K.P. Webster's Blog, page 26
March 15, 2013
Feedback Friday :: Love Is All You Need
bulk :: unknown
mammoth walks :: 2
walking injuries sustained :: 1
proper exercise :: 0
cigarettes smoked :: 0
bottles of wine drunk :: 0
pints of Bloody Mary consumed :: 6
new reviews for the book :: 1
bleak moments :: a few
high hopes :: a lot
I’m on a National Express coach. It’s currently half an hour late and still sitting in the station in Nottingham. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. The reason it doesn’t matter – apart from the fact that I’m not in a hurry – is that the bus driver is being lovely about it. He informed everyone that the bus was going to be late and suggested that if we were too cold, we could adjourn to the waiting room inside the station and he’d come and get us when the bus turned up. I chose to wait outside, where he informed me that today is his birthday. ‘This is the birthday bus!’ he cried.
12.01
The bus is moving. The driver has just passed a bag of chocolates around and sang a burst of ‘Happy birthday to me’.
To recap: it’s a cold, miserable, grey, wet day. The coach is late. And cold. There’s no room between the seats. The toilet is a human rights abuse all on its own. But you know what? It doesn’t matter because the driver is being warm and open and friendly.
I love him.
Yesterday I went into Mansfield to a mid-morning senior citizens’ screening of The Silver Linings Playbook. It’s a film that polarises opinion. Some people find it boring, predictable and offensive in its simplification of mental health issues. I loved it.
I loved the characters and their everyday madness.
When I left the cinema, I walked back towards the centre of town on my way to look for a cheap barber and whenever I thought of the film – particularly the heart-warming denouement – a few more tears escaped. They were happy tears. They were human tears.
I just kept thinking, as long as some of us continue to care enough to love one another, everything will be alright.
Yesterday afternoon I went for a bath at my sister’s house. As I was waiting for the water to rise, I remembered something I’d first heard when I was at college, I think in reference to Robert Browning. It was that many people – specifically many writers and artists – become less liberal, less tolerant, more reactionary, as they get older. The reason I thought about it was that I was thinking about myself and how I’m kind of the opposite.
Although I’m less interested in politics than I was as a young man, I’m also becoming less and less attached to conventional wisdom regarding how we are expected to live our lives. I’m becoming much more of a drifter-hippy-Buddhist-type too. I don’t believe I’ll ever get another job – not a proper job. I’ll probably never own a house. But as long as I can make sure I’m somewhere warm when I start to fall apart, I reckon I’ll be OK. And as long as I can find some people to love me back, everything will be alright.
I’m off to London for the weekend by the way. What are you up to? Anything spectacular? You don’t have to answer. I’ll still love you.
x
March 14, 2013
Living France :: The First Feature
Just in case I die some time soon, quite suddenly, I’ve decided I’d better put all of the stuff I wrote for Living France on this blog. This way people can come here after I’m gone and say, ‘Oh, look – he wrote some moderately amusing, distinctly upbeat articles for Living France. How interesting.’
So the first thing I wrote for Living France was this feature, which was published in October 2011 (click for massive)…
Living France :: October 2011
Just in case I die some time soon, quite suddenly, I’ve decided I’d better put all of the stuff I wrote for Living France on this blog. This way people can come here after I’m gone and say, ‘Oh, look – he wrote some moderately amusing, distinctly upbeat articles for Living France. How interesting.’
So the first thing I wrote for Living France was this feature, which was published in October 2011 (click for massive)…
March 13, 2013
Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now :: The Smashwords Promotion
Very recently, from the 3rd to the 9th of March, it was Read an Ebook Week. During this week – once a year for the past nine years – lots of people make their ebooks free and lots of other people download them and read them. I heard about it on the 7th, made my book free on Smashwords and was surprised by how many times it was downloaded in the next couple of days. Now it’s over and I’m thinking, hmmmm….
