Living, writing and other stuff

A scientific interlude

2012-01-29T14:26:00.001Z

Away from the usual self-advertising and PRplugs for a change. Two items I read recently – one on a website, the other in The Observer – set up some scientificmusings. Science to me usually means fascinating things which I don’tunderstand, but it often leads to trains of thought I wouldn’t otherwise have.

The firstitem was about chromosomes. I know, of course, that they’re made of DNA andproteins and carry our genes. When I checked Wikipedia, there was stuff aboutregulatory elements, nucleotide sequences, eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells aswell, but (as they keep saying in the film Airplane),that’s not important right now. What is important is that we (humans) have 46of them. But – and this is the interesting bit – it’s also possible that wehave 48. And why is that interesting? Well, we all know that chimpanzees alsohave 48, but – and this time it really is the interesting bit – so do potatoes.

In theevolutionary ladder, therefore, we are on a par with potatoes. (The temptationat this point is to digress into the class structure implicit in varieties such asKing Edward, Belle de Fontenay, Duke of York and Saxon. Instead, I’ll justpoint you to the admirable website http://www.lovepotatoes.co.uk/.)

The second piece of science, however,offers hope that such parity will soon change because stem cell researchers in Edinburgh have succeededin cultivating new brain cells. Not by sucking out real brain cells and proddingthem, or from the practice of using bits of embryos, which upsets so manypeople who think only God should do that. No, instead they've done stuff with skin cells.(‘Prodding’ and ‘done stuff with’ are scientific terms.) Thus, we can lookforward to a future in which our descendants are clothed not in skin but inbrains, which will give us a clear edge over our potato cousins who, even ifthey did manage to follow our evolutionary lead, would still get peeled andthereby lose their powers of ratiocination.

To some of you, this may seem a frivolousmisuse and indeed misappropriation of important scientific advances, but I takemy lead from one of the greats of British comedy, Tommy Cooper, whose use ofstatistics was exemplary. He once revealed the following:

“Apparently, one in five people in the world areChinese. There are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It’seither my mum or my dad, my older brother Colin, or my younger brotherHo-Cha-Chu.

...

I think it’s Colin.”

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Unsafe Acts

2012-01-23T12:14:00.001Z

One of my claims to fame (he says, as ifthere were several) is that I earned an acknowledgement in Ian Rankin’s daggerprize winning novel Black and Blue.Members of the UK’sCrime Writers’ Association are asked to list any areas of ‘special expertise’so that fellow members can contact them if they need information on differenttopics. I’ve written countless videos and DVDs about offshore safety as well as actual safetyinduction programmes, so that was one of my ‘specialisations’. In Black and Blue, Rebus had to make a tripto an offshore platform and Ian wrote to ask what sort of thing that involvedfor a ‘visitor’. I wrote back and thereby got myself a mention.

So, apart from name-dropping, why am Iwriting this? Because, on the 15^th of next month, Unsafe Acts, the 5^th novel inmy Jack Carston series, will be published and, as the cover image and the titlesuggest, it involves an offshore platform and safety. It also involves somereflections on homophobia and how, even in the 21^st century, that’sstill a problem.

It’s been through several drafts and, as Iwas reading the proofs, I again got the strange feeling that, while I knew I’dwritten it and my name’s on the cover, it was hard to remember how it happened.When something’s out there as a self-contained thing – whether in tangible formas a paperback or in the same completeness as an ebook – it somehow seemsinstantaneous. The book has become a fact. When you’re writing, you’re always poised on the edge ofwondering what the characters are going to do, where they’re going to go. Theprocess is one of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’. So for me the writer, Unsafe Acts was a succession of instantswhich eventually stopped. But for me the reader, it’s a complete, set thingwith its own internal logic and a journey which has only one path. I supposefor readers coming fresh to it, the uncertainties are still there because theydon’t know where the characters will take them until they’ve arrived.

The other question you sometimes askyourself, when you’re reading a novel you’ve written, is the one that mostwriters hate: ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ And again, it’s oftendifficult to answer. With Unsafe Acts,I know that the seed was sown in a casual remark from a friend, Mike Lloyd-Wiggins,who said one day ‘You ought to write about an offshore platform. There’s plentyof stuff going on out there.’ (This was the same friend who also said, a fewyears ago ‘You ought to write a story about a figurehead carver’. So thanks,Mike.) But that’s just the seed. When you see the dense vegetation that’s grownfrom it (I know, crap metaphor, but I’m lazy) you really do wonder where allthese people were hiding, what made them appear. Where did they get theirattitudes?

One other interesting thing about this book(for me anyway) is that it’s a different Jack Carston from the one I first metwhen I wrote Material Evidence. Ofcourse, I’m different now from the person I was then but I don’t think that meanswe’ve followed the same path. He now seems so fed up with the hoops he has tojump through to satisfy his superiors and tick the right administrative boxes (whata field day these crap – and now mixed, too – metaphors are getting), that I reallywonder whether the next book will find him leaving the job altogether.

Anyway, forget the Jubilee (definitely) andthe London Olympics, the date for your diary is the day after Valentine’s Day.

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A mish mash and hodge podge of titbits.

2012-01-08T15:19:00.000Z

I’ve just got the go-ahead for another bookin Pearson’s ‘Brilliant’ series, this time on Academic Writing. Also, HelenAnderson, John Grant and others are pestering me to get started on the sequelto The Figurehead, so blogging hasbeen shoved aside. But, since I know millions of people all over the world arewaiting for the pearls of wisdom I dispense here, I really must writesomething.

If you want the thoughtful me, try RichardSutton’s blog, Saille Tales. He invited me to say something about writing first drafts and,as is usual whenever I have to write and/or talk about writing, I had to stepback from it and try to work out what I do.

I’m not an advocate of rigid writingtechniques but producing anything worth reading calls for control, disciplineand a respect for the medium. Nonetheless, writing for me is instinctive. Withnon-fiction, I have headings and specific areas which I know I have to cover,but with fiction, I dive into it and just let it carry me along.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Ah yes,pearls of wisdom. Well, for a start there are all the usual political andcultural axes I grind:

the total lack of any leadership or credibility in any of our politicians, their undisguised scorn/contempt for us, the continuing expansion of the gap between rich and poor, the dismantling of the health service and education system;
the very existence of reality TV, celebrity culture and the seeming refusal to require any talent of those involved in and/or aspiring to it;
the abject acceptance that royalty confirms that some people are ‘higher’ than others;
the fact that football is about money;
Simon Cowell.

But that’s tedious, pontificating stuffthat will bore and/or alienate some of the handful of visitors. (My earlierclaim to serve millions was merely a hilarious joke.) So I’ll opt for apotpourri (which, given that the ‘pourri’ bit literally means rotten, is highlyappropriate).

And that segues neatly into an aside on wordsand their meanings. If you sign up for the newsletter on the sitewordsmith.org, they send you a word a day and some of them are fascinating. Inow have, for example, three new words to use in descriptions of characters:callipygous, mammose and lissotrichous, the first being of particular interestto both male and female lexicographers and perverts.

Then there’s the word noosphere, which ispronounced No-us-fear, and either sounds the opposite of what it means, i.e.the sum of human knowledge, or is an accurate description of where we’vereached on the evolutionary scale.

And ifyou have a tabby cat, you’re referencing a certain Price Attab who gave hisname to al-Attabiya, a suburb of Baghdad. Silk was madethere and tabbies got their name because their coats were similar to the cloth. (I know, you're now asking yourself how you've managed all these years without knowing that.)

What next? Ah yes, The Sparrow Conundrumwas featured on the site addictedtoebooks and I contributed a guest post to Past Times.And the illustration at the top is for UnsafeActs, the fifth in my Jack Carston series. It’ll probably be appearingtowards the end of next month.

And, to end this ramble, two apocryphalitems of news, both relating to last year’s (grits teeth, suppresses anger)royal wedding. It seems that Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline is one ofWilliam Windsor’s favourite songs and Mr Diamond would have been quite happy toamend it to Sweet Catherine for the occasion. Now, try singing the chorus usingthat substitution. See? It doesn’t work. The last syllable isn’t strong enoughto sustain the note. But they’re the Windsors, our favourite German family, soit didn’t matter that, at Diana’s funeral, Elton John sang the praises of ‘England’s rose’, i.e. the princess of

Wales

It seems, too, that the lyrics of Ubi Caritas were doctored toremove some reference or other that was deemed too risqué for the occasion. Ican’t confirm this because my Latin is non-existent. It does seem absurd,but that’s what’s being claimed. The only glimmer of light it offers is thatthe couple may want to avoid the couplings so cherished by ordinary mortals andtherefore will produce no offspring for us to support.

And 2012is the year of the diamond bloody jubilee. I want to spend it in Jamaica, wherethe new Prime Minister will be declaring a republic. But, wherever you are, Ihope 2012 is healthy, happy, productive and successful for you all. Happy NewYear.

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Christmas in College

2011-12-21T15:33:00.000Z

DR MCBRIDE: Can’t it wait untillater? I really need to finish this critical analysis of that late Beethovenquartet which…

PROFESSOR DEELEY: We don’t havetime, McBride. You know the date, I take it?

DM: Of course. it’s the 4th. Why?

PD: Yes, the 4th of December. They’llbe here in a couple of weeks.

DM: But this Beethoven score – I’mso close to finalising it. That b minor viola shift…

PD: I know the feeling only toowell, McBride. I felt exactly the same about what was to be my definitivearticle on Tolstoy’s debt to Victor Hugo. But there are other considerations. Wemust be realistic. We need to get ready.

DM: Damn. Every year it’s thesame. Every year I vow I’ll move to some respectable provincial university. ButI never do.

PD: And why would you? There’sOxbridge, us, and the rest are nowhere.

DM: I know that. But everyChristmas, with all the damned tourists, the carols, that absurd charitypantomime. It’s so demeaning.

PD: Tradition, McBride. And, ofcourse, economics. They bring the dollars, we deck the halls with holly, ivy,mistletoe and dress up like munchkins. It’s a small price to pay for 11 monthsof academic freedom.

DM: Professor Deeley, I have aPhD. I’ve published monographs on atonal shifts in Bartok.

PD: And your point is? Rememberthat you’re speaking to the editor of two volumes of Dostoevsky’scorrespondence.

DM: I know. I remember the reviewsof it. An outstanding piece of work.

PD: Thank you.

DM: But also, in and of itself, aconfirmation that we should not need to do this … these Christmas things.They’re demeaning.

PD: It’s what people expect. Whoare you this year?

DM: I’m sorry?

PD: In the … performance.

DM: Oh. Er ... Father John.

PD: Ah, showering reprobation fromthe pulpit.

DM: That’s the cross I bear thisyear. What about you?

PD: Well…

DM: You’re not driving the sleighagain, are you?

PD: No, I…

DM: You’re Joseph.

PD: No.

DM: Not Mary, surely?

PD: Er…

DM: Professor Deeley, you seemreluctant to divulge it. Is it something shameful?

PD: Not exactly. I’m … I’m thebeau.

DM: The beau?

PD: Yes. Under the mistletoe.

DM: I know where the bloody beaugoes.

PD: Please, McBride.

DM: And who’s the belle this year?

PD: Holly Devere.

DM: Holly Devere? The 4^thyear medic? The one who does lap-dancing in the Union?

PD: I believe so.

DM: You bastard. I’ve been afterher for a month.

PD: Don’t you think I know that? Everybody does. It’s damned embarrassing. Bad enough having to canoodle with a student withoutknowing she’s … well, not mine. I didn’t choose her.

DM: Maybe not, but you’ll be doingthe canoodling with her. You bastard. That should’ve been me.

PD: Has it occurred to you thatperhaps they wanted a beau who wouldn’t be a laughing stock?

DM: A laughing stock?

PD: Oh come, McBride, you may notbe a linguist but… Beau? Beautiful?

DM: What’s your point?

PD: Nothing of any consequence. Hugo’stheory of the grotesque. Inner beauty is what counts. You may resembleQuasimodo but I don’t doubt that, inside, you also have his capacity for love,compassion ...

DM: You patronising bastard.

At which point, we leave theProfessor of European Literature and his colleague from the music department tosettle their academic differences with a mixture of vitriolic abstractions andplayground taunts, but with no danger of any physical contact. TheirHolly-induced enmity will, in due course, lead to McBride penning a stinging refutation of Deeley’sinterpretation of Beowulf. Deeley, in turn, will use his influence to ensurethat McBride never gets to be the beau. And the tourists will be beguiled by apantomime which affirms the old enduring values.

So happy Christmas to you all and…

God bless us, every one!

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Welcome to the Benighted Kingdom

2011-12-13T15:12:00.001Z

A while ago, I asked for comments on asatirical piece I was including in a series of short stories. It was about theclichés that attach to various nationalities. Joe, the creator of an onlinerole-playing game, went visiting the various geographical locations in the gameand here’s what the bit about the

USA

became:

"Joe found this herd mentality interestingand spent some time acclimatising in various places. His frequent trips to the

Americas

made him wonder whether it had been wise to give residents so much freedom toadapt the in-world environment to suit their own preferences. Each state hevisited proclaimed its pride in being part of the

USA

and yet the differences betweenthem were so extreme that he began to wonder what ‘United’ meant. The souththought the north was populated by effete homosexuals while the north failed tounderstand the semantic lapses that led their southern counterparts to confusethe words ‘bride’, ‘groom’ and ‘first cousin’. The western states claimed to bethe true representatives of American history, those in the east celebrated along European ancestry. The only thing that united them was a general agreementthat God was American. And, except for a few individuals in Kentuckyand Tennessee,every single resident had wonderful teeth."

The reason I quote it here is that, despitemy (supposedly) funny insistence on the differences between states, in theinternational arena they really are UNITED, and all the stronger for it.Americans from all over are proud to chant their allegiance to ‘USA, USA’.

So what? Well, it’s because here in the

, atiny minority of our elected ‘leaders’ are braying their triumph at the factthat our Prime Minister (Prime Minister! God help us.) has told the other 26countries in the EU to eff off. So here we are again, the

Britain

that seems to think itstill has an Empire, that now ‘rules the waves’ with aircraft carriers whichhave no planes on them, in a position of tremendous power as a minority of one.The rest of Europe will carry on doing thething Cameron ‘vetoed’ (look the word up, Prime Minister), they’ll at least try tolook beyond their own self-interests and their borders and, with luck, they’llsave the Euro, re-emerge as a relevant force in world affairs, and maybe, insome idyllic future, become the USE.

So much for democracy. We didn’t elect acoalition government and we certainly didn’t give a mandate to just 10% of ourelected ‘leaders’ to dictate foreign policy. But that’s what we’ve got. Theirviews on Europe and, more importantly, on Britain, are outdated, irrelevantand harmful. The ‘bulldog’ whose spirit they claim to represent was replacedages ago by the poodle that George Bush dragged into his adventures like Tintinand Snowy. Don’t get me wrong – Britainstill has inner strengths and pride, a history and a present of greatness, but that’snot the Britainthat Cameron and his beasts belong to.

It’s all about power, isn’t it? Cameroncaved in to please his party’s hard-liners, Clegg, the supposedly pro-EuropeanDeputy Prime Minister (Deputy Prime Minister! God help us.) let him get awaywith it because it’s the only way he can hang on to a cabinet post. Meanwhile,any vestigial power we had as a nation has evaporated. Brilliant, Cameron.

As they put on their earnest, serious facesand tell us it’s for our own good, every single UK citizen is diminished by theirinsulting, patronising attitudes to diplomacy and to us.

Wait, though. We may not be part of aUnited States of Europe, but at least we’re a United Kingdom. Oh yeah? Not formuch longer. Another consequence of Cameron’s folly may well be that, up herein Scotland,we vote for independence.

Great job, Prime Minister.

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The Pulse in Poetry

2011-11-26T10:46:00.000Z

Ladiesand Gentlemen, the man who needs no introduction, my gifted, laid-back littlebrother, with a contribution illustrated by his son Joe.

Just for a change from our early morningcompetition over who has had the worst night’s sleep, or from repeating theclichéd, “Well, this won’t buy the baby a new bonnet,” and because it was laterthan usual, I tried some Yeats as I woke yesterday: “I shall arise and gonow……”

My wife beat me to the bathroom and – toprove I was not the only literate partner – took up and almost sang the firststanza:

“Ishall arise and go now, and go to Innisfree

Anda small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Ninebean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee;

Andlive alone in the bee-loud glade.”

And then, moments later, through thecleanest of teeth, her tone had changed from singing sylph to whip-crackingcritic:

“Ninebean rows? Nine rows of beans? What does he want with nine rows of beans? It’snot like he’s got a freezer or anything. He’ll never get through nine beanrows. We have a job eating our two rows before we get fed up and start makingpiccalilli –and there’s no evidence he was keen on that.”

And, unwittingly, alongside a brief searchfor a rhyme for piccalilli, I found myself not only agreeing that – unless hewas drying and storing the beans – three rows would be plenty, but alsoresolving to do a little more research to discover if the beans needed to besalted, like pork, to last the winter, although, being – presumably – afreshwater lake, he might have trouble keeping his salt pot filled.

“Andhe’s only got honey to accompany them: ‘….a hive for the honey bee…’Mind you, one hive is a bit more realistic, but that one ‘honey bee’ isn’tgoing to make life very sweet.”

I chiefly blame (and thank) Monty Pythonfor these journeys into the absurd. Before you know it, you’re miles away fromthe content, not to mention the writer’s intention. You can end up feeling likethe spoiler in the seminar, who won’t let the group get past “April is thecruellest month” by telling you how it can be quite nasty in early June if thejet stream doesn’t behave itself. Thank goodness the rest of Innisfree doesn’t invite any moreculinary speculation.

The same, over-rational spoiling is at workin a short story by Salley Vickers, where a character is posing the old riddlewhich goes,

“AsI was going to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives,

Sevenwives had seven cats, seven cats had seven kits,

Kits,cats, men, wives, how many were going to St Ives?”

Her companion isn’t satisfied to be‘tricked’ by the correct answer (one; it’s only the writer who is going toSt Ives) and says,

“Why shouldn’t he meet them on the way? Hemight be overtaking the guy if he had all those blessed creatures to drag alongwith him.”

But what has this to do with the heady lifeand times of award-winning writer and top brother Bill Kirton?

Well, it feels like it links to previousposts about the balance between the writer’s intention and the freedom and rightof the reader to make what they will of the text, even if that construct is asremote and prosaic as the examples above. However, those reader-rights ought tobe supplemented by the need to, at least, suspend disbelief and allow somepoetic licence, if they are to have access to the deeper structures in thetext.

What this entry needs now is a meatierselection of examples where the literal has blocked off the literature. That’swhere you guys come in.

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My brother is my keeper

2011-11-22T15:17:00.001Z

I should have known better than to post the previousoffering, in which I was boasting about winning awards. Hubris is alwayspunished and yesterday came retribution via that man you all (unaccountably)seem to like - my brother Ron. And what better way to convey the experience than by simplypasting the email I sent to him when it happened. The relevant part of my noteto him went like this:

This morning, to put off gettingstarted on anything, I looked at an analytical thing that counts blog visits,pageloads, and other stuff which I don’t understand. As a result of checking tosee whether I’m wasting my time writing the bloody thing, I found details ofeach blog’s popularity and as I scanned down the figures, I was quite pleasedto see that some of my efforts attracted well over a hundred (although the vastmajority were in double figures – and mostly low ones at that). Then – ohfrabjous day etc. – the wonderful figure of 586 leapt off the page – but it wasbugger-all to do with me. It was your second contribution. Fair enough, Ithought, so I looked for your first one and, for the months of January/February2010, I found the following sequence:

3 - 5 - 0 - 2 - 3 - 1 - 1 - 2428 -3 - 1 - 1

That’s not a joke or a misprint. I’mtherefore the blogging equivalent of the singer of Pinball Wizard andI owe a duty to ‘my’ readers to cajole you into raising my profile once more,you lazy, popular bastard.

To his credit, he didn’t gloat but he did recognise the need to restore some of my credibility again simply by associating me vicariously with himself and he promisedthat he’d give it some thought. Actually, it’s just occurred to me that thoseelevated numbers were probably achieved by him visiting the blog to look at hisown contribution again and again and again. But I can’t afford to take chancesand so, rather than sign off as ‘Award-winning author Bill Kirton’, I’m happyto acknowledge that the above was written by ‘The brother of Ron Kirton’.

