about me
i live in a flat in oxford with my wife and our two cats, pooky and columbus.
my wife is a writer but she is, as yet, unpublished. she writes poetry and fiction. check out the link to her poetry on my blog!
pooky is white and very cute and silly. she’s the cat that never grew up, she still likes to play and is all over us. when i’m eating or am on the laptop then i have to make space for her to sit. as such the laptop becomes a legtop…
columbus is autumn-coloured and an independant cat. she just looks at pooky with a withering look that says “have you no dignity?”.
i used to be an english and drama teacher for 5 years but have recently left teaching and started a career in publishing. i now work at oxford university press where i work on the oxford english dictionary.
i love reading novels and comics. i like to watch sport a lot – football and cricket in particular. i also like to paint and draw and, of late, have mostly been drawing my cats.
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Interesting reading that you work on the OED as Tom Shippey addresses it quite a bit in The Road to Middle-earth, at least in the early chapters regarding language and philology.
You should post some of your artwork sometime!
yeah, its very interesting working on the OED. its just a pity my memory doesn’t hold on to more of the interesting things i come across…! i often wish i had more time to let the all the variant and subtle senses and etymologies of words sink in more, but its expected of us to work very quickly. each new edition of the OED takes ages to put together…
i’ll definitely post some artwork… i want to do a little more first and then i’ll start sharing it.
I also look forward to seeing your artwork in the future. I will check out your wife’s blog too. My wife, as yet, is also an unpublished writer. She writes romantic fiction. I love watching sports as well with baseball and football ( the american version
) being my favorites. My wife and I have two kids we love very much ages 7 and 10 and a cat named molly that I belive would get along with pooky very well.
thanks jeff!
is your wife’s writing available anywhere on the internet? how long has she been writing seriously. charlotte has been writing pretty much seriously for about 3 years.
i’m learning about baseball and american football. i know the basics of the games as, even though they don’t play it here, being an american sport it is still very visible. a very good friend of mine, stephane, is from california and is a big sports fan. he loves college football (went to, and this supports, usc) and baseball so he’s been teaching me the rules and some of the subtler elements of the games.
which teams do you support?
stephane and i have actually launched a french football blog which i’ve put onto my blogroll. we’re both half-french and are big followers of the national side. if you’re into football and are ever at all curious about the french team then go have a look!
haha, do you also have a silly cat? pooks is such a fewl.
i’ll be posting some photos of the cats at some stage, so you can see what old pooks looks like.
Yeah. Our cat Molly is ten years old but she can still be quite silly.
My wife has been writing seriously for last year. She is just now completing her revisions on her first novel. By the end of the month she will start sending it out to publishers. We know it’s a highly competitive field and it will take a lot of luck along with skill for her to get published but we’ll keep our fingers crossed. She’s also just starting on her next novel, too. She is writing historical victorian romances. In fact next week she is off to a 4 day professional conference in Dallas. It’s for an organization she belongs to called RWA – Romance Writers of America. She’s quite excited and I’m praying she makes some good agent/editor contacts.
Ah! Now for sports talk. My wife can atest I LOVE sports. I’ve lived in Kansas City most my life so the Kansas City Royals are the baseball team I follow and the Kansas City Chiefs are the footabll team both Carl and I follow. As for college sports. I graduated from the University of Kansas whose mascot is the Jayhawks. I would think your friend stephane would be familiar with them. My Jayhawks could beat the USC Trojans in basketball but USC would pummel my school in football. I will give your friend Stephanne all the props on his college football team because they are great. I keep hoping my KC Chiefs will draft some USC players one of these years.
I will defiently check out your guys football blog in the future. I’ve watched soccer during the last few World Cups cheering for the U.S. team but it’s funny talking to you now about this because I also was cheering for the French team during this last World Cup and I was so bummed when they lost in the final. I wanted to cheer for someone else who I thought really had a shot to win it and as much as I love my country we just aren’t in the top bracket of truely great soccer countries. I’m going to misspell this but I thought that Zadean Zadan was amazing. What a great player.
wow! thats exciting. since we’re in the same boat i can honestly say i wish your wife all of the best! i hope she meets some people at the conference – that kind of thing must really help. let me know when there is some way we can support her.
charlotte’s just finishing her first one too. she’s almost finished editing it and wants to send it off in the next two months or so. she’s also getting stuck in with more writing and has already started doing research on her next novel. i think thats the best way – you can’t wait around for your one book to be taken up by publishers…
its hard to define what charlotte writes precisely – its probably somewhere between gothic/horror and psycho-analytical stuff. something like that.
she’s written some modern gothic, fairy talish short stories that i like very much.
i just tried to look up kansas city and see there are different ones… ah, wait, hold on! just looked up the royals! missouri. okay, cool!
although i don’t know where the midwest is. okay, just looked up the midwest – now i know.
i keep meaning to ask stephane about your teams, i will soon. he’s quite knowledgable about sport. i can believe that the usc players would be good to sign. i’ve seen a few games and the look really good. it seems theres a good culture there, so even when the players are average i’m sure they benefit from the current atmosphere and the training and all.
stephane is biased, of course, but stats-wise usc do seem very impressive indeed. predictably he hates notre dame and ucla and some of that has rubbed off on me too now…
how good are the royals and the chiefs? do you go to games?
its funny you should mention supporting france, because i supported usa in 2002. things were looking dire for france and i wasn’t enjoying the world cup on a whole, but usa played such positive, creative and attractive football that i got totally behind them. i was sad to see them struggle in 2006, but they had a nightmare of a group! i’m sure this whole beckham thing can’t hurt…
i’m glad you thought zidane was great! i know its silly, but i’m always happy to hear when other people think he is good too. not a lot of mention was made of him in the world cup and then after the final all the talk was for wrong reasons. i’m not saying they shouldn’t have talked about the head-butt, but it annoyed me that they talked about it exclusively.
for me he played some of the best football i’ve seen in my life. against brazil he was like a god among men. people like to be monday’s experts and say they knew spain and brazil weren’t going to do it, but they were both very good in the world cup and looked hot, and they are two of the most skillful teams. and yet (especially against brazil) zidane just controlled the game.
i get very emotional when i think about him…
I know what you mean about people being Monday experts.
