Thank you Gerard Mclean for your lovely comments and for following bureau à gradin. Of course you’re very welcome to follow my eccentric approach to everything that goes against the grain, of the held wisdom some regard as publishing know-how. I went out on the “never-to-do-limb” of having Rare Swan Press publish a book first with my own name on it and audaciously call it everything but self publishing. Foolhardy more than inspired some might say too, but there we go, and worse, deciding to sell and distribute directly so as not to have to cough up ridiculous percentages to the likes of Amazon.

It is so easy to fall victim to the slip stream of the endless bait-form models of how to do success that one risks losing sight of the real deal. I’ve never been one for following anyway.

I’d be delighted on an on-going conversation about our imprints, here or elsewhere. My heart and roots lie with independence and supporting like-minded madness is a thrill. So please make yourself at home.

I really feel your financial pain and it makes me ever more grateful for living in a country where medical coverage is mandatory and it makesz my own medical context feel unfairly like child’s play, by comparison to what I have read of yours, thus far.

I do wish you a smooth rather than moodier transition into September and am touched than I have offered you anything that resembles a ‘thing of beauty’ by way of writing. You’re very kind and you’ve made my transition into September very memorable.

That American journalism no longer has the clout or the bite it once had, in bringing power players to public account, in the way Woodward and Bernstein did with Watergate and that held real sway, is an indictment of so much more than just ‘public outcry’ and apathy.

It seems to me to be symptomatic of a wider malaise to hold the world in its grip, increasingly over the last thirty years, that soullessness. Octavio Paz describes the 20th Century as the first soulless century in human history and appeals for a new expression of humanity in one of the most remarkable books I’ve ever read. Should your mood find itself dipping to the morose in the coming days, treat yourself to a copy of The Double flame. It’s a beautiful account of what we stand to lose of ourselves, if we remain complicit and do nothing.

Thank you for your lovely note and it’s a real pleasure to meet you, Gerard.