Anarchadia blog

Gonamena

2009-07-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

It's not just me that's inspired by my surroundings. Gonamena is the tale of ordinary Cornish farming folk who experience tremendous upheaval when mineral prospectors come to their farm and turn it into a copper Klondyke. During the boomtime it's live hard and play hard but when the copper price crashes not only is there no work but no farm, either for the land has become poisoned. Emigration is the only solution to avoid solution.

This could be a mawkish and self-righteous account of environmental disaster and the Cornish diaspora but it's bloody funny and gets its point across without preaching -- although there is a preacher among the central characters.

For several weeks throughout June, what are known as the Gonamena guerillas have been targeting local supermarkets and shopping centres to publicise the show at Sterts Open Air Theatres. A gang from our row went to see it because one of our neighbours is in the chorus and I really enjoyed it.

For a cast largely made up of amateurs the standard is very high. As I pointed out once before on this blog, amateurs do things out of sheer love and the depth of feeling that the subject matter shines through in this production of Gonamena.

And because they are local, and therefore Cornish, they use the script and language to devastating effect and ably demonstrate the best of Cornish humour. The bottle boys and old biddies have brilliant timing and a number of people have told me that last Wednesday's performance was the best yet.

The performers are now going to have a little break but will be back from Monday 20th July to Wednesday 22nd.

I strongly recommend Gonamena to anyone who is in south-east Cornwall during this time. If you want an idea of what performance looks like, go toRob Frost Photography to see pictures of the rehearsals.

Extra-curricular summertime activities of the author

2009-07-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

If things have been a bit quiet on this blog recently, it's not because I have fallen off the world. I went to one of the inspirations for the Wild Hunt, the Le Mans 24 Hours race and since then have been making the most of what is turning out to be a fantastic summer.

This was the view from my sleeping bag of a morning - that's the Morgan of mate Al parked in the Houx campsite within the circuit and in the distance are the tribunes around the start and finish line.

Everyone was there because they were enthusiasts and we had a great time enjoying the atmosphere together. I felt very much like this during my time in this year's Land's End Trial.

Of course, what I should have been doing at Easter was promoting the launch of The Wormton Lamb for this was published on the Easter Saturday but this was the very day that I was making my almost triumphant ascent of Blue Hills near St Agnes. At Le Mans I should have been promoting the Engine Punk thing and networking with everyone, telling me who I am and what I write. Maybe one day. Sometimes it seems to happen naturally but at others I seem to be foisting myself on people. I reckon this could alienate them so I go with the flow and if it feels good I network like a loon and if it doesn't I do something else. Like enjoy the competitive spirit and great company. And the rolling sculpture.

When it comes to writing -- whether it’s books or blocks -- I find that it is a seasonal activity. When it's raining outside, which it did for much of last summer, it's easy to put together a website or a blog or a book when it's sunny outside I feel I must pursue some of my other interests. Good weather makes me feel wealthy in all sorts of non-monetary ways and I like to spend such wealth wisely. I also like to spend my good weather when ever I have the opportunity to spend it. Good weather is not like money, which can be spent many times over, but is more like time, which can only be spent once. There will be plenty of opportunities to write when there are no opportunities to build sheds, weld cars, paint cars, play with motorcycles, travel and socialise with friends while the sun is shining.

There have been a couple of other factors that have mitigated against blogging.

Late at night, when I am most likely to get my blogging muse, the Internet seems much less reliable than at other times of the day. The UK government is winding itself up over broadband speeds but, from what I can make out, there are many occasions where the Internet is simply not available. I know I live in a very rural area but I don't think you should make a difference. At the moment I'm having to dictate this blog entry into Word in anticipation of the Blogger website becoming available again.

The other obstacle to regular blogging is the ongoing lack of a proper workstation. I have no desk, just one dining room chair, a cordless keyboard, my Dragon voice recognition software and my screen. The ergonomics of this combination are not good. After about five minutes, I start to ache, no matter how interesting the subject matter, and after harping on about the importance of well-designed workstations on this very same blog I am only a little closer to solving this problem. However, I have ordered very nice plywood that, after a short interval, will metamorphosise into a splendid wraparound tabletop. I already have the executive leather chair but this hasn't emerged from its box yet or been assembled.

A forthcoming but short term lack of blog entries can be ascribed to me addressing these issues but disturbing the snake pit of all these cables and wrestling with a wireless connection again as I move my workstation upstairs will be a steadying step backwards before a giant leap forwards -- even if I do go off-line for a while.

Why I like Jan Needle's Wild Wood

2009-06-07T03:20:00.000-07:00

I read this book for the first time many years ago. It was recommended to me by a friend, which is always the best way with anything. He lent it to me which meant that I had to give it back afterwards and is part of the ongoing thought processes concerning the development of the Sole Trader Trilogy, I wanted to read The Wild Wood by Jan Needle again.

Getting hold of a copy proved surprisingly difficult. Amazon listed it but, on closer inspection, this proved to be an entirely different book altogether. In the end, I notified eBay that I was looking for one and after a few weeks found an original paperback complete with illustrations by Willie Rushton in good condition -- and all for the princely sum of 50p.

The Wild Wood retells Winston Grahame's The wind in the Willows from the point of view the working class stoats, ferrets and weasels.

