Those of you who've been to a Year Zero gig, or have read about a Year Zero gig, will probably know the name Jessie Grace. Jessie has played a barnstorming 3 gigs with us now (as well as the launch of my first book), including our humungous, fantabulous show at Rough Trade East. You can learn all about her, and her involvement with Year Zero, and see her playnig at some of our gigs on the footage HERE.
Because it's exciting when someone has great news, and because we think Jessie is just about (I only say just about because I was at The Dead Weather last night, and it'll take a lot of time to get Jack and Alison out of my head!) my favourite musician on the planet, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share two pieces of wonderful news. First, Jessie now has her very own band - check out there stuff on her myspace. Second, one of her amazing songs is featured on this hilarious ad - how cool is that!
Oh, and third - Jessie is headlining Friday night at Rugfest this week, which promises to be unmissable.
I hope Jessie will be playing with Year Zero again very soon - because if we don't nab her very soon, she will be off in the stellar stratosphere (to mix metaphors) whilst we're left far behind.
Oh, and BUY HER CD - Asleep on the Good Foot - it's on her myspace.
Showing posts with label indie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indie. Show all posts
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Saturday, 17 April 2010
What's in a Name?
Nothing. Nada, niet, zilch, zero, zip.
That's all, really. I wanted to say something about Ian McEwan or Martin Amis or Graham Swift, or Zadie Smith - or even why I've decided I love Jeanette Winterson. But they're too easy targets. So I'll have t piece together an argument from the start.
And it starts in many places.
It starts with the wonderful world of independent literature - the fantastic small presses, cool shops, salons, scenes within scenes that are springing up.
It starts with Katie Price and Martine McCutheon, and "celebriterature"
It starts with the fact that we don't have an aplication or submission process at Year Zero.
And it starts with Haruki Murakami.
I love Murakami. So do hundreds of thousands of others. My bodily fluids are in disarray at the thought of 1Q84 arriving in translation. If I met him I'd probably faint.
It really starts with WHY I love Haruki Murakami. I love him, you see, because he wrote "Again and again I called out fro Midori from the dead centre of this place that was no place" and I cried for about 10 minutes afterwards. I love him because he wrote a scene about a woman, stuck on a ferris wheel, who looks into the window of an apartment and sees herself, commiting acts she could never imagine, and that scene changed the way I write forever.
I equally love Penny Goring because she wrote the line "You find me at night when I’m trying to sleep and tell me all about why you can’t stay."
And that's the point I'm making. I love people who do amazing things with words. Rather, I love the amazing things they do with words (there are many other thigs I love about Penny, of course, but they have to do withthe fact it's my privilege to know her).
But the more I see of even the Indiest of the Indie world of publishing, the more I realise how uncommon that is. We all have heroes, of course. I guess we do, anyway. But the literary world (and I know it's not alone) is full of a certain kind of adulation that I really don't like. An adulation for names. A deferentiality - be it for Zadie Smith or David Vann or whoever. And it goes hand in hand with a derogation of Katie Price and Martine McCutcheon, and I am left in a state fo constant bewilderment that no one sees the contradiction.
Much of the literary world, it sems to me, is all about names. It's about clubbiness and cliquiness. About liking the right thing and disliking the right thing - about thinking (tired and overused example, sorry, but it's been a long week and I'm tired and overused) John Diamond was a brave man chronicling his demise and Jade Goody was an attention-crazy slapper. About whom you've met, whom you've heard, how famuos your guests are, who retweets you, who says hi to you down the pub. And frankly, I find the whole thing utterly nauseating.
We had a Year Zero gig this week (still waiting a coupla piccies before I write it up). We held it at the OVADA Gallery in Oxford, a project run largely by unpaid staff and directors to bring the arts into the community, against a backdrop of a fantastic exhibition called Hidden Voice, put on by young carers from the county. It was the best gig I've ever been to, with 40 or 50 of the loveliest people I've met in a long long time. It came about purely by chance when a friend pointed me to an exhibition there, and I got chatting to the curator and said do you ever do literary nights, and two weeks later we were doing one. She didn't know me from Adam but she had a read fo some of our stuff, and circulated their mailing list, advertised on the Arts council website, gotus a slot on local radio, made our ragtag group feel, in short, welcome. Part of a bigger picture in which we're all doing the same thing - trying to build a world with more art in it.
Why mention the fact we don't have a submission pocedure at Year Zero? Well, it sounds rather clubby and cliquy, that's why. But it's not. It's simply that we do a certain kind of thing and - without giving away too many details - rather a lot of us are rather damaged so we need to have a safe space to do it in. Think of us like a band - you wouldn't say a band was a clique just because they don't let every bass player play bass for them. I HOPE we do everything we can to encourage others doing the kind of thing we're doing, and to share what we've learned. I'm sure we could do more, but I hope that's through lack of resource not lack of willing.
We called our gig on Wednesday "Open-armed and Outcast", and the more I think about it the more important that description feels. There is a whole world in the arts that's about belonging in the "in crowd" - and for me it's even more distasteful and prevalent in the allegedly indie scene, where it's mixed with a cultural snobbery.
There are all sorts of debates to be had about filtering and gatekeeping, of course, and how it can ever be possible to read everything out there and give stuff a chance, but I want to make a very simple, very plain point. It's cool to like great writing. It's cool to have something move you to tears or laughter or despair or exhilaration and to tell teh world how great it is - whether it be by Zadie Smith or Jane Unknown or, yes, by J K Rowling. It is NOT cool to like something because it is by Zadie Smith, or to tell people you had Zadie Smith giving a lecture in your store whilst you hide the fact embarrassedly that you also had Jane Unknown. And it is VERY NOT COOL to say something's crap because it was written by J K Rowling.
I have met a lot of wonderful people in the publishing industry since I joined Year Zero (I don't actually think I've met anyone from the industry who isn't really nice), but my experience has done nothing but confirm why I want to have nothing to do with that industry.
In short.
What's in a name? Absolutely nothing.
What's in a word? Absolutely everything.
That's all, really. I wanted to say something about Ian McEwan or Martin Amis or Graham Swift, or Zadie Smith - or even why I've decided I love Jeanette Winterson. But they're too easy targets. So I'll have t piece together an argument from the start.
And it starts in many places.
It starts with the wonderful world of independent literature - the fantastic small presses, cool shops, salons, scenes within scenes that are springing up.
It starts with Katie Price and Martine McCutheon, and "celebriterature"
It starts with the fact that we don't have an aplication or submission process at Year Zero.
And it starts with Haruki Murakami.
I love Murakami. So do hundreds of thousands of others. My bodily fluids are in disarray at the thought of 1Q84 arriving in translation. If I met him I'd probably faint.
It really starts with WHY I love Haruki Murakami. I love him, you see, because he wrote "Again and again I called out fro Midori from the dead centre of this place that was no place" and I cried for about 10 minutes afterwards. I love him because he wrote a scene about a woman, stuck on a ferris wheel, who looks into the window of an apartment and sees herself, commiting acts she could never imagine, and that scene changed the way I write forever.
