Me And My Big Mouth

Guest Blogger: Ian Hocking

Cover Me

Tediously, it's me again. Not more than a few weeks ago, I was holding this blog hostage with a post about the tribulations of publishing my book, Déjà Vu. The traditional route hadn't worked. It hadn't worked for so long, in fact, that the 'future' in which the book was set was about to pass by with one of those 'whooshing' sounds. I was willing to turn to the Church of the Latter Day Kindle - can I get a 'Hell yes?' - and turn I did.

I am back to report, friends and neighbours, that I have got me some Holy Ghost power and a bad case of the born-agains.

No, verily.

The story so far: Déjà Vu is selling for 70p in the UK and 99c in the US. It's been selling since the beginning of March. In that month, I sold 320 copies in total; in April, 938; and in May (thus far)...um, 666 copies.

Riiiiight.

That totals £407.96 in three months. Nobody will be retiring on that money, or even earning much of a living, but I could certainly go to a casino and lose it all on the Snakes and Ladders.

Lo, brothers and sisters, following the success of Déjà Vu, I hatched a plan. I decided to publish the sequel. Flashback is yet another technothriller with yet more time travel, smart-arsed computers and snappy talkie-talk.

What first? Editing.

Déjà Vu was professionally edited by m'colleague Aliya Whiteley, who is also a novelist. I thought - more than thought; knew - that publishing Flashback without editing would be like putting on lederhosen, those strange socks-that-aren't-socks, and forgetting the accordion. Effect: ruined. Lacking in oompah-pah. Dead trousers, as they say in Germany. Readers not so much disappointed as very, very angry.

Friends of Me And My Big Mouth will need no introduction to Clare Christian, who was there when the Friday Project was wee. She's doing various things right now; one of them is editing. I blew a cool £425 on a...line/copy edit - whatever you call it. In essence, she changed all the things that made me look like an idiot into things that made me look clever.

At this point, given current earnings on Déjà Vu (disregarding tax for the moment), I was down about a hundred quid or so.

What next? The cover. I'd heard about Emma Barnes over at Snow Books through Scott. She's the managing editor of this small publishing outfit but also does freelance designing. I dropped her line asking about her going rate. Turned out it was £699.13.

In for a penny; in for a grand. I wasn't about to knock up something in my shed and have prospective readers shudder in a Sideshow Bob-meets-rake style every time they saw it. Besides, her covers are great - particularly those for the thrillers they sell over at Snow Books. Check them out.

How do you start the ball rolling with a cover? Well, the designer wants some initial ideas. I'm not sure how established publishing houses do this, but I'm not of the opinion that the designer needs to read the book first; the author should be able to communicate the tone, genre and major elements. So I sent Emma - now signing herself in a somewhat Kafkan manner as 'Em' - some piccies, chiefly covers of Robert Ludlum/Bourne novels, some Hollywood posters, and an image of the Avro-Lancastrian - one of the two aircraft that features in my book.

This was Em's first mock-up:

As a mock-up, of course, it has many almost-but-not-quite elements. I thought it was pretty good. The top plane was modern; the bottom one old-fashioned. And yet it didn't quite make Schnookins do the shit dance.

I wrote back to Em and requested another. Em's reply was not verbose. Later that night, I got this:

Wow. When I'd suggested 'woman with a gun' I was thinking trouser suit and pistol. This looked like something from Top Gear. You know the feeling you get when you're not sure whether something is really good or really naff? Usually when you're watching Top Gear? That's the feeling I had. Ultimately, I decided that the publishers of those 1970s Fleming re-prints would have loved it.

It had to go.

Em's emailed reply was almost entirely composed of a fictional conversation between myself and her. It was a comedic tour-de-force. By this point, it was hard not to picture Em as a chain-smoking, sassy young detective from a 1970s New York cop show who refers affectionately to criminals as 'clowns'.

We pulled the one-armed bandit of design once more. And the next cover blew the bloody doors off.

This was almost perfect. It needed a tweak or two for legibility as a 'fun size' Amazon thumbnail - the accordion to its lederhosen, as it were - and then we settled on:

Which just about makes me want to shout "Top drawer!".

So now I'm over a grand in the hole.

I remind myself that small businesses spend more than this on their headed notepaper. Ultimately, it ain't much. And if you're going to publish a book yourself without having it edited or given a decent cover, you might as well call it 'Book' and see how people get on googling it.

Lo, brothers and sisters: Flashback. It's been out four days and has clocked up 44 sales. Given that it's selling for £2.13 - the lowest price threshold for the 75% Kindle royalty - that's £67.76 or thereabouts. (Update as of 7pm, May 26, 2011: 64.)

The cover has a lot to do with it. Right now, with very few reviews - not counting those for the prequel, Déjà Vu - the cover is doing most of the work in selling the book. Perhaps once I have more reviews, those will take over...but a person does need to click that cover in order to get at the text of the reviews.

Now, do you need to spend this kind money to publish your book? Difficult to say. One might argue that £1000-plus is taking the enterprise into what used to be known as 'vanity publishing' territory - i.e. a con targeting the vulnerable.

My advice is to believe in what you're doing. Yes, you want a publisher to take you on and do some of your believing for you. There is comfort in that. But - here comes the cliché - you need to believe in yourself with this stuff anyway, publisher or not, so you may as well get the faith.

Alright, you clowns. Peace, love and incense.

---

You can check in on Ian's antics at his This Writing Life website.

Guest Blogger: Sarah Finley

The men that died......and other reasons why I’m not married!

“You want me, you got me,” his text message said.

Although a little cheesy I smiled as I read it in my drunken stupor. I’d just been on an amazing date with a guy who I’d fancied for a while. We’d spent the evening dissecting our lives and kissing so passionately that one of the gay guys in the bar had actually come up to us and declared us the ‘hottest’ couple in there. I’m not sure if he meant that we were actually cute together, or he got off on the fact that we were practically humping each other in a bar in the middle of Soho. But we both took it as a compliment anyway.

