The Thief Of Always

For reasons best known to the forces of random, what began with a quest to find a picture in a book of a gryphon on its hind legs (some homework assignment for Rhiannon), a couple of hours later I found myself re-reading The Thief Of Always. I hardly ever read a book twice and the first time I read this was when it came out and it was also the only time. I don't think the time I started reading it to Rhiannon years ago counts - she was way too young and I should have known better. I've always loved the illustrations in the book and this morning, I found this which is an excellent insight into how to build a book cover that means something: And I feel that says everything that needs saying about book covers in no small way. In amongst all of the talk about self publishing, how easy it can be, the chatter about the business of publishing, author margins, amazon vs the world and all manner of other things that actually have nothing to do with the beauty of a book - things like this have got lost. But this is why I love great books. This is why I have so many of them.

I'm not saying all of those other things aren't important in some way but when a lot of thought goes into the visual image you have of a book, it amounts to the difference between 'something you read' and 'something that buries itself in your heart'. What does it take, really? Another couple of months on the schedule to last a lifetime?

If you've never read this, then you should. Don't go standing for any cheap paperback nonsense either. This is one to hunt down as nature intended. Please don't ever make it into a movie - though I guess if that was ever going to happen, it would have by now. Hellraiser aside, whenever a studio gets hold of a Barker novel for a movie adaptation, they succeed in making the most wonderful fiction into gnarly garbage.

•••

Which in a round-about kind of way has brought me to a shuddering halt on a few things I had previously thought important. Must make a copious amount of coffee now in order to get thoughts previously considered to be in order, back in order.

It's The End Of The Week As We Know It

Yesterday, a good idea took a big step forward. I've been toying with a concept for publishing in a new way for a while now and last night it all came together. There's still a lot of work to do behind - and in front of - the scenes and if I've learned anything on this planet it's that you can't just play the end game. You need to have what else the game entails in mind as you approach something you can show people or it will stall pretty quickly. Thus: sometime soon, this will launch itself into the realm of the iPad:

I'm really excited about it - I don't expect it to go ballistic, in fact I have tempered my expectation into submission but I do expect it to be very cool and for the first few months, that will be good enough for me - there's some seriously cool material in the pipeline.

[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]

Do my ears deceive me or does the new Stereophonics single sound like Journey circa 1986 in rehearsal? While we're on the subject of things that involve the ear, my buddy Kahn (who has started a cool movie type blog thing here) turned me on to Ellie Lawson. If you're a rdio.com user you can find that right here. If you're not a user, you'll have to find it yourself and that will teach you to not keep up with great ideas.

•••

SOME STUFF LYING AROUND THAT WILL HELP PASS A FRIDAY AFTERNOON BECAUSE YOU'RE ONLY PRETENDING TO WORK:

I have too many books to use book ends but if I only had six books, this would be my choice. Or perhaps this one:

Here's a really good reason to use notebooks instead of a computer to write your opus on. Marcel Proust did this - and I can't be the only one who thinks they're pretty cool:

Pretty sweet H.P. Lovecraft sketch anybody?

And that's all I got for you today...

I think.

Judging stuff by its cover.

It's a weird world out there - I went out to grab some food & books last night and found myself talking to the manager of Waterstones who amused me with the following tale of a humanity that is surely doomed: Earlier that same day, some guy had come into the store and stolen one of the kindles that were on display. You know the ones - they're quantum locked to a desk-type surface with security wires hanging off the backs and to actually steal one means snapping it off the display unit. This is worth mentioning because apparently, after doing this, he went outside, changed his hat and came back in and stole another - I'm guessing they know this from the post-mortem security cameras. What in the world are you going to do with two broken kindles that have security pods drilled onto the back of them that are locked down to 'display unit' mode for all time? I totally understand how a man could be stupid or desperate enough to give it a try once... but twice? If he'd gone into HMV, which is the next store along, he could have had a try for an iPad or a Nexus which would at least have been worth something aside from a criminal record if he'd pulled it off.

This is evolution in regression surely.

•••

I've been on a tour of my literary heart today - looking for a little chicken soup for the soul (though yesterday I happened upon a pork and chipotle soup which my soul was very interested in, though admittedly, it doesn't have the same sort of ring about it for a best selling book). Here's Mr Kerouac with the wisdom of the day:

"In the end, you won't remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain"

Which leads me nicely into this mention of Paul Rogers who has illustrated an edition of On The Road with an illustration on every page. This, I have got to get my hands on - especially as I just gave my copy of On The Road away because I didn't like the cover (mostly), but it was more important that somebody else read it for the first time than me having it on the shelf. Here's a cool sample of what's in store:

You can see more of it here, but ultimately, just go buy a copy. Er... I'll find out where that might be from and report back. (I am now wondering if it's even a real world project - more research needed methinks).

 •••

This is pretty cool too, though I'm not sure what Kurt himself would make of it:But it's not a patch on this, which in spite of it coming under the banner of 'really fucking important', I had never even heard of before this morning. Here's a link to the article about Maurice Sendak illustrating The Hobbit - see what we missed, what could have been, what might lurk in a drawer somewhere:

Onwards...

Scenes from the President's Coffee House (1)

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that I've added some new sections to the front end of the site - or maybe not if you're doing the rss thing, but I'm sure you can find you way around just the same. Of note today though, is the first essay to be added to Scenes from the Coffee House. I'd be interested to hear what you think. There's a lot going on here right now with many words to be pinned to one another for scheduled books but I'm in the mood for a good batch of postings all the same.

Tomorrow.

Right now, I have a date with my second favourite movie of all time (yep - of all time) - All The President's Men. (Movie poster redux below from Adam Jurseko).

When The Music's Over - An Introduction

It's no secret that I love music. Life would be pretty dull and quiet without it, but there's a lot of albums that I've never listened to properly, especially from the sixties and seventies. What better way to investigate them than to dig them up and take a look back at whether this stuff was actually any good or not... first on the cards is that loveable rogue (or so I'm led to believe) David Crosby.

Talking Heads - An Introduction

This is a new project that I'm starting on soon with a friend who can do better tech than me. A little early with the navigation icon for sure, but that sort of thing makes me get on with stuff. What's it all about? Well, that would be telling but let's just say you're gonna have to arm yourself with an i-device to check it out.

When The Music's Over - An Introduction

Does this appear in the right place - if you're looking while I'm building... go away and come back later!

Book Design

Every now and again, when the wheels in my head stop spinning, I sometimes kick back and mess around redesigning some of my favourite book covers. Nothing too serious, but it keeps the saw a little bit sharp for the future. Click into images for a larger view.   

The Dark Side Of Me

An entry to the blog for myself so that I don't lose it, but feel free to watch and share... sorry for any adverts that nobody cares about.

We shall return to normal service shortly...

Snow, A Goat and a Polypropylene Dinosaur.

