BEWARE THE KRAKEN

Alongside of great books and music, the other thing I adore is great art. Particularly when it's used in the right fashion. This week, as part of the 'other job' (that's like the 'other mother' only you don't get your dinner at the end of the day), I got to working with the great guys at Kraken Rum. Not only is their bottle the nicest piece of branding I have ever seen in this department, their website is just brilliant. Not content with giving us a great drink, they have loaded the peripherals with real content. Not just stuff that the marketing department threw on there, but really well thought out material that just makes you want to be a part of it. Here's a pic of their awesome Kraken, which I simply love - and yes, loved it so much that I was inspired - for this month at least - to rebrand myself. February is indeed, cephalopod month. Bring it on.

No apologies at all for posting it here in its almost full size glory - but it's a Kraken. Not a squid - a Kraken. Sometimes you have to drive these messages home. Anyway - regardless of whether you drink or not, go check them out at the link above. For no other reason that they deserve to be known about. That and they're a nice bunch of people who work really hard at doing something properly.

I think posting about a Kraken releases me from having to write anything else today. Which is a good job because I have to make some edits to a script here just in case somebody comes knocking on the door for it.

TIME. WAITING IN THE WINGS?

The problem with great ideas is that they needed to be followed up, otherwise that's all they end up being. Yesterday, I had a great idea for a book that could be ready for the summer, only to make it happen I need to create time that I haven't got. In an attempt to get around this minor detail, I've decided to try and 'organise'. I believe this is a tool used by many the whole world over to get on in life, but it has never been for me. My lack of organisation is mostly based on the fact that all the things I ever thought were great, were all done on the spur of the moment and didn't take very long to get off the ground. I work with people who keep huge notebooks of phone calls and conversations, spreadsheets... my thinking has always been that if you can't hold the information in your head, it couldn't have been very interesting in the first place. While some may scoff, I would like to add that I've never missed a deadline yet. Watching people cocking about with cells, rows and columns and colouring things in seems like the biggest waste of time of all. Rather like all the apps on your iphone, you only click on them because they're there most of the time. I recently purged about twenty off my iphone and now can't even remember what any of them were. That's how valuable they must have been. In the time it takes to format your spreadsheet to a standard you like, you can easily write three pages of material for something.

So I guess, looking at this predicament logically, the secret of organisation lies not actually in being organised but more in not taking part in anything that isn't constructive to the job in hand. Yeah... I think that's what I'm trying to say...

I find myself making a lot of decisions lately. I'm seriously considering buying a record deck and putting some soul back into the music that I like. There's some decent systems around if you look hard enough and it would be pretty cool to buy all of the stuff I grew up on all over again. There must have been some reason I had hundreds upon hundreds ofback in 'the day'. There's an easy 'top ten' that could be rustled up when doing this - I'll nail it down here:

10. Lords of the New Church: Is Nothing Sacred?

9. Prince: Purple Rain

8. Kate Bush: Hounds of Love

7. Alice Cooper: Love It To Death

6. Journey: Frontiers

5. The Waterboys: A Pagan Place

4. Kiss: Alive!

3. Rick Springfield: Living in Oz

2. Prince: Sign of the Times

1. David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars

That's pretty much my entire adolescence summed up in ten lines. Not my all time top ten albums, but certainly all very memorable for different reasons. They had better all sound as good now as they did back then on an Amstrad tower system. Talking of which, a few days ago, I was writing some other stuff and found these two items regarding Stiv Bators (Lords of the New Church) that pretty much sum up the unpredictability of checking out bands at a club level in the 80s:

"The Lords became notorious for their live shows. A devotee of Iggy Pop, Bators had developed a fearless reputation in his Dead Boys days and continued such antics with The Lords, the most famous being the time he reportedly hanged himself during a show. Bator's stunt went awry and he was pronounced clinically dead for several minutes. Nonetheless, Bators survived and The Lords recorded two more successful albums."

and

"The Lords of the New Church broke up in 1989, when Bators injured his back and guitarist Brian James secretly began advertising for a replacement singer. When Bators found out he played the encore of the band's final show donning a T-shirt with James' newspaper ad printed across the front, he then proceeded to fire the remaining members on-stage."

This is why music was exciting. You never knew what was going to happen from one week to the next - it also took ages to find out about stuff. This meant you could dine out on an event like this if you were lucky enough to have been there without some dick reading it online and telling the world before you even got home.

