Dane Cobain's Blog, page 30

Introducing Come On Up to the House

Hi, folks! Today is an exciting day for me because it’s time for me to share some information about my upcoming horror screenplay and novella, Come On Up to the House.

I’ll be sharing an exclusive cover reveal for the new book, as well as the blurb and some further information, like a book trailer and some promotional stuff. So read on to find out more!

 

 

Doesn’t life seem nasty, brutish and short?

This horror novella and accompanying screenplay tells the story of Darran Jersey, a troubled teenager who moves into a house that’s inhabited by the malevolent spirit of his predecessor.

As time goes by and the family begins to settle, Darran begins to take on more and more of the qualities of James, the dead teenager who committed a bloody suicide.

As tragedy after tragedy threatens to destroy the family, Darran’s mother Alice decides to leave the house behind and start afresh, but is it too late?

Find out when you Come On Up to the House…

 

Dane Cobain – Come On Up to the House

 

Come On Up to the House will be released on Monday 5th December in paperback and e-book formats. In the meantime, there’s plenty you can do to help!

First up, you can pre-order the book or pledge your support over on IndieGogo. There are all sorts of cool benefits up for grabs, including signed copies that will be released ahead of the general public release and the chance to have your name included in the acknowledgements of a future release.

Then there’s the Thunderclap, which is a bit like Kickstarter for social sharing. You can pledge to post an update on Twitter or Facebook to support the book’s release, and if enough people pledge to help out then all of the posts go out and I get exposure to all of your friends and followers!

Finally, there’s the book trailer, which you can view at the top of this post or by clicking here to visit it on YouTube. I’d appreciate a share of that as well!

Thanks, as always, for reading, and be sure to sign up to my mailing list to hear about new releases and special offers as and when they happen. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter, or click here to check out my books on Amazon. I’ll see you soon!

Announcing the Eyes Like Lighthouses Live Stream!

Hi, folks! I’ve got a fun little announcement for you today – especially if you like my spoken word.

That’s right, I’ll be live-streaming Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home – my poetry collection – by performing it in its entirety from memory. There are 101 poems in the book, and a hell of a lot of words to remember, and so it should be quite the challenge!

 

 

The live stream will take place simultaneously on Facebook and YouTube from 6PM – 8PM UK time on Saturday December 17th, and you can mark your attendance on the Facebook page right here for a reminder when we’re about to get started.

In the meantime, be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter, and to sign up to my mailing list for further updates. You can also grab a copy of Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home right here. I’ll see you soon!

A Cake to the Face

It’s another year

of American breakfasts!

You’re not allowed

to not have fun

‘cause you are not

the only one.

Neil is insinuating

that he has one l;ast

big guess.

Let there be communication!

Let there be birthday celebrations

and godless congregations!

Let there be an open space

with your name on it,

a place to wait

with paper plates,

no time to communicate

with cake in your face,

don’t let me be

misunderstood.

At this time of year

the poplars look lovely

if you can be bothered

to look at the trees.

Ever heard of the rule of three?

It’s like Veni Vidi Vici

or three-part harmony,

education, education, education

in the way we share information,

you repeat things three times

and it sticks in the mind

sometimes.

It’s like a candle

you can’t blow out;

we’re here to lift the cover

and shine the light in

like lightning.

It’s like a cake to the face

in a three-legged race;

Sunday Assembly,

where you never know

what’s going to happen.

BOO!

Coming Soon: Audio Books! Want to be a voice actor?

Hi, folks! I’ve got something a little different for you today – basically, I just wanted to update you on a little something that I’m working on. I’ve started work on recording audio books for some of my releases, and hope to have something to share early in the new year!

I’ll be working with my friend Nick Reffin, who’s an audio engineer, to try to polish them and make them sound as professional as possible. As part of that, I’m on the lookout for people who’d be interested in voicing some of the different characters.

I’ll need men and women of all ages, and all you’ll need is some recording software and a device capable of recording. The better the quality of your setup, the better, but we can fix a certain amount of noise etc. in production.

