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.

Black Dye White Noise: The Audio Adventure

I had forgotten all about this. Some time after Black Dye White Noise hit the 'shelves', I went into the studio with my producer buddy JJ and we recorded this hour long show featuring music from some of the bands in the book - and then we talked about it too. It was a little opportunistic as we grabbed the studio time off the cuff and I think we were a little unprepared for it. Well I was - it was more of an "I wonder if we can make this work" kind of thing.

Anyway, we both got busy and I forgot all about it even though the intention has always been there to go back in and do it again - particularly now that he's moved himself into a killer new studio.

Yesterday, JJ also remembered about the session and loaded it up for me. This version has all of the interview section stripped out - not because it was bad but because of how long it was. What it has done though is kicked my ass to plan it properly and do it again...

In the spirit of a mix tape, I'm not going to catalogue what we played, you'll just have to listen to all of it from start to finish - and that's the way it should be because listening to Warrior Soul at their peak for even just a few seconds makes me want to form a band again.

Black Dye White Noise update

New stocks arrived yesterday of Black Dye White Noise looking all shiny and new which is always exciting. This is the batch with the updated softback covers to line them up with the Raised on Radio design ('management' said this was a smart thing to do and 'management' was right), so if you happen to have one of the previous versions, there ain't many of them knocking about anymore, but I'm not changing the covers on the hardback version of it. That's a step too far - when they're gone, they're gone but right now, there's still stocks available.

On which note, I got an email query yesterday asking whether the books were available to buy as hard copies. That query came from within this very site - so, I guess I had better review how that info is displayed here. Maybe it's time to boot up the bookstore page I've been toying with. It's been at the back of my mind for a while but its a good 'n valid point, so thanks Will... file under pending.

There is more blog to come but there are demons in the machinery of the upload images process. Back later - meanwhile, you can do this:

On the decks today:

Wonderful, Glorious - Eels

The Afterman: Descension - Coheed & Cambria

Black Dye, White Noise vs 50 Shades

There are way too many e-readers on the market right now, but I'm trying to keep up. The bastard stepchild is the kobo. I don't know anybody that owns one but I've seen people buying them so yesterday I made Black Dye White Noise available for it. Loading the book as an author is simple enough, pretty slick in fact. The reader 'experience' is varied. That's about the best thing I can say about it. During testing, I downloaded the desktop app for Mac which is OK I guess, but the app for the iphone is awful. Let me put it like this: I can throw a website together in a day but I can't even get the sample of the book to load on my phone. That's how complicated it is. I assume I'm missing something here but if I am, then everybody else must be too and that's not good. I'll roll with it, because it's the same source file that I used for ibooks and the kindle.

Give it time and only the strong will survive in this market and that will be a good thing.

Anyway, during my testing on the kobo, I must have had the 50 Shades trilogy pimped at me at least a dozen times. Thanks for that. Turns out e-readers have simply taken the same marketing strategy as bricks and mortar stores to sell their wares. All that technology and the entire contents of the internet at your feet and you choose to try and sell me the very thing I can buy in more places than I can get milk? Is that really smart, really dumb or just plain lazy?

Not my worry. Black Dye White Noise is available if you have a kobo and I'm moving on...

Smile for the camera...

Aside from the fact that my buddy Scott Cole took the time to be bothered to both mention and pimp Black Dye White Noise during an interview he did with Comic Book Resources and hit the tweetdeck with it too, the interview itself is more than worth a read for all kinds of reasons - particularly if you're a photographer who's treading the same old tired and worn boards and needs a shot in the arm (and who doesn't from time to time). My eldest daughter thinks she might want to be a surf  photographer when she leaves school (just a year away now - may the Gods have eternal mercy on my soul). As is totally correct when you're 15, in her head I'm sure she thinks this will involve hanging out at the beach and er, taking pictures of people surfing. For doing this, she will be paid handsomely by a surf magazine - preferably Carve - which is a great freaking mag if you've never read or want to see how a photo-based mag ought to be put together - and live in an apartment that looks like it once belonged to Rachel and Monica.

I'm totally behind her on this. Surfing is a great lifestyle to be a part of professionally and infinitely better than some dreams that she could have gotten into her head. Working with Scott as I do and also my other photo buddy, Chiaki (currently on tour with Daniel Craig and the 007 movie shooting set pieces for Warners in Japan), I know the harsh reality of being out in the field and how much you work you have to do to get  the tiniest percentage accepted into the media and an even tinier percentage that you'll actually get paid for.