I had often wondered what Ratty, Moley and the Badger did for a living. Toad was clearly gentry. Although he was a menace to everyone when behind the wheel, including himself, if ever there was an amphibian destined to ride in Nick Hob’s Wild Hunt, here he was -- Toad the Wild Hunter, Toad the cheater and death on the highway, Toad the arch enthusiast.

I never understood the way his friends treated him, either. If he was such a bad driver, wouldn't it have been a better idea to arrange for him to have driving lessons? Instead, they attempted to repress his enthusiasm and this left me feeling vaguely uncomfortable. In my darker moments, I wondered if The Wind in the Willows was not the depiction of some rural idyll that an attempt by Winston Grahame to close young minds against the glories of mechanisation. However, on rereading The Wind in the Willows I could tell that Winston Grahame felt the same way about cars as Toad. His descriptions of Toad's magnificent machinery -- the way the wheels ate up the miles – suggest that he understood what motivated Toad but also recognised how easy it was to get (literally) carried away by an overriding enthusiasm for the motor car.

Jan Needle seems to have understood this as well. I particularly identified with the central character, Baxter Ferret, who loses his job on the farm went Toad runs his Throgmorton Squeezer lorry off the road.

The Wild Wood is deliciously subversive. It turns around the story of The Wind in the Willows entirely. The stoats, weasels and ferrets are no longer sinister villains and thugs, they are a down trodden underclass existing on the breadline and the animals of the riverbank are completely heartless, selfish and oblivious to the plight of their neighbours and fellow creatures.

I loved the way Jan Needle set a different point of view on each and every event in the story of The Wind in the Willows. It almost answered a number of questions about this children's story that had been bothering me ever since I read it the first time.

Again, I believe Jan Needle understands the glory of the internal combustion engine just as well as I do. He goes a few steps further than Kenneth Grahame and that he gives the machinery names and identities, mapping out their technical details and brief specifications.

Jan Needle has written a number of children's books and although I haven't read any other of his works are delighted to find that he was the man behind Wagstaffe the Wind-up Boy, for I once saw a brilliant stage play of this title by the Kneehigh Theatre.

Apparently, when The Wild Wood came out, there were attempts by the Thatcher led regime to block this story from publication. I don't know if this is true but it has a ring of authenticity about it. This wasn't the first time that Jan Needle had been the focus of controversy. Other books of his had addressed even more contentious subjects such as the nuclear industry and the Falklands war.

And then there is still this funny business on Amazon, where you click on the cover to look inside or scroll down to read the descriptions and customer feedback and discover information about a book by Tamara Pierce. Is this deliberate? Or do people in high places still feel uncomfortable about children reading about social unrest and trying to assert their rights?

This is a book that deserves a far wider audience. It's funny that a joy to read.

But it's that dangerous word wild. Anything wild needs to be tamed, whether it’s Toad's enthusiasm, The Wild Wood or the Wild Hunt.

Engine Punk Litmus

2009-05-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

There's something interesting going on across the internet at the moment. Somebody else has picked up the engine punk ball and is running with it.

Engine Punk Litmus is a blog that suggests examples of the engine punk aesthetic and I have to say that so far - having coined the phrase in a tongue-in-cheek effort to pigeonhole my own brand of sci fi fantasy writing - the suggestions so far are pretty much what I would call engine punk.

But what do other people think?

Forthcoming merger of blogs

2009-05-18T15:52:00.000-07:00

This blog will shortly merge with my Engine Punk blog. I separated out the two originally to keep the themes clear but now that Engine Punk has been listed on Wikipedia and elsewhere on the net, I think there's no distinction between, on the one hand, the aesthetic and technical aspects and, on the other, my scribblings.

For a while I felt the inky-fingered arty-farty wouldn't want to know about the guitar wielding motorheads and vice versa. But now I know that these two prospective audiences are really the same people (freinds I haven't met yet) and that art and engineering are actually expressions of the same thing.

I don't know when I will achieve a unified blog but it will continue the Engine Punk name because this has a stronger identity than Anarchadia.

It'll still explore what artistic influences inspire me as well as what music and machinery appeals to me.

Engine punk on Wikipedia

2009-05-10T15:26:00.001-07:00

I can't quite believe this but if you click here, Engine Punk is on Wikipedia! And it's accurate, too.

I can't believe this so much that I think everyone should visist this page to make sure that it's not just me that can see it.

Go on- you know you want to.

Very favourable review for The Wormton Lamb

2009-04-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

I've just been advised of this extremely positive review on BookPleasures for The Wormton Lamb.

I am particularly pleased because I wasn't entirely sure if the Anarchadian Engine Punk thang would translate for American readers but it seems that in this country we've been led to expect the worst. Obviously, this particular reviewer is a highly intelligent woman of considerable taste. And before anyone asks, no i don't know her.

In the UK we hear so many stories of British TV programmes being re-written and re-acted to suit the American sense of homour - hell the folks in the parish beyond the Scillies even spell it differently - but they are people like you and me. Some jokes they get and some they don't just like Europeans, Africans, Indians, Chinese, Japanese and Australians.

So I am re-assured that it my stuff will appeal to the American market and could even go global.

It's quite easy being a megalomaniac, y'know.

My writing to be cited in a creative writing course

2009-04-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

I don't know the full details yet but my work is to be used as an example in a new on-line creative writing course - that's a good example before anyone out there says anything.