Re: Yesterday's post about BlackBerry phone. After no small amount of research, I eventually opted to hitch my wagon to the Nokia C3-01. Wi-fi, email and just about everything else set up in less than twenty minutes. Nice phone with some very cool features. Does what a phone should. Within two years, the little BlackBerry will be an obsolete piece of kit unless they change their game plan. I won't dwell on it, but seriously, what a piece of dirt.

Stiv Bators would never own a BlackBerry either.

BLACKBERRY DELIGHT

I'm one of those people that has two phones. I don't like it but it's a bit of a necessity to keep me sane. Having an iphone is pretty neat, but it's saturated with day-job stuff and you simply can't escape doing more work every time you press the damn button. My other phone is (was) a Sony Ericsson Cyber-Shot. Great phone but the key for a space has died a death and it's pretty annoying. So yesterday, I went to find a new phone and at six o'clock came out of Tesco armed with a BlackBerry. There was good thinking behind it. I needed a decent phone, some messaging services and the ability to keep on top of my personal email. Picture my face. Three hours to try and hook it up to wi-fi (never successfully achieved despite it being as simple as entering a password), total complexity when it comes to setting up email accounts, a lousy app store with an even worse interface. The only thing the damn thing had going for it was that it was black. By midnight, it was back at the store and the money back in my account. Compared to how unbelievably easy the iPhone is when you want to do, well, anything at all, it's shockingly awful that they think they can get away with this shit and hold their heads high as a market leader. Honestly... a worse piece of tech I have never layed my hands on.

The search continues - annoyingly, a couple of years ago, there were some great looking phones on the market but now, they're like cars. They all look the same and they all do the same thing. Functionality over design is really fucking dull believe me and not all it's cracked up to be.

I finished a crackerjack of a book yesterday too. It took me well into the early hours of this morning but it was worth it. Nattily titled She's Never Coming Back, it's a real Harlan Coben affair but Swedish (by Hans Koppel - real name Karl Petter Lidbeck, hidden presumably because he normally writes for kids). If you can handle the darkness of a Swedish kidnapping in the most bizarre of circumstances and have got enough time to chew it up in a day, grab yourself a copy. That leaves me free to make a start on Clive Barker's Absolute Midnight this evening.

Which won't be finished in one sitting. Guaranteed.

I have also decided that I am going to start wearing a lot of suits (not all at the same time). This may be a passing phase, but seems to me if you can find the right suit, it can speak volumes about you. Especially when you've got a ton of hair to go with it. (Note to self: be careful! This road has potential potholes every ten feet.)

Anyway - back to work. Lots to do...

Currently listening to: a great Stevie Wonder mash-up.

Currently reading: see above.

Not currently: speaking much on the phone

Liking: how Alcatraz might shape up over the next few weeks and seeing the potential in Once Upon A Time

Not that impressed with: a really slow kick-in for the second half of the Supernatural season. Sloooow.

A MATTER OF TASTE

I watched Green Lantern this evening. It's probably the best DC movie ever attempted. I can hear you - 'that's not hard'. Much like Iron Man in the way that expectation was originally pretty low, I expected nothing from it and was rewarded with a couple of hours of decent story, sfx only when necessary and a great cast. Stupidly, I had a look at the reviews for it this afternoon to see what others made of it. Hmmm.

In an era where everybody thinks they can be a critic, being a critic has become null and void. For every positive/negative comment you make about anything at all, somebody will come along and pose the opposite. And if they can't do it at the place they read it originally, they will post it somewhere else and reference it. The end result: no escape.

Once upon a time - and not so long ago either - if you wanted to find out what an album, book or a movie was like, you'd reference somebody who had a similar taste to your own, or at least respected. As much as I dig YouTube et al, it's hardly helpful as a resource when positive comment 'A' is swiftly followed by such delights as 'you're a nazi worshipper, go to hell if you think Bruce Springsteen's new single sucks.' I did make that one up although if you look hard enough, there are worse on there. For the record, Springsteen's single is OK, but that's all. I wouldn't miss it if hadn't happened. I probably won't go out of my way to hunt it down either now, but it will be OK on the radio.

If anybody picks it up.

