THE PEN IS MORE PORTABLE THAN THE SWORD
A FINE DISTRACTION
Until this time yesterday, I had never heard of Morgan James and if you put a pen in my hand to fill in some kind of survey as to how I came across her, I'd blow it big time. That said, she has me hanging like a worm on a hook. Don't know why, don't know how, but this woman has got me sunk. Take a listen:
I guess having a Prince tune in our arsenal helps but I gotta say, I'm a sucker for a voice that melts your soul like boiling honey being poured into your ear - so I dug a little further. She has an album out this week (which is presumably how she magically turned up on my radar) called HUNTER and the whole experience from start to finish, is just beautiful.
You can find her and all her associated links here: morganjamesonline.com
I don't need to say anything more. It's good to hear there's still some class out there when you need to find it.
How To Slow Down Your Writing
Welcome to a new series of special interest articles in which I look at different ways to slow down and sabotage your writing process. In this first instalment, let's take a look at slicing your pen-holding finger down to the bone right on the knuckle.
I found this very effective for slowing down almost everything in fact. Opening doors, driving, taking Hector out - you name it, it's now slow done slowly and awkwardly. I found the best way to inflict this was by opening a tin of rice pudding - old school with a tin opener. It's actually very easy. One little slip and you're done. If you're smart about it, you won't even know it until the blood starts spurting out and you can see a part of your skeleton you're not normally privileged with.
In a word: ouch.
Don't hold your breath over the next instalment in this series. I'm hoping it will be a good number of years before I have to write another one.
Doctor In The House And Other Stories
For the first time since it rebooted itself, I find that I haven't said anything at all about Doctor Who this year. After the first episode, I told everybody that would listen that Peter Capaldi was the best Doctor ever - and then I realised I may have been slightly premature. So I figured I would wait until the season was over before I said it again. Nobody likes egg on their face.
The good news is, I loved (almost) every moment of the season (I didn't get along with that Robin Hood episode so much), and Clara finally became a character I cared about. So good is Capaldi, that I forgot Matt Smith was once the Doctor. I'm not saying that I have 'script-gold' hidden under my belt here, but next year, it would be pretty cool to see some new writers on board simply because it can handle it. Doctor Who has never been a weak show, not by a long way, but right now, it's in the best place it's been since David Tennant slipped on a suit.
What the hell am I supposed to do on a Saturday evening now?
•••••
I picked up a copy of Molly Ringwald's new book at the weekend - When It Happens to You. It could have been bad, but it's not. It's far from bad. Buying a book by a writer because you love a film they were in thirty years ago is not a good reason, but I'm sure I've had worse ideas over the years. Anyway, if you like to be a little bit challenged with a sequence of fractured stories that really are linked together - regardless of what some foolish reviewers have dropped on amazon - you might dig this. I would even go so far as to say you could secrete it under the banner of dirty realism. There's a (presumably) limited edition hardback lurking in the stores during these early days. Nice work:
Talking of amazon, The Day The Sky Fell Down turned up across their global network this weekend. It's right here. I guess if you have Prime, you can get it delivered for free too, which oddly, is better than I can do with it. To combat this and still have some integrity, if you buy it direct from me - which you can do right here - every tenth book sold in the Bad Hare store comes with a Starbucks card inside it and all of them are signed too. Every tenth book is a promise but sometimes, if I'm having a good day, I slip them inside anyway.
Right now, I'm working on a long piece called 'Rider On The Storm'. I'm hoping I can have that up and live here before the end of the month. It's a road trip - or Hard Boiled Travel Writing as my buddy Wayne would have it. So far so good on that front. It's a real pleasure to write. I haven't hit that brick wall yet - the one where everything stops and you wonder where to go next and decide everything you've ever done is awful - so I'm running until I do.
•••••
Also on the news front, I've been informally invited to speak at a University. No shit. Not just wander the corridors muttering to myself until security forcibly eject me, but something organised. Details are still falling from the sky on this before it moves to a formal invite but I'm looking forward to whatever may come of it. Granted, as soon as I can nail something down like a time and a date, you'll be the first to know. Which is a great point in the dialogue for me to point you to this link where you can get updates by email as soon as I post anything at all. You know it makes sense.
•••••
More later - I need to get a couple new tyres put on my car - it's currently like driving some kind of weird James Bond car that has skis instead of wheels.
