Dog Day Afternoon

There was a local dog show in the village this afternoon. At lunchtime, I got the phone call... 

"Dad, can I enter Hector into the dog show?" 

Sure. Why not. I figured it would be a cool to have a rosette on the side of his crate for Most Handsome Male or Dog The Judges Would Most Like To Take Home. To win, will be a piece of pie, I said to myself.

So, we stood in line with all the other dogs. There was a beautiful Irish Wolfhound there but as far as I could tell, he was the only threat. The judge wandered around a little - and it was a little. I thought she was trying to stretch out a cramp - and then, BANG! There were two Border Collies in the middle of the field named as winners. 

What?

It may have been a little village affair but the judge could at least have mustered up enough respect for the spirit of an event called a 'competition' to at least look at my freaking dog before deciding - or any of the other dogs come to that. I love Border Collies as much as the next man - Hector is half of one himself - but what is this charade I see paraded before my very eyes?

Then, I may have said something along the lines of: "It's too hot for dogs out here to be cocking around with amateurs. I'm taking my dog and going home." I may also have said it quite loudly and tossed my hair over my shoulder like a princess.

And now - back to writing one word after another.

George Michael, A Doctor and A Teacher. No Candlestick Maker Though. Sorry.

Got anything new? Yes, I have thanks for asking. There's a new story - Careless Whisper - over in Dirty Realism. 

Last night, I found myself in a time-hole. Waiting for something to come in, I didn't want to start anything else and get interrupted so I fell back on an old favourite and kicked back to watch The Day Of The Doctor again. Still waiting for lazy and slow people when it had finished, I hit Netflix to watch Human Nature/The Family Of Blood for something like the fiftieth time. For me, this is the pinnacle of writing for the show and my memory was jogged as to how badly I want to write an episode of Doctor Who.

So I dug out the script loosely titled 'The House Of Sipan' that features both new and old creatures that I had put away to 'edit later' and am mostly very pleased with it having not looked at it for at least six months. Editing and tweaking shall take place over the next few evenings and a yellow post-it has appeared to remind myself to take a couple of days off soon to make some kind of sense of the large stacks of paper balanced on the corner of the table - digital and otherwise.

•••

While working through some edits on the my final proof of Family Of Noise, I had the dumb idea to attempt to track down my old English teacher from school and get in touch... for what reason I don't actually know but I found her all the same. It wasn't even hard. There must have been some point to the train of thought - maybe I will email her and simply say thanks for making it great - and she will be curious enough to see what I do here and the universe will turn its wheels in a mysterious way, and I will find only a day or so later that she has emailed me back and tells me that I might be interested to know that her brother has just been announced as the new show-runner for Doctor Who - and it is lovely to hear from me and she remembers me very well. She particularly recalls the story I wrote for her that she had to rip out of my exercise book because it was so incredibly unsuitable, the implications of getting found out would echo in hell.

Unlikely, but it would make a good story.

Good stories happen like that all the time if you let them.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

I've spent all day writing and editing. Not 'all day' in a casual brushed off kind of way, but ALL DAY. I did stop to take H out a couple of times and then earlier this evening I moved a chest of drawers in the car, other than that - writing. I think I have listened to something 40 albums today and I couldn't tell you what any of them were. This is not a complaint. This is me feeling pleased with myself that I really could sit down and write for an entire day.

The downside of that is I will expect the same of myself tomorrow and that's not going to happen because I have a stack of other things to write and/or fix - but the heart is willing. 

See how I have already dumped that dumb word count idea that I set up yesterday? The work will be finished when the story is told. 

Anyway. I am spent like a penny and cannot write another word that will still be of value in the morning. Time to retreat into a world that belongs to somebody else. I picked this up - Eleanor & Park - a couple of days ago and it's proving to be a little bit special.

Not my usual fare perhaps - it was an instinctive thing and once again, instinct proved to be correct. It will be finished by tomorrow evening - it's that kind of book and if I had been writing all day today, I would have finished it ages ago.

While we're busy looking at pictures, please help yourself to this one and paste it around your digital world like there's no tomorrow. It's some of the best advice ever:

My favourite amongst those is Make Me Fucking Care. That's so important right now. Everything is turned up to ten, everybody is pointing at everything and everything is louder than everything else - a man can only take so much shouting and pointing.

Make me fucking care because that's about all you've got left out there. 

It Really Is Too Hot For Dogs

I am not jet-lagged. Not in the slightest. This is because I have not been on a plane - the best I have been able to manage in the last couple of weeks is driving the car, but my feet are burning up to get out on the road, particularly a road with an expanse of some kind of ocean between where I am now and wherever it is I might be going.