What identity crisis?

2011-11-20T20:19:00.001Z

Cliché alert – ‘No two writers are thesame’. OK, good to get that out of my system, but there’s more because I alsothink that ‘No ONE writer is the same’. Here’s what I mean.

We all know the publishing business haschanged significantly and increasingly quickly over the past five years or so.When I started writing novels as opposed to plays, you polished your MS,printed out a copy (not cheap if it ran to 300-odd pages) and sent it out toagents and/or publishers. Postage wasn’t cheap either, (you also had to coverthe costs for its return if they didn’t like it). Then, through the (sometimes)months you waited for them to reply, you got on with the next novel. Meantime,you also had your day job and you were a husband, wife, lover, significantother, hermit, father, mother, son, daughter, outcast, or whatever other rolesyour social situation imposed on you. See what I mean? There were (and are) severalpeople inhabiting your body. But, back then, the writer bit was just that – youwrote, sent your stuff away, waited patiently but eagerly for a reply, gotrejected and did it all again.

Today, though, even that writing bit hasfragmented. Being a writer doesn’t just involve the one role. There’s still thewriting (the best bit), but there’s also:

the PR person, desperately trying to create and project a cuddly profile;
the fish out of water, trying to learn and apply marketing techniques;
the social networker, scrolling through tweets and Facebook comments with all the other writers;
the blogger, trying to sell books;
the prostitute, willing to do just about anything to be published or shoved up the sales lists;
the reviewer;
and, mostly, the unrecognised genius, whose blockbuster novel will change the course of humanity but lies misunderstood in the depths of a computer.

I exaggerate, of course, but only on thebasis of fairly common experiences shared by many.

But why am I saying stuff you all knowanyway? Because what I’m really doing (with very little subtlety) is boast.I’ve already sent out a few tweets and FB comments saying how wonderful I am, andthis is another because yet another ‘self’ has been added to my list. I am now …(discreet but still quite loud fanfare) … an ‘award-winning author’. Mypublisher, Diane Nelson of Pfoxmoor Publishing, submitted two of my books tothe 2011 Forward National Literature Awards. The Sparrow Conundrum was the winner in the ‘Humor’ category, and The Darkness came second in the‘Mystery’ category. OK, trumpet blown, so what?

First, the news turned me into a six yearold on Christmas Eve. And yet, objectively, I’m not comfortable with the ideaof ‘competitive literature’. Even though I know there are terrible novels outthere as well as terrific ones, I applaud anyone who’s had the stamina and thecommitment to actually write one and see it through to the end. But if I denythat we’re all in competition, where do sales figures fit in? In the end, beingable to add that little ‘award-winning’ tag to me and two of my bookstheoretically gives me a wee marketing edge. I say ‘theoretically’ because Idon’t yet know whether that’ll be the case and, anyway, it’ll be up to me (thesloth) to make it happen.

Perhaps more importantly, though, it opensup another tricky area when it comes to the various ‘selves’ I was speaking of.My two awards were for very different books. The Sparrow Conundrum is a spoof, The Darkness is a stark revenge/vigilante story with a prettychilling resolution. So what does that make me? A funny man or a scary man? Andwhat about the other stuff, the police procedurals, the historical, thenon-fiction and, most of all, Stanley’sBoswell? Multiplying your ‘selves’ can be counter-productive.

Readers, naturally enough, like to knowwhat to expect when they buy a book. If they’ve enjoyed your gore-saturatedslasher mystery, they’ll probably feel cheated if your follow-up is alight-hearted romantic romp through the tulips. In a way, then, they impose anidentity on you – and they have every right to do so. But what happens if it’s notyou but the characters in the follow-up who decide that they’ve gone off theidea of being serial killers and instead want to fall in love and skip througha field outside Amsterdam?

As I keep saying, ‘Hell is other people’but it’s also readers and our characters.

On the other hand, to end on anothercliché, I wouldn’t change it for the world.

(The above was written by award-winningauthor Bill Kirton.)

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Amazon is my shepherd. I shall not want.

2011-11-16T15:15:00.001Z

Those nice people at Amazon emailed me this morning to say therewas a book they were sure would be of great interest to me. And they wereright. The only problem was that I’d not only read it, I’d written it. The bookin question was the fourth in the series I’d written for Pearson, Brilliant Workplace Skills, and, to tryto penetrate and benefit from their marketing strategy, I asked myself why theydecided that that was the book for me.

First, why Workplace Skillsrather than the others? I’m well past retirement age and, in fact, I took earlyretirement to concentrate on my writing, so I only share my office with me.Which means I have little need for the book’s insights into topics such as promotionprospects and how to enhance them, interpersonal relationships, office politicsand protocols, and (God forbid) romance in the workplace. So they couldn’t havethought the content would be of interest.

Which leaves style. Maybe they thought ‘Ah, he’s a writer. He’llappreciate the finely rounded phrases here, the prose rhythms and cadences, theimmaculate structuring of arguments, the inspired organisation of the materialand the impeccable choice of words’. But no, style and content can’t beseparated so arbitrarily. And anyway, all of you, the sophisticated literateswho read these blogs, will already have curled a scornful lip at theheavy-handed irony of those stylistic claims and judged that this paragraph ismerely a filler, a spurious pretence that this posting has a theme, a direction, apurpose.

So what else? Maybe they’ve looked at my novels and decided thatthe fiction writer in me needs to be mentored by his non-fiction counterpart.After all, I’m clearly rubbish at writing crime novels. My detective makesjokes, doesn’t have a drink or drug problem, isn’t particularly scruffy andlives with a funny, attractive woman to whom he’s happily married. He caresabout people, too, and he’s more interested in truth than in justice, so he’sobviously not cut out to be between the covers of a modern crime novel. And evenwhen I try history, the crime bit gets overtaken or at least muddied up byromance. As for The Sparrow Conundrum,what self-respecting auteur would admit to committing such rubbish to paper (orscreen)?

Or maybe there’s something else, something unthinkable really.Maybe, in their desire to dominate the world and take the place of oxygen,Amazon has lost the plot. Could it be that they … I hesitate to articulate it, but … do they perhaps not know much about books? Surely they don’t think Brilliant Workplace Skills is a … aproduct, something electronic maybe, an executive toy, an object you put onyour desk and … well, play with until it’s time to go home. No, that can’t beit. Amazon is the pinnacle of evolution, the ne plus ultra of refinement and civilisation. Amazon is the reasonthe Big Bang happened. No, the fault must lie in me (and, no doubt, many otherwriters). Amazon can’t have made a mistake.

(The car, by the way, is a 1956 Volvo Amazon. I got the picturefrom Phil Seed’s Virtual Car Museum http://www.philseed.com/volvo-121.html.)

P.S. OMG, as some people say, as if to demonstrate the truth of Amazon's omnipotence, as I was posting this, news came through that The Sparrow Conundrum, whose quality I so cheaply dismissed above, had been awarded first place for 'Humor' in the 2011 Forward National Literature Awards. I don't know what it means, but I'm bloody impressed.

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Random musing, Wimbledon, stuff like that

2011-11-07T16:02:00.000Z

Just some random thoughts provoked by recent events. No, not Greece or theEurozone crisis, or the fact that there are 7 billion of us now (although theconcept of ‘us’ is laughable in the context of the generally accepted 99-1wealth split). And it’s not the absurd fact that Berlusconi was ever allowed tohold any sort of political office (or any other office than that of a brothelconcierge). And so on, and so on. No, we all have our convictions and hopes inthese matters of global concern; they don’t always coincide and no amount ofpreaching or arguing changes things. Maybe if I had the occasional chat withJesus, he’d make my putts drop, but I don’t, so He helps my playing partners tobeat me. Serves me right.

So these random thoughts are on things of no significance toanyone. They serve the Beckettian purpose of helping me pass the time. ‘Wealways find something to give us the impression we exist’ says Estragon in Godot. So the more entertaining andstress-free that ‘something’ is, the better.

Such as the recent academicresearch that found that people born in August are:

a) less likely to get to the ‘better’ universities in the UK, and

b) less comfortable in social situations.

The argument is that they’re the youngestin their particular academic year and therefore 12 months behind theirclassmates. What it adds up to is that you’re wasting your time reading thisand, if you’re a ‘follower’, you shouldn’t be. Because I was born in August,which means that I’m congenitally thick, I don’t know words such as ‘congenitally’,and I’m hopeless when it comes to engaging others in social interactions. (Onthe other hand, I’m still 15 days more intelligent and sociable than mydaughter, who was born even later in August than I was. Except in a differentyear.) (You see? That last remark was either a post-modern witticism on thenature of time and progeniture, or clear proof of my disjunction from coherentthought.) (It also gave me the chance to indulge my obvious predilection forparentheses.) (But I’ll stop that now.)

The only conclusion to be drawn from thiswhich might have some positive value is that, if any of you are planning tohave a baby, wait until January to make sure it’s born in September. I’m sureyou’ll be able to find other things to do between now and then.

Random thought 2 was provoked by a FaceBookposting by my other daughter (who was born in April and is therefore muchcleverer than I am – in fact, so clever that she managed to be born just 12hours before the end of the tax year, which at the time earned me an income taxrebate). Anyway, she wrote that, the moment she hears a politician say ‘Let’s be clear aboutthis’, she stops listening. Whereupon daughter 1 added that she has the samereaction when they begin sentences with ‘Look’. My own contribution was that,when they say ‘The fact is’ or, even worse ‘The fact of the matter is’, it’s aclear signal that what follows will be fiction. So, even given the hugeintellectual distances separating us, it seems that we’re bound by quite closefamily traits

Speaking of family, here’s another aside which is an unashamedboast. One of my granddaughters has been chosen to have free tennis tuition atthe All England Club (i.e. Wimbledon) everyweekend. She's the red dot in the picture. She’s 5 years old so I anticipate a seat in the Royal Box in, say,2026 to see her lift the trophy. I shall, of course, encourage her parents tobe ruthless in forcing her to practise, give up school, pleasures, TV,boyfriends. She’ll be made to eat healthy food which tastes like cardboard, rise at 5 am to get her conditioning right and runseveral miles before breakfast and after dinner each day. And I’m lookingforward with great eagerness to the day when she’ll be sponsored bymanufacturers of tennis shoes who pay workers in the Far East 25 cents a monthso that they have the necessary millions to spare on stars. Quite right, too.

Enough randomness. I was going to go on about thoseincomprehensible souls who think ‘Second Place is just the first loser’ (DaleEarnhart) or commentators like the British guy describing a race in the worldrowing championships who, when a British crew won, went all orgasmic, screaming‘They don’t do bronze, they don’t do silver, they only do gold’. I’m not surewhat he said when he had to call home British crews who did ‘do’ silver orbronze. Still, as Beckett (again) said ‘You'reon Earth. There's no cure for that’.

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Vladimir Poignard - the interview

2011-10-30T12:39:00.000Z

To celebrate a couple of milestones for the Booksquawk site to which I contribute reviews, I wrote what we called a spooftacular. And, since it seems that everyone grabs the excuse of Halloween to do a 'special', I thought I'd slavishly follow the fashion, join the flock, and share it here. Before this recording, all that was known of the person behind the wildly popular writer of such horror classics as I Recognise The Neck But Who Does The Razor Belong To? and The Night Of The Haggis was that he lived somewhere in the north of England and had resolutely refused to be photographed or give interviews. I have no idea why his representatives agreed to allow me to meet him, and what follows is a rare aural document and a genuine scoop for the blog. Only three people were present at the recording: Vladimir, myself, and my wife, Carolyn.

Audio track - Vladimir Poignard, the interview by Bill Kirton

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Guest blog – Social Media: a double-edged sword.

2011-10-23T12:16:00.000+01:00

By R. B. Wood

(RichardWood is a friend whose first novel, The Prodigal’s Foole, has justbeen published by Pfoxmoor. As part of his blog tour to celebrate its launch,I’ve invited him to give us some observations on writing today. Here's what hethinks.)

Thetwenty-first century for writers is a marvelous time to be in the business.

Thebig six are trying to figure out what to do with the ebook revolution whileAmazon nips at their heels to eliminate the middlemen (namely agents and otherpublishers).

Smallindie presses are popping out of the ground like daisies and theself-publishing market is exploding.

Whatdoes all of this have to do with social media and said internet tools being adouble-edged sword?

Letan old man get to the point in his own way.

Neversince the introduction of the printing press (“Gutenberg!” you all shout – no…it was introduced much earlier. But that’s for another post), has there beensuch a revolution in the writing/publication industry as that which we arewitnessing today. The small and self-publishingmarket alone has expanded dramatically and shows nosign of slowing down.

BothBill Kirton and I are proud to be listed with other fine authors of the Pfoxpubgroup, under the hardworking leadership of Ms. Diane Nelson. Pfoxpub, which encompassesboth the Pfoxmoor and more adult leaning Pfoxchase imprints, is one such smallpress that has arrived on the scene to embrace the new publishing model.

Butalong with being in the literary company of a small cadre of excellent authors,editors, and artists there comes a problem. See, the marketing budgets of the‘Big Six’ are significantly larger than our budget. So how do we compensate forthis disparity?

Well,the internet and social media of course. Told you I’d get there eventually.

Toolslike Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are used with some success inadvertising our wares. We’ve done other internet-based marketing as well, fromblog tours to online trailers and from Writer websites to Facebook Fan pagesand participation in online forums. Social media has been a big part of“getting the word out there.”

Butit is a double-edged sword for two reasons.

TIME – All of these activities take time away from the actualwriting. Websites need to be maintained. Twitter posts need to be consistentand conversational. And don’t get me started on Facebook, which in my opinionis the digital equivalent of the rabbit hole poor Alice fell into. The Social Mediacampaign takes time, planning and in some instances as much creativity as waspoured into the stories we want to sell in the first place.

Don’tget me wrong. I’ve found loads of advice online for an “indie writer” such asmyself. I’ve made fantastic friendships (I’m proud to count Bill as one suchfriend), found amazing critic partners and all have generally improved mywriting significantly.

Whichleads me to the other part of our imaginary blade:

90% of those I’m connected with are writers. This isfantastic when you are just starting out. But make no mistake about it, most ofthe folks you end up connecting with in the writing world are trying to selltheir own stories. And think about how many of your 2500 Twitter friends’ booksyou’ve purchased in the past year. A dozen? Half-a-dozen?

Soeven in this new world of ebooks and social media, we writers are left with theage old dilemma. Finding the READERS to go with all those writers whose companyyou enjoy online.

Socialmedia will get the new millennium writer started. And you’ll be amazed at thenumber of writers out there who will want to connect to you as well. Butremember two things about this new world we all are struggling with: limit/planyour time on social media; and make sure you connect with readers of your genreas well as those dear writer friends.

Linksfor Richard:

Website/blog

Podcast (The Word Count)

Facebook

Trailer for The Prodigal’s Foole

Links for The Prodigal's Foole:

Behind Shadow Selves

2011-10-14T14:33:00.001+01:00

This week, the fourth novel in my JackCarston series, Shadow Selves, is outas an ebook. It doesn’t have the same sort of back story as The Darkness, which I wrote about awhile ago – here, in fact – but, like all the others, ithas special connotations for me.

The trigger was many years ago when myfriend, Donnie Ross, who was then an anaesthetist, said that if I ever wantedto do some research on surgical procedures and operations generally, he couldarrange for me to visit an operating theatre and see how it all worked. Myfirst thought was that I’d probably faint, be a bloody nuisance and get in theway, but it was a great chance to do some real observing, so I said ‘yesplease’. Just a few days later, I got the call and found myself in the theatrewearing all the stuff you see on hospital telly shows and being so fascinatedby all that was going on that it never occurred to me to faint. In fact, theoperation scene in the book is a direct description of the experience and ofthe astonishing business of being prepared to dig around in someone’s thoraxamongst all the lungs, heart and other stuff that’s packed and folded awaythere.

But I wasn’t planning a book involvingsurgical things or anaesthetics, so the notes sat in the computer. For ages,though, I’d been toying with the idea of setting one of my books in auniversity context. I used to be a university lecturer and I’ve done writingfellowships at three others, so I knew something about the settings and whatgoes on there. The problem, however, came from something I’ve mentioned before– a lot of my thoughts of academia involved other people and fiction doesn’twork (for me, at least), if your head’s full of real people. If you findyourself thinking ‘Oh, this character’s like so-and-so’, the character can’tdevelop in his or her own right. The real person gets in the way.

So I had to work hard to take myself and myex-colleagues out of my thinking and start from relationships rather than letthe characters decide the relationships beforehand. In the end, they grabbedtheir independence and, since I didn’t know them and they weren’t based on anymemories or specific realities, they had room to surprise me.

The reality I didn’t change, and it’s onewhich has worsened rather than improved, is the significant transformation thattook place in many institutes of higher education, beginning in the 80s, withThatcher’s insistence on ‘leaner, fitter’ establishments. I know I’mgeneralising but, before then, education combined the close study of yourchosen subjects and topics with the freedom to investigate beyond them, todevelop a broader cultural awareness. It provoked and encouraged you to beintellectually curious about everything. Post Thatcher, it became astudent-processing, goals-orientated, vocational experience with too many boxesto tick to spend time on thinking, reflection, broader investigations.

I’ve said it before, but academic life wasmarvellous – sitting around with young, intelligent, interested people talkingabout books, and getting paid for it. And yet, beneath the urbane, learnedsurfaces, the most bizarre thinking sometimes went on and apparent intellectualgiants behaved like schoolkids. The title, ShadowSelves, relates to this phenomenon. It’s from Carl Jung, who wrote ‘Everyonecarries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s consciouslife, the blacker and denser it is’. So here, the lecturers, surgeons,anaesthetists, nurses – and, yes, the police too – all have these shadows, butit’s not necessarily the blacker ones that cause all the damage.

Commercial break. You can get Shadow Selvesat:

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The view from the virtual world

2011-10-11T10:51:00.000+01:00

Some gratifying news this week. First, Pearson want me to write two more books in their 'Brilliant' series, then an email to say that the first one I wrote for them, Brilliant Study Skills, is being translated into Spanish for the north and south American markets. The new books are needed for March next year so I won't be able to indulge my idleness until the spring. On top of that, the Pfoxmoor edition of the next Jack Carston mystery, Shadow Selves, will be out soon and the fifth (and perhaps final) one has been written and will be appearing next year.

All of which is very nice but will put the brakes on the audio tracks I've been doing recently. That's been fun, largely because I love finding technology simple enough for me to use. I hope it's been useful, too. The idea is always to try to attract readers and whatever methods are available, we have to use them.

Anyway, I'll still add audio extracts to the list on the right now and then but this one is different. It's a story from a batch I wrote a while ago when I was playing the online game Second Life™ . It's a fascinating game and I met some interesting people there, some of whom are still good friends. But it certainly sets your mind working on the whole business of virtual and real worlds, and technological advances are so fast that any stories you write about them can be out of date by the following day. I have a batch of these stories but they'll probably never appear for precisely that reason. Onthe other hand, the real interest lies in the fact that the avatars andimpossible contexts of virtual worlds are still manipulated and populated bynormal people with familiar, maybe even eternal hungers, curiosities, foiblesand all the other things that provide us with material for our fictions.

This one moves through the screen and looks back at our world through the eyes of an avatar. Warning - it contains rude words and adult content (but definitely not of the titillating variety). I'd appreciate your comments - positive or negative.

Audio track - The view from here by Bill Kirton

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Extract of Sparrow

2011-10-06T15:10:00.002+01:00

No, not the latest gastronomic delight from one of the army of today's chefs who spend their time not on cooking but on arranging mutilated vegetables and fragments of meat in artistic patterns on a plate or slate or lump of driftwood before drizzling balsamic fuel over them and scraping a smear of something along the edge of the confection. This is a wee experiment. I've recorded another extract from The Sparrow Conundrum and thought it would be a good idea to embed it in the blog. You may or may not agree but, for those of you with time to spare, you can click the play button at the top of the column on the right and listen. I'm sure you'll let me know the wisdom or otherwise of the initiative. It's the moment when, having had his garden (and a relief postman) blown up, Chris Machin (aka Sparrow) is visited by the sociopathic Detective Inspector Lodgedale as he's eating breakfast.

