Wisdom of the Gods (II)

"Call immediately. Time is running out. We both need to do something monstrous before we die."Ralph Steadman to Hunter Thompson

A sentiment that is hitting the floor in the House of Smith today.

DDP - The Punisher

For reasons still not quite clear to me, this afternoon we were in the chemist picking up the remainder of Eleanor's prescription when the urge to quit smoking struck. Again. With three left in the packet, I squashed it, threw it in the bin that sat next to the counter and bought myself a triple pack of the mint things that helped me keep off them last time. Cherry. It feels right at the moment. I shall try not to think about it too much because that's when bad things happen (ie: driving to the all night garage in search of goodies).

This was followed by my first twenty minute session of yoga with DDP that I've been putting off for the best part of a fortnight. Not sure what the hell I'm talking about? Best place to start is here. Somewhere along the road, this will be good for me but this evening, it crucified me to hell and back. It was 30 degrees when I got out of the car and certainly not much cooler an hour later. Maybe that contributed to the litres of sweat that came out of me. This will be an interesting ride over the coming months that's for sure. Combined with the plans coming from the You Are Your Own Gym project, some well researched supplements, a reduced calorie intake, close to zero wheat and some irregular fasting - though I still need to figure that part out - I might be able to get my ass back into some kind of shape that resembles a human being before the end of the year. I also went out and got myself one of these today:

And the point of all this? I'm not entirely sure to be honest - but it's no bad thing, right? Going away always puts things in perspective but this last trip - being outside and away from 'the machine' for more than a few hours - has really rattled the cage. Next thing you know, I'll be taking up some kind of sport...

Wisdom of the Gods (I)

"When I write, I just sit down and I write. If you can’t do that, you can’t be a writer. Even when you’re sick. Sometimes I’d be very sick, coughing, with a fever and I’d be going down the stairs to work and my wife would say “You’re sick, don’t work today” — but really, if you don’t work, who else is going to do it?"

— Harry Harrison

You Can't Land The TARDIS There...

It's been a long year - I figured it might be time to kick back for a week to regroup a little, so after the Manchester Show last weekend (which was superb, thanks for asking) we headed out for North Wales in search of some kind of downtime. Thus, in a week that contained a castle, a crazy bookshop, a TARDIS on a pier, some cable cars, a river, a horse-drawn canal boat, a big old Roman city and some extreme head space, I also found some time to slot in a spot of research in the shape of a trip to a certain house which features rather heavily in Turn The Lamp Down Low. I'm still not sure whether to name it as being the actual venue of events (in or out of the book) but it's a pretty big deal to have the colour and the shape of the 'main character' fleshed out in their entirety before I go any further. It's been more than twenty years since I last visited 'the house'. Much has changed and yet, nothing has changed.

That's the way everything should be in life.

In amongst all of this, we managed to squeeze in a major family meal for 16 estranged people. We've had it on the table for almost a year now and you have to love it when a plan comes together. I think living rather a lot of life online can make you appreciate what life offline used to be like if you're of the mind to look at it that way. I got it into my head that it would be wrong for the next time we all saw each other to be at another funeral.

Take a look around. It's easy to fix if you find yourself in a similar situation. A phone call and a couple of emails is all it takes - and it was one of the best nights I've had in quite some time. It's good to see that despite far too many years disappearing under the bridge that everybody remains much the same. Like I said: Much has changed and yet, nothing has.

•••

Over the past weekend, I picked up a copy of  Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce. I read a tiny little review of it somewhere and figured I would give it a shot. Sometimes a book comes along that gives you a good kick in the ass just to remind you of a few things. Not in the way that those monsters like Jonathan Strange or Imajica did (for they are the Olympians that sit on the top of the mountain for me), but one that reminds you to be as consistently great as possible. To say it's easily the best book I've read this year so far would not be a lie.

From start to finish, it's absolutely captivating - I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it. When a young girl appears back at the family home after being missing for twenty years and swears on her life that it was the fairies that took her away, the book had better go one way (a full on children's fantasy) or the other (a magical journey into the dark side of the human psyche) in the most bombastic way possible and it's the latter of these paths that Joyce finds himself on. Give it a whirl. I've been telling everybody that cares to listen about it - there's no disappointment to be found here. It's truly beautiful. Beautiful enough for me to track down a copy of The Tooth Fairy by Joyce which has to be worth a damn.

I might even be ever so slightly jealous and that doesn't happen very often at all...

•••

As is always the way with my holidays, I come back with a head more full of ideas and concepts than when I left. This trip has been no exception. What I didn't expect was to find that somebody somewhere had tracked down my trial run of August Moon's first instalment - The Monster Magnet - and, better still, publicly say nice things about it. As soon as I've mastered the artwork for the covers, it appears it might be time to make the old beast public again and finally commit to the schedule I'd set up for it.

More later... lots of catching up to do.

Alphabet Street

I picked up a copy of Ronin Ro's biography of Prince yesterday - Inside The Music And The Masks. It's shaping up to be really good. I'd never heard of Ronin before but he seems to have his shit together and on closer inspection, I see he's been putting in the time at Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and Playboy, which doesn't automatically make him great but I'm liking what I've read so far. Must investigate further. (Edit: And now, having investigated further, this will be the only book I ever buy of his... still, Prince is Prince. It would take a monumental effort even for a schoolchild to mess up that story...) Yesterday morning, I was telling Mike over at the Void about how brutally punishing these "You Are Your Own Gym" workouts are. To which, he suggested that I might want to combine it with some yoga.

