====================================== MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL! ====================================== "THE BOSUN'S CHRONICLE" --- emailed to Shipmates around the world each month --- VOL. 2, ISSUE 12, DECEMBER 2002 Avast there - and welcome aboard from the Bosun of the Thomas Kydd Shipmates' Network! 1) DECKLOG 2) HANDS TO MUSTER 3) NAUTICAL WEBSITE OF THE MONTH 4) ON THE STOCKS 5) DAYS OUT 6) SHIPMATE REVIEWERS CONTEST WINNERS 7) NEW NEXT YEAR ==================== 1) DECKLOG --- events and activities --- Last month Julian spent several busy days in London and on a whistle-stop tour through the South West of England signing paperbacks of ARTEMIS. Across the UK last month, millions of commuters and travellers would have seen a stunning ad campaign on train station billboards for the ARTEMIS paperback. The magnificent 4-sheet posters standing over five feet tall invited readers to "Voyage to the East and battle the Great Southern Ocean . without leaving your armchair." On the writing front, Julian is now into the most climactic scenes of MUTINY, and on target for delivering the manuscript to the publishers early in the New Year, for publication in 2004. He's promising a few surprises about Kydd in this book! Julian was recently invited by "The Guardian", one of the UK's most influential quality dailies, to write a column for their popular Paperback Writer feature. In the piece, which appeared November 23, he talked about how a career in the navy and a lifelong love of the sea had given him a magnificent canvas for his sea tales. Looking back on growing up in the late 1950s he felt the sea seemed to be much more a part of Britain's shared consciousness then. He remembered the thrilling drama of the Flying Enterprise, when Captain Kurt Carlsen refused to leave his sinking ship and, with First Mate Dancy of the ocean salvage tug Turmoil, heroically fought to bring her within sight of port before she tragically sank. Then, too, London Pool was packed with ships flying the red ensign, and it was also the time of the very last of the square riggers. ===================== 2) HANDS TO MUSTER --- Behind the Thomas Kydd series is a great team; each month "The Bosun's Chronicle" goes behind the scenes to talk to one of the Shipmates who have been involved in some aspect of the book --- This month we feature Carolyn Mays, Publishing Director at Hodder & Stoughton, and Julian's new editor there. Carolyn worked in the travel business for several years after graduating from Durham University in 1984 - and then finally decided she wanted to enjoy her job! - so she took up a career in publishing. Carolyn also worked as a literary scout in New York for a couple of years. +Bosun. What was your reaction when you were invited to become Julian's new editor at Hodder? +Carolyn. Very thrilled - and honoured; he's been a big priority for Hodder since our acquisition of the Kydd series. I'd loved KYDD when I'd first read it so there was also enormous pleasure at being able to work with him and on the books. +Bosun. How do you see your role? +Carolyn. As a facilitator - someone who helps the author (and Kydd himself) express themselves in the way they wish and tell the story in a way that's going to bring them to the potentially huge audience. +Bosun. Looking at Julian's books overall, how would you describe the development of his writing style? +Carolyn. I think it's becoming much more confident and assured over the course of the last two novels. Julian seems to be treading more sure-footedly on the territory that's not purely naval. He's also showing that even without the nautical angle he is capable of being an historical novelist of real distinction. +Bosun. The paperback of ARTEMIS has been launched in good time for Christmas. Hodder sent Julian on a pretty hectic signing tour of the south of England last month. What feedback have you been receiving from the booksellers? +Carolyn. Certainly the booksellers had piled the books high and our feedback so far has been that it has been good to make new friends in the West Country and cement relationships in cities like Portsmouth. +Bosun. On the surface, the Kydd series may be thought to appeal mainly to a male audience. However we know Julian has quite a large number of female fans in his readership. Do you think male and female readers are attracted to different elements? Do you as a female editor look at a manuscript slightly differently than a male editor? +Carolyn. I'm sure I do look at the manuscript from a slightly different angle than the average male reader might; I am interested in relationships and character development as well as action, I think many female readers are. But whatever different elements attract readers of the different genders, I think they can co-exist quite happily in the same novel: there's no reason why an action-packed nautical adventure series shouldn't have utterly true-to-life characterisation, varied pace and interesting relationships. +Bosun. Without giving away too much of the plot, what most impressed you about SEAFLOWER? +Carolyn. The fact that even to an unnautical reader like me Julian has managed to make the reader fall in love with a third ship. Each ship we've met in this series we've grown to love and when we leave them we feel we'll never love another - but we always do. And on a bigger level, the way Julian has managed to bring the wider world that Kydd and Renzi have left behind in England into the ocean-faring world of his two protagonists. ==================== 3) NAUTICAL WEBSITE OF THE MONTH --- Every month Julian talks about a website with sea links --- MARTIME HISTORY An eclectic collection of articles covering all aspects of maritime history, with some fascinating original naval documents from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Among the material that caught our eye: "The Memoirs of a Veteran Naval Officer" (1805), "Ships of the Old Navy" (an alphabetical, anecdotal