THE PEN IS MORE PORTABLE THAN THE SWORD
Here Come The Beats...
Groovy set of jacket designs for some of the Beat greats. These from Lucy Stephens. I might have to get in touch and ask her to do some work on Almost Human for me… I fucking love these.
(Just two more posts to go before I've pulled all of the tumblr blog in...)
Time To Walk The Walk and Talk The Talk...
I pretty much started this blog 12 months ago and announced right up front that much of 2012 was going to be spent getting the right things in the right place - and for the most part, I think I achieved that. There's still some work to be done but most of it is of a personal nature and simple upgrades - figuring that some things might work better if played a different way, but right now that's besides the point. As part of that year of building the site - or 'author house' to give it it's proper name - I thought that 12 months would be more than long enough to make a decision on whether to seek out an agent and therefore a publishing house to call home or to press on alone and publish my own material. In the first of these scenarios, the benefit for me was not actually in the publishing and the 'hey look everybody - xxxx publisher thinks I could be a contender' approval that I carried around with me for a long time, but in the distribution. To put it simply, to get a book published by a decent publisher means that all the hard work (and it is hard work) of getting your product in front of reader's faces, would be done behind the scenes without having to care too much about it. When your books appear on the shelves of Waterstones and all of the high street supermarkets overnight, it's a big deal - I would imagine. That's your product out in the world all over the country, all at the same time. I'm sure that's a great feeling. Maybe we'll come back to that one day.
In the financial stakes in this scenario, here's an extract from the 2006 edition of Self Publishing for Dummies - which whilst a little old now (and I didn't actually buy but instead took a photograph of this page in the bookstore), still has some nuggets of wisdom that are worth a damn:
Major publishers typically pay authors a recoupable advance, plus a pre-determined royalty on book sales as compensation. Writers who self-publish their books, however, must cover all their project's development, printing, distribution, and marketing costs out-of-pocket. The profit potential, however, can be significantly greater. Instead of receiving a 25-cent, 50-cent, or even a dollar royalty for each copy of your book sold, a self-published author can earn 40 to 60 percent of the book's cover price and sometimes even more. So, if your book sells for $15 per copy and you sell just 1,000 copies, the profit is between $6,000 and $9,000.
Conversely, if you're an author whose book is published by a major publishing house, you earn only a 25-cent royalty per book. If that book only sells 1,000 copies, your earnings are a mere $250. As initial sales are generated from your book, you potentially have to repay your outstanding advance to the publisher. (If the book doesn't sell, however, the advance doesn't need to be repaid.) Even if that's been done, your literary agent often takes between 15 and 20 percent of your earnings as his commission. If the major publishing house sells tens of thousands of copies of your book, as the author, you stand to earn a decent income. This, however, doesn't always happen.
Another benefit to self-publishing is that you don't have to wait three to six months to receive royalty checks from the publisher. Authors who have their book published by a major publishing house often have to wait for the money they've earned, but self-published authors tend to be paid a lot faster, especially on copies of the book they sell directly to customers. Self-published authors also aren't subject to a withholding of royalties as a reserve against returns for up to six additional months. As a self-publisher you stand to earn more money per copy of your book sold, but it's also considerably harder, but not impossible, for self-publishers to get distribution in major bookstores.
On this last sentence, at the rate tablets have been selling this year (24.7 million of them were activated on Christmas Day this year - which I look upon as 24.7 million bookshops that have just opened in households across the land) I find that last point somewhat irrelevant now - although make no mistake, it's even harder to get your easily published digital book seen on the pages of amazon and ibooks, but at least you can do something about it instead of sitting at home seething about what a clandestine bunch of motherfuckers WHSmiths are.
Anyway - the point of all this was that I would call myself out on whether to go traditional and seek an agent and a publisher (both of whom are probably more than well aware of how shitty the distribution chain can be already) or do it myself, because not deciding at all meant that I couldn't really say what I thought about either one with 100% conviction. So here goes:
I'm going to do it myself.
There are more than financial reasons behind this - there would have to be. It's sure as hell not a fast track to riches. Assuming I can do the work (the writing) I can feasibly publish a good six books a year about anything I like. Working with a publisher I am likely to release just one and get dropped into a genre I will find it hard to get out of in the future. I don't like that concept. This last year I've spoken to over a dozen authors who, while I might not be able to call them friends yet, are certainly acquaintances, and not one of them has ever said "I am over-the-freaking-moon happy with my publishing deal". Not one. Some are doing OK, some are taking it as it's handed out and rolling with the punches, others are wriggling and wanting out, some are even considering going it alone. In this last example, I think it's a great idea - especially when you've already had some success in the big wide world and don't have to start from absolute zero.
I have to be honest. It's a scary thought - doing it all yourself. I mean, there are probably good reasons why publishers like to pigeonhole their authors. It probably helps a lot in the selling stakes and assists the lazy with where to find you in stores, but looking at it another way, the percentage of authors who make it to the shelves with any promotion worth speaking of are in a teeny tiny percentage. I've read a lot of them. Some are worthy, some are not. Some are still even being pushed off the back of The DaVinci Code - can you believe that? In fact, not even the book itself but more that the cover design is slightly similar to Brown's masterwork. So, in the long term, what the hell huh? How much less of a snowball's chance in hell can I get?
Not very many of these guys ever hit the road to do signings either. Shit, with a reasonable advance, that would be the first thing I'd do with the money. What a great investment in yourself, surely?
So, like I said, time to walk the walk and talk the talk - and there are many things I (or any author) can do for themselves. The 'trick' is to treat yourself how you would want PanMacmillan or Penguin to treat you in an ideal world. Over the next few months, I'm going to post my accumulated knowledge here and be proud to be doing it myself. I'll let the public decide if I fall into the 'holy shit, this is great' or the 'as I suspected, just another self published author of averageness' category. It doesn't really matter - take a look at any product reviews on amazon for the best authors in the world and you'll still find a split in opinion. That's what you buy into when you play the internet game - everyone's a critic.
To wrap up, I'm looking to build a writing career. Period. I don't want to put my trust in bean counters who may one day need to cull or recoup. I don't want to put my trust in a project manager whose idea of a great cover is not the same as mine. I've read constantly for over forty years now - I think I know a good cover when I see one. Neither do I want to believe in a promise that I'll be a priority when I'm not - nobody can promise me that except myself (and sometimes even I just want to kick back and watch cheap TV for five minutes). The bigger question in the scheme of things for me has always been - if you get dropped from your publishing house (much as a band can get dropped from their record label), what other big publisher is going to look at you twice knowing a competitor couldn't make it work?