CURDS & WHEY: A 100 WORD STORY (1)
"What I'm saying is that it's traditional to use the surnames of the partners. I don't mind if we call it 'Whey & Curds', but those are our surnames and that's what we should be using. On the other hand, although I don't mind using it that way around, it's not half as snappy. You have to admit 'Curds & Whey' is very memorable and comes very early on in the Yellow Pages..."
"And what I'm saying is, you can't call a Funeral Home 'Curds & Whey'. We'll never get any people through the door, dead or alive!"
The Dark Half
Around 12 months ago, I asked a Canadian photographer who was working on a shoot for me, why it was that when some people are caught on camera, it didn't look like them in the photograph. All of the features were present and correct but the picture seemed incomplete - as though a part of them was missing. I was talking about myself but he wasn't to know that because the conversation was by email. Fact remains though, I hardly ever see a photograph of me that I'm happy with - it really does feel like some important part of me is missing from what's been captured. The shoot I did with Scott Cole - much of which is dotted around the site - is the exception but that's kind of different because I knew the shot was coming. There's some kind of Clouseau/Kato chemistry going on in a situation like that.
I assume it has something to do with light. I guess there are some people that reflect light in the 'correct' manner and the camera is thus able to capture all of the things they bounce back. Some people reflect light so well in fact, they are able to make a career out of it. If this is true, then I guess I belong in the opposite camp. I am one of those who absorb light - which might lend some credence to an ever increasing number of people around me telling me how 'dark' I am. The more the years pass by, the darker I become. It's not how I see myself but isn't that the story of all of us?
I didn't intend this to be a 'me, me, me' affair at all. Far from it. I'm genuinely curious as to why this might be. I half suspect I'm correct because it's impossible to take a picture of Hector inside the house in which he appears as nothing but a black shape.
Anyway, this was prompted by a picture that Emily Darcy Adams took of me a couple of weeks ago that I got hold of yesterday and thought for the first time that it might actually look like the version me that exists inside my head.
Something in the sidelines here seems to have amused me and although I look like I've been up for about three days solid - because I have - I really did recognise myself. And by that, I mean I can see the things that go on inside of my head being externalised.
I'll shut up now because I'm very close to confusing myself.
Is any of this grounded in fact? Is it something they teach you or that you learn for yourself when you're finding your photography feet? Comments welcome... preferably on the subject. I don't need psuedo-warriors loading up rubber bullets and taking pot-shots.
Close friends as always are exempt and may fire as many as they wish.
EATING THE DINOSAUR
So, at some point during the snowstorm of things to do that has swamped the last month of my life, I reached a critical mass with three books. How the hell I managed to do that, I have no idea but it sounds pretty good, so here I am writing it down.
First there was The Day The Sky Fell Down which is a collection of about forty stories loosely based on real life events. Some are extremely factual and others take so many liberties, perhaps only the names are real. Whichever way you slice it, people are saying cool things and (this is the important part) enjoying reading it which makes me happy. It's about the love of writing because I can. It's about the love of a real book with high production values, also because I can - it's not available as a digital book and never will be.
Right now, there are twenty three signed copies on my shelf and that's exactly what you'll get if you order it from that link above.
Then, a few days later, I republished Black Dye White Noise which is a collection of interviews and stories of my hook-ups with a mixed bag rocks hierarchy. From Paul Stanley, Dee Snider, Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper across to Kory Clarke, Chris Carrabba and Zakk Wylde (and an awful lot more) - there's a lot to chew up inside. Again, those who have read it have enjoyed it immensely - which is the whole point. Head on over to that page link and see for yourself.
The following week, I finished compiling the Tattoo Bible 3, which looks like this:
It's aimed at those new to the game. Those looking to get their first tattoo and how to go about that sensibly. We're not saying hang back from that monster Japanese back piece you've been thinking about - we're saying if you're going to do it, do it right. In fact there's all kinds of material going on in here - including an interview and some new work from one of my favourite artists, Mike Moses. That's right - if I can do anything to bring him to the attention of the world, then I will. If you think you'd like to lay your hands on a copy, I believe it hits the shelves of the world as of 1st November but if that's too long to wait for you, you can order it here and the chances are it will land on your mat the very next day.
I was probably as surprised as anybody when I counted how many of these I've written and found that number to be nine. Time flies huh?
What next? I honestly have no idea. I'm working that's for sure but as for what will land first, I am hesitant to commit. I have the best of intentions for a couple of projects but honestly, I need to take a couple of weeks to finish up some day job work and then I'll take a look at the landscape in front of me.
