Ham On Rye

Making headway with some good stuff here at the moment. Rather a lot of work continues on Turn The Lamp Down Low which is looking good right now - I'm not sure whether to start some pre-release promo five months early though. I've been thinking about making the hardback available for those who pre-order and then kill the whole hardback run after that to make it worth something to supporters - with some tickets thrown in to some of the signing sessions I have planned for it (though these won't be at bookshops) it could turn out to be quite a nice package. Let's file this under pending while I figure out what exactly such a thing would entail to get off the ground outside of kickstarter or any of those other crowd-funding sites. Can it be done totally independently? Who knows for sure, but I think so... Working at doing all of this yourself is interesting that's for sure. I was looking at the work the guys over at unbound are doing where (in a kick-startery kind of way) you put details of your project up, people who like the idea of it throw in some pledges and then, when you reach critical mass the button is presses and everybody who pledged gets a copy and maybe some other stuff. But let me throw in a question here - is it really that simple for the 'non-name' person? There's no two ways about it, Amanda Palmer changed the rules for musicians taking control of their own careers but as she herself states in no uncertain terms, she worked very long and very hard to put herself in a position whereby it worked out how it has for her. That's kind of how I see myself here - only er, several rungs down the ladder. The concept of being an author a la John Locke and making a stack of cash from the kindle model is fine, but it's not changing anything for the better in the big scheme of things. It's just proving it can be done and if that's what you want, that's fine. It's not really leaving anything behind though is it? Apart from thousands of other people also trying to repeat the formula which will obviously instigate the 'law of diminishing returns' at some point...

Anyway, the next work going live online will be a short story called The Undoing of Charles Walker. That should be published on Saturday at some point - which this morning got me wondering how many stories is a good number to have in a published collection? As many as you've written I guess, but somewhere around the 24 mark sounds like a good collection to me. I'll more than likely make a start on designing some covers for that over the coming months. Knowing myself as I do, I'll get through at least half a dozen 'finished' versions before I'm happy with the result... and then, there's what to call it. I love this part of the process. I love being creative with my own material.

Finally, I've revamped the tumblr blog over the last few days. Take a look. It's pretty neat if you love book design. Not so neat if you don't but it still looks great regardless.

 

The World All At Once (1)

I figured that I had better get my act together and start writing some long pieces for my blog here and spent some time last night racking the grey matter as to how to do it properly. The World All At Once will, more or less, crush my week of pop-culture consumption into a slick view on the week that just went by. I'll aim for Saturday or Sunday for posting it, but let's see how it settles in... Yesterday, I got the word that Black Dye, White Noise and The Language of Thieves and Vagabonds had both been release on itunes/ibooks and at Barnes & Noble for the nook. Thus began an afternoon of downloading and checking - and as a bi-product of this cocking about, came across a couple of really good books for ibooks (and probably the kindle too but I couldn't be bothered looking). They're both by the same person, both self-published and both really freaking good. Honest. Take it from somebody who throws books out of the car window if they suck before the end of the second chapter.

The author in question is Saffina Desforges - the books are called Snow White and Sugar & Spice - and if I'm not very much mistaken, she lives somewhere not so far away from me either. I thought I might get in touch, but then I read her blog and was put off by the fact that she seems angry and self-righteous about everything. All the time. Been there, done that and it will come and bite you on the ass no matter how good your book is. Then again, like one of my old bosses said to me: 'you're not here to be liked - you're here to get the job done.' Maybe I'll just read her books and leave it at that - though it's worth pointing you also to a page on her site where she details nefarious tactics by agents who really should know better.

Nice cover for Snow White - I really like both that and the forthcoming Rapunzel.

There's some other interesting books on there too that look like they might be worth the time of day - one thing at a time though. I already have a stack of books that I'm not getting through very quickly at all. That means Skin Deep is being shipped to print in the middle of the week so there's not going to be much going on except burying my head in that - on which subject, I interviewed Jovanka Vuckovic last night. What a fantastic lady - one I am now pleased to call a friend. We have much in common. More on that some other time. I might publish the full interview here later in the month as we spoke of many, many things - not all of it relevant to the mag.

Not strictly something from this week, but rather from last month. I picked up a copy of Vanity Fair magazine a few weeks back. I always thought it was a 'mag for women' but as it turns out - if you can see past the top-end advertising and the lure of celebrity for its own sake - it's a great read. The writing is top-notch and the variety of material in there is quite inspiring. Their ipad app is beautiful as well - better than the print copy I think. It didn't take long to win me over on it either, so we'll drop that name in the 'win' column for the foreseeable future. Nice work.

The new Marilyn Manson album is kind of strange. I wanted to love it like I loved Antichrist Superstar and Mechanical Animals. Love it for all of its wanton destruction and no small amount of effort put into the minutiae of the project. What I got however was an album of songs that sound like Marilyn Manson might sound when everything had got a little grey around the edges. An album he might make when he knows he's on the rocks. Maybe one in which the headlines are slipping away but he needs to put a product out all the same so that it doesn't appear to be too long between albums when you look in the history books.

He can do better than this. You know what he should have done? He should have sat on a beach for a couple of weeks (or perhaps a dank cave - either will do) and fleshed himself out a plan like Amanda Palmer did. A plan that would redefine Manson to the world forever. If anybody could have pulled this off, he could. I don't know anymore. Maybe it's just too much work once you don't have to worry if there will be breakfast on the table tomorrow. There's a lot to be said for staying hungry.

Thus, disappointed with the thing that should have been a supernova this week, I reverted to type and dug into itunes to find something of value, only the truth is that I couldn't be bothered looking that hard, so I let it ramble on shuffle like I do most days - then I remembered that earlier in the week, I'd found a nugget of vinyl on ebay that I'd bought but not paid for - which would explain why it hadn't arrived yet. I must have been through at least half a dozen copies of In The Dynamite Jet Saloon (Dogs D'Amour) over the years - this should be the last time I ever buy it again. It's getting hard to find great vinyl on ebay - everybody thinks their shit is worth a lot more than it is - or at least to somebody who wants to listen to it rather than collect the damn stuff. There's a record fair on next Saturday so we'll see what gives out there. The last one I went to, I picked up about seven albums for under £20, which is really how it should be...