Just for laughs

On Saturday evening we went out with some friends of ours to a Barnstormers comedy night at Solihull Arts Complex. Our friends had been to one recently where the famous comedian Jasper Carrott turned up unannounced; word had obviously got round because the room, although small, was packed.

No sign of Our Jasper on Saturday, sadly (he always has me helpless; at one of his concerts I quite literally stopped breathing, I was laughing so much). Instead we had a series of three comedians, interspersed with a genial compere. All three were good in different ways, but two appealed less - not just to me, but to Dave and our friends as well. They followed the route of standard stand-up: a 'chat' to the audience about events in their own lives, probably made-up and always tending towards bodily functions. One joke about poo can be funny but after a while it wears off and in the case of the first bloke on stage, I really didn't need to know that his Dad had phoned to tell him his mother had just shit herself. And the punchline? The mother grabbed the phone to say 'it was only a little bit'. Hmm. All very well but the only trouble is, it's not funny.

In between the two more ordinary acts, though, was one that stood out a mile. His name is Anthony J Brown and he's described as 'a dapper and dandy funeral director, ...with humour blacker than a raven that has slammed its claw in a coffin lid'. His jokes were different. His whole demeanour was different, since he sidled up to the microphone and began to fondle it in a distinctly erotic manner. He delivered his one-liners deadpan, in a voice that wasn't much above a whisper, so you found you were hanging on every word. And boy, was it worth it, because the punchline was always unexpected, often macabre, and very, very funny. He had the entire audience in stitches. I can't give away too much of his material, obviously (he'd probably chop me into little pieces and feed me to his pet microphone) but here's a tiny taster:

"I came into some money the other day."

[long pause]

"I'd run out of tissues."

[even longer pause]

"It halved the queue at the cashpoint."

At which point I stopped breathing again. I wouldn't mind if I never saw the other two comedians again, but I'll be looking out for Anthony J Brown on the local comedy circuits and I hope he makes a bigger name for himself than he already has. He deserves it.

When is art not art?

Possibly when it's a poem.

On Saturday we visited Abbott Hall art gallery in Kendal for the first time. We'd heard it was rather good and sure enough, although the collection on display is quite small, it's full of big names. These include George Romney, who studied art in the town before moving to London; Constable; Turner; and a collection of watercolours of local scenes showing the development of the 'picturesque' movement in the Lake District - paintings that are over dramatised to the point of wild innacuracy, but always romantic.

Upstairs the display changes to more modern art, currently including an exhibition by world-renowned artist Richard Long, who specialises in works that involve landscape. I tend to be rather undecided about Modern Art at the best of times; some of this was, to my mind, brilliant (especially his stunning landscape photography), but some left me cold. In particular, there were a series of artworks where words had been printed onto a sheet of paper and then framed and hung. One of these had me scratching my head, because it was a long list of sounds he'd heard while on a long walk. I assume you were meant to read the list, sound by sound, and hear each one in your own mind to re-create the artist's walk yourself.

The language Long used was very evocative and quickly brought the various noises to mind. It's an intriguing idea, but is it really art? To my mind, written words on a page with their own style and internal rhythm, which evoke a particular image (or in this case, sound) are poetry, not art. If so, then Long is as good a poet as he is an artist.

A story a day

A story a day may not keep the doctor away but it still sounds like good entertainment, which is the aim of the 'Daily Flashes of Fiction 2012' anthology from Pill Hill Press.

The anthology will include four of my darkest, twistedest short stories (Is 'twistedest' a word? Oh well, it is now!) and is divided into 366 days of the year (2012 is Leap Year), each day having its very own story. The editor has just confirmed which day will be represented by each of my stories; the dates are as follows:

27th February - This Life Sucks
13th April - Load of Bull
15th June - Footprints
7th August - Peeping Tom

As far as I know Pill Hill are still on track to release this in December this year, ready for readers to start devouring their daily story from January 1st, so do keep an eye open for further details on when it will be available.

