Michael seeks writing buddies

Dave Haslett, co-author of The Date-A-Base Book, a reference guide for writers and researchers, has recently published a 2010 edition of the guide, which includes thirty percent more information than the previous edition.

‘The book lists hundreds of forthcoming historic anniversaries, including significant events, inventions, discoveries, births and deaths. The 2010 edition gives details of almost 1,700 notable anniversaries that are due to fall between January and December 2010.’

Dave, who runs the writing website www.ideas4writers.co.uk worked on The Date-A-Base Book with his wife Kate: ‘We took a month’s worth of entries each and went off to separate computers in separate rooms and started checking them off whenever we had time. We sometimes cross-checked with each other about whether the other person has heard of someone. If neither of us had heard of them and they weren’t listed in Britannica, then they generally didn’t make it into the book.

‘Most of the work for this edition simply involved cross-checking every entry for accuracy. This was quite a difficult task as there is a lot of “disinformation” out there, and many sources repeat the same error time after time.

‘We are now fully confident that every entry in this book is accurate, but it took us around three months to do it. We started working on this edition at the beginning of September and finished at the end of November. We don’t work on this full time, however, as we have other work to do as well. I was writing a book of my own during this period, and researching another one at the same time, as well as editing a book for someone else. We rarely get the chance to just work on one thing at a time.
‘I would estimate that the work on this edition took us around 350 hours in total, not including the time we spent gathering and sorting the source information originally in 2006.’

Full details and a sample chapter of the book are available from: www.ideas4writers.co.uk
Details: The Date-A-Base Book 2010 is available at £8.99 (print) or £6.99 (e-book) from: Ideas 4 Writers, PO Box 49, Cullompton EX15 1WX; tel: 01884 839577; e-mail: enquiries@ideas4writers.co.uk; website: www.ideas4writers.co.uk