Tim Roux

The three-ringed circus of Christian Churches

2011-02-24T01:43:00.000-08:00

The Prodigal Prophet by Dylan Morrison

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think the expression 'Oh My God' was coined to describe this book. I cannot work out whether it is horrifying, hilarious, laughable, insightful, informative, or just plain bizarre.

Whatever it is, it is hard not to be transfixed by some emotion or another.

And, actually, it is definitely informative because I have no doubt it represents the gospel truth about how aspects of Christianity are exploited to nefarious ends. The Christian Church - whatever the denomination - has a horrible history of subverting a beautiful theology / philosophy for personal gain. Dylan Morrison's 'The Prodigal Prophet' incontrovertibly demonstrates that while the Christian Church is a bit short on burnings, torture and indeed genocide nowadays (beyond the activities of a few mass suicidal sects), vainglory, power and the obscene accumulation of wealth are very much still where it's at.

The only question I have is why the author fell for these cheap tricks time and time again when he appears to be a perfectly sane (beyond the avowed depression) and highly astute observer of his own Calvary at the hands of a series of rank charlatans.

I suppose that is th skill of the professional conman. You may even know you are being defrauded, but somehow you want them to succeed, even against you.

If you suspect that the leaders of the Christian Churches aren't very Christian and, by analogy, that the leaders of the Spiritual movement aren't very spiritual, this is a book to bolster you in that faith - that nothing, but nothing, is sacred once the all-too-humans get it in their sights.

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This should be a game

2011-02-22T02:01:00.000-08:00

Lord Cragus by John R Brade

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When you start reading 'Lord Cragus' it is all nicey-nicey - Peter and his mum, all cosy.

But as soon as he goes through the wall, it is something else. Who knows what the hell is going on, but it isn't anything nice. Well, Sal is nice, but is she to be trusted? And Peter soon finds himself cornered.

As the real situation emerges, the whole thing becomes absolutely intriguing, except that 'the real situation' is yet another mirage leading up to a blistering ending.

Quite superb. Don't be fooled by its YA-sounding opening. This is adult stuff and it will haunt you for some time to come.

It could also found a business or strategy game. Any gamesters out there?

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An extraordinary, extraordinary story

2011-01-23T04:39:00.001-08:00

Empty Chairs by Stacey Danson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Simply put, this book is a classic - a superbly written gruesome real life horror story - and self-penned to boot, no ghost writer in sight (they would never write as well as Stacey anyway). It is direct, it is transcendent, it does not shut its eyes for a single second. Stacey Danson does for child abuse what Primo Levi did for the Holocaust - she survived it and rose above it (although Primo Levi committed suicide in the end).

Talking of suicide, you can see those chairs of the title emptying as apparently 13 out of the 15 people in the street gang Stacey joined at the age of 11 are now dead.

I am not easily reduced to shock. I used to volunteer for Amnesty International and know well enough what people are capable of doing the other people, but this is something else.

How do you prostitute a toddler of 3? How do you allow man after man to rape your daughter at the age of 5? How can you allow them to mutilate and torture her at the age of 10?

Rumour has it that Stacey Danson wrote this book because of a promise she made to a friend who subsequently committed suicide before she had put one word down on paper.

I have read the interviews. Stacey had to relive every moment in writing this book and, absolutely extraordinarily, it is not a bitter book, it is suprisingly uplifting, as Primo Levi's 'If This Is A Man' was.

There are lists out there of books to read before you die. This is a book to read to stop others dying.

It describes a continuing outrage, a living hell, outragously well. This is one hell of a book.

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Seriously volatile. Handle with care (but soon)

2010-12-25T10:14:00.001-08:00

Exploits by Poppet

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have read many books I would classify as all-time favourites over the last year, and here comes another one - Poppet's 'Exploits'.

It is chick-lit in structure, but it has been artisticly coated in sensual nitroglycerine to deliver the most explosive of authorial rub-downs on opening.

It is raw, spontaneously honest, and skin-tinglingly exciting, wrapped as it is around twists and writhings of plot and bodies.

It is about personal enslavement and the physical and emotional enjoyment that makes that enslavement possible - thus the pun of the title. It is also about being stripped to self-loathing by others before rebuilding your own sense of validity.

In short, it is about a young woman laid aggressively bare who doesn't necessarily want to be clothed but who does want to be safe and at home.

My only reservation - I cannot imagine the heroine Stef as a blonde. Definitely brunette, I would say.

And, very fortunately, I have another Poppet book to hand - 'Seithe' (a dark romance). Can't get enough.

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It's quiet - it's excellent

2010-12-24T14:28:00.000-08:00

Surfacing by Catherine Chisnall

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved Catherine Chisnall's 'Descending' and this is the sequel.

She apparently feared that 'Surfacing' might not be as good as 'Descending' but in fact, if anything, it is even better.

Not that it could fail. Catherine's quietly precise voice coaxes you along the sense of searching, of coping, of outrage.

A wonderful book.

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You call it Vietnam; I call it Iraq

2010-12-24T14:21:00.000-08:00

How Can You Mend This Purple Heart by Terry Gould

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the most terrifying things about life for me is that a child can be damaged at an early age and then is mutilated or disfigured for life. That is what Stacey Danson's 'Empty Chairs' is all about - being prostituted from the age of three in her case - but it is also the gist of 'How Can You Mend This Purple Heart?' where young men of 20 have stood on a landmine - or their mate has - and they have lost one, two or even three limbs. One minute they are lithe young men at the peak of their physical prowess, the next they are angry cripples, in this case publicly derided for taking part in one of the most unpopular wars in history.

This is an extraordinary book for the way it describes how these Vets came to terms with their appalling injuries. Apparently during the First World War only one person ever survived a triple amputation. During the current occupation of Iraq I am told there is one a week, so this book is still highly topical.

It reads a bit like a theatre piece or TV series and, sure enough, next year it will be premiered in a playhouse in Pittsburgh.

It is also outraging and funny. You may well laugh and sneer until you cry.

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Typically West Coast

2010-12-17T14:17:00.000-08:00

Becoming Johnny Nova by David Kupisiewicz

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a young lad, I was very into the West Coast bands - Jefferson Airplane / Starship, The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver et al and I would have loved to have been out there lazing in the sunshine, dreaming to the music, basking in the casual amiability and maybe even choking on the weed (I have always preferred wine myself, but California has a few gallons of that too).

David Kupisiewicz's 'Becoming Johnny Nova' is a generation later than my fantasies and somewhat less fantastical, but it is still from another world of impromptu mass parties and irritatingly intrusive policing. I didn't even have the over-controlling parents.

You really do get a sense of being there in this life lived on Planet David, surrounded by some very dodgy friends, a very reliable girlfriend who isn't, drugs galore and academic rebellion. Then its all off to the hills - or the streets - to mill, drink, smoke and play, and occasionally to fight.

It is one of those books where you simply pick it up and read another couple of chapters at a time until you have soon finished it, with the thought that you have been living in somebody else's skin.

I don't believe that people are jerks, but I do believe in playing a little bit of rock 'n' roll.

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Not perhaps - definitely!

2010-12-17T13:49:00.000-08:00

Perhaps .... Perhaps by L.A. Dale

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Reading 'Perhaps .... Perhaps' is like sipping a crisp, dry Chablis on a warm summer's day, and reading the whole book is like downing the whole bottle, which is just fine by me.

So this is how you should read 'Perhaps .... Perhaps', a glass of white wine in one hand and LA Dale (so to speak) in the other - a perfect combination.

The writing is elegant, sharp and bouncy, the characters well defined, the heroine neurotic-squeaky and her reservations a bit olde worlde. Thank God her boss knows how to get on top of his job.

This is a very enjoyable chick-lit which knows the conventions without choosing to follow them slavishly.

I shall certainly be hunting down LA Dale's other book 'Heart of Glass' which apparently bumps along to a soundtrack of classic songs. I fancy another bottle.

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I'd settle for being shopped

2010-12-15T16:09:00.000-08:00

How To Meet A Guy At The Supermarket by Jessica L. Degarmo

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You can shop for anything nowadays and I reckon we are becoming more and more consumerist in everything we do. Statisticians have shown that we choose politicians like soap powder, so why not lovers too - great packaging, not too battered about, hours of fun and pleasure, dispose after use?

Well, the heroine of 'How To Meet A Guy At The Supermarket' thinks so. She's ready for a mate; time to go out and snag one. And, as a journalist, she can devise a syndicated column while she is at it.

What she finds, of course, is that while it is a clever conceit, actually doing it is one hell of a lot tougher. People just aren't looking out for lovers in supermarkets (in my experience and hers). A supermarket is simply the wrong context for those kinds of thoughts.

