The following is an extract from the newly republished The Sea’s in the Kitchen by Denys Val Baker:

Denys’s house in Penzance.

” Each of us could produce our favourite version of Dennis Pattison and his cars. I think I like best the story told by Donald Swan, of how one lovely sunny day he was driving back from Bodmin and gave a lift to a young New Zealand doctor and his wife. Wishing to impress them with the delights of Cornwall, it was such a lovely day, Donald said: ‘Look, I’ll tell you what, I’ll drive over to Porthleven. A friend of mine has a bungalow on the cliffs there. We’ll have a nice lazy time…’

” However, when Donald drove up the narrow lane leading to Dennis Pattison’s house he found the way blocked by an old ex-Post Office van, and Dennis Pattison hovering nervously around. Apparently the car had been there for days blocking the way and now there was unrest among the neighbours. How fortunate that Donald should arrive - as it happened Dennis knew of a shed at the end of a field, a woman had told him it would be all right to put his van there. Could Donald possibly…?

” Aided by the New Zealand doctor, Donald turned his car around and hitched up the van and proceeded to tow it by a difficult route up a narrow winding hill and out of Porthleven until they reached a large white gate opening onto a field with a shed nearby. After much complicated manoeuvring they got the old van close to the shed and then went and opened the doors…”

Be one of the first to buy Denys’s book. There’s a link in the sidebar.

In Cornwall where visual artists enjoy the relative security of a supportive tradition, through established galleries, studios and workshops, to be a full time professional writer is to be something of an unsung hero. Denys Val Baker was such a man.

There are one or two others of course but what made Val Baker unique was his dedication to the writer’s trade and his marvellous and unselfish belief that there should be a “community of writers” in the same sense that there is a community of artists; that the written word should be as much a part of Cornwall’s culture as the visual arts and that both should be extended.

Too often of course writers are their own worst enemies. Introverted and subjective, they lack the gregariousness of the painter and the visual evidence of their work while, for those writers who succeeded, total withdrawal seems to be inevitable.

Denys Val Baker never hit the bestseller lists but had he done so, it’s a fair bet he would have achieved even more for the Cornish literary world and for that community of writers he so believed in. As it was, he did everything he could until circumstances overcame even his spirited support for the written word.

It was ironic that, coincident with his death, opportunities for literature were being further eroded by a philistine National Arts Council.

Des Hannigan. Obituary in Peninsula Voice, Penzance August 1984

With Humdrumming’s republication of the works of Denys Val Baker, beginning with The Sea’s in the Kitchen, we’re having a Denys Val Baker Week here on Dial Publishing, so stay tuned for lots of information about the man, the writer, and the works.

Denys is rarely heard of nowadays, but if you ever come across one of his books, acquire, read and enjoy (see the sidebar). They are rib-ticklingly funny and an immensely good read.

Denys Val Baker (1917 - 1984), owner and editor of The Cornish Review, was the author of twenty hilarious autobiographies. Titles of these included, The Sea’s in the Kitchen and The Petrified Mariner, which give you a flavour of them. He wrote in the 1950s through the 70s, and was a full-time professional author, by which I mean he was always broke.

Nevertheless, he managed to buy an enormous old tramp steamer, MVS Sanu, and, with no sailing experience whatever, took his large brood of wild children and long-suffering wife, Jess, on incredibly dangerous voyages. He was on the rocks more times than Jack Daniels.

Denys lived in Penzance, Land’s End and St. Ives in Cornwall, and was usually seeking some means of financing his next outrageous project. He was an adventurer in the grand English tradition, though always amusingly shambolic.

You once could find his books on the shelves of most libraries, where they were among the most popular titles for borrowing. These days they’re not so easy to come by, although Amazon has a good listing of second-hand copies, mostly at premium prices. Denys would have been amazed.

His character never allowed a moment to pass without doing something absolutely beyond the pale. A catalogue of his adventures would take 20 books to compile, which is probably why he wrote 20 autobiographies.

When I lived in Penzance we occupied a house across the road from his, though he had been dead for a decade. I noticed there was no blue plaque on his house, which is a pity, though everyone remembered him in the library, where he did most of his research. His son, Martin, still runs a print business in the town, and his wildest daughter, Demelza, lives there too.

Denys was one of the old school of writers. He spent a lot of time in London, mostly in the literary pubs around Soho where he hung out with the likes of Dylan Thomas and other luminaries of the scribbling fraternity.

But his heart was in Cornwall, as was most of his written output. He will be best remembered for his twenty or so “funny books”. Gerald Durrell is probably the nearest comparison.

