A Question of voice,

(And I know this is going to piss off Bryon, but tough – them’s the breaks, Dude…)

Everyone always says that ‘voice’ is one of the most important things in writing. So what happens when the voice in question, isn’t yours anymore? Audio Books.

John’s just received his copies of Winter’s End on cassette, but hasn’t listened to them yet. Is he in for a treat, or a nightmare? The funny thing is, that while writing, and editing and doing all the other things we jolly write-ists do, the voices are our own, right? The voices in our heads (not the ones that tell us to buy high-velocity rifles – the other ones)? But as soon as the audio version comes out, that all changes. Now it’s someone else’s voice reading your words… actually ‘reading’ isn’t the right term, they’re not reading your words, they’re performing them and that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

I know I’ve been lucky – I got John Sessions and he’s actually Scottish, so score on the ‘not putting on a Scotty from Star Trek’ front. Plus he’s done a pretty bloody good job: it was the Sunday Times Audio Book of the Week. But it’s still someone else’s voice and I find that so bloody weird!

Weirder still, in addition to the abridged version (available now from all good bookshops) they’ve just sold the unabridged audio rights to someone else. And I have no idea if this is going to be John again, or someone completely new.

And as if that wasn’t odd enough, what happens if you land the big pay check and someone actually makes a film or TV series out of your book? Not just someone else’s voice, but face, moves, interpretation, direction… All that stuff, wriggling away in other people’s heads. It’s probably why some writers HATE the TV adaptations of their work.

Anyone?

The lady from Triumph, she say, "yes!"

Well, I got a response back from Triumph International Limited this morning – I have permission to use the Triumph Doreen in my book without getting my testicles sued off. Which is nice, as I’ve grown rather attached to them. In a manly way.

And so to celebrate, here’s a brief, non-Stephen-Hawkins-style history of that most illustrious of garments...

2500 BC ~ On the island of Crete, women begin using bra-like garments to hoist up their bosoms so everyone could see them. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it was a slow news day.

450BC ~ Roman women wrap a band of fabric around their breasts to reduce their bust size. Presumably it had something to do with all eating all those dormice.

1893 ~ Marie Tucek patents her "Breast Supporter". Similar to modern-day bras this has separate pocket for each breast, shoulder straps, and those fiddly hook-and-eye clasp things men have been fighting with ever since.

1912 ~ The term "brassiere" first appears in the Oxford English Dictionary. Schoolboys all over the world commence giggling.

1919 ~ New York socialite Mary Phelps Jacob cobbles together two silk handkerchiefs, some ribbon and cord and manages to get it patented. Not shy then.

1917 ~ The U.S. War Industries Board asks the women of America to stop buying corsets as the demand for metal is interfering in the war effort. Enough metal is saved to build two battleships. Though history does not expressly recall what they were named. The USS Second Base and the USS Untouchable, one presumes.

1935 ~ The modern cup sizing system is developed by Warner's leading to all those smutty DD jokes.

1968 ~ Feminism leads to arson. Bras are burned. Men rejoice. Breasts sag. Men despair. Bras are put back on again. Men think, ‘ah well, it was nice while it lasted...’

1977 ~ The first sports bra is created by sewing two jockstraps together. And if that wasn’t appealing enough on its own, it was called the 'Jogbra'.

1990 ~ Madonna's dons a bra that looks like a pair of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Years later it’s auctioned off for £14,100. £13,580 more than Marilyn Munroe’s bra fetched when it was sold off in 1981.

1994 ~ Eva Herzigova exclaims ‘Hello, boys’ from billboards up and down the country. Many men crash their cars.

What’s your favourite bra story? (And I know I’m going to regret asking that one)

And it’s away...

Well, that’s TDL sent off to the editing gurus at HarperCollins, so I suppose it’s time to kick back and have a cold one.

And yet…

Is there more I could do to the thing? Probably. But then my deadline isn’t so much creeping closer as dashing headlong, waving a rabid ocelot over its head and shouting, “I’m gonna git ya!” Or something like that. I suppose I could just keep on tweaking till the cows come home, but would it actually help, or hurt the book? I sometimes get the feeling that excessive editing takes all the lumps out of a story - no one likes a LUMPY book – and yet there’s something not right about smoothness… What would you rather have: a fillet steak with garlic mash and petit poi, or the same thing all wodged into a blender and whizzed until there’s not one single lump left?