So let's see what happens.
Footnote: the only big change I'm going to make here (if you've been following progress so far) is that I don't like my self created 'publisher brand' of Twin Earth that I created. So I'll be changing that soon. Not that it matters to you. Just dotting the i's and crossing the t's...
Footnote 2: It's now 4.22 am. Have laid in bed listening to Bill Bryson touring this Small Island for over an hour, so have decided to not sleep but instead get back up and work on said 'publisher brand'. Is this how it's going to be?
The Social Butterfly
I should know better than to 'do nothing' in what amounts to the last seven days of the year. Doing nothing allows errant thoughts to enter through the inner ear resulting in (sometimes) action being taken. Today has been a purging kind of day. Having evicted most of the physical clutter from the house since we moved in here nearly eighteen months ago, today I started work on the digital clutter. Oh yeah - that shit mounts up faster than supermarket carrier bags in the second drawer down. I repeat the exercise here simply because I figure you might get some use out of it. Actually, some of the de-cluttering was so long overdue that I've already forgotten what the hell it was:
Twitter: Been seriously thinking about shutting down that account for a couple of months now, which would leave me with only pinterest. I never really got on with twitter in a big way. I occasionally drop some 'funny as hell' statement on there and half a dozen people think I'm great for four seconds but that's about the long and the short of it. 1: I can't do anything in 140 characters. 2. I'm not really interested in what anybody else has to say in less than 140 characters. 3. Anybody pimping their wares of interest across twitter can't be that serious about their shit, right? 4. My kids think it sucks - that means everybody still on it is at least five years behind the times. My kids like to... get this... talk to each other. Sadly, I still have some day job still invested in the old network so I need to see whether I would be missed or not. Somehow I doubt it. If you found yourself un-followed today, don't take it personally. I still love you but either a) I am testing the leaving waters or b) I still love you but your tweets bore me to death and you should probably think about leaving too...
Pinterest: I kind of like this one, so for now it can stay. I like dumping shit on there that I see across the web and not having to administer it in any way. Time will tell... it's not important right now. There's been enough carnage for one day.
Email: This was a big job. Somehow, I have ended up on a lot of mailing lists ranging from publishing companies letting me know their latest releases across the board to people and things I might have once thought were a good idea. All fixed now. An empty inbox is a sexy inbox - unless of course it contains something you actually want to see - which was always kind of the point anyway, wasn't it? This tactic now also has some rules to go along with it. Time not spent dealing with nothing at all, leaves a hell of a lot more time available for creating.
AddShit: Yeah, I know it wasn't called that, but you'll notice (or maybe you won't) that I've removed the AddThis 'thing' from the bottom of each blog post. I'm sure everybody that stops by here is smart enough to paste a link into something else of their own choosing if they want to share a post. Mostly though, it occurred to me that for every post I wrote, it ended with the promotion of somebody else's brand. So I write 800 words and the last thing you see is a twitter icon... or a google icon... or an icon icon. That's about as smart and as useful as sticking my thumb in my eye after each post. So, fuck that shit.
It took me about an hour to sort all of this out but it's probably cut down what I lovingly call 'cocking about time' by a good few hours a week. The cause of this frenetic culling? I started flipping through a book called AntiFragile by Nassim Taleb which hammered home the message that as someone that wants to write books for a living, I should be writing books for a living and not getting sidetracked by emails, what other people are doing etc... I want to spend any time I do free up for myself, doing the things I love for myself - hanging out with the kids, travelling, raising ancient woodland God's from their slumber... those sorts of things. That's a very brief generalisation of it but you get the drift - and though many people have said this to me previously, maybe it was the way he said and what he was talking about at the time that clicked it into place. Good book. Go find it.
I Remember Now...
Back in 1992/93, when the 'band' was rolling at its finest, I went through a period of songwriting in which I blanked everything. I didn't buy any records, I didn't go and see any tours (and even though I missed some great bands, I still don't regret it) and I tried as much as possible to not be influenced by anything. It's really hard to do when everyone around you is doing the exact opposite but it was during that period that I came up with some of my best material - yeah, I know, that's a matter of perspective but in the big scheme of all the songs I wrote, those were definitely the best no matter what. I'm thinking that it might be time for such an event to happen again - with a few bolt-ons. Internet blackout as much as I can (given the day job), no news, papers, magazines, no radio talk shows (that means music only - something I can more than cope with) - those kinds of things. I'm tempted to blackout the books too and I'm pretty sure I can do it. Downtime will be fed with a few picked off TV shows and some trips to the movies.
The point of all this? Finishing work off and finding my own voice again. I'm giving way too much attention to others when I need to be occupying that space for myself. Does that sound dumb-ass? It's not supposed to but I need to take control. It's a good plan. I've also been reading about how Winston Churchill threw the rule book out when it came to 24 hours in a day. He recreated his day to be eight hours long, then slept for four and ran it in a cyclical fashion for the rest of his life. I don't know if this is true or not but it sounds great. Eight hours on/four off sounds like you could jam a mega-ton more into a day than normal people. How would that work out? Let's see what happens if we start this on a Monday:
Wake at 9am.
Sleep at 5pm.
Wake at 9pm.
Sleep at 5am
Wake at 9am
Sleep at 5pm
Wake at 9pm and so on...
I guess what you'd benefit from this is a whole working day and then a whole other eight hours during the night when you can do a ton of stuff that you didn't expect to for another eight hours - but you'd still be ready to roll at nine the next day without missing a beat. The initial start time might need adjusting otherwise there could well be starving children not too happy about that at all, but I think we could get around it with some proper thought attached.
Actually, it needs a lot more thought...
Anyway, the point of that was to get closer to my own voice. It's surprising how much the things you let in influence you without you really knowing about it. Not that I think I'm drifting away from myself - I prefer to call it sharpening the saw - but when you see a blunt edge coming... best do something about it.
