After all the publicity effort over the launch of Denys Val Baker’s: The Sea’s in the Kitchen, I hope to have news of the results soon.

The new Denys Val Baker is now on the streets, so lots to celebrate for Humdrumming after all their work.

Congratulations to the team and to Martin Val Baker in Penzance.

You can buy a copy of the book by clicking in the link in the sidebar.

We’re taking a few days off here at Dial Publishing. We’ll be back on Monday 10 July.

Have a great week.

As a final throw in our Denys Val Baker Week, here are a few more snippets from his irresistible first autobiographical volume, The Sea’s in the Kitchen. This is the opening to the book:

Author’s Note
“After working for many years in London as a professional author and
editor I responded to a call which many writers and artists have felt and
went to settle ‘away from it all ‘ in Cornwall. As this autobiographical
account of the ensuing ten years will show, life cannot be escaped from
in Cornwall any more than anywhere else. But in fact Cornwall offers
many precious things to the creative worker, quite apart from its inspiring
natural background - not least a more sympathetic and tolerant attitude
than is generally found in provincial England. For this reason I have tried
in this book to capture a portrait of Cornwall in our life as much as of our
life in Cornwall.”

Chapter One
“When Jess and I were married it seemed perfectly natural to me that we
should settle down in Cornwall. But then perhaps I was a little prejudiced,
for I had long ago deserted the literary world of London for the wilder
and much more exciting world of Cornish cliffs and carns and moors,
and everywhere the booming echoes of the restless sea.

“Like many other professional authors before me l had made the welcome discovery that one of the writer’s most precious gifts is that of freedom of movement. I could, of course, have travelled farther a field, wandered the world, but the fact was I had for a long time been conscious of feeling drawn westwards to this strange and rather primitive and mysterious land of Celtic mythology. This may have been partly due to Celtic sympathy, as I am Welsh. Whatever the reasons I felt happy and satisfied in Cornwall, whether living in a tiny castle on the cliffs at Portquin or working with a repertory theatre at Camborne or writing novels in an attic bedroom looking over the serene beauty of the Carrack Broads at Falmouth. I could not, in fact, imagine living anywhere else, or how anyone could wish to live anywhere else.

“It was true that Jess and I met far from this magic land. At the time I was spending Christmas up in London and one evening my friend Ross said: ‘Do you remember I told you about a little Sagittarian with two small daughters who has a flat off the Fulham Road? Well, it’s only round the corner — come on, I’ll introduce you.’ ”