abctales online mag

Cheers. We're hoping to turn it into as interesting and diverse a part of the site as the rest of the site already is - and give aspiring journalists a chance to get their work out there. Any contributions and ideas are welcome. Certainly, the publishers have responded very well and are giving us loads of interviews (have two to type up at the moment so more help on that side of things would be very much appreciated. Most interviews take place in London but if there's anyone on a book tour coming to your town who you'd like to interview, let me know and I'll try to organise it for you.) We also have a gazillion (approx.) books that need reviewing so anyone based in London who fancies coming over and raiding the office for free books in exchange for reviewing them, drop me a line. And if you're going/have gone to any literary festivals you'd like to review, that would be great. We're also very open to new photographers for the site, so if anyone reckons they can do pics for the front page, feel free to mail me examples of your work. As ever, we can't afford to pay yet but hopefully the Yell Award will help make advertisers realise that the site is a great way to reach people so who knows what will happen in the future. So what would you like to see in ABCtales online magazine? Cheers Em

An ABCtales online could consider a mission along the lines of the esteemed 'Arts and Letters Daily.' Rather than just publish more reviews and arguments on different issues it could select, no matter how subjectively, stories that are burried in the space somewhere. ---- The Web resembles a typical Australian goldfield, with vast mountains of low-grade ore. Mining in both cases can be arduous. On the Internet it means sifting through endless streams of verbose, under-edited, often self-indulgent prose, frequently accompanied by tedious graphics that negate the "instant information" advantage of the Web. Precious nuggets of real content are there to be found, however, and it's the mission of Arts & Letters Daily to extract them for our readers. ----

i'd like to write an article about running writers and/or readers groups ...

yes, I often look into these areas of the site. there is always something of interest although I had read some of the items before when they were first uploaded - david's article being an example. the writing advice columns are pretty good too and the articles on the apostrophe and the semi colon should be compulsory reading. the links page is very useful as is the author web site page. in fact, it's all very good. can I have my abc badge now please?

Agree, Stormy, all bloody good stuff (badge for me, too?). And Andrew's interview was, indeed, brilliant and informative.

I'll clearly have to get some badges made :-) In the interim, I do have some Yell Awards keyrings you can have - first 25 people to e-mail me with their address get one (they had bowlfuls of them at the aftershow party and an editor of one esteemed publication - who shall remain nameless as he may write nice things about us for my discretion - poured a whole bowl of them down the front of my dress. They're very cool keyrings despite that though.) Cheers Em

I expect many of us will have been interested in Emilys request to help review the gazillions of books she's got lying about. But I wonder what percentage of us are within easy reach of London to drop into the office. This London 'exclusion zone' is an evergreen bugbare for us 'Northerners' (anyone North of Euston.) How about if we paid postage Emily ? Any chance of some of us aliens up north getting a look in ? P.S. If any of those key rings are still warm and smelling of Chanel No 5............(Oops. Gotta go.)

Aw - OK, feeling bad about the Londoncentric thing (as a natural born non-Londoner) how about this: 1 Send me a list of your favourite authors 2 When we get a book in by one of those authors, I'll bung it in the post to you NB: This offer lasts as long as everyone actually reviews the books they get sent and as long as it doesn't cost us too much! If it ends up costing a fortune, then yep, I'll happily send books if you pay postage and send us reviews (hopefully we'll be loaded enough one day not to need to worry about things like this!). That do ya? Cheers Em PS: Keyrings no longer warm and I'm not rich enough for Chanel No 5 (more likely to smell of L'eau de free wine if my recollection of that night is remotely correct) No really, they are clean! And there are still some left if anyone wants one.

*waiting by front door for promised books for over a week* :o)

cos I packaged them up today so you should have them in the next 48 hours (the post from Kentish Town leaves something to be desired)

Emily, Good idea for the book reviews. Can't do fairer than that. My names will be on there way. Shame about those keyrings tho !

Thanks for your comment, Robert.