Free Short Stories - Crime, Monsters, Wrestling And A Missing Eyeball
It's been a day of cleaning up here. Notebooks out, trying to collate all of the digital notes into some semblance of order - that kind of thing. I re-read some of the story work I did across the Spring and Summer and although I posted them here previously, chose to take them down and then, today, chose to put them back up again. So excuse me if I commit that most horrendous of sins and engineer this post to conform to some kind of SEO results (cue a ton of junk mail from people I don't know who will try and tell me they didn't notice me in the top three google results and for eight trillion dollars they can fix that for me and zintuple my income) for it to get picked up. One of the downsides of not playing the fb game I guess - so here goes (regular check-iners, just sweep across the next paragraph - it pains me too): Today I reposted some short stories. I was going to rough them up and make them free short stories for kindle but then I figured my time was better spent writing some new material, so chose instead to post them here instead. You can click that if you like - or hit the short stories tab up above. The first resurrection is the ongoing supernatural crime serial in the shape of short stories featuring Inspector Kang. I kind of like how that's panning out but I have no idea where it's headed. I may rework it when I get to around part six or seven but there's something about 'growing up in public' that appeals to me. The same goes for the August Moon serial - dear SEO spider, that's a free supernatural story kind of thing with monsters in it - which will head off in a very different direction. Somewhere in my head, the worlds of Kang and Moon collide but it certainly won't be for a little while yet. There are things that happen in free supernatural monster and pulp crime short stories that need to be written about first. (See what I did there?)
If anybody passing by really would like them for the kindle, drop me a note and I'll get it done. They're all here, ready to go but I need to re-design the covers on the master files - if you're curious as to what they look like, scroll down (or up if my SEO didn't work and you turned up here late) and you'll fine them. On which subject, I've decided to kill off all the third party material that used to appear in that column. I deleted my instagram account yesterday. Aside from the 'media furore' about them being able to sell your stuff and then retracting the statement, I found that to be like your girlfriend saying she wanted an open relationship and then changing her mind when you got the suitcase out from under the bed for her. But rather simply put, I'm not a photographer and have nothing of value to share in my instagrams anyway.
That's why the God's invented blogs... isn't it? "Come on world, let's micro-blog with our micro-minds." No thanks (Will that count as a good SEO keyword?)
COMMERCIAL BREAK:
New Harry Bosch is always good news right? I'm listening to this in the car right now (well, not right this second obviously) but with all that muscle behind them, is that really the best book trailer they could come up with? Sounds to me like every police procedural novel I've ever read. Get your act together guys...
The Global Village
It's the day after my birthday and I officially start the first day of my 2012 holidays. I took a few days in the summer but not since this time last year have I had an extended period of being able to not have to pay constant attention to the day job. I need it, Eleanor and the kids need it - even the house needs it. On one hand, it seems like a mighty long time to wait, on the other, what better time than Christmas to be able to kick back and chew things over. After dropping the kids off at school this morning, on the drive home I decided that I would change a few things - the biggest one being to spend less time online. It crossed my mind that I probably spend far too much time attached to wifi. I might even be a hotspot for others I spend so much of my time there. It strikes me that I need to rejoin the human race at least for a little while but the real reason is that I need to write more without distractions. Sure - there's tools you can use to cock-block the web while you're working on your machine but I am not to be trusted. There's iTunes to mess with and all kinds of garbage that I can be distracted by on here... I'm going to see how it pans out without kicking myself in the head if I fail. It is, at least, a plan.
Slightly related to that subject, but not really, yesterday I ran through the blog of Neil Strauss. It's good fun but somehow I found myself clicking through to a site where some dude had detailed his 'digital nomad' gear kit. A digital nomad is, apparently, somebody who works out in the world without a permanent base. This can be a traveller of the world or even somebody that works from home or a cafe etc. I fall somewhere in between these two things. If you check in here often, you'll know that I hate travelling heavy. The lighter I can travel, the better I feel about a trip, so I did the pointy clicky thing and went to see what the kit lit looked like. And here it is with an update of the older list for this year here.
And while that was all very interesting, I thought to myself that aside from my books and vinyl collection, that's actually more stuff than I own. So I thought I might make a better list - along with some thoughts. I guess if you're going on an extended trip, you might need to add some bits, but for short break - even for periods up to a month, I think my list is far superior. Here we go.
When I went to Colorado a little while back - which is something like 7000 miles and therefore classed as 'far away', here's what I had on my original list:
And that was pretty much it apart from the clothes I was wearing. I considered taking the iPad but what does it do that this doesn't. Sure it's a bit smaller but I've trained myself to work small for a long time now for these very reasons. Is watching episodes of Grimm going to be less enjoyable on a small screen? Nope. Hell, at one time, I used to watch movies on my iPod - the one that looks like an After Eight mint (was that the original nano?) and that's tiny. I can read a book perfectly happily on the phone too - with iBooks and the kindle app on there, I sure didn't need anything else. I pre-loaded with a few audiobooks just to make sure. Loaded a couple of thousand songs and well, that was me pretty ready to roll out of the door.
I set the phone up to sweep photos and video into dropbox when I hit wifi spots, that was pretty flawless. The camera and video utilities are more than good enough for what I use them for and anything I really needed could be pulled down from there or any of the other spaces I have online for digital storage. I have an external hard drive, but that's for disaster recovery not playing with and at no point did it ever cross my mind to take the MacBook. Those things are heavy. Before I went, I also tested out the voice memo facility for interviews - and again, flawless. What the hell is that kit list from hell about? I dropped it in my jacket pocket and I was ready to roll - and yeah, in the other pocket was the charger. I've also got one of these that negates the need for a wallet too:
Now, my plan was to go in the clothes I was wearing and buy things like socks, pants, toothpaste, shampoo - you know all that stuff that's essential - when I got there because something that a lot of people seem to forget is that... wait for it... there are stores all over the world where the people that live there shop! It's amazing. The idea then is to dump it all before you come home so you don't have to carry it back. Wasteful? Not really. Not if you shop smartly and it's not like there are no people not in need of this stuff everywhere around the world.
This great plan was thrown into turmoil however when more than one person suggested that it might look suspicious getting on a plane to the States with no luggage. I'm not sure how true this is but I ended up taking a bag. This bag from Scaramanga. I put some shirts in, some underwear, a book (but only because I was taking a damn bag) and that was about it. The good thing about a bag like that is that you don't need to check it in and therefore don't have to wait for the luggage carousel - well, technically. My travel partner James had a case, so I ended up waiting for him waiting for his case, but the theory is solid.