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

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

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

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

•••

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

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

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

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

•••

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

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

Then came the body and some arms:

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

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

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

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

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

Calling Inhabitants Of Planet Earth - This Is Stupid

This afternoon, I was fixing up Rhiannon's new phone with a better deal than the paltry scraps that t-mobile think is acceptable and the guy on the other end told me that she would get 5000 free texts included in the bundle and then asked me if I needed to upgrade that to 10,000 texts a month - to which I responded: "Jesus - who the hell can use 10,000 texts a month... or 5000 even," to which he then said:

"You'd be surprised. I had a guy on the phone yesterday wanting to upgrade his 10,000 texts...

Afterwards (and no, she didn't get anything close to that), I sat down and worked it out. 10,000 texts a month? On a 30 day month, that's like 333 texts a day. Which amounts to something like sending 20 texts an hour (worked out based on a 16 hour waking day more or less). I haven't got the fastest fingers in the world but what the hell can  you have to say so often that's short enough to not take up your every waking moment. If the guy was texting anything of value, let's say it took 20 seconds. By my (very off kilter) calculations, that must be half of his waking hours spent texting because he surely has to read a text that came in first to respond to.

What kind of job has this guy got? Who is he texting that is obviously texting him back in equal amounts? How many times a day does he have to charge his phone up? What sort of things does he say? Why is this guy allowed outside?

Let's also assume that this isn't an isolated incident because - as the guy told me - it was something that happened just yesterday.

Jeez.

•••

Busy writing today - I'll leave you with the latest instalment from The Roth Show:

Best Books Of 2012:

Or rather, the best books that I read during 2012. Some were still hot from the delivery truck when I picked them up, others could possibly be from 2011 and sat on the shelf for longer than intended. Hey, it wouldn't be a list that I made if it was well organised would it: 1. The Tooth Fairy - Graham Joyce 

OK. Having done my research for this post, I see that The Tooth Fairy came out originally back in the mid nineties. Too bad. It's still the best book I've read all year. It's kind of what you think it might be like, but then it goes and does so many different things and walks so many unknown paths that it really is difficult to describe - and it's wonderful on all those levels. I've seen some rough as hell covers for it though. Ignore them. It's an out and out giant slayer.

2. Up Jumps The Devil - Michael Poore

I picked this up at the airport in Colorado (a woman from Derby sold it to me who pinpointed my birthplace accent - I thought I had lost that long ago) and I stripped it down on the plane, train and an automobile. Obviously not whilst driving. Great character, great time spanning story, a slick sense of humour (an American that gets irony - totally worth the entrance fee) and generally a brilliantly fun  - dare I say - laugh out loud novel to lose yourself in for hours on end. Great cover design - bonus!

3. The Lighthouse Keeper - Alan K. Baker

This sounded like every book I would never read. A book about a lighthouse? Written by somebody who sounds like he might be a news-reader? Be fooled no longer. This one is a stealth bomber. Weird as hell. I didn't have clue where it was going, not even on the last page and that's because although it's about er... weird shit that goes on at a lighthouse, the book is more about the keepers themselves and therefore more about human nature and as we all know, when humans are trapped on a rock with a lighthouse and weird shit occurs, anything can happen. And does. Almost as bad a cover as Tooth Fairy but not sure what I would have done differently if faced with the task...

4. Say You're Sorry - Michael Robotham

Sometimes, you simply need a book in which people get bumped off and you can't figure out who it is or why. This is my crime pick of the year because I read it one day and that's a good enough recommendation as you'll get. With a superb lead character who's not a copper or damaged in the way that coppers normally are, the whole Joe O'Loughlin series is worthy of a lot more attention that they're getting. Get off your sofa, go find some and read them in order. No comment on the cover of this - professional "look at me I'm a crime novel' design going on here. Which is what's called for. Michael... write more... faster please.

5. The Wrath of Angels - John Connolly

Well. There's no show without punch and I still say Connolly is the best writer in the country. I think this deserves to be higher on the list but circumstances meant that I picked it up day of release which wasn't necessarily conducive to me paying the best of attention. Thus, it took me a while to get started with it. My fault, not his. If I started it again today it would be a different story. If you're not familiar with Charlie Parker, best go and log onto janetandjohn.com or lookatmepetthedog.com because you're no reader friend of mine. The best crime series, let me think... since McBain's 87th Precinct plus added supernatural elements that mean... well, I still haven't figured out what they mean but it doesn't matter. 'Fucking incredible' is as good write up you'll find. The covers? Pretty good - when the series started they were different and I had never seen anything like them but they brought them into line for the 'stupid people'. I'll let it pass simply because what goes on inside the pages is so damned good.

6. Manhood For Amateurs - Michael Chabon

My latest flame. Currently reading his entire catalogue one after the other. Something I've never done with anybody before. Chabon is phenomenal but something of an acquired taste. This particular book is a collection of essays on being a father - which is as far from as dull as it sounds as I can get. Quite honestly, Chabon is the kind of writer that makes me wonder why I even entertain such dreams but he's so good that you can't help but hand out large plates of respect. He's probably a great guy as well. Bastard. Nice selection of covers on both sides of the Atlantic - which makes a change. He also has out of control hair. I think we should be friends.

7. Gods and Beasts - Denise Mina

Is Denise Mina still the UK's best kept secret? I see a pattern emerging with myself for detective fiction in which nothing is the same as it has been for far too many years with regards to UK crime. Anyway - I'm not going to say anything about this. Go discover her for yourself. There are too few surprises in life without me taking the few that remain. Nice covers too. I can spot a Denise Mina at fifty paces. That's a good thing.

8. Falcons of Fire and Ice - Karen Maitland

I really mean this: Karen Maitland is not for everybody. You'll have figured that out during the first paragraph of any of her books. But if she strikes the chord with you, each and every one of her books comes as some kind of gift that fell off a godlike cloud. Totally unique. I have never read anything like her stories and I adore every single one for all the right reasons. Stellar stories with massive amounts of thought goes into the production right down to the paper and the typeface - and the covers... what can I say about the covers? Among some of the best work ever laid on a cover? Without question. I'm talking hardback here, you don't get the same effect with the paperbacks. Why isn't this at number one on the list?

9. Every One Loves You When You're Dead - Neil Strauss

Strauss returns which a collection of interview snippets with seemingly everybody in the whole world. Strung together with a loose theme, this is one for pop culture guzzlers to get their teeth into (and it serves Klosterman right for not writing something I could put on the list). The guy writes so well, I'd punch him in the mouth if I didn't want to shake his hand for setting the standard the rest of us culture types to attempt to live up to. Like Chabon, he's seems like a genuinely great guy too. I shall not however call him a bastard because he has no hair at all and has therefore suffered enough already. Cover? Not great. Good job I didn't judge it from the cover or it would still be on the shelf.

10. The Prisoner of Heaven - Carlos Ruis Zafon

Zafon. At this point in the run, I'm hardly likely to be able to talk you into loving the man and his work, so if you've been playing the 'Shadow' game, you'll already have been here and nodded sagely to yourself. If not, see the advice at the end of number five. I like these covers even though I think I shouldn't. That means they're working. Ignore me. I'm just bitter than nobody asked me to have a go at them.

