On writing to authors.

A glance at Susan Hill's website has led me to this page for the first time. It's a snapshot of mail she receives from her many readers; some nice, more abusive, most of it weird. Having books on GCSE syllabuses can be a mixed blessing I suppose, but you've got to wonder at people who take the time to write to someone in order to compare studying their book to water torture, and stating how satisfying it was to then burn the book with the aid of WD40.

I'm all for honest criticism but at times its a wonder more people don't hunt down and apply actual water torture to the many wannabe hard cases hiding shivering behind their internet connections.

Still, it's given me an urge to read one of hill's books, and since the only books of hers I have in the house in The Woman In Black (which I read many years ago, but is due a re-read I think) it's going to have to be that. This is a book which, I don't mind admitting as it's not something which happens very often, scared the crap out of me a number of years back (and I really don't get scared by books, I've read a number which various people have promised will leave me terrified, The Shining being prominent, and nothing).



I've just finished two Pratchett books I've been alternating while ill over the past few days (yellow fever or manflu, you decide). One is an audiobook of Equal Rites, read by the ever welcome Cecilia Imrie, which was pretty much as I remembered it (still one of my favourite books, mixing fantasy, humour, satire in feminism in one glorious package). The fact it was an audiobook helped, as it enabled me to listen on my iPod while playing Super Smash Brother Brawl (ridiculously good fun I must say, and the return of the long missed Kid Icarus is most pleasing). The other was the print version of Mort, which I very much enjoyed, but can barely remember at all to the extent that I wonder if I ever read past Chapter 2 before, still, it has been a number of years.



And now it's two in the morning, and I can't sleep because I've spent most of the past few days sleeping. So what does a twenty-something man about town do in such a circumstance on a Saturday night. Go out, visit friends, do some of that late night writing authors always harp on about, perhaps go to a sauna? No, what I'm doing is sitting, doing a jigsaw online. The one below to be precise, dangerously addictive.

And it only took me twelve minutes longer than the website's average.