Let’s hope he will not be totally forgotten, especially in the county that inspired his best work.

Syntagma Media has just launched a great new blog by Steve Newman, Commissioning Director at Humdrumming, a new publishing house based in Stratford Upon Avon — Shakespeare and RSC country.

Steve starts off by telling us about the signing of bestselling American author, Allan Weisbecker, whose memoirs, Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? will be published by Humdrumming, probably next year.

He also heralds the long-awaited republication of Denys Val Baker’s joyous autobiography series, beginning with The Sea’s in the Kitchen this week. Be first to buy the book here.

There’s also an incipient deal underway with a very big-name British author. I had a hand in this at the early stages, but I’m not at liberty to name the name until a final deal has been struck.

All very exciting stuff. Stay tuned for more information.

There’s a post over on Syntagma about the future of the printed (written) word in an age of New Media which is forcing us down the road of more conversational communications.

It’s by yours truly so I deliberately avoided saying (writing) “interesting” post. You may judge for yourself.

It is really the second part of an earlier piece on A Code for Blogosphere Conversations.

Needless to say, I totally agree with everything said … er … written.

Colin Wilson (left) and Richard Perceval Graves at Glastonbury Tor.

Colin wilson has long been one of my favourite authors. From The Outsider to Beyond the Occult, his work is never less than engrossing and highly intelligent.

He is Syntagma’s celebrity of the day over at Celebrity at Work, where I asked him about his original view of living to be 300 and solving the meaning of the universe.

Read the interview: Link to blog. Link to post.

There’s a lot of good writing being done on the network by Syntagma Media writers, so I’m starting to assemble some of the best into what I call our SynBin.

When we have enough posts I’m going to string them into a book called SynBin: The Best Writing from around Syntagma Media, and publish it under our Dial Publishing imprint.

We have some very good writers and writing here at the Towers. Just take a look at Adelle’s Fifty-Something Women, which has a New Yorkish edge and humor. And there’s a lot more too.

I’m trying not to include myself in this book, but I may have to make up some numbers at the end.

We’ve reorganized the distribution of book and publishing assets at Syntagma Media, so that what was “Publishing Corner” has now been moved over here.

The reason for this is that the three book blogs will not be active until just prior to their publication — people tire of hearing about a book for months before it’s published. Because these sites are not updated regularly, they lower the average traffic metrics of the whole of the network.

So, I’ve decided to separate them off to this quiet corner, where they can be themselves without jeopardizing the advertising revenues of the main network.

The British judge, Peter Smith, who presided over the recent Da Vinci “plagiarism” trial in London, has secretly embedded a coded message in his ruling on the trial.

The New York Times spotted this and writes: “LONDON, April 26 — Justice Peter Smith’s 71-page ruling in the recent ‘Da Vinci Code’ copyright case here is notable for many things: the judge’s occasional forays into literary criticism, his snippy remarks about witnesses on both sides, and his fluent knowledge not only of copyright law but also of more esoteric topics like the history of the Knights Templar.’

“The key to solving the conundrum posed by this judgment is in reading HBHG and DVC,” the judge writes in the 52nd paragraph of the ruling, alluding to his code and referring to the two works at issue in the case — “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” and “The Da Vinci Code” — by their initials. (In the United States, the book is called “Holy Blood, Holy Grail.”)

If you pluck all the italicized letters out of the text, says the NYT, you find that the first 10 spell “Smithy Code,” an apparent play on “Da Vinci Code.” But the next series of letters, some 30 or so, are a jumble, and this is the mystery that needs to be solved to break the code.

Read the whole article. Login required.

Some internal projects at Syntagma Media are going out to trade publishers. Two have recently done so: Naked Tales and The Nirvaneans.

Naked Tales: Stories By Writers Who Blog, is to be published by Humdrumming in early 2007. It has its own website within the Syntagma network: NakedTales.org.

The Nirvaneans: The Natural history of Nirvana and Those Who Attained It, by John M Evans (otherwise known as “me”), is also being published by Humdrumming in 2007.

Dial Publishing will initially concentrate on spin-offs from the network, which might not otherwise attract a mainstream publisher.

Other publishing models are also being tried out. For example, we are republishing my earlier book on technical and business writing on a blog: Tech Biz Writing, supported only by advertising. This will eventually form a comprehensive free course on these crucial subjects.

Dial will also produce eBooks which will be sold off the websites, and will utilize new technology in the production of its print books. No specific projects have been decided on as I write, but some will be announced soon.