I figured it would be a good idea to create a series of adverts I could use around the place for the release of Cities of the Dead, so in the name of history and cataloging things, here's the first:
More to come as the days/weeks move along.
Cities Of The Dead • Hard Boiled Travel Writing
"You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to."
Jonathan Franzen
A few months back, I almost published a book in what I thought was a great format - the old Penguin pocket book style - and it is a great style, but when I got my hands on them, they sucked so bad I withdrew them immediately and went back to the drawing board. With those few months behind me of rustling up a few different formats to see what happened, I finally decided that the 6" x 9" format that I'd always used was in fact, wonderful.
So, with that pointless experiment out of the way, I can proudly present my latest collection - Cities Of The Dead - which is available to order right here and now in that wonderful 6" x 9" softback format and if I do say so myself, it looks fine, fine, fine - particularly when you stash it next to all of my other books in the store.
The digital editions for Kindle, iBooks and Kobo will also be available on that page from December 1st at a suitable digital price. I'll repost information here when it's all been taken care of later in the week.
Meanwhile, if you missed the extracts that have been published in Skin Deep over the last few months, there's an extract from the chapter on Paris right here that also features some great photography from my friend Dirk Behlau.
Anyway, here's what it looks like. I am really pleased with how this turned out:
Anybody buying five copies or more, will find an extra copy in their package to hand out to friends/leave on the train... whatever you choose. If you're an indie book store owner who is considering taking some stock, drop me an email and we'll work something out along the same lines that really works for you.
•••
Meanwhile, out in internet-land, the preview copies that went out got off to a good start with this review:
'Hard Boiled Travel Writing' is a phrase I like very much indeed and 'elegant'... nobody has ever called me or what I do elegant before. I'll add that to the list of odd things that happened this year.
•••
Alongside of the online promo, I'm going a little bit old school with it too. The internet can be like leaving a baby in the middle of a house party and expecting everybody else to look after it, so over the next few weeks I'll be hitting the streets with 10,000 of these - though not all at once because 10,000 flyers can be quite a pain to haul around with you:
To finish, I'll leave you with this from a man who, in spite of knocking back more than a few, knew what he was talking about:
“they thought that writing had
something to do with
the politics of the
thing.
they were simply not
crazy enough
in the head
to sit down to a
typer
and let the words bang
out.
they didn't want to
write
they wanted to
succeed at
writing.”
Charles Bukowski: The Last Night of the Earth Poems
The Street Of Dreams
This weeks Burn Baby, Burn (XI) is live, loud and clear right here. It's a peach.
In other news, yesterday, a proof of the first book coming out in a couple of weeks or so was headed this way for signing off. If all is well, it will go on sale immediately and that will be a big tick in a win column out here.
Other than that, my evenings are chock full of getting the second book ready in an equally efficient manner. These are all good things.
Which is a very short way of saying, all I have for you today is a playlist...
Back to work.
Proof Of Life
And The Angel Of The Lord Came Down And Said 'Get The Hell On With It Man'... so I did and now I have two books coming out before The End Of November. One is a project that I stalled on purpose for a little while (I won't bore you with the technicalities) and the other is a totally brand spanking new thing.
I'll update here over the next couple of weeks on both of those but first I need to take of some boring business behind the scenes. Exciting times though - I feel like it's been forever since I put a book out.
Let's get it on. Meanwhile:
I'm not sure how I ended up working with a Biblical theme today but this is the trailer for Leonardo DiCaprio's documentary/movie Before The Flood.
If you have an hour and a half to spare, the whole movie is available to stream over at National Geographic here and it's an hour and a half of your life that will be well spent. Should you feel inclined after watching it (or indeed, before), take a look at this page and see what you can do that's of actual value - and by that, I mean not typing a couple of sentences in a social media feed about how bad things are... although now I look at the page again, that also appears to be a valid option.
Damn. The irony of that stings more than you'll ever know.
If you're looking for a good read this week, I romped through Mr Cottam's The Memory Of Trees over the weekend and it's superb:
I'm not sure why his name never appears on lists of great horror writers - and I'm pretty sure he wonders the same sometimes - maybe it's because the things he does fuck with the darkness that lurks at the back of your head rather than hammering a railway spike into your eye. Trust me on this - and if your trust holds - The Waiting Room also has some serious jitters and is my favourite of his works. Go see.