•••

An interesting list. I need to tidy it up some thoughts. Nesbo didn't make the list because I didn't think The Bat was very good (for obvious reasons if you're a fan). Rankin returned with Rebus and I made the mistake of going for it on audiobook from audible - where it's read by the most annoying Scot on the planet. Truly dreadful but it's Rebus so I'll return to that one by purchasing something with pages in it. Shit cover. All the Rebus redesigns are shit. I hate them. True fact. That's a lot of hate for a set of book covers but they look cheap and disrespectful. Clive Barker's Abarat: Absolute Midnight nearly made the list but I'm just waiting for another instalment of something that isn't bloody Abarat to be frank. Me and the rest of the world. It will come. Gaiman has been a bit quiet. Was the Graveyard Book this year? That was a good read, but I've read so many kids books this year that I thought I might do a separate list... not that it was strictly a kids book I guess.

It's not right of me to actually name the worst book of the year is it but I think it was Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I made it through maybe a chapter and then decided to wash my hair instead. Sorry. That's the way it crumbles sometimes.

What did we learn here? Two things I think. 1. Brilliantly written original books need great covers so that people will be inclined to pick them up and investigate more. 2. People called Michael write really good books.

Le Fin.

The Angel Who Overslept

10 NOVEMBER 1995 I lay out of sight on the back seat of the car listening to Lyndsey pepper the air with some choice phrases as she tried to get the car to move faster. If it didn’t hurt so freaking much, it would have been funny. Nobody hijacks an old '64 VW Beetle as a getaway car. Nobody lifts a Beetle for anything except maybe some spare parts if you happen to own one yourself. But Lyndsey had stolen a Beetle. An orange Beetle at that. As I climbed into the back spewing out language that Harvey Keitel would have raised an eyebrow to, she turned the radio up louder to drown me out where we found Lennon dishing out some Instant Karma on an all night rock station. Classy.

If we made it the hospital before I died, it would be a fucking miracle. If the explosion in my gut didn’t kill me first, then her driving would surely finish me off. Man it hurt. I’m surprised my teeth hadn’t shattered down to stumps I was biting down on them so hard.

We’d been through the plan a dozen times at least. It was so simple a child could have understood it. Hell, she was a child - what was I thinking of. It wasn’t so much breaking and entering. We called it 'justice'. Twelve months ago, a hit and run driver had taken her mother away and left the two of us alone together. Shit, I couldn’t even take care of myself and at sixteen, the last thing Lyndsey wanted was to be taken care of. On this we agreed to disagree.

Anyway, I just wanted you to know we found ourselves in this predicament for good reasons and that we weren't bad people. We wanted the bastard dead - and now he was, but I had shot him from four inches away like the amateur I was and as he went down, he’d twisted the gun around on me and stung me good and proper at close range too. The bullet had gone straight through me taking what felt like my liver or kidney with it - and if it hadn’t, it must be damned close. I’m glad it wasn’t my own car I was leaking over.

Lyndsey ground the clutch pedal into the floor and grated around looking for fifth.

“There is no fifth Lynds.”

“What do you mean, no fifth? What kind of frigging car is this!”

“Well you fucking took it!” I growled.

“It was unlocked - what did you expect me to do?”

“OK, OK, just don’t drive it into the ground before we get to the hospital.”

The words had hardly even left my mouth when there was a sickening thud followed by the sound of breaking glass and the Beetle coming to a very abrupt halt. Next thing I knew, Lyndsey was screaming hysterically, pounding her fists against the wheel. I, on the other hand, had made it into the footwell. If you’ve ever been in the back of a Beetle, you’ll know how small a space that is. I was surprised I got down there actually and I was now lodged in quite firmly. Ah, the good old days of car manufacturing when not only was it not compulsory to wear a seatbelt in the rear, but they didn’t even bother fitting them.

“Lynds? Tell me what’s going on.”

Between sobs, she came up with: “Oh Jesus, Daddy. I think I’ve hit somebody! I’ve killed somebody - I didn’t even see him!”

I talked her down a little and she calmed not a jot.

“Get out of the car and take a look honey. Don’t touch anything, don’t do anything, just take a look and come back and tell me what’s out there.”

She pushed at the door and pretty much fell out. From what little I could see, she wasn’t badly hurt. I think the amount of hairspray she was wearing took the brunt of the glass imploding. I promised myself I would never say another word. I heard her crunching glass underfoot as she walked around the car, acutely aware that we wouldn’t be going any further than this judging by the shape of the bonnet pushed up where the windscreen should be. Hey, maybe it was a good thing she took the bug. With the engine in the back and all, thank heaven for small mercies.

She reappeared and flipped the seat up to talk to me. The tears were running wild now. “I’m sorry Daddy. I don’t know what to do. We have to get you to the hospital but there’s nobody around and I can’t drive this anymore and… and…”

I held my hand up for her to take it, which is when we noticed him at exactly the same time. The figure sitting in the passenger seat that is. This was probably because whoever it was categorically hadn’t been sitting there a few seconds earlier. Lyndsey dropped my hand and backed away from the car. I can’t say I blame her. I on the other hand, had no option but to stay right were I was.

“Who the fuck are you?”

I wasn’t in the best position in the world to be asking questions in that tone of voice, it just kind of came out that way. The figure said nothing at first, then turned slowly to face me. What at first I thought was a man, apparently wasn’t. Now, I wasn’t so sure it was even human. Rather than looking at me, it looked into me. I in turn studied its face - or rather the place that its face should be - only to find it had many. Not all at the same time obviously, but it was constantly changing subtly with every blink of an eye. I must have been hurt worse than I thought.

It reached down and lifted my hands from my stomach and I let it. Fuck it. I was going to die here anyway. I just hoped Lyndsey was running like the wind and whatever it was about to do with me would buy her as much time as she needed.

It placed an oversized hand, palm down on the leaking hole in me and my whole existence exploded in a searing, blinding white heat. I reacted like a baby and screamed loud enough to empty a forest.

And then there was no pain. I was a goner.

In hindsight, I should have realised that no afterlife in any religion, not even in the craziest drug-induced cult, would have boasted an afterlife that looked and smelled like the back of a VW Beetle.

Which meant only one thing. I wasn’t dead.

What’s more, I wasn’t hurting either. I checked myself with my hands, pressing hard into my stomach. Nothing. No pain. Gain! It wasn’t the regular rhyme but right now it suited me just fine. I reached my arm up and my hand scouted for the seat release. With no small amount of grunting, I released the catch, pushed the seat forward with my head and slithered out onto the road.

I lay there for a moment and checked myself over again while I was still horizontal. I didn’t want my insides slipping out of me and all over the tarmac. I could see Lyndsey cowering beneath a tree out of the corner of my eye. She hadn’t seen me. Or maybe she had and was keeping her distance anyway. I can’t say I blamed her.

I appeared to be just fine. I stood up, for some reason brushed at the sopping wet blood that was still on my shirt and then leaned my palms on the top of the car to talk to the guy-thing in the passenger seat but it was empty.