If I tell her any of this, it will probably either a) kill it for her or b) make her think I don't know what I'm talking about. What would a great Dad do in this situation? Wait to be asked for help? Sneak help in whenever opportunity arises? Think 'fuck it, nobody ever helped me'? Pull all the strings I can lay my hands on? Turn the TV on and crack open a beer?

The best I can probably do is introduce her to these people at some point. They don't even need to say anything - I think just being able to see them working in a safe environment will be enough and certainly of more practical use than signing up to a class at school where they say it will last an hour and by the time teacher has cocked about doing whatever it is they do to waste time, being left with only 20 minutes. I worked with a BBC cameraman once, who while studying part-time to be said cameraman, told me that if he'd known how little work they do every day, he would have signed up for a full-time course and still been able to hold down a job.

I guess everything will work itself out. It always does.

The other one wants to be a vet, but she's only eleven. My hands are tied on that one...

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...

Pictures for Pleasure.

This morning, the postman arrived with no bills - I repeat - no bills, and a copy of Charlie Sexton's Pictures for Pleasure. I had actually ordered it - he didn't just drop it off out of the goodness of his heart, but wouldn't the world be a totally brilliant place if that sort of thing happened. I love this album. Always have and I hope I always will (no reason why I shouldn't). Check out the video clip at the bottom of the post if you're curious. I often wondered why he didn't explode in the sky off the back of this (and I can't quite accept the fact that it goes all the way back to 1985) but he seems to have followed a path that worked for him at heart. That's always more important than doing what the record company tell you to do - which I think was much the case here.

This buying vinyl lark has had much scorn poured on it by my friends (I use the plural loosely), but seriously, if you have even the slightest motivation to go down that road, the experience is so totally different from clicking a few buttons in itunes, particularly if you're old enough to remember what it was like originally. For the rest of you, maybe not so much. My kids think I have lost the plot totally, but they will learn...

Here's this weeks reading list - and next week as well probably. A little bit different from normal. Not sure I'll get through it all but the heart is willing. Whenever I talk about books with people, I normally get met with lame ass responses like "I don't have time to read anymore". Which rather begs the question, "What do you do?" I have two kids, a full on day-job, an awful TV addiction and a ton of other stuff that needs constant attention. I rather think that right here, right now, in 2012, people sleep far too much for their own good.

Rubbish in, rubbish out. Nothing in, nothing out. There's an equation for the rest of your life.

I sort of got invited to the Train show in London tomorrow night via an interview I was going to do with their support act Matt Nathanson (previously mentioned here) who is supporting. Turns out Matt got sick today - which is a big pain in the ass but if he hadn't caught it today, I would have given it to him tomorrow - I feel freaking awful. I don't think cancelling the show is on the cards (Matt not me), so don't go around saying that's what you read here. I will however say this out loud in case anybody important is listening. Despite my best attempts to get 'a somebody' to agree to Matt and myself doing a decent interview over a coffee during the day, until about three hours ago, they were still angling for me to do it in the dressing room of the Hammersmith Apollo sometime in the evening. Frankly, that's a shitty idea and a crappy way to treat somebody who actually wants to help promote your artist long term and will get behind him in every way possible. Besides which, I've been in that dressing room before to do important stuff. It's not big and it's not clever in there...

Towards the end of the Fin Costello interview in Black Dye, White Noise, there's a passage where Fin talks about exactly the same thing when he was on assignment to shoot Train back when Drops of Jupiter came out. Maybe it comes with the territory. Is nobody wanting to take a stand in the music business out there and take things back to being done the right way for all concerned? It's no wonder everybody is running scared.

The new Train album - California 37 - is excellent by the way. To wrap up, here's that Charlie Sexton video I was talking about which sums up pretty much everything I'm thinking and feeling today:

Published and Damned.