Currently reading

I've just this minute finished reading 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell' by Susanna Clarke. It's a massive book - the sort you could use to fell a burglar at twenty yards - and it's taken some getting through. Not because it's no good, but because these days I only really read in bed at night and by then my eyes are too tired to read more than a few pages at a time.

It was worth the lengthy reading time, though, because the book is simply amazing. Original, quirky, full of sly humour but also excitement and even the odd note of poignancy. Basically it tells the tale of two magicians in late Georgian England, but a Georgian England that's very different from the one we learn about in history lessons. This England has been shaped by magic, and by the reign of a magician king who held sway over a vast swathe of northern England in medieval times but has since disappeared. The two magicians of the title, Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell, bicker and fight over the return of magic to England, with sometimes amusing, sometimes disastrous results.

The book is very, very long. Well over a thousand pages, and written in an old fashioned, Victorian-novel style that I thought was rather dry - for the first few pages, until I spotted the glorious, half-hidden humour underlying almost every sentence. In the end I think it probably is too long, and there were a few chapters after half-way but before the race to the end which dragged and which could easily have been shortened or even removed without affecting the story.

Overall, though, the sheer scale of the world Ms Clarke has created, the attention to detail, the frequent footnotes explaining this or that spell or historical event, make it less of a book and more of a fantasy tour-de-force. I loved it!

Breathless #2

No more sprints to the station with missing phones, thank goodness, but Dave's been suffering with a rotten cold and cough the last couple of weeks and has just, very generously, passed it on to me.

I won't go into details about all the spluttering but hopefully I'll be back on my feet and posting on here again soon.

Jack in the Box

This is the title of the latest story to be accepted by Byker Books for the latest volume in their ongoing Radgepacket series, which will be number six.

I had the acceptance late last night and was particularly happy as I sent the story in simply months before the deadline and was never quite sure the editor had received it. The good news was that not only had he received it, but read it and enjoyed it enough to stuff it in Radgepacket 6, where it'll snuggle up to stories by some great noir authors like Ian Ayris, Paul Brazill and Col Bury.

Actually, 'snuggle' probably isn't the right word since Radgepacket stories tend to be so edgy you could cut diamond with them, but you know what I mean.

And what's Jack in the Box about? Well, it's a painfully dark tale about a young man cosying up to the local crime boss to get what he wants. And it starts with said young man jumping naked out of the cake at the crime boss's fiftieth birthday party. You can't make much more of an entrance than that!

The book should be available to buy, or at least pre-order, in spring 2012 but I'll post regular updates, and perhaps an excerpt or two, nearer to the time.

Breathless

On Sunday Dave set off for a marathon five hour train journey to Kent, where he'd be staying for three days. Five minutes after I'd bundled him into a taxi, I spotted a small dark ominous shape on the hall shelf... his mobile phone.

Knowing he'd be lost without it (it's got all his work contacts, as well as email handling and everything else), I had no option but to make a dash for the station, to try to catch him. I slammed the windows shut, grabbed a jacket and set off, without even the time to change into decent walking shoes.

The train was due to leave in twenty minutes, and it's a three quarter mile trek to the station. Ordinarily that wouldn't be a problem, but it's relentlessly uphill the entire way, the last part a one-in-five gradient, and there are roads to cross and the village centre crowds to negotiate. I half-ran, half-walked, gasping for air on the steepest bits, and rather to my disbelief got to the station entrance just as the train was pulling in.

Of course, by the time I'd reached the platform Dave had already boarded the train but I went and bobbed up and down outside all the windows and luckily he saw me, came to the door and retrieved his phone. One minute later the doors shut and the train pulled away... and I retreated to a nearby cafe for a cuppa while my breath trickled back!

I'm quite proud of myself, though. One happy husband reunited with his phone, and I must not be quite as unfit as I thought I was!

Aspen Mountain update

As of Tuesday this week, the Aspen Mountain Press website has been down, with only the following brief statement to replace the usual content:

"The Aspen Mountain Press web site is temporarily suspending operations.

