Banned Books

Many apologies. This is a pluggy thread. Apologies also for the fact it contains largely the same material as I posted on the Year Zero site yesterday. But I wanted to tell everyone because I'm excited. Actually I'm more than excited. On February 4th, at rough Trade Records, Brick Lane, London, 6-8.30pm, the Year Zero Live tour begins. Full details here on our website. There are so many reasons I'm excited I don't know where to start. So I'll start with the big news: Daisy Anne Gree's "Hearing Voices" event teaser is out, and here it is!

But before you watch it, I should explain the other big news, which is that only a few hours after we'd posted the video, Facebook had had it reported and were banning it from being posted any more. Why we can't quite tell. We think it may be because Daisy's voiceover touches on a suicide attempt. Sure, the first reaction is COOL! WE GOT BANNED! But the second reaction is what the hell kind of sick world do we live in where we get banned for being open about a mental health issue when Facebook allows all kinds of bilious groups to proliferate. Let's just say, it's given us blog material.

Anyway, make your own mind up - but be warned, I guess. If you like it, do tell other people to watch it. I think it's one of the coolest book trailers out there.

Hearing Voices (link to YouTube video)

That's the two of us reading, by the way. So we have a trailer. And we have one of the coolest tour posters on the planet, courtesy Sarah E Melville, based on the cover for Thirteen Shadows Waiting for Sunrise, the anthology we're touring.

We also have a confirmed second date: 23rd February at To Hell With Books in Woburn Place. And the Oxford event will be held during the Oxford Literary Festival - 20-28 March. And we have notice that Jenn is going to be reading in New York in February too!

So what can you expect if you come along to Rough Trade?

Well, the whole gig is FREE, for which you get:

5 writers

Penny Goring reading Bone Dust Disco

Marc Nash readnig Twin Topiary Tales

Larry Harrison reading from Glimpses of a Floating World

me reading SKIN BOOK

Daisy Anne Gree reading the Death and Birth of Johnny the Baptist

3 amazing musical acts

To The Moon

Jessie Grace

InLight

You'll also be able to buy a whole load of books and CDs and Year Zero merch, any and all of which we will sign.

Most of all, I'm excited because we get to perform together, and in a few cases meet each other for the first time!! And I'm hoping we'll get to meet some of you!

Magical hours in London Part II: when Dan met To Hell With Books

A week or so ago I found, courtesy of MarshaWrites on twitter, a wonderful competition asking people to say what they would do with one hour in London. I was instantly cast back to one of the very favourite posts I've ever written, detailing one such hour I spent in the company of the wonderful Sabina England. It occurred to me how odd it was to PLAN a magical hour in London. True magic never happens through planning. It is spontaneous...

As I found myself musing last week during a second such hour, spent in the company of the lovely people at To Hell With Books, about whom I wrote a week or so ago. We were lounging in a wonderful basement space, on a decrepit button-back sofa, books strewn across a concrete floor, laptops akimbo amid piles of beer bottles, limited edition photographs and an Andy Warhol poster to die for on the walls. Lucy, one of the brains behind To Hell With Publishing, the fantastic venture that spawned To Hell With Books, was reminiscing over an impromptu poetry reading in the upstairs room of some seedy bar or other.

I'd come to London to arrange the Year Zero Live gig in Brick Lane, and wanted to take the opportunity to check out To Hell With Books. Sadly, I was diverted to Cecil Court, and the sister shop, Amuti 23. It seems there was a problem with the shelving supplier. From my days running luxury flooring showrooms I can sympathise.

I was expecting to walk into one of the myriad stuffy rare print shops that line Cecil Court where you daren't put your nose to the window unless you're wearing tailored tweeds. When I stuck my head inside the door to be greeted with a mix of concrete and chaos and unspeakably cool prints and artefacts (one of the Stone Roses' paint-splattered hats from THAT photoshoot), I had to double-take.

