Me And My Big Mouth

Snowflakes From Iceland

'His sight had become so poor that he couldn't even see properly in his dreams any more. He went to see the optician who had prescribed him glasses for his waking life.'

This book is full of wonderful snippets like this. Gyrðir Elíasson builds whole stories around them. Not very long ones though. These are thin slivers of fiction, each a few pages in length. Glimpses.

Despite their brevity they feel complete. They may not display a conventional beginning/middle/end (although some do) but they seem whole. Intact. Most are set in the author's home of Iceland, often in remote parts of the island. Whilst not quite as minimalist as The Blue Fox the text does feel pared down. This is simple, direct storytelling.

Such a setting ensures that moments of great poetry stand out all the more. Sometimes it is a phrase or sentence, others it is an image the writer leaves with you at the end of a story. Like the final moments of Book After Book in which a man walks out of his house and starts reading in the rain.

'The pages turned gradually damp, and he turned them with care.'

Nothing particularly flash or special about that but, believe me, the image lingers long after you have moved on to other stories. Stories such as The Stargazer is Always Alone in which an amateur astronomer stops staring at the skies to examine the book collection of the gentleman in the apartment opposite, cusrsing when he discovers a rare edition he doesn't own himself. Or A House of Two Stories which tells of two writers working on separate translations of Steinbeck whilst renting different floors of the same building in a remote Icelandic village.

Almost every story in the collection is worth picking out for special mention. As is common with the form some of the stories end with a neat twist, but these are the exception rather than the rule. More often than not we are left to tie up the loose ends or unravel the threads for ourselves. This could lead to dissatisfaction from the reader but instead adds to the pleasure.

Stone Tree is unlike any story collection I have read. The stories felt fresh, crisp - perfect renderings of narrative ideas. I know this is a book I shall return to and am most grateful to Sjón for recommending it when I interviewed him earlier in the month. It is a wonderful Icelandic book and I hope you are able to track one down. It is published by Comma Press who seem to have some very interesting titles on their list, often hidden behind terrible covers which hopefully won't put you off.

What lies behind the cover of this particular book is really rather special.

A Song For Sunday

Scream by Nut. A song from a long time ago. She now records as Cat Goscovitch.

Wimbledon Update

Well, it has hardly been a vintage week in our fantasy tennis league but, as the rest day approaches, we do find ourselves ahead of our rival teams.

Just.

The Me And My Big Mouth team are in 67th place, the Paperview Punters are in 70th and Trapped By Monsters are wallowing in 87th position, out of 98 teams.

All to play for in the week ahead.

In the side bet between myself and Mark Robson I am currently on 943 points and he has 741.

I feel another Toblerone coming my way soon.

Guest Blogger: Stan Cattermole

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a writer. To me, being a writer was better than being President of Real Madrid. Better than managing a branch of Nat-West in Dartford or Orpington. Better than being trapped in a chocolate shop with a cloak of irresistibility and Audrey Tautou. Maybe.

Then a couple of weeks ago, it finally happened. My dream came true and a book, a real-life, flesh-and-blood, tough-bodied book, full to gushing with words from my very own fingers and heart hit the shops and shelves like something from an outlandish daydream being dreamt by somebody else. I don’t mind telling you, for a while there I think I felt a little of what Susan Boyle must have felt, shortly before it destroyed her.

And so I did all the things I imagine first-time authors do: I developed a fleeting obsession with the Amazon Sales Rank; I skulked into Waterstone’s, located my beautiful memoir wedged uncomfortably between Belle de Jour and Les Dennis, took a surreptitious photograph and skulked out; I became briefly obsessed with the fate of my book, much like a mother fearing for her first-born – what was going to happen to her? Would she be loved? Would Les Dennis jostle her to the floor of the shop and do her a mischief? Why was my book a lady?; I discovered insomnia – I was either up all night rehearsing award speeches or else repeatedly throttled awake by cruel nightmares in which I was writhing in human ordure, trapped in the base of the portaloos at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, with both Martin Amis and Margaret Drabble above me, in adjoining cabins, voiding themselves vigorously into my eyes. I also did a few interviews, sent a few emails and flounced about like the whore one automatically becomes when one has a book to hawk. But without the sex.