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Les Voiles de Saint Tropez

2011-10-03T21:59:00.002+01:00

This ishard to write because it features a conflict between my social and politicalprinciples and my sybaritictendencies. For the past week, we’ve been the guests of very generous friendswho have a place in the south of France near to St Tropez. Theyhired a car and a very fast and quite big boat – the sort that usually haswomen with long legs and bikinis lying on the foredeck. In this case, therewere no women but, at the other end, there were 2 Honda 225 4-stroke engines.

It was moored at the bottom of the patio where, onevenings when we weren’t at a restaurant, we sat drinking wine and eatingrillettes, pâtés, cheese and the like, with the sun setting over the Mediterranean beside us.

Every morning there was a gorgeous orange dawnthen, after breakfast, we just stepped up onto the bow, untied a couple oflines and motored slowly out of the port. Once on the open water, we could easethe throttles forward and skim out to watch the hundreds of sailing boatstaking part in the annual ‘Voiles de Saint Tropez’ regatta.

I love sailing boats and this was a gathering ofsome of the most beautiful examples of the various designs and rigs, fromsmaller cruisers to enormous racing yachts with crews in the twenties and vastsails. Time after time, I marvelled at the fact that we were cruising alongsurrounded by hundreds of sails, nearby and filling the horizon.

The sun shone all week and, altogether, it waslike living a fantasy.

The quaysides in St Tropez were thronged withtanned and beautiful people who could obviously afford the £85 they were beingcharged for T-shirts. They strolled along beside the moored boats, admiring themasts and spars, the brass and copper fittings, the strange coexistence of theseemingly conflicting trappings of hard racing and unashamed luxury.

And there I was, amongst it all, not bothering toremark on the transitory nature of material things, such as the boats and thepeople, and me. I was just in the moment, enjoying it. There was a statue ofgood old Sisyphus there, too, but somehow it expressed the positive aspect ofwhat he represented, the way he triumphed over things, despite theirmeaninglessness, the way he engaged with life. So my tedious philosophising wasstilled. It had no place in such an intensely physical environment. Nothingneeded to mean anything.

But… yes, there’s a but…

… there was a bitterness in the concentration ofso much richness, so much luxury; of millions of pounds, dollars, euros beingin the hands of a minority who indulge every whim with no awareness of orconcern for those who have to live for months and months on a fraction of whatthey pay to moor their boat for the week. And I was as guilty as the rest,forcing myself to close my mind to that huge gap, unrecognised by those on theprivileged side of it. Yes, the privileged ones, like me. I had a great time,but what a pity it’s not accessible to everyone.

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War Horse, but not the movie.

2011-09-20T18:07:00.000+01:00

I’ve been involved in theatre in variousways over the years, writing, directing and acting in plays, watchingperformances by amateurs and professionals, and scratching my head at some ofthe things critics have raved about.

There was a time when we’d arrange to go toLondon for theweekend and cram in as many plays as we could. In those days it wasn’t cheapbut at least you didn’t have to take out a second mortgage to get even thecheapest ticket. The problem was, though, that much of what we’d actuallychosen to see – because it had been recommended, well reviewed, or featured afavourite actor or director – was crap. The house lights went down, the curtainwent up and, within 10 minutes, we knew we’d condemned ourselves to an hour orso of purgatory until the first interval set us free.

Simon Russell Beale was brilliant inRichard III but we sat through all of his Hamlet getting more and more angry atthe sight of the actors going through the motions. An American visitor in frontof us fell asleep very early only to leap to her feet and applaud wildly whenit was over. All the critics had said it was a brilliant production so Isuppose, even though audiences were bored out of their skulls by the insults totheir intelligence they were seeing, they were afraid to disagree with thearbiters of taste and excellence.

But that’s just one example, and I’m justsaying this to admit that, much, maybe even most of the time, theatre isembarrassingly bad. And that’s a great shame because when it works, it’sunbeatable. Sam West’s Hamlet was a triumph – it made you leave the theatrethinking you were somehow complicit in the nasty politics that had gone ononstage.

Last Friday, though, with my son, I went tothe New Londontheatre to see War Horse, and, for nearly three timeless hours, I forgot who Iwas and was grabbed by the experience and dragged through most of the emotionsof which I’m capable. The movie may prove to be brilliant – it’s Spielbergafter all – but the beautiful horses he’ll have gathered for his shots won’thave anything like the realism and character that the puppeteers managed togive those on the stage. In every single way, the performances, the effects,the sounds and music, the wholeness of the thing were astonishing. We watched acavalry charge in World War I, horses fighting for supremacy in a paddock, thetransformation of an awkward young colt into a big thoroughbred in an instant –and all of these creatures were being manipulated by people. But, within minutes,I stopped seeing the people and only saw horses.

I always make my blogs too long and, if Itried to convey even a part of the full experience, I’d need this to be evenlonger, so take a quick look at this trailer for the stage play, not the movie,and you’ll get a tiny fraction of a glimpse of a mind-blowing experience (mywords are so inadequate for things such as this). It’s beyond analysis so, ifyou get the chance to see it on stage, sell everything you have to get a ticket. It's an astonishing, visceral, truly cathartic experience.

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OK, I miscounted, but this is definitely the last one (I think).

2011-09-16T12:26:00.000+01:00

In previous posts, by 'penultimate', I meant 'ante-penultimate' and by 'the last' I meant 'not the last'. The answers below, however, are the only ones which remain from my Pfoxmoor author friends: Maria Kuroshchepova, R B Wood, Greta van der Rol, Heikki Hietala, Michael Pollack, Gev Sweeney and Sessha Batto.

What do you think of the word ‘nice’? In what contexts would you use it?

(MK) Can’t stand it. People use it when they have nothing good to say about this. “I’ve written a book” “Aww, isn’t that nice.” Or “So what do you think of this painting?” “Oh, you know... It’s... nice”. I sometimes use it as approval for a joke or a clever statement - but in those cases I write it out in all caps.

(RBW) It’s one of those fluffy words that is so overused it becomes meaningless.

(GvdR) It is the most obnoxious adjective I can think of, especially when diluted even further with the word ‘quite’. It’s the sort of word you use to describe something you think is nauseating but you don’t wish to be rude.

(HH) Nice is a non-word that should be reserved for those moments when you have absolutely nothing to say.

(MP) It’s a weak word. I use it when I can’t find anything nice to say.

(GS) .”Nice,” to me, implies “meh.” “Okay.” “Polite.” “Sunny within the confines of sociability.” “Unwild.” “Non-controversial.” “Something that has the potential for becoming worse, if not bad.” “Have a nice day.” Heh heh …

(SB) It’s a complete and total nonentity of a word. Nice means boring, inoffensive, bleh that you couldn’t care enough about to come up with a description for. Not bad necessarily, but most surely boring. I use it when I don’t want to offend but have nothing positive to say.

Would you like to be immortal? Why or why not?

(MK) Yes. All the shit I could learn! But I want to retain youth and health too. Being an immortal wreck of a person does not appeal to me.

(RBW) No. The thought of outliving my children is far to sad to contemplate.

(GvdR) I’d only want to be immortal if I could be immortal in a much younger body and if I had some immortal mates. But I can’t help but feel that Isaac Asimov was right about over-long lifetimes, let alone immortality. It leads to stagnation of the species.

(HH) Funny you should ask that as I am working on a scifi shortie on that very theme. I’d never want to be immortal. In fact, I believe you have seen all you need to see by the age of 75. Reincarnation rules.

(MP) No. Life is a constant beat-down. An 80-year stretch trying to find the sparkle in an otherwise strife-filled life seems long enough to me. I’ll embrace death when it comes… just not quite yet… I’m not done with my work.

(GS) Yes. To pass on the message that despite changes in fashion and technology, people are inherently the same now as they were centuries ago and will continue to remain the same centuries from now.

(SB) Never! I think it would be terribly depressing to see everyone you know wither and pass away. I’d much rather ride the wheel again and come back in my next life and start all over. If I could remember the lessons I’d learned in this life, so much the better.

THE END (MAYBE)

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Bloke who knew Questionnaire slightly when they were students together

2011-09-13T11:28:00.000+01:00

The last revelations from my author friends at Pfoxmoor: Maria Kuroshchepova, R B Wood, Greta van der Rol, Heikki Hietala, Michael Pollack, Gev Sweeney and Sessha Batto.

Your fairy godmother grants you a wish. You can curl up in front of the fire with your favourite object. What is it? (NOTE. You can define `object’ in any way you like.)

(MK) Just one object? Can I make the object a collection? I mean - a corporation is like a person in some respects, so can an assembly of objects count as an object? Because that would include: two gigantic pillows, my favorite wrap, all my animals, including husband, and a stack of books. Oh, and there would be some chocolate and alcohol involved in there somewhere too.

(RBW) A legal document granting me full custody of my children.

(GvdR) I would like an object that would have me looking the way I did at age 30, thanks ever so.

(HH) I’d want a teleporter to be able to go see the M41 up close, pop out to anywhere in the world, and finally, back in time to see who killed Kennedy.

(MP) A metallic blue Kirsten Dunst comes to mind, but I’ll go with: my MacBook Pro.

(GS) I’d be curling up in front of that fire in the favourite overstuffed chair from the house where I grew up.

(SB) Only one?! It would have to be one of my swords . . . but I’d have to cut with them all first to make up my mind, decisions, decisions . . .

A beggar sitting on a blanket on the pavement (OK, sidewalk, if you insist), says as you pass, `Fortune has favoured you but looks less kindly on deprived and desperate beings such as myself. It would be a kindness if you were to redistribute some of your wealth to redress the balance between you and I’. What do you reply? (NOTE for grammar nerds like me – I deliberately chose ‘I’ instead of the correct ‘me’ to set up my own answer.)

(MK) I grab him and take him somewhere for a cup of soup, during which I figure out why he is a beggar and what we can do short- and long-term to get him out of this predicament. I know it sounds uber-corny, but seriously, that’s what I would do. Blame it on Chris Gardner (for those who don’t know - the author of “Pursuit of Happyness”).

(RBW) I would say: “I have no cash, but would like to take you for a hot meal and a long conversation” (paid for via credit card.)

(GvdR) I’m an author. I’m probably more deprived than you are.

(HH) I’m a fatalist in matters of the wallet.

(MP) Stop begging. Pick yourself up and find work. God helps those who help themselves, and that seems like a damned fine policy. If there truly is no way that you can find a job in America legally plying some skill or another, then I will help you as I can and ask others to do the same.

(GS) I have my own place on the pavement.

(SB) I’m terribly afraid you have me confused with someone else – after a career in the arts, believe me, I have not a penny to my name.

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Second cousin of Questionnaire by marriage

2011-09-11T11:15:00.000+01:00

The penultimate peek into the minds of some of the Pfoxmoor people: Maria Kuroshchepova, R B Wood, Greta van der Rol, Heikki Hietala, Michael Pollack, Gev Sweeney andSessha Batto.

If you had to change nationality, which would you choose and why?

(MK) That’s a tough one - I honestly have no idea. I mean, I am already Russian-Ukrainian-Polish-Jewish. Married to a guy who is Irish-German-Navajo-Cherokee. If I had to incorporate yet another nationality in there somewhere, things could get REALLY confusing.

(RBW) Irish. I loved Ireland when I lived there for five years.

(GvdR) Fight, kicking and screaming. I’m proud to be Australian. I love our country, our lifestyle and our attitudes. (For the most part, anyway) If it HAD to happen, I’d be a New Zealander because they’re our first cousins, anyway.

(HH) I would like to be Irish. I spent a year there working for Microsoft (so sue me) and got to know and love the laid-back ways of the people. I also love the countryside there, and the way they wouldn’t let me pay my parking fine.

(MP) Italian. The food is great, and it might make me a shoe-in for a career in organized crime.

(GS) French. The only way to dismiss fools and stupidities really is to shrug them off, à la française.

(SB) Japan because I love the language and the culture – of course, the Japanese do as well, so I imagine they’d quickly scuttle any plans I had of emigrating, the last thing they need is an Irishwoman coming and mucking it all up.

Nominate 3 types of people for a long custodial sentence in a prison that uses painful experimental therapies to `cure’ its inmates. (NOTE. Obvious categories, such as bigots, tyrants, traffic wardens, estate agents, bankers, politicians and family and friends of Rupert Murdoch do not count.)

(MK) Well, damn, you listed all my top candidates already! Ok, how about this... People who are persistently ignorant. You know, the kind that are offered all the information in the world, but they decline it just so they can keep their opinion and spew venom at others. People who demand that I make myself appear dumber in order to “fit in” better. The other winners of that lottery from question 5 unless they are my friends. ;-)

(RBW) Massachusetts drivers, recruiters who say ‘they’ll get back to you’ and never do, Weathermen (and women).

(GvdR) Old farts who can’t drive who get in front of my car. Accountants. Microsoft.

(HH) People who promise a review of your book but do not deliver. People who believe Big Brother is ‘entertainment’ and watch it voraciously. People who say Steely Dan is elevator music.

(MP) Radical Islam extremists who are contorting an otherwise peaceful faith into something horrible and violent. (2) Wealthy people who’ve achieved success on the backs of others but who do not give back in any meaningful way. (3) High school gym teachers.

(SB) People who insist on proselytizing their religious beliefs while disregarding or belittling my own, people who think that gay marriage is somehow hurting them or somehow diminishing their own marriage and, finally, the extremely rude, ‘I’m a very important person’ types who feel it’s acceptable to leave their cars anywhere it’s convenient to them (including across my driveway on a daily basis!)

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Daughter of Questionnaire

2011-09-09T23:07:00.000+01:00

All is revealed by Maria Kuroshchepova, R B Wood, Greta van der Rol, Heikki Hietala, Michael Pollack, Gev Sweeney and Sessha Batto.

You have the chance to spend an evening with a film star of your choice. Whom would you choose and what do you hope the evening would bring? (Be honest.)

(MK) Colin Firth. He can bring his real-life wife and his “Pride and Prejudice” co-star - the lovely and voluptuous Jennifer Ehle.

(RBW) The late Marlon Brando. I firmly believe he was one of the best actors of the modern age. I would hope to hear about his thoughts on life, love and the world in general.

(GvdR) A film star? Film stars just don’t do it for me. They’re people being paid absurd amounts of money to pretend to be something they’re not. OK, I’ll go for Akshay Kumar and I hope he’d agree to play Admiral Saahren in the movie.

(HH) There was a time I’d have said Minnie Driver, at another I’d have said Audrey Tautou for her splendid performance in Amélie, but now I’d say Sean Connery. I just have to admire his singular charisma. I’d take him to an island on a lake in Finland and see how he likes the smoke sauna.

(MP) Gotta go with Kirsten Dunst again, plus an air compressor, a commercial paint sprayer, and that blue paint. You’ve stuck that image in my head, and it won’t go away. What do I hope it would bring? More than casual conversation about world events.

(GS) Gerard Depardieu. I want to see how bad and intelligent and French he really is.

(SB) James Earl Jones because I could listen to him talk all night and I’m sure he has some amusing stories to tell. To be honest, celebrities don’t impress me, all the famous people I’ve met have been just like anyone else, and some were a whole lot less interesting.

Complete the following sentence – `If I won the lottery and discovered that the prize had to be shared with 3 million other winners, I would …’

(MK)...have no problem sharing. And if I like any of the other winners, I’d suggest we have a party together. Naturally, I very much hope that all my writer friends are among the winners.

(RBW) …find a way to vilify them all in my writing.

(GvdR) … shrug and get on with life.

(HH) … definitely hope it was a very large lottery prize.

(MP) … open an essay contest and ask for 3 million entrants to prove how they would double their investment and cut me back in for the capital gain. It’s a win/win situation.

(GS) … start a charity to feed the hungry.

(SB) … be just as happy – free money is free money, when you’re a non-gainfully self-employed wastrel any income is a wonderful thing!

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Son of Questionnaire

2011-09-06T10:58:00.000+01:00

More soul baring from some of my Pfoxmoor colleagues: Maria Kuroshchepova, R B Wood, Greta van der Rol, Heikki Hietala, Michael Pollack, Gev Sweeney andSessha Batto.

If such a choice were possible and meaningful, would you prefer to live in a real or a virtual world? Why?

(MK) Real world never ceases to amaze me, but Andre Norton’s Witchworld and John Booth’s spellbinder universe both sound like places I’d love to live at, despite the dangers.

(RBW) I prefer the real world. So many experiences and challenges come up during the normal course of life—provides an author with a veritable cornucopia of writing material!

(GvdR) Real. Because virtual worlds smack of ‘The Matrix’. You can’t have a virtual world that is not controlled by some computer program. That’s scary and creepy. Mind you, a virtual world would be nice in some ways. Safe sex, for instance, with a male of one’s choice. (stop it) And flying on dragons and such.

(HH) Real, but augmented with a dash of virtuality in it. For example, the game Second Life would be very much fun if it had an immersive gaming experience, so that one could really feel the touch of someone else, or knock his head on the table after one beer too many.

(MP) Real world. When I was a kid I put two quarters in a soda vending machine just as some drunken jackass stumbled behind it and tripped over its power cord, unplugging it. No apology. No refund. No soda. The real world may be full of careless people, but at least it can’t be unplugged by one.

(GS) Real. I prefer the unpredictability, variety and adventure of the unknown.

(SB) I’m a pragmatist, the real world with all its ups and downs is just fine by me. I get nervous if everything goes my way too often.

You have permission to paint a celebrity in a colour of your choosing. That doesn’t mean you make a portrait, you actually get to cover them in paint. Tell us which celebrity, what colour, and why?

(MK) Angelina Jolie - paint the full Lara Croft costume onto her: black t-shirt, shorts and boots, because she absolutely nailed that role. I realize that she has since grown above and beyond the action flick chick, but I still love that image of her.

(RBW) Angelina Jolie. A very pale white or flesh tone. Because in the grand scheme of things, that’s really the color of her importance in life.

(GvdR) I’d paint our current prime minister bright green. Does she count as a celebrity? A legend in her own tea break? (Greta lives in Australia – ed.)

(HH) I would be very happy to issue a nice, even, and utterly non-transparent cover of dull grey paint over Lady Gaga as she stood against a hangar at Boeing Aircraft Co. Just so that she wouldn’t stand out for a moment.

(MP) Kirsten Dunst in Medium Blue Quasar metallic (the color of my first car). That would be just perfect. (Kirsten Dunst features in 3 of Michael’s 11 answers. Just saying.- ed.)

(GS) .Queen Liz. Yellow. I think she enjoys a good laugh and would love to break loose, just once, in public.

(SB) Mmmmm, Jet Li because he has an extremely shapely behind. Colour doesn’t matter because, as you might have guessed, I just want to look at his naked ass!

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Return of the Questionnaire

2011-09-04T21:54:00.000+01:00

For a change, the next few blogs will becoming thick and fast. That’s because they’re not written by me but by morerespondents to…

(Psycho shower scene sound FX)

… The Questionnaire

(Extended scream).

When I started this blog, it was becausepeople who knew told me that writers had to have this sort of online presence(well, maybe not THIS sort, but some sort). And it’s true that it’s got me somereaders (as well as friends) I wouldn’t otherwise have had. (And, by the way, Ido think some online friendships are real. There are, of course, those whichmainly pay lip service to the idea of friendship, but others are the genuinearticle.)

It also brought me into contact with DianeNelson, who is definitely a friend but now also, thanks to her energy,enthusiasm and willingness to respond to a challenge and take risks, mypublisher. This year, with surprising speed, she’s set up Pfoxmoor Publishing and gathered a highly talented team of writers who are producing books andstories across several genres.

I don’t want to name names or turn thisinto a promotional handout so, if you want to know who these writers are andwhat they’ve produced, just check via the link. Very quickly, we’ve blendedinto a group of mutually supportive friends as Diane and others have slavedaway reading, editing, formatting and submitting manuscripts to various electronicoutlets and printers. But you see how, even when all I’m doing is relating thefacts of this enterprise, I’m beginning to sound like every other spin doctorand the language starts to seem artificial.

So, instead of presenting you withsoft-focus shots of dreamy-looking artists gazing into the distance as theirmuses drift around them, I invited some of them to answer the questionnaire Iset recently. The reason was that, despite the fact that it was designed as abit of fun, an absurd parody of an interview, it turned out to be quiterevealing and slyly drew people out of their comfort zone – or at least intoareas other than ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’.

