Gonzo

I have a copy of Hunter Thompson's 'Gonzo Papers Anthology' here. Over 1000 pages of some quite serious writing from one of the masters. I've never read it from start to finish simply because it's too big but I've dipped in and out of it hundreds of times. It's the kind of collection that any writer would be proud to leave behind as a legacy. 

Why it's off the shelf, I cannot say. Maybe somebody needed to wedge a door open, take something down from a high shelf or splinter the skull of an intruder. Regardless, I started to flick through it again this afternoon and for the briefest of moments, toyed with the idea of how exciting it would be to write about British politics the way HST wrote about American politics.

The one fly in the ointment is this: what I know about the politics of this country wouldn't even fill the back of that proverbial stamp - but it still sounds highly appealing. I junked the idea just a second or two later when I woke up and recalled that, no - I don't want to write about politics at all. Never have and never will. What my brain was really trying to get at, was how great it would be to leave a juicy collection of work that would also fill a thousand pages.

Anyway, when HST was taking pot-shots at Nixon, there was something to get your teeth into and write about. There was controversy, action, opinion, polar opposites and a whole bunch of other issues that roused people. That climate simply doesn't exist anymore. All modern politics appear to be the same - nothing more than arguing over how to put more money in the pot and then keep a lid on it. It's like taking a car and having everybody gather round to argue over whether the switch for the air-con should be on the left or the right. It's totally empty of anything that actually relates to something of value.

So, combine that with the fact that every home in the land now comes equipped with over one hundred channels to keep your attention diverted from anything that might be important and there you have it: Le fin! 

I would write some more but I have a date with a Houdini documentary...

Graham Joyce

I found out that one of my favourite authors, Graham Joyce, died this afternoon. Not only was he a favourite and one I was constantly pushing people to read, he was also likely the best this country has had in an extremely long time.

He was also criminally under-rated, under-valued and under-read. 

I don't usually do sad as an emotion when somebody I don't personally know dies, but today I do. He connected with me on a huge scale as both a reader and as a creative. I sent him an email some time ago to tell him so and I'm pleased that I did.

In an odd chain of events, very early this afternoon I told a friend about him, sent over a list of his books to track down and insisted she read them immediately. She had never heard of him and wandered off to drop his name into google - at which point, this news had not been announced but practically unfolded in front of her face during the search - and then she called me. That was just the kind of thing he would have dropped into a story.

So... thank you Sir, for shaking my book tree really fucking hard. To the readers among you, go and read something - try Some Kind Of Fairy Tale, The Tooth Fairy or Year of the Ladybird. There are others, but he was bang on the money with all three of those. Trust me. 

And if you really like what somebody does, you should tell them. Probably right now.

Whatever it is they do. 

Life is short. Trust me on that too.

IF I POST THIS, I WON'T FEEL SO BAD ABOUT NOT POSTING FOR FAR TOO LONG

So, I fell over... I fell over hard. Well, not so much fell over - simply waylaid by the day-job, which is OK, it has to be done, but I've missed my own deadlines for getting things finished. The Day The Sky Fell Down will be along shortly and i shall be immensely pleased to release it into the wild. 

I should have read the sign. The big neon sign I mostly should have seen was when I got knocked over last week. Knocked over by a VW camper van no less. It sounds serious but he was doing maybe two miles per hour at the time. I however, didn't even see it coming and was not ready for it because I was idly putting petrol in the car at the time.

One second, I was pumping gas - the next second, I was on the floor looking at the sky which was still where it should have been. The old guy driving the camper was more than a little embarrassed and showed this by winding his window down a whole two inches to say sorry while his wife made sure she looked the other way. 

That's was a sign and I did not read it correctly.

When you listen to the world properly, it doesn't have to shout at you.

Anyway, when all that was over, I made a YouTube playlist of some things I've been turning over this week. You may enjoy also by clicking the necessary buttons below.

Now - time to get along with the last story in the collection.

Back later...

The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers

Something happened today that has never happened before. I took the monkeys to the coffee house in the bookshop (that's not the thing) and afterwards, I announced I was going to wander the shelves for a little while (that's not the thing either). 

