A Podcast, building stuff, breaking stuff and a dog in negative

I have been remiss in mentioning something because recently, my head has been up my ass, but this is a link for you to download the podcast Wayne Simmons interviewed me for. It's excellent fun and sets a nice stage for another one that we are about to launch ourselves into - next Saturday I believe - that came around quick. This one is about my take on being a writer these days and the next one will be a lot less of me talking about myself and we're going to investigate Scandinavian Noir together.

Game on.

•••

As I write this, I'm still two days from flicking the switch on the electricity in this new place. I've been busy building the bookstore page and that was the second to last thing that needed urgent attention - and now only leaves importing six years worth of blog posts that will probably need to be attended to for broken links and missing pictures. That's going to be a long old haul so don't be expecting them all to turn up all at once. Reading back through some of them, I have come to see that in the early days, I used to do an awful lot of thinking out loud. So much so that I might even cull some of it... or at least sync some posts together so that they make more sense.

File under pending.

•••

On the day that I finally sat down with myself and decided that I really needed to get fit again - not 'get fit and leave it at being nothing more than a good idea', but actually in the real world - my knee that has not been the best knee in the world ever since I jumped from the top of this many years ago... 

...decided to blow out on me in the most horrible fashion. I've seen it coming for a while but today it's being a real bitch. I haven't cried yet but I've come close. 

•••

Other than that, it's been a pretty quiet day. Wrapped up a couple of interviews for the next issue of the mag early on, took Hector out for a decent walk in the rain... and he thinks he has trouble with curly hair! On that very subject, here's a picture of H from maybe a couple of months back:

And here's a picture of a sexy female relative who is about a year older than him from the same parents (we think) who happens to be for sale. Did we think about doing the unthinkable? Yes we did but H is like three dogs in one. Not sure either of us could actually handle it but the thought is there...

And no matter how much we try to shake it off, it won't go away.

Breast Cancer and a look back at 1974

Sometime before Christmas, I found myself interviewing some women who had decided that tattooing over/around their mastectomy scars/total breast removal after cancer surgery was a great idea. It was enlightening to say the least. I pondered long and hard over how to approach the story - it's a little delicate here and there, sensitive too but the one thing I didn't want it to be was boring. Eventually, I decided I would approach it in the same spirit as they themselves approached it and it turned out just fine.

Now that both issues of the magazine have come down off the public shelves, now is a good time to post them somewhere - like here - for public consumption. The pdf files will load in your browser - if not, get a better browser. Part One is here and part two is here. Please feel free to link, share and credit accordingly.

In rummaging around in this story, I discovered that Peter Criss (original Kiss drummer) had also battled breast cancer - it's not something that you ever hear men talk about really, so thumbs up for coming out and talking about it. He didn't get back to my request to include his thoughts in the piece which is a shame but maybe he has other things to do. You can watch the youtube footage of the CNN interview here. As you'll see, the numbers are relatively low compared to that of women but make of it what you will... chances are you will know somebody, somewhere. 

The most important thing to remember here is none of these people ever thought it would happen to them...

•••

I don't need any excuses to post a Kiss video from the good old days, but that was a good link so, er... here's one right now. If you watch through the interview (which Gene must have reviewed swiftly and decided from that day onwards to never do it like that again) to the live performance, you'll see that it must also be the production managers first day at work or maybe just the day when he found out how to switch from camera one to camera two.

How I miss you 1974 - even though I was only seven.

The Telescope Effect

Last night, I took a road trip back in my own timeline to find some music to write to that I didn't automatically feel the need to form an opinion about. Old habits die hard I guess. I ended up with a five album playlist and started to write. When I got to the end of the playlist, I found I had written just over 4000 words which is a good place to be. It's certainly not normal for me to write that much in one sitting, so I need to test this 'comfort music' theory out to see if that's what I've been missing all these years. There's certainly enough albums around that meet the criteria.

There was nothing even that special on it that you would even be interested in - only albums that mean something to me I suspect - like Brad Sinsel's War Babies, an album called Siogo from Blackfoot (which is odd because I don't like any of their other albums), the first two Japan albums and also the first Bon Jovi album which (shockingly) stands the test of time. They are all albums I have listened to thousands of times over the years and know inside out and back to front. 

If this helps me write fast and well, I am more than happy to keep digging. Now that music is streamed 100mph at you, it's easy to forget what it used to mean and how you used to treat it with a lot more respect. I guess we could say the same about a lot of things.

This habit of looking backwards is, I hope, not peculiar to me. I used to actively practice avoiding the past and once upon a time, did in fact totally master the art of 'no rear view mirror' thinking and found that I was able to sink my teeth deep into life and whatever project I was working on. When you take this approach to life, several things can happen to you - or at least they happened to me. The first is that I didn't see my mother for three years. Some of my extended family I didn't see for at least fifteen years. I missed funerals, holidays, birthdays - you name it, I wasn't there for it, so intent was I on building a castle in the sky with no foundations. 

The second thing that happened is that most people thought I was a bastard. There's a quote from George Clooney (out of From Dusk Til Dawn) that goes "I may be a bastard, but I'm not a fucking bastard" - that was me. It makes sense in my head that when the milk is spilt, there's no point in trying to mop it up to get it back in the bottle, but as human beings I found that we don't really like people to behave in that way. What human beings like is for as many people as possible to gather round and say how sorry they are that the milk is spilt. Some will offer to buy you new milk, some will slip in the milk and make even more of a mess - some of them won't even know what milk is but will stand around looking apologetic because that's what the others are doing.

Most of what we believe about the world, we haven't even experienced. I'm too young to remember where I was when Kennedy was assassinated - I'm not even sure I had been born but I remember where I was when the space shuttle launched for the first time. I was in our physics classroom at school but I remember the day as a classic not because people were travelling into space but because me and my buddy Chalky decided to see what would really happen if you plugged an immersion heater into the mains and left it out of water while it heated up. Sure - it spoiled the whole 'important world event' thing that day but everybody present without exception learned a really valuable lesson about safety in the home.

For me, this is how life should be recalled. In personal moments of living - not via a satellite hook up. Sure, these things are important but unless they inspire you to do something spectacular of your own or have a direct impact on your own life, they are nothing but wallpaper. Things to discuss around the water cooler at best. 

Now I've written that down, I can see the hypocrisy of it. It's only by being exposed to these events that we're able to decide what is important and what isn't. Also, if the shuttle hadn't taken off that day, we would have been outside in the rain instead of in the physics class. 

If I hadn't been in the physics class and blown up an immersion heater, I wouldn't have been thrown out of the physics class and I wouldn't have made a new best friend called John in remedial physics, who in turn, wouldn't have come round to my house with that album by Blackfoot. We wouldn't have later formed a band with a guy called Steve who burned down the curtain for me on just how good the first two Japan albums are and... well, you get the picture by now.

All of these things are distinct points in time that span many years in the making - and yet I remember them all as a very, very short chain of events that don't even take one second to bring to mind as a singular image now.

Man, life sure is complicated.

That physics teacher though... he was a fucking bastard.

And the raven was called sin

It's true - I have fallen behind with blogging, reading, all of the TV shows I like to watch and just about everything else in life that I'm supposed to be doing as well - but at least I'm writing. A lot. Throw in a valiant attempt to move the site to a new home and I see February has arrived and I didn't even notice.

To keep me company today, I've dropped Carrie (1976) onto Netflix. The first five minutes of that movie is cruel. Not a patch on what school can really be like, but cruel all the same. I picked Rhiannon up from netball yesterday afternoon. After weeks of training and staying after school, she didn't get picked for 'the team'. The teacher suggested she might choose her next time - which both her and I have interpreted to mean, "if somebody drops out and there's nobody else around, you can make up the numbers".

There are two ways of looking at this. The first is to say that you enjoy netball anyway and will carry on playing in the hope that a space does become available so you can try and prove yourself again. The second way (the one both she and I took) is to raise a finger to the world, reclaim the time, spend those hours drawing or building something that you love and move on. There are many people out there who think this is the wrong way to teach a 12 year old to handle the world but I don't think so. It's just taking care of business for all of us.

Lazing on a Saturday afternoon

Dog fed, walked and asleep. Don't ever let an amateur tell you that having a puppy isn't hard work. Currently lying on the sofa watching old Doctor Who - the Shakespeare one - and tossing out various endings for a short story I wrote on the train this week that features ladybirds and Starsky and Hutch. 