If you think hard about what it is you'll be doing when you get there, how you want to entertain yourself and what kind of business you need to do (if any), you too will probably find that any old smartphone will be enough. Just don't lose your phone!
As part of an ongoing purge of garbage in my life, I've also thrown out at least 30 apps from the phone that seemed like a good idea at the time. There were maybe only 40 on there anyway. I've tried every kind of 'word processor' out there on the phone and the pad from Pages right down to well, you name it, I've tried it. Nothing comes close to Evernote. Nothing. Do yourself a favour and sign up to a premium account with them. If you need to work on the road, this is all you'll ever need. Then do yourself another favour and believe that you really can write a novel using only an iPhone.
•••
..and now, I am going to find a coffee shop with no wifi. Me and my notebook have things to do. I'll leave you with Dave:
The Global Village
It's the day after my birthday and I officially start the first day of my 2012 holidays. I took a few days in the summer but not since this time last year have I had an extended period of being able to not have to pay constant attention to the day job. I need it, Eleanor and the kids need it - even the house needs it. On one hand, it seems like a mighty long time to wait, on the other, what better time than Christmas to be able to kick back and chew things over. After dropping the kids off at school this morning, on the drive home I decided that I would change a few things - the biggest one being to spend less time online. It crossed my mind that I probably spend far too much time attached to wifi. I might even be a hotspot for others I spend so much of my time there. It strikes me that I need to rejoin the human race at least for a little while but the real reason is that I need to write more without distractions. Sure - there's tools you can use to cock-block the web while you're working on your machine but I am not to be trusted. There's iTunes to mess with and all kinds of garbage that I can be distracted by on here... I'm going to see how it pans out without kicking myself in the head if I fail. It is, at least, a plan.
Slightly related to that subject, but not really, yesterday I ran through the blog of Neil Strauss. It's good fun but somehow I found myself clicking through to a site where some dude had detailed his 'digital nomad' gear kit. A digital nomad is, apparently, somebody who works out in the world without a permanent base. This can be a traveller of the world or even somebody that works from home or a cafe etc. I fall somewhere in between these two things. If you check in here often, you'll know that I hate travelling heavy. The lighter I can travel, the better I feel about a trip, so I did the pointy clicky thing and went to see what the kit lit looked like. And here it is with an update of the older list for this year here.
And while that was all very interesting, I thought to myself that aside from my books and vinyl collection, that's actually more stuff than I own. So I thought I might make a better list - along with some thoughts. I guess if you're going on an extended trip, you might need to add some bits, but for short break - even for periods up to a month, I think my list is far superior. Here we go.
When I went to Colorado a little while back - which is something like 7000 miles and therefore classed as 'far away', here's what I had on my original list:
And that was pretty much it apart from the clothes I was wearing. I considered taking the iPad but what does it do that this doesn't. Sure it's a bit smaller but I've trained myself to work small for a long time now for these very reasons. Is watching episodes of Grimm going to be less enjoyable on a small screen? Nope. Hell, at one time, I used to watch movies on my iPod - the one that looks like an After Eight mint (was that the original nano?) and that's tiny. I can read a book perfectly happily on the phone too - with iBooks and the kindle app on there, I sure didn't need anything else. I pre-loaded with a few audiobooks just to make sure. Loaded a couple of thousand songs and well, that was me pretty ready to roll out of the door.
I set the phone up to sweep photos and video into dropbox when I hit wifi spots, that was pretty flawless. The camera and video utilities are more than good enough for what I use them for and anything I really needed could be pulled down from there or any of the other spaces I have online for digital storage. I have an external hard drive, but that's for disaster recovery not playing with and at no point did it ever cross my mind to take the MacBook. Those things are heavy. Before I went, I also tested out the voice memo facility for interviews - and again, flawless. What the hell is that kit list from hell about? I dropped it in my jacket pocket and I was ready to roll - and yeah, in the other pocket was the charger. I've also got one of these that negates the need for a wallet too:
Now, my plan was to go in the clothes I was wearing and buy things like socks, pants, toothpaste, shampoo - you know all that stuff that's essential - when I got there because something that a lot of people seem to forget is that... wait for it... there are stores all over the world where the people that live there shop! It's amazing. The idea then is to dump it all before you come home so you don't have to carry it back. Wasteful? Not really. Not if you shop smartly and it's not like there are no people not in need of this stuff everywhere around the world.
This great plan was thrown into turmoil however when more than one person suggested that it might look suspicious getting on a plane to the States with no luggage. I'm not sure how true this is but I ended up taking a bag. This bag from Scaramanga. I put some shirts in, some underwear, a book (but only because I was taking a damn bag) and that was about it. The good thing about a bag like that is that you don't need to check it in and therefore don't have to wait for the luggage carousel - well, technically. My travel partner James had a case, so I ended up waiting for him waiting for his case, but the theory is solid.
If you think hard about what it is you'll be doing when you get there, how you want to entertain yourself and what kind of business you need to do (if any), you too will probably find that any old smartphone will be enough. Just don't lose your phone!
As part of an ongoing purge of garbage in my life, I've also thrown out at least 30 apps from the phone that seemed like a good idea at the time. There were maybe only 40 on there anyway. I've tried every kind of 'word processor' out there on the phone and the pad from Pages right down to well, you name it, I've tried it. Nothing comes close to Evernote. Nothing. Do yourself a favour and sign up to a premium account with them. If you need to work on the road, this is all you'll ever need. Then do yourself another favour and believe that you really can write a novel using only an iPhone.
•••
..and now, I am going to find a coffee shop with no wifi. Me and my notebook have things to do. I'll leave you with Dave:
Welcome to the Freakshow
I've got an interview scheduled for tonight with Austin from Hinder. I like Hinder a lot - they fulfil the needs that I have for what the lazy people call 'stadium rock' (amongst other things). Alongside of Nickelback, these two bands more than cover the bases required by my soul. What's odd about the situation is that both of these bands are easy to knock by critics and regularly are, but I like what I like and that's pretty much the end of the story. Or is it?
Let me see, it's Wednesday. This week I've listened to this new Hinder album (called Welcome to the Freakshow if you hadn't made the connection) but I've also listened to the first three albums from Kate Bush, spent a few hours on some jazz station trying to understand the damn thing, reverted to type with Soundgarden's King Animal, revelled in the nostalgia of Japan's Adolescent Sex, tried on the revamp of War of the Worlds (which is pretty hot) and nodded my head at James Arthur's victory on X-Factor this year - because despite what you may think of the show, that guy is gonna make something of the shot he's got. That's an off the cuff list too - I use rdio as my main fix these days, so for good or bad, this shit gets data-logged. Realising this means that I need full disclosure that out of curiosity, I tried to listen to the Little Mix album but only got about three tracks in before it had to go - you can't win 'em all.