•••••
I took Hector out to the beach at lunchtime yesterday. Sometimes, there's nothing better than chasing the tide as it comes in and then getting dried off by the wind on a long walk from one end of the seafront to the other. That goes for both of us.
We stopped to take in the ocean for a moment and there, pretty deep in the sea, I thought I saw a dog swimming in the water but on closer inspection, found it was a seal! Funny how something like that can change the course of your day for the better. By the time I had gotten my camera booted up though, it had gone. It resurfaced a few times but after ten minutes, I gave up because taking a picture of a seal is like trying to take a photo of Nightcrawler.
Saturday was equally profitable in the outside world for seeing things I never had before.
Toadstools.
In the woods there were hundreds of them:
Things like this make me want to spend a lot more time outside than I actually do. The world is a pretty neat place when you stop to look around.
After all of that, I came home and checked in on 'my' hammerhead shark (see this earlier post) and found myself wondering just how much time and money you have to throw at something before you can fix the problem. Some concepts in life are simply too large to get a handle on. Sometimes, an issue can be so big, you don't even know where to begin to try and fix it.
An hour later, I found that I had visited over a dozen other sites, all desperate to try and fix similar problems. For the tiniest glimpse into this, there's these sharks in danger, but if sharks aren't your bag, how about this rhino that we'll never see again - or if you think that's too far away, there's always this list of animals very close to home indeed. It goes on forever and ever...
...and I sat, clicking through the sites, not doing anything at all because to even consider doing something seemed so utterly pointless when the human race appears intent on laying waste to as much of the planet as possible.
Where the hell do you even begin to help fixing the world?
That's not a rhetorical question. It's just not one I can come up with an answer to this evening.
Black Dye: Redux
What I was hoping would turn out to be a lazy Sunday actually got pretty busy. After tidying up some files and images that should have been archived long ago, I got it into my head that it was no good having run out of stock copies of Black Dye White Noise (which only happened because the book size got discontinued) so I spent most of the afternoon reformatting it to republish.
It was almost that simple.
I decided I didn't much like the cover anymore and that it needed bringing into line with what I've got going on now - so I then spent the rest of the afternoon redesigning, gave it a new ISBN number and generally gave it a good licking. It now looks like this:
So far, so good. There's only a few things left to finalise and then it will be back out on the shelves. This makes me happy - playing with it again has also given me something of an insight into how the coffee table book (see yesterday's post) might work in reality.
There are a hundred buzzing wasps in my head over it now, so being as I expected a lazy day, I'm going to spend the rest of it figuring out how big I can make such a product and toy with how it might look at the end-game.
And when I say I want it to be big, I'm talking about making Gene Simmons rethink his game plan.
More later... quite possibly.
A Pictorial History of Now
There's been some cool feedback on Sky over the last few days. More copies are due in tomorrow for further deliveries at the end of the week but the last thing I want to do is turn this into a place in which I can't stop talking about one single book for months on end, so I'm going to reel it in and move along the bus.
Thus: work begins on the next and the following weeks are taken up with finishing up other things I've already mentioned. Or at least I think I've mentioned them. If I haven't, I'm sure I will eventually.
Meanwhile, out in Germany, my friend Dirk Behlau has written - or rather, shot - a new book called Alive. If exploring the counter culture of the universe is your thing, look no further. Seriously. Stop looking right now, because Alive is what you've been looking for. I'm not saying that because I wrote the introduction for it - I'm saying that because I mean it and that's why he asked me to write the introduction... and that looks a little like this:
That's Dirk over there on the right. Not sure who the bloke in the middle is - a good guess would suggest he's a barber. As far as I know right now, the book is in a container being shipped from somewhere far away to somewhere slightly nearer but as soon as it lands in his shop, I'll post some links. Here's some of the promo shots Dirk mailed across:
I'm looking forward to seeing this - when I heard of its birth in Dirk's head, it gave me an idea to produce a Black Dye White Noise coffee table book. I toyed with it a little, mocked up some pages and figured it really might be possible to publish such a thing reasonably independently with style and panache. It might look something like this:
You wouldn't believe the wealth of material Chiaki shot for me that was either partly used or never used. It's a crime against pop culture to leave them on a hard drive in a desk drawer for the rest of eternity. Anyway... that's not going to happen any time soon but I like having it here for my own frame of reference. I promise you this: if I can make it happen, it won't be shit. Neither will it be cheap. It will however destroy all other rock photo books that have come before it.