In my line of fire this week, I bought a copy of Dear Life by Alice Munro which is excellent, started listening to the audiobook of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Heaven written/read by Slipknot's Corey Taylor - also excellent - and can also highly recommend Isle Of Noises by Daniel Rachel which is a book of interviews with 'Great British Songwriters'. I haven't read all if it by any means but those that I have so far (Jimmy Page, Bryan Ferry and Lily Allen) are effortless. Rachel really knows his stuff from the ground up and Picador have done a great job on making it something that had to be bought rather than downloaded.

Damn you Picador. I was really making progress this week...

As you totally won't notice for another few days because we're all locked up behind a password here I've moved site host, servers and all manner of other things. It's been refreshing to say the least. Wordpress is lauded the world over as the best blogging platform around but time moves on and there are new sheriffs in town - all rather dependent on what you hope to achieve. There's nothing particularly wrong with wordpress but man, it's got complex over there. All I need is a platform that's slick and that works properly. Thus: welcome to squarespace where things rock hard and best of all, their iPhone app for blogging within your own house is absolutely flawless.

Game on.

The Picture of Dorian Gray - One Can Hope...

February is getting busy. One of the things that's been on the list of things to do for the longest time is getting a proper photo shoot under the belt. Consider it booked and ready to roll. It's one of those things that you can put off forever but you really shouldn't if you're out to achieve something on your own. Actually, the same can be said even if you've got the weight of Sony or Coca-Cola behind you and are trying to achieve something. Getting your shit together to know what you want however is another thing entirely. Have you ever sat down and asked yourself how you want people to see you? That photo-shoot will be one of your 'business cards' and I've seen some horrendous examples of author photographs ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Even though I've already decided and discussed what we're going to do (so I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to get), I had a quick look at what some other people had done yesterday. A writer of erotic fiction you may be, but when you're over 60, should you really be pushing out a photo of yourself wearing flares with your legs wide open? It's a genuine question. Judging by the covers of her books, maybe she should. Maybe that's exactly the image she wants to be portraying but I have to say, it made me shudder a little. Ultimately though, it's your decision, your life, your career... do what you want to do but don't ever forget why you're doing it. Am I qualified to make sweeping statements like this? After putting more than 300 magazine covers out into the world that did their job, you get a feel for what works and what doesn't and thankfully the ones that fall into the 'doesn't' category where many years ago.

One final word on this subject - did you ever see an author photograph that didn't change for over twenty years? That's not good practice at all. That's lying through your teeth. A little honesty about being who you really are is good. People will respect you a lot more for it. It's 2014 - you can't hide from the public like you were able to in 1985.

•••

I don't know if I should be talking about this yet but that leads me nicely on to something I'm really excited about. I've never considered getting my portrait painted - it's something that wouldn't even cross my mind to think about doing but one conversation led to another and how could I say no to Nick Lord - who is just wrapping up his portrait of Hilary Mantel (winner of the Booker Prize - twice) and has previously painted Amy Winehouse and er... the Queen amongst many others. He is also Portrait Artist of the Year 2013. On those grounds, it would be dumb to say no but more than anything, it goes to prove that good things happen when you say 'yes' more often than 'no'. Besides, I think I shall get on swimmingly with Nick. I'll post more when I know more - it was one of those things that I was having a hard time keeping to myself but now I don't have to.

Insert smiley face.

Call of the wild

I was standing in the garden this morning while I waited for Hector to decide where he had hidden his ball, when a sheet of crows flapped across the sky like they had been unpegged from a washing line a little way down the street. Low flying, noisy, yet organised, I actually flinched they came so close to me. A few moments later, they all landed as a single in unit in the trees at the other end of the street and sat up high watching us.

Meanwhile, in the tree that's actually in the garden, the lonely magpie that comes without fail every day sat shouting at us as well. When you listen to the world, it doesn't have to shout at you - this was the world talking to me and today, I knew what it was saying. 

There are times when you don't have a clue what the world is trying to offer - for me, it's normally when I've got my head in the clouds and think I'm busy being busy, but a few seconds of paying attention at the right time is worth a week of hard work. I've been trying to finish working on The Family Of Noise these last few days and had gotten to a point at which I couldn't decide whether to push the novel or pull it. After this mornings revelation, I see that pulling it is the better option. Pushing is hard and doesn't help anything flow but pulling is a totally different way to play.

Wisdom

You’ll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do.

AN INTERVIEW WITH GREG CRAOLA SIMKINS

The world outside is an odd place at the best of times. Recently, the media appears to have become aware of tattooing and related fine art – or to be more precise, how tattoo culture has seeped into a world it perhaps shouldn’t have. To this I say: ‘just because you’ve decided to notice it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening before.’ Thus, with great pride and other wholesome things, I sat down with Greg Craola Simkins to figure some stuff out… and got more than I bargained for:

I have admired from afar – very afar. Then I admired from slightly closer but a book is still quite far away. To find yourself in the eye of the hurricane, up close and personal while digging on a story is the best feeling in the world. A family man first and foremost these days, the former graffiti artist Greg Simkins – better known to the world as Craola – is startlingly easy to get along with. That’s no surprise to be honest – if you are able to digest a person’s work properly, you’ll find that when the work is intense, the person is not. If the work is lacking, the frustration sits with the artist.

Greg still gets up frighteningly early in the morning – mostly, we’re on the same wavelength for this conversation but mornings are only for the birds surely…

“Honestly, I’ll draw or paint at the drop of a hat or any opportunity I get, and to clarify, it’s not because I’m the most dedicated artist around, it’s because I have kids. I am obsessed with making art, but the reason for the early start time is so I fulfil my glamorous duties at home such as cleaning dishes, changing diapers, keeping my five year old from running into traffic and – all joking aside – enjoying my family and watch these kids grow up. I try to work the hours my dad worked when I grew up. Seven to four or five every day, drawing late night with weekends off.”

I struggle with this concept but it’s not really important – or maybe it is… that will become clearer later. The purpose of my stay here is to do what I love doing and that’s trying to figure out the inner workings of a word class artist. As a writer, I don’t plan anything – I turn up at the page and see what the page wants to do. I may have a vague idea of where to start, but I find planning ruins most things for me – takes away any spontaneity that is likely to happen. As for working when other people are around – that’s a major crime around here.

“I understand what you’re saying and I feel you to a point. I look at my sketch time as my writing time and my painting time as the editing of those ideas I came to when drawing. I also don’t fully flesh out a painting at drawing time because I love discovering new things that the painting is asking me to do. You just start seeing new things in the rendered shapes once the paint goes on, that’s the time to be spontaneous and I love that part of painting.

“I share my studio space/warehouse with four other dudes, Kevin Pasko, Bob Dob, Graham Curran and A.J. Dia, so there’s never a dull moment. There are plenty of guys to bounce ideas around with and they aren’t afraid of being honest with a “that sucks” at the appropriate moment. I do see some differences with my work prior to having people in the studio, but it is hard to gauge if the work has altered because of that or if it’s because it’s just the natural progression. I do get away to draw though. I prefer to being “alone in public”, like at a library or a coffee shop to draw. A change of scenery is always good.”

We’re bandying the phrase and concept of “work” around here like it’s something everybody understands but one look at any (take your pick) of Greg’s pieces reveals that not to be the case at all. The concept of originality in a world in which the obvious paths have been worn dry is tough. Personally, I deal with it like this – I smash opposing concepts into each other – things that have no right to go together and make them work. I wonder out loud if that’s the way Greg’s brain works without even consciously thinking about it anymore?

“Wow, that’s almost exactly how the pieces come together. It started making more sense to me when my interest in coral reefs collided with forest wildlife and wanting them to “meet”. After that, everything was game and there were no more boundaries. Composing the morphs has become almost unconscious and more about textures colliding than creatures. It is a license to try anything and everything out and make them fit seamlessly.”

I dare say that a vast percentage out there will be somewhat surprised to learn that Greg is a Christian. A church-going man who finds a spirituality there that fuels a very large part of his work – whether that be conscious or otherwise is in the eye of the beholder. I didn’t know this beforehand, but once learned, went back to Greg’s work and came out with a different view than I came in with. Funny how knowing a person even a little bit changes how you look at what they do. So would I be a million miles away from the truth if I were to suggest there were subtle nuances here of ‘giving’ and ‘taking care of each other’ as a primary themes?