There's a big difference between being a critic and just some dude who loves music and happens to write. There seems to be a 'point' to being a critic, like you're trying to build yourself up into something - and while that might have been valid back in the seventies and eighties when there were only a fistful of magazines worth a damn, as we approach 2013, it's not and that's because I can find you over 100 review sites at the flick of a wrist. Each has an opinion, some are better written than others but my point is that if you disagree with a review - be that music, movies or even a watch you bought yourself - you're just going to head off to find a review site that you do have something in common with to prove your point. Worst still, there is no differentiation between the two. People will take what they need and ignore the rest.
These days, being a critic means very little - so much so that I have backed out of doing them anymore. It's a pointless exercise, I think I would rather say my piece here where it's a part of something else. Part of a bigger story to be had because to do the other thing, is to not love music. It's to love yourself and think your opinion matters.
Anyway, over on rdio, there was a 'critic's review' of Freakshow that seemed to serve nobody but the writer himself. I hope he felt good about himself afterwards. I can picture the scenario because I've been there. Lots of things to do, give the album a listen on radio because it's free and requires no effort. Dip your hand into the pit of dirty adjectives that are in your head and presto! A review that makes you feel as though you pointed out something valuable. I know, I know - everybody is entitled to their opinion.
But I just couldn't keep my mouth shut (click it to make it bigger if you need to):
The original is not even that objective. It reads as though it was on the hate pile before the first track had even finished. Sometimes, I suspect I take this stuff too personally for my own good. It's only rock n roll.
Just keep telling yourself, it's only rock n roll...
INTERLUDE:
Being as that's what we're talking about (no video releases yet from the new album):
•••
I bought a new book yesterday - Everyone Loves You When You're Dead by Neil Strauss. I finished it yesterday too. I lost a lot of the evening, all of the night and closed the book when the temperature hit -3 and it was very, very dark. Sometimes, you need to read a book like this. Sleep can be had any day of the week but when you're into the drag of a good read, it shouldn't be pushed off the road by something that will come around again tomorrow. If you're in the market for a neat Christmas present for the music lover in your life, it's really good and a no-brainer. It's also part of the two for a tenner deal in HMV at the moment, so you could double it up with a copy of Mick Wall's Lep Zep book maybe, which is what I did.
•••
More later. Promise. Things to do right now...
A Whole Lot Of Rosie
I find myself staring down the barrel of having to take care of some things hanging off the business end of the stick here. That sounds worse than it is actually - it amounts to tuning the DAB radio into Hairband FM and riffling through blog posts of those who are much further ahead in the writing game than I am (or at least when it comes to bodies of work). Disappointingly, I find that Nick Hornby has fallen right off the blog radar. As he points out himself, he is possibly the world's worst blogger (he's not, I know way slacker people with far more than a two year gap since the last post). Mr Hornby is however a great example of something I would pay good money to get behind the paywall of. I wouldn't expect the world from him and he could always divert any funds he made to his Treehouse project if it made him feel better. It will happen one day with somebody that's for sure - the world will go to war over being expected to pay for such things but as a daily blog surfer, I'd be behind such a thing and you can't argue with the Treehouse idea. It's not like you'd be giving things away for free when you haven't posted for two years? Is it?
Mostly, I think that one day, someone with balls of steel will figure out that to make things 'special' again in the world, we're not going to be able to give stuff away for free forever.
Mr H/Penguin - you can have that idea if you like and count me in.
Talking of which - and I hope I don't get bullets flying into my inbox - here's one of Nick's posts from a really long time ago that made me laugh hard and long:
In Borders… I watch with fascination as a local author rearranges the shop in order to optimise his chances of sales. He is not happy with the container that has been clipped to the section of the bookshelf displaying his book; the container holds flyers advertising a related product but it partially obscures the book’s cover, so while nobody is looking (apart from me) the author unclips it and sticks it somewhere else, where it will partially obscure the cover of somebody else’s work. He then spots someone picking up and leafing through a competing hardback, so he grabs his own and thrusts it into the bewildered shopper’s hands. I suppose this is what we have to do during a depression, but I’m not sure I have the stomach for it.
These kind of things really happen. I've seen them with my own eyes and pray to the gods of pride on a daily basis that I never feel a need to act this desperately. Good story though. This all came to the surface because I was researching my books of the year list mentioned a while back. I read both A Long Way Down and Juliet Naked this year (remiss, I know. I learned all I know about falling behind from Hornby himself) and forgot how good they were - or even that I had read them at all because I read them both in a day (separate days - I'm not that fast) and then handed them on to be loved elsewhere as I tend to do with great books.
If you're looking for something short to fill a train ride - you might love Everyone's Reading Bastard. If you don't, all hope may be lost.
COMMERCIAL BREAK:
•••
I found out today that the greatest book ever written by human being - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is headed to TV. This is either the nest news ever or... well, it is the best news ever but how I feel about it afterwards all depends on how it pans out. Part of me says that I should steer well away from anything to do with it but an equal part of me knows I'll be right there, phone off the hook. I picked this golden nugget up from here - who are definitely some people who should know better than to call it a 'fantasy epic'. That's a cheap shot for search engines if ever I saw one. That's like calling Wuthering Heights, Chick Lit.
Sigh.
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Something else potentially full of excitement is the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who - which might hold this in store for us. Interesting. I'm going to stay away from trailers if I can and hope the BBC give them about £8 to make it with so that the whole project hinges on a story rather than the 'digital smartness' that it seems to be geared at. One raised eyebrow to throw in the ring here is that for a long time, Moffat has continually stated that villain X, villain Y etc, from years gone by have not much of a place in modern Who. But given that very same audience won't give a damn about eight of these Doctors, what then? Hell, the older audience only give a crap about seven of them (you can even insert your own number here - there are some pretty dire years to chew on). It will be interesting that's for sure - and I hope with all my heart that they knock it out of the ballpark.
No pressure then...
