Jonathan Pinnock's Blog, page 2

Publication Day for The Code of the Vavasors

So here we go again. Book Six in the Mathematical Mystery series, THE CODE OF THE VAVASORS, is out today. Exciting stuff, eh? I think this is my favourite bit of the cover:

I’m also rather excited to see the book featured in Mystery Tribune’s list of the best crime, mystery and thriller books published in April 2024, alongside such luminaries as Sara Paretsky, David Baldacci and Anthony Horowitz.

But what is it all about, I hear you ask? Very good question. Maybe the back cover will help?

Well, I guess that does give the gist of the story. If you’ve read any of the preceding books in the series, you’ll probably know what to expect. If you haven’t, let’s just say you’re in for quite a ride, and you might want to have Archiepyedia to hand just in case. Most of the regular characters are there, both animal and human, plus several newcomers. Babies are born, generations are reconciled and the strange on-off love story of Tom and Dorothy continues. So basically business as usual. I’m actually really proud of this one and I hope you’re all going to enjoy it.

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Yes, it’s Another Book

I’ve been toying with the idea of cranking this blog back into life again for a while. For presumably obvious reasons, I’ve been finding Twitter less and less appealing these days, Bluesky is still a bit parochial and Threads is weird because the profiles there are locked into Instagram, so I’m known as BeardyJon and I’m not sure I really like that. MAKE SURE YOUR HANDLES ARE CONSISTENT THROUGHOUT SOCIAL MEDIA say the marketing gurus, and I’m sure they’re right. But some other git had nabbed jonpinnock on Insta by the time I got there, so I’m stuck with the stupid Beardy one.

Of the long form alternatives, Medium seems to be a bit meh and Substack is apparently crawling with Nazis, and there is also the long-term risk on all these places of not retaining control of your content. So I might try doing stuff back here for a while and see if anyone notices.

ANYWAY.

I have a new book out next week. It’s called THE CODE OF THE VAVASORS and it’s Book Six in the Mathematical Mystery series. You don’t have to have read the first five books in order to enjoy it, but it helps a bit. Also, I earn more royalties if you buy all the books in the series, so it’s a win all round. However, if you do insist in diving in part way through, there’s always Archiepyedia to help out. I’m stupidly proud of Archiepyedia, although no-one whatsoever has ever commented on it, so I’m assuming that no-one else shares my opinion. Suffice to say, if you enjoyed Wickhampedia (and I think lots of people did), you’ll enjoy this one too.

Regular readers of this blog may have been surprised by the fact that I’m talking about Book Six here because I’ve been so lax about updating this place that I completely overlooked to mention Book Five, LAST CHANCE IN VEGAS, at all. Which is a pity, because it’s one of my favourites. Then again, like my kids, I love them all equally. Most of the time, anyway.

I’ll say a bit more about THE CODE OF THE VAVASORS when it gets published next week, but for now here’s a picture of a pile of books. Beautiful, aren’t they?

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Introducing Subbub

Well, I guess we ought to get this thing launched then.

TL;DR: I’ve developed a new low-cost, high-functionality submission management system. It’s called Subbub and if you run a literary magazine or competition or have any other reason to manage anonymous submissions to something, you really need to take a look.

Here’s a bit more background. I’m part of the committee that runs the very excellent Burnham Book Festival (it’s on May 19th – 21st this year, by the way and you really should come). As part of the festival, we run a writing competition. Last year, all we did was set up an email address for people to send their submissions to. This worked reasonably well, but it was a massive headache for the person managing it. So when it came to this year, like a fool I said, “I’ll develop one. Can’t be that hard, can it?” After all, this was probably the first time in my career where the circles of “technical expertise” and “proper domain knowledge” had a nice meaty intersection in the Venn diagram.

Of course I’d overlooked that fact that there are six different categories in the competition, four of which are age-restricted. I’d also overlooked the fact that this year we’d decided to keep the competition free for entrants from Somerset but charge people from outside the county, while still barring entries from outside the UK. I’d also overlooked a whole load of other complicated requirements, but we’ll gloss over them for now. Let’s just say that I have even less hair now than I used to.