Run by the New Horizons Writing Academy on Writing.com, one module concentrates on inspiration and breaking up writer's block and I have been cited as a good example of writing about what I know and using my imagination to put a new twist in things.

I'm thankful that I've never really suffered from writer's block. Sometimes it would be quite nice to be left alone by my muses for there often seems to be so many of them.

But if I ever get a bit stuck with what happens next or wish to link sections that I've already drafted - because i don't write sequentially - then write a literary review of the section I am about to write. I've travelled forward in time and am looking back through the eyes of another person at something I am about to write. Of course, they think it's absolutely brilliant and say why it's brilliant. I find living up to this imaginary expectation of a fictionary literary student, studying your work for their PhD (and why not?) inspires me come up with the goods. Often these students read my stuff on a completely different level, soemtimes seeing it as an allegory or finding all sorts of associations and subtleties of meaning of which I was totally unaware - until reading their piece.

Anyway, I am extremely flattered that anyone likes my stuff, let alone a tutor on a creative course who wants to use me as an example in this way, with links to my website and everything.

Amazon review for The Wormton Lamb

2009-04-15T15:36:00.001-07:00

The Wormton Lamb has just had a 4 star review on Amazon. Apparently Mr B (me) is not in the same league as Mr A (Douglas Adams) but I would have agreed with that.

Get this - "I was frequently completely taken aback by the inventiveness, cleverness and downright absurdity of many of his ideas." That's me the reviewer's talking about, not Mr A.

There are 6 new copies available from ₤11.97 and 3 available from ₤17.24 – so there’s already a cachet associated with secondhand copies. No ranking yet but with three secondhand copies somebody must have been buying it.

Buy why are they re-selling it so quickly?

Or is Amazon operating true to form again? Are these prices simply meaningless?

There was me wondering if The Wormton Lamb was doomed to a life of obscurity.

This is just the beginning.

The Wormton Lamb is now available

2009-04-14T10:03:00.000-07:00

While I was competing in the Land's End Trial, The Wormton Lamb became available. I know the timing of my book becoming available should have been part of a finely co-ordinated promotional campaign involving lots of media interest and an attention grabbing launch party but that doesn't sound much fun to me.

Leave that kind of thing to the professional book promoters who operate hand in glove with mainstream media. They're good at it and they've got it all sewn up. Your book is called "product". It's a production line and you fall off at the other end.

My idea of fun is doing just what I've been doing - connecting to like minded souls whether they are motor sport enthusiasts, fans of artists I like or readers of my books.

I have many other interests besides book promotion - writing is one of them for goodness' sake - and while some say I spread myself too thinly I view it as achieving the right balance.

I enjoy doing it and I think I come across better than I ever could in a speculative e-mail to someone who never will be interested.

So The Wormton Lamb has had a quiet start to its commercial but one that is not over yet.

Pavane - is this the start of Steam Punk?

2009-04-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

I discovered this book in the best way, by chance and through a personal recommendation. If I had not sat next to Peter Jenkin on the train and fallen into conversation with him he would never have told me about the book he was reading.

It was the traction engine on the cover that caught my eye. Although I prefer the internal combustion engine, external combustion varieties - where the fuel is burnt outside the cylinders - still appeal tremendously. Railway locomotives may have a literary presence but road locomotives rarely feature in fiction of any sort, let alone sci-fi or fantasy.

A pavane is a dance of Spanish origin popular around the time of Queen Elizabeth I and this story is divided into measures and a coda. Now, I know nothing about music but I know what I like and I quite like this musical example of a pavane. Not sure how you dance to it, though - probably too courtly and graceful for my usual enthusiastic outbursts of physical musical pleasure.

Keith Roberts' Pavane is really a series of closely linked short stories set in an alternative history where the Spanish Armada successfully landed in Britain following the assassination of Elizabeth I. The whole world subsequently came under a very repressive Roman Catholic rule in which the Pope issued directives on every aspect of life. Continuing the long association between men of the cloth and the steam engine, the Pope banned the internal combustion engine for most of the twentieth century, restricting its use and stunting its development. I'm really intrigued by this idea - but what a terrible world this creates!

Catholicism controls every aspect of like in Pavane. All other technological advances are potential heresies until the pope has passed judgment upon them and the Inquisition is more active than ever.

The scene is then set for a great deal of nastiness and civil unrest. The action takes place over several generations and depicts the slide into revolution of an incredibly repressive religious regime. It's set in the Wessex and probably stands comparison with Thomas Hardy's novels. I also associate Dorset with the Great Dorset Steam Fair so relate to the setting particularly strongly, although foreign readers probably won't pick up on many of the references.

I really enjoyed this book. Classified retrospectively as Alternative History, it pre-dates the genre by several decades - it was first published in 1968. It's also hailed as one of the first examples of steam punk. There's more to it than that and yet the exploration of the steam punk possibilities Keith Roberts conjures up would have intrigued me more than the sadistical excesses of the Inquisition, although this is handled adroitly and the violence is not gratuitous. The ceremony of blessing the instruments of torture so that the truth can be revealed is an idea that struck me particularly.

I would have enjoyed it even more, however, if the story had concentrated more on the steam engines. It strikes me that the old British steam-powered road trains offer vast literary possibilities and have been overlooked for too long.