Task of the day - find the holes in the rest of the year and nail those holes to the floor.

What can I tell you. The Family Of Noise is complete and I've handed it over to a trusted source to read it and maybe point out some sinkholes. This feeling of extreme love vs extreme amounts of hatred are not unusual apparently. I guess it will wear off in time - or as I suspect, get a lot worse as either a) the stakes get higher or b) nobody is looking at the stakes at all.

I spoke to the guys in Waterstones again this week and we got the signing idea back on the table for Black Dye White Noise - so what I'm going to do is nail down a date and get this show on the road - most importantly though, I think it needs to be more than a gentle author reading. It needs to be treated as something that people will go away from and talk about to as many other people as they can find.

Free cut-down samples of The Day The Sky Fell Down? Check. Yeah... that's a good idea.

Dates to come. You WILL know about it when it happens.

•••

One of the hard parts of this writing game is monitoring yourself and your output - or at least I find it hard. Cherie Priest regularly blogs her word counts for the day, or the week, and I sometimes consider that this might be a good idea for myself, but I'm not sure that I can actually be shamed into making myself feel guilty when a whole day goes by with no words being committed to paper.

Work on Misty Mountain Hop has begun (the rough title of my next one which does actually have a mountain in it, stolen - obviously - from the Zep song but that's where any similarity ends) so maybe I should try it out for a while and see where it gets me - but don't go being disappointed if I suddenly decide to ditch it as a spectacularly awful idea. Right now it would look like this:

Using this strange, ugly tool, by the time Monday comes around, it should look more like this:

But still I am not enthused even though 18% complete is a lot better than 8% complete. If I could stick to it, by the end of next week, by rights, it should be 25% complete and that sounds really good but hey... this is just pie in the sky. Let's see what happens. 

I hereby promise I will try very hard to do this everyday and paste in the Ugly Bar (as it will now be known) - for the sake of experiment only, you hear! 

•••

And now - even though it really, really is Too Hot For Dogs (I really should dig up poor, forgotten about comic book I started all those years ago), Mr H wants/needs to go to The Woods.

Let's do this thing and ponder jut how misty that mountain is as we stroll...

Notes On A Lady Drinking Coffee Not A Few Feet Away From Me

I wonder what she does? She doesn't look like she does anything, which means she must be one of that dying but ever so interesting breed known as 'ladies who do lunch'. 

She is dressed extremely nicely and is wearing a silk scarf to set her outfit off. She does not appear to be waiting for anybody - in fact she seems to be very content to simply sit and 'be'. I would guess that she is the same age as my mother, but she is not my mother because I hope that she would at least say hello.

She sees me looking at her but looks away quickly when I don't avert my gaze like polite people would. Now I feel bad because I have made her feel uncomfortable, so I look down into my coffee and stir it again because I can't think of anything else to do. Nobody else in the coffee shop is aware of this because they are too busy being important with their phones - even when they are out for coffee with other people. The coffee shop is upstairs in a bookstore. In the far corner there is a man reading a book on a kindle. He knows this is wrong which is why he's sitting in the corner but he cannot hide his shame even from himself.

The woman who is not my mother reaches into her bag and pulls out a small red notebook and a tiny silver pen - she marks something important in the book and puts them away again. I wonder what kind of a life she is living. My best guess would be that, financially speaking, she is more than comfortable but she looks tired - she has seen everything there is to see and is now nothing but a tourist in her own timeline.

Perhaps she is a writer like me. Sometimes I sit and do nothing in the coffee shop, trying to see into the cracks to figure things out. Perhaps she is taking her cues from J.K. Rowling - coffee shop dwelling and making notes for a future million selling trilogy. It most definitely is not Ms Rowling though, I would recognise her. Having said that, the other drinkers in the coffee shop seemingly wouldn't notice if Harry Potter himself turned up.

I have been here long enough. It's time I moved on but I find I am immobilised and cannot move from my seat. I have heard that sometimes this can happen in the world but never thought it would happen to me. 

You would imagine that for one known as being observational, I would recognise one of the Gods taking a coffee break. I have been written into her Book of Deeds and must now wait for her to decide what to do with me as she plots the remainder of her story.

Around us, human beings fiddle with their mobile devices while Rome is burning in my heart.

A Season In The Abyss

I don't even know what I was doing to discover this but this drips class from every angle I can possibly look at it from. So far, I've watched it something like eight or nine times and every time I do so, it gets better and better. It's mostly surprising because that's eight or nine more times than any rock video I've watched in the last couple of years.

