Holiday, writing, reading…

Just to recap before the film…


Actually I’ve checked the cinema listings for tonight and there’s not one thing I want to see. Except the film with Eric Cantona in and the only showing of that was 12 midday. As it’s about two million degrees I might give that a miss.


I’m pleased Eric became an actor. I remember when he hung up his boots he said he was going to become a poet. As Simon Armitage, real dogs-bollocks poet, said, ‘You wonder how long he’d last, setting off on a pissing-wet Wednesday for a train to Redditch, to read to three men and a dog in a cornered-off section of the library then back to a B&B… and the world snoring champion in the bed behind the cardboard wall.’


I’ve just booked a B&B myself, although I’ve discovered they are called ‘boutique hotels’ these days. The brilliance of their websites. One listed all their rooms one by one, each had a name, ‘the Hunstanton suite’ and so on and then at the bottom in capitals,


‘NEW. ROOMS ON TOP FLOOR NOW WITH SEA-VIEWS!’


New? Global warming I presume leading to the reposition of the oceans.


The worst ones are where the owners themselves feature in the photos. They glare out at you trying to look welcoming but instead manage only to look like a smiling Rose and Fred West.


We’re going to ‘sunny hunny’ Hunstanton on sea.


“Has the room got a tv?” Will has already asked. “Cracking line up for Wimbledon tomorrow.”


I’ll be ok, I’m currently reading 5 books. Although this is not strictly true. I’m listening to one. Edward Hogan’s Blackmoor. I bought it after seeing that it won some young writer award. It took him 6 years to write apparently and he’s only fifteen now.


Normally I get these audiobooks and I never listen to them fully. They’re the blanket which help me sleep. This one though, I’m hooked. It reminds me of Ian McEwan mixed with Ruth Rendell. Both compliments.


For the last two evenings, exhausted, I’ve been lying on my orange sofa listening to it. I’ve also been alcohol free. Then to bed early to read.


Like the movies I like the idea of tv but books always seem a better option. I’ve been off work for ten days now, holiday not ill, and I don’t think I’ve watched one tv programme. That I’m exhausted is because I’ve been exercising every day.


Yesterday at the gym I was watching this bloke running. ‘I want to look like that,’ I thought although why I would suddenly develop dark Hispanic features I don’t know.


Then I went on the running machine myself and this old bloke with legs up to his nostrils appeared next to me. He ran 5 kilometres in 18 minutes. It took me 26 minutes to get that far and then one of the personal trainers came and slapped an ‘out of service sign’ on me.


I’ve also been working, writing. When you’re writing time collapses. You can sit down and three hours have passed, on consequetive days.


I’m going with the flow at the moment. The main section of the book, first draft, was almost finished. Then I had this idea for a prologue. 25,000 words later…


I wonder if there’s any precedent for a novel having a 25,000 word prologue?


In my head I’m thinking of The Insult by Rupert Thomson. That finishes with someone telling a story about 100 pages long. I’m hoping this will work like that but in reverse. And in my head I think it might be pretty cool to read a novel where chapter 1 starts on page 112.


In my head also is the thought that perhaps it’s a disaster.


Right now, I don’t care. I’m loving it, you see. I’m telling a story. I’ve got characters. Next scene is a break in on a Russian base in the Antarctic. Then there’s a suicide mission across the ice to find the ‘holy grail’. Then there’s a suicide mission to find the person who’s gone on the suicide mission.


This story is within a story that is part of a letter that is sent to the character with which chapter one opens.


Perhaps I should go to the movies. There I might learn how plots work.

Currently reading: All Points North by Simon Armitage, 31 Songs by Nick Hornby, The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross, Blackmoor by Edward Hogan, As You Step Outside by VG Lee.

Currently listening to: Michael Jackson. Aren’t we all? And I only wrote about him last week too…

Pride Words / Gig

On Monday I’m appearing at Pride Words at Foyles bookshop in London. It’s the first time I’ve been asked to provide next of kin and emergency contact details for a reading so I’m wondering what kind of crowd they’re expecting.


I had some trouble filling in the form as I don’t know what my mum’s or my partner’s addresses are. I toyed with the idea of putting down my own address, thinking that if anything happened to me then everyone would probably gather round there. But then I realised that they wouldn’t know anything had happened to me if I gave out an address for a place where they’re not.


I’m looking forward to the event but nervous as well as I always come away from these events feeling depressed. I believe everyone else is cooler and more intelligent than me. Mind you, I’m the kind of person who can feel inadequate crossing the road.


“Look at him, the way he nipped between the cars, it was brilliant!”


I’m currently reading Simon Armitage’s ‘Gig’. I bought it after watching his BBC4 documentary on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. If you don’t know, Armitage is a poet, and he has recently translated Sir Gawain which is a 14th century poem about a knight from Arthurian legend.


Anyway the documentary was brilliant. Armitage followed the journey Gawain would have made in his quest to battle the Green Knight. The poem has beautiful descriptions of place, sex, and a powerful narrative.


The documentary also had a fantastic soundtrack and it was then that I remembered seeing Armitage’s book about music last year when it was out in hardback. I can remember where it was too. It was Sheffield’s Waterstones and I was in there during the break between matches I was watching at the Crucible (the snooker place).