What a crazy week. This past weekend we hosted the Great British Tattoo Show at the Kensington Olympia where lots of people got tattooed (self included), lots of people got their photo taken with other people and a good time was had by all. There'll be a ton of material kicking about from that over the next few days - we're just collecting all the photo shoots together, but some bright spark forgot we were moving offices this week as well, so that kind of threw a bit of a spanner in the works. File under pending for a little while longer. The good news on that front was that earlier this week I had the opportunity to get on top of some of my own things. I took delivery of a big stack of limited edition hardback and softcover editions of Black Dye, White Noise which look brilliant. I'm pretty damn pleased with that all round - so much so that I even stayed up all of Tuesday night figuring out how to format correctly load up for the kindle, ibooks and Barnes & Noble. The kindle version went live this morning - the other two will apparently take a little longer. How much longer I'm not sure but I've heard it can be a few weeks. Once I know, I'll rustle up a post because it's pretty stupid for one route to take about 10 hours and the other to take hundreds of hours.

That leaves me free to get on with Raised On Radio next and figure out what the rest of the year has in store. I'm also working on two freaking huge monster book projects. If I can pull it off, they will be quite something to have in the arsenal. One of them has a publisher attached already, the other is a personal project that's going to take some real hard work to pull together but it will be more than worth it.

Sometimes I think that sleeping might be a good idea but that never got anybody anywhere in the twenty first century.

Anyway, while I was running up e-reader docs for Black Dye, I remembered that the red-headed step-child that is The Language of Thieves & Vagabonds had never really been pushed, so I did that too. Here's the link for it on the kindle - same thing applies for ibooks and the nook as above. I'll let you know. If anybody out there is clued in the ebook front, perhaps you could drop me a line over whether it's even worth bothering with the kobo thing?

I've said my piece on smashwords already. Using that as a shop front for your material is a joke. It might be easy and it might be free, but taking something I've worked my ass off on for months on end and handing it over to a store that's happy looking like a junk shop is not for me.

Oddly, I've just realised that nobody on the face of the planet is talking about the Sony Reader anymore. I think we need to consider that product dead and buried.

BANG BANG

I kind of missed having a tumblr account since I shut it down a few months back. Of all the blogging platforms, they're the ones that got it right. Not only for being easy to use but also for how interactive it is with others of the same mindset. So earlier this week, I resurrected in and played around with exporting blog posts from here and also importing things I posted there to here. It kind of works but right now, the export widget thing is busy reposting every single post I ever made here to tumblr and using up my daily allowance while I sleep. There can't be that much left as it's already gone back at least three years... it's looking pretty good even though it has killed any images that were attached - so if a post doesn't make sense, that's probably why. Meanwhile, this week has mostly consisted of putting the latest edition of the magazine to bed and finishing Tattoo Dynamite 2. This is only a mock version of the cover - the final version will be decided on sometime in the morning but for all intents and purposes, this is what it will look like when it's unleashed next week. I love doing these books but man, it's tough towards the end trying to make sure that you didn't forget anything. I especially dislike proofing my own work. There's nothing worse than looking for mistakes in a piece of work you've seen at least twenty times, but we're nearly there now. If anybody in it happens to be passing by here, thanks! That's all - thanks. Couldn't have done it without you.

And now that one is complete, it's back to normal with a regular run of magazines for a few months which should leave me with enough time to wrap up Raised on Radio before it starts getting hyper busy again. If you've been following the train of thought on here over the years, I'd also like to state for the record that Almost Human is now officially a work in progress as is a special edition of the Black Dye, White Noise project. Wait until you see it... it's an out and out peach.

So today, being as there's still work to do, I shall leave you with this:

UNPLUGGED

Before I begin I guess I had better own up that the Evil Dead poster I've used here, has nothing to do with the content of the post - but, I'm sure we can all agree, it's a great poster and therefore, valid on all fronts. I must admit, I'm totally enjoying romping through the complete series of The Invaders - there's tons of it and even though the kids thought it looked "old fashioned" and therefore presumably dull, it's brilliant.

I've fallen behind with my self imposed deadlines this week. I am due to publish past two of August Moon on the 14th - Saturday if memory serves - but I'm slap in the middle of a proper book deadline and have a show to host at the weekend. I was thinking that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to have these self imposed deadlines, but they are good for me. Maybe a better approach would be not to crucify myself when I miss them but instead, gently move them to a more convenient place - otherwise there's no point in trying to do something for yourself on the grounds of 'enjoyment'.

