B-Day Plus 1: hangovers and leftovers

Well that’s it, I am now ‘out’ as a write-ist. The gathering was select, just the finest crop of ‘care in the community’ patients*, but every one seemed to have a good time. And I got to drink heaps and heaps of fizzy wine, which is always a good thing, even if I have been burping like Barney Gumble all day today (not to mention trying to reply to Sarah’s comment last night, plastered as a mongoose, cue ‘one eye screwed shut, two finger typing’ gibberish). The only real disaster was jelly-related. When we told Peggy and Gordon (She Who Must’s parents) about the party – there was to be jelly and ice cream – Gordon immediately launched into a misty-eyed oration on the beauteous merits of tangerine jelly. OK, we thought, it’s not his birthday, but we can play nice: tangerine jelly it is. In order to make sure no one else’s jelly-flavour-fetish was left out, I made a huge glass bowl of multi-layered flavours. Blackcurrant on the bottom, then lime, then the much praised tangerine and finally a layer of strawberry with flumps in it (très sophisticated). The idea was to turn the whole thing out onto a plate, like a vast, wobbly rainbow and serve it in wibbly slices. Of course of all the different layers one decides that a whole night isn’t enough to set, can you guess which one? Tanger-bloody-rine. So when the jelly was turned out onto the plate we had a time-lapse demonstration of plate tectonics as blackcurrant and lime slithered on a near-liquid mantle of orangy ooze, making for the edge of the plate and freedom. Or failing that making a huge splattery mess on the floor.

The news of my impending writerhood was broken in true bastard fashion, in order to make Fiona squirm. “The big announcement,” says I, “is that I’m leaving (insert name of global IT company here) to go work for myself.” Smiles from the assembled guests, and those requiring assembly, but of an ‘is that it?’ variety. “In fact,” I said, drawing it out for as long as possible, “I’m off to Oslo in a couple of weeks as part of my new job.” By now She Who Must Not Be Teased is looking daggers in my direction and making ‘I’m going to kill you!’ hand gestures as I deliver the grand finale: “Because Tiden are publishing the Norwegian version of my first crime novel in March.” There then follows a brief, stunned silence and so on and so forth. I think the best reaction has to go to Norman, who sat and went “Oh my God!” about a half dozen times. Very gratifying: we like Norman.

So that’s it, everyone now knows about the book deal and the giving up work. The next challenge is going into work tomorrow without jumping up onto my desk, and shouting out over all the soulless little cubicles, “Buy my f***ing book!”

Hurrah!

*From top left: Chris (Norman’s paramour), Christopher (ego-search googling brother), She Who Must Be Appeased, Norman (friend and long-time colleague), the other Stuart MacBride (father), Kim (Christopher's better half and queen of the broccolli people), My Mum (Sheena), Peggy (Fiona’s mum and Gordon's supervisor ), the aforementioned Gordon ‘I Like Tangerine Jelly’ Reid, and at the front some bearded weirdo who gatecrashed and wouldn’t wear a bloody party hat.

Birthday Minus Zero

Yup, the day has finally arrived for me to come out of the author-shaped closet and announce, “I’m here, I’m published: get used to it!”

The birthday tree is up – note the huge pile of present (singular) under the tree – as are both cards, so the whole place has taken on a festive birthday air. Hurrah! And we prepared all the party food last night: chocolate crispies, teeny sausage rolls, huge mounds of jelly, ice cream, crisps (both crunchy stick and cheesy puffs) and assorted other thingies; we even jointed the chicken wings – everything’s ready to chuck into the oven; so there’s no reason to get all stressed out today. Other than the fact that I’ve STILL not done any bloody text for the bloody website. But we are now ready to Party On Down like the wild young things we are, contrary to comments from certain cheeky buggers.

Yesterday was pretty much consumed with a major house tidying and preparing all that food. And the small gap I had in the middle was spent answering questions for an interview with the book club. Now this is the first interview thing I’ve ever done in my entire life – not counting local press things for a variety of small productions which weren’t about getting published and so don’t count for the purposes of this rambling monologue – and although a bit daunting in places where I had to explain what the hell I thought I was doing, it was an interesting experience. Hopefully I’ve not come across as a conceited arse, or a bumbling buffoon, but knowing me it’ll probably be one or the other.

Right, enough of this: I’m off to see what Dilbert and Get Fuzzy are up to. And if I’m not totally rat-arsed after the party – it’s a lunch thing, so there’s always a slim chance of sobriety – I’ll let you know how it went. Posting pished is never a good idea.

B-Day Minus 2(ish)

Yes, it’s rolling up like a drunken Santa Claus, half-empty bottle of red wine in one hand, smouldering fag in the other, smelling faintly of wee – the big birthday bash. Well, the not so big birthday bash, but still bigger than any other birthday bash I’ve had since I was about six. Tonight we did that most exciting of Friday evening things and went to Tesco in Inverurie, wild impetuous things that we are, and bought a heap of food and booze for Sunday. We now have enough jelly, ice cream and party nibbles to make a dozen bellybutton innies become outies. So hopefully things should go OK, and if not: screw it, we’ll get bladdered. I’ve got the Monday off work after all and laugh in the face of Madame Hangover. Ha, ha! Just like that (only in a Basil Brush rather than Tommy Cooper kind of way).