Well, I’ve got most of tomorrow and all day Thursday to completely screw things around. If I want to. Probably shouldn't. But I could. If I wanted. It’s a bit like having an interesting scab: you know you shouldn’t pick, but...

And the deadline thing is kinda arbitrary. Thursday the 30th June. Day before the big HC pish-up for people what had got their book published. My bet is everyone will be too busy lining their stomachs with yoghurt and vitamin C to bother about what some bearded numpty has submitted. But I’ve always beaten my deadlines as a point of pride - so if I’m going to do anything it has to be NOW!

How’s that for rambling claptrap?

Congratulations you rotten sods...

I’ve been off-line for a bit editing like a dervish, but it was with great pride – and something approaching heartburn – that I powered up the computer at the end of a hard day’s graft to see that Lynn has awarded the coveted BAM Book Awards to Stinky Jim for "Grendel slashed my wrists today..." and Dirty Darren for MacYoda Rotten wee buggers one and all ;}#

Special mention must go to Tambo, who’s promised me a quilt to hide under next time, and to Gabrielle, who felt it important to not offend my delicate writer’s sensibilities by taking the Mick, like everyone else. Shrinking wallflower that I am.

No I have to think of something suitably cruel to do to Lynn in revenge, something Faustian involving reviewers and a large vat of jello...

Number one son is now, officially, a number two

Where have you been? I been to see the sea – this Saturday morning saw the culmination of about four years of ‘reminding’ by She Who Never Nags about getting Jasper, our first born to the beach. A simple thing, you think, strap the wee bugger into the back seat and away you go. Nope. This has involved spending £5,000 on a second-hand Jeep Cherokee and another £1,200 on a trailer, because Jasper Conan MacBride is a 15.1 hand high thoroughbred-cross-cob we adopted from Ireland. He’s a bit rowdy, so while Little Miss is allowed to sleep on the bed and fed titbits of cheese, Jasper has been sent off to borstal. Or possibly boarding school, depending on how much of a wee turd he’s being at the time.

Most of Saturday was actually not too bad. OK, the early rise to catch the morning tide on Balmedie Beach stung more than a bit, but we got the trailer hitched up, the horse in the back and away we went. Never towed a horse before, but I managed to get him there in one piece. At the beach, Aberdeenshire Council had done us proud on the facilities – Saturday morning, mid June, think anyone would have thought to open the toilets? Naaaaah! Every last bit of the surrounding countryside was jam packed with urinating holidaymakers (one upside of this was finding a puffball mushroom when I went to get rid of some tea – very nice it was in Sunday’s chicken casserole too). But off went Fiona and Jasper to play in the sand while I stayed in the jeep to do some of the third edit. Sounds a bit biblical when you say it like that, doesn’t it? The Third Edit!

A couple of hours later She Who Has Had Fun comes back and we have our family picnic: egg sandwiches, cheese and chilli crisps, edam, cherries, and a thermos of tea for us, big bag of hay and a bucket of water for the horse. Things only started going to Armitage Shanks when we tried to get Jasper back into the box. Hell no, he wouldn’t go. An hour and a half of trying to haul his stroppy, hairy arse into the trailer he waltzed happily into on the way here. That may not sound all that onerous, after all he’s only a horse, how difficult could it be? Jasper is about seven foot tall with all four legs on the ground, weighs in at about half a ton (which is the same as a Mini Cooper) and most of that’s muscle. Much, much, much swearing. An hour and a half of struggling and swearing. In the end he got fed up and sauntered in on his own. Bastard.

So that kind of put the spoiler on the day somewhat – quarter to seven in the morning round to half four in the evening, all spent getting the hairy wee poo to the beach and back.

This is why I christened him The Boy Rat way back when we picked him up from the orphanage. And if he keeps this up, he’s going back.

Where do they go – up or down?

I have taken the law into my own hands, at least as far as slugs are concerned. The back garden has become a scene of total carnage, dead slugs all over the shop. Every evening I’m out there with my trusty blade ‘Slugthulu’ slicing the little beggars into little rubbery bits that ooze innards. Very tasteful.