Apparently, even when it isn’t Read an Ebook Week, if your book is free on Smashwords, it finds its way onto certain free-book tables in certain e-stores. Which means being downloaded and hopefully read. So, as there is absolutely no point writing a book if nobody reads it, and as making a book free is one of the best ways of guaranteeing readers, I thought I’d make The Lives and Loves of Hana Lee free for the next month.
From today.
From .. hold on a sec … now.
There. Done it. Go and download if you like, if by any chance the massive two-quid price tag was putting you off. Or tell other people – people who read. Send them a link to the book. You know, if you like. But it’s not really for you. It’s for the e-store browsers. They’re gonna love it.
Hopefully.
Wish me luck.
March 12, 2013
Book Quiz :: A Brief History of Goats in Literature
There was a period of a few weeks back there – back there when I was living in a field in France – that I had goats. The experience – for various reasons – wasn’t a very enlightening one, and I was pleased when the goats and I eventually parted company. One good thing that came of it though, was that I got drunk with a friend and collected a bunch of goat-references from literature. I was going to post them on this here blog as a kind of light-hearted goat-based literature quiz but for some baffling reason, I never got round to it.
Today, you will be pleased to hear, is the day.
So.
Below you will find 15 extracts from 15 very famous books. Many of them include big clues. Many don’t. Needless to say, use of Google is strictly forbidden, except to check your answers when you’re sure you have given the quiz your very best shot.
Let me know in the comments how many you got correct. Failure to comment will result in the assumption on the part of the rest of the internet that you are an imbecile.
If you genuinely guessed between three and seven correctly, give yourself a pat on the back. You know your literary onions. If you got between seven and 12, you are incredibly special. No kidding. More than 12 and you are either a) a genuine genius, or b) a brazen, stinking liar.
Ready, steady … goats!
1. ‘Redheaded women buck like goats.’
2. ‘She looked the part of the sacrificial goat, the constant butt, believer in left-handed monkey wrenches, perpetual foul-up, and she was.’
3. ‘I was in like a big field with all flowers and trees, and there was a like goat with a man’s litso playing away on a like flute.’
4. ‘[His] heart jumped into his mouth. He gave a terrific squirm. Buttons burst off in all directions. He was through, with a torn coat and waistcoat, leaping down the steps like a goat, while bewildered goblins were still picking up his nice brass buttons on the doorstep.’
5. ‘No lingering now—he heard the goddess’ voice—but back he went to his house with aching heart and there at the palace found the brazen suitors skinning goats in the courtyard, singeing pigs for roasting.’
6. ‘These, he said, were the mysterious groups whose gods demand – instead of a cock, a pigeon, a goat, a dog, or a pig, as in the normal rites of Voodoo – the sacrifice of a “cabris sans cornes”; This hornless goat, of course, means a human being…’
7. ‘The real universe arched sickeningly away beneath them. Various pretend ones flitted silently by, like mountain goats.’
8. ‘”Sir, if you have a down payment of three thou, I can make you owner of something a lot better than a pair of rabbits. What about a goat?”‘
9. ‘”But the new ones are so stupid and horrible. Those plays, where there’s nothing but helicopters flying about and you feel the people kissing.” He made a grimace. “Goats and monkeys!”‘
10. ‘Their heads and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled and others lank; they had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backs, and the foreparts of their legs and feet, but the rest of their bodies were bare, so that I might see their skins, which were of a brown buff colour.’
11. ‘”I guess I’m a sentimental old goat,” he said. “And no soldier at all. I took a fancy to that boy. He seemed pretty clean to me….”‘
12. ‘In four bounding steps she covered the distance to the goat, bent down, and bit it through the neck.’
13. ’Feisal, angry at the metaphor (impolite in Arabic), looked at Bremond’s six feet of comfortable body, and asked if he had ever tried to “goat” himself.’
14. ‘But if there were no mines, where was the radiation coming from? The sun? No, not that. Goats on the higher ridges had no trouble multiplying and he had never seen a deformed goat.’
