Welcome - The International Writers Magazine - November 2007 writing from across the globe. Many thanks for writers for making October such a brilliant and huge issue.
The Fall Edition

November comes in with floods and high winds– masking the menace of winter under a muted fall palette of oranges and brown. I tend to love autumn because of the rich colours, the hazy sunlight and even the nip in the air at night. November always has potential. I’ll ignore the fact that it always leads to Christmas and the inevitable disappointments. Term at this University is in full swing, Fresher’s flu is receding, it’s week six, so a good thirty percent of the students are either not attending classes or realising that they may have to do some work at some time in the future. The others, I am happy to report are getting on with it with some exciting ideas. Reading this I am hoping you are now are thinking of ways to reduce your liabilities to the coming recession. Yes, it looks like its finally here. Headlines in the USA talk of two million people will face having their homes repossessed in the next six months. That’s a lot of homeowners. Over here in the UK, they reckon there is a trillion pounds tied up in mortgages and hey, I am one of those, struggling to find over $2000 a month to keep this rather sad railway cottage in my name rather than the banks. Banks are discovering new ways to bankrupt us, piling charges on everything. Worrying times ahead I guess. Will oil breach $100 a barrel? Of course it will and we shall all be sorry.... (except the oil producers of course). Image Millais 'Autumn'

Why talk of this? It came up in class today. I was trying to persuade my Critical Review students to tap into the zeitgeist of the times and find that contemporary novel that tells us about ourselves. Whether Chick Lit or action novel, what is the decade about? Has been defined? Is anyone really defining it? I want them to seek it out.

I asked my students if they read newspapers (any) only three out of 25 in class did and never regularly, none ever listened to Radio 4 on the BBC, none watch TV news. You might say, so what? Well, if you want to review books and films, shouldn’t you know about the context they are written in? If examining Eastern Promises by David Cronenberg, should you know something about all the Eastern Europeans flooding in the UK now and bringing the rather violent criminal activities they are used to over there, over here. Like you, I’d rather read about Russian criminals in Martin Cruz Smith novels; than admit they are over here running prostitution rackets and Buy to Let scams on a huge scale. Maybe you can just respond to culture as it is, without any coverage of the issues? You are then responding to just the artefact. But then again, do we see things in isolation from one another? It's a debate.

Should I be asking my students to question things? Investigate? One asked if she had to use the library to research when there was Wickipedia to do to for her. Well, OK, at least she knows Wickipedia exists and that’s a good thing, right? Perhaps. Trouble is it is hard to get out of the confines of Facebook these days and Facebook is altogether another phenomenon. Do we really know how it works and why evil Microsoft have bought into it? Who is gathering all the information we willingly give them? And why?

I provoke and tell them that they are the apathy generation. But they just say that nothing interests them. Perhaps the music and even that, most acknowledge, is hugely derivative.

Capitalism is moving towards one of its periodic waterfalls and all will flow over the edge. What floats will survive. A whole generation has grown up not knowing about recessions, or making do and some, thankfully some, do know that the planet is at risk and will recycle plastic bags, but that may well be the full extent of their awareness. They won’t know and don’t care to know about how people got through recessions before them.

I’d like to see it mandatory that students, all students, at University in the UK, no matter what they are studying, are reading a quality newspaper (Guardian, Times, Independent, Telegraph), if not everyday, at least every week. This isn’t about being elitist; it is about being informed. To be informed enables you to make sense of your world. It will help one make decisions about career choices, money, morals, culture and choices. It may even inspire you to be a journalist.

To live in a vacuum, without information, will mean one inevitably makes more mistakes than are necessary. It means come election time some are not informed about the issues under discussion. It means your opinions (and everyone has one) has no foundation in fact. It ends up with putting a man like Bush in the White House and Blair in Downing Street.

To know is to live and is a path to freedom.