..and while we're on the subject of things that are worth checking in on this week, Beware Of Darkness handed over their latest album Are You Real? This also gave me jitters but of a different kind.
That's all I got. Things to do. People to see.
Well... things to do anyway.
We Are Oceanic
Humpback Whales. If you were in that boat, you would spend the rest of your life knowing just how pointless it is to walk the planet fearing what might come next or worrying about the day ahead.
Beautiful monsters.
Being away last weekend means I missed out on posting the latest Burn Baby, Burn playlist - volume ten! Who would have thought! If it's becoming part of your week, here the link for those of you playing at Apple Music... and because some of you are missing it on Spotify, I appear to still have some free version of the account, so here is Burn Baby, Burn over there - I see no reason why it shouldn't work. Knock yourself out!
Over at the Big Bear Rescue t-shirt project, there's still a good 20 days or so to go before the limited editions are withdrawn from sale - if you were ever intending to buy a shirt there, now would be a good time. Another eleven shirts in the bank means we all get jolted up a notch to superior printing free of charge - so if you placed an order, now is a great time to shake some of your friends into action as well and get a better product for very little effort.
This past weekend away also put some fantastic artists in the bank as we go along. I'm working on how to play it best but I am not displeased with the direction it's taken... not at all.
More tomorrow... lots to tell and I'm finally catching up with myself here.
Dandy In The Underworld
There was a story kicking about earlier this week about how scientists had 'solved' the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle - which is great. Another veiled attack by Science on the Magic of the World is just what we need around the place. Science is fantastic at things like finding cures for diseases that kill people, making whatever it is that's in plastic stick together so that we can watch TV on something that keeps its shape as a rectangle... those kinds of things.
But when it comes to the Magic of the World - of which there is precious little left - Science needs to back off.
Science wouldn't like it if Magic came along and pointed out that, despite their best laid plans and equations (which mean nothing if you're not a scientist) a TV retains its shape as a rectangle because those very same equations are actually a magical formula they have simply failed to recognise. Overnight, while they are at the Science Bar (kind of like a Sports Bar but they screen clips of 1970s Open University shows) perhaps Elves came along, saw what the Scientists were trying so hard to achieve and made it so.
They were helpful enough to the Shoemaker... why not the Scientists? It's crazy talk but no crazier than the crackpot idea that a black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from inside it.
What?
Anyway, also earlier this week, it may even have been the same day, I came across a Gateway to the Underworld. I took Hector out for a long walk and during a sniffing session that went on far too long, this tree (below) shifted a little. Not much. If I hadn't been standing still next to it, soaking up and breathing in the atmosphere of the wood, I would have missed it.
The beauty of an Underworld Tree is its ability to be exactly like all of the other trees in the wood, but that's not the whole story. Over time - and this can be hundreds of years - if they happen to have grown over a Gateway, the laws of the woodland state they must leave access at all times and the tree will nudge itself around accordingly.
Having seen the tree shift, I got down on the ground for closer inspection and as suspected, in between the roots and the earth, I found an authentic Gateway To Another World. I've seen them hidden better than this before, but I've also seen a lot worse. It's not something the tree has a whole lot of control over which is where undergrowth and ivy come into play to back it up.
I took a couple of pictures to show you the Gateway here in close-up and I'll leave it at that. You don't need to know where it is - only that such things exist.
You can believe or not believe. Makes no difference to us in the slightest.
Beautiful Creatures II
The next instalment of my Beautiful Creatures sequence is now up where it should be for all who are interested. You can find it published right here at Serpents of Bienville where it belongs. I hope you dig it - this one's a little more personal than the first. Hopefully I'm finding my groove early on with this. The wheels are already spinning over where I'm going next.
This instalment features the inimitable Arthur Rackham. I hope I did him justice.
If you're new to Rackham (and the only excuse for that would be if you are young) you can find a stack of high res images here, but his entire life's work is probably online if you want to dig.
The Magazine went to the print shop today - that's another thing off the desk for a few days. Slowly, the pile of things to do is getting smaller - but only in theory, because as soon as one thing disappears from it, there's always another ready to take its place.
Anyway, I've downed tools for the rest of the day to get a grip on real life for five minutes - and that requires a soundtrack... and today, Act V: Hymns With The Devil In Confessional from The Dear Hunter is making quite an impact. It looks like this and you can find the band here.