Not any old yoga. Man Yoga. Yoga from the mind of Diamond Dallas Page. That's right - he of The Diamond Cutter. Take a look at what's on offer here (not that I'm in quite as bad a shape as some of the grizzled veterans captured on video). It not only looks great. It looks hard and great, so I've scheduled into tomorrow afternoon. I tell you - it looks hard but I'll bet quite a large sum of money that it will be a lot harder than it looks too, at least for a few weeks.

So, with a combination of being my own gym and some knackered old wrestlers yoga plan (which is pretty much why I'm knackered anyway), things are looking up. Next stop? Triple Iron Man Challenge! Or maybe I'll settle for simply not feeling like a sack of hammers everyday. That sounds more like it. Anyway, looks to me like there's quite a number of discs to get through and Mike has loaned me the first one... this one could run and run.

Meanwhile, I've spent the last three nights putting together a proposal for an agent. I'm down to a shortlist of three (can I afford to be picky?) and take it from me, it's damned hard work analysing your work with a business mind. I don't think I'd much like to start a piece of work after I'd written a proposal - I think you'd lose the brilliance and fire of your idea and wind up trying to shove a square peg in a round hole.

I've also started work on Project X (more about that in about 6 months when it's complete), had a great idea for Project Y (which I don't think will ever get off the ground simply because of the concept behind it) and... well, I don't have a Project Z. That's a good thing at this stage of the game.

I almost forgot - travelling back in time like all groovy Time Lords do every now and again - I picked up a copy of The Amazing Joy Buzzards graphic novel 'Here Come The Spiders' at the weekend. I don't know why it slipped through the net when it came out but it's really good. Make that Really Good. Loads of great inventive and original material in it - and because it's slightly on the indie side of the tracks, gets away with a whole bunch of stuff that they never would otherwise.

This week, I've also gone back in time and I'm listening to Stephen King's On Writing again... well, actually I'm listening to it for the first time but I've read it before. If you're in the writing groove and sometimes wonder about exactly what the hell it is you're doing, it's always worth coming back to this place as a solid point of reference. It's never boring and always gets me back in the right mood whenever I hit those brick walls we all encounter every now and again.

Sometimes I wish I could read Stephen King for the first time again - stay up all night long ploughing through Pet Sematary or Salem's Lot and hoping to get at least half an hour of sleep before you had to get up for school - but then I think to myself, better just to concentrate on trying to be the person that some kid says that about in the future.

Aching legs, a mermaid and a cool chapter written...

I have to tell you, this You Are Your Own Gym routine is kicking my ass from one end of the street to the other and back again. I ache like I haven't ached in years and this is a good thing but trying to lower myself into the car this morning sure as hell told me I was doing something right. The other thing that I did right was to cancel my gym membership. There's nothing on offer there that can better this. So, thus far, really impressed with it and totally recommended. The downside of a harsh look at yourself is having to address things you really don't want to. My food intake has been out of control lately for no other reason than bad habits really. So last week, we decided to cut wheat from the household diet. Harsh.

Do you know how many things are made with wheat or have wheat as part of their make-up? It seems to be everything I've ever liked - but I can't handle any 'great idea' that's too complex as I never stick to it, so instead of doing a wheat free diet and having to look at every single thing in the cupboard, we came at it through the back door and simply decided that only meat, fruit and vegetables were allowed in. I've forgotten something... dairy. Dairy products are allowed as well at the moment but I'm going to have to look at that.

Anyway, all of this gym and food stuff has been propelled by a general feeling of going downhill and a need to arrest it. I guess you hit your forties and all those things you once took for granted begin to leave the building. Not that I'm knocking on heaven's door or anything like that, but I'm two Dads down and that kind of has a knock on effect in the head. Not that they had a habit of walking on the wild side or anything. Just the way the house of cards fell.

Anyway, super busy this weekend with lots of words being laid down for the day job - I'm sure those deadlines are getting closer together behind my back. On which subject - I started thinking about the next tattoo. I found this mermaid pic and it started a little chain reaction in my head. I know who I've got in mind to start the work but I reckon it's going to be at least six months in the planning before we even get started. All I know at this stage of the game is that it will be both complex and excellent by the time it's finished.

I'm chipping away at Raised on Radio on a daily basis now. I'm hoping it will be finished sooner rather than later so that I can spend more time than I currently have assigned on the design and production, but so far, so good. Other projects are also coming to the boil - by the end of the year, I should be in a really good place to launch the plan that is known behind the scenes as "2013". When I started these 'plans' in my head, it seemed really dumb to attach calendar years to them, but a fact of life is that as humans in the western world, this is how we measure our time. It works because it's easily divided into months and weeks. It's not set in stone but I can be a lazy dog sometimes and it helps - a little - to have this sort of timeframe to work within. I tried it the rock n roll way for years and got nowhere, so at least by embracing this loose plan, work is getting done. I guess it would be different if I had a publisher and agent breathing down my neck.