Fact of the matter is, get online and all manner of reviews are at your fingertips. A little while back as some of you may have noticed, I dropped August Moon: The Monster Magnet up on smashwords to get some feedback. Duly, it was left. It wasn't great but I can take that - I wouldn't be in the game if I couldn't, but when I checked who it was written by, it was from a lovely lady who wrote 'erotic' novels whose keywords involved some spurious delights that made even me cringe. When I read the extract of her book - and if there's one thing I know, it's a good story when I see it - it was the most up your own arse drivel I've ever seen. Which was when I realised that the whole site and its concept is nothing more than a fanzine jumble sale. Smashwords is not about good writing or even selling books, it's about calling yourself a writer and being read indiscriminately just because it's there. But it doesn't mean your good. Apologies to all the real workers on there who are great and got sucked in, but my advice to you is get your material off there and do whatever it is you're doing from your own site or blog. It's the writers equivalent of facebook - only not so slick.

That's not sour grapes. It's a fact. It's all nothing but an illusion that will keep you down in the pit.

Which prompted me to consider amazon and the kindle. I like amazon. I spend a lot of money there. I currently have a few products up too and the model is good, but I don't think it's what I want. It's not why I started out. Sure, I might tempt some chance purchasers out of it but will they become loyal readers who are actually listening to me? Probably not. This is not dissing the beast in any way, I just don't think I'm ready for it yet. Thus, over this coming weekend, I shall be withdrawing all the things I wanted to give away for free (because it won't let me do that) and will be replanting them here. At this tage of the game, I would rather fewer people came here because they wanted to than a million people walked past simply because they were there. Isn't that the point of the web? To empower what it is you're doing in any way you see fit, but with thoughtful control?

Life on the internet gets more interesting everyday. Making it work how you want it to can be hard, but it is worth it. Take some chances, try some things out. If you don't like it, you can change your mind and move on the very next day if you so wish. Whatever get's you through the night and all that but don't be attracted by shiny things simply because they're shiny.

Generally speaking, all people want online is either your attention or your money. Make sure you devote both to the right kinds of places.

FOXY, FOXY.

Busy day. Wrapped up what I needed to of Fox On The Run for its deadline and feeling pretty damn pleased with myself over it. But now I need to pack my stuff together for tomorrow. No big deal but if I don't do it now, I know I won't get up in time and then it will be a big deal. Should be a good weekend - looking forward to getting some ink in the skin and hanging out for a while. With a bit of luck, I'll find some downtime to wrap up the rest of Fox, and - as chance would have it - I had what appears to be a killer idea for a new TV show. It needs some fleshing out, but I think it has long enough legs to make it all the way. Should be able to create some downtime next week to get my head around it and maybe thrash out a pilot and the skeleton of a series.

Meantime, I saw this poster for the first time today. "They" are certainly pumping out some great movie posters at the moment (whoever they are). It's just a shame that most of the movies attached to them don't have quite the same values. Still, I'm holding a candle for this one...

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE

So there I am looking at an absolute ton of files uploading for next month's magazine and I think to myself, while that's busy choking up all my bandwidth, I'll type up the last few handwritten pages of my script, Fox On The Run, for (secret project with a deadline so close that I can smell it). Knock on the door. Postman with package from amazon. Waking the Dead season three. That's fair.

Back to the script.

Phone rings.

Ellie. She has had her phone confiscated at school and can I go and pick it up at the end of the day because those are the rules.

Call school. See what the score is. Yes - I have to sign for it. Crap. That drives a stake in the afternoon. Organise to do it at the end of the school day.

Back to the script.

Clattering in garden. Rabbit escape! Mexican stand-off between rabbit A and rabbit B. That could have been nasty. Note to self: put a couple of nails in the panel in the gate that came loose in the storm last week.

Back to the script.

Lost the thread of it now. Maybe I'll come back to it later today...

Sigh.

And yeah, the Rocky poster is slightly relevant - but you'd have to see the script first I guess. Good film though - not seen it for years. Maybe I'll dig it out.

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.

THE WICKER TREE

I'm not sure what I think of this. I'm reasonably excited by its arrival but you know how these things go. Those are incredibly big shoes to fill. The Wicker Man is my favourite ever movie - it hit me quite hard as a kid (when I don't think I was supposed to be watching it) and it only got better with time as I began to really understand it and had the time to truly appreciate how original it was.

The Wicker Tree however could go either way. I'll research the background on it later but if it's a movie constructed from Robin Hardy's Cowboys For Christ novel (which I suspect it is), I shall reserve as much judgement as I am able because quite honestly, it wasn't the greatest thing I have ever read. Not by a long shot - and I really did want to love it simply because of its heritage.