It's great to see a band still putting some thought behind their album art instead of running up junk with a band pic on the front alongside the first font that became available. Their previous - Act IV: Rebirth In Reprise - was also looking sharp and is also a damn fine album.
This is not a hit 'n' run listening affair however. You will need all of your senses and no small amount of attention span... but you will be well rewarded.
There is obviously also Acts I-III available but they're not up for streaming so you'll have to put your hand in your pocket if you love them.
And while I'm on the subject of beautiful things, I found these images of home yesterday. I've been away too long and need to head back just to check in with my soul.
These shots were taken by Richard Outram who you can find here on twitter. The man sure has an eye for what makes home 'home' that's for sure.
Now... there must be some food somewhere in the house.
A Room With A View
It's almost that time of year again when I should at least try to pull a list together of places I'll be heading out to... I could swear I used to have a Road Trip calendar online here somewhere but I seem to have hidden it from public view. I didn't mean to, so I'll drag that back out shortly from whatever hole I swept it into.
I'm back in Florence in three weeks or so to do some work out there - I'm also getting tattooed over the weekend which is neat - but there's also some time available to investigate some new things. I'm wondering what I should do other than sit around eating pizza and wonder where all the genius-like people went.
Coincidentally, we all took an evening off last week and went to see Inferno. I like Dan Brown. He does what he's supposed to with his books. It's not his best book by any means and neither is the film. The thing everybody was most impressed with - despite a reasonably arty jaunt around Florence - was the scene in which Langdon and Sienna are able to hire a car by tapping a credit card against the windscreen. Go figure.
I could do that I guess but somehow, it seems to miss the point.
Digging around a little however, I find that if I talk to someone nicely, it's entirely possible to gain access to a secret room under the Medici Chapel in which Michelangelo hid himself away for three months to avoid being torn apart by horses (or some equally gruesome fate) during a rebel uprising. With nothing to do but sit it out, he apparently took to rustling up some 'sketches' for the walls. The usual kind of thing really: Christ... a self portrait or two... some copies of his own stuff that he did on something called the Sistine Chapel. Nothing too out of the ordinary.
I'm pretty intrigued by this because nobody found the room until 1976, so not that many people are likely to have been in there, Certainly not as many as if it had been public knowledge for the last 500 years. Here's a few samples of things I could find online - if I can add more to the collection, I will.
You should have put that in your book, Mr Brown.
On the subject of which... the whole world seems to have been so wrapped up in Inferno being released at the movies that it's missed a new novel coming out. It should be out already but appears to have been delayed. It's called Origin and was due out on 26 September, I'm saying nothing. I know as well as anybody how your stuff can get derailed no matter how well you plan it. A quick look at his site doesn't even hint what it's about either - and I like that.
The critics will no doubt come for you with hammers and lead pipes, But We Love You Dan Brown!
Would you look at that! One lousy dollar in exchange for so much life. If you pressed me on which of these three people had given me the most pleasure across my time on earth so far, I would have to say that Mr Schultz said everything the other two had to say and a whole lot more besides.
If he had hidden in a secret room for three months and knocked up a fresco or two down there, we'd really be onto a winner.
Click, Click, Boom
I made it! A lot sooner than I had planned too. The Family Of Noise is now finished in its entirety. That's about all I can say about it - because now, it's about to play The Great Game Of Publishing out on its own in the big wide world. This is also a good time for me to say an insanely huge thank you to everybody who took the time to read the trial copies and gave feedback... doesn't that seem like a lifetime ago? Maybe it was - I feel like I've been writing it forever. There's certainly been enough blood, sweat and tears to justify it feeling that way.
I'll leave it there for now - parked very carefully in the street. Any positive/exciting news will be posted right here, you can bank on that much at least.
What next? Well, the next few days are going to be filled with submissions. We also have a magazine going to print on Wednesday and a big show next weekend in Manchester that needs some attention from my side of the fence so it looks like it's going to be 'one of those weeks'.
Once all of that is over though, I want to get back on the horse and put something new out here at Bad Hare. I'm in the mood for something about as far removed as I can get from The Family, so perhaps a poetry book or maybe I'll focus on finishing up Scenes From The Coffee House. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with Cities of the Dead at the moment too. I've been talking to a publisher about releasing an illustrated version of it but good illustration doesn't come easily or quickly either. I'll make a decision on it soon though.