What usually happens next is one will gravitate towards the baking, travel or psychology section (not sure how it is that she hasn't figured out what to do with her life yet but I'm leaving her to it with subtle hints along the way), while the other one pinballs around, being fascinated by anything with a sticker on the front cover. 

Today, those exact things happened with a slight change to the advertised programme. Both actually wanted a book and said so out loud. One put in a request for some psychobabble about why women don't read maps and men don't listen (something like that) and the other presented me with My Family And Other Animals and an expectant face. I wasn't sure about that one - it hasn't aged well, and after a brief 'sit here and read a page' test, it turns out I was right and she switched to a gorgeous half-sized hardback of The Hobbit. How could I refuse?  

But wait: The Hobbit instead of Diary of a Wimpy Kid and human behaviour over sexy muffins? What's going on? 

Couple that with older monkey buying her own copy of Vanity Fair because I'd forgotten this month and smaller monkey going to bed of her own volition to crack on with Tolkien - I'm convinced that somebody has switched my children for... well, I'm not sure what for.

They look the same and eat in a similar fashion but this behaviour is not correct.

Not in the slightest.

••• 

Earlier today, I hooked up with Dave Navarro for a hit and run catch-up interview type thing. It feels good to go back to my roots - I haven't interviewed somebody that I grew up with (figuratively speaking) for a long time. I'll let you know when that will be coming out sometime later, but for the record, Jane's Addiction in London, 1990: best show ever - of all time.

I've been to some 'whole new level' shows over the years but that one was something else. It changed the way I saw rock n roll forever. At the time, I believe I said something about it being the closest a man who was born too late could get to seeing The Doors.

And that makes it very serious indeed.

Here's some old and some new(er): 

Nirvana? Never even touched the sides, people.

Never even touched the sides.

How To Overcome Writer's Block

1. Put this on your stereo.

2. Turn it up.

3. Turn it louder.

4. What are you 76? I said louder.

5. Write. Write like you have never written - before the police come to join the party.

Hair Growth For The New Generation

I have just been informed by my daughter that she is "doing the hair growth thing that everyone is talking about" to make her hair grow faster. I am sorry I asked now but let me share it with you:

1. Wash the roots of your hair with shampoo. Just the bit you can see at the front. Apparently.

2. Condition the ends of your hair with conditioner. 

3. Rub some honey into your scalp: "But I don't want to do that bit because it sounds sticky and I don't really like honey."

4. Spend 45 minutes 'inverted': "But I don't want to do that bit either, it sounds like it hurts after a while."

5. Comb your hair through with a shower comb, not a brush: "I haven't got a shower comb, so I think I'll just use the brush I have already."

6. Don't blow dry it, just squeeze the water out with a towel and let it dry by itself: "But it depends if I'm doing something important or not - I might do that bit or I might not."

Me: "So that's just washing your hair as normal then?"

Her: "Yeah but I started it a few days ago and I think it's starting to grow a bit faster already."

Me: "I think eggs and beer are supposed to be really good for your hair and making it grow."

Her: "Don't be stupid..."

Welcome to life in the fast lane.

•••

Talking of My Chemical Romance - which I happened to in the previous post - take a listen/look at Gerard Way's new tune:

This has legs that can run for miles and miles. 

And now, back to doing something constructive...

So I Adopted A Hammerhead Shark...

I wrote a story yesterday called Blankets - one of the last few that I had been working on for Sky Fell Down - which is (a little bit) about people who are more than happy to stand idly by while the world falls to pieces within arms reach of them.

I put the full stop where it belonged (at the end), lit a cigarette because that's the law when you finish a story and dropped a pair of headphones on to bury myself in an avalanche of My Chemical Romance because the only way to silence the voices in your head that all want to talk out loud about the next thing you have to do, is to drown them out.

And while I was sitting there at The Big Table, a thought occurred to me. That I should do something right now - right this very second - to not be one of those people who talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk. This ball of dirt we're living on? It's full of puddles. More puddles than dirt in fact and right now, it's getting fucked over.

Reason? Bare knuckle fighting to make ends meet and survive probably. There's also greed, commerce and a hundred other things I don't know about or understand, but I don't need to. What I do know is that sometimes, you have to stand up and start throwing stones into the water to even begin to build a dam. 

