Me And My Big Mouth

Obligatory End of Year Blog Post

There was a year. Some things happened in it.

For example, I went here.

To write this.

(Still available in all good bookshops and as a low-price ebook - just saying).

Thanks to everyone who helped out before, during and after the publication of 21st Century Dodos by the way. I really am very grateful. I can report that the book sold pretty well and has even been picked up by some non-traditional book outlets like RHS gift shops, the British Library bookshop and Past Times, so it might tick over for a while yet.

Lots of other things happened - some good, some bad - pretty much the same as every year.

So, on to 2012 and whatever it may bring. I wish you a healthy and happy one, whoever you are and wherever you may be on land or sea. It is a pleasure to be able to share my blog posts with you and I thank you for reading them.

Now fuck off and enjoy your New Year's Eve.

xx

Selected Scenes from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

INT. MILLENNIUM OFFICES - DAY.

DANIEL CRAIG

Mumblemumblemumble

ROBIN WRIGHT

Why are you mumbling? It's the start of the movie, people need to understand what's going on.

DANIEL CRAIG

It's so that no one realises that I'm not doing an accent.

ROBIN WRIGHT

You're not doing an accent? I'm doing an accent, why aren't you?

DANIEL CRAIG

I can't do Swedish. I can have a crack at American. I also do a good spy accent. Just not Swedish.

ROBIN WRIGHT

Isn't that sort of the whole point though? This is an American remake but we are all pretending to be Swedish. All the writing is in Swedish. Look at the headline of our pretend magazine - Swedish.

DANIEL CRAIG

Yeah, sorry about that. I plan to get my arse crack out later to distract people.

ROBIN WRIGHT

That's not much use to me now, I am having to shoulder all the accent duties. I am not best pleased, Daniel.

DANIEL CRAIG

Again, I'm sorry.

ROBIN WRIGHT

That's OK, I suppose, my ex-husband was pretty shit at accents as well. Now, when do we get to see this arse crack of yours?

DANIEL CRAIG

Not till later on, those opening credits were great though, weren't they?

 

INT. HOSPITAL WAITING ROOM - DAY

DANIEL CRAIG

What the fuck are you doing here?

MARTIN JARVIS

I'm sorry?

DANIEL CRAIG

Shouldn't you be narrating a Just William audiobook or something? You're not a movie actor.

MARTIN JARVIS

At least I'm doing a fucking Swedish accent, dearie.

STELLAN SKARSGARD

Gentlemen, please. If it makes you feel any better I am the only real Swedish person in the cast and my accent sounds American.

DANIEL CRAIG

He's got a point.

 

INT. LISBETH SALANDER'S APARTMENT - MORNING

DANIEL CRAIG

Hello, I'm Mikael Blomqvist. I've brought you some breakfast but you are not having any till your lesbian lover leaves the building.

ROONEY MARA

Hang on, what's that accent you're doing?

DANIEL CRAIG

I'm not doing one.

ROONEY MARA

Why the fuck not?

DANIEL CRAIG

David Fincher gave me special permission.

ROONEY MARA

Let me get this straight. I've got my nose pierced, my eyebrow pierced, I've even got my tit pierced, I will shortly have unspeakable things done to my bottom and I'm doing a Swedish accent but you can't be bothered?

DANIEL CRAIG

It's not that, it's just that my Swedish accent ends up sounding a bit Welsh.

ROONEY MARA

It's because you are James Bond, isn't it?

DANIEL CRAIG

I will be getting my arse crack out later if that helps at all?

 

INT. POLICE STATION - DAY

ROONEY MARA

Aren't you Jim from Neighbours?

JIM from NEIGHBOURS

Shh, today I am being a Swedish policeman.

ROONEY MARA

You're in everything now, aren't you?

JIM from NEIGHBOURS

Well, yes, I do pop up now and again. It is because of my ability to do a range of accents. Did you see me in the shit Indiana Jones movie?

ROONEY MARA

Your Swedish is very good, better than Daniel's.

JIM from NEIGHBOURS

Yes, I had noticed. Between you and me, I think he gets away with it because he is James Bond.

ROONEY MARA

Have you got any gossip about Kylie?

 

INT. COTTAGE - NIGHT

DANIEL CRAIG

If you could hurry up and stitch this wound then I can get my arse crack out to make up for the no accent thing.

ROONEY MARA

OK, hold still.

DANIEL CRAIG

It's a nice arse, by the way, not hairy.

