Moving on up

Hello! 

If you're reading this then you don't need glasses!

No, what you need is to head over to http://www.craplookingbooks.com because we're no longer supported by Blogger/Google but the lovely world of WordPress! 

This means much less disgusting design, and more enthusiasm and functionality!

Nick
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To Boldly Go: Finally, some Science Fiction

At last weekend's London film and Comic Con I had the fortune (between yelling "I'M REALLY NERVOUS!" at Peter Dinklage and pretending to communicate telepathically with Jan Chappell) of coming across a "free books!" stall managed by the guys from Loncon3, a sociable fan-run convention coming next August.

not everything at Comic Con costs a fortune..

Resisting the urge to go absolutely mental and clean out their entire stock, I calmed myself down and tried to focus, picking up a few choice texts that promised both ridiculousness and entertainment. Remember, Crap Looking Books isn't about specifically bad or rubbish books, it's about finding unique gems somewhere between laudable and applaudable, about overturning preconceptions and conventions, and wrapping hands and eyes around books that might otherwise have been sidelined, while pushing so-so books that claim centre stage to their rightfully deserved quirky peripheries. 

Anyway, this is what I picked up.

 

Who could resist such fantastic titles as "Spacepaw" and "The Time Bender"? I wasn't about to walk away from the unashamedly on-the-nose "The Bug Wars" or the fantastically detailed cover of "High Justice" and fantastically atrocious cover of "Near Death" with its wholly unnecessary "Canadian Writer" sticker.

After my initial glee, I realised that (perhaps with the exception of Near Death) these were all science fiction titles. Not a surprise at a largely science-fiction driven Comic Con, but long-term readers of Crap Looking Books will have spotted a majority of crime fiction novels and boil-in-the-bag horror in my past reads and responses, and not a whole lot of science fiction.

I'm prepared to admit that crime and horror really aren't my genres of choice, and I have at times felt a little concern that some of the vitriol that comes from Crap Looking Books is less about the books in question and more about me undermining a genre that I simply don't enjoy. that's not how I want to be or write, and sort of defeats the whole point of reacting and responding to individual books.

With science fiction however, I'm forced to dig a little deeper. There will be no "People living on other planets, I mean what the fuck is that nonsense?" and no "Space is big. Big and boring." Instead I'll be taking the uncomfortable angle of looking for something ridiculous within a framework that I already find both acceptable and praiseworthy. I can't just attack the standard tropes or conventions, I really need to delve in to find the crazy and preposterous.

Although in the case of Spacepaw, that doesn't look like it'll be too hard.

I look forward to it!

Nick

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If you want to see how I get on with these books then feel free to give a Like on our Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, or do something Google with The Google, as your nan might say.

How to talk to Writers: Vol.1

So there's things I've learnt as a writer, and things I've learnt as someone who knows a lot of writers. Here's a few of them, collected as a guide for friends and family on the right way to approach these difficult, awkward and sometimes fussy souls..

This list is by no means exhaustive, which is why I've decided to dub it Vol. 1! Your own submissions and ideas would be more than welcome, either in the comments below or on our Facebook page.

Here we go...

IF YOU HAVE TO ASK a writer what they've had published, do your very best not to sound despondent if the answer is "nothing", or a surprisingly short list of things.

DO ask them what they're writing. DON'T tell them what they should write.

DON'T assume they have a schedule or a consistent plan of action.

DON'T assume they have a special writing book, writing pen, writing hat, or any other cute affectation.


DON'T force them to tell you about a project, CONVINCE them that you genuinely want to hear about it.

NEVER agree with them if they say one of their ideas is bad or stupid. 

NEVER disagree with them if they say one of their ideas is their best yet.

ALWAYS ask them where they get their ideas from. NEVER tell them where you think their ideas come from.

DON'T compare their work to other authors without being asked. It isn't "straight out of Guy Ritchie" or "a touch of the David Gemmells"

DO ask them follow up questions on a project they previously told you about.  DON'T be surprised if that project hasn't advanced at all.

DON'T suggest improvements without being asked to. It's their baby, not yours.

NEVER ask "Why?".

I think we can get some good mileage out of these over time, so as I say please feel free to submit in the comments below or over on the Crap Looking Books Facebook page.

Nick
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The immaterial economy, or why I don't (usually) pay for digital content

So... I'm really not a fan of paid digital content. Sure, I've bought indie games on Xbox Live and downloaded paid apps to my phone. I even paid for the Gosford Park soundtrack on mp3 because it was so hard to acquire through less legal means.