The book is funny (‘It’s amazing how many hermits have websites these days’) and warm and in one point moved me to tears. This was when he got to interview David Gedge from the Wedding Present in the Holmfirth Pictodrome. The whole interview consists of Armitage asking Gedge a series of either or questions:

SA: Hudderfield or Halifax
DG: Er… I don’t know really.. Er…
SA: The right answer’s Huddersfield.
DG: Put me down for that, then.

There was something honest and unassuming about it that touched me. The truth these days is either hard, or slippery, so we spend a lot of time giving poncey responses to poncey questions.


I can remember the first records I ever had. They were bought for me and my brother by our mum and dad. It was on the same day they bought us a stereo. It was one of those that looks like a suitcase and weighed about half a tonne. The records were something by Shawaddywaddy and Ravel’s Bolero. As a musical education it was a start.


My mum moved house a few years ago so me and Will (my partner) were called in to clear out / sort through my old stuff. One of the boxes contained my old music cassettes and I was pleased to see that it contained nothing too embarrassing, Floodland by The Sisters of Mercy, Closer by Joy Division, Boy by U2, Get Close by the Pretenders, Ratus Norvegicus by the Stranglers, Savage by Eurythmics, Bauhaus, New Order and so on.


(I haven’t got that good a memory, I’ve just brought down the box from my spare bedroom. Sad in a way because I don’t have a cassette player to listen to them. My current CD collection represents my musical taste from the last 8 or 9 years during which time I’ve been settled back in the UK.)


Like a lot of people that have older brothers, my older brother was a big influence on me in his music tastes. He was also always a lot cooler than me. He was in a band, various bands in fact, and then worked in a record shop.


Nick, my brother, was the kind of person who could nip out to the local shop for a hairspray and then come back a week later having been to London and Brighton. At 40 he hasn’t changed a great deal although his flights become more precarious and worrying.


That same day in Sheffield at the Crucible he managed to disappear. It was only as he leant forward to speak to the taxi driver, late at night, not recognising the town he was in to ask the question:


“Are we in Derby?” (where he lives)
“No, this is Bradford mate.”


Back then I was more into computers. On a Sunday I was allowed to plug my Sinclair Spectrum into the tele in the lounge. If Nick was around then he would play too and I remember one of our favourite games was Psion Tennis, little black stickmen running around a black and white court.


Nick would be in charge of the music and I can remember while playing that tennis game was the first time I heard The Smiths. Years later Morissey’s lyrics would come to be music that defined my coming out and Hatful of Hollow still seems to me to be an album full of gay angst. I mean just read the song titles, ‘William, It was really nothing’, ‘What Difference Does it Make?’, ‘These Things Take Time’, ‘How Soon is Now?’, ‘Handsome Devil’, ‘Still Ill’, ‘Accept Yourself’ and so on. And to this day my favourite lyric remains, ‘If you ever need self-validation, I’ll meet you in the alley by the railway station’.


I’ve got nearly everything Morissey has recorded since The Smiths but I’m pleased to say, in my humble opinion, that the latest album, Years of Refusal, is the best thing he’s done since his musical youth.


The first gig I went to was Sting at the Royal Albert Hall in 1985 for the Dream of the Blue Turtles Tour. I was 14 and went with my brother on the train to London.


I remember just before we set off I was in my bedroom playing Bomb Jack on the Sinclair Spectrum.


“Come on,” he said, “we’re going to see Sting.”
“Hang on, I’m about to get my high score.”


You see, not cool.


The best gig I’ve ever been to was Elbow last year at Rock City. They came on stage in darkness. The strings were playing the intro to Starlings. Through the smoke the band members all raise the trumpets they are holding and then comes the blast of noise and then, alone, Garvey’s voice. It makes me almost cry just thinking about it.


You see, not cool.


The worst gig I’ve ever seen was two years ago at the Charlotte in Leicester. I can’t remember what the band were now but they were something young and trendy. The place was packed and they made us wait for ages and ages before they came on like they were the fucking Beatles reformed of something and then they played for about fifty minutes before pissing off.


I went and stood at the back and drank wine so it wasn’t a total washout.


The band I’m most pleased I’ve seen is The Cure because I love The Cure. They’ve had a new album this year too and like Morissey it’s probably the best thing they’ve done in years.


The biggest gig I’ve been to was Michael Jackson. He was good. It was in Montpellier in the South of France. That’s when my dad worked on a roller-coaster and it was a good summer all round.


The band I’ve seen the most is Marillion and they are always excellent. I’ve been to their last two conventions in Port Zelande in the Netherlands and that’s just a good time all round. Lovely people, food, place and music.


All of this might explain why I wrote a novel about a band, gay pop duo Down by Law. I don’t know. All of the above though I’m sure are the things I am into, books, music, poetry, travel and that is how I see myself, this passionate, awkward, uncool outsider. How this will translate into me appearing at Pride Words might be interesting to see. I hope my next of kin details will not be needed.

Live Literature Lives

On the stage in the Phrased and Confused tent at last year’s Summer Sundae festival I was asked if when I was writing ‘Me and Mickie James’ I knew that I would be expected to go out and read from it, living the ‘rock & roll’ lifestyle, as it were. My answer was simple.


“No.”

Read the rest of this post over on The Literature Network.

Write What You Know. George Orwell and all that.