So, the next five blogs will lay bare thesecrets of seven of the Pfoxmoor stable. They are: Maria Kuroshchepova, R B Wood, Greta van der Rol, Heikki Hietala, Michael Pollack, Gev Sweeney and Sessha Batto.

And their starter for ten was: What musicwould you play through loudspeakers at night outside the house of someone youdisliked intensely?

(MK) Anything by Gustav Mahler, whose music I dislike just a little bit lessthan the only person in my life I’ve ever hated.

(RBW) A compilation of 70’s and 80’s commercialjingles.

(GvdR) Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man”. I wrotethat without even a moment’s hesitation.
(HH) Ah- you’d notknow this, but it’s a song by a Finnish artist, Ismo Alanko, and the name ofthe song is (very loosely translated) “Fuck how fucked I feel”. The net result would be well worthwatching.
(MP) Something I hate, like 80’s glamor hair metal bands. That garbage.

(GS) Thesoundtrack I composed for an indie film. Haha, ask Diane. She’s heard it … :P

(SB) Bagpipes. I love them, but they can wake the dead, no matter how much youcrank up other music it doesn’t drown them out ;) Of course, I have to say nowthat a steel drum band school moved in next door to my house, ANY music playedcontinuously and repetitively will drive you certifiably insane in a very shorttime.

And, in the best Hollywood tradition,coming very soon:

Son of Questionnaire

Daughter of Questionnaire

Second cousin of Questionnaire by marriage

Bloke who knew Questionnaire slightly when they were students together.

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Dib Gringe

2011-09-01T15:47:00.000+01:00

Let me tell you about Dib Gringe.

It’s not a small, eerie village, with cowedresidents slinking about, fearful of what new horrors may be inflicted on themby their evil landlord from his dank castle on the hill overlooking the swampon which the village was built.

It’s not the swamp itself, some modernequivalent of Conan Doyle’s wonderful Grimpen Mire, into which strangers havewandered to disappear with a gurgled scream, only to reappear at Halloween withdripping rags of flesh still clinging to their skeletal forms, moaning theirsouls’ agony into the echoing night.

Nor is it a wasting disease with a muchmore impressive Latin name but with symptoms too nauseous to describe, broughtback from the southern ocean in the late 1700s by the crew of Captain Cook’sbarque Endeavour and transmitted to the inhabitants of the brothels of Britishports and from them on to the towns’ residents.

No, Dib Gringe is not an ‘it’, he’s a‘him’.

He was born just before breakfast in abedroom only a few minutes walk from Scotland’snational stadium, Hampden Park. In fact, Dib, as helets me call him, came into being some five minutes after his mother. Therewere no midwives, nurses or obstetricians present – just me and my six year oldgrandson. And the bed was mine – at least for the duration of my stay with himand his 11 year old brother.

Mrs Gringe came about as part of a story wewere telling together. She has no husband; Gringe is the name of her own familyand her given name is Mrs. I know little more about her because, as I said, Dibarrived a few minutes later and immediately, like all children, became thecentre of attention. He was, however, not like other children. When he was born,he was already six years old, six feet two inches tall and an accomplishedbasketball player. He wore soft leather trousers, no underpants, and a top madeof seaweed. (The soft leather was a somewhat disturbing revelation but onewhich, fortunately, we didn’t explore further.)

We were called to breakfast and Dib wasleft to his own devices but, periodically, during the day, my grandson remindedme of him and asked questions about his habits, many of which were grotesquedistortions of his own interests and activities. I think he began to identifywith him and suspect that I was compiling his own biography.

In the evening, the whole family – Mum,Dad, two sons and me – went to a local restaurant. And Dib was there. Not inperson, of course, but once we started talking about the sort of food hepreferred (don’t ask), the questions started coming again and my grandson beganto insist that Dib didn’t exist, that he was simply a figment of my (and hisown) imagination. I protested, of course. (All my creations are real to me.) Itook a call from Dib on my mobile but he rang off before I had a chance to passthe phone to my grandson. I must confess to being a little surprised when Idid, in reality, get a text message from him just a minute or so later. Itread:

‘Hi Dr Kirton. Dib here. Hope you’re havinga nice meal. Wish I was there. Give my love to everybody.’

I showed it to my grandson, who remainedrelatively unimpressed. (Rightly so, of course, because it had been sent by mydaughter from the other side of the table.)

Then, as I was telling him about Dib’sFaceBook page and debating with myself whether I should set up an email accountin Dib’s name, I started wondering whether I’d gone too far. My grandson’sscepticism was refreshing, his hold on reality secure, and yet he wanted tobelieve – no, not believe, pretend tobelieve – that there was such a being as Dib Gringe. Kids are so open andreceptive, not yet indoctrinated with the idea that everything is explicable.Their ‘normality’ is much wider than ours. (A granddaughter once asked my wifewhether she’d seen Stanley,the fairy who lives under the dripping tap in our bedroom.) Kids are also quitetrustful and if we’re insistent that fictions are real, they want to acceptthem as such. That’s fine for a while, with Santa, fairies, and thedisappearing coins which then materialise behind their ears, but if they starttrying to convince less imaginative friends in the playground that the 3 inchtall fairy who lives in Aberdeen and the six feet two six year old basketballplayer in soft leather are real, they may find themselves in trouble.

So Dib Gringe has now retired. But I bet hereappears when I’m next in Glasgow.

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Paragraphs Regained

2011-08-22T12:44:00.000+01:00

If I’d been clever enough to think of the title ‘Paragraphs Lost’for the previous posting, putting the two titles together would have shown howbrilliant and cultured I am. As it is, I didn’t, so you’ll just have to take myword for it.

Anyway, whatever its title, the said posting obviously turned out tobe considerably less than gripping. That shouldn’t have surprised me. Idrone on so often about absurdity being the norm that I should acknowledge thatall attempts to impose structure imply meaning and so, by definition, are futile. Before we leave it, however, here’s the ‘correct’ version and somequick thoughts on why I still think it’s a valid exercise.

By ‘correct’, I mean the paragraph in itsoriginal form, which means that it’s ‘correct’ for what we wanted it to sayrather than being the only possible version. Anyway, the number sequence is 7,10, 8, 6, 1, 3, 2, 9, 4, 5, which gives you the following paragraph:

Propaganda is seenby some as a necessary evil but by others as just lies. Writers use language toexpose the hypocrisy of politicians. The fact that they see themselves ashaving a higher goal still does not separate them from those they seek tocriticize. Politicians use language to manipulate people. But the writer isjust as guilty of manipulation. He has an agenda, he shapes his words to createa specific effect and, as a result, he is responsible for distorting the visionof his reader. He claims that his aims are those of society. The politicianssay exactly the same thing. It would seem, therefore, that words are dangerous,whoever is using them. Language is a very powerful tool.

The specific ‘clues’ to the ‘correct’sequencing are:

If there’s a plural noun or pronoun – ‘writers’, ‘they’ – it can’t be followed by a sentence referring to the same set of people in the singular. (Politicians use language to manipulate people. He has an agenda.) And vice versa (The writer is just as guilty. The fact that they see themselves as having a higher goal…)
Stylistically, repeating a word in successive sentences is awkward. (Language is a very powerful tool. Politicians use language to manipulate people.) This would obviously be better if the second occurrence was replaced by ‘it’ and the two sentences were made into one and separated by a semi-colon.

But the real object of the exercise was tosuggest that, just as a novel or chapter is structured for maximum impact (youhope), so paragraphs and sentences need just as much in the way of shaping. Theessence of the ‘test’ is to focus on how each sentence links with the one beforeit and prepares for the one after it.

Technically, a paragraph should deal withone major point. If the emphasis changes, you need to start a new one. Theopening sentence establishes the theme, those which follow develop it in moredetail and, you hope, lead to a powerful concluding sentence. It should do twothings:

Present thoughts in a logical sequence
Link them smoothly to make your argument/narrative coherent.

If anything in a paragraph makes you loseyour way or wonder what’s being referred to, it’s failed. Surprises are finewhen they’re effects designed deliberately to disorientate the reader, but notwhen they’re the result of lack ofclarity or stylistic ugliness.

So there, and after all that, just thinkyourselves lucky you don’t live in Aberdeen because I’m giving two workshopsthere next month on creative writing and I may well do more of this sort ofthing with them. But, for now, I’m going to slip out of this teacher mode andinto something more comfortable. Maybe a chiffon negligee, or perhaps the storyof how my weekend visit to grandsons in Glasgowadded to the population of Italya six feet two inch 6-year-old called Dib Grinch who plays basketball and sleepsupright in a cupboard.

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The paragraph assembly line

2011-08-15T15:03:00.001+01:00

I intended to write a blog about the importance of rhythms in both poetry and prose but time is pressing as usual and I need to find some good examples before I start. So this is another cop-out blog. Having just subjected you to an exercise that has probably lost me several followers, I'm going to do it again. No, the idea isn't to alienate everybody so that I can close down the blog, but some of you said you liked it, so I'm risking another one. Like the first, it's adapted from Just Write, the book I co-wrote with my friend and colleague Kathleen MacMillan and I think it's less likely than the previous one to hurt heads, sting your eyes, induce lethargy and make euthanasia seem attractive, etc. .

It's also shorter than the last one and it's writing-connected, so that's my excuse. Anyway, we wrote a paragraph which made sense, then broke it apart and listed its sentences in alphabetical order according to the initial letter of the first word in each. All you have to do this time is put them back in the right order to restore the original paragraph. I've numbered the sentences so you don't need to write them all out. If you want to make a comment you can restrict yourself to jotting down a numerical sequence that works for you. I haven't tested it to see if it's possible to produce variations of the original which still make sense and are grammatically and stylistically coherent. There may be more than one; I don't know.

So, here's the paragraph:

But the writer is just as guilty ofmanipulation. He claims that his aims are those of society. He has an agenda,he shapes his words to create a specific effect and, as a result, he isresponsible for distorting the vision of his reader. It would seem, therefore,that words are dangerous, whoever is using them. Language is a very powerfultool. Politicians use language to manipulate people. Propaganda is seen by someas a necessary evil but by others as just lies. The fact that they seethemselves as having a higher goal still does not separate them from those theyseek to criticize. The politicians say exactly the same thing. Writers uselanguage to expose the hypocrisy of politicians.

And here's the same sequence, with the sentences numbered:

But the writer is just as guilty ofmanipulation.
He claims that his aims are those ofsociety.
He has an agenda, he shapes his words tocreate a specific effect and, as a result, he is responsible for distorting thevision of his reader.
It would seem, therefore, that words aredangerous, whoever is using them.
Language is a very powerful tool.
Politicians use language to manipulatepeople.
Propaganda is seen by some as a necessaryevil but by others as just lies.
The fact that they see themselves as havinga higher goal still does not separate them from those they seek to criticize.
The politicians say exactly the same thing.
Writers use language to expose thehypocrisy of politicians.

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All is revealed

2011-08-09T17:32:00.002+01:00

This time, the illustration shows the book I co-wrote with a friend. It has lots of examples of the sort of things I've highlighted in the awful passage I concocted for the last posting. And here’s the passageagain, with the mistakes highlighted and ‘explained’ – some obvious, some lessso.

Health issuesin humans have always been compared with animals in the wild[1]and the balance between activity and reward, in the way of nutrition, is avital part of the equation. It was those factors that’s[2]behind the establishment of the fitness and health survey of January 2011. As a consequence of collectingdata from various social groups on their eating habits and the amount ofexercise they do each week, and taking age and other fitness-related factorsinto account.[3]Researchers got a clearer picture of the overall population’s general attitudesto health. Less[4]people said they feel[5]satisfied with their skill sets and general fitness levels. The amount[6]of middle-aged women joining health clubs has almost doubled and much[7]of the current research projects are showing unexpected results. There’s lessobesity and less[8]sweets and chocolates on the average shopping list. If we keep on seeing that much[9]more changes are being made, we’ll all need to look again at what we mean by‘normal’. The leader of the research team, not being really sure of howeffective their results would be in persuading groups and individuals in allthe towns which had taken part in the survey to change their eating habits, were[10]ready to repeat the process across a wider area. Her team was[11]preparing to send out the questionnaires and, indeed, were[12]already drawing up lists of target groups. The person that[13]represented their sponsors was satisfied that the findings of the researcherswere more reliable indicators of the current state of affairs than the leader of the town council[14]and the sponsors themselves were convinced that their products would sooneliminate variations in obesity levels, age-related survival rates and increasing the use of healthfacilities[15]by a wider range of people. Speakingat[16]the launch of the report, it was obvious that their financial director wasprepared to invest even more in the project. ‘Between you and I,’[17]he told the team leader, ‘I think it’s fair to assume that your contract willcertainly be extended for another year and perhaps even beyond that.’ However,none of the team were[18]surprised by his words. They knew they’d done a good job. The general consensus of opinion[19]was that thorough preparations, careful cross-checking, and a meticulousobservation of research etiquette always leads[20]to client satisfaction

Don't worry, we'll get back to normal human trivial absurd things next time.

[1] False comparison – ‘health issues’ with‘animals’. The correct version would be ‘compared with those of animals in thewild’.

[2] Plural subject needs a plural verb‘Those factors that were’

[3] This isn’t a sentence. It doesn’t havea verb in it. Change the full stop after ‘account’ to a comma and ‘Researchers’to ‘researchers’.

[4] ‘Fewer’ for things you can count,‘less’ for things you can’t – ‘fewer people’ but ‘less obesity’.

[5] ‘said’ is past tense, so this should betoo – ‘felt’.

[6] ‘Number’ for things you can count, ‘amount’for things you can’t – ‘number of women’ but ‘amount of exercise’.

[7] ‘Many’ for things you can count, ‘much’for things you can’t – ‘many more changes’ but ‘much more success’.

[8] See 4 above.

[9] See 4 above.

[10] The subject of this verb is ‘The leaderof the research team’ so it should be singular ‘was’.

[11] See 12 below.

[12] These verbs both have the same subject‘Her team’ should they should both be either singular or plural.

[13] If it’s a person, the pronoun should be‘who’.

[14] False comparison as in 1 above.

[15] This is similar to the comparisonerrors. All the things that ‘variations in’ covers should be the same part ofspeech. Here, the first two are nouns – ‘obesity levels’ and ‘survival rates’but the third is a verb. The correct version would end with ‘increases in theuse of health facilities’ – another noun.

[16] This is called an unrelated (orhanging) participle. It’s a common fault. When you start a sentence with aparticiple (in this case, ‘speaking’), it must relate to the subject of thesentence. So this should be ‘Speaking at the launch of the report, theirfinancial director made it obvious that he was prepared… etc.’

[17] Very, very common fault. ‘Between youand me’ is the correct form. You wouldn’t say ‘he was standing behind I’, wouldyou? If it’s governed by a preposition, it’s always ‘me’.

[18] Another common error. Expressions suchas ‘neither of them’, ‘none of them’, each of them’, etc. are singular so theverb should be singular, too – ‘none of the team was’. (That’s the correct formbut, as Gilly said, it sounds wrong.)

[19] ‘Consensus’ means ‘general or widespread agreement’,so there’s no need for ‘general’ or ‘of opinion’ – ‘The consensus was that…’ isenough.

[20] This verb has aplural subject – ‘preparations… cross-checking… observation’ so it should be‘lead’.

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Your starter for 20

2011-08-05T18:13:00.001+01:00

(The picture has nothing to do with what follows. It's just the latest of Sessha Batto's brilliant cover designs for my books - this one for the new Pfoxchase edition of The Darkness, which is available on Smashwords now. I'll write more about it soon.)

OK then, a little piece of anal retention this week.I’ve often spoken of how some writers don’t actually respect the tools of ourtrade. It’s OK to break grammatical and other linguistic rules AS LONG AS YOUKNOW WHAT THEY ARE. But far too many stories, not to mention newspaper articlesby people (and their sub-editors) who should definitely know better, arelittered with careless errors. Most respectable agents and reviewers stress theneed to make sure your copy’s been thoroughly checked before you submit it.Sending stuff that’s grammatically crude, mis-spelled and the rest is theequivalent of submitting a manuscript with coffee stains on every other page.

But some errors occur so frequently thatthey somehow go unnoticed. That’s why I’m offering this as a wee game. I wrotethe next paragraph to illustrate some of them. As (or if) you read it, you’llsense how ugly it is but, rather than analyse its style, I’m suggesting youidentify the mistakes. There are at least 20 of them. I say ‘at least’because typos have a way of creeping through so there may still be more than Irealise. If so, my preaching is worthless and I’ll be hoist with my own petard.I’m not expecting you to write long comments about what you’ve found but itwould be nice to know that you’ve had a look at it. If anyone’s interested,I’ll identify them in a future blog. (Who said I can’t do cliff-hangers?) Sohere it is.

Health issues in humans have always beencompared with animals in the wild and the balance between activity and reward,in the way of nutrition, is a vital part of the equation. It was those factorsthat’s behind the establishment of the fitness and health survey of January2011. As a consequence of collecting data from various social groups on theireating habits and the amount of exercise they do each week, and taking age andother fitness-related factors into account. Researchers got a clearer pictureof the overall population’s general attitudes to health. Less people said theyfeel satisfied with their skill sets and general fitness levels. The amount ofmiddle-aged women joining health clubs has almost doubled and much of thecurrent research projects are showing unexpected results. There’s less obesityand less sweets and chocolates on the average shopping list. If we keep onseeing that much more changes are being made, we’ll all need to look again atwhat we mean by ‘normal’. The leader of the research team, not being reallysure of how effective their results would be in persuading groups and individualsin all the towns which had taken part in the survey to change their eatinghabits, were ready to repeat the process across a wider area. Her team was preparingto send out the questionnaires and, indeed, were already drawing up lists oftarget groups. The person that represented their sponsors was satisfied thatthe findings of the researchers were more reliable indicators of the currentstate of affairs than the leader of the town council and the sponsorsthemselves were convinced that their products would soon eliminate variationsin obesity levels, age-related survival rates and increasing the use of healthfacilities by a wider range of people. Speaking at the launch of the report, itwas obvious that their financial director was prepared to invest even more inthe project. ‘Between you and I,’ he told the team leader, ‘I think it’s fairto assume that your contract will certainly be extended for another year andperhaps even beyond that.’ However, none of the team were surprised by hiswords. They knew they’d done a good job. The general consensus of opinion wasthat thorough preparations, careful cross-checking, and a meticulousobservation of research etiquette always leads to client satisfaction.

(God, that was awful.)

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The questionnaire - last lines.

2011-07-31T12:01:00.000+01:00

OK, I'm beginning to feel guilty that I've been using your answers instead of writing blogs myself, so this will be the last one. They're nicely contrasting answers from Sara Bain and Linda Faulkner, with just one for question 10 from Melissa Conway. Thanks to everyone who got involved - you gave me lots of laughs but also some food for thought.

1. If such achoice were possible and meaningful, would you prefer to live in a real or avirtual world? Why?
Sara : Since reality is a philosophical concept of physical being andvirtuality a potential form of existence, I would choose to live in a realvirtuality: where life can be exactly what I make it. Just imagine a life withno violent criminals; no corrupt politicians; no starvation; no trafficwardens; no petty next door neighbours; no midges; and no onions. My fantasywould be an international best seller and the movie moguls would be slappingeach other over the film rights.
Linda: Real. Ican always make a virtual one if I want to.

2. You havepermission to paint a celebrity in a colour of your choosing. That doesn’t meanyou make a portrait, you actually get to cover them in paint. Tell us whichcelebrity, what colour, and why?
Sara: I would paint Paris Hilton pink and camouflage herexistence from both the real and virtual worlds.
Linda: I havemore important things to do.

3. What doyou think of the word ‘nice’? In what contexts would you use it?
Sara: Nice is one of those useful wordsthat can conceal a multitude of clandestine thoughts. I would use it as anacronym for the National Institute of Clinical Excellence.
Linda: Whenapplied to me, it’s boring. When applied to other people, it’s … nice. In agood way.

4. You havethe chance to spend an evening with a film star of your choice. Whom would youchoose and what do you hope the evening would bring? (Be honest.)
Sara: Buddy the Elf: we could talk aboutSanta over a bowl of spaghetti and maple syrup. He could show me how to maketoys and snow balls and we would sing a Christmas duet. If Buddy couldn’t makeit that evening then I’d have to settle for Hitman.
Linda: I seldomwatch TV or movies, so I can’t think of any film stars I’d want to spend timewith.