Over the past five years we've demanded high standards in all areas of the company from authors to editors to administrators. Due to the current health of the owner these standards have not been met.

We'd like to thank you for your support and patronage over this past half decade and apologize for any inconveniences this decision causes."

On the one hand this is terrific news - someone at the press has finally seen sense and suspended operations while they sort out both themselves and the whole horrible muddle. Books are no longer being sold illegally, outside of contract and/or copyright, and although royalties are still not forthcoming many authors (including me) would be willing to forego their payments just to get their rights back.

On the other hand, there's still that pesky 'temporarily' in the message. This has happened before; the website is starting to resemble a game of hokey-cokey having been up and down about three times in the last couple of weeks. Each time it went down the authors breathed a sigh of relief, only for it to pop back up again a day or so later. This time, it's been down for three days straight, and I'm really starting to hope that it has either gone off air for a major re-think, or closed its doors for good.

Wine, women and song

We had a fantastic night with our friends last week when we went to see American folk rock band The Pierces at Birmingham's Glee Club.

The Pierces are two singing sisters from the other Birmingham in Alabama, who have been performing together since early childhood and specialise in the sort of harmonies I remember from sixties groups like The Mamas and The Papas. We first came across them at an accoustic studio performance during the Glastonbury coverage on BBC and were, quite honestly, blown away. Two women, one bloke with an accoustic guitar, and sheer perfection.

On the strength of that, and a few searches on YouTube, we bought their latest album and when we saw they were performing live in Brum, we grabbed some tickets (not before time as the concert was a sell-out) and mugged our friends into going along. All four of us were blown away all over again. The songs were note-perfect, and at one point the sisters sang acapella, with no accompaniment whatsoever, and were still note-perfect. They really are a sensation, and not nearly well known enough.

The only slight downside was that the event was standing only. From the moment we joined the queue outside the doors to the moment we finally hauled ourselves back to the car was a little over three hours. I'd worn flat boots but even so my feet were close to committing murder and our friends ached from head to foot. Still, it was a small price to pay for a great musical evening.

Google email problems

It looks as though Google mail is having serious problems this morning. I logged on to my usual email account in Windows Live, to find over a thousand messages waiting for me, most of them junk.

I went through and deleted the lot... and then found that something had apparently spoofed my email address and was happily sending more spam out *from* my account. ::headdesk:: According to Dave, there are new kinds of spam that activate when you delete the original message, whether or not you open it. That's so crafty it's untrue, and seems to have happened to me.

I've logged out of my email account and closed the program, which will hopefully limit the damage until Google sort themselves out. In the meantime I can't, of course, receive or respond to any email - and can only apologise if any of my readers, friends, relations and contacts have been showered with spam from my account. I'm hoping it's only a temporary glitch...

Unfinished novels

I had to smile at this little snippet in the latest issue of Mslexia:

"At myunfinishednovels.com 'six-time failed novelist' Steve Wilson calls for fellow failed novelists to show their faces. "It's time for us to face our shame and share our failures, bathe in our lack of dedication, explore our artistic nebbishness." Each unpublished novel is accompanied by a 'reason abandoned'."

I quite like the sound of this. I could fill a double-decker bus with the files containing all my unfinished novels, some of which date back to my earliest days as a new writer, nearly (gulp) twenty years ago. Since then my style has changed and so have my interests; a vast sci-fi tome, for instance, is unlikely to ever see the light of day because apart from a very occasional flash story I no longer dabble in that genre.

Others may still get tugged off the shelf and fiddled with from time to time, and there's at least two that I still have high hopes of finishing, One Of These Days. In the end, though, I think my biggest downfall is concentration. It's so hard to focus on just one mammoth project long enough to get it written, edited, polished, re-written and submitted somewhere. Some writers can do all that in a matter of months or even weeks, but it takes me years.