15. ‘We rushed over the brow of the hill, and there was our man running with great speed down the other side, springing over the stones in his way with the activity of a mountain goat. A lucky long shot of my revolver might have crippled him, but I had brought it only to defend myself if attacked, and not to shoot an unarmed man who was running away.’
March 11, 2013
Seven Thoroughly Excellent Things About Self-Publishing
As you may or may not be aware, I published my latest novel The Lives and Loves of Hana Lee just a few weeks ago – all by myself and at no cost whatsoever – here on this very internet. This is my first experience of self-publishing, having had various experiences of traditional publishing in the past, primarily with Macmillan, The Friday Project and HarperCollins. Now, less than a month in, I have to say, I’m rather enjoying it. Also, in a great many ways, it’s actually better than being represented by an agent and a publishing house.
Here then, for your cerebral digestion, is a list of some of the uniquely excellent things that I have discovered about self-publishing…
* Autonomy. It can be as daunting as a bathful of piranha fish, but there’s really no feeling beats being your own boss. And now that I’ve become a bona fide independent author and have committed myself to making a living out of writing, I am – very much so – my own boss. This means that if I start dragging my feet or losing heart (the latter being the most likely scenario), I’ll have myself to answer to. Thankfully, I’m on the same side as myself so I’m unlikely to chastise myself particularly harshly if I happen to take time out to enjoy Tipping Point with my mother – for both of our pleasures – or smoke a crafty one out the kitchen window in the middle of the afternoon. I get to create my own rules and as I have no one’s interests at heart but my own, they are rules that work for me rather than making me stressed and angry and wishing I was stuck in an office somewhere slowly dying. Instead, I’m working for something I believe in, and I do believe, in general, working for something you believe in is good for you. (I mean Tipping Point the quiz show by the way, not the Malcolm Gladwell book.)
* Creativity. You can do whatever you like to let people know that you exist. You are limited only by your imagination. And the chances are, you’ve got so many other hidden treasures on your hard drive or packed away in a cardboard box in your brain that you can make them really happy that you barged your way into their lives.
* Connectivity. Joining in. Rather than relying on the whims of a disinterested PR stooge from a respectable publisher, how much more invigorating to do your own publicity. Rather than waiting for people to come through on the promises they make to everybody at the beginning (in the hope that they’re going to make some money out of you), how much more satisfying and rewarding to find the people who genuinely like your work by yourself. Making connections is hopefully one of the main reasons you write in the first place. Think of the marketing you have to do to get yourself noticed as part of this same desire to connect with other people. On a personal level, I feel I’m getting to know the internet again. It’s been a while since I was properly involved with people online and I forgot how exciting it can be.
* Accountability. By which I mean personal accountability, closely connected to autonomy but worth a special mention for the sheer joy of knowing that if you promise yourself you’re going to do something, you probably are. But even if you don’t, you’ll know about it immediately, and won’t have to send yourself emails every couple of weeks asking if you’ve done that thing yet, that thing you promised yourself that you’d do. Only to find that you hadn’t. Because you couldn’t give a damn.
* Durability. Your book does not die within a month or two of release as it would if it had been published by, let’s say, HarperCollins. Self-published books are always on the book-store shelves and as Mark Coker – the guy behind Smashwords – so rightly says, ‘Welcome to the never-ending book launch.’
* Sticking it to The Man. It’s a good feeling to be part of a revolution in publishing, to know that by joining the hordes of authors refusing to lay down and die simply because the publishing establishment decrees them unworthy of their patronage, we are in fact and in a very real way challenging the power of these so-called authorities. Sure, a great many of us can’t write for toffee, but so what? Some of us who can’t write for toffee will go on to make an awful lot of money. Just ask EL James. People who can’t write have always made very successful writers, but with the advent of affordable ebooks, now they no longer have to rely on being spotted by experts who – whether they admit it or not – get it wrong constantly.