5. Completethe following sentence – ‘If I won the lottery and discovered that the prizehad to be shared with 3 million other winners, I would …’
Sara: Slip into Real Virtuality and burn3 million tickets.
Linda: Sharewith 3 million other winners. I don’t mind sharing. In fact, sometimes it’sdownright … nice.

6. If you hadto change nationality, which would you choose and why?
Sara: I would become Fijian for the sun,sea, sand and surnames. I could be lying on a beach with a coconutin one hand and a machete in the other. I would be called Sara Yalayalatabuaand live on a diet of fish (and coconuts).
Linda: Somethingabout Celts calls to me. Perhaps because some of my ancestors came from Ireland. So,I’d have to say Irish. Maybe Scottish or Welsh.

7. Nominate 3types of people for a long custodial sentence in a prison that uses painfulexperimental therapies to ‘cure’ its inmates. (NOTE. Obvious categories, suchas bigots, tyrants, traffic wardens, estate agents, bankers, politicians andfamily and friends of Rupert Murdoch do not count.)
Sara: The managing director of TrinityMirror (just refusing her a monthly session of botox and breaking her nailswould be sufficient to make her scream in agony) ... wait a minute, you said“types” of people: sorry, the managing directors of Trinity Mirror (see supra);my next door neighbour; scammers (including scam callers, hackers,phishers, virus programmers and TalkTalk sales people).
Linda: I don’tthink causing pain is the way to cure anyone or anything.

8. Your fairygodmother grants you a wish. You can curl up in front of the fire with yourfavourite object. What is it? (NOTE. You can define ‘object’ in any way youlike.)
Sara: Her magic wand complete with itsfull English manual.
Linda: A book,of course. Or paper and pen—which is two objects, but they really belong toeach other and form one unit.

9. A beggarsitting on a blanket on the pavement (OK, sidewalk, if you insist), says as youpass, ‘Fortune has favoured you but looks less kindly on deprived and desperatebeings such as myself. It would be a kindness if you were to redistribute someof your wealth to redress the balance between you and I’. What do you reply?
Sara: Nice.
Linda: Nothing.I was born in New York Cityand was trained to ignore people sitting on the pavement looking for a handout.

10. Would youlike to be immortal? Why or why not?
Sara: There can only be one and that’sConnor McLeod of the Clan McLeod: I’m afraid that I’m a Macdonald and I haven’tsharpened my sword in nigh on three thousand years.
Linda: Itdepends upon what goes along with it. Right now, I say no. On my deathbed, I’llprobably say yes.
Melissa: No. Iwas confronted with that question when I wrote The Gossamer Sphere. My character Caitlin is immortal(as long as she doesn’t suffer a violent death) and has lived for over athousand years. She’s had to watch those she’s loved grow old and die and it’shardened her heart. It’s unnatural for a person to outlive theirchildren, and I can’t imagine myself living without mine…so no, I’d rather dieas we were meant to, in our own time. Unless, of course, I could stayyoung and beautiful and keep all my loved ones with me. In that case,bring on the immortality!

11. What musicwould you play through loudspeakers at night outside the house of someone youdisliked intensely?
Sara: I’ve Gota Brand New Combine Harvester by the Worzels – on a loop.
Linda: See myanswer to question #7.

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The questionnaire - more of your answers

2011-07-27T16:08:00.001+01:00

More responses to the questionnaire, more revelations from yourdeep, dark psyches. This time, the contributors are Donnie Ross,Melanie Robertson-King, and Fiona Glass. Once again, comment from me is superfluous.

1. If such a choice were possible and meaningful, would you preferto live in a real or a virtual world? Why?
Donnie: I already live in a world whichis simultaneously both real and virtual. So do you. Stop kiddingyourself. Why? There’s no choice, other than to become awareof the real situation. And the virtualone.

Melanie: Real. Yeah, itstinks at times but the virtual world is a place to escape to when real lifegets too tough by picking up a book and reading or putting "pen topaper" and writing.

Fiona: The real world seemspretty good to me. I’ve always wanted to be a writer... and I’m a writer. I’vealways wanted to live in the English Lake District... andwe’re hoping to move there later this year. I’m not sure I’d find anythingbetter than that, no matter how good the virtual world. (Sorry if I sound smug,by the way. It’s taken me a long time to get to this stage, if that’s anyconsolation.)

2. You have permission to paint a celebrity in a colour of yourchoosing. That doesn’t mean you make a portrait, you actually get to cover themin paint. Tell us which celebrity, what colour, and why?
Donnie: Donald Trump, CremnitzWhite. Why do you think? Lead Carbonate??

Melanie: Finger paint?Brush? Or just pour the bucket over his/her head? All could be fun. The colourand the person... hmm... will think about this one and come back to it...
Mel Gibson and it would be black... he's turned into such an ass (hope I cansay that without getting sued). And I would pour the bucket over his head.

Fiona: Mel Gibson, brightblue. He deserves it for the historical drivel in Braveheart.

3. What do you think of the word ‘nice’? In what contexts would youuse it?
Donnie: Curate’s egg of a word. Good parts: I use it in the sense of accurateor condign. Sometimes of people, maybewith a tinge of irony, but a nice one.

Melanie: It's lame andoverused. I'd only use it when the thesaurus lurking in my brain couldn't comeup with a word/phrase to replace it.

Fiona: Perfectly decentword if you ask me, but like so many cliches it’s been over-used to heck andback. Nowadays I would only use it in deep third person point of view if thecharacter I was writing about was likely to use it themselves.

4. You have the chance to spend an evening with a film star of yourchoice. Whom would you choose and what do you hope the evening would bring? (Behonest.)
Donnie: Tom what’s his name, he’snice. No, not Cruz. No, wait, that bloke from Indiana Jones, he might like my book,!Leonardo Mind for Modern Times (in Swahili). Nah, Margherita Buys. She’s Italian, and the link with Donatello isirresistible too. Besides, she doesn’tknow me from Google.

Melanie: It would have tobe either Judy Dench or Helen Mirren. I love their films and would like to justsit down over a cuppa or something and have a good natter.

Fiona: Preferably someonewho didn’t look like a Greek god. I’m way too shy to talk to anyone as perfectas that and besides, in my experience the more handsome a man is, the morelikely he is to talk about himself for hours. Give me someone who looks likethe back end of a bus but is witty, charming and intelligent.

5. Complete the following sentence – ‘If I won the lottery anddiscovered that the prize had to be shared with 3 million other winners, Iwould …’
Donnie: … make a decision based on astrategic analysis backed up by advice from Health & Safety.

Melanie: I guess a lotwould depend on the size of the jackpot but I'd likely have the entire prizespent in my mind first, then take out a calculator and figure out what my shareof the loot would be.

Fiona: Shrug. It’s just myluck to win the lottery and end up with sixpence. Having said that, vast sumsof money don’t interest me - they bring responsibility and even unhappiness oftheir own.

6. If you had to change nationality, which would you choose and why?
Donnie: Italian. Per che non?

Melanie: That's ano-brainer for me. Scottish. My dad was born in Aberdeenshire and came to Canada as aHome Child in 1930. Not to mention, I love the accent and the look of a man ina kilt.

Fiona: Irish. They speakthe same language, the country is beautiful and they have a wonderful andinspiring heritage of culture, music and literature.

7. Nominate 3 types of people for a long custodial sentence in aprison that uses painful experimental therapies to ‘cure’ its inmates. (NOTE.Obvious categories, such as bigots, tyrants, traffic wardens, estate agents,bankers, politicians and family and friends of Rupert Murdoch do not count.)
Donnie: 1) People who’ve recently died.2) People who’ve been dead for a while. 3) People who’ve been dead a longtime. This will teach those who runprisons not to waste their time with painful therapies, when they should beimplanting electrodes into the relevant brain areas.

Melanie: Paedophiles, drugdealers and rapists. And with the former and the latter, put them in generalpopulation and let the other inmates have their way with them. They wouldn'tlast long.

Fiona: People who get paidto do a job but refuse to do it properly. People who are rude for no goodreason. People who shout at children in public. (There’s plenty of others I’dlike to nominate, but that’ll do for now...)

8. Your fairy godmother grants you a wish. You can curl up in frontof the fire with your favourite object. What is it? (NOTE. You can define‘object’ in any way you like.)
Donnie: Liddell & Scott’s GreekLexicon. It’s exactly the rightthickness for a pillow.

Melanie: I'd curl up withmy husband. Could we have a bear-skin rug and perhaps a bottle of chilledchampagne?

Fiona: My fairygodmother??? You mean I have a fairy godmother? Good grief, where’sshe been hiding all these years? As to the question, I’m going to cheat. A goodbook and a cup of tea. I know, that’s two objects. So sue me.

9. A beggar sitting on a blanket on the pavement (OK, sidewalk, ifyou insist), says as you pass, ‘Fortune has favoured you but looks less kindlyon deprived and desperate beings such as myself. It would be a kindness if youwere to redistribute some of your wealth to redress the balance between you andI’. What do you reply?
Donnie: Nae ti me!

Melanie: Sod off? I try notto make eye contact in these situations. In the end it likely wouldn't be quiteso abrupt. I'd fall back on the 'sorry don't have any cash' excuse. And it'snot really an excuse because with debit and credit cards, who carries cashanymore?

Fiona: I don’t think Iwould reply, I’d be too busy running away! (Has anyone seen Jasper Carrot’smarvellous ‘Nutter on the bus’ sketch? That’s me, right there, next to thenutter...)

10. Would you like to be immortal? Why or why not?
Donnie: Up to a point. There would be enough time to get seriousabout learning to play the piano (500 years), paint (250 years oils, 400 yearswatercolour), write (1000 years). Spending5000 years without thinking a single thought about football would be a blow forfreedom. After all that I would go downthe pub and then go clubbing. One has toget out a bit sometime.

Melanie: I think I'd getbored living that long. And I'd want to have my health, otherwise, I'll stickwith the lot I've been given and punch my ticket when the time comes... and Idon't plan on it being any time soon. Could I come back and visit? By then my'real' world would be unknown so my return would be my virtual world fromquestion 1.

Fiona: No. Imagine havingto watch everyone you ever knew or loved die, including your own children andgrandchildren. It would be heartbreaking, and very, very lonely.

11. What music would you play through loudspeakers at night outsidethe house of someone you disliked intensely?
Donnie: Schubert’s String Quintet. If they hated it that would show I was rightabout them. If they loved it I wouldchange my opinion of them.

Melanie: It would have tobe Jeff Wayne's musical version of War of the Worlds. Cranked up good and loud!Bought the 2 CD set on my last trip to the UK after listening to snippetswhile we were driving...

Fiona: Black Lace’s‘Agadoo’. Possibly the most irritating song ever, and catchy enough to stick inyour brain so they’d be humming it for days, thus doubling thetorture. (Tiptoes away to dig out the hi-fi...)

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Impressions

2011-07-23T11:46:00.001+01:00

Strange stuff, this blogging. Only fourresponses to the questionnaire and yet lots more visitors than the average whenI posted them. I was hoping for more because the ones I got were so good, notonly in themselves but when you put them beside one another and saw thevariations. It was a great show of creativity as fun and I’ll probably tryanother one at some point. For those of you who didn’t respond, though, thequestions are still there and new contributions are welcome.

Anyway, this week time presses so I’m doinganother cop-out blog. It’s a corny old sketch I wrote when my wife and I usedto do a revue at the Edinburgh Festival. She’d deliver this monologue in acockney accent:

Funny ’ow ’istory never gets its factsright, innit? Take the Impressionists. They was s’posed to be ‘a generationwhose fragmentation of the visual elements of experience dispensed with theerroneously deduced borders between reality and art’. Bloody rubbish. I oughtto know, I used to make the tea for ’em.

I’d go into the studio – naked, ofcourse – well, that was one of the rules, you see; gents wore clothes, ladiesdidn’t. Mr Manet thought of that one. He was a little bit inadequate, I think,our Edward. Anyway, I’d go into the studio and there they’d all be talkingabout translucent pigmentation and the transient fragility of perceptualexperience, and they’d shout ‘’allo, Flo. Nice tits’. And they’d all laugh, and start up again about the aesthetics oftranscendence and textures within traditional chiarascuro concepts. They didn’tseem to mind me listening to all their filthy talk. I had to be very carefulnot to step on Mr Lautrec, but they’d put 'im up on the mantelpiece where Icould see 'im, so he wasn’t in any real danger.

Trouble was, the salon kept on refusingtheir paintin’s, and they’d come ’ome in a foul temper. Mr Cézanne would sitthere fondling his oranges, Mr Degas used to get livid, ’specially when peoplecalled him ‘Dayga’ instead of ‘Duhga’. 'e’d shout ‘It’s bloody Duhga. There’sno bloody accent’. And ’e’d go off with 'is ballet dancers. And 'is jockeys. ’ewas a bit funny, ’e was. And Mr Lautrec was so livid ’e nearly fell off themantelpiece. Mr Gauguin was lucky. ’e won a competition – you ’ad to look atsix pictures of sheds and pick out the Taj Mahal. ’e won first prize – a tripto the South Seas.

But every year it was the same. Troublewas, people kept encouragin’ ’em. That Mr Baudelaire, the poet. Fancied 'imselfas an art critic. ’e came along one day and said they was the forerunners ofone of the greatest revolutions paintin’s ever seen. ’e was pissed at the time,mind you. And ’e had a dead rabbit on a string. Said ’e was looking after it for afriend while she had some confidential treatment.

You know the real trouble though – theiroptician. ’e was rubbish. ’e tried to sell Mr Zola three contact lenses. Mindyou, I only realised what was goin’ on when I noticed Mr Seurat’s glasses 'adspots all over ’em. And Mr Renoir – well, ’e used to get a bit excited when allthe models was there and ’is’d steam up, so 'is paintin’s came out all fuzzy. Andyou all know ’ow different Mr Van Gogh’s paintin’s was – well, ’e couldn’t wearglasses at all, ’cause of 'is ear. So that’s it you see. All the optician’sfault. Pity, they could’ve been good artists.

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The Questionnaire - your answers

2011-07-19T10:53:00.002+01:00

The interesting (well, to me anyway) thing about this idea is that,although it was only meant to be a silly exercise, a piece of fun and a blogfiller, the daft questions actually provoke responses which can be as revealingas straight answers to serious questions. There’s also the thought that thequestions themselves reveal more about me than I realized. The emphasis seemsto be more on doing nasty things to people I dislike than to glorying in thewonders of friendship and lovable human beings. Maybe that’s why I have so fewfriends. Anyway, I’ve had four responses so far, from Michael Malone, C. N. Nevets,Janice Horton andAnneke Klein. They’re allentertaining, varied and, most importantly, fun, so with no commentary from me, here they are:

If such a choice were possible and meaningful, would you prefer to live in a real or a virtual world? Why?
(Michael) I would prefer to live in Disney World. No bad news and everybody is cheery.
(Nevets) Real. I'm already bad at telling the difference sometimes.
(Janice) I prefer to live in the real world and visit the virtual one.
Anneke) At the moment, a virtual world can't exist without the real physical world. The machines used to get access to the virtual world are all part of the physical world. If a virtual world, separate from the real world, would actually exist, staying there would be a different experience. Then, living in a virtual world, such as Second Life, would be like living in another real world, only with different options. Difficult to imagine. But the benefits of transportation through teleportation would never make up for giving up the joy of smelling and tasting good food. If that would be the case, I'd rather stick with my old fashioned imperfect real world.
You have permission to paint a celebrity in a colour of your choosing. That doesn’t mean you make a portrait, you actually get to cover them in paint. Tell us which celebrity, what colour, and why?
(Michael) Ooooo - drums fingers on bottom lip while thinking - the Rebekah Brooks wummin. and it wouldn't be paint, it would be tar with a pillow full of feathers. Why? I've always had a strong dislike of the gutter press and what they stand for and she was right at the centre of it all.
(Nevets) Jennifer Garner in red, because it's the first thing that came to mind. I'm a little disturbed that I didn't even have to think about it.
(Janice) Gordon Ramsay. Pink. He’s such an arse.
Anneke) This one is too hard. Why would I want to do such a thing? I thought about it for hours. Then I went to Paul McCartney and covered him in blue.
'Why did you do that?,' he asked, still dripping.
I shrugged. 'A guy named Kirton suggested it.'
'Kirton,' he said, 'and who the hell is that?'
'A writer, I can recommend his books,' I said. I grabbed in my bag and put two paperbacks on the table. 'There's The Figurehead, and The Sparrow Conundrum. He's a paperback writer.'
Paul didn't laugh. He picked up The Sparrow Conundrum and flipped through the pages. 'Which one should I start with?'
'I'd say The Figurehead', one of my favourites. The Sparrow Conundrum is more suitable for, how can I say this politely, people with a good sense of humour.'
'Ah,' he said. 'No, that's not me.'
'I thought so,' I said.
He took The Figurehead and left without saying goodbye. I noticed I was humming Black bird singing in the dead of night, and wondered if I'd chosen the wrong colour.
What do you think of the word ‘nice’? In what contexts would you use it?
(Michael) Nice is a nice word and underrated in my view. Some things are just NICE and no other words will do to describe them. No, don't put me on the spot, I can't think of anything right now.
(Nevets) As a compliment it's luke warm. As an exclamation it's on par with "Sweet!" As an adjective, it feels smooshy. I usually use the middle option only.
(Janice) Nice is such a negative word - as in ‘I’m trying to be nice’.
Anneke) I would use it here, in: 'What a nice question.'
You have the chance to spend an evening with a film star of your choice. Whom would you choose and what do you hope the evening would bring? (Be honest.)
(Michael) Jennifer Aniston and I hope the evening would bring romance, a marriage and a shitload of book sales because of my new celebrity status.
(Nevets) Robert De Niro. I want to learn to imitate his voice.
(Janice) OMG. I’m a married woman so I can’t answer this question on the grounds that I might incriminate myself.
Anneke) Jean Paul Belmondo. When I was very young I fell in love with him, deeply. It happened when I saw him in the film L'animal. He kissed every woman in the film, and they all loved it. I couldn't resist either. I started dreaming about him. Fascinating, after all he wasn't actually considered to be a 'real' 'beauty', but his eyes.... his eyes. He's 78 now, I'd love to discover if he still has it. I would not expect much though. Hopefully he's fun to chat with.
Complete the following sentence – ‘If I won the lottery and discovered that the prize had to be shared with 3 million other winners, I would …’
(Michael) If I won the lottery - blah - 3 million other winners, I would laugh (cos I'm assuming there isn't much to go around). I would laugh lots. Call the universe a bastard and then laugh some more.
(Nevets) Hope that I had bought all 3 million other tickets myself.
(Janice) Buy a bottle of Champagne/Cava, the quality of which would depend on how much I’d won.
Anneke) be thrilled, because the prize is 300 million zillion euros.
If you had to change nationality, which would you choose and why?
(Michael) French. I'm a bit of a francophile - and then I would have to learn the language and buy a second home in Paris. Cos you do, don't you?
(Nevets) Japan. I think I'd get along pretty well there.
(Janice) Always fancied being American. I know they like our accent (Brit) but I quite like theirs.
Anneke) I would refuse, and if they kept insisting I'd beat them with my wooden shoes.
Nominate 3 types of people for a long custodial sentence in a prison that uses painful experimental therapies to ‘cure’ its inmates. (NOTE. Obvious categories, such as bigots, tyrants, traffic wardens, estate agents, bankers, politicians and family and friends of Rupert Murdoch do not count.)
(Michael) This one is going to be a bit obvious - paedophiles, rapists and murderers. Oh and people who turn right against the traffic but don't signal until you are stuck behind them for AGES. Bastards.
(Nevets) People who crush the self esteem of children. People who thwart the dreams of others. People who act destructively in noble ignorance.
(Janice) OMG. I can’t answer this question on the grounds that I might incriminate myself at work.
Anneke) People who put laminate floors in their house, because it is so easy. The ones that claim it really looks good have to do extra time.
People who say it's very unhealthy to drink milk (and/or evangelise similar kinds of fashionable food religions).
People who claim that everything in the world is there for a purpose and/or that everything in the world is connected, and get angry when I say I don't believe in this kind of nonsense.
Your fairy godmother grants you a wish. You can curl up in front of the fire with your favourite object. What is it? (NOTE. You can define ‘object’ in any way you like.)
(Michael) My "object" - and I would never objectify women - would be Jennifer Aniston - and then we would marry and I would get a shitload of book sales because of my new celebrity status.
(Nevets) More fire.
(Janice) My fully loaded Kindle. Can I have wine too please?
Anneke) I'd thank her for the fireplace. I always wanted to have one. Then I will ask my fairy godmother to join me. I'd love to hear what else she has in store for me.
A beggar sitting on a blanket on the pavement (OK, sidewalk, if you insist), says as you pass, ‘Fortune has favoured you but looks less kindly on deprived and desperate beings such as myself. It would be a kindness if you were to redistribute some of your wealth to redress the balance between you and I’. What do you reply?
(Michael) I've only got a pound on me, mate (I'm like royalty me, never carry money). Here you go. (I throw him the pound.)
(Nevets) Sorry, no cash. And it would probably be true.
(Janice) I would give him a fiver. If he can deliver a spiel like that he’s neither drugged up or zonked out - neither of which I can abide in a beggar.
Anneke) I''ll say that I would give him his share as soon as he comes up with a better, more creative, reason. This will inspire him tremendously. He'll start thinking, writing, practising, until he's so good, his book gets published and becomes a big hit. It'll make him very rich and famous. He'll tell the story about that friendly lady who inspired him, in every talk show on tv. And that he would love to thank her if he could find her. Bad luck for him, they'll find me, and let me show up in one of these shows as a surprise. He'll play his role well, he'll even accept my gift, my own book. However, he'll leave it in his dressing room where the cleaning lady will find it it. She'll take it home with her, not that she will ever read it, she grew up in a poor village in Morocco and never learned how to read. She just took it because she liked the picture of the violin player on the cover. It reminded her of her late father.
I will end up completely broke and homeless, until Jesus saves me and as a born again Christian I'll start a very successful career as a real-estate agent. The rest of my life I spend forgiving people for their laminate floors.
Would you like to be immortal? Why or why not?
(Michael) Immortality? No thanks. Life has its cycle and it would be beyond boring to live forever. Now, if you were to offer me the gift of flight I would chew your hand off.
(Nevets) Yeah, I think the Highlander was wrong.
(Janice) No. It’s not how long you live but how you live. (Wouldn’t mind popping back though, say in 200 years or more, to see how things have progressed and if Star Trek has come true.)
(Anneke) You don't have to be friends with Faust to understand that this is a trick question. It doesn't say when I would get immortality. Imagine, I'm 95, deaf and blind, with Parkinsons. With my trembling fingers I just signed my euthanasia request. Then they say: 'You always said you'd like to be immortal, didn't you?. Hey, guess what a surprise I have for you.'
What music would you play through loudspeakers at night outside the house of someone you disliked intensely?
(Michael) Killing in the name - by Rage Against the Machine - apparently they used this as torture in Guantanamo. That suggests it's effective.
(Nevets) The Blues Brothers' cover of Stand By Your Man.
(Janice) Motorhead. It’s just a racket.
Anneke) Great one. The issue here is that it is important to choose something that most people hate but that you actually like yourself. Unless you are a masochist of course.
I once took a class on avant garde music, and after listening to Iannis Xenakis' Persepolis I felt my tooth fillings had come loose. But, after having listened to all kinds of modern music I got used to this kind of sounds and actually started to appreciate the music. Give it a try. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJUR2qkJup0&feature=related
If this is too hard, I recommend Bebop. Charlie Parker is a genius.