She Who Must Be Calmed Down, is boiling over with excitement at the prospect of actually telling someone about the whole writing thing, which is sweet. I however am ramping up to my usual ‘end of year gloom’ where I look back on the last year and bemoan the dreadful lack of any sort of achievement… Oh, wait a minute, NOW I remember: book deals. Ha, ha again! No, wait a minute, I think this time I’ll bring out the big guns and go for a full blown, Bwahahahahahahahahaaaaa! So I’m actually going to be cheerful in the run-up to my birthday for a change. Will wonders never cease?

The only downside to all this will be getting older: though in a way I’m actually getting younger, which is maybe a topic for later. Oh, and the fact that we’ll have to spend Saturday tidying the house, when I’d far rather be writing my shorties for the web site (which is now finished, no thanks to the Cat). Just have to do those next week I suppose.

Going to be bloody weird going back to the office on Tuesday and telling people that I’m going to be a write-ist.

Shiny Clean Soul

Well, taking inspiration from Mr Winter I too have rated the old blog and lo and behold, my soul shineth like a beacon for all in the dark, sin-fuelled internet. Come unto me and I shall tell you tales of stuff, and occasionally jobbies. And that STILL leaves me a good 10% less evil than naughty old Jim.



I have often told Fiona that I deserve beatification for putting up with her for all this time (11 years – poor me). Truly suffering is good for the soul.

Mucalicious

Well, no post yesterday due to being totally and utterly shagged out. Went into town with She Who Must in the morning then borrowed her car to go do the long-awaited photo shoot. Urnnn… Fiona’s car is bloody hard work, I miss my power steering – mind you, given that my car insurance is probably about to go through the roof when I become a write-ist, maybe I should be thankful I’ve got anything to drive at all – and getting the thing parked all over Aberdeen was nothing short of exhausting. Not to mention all the running about.

Even though the snow is armpit-deep out where we live, Aberdeen was ‘inconsistently covered’, which was a bit disappointing. But I still managed to take 183 photos for the website. Kinda get the feeling that I’m going to have to edit / spread them out over a while, or I’ll never get any work done. And it took all bloody day too. In the cold. And the snow. So today I sound like an elephant snorkelling in a vat of custard and ache all over. Groan...

And, to add to the ‘things to do’ pile, I picked up the abridged version of the manuscript from the post office this morning, so that’s another 226 pages of stuff to read through ASAP. But then, Sarah says the abridger is very, very good, so I’m hoping it’s going to be nothing more than rubber-stamping what’s been done.

Maybe then I can get around to finishing off the website, writing the content, tidying the house and getting everything ready for the party. Or at least, getting it ready for the half dozen people who’re now coming. Well, at least it’ll cut down on the washing up.

Less ‘Scat’, More Cat...

You may have noticed that my postings have recently been of a somewhat scatological bent. This must end, otherwise people will think everyone in Scotland is obsessed with poo. This is not the case: most people are obsessed with football, and how that compares with excrement as a topic of conversation I leave up to you.

So, leaving talk of jobbies and whatnot behind, I turn instead to my day, which I suppose is the whole point of having a blog. Kinda stinky. It’s not that I’ve not enjoyed getting back to my programming roots, but… I’m hella-bored with it now. I want to be writing again. I miss it, making stuff up. Making people up. Making nasty things happen to them.

The only spark on the horizon is the couple of shorties I want to write for the website, a kind of ‘get to know some of the Cold Granite supporting cast’ thing. Which I’m looking forward to writing, but have been keeping on the back-burner until this damn website is finished.

Now I could have just thrown up a bunch of flat HTML pages, but no: that would be too easy. Instead I have to go build some dynamic, multifunctional application with optional idiot-proof edit facility. WHY? I’m the only one going to be using the damn thing! (and yes, this is an anorak moment when I admit that I’m building in a security model to allow a select group to add and edit things, but at least I’ve never owned a Klingon uniform, so it’s not THAT bad)

And it’s not like there aren’t other things to do! We’ve still got to tidy the house for Sunday’s ever-decreasing birthday party (lots of people seem to be growing ‘prior engagements’) which is a lot more complicated than it sounds, considering it’s been two years and we’re still living out of boxes. Then there’s the cat to be played with and that new front door sign to be made, not to mention that tomorrow is ‘Photo Day’. Yes, the weather has finally turned nasty enough to merit going and taking some pictures of Aberdeen for the website. Hoorah! Tomorrow I get to freeze my arse off taking pictures of Aberdeen’s underbelly.

But I suppose I have no one to blame but myself. Which is never a good position to be in.

P45 Me!

Everyone's trying to get fired these days, first it’s David with his ‘worst employee of the month’ entry, then Alan wants to leave his magic bus and now James is jacking it all in at AGRISOP. Doesn’t anyone want to work for a living (he said with tongue firmly in cheek – which makes the words come out all mumbly, like you’ve been eating instabond adhesive)?

I, of course gave James the most hypocritical advice I possibly could: follow your dream. Ha, ha. And thrice more, ha! Like I don’t still fret the decision to go part time, let alone the looming fear of actually giving up real work all together. Not that it has always been thus, I have had some monstrously shitty jobs in the past where I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. At one place I started having this recurring dream where I would walk into the office and kill every last one of them, taking extra care to make sure no one could call the police or escape. Not healthy.

And that’s not to mention the time when the waste pipes broke on the flotel I was working on. Mmmm, big lakes of piss with jobbie islands and toilet paper reefs filling the corridors. Nothing says job satisfaction like mopping up human excrement on a floating accommodation unit in the middle of the North Sea.