Le Fin.
TerraMar Weekend
I leave for Tattoo Jam in about one hour so, today, you just need to go here: TerraMar Weekend
...and then you may go back to sitting on your ass and eating chocolate.
PERSPECTIVES
Taschen mailed me a copy of this today:
It's the kind of book you need to hold your breath to look at but it also raises all kinds of questions about the world we live in. Such as, why are we content to pay for garbage and have it taking up time and space in our lives? You can sit around all day long and say things like '...that's not fair, it's Michelangelo' - but you will have missed the point. As an intelligent race of people who all live on the same ball of dirt, how did we get to a place in which we're more than prepared to accept junk as being normal and carve the place up in the name of progress?
I can't even articulate this properly - it's too big a concept - but you have to draw the line somewhere, so this morning, I took all the junk mail that came through the letterbox from supermarkets and telephone companies and put it all back in the post box. If we all did this, every single day, somebody would eventually get the message, stop doing it and that would at least be the tiniest movement in the right direction.
Mr Smith: 1 • The World: 8,948,458,392 (and counting)
It's going to be a long day.
•••••
On the way back home after taking The Moose out for a walk at lunch-time, I passed the park keeper sitting in his truck-like-park-vehicle-thing. In the back of it was a dead swan. I guess animals die all the time out in the wild, but this one had been hit by a car and then left in the road. It made me sad - they're such graceful creatures - but the bigger question is: how do you fail to see a swan in the middle of the road? They're at least four feet tall, highly visible and pound for pound, probably weigh more than a small child.
In Germany, I believe you can get your ass prosecuted for things like that, but here, not so much. Life is frighteningly cheap sometimes.
•••••
I need a drink.
Life: Beautiful
I'm right at the end of writing a 'day-job' book at the moment. I have something that looks exactly like two days left with it, then I go away for Tattoo Jam and the day after I get back, it leaves the work-desk to go to print. There's still a fair amount to finish up on it but it shall be done. No question.
Which, in the real world – when you throw in normal life that features things like tough school homework regarding Of Mice And Men, a looming birthday for a small person who's not so small any more but still very excited and a dog that thinks he's more special than Marley – means for the next seven days, I should walk away from any intention I ever had of touching any of my own work...
So last night when all was quiet, I dug out an unfinished Raised On Radio, figured out what needs to be done to wrap it up before Christmas and rewrote the introduction. I'm far too off target to figure out if it will make a self-imposed pre-Christmas deadline, but I'm not going to slap a date on it like I did a few weeks ago with SKY. That would be foolish in the extreme.
A man has to learn something as he goes along.
No, the next thing to show its face here in the next week or so, will be to open the doors on that tab up at the top there that says 'Travel'. It's totally empty at the moment and I should really take it down but I like the way it annoys me that there's nothing there which in turn, forces my hand. This first instalment is set in Paris and if you're already here for a good reason, I think you'll like it a lot. I have big plans – but then again, when don't I.
However, any big plans I might have had of conquering the world this week have been totally thwarted by that age old fun-sucker know as 'passport has expired'. Thus I shall be grounded until I get that fixed but that's OK because I wasn't planning on going anywhere for a couple of weeks and the new Sixx:A.M. album is out tomorrow. Bonus.
Life is beautiful - as they say:
PIPELINE. THINGS IN IT.
First thing on the agenda - I believe I mentioned a bookstore meeting this afternoon about The Day The Sky Fell Down. That very thing happened and will be continued over the next couple of days... mostly because I wanted it to be done right, so I dropped a copy off with them to see what they were getting themselves into. I'm spinning my wheels in the sand over getting stuck into it but the whole experience will be a sweeter taste if we're all into it and not just me.
I might regret saying that but I hope not!
•••••
Next up: this years P.INK DAY is alive and kicking in the USA. I was desperate to get behind this here in the UK and launch something of equal scale and value (because I probably can) but I dropped all the balls a long time ago. Next year, I swear I will be better prepared - mostly by starting to organise it some time in the next few weeks. I'm very passionate about this for all the reasons you can read in these two articles from last year.
If you're intrigued by the concept, think it could change a life that's a close satellite to yourself or you happen to be on one side of the coin or the other, please get in touch. I have a lot of tools at my disposal to make this happen here next year, but I'd rather not do it all by myself.
