Welcome to the Jumble

I was at a jumble sale on Sunday. I tell you this not by way of shaming you with my glittering, exotic lifestyle, but as a prelude to boasting about one of the bargains I picked up.

Amongst the paperbacks of Carol Vorderman's How To Do Sudoku, and a cassette audio book of Women in Love, was this: a large hardback edition of the edited letters of Kingsley Amis, which would set you back over £12 on Amazon. It was hidden underneath a silk peg-bag and an old Dorothy Perkins t-shirt and I nearly didn't see it, except for that my friend Amy was rummaging impatiently through everything in an attempt to find the bargainous, and legendary, 'knit your own monkey' kit.

Amy never did get to knit her own monkey, but I did get this beast of a book, and for a pound only. A POUND! You see? Who says jumble sales are all doddery old ladies and worn-out handbags?

Fictions of Every Kind

I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that last Tuesday's Fictions of Every Kind was an unqualified runaway success. There were superb readings from Matt Bellwood, Nasser Hussein, "Dr" Sam Francis, and Mason Henry Summers. Every single reading was amazing, and all of these performers had the audience hanging off their every carefully-chosen word.

There was a set of beautiful music from the very wonderful Invisible Cities, and in addition the standard in the open mic section of the night was especially high. Who knew there were so many talented writers hiding out in Leeds?!

The next Fictions of Every Kind is planned for the 11th January 2011, with a theme of 'Hungover and Underwhelmed'. It takes place at The Library Pub in Leeds, from 7.30 - 10.30 pm, with an entry fee of £3; and if I have anything to do with it, it'll be a devil of a lot of fun.

Watch this space to find out who the guest speakers and musical act are....

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Hell is other people's music choices...

Lately, mainly because it is colder inside my house than it is outdoors (how can this be?), I've been doing a lot of writing in the local coffee shops. There are many advantages to working in a coffee shop, chief amongst which is that it is warm there, and there is no need to wear fingerless gloves while you type. There are fewer distractions in a coffee shop; your average writer is less likely to procrastinate by suddenly noticing that the skirting boards need ironing, or that there's a mucky teaspoon in the sink that needs washing up right away. In my nearest coffee shops, I can't even get an internet connection. Add to this the frequent availability of coffee and cake, and you have a recipe for excellent writer productivity. In the last week alone, I have finished six novels, eight short stories, and an hundred-line ballad written in iambic pentameter, just by dint of sitting in the nearest Costa. (Only joking.... I don't write poetry).

But srsly though coffee shops of West Yorkshire, what is UP with your music choice? A few days ago, I was rendered rampantly KILLY and ENRAGED by the abuse to which my ears were subject. Coffee shops of the world seemed to have turned to filling their stereos with CDs of pastel coloured, twinkly, no-cunt, irritatingly twee music, designed to offend nobody. There must be a special shop that sells this stuff; I imagine that only coffee shops buy it - for the love of God, I hope that nobody willingly listens to this stuff at home.

This kind of music is meant to promote a self-consciously cool, laid-back atmosphere within the environs. Recently, I've heard versions of 'Tainted Love' sung by a woman with a child's voice backed with what sounded like a music-box, 'Sweet Child O' Mine' gently tickled to death with a xylophone and an accordion, and a version of 'When Doves Cry' played in a jaunty rhythm on a Spanish guitar. I imagine the aim is to reassure your average coffee-shop customer with music with which he or she is familiar, presented in a way that promotes a kind of slow death by passivity: a sort of lift music for the post-modern ironist of the 21st Century, if you will. It's irritating and its twee, and every time I hear one of these dreadful, knowing cover versions, I am filled with an almost uncontrollable urge to punch a kitten to death. And I really like kittens.

Please, coffee shops of the local West Yorkshire area: I AM TRYING TO WRITE A NOVEL AND THIS CAR ADVERT MUSIC IS NOT HELPING.

Jeez, and in the middle of winter, too?

There's only one decent way that any right-thinking person can react to the news of Nathan Bransford's exit from the world of publishing:



For the longest time, Nathan has been astonishing writers and agents around the world with his ability to fit all of the following into the same 24-hour day that the rest of us squander on drinking cups of tea and fannying around on LOLcats: being a top-flight literary agent, writing one and many novels, regularly updating a blog, keeping the rest of us know-nothings up to date on how to write a good query and on what's new in the world of publishing, and yet even so, still managing to be an all-round nice guy. I can't speak for any of the rest of you but I would literally need an extra seven hours in every day even to accomplish half of this stuff (which, incidentally, is what I'm going to be asking Santa for this year).

Best of luck, Nathan: we'll miss you.

Fictions of Every Kind

November: season of fireworks, dark nights, writing in dark garret rooms wearing fingerless gloves, and of large swathes of people attempting to write a novel in a month. Interesting fact: writing Inception took Christopher Nolan 10 years, while Stephanie Meyer wrote Twilight in a matter of 2 months. You can make of that what you will, because I am in no way casting aspersions about the sustained hard work and detailed attention that ought to go into writing a worthwhile novel.

