We have lift off…

Believe it or not, after all I said yesterday, today I went to IKEA. While we loaded a flatpack wardrobe on to the roof bars we sat our 3 year old grandson in the drivers’ seat (key out, of course, handbrake pulled tight). I was warned that the first thing he would do was put the car in gear. Okay. He did that. Then the hazard lights. No problem, easily switched off. Then the central locking – momentary panic, he was sealed inside – again, no problem, I had the remote. Finally alone in the car and ready to roll I went through everything like a Jumbo pilot on a pre-flight check. Everything had changed. So… gearstick in neutral, wipers off, indicators off, main beam off, headlight adjusters back to their mid-position, dash light brightness control back to dim. Close the glovebox and other little cubby holes. Only then did I turn the ignition. Pulled away, out of the floodlit car park and into heavy traffic. I never bother with lights. I have a little thingy that detects darkness and does it all for me (okay, so I’m spoilt). It can, of course, be overridden with a switch I never use. And guess what….?
So when you have all your ducks in a row, watch out for the guy with the duck gun.

Beam me up, Scotty!

I overheard a man on a cellphone today: ‘I’m in Edinburgh at the moment…’. He was sitting outside a pub and looking as if he wasn’t going anywhere for a while. It struck me as an odd thing to say, as if in a moment or two he would be in Rome, then Buenos Aires, then maybe even Milton Keynes. Did he have a Tardis tucked away around the corner that he used only for short trips? Or perhaps it’s just me. Not content with scrutinising my own use of language I find myself scrutinising the language of others. I don’t want to get like that. I even enjoyed reading Eating Shoots and Leaves when it first came out. I also bought the CD to listen to in my car. Sad. Even sadder was that I agreed with almost everything Lynne Truss said. And I loved that quote about greengrocers and the Apostropher Royal….
Then, on the bus to the park and ride, I heard a child who had mixed up her locations and was staring out at green fields: ‘IKEA’s gone!’ she yelled. Then her mum, not disagreeing: ‘Yes, it’s blown away!’ In your dreams, lady. In your dreams…
Having said that, IKEA really is the place to buy the world’s most bizarre bulbs and light fittings. Also, it’s a company that took a simple concept – Hampton Court Maze – and applied it to retail shopping.

Dodgy web sites…

Blogging is a new thing for me. If practice really does make perfect, then this blog should get better. I have now bought webspace (!) and a domain name. All I need to do now is create a web page. I’m not going to rush. There are some pretty dodgy looking websites out there and I don’t want that. If you find this site boring, please say so. Or if not boring, then can you think of ways to improve it? – apart from deleting it, I mean. Feel free to use the comments box under this post.

IAN RANKIN AGAIN

If you know Edinburgh, or have read Ian Rankin’s latest book The Complaints, you will know about the traffic chaos caused by the city’s trams. Well, not the trams themselves, because there aren’t any yet. It’s the disturbances caused by the road works. They can’t have anything beneath tram tracks, so before laying them they have to dig holes big enough to hide a bus in so they can reroute the water and gas mains, electricity and telephone cables and the sewers and drains. To complicate matters there are bricked-up cellars under some of the roads. Again, Rankin fans will know about these. The cellars should have come as no surprise to the planners, because in 1979 Princes Street was closed after the supporting legs of high scaffolding punched their way through to a cellar – though no doubt it did come as a surprise to the engineers in the site offices up on the scaffolding. The offices were left sticking up at an angle, like a ship on a very big wave. Been there. Seen that.

Talking of catastrophies befalling site offices, I have a tale to tell about that… 

Haynes Manuals and blogs

The Haynes Manual suggests blogs should be short. Pity I didn’t read it before I wrote yesterday’s blog. So to make up for I’ll stop here.