Then I began to notice something I hadn’t been aware of before – they’re cannibals. Every morning there’s a group of fresh slugs, feasting on the carcasses of their fallen comrades. She Who Is From Fife And So A Bit Odd In The Head claims that they’re not eating the dead, but mourning them. Do slugs have souls? And if they do, what happens to them when they die?* Are they judged at the gates of heaven by a tiny, slimy St. Peter and their deeds weighed on the scales - to roam free on the cabbages of the Lord, or sent to burn in an eternal lake of salt? Or is it more of a Valhalla deal, where the Valkyrie ride to collect the souls of the fallen, very... very... very... slowly? Or do they get reincarnated as caterpillars (something else I squoosh on a regular basis when the little buggers have a go at my brassicas)?

Personally I think they go to hell.

It’s theology, Jim, but not as we know it.

*And no, this wasn’t just an excuse to go play with Photoshop: how dare you!

Sound bells and trumpets* for I have done the deed of DOOM!

Yes indeed – second draft now all typed up, zipped and sent off to Agent Phil (those aren’t Malteasers) for safe keeping. Hahahahahahahahaaaa… From 150, 359 beautifully-crafted words down to 135,422. Not quite 10%, but near enough for the price of aardvarks. I’m sure I can shave those extra 99 words when I give it another quick run through.

Hahahahahahahahaahahahaaaa!

Now, all that remains is to force She Who Must Be Coerced Into Reading Anything I Write Before It Gets Published to read it so I can talk to her about how it reads and I’ll be set for the second pass. And I have a whole week to do it in! Hahahahahahaha…

I’m going to go lie down now.

* Or Bells and Sebastians if you’re that way inclined.

Before I go

That inveterate stinker Lynn has fallen from my good graces by offering up a competition to win two (unsigned) copies of the US edition of Cold Granite – all you have to do is pop over there and take the piss* out of yours truly. Points will be given for originality, mentions of beards, edits, titles, cats and She Who Must. Though I think nasty old Tambo may have already taken the biscuit.

Poo, I say, poo!

Gonna buy me a high-velocity rifle and do some blogger-huntin’

*Well, she calls it posting "your best imitation of Mr. MacBride on a bad day in comments", but we know that's like waving sausages around in front of you Hyenas!

I can hear my brain

This isn’t the cackle of some caffeine-ridden word monkey’s skull bones - after all, I’m not some kind of freak - this is a constant, low-pitch thrumming that comes mostly in darkness. It’s a bit like being on a ship, or an oilrig, where there engines are buried away, far below, but make the deck and walls vibrate – the sort of noise that you learn not to hear pretty quickly. It’s still there, but you’ve tuned it out. The only time you actually notice it, is when the noise changes.

Now I’m not suggesting that my brain is some vast, powerful engine, I’m just saying that it’s making a funny noise right now and I can hear it again.

Or maybe I need to go get my ears tested?

Mr MacBride: him not feel to shiny

I can’t believe I only managed to type up 84 pages yesterday! It took me 13 hours! For 84 pages! And that’s not 13 hours including breaks for lunch and tea, that’s 13 whole bloody hours. So my productivity seems to be taking a pronounced dip at the moment. I’m not sure if this is because I’ve been sitting at this damn computer for the last three days solid, or if it’s because as I went through the manuscript with a collection of red pens I did a hell of a lot more scribbling in the last third. So there’s a lot more to type up.

It must be said that I’m also pretty damn knacked this week. Sitting here day after day has done my back no favours, so actually sleeping through the night (which I don’t really manage at the best of times) is impossible. On the plus side, when I go to the HarperCollins author party in London next Friday I won’t have to take any luggage; I’ll just pack everything into the two huge black bags under my eyes. Hand luggage only, my friend. Ah, yes…

The nice people from HC throw the bash every summer to celebrate everyone they’ve published since the last one, so it’s not just new fish like me, there will be proper authors and stuff too. I’m guessing they’ll be the ones making an economical figure of eight between the bar and the buffet, while the newbies wander around with a dazed expressions on their faces, wondering why everyone else is much more drunk and fed than they are. Champagne and prawns for me – that’s the goal. Mind you I’ll have help, Agent Phil (who’s entitled to 10% of any drink or canapé I get) will be there also, and he’s only little so will be able to nip under tables and scurry between people’s legs to get the finest morsels. No, it’s true! Honest ;}#

Right, enough fun and frivolity - I’m off to check up on Dilbert and Get Fuzzy, then it’s back to the edit. Only 67 pages to go!

