… that’s the time a potential reader gives to the cover of each book when scanning a bookshop display or online screen. So say the publishers. In that time the individual takes in the design, the title and whatever is written – tag-line or glowing review – on the front cover. If it doesn’t get their attention, their eye moves on to the next. So the pressure to make the cover arresting and appealing is intense.
The new novel from yours truly – a contemporary political thriller set in Westminster, entitled Plague – is due for publication in the Autumn of 2020, with review copies available in the Spring. So I am currently engaged with publisher Claret Press and designer and artist Petya Tsankova in deciding upon the cover. Petya is a freelance graphic designer who frequently works with Claret Press.
I am used to working with cover designers. Readers of my blogs at The Story Bazaar will be familiar with the work of Andrew Brown, who designed the cover for Reconquista see ( Reading a Book by its Cover ) and that of Dan Mogford ( Final Touches ) who designed the cover for The Silver Rings. Both are excellent designers who created covers which, in my humble opinion, have stood the test of time, with arresting images, bold and interesting lettering and sufficient of a theme to link the two together. Credit for this must go to Dan who designed the second of the two and continued the pattern – quite literally when it came to the tracery at the foot of each cover.
Incidentally, both books in the Al Andalus series can be had half-price, for less than the price of a cup of coffee, at the Smashwords Christmas Sale which runs from Christmas Day until the New Year.
This time around, however, it’s not just the cover for Plague ( a very early version of which can be seen above left ). Plague is the first in a series of novels with the same protagonist, so there must be commonality in the designs for each of the covers, thereby establishing a brand. A quick visit to Amazon or any other online bookstore to take a look at a long running series will show how that translates in design terms.
So I have received not one, but three covers recently, for the first three books in the series. For Plague, but also for Oracle, the second in the series, which is set in Delphi, Greece and Opera the third, which returns to central London ( and which I have not yet started writing – although I know its last line – I have my writing life mapped out until December 
2022! )
The covers aren’t final and they will change and develop ( the photo right does not do that cover justice ). The title needs to be clearer I think, especially of Plague – two seconds, remember, and the eye moves on, the gaze won’t linger to decipher a word which isn’t understood immediately. I do like the fractured nature of the space in the first set of covers, the jagged edges which promise the excitement of the thriller within which remind me of film titles of the nineteen sixties. But there’s a way to go yet….
In the meanwhile Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all readers!
Calling all lovers of books and reading! The countdown to the annual south London celebration of both has begun. 
were, by and large, pristine copies at knock-down prices and some of them signed by the authors as well. One woman was delighted to find the signature in the book she had just purchased. We had a superb hand-made chocolate cake to raffle off as well (congratulations John, I hope it tasted as good as it looked).
the events ( and having fun talking about books and writers ). Clapham Writers has at least three new members, who we hope to see at the Meet & Greet event after this year’s Fest.
voucher for an overnight stay for two in that boutique hotel as a prize in our Festival day raffle. Last year’s winner was a Clapham resident who, as the occupant of a one-bedroom flat, was able to have his parents to stay by using the voucher. Thank you The Windmill and Young’s Brewery.
the Society of Authors, in the Sunday Times On-line and in a veritable cornucopia of local media of various kinds. There’s also a podcast coming out on 1st October. Henry Hemming – Our Man in New York – had a double page spread in the Sunday Mail and Elizabeth Buchan – The Museum of Broken Promises – an excellent review in The Times. Aida Edemariam and Ursula Buchan won the plaudits when their books, The Wife’s Tale and Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps, respectively, were first published. That’s not forgetting our opener – Professor Kate Williams on the relationship between the Rival Queens, Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots – and Frank Gardner OBE, BBC Security Correspondent to close the Festival.
about, then reading from, his latest book Our Man in New York.
World War II espionage finally has its expert chronicler.” 
So to Sadlers Wells Theatre for the annual Flamenco Festival in north London. This time I had only returned from Jerez de la Frontera the day before and I went to see Santiago Lara and Mercedes Ruiz who hail from that city. I have written about this married couple before ( see 
and Eduardo Guerrero, who I have tried to see several times at the Jerez Festival, only to be stymied by the schedule. Accompanied by rising singing star Maria Fernandez Benitez, known as Maria ‘Terremoto’, and male singers, Emilio Florido and Ismael ‘el Bola’. They were billed as the Gala Flamenca and it was excellent.