The people at TerraMar have got a handle on it, there is more work to do than we will ever know but that doesn't mean the work shouldn't be started. Go take a look, there are plenty of creatures you can publicly get behind on there but the hammerhead shark is such a wonderful freak of nature, it had my name all over it. 

You can throw some useful, cold, hard cash into the hammerhead fund here, join me and publicly declare that you give a fuck. It doesn't go directly to saving the shark itself - that would be impossible - it's a huge global project to simply do something constructive to help make this ball of dirt and puddles a better place to live on in the future.

Small gestures aren't really in my nature. Or useful for that matter.

Aside from this initial toss of some coin into the wishing well, the best I can do right now - at least until some incredible stroke of good fortune falls into my lap - is commit to handing over a percentage of my monthly writing earnings to them.

So that's what I'll do.

Ghislaine Maxwell explains much better than I ever can right here:

More later... I have to write something for somebody.

Head Games

Did you ever see a book and know you should be reading it but for some inexplicable reason have steered clear? For at least two years I have been avoiding the works of Haruki Murakami with a vengeance. Part of me didn't want to be disappointed because of the surrounding hype. Part of me wondered if whoever translated from the Japanese could pull it off properly. There are likely other reasons too but this week, the pull was too strong - I bought a copy of Norwegian Wood and buried myself in a corner just for half an hour to see what it might be like...

The effect was much the same as when I picked up del Toro's book just after Christmas. At first, it made me wonder why I even bother owning a pen, never mind the paper to make childish ink marks on - and yet the more I read, the more I wanted to raise my game. Over the years, there have been plenty of writers I have looked up to - and even more that I didn't - but this was a new experience entirely. This was like hearing a band so original, so utterly in control of what they were doing, you can't help but be in awe of the music that's entering your ears.

I put the book down and scowled at its cover. Sometimes a star can shine so intensely, all you want to do is be close to it to share the warmth it gives off but at no point did I wish to throw in the towel because I will 'never be that good'. I picked it up again, read a little more and picked up my pen...

•••

Meanwhile, not ten minutes ago, this little puppy arrived at the door from Michelle Harvey:

Which will be heading out to the picture framers at the weekend. Mightily pleased in the extreme. She also threw in a copy of her book The Fall Of Redd:

I predict big things for Michelle - but do not expect a Judoon Captain oversize mug if you order a print from her. That's mine...

•••

I took H out for a long walk at lunchtime. Here is the offending article:

On the way home, I had the radio on and caught Bill Oddie talking about 'being bi-polar' - or as he put it, 'manic depressive dressed up to sound nicer'. He was telling a story of how somebody told him that people were sometimes frightened by him, that he could be in the office and do something as simple as ask where a report was and if it wasn't done, announce he might as well do it himself, then go and do it himself.

And I thought to myself... that's me. I don't think I scare people. I am not scary - though I can see why I might be to small children. Yet, that's exactly what I would do. All you want is the damn report, so why hasn't somebody done it like they were supposed to? It's not unreasonable to expect that people do what they are supposed to, properly... is it?

I know lots of people who are bi-polar - or at least tell me they are - but I have never thought of wearing that t-shirt for myself. I get a little frenetic every now and then, but who doesn't? I can also go so far down, I get the bends when I start to come back up. All of the things he was talking about seemed pretty normal to me but after listening, I'm not so sure. 

Is it only a problem when it's unmanageable? I certainly wouldn't want to kill off any creativity caused by it and luckily, so far as I know, nobody has ever pointed out that I should see somebody. Not in the last eight years anyway, but we all go through bad times. 

It's actually something I don't even want to think about - mostly because I don't perceive it as a problem and I hope it never will be but if you're one of the people whose life it destroys day in/day out, it's worth hunting down on iplayer for a listen - you are not alone.

All of that aside, the impression I make on small children (not that I bump into them that often) will not be assisted by the 'V for Vendetta' facial hair I have been planning to sculpt onto my face later today. I can see it going awfully wrong and having to take it all off - because that's what always happens on my face.

(While I was looking for that, I found this great minimalist poster design for the film...)

That's enough for now. More later. After days and days of not saying anything at all - I find that I suddenly have a lot of garbage in my head that would like to come out, but for now, this:

...which is beautiful.