So her antics have to get a bit wild and intrusive, from which derives the humour in the book, and blokes are simply not guaranteed to give as much satisfaction as all those inanimate objects on the shelves.

However, the real pleasure of this book is that Quinn, the heroine, is human - not some chick lit artefact. You can really believe that author Jessica really did the things in the book and even wrote a column about them.

Einstein once said that he had the choice of studying either advanced physics or women, and that he had chosen to pursue the physics because he had at least some chance of understanding some of it. This book could help you if you are considering taking the other path.

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A book about love to love

2010-12-15T15:53:00.000-08:00

Travels Through Love And Time by Christine Hall Volkoff

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first went to the Hyeres as an 8 year old when my parents took me on a day trip to the Ile de Levant which has a famous nudist beach. Appropriately enough, the first novella of this book is set on the Ile de Porquerolles, a neighbouring island.

This is a story of love in three aspects and at three ages. It starts when a teenage girl falls in love with a glamorous Italian actress, and then catches up with its narrator some twenty years on, I would guess, spotting a beautiful woman on the terrace of a cafe bar in Paris. The final novella is a kind of swan song.

It is billed as a lesbian book, which I suppose it is, but it is much more universal than specific, and reminded me at one moment of Francoise Sagan and at another of Truman Capote who wrote the only portrait of Marilyn Munro I have ever fully believed. I don't know if the actress in the first novella is / was a real person but, if so, you get an indelible sense of her private, yet not fully private, self.

A wonderful, lyrical book - the sort of thing you should read every year to remind yourself what being human and vulnerable is all about.

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A must-read YA (and there aren't many of those around)

2010-12-15T15:42:00.001-08:00

Hellogon by John Booth

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read the original version of John Booth's 'Shaddowdon' a while back and enjoyed it so much that I read it to one of my sons too.

However, I reckon 'Hellogon' is even better. In fact it is definitely scary, not so much at the time as afterwards, when you come to think about it and realise that it is giving you a very unsettling insight into how real politicians, diplomats and secret services (the Establishment) calculate and strategise.

The tale is classic Harry Potter - a teenager who doesn't realise he is born to greatness suddenly finds that he has an unwelcome and burdensome job to do - in this case to save his race that happens to be a race most of us would have our doubts about saving.

However, the theme of 'Hellogon' is somewhat the reverse to that of Harry Potter and its core message is diametrically opposite.

It is also good to see a YA book that actually has some wholesome, playful sex in it accompanied by many a wry reference.

Good fun, well written, chilling, you know you are in the hands of a master as you read this book.

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A fun read - don't do this to the one you love!

2010-12-15T15:23:00.000-08:00

Spoilt: Joanne Ellis by Joanne Ellis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

'Spoilt' is a romantic slasher-thriller where a crazed maniac is abducting, torturing and killing girls all, seemingly, as a warm-up to abduct and carve up Chelsea whose boyfriend walked out on her without explanation a year beforehand. The romance hots up between Lucas and Chelsea, then ....

You don't see many chick-lit crime procedurals around - a bit cross-genre - but this is certainly one, and a fun one at that, with a twisty ending borrowed from a classic romantic plot. I suppose that is the fun of miscegenation - you can plug and play with the conventions of both genres as the moment takes you.

This is not one for the literati, but it swings along with much pleasure, and a little pain, and the lead characters are endearing and well-suited.

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I'm in the women's hygiene section - 'How To Meet A Guy In The Supermarket'

2010-11-11T05:24:00.000-08:00

Having been educated in more or less all-male establishments between the ages of 7 and 22 (well, Cambridge University was 24 males to each female at the time), I have to admit to a certain fondness for well-written chick-lit while I still try to understand how women's minds work in relation to love and romance some 30 years later.

The central core of any romance tale has to be that you actually want the girl and the boy to get all hot and sweaty together somewhere around the last chapter, whilst knowing that almost everything will get in their way en route.

As in Jane Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility', the problem here is that Quinn is looking down all the wrong aisles and taking some pretty dubious advice from friends.

The great thing about this book is that psychologically it rings much more true than its more manufactured chick-lit cousins. I don't know if Jessica really writes a column on travel and dating, or whether she has indeed picked up men in supermarkets, but the more I read, the more I came to believe that this was a thinly disguised documentary.

So, not only do I thoroughly recommend this book, but I shall pay much more attention down my local Tesco's or Co-Op from now on. There may even be a 2-for-1 offer at one of the gondola ends.

Brendan Gisby's 'The Island of Whispers' reviewed by Teresa Geering

2010-10-29T06:50:00.000-07:00

(Teresa Geering is the author of the excellent time-travel romance 'The Eye of Erasmus' - here).

With great trepidation, I began to read The Island of Whispers.

I hate Rats with a passion, but under the influential, cunning writing of Brendan Gisby, I found myself reading this in one long sitting.

Out of sight of prying eyes deep underground, live a colony of rats with imaginative names, such as Twisted Foot, his mate Grey Eyes and their offspring Soft Mover.

Their world is regimented and overseen by A King Rat, who ensures that only the strongest survive by having the weakest culled. These bodies are then in turn used for the feeding cycle.

As the Cold Cycle begins above ground so the breeding season begins below. All in their world is exactly as it should be....

Then the story takes a different turn. A group of the rats led by Twisted Foot and his mate Grey Eyes, who had been subjected to rape, decide to make a bid for freedom to the greener lands above, along with their offspring.

With unexpected help from the lower rat quarters, a bloody battle ensues and they are finally free but at what cost?

Keeping well hidden from four legs, (a nifty Jack Russell called Nipper) and the two legged variety of rat catcher, they set out to cross the sea to safety. Could they swim? They had no idea but were prepared to take that chance.

I found myself willing these little rats to overcome all of the obstacles put in their way, (and there were many) to obtain safety on the other side.

Twisted foot and his followers are pursued by the remaining rats in the colony that have orders to bring them back at the cost of their own lives.

I breathed a sigh of relief, as these intrepid adventurers finally make it to safety but again at what cost?

Do they set up a new colony and live happily ever after.......

At times, the song ‘Bright Eyes’ from Watership Down popped into my head. Was I getting to like these disgusting little furry creatures?

Would I highly recommend it?

The answer is a resounding yes for all age groups, because The Island of Whispers is extremely well written and thought out, albeit highly gory in places.

('The Island of Whispers' is available from Amazon.com here).

Lose your legs and smile - How Can You Mend This Purple Heart?

2010-10-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

‘How Can You Mend This Purple Heart?’ is not an intrinsically funny book.

It is the story of how a young naval recruit, Jeremy Shoff, is involved in a lethal car crash coming back from a party and finds himself in the U.S. Naval Hospital in Philadelphia among a ward full of mutilated Vietnam veterans who have lost between one and three limbs while stepping on landmines in the war that was considered by many Americans to have brought shame upon their country.

While some of the therapeutic treatment of these wounds is agonising, it is the convalescence which is the most traumatic, not only for the endless pain subdued by massive amounts of pain killers, but also for the physical and psychological adjustments required to face almost an entire life of handicap after having been the fittest of the fittest, and for the horrific flashbacks to the moment when this crippling transition occurred.

Jeremy is looked down upon as a non-combatant by one hardened and embittered marine in particular, and Terry Gould is excellent at identifying the complex socio-military cross-currents of the situation – marines vs. non-marines, optimists vs. pessimists, warriors vs. peaceniks.

However, and miraculously, most of this book is far from dour. There is a tremendous fondness and understanding in the writing, a recognition of the humanity in all of the participants in all situations, and true admiration for the tact, professionalism and generosity of the hospital staff.

It also regularly dips into outrage and rises to humour, once both at the same time when a passing admiral insists on being treated with the respect he so little deserves.

In common with its publishing stable-mate ‘Confronting Cancer with the QiGong Edge’ by Robert Ellal, this is a book detailing extreme medical trauma that transcends the horror of what it is describing to offer the residual hope that many human beings can overcome almost any setback, the message and the quality of writing exemplified by Primo Levi in his books about the Holocaust.

Simon Swift's 'Black Shadows' reviewed by Teresa Geering

2010-10-10T13:52:00.000-07:00

(Teresa Geering is the author of 'The Eye of Erasmus' - here).

'BlackShadows' is not a book I would normally choose to read, but I’m so glad the opportunity was given to me.

We are introduced to the main character Errol Christopher Black, a rookie private detective as he tucks into a large bloody porterhouse steak. Detectives Terry Shadow and Dyke Spanner of the Shadow Man Detective Agency are helping him work his way through a now half empty bottle of claret.

The story unfolds in Newark New Jersey in 1935 where mobs rule, and we are witness to a typical shoot out of the time. As the table is upended to afford some form of protection from the flying bullets, they realise that they are not the intended targets but Terry Shadow meets his untimely end with two clean bullets to the head.