Oh God...

Slurry, slurry, rush and scurry

122 pages typed up yesterday in a marathon session that involved a break to go shopping for the weekly rations and a late lunch - about 16:30 when I got back from the supermarket. Which meant that, after cooking and eating tea with She Who Must Be Fed Before Bedtime, Or She Gets Cranky and the cat who’s been on a grump all day, it was probably another 12-hour day.

Why is Grendelon a grump? After the farmer was finished making rat tartar in the back field – which took not just Friday, but all day Saturday too – the crows descended. Murders and murders of them, krawing loudly at each other while the gulls screeched overhead, trying to get a bit of the action. Like something out of Westside Story it was, only without the dancing and no one got knifed. And probably no inter-crow-seagull romance. And I think the crows have been picking on Little Miss: she’s not been asking to go out anywhere near as much since Farmer Chuckles stopped mooshing field mice and other assorted rodents. Instead she’s taken to sulking in the conservatory until it’s evening and the crows bugger off to hang about in bars and get rowdy with the local drunks. They cheat at pool, you know (the crows, not the drunks). And then yesterday, when the crows were finally beginning to lose interest in hanging around our gaff all day, our local agricultural technicians decided to spray the field with seven million tons of slurry. Mmm, pig poo...

Don’t know about you, but the smell of fermented animal faeces somehow just doesn’t make my day. It’s the one thing about living in the country that I just can’t embrace. And neither can Madame La Peep – she hates it, and so it was back to the sulking for her.

Anyway, I’ve got another 150 pages to type up – I’m hoping it’ll be done today, but as I was up doing the self same thing until half-past midnight last night, I’m betting it’s not going to happen. No matter how good my intentions, I’m probably going to end up falling asllllllllllnnnnnnnnnnnnn///////////,,,

Tippity, tip, tip, type

Urrrrgh... All day yesterday, and all day today, and probably all day tomorrow too – typing. Not writing, because I did that ages ago, no – this is just typing. Getting all those hundreds and hundreds of red scribbles* transcribed off the edit and into the computer. All 489 pages of them. Yesterday I only managed a piffling 156 pages – so I’ve got a bit to go before I get as proficient as Trace – which is just enough to get the old RSI tingling. Not to mention a numb bum from sitting in front of the electronic Cyclops of DOOM for 12 hours. Still, I have the same thing to look forward to today, and all this blogging malarkey isn’t getting the estate agent skinned.

Onwards – typing ho!

* The scores on the doors at the end of the edit? Three and a half red pens. And that’s not counting the blue one I had to use somewhere about the middle.

God help us, she’s just not that bright

The following is an actual transcript of events that happened on Sunday the 19th of June 2005. Actors have been used to protect the identities of those involved.

“Ooh look, a BEE!”
“Kitten! Don’t play with bees. Kitten – you’ll get stung!”
“Bees! Yay! Pounce, biff! Biff! Pounce. Biff! Biff, biff, pounce… OW! Awwwwwwww! Paw, ouch, ouch, ouch. Paw! Ouch!!!”
“Oh, Kitten! Silly fish! Let mummy see your paw…” -- sound of wriggling cat being picked up – much washing of nearside front paw -- “poor fish!”
-- wriggling followed by sound of cat leaping free, then more paw washing --
“Oww... Paw… sore, ouchy! Nasty, sore!” -- silence, during which more paw washing is undertaken, pause: two, three four… -- “Ooh look! A BEE!”

She gets it from her mother’s side.

Superstar, that’s what you are, only hairier, with less money and no groupies...