Yet to my mind, digital content doesn't "exist" in the same way that physical products do.

When I buy a CD, book, or game from a store, I own it. It's in my hand as an individual object that exists as a single entity in the real and physical world. When I buy an mp3 or program or whatever, it isn't a thing. It's a notion or concept that depends on other things in order to exist. Nobody ever considers a digital edition of their favourite novel to be a treasured possession, unless perhaps it's insanely hard to find or digital-only, and nobody ever fought off garden zombies with a box of mp3.

remember these?

Still, I'm not a Luddite, and I'm not really that concerned about the physical properties of these purchases. I have plenty of free digital content which I am more than happy to use. Hell, this and every blog of mine doesn't count as "real" by my schema, yet I spend a ridiculous amount of time working on and worrying about them.

No, my concerns are more economic.

It takes a certain amount of material and manpower to produce a book or mp3. It takes twice as much material and manpower to produce two identical books, while producing two, six or thirty million identical mp3s costs no more than producing just the one.

When you paying for digital content, you're not paying for a "thing". At least when you pay for a book, a DVD or a cat-scratching post, you're paying for the materials that go into making it. Yes, I know that digital content still goes through a production process that costs money and has to be covered by sales, but every single purchase beyond that point increases the profit margin exponentially. Once a digital album has paid for itself, every sale is profit. Once a book launch has paid for itself, it still needs to make more books to encourage more sales.

well, maybe it's not that bad

If Francis Drake can't pack it in a crate, store it in the hold and ship it round the world, then it isn't "real" goods, and paying for it is only going to take money out of the physical, material economy and put it into the pockets of retailers, driving up the cost of actual physical goods and materials.The value of your purchase isn't being passed down the line to anyone in construction or any aspect of industry- for all intents and purposes it simply vanishes.

Maybe I've missed something, or maybe this doesn't matter as much as I think does, and the economy has some sort of reactionary way of dealing with this that I haven't considered. I'd love to hear what you think over on Crap Looking Books Facebook page or in the comments below.  

Nick
xx


I'll made a shorter, less wordy and more gesticulative video of this blog injected with my usually quirkiness, which you can watch you can watch here.

ANTS!! A 1980s horror fiction parody-pastiche

Horror tropes and cliches came so thick and fast in Shaun Hutson's 1982 cult novella "Slugs" that I found myself wondering if it could be used as a road map for writing similar fiction. I was right.

Everything you read here is inspired by genuine content that I discussed in my original review, and will probably make much more sense if you read that first.

(Trigger Warnings: Intimate body parts, vice, various abuses, gore, telling not showing)

aiiiiiiiiiiiiie!!

 Ants

Information systems analyst Bob Corrigan woke up in a red armchair soaked in his own sweat. He had on a white shirt, unbuttoned at the neck and a pair of jeans that his wife had bought him three years previously when they'd been in the city. It had been a hot day and they'd been eating ice creams. She was lactose intolerant but didn't let that always dictate what she ate. They'd walked past a jeans store and remembered he needed new jeans, so had gone inside. When they came to pay he realised he'd left his bank card at home thanks to leaving in a hurry too busy thinking about the service that his car was soon to undergo. The car had been rattling a lot more than it used to, and the red paint had been flaking off to reveal rust underneath, so Bob was concerned that the car was too far gone to repair. Bob's wife had offered to buy the jeans for him, and Bob had never paid her back. Not because he hadn't wanted to or was making a point, it just had never happened.

Bob stood up. The information systems analyst had a hangover and felt the associated pains of a hangover, in his head, his organs, his mouth and his joints. He crossed the living room to the large wooden chest of drawers where he kept a bottle of non-specific-brand painkillers. The chest had six drawers, two small ones and four longer, larger ones. The handles of the bottom drawer were slightly more worn than the handles of the other five drawers.

Corrigan glanced out the window over the chest of drawers. The next door neighbour Claire Francis was bent over picking flowers in her garden, wearing a short skirt, and tight t-shirt. Her firm supple buttocks bounced in the information system analyst's direction, while her nipples brushed against the grass, where her nipples were brushing. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples.

