Accepted for publication

Well, so now I have a publisher. I am delighted that Crooked Cat are going to publish this novel. They are a lovely husband and wife team and Crooked Cat editors and writers form two supportive networks. There’s quite a following of readers now as well.

It is exciting, having found a publisher. I can now get on with the marketing campaign. All the content is waiting there on the web site that I can now make live gradually. I can step my offer of school visits.

Publication is probably going to be March or April 2014. This falls very well: I’ve had a hectic semester at the University of Salford where I lecture in English and Creative Writing and what looked like being another hectic one is now looking as if it will be a lot easier. I am no longer convening   Representing the Holocaust but shall be teaching on it. In fact, shall be teaching one week on this – lecture and two two hour seminars to two different groups. I shall also be delivering a week on John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

 For the latter I shall be comparing the book, the two films and factual information. Both my book and Boyne’s contain bilingual jokes that don’t quite work. It’s extremely doubtful that a civilian child would actually be able to sit and talk through the fence to the inmates of the death camp. Neither can we be sure what really happened to the Hilfsklasse that met in the house on Schellberg street. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas can be described as a tragedy. The House on Schellberg Street seems to end on the upbeat but readers, even young ones, know that the main character faces tragedy in the future.

This slight lightening of my work at the university means I should be able to get out to quite a few schools this year.