I realised this very morning that inside the ipad version of Skin Deep, is a link on the app that leads here. Welcome to here. If you came here from there, I should apologise for a) lack of posts lately (busy) b) lack of tattoo stuff (like I don't push enough out on the front already but I've started to drop stuff into my tumblr so maybe I'll get it repointed there) and c) there is no c. Just a mug of coffee waiting to be devoured. I started watching Californication again this morning - from the beginning. Man, I love that show and after watching all ten seasons of Spooks last week, needed to get back to some kind of non-paranoia background noise. Are any of you reading this writers? It get's fucking lonely out here - the radio is fine but sometimes, you need a little bit more company than that. The radio is directed straight at you - they pretend to talk to you and involve you, but that's not what you need. What you need - in the absence of the postman coming round with a parcel or somebody who's lost knocking on the door - is to know that life is still going on outside. Even if it is pre-recorded and you've seen it before.

Then again, isn't that most people every single day of the week?

I did seven interviews yesterday. Looming in the distance are seven more but some of these coming are with people that I've had a bit of a Pro-Crush* on since I was a kid. (*Pro-Crush: the admiration of somebody who you adored when you were a kid whose world seemed many universes away from your own). Been doing this too long to get all gooey over any of them but still, it's always weird to find yourself playing ball with people you still think are kings among men.

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There's a lot of idle chatter out there at the moment from people proclaiming that blogs are dead - that they're a thing of the past. That maybe true if you were looking for traffic and cash and ended up with neither. The problem mostly stems from the fact that everybody had a machine of some kind. Laptop, iPad, iPhone (though holy fuck, who the hell let those Samsung things out into the world that you can barely get your hands around), they all come with a keyboard of some description. Stick a board with letters on it in front of anybody and they think they're a writer. There's your problem. Same as every phone comes with a camera and as if by magic, you can sign up to a free account with corpwhore.com and shit, would you look at that, you're a photographer.

No. You're not. You're neither of those things no matter how much you want to be.

Sounds harsh but roll with me on this. I realised a long time ago but have only just gotten around to formulating the thoughts, that, brace yourself - the internet is full of shit. It's empty. There's nothing here to see.

Yesterday, I saw something I didn't agree with in the biggest way. I know Waterstone's have started to sell kindles (yeah, go figure - it's like selling dope at the school gates) but there was a guy in the coffee shop yesterday reading a book on one. Let's write that again. A guy was reading a book on a kindle in a bookstore. A guy was reading on the device that will eventually shut your store down and put you all out of jobs. A guy was reading on a machine that he won't be able to do in that same place for much longer because it won't be there...

There should be laws but there aren't.

I like hitting a book up on iBooks as much as the next guy but what that guy did? That's like masturbating in church. Eating a packet of crisps between courses in a restaurant. Leaving your suitcase on the seat next to you while the pregnant lady has to stand.

Isn't it?

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Which brings me nicely to a close. If you want to do something great with a pen (i.e.: not writing) - try your hand at this, it might suit you. This is Mark Powell and he rocks.... you can check it out for real in the next issue of the mag.

A word about writing - and this might be pretty important whatever it is you're planning to do - now I've decided to go it alone (see post from day before yesterday), a lot of pressure has disappeared. The pressure was self inflicted for sure but I've always worked that way. I've stopped thinking about 'might be' and 'what if' and a dozen other things and have probably written more in the last few days than I have in a long time. The icing and the cherry on the cake for me was that I just read Seth Godin's new book The Icarus Deception which (as I'm sure is the point of the book) snapped everything into a very fine focus. Allow me to drill into it if you will. The general gist of the book is everything as you know it is broken. Some of us know this, some of us don't, but regardless of which tribe you fall into doesn't change the truth of the matter. It's 2013 and everything is different, everything is changing and if you think you've got a handle on it, then you've missed the point because it will all have changed again by tomorrow anyway.

Keeping focussed on the 'being an author' train of thought, I think it's important to chew that over. The only way you can be an author is by finishing your book. Then writing another and another until you don't want to do it anymore or die. It has nothing to with a publisher giving you permission to be one. Or an agent. Or whether the public buys your book or anything else. The money I'm sure is very nice, but if that's truly your prime motivation, you'd be better off becoming an investment banker or a drug dealer.

The story is all there is - and I suspect in my own spiritual way - that the universe will find you an audience when you've done good work - providing you don't just leave it sitting on a hard drive or in a notebook under your pillow.

Anyway, back to Seth Godin (and you should read it, not just listen to my lousy paraphrasing of it): it's time for new 'stuff' to happen. It is a new world out there. A new world in which anything is possible. I realise now (and how could I have been so stupid) that while I was 'waiting' (that might be the wrong word) for somebody to step up to the plate and say "I don't give a fuck what the publishing industry thinks - here's my book", what I should have been doing was to be that person.

Visibly. Not just in my head.

In the back of my mind, in an alternative world, I have sat here many times and said Stephen King should do this... or Gaiman should do this. 'This' being to go it alone - not for the money but to prove it can be done, but why should they? They paid their dues once. Why pay them again? And somewhere inside I think I wanted them to do this because I perceived them as 'safe'. If it didn't work out, they would be OK. That was wrong of me. It may be safe but really, what would it actually prove? Maybe I was looking for some kind of role model. A Dirty Harry style lone gunman of the publishing world... but I have no idea why I thought I needed that. Insert smilie face icon of choice at this juncture if you wish. This searching for answers thing is hard work. I should learn to quieten my mind and stop asking so many damn questions. I'm a big boy now.

The real world answer is that I need to do it for myself and maybe I can help some others out along the way. If it all falls apart and the world thinks my books suck/are incredible, that's fine too.

My job is simply to keep going.

Yep. That was me thinking out loud in public. Thanks for listening...

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That's enough of that. Let's get back to inane-ness. Californication starts again next week. Here's a cool interview with David Duchovny for Rolling Stone.

And to raise the mood before you go, I heard this on the radio earlier on. Great song. Great band. Stupid hat.