“You are correct. I am a Christ follower, I would say I am Christian – and am – but the term has become loaded and trampled by so many people in the media, and I believe rightfully so in some cases. There are many people out there professing to be Christians and then doing everything in their power to expose their ignorance to anything that is in the Bible they claim to believe or of Jesus whom they profess to follow. Just watch TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network) for a few minutes and you’ll get my drift. It’s a carnival sideshow that has no idea what it’s doing.

“Sometimes my work is taking a shot at this very picture. I have a piece called “Prey” that I recently painted which showcases a lamb walking into a room full of wolf snakes draped in sheep skins. It is loosely based on Matthew 7:15. The Lamb is representational of unblemished purity boldly walking into a horrible fate by those He knows to be liars and murderers. These wolves are described as people professing to be “believers” and the passage is directed to “the Church”.

“As far as the majority of my work goes however, I don’t approach it theologically. I don’t attempt to put messages in most pieces, “Prey” and “Here Stands Matt Riddle” are exceptions. I enjoy creating narratives about interactions and relationships between worlds that wouldn’t normally meet under any other circumstance than popping into my brain. I believe my world-view seasons my work and that comes out in instances while drawing and painting without a forceful push. I have said it in the past: I am attempting to explore the depths of creativity that we have all been given in the likeness of a vastly imaginative Creator.

“I’m amazed that we can even be contemplating things in such a way with our minds totally irrelevant of the natural world. Things that don’t make sense somehow manifest just by daydreaming. It’s pondering ideas of time, eternity, infinity, minds, souls and the basic question of “Why are we here?” that has me battling back and forth daily. As much as I’d like to just believe we popped into existence out of absolute “nothing” (and I mean real nothing, not particles, or vacuums, because that would be something) I can’t buy into it. Even the multiverse discussions I have heard just push back the ultimate timing of the Big Bang and ultimately, you have to ask the question “Where did the Multiverse come from?”.

“Watching William Lane Craig debate Lawrence Krauss on these topics and similar discussions are inspiring. These discussions also give me great ideas for creating my own imaginative worlds and ask the question “What would be going on in another universe separate from our own, what would we see there?”. Then topics such as relationships, love, longing to be loved, heartache, suffering, regret, courage and as you have pointed out – giving and ultimately sacrifice – seep their way into the narrative as I draw ideas. These thoughts are just there and I am sure are a result of what I take into my mind – be it through discussion, reading, podcasts or sitting and pondering the world before my eyes.”

‘That’s pretty heavy’, I thought to myself – but in a world where people think putting a pineapple on a bed and drawing a square around it is art, also relevant and worth pointing out by not editing down any part of that segment. On a totally different subject, when you work like this, one idea must surely lead to another that doesn’t fit into what you happen to be doing at the time. Do these ideas get put to one side to become something else or are they simply let go?

“Each painting has a life of its own and the time frame can go from one day to many months. I tend to jot down notes and sketches in my little sketch books so as to never lose my ideas. Sometimes I scan them in and put them in “idea” folders logged under whichever show I am working on. That becomes a time stamp for the idea. I then either leave it there to address later, or copy and paste it into future folders so as not to lose the thought.

“I am discouraged that I won’t be able to paint the majority of ideas I have stored away in these folders. There isn’t enough time in the day to address these sketches and at times I find myself irritable. By not being able to visibly kick out an idea, I am left to wonder about it. It consumes me sometimes.”

Let’s talk about mistakes and criticism: are you able to live comfortably with both once a piece is finished? Most great artists I know are incredibly hard on themselves. The good criticism you are grateful for but pay little attention to – and the bad, you take very much to heart and analyse it to see if you can better yourself or whether that person just didn’t get what you were trying to do.

“I have a lot of critics in my life surrounding me closely. Be it my friends, studio-mates, family members or acquaintances. I also know my limitations. I am nowhere near where I want to be. I am always frustrated… always. A lot of times, it is my drawings that kill me. I am in such a hurry at times because I can’t wait to see the painted version, that I push the drawing out. It usually takes a few weeks after I finish a painting that I can begin to enjoy it – especially the larger ones. I tend to like to paint the big ones way more than the small, but I still need to separate from it for a while before I can engage it again and begin to enjoy it. I am excited to have my new book out right now but am totally unable to look at the early chapters of it. Most times I feel like a huge phony and that I am going to be found out as being a horrible artist. I think I definitely fall into the trap of being my worst critic.”

Ah – the old impostor syndrome that all true originals feel on a daily basis. Here she is again, doing her thing. Is it harder or easier as you go along to make a decent living and put food on the table? Do you find that – particularly after a successful period – you wonder how you can ever better yourself or progress forward fast enough? Do ever feel like you’re er… what’s a good way to put it – only as good as your last piece of work?

“That’s a great question. I always live with the realisation that I need to be a good steward of what I have. We live very thriftily, stay well within our means because what I do could disappear in an instant. Buying art is a luxury item for people and not on the top of their lists if times get rough.

“I am not performing surgeries or anything like that which will always be necessary. So thinking realistically, I have to do the best job that I can and work as hard as I can to be honest to my work, but also to provide for my family. It is hard to contemplate these things, but necessary. We are grown ups now, it is important to take things seriously. It’s important to progress and learn as much as I can as I go so as to better myself and my work – but that’s half the fun of it, so it weighs in my favor.

“The journey is scary and awesome at the same time. I don’t want to go back to not painting full time, but if that was to be the case, so be it. There are things far more important than art and keeping my family safe and fed is way up there on the list.”

There’s a good question in an interview online in which Greg says: “I have this fear that if I get too stoked on one moment then that’s where my growth ends”. I like that and it sits well with me but is it possible to improve forever? Is anybody able to project themselves forwards and see themselves in ten years -  twenty years – and even begin to imagine what they’re capable of? I guess the big worry may be that one day, you do a piece that is so good (to you personally) you have to wonder where on earth you’re going to go next.

“I still feel that way. I want to progress until I die. If my technique ever gets polished to where I want it to be, maybe I’ll be able to fully realise the narrative end of things and the conceptual side in more depth. Perhaps that side will take over and my interests will become more abstract, who knows. I am taking each day at a time and chasing after concepts that haunt me and trying to add new things to my tool belt everyday.

“I hate my limitations though. It makes me sick that I can’t do certain things with my drawings. More exploration is in order.”

Time can be a cruel mistress. It runs out for everybody eventually but I have one final question and it’s a good one if not only because I’m curious for myself: I like a lot of the same things as Greg, literature and art-wise – I’m a spiritual kind of guy for sure, but not a Christian – so I’m interested as to what an artist like Greg makes of a writer/artist like Clive Barker (and similar), who kind of exist on the same plane but approach the art from the darkness as opposed to the light. Is the artist part able to appreciate things like that or is it preferable to stay away from them as not being something wanted or needed to influence your work, no matter how good they may be?

“That is a good question. My studio-mate Kevin is a huge Clive Barker fan and talks about him all the time. I still haven’t read him. Just synopses of his works or what Kevin describes. And of course I appreciate works that come from other angles than what I hold. I appreciate the technical skills and creative flow of thought very much.

“The fact that there is even an approach that would be considered ‘darkness’ versus ‘light’ and that the two sides of thought are in opposition drives my creative juices. How are these things grounded if there were no ultimate good? These things bounce around in my head all day long. But to get back to your point, I do personally favour fiction which is fantasy based and balances good versus evil. The entire back story of my White Knight hero (some of which I have written just to document for myself) is about the grey areas we find ourselves in between the two sides but trying to strive towards ultimate good in an otherwise dark and scary world.

“My interests have been leading me these days more towards things that I find beautiful and fantastic as opposed to horrific and depraved, and then past that to why do we consider such things beautiful or depraved, what gets us to that point?”

Those must sadly remain questions for another time – another life even. Right now, my head hurts a little from being enlightened.

I wonder sometimes if people only look at pictures in magazines, never bothering to take in the text that runs with it and that’s something that comes with the territory I guess, but just this once, I hope that’s not the case…

Wisdom

You’ll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do.