I'm not saying that I'm deserting my roots - they're too far down into the ground for that - but this is, if you'll pardon my language considering the subject matter, fucking phenomenal. I don't actually have any useful words to describe how I feel about this because I have no concept of what it's supposed to be like when it's world class. It looks world class and having done some digging on Mari Samuelsen (this is her, obviously), it appears that indeed it is. 

She also has a brother, Hakon, who is a cellist and between them, what they want to do is "connect a new audience to classical music." 

This is the greatest musical performance (of any kind) that I've seen for such a long time, that I'm all ears. 

I need to sleep on this new discovery.

THE NEWS OF THE WORLD

I finally tracked down the story that I did with the guys from The Circle for CNN - it's pretty good, take a look for yourself:

It's always odd to do an hour's worth of interview footage and find that what's left is but a fraction of what you really had to say. Still, along with the material for the BBC, I'll put this in the win column because it's actually pretty good.

Some Good Stuff

I hope not to talk about this very much for at least six months but yesterday I began work on a new novel. I figured that whatever happens with The Family Of Noise, I don't want to be that person that only ever wrote one book and then made a valiant attempt to dine out on it for the rest of his life.

That's not being a writer - that's writing a book. I don't feel strongly about many things in this life but if you're going to be something in this world, you should really be it.

I've written a fair few shorts this last couple of weeks but I've kept them all offline to be a part of The Day The Sky Fell Down which is coming along nicely. I didn't mean to keep them all offline but I have, so now I feel guilty for not handing over a new story to read. This shall be rectified across the coming weekend by creating something out of nothing.

•••

I realised today that I was a little pre-emptive with the 'missing Ray Bradbury' comment I made in my last post - the BBC have published it right here, so er... you can read it there too. The wheels of a big machine take time to rotate don't you know. 

In other media news, I've just been interviewed by The Sunday Times for something in the Style section this coming weekend - it's day-job related but I like (and so far, trust) the Times. They have a reputation to uphold and are more likely to retell what I actually said as opposed to making things up that they want to hear. 

Talking of which... currently chasing up what happened with the CNN piece - if anything. 

Funny. When I write it like that in a single paragraph, it looks like it all really happened. Which it did. 

•••

There have been some good articles around the web this week - which makes a change. First, there's this article on buzzfeed called How To Get Published - it's not really about getting published at all, but it's still a good read populated by some great debut authors, and those people would be:

Alena Graedon, Scott Cheshire, Julia Fierro, and D. Foy.

If you're playing The Writing Game, it's definitely worth reading through but the thing I took away most from it was, if you're looking for a great example of what an author photo should look like, there's four great ones right there - particularly the one of Scott Cheshire. That's how you do it.

I also picked up on Neil Gaiman's tumblr yesterday, somebody had written to him asking for advice on being a failed novelist (published once and then dumped at nowheresville) - he said something very cool, and I quote:

"And maybe you’re ahead of your time: your audience doesn’t exist yet. Or maybe you aren’t letting your audience know that there are stories for them, and where to find them."

That's a great way of looking at your work if for no other reason than it's probably true. How do you even begin to let people know you exist and that they might enjoy your work? It's very much worth thinking about, however you do it - whether you're a writer or at war with another kind of artistic endeavour.

THE INTERESTING

A bad thing happened yesterday. We were fixing up Hector's dinner and had Pointless on the TV - pretty normal afternoon routine - when the show flashed up a full screen image of Chairman Mao. 

Hector lost it and for the rest of the evening, gave the TV a wide berth and was acting like something awful was about to happen. I guess when you're not expecting somebody to show up in your house and suddenly, there they are (especially Chairman Mao) it can have a pretty adverse effect on your psyche. 

Tonight, he is still very wary of the TV just in case that Mao fellow turns up again.

Dog's are weird sometimes. 

•••

Book shopping this evening - there's a lot of good stuff around at the moment, which is also weird because last week I couldn't find a damn thing. Anyway, this is today's acquire: 

I think I shall down tools, throw the big red switch and nest in a corner of the lounge with it later. This is something I've been considering a lot lately. It's frighteningly easy to become a person who feels the need to take out a magical miniature machine in order to contribute to a world that shouts and points at everything all at the same time.

Have you ever sat back and considered exactly how much a tool of your tool you have become?

I don't want either of those things, do you?

•••

Now that I've pretty much finished The Family Of Noise, I don't ever want to write a book in that way again. It's been pretty fractal along the way. The important thing is that I learned something, i.e: there must be a better way to write a book than the way I wrote that one. 