Abseils in the sunset…

You might have got the impression that I have written a few books and not had any published. You are right (except for three short stories a few years ago). It is probably what happens when either (a) your writing is pants, or (b) when you don’t have to make a living from it, you get a few rejections so you can’t be bothered to submit any more, or (c) both of these things. With me it is (b). This isn’t arrogance, it just happens to be true. I am a good writer.
I’m not good at rock climbing, I wish I was. I’m rubbish at it, I always have been, it scares the hell out of me. I’m no good at maths. Nor ironing shirts. I’m not very good with a paint spray either, the paint runs everywhere. Getting the picture? As you get older you get to know yourself better and better. I’m good at fixing things, I can strip and rebuild an engine. I can build computers. I can shoot (well, I could years ago. I have shot at Bisley. No, not at Wisley, that’s the Royal Horticultural Society’s Garden in Surrey. They would not be pleased).  And I can write. 
One of my books is called Playpits Park (yes, you already know that, you have read that). It is the one I submitted to Random House and got that amazing response from the MD. After taking the trouble to say all those nice things and do all that editing (see Thurs 15th Oct) he said he didn’t know where to place it. At the time I sympathised. It didn’t fit a genre – or should I say, it didn’t fit one of the publishing genres, which of course are artificial divisions between fiction types.
These days I no longer sympathise, not when publishers seem to be able to find the money to pay millions for ghost-written trash-ridden memoirs of 20-something ‘celebrities’ (Hey – I’m not bitter, these are not my words but those of an agent).
So….. should I sacrifice Playpits? By that I mean should I give it away? I don’t mean self-publishing, I mean convert it to Adobe so it can be digitally read, sell it on ebay for £1 or build a website on which it can be downloaded free? This is my daughter-in-law’s suggestion and I like it. 
A good novel takes about a year to write. Then you put it away and revisit it later, spending another 3 months rewriting and an additional month editing. You spend a small fortune in coffee shops. And for this (if you are lucky – you probably have more chance of winning the Lottery than getting published) you get offered a few hundred pounds for it.
Yes, I think I will give away Playpits. Trouble is, it will take time to get the website set up. So hang about. Rome wasn’t… etc.

NOT HARRY POTTER

My ten year old granddaughter just phoned me. Over the school holidays she has been test reading my children’s novel, Keewatin. ‘I’ve just finished it,’ she said, ‘it’s really good. I loved the way it ended, the way they found …….’ ‘Only the way it ended?’ ‘No, I mean I loved it all, it was cool.’ ‘What did you like best?’ ‘It was like I was there. It was real.’ Then her mum’s voice in the background: ‘Tell him what you told me.’ Then GD: ‘It’s better than Harry Potter.’ ‘That’s daft. It can’t be. So why’s that?’ ‘It was like I was in the story. There was no magic, it was really real (sic).‘

Nice way for me to start to the day. To be fair to J K Rowling, GD has just finished a marathon read of all the Harry Potter books and has been watching the DVDs, so she is no doubt supersaturated with wizards and needs something different. Maybe other children are feeling that way about fantasies. Time will tell. 

Ironically, when I wrote it in draft about ten years ago I intended it to be a ‘boy’s book’, to help address the lack of adventure stories for that age group. Then, perhaps stupidly, I put it away and turned to crime (well, you know what I mean), no doubt influenced by Ian Rankin’s growing success at that time. I told GD that unless I can get Keewatin published, then she will be the only one who will read it. She didn’t like that, she thought it was sad. I told her I would start attacking agents with it. She seemed happy with that.

Blunted Barbers

I have been playing with different blog themes. Found a nice header photo, one I took a few years ago. It lends itself to the panoramic frame style, don’t you think? Quite a different view of the Glenfinnan Viaduct from the one you see in the Harry Potter films. No sign of the Hogwarts Express, either. The artists amongst you will notice the aesthetic style. The engineers will notice the concrete corrosion…. 

I bought a Haynes Manual today about web site building. I have used them for years when rebuilding old motorbikes. The difference with this one is that I don’t need to use spanners. Hopefully I’ll have a website up and running soon. I also went to the barbers… I needed it. For you guys in Edinburgh, try Blunted Barbers near St.Andrew Square (bluntedbarbers.com) I don’t intend turning this blog into an ad site, but want to give them a plug as it is the best place I know.

publishing and climate change, the connection

Attempted, unsucessfully, to write in Starbucks this morning. Not because the muse had left me, but because of the earbashing piped music, jazz on a solo tenor sax, strangled by tinny speakers that pitched it around castrato – as if it wasn’t bad enough already. Struggled on, as one does, wanting to be somewhere else but not wanting to bolt my latte and mini cheese and ham muchies (that I rather like). Developed a gradually worstening brain pain. Bye bye Starbucks, hello Nero and Mr Costa. 
Interesting stuff now appearing in blogs and on Twitter about electronic publishing. I get the impression that agents and the publishing industry are running scared. Maybe running isn’t the right word. Ambling, then. It’s rather like the world’s attitute to climate change: we know it is going to be serious, but nobody seems willing to do much about it.

New post

Nothing to do with writing, I know, but I can’t resist telling you this: I have an aged aunt. We were chatting on the phone today and she said “I don’t bother with make-up these days. I mean, how can you get all dolled-up when you don’t have your teeth in?”