“Lyndsey. Lyndsey!” I yelled in one of those whisper type shouts that would fool nobody. I motioned for her to come over and seconds later we were both standing in front of the Beetle, marveling at the man-type dent our visitor had made in the bonnet. It was in the shape of two legs with maybe a little crotch thrown in for good measure. Whoever, whatever it was, had done a good job on writing it off. He’d done an even better job of disappearing which is something that we should have been doing before the dawn broke and people we really didn’t want to be speaking to showed up.

We did look for him, admittedly not very hard but it was the effort that counted. It was too weird and far too unexplainable for either of us to answer each others questions, so we simply didn’t bother and over time, it became an 'unspoken event'. So much so that even though I thought about it everyday, even I began to wonder if I had imagined the whole thing.

18 AUGUST 2002

I spread myself out over the picnic blanket, not really caring that I was sharing it with some of nature’s finest scavengers. The sun was beating into my face and life was good in a ‘tea in a flask and limitless cakes’ kind of way. Lyndsey had grown up fast. Here we were with her kid on his fifth birthday and he was growing up fast. I have to admit, I found it all pretty fantastic. I was going places as a painter with more than a few exhibitions under my belt and she was making a real go of her latest career working for some television production company. I should know what their name is but I don’t have a head for details. Never did.

Little Nicky seemed to having a good time too. I can’t say the same for the birds he was chasing. There were some other people up here too but out here, souls all look the same. I love this place. I don’t know why it’s called Lands End because it doesn’t end at all. Perhaps it’s just as far as a place namer could be bothered walking before they turned around and went home. I dropped my sunglasses back onto my nose and closed my eyes to soak up some of the good stuff.

I must have fallen asleep because when I woke, it was getting dark and I was by myself. I raised myself onto my elbows looking around for Lyndsey and Nicky. Maybe they had gone for a walk. I put what was left of the picnic in the cool bag, picked it all up inside the blanket and threw it in the back of the camper van. They couldn’t and wouldn’t have gone far without Lyndsey waking me up.

I headed over to the edge of the wood which is the way I would have gone exploring only to find Nicky sitting cross-legged by himself at the edge of a pot-hole. I forgot this place was littered with them. We used to come here as kids, me and my cousins. Back then, we had the fear of God put into us about them with over the top stories of what was ‘down there’. Sometimes, we’d get here and see groups of men armed with hard hats and rope go exploring but it was never something that I wanted to attempt myself.

Now, to get to Nicky, I had to go closer to them than I ever had before.

“Nicky?”

He looked up at me and then looked back into the hole.

“Don’t lean too close there buddy!”

I whipped him up into my arms and took a nifty step back away from the hole.

“Where’s Mum gone Tiger?”

Nicky looked back over his shoulder and pointed to the hole. I frowned and took his hand in mine. I jiggled him around a bit like grown-ups do to kids for some reason. “That can’t be right can it buddy? Where did she go? Back to the car? Chasing birds?”

Nicky pointed to the hole again and said:

“Down there.”

My brain kicked into some gear that doesn’t really exist. I ran back to the camper with him, dumped him into the passenger seat and drove over to a reasonable distance from the hole. Close enough to watch him through the window and close enough to try and check this crazy shit out.

I checked him one last time, gave him a pointless thumbs-up and then got down on my hands and knees to get closer to the edge. This sort of shit scared still scared me. Lying flat on the ground, I poked my head over the rim. Black. Good thing I’d pulled the torch from the glove box. I flicked it on and it helped me to see even more black, only a bit further down than before. Not helpful.

I raised myself up on my haunches to consider my next move and there it was. Standing on the other side of the hole. Looking at me and not really looking at me at the same time. It stretched out its hand to me which somehow made it all the way across the mouth of the hole. I didn’t reach out to take it. That would have been too weird, but that’s not what it was doing. It got hold of me by... well, I don’t know what it had got hold of me by but the next thing I knew, I was standing in the dark.

Man, it smelled bad wherever this was. In my heart, I already knew where I was but I turned the torch on all the same to check. Yeah - that would figure. At the bottom of the freaking hole. I shone the torch around. Nothing but wet rock. Even though I could see the evening coming through the mouth of the hole above, I shone the torch up there and then down the walls. Now I knew why those guys used ropes and wore hats. It would be like trying to climb up the neck of a bottle to get to the top. A wet bottle at that. Man, I was confused. What the hell was the point of dropping me down here anyway?

“Hi Dad.”

Lyndsey. Of course. I was shining the torch mindlessly at the floor which was just about the only place I hadn’t investigated.

“Thanks for coming.”

“Yeah - no problem Lynds but, for crying out loud, what the fuck are you playing at down here? I’ve left Nicky in the camper by himself!”

Seeing she was safe, anger was spilling over.

“Well,” she announced, getting to her feet. “I didn’t actually fall. Much as you didn’t fall, you grumpy bastard. I’m just here. Being as you didn’t fall either, we can probably assume I got here the same way you did.”

That shut my mouth. Couldn’t argue with that logic, mad at her or not. We stood not saying anything for a moment. She broke the silence first.

“It was real wasn’t it. That thing in the car from way back. We didn’t make it up did we.”

It was a statement not a question.

“We probably should have talked about it, huh. But no, we didn’t make it up.”

“Fuck.” She spoke for both of us.

I shone the torch around some more. We obviously weren’t going upwards anytime soon but there was a ‘road’ we could take that went further down. With less options than a death row inmate, I took Lyndsey’s hand and we took tentative steps down the path.

Crouched almost double for hundreds of yards, we came to a part of the hole that was bigger than the rest where we could stand up. There wasn’t much to see though, or so I thought at first. More wet walls, maybe a few fly type things buzzing around but not much else. Apart from a bundle of rags dumped in the corner. Lyndsey gave them a kick as she was standing next to them and they didn’t quite behave as they should. I put the torch beam on them and Lyndsey shrieked back at the skull that was silently shrieking at her. God knows how long it had been there but it didn’t look good. Feeling brave, I crouched and inspected it a little more closely. It was a woman.

Correction. It had been a woman - either that or a man who had been wearing a bra before he died. Jesus. How long had she been down here and why did she have her hands cuffed behind her back? The cuffs had long since slipped down the wrists but I felt it was an educated guess that this was the case. I’m not normally good with dead things, though my experience only extends to animals in this domain. Now that the flesh had left the building, working with a skeleton seemed to be fine. I guess it didn’t look like it had ever been alive. Funny the way your mind works.

“Dad - there’s something sticking out of its back pocket.”

Sure enough, when I looked, there was the corner of what looked like a wallet showing itself from the 501s. Curiously, I actually took the fact that they were 501s on board quite seriously. I had worn them for years and felt vindicated that my faith in them as a lasting product was valid. I pulled the wallet and and flipped through it.

It was a tiny thing with just two cards in it and something that possibly used to be paper that hadn’t stood the test of time quite so well as the Levi’s. Lyndsey came to view them over my shoulder as I pulled them out of their little slits. I handed one to her and tried to make sense of the other one myself, but the torch was showing signs of fatigue, so I gave up and handed it to Lyndsey who still figured it was worth the effort. I was about to suggest that we should start thinking about making a plan to get out of here, when we were.