The Wormton Lamb competition

2009-04-01T10:10:00.000-07:00

5 people have just won copies of The Wormton Lamb in a competition run by Zopa the internet social lending network. I should be able to get them in the post on Saturday.

The Wormton Lamb is released on 11th April. I won't be involved in a huge media event - on that date I'm crewing a 1946 Allard in the 2009 Land's End Trial for a mate of mine who was let down by his navigator/co-driver/bouncer-for-when-the-going-gets-sticky.

So obviously I've got my priorities right.

I should also point out that any similarities between classic trials and The Wild Hunt in my books about Hob and Anarchadia are purely coincidental.

More about The Wormton Lamb dreckly.

I'm a Type B kinda guy

2009-03-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

Last night I was making a bracket - as well as a racket - in my garage-cum-studio when I heard a very thought provoking programme on Radio 4. It was about sleep patterns and how the early risers have been favoured by society ever since we were an agricultural economy. In our pre-industrial society, our lives were ruled by daylight and the early bird really did get the worm. However, since the dawn of industrialisation, we have adopted much more varied work and sleep patterns.

Our sleep patterns change throughout our lives. As young children, we tend to go to bed earlier than when we are adults and when we are teenagers we prefer to stay up late and have long lie-ins instead of getting up at the crack of dawn.

And sleep patterns vary tremendously between individuals. The point this programme made was that some of us are Type A and naturally disposed towards getting up early and going to bed early. The disposition towards early-ness for larks is much greater than it would be for most of the population.

Type B people are the other way round - they prefer to get up late but quite happy to work well into the small hours in some cases.

This programme went out before the 10 O'clock News and I eventually finished in the garage at about 2230. I think that proves that I'm on a lark but I'm very much an owl.

According to some of the speakers on this programme, people like me have been discriminated against the generations. We are dragged out of our warm cocoon is far too early during our childhoods and have had the "early to bed, early to rise, makes a child healthy, wealthy and wise" mantra drummed into us from an early age. As adolescents, our sleep patterns shift back by as much as three hours and for some of us that’s where they stay. Most adults begin to go to bed a bit earlier in their 20s and, by the time they’re in their 40s, getting up at 0630 seems quite natural.

But if it is natural for you and you have to conform to the more traditional work patterns of a 9 till 5 job, then it is very easy for you to end up in a state of sleep deprivation.

Although I have no difficulty getting up in the morning, the natural time for me is 0900, not 0600. Going to bed early simply doesn't work because in evening I'm not tired. Very often I don't get to bed until about midnight. If you are running a publishing empire in your spare time after the working day this can be quite convenient but the lack of sleep gradually creeps up on you.

Flexible working hours and changes in more traditional working patterns are beginning to allow Type B people to adopt working lives more in tune with their own body clocks. We have effectively been jetlagged for most of our lives without benefit of going anywhere exotic.

I'm quite comfortable with my status as a Type B, but I have been aware for some time that the two had a half hours of sleep but I'm not giving every morning can't be compensated for by going to bed two had a half hours earlier. At certain times of the day I'm ready for a little nap but in that pleasant state between waking and unconsciousness I can be incredibly creative. The linkages between the various compartments of my brain seem to occur with greater regularity and I have my best ideas when she asked on the point of drifting off to sleep.

The trick is to stay just awake long enough to remember what brilliant ideas I've had. I once tried keeping a tape recorder close to my bedside and on several occasions had the presence of mind to record my ideas. The only trouble was, when I played the back, the grunts and mumbles were unintelligible. Keep your notebook didn't work either. By the time I switch the light on and found a pen I've forgotten what it was that I was trying to get down on paper.

I'd like to be able to work later during the day but not in my present day job. I won't be able to give this up for some time but my ultimate dream would be to make my living from my writing and when I'm able to do that (or more likely when I have retired) I will be able to get up when I want and do what I want in tune with my own sleep patterns.

In recognition of this tendency to work and live later, a movement known as the B-society is growing on the Internet. Some industries, such as IT and more creative disciplines, have already adopted work patterns that suit B-people. This is because many of the people who work in these industries are fresh from college or university where a student life centres upon staying up late. The purpose of the B-society is to promote awareness of B-people and maximise their talents, whereas in the past these have been blighted by sleep deprivation as they try to fit in with traditional working patterns that have been more geared towards A-people.

For the moment, though, I think I will still have to participate in a day job that is a little bit too early for me. This allows me to indulge in my more creative passions for hours but the feeling that this work pattern is slowly killing me won’t go away!

It's 2130 and I'm off out to the garage to finish off that cunningly fashioned bracket that will transform the way my van drives.

Review of The Horsepower Whisperer

2009-03-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

I've just had an extremely positive review on BookPleasures.com, the independent internet review site. Read it here!

I am particularly encouraged by this coup - I had a sneaky feeling some of the humour wouldn't be got by an American reader. Either the reviewer was particularly clever and understood what I was on about or it's not so abstruse for our transatlantic cousins as I'd thought.

At first I never considered how it would appeal to an American reader. People are still people wherever you go but over the years I've heard many instances of British shows being adapted for American tastes. This seems especially true of comedies but it doesn't seem to be a problem for Jaspar Fforde whose very Britishness is one of his keyways to success.

Wallace and Gromit also cross this great alleged divide. The Japanese love them especially their tea drinking. It makes for an alternative take on their tea ceremony, I suppose.

