H.J. Hampson's Blog, page 6

Slightly tweaked The Vanity Game cover

Breaking news… The Vanity Game will now not only be issued with pink lettering on the cover but also a fabulous quite from best-selling and incredibly cool US author Megan Abbott.

Here is what Ms. Abbott said in full:

“As black as black comedies come and twice as audacious, HJ Hampson’s The Vanity Game eviscerates celebrity culture with the incisiveness of an expert surgeon—but with a giddy, over-the-top pleasure that’s exhilarating.”

— Megan Abbott, bestselling author of The End of Everything and just-published Dare Me 

And below is the lovely new cover.

Why change from red to pink you may wonder? When we were initially discussing designs for the cover I said how much I liked the posters for the movie Drive… not just ‘cos Ryan Gosling looks rather sexy in that white jacket, but for the use of pink lettering for an edgy, violent movie.   As The Vanity Game is rather edgy and violent too, I wondered if pink lettering would work for the book cover as well. We played around with designs, but couldn’t get it work right, so we decided to go with that reliable combination of black, white and red.

However, the cover was re-tweaked for the print give-away competition and so Blasted Heath’s marketing guru Kyle, and cover designer J.T Lindroos, decided to revisit the pink idea.  This coincided with me seeing a short trailer for the Cronenburg movie, Cosmopolis, which used pastel-coloured lettering.  Again, this is a movie about a dysfunctional male protagonist.

Being a bit of a geek for fonts and stuff, I find it kind of interesting that these two movies have used what I would hesitantly call ‘feminine’ colours in their branding.

Anyway, we decided that the pink works too for The Vanity Game, now also with more high-res cocaine, which I’m sure everyone will appreciate:

Win a super-limited, print edition of The Vanity Game!!

Blasted Heath are an e-publisher, right, but they are doing a special print run of just 25 copies of The Vanity Game which they will be giving away to some enthusiastic and savvy people. Yes, an e-publisher doing a print run, it’s like, erm, Apple selling cassettes or something!

But it’s happening and it’s happening now over on Goodreads first where you can win one of three copies and you don’t even have to answer a question to enter.

Oh yes, and each copy will be signed and numbered by myself.

A foray into football forums…

With less than a month to go until The Vanity Game’s publication now (!!), myself and Blasted Heath have been upping the marketing activity. A big part of this involves promoting Beaumont’s blog and Twitter feed (Beaumont is the protagonist in The Vanity Game).

We thought we would post a few links to the Twitter feed etc around football and other forums as the novel is about a footballer and football fans might find the blog and Twitter feed funny.

Now, I know no-one likes to be sold stuff but my foray into football forums has ended up with me having my  IP address banned from one football forum (clue: Combine the name of a famous Liverpool FC manager with the last word in a Smiths song about a dreaded sunny day and Keats and Yeats being on your side).  Sure, I’ve been banned from bars in the past, but never an online space.

As a Liverpool fan myself, I hate to diss my own and all that, but…

Perhaps my post suggesting people that they might like to follow Beaumont on Twitter contravened the (extremely well hidden) first-post rules, or rules about selling stuff (is promoting a Twitter feed selling stuff? You don’t have to pay to use Twitter?), but the reaction from a few of the users was slightly over the top. Instantly, I was aggressively accused of being a ‘manc’ (i.e. a Manchester United fan). Do Man U fans often go on this forum to suggest Liverpool fans follow certain Twitter feeds?  Perhaps certain Twitter feeds that are full of vitriol about Scousers or push out tweets that have highly effective subliminal messages that will make Liverpool fans subconsciously convert to the dark side, or accept that their team is in fact shit these days, or accept that Luis Suarez did actually make a racist remark to Patrice Evra?

But the best comment came from this enlightened poster:

‘Books ain’t electronic media dipshit, books are bundles of paper about fantastic things like kids getting killed in a chocolate factory, graphic ‘Nam reportage or drug adventures in Las Vegas. What you’ve done is make a Microsoft Word document, and as we all know reading massive blocks of text off a goddamn monitor is INRAT central’

Oh yes, of course, us e-book authors have it so easy don’t we? Not like in the days when Hunter S. Thompson not only had to write ‘Fear and Loathing’ whilst totally off his face, but also had to copy-edit, typeset, print, do the illustrations, design the cover, bind the books and market them all himself. Isn’t it amazing he managed to get all the spines straight while being whacked on mescaline?

I love the way these people are so adamant in their assumptions. I am now adamant in my assumption that they are a bunch of twats.  My IP address was banned after I posted a smart arse reply to the above comment and complained that one poster had posted a homophobic comment, aimed at another poster who had identified himself as gay.

In hindsight, I should have perhaps chosen an LFC forum that does not actively encourage users to post porn (in a non-search engine-searchable area of the site) and has no policy against homophobic (and likely sexist) comments, but you live and learn.