That was a few years back though and British Lion aren't ones to squander their cash on any old junk. See what you think. You can check out everything you need to here. There appear to be some similar set pieces lurking in there and surely everybody is smart enough to know that you can't hit us twice with the same type of ending as the original.

Aren't they?

One of the things that set The Wicker Man apart was its lack of anything substantial to play with. All the props used were quite authentically of the time - and even though these may be of this time, it might not work quite so well. I realise it's only a clip but that fluffy donkey head in the trailer is no substitute for a home-made bit of wooden calamity. The true joy of The Wicker Man is in just how beautifully weird and home-made it is, but like I said, let the dog see the rabbit first.

If anybody is reading and is holding some tickets for a press screening, hit me up... I'd love to be involved from the ground up - one way or another. On the plus side, that's a fucking great movie poster.

BOOKS UNLEASHED...

Don't you just love the holiday period? All festive items aside, over the last few days I've had the extremely large post-it notes out in an attempt to make the site slicker and by the time you read this, I hope I'll have ironed out all the things that were bugging me. Somewhere along the line, I had bagged up a set of images for the August Moon series on shutterstock only to find that the guy I was working with has removed all his images from the site. So that will teach me not to download the whole series that I needed. Thus, I spent Saturday morning redesigning the whole package. Apologies to those who were liking the originals - I liked them too but I hope these new ones will hit the mark just the same. They're certainly a world apart and possibly give the reader a bit more of an idea as to where the series is headed.

And on that same subject, while I was knee deep in Photoshop layers, I totally destroyed the cover for Black Dye, White Noise and revamped it for the much sexier one you see here and then also made the final changes to the Inspector Kang covers bringing them all into line as a series. Much happier with these too. Now that the majority of the core designs are done for the final time, I'll leave it at that and can finally get on with some more writing.

If you want to grab yourself a copy of Black Dye, White Noise, you can find the links here. Today also saw part two of the Inspector Kang series go out to the world. You can download Roll Away The Stone for whatever e-reader device you have right here. I'm going to continue to use smashwords for the time being simply because they make it so damn easy, but there's soem interesting things going on at amazon at the moment that I need to check out.

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.

THEY'RE HERE...

Wow, how fast did 2011 go? Over the next couple of weeks, I'll probably be a little premature with my 'end of the year' comments but I've finished up with the day-job for the year (and I should think so too after a year of working non-stop with only five days off this year) which leaves me the time and head-space to attend to the ever growing stack of junk inside my head.

The kids had no idea what to get me for my birthday this year (which was last week) so I directed them to the first season box set of The Invaders. I always liked this show when I was a kid but when my Ma told me this is what she watching when she went into labour with me, that kind of sealed its fate in my heart. I've gotten through the first four episodes so far and it's fantastic throwaway TV. If you ever needed some tips on how to spot an alien in your own backyard, this is all the info you'll ever need...

Also worthy of noting here is the book Rivers of London. I bought it as an audio book months ago but never got around to listening to it. I don't know why I waited so long to get it on - it's really good. Like really good. A proper book and kind of like something I wish I had written. Nice work Sir. As luck would have it, lame as I have been, there are a few more already available in the series. That will give me something to do over the hols... Ben Aaronovitch is the word on the street.

Right - I still have last minutes scraps to buy for the monkeys and some other special things. Watch out for those body snatchers...

TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2011

As is traditional at this time of the year - here's my pick of the music released in 2011. A couple of them even surprised me... 1. SIXX AM - THIS IS GONNA HURT   

Even though this came out in the summer, it's been a solid part of the year, getting multiple plays a week in the car. A fine, fine example of how to make a rock album that means something to people. Genius.

2. NICKELBACK - HERE & NOW

I don't need to say anything. Stick it in the slot, rock out with your fist in the air, smile… you know the drill by now.

3. CHRIS CORNELL - SONGBOOK

As I have said elsewhere, I knew this was going to be pretty special. In fact, the only reason it's not occupying the top slot is that it's not so great for driving to. In reality, probably the best album of the year… just not the favourite.

4, KELLY CLARKSON - STRONGER

I expected great things and got them. Knock her if you wish, but this is one solid slab of great songs from beginning to end.