In case Jaspar's sense of humour needs explaining, his website offers explanations and background information to help people who've never been to Swindon. I suspect this is now an accepted part of publishing - both book and author are supported by the web to create an information resource or mystique that adds to their appeal.

All I have to do now is get some of these great quotes from this review onto my Amazon page.

One thing - of many - that I've learnt during the last 12 months is how important third party recommendations like this are. It's no good just me saying I'm brilliant. It's got to come from other people and, thanks to my recent efforts in publicising my work, it's starting to at last happen.

Why I like Doctor Who

2009-03-13T15:45:00.001-07:00

Although I don't have a telly these days, when I was younger I watched a lot. And my favourite programme of all was Dr Who. In my opinion the best Doctor Who was Jon Pertwee who brought such action and excitement to the role.

I remember Jon Pertwee was on the phone once to The Master, played by the brilliant Roger Delgado, when The Master tweaked a gadget and Jon Pertwee's phone cable became alive and began to strangle him - complete with sound effects from the BBC Radiophonics Workshop. Of course he escaped but I don't think Tom Baker would have managed it. He was too intellectual for me.

Pertwee's Dr Who was like a time traveling James Bond. He had the the gadgets. Who could ever forget the sonic screwdriver? (I had one of those once but it gave me a nosebleed.) He had a quirky Edwardian car (a Siva Edwardian no less! - see my occasional blogs about Sivas on my Engine Punk blog) that did more than 007's Aston Martin and could call on reinforcements in the shape and form of UNIT if any gargoyles suddenly came to life. Complete this sentence, uttered by the Brigadier during the story entitled The Daemons, "Chap with wings...."

Jon Pertwee was a bit of a dandy as Dr Who but the sheer energy he put into his performances overcame my reservations about this.

But the ultimate Dr Who moment for me predates - as in coming before, not eating - Jon Pertwee's Dr Who.

I have a black a and white memory of a Patrick Troughton episode where The Doctor was unconscious in a sewer beneath London and the cybermen were entering it. The cybermen were second only to the daleks in terms of Dr Who's adversaries and what I found particularly appalling was their unhurried gait. They didn't have to walk quickly because they just knew they were going to get you.

As they nonchalantly made their way towards the unconscious Doctor, I couldn't bear to watch anymore. And yet I had to see what happened next.

Peering through my fingers was not good enough. I tried watching from behind the settee but that didn't work either.

In short, I couldn't be in the same room as the television when that episode was on.

In fact, I couldn't even be in the same house.

My father was digging the garden at the time and as he paused in between spade loads he noticed me outdoors, peering in to the sitting room through the window.

"What are doing out here?" he asked. "I though you were watching Dr Who."

"I am watching Dr Who," I insisted, shading my eyes to minimise the reflection.

I later acquired a Dr Who annual and in an interview with Jon Pertwee he mentioned criticism from parents that Dr Who was too scary. His solution? "There's a button on the set marked off," he said. "If parents are really concerned they should try using it and see how their kids react."

But what Dr Who did best was introduce kids to sci-fi and adventure. I've seen the latest reincarnation but the effects are not quite so quaint as I remember. Maybe today's generation will look back at them and think them charming like I do. The latest Dr Who is still just as much a trouble maker as he ever was - as soon as he turns up you just know there's going to be trouble.

And at long last the BBC have got the marketing right. If Airfix had produced packets of Daleks instead of fighting human figures from historic battles, then I would have spent all my pocket money on them. They are still my favourite "monsters" even today.

Back to writing

2009-03-02T10:28:00.000-08:00

I am currently re-drafting the beginning of my next book and it has occurred to me how much of this self-publishing lark has nothing to do with the simple act of getting your thoughts down on paper. Or a screen. Or a digital dictaphone.

Assembling these often random ideas into a coherent story also takes a lot of time but I quite enjoy doing that - drafting and re-drafting until the story has a direction that and sense of purpose that makes it almost write itself.

Once I have that all important orientation in the narrative, the story assumes a kind of critical mass and I get carried away by it until it's finished. It always needs more polishing once I've reached The End but by then I can see the whole story, something no amount of planning can bring out.

So that's the writing part, the easy bit.

The self-publishing manuals are also telling me to do a whole lot of other things. Some of them I find easy, others I don't. And if I am to be a writer who actually writes - instead of being only a publisher - I've decided I'm going to have to ignore their advice and do what I like.

No change there then, some of you might think.

My point is that the To Do list for a self-publisher is endless and I can't do all of it myself. So I choose what I can and like doing and don't do what I can't or dislike.

I haven't had much success so far at getting reviews for my books. In fact, if just one review qualifies as a successful then I suppose I've been unsuccessful - so far.

"So far" is the balm that restores everyone's optimism. Who can tell what ripples i have created over the interweb? What out of the corners has my message reached? How long will it take for the ripples to bounce back to me as I sit like a spider at the centre of my far-reaching tentacles, mixing my metaphors and touching people's lives everywhere, sometimes without them even knowing it?

Unfortunately, publicity is critical and I would be delighted if my ham-fisted efforts resulted in some. Publicity is what publishing is all about but if newsapers and magazines have a policy of no reviews for self-published work then I have to look for otehr avenues for promotion. And thise 'ere blog is one of them.

I don't have the time to chase up media types with short attention spans. I don't have the time to tout my books around bookshops. And I am not a particularly good salesman, either.