Ten years down the line we find Errol Christopher Black with a new partner, Hermeez Wentz and now based in Manhattan at the Black and Wentz Detective Agency along with his very obliging secretary Ava Jameson.

Errol seems happy to take on run of the mill cases and his new client Claudia seems to fit into that category. She tells of a straying fiancé George, along with the discovery of a lipstick and pair of lacy panties which don’t belong to her.

As he takes on what he considers to be a routine surveillance case, Errol is unexpectedly drawn back once more to the mobsters and gangs of that time.

His one time partner Dyke Spanner is shot to death and Errol finds himself on the trail of a blue diamond coveted by hoodlums and beautiful women alike.

The story unfolds with many twists and turns, whilst the reader is witness to the beautiful women that Errol chooses to bed, in his quest for the diamond and the elusive George. Murder is not a rare occurrence either. To state more would give away too much of the plot.

The strength of the writing led me to imagine that I was entering into a 1940’s movie with Humphrey Bogart in the wings.

I also firmly believe that with the right exposure, there is potential here for a film.

Many times during reading BLACK SHADOWS I was convinced that I had all the answers, only to be completely wrong footed by the superb, imaginative writing of Simon Swift.

More information on 'Black Shadows' - here.

Sheila Mary Taylor praises 'Conronting Cancer' by Robert Ellal to the rafters

2010-10-10T02:03:00.000-07:00

Sheila Mary Taylor (aka Sheila Belshaw) is the author of 'Fly with a Miracle', the story of Sheila’s son Andrew who overcame a usually fatal form of teenage cancer against all adversity, and fulfilled his dream to learn to fly. Published by Denor Press, London, available from Amazon - here.

'Confronting Cancer with the QiGong Edge' - the true life horror tale of facing cancer four times.

The unputdownable quality of this book lies not only in the superb writing, but in the mesmerising balance the writer achieves between the horror of his protagonist’s journey through seemingly never ending onslaughts of cancer, and the philosophy behind his remarkable recovery.

He is not afraid to show the weaknesses of the main character alongside his strengths. He doesn’t keep you strung up on the edge of your seat all the time. He gives you an enlightened breather every now and then, skilfully juxtaposing events that are not necessarily chronological and yet perfectly fit a pattern ─ creating cliffhangers as in a thriller that draw the reader ever forward.

This book should be read not only by cancer patients, or those touched by cancer, but by everyone. For there is a wealth of knowledge to be gleaned about how by one or two simple processes we can escape the stresses of the modern world that lead to so much ill health. One of these is a simple qigong exercise, a method of exercising from the inside out, instead of from the outside in; a combination of mind, breath and body co-ordination that leads to stillness, which in turn leads naturally into meditation, and from there to the art of visualisation ─ visualising the body whole and healed, a concept so important in augmenting the very necessary highly technical treatments of cancer. The “Embrace the Tree” exercise (what a lovely title that would make), is the most important of these, and one we could all use, if only to chase away the common cold.

There is a fine line to be drawn between bravery and fear, between strength and weakness. Bob Ellal acknowledges that his usual iron will sometimes falters. He does not pretend that that it isn’t happening. This endears the reader to Bob. We can all identify with this weakness. But at the same time we are astounded at his tenacity, in his belief that he will recover, in his ability to face whatever new monstrous horror is thrown at him.

Bob’s wife Cheryl also shows great fortitude. Throughout the terror and drama of the recurring cancer, she remains strong, as do his children. In periods of remission Bob and Cheryl are able to resume a semblance of normal married togetherness. “That’s the litmus test of true love,” Bob tells us. “To sit in an empty room, say nothing and not get on one another’s nerves.” He highlights the stresses and strains of the carer, the wife who has to stoically stand by him, exercising inexhaustible strength. Cheryl is underplayed by the writer, but she shines through as a crucial cog in the wheel of Bob’s extraordinary journey.

It was a toss-up for me to decide which element of this book made me most excited: the beautiful prose, or the spell-binding content. But I suppose that in the end it is a combination of both. I love the easy conversational tone, the elegance of style, the metaphors, and the perfect syntax which gives rhythm to the prose, at times almost as alluring as poetry. But above all there is the ring of truth and honesty in every word. He illustrates graphically how great things can be achieved through being faced with the prospect of death. At so many different levels ─ physical, mental and philosophical, he concludes that the importance of good health and the achievement of it, far outweighs the material achievements that so many of us consider necessary for a “successful life”. And he gives tangible hope to other sufferers.

You can buy 'Confronting Cancer with the QiGong Edge' in paperback or on Kindle - here.

Ramzy Baroud reviews two excellent George Polley books

2010-10-08T04:11:00.000-07:00

(Ramzy Baroud is the editor and publisher of The Palestine Chronicle and author of several books, including the recent 'My Father Was a Freedom Fighter').

What struck me most reading George Polley’s books, Grandfather and the Raven and The Old Man and the Monkey are their ability to relocate the reader geographically without dislocating him culturally or intellectually. The place is maybe Japan but the moral of the stories are to be applied everywhere, and on everyone.

My children read both books and enjoyed them immensely. They appreciated the sense of adventure, readability and the uniqueness of the style. I appreciated their subtle moral messages. Indeed, the reader is left without a restricting set of values imposed by the author, but the ability to think and glean the messages of the stories using his or her moral contexts or cultural values. My younger daughter saw The Old Man and the Monkey as a clear anti-racism message. My older daughter argued it teaches kindness to animals and appreciation of everything around us, no matter how different or seemingly strange. I appreciated the fact that the books allowed them to think outside the carefully tailored, yet often simplistic messages imparted on them by the media regarding the ultimate right and wrong.

George Polley’s text is readable and enjoyable. No gimmicks and no stylistic fads. Seemingly classic in its approach to writing for younger readers, it is still very creative in the way it conveys the content and the overall moral of the stories.

Grandfather and the Raven leaves one wondering if indeed such stories have been carried from one generation to the next in Sapporo, Japan. The way the stories are told transmits the feeling of generational wisdom that is conveyed through ancient legends and fables of East Asia, the Middle East, Africa and beyond. George Polley expresses that astute sentiment so wonderfully through his prudent, careful but at times mischievous characters.

Even as an adult, I found myself very much involved in reading and attempting to interpret the stories. The conclusion of The Old Man and the Monkey had me pause and reflect for a while with a mix of feelings, partly sadness, but also appreciation of that often unspoken relationship between us and nature which keeps our world moving, often unnoticed.

George Polley’s beautiful style is a model of anti-sensationalism, a breath of fresh air at the age of intellectual profit-generation and mass production of ideas. It’s beautiful and sweet. It gets the reader to think, and often smile.

Thank you George.

'Simon's Choice' by Charlotte Castle

2010-07-24T10:43:00.000-07:00

Simon's Choice by Charlotte Castle

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The topic of a seven year old child dying of leukemia could have come across almost as insufferably as the fictional tragedy itself, but in Ms. Castle's hands it doesn't. It comes over exceptionally powerfully, warmly, movingly, provocatively, inevitably.

There were times I could have hugged the characters and others when I could have thrown a very sharp plate at Melissa, which means that this book probably works just as well for men as for women.

This is a really involving book which is as much about the stresses and strains of modern marriage as it is about the suffering of a dying child.

It also reminded me of Winston Churchill's famous quip when a woman MP came up to him and said "Mr. Churchill, if I were your wife I would poison your food," to which Winnie replied "Ah yes, Madam, and if I were your husband I would eat it".

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Descending by Catherine Chisnall

2010-07-23T01:28:00.001-07:00

Descending by Catherine Chisnall

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Catherine Chisnall's 'Descending' is one of those books which it is easier simply to read than to read reviews about.

It is about a low key love affair, an aberration, a few days in a life which might change everything or nothing.

It is about the role of a support teacher and how she fits into a male dominated classroom. It is about how pupils play games with teachers and about how the management of any institution plays those same games but in a more self-righteous and pompous way.

This is the tale of a minor transgression that says so much about how we politic to puff ourselves up and to put others down.

It is a very quiet and powerful book.

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The Old Man & The Monkey

2010-07-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

The Old Man & The Monkey by George Polley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a really, really beautiful tale of friendship across races - quite a long way across races, given it is between an old man and a Japanese snow monkey.

Snow monkeys are considered pests. Old men can be pests too, especially on the roads, so perhaps they have more in common than you might at first imagine.

The old man's wife and the villagers fear an infestation of snow monkeys in their village, as if they hadn't infested it first away from the snow monkeys.

It is a wise story. Legendary.

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Get Some

2010-07-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

Get Some by Daniel Birch

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm a big fan of Danny Birch and this is a great book, better even than his 'Clipped'.