5. BEGGARS & THIEVES - WE ARE THE BROKENHEARTED

A surprise, totally under the radar entry. This is one that you'll have to hunt for and if you didn't know it was coming, you stood little chance of ever hearing it. That said, if you remember the glory days or are in the mood for some intelligent rock that doesn't suck, hunt it down.

6. BLACKSTONE CHERRY - BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA

Blackstone Cherry just get better and better with each release - to the point that if they continue with this pattern of bettering their previous album, the songwriting coming out of this camp over the next few years will be looked back on with quite some reverence.

7. JANE'S ADDICTION - THE GREAT ESCAPE ARTIST

The chickens come home to roost in an album that would be just at home and relevant in their early days. Nice to see the old dogs can cut it. Even better to see that Jane's Addiction still have the ability to hold it together when it really counts and in this climate, that means right about now.

8. ELECTRIC BOYS - AND THEM BOYS DONE SWANG

Sure. I'm more than a little pleased to see Conny Bloom back in the saddle with this. He could have kicked back and released some junk, but regardless of the year, this is a full-on authentic Electric Boys album that can hold its own in today's market… if it only had half a chance.

9. TOMMY STINSON - ONE MAN MUTINY

Authentic, one man army, close to the bone rock n roll. The only real rock n roll album to be released this year. Write some songs, record them quickly and get back out on the road. Brilliant.

10. LENNY KRAVITZ - BLACK AND WHITE AMERICA

Lenny does his thing a little more comprehensively than usual here - the last couple of albums have faded out a little around the halfway mark but Black & White America has got a great set of legs on it.

AN AMERICAN HORROR STORY - SHEER UNADULTERATED GENIUS

 I thought for a moment that with the wrapping up of so many TV shows over the last few weeks, we were in for a long, cold and lonely winter. Not so apparently.

Today, I watched the first five episodes of An American Horror Story back to back (it's who you know, not what...) and I'm sitting on the next five, so I figure it's going to be a pretty long night. Thus far, it's proved itself to be the most original, ingenious piece of TV writing craft and the best cast serial that I've watched in years - certainly since LOST crashed into our lives - and only goes to hammer the final nail in the coffin of what I've been saying for years. The movie industry is losing out to TV every single week. Maybe not financially but certainly when it comes to the craft.

Anyway, what the hell is An American Horror Story all about? That would be a very good question my friends. What this very smart writing crew have done is thrown everything in the freaking book at this show - everything that is except the 'everything' you would expect an American horror show. There's no blood to speak of, no big sweeping gestures of cliche and is potentially just as full of no answers as LOST.

We've got a damaged neighbour with Down's Syndrome, Jessica Lange being fabulous and a guy with half a face who won't go away. We've got a whole bunch of people that won't stay dead, some clueless coppers, a housemaid who might be old but half of the time isn't and best of all, a mysterious S&M latex bound figure lurking in the background.

It's not a show that could ever come out of the UK - it's very, very American and all the better for it. It just wouldn't work coming from here. To be honest, I'm hooked, intrigued and extremely jealous. An American Horror Story - if I may be so bold - is sheer fucking unadulterated genius.

And to cap it all off, they even have knockout posters to go with it.

FINAL DESTINATION POSTER BANNED?

Apparently, this poster got banned today - for scaring children. I've seen much worse over the years. Go into any HMV/Blockbuster/WHSmiths and you'll find a ton of nasty covers easily within reach of little ones. Or is it more a case of a particular child that it scared? I'd love to get a heads up on the circumstances behind this - besides which, hasn't it been out for months and months already? More later if I can find out...

ALL ALONE IN THE WORLD

Here's an interesting statistic (can I call it a statistic? Maybe not. I might have to come back to that word later). I published both The Monster Magnet (Book 1) and Shouting and Pointing (1) over the last weekend. So far, the downloads on it are pretty healthy - and the feedback is good. I was faced with a multitude of choices before doing this - as everybody is aware these days, there are so many venues to place things like this, where do you start? Well, the smart money is on market saturation. Get your product into as many 'bookstores' as possible. I was originally going to publish them only here so that readers would have to download them from my own 'store' (making the entire exercise truly independent), but after looking over smashwords, I decided to drop it there to see what would happen.

Truth be told, the front end of smashwords is disgusting and looks amateur at best - and I wrote and told them so - I don't really like being associated with a store that looks so damn cheap. One of these days somebody will come along and show them how it's done properly and all that good work will be for nothing. But that's their problem not mine. I was mostly curious as to how they would make the transition easier for me with regards to hitting the kindle store, kobo... etc, hard and fast.