ROONEY MARA

So I've heard.

DANIEL CRAIG

I am sure you'll feel much better about things once I've given it an airing.

ROONEY MARA

So much so that I will take off all my clothes and have sex with you?

DANIEL CRAIG

Hopefully, yeah.

ROONEY MARA

Well, it's in the script so you are pretty much on a promise, sunshine.

DANIEL CRAIG

You're very good, by the way.

ROONEY MARA

How would you know? I haven't shagged you yet.

DANIEL CRAIG

No, I mean in the role. As Lisbeth. You're very good.

ROONEY MARA

As good as Noomi Rapace?

DANIEL CRAIG

Well, perhaps not quite as good as her but you're the best thing in this remake by a mile.

ROONEY MARA

I can always change my mind about that shag, you know.

DANIEL CRAIG

No, you can't do that.

ROONEY MARA

Why not?

DANIEL CRAIG

Fincher's already changed the ending so we've got to keep the sex scene in otherwise fans of the book will be up in arms.

ROONEY MARA

OK, well get that arse crack ready, your luck's in.

Interview: Jonathan Lee

Jonathan Lee is the author of the excellent debut novel Who is Mr Satoshi?. He has appeared at two Firestation Book Swaps. He has answered some questions today.

SP: To save me the trouble, can you pitch my readers Who is Mr Satoshi? in a few sentences?

JL: Foss, a once-famous photographer, has withdrawn from the world - no more pictures, no more lovers, and only the occasional excursion outside his London flat. Then his mother dies, and he finds among her belongings a package addressed to someone called ‘Mr Satoshi’. Who is this guy? What did he mean to his mother? Why did she never mention him? These questions gnaw at Foss until, resigned to the the role of reluctant detective, he goes off in search of answers.

That’s the basic story. But the 80,000-word version has all sorts of fun features and behind-the-scenes extras. You know: characters, scenes, all sorts of stuff.

SP: You know that it reminded me a bit of Haruki Murakami, but without the magical realism. I am guessing you are a fan of Japanese fiction but who other than Murakami have you enjoyed reading?

JL: I love Murakami’s books. But even if I’d wanted to, I’m not sure I could ever have pulled off the talking cats, the blokes in sheep costumes, the unusually-earlobed girls that are Murakami’s stock in trade. The reason the magical realism bits work so well in his better books is, I think, because they act as a counterbalance to his other writerly obsession - the careful, highly detailed depictions of the minutae of everyday life. I’m more interested in this second aspect, the realist side of Murakami, the desire to catalogue everydayness and explore the loneliness and comedy inherent in certain daily tasks - pasta-making, ironing, tooth-brushing. I learnt from Murakami that this was a way of getting inside a very isolated character’s head. Foss is shut off from the wider world, so for him small household rituals are imbued with an exaggerated significance; they shape his days, his life. 

My book is partly set in Japan, and I ended up discovering quite a lot of Japanese authors during the writing of it. Among my favourites is Yoko Ogawa. She shares some of Murakami’s attentiveness to small details. Like John Updike, whose Rabbit novels I’m obsessed with, she has this ability to ‘give the mundane it’s beautiful due’.  Martin Amis has pointed out that Updike seemed to know everything - he could write a convincing, beautiful page of prose about the finer points of car engines, or his second wife’s pubic hair, or the currency markets. Yoko Ogawa has the same kind of forensic, all-seeing eye. She’s also not afraid of what now seem to be commonly considered as ‘genre’ attributes: suspense, plot, mystery. I wish a greater number of ‘literary’ authors embraced these elements of fiction-writing. I wrote as much in a blog post a while back and much later, after the Booker debate blew up, got some hate-mail in response. People seemed to think I was saying that readability is everything. Clearly it’s not everything, but we are talking about books here. We’re in trouble if the fundamentals of storytelling get confused with cheap tricks. Sonorous similes are nice, but I’m partial to the odd bit of plot too. There’s still a degree of snobbiness in literary circles - a sense in which the phrase ‘page-turner‘ is more condemnation than compliment. 

SP: Have you been to Japan? If so, chuck us an anecdote. If not, explain yourself.

 JL: Man (me) walks into a bar and sees a middle-aged Japanese guy drinking beer from a bottle. On the stool next to him, this man’s 5-year-old son is swigging frothy brown liquid from a similar bottle labelled ‘KidsBeer’. That’s Japan - a place of constant weirdness. I lived in Tokyo for six months and I was as confused when I left as when I arrived. I loved it.