This tale of persecution and revenge has excellent female characters too.

It just fires along. You could even say it rocks.

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Buenos Aires: a train ride over the rainbow

2010-07-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

'Buenos Aires: A Train Ride Over the Rainbow' by Paul Perry

***** (five stars)

There is that saying "Some people drink to remember, others drink to forget".

I think that travel is like that too.

Paul Perry travelled to forget Philadelphia and in search of the Land of Oz - not Oz as in Australia, but his personal Land of Oz as in Argentina.

Well, from the look of his poetry it sure ain't paradise for him. Which is our gain. Happiness makes for lousy music and for pretty bad poetry too.

This misery is very immediate and evocative - quotable too.

Little Guide to Unhip

2010-07-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

Little Guide to Unhip by Kate Rigby

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It was obvious from the beginning that this book was going to be a laugh.

It was obvious from near the beginning that it was also going to be an assault course - could I jump over the hurdle of every chapter unscathed?

Gilbert O'Sullivan - no worries there
Elasticated waists - not my fault
Morris dancers - you jest
Austria - don't care if I don't go there again

And triumphantly on until 'TIM' - Tim? Yeah, Tim is one of the unhippest names in the universe according to Kate Rigby. I lost it at birth or soon after.

Now I am too ashamed to stand in a pub next to a Morris dancer. He is a better man than me.

Take the test; feel the humiliation.

View all my reviews >>

The Eye of Erasmus

2010-07-19T13:14:00.001-07:00

The Eye of Erasmus: Erasmus the Omnipotent by Teresa Geering

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a real shaggy dog story of a book. You just get sucked in by the writing. Is it going anywhere? Who knows? Who cares? The journey is so mesmerising.

Is there a punchline?

There is.

View all my reviews >>

Quick review of Monday Afternoon by Steve Sangirardi

2010-07-19T12:59:00.000-07:00

Monday Afternoon by Stephen Sangirardi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A really intense tale of a love affair. The first section grabs you by the throat as you remember what it was like to fall in love during those first few breathtaking hours, and then there is the hangover. Great book

View all my reviews >>

2010-04-25T18:15:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time in a time and space far distant from our own, I used to work for 3M, a company famed far and wide for its innovation.

Inside 3M we were far less convinced of 3M's innovative capabilities than seemingly those who had read the publicity, but it was clear that 3M in its first 75 years had been ground-breaking, commercialising one landmark innovation after the other in a relentless, if never smooth, sequence.

The insight that 3M had from around 1920 was that all landmark innovation is not a risk, but a gamble. The chances of success cannot be calculated. However, there is a formula which 3M used. Identify a whole bunch of crazies, fire them up, tell them to break every rule, and taunt them with the idea that their obsessively cherished baby of an invention will never, ever be born unless they go through hell and back again.

That really gets the manic juices going.

The truth is, though, that while a small-to-medium sized company can handle a bunch of out-and-out whackos, it is untenable for a massive mega-corporation to do the same with 70,000 employees, which is why those sorts of companies nearly always buy in landmark innovations from elsewhere.

So, the old 3M innovation model was:

1. Darwinian - send a thousand baby turtles scurrying for the sea - some will evade the swooping skewers and grow to become big, fat turtles

2. the future and the success of any one project are unknowable, but you have to take a position regardless

I believe that this is the only way for any company to become truly innovative - to be 'the house' in gambling terms, to encourage thousands of punters to place their bets and to be assured that overall you will win, without knowing which individual gamblers will win or lose against you.

At the moment, the whole of the publishing industry is a roulette wheel which can fudamentally pay out on odd or even numbers.

The 'odd' will be that it follows the 'paper market paradigm'. Since the 1970s, everybody has been foretelling the collapse of the paper industry in that it should by all logic be virtually replaced by digitisation and yet, every year up to the last time I looked, the paper market grew in overall size. Far from depressing the demand for paper, digitisation has actually accelerated it.

According to the 'odd' scenario, therefore, paperbacks are here to stay and may become even more popular overall.

The 'even' paradigm is that of audio / video / photography whereby despite all the fond assurances of many experts that analogue musical tones were 'warmer' than cold digitital ones, that digital images were less nuanced than photographic ones, and that we all yearned to hold a photograph in our hands and onscreen viewing just wouldn't wash, the original vinyl, VHS and photographic paper markets have tumbled in the face of CDs, DVDs and digital photography.

According to the 'even' scenario, in 3-5 years' time e-tablets in combination with portable computing systems will rule the world (and may even merge), and bookshops will be but a nice place to drink coffee and to try to remember what paperbacks used to look like.

While the experts are hesitating between these two positions, declaring it is all too early to be sure which of the odd and even scenarios will play out, commercial operators have to place their bets.

And three little-known niche market players already have - Amazon, Google and Apple.

You may not have heard of these three, but you will one day.

All three have definitively decided that the paperback is fundamentally dead. Google has been digitising books for years, Apple now has the iPad which is a serious e-tablet platform, and Amazon is hailing every passerby to persuade him or her to invest in a Kindle.

My guess is that if these three digital giants are determined to make this revolution happen, the heads of the ancien regime will surely roll.

The big enticement here is not the digitisation of the erstwhile paperwork in the humble written word. That is merely the first step. The biggie is multi-media publishing.

Within a very short period, books will read, sing and dance - and it is tough to do all that in paperback.

Take bird books as I was discussing them with my twitcher brother-in-law Steve the other day. Currently you have a bird watcher's book whereby you have beautifully rendered plates of a bird in a limited number of static positions with some sage words to describe how wonderful it is. Happily, the real bird doesn't have such a limited repertoire and the vast majority of them have been known to fly, and to sing. Indeed, real ornithologists rely on a bird's call more than on its visual appearance to identify its presence. So, the ideal book for a serious bird watcher is not in any paper form that exists today, but a digital book which blends static shots, words, the moving image, sound and links to further sources of information or even live webcams - watch the birds on XYZ wetland now! Given developments in intelligent CCTV technology, that could save pampered bird watchers from suffering some very cold days in the field and take the more enterprising ones around the world in seconds at the flick of a switch, or less. Oh, and by the way, a tip from Steve - expert bird watchers are only interested in brown birds. Don't embarrass yourself by declaring loudly "Oh look at the astonishing plumage on that one" while the anorak at your side is thinking "Tart!".

All this is but a mere preamble to where Bruce Essar and I are taking Night Reading / Publishing. Bruce is infallible even if I am not, but our gamblers' bet is that the digitisation of books is the only likely future and that bookshops will become literary-chic cafés anytime soon. When that happens, the classic book marketing strategy of pouring money into the hands of bookshops to muscle in on their window displays and instore facings will be over. The only way forward will be to market books via social network media and book review bloggers.

So that is where we are headed and, in that vein, we are pleased to announce that all our future books will appear on the three key publishing platforms - paperback (initially via Amazon's CreateSpace), e-tablets (Amazon's Kindle / iPad / the Sony eReader) and e-books (Smashwords). Fortunately, all three platforms are relatively painless to access.

We have also nearly completed loading our backlog onto these platforms as well. To take a look, click on the magic words here:

'Get Some', by Daniel Birch - CreateSpace - Kindle - Smashwords
'Missio', by Tim Roux - CreateSpace - Kindle - Smashwords
'Buenos Aires: a train ride over the rainbow', by Paul Perry - CreateSpace - Kindle - Smashwords
'.... at last!', various - CreateSpace - Kindle - Smashwords

Stephen Sangirardi's runaway 'Monday Afternoon' is next.

Enjoy!

Is Danny the first Nick Hornby of the FB / Twitter age?

2010-04-19T08:13:00.000-07:00

I came across Danny Birch because he happened to have just released his first book 'Clipped', and to have got it puffed in The Hull Daily Mail, at the time I was setting up The A63 Revisited site to identify, showcase and promote Hull writers.

So, 'Clipped' was one of the first Hull books that I read. The A63 Revisited might have died there.

And opening 'Clipped' was certainly an odd experience.

I have frequently described Danny as being one of the first great writers of the Facebook / Twitter generation both because he has the intimacy of Nick Hornby's delivery (with an added 'street' angle), and because of his complete disregard for the formalities of literature. He even litters his dialogues with "Ha!' or 'Ha! Ha!', so that proves he is straight off the FB page (don't remember any 'LOLs', though).

'Clipped' was early days, so not only did anybody picking up that book find random grammar and syntax being hurled at them from all directions, but the ground was decidedly shaky too, rocked by some traumatically shifting tenses.

Still, after a handful of pages I got my Danny-legs and didn't feel at all queazy after that. In fact I loved the book.

I did, however, beg Danny to let me get after his grammar and syntax, but Danny was having none of it. "What's done is done," he said, or words to that effect.

