So here I am, poised and ready to enjoy reading a book on the kindle. I have been prepped so I know it is NOT a touch screen device; you turn the pages by pressing buttons. It’s basically like living in the olden days, technology wise. Remember buttons? They were fun, weren’t they. Although sometimes you used to get things stuck under them – bits of cake, usually, or foliage – and then you had to prise them off with a nail file or a straightened out paper clip to get the stuff out. They went back on OK but they were never really the same again. Continue reading “The Great Kindle Challenge: Day 1”
“I’ve got an idea for your blog,” Bob said mysteriously at the office tea point one morning, “but I won’t tell you about it now, I’ll speak to you later.”
Then he vanished into the mist like he’d never been there at all. Being as how I’m not much of a pre-10am person this was a little befuddling. Why was our office so misty, and on a sunny day? Still, an hour or two of putting together resource packs sorted me right out. By the time he reappeared to expound on his idea, I was alert as a tack.
Continue reading “End of Books: The Return”
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Apparently this month I elected to write a book in the key of ‘humour’. I’m not really sure what possessed me to pick that – genres were allocated back in December 2010, which was a different time altogether.
Remember December 2010? It was a whole different time, wasn’t it? Of course it was. Remember Snowpocalyse? Public transport drew to a standstill and there was ice on the inside of the windows of your flat and you had to wear a dressing gown over your other layers of clothes for fear of getting pneumonia? Although that might just have been in my house… Oh, and remember Matt Cardle off the X-Factor getting to number one with a fairly average Biffy Clyro cover? That was adequate, wasn’t it. And remember civil unrest kicking off in Tunisia? Heady days indeed, they ended up getting rid of their political leader. December 2010 eh, it was another world.
And in that world, I arbitrarily decided that in 9 months time I’d be in the mood to write something funny. You might think that my natural wit would see me through nae bother, but there are one or two problems occurring.
Continue reading “Tell Us A Joke”
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Today is the last day of August and therefore it feels like time for a progress report.
I have just over 15,000 words of book 8 written in a delightful stream of consciousness that makes no sense whatsoever; a situation unlikely to be improved by the fact I have a full day of work ahead of me and guests staying in the flat for a few days who it would be churlish to ignore.
I’ve been writing in first person from the point of view of several characters, and accidentally switching tenses all over the shop. This will almost certainly make for a narrative that feels immediate and tense and worthy of all manner of high praise… That or when I go back to it I’ll be so confused and irritated I’ll consign the whole lot to the recycle bin and try to forget it ever happened. I considered posting an extract by way of example, but to give you a proper sense of the nonsense it’d need to be 1k +, which seems inappropriately long for a blog post.
I have mostly been writing on my laptop, which has been the case with the bulk of the project, although I did actually scribble quite a few notes by hand this month (how retro) and I also typed out a few sections on my phone in queues at the Book Festival. To the untrained eye, I was the only loser who was playing on my phone instead of reading a book. Little did the general public know that in a couple of years they’ll be picking up the very book I was writing on my phone from the festival book shop! Muahahaha, etc. Except they really won’t. I can’t see book eight being my debut – not unless there is some kind of drastic book shortage that necessitates the publication of things that need so much re-writing it makes your eyes water.
By way of research (it’s scifi this month, by the by) I have read half of The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross and the first chapter of Neuromancer by William Gibson. Oh yes, I am that prolific a reader these days. It turns out having a vast pile of recommended books did not translate into having time to look at them all – who saw that coming, after my amazing track record?! The only book I’ve finished this month is The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein, which is a good story but doesn’t have much bearing on genre fiction. Not this genre, anyway.
Naturally I am disinclined to take responsibility for my own actions and therefore lay the blame for this appalling lack of reading squarely at the feet of festival season. To be fair the festival has been very distracting, although it has also been amazing in terms of making blog posts more diverse. In fact I would like to thank Andrew Blair, Emily Dodd, Ruth Dawkins, Harry Giles, Bethany Anderson and Mara from Toto Tales for their excellent guest posts; Amanda Palmer, Rod Jones and Andy Stanton for letting me interview them; and the Edinburgh International Book Festival for having me along to an amazing range of literary events over the past couple of weeks. All of you have made things a lot more colourful around here, and generally helped to set a blogging precedent I am unlikely to maintain.
Which is nice.
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This is my last post about the book festival, which finished yesterday with what I can only assume was a life-changing production of Alasdair Gray’s Fleck (I don’t know for sure as I didn’t manage to get a ticket. Instead I went to see The Guard, a black comedy with Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle which was very funny – highly recommended).
Said post contains my thoughts on a session I went to last week about graphic novels, run by Dr Mel (“don’t google Mel Gibson, google Dr Mel Comics!”) Gibson and self styled ‘comicker’ Emma Vieceli.
“I had a crush on Asterix,” offers Emma early on in the discussion.
“Fair enough,” Dr Mel lies effortlessly (or maybe she really does think it’s fair enough. Who am I to judge.) “We had Asterix in the school library in every single European language other than English. English was cheating.”
Continue reading “Getting to Grips With Graphic Novels”
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There is a copy of singer James Yorkston’s book, It’s Lovely To Be Here: The Touring Diaries of a Scottish Gent, in our house. I know because I bought it as a birthday present for my flat mate, who says it’s very good. Unfortunately I haven’t borrowed it yet, mainly because my mighty pyramid of to-read books is so enormous it hurts my brain. Still, that didn’t stop me going to see Mr Yorkston talking about it with Ian Rankin at the book festival over the weekend.
It was a great event, the atmosphere was very friendly and there was cheery banter aplenty. After a brief overview of his new guitar (made from Tazmanian blackwood, spruce and Brazilian Rosewood), Rankin began by asking about Yorkston’s background.
He grew up in Fife and attended Madras college in St Andrews, a few years below Kenny (King Creosote) Anderson and amongst such luminaries as KT Tunstall and Steve Mason from The Beta Band. Listening to him describe his early years “dancing with my across the road neighbour, Vic Galloway (a BBC Scotland presenter and DJ) like dafties on the lawn,” it strikes me the East Neuk is overdue an Almost Famous style look at the music scene – there are so many artists compressed into that area it’s a bit ridiculous.
Apparently Yorkston wrote his first song at the age of 8, him on electric guitar and Galloway on banjo. “It went, baa baa goes the cow, moo moo goes the sheep, woof woof goes the hippopotamus and they all went to sleep.”
I felt exactly like Cameron Crowe as I typed that up, seriously. This could work.
Continue reading “James Yorkston at Edinburgh Book Festival”
12 Books in 12 Months 