SP: The idea of a man who is uncomfortable in crowds going off to a strange country on what might well be a wild goose chase is most compelling. Did you always know if he would find what he was looking for, or did you decide as you wrote it?

JL: If you boil the plot of Who Is Mr Satoshi? down, what you have is a quest story. The character goes in search of something. To use that awful creative-writing-class phrase, he’s on a journey. But the disappointing thing about a lot of quest stories is the element of anticlimax. Either the quest fails and a suitably ambiguous ending is tacked on, or you meet the object of the quest and find that this long-heralded moment of confrontation is hugely deflating.

I always felt, even in the early planning stages of the novel, that it would be a cop-out not to at least attempt to describe a meeting with this Mr Satoshi character I’d invented. I had to at least try and pull off an ending that had emotional impact. Whether I succeeded or not is not for me to judge. (This is author-speak for Yes! I succeeded! Tell me I did! Tell me I did!)

SP: Some questions about the mechanics of writing. Do you write longhand, or on a computer? Do you have a special place to write? Bang out a draft and then refine or fiddle as you go along? Fast or slow?

 JL: Computer. I have to write and rewrite sentences so many times that longhand would be unbearable. I know lots of writers swear by longhand, but the idea fills me with horror. Moleskine’s global profits would instantly double.

I try to get to an advanced stage in a given draft before succumbing to the temptation to go back and fiddle with things on the sentence-to-sentence level, but it rarely works out like that. I get up in the morning and I can’t resist looking back over what I did the day before, and dealing with the fact that it’s awful. It’s a matter of patching up my self-esteem before I can progress to the next chapter. When things are going well, I can get a couple of thousand words done in a day. But I’ll probably have to rewrite each of the sentences comprising that 2,000 words twenty times before I’m in a position to convince readers that English is my first language (which, believe it or not, it is). Then I’ll delete all the words and start again.

SP: I have actually met a Mr Satoshi. He writes and illustrates children's books. Do you know him?

 JL: Is this the famous Satoshi Kitamura? I haven’t met him, but a few people have mentioned his name. I actually took the name ‘Satoshi’ from a barber I visited when I lived in Japan. He had a small dog called Lennon Two. Lennon One had died in suspicious circumstances. My mum also told me recently that I had a best friend at playgroup called Satoshi, a Japanese toddler who I apparently hung out with constantly for about a year of my childhood. That freaked me out a bit - no memory of it whatsoever. 

SP: Satoshi was #9 in my Books of the Year 2010. You next book is coming in 2012, what is it about and do you think you could get to #8 this time?

JL: I’ve got my eye on the #7 spot. The book is a dark office comedy set in the City.

SP: Heard any good music recently?

JL: I recently discovered Lykke Li. Saw her live at the Roundhouse a couple of months ago, and she was quirky, weird, a fantastic performer. I’m also still playing my favourite album of last year quite a bit - High Violet by The National.

SP: And before you go can you recommend a book we should all be reading?

JL: You're an Animal, Viskovitz by Alessandro Boffa. It’s a series of love stories (or maybe anti-love stories) narrated by different animals. A pair of parrots split up when their marriage gets bogged down by repetitious dialogue. A scorpion is unlucky in love because in the throes of passion his tail, unbidden by his brain, smashes through his partner’s skull. It’s genius. Sadly it’s not available on Kindle. So everyone should download Who is Mr Satoshi? and read that whilst they wait for the postman to deliver the Boffa paperback

This is Not Just Any Novel, This is an S&M Novel

Have you seen the movie Secretary? It's this one.

I loved it. An exploration of an S&M relationship that manages to be both tender and moving without shying away from the unpleasant aspects of that sort of set up.

Hotel Iris by Yoko Agawa looks at similar themes but it's a book, not a movie. Don't want you getting confused.

Mari is a teenage girl who helps her widowed mother to run a seaside hotel in Japan. One night there is a fight between an elderly guest and the prostitute he has taken to his room. When the guest shouts "Shut up, whore" at the fleeing woman, Mari finds herself aroused by his voice and dominant matter.

A chance meeting with the same man a few days later leads to a bizarre not-quite-sexual relationship developing between the two, something they carry out in secret over many weeks.

It is an interesting examination of what can lead people to explore this sort of lifestyle - the desires and urges, the pleasure in pain - but it never really catches fire. It isn't dark enough and it isn't, well, erotic, enough to hit home.

