My buddy Daryl, who owns Diamond Jacks in Soho, recently posted some pics over on his instagram feed about what's happening to that particular area of London. It's been happening for years. I first noticed it in the early 2000s when I went to interview Dave McKean and had cause to head into part of the city I hadn't been to since the early 90s. It's amazing what can happen when they chip away at small parts of a thing over a long period of time.

And now we have come to a point in time at which it's no longer small parts. Now we are down to the Big Parts. The scaffolding has moved in. Shops that once made Soho into Soho are no longer there and there's very few still holding their own. They call it progress and as much as I adore coffee of the Starbucks variety, even I can walk 50 yards around the corner to get one. There is no need for a handy venue on every street in London... but that's what we're going to get whether we like it or not.

Then one day in the days of future past, people will discover coffee causes an incurable disease and one by one they will all close down leaving a million empty shells across the city-scape. Cities all around the world will collapse into their underground train systems because Starbucks was the only thing holding the damn place together. Then the revolution will arrive (but it will not be televised) of people wanting record shops, book stores and umm... shops that sell ropey magazines to old men normally best avoided in long coats because some motherfucker also turned off the internet.

Anyway, on my travels through Soho, I found this house and I guess when they finally take that sign off the door, Soho will officially be closed and that will be a sad, sad day for individuality.

Or maybe they will just change it:

"This is not a Starbucks. There is no coffee at this address."

Elektra (my new Gretsch) and I are getting on just fine together thanks for asking. I've got one eye on the white 12 string variant still, so that's only a matter of time but while I had one eye on that, the other eye discovered a guy called Israel Nash who I had not heard of before, but there he was on the Gretsch website flaunting one of the family for all the world to see. Here he is in action:

Here's the cover of Rain Plans. I have fallen in love with this so hard that I haven't played anything else this week. In fact, that's something of an understatement. It may not be his latest release but it's gone straight to the top of the list of greatest things I've heard this year... with a bullet:

Inspiring is what this is. Listening to it has given me ideas way above my station to pursue but it's all good. It's also good to feel like somebody else knows where your soul is coming from when you have 'one of those things' draped across your shoulder..

Go listen - most of his work is around on the streaming things.

In another bullet from the heavens this week, one of my favourite writers who likes to loiter around the world in the shape of Michael Marshall Smith has a new book out called Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence. I think it may have been out a few weeks now and I just missed it in my busy-ness, but regardless of that, I'm going to drop the needle back to the beginning of Rain Plans, turn on the lamp and get lost in one of his worlds.

As luck would have it, here's a book trailer for it:

It would be irresponsible of me to not mention at least once a week that if you sign up to the thing that appears across the top of all and any pages you look at here, you'll get an email fall into your inbox on a Saturday morning that contains everything I post here across any given week.

Some I cross link to social platforms, some I don't, so it's a good way to catch everything... unless of course you have a desk job and get bored easily, in which case, feel free to check back as often as you like.

Holy fuck. I bought a Gretsch.

This guitar has been haunting me for the best part of a year, but today, I stopped talking myself out of it, pressed some buttons and this beautiful Gretsch Falcon will be here sometime over the weekend:

I'm excited - and I don't do excited very often. What I wanted was a guitar that could handle what I have to throw at it on the songwriting front. Something that would behave like a partner in crime worthy of the title. Something that looked like it could handle a lot of work even when I wasn't in the room!

I am in love.

Soon it will be time to begin demoing up the first batch of songs for my DeadBirds project. We'll spend some time getting to know each other better and in those cracks of production known as putting The Family Of Noise out, together we will get in on.

Meanwhile, in the writing world, I found a great post over on LitReactor this morning about the life expectancy of a novel. You can read the whole thing here and if you're in the writing game, you should read it.

It's one of the things nobody ever tells you about when you talk about being a writer. You can write a novel, spend years on it even, but once it's out there, you have zero control over what happens. You can't vet the people that buy it to make sure they will understand all of the things you were trying to say about the world. Just like in the above linked scenario, you can't guarantee your book will stay alive out in the world, can't guarantee your publisher will stay in business or sometimes, that you will even get paid.

Conversely, if you have a massively successful book, the mental fatigue can be just as harsh. You write a book. It sells millions of copies. You write another. Nobody likes it because it's not 'the same' as the first one. Maybe you only had one book in you. Who knows.

The writing road is littered with obstacles you need to navigate.

It's tough being a writer - mostly because unless you are one of about 24 people, nobody has heard of you and yet, you still need to find a reason to get up in the morning and write again and again, for no reason other than it's what you do.

You want to know what's even tougher than being a writer in 2017? Being a horror writer...

Here's a shot of my local Waterstones where 'horror' has been consumed by 'science fiction and fantasy':

I went up close to check too. They're all in there - King, Barker, Koontz, Herbert - all consumed by this new multifaceted heading and I like it. Well, I kind of like it. Perhaps it would be more accurate if those big headings at the top of the rack said 'Other Worlds' or 'Alternate Realities'. I could see that as a huge step forwards for kids looking for kicks in 2017 and future years. It has to be about the kids now. When it comes to these genres, people of a certain age are already sold regardless, but for me, I think the whole genre-fiction 'thing' needs reinventing from the ground up.

And if we're going to kill one genre, let's kill them all because fans of these genres are not dumb. Eight racks with seven shelves to each rack means we're not playing a minority game these days.

Anyway, I take my hat of to The Management for bringing horror into a larger family where it wasn't quite so noticeable that there were only thirty books worthy of the title up for sale.

I did ask: when people (generally speaking) buy science fiction or fantasy, they are game for new works/authors more than ever - but when people (also generally speaking) buy horror, they fall back on the masters.

What happened out there? Is it easier to get scary thrills from a movie? Did it go down the same path once too often?

I'd love to know the answer.

But I bought a motherfucking Gretsch, so I don't have a care in the world right now. Sorry about that.