Then Danny lent me an early version of 'Get Some' - same old grammar and syntax, but what a fabulous book, maybe even better than 'Clipped'.

"OK, Danny, can I have a go at the grammar and syntax on this one?" I pleaded.

"Oh, go on, then," the great man conceded.

Danny is very polite in real life - a lovely guy - which made it very funny when Rich Sutherland was putting together the 'Writing on the Wall' exhibition at the Hull Truck Theatre and counted about 30 expletives within any two random pages of the book Rich wanted to feature in large lettering on posters.

So, I got my own way and was allowed to apply the grammar and syntax steam iron to Danny's elegant prose and, though I say it myself, it flattened out really very nicely.

Danny, you see, has an absolutely unerring eye for character and storyline, it's just that some of it looks like it has been written to be blasted across Facebook and Twitter.

One of the big surprises of 'Get Some', after 'Clipped', is how sensitively Danny handles the female characters. I don't think there was a single female character of note in 'Clipped', but this time around there are two really impressive ones - Emma and Sarah. I met Sarah at the Hull Truck exhibition launch recently (Danny has a tendency to name his characters after real people). I also met Chris Colton, Danny's cousin, who came to a horrible end on a toilet in 'Clipped'.

Another big surprise was how much I found myself savouring the language and the constant under-current of wry humour Danny has built into 'Get Some'. When you are editing a book, you get to read it rather a lot of times, but I found that I was enjoying Danny's wordsmithing more and more with each iteration.

The final big surprise was George Polley. George is an American writer living in Japan whose own writing is firmly anti-violence. Night Publishing has just published his 'The Old Man & The Monkey' which is a fervent allegorical plea against racism and towards greater understanding and friendship in the world. When 'Get Some' was all ready to go, I sent George a pdf copy, saying that I doubted it was his sort of thing but ..... The next day George wrote back saying he was fifty pages in and absolutely loving it - he continued to love it too, and he promptly pasted the proof onto Amazon.com.

What is not surprising about Danny's writing is that it draws in people who would not otherwise be tempted to pick up a book. What is perhaps more surprising is how many other writers on Night Reading and elsewhere really appreciate his work. Danny seems to have an extraordinarily wide appeal.

So, I urge you strongly to go out and buy a copy. Do yourself a favour, as they say. And you can find out more about it here:

The Daniel Birch profile on Night Publishing
The A63 Revisited
The Hull Truck 'Writing on the Wall' exhibition
Night Reading
George Polley on Night Publishing

Background to Monday Afternoon

2010-03-15T10:17:00.001-07:00

Background to Monday Afternoon

Posted using ShareThis

Why I am proud to be from Hull

2009-08-01T03:45:00.000-07:00

I haven't lived full-time in Hull for a long time - since I was seven (1962 to you). That was when I was sent away to school, first to around York and then to Oxford. Since then I have lived in Cambridge, London, Reading, the South of France and now just outside Brussels.

But, still, I am not a Southerner, nor French, nor Belgian. I am a little closer to being South African, as my wife Ralette is South African and my children are half-so. Plus South Africa has some uncanny resemblances to Hull.

So I am definitely from Hull and my home reference is still Hull.

Ten years ago I would have felt a little embarrassed admitting this although it might not have stopped me. Hull was definitely a place to come from rather than to be in. In 2004, Hull had some of the worst crime statistics in the country.

However, an extraordinary thing has happened to Hull. It is fast becoming, if it hasn't already become, a cultural mecca.

In my youth, this claim would have been ridiculous. In my youth, the claim that Australia produced decent wine was ridiculous too (remember the Monty Python's "better than a Welsh claret" claim?). I even remember Japanese cars being a laughing stock ("Have fun, in the sun, with Datsun").

I cling to the prejudice that Hull in the 1960s really was a cultural wasteland. Andrew Marvell had done something memorable (but not actively remembered) in the 17th century. Winifred Holtby wrote an exceptional book for the fact that it was written by somebody from Hull, and Stevie Smith was born in Hull and left shortly afterwards. The Hull New Theatre hosted Agatha Christie plays in the summer and Doyly Carte Gilbert & Sullivan operettas in the New Year.

Then somebody had the incredibly bright idea of inviting Philip Larkin to be the librarian at Hull University. It is hard to describe the impact of this, but I will try: Tony Flynn, TF Griffin, Ian Parks, Frank Redpath, Peter Knaggs, Pete Ardern, Peter Morgan, Andrew Motion, Carol Coiffat, Daithidh MacEaochaidh, Joe Haikim, Mike Watts, Daphne Glazer, Dorothea Desforges, Leslie Wilkie, Nick Quantrill, Peter Jones, Rich Sutherland, Robert Adams, Robert Erdric, Valerie Wood, Alan Plater, John Godber and Dave Windass.

The defining moment was the publication of a collection of poetry wittily called 'A Rumoured City' which local poets still rave about but which I think was a total boss shot artistically - a whole roomful of talented poets coming over like the Great Eeyore Choir.

Its quality didn't matter. It made a statement and created an unstoppable momentum - flowers colonising the scrubland (as memorably described by Frank Redpath).

I have spent the last year reading almost exclusively Hull writers and poets and listening almost exclusively to Hull and York musicians (CrackTown, Joe Solo, Edwina Hayes, Holly Taymar, Abbie Lammas, David Ward Maclean, Henry Priestman) and I certainly haven't been slumming it. I am so proud.

It almost makes me believe in redemption.

I don't want to give the guy who invited Philip Larkin to Hull all the credit, nor Philip Larkin himself. The Hull Daily Mail has worked tirelessly to promote Hull artists, as has ThisisUll, that wonderful site driven by Cilla Wykes which publishes new poetry and writing daily.

God bless you all.

Inspiration and someone 'out there'

2009-07-26T13:17:00.000-07:00

Where does inspiration come from?

It is a topic that most artists fight shy of because it is a bit weird. We (I at least) live in a Western rationalised society whose competitive positioning is that we can explain everything scientifically, whereas those other guys in the East and Africa still believe in woo-woo stuff.

Except that we can’t. Even our rationalised scientific explanations are sounding weird – tried Quantum Physics recently? No miracles happen, nothing is out there, except that I personally know three people who have ‘miraculously’ recovered from cancer – liver, colon and leukaemia – and on a much more minor note I once had 21 warts disappear overnight after I placed my hands in potato juice.

However, it is a question that no artist can fully ignore. Maybe there are people out there who write songs, books etc. out of sheer will power and application, but my guess is that they are few and far between, and probably grossly delusional (not to mention egotistical).

The books I write ‘pop up’, often in my sleep. Yesterday I didn’t have a clue what my next-book-but-one would be, and then I woke up with it this morning.

My books are only very loosely planned. I usually have a starting idea and that is it. If I try to plan them out too much, they bore me silly.

For any given chapter, I sit down to a blank page. 1-1.5 hours later I have 1,500 words of utter fabrication which had never occurred to me before but seem to more or less make sense.
I constantly find that I leave ‘hooks’ in books which become useful later on – often much later on. I wrote a book called ‘Little Fingers!’ in which a character called Alice simply disappeared. I felt no need to explain her disappearance. Four books later, suddenly this became the central plot of ‘The Ghoul Who Once’. It needn’t have been. It was just given to me that way.

One thing I know is that I am far from alone. Many musicians write songs in minutes (e.g. Elton John), and writers are always muttering about their muses.

The thing we have to get our heads around is that muses really exist. Dunno what they are, dunno where they come from, dunno where they go, but they are around somewhere. I wrote the recent musical novel ‘(Just like) El Cid’s Bloomers’ within 30 days from concept to completion, and I am not sure that I devised a word of it. I just typed – furiously. I find that all books can arrive that way, as does life in general. I can work at them, but it is very hard work, or I can just wait for them in which case everything flows.

My wife believes that a mysterious organisation called ‘The White Brotherhood’ is behind my writing – in short, the ascended masters of philosophical thought, including Christ. Maybe so. Maybe not. I haven’t a clue. However, as a committed atheist, what I am becoming increasingly convinced about is that there is a whole dimension out there of which we only have a few clues that greatly influences our lives. Major scientists (including Einstein) have often come to the same conclusion. I wish I knew more. If I carry on writing maybe I shall.

Researching my books

2009-04-08T11:46:00.000-07:00

I kid myself that I only write from my own experience but, as my wife frequently complains, I more often write from hers.

She also complains that from the evidence of my writing I seem to have understood so much but from the evidence of my life I am almost clueless.

As they say, “It is not so much that married men make more mistakes – it is more that they find out about them quicker”.

In writing, it is the small details that bug me the most. How did anyone write novels before the Internet?