This week things have gone a little quiet. And apart from the sempiternal dread of the book disappearing like sunburn – flare, fade, peel, pillow – and the failure fuelling thirty years of abject misery, I’m actually rather relieved. My life is the calmest it’s been for about a year. And despite the fact that it’s become like something out of one of Alan Bennett’s rejected monologues, I like it.

Yesterday afternoon, for example, I was lazing in the living room, watching the tennis like a lump of lard whilst Grandmother peeled turnips and carrots in the kitchen. ‘There’s no need for that,’ she said, as one of the Russian girls grunted like a scalded cat with every stroke of the ball. Then she shuffled into the living room brandishing her peeler, spits and spots of carrot skin stuck to the bandages on her hands. She shook her head and despaired. ‘Is nothing sacred?’ she said. I said I didn’t think so. Not these days... Then last night I crept through to the kitchen to find – amongst the shadows and the silence and the silverfish – that Grandmother had put some new jellies to set.

I smiled.

So this is my life. This is the life of a writer. A proper writer with a book in Waterstone’s. Just like Les Dennis. And all the other whores.

My book by the way, is called Bete De Jour: The Intimate Adventures of an Ugly Man and I want you to buy it. It has its roots in a blog I’ve been writing for the last 18 months. The blog is about me – face like a bag of elbows, gut like a pastry parade, bed like a beached windsock – trying to sort myself out and find someone to love. The book is about my life in general: my trials, my tribulations, my triumphs, my hilarious neuroses and my recent family upheaval.

Because the blog was highly confessional in nature, and genital-warts-and-all in its approach, and because I still had the remnants of a fairly ordinary life that I didn’t want to entirely besmirch, I decided I would write anonymously. So I became Stan Cattermole.

In eighteen months then, my life has changed substantially. I still haven’t found the everlasting wholly reciprocated love I was seeking. I still haven’t lost all of the weight I was hoping to lose. And if I’m honest, I still struggle with tobacco consumption. But at least now I have a ridiculous fake name and I eat a lot of jelly. Oh, and I have a book in Waterstone’s. Next to Les Dennis.

Whatever happens to my book – whether it becomes the bestseller it thoroughly deserves to be or disappears like a toddler in the Algarve – I decided today that I’m going to try and write another one. This one will be a novel, however. I’m going to write it as much of it as I can over the next two months, then move back to London in September and have a party. Anyone who’s ever left a comment on my blog will be invited. And Audrey Tautou. She’ll be invited too.

So here’s to the future. Feel free to buy my book, won’t you? And if you fancy coming to my party, you’d better go make your presence felt at my blog.

There will be jelly.

Goodbye.

Twinterview

You see, I wasn't imagining it. Follow this link to see me interviewed by identical twin sisters.

Scared the shit out of me, to be honest.

Oh, and I am the one in the middle.

Happy Dust

I bought this battered old tome for £3* from a secondhand bookshop some years ago. It didn't have a dustjacket (hence the scan of the spine), was somewhat the worse for wear and I had never heard of the author. To be honest, I have no idea why I picked it out, it was just one of those impulse buys fuelled by the smell of old paper and the atmosphere of a quiet bookshop on a sunny afternoon.

The book in question is the Clay Harrison Murder Omnibus by Clifton Robbins. It was published in 1933 and contains three full-length novels - Dusty Death, The Man Without a Face and Death on the Highway - all featuring the debonair private investigator Clay Harrison.

After years sitting on the shelf in my living room where all the weathered and worn hardbacks are placed to look artistically old together, it was finally plucked out last weekend. I was waiting for the kids to get their shoes on so grabbed it and started flicking through to kill a few minutes.

I was quickly hooked and spent much of the rest of the weekend reading chunks of the first novel in the omnibus, Dusty Death.

Harrison is visited in his chambers by a distressed landlady who has had a lodger die in mysterious circumstances. Shortly afterwards he is employed by a young woman whose fiance has gone missing in Geneva. Cue a trip to Switzerland, trouble with the local press, political shenanigans at the League of Nations, the occasional moment of frisson with a member of the opposite sex, regular cups of tea, more than a few plot twists (including the discovery that the erstwhile fiance and the dead lodger are mysteriously linked), all wrapped up in a bloody good adventure - during which he is ably abetted by his eager assistant Henry.

This is great stuff. It is certainly of its time but isn't of the 'I say old chap' variety. On the contrary, this is a sophisticated narrative that could certainly hold its own alongside many of the novels written today but set in the period. I was really wrapped up in it and will shortly polish off the other two novels in the omnibus.