He hadn’t been my normal type when I’d first met him. When we’d been introduced by a mutual friend the fact that he was a chain smoker and way too tall for my 5ft 1in frame had put me off. But a guy that can make me laugh changes everything. FACT. After he’d hooked me on his tales of drunkenness and melted mars bars (I would like to fill you in but tequila has blurred my memory) I made pretty sure that he’d be asking me out.

So when he left me at the tube station after our first date, with a kiss which could have easily come from a scene in a rom-com I thought that was it, he was the one, the one I’d go on a second date with, argue over the remote with and quite possibly.......well you know the rest.

It was the start of something beautiful – or so I’d thought. My silent phone told me something different. A second date never materialised and we never did get to compete nationally for the title of ‘Britain’s next top couple’! So when I’d come to terms with how we wouldn’t be spending Sundays in Ikea.......I pronounced him dead.

And you probably know some guys that have died too – they’re the ones that never called and asked for a second date, the ones who did a vanishing act after date number three and even worse, the ones who said they’d be your boyfriend but got cold feet before they committed to Sunday nights in front of the Antiques Roadshow.

Some might think that this is a little harsh – but what’s worse than admitting that the guy we had really high hopes for had just been a complete loser. So once we declare that they’ve been tragically been wiped off this planet life seems so much better.

Well that is until you bump into one (usually with their new girlfriend), happen to stumble (aka stalk) on to their facebook page or your friends ever so lovingly tell you ‘oh you know that guy you dated for a few months a while back? Well, he’s getting married in a few months.’

But even with social networking annoyingly reminding us that exes are in fact alive and well, I still claim that all the guys that have disappeared on me are dead. So when I get asked ‘that’ question at weddings I usually say the same thing. You know the question, that annoying one that your great Aunt Noseypants asks when you’ve just come to terms with a break up or just survived seeing your exe’s new wife pregnant  - ‘So why don’t you have a boyfriend?’ They usually look at me with a look of sympathy when I utter those immortal words – ‘He died’. Beats admitting that he never called.

---

Read more about Sarah’s disastrous love life at: http://thelovesandlifeofalondongirl.blogspot.com

A Song for Sunday

Turn Me On by The Grates.

Guest Blogger: James McIntyre

Why I’m Not Very Good at Writing Blogs

Let’s start back in my university days. I can’t remember how we arrived at the conclusion but one time my stereotypical student friends; the stoner, the arty one, the self-harming depressive, the Oliver Reed impersonator (collect the set kids!) and I, decided that at the weekend, we would head out to Edinburgh and have a day of glorious abandon in the capital during which we would all get ourselves tattooed. Like most proposed endeavours during anyone’s student days, this seemed like a great idea at the time and we fixed ourselves on that course with all the enthusiasm we didn’t apply to our studies.

During the week leading up to our adventure I’m sure among us there was a great load of old toot talked about how us getting tattoos together would bond us forever and basically prove us to be the free thinking idealists we were sure we were. All good student fun, however there was a pivotal moment for me where one of my mates, while talking about the Garfield ‘Stuck on You’ style tat he was proposing to get on his arm (cartoon fat cat clinging-big in the 80s), asked me what I was going to get.

This question hit me like a thunderbolt because truthfully, up until that point I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought and I realised that I had no idea what to get. I liked the idea of getting a tattoo but what to get? In fact, it highlighted a problem in my life before and since which is what am I actually into. The answer is nothing really. I like a lot of things but none of them to the extent I would want to have them depicted on me. I wish I was different but in the words of the annoying hipsters in that tragic advert, that’s just me.

I think in terms of the tattoo, even then I was aware of the transitory nature of my own appreciation; a band that you love for their erudite and sensitive songs take part in an interview and you see it and realise that they are a pack of thick oafs. Or conversely, a pack of thick oafs you are fond of turn up on something or other and you realise they are a bunch of educated fops you can’t stand. So bands were out, cartoon characters were a bad idea even then, Tribal patterns and Ying-Yang dolphins were an obvious fad, slogans were risky because I didn’t know what I believed in (still don’t) and my catastrophic family situation back home ruled out even the obligatory ‘Mum’ with heart.

Over the days leading to the proposed tattoo trip I pondered this to the point of obsession. I decided I would decide on a design when I got to the parlour and devoted the rest of the time until Saturday in my usual fashion- namely wasting my state funded education time on hedonism (I’m ashamed of it now… seriously).

The problem was the same as if someone had presented me with a whitewashed wall and given me can of spray-paint, telling me to make my mark.  Despite having a mad, whirling tornado of opinions and ideas, I would not have had the foggiest idea where to start and would be acutely concerned that what I put down would then become representative of me for all time. Ultimately, if I ended up drawing something easily regrettable later such as a tacky alien smoking a joint, then that stoned alien would basically be me for the rest of my life. Perpetually out of time and looking awful (in a Bob Marley cap). If I wanted to get rid of it then it would be horrendously complex- I’d have to demolish the wall and how do you go about that? Even now, as a so called mature adult, I can barely organise a sandwich. So I’d hide it and then from time to time someone would be confronted with my horrendously ‘of its time’ graffiti would reveal me for what I am- someone without a clue.

The Edinburgh tattoo (see what I did there) adventure ended predictably dismally with my friend going in first and getting his Garfield tattoo while we waited. After half an hour, he came out manfully showing the latest addition to his shoulder to the rest of us. The Garfield who clung there was lopsided and one of his eyes was bigger than the other. His tail was thin and too long with scrappy stripes in blue ink. In short, Garfield didn’t look good at all and even my friend knew it. There was a sadness in his eyes as he defiantly told us how chuffed he was to have his hero on his arm. That made it all the worse and the rest of us made our excuses and cried off. We’d get our tattoos another time. The ‘one for all and all for one’ spirit had departed and we were all aware of it, especially my newly tattooed friend, who spent the bus journey back to the halls sullenly rubbing his shoulder and absently shaking his head at our betrayal. I suppose at least I had the excuse of not having been able to make up my mind.