I am sitting here thinking that my character is just about to down some street drug or another. Not taking drugs personally, which one is that character in that situation in that country most likely to be taking and what are its effects? Fifteen minutes tops on the Internet will give me some strong clues. Twenty years ago, I don’t know what I would have done.

Which is maybe why I did not write novels twenty years ago. I wanted to, but I realised that I had not lived enough of a life yet and that the research would be too time-consuming and complex.

Much of the background to my stories I have already lived, or rather my wife has already lived.

“Blood & Marriage” is based on family stories – I merely re-told them and guessed my way into the gaps. “Little Fingers!” was written because I realised I knew a paedophile and, more shockingly intriguing in some ways, I encountered at first hand his close relations’ strong desire to wish his callousness away. “Girl on a Bar Stool” is about brand marketing – I have been a brand marketer for nearly thirty years. It is also about Christianity which was imposed on me from the age of seven. “Shade+Shadows” is about classical and alternative medicine and human rights abuses. Thanks, if that is the word, to my wife’s and elder son’s serious illnesses of ten years ago, I have experienced a great deal of alternative medicine and come to be fascinated by its resistance to ‘scientific’ proof in the face of its evident effectiveness. I also volunteered for Amnesty International for a few years, so I knew where to find the bodies. “The Ghoul Who Once” is a ghost story. I have actually (I think) seen a ghost, but I have also met a lot of people who are intensely spiritually-minded and claim to have experienced many extraordinary things. “The Dance of the Pheasodile” just turned up, but I was born in Hull, I have seen a thousand programmes about gangsters – fictional and factual – and the torture scenes are based on official US submissions to inquests into the abuse of prisoners during the Extraordinary Rendition process.

The hardest book of all to write was “Fishing, for Christians” because I have never knowingly met an angel, or God, or gods, or the Devil, so I haven’t a clue what they sound like, and probably still wouldn’t even if I were to meet any of them. As Wittgenstein observed “If a lion could speak, we wouldn’t have a clue what it was saying.” The first level of research I did was to follow much of “The Course in Miracles”. I also read up on Gnostic Christianity – Wikipedia is a great resource for that type of information – and I then crammed the mythological gods from the Godchecker site. Strangely enough, long after I finished the book, I discovered that many of the elements I thought I had made up were actually officially endorsed by one religion or another, even down to writing the book itself as a quasi-gospel (Gnostic Christians believe that everybody should record their own gospel).

I have never met Adolf Hitler either, but I have to agree with him on one thing - “The people are more likely to believe a greater lie than a smaller one.” So, I am quite comfortable wandering off into realms that nobody knows that much about, but I have to get the details right. I even check train timetables.

How do I write a book?

2009-02-05T09:55:00.000-08:00

I hear a lot of people asking how they should approach writing their book. Most people believe they have a book inside them, and they are almost certainly right. Furthermore, I wish that they would write it. Wouldn't it be fascinating if everybody wrote about what it was like to be them?

However, I have a preliminary question - do you want to make money from writing a book, or do you want to spend money writing a book?

This is not a a both/and question. It is one or the other. If you primarily want to make money, don't write a word. It is not what you do best. You are a business person. Find somebody else to write your book for you. There are lots of superbly skilled artists around who will write for the pleasure of writing, for the honour of eating your peanuts. Feed them peanuts to write for you. Then you will both feel fulfilled.

Question - would you rather be the guy who delivers your UPS parcel, proud that it has arrived at the right address in an unblemished condition, or would you rather be the boss of UPS, living like a god on more money a minute than the little guy receives in a year? If you are with the boss of UPS - don't write a word!

Good, that is settled. For those few left, you really want to be a writer. Good on you! You have chosen a path of pain and suffering, and ultimately of incomparable personal reward (but no money).

My best advice is "Ignore all advice. Do your own thing." True writers are the other types of entrepreneur - those want to change the world, not to exploit it.

Failing that, I have two ideas:

1. write as you talk

Unless you have an overwhelming urge to write differently, then write the way that you talk. If you think that great writers adopt special voices, ditch them. Do your real thing. If, on the other hand, you feel inwardly compelled to write in a different style, then do that.

2. get diverted

All great story tellers head down a path and get diverted. If you have ever seen "The Two Ronnies", Ronnie Corbert nailed it sitting in his chair. Audiences crave closure, so find a story that the audience is minded to want to close, then tease the hell out of the cliff-bound suckers. Get side-tracked. Get side-tracked on your side-tracks. Ensure that the audience believes that you will provide closure to every plot line in the end, but never make it yet. Audiences crave the promise of closure, not its achievement. When you finally close, they go "Is that it?" Before you close, they are speculating. All the best soaps have a whole pile of sub-plots running wild, all with the promise of closure in about 3 series' time. Soap writers know exactly what they are doing. Follow their lead. Imagine playing 'strings' with your cat. The cat has to win sometimes, but only sometimes.

So there you are. If you still want to do it, pitch in and don't ask another question until you have most of the answers already. Writing is not about when you should start; it is about feeling compulsively guilty that you haven't started already. Writing is for alcoholics, not for social drinkers.

Why I did them

2009-02-01T01:16:00.000-08:00

I don't know if I have ever been asked why I write my books, but I keep telling people anyway. Probably what they say is "Why, oh why, do you write your books?".

Whatever. For anybody who cares, this is why I have embarked on each episode in this compulsive habit of mine, as I best remember it (never trust what a fiction writer says - we make things up, you know):

"The House of Saint & Martyrs" (published in bin)

Actually, I cannot remember what this book was called because I wrote it a long time ago, and then trashed it before embarking on a 30 year spell of writer's block.

The story was of a guy who gets on a train, and when he arrives at his destination realises that it is not his usual stop at all - in fact, he is dead. What he finds in the afterlife is very different from what he had expected. God is a constitutional monarch. His Prime Minister is Stalin, and his deputy is Hitler. The lower chamber of the celestial parliament is stuffed full of apparatchiks, and therefore utterly subservient, but the upper chamber - "The House of Saints & Martyrs" - is extremely challenging and feisty. Hitler was once heard to mutter "Damn these martyrs. They fight to the death, you know."

I submitted some early sections to Private Eye, and received an immediate response - "Not funny. Try Punch."

30 years later I may even re-write this as a short story to be included in my upcoming magical-realist effort "The Blue Food Revolution", to be published late 2009 (I think).

"Blood & Marriage" (2007)

My mother recounted and celebrated family tales throughout her life, many of which I greatly enjoyed. While she did join a writers' group in her eighties, she hardly wrote any of these stories down.

When it was obvious that she was both dying and becoming increasingly 'confused', I thought I had better get them down myself while there was still time to check them. Unfortunately, even though I wrote the book within 3 months (from April to July 2004), mostly 35,000 feet up in the air, although also partly at the Chateau d'Agay which Antoine Saint-Exupery used to visit regularly during the 1930s, by the time I gave it to my mother she was past contributing either corrections or additional details.

The book is sub-titled "From Kingston-upon-Hull to the first genocide of the 20th century" because my mother contended that her great-grandfather was the Governor General of German South-West Afrika during the Herero massacre.

"Little Fingers" (2007)

This was my first novel and took a year to write, between July 2004 and August 2005. The thought behind it was that everyday dictators can cause almost as much damage as political ones.

The specific behind the book was someone I knew (he has since died) who was a paedophile and a rampant womaniser for many years of his life. The label of 'paedophile' is perhaps rather harsh. As a 40 year plus man he was attracted to 14/15 year old girls. However, as at least three of these girls were his daughters and step-daughters, he was probably not beyond criticism either. Equally, I know of at least two people who died as a result of his womanising. A cuckolded husband, with his seven year old son at his side, drove his car straight into the headlights of an oncoming truck.

"Little Fingers" is therefore an enquiry into the nature and morality of sexual attraction - an exploration which makes many people uncomfortable, including me.

I chose to write it as an English village green murder mystery because I always find such books so anodyne, even those by Ruth Rendall. Time to inject a bit of real-life ugliness into the world of murder (and, indeed, chick lit).

"Girl on a Bar Stool" (2007)

This book was written:

a) because my friend Max asked me to write a strategy & brand marketing textbook based on our free Mud Valley materials

b) I suddenly got the plot while lolling in a swimming pool near Granada, Spain

I had no intention of writing a text book, but writing a fictional thriller about brand marketing at the levels of the individual, corporations, politics and religion, all attached to a tale about the Second Coming was much more enticing. Consequently, it only took 2-3 months to write.

"Shade+Shadows" (2008)

In 1999, my wife Ralette was told she had cancer of the liver. Her immediate response to this news was to change her diet, to track down the best homeopath she could find (Dr. Jean Boon) , and then to return home to South Africa for an extended period, taking our son Rouxan with her.

