Sometimes, you just get lucky. Fate, which so often conspires against you, shifts the balance in your favour. Just for a little while. As long as you’re aware of it, then fate can give you a moment that you will treasure for a very long time.
Yesterday, fate put me close enough to the legendary Bradley Wiggins to feel the slipstream as he rocketed past. And that was just one part of an amazing, dizzying day.
Continue reading A Golden Day: X&HT Went To The Olympic Time Trials
I’m not a sporty person. Far from it. I’m a clumsy goof who was always picked last for games at school, and most sporting events leave me not just cold but catatonic.
The Olympics is different. There’s something about it that stirs me. Maybe it’s the sheer sense of endeavour, the drama that comes from so many people spending years and years in the pursuit of a dream. Once every four years I buy into that dream, completely and wholeheartedly. And with the Olympics in London, well, let’s face it. TLC and I had to be there.
The DocoPhone starts ringing. I dive for it, my responses hard-wired after years of loyal, unquestioning service to a playful, capricious master.
I lift the handset, and listen while it clicks and purrs–the line connects through a bewildering array of redirects, anonymisers and scramblers. The call could be coming from the other side of the world, or three doors down. There’s no way of knowing, and believe me, smarter people than me have tried. There’s one last ear-shredding blast of modem noise and then…
Right-wing radio host and all-round screw top Rush Limbaugh thinks that the new Batman film has an explicit anti-Republican message. His reasoning? The villain of the piece is called Bane, and Presidential nominee Mitt Romney made his fortune through a company called Bain Capital. It's just all so clear and simple.
We shouldn't laugh too loudly at Limbaugh, easy as it might be. In some ways he's on the money. The Dark Knight Rises has plenty to say about power, corruption and lies. But as with all of Christopher Nolan's films, things are never as straight-forward as they appear.
The spoilers after this point are numerous and mighty. Be warned.
The one thing I’ve noticed about the wacky world of self-publishing is the sense of engagement that rapidly develops between author and audience. This has to happen. The writer can’t afford to be aloof from his or her readership. The buffer zone that an agent and publisher puts in place just isn’t there.
That’s part of the fun of the self-pub game, but it does mean that word-slingers like me have to extricate ourselves from our cocoon and get out and engage with people. As we tend to skew introvert, that’s kind of tricky, and if you’re a shy retiring flower like me, it’s difficult not to feel like some kind of huckster or hawker when all you’re trying to do is make people aware of the worth and value of your work.
With that in mind, let’s get on with the sales pitch.
Continue reading The Dog And Pony Show, or Three Things You Can Do To Help Out Untruths
Sometimes, you just have to make the most of a collapsed plan. We were all set to visit the Festival of History at Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire this weekend, until the weather did a dirty on us, and flooded the site the evening before it was due to open.
We found a silver lining to that rain-sodden cloud, tucked away in the lanes of rural Warwickshire. A bookshop that swallowed us whole and ejected us hours later, giddy and shine-eyed.
Westminster Council have a reputation for sucking the fun out of any party. The pubs in Soho are well known for the draconian restrictions placed on them in terms of drinking outside, and the fenced-off demarkation zones have to be strictly enforced on pain of a heavy fine.
But now they’ve gone to far. Although the blame has yet to be categorically laid at their door, Westminster Council are at least indirectly responsible for cutting off Bruce Springsteen.
Comics are soap opera. Characters don’t change. If they die, it’s hardly ever permanent. Their origins are constantly retold, reinforced, raked over for any new tiny scrap of resonance. Some critics have griped that The Amazing Spider-man, the fourth movie about Peter Parker and his penchant for going out in red Underoos, is a rehash of Sam Raimi’s 2002 film.
They’re missing the point. This kind of thing happens in the funny papers all the time.
Continue reading A Swinging Time: X&HT saw The Amazing Spider-Man
Mark Brown paces around outside the Hideaway Bar. The brim of his trademark fedora is low, but the shadow it casts can’t disguise the worried look on his face. His go-to guy has bailed on him at short notice. Which means that, if the emergency back up plan doesn’t pan out, he’s going to have to find a way of running his popular film night without a projector.
He glances back at the rapidly filling bar behind him. He’s had better days.
Continue reading Sheets For Screens: A Night At The BraineHownd Awards
Ok, relax. This is not going to be one of those posts where I talk about the inspiration, background and hilarious stories behind the tales on my new ebook, Untruths, in exhausting detail. That would be dreadful.
Instead, I wanted to answer the question quite a few people have already asked: how difficult is it to get an ebook published?
The answer is, of course–it depends.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 