And what the hell does ‘INRAT’ mean?!

The Vanity Game wordled

I love this site, Wordle, so I thought I’d run the entire text of The Vanity Game through it and see what it came out like. I’m a bit concerned that ‘fucking’ seems to be one of the most common words in the book, but I guess it gives you a tone of the novel.

Other key words on there are ‘Beaumont’… he is the main character and you can read more about him here. ‘Krystal’ is his girlfriend and ‘Serge’ is his agent.  And if you want to know what the other words are all about you will just have to download it when it’s out on June 11th!

You can click on the picture to see it full size.

 

The Vanity Game cover…

…. has been finalised and here it is:

Thanks to the fabulous JT Lindroos for his excellent design work:)

Introducing Beaumont Alexander…

Footballer. Model. Mega-brand. Beaumont Alexander is top-flight footballer who endorses everything from hair gel to jeans to a dating site.  Until recently, he existed only in my forthcoming novel, The Vanity Game, but now he’s developed a life of his own and has started blogging and tweeting!

Beaumont is liability. He’s already pissed off his mate and fellow footballer, Jon, by revealing detail of an affair he had sought an injunction over. Yes, who needs tabloid enemies when you have friends like Monty? Then he accidentally revealed that he’s taken cocaine when he tried to emphathise with Muamba.  I don’t think he realizes that when he posts something online, everyone can see it: he is a bit thick.

But the question is, is he really just a harmless idiot? Or does he have something to hide?

You can read a short extract from The Vanity Game here

Beaumont and his girlfriend Krystal's unisex perfume, scent B&K, and some random models

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A rant

What a tragic day. In some ways I am glad my father died before he had to experience the destruction of the wonderful  health service he relied on so much, and to see the party he supported most of his adult life have a hand in this destruction.

Thousands and thousands of British people gave their lives to protect this country from fascism, and the deal was that the government would provide a better feature for all, the NHS being part of that.  It sickens me that the Conservative Party have, for want of a better word, shat all over the altruistic, lofty aims of Clement Atlee etc.  They have no scruples about looting and torching anything they want, yet have no qualms about sending working class  kids to jail for being by-standers in the summer riots.

It is just outrageous that the Conservative Party have relentlessly, doggedly pursued this bill that serves no one other than private health care providers, and that was never in their party manifesto, and was opposed by most of the medical establishment from hospital cleaners to surgeons.  What the fuck is the left going to do now?

 

Permanence

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks clearing out my parents’ house following the death of my father. It’s depressing but in some ways satisfying.  The tip has become my new favorite place.  I find myself becoming a bit manic as I’m clearing stuff out, thinking ‘what else can I take to the tip?’, ‘what else can I shred?’, ‘what else can I destroy?’.   It’s not like my parents had loads and loads of stuff, but there is a lot of stuff none the less… books, paperwork, old furniture, ornaments, clothing, National Geographic mags, My Little Ponies (and other childhood toys), puzzles, fabric,  photographs, hundreds and hundreds of old school slides, the slide projector, shoes… et cetera et cetera.  A lifetime’s worth of stuff… now being distributed to the charity shop, the recycling bins and the tip. I think I’ve developed an allergy to ‘stuff’. I was walking past a cheap ‘stuff’ shop in the local shopping centre the other day and I shivered at the sight of shelves and shelves of cheapo lamps, cushions and vases. One day, 90% of them will end up a landfill site. How can we go on, just creating more and more stuff that will then be chucked away?

So, it’s made me think about e-publishing in new light. Despite my debut novel, The Vanity Game

A rubbish tip...

, coming out as an e-book via Blasted Heath in June, I have to admit I have until now been a bit iffy about the whole e-book thing. What would I fill my Ikea Expedit bookcase with if I didn’t read ‘real’ books? What would replace the musty smell of a second-hand bookshop? If I ever made it as an author, wouldn’t I be denied book-signing events if I had no ‘real books’ to sign?

Although I still think I’ll miss hard copy books for some reasons, I’m now imminently going to buy a Kindle. Books might look nice, but they are still just ‘stuff’, and if you collect hundreds and hundreds of the things, when you die some poor fucker is going to have to take them all to the charity shop. And books are very heavy.

It was interesting to hear Jonathan Franzen banging on about e-books and ‘permanence’.  He said:

“”a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience”. “Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change,” he continued. “Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don’t have a crystal ball. But I do fear that it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that.”