I would love to tell you a little more about the author and this series of books but I must confess I have drawn a blank. All I have been able to discover online is this reference which lists his books and a few dates. The rest is a mystery.

Perhaps it is a case for Clay Harrison himself.

*Quite the bargain, it would appear, as copies are going for £40+ now.

Just For One Day

If you were a superhero what would your special power be?

Perhaps you would be like The Frog-Kisser, blessed with the ability to turn geeks into winners just by dating them?

Or maybe The Couch Surfer? He can withstand long periods of poverty by feeding on handfuls of breakfast cereal and moving across town sleeping on the sofas of friends and acquaintances.

What about Mr Opportunity, who knocks on lots of doors but finds them rarely answered?

You may prefer to be Inverse. Shake his hand and you will see a vision of the extact opposite of your life.

Or, like Andrew Kaufman, you would be able to write the most charming, original, romantic and slightly warped novel I have read in ages.

Tom is not a superhero, but all of his friends are. Some of them are described above. He has even married a superhero, The Perfectionist. She can ensure that everything is just right. On their wedding day she is hypnotised by an ex-boyfriend, Hypno, so that she, and only she, cannot see or hear Tom.

This unfortunate development does not make for the best of honeymoons. Convinced that Tom has left her, but hopeful that he will return, The Perfectionist waits for two years but eventually gives up and decides to move to Vancouver and start her life afresh.

We join her on this flight. She thinks there is an empty seat beside her but we know Tom is there, desperate to break the spell and make her see him. If he doesn't manage it by the time they land he will lose her forever.

This is such a deceptively simple story, precisely the sort of book that makes you wish you had come up with the idea yourself. It is funny, clever, bitter-sweet and adorable.

I guess there may be some people who will be able to resist the off-kilter charm of All My Friends are Superheroes but if there are, I am not sure I want to know them. I prefer people with a bit of romance and magic in their hearts, and this is a book that amplifies that tenfold.

If I had any criticism it would be that All My Friends are Superheroes is just too short. At a little over 100 wide-margined pages it takes next to no time to read. I polished it off between Richmond and Windsor on the train home. There simply isn't enough of it. I would have liked to spend a good week or so in its company. Instead I shall have to make it one of the books I re-read every couple of years.

The Firestation Book Swap

I am delighted, chuffed, and not a little excited to announce the launch of a new literary event. The inaugural Firestation Book Swap will take place in August and, if all goes to plan, will be something a bit different for book fans.

The idea is one I have been knocking around for some time and have finally come up with a venue and a format. The Firestation is a new arts centre in Windsor, just round the corner from my house. It has already played host to a great deal of cutting edge comedy, live music and cinema events and is soon to find itself the setting for our Book Swap night. It seats just over 150 people and there is a gallery area, a cafe and bar. It is rather a nice place to hang out and is quickly becoming a bustling cultural centre for Windsor.

The format is, I hope, one which will prove to be entertaining - it had better do as we will need to sell some tickets to make the whole thing worthwhile. There are still some elements to be confirmed but the sort of thing we have in mind is this.

The evening will be hosted by myself and Marie Phillips. Marie is the author of the bestselling novel Gods Behaving Badly and The Woman Who Talked Too Much blog.

We hope to welcome 2, or perhaps 3 authors to join us on stage for some tea, cake and conversation. Unlike a typical book event, we don't want people to read from their latest novel, we just want to have a good chinwag about all manner of things. Sure, we will touch upon their work and career but will want to delve deeper as well as getting them chatting about things outside of the normal literary subjects - we might ask them to bring along some favourite songs, give us a rundown of the websites and blogs they frequent, perhaps bring along a cake and share the recipe with those in attendance. Anything goes really.

The Firestation Book Swap will also encourage audience participation. Attendees will be invited to write down their own questions for the guests which they can plonk into a question jar for us to pluck out at various points during the evening. The only rule is that the questions cannot be anything to do with books!

One audience volunteer will be asked to man our Twitter account during the evening, tweeting the highlights as they see fit. If we can, we will record the night's events and release it as a podcast.

But the most important piece of interaction will be the Big Book Swap. Every member of the audience, and the guests, will be invited to bring a book along with them. At the end of the evening everyone will mingle and attempt to swap their book with someone else. The plan is that everyone leaves with a new book. As well as, we hope, some good memories of a night well spent.

