Wisdom

You’ll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do.

David Foster Wallace

From Here To Eternity Without You

Thanks to a couple of interruptions - I have brought The Eternity Ring to an end. Now it's complete and ready to roll, I'm going to start pushing forward with plans to see if there is interest in releasing an illustrated version. I can't promise that will ever happen though so if you think you might be into it, don't hold your breath waiting for an alternative version... do you know how long an illustrated edition of something takes to come out even when there are big guns behind it and some money thrown into the pot. Then again... maybe that's the problem. File under pending. Anyway - I'm most pleased with it. I've never tried writing anything for children that's really for adults pretending to be children before (or possibly the other way around) - if you want to throw some feedback around, you know where I am but I'll also leave the comments open on the bottom of its own page so that you can throw stones in public if you wish. The whole shooting match will go live in the next couple of days (as I write it's been shipped out to the editing/proofing guys for crash testing) and that makes me happy.

What next? Well, for a couple of days I have a magazine to put to bed, then I intend to redesign and rebuild said magazine and alongside of that, I'm sweeping the table of all writing projects to get a final draft of The Family Of Noise under my nose... all writing projects except The Day The Sky Fell Down that is - which is more of a 'broken' style thing and currently has some momentum. Those are my two aims for the next few weeks.

Yep - I am addressing my biggest weakness of being able to focus. Let's see what happens.

•••

A couple of nights ago, Rhiannon was showing me a song she was learning for a music assessment at school. What it came down to was basically learning - parrot fashion - how to play Mad World on a keyboard. This she did - pretty damn impressively - by using a free app on her Nexus. Inspired by her slave like devotion to the app and getting the job done, I thought to myself "How hard can it be?" because there's something pretty damn cool about coming across a piano when you're out in the world, sitting down and banging something out for the people just because it's there.

So I added myself a task to the Day Zero project. In at number 79 with a bullet: Learn how to play a Harry Nilsson version of Without You (previously proclaimed 'the best song of all time' somewhere in the annals of this blog). It's very specifically one of Harry's versions that it has to be though. He was the one that brought it to the table and made it sounds like a woman had taken a sledgehammer to his soul. There have been other diva versions since, but for those, the song is nothing more than a platform to use to show how much range you can pound out.

No: the Nilsson version it must be. There are tutorials for everything on YouTube, so right now I'm working through them and trying to figure out which is the best. I figured the best way to do this, being as I don't play piano and never have, would be to take a 12 year old's approach to it and simply copy until it sounds right and then I'll figure out how to clean it up and add some sparkle to it. I have no doubt that playing it will be hard enough but then I'll need to add the vocals and that will be another adventure altogether...

Whatever happens, it's a nice distraction from writing. Not that I need one, but sometimes it's good to do something for no other reason than because it's there.

Here's Harry (audio not video) - I love this demo version. It's raw in the extreme and that's how it's got to be.

Rounding Off The Week While I Watch 'Born To Be Wild'

Born To Be Wild - the story of American rock in the seventies. Catch it on BBC iPlayer before it falls off the map. Nearly three weeks into the year huh. I've made quite a good start - I've certainly got my eye on the ball more than usual. This is entirely fuelled by the creation of Day Zero between Christmas and New Year. I think I blogged about this not so long ago, but if you've just joined us (where the hell have you been), Day Zero is rebooting your life by making a list of 101 things to do in 1001 days - which is about 2.75 years. It's actually really tough to make that list but it does focus your mind as to what's important and all the things you are/aren't doing. So far I've gotten to something like item number 70 in making the list (not actually doing them) but I didn't want to hang about to get started. I tried to talk my Ma into doing one as well. She has made a valiant attempt and written three items - all of which are holidays, but that's fine. It's whatever you want it to be and at least she has booked one of them.

I'm still considering posting that list here - I think it would be fun but on the other hand, I think some things should be just a little bit sacred.

Big Bear Rescue (which is one of the things on the list) got off to a good start today. Rhiannon has decided to join in by forcing her friends to make Bear Cakes with her and hosting a Bake Sale. I can go along with that. One of her teachers is pretty cool so I might ask her to open it up to the whole school and get some traction under it. I have some other ideas too but I really should speak to the people I want involved before I shout about it. I've also set up a page for it (still under construction) here where you can randomly donate if you want but there's lots to do still. I need to figure out how to blog about it properly - I might need to take it external to somewhere like tumblr for maximum traction and use some widgets to pull it back here. Still chewing that one over... mostly because I am trying to spend less time online, not more.

What else has gone on? Let's make a list. I got hooked on the excellent Welsh crime drama Hinterland that's simply excellent and yeah, it makes me want to go home again. I also got hooked on some new Scandinavian crime - this time via audiobook. The man in question is Jussi Adler-Olsen and his Department Q series is great fun. With a Danish slacker detective and his Syrian assistant (possibly ex-special forces or secret police), an ex-wife that won't go away but won't stay either, a crippled ex-partner, a lodger who cooks... and as the series goes on, more and more misfits turn up, such as the forensic guy who won £10 million in the lottery, lost it all and had to go back to work in the canteen. Standing proud in the middle of all of this are the plots. Gripping, serious and harsh plots. Its a great balance. There seem to be a lot of alternate titles in the translation of these on various websites but the first three books that are available are: Mercy, Disgrace and Redemption... and having done that research for you, I see there's a new one available called Journal 64.

...and that's all I got. Wiped out and finished for the day - I am out of here. Maybe I should have gone to bed last night.

Clan of the Heart Punch

We landed in Philadelphia with ten minutes spare to make it from one side of the airport to the other if we were going to stand a chance of catching the connecting flight to Denver. With security being the way it is, that was looking about as likely as getting a smile out of one of the flight attendants we’d been trapped with for the last seven hours. To make it through security, first you need your soul dissecting and you must answer a bewildering array of questions designed to catch you out. These are either asked by people who could care less one way or the other what business you have in the States and ask stupid questions like “Do you dye your hair” to people who care a little too much and behave like they never got accepted into the military and have a chip on their shoulder to prove it. These people have buzz cuts in order to ask their questions properly — questions like whether you intend to work while you’re in the promised land and that next time you come in, you need a form that says you’re allowed to. Then he’ll tell you the number of that form — and because there was nothing wrong with your entry visa in the first place, he will attempt to sweeten the deal by telling you that he’s “not going to bust your balls this time for it.”

The flight was long gone by the time we hit the gate. To be reasonable here, the airline did book overnight accommodation until the next flight in the morning but it was only for one of us — and the girl who I was travelling with was not going to let me crash on the floor of her room this side of the apocalypse.

The guy who works for the airline says that he can fix me up a room — for which I am truly grateful. He tells me that my friend has a really nice hotel room but I must stay seven miles away in a different hotel. This too is a ‘nice hotel’ apparently, but the fact that he felt the need to make the comparison doesn’t fill me with confidence. So long as there is a bed and some kind of running water that isn’t brown or red, it will suit me just fine.