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Finally, in the continuing import of stuff I had gathered on tumblr, this:
"Jim Tierney - designer par excellence and just starting out by the looks of things. If these and the other samples on his site are anything to go by, I predict very, very excellent things. Check out this pull tab on From The Earth To The Moon. To see the die-cuts on all the titles, click into the site.
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Let's wrap this puppy up and put it to bed with the assistance of some of the mighty Blind Melon...
Soundgarden - Live on Letterman
Not perhaps as exclusive as I would have liked but all the same, I missed this which means you might have too... Soundgarden live on Letterman. Watch it right here - make yourself comfortable, it's nearly an hour long:
YouTube can truly be magical sometimes. Back soon...
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Edit: Added bonus feature. Soundgarden on Jools Holland with Chris Cornell interview:
The Vindicators.
I found this today from the mind of Brandon Riesgo:
It's part of a very cool monster giveaway of alternative movie posters over at shortlist. They're all really something. Check out the brilliant Spiderman poster there from Dave Will. I love the feel of that but on investigating his place, I also found this that made me smile wider:
I love good design. A little enhancement to all the things you find great in life is no bad thing at all. On which very subject, Tom Gauld posted this (below) earlier which (spookily) fits in far too nicely with what I said about spreading yourself too thinly online.
Vindicated in the extreme. Not that anybody asked, but still...
Short today - apologies. Am writing big words for big project.
Reap The Whirlwind.
Via the magic of cross pollination somewhere on the web, I came across this today:
The Tiny Wife is one of the greatest books ever written. It should only take you a few hours to whip through it but what it says will stay with you for the rest of your years. I've already bought two copies of this in the last year and given them both away. I have no doubt at all that the one I still have will go the same way eventually. It's an Andrew Kaufman masterpiece that quashes even the incredible All My Friends Are Superheroes. Tom Percival's art only adds to the experience.
One thing I didn't know was that Tom also does the cover art for Skullduggery Pleasant - on which note, if you're not familiar with, you need to get in the car sometime today and get the hell on with it. One day, when I get myself some money, Tom's is one of the first doors I will be knocking on.
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Also on my travels this morning, I see that Rob Zombie's new movie Lords of Salem is almost upon us:
The guy is a genius film-maker. If you've never seen his reworking of Halloween, it totally grounds the original premise into the ground - and as he moves forward, he only gets better and better. The reason for these two things appearing here is 'inspiration'. So long as there are always people out in the world raising the standard all the time of what's achievable, I'll always have something to push against.
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Which brings me neatly onto what the hell is going on here. Last night, as stated, the tumblr feed began to be whittled away at, the eagle eyed amongst you will see that the 'social' widget has also disappeared. It doesn't make me anti-social, honest! I think I have seen the light though. The temptation with building an online HQ is to reach as many people as possible in the hope that your name will spread and help you along the way, but it doesn't work how you think it does.
Having given it a push for a good few months, I found myself trying to feed smaller and smaller parts of myself into the grinder - and that's not what I do. There's a few scraps still lying around that need addressing but over the following weeks, I look forward to eeeking them out as well. It's surprising how you can get dragged into the psyche of the world and what it thinks is a good idea.
Anyway, that decision is made. It's a good decision too. Let me tell you why. Take a look at this graphic.
Every single one of those orange rectangles is time taken away from spending it with people I love, time for writing big things - or small things even. Hell, there are eleven rectangles there and you can probably add a few more for every year that goes by. The last sentence on that slide is a lie. People are inherently lazy and don't back track - certainly not from a space like flickr. People are also easily distracted and every single one of those places will pimp something sexy at you to keep you within their own space at the single click of a button. This is business for these people.
I feel better having written that.
•••
Being as I've already posted two clips for you to watch while you pretend you're doing something else today, figured this would be a fine place to pull in an old tumblr post.
The great Robert McGinnis - all of which have been used as classic pulp covers - I kinda like how they look in their original form, so here they are… I believe Robert is still working - for Hardcase Crime.
Good work Mr Smith. More later... maybe.
Monsters in the Head
I started writing a song this evening. I haven't written a song in a very long time and having spent a very long time being a writer of songs (albeit with little to show for it in the long run), I was a little more than 'slightly' disappointed to find how rusty I was. Then again, once I'd started, things began to come back pretty quickly. I've got a couple of days to myself at the end of the week - let's see what happens - and out of interest, along the way I'll give GarageBand a damn good hammering. More intriguing than how rusty I was, is how as artists, we move on without realising it. I dug out the recordings of the last time I put anything of value down and found that lyrically, I really didn't think the same way anymore. Not even close. That means there's going to be an awful lot of material on the cutting room floor before I find my train of thought again.
This rekindled activity comes courtesy of my buddy JJ who is currently building a studio. Actually that's not strictly true. The studio is already there in the shape of Aerial Studios and fully functioning but there are more rooms in the studio space still to be built. A couple of weeks back, we met, we talked, we laughed, we imagined and we looked out of the window and laughed again at how long it takes some dreams to come to fruition and when they do arrive, never come fully formed. They always have more work to be done - but that's OK otherwise it would probably look like somebody else's dream. Go check it out - and if you want to get something on, it's as easy as dropping the dude a line believe me.
Anyway, I was toying with the project name 'Black Like Sunday' but I don't like that anymore. It didn't stand the test of time and certainly doesn't fit the frame of mind that I'm working in. I guess we'll be revisiting this place regularly as winter turns slowly into spring...
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COMMERCIAL BREAK:
Lester Bangs. The one and only in action.
•
As much as I have loved playing with tumblr this past year in a multitude of ways, I have decided to say goodbye. Not immediately, but soon enough - like the end of the week. The way things are shaping up right now, I need to pull my sphere of influence in around me (not that it's huge or anything) and not throw it at the four corners of the interverse. It's a time thing that's all. With lots to do and all of it coming along pretty well, even though I could, I don't want to spend my time blogging multiple times. In the real world, I think that call that a commitment - or maybe even a decision.
If you tumblr'd with me, thanks. Now you need tumble no more as all things that were headed for the blog space of never ending length, will now be sunk into posts here - which are more than long enough to handle it. It all forms part of the "12 months to get your online presence together" as promised all those months ago. By by calculations, I think I have just five weeks left to wrap that part of the plan up and I don't think tumblr will be the only casualty of the war either. To be honest, I think tumblr will be just fine without me, don't you?