On days like today though, when a 3,000 word chapter on one of my favourite bands (Sweet) dripped from my fingers like they had been there all along, I don't much care.

On days like today, I know I'm doing the right thing.

Tomorrow... who knows. I was never much of a tomorrow person anyway. Let's wring this one dry first.

The Big Switcheroo

To drive a stake in the day that was Tuesday, we headed over to Waterstones/Cafe Nero in search of some kind of differentiation between day and night. Nero is kind of 'stuck on' to the bookstore upstairs and between the books and the coffee, somebody had made made a pop-up promo for 50 Shades of Grey on a little round table that also had a hand-made sign that read "Grab a copy of what everybody is reading". And rather obviously, piled up on the table were multiple copies of said book. I can't remember if I blogged about this or not, but when they did a similar thing at the supermarket last week, they shifted about 100 copies in about 10 minutes. However, they moved a grand total of zero in the bookstore. That speaks volumes to me - and it's essentially this: books placed in a supermarket and heavily discounted are bought by people who like to read but are prepared to be sold to/told what to read/haven't really got a clue what they want. People who go to bookstores in search of a read however are the complete opposite, know what they want (ish) and are prepared to hunt for it. Sure, there's some crossover there but not enough to be bothered about. This is partly why publishers have been able to propel somebody like Katie Price into the stratosphere and make her a bestselling author - because people are freaking lazy.

Why does this bother me? The publishers don't care, Ms Price doesn't, the people who buy her books certainly don't - everybody in the circle is happy. It's not jealousy that's for sure. Is it because I feel the people lapping it up have been duped? People get duped all the time in business.

Anyway - my big plan was to take some copies of Black Dye, White Noise and while nobody was looking, switch the copies of my book with 50 Shades, sit down for a coffee and wait to see what happened. And now that a big package has arrived with some more books in it, this afternoon I just might do that. I think it's a plan worthy of sacrificing a few books to.

LATER THAT SAME DAY:

For the last er… couple of years, ever since I took over The Mag for a living, I seem to have gone from 'pretty OK for my age kind of weight and physique' to 'not so pretty OK for my age kind of weight.' This week, I decided to do something about it - actually that's not true. Back in February I decided to do something about it. If you're up for a bit of a story and a little inspiration, read on.

A long time ago, I blew my knee (and shoulder, though not so bad) at jujitsu. Nobody to blame, just the way it panned out after previous years at tae-kwon do, wrestling and fencing. Stick that on top of ten years of thinking your invincible in a band and things ain't looking so hot in the joint department. For the record, being in a band is pretty good exercise. Equipment is not light to carry around, you get good at spacial awareness and flights of stairs and if you're playing/rehearsing properly, it's way more exhausting than hitting the gym. I tried out fencing again a few months back but even that put a stupid amount of pressure on the knee - this is what's prompted my rethink of 2012 (and I see now that I look, that 2012 is nearly over but never mind. There'll be another year along shortly).

So. I joined the gym back in February. It's a good gym. Clean, well run - that sort of thing. There's plenty of machines and free weights but I thought I'd stick to the machines initially because it locks your posture down and I don't need to be blowing anything out any more than it already is. Then, when I figured I was ready, the plan was to move across to free weights. I figured a year would be a good time frame to get this done in.

Fact of the matter is though, I'm not getting on so well with the gym no matter how well equipped it is. It's pretty dull even with an iPod and it's just another gym that thinks everybody wants to work out to high energy dance music - which I believe is technically not true - the best music for working out to is rock because most of it has a basic 4/4 rhythm. We all swim a few times a week on a good week, maybe twice on a bad/hectic deadline week but it's not enough - it keeps the wolves from the door but I need some kind of divine intervention and I think I've found it.

I'm one of those people who is more than aware of food content and calorie intake, but it won't stop me finishing off an entire cake or whole packet of biscuits if its in the cupboard (note: if you don't buy it, you can't eat it). Anyway, I found this book a couple of weeks back. It's called You Are Your Own Gym and, in a word, it's freaking excellent. It's the only book you'll ever need on the subject of your body and all it really takes - as far as I can tell right now - is commitment. I've done week one this week and I've got to say, for what amounts to a few simple exercises that take up about half an hour, it's the most brutally punishing workout I've ever done. Honestly. I ache in places I forgot even existed.

Now all I have to do is keep it up.

Simple. I think.

Black Dye, White Noise vs 50 Shades

There are way too many e-readers on the market right now, but I'm trying to keep up. The bastard stepchild is the kobo. I don't know anybody that owns one but I've seen people buying them so yesterday I made Black Dye White Noise available for it. Loading the book as an author is simple enough, pretty slick in fact. The reader 'experience' is varied. That's about the best thing I can say about it. During testing, I downloaded the desktop app for Mac which is OK I guess, but the app for the iphone is awful. Let me put it like this: I can throw a website together in a day but I can't even get the sample of the book to load on my phone. That's how complicated it is. I assume I'm missing something here but if I am, then everybody else must be too and that's not good. I'll roll with it, because it's the same source file that I used for ibooks and the kindle.

Give it time and only the strong will survive in this market and that will be a good thing.