The cab driver is noncommittal in every way. He looks like he’s driven this route close on a hundred times today — the same as yesterday and more than likely, the same as every day before that as well for months on end. Maybe even years. When we get to the hotel, he simply points to the meter and I give him $20 without waiting for the change. Maybe he just gets tired of talking to people. I can roll with that.

At the front desk, there is a young family trying to arrange some kind of milk warming device for their baby who is clinging to the mothers neck like a new born monkey. Also at the front desk is an older gentleman who looks like he’s just talked the other desk-clerk into booking a steady stream of prostitutes armed with cocaine and beer into his room.

Maybe I’ve stumbled across some kind of Hotel Shangri-La. Maybe you can get anything you want in this hotel. It’s certainly out of the way enough to fly under the radar.

The cocaine guy wanders off still looking immensely satisfied — in case you’re wondering at this point, the milk baby couple are still trying to get the finer points of their apparently complicated order across.

“Good evening Sir. My name is Daryl. How can I help you this evening?”

I am too tired for prostitutes, cocaine and baby milk so I explain what happened and that U.S. Air should have booked me a courtesy room. He’s already two steps ahead of me and has me up on the screen before I’ve even got my passport out of my pocket to prove who I am.

He amuses me with some small talk while he assaults the keyboard and one swipe of my debit card later (should I wish to abuse the mini-bar at selling arms to the Middle East prices), I’m handed a key and given such exact directions to my room it would shame an iPhone. Before I can escape, he holds on to the other end of the plastic key as I am trying to take it from him — he appears to be trying to form some kind of connection with me through the plastic — and says:

“Like I said, my name is Daryl and if I can help you out with anything at all while you’re staying with us, just be sure to let me know.”

He may have winked at me during this statement. It sounds like a winking kind of speech but I’m too busy noticing how he has clenched his fist and is pounding it repeatedly onto his heart as he says it. Like they would on Star Trek or if you were swearing allegiance to life as an apprentice to an L.A. drug lord.

“Thanks Daryl, I’ll remember that.”

“You have a good night now bro…”

You know something Daryl? If I could actually get to my room before I have to embrace another time zone shift, I just might.

He does the heart punch thing again.

Weird.

The hotel is a little run down but clean and bright. It’s kind of how I imagine an out of town Vegas hotel to have welcomed me but it’s most luxurious compared to the first $20 a night time I hit New York twenty years ago. Tonight, I am not afraid that kidney thieves will break into my room in the middle of the night. An old man looking to escape his overnight harem or a baby still in search of the perfect milk perhaps but I’m quite confident that all my body parts will still be where they should be when the sun comes up.

After battling with the plastic card which I have already put in upside down and back to front, I throw my suitcase on the floor and wash my hands and face. There’s hot drink facilities and I make coffee because what Americans know about tea isn’t worth talking about. It doesn’t occur to me until the following morning that Daryl could have fixed that for me.

The room is huge. I could live here for the rest of my life and not run out of places to sit differently in. It’s also clean and as soon as I’ve located the power switch to disable the air-con, it’s damn near perfect. There’s even a balcony I can walk straight onto for secret smoking. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do: smoke and drink a cup of wonderful American coffee while I look out over Philadelphia from seven miles away. In my pants.

It may be the middle of the night but from up here, I can see for miles. The front of the hotel curves around but I don’t see anybody else smoking on the balcony. I don’t think anybody smokes in America anymore. There are no chairs out here so I sit on the floor like a trailer park Buddah. Life is good.

I come across my usual second wind of life that always turns up after midnight even though I’ve been up for something like twenty seven hours already. It’s nice to know it has a blatant disregard for time zones. The TV here is twice as big as the one I have at home and that’s necessary because the bed is so far away from it, I don’t know if I could focus if the it was any smaller.

Flipping around the channels, I find exactly what I expect. Junk. There are seemingly hundreds of channels of junk. It take me twenty minutes and another two mugs of coffee to get through them all just to find something to fall asleep to. I didn’t know they had remade Hawaii Five-0. It’s not bad. In fact, it’s pretty good as far as cop shows go or maybe I’m more tired than I thought.

When I wake up, the TV is still going and somebody is trying to sell me something I don’t want. Welcome to America. I turn it off and go back to sleep. I would have left it on but the last thing I need are subliminal messages for ordering pizza with free delivery for less than $10 floating around in my head.

Besides, if I wanted a pizza, I would place a call to Daryl.

The flight is at an ungodly hour — 9am. I make it through security without being frisked and scrutinised like a dime store hooker only to be pulled to one side when I get through the X-Ray machines by the biggest security guard I’ve ever met.

For the briefest of moments, I am concerned though I have no reason to be unless a novel by Poe Ballantine is considered to contravene the laws of immigration. Turns out he thinks he knows me from somewhere. Deep in my heart, I’m hoping that he thinks I’m Johnny Depp but he genuinely swears that we have met before. I tell him I used to be in a band a long time ago but now I’m a writer. He asks me to sign a piece of paper for him and seems very satisfied with that, whaps me on the shoulder with a grizzly paw and says:

“You have a great trip bro.”

Did I see him give me the heart punch that Daryl introduced to me? I guess if ever need to get through security in a hurry again, he’s my man.

On board, I am checked to make sure I’m capable of doing up my own seatbelt before they serve me something invented by Charles Dickens in a metal tray. I am afraid to go to the bathroom in case somebody knifes me with a shiv made out of a filed down toothbrush. None of the flight attendants look like they are going to salute our brotherhood with the heart punch though one of them looks like he would like to punch me in the face given half the chance. If you’re a passenger on a plane these days, you’re nothing but a terrorist waiting to happen — at best you’re a minor inconvenience.

I don’t meet anybody from the clan for the longest time now. Not the bus driver who drives me uphill for two hours to my room in the remote wilderness of Keystone, not the desk guy — although he does have a good line in politics and holds the keys to the coffee machine which makes him the most important person in the world between eight and ten in the morning. Most disappointing though is the guy who owns the store at the top of the mountain.

I walk in and within a second, he tells me about the last time he saw Whitesnake. Unprompted I might add — that’s not the first (or last) thing I would ever ask somebody. It does however lead to a half hour conversation about all the bands he has seen. I guess he doesn’t meet many people he can talk to up here who even know who Adrian Vandenberg is. There’s another guy in the store now and he has no hair at all. This means he gets ignored because we are busy being brothers in rock. I discover the store owners name is Rock Soldier. You can probably look him up on the internet. I hope that’s his real birth-name. I’ll be heartbroken if I find he has made it up.

I leave but he doesn’t give me the heart punch. Maybe the gesture hasn’t filtered out to this side of the country yet. In a town with a permanent population of something close to 100, I shouldn’t be surprised.

