No time...

I realise I've been neglecting this blog the last week or so but there's a good reason for that. Last Friday I spotted a call for submissions from a publisher which might be right up my street, for a theme that I wrote a story about many years ago. The story needed a complete rewrite but I figured I could do that, and get it to the length the publisher was asking for. The only problem? The closing date is 1st February, which was only ten days away.

Writing a 10,000 word story from scratch in only ten days is a tall order, especially for me as I tend to work more slowly than some writers. Nevertheless, I've parked my bum in my study chair every day this week, and have made remarkable progress. Luckily, because I'd already written a version of the story, I knew where it was going which has helped. Now I'm only a couple of thousand words or so away from finishing it, and hoping against hope that I'll have time for that next week.

In the meantime, I shall reapply nose to screen and get typing again. Sorry for the silence. I should be back soon!

Kindle charges

This post is really aimed at any writers out there thinking about publishing their work on Kindle; the information has filtered down to me (via a writer friend) from the head honcho at electronic publisher Untreed Reads.

Apparently, for any work priced at less than $2.99 (or the £ equivalent in the UK, presumably), Amazon takes back a hefty 65% on every sale. For titles over $2.99, Amazon check regularly and if they find it for sale at a lower price anywhere else they will automatically reduce the Kindle price to match and only pay royalties on the lower price.

It's worth bearing this information in mind, especially for anyone hoping to put out single-title short stories on Kindle, as it will have a big effect on the amount of income you can expect from your sales.

There's always a downside, isn't there?

Houston, we have a cover...

And here it is - the brand new, just-announced cover for Radgepacket 6, the latest volume from Byker Books.

The book itself is due out in March (I've already blogged about the launch party) so there's not too long to wait before you can get your sticky mitts on another great collection of gritty 'industrial-strength' stories from authors established and new. Including yours truly, with a tale about a man jumping out of a birthday cake in his... birthday suit.

I hope that snippet, and the cover, whet your appetite!

Scribbling again

Ooof, that was a long break from writing over Christmas and the New Year. First there was a two to three week period in December when I seemed to do nothing but plan for presents, shop for presents, wrap presents, pack presents, and heave presents up the high street to post them.

Then there was the whole holiday period, which dragged on even longer because both Christmas Day and New Year's Day fell on Sundays, so we had to have extra bank holidays to make up.

And then there's that 'first few days back at work' when you're itching to get going again but your brain has been idle so long it's effectively shut down and you have to scrape around for every word.

However, I'm delighted to say that the scraping is over and I'm starting to make some decent progress again at last. I've picked up an old ghost story for now and am having a go at re-writing it since it had some Major Issues I need to work out. Let's hope I can keep the momentum going long enough to actually work them out.

Currently reading

Right now, Dicken's 'Great Expectations', which we watched a brilliant BBC adaptation of over Christmas and enjoyed so much I decided to dig the book out again. I haven't got very far with it yet but I must admit I'd forgotten how funny Dickens can be. Funny, but also caustic. Last night I was giggling over his description of a village school where the children paid twopence a week to watch the elderly teacher fall asleep!

It's quite a contrast to the last book I read, 'The Brutal Art' by Jesse Kellerman, which is far more modern in style and content but in its own way no less good. The book is mostly narrated by Ethan, a rich playboy art dealer who discovers some artwork by a tenant in one of his squillionaire father's properties. The artwork is original, brilliant and holds clues to a series of murders decades ago, but the artist himself has vanished and Ethan sets out to discover who he is, where he is, and whether he had anything to do with the murders.

Ethan is a lot more entertaining than you might expect, with a good line in caustic humour of his own, and his search for the truth is intriguing. The book also features interludes from the past as we follow Ethan's family from their first arrival in New York up to the present day. Some of these are beautifully written and surprisingly poignant. One or two include dialogue which is reported strangely without the use of quotation marks (something I usually hate) but in this case there's a very specific reason for that and it's actually rather clever.

The ending is possibly the weakest part of the book; part felt slightly 'bolted on', and there was one (mercifully short) 'Dear Reader' bit which stuck out like a sore thumb. But on the whole, it keeps you guessing right up to the end, with some very unexpected twists and turns. I can thoroughly recommend it.