When, three months after her first tests, she visited one of the best-known homeopaths in Cape Town - Dr. Patrick Fieuw - he ran further tests on her and told her he had very bad news: the tests showed that she was on the borderline of having liver cancer. She instantly hugged him and expressed her relief, which startled him until she explained that his tests suggested that she was headed in the right direction for recovery.

She says that the turning point came when she realised that she faced a life or death decision - could she leave our one year old son, Rouxan? The answer was "no", not least perhaps because he too had been desperately ill for the first year of his life.

My family, to this day, do not believe that Ralette was ill at all, and more or less ban us from discussing alternative medicine with them.

So, this is a book about the weirder end of alternative medicine, based in part on the work of Jack Temple who was the alternative healers' healer - the healer of last resort. It is also about human right abuses, specifically in Saudi Arabia, but anywhere really.

It has been the hardest book for me to write. I supposedly finished it in the summer of 2007, loved the first 100 pages, but felt very uneasy about the rest. So I put it aside for 6 months, and then embarked on a series of major re-writes which were only completed in the autumn of 2008. I have often thought that this will turn out to be either my best book or my worst, and I am still not sure which it is.

"Fishing, for Christians" (2008)

Somewhere before I started "Girl on a Bar Stool" I decided that I was going to write a sextet of six books called "The End of the World Sextet".

"Fishing, for Christians" is one of the two pivotal novels of the sextet. I hadn't a clue what it was going to be about, so I let it simmer for 6 months while I read "A Course in Miracles", and all that.

One of the fundamental issues was how to sound like an angel, or at least how not to sound too unlike an angel.

The central question of the book is "Why do people suffer?"

Rather accidentally, the core structure I adopted is that of Gnostic Christianity, although I did not know too much about it at the time (still don't). I made up, I thought, a whole bunch of theology, only to find that my ideas nearly all belonged to one of the major world religions.

Having sat on it for about six months before I started it, I completed the book in four months between January and April 2008.

"The Dance of the Pheasodile" (2008)

This book is not part of the sextet. I had finished "Fishing, for Christians" the night before, sending a friend to sleep explaining what it was all about, and woke up on the morning of my niece's memorial service with the first chapter of this book in my head.

I was recently told that this also happened to Coleridge when he wrote "Kubla Khan". He woke up with the whole poem in his head and was scribbling it down frantically when someone came to deliver the post, at which point he lost concentration and never managed to recover the rest of it.

I really liked the image of this guy hanging from a helicopter, naked, outside his wife's 18th storey office, looking completely different from the man everyone else thought she had married. I didn't know what the book was about, but I thought I would write it anyway. In the end, I made about three conscious plot decisions in the entire book, the first one being halfway through.

It was written between April and July 2008.

"The Ghoul Who Once" (to be published July 2009)

This is the last (or first) volume of "The End of the World Sextet", being about how some of the main characters in the other books got to meet each other. It is also a ghost story - I try to write each book in a different genre.

The fun of the book for me has been to describe Paul Lambert, as the narrator, from the inside. In "Blood & Marriage" and "Fishing, for Christians" he is only seen from the outside. Conversely, I describe Alan Harding from the outside, whereas he has been a narrator in both "Shade+Shadows" and "Fishing, for Christians".

There was no real purpose to the book other than to complete the sextet, and I held off writing it until October 2008 while I played with two other books which I will now be addressing under the titles of "The Blue Food Revolution" and "The Fish That Knew No Scale".

I finally finished editing "The Ghoul Who Once" today.

Free and cheap self-promotion

2009-02-01T00:32:00.000-08:00

Unless you are one of the world's most recognised writers or artists, promotion is always an issue.

Here are some methods I have come across for self-promoting which are either free or relatively cheap, should they be of any use to you:

Free

Word-of-mouth (WOM): the biggest-selling self-published authors I know simply know lots of people and never stop talking. You can even sell 10,000 books this way
Set up a Blogger.com blog. Google gives you this blog for free, or you can even be paid if you ad Google Adsense ads
Set up a free Squidoo page
Advertise for free on Expatica – I got between 150 and 175 hits for each of my books in 45 days, e.g. "Blood & Marriage". I paid €39 for an enhanced business ad and got 85 hits within a week
develop YouTube promos – Windows Movie Maker is free and is relatively intuitive. Each video takes me about 4-5 hours – e.g.: “The Dance of the Pheasodile” and "Fishing, for Christians"
Set up free Facebook / MySpace etc. profile pages and set about systematically collecting friends
Surreptitiously promote yourself in Facebook groups which can often number 10,000+ members
Do signings in bookstores – most will allow you to pull up a chair for free
Contact local readers’ clubs
Record a PodCast - free software is available for the distribution of PodCasts, e.g. Poderator

Cheap

Advertise on Facebook – it will cost about $US0.35 a hit, generating 10-50 hits a day
Advertising on Google – it costs more – approx. $US1.30 per hit – but you can get more hits
Do a PR release for around $US75, via PR.com or PRWeb.com e.g. for "Fishing, for Christians"
Set up your own full website for approx. $US150 a year
Get coverage in local media for an event, e.g.:
- 100 FREE PINTs event - Hull Daily Mail
- 100 FREE PINTS event - ThisisUll
Place bookmarks in other writers’ books. Some bookshops allowed me to do this, so in one shop I posted about 200 bookmarks in bestsellers by people like Nick Hornby, Ian McEwan etc.
Do door-to-door leafleting – cost of printing leaflets (even off your own desktop printer) + shoe leather
Print up some t-shirts and walk around advertising yourself and/or persuade friends to do it for you

If you are really going out to make money, there is one obvious lesson: “Don’t write the book you want to write; write the book which an easily accessible audience wants to read”. For instance, a book promoting the merits of alternative medicine is a likely winner – there are 44,000 alternative healers in the UK, all trying to justify what they do. Plug into them via associations, ecademy.com etc. and you have a huge market potential if you can persuade them to talk about it to their clients.

The Dance of the Pheasodile

2009-01-20T04:44:00.000-08:00

These are the first two chapters of my 2008 novel "The Dance of the Pheasodile" which takes its characters to the streets around Hull where my family was brought up 100 - 75 years ago - Coltman Street and Gee Street.

The story is of a London commercial architect, Keith McGuire, who was an orphan and is married to another orphan, Chrissie. Given their background, brought up in Care, they are determined to create the perfect family setting for their children and to give them all the things they never had.

Things are going well. Against all the odds, Keith is an up-and-coming architect and Chrissie is the partner of a law firm.

They decide to address some niggling issues associated with their childhoods and visit a hypnotherapist. Chrissie's session goes well, but when Keith comes round from his trance he discovers that he is in the body of a different man - a penniless Hull gangster, hated by his wife, in trouble with two local gang leaders and firmly on the Humberside Police's hit list .......

Chapter 1

I have to admit that I am in a bit of a predicament.

I have regained consciousness to discover myself swinging upside down outside the plate glass window that wraps around the lawyers’ office where my wife works – where she is a partner, in fact. I am bumping up against the pane as I dangle here. I can see several of the office staff taking pictures of me with their mobile phones, and feverishly distributing them somewhere over the ether.

My wife has just noticed me, and she is holding her hand to her mouth in shock.

If I tell you that my wife works on the eighteenth floor of the Baxter Spires building, you may get an inkling of what is happening to me.

If I add that I am freezing cold, despite its being mid-summer, you might guess that I am not appropriately dressed for such a feat. I will let you into a secret I too have only discovered since I came round. I am only dressed in two boots and a safety harness, and all those secretaries in there with their mobile phones are almost certainly taking pictures of my winkle, which is probably about winkle sized, given that I am freezing to death.

Someone is saying to Chrissie something like “Do you know him?”

She nods horrified.

Presumably they will have followed up with “Who is he?”

Has Chrissie admitted that I am her husband? I cannot tell. Yes, she has, I think. There is a scowl on the other person’s face as she turns round to point towards me, referring to me as something like “that thing”.

Everyone is looking at me in a new light.

Another woman is arguing with Chrissie.

Chrissie is nodding emphatically.

The other woman shakes her head equally emphatically.

I guess that she is saying “That is not your husband!”, and Chrissie is saying “Yes, he is!”

“But your husband doesn’t look like that. I have met your husband. He is slim and intellectual-looking, not stubby and hairy.”

That will take some explaining, which I would very much appreciate the opportunity to do, but we have been joined by several army helicopters and a couple of fighter planes, probably objecting to our flying over London, which is massively against the law. We could be terrorists.