So there you have it. The first Firestation Book Swap will take place in August, the exact date to be confirmed. Naturally, all of you are very welcome to come along. Windsor is only a 30 minute train journey or car ride from London and is pretty easy to get to from anywhere in the M4 corridor. We really hope to make the night something a bit special and, if it works, we will try to hold it as a regular monthly thing.

What we are trying to do now is sort out the guests for our debut event. I know that quite a few publishers and authors read this blog so if you are such a person and are keen to get involved then do please drop me a line. We are hoping for a nice mix of guests - both the famous and the up and coming, even the completely unknown - and it would be great to have a cracking line-up for our very first night. There will be an opportunity for the audience to buy books on the night so that should make the trip worth the authors' while but the emphasis is on quality chat, quality cake and lots of fun.

I shall keep you informed and updated as things start to firm up over the coming weeks.

Bored To Death

I have not performed this experiment myself but I care to postulate that if you grabbed 30 random passers-by and stuck them in front of the Charlie Chaplin movie The Kid there is a fair chance that the majority of them would find it thoroughly entertaining. Sure, a few would struggle a bit with the silent movie format and some might consider the humour a bit clumsy and obvious but, on the whole, I think the man in the hat and cane would get the thumbs up.

But make them watch Ladies Must Live, a hugely successful romantic movie from the same year, and I reckon most of them would be bored rigid. The audience of the time loved it and went to see it in their millions. A modern viewer would be hard pushed to sit through the whole thing.

Which is rather a long-winded way of conveying my feelings about The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. I have no doubt that it was a major piece of work when it was published in 1886, and clearly Tolstoy is a literary heavyweight whose work is worthy of attention to this day but, if I am completely honest, I really cannot see why or how the book is considered a classic.

The titular Ivan is a city official, married with two children. His life has been somewhat uneventful. His marriage is more of an annoyance than anything else. He is irritable and impatient but, on the whole, considers himself a good man who has led a good life.

One day, while fiddling with some new curtains, he falls over and hurts his side. This injury gradually worsens, or perhaps brings on something more serious, and he slowly succumbs to an unpleasant illness which eventually, and I am really not giving anything away here, kills the bugger.

And that is it. Nothing much else happens. It is implied that his wife and children aren't that fussed about his impending demise, the most pleasant character in the story is Ivan's manservant, and Ivan himself has a minor deathbed revelation - perhaps he hasn't led quite as good a life as he thought - but none of these things are enough to really move, impress or stimulate me as a modern reader, although I accept they might have been a big deal 130 years ago. I was a bit bored really.

It isn't even as if the writing is particularly impressive. Not once did I pause over a poetic phrase or striking sentence. The book was, thank goodness, mercifully short but it was a complete non-event for me.

I am hoping that some of you will disagree with me and be able to point out what I have missed. Please feel free.

A Song For Sunday

Vertigo by Anya Marina.

Every Sprem Is Sacred

With Nadal pulling out of Wimbledon I need to rejig my fantasy tennis team. The deadline is end of day Sunday so will spend some time tonight looking at the draw and having a bit of a fiddle.

Don't forget, you are all very welcome to join the Big Mouth group. All details in this earlier post.

My own team is named in honour of the wonderfully monickered Karolina Sprem, who isn't actually one of my ten women players but I may have to remedy that now that I have seen a picture of her.

Publishers Are Parasites

I went to the movies last night. The BFI to be precise. They were celebrating the life of BS Johnson and offering a rare chance to see some of the film and television work from his short career.

Johnson is best known as an experimental novelist. The Unfortunates was a novel packaged in a box with loose leaf chapters that, with the exception of one marked FIRST and another marked LAST, could be read and re-read in any order. House Mother Normal is set in a nursing home with each chapter recounting the same events from the perspective of new character, and each character is more senile than the last. Albert Angelo has a hole cut into some of the pages, revealing a glimpse of plot ahead.

But Johnson also tried his hand at filmmaking and television presenting and it was this work which was being shown last night. I get the impression that the organisers were surprised by the demand as the programme changed screen twice in the weeks before, ending up at the main NFT1 which seats up to 450.

You're Human Like The Rest Of Them was written and directed by Johnson and was the most cinematic of the pieces on show. It screened at a number of festivals in the late 60s and went down very well. An adaptation of his own verse play it had some amusing subliminal cuts and, despite being a bit amateur in places, was actually pretty good.