Writers are often asked how much of their own life is contained in their writing. Running by the side of this is that old adage, write what you know.


I haven’t given these matters much thought, but this blog will be my response. That it will be half-baked there is no doubt. In my defence I would say that even people who have thought about these things long and hard have come down on opposite sides of the same fence.


This is the beauty of freedom of speech and as Spike Milligan once said, ‘if speech is free, it might as well be silly’.


That I am thinking about this at all is because of the Stephen Fretwell concert I went to on Thursday night.


Stephen Fretwell is a singer songwriter, guitar player. In the world we live in of silly talent shows Fretwell is the truly talented. I could go on but I won’t because you are going to buy his CDs after reading this blog. That is the power of advertising as Saatchi and Saatchi would said while popping a coke they don’t really want, driving the car that looks like more money than sense.


Anyway, when introducing his song ‘Funny Hat’ Fretwell said, ‘This is a song about being in a hotel room late at night with a drunk transvestite when your girlfriend is on the way up’.


That I love that song more than I already did is because I now know where it came from.
George Orwell in his essay ‘Why I Write’ wrote that there are four reasons for writing. 1) Sheer egoism. 2) Aesthetic enthusiasm. 3) Historical impulse. 4) Political purpose.


He starts the essay by saying that he always knew he was going to be a writer, and that from an early age he was writing himself into situations. For example, ‘He pushed open the door, his mother was standing by the ornate fireplace’ and so on…


That he became a political writer was because of the age he lived in. His essay, ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ starts, ‘As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me’.


That 1984 is not an autobiographical book is clear although there was a belief at the time of its writing that Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt were planning to divide the world, post WWII.


I was at the right age at the right time for 1984 because in the year 1984 I was thirteen and I loved books. As you can imagine that year there was a big hoo-ha about Orwell’s book and I knew that I wanted to read it.


1984 was also a time when a) the Cold War was in full swing and b) a film was made of the book.


The Eurythmics were to do the soundtrack. All the way through the film I was waiting for the song. It never came. At least, not until right after the titles were rolling. I loved the Eurythmics and all I could remember afterwards about the film was that their song wasn’t in it.


At that time also my mum and dad ran a pub. The pub itself had undergone something of a transformation that year. We’d had the builders in for weeks, and with old bricks they’d built all these arches within the pub so the pub itself was divided almost into a series of caves.


Sticking out of the arches was all this found detritus, lawnmower handles, spades, iron bars and so on. You had to see it to believe it.


One of the caves became a cocktail bar, ‘Gatsbys’ and late at night we served cocktails, of course. The base mix for these cocktails was a powder that came in packets like Vesta curries. I was allowed to make them up, in these large jugs bought specially for the purpose.


I always used to get a thrill opening the fridges and seeing these jugs. The powders mixed with water were colourful and they had glorious names like ‘Pina Colada’, ‘Margarita’ and so on.


Around this time too I wore a trilby hat and a cardigan. I was the height of fashion even then.


This is Will’s favourite picture of me, age 13, leaning against a castle somewhere in France in my hat and cardie. I looked like a mix of Little Lord Fauntleroy and Huckleberry Finn.


But to get to my point, running above the arches within the pub were a series of shelves and on these shelves were old books, got from the junk yard I guess, because they were ancient, dusty, damp and they stank.


Books back then didn’t have pictures on and they were all hardback and different colours.


Because I loved books though I would pull over one of the bar stools, climb up onto it, and look at the books.


That’s where I found 1984.


A couple of years after this when I was sixteen mum and dad both left home.


Dad decided that it was the time in his life to become a drifter and after a poor start; he had gone to the airport and asked for the next flight out of the country, ‘Lanzarote, yes!’ he said, thinking he was going to Spain only to find himself landing on a small volcanic island, he ended up quite happily working on a beach in France, on fairgrounds, in cafes and grape picking etc.


This was also the time I read Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ and I quite enjoyed it because all those situations reminded me of my dad.


‘That’s him’ I thought as Orwell landed himself in a penniless scrape with assorted bums, psychopaths and alcoholics.


That I always write about people now who don’t have proper jobs, who drift around, don’t drive, or have mobile phones, but are seduced by the easy glamour of a tacky cocktail bar while wearing distinctive clothing might have something to do with all of this.


Or it might be entirely unrelated.


As I said, I haven’t given it much thought.

Currently reading - Dreams of Leaving by Rupert Thomson


Currently listening to – Man on the Roof and Magpie by Stephen Fretwell

Stephen Fretwell singing William Shatner’s Dog

A Day In The Life of a Writer. Yesterday.

I wake up. First thing I do is check the time. Have I overslept? I got home from work last night at 11 p.m. and then watched Question Time on the iPlayer. The one glass of wine I intended to have turned into several. Question Time turned into The Week. I like politics, especially when I’m drunk.


Sun is coming through the curtains. My mobile says 8:45. This is not ideal but ok. If I don’t write in the morning then I can’t write at all. Usually I like to read in bed for an hour first. If I do that it’ll be nearly 10 o’clock. Then by the time I’ve checked my emails, usual internet sites it will be 11.


I start to panic. I’m not going to get any writing done.


Downstairs there is a knock at the door. I know it will be the postman. He’s the only person who knocks on my door. I am naked.


I don’t always sleep naked. Sometimes I like to have a sweatshirt and underwear and I regularly have two duvets and a sleeping-bag on my bed.


