Dane Cobain's Blog, page 38

Competition & Announcement: Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home Book Launch!

Hi, folks! Exciting times today – I wanted to let you know about the release date for my new book of poetry, Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home, and what better way to let you know about that than with a competition?

You could win a £10 Amazon voucher by getting involved through social media, and the competition allows you to enter multiple times so be sure to come back each day for an extra chance at winning. The competition will be running until midnight on Thursday 31st March – best of luck!

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

The book itself will be launched on Tuesday 22nd March, and there’s going to be an online launch event on Facebook for you to get involved for a chance to win some fantastic prizes whilst learning about new authors. Click here to check that out.

We’ll also be having a physical launch party here in High Wycombe at the Rose and Crown. That’s going to happen on the evening of Thursday 31st March, so get the date in your diaries and I’ll see you there!

 

Dane Cobain – Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home

 

Eyes Like Lighthouses is Dane Cobain’s first book of poetry, distilled from the sweat of a thousand memorised performances in this reality and others. It’s not for the faint-hearted.

“I’ve never seen anyone do a stream of consciousness piece as talented as that. Very impressed.” – Mark Allard-Will, author of Saskatch-A-Man and co-founder of Cuckoo’s Nest Press

“Dane’s poetry is a multi-layered spiral of the macabre, quirky humour and disjointed imagery. Not only does he make you think, he captures the small forgotten moments of everyday life.” – Nikki Dudley, co-editor of Streetcake Magazine

“…[Dane] combines concrete detail with socioeconomic concerns.” – Lorna Wood, associate editor of Gemini Magazine

The post Competition & Announcement: Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home Book Launch! appeared first on DaneCobain.com.

New Song: Catch Me Out and Defeat Me

Hi, folks! Today, I just wanted to post a quick update to let you know about a new song that I wrote, called ‘Catch Me Out and Defeat Me’. Before you ask, I have no idea what it’s about – I never do, when I write songs.

What’s interesting about this song is that it’s pretty much impossible for me to play it live – I recorded it on a guitar that had only four strings, and they were tuned in a weird set up so that you can’t really replicate it on a normal guitar. Sounded pretty cool, though.

 

 

You can check out the demo of the song in the player above, or head over to my YouTube channel for more music and stuff.  You can also find my first two albums, Nocturne and Sketches, on Spotify and iTunes.

If that’s not enough, you could always follow me on Facebook and Twitter for further updates. I’ll see you soon!

Probable Cause

I finally realised

life is like a tower of cards

and maybe you use glue or something

or steal cards from someone else

but you’re basically trying

to build up this tower,

without knocking it down.

 

Some people get married

and attain some next level

tower of card shit,

and then they take a hairdryer,

in the form of an affair

or a crippling gambling addiction,

and try to knock down their house

of cards.

 

Some people build their tower

with love and compassion and

something like cancer comes along

and fucks it all up for them,

but hey that’s life

and any one is as good as another

I guess.

 

Me,

I left my cards

in a wallet

I lost

somewhere.

Change is afoot: Plans for my music in the future!

Hi folks! Just wanted to post a quick update to let you know about some change that’s afoot – I’m going to stop working on my One Man Band series on YouTube, and I’m going to do a big audit of all of the videos to determine which ones should stay up there. A lot of them sound pretty bad, and it’s not really a true reflection of me, and I also want to put less of an emphasis on my music anyway – I’d rather that people thought of me as a writer.

That doesn’t mean that I’ll stop doing music for good, though – I’ll still continue to write and record songs, and I might do the occasional new One Man Band video, but I won’t be doing it at such a rapid rate. That said, my own original music will still be coming along, and I have actually recently uploaded a couple of new tunes. I’ll also still be working on my third album, the follow-up to Sketches and Nocturne.

I’m also hopefully going to re-work the DaneCobain.com website, so that it’s a more accurate reflection of all of the stuff that I do. Music will still be featured on it, but it won’t be featured as prominently, and the primary focus will be my writing. Social media marketing won’t even get a mention – I’ll save that for LinkedIn!