Next up was a 15 minute feature on The Unfortunates, orginally broadcast as part of a BBC2 arts programme called Release. Johnson returned to Nottingham, where the book is set, and talked about the book between shots of the city and readings from the book by William Hoyland, the lead actor from You're Human.

Hoyland also appeared in Paradigm, Johnson's second attempt at a film for cinematic release. With a minimalist set and conveyed in a made-up language this was, frankly, pretentious artwank and notable only because it effectively ended any chance Johnson had of a career in movies.

Unfair! was an unsubtle but very funny piece of propaganda Johnson created in opposition to the Industrial Relations Bill which was making its way through Parliament at the time.

One of the highlights for me was a 25 minute programme in which BS Johnson discussed the life of Samuel Johnson. It was - get this - originally broadcast as prime-time weekend viewing on LWT. Coming over as an entertaining cross between David Aaranovitch and Jonathan Meades, Johnson passionately argued the case of his namesake's position in history and peppered his talk with some wonderful subliminal messages - my favourite being the words PUBLISHERS ARE PARASITES appearing on screen when he discussed the disparity between author royalties and the amount spent on publisher lunches.

One very special part of the evening was the first ever showing of a short film Johnson had made to illustrate a Beckett poem. A 2 minute fragment that no one had previously known existed.

And we ended up with Johnson's most famous screen work. Fat Man On A Beach was made for Welsh television in 1974 and was broadcast shortly before the author took his own life. Essentially 40 minutes of random musings set in his beloved Lleyn peninsula this was a surreal masterpiece and highly entertaining. I would happily bet a week's wages that Jonathan Meades saw this when it came out and that it influenced his own style. Great stuff that I am sure would stand up to repeat viewing.

The evening was introduced by Johnson's biographer, novelist Jonathan Coe. He said a few words at the beginning to set the programme in context and very fine words they were too. He also announced that the Johnson literary archive was being donated to the British Library and that a one day conference on his work is scheduled for October. Both very exciting pieces of information.

My companion for the evening was novelist and publisher David Belbin who came down from Nottingham especially. He was a delightful movie date, full of information and was kind enough to introduce me to Barry Cole, BSJ's close friend, who was also in attendance.

For a BS Johnson fan this was very much a once in a lifetime opportunity and I suspect the theatre was full of people who had waited decades to see some of this material. I am pretty sure they would have all found it worth the wait. I certainly did.

Yet More Blood

We've had to reload the content for More Blood, More Sweat And Another Cup Of Tea on the issuu.com site due to some technical difficulties.

If you were kind enough to embed the book on your site then you might now have a dead link. Apologies if that is the case.

Here is the code that you need to make it work again, or you can click through the the host page for the book which is here.

Copy and paste the gobbledygook below:

<div><object style="width:420px;height:284px" ><param name="movie" value="http://static.issuu.com/webembed/viewers/style1/v1/IssuuViewer.swf?mode=embed&amp;layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml&amp;showFlipBtn=true&amp;documentId=090616141921-39662af6893b455fb305ae62f02756ab&amp;docName=more_blood_more_sweat_and_another_cup_of_tea&amp;username=FridayProject&amp;loadingInfoText=More%20Blood%2C%20More%20Sweat%20and%20Another%20Cup%20of%20Tea&amp;et=1245236559313&amp;er=64" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"/><param name="menu" value="false"/><embed src="http://static.issuu.com/webembed/viewers/style1/v1/IssuuViewer.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" menu="false" style="width:420px;height:284px" flashvars="mode=embed&amp;layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml&amp;showFlipBtn=true&amp;documentId=090616141921-39662af6893b455fb305ae62f02756ab&amp;docName=more_blood_more_sweat_and_another_cup_of_tea&amp;username=FridayProject&amp;loadingInfoText=More%20Blood%2C%20More%20Sweat%20and%20Another%20Cup%20of%20Tea&amp;et=1245236559313&amp;er=64" /></object><div style="width:420px;text-align:left;"><a href="http://issuu.com/FridayProject/docs/more_blood_more_sweat_and_another_cup_of_tea?mode=embed&amp;layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml&amp;showFlipBtn=true" target="_blank">Open publication</a> - Free <a href="http://issuu.com" target="_blank">publishing</a> - <a href="http://issuu.com/search?q=tea" target="_blank">More tea</a></div></div>

And you will get this:

Please feel free to copy and share with anyone and everyone.