The Day The Sky Almost Fell Down

I have an apology to make - for those paying close attention, I am due to publish The Day The Sky Fell Down in exactly one day, except it is not finished. Rather than rush it, I'd actually prefer it to be correct and as I intend it to be, so I'm moving the release date to October 1st to give myself a little more time to make it right. There's little point in doing something all by yourself if you can't move the goalposts by a couple of centimetres - so, sorry about that but it's the right thing to do. There is every possibility that it will be ready to roll before that but time has taught me to manage expectation above all else - especially for myself! 

That will teach me to go on holiday for a week...

More posting of actual value to follow. 

GOOD DAY AT THE OFFICE, DEAR?

I follow a fair few writer blogs and some of those guys have the best fans in the world. Seriously. They draw things for them, make things, start insane campaigns to get things done in their name - they probably go through their trash sometimes as well but I've not seen anybody write about that. Not ever.

Anyway. That kind of thing comes under the banner of "dreaming about movies nobody will ever make about my life". Particularly when you have but a couple of finished works out in the world and nobody really knows about the teetering stack hidden behind the door - but you know what? I can be so busy doing the things I'm trying to do here that I forget exactly how many hours and words I plough into the mag doing the day job and what effect some of those things have once they're out there.

Today, two things happened. Last weekend, I met Michelle Harvey (aka wolfskulljack) and immediately fell in love with her art. I'm not sure she believed me but that's OK. I never believe anybody when they say nice things about me either. She went away from the show and painted this based on er... me. Which is so fucked up and so incredibly cool at the same time, I had to buy it. 

When it arrives, I will frame it and hang it somewhere people will see it and ask me about it - that's more than good enough but I will probably also 'force' them to buy other works from her because it's hard being an artist of any kind out in the real world. Don't wait for me though - her store is right here.

Shit like that doesn't happen very often (when I say 'very often' I mean: 'ever'), so later, when I got an email from a guy who runs a blog (I don't know what it is yet or I would namecheck it) asking me for advice because he was into the way I did things, I felt kind of weird. Kind of like the Gods were playing some intricate cosmic gag that I hadn't seen coming but I guess when people take the time to do or say something wonderful because of something you do, you should accept it like a man.

I haven't yet replied to this one (if you happen to be reading), well, I have, but it's currently the length of a short novel that badly needs some attention before it makes sense.

So yeah - it was a  good day at the office, thanks for asking.

LOOK INTO MY EYES...

Some things in life are important - such as having your faith restored. If you ever loved Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, their new album Hypnotic Eye is quite something and you will tell everybody you meet for many days. If you have never loved Tom Petty, maybe you should get a life. Hypnotic Eye. That's what it's called. Go find it. Go love it. Report back.

The Creative Process: Day Ten

As expected - the weekend and other responsibilities threw a grenade in the work shed. What's man to do, but brush off the dust and get back on the horse. Let me backtrack a little though because there are some important events that became part of the process.

The flyers: I didn't know quite what to expect from them but so far as I can tell, at least half of them disappeared from the show at the weekend. I didn't stand and watch people picking them up but I am assuming one single person didn't simply take a fistful and deplete the stock. That's a good amount and hopefully, some of those people have made it to here when they didn't previously know it existed. 

Also on that note, some of the guys who work back at the day-job office didn't have a clue I did anything at all like this, so we'll put that in the win column. My mag publisher picked one up too, saying the cover was really good - which actually meant something to me because he's the man responsible for making me look good in the distant past with other things and I love his own work. so we'll put that in the win column too.

When pressed by one of the office staff on the books subject matter, I showed her a story on my phone (The Advantages Of Having A Thick Coat Of Fur) and she began to read extracts of it out loud. I was badly prepared for this and she made it sounds filthy - picking up on keywords like 'pants', 'bath' and 'being naked' like some kind of triple-x search engine. So there's a lesson for all of us. No matter what you write, once you release it, people will make it their own and tell other people their opinion of it... which also happened. Another staffer came over to see what she was reading and then there were two people who thought it was some weird dog-porn-bath story.

What did I learn? Choose your extracts carefully? Don't show people random items on your phone out of context? Maybe - but mostly, what I already said. They will make of it whatever they want. You have zero control. Get used to it.