I equally love Penny Goring because she wrote the line "You find me at night when I’m trying to sleep and tell me all about why you can’t stay."
And that's the point I'm making. I love people who do amazing things with words. Rather, I love the amazing things they do with words (there are many other thigs I love about Penny, of course, but they have to do withthe fact it's my privilege to know her).
But the more I see of even the Indiest of the Indie world of publishing, the more I realise how uncommon that is. We all have heroes, of course. I guess we do, anyway. But the literary world (and I know it's not alone) is full of a certain kind of adulation that I really don't like. An adulation for names. A deferentiality - be it for Zadie Smith or David Vann or whoever. And it goes hand in hand with a derogation of Katie Price and Martine McCutcheon, and I am left in a state fo constant bewilderment that no one sees the contradiction.
Much of the literary world, it sems to me, is all about names. It's about clubbiness and cliquiness. About liking the right thing and disliking the right thing - about thinking (tired and overused example, sorry, but it's been a long week and I'm tired and overused) John Diamond was a brave man chronicling his demise and Jade Goody was an attention-crazy slapper. About whom you've met, whom you've heard, how famuos your guests are, who retweets you, who says hi to you down the pub. And frankly, I find the whole thing utterly nauseating.
We had a Year Zero gig this week (still waiting a coupla piccies before I write it up). We held it at the OVADA Gallery in Oxford, a project run largely by unpaid staff and directors to bring the arts into the community, against a backdrop of a fantastic exhibition called Hidden Voice, put on by young carers from the county. It was the best gig I've ever been to, with 40 or 50 of the loveliest people I've met in a long long time. It came about purely by chance when a friend pointed me to an exhibition there, and I got chatting to the curator and said do you ever do literary nights, and two weeks later we were doing one. She didn't know me from Adam but she had a read fo some of our stuff, and circulated their mailing list, advertised on the Arts council website, gotus a slot on local radio, made our ragtag group feel, in short, welcome. Part of a bigger picture in which we're all doing the same thing - trying to build a world with more art in it.
Why mention the fact we don't have a submission pocedure at Year Zero? Well, it sounds rather clubby and cliquy, that's why. But it's not. It's simply that we do a certain kind of thing and - without giving away too many details - rather a lot of us are rather damaged so we need to have a safe space to do it in. Think of us like a band - you wouldn't say a band was a clique just because they don't let every bass player play bass for them. I HOPE we do everything we can to encourage others doing the kind of thing we're doing, and to share what we've learned. I'm sure we could do more, but I hope that's through lack of resource not lack of willing.
We called our gig on Wednesday "Open-armed and Outcast", and the more I think about it the more important that description feels. There is a whole world in the arts that's about belonging in the "in crowd" - and for me it's even more distasteful and prevalent in the allegedly indie scene, where it's mixed with a cultural snobbery.
There are all sorts of debates to be had about filtering and gatekeeping, of course, and how it can ever be possible to read everything out there and give stuff a chance, but I want to make a very simple, very plain point. It's cool to like great writing. It's cool to have something move you to tears or laughter or despair or exhilaration and to tell teh world how great it is - whether it be by Zadie Smith or Jane Unknown or, yes, by J K Rowling. It is NOT cool to like something because it is by Zadie Smith, or to tell people you had Zadie Smith giving a lecture in your store whilst you hide the fact embarrassedly that you also had Jane Unknown. And it is VERY NOT COOL to say something's crap because it was written by J K Rowling.
I have met a lot of wonderful people in the publishing industry since I joined Year Zero (I don't actually think I've met anyone from the industry who isn't really nice), but my experience has done nothing but confirm why I want to have nothing to do with that industry.
In short.
What's in a name? Absolutely nothing.
What's in a word? Absolutely everything.
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Poem
The First Night I didn't Think About Killing Myself
"That razor blade looks rusty," you said. "You wanna watch it."
"What the fuck do I care?" I replied.
You looked at the skin above my wrists.
I clasped a hand over each.
I looked at the skin inside your elbow.
You looked straight back.
"This is clean," you said. "And sharp.
And you won't feel a thing."
I don't know what I did think
But I know I didn't think about killing myself
And when I woke up and looked on the ground beside me I thought
That razor blade looks rusty.
"That razor blade looks rusty," you said. "You wanna watch it."
"What the fuck do I care?" I replied.
You looked at the skin above my wrists.
I clasped a hand over each.
I looked at the skin inside your elbow.
You looked straight back.
"This is clean," you said. "And sharp.
And you won't feel a thing."
I don't know what I did think
But I know I didn't think about killing myself
And when I woke up and looked on the ground beside me I thought
That razor blade looks rusty.
Thursday, 18 February 2010
Freakshow
I lie
Lip-reading the liquid crystal drumbeat.
Red slashes strafe the ceiling;
Hours minutes seconds,
The tick tock triptych
Flickers faces of a pulsebeat promenade,
A pageant scarred
From the egg-pan scraps and rancid lard
Of my life.
One by one they hide their whispers in the roar,
The crowdsourced maw
The thousand mouths
That pound and gouge
Their silent cries
Inside my skull,
Behind my eyes,
Repeating
Repeating
Repeating, repeating:
Freakshow.
Freakshow plays a nightly Columbine zoetrope tamazepam blur, rejubilant slur, infinite whir, sleep now bullet-hole smack-rush joy lie there the deserving dead and never stir
Freakshow wears a wrist-slit wristlet of his meds, rosary recites and plucks each bead and tongues each name, each holy mother treat me beat me amen
Freakshow has fuck-dream fantasies of Mary Bell, folds her in a skin book blanket to protect her from a living hell
Freakshow prowls the corners of the pheromone cage he constructed in his own front room
Freakshow says if you don’t see the secrets of Gannymede, pulsars, galaxy dust beginnings striated out in Jack White’s riffs then what’s the point, and mashes grandma’s pumpkin chowder cool between air guitar fingers
Freakshow’s life is so important to your lace chintz gimp mask vibrator conscience you waterboard torture throttle each word before it leaves his throat
Freakshow finds stillness in the million iPod ears scrumming a chaos concertina; in the neon thrum the bass and drum, the car horn and hawker, the cortisol scent of slickers bonus-bent and rent boys, hookers, a thousand faces more lost than his in cardboard houses, peeking out from Prada blouses, empty, drawn, transparent, barely bulging the bubble of his self-absorption as they brush by towards their Waterloo nothing
Freakshow harvests cancer daydream sinews, tans and tenderises, chemo anaesthetises them with his keypad club till each page hollers at the star-pricked unpolluted sky grazing the night for kitten candy innocents to scrape, for stopped-up pelmet ears to rape
Freakshow needs a passport to leave the prison of his head, increasingly infrequently collects his border guard refusal stamps and shuffles back to his squalid camp to wait his patient turn
Freakshow lives in a candle joint hotel room darkness world, shrinking down to the wrinkled dragons beyond the body boundary of his collagen-culled and crippled skin
This sicked-on Soho sidewalk night slithers toward amaretto coffee dawn, turns off the torture porn of spooling self-derision, the prophecies, the visions, the pharmacy and fallout from a fissile life, and bares its wrists to the drab diazepam day,
The lithium grey
The fog, the fug, the cigarette-smoke grey
The sacred grey
The damnèd grey
This daylight veil
I wear like dust
This calico skin I push through the pores from an endlessly replenishing stuffcloth innards mind
Is me
I’m
Your border control, your lintel lychgate ash-filled heart
The skin that shrink wraps and vacuum packs you
The barcode that tracks you
The pudenda the sphincter that sucks in your boredom excretia
The white sand shore that laps on your drabness
That traps the flab and flaccid slab of your normality.