November also brings us the first ever Fictions Of Every Kind night. The inaugural FOEK aims to celebrate national short story week, and it will do it with a wide range of interesting performers - with readings from folk story-teller Matt Bellwood, to hip-hop poetry with Nasser Hussein; cyber-punk and speculative work from Sam Francis, cutting-edge dark science-fiction from Mason Henry Summers, and fiction from me too. Readers, I haven't read aloud to an assembled audience since that unfortunate incident at primary school, and I don't mind telling you I'm a bit scared.

In addition, there's music from the very wonderful Invisible Cities, and an open mic story-telling session at the beginning of the night.

"Where is all this happening?" I hear you cry. "I'm champing at the bit to go to there!"

Well first of all hold your horses, because its not until the 23rd of November. Its at The Library Pub in Leeds, it starts at 7pm, and its £3 in (all this information is on the flier above if you squint your eyes hard enough.)

Hopefully these kinds of shenanigans will become a regular event, but until then you'll just have to content yourself with this one, dear readers. Hope to see you there.

The Print Project, Bradford

Letterpress. I loves me a good letterpress: it makes me go weak at the knees. In letter press, metal plates are used to impress text and ink deep into card. Every single page in letterpress needs to be made by an actual human being, operating several tons of weighty machinery. It's beautiful and it's unique and it doesn't get used very often any more, so three cheers for The Print Project in Bradford who are working hard to resurrect it.

This project is based at the 1 in 12 club in Bradford. The art of letterpress is centuries old, and this lot, Fred Dibnah-style, are doing what they can to keep the skills and expertise necessary to run one alive. With the increasing development of other methods of printing which are cheaper and more convenient, the art of letterpress - which produces something very beautiful and memorable - could be in danger of dying out.

Unlike items lazer-printed or photocopied, the marvellous thing about letterpress is its texture. In picking up a letter-pressed item you can feel, in your very hands, the sweat and skill that has gone into making it. A letter-pressed booklet or flier feels a little weightier in your hands, and with the text sunk and pressed into the card, you can actually feel the texture of the words you're reading with your fingers. (fact fans, this is very much not the sort of thing you can get from an app on your iPhone.... I'm just sayin'.)

At present The Print Project can produce leaflets, stationery, CD packaging, booklets and leaflets, but welcome contacts to discuss other commissions. If you're interested in letterpress, or even if you just have a bit of a 'thing' for different printing techniques, it's well worth a look.

The Print Project's blog
Print Project on Facebook

Things that go by the wayside for writers

There are lots of things that writers are good at. Sitting still for long periods of time with only their own thoughts in their head for company. Inventing whole new worlds. Making pretend people come to life. Making a reader see a picture in their mind using only a collection of well-chosen words. Typing. Procrastinating. There are all sorts of things at which writers do regularly, and at which only a writer can excel.

But... there are also many things that writers are bad at. When you're busy trying to write novels / stories / terrible pulpy romance novels, there are so many things that necessarily have to go by the wayside. So few of us can make a living from our art that we instead spend our free time holed up in a semi-darkened room with only a laptop, a notebook, and a mug of tea for company: friends, what effect does that have on us? What, in other words, do we 'miss'?

Socialising. My friends still wonder why I glance around shiftily and make excuses when they invite me out. People never understand when you tell them, "I've got to write". "WRITE SCHMITE!" they shout. "YOU CAN ALWAYS WRITE TOMORROW BUT THIS INVITE TO COCKTAILS IS A ONE-TIME ONLY OFFER." Not that it matters, even if you do go out, because the next thing that goes by the wayside in the writer's life is...

Having normal things to talk about. People at work always want to talk about last night's telly, and I DIDN'T SEE ANY OF IT, because I was TRYING TO WRITE A NOVEL. But you can't tell people at work you were writing a novel: they won't understand, and anyway it only makes you look like a pretentious wanker. So instead you tell them, "Oh no, I must have missed it, I was painting the bathroom." And then your workmates think you are weird because you, apparently, have spent every evening for the past 3 years painting the bathroom. "How big is her bathroom?" they must think. "Does this woman live in the Golden Gate Bridge?"

Having normal social skills. You spend your evenings missing conversational telly, and having conversations with imaginary people who, by the way, most definitely did not exist until you made them up. It makes you a bit twitchy when people talk. For one thing, you find yourself mentally editing everything they say; and for another, you start obsessing over whether their character really would say that sort of thing, or is she just saying it to drive the plot forward at the expense of realistic characterisation? Viewing every human interaction as an extension of your plot quandary starts to make you look a bit strange. If you didn't already look strange enough.

Currently Reading

In Pursuit Of The English Doris Lessing
The Complete Maus Art Spiegelman
Twilight Stephenie Meyer (my friend lent me it, and I didn't want to be rude)
Soho Keith Waterhouse