Many days later, I’m boarding the flight home with a copy of Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris in hand. I don’t know what this guy in a uniform does — he doesn’t look like the captain but I guess he might be as I don’t see him again during the flight — but as I show my boarding pass, he points at the book.

“Good choice man.”

“I hope so. I’ve not read anything by him before.”

“You’ll love it. He’s a really good writer.”

“Promise?” I smile at him.

“Promise.” And then — he did it. Fist clenched, he banged at his heart twice which I guess means he really promises or he’ll guarantee my money back out of his own pocket. I was headed for my seat when I stopped and asked over my shoulder:

“Do you know Daryl?”

“Is he on this flight too?” he asked cocking his head at me.

It’s a small world. Anything can happen out here.

Bears. Lots of Bears.

One of my pet projects is finally off the ground - now I have to do some work to fuel it. WSPA called me yesterday and we spoke long and hard about my quest to save a bear that's been locked up all its life. It's very sad out there and it turns out that nothing is as easy as it would first appear. I probably should have known better but when freeing up a bear in the backwaters of Romania, you will come across that old favourite of a troll under a bridge: international politics. I won't bore you with the details but consider my Big Bear Rescue launched. I have nine months before I have to actually do the thing I'm going to do and in the meantime, I need to get my head around raising some funds. This involves some art, some stories, some clothing, some auctioning and finally an appointment with ink.

All will become clear - like I said, there's a lot of things for me to do behind the scenes. As a bi-product of this, I'll be spending some time here:

Known in the real world as Bran Castle and in the fictional world as the likely setting for Mr Stoker's Dracula, if this isn't a good place to stay and write for a day, what is? I'm excited to be finally getting on with this. It's going to be tough but "if you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly" - is £10,000 too ambitious? No, I don't think it is. Let's do this. More to follow...

I'll hook up some kind of bear symbol thing and newsletter shortly. it will be fun keeping track and logging all of this he said scratching his head.

•••

In other 'going outside' news, I've decided to head out for the Aarhus Art Convention in Denmark sometime in mid-June. If I can tie it in with some other ideas or projects (of which I have far too many to be entirely practical) then I will. If you're reading and headed out that way, drop me a note - it looks like quite a trek from the airport!

•••

I realised yesterday evening that a lot of people subscribed for posts to be delivered by email - which means you'll miss anything I throw around that's not actually in the blog. Bearing that in mind, I'll start rounding off my posts with any of these things so nobody misses anything. If missing something was your intention, simply don't click on stuff. It will look like this:

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:

I started a new section on the site called Scaramanga Bag. Although it sounds like a small pouch to keep your third nipple safe if you happen to be Christopher Lee, it's actually a new series of Hard Boiled Travel Writing (thanks to Wayne Simmons for the tagline). The first story - Clan of the Heart Punch - is out there already. If it makes you chuckle, you like it and want to share it with somebody, knock yourselves out - I've also filtered it out to the website Medium to catch other people in the net. I don't like going third party but let's just think of it as a test...

A Day Condensed.

I can't even begin to think about writing anything remotely useful after the weekend. Shattered. A single day show can take the wind right out of your sails but work aside, there was also some fun to be had in the cracks. First of all, I had lunch with my buddy Mr Scott Cole (well, we sat in an area where other people where eating lunch and that's as good as it gets sometimes) and discussed things that should happen in the future if we can keep our eyes on a bouncing ball. Which is also as good as it gets sometimes. I'd have been happy to sit around and talk about cardboard boxes with jam inside them to be honest. It's always good to catch up with friends in the flesh. To mark the occasion, a self - courtesy Mr Cole. (Note to selves: Get some sleep). 

Sometime later that same afternoon, we hooked up with my slightly newer friend Mr Wayne Simmons as arranged (it doesn't always work out like that) and found a quiet corner in which to make a nest and rustle up something of a podcast. It went on a little long - we know this for sure because the video camera we were using ran its battery out and then it got too dark for Scott to take any photographs - eventually, we were left sitting alone in the dark so figured we had best call it a day, but there was at least another six hours left in us. Content-wise, we talk tattoos and the four shows we have a year (natch), the tattooing scene (also natch) and then brought in some horror books/movie commentary (generally speaking and our own projects), shot the breeze about writing, editing and anything else that we came to mind. To be fair to Wayne here - he had a plan and came armed with a notebook. I think it was me that wandered off on the tangents. I think it's because I don't see many people on a day to day basis.

Here's what it looked like - colour commentary by me:

When all of this will be available to listen to/watch, I have no idea - certainly not today or tomorrow so don't hold your breath... but soon. Definitely soon.

•••

Later still, I sat down with Mr Paul Sweeney (who apologises for the state of his site in advance and has promised to fix it real soon) to discuss some future plans we have talking about for ages. Maybe it's simply that January is here and everybody is keen to get along, but things are starting to come together all over the place. The plans concerning Mr Sweeney are good fun too. They involve funny people, a possible exhibition and some cross-pollination amongst friends. Hey - everybody else is at it. That seems to be the way to make things work around here. More on that much later (like weeks not days) as I need to organise some stuff at my side of things. I also found out that Paul's girlfriend, Hannah, is the agent for Emilia Clarke (Khaleesi in Game of Thrones) - after that my attention kind of wandered off.

Sorry chief. Girl who is mother to dragons beats anything we might have had cooking on the stove.

•••

Even later than that, I finally caught up with my long time buddy JJ who made it for a coffee and we talked about expanding on something that has something to do with 100 rock stars. I need to get this stuff uber-straight in my head before I attack it but it's always cool to have the foundations of a plan in place. More on this much later.

That's the top end of the interesting stuff - the rest of the weekends happenings will appear elsewhere in their own good time. Right now however, I have a teetering pile of emails to reply to, more words to string together than I know where to begin and I'm struggling to keep my eyes open. For once, I think I'm going to give in and hit the sack before midnight.

Just once though...

Bring Up The Bodies... And Some Bears.

What started out as a day with not much ahead of me but compiling interview questions and transcribing things recorded in totally unsuitable environments, by lunchtime, it had actually gotten pretty interesting. I found that I have a reasonable amount of essays about travel to start pushing them out a little - does that make me a travel writer? That has to be one of the coolest job titles in the world. Anyway, I thought I would try a little experiment and if you're observant, you'll see a tab up there that says Travel Writing and it hooks up to a page on the relatively new platform of Medium. It's been there a whole day now and already I'm thinking of walking away, pulling it down and bringing it back home. Not that there is anything wrong with Medium - it's a beautiful platform to work on and when it started out it was full of great ideas and writing that shone. Having come back to it today, I find that it's turning into more or less the same platform as every other on the web. In order to keep people interested and active, readers are now able to comment on the writing on a paragraph by paragraph basis. Typically, this happens a lot, so now, great writing is set upon with minute sleeve notes by people arguing over an otherwise lovely piece of work. People need to understand that just because you don't agree with something, doesn't mean you have to comment on it. The builders at Medium should have known better. It was originally a nice magazine - now it's a magazine with big margins and a pen on a string so that others can deface work or extract a tiny amount of ego for themselves from somebody else's work. People have too much time on their hands - if you don't like something, walk away. If you do, tell somebody else about it.