The programme began with Morena dancing an alegria. As is always the case with British theatre audiences, while the dancing was well received, there was little feedback between performer and audience until the end of each piece. This contrasts with watching flamenco in Jerez, when the audience is supposed, even obliged, to clap, shout encouragement and cheer during the performance. I was very pleased therefore when a particularly spectacular series of steps ended with a sweeping flourish and a spontaneous cheer from the audience. I noticed Lara, who was nearest the edge of the stage, start to smile. The performance had ‘taken’ and the audience were bound in.
Mercedes Ruiz. Ruiz, dressed in black, male garb performed accompanied only by the singing and her own castanets and stamping feet. She was outstanding. The audience was well and truly captured by now, so much so that Ruiz could be playful, making us laugh as well as astounding us with her artistry. How could anyone top that?
Well, then came Eduardo Guerrero, long black hair flying, in a stunning Cana. Guerrero’s arabesques were straight out of the Miguel Linan playbook, athletic, fluid and captivating. What was not was the truly amazing footwork which followed, which had the audience, by now half way to behaving like Jerezanos, applauding and cheering with every flourish. As a female member of our group said afterwards, he was gorgeous and absolutely commanding ( and the dancing was pretty good too ).
LastSaturday my local church had its annual fete, smaller this year, as the event has grown in recent years ( see 
end of that month you can find J.J.Anderson’s ‘e’ books at a major discount. In the Al Andalus stories , Reconquista will be FREE to download until the 31st July. The next book in the series, The Silver Rings, will have 25% off RRP at $2.45 or less than £2. The Village; A Year in Twelve Tales will be discounted by 50% to $1.99 or £1.50. So, if you want to make a journey in the imagination on your holiday, why not travel to 13th century Al Andalus, or to a contemporary English village, you can do so for free or at a major discount on Smashwords as part of its summer sale!
In the meanwhile it’s time to submit my latest manuscript to the publishers. A real departure from the historical adventures written previously, Plague is a contemporary thriller set in Westminster, which draws upon my own experience working in Whitehall and the rich history of Westminster and Thorney Island. On the basis that informed and independent criticism is worth its weight in gold, I have been fortunate enough to have the members of three different book clubs read the manuscript. Any author will tell you that, however objective your friends try to be, they will, invariably, be less critical than people who don’t know the writer 
personally. Their comments have been insightful and very useful, helping me refine the novel before submitting it to the publishers. Now I await the editor’s comments.
as a young man, not the James Joyce novel but Tate Britain’s summer exhibition, on Vincent Van Gogh and his time in in south London. Van Gogh arrived at the age of twenty in 1873 and lodged in Brixton ( though it’s described here as Stockwell ) where he fell in love with his landlady’s daughter. He worked for two years at the offices of Covent Garden art dealers Goupil, before turning to both teaching and preaching, when he was dismissed from his job.
paintings, drawings and washes, but also many works of contemporary, or near contemporary, artists who were living in London at that time or which Van Gogh would have seen while he was here. It includes works and prints which Van Gogh owned and there is cross-over here with the Tate’s winter exhibition of 2017/18 
Francis Bacon, who acknowledged their debt to Van Gogh ( see study, by Bacon, left, of his painting of Van Gogh in the sun-bleached landscape of the south of France ).
obvious, indeed they may seem tenuous to the untrained eye, though I have no doubt that the scholarship behind this exhibition is excellent.
visited at 4 o’clock on a Friday, when we thought it would be quiet, yet it was anything but. Afterwards a steward told me that, in relative terms this was quiet! So beware the crowds. Entry costs £22, with concessions for students, seniors etc. and if you are not a member you will have to book. It’s well worth a visit.
… the lighthouse or faro at Bonanza in Andalucia, to be precise, not Virginia Woolf’s Hebrides set novel of 1927. The fishing village of Bonanza is on the estuary of the Rio Guadalquivir as it reaches the Atlantic, just north of the Bahia de Cadiz. The derivation of its name is from the Spanish (and Latin) for calm sea, or tranquil waters, though it has come to mean a windfall, or unexpected piece of good fortune. It was our good fortune to be there last Sunday.
interspersed with houses whose architects certainly had exuberance and imagination, though they didn’t tend towards understatement (the Baroque featured here too, though attached to flat-roofed bungalows). If you continue along the single road you eventually gain access to that portion of the Donana National Park which lies on the south eastern side of the Guadalquivir. Here there are wonderfully tranquil forests of Iberian pines and a lagoon, complete with bird watching hides. The flamingos were displaying and we saw not one other human being.
