MY WRITING LIFE  

FEBRUARY 2024

Spring in Earls Court

Or not!

Because frankly my February had a LOT of church stuff, plus struggling with marketing and very little writing.

CHURCH

I definitely got my dog collar out of mothballs this month.  This was for two Sunday services for churches in Hounslow and Kensington, took graveside prayers at the Brompton cemetery, and prayed twice in a lady’s home addressing some distressing psychic phenomena.  I also went to Holland Park Synagogue, Kensington, to welcome in the new rabbi there, Rabbi Kada.  Felicity Buchan, our MP, fielded questions and then we had a splendid buffet meal. 

  We are having weekly Zoom Bible discussions for a few weeks following Pete Greig’ ’Prayer Course’.  My weekly Wednesday Saints Zoom prayer started in lockdown and I have continued them ever since because I enjoy them.  We have half an hour of Bible and prayer focusing on a saint of the week.  Last week we remembered Woodbine Willie, the First World war army chaplain and poet. We end the formal session with  bread and wine, but it is NOT communion!   This is followed by half an hour of coffee and chat.   Anyone is welcome to join in and see what it is like.  Just send me an email.

I have taken on two extra things for Lent, starting on 20th February.   I am taking part in weekly discussions in St Cuthbert’s Philbeach Gardens, going through Rowan Williams book ‘Meeting God in Mark.’ It is a friendly and thoughtful group, with soup, bread and cheese to start with.  

 I am also speaking twice a week at Holy Sepulchre London, opposite the Old Bailey.   I give the same talk on both Tuesday and Sunday, going through what  I believe really happened in Holy Week, based on ‘Jesus the Troublemaker’.  It is a very good space to speak in, and I enjoy standing up in front of a mike and talking about my favourite topic:  what Jesus actually did and what he actually thought.  (More of that later this month) On Tuesday the audience is tiny.  On Sunday it is small but attentive.  The church is wonderful and the vicar Nick very encouraging.  It is also the church which hosts the weekly lunchtime concerts for our music society, Music at Hill.

MARKETING 

My main project this month was contacting all the independent bookshops in London to promote ‘Daily Prayers from the World’s Faiths’.  From my experience of Ivybridge Bookshop, I think that my best market is through small community bookshops, not explicitly Christian ones.  I had to find who the bookshops were, and make a list with their addresses, emails  and phone numbers.  I thought that a physical letter accompanying the Advance Information Sheet would work best but found that I had to ask Chris my publisher for a corrected sheet.  There had been insufficient details about our book distributor which bookshops need.   That took a few days, and I then sent it off to forty eight bookshops in and around London.  Response so far, twelve days later, 9th March, is nil.  However, there are still four or five shops who I will approach individually.

Sadly, there were two further glitches.  

1 The ISBN number was wrong!!  So that got dealt with (I hope) and Chris told me that that was essential for bookshops but not critical for Amazon.

2 I bought a hundred copies of Daily Prayers from the World’s Faiths’ Fromm Amazon for £2 each.  I discovered a week ago that they were all the photos printed in black and white.  I was devastated!  However, it was not Amazon’s fault.  I had uploaded the ePub file that Chris got for me, but Chris saw that I had  uploaded it from a zip file, so it didn’t do the full job.  I have since uploaded the full book file successfully, so I hope that will have sorted it out.

Meanwhile, if anyone has any bright ideas what I can do with a hundred copies of ‘Daily Prayers for the World’s Faiths’ without colour photos, please let me know!

WRITING

My sole writing project this month was blogs for my two websites.  I sent out my Newsletter on February 2nd and  ‘What did he actually do – the real story of Holy Week’   on the 10th. The latter was quite easy for me to write, I have been thinking about it for years!   “Buddha and Christ was a lot more challenging.  It started to come together when I decided to concentrate on the images of each religion that are in the V&A and comment on them.  I cannot claim any deep thought or new insights.  But it is an issue that is pretty well ignored by everybody.and is, I believe, important.  Christianity is the default religion for most people in Britain, but Buddhism is increasingly the unconscious  system which people take on board even without realising it, especially in mindfulness; (properly called vipassana meditation).  Maybe I should start giving guided tours in the V&A!

Wishing you a great and spiritually productive Lent!

God bless

Andy