A good read while it lasted but not one to linger.

My Most Popular Blog Post of the Year

Rewind back to April 26th. I tried to get tickets for the London 2012 Olympics. I didn't enjoy the experience so I wrote this open letter to Seb Coe.

By the end of the day the blog had received over 25,000 hits.

---

Dear Seb Coe,

I have just applied for London 2012 tickets. It was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life, and this is coming from a man who has had a colonoscopy.

Allow me to elaborate.

Tickets, as you know, will be allocated by a sort of ballot or lottery system. This, at initial glance, seems fair. Rather than first-come-first-served, everyone has an equal chance of getting a ticket. In reality this means I have no idea whether I will actually get the tickets I have applied for.

This leaves me with a dilemma. Do I just apply for one lot of tickets, for an event I really want to see? Or do I hedge my bets and apply for a number of tickets across a range of events and dates in the hope of at least getting one batch?

I have opted for the latter. It would be hugely disappointing to apply for one event and fail, thereby ending my participation in the Olympics a year before they actually start. I am hoping my strategy pays off and that I am able to take my family to at least one event.

Ahh yes, my family. They are a lovely bunch but they are proving to be bloody expensive to bring along with me. I have a wife (at the time of writing that is, she may leave me when she finds out how much I have potentially pissed away on your tickets) and two children - Ethan (12) and Martha (9). None of us are particular sporty - Ethan plays tennis once a week and Martha has a regular gymnastics class - but we are all quite excited about the Olympics and recognise that this is the only chance we will have to see them in our own country.

I have applied for 4 tickets to 5 separate events - two different days of athletics, a day of tennis, one of gymnastics and one of rowing. The rowing is of particular interest as we live in Windsor and it is taking place within walking distance of our house.

The cost for these tickets - and in nearly every case we have gone for the cheapest available option - comes to £723 pounds. That's SEVEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY THREE POUNDS. I cannot actually afford this - and I am not what anyone would describe as badly off - so I bloody well hope we aren't successful in all of our applications but your allocation system means that loads of people are taking a similar approach - apply for loads and pray that you don't actually get them. A bit of a daft situation Seb, old bean, don't you think?

Now, before you start spouting off about all the splendid special offers that are available - kids only pay their age and all that bollocks - such deals were only available for one of the events we have applied for, and our applications are not all for big finals days. I have had to pay full whack for nearly every ticket. One of my group is 9 years old. She doesn't even have to pay full fare on the train and train companies are the biggest lot of thieving toerags out there. Bad show, sir, bad show.

But, you know, an opportunity such as this really does only come round once in a lifetime so perhaps I shouldn't moan so much. I am, after all, quite fortunate. For one thing, I happen to have a Visa card. If I didn't then you wouldn't have let me apply for any tickets at all.

And I am sure I can make a few savings here and there between now and the big event to make sure that we can afford the high cost of actually attending these games that are supposedly going to inspire and delight us. For example, I could take a packed lunch to the events themselves, that will save a few bob. What's that? Sorry? Oh, I see, I am not allowed to take any food or drink into the venues? I have to purchase these items from approved vendors inside? And what will the prices be like? No, no, let me guess, how does FUCKING EXPENSIVE sound to you? I hope I am wrong but if I have to pay £5 for a hot dog I am going to hunt you down and shove it up your failed Tory arsehole. With mustard.

A stupid allocation system which means I have over-applied purely to stand a chance of seeing something, anything. Credit card restrictions that must surely fall foul of EU competition laws. A ban on cheese sandwiches and Kia-Ora. This is supposed to be fun, Lord Coe, fun and exciting, instead it is deflating, demotivating and depressing.

But at least you are aren't charging me £6 to send me my tickets, that would be taking the piss.

What's that? Oh, you complete cunt.

Yours sincerely,

Scott Pack

---

I received no tickets. This blog post may have had something to do with that.

A Song for Christmas Night

Always good to end Christmas Day on a heartbreaker, I find.

This might being a tear to your eye if you've had one too many sherries.

A Song For Christmas Day

Home for the Holidays by Emmy the Great and Tim Wheeler.

Sometimes you just need to kiss the other person and see what happens. The results are often magic.

Have a wonderful Christmas you lot.

x

Sorry, But Has There Been a Coup?

