Lesley, Author at Allison & Busby

Even superheroes get old…

17 July, 2009

There are definitely days when none of us feel all that super and mediocre is a more likely goal. That’s why these fantastic cartoons by Donald Soffritti, in which all your favourite superheroes are showing their age, makes me smile. My favourite? Definitely The Invisible Woman. Click here to see more – as featured on […]

An evening with Matt Lucas and other nice freebies

9 July, 2009

Ah, how nice to enjoy a freebie in these very credit crunchie times (there must be a better adjective than that for the current climate, that makes me think of breakfast cereal). Last night I was one of about 90 lucky people who got free tickets to watch a recording of a new comedy panel […]

My Favourite Things (in Cambridge)…

3 June, 2009

This coming weekend I’ll be popping over to see some friends in Cambridge – one of my favourite places in the UK or indeed the world. My favourite places there include the wide open space of Parker’s Piece, the cafés and restaurants at Magdalene bridge, the impossible-to-scale-whilst-riding-a-bike-bridge behind Trinity Hall and, predictably if you know […]

Rachel Caine’s visit to Boston

20 May, 2009

There’s quite a lot that succeeds in making me feel old these days. Bills. Songs on the radio. Slang that doesn’t make sense to my enfeebled mind. The prospect of my Young Person’s Railcard expiring – boo! But the thought of going back to a real school does the trick most completely. Timetables. School-dinners. Maths […]

Beyond the era of the sales rep force

30 April, 2009

I was reading a very interesting article in The Bookseller here today, about the ‘death’ of the publishing sales rep, the general gist of which elaborated on the scaling down of large on-the-road rep bodies as more and more buying decisions become centralised or via one-stop wholesalers. As some of you out there may know, […]

Last bid for a free iPhone….

23 April, 2009

Phew, a mere three days at Earls Court, having largely lovely conversations and dashing off to the odd seminar, how exhausting the whole thing was. And as suspected it was often the people I didn’t expect to see who gave me the most pleasure by stopping by. So a quick, virtual wave to the following: […]

Time for the London Book Fair

16 April, 2009

It’s nearly that time of year again, the time when people in the book industry descend like moths to a flame on huge halls in West London for The London Book Fair. Earls Court is a funny old place, or so it seems to me, having seen it under other auspices ranging, but not limited […]

Working with funky fonts

26 March, 2009

Ah – the simple things in life that make me happy (doesn’t take much). For instance, while working on our next catalogue I got to play with two beautiful fonts discovered by cover-designer-in-chief Christina which feature on next month’s One Foot Wrong. One, a slightly bonkers mix of hand-sketched characters that makes me think of […]

Reading on the move…or mobile reading…

16 March, 2009

I spend a lot of time on the train chugging to and from London. Which is great, usually, as it doesn’t take much for me to lose myself in a book and an hour of reading where I can’t do the washing up or other looming chores is precious. So it’s annoying when I finish […]