If you've been paying attention in the long term here... Project X is still ongoing. I wish I could release some info here but I can't so I'm trying to forget about it until I can.
Actually, I came across Mr Gaiman's Calendar of Tales again a few days ago. I always loved what he did with that. I like the idea of chewing a similar - but not very similar at all - concept over. I also happen to be off work for the Whole Of December. I'll have had all the time off I need by around the 3rd.
Who knows.
Meanwhile, I have missed posting my Places I Would Like To Sit And Write One Day series. To make for it, this one might take all of the biscuits:
Fjaòràrgljúfur Canyon. Iceland. Photo by Jason Fenton via mthrworld.com
I was talking to somebody a few days back about my 12 possessions and they asked me how many apps I had on my phone. Not counting all the things that are bundled as standard, I have about 17 and in reality, I think I could probably live without... all 17 of them.
I'd miss using it as iPod that's absolutely guaranteed, I might even miss the camera but the rest I think I use (occasionally) because they're there.
...and then I found this, which is beautiful in every way:
It's called The Light Phone and it makes and receives calls and tells the time. That's all - not even any text facility. It's the size of a credit card and fits right in the Bellroy Sleeve next to your bank card. Demand appears to be high but if they really are shipping soon like it says on the site, they can count me in all the way because here, you have a fan of the highest order.
And now, back to work.
Into The Woods
Today, I hit the Big Red Button on the Big Bear Rescue t-shirt store. The design is available for 30 days only and then it will be withdrawn and replaced with the next in the series. This first one is from my buddy Matt Henbo Henning who you can find here and I love it.
There's a kids shirt too over at the store but it looks the same as the one on the left here and I thought that might be confusing. The shirts are all organically made and tick as many boxes as I could damn well find on the eco-front. All help appreciated with retweets and things like that. Here's some social media places were you can find the project:
twitter • instagram • tumblr • facebook • justgiving
I'm guessing that some of you may raise an eyebrow over me including f***b**k here as a link. I chewed it over for a long time before I entered Satan's Kitchen and then decided it was a worthy cause to bow down to and when I thought about a little more again, I figured it would be a neat thing to hand over to my small person to manage. She's 15 and must spend half her life on there. That's not been instigated yet... in fact I haven't even asked her but we're approaching School's Out and I figured being a 'social media manager' of a global fund-raising project would look pretty decent when it's time for the bullet to hit the bone.
It sounds like a good plan in my head - I'll keep you clued in. Meanwhile... if you happen to buy a shirt, take a pic of yourself in it and we'll get something cool rolling.
Burn Baby, Burn is now up for whatever it is you like to do with it - though you'll find it coming from Apple rather than Spotify just like I said earlier this week. Let me know what you think - but if you think it sucks, I don't really need to know that, so we can skip that part absolutely. Feels good to be back with Apple. That will teach me a good lesson.
Meanwhile... I'm coming into the final stretch of some writing here. It must be finished by next Thursday and I will throw back the curtain. More tomorrow. I've got an unholy ton of things here to be posting about.
Always Forwards, Never Backwards
This week - Wednesday or Thursday - I'll be taking the Big Bear Rescue t-shirt store live. It's taken a long time to get it right. Along the way, I've road-tested just about every online t-shirt company who provide quality organic/ethically produced shirts, weighed up the pros and cons of pricing vs profit, mailing costs, ease of payments to people who want to pick up on the merch... until there was a Last Man Standing.
I have a few things to address at the back-end but I am done and ready to roll. The first shirt off the blocks is a limited edition design by my wonderful friend Matt ' Henbo' Henning. He's an incredible tattoo artist - 75,000 instagram followers are not wrong - massively in demand at the moment and I'm really stoked to be able to launch with this design. The very last thing to do is decide whether or not to make it limited in the number of shirts available or limit the amount of time it will be available for.
I'm hedging towards the latter and I think a six week window in which to buy the shirts and still make them special is long enough. There'll likely be more than a few postings on this during the first week but I'll try and make social media do what it's good at rather than hammer it to death here.
I also finished my next instalment of Beautiful Creatures this morning. That took way too long for my liking, so I shall be getting along with the part three sometime this week. As a mag editor, I should know better... consider those balls well and truly dropped before they were all picked back up again. I'll post a link here as soon as Sean gets it up over at Serpents.