I published an ebook yesterday. It is one of those political satire thingies. It asks lots of pertinent and topical questions such as:

Is the Cameron government a coup?

Why can't the Tories agree on whether Britain is fucked and broken or not?

Did Sam Cam invent trip-hop?

What is it about having his best mate around that makes Liam Fox so comfortable?

Did Louise Mensch kill Louise Bagshawe?

and

Will they at least make their fucking minds up about how often they are going to empty the bins?

It is written by Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur, the chaps who brought you Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit? , and is a digital-original (as they say) that sells for 99p. It is also full of swearing. And very funny. You can get it for the Kindle now, other formats will follow in the New Year (when the people who put things up on their sites are back from holiday).

Please go and download in your thousands. Thank you.

And This

Have been playing the Paper Kites album a lot in the past week. Another late entry to the best of the year.

A Couple of Late Entries

I stand by my fine selection of Movies of the Year from a couple of weeks ago but I have since seen two more that would certainly have made the list.

Had I seen them in time.

Which I didn't.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a remarkable piece of filmmaking. Excruciating to watch, at times, without ever being gratuitous or graphic. Tilda Swinton gives a harrowing and breathtaking performance, and if she hadn't accidentally been given an Oscar for her role in Michael Clayton then she'd walk the award next year. She has lovely ears.

Ryan Gosling also has lovely ears. He doesn't say much in Drive but that doesn't seem to matter.

Kevin is still on in cinemas and whilst it isn't really festive fare it is worth making an affort to see it. Drive comes out on DVD in January. One to spend you Christmas gift vouchers on.

The Bestselling Ebook of the Year

I couldn't resist sharing this article with you.

Books and Swearing

You have to visit this blog.

It is my favourite thing on the web.

But best not pop over if you are offended by the word 'cunt'.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Oh, and this one also promises to be great. Albeit with less swearing.

As is this.

Interview: Zelda Rhiando

I went on a blind date with Zelda Rhiando once. Sort of. At least, that's what I'll tell everyone when she is a big literary sensation. We first met in our teens/early 20s and are now a lot older. She is a very talented individual with a cracking novel under her belt and several bestselling apps and popular websites to her name.

Now that her novel, Caposcripti, is available from all good bookshops I have persuaded her to come on here and answer a few questions.

SP: Tell us about Caposcripti in a couple of sentences (mainly to save me from typing up an explanation myself!)

ZR: A photographer stalks the streets of London looking to capture subjects for his terrifying experiments. An explorer, lost in the Amazon 150 years earlier, is on a quest to discover a language lost since the dawn of civilisation.

Separated by time, they are ruthlessly united in their obsession - to discover the code of life.

SP: The book has had a rather long gestation I believe?

ZR: Yes - it's been a while coming! I first had the idea in the late nineties, and then went and researched it in 1999 in South America. Then followed a period of intense writing when a lot of the jungle scenes were created, and an outline of the whole plot. I was working on various digital projects at the same time, so writing was sometimes compartmentalised, and I put it away for a little while. Then in 2007 I decided to take a fresh look and got in into complete draft shape. It then went through a couple of rounds with a really good editor [Scott: modesty prevents me from revealing the identity of said editor] who made structural suggestions that really helped the book take shape, and resulted in a finished manuscript. Sadly due to economic woes, the publishing offer fell through, and nothing happened with the book for a year and a half.

Meanwhile, I'd begun working with Penguin Digital - developing enhanced digital books and apps as part of their move into digital publishing. This brought me into a wide range of formats, and gave me a rather eye-opening glimpse into the world of publishing - as well as a good understanding of the end-to-end process of getting a book from manuscript form into the hands of a consumer.

A good friend had recently left the Sales department of Hodder and offered to help me get the book into shops, so I decided to go the boutique publishing route. I set up my own imprint (Badzelda Productions) and created several editions of the book. Kindle, ePub and iBooks editions started the ball rolling, followed by a print on demand service for the US, and finally a print run.

SP: Wasn't it a free download for a while? How did that go?

ZR: There hasn't been a free download of the whole of the book - just a few sample chapters. I did get a lot of interest in the chapters, including an interview on BBC London followed by a flurry of downloads. However, the final book is a very different beast to those early concepts. Free downloads could conceivably drive print sales of the book, but in reality paid downloads offset the print costs, and for me that's a better model at this stage.

SP: I have to ask you about the headshrinking. You actually went to South America to research that aspect didn't you?

