Frosting On The Railroad

The diary is getting full - no complaints here though. Next month (that would be September if I have my facts correct) sees a double-headed working trip to Colorado, delivering the first draft of The Family Of Noise to my pseudo-agent, wrapping up the Sci-Fi Tattoos book and a house move on the cards - throw into the mix that the day I come back from the States, Eleanor leaves to go to some week long 'thing' in Dubai and that's September pretty much finished before it has begun. Also on the cards somewhere in there is a meeting about re-booting The Ballad Of The Goat-Faced Boy project which I have medium-sized hopes of getting back on the table after it fell off. Not that I actually have a diary - I can't think of anything worse then having a diary when you have lots on your plate. That would be just one big fat reminder of all the things you hadn't done.

Talking of things I haven't done - I have quite a long short story that I need to wrap up: The Run-Along Man Sells Spoons. It's quite something - well I like it anyway. Now I have written that down I think I may have mentioned it here before. It needs shopping out into the big wide-world somehow so I'm going to take some time out soon and see if I can talk anybody into playing host to Arthur Conan Doyle crosses paths with Monster Magnet. It's clocking in at 10,000 words right now - so that's quite a long short story really. Let's see how it wants to end and take it from there.

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I used to love magazines for their own sake - that ought to be obvious being as I've spent most of my adult life around then in some form or other. Is it my imagination, or are they suffering badly right now? My own mag aside (obviously as I'm not allowed to have an opinion about that) , the only other magazine I buy and read without fail every single month is Vanity Fair. (I love the way the distributors think they know the mag and choose to sell it amongst women's magazines almost as much as I love the way they think they know my mag and choose to sell it either with bike mags or up on the top shelf). Vanity Fair is excellent  - it has world class writers, doesn't skimp on the photography, has superb thought behind the production and the iPad edition rocks hard too. I take a lot of cues from Vanity Fair but hopefully, nobody can tell.

So, this week, I picked up a copy of National Geographic Traveller hoping for inspiration because I love travel writing when it's from the heart. But that's not what I got...

What I got, mostly, was 18o odd pages of watered down press releases that do nothing more than appease advertisers. There's a couple of good (even great) features in there but for the most part, that's not what I expected from National Geographic at all. When you see a story about New York and the intro says "If you think you've seen New York, think again" and the pictures that follow are of the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Grand Central and a shot of the skyline... well it doesn't bode well for wanting to really get into the guts of the thing. When did readers become stupid and lazy? (I'm tempted to state here that it was the day they switched the internet on but it's asking for trouble).

That left me with two trains of thought:

1. Mail National Geographic and tell them that when they were tired of their editor, they should maybe give me a call. I'm not perfect but that mag needs some big steel balls if National Geographic are going to keep their reputation intact going forward. Then again, what the hell would they do with a loose cannon on the deck?

or:

2. Start my own travel writing blog where I could see if I was able to back up Point 1 in relative safety. Yeah... it's easy for me to sit here and take a pot shot but in my defence, I'm not doing it anonymously. Could I be good at travel writing? Could I be great at travel writing? Could I be the most loved and hated travel writer of all time?

Not a clue. Let's build a blog to work with and see how that pans out. I'll be sure to mention it when it goes live and you can all pile in with your size tens if you wish.

Anyway, if you want travel writing done properly, pick up a copy of the book (or audiobook - which is also top notch) Travels With Charley from John Steinbeck. It may be over 50 years old but hey, Game. Set. Match as far as I'm concerned.

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On which subject - take a look at this train which is run by Renfe I believe - it's a luxury cruise liner and I would give many, many right arms (don't care who they belong to) to write a story about it for... well, I'd write about it for anybody to be honest. If you guys pick this up from a tag, sincerely... drop me a line and let's set something up.

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That was a lot of words without even so much as a picture break, so to make up for it, here's The Posies performing the entire - yeah, ENTIRE - Frosting On The Beater album at Donostikluba 2008 (which I believe is in San Sebastian). Go make tea first... it's over an hour long.

Be cool to each other...

Snow, A Goat and a Polypropylene Dinosaur.

If you're stuck for something to do on a snowy day, here's my top three ideas. All of which worked out very well for me thanks: 1. Have a shave. A proper one in which you take all your facial hair off and start again.

2. Watch Forbydelsen III (The Killing) - all ten episodes of it one after the other with no breaks. I forgot I had this bagged up but watching it in a big block is the only way to go.

3. Commit to finish up a project that was almost there but not quite and apologise profusely to the guy at the other end who has been waiting for it for far too long.