Today has marked another change in my bearded view of the world. For today I have been transformed from a bloke with a computer and a cat, to someone who receives FAN MAIL! Hurrah! I think... Luckily the plural of fan mail is the same as the singular, so it still sounds impressive. Round about noon, the postman turned up today with an envelope with my name on it in black biro, and my address in blue. ‘Oho’, thinks I, ‘what’s all this then?’ And it turned out to be a very nice letter from a Mr Hamilton from Clydebank, forwarded on by HarperCollins (or at least I assume it has been, hence the different pens on the envelope). Hate mail, I thought I’d probably get by the bucket load, but letters from obviously deeply talented and intelligent people telling me they like the book? Didn’t actually count on that.

So, now I’m going to have to start trashing hotel rooms and going to orgies and maybe wear some spandex too.

The thing that concerns me, is what happens now? I’ve never sent or received any fan mail before – do I reply with an autographed 10 by 4 of my hairy face, or do I file it under ‘things to read next time you get kicked in the nads by a reviewer’ and go back to the editing? What’s the proper writerly etiquette?

Confined to barracks

The farmer is out in the field behind our house today with his rotary rat shredder (it slices and dices and turns all your external wildlife into bite-sized pieces). This takes the form of a dirty big lawnmower he drags along behind his tractor, slicing its way through the long grass and anything else that gets in the way. This is why Little Miss is not being allowed out. Yes, I know this is probably mollycoddling, but I’d rather coddle a molly than risk her being turned into some thing that looks like Burt Reynolds’ toupee covered in tomato sauce. So far she’s taking her confinement pretty well, and she’s not lacerated any of my body parts yet, so here’s hoping we’re in for a nice quiet day.

Editalicious

That’s the first edit of Dying Light* done, on paper at least. Now I just have to type the whole thing up and then give it a second going over. All except for the first two chapters, which I’ve had to rush through at the behest of Sarah at HC. “Get them done by Friday,” she said with an evil gleam in her eye, “Or you’re for it!” They want to put them at the back of the CG paperback.

Personally I never read those little sample chapters at the end of a book. I don’t know about you, but for me a good book is like a nice steak. I like to settle back when I’ve finished it, enjoy the flavour it’s left in my mouth, maybe order a brandy. Pick my teeth. What I don’t want is the waiter snatching my plate away and forcing cheesecake down my throat. And if I’ve not enjoyed the book – struggled through it, spitting out mouthfuls of fat and gristle – then the last thing I want is more of the same thing. Leave me be! Etc.

I know some people love these little snippets, but not me. It’s like when they do that horrible ‘Next Time On Doctor Who…’ thing, GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE! I don’t want any bloody cheesecake! Ahem. Mind you the ‘Next time’ thing is infinitely preferable to the idiotic ‘Tonight on Insert Name Of Show Here…’ Don’t tell me what the show’s going to be about! I want to find out by WATCHING it! What’s the point of me sitting here for the next half hour if you can condense the whole bloody thing down into thirty seconds? Muppet.

Where was I? Ah, yes, editing. So, that’s two chapters down, forty three to go. Think I’m going to be spending a lot of the weekend typing. Or I might escape and do something creative with paint instead. Like colouring myself purple and scaring the sheep.

* Or maybe it’s The Dying Light – can’t decide whether it’s better as the definitive article or not

I want to meet the man who invented the Jeep Cherokee,

So I can wrap my hands around the little bastard’s throat and squeeze till his fucking eyes pop.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze: POP!

Schizophrenia is so hard to spell...

And yet it’s the feeling I’ve got at the moment. No sooner had I put up the ‘dichotomy review’ header above, with its less than glowing quote from the Sunday Herald, when they go and flummox me entirely with a stunningly good review. Allan Burnett is obviously a man of great depth and talent. Someone men want to be and women just plain want.

No, I’m not biased in any way…

Against my better judgement:

When they turned up at Saul’s Café I knew this wasn’t going to be one of my better days. The boy Whitey and his gimp, bold as brass only half as classy. Somewhere between here and wherever it is, the Gimp had got himself a nose full of Angel Delight, twitching and giggling, stroking the leatherette seats with his sticky fingers. Exploring the cracks.

“You remember the thing what went down last time,” said Whitey, squeezing in on the other side of the table, eyeing my breakfast, “That thing? You remember?”