Anyway, I went ahead and developed it and it turned out to work pretty well. So much so that I’m now opening it up to the rest of the world to use, for a nominal fee or – in the case of the most basic tier – nothing at all. If you’d like to read more about it, there’s a full description of it here. There’s also an entertaining demo, where you can see what the system looks like to different categories of user. Please do take a look and drop me a line if there’s anything else you need to know.

One other thing: I have plenty of other plans for things to add to Subbub. This is very much only the beginning.

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One Two… One Two…

Is this thing on?

Hmmm. Thought I might try a bit of blogging again, seeing as Twitter seems to be slowly heading down the tubes since yer man Musk took over and Mastodon doesn’t appear to be a particularly appetising replacement.

So what have we been up to since we last had a chat?

Well.

I could just do a kind of summary listicle sort of thing, but that might be a bit dull and in any case it would exhaust all my material pretty quickly. So I think I’ll take things one at a time and just to be slightly perverse, I’m going to talk about something that isn’t directly related to writing, although it is very much to do with WORDS.

If you’re on twitter, there’s a pretty good chance you will have come across my chum Lev Parikian’s “World” “Cup” of “Random” “English” “Words”, an insane year-long search for the most popular word in the English language via the medium of Twitter polls. Even if you’re not on Twitter, you may have seen mention of it in the Times and even briefly on Global News, like this example:

Shame they didn’t get Lev’s surname quite right, but you can’t have everything I guess.

Anyway, back in the middle of 2022, when Lev was still bogged down in the 1024-group first round, he dropped me an email asking if I fancied helping out with a bit of web stuff to (a) add the capability to let people sponsor words for charity and (b) display the results? I’d previously assembled Lev’s website, but this was a little more challenging, which is why I obviously leapt at the opportunity.

The JustGiving stuff was quite fun to put together, being based (as so often) on a defunct no longer supported semi-official API, but it largely did what it was supposed to do. The results page was an equally interesting challenge and involved hunting around for a suitable Javascript API. I’m quite pleased with the way it turned out (scroll right to see the eventual winner).

But the bit I’m most proud of were the pages for each individual word, where I suddenly realised that there had to be a Wiktionary API, right? Talk about added value.

I also added some rudimentary stats – although I expect the real fun will start very soon, now that I’ve added a page where anyone can download the raw data in CSV form to play with it to their hearts content.

Anyway, it’s all been a lot of fun and I’ve learnt so much about web development from it. It’s also great to ride on Lev’s coat-tails and be a small part of something that so many people have enjoyed.

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More Stuff on the Way

When I got to the end of THE TRUTH ABOUT ARCHIE AND PYE, I realised that there were more things that I wanted to do with these weird characters who had strayed into my life. So I deliberately left the ending open-ended when I initially sent it out on submission. However, one of the (few) agents who took an interest in it said that one of the things that was putting them off offering me representation was that open ending. They felt this was too ambitious.

So I immediately dropped the idea of a sequel and brought everything to a tidy conclusion. Unfortunately, there were too many other things that they didn’t like about the manuscript, so they didn’t make an offer anyway. Interestingly, I did end up fixing most of the other issues and made the manuscript a much better one as a result, so the process wasn’t a complete waste of my time.

Anyway, eventually I came across Farrago, who were of course specifically looking at series, at which point I reinstated the open-endedness (to some extent, anyway) as if it had been there all along. Since then, the overall story arc has waxed and waned, while my cast has grown, developed, expanded and – in some cases – died, and I have quite a rich choice of situations and characters to play with. (There’s a selection of characters listed here, although I think there are quite a few – especially from BAD DAY IN MINSK – who aren’t there yet.)