I almost missed my usual Friday slot for hooking up the Burn Baby, Burn playlist last week. I know it's Monday now but it did make it to the Friday... not that it matters I guess. I might have to switch some things around soon though. This week Spotify notified me that I had reached the limit of albums I could add to my collection. That's not downloaded songs... just the amount of albums I could 'save' to my library.
I would have thought that was nothing more than a database of titles that linked to a picture but I queried it and that's very much the case. On those grounds, I'm thinking I will be better served heading back over to Apple Music - which I loved... I only moved so I could share a family account with Rhiannon.
If they don't pay well in the way of royalties and they can't give people what they need, I'm failing to see a long term future for Spotify. One day, you will be beaten into the ground and stranded on the beach like MySpace.
More later. Writing. Insert smiley face of own choice.
Literary Things
This turned up earlier this week and I hid it from myself and forgot to post it:
Somebody went to a lot of trouble to do that - or at least it looks that way. Maybe it was some slacker working in a corporate job who figured 'fuck it' and spent a morning doing his own thing that was worthwhile. I'd like to think that's how it was put together anyway.
So if you're struggling with some writing, what we can gather from this diagram is... just keep going. Even when all hope is lost, keep putting one word after the other because you never know how things might turn out. More than anything, perhaps this is a diagram of hope.
Meanwhile, my love of noir and pulp novels is no secret. I think everybody loves pulp really - they just don't like to admit it in public. Whether you're a public or a closet lover, if you're also into comic books, Hard Case Crime and Titan are about to release a couple of noir/pulp serials - Triggerman and Peepland. While they appear to be pushing Peepland as the flagship title in the series, it's Triggerman that I'm liking the look of... here's some sneak things that they unleashed earlier today:
There's a lot of scraps around the web trailering both titles so I won't kill the treasure hunt for you but it looks good to me.
The crows upgraded their gift allowance this week too. After feeding the rabbits, I accidentally left a whole bunch of things on top of their houses along with a whole bag of fresh straw. The following morning, I let Hector out and wandered up the garden with him and found this sitting on top of one of the roofs:
At first, I thought it was a metal dog stolen from a Celtic hoard but on second inspection, it appears to be a plate from the front of a drawer - the fixing that the handle attaches to. I wish I had stuck with my first inspection now, but the thought is there. I'm not sure how good this next photograph is but here they all are... doing their thing:
I tried to make out the sky writing and what they were trying to say but I wasn't quick enough... maybe next time.
That's all for today... Friday's Burn Baby, Burn playlist will be with you sometime late Friday night along with some other random scraps of happiness for the weekend. Meanwhile, I must deliver my next instalment of Beautiful Creatures to Sean, go through some pictures I took of a Gateway To Everlasting Fire I found, finish up a travel piece on Siberia that I'm working on for The Mag, rustle up a synopsis for a big push on the 'finally completed forever' Family Of Noise (did I not mention that before?), and ummm... that's probably enough.
Oh yeah... and put out the trash for collection. I'll do that now.
Pretty Things
Isn't this just the best quote ever:
"I knew that Jaws couldn’t possibly be successful. It was a first novel, and nobody reads first novels. It was a first novel about a fish, so who cares?”
Peter Benchley
This is neat:
Regardless of what people may say about him out there, Stephen King is an icon for a reason.
So... Sunday morning came around and we decided it was time to paint the lounge. A few hours later, the first coat was done and because we had taken all the pictures down and pretty much moved everything into another room to work with a blank canvas, we were left with a choice Put all the things we had just taken down back where they had come from or take the opportunity to replace them with something new... or at least different - and while I was looking for different, I found these:
And then I found these:
All of which are just killer.... aside from the fact that a) they are all sold out and b) I need a set of five things to fill the holes in this way. The Agatha Christie ones would have been perfect but alas... the search continues. I mention it here because the Black Dragon Press store has many, many similar wonders if you like this sort of thing.
If it were up to me, I would unfurl the tube I have sitting in a corner with things like this inside...
...but you know how the compromise thing goes.
And now I need to actually do some work. No. I really do...
Walkin' The Dinosaur
It's Friday. For those of you who like to drown your life in sound, here's the link to this weeks playlist: Burn Baby, Burn - how did it get to week eight already!