Anyway, during my testing on the kobo, I must have had the 50 Shades trilogy pimped at me at least a dozen times. Thanks for that. Turns out e-readers have simply taken the same marketing strategy as bricks and mortar stores to sell their wares. All that technology and the entire contents of the internet at your feet and you choose to try and sell me the very thing I can buy in more places than I can get milk? Is that really smart, really dumb or just plain lazy?

Not my worry. Black Dye White Noise is available if you have a kobo and I'm moving on...

The Monday Carvery

Although it may not look like it, things are coming together nicely here. Sure - there's some tabs missing up in the navigation as of today, but there is a good reason behind it. Promise! For maybe the third time this year, I'll point out that I was taking the whole of 2012 to work on this site 'live' to get it where it needed to be and todays decisions contribute to that plan. So - while I'm busy doing stuff, I hope you don't miss anything in the meantime...

Smile for the camera...

Aside from the fact that my buddy Scott Cole took the time to be bothered to both mention and pimp Black Dye White Noise during an interview he did with Comic Book Resources and hit the tweetdeck with it too, the interview itself is more than worth a read for all kinds of reasons - particularly if you're a photographer who's treading the same old tired and worn boards and needs a shot in the arm (and who doesn't from time to time). My eldest daughter thinks she might want to be a surf  photographer when she leaves school (just a year away now - may the Gods have eternal mercy on my soul). As is totally correct when you're 15, in her head I'm sure she thinks this will involve hanging out at the beach and er, taking pictures of people surfing. For doing this, she will be paid handsomely by a surf magazine - preferably Carve - which is a great freaking mag if you've never read or want to see how a photo-based mag ought to be put together - and live in an apartment that looks like it once belonged to Rachel and Monica.

I'm totally behind her on this. Surfing is a great lifestyle to be a part of professionally and infinitely better than some dreams that she could have gotten into her head. Working with Scott as I do and also my other photo buddy, Chiaki (currently on tour with Daniel Craig and the 007 movie shooting set pieces for Warners in Japan), I know the harsh reality of being out in the field and how much you work you have to do to get  the tiniest percentage accepted into the media and an even tinier percentage that you'll actually get paid for.

If I tell her any of this, it will probably either a) kill it for her or b) make her think I don't know what I'm talking about. What would a great Dad do in this situation? Wait to be asked for help? Sneak help in whenever opportunity arises? Think 'fuck it, nobody ever helped me'? Pull all the strings I can lay my hands on? Turn the TV on and crack open a beer?

The best I can probably do is introduce her to these people at some point. They don't even need to say anything - I think just being able to see them working in a safe environment will be enough and certainly of more practical use than signing up to a class at school where they say it will last an hour and by the time teacher has cocked about doing whatever it is they do to waste time, being left with only 20 minutes. I worked with a BBC cameraman once, who while studying part-time to be said cameraman, told me that if he'd known how little work they do every day, he would have signed up for a full-time course and still been able to hold down a job.

I guess everything will work itself out. It always does.

The other one wants to be a vet, but she's only eleven. My hands are tied on that one...

Fuck Yeah Stop Motion

Great song too from the mighty Amanda Palmer doing her thing...

Ker-plunk!

In the defiant spirit of Cherie Priest - who likes to write things in her blog such as Things accomplished in fiction and Things accomplished in real life, I thought I might bring these two items to the table for today's blog post as I really like the way her blog publicly flaunts information such as: Project: Fiddlehead

Deadline: September 15, 2012

New words written: 1669 (it’s a start!)

Present total word count: 1669 words

So bearing that in mind, Mr Smith's kinda goes thus:

Things accomplished in fiction: rewrote chapter two of Turn the Lamp Down Low which brings me to a much better place than I was yesterday (in which I wondered why I was crucifying myself over something so small). I had to get to chapter seven of the book and then backtrack somewhat to get this right so it took a little longer than I really wanted to due to the amount of research involved. I say research, but creating a world from scratch and a magical ceremony that doesn't really exist that's weirder than what actually goes on in real life are not things that drip off my tongue easily. Actually, that's a lie - they drip off my tongue very easily. Putting them into sentences that other people want to look at is another matter entirely. Time to go forwards in time again now and hope I don't ever have to do that to myself again. (Dear other writers - is this normal?)

Things accomplished in real life: decided to rebrand the site here with the publishing company logo in the background (that's the Twin Earth sun/moon icon type thing that's suddenly appeared) and clean up some other scraps that were bugging me. Listened to the rest of Peter May's audiobook version of The Black House (which is very highly recommended from this quarter) whilst I took the wrappers off my page at about me. Not really necessary to make it live agan for any reason, but not doing any harm either. Next up - proofing the magazine and signing her off for print which will push me a good few hours into the evening. Then I had better get started on the next one - or at least have a clue as to what's going into it. Watched John Carter DVD that I stole off the kids this afternoon too. Good movie - don't believe what you hear on the grapevine, it's great fun. Note to self - remember to phone your mother... maybe. Is that enough for you?

Project: Turn The Lamp Down Low

Deadline: August 27th, 2012

New words written: 1,765

Present total word count: 7,342 words

I might have to rework the deadline on this. That date seems a bit close for the word count I was working towards but it might work out. Let's see where we are at the weekend. Just trying to keep focus on publishing in November as promised - to nobody but myself obviously, but still...