I’m the cock, the gash
The pox the rash
The stenching slash to your screaming throat, your pleading bleeding hands that wrote their foul graffiti on the wall, the great stone empty hall;
The echoes in your ears, the reflections in your tears, the flea bite fingers that pricktease your skin for eighty seven years
Repeating
Repeating
Repeating, repeating
Freakshow.
Lip-reading the liquid crystal drumbeat.
Red slashes strafe the ceiling;
Hours minutes seconds,
The tick tock triptych
Flickers faces of a pulsebeat promenade,
A pageant scarred
From the egg-pan scraps and rancid lard
Of my life.
One by one they hide their whispers in the roar,
The crowdsourced maw
The thousand mouths
That pound and gouge
Their silent cries
Inside my skull,
Behind my eyes,
Repeating
Repeating
Repeating, repeating:
Freakshow.
Freakshow plays a nightly Columbine zoetrope tamazepam blur, rejubilant slur, infinite whir, sleep now bullet-hole smack-rush joy lie there the deserving dead and never stir
Freakshow wears a wrist-slit wristlet of his meds, rosary recites and plucks each bead and tongues each name, each holy mother treat me beat me amen
Freakshow has fuck-dream fantasies of Mary Bell, folds her in a skin book blanket to protect her from a living hell
Freakshow prowls the corners of the pheromone cage he constructed in his own front room
Freakshow says if you don’t see the secrets of Gannymede, pulsars, galaxy dust beginnings striated out in Jack White’s riffs then what’s the point, and mashes grandma’s pumpkin chowder cool between air guitar fingers
Freakshow’s life is so important to your lace chintz gimp mask vibrator conscience you waterboard torture throttle each word before it leaves his throat
Freakshow finds stillness in the million iPod ears scrumming a chaos concertina; in the neon thrum the bass and drum, the car horn and hawker, the cortisol scent of slickers bonus-bent and rent boys, hookers, a thousand faces more lost than his in cardboard houses, peeking out from Prada blouses, empty, drawn, transparent, barely bulging the bubble of his self-absorption as they brush by towards their Waterloo nothing
Freakshow harvests cancer daydream sinews, tans and tenderises, chemo anaesthetises them with his keypad club till each page hollers at the star-pricked unpolluted sky grazing the night for kitten candy innocents to scrape, for stopped-up pelmet ears to rape
Freakshow needs a passport to leave the prison of his head, increasingly infrequently collects his border guard refusal stamps and shuffles back to his squalid camp to wait his patient turn
Freakshow lives in a candle joint hotel room darkness world, shrinking down to the wrinkled dragons beyond the body boundary of his collagen-culled and crippled skin
This sicked-on Soho sidewalk night slithers toward amaretto coffee dawn, turns off the torture porn of spooling self-derision, the prophecies, the visions, the pharmacy and fallout from a fissile life, and bares its wrists to the drab diazepam day,
The lithium grey
The fog, the fug, the cigarette-smoke grey
The sacred grey
The damnèd grey
This daylight veil
I wear like dust
This calico skin I push through the pores from an endlessly replenishing stuffcloth innards mind
Is me
I’m
Your border control, your lintel lychgate ash-filled heart
The skin that shrink wraps and vacuum packs you
The barcode that tracks you
The pudenda the sphincter that sucks in your boredom excretia
The white sand shore that laps on your drabness
That traps the flab and flaccid slab of your normality.
I’m the cock, the gash
The pox the rash
The stenching slash to your screaming throat, your pleading bleeding hands that wrote their foul graffiti on the wall, the great stone empty hall;
The echoes in your ears, the reflections in your tears, the flea bite fingers that pricktease your skin for eighty seven years
Repeating
Repeating
Repeating, repeating
Freakshow.
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Newsflashes
Gosh, what a busy time it's been, hence teh humungous apologies for the lack of posting. I hope to make up for it now, with some meaty posts coming up on subjects like censorship and confessional literature. But first some updates!
BUYING MY BOOKS!
Has never been easier! I've compiledd a handy guide to where you can buy the physical copies of my two books - either online or from bookshops
SONGS FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL
bookstores:
The Albion Beatnik, Walton St,Oxford, UK
Rough Trade East, 91 Brick Lane, London, E1 UK
Camden Lock Books, Old Street Station, London, UK
Jaffe & Neale, Chipping Norton, UK
online:
Lulu
Rough Trade
SKIN BOOK
bookstores:
Rough Trade East, 91 Brick Lane, London, E1 UK
online:
Rough Trade
Not forgetting FREE DOWNLOADS
Songs From the Other Side of the Wall
SKIN BOOK
And from next week To Hell With Books at 10 Woburn Walk in Bloomsbury will be added to that list.
GIGS!
On Feb 4th Year Zero had an amazing gig at Rough Trade East on Brick Lane, with music from the fab InLight, Jessie Grace and To The Moon
And on 23rd Feb YEAR ZERO UNPLUGGED AT TO HELL WITH BOOKS will be our most daring gig yet
To Hell With Books is the bookstore part of To Hell With Publishing, one of the most exciting outfits in literature. Specialising in special editions, poetry, art, zines, and the uber-literary, they are a publishing press we actually love – and that’s like being a beloved carpaccio at a vegan dinner.I even blogged about them.
It’s an intimate setting, and a timetable without constraints, so to do our hosts justice, we’ve put together the following feast of unplugged delights for you. Come, listen, buy:
Dan and Daisy dueting Daisy Anne Gree’s Conversation in a Basement on 17th and Mission, in 1998
Penny Goring reading Bone Dust Disco
Daisy Anne Gree
Dan Holloway performing a world premiere of FREAKSHOW
Marc Nash performing “Non-Smoker” & “Meathook Carousel” from “A,B&E” plus “Mother-Daughter Coagulate”
Larry Harrison
Readings from Ali Cooper’s forthcoming The Girl on the Swing
PLUS: An acoustic set from the brilliant blues singer-songwriter Jessie Grace
MAILING LIST!
Year Zero has a mailing list!
BUYING MY BOOKS!
