A remarkable life

I have read many biographies and unless the subject's life is particularly tragic, I am impressed by what a rich life they've led compared to my own humdrum existence. However, only one person has inspired me to the point where I would swap places with them: the lesbian speedboat champion Marion 'Joe' Carstairs.

During her youth Carstairs was famous as the fastest female speedboat racer in the world but by the time she died in 1993, at the age of 93, she was almost forgotten. Luckily, the Daily Telegraph newspaper decided to include a small obituary and asked one of its writers - Kate Summerscale - to prepare one. When Summerscale began her research she soon realised that she was dealing with a remarkable individual and had a book in the making.

Carstairs led an extraordinary life. After becoming the fastest woman on water she went on to buy an island in the Bahamas and ruled it as a benevolent despot, entertaining the great and the good of Hollywood and Europe whilst enjoying a string of lovers that included Marlene Dietrich.

One of the most appealling things about Carstairs was her penchant for practical jokes. Her sister was a professional golfer and Carstairs once travelled halfway across the world so that she could hide in a bush by the last hole and jump out shouting 'Boo!' just as her sister was taking the crucial final shot.

However, her finest joke was when she persuaded some islanders to shine up their faces, strip down to their shorts and drum menancingly outside her house as she entertained guests one evening. 'The Blacks are going to kill us all. Pansies first, women last' she warned her guests and watched with delight as they fled upstairs and cowered in the bedrooms. With a great theatrical flourish she marched outside with a shotgun and let off a few shots. The drumming subsided and Carstairs told her guests 'I think it's going to be alright now.'

As Kate Summerscale found out, Joe Carstairs' rich and varied life cannot be summed-up in a few paragraphs and I am not going to try and do that here, particularly when you can follow this link to an excellent article written by Summerscale herself. Even better, you could read Summerscale's excellent short biography of Carstairs, The Queen of Whale Cay, which is a fitting tribute to a genuine eccentric with an exhilarating zest for living.

Fantasy

I have to admit from the word go that I don't know what I'm talking about (althought that's never stopped me in the past). I have never read a Fantasy novel, unless you include The Hobbit. I once listened to a BBC radio dramatisation of Lord of the Rings that was so good I felt that it absolved me from having to read the book. But apart from that, nothing.

I have vaguely tried, on a couple of occasions, to see what it was about these novels that inspired so much passion in their readers. However several things put me off, not least the people who buy them. Fantasy fans have always been the bain of my life as a bookseller as they have an uncanny ability to appear at the most inconvenient time of the day with an enquiry about when the next book in the Wheel of Time/Shannara/Otherworld/Pern/Mallorean series was coming out. This was always annoying, but today it's unforgiveable. I know these people spend at least four hours a day on the internet and have access to dozens of author websites and online fanzines, so why are they still coming in at 5.27 pm and asking for a list of all the books featuring orcs?

I've been trying to discover the secret of the Fantasy genre, but I've failed. All I can deduce is the following:

• If you're a male writer, you should call yourself Terry
• Always have a map at the front of the book, usually featuring a 'Western Sea' and some mountains in the east

• Use as many superfluous apostrophes as possible when naming people. I'm not sure why P'lomia and D'garian should be considered attractive names. I blame T'pau
• Write in a portentous, over-written style that echoes Tolkein and lends a certain gravitas to your tale of a humble blacksmith who finds himself being sent on an vital mission to destroy a dark lord
• Always have a quest. No quest, no story
• Never mind the quality, feel the width
• Never write a single novel. All self-respecting fantasy writers have at least five in their series
• The front cover should, if possible, feature a white horse

I read a very interesting article (which I've sadly lost) which deconstructed Fantasy fiction and its appeal to a largely male readership. The gist of it was that it tapped into a cultural subconsciousness about the myth of Lyoness/Atlantis (hence the prevelence of a western sea in the maps) and appealed to men who felt psychologically castrated by the post-industrial consumer society.

Shall I mention this to the next person who buys a David Eddings novel?

Second thoughts...

It seemed like a good idea at the time - instead of getting a local author to sign copies of his memoirs of being a pilot during World War Two, ask him to come and do a talk. However it now transpires that he is a right-wing, Christian fundamentalist who will probably use the evening as a platform for his views. Looking back on my meeting with him, he did say something along the lines of 'My friends didn't sacrifice their lives for all this filth and depravity.'

I should have taken the hint.

If he sticks to talking about firing rockets at Nazis then all well and good. What I don't want is a roomful of people who have turned up to listen to a war hero recount his exploits, only to be told that they live in the last days of Sodom.

(NB - Since writing the above, I have met Steve Stevens several times and he is never less than charming, so I should take hearsay with a pinch of salt)

Several years ago I booked an author who wrote books about self-defence and was notorious as the sort of man who could (and would) break someone's neck with his little finger. The shop filled up with shaven-headed, neckless men in their twenties and thirties who all seemed quite excited by the prospect of comparing notes about the best way to beat someone senseless.

The author arrived and after greeting the audience with a convivial 'Alright lads?' began his talk with the following sentence:

'I know that a lot of you have come here because you want to hear me talk about fighting, but I've become a Buddhist and turned my back on violence. Self-defence is not about fighting, but avoiding confrontation...'

You could cut the atmosphere with a knife. The crowd were turning ugly and it was only when the author started listing some of the 'terrible' things he did before he converted to Buddhism that the mood improved. The talk finished with something along the lines of 'I don't fight any more, but I could still 'ave you if I wanted to.'

Beware of the headhunter!

A few weeks ago I was talking to someone from one of the big five publishers and we got onto the subject of central scale-outs, where deals are made in smoke-filled rooms between publishers and bookselling chains. It's a simple enough process. We, the booksellers, agree to buy 2000 copies of a book in return for a better discount of 57% instead of the usual 48%. We use this extra margin to discount the selling price resulting in higher sales. Everyone's happy, except those authors whose books haven't been promoted.

It should be a fairly amicable process, but a few years ago the publisher had to deal with a buyer who was extremely difficult to work with. The buyer was generally disliked by most of the people she dealt with, but because she was a 'figure' in the book trade she was regarded as untouchable.

The publisher came up with a novel solution: they decide to poach her. The buyer was given an offer she couldn't refuse and happily jumped ship. Six months later they made her redundant. She couldn't go back into book retailing and no publisher would employ someone with her reputation, so that was the end of that.

This tactic was so successful that it was almost employed on at least one other occasion.