Everyone's a critic these days. Maybe they always have been. Maybe I'll boot up a separate blog for it but that kind of negates my rule of "find all the things you need in my own house" rule.

File under pending... but only overnight. These things need sharp decisions!

•••

Something else happened today that I can't talk about but it's very exciting - and I don't get excited about much at all. When I heard my name mentioned in the same sentence as Hilary Mantel, it made my day complete. It's probably nothing at all like anything you would ever imagine either - but it is, without question, super cool in the extreme. I shall wait until something happens before revealing anything about it but rest assured, just writing this here even for myself makes me smile.

•••

The guys at WSPA finally got back to me about my Big Bear Rescue project - and I missed the damn call. I re-left messages at all the right places to say I was returning calls but everybody seemed to have gone home by mid-afternoon. Maybe tomorrow. I had almost given up but the flame is still alight. Not quite so bright that you could navigate yourself from one side of the Grimpen Mire to the other without getting sucked in, but it's alight all the same.

Topically, this Doctor Who/ Sherlock fan made video is absolutely ton notch if it really is constructed with no assistance. In fact, amazing would be absolutely fair:

The Man Who Was Wednesday

If you've been hibernating for the last few months, you'll have missed the fact that we now have a dog. Time consuming? Hard work? Sure - but totally worth it. I even built him his own blog so that I wouldn't write about him too much here but it's very tempting all the same. There's a lot of things on the proverbial desk this week, let's see if I can make sense of it all. First of all, on the day job front, we have a show this weekend which is always good fun if not rather time consuming. I'm looking forward to this one because my buddy Wayne Simmons is coming up to work on some stuff, but we also have clandestine plans to do a podcast. Wayne figured it would be a fun idea to interview me about my 'career' in magazines (I'm sure he intended the term loosely) and then also about by books and writing - something that I'm really looking forward to because I've never been made to really think about it before. Back in the real world, I know I won't be able to help myself and it will transform itself into a two-way street pretty swiftly, so if you're a fan of his work, stay tuned for the results of that. I'll post them here and Wayne will do his thing with it as well. If the name is damningly unfamiliar to you, Wayne has written a good few books (or a few good books even) - all the info is over at his linked blog there, but the latest is called Plastic Jesus and looks like this...

...and it's totally worth your time. Anyway, if it all goes wrong, the worst that can happen is that we'll have a "hair vs no hair" picture to post. Sometimes, that's as good as it gets. Mr Simmons (everybody should have a friend called Mr Simmons) also puts on his own show - Scardiff - in err, Cardiff (natch). With the wind in the right direction, I'm looking to release Turn The Lamp Down Low in time for it and launch it there, but that's months away (October) but it's a heads up for you all the same.

•••

I've been reading about.. hmm.. how can I put it... "making things happen when you're out on a limb" this week and came across some good wisdom along the way that I think is worth sharing. In Seth Godin's book The Icarus Deception, he puts it like this (and I paraphrase): Oprah (as a show) is dead and buried so you can't go on her show to get noticed, but YouTube actually wants you to host your own show and they will give you the space for free - but neither Oprah or YouTube will call you up. The record company's aren't looking to sign you but iTunes and hundreds of other places will be only too pleased to play host to you. Sadly, they're not likely to call you up and ask either.

The point of this section is that it's in our very nature to wait to be picked. To seek permission and authority for somebody to say you are good enough and that in turn, validates what you're doing - but the world only turns on that axis for a select few and who knows what's gone on behind the scenes in order to get them that far. Sometimes, the very thing going on behind the scenes is the very thing that's being suggested here - getting off your ass and making something because it's there to be made and only you can do it your way.

Later in the book, there's a great section about your audience. How you can read 24 good reviews and one bad one - guess which one you'll hold onto. That's right.. the bad one and exactly why you should never read any reviews - good or bad. Ignore them all. I need to quote this next part:

"After you've created your art, whatever it is, it's done. What the audience does with it is out of your control. If you focus your angst and emotion on the people who don't get it, you've destroyed part of your soul and haven't done a thing to  improve your art. Your art, if you made it properly, wasn't for them in the first place. Figure out who your art is for, get better at connecting with that audience, ignore the rest."

There's one final bit that hit home with me: he then describes how a big enough audience will destroy you because some of them will want what you do taller, shorter, wider, thinner, cheaper, more expensive... but (and this is the important part if you're still with me on this) it's only the mass marketers that need everybody. You do not. You only need to matter to a few.

Interesting trains of thought huh. The key is actually believing in it and living by it knowing that it's true no matter how hard it gets.

•••

Meantime, the best thing the web has turned up for me this week is this fine article on How To Make A Bone Chandelier over at Atlas Obscura. Take a look. What in the world could be simpler than this:

Kick Off The Year As You Mean Go On, Smith...

Lists can be pretty handy things. I got up this morning and made one of the things that really needed doing for the day job and then made another of some things that were hanging around in the wings that like to haunt me at night when I'm supposed to be sleeping. Day job aside, I finished typing up my longhand scrawl of The Eternity Ring late this afternoon which means I have a complete first draft. "Good work Mr Smith" he said to himself...

Cleaning up starts tomorrow to make sure I haven't done anything dumb within the timeline but as of about 10 minutes ago, I put out some feelers out for an illustrator to come on board with me. It will stand perfectly solidly by itself (and I might publish a limited edition text only version of it) but I think it's a story that could dance as well as sing with some art alongside of it. Updates to follow. At ten thousand words, I need to decide whether to call it a short story or a novella. Maybe it's just a story and that happens to be how long it is. Yeah, that sounds about right to me.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, there's a real hurricane brewing outside - not quite of biblical proportions but there's stuff blowing down the street, which is one way to get rid of your trash.

•••

OK, so I meant to post that yesterday - maybe even the day before - I'll carry on like nobody really cares anyhow. The illustrator feelers are out of the bag - work continues. Towards the end of January, I'm going to release The Eternity Ring in its story only format - I'm looking for half a dozen casual readers to hit me with some feedback. It doesn't matter if you've got a blog to talk about it. I'm more interested in whether you enjoyed it or not. Drop me an email using that Contact Me thing on the left and when finished fixing it up, I'll mail you a pdf file of it. For your trouble, there will be a tasty limited edition of it in the mail to you once it's ready in hardcopy format and maybe, just maybe if it all works out well, I'll remember you kindly when the illustrated version comes out too.

To wrap this up - I believe a few weeks back, I posted a likely cover for the book but hindsight being a wonderful thing, I decided it was well below par (i.e.: shit) and threw it in the trash. Here's the final cover:

There are many, many reasons to be capable of dabbling in this sort of thing yourself but this is the best one. I can't imagine being powerless over the way your finished product might look when it finally goes out in public. I don't think I'll change my mind again - the soul seems quite happy with this.

