The weather has been glorious for the last ten days. Bad weather’s always the biggest risk when you book a holiday in the UK, but we lucked out on our trip to Dorset. Those obscene 4 by 4 behemoths jam the narrow lanes but, otherwise, the county shows England at its most appealing. We had an Enid Blyton seaside holiday, interspersed with cream teas, long walks, fish suppers and trips to bookshops. This seems to be one county where the internet hasn’t yet closed down the majority of second hand bookshops. Browsing in them is, for me, one of life’s great joys. You never know what you’ll find. On our final day in Bridport, I got my hands on a book I’ve been after for…

I’d planned to write my next entry about pseudonyms. I’ve just finished reading Brian Moore’s Intent To Kill, which he wrote as ‘Michael Bryan’ shortly after the publication of his first ‘literary’ novel, ‘Judith Hearne’. It took me twenty years to track down, via eBay, and I still haven’t got my hands on his other Bryan novel, the earlier Wreath For A Redhead, or the novels he wrote as ‘Bernard Mara’. These novels, 25 cent paperback originals, now go for serious money. I was outbid the only time I found a copy. The Bryan novel was interesting, combining good clean writing with a sharp sense of suspense and characterisation that rarely rose above pulp fiction level. You could feel a writer learning to write, testing…

I’ve had a reply to my letter from the children’s laureate, who sees no reason to change her title. The gist of her argument is that she wasn’t aware of my book and, anyway, the publishers chose the title, not her. They say they didn’t know about my book either. I’m told that, unlike most authors I know, Random House don’t use Amazon to check titles before publishing a book. My case for asking that JW change her title is evidently weakened by the fact that there are other novels called Love Lessons. I can find just one, an adult romance only published in the USA, after mine, on a different subject. But, as I state in the entry below, there’s no copyright in titles…

According to today’s Guardian, Jacqueline Wilson’s 86th novel, out this autumn, looks at student/teacher relationships and is called ‘Love Lessons’. Sound familiar? I’m assuming that despite the huge (by my standards) sales of the 1998 David Belbin Scholastic novel, ‘Love Lessons’, not to mention all the press, prize short listing, million plus library loans and all the five star reviews on Amazon, Jacqueline and her publishers aren’t aware of my novel, which is still in shops. No publisher or novelist would deliberately publish a book with the same title, subject matter and target readership as another recent novel. There’s no copyright in titles, or ideas, but I’ve written to Jacqueline asking her to change her title to avoid confusion with my novel, a state of…

Forget old bands reforming. If they have some of their original members, good luck to them. Nobody has to pay to see them play. But what about much loved fictional heroes? I don’t know which meant the most to me in my childhood, Sherlock Holmes or Doctor Who. My Mum suggested I check out the first episode of the latter, An Unearthly Child. I didn’t see it on its first showing. Evidently a lot of people missed the show, because JFK was assasinated that day, so the BBC repeated it the following Saturday. And, from then on, I was hooked. I skipped ‘Coronation Street’ when I was away at university, but I always watched Dr Who, then at its inspired, Tom Baker era, peak. I…