As the more observant will have noticed, I'm still playing around with the site on a 'live' basis. Not always the best of ideas but it works for me. This week, I have retracted all of my material from smashwords (based solely on the fact that it looked like trying to sell your brand new stuff at a freaking online jumble sale) and shall never return. Instead, I have done what I planned to do from the start - it just took me a bit longer to figure it out - and that was to drop everything on the kindle store at amazon. I can't give it away as I would like, but I have made it as cheap as possible and they have given me five days in the next three months during which I can give it away. I've not decided when those days will be yet and I should probably figure it out so that it works properly for people. File under pending until after the weekend...

Anyway, after the weekend, it will be time to start the PR for Black Dye, White Noise. I've kind of just let it sit there at the moment, which is fine by me, but with a week or so clear ahead of me, it will be time to get off my ass and into some friendly radio stations to maybe talk about it.

FINISHED READING: THE END OF THE WASP SEASON - DENISE MINA

NOW READING: THE TINY WIFE - ANDREW KAUFMAN and Denise Mina's HELLBLAZER graphic novel THE RED RIGHT HAND

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: THE PIERCES and ADDICTED TO RADIO/CLUB FM HAIR via this very sexy ROBERTS RADIO

LATER, I MIGHT: Go fencing. Not sure. My knees are more knackered than I thought. Also thinking I might proffer some thoughts on the new ETERNAL LAW show over at The Void.

ME AGAINST THE WORLD

It's always nice to get a namecheck outside of your circle of regular influence. Over at The Mark - the gargantuan Canadian online news site - Victor Barac took note of my somewhat heartfelt Nickelback album review at The Void. It would have passed me by if half a dozen people hadn't sent me the link, so thanks everybody - that got the day off to a good start. More than it simply being cool, the article itself says an awful lot about the state of music these days - and that is that there are too many people working in influential places that haven't a clue what music really means to people. I haven't looked but I'm guessing that most of the reviews haven't been favourable but that's OK. Music fans are not dumb beasts and - as one myself - you can usually tell within the first few words when a piece is little less than a hatchet job because the writer doesn't like a band. I think I shall scrabble around in the grey matter further and build an article around it in the next few days. Yeah... why not. Work continues on Roll Away The Stone and Monster Magnet 2 for a post-Christmas release. Both are going well and I'm getting a much better handle on where the stories are going. I even had half an idea that the characters could maybe randomly appear in each others books, but right now that's a little complex for me with a head full of creatures and odd plot lines. Right now though, I am going to put the finishing touches to Black Dye, White Noise (the audio promo material should be back soon) and write something for Almost Human that was in my head when I woke up.

THE LIGHT IN THE TUNNEL

I forgot that this time of the year normally unveils some music that I might actually want to listen to - in the forthcoming week there's Nickelback's Here and Now, Chris Cornell's Songbook and The Great Escape Artist from Jane's Addiction. I'm hoping they'll all be worth talking about still in a few more weeks but you never know. I put the finishing touches to The Monster Magnet late last night. I need to step back from it for a day or so and then it will be sent out into the world to see what people make of it. Right now, it's been mailed to a couple of "safe places" for proofing (always important when you're publishing something yourself). Most of me is excited and as with all things I do, a small part of me is ready to defend itself. Anyway, when all that is done, it will need formatting for the kindle which always takes longer than I remember. If only everything were as simple as Apple's ibook format - basically a properly formatted pdf file where things stay where you want them to be.

Maybe in a few years, when nobody is afraid of the competition, the playing field will level out and pdf will once again be what it was supposed to be in the first place - a standard format that is accepted across all platforms. Sometime between now and the end of the month, I'm actually going to sit down for a few hours and try and figure out which bookstores are worth spending the time and effort on. They can't all be essential - especially when the most likely way people will find them on the "shelves" is by word of mouth or passing by here anyway. I'm not sure that the lessons of all indie publishers apply in a flat rate to all indie authors. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

Once that's all polished off properly - which has to be by the weekend - I have a week in which to push Black Dye, White Noise to the endgame. Late next week, I'm due to go into the studio to do an audio special for it. An hour of me playing some music from each of the artists in the book and talking about it sounds like great fun. That little promo will then be loaded here for all to listen to via some sexy third party like soundcloud and I might also give it a poke with a stick and format it as a podcast.

What have we learned from all of this? That everything takes a really long time if you're going to do it properly, but that's OK. I would rather it took as long as it takes than have it reading and looking like amateur hour - there are plenty of examples of them out in the world.