Rob Rusick > The Running Man ... ended with the hero flying an airliner into the skyscraper headquarters of the evil corporation.
The book did, but the movie didn't, so I'm not sure whether 9/11 would affect its showing. For whatever reason, it's rarely on TV here (UK) compared to other Schwarzenegger films.
Finally, direct confirmation of the situation from Lorna Page's publicist (and daughter-in-law) Cate Allen: see The 93 year-old and the big advance.... by Chris Vallance at BBC Radio 4's iPM blog.
Cate tells me that instead of receiving an advance, they paid a small sum to have the novel published, as is usually the case with self-publishing. They chose AuthorHouse because Cate is herself published there. They are hopeful that the book will make money, and that this will enable Lorna to help her elderly friends, but it is early days.
Cate also told me that some media reports "just made up facts".
As for what she has been doing to correct errors in coverage, Cate says she now makes it clear to journalists how the story has been misreported, and she's encouraged Lorna to go online herself to set the record straight.
It's PR. Heart-touching, clever and deceitful PR.
It does look almost viral in its apparent crafting to slip under the reality-check radar. It has a payload ("buy this novel") heavily cloaked inside a feelgood philanthropic story well-shielded against critical analysis (why, only a mean-spirited person would question the scenario of a dear old lady altruistically helping others out of Dickensian care homes).
And more in the same vein: Turkey City.
I also had a play with that Bayeux site. You can see my efforts here and here.
CHip That's ... excessive.
Well, OK, very jaundiced. There are plenty of counter-examples. I was thinking primarily of the average small-town British writers' group, and I've been to a good many. The overwhelming problem, I think, is that many amateur writers devote all their energy not to improving their writing nor the necessary self-analysis, but to pursuit of the secret 'inside track' (the tip about the agent that will take them on; the new market/publisher to try; the author's lecture where they'll hear the secret of success; the paid-for conference where they'll find a publisher; and so on). When a group gets into that mode, it's just as much a dead end as the 'circle jerk' - even though they *think* all the effort they're throwing at networking is improving their chance of publication.
TNH: "Near as we can make out, they literally can't tell that their rejected writing isn't like the writing that does get published."
Strikes a chord. See this Journal of Personality and Social Psychology paper - "Unskilled and Unaware of It" (www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html) which talks about incompetence, including in writing. Incompetence, it argues, carries a dual burden: not merely the incompetence itself, but the associated cognitive inability to recognise competence elsewhere. I came to the conclusion recently that writers' groups are a waste of time for this very reason. You can critique until you're blue in the face, but many, if not most, amateur writers will never, ever, grasp what their problem is.
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