THE PEN IS MORE PORTABLE THAN THE SWORD
INTO THE WILD
Earlier this morning, somebody sent me a link to part of The Guardian website that hosts pictures and ‘biographies’ of writers desks and asked what mine looked like. It’s a nice question to be asked but the answer might not really be what’s expected.
First of all, here’s a few of those I liked over at The Guardian. We’ve got Clive James:
and Sebastian Faulks:
Those are my favourite looking desks and/or rooms from the selection that I think I could actually work at but this may be because I'm interested in the guys who own them and yet somehow, I think they’re all a little too ’contained’ for my liking.
I spent nearly all of my childhood behind a desk at school and over the years, more time than I had actually expected/planned stationed behind one working for The Man. Do I really want to spend more years behind one? No. I don’t.
So, my answer to the question is, I don’t actually have a desk. There’s a table in the lounge where Big Work gets done, (Big Work = work that needs a big machine and some firepower behind it to make it happen properly) but I stay away from it as much as possible and in the real world, like to do what I call Proper Work in close proximity to here:
or later in the day, perhaps here:
...but not exclusively at those places - anywhere similar is fine by me. There’s a couple of chairs in the garden for those times I need to be at home - and for rainy days (which let’s face it, is more than half the time around here), trees can make useful umbrellas if you choose the right ones and… well, the point is, it’s a pretty simple job to make words travel from inside of your head to a pen/keyboard via your fingers. There’s not actually that much equipment needed to write - I think people make it look a lot harder than it is.
The bigger the desk, the more seriously you take yourself? Is that the way it's supposed to work?
Then again, I never wrote anything big and worthy enough for The Guardian to ask me about where I do my work, so maybe a desk really is what’s needed to add the necessary gravitas - but I don't believe that at all.
However, if you're insistent on doing the desk thing, I think it should be done like Will Self. Here's a shot from his workspace - you can also find an entire 360° shot of his workspace here. If you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly, right?
That's a neat workspace in any book but I'm sticking to my guns - surely you can’t get a much better space to work in than The Wild?
AMAZING ADVENTURES IN CARPENTRY
Quite often (far too often than is probably healthy) I know I can be uber-dismissive of most things the world. This is because far too many things are genuinely shit and made by people who think they can do great stuff but in the final delivery, fall short.
When the pages of your calendar are full of too much of this, it's easy to lose faith that anything wonderful might ever happen again - such was the case here until this morning when I discovered this monster:
The builder's name is Janis Straupe and you can find more info on his work (and this in particular) right here but there are some more pics of it here too - check around his site as well because there's some great art created by him out in the world.
See how easy it is to rebalance the world.
Meanwhile... I have things on the boil.
CRYING IN THE RAIN
Standing out in the rain is a lot like watching your parents trying to keep all of the days of your childhood from slipping between their fingers and turning them into their own parents. They can see it happening but no matter how fast they run, they’ll be soaked to the core with the tears of the universe by the time they get back inside.
Then, one day, it will be your turn.
HUMBLE(ISH) PIE
If you're ever stuck between a rock and a hard place with the same thoughts pin-balling around your head never amounting to much, simply stop and go do something else.
Such a thing was enforced on me this past weekend and somewhere amongst the busy-ness, my head figured a lot of things out. Or rather, my head went back to an answer it had some six months ago that I went on to overthink, finally coming out of the other side with the wrong answer. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say 'a badly timed answer' because it's still a good answer, just not the one I need right now. Let me explain.
A while back I had a plan that looked something like this:
Short stories: fair game for publishing in magazines, online and eventually in a collection published right here.
Novel: keep it held back to push at the publishing world using the traditional model.
I also figured - probably because I love books so much - that it would be ‘noble’ to not make any of this available digitally. If you want the book, you buy the book.
It all sounded simple and worthwhile - and it is, but across this last weekend, I asked an awful lot of people how they read books these days. I was only halfway through my straw poll before I started choking on the pie. It appears that more people than I thought read on a tablet or a phone these days. I knew it was a lot but I also figured these people still loved the physicality of books… and they do, but they don’t love them enough or at least not in the same way that I do.