Having said that - dancing stars are only created out of chaos, so don't quote me on any of that. I might just change my mind if it doesn't work. 

Just thought I would drop that in the run here being as it was in my head.

•••

What else can I tell you - yesterday I interviewed Darcy Oake. We talked for a long time about many things including Harry Blackstone, the psychology of human beings and how bad your mobile phone reception can be in London - a real-live first world problem, believe me. I'll post the interview here when it's done and link it up and all of those other things but first I must publish it elsewhere (obviously) and I'll link to that as soon as it's alive and kicking too.

I also decided that I want one of these - it's a Citroen DS - because this is just the kind of thing someone like me needs to drive. It's what's known as a measure. When I can afford to buy one of these fully restored, then I shall consider myself, officially 'getting somewhere'. 

It's not a 'fuck you' statement like an Aston Martin or anything. I consider it a perfectly reasonable measure of getting somewhere at around £15,000. 

Which really just leaves me with this:

And this:

Ravens, More Ravens and Some Other Stuff

It appears to be catch up time on the blog - so what can I tell you? A few days ago there was a fight outside the house... up in the sky between a gang of ravens and a gang of seagulls. I'm not sure who won but I was left with an injured raven hiding behind the paper recycling box. He was very frightened, so I left him for a few hours and when I went out to wrap him in a towel - my preferred method of handling injured birds - he decided he was fine thanks and flew off. Maybe he was just stunned but it looked nasty up there for a time. 

In other news, for those interested, Brian Sibley's adaptation of The Illustrated Man page is up at the BBC site - I promised to link to it when it was up, which it is and that's here. Apparently I did this clip for them, though I'm sure we were going to have another sweep at it before it went out. Never mind. There's nothing better than being caught off guard by people from the BBC with tape recorders and cameras while you're busy looking for coffee...

I also wrote a blog post for them but it appears that the pages for the show are now complete, on which basis, I will post it here and thus wrap up:

•••••

Something Wicked This Way Comes:

The Illustrated Man was part of an elite group of books that we genuinely looked forward to getting involved with at school. Along with The Day of the Triffids and The War of the Worlds, it was off syllabus but our teacher that year was determined to broaden our horizons beyond Shakespeare—and she did it with such a passion that I hope she will be mightily pleased that I, if not others, have continued to keep this flame alive.

In 1981, I was 14 and it was not a period in time when tattoos were even remotely pop-culture orientated, but the backstory to Bradbury’s tale is absolutely captivating. What 14-year-old boy would not have his eyes swept wide open by the tale of a vagrant who had been tattooed with magical images by a time-travelling witch?

That the book had been out in the populace for thirty years already makes it all the more special. 

Some years later, I found a VHS copy of Jack Smight's 1969 movie adaptation on a market stall. Held up at the front-end by Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom, it's a strange film and up until that day, I had never seen it. It was captivating for all the wrong reasons—it certainly wasn't how I remembered the book that was for sure, so I back-tracked to the novel again and found that a subsequent reading was actually far superior to the first. 

Since then, I've read The Illustrated Man many times, and not only as I've had cause to work with the book due to my job. You can never be sure with Ray Bradbury as to what his intentions were with his stories. As something of a ‘fussy’ fan of Bradbury, I get the impression that he was simply writing stories he liked, and if you liked them too, that was great. If not, that was also fine because there would be something different along shortly. 

I believe 2014 makes it 63 years on the shelf but still, The Illustrated Man never gets old. If you were to press me as to why, I would say it was because it consists of contrastingly different short stories held together with a premise thinner than a spider’s silk that just so happens to be stronger than steel. The book is not really even about a tattooed man—that's nothing but a mask to see it safely into the carnival to make its speech. 

What the book is really about is human behaviour. And for that reason alone, The Illustrated Man becomes truly timeless in a way many books wish they could also be and yet, fail miserably.

•••••

In other spill-over from the day job, there was also this from the North Wales Chronicle - which is lovely thank you very much. 

•••

There's not been much action on the blog front at the moment as it's spectacularly dull proofing and correcting your own work to get it ready for the outside world. Having said that, after a good brainstorm with Wayne over how a writer can increase his stock in a world were everything is louder than everything else, we came up with some good ideas, the results of which should turn up soon. 

Meanwhile, my dog continues to get bigger and bigger...

CNN AND SOME OTHER STUFF

A cool thing happened yesterday - I got a call asking if I was available to do an interview with CNN about tattooing - and not the usual old duff either. The answer of course was yes... even though I swore off the media after the Radio 5 fiasco. I'm really pleased that I didn't tar them with the same brush. They were professional, genuinely interested in the industry and it was a pleasure all round. I hope they got as much of a kick out of it as I did. Not sure where that will turn up right now but you can be pretty sure that I'll post some links to it here when I do.