Anyone For Tennis?

Well, it is that time again and hopefully I won't cock it up.

Wimbledon is less than a week away so once more I invite you all to join me in the Tennis For Free Dream Team fantasy tennis tournament.

The rules are simple.

• Visit the TFF Dream Team site.
• Follow the instructions to select 10 men and 10 women players for your team.
• Join the Big Mouth group by using this password: f6cc429ae78d3d5a0a1c6bdb9a4b4096.

Everyone is welcome. Regular players include author Robert Hudson and the owner of the Ringwood bookshop Trevor Johnson. But the more the merrier - don't be shy.

If those lovely and refined book lovers over at Dovegreyreader's blog want to battle it out again then we would be honoured to accept the challenge.

And if our one-time member Mark Robson wants to save face after coming next to last with his splinter group in the French Open then we welcome a rematch.

I have been doing my research this time round and will be studying the draw and making some adjustments right up to the deadline. But I won't try to do it after the deadline, like I did last time - muppet.

It Ain't Pretty

Bete du Jour is not your average memoir. It is the life story of a very ugly man.

The author is a friend of the blog so I am more than happy to give the book a mention here and point you in the direction of this place, where you can read a huge chunk of the book online for free.

He will be guest blogger here soon as well, so watch out for that.

Ethan Interviews Steve Feasey

Ethan is my 10 year old son. He is a fan of manga, loves drawing and reads a great deal. One of his favourite recent reads is Changeling by Steve Feasey.

Changeling tells the story of Trey, a teenage boy who has no idea that he is actually the last hereditary werewolf. That is, until his dorm room is mysteriously trashed one night and he slowly discovers how it got to be that way. Cue a fantastic adventure full of vampires, demons, socerers and more, much more.

Steve recently gave a talk at Ethan's school and kindly agreed to answer some questions once Ethan had finished the book.

The results are below.

EP: Hello Steve, thanks for letting me ask some questions. Here goes. What books did you read when you were my age? I am 10.

SF: Hi Ethan. Thanks for putting together a great bunch of questions. At your age I was reading classic adventure stories. I was a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and really enjoyed the Barsoom series, but the Tarzan books were my favourites. I also read Treasure Island and The Jungle Book at about the same time. One book that I remember reading, which I’d recommend having a squint at, is The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall – terrific stuff.

EP: And what books do you read now?

SF: I read a bit of everything. I always have a big pile of books waiting for me to read, and I like to mix up the types of book that I read. I’ve recently read Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist (excellent vampire story), Blood Brother by J. A. Kerley (serial killer thriller), and I am currently reading The Equivoque Principle by Darren Craske (a Victorian adventure romp).

EP: Why did you choose to make Trey a werewolf and not something else like a vampire?

SF: I think that there are more than enough vampire books out there already, don’t you?. And besides, werewolves are the next big thing! Seriously though, I’ve always had a thing about werewolves, and I really liked the idea that a boy could live out his entire young life without knowing that he was born with his ‘curse’, only for it to rear its ugly head when he enters his teens. Plus the transformation scenes are so much fun to write.

EP: My favourite bit in the book is when they are looking for Alexa and go into the mansion where Tom starts shooting the spiders. What was your favourite bit to write?

SF: My favourite scene is where Lucien has to force Trey to change into a werewolf by using a cattle-prod. It’s not necessarily the most exciting scene, but it was the seed from which the entire Changeling series grew, so it’s special to me. The fight scene on the London Underground with the Shadow Demons was good to write too. I like the action-stuff. It’s not easy to write, but it’s the most fun to visualise and try to get down on the page.

EP: And who is your favourite character? I like Tom because he swears and is funny.

SF: LOL. Tom is my go-to character when I need to relieve the tension a bit. He’s quirky and comedic, but has a rough and ruthless side to him too. I use him as a release valve when I want to lighten the mood a bit - which is important when writing horror. But my favourite character is probably Lucien - he’s just so cool. Or maybe Trey…or Alexa…or…

EP: Does the drawing on the cover of Changeling look like you imagined Trey would look when you were writing the book?

SF: Not really. I think that the cover of the second book - Changeling: Dark Moon - is more how I imagined Trey in full-werewolf-mode. Having said that, I think that Kev Walker has done an amazing job on all of the covers (I got to see the artwork for book 3 this week, and it is stunning – seriously scary).