The one thing that puts me off joining Steve Wilson at unfinishednovels is the implication that you have to share the entire work with the group. That could give rise to copyright or 'previous publication' issues if hell ever freezes over and I do finish one of my babies. Otherwise, I'd be in there like a shot. If nothing else, it sounds like the perfect place to waste more time that I should really be spending... um... finishing a novel.

New! Spark to a Flame

Remember me saying, a few days back, that I'd had a story accepted by Litro? Well, they've published it today and you can read it, absolutely free, on their Ones to Watch section.

The story, about an arson attack on a school, was inspired by various news reports and events here in the UK, and has a twist that I hope makes it very topical. I hope you all enjoy it, and don't get any ideas involving matches. ;)

Please don't buy my book

You might think this is a really strange thing for any writer to say. After all, we write books and stories to entertain people, and hopefully to make a little money in the process, so asking readers not to buy our work is a little like an athlete stapling their feet to the track. They're not going to get very far.

However, sometimes circumstances are so difficult that desperate measures are called for, and that's what has happened here. My second pigeon shapeshifting tale, Steal the Sky, was published by Aspen Mountain Press in the anthology 'Shifting Perspectives 2' three years ago, under the terms of a three-year contract. As of the 1st of October this year, that contract expired, and one of the other authors in the same anthology had already let the company's owner know that we didn't want to renew. Under the terms of the contract, as of 1st October all rights should have reverted to the authors (including me) and the publisher should have automatically removed the book from their own catalogue, and notified any third-party distributors such as Fictionwise, Barnes and Noble, Amazon etc.

Sadly, this hasn't happened. Not just for my story in that anthology, but for many books by many different authors all contracted to Aspen Mountain Press. The company's owner has gone AWOL, is refusing to answer emails, telephone calls or letters, is returning certified mail unopened, and hasn't paid any authors royalties for some considerable time.

The last time I was paid royalties on Steal the Sky was in July, and those were already two months in arrears, which means the last actual payment I received was for May. That's six months ago. Six months of the book continuing to be sold by Aspen Mountain Press and other distributors, while I receive not a single penny. Now the book is out of contract, and it's *still* being sold. Illegally, I might add, and the payments are still not being made.

I'm not alone. There are authors out there who are owed hundreds, possibly even thousands of dollars in unpaid royalties. But I'll let them tell their own stories; all I can do is point to my own experience. I emailed Aspen Mountain Press on Monday to remind them Steal the Sky was now out of contract. I've received no response and the book is still on their catalogue.

I will of course be contacting as many distributors as I can track down to explain the facts to them and beg them to remove the book from their catalogues. But in the meantime I can only issue a heartfelt plea - if anyone comes across this book being sold anywhere, please please please don't be tempted to buy it. You won't be doing me any favours if you do because I won't receive a penny from the sales; the only person who will benefit is the owner of Aspen Mountain Press.

It's an unpleasant situation, and sad too, because until quite recently Aspen Mountain were a decent company to work for. That's no longer the case, and I can only sit and watch the carnage as the company circles the drain. Oh, and if anyone out there is considering submitting work to them, don't. Seriously. It really isn't worth the bother.

Litro accept a story

Yesterday I got back from a few days away to the great news that Litro Magazine, a well-regarded British literary magazine distributed free to libraries and the like, have accepted a story of mine for their (relatively new) online 'Ones to Watch' section.

The story, called Spark to a Flame, is a topical little piece about an arson attack on a school. I originally wrote it for the revenge anthology since the twist in the tail contains definite overtones of vengeance. But I can easily replace it with something else and I'm delighted to be part of Litro's new venture. Look out for more news of when the story is likely to appear in the next few days.

Scribbling again

Little by little, now that the intense hard work of preparing the house for sale is over, I'm starting to write again.

I can never concentrate when there's too much going on. I need to be able to hear my characters' voices in my head, and if I can't hear myself think then I certainly can't hear them think.