Stacked to the nines.

This week, I've pretty much punished myself at both ends of the candle putting out another magazine and clearing up on about 16,000 words in other writing. Around 10k of that was on Turn The Lamp Down Low (not including the words and the day I sacrificed twisting what was already completed on the first section from a first person narrative into third to make it work properly) - the other 6k was spent tightening up some other things I have on the boil here. Overall not a bad weeks work but I crashed and burned out last night and gave up trying to think my way through the fog and took Eleanor and the kids to see The Amazing Spiderman. I say 'took the kids' but as we all know, this is just deep cover for not having to go see a movie by yourself. Anyway, today, my goal was to crank it up again and put down a good 4,000 more on Lamp before the weekend took over but I have to admit I'm struggling - hence the blog post. Sometimes when I write these, it's to keep the machine moving. Quite often, while I'm typing out stuff on here, all the ideas slot into the right places while I'm not looking. And sometimes, you just have to sit back and look at the copious amounts of words you've written in the last few days and wonder how the hell you managed to make them all sound different from each other. In other news, started getting some good feedback this week over the initial copies of Black Dye, White Noise but am encouraging people to leave any feedback they have either at amazon or itunes rather than here. Sometime later in the month, which I haven't even looked at yet, I'm doing a DJ slot in a club for some promo that's related to something else but I think we might be able to squeeze in some BDWN action somewhere along the line. More on that when I come up for air. It's only a couple of weeks away so I guess I'd better get my game face on pretty soon.

Actually, there's quite a lot of news kicking about that I haven't thought about too hard. Biggest news of all is probably that some time in September, I'm headed out to Colorado on a mission. Not sure if there'll be time to do anything else other than work while I'm there, but it won't be for want of trying. More on that some other time, right now though, I think I shall hit the 'post' button on this, go offline and proof the mag before trying to muscle up the CMYK matter back on track...

Somebody get me a doctor

Remember when you were a kid and hearing some kinds of music blocked everything else and made life rock in a big way? This was one of mine:

Mr Ransom & Mr Smith on the blogging author.

A couple of weeks ago, I got in touch with Christopher Ransom (see review of his new novel The Fading here) about something so small, I can't even remember what it was but it propelled us into an email exchange on the pros and cons of blogging - on which subject he gave me the thumbs up to repost the contents of here. So in the interest of er... research on how important a blog is for a writer these days, here's the not so contrasting views between a published author (him) and  a 'not-published in the strictest sense of the word' author (me), here's that very conversation - unedited: Hey Sion,

First off, my apologies for being delayed in getting back to you.  I had a good friend in town for 5 days, during which we attended an author event for Tom Piccirilli, hit a Wilco concert at Red Rocks, hosted a bbq for my family, capping it off with one of my own author events in Boulder to promote the US release of my second novel, The Haunting of James Hastings, aka Killing Ghost (US).  Needless to say, after 5 days of work and play, all of which involved copious amounts of beer, I was flat exhausted and needed a day or two to get back on top of my correspondence ... well, enough of the excuse making.

 

I had originally intended to get back to you personally as I was intrigued by your blog response to my almost-blog about blogging.  I thought you displayed quite a bit of good humor and made the discussion interesting, especially considering I came off as a bit of jerk with respect to blogging.  The truth is, when I posted that "news" item on my site, I was lamenting my own crumbling will-power in the face of today's publishing needs and, I suppose, sending myself a bit of a reminder not to slack off on the book writing.  One of the main reasons I have held off on blogging is my fear of losing (wasting) valuable writing time.  I am, by nature, a procrastinator and time-waster when it comes to staring at my computer monitor.  And, in all honesty, I've seen too many would-be writers spend the lot of their time blogging or writing smaller pieces daily when they could have been writing 3, 5 or 10 pages of prose each day.  In other words, in addition to longing for the days when an author could afford to sit back and limit himself to writing novels and sending them off to his editor, with no further promotional responsibilities, I was talking to myself.  My post was something of a last gasp.

 

However, the reality is, that just-write-a-good-book publishing climate is gone.  If one is fortunate enough to have a publisher that promotes one's books (as opposed to simple binding and printing the thing and dropping it off at a few stores), one is EXPECTED to do one's part in flogging the book online, be that in one's blog, on Facebook, on Twitter, through email campaigns, etc.  As any writer or would-be writer knows by now, we are living in frightening times.  The book market is changing, book stores are vanishing, e-books are flourishing, revenue models are changing, self-published authors are riding a wave, mid-list authors are seeing their print deals go up in smoke, publishers are panicking about how to keep abreast of everything, and readers... well, readers are more discriminating than ever.  All this change is inevitable with the current advent of technology, but it does send author and publisher alike scrambling for a foothold.

 

Another reality I hadn't thought of, but which your post called to mind for me, is that we can't really know how the authors of yore, or those favorite authors of mine that I alluded to in my post, would have responded to the current technology and communication channels back in the day - because they simply didn't exist.  Would Stephen King, Dan Simmons, Clive Barker, Robert McCammon, Dean Koontz, and so many other horror, mainstream, or even literary authors have taken to blogging, tweeting, and Facebooking with their fans and the online community (whatever that is) in their day, had they possessed the tools?  I guess we can't know.  Except to observe that many of them are doing it now that they DO have the tools. All of them have formidable online presences, some of them staffed and well-funded.  So much for my notion of the old school, yes?