Out that is - and it was still comparatively light too. Lyndsey hadn’t even noticed we were back on solid ground for as I turned I saw that she was still squinting at the cards with what was left of the torch light.

“Lynds...”

“Hang on a minute Dad - I think I can almost make out a name.”

“Well come and make out a name in the camper. There’s lights in there and your son is probably wondering where you’ve been.”

I didn’t feel like I should say anything else to her. She could adjust to this and figure it out just as I had. I got into the drivers seat and looked at the clock. I couldn’t be sure but I don’t think we had been away for any time at all - not even a few seconds. Nicky certainly didn’t appear to think so.

I didn’t have to ask if we all wanted to go home now. I didn’t even care truth be told. I wanted to go home, so home it was. There were no objections when I started the camper and pulled away. From the back, Lyndsey reached over the front seat to strap Nicky in and then rummaged in her bag and came up with some biscuits. I didn’t even know I was hungry until she dropped the packet into my lap.

We drove in silence. Munching.

Later that evening, with Nicky in bed, I lay on Lyndsey’s sofa looking at the cards that belonged to a Grace Lewis while Lyndsey battered away at a keyboard at the table behind me to see if google really did hold the keys to the universe - the answer to which of course is that they do. A couple of minutes later, populated by ‘Oh my God’s’, she began to read to me.

“Apparently, she went missing three years ago - but you’ll never guess who she was married to...”

What actually happened is irrelevant to the story. Rather a bi-product of our mysterious friend. Sometime later, a very grateful and humble Mr Lewis handed over a large sum of cash out of gratitude, which of course we took gladly. I paid my car loan off with it and give the rest to Lyndsey. She’s probably wasted it all, but that wasn’t the point.

Nor was it the end of the story. What happened next was the end of the story - or maybe I'm just hoping it is.

7 FEBRUARY 2008

I was looking vacantly out of my bedroom window when it started. The snow that is. Moments earlier, it had been a crisp night, but not cold by any means. The next thing you know, the snow was beginning to lie thick as blankets one on top of the other on the ground. Within an hour, as far as I could see was a total white-out. It was going to be a cold few days ahead if it continued like this.

The snow brought with it a sense of impending doom. Over the years I had come to learn that some kind of ‘doom’ was more than likely coming anyway - always coupled with a visit from our extraordinary friend. Since the pot-hole incident back in ‘02, there had been maybe half a dozen lesser incidents in which he had chosen to become involved. There were a couple in 2005 that didn’t include me but saved Nicky and Lyndsey from being in a far worse scrape than they would have been otherwise.

There was also one memorable time in 2007 too when I hit a patch of black ice on the most lonesome stretch of road you could even imagine whilst driving back to Inverness airport after an exhibition on Skye. I guarantee that one wouldn’t have ended well. We kind of got used to having it around. Would it be so bold as to say we began to take it for granted? Probably not. In fact, it would be pretty honest of me to admit it. In recent years, we had even discussed its origins. Angel or alien - those were the main trains of thought and who could blame us. There was little other point of reference to run with. Neither seemed to fit quite right enough for us to hang our hat on though but what would you suggest?

It would appear and disappear at will. No time ever seemed to pass during these incidents either and yet, neither did time appear to stop. Which is a good thing - that would have been a step to far.

The snow gave up its assault mid-afternoon on the following day. Nicky and Lyndsey trekked over to my place not long after and we made a plan to go collect some wood from the forest that both of our houses backed onto. Virgin snow and layered beyond measure, we hit the woodland with the sledge and a length of rope. If you’ve ever tried to carry wood home for burning yourself, you’ll know just how essential these two items are. A couple of brutal snowball fights later, we began loading what sticks we could find onto the sledge - and yes, I know we could never have used them for fuel. The point of the trip wasn’t really the wood, it was the collecting of the wood as a family that meant something to us.

Nicky was pretty adventurous these days and it was something that I encouraged, much to Lyndsey’s displeasure. He found himself a tree and whipped up it like a squirrel.

“Hey, guess what! There’s a birds nest with eggs in it - in the winter! What kind a bird would lay eggs in the winter?”

“Can you get over to it safely?” I shouted up to him. “See if you can shimmy over there and see what kind they are.”

I got a punch on the arm. Nicky wriggled his way along the branch. Then, just as he raised himself a fraction to look into the nest, there was an ear splitting crack that filled the silence as the branch split in two.

Time appeared to slow down. It’s amazing how many things can happen in a few seconds really. I remember looking at Lyndsey and her looking at me. I remember watching Nicky fall through the air and to the ground just like he would have in a movie. There were sounds coming from all three of us and then - remember all that time that had slowed down I spoke about? Well, it has to go somewhere and today it was condensed into a sickening tenth of a second thud as Nicky’s head hit the roots of the tree that were visible above the snow.

I’d never heard anything like it. Blood splattered across the snow very much in real-time as Lyndsey and I simply stood there waiting for an answer. It was unreal. In hindsight, I think we were both in shock. I never really knew what that meant until then, but we both genuinely seemed powerless to do anything. Seconds later - if indeed it was that long - it, (or that ‘fucking thing’ as it became known after this), appeared at the base of the tree, arms outstretched.

When I think back now, it appeared to be confused or maybe even disappointed in itself. Whereas once I could have honestly said that it always appeared with an aura of majesty - for want of a better word - today, it was all gone. It was there in body but the spirit was nowhere to be found. Its numerous ever changing faces glanced down at Nicky and I swear it groaned. Not human by any means but the intonation was certainly that of a groan. Lyndsey fell to her knees, cried and babbled like a river. I - for all my guilt - simply stood and watched. I’m not sure what ‘it’ was doing. It appeared to be thinking very hard. So hard was it thinking, that it didn’t see Lyndsey get to her feet and round on it with no small amount of bile.

She began pounding at its chest and face with fists clenched so tight, they must have been as solid as marble. A long string of guttural and foul language came from a place I have no desire ever to see again. It stood right where it always had and took every broken pound from her.

I think I was still expecting the 'expected' to be brought forth. It was time to pull something spectacular out of the hat, but nothing came. Nicky didn’t magically sit up. There was nothing. Lyndsey fell to the ground pounding at nothing now. It was gone. Whether it was gone forever, I don’t know. Part of me thought it would be better if we never saw it again, another part of me felt a little sad that we might not but I don’t know why. Maybe some of that sadness came from how we had come to rely on it only to be let down. If it had never been a part of our life, would one of us been there to catch Nicky a little quicker? I don't think so.

Truth be told, I wouldn't even be here at all.

