The Dog And Pony Show, or Three Things You Can Do To Help Out Untruths

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

Stacked: X&HT Visited The Astley Book Farm

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. 

Continue reading Stacked: X&HT Visited The Astley Book Farm

Code Of Silence

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.

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A Swinging Time: X&HT saw The Amazing Spider-Man

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

Sheets For Screens: A Night At The BraineHownd Awards

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

How I Wrote A Book

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.

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So I Wrote A Book

A little over thirty-six hours ago, I took a deep breath and clicked the big yellow button on Amazon’s Direct Publishing site. The one marked SAVE AND PUBLISH. Wheels span for a moment in the guts of my Blackbook. Then a congratulatory notice pinged up, and a book that I had spent a day’s work and fifteen years writing was on its way to the Kindle Store. 

Big news, Readership. You can buy some of my writing on Amazon. 

Continue reading So I Wrote A Book

Sunday Songs: SEXYMIX

Perhaps I should explain myself a little. 

One of the most important discussions to be had about the internet is on privacy. The ever-increasing desire for government and business to know what it is you do online is creepy and greedy in equal measure, and I believe strongly in making sure that I am in control of what information I allow out into the world.

One man’s comfort zone is another man’s straitjacket, however, and if you want to spread yourself all over Facebook then go to it. As long as you’re aware of the risks and the tools available to make sure that you’re in control, then your digital life is yours to lead, and it would be remiss of me to tell you what to do.

That argument goes the other way, of course, and I find my ghast occasionally flabbered by a minor privacy issue that gets blown up out of all proportion, particularly when it comes to the “difficulty” on switching on privacy controls. It’s a simple box-ticking exercise that takes 5 minutes. 

Back in February, celebrity doctor and statistician Ben Goldacre and Father Ted writer Graham Linehan got their panties in a pretzel over the fact that Spotify’s sharing controls were defaulted to on. One of the reasons they gave for this being a bad idea was that interested parties could see if you’d put up a playlist of songs you liked to play during sexytime. It was an idea I found laughable then, and still do. 

But it got my little brain cells working, and the very next playlist I put together was a discordant mash of death metal, tooth-gritting avant-garde and sleazy old blues numbers. Of course, I called it Sexymix.  

Graham, Ben, thanks for the inspiration. This one’s for you. 

End Of The Century – X&HT Read LOEG: Century 2009

A common complaint levied at Moore and O’Neill’s League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen books, especially in the later stages of the story that are chronicled in the Century stories, is their impenetrable metatextuality. 

It’s really easy to tie yourself in knots when you discuss LOEG. I mean, just look at that first sentence. Impenetrable metatextuality? Good grief. Way to lose an audience. Let’s try this again. In English. 

Continue reading End Of The Century – X&HT Read LOEG: Century 2009