Passive explained

Lately I've been seeing some increasingly odd statements from editors about the use of passive in writing. Chief among these are that passive is a tense, not a voice, and that every single instance of the verb 'to be', especially when used in past tense, is an example of passive.

So I was delighted to come across writer Pat Wrede's delightful, simple yet intelligent blog post on the subject of passive and the sudden passion for 'de-wasing'. She puts it so much better than I ever could (I can never remember the names of all those past tenses!) and it's well worth popping along for a read.

If we spread the word, we might be able to stop an entire section of the English language being put 'off limits' for the wrong reasons.

Radgepacket 6 launch party

Byker Books have just announced the date, time and venue of the launch party for their latest volume of 'Tales from the Inner Cities', Radgepacket 6. As with several of the previous parties it's being held at The Back Page, a spectacularly well-stocked sports bookshop in Newcastle upon Tyne (England, in case you weren't sure!), and this time it's on Saturday 10th March 2012 between 12pm and 3pm.

I have a story appearing in the book, but this far ahead I can't say for sure whether I'll be able to attend the launch or not. We do so much travelling these days that I never know where I'm going to be more than two weeks in advance, so two whole months away is a step too far. If I can be there I will, though, and I'll obviously let everyone know a little nearer the time.

In the meantime the book's editor and an assortment of authors will be there, and there'll be free drinkies and nibbles on the house, so if you've got a spare Saturday afternoon and want to get a signed copy of Radgepacket 6 for your collection, do pop along to:

The Back Page
56 St Andrews Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 5SF

You never know, you might even meet me there!

Not so much white as wet

There's been no snow over Christmas this year. Our neighbours' children were most upset, but all the adults have been quietly saying 'thank heavens for that' and enjoying being able to get about without the aid of spiked boots, 4-wheel-drive and sledges.

Even so, the weather has been atrocious, with almost non-stop rain that's been either diagonal or horizontal depending on whether the wind was gale force or severe gale force.

We'd hoped to get out for some nice walks over the holiday period, at least at lower levels below the snow line. Sadly, the awful weather has mostly put paid to that. We can cope with rain OR wind, but put both together and umbrellas become impediments last seen flying in the general direction of Yorkshire, and not even our expensive waterproofs can keep us dry.

We did manage one walk on Christmas afternoon, as penance for the turkey. It was only short, to one of the small range of fells at the back of the town, and it was more than enough for us. The rain bounced, the wind howled, the path was indescribably muddy in spite of being on a slope, and when we crawled, slithered and sludged our way to the top it was so blotted out that we couldn't see a thing. Not even the lake, which is a pretty big target to hide so successfully. We stood there for a minute or two staring at the fog, blew rain drops off the ends of our noses, and slithered back home. Not one of our more successful outings, and since then we've stuck to the pavements. Figuratively if not quite literally. Roll on spring!

Merry Christmas

Hope it's a good one for everyone with plenty of relaxing and all your favourite things, be they food, drink, dreadful old films on telly, or good books!

I'm off to partake of all of the above but should be back in a couple of days' time, rested, fed, watered and entertained.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

Daily Flash available at Amazon UK

The title says it all, really - Daily Flash 2012, complete with four of my short stories, is now available to buy at Amazon UK. This is good news for British readers as it means you can order the book without paying shipping all the way from America.

Try this link if you'd like to buy the book.

And even more good news - the book should shortly be available in e-book format for both Nook and Kindle. I don't yet know how much it will cost, or have any links, but I will post an update as soon as I have more details.

Currently reading

A couple of charity shop finds. And they could hardly be more different if they tried.

The first is a 'two books in one volume' by David Hewson, who specialises in thrillers set in modern-day Italy but often with historical overtones. Or perhaps I should say hysterical, since the one I've tackled, 'The Garden of Evil', reads like Dan Brown on a slightly better day. The style is reasonable but the plot is a wild and indigestible concoction of murder, religious cults and medieval art and the characters are so wooden you could chop them into planks and make wardrobes out of them. Indeed, the only character who came to life in any way died at the end of the first chapter and after that I rapidly lost interest, not helped by illogical and irrational dialogue that sounds as though a mad editor has simply hacked out every tenth line, so none of the conversations quite make sense.