On returning from the exile of the weekend, I came back to find a message from an author I had contacted to see if he would look at the book and perhaps write something enticing for the  cover. I am playing this down here. I say 'an author' but he happens to be my favourite living author. I won't disclose who it is and fire all of my guns before the time is right - it's enough to say that this tiny message made my day/week/month. File under pending for now.

That's good enough for Day Ten. The work haze is starting to clear enough for me to see where the saddle is now to jump back on it.

The Creative Process: Day Five

1. Today I realised that publishing a hard copy book is a lot more enjoyable than having to dick about with the process of publishing for ebook platforms. That's right, one of my post-it notes was to make sure all the ducks were in a row on the digital front. Laying out text and making sure the whole affair will look good in your hands is very different from adding page breaks to make sure it turns up in a basically sequential order. Why can't everybody just get along and agree on a single format for this stuff? Bookmark a lot of web pages to research it again. I've done it before but it was so much fun, I obviously forgot everything the minute I shut down my machine.

2. LuLu have pulled out the stops this week - I ordered a proofing copy to play with only a few days ago and it arrived in the mail today. It's not always been that fast but this is impressive. For those keeping score for their own purposes, if I had decided to run with Amazon and CreateSpace, they would still be thinking about printing it at this point. So far, so good. If they roll out at that speed from ordering, I will be a happy man with happy readers.

Here's the package:

The next few days will be odd. I have a magazine to proof today and then I leave for Manchester at lunchtime tomorrow until Monday. I think I will take everything I need with me and instead of lying on a hotel bed watching crap on TV, use the time to get through the work without a dog panting in my face. Maybe I'll wander up to some bookstores early on Saturday morning to see if they will host some flyers on the counters. 

Anyway, not too bad for Day Five...

The Creative Process: Day Four

1. This book needs some people to say sexy things about it (or me) for the cover. Ponder over whether such people exist and draw up a short-list of people I know, or semi-know, to ask them if they would "be so kind...". If feels odd - particularly as I'm doing it solo but then, I don't suppose it would be any different if there was a publisher in the background. The illusion of a third-party being able to help out if I run into a hole in the road should not exist, so I press on, create a short-list of authors I really like and have spoken to at least once in my life and ignore the fact that it's pretty windy up here on the edge of the cliff. 

2. 1000 flyers arrive while I'm out with the dog over lunch - decided that these guys looked like they meant business and I was correct. Delivery driver hides them in the recycling bin and sticks a note through the door to tell me so. A delivery driver with common sense? More like him/her please. Slice the box open to find 1000 exactly as intended flyers all cut to size and ready to go. The process of doing this and their arrival is a feeling far superior to typing a 140 character tweet or having to face the indignity of creating a facebook page. I sacrifice five of the flyers. I stick one on the fridge to see if stands the test of time, one on the kitchen cupboard just because I want to - the dog took the other three and chewed them up because I left them on the corner of the table.

C'est la vie. Hopefully he has gotten it out of his system. This is the flyer:

3. Call the day-job boss and ask if it's OK to distribute flyers at big event over the coming weekend. I kind of assumed it would be but assume nothing in everything you do. When you do, that's when goats come and bite you on the ass. Thousands of people who (presumably) know what I do on a monthly basis is called a Gift Horse and I should brush his teeth. Damn - there I go assuming something. Well OK, some things you can assume without any harm actually coming from it...

Let's move on.

4. Decide to do nothing more with this for the rest of the day but make sure that all the things I've done so far won't fall apart while my back is turned.

5. Rustle up a calendar for next week to stay on schedule. By 'calendar', I mean 'stick a lot of post-it notes to the kitchen cupboards' because you can't hide from them like you can a calendar on your phone or machine. This is because human beings remind you frequently that you have put post-it notes all over the kitchen...

The Creative Process: Day Three

1. Start proofing the work itself. Still a few things to finish writing - stick a post-it note on the TV telling me all the shit inside the screen can wait until it later. it will still be there and it will still be shit.

2. Look over the Amazon CreateSpace process again and throw a fist sized rock at it. Not that it's complicated as such but I don't like their inability to decide how long something will take to print and ship out. It's not so much vague as noncommittal. I can live without that and return to LuLu where I know they do what they say they will and also have real live people to talk to if anything should go pear shaped. Feel better about the whole affair with a trustworthy partner in the corner of the room.