Aftermath

My, my, my - what an interesting weekend I have just spent. Shattered and brain-dead, I got home yesterday afternoon and figured I could have gone straight back out and done it all again. You get a certain momentum beneath you once you start running with these things that's hard to apply the brakes to. There are certainly plenty worse ways to spend your weekend than hanging out with 10,000 people and some friends you haven't seen in a good few months. 

Friends like Millie Dollar...

...and Paul Sweeney:

Before scowling intently at tattoos that have been freshly loaded onto people with your other pals, Trent and Paula, in the vain hope that nobody will notice your hair has become three different colours since this time last year and the dominant colour is grey...

Before handing out some of these for top notch work:

(Thanks to Nicky Connor for these pics... just four of something like 800 and counting last time I looked)

Work aside - as that will be discussed elsewhere at length - there was a sit down meet with a literary agent, a discussion with an indie film-maker, my buddy Wayne Simmons came down to hang out, I got started on the long-planned tattoo on my other arm and met some lovely people who, if the wind is blowing in the right direction, I will meet again in the not too distant future. 

Basically, my head is awash with a thousand possibilities and all I need to do is figure out just what the hell to do with them all. Patience and deep thought are required. Today however, the best I can do is take Hector out. So far, we've been to the woods in the rain and then after lunch, we went down to the beach and walked until we could walk no more. 

In other news from the past 24 hours, I was also asked to do some work with Radio 5 last night - and for the third time in my history with them, the station sold me a pig's ear. I should have known better because it looked like a pig's ear before we even began but you know... you turn up in the hope that 'this time' will be different. That will be the end of that 'relationship' then. Words fail me as to exactly how much of a waste of airtime that station is. I was bang in the middle of the Philip Roth documentary too... 

Finally, sometime last year, I read a book that I really liked. I mailed the author and told him so. I also told him that I thought his publishing house had misrepresented him with the cover design and duly, redesigned it for him simply because I dig designing book covers. Come full circle to this morning and it turns out he will be relaunching the book across the world for your digital devices and would like to use it. I'll hook it up here just as soon as I know what's really going on with it but that was a cool thing to find in the inbox. First, I have to find which of my safe places I put it in...

...and before that I had best finish the introduction I was writing for my friend Dirk Behlau's new book. More on that tomorrow.

The Family Of Noise: It's A Wrap - Almost

There were a few times when I thought I wouldn't make it - that I had bitten off more than I could competently chew on but about an hour ago, I finished a first draft of The Family of Noise.

Now it's time for the hard work of getting it out into the sunshine. Updates to the pilgrims progress will be made here of course.

In the meantime,  I'm definitely going to self publish The Day The Sky Fell Down because I'm not holding my breath when it comes to any kind of deal over a short story collection and sometime around the end of June, when that's complete (I still have a few stories to wrap up before that's ready), I'll move on to the next novel. That's currently called Misty Mountain Hop but we'll see how that pans out as a working title as I move along with it.

Also in the pipeline is an easy job of writing an introduction for my friend Dirk Behlau's new book - I don't know when it's out but he's a superhuman whizz at letting the world know about his work, so chances are you will know even before I do - I'll post when I know more.

This week however - before the rough and tumble of three 20 hour days next weekend - I am most definitely going to take two whole days off from absolutely everything and spend some time with the real family of noise and walk that dog until we can't walk no more.

Expect pictures. 

Meantime - I just posted a new story over in Dirty Realism: This Means War (I) which suggests that there will be more from the war in the future... which there will be.

Now, back to slobbering over just how great Tobias Wolff is and cooking. Tonight, it's fajita's created in the fiery pits of hell. I know you're jealous...

BROKEN FINGERS, THE BBC... AND OTHER STORIES

PROLOGUE:

So, there I was, nonchalantly holding Hector's lead in one finger - who was giving the grand illusion of being relaxed after a long walk - when he spotted a squirrel and was gone taking my finger with him. A broken finger will certainly slow down how fast you can wrap up two magazines and a book when you're up against the clock.

Particularly with your girlfriend in Singapore and your kids needing to go places... and the dog still needing to go out later that same day and all subsequent days after.

I considered going to hospital to get it checked out but not a lot happens to broken fingers. If I recall correctly, they strap it to the finger closest to it and send you home after you've waited for something like close on four hours - so I did it myself, but I couldn't type even half properly so I took all of that off and have a pretty bent finger for my trouble. Not only could I not type properly - even simple things like getting dog sausages out of the oven is harder than you would think.