I’ve ordered some books from Amazon. I imagine that’s why the postman is knocking. On top of the nakedness I have an erection. Why does the postman always come when I have an erection?


I can’t very well go downstairs like this.


I used to do door to door sales in Australia. Sometimes when I was doing areas by the coast you’d get surfer dudes out of bed. I used to hope they’d come to the door naked. It was a boring job and the mind tended to wander.


As it happens, it rarely happened. This is just one way in which life is different to fiction.


I stumble into the spare room and pull on yesterday’s work trousers and a cardigan. I either looked dishevelled and interesting. Or a tramp with a hard on. No time to check in the mirror.


Postman done I make a cup of tea and go back upstairs to bed. The books I ordered were ‘Jack’ and ‘The End of Alice’ by A M Homes.


A M Homes is getting to be one of the writers of whom I have read their complete works. In this she will join Rupert Thomson, Magnus Mills, Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro, Raymond Chandler, Raymond Carver, Andrey Kurkov, David Mitchell, Timothy Mo, Sarah Waters.


She will be, I note, the only woman on the list. Except for Sarah Waters.


I spread the books out on my bed. The two A M Homes ones and also Nocturnes by Ishiguro. I have recently bought this too.


I haven’t got too long.


I choose the Ishiguro and read the first story.


So far I haven’t mentioned much writing. That’s the thing about writing. A lot of it is in your head. The rest of the time is not writing.


So when I am sitting in bed naked, books spread out before me, drinking tea, I am actually very busy. Convincing other people of this is sometimes a problem.


I have just finished six days in a row at work. Therefore I haven’t had much time to write. In fact, I haven’t done any. Prior to these six days I’d had five days off. In those five days I’d written 8,000 words.


Writing is like that for me. Once I start it’s easy to carry on. Once I stop it’s difficult to start again.


Once downstairs, and dressed, I open up the document.


I stopped right at the end of a long section in which a character on a boat to the Antarctic is telling a story over the phone to another one of the characters back in England. This story is about his time in Iraq and it’s kind of a love triangle.


The character on the end of the phone is in love with the character telling the story.


This 8,000 word section from my previous days off is this story.


This novel is a novel of people telling stories to each other. I like all the characters and the stories but I wonder if it works as a novel.


I have a cup of coffee.


Also all the stories are about death. Would someone want to read about so much death?


Someone slips under a tram, gets hit by a car, falls into a vat of acid, loses their hand in an industrial accident. But pulls through! Loses their feet to frostbite, is the victim of a serial killer, dies of cancer, dies in a water-skiing accident.


And so on.


As I don’t know if it works I am trying to establish a life / work balance. I don’t want to spend a whole year doing this and then have to delete it. If I’ve done other things I can look back on those things.


Like drinking tea in bed. Drinking wine and watching Question Time on the iPlayer. For a few years I didn’t do any of those things. I used to write all the time.


I follow pretty much the Stephen King model of writing. I try and do 1000 words and then stop. Like him, sometimes this can take hours and other times I can rattle off 1000 words in an hour.


While I’m writing though I am constantly checking things on the internet. Looking at the news, Facebook, my blog, YouTube and so on. So often I don’t feel like I am writing. When I stop I feel useless and berate myself.


“You’ve wasted your day. You’ve spent it on the internet.”


But I do hit my target.


At three o’clock I stop to go to the gym. If I’m going to sleep naked I owe it to myself to look the part.


Also I’ve managed to stop in a good place. David non-Dave has built a city out of toilet rolls for the miniature person who was living in his bum. This is a person he killed earlier in the book. He’s about to show it off to the other characters. His city that is and not his bum.


David non-Dave is having a nervous breakdown I should say and it is not a real miniature person living in his bum. These miniature people made an earlier appearance in another story of mine, ‘Neighbours’.


That’s another tip. Recycle.


After coming back from the gym I go straight out food shopping. This is on foot as I don’t have a car.


It’s a beautiful sunny day.


As I walk I wonder if I’m wasting my time with all this writing. There are other things I could be doing. I would like to be in the countryside somewhere walking by the side of a canal.


Then I imagine falling in the canal and getting attacked by a shark. It bites off my legs. But how would a shark get in a canal?


There was a lorry heist. They expected cash but instead found themselves with a shark on route from one aquarium to another. They don’t know what to do. Under cover of darkness they release it into the canal.


One of them has a favourite film of Jaws. During the heist he says, ‘We’ve got ourselves a shark situation.’


It could happen. There are sharks in the world. There are aquariums. It’s just the question of thinking it.


When I get back home I reopen the document.


I’ve been thinking about the beginning. It needs re-writing. I pour myself a glass of wine. I pick up Music For Torching by A M Homes and re-read the opening. It’s a good beginning. I’d like something like that, but Homes has already used it.


Shit.


I need more humour. The characters need to stand out more. Perhaps I should scrap the whole thing.


I drink some more wine. I make dinner. I watch the Pulling special. This is reassuring because it is more rude than my books. This is important to me but I’ve already gone on enough.


At ten o’clock I go to bed. I read ‘Jack’ for two hours.


I drink two beers.


I fall asleep.


Tomorrow it starts again.