All of which meant that I’ve been keen to go ahead with Book Five, and I am very pleased to announce that as of today I have a contract to write both this and Book Six. I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen in Book Six yet, but I can say that Book Five will have some unexpected and in some cases life-changing new developments for several of the main characters. Some interesting new characters will also emerge, and some old ones may re-emerge. The big question, of course, is about what is going to happen after the cataclysmic events at the end of BAD DAY IN MINSK. Or to put it another way, can Tom ever be forgiven? (I’d say more, but I’d have to put some kind of spoiler alert.)

I can’t wait to get started!

Meanwhile, I have been carrying on podcasting. I’m in the throes of preparing for the recording of Episode Sixteen, and I think it’s going pretty well. No idea what anyone else thinks, to be honest, but I’m enjoying it, so there’s that at least. I’ve also been commissioned to write a piece on the subject (oh yes), but I’ll tell you more about that when it gets published.

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Blog? What blog?

Yes, hello again. Remember me? I used to blog here. So what has been going on in the last month and a half?

Well, BAD DAY IN MINSK was duly published, and it went on a rather exciting blog tour, where everyone was very nice about it – even the ones who hadn’t read any of the previous books in the series. I’ve posted links to all the stops on the tour on the BAD DAY IN MINSK page, if you’re interested.

The thing about having a series of books published is that your publisher can play all sorts of fun games with promotions and price reductions, so that you get mad things like this happening in the Amazon Kindle charts:

And, no, I don’t think it’s going to make me rich (especially when two of the books in question are heavily discounted) but it’s fun to watch.

I was interviewed by Our Book Reviews Online and I also pretended to be interviewed on Laura Pritchard’s blog. I turned up for the third time on Steve Yabsley’s show on BBC Radio Bristol; at the time of writing, you’ve got nine days left to listen to this one. You can never quite tell what Yabbo’s going to throw at you, but I think I managed to keep up. I also had an entire episode of Polly Hall’s Procrastination Station devoted to me, and I’m really pleased how this one went. I also like the blog post she wrote about it – especially the description of this website as “cavernous”.

Polly will herself be a guest on my IT’S LIT BUT IS IT FUNNY? podcast in July, and I’m really looking forward to talking to her about getting reviewed in the New York Times amongst other things.

Speaking of ILBIIF, I’ve just recorded episode 8, so I think we can say that it’s not just a flash in the pan. I’ve also got some excellent guests lined up to take us through to at least September. I’m still learning and there are some things that I’ve got hopelessly wrong as well as some things which have gone really well. The important thing is that I’m learning not to obsess too much about the former. Once I’ve done a few more, I’ll sit down and write a proper post about the experience. In case you haven’t listened to it yet for some reason (what are you, some kind of lunatic?) here are the last few episodes:

Finally, I thought it was about time I put together a snappy promo video for BAD DAY IN MINSK. I briefly entertained the idea of putting it on TikTok before succumbing to a bout of overthinking. The trick with all these things is to plough on regardless before the overthinking kicks in, and on this occasion I was just a bit too slow. Here it is anyway. I’m quite pleased with the music, although I’m still agonising about whether I should have sung the words over it.

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Publication Day for Bad Day in Minsk!

So there I was last night, thinking to myself that I really should get around to writing about what I read in February, when it occurred to me that I should probably hold off on that because there were MORE IMPORTANT THINGS to write about at the present moment, such as THIS NEW BOOK coming out. Unbelievably, given how late I started in all this, this is my tenth book and I have to say that the excitement of seeing a new one go out into the world never diminishes.

This time round, my publishers have arranged a blog tour to promote the book, which is rather terrifying, as these are all complete strangers to me and ANYTHING could happen:

Fortunately, things have got off to a very good start with a very nice review from Tony Hill. I’m particularly pleased that he says he’s enjoyed it as a stand-alone novel but that he also wants to go back and read the first three.

What else can I say? I think this is probably the best book yet in the series, but then again I’m quite fond of all of them. They’re funny as well as being oddly exciting at times and I’d like to think that people will feel better for having read them. What more can you ask for in a novel?