David Foster Wallace

From Here To Eternity Without You

Thanks to a couple of interruptions - I have brought The Eternity Ring to an end. Now it's complete and ready to roll, I'm going to start pushing forward with plans to see if there is interest in releasing an illustrated version. I can't promise that will ever happen though so if you think you might be into it, don't hold your breath waiting for an alternative version... do you know how long an illustrated edition of something takes to come out even when there are big guns behind it and some money thrown into the pot. Then again... maybe that's the problem. File under pending. Anyway - I'm most pleased with it. I've never tried writing anything for children that's really for adults pretending to be children before (or possibly the other way around) - if you want to throw some feedback around, you know where I am but I'll also leave the comments open on the bottom of its own page so that you can throw stones in public if you wish. The whole shooting match will go live in the next couple of days (as I write it's been shipped out to the editing/proofing guys for crash testing) and that makes me happy.

What next? Well, for a couple of days I have a magazine to put to bed, then I intend to redesign and rebuild said magazine and alongside of that, I'm sweeping the table of all writing projects to get a final draft of The Family Of Noise under my nose... all writing projects except The Day The Sky Fell Down that is - which is more of a 'broken' style thing and currently has some momentum. Those are my two aims for the next few weeks.

Yep - I am addressing my biggest weakness of being able to focus. Let's see what happens.

•••

A couple of nights ago, Rhiannon was showing me a song she was learning for a music assessment at school. What it came down to was basically learning - parrot fashion - how to play Mad World on a keyboard. This she did - pretty damn impressively - by using a free app on her Nexus. Inspired by her slave like devotion to the app and getting the job done, I thought to myself "How hard can it be?" because there's something pretty damn cool about coming across a piano when you're out in the world, sitting down and banging something out for the people just because it's there.

So I added myself a task to the Day Zero project. In at number 79 with a bullet: Learn how to play a Harry Nilsson version of Without You (previously proclaimed 'the best song of all time' somewhere in the annals of this blog). It's very specifically one of Harry's versions that it has to be though. He was the one that brought it to the table and made it sounds like a woman had taken a sledgehammer to his soul. There have been other diva versions since, but for those, the song is nothing more than a platform to use to show how much range you can pound out.

No: the Nilsson version it must be. There are tutorials for everything on YouTube, so right now I'm working through them and trying to figure out which is the best. I figured the best way to do this, being as I don't play piano and never have, would be to take a 12 year old's approach to it and simply copy until it sounds right and then I'll figure out how to clean it up and add some sparkle to it. I have no doubt that playing it will be hard enough but then I'll need to add the vocals and that will be another adventure altogether...

Whatever happens, it's a nice distraction from writing. Not that I need one, but sometimes it's good to do something for no other reason than because it's there.

Here's Harry (audio not video) - I love this demo version. It's raw in the extreme and that's how it's got to be.

From Here To Eternity Without You

Thanks to a couple of interruptions - I have brought The Eternity Ring to an end. Now it's complete and ready to roll, I'm going to start pushing forward with plans to see if there is interest in releasing an illustrated version. I can't promise that will ever happen though so if you think you might be into it, don't hold your breath waiting for an alternative version... do you know how long an illustrated edition of something takes to come out even when there are big guns behind it and some money thrown into the pot. Then again... maybe that's the problem. File under pending. Anyway - I'm most pleased with it. I've never tried writing anything for children that's really for adults pretending to be children before (or possibly the other way around) - if you want to throw some feedback around, you know where I am but I'll also leave the comments open on the bottom of its own page so that you can throw stones in public if you wish. The whole shooting match will go live in the next couple of days (as I write it's been shipped out to the editing/proofing guys for crash testing) and that makes me happy.

What next? Well, for a couple of days I have a magazine to put to bed, then I intend to redesign and rebuild said magazine and alongside of that, I'm sweeping the table of all writing projects to get a final draft of The Family Of Noise under my nose... all writing projects except The Day The Sky Fell Down that is - which is more of a 'broken' style thing and currently has some momentum. Those are my two aims for the next few weeks.

Yep - I am addressing my biggest weakness of being able to focus. Let's see what happens.

•••

A couple of nights ago, Rhiannon was showing me a song she was learning for a music assessment at school. What it came down to was basically learning - parrot fashion - how to play Mad World on a keyboard. This she did - pretty damn impressively - by using a free app on her Nexus. Inspired by her slave like devotion to the app and getting the job done, I thought to myself "How hard can it be?" because there's something pretty damn cool about coming across a piano when you're out in the world, sitting down and banging something out for the people just because it's there.

So I added myself a task to the Day Zero project. In at number 79 with a bullet: Learn how to play a Harry Nilsson version of Without You (previously proclaimed 'the best song of all time' somewhere in the annals of this blog). It's very specifically one of Harry's versions that it has to be though. He was the one that brought it to the table and made it sounds like a woman had taken a sledgehammer to his soul. There have been other diva versions since, but for those, the song is nothing more than a platform to use to show how much range you can pound out.

No: the Nilsson version it must be. There are tutorials for everything on YouTube, so right now I'm working through them and trying to figure out which is the best. I figured the best way to do this, being as I don't play piano and never have, would be to take a 12 year old's approach to it and simply copy until it sounds right and then I'll figure out how to clean it up and add some sparkle to it. I have no doubt that playing it will be hard enough but then I'll need to add the vocals and that will be another adventure altogether...

Whatever happens, it's a nice distraction from writing. Not that I need one, but sometimes it's good to do something for no other reason than because it's there.

Here's Harry (audio not video) - I love this demo version. It's raw in the extreme and that's how it's got to be.

The Eternity Ring - Sion Smith

Rounding Off The Week While I Watch 'Born To Be Wild'

Born To Be Wild - the story of American rock in the seventies. Catch it on BBC iPlayer before it falls off the map. Nearly three weeks into the year huh. I've made quite a good start - I've certainly got my eye on the ball more than usual. This is entirely fuelled by the creation of Day Zero between Christmas and New Year. I think I blogged about this not so long ago, but if you've just joined us (where the hell have you been), Day Zero is rebooting your life by making a list of 101 things to do in 1001 days - which is about 2.75 years. It's actually really tough to make that list but it does focus your mind as to what's important and all the things you are/aren't doing. So far I've gotten to something like item number 70 in making the list (not actually doing them) but I didn't want to hang about to get started. I tried to talk my Ma into doing one as well. She has made a valiant attempt and written three items - all of which are holidays, but that's fine. It's whatever you want it to be and at least she has booked one of them.

I'm still considering posting that list here - I think it would be fun but on the other hand, I think some things should be just a little bit sacred.

Big Bear Rescue (which is one of the things on the list) got off to a good start today. Rhiannon has decided to join in by forcing her friends to make Bear Cakes with her and hosting a Bake Sale. I can go along with that. One of her teachers is pretty cool so I might ask her to open it up to the whole school and get some traction under it. I have some other ideas too but I really should speak to the people I want involved before I shout about it. I've also set up a page for it (still under construction) here where you can randomly donate if you want but there's lots to do still. I need to figure out how to blog about it properly - I might need to take it external to somewhere like tumblr for maximum traction and use some widgets to pull it back here. Still chewing that one over... mostly because I am trying to spend less time online, not more.

What else has gone on? Let's make a list. I got hooked on the excellent Welsh crime drama Hinterland that's simply excellent and yeah, it makes me want to go home again. I also got hooked on some new Scandinavian crime - this time via audiobook. The man in question is Jussi Adler-Olsen and his Department Q series is great fun. With a Danish slacker detective and his Syrian assistant (possibly ex-special forces or secret police), an ex-wife that won't go away but won't stay either, a crippled ex-partner, a lodger who cooks... and as the series goes on, more and more misfits turn up, such as the forensic guy who won £10 million in the lottery, lost it all and had to go back to work in the canteen. Standing proud in the middle of all of this are the plots. Gripping, serious and harsh plots. Its a great balance. There seem to be a lot of alternate titles in the translation of these on various websites but the first three books that are available are: Mercy, Disgrace and Redemption... and having done that research for you, I see there's a new one available called Journal 64.

...and that's all I got. Wiped out and finished for the day - I am out of here. Maybe I should have gone to bed last night.

Clan of the Heart Punch

We landed in Philadelphia with ten minutes spare to make it from one side of the airport to the other if we were going to stand a chance of catching the connecting flight to Denver. With security being the way it is, that was looking about as likely as getting a smile out of one of the flight attendants we’d been trapped with for the last seven hours. To make it through security, first you need your soul dissecting and you must answer a bewildering array of questions designed to catch you out. These are either asked by people who could care less one way or the other what business you have in the States and ask stupid questions like “Do you dye your hair” to people who care a little too much and behave like they never got accepted into the military and have a chip on their shoulder to prove it. These people have buzz cuts in order to ask their questions properly — questions like whether you intend to work while you’re in the promised land and that next time you come in, you need a form that says you’re allowed to. Then he’ll tell you the number of that form — and because there was nothing wrong with your entry visa in the first place, he will attempt to sweeten the deal by telling you that he’s “not going to bust your balls this time for it.”

