Julie Burchill - join Francis Wheen and help fund her book (61% there!)

Julie Burchill

A while back I (along with others) received an email from the divine goddess Julie Burchill. She was seeking my financial support for a book she wants to publish called Unchosen: The Memoirs of a Philosemite - about her adoration of the Jewish race. She had signed up to a crowd-funding publishing outfit called Unbound - if an author can find enough loot via backers (ie interested readers with cash) to sponsor their book, then they, too, will find themselves between covers.

But why would an award-winning author such as Burchill take this route to publication? Have commercial publishing editors entirely taken leave of their senses in their crazy pursuit of Yuletide instant bio, supermarket soft-porn and the celebrity chef TV tie-in?

In a promo video on the Unbound site, she says she wanted to write the book her 'own way'. More to the point, as she revealed in the Telegraph recently, she was put out that publishers had had the gall to demand she submit a sample chapter of 6,000 words. The very idea!

Even more to the point, and In all probability, editors were nervous of the theme. Suddenly the prospect of lucrative wall-to-wall media coverage of the title and its outspoken author paled by the fear of an upset.

How times have changed. Many years ago I couldn't find a publisher for my novel Farce Hole (an 80s-set fashion satire, due to be republished as Vicki Cochrane's Astral Chronicle) despite rave reader reports. Then one day the late Sheridan Morley drew my attention to a new publisher called Citron (now defunct). Even Martis Amis and Fay Weldon were singing its praises. For a nominal fee to cover marketing (I think around £100) this print-on-demand cooperative, with exacting editorial standards, brought out my book. It sold several hundred copies - 25 alone at a Kinky Fiction Night reading at Waterstone's in Oxford Street.

Oh, but the snobbery! I remember the idiotic Jason Cowley, now editor of the New Statesman, sniffing about Citron being a 'vanity publisher' (even though it was nothing of the sort). The Jasons of the day decreed that author talent had to be determined by flaky souls in publishing offices - from whom bookish journalists took their cue, in their anxiety to be seen not in the wrong.

And now look. Famous authors everywhere are finding and funding new ways to sideline the redundant Snipcocks - who gives a fuck about vanity? Why Julie is not self-publishing Unchosen as a Kindle e-book I do not know. And how close is she to publishing Unchosen? She has 61% of the necessary funding as of today - I'm sure she'll soon hit her target. The likes of Private Eye's Francis Wheen, Candida Lycett Green, Barbara Ellen and Paul Burston have made a contribution.

We'll see if Madame Arcati feels so generous.

To watch Julie Burchill's video for Unchosen, click here

Jude Calvert-Toulmin interview: 'Erotica must moisten your gusset'

Jude Calvert-Toulmin

Jude Calvert-Toulmin is one of the UK's top-selling erotica authors. Her novel Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law is trouncing the opposition in Amazon's erotica charts - both kindle and book.

It probably helped that she is also a recent winner of Come Dine With Me, a popular TV series in which a bunch of show-offs display their kitchen culinary skills for a cash prize.

I have a feeling that we shall hear more of Jude. She's also auditioning for the next Big Brother due this summer. Whether she appears or not (and quite frankly the show needs articulate and intelligent housemates of a certain age to pep up the usual mix of troubled tattooed tots), prime your tongue for that twister of a surname.

Madame Arcati caught up with Jude and discussed erotica, recipes and damp knickers.

Q: Hey, Jude! You little attention-seeker you! You won Come Dine With Me lately - I have to ask: do you get an allowance to buy the food?

Yes, £120, however I got the wine from the finest wine merchants in Sheffield (Mitchells) and the chilli stout from one of Yorkshire’s finest breweries (Wentworth) gratis in return for blogging/twitter/facebook publicity, which helped.

Q: And what was your piece de resistance dish? Recipe please.

Coca Xira. I discovered this Spanish pie on my honeymoon in the tiny mountain village of Finestrat in the Costa Blanca; Vincent and Vincenta at Forn de Pa Pastes bakery described the process and I worked out the recipe by trial and error once I was back in the UK. My recipe is the only one on the net for it. The recipe is on the C4 site: click here. 

Q: Perhaps as a result of this victory, you're also now a bestselling erotica novelist with Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law high in the book charts. Did it zoom up as you slaved over the cooker?