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Bad Day in Minsk Heaves Into View

Well, this is all getting terribly exciting. First of all, book 4 of the Mathematical Mystery series, otherwise known as Bad Day in Minsk, acquired a cover a couple of weeks back, and I think it’s the strongest one yet. You probably caught a glimpse of it when you first arrived at the site, but in case you didn’t, here it is again:

Amazing, right? I’ve said it before, but the absolute best thing about having a series of books published is that you get MATCHING COVERS. Profound thanks as usual to Mark Swan aka kid-ethic for doing the magic once again.

Meanwhile, the marketing campaign is beginning to ramp up, with a completely new free short story available via the Farrago website. It’s called Ten Years Earlier… and it’s a prequel to The Truth About Archie and Pye, and it’s an absolute must for completists, as well as anyone else who just fancies dipping a toe in. Watch out for more exciting stuff in the run-up to April 8th.

You may not have noticed this, but last Sunday was – possibly – e day. I thought this day shouldn’t go unnoticed, so I added an article about it to Archiepyedia, which – much to my delight – got picked up by Charles Arthur’s Overspill blog.

Finally, the It’s Lit But Is It Funny? podcast is proceeding apace, with one episode published, another one edited and awaiting transmission and six more lined up waiting to happen. I’ll have more to say about it in due course, but for the moment, I’m finding it the most amazing fun to do and also quite terrifying. If you haven’t had a listen yet, do please do so – there’s a player widget thing over here, along with a load of buttons to subscribe via the provider of your choice.

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It’s Lit But Is It Funny?

Over the last few months, I’ve been getting into podcasts. Not sure if this is a pandemic thing or a way-of-staying-sane-while-assembling-a-stupidly-complicated-polytunnel thing (don’t ask), but I really like the way you can carry a show around with you, bluetoothing it either to your headphones or the speakers in your office or even the car, picking up from where you left off last time.

Of course, thinking the way I tend to think, I began to wonder if I could put one together myself and if so, what form it might take. I did try setting up a book review vlog a while back, but I stopped doing that mainly because I found it quite hard to talk to the camera in a suitably spontaneous manner and I never managed to find the right balance between script and ad-lib. Also, I looked awful.

Now a podcast is a slightly different proposition if you have, like me, a great face for radio, and it’s also less intrusive, as you’re only demanding that the audience devotes one of their senses to you for the duration of each episode rather than two. However, my limited research has led me to the conclusion that there are very few amateur podcasters who can hold their own with just their own voice without getting annoying (Julie McDowell of Atomic Hobo is one of the few who definitely can – highly recommended).

So I decided that a two-voice format would be the best approach, and the best way to do this would be to invite a new guest on every episode. But what to talk about? Well, it was obvious in the end: the thing that no-one talks about in the book world. Funny books. I decided that the guest would choose a favourite funny book to talk about and then we’d talk about their own work as well. I drew up a shortlist of people who I thought might be interested in this sort of thing, and gratifyingly, all three of them said yes.

The next question was what to call it. I quite liked “Dissecting the Live Kitten”, on the basis that someone (I’m not sure who) once described analysing comedy as being like dissecting a live cat to find out why it’s purring. However, there was quite a good chance that the likes of iTunes wouldn’t even run a podcast with a title like that, so I next wondered about “Plumpod”, being a snappy little neologism based on P.G.Wodehouse’s nickname. But on reflection, there was a danger that a name like that could steer the podcast into dead white men category, and I really didn’t want to do that.

So I’ve ended up with “It’s Lit But Is It Funny?”, although I’d like to think will be shortened by the hardcore fans to “LitBut”. There’s now a dedicated page to it on this site, which will be updated as more episodes get added. Right now, there’s just my rather stilted introduction available, but it does include the jaunty intro music that I threw together using GarageBand AND the logo that I made with Canva.

