What will the next page of the publishing world reveal? Find out here! Best-selling novelist Michael Crichton has had to part with $31 million to get out of his fourth marriage. The pay-out ends the Jurassic park author’s 14 year marriage to Anne-Marie Martin Crichton, who blames the break-up on his work schedule. Sharing a home with Crichton while he was writing, Anne-Marie said, was “like living with a body and Michael is somewhere else.” An interview with Graham Swift In London’s Daily Telegraph, reveals that even Booker Prize winners have their bad days: “You might as well say, ‘Oh, sod it.’ You often can’t explain to anyone, even the person closest to you, the meaning of what you did – or did not – do on a particular day. To say I didn’t write a single word, but I did a lot of thinking …it doesn’t really work, does it? So whether it’s going well or badly, it’s with you.” (Swift won the Booker Prize in 1996 with Last Orders. His latest book, The Light Of Day (Hamish Hamilton), was released last month). In 1986, US author Sue Miller (The Good Mother, While I was Gone and The World Below) found herself caring for her father after he developed Alzheimer’s disease. In an interview given to publicise her new book, The Story of My Father (Allen & Unwin), the 59 year old author is asked for any words of advice for a caregiver. “Just to really forgive yourself,” says Sue, “ to recognise that what you’re doing can’t be done, in a certain way. What one wants to do is to make a difference, of course. Though you can’t do anything about it, you feel maybe you can.” In the speech earlier this year, when Oprah Winfrey announced that she would soon begin to feature classic works of literature on her chat show, she revealed what books meant to her as a little girl growing up in Mississippi: “Books allowed me to see that there was a world beyond my grandmother’s front porch. That everybody didn’t have an outhouse, that everybody wasn’t surrounded by poverty, that there was a hopeful world out there and that it could belong to me.” Fans of the master thriller writer, Jeffrey Deaver, will be thrilled to know that he will be a star guest at the Sydney Writers’ Festival (19-25 May) and will also appear in Sydney at the Lindfield Bookshop on Tuesday May 13 at 6pm and at A&R Imperial Arcade on Wednesday May 14 at 6pm. His Melbourne appearances include: Collins Booksellers event at the Grand Hyatt at 12 noon drinks for 12.30pm lunch on Thursday May 15 and at Dymocks, 234 Collins St., at 1pm on Friday May 15. Deaver’s new novel, The Vanished Man was published last month along with the paperback version of The Stone Monkey. He has been nominated for five Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America and is a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader’s Award for Best Short Story of the Year. According to the Drudge Report, former First Lady, Hillary Clinton, has already received $US2.8million cash advance on her memoirs due out in August, from a total deal valued at $US8million. Last heard, everyone, publishers included, were still waiting with baited breath to see the completed manuscript. Books Alive is what they’re calling the biggest cooperative promotion of books and reading ever undertaken in Australia. An $8million Federal Government initiative developed through the Australia Council, it will enable readers to buy a book by six high profile Australian writers for just $5 each, with the purchase of any other book. The promotion will run from August 2-15. James Patterson has turned back the clock for material for his latest bestseller, which went on sale in the US in March. The Jester is set during the Crusades of the 11th century and, in the words of book bible Publishers Weekly, is “packed with colourful details of medieval life, bursting with unforgettable characters.” In the 2002 trade bestsellers in the US only one book sold more than one million copies – The Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook: Feasting with Your Slow Cooker by Dawn J Ranck and Phyllis Pellman Good. It outsold all of the Lord of The Rings movie tie-ins by at least one to two. Muhammad Ali is writing a book with his daughter, Hana, about his spiritual journey from world boxing champ to peace activist. Former US President Jimmy Carter has already written several non-fiction titles, but will now turn his hand to fiction. The Hornet’s Nest is believed to be the first novel ever written by a US chief executive.
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