8:56pm Monday 25th February 2008
By Michelle Archard
AUTHOR Dee Gordon has been shortlisted for a literary award - for writing the oddest book title of the year.
The accolade has come as something of a surprise to the writer, as she believed it was self-explanatory.
Dee Gordon's book, People Who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr Feelgood is one of six titles readers are asked to consider for the Diagram Prize, 2007.
"I don't think it's odd at all," said Mrs Gordon, 60, of Prittlewell Chase.
"But all publicity is good publicity and it would be good to win.
"I don't like books - especially non-fiction - which don't tell you what it's about in the title.
"Titles need to be very basic. Mine was the shortest that the publisher and I could come up with."
The book about famous people from Southend, took Mrs Gordon two years to research. It was completed in 2005 and published in 2006.
She says some of her inspiration came from her autistic son, Ben, 19. She said: "Ben likes reading non-fiction and had finished the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Famous People.
"He said to me, there wasn't anybody in there from Southend'. He was right. I contacted a publisher with the idea and he told me if I could find 100 people then he'd publish it. It was a challenge, but in the end, I found 137."
It was Mrs Gordon's fourth published work. She also has two other local history books - Southend Memories and Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in and Around Southend - and a novel to her name.
* People Who Mattered in Southend and Beyond is published by Ian Henry Publications.
You can vote for Dee's book by clicking on the link below...
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