I also thought the media focused too much on the head butt with Zidane after it. I just thought he played so well in so many games but the media let the head butt over shadow all his great accomplishments. The media drives me crazy sometimes.
As for Kansas City. Carl and I live in suburbs on opposite sides of city. It’s located on the eastern side of the state of Kansas which is located smack dab in the middle of the united states.
I also wish the best for charlotte’s writing success. Thanks for the offer to help in any way you can and the same goes for us helping charlotte any way we can. I think the subject matter charlotte’s writing sounds interesting. I would be more likely to personnelly pick it up to read in a store than my wife’s.
I’m not a romamnce reader myself but I try to be a good supportive husband. I think Charlotte’s approach to starting writing the next one now is a good one too. Keri is doing the same thing. We have heard that sometimes when a publisher makes an offer sometimes they like to contract for multiple books so it’s best to be working on that next one already anyhow.
As for our Kansas City sports teams. Well the Royals baseball team has been bad for many years now but when I was a kid they were great. Between 1976 and 1985 they were awesome. They even won the world series championship in 1985. Since then, argh!, not so good. They are starting to turn it aorund now though. They had a change in general management and philosphy a year ago and even though the wins haven’t came on the field yet you can see the pieces starting to fall into place for them to be good in two years, hopefully. As for our football team the Kansas City Chiefs they are stuck in mediocrity. Kansas City also has a MLS Soccer team called the Wizards. My wife and I took the kids to a game last year and had a blast. The Wizards are doing well this year and we have a relly good player by the name of Eddie Johnson who they say may be going overseas to play next year. Beckham is supposed to come play here next month but they tripled ticket prices for that game so needless to say we’re not going which is really too bad I was thinking about going until I heard about the ticket increase. I don’t think the Beckham thing is going to have the impact on the US like they hope it will. I have many reasons for that and that’s a whole nother post. I’ll defiently will be cheering for France along with the US in all future tournaments, too.
i know this is a dumb question, but are there any films set in kansas city? i’m curious to get some impression of the city…
or what cities look similar?
wow – your baseball team won the world series! were you into baseball then? did you follow the games? thats really cool that they’re turning it around. its funny, you sometimes hope or suspect that a team is doing that and sometimes its just clear. the results might not say it but you can see it in the team ethos and the players attitudes…
i’ve heard of eddie johnson, steph talks about him. he sounds a good prospect.
thats really annoying that they’ve put the ticket prices up. thats so stupid – ’cause the people who are gonna pay for that are those who just want the spectacle and aren’t necessarily the ones that are going to get more interested in soccer. they’re shooting themselves in the foot. but it always happens when something becomes marketable, doesn’t it…?
We live in the same city, roughly, but I live in the better state! Ha, just kidding. Jeff is one of those rich Kansas snobs.
I suggested some website ideas to Jeff to give you more of a flavor of KC but I won’t spoil his fun and will let him post those.
aah cool! i look forward to that.
carl, please add anything if you want after jeff has pointed me towards some sites.
My nefie, jy moet defnitief jou tekeninge van pooky en columbus oplaai. Jou blog is stunning ! Baie interessant. Dankie. Jou niggie van SA
monique!!! ja, ek moet seker… jy’s reg.
ek’t bly jy hou van die blog! en dankie dat jy ‘n comment gelos het
your mother loves you the most
I would just like to query if this is Louis Jean Pierre De Rosnay who grew up in Parow, South Africa, and attended Settlers High School? If so, I’ve been trying to look for you for years old friend. Sorry the topic does not form part of the blog topic, but after searching this long, I’ll try anything. You can mail me at andrewh@magnumshield.co.za. Really hope it’s you old friend. if not, so the search shall continue. Wishing you a spectacular day regardless.
How do we submit a book for review?
- Dailey Swan Publishing
The Broomwhistle Chronicles
by Eric Dreyer Smith
Hi
I’ve written a YA fantasy novel, Lethal Inheritance and like all new authors I need some help getting the word out.
You can read ch 1 at http://publishersearch.wordpress.com/lethal-inheritance/
If you like it, I’d appreciate it if you could mention it to your readers.
I would like to know how to submit a book to you for review?
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Dianne
Hi. I have a fantasy e-novel, “God Wars: Living with Angels” coming out on March 1st and was wondering if you had the time to review it.
Thanks.
Best,
Rob Tobin
scripts@earthlink.net
Hey B.B.,
How can we get in touch with you to send you our book?
Picaresque
I recently published a YA Fantasy novel : Martin Truemartin (see: martintruemartin.com). Would appreciate if you could get the word out and would be most pleased to send you a copy of the book. You can also get a glimpse of the ‘inside’ on Amazon.
L.D. Rafey
Hi there, I was wondering if you review fantasy comic books? I would love for you to check out what we are cooking up at Stranger Comics. I left you a link to our website. Hit me up if you are interested.
Best,
Seb
Hi!
My first novel, Captives and Prisoners, was just accepted for publication, and it was strongly suggested that reviews could help me tremendously. Your name was on the (albeit short) list of reviewers that I was recommended to contact. If you are interested in paranormal fantasy, I would love to send you an advance e-copy for your review.
Thank you so much for your time!