... and a load of russbish

Well the past couple of weeks have made me realise what a stupid thing to say that is. Does Mr. Franzen have nothing in his life other than his processions to give himself a self of permanence? Whilst I’ve been sorting through the house I found a drawer full of all the Christmas cards my parents ever sent to each other, and I sent to them. It was heartbreaking, reading through these, but what could I do with them? I just bagged them up and took them to the paper bank. What was heartbreaking was not throwing away the cards though; it was feeling of love that ran through all those cards, and the realisation that all that love has gone now. I would destroy everything I own to have my parents back. Books cannot recreate that sense of permanence, as great as they are. Certainly, I’m not exactly seeking solace from my grief by flicking through the pages of my copy of ‘Freedom’.

Life is not permanent anyway. As Shakespeare said, ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage’.

So really, does it matter whether you read a story out of a physical book, or electronically, or whether someone reads it to you, or whether you watch it as a play or film? A great story is something you will always remember, and something that changes you in a small way or change the way you see the world.

So I can’t wait for The Vanity Game to come out as an e-book. I hope people will treasure the story just as they would if they consumed it in any other way.

Bring on the Kindle!

Onimousity and dead famous people

I woke up today with that horribly ominous feeling one gets when one remember can’t remember the last part of the night.  It’s horrible, that feeling. I think it’s worse than the headache, the nausea and the eye-ache that often accompany it.   Eskimos have invented loads of words for snow because it snows so much where they live, so I’ve invented a new word for hangover symptoms: ominuosity.

One of the most alarming things about my current onimousity is that I found out that Whitney Houston was dead last night, apparently, but I can’t remember, so when I logged onto the ‘net this morning I was as freshly shocked as I was when I was a kid and got up one Sunday morning and my dad told me Princess Diana was dead. Weird. I feel kind of sad, but at the same time I don’t really care. The sadness is probably exasperated by the hangover. It is sad when people who were big in the nineties die though.  It makes me feel really old. I wasn’t a fan of her music… in fact, my foremost Whitney memory is when I went shopping with my friend in Chester and I realized the full extent of her shit music taste because she bought the cassette single of that duet Houston did was Bobby Brown.  Anyway, in honour of Whitney, here are my top five ‘Finding out Famous People are Dead’ situations:

Micheal Jackson.  In this case, I was tipsy when my friend texted me to tell me the fruit-loop was dead, but the next morning I questioned whether I was in fact so drunk I had hallucinated the text as it seemed so unlikely but I turned on the radio and they were playing ‘Man In The Mirror’. We were moving out of our shitty ex-local authority house that day.
Diana… yeah, I’m a republican so I hate myself for remembering this. I was sixteen. I remember going into Asda in Runcorn and there was a book you could sign which they were going to send to  her kids.  Great.
Hunter S Thompson. This is the saddest one on the list. I was gutted when I found out Hunter S had topped himself. I went out to the The Grapes pub in Sheffield and had a conversation about it on the stairs with a friend.
Winehouse. It was a shock yet not surprising. I was at a writing retreat in the

Princess Di: ominously dead

Andalusian mountains and it seemed like it the world was falling apart as I spent the days languishing in the Spanish sun, working away at my novel, then the evenings getting drunk on home-brewed sherry. I’ll always associate Amy Winehouse dying with that lethal home-brewed sherry.
Kurt Cobain. It’s embarrassing he’s fifth on the list, but I hardly remember Kurt dying at all. I was 13 and I found out about it when I was in an RE class.  My parents used to get that awful Today tabloid and there was a tiny, one paragraph story about it. It just shows how much celebrity culture has changed. Nowadays they’d spew out pages and pages of tabloid coverage, The Guardian would change the picture box on its homepage to black and everyone from Kim Karshashian to Barack Obama would tweet about it. But yeah, back then, it was just the last item on the news and  only championed by the cool pages on Teletext.

Hamlet, cornflakes.

This week, the first week of 2012, I went to see Hamlet at the Young Vic, went to bed early most nights and for the first time ever, and bought a box of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.

Hamlet was good, though it’s a long play and (cheap) seats in the Young Vic aren’t that comfy. I was ashamed to admit I was a bit confused as well. Was it all in his head? Dead people came back to life and stuff, but I know Shakespeare likes his ghosts because I’ve read MacBeth.  Anyway, Michael Sheen put in a bloody good performance and the bit where they had Claudius doing his speech behind a glass door was cool.

I resolved to read more Shakespeare after I went to see John Logan, the screenwriter, speaking at BAFTA last year. He said don’t bother with all the screenwriting books by the likes of McKee etc, just read The Bard.  A fair point, I guess, and if it inspires you to come up with line such as ‘at my command, unleash hell’ (Gladiator), then who can disagree?  Years ago, when I lived in Sheffield, I bought this manky old book of Shakespeare’s entire works for 50p from a charity shop and I never read a single page of it until after that lecture.  The trouble is the book is heavy and fragile and the text is very, very small, so it’s not exactly portable.  I read little bits of MacBeth over breakfast and now resolve to read Hamlet over my CN Cornflakes.

What else? What else? I finally ‘get’ James Blake.