I've given up, at least for now, and moved on to the other book - 'The Brutal Art' by Jesse Kellerman. So far I've only read a handful of chapters but it's brilliant. Oddly, this also involves art and murder but both elements are far more original and far more gripping and the style is a wonderful mix of vivid description and self-deprecating, wry humour. I can't wait to read the rest.

Both books only cost me 75p each, which makes the latter an unbelievable bargain and the former less of an annoyance than if I'd paid full price for it.

You know it's cold when...

...even the pigeons hunker down, fluff themselves up and huddle together for warmth. We walked down to the lake yesterday in a brief gap between showers of horizontal sleet and I managed to grab some more nice pictures, both of the snowy fells in the distance and also of one or two fun little things closer to home.

Here are the huddled pigeons, and some tourists have tremendous fun feeding the birds, as well as a shot of the fells looking dramatic again:

Early snow

We've had the first snowfall of the winter here - lots of sleet showers over the weekend and then yesterday morning we woke to find everything white.

On Sunday after the heaviest of the showers we took the car, carefully, to the top of Kirkstone Pass where we could get great views without having to venture too far from home. It was snowing the whole time we were up there and there was snow on the verges but the road itself was fine, thank goodness, as it's 1500 feet above sea-level and can get pretty hairy up there.

The car park was quite literally flowing (there's been a lot of rain recently, even before the snow) but I managed to wade about and get some half decent photos of the fells looking their dramatic best. Here are a few to show you what I mean:

A distant shot of the fells taken from further down the road to the pass.

The top of the pass with Red Screes in the background.

Not so much Red Screes as white...

Daily Flash 2012

Once again the editors at Pill Hill Press have bust a gut (hopefully not literally... eww) in order to ensure Daily Flash 2012 is ready before Christmas. They've done it, and the book is available right now from Pill Hill themselves and also from Amazon US.

Don't forget that the anthology contains not one but four short stories by yours truly, ranging in subject matter from depressed vampires to enigmatic dogs, scarecrows to a monster in a maze.

More ordering options will be added to the list shortly, including Amazon UK for any British readers not wanting to pay shipping all the way from America!

In the meantime if anyone you know loves reading, then a collection of 366 stories, one for every day of the year, might make the perfect Christmas present.

Shark tales?

Well, not quite, but I have a snappy little story up at The Pygmy Giant today. It's called Make It Snappy and it's set in one of these fish foot spas that are suddenly springing up on every high street, all over the country. We had two open in our small village in the Lake District over the summer; sadly not even the tourist trade could keep both going and one closed a few weeks ago. The other still seems to be packed!

Sticking my feet in a tank full of fish that may or may not have been cleaned since the last pair of feet were flapping about in there is not my idea of heaven so I've never actually tried the experience for myself. I'm told the fish tickle... and that it's an effective way of dealing with all sorts of skin conditions and diseases. But... but... oh, I don't know... FEET. Ugh.

Still, I hope everyone can get over their various feety dislikes and enjoy the story. It's dark, it's slightly evil, but I'm hoping it's fun.

Heave away, haul away

We seem to be booked into a sudden flurry of concerts and events lately. Last night it was the turn of Fishermen's Friends at Birmingham Town Hall. They're a group of Cornish fishermen and artisans who have become famous for singing sea shanties and other old folk songs, often in the open air in their home village of Port Isaac.

The sea shanties were particularly appropriate last night as we could have done with a boat to row ourselves into the city centre and back - it was absolutely sloshing down!

I'm not sure shanties are my favourite type of music - they all sound the same after a while - but the evening was great fun. The men do wonderful harmonies and because there are ten of them they can give it some 'oomph', and they sang a good selection of songs including a methodist hymn, a calypso number and what sounded like a negro spiritual, which helped keep the sound more varied. And in between the numbers, the group's blogger/raconteur did a great line in 'patter' with jokes and snippets of information about Cornish history and the background to the songs. He turned the evening from a recital to an event, and was a lot funnier than two of the comedians we saw the other night.

The support band Flats & Sharps were a revelation, too. When they came on stage they looked incredibly young and we thought 'oh, no, yet another group of festival-band-wannabes'. Then we saw their instruments - double bass, banjo, mandolin... and thought 'no'. Turns out they're a teenage bluegrass band from Cornwall (now there's a combination) and they were incredibly good. I think I preferred them to the main act, actually...

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!