•••

In a few weeks, BBC Radio 4 are launching a new week of sci-fi drama - it starts on Saturday 14th June at 2.30pm with an adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Illustrated Man for which I shall be writing an introductory blog post for and am (apparently) also being interviewed for some post broadcast extras - or at least that's how it's been explained to me. I'll find out more next weekend when we actually do it but I'm really pleased to have been asked... seriously I am. That's normally the domain of people like Gaiman. Maybe he's washing his hair. The adaptation is written by award-winning radio dramatist Brian Sibley, whose previous works include the 1990s series Ray Bradbury's Tales of the Bizarre as well as the classic BBC Radio adaptations of Lord of the Rings, Gormenghast and The History of Titus Groan. I can't find a direct link for the show on the Radio 4 page at the moment - I guess it's a little early - but I'll link it up when it goes live.

Talking of Gaiman - which we weren't, not really - I'd love to see Dave McKean work up a cover for The Illustrated Man because so far, every single published version of the book has been dreadful.

For what we could have had, here's McKean's work for The Homecoming - which is not awful in any way:

•••

EPILOGUE:

I forgot to mention - while I was busy breaking my finger in the park, just before we headed for home, we bumped into Nick - the drummer from The Clash - who lives down the street and caught him out running! Looking good too - which is a far cry from where he was ten years or so back.  It's pretty impressive what a man can do when he gets tired of the Self Destruction Blues. If I was the kind to wear a hat, I would take it off...

(I always liked the way there was an epilogue to each episode of The Streets of San Francisco - somebody should put that back on the TV immediately)

The Big Sexy

I start this post with no real idea of what I'm trying to say or where I'm going with it. All I got is a vague notion to talk with somebody (imaginary virtual audience) about self image. I was reading some articles over on Medium after I posted there yesterday (you didn't miss anything, it was a repost of How To Drown The Sound Of Crying) and I came across a great post by some guy I had never heard of called Rich Roll. The article itself is worth a read, as is this second one from him - but first you must click here and see his site. Two seconds is all it will take you to figure out what he's all about. 

If you can't be bothered looking, it's basically about some guy who got tired of himself lying on the sofa and being a perpetual loser who turned himself into one of the X-Men using plants and can now run insane distances while looking sexy and podcasting about it. It's easy to be dismissive when I don't want to be those things. Actually - I say I don't want to be those things, but I'm not entirely sure of that. Would I like to be an amazing runner-type-dude with podcast episodes that people paid to listen to? Sure - why not. Sounds great. Except, that's not what I want my legacy to be. It might be sexy to some people whose own mirror tells them it's a sexy image but my idea of sexy has nothing to do with sex nor does it have anything to do with fitness.

I thought in those actual words - "that's not what I want my legacy to be". I don't want to be remembered for being able to run for miles but there is a little part of me that wishes what I saw naked in the mirror matched the mental image of what used to be some time ago. 

Which begs the question - of me, and perhaps you if you want to go down that road - "how do I really see myself and does it matter if that doesn't match what other people see."

I think it might. What if you see yourself as a successful 'take no prisoners' entrepreneur but the rest of the world sees nothing but a selfish dick whose parents didn't pay them enough attention, did you really win that war? It's one thing to not care what other people think about you but - in this example - when the weight of opinion goes against the grain, it gets out of the realm of funny and starts to have too many similarities with great dictators of the world.

So what do I want my legacy to be? What do I think is sexy? They sound very different but they're very much the same really. I guess if I pursue what I think to be sexy, then those things will be pure, from the heart and become the legacy by default. Given that you can't dictate what the world will think about you when you're gone (hell, maybe you don't give flying one about what people will think about you when you're dead but roll with it - if you've got kids, it's at least semi-important) you might as well focus on what you find sexy.

So, I ask myself again - what do I find sexy these days? I used to find self-confidence sexy but that's over-rated now that everybody is faking their aura and backing it up with proactively and continually trying to sell you something. I blame social media for that one. It's one thing to be self-confident but let's face it, a far too large percentage of the people who are out there tooting their own trumpet are, in all reality, shit at what they do. 

There have been a couple of times that I found the idea of being in great physical shape quite sexy. Maybe once after I had seen Rocky, definitely another time when I found myself outgunned at a ju-jitsu competition at Crystal Palace and maybe one other time when some guy called Scottie decided I would be a good punching bag sometime in the mid-eighties. That last one actually has a happy ending because I slept with his girlfriend some ten years later. 