Anyway, it’s for essentially the same reasons that I don’t think I’m that I’m very good at writing blogs. The expanse of the page looms as large as a whitewashed wall and haunts me with the same doubts that the tattoo question did back in my student days. Although obviously I have written this blog you’ve just read so maybe I’m maturing or relaxing a little. Whatever it is, it’s not the norm. I can assure you it’s not the norm.

---

You can read some of James McIntyre's stories here.

Guest Blogger: Martha Eleni Pack

Guest Blogger: Steve Murphy

Firstly, I'd like to say thank you to Scott for his open invitation for guest bloggers via twitter and the opportunity to pass on this short story of a true event that happened back in 1994. It crops up quite often when I'm writing poetry.

I was in the Royal Navy between March 1987 and August 2001. The episode happened while I was serving onboard HMS Herald. It was early February 1994, I'd done my usual, through the night, drive from Luton to Plymouth getting to the ship just before it sailed at 7am. As the ship left it's mooring and passed the breakwater in Plymouth Harbour we sailed straight into very rough seas: it stayed that way for the next three weeks while we were at sea. Herald was a survey ship and we had been surveying the sea bed off the west coast of Ireland for a few days when we received a mayday call from a Greek ship called MV Christinaki. We didn't have much detail but as is the lore of seafarers, anyone within the vicinity is both legally and morally bound to make headway to the last known position to aide recovery of crew, and if possible, save the ship.

You have a real mix of people onboard one of her majesty's finest [Navyspeak is a language unto itself]; young and quiet and young and brash upto the Captain who is normally a very level headed, well spoken individual. All, I would say, have an air of confidence and a sense of humour, which is not just a nicety, but a necessity. Banter is raw and prolific and accentuates a thick skin to the most awful experiences.

We knew we were a long way from Christinaki's last known position when the call came and we knew other ships were closer but we set course and hoped we could get there in time to be of assistance. The mood in the ship changed. We were no longer going about our work in the same way, you would see people looking into space when they never would have before. The chat up on deck over a cup of tea and a cigarette became more of home and how families were, “Did you speak to the wife at the weekend about your holiday?”. We knew we were chasing down the heavy swell to save lives.

Preparations were being made in messdecks: blankets were being found and piled ready, the dining hall had been transformed into a make shift sickbay, we were looking forward to bringing wet, cold people on board, making them welcome and taking them to safety. It took us nearly 24 hours to reach the last known position of the Christinaki, sailors were posted at every lookout point about the ship two or three hours before we would get to that position. Lookouts out on deck were changed every 30 minutes: this was February, the wind and rain were heavy and it was cold – as was the sea. The mood depeened within the ship, only essential tasks were being done, everyone was acting as lookout, bonafide or not. We started to see debris, broken wood which had possibly been shipping pallets: every time something was seen an air of excitement filled the ship, followed by the realisation it was another piece of wood or another survival suit, empty again.

We spent a long time in the vicinity, looking, searching, dragging debris out of the water, all to no avail. We never found any survivors. The official enquiry explains that MV Christinaki had left Liverpool with it's cargo of scrap metal bound for Mexico. During a force 10 storm and 35ft waves 240 miles southwest of Cork, one of the forward hatch covers failed and the hold started taking on water – tragically all 27 crew were lost at sea.

The mood on board took a few days to recover, the dining hall returned to being a dining hall and the warm dry blankets were stowed. After any disaster, natural or inflicted by Man, jokes appear very quickly within the raw banter ridden confines of a navy ship but on this occasion, everyone went about their work in a quiet, respectful manner. Not a joke was told, or heard, or would have been tolerated by anyone. It was an experience that drove home, just how dangerous the sea can be.

 ---

Steve Murphy blogs at Bringing Words to Life. His first collection of poetry is called Adrift in a Mind.

Rainwater Tea

If you are missing me, just a little bit, then I have made a guest appearance on Kat Stephen's blog where I read a poem about a cup of tea.

Go on, have a look.

Go on, go on, go on, go on....

Guest Blogger: Bill Fathers

- Do condoms have a best-before date? Does the rubber perish or the lubricant dry out after a while if they're not used... Well? Do they?

- ... Oh, you talking to me?

- Yes, it’s not a rhetorical question, I’d really like to know.

- Have a look on the packet, then. You must have some.

- That’s just it. I could check for myself because about 18 months ago I bought a box of nine -

- Nine! You extravagant creature you.

- But the thing is I’ve no idea where they are. If memory serves there were still seven left when I last reached into the bedside chest of drawers. That must have been back in the winter – not the one just gone, the one before - because I remember we were wearing woolies and the days were getting dark at about five. So, anyway, the other evening, out of curiosity, I looked in the drawer but they weren’t there. I rummaged around in my wife’s underwear for some time -

- You dirty old man.

- That’s where the condoms are kept. In her knicker draw. Incidentally, I never knew she had so many knickers; she’s got hundreds.

- Yeah?

- I have seven pairs of pants. Surely that’s enough?

- More than enough.

- But the box had definitely gone.

- Did you call the police?

- Not that finding them would have made any difference to what is laughingly called our love life.

- Bit of a joke, is it?

- You could say that. I think my wife’s beautiful but she hates me looking at her body, so I have to steal glances, like some voyeur. If she catches me sneaking a peek, she’ll punch her thighs and say accusingly, ‘I’m putting on weight, aren’t I?’ like I’m to blame. No, I say, you look lovely. ‘My arse is really lardy, isn’t it?’ she’ll counter. Not a bit, love, you’re gorgeous. ‘Hmm,’ she says.’

Occasionally I’d make some kind of sulky comment, like, ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance we might do it before my knob drops off through lack of activity, is there?’ And she would snap back that she was just too tired. Always too tired.

- And what did you say to that?