The Gimp grinned, repeating the words over and over: “The thing, the thing, thethingthethingthething…” Whitey hit him with the ketchup bottle and the Gimp went back to picking at the seat.

“What if I do?”

“We’re doing it again.”

“Doon it again, doon it again.” Squeal and jitter.

“I swear to God,” I said, “If he starts in on his Good Ship Lollypop routine I’m going to pop him one.”

“Look,” Whitey gave my sausages the same kind of look dodgy priests give choirboys. “We’re doing it again – you want in?”

I’m not sure it’s a good idea, I told him. I’m going straight these days. Legit. Got my reputation to think of.

A banging at the front window and Whitey cringed, some doped-up freak was out there pressing his face against the glass, mouthing obscenities. Whitey forced a smile and waved. “I see yah, John, give us a minute, OK?” He shuddered, then leant across the table, dropping dandruff on my baked beans. “You see what I gotta deal with? You see the kinda people I got?”

“Peepil, peepil, peepil… it’s a nice trip to the candy shop – ”

“Seriously,” I said, “I’m going to pop him one!”

“Come on,” he tried fluttering his baby blues. It wasn’t pretty. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Well, this -> Lot 346

The following poor souls were also duped into writing stuff*:
Bryon Quertermous, Dave White, John Rickards, Dave Zeltserman, Ray Banks, Duane Swierczynski, David J Montgomery, Bill Crider, Gwenda Bond, Scott Neumyer, Paul Guyot, Gerald So, Sarah Weinman, Christin Kuretich, Bob Mueller, Megan Powell, Pat Lambe, Steven Torres, Graham Powell, Jennifer Jordan, Jon Jordan, Bob Tinsley, Aldo Calcagno, Rochelle Krich, and Alina Adams
(I stole these links off John)

Another one bites the dust

That’s another red pen killed in the process of editing DL (now that it’s no longer going to be TNH). I don’t think I’ve ever gone through that much red ink on a book before. What fun, tra-la-la…

On the plus side, I’m down to 54 pages to go. And them I’m going to back to the start again. Yay!
I think half of the problem with this one is that by the time the notes came back on the first draft I was a good third of the way into TSA. So I’ve still got big chunks of that book swimming round behind my eyes, getting in the way of the stuff I’m trying to edit. Which is more of a pain than I thought it was going to be. Still, tomorrow is another day and will hopefully take me within spitting distance of the finishing line (or it would do if spitting wasn’t frightfully rude).

And from the looks of thing pen number three might not be long for this world either. I’ve only got about an inch of ink left in the damn thing. Good job I bought a pack of twenty.

What's in a name (part Christ knows how many)

Well, it’s official (ish) TNH has a new title. Agent Phil (trousers and a smile) emailed me today to say that Amazon has got the new book up as ‘DYING LIGHT’. So there you go: DYING LIGHT it is. OK, so it’s a bit of an odd way to find out what your book’s going to be called, but at least there’s no more worrying about having to come up with alternative names the whole time. Now I can concentrate on bashing my head against the edit every day instead.

Bash, bash, bash.

Still, I’m now down to a mere 80 pages, so it’ll be done sometime soon. (just keep telling yourself that Stuart: sometime soon…

Home of the brave

Well, we’re into serious countdown territory now – CG hits them naughty American bookshelves on the 15th and everyone on that side of the pond can find out for themselves which Guardian news paper got it right: the eponymous one or the MUCH more classy Wanstead and Woodford one.

I got a copy of the US edition through the post a couple of days ago from St. Martin’s Press and it now has pride of place on the bookshelf of self-indulgent shame along with the Norwegian, UK, and Large Print editions. That’s not even counting the audio book versions on CD and tape. It’s like one big ego-fest round here you know. All I need now is a film deal and a television series and I’ll be impossible to live with. Mind you She Who Must Need Her Head Examined has managed to do so for eleven years and two months (it was our tenth wedding anniversary yesterday, and thanks to everyone who sent us their warm wishes… ahem).

Funny thing is, even though it’s set from the UK edition – making it almost identical apart from the cover – I still got that wide-eyed thrill when I took the book out of the yellow baggie, like holding the book for the first time.