SWARM

It was Ryan’s first day at school and he didn’t want to go. Not at all. He knew that as soon as he stepped into the playground, all the other kids would laugh at him. For a start, he’d never been out of the house in short trousers before and the pair that were hanging on his wardrobe door loomed down on him and had darkened the last few days like an eclipse. He had toyed with the idea of hiding them or even throwing them away, but he couldn't do it to his mother after ‘all the sacrifices’ she had made. The fact remained though - this would be the third school in as many years for Ryan and he didn't see how this one would be any different than the others. Kids were kids and kids were mean. It was a harsh, sweeping statement but one that Ryan knew to be perpetually true wherever he went these days.The short trousers were the icing on the cake, but there were other things he was not happy about either. His new military style haircut, the tiny room that he now occupied in their tiny house in the middle of nowhere, the embarrassing small yellow car that they now owned... it was all so far removed from what they used to have before Dad left. Even though his mother told him relentlessly every single day that it wasn't his fault, he knew that it was really. There was nobody else in their family whose fault it could be. At nine years old, Ryan had developed a guilt complex far in excess of his years. He had taken so long over his cereal this morning, spooning the milk and letting it drip back into the bowl many times over, that his mother had eventually taken the bowl away and forcibly dragged him upstairs by the wrist to get dressed. After the statutory squabbling, huffing and puffing, Ryan finally conceded to parent power - “If you don’t get dressed, I’ll take you in your pants” - and put on the dreaded trousers. If it was possible to put a pair of trousers on badly, then Ryan achieved it with merit. They were a little bit turned to the left and he had even managed to screw up one of the legs so that it looked shorter than the other.

“Every other boy will be wearing them, it’s part of the uniform”, she told him as she straightened them out, but he didn’t care and certainly didn’t believe her. She ran her hand through what was left of his hair in a loving gesture before combing it again for about the fifth time that morning. It still sounded like the stupidest idea ever. What kind of school would make children wear short trousers when the term started in September?

To be fair, his mother had done her best to make it sound appealing. She had bought him a new lunch-box – the one that he wanted with Wolverine on it and had even gone so far as to include the occasional bribe with the addition of sweets and chocolate. Her biggest concession though had been the very dark glasses she had found for him on ebay complete with wraparound sides. There were times, even at nine years old, when he knew he was being exasperating for the sake of it. It couldn’t be easy bringing up a child on your own. He had heard that on TV once and he almost understood. James, who before they had moved, lived a couple of doors up the street, had a dad as well as a mother. Then again, James didn't appear to be a "bloody liability". If Ryan had been able to see, he might have thought he looked pretty good with his X-Men Cyclops style shades and haircut, but Ryan was as blind as a rock.

Most of the time.

Ryan’s mother finally got him in the car. Strapping himself into the front seat, he purposely 'looked' out of the window, ignored his mother and wondered if she could see the reflection of his sulking face. Obviously not, for she hadn’t said a word to him. Even the radio brought no joy to the car this morning. Sometimes they would sing together if it was song they both knew and those were the times when Ryan was at his best. Music put him in a different state of mind. Everything was calm when music played.

Ten minutes later – each one of them filled with the agonising silence of a family row - and they had almost reached the school. She pulled up far enough from the gates so as not to be noticed and sighed deeply a she turned off the engine and rolled her window down a couple of inches.

“Come on. You’ll be fine. It doesn’t matter if they laugh at you. I’m sure you’ll find some friends who are just like you and eventually you’ll find some other kids to laugh back at – that’s what happens at school. You’ll have a great time.”

“Mum - I'm never going to find any friends who are just like me. There is nobody else 'just like me'!"

“It will come honey. I chose this school because they said it was a good place for kids who are different. Do you want me to take you in. I promise it will be OK.”

Ryan knew she meant it this time – she reserved that tone of voice for those moments when he had taken her all the way to the edge. He felt around the footwell and picked his cane up off the floor. He hated it and was looking forward to day when he could have a dog instead but they didn't allow dogs in schools, so the cane it was.

For all her nagging, Ryan’s mother thought he looked very grown up in his uniform with his school tie and his little cap (which was another thing he hated but had actually forgotten about until she put it on his head at that very moment). It had been a rough few years and this was a landmark event for both of them. She had meant to take a photograph. Maybe tomorrow. She wished she could let him know that simmering just below the surface of her impatient demeanor this morning, was no small mountain of pride. Her beautiful baby hadn't quite turned out as any of them had planned but she still loved him more than life itself.

"Come on. I'll walk with you to the gates."

Ryan didn't say anything but got out of the car knowing full well he was never going to get out of this. As they walked through the gates and into the playground (for she could be just as stubborn as he), his mother grimaced at the words he was whispering to himself. Muttering almost silently under his breath as he had many times before, he chanted:

“Please don’t laugh at me, please don’t laugh at me, please don’t …”

She was beginning to feel a little guilty, but this was something they had to get over otherwise all hope would be lost. They had almost reached the steps that led up to the main building – the sacred point at which parents stopped being in charge and school took over. She had watched the other parents many times over in her last year of scouting - standing every day in the same spot as they waved their kids goodbye or welcomed them back with a smile. There were lots of other new parents and kids here whose eyes were also filled with trepidation. For once, she felt as though she wasn’t totally alone. Ryan was standing very close to her still when she heard the galloping of small feet coming up behind her.

“Ha ha! Look, I told you he was weird.”

Three young boys – maybe in the year above the Ryan – were standing in front of them, pointing at Ryan, who was still chanting his mantra under his breath.

“Hey freak! Why don’t you go back where you came from!” yelled the ugliest of the trio - and he was really ugly - loud enough for almost everyone in the playground to hear.

“He's a freakazoid!”, taunted the next in a high pitched tone that made him sound a lot more feminine than his troll-like frame actually was. It hadn't occurred to Ryan that they were winding him up and there was no way they could actually see behind his glasses to discover exactly what it was that he was hiding. The third boy however, who was evidently more curious, went and stood right in front of Ryan and took the glasses clean off his face to get a good look at what a blind kids eyes really looked like.

Ryan, who obviously didn't see this coming, swept into panic mode. He stopped chanting his mantra and switched to another. The words came out so fast, they hardly even registered in his head:

“Oh please no. Not today, not now. Please no, not today...”

But it was too late. The wasps that had lived in his eye sockets since the day he was born, left their nests and took flight. It was a sight to behold. What appeared as a great dust cloud twisted above Ryan’s head like a tornado as a deafening hum took over the playground. The loudest boy - the instigator of the sudden drama - stood very still as he wished with every wish he had left that everybody was looking at the black and yellow twister and not the wet patch that was pooling around his hooves. Then he began to run.

With the boy screaming like a banshee, the wasps – possibly 600 of them - pursued him across the schoolyard. He zigzagged across the playground and around in circles, but boys were not put on this earth to outrun wasps. Not even boys who were half boy, half zebra. They tangled up and buried themselves in his hair, invaded his open necked shirt and burrowed deeply into his blazer pockets. Some went up his trouser leg, others crept into his ears, but none of them stung. Some of them even managed to evade his swishing tail to settle at that end of him, waiting for the word.

Then the world went very quiet as the boy passed out beneath the year two classroom window, from which two teachers watched nervously with the windows shut. The other two boys had also run off, but in different directions.