One thing is for sure - burrowing into this sure is complex and I am not the man with the correct answers but I am not entirely wrong either.
Thus I have rethought and rewound:
1. The Family Of Noise has been withdrawn from sale on the Bad Hare store. It’s doing the rounds with agents at the moment and I want to see what will happen with it. We’ll file that under pending for the time being. I think it’s going to be a long process.
2. The Day The Sky Fell Down will shortly be available to buy at amazon and iBooks (sometime over this coming weekend) along with Black Dye White Noise. I can’t swim against this digital tide, it’s a pointless exercise but sometime soon (not that soon) I'll also make both of these available as limited edition hardbacks from here with some nice extras - but there are still a few copies of each ready to roll as softbacks.
That should cover all the bases and also keep my soul happy over having physical product available that’s worth owning.
So that’s my pie eaten and I didn’t even leave any crusts. It’s tough out there in the new world but the bottom line is I want people to read my work - what format readers wish to choose is not up to me, and I should have known better. Digital devices are not going away any time soon that’s for sure but it was heartwarming to think everybody else stacked their homes to the roof with books as well.
Maybe I need to get out more but one thing is for sure - it's about time I stopped talking about anything to do with publishing and got on with writing. So be it.
The world may not have been like this when I found it but it damn well is now.
NOW WE ARE SIX
Six things I'd like to be/do when I grow up:
1. An MI6 agent. International espionage? Clandestine liaisons in smoky bars and coffee shops? Count me in. Umm... MI6, if you happen to call, please don't withhold your number, I tend to ignore them because it's usually Radio 5 wanting something I don't want to give and that would be a real shame.
2. The owner of Ninth Gate Books. An elite bookshop - obviously. Here, you could get coffee but it would be from a jar and a kettle. Ninth Gate Books will not necessarily sell the books you're looking for but it will sell books you will be pleased you bought. Sometimes, there will be author talks at 3am at which we will draw straws for a 'volunteer' to drive to the all night garage for snacks. People like Alan Moore and the ghost of Raymond Carver may stop by unannounced. Neither will be excluded from the snack run.
3. Jacques Cousteau. Man, the things people used to find to do with themselves before TV and smartphones interrupted our lives. A hero worth having and somebody absolutely worth wanting to be. Check out the Cousteau project to plant 1,400,000 trees on Easter Island here.
4. Doctor Who/Gandalf. I don't think this needs any further explanation. Either would be quite acceptable.
5. TV Talk Show Host. In which people are brought to your attention who are actually great at the things they do as opposed to marketed as such. Ideally, we would be rewinding back to the days when there were only three channels for this scenario to ensure viewing figures of at least twelve million simply because there's nothing else to watch. I can hear what you're saying - why not do it on YouTube? And you would be right but I think I would struggle getting my wishlist co-host of Catherine Zeta-Jones.
6. The Man Who Really Did Discover The Loch Ness Monster. I would leave her right where I found her and not say a word to anybody. Chances of looking quite annoyingly smug now and again? Quite high.
THE WILD LIFE
Remember a couple of days ago when I did the whole "I wonder what it would be like owning a boat and using it as a base to write from" thing? Well, I absolutely have not been down to the harbour to look at boats and see what size of boat might suit such a purpose.
Absolutely nowhere near. Honest.
I still have no idea what a boat costs or how much of a money pit they might be (let alone how to drive one) but I'm going to keep it floating around in my head anyway because every man, woman and child should always have something stupid floating around in their head to aim for.
•••
Bear stuff: As previously noted, I've postponed my Romanian trek to 2016 which on one hand is a little disappointing but on the other hand, gives me a lot more time to raise some decent money to actually do something useful. Meanwhile, the world keeps turning and the guys at World Animal Protection sent an emailer round yesterday about needing some funds to help Ellie the Dancing Bear.
Poached as a young six year old, she's been trained to 'dance' and 'perform' on the streets for money on a daily basis but then again, you don't have much choice about the dancing when you've had a hole drilled through your snout and a rope put through it so you can be controlled like a puppet.