But, to be perfectly frank, I’ve had worse jobs...

Last minute reprieve!

Well, kinda… No trolling round the shops today for me, tra la, la, Fiona has taken to bed (well couch) with a dose of industrial-strength cooties. She’s obviously not been paying enough attention to ‘So You Think You’re Safe?’ and probably did something daft, like breathe. Anyway, this sudden attack of the nasties means that yours truly has been spared the threatened trip into Aberdeen to spend the day trying on dreadful clothes. Hurrah!

Only down side of this is Jasper – our ‘little boy’, a 15.1 hands high big, hairy rat with a southern Irish accent – Fiona has him on DIY livery at the weekends. To anyone bright enough to have never come into contact with this concept it involves simple tasks like getting your horse in from the fields and feeding them. And the less simple tasks of hefting out the three tons of poo they’ve managed to produce during the night, not to mention the four tons of urine-sodden straw. And since She Who Must Be Cosseted is down with the aforementioned cooties, this delightful task falls on… can you guess? That’s right: muggins here.

Now I’m grateful to have been let off with a warning as far as the clothes shopping goes, but to be told I have to shovel a mountain of shit in order to obtain this beneficence is a bitter pill to swallow. OK, I could have let Fiona go do it herself, but I had to play the chivalry card. “No, do not trouble thyself fair, snottery maiden, I shall see to thy noble steed in thy stead!” Fool! Not only do horse-leavings weigh a ton, they also stink to high heaven! A huge box full of peed-on straw, nasty mounds of jobbies lurking everywhere like little stinky landmines… As Sunday afternoon pastimes go, it’s right up there with giving yourself a DIY bikini wax using duct tape and a Black & Decker random orbital sander.

And if you’re thinking this would be some sort of opportunity to ogle pretty women in their jodhpurs you can forget it: they all smell of horse-leavings too. As did I when I finally managed to drag my frozen backside home.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I seem to be getting a bit tufty round the old bikini line…

I have of late – but wherefore I know not – become a scruff…

Fiona (She Who Must Be Indulged) has decreed that I am become a scruffy bugger of late and really need to do something to sharpen up my image before all the brouhaha of publication occurs. Particularly the threat of being seen, or worse: photographed, in public.

Now I’ll admit that sartorially, I may have let myself go a bit over the years. Never having been overly vain I’ve not been a desperate follower of any sort of fashion. In fact, like most men, I’m quite happy never buying clothes. Buying clothes requires walking round shops and trying things on and being bored and trying other things on and walking round more shops and OH GOD MAKE IT STOP! Suffice it to say that it’s not my favourite past time. The last time Fiona dragged me off shopping it was to pick out a suit for starting my new job. That was four years ago and I’m still wearing it, though on a bad day it now looks like it’s wearing me. And isn’t too happy about it. There are shirts in my wardrobe from 1987.

Fiona (The Monster Under The Stairs) claims that I scrub up nicely and have no excuse to go round looking like a tramp on his day off. You know, when he doesn’t have to get dressed up special? I tried pointing out that looking all smart and well-groomed will only encourage book-groupies, but she’s having none of it.

So tomorrow, ask not for whom the changing room tolls, it tolls for me...

This week I are been mostly…

ColdFusioning up the old (or rather new) website. Now that everything works as nice flat XHTML files with all the fancy stuff happening stylesheet-side I’m going through it making sure all the content can come from the database back-end. Only trouble is that I decided to base this all on a previous database driven website I did (back in the day) and I can’t remember a bloody thing about how it all went together. Like He Who Shall Not Be Named, I too take a pretty intuitive approach to programming. There’s logic in there, but I tend to make leaps of faith the whole time, leaving it nearly impossible to decipher what the hell is going on: it works and it’s slick, that’s all you need to know. Not being professionally trained (or even unprofessionally trained) I go by feel, rather than knowledge. This means I’ve managed to break many an experienced, professional programmer’s head, as they look at an application and say, “No! It can’t do that! It’s impossible! How the hell did you get it to work?” Sometimes I know, but frequently, like John and his Excel spreadsheet, I haven’t a sodding clue. But it works, that’s all that matters.

Only problem (well, not the only one – after all I managed to completely forget how to do LEFT JOINs via ODBC to an Access database {Norman hasn’t figured out how to set-up separate SQL server databases on his box yet} for almost two hours yesterday) is that the site I’m currently cannibalising was written almost three years ago when I was programming every day, and it’s pretty much the most alarmingly intuitive and configurable thing I’d ever programmed. So it’s doing my nut in, trying to figure out how it all hangs together.

I get the feeling it’s going to be a long week...

The dirty deed is done!

Well, that’s it: book two is now officially out of my hands. It is now winging its merry way through the ether to Jane and Sarah, now the really worrying wait begins! Will they like it, will they hate it? Will they think there needs to be more full-frontal nudity?

Who knows?

Anyway, now the book’s away I can get down to some serious and obsessive worrying. Who’d be a write-ist, eh?

Heck No: It Didn’t Go!

Remember I said last week that I was going to send Book 2 (still unnamed, though I do have a couple of ideas now) through to the lovely, and inimitable, Jane and Sarah so they’d have it on Monday? I lied.