- Well, I said, we could have an early night, or - and here’s a really crazy idea - we could even nip upstairs in the afternoon, you know, before the girls get back from school. When I said that she gave me a scornful look like I’d just suggested, I don’t know, like I’d suggested we go and have a shag on the village green.

- You have to admit it’s a bit kinky at your age. Anyway, surely it can’t be that difficult. You just need to drop a few hints, don’t you, like rubbing her back or something?

- You don’t understand. At night, after the light’s been switched off, there can be nothing worse than a hairy paw creeping onto a woman’s body...

- You’ve got the dog in bed with you!? No wonder she doesn’t feel like it.

- I was talking about me, putting my arm on her.

- Oh, right. Well, that’s not so bad, is it?

- Yes, it is. It’s awful for both of us - awkward to say no and humiliated to be told no - so I don’t make any overtures anymore. I figure it’s only fair to wait instead for her to let me know if she’s in the mood.

- And?

- She’s never in the mood.

- Perhaps it’s you. Maybe you’re rubbish at sex.

- Cheers, but it’s not just about sex. I tried to tell her that one night after lights out.

- What did she say?

- She snapped back: ‘Why do you always pick this time of night to have one of your talks when you know I’m trying to get to sleep?’ But I persisted.

- Well done. Faint heart never -

- As I was saying, I persisted. It’s not just about sex - though there’d be nothing wrong with that if it were, surely - but it’s about showing love, isn’t it, it’s about displaying feelings of intimacy that you don’t show anyone else?

- Good point. And what did she say?

- Nothing. So I gave her a nudge. Well? ‘For Christ’s sake!’ she hissed. ‘I’m exhausted, I’m trying to go to sleep. I have a low sex drive, OK? Just deal with it.’

- Ouch, that’s telling you. And did you deal with it?

- If we can’t go the whole way, I thought, then perhaps a cuddle, but if I tried that she’d probably take it as a leading gesture. Besides, she hates it if I stroke her bum (‘it’s fat, isn’t it?’) or cup a breast (‘they’re pathetic little things, aren’t they?’). So physical contact is pretty much off limits.

- Not having much luck, are you?

- And call me a perv but I’d also like to sleep in the nude.

- Perv.

- Fuck off. I find it more comfortable, and if we ever did have a cuddle - just a cuddle - then the feel of skin on skin would be delicious. But that’s not an option, either. She says it’s distasteful not to wear anything and what if one of the girls were to come in? So I keep my boxers on, and get all my bits and bobs tangled up whenever I turn over.

- Ooh, yes, I know that feeling.

- I suppose I could make my own amusement.

- You mean, have a -

- Yes, but it’s not the same, is it? Besides, what if one of the girls came in?

- That would be awkward.

- So why am I wondering where the condoms are?

- I don’t know. Why?

- I’m not sure, either. I suppose I’d like to know, just in case.

- Be Prepared, and all that?

- Exactly.

- I don’t think the Cubs had this sort of thing in mind when they coined their motto.

 

Some months later…

 

- Pint of your usual?

- Yeah. Oh look, that barmaid’s on tonight.

- Who? You mean the one young enough to be your daughter?

- She has perfect breasts.

- Being ogled by men her dad’s age must be a perk of the job. Probably makes her night.

- I’m not ogling. I’m being very discreet.

- Well done, Germaine.

- Something bothering you tonight? You’re not normally so touchy.

- Yes, you could say something is bothering me. My wife wants us to separate.

- Oh. Blimey.

- Yes, blimey.

- Not been hitting her again, have you?

- Shut up.

- Did she catch you creeping out of the au pair’s bedroom?

- You know we don’t have one.

- Did she -

- Are you going to be a fucking twat all evening or can we talk about this?

- Sure. Hang on, I’ll get another round in first. Have a little peek at her whatsits while I’m there. Same again?

- Actually, you know what, I think I’ll leave it tonight. It’s been fun but I’m going home. Another time.

 

Next day, the phone rings…

 

- Hello?

- Hi mate, it’s me. Listen, sorry about last night. I was being flippant and you obviously wanted to talk.

- It’s all right.

- And I’m really sorry to hear about you and your wife. Why does she want to separate? You two seem fine.

- I wish I knew. I wish she knew. This has been going on for months and I’m only just starting to get some answers.

- What d’you mean?

- You remember she had a long tour with the orchestra last November. Went all over Europe. Well, when she got back something had changed. She was distant and cold, unaffectionate.

- Maybe she was just tired and fed up with being away. She’s done a lot of tours the past few months.

- You’re right, but this seemed different. As if there was something else.

- Hmm? Like what?

- Well, you know our sex life has been practically non-existent.

- Yeah, you and I talked about it. You were asking about the shelf life of condoms if I remember.

- That’s right. I’d sort of accepted she wasn’t interested in it and that she wasn’t interested in talking about why she wasn’t interested.

- It was all a bit of a no-go area, wasn’t it. Is it that important, though, having regular sex? Don’t lots of couples go through this sort of thing? It’s all bang, bang, bang to begin with and then it’s bang, bang and these days just the occasional bang.

- I could live with that, but with us there are no fireworks at all.

- What, none? Not even a cheap rocket from Poundstretcher?

- Not even a damp sparkler.

- But is it the end of the world if you’re not having sex? You get on in every other way, don’t you?

- Yeah, it is a problem. I miss it. And I think it’s important couples should have sex. It says something about your relationship. And not having sex says something about your relationship too. It helps define the two of you, sets what you have apart from friendships, because friendships are platonic and the relationship with your partner isn’t.

- I know a few friendships that aren’t platonic.. You’ll never guess who’s shagging -

- I don’t want to know. But it’s not just sex, it’s the whole physical side of our relationship that’s gone and I really miss that intimacy. I miss the feel of a woman’s skin against mine. I miss stroking a thigh or rubbing noses, I miss having someone reach down and take me in their hand and feel me grow hard, or me sliding my finger into that sudden wet, slippery warmth between her legs or rubbing that nubbly bit -

- Do you mean the lady’s clitoris, Dr Kinsey?

