The toad, work (an appreciation)

My new novel, Serious Things, will be published in hardback at the end of January. Though it’s early days yet, the advance reaction seems positive, with a couple of national newspapers taking an interest and booksellers not troubling their noses with too many wrinkles. I hope to ‘launch’ the book in London, and there may be a reading at the excellent Word Power Books in Edinburgh (I will post details closer to the time).

It’s now more than six months since I finished tampering with Serious Things, and I have to confess that I haven’t started work in earnest on its successor. There are two projects in the pipeline (as well as a completed collection of stories which is still looking for a buyer) but I’ve yet to decide which novel idea to pursue first. One is projected to be a rollicking dystopian fantasy; the other should be quieter and contemporary in setting, a character-driven comedy. I sometimes think I may be running scared from the more ambitious project; yet part of me really fancies, and I hope honestly, the smaller (yet not much less frightening) challenge of a social comedy.

Meanwhile, my great obsession this year has been writing very short stories. There are currently 36 of these Fleeting Tales (the working title of a planned collection) and they range widely in style and form and content. The only rules are that no story can exceed 1000 words (most are about 600 words) and each must tell, or at least suggest, a complete narrative. One of these stories, ‘Gorgon’, I have posted on this blog. Another, ‘The Siren of May’ will be broadcast on The Verb on BBC Radio 3 on 14^th December at 9 p.m. Tune in to hear me talk with the great Ian McMillan about mini fiction and ‘playing with words’!

Paper view

A recurrent theme on this blog has been my publishers and their environmental policies, so it was with huge pleasure that I received an email from Hachette Livre UK’s CEO, Tim Hely Hutchinson, containing a press release from the corporation. Here are some of the details…

Hachette Livre UK, the largest publisher in the UK, has committed to “working with environmental organisations to ensure that its policies and practices not only protect the environment but also improve it wherever practical”. (This is a major turnaround: until recently Hachette was reluctant to talk to Greenpeace, let alone actively work with them.)

In order to achieve its goals, Hachette aims to phase out “controversial sources of paper fibre”. When practical, preference will be given to using post-consumer recycled fibre. The company is working to ensure that any virgin fibre is certified by the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council).

It’s a tough call to make such a huge shift in policy, so one appreciates that it will take a little time. Nonetheless, the press statement goes on to claim that Hachette is working towards FSC certification on a company by company basis. Little, Brown will achieve certification at the start of 2008, with all other companies – including Headline and my own publisher, Sceptre – following by the end of the year. The overall aim is to move “substantially” all trade publishing to FSC-certified paper by the end of 2009, and to make “major progress” in the same direction for educational and illustrated publishing (a much tougher ask, by all accounts).

Progress doesn’t stop here. Hachette Livre UK has made commitments on ethical trading and recycling from their offices and warehouses, while pledging to cut its carbon emissions by working with the Carbon Trust. Emissions that cannot be avoided are to be ‘off-set’ by contributions to tree planting programmes. (And yes, I know this is a hotly debated policy.)

While running my letter campaign to get Hachette to improve its act, I spoke with Belinda Fletcher, Senior Forest Campaigner at Greenpeace-UK. It reassures me that she has seen fit to write the following for the press release:

“By choosing recycled fibre and paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council for their books, Hachette Livre UK is making great strides towards being a truly forest friendly company. Greenpeace welcomes Hachette Livre UK’s ethical and environmental policy – once implemented, it will be great news both for the environment and for consumers.”

Having written exhorting letters to Tim Hely Hutchinson, I am now in the far happier position of writing him a letter of thanks. Of course, my personal efforts will only have had a small impact; but many writers have expressed similar concerns – which just goes to show that pester power can work.

Three thumbs up

[The following should be read with a healthy dose of scepticism]

Because I’m an especially sad individual, I spent Saturday morning in my pyjamas watching live-stream footage of the Australian election results. The overwhelming victory of Kevin Rudd is a cause for celebration, and not only for Australians who’ve put up with the repellent John Howard for eleven years. It looks as though the world’s biggest per-capita polluter is finally going to get real on climate change – with the new PM pledging to sign up to Kyoto and attend next month’s Bali conference in person.

Many heads wiser than mine have declared this the world’s first climate change election. Suffering the worst drought in centuries, Australians have woken up, as the rest of are going to have to, to the grim consequences of our carbon-spewing ways; and the cynical inaction of Howard’s Liberals played a part in their defeat, with 69% of voters considering global warming a major electoral issue (the economy came in at 65%).

Will this change of electoral mood be repeated in the USA next year, or in Canada, whose odious Stephen Harper has returned from the Commonwealth Summit in Uganda with the carcase of a proposed climate emissions agreement slung across his shoulders? Here in the UK, Gordon Brown shared a platform last week with the WWF and gave the first indications of serious engagement with the climate crisis. Other, more immediate, disasters soon overshadowed his pronouncements, and of course we must wait and see what, if any, policies we get out of his government. So far, New Labour has been all talk and no walk on the environment, and perhaps we shouldn’t hold our breaths; yet I’ve decided to take heart from Brown’s rhetorical greening, in the hope that, on renewable energy at least, his reassurances are going to carry weight.

On a much smaller matter, there has also been progress in my (now) hometown of Edinburgh. The excellent Steve Burgess, Green Party Councillor, has sounded out his colleagues on the City Council to find broad support for the idea of ‘differential parking charges’ – that is, tagging the cost of parking charges to vehicle emissions. It looks like we’re going to see a feasibility study commissioned: a necessary first step to getting the New Town Tractor brigade to cough up for the damage and danger they cause the rest of us.

Reasons to be cheerful, then; though all that’s happening – one could argue – is that politicians are approaching the point they should have reached a decade ago.