Re: Ex Occidente Press
 

Are you thinking of this huge and hugely desirable item?

http://www.centipedepress.com/horror/dramasdepths.html

Re: Ex Occidente Press
 

'Are you thinking of this huge and hugely desirable item?'

Thank you Ramsey! Indeed.

Re: Ex Occidente Press
 

My copy of The Man Who Collected Machen arrived in bucolic, breezy New Jersey, U.S.A. first thing this morning.

It's another winner from a fine press and a fine author.

Re: Ex Occidente Press
 

Mine just arrived, and in fine condition too!

Re: Ex Occidente Press
 

I hope my author's copies arrive soon. I've not actually seen the book other than via photographs, which is a shame.

Mark S.

Re: Ex Occidente Press
 

Although I share Mark's eagerness to obtain copies of his own book, it does raise an interesting question, namely why authors are so keen to receive copies of their own books. It's not as if they haven't already read them.

Do authors actually read author's copies in the same way as readers do? Or are author's copies destined just for the shelf of untouched volumes?

Re: Ex Occidente Press
 

I remember Kate Bush saying, in an interview, that her ambition was never to become famous, but to make a record - the physical object. Of course, she did this, so presumably to physically hold that object would have been to know that her ambition was realised. Perhaps the same is true for authors. There is also the fact that authors often promise copies of their book to people, having already been promised by the publisher. The copies don't always arrive from the publisher, and then the author has to let down those people to whom he or she has promised copies.

There's also this possibility - in my case, I write the kind of thing I would like to read if only it existed. I don't actually re-read my work as much as this would suggest, as I can't help being me, which means, whether my work is good or not, it's hard for me to enjoy it in the same way as someone who didn't write it. A cruel twist of fate, perhaps? I aim to write precisely what doesn't exist in literature that I think should, and then I'm unable to appreciate it fully.

And again, there's the possibility that, if you do find you are able to enjoy your own work, then you might also be someone whose enjoyment is enhanced by reading a well-produced book, rather than reading from your own messy manuscript, or from a screen, or - if you can afford so much printout - from a scrappy sheaf of loose printed pages.

On the whole, writers are paid so little by publishers, anyway, that not even to get copies of one's own book can feel like insult added to injury. One can feel, "I should at least get copies of my own book!"

Re: Ex Occidente Press
 

I promised to give a copy of the book to my mother whom I'm seeing on Friday.

Mark S.

Re: Ex Occidente Press
 

Extremely well put, Quentin! That's exactly my motivation too, and also the same snag I keep facing.

Something Calvino said about his first fantasy novel, The Cloven Viscount, when many of his friends were berating him for turning away from Neorealism, has stuck in my mind: "Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic."

That elusive, mysterious, wistful but profound quality of atticness is what I most value in a work of fiction.

But is there not also a perverse satisfaction in not owning a copy of one's own books? A sort of unencumbered lightness of spirit worthy of a Cynic in a tub? I believe there is.

Re: Ex Occidente Press
 

I am currently rewriting my trilogy of novels (Tenacity of Feathers (2005): Hawler, Klaxon City etc) as 'Nemonymous Night' (a single novel). On re-reading the original, I found myself enjoying something that I had forgotten I had written. Hey, this is a great author, I thought. Must read some more of him. But then I realised the stupidity of that thought.