- Yes, Dr Johnson, I do believe I do. And I miss kissing. Proper, passionate kissing where your tongues are alive.

- And none of that happens?

- No, at best I get a dry peck on the cheek and a brief flutter of her hand on my arm when we switch out the lights.

- That’s not really enough for a red-blooded male like you, is it.

- It’s not really enough for someone with anaemia.

- Thing is, though, you know it’s common for women to lose interest in sex after they’ve had children. Their body image is poor, they think they’ve put on weight, their stomach hasn’t gone back to what it was, or whatever, and they know you’ve seen them at their least attractive, so it’s probably just that. Maybe she just needs more time to start feeling good about herself. Then she’ll start taking an interest in sex again.

- I suppose you’re right.

- Of course, there is the alternative.

- What’s that?

- She’s fucking someone else.

- Ah, that’s what I was coming to. When she got back from that tour and was all off-hand we started to talk a bit. She said she was bothered that we had no sex life.

- Really? Having blanked you whenever you tried to talk about it she now decides it’s a problem?

- Yes, ironic, huh? I asked a few questions and she acknowledged that she wasn’t off sex in general. Just with me. So then I asked her if she was attracted to anyone else and she said - oh hang on, the girls are back from the park. Listen, I’ll have to call you back sometime, or maybe we can go for a pint. Got to go. Bye, mate.

 

 

Days later, two men out for a stroll…

 

- I love walking through these woods.

- Mmm.

- We’re so lucky in the village to have them right on our doorstep.

- Mmm. Long as you don’t mind stepping in dog shit.

- And they’re really peaceful.

- Yuh, sure. Right, so, listen. You were telling me you think your wife has her eye on someone else.

- Yeah. When she told me she wasn’t interested in sex, I asked her if it that was a general feeling or if it was just me, and she said just me.

- How’d that make you feel?

- Pretty small, actually.

- I can imagine.

- Yeah, not great for the old self-esteem.

- Though maybe that’s your problem.

- What is?

- Being pretty small.

- Hey?

- Well, I’ve stood next to you in the urinal. Couldn’t help noticing... you know...

- What? What are you talking about? Are you saying I’ve got a small dick?

- Well, you’re not exactly hung like a donkey, are you.

- Shut your bloody face.

- All right, I’m just saying -

- It’s average sized, which means it’s the same size as most -

- OK. Don’t be so -

- And even if I did have a small dick, which I don’t, are you saying my wife is so shallow she’d dump me after eight years or however many it is because she’s decided she has to be with a man who has a really big -

- All right, all right. I’m sorry I mentioned it.

- Do you know something? Guy the gorilla in London Zoo had a 73-inch chest and was very popular with the female gorillas - and his penis was just one inch long.

- Good for Guy.

- That’s one inch when erect.

- Fine. Compared to Guy, then, you have a huge dong and would have no trouble pulling lots of female gorillas.

- I’m just saying I don’t think that’s the root of the problem.

- Well, what is?

- I don’t know. I just don’t know.

- Do you think she’s having an affair?

- She says not. When she said she was interested in sex, just not with me, I asked her if she was attracted to anyone in particular and she admitted there is a bloke in the orchestra. Someone she’s known for years. But she claims nothing is going on.

- D’you believe her?

- Kind of. She doesn’t seem the sort who’d go behind my back.

- Well, no one does if things are going well. But when the cracks in a relationship start to appear, people change and their eye starts to wander. Your wife’s a decent person but that doesn’t mean she’s incapable of having an affair. It means that if she did she’d probably keep it secret because she wouldn’t want to hurt you.

- Hmm. I suppose.

- Have you thought about having a little fling yourself? Might make you feel better. It’d at least help you with all that libido you’ve got bottled up.

- Have an affair? With one of the mums in the village? I don’t think so. Besides, what’s the outcome of an affair, where does it lead? They always end in tears, don’t they?

- Do they?

- Yeah, sure. Either the two of you decide you want to be together and bring your affair out into the open, so you break up two homes. Or only one of you wants to tell the world and that person eventually gets dumped when their lover goes back to his or her spouse.

- But what if the two lovers both knew that neither had any wish to end their marriage, that they went into the affair already knowing it would only ever be a quiet bit on the side?

- How’s that happen, then? You can’t meet someone, plan to sleep with them but before you do whip out your terms and conditions.

- You can, sort of.

- Huh?

- There are websites you can sign up to.

- What websites?

- For people who want to have affairs but who don’t want to end their marriage. You sign up, state your interests and location and you’re put in touch with like-minded women. They’ll be in the same position as you - they might love their husbands, but the sex is stale, or they have too much to lose if they split up, so they’re looking for a secret lover.

- Sounds sordid.

- Sounds like a good arrangement to me.

- Well I don’t want to sleep with someone else. I want to sleep with my wife.

- But she doesn’t want to sleep with you, and she wants to separate, so what are you going to do?

- Probably get very drunk. Fancy a pint?

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Bill Fathers blogs at the Shouty Dad blog.

Guest Blogger: Ants Bolingbroke-Kent

The Adventurists Adventure 7 is unleashed upon the world.

After several weeks of nail-biting apprehension we can finally reveal the identity of the latest addition to our global web of adventuring mayhem......

 

Hotter than Pippa Middleton’s derrière and junglier than the Congo Basin, The ASEAN Rickshaw Run, will launch in October 2011, pitting 30 international teams against thousands of miles of South East Asia. The basic premise of the Run is the same as its Indian cousin, the original Rickshaw Run: take the smallest, least practical vehicle available in Asia, shoe-horn a motley crew of Adventurists into it and hurl yourselves across several thousand miles of Indonesian archipelago and South East Asian terrain. From dense Sumatran jungle, precipitous mountain tracks, sublime coastal roads to the cacophonous melee of Bangkok, this is adventuring stupidity in it's finest form.

 

There's no guarantee of making it to the finish line and no back-up. It's just you, half a horse power of engineering genius and a dazzling panoply of countries to tease and titillate you.