 

Which brings us back to the point I almost but didn't really make at all: I am in the process of ramping up my own online marketing efforts.  This will include a stronger and more professional Facebook presence, a Twitter feed run by my invisible friend Noel Shaker to help promote The Fading, and more updates on my author site.  I'm doing this for a few reasons.  One, I have realized that I spend too much time dallying online, contributing to other sites, when I could be building something of my own.  Another is, I am grateful for my readership and want to nourish that lest it go up in smoke.  And lastly but not in the least, my publisher has, ahem, 'encouraged me' to boost my efforts at online marketing and offered to boost their own in my service.  So, it's really a matter of playing the game the way the game is played nowadays.  It's making the most of the tools at hand, building a readership the way one builds a business, and meeting our publisher's commitment with deeper commitments of our own.  

 

Time will tell if my readers and new readers really are interested in hearing more from me than what I have been able to publish in novel form, once annually, but I admit I am curious to see where it leads.  I am in constant conversation about books, writing, publishing, movies, random events, ugly trends, and terrifying world developments -- all with my friends, in person and on other authors' forums.  The only real shift for me, then, will be to direct all that time and energy at my own channels.

 

Still, even as I type this, a little red light is blinking in the back of my skull.  Don't forget to write some new pages for the new novel today, that warning light is telling me.  Whore yourself out in all the best possible ways, it says, but don't forget the books.  The books are everything.  To siphon energy and commitment away from them, from their daily creation, is, after all, the first sin of any would-be professional author.

 

See how easy that was?  I think I just wrote my first new blog entry.  Thank you for continuing the conversation, and inspiring me to do so.

 

Feel free to post this on your site.  I plan to put this -- along with your very generous review of The Fading -- on my site, my Facebook page, and then plug it through Noel's Twitter feed @TheFadedMan.  

 

It's what we do now, isn't it?

 

Interesting huh? To which I responded:

These are certainly weird times we live in. Some of my most liked authors are successfully avoiding any sort of online presence at all (Chuck Klosterman, Bret Easton Ellis off the top of my head) and appear to be quite happy letting their publishers run the game for them. But to come full circle with it and to put it in some kind of perspective, I am unpublished with fiction (day job is another thing entirely) and I figured the odds were stacked against me anyway, so I began my journey planning to do absolutely everything myself. I'm kind of OK with this but I needed a great model to base it on - and I did just one thing. I copied Neil Gaiman. I really like his presence and how he deals with his audience, I like the insights into his life (even if it does seem more interesting than mine). So I decided that if Gaiman had a blog, I would too, Gaiman had a twitter account, so would I. It's advanced from this somewhat over the last 12 months but the foundation was there and  - despite still not having finished the book - feel like it's a good place to start if people do happen along to my online space. The one key thing that I think is critical in this is to NOT have a facebook page. I know so many people who are locked into the time-sucking satanism of it, it's frightening. Interestingly, none of them are particularly successful apart from on their own facebook page - which is bad self hype to believe in.

 

And it's weird too because I, like you, am a loyal reader. I will always check out Clive Barker etc... it's just how I am. James Herbert has almost nothing online, King is more info-driven, Koontz makes an effort now and again, but up against Gaiman, nobody is really knocking it out of the park. I don't think anything less of those guys because of it but like you say, that's not the game anymore... what about the readers who are in their twenties? You're going to be their Stephen King/Dean Koontz - what do they expect? I can't quite figure it out but luckily, I really like blogging. Without a publisher breathing down my neck I can blog about Queesryche if it want to or a sandwich and pretend to be on the level of Gaiman (er - that's my big plan - fake it til you make it) - do you think your publisher would expect rather more exact pimping of your own product? It's a tough call.

 

Writing is never what those who aren't writers think it is huh. For what it's worth, here's my overall thought on it. If 'you' (not you personally, obviously) want to interact with me and like what I do, I have a site and you can contact me there. I will answer (so long as you're not being an idiot). If I have something to say, that's where I'll say it. Nobody serious about what they are doing has time to go and knock on each individual 'fans' door to work like that. I am not Santa. If I've said something particularly great, other people can do the networking thing for me.

 

And that sits really well with me. Here are you and I - interacting, with purpose about something important, from an email. I'd check in or add you to my news feed and see what you had to say because I like what you do. That's enough. As a grown up, I don't expect you to drop everything to tell me what you had on your toast this morning... 

 

Man, we all griped when there were rules and gatekeepers. Now they have taken all those things away, we don't know what to do with ourselves.

 

I guess you just need to put one sentence after another and keep going... 

More came after this, but after that, it peters out into 'we have work to do' much shorter paragraphs and a promise to keep in touch and bandy around some more ideas. I guess the point of me republishing it here is this: just because you got somebody to 'print and distribute' your work (known in the trade as 'publishing'), doesn't mean you won't find yourself thinking about these things. Nobody is going to come and take it off your hands. There is no holy grail at the end of the line anymore - I'm not sure there ever was. We may live in frightening times but they can be exciting frightening times too if you care to keep hold of the umbrella when the hurricane comes knocking...