Right, I’m off to look at more websites full of bras!

Ladies' bras and other fun things

When I got TNH back from Sarah there was a note of concern from the HarperCollins legal department about my use of an Aberdeen City Planner in a very deviant sexual threesome (fictional – not based on any persons real, dead, or smelling of herring) and another about the potential problems caused by referring to that bra of bras the Triumph Doreen.

As the ‘Doreen’ has a special place in my affections, which we won’t go into here*, I was keen not to replace this phenomenal work of lace engineering with another bra that I’d made up. After all, how could you replace an item of lingerie called ‘Doreen’? So I decided to try hunting down the manufacturers and get formal permission to use their upholstery in TNH. Not as easy as you might think, Google comes back with 7,880 results for Triumph Doreen Bra but I finally managed to track them down through the yellow pages and a bit of guesswork. So now they are in possession of a tiny snippet of the book. I suppose it’s all going to come down to how seriously they take themselves… It won’t be the end of the world if they say no: I’ll just go and make one up. How does the Victory Agnes sound?

Boy, this writering stuff is hard work, no? ;}#

* And no, it doesn’t have anything to do with my dressing as a woman for money: you can look, but you can’t touch!

To join, or not to join?

Given all the ‘interesting’ publicity that the RWA has been getting over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been wondering if joining a writing organisation is a good or bad thing. The organisation in question? The CWA (Who have a bloody awful website. Not germane to the discussion, I know, just thought I’d throw my professional opinion in there for you. And that’s free by the way, no charge.).

Will having the letters CWA after my name make me seem more sophisticated and alluring at parties? I mean, I’ve already got my manly beard and twinkly eyes for that, and how much more alluring can one person get? And I’ve never really contemplated joining a professional organisation before, it always struck me as a rather odd thing to do. So how come I’m giving it serious thought now?

Anybody out there a member?

Little Miss Squitty Cat (AKA Coley’s Revenge)

Well, our birthday treat for Grendel has resulted in a nasty dose of the Norris McWhirters. This was a piece of supposedly ‘fresh’ fish, poached in nothing but water (no Cajun spices, lime and coriander marinade, or béchamel sauce) so how come it’s reacted with Little Miss’s stomach like a mutton vindaloo?

Actually beginning to get a little worried about her. We’re supposed to worm her, just in case she’s got visitors inside and they’re the ones making her squirty, but she’s just refusing to eat the damn wormer. “Sprinkle the required number of sachets on to about 1/3 of your cat’s usual food ration and mix…” it says on the packet. We sprinkled, we mixed, and ended up with something that looks like it came out of Bishop when the alien queen tore him in half – all white, milky and utterly revolting. And we weren’t the only ones who thought so; Grendel refuses to touch the foul stuff. You’d have though they’d make worming powder taste of cheese, or beef, or fish, wouldn’t you? Something a cat would actually enjoy eating? Nope, let’s make it turn cat food into a foul milky sludge. Makes you proud.

All of which leads us to a vomiting cat at twenty past six this morning as she tries to clean herself up after her latest litter-box mishap. Not exactly the best of starts to a tenth wedding anniversary, is it? Poor wee thing.

Happy birthday to miaow

Well today Little Miss obtains her majority. This means she’s able to force through any bills she likes into law, providing there’s no backbench revolt (ooh, little bit of politics). In celebration of this fact she’s had coley for her tea. I went into TESCO and tried to get the lady with the lazy eye to understand that I didn’t want a bit of fish the size of the Lusitania, it was for my cat, not the entire cast of Moby Dick including the bloody whale. And while we’re at it, I don’t want the nasty grey bit either! Cut a nice bit of fish from the clean, fishy-looking end, not the bit that looks like a tramp’s used it as an underarm deodorant for the last six months. I still ended up with enough fish to feed twelve, but Madame La Peep wolfed it down good style. And then partook of cat-style sweeties as well. Why the hell do they make Felix Lickens in the shape of tiny chickens? It’s not like cats are going to look at them and go ‘Ah, right, these’ll taste of chicken then.’ No all Grendel thinks is ‘MINE! NOW! MORE!’ You could make them look like Monopoly* pieces, or your duodenum and she wouldn’t care. All she wants is a tasty savoury snack, preferably flavoured with dead animal. Anything else is just window dressing.