Thanks, as always, for visiting, and for supporting me over the years. If you haven’t already, you can find me on Facebook and Twitter for further updates, and you can also check out some music on YouTube and SoundCloud if you’re curious. I’ll see you soon!

Barbecues in February

It’s a total change

for deranged mainframes,

dreams about rows of switches

and a kit with a cut on his cheek

holding a kitchen knife

between his teeth;

 

we fear change,

our minds have evolved over time

and we all have our choices to make

whether we stagnate and stay the same

or whether we change our names

and run away again,

and life is one big experiment

where you can’t control the variables,

so you have to draw conclusions

based on biased data,

but my conclusions

can wait

until later.

 

When you’re asleep,

the world turns on its axis,

and it’s practically fact

that this world

is not the world

you were born in,

not boring

but ever so slightly

mundane.

 

Still,

I can hear a blackbird

calling for its mother,

and spring is coming

and so is summer,

another summer of love

for all the loveless,

so I’ll go to barbecues

and not eat

in case the meat

contaminates my vegetables,

and besides,

I’d rather get drunk

than line my stomach.

New Song: Stand Right By Your Guns

Hi, folks! Just a quick update today to let you know about a new song that I wrote. I guess it’s inspired by some of the music that we’ve had on at work – a lot of old pop punk and stuff, which made me want to pick up my electric guitar.

Within the space of about three hours, I’d written something and recorded it, and edited it all together as a One Man Band video. You can check it out in the playlist below, or click here to view more of my One Man Band videos.

 

 

It’s been a while since I’ve written a new song, but maybe that’ll change and I’ll get back to it again. It’s hard to find time though, I have so much stuff going on that I’m basically just constantly working.

Anyway, if you’d like to check out some more of my music, you can check out my two home-recorded albums, Nocturne and Sketches. Oh, and don’t forget to follow me on Facebook and Twitter!

Come On Up to the House: An Excerpt

That night, Darran woke with a start, sitting up suddenly in bed and sweating and gasping for breath. He’d had a nightmare, a bad one – visions of the shed, of blood and death and pestilence. Fucking you ‘til your bones break.

It was like a breath on the wind, the faint, subtle sound of a piece of music, tinny and distorted but clearly audible. Suddenly, a poster peeled from the wall, whispering its way to the floor in the darkness.

“What the fuck?” Darran shouted. In the darkness, he had no way of knowing what had happened, but he’d heard movement and movement was enough to scare the shit out of him after a nightmare like that.

Then there was a knock at the window, and Darran’s room was up a flight of stairs, so who the hell was out there? He climbed out of bed to investigate, the floorboards creaking as he shifted his weight across the room. He yanked back the curtain and discovered the source of the noise – the branches of the old oak tree were rattling in the wind, and tapping at his window like an uninvited guest at a house party.

Darran breathed a sigh of relief and turned around; as he did so, the lights flicked on by themselves, and his nightmare was back, only this time he was living it. The walls were spattered with blood, and a deep, scarlet stain covered the carpet. Darran didn’t know it, but he was looking at the room as it was left by its previous inhabitant, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

He ran to the door and tried to open it, but the bolt was jammed fast and refused to budge, no matter how heavily he hammered at it. He tried to call for help, but his throat had dried up and he couldn’t get the words out; then, the light went back out again, leaving the moonlight to filter in through the window to light the room in an eerie glow.

A shadow passed before it, a quick, blurry movement. Nothing can take me higher. Darran passed out as the music in his ears grew louder.

The post Come On Up to the House: An Excerpt appeared first on DaneCobain.com.

Come On Up to the House: A Teaser

It was a standard, suburban street; an elderly couple was hobbling down the street with their arms intertwined, the sun shone down on the wanted ads in the window of the local corner shop, a policeman stopped in at the bookies to put his money down for the weekend’s derby, and a white van pulled up past a For Sale sign and onto the crunchy asphalt of the driveway of 23 Wentworth Road.