And the answer is, I still don't know because nothing has happened. For a fledgling industry that bases one of its selling points on how instant everything is, that's no good to me. Actually, that's not true, I am more than prepared to wait and filter everything out slowly. Besides, it gives me time to figure out the practicalities of exactly how to do it all myself. I mean, I know most of it in theory but there's no substitute for seeing exactly how these things work in the real world.

I think the sacrifice of having somebody else do this for me now, while I'm busy writing more, is priceless. I liken it to a radio station occasionally playing your song while you're still busy working on your album - and I think that's healthy and a healthy attitude. I have no desire to join the dirty street-fight that seems to be taking place everywhere else.

So - why the John Carter movie poster? 1. I needed something that looked nice on the front page 2. It looks great and 3. I have never seen two trailers for the same film that make it look as though one of them has nothing to do with the other. Check it yourself here. I still think it looks great though.

PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED.. WHICHEVER WAY YOU SLICE IT

I don't feel very festive yet and I think I should. The kids have got their Christmas tree up already and I'm being pestered to get one up this coming weekend and I think I will give in gracefully. I guess I had better finish off some Christmas shopping too. I still haven't got a clue what to get Eleanor for Christmas - she says I'm hard to buy for but that's the pot calling the kettle out for sure. Something has been bugging the hell out of me this last week and it's taken me a while to figure out what it is. It finally dawned on me last night that it was the cover of The Monster Magnet - it is weak to say the least, so if you happen upon the site/blog while I'm changing it, apologies for any confusion but it deserves a better cover than a spooky looking tree. How many times have I sat here and slated publishers for going down the 'spooky tree' road? Harlan Coben, Michael Connelly, Linwood Barclay - and those are off the top of my head. If I went and looked I could probably find at least a dozen more. Anyway, I've got a real bee in the head over it as well, so I've sourced images for the entire series all at once. I guess this is the beauty of doing it yourself. Can you imagine how much carnage that would cause if you were in the hands of Harper Collins? Then again, Harper Collins wouldn't have let it go out looking second rate, but you know what I mean...

About a week ago, I read a fantastic blog post "Reasons Not To Self Publish" over at The Millions. While I disagree with about as much of it as I agree with, it's the wealth of knowledge, hatred and disbelief that follows in the comments that yields the good stuff. There are no answers to be had there. There are as many haters of self publishing/digital publishing as there are those that love it. There's all kinds of squabbling going on, but much of it appears to be about being validated as an author by a publisher putting money into you or how people view published books as real and ebooks as not. Money, money, money...

I thought about this long and hard. It really made me question my own motivations for writing at the moment.

1. I write because I have stories in my head and believe other people would enjoy them

At which point, the list ends because having talked to other authors/writers, there are two roads we can down at this point. The first is that I can either write because I have a story to tell regardless of commerce, the second is that I can write because I believe I can make a living out of it.

Regardless of the fact that I write for a living - because running a magazine has about as much in common with writing a book and washing cars does with building them - I fall into the first category. I don't believe I have the 'right' to be published. I would like to be pubished but I don't have any rights to it at all. That's not for me to decide. Publishing is a money making business and I'm sure if a publisher thought they could make a success story and some money out of me, I would be the first to know.

Meantime, I also don't expect a publisher to pay any attention to me at the moment. Why would they? I have nothing. Buying into a first time author with no track record is akin to taking on somebody ho left school last week and leaving them in charge of an entire department (yeah, it does happen, but they are few and far between). My own thinking on this is about the same as it was when I was playing in a band. If you haven't got a demo of your music for people to listen to, all they have is your word for it.

Am I the only one looking at digital publishing like this? I mean, every day above ground is a good day right? Why would you want to sit on something you had written until somebody paid you for it? Wouldn't you rather some people read it and then told some other people about it. Sure, getting paid is great but it can't be the end-game anymore - not in this climate.

Which begs the question that it must be time to differentiate, not between published authors and self published authors/hard copy books and digital books but between story-tellers and commercial writers. Those, I feel are the two categories we should be looking at. I think then, the word of publishing would make a lot more sense to people.

Following on from this, I thought I would go back in time and check out Amanda Hocking's blog posts from the beginning of time. From the era before she had sold a million. Her grammar and spelling are terrible but that didn't stop millions of people from buying her material. I find her a bit of a whiner and I also feel like she plays some bizarre sympathy cards a little too often as well, but hey, she is the one that shifted all of those books not me. She obviously knows her audience well and they identify with her.