It does not look like this:
Sadly, after many years, it does look a lot like this:
If you've skip out on that chocolate bar, the bottle of wine or the pizza just for today, you could click this and feel good about yourself for a few minutes. It's not as much of a high as say, getting stuck in an elevator with a celebrity of your choice and a smartphone, but it's close.
•••
I would venture a guess that most of you passing by here haven't read much Shirley Jackson over the years. If I guess a little harder, I don't think I would be too wide of the mark if I said 'none' is the amount of Shirley Jackson's books under your belt, but I shall not judge. She's not exactly 'en vogue' but you're missing some gold if that's the case.
To put a slant on it for you, Shirley was the hand behind the novel The Haunting Of Hill House - made into the wonderful 1963 Robert Wise movie 'The Haunting' and also the not so brilliant 1999 attempt from Jan de Bont - and We Have Always Lived in the Castle along with a trawler full of short stories. I like her a lot.
Anyway, over at the New Yorker magazine, there's a piece Shirley wrote called Memory and Delusion about the act of writing itself. There's a lot of people out in the world that will tell you being a writer means being responsible to the profession, turning up at the blank page and 'doing the work'. Personally, I can't imagine anything more soul destroying and this article is the only time I have ever heard somebody who made a real dent in the world put into words what goes on in my head.
As a little aside to this, here's a great extract her husband wrote about her:
"She consistently refused to be interviewed, to explain or promote her work in any fashion, or to take public stands and be the pundit of the Sunday supplements. She believed that her books would speak for her clearly enough over the years." Hyman insisted the darker aspects of Jackson's works were not, as some critics claimed, the product of "personal, even neurotic, fantasies", but that Jackson intended, as "a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the Bomb", to mirror humanity's Cold War-era fears. Jackson may even have taken pleasure in the subversive impact of her work, as revealed by Hyman's statement that she "was always proud that the Union of South Africa banned 'The Lottery', and she felt that they at least understood the story".
Which kinda puts a lot of arguments about writing into sharp perspective don't you think.
BREAK ON THROUGH
A survey of the various notebooks lying around the place suggests that I have quite a stash of new short stories to play with. Twenty eight to be exact. I've also pulled together all of those that need finishing, which amounts to something like another twenty making a decent number to start working on putting another collection together. No doubt some of those that are unfinished don't have the goods to make it all the way to the end but enough of them will.
This makes me happy. I didn't realise I'd done this much in the cracks of all the other things I had on the table, so we shall put that in the win column.
Meanwhile, in notebooks of a different colour, a larger work is beginning to pull itself together - swiftly, very slowly, then swiftly again - which is also good. I may have mentioned it a few weeks back, but it wants to be called Misty Mountain Hop and that's fine by me. I almost know what it's about too but while it's busy writing itself (those are the good days), I won't try and head it off at the pass. I'll simply let it grow while it wants to.
So far, so good.
•••
There's some bear news kicking around as well. My proposed trip to Romania is going to have to wait until next year - good old fashioned bad timing is responsible for that pothole, but that doesn't mean I'm backing off on it. I'll update on that tomorrow when I know some more about what I'm dealing with.
This shit breaks my heart sometimes.
•••
On a similar note, this is great:
It's taken from the 2014 Travel Photographer of the Year and shot by Joshua Holko. There's some great images been pulled together over at the BBC and if I recall correctly (which I do because I just checked), this years competition is still open until the end of September - and you can enter here. I'm no photographer (I might even suggest I am less than a photographer) but a great image from the wild is a lovely thing to see... and yet, the one thing I can't find that's constructed in a way that appeals (to me at least) is anything similar for travel writing.
It's a strange thing. There is not one newspaper that carries any great travel writing in their travel supplements and even the dedicated travel magazines are geared up for either trying to sell you something at the back end or at the very least, take all of the fun out of it by handing over a list of websites that will make copying what you just read about easy for you.
Not that you'd catch me entering such a competition. I'm just pointing the finger because I think it needs pointing. Somewhere along the way, travel writing became as sedentary as everything else out there and I miss it. Where did all the adventurers go?