Fiona declared Saturday a ‘day of rest’ as I’ve been hunched, troll-like in front of this darn computer all day and all night for what seems like years. So Saturday was not to be a day for fiddling with words, Saturday was to be a day of ‘doing other things’… Quite what I have no idea. It is a deep shame to admit it: I don’t know how to relax any more. I’m so used to working on something or other, that when I get an allocated ‘day of rest’ it becomes a ‘day of unrest’, where I spend the whole bloody time wandering from room to room, looking for a job to do. In the end I settled on trying to make a sign for the house, as the magic marker on a sheet of A4 attempt currently ducktaped to the front door doesn’t convey quite the right note of class. So out with the imitation Dremel-thing and a merry, if bloody freezing, afternoon is spent on the veranda creating huge plumes of sawdust and lead paint. And there was still loads of time left over for more wandering around aimlessly. Hurrah! But no writing got done, not on Saturday either as it was the Big-Family-Dinner-Thing.

Now if I weren’t such a picky bugger, I would just parcel up the book and fire it off anyway. Sod the edits. Jane and Sara are going to ask for changes anyway (wouldn’t be good editors if they didn’t) so why do a round now when I’m just going to have to do more later? Because I don’t want to let them down. I have a lot of respect for my editorial team – they’re a lot brighter than I am for a start – and the thought of putting something in front of them that isn’t as good as I can make it, makes me very uncomfortable. So I’m going to hang on for an extra couple of days and iron out some of the things that are wrinkly before sending it away.

Have to get my skates on though: times a tickin’!

The Days Is Fair Flyin’ By...

Well, it’s the 15th of February and that means my part-time-thing is back in force again. From now until the first of March I am an write-ist, living off my wits and whatever I can scavenge from the fields and hedgerows (or kitchen, if the weather looks a bit dodgy). Twelve days completely free to polish off the book, ColdFusion up the website, write a couple of shorties, and get everything ready for my coming-out party. Eek!

To be honest it’s about bloody time. I’m now getting to the point where I really want to be telling people what I’ve been up to all this time. So another 12 days to go and the secret’s out. No more pretending to be a hermit: I can get down to actually being one instead ;}#

It’s odd that everything’s coming together in such a clump: birthday & announcement, then one week later off to Oslo, then the week after that CG’s out in Norway and I’m off to a fancy cocktail party in London to meet some of the lovely international people publishing the book…

It’s like, suddenly being a write-ist, or something!

Good feedback.

The thing about really good feedback on a book – at least for me – isn’t the stuff where someone says, “You’ve spelt banana wrong, 32 times.” (helpful though that undoubtedly is) it’s the stuff that makes you think about characters / scenes / interactions in a way you hadn’t previously. Having someone ask you how come this character’s got a limp and carries round a cuddly Kermit The Frog everywhere he goes, is a good sign that I’ve been too obscure. That those cunningly placed hints and tips just ain’t cutting it. That it’s time to go in with a slightly bolder brush.

Like a lot of people what write, I know a lot more about the ladies and gents that populate my books than anyone else is ever going to: they usually pop into the old noodle, complete with lots of baggage, and as soon as I start talking to myself about them (schizophrenia: my development tool of choice) a lot more things start to fall out of the woodwork. And when I get good feedback, what happens is that the process kicks off all over again and I get to suddenly discover more things about my characters. Though why the lazy bastards didn’t think to tell me all this in the first place is beyond me. Bloody freeloaders.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that JamesO and Agent Phil have provided such feedback. And that’s the REAL reason the book hasn’t gone off to the great Jane and Sarah yet.

If in doubt: always blame someone else!*

*old project management saying.

And yet...

Good job I was circumspect about the name of ‘Actor To Read Book’ as it appears he’s no longer able to fulfil this commitment. So anyone getting all excited about some big-name Scottish actor person reading the thing, will have to apply ice to their underwear. It ain’t going to happen.

I, of course, have gone back to the Philster and said: look mate, if they can’t get the bloke they want – I’ll do it. If nothing else it’ll cut down on the outgoings and maximise our chances of earning out. And I will qualify that statement by saying, I’m not exactly a novice at the old voiceover lark: I’ve done numerous adverts on radio and work on videos as well (OK, the voiceover work was all about oil production units and associated installations, but it’s the thought that counts.), how hard can it be to read a 127,000 word manuscript?

Strange isn’t it: how quickly things can change…

Well, as it’s Valentine’s day...

My love is like a bag of chips, with vinegar and salt,
A pickled onion on the side to crunch as home we walk.
My love is like a glass of fizz: golden and alcoholic,
To stagger round the living room, our dancing quite shambolic.
My love is like a fluffy cat, a-sitting in the sun,
A-stretching out it’s fuzzy limbs and licking it’s own bum.
My love is wise, and pure and deep, her features quite fantastic,
A smile to melt the polar caps, her décolletage not plastic.
My dear: be mine, and I will swear to love you all my life,
But do me one small favour please and never tell my wife…

Abridge to far...

Got some weird news from Sarah at HC towards the end of last week: someone’s going to be abridging Cold Granite for audio. Eh? Now I’d seen the CD and tapes advertised on Amazon and the like, but never thought that much about it. To be honest, I had kinda thought I might end up reading the thing myself (thus fulfilling yet another of those things on the ‘to do before you die’ list), even though I ain’t the slickest read-out-loud-ist in the world.