3. Order ISBN number for global distribution. Sounds scary when you write it down like that.

4. Decide that if I stay up all night, I can get the cover finished at least to a point that I can see a hard copy proof sooner rather than later. Got cover wrapped up quite fast probably due to the fact that I had been thinking about it for so long and knew what it looked like before I started.

5. Have drunk so much coffee, am wide awake when I should be asleep. Decide to carry on and create internal pages template, front pages and anything else that needs doing. Fell asleep at the 'desk' again but it's finished now. Made pdf's of first draft proof and ordered a single copy. Worth every minute of lost sleep to sign that off and order a proofing copy to see what it will look and feel like. For the record, proofing a copy of something that is a real book and not 300 pages of manuscript is good advice when there's no team behind you. 

The Creative Process: Day Two

1. Stayed up far too late battering the cover blurb into submission and fell asleep, pen in hand with my head on the kitchen table - which is now in the lounge and called a desk.

2. Fixed up a calendar with a list of jobs to do between Now and Then. Wonder if I'm doing the right thing with two magazine deadlines, a big show, a new book brief, school holidays and a diva of a dog in the house. Think to myself "what would a professional do" - decide that they would pay somebody to help but that's not going to happen. Eat a banana and choose to suck it up and get on with it. The work, not the banana.

3. Can I do all the publicity myself? Not sure. fire off some emails to people I used to know in a past life.

The Creative Process: Day One

This will be interesting to do - mostly because the 'professionals' tell you that this is what you should be doing with a blog - not that I know who any of those people are and neither do you, so point proved on that front I think. Anyway, I've nudged the date of the release of The Day The Sky Fell Down to August 20th which is in 25 days.

In the name of 'science', I figured I should be keeping track of what those 25 days are filled with particularly since I decided I was going to go it totally alone from start to finish. I started using the Day One journal app on my phone (which is great)  but then back-tracked as I have a perfectly good place to do such a thing right here. It's likely that others might be interested to see my daily thinking, reasoning and actions behind the whole project - which is a 250 page book available in hardback (limited edition), softback and on all digital formats for any device you might care to wield. If you have any questions, comments are open.

27th JULY 

1. Ordered 1000 flyers for 'human' distribution for the first 14 days of promotion. In a world that's far too noisy online where everybody is fighting everybody else for airspace, I figured I would go underground and old school by putting the word directly into their hands. This won't preclude online promotion but I have to say, it feels mighty real to do it this way. Spent the afternoon designing a flyer and sourcing a good online printer with a decent courier behind them.

2. Updated tax information at Amazon's print on demand service CreateSpace - I'm sure I did this once already but I'll do it again anyway.

3. Set up a working draft of The Day The Sky Fell Down page within the bookstore here. Can't figure out a way to make it live but with a block on ordering and/or pre-ordering availability. Decide to park it up as a draft pending figuring that one out some other time.

4. Get out the three cover designs to see where I had got to with them. Throw them all in the trash because they suck. Start again from scratch with pencil, paper and a large Dalek mug that should refill itself in times like this.

Let's Bury Magic - One More Time Just For The Hell Of It

I was sitting here in front of a blank screen thinking 'I should blog this evening' but I've written so much today alongside of compiling two interviews, that I've got nothing left.

My partner for this evening's non-happening blog post is Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It's good for the soul to travel back to a time when you were allowed to develop as an artist before the world felt the need to write you off with the Sharpie of the Universe. Bernie Taupin is one of my favourite songwriter's of all-time. Would he get away with such creativity now? Doubtful. 

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is Elton John's seventh album. Read it again - seventh. Most bands don't get that far anymore but if you travel back through the previous six albums, I would venture an educated guess that even an above average music fan will only have heard of half a dozen songs across the entire board. That's one song per album. That's six songs out of sixty or seventy - and those are the songs that actually made it to the albums. Can you imagine what got left on the cutting room floor?

Out of interest here, if you jump forward an album to Caribou and look at the track listing, you'll find the seminal Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me arrives at track nine. On the original vinyl version, there are only ten tracks. Today, that's called commercial suicide - and it would be sad if the only reason you know what I'm talking about is because George Michael dug it up for you. It's the only version I ever hear on the radio.

