Thursday, July 26, 2007

Boy Wonders & Small Publishers

When asked to name a forgotten classic that nobody else ever mentions, I tend to say "Boy Wonder" by Robert James Baker. It usually falls on deaf ears, so imagine how pleased I was to see Baker as the recommended obscure writer on Scott Pack's Me and My Big Mouth Blog by writer Sebastian Beaumont. I've generally been a fan of Wikipedia, but its limitations are seen here. I'd read two of Baker's books but never in a million years thought he was a writer of "gay-themed transgressional fiction," but then I never do. I've got the opposite of a gaydar - it just never seems to occur to me. In fact, I never expect to find anything about an author from their writing, and I'm mildly shocked when I find out is all about them! Though had I picked up Baker's posthumous "Testerosterone", the title might have given me a clue. I'm now in a quandary - do I try and adapt Wikipedia's entry on the basis that I once read two of this obscure writers books, or am I just glad that he's there at all?

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Sebastian Beaumont is published by a small publisher, and Scott works for a small publisher, and friend of mine has just been published by a small publisher. Ruth Estevez's debut novel "Meeting Coty" is just coming out from Kings Hart Books. A number of friends have got books out this year, and this one's particularly pleasing, since Ruth read it as a work in progress to my small, select writing group, not that it needed much help. Its a historical novel, based around a large London-based Spanish family in the early 20th century, the Coty of the title, being the perfume manufacturer Francois Coty.

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