Richard Butchins's Blog: Angels stand corrected... - Posts Tagged "books"

I have to visit LA, Portland, Chicago, Olympia (lovely place near Seatle) Eugene, Oakland and a place called Timber Oregan (population 131) all in 7 days. Organising this has been stressful.

But it will be worth it as its the start of a poignant and moving project. I will be researching and filming material about a talented but disturbed young woman.

Watch this space.....

Recently I have been having meetings with some large publishers about a book I am co-authoring the subject is quite commercial (can't say what it is here) and the thing that's been most illuminating is the insight into what these publishers, and therefore, by extrapolation all big publishers think and feel about the art of writing.

In short, the answer is not a lot. They don't care a jot about the quality of writing, which is convenient for most of the books they produce are dreadful. There's a shedload of ghostwriting going on, probably in sheds.

Any moron on a reality show can release their "autobiography" at the age of 23, I mean really - have some fucking dignity. You want a book of cat wisdom from the internet...you got it. They have no self esteem they will publish anything that will make them money. There is an almost shameless disregard for the written word.

The process has been interesting thus far and no doubt will continue to be so. I will blog about it on here in a forthright fashion until they set the lawyers on me, or the dogs, or fire me, or something !

My childhood was a fucking disaster. I was a crippled kid and had constant trips to hospitals where, as far as I was concerned I was tortured - to make me better - it didn't work. Then there were the beatings at home. I could never tell what response any action might generate. One day I could spill a glass of milk and nothing would happen the next day I could do the same thing and be lifted up by my ears and thwacked soundly. As I grew into a teenager the beatings at home stopped (mainly because my mother and father had split up after years of beating the crap out of me and each other). But I was relentlessly bullied at school. It was terrible. The one thing I had to escape into were books, I read everything, like Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird" I had been able to read since forever; though my father was no Atticus Finch.

I read all that I could get my hands on - like a drowning man I grasped at the books and the worlds they portrayed. They were a life buoy for me. I would retreat into my room and read. I'm not exactly sure but I think I read all the Narnia books by the time I was 10 and everything by Orwell by 14 and books like "The Wolves of Willougby Chase" and everything by Alan Garner.

I can't remember a time I didn't read. Later I read Kafka and Bulgakov and Beckett and, well, everything. I escaped into other worlds because I thought that what was happening in my world was my fault. I was wrong but that's how children's minds work.

The books saved my life, they gave me hope and nurtured the possibility that I might escape in the future as it happened I took the pain with me and it was many years before I had the confidence to write but I do now and my book is the result

So, I have a book and I am not a celebrity. This is a problem, according to my publisher, you can't get an audience in this inattentive and noisy internet age unless you have celebrity status of some kind - or at least celebrity endorsements.

"Go and get some celebrities to read the book and say nice things about it."

"Er, I don't really know any celebrities. I mean I am on nodding terms with some and acquainted with some people that work for celebrities from time to time. But to ask them to read a 200 page book is pushing it some."

"Hmmm, well you know ------- ask him to read it he's a very well known author."

"He will be busy authoring and not have time to read books by people he is related to, let alone weirdo's like me."

Nevertheless I sent famous author a copy. It's probably still on a table with 1278 other books for his attention. It's not that I think he won't want to read it, but that he can't, there's not enough hours in his lifetime to get to it.

So, what to do? I believe that I have written a book that deals with some important and difficult issues. It is a very different take on the subject and the voice is unique. Well, of course I think that....I nearly died in order to write it, what else would I think?

Anyway, the celeb route isn't really working out. Funny because I am currently co-writing a celebrity biography for a large publishing house in London. Turns out there are lots of types of celeb and all these are the wrong type for my work. I need to try and create an audience so I am going to publish extracts from the book on this blog - and keep doing so until you all pay attention or I run out of book, whichever comes first. I will not publish the extracts in order and I'll keep the really good bits back.

I'll do another giveaway (I don't know how Goodreads selects the winners of these?) and I'll also offer review copies to people for free after I have published a few extracts, if anyone expresses an interest - I think that's allowed by the site but I'm not entirely sure.

So that's it. My answer to not being a celebrity.... Not much but well, it'll have to do for now.

Oh, I'm on twitter at @PavementNovel

Hey, someone got it... "This is brilliant writing, atmospheric and disquieting. The imagery of the dreams alongside Smith’s observations of his everyday surroundings are haunting." Here's a great review posted today by a blogger. It's good to be appreciated...


neverimitate blog

Last weekend I had a tea and a chat with the actor Ray Winstone in his kitchen in Essex. I was with Rosa Hoskins and we were interviewing Raymondo as he calls himself about his time working with the actor Bob Hoskins. Ray is a really genuine and lovely man with te uncanny ability to insert the F word into any sentence and make it feel at home. The man is a fabulous swearing machine. I usually find actors to be rather dull and self absorbed but not Ray he's a proper geezer and funny as fuck. Also makes a great cuppa tea and he cheered Rosa up "right proper"

Cheers Ray

Here's the latest review of my book from Amazon - I like this one

'Pavement: Thoughts of a Serial Killer' is a compelling read. It tells the story of a man who, through his struggles with life due to his disability and a dysfunctional, unhappy childhood that we are allowed only tiny glimpses of, feels himself excluded from society. Unemployed, he escapes from his dingy bedsit existence by walking the streets of London, finding solace in his obsession with the order of the paving stones of the pavements he treads, and catching glimpses of other lives through windows as he searches for himself in the reflections. He feels invisible, and this feeling leads him to find a way in which he can take action.... take revenge on the 'normal' world which he does not feel a part of and yet covets.

This novel is extremely well researched. The details draw us in... we are there in the here and now, walking with 'Smith' and seeing everything as he sees it. A few small clues tell us that this present is in fact a not so distant future, where we are ever more under the control and surveillance of the System. Yet Smith finds a way to rebel and, ultimately, to escape.

The author's gift for words allows him to get away with very graphic and lurid descriptions that from the pen of a less talented writer could be felt to be gratuitous, but here are always beautiful even as they are shocking and disturbing. The boundaries between dream and reality become more and more blurred, reflecting the state of mind of the protagonist, as the aftermath of his cold, logical and well thought through actions pervade his subconsciousness when he sleeps.

Despite the horror of the story, I didn't want this book to end. I look forward to reading more from this author.

What is meaning? I have no idea. It's an abstract concept individual humans ascribe to things or people or ideas but it doesn't exist. In the same way love or hypnosis doesn't exist and yet we all believe in it - like it or not....Not, in my case.

I have given up writing my great second novel I ran out of things to say. I stare at the page and nothing happens after a couple of hours I shut it down and go watch some TV or drink some beer - or both - this has been going on for some months and I have no idea why - if I'd just kept scribbling it would be done by now and it's not like thousands of shit books aren't published and finished each year - so why not me....