If you’re interested, please drop me an e-mail to let me know your availability, preferably with a short clip of you reading a sentence or two from a book of your choice so that I can get a feel for which characters you’d be suitable for.

Keep your eyes peeled in the new year for audio books of Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home and Social Paranoia – which don’t require multiple voice actors because they don’t contain dialogue – for more of an idea of what the end result will sound like.

Thanks, as always, for all of your support, and be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter for further updates. You can also sign up to my mailing list or check out my books on Amazon for more. I’ll see you soon!

The True Book About Trees

I work to kill trees

or to melt sand into glass

for computer screens.

I use more ink

than a squid might think

to bring the quids in,

use hours and hours

of pointless manpower

to turn my thoughts from the shower

into words to devour,

and in another life

I was a lumberjack.

My hands weren’t made

for manual labour;

I savour the way

my brain behaves

and write words

on the page,

and maybe

I’m going crazy.

My computer

steals electricity;

I feed it and feed it

and it eats and eats

and then EDF Energy

tries to smash my door in;

it’s just a game we play

with multinational corporations,

but I can’t pay my debts

with free exposure.

So I cut down more trees

to spread words like disease,

a Dawkins meme

from The Selfish Gene

and it seems so easy

to mean something.

I meant every word

I ever said.

From the Mouth of a Cat

I will fight you

puny human,

you’re just a giant rat

in a baseball cap.

Stroke me,

stroke me now;

stroke me now

before I start to growl

and howl your tiny

house down.

You call that a garden?

Mrs Jones down the road

grows roses,

and she feeds me fishies

when I’m feeling greedy,

which is almost

all of the time.

I don’t have time

for your whining;

I sleep all night

and I sleep all day,

and then try to escape

when you’re away from me.

I remember Ancient Egypt;

the pharaohs had nothing

on me, my sweet.

Milk.

Bring me milk.

Bring me milk

from the empty skulls

of a thousand virgins.

Hold the door,

Hodor,

you’ve got to let

me out.

Let me out.

Let me out.

Let meowt.

Let meowt.

Meowt.

Meow.

Meow.

Meow.

Dead Kids On Wentworth Street

Come on up to the house

it’s got a corpse

in a tiny bedroom.

It’s got James Davies

with his throat slit

and a little bit of blood,

bad vibes,

rolling down the road

to Mr. Rombach’s place.

And the estate agent

doesn’t even mention it;

no “No smokers,

pets or hellish non-entities,

no undead kids

with a gash on their wrists,

asll sick and twisted.”

Your dog

would not like

to bite you;

seriously

it might start to froth

at the mouth.

And Darran’s dad’s

a handyman,

a handy man

to have around,

until he falls to the ground

and gets back up again.

Beware the house

has many secrets,

and the blood runs red

from a hospital bed.

James,

I might be coming

to get you.

COMPETITION: Win a Character Named After You!

Hi, folks! I’ve got something a little special for you today – you could win the chance to have a character named after you in one of my upcoming novels!

And it’s simple, too – your entries will help me to generate some publicity, and if you’re lucky then you’ll be immortalised in fiction, too! Here’s how you can enter:

#1: Post a review on Amazon or Goodreads

Review one of my books, take a screenshot of your review and share it with me on either Facebook or Twitter!

#2: Take a photo of yourself reading one of my books

You can do this with either an e-reader or a paperback – just make sure that you can see your face and the title of the book!

#3: Refer a friend

Let a friend know about my work and get them to either tweet me or post on my wall saying you introduced them to me!

 

 

I’ll be listing every instance of any of these three entry methods between October 1st and December 31st 2016, with the winner revealed in early 2017. You can enter multiple times with each of the different entry options, so get to it!

As always, you can sign up to my mailing list or you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter for further updates. You can also buy my books from Amazon, so click here to check that out. I’ll see you soon!