Anyway, over at the CP&B HQ where all of this originated from, they've made an iPhone app: "that allows survivors to “try on” a mastectomy tattoo in the privacy of their own homes — to envision what their future might look like. It’s a significant unmet need for survivors who don’t think of themselves as 'tattoo people' and may be intimidated by the tattoo process."
More info on the app and what it does are available here, there's a YouTube video of how it works here and if you're in the mood, you can just get the hell on with downloading the app right here - or you could just throw some money in the pot. There's a donate button around there somewhere. Making stuff happen is not cheap.
•••••
Rewinding again (jumpy mind), while I was in the bookstore, I stumbled across something I didn't know existed and that was a travel book by Ian Fleming. It's called Thrilling Cities - I've only read the first entry but it's damn good. Excellent even. If you give a damn about exploring the planet you live on, it's a peach and it looks like this:
I had a look around when I got home to check its heritage and found this killer cover design from some years ago:
Sometimes, progress is not all its cracked up to be. This older version kicks way more ass on the shelf. Maybe I'll scout around for it. If I can find an old copy, it will probably smell right too.
SKYFALL
So, here she is. Right here for the taking - all doe-eyed and full of wonder:
I'd like to say it's been fun, so I will. It's been a blast putting it together. There's been some long nights but that's what it takes, right?
I have a meeting (read: coffee) on Saturday afternoon to figure out hosting a few author talks over the next couple of months. These will be local affairs but it’s something I want (and need) to get my head around so that I can push them out further afield. Eventually, I would like that to be thousands of miles further afield but that comes under the heading of ‘I’m going to plant a flag on the moon’. Not impossible but unlikely to happen before the weekend.
Back shortly...
King Of The Wild Frontier
While we wait for somebody in the USA to push some buttons - the buttons that will give The Day The Sky Fell Down its final push into the book canal (technical term for the birth canal of books) - I feel obliged to amuse you.
Even if it's only for a short time.
My offering tonight comes in the shape of this almighty relic from the late 1970s. We shall call it Exhibit A. The official letterhead of a certain Mister Adam Ant:
I mean, seriously. How off the scale cool is that. People don't send letters any more, let alone have their own headed paper.
Until now perhaps.
Until I was left to my own devices earlier this evening. Until I remembered how excited I was to get a letter from Dee Snider on Twisted Sister headed paper one day - which I still have thirty years later.
So that's what I did this evening. If you buy a copy of SKY (insert picture of fingers rapping on table top), maybe I'll write you a note of thanks and slip it inside. Maybe it will be on a letterhead. Everybody who cares about their stuff should have their own letterhead - it gives important things gravitas and slows the world down a little.
Anybody who wants to be a fucking lion should have their own letterhead.
Le Fin.
The Day Before The Day The Sky Fell Down.
The Day The Sky Fell Down will be staring down the barrel of being published sometime tomorrow evening. Technically, that's still the 1st, right?
There have been a few changes along the way though. Such as: following the not inconsiderable amount of hours spent formatting it for digital devices (and then asking a fistful of friends to test the files), just as I was wrapping the whole process up, it occurred to me that wasn't what I wanted to do.
Not in the slightest. Not even a little bit.
I didn't want my book to be a faceless data file on a device that nobody knows you're reading. I want my book to be on your shelf, in your bag, on your bedside table. I want it to be something you might loan to a friend and miss it when they didn't give it back. I want it to be something that might catch your eye now and again when you walk past it.
I want it to have some value - which is one of the big downfalls in digital delivery. No matter which way you digitally slice it, digital books have a status of 'here today, something else tomorrow' - they languish on your device with their Ray-Bans on, not really doing much at all.
That's not what I do. It's certainly not why I'm here.
So, the files I had spent the evening making? I threw them all in the trash. The Day The Sky Fell Down will not be appearing in any digital format, anywhere. If you would like to read it - and with all my heart, I hope you do - you know where to find it and I think anybody who hangs out here reasonably often will totally understand why I've gone down that road.
This whole thing was never about money and a position on a bestseller list. It was certainly never about reaching as many people as possible either. You want to know what it was about? It's about the love of books and the love of figuring out just how good a writer I can be, no matter how long it takes.
I love books and I love writing. I love book cover design and hanging out in book shops. I used to be able to say the same thing about record shops but they've all gone. There's a lesson to be learned here.
I'm not stuck in the past but I won't be a slave to somebody else's future either. I don't want to be throwaway and silent.
I want to be a fucking lion.
