Good News

6th March 2007

Memories of my camel injuries weren’t the only thing I brought back with me from Lanzarote, as I have been struck down by a virus and order generic viagra have been feeling worse that death warmed up for the past couple of days, in fact death warmed up would be a luxury.
However I have had good news to temper the bad, for while I have been away on holiday a book publisher has emailed me, wishing to know if I am interested in his firm re-publishing my book Dear Air 2000 and publishing its follow up, Dear Coca-Cola. Am I interested? Is a man just released from a ten year jail sentence interested in getting a shag. Is a man dying from thirst in the desert interested in a drink of water? Do bears shit on The Pope?
However, not wishing to appear too eager I waited for two minutes before emailing back that I would be delighted if he were to publish my books. (Dear Air 2000 is at the moment a self-published book. Self-publishing is all very well and it gets you into print for not much money but it is the Devil’s own job to get a self-published book into retail outlets like Waterstone’s and W H Smith, which it of course needs to be to get decent sales and make the whole business worthwhile, if profit is the motive).
The upshot of it is that I am meeting the publisher for lunch in London next Tuesday.  I’ll get the most expensive bottle of wine on the wine list out of him if nothing else. Actually he has already offered me a handsome advance which I am not about to turn down.
Since relating my good fortune to friends and family I have been inundated with well-meaning good advice, particularly in regard to the contract I will eventually have to commit myself to. Apparently most publishers’ contracts can be likened only to minefields when it comes to possible dangers, and always drawn up in such a way as to obtain the greatest reward possible for the publisher and the least possible reward for the writer. In fact one friend warned that contracts can be so biased in favour of the publisher that it is quite possible that the writer ends up paying (I) them. Therefore I will be eyeing any contract offered to me with suitable suspicion. And if anyone out there has any tips on publishing contract negotiations please feel free to pass them on, they would be most appreciated.
Getting back to my friends, they are of course delighted for me. Especially Atkins Down The Road, who sees my success as encouragement to his own literary ambitions, having almost completed his crime/mystery novel Lady Don’t Look Backwards. Actually I’ve read it and the only crime will be if it ever gets published and the only mystery is why Atkins thinks it has any merit, but try telling him that.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy

Published by

Razzamatazz

Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things. Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.

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