* Freedom. No agent. No publisher. No help. No hindrance. No contracts. No meetings. No pressure. No bullshit. I can do what I like. I can give up tomorrow if I like.
But I’m not going to.
And this is just the beginning.
Until tomorrow.
x
March 10, 2013
Hazey Jane :: Shadow and Shade
I’m not a fan of Nick Drake. His music I mean. I never got on with it. Apparently this band I’m about to try and persuade you to listen to, Hazey Jane, are heavily influenced by Nick Drake – even their name is taken from one of his songs. I didn’t know this when I first listened to them – although it wouldn’t have made any difference because my mind is open like the seas of the moon.
This particular song – Shadow and Shade – was recommended to me by my nephew, who you can see here drumming and inadvertently showing his penis, and who you can hear on this very song - Shadow and Shade - also playing drums. For he recently joined the band, Hazey Jane. Good for him, I say. The little shit. Sorry, I don’t mean that. I’m just very envious of his musical ability.
So this song. I think it’s really rather brilliant and I can’t quite believe it’s been written by young people. It sounds very mature to me. Perhaps someone’s lying to me. The singer’s voice is like the voice of someone who has known something of life, but that seems unlikely, as he’s about 12 years old. I exaggerate obviously. Envy again.
The lyrics too are surprisingly sophisticated. I particularly like this bit:
‘So whatever comes round is whatever we’ve earned. Nothing lasts forever, girl. What the water don’t drown, the fire will burn.’
Listen to it:
They have a few more songs here on Soundcloud and a few more still here – for some reason – on MySpace.
Apparently they’re playing their first gig next Monday. I hope it goes astonishingly well.
Little shits.
March 9, 2013
People Are Strange
Last night on Twitter, I found this in my timeline…
I followed the link and, like everyone else who followed the link, I imagine, I was surprised by the chutzpah of this particular eBayer, who calls himself thedoctorwhoguide2012.
Here are some of the things he is currently selling.
A large pink comb, used but ‘Sterilised in Boiling Water’…
A small ornament listed as ‘Glass Dog (Bargin) … Made from translucent glass. Tail snapped’. Only £4.95…
Next: ‘Little Girls Purse’. Slightly odd. But I’m prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. £3.99…
Next: ‘The Crucifiction (Postcard) Jesus Religion’. User’s notes: ‘Very old but in FINE condition’…
And this, described expertly as ‘Brighton Beach – Pebble (Rock)‘
The best of his items, however, are almost certainly his drawings. Some of them are based on popular cartoons. There is a drawing of Shrek, for example. One of Rabbit from Disney’s Winnie the Pooh, and one of Pooh himself, seemingly in the process of actually having a poo or at the very least making one of those farting noises with combination of paw and pit…
Then there are his ‘erotic drawings’ such as this one entitled ‘Naked man‘ – a naked man who appears to have a slice of pizza in his crotch. Obviously, if you choose to pay the £3.95 (free P&P), you will receive the uncensored version…
Then there are the doctors. See if you can guess which one’s who…
All of which got me thinking, if my dark, funny, scary, erotic unputdownable new novel doesn’t ever break out and make me a fortune – or at least enough to buy myself a new tooth and then go WWOOFing in June – then maybe I should start selling stuff on eBay. I’ve got a lot of old tat after all – or at least my mum has – and I can draw. I never thought I could draw well enough to make money on it, but after seeing these items, I reckon I can.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m presuming that thedoctorwhoguide2012 actually makes money off of his drawings when in actual fact he obviously doesn’t. Well, that’s what I thought, so I sent him a little note. I said:
‘I was just wondering how sales of your drawings have gone on eBay, if you don’t mind me asking. I’m thinking of putting a few of my own pictures up for sale and wondering if there’s much of a market.
Hope to hear from you.
Some interesting stuff you’re selling there.
Cheers!’