Currently reading – see above


Currently listening to – Friendly Fires by Friendly Fires

Drew Gummerson’s first novel ‘The Lodger’ was published in 2002. It was a finalist in the Lambda Awards in the States. Drew’s latest book ‘Me and Mickie James’ was published by Jonathan Cape in July 2008. Drew is also an award winning short story writer, his short fiction being widely published and featured on Radio 4.

50 Word Animals

While we’re on the subject of animals, one of my favourite animal books is Timoleon Vieta Come Home and it’s by Dan Rhodes. This is a book that almost wasn’t because when he handed it to his then publisher they didn’t want to put it out. This is a shaggy dog story with a happy end though as it was picked up by Canongate and was a big success and he has since gone on to write about a woman that chops her car into little pieces (Little White Car) and a Japanese lesbian with a sneezing affliction (Gold).

Then the next best thing is Fup by Jim Dodge which is a novella about an ugly duck called Fup which likes going for your balls. It also has some rather nice ink drawings in it.

If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, and after all, if we were all duck people what a dull duck infested world it would be, then there is ‘You’re An Animal Viskovitz!’ which is a collection of stories in which in each one Viskovitz is a different animal but in all of them he is in love with Ljuba. Cue, a parrot, a dormouse, a police dog with a heroin habit and a microbe with an inferiority complex.

And if that doesn’t get your goat there is of course the masterpiece which is The Jungle Book by Raymond the Kipper. I haven’t read this one but if it is indeed a masterpiece please let me know by text or email.

All of which brings us nicely to the latest of the 50 Word story competitions, the theme of which was Animals. Huge thanks to the beautiful and talented Polly Tuckett director of Leicester’s own short story night Short Fuse for picking this month’s winners.

The winners will actually be announced at the forthcoming Short Fuse event on the 26th May at Leicester’s Y Theatre, and read out there. Details of the winners will then follow on this blog…

And as a bit of a news flash the stories may also be on BBC Radio Leicester. A big thank you to them….

(Unless I balls it up and read like a donkey. Eeyore and all that.)

Anyhow, without much more to do, please enjoy the shortlisted finalists which were the very best of a brilliant bunch of cats and dogs.

WINNER Eric Karl Anderson

To Survive

Mark’s earliest memory was running for his life. His heartbeat in his throat, burning leg muscles nearly snapping, eyes searching wildly for cover. A beastly phantasm was hot on his heels, animal-jaws snapping. Smiling adults observed this game, but it was more serious than playing. This ritual enabled Mark’s survival.

JOINT RUNNER UP Sean McNulty

The Foxes of Summer

City foxes take to the streets regularly in the summer, but we rarely see them. They’re sharper than us, so amuse themselves with our blindness. I’ve noticed one. I’ve fallen in love with her, but she knows my dimness, so dances without me. City foxes play tough in the summer.

JOINT RUNNER UP Ralph Dartford

The press conference, the day after, in Sheffield.

He said they were nothing but animals. He was a police officer, a man in a black uniform, a nice house near Barnsley, a kitchen to swing a cat in.

In Kirby, the Wirral, Stanley Park. There’s a breathless scream of rage.

Jake Webb

I tried to make life-size animal crackers. What a nightmare! The monkeys wouldn’t sit still. The hippos objected to having chocolate poured on them. And a crocodile bit my hand off. So I gave up and started making giant iced gems instead. But it’s not easy with only one hand.

Louis Anthes

Here we are, a million monkeys typing out a novel, but the striking elephants stopped editing, and all we are left with are parrots to memorise what we say while we write. The hyenas laugh as the dogs eat reams of used typewriter paper falling from tables.

Frances Gapper

After he left, I spent my evenings drinking gin on the sofa. The tiny elephants who live behind my skirting board would troop out through an abandoned mouse-hole. The shag carpet waved like grass. I kept very still as they drank and bathed in the orange neon glow of sunset.

Keith Olsen

The Last Ride

Dooley sensed something terribly wrong when the bull broke from the chute. The animal surged violently and came down on its knees. The cowboy slammed into the Brahma’s bent horn as bursts of hot breath buffeted his face. Then, seconds remaining, the beast rose and launched Dooley to the heavens.

June Anne Welsh

My Back Garden (2)
Used to be scared of insects. Not now. Just rather they didn’t hang in my house. Spiders are different. I don’t mind them coming in for a warm. Last summer I tried to start a dating agency for them out on my windowsill. Nice to be able to make magic.

June Anne Welsh

My Back Garden (1)
The night cold and dark, birds all gone, no more chattering. Where do magpies sleep? Do they have any kind of nightlife, I wonder? Could they be with crows, maybe, in some seedy night-club for birds, listening to jazz and getting high? That’ll be why they chatter all day.

Peter Lawson

I was in the shower this morning. This is true. The small half cuticle sized ’squirm’ the movie flesh eating worm thing on the shower head filled me with wonder. And angst. I couldn’t bring myself to destroy it. It was there before me. But I value my flesh. Flick……

Join the 50 Word story group here.

Currently reading – Music For Torching by A M Homes

Currently listening to – Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes

Mystery Man

Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the important things in your life, what with work, family, friends, loved ones and so on. For example, just a few minutes ago I was thinking, I really don’t have enough money.


It was like a revelation.


Take the other day as well, or other two days in fact, when two people asked me independently of each other if I liked mystery novels.


