OH HAPPY PUBLICATION DAY

Oh magic midnight!

Can you hear the ding of Kindles?

Barbara Amiel--my Black Queen's memoir is out!

There will be no sleep this day.

Who will she spear at the Sun?

Amiel writes:

"Most journalists were not friends but, though hostile were just doing their job. Journalists singled out under 'Enemies' deliberately lied or were vicious beyond the call of duty--the same criteria is applied to non-journalists." (Amiel, in book)

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Amiel's list of 97 FRIENDS in the appendix includes only Sun folk Peter and Yvonne Worthington and John McDermott. 

Her list of 25 ENEMIES includes only one Sun name, an unexpected one at that. What did Bernie do to cross her?

This is only her CANADA enemies list. LOL.

There's a UK list ( 107 friends, 3 enemies)

and a US list (70 friends, 16 enemies)

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 AMIEL writes:

"The Toronto Sun and I were not compatible in any way whatsoever, apart from a certain determination to shock and a sturdy belief in a Lockean individualism, a phrase that would have as much resonance with its core blue-collar readership as a Chinese ideogram..."

Ouch! 

Intellectual diss, babe. 

A John Locke joke.

She continues: 

"There was a not so subterranean belief that I had obtained the editor's chair, and its office with a dismal potted tree and coat cupboard, via Peter Worthington's bed ... but the wistful rumour was not the slightest bit true.

 "Still, the myth comforted the rather jock newsroom, where many had jostled for the position that had fallen into my apparently well-used lap."

Amiel writes she was a "shrewd but wrong" choice for the job.

"The managing editor, Les Payette (sic) would have been far more competent in the position." 

Yes, the book spells his name like the governor-general's.

It's Les Pyette.

Maybe Penguin Random House needs a copy editor from that Jock Newsroom?

She dismisses her Sun years in a couple of pages, remembering a marketing meeting featuring a proposed Guess the Pope's Weight contest. Not exactly B-I-N-G-O-HHH.

Why does the memoir have a different cover in the U.S. than Canada? No prob: it's a delightful, wicked and dippy read.

amazon.ca white cover                   amazon.com black cover