Linda Collins

@NewsroomNZ has this creative nonfiction piece by me up in ReadingRoom about #lossadjustment, my late daughter Victoria, & also poet #CyrilWong. @AwaPress @maryvarnham @modernletters @jongresham

@JaneVsw @TheRSC I was lucky enough to see that in the early 90s and they were both wonderful. A deeply moving experience.

@TheRSC Ah no! I was just thinking of her the other day: going to see Shadowlands on Saturday, and saw it in the 90s when she played Joy Davidman to Nigel Hawthorne's C.S. Lewis.

We are saddened to hear of the death of Jane Lapotaire. A truly brilliant actress her RSC credits include Piaf, winning her TONY & Olivier awards, & Gertrude opposite Kenneth Branagh in Adrian Noble’s Hamlet.

I've got a review of Jac Jenkins' collection, Moon too Heavy, in the NZ Poetry Society's latest magazine, a fine line. Jenkins was a poet at the same IIML workshops when I was memoirist. The review draws on that experience, and mutual domesticity😆. @nzpoetrysociety

Sad to read this.

@channnnnyyyyy My daughter died tragically in 2014 and we have been unable to unlock her Android phone. we keep it charged up in hope.

If someone dies and nobody knows their password, how do they unlock their phone?

When you realize that graduating before the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 was like taking the last chopper out of Vietnam

@amwilson_opera @wmarybeard Got this reply from a publisher about a new project: 'To be honest, this kind of memoir by someone without a public profile doesn’t really work for us. They just don’t sell that well, no matter how well written they are. So, yes, I guess you could consider switching to fiction?'

@wmarybeard If you didn't see it, this blog post on the current travails of non-fiction authors is worth a read. Not an easy publishing space at the moment for anyone who isn't famous. rachelhewitt.substack.com/p/no-platform-…

Noone could claim I'm not invested in fiction (chairing Booker this year). But non-fiction is getting a bit short-changed, I think, in this "year of reading". For some, it's always been non fiction (glimpses of other worlds, other ways of thinking) that started the reading vibe.

@CoolestLame_Evr As the mum of a teenage daughter who took her own life, I would resent the insinuation she simply 'gave up'. She tried her hardest to stay. It would be better to be specific, to advise keep seeking help if troubled, try other counsellors if one doesn't work, keep asking.

I went to a suicide victim’s funeral today and part of the sermon was about not giving up. I don’t think that was appropriate

I have this piece in The Straits Times today on what would have been Victoria's 29th birthday. RIP darling. #Lossadjustment Angie, our cat, connects me with Victoria, my late daughter straitstimes.com/opinion/angie-…

Congrats to friend Olivia Tuck, one of three poets selected for Primers Volume Eight published by prestigious @NineArchesPress.

So true. RIP Victoria.

@JasonWMizer Yeah i get 'book clubs would love etc'. Um, it's about my daughter's suicide.

Since when do book clubs need permission from the author to read their book? To al of you scammers out there. I wasn't born yesterday. Go away.

@adrianmckinty Pale Fire inspired me to write a creative-critical essay where the End Notes seize control. But my university marker discounted the End Notes as he said this exceeded the word limit. Didn't quite get the point.

A few years ago, interviewing Martin Amis, I asked him what he was reading "Pale Fire" he said. "What? Again?" I said, cos he'd already written a LOT about it. "Every year," he said. Pale Fire might be the heavyweight champ of the unreliable narrator novel & it is v funny 👇👍

This is such a good read: The Poems of Seamus Heaney by Rosie Lavan, Bernard O’Donoghue and Matthew Hollis (edd.) - review by Jeremy Noel-Tod literaryreview.co.uk/the-pen-the-sp… via @Lit_Review

@amwilson_opera @OUPAcademic Where did they get it printed? If China, there could be shipping delays.

@OUPAcademic I've been holding back on going public about this, but it's got to the point where I have to. My OUP trade/crossover book "Someone Else's Music" was published in the UK in late September and ever since then it has been extremely difficult for customers to buy it. /

@extradeadjcb My working class parents were upset when I said I'd go to university, saying 'you'll get ideas above your station'. Their clumsy way of saying it was an alien world, they couldn't help, I might come to harm. Life may not have been so tragic, had I heeded their advice.

Their parents told them I didn't actually put this together until my 30s, your parents are supposed to know where the bananas are & they're supposed to tell you Whoops!

Health NZ trying to put a positive spin on the rise in suicides this year from 2024: 'The rate of suspected self-inflicted deaths in the 2024/25 financial year was 3.1% lower than the average rate over the last 16 financial years.' Sixteen years! wtf? #SuicidePrevention

'Move then, in circles'.

So damn pleased my mate Olivia Tuck is on this Nine Arches Primers shortlist.

@Joseph_Fasano_ Thanks for spreading this. I received these scam emails. They are effusive and surface-praising, saying my memoir is ideal for US book clubs (cue, women socialising, drinks, nibbles, laughter). But they had clearly never read it, as it is about my daughter's death by suicide.

There's a new plague of book "marketers" reaching out to authors by writing emails that are clearly AI-generated. They send a first feeler email that "praises" your work, and they hope you'll engage. Don't. In a world where people are searching for human connections, this is such an unethical and manipulative practice. It's one more example of how AI has the potential to do interpersonal harm and compromise our way of being with one another. It must stop.

@farhanashaikh I have had the same, touting access to US book clubs. (As well as the name author supposedly interested in my ‘writing journey’).Writer friends in Singapore received similar. The emails are flattering but I can tell they haven’t read my book as it’s about my daughter’s suicide.

@lindacwrite Really? I seem to be getting lots of "we can help you reach more readers" emails too.

Has anyone else been contacted by a famous writer lately, with links to their page on Amazon? It's a bit odd but the email is polite and an invitation to connect and find out more about "my writing journey". I wonder if this is some sort of scam?