Mark Williams Mention

[Athanasios]

In the second of a four part series I've detailed my process of cover making. This time specific to Swallow the Moon and Andre Jute's complicity in the whole affair.

http://markwilliamsinternational.com/

Hope you all enjoy this. Tweet it out or share with whoever you think would be interested.

[J.A.]

Interesting to see the behind the scenes.

[Andre Jute]

I don't mind complicit. I'd like corespondent even more...

[Athanasios]

I wrote complicit with my tongue firmly in my cheek, the one next to my teeth.

[Andre Jute]

You would say that, Tom.

[Katie]

You don't keep your teeth in your pocket, do you, Tom?

[K.A.]

Katie (snicker)

Andre is always making mischief of some kind.

Nice article, Tom.

[K.A.]

I had to look up the righ spelling for this.

Andre is an Agent Provocateur.

Isn't that a great word with a lovely sound to it?

[Andre Jute]

Notice that Kat doesn't ask who Tom and I would like to corespond with.

And yes, every word in this post is spelt correctly.

Tom, I might add, has a rare talent in a graphic designer, being sensitive to words.

[K.A.]

I shouldn't try to type when I'm tired. I used up all my cleverness (is that a word?) while baking cookies.

If you both weren't so far away, I'd bring you a box for Christmas.

Oh, Sorry. I'll Fix it.

provocateur - Definition: A provocateur is a harmless, charming, bicycling, little old intellectual with spectacles; whose work suggests ideas more in tune with the New World Order of publishing than with Traditional Publishing practices.

(There, wouldn't want to get you into any trouble.)

[Andre Jute]

Not so loud, Kat. People, governments, have tried to kill me for it. My sense of humour stops short of perfectly competent (I used to give driving lessons to some of theses people) assassins coming to within ten feet of my wife and child, as happened in the Forest of Devres in France. Don't make jokes like that. You give me the shivers. I'm a harmless, charming, bicycling, little old intellectual with spectacles; we don't want undesirables to start trying to beat up on me again.

[K.A.]

The harrassment of little old men with spectacles has been outlawed by Interpole's "protect the Author" policies.

[Andre Jute]

You tell 'em, Kat, while I practice looking intimidated.

[K.A.]

I'll need to be dressed for it...

[Katie]

"Little old man with spectacles"...I have to say my mental image of Andre changes daily. Last week he had a six pack, albeit Photoshopped.

[Andre Jute]

If you believe that, you'll believe anything. I'm a chameleon, if you can imagine a 6ft, 215lb chameleon. It helps, because I look a lot more like what I used to be, a rugger and polo jock, than an intellectual.

[Katie]

Andre, I take everything I read about you with a pinch of salt.

It's doing terrible things to my blood pressure.

[K.A.]

This thread is SO HIGHJACKED!

[Patricia]

I have it on good authority that Andre is actually Andrea, and was once Miss Ireland.

[K.A.]

Hey, Tom - You knew we were all crazy before you joined, right?

[Andre Jute]

It's not true, Sierra. I was much more important than the Rose of Tralee (and all that cycling gave me shapelier legs, too), I was the Irish delegate to the Eurovision song contest with un homage (that's what we upmarket rockers call a cover) of my student hit of a rock'n'roll version of UP ABOVE MY HEAD. I ran into Mickey Gold on the street (I live on the Carbery Coast, known sarcastically to the infernal rebbenoo as the Costa del Disgusting Tax Exile & Arteeests, so eventually you run into everyone who's anybody, and if you don't run into them on the main street, they knock on your door to beg a couple of one-liners, always for a "charity speech" which turns out to be an award acceptance speech, cheapskates) and he said, "Let's show them all over again how it's done." I thought that was the name of a song, so I said, 'Here? On the main drag? I live here, man, I can't zip off and show you mine, even if you show me yours." And the brassy blonde with him said, "God, Mickey, your friends are so common." And Mickey said, "He's a fucking prince, his family is in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, he's putting it on for your benefit, it's your fucking hair and your fucking voice and I told you those stretch pants aren't right for you. He used to dine with the Queen Mother before she copped it." Anyway, after the brassy blonde flounced off into the Mulligatawny Arms (name changed to protect innocent salmonella) as a protest against disrespect to the royal family, and I wistfully told the maitre d' to seat her in the last chair Michael Collins sat in before a sniper got him, Mickey and I cleared up the misunderstanding about who has the biggest dingus, much to the amazement of a gaggle of housewives passing, and put our plot to send me to Reykjavik in motion. It backfired, of course. We won, and then Ireland had to host the next contest, and my bosses at RTE, the national broadcasters, claimed they specifically told me they didn't want the £$%^&*( burden back, and to lose, lose, lose. They withheld my salary for the entire year to pay for part of it, and a chicken sandwich besides. Pikers.

[Andre Jute]

Katie, I feel for your blood pressure, so I'll tell you the truth. There is no Andre Jute. Haven't you noticed that he never sleeps? Haven't you noticed that no two of his books are even remotely alike? Haven't you noticed that for a supposed recluse, he knows an awful lot of fine detail about a great many places all over he world? But I'm not the Devil, I'm just one of four Rhodes Scholars who at Cambridge in 1964 invented Andre Jute, the polymath South African, the last King of the Kingdom of Kent, for a Footlights sketch. Then we just kept him going, inspired by the Ern Malley hoax.

He's sort of like a Dame Edna Everage with actual class, mainly because we didn't know how to do common, and Barry Humphries wouldn't help us because we were raving heterosexuals.

So there you are. Now you know everything I do.

[Patricia]

Andre, quit telling that story about my hair. It wasn't brassy blonde. It was Sassy Blonde. Said so on the bottle.

Katie, do not believe a word of that story about the Rhodes Scholars. Andre is actually all four of the Four Tops, the doo-wop kings.

[Dakota]

De-doooo-wop!