December Approaches, So it Must be 'Britain's 'Most Dreaded Literary Prize'...

Time for the Literary Review's shortlist for the annual Bad Sex in Fiction award...

This is the 20th year, and the ceremony to announce the winner "for the most embarrassing passage of sexual description in a novel" will take place on Tuesday 4th December.

I do wonder if some authors don't leave these dreadful scenes in, rather than edit them to make them better, so they can improve their chance for the shortlist and get their book publicity - no actual cost in time or money needed. 

As it's really not bad publicity on the scale of everything that could be classed as bad publicity...

Others no doubt, just aren't very good at writing such scenes- though I'm sure they think they're okay at the time...

If you had the option, saying you did it deliberately is much better than admitting you write bad sex scenes... :-)

In a year that has seen the rise of 'Fifty Shades of Grey', you might expect the book to have been a sure-fire candidate. But no, and here's why.

"The purpose of the prize is to draw attention to the crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it. The prize is not intended to cover pornographic or expressly erotic literature."

So that rules FSOG out...

There've been the usual newspaper articles mentioning names;  the shortlist includes the following: (if you've actually read any of them, and have an opinion, do please comment.)

The Yips by Nicola Barker

The Adventuress by Nicholas Coleridge

Infrared by Nancy Huston

Rare Earth by Paul Mason

Noughties by Ben Masters

The Quiddity of Will Self by Sam Mills

The Divine Comedy by Craig Raine

Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe

"For snippets from the shortlist, follow Literary Review's twitter account, @lit_review. The tweets are tagged as #LRBadSex2012."

I'll definitely be following on Twitter...


 

Thursday's Radio Interview...

Another experience in the book promotion of the One Word Anthology has been achieved- the radio interview.

Nottingham has a BBC Radio and local news studio on the edge of the city, and that's where Catherine (Dalling) and I were this lunchtime.

We had an interview about the e-book on the Gareth Evans programme that airs between 12 midday and 4pm.
Our instructions were to be there by 1.30 for 1.40...

Actually we were there by 1.05, as we weren't sure how long it would take us. We were fortunate that the tram came along just as we were approaching the Royal Centre stop, otherwise we wouldn't have got there until nearer 1.30.

It's not far to walk from the tram terminus- about 5 minutes- so we had time to sign in, sit in reception and chat, and watch the four screens on the wall- we had a choice of BBC News reporting on the flooding around the country, the lunchtime antiques show, and at one end the local BBC news studio presenter preparing for the East Midlands report that follows the main One O'clock News, while at the other end and with sound, the radio presenter Gareth in his studio.

It seems the whole show for today was word related: with questions about words, fun news that was word related; so we were going to fit right in with the One Word Anthology...

We went upstairs and waited to go into the studio.

Then it was time. Introductions were done while the music was playing, we sat down and then it was time to put the earphones on.

Catherine and I naturally alternated answering the questions, and during the next music break we were able to tell Gareth about the contributors who are in Fiji, and Australia and Europe, as well as the UK and Ireland.

So when we put our earphones back on, this community aspect became part of the next question.

We talked about the words used in the anthology- why does the mind always go blank on important things? :)

Then it was time to tell listeners where they could buy the book, and say thank you.

It was the 2 o'clock news and we could leave the studio. Hopefully some of the listeners went and bought the book- or will do in future...

Everyone was pleased with how well it went; and fellow contributors were happy with our efforts. As were we.

The e-book

So here's an edited version minus the music. Interview.
Hope you enjoy it. (Thanks, John.)




Lola