Best Books of 2013 • Around The World In 80 Days (ish)

Before I do anything else, promise me that you'll watch this. If you never watch anything else that I ever post here, that's fine - but please, watch this because it's one of the finest video clips of all time:

You can find more on YouTube by searching for Salad Fingers or follow its creator David Firth by going here. Simply brilliant. I haven't laughed so hard in years.

•••

I've started to fire up some plans to hold a miniature promo/reading event or tour for Family of Noise in Copenhagen in either April or May next year. April is looking good but I'm also kind of keen on May because it was so freaking cold when I went in March last year. There are some very cool bookshops out there, so over the next few weeks I'm going to see if they will have me. I'm inspired by the concept of doing this entirely off my own back. Is it possible? Can you really make it work? Maybe I'll rough up some free samples of various things and simply give them away - then again... not sure. Let's see what happens. First of all I have to convince some nice professional people to take a chance on me.

I'm hoping that I can figure out how to work this properly because Paris, Barcelona and Vienna are also high on the list of places to break into. I guess I should add London to that list with it being pretty close to home but I might see how it goes hundreds of miles away first if you know what I mean. I have to tell you though - finishing a book with no other deadline than the one you have set yourself is really hard. At least I am finding it hard. It's too easy to move it when I fall behind. I'm hoping this will force my hand somewhat. Something has to...

•••

ON READING:

I've just spent ten days offline and aside from going to war with the Destroyer of Worlds, all I've really done is read. No writing as I had planned (that starts tomorrow), just reading. There's been some great ones too. I picked up a copy of Ray Harryhausen's sketchbook which is everything you imagine it to be and also a copy of Diableries which is also a serious piece of work and rather difficult to explain what it actually is, so I'll simply point you here.

Meantime, on the fiction side of things, I ploughed through The Ghost Hunters by Neil Spring in near record time. If you're of a mind to sink your teeth into a ghost story that bites back, that's the very thing for you. Next, I tried a book that's been hanging around for a while called The Eye Collector but it was lacking in far too much after twenty minutes and was unceremoniously dumped. The kids bought me a smooth Edgar Allan Poe collection this year - a good looking volume it is too. I flipped through it but made a promise to sit down and read all of it soon. Clamouring for my attention today though are two really good books. One is The Marriage of Sticks by Jonathan Carroll and the other is called Mercy from Jussi Adler-Olsen. I had to divert Mercy to an audiobook to chew them both at the same time - though not exactly at the same time...

...and so, onto the best books of the year. Although this list is in order, not all of them were actually released this year. I don't much care that they weren't either - all that's important are that good books get into the right hands:

1. The Year Of The Ladybird - Graham Joyce (Seriously - if you love reading for no other reason than you love a great story - please pick this up)

2. The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith (As great as everybody has been saying it is. Damn you Rowling)

3. The Ocean At The End Of The Lane - Neil Gaiman (This doesn't need any introduction, surely)

4. Stoner - John Williams (Beautiful - a book that's not about anything and everything at the same time)

5. Bellman & Black - Diane Setterfield (A strange and wondrous peek through the curtain)

6. Joyland - Stephen King (King doing what King does best - telling stories)

7. God Clobbers Us All - Poe Ballantine (Everybody will love Ballantine when he's dead - it's that kind of thing)

8. The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien (Now there's a man living on the edge)

9. Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls - David Sedaris (Funny. Very, very funny. No other reason needed)

10. The Blood Detective - Dan Waddell (This one sneaked up on me and took me by the hand into a dark alley. More thrillers like this please)

Disappointing in the extreme were: Dan Brown's Inferno (more so than The Lost Symbol - never mind), Jo Nesbo's Police (Harry Hole usually soars but this drags its heels way too much for me), and Rankin's Saints of the Shadow Bible (did anything actually happen in this book?). These three are from big heavy hitting authors who I expected far more from. Maybe that's the problem. I'm not saying don't read them - I'm just saying I wish I had spent my time reading something else.

There's something else I've noticed this year too. I've checked out maybe six or seven books that have been free on iBooks and without exception, they have all sucked. Let that be a lesson to me. Meanwhile, audiobooks are really kicking ass. The production values keep improving, the list of great material available increases and for me, means that I can still 'read' even when I'm doing something else. You can't get a much better deal than that.

A Fistful Of Culture

It's that time of year again. The time of year when I make a valiant attempt to plough through as many books as I can in the face of an ever mounting drift of festive tomfoolery. Actually, does anybody remember that show? It was the sort of thing they ploughed out on TV during a Sunday afternoon between a bout of Tex Avery and Walter Lantz while adults got on with grown up chores like mowing the lawn or cooking, thinking it would keep us amused - and they were right! Oh, how easily us children of the 70s must have been to keep occupied and out of the way as suburbia revolved on its axis.

Whatever happened to cartoons on TV? I can't remember the last time I saw a Tom & Jerry, a Droopy or a Mister Magoo cartoon. Here's a reminder - and it's a classic:

Lost my train of thought there. Next on the reading list after STONER (which is so damn good, I've already bought another three copies to hand out to people that I think will appreciate them - so much for not buying any more books huh) is this:

I like a good rock n roll story, particularly when it comes from the early years of the band I worshipped on my knees for far too much of my life. The three years that this book covers and maybe a couple more tagged onto the back end up until maybe 1977 are all I need from them. I'll have finished it by tomorrow so luckily, sitting right next to it in the shelf is this:

And if you can't tell what it's about from the cover alone, you came to the wrong place. Sheesh - all you have to do it read that big round sticker type thing and that's it in a nutshell. I don't give that much longer than 24 hours either to be honest. I might review this one properly.

And then? I'm not sure where to head next, probably back into something hefty and story-like. Maybe a book from somebody who's doing nothing more than wandering around the avenues and alleyways of the world with their teeny-weeny finger curled - and ain't that Thomas O'Malley theme from The Aristocats one of the greatest movie soundtrack songs of all time? Let me see if I can find it...

I wish I had a theme tune like that. Perhaps I should change my name instead?

•••

I've made it sound like I've been doing nothing but reading and watching crap on YouTube but that's not true! No Sir. Wrapping up the first edits of The Eternity Ring here which I'm really pleased with but I now need to throw it in a drawer for a week to get some editing distance 0n it. Also made some serious impact on The Family Of Noise as well but tomorrow I'm in full author mode to see exactly how much of that I can nail down.

There's nothing but a small (though getting bigger) dog standing between me and success on that front.

Short Post. Emptying Head.

I had a good idea last night - a really good idea that would be really good for me as an author and pretty good fun to see through to the end. This morning it didn't seem like such a good idea and I put it to one side but then, when it got dark again, the idea resurfaced.

Is this normal?

