I can’t believe this is my last blog post of 2010. Where did the year go? Where did the decade go? Come to that, where did my life go?
Not only is it my last post of the year; it’s also the last Wednesday after a Barbara Poelle Tuesday. Fortunately I’m the least competitive person in the world, but even if I wasn’t, it would have taken me about three Barbara posts to realise that trying to be witty and hilarious on a Wednesday would be a losing battle, which is why I aim for a different style. One reason anyway. The other is I don’t stop laughing till Thursday, and I can’t generate my own wit when I’m rolling on the floor at someone else’s. Barbara, you’re a one-off, and Tuesdays will never be the same.
One way or another it’s been a year of change. This time last year I was dropping heavy hints about an exciting development in the life of Crème de la Crime, but I don’t think I had the faintest inkling exactly how exciting things were going to get.
The development, of course, was our venture into eBooks, which got under way in April just as planned, and is still going strong.
But then in September…
It still feels a little strange not to be running my own show. Or more accurately, my own publishing company. I’ve run my own show for more decades than I care to admit to, in one form or another: freelance writer, creative writing teacher, theatre critic and feature writer for the local paper, setter-up and co-ordinator of the first-ever support and appraisal service for aspiring writers, administrator of a short story competition which grew into a major international award. All of the above together at one point, and all related to the written word, which is what ignites my candle, sets my blood alight and makes me want to get up in the morning, but each making slightly different demands on my rapidly ageing brain.
Then came Crème de la Crime. But Creme is now someone else’s responsibility, and I’m in the process of finding yet another show to run.
Someone once told me that regular progress wasn’t always the best way forward; that seeing life as a series of not necessarily linked episodes was OK too, and moving on from one major focus to another didn’t mean you’d failed at the one you were moving from. It was good advice.
Crème de la Crime may not have made my fortune, raced into the bestseller lists or won any high-profile awards, but it did give thirteen top-class crime writers a foot on the ladder. Of the thirteen, eight are still going strong, with ongoing contracts with bigger publishers than Crème could ever have become without a complete change of personality. Two more are working on their next books, and if there’s any justice they will follow the eight to continuing success. Two of the remaining three are still writing, and will reappear during 2011 in eBook format; and the last one’s name frequently pops up in a written word context too. I call that success. What we set out to do, our mission statement if you like, was to seek out new crime writing talent and give it a springboard. We did.
And of course Crème de la Crime itself lives on, albeit in a slightly different shape, as part of Severn House, with four of those thirteen authors (so far) on the schedule. Which has to mean it was in good enough shape for someone bigger to take an interest. I call that success too, especially since when I began, my only experience of publishing, aside from a handful of anthologies of competition winners, was from the author’s side of the fence. I’ve learned a lot in the past seven years. Which is another success in itself.
So as 2010 ends, here’s a toast. To new beginnings.