I think I'm leading up to announcing here that I find writers sexy but that's not exactly true either because there are too many of them to make that declaration in such a sweeping statement. The truth is, there's a certain type of author/writer that I find sexy. That goes for songwriters and other types of artist too. 

That type is the honest artist. It was incredibly simple all along but it still took me forty-five years to figure it out. Charles Bukowski is sexy because he is bare-knuckle honest. The new album from Lissie (Back To Forever) is unbelievably sexy because it's a bucketful of her heart tipped out across the kitchen floor.

Game of Thrones is sexy because it's not pretending to be something it's not. On paper, it should be an awful show that makes me cringe but it's so hand-on-heart honest about its intentions, it's impossible not to fall for it.

The more people that I find sexy in this way, the more it feels right to be a part of that tribe. The world is not a nice place but it's not so awful either. The world is pretty funny really if you carry some salt around in your pocket. 

For honesty (and therefore, sexy) to work properly - to be honest with yourself and others - you need to be able to not stand in judgement of either. To take something and love it in the state you found it in, is very empowering. I didn't realise before that many of the things I find sexy have been with me for a long time now. That famous quote that goes "Have nothing in your house that's not useful or beautiful" reads much better as "Have nothing in your life that you don't find sexy" - we shall let it be somebody else's problem if they wish to interpret 'sexy' as the size of your chest, lips, hair colour or ability to run across the Grand Canyon fuelled only by the leaves of a Yukka tree.

Being sexy is the new black. As Lissie would have it: 

"I don't know what this game is
because I'm not even playing it"

And the only game that's worth playing is the one you set the pieces up for inside your head.

GRRR - MAKES NOISE LIKE A WOUNDED TIGER

I've found something curious out about myself in the last few weeks. My writing style has begun to change recently. Not to a huge degree but enough for me to notice where it's headed. I think it may have something to do with what I've been reading. It would be pretty foolish to make a list here of exactly what I have been reading because I am in no way saying that I'm anything like those people - more that I'm listening to what they had to say and then, to the way they said it - which is much closer to how I am coming around to viewing the world myself. 

I don't think much of that made sense but writing it down has made me feel better - so thanks for working your way through it. Much appreciated.

I'm not quite sure what's going on around here right now. I figure this must be what every writing life is like. Long periods of having to 'do the work' - long periods that have no end in sight either. The closer I think I'm getting to something that looks like the end of a project, the more I realise I'm running like thunder just to stay in the same place. I should probably know better than to ask my writer friends how they are getting along too because when they tell me 'pretty damn good', I just feel like I'm pretending out here. 

Tonight however, I am mostly lamenting the fact that events conspired against me to NOT get out and see a one-off screening of Super Duper Alice Cooper at a venue not 20 minutes away from me. Life sure got in the way of that one - "more then slightly sad" would be an understatement given that the reason for not being able to go was actually - and in all truth - shit.

I don't have a lot else to add today apart from the fact that I noticed earlier today that: a) I broke a promise to myself that I would post here everyday whenever I could and haven't and b) I haven't posted a story for far too long either. Must fix both of those things. I blame Richard Ford because I am currently reading this - and it's excellent:

Anyway - Coffee and Game of Thrones is calling. Then I must get my head down and do some writing. Believe it or not, this work has been planned to take place in the garden tonight (sweater at the ready) because I'm determined not to miss the meteor shower that's passing by over the next couple of days.

And no - watching geek clips on YouTube tomorrow will not be good enough for me.

Other People and Their Words

I found this lying around online yesterday and found it - quite frankly - majestic - I didn't understand it at first and it took me about half an hour to figure out what was going on but it's very cool. Take a look for yourselves:

There's a major blow-up of it at this link where you can read it properly and if you're of a mind, you can find more from Wendy MacNaughton here. If you really like it, you can buy a print here.

I've been slacking off from reading lately but if you're looking for something great to sink your teeth into, John Connolly's The Wolf In Winter is on the shelves - but keep your eyes peeled for the variant with the free 'soundtrack' CD stuck to the inside back cover. Regulars here will know that I think he's the best thriller writer around right and has held that spot for many years with me but if you're looking for a long term affair with his main squeeze - Charlie Parker - you must start at the beginning of the series which is Every Dead Thing. I'd post an image of the cover for you but I can't find one big enough, so instead, you'll have to saunter over to his site and look for yourself. There's an extracted first chapter here if you're curious.