Bob Corrigan pulled the lid off the bottle of painkillers. It was a child safety cap, but that didn't matter to the information systems analyst, because all his children had died in infancy. That was why his wife had killed herself. She had been suffering from breast cancer, ovarian cancer, XX chromosome cancer and wandering womb for several years up to that point, and given the constant sexual abuse that she had received as a a child, the fact that she wasn't pretty, and looked kind of old in certain lights, it had all been to much for her. She had drunk a ton of gin, eaten all her lipsticks, and hung herself with her own knitting.

Bob swallowed a fistful of painkillers. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something moving, so he turned to look, but there was nothing untoward there. Suddenly he sensed something behind him, and flinched around... but there was nothing there. Deep in the darkness under the sofa there may have been things, but he didn't know what things.

The information systems analyst noticed an ant on his forearm, and another on the back of his hand. Three more were climbing up his leg.

During the last six years the ratio of ants to humans in the local area had shifted drastically without anyone noticing. The ant community was now 5354.33% larger than it was at the start of summer, with a generally even dispersal rate per square foot of soil.

The ant on Bob's arm dug its fingernails into Bob's skin, ripping hard and drawing blood. Bob screamed and stumbled backward, tripping over the thirty cans of premium larger he had drunk last night and the positive AIDS test that he had opened the morning before. When he hit the ground his brittle bone disease caused several of his limbs and ribs to shatter, and he howled in pain again.

The ants swarmed upon him, tearing at his flesh with their fingernails. They were happy although did not like the temperature of the house as much as they liked the temperature in the garden. They also liked sports.

The ants quickly ate Bob's heart, lungs and brain, and he continued to scream and thrash around for thirty minutes after this. The ants ate his penis, and spent a long time chewing the flesh of his anus. Blood ejaculated from his wounds like the spray of vomit from the mouth of a person suffering from swine flu, while his bones crushed like egg shells if someone applied pressure to them. He was not happy.

With a final rasping gurgle the information systems analyst died and the ants quickly disappeared into wherever it was they came from, using a system of spider silk toboggans. Bob's remains lay on the floor, completely devoured yet inexplicably identifiable. Nobody found the body for days, despite the substantial amount of screaming he had done, and how well-populated and quiet the neighbourhood was.

Well there you have it. Personally I think there may even be a market for this sort of thing. I'll get on to the publishers of The Matewix and Bored of The Rings right away...

Nick
xx

Crap Looking Books #8: Shaun Hutson's Slugs

When you're in the habit of intentionally judging books by their covers, it can be a little hard to find something of questionable content that'll still be entertaining. Sometimes you find yourself looking at the same endless parade of pedestrian covers and nothing really jumps out and yells "READ ME!"

This was not one of those times.

This Garth Marenghi-esque novel as good as leapt (or slithered) into my hands, and not because it's particularly crap looking- it isn't. You've got the uncomfortably fetishised human mouth, a slug causing some rather gross wounding, and the title that lets you know upfront exactly what the book is all about.

At 208 pages you might think Shaun Hutson's  Slugs is a succinct and well paced tale bereft of padding.You'd be wrong. The problem with this kind of horror fiction is that it has only two objectives, to set up the killer monster and to destroy it. Narratives either fit those monsters in alongside a normal, everyday story of love or deceit or whatever, or stuff the pages with irrelevant filler material just to kept the page count high and let the monster be a threat for more than a few pages.

Slugs definitely takes the second approach, treating the reader to a constant procession of unrelated and unlikeable characters who either meet a sticky end at the hands (or proboscises) of the slugs, or blindly never realise how close they came to a squelchy and bloody death.

Unfortunately, when 90% of your chapters follow the same format, they're also going to throw up the same issue and problems. In the case of Slugs, that's the constant and flagrant abuse of "Show, Don't Tell"

convenient source: Carey English

I'm not going to quote every single instance of straight up telling of character traits and appearances, because it happens every single fucking time somebody is introduced. Even when a female character is standing naked in front of a mirror (more on that in a moment) the reader is told what she looks like through the narrative voice, rather than shown what she looks like through her own gaze.

It's often the case in Slugs that all the pieces are there, they just sit unused.

The book tells the reader over and over that Brady is a health inspector, but then extensively shows him inspecting health, making the previously forty or fifty tellings completely unnecessary waffle. (Incidentally both he and his wife are referred to by their surname, because that doesn't confuse things at all, nope!)