It's snowed for about 10 hours solid here today and I have used my time wisely. After points 1 and 2 above, I un-earthed a bunch of half finished and almost finished drafts of The Ballad of The Goat Faced Boy and actually finished it, laid the script out and deposited it safely into the hands of Mr Poole who has been waiting very patiently for me to do such a thing. Let's see what happens next. I rather suspect very excellent things... I shall strike it from the work list until it comes to back to me later in the year and press on with the next unfinished piece - which according to the plan is wrapping up Raised on Radio. Good. I'm more than in the mood for that sort of thing right now.

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Last week, I was asked to take part in a speaking event in Canterbury called Digibury - details are here. I have to say, if you ever wonder exactly what it is you're trying to say to people in your digital space, work at getting invited to a similar event because it will sharpen your mind in a flash - or at least force you to think about it. Sometimes I suspect I think too much because now I'm sitting here wondering just what it is that I'm saying to people - this is a good thing. I probably should think about it more than I do but in a separate conversation I had with somebody about a year ago, said person suggested that your site (or mine as we were being quite specific about it) should be delivered 'more like a magazine' as this is how my head works.

Which is what I did/am doing/will continue to build. I think.

Only now I look at myself with outside eyes (a skill everybody busy working on themselves should develop immediately), I am wondering if that's really what's happening. Sit yourself in front of the mirror. Give yourself 15 minutes. Tell yourself about what and how you do what you do for the whole 15 minutes and make it interesting. Can you fill 15 minutes? Are you interesting?

Good questions huh? I've confused myself with that, so am choosing to move on - but all the same, let me know if you're coming to the event and say hi. Somewhere along the line, I think I promised to bring sweets...

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Last month, during the birthday/Christmas season, Eleanor bought me what can only be called a "build your own massive dinosaur lamp kit". It came in something that looked like a pizza box and the instructions...

Well, I don't normally look at instructions but there was no question that this particular set were more than worthy of attention. I got so into the build that I tried to remember to document it each step of the way. If you don't want to know the results, look away now. Here's the head:

Then came the body and some arms:

With a bit of a struggle, you attach the two things together and already it's looking like it might be very special when it's finished:

I forgot to take a picture of the big round body because I was too impatient to get to the tail and installing the bulb holder part of things:

I forgot to take pictures of the leg build too - probably because I could see the end was near. Eventually, it looked like this - 1 meter tall and pretty cool:

In the big scheme of things, it's easily the most fun thing I've built in about 30 years. It's hard enough to make it interesting to get on with but not so hard that you want to give up and walk away. If you fancy your chances with the beast, you can get one here - where they also have other great stuff (though obviously, nothing can ever be so great as a metre tall build your own polypropylene dinosaur lamp).

On which note, I'll leave you with this. The return of the mighty Californication (at least over in the US):

Words, Pictures and a Bad, Bad Wabbit

I got asked on this very day to write a book for somebody. Not in ghost writing way - I don't know if I could do that even if offered all the money in the world. Well, OK maybe for all the money in the world I could but you know what I mean. This book is a bit special, I'm totally knocked out to be doing it. I'll (obviously) be blowing it from the rooftops once it's completed and I have a copy of it in my hands.

'What's so special about it?', I hear you ask. Well, on one hand, the guys that are putting it out have got the production values of NASA and on the other hand, it's something that I'm really into. That's enough said about it for now. Suffice to say, the final product could knock out an adult cow if you so desired and that's good enough for me.

Work on Turn The Lamp Down Low is coming on quickly now. I think that from here until Sunday will be a good chance to get a whole lot of it done before I'm going to have to stop again and come up for air - and that's OK. Plot is settling in. A new sharper synopsis has been written for the cover and promo stuff - I think it might even be the final version, but I'll sit on it a little while longer before I post anything on it.

I also hooked up again with my buddy Mark Poole and between us we resurrected the fallen giant that was to be The Ballad of the Goat-Faced Boy. I just need to make a few more tweaks at my side of things and then we'll reboot the whole damn thing and see what we can come up with. And this time, I'm not putting it down until the damn thing is finished. I'm sure I've posted previously about how long illustrated projects take to get off the ground but it's worth saying again. Illustrated projects take a long time to get off the ground and see the light of day - and if you're working with an artist of some value, you'll soon find out why.

Somehow, it's gotten to be quite late again - and for once in my life, I'm actually tired to go along with it. Our new-ish giant rabbit, who Eleanor calls Berry and I call much worse things, has taken to thumping her feet on the base of her house at night. Like at 4am. So far as we can tell, there's no particular reason for this but on the shortlist so far are:

1. Cat on the fence

2. Being an arse for the sake of it

3. The birds are annoying her (I'm reluctant to go with this one because she's also done it earlier in the night when there are no birds)

4. A full moon. I quite fancied this one as my favourite simply because it sounds cool but it wasn't a full moon last night. It was however a new moon. Maybe I'll make a note of it somewhere and try and figure out if there's any pattern to it.

As glamorous as number 4 sounds, it will probably come down to it being number 2, because sometimes, that's just how life is with animals.