But now here we are with a proper actor* (Scottish, thank the tartan gods) reading an abridged version of the book. How weird is that? I’m going to be able to put a tape in my car and hear someone else reading the book out loud, putting on voices for my motley collection of madey-uppy people, like it was a proper book or something... Actually I can’t put a tape in my car, not if I ever want to see it again, the damn thing ate a copy of Roger Waters’s Amused To Death about six months ago and I swear there are still little bits of monkey noise in there somewhere. The machine now only plays one side at normal speed; soon as it flips the tape over everything goes helium crazy. So that would mean chapters one through four read by professional actor man and chapters five through eight by Chip and Dale, really, really quickly. Though, given the graphic nature of some of the content, that might be quite funny.

Where was I, ah yes: abridgement.

Now I’ve been edited before (and very gently too, no bruises inflicted by the lovely Jane and Sarah), but never abridged. Sarah tells me that my abridger will be the same one who does the Ian Rankin books and is considered something of a star in the biz. And she has said nice things about CG, and so clearly has excellent taste (or is utterly deranged). So, sometime in the next two weeks I should be receiving another pile of paper through the post to read through and approve and after that it’s gonna be showbiz all the way, baby! Or not as the case may be.

*Who’s identity I shall protect for the moment, so as not to jinx the deal. Let’s just say he’s tipped for BIG things in the coming year and so probably should know better.

Apparently it no suck the poo*…

Like busses, the initial reports on the unnamed monster (no, not that one) that is Book 2 are back, both arriving within a couple of hours of each other. Which means I can stop e-nagging Phil, poor sod that he is ;}# Both he and JamesO seem relatively sure it don’t munch jobbies, which is a great weight off my tiny mind. I’m going to split the weekend between writing copy for the new website (now that it’s pretty much all style-sheeted up) and implementing a couple of the suggested tweaks – have to be careful not to change too much at this point though, as one never knows what some people are going to like and others are going to hate – before firing it off to Jane and Sarah at HarperCollins for Monday. Which will be when the real acid test occurs.

Mind you, I suppose most of this tweaking will have to take place on the Saturday, as Sunday is likely to be ‘family day’. My brother Scott (no, not the ego-searchy one) and his family (lovely wife Catherine and three-year-old son Logan**) arrived unexpectedly from Ireland on Thursday, so they could attend Kim’s father’s funeral. Scott can be oddly thoughtful like that.

As they live in Dublin (where he is the head chef at the American Embassy no less) they don’t get over all that often, so there’ll probably be an elongated Sunday meal arranged, involving much sitting about and eating of things. And then some railway construction with Logan, who has a great wooden rail-and-road set.

Last time I managed to extend his education: “Look Logan,” says Uncle Stuart, pointing beneath the lovely suspension bridge they’ve just built, “Do you know who lives under there?” Logan furrows his little brow and admits that no, he doesn’t know who lives beneath the bridge. “Ah,” says Uncle Stuart, with an avuncular wink***, “That’s where the wino’s live.” He, of course, proceeds to tell his mummy that winos live under the railway bridges, while Uncle Stuart runs for cover, giggling maniacally.

Ah, family life: you just can’t beat it.

* And yes – this time I am using it in the pejorative sense.
** Unnecessary trivia time: I named the protagonist in Cold Granite after my nephew. I thought it’d be something nice for him to brag about in school if the book ever got published. But this means that if any more nephews or nieces turn up in the future I’m probably going to have to write a book with them as the main character. Here’s hoping my siblings take that into account when choosing names for their offspring!
*** Well I am his uncle, so I’m allowed to be avuncular.

Little tiny bugs with clogs on, there in her ears…

Yup, poor Grendel (AKA: Miss Kitty-Poo*-Cat, Little Miss, Poo*-Cat, Madame La Peep, and all other varieties of infantile drivel depending on how the mood takes us) has got ear mites. Bugs in her lugs.

We have no idea where they came from (though we suspect she may have arrived at Cassa De MacBride already endowed with the little buggers). When she was at the V.E.T (say it quietly and never all at once – bit like He Who Shall Not Be Named – lest ye cause a terror-stricken panic) they pointed out that Grendel had nasty creepy-crawlies infesting her not inconsiderable, sticky-up ears. They didn’t actually come right out and say that we were bad parents who should be flogged and pilloried for allowing our little girl to get into this dreadful state, but you could tell it was bubbling just under the surface. So we paid the bill and hotfooted it out of there before they could warm up the Burmese-O’nine-Tails. However, they said they’d taken care of Grendel’s unwanted guests and that this wonder treatment would last for a month.

Ha. Ha, ha, ha, haaaa… If only it were to be that simple.

A couple of days later we start noticing that she’s scratching her ears a lot, again (Grendel, not Fiona, who doesn’t have ear mites, only Cooties – well, she is from Fife). Now to start with we think this is just her getting rid of the last of the dead bugs. After all, the V.E.T has taken care of things. They said so.

Altogether now:
“But the bugs came back, the very next day,
yes the bugs came back…”
So now we have to administer fancy-pants eardrops twice a day. Which is bad on three fronts: firstly – it makes us the bad guys, rather then the V.E.T; secondly – said drops have to be kept in the fridge, so they’re cold and who wants that dripping into their lugs? And last, but not even vaguely least, she HATES having the damn things put in. It’s like a tag-team wrestling match where Fiona has to pin Madame La Peep down while I do the ear-dropping. And anyone who has ever tried to restrain an unhappy cat will know what happens to hands, arms, legs and anything else she can get her pointy little claws into.