I saw on Mr Gaiman's blog today that he had big plans to visit a hairdresser for a tidy up but due to a rather large storm in those parts (that I thoughtfully sidestepped on my return trip) the only place left open was A Barber Shop. You can read the whole story here. Being a barber is a cool job but let's face facts here... you only walk through that door if you don't want any hair when you come back out. I know this to be true because Once Upon A Time back when I was about ten years old, this very same thing happened to me after I had spent months trying to cultivate a good David Starsky kinda thing:
I have never since stepped through one of those doors again.
Scarily, looking at this pic here, I see that I have just bought a pair of trainers rather like these. Maybe some things are written in stone.
I've been looking into doing some more book cover design lately - mostly because I like it, it's fun and erm... therefore I need no other reason. Anyway, the last few things I've worked on that weren't my own (which I should probably post here somewhere because that's whats blogs are for) have mostly been 'literary' affairs, like this:
But I saw this today and thought it was as good as an adventure book could get...
...so I went out and did the unthinkable. I bought a ton of art materials to sketch some ideas out. Me and art materials don't usually mix so well but a plan is a plan is a plan and I'm going work on some alternate covers for H.G. Wells' The Time Machine which has a big anniversary in 2020. Not that it will take me three years (or at least I hope it won't) but it does mean I can play with some big ideas without any pressure.
Not that there's anybody breathing down my neck but you get the picture.
Three years. Wow. Sounds like a lifetime away. What great things can a man achieve in three years? He could watch a lot of TV that's for sure but I'll try and make sure that's not the only thing I can manage.
Meanwhile, on my travels of working up my next column of Beautiful Creatures, I came across this neat looking movie poster for The Monster. Based on Bertino's previous movies, it might just be something out of the ordinary. It had better be anyway:
Here's the trailer:
That's it for the week. I got some writing to do...
Be cool to each other.
The World Is Not Enough
Now here's somewhere a man could kick back and chew over his place in the world and more than likely come to the conclusion that his place in the world was not worth chewing over.
If he was smart, he would figure out those mountains had been around long before he was even a starseed and will be there for many moons after too. Even those rocks sitting beneath the surface of the water have a longer lifespan than he does and in all likelihood, probably provide a far more useful purpose in the world than he does too.
But that's not a good reason to not even try.
Still jet-lagged to hell and back here. More time in the air than on the ground in a short four day period is not good for your equilibrium. I wrote a little - not as much as I would like, but enough. I did The Bad Thing and watched an airplane movie which knocked on to another and then another. Worth talking about are 500 Days Of Summer and Our Kind Of Traitor - both are good investments of your (wasted) time.
I'm not going to tell anything about my trip here. It will make a good extra chapter for the Cities of the Dead collection - it was also the first time I have ever got in an uber car. It's very much the same as being in a regular cab in that you sit in the back while somebody drives you, but the reality is, it's more like being driven somewhere by a friend of a friend in a nice car that somebody gives a damn about. I can see why it works and how it is absolutely the death of the taxi as we know it. Then again, all it takes is one singular uber-murder scandal and the whole world will come crashing down around its ankles.
I wonder if cab drivers moonlight as uber-drivers during their time off.
I picked up a couple of magazines at the airport too. One of them was the latest edition of Wired. Somewhere in there is an article about a company that hosts residential courses for kids who want to be You-Tubers when they grow up. It really is a thing. It says that five years ago, kids mostly wanted to be app developers but now they want to be You-Tubers making money for simply being themselves.
Meanwhile, I mailed my friend Wayne Simmons a pic of his book on a Waterstones shelf yesterday - a pic from the period in which he wrote (and made his name with) horror. On one side of his book was Pride, Prejudice and Zombies and on the other side, a classic edition of Frankenstein. In that 'horror' section, there was a whole collection of Stephen King books but hardly anything else to speak of. No Ramsey Campbell, no Clive Barker and no James Herbert.
Maybe horror fiction is resting. Maybe it's waiting for somebody to come out and lay waste to the world. Maybe Stephen King must die for people to pay attention again... but it didn't make any difference when James Herbert did, so that's a very poor answer to the problem.
Or maybe, horror authors need to become You-Tubers to regain their mojo, though I can't think of anything more boring to watch than a video of somebody staring out of the window before occasionally tapping some keys.
If you took a poll in an average school, I wonder how many kids would say they wanted to be a writer these days and how many of them would say they wanted to be a horror author - and just who would they want to be like? Who are their role models? I wonder exactly how many schools you would have to visit before you found a kid who wanted to be a horror author and said as much without being prompted from a list of previously arranged choices.