I know no one reads these little missives and I also know that my students think I’m mad for even thinking that they should read papers or listen to the radio, (radio is for old people they say) but it doesn’t necessarily mean that I am wrong.
Nov 9th update:

This week we had the author Jon Grimwood visit us at the University of Portsmouth. (9 Tail Fox and Arabesque and more). Great to have him over and much was learned about the current state of publishing. You will see that Hacks is pretty busy this month. Many reviews by our students and some pretty good apocalyptic fiction too. Take a day off and read us, you might find it very rewarding. These are tomorrows writers.

Our publisher Kit is in New York this week, I have to stay in Portsmouth, not quite fair. But I did catch a great little movie last night called 'The Lookout'. It will disappear fast but seek it out. Tonight I am off to see Elizabeth. I rather suspect it will not be so rewarding.

Enjoy November and oh yes. Our Vancouver Girl has returned. Catch Tabytha Towe's European Diary on the front page. Some people have all the fun.
© Sam North - Editor

The MA in Creative Writing at Portsmouth University started another year this October. Apply now for 2008 entry: The current students have all got their major projects under way now. Novels, screenplays, children's fiction, speculation fiction, crime novels, you name it... If you need support and like a good encouraging peer group, join us. Might do you good to live in Portsmouth for a year, but you don't have to. Students come down from London once a week and further afield. Apply now to avoid being disappointed. You do not have to be published to join us, but you do have to have a portfolio of some interesting writing already to hand. *Hackwriter published writers especially welcome. Come to Sherlock Holmes country (yes this is where it all started on Elm Grove in Southsea).

Meanwhile, you worried about your health this winter? Read my book '‘Another Place to Die'' . If you have the slightest worry about how to survive the coming flu pandemic, you need this book and all the proceeds go to keep Hackwriters going. In the UK newspapers 31.08.07 they were quoting a Home Office paper called: Planning for a possible Influenza Edpidemic and predicting 650,000 'extra' deaths this winter in the UK if it breaks out. There will also be a shortage of coffins, not that you need them in a mass grave. It's all in my book, you don't need this report. Another Place to Die is a guide on how to survive the pandemic. So order now for your autumn reading. (Maybe Amazon will do you a deal on a coffin too!) You will not be disappointed.
See the review from Ian Middleton.

Someone who just read it described it as: ‘Thought-provoking, horrifying and moving’ It’s essential reading for anyone who wants to survive the next flu pandemic. You just might want to be prepared. The Government is taking it seriously. Are you? Order the book now. If you want to be prepared for the coming flu pandemic you will need 'Another Place to Die'
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We at Hacks are self-supporting and if you want to support us, buy Sam's books - All the funds from the sale of the books go back into the site. If you live in New York they can be ordered at the Mysterious Bookshop at 58 Warren Street. These titles are able to be ordered at Amazon who keep stock see below and can be ordered from Waterstones all over the UK and Hatchards in London and for less cost direct from Lulu.com in the UK and USA

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Another Place To Die by Sam North ISBN: 978-1-84753-899-4 The Next Great Flu Pandemic is coming. Are you prepared? Reviews: 'It will keep readers in suspense, laced with gritty-gallows humor' Charlie Dickinson 'Beautiful, plausible, and sickeningly addictive, Another Place to Die will terrify you, thrill you, and make you petrified of anyone who comes near you...'. Roxy Williams - Amazon.co.uk Fascinating, frightening and compelling, Another Place to Die is the ultimate page-turner which I guarantee will result in many late nights under the bedside light with you uttering, ‘just one more chapter!!’ Ian Middleton Read the first chapter on line Order Now direct from Publisher : Another Place To Die

The Curse of the Nibelung - A Sherlock Holmes Mystery by Sam North ISBN 1-4116-3748-8 $19.98 Retail - 300 pages - Lulu Press USA 'Chocolate will never be the same again' - Sunday Express Buy from your favourite on-line retailer Amazon UK Amazon USA Barnes and Noble & Waterstones

Diamonds - The Rush of '72 is available $19.95 from Amazon.com in the USA or from the Lulu publishers direct

Diamonds - The Rush of '72 By Sam North ISBN: 1-4116-1088-1 Buy now from Amazon.com 'a terrific piece of storytelling' Historical Novel Society Review Now printed in the UK and available from Amazon.co.uk & Waterstones

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