K.P. Webster's Blog, page 27

To This Day

There is a poem by a man called Shane Koyczan. The poem is called To This Day and it’s about Koyczan’s experiences – and others’ experiences – of being bullied. It’s recently been animated and has gone hugely viral on YouTube. You may have seen it already, but just in case you haven’t, I thought I might put it here, because it’s very powerful and you should definitely see it… 

 

 

Also, if you want to see how far bullying can go, you might want to start reading these posts on Amanda Palmer‘s blog. It is extremely harrowing, but there is also plenty of stuff to warm the heart. 

 

…our lives will only ever always  continue to be  a balancing act

that has less to do with pain and more to do with beauty….

 

 

Conversation Piece

As many of you will know, I am currently living in England, looking after my mum for a while – she’s doing very well, you’ll be pleased to hear.

 

Until three or four summers ago, my mum lived in Sunderland, which was where I was born and raised. For various reasons, I never liked the place. It always made me think of the Paul Simon song My Little Town, with its refrain, ‘Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town.’ 

 

Mansfield Woodhouse – where my mum is now, where I am now – is, in comparison to Sunderland, a veritable promised land. A kind of jewel-encrusted, serotonin-pumping paradise full of wondrous things and enchanting people.

 

I was wondering today if perhaps I’m being – or have always been – too hard on the North-East and I tried hard to think of something I missed about the place. The only thing I could think of was the coast. The last time I lived there – in 2009 for about six months – I bought a bicycle and I used to regularly cycle from Seaburn up to South Shields and sometimes beyond. And the coastline there is beautiful. Having said that, most coastlines are beautiful. One thing made this particular coastline special, however. Actually there were numerous things. There was this…

 

 

Which will always amuse me. And there was this: Conversation Piece by Juan Muñoz. And after much thought, I have decided, this is the only thing I miss about the North-East of England, a series of sculptures designed and created by a Spaniard. I hereby bequeath it to you…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See you tomorrow.

 

Photos first appeared here.

 

Feedback Friday :: More Than Zero

no. of days since last proper Feedback Friday :: 1,235

no. of days late with this Feedback Friday :: 3

bulk :: 12st 10 (not that I care massively but I’ve put on nearly a stone since I came back to look after my mum)

my mum :: doing very, very well indeed – operation wounds almost totally healed, chipperness returned

films wept at :: 3

book reviews rehashed :: 4 (at Goodreads)

book reviews received :: 15

books sold :: no idea

other jobs in pipeline :: 2

supermodels :: 0

gold :: 0

weeks remaining till I give up and go farming :: 13

 

So here we are, just over two weeks since I published The Lives and Loves of Hana Lee as an ebook and for some bizarre reason, my eyes – as yet – are neither stinging from the sweat of supermodels nor squinting from the gleam of gold coins. I’m joking of course. I actually have zero interest in supermodels and gold. Almost zero.

 

I have so little interest in gold in fact, that I have no idea how many copies my book has actually sold. At least, on Amazon I have no idea. On Smashwords I do, because Smashwords is much more transparent. And on Smashwords, it’s sold very close to no copies at all. Almost, in fact, zero.

 

I’m hoping, however, that this is because most people who read this blog don’t really know what Smashwords is yet. This is something I hope to help remedy in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I’m imagining, and again hoping, that most people will be buying the book from Amazon.

 

Oh, Amazon.

 

Amazon, Amazon, Amazon.

 

And at the moment, I’ve no idea how to find out from Amazon how many books I’ve sold, because as yet, I’ve deliberately refrained from informing myself. For the moment at least, I’ve got more important things to do.

 

For the moment I’ve got to concentrate on finding readers. In a way it’s a shame I chose to create original characters rather than churn out cheap copies of already existing if very poorly realised characters from some previously written bestselling garbage, because then I’d have a captive audience ready to … oh God, I’m sorry. For a moment there I fell back into resentful old ways.

 

I’ve just been reading about Snowqueens Icedragon, which was the name Erika Leonard used when she first started out, before she switched to EL James, and I’ve started getting all resentful again.

 

I really have to watch that.

 

It’s not good for me.

 

Resentment of others is the first manacle that must be cast off in the quest for freedom. So says Tom Hodgkinson in How To Be Free, the book I’m currently reading and thus far one of the most audacious, exciting, inspiring books I have ever read. We’ll talk about it in more detail when I’ve finished it. 