There was a staircase into the shell of a bunker-space, where two chilled-out people with laptops were surfing around.

They both looked up and flashed warm, possibly slightly hungover smiles.

"Is one of you Emma?" I asked.

"Hey," said Emma. "You must be Dan."

By the time I was downstairs Lucy had cleared a slew of books from the sofa to make a lovely comfy snug, and we spent the next hour burbling about pretty much anything and everything to do with books and writing, and the arts, and what was right and what was wrong and what was hot and what was cool; and occasionally Laurence - a lovely chap (lovely being the generic term for well-framed men with beards :p) with a penchant for insightful, sardonic one-liners - would come off the phone long enough to move the enthusing in some unexpecetd, anecdotal direction.

We talked about the amazing special ed of Kevin Cummins' book of Manchester photos that comes in a box held together with glue used in Formula One Cars; we talked about Andy Warhol; we talked about how to represent performance poetry on the page and crossovers betweenm literature and other arts; we talked about new writing and DBC Pierre.

And we talked about their fantastic To Hell With First Novels imprint, whose first book, Grant Gillespie's The Cuckoo Boy, is out next Spring. Sounding like something John Updike or David Lynch might do if the got their hands on the Wasp Factory, it goes top of my "to be bought in 2010" list. There are lots of things I like about the imprint - that it takes submissions direct; that it's for first novels of literary fiction (if I'd known about them before Year Zero, I may have been tempted to chance my arm); that its cover design philosophy sounds bang on what mine would be. But what I like best is that it's a one book deal. The aim is to bring brilliant writers to the wider public, not to tie them into long deals that will stultify their style and leave them in literary pre-pubescence.

Like all the best hours with strangers (well, the ones that don't involve hotels that charge day-only rates, anyway), it felt like I'd spent a whole day with people I'd known all my life. I wondered when I read about To Hell With Books whether the reality would live up to the hype. As Emma and I swapped e-mails my fears subsided and my expectations grew. Meeting her and Lucy and Laurence, I very much get the sense the reality is better than the hype.

I look forward to going back in the New Year and finally seeing the new shop. And, everything crossed, arranging a Year Zero Live gig with them.

And I'll leave you with a thought, an observation. The literary internet is full of people who moan about the current state of affairs, of writers who bewail the lack of openings, of publishers who fear for the future, of agents who live in fear of zero-advance deals. It's full of people who scaremonger lots and talk more. The more I getout into the actual world of independent arts, and hang out with people like these guys, like Sabina, like Nikesh and Nikki Loy, and everyone at Year Zero, the more I realise there's a whole world of people out there who don't bother complaining about the gloomy future - they're too busy creating a bright one for themselves.

To Hell With Boring: London's most exciting bookstore

It would seem to be a strange time to open a bookstore, but it's actually the perfect time for a well-focused independent store that knows exactly what it wants to do and be. Laurence Johns of To Hell With Publishing has clearly grasped this, and the result is To Hell With Books at 10 Woburn Walk in London, a store unashamedly specialising in quality literary fiction. Which makes it as perfect credit card candy as I can imagine.

To Hell With Publishing was set up in 2006 as a company that aimed to kick life into the independent publishing industry. It has since branched into To Hell With First Novels, doing what we strive to do at Year Zero, support new authors writing amazing literary fiction, and has even launched To Hell With Prizes, a great prize for unpublished novels (I'm not 100% sure I approve that it'f for agented authors but they already do more than anyone else for the unagented lit fic author). They love journals, chapbooks, novellas, and limited editions. Which are all reasons why I love them. I'll be heading down there to meet them and the shop in a week or so, and I'll let you know if it lives up to the considerable expectation, but I was lucky enough to be able to ask a few questions of the team behind To Hell With Books as they busied themselves for launch:

1. You are very clear on your website what you'll be stocking - signededitions, special editions, your own journals etc. What I'm less clear aboutis whether this is ALL you'l be stocking. In other words, how focused are you being?
We'll be stocking high end literary fiction and anything that we reallylove. We'll be very focused on our personal selection so that we can giveour customers the right recommendations. So we'll be extremely focused onquality.