(NOTE: I can hear what you're saying: 'why not do it properly yourself then?' To which the answer is 'I am'. It's just slow progress with only a few trips a year but it will come. Stick around.)
•••
...and now, back to work.
OCEAN SIZE
I took Hector out in the car this afternoon and after wandering around for a while, we found ourselves wandering up a pier and into the sea and there was something incredibly appealing about being out there. We stood for a while and looked out across the water for a few minutes - it was like being in a photograph... so I took a picture and it was only after I had taken the picture that the idea came into my head fully formed:
What if I bought a boat? What a great place to write. It's not like these boats in the picture were very far out at sea. How long could it take to get out there into a little bit of seclusion, drop an anchor and escape for a little while?
I'll admit here and now, I know nothing at all about boats. Not a thing but again, how hard can it be? Millions of people the whole world over do it... I've just never thought about it before. This lusting for the water is likely to be fuelled by the fact that the sun was out, I had cleared all my work for the day and felt like I was in control but still... it's an interesting idea right?
Hell, I don't even know how much a boat would cost. Maybe I'll look into it a little more and see if the idea still holds when it gets colder around here.
Hector agrees.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"The telephone and visitors are the work destroyers."
Hemingway
I wonder what he would make of 2015?
NEW YORK GROOVE: 2 | GRIMM
The morning I was about to leave, I had an hour or so to kill - not enough time to do anything that might look like an adventure but enough that sitting in Starbucks would be nothing but a waste of time, so I hit the Museum Of Modern Art. Well, I hit the shop anyway - my friend had ventured into the depths the day before and had come across the Yoko Ono exhibition and reported back using such words as 'pretentious', 'boring' and 'amateur'. She knows her stuff and I would rather have spent the hour in Starbucks than with Yoko but the shop itself is stacked with some neat books.
There were more than a few that caught my eye but one in particular begged to come home with me - and it was this:
Over the years I've dipped in and out of The Tales but I've never seen them presented like this before. This is one serious piece of work. The stories themselves are dark enough in their original form but Natalie Frank's illustrations take the stories to somewhere I've never been before.
Her work reminds me a little of Clive Barker's illustrations but thinking seriously about it, I know he pulls his cues from Jean Cocteau, Francisco Goya and my old friend, William Blake - so maybe those are better names to drop for a point of reference. Better still, here's some examples from the pages:
Those Grimm brothers really knew how to spin a tale. I sat down and read it from cover to cover over the first few days I was back and they pull no punches. Not even one. What Natalie does is shine a torch at the cave wall so that you can see just how dark the journey is.
This is one beautiful book. Every home should have a copy. You can find Natalie online here with a full page of some of her Grimm work here but it's not a patch on seeing it all in context. I missed the original exhibition at MOMA by about 10 days but if you happen to be in Texas over the next few months, that's where you'll find it: July 11–November 15 at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin.
NEW YORK GROOVE: 1
So that was New York. What can I tell you that you don't already know about the place? How about this: did you know they had removed the book store at JFK airport and replaced it with Victoria's Secret? I know it's 2015 but do the people that go to make up the human race really need to buy a bra and a pair of pants to play with on the plane instead of read?
You know what... maybe they do. I don't know why I was surprised but I was - and still am.
Anyway - something that I probably won't mention anywhere else is a trip I took to Paul Booth's Last Rites studio/gallery at the weekend. Paul Booth was the first tattoo artist I ever interviewed (12 years ago now) and, as luck would have it, he was everything I needed him to be. Talented beyond measure, educational and most importantly for me back then, free and easy with his time when he didn't have to be. Over the years, we've met a few times by accident rather than design but this last weekend on his home turf was something else. I felt like I had come full circle.
I don't know if many people get to hang out in his office if they're not getting tattooed but it's a totally submersive experience of darkness that I kind of expected but didn't think would be quite so saturatingly dark as it actually was. What I'm trying to say here is that when you set yourself up as anything in this life, you better be on point during the important parts because people will go away and filter their findings back into the world. Last Rites is everything it is supposed to be and much more than that too. It's hard to explain, so your best option is simply to drop in when you're there. Don't forget to take some cash with you because the curated gallery is off the hook.