You can find Mr Ransom online here.

Twin Earth

Found myself with a lot of time this weekend and smartly threw it all into writing, but along the way I had a couple of ideas about some other things that crept into being. I read a decent article on branding last week and thought it was certainly worth checking over everything here which effectively meant making more work for myself. Cutting a medium length story very short, I worked on something that's been bugging me for a while. At the moment, I've not put a 'publishing company' name on any products and it's been haunting me that maybe I should. So I downed tools on Sunday afternoon, picked up some different tools and came up with a concept for my own publishing brand called Twin Earth. Eventually, I guess it will have to be set up as a business (because right now it's worth nothing at all believe me). Anyway, the logo looks like this at the moment:

and the mono version for internal usage:

I didn't want it to say an awful lot but I did want it to at least be recognisable and unobtrusive. By using a simple two colour scheme, one of which is a variation on the other, I think I should be able to consistently change the colour logo to match whatever cover design it has to go on. I'm going to sit on it for a little while and then, maybe in a week or so, I'll drop it on the cover of Black Dye, White Noise and Thieves and Vagabonds to see how it conducts itself. For the curious, there's no huge story behind it. A while back I wrote a song called Cobalt Rain in which one the lyrics is 'Now my twin earth is pacified' - and that's all there is to it. It's an expression I like a lot and somewhere deep down, I'm sure it means an awful lot more than I'm letting on.

Truth be told, I know it does but that's explanation enough.

With one eye on what I said a few days ago about doing things yourself and doing them properly, this is probably a good idea. If you missed what I said, the point was to make yourself look like a pro - and therefore become a pro. If you can't do it yourself, get somebody who is a pro to do it for you. In a market that's totally flooded and in the public eye every day, it's never been more important to rise above the MS Word brigade and set yourself apart. We've all seen them - a basic font dropped onto an awful picture and then sent out into the world to do some work for you. Sometimes I feel embarrassed for those poor products. 'They might sell well' I hear you say. Indeed they might, but so do a lot of things that are awful. It doesn't bode well in the long run and if I may re-quote myself here - it's like going to work in your pyjamas.

If you're unsure how to go about it, the answer is unbelievably simple. Take some products from a company that you respect, doubtless they'll be lying around on the shelf already - in my case this is Harper Collins because I really like their production values - and replicate what they do. It requires no small amount of thought but better to hold a torch up to Harper Collins than 'Joe Pistachio the self publisher' because essentially, the amount of work is the same whichever road you choose.

As a final word on the subject, if you really need some help, there are many students around on the internet who have redesigned book covers as part of various course projects. Some of the work I've seen out there is even better than the original commission that made it to the 'big shelves'. It's totally worth getting yourself immersed in this world if you want to set yourself apart. If on the other hand you're more than happy to be a one hit wonder... knock yourself out.

The world is watching.

The Fading: A Book Review

A prelude: I've thought of reviewing books here many times but shied away from it lest I feel the need to say something bad. Having said that, there's no harm to be reaped in playing nicely with other authors whose space I wish to share in the future. Perhaps a good way to approach this is by simply saying nothing at all about books that suck. This also appeals to my sense of time - why waste the precious stuff slating something I didn't like in the first place.

Which segues nicely into this. Christopher Ransom's shapely new novel.

It's been a while since I've read a book in a single sitting - or as much as a single sitting gets these days. Long gone are those times when you were 13 and could stash yourself away for hours on end and nobody would miss you. Ransom's previous novels (The Birthing House, The Haunting of James Hastings and The People Next Door) have all been great but read over a period of days and weeks - and that doesn't suit his style. What Ransom needs is for his stories to be chewed up and spat out as fast as you can to get the full benefit of what he's capable of. Interestingly, the inside cover of this UK version (I don't believe it's out anywhere else yet) has a teaser poster kind of thing going on that runs something along the lines of: "First there was King, then came Koontz. Now horror has a new voice..."

Something like that anyway. It's certainly the first time I've not laughed at such a statement. If you were into both of those guys the way they used to be before they got er... how shall we put this? Before they got complacent? Comfortable? Take your pick. Either way, Ransom will be right up your street. While he unintentionally mixes elements of both, Ransom is no copycat killer. He has a unique vision of all his own that I think he's only just starting to see for himself. Maybe four novels is how long it takes to settle into yourself and figure out what you think you're capable of...

The Fading is an easy read, there's nothing taxing here. It's simply a good old fashioned supernatural horror executed brilliantly. A lesser author would have taken me down a different path but Ransom, sure knows what he's doing. The book is lean as a fighting pig - there's no fat to speak of, no filler chapters that go on forever (oh yeah. we've all seen them and skipped over them, wondering why they were there in the first place) and no beating about the bush when it comes to plot. It even has a series of false endings - whether intentional or otherwise, it works great and made me kick back in the sofa and consider Mr Ransom pretty clever. A device certainly worthy of considering as I go forwards...

While I wouldn't consider it 'horror' in the traditional sense, I can see why it's being pushed down that road. It's as close as you'll ever get. Fact of the matter is, it stands alone. Think James Herbert when he pulled Moon out of the hat - or King when he mailed It out into the world. The similarities within the genre are easy to find but the key is that it really doesn't matter. The Fading has a fantastic idea behind it and an even better lead character who is able to pull it off. All supporting cast members are necessary. Honestly, there's no wastage here at all.