‘They’re the most conservative form of fiction,’ I said, ‘giving the impression that life’s mysteries are solvable. When I think the opposite. That life is absurd. You live, die and there’s no meaning to any of it. So you might as well get out there and enjoy yourself.’


Then last night, bugger me, if I didn’t find myself banged up in bed at 8pm with a glass of cheap wine and Colin Bateman’s latest, ‘Mystery Man’.


This is good, I thought 100 pages in, reaching for my glass. Let’s cut the existential dilemma for a couple of hours because, after all, what is existential dilemma but a guiding rope between life and death?


Well, I had had a few.


Mystery stories were my way into writing as well. When I was sixteen, seventeen I used to have my own fictional detective, Tod Towski. He was American style – hardboiled – rather than cosy, Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie say. Every week I’d put him in a different style of story. That I was the editor of our college magazine meant they had a good chance of being published too.


Those were the days.


I was a big fan of Raymond Chandler back then, still am. I have all his books. And also Dashiell Hammett. But my favourite was James M Cain and The Postman Always Rings Twice especially.


If that’s not the greatest book ever written, I don’t know what is.


(Actually it might be Don Quixote but T.P.A.R.T. is definitely up there.)


The story is simple, a drifter turns up at a gas station, has an affair with the fat owner’s wife, they plot to bump him off. And do.


What I like though is the relationship of these characters after the fact. After the infatuation has died they realise they don’t know or like each other but are bound together by mutual suspicion and also the act.


In this way, I guess, Cain is like Graham Greene – a single event has repercussions that spiral out of control.


Thinking about Cain, as I am now, I remember I wrote my own version of his Double Indemnity for a collection called ‘Death Comes Easy’. In my story an Australian door to door salesman sells life insurance to a man who wants to bump off his wife. My story is quite similar to Cain’s except there is no train in it and a bit more gay sex.


Such is life.


Other mystery writers I like are P D James. I’ve read all of those except for the ones written in the last 15 years. Don Wilmslow is good, as are the crime writing duo Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. These last two are Marxists and have something to say beyond the mystery.


What annoys me, in my head, about mystery books, is that the writing is geared towards a specific end. It’s exciting and I want to turn the page but when I get to the end I think I don’t care who did it.


What I like in writing is all those little moments in books that make you smile, or drop them on the floor, or leap up.


For example I like it in ‘The Insult’ when the blind man decides he is going off in search of the invisible man. Or I like it in the Raw Shark Texts when he takes his cat with him on his adventure. I like pretty much all of Willy Vlautin’s The Motel Life because it is full of stories. Or the tortoise in Pandora in the Congo called Marie Antoinette. Or when the penguin appears in Death and the Penguin and so on.


So maybe this sounds like I only like quirky odd moments and perhaps I do and perhaps this is what I write too. Aside from all this existential angst that I feel on a daily basis perhaps this is what life is about. Those little moments that make you smile every day, little acts of kindness, something you overhear, someone scoring a goal. Or missing one. They are what is important.


I’m not on a career path, I don’t have a goal. I’m not going anywhere. This is basically it, for me as it is for everybody. Books that hurtle me towards some end with no fun along the way are not then what I’m looking for.


Except…


I’ve got some wine left and my bed is calling and so is the Mystery Man.


Way-heyy!

The Postman Always Rings Twice clip

America

When I was 18 I travelled around America on a Greyhound bus. I don’t know where I first heard about the Greyhound bus pass now, but like Santa and Hershey bars it was just something fixed in my consciousness and at $150 dollars it was a bargain. I started out in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, mid-west.


Milwaukee is a fine place. It has long hot summers, and beaches on Lake Michigan, coffee book shops with tables outside where you can sit all day and read and drink. They have festivals too. The year before I was there Depeche Mode headlined. I was lucky enough to catch The Judds, some kind of farewell extravaganza. Fine, I imagine, if you like hours of homely country and western hoopla.


The first place I planned to go was New Orleans, via Chicago.


Two hours out of Milwaukee, my very first trip, the bus broke down. ‘Everybody off,’ the driver said and we stood by the side of the road in the heat and fumes until another bus arrived to pick us up. Us, but not our luggage. That was to stay on the broken down bus despite my protestations.


‘That’s it,’ I thought, ‘I’ll never see it again.’ And I imagined the next month travelling with no change of clothes or anything. This trip I was doing on $20 dollars a day. My backpack I had bought from a charity shop, rigid metal frame and thousands of straps but it was mine.


Greyhound Bus stations are forlorn places at the best of times. Arriving there I sat and wrote a long letter to a friend. This was the days of letters and I wrote them often if posted them rarely.


I’d had high hopes. Talking with a friend we said our travels should have a point. He was going to try and find Bukowski and I thought I’d drop in on David Hockney. I’d seen some photos he’d done, mix and match style, of various people he came across.


Of course he would photograph me, I thought, and I knew he lived near a beach somewhere on the west coast when he wasn’t in Bradford. He wouldn’t be too hard to find. And Hockney would be my connection, however tenuous, with Christopher Isherwood. He’d painted him once.


Just to assuage any narrative tension you may be feeling I’ll tell you now, I didn’t meet Hockney but my bag did turn up, just before the bus to New Orleans left.


I like travelling alone. It’s so much easier not to fall out over petty arguments. But at the same time I have having little dialogues in my head, imagining the conversation I would have had if someone was actually with me.