The flight was long gone by the time we hit the gate. To be reasonable here, the airline did book overnight accommodation until the next flight in the morning but it was only for one of us — and the girl who I was travelling with was not going to let me crash on the floor of her room this side of the apocalypse.

The guy who works for the airline says that he can fix me up a room — for which I am truly grateful. He tells me that my friend has a really nice hotel room but I must stay seven miles away in a different hotel. This too is a ‘nice hotel’ apparently, but the fact that he felt the need to make the comparison doesn’t fill me with confidence. So long as there is a bed and some kind of running water that isn’t brown or red, it will suit me just fine.

The cab driver is noncommittal in every way. He looks like he’s driven this route close on a hundred times today — the same as yesterday and more than likely, the same as every day before that as well for months on end. Maybe even years. When we get to the hotel, he simply points to the meter and I give him $20 without waiting for the change. Maybe he just gets tired of talking to people. I can roll with that.

At the front desk, there is a young family trying to arrange some kind of milk warming device for their baby who is clinging to the mothers neck like a new born monkey. Also at the front desk is an older gentleman who looks like he’s just talked the other desk-clerk into booking a steady stream of prostitutes armed with cocaine and beer into his room.

Maybe I’ve stumbled across some kind of Hotel Shangri-La. Maybe you can get anything you want in this hotel. It’s certainly out of the way enough to fly under the radar.

The cocaine guy wanders off still looking immensely satisfied — in case you’re wondering at this point, the milk baby couple are still trying to get the finer points of their apparently complicated order across.

“Good evening Sir. My name is Daryl. How can I help you this evening?”

I am too tired for prostitutes, cocaine and baby milk so I explain what happened and that U.S. Air should have booked me a courtesy room. He’s already two steps ahead of me and has me up on the screen before I’ve even got my passport out of my pocket to prove who I am.

He amuses me with some small talk while he assaults the keyboard and one swipe of my debit card later (should I wish to abuse the mini-bar at selling arms to the Middle East prices), I’m handed a key and given such exact directions to my room it would shame an iPhone. Before I can escape, he holds on to the other end of the plastic key as I am trying to take it from him — he appears to be trying to form some kind of connection with me through the plastic — and says:

“Like I said, my name is Daryl and if I can help you out with anything at all while you’re staying with us, just be sure to let me know.”

He may have winked at me during this statement. It sounds like a winking kind of speech but I’m too busy noticing how he has clenched his fist and is pounding it repeatedly onto his heart as he says it. Like they would on Star Trek or if you were swearing allegiance to life as an apprentice to an L.A. drug lord.

“Thanks Daryl, I’ll remember that.”

“You have a good night now bro…”

You know something Daryl? If I could actually get to my room before I have to embrace another time zone shift, I just might.

He does the heart punch thing again.

Weird.

The hotel is a little run down but clean and bright. It’s kind of how I imagine an out of town Vegas hotel to have welcomed me but it’s most luxurious compared to the first $20 a night time I hit New York twenty years ago. Tonight, I am not afraid that kidney thieves will break into my room in the middle of the night. An old man looking to escape his overnight harem or a baby still in search of the perfect milk perhaps but I’m quite confident that all my body parts will still be where they should be when the sun comes up.

After battling with the plastic card which I have already put in upside down and back to front, I throw my suitcase on the floor and wash my hands and face. There’s hot drink facilities and I make coffee because what Americans know about tea isn’t worth talking about. It doesn’t occur to me until the following morning that Daryl could have fixed that for me.

The room is huge. I could live here for the rest of my life and not run out of places to sit differently in. It’s also clean and as soon as I’ve located the power switch to disable the air-con, it’s damn near perfect. There’s even a balcony I can walk straight onto for secret smoking. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do: smoke and drink a cup of wonderful American coffee while I look out over Philadelphia from seven miles away. In my pants.

It may be the middle of the night but from up here, I can see for miles. The front of the hotel curves around but I don’t see anybody else smoking on the balcony. I don’t think anybody smokes in America anymore. There are no chairs out here so I sit on the floor like a trailer park Buddah. Life is good.

I come across my usual second wind of life that always turns up after midnight even though I’ve been up for something like twenty seven hours already. It’s nice to know it has a blatant disregard for time zones. The TV here is twice as big as the one I have at home and that’s necessary because the bed is so far away from it, I don’t know if I could focus if the it was any smaller.

Flipping around the channels, I find exactly what I expect. Junk. There are seemingly hundreds of channels of junk. It take me twenty minutes and another two mugs of coffee to get through them all just to find something to fall asleep to. I didn’t know they had remade Hawaii Five-0. It’s not bad. In fact, it’s pretty good as far as cop shows go or maybe I’m more tired than I thought.

When I wake up, the TV is still going and somebody is trying to sell me something I don’t want. Welcome to America. I turn it off and go back to sleep. I would have left it on but the last thing I need are subliminal messages for ordering pizza with free delivery for less than $10 floating around in my head.

Besides, if I wanted a pizza, I would place a call to Daryl.

The flight is at an ungodly hour — 9am. I make it through security without being frisked and scrutinised like a dime store hooker only to be pulled to one side when I get through the X-Ray machines by the biggest security guard I’ve ever met.

For the briefest of moments, I am concerned though I have no reason to be unless a novel by Poe Ballantine is considered to contravene the laws of immigration. Turns out he thinks he knows me from somewhere. Deep in my heart, I’m hoping that he thinks I’m Johnny Depp but he genuinely swears that we have met before. I tell him I used to be in a band a long time ago but now I’m a writer. He asks me to sign a piece of paper for him and seems very satisfied with that, whaps me on the shoulder with a grizzly paw and says:

“You have a great trip bro.”

Did I see him give me the heart punch that Daryl introduced to me? I guess if ever need to get through security in a hurry again, he’s my man.

On board, I am checked to make sure I’m capable of doing up my own seatbelt before they serve me something invented by Charles Dickens in a metal tray. I am afraid to go to the bathroom in case somebody knifes me with a shiv made out of a filed down toothbrush. None of the flight attendants look like they are going to salute our brotherhood with the heart punch though one of them looks like he would like to punch me in the face given half the chance. If you’re a passenger on a plane these days, you’re nothing but a terrorist waiting to happen — at best you’re a minor inconvenience.

I don’t meet anybody from the clan for the longest time now. Not the bus driver who drives me uphill for two hours to my room in the remote wilderness of Keystone, not the desk guy — although he does have a good line in politics and holds the keys to the coffee machine which makes him the most important person in the world between eight and ten in the morning. Most disappointing though is the guy who owns the store at the top of the mountain.

I walk in and within a second, he tells me about the last time he saw Whitesnake. Unprompted I might add — that’s not the first (or last) thing I would ever ask somebody. It does however lead to a half hour conversation about all the bands he has seen. I guess he doesn’t meet many people he can talk to up here who even know who Adrian Vandenberg is. There’s another guy in the store now and he has no hair at all. This means he gets ignored because we are busy being brothers in rock. I discover the store owners name is Rock Soldier. You can probably look him up on the internet. I hope that’s his real birth-name. I’ll be heartbroken if I find he has made it up.

I leave but he doesn’t give me the heart punch. Maybe the gesture hasn’t filtered out to this side of the country yet. In a town with a permanent population of something close to 100, I shouldn’t be surprised.

Many days later, I’m boarding the flight home with a copy of Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris in hand. I don’t know what this guy in a uniform does — he doesn’t look like the captain but I guess he might be as I don’t see him again during the flight — but as I show my boarding pass, he points at the book.

“Good choice man.”

“I hope so. I’ve not read anything by him before.”

“You’ll love it. He’s a really good writer.”

“Promise?” I smile at him.

“Promise.” And then — he did it. Fist clenched, he banged at his heart twice which I guess means he really promises or he’ll guarantee my money back out of his own pocket. I was headed for my seat when I stopped and asked over my shoulder:

“Do you know Daryl?”

“Is he on this flight too?” he asked cocking his head at me.

It’s a small world. Anything can happen out here.