•••

Stoner - the lost/rediscovered classic from John Edward Williams - is every bit as good as the press are saying it is. Book of the year? That's a tough call because there are many books that really did come out this year that deserve that accolade (Bellman & Black certainly being one of them if you're lost for some place to lay your hat) but it's certainly "book of the year from a different year" if anybody would like to make up a category that goes down that road.

But what's going on with that cover? It's not exactly drawing you in with... well, with anything at all. This one below however, is pressing all the right buttons for me. Sadly, Catalan is not a language I am overly familiar with. Maybe I'll try and hunt down a poster of it instead.

In this case, don't judge a book by its cover. I usually think it's a great indication of a damn good start, but in this case, that's not so.

To rewind a couple of minutes or so, here's the book trailer for Bellman & Black. I like a good book trailer... one day, somebody will come out swinging a hammer with one and change the face of book marketing forever.

Well that didn't take long for my head to empty - if you're stuck for Christmas presents, you could probably do worse than either or both of those.

Seven Kinds Of Serious

Nothing else needs adding here.

Shoot To Kill (II)

I like getting questions. Nobody ever sends me questions. Probably because although I like getting questions doesn't always mean I like answering them - usually because people ask the wrong questions. Yesterday though, my buddy Scott asked me a peach. It looked like this: I've just finished re-reading (sober this time) Shoot To Kill - you interview with Fin Costello in BDWN. I enjoyed that chapter pissed first time around and wanted to return to it to take it in properly.

I may not have worked at the very top with the biggest bands, but there are so many similarities. I spent years shooting bands, (Californian punk mostly, with the Fat Wreck Chords label), travelling with them, hotel rooms, dressing rooms, I can relate to the whole thing. I earned their trust over time and they became good friends - there was nowhere I couldn't go.

I recently got invited to meet up with Bowling For Soup again on their farewell tour too. I didn't bother taking my camera. I'd spent seven years travelling and documenting everything they did in the UK already, so this time it was just to talk about all that we'd done and which photos they'd like for the book. I wandered around to the back of the venue, went inside and walked up to the dressing rooms, without a pass, unchallenged. I've always wondered why no one else did this. After the show I was stood chatting to the tour manager when one of the evening photographers asked me what an 'old guy' like me was doing at a BFS show! 

Do you think any of us photographers can ever make our mark like Fin? Everything seems so throw away now and everybody's at it.

Just wanted to say I found it a really interesting chapter. Great work Sir.

Oh yeah... that's a peach of a question alright. For the uninitiated, this is Fin Costello. If you're a music fan, there will be plenty you recognise - and this is Black Dye White Noise. This may be the longest blog post I've written in years. Hopefully, I can make it useful

That interview with Fin is from back in 2003 but I think all of the things he talks about are still relevant - not only that, but they are relevant to more than just the music business now time has moved on. You can also apply the same principles to writing that's for sure. The background of the story is that I interviewed Fin for a magazine I had just launched (Burn) and he gave more than I could ever have asked for. Hours of material. He was a true gent and unintentionally, taught me everything I know about how photographers should be treated - looking back, it might have only been how Fin wanted to be treated (which was with respect) but it all made perfect sense to me and still does. So:

Will any photographers ever make a mark like him?

Sadly, unless things change across the board, it's unlikely in the current climate. First of all, photographers (pro, amateur and everything in between) must stop giving their work away for free - even though they don't mean to. As you know all too well, as soon as a single image hits the web, it's dead meat. It can be around the world so fast that you have no hope of reclaiming it ever again. So the first rule must surely be, keep your work to yourself. Unless you want it to be a genuine free for all, you wouldn't do it with a song, a book or a movie. Assuming photographers think of their work as being in the same arena - why is it more prevalent with images than these other things? Do you all feel guilty that the web will be empty if visual treats without your contributions?

But that's not actually a real world proposition if you're trying to make a name for yourself. You want people to see your work and the web is great for that, but unless you have a client at the other end (an editor, a paid for commission etc) what the hell are you supposed to do with them? It probably seems like you won't get anywhere if you keep them to yourself. So, as far as I can see, a photographer needs to decide which side of the fence they sit on. Do you pull everything in and keep your cards close to your chest until such a time as you get a break or do you throw it to the four corners of the world and see what happens? The correct answer is that you keep them to yourself. Sounds harsh but hey, that's business for you. All the time you give your work away 'for free' and let it loose in the world without your knowledge, you're in no better a position really than a 12 year old with a mobile phone and a wi-fi connection.

Sounds harsh, but that's what I think should happen. That's what would separate the men from the boys but that is an ideal world scenario because it won't work unless other things come into line as well - media editors offering decent money for the work would be a good start. Being a mag editor, I know that money isn't as freely available as it used to be back in Fin's day, so those people are also in a hole. Everybody is in a hole and the root of the problem is that we've all got used to getting stuff for free. It's a good plan as a promotional tool but when promotion turns into "why is there no petrol in the car?" and "why is there nothing to eat today?" maybe you should have thought it through a little better.

There was a time when I would spend good money on a poster of a band - that's how I discovered Fin in the first place. Sometimes you can get lucky and find an editor who appreciates what you do but I think we (I do class myself as one of them) are few and far between. Switch places and you wouldn't find an editor of a mag spending four hours making your work look great for the love of it. You can pretty much guarantee that. That's a bit simplistic but I think it gets the point across. I'm sure most people think you just turn up with a camera hanging off your shoulder, rattle 1000 shots off digitally, send them in and walk away with more cash than you know what to do with.

Do they teach you this at university if these are your plans? They should do.

The other thing that's important here is that nobody seems to have a freaking clue about what's good anymore. Either that or nobody cares because information floods at you now instead of being carefully chosen by you. In music, the CD killed off most artistic cover work and mp3 put the final nail in. Now that we're streaming instead of downloading (or at least I am) - what happens next?

They are not all like this by any means - the shot of Rebecca Ferguson's album cover that I posted yesterday, is a stunning shot. Nice work whoever shot that... and RIGHT THERE is your problem - and even now that I've had a cursory look for who shot it, that info is not easy to come by.

Back in Fin's day, you had the album sleeve. We would sit around for years with those damn sleeves and read them over and over while we listened. You knew who produced stuff, who wrote songs, who shot the cover - and I think (I hope) within the industry, that was out of respect for everybody being a cog in the big machine. You play nice. You get remembered. You turn up, you get let in. You could call up David Lee Roth and he would remember you. You knew the manager and the tour bus driver and you treated them all the same because the clock doesn't work if one of the cogs gets fucked up. Basically, you could get things done. The more you got things done, the more the people with the money would just trust you to work out what the client (the band) wanted and know (for the most part) that what they would get back would work. (If you're interested, that's one of the reasons why I moved the photo credits on the cover of Skin Deep to the cover instead of burying it on the contents page. It's just the way I think things should be done. I don't know if other mags do this or not. I only read Vanity Fair these days but as far as I can see they are still very respectful of photography and still treat it well - but they are quite old school).