 

The pioneers ASEAN Rickshaw Run will set forth from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on October 16 and finish several weeks later in the the Thai capital of Bangkok. As with all our events, the brave teams will have no set route. You can trundle through the jungle, put your rickshaw on a boat via Borneo, stop for a Singapore Sling, or swing in a hammock in Krabi. The idea is that you into more pickles than a Ploughmans and use your wily wits to cajole your chariot to the finish line.

 

You may be wondering what the blazing saddles this ASEAN malarkey is. Well, ASEAN stands for the most esteemed Association of South East Asian Nations. Since its establishment in 1967, ASEAN has been committed to promoting the stability and economic growth of Asia, through the collaboration and cooperation of its member states: Thailand, Laos, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Cambodia, Malaysia and Myanmar. Rather fabulously for us, lots of terribly important people at ASEAN decided that a new South East Asian Rickshaw Run would be a perfect project to support. We're cock-a-hoop about this, as not only is it brilliant to be supported by such a marvellous organisation, but it's the first time ASEAN have ever officially supported a tourism initiative.

 

To find out more about how you could be one of the lucky pioneering teams, costs and the official charity, have a  gander at the shiny new website here.

 

Tally-ho and see you in Jakarta!

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Ants Bolingbroke-Kent works for The Adventurists, researching and setting up new adventures, such as The Mongol Derby and Africa Rally.

In 2006 she and her best friend Jo raised £50,000 for Mind, when they drove a bright pink Thai tuk tuk from Bangkok to Brighton. They subsequently wrote a book about their adventures, Tuk-Tuk to the Road: Two Girls, Three Wheels, 12,500 Miles. It was described as 'a brave and marvelous adventure' by none other then Stephen Fry.

Guest Bloggers

I need to knuckle down and finish off this book I am writing (available to pre-order here if you want to boost the Amazon ranking) so I am taking a break from the blog for a week or so.

But worry not, a whole host of guests will be standing in for me and they are bound to be more entertaining that I usually am, so you will not miss me at all.

Although feel free to miss me a bit.

In other related news, I will be recording the audiobook for It Is Just You, Everything's Not Shit the week after next and, assuming I don't make a complete cock of it, it will be available pretty soon after that.

Have fun while I am away and do please make my guests very welcome. I am sure you will.

Sleepwalking After Midnight

It is always weird when you read a book written by a friend. You want to like it, obviously, but you are worried about what to say if you don't. If you have ever been presented with an ugly baby by a doting new parent then you know the dilemma I am describing.

The Somnambulist is written by Essie Fox, a close friend of my wife (who is thanked in the acknowledgements) and someone I have got to know over the past few years. She lives a couple of minutes from my house, often knocks and says hello when walking her dog and is a regular attendee of the Firestation Book Swap. Last week she appeared on the other side of proceedings as a guest author on our Book Swap sofa. She went down a storm.

Fortunately, Essie's literary baby is not an ugly little sprog with a fat chin and hairy ears. It is entertaining tyke with a mischievous glint in its eye. But time to kill off that particular analogy before it gets completely out of hand. I should have drowned it at birth.

The Somnambulist has all the ingredients of a classic Victorian melodrama - religion, death, isolated country house, love affairs, betrayal, revenge, a reclusive madwoman, a tall dark stranger, dark alleys frequented by ladies of the night, music hall performers, ghostly apparitions - but Essie manages to weave them all together without ever becoming melodramatic. It is, instead, a ripping yarn that kept me entertained throughout.

I did, at one point, almost miss by tube stop, cliched as that may sound, while approaching a particular twist in the story and this is the sort of book that does weird things with time. You open it up and the next thing you know two hours have passed.

Phoebe is a young woman growing up in a strained household. Her mother is a strict and religious widow, her aunt an ex-music hall performer. Phoebe clearly prefers spending time with her aunt Cissy but feels the bond of duty to her mother, Maud. When Cissy makes a comeback to the stage it prompts a series of events that questions those loyalties and unearths more than one family secret.

If you enjoyed the recent BBC adaptation of The Crimson Petal and the White then I dare say this will be right up your cobbled street. It is darkly entertaining and sometimes quite moving. It will also prove a treat to fans of Victoriana, as will the author's Virtual Victorian blog and her new site dedicated to the book.

You can read an extract from The Somnambulist here.

A Song for Sunday

Blood to Gold by Boy & Bear.

Henley Arts Trail

Mrs Big Mouth, otherwise known as Rhian Winslade, will be showing some of her remarkable ceramic creations as part of the Henley Arts Trail next weekend.

Her work will be part of the Jo Sinclair & Friends exhibition at:

Woodclyffe Hall
Wargave High Street
Wargrave
RG10 8BY

It runs from 28th to 30th May and is open from 11am to 6pm each day.

It will feature the work of 20 artists and that should include a fair sprinkling of Rhian's pots, tiles, decorations and other bits and pieces that she conjours up out of clay.

You can check out details of the event here or visit Rhian's website over here.

Man's Best Friend

2009. A group of monster dogs arrive in New York.

Walking on their hind legs, with prosthetic arms and artificial voice boxes, they act and dress like aristocracy from the 1800s. They have arrived from the north, from a previously unheard of town in Canada where they, apparently, slaughtered their human creators a few years before. They are rich but pretty much keep themselves to themselves, driving around in blacked-out limos and receiving very few human guests. But they take a human journalist, Chloe, into their confidence, and she begins to write their story.

Their origins can be traced back to 19th century Germany and a mad young man intent on performing gruesome experiments on unsuspecting animals. The truth behind their escape from Canada is less clear, however, and Chloe finds it hard to discover the truth.

Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis is, as you can probably tell, a rather odd book. Odd, but impressive. The monster dogs are entirely believable creations - polite, well-spoken but with an edge of darkness - and their story is fascinating. And that hints at the book's only real weakness.