history of the sailing warships of the Royal Navy from 1761 to the 1840s), and a special section on Nelson. http://www.cronab.demon.co.uk/marit.htm ==================== 4) ON THE STOCKS --- News of upcoming books, foreign translations, audio versions, other products --- Abridged audiobook The abridged audiobook of SEAFLOWER will be published by Hodder & Stoughton in April in conjunction with the hardback, and is priced at GBP 9.99. ISBN 1840 3242 1X. Hugo Wilkinson of Hodder's audiobooks division chatted with us recently about the project. "Cutting a book like SEAFLOWER down to a two-hour recording is always tough," he concedes. "Peter Mackie, our abridger, has worked on all of Julian's books to date and so is used to his style. The best abridgements strip the story down to its bare essentials while keeping the atmosphere and tension, and as with KYDD and ARTEMIS, SEAFLOWER has this in spades. All this is driven along by another fantastic reading by Jack Davenport who really brings to life the colourful list of characters - and of course Kydd himself." ==================== 5) DAYS OUT --- Each month we visit somewhere around the world of special nautical interest --- PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND Commanding the entrance to the English Channel, and with one of the finest natural harbours in the world, the City of Plymouth lies between the River Plym and the Tamar River. Its value as a naval base was recognised by Edward 1 in the 13th century and by Kydd's day a great tradition of seamanship and shipbuilding was flourishing. Just a few of history's great events that began in Plymouth: + Sir Humphrey Gilbert's departure in 1583 for Newfoundland, England's first colonial possession + The Pilgrim Fathers sailed from Plymouth in "The Mayflower" in 1620 + In 1768 Captain James Cook, the greatest navigator of the eighteenth century, departed for the first of his epic voyages + The sailing in 1787 of transportation ships carrying men and women convicts bound for Australia. They landed at Port Jackson, later to become Sydney, where they established the first British colony. + From Devonport, on the western side of the city, "The Beagle" carrying Charles Darwin departed on a five-year voyage. The naval base at Devonport dates from the 1690s and is still the largest in Europe. Down the coast from Plymouth is Slapton Sands. It was from here the that ill-fated Exercise Tiger took place during preparations for D-Day landings. A surprise attack by German E-boats led to the loss of hundreds of American lives. A Sherman tank retrieved from the sea and a memorial commemorate this tragic event. =================== 6) SHIPMATE REVIEWERS CONTEST The Shipmate Reviewers Contest generated a large number of entries from all around the world and the judges were impressed with the variety of the selections and the descriptions of favourite scenes. The six winners (who all received personally signed Advance Copies of SEAFLOWER) are Graham Davenport of Hertfordshire, UK; Mary Goose from Cambridgeshire, UK; Sheldon Levy who lives in Florida, US; Todd Wardwell from New Jersey, Stephen Collins in South Australia and Graham Mills of Coventry, UK. We'll share their reviews about SEAFLOWER with Shipmates in a future newsletter. Here are excerpts from their winning entries: + (the capture of Citoyenne in ARTEMIS). "The vivid descriptions meant I was there at Kydd's side . the screams of pain and terror mixed with the smells of the fight . [the battle] gave me a real feeling of what those sailors went through." + (chapter 5 in KYDD when Kydd comes up from below to face the foulest weather he has seen to date). "When Kydd threw his shoulders back, faced the storm and made the decision to depart on a career at sea, I felt enthralled." + (the fever aboard ARTEMIS). "It is a chilling description that still creates shivers. No one is immune and everyone is afraid of who will be next." + (Duke William getting underway from Portsmouth). The activity of preparing to sail, her sternward movement until she takes the wind, the exhilaration of the elements. so much in those few pages." + (chapter 10 in KYDD; the battle) "When Kydd first experiences the physical tiredness, emotional turmoil and anguish at the human carnage. thundering guns, cracking timber, human screams, blinding smoke, pungent smells . nothing more powerfully portrays the role of the seaman." + (Kydd running afoul of a lieutenant in Duke William) "The price was twelve lashes at the grating. Tom's attitude changed at that moment and the description of the scene strikingly captured his intense anger and resentment at a system he believed had let him down." Watch out for the Shipmate Reviewers Contest again next year! ________ 7) COMING: NEW FEATURES IN THE NEWSLETTER, UPDATED WEBSITE Starting in 2003 there'll be a number of new features in "The Bosun's Chronicle": + "Ask Julian" - Julian answers your questions! He'll be happy to respond to queries about the Great Age of Sail, the Thomas Kydd series, the challenges of writing. over to you. + "Recommended Reading" - selections from the world of sea/maritime books, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as nautical magazines + "Salty Sayings" - The origin of some of the many nautical sayings that have found their way into common useage today + And a "Who's Who" of the series characters. Bios and backgrounds of all the people in the books. PLUS, NEW LOOK WEBSITE + In January, you'll also see some changes in the website: a number of new photographs (from Julian's personal collection) of the recent Author Tour of the States and the various locations visited in the course of research for the series; fully updated information on all the formats of the Thomas Kydd series; feature articles; new contests for First Editions - and another chance to win a superb limited edition print of one of the cover paintings. ================== Yours aye, THE BOSUN ++ Back issues of the newsletter by request ++