But it’s always intriguing to me that there are tiers of fame and interest when it comes to icons. There are the ones whose adventures you follow, and then those who exist in broader strokes, a single identifiable brand, if you like, without waxing history or cluttering detail. I would have expected such an exhibition to represent the one rather than the other.

That said, my sister loves Grace Kelly and reads around her, so it sounds like it would do for someone like that.

Thanks for posting about it, anyway, as I had wondered what this was like! Loved the description of the bag especially.

i deem the experiment a success if at all but one recognizes it when it manifests itself. and in truth it is ever around us. shame on us! there is no price tag for this type of beauty.

-m.

great post!

-m.

Sorry I didn’t reply earlier, it’s been a bit hectic, getting settled in and realising that the course I’m on is full on – I haven’t studied so much since I was at school. Actually, I was Skyping an old friend yesterday and she said, “Don’t be ridiculous, we NEVER did any work at all at school.” She’s right, this is a new experience for me.

The sun did come out for several days and much wine was drunk (although that’s a given in any climate). Pissing down now and will be all week, but it is April after all.

I would love to hear the experiences of your mature student friend. Any chance I could Facebook him or something? I’ll invite you as a friend in a minute if I can find you. So far all the other students are loads younger than me, there are even some hapless bambini in my class who are FIFTEEN. They’re on a school trip from Adelaide. They lasted 3 days and I haven’t seen them since, poor little buggers.

I’m fascinated by your successful forays into the world of Twitter, I did sign up but have never used it – what exactly do you do? I’m most impressed as well – I think exploiting social media and the internet generally is the way to go with publishing.

I packed in my freelance ‘career’ in TV ten years ago because I wanted to write a book. Fortunately, I got a job as a writer on the doomed start-up boo.com before my money ran out. After boo went tits up I had as much copywriting work as I wanted – there weren’t many web writers around in those days. Lately I was working for a charity in London but was bored stiff and packed it in to come to Perugia.

My first novel got me an agent, quite a bit of interest but no deal. I wrote 100 pages of a second novel and the ed. director of Orion wanted it, but her marketing department turned it down. Then Sarah Waters published a book with an almost identical plot, rendering mine dead in the water, if you’ll excuse the pun. The third, complete book got a lot of interest – a lot of people hated it but the Harper Collins woman said, ‘ I laughed all the way through it, she reminds me of a female Nick Hornby’, then turned it down. I then ritually disembowelled myself (not really).

Several misfortunes later I wrote a short story and submitted it to the Manchester Fiction Prize last year. It made the unofficial long list and I got a special commendation from the judges. I sent it around to a few publishers but none of them even answered me.

Then to my amazement Nick Royle tracked me down on Facebook about a month ago and said he thought my story was excellent, it had almost made it to the shortlist and he wanted me to know it hadn’t fallen into a black hole. I told him it had, and he submitted it to the London Magazine on my behalf. They haven’t responded yet.

And that is the sorry story of my literary career so far. I was going to have a bash at a short story or two here, but I’m too busy just being at the moment. We’ll see what happens when I’ve been here a bit longer.

I’d love to see Crash crash. Do keep us posted. I’ve now got to struggle 10 feet through the wind and rain to drink some aperitivi with my landlady and her family next door.

A presto,

Deborah

Perugia? Just how jealous do you want me to be?! I had a friend who went there as a mature student some years ago and he absolutely loved it. For a time he was even talking of trying to relocate there.

Crash’s swan song happened a fortnight ago, but you’ll still be able to see it. There were seven photographers on hand in all, some of them using video as well, so the final flight was captured from all angles. I’ll be posting more about it soon, but life has rather got in the way for a lot of those who are involved (two of them got married last week, which was a nice uplifting thing for the throng of lenses to take aim at). Plus, we still have a bit more filming to do, and then we’ll be making a montage in the near future. In a rather rather thrilling twist, the original owner of the cello read the blog and will hopefully be playing a track for us on his new cello for us to film. Ideally, we’d like to inter-cut this with the scenes of Crash’s descent.

Blogging about the books has been a surprisingly useful experience. To begin with, I only wrote about the Paris novel when my agent started submitting it to publishers. To begin with, no one even knew it was there, so it was pretty much the cyber equivalent of mumbling to myself in a corner, but at least it helped me gather my thoughts enough to speak to people about the books. Then I discovered Twitter and was amazed at how many people sent messages commenting on the blog, or volunteering advice and/or their own experiences. It was then that I decided it made sense to start writing about work-in-progress as well. That’s felt a bit riskier than writing about a finished book, but has proven VERY useful. I’ve been thrilled by how many musicians have got in touch with input and encouragement. I’ve not been blogging as much in recent weeks, as I’ve had too many other things on my plate. But I’ve now got my desk cleared and will be swinging back into Blood Harmonies mode. I think the trick is that I’m not saying anything on the blog what I would mind a reader knowing from page one, if that makes sense. My inner safety mechanism is set to ‘keep your powder dry’.

I hope the sun comes out there soon and you can get in lots of long afternoons lingering on terraces, maybe writing with a glass of something lovely, or perhaps just chatting to locals. And if you get a chance, let me know a bit more about what you write?