Bears. Lots of Bears.

One of my pet projects is finally off the ground - now I have to do some work to fuel it. WSPA called me yesterday and we spoke long and hard about my quest to save a bear that's been locked up all its life. It's very sad out there and it turns out that nothing is as easy as it would first appear. I probably should have known better but when freeing up a bear in the backwaters of Romania, you will come across that old favourite of a troll under a bridge: international politics. I won't bore you with the details but consider my Big Bear Rescue launched. I have nine months before I have to actually do the thing I'm going to do and in the meantime, I need to get my head around raising some funds. This involves some art, some stories, some clothing, some auctioning and finally an appointment with ink.

All will become clear - like I said, there's a lot of things for me to do behind the scenes. As a bi-product of this, I'll be spending some time here:

Known in the real world as Bran Castle and in the fictional world as the likely setting for Mr Stoker's Dracula, if this isn't a good place to stay and write for a day, what is? I'm excited to be finally getting on with this. It's going to be tough but "if you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly" - is £10,000 too ambitious? No, I don't think it is. Let's do this. More to follow...

I'll hook up some kind of bear symbol thing and newsletter shortly. it will be fun keeping track and logging all of this he said scratching his head.

•••

In other 'going outside' news, I've decided to head out for the Aarhus Art Convention in Denmark sometime in mid-June. If I can tie it in with some other ideas or projects (of which I have far too many to be entirely practical) then I will. If you're reading and headed out that way, drop me a note - it looks like quite a trek from the airport!

•••

I realised yesterday evening that a lot of people subscribed for posts to be delivered by email - which means you'll miss anything I throw around that's not actually in the blog. Bearing that in mind, I'll start rounding off my posts with any of these things so nobody misses anything. If missing something was your intention, simply don't click on stuff. It will look like this:

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:

I started a new section on the site called Scaramanga Bag. Although it sounds like a small pouch to keep your third nipple safe if you happen to be Christopher Lee, it's actually a new series of Hard Boiled Travel Writing (thanks to Wayne Simmons for the tagline). The first story - Clan of the Heart Punch - is out there already. If it makes you chuckle, you like it and want to share it with somebody, knock yourselves out - I've also filtered it out to the website Medium to catch other people in the net. I don't like going third party but let's just think of it as a test...

AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW KAUFMAN

People are strange. People are not only strange when you’re a stranger but they are also strange when they see fit to put their name – their actual given name, the only thing which holds any weight in the outside world – against something they have been smarmed into believing is magical and wise.

I’m not sure ‘smarmed’ is a real word, but roll with it.

During the run up to the second interview in my life that actually means something to me personally, my friend Mike shows me a link to a book he – and there is no other word for it – got smarmed into buying for his Kindle. There are more than a hundred reviews saying how great it is and maybe three of them are honest. Mike declares it to be the worst book he’s ever read in his life. As do three other honest people. I check out the author’s blog – his wife runs a book club in some ghost town in Texas which has almost a trillion members. Maybe there’s nothing else to do in town that day because the gun club is closed for redecorating. Or something.

We like to illustrate our points around these parts, thus, completely independent of each other (this conversation is taking place over our favourite chat client while we are both supposed to be doing something else) Mike looks at how many reviews there are for Andrew Kaufman’s The Tiny Wife while I drill into All My Friends Are Superheroes.

Neither of us is seeing many reviews for Kaufman’s books and yet Mike declares the first of these incredible beyond belief, I declare the second to be so. We decide that ‘people’ are indeed strange and sometimes, incredibly stupid as well, but that’s OK. It’s good to be the keeper of a great secret. It’s not our fault that people don’t read books that are good for the soul.

Anyway, there’s magic happening in the world right now. Read any Andrew Kaufman – he will immediately and completely become your favourite author of all time and that comes with a cast iron guarantee. Over the course of the next few years, you will tell smart, sexy folk whom you respect, all about him and share thoughts you have generated yourself from reading his books in dimly lit passageways around the world. Sometimes – as I have four times so far – you will give his books to people you meet and insist they read them. To tell them about the book (and you can pick any of them) is not enough. You must physicallyhand it over to ensure the job is done properly.

I digress. A lot. Mr Kaufman picks up the phone. He is either running or putting out the trash.

“I’m outside right now. Could you call me back in like, 30 seconds?”

On a particularly childish level, that’s enough for me. Or maybe it’s spectacularly grown up. It’s not for me to decide. There is a train of thought that says you should never meet your heroes in case they turn out to be dicks. I call Mr K back anyway because, frankly, this one is safe. Andrew Kaufman may be a lot of things but a dick isn’t one of them.

“Hey, where’s your accent from?” This is he to me… thus follows a story from me to Mr K which feels odd to say the least. I tell him some stories of my own travels and a small part of me hopes the wind that blew the seeds into his head will blow them out again but nevertheless, this leads us to a place that I hoped we would reach very quickly. I give full disclosure that I am not about to the cover the same ground that was dug up on his recent UK tour in support of Born Weird, but instead will take it for granted that those interested will find these places for themselves.

The place I wanted to get to quickly was the common ground of both of us having children. It makes a difference.

“Once you have kids, you realise that you’re no longer indestructible. Until I had kids, I never had to risk,” he says. “It’s easy to take huge risks and leave things to chance when you don’t have them but once you do, there’s just so much more on the line. Everything is so much bigger.” You see. Wise is seeping through pores.

I offer Mr Kaufman my twin towers of a question – and that is, Michael Chabon once said that when his wife became pregnant, he found that he suffered from ‘provider syndrome’. That is: ‘Holy shit, how am I going to provide for my family?’ and the other – possibly Neil Gaiman (but I may be mistaken, so don’t quote me on that) – once admitted he suffered from ‘imposter syndrome’ – are these identifiable demons?

“One hundred per cent. The good part about having kids is that you no longer have to wallow or over-think things. Once the kids arrived, my productivity went way up because I didn’t have time to second guess myself. I didn’t have time to ponder decisions. I found with my writing that I had like, 45 minutes to work on a piece. So it’s not about being precious and agonising over decisions, it’s about making them and moving on. That was really effective for my writing because I can really over-edit. I enjoy the editing process, I really want to get everything super-tight and I don’t want there to be an extra or unnecessary word anywhere and sometimes that process is achieved and you don’t even notice. You keep going on and on and on and on – until you stop because you’ve simply run out of time. But when you have kids, you don’t have any time so… I would say that was a huge deal for me.”

“The other thing – imposter syndrome – it’s er.. yeah, I’m feeling that right now. Somewhere in my head, a voice is asking me why you’re wasting your time speaking to me. Aren’t there real writers out there who you could be talking to at this point?”

Touché. That same person is in my head wondering if there isn’t a real interviewer out there that he should be talking to? We are the same age, so this is excellent common ground to occupy.

Falling between genres

I have always been curious as to how an author finds a way to slip himself between the cracks of something I thought rarely possible. In this crazy place we call the 21st century, everything has a genre – a pigeon hole in order for lazy people to find things – thus, my train of thought is, how has he escaped this? Using Clive Barker as an example of a ‘fantasy’ writer, when he is evidently so much more than that, how does the genre thing sit with him?

“I do feel like I’m in a little bit of a lack of genre – let me answer that in two ways. I think that literary fiction is a genre. I say this to people and those same people say that I’m wrong but to say the phrase ‘literary fiction’ is to denote and suggest some sort of quality worthy of attention and that may be, but I don’t think Clive Barker is saying that he doesn’t pour his heart out when he’s writing his stuff, so I think that genres are really based on conventions. One of the conventions of the literary genre is that it’s realistic, it’s certainly 300-plus pages, it’s usually a coming of age story or a couple in crisis story. I mean, there are really hardcore conventions within the literary genre even though people don’t necessarily think of it as a genre, so that’s my first answer.

“My second answer is that I feel like I fall between genres. One of those being literary and the other being fantasy or perhaps science fiction. So, I’m not against genre, I’m not against structure. Genre is just a way of structuring a story right? People really enjoy structure and people really enjoy having a story told to them in a way they can easily comprehend and consume. People tend to like one certain kind of story – they most often like the same story being told to them over and over again, like detective fiction or horror stories. There are innovations inside each of the genres but it’s like a sonnet – there’s a structure that denotes what you’re going to get and then the talent of the author is to breathe life into that.

“So, that being said, I think because I incorporate aspects of two different genres, sometimes people don’t know exactly what to do with me!”