ZR: I did - I spent time travelling down the Amazon and Janamono rivers in the Loreto district of Peru, looking for the Jivaro and other tribes. Actually most of the tribes I came into contact with in the Amazon were somewhat westernised - satellite telly, football, etc - but I did find some people in the cloud forests of Southern Columbia that were living a much more traditional lifestyle.

SP: Do you have a shrunken head yourself? If so, where do you keep it? If not, do you secretly want one?

ZR: I've got several replicas, but not the real thing. Actually, I think I can live without the captured spirit of a fallen warrior in my house :)

SP: In your other life you do lots of exciting digital things, what sort of projects have you worked on?

ZR: Well I've been making digital stuff since 1996 - so that would be a long list... I've always loved a cross-disciplinary approach: imagining, structuring, coding, designing, and generally making projects happen. I've been lucky enough to do that as a 'company of one' for the last decade or so, which gives me a lot of flexibility with writing. Websites, apps, enhanced tv, digital books - I've worked on all these things at some point.

Recently I've been making apps and enhanced books - mostly for kids, from babies up to young readers, with Penguin, Ladybird and Warne. Other projects are afoot, in the adult space, but I can't talk about them just yet.

SP: What next on the writing front?

ZR: I've got another novel in progress - which will be set in Japan. It's in a fairly early stage at the moment - treatment, emerging outline and a couple of chapters. I'm excited to see where it goes!

SP: And finally, every visitor to my blog is invited to recommend a favourite book. What do you think we should be reading?

ZR: Well, my favourite book to read again and again is Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. In terms of new writers, I really enjoyed Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beaumont. I just read through your top ten books for 2011 and some of them look very intriguing - so off to read a couple of them now.

Thanks for having me Scott!

---

Zelda, it has been a pleasure.

You can discover more about Zelda and her work at www.badzelda.com. Caposcripti is available in print and ebook editions and should be pretty easy to get hold of from your retailer or e-tailer of choice or direct from the author here.

The Best Poetry Book I Have Ever Read

I have a friend called Sarah Salway. She is a mighty fine writer. Dont just take my word for it, this is what Neil Gaiman says about her:

"Sarah Salway is the Madonna of writing books. The dancing one, not the Mother of Jesus one."

And I believe it is the law that no one is allowed to disagree with Neil Gaiman.

A couple of weeks ago she sent me a sneak preview of her forthcoming poetry collection, You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book, and I devoured it in one sitting. A few pages in and I felt like I should never write another poem again. There was just no point. These were so good that I could never top them. This made me sad.

And then I read this one.

The Path Home

Sometimes when the children are in bed
when once we would have collapsed too,
poured wine, slouched on sofas,
talked ourselves back into life,
I stand at your door, seeing
you work your way into a different world
in the same way I watch our children sleep,
wondering where they go,
whether I am with them to hold their hand,
worried they might get lost and not return,
but then you’ll turn
ask me what I’m doing
standing there when there’s so much to do
and I’ll want to slip a pebble in your pocket
and point to the white stone path
leading you back home.

And it made me cry. Proper tears. How many nights have I spent sitting at my laptop when more important things were going on elsewhere in the house? When the people I love most in this world are just a few feet away. What a selfish bastard.

But as I made it through poem after wonderful poem I found myself inspired. This book wanted me to write more. And better.

It is the best poetry book I have ever read.

It isn't published till next March, by Pindrop Press, but if you wanted to pre-order a copy at their website then yours will be signed by the author.

Do it.

(Oh, and the poem above first appeared in Mslexia magazine, just so you know.)

Interview: Brad Listi

I like Brad Listi. He writes books, runs a online culture magazine, helps to make babies and is now the man behind a cracking new literary podcast.

I have asked him some questions.

SP: So, Brad, tell me about this new podcast of yours?

BL: It's called Other People.  It's a twice-weekly, hour-long author interview show, available for free at iTunes or at Stitcher.  It's me, talking to another author at length but the difference is that the main focus tends to be the author himself or herself, rather than the books.  Which is to say: it's not a lit-crit show.  There's not a lot of plot synopsis or quiet, intellectual discussion.  It's more unruly than that.  It's about the authors as human beings, in all of their messy glory.

SP: You describe the interviews as 'in-depth' and 'inappropriate'. How inappropriate? Do you say 'fuck' and 'shit' alot?

BL: Constantly.  As much as possible.

SP: And do you ask questions about their sexual proclivities? Make romantic advances towards them?