Paul Booth (left), Nikko Hurtado (right) and me. There's more black in this photo than I've ever seen. Good work darkness.
As we can see here, Last Rites is so dark in fact that it even has the capacity to suck all of the light out of a picture even with the flash kicking in. By comparison, here's a couple of shots from the rather more well lit gallery downstairs:
Stefano Alcantara, me and my buddy Trent. That white t-shirt was possibly the only white item in the building on that night.
This time with Timothy Boor.
These guys are the most genuine people I know in the tattoo world. Stefano and Tim both came out of Last Rites before starting up their own studios, all of which goes to show just how balanced that damn place is.
(Footnote: I know these shots were taken on an iPhone5 (not mine), but the camera is shocking on it by comparison to today's standards. I don't remember my 5 being this bad at all - it makes it look like we are all stuck in 2009 and the phone cam is shooting through the Shroud of Turin.)
•••
More tomorrow - about this and some other stuff - but I haven't posted for too long and this one will make me feel better about the whole affair.
On which note, this:
KING FOR A DAY
I caught wind of a potentially exciting project happening on indiegogo today - and that project would be a third instalment to The Wicker Man (the second part being The Wicker Tree if you weren't paying attention). It's no big secret that The Wicker Man is my favourite movie of all time and nothing has ever come close to capturing its spirit for me. For that reason alone, I'm probably a lot kinder to The Wicker Tree than I should be. It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it sure isn't great either... which is fine, because I didn't expect it to be.
Most of its downfall for me is in the production. Too clean, too slick, too much money spent on it (though I guess the producers would argue the fact) and that kind of thing shows when the first time around, the whole project was held together with much love. People underestimate how much 'love' actually shows through in the end result.
Anyway, what's gotten me excited about this third instalment - called The Wrath Of The Gods - are these woodcut posters from Richard Wells:
Holy mother. That's all I have to say.
Anyway, this has resulted in a short list of things to do today:
1. Buy these three posters.
2. Email Richard Wells to discuss.
3. Figure out where on earth I'm going to hang them.
There's a fundraising site up at indiegogo here and the official Wrath of the Gods movie site is here, but hey... if those posters are all that ever comes out of the idea, that's good enough for me. Reading the whole description of the project in which the words 'theme park' and 'steampunk' are mentioned, maybe these posters are as far as it should ever go, but still.
Beautiful, beautiful work in every way.
It doesn't take much to make me happy.
PAINT JOB
I'm quite impressed that I had enough self control to leave the site alone for a whole year without getting bored and deciding to redecorate. That's the thing about an online presence - whatever it is you're gonna do, it's always going to exist on a flat screen, but you can't let it slide. It's important and it was just 'time'.
I kinda like the new walls. Doing such a thing focuses the mind.
On which note, all that focusing got me distracted so that's all I got today because now I'm in the middle of some new stories... so I'll go do that because it's more important.
FOOTNOTE:
This new blog template appears to have the ability to expand images to their original size whereas the other was very much under control, so if you happen to go back in time, sorry about that. Going forwards, such things will be fixed. Outta here...
SEPARATE WAYS
There was a story run at the BBC yesterday about how... actually, I had best quote this:
"Self-publishing authors whose work is available from Kindle's library and membership platforms will only receive royalties for the pages of their books that are actually read, Amazon has announced."
Interesting proposal huh. When I first read it, I interpreted it as 'the reader will only pay for the amount of pages they have read', but I read it wrong. Regardless of what the reader has paid for it, it's the author that will not be paid the full amount if their book is found wanting. A part of me thinks this is a good thing but only because the optimist in me thinks it will keep a lid on the junk, but the reality of the situation is the cats are already out of the bag. So far as I can see from the (extremely) limited number (two) of obviously self published books I've read, this is nothing but a heralding of page one to be loaded with sex, page two with a fight, page three with a car chase and so on - do people write car chases? I'm not sure I've ever read one - if I did, I forgot about it, but you get the point.
There's a part of me thinks this will make writers write in a certain way in order to sell books. Take a novel like Catcher In The Rye - would many people get past the first three pages? That takes a while to pick up the pace. Mockingbird would be sunk without a trace... but maybe this is a good thing. Maybe this is what the world needs. A huge spike driven between real books and not so real books, but who decides what's good and what isn't anymore - and is it one step away from applying the same model to 'properly' published books? That would see the publishing companies building their own platforms and apps pretty damn fast if they're not already.
All any of us want is to escape into a good fucking story, surely?
Anyway, like I said a couple of days ago.. ebooks are a gateway drug to not reading at all, but possibly even more importantly, the whole ethos of the kindle (and other things that look like Fisher Price designed them) is killing things like this:
Real Gabinete Portugues de Leitura. Rio De Janeiro. Photo: Os Rúpias
and this:
Strahov Theological Hall. Prague. Photo: Rafael Ferreira
That's right. The people before us created the things you see above, but this is what we will be leaving behind as our legacy:
Stop it.
THE TREE OF LIFE
I bought a Bonsai tree this afternoon - this will be my third shot at keeping one alive. The first one I had lasted for a couple of weeks and then it simply lost all of its leaves and that was the end of that. The second made it through a whole year with me. It seemed to like wherever it was living and only gave up on me when I thought I had moved it to a 'better place'. So there's a good lesson in perspective for us all - just because something suits you better, doesn't mean the same is true of the other thing.
The new tree has made it to the window ledge in the kitchen. I'll keep an eye on it. It already needs some attention in the topiary department (apparently some shops don't know how to look after them properly either) but I think I'll let it settle in before I go at with the scissors.
Looking after small things is tough.
What I didn't expect in the Bonsai shop however was to be served by somebody I know reasonably well and didn't recognise because he was 'out of context'. I am very used to seeing him in the showers, used to having him pinning me to the ground with his sweat dripping into my face or... actually, such gags could go on forever but I'll stop now. I know him from my JuJitsu club.
Five years on from being too damn hurt to continue, I still miss it. "Come back," he said. "Come back, say hi and see what you think." I already know what I'll think. I'll think that I should be there next time without fail. I think this so much that after I had found a home for the Bonsai, I pulled out my sports bag and threw everything in the washing machine... just in case. Not that it was dirty, but it had kind of been in there a while.
Looking after small things can make you look closely at how things work out sometimes.
PAPER IN FIRE
Somebody asked me yesterday why my books were not available for the kindle (or any other device) when it was such an easy format to carry around and read from. The simple answer is: nobody can see what you're reading on a kindle and that's a big deal. Despite its portability, you're also a lot less likely to pick it up, actually get on with reading and take in what you have in front of you without being distracted. You can't loan the book to somebody else when you're done with it - neither can you make a gift of it and have it mean something. Nor does a visitor come into your house and crank up your kindle to see what kind of books you have about the place... there are dozens of reasons but mostly, I think it's important to exist in the real world.
ebooks are like being involved in a long distance relationship. ebooks are like watching a travel show instead of booking a plane ticket. ebooks are a 'gateway drug' to not reading at all. ebooks are like diluting your whiskey. I could go on forever with these but the fact remains, the further we get into The Cult Of Data, the more soulless it gets - and that hurts.
And it's good to hurt because it means you still have a piece of your soul left.
It's about the love of reading, writing and books. It's certainly not about lining my pockets and certainly not lining those of a data-farmer.
This soul is not for sale.
•••
Some of you may feel the need to point out that The Eternity Ring is available - free - for digital devices in my store - and you would be correct. I wanted to see first hand what it felt like to be a part of the experience and I don't like it, so it won't be there for much longer. Just long enough for me to make it available as a pocket sized book. More on that later this week. The phrase 'stand for something or fall for anything' is truer now than it's ever been out there.
•••
Currently telling everybody: who will stop and listen for two minutes that they need to open their ears and spend some time with The Dead Daisies.
Currently reading this: and it's damn good. Not what I expected from Tony Parsons but maybe that was his intention.
INTO THE WILD
If you live in the UK, there's a show on TV at the moment called Kevin McCloud's Escape to the Wild. I don't watch a fraction as much TV as I used to but I was idly channel surfing a couple of days ago and stumbled upon it (though a part of me suspects The Gods half heartedly shoved it in my direction) and was captivated.
On tonight's show, he visits a family who have thrown their all into living in the shadow of an active volcano in the Andes. Excitement and wonder aside that regular (debatable in hindsight) people have actually committed to discarding the rat race and backed out of Ladder Climbing altogether, the one thing the show does better than anything is to shine a very bright light at the spot where you're standing right now.
There's something about any kind of wilderness that fascinates me. Being disconnected from the world is unbelievably appealing because it means you have a chance to find yourself and figure out how the world revolves with you in it. It's certainly not about bank balances, working for the man or any other form of legalised doping you care to think of. The wild does not care what sex or colour you are - all it cares about is whether or not you are able to tread lightly enough to be a part of The Big Machine.
That said, you'll forgive me if on this very day in history, I decided that I need to have this in my life:
For the uninitiated, it's a Triumph GT6. I don't need to tell you why I must have it or describe any reasons behind my thinking either - all you have to do is look at it and if you have even a small portion of your soul left, any questions you have are immediately answered.
Being as I have no intention (yet) of disappearing into the hills never to be seen again, I figure this looks very much like a Road Trip Car. A European Road Trip Car at that - probably with international breakdown cover but that's OK. A European Road Trip Car which is an adventure waiting to happen even before you've got the keys in your hand.
I think the book detailing these adventures will pretty much write itself, don't you?
Sigh... now I just need to figure out whether to go for the Mk II or Mk III.
PUBLISHING AND THE DAMNED
I've had to sit on the Publish & Be Damned event for a day or so to make some kind of sense out of it. Lots of interesting things came from it, but here's the crucial one for anybody doing anything art related in the public eye: expectation.
When you decide to put your head over the wall and see what's going on, I guarantee your biggest expectation will be for the world to surprise you, buy all of your books and lots of people to show their face. Meanwhile, your biggest fear will be that nobody will show - and it won't go away no matter how hard you push it, but here's the truth: you're guessing. Call it what you will, it's nothing but guesswork and worse still, it's guesswork with no facts behind it (unless it's a paying event I guess and you can count ticket sales - in which case you're even further in the hole). It's a horrible thing and in the name of staying sane, I nailed my expectation to the floor and brought two scenarios into the equation:
1. The worst case scenario would be that I would find myself drinking coffee with Juliet (Waterstones manager of excellence - she has a blog here) after hours. I like drinking coffee in bookshops. There's not a bad ending when I write the story like this - it simply depends how you choose to look at it.
2. At the other end of the scale, I was not ready for dozens of people to show. It would have gone ahead but I think I would also have stood there and wondered what the hell was going on. Like it was some kind of set-up. We all have our own safety valves and if we don't, we soon find them.
Mostly though, a week or so ago, Neil Gaiman had posted a picture of his first book signing at which twelve people showed... and Sandman was on the shelf by then too. I think he was signing with the artist Mike Dringenberg. Anyway, that was my flag in the sand. Twelve people I would most definitely view as a major comparative success.
As it turned out, there were nine of us (plus me) and I was more than happy with that. You can get a thousand likes on Facebook in a few minutes with a picture of a cat and some peanut butter but this was nine actual real-live breathing people who got out of their chair and made an effort to either a) help themselves fix holes in their knowledge b) not to feel so alone or c), d) and e) lots of other reasons... and I thank you all for coming regardless of what those reasons were.
Even if you just wanted to get out of the house and avoid walking the dog. It's all valid.
Typically, I didn't think I would learn anything (I wasn't there to learn dammit) but I did, so I hope everybody else took at least a few gems of wisdom away with which to beat their own careers over the head with.
If you want to know what happened during the event and the things we talked about, maybe you should have been there, but the point is, you can't let the fear of nobody showing up at 'your thing' stop you from putting yourself out in the world.
That's the worst crime of all.