To which thedoctorwhoguide2012 replied:
‘You know I’ve been a seller for a long time now and from my experience things WILL sell eventually if you give it time. I sometimes post things and they don’t sell the first time but then the second time around they sell for a high profit. With drawings, well you caught me on a good day. I just sold 3 drawings for £15 but it depend what they are, mine were eastenders drawings. BEWARE though Nazi Symbols are NOT allowed on eBay. Thank you very much for asking,.’
And it’s actually true that there were three EastEnders drawings up there last night that are no longer there.
So there you have it.
eBay.
And no, I have absolutely no idea why he imagined I want to put Nazi symbols on eBay either.
People are strange.
March 8, 2013
Feedback Friday :: What if…?
bulk :: 12st 11
mammoth walks :: 2.5
proper exercise :: 0
cigarettes smoked :: 0
bottles of wine drunk :: 1
new reviews for the book :: 1
bleak moments :: a few
high hopes :: a lot
blinding realisations :: 1
The book is dead! The book is dead!
Those are the bleak moments.
Thankfully, they are few and far between and thankfully, as Mark Coker, the guy behind Smashwords, points out again and again, ebooks are immortal. ‘Welcome to the never-ending book launch!’ My time will come. Plus I’ve been working very hard all week on lots of things related to the book. So we’ll see. Keep hope alive.
In the meantime, there’s this, which – I suppose – you might call a poem…
What if…?
What if I’d got married when I had the chance and now I had three kids and no time to waste still trying to be something I’m not?
What if I married the wrong twin?
What if I caught a train to a place that didn’t exist and by the time I got there, I was completely invisible?
What if my fairy godmother appeared and was about to grant me three wishes when I sneezed right in her mouth and she changed her mind?
What if I fell in love with someone across a crowded room and it turned out it was just my own reflection in one of those weird new mirrors
What if I had a magic umbrella that rained on me whenever I put it up in sunlight?
What if I was given 24 hours to live and I decided to spend them in a hammock, eating crisps?
What if my boss was berating me and instead of looking ashamed, I just smiled, put my finger in my mouth and started making popping noises
What if I joined the army and from the very first day I repeated everything my commanding officer said in a voice like Donald Duck?
What if I was being tickled by an old lady with six hands and I laughed so hard that my belly button came undone?
What if I discovered my kisses could heal the sick, but I didn’t bother healing anyone because I was too shy?
What if I wrote an ironic song called ‘Kissing Robert Mugabe’ and Mugabe heard it and asked me out on a date?
What if I fell down and sprained my ankle but insisted to everyone that I had broken my crown?
What if I cried ‘Wolf!’ in a pretentious art gallery and people assumed I was an installation, and then they were all eaten by the wolf?
What if I declared a thumb war on a boy with no thumbs, then I shouted ‘I win hands down!’ and the thumbless boy poked me in the eye?
What if I became Prime Minister and passed a law forbidding the wearing of scarves and then Audrey Tautou knitted me a really nice one?
What if I started making a man out of dough and raisins and then halfway through I realised I was making Jimmy Carr?
What if I coined the word ‘sporange (n) a meaningless word specifically invented to provide a rhyme for ‘orange’ and the OED gave me an OBE?
What if I invented a new drug that made people not want to take any more drugs and all the drug addicts took it and got addicted?
What if neo-Nazis bought up all the Kindles in the world and burnt them?
What if the Three Little Pigs, having pooled their resources, got a place together, and the wolf just came in through the window?
What if one day all the world’s religious people suddenly said, ‘OK, let’s stop this. It’s silly…’ and then it started raining human eyes?
What if the princess from The Princess and the Pea stopped being such a moaning, self-centred cow, got off her arse and got a fucking job?
What if, in The Princess and the Pea, it wasn’t actually a pea at all, but was in fact a tumour?
What if kittens were carcinogenic?
What if Jesus came back and just as He was about to start preaching again, He lost His faith and started talking about Justin Bieber?
What if I stuffed a cushion up my jumper and said, ‘I am a hunchback!’ and then the wind changed and I was blown down a hill?