As for everything being throwaway. I agree. I hate it. I hate it so much, I've given the world what it asked for and thrown/given all my things away in some desperate stab at regaining control. I own no compact discs anymore, stream all my music via rdio but I do have a record deck for the things I really care about - plus it gives me something to do when travelling. Do you know how hard it is to find old vinyl that's not been to hell and back. I have no DVD's and I'm working on my books to the point that I only want books with effort put into their presentation on the shelf - the rest might as well be an ebook or an audiobook because - if you're not going to package it like you mean it (respect it?) - why the hell should I show everybody in my life your half assed effort?

It's probably a fruitless stand but it's a stand I like to make. It's going to be a long time before people want quality stuff in their lives anymore. It's the Facebook mentality of "live fast, die young and tell everybody about it" because "I want to be important too". Don't get me started on it but I can never resist an opportunity to say again that Facebook is the slug of the internet garden. It's ugly, pointless, will eat everything in sight regardless of what it is and you can't kill it. I tried putting salt on it one day just to make sure but just made a mess on the table.

Finally... the comment you make about being an "old guy" at a show. I suspect we all used to be like that. Then I became an "old guy" - not that old admittedly, same age as you in fact. Time moves on and you get a bit more respectful about it because if you don't, you're just going to end up being that "young guy" who was hot for ten minutes - or at least until the even younger guy came up behind you and kicked your ass into oblivion. Which is more or less the same as the story that Fin tells about being treated like shit when he went to shoot Train - when the guys in charge found out what he had done in his career, the rules changed. And I dare say that if good money hadn't been involved, Fin would have told them all to go fuck themselves.

So - on a positive note, if anybody reading wants to be remembered like Fin, Mick Rock, Bob Gruen, Ross Halfin, Scarlet Page and there are many, many others - you better get your shit together, (not you personally, I'm just speaking generally here). If anybody else is reading - and I don't profess to know everything, this is just how it appears to me - be an decent human being of a cog whilst also getting pretty good at not taking shit from fools. Talk to the waitress like a real person. Talk to the guy who holds the door open at the hotel, he has dreams too. The guy who is serving you coffee hasn't made a career choice there. Don't be a dick because frankly, you're just not that important - play nice and you can make good art (yep - stole that from Gaiman and I don't care) and if you make really good art and aren't a dick, people will ask for you and remember you.

That - I think is how it should and could work but there's one hell of a long way to go. I guess some might say that it's OK for me or that I'm older and don't need to fight the same, but I paid my dues. When I started out, I turned up at 2pm hundreds of miles away from home and waited for a band if I wanted an interview. I've slept on stations, under trees, in photo booths - once even under a car because it was raining (which was stupid) all because I wanted to work for Rolling Stone. That didn't happen - in fact I never worked for any of the music magazines. So I stuck two fingers up at them and decided to do it myself. I'm not a name anybody would throw into the arena when it comes to music writing but that road led me somewhere else that I love just as much.

Finally... I think there are enough tools out there for photographers (or whatever else) to make their own way. Put a book together of your total best. Make it kill. Invest in the best "one copy only" print on demand service you can get. Shop it around. Make yourself hot property - don't throw it away on Facebook for the sake of somebody giving you a big thumbs up. Make ten copies and send it to your favourite bands management companies of nobody will give you the time of day.

Fortune favours the brave and all that. What we need right now is for someone to break the shitty mould that's been left behind by accountants.

Phew. Did I actually answer anything at all here?

As an afterthought/footnote - and I think Fin says this at the close of that interview - if you're busy, you won't know you're 'making it' at all. One day, after many years, you will stop for a moment for some odd reason - maybe you've run out of milk -  look back and say 'holy shit - look at all this work I've done'. The train of thought today is that you have to 'make it' but it's not something that's up to you decide even if you're fantastic at what you do. All you can do is The Work and the public will decide the rest...

When you're shooting Aeromsith in 1974, you don't know they are going to be huge. You do your best work - that's all you can do. The rest is nothing more than the world turning in a certain direction - but if you never turned up to take the shot, you're not even in the game.

Rebecca Ferguson: Freedom Reigns

This year might possibly have been the flattest year in a long, long time for album releases worth talking about. It's a wasteland out there but I have persisted through the usual suspects, continued to listen to albums released sometime between 1973 to 1978 to keep my faith intact and bided my time in the hope that something might come along and make me feel alive again.

Finally, this week, something did come along and raised my spirits beyond street level. It might have prompted a little scorn from some friends and there will be those who simply don't believe me, but Rebecca Ferguson's Freedom is an insane chopping board of sheer class. Maybe it's just the mood I'm in at the moment but I tell you from the heart as somebody who knows good music when he hears it, this is the finest album to come out of this year by a long shot. Better still, it's not only got killer production values and all that other behind the scenes magic that makes an album great but the quality of the actual songs on here outshines the competition by miles and miles. And then some.

Songs. Remember those? They were the things that used to be important to us before merchandising, posturing and shaking your booty at a video camera took over. They were the things that formed the soundtrack to a whole life before MTV redesigned the industry in exchange for a suitcase full of cash.

Loving this album as much as I do is a strange feeling. A few weeks back, the new Monster Magnet album came out. I love that band. The album was pretty good but I didn't come here for pretty good. I came to be floored in exchange for offering you my time and attention. That's the deal we make when it comes to music.

Others have said it before me, but none have meant it as much as I do right now: that voice drips honey at every twist of the knife.

Her voice does the same thing to me that Stevie Nicks' used to back in the days before it went kinda fuzzy - and it's funny how people respond to marketing. If you put Freedom next to Bella Donna, you'll find a lot of similarities - but the world will have you believe that one is a classic from an international rock star worthy of the status and the other is the result of a talent competition. While that might be true on the surface and on paper, that's not what's actually happening. People need to listen with their ears and not eyes that scan column inches in search of an opinion they can use as their own, normally generated by somebody that got mailed a CD for free and has nothing to lose.

More than this, people should listen with their hearts. It's simply so beautiful in every way imaginable, I don't have any more words than I've already written about it available for description.

How Long Is Forever?

I finally decided on a better title for the previously titled Scarecrow short story - it shall hereafter be known as Eternity Ring, which is something of a shift in suggesting what it might be about but it suits it a lot better. All will become clear. Currently running edits on it and doing layout stuff. The cover might look something like this - file under pending - I'll see how I feel after I've lived with it for a few days:

Estimated time of arrival? Mid December.

•••

Now and then, you can stumble across something so far out there and so jaw-droppingly up there on the scale of ‘thumbs up’ that you want to show/tell everybody you meet. Apologies for the incredibly bad English there but that’s how it came out.

The first port of call is this video clip that Rhiannon pimped at me after school today. She showed it to me because it was freaky but it’s so much more than that. See for yourself.