We're told at one point that the sky simply "is" glorious, and that Brady "likes" looking at it, when we could have just as easily been shown both these things through him "looking at a sky that he felt was glorious". Readers don't need their hands held, they can draw the dots- if someone finds something "glorious" chances are they're going to "like" it.

Sometimes the novel gets lost in these little tells, and showers the reader with floating information that has no relevance on the story or the events of the chapter. 

"Kim in particular went through a seemingly endless period of depression during which Brady began to fear for her sanity but she got through it in the end and their experience seemed to strengthen their marriage, intensifying their love beyond imagination."

Wow! Thank fuck that was all written out like that. Saving time and skipping relevance is a much more effective strategy than gradually letting the the whole story unfold through memories, conversations and other narrative clues, or finding it out through the subtext of how Kim Brady and Brady Brady behave together.

This constant desire of the book to tell everything extends to gross abuse of omnipotent narration, particularly with regards to the motion of the slugs themselves. The slugs are often described performing such motivated tasks as "burrowing into his ear, seeking the juicy grey meat of the brain" as if the victim of such an attack would comprehend the specific feeding intentions of such a creature.

A mass of unobserved slugs are a cause for concern because "there seemed to be so many of them now", but you can't have seeming without someone there to do the seeming. Without a subjective observer, even an imagined one, all the narration can give you is facts or silence, never opinion.

Also, if "Bob blacked out" I'm never going to bond with him as a character if the book tells me everything that Bob forgets after he wakes up.

Bob's actually lucky that he blacks out. Even the gravedigger, rebellious teen and town drunk (because town drunks are a thing!) are lucky, despite ultimately being eaten alive. No, the real unlucky and suffering characters of Slugs are the women. All of them.

run. run like your XX depends on it

Slugs makes no bones about positing women in supposedly traditional roles. They cook dinner, they look after children, they take showers, enjoy a good natter and are hysterically passionate about housework. They also get beaten by drunk husbands, miscarry in car crashes, turn barren, get cheated on, get used to cheat on others, constantly obsesses about their own nipples and whether or not they're wearing a bra, start the day masturbating naked in front of a full length mirror, and do get eaten alive, but genitalia first.

Remember all this is in just 208 pages, which also have to talk about killer slugs at some point.
 

"She slid further into her denims, allowing the seam to cut into her damp cleft [...] noting how her thin shirt made her hardened nipples even more prominent"

Seriously, why is she doing this? Because it's central to the plot? Because it has something to do with killer slugs? No! It's because her husband left her to raise a "slightly retarded" child all by herself, and since she's unable to exist without a man, she's getting all hot thinking about her neighbour, "a nice bloke...pity he was married."

I appreciate that this book was written for a male dominated genre, 31 years of socio-cultural advancement ago, but it's as if it screams in terror at women as an unfamiliar race... "Women! They suffer! They're mistreated! They have nipples! That's all we know!"

om nom finger gone

When I picked up this book I was looking forward to what the cover boasted, some trashy "mind-shattering horror" punctuated by gore and tension. I suppose that was there, but given all the sexism and poor style choices that surrounded it, it wound up taking a back seat.

However, the mistakes and tropes were so persistent and absurd that reading them became almost like an act of friendly familiarity. It wasn't so much horror and suspense that kept me reading, but the bizarre desire to see just what ludicrous backstory, female-abuse or appalling conventions the book would throw out next.

Every chapter save a few were pretty much the same. Somebody is introduced, their specific and always depressing socioeconomic backstory is explained without any regard for context, and then they're brutally killed. 

What do you do when you've got some great ideas for characters but no idea what to do with them? You feed them to giant mutant killer slugs in quick succession, of course!

Nick
xx

This book however does win my unofficial award for best/worst simile ever. "Burst forth like diarhoettic excretion." Lovely.

Literally Giving up the Fight on Literally

I need a lot of things. What I don't need is to waste energy and time enthusiastically dictating the proper use of an adverb to people who enjoy abusing it in a way that many others find addictive and catchy.

So I am literally giving up the fight on "literally"

But I'm literally going out with a bang. BANG!

The reason why I think it's time (for me at least) to call it a day on the "true" definition of "literally" is the sheer abundance and popularity of the wrong use. Here's a quick explanation of the difference between the two.

RIGHT: I was so scared I literally shit myself. There was poo in my pants.
WRONG: It was literally raining cats and dogs. By which I mean water.