As a result of all this we now wrap her up in a towel first. The resulting ‘cat straightjacket’ is effective, if a little undignified. She looks like a huge, grumpy, wriggly worm. A look that’s always popular – I sport it myself on numerous occasions.

But at least I don’t have bugs in my lugs!

* I should point out that ‘Poo’ is used here in its fuzzy, term of endearment sense rather than as a pejorative scatological reference.

Pimpin’ ma wares...

Since the interview on Mad Max Perkins’s blog way back at the start of January I’ve been dropping past ‘Paperback Writer’ on a regular basis. Now for those of you who haven’t visited this one, let me say that the blogger in question is incredibly prolific: thinks nothing of churning out 14,000 words a day, has had 25 different novels published in 5 different genres, under 5 different names… you get the picture.

The reason I mention this is that today’s offering strikes something of a cord: talking as it does of an unnamed writer’s blog repeatedly centring on their latest book, how they work references to how great it is into the text the whole time, how – horrible though it is to contemplate – the book jacket is actually part of the blog template… Oh… Wait a minute… ;}#

Now I am nowhere near egotistical enough to suggest that I am the unnamed writer bloggist in question (I think there’s only about half a dozen people who actually read this thing, and most of you are very, very strange), but I am clearly guilty of a LOT of the same crimes. And you know what: I’m not too bothered about that.

Jim was talking a while back about how he hates promoting his stuff, and I understand where he’s coming from. But – and here’s my lame excuse for all this reprehensible pimping behaviour – unlike them Big-Name authors (or even Medium-Sized-Named ones who have loads and loads of published books) for us newbies: this is it! We ether make our very first book work and sell, or we’re fucked. And not in a nice, snugly, wine-and-flowers kind of way either. This is your basic pinned-down-in-an-alleyway-by-troupe-of-drunken-sailors kind of fucked. We’re repeatedly told that if you don’t make them sales, straight out of the trap, your chances of continuing in this industry are severely damaged.

Another thing that strikes me, and this is just me talkin’ here, right now I’m pretty heavily focussed on the whole book thing. There are other things in my life, but a lot of the old grey matter is currently devoted to worrying about whether or not Book 2 is OK or a pile of cat sick, and how everything is going to change as soon as the CG hits the shelves. Am I obsessing? Yup, guilty as charged. Damn straight.This is a very exciting time for me, how often do you get to go from project management / ‘insert crappy job here’ to published writer?

So: apologies if I pimp too hard, gentle browser, but this is what it’s like right now. Maybe in two or three books time, when I’ve got tired of dusting all those CWA Daggers and Edgars (chance would be a fine thing), I’ll relax a bit. Till then: you’re stuck with it. Only you’re not, there’s always the lure of that big, shiny ‘Next Blog’ button. Just don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out ;}# And if there's anyone left after that I'll tell you all about my cat's ears!*

*Christ, there's an incentive to bugger off if ever I've heard one!

Guys and galls: start your engines...

Well, apparently the St. Martin’s Press advance reading copies are winding their way across the good old US of A as we speak (or at least I think they are, unless I’ve had some sort of bizarre brain thing – I’m sure there was an email, but I can’t find it any more…) so there will be a whole heap of new people out there scratching their heads and asking one another what ‘shoogle’ and ‘sooked’ mean. Hopefully it’ll generate some nice reviews and get people to buy the thing.

If it does, I shall probably be venturing across the pond next year to promote the launch of Book 2 and the paperback of Cold Granite. Hurray! Fiona and I really enjoyed out trip to the states last year, especially the buffalo wings. Mmmm…. Spicy chicken bits… So fingers crossed again!

P-Day + 9

This evening I are been mostly doing the website thing again. And although it has resulted in much banging of the head off the monitor, I’m reasonably pleased with the results. At least it shouldn’t look like I’ve downloaded some free template off an ‘Internet For Complete F***ing Moron’s’ cover disk.

Now all I need to do is get the rest of the thing written and up onto Norman’s web space. So looks like everything should be OK for the Norwegian launch. Provided poor Phil (who’s under the bearded thumb at the moment) doesn’t come back with a stack of complaints about Book 2.

Fingers crossed…

P-Day + 8

Still no word from Phil about Book 2. Not that I’m counting...

Not a lot...

This week things are not as shiny as they should be in the run-up to the 27th – when everyone and their maiden aunt get to hear that I’ve written a book, and more importantly: that some pretty groovy people are going to publish it. Well, as it’s technically only my family and friends, it would really just be my maiden aunt, rather than everyone’s. Only I don’t have a maiden aunt. Not that I know of anyway. There may be one hiding in a broom cupboard somewhere, nibbling the legs off spiders, but I’ve never heard of her. (Mind you, if she’s the kind of person who does masticate the appendages off arachnids, maybe that’s why I’ve never heard of her! She’s some sort of stain on the family’s mental health record, so nobody talks about ‘Mad Old Aunt Euphemia, The Spider-Munching Agoraphobic’...)

The reason for this lack of gloss on the week is the sad news that Kim (wife of my brother Christopher – he of the nosey ego-style Googling) lost her father on Sunday. And while we never really knew her father, we’re very fond of Kim, so are deeply sorry for her loss.
And it also means that She-Who-Must-Be-Indulged and I have been discussing the appropriateness of having a big jelly and ice-cream style party (complete with balloons and party games – I’ve suggested ‘pin the nose on Michael Jackson’, but Fiona fears it may be in poor taste) so soon after Kim’s father’s funeral. OK it’s a celebration of something good happening and we all need that now and again, but on the other hand we don’t want to be insensitive.