If you ever thought the world was going to hell in a sea of averageness, that should restore some of your faith. Simply wonderful.

Similarly eye stretching are these pics of frozen light-houses.

Frozen lighthouses? Not something you hear about everyday but here they are - larger than life. If I had shot these, I suspect I would spend the rest of my life wondering exactly what the hell I was going to do next that meant anything.

Nature.

No matter how far out on the edge of life you think you can get, Nature laughs in your face every second of every day. You can find more of this lighthouse magic right here.

All of which leads me to this:

Last week, I bought a book that changed the way I think about many things. It took me so far down to the bottom that I pushed everything that was in front of me to the far side of the table and considered never looking at any of it ever again because there was - quite frankly - no point in even trying.

A few days passed and that very same book took me from the place it had squashed me under a rock and raised me to the far side of the universe from where I could look down on everything and think that maybe it was way too early to be throwing in the towel. Which is a good thing because I rather think that Guillermo Del Toro would be pretty sad if he thought his book had that kind of effect on somebody.

This is the book.

It’s a monster in every way. It’s the Led Zeppelin of books. You look in at what’s going on behind the curtain and you absolutely have to say to yourself “I will never be this good” - and for a while there, I believed it in a bad way. Then I came down from the bad trip and figured, “what the hell, this is something to rise to”. That sounds wrong… what I'm trying to say is it's like you’ve been wandering around the bottom of a mountain for far too long and somebody yells down at you from the top “You wouldn’t believe what I can see from up here” - and the guy is right. You can’t believe what he can see because first you have to climb the mountain and by the time you get to the top, everything will have changed anyway.

Or something like that. It’s good to be put in your place every now and again. I could live without it happening too often though.

On the plus side, all of this is much better than looking at a bunch of stuff that’s nothing more than average and thinking it was a high enough bench-mark to set yourself.

Harsh but fair.

•••

I started compiling my 101 x 1001 list a couple of days ago. I’ve decided to publish ‘most’ of it here aside from a few personal items on it (and that’s things that I want to do with the kids mostly - I haven’t told them about it yet so I guess I might meet some resistance on that front). I was telling somebody about it and he suggested I document it all. Video what was worth videoing, record what’s worth recording, photograph what was… you get the picture.

There’s a part of me that could get excited about the prospect of doing that and another part of me that’s a bit reluctant to start heading down a path that I can’t keep rolling once it’s in motion. On one hand, I like the idea of running something up that might be similar in spirit to The Roth Show - which if you’re not keeping up with regularly, what the hell’s wrong with you? On the other hand, I’ve never been super comfortable in front of a camera - maybe it’s time I started fluffing those pillows to make it comfortable and see what happens. It’s not 1973 anymore. I don’t think being mysterious in a ‘Led Zepp/media blackout’ kind of way is going to help much when you’re trying to make a name for yourself without any outside assistance. Maybe the Diamond Dave approach is the way to go.

Who am I kidding? Without the backing of a big publishing house, of course it’s the way to go.

Big gulp.

•••

To wrap this up today, I thought I might cut all my hair off and buy a Hugo Boss suit - maybe reinvent myself for the new age. Why that would make a difference I have not a clue, but it might be fun for a little while… I think I will wait just a few more months until Hector gets tired of hanging from my trousers though.

Here Be Monsters

I always figured myself to be quite clued up on the monsters of the world but looking at this excellent Lake Monsters of America map - handily provided by Atlas Obscura - I find that I am indeed, wrong. Take a look:

 I've never heard of the Horse-Headed Alligator before now. That's a monster I'd really like to see - not that I've seen many of the others, but that one I think would be really something. Not sure about the Monster Fish however - that sounds pretty normal to me. Anyway - nice work on the map everybody. If anybody reading can be bothered rustling something up for the UK - or even better, Europe - bring it on.

And on the subject of infographics (is this an infographic or just a map? I can't tell the difference anymore), I've kept this little nugget of gold in a folder for weeks now. I came across it when I was putting the Sci-Fi Tattoos together and then forgot all about it, but being as we're in the house so to speak, this is a good time to deliver it to you. If you've never seen the movies, move along the bus - there will be nothing to see here:

 Being as I mentioned it, between now and Christmas, Jazz have bundled together Sci-Fi Tattoos, Comic Book Tattoos and Horror Tattoos together for £20 - £19.99 if you want to be picky about it - which is a pretty good deal. Next day delivery too. You can find it here.

Time And Time Again

Holy Cow. It's my birthday in something like 15 days. I must make my annual pilgrimage to the list previously known as 101 things to do in 1001 days (which is now known as 101 things to do in 3001 days due to time not being what it was back when I originally made the list). It obviously needs an update though I guess if I had actually done the 101 things in the 1001 days allotted to it, I wouldn't have lost interest in some of them. Maybe I will press the reset button on the whole damn thing, make the list public and work my way through it. A public list? That sounds dangerous. "45. Spend a week in Copenhagen writing" doesn't sound very interesting to anybody else, but then again, it is to me... so you're going to have to put up with it - at the very least, reading about it when it happens.

Look, I've changed my mind already. This isn't going to be a public list at all. It's going to be a very private list. I think I'll publish the list when I've done them all and then (it's easy to say this three years before you have to) simply start a new list.

The original website that inspired me to start this has gone through some changes since I first found it but it's still here at Day Zero Project. Not quite so organic as it once was but what is any more on the web?

•••

In a totally not related to anything kind of way, I stumbled upon this hotel earlier on today and think I might like to stay there for no other reason than because it exists - maybe do a weeks worth of writing there as well. Perhaps I should add it to the list. Perhaps I should just add lots of places I'd like to go for no reason and say that I'll write when I get there. This one looks like there might not be not much else to do except write actually.

 •••

Hector is tapping into any reading time I actually had but I'm making good headway with Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield - it's a damn fine book and will make an end of the year top ten list if I can be bothered to do one. There's a section of it where Bellman is busy cramming as much into his day as he can with all the efficiency of a machine. The paragraph that follows goes like this:

"But what he really felt about the matter was that he had discovered - or been given - the key to chronometry. He could open up the case of time when he chose, apply weight to the pendulum and slow its movement. He could take the hours apart, find the extra minutes that were going to waste in them, make them his own."

Which makes it sound a little like a time travel novel, but it's not - it's about a kid that accidentally kills a rook when he was a kid, a mill and an awful lot of dead people. Check it out here.

I like this idea of chronometry. Does such a thing exist or did she make it up - it does indeed exist but reading about it gives me a headache. Still, I suspect it's worth having a closer look at it. No matter how busy you are, there are always dead minutes in any given hour - if you can find a way to collect them all together and make a new hour... well, that's magic in its purest form.

451 Books

No great mystery, no great reveal. I needed an imprint for my own work and this works for me. Right now I have no plans at all to do anything with anybody else, but who knows... maybe one day.