BL: (Laughs.)  I'm a married man, so I don't make any romantic advances.  But I do ask plenty of sex questions for sure, particularly when I have guests like Jillian Lauren and Melissa Febos, both of whom have done sex work in the past and have written brilliant memoirs about the experience.  When its germane to the author's life, or if it happens to come up naturally in conversation, I'm happy to go there.  Sex is a big part of life. And people like to hear about it.

SP: What splendid authors have been your guests so far?

BL: Oh, man.  I've had a ton of really great writers on the show.  Jillian and Melissa, to name two.  Dennis Cooper was just on.  And David Shields, who wrote Reality Hunger; I just talked to him.  He's a fascinating guy and a really interesting writer.  Darin Strauss was great; he wrote Half a Life, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award here in the States.  Jonathan Evison, Megan Boyle, Greg Olear, John Warner, Jessica Any Blau, Adam Levin, Shann Ray, Gina Frangello, Katie Arnoldi, Janet Reitman, Elissa Schappell.  So many.  The list goes on.

SP: And who do you have lined up?

BL: Well, in the short term I'm going to be talking with folks like Dana Spiotta, Jamal Joseph, Vanessa Veselka, Tayari Jones, Roxane Gay, D.R. Haney, and Alan Heathcock, just to name a few.  A lot of good ones coming up. 

SP: Dream guest?

BL: Gore Vidal in top form.

SP: Are you prepared to interview British authors?

BL: Hell yes.

SP: And if any publicists representing the superstars of international literature are reading this how would they go about getting their authors on your show?

BL: Just email me:  letters [at] otherpeoplepod [dot] com.

SP: Do you remember writing a book called Attention. Deficit. Disorder? If so, please tell us about it.

BL: (Laughs.)  I have vague recollections.  Attention. Deficit. Disorder. is a novel I wrote in my twenties.  It's about a young man coming to grips with the suicide death of an ex-girlfriend.  A picaresque.  A contemporary coming of age novel set against the backdrop of the information age.  And the narrator, I should mention, is of average intelligence.  That was important to me, to try and do that.  To render him as utterly confused, and searching.  Too many young narrators are wise beyond their years.

SP: And how much better is the UK cover than your American one?

BL: Loads better, I must say.  The rubber cover in particular, on that limited edition hardback, is the ultimate favorite.  A collector's item!

SP: What next, my good man?

BL: Well, I'm working on a new novel, when I can get to it.  And I'm extremely busy with a one-year-old daughter.  And with running The Nervous Breakdown, my online culture magazine and literary community.  And the podcast as well.  It's chaos.  So hopefully I can keep it all going, while also managing to get some sleep here and there.

SP: Finally, can you recommend my readers a good book?

BL: I can't stop talking about Leaving the Atocha Station , by Ben Lerner.  It's a short novel about a drug-addled American Fulbright poet living in Madrid.  A superb book.  And then another one is Nothing , by Blake Butler, which is about insomnia, among other things.  And then there's Not that You Asked , an essay collection by Steve Almond, who is an incredibly funny and perceptive writer who deserves to have a massive readership.  Any one of those three, and you're in good shape.

---

BRAD LISTI is the founder of The Nervous Breakdown, an online culture magazine and literary community that now includes TNB Books, an independent press specializing in literary fiction and nonfiction. He is the author of a novel called Attention. Deficit. Disorder., a Los Angeles Times bestseller, the executive producer of The Nervous Breakdown's podcast series, and the host of Other People with Brad Listi, a twice-weekly podcast featuring in-depth, inappropriate interviews with today's leading authors. To learn more, please visit www.bradlisti.com.

A Dodo on Christmas Day

I reckon you've just about got time to thank me for the past year of splendid blog posts by purchasing a copy of my book, 21st Century Dodos, for Christmas.

It is the least you can do.

I do believe it is available in WH Smith, Waterstone's and a whole bunch of independent bookshops if you have legs and want to walk into town to pick one up. Amazon have it for a bargain price if you are lazy and want to contribute to the death of the high street. International readers can buy it from The Book Depository and take advantage of their free worldwide shipping offer.

But if you are all modern and digital then the book is a mere 99p for Kindle, Apple devices, Kobo and all the other download places.

And there is even an audiobook read by me, of all people.

Go on, you know you want to.

A Song for Sunday

Featherstone by The Paper Kites.

A Quaint Christmas

Here's a free ebook for you. Consider it an early Christmas present.