For my part, I think people simply don’t get Mr Kaufman yet. Born Weird (his new novel and available at all good book shops now – so when you’re done here, go find it immediately) is likely to be the most successful stab at people understanding what it is he’s trying to do, but then, each of his books is like being parachuted blindfolded into a new city every time you pick one up. I recount the tale of how I have so far been through four copies of The Tiny Wife (as previously discussed) to give to others. Born Weird however seems to have picked up momentum off its own back. A step forward in his mind?

“Well, some people might say it’s a step backwards too! Even though it has strange things happening within it and magical realism and all that stuff that is ‘me’, Born Weird is a much more conventional book than The Tiny Wife or Superheroes – and certainly a lot more so than The Waterproof Bible, so… it’s a three generational family saga, which is a convention…”

I am far too good at interrupting for which I apologise, stating that All My Friends Are Superheroes is beyond convention – it doesn’t fit in anywhere, it’s a simple work of genius that looks like it came fully formed, with utter clarity and ready to roll. It may have taken five years to write or ten minutes. It stands alone…

“That was so not the process. That was my first book, right, so if you’re writing your first book, you’ve got two things going for you…”

That you’ve got nothing to lose?

“OK – you’ve got three things going for you! First of all, you’ve got a bunch of material that you’ve had hanging around for a long time. You have this war chest of stories but the important thing is that – well, the metaphor I always use is that I was simply a guy who had a TransAm in his garage and every night after work, I’d go out and tinker around with it. I’d spray paint something on the side or try to get the transmission going and I was totally just doing it for fun because I wanted to see if I could get it on the road.

“When I got it on the road, it operated way better than I anticipated and people seemed to like it. And then it was time to write the second book and all of a sudden, I’m walking around calling myself a mechanic! There’s now an expectation that I know how to fix cars, so the professional aspect of it… well, it’s a weird loop when… well anytime you get what you want, it comes with some weird sort of kickback. It’s a monkey’s ball.”

A monkey’s ball? That phrase hasn’t made it into my sphere of influence yet though I think I know what he means.

“That’s why that story is so resonant. Any time you get what you want, there’s always something that’s going to come along and present itself as the shadow of that deal.”

Was Superheroes tough to take from birth to toddlerhood or did it wander out into the world relatively easily?

“I lucked out with that really well. I finished it, I looked around and I found a company here in Canada called Coach House who had published a couple of books that seemed to be similar in tone from that pop culture side of things. I sent it in and my editor picked it out of the slush pile and they went for it. So I got super lucky with that, but then Telegram picked it up in the UK and from there it started spreading all over the place. That came out in 2003 in Canada – in fact Coach House is pushing a 10th anniversary edition right now which is cool. I don’t think it hit the UK until like 2005, something like that.

“But anyway, it’s been out for a long time. When I wrote that book I was single and I lived in a one bedroom bachelor apartment and now I have a house, I’m married and my kids are six and four. The arc of the last 10 years has been crazy – but then everybody experiences that as they go along in life – don’t they?”

“You know what I’m talking about with us both being the same age, right? From 34 to 44 were crazy years, but when I think back to 14 to 24, those were pretty crazy too. Twenty-four to 34 though… not quite so crazy actually. Not a lot changed in those ones, just discovering a lot of dead ends really.”

Figuring out life

For my money, I like getting older. I like having money, being dignified, being able to stay win a hotel without wanting to throw shit out of the window, having a car that starts in the morning…

“Knowing how to cook, wearing clean clothes – I hear you! It’s all about responsibility right? The more you’re willing to accept, as you get through your responsibilities successfully, that gives you the confidence to do more, it’s a vicious circle. But you’ve just got to keep climbing because the view gets better.”

“I’ve already started on writing something new. I have to. It’s what I do. I can’t stop – for me writing is just… well, there’s that theory that your dreams are your brain’s way of processing everything that happened to you in a day. To me, it feels like that’s what I’m doing with my writing. I really don’t know how to keep everything together and keep my brain clean and running well without writing a story – because when I’m writing a story, I’m trying to figure out something that I’m trying to figure out about myself. Every single book that I’ve written is… well, I can track all of them.

“All My Friends Are Superheroes is about me being afraid to commit to get married. The Waterproof Bible was a really sad story about loss and that came from dealing with the reality of when my wife and I had a bunch of miscarriages. The Tiny Wife was about getting out of the tunnel of having two kids and dealing with all the diaper stuff and trying to find the love for your wife again.  Actually, Born Weird is really the only one I don’t really know exactly what the hell I was working on.”

So – here we are at the crux of why Mr Kaufman is the greatest writer on earth. Within The Tiny Wife (which is my favourite of his books and it may be for this reason) there’s a paragraph that looks exactly like this:

“Perhaps one of the hardest things about having kids is realizing that you love someone more than your wife. That it’s possible to love someone more than you love your wife. What’s even worse is that it’s a love you don’t have to work at. It’s just there. It just sits there, indestructible, getting stronger and stronger. While the love for your wife, the one you do have to work at, and work so very hard at, gets nothing. Gets neglected, left to fend for itself. Like a houseplant forgotten on a windowsill.” 

If that isn’t the most eloquent and honest paragraph in the history of literature, I don’t want to read what is. Maybe you also have to be male and have kids for it to really ring true. I put The Tiny Wife down at that point and went outside to look at the sky and think about it. It’s officially the biggest paragraph ever created. I reveal that I have quoted it numerous times to many male friends but it is never something that I will show to any females I know because to know this will be both devastating and heartbreaking.

“Ah dude – that’s beautiful. It’s really nice to hear that… I feel like I really accomplished something with that book. When you have those kids, it’s hard proof, man. You don’t anticipate how different a dynamic it’s going to put into your relationship. It’s so much work. You can’t believe your partner is doing as much as you are because God knows you seem to be doing so much of it – it’s a recipe for resentment and you don’t have the time to do the passionate, loving thing. It’s a hard time.”

With one eye on the introduction to this piece regarding what shall hereafter be known as the Crappy Book of Many Reviews, I wonder if any of the dirt that the media is kicking up about the publishing world ever concerns him. Is going it alone something he would ever consider?

“Well, we’ll see how well Born Weird sells! But no – I don’t think I could do it on my own. I’m a writer that needs an editor. I need an editor to read my stuff and say what’s working and what’s not. I need to work with someone who can make me focus the story, make it sharp and show me where it’s not working. My stuff wouldn’t be nearly as good without my editors. These people made me a better writer. Fact.

“So, that’s point A. Point B is that I suck at promotion. I can barely get my invoices in. I already feel like I don’t have enough time to write just by being alive and having kids – so what, now I’m going to run a publishing company? Design the covers, get people to spell check? There’s just so much maintenance and from where I’m standing that looks like… well, why the hell would I want to do that? They do that for me. They take a cut, but that’s fair man. Distribution? I mean come on – does anybody know how hard that really is?”

“I remember in the mid-90s, when I lived in a town called Halifax, for a while there it was the ‘new’ Seattle. There were all these bands who were popular and were getting a lot of attention and they all decided to form independent labels but it didn’t work for any of them. Even though they got an 80 per cent cut on the royalty, instead of 15 or 20, they still didn’t end up making any money… you know what I’m saying here. The people in publishing are professionals, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it and I totally trust them. I’m really happy with my deal – the Friday Project in the UK particularly. They understand that the nature of the kind of books I write depends on word of mouth.”

“I was just over in the UK for a week and it was so much fun to work it. When I’m in Canada, the fact that my books are actually in stores is so abstract to me, so to come over there and see them on shelves was a real blast! I have to say it’s been fun.”

I need to wrap up here, otherwise we could be at it all night. Seriously. Hmm…how to wrap up something like this? Unintentionally and out loud, I wonder if he’s able to dump his previous ‘children’ having given birth to a new one, and I ask this specifically because I have heard Mr K say, on more than one occasion, that you ‘have to keep moving forward’. As we’ve seen, there is no small amount of personal trial in those previous works. I’m not sure every writer could keep from pointing that out to interested parties.

“Totally. I can totally let it go. Absolutely. As soon as they’re published… well here’s the deal. I hand in my book, my editor will say I need to do one more draft and inevitably they are right. By the time I have done that and handed it back, I am so through with it, hate it so much and never want to see it again. That’s when I know that it’s really finished and we are done.