Simple enough. If something is literally happening, then it is actually genuinely taking place. If your Dad literally explodes with anger, you had better start looking for a new Dad, and cleaning the pieces of your old Dad off the walls.

So if I have such a clear idea of the definition of literally, why am I letting it go? 

Because language is dynamic. Language is constantly shifting and evolving. That's why I can get away with starting this burst of sentence fragments with "because" and ending them with whatever preposition I end up with.

Let's go back to the example of the exploding Dad, and look at the linguistic and grammatical choices.

 

Dad was angry.

Little bit drab, isn't it? In a world of exaggeration, flashing billboards, explosions, car crashes and the kids with their rock and roll music, Dad's anger doesn't seem to be that much of a big deal here. 

Dad was really angry!

Ok, this is a little better. Dad's anger is on a level with all the other noise and nonsense buzzing around our heads and lives. But still.. where are you going to go from here? Dad probably gets angry all the time, so you need some way of establishing when he really gets properly angry, and since "really" is already in use you've got to run with something new.

Dad exploded with anger!

This is where we find ourselves most of the time. A little creative wordplay, and our attention is briefly pricked by the suggestion that Dad exploded. We question what actually happened to him, before realising he of course didn't explode but only lost his cool a bit above his usual limit. We're all happy. Except Dad. Dad's angry.

But...

This idea of someone exploding with rage is nothing new. It's an established exaggeration or metaphor, a go-to response that it is so common it was one of the first I jumped to in order to explain my point. When someone says Dad explodes with anger, we don't really react any more. It just means anger to us, not any special kind of angry above or beyond the normal.

So...

Dad literally exploded with anger!

The first response to this is usually one of disbelief, coupled with criticism. "Don't be stupid, your Dad didn't actually explode, so stop abusing 'literally' like that." ... but that's just the point. By suggesting that Dad genuinely exploded, the severity of 'exploded' is brought back into play after a generation or two of becoming a dull cliche. Suddenly Dad's anger is of palpable interest, something above and beyond and worthy of attention.

Dad needs to calm the fuck down.

So there it is. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm right, maybe I'm exhausted with all the explanations and debate. It literally makes my brain melt. That said, if you have anything to add or ask, please pop it in the comments below, or on our Facebook page.

Nick
xx

London Book Fair 2013: Day Two

For my photos from London Book Fair, check out this Facebook album!

DAY TWO
(Read all about my first day at London Book Fair here!)
On the whole, day two seemed a little less frantic, a little more conversational, and a lot more writer-focused. Two seminars from Literary Agents revealed an underlying truth- that authors are no longer a resource for agents to draw on, but tools they have to utilise. Tools they have to chase after, learn to work with and keep in happy working order.

Publishers, editors, agents.. no-one institution is as removed from the author as they once were, but instead are hip or neck deep in promotion, personality and social networking. Day two gave me this increasing feeling that some of the networks I've built are grossly beneficial valuable commodities. I've just been using them in utterly the wrong way.

the early author gets the front row..

In an early seminar, publisher Scott Pack (above) raised the interesting question of how digital publishing changes concepts of value, and how a well-made, quality paperback has a different sense of “value” than a well written, well edited e-book. In digital publishing the text speaks for the consumer worth, and the relationship between cost and content is entirely based around how not-bad the book is.

There was a suggestion that Dickens would have loved e-books, and they'd have made an ideal platform for Dombey & Son and his other epic serialisations. This idea that publishers might start releasing episodic digital literature is an exciting one, but it also smells a little too much like the current issues faced by gamers regarding micro-transactions and DLC.

Speaking of gaming, a seminar on the gaming industry's links with literature and the possibilities presented fell a little short of the mark for me. Watching people from the world of books talk about games can sometimes be a little like watching someone from Activision wave a book above their head yelling “IT'S MADE OF PAPER AND THERE ARE WORDS IN IT! THAT'S ALL WE KNOW!”

On the whole it felt like yet another expression of the need by some publishers have to cash in on all markets.. chickens like corn, right? Well stick corn to your book and you can tap this lucrative chicken market! Sales!

At the time I wrote the note “Is any of this really news? Or is it just news to publishers?” but suppose that at any trade or industry show you are going to have areas of lack. A talk on bikes at the Chelsea Flower Show is going to be just as light as a gardening exhibit at a Harley Davidson show, and you can't fault publishers and the events staff for their enthusiasm for new markets, regardless of their motivation.