The ugly boy, whose even uglier father was waiting in the car watching the action unfold, opened the window a slither and shouted; “Run!” He waited until the boy was but an arm’s length from the car and opened the door. The boy dived onto the passenger seat and the door was slammed shut behind him. But wasps are not stupid and not so easily outwitted. Some invaded the engine through the ugly over-sized grill on the 4x4, while the others went to find a way in through the exhaust system. The boys quick thinking ugly father gunned the engine and the exhaust battalion were spewed out onto the street, but it was too late. The first troops had found their way into the air conditioning system and were in the car, doing what wasps do best.

They gathered around the boys mouth and some loitered in his schoolbag close to his lunch. A dozen or so began to explore his nostrils as he had sat there screaming with his lips sealed tighter than if a dragonfly had flown past and sewn them shut. Now, he sat paralysed with fear not knowing what to do for the best. If he had been able to move, he would have seen his ugly father proving himself to be a very brave man by diving out of the car and leaving his son to fend for himself.

Meanwhile, the third boy had taken refuge on the climbing frame. Boys can be pretty stupid sometimes - even those of a troll-like size. You can no more out-climb a wasp than you can outrun them. The wasps buzzed around his head and they seemed content to circle him for the time being, although on closer inspection he would have found that they had also begun to congregate around the leg holes of his short trousers. The more he batted at them, the closer they seemed to come.

For only the second time in his life, Ryan was able to see again. Tears rolled out of his deep brown eyes and down his face with happiness. The only thing he was capable of was to look up at his mother as though it was the last time he might ever get the chance. Kneeling down she hugged him tightly and whispered:

“It’s OK, everything is going to be OK.”

Ryan hugged her back just as tightly and said

“Really?”

“Really. I think we had better call them back don’t you? I don’t think there will be any more laughing at you for the time being.”

“You promise?”

“No. I don’t make promises I can’t control, but I think there’s been enough excitement for one day.”

“Can I look at you a little bit more?”

He pushed his mother away slightly and held her at arms length while he gazed deeply into her eyes.

“Love you”, he said with a grin.

She returned his smile, hardly able to see her son for the tears that had gathered and replied, “Love you too kiddo.”

Ryan took a deep breath, clenched his fists and summoned the wasps back to him. They seemed reluctant for a moment, enjoying their new found freedom but eventually, as surely as they had left, they returned to their twin nests. The playground was wrapped in a stunned silence. Nobody looked at Ryan or his mother, but very silently, they began to file into the school as the bell rang as if on some God given cue.

“You’ll be fine now. Go on. I’ll see you at 3 o’clock,” she said, handing him back his cane.

“Ok. See you later.”

Picking up his lunchbox and bag off the floor, he followed the other children up the steps, hoping his mother wouldn’t notice he was no longer wearing his cap. He was the last one in, but just before he went on to begin his first day at school, he turned and raised his glasses just an inch or so, spilling out a couple of hundred of the wasps who knew exactly what they had to do.

Silently pursuing the car in which the ugly father rode, they entered through a now open back window. Silently, they all sat on the back of his seat, just below the headrest and waited for a sign. If there was one thing that Ryan despised more than the cross he must bear, it was a father who was never around when his kid needed him.

David Bowie - Where Are We Now - Beautiful...

The new Bowie cut - worth the ten year wait? Pretty much, yeah.

Coffee: An Introduction

Scenes From The Coffee House is a series of essays with no common thread bar they were all written in coffee shops around the world. Maybe that's the thread. When I'm done collecting them together, I shall call it 'Scenes From The Coffee House'. To see what it's all about, read this again.

The Inferno of Dan Brown and his Code

Those of us who have read The Da Vinci Code - which is a fair few of us judging by the sales figures - can be split easily and neatly into two groups. There are those who picked it up and absorbed the story by osmosis over the period of a couple of days because that's what they always do when a new thriller comes out and there are those who read it once the hype had begun and then felt compelled to comment. If I can navigate my thoughts, this is an article about stories and what lies at their heart. Then again, it's very possible that I might get sidetracked by all manner of rubbish.

In all my years as a reader on the planet, I have either had cause or been made to read the following classics: The Return of the Native, Oliver Twist and Little Women. I consider myself lucky that the list stopped there, but I also think I speak for many when I make the sweeping statement that they are all exceptionally tedious. I didn't enjoy reading them one iota. Conversely, around the same time, I chose to read both Carrie and The Shining. As far as some are concerned, Stephen King is the ultimate in low brow literature experiences, but based on the premise that millions of readers the world over choose to invest their time and money in him, how does that make it low brow?  He has a good command of the English language. His stories are about people we care about or can at least identify with on some level and there's always more than a fair share of surprises along the way. All of which really goes to prove nothing except that Stephen King knows how to tell a story. Put back to back with Hardy's Return of the Native - which tells a 60 second story in a very long winded fashion - I'd say that was OK.

In a nutshell, King appeals to the primeval part of us. The part of the soul that's still gathered around a campfire listening to tales from the forest. 'Classic' authors however - I don't get, at least in the way that they have come to be defined. It's the literary equivalent of listening to a couple of very elderly neighbours talking over the garden fence about the way things used to be - about people you've never heard of and have even less desire to know them. At an educated guess, I think this is not because they are awful writers but because they're not dealing with 'my time'. We can't be interested in every era throughout history. Can we?

I can take a certain amount of snobbery when it comes to music and sports, but not books. The DaVinci Code is an outstanding example of the literary snob. Dan Brown never set out to change the world. It's well publicised that the concept itself wasn't new but really, all anybody needed to do was read Angels & Demons to know it was nothing more than the next book in the sequence. Having said that, he might have made an absolute fortune but when the pressure was on to deliver the next, that didn't shape up quite so well. It might have sold in its millions, but did anybody recommend The Lost Symbol to their friends in the same amounts? I don't think so. I suspect Inferno will be much better now that expectation has come back down to a reasonable level.

I've always been a sucker for a for a great story and what we need to remember is that we've been born into an era outside of the classics. There are many writers out there who, almost on a weekly basis, are stating in print that most writers today have a weak command of language. Whilst I tend to agree with that, it doesn't mean they have a weak grasp on how to spin a yarn. Thus, the ultimate goal for us all, is to decide whether we love stories or literature. We can of course love them both, but the clash comes when the literary critic gets a hold of a blockbuster. These people should be careful what they say because despite the ever advancing digital book world, it's sales from authors like Harlan Coben that are single handedly keeping every single branch of high street bookstores open.

See, it strikes me that the business of publishing and book selling are supported by authors who tell stories that people want to read - and while it's nice to think of a starving author as being noble, that pretty much sucks all round for all concerned. Coming in at it from the other angle, neither do I mind if it takes fools buying 'a Kardashian' (a phrase I am now introducing to the English language to depict lower than low-brow) if it means the kickback means another Andrew Kaufman book finds a home.