The front garden was surrounded by a white picket fence, with two tall oak trees and a rusty trailer that was covered by a rain-soaked tarpaulin. On days like these, the house looked lived in, and almost inviting.

The van crawled to a stop, and Dave Jersey stepped out of the driver’s seat and onto the asphalt. He made his way to the back of the van and stretched in the sunlight, his middle-aged body putting up a fight against the unwanted activity. He smiled; there’s be more of that to come – that was for sure.

Dave popped open the lock and looked inside the vehicle, whistled and walked towards the front door. It was a long walk through the garden, and as he stood in the overgrown crass and craned his neck to look up at the house, he fell in love with the place. He started to think about the future that his family would have there, and his retirement years when he could tend the gardens in his own time, growing tomatoes and cabbages.

“Come on!” Darran shouted, jolting his old man back to the here and now. “Let’s go inside.”

Dave grunted and looked back at the van. “Give me a hand with these boxes,” he said.

Darran shrugged and walked towards the front of the house, empty-handed.

Inside, the house was covered with dust and in need of repair, although not inhospitable. Its ancient beams made it feel already lived in, and the sun shone through the large bay windows to light up the living room.

It also felt lived in because the Davies family had left in a real fucking hurry.

The post Come On Up to the House: A Teaser appeared first on DaneCobain.com.

Cover Reveal: Dane Cobain – Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home

Hi, folks! Big news today – I wanted to share the brand new cover for my upcoming poetry book, Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home.

This will be my first book of poetry, and it’s being released by Booktrope within the next couple of months. The awesome cover art was created by Michelle Fairbanks of Fresh Design, and it’s so fricken cool that I wanted to share it with you now so that you could get as excited as I am before its release. Enjoy!

 

Dane Cobain – Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home

 

Eyes Like Lighthouses is Dane Cobain’s first book of poetry, distilled from the sweat of a thousand memorised performances in this reality and others. It’s not for the faint-hearted.

“I’ve never seen anyone do a stream of consciousness piece as talented as that. Very impressed.” – Mark Allard-Will, author of Saskatch-A-Man and co-founder of Cuckoo’s Nest Press

“Dane’s poetry is a multi-layered spiral of the macabre, quirky humour and disjointed imagery. Not only does he make you think, he captures the small forgotten moments of everyday life.” – Nikki Dudley, co-editor of Streetcake Magazine

“…[Dane] combines concrete detail with socioeconomic concerns.” – Lorna Wood, associate editor of Gemini Magazine

The post Cover Reveal: Dane Cobain – Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home appeared first on DaneCobain.com.

Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home: An Update!

Hi, folks! I just wanted to give you a quick update on Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home, my book of poetry. It’s currently going through its final round of proofreading and will be off to layout shortly afterwards, and I’m hoping for a tentative release date of February 29th, just because it seems crazy not to shoot for such a unique date for such an unusual project.

The good news is that it’s almost there, and so the main delay will come from layout and from getting the book listed on Amazon, but with a bit of luck, it should be out in time. In the meantime, the cover reveal is scheduled for next Friday (29th January), so keep your eyes peeled for that – it was designed by Michelle Fairbanks of Fresh Design, and it looks awesome!

I’ve also been hard at work memorising the poems from the book, and I’m up to about 85 poems (of a total of 101). I don’t think I’ll have finished memorising them all by the time that the book comes out, but I’ll be close. Which brings me onto my next point.

I’m probably going to look into setting up a physical launch party for the book, either in High Wycombe or in Marlow. That would be likely to be in early March, to make sure that the book is out and in my hands so that people can buy it. I’ll let you know how that goes and keep you updated!

In the meantime, thanks as always for reading, and be sure to check back often to see how things are coming along. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter for further updates. I’ll see you soon!

The post Eyes Like Lighthouses When the Boats Come Home: An Update! appeared first on DaneCobain.com.