Has never been easier! I've compiledd a handy guide to where you can buy the physical copies of my two books - either online or from bookshops
SONGS FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL
bookstores:
The Albion Beatnik, Walton St,Oxford, UK
Rough Trade East, 91 Brick Lane, London, E1 UK
Camden Lock Books, Old Street Station, London, UK
Jaffe & Neale, Chipping Norton, UK
online:
Lulu
Rough Trade
SKIN BOOK
bookstores:
Rough Trade East, 91 Brick Lane, London, E1 UK
online:
Rough Trade
Not forgetting FREE DOWNLOADS
Songs From the Other Side of the Wall
SKIN BOOK
And from next week To Hell With Books at 10 Woburn Walk in Bloomsbury will be added to that list.
GIGS!
On Feb 4th Year Zero had an amazing gig at Rough Trade East on Brick Lane, with music from the fab InLight, Jessie Grace and To The Moon
And on 23rd Feb YEAR ZERO UNPLUGGED AT TO HELL WITH BOOKS will be our most daring gig yet
To Hell With Books is the bookstore part of To Hell With Publishing, one of the most exciting outfits in literature. Specialising in special editions, poetry, art, zines, and the uber-literary, they are a publishing press we actually love – and that’s like being a beloved carpaccio at a vegan dinner.I even blogged about them.
It’s an intimate setting, and a timetable without constraints, so to do our hosts justice, we’ve put together the following feast of unplugged delights for you. Come, listen, buy:
Dan and Daisy dueting Daisy Anne Gree’s Conversation in a Basement on 17th and Mission, in 1998
Penny Goring reading Bone Dust Disco
Daisy Anne Gree
Dan Holloway performing a world premiere of FREAKSHOW
Marc Nash performing “Non-Smoker” & “Meathook Carousel” from “A,B&E” plus “Mother-Daughter Coagulate”
Larry Harrison
Readings from Ali Cooper’s forthcoming The Girl on the Swing
PLUS: An acoustic set from the brilliant blues singer-songwriter Jessie Grace
MAILING LIST!
Year Zero has a mailing list!
We have no desire to spam you. On the other hand, we realise things can get lost in the blog, and we do like to give you freebies. So, from April 2nd, we will be sending out a monthly newsletter that will contain:
- what we’re up to in the following month – readings, publications, all sorts
- what was posted the previous month, with excerpts
- what we’ve been up to – reviews, write-ups of events, links to videos etc. - where to get hold of our books – in the real world, online, and as free downloads
highlights from our personal blogs
We will probably run a full e-newsletter every other month, with a digest one in the intervening months, depending upon our time – and yours. We may even run some writing comps.
To subscribe, simply e-mail yearzeromaillist@googlemail.com and put “subscribe” in the subject line
We will ONLY send you the monthly newsletter unless you initiate correspondence. We will NEVER divulge or shgare your e-mail address (even with ourselves, as it were – so if you sign up for newsletters from Year Zero you won’t suddenly find yourself on Marc or Dan’s private mailing list). All information will be handled in accordance with the 1998 UK Data Protection Act. You may unsubscribe at any time simply by e-mailing the above address with “unsubscribe” in the subject line.
Some writing by Year Zero Writers may be unsuitable for minors – by subscribing to our newsletter you are affirming that you are of a suitable age to access such material. Year Zero Writers will not be responsible, jointly or severally, if this is not the case.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Dear Publisher
Thank you for sending me your contract for consideration. I am sure you will appreciate that talented authors receive many unsolicited contracts. Nonetheless, I am aware that a publisher like yourself relies upon discovering new talent in order to keep its lists fresh and win new readers, so I hope that you will not be too disappointed that in this case I am declining your kind offer. I wish you all the best in seeking exciting new talent elsewhere.
I understand that it is frustrating to receive a form rejection from an author, without any elaboration on specific areas to work on in your contract. I hope that the following general points may help you in your future submissions.
1. An author relies for their living upon a day job. They write, edit, and network in the evenings, at weekends, and in lunch hours and teabreaks. A publisher's advance, the largest incentive for an author to sign a contract, is not sufficient for them to give up their day job with any security.
2. Many talented, exciting authors write work that will not appeal to large readerships. Publishers need to sell large amounts of books. The result of this tension is that many of these authors will fail to recoup publishers' outlay within their first two books, and it will not be viable for publishers to keep them on board.
3. Without a publisher, a writer is under no such pressure, and will not be junked if their initial books "fail".
4. Should a writer achieve initial success wit ha publisher, they will be expected to produce similar works, and not explore or develop their talent.
5. Without a publisher there is no pressure to change for a writer the way they write in order to fit market needs.
6. Without a publisher there is the freedom to experiment, change genre at will, try, fail, try again, fail again, and devlop one's talent, voice, and potential to the full.
7. With a publisher a writer must concede control over cover design, the way their work is presented to the world.
8. The long cycle of the publishing industry means that the time from pen to audience inevitably freezes some of the initial energy and excitement of the creative process, leading to a less real and invigorating feedback process between writer and audience, and a less meaningful feedback loop.
9. With a publisher, a new writer loses editorial control. Not just total control of final cut, but control of which editor to use in the first place. An editor must have two qualities - the ability to be utterly ruthless; and absolute sympathy with an author's aims. An author needs to be free to select their own, trusted, editor.
10. Pricing - whilst unsigned, the author is free to set the price for all their books - and other merchandise. This includes setting the price at free should the author wish to do that with, for example, their ebooks. It also means the freedom to create and price specila and limited editions of their work.
In conclusion, I am afraid that an author must consider not just their short-term but their long-term future. And whilst I am sure that your kind offer, were I to accept it, would put me in a financially more advantageous position one year from now, and possibly three years from now, compared to that if I reject it; I am afraid that the models I have run show that in five, ten, and twenty years - that is, over the course of my career - there is no financial advantage, and in many models financial disadvantage, in my accepting.
I wish you every success in your future publishing career.
I understand that it is frustrating to receive a form rejection from an author, without any elaboration on specific areas to work on in your contract. I hope that the following general points may help you in your future submissions.
1. An author relies for their living upon a day job. They write, edit, and network in the evenings, at weekends, and in lunch hours and teabreaks. A publisher's advance, the largest incentive for an author to sign a contract, is not sufficient for them to give up their day job with any security.
2. Many talented, exciting authors write work that will not appeal to large readerships. Publishers need to sell large amounts of books. The result of this tension is that many of these authors will fail to recoup publishers' outlay within their first two books, and it will not be viable for publishers to keep them on board.
3. Without a publisher, a writer is under no such pressure, and will not be junked if their initial books "fail".
4. Should a writer achieve initial success wit ha publisher, they will be expected to produce similar works, and not explore or develop their talent.
5. Without a publisher there is no pressure to change for a writer the way they write in order to fit market needs.
6. Without a publisher there is the freedom to experiment, change genre at will, try, fail, try again, fail again, and devlop one's talent, voice, and potential to the full.
7. With a publisher a writer must concede control over cover design, the way their work is presented to the world.
8. The long cycle of the publishing industry means that the time from pen to audience inevitably freezes some of the initial energy and excitement of the creative process, leading to a less real and invigorating feedback process between writer and audience, and a less meaningful feedback loop.
