Authortrek

I shall resist the lame Star Trek puns ("to boldly go where where no writer has gone before," yadda yadda yadda...) and cut to the chase: My good pal Jai Clare is New Writer Of The Week at Authortrek!

What the chuffin' crikey is Authortrek? I hear you ask. Actually, I had no idea until I found out Jai was their New Writer Of The Week so I went and had a look. Turns out that Authortrek is an online directory for writers wanting to promote themselves to agents and/or publishers. In their own words...

We at Authortrek.com believe that there is a dire need for journalism and information about new writers who do not have agents and publishing deals. Why should such talented writers have to wait around on the slush pile, waiting to be discovered?

Anyone can create a profile and the whole thing is free so you have no excuse not to sign up... unless you're not a writer - there wouldn't be much point in that case.

So, well done to Jai for being New Writer Of The Week at Authortrek.

Flann O'Brien revival

The late, great Irish writer Flann O'Brien is enjoying something of a revival thanks to the TV show Lost.

Sales for O'Brien's absurdist masterpiece, The Third Policeman, have soared in Britain, Ireland and the US after being referenced in the popular TV show.

Read the article at The Observer's website.

This is splendid news, as far as I am concerned. The Third Policeman, is one of my favourite novels (the part about people swapping atoms with their bicycles makes me laugh like a loon every time).

And all thanks to a television programme. Perhaps I should write to the producers of other popular shows and try to get them to reference some of my other favourites: the makers of Charmed could mention Bulgakov's The Master And Margarita; the characters in Neighbours could be seen engrossed in the novels of Peter Carey; the contestants on Strictly Come Dancing could prance around with a copy of Paul Auster's The Music Of Chance under their arms.

Well, it could work.

Fucking drama queen

*Sigh*

It's OK, I've had my gratuitous and sadly predictable hissy-fit for this month. And I had to go ahead and blog the bastard. How tiresome.

Sleep... now in pill form!

Scientists are working on a drug that would allow the human body to function with only two hours of sleep a night.

Cool! This means we could all work even more hours! We could sacrifice even more of our lives to our corporate paymasters! No more piddling 40/50 hour weeks at the office - 100 hours a week minimum!

Two hours sleep a night. Two measly fucking hours? No thank you very much; I'll stick with my eight hours. Oh, but think of all the extra spare time you would have to do the fun stuff you don't have time to do now, I hear you cry. Who are you kidding? If we could survive on two paltry hours of sleep a night, how long do you think it would take employers to demand more hours from their workers? Why do you think there are scientists developing such drugs in the first place? Who do you think is paying them to develop these drugs? The Salvation Army?

No, we are all expected to dedicate more and more hours to earning a crust. The pensions going down the shitter, nobody will be able to afford to retire at 60 or 65. It is now accepted that most people will have to work well into their 70s in order to maintain a decent quality of life in their twilight years... assuming that they don't drop dead on the job.

Thinking about all this today, it struck me that, even though I work fucking hard for 45 hours a week, my current earnings mean that I will never be able to afford to buy my own home and I will never be able to retire. I will have to work until I am dead with no hope of a well earned rest at the end of it all.

So what is the point? Realy: what is the fucking point? The panic has been building, building over the last year. I'm going to be 31 years old in a month. I need to do something. I've been needing to do something for years. But what? What should I do? What the fuck should I do? I don't know. I just don't fucking know how to spare myself from a pointless and miserable existence of low paid paper-pushing until I keel over.

I don't know how to make it better.

Free Things About Me

Many thanks to Aliya Whiteley for sending me a free bookmark. It is currently marking my place in Martin Amis' Experience and, I must say, doing a damn fine job of it.

But why did Aliya send me a free bookmark in the first place? Simple: As an amusing way to promote her debut novel, Three Things About Me, that is to be released under Macmillan's controversial New Writing imprint in July, Aliya is inviting any passing stragglers to post three "facts" about themselves on her website forum, one of which is a lie. If she fails to guess which of the three "facts" is a lie, she will send you a free bookmark.

