Soft-selling Scent of Cinnamon

I suppose it's just possible that one or two of you out there might not already own a copy of The Scent of Cinnamon and Other Stories. It's all right, I don't want to know your names. All I want to do is tell you that you can now buy the prize-winning collection in paperback. It's just as big and fat and full of goodness (and a pinch of wickedness too) as it was in hardback, but it costs less! You can buy it direct from Salt at only £8.79 by clicking here.

Which means you no longer have any excuse. Right? So what are you waiting for? Come on...

A message from Griff Rhys Jones

Griff Rhys Jones says:

“Support the good work here. Don’t let Salt fall. If the recession is going to take things down, let it be motor manufacturers, let it be bad banks, let it be chains of fast food restaurants. We can lose a few of them, but we don't have enough small independent and daring publishers like Salt. I think I can be a little more forthright than Chris and say ‘Just six books’. Buy dozens why don’t you? It’s a great list. And apparently you will help the economy in many subtle ways too complicated for studious folk like us.”

Salt news

I'm sure you've been following the Salt Just One Book campaign, and I hope you've supported it. If you haven't, and need a final incentive, other than a visit from some rather shady friends of mine early one morning, this might just do the trick. It's the latest offer from Salt, and it's a winner:

A THIRD OFF ALL SALT TITLES THROUGHOUT JUNE

We're now giving you a huge 33% off ALL books till the end of June. Use the coupon code G3SRT453 when in the checkout to benefit. Don't forget if you spend £30 or $30 you get free shipping too.

Please continue to spread the word, and spread news of this offer. Please don't let up. It's been extraordinary, but we're not out of danger yet. Every penny goes into developing Salt's books and services. We want to start a new children's list, and offer more resources to teachers and schools. We want to extend our publishing in new areas including our translations programme, we want to offer you more free magazines online. We want to help develop more support for debuts with the enhancement of our Crashaw and Scott prizes. We're planning audio books, ebooks and new videos for you. We only want to move forward, to develop and expand what we do and deliver great books in new ways to you and yours.

We need your support throughout June. We'll try and organise more readings and promotions with our authors. Virtual book tours. More launches. We'll work with bookstores to bring you short story and poety evenings. Stick with us throughout June and we can do something astonishing. That's the power of Just One Book — we want you to be a part of it. Follow us onTwitter look for #SaltBooks and #JustOneBook. Join our Facebook Group. 

And have a giggle at the vid, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdcTqXaOD2s

Oh, and one last special offer — Catherine Eisner’s magnificent crime novel, Sister Morphinefor £7.50 plus P&P, simply enter coupon code EISNER in the UK checkout http://bit.ly/8rHDa

Watch out for more special offers throughout June.

Salt

Salt Publishing, as you may know by now, has been savagely hit by the credit crunch and is now in officially dire financial straits. All, however, is not lost. If every human being currently alive on the planet orders a copy of The Scent of Cinnamon just one Salt book, Salt will be saved and, indeed, in a position to challenge the media domination of Murdoch, Branson and Berlusconi, not to speak of other more savoury characters. This isn't likely to happen, but it wouldn't hurt to get the ball rolling. You can order direct from Salt or from whichever bookshop you prefer. And if you live outside the UK and are ordering online, Book Depository is almost always cheaper than Amazon, as I never tire of pointing out. Naturally, you won't just be doing Salt a favour; you'll also be doing yourself one. I won't recommend any one in particular, because Salt doesn't do duds.

Remember: no Salt, no flavour

Dithering about what to buy people for Christmas? I know times are hard, but, let's face it, what are friends and family worth? Something between a fiver and £14.99, with a 33% discount? I guessed as much.

So all you need to do is click here and buy your loved ones, and their loved ones, one or - why not? - two or three of the fabulous books produced by Salt. I'm assuming you've got a copy of The Scent of Cinnamon. What do you mean, you haven't! Shame! Order one this minute! You'll be doing yourself a favour. More to the point, you'll be helping one of the bravest, most adventurous presses around at the moment, in the UK or anywhere else, to continue to produce books that don't just look good, very good, but actually do you good. (I have a medical certificate to prove this.)

I won't make any recommendations, but these are just some of the Salt books I've read - and loved - this year, in no particular order:

Elizabath Baines: Balancing on the Edge of the World

Simon Barraclough: Los Alamos Mon Amour (shortlisted for the Forward Prize)

Katy Evans-Bush: Me and the Dead

John Wilkinson: Down to Earth

Vanessa Gebbie: Words from a Glass Bubble

Isobel Dixon: A Fold in the Map

Douglas Oliver: Arrondissements

David Gaffney: Aromabingo

Tania Hershman: The White Road

And just to show that I've put my money where my mouth is, I've ordered and can't wait to receive:

Jay Merill: Astral Bodies (I read with Jay earlier this year and she was wonderful!)

Matthew Licht: The Moose Show (I'm intrigued, and slightly turned on, by his podcast)

Andrew Duncan: Origins of the Underground (I'm in the introduction to this, by the way, and Andrew didn't even tell me! This is your chance to explain yourself, Andrew...)

And we're off...!