EP: If you could have a quote from anyone in the world for the front of your book who would it be?

SP: Stephen King. For me he’s the best pound-for-pound storyteller out there, and I love his early books. If Mr King was too busy I’d go for Clive Barker – that guy can write like hell too.

EP: I loved Changeling, what other authors would you recommend that I read?

SF: I’m sure you’d love the Artemis Fowl books by Eion Colfer, and Horowitz’s Power of Five series is supposed to be good (I’ve not read them myself yet). The Black Book of Secrets by F. E. Higgins is great stuff, so I’d recommend that as a must-read.

EP: And finally, you must be selling lots of books, can you lend me a fiver?

SF: I tell you what; I’ll lend you a fiver if you promise to use it to buy a copy of Changeling: Dark Moon when it comes out in August. How about that? (Shameless plug, or what?)

---

Ethan and I both want to thank Steve for taking the time to answer his questions. I can report that Ethan was completely wrapped up in Steve's book while he was reading it and he cannot wait to read the next one in the series. That may be a useful recommendation if you have kids of a similar age.

Steve Feasey has a very good website and also a blog which is well worth checking out. Changeling is published by Macmillan and is out now. The second volume follows in August.

Free Books And Free Wine

To mark the publication of their latest volume in the City-Lit series, this time the city in question is London, Oxygen Books are kindly offering three free copies to my readers.

The first three people to email me asking for a copy with have one hand delivered (by a postman) to their door.

But if you aren't quick enough to pick up the book then worry not. Oxygen are inviting all of you (presumably in the hope that you don't all turn up) to attend the official launch. Details below:

16 June
7.00 – 8.30pm
Eastside Books
166 Brick Lane (near Truman Brewery)
London E1
admission free

Writing London: Under the City's Skin with Clare Clark, Rachel Lichtenstein, Time Out's Peter Watts and city-lit's Heather Reyes. Free glass of wine. An Independent Bookseller Week event.

Please don't embarrass yourselves in the presence of free wine. Have fun.

You're Barred

Lots of interesting posts coming up this week, I promise.

But before they appear you may want to check out the sidebars. Loads of new reviews, links and updates to be found. Something for everyone and plenty of reading recommendations amongst them.

Happy scrolling.

A Song For Sunday

Monster Song by Psapp.

Interview: Sjón

Sjón is the pen name of Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson, an Icelandic novelist and the author of one of my books of the year The Blue Fox. Here is a fascinating interview in which his answers are miles more interesting than my questions.

SP: The Blue Fox is a short book, with the words used sparingly on the page. I am guessing that this didn't mean it was a quick book to write - or am I wrong?

S: You are right. I wrote it over a two year period. The first year was more or less spent researching 19th century Iceland and reading about the different subjects that make up the story, such as fox hunting, accidents at sea, avalanches, burial rites, the care or abuse of mentally handicapped people, opium smoking, cravats and bow-ties (late Byronesque or otherwise). During that time I also worked hard on the structure of the book and its style. The style came quite naturally as the language of the 19th century documents slowly became natural to me but the structure was informed by my work with the Brodsky Quartet. It was while working with them in the autumn of 2002 that I realized that I could take the classical string quartet as a model for the composition of the Blue Fox. That is why Schubert has a cameo in the book, and his Winterreise and the Death and the Maiden quartet are my imagined soundtrack to it. So, when it came down to actually write the book it took me about four months. I knew from the beginning that it was going to be a short novel so I had to continually slap my wrist when it started to stray in the direction of the epic. And while we are on the subject of long books and short, I read somewhere that when asked why he wrote such long books Sir Walter Scott answered that he didn't have time to make them shorter.

SP: You have written lyrics for Bjork in the past, so a lot of people will know your words without necessarily realising that you wrote them. Presumably you have to approach lyric writing very differently to writing a novel?

S: Yes, as I do not write the music it is by nature a collaboration. When writing the novels I am the creator and king of my little world, enjoying my freedom to choose and refuse which elements to put into play. But when I work on a song with Bjork I have to take into consideration which ideas and feelings are its source. We usually sit down for an afternoon and brainstorm about the narrative possibilities of the story we are going to tell in the song. And as I only start working on the words after she has laid down the melody, the melody practically defines the meter of the verses, bridges and choruses, the number of syllables I have to wrap in words of some meaning and emotion. After finishing each of my novels I seek out such collaborations. They are a great way to relax and to deflate the overblown ego one tends to develop when playing God and Emperor for so long.