9. With a publisher, a new writer loses editorial control. Not just total control of final cut, but control of which editor to use in the first place. An editor must have two qualities - the ability to be utterly ruthless; and absolute sympathy with an author's aims. An author needs to be free to select their own, trusted, editor.
10. Pricing - whilst unsigned, the author is free to set the price for all their books - and other merchandise. This includes setting the price at free should the author wish to do that with, for example, their ebooks. It also means the freedom to create and price specila and limited editions of their work.
In conclusion, I am afraid that an author must consider not just their short-term but their long-term future. And whilst I am sure that your kind offer, were I to accept it, would put me in a financially more advantageous position one year from now, and possibly three years from now, compared to that if I reject it; I am afraid that the models I have run show that in five, ten, and twenty years - that is, over the course of my career - there is no financial advantage, and in many models financial disadvantage, in my accepting.
I wish you every success in your future publishing career.
Sunday, 20 December 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Free-e-day live
Free-e-day live was the real-life gig to tie in with Free-e-day, the global online celebraion of internet culture that I dreamt up on the bus one afternoon and ended up attracting 100 participants all offering amazing creative things for free, and giving us workshops and webchats with invaluable resources for anyone outside the mainstream. It has been all a bit of a wonderful haze.
Free-e-day live was put together by local singer-songwriter Nikki Loy (pictured) who, being an illustrator as well as musician, embraced the multi-arts idea behind the festival. Held at Oxford's Cafe Tarifa, the night featured an art ecxhibition, belly dancers dressed as skeletons, music and reading. It was a fantastic night with a fantastic crowd. Let me bore you with a LITTLE about what makes a live, indie occasion like this great.
First off there's the hyper-contrived shot for the local rag (who thought, for some reason, that we were giving away electronic gadgets and wanted Nikki and I to hold up some mobile phobnes for the photoshoot!). next there's the inevitable when you invite people from London. As the 8 o'clock kick-off approached, 2 writers and the headline band remained, as so many before them, and so man
y, I dare say, to come, stranded on the M40. Never have I been so pleased (I'm always pleased to see him, but I can't remember physically bear-hugging him before) to see Roland (pictured left), who gave us a brilliant rendition of Chapter 17 of The Beach Beneath the Pavement. Hearing his words somehow made them even funnier than they had been on the page, a reminder that stories - whatever your age and their genre - are best read aloud.
y, I dare say, to come, stranded on the M40. Never have I been so pleased (I'm always pleased to see him, but I can't remember physically bear-hugging him before) to see Roland (pictured left), who gave us a brilliant rendition of Chapter 17 of The Beach Beneath the Pavement. Hearing his words somehow made them even funnier than they had been on the page, a reminder that stories - whatever your age and their genre - are best read aloud.Setting the reader-musician rhythm we were next treated to a rather endearing keyboard and vocals set from the big-voiced Mol Hodge. "Most of 
my songs are a bit morbid" she told us nervously. "Bloody hell, if you think that's morbid just wait for SKIN BOOK" I thought. Mol has a great voice, and plenty of time on her side, and as she explores the melodic range of her music over the years to come is sure to be someone we see more of.
my songs are a bit morbid" she told us nervously. "Bloody hell, if you think that's morbid just wait for SKIN BOOK" I thought. Mol has a great voice, and plenty of time on her side, and as she explores the melodic range of her music over the years to come is sure to be someone we see more of.Nikesh Shukla is someone the world has already seen plenty of. With a string of TV and radio credits, festival appearances, awards and the like, he is far the most advanced and successful of any of ourt artists on the night, and we were hideous lucky to snag him - not only that he doled out copies of his kidologies CD to grateful audience members. Having introduced Nikesh as a poet he proceeded to read us a short story, but th
e performance element of Rap Tracks - a hilarious tale of pre-teen rap, Asian grandmothers and Gujurati dialect - was the match of anything slam poetry can offer. More confirmation that anyone who says writers can't engage an audience with prose is talking nonsense.
e performance element of Rap Tracks - a hilarious tale of pre-teen rap, Asian grandmothers and Gujurati dialect - was the match of anything slam poetry can offer. More confirmation that anyone who says writers can't engage an audience with prose is talking nonsense.I met Nikki Loy, who came on as Nikesh departed back for the next of 20 gigs in 32 days, when she was busking on Oxford's St Giles. I was so taken with her guitar and vocals I snaffled a card and dropped her an e-mail, and I've been impressed with her ebergy, verve, and all-round artistic enthusiasm ever since. This was the first time I've seen her live, and I was impressed by the way she handles a crowd and the way she handles a guitar. She too had freebie CDs that were gobbled up gladly.
In the interval, N
ikki came up to me and said "can you hold this?" pointing to a UV tube. "Er, OK" I said rather confusedly, until I saw what was coming next, a train of skeletons snaking to the stage who proceeded to shake their fluorescent booty to music I was too gobsmacked to notice much but think may have been some scuzzy Goldfrapp.
ikki came up to me and said "can you hold this?" pointing to a UV tube. "Er, OK" I said rather confusedly, until I saw what was coming next, a train of skeletons snaking to the stage who proceeded to shake their fluorescent booty to music I was too gobsmacked to notice much but think may have been some scuzzy Goldfrapp. The Scary Skele-belly Dancers gave me the perfect segue into the world premiere of the whole of SKIN BOOK - you know "those were th bones, now for some skin" - ah the joys of improv! Won't say much about me (below). That would be rude. Suffice to say my opinion remains unchanged - performing to a live audience is THE best thing a writer can do - feeling attentive eyes, listening to the gasps the sighs - that kind of engagement is what writing is all about. I THINK people enjoyed it - if enjoy is the right word for a story about a woman whose diary is made from skin she harvested from her twin bro.
The headline act seemed to enjoy it, though, which was nice. The Joker and The Thief describe themselves as a folk blues combo which had me worried before the show. I dislike folk so much I wouldn't hand a picture of Fleet Foxes to my dartboard because it would be unfair to the bristles. But The Joker and the Thief were an unexpected delight. Full of energy (proper energy - the kind you actually believe might just come from some kind of dark passionate place rather than the gurning wurzelly cheeriness of much folk), they delivered a set that was variegated and exciting. They have a penchant for playing around with different instruments, whcih added colour to the set - from frontman Dan (sounds like an epithet from Total Wipeouut) banging the cymbals with an assortment
of bells and sticks, to Josh's alternation of ukelele, sax and accordian (far my favourite - I could almost feel myself on the set of Amelie). A pretty much perfect night was rounded off when two of the skele-bellies came back dressed in burlesque and the crowd dispersed happily into the night.
There seem to be some obvious lessons from a night like this. Everyone would do well to bear them in mind:
1. There is a ridiculous wealth of talent outside the mainstream.
2. The creative world is full of almost boundless energy, enthusiasm, and can-do attitude.
3. Writers are every bit as engaging as musicians.
Here's hoping this is the first of very many such nights I get the pleasure of being involved in. A HUGE thanks to all who contributed, to Cafe Tarifa for being such great hosts, and most of all to Nikki for making it happen.
A full list of artists who contributed to the exhibition:
Cheryl Pearce – Poet
cherylpearce@yahoo.com
cherylpearce@yahoo.com
James Whayman
– Photographer
http://www.unformedmind.com/
Sarah Kennedy – Artist
email: acrylicartist@gmail.com
http://www.sarahkennedyart.com/
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
You won't find this in ths shops; or, why authors should stop pretending to be Indie when they stuff their books in Borders
Remember those adverts for 100 greatest b-sides of 1950s records by people you'd never heard of? You always had to send a cheque to Admail 54 (they were in Plymouth, I think) because "this offer's so good you won't find it in the shops".
That's what being Indie in the book world's all about, isn't it? Doing it all online, getting people to order from Amazon, sticking two fingers up to the whole bicks and mortar and paper establishment.
Well no, it's not. It's about valuing quality over consumerism; about cherishing specialist knowledge; about appreciating a great job, beautifully done. As long as I've been arguing about he future of the literary world, I've been pointing out the business reasons as well as the cultural ones why independent bookshops will increasingly thrive as Borders and B&N flail.
By independent bookshops, I don't mean "a shop just like Borders only smaller and owned by a strange man in cords with a ginger cat for his sales assistant". I mean shops that have a passion for books, a deep knowledge of the literary world, who can act as trusted reading companions for their customers, and probably have at least one area of specialism you just won't find in the mainstream sheds.
I mean shops like The Albion Beatnik in Oxford, buried in Jericho, a part of town so cool you need to take mittens just to walk down the street in summer. The Albion Beatnik sells hyper-hip fiction. But it also devotes half its floor space to books about music and the Beat Poets. And its online arm, Jazzscript, just sells books (including a whole library's worth of novels) about jazz.
It's become really trendy to "support your local bookshop". Authors are always plugging the cause. Great! Well, yes and no. First, I'm not a sentimentalist. I don't really see that "local bookshop" is the right thing to support. Not unless it gives readers that extra something. I'd rather see people supporting independent bookstores, in the sense outlined above. That really is a good cause. It's campaigning to give readers quality.
So it's great that authors support independent bookstores. But come on, guys, you can do a bit better than you are!
If Ian McEwan, for example, insisted that his next book was ONLY stocked in indie bookstores, THAT would be a serious statement. Sure, his sales might be a bit lower. But it would drive money to the Indies. Why not? Because his publisher wouldn't countenance it, of course. You see where I'm going with that.
All of which is by way of announcing that Songs from the Other Side of the Wall, unlike those Admail Classics, IS available in the shops. But you'll only find it in the Indie shops. Easy for a nobody like me to say - that's like a bloke down the pub saying "I'm not going to sell out and play for Manchester United". Well I HOPE if (heaven forfend) I ever get as big as Ian McEwan, I will still only sell my books in Indie stores. There may be a time in between when I sell out - I want toe arn a living. But I don't want to be stinking rich. I'd rather throw all my support behind the Indies and earn a little bit less for me and the mainstreams, thank you.
So far the book's in stock at - you guessed it - The Albion Beatnik (where thers's going to be a big party to celebrate at the end of October). It's also at Jaffe and Neale in Chipping Norton later in the week (Independent Bookstore of the Year in 2008). And next week I'll be checking out Indie stores in London - suggestions welcome.
That's what being Indie in the book world's all about, isn't it? Doing it all online, getting people to order from Amazon, sticking two fingers up to the whole bicks and mortar and paper establishment.
Well no, it's not. It's about valuing quality over consumerism; about cherishing specialist knowledge; about appreciating a great job, beautifully done. As long as I've been arguing about he future of the literary world, I've been pointing out the business reasons as well as the cultural ones why independent bookshops will increasingly thrive as Borders and B&N flail.
By independent bookshops, I don't mean "a shop just like Borders only smaller and owned by a strange man in cords with a ginger cat for his sales assistant". I mean shops that have a passion for books, a deep knowledge of the literary world, who can act as trusted reading companions for their customers, and probably have at least one area of specialism you just won't find in the mainstream sheds.
I mean shops like The Albion Beatnik in Oxford, buried in Jericho, a part of town so cool you need to take mittens just to walk down the street in summer. The Albion Beatnik sells hyper-hip fiction. But it also devotes half its floor space to books about music and the Beat Poets. And its online arm, Jazzscript, just sells books (including a whole library's worth of novels) about jazz.
It's become really trendy to "support your local bookshop". Authors are always plugging the cause. Great! Well, yes and no. First, I'm not a sentimentalist. I don't really see that "local bookshop" is the right thing to support. Not unless it gives readers that extra something. I'd rather see people supporting independent bookstores, in the sense outlined above. That really is a good cause. It's campaigning to give readers quality.
So it's great that authors support independent bookstores. But come on, guys, you can do a bit better than you are!
If Ian McEwan, for example, insisted that his next book was ONLY stocked in indie bookstores, THAT would be a serious statement. Sure, his sales might be a bit lower. But it would drive money to the Indies. Why not? Because his publisher wouldn't countenance it, of course. You see where I'm going with that.
All of which is by way of announcing that Songs from the Other Side of the Wall, unlike those Admail Classics, IS available in the shops. But you'll only find it in the Indie shops. Easy for a nobody like me to say - that's like a bloke down the pub saying "I'm not going to sell out and play for Manchester United". Well I HOPE if (heaven forfend) I ever get as big as Ian McEwan, I will still only sell my books in Indie stores. There may be a time in between when I sell out - I want toe arn a living. But I don't want to be stinking rich. I'd rather throw all my support behind the Indies and earn a little bit less for me and the mainstreams, thank you.
So far the book's in stock at - you guessed it - The Albion Beatnik (where thers's going to be a big party to celebrate at the end of October). It's also at Jaffe and Neale in Chipping Norton later in the week (Independent Bookstore of the Year in 2008). And next week I'll be checking out Indie stores in London - suggestions welcome.
Monday, 20 July 2009
The View From the Shoe: To The Moon
Apologies for the late hour of today's interview with the very best of creative twitter, but I was laughing too hard to post it before now.
To the Moon - (comprising MJ and Dennis) are the most infectious and eccentric band on twitter. They describe themselves as Experimental Rock/Electro/Pop Band preparing for the worst by evacuating Earth with whoever wishes to come. Their music, like their approach to life, is unique. And their wonderful relationship with their fans is everything I love about Indie culture.
Oh, and they're exceptionally good.
Follow them on twitter and listen to them here.
Thank you so much for your time. So, Louboutin or Converse?
mJ: I tend to berate myself cos, despite being a hip young laser-gunslinger I’ve never having owned a pair of Converse! I’m afraid Louboutin is slightly too Haute Couture for me – do love Lagerfeld at Chanel but I cant say I have done as much research into fashion as I have done into supermassive black holes and their application in sound-proofing a laboratory (read studio) room.
Den - i have no idea what you're talking about. Does not compute!
Why is there no one in the world who does it quite like you?
mJ: We’re exponents of newness, originality & vitality, and we have a unique blend of our two worlds- when two worlds collide...
Den: And we clean our synths with Cillit Bang
What do you really, really love about it?
Den: much Faraday's Cage comes into play!
A bit more time in the day, or a bit more money in the bank?
mJ: Well it’s a toss-up between more time for experimentation, vs. project funding - we always need funding though, as we’re constantly being discounted from scientific government grants for being too noisy. More time for tweeting and recording and wandering around wondering around soaking up future inspiration…
Den: but time is money… Amend your paradox at once!
Imagine you “make it”. You wake up, and imagine the day ahead. Tell us about breakfast.
Den: breakfast of fruit, followed by a short run and then maybe an egg on toast. then in the studio. OR wake up in your own sick and 4 ciggies later you make a coffee and sit in the studio.
mJ: We will spend at least 8 hours per diem in the laboratories at TTM HQ, tinkering with the rocket ship and having the occasional recording session… The idea of expeditions to other countries etc is very thrilling; as Derek Smalls of Spinal Tap said… Den: “Touring the world and elsewhere”
mJ: Affirmative.
What’s your Jimmy Choo? And what’s just cobblers?
mJ: Aside from my moon boots, which have got me out of many a sticky situation in the past, I have a pair of white, fabric Irregular Choice shoes, so bright I can see them from space on my shoe rack at TTM HQ. beautiful winkle-pickers, they are. To give you a scientific opposite, I have more loathing for Crocs than I do for most other things in the universe.
Tell us about the last time a fan made you feel 100 feet tall.
Den: I think probably the midget who came up to us after a gig. Mickey. he was ace, but kept getting into fights with this lanky bloke called Kramer.
mJ: Dennis, I know you find it hard to separate the blurry lines betwixt tee-vee and reality, but that’s an episode of Seinfeld.… He’s fragile, our Dennis is.
But anyway, thanks to Twitter, I’m lucky to get a lot of postivity from Comrades. As 1st in Command of Mission “Shameless Self Promotion” or SSP (tee hee), the compliments come in thick and fast! When someone asks where they can buy your music, or why we’re not signed yet, that does things to your ego. Like if your ego was a supernova, that’d be a good likeness.
Our music is totally free at the moment, anyway – its not about making the big money out of that sort of thing, and artists don’t at the moment.
Independent and poor, or under contract and rich?
Den: depends on the contract. as no labels are giving advances unless you sign a longer contract most musicians have no choice. you need equipment (we certainly do) and some form of financial security before you can take the plunge into music full time. some money is required so that you can stop doing your office job and pay the rent. i think most musicians aren’t bothered about money, but they have to think about it otherwise society will eat them alive.
Do you remember that bit on Play Away where Brian Cant stood behind people and did the actions whilst they spoke? If you could choose anyone to stand behind you and do the actions to your sales pitch, who would it be and why?
Den: there was someone called Cant on TV? poor bloke! brian-facking-cant… i would have Berlusconi behind me. he's mentally ill and it would liven things up.
mJ: To The Moon Corps. Has no sales pitch, only briefs and mission statements. But I’d nominate Voltaire to stand behind me and do the actions to the Emergency Exit instructions in-flight on the Star Ship TTM. Would be imperative to have someone with such gravitas and a lust for all things electrical!
Frocks or socks?
Den: i'm a big fan of socks. Totally sold with the idea.
mJ: Girls wear frocks, and feet wear socks. But socks keep you warm in the lab, and I’ve got a pair with stars on (obviously) so we have two positives plus two negatives, so the two serve to cancel each other out. Therefore, according to the laws of physics, neither frocks nor socks technically exist! Weird! Glad we found that out thanks to you guys! We shall write up our findings and report back. *Salutes*
To the Moon - (comprising MJ and Dennis) are the most infectious and eccentric band on twitter. They describe themselves as Experimental Rock/Electro/Pop Band preparing for the worst by evacuating Earth with whoever wishes to come. Their music, like their approach to life, is unique. And their wonderful relationship with their fans is everything I love about Indie culture.
Oh, and they're exceptionally good.
Follow them on twitter and listen to them here.
Thank you so much for your time. So, Louboutin or Converse?
mJ: I tend to berate myself cos, despite being a hip young laser-gunslinger I’ve never having owned a pair of Converse! I’m afraid Louboutin is slightly too Haute Couture for me – do love Lagerfeld at Chanel but I cant say I have done as much research into fashion as I have done into supermassive black holes and their application in sound-proofing a laboratory (read studio) room.
Den - i have no idea what you're talking about. Does not compute!
Why is there no one in the world who does it quite like you?
mJ: We’re exponents of newness, originality & vitality, and we have a unique blend of our two worlds- when two worlds collide...
Den: And we clean our synths with Cillit Bang
What do you really, really love about it?
Den: much Faraday's Cage comes into play!
A bit more time in the day, or a bit more money in the bank?
mJ: Well it’s a toss-up between more time for experimentation, vs. project funding - we always need funding though, as we’re constantly being discounted from scientific government grants for being too noisy. More time for tweeting and recording and wandering around wondering around soaking up future inspiration…
Den: but time is money… Amend your paradox at once!
Imagine you “make it”. You wake up, and imagine the day ahead. Tell us about breakfast.
Den: breakfast of fruit, followed by a short run and then maybe an egg on toast. then in the studio. OR wake up in your own sick and 4 ciggies later you make a coffee and sit in the studio.
mJ: We will spend at least 8 hours per diem in the laboratories at TTM HQ, tinkering with the rocket ship and having the occasional recording session… The idea of expeditions to other countries etc is very thrilling; as Derek Smalls of Spinal Tap said… Den: “Touring the world and elsewhere”
mJ: Affirmative.
What’s your Jimmy Choo? And what’s just cobblers?
mJ: Aside from my moon boots, which have got me out of many a sticky situation in the past, I have a pair of white, fabric Irregular Choice shoes, so bright I can see them from space on my shoe rack at TTM HQ. beautiful winkle-pickers, they are. To give you a scientific opposite, I have more loathing for Crocs than I do for most other things in the universe.
Tell us about the last time a fan made you feel 100 feet tall.
Den: I think probably the midget who came up to us after a gig. Mickey. he was ace, but kept getting into fights with this lanky bloke called Kramer.
mJ: Dennis, I know you find it hard to separate the blurry lines betwixt tee-vee and reality, but that’s an episode of Seinfeld.… He’s fragile, our Dennis is.
But anyway, thanks to Twitter, I’m lucky to get a lot of postivity from Comrades. As 1st in Command of Mission “Shameless Self Promotion” or SSP (tee hee), the compliments come in thick and fast! When someone asks where they can buy your music, or why we’re not signed yet, that does things to your ego. Like if your ego was a supernova, that’d be a good likeness.