I know conventional publishing wisdom dictates that I should have a book launching party for The Wormton Lamb but I have no idea of how to organise one.

Why bother about these negative character traits, though? I ought to be capitalising on my strengths, not worrying about my weaknesses.

So that's why I am writing again, and writing with a clear conscience. It doesn't matter that I haven't built up a media blitz yet. The long dark evenings are ideal for a little introspective fantasising. The next part of The Soul Trader Trilogy is taking shape.

Bob Blackman - never knowing overhyped - that's me.

Appealing to grown ups and children

2009-02-25T12:01:00.000-08:00

I really like this photo. It was sent in to me by Mr Charles Coad of Snozzle and shows him reading The Horsepower Whisperer with his daughter Katie, appearing courtesy of Mrs Sharon Coad who took the photo.

One point of interest is that although this book was ordered via Amazon only last week, the cover is the very first version, so Charlie and Katie have a collector's item in their hands. I can only assume that Amazon stockpiled some when my book first came out. Sometimes I don't think they "get" print-on-demand. Anyway, there can't be many of these left in the Amazon warehouse now so order your own one quick...

Personally I prefer the current cover. But I really like this image and thank Chas'n'Shaz for sending it in.

Why I like Facebook

2009-02-20T11:40:00.000-08:00

After trying MySpace and Bebo and not finding either to my liking, I couldn't see the point of going on Facebook for a long time but now I'm on there, I think it's great. When you join, it strips all your e-mail addresses out of your mailbox and sends messages to your mates to tell them you're on Facebook. And blow me if most of them aren't on there already!

I've had ping pong games of messages with friends in real time (that never happened with e-mails) and I can let my little circle of friends know what I'm up to and what the next exciting event for Anarchadia Publishing will be. I can post photos and links - it does everything that e-mail can do but better.

After the usual initial flurry of interest, I've found Facebook to be a useful tool. For networking it seems ideal. I'm on there to promote my writing mainly but I can easily see why it could become addictive.

You can even be fan of someone.

But I would like to be someone who has fans. I just haven't asked anyone yet.

Post tax submission euphoria

2009-02-18T10:54:00.000-08:00

I've been feeling particularly high-spirited lately and I've just realised why. It's because I avoided that ₤100 fine for late submission of a tax bill.

Now that not sound a lot to you but there was a principle at stake here and I'd spent a lot of effort for the last two weeks of 2009 and the whole of January 2009 in avoiding that fine.

I managed to submit my return in the end and now I can get on with my other activities. Writing is one of them.

I can allow myself to be stimulated again, instead of shutting down my creativity because "I really must have to do this piece of admin instead".

One day, I'll have an office manager to do that for me. I find administration and business stuff really tedious so it's great to get it out of the way. I have to do now is (assumes exuberant Latin gestures) CREATE!

Bob Blackman beats slush pile

2009-02-16T13:19:00.000-08:00

Here I am doing it!

Yet more trouble with reading

2009-02-15T11:15:00.000-08:00

No, I don't mean having trouble with reading - I'm having trouble finding good stuff to read. I want books that absorb me into their world completely. I want to feel that nothing else matters except the story I'm reading. I want to find books (just one would do for a start) that make me feel that I don't want to do anything else but revel in their story.

But the more I look, the more difficult it becomes to get this feeling.

I want the outside world to stop. I want the only thing that matters to be between the pages of a book. And I want to stretch out on my leather settee (it could do with being a bit longer actually becauue I'm 1.85 metres or 6'1" in old money) and read beside my open fire during these cold dark nights.

How is it that with so many books being published these days, so little interests me?

I went to the library today and nothing appealed. In these circumstances, how can I realistically expect to go into a bricks and mortar bookshop and see a book I like?

I perused the sci-fi/fantasy section and instead of names or title leaping into my eager hands to be read, every volume just stared back at me blankly.

I obviously wasn't the kind of reader that these books were hoping for, either.

I could consult my copy of 100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels mentioned in an earlier blog entry for the 8th October but what I really want to do is find a book club that can weed out the rubbish and recommend to me only books that I'd like - guaranteed.

I could also do with a radio station that only plays music that I'm guaranteed to like but I can't find one of those, either.

The only thing to do, it seems, is write my own book to read.

Why I like Edgar Allen Poe and Harry Clarke

2009-02-12T10:38:00.000-08:00

I first came across Edgar Allen Poe when I read a legendary treatise on steam locomotive history. The Chronicles of Boulton's Siding by Arthur Rosling Bennett - er - chronicles the fascinating and mysterious locomotives that Isaac Boulton bought, rebuilt, sold, sometimes bought back, rebuilt again and often finally sold as winding engines to collieries. Many of them had illustrious careers before they appeared at Boulton's siding in Ashton-under-Lyme but once Boulton had converted them for industrial use only someone with an infectious enthusiasm and deep knowledge of his subject could hope to piece their stories together. Rosling Bennett was that man. Many stories remain incomplete despite Bennett's best efforts but this book is the start of many enquiries into ancient locomotive lore.

Despite the murky origins of some of these locomotives I especially liked the line drawings that illustrated them in the condition when Boulton owned them.

Boulton even built his own locomotives and it was one of these that was that was painted a peculiar tint of black that Bennett singles out for especial mention. The work's manager, Thomas Boulton, Isaac's first born son and heir to the firm, had been reading Edgar Allen Poe and christened one engine as the Raven. One of their employees, a Mr Knowles, was something of an amateur artist when it came to painting steam locomotives and he endowed it with a blue-black paint finish that served to emphasise the title. Shortly afterwards, Thomas Boulton died suddenly abroad, a blow from which his father never fully recovered.

Bennett drew a link between the two events. "Quoth the Raven 'Never more!'"

I wondered at the time who was this chap Poe who could evoke such doom laden portents? Until then I thought a Poe was a guzzunda - another name for the chamber pot that goes under the bed in case one was caught short in the night.

When I lived in Kent in a shared house the only book in the communal sitting room was Edgar Allen Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, illustrated by Harry Clarke. I was captivated by the striking black and whiteness of Clarke's illustrations and the feverish mortality of Poe's over blown prose. I was already familiar with the work of Aubrey Beardsley's work but Clarke's drawings were something else again. With a line or two quoted from Poe's tales, his illustrations left an impression on me has stayed with me ever since.

The other day I found a copy of this book on Ebay and have been re-visiting the sensations this Gothic masterpiece made all those years ago.

Some of Poe's stories are - in truth - a bit boring but most are wonderfully evocative. You can smell the rotting grandeur of The House of Usher, feel the chill of the tomb in The Cask of Amontillado and reel at horror at the The Strange case of M. Valdemar ("upon the bed.... a nearly liquid mass of loathsome - of detestable putridity")

I love the sense of inevitable horror and the dramatic language! It's archaic but it sucks you in so you forget the modern world and it seduces you with odd, long -forgotten branches of experimental science like magento-galvanics. And let us not forget that Poe invented the modern detective story with his Murders in the Rue Morgue. Conan Doyle may be more readily associated with the snug terror in his Sherlock Holmes stories but Poe got there first.

I can't imagine a better illustrator for Poe than Harry Clarke. He brings out the darkness and adds to it, making the poses more exaggerated and the details in costume or plants in the background grandiose and bizarre and unworldly. It must have been a labour of love for Clarke to work on Poe's stories.

I am especially pleased to have this version of Poe's stories because it includes some colour illustrations but to be honest it's the graphic qualities of Clarke's black and white work that pleases me the most. In Clarke's capable hands, a simple black line becomes a thing of beauty and he wields his lines with such exuberance.

I like the line drawings in The Chronicles of Boulton's Siding for different reasons. There is another sort of joy in laying done these lines. They don't capture a dramatic scene or a distillation of Poe's glorious horror but a record of an engineer's idea, a dream that was made real out of iron and copper. The way Arthur Rosling Bennett tells these chronicles, they are indeed tales of mystery and imagination.

In both books, I like the combination of words and pictures. The typeface is old-fashioned but stark against the white of the page. The illustrations seem to squeeze out every nuance from a single line of Poe's rich text - "But then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the Lady Madeline of Usher."

Maybe it's just me but I reckon Harry Clarke sometimes spotted some double meanings in Poe's prose. The best example is from The Assignation, a morbidly romantic story that Clarke considered worthy of a double spread. On the left - "It was the Marchesa Aphrodite - the adoration of all Venice." And on the left, balancing in a gondola - "I had myself no power to move from the upright position I had assumed."

And it's the black and white line drawings that bring me back to The Chronicles of Boulton's Siding, too. The draughtsman behind the line drawings remains uncredited although Arthur Rosling Bennett thanks him anonymously. Many of these engibes were a bit freakish and some even had Gothic fireboxes.

Another of Boulton's engines was called Fowler's Ghost, an almost apocryphal locomotive built for service under the city of London on Brunel's seven foot wide broad gauge. It was supposed to have swallowed its own smoke in the tunnels it habituated but in the end produced "neither smoke nor steam" and was condemned as a failure before arriving at Boulton's Siding.

I can't help but wonder what sort of drawings Harry Clarke would have produced if he had been chosen to illustrate The Chronicles of Boulton's Siding.

Harry Clarke (1889-1931) had an illustrious career as a stained glass designer but it's his black and white work that entrances me. One day I'll travel to the Emerald Isle and see some of his windows. I like stained glass and when the fine lines of his drawing are combined with the colours of stained glass I suspect the overall effect is amazing.

It is rumoured that Harry Clarke's continuing ill health was caused by the toxic chemicals that he and his brother Walter used in the stained glass processes.

These poisons may even have hastened his death, a twist of fate of which Edgar Allen himself would have made much.

Summoned by bells to St Ervan

2009-02-07T15:20:00.000-08:00

The other day I took my silver haired rellies out to St Ervan church. This little-known church in Cornwall was mentioned in a guide book on churches that one of them received for Christmas and the description was so interesting it even tempted a heathen like me to go and have a look. St Ervan lost its tower many years ago and the stump remained a stump until given a proper job roof as late as the 1950s. For many years an improvised tripod of tree trunks supported a bell in the churchyard and this was how a youthful John Betjeman found the church whilst on holiday in Cornwall.

Betjeman visited Cornwall from an early age and is buried at St Enodoc. He championed Victorian architecture and Britain's railways when they were most under threat and had a knack of making the most mundane things appear special.

But St Ervan was something exceptional, a strange place in a strange land.

Betjeman found St Ervan when he was still quite a young chap and by chance - always the best way. I can imagine what an impression a semi-ruined church with its bell outside the porch on some rusticated sheer legs would have made on him. He met the vicar who summoned Betjeman by whacking the bell and later gave him tea in the bookish atmosphere of the vicarage. And "Summoned by Bells" was how Betjeman described his autobiography.

Like many churches in Cornwall, that of St Ervan is wonky. In plan, the choir is at an angle of several degrees, enough to look deliberate at any rate. And my learned relations told me that this to symbolise the head of Christ lolling on the cross. Anyone in the congregation looking towards the altar would never be allowed to forget this.

But what really struck me about St Ervan was the story of its tower.

Despite great thick walls, the tower was considered to be unstable by the middle of the nineteenth century and the parishioners had a go at pulling it down. First they tried with horses. That didn't work. Then they tried with one of those new fangled traction engines (Why didn't anyone photograph this?). That didn't work either.

Without pausing to consider whether the tower was really going to collapse that easily, they eventually resorted to dynamite and in 1883 succeeded in destroying the top half of the tower.

And a goodly portion of the roof.

When Betjeman found the battered little church, it was still a jagged stump, although they'd repaired the roof and could at least hold services in the dry.

Such determination to destroy the tower could stem from the fate of St Issey's tower to the north, which collapsed in 1869 after being struck by lightning. Much closer to home, the church tower at St Eval also gave trouble. Merchants from Bristol contributed to its rebuilding because it was such a welcome marker for vessels coming up the coast.

I remember the legend of Widecombe-in-the-moor in Devon when the devil visited the village. When he paid in a high value of coin for his ale at the inn, the ale turned to steam as he downed it, so infernally hot were his vitals. And when he left, Widecombe on a flying black horse, his steed lashed out and caught one of the pinnacles on the tower, sending it tumbling through the roof and onto the congregation below with great loss of life.

Some attributed this not to the devil but to another lightning strike. I reckon it was the devil. When I was a mixed infant at Goonhavern County Primary school, a touring group of players dramatised the story of Widecombe's disaster. I was convinced then and have been ever since.

How I saved a ₤100

2009-02-04T14:22:00.000-08:00

Well, I avoided having to pay £100 to the Inland Revenue. My top-secret log in PIN arrived with just a few days to spare and as soon as I had it in my grubby little hands I burst into action, logging on in a blur of fingers and accurately typed alphanumeric characters. The computer said yes and I was able to record my loss in the first year of trading as Anarchadia Publishing without any communist subversives hacking into the system beside me.

Many years ago, in a weak moment, I once tried to train as an accountant but couldn’t understand tax. Someone who worked for me at the time actually taught students in it and said that he would help me.

“All you have to do,” he said, “is ask yourself, is it fair?”

I seem to recall he mentioned something about chimneys as well.

Despite this congenital handicap, I found the on-line tax return very easy to use and look forward to recording a vast profit next year (just for a change)

It has occurred to me that if I hadn’t been able to get into the system to record my loss and been late, instead of being fined (if I had turned a profit), would the HMRC then owe me money?

The prospect of a ₤100 fine

2009-01-26T13:19:00.000-08:00

Time is drawing close to the deadline for submitting one's tax return for 2007/08 and this one has already received a hopeful looking ₤100-fine-sized envelope from what used to be the Inland Revenue. Nowadays they trade as the HMRC or Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs, not Harrogate Model Railway Club as I originally thought. I couldn't work out why I was being asked for a hefty subscription - and then I saw that it was for another kind of club entirely.

The reason for the looming deadline is that I've yet to receive a PIN that works. Back in 2008 (ah the nostalgia!), I didn't bother making a paper tax return for Anarchadia Publishing (a member of the Robert Blackman group of Companies), preferring to trust that my IT skills will enable me to make an online submission.

So here we are with a few days to go (possibly less by the time you read this) and still no tax return filed, a pile of rejected PINs on special secret paper and that hopeful envelope smirking at me from its pigeonhole in my escritoire.

What seems to have happened is that I have entered into a kind of infernal loop. I registered before Christmas for the Unique Taxpayer's Reference number and Government Gateway card and then got my PIN . Apparently all this is necessary so that Al-Quaeda don't de-stabilise the British Government by paying my tax bill.

Let them I say.

After three goes at entering this PIN the system freezes you out and automatically issues a new PIN. What I think may have happened is that I entered one of the other code numbers instead of my PIN, thereby caasing another PIN to be generated. When this didn't arrive within 5 working days, I logged in again to hasten my PIN. Two days later a PIN arrived but it was not the one that I'd hastened. It wa sthe one before. Of course, this was not recognised when I tried it and, after three failed attempts with an out of date PIN, the system generated another one for me. As soon as the next PIN arrived, which would have been okay to use afew days earlier, I’d try activating my self-assessment area with a PIN that had been superseded.

This could have gone on indefinitely but I managed to speak to someone on the helpline. This 7 days a week from 8 till 8, which sounds pretty good until you discover that it’s inundated by callers and an automated voice tells you to try again later.

At about 1955 hours on a Sunday I got through and explained my predicament to someone who probably already had his coat on. He explained what had happened and didn’t seem in the least surprised by it. All I can do now, he said, is wait for another PIN to come through the post within 5-7 working days and then try logging in again.

The clock is ticking….