66 replies to this topic

[The diarist]

Hello again.

I just wanted to say, please ignore the current Secret Servant paperback cover art posted on Amazon. It is a very old, rejected version. The new one is quite different.

Thanks for all your support.

There have been a couple of technical hitches concerning TMD being published in the US. Until they get sorted out, please buy from Amazon UK!

Thanks again.

The Diarist

[dodge]

A belated, but warm, welcome. I'll be following your postings with interest. The bad news is, as you will learn, this does become obsessive. The good news is obsessiveness just doesn't get any more thrilling.

[Righty007]

There have been a couple of technical hitches concerning TMD being published in the US. Until they get sorted out, please buy from Amazon UK!

I would but 1 GBP = 2 USD plus shipping and handling to the United States makes buying from Amazon.uk very expensive.

[Mister Asterix]

There have been a couple of technical hitches concerning TMD being published in the US. Until they get sorted out, please buy from Amazon UK!

I would but 1 GBP = 2 USD plus shipping and handling to the United States makes buying from Amazon.uk very expensive.

Not really. Prices to ship books from the UK are relatively cheap and you are talking 8 pounds for a book that would be $13 if it were sold here. Really there is hardly a difference.

edit: Sorry was wrong about the postage from Amazon.co.uk. It’d be about 7 GBP for shipping. I’ve had books shipped from the UK for about a pound or two, but I suppose Amazon doesn’t use that type of shipping.

[Major Tallon]

I'll certainly make the purchase. I very much liked your short stories from last year. I think just about all of us around here have enjoyed reading your new take on the world of James Bond.

[MkB]

Why DID you alter Fleming's ableit vague chronology? You date CR to 1952 - okay - but Moneypenny in the Diaries did not join MI6 until 1953. M didn't become M until 1956? Yet, Fleming name-checks both in CR and the other novels written/set before 1956. As you state in your interview with Zen, the Mau Mau didn't influence your dating the Diaries, surely Moneypenny being that bit older - so to fit with the Fleming "facts" - wouldn't have made her that bit less physical/resourceful in 1962?

Well, if I may add to the debate, if one accepts the smart novelist's idea that TMD are real diaries, then they don't have to be completely faithful to Fleming's (vague) chronology (as according to this idea, Fleming books are fiction, and the diaries are not). The diaries are the true chronology, and we must assume that it is Fleming who took liberties with it and adapted it to fit his own timeline in his novels. It's a kind of parallel universe (parallel to Fleming's one, which was itself parallel to the real one! )

[Mister Asterix]

Why DID you alter Fleming's ableit vague chronology? You date CR to 1952 - okay - but Moneypenny in the Diaries did not join MI6 until 1953. M didn't become M until 1956? Yet, Fleming name-checks both in CR and the other novels written/set before 1956. As you state in your interview with Zen, the Mau Mau didn't influence your dating the Diaries, surely Moneypenny being that bit older - so to fit with the Fleming "facts" - wouldn't have made her that bit less physical/resourceful in 1962?

Well, if I may add to the debate, if one accepts the smart novelist's idea that TMD are real diaries, then they don't have to be completely faithful to Fleming's (vague) chronology (as according to this idea, Fleming books are fiction, and the diaries are not). The diaries are the true chronology, and we must assume that it is Fleming who took liberties with it and adapted it to fit his own timeline in his novels. It's a kind of parallel universe (parallel to Fleming's one, which was itself parallel to the real one! )

I write it off that we will never get anything that is entirely true or accurate out of the Secret Intelligence Service. So any issues with dates, facts, colours of lights, or the whatnot is just there to help throw off the Ruskies.