No, because the show was shot back in October. MILSIL became a best seller in the Amazon Erotica charts overnight after CDWM was aired in the UK in February.

Q: And what's the book about? Is it a transgressive tale of hot lust between a cougar and a hairy cub? What inspired it?

It’s a love story about a middle-aged, widowed author, Julia, whose selfish slapper of a daughter, Kate, spends every weekend at a fetish club in London (inspired by Torture Garden) shagging meeja wanker Colin whilst nagging her lovely rock climber husband to help mother with the gardening. I loved writing Colin, pissed my pants in every chapter he features in. He’s every meeja idiot you’ve ever met rolled into one.

Q: What effect should erotica have on the reader? Speak plainly, please. Is it different from porn?

Buy here

The difference between Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law and porn is that MILSIL is a warm, honest love story described explicitly. Porn is cold, deceitful and a love-free zone.

Q: And what effect does erotica have on you as you write it? Are you planning to write more erotica?

When you’re writing, if your own humour doesn’t make you piss your pants and your own erotica doesn’t moisten your gusset then it needs rewriting.

Maybe after Drowning and Labrats are out later this year I’ll toss off a sequel as my fans are nagging me to do.

Q: Aside from your own work, which work is the most erotic ever and why?

Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It was an erupting volcano whose hot lava flooded the hyprocrital prejudices of its time. And Mellors is a masterpiece. My husband is like Mellors. Son of a gas fitter, Yorkshire born and bred and takes me in the garden on a regular basis.

Q: I see you're self-published. Did mainstream publishers turn down your work?

The reverse. I turned several of them down. I didn’t want them having my money.

Q: I hear that you may be making a TV comeback on Big Brother this summer. Have you auditioned yet?

No, I’m going to stay in London with my darling friend Fiona Russell-Powell this weekend and auditioning then.

Q: What do you think you'll bring to the BB house party aside from a bubbly personality?

Bums on seats. The BB format has become stale; the public don’t want to look at fame-hungry wannabes showing off, bitching and obeying the production team’s every role-playing dictate, they want real, earthy people with interesting personalities who are allowed to be themselves. I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve said “I don’t watch BB anymore, it’s crap. But I’d watch it every night if you were on it.”

Q: Who's your best Big Brother housemate ever? And which celebs would you dearly love to share the BB house with?

Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace, I absolutely adored her.

Celebs…

Bruce Robinson (Withnail & I, Smoking in Bed)
Marco Pierre White
Joanna Lumley

Robin Gunningham

Shane Meadows

Jennifer Saunders
Paddy Considine

David Lynch

David Milch (Deadwood)

John Lydon

Olivia Coleman

David Weiner (Mad Men)

We’d have a ball.

Q: What's this about Switzerland?

Last year, a woman I used to discuss BB with on Digital Spy (she was “babycakes”, I was “moonsparkle”) left a copy of my novel My Adventures in Cyberspace in the lobby of a hotel in the Sicilian countryside. Weeks later, a Swiss American woman, intrigued by the cover and jacket blurb, picked it up, read it, fell in love with it and tracked me down.

The novel gave her the courage to get a divorce from her Swiss banker husband. After meeting her IRL at a party I held for fans last summer, she’s flown me to Luzern for the Fassnacht, all expenses paid.

Naturally, she will inspire a character in The Moonbeam, the third of the My Adventures in Cyberspace trilogy, which is about what happens once “The Misogynists”, my protagonist Dominique Du Bois’ first novel, becomes successful.

Q: What's your star sign?

Leo sun, Sagittarius rising (double fire!) Scorpio moon (ouch) and Libra midheaven.

Q: Have you ever seen a ghost?

I can’t see them; I feel them in the trees. The ending of My Adventures in Cyberspace describes this; my Swiss fan said the final chapter was the cherry on top of the cake.

Q: What do your family think of your new TV fame, erotica, etc? Will you ruthlessly cast them aside as you hurtle into the TV stratosphere?

My 16 y/o son cba. My daughter Jodie was the one who nagged me to go on the show in the first place. My daughter Hollie wishes she’d been on it. As for my husband, I’m like a helium balloon. He is the rock which tethers me to earth so I don’t float out into an oxygen-free, scorching stratosphere.

Jude's website

Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law can be bought here

Jude's publishing company and books