A point of interest the seminar raised was on how players, users (and particularly children) write their own stories. They know Princess Peach has been kidnapped, but we don't know why she's a Princess, and let some mental process fill in the blanks. If we play Cut The Rope long enough, that hungry frog starts developing motivation and a backstory. We know the goal is to feed him, but over time we need to establish why we're feeding him.

I don't know if that's interesting, insightful, or just obvious, but I appreciated it.

It was around this time I really started chatting with other visitors, and found it inevitably rewarding. There were new writers, established writers, editors from the Guardian I would never have chatted to in any other forum, and a lady struggling to mass publish a treatise on the history of science in the form of an epic poem.

I started to realise I'd been mistreating the Crap Looking Books brand a little. Rather than sharing cards and info just with those I spoke to, I should've brought a sack of literature and flyers and drowned the exhibition centre in them at the start of each day.

While Crap Looking Books may still be very much a fledgling, it's an eye-catching brand that gets people asking questions and talking... it's just a little hard to introduce into a conversation where everyone is proud of what they do and resist to anything defamatory. Rightly so!

books, of course

 It was while sat in “Should Novelists Write Screenplays?” that I felt the seminars could do with longer, less misleading titles. Had the seminar been titled “Should Novelists Write Screenplays based on their own novels?” I wouldn't have attended, since I went to something very similar on the first day. I still think the “How to reach your readers” talk from GoodReads should have been titled “How to reach your readers using only GoodReads”

Still. Nobody was forcing me to be anywhere and it was often in some of the less engaging moments when I had more flashes of brilliance about projects I'm working on or ideas for synergy and networking and other buzzwords, fostered by the creative learning atmosphere... and maybe the lack of air conditioning or available oxygen.

The afternoon picked up pace a little when a seminar on author branding from Author Profle opened with the claim “If you've come here for a nap, sorry!” Authors and agents in the crowd were encouraged to think about the attitudes and attributes that make up them and their work, but to share this 'brand' openly with each other and the wider group.

Putting aside the speaker's somewhat worrying obsession with the high class safe sexualisations of Jilly Cooper novels, this was a bloody useful seminar. As a writer of genre fiction who can't and won't just pick a genre, it pays to think about my “brand” and any recurrent themes or content between what I write. Considering I'd left Day One's genre seminar worrying about this, it was just what I needed.

It's that old Babylon(5)ian thought game- Who are you? What do you want? Why are you the way you are? Answer them, then keep answering them.

The last Author Lounge seminar of the day was an excellent talk from agents Hellie Ogden and Andrew Lownie about the state of the industry and the place of authors and agents within it. Of startling interest before this though was just how busy and popular the Author Lounge had become at this point. So much so, that extra security had been laid on to help with crowd control and safety.

At the time we suggested (and ran away with the suggestion) that these security were bodyguards Mark Lefebvre from Kobo had presumptuously brought with him to protect him from stray kindles, but this was of course nonsense and would've been ridiculously out of character for Mark, an author himself, known for being friendly and approachable.

The extra security was thanks to London Book Fair themselves, which is fantastic in a way because it shows they can't ignore the increased popularity of Author Lounge, and the rising prominence of authors within the wider event. Still though... who wouldn't be exciting to see a kindle / kobo West Side Story style throwdown? One day maybe...

bags are thankfully not my book

I finished up the day taking photos of stands, (either for Crap Looking Books or just because they had some damn fine artwork- hey, there were Superman comics distributors there!) and chatting enthusiastically with people. This is not hard at all because everybody there is enthusiastic about everything they do.

There was not a single person there who did not love books in one way or another, even if they just loved buying and selling them. I don't know anywhere else in the world you could get that kind of crowd and atmosphere, and it was a fantastic place to be.

I'm going to close on this sound bite from literary agent Andrew Lownie- “Don't chase a trend, just write a good book. Good books always get through.”

Sound advice.

London Book Fair, see you next year!

Nick

xx

London Book Fair 2013: Day One

For my photos from London Book Fair, check out this Facebook album!

DAY ONE
Getting up at 3am and to London at 7am, I somehow found myself inside Earl's Court before it was officially "open" and had plenty of time to check out the plush spaces and marvel at the fact that this was the very same Earl's Court where a teenage me threw up druing a Radiohead show 10 years ago.