The tales of their creation - the 19th century portions of the book - are wonderful, reminiscent of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind, but they are in short supply. Most of the book is set in the present day and, fascinating though that story is, it isn't quite as good as the older stuff. I found myself wanting more of the latter.

But all in all this is a brave experiment that is pretty successful. Worth seeking out if you are in the mood for something weird.

Facesitting, Philip Roth Style

As someone who, as yet, just doesn't 'get' Philip Roth I was mildly miffed to see that he was awarded the Man Booker International Prize yesterday. I say 'mildly miffed', I don't really give a shit but I made a face at my computer screen when the news flashed up on Twitter.

It was my disapproving face. That showed him.

Then I noticed that he looked a bit like Larry David and that made me chuckle.

But then, a few hours later, I heard the news that one of the judges for the award had quit in protest at Roth winning. Here are some gems from Carmen Callil as quoted in the Guardian:

"He goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It's as though he's sitting on your face and you can't breathe"

"I don't rate him as a writer at all. I made it clear that I wouldn't have put him on the longlist, so I was amazed when he stayed there."

"Emperor's clothes: in 20 years' time will anyone read him?"

And that pretty much made my day.

I should clarify. I have only ever read one Roth novel. It was Everyman. I found it incredibly dull but mercifully short. If you held a gun to my head now I could not tell you what it was about. It was that fucking boring. It was only published 5 years ago and has failed to stick in my memory.

(I have just clicked over to Amazon to read the description on there to see if it jogged the old brain cells. There is no blurb or synopsis there, just a couple of quotes. Apparently, Andrew Holgate ended the novel 'exhilarated, buoyed up by its boldness and defiance.' I ended it asleep.)

The year before I read Everyman I remember The Plot Against America being hailed as one of the books of 2005. It topped pretty much every end of year round up but one commentator, and I regret that I cannot remember who it was, took great pleasure in pointing out that everyone who was raving about it had neglected to mention that it pretty much fell apart in the final third. I have no idea if this is true or not but I loved the fact that here was one dissenting voice. Up till then I had not read a negative word about the book.

Ironically, it remains the one novel of his that really appeals to me. Doubly ironically (assuming either example is genuinely ironic), it is the only one I don't seem to have been sent by his publisher over the years.

But my main point for the blog post was this. What is it about Roth that people like? I am genuinely curious. I haven't been able to ascertain what the appeal is. I have heard a few people discuss the fact that he is the great writer of American Jewish identity. I'll be honest, I am not that interested in American Jewish identity. Nothing personal, it's just not something that I am all that bothered about. Like rugby. Or coffee. Or ITV.

So please, enlighten me. I am serious. A writer doesn't win the Man Booker International Prize and the Pulitzer and all the other gongs if he is completely rubbish. He obviously has something that appeals to people.

What is it?

Guest Blogger: Martha Eleni Pack

I would like to tell you about a book I have read. It is called Agatha Parrot and the Floating Head and is written by Kjartan Poskitt and is very funny. It isn't out till August but I got sent a sneak preview copy and I read it in two days.

Agatha Parrot is a girl at school who has four friends. Their names are Bianca, Martha (same as me!), Ivy and Ellie. I don't want to give too much away but their teacher promises to take them all bowling if they don't have any days off sick for a whole term. The girls go round Martha's house one night and build their own pizzas with weird toppings. Agatha dares Martha to put lots of octopus paste on hers and when she eats it she gets ill.

So the girls have to pretend that Martha is really at school the next day. They build a pretend Martha and try to get through the day without their teacher noticing. But then Martha's head explodes.

It was really funny and very interesting. It is a real pageturner. I am 9 and I would recommend it for 7 or 8 year olds upwards. You can find out more about it here.

I have just started reading For the Record by Ellie Irving and so far it is really good. My dad will let me come back and tell you what I think when I have finished.

Ebook Summer Sale: Bestseller

Confessions of a GP by Dr Benjamin Daniels spent over 4 months at the top of the iBooks chart and is our bestselling ebook at The Friday Project. We have sold tens of thousands of the blighter and it shows no sign of stopping any time soon. At the time of writing it is still in their Top 5.

What is interesting about this, and the reason I am showing off about the sales numbers, is that the print edition was only promoted by retailers for a few weeks back in August. It did OK but dropped out of the 3 for 2 promotions by the time the big Christmas titles started hitting bookshops in September and October.

The digital edition, however, did quite the opposite. It ticked over when it first came out but as Christmas kicked in it became a bestseller. It now has over 850 ratings on iBooks, is a top 50 title on Amazon and top 20 at Waterstones, nine months after publication.

So I think this is one of the first examples of an ebook becoming a big hit when the print edition has not. Well, I say that, following the success of the ebook the print edition has gone on to sell into five figures itself and is still ticking over nicely.

That's all very interesting, Scott, but what is the book about? Here's some blurb.

Benjamin Daniels is angry. He is frustrated, confused, baffled and, quite frequently, very funny. He is also a GP. These are his confessions.

A woman troubled by pornographic dreams about Tom Jones. An 80-year-old man who can't remember why he's come to see the doctor. A woman with a common cold demanding (but not receiving) antibiotics. A man with a sore knee. A young woman who has been trying to conceive for a while but now finds herself pregnant and isn't sure she wants to go through with it. A 7-year-old boy with 'tummy aches' that don't really exist. These are his patients.

Confessions of a GP is a witty insight into the life of a family doctor. Funny and moving in equal measure it will change the way you look at your GP next time you pop in with the sniffles.

A new edition of the book will be coming out for Christmas so we are giving the original one last boost with a £1.99 price offer.

Gotta Get Down on Thursday

On Thursday night we host the next Firestation Book Swap. All are welcome.

Joining us are two Windsor authors who are regulars in the audience at Book Swaps but are taking their turn on the famous sofa as they both have new books out this month.