Or maybe head back to Sanlucar de Barrameda, of which I have written before ( see 
of the Barrio Alto, with its two museums and excellent views over the Barrio Bajo or take tea in the gardens of the 13th century 
…is what one gets at the Dennis Severs House, or 18, Folgate Street, Spitalields, E1. Not quite a fleeting glimpse of those people who have just left the room, who were eating that meal just before you walked in, or smoking that pipe, or baking that loaf. Whose wig sits on the wing of the chair? Or whose floral perfume scents the formal withdrawing room?
and storyteller, who died, aged only 51, in 1999. Twenty years after purchasing the house he saw the Spitalfields Trust buy the house and commit to keeping it going, when on his death-bed. It’s still going twenty years later.
inhabit the house and it is their homely detritus (and comestibles) that one comes across as one climbs the narrow stairs, either down to the kitchen and cellar, where there are the supposed fragments of St Mary’s, Spital (1197) and the warmth of an iron range and the smell of…what is that smell? Or upwards, through fashionable London entertaining to the elaborate boudoir and then up beneath the eaves to the penurious lodgers’ rooms.
There are wordless guiders, who will direct you if you go wrong.
The day dawned bright and this south Londoner rose early, if not quite with the lark. It was the first day of this year’s 
chance to text other members of the group. I could even see the river. Meeting up was always going to be something of a logistical issue, given that we were from all parts of the UK – from the West Country, North Wales, the south coast and Scotland. Plus, my phone seemed to throw a tantrum. Why don’t they work properly when you need them to? No matter, there was nothing for it, I would just have to wander around until I found the others – amid a crowd of thousands!
At this time of day the betting was that some, if not all, would be on Main Avenue looking at the Show Gardens, before it became too congested to see them. And so it was. I met the West Country contingent by the Resilience Garden and we were shortly joined by those from Wales and some from Oxford, via Putney.
but not quite the garden meadow and sprinkled wildflower natural which has prevailed in recent times. There were a lot of mature trees, including a glorious Scots Pine, and green predominated. Andy Sturgeon’s M & G garden deservedly won Best Show Garden, in this humble gardener’s opinion, with its burnt timber formations resembling ancient rock and setting off the jewel-like colours to perfection.
lots of talk about this year’s Clapham Book Festival ). We disperse again in the afternoon, it being impossible to keep over a dozen people together in the growing crowds.
A word for my favourite gardens, the Silent Pool Gin garden ( alas no gin, but excellent planting and lovely use of copper ) and the Greenfingers Charity Garden, not for the double storey so much as for the planting, with liberal use of fennel and angelica. The D-Day sculpture garden was also immensely impressive in its own quiet way.
– could it suit the two main party leaders to drift towards the Euro Elections I wonder ) we might forget that the polarisation of politics is going on in plenty of places other than the UK.
(PSOE) a left of centre social democratic party. PSOE is now the largest block in the Cortes. In second place, just, the Partido Popular with only 67 seats, followed closely in third by Ciudadanos with 57. The last of these, though tacking to the right, went nowhere near as far as the PP, which tried to steal Vox’s thunder. Alberto Rivera, Ciudadanos leader says he wants to lead the opposition, but already media ( and many Spaniards I spoke with ) like the look of a PSOE Ciudadanos coalition. A coalition of the centre.
I enjoyed watching the TV coverage in the run up and on election night. My TV aerial was not functioning well so I watched the results come in on a channel I wouldn’t normally watch politics on, which made it even more interesting. Think Peter Snow, but in faded jeans, and speaking even more quickly, as coloured columns rise and fall around him.
the D’Hondt method of proportional representation ( the same to be used in the forthcoming European Parliament elections ) with parties having lists of candidates. I gathered up the listings, as well as a ballot paper (see photo above). One of my neighbours then went to register and cast her vote in a temporary voting booth ( which looked suspiciously like a temporary shower ).
Julie Anderson 