So, I guess whether you're hitting the beach soon, need something for a boring train ride or are just another victim of the hard drugs they're embedding into the paper they make books out of these days, The Fading really is worth the hours you'll give up out of your life for...

A Gathering...

Decided this morning to get my ass over to this at the weekend. With one eye on the future, it will be good to see how these things work, maybe shake some hands and drink some coffee.

Then I remembered I'm supposed to be going to some other 'event' of a 'keeping the peace in the house nature' and nothing to do with writing at all.

Decisions, decisions...

Sacked by your own band? You are not alone...

Funny the things that happen in the world when you're not looking. I found out today in this Rolling Stone article that Queensryche had fired Geoff Tate. Huh? How does that work? I asked myself - though, in reality, I know first hand exactly how that works. It was still something of a surprise though. No wait - surprise is not the right phrase. How about commercial suicide? If you're a fan of the band and happen to be passing by, your best port of call is to read it at source. It's full of Guns n Roses type conspiracy and rumour - but what I will say on it is how the hell do you even begin to replace Geoff Tate? That's like replacing Gene Simmons. No Geoff Tate = No Queensryche = No Interest from me and rather a lot of other people. Replacing Geoff Tate with the guy from Crimson Glory though? Well that's our relationship done and dusted for the future.

I'm sure there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that we'll never get to know about here but since Chris DeGarmo left the band in '98 (that's like, 14 years ago - wow), they've been a different band anyway. A band I've always had time for but that's only ever been because of Geoff Tate. I Certainly don't want to hear some other guy (who will no doubt want to bring his own creativity to the band now) delivering material that's been sitting in my heart since the mid-eighties. Read this as well if you want a shot at making your own mind up as to who cares about you, the listener...

But if it ain't working, it ain't working. Is this a good place to pimp Black Dye, White Noise and the interview I did with Tate on the release of Mindcrime 2? I can't think of a better place right now.

The Fading

I just can't help myself. I've got books piled high in some strange places right now - why I bought another, I'm not sure but I was picking up some vegetables last night (oh yeah - look at me knocking up real food from scratch) and I spotted Christopher Ransom's new release - The Fading. His previous: The Birthing House, The People Next Door and The Haunting of James Hastings (which has had it's name changed in the US to rather inferior Killing Ghost), have all been great reads. If you're in the mood for a skin crawler that's pretty much guaranteed to make the grade, The Fading is out on general release now. Ransom has a semi-blog here where he says that he should probably have a blog but nobody can surely be really interested, thus the 'blog' is disguised as 'news'. Looks like a blog to me though! In fact, what he actually said was this:

I really should have a blog or something more frquent to contribute to. You know, so that you will come back here again and again and I will become a fire brand in your brain and you will never, ever forget to buy my books. But then, if my books are earning that loyalty on their own, I'm pretty much sunk, aren't I? And I don't think I have all that much interesting to say that doesn't get fed one way or another into my books. Do any of you really want to read about what cute thing my dog just did today? So you care what my politics are? Where I had lunch today?

Probably not.

Or maybe some of you do, but still. I can't help feeling like such "blog" entries are a waste of my time and yours. There are enough opinions out there for people to gorge themselves on for a couple centuries, most of it about as nutritious as pre-digested celery. You need more opinions shoved down your throat like I need another spam voice mail to my cell phone. Right?

To put it another way, when I was growing up we didn't have blogs, and my favorite authors didn't blog, and I didn't miss hearing more about their personal lives, at least not unless it had to do with how such personal things helped them become a writer or how it influenced their work. My heroes didn't opine on the latest trends, celebrity divorce, or failed legislation. They just quietly went about writing novels, year after year.

When people whose work I like say things like this, I wonder exactly why I blog. What are we now? Four years into it perhaps. Maybe more. There's not much of real-value on here that, if something big happened, anybody could possibly be interested in. Sometimes I feel like I could flick the switch on it tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference to anything - and it wouldn't.The key phrase in Ransom's statement for me is "I can't help feeling like such "blog" entries are a waste of my time and yours." Ouch. That smarts a bit because it's got more than a few grains of truth in it.

It takes a lot of time and effort to blog consistently - and I will be the first to admit that the subject matter has veered around here more than I would have liked. They - the 'experts', that is - say that a successful blog is 'about something'. Sorry. Can't do that. There's too much life in the world to talk about just one thing. Too many great things to find and discover to confine yourself to one single focus. Experts tend to define 'success' as 'money' anyway and that's not always the purpose of something is it.

That's a really tough decision - shut down blog and spend more time writing proper things - or continue as normal?

After I posted the Lulu comments yesterday, I carried it around with me all day thinking that I had been harsh quite unintentionally - well, anybody who happened to pay attention to it. After all - who the hell am I to be preaching to the world? But I still think it's true. If you're going to do everything yourself with your story, why would you want it to look as though you had only spent five minutes on it? The extension of that for me though was, does it really matter, if thousands and thousands find themselves reading your book? Surely that's the important thing?

Hmm. Somehow it seems like going to work in your pyjamas to me...