SP: Congratulations on being nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. What are your thoughts on translation? There is always an element of compromise involved, do you find that difficult?

S: Thank you. I think that the translation of literature is one of the greatest projects our species have undertaken. It satisfies elemental needs which seem to be at the core of our being, that is to swap stories, to get news from faraway places, to cry over the misfortune of strangers, to laugh at the mishaps of rascals. There seems to be a growing interest in world literature and it might stem from people's wish to look beyond the global news media's fragmented and clichéd presentation of exotic and ravaged places. Regarding the translation process itself I very much enjoy working with the translators of my books. I know I do not make their work easy as I never think about if a book will travel or not while writing it, so I do not hesitate to use the most obscure, nearly forgotten, untranslatable 17th century term if it happens to make a sentence sound better. How the translators always manage to escape from those traps amazes me. Being brought up on translated books I know that when the book is well written in its foster language the reader will not realize that a compromise was made. I once witnessed an incredibly long and boring conversation between Jose Saramago and and Icelandic moderator about how much he suffered because some of his translators insisted on placing the commas in the text according to the grammatical rules of the target language. I couldn't care less and imagine most readers do not miss out on much ...

SP: I have been recommending The Blue Fox to anyone who will listen and some local book groups have read it as their monthly selection. There seem to be many different interpretations of the story, about what is real, what is imagined, the symbolism involved. How does it feel to have your work discussed and analysed in this way?

S: It is always a good feeling to know that someone is actually reading your book. That the readers have opinions about what it is made of is even better, and when opinions differ it is plain flattering, especially when they go against your own intentions. "The Blue Fox" seems to be especially open to personal interpretations and sometimes quite surprising ones. A journalist I met in Warzawa told me that the discussion about the pros and cons of electricity reverend Skuggason has with the vixen at the end of the book was the most erotic thing she had read in a long while. She insisted that it was meant to show an interspecies intercourse taking place and the shudder she felt when the hunter-reverend plunged his knife into the beast proved it. In a case like that, who would dare to disagree?

SP: Are we going to be able to read some more of your work in English soon?

S: I hope so. Telegram has just acquired the rights to my latest novel, Rokkurbysnir as it is called in Icelandic and roughly translates as 'the Twilight of Marvels'. The year is 1635. The earth is still at the centre of the universe, the chambers of the heart are two, birds hatch from seaweed, unicorn horns are in demand as luxury goods and stones are used as medicine. The artist and wordsmith Jonas Palmason 'the learned' is sentenced for spreading the knowledge of witchcraft and sent into exile on a tiny islet, Gullbjarnarey, off the east coast of Iceland. I based it on the life and mental world of this self-educated Icelander who can be said to have embodied the seventeenth century Iceland. And it tells of the chilling aftermath of the Lutheran Reformation, the heroic exorcism of a walking corpse in the remote county of Snaefjallastrond, secret Virgin Mary rituals, the massacre of Basque whalers in the western fjords and a family on the run in times when neighbourly charity had become obsolete. In his exile Jonas 'the learned' reflects on his life so far, and the reader follows him on his journey as he braces the storms of the heart and the mind in the age of 'The Twilight of Marvels'. It will be a must read for all the unicorn fanatics out there (yes, I expect them to be a legion), though a bitter one, as in one chapter I reveal how Jonas the Learned's contribution to Natural sciences led to the dissolution of the myth of this fantastic beast.

SP: Are there any other Icelandic authors we should be checking out?

S: There is our Nobel prize winner from 1955, Halldór Laxness, and his beautiful novel The Fish Can Sing. It is published in the UK by Harvill Press. Then there is Bragi Olafsson's dark and quirky comedy The Pets, published by Open Letters Books in the US. And Gyrdir Eliasson's short story collection Stone Tree, published in the UK by Comma Press, and recently longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

SP: I am always keen for my guests to recommend a favourite book. What would you suggest we all rush out and read next?

My favorite book for the last 29 years has been The Master and Margarita , but as I expect that many of those reading your blog have read it, I will also recommend House of Day, House of Night by Poland's greatest living novelist Olga Tokarczuk. And please read Babette's Feast by Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen if you haven't done so five times already.

---

The Blue Fox is published by Telegram Books and is bloody marvelous, so stop what you are doing and grab a copy now.