 

Which will be soon.

 

In the meantime, if it helps you fall in love, a song…

 

 

 

Until tomorrow.

 

Shalom. 

 

Some Signs, Some Notices and a Pencil Case

I once had a website devoted to typos I came across, but like many other things, it fell by the wayside. Probably for the best. I just came across those that I’d collected again recently, however, and a few of them made me titter. So I thought I might bequeath them to you.

 

Your welcome…

 

This is the pencil case.

 

Here are some shops signs…

 

This is in Peckham. Good old Peckham.

 

This is Burger King. They out of meet.

 

I love that they actually corrected the last part of the word ‘failure’. They must have been so relieved to have spotted it.

 

This is a fortune cookie…

 

…with some fishy advice.

 

This is not actually a typo…

 

It’s just silly.

 

Someone sent me this. I find it strangely beautiful…

 

I would like a newted tom.

 

A south London railway station…

 

Someone must be taking the piss.

 

Employment is wasted on the employed…

 

I  like the exclamation mark.

 

No mistake here either. Just … toads…

 

 

Migratory toads. Crossing.

 

I love migratory toads.

 

See you tomorrow. 

 

 

 

Seymore Butts :: Putting the Anal in Banal

Certain groups of people have something of a reputation for not being very bright. Football players, for example. Models. Boxers, BNP voters, Texans, people who work in Argos and, of course, porn stars. Now I don’t know if Seymore Butts is considered a cerebral giant in the world of porn, but let me tell you, when he isn’t ball-deep in stretched rectum, or else pointing a camera at someone who is, Seymore Butts does nothing for the reputation of his peers. For Seymore Butts - author of Rock Her World - is a moron. And I neither use this term lightly, nor mean it as an insult. What I mean is that, having studied Butts and the language he uses to convey his ideas…

 

 

 

…I have concluded that he has the mental age of someone aged between 8 and 12 years old, and therefore, according to the original medical classification, he is – unequivocally – a moron. And that is nothing to be ashamed of. At least he’s not an imbecile. But should Penguin really be paying him good money to write horrible, rancid books that undoubtedly damage our collective psyche? I’m not so sure they should.

 

‘This isn’t your ordinary book,’ says Butts at the offset. Of course, he’s flattering himself. This is barely a book at all. It’s more like a soiled bib around the neck of a slow-witted sex pest.

 

It could be, of course, that I am very wrong, and it’s actually more to do with the fact that I’m just not Butts’ target audience. I do use pornography, don’t get me wrong. But also, I read, and Butts’ readers don’t read. Just as Butts himself does not write. In the opening chapter, in a touchingly honest exchange, non-writer addresses non-reader and lays it on the line:

 

‘I realize you may not be used to reading anything without a centrefold and may look at the number of word-filled pages ahead and say, “Who the fuck has the time to read all that?”’

 

This is a nice touch. It immediately puts the reader at his ease. Essentially, Butts is saying: ‘Fear not, my oafish friend. I too, am a moron. We’re all friends here. Stupid horny men friends. At ease.’

 

I could stop there really, and I think you would agree that my loathing of this book is justified. But I’m not going to. Sadly, this is only just the beginning…

 

… 

 

To continue reading and enjoy a lovely little joke about a split infinitive, go to the full version at Goodreads, here. And while you’re there, if you’re feeling friendly, we can be friends. Friends! Book friends!

 

 

 

* This review was originally published in a slightly different form here.

Day One :: I Am a Writer

Things are changing. Around here I mean. Around these here parts. For one thing, I’m bringing blogging back.

 

This self-publishing lark, coupled – I won’t deny it – with the occasional trip to the kitchen window – has got me more excited than I have been for years. Since the early days of Bête de Jour in fact. 

 

I’m firing on a multiplexity of cylinders – ideas scattering out of me like crystal pixies from a broken kaleidoscope – some of them not so good – but some of them golden.

 

The first thing I have decided to do is start blogging again. Regularly I mean. Starting today with a blog post a day for the whole of March. Whenever I’ve said this in the past, I’ve done it. Frankly, because I don’t want to look like an arse. So I’m saying it now, because I’m doing it now.