Anyway, as part of my wrapping up on that front, here's a repost of one of my favourites that I'd posted there about a revamping of the covers of the greatest book of all time:
Here's what I originally wrote to go alongside:
Talking of Matt Roeser (which I was just a single post ago), I couldn’t let this one slip through the net without posting it here as a personal reminder. From the pen of Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is absolutely my favourite book of all time. I love this delicate re-imagining of it but I’m not sure it would have pulled me in initially.
Now yes. Then, perhaps not.
Seeing this is kind of like when your girlfriend has her hair cut really short after a lifetime of long… or something like that.
Just prior to this I also fawned all over his revamping of the Game of Thrones series:
And again, here's what I originally wrote to go with it:
Matt Roeser - essentially cool and very talented book designer from Boston - hit the revamp button on George Martin’s Game of Thrones series a while back and, to be frank, trumped all the designs I’ve ever seen launched onto the shelves. There are some people out there who I seriously need to work with in the future. These are stunning.
Tumblr - I shall miss you a tiny bit, but truth be told, not actually all that much... everybody else, go check out Matt's work. He's pretty cool. We should probably talk.
In the spirit of things, let's wrap up with this. It looked great before it had begun and hasn't faltered one iota so far...
Road Trip - Brussels
Funny how short trips can be just as tiring as long trips. I came back from Brussels last night and felt as though I had flown half way around the world. Slumping in front of the TV, all I could find was Jaws - I haven't watched that movie in something like ten years and it's still as great as it ever was, even after we've all seen the rubber shark. Aside from work stuff, I met up with my buddies Dirk and Jessica. Dirk has just put out a book of his (and a few of his friends) custom culture photography. It looks like this:
and I mention it here because a) he's my friend and b) the production values are just brilliant and whether you're into pimped up cars and tattooed people striking curious poses or not, it's a gorgeous book that took a long time to get right and it shows. You can find more info on it here... and now I have copied that link I remember that Jess took a photo of us which you can see there - and I have also remembered that I never said anything here about getting a hair cut last week. It was just time you know. I also got tired of trying to do the Fu Manchu thing (couple of posts back) so that got killed off too. Sometimes, you simply need to start from scratch.
Anyway - the book is a peach. Would make a killer Christmas gift for somebody y'know...
•
I don't talk about food much here and that's probably because I don't eat out as often as I would like and when I do, it's never anything to write home about. This time though, a few of us found our way to what might be the best restaurant in the world - or certainly one of the best I have ever been to. It's a tiny place called In 't Spinnekopke and it looks like this:
Man, they cook the food to absolute perfection. I'm no culinary guru but when five well travelled people can all sit around a table and agree that it is indeed, one of the best restaurants they had ever been to, you won't be far from the truth. The fact that you don't have to remortgage your house to eat there is a bonus. If you're ever passing within striking distance, make the effort to stop by. You can find them here.
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One of the good things about going away is that time on a train/plane and in a hotel room by yourself means totally focussed writing time - and this trip I got through a good 15,000 words of a project. This made me very happy particularly as about half of it was under the steam of the calories taken in during the above meal. After Jaws, had finished I took a good hard look at all the things I've been working on and have definitely passed the 'point of no return'. Which is the real world is more sensibly translated as 'more than half way through all of it'.
COMMERCIAL BREAK:
One of the greatest movies of all time. Fact.
•
I didn't see any bookshops at all while I was out there. If you're looking for travel advice though, the Brussels Midi station where the Eurostar arrives is weird. The insides of the station are pretty neat with a lot of cafe's to hang out at but the outside is nothing more than a destination for local crackheads and homeless drunk dudes to hang out. In the space of about three minutes I was approached by three guys for cigarettes, two guys for cash and one drunk guy (who was wearing a knuckle-duster) was certainly thinking about asking me for something but he was so out of it even my sister could have taken him out . Surely common sense would dictate to the authorities that when it comes to the rest of Europe landing on your door-step, the cops should clean up by the hour? It's like inviting people to your house for a meal and leaving a pack of hungry dogs out to welcome them. Interestingly, the smart homeless people had got themselves bags from somewhere and were able to hang out inside the station looking like they were going places with pretty well thought out sob stories to get by on. Survival of the fittest and all that huh...
To wrap up - not much of a video - rather an audio embed but worthy of your time all the same. The return of the mighty My Chemical Romance! Get cool stuff right here.
Judging Books By Their Covers
It's no secret that I love book cover design and this little gem has got way more work going into it than it first appears.
It was designed by Rowan Stocks-Moore to 'celebrate the launch' of the Penguin Design Award, of which he knocked up a few but this is far and away the best. Oddly though, I'm not sure it works as a real world book cover. It's a great piece of design in a masterclass 101 kind of way, but I can't imagine it jumping on - or off - the shelf. That happens sometimes... but regardless, it's really clever and beautiful all the same.
Conversely, these bookmarks are really simple but supremely freaking cool.
They were designed by Ethem Onur Bilgiç who is from Istanbul (no, I can't pronounce it either) and you can find him and his other groovy stuff right here.
Over Christmas, I might have a bit of a whirl at designing some bookmarks myself. That sounds like a neat plan to me - and maybe I'll lovingly hand-craft them and give them away with every copy of a book sold here. So maybe they had better be good! No idea what to base them on though. Best enlist the collective aid of that powerhouse known as 'the children'.
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COMMERCIAL BREAK:
And that wraps that up.
•
A friend (Hi Tim) mailed me a story this morning about David Byrne (the Talking Heads dude) and his quest to produce a digital book of some value to people and the roadblocks that amazon et al put in the way. You can read the whole article by clicking here and always a good read, you can check into Byrne's personal blog here. Anyway, read that first and come back - there's a section at the end where Mr Byrne says;
Books, when well made and beautifully designed, are lovely to hold and behold. There is pleasure in reading a well designed book. A little bit of beauty is added to one’s life—something that can’t be measured in terms of pure information. I also have a funny feeling that, like much of our world that is disappearing onto servers and clouds, eBooks will become ephemeral. I have a sneaking feeling that like lost languages and manuscripts, most digital information will be lost to random glitches and changing formats.”
I tend to agree and that shocks me a little. I have come full circle from being a pro-digital kind of person to seeing so many of them, that they mean nothing. A quick look around myself right now will reveal a lot of business type books and books I have outgrown but couldn't let go of sitting on my various bits of tech. Big novels that I will never read twice can be found on audio because a) I can sometimes work and listen, b) I am in the car a lot and c) I actually quite like being read to when it's done properly - when you look at words all day long, sometimes it's really nice. Latest additions to this audio list are James Herbert's Ash and Rankin's Standing In Another Man's Grave. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by reading them like this.
When I look around my shelves however, I am still buying books at a heavy rate. Yesterday, I picked up Winter Ghosts from Kate Mosse, I'm on the road tomorrow. I know I'll buy another even though I'm armed with audio. I did give away a lot of books a while back - I have no idea what they were anymore but anything deemed important is still with me. Big art books, books with great covers, books I've had since I was a kid. The list goes on.
I am beginning to know myself more than I should - I mean, you hit certain times in your life and you should have it all figured out, right? Albums come and albums go. My rdio collection online grows by about six albums a day but I still bought the Soundgarden album on vinyl last week. Why? Because some animals will always be more equal than others. A beautifully designed Bukowski novel will never be archived to digital around here. It doesn't work.
Eventually, I think we'll all figure this out for ourselves. It's not going away. I don't want it to go away - it's cool and useful in some instances. I don't want bookshops to go the same way as record stores but it's already too late. We're headed down to a critical fork in the road. The only thing anybody really knows for sure right now is that it's a fucking mess. If you want books, albums and films to go the same way as the motor industry in which all cars look the same and are classified as to whether they're small, big or really big, then carry on doing the digital thing. If you got this far - you're already too late. The movie industry is already there.
Slick is very cool but nobody will look back fondly at any digital product like they do a Cortina or an Impala - they don't have a memory attached to them. Nobody will sit around and say "Hey, remember that day we stood in the kitchen and downloaded the new John Connolly book" - it doesn't have a sense of occasion attached to it. I used to have a Triumph Spitfire. It was a piece of junk but it had more character than any car I've had since. That had a sense of occasion about every freaking journey...
We're in the midst of a trauma here. Here's some questions for you to mull over if you care to:
AC/DC recently gave in and allowed iTunes downloads. This is a shame. Want an AC/DC album? Just go and buy one - it's not hard. Anybody that cares that much must have their catalogue anyway. I don't know if Led Zeppelin have released their catalogue to digital outlets but I hope not. Want a Led Zep album? Simply go and buy one. There's a certain way a few bands should be listened to because it's not about the money. It's about the songs. I rather think it's not the bands that think this is a great idea.
People like Stephen King, Rowling - all those guys at the top. We don't need ebooks from them. People may moan a lot and request them but ultimately, if you want to read those authors, go buy a fucking book. You get what you're given... if there's no audiobook available, damn right I'll read it instead of listening.
And there's the crux. We can all have so much now that even something as dumb as being able to own a dog, people think comes under a basic human right. It's going to take a publishing company with balls of steel to hang in there and say 'no, fuck you, buy a book' - and that's exactly when it will become special again. It's all pretty confusing. I wouldn't like to be the historian who looks back and tries to make sense of it.
(I'm not sure I actually said anything during that part of the post, but I feel better. Thanks for listening!)
•
Closing with a classic is getting harder everyday. Time to take a left turn and just flaunt something I like and reboot from there:
Cool Shit For Its Own Sake
I've been following the guys at the Mondo Gallery for a while now. Along with my buddy Brian Ewing, I am smitten by the art they produce and may have to work an awful lot harder at getting more of it on the walls here. I wasn't paying attention when these Universal Studio prints went up for sale, so at a vastly inferior level, assuming they are all sold out (but I will check in a second), here I am hanging them on my blog:
First thing I'm going to do when I am in a position to actually have an office is flood the place with art like this. I find it totally inspiring and I think the reason behind that is that I can't draw to save my life. I have no desire to even try - thus, it remains something that I enjoy rather than have a desire to replicate.
On a similar note, it was Rhiannon's first parents evening earlier. I sat down with her art teacher and was blown away by what they're up to there. They're really teaching some great skills and with the wind behind us, so it will continue. I'm kinda hoping that by being honest about art, she'll rise to it and see that there is a solid future in it. It might be hard work, but hey - what isn't! She thinks she might want to be a vet, but I can see otherwise...
For those of you doing the Pinterest thing, you can drop in on my Cool Shit For Its Own Sake pin-board by clicking that very link.
Preaching The End Of The World (II)
I saw these today on tumblr, but they absolutely need reposting here - if anybody can tell me where they originally come from, I'll hook up the links.
Those are some damn fine nibs right there. The simple things in life are always the best.
•
I thought I had said my piece on writing for the time being in yesterday's post but just to make sure I had my facts straight, I mailed my friend Gary Smailes at Bubblecow (go see what they can do for you if you're the sort that is likely to be admiring those nibs posted above) to check. I was pretty close to the mark, but Gary filled me in on a few things that I hadn't taken into account, once you read them, you'll see why there's more than a little life left in print publishing. I'll paste the entire email in here:
This makes perfect sense. A UK mid-list writer will be selling 5000-ish books a year. But you are missing something from the equation:
If that doesn't change the way you want to look at the industry, I don't know what will. We're all aware that there are hard times right now but maybe what it comes down to is this: If somebody took away all digital books tomorrow and told me I would never read one again, would it bother me? Not in the slightest. I don't think I would miss them one iota - and if you track back through the blog, you'll find that I have tried a couple of times to reduce my stock-piling of books into a neat digital library, but it's not happening at all. Conversely, if print books disappeared, I would indeed be very sad. Where would I hang out? What would I spend my money on? Would I still love great book cover art as much as I do now?
I don't have any answers that's for sure - but you know what's more important here? I don't think I have any more questions either.
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COMMERCIAL BREAK
...and if that isn't one of the greatest moments in television anywhere in the world, I don't know what is.
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It's nearly the end of the year people. I've decided to gather together a Top Twenty Books of the Year - I'll open comments out on it and aim to post early December. I'm also going to have fuck with the format and add a clause that says I can have five books in the list that weren't necessarily published in 2012. I've discovered far too many great books this year to be boxed off by tiny details. It's shaping up to be pretty diverse. In fact, it's a pretty serious list with something I didn't expect to be at number one nestling comfortably in that very spot. I doubt it will look anything like the bestseller lists they have in the back of the newspapers at the end of the year but it may contain books you might actually read.
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Where shall we go today for an outro tune? How about this from the days when 12" remixes ruled the world: