Writing was always prefarable to killing someone.

Over the last twenty years I have read every kind of self help book I could lay my hands on, some I loved (Women Who Run with the Wolves, Tuesdays with Morrie, All the Julia Cameron and Robin Norwood Women Who Love Too Much) and some I just dont get so have bought them and left them somewhere just out of reach and almost out of sight. (Power of Now...just cant get it). I had to read Ulysses when I was in college and lost several years of my hedonistic twenties in the process. Fair balls to James Joyce, he published in France so I presume they thought it was some kind of quaint folk oirish dialect and we all ate kidneys for breakfast and had very long soliloquys about bedposts.

So given that the last year of my life has been largely devoted to my twin passions of writing and painting, I have decided to read only stuff that A, I can follow, and B makes me want to read more. So I LOVE Brick Lane by Monica Ali, The Shipping News by Annie Proulx and The Kite Runner and A Thousand Spendid Suns by Khaled Hosseni.

So having written the novel and finding an agent that was a real person who then lost it and then couldnt find a home for it (dont ask, see earlier post!) I decided that I would continute to be professional and proactive about getting it published.

Dear Sweet Jesus was I naive??

I can either donate a lung and pay a self publishing house who will wreck my head with typeface and fonts, all the time reassuring me that any mistakes in the finished product are indeed my responsiblity, or put my ego in my arse pocket and print out many many copies of the first few chapters and post them to agents who will not read them but send me back a lovely little rejection slip.

Unless, that is, I have murdered someone and boiled their liver to be fed to Pigeons in Regents Park, lived a double life as a high class hooker and a mother of two speicalizing in making bread and imposing pain whilst simultaneously singing Danny Boy, or fess up to the fact that I was, in fact, the feet in Michael Flatley's Riverdance, with his body superimposed on top of mine.

So I was thinking, what if I made up some amazing background and name, sent the same chapters out to several publishers and see what would happen? How ethical would it be? Or would it be good fun to see the response?

Of course, I would probably have to invest in some cooking pots , a leather pinny ( size large) or a pair of good stout Irish dancing shoes (can still do a passable hornpipe if pushed).

So watch this space for the first novel by Shiela O'Breatheheavy, "My life as a pair of sweaty loafers!"