And if we delay it much longer the whole announcement will be moot anyway. My birthday (think I’ve dropped enough hints about that now?) is only one week before I’m due to jet off to Norway to do the scary publicity thing.

I think we’re going to have to go ahead with it anyway, and hope that Kim feels up to coming along and letting her hair down. It really doesn’t help to say, “Life must go on,” when you’ve just had so clear and painful a reminder that sometimes: it doesn’t.

All quiet on the Phil-shaped front…

Still no noise from Agent Phil (double Oh three feet four inches) regarding the first draft of ‘A-Book-Without-A-Name’ which is probably because the poor bugger has been up to his ears moving house. And his ears are a lot closer to the ground than yours or mine (because he’s only little). So I’m still in limbo: is it any good? Is it a steaming pile of cattle poo? Who knows?

JamesO has offered to read it, in a ‘I’m-just-back-from-a-flashy-holiday-so-nyah’ kind of way, so I’ll have to fire a copy in his direction too. Though he generally considers himself ‘too bright to read crime fiction’, I dare say he’ll lower himself on this occasion ;}#

Don’t remember being so worried about Cold Granite, but then I didn’t have the whole international publication thing to get worked up about. I’ve got a LOT more people to disappoint this time.

Still, mustn’t grumble: at least I’m getting published!

Time for the website…

Well, that’s the blog restyled. (can’t you tell?) I went back and redid everything on Sunday – took me two hours to redo what had taken two days the week before! This I attribute to the excellent tutorials from Max Design. So, with the blog confidently behind me – until it gets put live and all falls to bits that is ;}# – I can finally get down to doing the website. Which is just as well, the whole Norwegian trip happens in just over four weeks time! At least I’ll have two of those off to get the thing finished and up on the net.

Now all I have to do is hope the weather turns nasty – as it’s supposed to – so I can take all the pictures I need for the site! This would have to be the one winter in living memory where we’re not scraping ice out of our beards by mid-January! Must mean we’re in for a nasty, nasty summer.

And I’m not afraid to use it…

Well, that’s the form off now for my leave of absence. Depending on how convoluted the bureaucracy turns out to be it could be anything up to two months before I hear how my application goes. After all, it took six months to sort out going part time, who knows how long this is going to take…

So that means come April the 22nd (my work has a bizarre four week calendar) I’ll be a free man. Of course, they may still turn around and say, “No!”, but I have a perfect, reasoned argument should that come to pass: “I quit.” All in all I’d rather have the free health and life insurance, but needs must when the devil turns up asking to borrow a cup of sugar and ends up sneaking off with all your teaspoons.

This week I are been mostly…

Sodding about with cascading style sheets. Yes, now that book the second is off with Phil to go “Oh my GOD, it’s all CRAP!!!”, I’ve turned my attention to the heady world of internet thingies: in particular the creation of an new website to promote the book and a restyling of this very blog.

Now I’m from the old school – I’ve been designing web sites for about 10 years, and web applications for the last 8 (‘applications’ being much grander than ‘sites’ and costing up to about £7.5 million, so I get some sort of geek brownie points and RSI: hurray for me…) and that’s all been done doing tables. Mmmm… Tables. I LIKE tables, they’re easy, they’re straightforward, they’re predictable. You put something inside a table – it’s inside the table. Not like with CSS, where you put something inside a bounding box, it’s maybe in the box, but maybe not. Did you rub bacon into your thighs this morning? ‘Cause if you didn’t your text is going to be all over the place. Bwahahahahahahaaaa! And the damn stuff doesn’t even behave consistently. Get it looking OK in firefox (my personal browser of preference at the moment) and it looks like a three-year-old’s art project in Explorer. Not to mention Netscape, which I haven’t even tried yet. The stuff I’ve done since sending book 2 off to Phil I could have done in about an hour with straight HTML. But straight HTML would be too easy! Now it all has to be content separated from style and… poo… Like life isn’t hard enough without making it purposely difficult for yourself. But I’ve broken that particular dromedary’s back and now all is slow, irritable sailing towards the great nirvana of website and new-look blog.

So don’t be surprised if everything stops working in a week or two, it’ll just be because I’ve screwed something up.

How Safe Is Your…

Now before I go of on yet another rant, I have a confession to make. I have never seen a single episode of the show I am about to slate. Like those people who objected to ‘Jerry Springer The Opera’ without having seen it (and not on the basis that it just wasn’t very funny, the singing / arrangement left a lot to be desired, and to be frank: South Park do it much, much better) I do so because of my own prejudices and preconceptions. That and SKY keep putting on adverts for the bloody thing all the time (‘So You Think You’re Safe?, not ‘Jerry Springer’), so I have more than enough information to know that I detest this kind of anti-filth.

For those of you lucky enough not to have come into contact with it, ‘So You Think You’re Safe?’ is a whole series pointing out why you shouldn’t eat food, sleep in hotel rooms, go to the toilet, or use your keyboard at work, because you might catch cooties! Cleaning chainsaws with your eyebrows: don’t you know how DANGEROUS that is? Don’t drop hydrochloric acid down your trousers: it may sting! The world is a terrible place, full of bugs! Microbes! Viral infections! Bacteria! OH MY GOD, did you just breathe some air? Don’t you know PEOPLE FART IN IT! (and OK, I’ll give them that one – as all smells are particulate a fart is made up of tiny little bits from someone’s bum-hole, and few of us want to be ingesting that {members of parliament excepted.})

Morons.