The end result, she has gotten herself a decent deal and a good team behind her - there's even movie talk these days. She gets a raw deal when really all she did was grow up in public. It's no different from making indie movies until you know what you're doing. Look at Del Toro and Tarantino. It's no different from demoing songs until you're a fantastic songwriter and recording artist. Back in the seventies and long before that, music artists where given time to develop. Nobody expected anybody to sell a million on your first album. Everybody took some knocks to get the job done.

So answer me this, why isn't everybody playing nicely together? Why aren't the big six publishing companies using self published sales data to fuel their risks for the future? Or have I missed something?

THE AWAKENING

As you'll have noticed, I got a little sidetracked from formatting books for e-readers this weekend. It's been worth it though. For anybody struggling - and this is probably more relevant to Mac users - with the multitude of instructions for the various bookstores, I can thoroughly recommend a free programme called Calibre. It's pretty damn seamless and I've had no problems with it at all. I've put it through its paces to see what it's capable of and it's proving to be quite invaluable. Check it for yourselves. Don't know if it works for people working on a PC and neither do I care. Anyway, all done now, I think. Back to the writing. So having decided I've done quite enough work for one weekend, this evening I was going to go check out the new Daniel Craig spooker called DreamHouse, but checking out some of the reviews online, it got very disappointingly hammered, so instead, I am going to check this out - The Awakening - which as far as I can tell has been universally applauded and yet for some reason, is dropping below the big cinema radar. Maybe that's a good thing.

I've been following the Henry Rollins Drop in the Bucket project Drop in the Bucket recently and feeling like I'm letting the side down. I mean, as the editor of one the biggest circulating magazines in the UK, I feel like we should be able to harness the combined readership into action over something, anything! What I'm struggling with is exactly what to tether that horse to. It has to be something that we can by-pass the system with. What I'd really like is to be able to take whatever money was raised and give it directly to said cause, bypassing all of the expensive admin and actually get something done. It's something that needs some thought though. It's going to have to be something that both myself and everybody else cares about too otherwise it will turn into a dead fish. File under pending for now. Some serious thinking to be done there.

PAPERBACK WRITERS

After a day spent (semi) mastering the formatting of every single ebook format there is, Eleanor and myself went out earlier on this evening and put our money where our mouths are and joined a gym. I have to say, it's pretty impressive - not only is the gym pretty full on, but there's a gorgeous pool (as opposed to the public one we currently go to which is - to be frank - a disgusting hole that I can't believe we pay for) with more included classes and associated paraphernalia than I will ever use. Considering the monthly membership is what I pay in a week for cigarettes, I could hardly say no really. Now I kind of feel pressured to figure out what to do there because there are so many option, but I shall start tomorrow morning all the same. If I can get my fitness back to something that looks like a real-live human being, I'm tempted to take up some new classes - something that I've never done before maybe.

I have quite a bit of work to do tomorrow on the books. Regular visitors will notice I've had something of a carve-up in the navigation here. Hopefully, it's a lot simpler now and makes a more logical sense. I know I shouldn't work like this, but doing things publicly makes me work an awful lot harder to get them finished. The beauty of the web is that 24 hours later, most of you (self included) can't remember what it was like before - and I am grateful for that! Don't change a thing!

My friend Mr Downes pointed me in the direction of the Radio 6 "Paperback Writer" series earlier this week. It's a great idea but some of it is sinfully dull. I expected a lot more from David Nicholls for one. Mark Billingham was cool as always as was Iain Banks, but the rest... I'm not so sure. I figured it couldn't be that damned hard to do myself, so I've started to put together a podcast - just for fun! Certainly not ego driven. I'll post it up here when it's done - there's some classy tracks waiting in the wings. Probably an awful lot of material you wouldn't expect from me either. For a start, everything I have on the list so far is British. Yeah, that surprised me too...

Anyway - gotta bail. Lenny Kravitz on the TV... like most, he should grow his hair again. This here is a good look for him (said the fashion guru).

THIS IS GOOD TO SEE...

...and also - as far as I'm concerned - pretty important. Read about it here.

JOSH AND HIS WILD HORSES

This is Josh. He's a contestant on the US X Factor.

This is him performing this week.

Fucking killer.