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The Questionnaire - my own answers

2011-07-17T15:56:00.000+01:00

So far I've had a couple of responses to the questionnaire I offered in my previous posting and some of their answers were so good I wanted to steal them so, in order to avoid feeling the same about any others that arrive, I thought I'd get my own out of the way. So, here's my offering:

If such a choice were possible and meaningful, would you prefer to live in a real or a virtual world? Why?
A: Real, because that’s what virtual aspires to be anyway (although it would be nice to ride unicorns, to remain at an age you can select for yourself, and not to have to perform embarrassing private functions associated with waste products and other secretions).
You have permission to paint a celebrity in a colour of your choosing. That doesn’t mean you make a portrait, you actually get to cover them in paint. Tell us which celebrity, what colour, and why?
A: Mick Jagger – black. Black because it’s negative and anyway he sang about it, but mainly because his ‘dancing’ is that of a white middle-class Englishman who can’t dance and also because he can’t sing. Oh, and he’s a ‘Sir’ – ludicrous.

What do you think of the word ‘nice’? In what contexts would you use it?
A: Immensely irritating because it’s so appropriate for so many contexts and stops people finding a more specific, more accurate word. I’d use it when I meant anything but nice.

You have the chance to spend an evening with a film star of your choice. Whom would you choose and what do you hope the evening would bring? (Be honest.)
A: George Clooney. I’d hope all his qualities (and physical attributes) were contagious. (Failing that, Isabelle Adjani – no need to say what I’d hope for.)

Complete the following sentence – ‘If I won the lottery and discovered that the prize had to be shared with 3 million other winners, I would …’
A: … become the world’s biggest serial killer.

If you had to change nationality, which would you choose and why?
A: French. They know how to live, how to relax. They assume that everyone else wants to be French, too.

Nominate 3 types of people for a long custodial sentence in a prison that uses painful experimental therapies to ‘cure’ its inmates. (NOTE. Obvious categories, such as bigots, tyrants, traffic wardens, estate agents, bankers, politicians and family and friends of Rupert Murdoch do not count.)
A: People who drive in the middle lane of the motorway when they’re not overtaking. Footballers who feign injury. Anyone who makes any sort of noise which disturbs me (which is most noises, most of the time).

Your fairy godmother grants you a wish. You can curl up in front of the fire with your favourite object. What is it? (NOTE. You can define ‘object’ in any way you like.)
A: A complicated kit for making a full scale wooden model of one of the great tea clippers.

A beggar sitting on a blanket on the pavement (OK, sidewalk, if you insist), says as you pass, ‘Fortune has favoured you but looks less kindly on deprived and desperate beings such as myself. It would be a kindness if you were to redistribute some of your wealth to redress the balance between you and I’. What do you reply?
A: (OK, I confess I altered this one in order to allow me to make one of my pathetic gags based on linguistic things. Originally, I was just interested in the idea of how people would respond to an apparently educated, sophisticated beggar, but as I wrote it, the gag occurred, so I would say to him …)
The final pronoun should be ‘me’ not ‘I’.

Would you like to be immortal? Why or why not?
A: I want to cheat and be somewhere in the middle because I hate the idea of outliving family and friends and the degeneration involved would be intolerable but, on the other hand, I have huge curiosity about everything so I want to know what happens.

What music would you play through loudspeakers at night outside the house of someone you disliked intensely?
A: Mozart’s Queen of the Night, sung by Florence Foster Jenkins. You can hear it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM6qntPpyZ0

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The Questionnaire

2011-07-16T15:40:00.000+01:00

I’m in that wonderful proofreading modeagain – the galleys for Brilliant Workplace Skills have just arrived so I canstop trying to force myself to switch from thinking about writing to writingand instead get on with doing something useful by trying to weed out anyremaining typos. So this is an attempt to keep you visiting while I get on withthat. And it was triggered by thinking about doing some more interviews andinviting some more guests.

There are lots of blogs which conductexcellent interviews with writers and others and it’s always interesting tohear how they approach their work and the attitudes they have to theprofession. I’ve even held some here and will no doubt do more in the future.But I want to propose something a little different because I think we perhapsreveal more about ourselves, or maybe create a more telling impression of whowe are (or who we want to appear to be) when questions aren’t direct orleading. That’s why I’m inviting you to respond to a questionnaire.

As you’ll see, the questions are … er …unusual, but that’s intentional. Routine is deadly, so I like to useprovocation, invite the unexpected, connect things which don’t belong together.Don’t worry, in order that you won’t feel inhibited, the first respondent willbe me. As I wrote the questions, I hadn’t thought of that. So my approach tothem will be the same as yours. The only difference is that, by posting thisI’m actually committing myself to completing the questionnaire while you canslink away and find more interesting blogs to read.

But if you do join in, I’d prefer answersto be relatively short – maybe not as repressively so as tweets, but shortenough to stay interesting. Also, if lots of people take up the offer, it wouldmake the comments section rather long, so I suggest you send your answers to mevia email (bill@bill-kirton.co.uk)and I’ll post them in whatever combinations seem to make sense. If the responseis a deathly silence, I’ll know that no-one ever reads this or that those whodo have lots to hide.

But it’s not serious – the main object isto banish predictability and have some fun, so …

THE QUESTIONNAIRE

If such a choice were possible and meaningful, would you prefer to live in a real or a virtual world? Why?
A:
You have permission to paint a celebrity in a colour of your choosing. That doesn’t mean you make a portrait, you actually get to cover them in paint. Tell us which celebrity, what colour, and why?
A:
What do you think of the word ‘nice’? In what contexts would you use it?
A:
You have the chance to spend an evening with a film star of your choice. Whom would you choose and what do you hope the evening would bring? (Be honest.)
A:
Complete the following sentence – ‘If I won the lottery and discovered that the prize had to be shared with 3 million other winners, I would …’
A:
If you had to change nationality, which would you choose and why?
A:
Nominate 3 types of people for a long custodial sentence in a prison that uses painful experimental therapies to ‘cure’ its inmates. (NOTE. Obvious categories, such as bigots, tyrants, traffic wardens, estate agents, bankers, politicians and family and friends of Rupert Murdoch do not count.)
A:
Your fairy godmother grants you a wish. You can curl up in front of the fire with your favourite object. What is it? (NOTE. You can define ‘object’ in any way you like.)
A:
A beggar sitting on a blanket on the pavement (OK, sidewalk, if you insist), says as you pass, ‘Fortune has favoured you but looks less kindly on deprived and desperate beings such as myself. It would be a kindness if you were to redistribute some of your wealth to redress the balance between you and I’. What do you reply?
A:
Would you like to be immortal? Why or why not?
A:
What music would you play through loudspeakers at night outside the house of someone you disliked intensely?
A:

I look forward to:

a) some interesting answers andrevelations, or

b) tumbleweed and the sound of the desertwind.

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Confess me, brother - a welcome guest blog

2011-07-08T16:08:00.000+01:00

At last - another guest blog from brother Ron, a wry entertaining peek at life through his much fresher perspective. He said he'd thought of fictionalising it to submit it to Rammenas but, since it's an account of actual events, he decided instead to bring it to this virtual confessional and repent. (Actually, I rather like the idea of offering this as a Sacrament of Penance so if any of you feel like confessing something, feel free to get in touch with Brother Bill.) Anyway, this is what Ron wrote:

There was something about the detail in hisanswer phone message that made me prick up my ears:

“….myname is Eric Hill. It’s now five past eleven on Tuesday the 26^th ofJuly. I’d like to speak with you, if you’d like to give me a call. It’s mybusiness number. Leave a good time to get back to you if I’m not around. Mynumber is 0473….”

Perfectly innocuous of course, except whenit’s filtered through an over-fertile imagination. I often wish I’d never metthat phrase, “what if?” – the stock in trade of you writers. In this case Ineeded to consider, “What if he’s a local businessman with a legitimate andun-threatening proposal which would be to our mutual benefit?” The obviouscourse was to call him, have an adult conversation and find out, but no: simpleI may be but I don’t always do simple things.

It was the lack of context and the factthat his message wasn’t aimed specifically at either me, or my wife, that wasunsettling. I reasoned it was a pretty fair bet that if a businessman wasringing me at home he didn’t want to talk about how my tomatoes were coming onand leapt immediately to the conclusion that he was after something, probablymy money. Instead of ringing him, I Googled him.

Given the fatal fork I had taken on myimaginative road, I was not surprised to discover he was a property developer.Not quite enough evidence to take back to the lively debates my wife and I werenow having about judgement and tolerance but, a start. Information on the webpresented him as successful, involved in several prestigious localdevelopments, mainly residential. Residential…..hm. He was involved infund-raising for a number of local and national charities (clearly a cover forhis nefarious dealings on the property market).

I then made my final mistake by clicking ona link that took me to a forum which had two people exchanging views about mydeveloper.

“Quite a few mysterious fires over theyears…..Eric Hill owned one place…just when he was having cash flowproblems…..”

This was even worse than I had imagined. Theman was a villain, and he was going to set fire to my broad beans and build aresidential development in my garden. Thus armed, I returned to my wife withmy, “I told you” file bulging. To her credit she was unimpressed but agreed notto ring him and to let him make the next move. And the very language I’m usinghere hints at the paranoid state of mind into which I’d sunk.

I’m just so grateful that I was not therewhen he did make his next move, which was to call and ask my wife if she wasstill involved in life-coaching and could she help his niece confront aproblem. I’m almost worried about the lack of relish with which my wife relayedthis to me. The worst she said was, “That’ll teach you….”

But I’m not sure it will. Although Ichanged the property developer’s name, I will tell you the name of the ebayseller I’ve just bought a golf trolley from: Mr Bones. And once again thecreative cogs whirr: Billy Bones, the first pirate we meet in Treasure Island,a distant relative in Basildon….

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Words, rocks, respect.

2011-07-02T14:34:00.004+01:00

Please, bear with me, be gentle with meand, above all, be patient with me. The next paragraph will, probably from thevery first word, get you clicking the exit button and deleting me from yourblogs-I-occasionally-visit list. Please, though, try to resist the urge andjust read it and then I’ll explain why I risked losing your friendship or justyour casual curiosity through such flippancy. It’s a spoof opening to asupposed review of a non-existent book called Ambiguity and Gastronomy inTennyson’s 'In Memoriam'. If the book had ever existed, it would have been writtenby Professor V. Nonchalant. (If any such person exists, I apologiseunreservedly for hi-jacking his/her name.) Here, then, is how my review ofhis/her book starts:

Teleological inadequacy in the quest for meta-fictional catharsisis a trope too frequently associated with linguistic excess. In his previousstudies of root vegetables in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason andhis monograph entitled Descartes and the Bay Leaf, ProfessorNonchalant posited the extensory variability of post-cultural deviance in theseventeenth century’s sporadic yet transitional dalliance with anarchicconceptualisations of disassociated herbivorous phenomena. Here, he extends hisexegetical analysis of textual malfunctions to encompass the twin themes ofliteracy and indigestion, arguing persuasively that the Victorians’semi-precocious insistence on the iconography of laissez-faire nutritionalexpediency both complemented and contradicted their equally fervent adherenceto the vertiginous monotony of the iambic pentameter. That, in simplisticterms, is the point de départ of this 642 page study.

If you’re still reading, thanks for yourpersistence and good will. The paragraph, of course, means absolutely nothing.It’s unadulterated garbage masquerading as learning. In a moment, I’ll get towhy I’ve quoted it here but first, why write it at all? Well, some of you mayhave visited the excellent booksquawk.com (and, if you go there this week, you’llsee my latest review for Lisa Hinsley’s My Demon in which I use the word I introduced in my last posting – algolagnia).The site is celebrating the fact that it’s attracted 25,000 visitors and Isuggested one way to celebrate would be for all its regular contributors tosend in a parody paragraph of the worst type of reviewing they could think of –not nasty or vicious stuff, just typical of the most pretentious or just plainsilly garbage. The idea was to just have a bit of fun.

So I wrote the above as an example andposted it to the group. But here’s the interesting thing. Two of the othercontributors – both friends and excellent writers – knew that it was only aparody and therefore not supposed to make sense but they tried to read it as ifit did, and one of them said ‘my brain couldn't HELP trying to make sense of what youwrote...and it *almost* did’, a fact which she said was sort offrightening. So it brings us back toanother aspect of the power of words. If we see them laid out in seemingly normalstructures, we want to unlock what they’re saying. The tendency is to assumethat they ‘mean’ something so we do what they implicitly ask and try to givethem that meaning. And if we can’t, we think it’s our fault.

But what if I hadn’t confessed that the paragraph was justcrap? I’d be admired for my profundity and towering intellect or dismissed as acon-man and a wanker, and all sorts of other things in between. And all becauseof my words. People are in awe of words, especially big ones; they’re powerful, theyshape our experience and they’re the only things that suggest meaning in theaccidental absurdities of the world we live in. My old mate Sisyphus had hisrock; we have words. It's a big responsibility. Let’s respect them.
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Words, words, words – again

2011-06-24T13:27:00.000+01:00

I know you only come here to find solutionsto all your writing problems or learn how to conduct yourself in polite societyor maybe find out the latest on chaffinch migrations, but this time I’ll justbe waffling on about some recent events – totally separate and yet linked by aspecific theme.

I should first establish that I have thatfeeling of well-being you get when you open a package and find yourself holdinga copy of your latest book. In this case, it’s not technically the latestbecause The Figurehead has been available for a year now, but this is the newPfoxchase edition – you know, the one with the cover I’ve been raving about fora while – and it’s even more gorgeous in the flesh than it seems in thepicture. I know ebooks are the future (and the present, too), but they’ll neverbe able to replicate the physical feeling of opening the pages, seeing yourwords there, feeling the weight of the object in your hand and, well, justlooking at the actual evidence that you’ve written it.

Anyway, let’s get to the theme I mentioned.Because the books aren’t yet being printed in the UK,they came in a package from the USAand one scary aspect of them was that one of the labels was clearly marked, inbig letters, LANGLEY,which is where the CIA holds its garden parties and other events. A secondlabel showed that the books had first gone to Frankfurtand a third carried just one word – OVERWEIGHT. So there they were, threeseemingly innocent scraps of paper which illustrated perfectly the power ofwords – isolated words, words not strung together by an individual to create aneffect or convey any particular meaning – just labels. But the first two –Langley and Frankfurt – made me wonder why I was under surveillance not only inAmerica but also in Germany, andthe final one was clearly a gratuitous personal insult.

So that’s one of the events. The nextconcerns a conference I went to this week, down in Edinburgh. By the way, if you haven’t beenthere yet, try to get there some time. Glasgowhas a dynamism and energy that’s terrific, and its architecture is impressive,but Edinburgh,with its castle rearing up across the gardens from Princes Street and its Georgian eleganceis like a beautifully realised film set. (Which is a pretty strange simile touse since film is artificial and Edinburghis emphatically real. Maybe that just shows how our exposure to mediaconditions our perceptions – to really believe in something we have to haveseen it on TV or at the cinema.) Anyway, I was there to do a wee role-play aspart of a presentation given by a friend of mine who’s a leading authority onrheumatology and he wanted someone to pretend to be a patient being interviewedby a nurse about taking part in clinical trials. And that was me.

But the reason I bother to mention it isthat, on the first slide of his presentation, he identified the people takingpart and there, at the bottom, were the words ‘Bill Kirton, Patient Actor’. AndI wonder whether you’ve just had the reaction I did when I read that. It mademe start speculating about all the other types of actor he could have had –impatient, stoical, gay, bloody furious – well, you can add plenty of your own adjectives.And it’s yet another example of the magical, independent power of words in isolation,and the other power – that which they give to those who can use themeffectively. The slide was simply identifying me as an actor playing a patient,and yet the simple juxtaposition of words created a totally differentphenomenon; it implied a specific personality type, suggested a whole storybehind why I was there, how I’d reacted to the request to play the role. It might even have been a comment on my entire acting career. Infact, it could easily have set the audience speculating about why it wasnecessary to stress that I was patient rather than grumpy or insecure. And myfriend might have been doling out his wisdom and expertise to a room full ofpeople who were more interested in solving the mystery of this enigmaticallypatient actor.

And one final word-related story. On thetrain to and from EdinburghI finished reading My Demon by Lisa Hinsley, which is a very readable, scarybook. I decided to review it for Booksquawk and today scribbled some notesabout it and, since one of its themes is the connection between lust and violence(even death), a word came into my head that I hadn’t used or even rememberedsince my days as a university lecturer. I didn’t use it much then, admittedly,but it cropped up now and again in articles on the Romantics or writers conveyingdecadence. It’s a small, undistinguished word but it carries all sorts ofechoes, implications, concepts and contradictions, and it illustrates thechasms that can open under just a single word. It’s algolagnia. Try it.

Words, eh?