What do they expect the viewing public to do? Nip down the nearest army surplus shop and pick up a half-dozen HAZMAT suits before daring to take a stroll down to ASDA to buy the three tons of industrial disinfectant they’ll need to make it through to tomorrow lunchtime? Who the hell commissions garbage like this and how do we make sure their body is never found (though I suppose we could just get David V to chuck the bits in his local tip).

Coming soon: How Safe Is Your Bum-Hole? Don’t you know that's where POO comes from!?!

No More Mr Nice Guy

There has been this ‘thing’ nagging away at me for a while. Months in fact. Now I consider myself to be a pretty reasonable kinda guy. OK, I can get a bit annoyed at bilge like ‘How Safe Is Your…’ ever getting on the air, or croutons turning up in things (if I want greasy bits of toast to eat I’ll root about under the fridge for them, thank you very much!) but mostly I’m easy going. And anyone who says any different is a f*****g k****g.

BUT: there are times that try my patience to the point where I want to go over to someone’s place of work, smash them repeatedly over the head with their telephone, and then urinate on their unconscious, battered body. Take the thieving bastards who’re supposed to be fixing my car right now: it’s a dealership, so they can charge more or less what they like (and you know it’s never going to be ‘less’) and provide as crappy a service as their slack-jawed troglodyte staff feel like on any given day. Which I think is directly related to the size of boobs on that morning’s page three girl: too small and they’re bitching an moaning and being grumpy all day, too big and they’ve all worn themselves half-blind in the company toilets.

But I digress. The reason this bugs the nipples off me is I’ve got a book coming out in about three months time that’s likely to make me notorious enough around Aberdeen, with out some greasy onanist turning round to his mates in the pub (or getting a literate acquaintance to write into the local paper on his behalf) and saying: “We had him in our garage the other month. What a wanker. Shouting the fuckin’ odds about his bloody car and ‘how come we’ve got no bloody clue what’s up wiv it’. Tosser. Then he goes mad, grabs Derek’s mobile and starts smashin’ ‘im in the ‘ead wiv it! Mind you, I would’ve stepped in and broken it up, but I ‘ad to go bash-me-weasel in the bogs…”

Bastards.

The Ego Clause…

Like Santa Clause, only more self-indulgent. Way back in the day, when I was but a stripling and my beard too tiny to see, I did one of those ‘list all the things you want to do in life’. I think we were trying to kill a period of English when the substitute teacher was too hungover to beat another poem to death, one line at a time. Not only did my list included ‘write a book’ – doing OK so far on that one – but it also included ‘be in a movie’, which is a bit more of a stretch. Or it was, until I managed that whole book thing: and this is where the Ego Clause comes in. I live in the North East of Scotland, and the whole film industry thing doesn’t really reach this far. (OK, so Mel Gibson’s Hamlet was shot down the road a bit, but other than that it’s suffering from a serious celluloid drought.) BUT I have writed a book and that means I hold the dramatisation rights. Bwahahahahahahaaaa… Anyone wants to make a movie from my stuff, they have to provide the write-ist with a speaking part.

Now this doesn’t have to be a huge part, not looking for a starring, or even supporting role, and they get to choose which part – but it must have discernable words and it can’t end up on the cutting room floor. Bwahahahahahahaaaa… does mine ego know no bounds?

And there’s NO WAY I’m the only write-ist out there doing this. After all, they always say you have to make your own opportunities, and if you can’t use contractual means and blackmail to fulfil a childhood ambition, what can you do?

Personally I see Mr Rickards as one of those inbred, beered-up truckers in Winter’s End, that Alex Rourke tries to pick a fight with (which should annoy Bryon). From what Sarah says about John, it’d be typecasting gone MAD!

Work (pronounced "g****b-h******k")

No post yesterday as work was just too darn… Well, let’s just leave it at that, so as to avoid the legal ramifications of publicly scorning a vast IT conglomerate. It’s really getting harder and harder to actually go back to work these days, that first taste of Monday morning in the office is getting more and more bitter. Not long now though: I have the ‘Leave of Absence’ forms and I’m not afraid to use them.

Another reason for the deplorable lack of drivel yesterday was due to a pressing need to minister to a sick cat. And if you’ve never tried it, I think I can safely describe washing an ill kitty’s delicates in the bathroom sink as being somewhat akin to cleaning a chainsaw with your eyebrows: while it’s still on. Never mind razor-wire! Just Velcro a bunch of cats on top of your fence and invite burglars / terrorists / nogoodnicks to try washing the moggie’s bums with nice warm water and kitten shampoo. Accident and emergency will be flooded with lacerated naughty people.

Doesn’t help that I’m still pretty allergic to Miss Kitty Fish, which means that all those claw marks and puncture holes end up looking like the elephant man on a bad day. I kid you not: my poor tattered flesh swells to four times its normal size (and we’ll have no comments from the smutmeisters thank you very much: you know who you are) and it itches like a bastard.

But it all goes to keep the mind from obsessing about potential feedback from the Phil, and when such feedback might actually arrive. Obsess, obsess, obsess…