Note to self: never buy Wired again. Wired is Cosmopolitan for the Samsung generation. It suggests the new world is built on algorithms and there is nothing we can do about it. It hosts adverts for apps that will close your blinds for you when you're not at home. It promotes great design discussed over many pages for items such as football boots and lamps.
It tells me the world is more connected than ever but does not even begin to explain why everybody feels so fucking alone.
Welcome to the true face of horror in 2016 in which horror writers now freelance for tech mags.
Road Trip. A Prequel.
I hit the gym earlier this evening. It's not a big thing - I go a few times a week just to keep the wolves from the door and if nothing else, it's no bad idea to try to quieten the brain by flooding it with whatever those good things that get released when you exercise are called.
But today, the gym was really busy with a whole crowd of people I've never seen before, leaving me with nothing but a running machine to make friends with. I've never been on a running machine in my life. I don't run. Not for anything. But there it was, idle. I figured I would give it a whirl and one whole My Chemical Romance album later, I found I had run 7km without breaking a sweat.
Except this is a lie. There was a lot of sweat. A Lot. But I wasn't on my knees when I was done. In fact, I felt pretty good about it but how the hell did I run 7km without thinking about it? I guess walking Hector for at least two hours a day is the answer. He just turned three. That's a lot of walking over something close on 1,000 days. Driving home, I wondered if - with a little more training than just one fluke of an evening - I had what it takes to run some kind of 10km event.
It was a two cigarette problem that's for sure.
I figured I had best start getting my face together to hit the road at the weekend. My Big Plan is to write like a demon though I guess I might need a change of pace somewhere along the way, so I bought 20,000 Days On Earth - which looks like this:
Why I have recently become attracted to the work of Nick Cave like a moth to a sheet of fly paper, I have no idea, but I'm very much enjoying the ride.
Today has been a busy one. I'm about to sign another mag off first thing in the morning even though I'm pretty sure I only signed the last one off a week or so back. Once that's gone to The Place It Must Go, I think I will take a day off and not so much as look at a screen for as long as possible.
And all of the above was supposed to be a post for yesterday... and then the wheels came off the bus when I decided to update my operating system to Sierra and all kinds of sins rose from beneath the earth right in front of my eyes. One erased hard drive (something like twelve hours later) and a clean install, I was back up. Which is a good reason why you should stream your entertainment and keep all your work in the cloud somewhere. To be fair, it's the first crash I've had with a Mac in about fifteen years. Always one to look on the bright side, it's running faster than ever now and lends itself to the idea that you should wipe your hard drive once a year anyway.
It was even quite liberating for a while but also a royal pain the ass. Onwards.
Finally... because it's kinda becoming a thing around here - which was always the intention - Burn Baby, Burn 6 is right here for you. Crash or no crash, trip or no trip... music makes the world go round. Hope you dig it.
Now... I should pack.
Call Me A Dog
Burn Baby, Burn V is up and running right here. It's the best hour you can spend by yourself this morning and you know it...
And for a huge anti-climax, I've got very little to add today - see yesterday's post for details... just busy writing.
Crazy From The Heat
Places I'd Like To Sit And Write One Day:
This looks like a great place to squirrel myself away for a week (at least). Known to the world as to Eltz Castle (with Eltz Forest shrouded in mist in the background). It's something like 800 years old and has been owned and maintained by the same family since day one. It doesn't appear to take overnight reservations so maybe this is as close as I'm likely to get to writing here. Still - the sentiment is there.
This photo was taken by one of my favourite landscape photographers, Hannes Becker. Go see what he does.
Anyway, I had all kinds of things lined up for posting here this week and then somehow, I got to today, Thursday, without posting a damn thing mostly because I've been writing - a lot - and got caught up in a world that isn't this one. Well, it is this one, but it's looked at through different eyes...
I picked The Sick Bag Song (Nick Cave) up at some point along the way this week and it's a beautiful beast...
If you're a fan of Mr Cave, you'll already have dug into this, but if not, there's more than enough here to fall in love with. Here's a video sampler from the man himself:
The book even has a website of its own that you can find right here and order yourself one of the clamshell versions. Why you wan't the paperback when you could have that, I have no idea. If you like that video, there's another four posted on that site.
And that ladies and gentlemen, is how to work a book release properly.
Note to self: remember you said that.