“When I finish a book, it then takes me some time to recoup from the process because it’s so emotionally draining – I get a little depressed and my emotions are a little out of whack but I am definitely not mourning the book itself. That sliver is out and it’s not emotionally causing me any problems any more.

“That’s healthy right? That’s how writing should be?”

We are done here. Andrew Kaufman: Not a dick. Official. I knew that before I started but it looks good written down all the same. What I do know is this and you must remember it well: Andrew Kaufman writes extraordinary books – for those who take the time to read and listen to what he has to say, the world will seem a better place by the time you get to the end of any one of them.

And when you’re Andrew Kaufman, that’s about as good as it gets.

A Day Condensed.

I can't even begin to think about writing anything remotely useful after the weekend. Shattered. A single day show can take the wind right out of your sails but work aside, there was also some fun to be had in the cracks. First of all, I had lunch with my buddy Mr Scott Cole (well, we sat in an area where other people where eating lunch and that's as good as it gets sometimes) and discussed things that should happen in the future if we can keep our eyes on a bouncing ball. Which is also as good as it gets sometimes. I'd have been happy to sit around and talk about cardboard boxes with jam inside them to be honest. It's always good to catch up with friends in the flesh. To mark the occasion, a self - courtesy Mr Cole. (Note to selves: Get some sleep). 

Sometime later that same afternoon, we hooked up with my slightly newer friend Mr Wayne Simmons as arranged (it doesn't always work out like that) and found a quiet corner in which to make a nest and rustle up something of a podcast. It went on a little long - we know this for sure because the video camera we were using ran its battery out and then it got too dark for Scott to take any photographs - eventually, we were left sitting alone in the dark so figured we had best call it a day, but there was at least another six hours left in us. Content-wise, we talk tattoos and the four shows we have a year (natch), the tattooing scene (also natch) and then brought in some horror books/movie commentary (generally speaking and our own projects), shot the breeze about writing, editing and anything else that we came to mind. To be fair to Wayne here - he had a plan and came armed with a notebook. I think it was me that wandered off on the tangents. I think it's because I don't see many people on a day to day basis.

Here's what it looked like - colour commentary by me:

When all of this will be available to listen to/watch, I have no idea - certainly not today or tomorrow so don't hold your breath... but soon. Definitely soon.

•••

Later still, I sat down with Mr Paul Sweeney (who apologises for the state of his site in advance and has promised to fix it real soon) to discuss some future plans we have talking about for ages. Maybe it's simply that January is here and everybody is keen to get along, but things are starting to come together all over the place. The plans concerning Mr Sweeney are good fun too. They involve funny people, a possible exhibition and some cross-pollination amongst friends. Hey - everybody else is at it. That seems to be the way to make things work around here. More on that much later (like weeks not days) as I need to organise some stuff at my side of things. I also found out that Paul's girlfriend, Hannah, is the agent for Emilia Clarke (Khaleesi in Game of Thrones) - after that my attention kind of wandered off.

Sorry chief. Girl who is mother to dragons beats anything we might have had cooking on the stove.

•••

Even later than that, I finally caught up with my long time buddy JJ who made it for a coffee and we talked about expanding on something that has something to do with 100 rock stars. I need to get this stuff uber-straight in my head before I attack it but it's always cool to have the foundations of a plan in place. More on this much later.

That's the top end of the interesting stuff - the rest of the weekends happenings will appear elsewhere in their own good time. Right now however, I have a teetering pile of emails to reply to, more words to string together than I know where to begin and I'm struggling to keep my eyes open. For once, I think I'm going to give in and hit the sack before midnight.

Just once though...

Bring Up The Bodies... And Some Bears.

What started out as a day with not much ahead of me but compiling interview questions and transcribing things recorded in totally unsuitable environments, by lunchtime, it had actually gotten pretty interesting. I found that I have a reasonable amount of essays about travel to start pushing them out a little - does that make me a travel writer? That has to be one of the coolest job titles in the world. Anyway, I thought I would try a little experiment and if you're observant, you'll see a tab up there that says Travel Writing and it hooks up to a page on the relatively new platform of Medium. It's been there a whole day now and already I'm thinking of walking away, pulling it down and bringing it back home. Not that there is anything wrong with Medium - it's a beautiful platform to work on and when it started out it was full of great ideas and writing that shone. Having come back to it today, I find that it's turning into more or less the same platform as every other on the web. In order to keep people interested and active, readers are now able to comment on the writing on a paragraph by paragraph basis. Typically, this happens a lot, so now, great writing is set upon with minute sleeve notes by people arguing over an otherwise lovely piece of work. People need to understand that just because you don't agree with something, doesn't mean you have to comment on it. The builders at Medium should have known better. It was originally a nice magazine - now it's a magazine with big margins and a pen on a string so that others can deface work or extract a tiny amount of ego for themselves from somebody else's work. People have too much time on their hands - if you don't like something, walk away. If you do, tell somebody else about it.

Everyone's a critic these days. Maybe they always have been. Maybe I'll boot up a separate blog for it but that kind of negates my rule of "find all the things you need in my own house" rule.

File under pending... but only overnight. These things need sharp decisions!

•••

Something else happened today that I can't talk about but it's very exciting - and I don't get excited about much at all. When I heard my name mentioned in the same sentence as Hilary Mantel, it made my day complete. It's probably nothing at all like anything you would ever imagine either - but it is, without question, super cool in the extreme. I shall wait until something happens before revealing anything about it but rest assured, just writing this here even for myself makes me smile.

•••

The guys at WSPA finally got back to me about my Big Bear Rescue project - and I missed the damn call. I re-left messages at all the right places to say I was returning calls but everybody seemed to have gone home by mid-afternoon. Maybe tomorrow. I had almost given up but the flame is still alight. Not quite so bright that you could navigate yourself from one side of the Grimpen Mire to the other without getting sucked in, but it's alight all the same.

Topically, this Doctor Who/ Sherlock fan made video is absolutely ton notch if it really is constructed with no assistance. In fact, amazing would be absolutely fair:

Bring Up The Bodies... And Some Bears.

What started out as a day with not much ahead of me but compiling interview questions and transcribing things recorded in totally unsuitable environments, by lunchtime, it had actually gotten pretty interesting. I found that I have a reasonable amount of essays about travel to start pushing them out a little - does that make me a travel writer? That has to be one of the coolest job titles in the world. Anyway, I thought I would try a little experiment and if you're observant, you'll see a tab up there that says Travel Writing and it hooks up to a page on the relatively new platform of Medium. It's been there a whole day now and already I'm thinking of walking away, pulling it down and bringing it back home. Not that there is anything wrong with Medium - it's a beautiful platform to work on and when it started out it was full of great ideas and writing that shone. Having come back to it today, I find that it's turning into more or less the same platform as every other on the web. In order to keep people interested and active, readers are now able to comment on the writing on a paragraph by paragraph basis. Typically, this happens a lot, so now, great writing is set upon with minute sleeve notes by people arguing over an otherwise lovely piece of work. People need to understand that just because you don't agree with something, doesn't mean you have to comment on it. The builders at Medium should have known better. It was originally a nice magazine - now it's a magazine with big margins and a pen on a string so that others can deface work or extract a tiny amount of ego for themselves from somebody else's work. People have too much time on their hands - if you don't like something, walk away. If you do, tell somebody else about it.

Everyone's a critic these days. Maybe they always have been. Maybe I'll boot up a separate blog for it but that kind of negates my rule of "find all the things you need in my own house" rule.

File under pending... but only overnight. These things need sharp decisions!

•••

Something else happened today that I can't talk about but it's very exciting - and I don't get excited about much at all. When I heard my name mentioned in the same sentence as Hilary Mantel, it made my day complete. It's probably nothing at all like anything you would ever imagine either - but it is, without question, super cool in the extreme. I shall wait until something happens before revealing anything about it but rest assured, just writing this here even for myself makes me smile.

•••

The guys at WSPA finally got back to me about my Big Bear Rescue project - and I missed the damn call. I re-left messages at all the right places to say I was returning calls but everybody seemed to have gone home by mid-afternoon. Maybe tomorrow. I had almost given up but the flame is still alight. Not quite so bright that you could navigate yourself from one side of the Grimpen Mire to the other without getting sucked in, but it's alight all the same.

Topically, this Doctor Who/ Sherlock fan made video is absolutely ton notch if it really is constructed with no assistance. In fact, amazing would be absolutely fair: