Dane Cobain's Blog, page 7

A Twitter Cleanup

Hi, folks! So I’ve spent the last couple of weeks going on a Twitter cleanup, unfollowing accounts that I no longer have any interest in. I’ve had my Twitter account for close to ten years and there are people on there that I don’t even know.

It’s actually something that I recently did on Instagram, too. When you follow so many people that you can’t even remember who they are, it’s difficult to actually get any use out of it. That was certainly the case for my Instagram account, which I’d pretty much stopped using because of it.

The way that I use Twitter has evolved throughout the years, and so unfollowing the irrelevant accounts will hopefully make it all much more fun, both for myself and for the people that I follow. At the same time, though, I know that there are people who’ll notice that I’ve unfollowed them and who will take it personally. Sorry about that.

 

Twitter

 

Ultimately, clearing my feeds is good for my mental health, and so I decided to put that first. If you think I’ve unfollowed you by accident (that also happens) then feel free to tweet me and I’ll see about fixing it.

And so on that note, I’m going to go and head off and unfollow some more people, because I still have more work to do. The good news is that I’m already actually enjoying using Twitter, at least most of the time, which is almost unheard of. For the last ten years, it’s just been something that I’ve had to use for work.

In the meantime, feel free to give me a follow if you fancy it, and you can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, among other social networking sites. You can also check out my books here for further info. I’ll see you soon.

Book News: Driven and The Future of Healthcare

Hi, folks! Okay, so it’s been a little while since I’ve written an update about my books and stuff, but I have a little bit of book news to share and so let’s just jump straight in.

The first thing to talk about is Driven, the first book in the Leipfold series. I released Driven independently earlier this year, and I’m pleased to announce that it’s been picked up for publication by a company called Encircle Publications.

Encircle started out as a specialist publisher of poetry books before branching out into mystery fiction, which is interesting because I suppose it follows my own development as a writer. It’s still early days and so I can’t tell you too much about what’s happening, but if you keep your eyes peeled then I’ll update you as much as possible. And in the meantime, of course, it means that the rest of the series is on hold (but still going through editing) until I’ve figured out what comes next.

 

Dane Cobain – Driven

 

The other news is that a book that I’ve been helping a client with is now out and available in both paperback and ebook formats, with a hardback edition on its way too. The book is called The Future of Healthcare: Humans and Machines Partnering for Better Outcomes by Emmanuel Fombu MD and you can check it out on Amazon here.

I worked alongside Fombu as an editor on the project, which is his first non-fiction book, and we’re both super excited to be able to share it with the world. I also helped Emmanuel to find a cover designer, who in this case is the very talented Sean Strong. The book has been in the making for over a year.

We’ve done some work on a hardback version of the book, too, but that’s not quite ready for public consumption at the moment. Keep your eyes peeled though, and don’t be surprised if Fombu follows it up with an audio book, a hardback and even a sequel.

 

Emmanuel Fombu – The Future of Healthcare

 

I have some other stuff going on behind the scenes, but I can’t talk about it all at the moment and I don’t want to keep you too long and so I guess we’ll leave that until next time.

In the meantime, thanks as always for stopping by and be sure to give me a follow on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube for further updates. You can also check out all of my books, including the current version of Driven, on Amazon by clicking here. I’ll see you soon!

Visiting Berlin!

Hi, folks! So today, I wanted to talk about my recent visit to Berlin. Becca and I decided to go for a few days from a Monday to Wednesday in June to time it right between our birthdays. Here’s what we got up to.

We only had a couple of hours of sleep on the night of Sunday 17th June, but that had to do as we had to leave the house at 2 AM to get to Luton Airport. We flew out to Berlin at about 6 AM on Monday 18th June, and I kept myself busy with the book I took with me: The Talisman by Stephen King.

It was a short, uneventful flight, and we made it through check-in without a problem. When we landed, there was a pretty long wait to get back through passport control, so I managed to read 40 more pages. I actually ended up reading all 770 pages of The Talisman over the three days that I was travelling.

 

Becca on the Plane

 

After we got through passport control, we headed into the city and then stopped off for a coffee. We discovered while we were there that most places are randomly closed on Monday for some reason. We tried two different museums but they were both closed, even though it said they were open on their websites. So we went to the Berlin wall instead.

The Berlin Wall memorial was worth a visit, but there wasn’t a huge amount to see because obviously it’s been torn down. Still, we wandered along and learned a little bit of the history, and it was interesting to see the paths of some of the escape tunnels. It’s definitely worth a visit.

From there, we went for a wander along the canal and eventually to the Reichstag building, which was beautiful. But you have to book in advance if you want to take a tour, and we hadn’t done that, but we weren’t particularly keen to do that anyway and so all was good.

 

Berlin

 

After that, we hopped back on the metro and travelled to Schivelbeiner Straße, which has a reputation for being popular amongst vegans because of its Veganz supermarket and The Bowl, a vegan restaurant. They also had a vegan shoe shop, but the prices were insane and literally ten times what I’d normally pay for a pair of shoes.

We did stop for lunch though, which was delicious, and then we headed back to the hotel because it was time to check in and my feet were hurting from being repeatedly run over by Becca’s suitcase. The hotel wasn’t great. There was no kettle for a start, and our room was above the smoking area and so all night we could hear people talking out there and smell the smoke coming in through the window.

But before we tried in vain to get some sleep, we headed out to a vegan restaurant called Let It Be, where all of the dishes were named after prominent vegans. I had the Chrissie Hynde burger and it was delicious. Easily the best meal we had in all of our time in the city.

 

Berlin Architecture

 

After our burger, we headed back to the hotel for a few beers while watching England play Tunisia in the World Cup with German commentary. By the time we actually went to sleep, I’d read 430 pages of The Talisman. Not a bad effort.

We woke up late the next day, mainly because we hadn’t slept well thanks to all of the smokers. Still, we got ourselves vegan currywurst and calamari, and I’d never had either of those foods. Currywurst is like the unofficial dish of Berlin as well, and so it was great to give it a try.

From there, we went to the Berlin Story Mueum, which is basically an underground bunker with a couple of different exhibitions in it. It was built during the 1940s during the Second World War and basically tells the story of Hitler’s rise to power and eventual suicide. The Fuhrerbunker itself no longer exists, so this provided an interesting alternative.

 

Berlin

 

We planned to hop on a boat tour after that, but despite what it said on the company’s website, the last boat had already left. Instead of that, we went to Voner, a vegan doner kebab shop, where I had my first doner kebab since going vegetarian in 2005. It was delicious.

And then after that, we went to check out some live music. We caught an electronic pop duo called White Light and then a blues band called Arkansas Dave. They were great, and it was good to have a couple of beers while we were at it. Then it was back to the hotel for more noise and smoke from the smoking area. And did I mention that instead of a double duvet we for some reason had two singles?

 

Berlin

 

We woke up on time in the morning and pretty much packed and left straight away. Our flight home was in the afternoon and so we only had a half day, and we started out by going back to Piez, the vegan cafe that we had coffee at on our first day. This time, though, we had the breakfast. I had something with tomato and tofu in and it was delicious.

Then we went back to the main station to try the boat tour again, and this time we got on board without a problem. The boat tour was lovely and the perfect way to finish off our visit, but after that we had to head to the airport for our flight. It was full of kids, but it was survivable.

And then we were on the drive home at the end of our Berlin adventure, and so I’m going to love you and leave you here. Thanks as always for coming along with me on one of my adventures and be sure to give me a follow on Facebook and Twitter for further updates. You can also check out my vlog of the trip on my YouTube channel or click here to subscribe to it. I’ll see you soon!

My Birthday!

Hi, folks! Today, I wanted to take a little time to let you know what I got up to on my birthday. I turned 29 on June 11th 2018, but most of what you’re about to read about took place on the 10th, because that was a Sunday.

I made the decision several weeks ago to vegan (after being a vegetarian for nearly thirteen years), and so Becca said that she’d like to take me to a vegan restaurant to celebrate. We’d heard good things about The Temple of Seitan in Camden and so we decided to go there, although it’s more of a lunch place than a dinner place as it closes at 6 PM.

We were in kind of a rush to get there because we had plans for afterwards, but we managed to make it in time and I can confirm that the food was delicious. I had the Temple Spicy Burger (fillet, chipotle mayo, coleslaw, cheese, jalapenos, sriracha) and Becca had the Temple Burger (fillet, ranch mayo, bacon, cheese, lettuce, pickles), so we sat outside in the sunshine to enjoy them before moving on to the next step.

That’s because we figured if we were going to take the time to travel into London, we might as well make sure that we were making the most of it. Becca basically gave me carte blanche to pick out anything that I wanted to do, and I figured that what I really wanted to do was to check out a play.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a play, and most of them have been Shakespeare plays at The Globe, although I did see a great adaptation of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana at a theatre in Richmond. I didn’t fancy Shakespeare though, so instead I just Googled “Agatha Christie plays London”. I was in luck.

Turns out that there’s a run of Witness for the Prosecution at the London Theatre, so we went along to check that out. It was boiling inside the theatre and we only just made it in time, but for £12 per ticket it was phenomenal. We both really enjoyed it, and it’s made me want to go and see more Agatha Christie plays. There’s a reason she’s one of my favourite authors.

That’s about it for my birthday, but that’s not to say that it’s the last thing I wanted to mention. I also wanted to mention the gift I got from Becca, who was kind enough to double check with me before she got me something. She asked if I needed any books and what I came up with was the Vintage Minis box set, which is absolutely beautiful.

I also got a couple of Amazon vouchers, one from my mum and one from my dad. I put the two of them together and used them to buy myself the Penguin black classics box set as well, which makes me happy. When that arrives, I can add it to my other two box sets and get them all on display. How exciting!

So yeah, I think that’s it for another birthday. I’ve got one more year of my twenties to enjoy and then I’m in my thirties, which is kind of scary. But I’m feeling optimistic about the weeks and months to come and I guess we’ll see how it goes. Keep in touch and give me a follow on Facebook and Twitter for further updates and stuff. I’ll see you soon!

When Writing a Book Changes You

As some of you already know, I’ve been a vegetarian since I was sixteen (or for nearly thirteen years). And because they say you should write about what you know, I decided to write a novel about factory farming.

I’d already read a lot about factory farming, and I’ve also watched my fair share of documentaries. I already knew a lot about the problems with factory farming going into it, from the way that animals are treated to the way that factory farming damages the environment and devastates local communities. But I didn’t know everything.

And so this has led me to an interesting quandary. I’d thought about going vegan before, but I always joked that I like cheese too much. But honestly, after all of the research that I’ve done, being vegetarian didn’t feel like enough.

So I’ve decided to go vegan, and at the time of writing I’m perhaps a week or so in. It’s going pretty well so far. But it’s also made me think about reading, writing and the power that comes with it. When you write something, you have the power to change someone’s mind. And when you read something, you have the power to change your own.

My research on factory farming and the work I did writing Meat convinced me to change my diet, and I like to think it’s for the better. But it’s also an interesting case of life imitating art and art imitating life.

I think writing a book always changes you, or perhaps it’s that every book you write holds up a mirror to where you were at that point in your life. That’s why it’s hard for writers to pick a favourite, because each of their books represents a different version of them.

Meat, when it finally comes out, will mark the point at which I decided to stop relying on animals to provide me with food. I’ll be interested to see how people react to it. Perhaps it’ll make someone else change their mind. At the very least, I hope it makes people think about things and ask themselves some questions. I guess we’ll see.

A New Series?

Hi, folks! So today, I wanted to talk a little bit about a new series of books I’m thinking about working on. Let me explain.

This idea is inspired by collections like the Penguin Mini Modern Classics books that I’ve been working my way through, George Orwell’s Why I Write and a few other shorter non-fiction works like Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

Basically, I’ve been looking for an excuse to write more long-form non-fiction and I think this might be exactly what I needed. The idea is to have a series of small, short books, pretty much running at the shortest size I can get going through CreateSpace and/or IngramSpark using a sort of simple, set cover design that will allow me to release as many as I want to in a consistent collection that can grow as needed.

As for the topics, there’s a lot I want to write about. We’re talking about everything from the publishing industry to the meat industry, writing for a living, the reliability of mainstream media outlets, gender and more.

Whether this all actually happens or not remains to be seen, but the intent is certainly there and it seems like a pretty fun idea to me. The idea would be to keep the prices as low as possible, possibly with the e-copies available for free and with inexpensive paperbacks available too.

It’s still early days for the idea, and I guess I’m currently just testing the waters and seeing whether anyone would be interested in the first place, but we’ll see. I think it’ll be a good exercise to do in its own right, even if nobody ever reads them.

So on that note, I’d better get to it.

Where does the music fit in?

I think of myself as a writer, which means that I don’t tend to worry too much about the format that I’m using. I write poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, and I also dabble with music and lyrics. But recently, I’ve been trying to figure out how it all fits together.

My music is definitely a hobby, even though I’ve got three albums out on Spotify and a couple of hundred songs to my name. When I was younger, I used to play a lot of gigs and open mics to try to promote my music, but these days I usually only get as far as the open mic at the Rose and Crown, the pub around the corner from me.

For me, my books are my profession and my music is just a little something extra. When I was a kid, I grew up wanting to be a rock star, but then I discovered that writing books was my true calling. That’s not to say that if I get offered a gig or a record deal, I’d turn it down. It just means that I spend my time working on my books and my writing.

Sometimes I worry that people will get confused, and that they’ll listen to one of my home-recorded albums and expect that the same quality applies to my books. But it doesn’t. Perhaps I could spend a bunch of money recording my songs in a proper studio, but I have too many of the things and I’m not sure if my budget will stretch to it.

And besides, it’s like I said. The music is just a hobby. I’d rather spend my money on professional editors, cover designers and other services that I need to make my books the best they can be. Perhaps one day I’ll be a rock star, but I doubt it. I’d rather be a badass author.

So that’s what I’m working towards.

On Spoilers

Spoilers are bad, right? Well, maybe.

I know a lot of people who obsess about spoilers, to the point at which I know people who’ve read four or five books in a series and then stopped because they found out a minor plot point about the next one. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t like to share spoilers either unless I’ve put a spoiler warning in place, but at the same time I think it can often be hard to talk about something without using them.

I usually don’t mind spoilers, and I’ve been known to read the Wikipedia pages for movies when I start watching them so that I don’t have to pay much attention to know what’s going on. I don’t mind spoilers for books too much either, which is why I’ll happily read a book even if I’ve seen the movie of it.

But that was until I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I’d already been spoiled because of all sorts of parodies and references in popular culture, but I was spoiled even more by the book itself. The front cover showed a pivotal scene that literally takes place on the final page, and the introductory essay contained spoilers that took you up to 40 pages before the end.

And suddenly I had an epiphany. When I say that I don’t mind spoilers, that might be true as a general rule. But still, knowing those spoilers hampered my enjoyment of Rebecca, and once I knew them I couldn’t forget them. That made the entire book feel like a re-read for me, and that’s a shame.

Now I realise that when I say that I don’t mind spoilers, what I actually mean is that knowing them doesn’t put me off reading or watching something. The issue is that regardless of that, they can hamper my enjoyment, and there are books that I’ve read and not enjoyed that perhaps I would have enjoyed if I hadn’t been spoiled before going into them. I’ve always thought that they just weren’t good books, but perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps being spoiled can make the difference between what I perceive to be a good book and what I perceive to be a bad one.