There was a time not so long ago when I decided not to contribute any further pieces to any purely online 'magazines', Sometimes you have to take a stand and if your stand was wrong, then at least you stood. All of which meant I needed to start scouting out great hard copy magazines to see if they would like to play. I'm building quite a stash here as the weeks go by - some of them are great and if lit mags are your kind of thing, you should get your hands dirty with them.
Popshot Magazine is one of the great ones. They have a great ethos and their production values are up near the roof. Editorially, they're bang on the nose too. There's not an issue that's dropped through the box (I'm a subscriber) that I've been disappointed with or not found a writer that could be a contender out in the real world. They also use illustrators to give it extra props and in 2016, the outlets for great illustrators to work within a context are few and far between. Bonus.
They don't pay for your work - which is something that would set them apart nicely if they could figure it out. Even £10 by way of some kind of thanks would be fine. A packet of cigarettes to assist with the creation of your next story would be more than welcome to most - and if it breaks the bank to do that, then make the issue £7 instead of £6 to cover it. I wouldn't throw all my toys out of the window over that.
I'll try and keep up with the good ones here. There are a couple more on the shelf behind me that are worth mentioning but I won't fire all of the guns at once. There's a whole world out there happening under your nose if you choose to look - and even after all these years, it still makes a difference on paper as opposed to a screen.
Fact. Whether you like it or not.
More tomorrow... back to the pen. I have important shit to take care of.
The Weekend Supplement
Friday! Burn Baby, Burn IV is up and Ready To Rumble... and while you tune in, there's a whole load of other great swag to be found in the world. Let's do it:
I have no idea what this is, but I thought I would post it here anyway. Honest I don't.
I picked this up earlier in the week:
...and it's quite fantastic. Nice cover too. If you like (and know your) noir, Blood Count is up there with the greats and that's not something I'd say lightly every day of the week. Reggie is a new name on me though and there are eight previous books in this series that features Artie Cohen too. That should take me to the end of the year. I'll stick that in the win column.
Ummm. Check the hell out of this from Reignwolf:
In other things to get excited about, sometime in the last week, Jack White released this album of acoustic recordings.
Meanwhile, Roadies finally turned up on Amazon Video this week. I had abandoned TV for the foreseeable future but I've been looking forward to this for months - so you'll forgive me if I Go Dark for a few hours at a time while I plough through it.
I also found this. I'm not big on YouTube and how it delivers content, but perhaps if it was all like this, I could be converted quite easily. This is a great book review of Roberto Bolano's 2666 by a damn talented reviewer. That aside, if you fancy yourself a reading challenge that reaps rewards beyond what you should get for the price of a paperback, knock yourself out. If you fancy a slightly slimmer challenge, check out The Savage Detectives instead.
Then I made an appointment for a new tattoo. Big thing. More on that some other time. Have a beautiful weekend lovely people. Time to write.
Bear With A Sore Head
I have in my hands, the first design for the range of Big Bear Rescue t-shirts (designed by my buddy Henbo who you can find here) that will be launching soon - I'm hoping the end of September will see this go live but I have my work cut out on that front. This week, I have a store to build and eco-shirts to source and probably a whole ton of other things that I haven't even thought about yet but now the design is in (and man, is it ever great) everything can progress at a speed only dictated to by how much sleep I need.
I'll preview it here next week when I'm happy with the end result. I probably need to do things to it that mean it can't be stolen too. Things like load up bad-ass occult symbols in invisible layers in Photoshop.
That ought to do it.
I figured we needed a decent logo as we go forwards as well, so I came up with this:
...so that's two things done this week. Two steps in the right direction and now I need to start piecing them together to make sense to the world.
This week, the story is about Maya. Maya is a dancing bear. That means she would have been stolen from her mother as a tiny cub. Then she was tortured until she learned to perform a pitiful hop that looks as if she’s dancing.
When they’re little cubs, dancing bears like Maya have their paws burned repeatedly to make them hop in time to music. But the audience don’t see this part of the deal. They don’t see the traumatised, frightened animal, controlled by the pain of a cruel ring that's been drilled through her muzzle. Being as words are sometimes too easy to walk away from, here:
In my own inimitable sales rep kind of way, you either give a damn or you don't. Giving a damn means doing something about it - in this case throwing some money into the pot here. Not giving a damn means moving right along the bus and pretending I never said anything. Makes no difference to me, but to the bear - and she is just one of many - it means a lot.