But although there's still work to be done it's more of a 'holding action' now, of keeping everything clean and tidy while the agent brings potential buyers round. I can actually stop to draw breath again, and there's even time to sit and just think. All of which means progress on the story front. I've finished one more very short one for the revenge anthology (remember that from earlier in the year?) and am rattling through a second as I type.

It's a huge relief not to have all those words bottled up inside me with no way of getting them out.

Psst! Wanna buy a house?

The hard work is finally over and we signed contracts with an estate agent on Monday to put our Birmingham house on the market. He braved a howling gale (ex Hurricane Katia...) to take photos of the place, but in spite of that has managed some stunning shots which we're delighted with. I never realised how tidy everything looked!

We had a couple of viewings yesterday; no offers yet but it's still very early days - it hasn't even been advertised in the local papers yet. We're expecting a quietish weekend, and then for all hell to break loose later on next week.

If anyone is interested, either in buying a 5-bed Victorian house in Birmingham or just in being nosy (grin), then you can find all the details here. And anyone who's seen references to our 'pointy' house in my biography can perhaps see what I meant...

No more hurricanes, thanks

America is being a tad too generous with its ex-hurricanes at the moment. So far we've had the tail-end of Irene (gales, rain); Katia is expected on Sunday night (more gales); and Lee is hovering in the wings and looking far too likely to cruise across the Atlantic in the other storms' wake.

This is Not Good if you're about to put your house up for sale. We're eyeing the nearby trees nervously and wondering if they're going to chuck nasty big branches all over the garden, or even worse, topple over on the roof. It's a nerve-wracking time.

The rain, on the other hand, is welcome. We heard on the local news last week that this summer has been the driest in the West Midlands since the long hot summer of 1976. Pretty much everywhere else has had a damp and depressing summer but every time it rained somewhere else, Birmingham missed it. The end result is a garden that looks as thought someone poisoned it, since so many plants are either losing their leaves to conserve moisture, or dying. We've been watering but there's only so much you can do with a hosepipe; what we really need is several days of good, heavy, non-stop rain.

Perhaps we need those hurricanes after all...

A bit of Shakespearean fun

Oxford Dictionaries online are running a fun little app that you can use to find out how 'Shakespearean' your writing is.

Simply copy a paragraph of your writing, paste it into the box and hit the button at the bottom. It calculates how much like the Bard you are by comparing the number of words you use that he also used. I got 85%, which is pretty good going in a small paragraph about a swimming lesson!

Mind you, the calculation was so incredibly fast (really, almost instantaneous) that the cynical part of me wonders if it just plucks a number out of the air at random.

It's still a bit of fun, though.

Quiet but crazy

Things have been a little quiet on the writing front the last few weeks. Partly, I think, this is due to so many people being away on holiday. Partly it's my own fault, because in the strange world of Real Life (TM) things have been anything but quiet as we prepare to put our Birmingham house on the market.

This entails a huge amount of work. Finishing off all those irritating little jobs that we started and never 'got around to'. Redecorating to tone down any colours that aren't neutral enough. Decluttering. Cleaning on top of and behind all those large pieces of furniture that you can't normally be bothered to move. Taking bag after bag of excess clutter to charity shops or (if beyond repair) to the tip. And endless tidying, snipping and sweeping up in the garden.

We've been at it, on and off, since April, but the last two to three weeks have just been non-stop. I ache in places I didn't know I had, I seem to be permanently sneezing, and as for work, I've hardly even looked at it let alone written anything new.

Never mind, we're down to the last few tasks now and hoping the house will be on the market sometime next week. After that we settle down to wait for viewings, buyers and the like, and to catch our breath. And after that, I'm hoping to get scribbling again. It's been too long without and I'm starting to get irritable. Never a good sign.

Missed it?

If you missed reading my latest 75-word story Early to Bed, don't worry. There's another chance to catch it at the Paragraph Planet archives, which have just been updated for August. Simply follow this link and select 21st August from the drop-down box. Hope you like it!