Youth Voices 4 Justice Benefit Gig Wrap-Up

Hi, folks! I’ve got something a little bit different to you today. A short while back, I was lucky enough to be invited to perform at the Youth Voices 4 Justice Benefit show at Six Ways Erdington Baptist Church. It was a great night, in aid of a fantastic cause – 4WardEver UK, which I’m going to tell you all about.

The organisation’s tagline is “the voice of youth affected by custody deaths”, and it exists to support a number of different fundraising organisations and to raise awareness of custody deaths in general. In fact, it’s considered by many to be a controversial subject, despite statistics showing that it is actually a problem, and so the event organisers struggled to find a venue that would put the show on. Eventually, they settled on Six Ways Baptist Church in Erdington, which is a little outside Birmingham and so probably contributed to the  (relatively) disappointing turnout.

But there were still a couple of dozen people there, and it seems to me that the problem with putting on an event like this is that people don’t really think about it unless they’ve been directly affected. One of the things that I learned from the evening, though, is that custody deaths could affect anyone – it’s not just IC3 males from underprivileged areas, because it can happen to women and children too, even at psychiatric institutes where people are supposedly being detained for their own safety.

 

4WardEver UK

 

I think the problem is often that people don’t want to be seen to be criticising the police. I’m not a huge fan of the police, but I’m not exactly NWA either. I see the reason for their existence, and just hope that I’ll never have to deal with them. The problem is that they’re only human, and humans make mistakes. Ultimately, though, if that mistake costs someone their life then they need to be held accountable.

The families of the victims of custody deaths are offered little to no support, and for every one large case that you hear of in the media, there are a dozen others that go unreported. Even when you do hear about it, it’s usually in an abstract way, and you don’t tend to realise that it’s not just a story in a newspaper – it’s a real human being.

Which is why I decided to do a write-up of the event, to get the word out. I’m going to have a quick chat to you about the night itself, and then list a few places where you can go to find out more.

 

Youth Voices 4 Justice Promo

 

Now, in all fairness, there was a lot of waiting around at the event, but that was partly because we got there early and partly because there was a break for food, which was a nice touch. Throughout the event, we heard the real-life stories of the people who’ve been affected by deaths in custody, and there were a group of relatives there as guests of honour.

The evening was kicked off by the screening of a film called ‘BURN‘, a grass-roots documentary which takes a look at why Tottenham burned during the London riots, including at the deep-rooted reasons behind it. We were also treated to musical performances from Lil D (a rapper and film-maker, who was also documenting the night) and Call Me Unique, a singer-songwriter who used a loop pedal, an acoustic guitar and her voice to blend together a bunch of different genres.

Then there was my performance – I did a couple of poems, including Anonymous’ White Mask of Freedom, Automatic Po-Po, Fear and Groupthink to name a few, although I’m pretty sure I did more. It’s hard to tell – I went in there with a plan, but then I didn’t follow it. Standard!

All in all, then, it was a fantastic evening, and a pleasure to learn more about the causes and to find out how to support them. Speaking of which, be sure to check out the links below to find out more about some of the organisations involved, and be sure to keep your browser pointed to DaneCobain.com to hear more about new shows, new poems and other new news.

ORGANISATIONS LIST:

4WardEverUK
Mikey Powell Campaign
Red Alert Help
United Families and Friends

Names and Fame

Tom Waits

for no man;

Frank Sinatra,

wherever Atra is,

and Bob’s the ghost

of Jacob Marley.

Janis Joplin

even though Jan

hates jops,

but she’s not a racist.

Conor Oberst

out through his eyes

and Mike Mogis

joking.

Then there’s a Dane

on the M Ward,

probably because Donna

kebab ain’t vegetarian.

Bill Hicks

up and down

like a rollercoaster,

just a ride

in Drayton Manor

Theme Park.

Bruce Lee

bruised Lee

easily;

Jackie Chan can

like a Chinese man,

and Chine White

is right,

alright?

Jimmy Wales

even though it’s not sustainable;

damn you Jimmy,

I gave you my pocket money!

I’m in a Nicholas cage

of my own creation.