The first proper episode should be appearing around February 22nd, featuring Toby Frost talking about Kingsley Amis’s “Lucky Jim”, which I’m currently thoroughly enjoying re-reading prior to our recording session next week. After that we’ll have Isabel Rogers talking about W.C.Sellar and R.J.Yeatman’s “1066 and All That”, which was one of my favourite books when I was a kid. Then we have Lev Parikian talking about Nora Ephron’s “Heartburn”, which I haven’t read yet, although I’m pretty certain I’ve seen the film. More guests will be confirmed in due course.

I launched it on Twitter on Monday evening and I’m really pleased at the positive reaction to the idea. I really think there’s a hunger for this sort of thing, especially while we’re in the middle of ALL THIS (waves hands dramatically). We’ll see how it goes, anyway. I’m feeling really excited about it and also quite unbelievably nervous, because this kind of thing is waaaaaay outside my comfort zone. But that’s always the most interesting place to visit, isn’t it?

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What I Read in November and December, plus What I Read in January

So, two posts for the price of one, kids.

I didn’t read much in November and December, completing a thoroughly wretched year on the reading front. January 2021 was a little bit better, however. Now I could have simply chucked all three months together, but I really felt I should emphasise that I’m trying to make a new start this year. But then again, it seemed a bit pointless to separate those seven books into two posts. Hence this ungainly composite effort.

I’m overthinking this as usual, aren’t I?

Here we go…

November and December

Spook Street by Mick Herron. Number four in the Slough House series and terrific stuff as ever, although I think my favourite is still the third one, Real Tigers. Interesting to see that with his very latest, Slough House, he seems to have broken through from cult status into the mass media – which of course has coincided with the inevitable backlash. Meh. If you haven’t discovered them yet, get stuck into Slow Horses and carry on from there. You won’t regret it.

Libra Shrugged: How Facebook Tried to Take Over the Money by David Gerard. The latest from the man behind Attack of the 50ft Blockchain, which is basically the only book you need to read on the madness of cryptocurrency (apart from A Question of Trust, obviously). This is the story of how Facebook tried to become the world’s banker through its Libra cryptocurrency, and it’s another wild read. Like his first book, this is also another example of a very well put-together self-published book.

Music to Eat Cake By: Essays on Birds, Words and Everything in Between by Lev Parikian. This is such a brilliant idea: the literary equivalent of a night at an improv club. Having successfully launched Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? via the crowd-sourcing platform Unbound, Parikian decided to take the concept a mad stage further and crowd-source the actual content of his next book, inviting the funders of the book to suggest the topics that they’d like him to write about. Now, there aren’t many writers who could pull this off, but Parikian manages it in style, and the net result is a witty and curiously informative roller-coaster ride.

January

Tripwire by Lee Child. As I’ve said before, a Lee Child novel does what it says on the tin, and this one is no exception. Perfect escapism of the sort that we need right now. This is number three in the series, and I expect to be moving on to number four very soon.

The Taxidermist’s Lover by Polly Hall. Polly was in my MA year group at Bath Spa University and it’s great to see this in print. It’s a sensuous, disturbing tale of obsession set in the damp, liminal world of the Somerset levels. The story builds to a thoroughly shocking but very satisfying gothic ending, and I would definitely recommend it.

Bath Short Story Award 2020 Anthology. I was on the pre-reading team for this one, and it’s always nice to see what eventually came through – especially if you recognise one of the ones that you put forward for longlisting. I didn’t pick the winner this year, sadly, but I still enjoyed re-reading Louise Dean’s Upgrade Day, which I had spotted in the first stage. I also particularly enjoyed Hilary Key’s odd but perfectly-formed story Lovely Day.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. It’s almost impossible to review this without using the word ‘quirky’, so let’s get that out of the way straight away. This is a gossamer-thin story in which almost nothing happens, and yet leaves you wondering about all sorts of things: about the choices we make, the choices others would make for us and how to carve a neurodivergent path through a neurotypical world. I think. I loved it.

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