 

I know there are people out there who say that blogging is dead – everything is dead according to some people – but I don’t buy it. The landscape has changed since I used to blog properly, for sure, and many of the people I used to read regularly and hear from regularly do seem to have fallen off the internet, or at least have turned their back on blogging. Many of them, I suspect, don’t need it anymore. I don’t need it either, frankly. But I want it. I want to start sharing myself again, like I used to when I was someone else.

 

My blog is my soul – kind of – and it needs bearing. No, wait. Baring. No, wait…. 

 

But also, apart from a book or two, it might possibly be the only physical thing I leave behind when I die (at least until the domain runs out), so it’s a kind of like a living will. Every post I publish is another part of me, another special little gift bequeathed to the world – whether the world wants it – or is even remotely aware of it – or not.

 

And none of this is about book sales. Self-publishing was the push, for sure, but my decision to blog again is bigger than my writing choices. It’s about my choices as a human being.

 

I’ve always had an enormous urge to get it all out there. It’s the first thing that fuels the writing. It’s also a hugely egotistical thing, in a certain light, but I don’t care for that particular light. I’m looking at it as a calling. Which is what it is. I’m interested in stories and how they help us grow. That’s all I’ve ever been interested in. Everyone has stories that are worth telling – everyone – and part of the urge to write is the urge to write the stories you know best. At least it is for me. And the stories I know best happen right under my nose.

 

Narrative begins at home.

 

I also find that I’m no longer embarrassed about talking about this stuff. The writing stuff. 

 

It took me a long time to be able to say, when I was asked what I did with my life, ‘I’m a writer.’ Then I learned how to say it, but for a long while I’d always qualify it with something – some would-be quip or snippy self-slander – in order to let the person I was talking to know that I knew there was something intrinsically ridiculous in what I was saying.

 

Well,  I’m over that.

 

I’m a goddamn writer.

 

That’s what I am. And what I’ve always been. And what I always will be.

 

And no amount of sales – inestimable or infinitesimal – will change that.

 

Aaaaah. 

 

That’s better.

 

This is exciting, isn’t it?

 

 

Here’s wishing you an absolutely wonderful Friday evening.

 

Until tomorrow.

 

X

 

Celebrate Every Triumph … Dance Your Inner Kitten to the Bouncing Broken Lace of Your Soul … Eat Teacakes

I found out this morning that the Smashwords edition of my critically acclaimed new novel The Lives and Loves of Hana Lee has achieved Smashwords Premium status at the first attempt. As this is unequivocally a good thing, I’m having a Smashwords Premium party. Right now. There will be cake.

 

There is cake!

 

When you’re going it alone, every minor triumph must be celebrated. With cake. With ice cream. With whatever. The treat is irrelevant. It is the celebration that counts. (I’m having ice cream.) (And cake.)

 

Look!

 

 

What this means is that the book will now be present and available for purchase in the virtual shop windows of a selection of commercial behemoths.

 

For those of you who are interested, here it is in more detail…

 

 

So that’s that. Progress.

 

Now I must return to the awareness-spreading campaign, which is currently proceeding with the kind of deep-simmering intensity normally reserved for people who stare a lot.

 

Selling yourself is a disconcerting business. That’s what I mean.  

 

Sometimes I’m afraid of being perceived as something I’m not, or at least as something I don’t think I am.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

It’s like when you go to the supermarket to buy teacakes but then the moment you get within 20 feet of the main entrance, a great waft of freshly toasted teacake aroma hits you full in the face. Like an old friend. But it’s not real. It’s olfactory marketing. Immediately you feel utterly compromised. You walk around the supermarket – the sweet, buttery, toast-crisp crunchy supermarket – and everywhere you look, the baskets and trolleys of raging saps are shiny with teacake-packets. But you can’t possibly buy teacakes now, not now they’ve been foisted upon you in such an insidious way, not now THE MAN is telling you to buy them. ‘I am not a victim of underhanded marketing techniques!’ you begin to shout. ‘I am too savvy for your psychological tricks!’

 

You buy the teacakes.

 

You feel dirty.

 

Or it’s like when you pick up a copy of The Sun on the tube and you wish there was a way to make people know that although you’re reading it, you have not paid for it and you also happen to despise it.

 

That’s how I sometimes feel.

 

I might be selling myself like a discounted bagel, but that doesn’t mean I’m worthless.