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A taste of Sparrow

2011-06-20T12:57:00.004+01:00

Just to underline the difference I implied in my previous posting between myself and my sisters, while they’ve been doing good works for charity and generally spreading joy amongst their fellows, I’ve been sitting on my own in my study indulging myself and having a good time. I’ve been making what I first thought would be a trailer for the still simmering Sparrow but which turned into a short reading of the opening paragraphs with some fancy pictures signifying nothing.

As I think I’ve said before, making little videos like this is a wonderful displacement activity. It’s as absorbing as writing. And it’s a way of keeping the Sparrow simmering. Actually, come to think of it, this book seems to be spawning culinary metaphors. Maybe calling the video ‘A Taste of Sparrow’ will attract new followers, people who barbecue very small birds such as larks, wrens, ortolans and, of course, sparrows, strip the tiny morsels of flesh from their razor-sharp, throat-threatening bones and wash them down with a can or two of Irn Bru. (NOTE. In fact, the bones of ortolans aren’t like that at all. French bon-viveurs prefer them to be force-fed, marinated for ages in Armagnac then roasted, whereupon they eat them, bones and all. There you are, a gratuitous piece of knowledge you can use in your next conversation with a gastronomic aesthete.)

But these and other birdivores (a word which doesn’t exist, but should), are all welcome, as are any images, comments or symbols linking The Sparrow and gastronomy. I might be able to squeeze another blog out of them.

Three sisters, but not by Chekhov

2011-06-14T14:39:00.005+01:00

If you’re a relatively regular visitorhere, you’ll be aware of a shadowy presence that wafts in and out occasionallyto offer the odd guest blog and enigmatic comment. I refer, of course, to mybrother, Ron (whose next contribution is long overdue). My other brother, Bob,has better things to do with his time, and reserves his bons mots and wit forface to face get-togethers. But I think we’re all in agreement about at leastone thing – that we have three sisters whose dynamism and energy make us seemcomatose.

The reason I mention this ‘fact’, which canbe of no interest to anyone other than the six of us, is that I’m just backfrom a long weekend during which I benefitted from some of their energy andcommitment. I won’t embarrass them by saying anything of their personalcircumstances except to say that they’ve experienced (and continue toexperience) various trials and tribulations connected with health and withloss, some of them particularly devastating. And yet they are the mostpositive, life-affirming people I know. If you were to spend time with them,you’d think they’d never had a sad or painful moment. The saying is that youcan choose your friends but not your family – well, if I had been given thechoice, I’d never have come up with something so right as the wonderful balanceof my 5 siblings.

The main point of the weekend was abanquet. No, not a white tie and tails affair in a baronial hall with lukewarminstitutional food and thick layers of pretension, but a superb Italian mealfor 20 people, all prepared and cooked in my sister’s 12’ x 8’ kitchen andserved on 2 tables for 10 in her dining-room/sitting room. My 3 sisters and aniece did the cooking and serving, duly kitted out as maids. The aperitifs,hors d’oeuvres, 4 courses, coffee and digestifs were all served efficientlywithout any waiting around, the wine flowed copiously, and everything wasdelicious. The evening’s main sound track was laughter and the overall profitwas £680, which went to a cancer charity.

They hold these banquets maybe twice ayear, interspersed with quiz nights, the occasional barbecue and the even moreoccasional ball. Admittedly, they love doing it and have great fun with all thepreparations, but the mere thought of trying to organise and carry out such anevent makes me want to lie down in a quiet room and dab my fevered brow with asilk handkerchief.

I’d love to draw a general conclusion aboutall this, some insight that would solve the various crises in the Middle Eastor lighten the burden of the diseased and threatened in Asia, Africa and South America, but that would be glib and artificial andhave nothing to do with the uncomplicated joie de vivre that my sisters exude.So I just wanted to boast about them and make it known officially that I notonly love and admire them but am in awe of the things they do.

The chaffinch is back

2011-06-02T12:20:00.006+01:00

Last year, on May 19^th in fact, I blogged about a chaffinch which flew up and banged into the top of the window pane beside my desk. If you want to check it, it's here. At the time, I took a picture of my window from the viewpoint of his take-off area but could only see the blurred reflection of a tree (blurred because it’s reflected from the two layers of double-glazing). I did the same today and you can see the result, which doesn’t seem to me to contain anything that might look particularly inviting to a chaffinch. Last year, my speculations ran as follows: ‘Maybe the soul of a critic has transmigrated into his body and he hates writers. Maybe he’s practising some arcane act for the next Simon Cowell show – ‘Nature’s Got Talent’ or something. Maybe he’s a chaffinch philosopher and he’s just proving that ultimate satisfaction is unattainable.’

But here he is, back again, within a few weeks of the date of his last visit, so I need to adjust my thinking. It must be an annual pilgrimage. Now I’m not enough of an ornithologist to know whether birds have religions so, for all I know, my window might be the avian equivalent of Jerusalem, Mecca or Salt Lake City. On the other hand, it’s just one chaffinch. It may be a different one from last year but it’s still just one – and it’s not much of a religion if it’s only got one follower.

Much more sensible is to assume it’s a migration, but I checked that and they mostly migrate in Autumn, so what’s going on with this particular Fringilla coelebs? (See, I take it seriously enough to consult Wikipedia.) It’s obviously an unconventional chaffinch. Not only does it migrate in May/June, when all its fellows are singing, building nests and fornicating, it also migrates not to Finland or other parts of Scandinavia but to a small spot at the top of my study window. It’s clearly a rebel chaffinch and, if I had the time, it would be interesting to study all its habits. I imagine it building a nest out of lego, walking past a bird table laden with seeds in search of a cheese sandwich, shaking its ironic head at its fellows whistling their heads off in the branches as it strums a ukulele and does an impersonation of Bob Dylan,. There are so many possibilities. I could even write up my observations and submit a paper to some learned biological journal. Indications of solipsistic deviance in some aspects of migratory behavioural patterns in male Fringilla Coelebs in north east Scotland, then recycle the article to a tabloid under the heading CHAFFINCH IN FRENZIED ATTACK ON WRITER.

Then there’s his name. If we assume Fringilla to be his given name, he’d make the perfect Romantic heroine. I realise that would mean he’d be cross-dressing as well, but he’s a rebel, remember, so it would come naturally to him. “Fringilla looked at her reflection in the window pane, shuddered with delight at its intoxicating beauty and hurled herself into his arms”. But wait – why didn’t I think of this before? The name. It’s a sign. A natural magnet for the paparazzi – drop the ‘o’ and maybe the ‘s’ and you have Fringilla Celeb. And he’s chosen MY window. What a day.

It’s a question of morality, innit?

2011-05-30T11:55:00.000+01:00

I don’t ever say much about thingsconnected with morality in these scribblings. That’s partly because I assume mypoint of view is that of most normal people – try not to hurt others, don’tsteal stuff or kill people, deal with folk the way you’d like them to deal withyou. It’s also because, since I don’t want Jehovah’s Witnesses et al lecturingme about how to live my life, I know that they’d feel the same about me if Iknocked on their door and advocated fornication, adultery, excessiveconsumption of alcohol, and various unspecified activities relating to smallanimals, pieces of latex and a bowl of fruit.

So, the Google alert I got yesterday givingme a link to a Chinese site where I could download The Figurehead by BillKirton completely free posed a problem. How should I react to it? Should I beflattered that I’m such an important figure in world literature that piratesare taking the trouble to rip off my wisdom and make it accessible to a largeraudience? Should I be upset at the knowledge that, if it weren’t for thesepirates, I’d be earning even more than the millions of pounds I already receivefor my books? Should I forward the link to people I don’t like in the hope thatthey will try to download the book and, when it arrives, it will bring with it viruses,Trojans and all those other things which will turn their computers into direreminders of the retribution that results from acts of gross immorality?

In the end, the answer was – none of theabove. I have no idea how great or grave a problem the practice is. I’d preferit not to be happening – not just to me but to all writers or other artists or anyholders of intellectual properties – but I can’t, in all honesty, startpontificating about it, because it’s what people do. If you’ve never copied atrack from a friend’s CD or borrowed another friend’s book or photocopied auseful (copyrighted) article or watched a DVD hired by a friend or downloaded musicfrom a freebie site … well, you get my gist. I’m not advocating or excusing anyof that, but it happens. And just because it’s now happened to me it would behypocritical of me to demand a change in the law.

It’s how capitalism works – or is that toosimplistic? (Answers on a postcard to anywhere but here please.) Oh, and if youhaven’t already done so, you can do your bit to uphold decent human values and beatpiracy by buying The Figurehead. You don’t have to read it but the act itselfwill make you feel incredibly righteous.

Be careful what you write

2011-05-24T15:59:00.000+01:00

I’ve just finished reading the galley proofs for the Pfoxchase edition of The Figurehead (and I love the excuse to post yet another picture of the gorgeous cover which Sessha Batto designed for it). I’ve been busy with other books, so I haven’t looked at this one for a while and it’s interesting to read it almost as an objective outsider. Of course, I remembered the characters, the main events, the lovers, its overall shape and whodunit, but not the details, especially those which reveal things about the writer.

That may sound strange, since I wrote it, but it simply confirms what I’ve always said about books, plays and poems – we put much more of ourselves into them than we realise. As well as its focus on murder, romance and history, The Figurehead has attitudes to commerce and passion, the rich-poor divide and the importance of community which I wrote about in my last posting. But then, I was being autobiographical and referring specifically to my beliefs and intuitions; when I was writing about people in the Aberdeen of 1840, I wasn’t aware of how much those same beliefs were influencing my choices. It’s only when you get some distance between yourself and a work that you can appreciate just how intricately your inner self is bound into the fiction you’re creating.

Fashions in literary criticism (no, I’m not claiming I write ‘literature’) always keep changing and, quite often, the tension is between whether you need to know anything about a writer’s life to understand his/her works or whether the works are independent items, with enough of their own, internal coherence and referential information to make the writer irrelevant. I’m inclined to accept both approaches. If you’re swept along by a narrative, made to think, laugh, cry, or believe its characters are more real than those around you as you read, it’s served its purpose and it could have been written by a monkey with a typewriter. On the other hand, if you then discover biographical details about the author which ‘explain’ why he/she made certain choices, there are other resonances of the work which open new perspectives.

So, whether we like it or not, our writing reveals us in ways of which we’re unaware at the time. And, to take that a step further, I know that we only see some of the secrets we’re betraying and that reviewers may see things which we may not want to know about ourselves, things we deny. I may have said this before but it’s worth repeating in this context. Victor Hugo (out of favour now but by any standards a truly great writer), wrote that, when he saw a new play of his performed before an audience for the first time, it was as if his soul had climbed onto the stage and lifted its skirts for all to see.

Having said that, though, if anyone were to set The Figurehead alongside The Sparrow Conundrum to see what my soul looks like, they’d immediately be on the phone to a psychiatric unit.

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Is education good for you?

2011-05-15T17:31:00.000+01:00

OK, I’ve run out of guest bloggers for the moment so I suppose I’d better write something from me for a change. Luckily, a journalist friend, who’s going to do a piece on me to help plug The Sparrow Conundrum, sent me some questions to answer and the subject of the first one was education and other influences. It made we wonder, not for the first time, whether getting an education helps or hinders a writer. Obviously, we need to learn to read and write, to find out about things, other cultures, people; we need to know the value of researching things, understanding them and being able to apply them in different contexts, but do we lose anything in the process of acquiring those skills?

I taught at a university and wrote academic articles (not because I wanted to but because that’s what you had to do). I loved the teaching bit, which consisted of sitting around with young, intelligent, interested people talking about books, poems, thinking, creativity – and I learned at least as much from that as the students did. Astonishingly, I also got paid for it. But, given that my dad was a labourer on a building site and worked from 7 am to 6 pm (and often later than that) for 5½ or 6 days a week, I never found it easy to think of what I was doing as ‘work’. And it’s that apparent (or real) gap between academia and reality that’s the problem.

I came from a background and a part of town where ‘university’ was what happened to other people. Nobody resented that or even gave it any thought, and far more important was the fact that my upbringing was full of real people, in a community which cared – individuals who, for all their lack of formal education, were wise, compassionate, philosophically astute (without the terminology), and REAL. I know it’s a cliché but their wisdom and their education came from life.

So, when you put the education I got in that context, it’s obvious that, yes, it gave me a wider vocabulary, a new set of cultural references, and literary models I might not otherwise have come across, but it also introduced an artificiality, the notion that life was full of sub-texts, the feeling that I was talking with a different voice. Somehow, it seemed pretentious. I still think of the fishermen and others who were around me when I was growing up as being more ‘real’ than the middle classes amongst whom I’ve moved ever since graduation. That’s not me denigrating my excellent friends, real and virtual, but I do get a genuine sense of there being a gap between the spontaneous, instinctive life I led then and the more measured, considered way I am today. The very fact that I’m choosing these words with relative care is somehow ‘foreign’.

So how has it affected my writing? Well, education constrains us, tells us the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way of doing and saying things, tends to suppress the sort of individuality which doesn’t suit current fashions. Students today think in terms of vocation, outcomes, objectives and all those other perfectly good words that have had their meanings usurped by the purveyors of business jargon. Maybe if I’d by-passed all that, I’d have had a more natural, less mannered voice, and its more limited vocabulary would have been compensated for by its directness, its lack of artifice.

I love words and their combinations but my writing is driven by people, the compromises they make, the hopes they have (in the face of utter hopelessness at times), the complexity of their conditions. Rather than reveal them, elaborate word pictures can spin veils which hide them, which focus on speculative stuff rather than on who they actually are.

I offer no answers – I’m just asking. And, since I try not to take anything too seriously, I’ll hop quickly to my friend’s second question ‘How important to you is humour in your writing?’ It’s an excuse to pass on to you some comments from a list the same friend (coincidentally) sent to our writers’ group. They’re all extracts from letters sent to local councils in the UK.

There are some which seem to relate to an educational deficiency:

“50% of the walls are damp, 50% have crumbling plaster, and 50% are just plain filthy.”

and:

“Our lavatory seat is broken in half and now is in three pieces.”

The scatological ones:

(a complaint about the neighbours) “Their 18 year old son is continually banging his balls against my fence.”

and:

“It's the dog mess that I find hard to swallow.”

And the ever-welcome surreal ones:

“Will you please send someone to mend the garden path. My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant.”

and:

“My lavatory seat is cracked, where do I stand?”

Ah, those life-defining questions.

Oh, and while I remember it, there's a collection of flash fiction stories from Rammenas to which some of you have contributed. A selection of the best is available as a wee ebook including examples from Scary, Anneke, Diane, Beth, Donnie, Ron and me. It's called In These Hands, it's dirt cheap and all the proceeds go to a charity called War Child Holland.

You can get it from:
Amazon US - http://amzn.to/lx8FaP
Amazon UK - http://amzn.to/mTNFvJ

Smashwords - http://bit.ly/k8qQ7W

OmniLit - http://bit.ly/k5ADAD

Guest blogger Jean Henry Mead on Pacing a Novel’s Suspense

2011-05-09T11:22:00.000+01:00

I’m lucky in my friends. The guest bloggers I’ve had have all had interesting things to say about writing and their experiences in the industry. (Not to mention brother Ron’s insights and apercus into the meaning of life.) Here’s another with some telling observations about the all-important topic of narrative pace. It’s from Jean Henry Mead.

I once read an article by mystery novelist Phyllis Whitney concerning pacing and suspense. She said the best advice she received was from the editor of Weird Tales Magazine, a highly respected pulp magazine published before she began writing novels. The editor said she shouldn't try to keep her stories at constant high pitch, that readers grow as bored with continuous excitement as they do with nothing happening at all.

Pacing suspense is important because a reader needs time to relax between action scenes. Another important aspect of writing suspense novels, she said, is that your reader will find endless defeat and discouragement too unpleasant to read. Writers are, first and foremost, entertainers. And main characters’ lives should never be easy although small victories have to be paced strategically along the way to keep the plot interesting.

Much like mystery novelist Marlys Millhiser, Whitney started her novels with a setting. She said she wanted a place that gave her fresh and interesting material, even though it may be in her own backyard. In her first mystery novel, Red is for Murder, she went to Chicago’s loop to get behind-the-scenes background on the window decorating business. Because the book only sold 3,000 copies, she returned to writing for children, but years later, the book was reprinted in a number of paperback editions as The Red Carnelian.

Once she had her setting, Whitney searched for a protagonist driven to solve a life and death situation. The more serious and threatening the problem, the higher the reader’s interest. Whitney stressed that a writer needs to think about this powerful drive during the novel’s planning stages because it’s easier to build the plot around the problem in an action story than something much quieter. However, inner turmoil can be just as suspenseful as the threat of bodily harm if the writer remains aware of the character’s desperate need to reach a certain goal. Action doesn’t necessarily have to be violent.

The protagonist doesn’t know from the beginning of the story how to solve her problem, but sooner or later, she decides something needs to be done. That’s when the story actually begins. The character may make the wrong decision but he needs to do something rather than just drift along through several chapters.

Give your character(s) purpose and a goal to reach by the end of the book. If your protagonist is unable to reach her goal or solve her problem, bring in another character who can help. This new character may have ulterior motives or a different goal, and therein lies suspense.

An eccentric character can also provide suspense by doing the unexpected, thus making the situation worse. Whitney advised against more than one strange character per novel because it suspends belief. But any character doing the unexpected can build suspense. If the reader knows what’s going to happen next, she soon becomes bored and may lay the book aside. So to prevent that from happening, surprise your reader with something unusual although logical. Whitney had one of her characters making her way down a long, dark, narrow passageway when she suddenly touches a human face. That’s not only unexpected, it's suspenseful.

In my own mystery/suspense novels, the Logan & Cafferty series, I try to balance the action with humorous dialogue. That, in my opinion, prevents the characters from becoming cardboard cutouts and endears them to my readers. In my latest novel, Murder on the Interstate, my two protagonists, Dana Logan and Sarah Cafferty, are delivering humorous lines in the midst of a flash flood when they’re in danger of drowning. And Sarah does some crying in order to prevent suspension of belief. She also confesses that she irrigated her underwear.

Marlys Millhiser once showed me her suspense chart with separate lines for pacing action, storyline, subplots and exposition, chapter by chapter. She said it helps her to prevent melodrama.

Not a bad idea.

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The big fat London Book Fair (by Helen Ducal).

2011-05-03T10:24:00.000+01:00

I said in my piece on the London Book Fair that it wasn’t the place to say to someone, ‘I’ve written this great book, want to publish it?’ My guest blogger this week, Helen Ducal, with whom I had a very pleasant lunch there, proves that I was wrong. Here, in her own words, is what happened to her.

If there is one expression that has stood me in good stead over the years it has to be; You can’t just...

To which, my silent (usually) reply has been; Says who?

So when I saw there was to be a London Book Fair, I thought, I have a book or six, I’ll go. A published friend asked me if I had made appointments. Oh no, I replied, I am much harder to ignore in person.

As it turned out, getting there was far more nerve wracking than anything Earl’s Court could offer.

The Book Fair took place over three days.

Day 1. Set forth in borrowed car from Birmingham to London. Simples. So much more relaxing than the train...I spent the first sixty miles trying to tune in the bloody radio. Living in France, I miss only two things, Radio 4 and Neighbours. Sad but true. I stop at a service station. Starbucks coffee? Never. Strolling back to the car I spy, no aerial. Hence no radio. CD? Don’t be daft. This vintage vehicle has a cassette player but no cassettes.

Another twenty miles along the motorway and an orange warning light comes on, on the dashboard. I know enough about cars to know it isn’t oil, temperature or brakes. The shape outlined in orange is disturbingly shaped like a hand grenade! What to do? I am not going to stop on the hard shoulder; lots of nasty things happen there. I decide that as the car is still, a) moving, b) slows down when I brake and c) not overheating, I will continue. If the light starts flashing, I will stop and cry.

I have driven this route to Chiswick many times. It is very straightforward. So why am I...where is the...? Flaming hell, I am in London. With no radio to distract me in a good way I have been distracted by an unexploded orange object and missed the turning to Chiswick. So what’s with the red tarmac? Ye gods, I am in a bus lane. I am on dual carriageway with railings between the road and the pavement. What? I can’t get off. Beam me up Scotty. I normally have low pressure.

Do you want to hear the real irony? I see a sign for Earl’s Court. I also see a sign with the letter c in the middle. Uh-oh. Congestion charge. Where does that start? Where were the signs? Get OFF this road or you will be charged £60. Yep, the fine arrived four days later, on my birthday.

