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.
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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...
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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.