Well, I am the one being terrorised. I am some seventy metres from the traffic and the tarmac below, held only by a rope and a harness of uncertain strength and durability, my hands tied behind my back, utterly defenceless, with the pilot of the helicopter that is trailing me realising that he, she or it is going to have to take evasive action. I have now been swung away from the site of my shame and humiliation, and am hurtling towards another skyscraper, swinging wildly. There is nothing I can do to protect myself. What if the pilot simply jettisons me? What if they make an error of judgment and smash me at seventy or eighty miles an hour right into a concrete tower? What if the rope snaps? What if they forget I am even here in their hurry to get away?

I think I know why I am here. I think it is because my other wife thinks I have been committing adultery with my wife. I want you to know that half of me is entirely innocent, although the other half is less so. My body may have been inserting itself in places it should never have been, but my mind is totally innocent.

Let me explain ……..

* * *

Chapter 2

I have always adored Chrissie. We first met when I was twelve and she was ten, and we fell deeply in love instantly. You may assume that children of that age are incapable of profound love, but from personal experience I can assure you that you would be wrong to think so. I am as in love with Chrissie now as I was then, and it feels exactly the same. I sense her every vibe, and quiver alongside it, amid calm, ecstasy or despair. Chrissie is my reference point. I have no other. Whatever will please Chrissie delights me. Whatever will upset her tears me apart. I cannot bear to hurt her any more than I would want to drive a nail through my big toe. The pain is the same – I have done both.

Chrissie is beautiful. She is so beautiful that she steals away my breath every time I look at her, and I cannot even glimpse her without appreciating everything about her. She is so elegant. Her body is straight if you see her from the side, and nicely curved if you catch her from the front. Her hair naturally swings like a soft, glossy rope. Her smile is innocent, yet a touch knowing. She only thinks the best of anyone, and never gossips maliciously. She is devoutly Christian, yet she never talks about it, or tries to impose it upon you. When we make love, I feel that I am swaying with an angel, a female angel that is. Her skin is pure white and as perfect as an exotic silk.

We talk to each other all of the time. We are continuously in a state of excitement with each other, fighting to share our thoughts.

Our children are a girl and a boy. Ella is twelve and Mark is seven. Ella will no doubt grow into a stroppy teenager in time, but she has yet to be soured by all that stuff. She is sweet and helpful and kind. She is excellent at her homework, and effortlessly bright. Mark is a boy. He rushes around doing energetic things, and playing riotously with his friends. He has never been known to do the least harm to anyone. He has short hair and a frank expression, and likes to cuddle both of us during quiet times. He is mummy and daddy’s boy equally. He also works hard, and his results are reliably competent. He has it all under control, without exerting himself any more than is decent for a sporty, physical young man.

I am an architect, whose commercial designs are increasingly in demand. Chrissie is a partner within one of the top law firms in the country, specialising in maritime law. My only gripe is that she works long hours, and yet she brought the children up without breaking her stride and without a single word of complaint as to how difficult it all was to raise children and to keep the flame of her career ambition stoked at the same time. I did pitch in, but men do not really contribute that much, even when we believe we are shouldering half the load, do we? We also have a housekeeper and nanny, a lovely Scottish lady called Agnes, who can only be described as rigorously spick and span, and absurdly well organised. She is almost one of the family, like a surrogate grandmother to the children, and she often pops round at weekends too for a chat with us, and to play with them. Chrissie and I are both orphans, left with no family whatsoever. In fact, we met in a residential care home, when such institutions were still prevalent. Perhaps that is why leading the perfect family life is so important to us. We want everything to be right for our children, squared with our consciences.

We both love reading. Chrissie has to read mountains of paperwork anyway, but when she has cast that aside, she still reads magazines and the occasional book which she regularly falls asleep to. Come to think of it, she has probably been reading “Wuthering Heights” for the last five years. I recently asked her, as a prod, how Heathcliff was getting on, and she replied “Who’s he?”

“Heathcliff?” I exclaimed in astonishment, thinking how could she not know who Heathcliff is, even if she weren’t reading the book.

“Oh that Heathcliff,” she recovered. A puzzled look crossed her face, followed by a slightly embarrassed smile. “To be honest, I cannot really remember. I think he is OK.”

According to her colleagues, Chrissie has a jaw-dropping capacity both for marshalling complex data and for precise communication, so it is strange how daffy she can be over her reading, not that feyness characterises her in any way in the manner with which she runs the house. She and Agnes between them are so organised that they could ensure that everything was spotlessly in place and march on Russia at the same time, not that Chrissie has a single warlike instinct in her psyche.

We may have two children, but we still go out a lot. Chrissie read somewhere that it is really important for a couple to act as a couple even after their children are born. The children are special, and must bask in the warmth of their parents’ unconditional love for them, but they must also understand that while they may be the primary focus of the family, they are not a part of your marriage. That is something exclusive to you two as lovers, and must remain sacrosanct and fully electric. That way, you two thrive as people, and therefore as parents, and your children will also benefit accordingly.

I cannot say whether it was good or bad advice; all I can say is that Chrissie and I have found it very easy to follow it. Every week, since each child was old enough to physically survive without us, we have gone out on the town, which is why you may have noticed that so much of London is red. We didn’t do stupid things like nightclubbing to all hours, commuting to New York, or attending relentless corporate events. We spent time quietly by ourselves in intimate restaurants we fancied trying out, and seeing movies, and we always topped off the night by hiring a room at the same prominent hotel near Hyde Park Corner for some post-prandial, vigorous and, most importantly, uninterrupted nookie.

At first we got some suspicious looks from the reception staff when we booked out of the hotel at one a.m., having only booked in at eleven. They wanted to know whether “Everything was all right, Sir, Madam?”, or rather they wanted to ascertain whether Chrissie was a hooker. On our third visit, the manager took me aside and discreetly asked me what was going on.

“We are a married couple and we have children,” I told him rather sharply.

My off-the-cuff answer was not immediately enough for him; it was too forthrightly delivered, which he mistook for being a sign of defensiveness. He raised an eyebrow.

“Chrissie,” I shouted across the lobby, “the manager here thinks that you are a prostitute. Is there anything you want to say before we never come back here again?”

An elderly couple who were making slow progress across the lobby, seemingly encumbered by the sheer weight of the jewellery she was wearing, stopped in their tracks.

“You see,” I explained to them, “we have very young children, and we want to be alone together.”

The couple beamed. Her well-powdered nose even hinted at a delighted blush. “Good for you, my dears,” she exclaimed. “Do you know, Harold here is eighty-three and I am seventy-seven, and we have been doing exactly the self-same thing for the last fifty-six years. It keeps you regular, doesn’t it?”

The manager was beginning to hop up and down on one leg in sub-conscious acknowledgement that he had made a serious faux-pas.

“Still,” the woman went on, “for thirty of those years, Harold used to come here with his mistresses too on other days of the week, but so long as I got the Saturday slot, I have never minded too much. You can get too precious about sex, can’t you? You can accord it an importance it doesn’t deserve.”

Chrissie grinned at the old man, and whispered, “If you see Keith here with another woman, could you let me know?” She started searching in her bag for our address card.

“Oh, he doesn’t do that sort of thing nowadays,” the old lady boomed across the lobby. “At eighty-three, his tank doesn’t refill that fast. I knew that if I stuck to the Saturday night slot, I would outpace the rest of them in the end. Come on, Harold. We had better let these two romantic young things get back to their children.”

The manager was seriously flummoxed. I think he feared for his job. Chrissie smiled sweetly at him, and offered him the card she had been searching for. “If you ever see my husband with another woman, or another man come to think of it, could you let me know?”

I was absolutely incensed as I paid the bill. The manager apologised to us in grovelling terms all the way to the steps, and insisted on hailing the taxi and paying for our ride home.

“What on earth did you give him your card for?” I asked Chrissie.

“I just wanted to make sure he knew where to send the champagne, flowers and chocolates in the morning,” she replied.

And she was right. All three arrived on cue at ten o’clock the next day.

So we decided to give the hotel one more chance. When we arrived there the following Saturday, the manager came straight out to greet us with the news that, by a stroke of luck, one of the executive suites was available, and he would be delighted to offer it to us for the night at our usual rate. We accepted graciously, and giggled at each other all the way to the room, which was wreathed in a mass of fresh flowers. A chilled bottle of champagne and a box of Belgian chocolates were being proffered as peace tokens on both sides of the bed. More miraculously still, they kept it up week after week, as did we. We were not always so lucky as to be offered an executive suite, but we always got the flowers, champagne and chocolates.

About a year later, I happened to be reading The Daily Telegraph, and saw a photograph of the old man we had met in the hotel that night. He had just died. Being both titled and a luminary in his industrial field, he merited a full-page obituary. His wife, it reported, had died twenty years previously, and not a day had gone by without his missing her. He had never remarried. He was reputed to be one of the most generous philanthropists in Britain. Over the last ten years, he had been greatly comforted by his friendship with the Countess of XXXXX.

* * *