Best Books of 2013 • Around The World In 80 Days (ish)

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.

A Fistful Of Culture

It's that time of year again. The time of year when I make a valiant attempt to plough through as many books as I can in the face of an ever mounting drift of festive tomfoolery. Actually, does anybody remember that show? It was the sort of thing they ploughed out on TV during a Sunday afternoon between a bout of Tex Avery and Walter Lantz while adults got on with grown up chores like mowing the lawn or cooking, thinking it would keep us amused - and they were right! Oh, how easily us children of the 70s must have been to keep occupied and out of the way as suburbia revolved on its axis.

Whatever happened to cartoons on TV? I can't remember the last time I saw a Tom & Jerry, a Droopy or a Mister Magoo cartoon. Here's a reminder - and it's a classic:

Lost my train of thought there. Next on the reading list after STONER (which is so damn good, I've already bought another three copies to hand out to people that I think will appreciate them - so much for not buying any more books huh) is this:

I like a good rock n roll story, particularly when it comes from the early years of the band I worshipped on my knees for far too much of my life. The three years that this book covers and maybe a couple more tagged onto the back end up until maybe 1977 are all I need from them. I'll have finished it by tomorrow so luckily, sitting right next to it in the shelf is this:

And if you can't tell what it's about from the cover alone, you came to the wrong place. Sheesh - all you have to do it read that big round sticker type thing and that's it in a nutshell. I don't give that much longer than 24 hours either to be honest. I might review this one properly.

And then? I'm not sure where to head next, probably back into something hefty and story-like. Maybe a book from somebody who's doing nothing more than wandering around the avenues and alleyways of the world with their teeny-weeny finger curled - and ain't that Thomas O'Malley theme from The Aristocats one of the greatest movie soundtrack songs of all time? Let me see if I can find it...

I wish I had a theme tune like that. Perhaps I should change my name instead?

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I've made it sound like I've been doing nothing but reading and watching crap on YouTube but that's not true! No Sir. Wrapping up the first edits of The Eternity Ring here which I'm really pleased with but I now need to throw it in a drawer for a week to get some editing distance 0n it. Also made some serious impact on The Family Of Noise as well but tomorrow I'm in full author mode to see exactly how much of that I can nail down.

There's nothing but a small (though getting bigger) dog standing between me and success on that front.

This Road Is Littered With Scarecrows And Faeries

I've discovered this weekend - but really knew it all along - that writing a book is not simply a matter of turning up at the page. It's half the battle for sure, but when the words that come out of the end of your fingers don't match up to the vision you had in your head, this causes trouble. I'm certain that I'm not alone in this find either - and why did that word 'battle' slip so easily into this paragraph? Surely the writing thing should be a joy, not a war to be won by beating nobody but yourself up. Yesterday, this is exactly what happened. I sat down to push forward with The Family Of Noise and wrote an easy chapter that, by the time I had finished, simply didn't belong. I put it to one side and decided it could perhaps be something in its own right. This is not the first time this has happened but it is the first time I've actually set something aside to do something constructive with. Would it be bad to admit that if, in the past, something didn't fit it found itself in the trash with no hope of a return to the real world? I guess it's not worth thinking about because the trash has been emptied. If writers pull stories from a big pool in the sky - as I believe they do - then it's only fair that if you're not going to do anything with the fish you caught, you should throw it back for somebody else to pick up and make a meal out of.

It won't be a very long story but the story is there to be told and I'm claiming it as my own. This fish is coming home with me and this fish is called Scarecrow. My gut reaction is to work with somebody to illustrate it. It's not a children's story but it's not an adult story either. It's just a story and maybe people that like stories will like it. I even know who I want to illustrate it so I had best get it into some kind of shape to send it to him and see if he wants to work with me.

Meanwhile, after that unexpected fish had been caught, I returned to what I was supposed to be doing and really did finish what I intended to in the first place - and it was much better than I expected it to be even though it took me down a road I wasn't expecting. This has made for a day of figuring out where to go next with it but... so far, so good. I like it this way. If I have no idea what's going on, the reader has not a hope in hell.

I'm massively aware that there's a lot of talk from me at the moment about finishing things off and anybody reading must imagine there to be something like ten projects all waiting to be wrapped up and you wouldn't be wrong. I've tried working on only one project at a time but it doesn't work for me. I much prefer this concept of working on several canvases at a time and seeing how things turn out. So while the actual work might take some time to reach its destination, at least we had a good trip, saw some cool things out of the window along the way and met some great people. It's the difference between launching the Maps app on your phone, following the voice and the route that everybody else will be taking, getting where you're supposed to be going quickly and efficiently or getting in the car with a vague idea of where you're going but being as nobody is really expecting you at the other end, why not take a look around and be inspired along the way. Those inspirations lead to other adventures and so it goes on...

There's a part of me that says this is wrong, but I spend my life working to deadlines (fast and sharp deadlines too) with the magazine, so I'm not going to beat myself up about it.

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On my travels of putting the science fiction book together - note to self: remember to put a page up for it as it goes on sale next week - I found many incredible sights that don't really come under any heading at all. One of them was the work of Henry Justice Ford. I had never heard of him before but he was one serious motherfkr when it came to making shit up and is most famed for his work on Andrew Lang's Fairy Books. Here's some of his work - why there isn't more jaw-droppingly incredible work like this out in the world today is beyond me:

But I remain hopeful all the same because my buddy Richey Beckett has this beautiful print available for sale right here - snap it up before they're all gone:

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...

Don't Try This At Home

After all this time, I finally witnessed it with my own eyes. The kid must have been all of 10 or 11 and figured that he could go from a standing position to standing on top of the iron bars around the trolley park. C.M. Punk in the making perhaps? No. It doesn't take but a second to go from hero to zero as you slip and land face first on the concrete, smashing your mouth open and breaking your specs. Less time than that even.

Don't say they didn't warn you.

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Work continues on The Family Of Noise. I don't get along so well with this kind of weather we're having, I guess I'm built for a more 'wet' climate which means I am wandering around like a dog, notebook under arm, looking for the coolest place in the house to bed down and write. File under: not very constructive.

Also not very constructive is getting hooked on a book that you know your own will never be as good as.

I know this for a fact and am quite accepting of it. If it's even almost as good, that will be good enough for me. This guy held the number one spot for me last year with a book he had written some years previously but it was so 'huge' in its delivery, it stomped all over some literary greats. The man is Graham Joyce. Last year's book was Some Kind Of Fairy Tale and his latest that I'm ploughing through right now is The Year Of The Ladybird. Somebody at the publishing house needs to get some traction behind this because Joyce deserves to be much more widely read than he is at the moment. To kick back and say 'I really wish I had written that' is not something I say very often - and it's normally about a song when I do.

Maybe I should say it to nobody but myself? Follow it with some warlike cry of "Joyce, I'm coming to get you!" Yeah... that's what I'll do - but only to myself.

So while you wait for me to finish The Family Of Noise, go read Fairy Tale and Ladybird. Not necessarily in that order. This is what Ladybird looks like. Go find it:

So good, if you think you might have a book in you, it will make you think twice about putting pen to paper.

That's probably not the greatest blurb quote you can say about something, but you get the picture.

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..and now back to work.