I finished writing a book - that's a big deal. Know what I'm going to do tomorrow? Instead of spending all day checking in at a digital store front to see how it's all going, I'm going to start on the next one.
The Sky Really Is Falling Down...
Where was I? If I remember correctly I was about to release The Day The Sky Fell Down and got sidetracked by that old devil called 'work'. I have in my sticky paws right now, a pre-final copy that needs checking over and a few tweaks making...
...and then I will hit the button for a publishing/release date of October 1st. That means this weekend, I'll be checking the store still works now that I've moved things around and then it will go on a pre-release - probably with some extra jam in the rice pudding if you know what I mean.
Which you do.
I've handed out a few sneaky reads to the inner circle and feedback is great. It's getting a good reception already - here's Scott reading a digital version of it at Sleep When You're Dead in Cardiff:
I suspect he should be working, but this pleases me in the extreme. There's not much sense to be made of this image (other than this pleases me too) but here's a random comment he mailed me this morning:
"Please be quiet, Simon Mayo has cranked up the tension by announcing the next round will be a lot harder..."
Which gives me an idea for a competition when this little puppy turns up in the store in a few months time:
Before Christmas? With the wind behind me - maybe. The 'little' puppy has turned into something a little bigger than I first planned - which is a good thing. That happens a lot around here with puppies.
Anyway, once all of the production is complete for Sky Fell Down, it will be time to put some PR wheels in motion. I might even get a hair cut.
But probably not.
New House. Kind Of.
So, my guess is that if you're not reading this in blissful ignorance on an RSS feed, you'll notice that things look a little different here. What can I tell you? It was a mixture of having outgrown what I could do with the other template and getting bored of seeing the same thing. Experts will probably tell you that it's bad practice to go changing things once they are set because people get used to things being a certain way - but this 'expert' says that if the people can't see another way sometimes looks better, performs better and is future-proofed, then the people don't know what they're talking about.
There are still a few things to clean up and some items to add as well, but for all intents and purposes, this is my new house for the foreseeable future. The biggest change is incorporating the publishing company I've set up for myself - Bad Hare - as part of the deal. There's good reason too. In passing, nobody can spell my name correctly and find themselves in the right place: thus, both addresses arrive here and I'm quite happy to have bolted that to the floor to be something I can move on from.
While I'm at it: mention of the two magic words 'publishing company' is not an invite for anything that even remotely looks like a submission. I can barely manage my own workload never mind anything else.
Back to work slackers.
Le Fin.
SLEEP WHEN YOU'RE DEAD
Busy days around here. Lots of production type things going on and to no lesser an extent, a lot of proofing, a lot of rewriting and a lot of beard stroking. The beard stroking is an important part of the process because it means a) I am too busy to shave and b) I'm thinking about things very seriously indeed. I am also very tired. Hazard of doing things for yourself I guess.
•••
I hate being disappointed with music. The new Counting Crows album sounds a lot like a band that ran out of ideas a long time ago and are now content to make music that bares a passing resemblance to something we might be fooled by, but alas... I am not fooled.
The new Train album fares a little better but if you asked me to point at something worth your time on it, I would find it hard. Truth is, it sounds like a bunch of songs that you could find towards the end of any of their previous albums. This one was a big disappointment. Train are a great band but unlike Crows, I'll give Train the benefit of the doubt because everybody is allowed to make a album that tripped over a kerbstone.
In keeping with the theme, the new Maroon 5 album is equally scrappy. Maps is an OK lead track and Animals is actually a great radio track but either I'm having a really hard time retaining information and my ears are broken or these bands that should be full of substance and magic have lost their way.
And I'm telling you now - my ears are fine because the recent self-titled album from Royal Blood is kicking plenty of ass and the new six track EP from Palaye Royale is hugely addictive and they didn't screw anybody over by dropping their previous two house-burners on there either. A couple of bands worth keeping up with over the next few years for sure.
Le Fin.
THE FIRE SERMON - A GRAPHIC SHORT
Back in 2010, Jonathan Cape ran their annual competition in the Sunday papers. Along with my friend Charlotte Rose, we muscled together The Fire Sermon (which is rather obviously inspired by my house burning down) and threw caution to the wind.
Despite not winning, I posted it online and over the next six months, it cranked up 250,069 reads which is insane - that's like a quarter of a million people. Where they all came from, I have no idea but in the spirit of enough people sending it some love (though at those kind of numbers, £1 each would have been equally welcome), I figured I would post it here for the sake of it.