Feeling a little like the only man there not in a suit, I obviously wasn't there to buy publishing rights, and settled in to the Authoright's excellent Author Lounge program of seminars, and ran back and forth between that the fantastic Love Learning Programme.

With the focus clearly set on the future of authors and publishers, London Book Fair quickly set about dampening my loathing of digital literature and e-book platforms. While many from No, I Do NOT Have Too Many Books! might cry that I've fallen to the dark side, I'm starting to see the inevitable benefits of supplementing printed fiction with digital marketing- rather than letting one win out over the other. 

But still, you can erase me from a Kindle. You can't erase me from a bookshelf quite so easily.

Rightly acclaimed authors remarked how digital publishing had properly launched a career that they'd been working on sometimes for decades until then. The idea that "making it" in digital publishing is often accompanied by an exponential burst of popularity and success was repeated throughout the day, and is both exciting and daunting. Nothing good ever came without hard work.

It turns out that a lot of self-publishers and self-promoters do or did the legwork that I am currently doing. The only difference is they actually have a finished book or seven to actually promote to audiences.

I feel a little bit like my creative footprint is an empty measuring jug that gets bigger and bigger as I learn and network more, but until I lash myself to my drafts and hammer out their details that jug will never fill with water.

Great metaphor Nick, just great.

An excellent seminar on genre snobbery chaired by Matt Haig with industry legends Chris Preistley and Brenda Gardener made me realise that my recent deconstruction of Things We Knew Were True "Women's Literature" cover and context was a little harsh and off-kilter, and didn't ackonwledge the pressure that market forces and retailers put on jacket design. Another uncharacteristic retraction may be in order.

Suggestions of the suffering of genre fiction and the frictions between different genres has made me worry for my own diverse portfolio of "novels" but I keep telling myself that getting the damn things actually finished is more important than finding the right market for them.

I've mentioned before that book covers can often lead to novels flying under the radar, or onto the wrong radar, and I'm glad (or indeed sad) to see that this concerns the whole industry. Publishers are not as blind or ignorant as I may have suggested before, and regard cover art as one of the most important things when it comes to marketing a book.

I'm inclined to think that Crap Looking Books has been a little too vicious at times, too quick with reactions and too slow to ask why those reactions happen. it may be time for a considered reshuffle of the mission statement, and going a little easier on publishers and authors.

As my first day at London Book Fair rolled on I found myself learning to identify the difference between someone sharing wisdom or advice, and somebody trying to sell something. Yes, the guy from GoodReads was enthusasitic, warm and informative, but he was enthusiastic, warm and informative about GoodReads and could easily have been pitching it as a buisness pan to prosective investors.

Differences between various talk and seminar panels can be interesting- one may know very little about the craft while knowing a great deal about social marketing strategy, while some are drowning in rich advice on the craft, and utterly (and unashamedly) clueless to social marketing strategies. 

Forgiving each panel their shortcomings feels just as important as benefiting from their knowledge, and forming a lattice of information from various sources is always much mroe efficent than expecting all the answers to be in one place.

Busy? What y'all know about busy?

With the afternoon Authorlounge inevitably over-crowded for the  "How to Get an Agent" event I gave up and headed for a seminar on selling books and narratives to film and TV, a subject I know a great deal about already, and expected to be hear little new about. Of course I was wrong, and not only gained insight into the optioning process, but also found invaluable nuggets of information that will help guide where my screenplays and shorts are headed.

Screenplays, shorts, novels... ever feel like you're running too many projects at once?
 
Anyway, I found myself repeatedly and randomly struck with ideas and changes for those existing projects, often totally irrelevant to the seminar I was sat in when they struck. Some of them were so blindingly obvious they're almost embarrassing- guest blogging, audience collaboration, and streamlining my Twitter so it's less about tying to be Rob Delaney or Charlie Brooker and more about building a strong network. 

Other revelations I won't talk about here, I'll just implement them and let y'all everybody reap the benefits.

With all my talks and seminars done for the day, I wandered around for a while taking photos. Naturally people running booths are a bit apprehensive of having their displays photographed, but "it's for a harmless book loving social network of six thousand people" went down unsurprisingly well and I found myself chatting away merrily.

Before you judge me, I was there.

Plugging Crap Looking Books turns out to be a little difficult... getting someone to let you photograph them for something with a title like that is not the easiest thing, though some awkward chats about the subject have already given me some ideas on how to boost the brand without damaging the content. Buzzword'd.