What if I took off all my skin and meat and muscles but instead of finding a skeleton, I found a 15-year-old Anne Frank playing Solitaire?
What if I made a kite of human skin but the moment I tried to fly it, the sky filled with the screams of all my victims?
What if instead of beards, all men could grow a profound empathy with womankind?
What if God existed but instead of a decent, all-loving deity, He was a despicable, unremittingly odious sociopath?
What if EL James and Dan Brown had a baby that grew up to be a really good writer who couldn’t get published?
What if I keep plugging away at the book, then suddenly it breaks out, sells over a million copies and my life completely changes?
Seriously though. What then?
This weekend I’m staying indoors and writing. What about you? You doing anything spectacular? Do tell. Without you I’m nothing.
x
March 7, 2013
Fat Thursday
Two years ago this week I was in Ivrea for the Battle of the Oranges. This is Ivrea…
This was when I was trying to travel Around the World in 80 Festivals. Remember that? Christ, I gave up a damn fine office job for that ludicrous dream. I could have still been there to this day I reckon – in that office, or another identical office. I’d probably have my own flat somewhere in London by now too, and I’d be trapped forever and ever in a hideous cycle of work and weekends and mortgage payments. Thank the Lord for ludicrous dreams.
The Battle of the Oranges was the third of four festivals I managed to visit. I wrote about it on a site I had at the time, but then I let the site die. Just like my dreams. Well, just like that one dream. I have others.
Before going to Ivrea, I was under the impression that all I would see there was people throwing oranges at one another. In the end, oranges were just a small part of the whole Ivrea carnival experience.
I arrived in Ivrea on Giovedì Grasso (Fat Thursday). Giovedì Grasso is the last Thursday before Lent, which begins, six days later, on Ash Wednesday. This is apparently a good enough reason to eat, drink, dress up and make merry in the streets. And why the hell not? If it were up to me, every Thursday would be fat.
The family I was staying with were brilliant – breezy and bouncy and silly and super-generous – and within a couple of hours of arriving in Ivrea, I had been wined, dined and dressed as a very colourful clown.
In Ivrea, Fat Thursday is also the inauguration of Carnival Week, which begins with dressing up and hitting the town and ends with the mass consumption of cod and polenta.
Spring, of course, was the reason we were there. Carnival exists because Spring exists and I had felt all day – all week – that Spring was just around the corner. I had just returned from Krakow where the snow had barely let up. I had spent a day or two in Bologna, where the snow had followed me across Europe. But on the day I travelled to Ivrea, things seemed to be brightening up. The snow stayed in Bologna and by the time I got to Milan, it was miserable and wet and the snow was a thing of the past. Then, about an hour before we were due to leave the house, the arms of Spring – like the doors to a sex dungeon – snapped shut, and winter stormed back in to give us all one final thrashing.
When it came, the snow came thick and fast and soupy, but it did nothing to dampen spirits. Festive flurries of fat flakes fell upon clowns and fairies and pirates and ladybirds and nuns and priests and wizards and giraffes and giant bees and Vikings and surgeons and Red Indians and playing cards and bullfighters and ballerinas and Mexicans and Teletubbies and Christs and the occasional Berlusconi.
Although snow is not unheard of on Fat Thursday, it is fairly rare. Consequently, my hosts and guides for the evening were prone to bemoan, feeling that the snowfall had adversely affected turnout, but the turnout was pretty amazing as far as I was concerned and for once I felt compelled to defend the beastly weather; for once it genuinely seemed to make the evening more special. After all, we were there, all of us were there because the Winter was ending – before all the religion got tacked on, before all the stories, it was the change of season that made this time of year significant. So it seemed only right that it was going out with a bang.
This year, here in the East Midlands, there is no bang. There are no giant bees, no tripe and beans, no two days of diarrhoea, no oranges. But the winter is ending anyway, and the weather is changing, and it’s time to make contact with some farmers.
Until tomorrow.