Aside from that, nobody will be surprised to learn that I'm more than spinning my wheels to chew this up:

Why it's not out for another month in the UK is a sad fact of international publishing nonsense, but it appears to be available on all digital platforms, so we'll do it like that instead. Go figure. Word on the street is that it's as good as we (the royal we) think it should be. I have banned myself from buying it until I have finished my work. How's that for growing up?

Finally, being as I still haven't imported all of my old blog posts that go back to 2009, I'll post this again because I love it, because it's great and because then I'll know where to find it:

Warriors: come out and play

The news of another dead wrestler is nothing new in the world but this has touched me. In a world full of people thinking that being OK was enough to get by, Warrior was a welcome box of fireworks on the loose. He may not have been the greatest wrestler in the world, but he was - without question - the greatest sports entertainer of the time. He leaves behind a wife, two children and thousands of people around the world who know how to shake the ropes when they mean business...

My, my - the world got complacent in its delivery of people to look up to.

Tumbleweed

Jeez - writing is hard work sometimes. I'm currently going through the literary equivalent of standing in a tumbleweed shower. It's gone very quiet in my head, all the good ideas are counting to one hundred and hiding behind the bad ones. I've taken an official day off from work today to get my shit together but it stillisn't happening. In fact, it's not happening so much that I'm tempted to get on with some magazine work just to be writing something... anything at all. I've actually got some cool things on the table at the moment - most notably, I'm working on an interview/feature with Chet Zar which means we get to talk about things like Clive Barker, del Toro and MAD magazine which is a big one in the win column in my book.

Let's see if I can work through what's going on in public and clear my head a little - who knows, it might even provide some entertainment. Later this week, I've got an interview scheduled in on Thursday with Laura Checkoway, the director of a documentary about a woman struggling to survive on the streets of New York City under less than glamorous circumstances - that should be fun to sink the teeth into. The movie is called Lucky and you can check out the trailer here and if it shakes your tree until fruit falls to the ground, you can book tickets for the screening right here. Being as I'll be in London, I'm going to book in another session for some laser removal of an old tattoo that's in the way of progress. If you find yourself in a similar situation, I can whole-heartedly recommend my buddy Wayne at The Circle who knows exactly what the hell he's doing. 

Also on the table this week is a spin-off project going on in the shape of podcasting. While I've got the equipment set-up, I figured I may as well do a few of them at the same time, so one will be for the Great British Tattoo Show that we're hosting at Alexandra Palace at the back-end of May and the other will be for my book Raised On Radio which could quite possibly come out around the same time. Both of these are for broadcasting at Liverpool's Sound City which means with an FM broadcast, copyright royalties are someone else's problem and I can play some fine and relevant stuff. Looking at the notes I've written up for this, they will be very, very different. Here's what Raised On Radio looks like:

See how Raised on Radio exists in the real world - as a working proof copy anyway.

Talking of podcasts - I believe that my buddy Wayne Simmons has posted up the episode where we talk about the mechanics of writing in the lobby of some deadbeat hotel in Cardiff. It is only polite for me to point you here first but you can also download it directly from here. Much Dairy Milk and Pepsi was consumed. You know where you are with things that come in wrappers and sealed lids.

Finally - if you're out in the streets and find this on the shelves - you should pick it up. It's damn fine even if you're not a tattooed freak on a leash:

Having written all of that, I feel like a writer again instead of somebody standing in the kitchen making coffee. Time to press on. Winter Is Coming.

Sleep vs wake

 "I have to drop your Portuguese exchange student off at what time in the morning?"

I don't get up majorly early very often but when I so, it always amazes me exactly how much you can get done. Exchange student delivered safely to her bus (though I wouldn't guarantee safety beyond that if the Victorian fog that's hanging around doesn't lift), I got back, tidied the kitchen, took Hector out, read a couple of chapters of A Prayer For Owen Meany, made a list of other things I really need to get through today and then remembered I had never watched the second season of American Horror Story. One episode in and it appears to be made of good materials...  it also has a great line in promo posters:

 •••

That was yesterday. Somewhere along the line I picked up some crappy virus and finally fell asleep on the sofa and slept for nearly 12 hours which is more than twice what I normally get - and oddly woke up not feeling refreshed but with the notion that I should continue work on the expanded Black Dye White Noise photo book that was on the table a while back.  

What's a poor boy to do but put some more American Horror Story on and dig it out to see what needs doing. I used to shake my head in wonder that some of the writers I follow seemingly took forever to finish what sounded like a fairly simple project - and now I know why. 

Right now though, I need to wrap up an interview I was working on with the mighty Chet Zar. If you don't know him, look him up. More later. Head is too full of good stuff not to post again today.