I'd like to draw your attention to Elizabeth Baines' blog today. For two reasons. Well three, actually. The first is that - unsurprisingly - it's one of the most stimulating blogs around, with a care and attention to what reading and writing are really concerned with that's unrivalled. But you already know that. The second is that she has officially kicked off the Something Rich and Strange virtual book tour, in which ten illustrious bloggers interview me about different aspects of my new collection of stories The Scent of Cinnamon and Other Stories. Salt Publishing is not only an extraordinary, and extraordinarily ongoing, act of courage and faith in both writers and readers, it's also a hotbed of brilliant ideas for making sure that books get into the right hands. The latest, Cyclone, the "home of virtual book tours", recognises the immense power of the web and of literary blogging and has harnessed that power to promote its publications. Tania Hershman's wonderful collection, Walking the White Road, is currently on tour, and I'm travelling, humbly, in her wake. Elizabeth's interview with me will be followed in a week's time by Kay Sexton's, at Writing Neuroses, in which I'll be talking about, among other things, ghosts, Look out for it.

The third reason is that Elizabeth has also written a typically generous and astute review of Little Monsters. What more could anyone ask?

The author speaks, so button up and listen

One of the things I did when I went to visit Jen and Chris at Salt Publishing last month was make a podcast in which I talk about short stories. The result is - how shall I put this? - engagingly unprepared. Here it is. 

For more information about the book, click here. (As though you didn't know.) And if you want to buy it, click on the widget somewhere to the right, and the Amazon fairy will provide.

It's out! Out, I tell you!

Well, today's the big day. The Scent of Cinnamon and Other Stories is now officially available from all good booksellers. If you pester them. Go on. Pester them. And, of course, from Amazon. You can order it directly from this blog by clicking on the widget on the right. You won't regret it. I'll keep you updated with reviews and the exciting promotional activities Salt and I are dreaming up to make sure that no one in the known universe will be unaware of the book. You can, of course, do your part by telling everyone how wonderful it is, even if you haven't read it yet. And, naturally, it would make a fabulous Christmas present for broad-minded aunts. 

Anything else? Not that I can think of. Oh yes, for more information click here.

Days in England

What I should be doing now is telling you all about my last week in England, as I promised. And since should is the governess of will, to coin a phrase, that's exactly what I'll do. It all started off with a visit to the very wonderful Jen and Chris Hamilton-Emery, who publish fantastic books in exquisite editions, making their writers happy and the fortunate readers of those writers even happier. They are, of course, Salt Publishing and without them, and it, the world would be a sadder and less literate place. They also make excellent coffee and gave me a couple of freebies. What I was doing there was meeting them for the first time, which was great, and picking up some pre-publication copies of The Scent of Cinnamon, my new short story collection. And a very lovely thing it is. I think we can all be proud of ourselves. 

I then had a walk round Cambridge and discovered that whole tracts of the city are now given over to mobile phone shops. I stumbled into a queue of McFly fans waiting for autographs from two McFlies in HMV. I looked for two books I wanted, neither of them particularly arcane (OK, Edmund White's My Lives and some stories, any stories, by David Foster Wallace... Satisfied?), found neither at Heffer's and both at Borders, which came as a shock. Bowes and Bowes is now the CUP bookshop as, of course, you all knew, but I didn't and was disappointed. I almost had lunch at the Gardenia, in memory of Jonathan Williams ('street food'), but ended up with a rather miserable (in both senses) king prawn salad, sitting outside a place near the market in the unseasonable heat. 

My other reason for being in Cambridge was to go to the annual lecture at my old college, Emmanuel, to give 'moral support' (though what qualifies me for this I'm not sure, other than a willingness to be entertained) to Griff Rhys Jones, who lived on the other side of the roof garden in South Court when I was doing drugs and so on for three utterly delightful years. I used to watch him stride up and down in his room at three a.m in search 

of whatever was needed to complete his history essay, before he wisely switched to English and could enjoy the opportunities offered by constant leisure. Griff was in fine form, as usual, still striding up and down, though with shorter hair. Dinner followed and was really very good, another marked change from the Cambridge I remember. I met David Lowen, who somehow finds time to run the Emmanuel Society, and agreed to take part in a Literary Day at the college. I'll keep you informed.

My other (non-personal) reason for being in England last week was to take part in Ride the Word III. Well, I had a great time, reading the final story from the collection, previosuly available only in Dutch translation (and how often can one say that?). Elizabeth Baines and Vanessa Gebbie have both blogged about the event and impartial judgements on my contribution can be found there, but it was a great pleasure to be on the bill 

with three such interesting and accomplished poets - Simon Barraclough, Vincent De Souza and Isobel Dixon - and, in particular, with short-story writer, Jay Merill, who was an absolute revelation and a delight. Add to that the opportunity it gave me catch up with old friends and meet new ones - you know who you are - and I couldn't have been happier. Which brings us back to Salt, without which most dishes would be very dull indeed.

Coming soon to a screen near you

Salt has already put up a website for The Scent of Cinnamon and Other Stories, which contains not only a lot of valuable information about the book and an excerpt from the title story, as well as some reviews, but also a large version of the small photograph of me that you're used to seeing on this very blog, in which I look, well, larger. I know, I can't believe it either. And here's a preview of the cover. Pretty damn fine, right. Now all you have to do is pre-order and wait for October...