I stopped the car as soon as I could turn left. A traffic warden was on me like a shot.

You can’t park...

he stopped as I emerged from the car, shaking, with a crumpled map and a look so forlorn I could have beaten Bambi in a homeless contest. He pointed out where I could turn right, back towards Chiswick. That would be the traffic lights that clearly state, no right turn.

I eventually reached my destination. I never wanted to go out ever again.

Day 2. Got the train to Earl’s Court. Became mesmerized by the scale of the place. Met my cyber-writer-friends. Had a very nice pub lunch. Still no plan. Unless you count business cards and A4 prints of my book covers. Wandered round, wondering what on earth I was going to do, to make this trip worthwhile. I got the train back to Chiswick. I glared at the parked car.

Day 3. Mantra: I cannot waste this opportunity. Think positive, think retro. Paper not iPad. Independent Publishers Group. Sounds about right. Small, perfectly formed and proactive.

Hi, I am looking for a publisher...
Hi, I have written...
Hi, are you taking submissions...?

Tried all of the above and all I got was. Here’s our email address, and Get your agent to contact us. I even tried the ‘big boys’. Sorry, no one available to speak to you. Boo hoo. Then I spot a lady eating a sandwich. The French part of me cannot interrupt her impromptu lunch. I circle the stand...three times.

Last crumb, in for the kill.

Hi, you have an interesting cross section of books. I meant it. She glanced at my Blue Peter version of my book cover and my portfolio. She pointed at the chair opposite. She gave me her card. Send me your manuscript, she said.

I drove back to Birmingham in a soundless car with the occasional orange ‘malfunction indicator’ rearing its ugly head. It was malfunctioning all right. It had the power of a demented sewing machine.

Skip ahead two weeks. I post my manuscript to the nice lady in Brighton at 3pm and by 4.30pm the next day, I get an email that says. At first glance this looks very interesting indeed. GULP.

So, yes, going to the London Book Fair was worth it. And even if this meeting doesn’t change my life, it did reinforce what I already knew. You have to believe in yourself before anyone else can.

Watch this space.

Helen’s book is All Expenses Paid – her pitch for it is just ‘Granny sitting in the South of France for six months. What could be simpler?’ I’ve asked her to let us know how things develop.

You can read more of her musings on her own blog here.

Equals - a play in 3 acts

2011-04-29T13:16:00.000+01:00

I can’t resist a mini-blog on such a day.

Scene 1. Interior. House on a council estate. Mother and Boy are having breakfast.
Boy: All that work paid off, Mum. I got five A grades.
Mum: I know, son. I’m proud of you.
Boy: Think I’ll go to St Andrews.
Mum: Sorry, son. It’s 9 grand a year there.
Boy: Oh. OK. Never mind, I’ll get a job instead.
Mum: There aren’t any.
Boy: Oh, OK. Any more coffee?

Scene 2. Interior. Palace or castle or some other big, posh place. Phone rings. Boy answers it.
Boy: Hello.
Mum (on phone, sounding happy): Good morning.
Boy: Hi Mum.
Mum: I’ve made you Duke of Cambridge.
Boy; Really? Thanks, Mum.

Scene 3. Some time later.
Sun explodes.

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Sentences

2011-04-27T12:40:00.000+01:00

For a change it’s not laziness that’s stopped me writing anything here for a while, it really is busy-ness. So take a deep breath and, if you want to, try to absorb the following ugly, unprofessional sentence listing my current activities: I’m concocting a plot for a charity evening at which paying customers do CSI experiments, interview ‘suspects’ and try to solve a mystery; Brilliant Workplace Skills (what an ironic title in the circumstances) is crawling towards its final chapters; I’m proof-reading the manuscripts of 3 of my books to try to eradicate those persistent bloody typos; Stanley has stamped off to 2 UK publishers to try to get himself printed here; The Figurehead is moving to Pfoxmoor because Virtual Tales is no more; Shadow Selves is also moving there, where it’ll be joined by a new Jack Carston mystery, Unsafe Acts; I’m looking for appropriate images to use on the covers of the new editions; and, harnessed to the seemingly unlimited energy and enthusiasm of Diane Nelson, who not only writes her own novels, short stories, flash fiction, edits the work of others, tweets, contributes extensively to Facebook and has to look after horses and things, I’m trying to encourage people to read The Sparrow Conundrum.

You see, I told you it was ugly. My excuse is that it’s a way (stylistically) of conveying the mayhem of my days. It also serves another sly purpose because this blog’s about how important it is, especially in rhetoric or humour, to put the elements of a sentence in the right order. I’ve always known that, and I’ve even examined it in some detail in Just Write, but it was a news item in yesterday’s Guardian that reminded me of it.

It concerned a 15-year-old schoolboy, Joe Cotton, who’s the first ‘child’ (as the Guardian called him) ever to address the annual conference of the National Union of Teachers. He was speaking about some of the cynical, sinister ideas of our Education Secretary, Michael Gove, one of which is to get rid of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) to help with his budget cuts. This is what young Joe was quoted as saying: ‘Well, I don’t know how nifty Michael Gove thinks he can be with a loaf and some fishes, or even a bus pass and some textbooks, but he’d need nothing short of a miracle to replicate the benefits of EMA with that budget’.

First, I admire enormously a 15-year-old with the confidence to stand up in front of a hall full of teachers and articulate the feelings and ideas of his generation, and I’ve no doubt his words – and that sentence – were well received. But let’s be picky with its structure. The word ‘nifty’ is good. It implies sleight of hand, ducking and diving, smoke and mirrors. Applying it to one of Jesus’ miracles puts both it and the ‘miracle’ in a different light. There’s no longer the po-faced, respectful kow-towing to the specialness of divine intervention; instead it conjures up (see how subtle I was there?) a seedy bloke on a music hall stage with a wand, hat and rabbit – or, if you like, ‘a loaf and some fishes’.

So it’s good, and it’s worth a laugh. BUT …

The laugh has to be delayed while he finishes the rest of the sentence, and that ‘rest’ consists of a much weaker joke, then a serious political point and finally an ‘explanation’ of the loaf and fishes reference (in the word ‘miracle’). So, if we get rid of the weaker – and rather confusing – joke, the sentence has 4 elements it needs to juggle:

1. the benefits of EMA (agreed fact)
2. the budget (boring economics)
3. the fact that 2 and 1 can’t coincide (self-evident truth)
4. the gag of Michael Gove, using Joe’s idea (and words), ‘being nifty with a loaf and some fishes’.

By rewriting the sentence and putting the elements in that order, the good gag is made even better and more effective because it’s now the punchline and also offers light relief after the seriousness of 1, 2 and 3.You can then, of course, refine it even further by moving around the words inside each element. The punchline, for example, works better if you make it ‘being nifty with some loaves (pause) and a fish’. It’s not rocket science but it is the difference between writing and editing.

Whenever I had one to one tutorials with students about their writing, I frequently got them to isolate the different elements in a sentence, swap them around and see the difference it made to its meaning, impact, power. If you haven’t tried it, have a look at some of your own writing now and see whether it could work for you.

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The London Book Fair and a bribe

2011-04-16T16:34:00.000+01:00

Yes, it's that cover again - but bear with me, it's relevant.

I’ve always been partial to a little bribery and corruption as long as I’m on the receiving end of the profits, so for a change this will be a mercifully short blog which ends with an offer you may find it hard to refuse.

First, though, some abbreviated thoughts on the London Book Fair, around which I wandered aimlessly for two of its three days last week. We all know how many hundreds of thousands of books are being produced each year but, sitting in our studies or kitchens or attics or yachts or sheds or wherever as we scribble our masterpieces, we still manage to generate the notion that readers will snap up our babies the minute we let them out. But when you see row upon row of stalls, with crowds milling round them all, smartly dressed people sitting at tables with impressive document holders before them deep in earnest discussions with other movers and shakers, huge adverts for books by people you’ve already heard of and who hardly need the PR, you start to think that the wee label you’ve pinned to yourself which identifies you as an AUTHOR is the equivalent of wearing a yellow sack, ringing a bell and shouting ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ as you move through it all.

At the same time, it gives a sort of smug satisfaction that all these people are only here and only earning a living because writers write books. When it’s laid before you in this way, with translators, little independent publishers, foreign rights, niche markets, huge publishing empires and God knows what else, it’s a pulsating proof that the industry is enormous and dynamic. So vast, in fact, that you get this ambivalent feeling that your ambitions are presumptuous and yet there must be a wee corner in it somewhere for you.

But it doesn’t feel like the place that you can go up to someone on one of the stalls and say ‘Hey, I’ve written this great book. Want to read it?’ The response would range from a puzzled, concerned look to an old Anglo-Saxon invitation to go away. My impression, in fact, was that this wasn’t about books, but about deals. And that’s fine because that’s how it works. We just have to make sure one or more of our books is/are part of those deals.

Anyway, those are the impressions I came away with. Now to the bribery. I’ve already told you that The Sparrow Conundrum is supposed to be funny and I’ve encouraged you to contribute to the funds which will buy my tax haven property by buying it. But for five lucky people who haven’t, I have a little deal. On Smashwords, the ebook version sells for a ridiculously low $2.99 (about £1.80). It already has 2 5-star reviews on Amazon UK and is obviously the best and funniest book that’s been written in this room for well over a week. So … all you have to do is leave a comment on this blog. It doesn’t have to be long – just something to show you’ve been here. If more than five comments appear (dream on, Bill), I’ll put the names in a hat and choose five, each of whom will get a coupon code to buy the book at half-price. That’s $1,50 (90p) for a masterpiece. You’ve got until the end of the month. Good luck.

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Curiouser and curiouser

2011-04-05T12:01:00.000+01:00

It’s easy enough to imagine how Stone Age people started making their stuff. Ugg probably stood on a stone, cut his foot, swore, felt sorry for himself but at some point made the connection between the flint being sharp and therefore just the thing to shave with – so stone tools were born. What isn’t so easy is to conjure up how Bronze Age people started doing whatever you have to do to make bronze. It isn’t as if their equivalent of the media started saying it was the dawn of a new era – the Bronze Age – which made everybody want to be trendy so they all got bronze-making stuff from their Wal-Mart. It needs mixing and heating and pouring and things.

And then, when the Iron Age arrived, it was even more complex because at least with copper, it flowed when it was heated and it was a nice colour so you could see it, but iron ore looks like rubbish, and there’s no melting and flowing and prettiness. And yet they somehow knew or found out that if you added it to a mixture of tin and copper and lead (I think – I don’t have to be meticulous with my research for musings such as this) it made it all less brittle, you could hammer it into shape, shrink it onto wheels to make tyres, and the ingredients were all nearby anyway so there was no need to spend hours stuck in traffic jams on the trade routes to get copper.

So what the hell has this got to do with anything? Well, I was listening to a podcast of a great BBC programme this morning as I was riding my bike. It’s called In Our Time and it deals with all sorts of subjects and is proof that dumbing down hasn’t yet penetrated every corner of life. They were talking about the Iron Age and there are so many mysteries about how some things came about that it made me wish I could go back and see what was happening.

And that in turn made me think of those celeb questionnaires which ask questions like ‘What was the best kiss of your life?’, ‘How would you like to die?’ and ‘If you could go back or forward in time, what period would you like to visit?’ I could answer the first two easily, but for the third, there’d be too many possibilities. Even if you just restrict it to travelling back in time, there are so many things to witness, to learn, to marvel at. We could see who had the idea of riding horses and how they set about doing it, watch people daubing stuff on cave walls, find out just how sophisticated the Greeks and Romans were and what Stonehenge was really for. Then going the other way, we’d meet extra-terrestrials, see babies being born with their iphones and ipads already charged and wired into their brains – all sorts of stuff.

And what it all boils down to is that, while everyone lists the same sort of characteristics when it comes to writers – a way with words, good observational skills, the ability to empathise, a vivid imagination – they don’t use the word ‘curiosity’ nearly as frequently. While we remain curious, we’re still alive, we still engage with our surroundings and with other people. I can’t imagine a state in which being curious about something wasn’t part of the equation. Books telling people ‘How to write’ should always encourage readers to ask ‘What?’, ‘Who?’, ‘When?’, ‘Where?’, ‘How?’.

And perhaps most of all, ‘Why?’ – because it’s usually the hardest of all to answer.

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Bagpipes and Bullshot and Janice Horton

2011-03-31T09:00:00.000+01:00

The Darkness appeared at about the same time as a romance novel by Janice Horton called Beneath Apricot Skies. They’re both set in Scotland but there the parallels end. My book was pretty scary, with some nasty goings-on, a murder, some disappearances and (I hope) a challenging attitude to morality. Janice’s, on the other hand was full of warmth, romance, humour, and beautiful places with, at its centre a love between a Scottish laird whose funds were running pretty low and an American cowgirl. But, because we have several mutual friends who bought both the books, Amazon obviously thought they belonged together and, for a while, said that people who bought Janice’s also bought mine, and vice versa. There’s no reason why readers shouldn’t enjoy both books but some unsuspecting people who’d just been drawn into Janice’s lovely, upbeat tale might get a nasty shock if they thought mine would offer the same sort of pleasure.

Anyway, Janice, who obviously shares none of my laziness, has now reworked the original story, getting more quickly into the meat of it and giving even more scope to the humour, a fact that the new title confirms – now available for Kindle, the book’s now called Bagpipes & Bullshot. And her visit to my blog is part of her enterprising blog tour.

B): So welcome Janice, and first of all, I note you’ve been asking people NOT to buy it. That doesn’t sound like a good marketing strategy.

J): I hope it is, Bill. You see, I’ve asked everyone who might consider buying it to wait until Friday 1st April. The date is important because it’s very difficult to get a new e-book noticed by potential readers unless it features on one or more of Amazon’s Top 100 charts, but because of the way Amazon calculates its sales, just a few sales on one particular day – Friday 1st April – can make all the difference in pushing it through the charts.

B): Very clever. You seem to have given this plenty of thought. Before we move on to the actual experience of publishing with Amazon Kindle, though, tell us a bit about the book.

J): Well, it’s a humorous contemporary novel which twists an everyday love story with a whole cast of village eccentrics into an entertaining play on Scottish rural life. The story begins with boy meets girl in Texas but soon unfolds into a tale of love and conflict set in Scotland. I’ll leave it for the reader to tell me if it’s a love story with elements of humour or a humorous novel with elements of love story.

B): What made you decide to go indie and self-publish on Kindle?

J): Two reasons: the first was that having been previously published in paperback by both traditional and self publishing methods, I couldn’t resist the challenge of having a go at e-publishing, especially on Kindle, because distribution and marketing on Amazon are all well established. The second reason was that I unexpectedly fell in love with the Kindle my husband bought me for Christmas and wanted to have my books available for it.

B): You know I’m a complete techno-idiot, so how did you find the process of uploading to Kindle in terms of technical problems?

J): I read the Amazon guide to formatting and uploading and also watched some helpful You Tube videos to give me an idea of what I was letting myself in for. I also opted for the simple route. You can get involved with writing your own HTML if you like, I didn’t. Preparation is key, so do make sure you edit your manuscript with formatting ‘activated’ which will help you check that tab stops and page breaks are correctly placed. If they’re not, then transferring your file will move your paragraphs all over the place. You do get a chance to preview before you actually publish but that should just be for final checking. I had the manuscript on Word, saved it as a HTML filtered file, and uploaded it to Mobipocket Creator (downloaded free from the internet). This created a stable file recognised by Amazon Kindle.

B): You make it sound easy. Next question, though, now that it’s available to download, how are you going to get it noticed amongst the thousands of other books already available on Kindle?

J): OK, this is the plan. I want you to ask your lovely blog readers to support me by either buying the book on Friday 1st April 2011 (it is £1.38 / $2.24) or by telling other people about it through their own social network. I would be very grateful for all sales, support, and help to spread the word. I’ll be blogging and tweeting all day on Friday 1st April. You can find out where I'll be on my Blog Tour throughout the whole day by checking on my own blog here. I’ll also be running a prize draw there (Friday 1st April only) to win Kindle beach protectors (an essential and stylish accessory for every Kindler). All you have to do to be in with a chance to win is go to my blog and leave a comment.

B): Hmmm, my ‘lovely blog readers’ – I’ll let that one pass. But how about people who don’t have a Kindle? Can they download it for their PC, Mac, IPhone, IPad, whatever?

J): Yes, absolutely. Go to Amazon and download their free App for PC, Mac, IPhone or IPad.

B): You seem to have covered all the bases. Anything else?

J): Well, just the obvious one really – buy the book. I’ll be forever grateful.

B): OK people, you heard Janice. But DON’T buy it, at least not until April 1st. I for one will be very interested to hear how the strategy pans out. Thanks for the visit, Janice, and lots of luck with Bagpipes & Bullshot – I’m looking forward to seeing for myself the changes you’ve made to Beneath Apricot Skies.

J): Thanks for the invitation, Bill. It’s been a great pleasure.

A bit more information about Janice for those who don’t yet know her work. She lives in Scotland and writes entertaining and humorous contemporary women's fiction novels which are, for the most part, inspired by the romantic beauty of the heather-filled glens around her country cottage. When she’s not writing novels she writes lifestyle articles and has had work published in national magazines and regional newspapers. She’s also been involved in BBC Scotland's Write Here Write Now project. Her next novel Reaching For The Stars will be available soon on Kindle. Her website is here, and her blog here and you can follow her on Twitter at @JaniceHorton.

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Stanley’s ambitions

2011-03-29T18:17:00.000+01:00

Stanley is showing a remarkable flair for marketing. Having caused a minor stir with the mugs (he insisted I recycle that pun on his behalf), he was rather taken with the idea of featuring on the front of a t-shirt. His preference, for some reason he refused to divulge, was for one worn by a female, so I think the illustration will not be to his liking, which, of course, in his world means it WILL be to his liking. Anyway, once again, he’s seeking to tempt you with his merchandise to such an extent that I’ll no longer have to write about his exploits.

(By the way, the wording on the shirt is an addition of mine - to acknowledge the hero of Looking for Eric. The words were spoken in the movie by the great Eric himself, with 'Cantona' instead of 'Stanley'.)

In fact, there are already seven Stanley stories, which is convenient because, with six more to appear and six more grandchildren in line for dedications, there’s a pleasing symmetry about the whole enterprise. The trouble is that, by the time the seventh is published, I’ll have written more – and I certainly don’t want any more grandchildren; Christmas is already horrendously expensive. The other trouble is that, with Stanley threatening to sue me if I step even marginally away from the truth of his words and actions, I may have difficulty maintaining that willing suspension of disbelief needed to sustain the reader’s interest.

One thing I should have added before, when I posted the shot of his mugs, was that Stanley’s image rights belong not to him, as he insists, but to Melanie Chadwick who first sketched his portrait. The fact that she made him (according to him, anyway) far less attractive than he finds himself, is irrelevant. As well as suing me, he intends to ‘take her for everything she has’ (his words) for whatever the visual version of libel is. He even used the words ‘bearing false witness’ before I reminded him that that was in one of the commandments and represented the word of God, not the word of Stanley. But all that did was start him muttering about the parables he could tell.

In the end, Mel and I might need not just a lawyer but an exorcist, too.

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Not a blog, just a picture, on Stanley's insistence

2011-03-22T12:51:00.000Z

With the publication of Shadow Selves, The Loch Ewe Mystery and now The Sparrow Conundrum all around the same time (thanks to some poor management on my part), Stanley has been getting a raw deal (which, of course, suits him perfectly because it confirms that the universe and everything in it is only there to perpetuate his misery). His next story, Stanley In Love, is ready for publication, beautifully illustrated and formatted by Melanie Chadwick again. Only problems with getting it printed in Europe as well as the USA are holding it back.

So, when I saw an advert for free mugs, t-shirts etc., I thought if I got one made on which he was the star, he'd be pleased. (He wasn't.) I told him that, when he's famous, he'll have to put up with such artefacts being in homes throughout the civilised and uncivilised worlds, as well as (probably) being the motifs on dresses worn by Lady Gaga and others at the Oscars. It would need a better writer than I am to describe the conflicting emotions which crossed his features as he realised he might some day achieve the pre-eminence which he thinks is his due, the consequent happiness it would make him feel and the misery that feeling happiness would provoke.

Life is hard for a 3 inch high superstar.

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