G.I. James's Blog, page 6

Why was Irie offered a publishing deal? (Part 1)

The Simple Bit

‘They just rang you up?’

‘Well yeah – kinda.’

‘And you’re suddenly writing a book for Hodder?’ 

I nod ruefully, scrutinised under of the accountant’s cheerless expression – the frustrated novelist within the man – beside himself.

‘But you’ve not been published before, have you?’ 

I look to my shoes.

‘Have you ever even thought about writing a book?’

‘Never crossed my mind.’

He frowns. Sighs. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he says. And leaves his congratulations to this.

So how? With no experience and no examples of writing to submit; why was this unlikely guy offered a small but life-changing publishing deal with Hodder, a division of Hachette, one of the largest book publishers in the world?

Let me tell you…

Why did Irie get offered a publishing deal? (Part 1)

The Simple Bit

‘They just rang you up?’

‘Well yeah – kinda.’

‘And you’re suddenly writing a book for Hodder?’ 

I nod ruefully under the scrutiny of the accountant’s cheerless expression – the frustrated novelist within the man – beside himself.

‘But you’ve not been published before, have you?’ 

I look to my shoes.

‘Have you ever even thought about writing a book?’

‘Never crossed my mind.’

He frowns. Sighs. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he says. And leaves his congratulations to this.

So how? With no experience and no examples of writing to submit; why was this unlikely guy offered a small but life-changing publishing deal with Hodder, a division of Hachette, one of the largest book publishers in the world?

Let me tell you…

Under Pressure

(Originally published Cambrian News (print editions) 15th June 2022)

What the hell to do? Amid this tempest of spiralling costs. Realising that personal economies (such as ditching Sky Sports) are not enough to avoid sinking. Understanding that existing in the uplands is expensive so more consequential changes must be made. I am moving into Aberystwyth. And I am not the only one.

            I will miss the clear-eyed characters who inhabit these hills. The unrivalled privacy and the inescapable community of a small Welsh village. I will miss strolls through the forest, the views, and (weekend warriors apart) the peace and quiet of our wilderness. I will miss the sound of birdsong and waterfalls, the unspoiled starry nights, and having a garden. I will miss crystal-clear tap-water and log fires on freezing winter evenings. Chopping wood in the cold? Not so much. Homes in hills are rarely new builds and two-foot stone walls require a great deal of warming.

            Weather in town will be kinder. And with connection to the gas-main, keeping warm easier and cheaper. Plus, a mobile phone signal. Tesco right there. The Post Office just up the road. Located only a moment from the train station, I will not need to fund a car. My new home will be simpler to locate for approaching deliveries and for routinely disorientated family and friends. There is more going on in town, so they say. The beach is a short stroll from my front door.

            So, for many, this round of belt tightening will be considerably more devastating to well-laid plans, savings, and personal wellbeing than the minor discomfort suffered during my forced relocation. For many, the scale of the financial downturn will be a new and terrifying experience. For others, an unwelcome resumption of hard times. For all but a few of the rest, this steepest cost-of-living upsurge in a generation will intensify an already overwhelming crisis.

            Wales, with the lowest disposable household income in the UK, with the second highest increases in child poverty nationally, has a significant section of the population in urgent need. In response, the Trussell Trust have provided hundreds of thousands of emergency food parcels throughout Wales. And on February 14, the Welsh Government announced a £150 cost-of-living payment to be paid ‘as soon as possible’ into the rapidly emptying pockets of millions of under-pressure households. These emergency payments were made by many local authorities way back in April.

            Yet, across Ceredigion, disregarding the scale of the problem, ignoring the immediacy of the crisis, and offering scant consideration for those families in most need, cost-of-living payments have been bewilderingly glacial in progress.

            By the beginning of June, Ceredigion Council confirmed issuing only the first tranche of cost-of-living payments to residents paying their council tax by direct debit.

            Households in most desperate straits, of course, are unlikely to be paying council tax, let alone by direct debit. Two weeks later, at time of writing, the most financially vulnerable are yet to receive a penny of this ’emergency’ payment.

            The council’s response? Ceredigion County Council ‘have given priority to this scheme and working with our software supplier to establish the systems required to deal with new payments.’

            For the organisation tasked with protecting the region’s most deprived to be so clueless to the reality of hardship is inexcusable. The rollout was obviously deficient in planning and has been deficient in execution. Having received these funds, to navel gaze with their ‘software supplier’ for months, then finally to make such a Horlicks of distributing cost-of-living payments, I hope, is not indicative of how Ceredigion Council’s leadership will manage future assistance already promised to our most under-pressure residents.

Click Here to read this article on Cambrian News website.

Here We Go Again

I first meet Bill Gates while tasked with booking celebrities to promote the UK launch of Windows 95; David Gower, Angela Rippon, Jonathan Ross, Andy Crane, David Emanuel, Carol Vorderman – plus others I will later forget.

Bill is underwhelming – nerdy and beige. Single expression of success, the aspect of the man that will stick in my mind, an embroidered BG on the collar-tip of his diarrhoea-coloured shirt.

Equally unengaging is his lengthy spiel; that everyone will soon own a desktop PC, communicate with ‘e-messages’, and how businesses are going to construct and trade on a World Wide Web (the WWW, or ‘information-superhighway‘ as it is referred to in 1995). But take up is clearly slow and Bill’s MSN dream patently ludicrous. Only Marks and Spencer, Barclays, and Littlewoods (I think) have thus far bought into the new technology, and their ‘websites’ little more than shop window posters – you can’t do anything with them. We shuffle in our seats.

We are issued with pointless ‘e-message’ addresses. Pointless, for no one else has such a thing, so we can only communicate among ourselves, with Microsoft employees, and Bill. We try not to smirk while pocketing our considerable cheques.

Anyway, with limitless free Microsoft software, and being a little nerdy, I undertake to waste some time and build my first pointless business website.

But it isn’t pointless. Bill is right. 27 years later, we all own computing devices, rely upon email, and every individual and business wishing to compete requires a web-presence – even a writer.

So, here I go again, designing another website. A bit of a daunting prospect to be honest. But creating these pages, even for an old fella, is proving considerably less taxing than the technical grapple, the code-editing, blue-screen-inducing, instruction-manual-requiring, never-ending FrontPage 1.0 experience of the mid-nineties.

Bill wasn’t always right though. While launching Windows 98 he told us that photo-quality printing would be the ‘next big thing’. He was wrong. The next big thing would be this screen you’re looking at. The photo-quality display superseded the printer, and in doing so proved Bill Gates fallible.

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A Fork in the Road

Within the forest, inland fourteen miles, 300m above the coast of West Wales, wise folk pay heed to a Met Office weather warning. But this incoming thunderstorm should be of little concern and living up in the hills will offer a panoramic view of nature most visual.

I will miss the unrivalled drama of a wilderness. I’m moving into town. A nearby beach proving fair substitute, hopefully.