 

Read my book. You’ll enjoy it. Write a review.

 

Thanks.

 

The Heartbreaking Loneliness of Long Distance Running (With Scissors)

Yesterday morning I finished formatting The Lives and Loves of Hana Lee for Smashwords, so it is now available to download there, and if it passes formatting muster will soon be available for sale in the Apple store and various other places.

 

Last night I managed to get it on to Goodreads.

 

This morning I woke up thinking the whole thing was pointless and that I was wasting my time and almost certainly heading for disappointment, disillusionment and clinical depression.

 

I don’t like mornings like this, but they are par for the course.

 

It’s got me thinking.

 

One of the good things about being published by a traditional publishing house – such as HarperCollins, who published the Bête de Jour book – is that you have occasional conversations with publishing professionals – either editor or agent in my experience – and they say things like, ‘We’re going to make a lot of money!’ or ‘I see this book sitting alongside A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Running With Scissors‘ or ‘You really have written a brilliant book’ – and you, on hearing these things, despite yourself, you think, ‘Wow! These are publishing professionals! These people know what they’re talking about. Surely, finally, I cannot fail.’ And that feels good. More than the flannel (which you’re cynical and world-weary enough not to fully believe anyway), you feel like you’re not alone.

 

One of the horrible things about being published by a traditional publishing house is that, when the book doesn’t immediately start flying out of bookshop doors, you realise pretty quickly that you are in fact completely alone.

 

One of the good things about self-publishing is that it’s all up to you. Everything is up to you. So you can do what you want. No one’s going to be pissed off with you if you say something inappropriate on your blog. No one’s going to promise to do a million things for you, then let you down and do none of them.

 

One of the horrible things about self-publishing is that you are in fact completely alone.

 

And some days, when you wake up on your ailing mother’s living room floor and your back is aching and you realise you haven’t properly kissed a woman for well over a year – I mean, properly – and you know that your book’s chances of getting even a tiny percentage of the attention you feel it deserves are infinitesimal, well … I don’t know. It’s tough. And then when you realise – whilst in a static unsmiling queue at the doctor’s surgery – that you’ve been doing this for very close to 30 years….

 

It’s upsetting.

 

But you have to keep going. Obviously. And you have to accentuate the positive. Apparently. 

 

Speaking of which, here are the reviews the book has picked up so far.

 

They’re all good, which is nice, and even nicer is that I’m not sure I actually know everyone who’s written them, although let’s face it, at this very early stage, I probably do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t get the Forrest Gump reference in the slightest, but I like the recommendation to THE WHOLE WORLD!

 

So, another hundred or so reviews like those and the book might begin to get noticed. Please add yours when you have a moment.

 

Thanks.

 

Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now…

I thought about making The Lives and Loves of Hana Lee free for the first month or so, in the hope that more people would read it. But in the end I decided against it. Instead, I’m encouraging anyone who buys it and likes it to simply give it away.

 

That’s the great thing with digital products, isn’t it? You can just stick them in an email and pass them on to a friend, like an infinitely replicating sandwich.

 

Or like a hug. I want you to think of my book as a literary hug.

 

 

Obviously, there’s a downside to all this in that if no one ever actually buys a copy, there’ll be a gap in my Lower West Side till I give up and get a proper job. (Which I don’t think will ever happen.) But my feeling is that the more the book is read and recommended, the more it will eventually be bought.

 

The recommendation part is key though.

 

Here’s my ideal scenario…

 

Everyone who reads and enjoys a copy of the book – that either they’ve bought or that has been given to them by me (like a hug) – then gives a copy to as many friends as they have who they think might also like it.

 

Also, they leave a review on Amazon. (And later on Goodreads, Smashwords, Lushlex, etc, etc, etc.) (Lushlex will exist one day.)

 

I reckon if enough people read it and like it and rate and review it online, then strangers will start buying.

 

Piracy is profit.

 

Give it away.

 

Oh, and do drop me a line if you’d like a free copy.

 

Big love.

 

The Lives and Loves of Hana Lee :: A Gift For You On Valentine’s Day (Yes, You)

Because I love you – yes, you, you big sap – because I love you, I’m giving you the uniquely beautiful gift of fictional love. But real fictional love.