Darren Craske, author of The Equivoque Principle and The Eleventh Plague has written a festive story featuring the hero of said novels, Cornelius Quaint.

In The Quaint Christmas, Cornelius tries to swindle Christmas dinner out of some dodgy looking chaps in a London pub with the help of his Eskimo valet Butter.

And you don't get much more Christmassy that some Victoriana, a couple of fat geese and an Eskimo, now do you?

The ebook is available completely free and you shoud be able to download it from your favourite e-tailer without too much hassle. Here are links to the Kindle and iBooks versions to help you on your way.

Books of the Year: Honourable Mentions

Books that didn't quite make my top ten but still impressed, delighted, amazed or entertained me included...

Orange Prize nominee Annabel, by Kathleen Winter, which was a brutal yet tender account of a hermaphrodite growing up in a small Canadian village.

The Hare with Amber Eyes wasn't quite the masterpiece that everyone and his dog seemed to be claiming but it was still a fascinating look at several generations of a family linked by a collection of small Japanese carvings.

I don't read many books about maths but The Number Mysteries by Marcus du Sautoy convinced me that I should more, especially if they are written by him.

I read 13 Treasures by Michelle Harrison as she was one of our guest authors for a special Children's Firestation Book Swap. I needed to swot up so that I had plenty of questions. I didn't expect to be quite as charmed by this bittersweet magical tale as I was.

And I was properly shocked by Holly Howitt's The Schoolboy. They didn't write books like this when I was a teenager.

Books of the Year: Number 1

My favourite book of the year is a Danish seafaring epic that has stayed with me from the moment I put it down during the summer. It's size might put some people off but they are fools, I tell you, fools! Here is the review I posted some months back.

---

Marstal is a town in southern Denmark, the largest on the island of Ærø. It is also this narrator of this remarkable book. It is a 'we' novel, if you will, with the story told by the people of the island, watching one as one hundred years' worth of events unfold around them.

We, The Drowned opens in 1848 when Denmark is at war with Germany. Marstal is on the coast, populated by sailors, so it is only proper that the men of the town are enlisted to join the naval attack. It is a disaster, with many lives lost, but Laurids Madsen survives after been blown sky high and landing back on deck feet first in his trusty boots. A miracle, of sorts, and he becomes a local celebrity when he returns home.

But such fame sit uncomfortably with the big man and he is soon off to sea again, last heard of in Australia never to return to his wife and family in Marstal.

The story then shifts its focus to Madsen's son, Albert, watching him grow up until he too goes to sea, eventually travelling halfway around the globe in search of his father.

Later, when Albert is an old man, unmarried and childless, he is persuaded to spend time with a young boy, Knud Erik, who has lost his own father to the waves and in need of a male influence in his life. The relationship softens the weatherbeaten sailor and has a profound effect on both of them.

And it is Knud Erik who takes us through the Second World War and on to the end of the book. A century of sea stories, of deaths by drowning, of sailors, boats and foreign climes.

And of the women left behind.

As you may expect from a book that encompasses an entire century it is rather long, nearly 700 pages to be (rather less than) precise, but it never feels laboured, at no point does it drag. The language is simple and direct, a storyteller's style, and the translators, Charlotte Barslund and Emma Ryder, appear to have done a wonderful job.

And the narrator(s) - the story is told by the people of the village as a collective 'we' - works brilliantly. At first you assume that the voice is that of one of the sailors going off to fight the Germans but then the same voice tells of Albert's schooldays and continues for another seventy years or so. It is a difficult device to pull off but Carsten Jensen does it to perfection. You don't question it for a second.

I was swept away (pun noted but not intended) by this wonderful book. I didn't want it to end and thankfully, given its length, it didn't do so for some considerable time. It was voted the greatest Danish book of the last 25 years. I have no idea what sort of competition it was up against but its victory doesn't surprise me: it is one of the best books I have read in the past 25 years as well.

---

I have been partial to all things nautical this year (check out my album of the year for further evidence of this) which may explain why I warmed to this so much. I also happened to be reading it on an island, which helped set the mood. It is a book that I am eager to re-read, although I will wait a while to ensure sufficient detail becomes lost to the mists of time, and I have collected the author's other books in anticipation of future joys.

If you have a few days to curl up in an armchair over the Christmas break then you could make those days really special by having this in your hands while you do so. You won't regret it.

So, what was your favourite book of the year?