My first brush with the high brow versus low brow argument came very young as I moved through The Famous Five, Secret Seven, Five Find Outers and umm, "the ones who had no collective name for their gang but one of them called Jack also had a parrot called Dinah" - I think. (Edit: having done some research on that to refresh my memory, Dinah was actually Jack's sister. His parrot was called Kiki. They appear to be called 'The Adventure Series', but I think that's been added post-watershed as I would have been shit out of luck if I'd gone into a store and asked for them by that name. Do not confuse this series with the Five Find Outers who sported the inimitable Fatty and a small dog called Buster. Fatty was my favourite childhood detective because he taught me how to get out of a locked room - so long as the key was left in the door on the other side. I tried it many times and it worked a treat. Not that I used to get myself locked in the cellar as a kid but still, the skill was there if I needed it).

Later, and very swiftly, I moved onto The Hardy Boys, Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators and Willard Price's 'Adventure Series' - which I believe really were called 'The Adventure Series'. The Willard Price series featured Hal and Roger Hunt who were teenage zoologists, which written down sounds like the dullest piece of crap ever created but no - it opened a world of amazingness up to me. A world that up until that moment was quantum locked into nameless British villages and distant relatives that made pies on a Sunday.

As a slight aside - here's some covers I found online that are from the Five Find Outers run being published (I was a Red Dragon reader and proud of it) when I was a kid:

and a selection of the sort of illustrations that were inside:

 

 Now take a look at how they eventually got upgraded at some point in the nineties to include shit such as this:

Seriously? Is that really a man who is somewhat short in the height department pulling a smoke from a packet? Is that supposed to show kids how smoking stunts your growth? Sadly, I think it is.

See. Sidetracked. I've totally forgotten what the point was now... oh yeah - highbrow...

It's not that I wasn't exposed to high culture when I was a kid. Far from it but there was a sensible mix which meant choice. The Water Babies is an incredible book and Kingsley should be mentioned in the same breath as people like Dickens more often. We also had Welsh kids books, the mighty Mabinogion and for some reason, a book of Danish folk tales that had been translated into English that was intriguing to say the least. I had my own comics delivered too. So to paint a very miniature picture of twenty years of history, there was always more than enough to read. Everybody had their own books and nothing was off limits. Not even Lyn Marshall's yoga book, which I mention here simply because it sprang to mind. I never read it, have only recently become interested in yoga, but as a ten year old boy, the idea of women doing yoga in superhero outfits was most attractive. Here's Lyn in her heyday on the front of an album she released. One would assume it had a book with it but then again, when you talk about the seventies you can assume nothing:

I was sad to discover in the process of stealing this picture that Lyn is no longer with us. Shame. My Ma was really into her at the time and is still doing yoga after all these years. That's a legacy for you to hang your hat on.

Way off subject, I know.

Take a look at any book on amazon - absolutely any one at all. Choose your favourite in fact. If you look at the reviews there, there will always be a mixture of shock and awe. For every lover, there will be a hater. People who love excessively want to share with other just how good that book was. People who hate in an equal amount also wish to share their thoughts. My favourites are the people that leave a one star review because it took too long to come in the mail. There really is no hope for some people.

Thus, the whole reviews/commentary process is negated to the point that - as a publisher of my own material - I have figured out that the only way to get a jump start in the world is by word of mouth. How that works in the real world is a subject for another time but basically, people trust people. Book lovers trust other book lovers, but most importantly, great story lovers trust other story lovers. That's how the DaVinci Code sold a galaxy worth of books. That's how Harry Potter took off. Press rewind: that's how Lord of the Rings took off. Fast forward: that's how Jaws went interstellar. It's no great secret. Despite the advances of technology, we're all still human.

Well, apart from the people who leave reviews about the mail service on amazon.

More on this in the next instalment perhaps...

Bradbury Rediscovered

In memory of one of the greatest writers of our time (or any other time for that matter). There’s not much that readers and writers can agree upon, but if there’s one thing we should, it’s that Ray Bradbury gave more than he took…

These covers by Adam Johnson. Good work Sir..

Which concludes importing my tumblr blogs... more cool book design on the horizon shortly...

Scenes From A Coffee House

A word about writing - and this might be pretty important whatever it is you're planning to do - now I've decided to go it alone (see post from day before yesterday), a lot of pressure has disappeared. The pressure was self inflicted for sure but I've always worked that way. I've stopped thinking about 'might be' and 'what if' and a dozen other things and have probably written more in the last few days than I have in a long time. The icing and the cherry on the cake for me was that I just read Seth Godin's new book The Icarus Deception which (as I'm sure is the point of the book) snapped everything into a very fine focus. Allow me to drill into it if you will. The general gist of the book is everything as you know it is broken. Some of us know this, some of us don't, but regardless of which tribe you fall into doesn't change the truth of the matter. It's 2013 and everything is different, everything is changing and if you think you've got a handle on it, then you've missed the point because it will all have changed again by tomorrow anyway.

Keeping focussed on the 'being an author' train of thought, I think it's important to chew that over. The only way you can be an author is by finishing your book. Then writing another and another until you don't want to do it anymore or die. It has nothing to with a publisher giving you permission to be one. Or an agent. Or whether the public buys your book or anything else. The money I'm sure is very nice, but if that's truly your prime motivation, you'd be better off becoming an investment banker or a drug dealer.

The story is all there is - and I suspect in my own spiritual way - that the universe will find you an audience when you've done good work - providing you don't just leave it sitting on a hard drive or in a notebook under your pillow.

Anyway, back to Seth Godin (and you should read it, not just listen to my lousy paraphrasing of it): it's time for new 'stuff' to happen. It is a new world out there. A new world in which anything is possible. I realise now (and how could I have been so stupid) that while I was 'waiting' (that might be the wrong word) for somebody to step up to the plate and say "I don't give a fuck what the publishing industry thinks - here's my book", what I should have been doing was to be that person.

Visibly. Not just in my head.

In the back of my mind, in an alternative world, I have sat here many times and said Stephen King should do this... or Gaiman should do this. 'This' being to go it alone - not for the money but to prove it can be done, but why should they? They paid their dues once. Why pay them again? And somewhere inside I think I wanted them to do this because I perceived them as 'safe'. If it didn't work out, they would be OK. That was wrong of me. It may be safe but really, what would it actually prove? Maybe I was looking for some kind of role model. A Dirty Harry style lone gunman of the publishing world... but I have no idea why I thought I needed that. Insert smilie face icon of choice at this juncture if you wish. This searching for answers thing is hard work. I should learn to quieten my mind and stop asking so many damn questions. I'm a big boy now.

The real world answer is that I need to do it for myself and maybe I can help some others out along the way. If it all falls apart and the world thinks my books suck/are incredible, that's fine too.

My job is simply to keep going.

Yep. That was me thinking out loud in public. Thanks for listening...

•••

That's enough of that. Let's get back to inane-ness. Californication starts again next week. Here's a cool interview with David Duchovny for Rolling Stone.

And to raise the mood before you go, I heard this on the radio earlier on. Great song. Great band. Stupid hat.

A Little Stephen King Magic...

These are far too beautiful a find to let them slip through the fingers of my memory - then again, that’s what blogs are for. So that you don’t forget great stuff. These sets of Stephen King covers comes from the mind and hands of Stuart Bache. Click around his site for close-ups and backstories. Good work dude...