 

The novel I wrote – entitled, in the end, The Lives and Loves of Hana Lee - finally went up on Amazon this morning. And it is most certainly a romantic tale. With a little death in it.

 

Here I shall give you a flavour of the book.

 

Here is the cover…

 

 

Created by NotKeith to an ever-changing design in my fickle head, it took us a while to get there but we got there, and I love it. 

 

Thanks, NotKeith. Half of everything I earn from this book is yours. Not literally half. But a figurative half. Once I’ve paid for my tooth. No, before, before. My mouth can wait.

 

Here also, to further whet your appetite, are some of the nice things that people who read a late draft said – I’m not going to give their names because I haven’t asked their permission, but hopefully before long they will be repeating their praise (and none of their criticism) on Amazon, so you can see for yourself:

 

‘Totally gripped. BRILLIANT idea. Freaky and compelling and awesome …  I really love it. The story is bonkers, but not so much that you can’t relate or enjoy it … I love the relationships, and I LOVE your descriptions. It’s also gripping, surprising and very, very exciting. I love this book. I was so sad it had ended.’

 

‘Love your book. So many questions, though. I think lots of them boil down to “Karl, are you secretly a woman?/How the fuck do you know?” … I honestly thought such anger could only come from a woman.’

 

‘You should be proud of this book. It’s full of great concepts – really full of them – and great ideas and great writing. And humanity. Tons of humanity. And tenderness. Let’s face it, you’re a radical lesbian separatist feminist trapped in a straight man’s body, aren’t you?’

 

Those reviews were all from women, which made me particularly pleased, because the novel is largely about women, and when one is writing about women as a man, one is always afraid that one is about to show one’s arse. If you’ll pardon the expression.

 

These two are from men:

 

‘I was pretty much blown away by it … The plotting felt very tight: there wasn’t a single wasted chapter. And some sections were genuinely horrifying … I hope it sells. I think it could. It’s sexy and mysterious and mad, and it deserves to be read.’

 

‘The story seemed to be the work of a woman, in as much as it seemed to express really well a woman’s perspective on sex, life, men and relationships. So that was an impressive feat on your part. Bloody brilliant. It was a great plot too. How would you market it, though? ‘A darkly comic, lightly pornographic and blood-red horror story of breathtaking originality.’ That would almost do it justice.’

 

There were criticisms of course, but that’s the advantage of having people read early drafts for you. You’re able to iron out the rough spots and make the book perfect.

 

Ho ho.

 

No, really. It’s perfect. 

 

I had a couple of agents get back to me too. Actually I had a few agents get back to me. Of the approximately 12 I contacted, approximately five got back to me with variations on ‘What an intriguing concept. No, thanks.’

 

Then one agent actually read it and had this to say:

 

‘I really enjoyed Come Die With Me [as it was called at that stage] – it’s so original and really compelling. Part of the reason I have taken so long to come back to you is because I’ve really been in two minds about it. However, I’ve decided that I just don’t think I’m the right agent for this. Not because it isn’t great or that I don’t think it will sell – more because I’m not sure I have the right editor relationships for this book.’

 

This agent – a big one too, who has her name above the door – went on to recommend another agent who had this to say:

 

‘I loved your submission letter, and you seem great, but I think this is just a mash-up of too many genres for me to figure out where I’d place it. You can really write, but I’d just not be confident in figuring out which publishers to send to, or how they’d publish it. Very sorry to have bad news and I really hope you find someone who gets it and loves it.’

 

At this point, I had the option of approaching other agents who’d been recommended to me or doing it myself. But with each recommendation there’s a wait of at least a month or two, usually more, and my teeth were beginning to fall out, so I thought, ‘Balls to it.’ That’s what I thought. I thought, ‘I’ll do it myself.’

 

So here we are.

 

Whether you buy this book or not, chances are you’ll find a copy in your inbox very soon as I intend to send copies to as many people as I know in the hope that they’ll read it, like it as much as the people above, and recommend it to all their friends.

 

If it’s going to succeed, after all, it’ll only succeed on the strength of warm word-of-mouth.

 

Which in turn will buy me a new tooth. 

 

You see? It’s like an ouroboros. A sexy ouroboros.

 

Anyway, if you read it, I really hope you enjoy it. 

 

And happy Valentine’s Day to you. Especially if you’re on your own and are susceptible to marketing. 

 

Big love.