Like the woman on the bus who bought the man who had BO a bar of soap at one of the rest stops.


I was uncomfortable in New Orleans. It was like a theme park for black people. There was a troop of cute black kids in the street tap dancing for money with lots of white folk around. A white boy started forward after they finished and his mother put a hand on his shoulder, a look of horror on her face. Don’t get too close. Or people gathered around watching the old black men playing chess.


Anyhow, I did the usual things, went on a paddle steamer down the Mississippi, saw a crocodile, went to the voodoo museum and I actually met Huck Finn, I really did. That’s when I was leaving, heading towards Vegas, and another story. If this was one. As is San Diego, Baja California, New York, Washington.


And if this was a story, it was 20 years ago and I don’t know why I am thinking of it now except for a couple of things. Except I don’t know if I want to tell you.


So….


None of the characters in any of my stories are settled down, or have proper jobs. ‘Me’ and Mickie James travel the world and live above stations, ‘Me’ and Troy live in a bedsit and a caravan and get temp jobs as elves, Mark in When the Chips are Down has only a tea-towel and a burnt down house, the character in The Suitcase works as a dishwasher, and so on.


Perhaps this, for me, is an ideal. This not fitting in, life as a road movie. Perhaps this too is why I’m never going to be a success. Only middle-class people read these days, don’t they? And they only want to read about other middle-class people. Or life in India.


For the working-classes these days have Kerry Katona, and Britain’s Got Talent.


I can’t compete with that.


I do have romantic aspirations, but practically, I’m a dead duck.

Amazonfail

I’ve been mad as hell at Amazon all week and then I saw they had this book on Ants half price and I forgave them a little bit. Because where else am I even going to find a book on ants, or know that I want it?


First of all I want to say something good about Amazon, because I like Amazon. First of all, they sell my books. No, no, that’s not first of all. First of all I like Amazon because they sell books, all books / most books.


Go into any bookstore and then spend a couple of hours on Amazon and you’ll find how many books aren’t actually in bookshops, books that I actually rather like. For example in the past two weeks I’ve read The Motel Life and Northline both by Willy Vlautin. Both have been published in the past couple of years, got brilliant reviews, but are they on the shelf of my local Waterstones? No.


This is obvious. Obviously. That Waterstones can’t stock all books because there are millions of the things published all the time.


Obviously it’s true but this isn’t where I was at ten years ago, five years ago. In those days I was a bookshop buyer. These days I buy things from the internet. My tastes have changed, improved I like to think.


Now most of the things I read aren’t on the shelf of your average bookshop. I don’t read obscure things, not by a long shot. I love books. Good books. But where are they and how do you find them?


The second thing I like is that when you buy one thing on Amazon it will tell you a whole list of other books you might like. That’s where that ant book came in.
(Does anyone remember Ant and Bee? They were my favourite books as a kid. They were brightly coloured. They were about an ant and a bee who lived together. Ant was put-upon and Bee was a bit of an arse. Ant was my favourite.)


Anyway, back to my books. When my first one, The Lodger, came out it was classified on Amazon as a ‘Gay and Lesbian’ book. It went to no. 1 in the gay and lesbian Amazon charts. I am rather proud of the fact. I printed off a screen-shot. Come over for a cup of tea and I’ll show you it. Bring a copy of Ant and Bee if you have one. We can read it together, me and you, after I’ve shown you my screen-shot.


So this is where I stood and then it all kicked off, Amazonfail.


On Easter Monday morning I logged onto Facebook before work, 6:30am, (I know, sad aren’t I? When you bring that book, Ant and Bee, you can bring a gun too. Shoot me.) There were stories all over the wall from gay writers talking about how their books had been ‘delisted’.


Delisted – this meant that the books had been stripped of their Amazon sales rank, and now wouldn’t show up in any searches.


I made a quick check. I searched under my name. There was ‘Me and Mickie James’. but no ‘The Lodger’. I was invisible. Partly.


What this meant for me personally was that if a similar thing had happened years ago The Lodger wouldn’t have trundled its way to the top of the gay charts and I wouldn’t have had my screen-shot.


What it meant on a far larger and more important scale was that anyone looking for a large number of gay and lesbian books would not be able to find them.
The rest, as they say, is internet history. A petition was started, Amazonfail became one of the most talked about things on Twitter, boycotts were talked of, Amazon HQ was inundated by emails.


By the end of the week Amazon had apologised, books were reinstated. Including The Lodger. Hooray.


Happy end.


But what is the fallout. What gives?


Was there some meeting at Amazon HQ where delisting books was talked about. There must have at some level, some decision that ‘gay and lesbian’ books would now be deemed to be ‘adult’ books. Although this doesn’t make any sense.


As Gore Vidal said, “What kind of a childish game is this? Why don’t they just burn the books? They’d be better off and it’s very visual on television.”


Amazon themselves described it “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloguing error”.


Putting on my own journalistic head for just a moment I would have to say that it is an almighty fuck up.


So what now? Do we boycott Amazon?


As of today, is my latest book ‘Me and Mickie James’ on sale on Amazon? Yes. Is it linked to lots of other nice books? Yes. Does it have some nice reviews? Yes. Is it cheaper there than anywhere else? Yes.


