This file is a formatted recreation of one of the early newsletters I sent out from James Thin. Purely for archive purposes.

Summer Greetings to All our Dunnett Enthusiasts
Hope you are all well and not effected by the extremes of drought and flood that seem to be so widespread in many parts of the world at the moment.

I’d been hoping to get this newsletter out before now as I know that many of you in the US are anxious for news of the itinerary for Dorothy’s forthcoming author tour. My contact at Random House had originally expected to have the details a few weeks ago, but as I’ve just had confirmed this morning the negotiations are still going on. My information is that the original plan was for a three week tour, but it may now be two separate 5 day tours at the beginning and end of October. I’ll let you all know when I hear anything else.

For those of you who are in Edinburgh for the Festival, Dorothy will be making her usual appearance at the 1997 Edinburgh Book Festival on Tuesday 19th August at 11.10am in the Post Office Theatre tent in Charlotte Square. She’ll be talking to BBC presenter David Stenhouse. Tickets there are £5/£3

There is also a possibility that she may be at the Lockerbie Book Festival in early Sept but this is not yet certain.

I heard from Dorothy this morning – the good news is that Caprice and Rondo is now finally finished and went off to the printer last week. Having emerged blinking into the light she’ll now be trying to attack the backlog of months of correspondence 🙂 Then of course comes the promotional work.

One little snippet of information; C&R is dedicated to Dorothy’s latest grandchild – Annabella Charlotte – who is I believe about 18 months old.

If you’ve logged on to the web site in the last couple of days you’ll have seen two new items. Firstly we now have a scan of the cover for Caprice & Rondo. I have to thank Alan Cartledge for letting me know that he had got hold of a copy of the cover and for doing an excellent scan. (I’m rather less pleased with Michael Joseph for not having sent a copy to me yet!)

Secondly the address for Marzipan and Kisses now has a link as it now has it’s own web site. Please note the slight change in the address to write to for subscribing.

I wanted to ask if anyone is still waiting for a copy of the cassette of “Music for Lymond Niccolo and the Medici”, just in case anyone was missed out. We now have plenty of copies available but I seem to have more than I expected. Sometimes it happens that a written letter will go to Douglas in Mail Order without coming to me after the initial enquiry has been by email, so hopefully everything is ok, but I just want to make sure.

Still no word on the “Dorothy Dunnett Companion” which is still unavailable. I believe some of you managed to get copies from the Canadian company that I mentioned on the web pages, but at least one other hasn’t been able to get through to them. I got a very nice email from them thanking me for mentioning them, so they’ve obviously been able to supply some of you but I don’t know how long their supplies will last.

Now I have a question for any of you that have both the new editions of Game of Kings & Queens Play and one of the older editions. In the new Vintage editions Dorothy mentions in the forward that she did “a little manicuring” to tidy up some of the defects in the original edition. A couple of people who have noticed this reference have asked me if I know how much difference there is. Well as far as reading the books I’m just a beginner compared to most of you! From the fax that Dorothy just sent me it looks as if both the new UK and US editions have these changes (although the forward is only in the US editions) and in most cases these are “corrections of misprints, small omissions … or misleading punctuation”. Some other changes were intended but not done because it would have meant major typesetting changes. If any of you who have read the older editions and noticed differences would like to comment for the benefit of the others, then email me and I can pass this on in the next newsletter.

One thing I had better mention again are the email and web addresses, particularly the latter, as anyone who still has a bookmark or link with the old address (the one with almac and business_park in it) will find that it won’t work anymore because of a change of ISP. Use the one with our own domain name – http://www.jthin.co.uk/dunnett.htm and you’ll get through fine. Please have a look at the rest of the site as well if you have time – I’ve added quite a bit recently and we now have many additional subjects such as Science Fiction – and let me know what you think.

While the old email address (james.thin.ltd@almac.co.uk) still works and is aliased to enquiries@jthin.co.uk it may not do so forever and it would be better to use the newer one. That one gets through to Craig as does orders@jthin.co.uk and either one can be used for ordering or enquiring about orders. If you have other Dunnett questions then you can still contact me direct at the address below.

best wishes to you all

Bill