2. I love the special edition idea. just how exclusive are we talking?Limited edition, hand-touched runs of 10, for example?
It'll vary between 10 - 200 in terms of copies. We've just published a limited edition of Kevin Cummin's Manchester (150 copies bound in light blue, light grey or dark grey cloth and boxed with a signed print in a perspex slipcase sealed with the glue used in Formula One racing, paddedand boxed in packing that's been tested by being sent to China and back - details on the website www.tohellwithpublishing.com) which should give you an indication of the kinds of things we do.

3. It's great that you are opening a shop like this when many are claiming
the industry is on its knees. What gives you the confidence to believe you can succeed?
Laurence has been an independent book seller all his life and I think we all feel that the time is right to start up a boutique bookshop.

4. I'm a huge fan of multi-arts and love the idea of combining books and art. And the literary crossover element is great, but will you have the same quality controls in place for the art as the books?
Quality is at the heart of what we do in Amuti and at To Hell with Publishing. Details on the art side of Laurence's interests and how properit all is are at amuti23.com.

5. You say you'll be sharing space with your publishing wing. Don't you worry that you'll get a buch of authors camping out in your shop?
We hope we will.

6. How do you intend to promote the shop? I imagine an exclusive club or newsletter like a fine wine appreciation society. Is that the kind of thing you have in mind?
Yes - we'll be sending regular mail outs and organising regular events. It'll be a fine book appreciation society and pobably involve a certain amount of wine too.

7. You mention journals and you mention quality - from my literary fiction collective point of view, I have to ask: will you be stocking the things we can't get elsewhere - high quality chapbooks, novellas, poetry, even high quality special editions from self-publishers?
Yes - we're keen to support other independents as well as self-published work, just as long as its high quality. We'll be importing hard to find stuff from the US and rest of Europe too. I've heard you can buy poetry on Amazon these days, but it won't be as fun as buying it from us.

8. What's the space going to be like? I have two conflicting visions in my head - one is a gentleman's club with Hogarth prints and button-back chairs (I guess that's because of the address); the other is throw-covered sofas and graffiti walls like some of the cool arts places on Brick Lane. Is either of these close?
It'll be gentlemen's club meets Brick Lane. But without the throws - we're not really throw kind of people.

9. Do you intend to be a venue for people to come and hang out and talk literature? It's often struck me, as someone who's trying to create an online community that feels like the Left Bank of the 60s, that if literature's going to move forward we need places where anyone can come and swap ideas with anyone, where ideas can ferment (I imagine Malcolm MacLaren& Vivienne Westwood together on the King's Road). Do you see the shop as the physical home for a movement that encompasses your publishing wing and website, or is a shop just a place to sell books?
We're going to have a large dining room table in the middle of the roomfor everyone to sit round and chat and read at. Berets optional.

10. Because I'm asking everyone at the moment: are there any writers out there doing something exciting and new with the novel?
There are loads. We think our first novels novelist Grant Gillespie is possibly the finest example of one of them. We're publishing his book The Cuckoo Boy in April 2010. It's a quiet and beautiful story of an adopted child's disturbed and disturbing behaviour that succeeds in being funny too. And we love Richard Milward.

11. A question that sounds impertinent, but matters for setting the tone, let's play launch party balloon game. Suppose you knew they'd say yes: which of these makes it to your launch do:
- Nick Cave
- Nick Serota
- Beryl Bainbridge
- Kurt Cobain
- Jimmy Dean
- Dorothy Parker
- Max Clifford
- Brian Sewell
- Tracey Emin
- the skinhead who plasters haikus to the MacDonalds window on the corner
- Ian McEwan
- Salena Godden
- Jamie Oliver
We would rather the alive ones. And would quite enjoy seeing Brian Sewell and Nick Cave together.