Quick review of Monday Afternoon by Steve Sangirardi

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

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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?

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

Background to Monday Afternoon

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Why I am proud to be from Hull

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'

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

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.