Our music is totally free at the moment, anyway – its not about making the big money out of that sort of thing, and artists don’t at the moment.
Independent and poor, or under contract and rich?
Den: depends on the contract. as no labels are giving advances unless you sign a longer contract most musicians have no choice. you need equipment (we certainly do) and some form of financial security before you can take the plunge into music full time. some money is required so that you can stop doing your office job and pay the rent. i think most musicians aren’t bothered about money, but they have to think about it otherwise society will eat them alive.
Do you remember that bit on Play Away where Brian Cant stood behind people and did the actions whilst they spoke? If you could choose anyone to stand behind you and do the actions to your sales pitch, who would it be and why?
Den: there was someone called Cant on TV? poor bloke! brian-facking-cant… i would have Berlusconi behind me. he's mentally ill and it would liven things up.
mJ: To The Moon Corps. Has no sales pitch, only briefs and mission statements. But I’d nominate Voltaire to stand behind me and do the actions to the Emergency Exit instructions in-flight on the Star Ship TTM. Would be imperative to have someone with such gravitas and a lust for all things electrical!
Frocks or socks?
Den: i'm a big fan of socks. Totally sold with the idea.
mJ: Girls wear frocks, and feet wear socks. But socks keep you warm in the lab, and I’ve got a pair with stars on (obviously) so we have two positives plus two negatives, so the two serve to cancel each other out. Therefore, according to the laws of physics, neither frocks nor socks technically exist! Weird! Glad we found that out thanks to you guys! We shall write up our findings and report back. *Salutes*
Friday, 19 June 2009
Free-e-day. The World's biggest indie culture online expo & giveaway
Free-e-day, the world’s biggest cultural giveaway
http://freeeday.wordpress.com/
search free-e-day on Facebook and join the group
What is Free-e-day?
Free-e-day is 1 December 2009
Free-e-day 2009 is the biggest ever cultural electronic giveaway & celebration of the independent creative spirit.
Free-e-day is for every singer, writer, artist, artisan, photographer, film-maker, whatever who believes that the most important part of culture is the fans. And it’s for everyone who loves culture and wants to experience the very best of it, or just try out something new, for free.
Free-e-day is the chance for everyone and anyone to give some of their work away for free, as a thank you to their current fans, and a present for their new ones.
Free-e-day is the world’s biggest showcase for the massive, indomitable, indestructible, joyful, independent creative spirit of the human race.
Free-e-day is the chance for everyone to discover the most exciting culture the whole world has to offer.
Who can take part in free-e-day?
Anyone can join the group. You don’t have to be giving something away; you just have to think it’s a good idea.
And anyone can give their stuff away. If you’ve ever written anything you’re a writer. If you’ve ever sung anything you’re a singer. The established industries might tell you what you’re not. We believe in celebrating what you are.
How do I take part in free-e-day?
All you need to do to participate in the spirit of Free-e-day is give something away for free on 1 December 2009, or take something that’s being given away.
On the other hand, we want to make this the biggest, shiniest, most fantabulistic cultural giveaway ever, so, if you want to give something away:
Sign up to our Facebook group. That way we can put a number on it and show the world just how many of us there are.
- Post your name, what you do, and 32 words about yourself.
Include up to 8 tag words to make it easy for people to find your stuff - Post a link to somewhere you’ll be giving something away. It has to be something people can take away and keep. A pdf, a jpeg, an MP3 or MP4 file.
- Tell us what you’ll be giving away
- Make sure, come free-e-day on 1 December, you put up your freebie. If you don’t have the tech to do that, you can give people an e-mail address instead of a URL, but make sure you send your thing by the end of 1 December.
- If you have some way of doing something live, let us know what, when, where, in the same format as above
- Don’t post more than one plug. It’s rude. And it’s unoriginal
If you get something fantastic on Free-e-day, remember to tell us. Remember to tell the lovely people who gave it to you. And most of all, remember to tell everyone you know.
If you want to speak to me about Free-e-day, whether you want to publicise it, get a quote, offer moral support, volunteer to do something, or even tell me to p*** off and make people pay for things, send me an e-mail: songsfromtheothersideofthewall@googlemail.com
So What’s Gonna happen? - I’m going to turn the free-e-day website into a directory with sections for:
· Music
· Writing
· Film
· Photography
· Art
· Pot luck (you can put anything here if you prefer people to come across your stuff serendipitously)
· Craft
· Live Shows
If I’ve left anything out let me know. - I’ll paste everyone’s details over, including the links.
- I’ll paste your links as you post them, but it’s your job to make sure they work. There’s only one of me!
- This needs to be a live – and living – event. So from midnight on one side of the world to the following midnight on the other, there should be events
A 48-hour long open to all webchat - Workshops. Some of the most important things anyone can give are experience, time, and advice. This is a day for fans, but with so many people around, it’s a great chance to host a workshop to help your colleagues
- Live events – online and in real life. If you’d like to offer a live show as part of Free-e-day, the only criteria are that it’s held on the right day, and that it’s free. Anyone hosting an event will be sent some free e-files with media releases and logos nearer the time. Just let us know.
- Whatever your social media of choice, make sure Free-e-day is what people are talking about. And make sure, come December 1st, everyone’s giving and getting a whole load of stuff for free
How can you make this a sparkle in the cultural firmament?
Volunteer to do something. I’ll need help with the following:
- Admin. If this is going to be a big event I won’t be able to do all the cutting and pasting and sorting. I’ll need help.
- Publicity. Point anyone and everyone to our website and our group. I’m up for interviews and all kinds of publicity.
- Hosting – care to host the webchat for an hour? Or to host a workshop advising and answering questions from the people who work in your area – or another?
- Tech. There are probably things out there I need I have no idea I need. If you’re willing to offer it/your time for free, let me know. I’m sure at some stage, to paraphrase a certain Spielberg movie, we’re going to need a bigger website. If you can offer that, supertastic!
I’d love to think we’ll get lots of coverage. If you come across any publicity anywhere, send me the link – to the Facebook site, by e-mail, or to the website, and we’ll build a great big bumper archive
Send me an e-mail if you’d like to volunteer: songsfromtheothersideofthewall@googlemail.com
Free-e-day Against Spoilsport Twits - Spam sucks. Everyone needs to put food in their mouths. Some of us do that by selling stuff. Fans love to buy stuff. But not on Free-e-day.
- Plagiarism really sucks. If you’re giving stuff away, make sure it’s yours. Its’ not up to us to make sure it’s yours to give away. It’s up to you
- If you’re with us you’re with us. If any nice people in the press and stuff give us some inches, we can say you’re on board.
- Viruses and worms and other terms borrowed from questionable if ecologically essential branches of the tree of life and metonymously applied to inanimate scuz beyond suck. I’m not responsible for what you put out, but if you do that kind of stuff there’s a whole bunch of people gonna like you not very much.
Oh, and any ideas – e-mail me, post them on the facebook group, or add a comment on the website
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