Is this, ultimately, the crunch?


Naomi Klein, who is one clever lady, has written two brilliant books about our capitalist society, ‘No Logo’ and ‘The Shock Doctrine’. In them she describes certain methods of grass-roots activism.


She argues, for example, that it would be almost impossible for you to not buy all your clothes from retailers that don’t use sweatshop labour. They all do it. What you can do is start a campaign to pinpoint one, raise consciousness, start to make a change.


Is this what the Amazonfail phenomenon was? People have raised their voice and Amazon have backed down (if ever they meant truly to back up).


And what of Waterstones, are they super gay friendly? Do Waterstones even have a gay and lesbian section? Does Borders? My local one did but over the years it has got smaller and smaller.


And over at Bookkake they are talking about the bigger issue, what happened in Dubai and all that.


And over across the Atlantic there’s the American Libraries Association’s ‘most challenged books’.


And so on. Etc.


So what do I think? Honestly.


I like that I’m gay. I like that I’m a writer. I like that I’m sold in the biggest store in the world. I don’t want to live in a ghetto. I do want the world to be a more fair and equal place.


I’m frustrated by comments, ‘Oh, so you like football?’ Raised eyebrows. Or, ‘this is Will’s friend’. And so on.


But my attitude is grin and bear it, fight from inside it. Try and make a difference. Like that Harvey Milk bloke did. It’s no good taking yourself off in a huff.


So is this me saying don’t boycott Amazon, that Amazonfail did the trick, that we, as consumers have power?


I don’t know. And…


Oh God, I can’t do this stuff and it’s three minutes to ten and the World Snooker Championship starts at ten so this is me checking out.


But if you get a chance check out Ant & Bee. They were my first gay insect love. Bee has an umbrella and wears a top hat, Ant wears a pinny. They share a bed in a little house.


Such things are sweet dreams made of.

Currently reading – We Are Now Beginning Our Descent by James Meek


Currently listening to - Magpie by Stephen Fretwell


Stephen Fretwell – New York

Mitten

A writer friend once said to me, ‘If you’re going to buy a wig, make sure you buy an expensive one’. And I think I knew what he meant, because those cheap wigs can look rubbish, can’t they?


Another friend used to wear one and it was made of straw. One time she was at this balloon party and the kids played a trick on her by attaching balloons to all the bits of straw.


We were speechless as we watched it drift off into the sky and my friend she had to go home wearing a tea cosy. After that she kind of developed a phobia for balloons. If you were out with her and she saw a balloon your life wasn’t worth living. Sometimes she used to make high-pitched wailing sounds and other times she used to try and scratch her eyes out. This was the reason she always wore mittens and for a while there we used to call her, ‘Mitten’. Her real name was Susan.


Her phobia of balloons was the reason she never went to hen parties, hen parties being a place for balloons in her head. And I suppose, thinking about it, why she never got married. Sad really.


I’ve been working hard.


I started off writing 72 linked short stories but that’s settled down into about 6 that I’m happy with.


After quite a long time of writing most days but struggling a bit it’s good to be buzzing again. I can’t wait every day to get back to these stories and I know more or less what’s going to happen in each one.


That’s the thing about writing. You know you’ve done it before but you never know if you’ll be able to do it again. Every day there is this sense of fear when you turn the computer on that today it’s not going to work. Then when it does you feel like singing. I don’t sing though as I don’t have a good singing voice and an ex boyfriend once told me after a karaoke night:


 “YOU SHOULD NEVER SING AGAIN!”


I like reading how other writers write but I don’t ever believe it. The Coen brothers gave the best description, or the one that is closest to my experience:


“We spend a lot of time sleeping on the sofa.”


Although I don’t sleep on the sofa. I generally start as early as possible, eight o’clock, but by about twelve o’clock I am pretty tired and have to get back into bed. I’m not the kind of person who can muddle through when I’m tired. I know other people can do things like watch daytime tv or repeats of old films.


I prefer to watch films in the evenings. Recently I’ve bought a few Woody Allen box sets and am slowly working my way through those. I also recently bought the ‘National Treasure’ box set. I suppose some people would call this a guilty pleasure and if ever I’m interviewed I probably won’t talk about that.


I worry sometimes people don’t take me seriously although I never worry that people think I am actually mentally disabled.


If I were to align myself with a movement in art it would probably be faux naive. This is no bad thing and after all I do like bright colours.


I am thinking of buying a house and looking through the Ikea catalogue I came across some brightly coloured glasses and I thought they would look nice in my new house. I currently only have one glass and two knives.


When I have been looking around houses people keep saying to me, “Yes, this space would be good for parties.”


I must look like the kind of person who looks like he has parties although I don’t. The glazed look in my eyes must come from spending too much time at this screen writing.
One thing I am looking at in houses is for them to not have a garden but of course the one I like the most has this massive garden. Now I’m thinking I’m going to have to get a lawn-mower.


If I did get a lawn-mower I would like one of those petrol ones that you can sit on. What I would really like is to drive it to work on it one day. I’d love to see the look on the face of the man at the gatehouse.


Anyway, that’s it for today. And Mitten, if you are reading this please get in touch.

Currently reading – Northline by Willy Vlautin
Currently listening to – Kingdom of Rust by Doves

Scott Matthews – Sweet Scented Figure (I’m going to see him next month)