I was already convinced in a day that I would love to come back next year with a few final drafts and stronger brands under my belt, and really the sell the hell out of myself.

Throughout all the digital platforms, multi-genre creativity, hype, pomp and circumstance... one mantra has been repeated in some form or another all day- The most fundamentally important thing is always the quality of the story itself.

Sicne I'd been on my feet for a good 12-14 hours, I took to my hotel to collapse and wait for the next day of booky goodness.

Read all about my second day at London Book Fair here!

Nick
xx

SPOILER WARNING!! This isn't a spoiler, but..

So, with season three of Game of Thrones is kicking off on HBO, the BBC is scheduling more Doctor Who in the run up to their anniversary special, and so many new books are flying in from all directions... I want to talk about spoilers. 

Specifically, I want to talk about the fact that there is no such thing a "little" spoiler, and anyone who tries to use them is courting danger and offense.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the urge. You've seen or read something someone else hasn't, and you want to talk about it. You're desperate to discuss it but don't want to ruin it, and you think you've found a way to discuss that show, film or book without actually spoiling it.

not quite what I mean..

You're wrong. There really is nothing you can say which doesn't contain or imply relevant information. Here are a few examples that I loathe.

Keep your eye on that one! or Don't worry, he gets better!
You may not have revealed anything specific about the character you're talking about, but simply implying they are of interest means that they have a story arc, that they develop as characters and narrative pieces rather than dying suddenly or being sidelined. Letting on that certain characters are more worthy of notice than others, or that they will be, still counts as revealing the narrative structure. Spoiler'd.

Do you remember the bit in the first book when...? and That'll all make sense in the second book!
Readers don't as a rule know which characters and events will have the most significance in the following volumes. Telling them totally changes how they will interpret those events, and doesn't allow each book to be presented as the author intended.

Don't read the last page first!
Apparently it's a common thing, reading the last page first. Maybe it provides a sense of continuity, a reassurance that the book will not spiral on forever and that all things including life will eventually end. Still, the suggestion that the last page is important can totally preoccupy the reader with what the final shocker is, and turn the whole experience into unnecessary mystery solving, regardless of genre.

Why do they always kill off the fit ones?
More relevant to TV than Books, this question-spoiler reveals a lot about who is going to die, narrowing it down to the more attractive cast, and, if  whoever you're spoiling things for knows you well enough, your personal tastes. It's really no better than "the black dude always dies first" or "the butler did it".
 
The Prince is in the next book loads! 
Whoever you're spoiling Book Nine for will now know that the Prince (or whoever it might be) not only survives Book Four but lives through the events of Books Five-to-Eight as well. Now we know that Avery Cates, Harry Potter, and Colonel Hammer will usually live on to feature heavily in their subsequent books because each series is based around their adventures, but with an ensemble cast or a universe-spanning community all bets should be off since anyone could die, disappear or be sent away at any time, and letting on in any way robs the reader of any surprise.

You'll love the end of issue 12!
Someone actually said this to me like it wasn't a spoiler, as if I don't know what I love and therefore would be unable to predict what will happen. I haven't read issue 12 of the relevant graphic novel yet, and may never do, but I know that somebody dies well, and that there's a poignant act of self-sacrifice... because that's what I love.

You'll love it!
Really, simply being told that you're going to love something is a spoiler. It has much more weight than "you should watch it" and gears the prospective viewer up for all the things they usually like, leaving them disappointed if they don't happen, and unappreciative if they do.

I didn't like it at first, but I love the second season!
Friends know what friends like, just as friends know what friends hate. If you tell me that you don't hate a show anymore, then I know that all the things you used to hate about it aren't in any of the new seasons, and I can build expectations and spoilers based on that.

Oh, Gerrard! :'(
Someone posted this as a Facebook status last year and I instantly knew that Gerrard had died. You are never as cryptic as you think you are.

There really is no way of talking about something without actually talking about it, unless you remove all relevant phrases to the specific show or book but then you won't be talking, just speaking from an unconnected series of meaningless phrases.

There's a reason why they call them spoilers.
 

All you can ever hope to do is hold your tongue, and wait for your friends and peers to catch to you, even if that means halting your own reading and viewing, or giving them frequent persistent pushes to get on with it.
  
Nick
xx 

I would love to hear of any other failed attempts people have made at spoiling-without-spoilers! Drop them in the comments box below, or over on our Facebook page. Thanks!