Anyway, Goodbye, is probably the best known of Elton John and Bernie Taupin's albums (sorry, they always come together like that in my book and always will), but one of the best songs they ever wrote - All The Girls Love Alice - I've never heard anywhere outside of myself playing it. Again, this is the last track on side three of the double album. If you would care to rub that up against any album released since something like, 1979... well, it just doesn't happen.

Nobody buries magic anymore. Nobody lets people discover magic for themselves. It all has to be upfront and explained in a show on Sky. No surprises. Nothing to feel smug about. Nothing to be frightened about. Nothing that might shake your foundation and cause you to spill your apples.

Buried magic is the best kind. When you have to dig deep for magic and you actually find it - those are the moments that change your life in 'Ways'. 

It makes me want to publish a book and never talk about it. Maybe produce just twelve copies of it and hand them out to people I know won't write about it online - or anywhere else for that matter. People that will leave them to live amongst all of their other books, only for them to be discovered many years down the line upon death. The idea of such a thing turning up in a second hand store in 2067 and being picked up by a magic-hunter is very appealing in a cosmic alternate reality that exists only inside of me. Why would anybody care?

Well, that's the whole point. If everybody cares, it's not magic. Magic is tiny in its delivery - it doesn't exist how you think it does. It's so tiny, it's a universe all by itself. If it wasn't tiny, you wouldn't be able to carry it around in your ear. 

THE DAY THE SKY FELL DOWN

After some weeks of wrestling with the schedule, I've decided on a date to release The Day The Sky Fell Down - for those keeping score, that would be August 18th. This is what it looks like...

I still need to firm up some finer points such as pre-ordering, promos, readings and filing the sharp corners down on it but by the 18th, we'll be ready to roll in a paperback of around 250 pages and if you choose to roll this way: for all digital platforms, in which case it will depend on how good your eyesight is as to how many pages it has.

That's all I got today. I bathed the dog but you really don't want to see pictures of that. 

Actually, I know you do, but I was talking about my book, so too bad.

Here, There, Everywhere and Somewhere.

There's nothing unusual about me buying books but the way I have started to make my choices is becoming odd to say the least. The last five or six books that I've picked up have more or less picked me but it wasn't until yesterday that I realised what was happening.

It's not unusual on any given evening of the week to find me heading towards the coffee shop that lives within the book shop. These are two things that should go together far more frequently than they do. If Waterstones could take a leaf out of the Book of Borders and also sell magazines instead of joke pencils and balls that bounce incredibly high, you would probably find me there a lot more often.

Anyway, I walked into the book shop and stood more or less in the middle of it, turning a full circle on the spot. I see the book. The book sees me. It's not placed out on a table, it's right up on a top shelf and by the door which is not the greatest of places to be for a casual observer. That said, a casual observer, I am not. I walk over to introduce myself to the book and I find that it's not one book at all, but four books in a slip case. I have blown £30 on dumber things and before I know it, it's in my hand and doesn't want to leave.

We are going home together.

The box set/book(s) in question is/are collectively called Elsewhere and looks like this:

Not particularly a cover that I would normally gravitate to, but somebody has tried to get the box out of the cellophane and given up. I finish the job off and tip the books out to take a better look being as I'm going to buy it anyway.  Four beautiful hardbacks fall out of the case. Inside, I find stories laid out with love - this is some great book design. I find stories of such an eclectic nature, how could I possibly ever tire of picking any one of them up and getting lost within? 

I inspect the package a little closer and discover, it's a project from McSweeney's. There's some kind of association going on with Cargo - who also have discounted copies of each individual book right now but are sold out of the box set. 

I have to ask myself though - why? Why this one? Why didn't a crime thriller I could chew up overnight jump from the shelf and bite me on the head. Why not one of the books hand-picked by my friendly local Waterstones staff and placed on a table so that I can't possibly miss it as soon as I walk in? 

Because sometimes, that's just the way things happen.

So... if you might be looking for something to leave around the house and look clever with or perhaps you might even looking for something to read and enjoy - Elsewhere, in any of its variants, is a lovely choice. 

Was that a book review? Not really, but I still meant every word.