Book people.

Good start to the day - the ordered books turned up as did my second pair of glasses. Todays orders where easy to find. The gods are kind.

It's been a busy morning in the shop so far - busy socially and not too bad financially. Firstly, my friend Kate brought in a Dutch author whose book about the life of Vivaldi she translated last year. She had never met him until this week although she had lived in his mind and words for the best part of twelve months. I would have known him for a dutchman anywhere because he was wearing the ubiquitous loden coat; also a wide brimmed suede hat which did rather make him stand out in Forres High Street early in the mornng. I NEARLY persuaded him to buy Motley's Dutch Republic in three nice little volumes bound by Bayntun, but he was on the look out for history books that covered the period of the next book he is about to write. This will touch on the members of the Kit-Kat club and their part in the Glorious Revolution 1689. As Wikipedia drily remarks: 'Secret political groups with dangerous agendas tend to be poorly documented.' Which should give him ample room for speculation and romancing. He bought as many books as added up to the price of the copies of Dutch Republic, most of them old, slightly tatty and of little interest to anyone but a specialist, so I was happy. Sophie and Kate talked about the editing and publishing of books, agents (Sophie has a friend who is a literary agent and she would quite like to work in the same field) then their own poetry and finally exchanged emails.

Then came Sheila, who I haven't seen for ages. Marriage seems to have removed her temporarily from the social round. She has gone back to living on her own, which amuses everyone and is really no surprise. John spends time with her but they are both too used to their own space and having things their own way to enjoy sharing. Lots of ways to have relationships these days.

As Sheila left, Edward, the chunky ebony coloured poet came into the shop. He recently arrived in this area, initiated a poetry competition and started a writing group from amongst the entrants. I like Edward a lot. He's very warm and seems to have a genuine interest in other people's work. He travels around the country giving readings and workshops and is very articulate about his own writing. I suppose that should be what one expects of a poet who is after all a wordsmith, but he is in direct contrast to Eileen, who has had one book of poetry published by an established publishing company and is putting together another collection for them to publish this year. She is much more reticent. Eileen submitted to magazines and was spotted by a publisher who asked to be sent more of her poems and eventually for enough to put together for the first book. I believe her when she says she was surprised.

Eileen struck up a friendship with an American author who came four years ago to be a presenter at a local Book & Arts Festival. She writes three or four books a year, each of which have a print run of 75000. She loves Scotland and sets her stories in the landscape which gives her an excuse to visit once or twice a year. She is attractive, vivacious and an incorrigable flirt, although a very nice cheerful one who makes it clear that she is happily married. The men who where on the Book Festival committee enjoyed having her around, very much enjoyed being flirted with and paid eager court to her. Their wives were NOT so happy about her I'm told. She wasn't invited back the next year, and when Eileen asked why her name wasn't on the programme the reason given was that she is a 'Mills & Boone' sort of author and not in the literary class the festival aspires to. I don't believe a word of it! I met her the year she gave a talk and she is great fun. She flirted with Mr Toad and got him all hot for a bit. He was quite put out because she was ringed round with suitors, but got some private time with her in his shop where she told him of the novel she proposed to write on the life of the Wolf of Badenoch, a local bad-boy hero who burned down Elgin cathedral in the fourteenth century. She was proposing to unite historical fact with re-incarnation and bodice-ripping, which has been done succesfully by quite a few very popular authors on Scottish themes and would be sure to go down well with the Scots-loving, re-incarnation loving Americans (probably not the Fundamentalists then!) Mariota, the Wolf's woman, would, in her present day incarnation, remember how she got the little scar on her knee when kneeling on rocks to give the Wolf oral sex whilst he was imprisoned for his crimes. I have yet to come across this book... I hope she wrote it.