Essie Fox will be chatting about her debut novel, The Somnambulist, which has been the talk of the publishing world since she signed a deal with Orion last year. It is a Victorian tale of music halls, enigmatic strangers, reclusive wives and country houses and presumably a whole lot more but I haven't finished reading it yet. Technically the book isn't published till next week but we have been given special permission to sell it in advance on the night.

Warwick Cairns has just published In Praise of Savagery, the true story of his friendship with legendary explorer Wilfred Thesiger and of his visit to visit the old man in his African home. There is a whole lot more to it as well but Warwick can fill us in on Thursday.

We are expecting a big turnout this week as both authors live within a stone's throw of the venue and should be bringing lots of neighbours and friends along but there'll still be room to fit all of you in. Tickets are £5, available on the door, but if you bake a cake you can get in for free.

More details here.

A Song For Sunday

Crazy Town by Velocity Girl. Still my favourite song to write to.

Interview: Richard Gwyn

You may have noticed that I have paid rather a lot of attention to one particular book this week. The Vagabond's Breakfast by Richard Gwyn is a splendid memoir with passages of writing that kept me awake at night. I urge you to read it, it is wonderful.

Here is an interview with the author.

---

So, how are you feeling?

I am good – very well and planning to be around for a while yet.

Thanks for letting me share some sections of The Vagabond's Breakfast on my blog. What has been the reaction to the book so far?

I’ve been pleased that so many people have responded positively to it, in spite of the lack of major reviews to date. It is quite a private book, and I wasn’t really sure how much people would identify with the rather extreme lifestyle it depicts. Above all, I wanted the book to be taken seriously as a piece of narrative writing rather than merely in terms of its apparently sensational content, and, by and large, that has happened. I have received very kind and enthusiastic emails from readers.

You have a PhD in 'the narrative construction of illness experience'. I can't pretend to know quite what that means but I am guessing it was of some use when writing the book?

My PhD examined the ways in which patients and their close relatives talked about chronic illness both inside and outside the clinical setting, concentrating on the way they use particular narrative devices and metaphors in the telling of their stories. I spent a long time in hospitals and clinics and talked to a lot of health professionals. And I know that world pretty well, having grown up in a medical family. The discourses and attitudes are familiar, so when I became ill I was very conscious of this duality – on the one hand I was just another patient; on the other I was something of an expert in medical discourse and the way health professionals behave around patients, so with one eye I was taking everything in and storing it away. As it turned out, I didn’t use nearly as much medical stuff as I had thought I might – it would have disrupted the schema or structure of the book. But it was very useful to have that professional background to draw on.

You mention running in to Roberto Bolaño, how did that come about?

As I describe it in the book.. I met Bolaño while working as an itinerant agricultural labourer in the south west of France. I was in a town called Lézignan for the grape harvest and one day in the café I was sitting on my own reading William Burroughs and this guy came and sat at my table and started talking about Burroughs. He didn’t speak English, but he knew a hell of a lot about the Beats as well as a heap of other writers I had never heard of. He talked and talked, in poor French peppered with Spanish, and we spent the day drinking together and exchanging travellers’ tales. He had an issue with his passport, a theme he kept returning to, but I forget the exact nature of his problem. In the evening we wound up in the park, attempting to play football with some gypsy kids. The memory is tinged with a kind of sunset pastel hue. We were both fairly drunk, of course. But when I saw his picture in the New York Review twenty-five years later, I recognized him immediately.

One of the things that struck me about the passages concerning your, shall we say, colourful past was that you weren't showing off. You appeared to be simply presenting the facts. How do you look back upon those times now?

I never saw it as a platform for showing off. To be honest, I feel vaguely embarrassed by my behaviour over fifteen years – and for some of my actions (notably ones that didn’t make it into the VB) I feel a profound regret. But I write about them as though they were the actions of a third person – a ‘he’ rather than an ‘I’. A Spanish writer, Justo Navarro, puts it this way: ‘Writing is a case of impersonation, of adopting a new personality. Writing is pretending to be another.’  I found writing the book very difficult until I managed to achieve that detachment, of ‘pretending to be another’ and began writing my own ‘character’ as though I were writing a novel. Now that I’ve done the book, I look back on those times through the prism of having written about them, which is kind of weird: the memories have been re-moulded by the act of writing. Now I find it easy to look on those memories as the actions of a person in a book.

Tell me a bit about Alcemi, your publisher, I was not familiar with them before they sent me your book.

Alcemi was set up by Gwen Davies, with whom I first worked on The Colour of a Dog Running Away (she was then fiction editor at Parthian Books) as the English language fiction imprint of the mainly Welsh language publisher Y Lolfa. Gwen is that rare and wonderful thing – a genuinely talented creative editor. When she found out I was doing a memoir she asked me if I would consider submitting it to Alcemi. The way things turned out, I am glad I did go with them, because I don’t know where else I would have found such a sympathetic editor. Sadly, Alcemi are folding now: they were only around for four years but published some very fine fiction in that time. Gwen has gone on to become editor of the excellent New Welsh Review.

What are your future plans, both in terms of writing and the rest of your life?

Rest of my life? Well, that has to be staying alive. In terms of writing, I came to publication quite late – for reasons that are now pretty well documented – so feel I have quite a lot of catching up to do. There is a new novel on its way, and I would like to do some more short stories. I also translate poetry, mainly from Spanish, so I’m kept busy. I have a full-time job at Cardiff University and run the Creative Writing MA there, and enjoy being in touch with what younger writers are up to.

And finally, I always ask guests on the blog to recommend a good book. What do you suggest we all go and read?

I have been commissioned to write an essay on Montaigne, and am very much enjoying Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer. But for fiction I would advise anyone who hasn’t read it to go and buy Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. For me it is the most staggering and absorbing read of the past decade.

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Richard Gwyn's wonderful memoir is available now. You may have to ask your local bookshop to order it up for you (last time I looked only two branches of Waterstone's had bothered to stock it) if you prefer human contact but it is widely available online. I can also recommend a visit to Richard's website and cannot praise his debut novel, mentioned above, highly enough.