And so because of that, I’m going to go out of my way to avoid spoilers, just in case. If I see them, I see them, but I’d rather avoid them when I can to make the reading experience as pure as possible. I think I have a responsibility to do that as a reviewer.

And it’ll make it more fun as a reader, too.

On Anxiety, Depression and Balance

I’ve been spending a lot of time of late trying to figure out what exactly it is that makes me happy. That might sound like a weird question, but the truth is that it’s just never been a priority. It’s always seemed more important to get a job and earn enough money to pay the rent or to write down the stories that I’m compelled to tell.

Since going freelance, I’ve worked pretty much every hour available to me. I’ve made a little more than I used to make when I had a full-time job, but it actually works out as less once you factor in expenses. Granted, I still paid those expenses anyway because we’re talking about stuff like editing and marketing which I was paying out anyway, but still.

I was looking into moving house recently because the place I live in is too small, and I actually think that a large part of my recent anxiety and depression is because I’m not happy with where I live. And because where I live is also where I work, the problem is only exacerbated. I’m also stuck here for another year because I’m tied into a contract.

It’s not nice to feel trapped somewhere. It’s a little bit like being in jail, especially when you’re working seven days a week just to stay on top of things. But it’s also helped to guide me towards an epiphany.

You see, the way I see it is that I’m stuck here in this poky flat whether I like it or not, and so I might as well spend the time (and serve out my sentence) by working as hard as I can for the rest of this year and saving up as much money as I possibly can. That way, when it’s finally time to move out of here, I’ll have earned some time off to actually enjoy my new place.

So basically, I know I’m not going to have much balance for the next nine months, but then I haven’t had much balance for the last nine months either. And at least there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and when I’m finally able to move out of this place and into somewhere a little nicer, I’ll have earned a few three-day workweeks. So silver linings and all that…

And on that note, it’s 6:30 PM on a Sunday and so I’d better get back to work…

How I read “so much”

One of the most common questions that I get asked by my reader and writer friends is, “How do you read so much?” So today, I figured I’d try my best to answer that.

It’s funny, because I only read to punctuate my day, and I don’t often sit down for hours on end with a book in my hand. Instead, I tend to read in very specific situations. For example, I used to smoke cigarettes and so I’d read a few pages with each cigarette, and while I have quit smoking, I still build those breaks into my day and just read a book instead. I actually read more because I don’t have to waste time rolling tobacco and finding my shoes, coat and lighter.

I also read a little bit of whatever my “bedtime book” happens to be before I fall asleep in the evenings. It’s all part of the drive to improve my sleep hygiene, although I have quite a lot of work to do there. Still, I manage maybe 10-20 pages a night depending upon what I’m reading, and it was enough for me to finish Homer’s Odyssey and Graham Greene’s collected letters to the press over the last couple of months.

And of course, I read whenever I’m travelling, whether I’m in the passenger seat of Becca’s car (because I can’t drive) or whether I’m on the three-hour train journey to the Midlands to spend time with my mum. I read fast, probably because I spend so much time reading, and so I managed just over 200 pages on the first leg of my most recent trip. That’s 400 pages if I read both ways, which I do.

Other than that, there’s no real secret. I don’t really do audio books, although I have nothing against them. It’s just that I only listen to audio books if it’s a re-read so that if I miss something, it doesn’t matter too much. They’ve actually been super useful so far this year because I’ve been listening to them to take part in Catalyst Reads’ rereadathon. But honestly, unless I turn the speed up to 2x, it’s slower to read audio books than to just read a book.

At the time of writing, it’s Saturday 5th May and so far this month, I’ve read three books. I should have finished four by the time that I get home from my mum’s house on Monday evening, and  that’s factoring in that I’ll be reading an 800-page Stephen King book. I don’t know, man – I just love reading. And if you love something, you make time to do it. So that’s how I read so much…

And on that note, I’m off to finish up As You Wish by Cary Elwes. I’ll catch you later.