I managed to secure my freebie by offering the following facts:

1. I have a glass eye.
2. I only have one testicle.
3. I have a birthmark on my lower lip.

Politeness more than anything compelled Aliya to erroneously select one of the above as the falsehood lest she cause offense, even though she suspected it was true. It was a bit of an underhand strategy on my part but, dagnabbit, a free bookmark was at stake!

Anyway, you can go test Aliya's powers of guesswork yourself by visiting her website.

Oh, that time of year again

Tomorrow I will spend Valentine's Day as I always do: hiding from the outside world and watching an extremely violent movie.

Is it a coincidence that the acronym of "Valentine's Day" is V.D.?

If this makes me sound like a sad, angry and bitter loser then that is because I am. I have never pretended to be anything else and yet many people who know me refuse to believe it.

I don't begrudge anyone their happiness - I wish you lovers all the joy in the world - just do it some place far away from me, thanks.

Hanging with the literati

If the collective pronoun for the cream of the literary world is "literati" then would the collective pronoun for the most untidy people on the planet be "litterati"?

Never mind.

On Thursday evening I went a-travelling to the fair city of Worcester to attend the glamorous literary event that was the launch party for Charlie Williams' third novel, King Of The Road, the final installment in the Mangel Trilogy that began with Deadfolk and continued with Fags And Lager that chronicles the dark misadventures of potty-mouthed doorman, Royston Blake.

This highly prestigious event took place in Ottaker's bookstore on the amusingly monikered road "The Shambles". I attempted to show up fashionably late but, having polished off my latte at Caffè Nero (which, due to the square-ish font they use on their shop fascias, always looks like "Caffè Nerd" to me) too quickly, I ended up strolling around the shopping centres for a bit. The turnout to the signing was small but select. Charlie speculated that the lack of interest from the local press may have been as a result of him taking the piss out of them a bit in Fags And Lager. Nevertheless, it was an appreciative bunch of people who sat and listened to Charlie read from his new book and answer questions. There was free wine, too, and some of those cheesy breadstick things.

After grabbing a copy of King Of The Road for Charlie to sign for me (and after completely failing to adequately explain why I feel compelled to use a pseudonym for my authorial endeavours) an even more select group of us went to the pub to drink ale and talk about music. I seem to remember trying to convince Charlie that Orbital were much, much more than your typical thumpy-thumpy techno band and that he should go and steal In Sides from his brother. I'm not entirely sure how the conversation went with those who remained after Charlie and his lovely missus left the pub, or how I got back to my hotel but I am pretty sure that I had a thoroughly good time even though I am clearly a complete lightweight with regards to the consumption of alcohol these days.

Helix: the feedback

So, two people have now read my 50K NaNoWriMo novel and they both said it was good. In fact, one of them said that not only did he enjoy but it also made him seriously reassess the course his career is taking. I made him think. Scary.

The interesting thing is that, although being quite different personalities with different reading habits and tastes, they both liked the same aspects of the novel and also made similar criticisms.

Things they liked:

• the basic premise
• the flow of the prose (with the caveat that the first five or six pages are awkward but then the style settles down)
• the observations about office dynamics and politics
• the psychology of the protganist and how I convey his sense of failure
• the fact that I don't cop out at the end and attempt to offer a coherrent explanation that neatly ties up all the loose ends

I did fear that the whole thing would be too weird and nonsensical but, even though both readers conceded that they never figured out who certain characters were supposed to be or what the hell happened at the end, they felt the book too oblique for its own good.

Between them they made the following criticisms:

• it takes a few pages for the style to settle down
• the dialogue between the protagonist and the two main female characters is ropey and, by extension, the female characters are underdeveloped (although one of the readers thought the break up between the protagonist and his first love was very well handled)
• some of the prose is repetitious
• lots of typos! (but, hey, they both know I churned the sucker out in 23 days, so...)

In conclusion, they both felt that there is an excellent novel in there that, with revision, is of a publishable standard.

So, there we are: I've got absolutely no excuse not to persevere with rewrites and send it out. I admit that I was surprised to get such positive feedback, especially considering that I had major reservations about the quality of the thing. It just goes to prove how difficult I find it to judge how good my writing is. I have a lot of work to do to knock the book into a publishable state but at least I now have confirmation that it will be worth the effort.

A big thank you to you both (you know who you are). Your critiques have been very useful.

Onto draft #2.