But we still sang ‘Happy Birthday To You’.

*Incidentally, you can now get Lord Of The Rings Monopoly… WTF is THAT all about? “Oh,” says Sauron, “You’ve landed on Minas Morgul, I’ve got three hotels there, that’ll be fifty seven pounds…”

Pathology 101

Ishbel Hunter (good name, no?) isn’t exactly early and I’m not exactly late for our three o’clock meeting at The Globe this afternoon. But the differences in temporal placement is large enough to allow Ishbel to buy herself a pint of Guinness before I get there, but not drink any. Damn. The write-ist buys his source the first drink, this is the rule.

Aberdeen is like an oven this afternoon, the air filled with the promise of thunder and rain heavy enough to make the granite buildings weep. But it never comes to anything. Instead it’s armpits and smalls of backs that do the weeping all over the city. I’m here to get the low-down on what it’s like to be an Anatomical Pathology Technician from someone who really knows her stuff. Ishbel Hunter is the chief APT at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary’s Morgue, it’s her job to take people’s insides outside and put them back in again. I successfully conned her into helping me on the first book and somehow managed not to piss her off with the printed article enough to get her to agree to do the same for book 2 (which may actually have a name now, but I’m not counting my finger bones yet).

Ishbel has a curly head of red hair – a bit like a grown up Crystal Tips only without the dog sidekick – and eyes that do not suffer bullshit. As we talk about post mortems and ‘Lividity’ versus ‘Hyper Stasis’ a lot of really, really disturbing stuff comes out. The kind of stuff that’d have the other patrons of the bar hammering 999 into their mobile phones to report the two weirdoes talking about dead bodies, if Ishbel wasn’t talking in hushed, nearly whispered, tones. Bone saws; spinal cords; how to suspend a human brain in a bucket of formalin; what the small intestine looks like when you take it out, anchored to its rah-rah skirt of fatty, yellow mesentery – Ishbel is a fountain of information.

We play word association games to try and describe the smell of formalin (the fixative they use for dead tissue) while her second pint of Guinness settles. Then do the same to visualise the four different blocks of internal organs that get removed during a post mortem. I mention that this is probably the most bizarre conversation I’ve ever had in a pub and Ishbel just smiles. Unlike me, this isn’t her first time. At parties people either want to know all about her job, or smile nervously and take a sudden interest in the cheese platter. And she’s completely professional while we’re talking – no anecdotes or funny post mortem stories here, and I can understand why. On one level her job is like any other – she goes to work, she does what she does, she goes home – but on a larger scale what she does, daily, is become more intimate with a human being than anyone ever could have while they were alive. And she’s careful to preserve that dissector/client confidentiality. But she’s quite prepared to take the piss out of junior doctors. The only anecdotes she admits to involve her time in Bosnia: working for the United Nations, performing post mortems on the bodies recovered from mass graves. X-raying the body-bags to make sure the archaeologists haven’t accidentally dug up a grenade along with the corpse. Tracking the path of a bullet through a body by following the green, verdigris trail left behind. I ask her how on earth she managed to face that kind of horror for three weeks, up to her elbows in people who’ve been murdered en masse, and she shrugs. It’s what she does. Somehow I get the feeling she’s a lot braver than I would have been… Ah, bollocks to that: booby trapped bodies with multiple gunshot wounds, or being dug up with the ligatures still round their throats – I’d have been back in the hotel bar in two minutes flat. Screw macho bravado.

I get a lot of good info from Ishbel, and a couple of old brochures as well – gonna order me up an oscillating bone saw soon as ma check comes in – and a MUCH better idea of what goes on during a post mortem. So I hope to God I NEVER have to have one. The only fly in our ointment comes when Ishbel’s better half calls to ‘remind’ her that dinner was meant to be on the table fifteen minutes ago (He’s the one who cooks, so he’s none too happy that she’s still in the pub with some bearded writer bloke – and I can’t blame him. It probably doesn’t help that I’m such a funky sex-god.) Our long afternoon of death an dissection are at an end.

In the end I know that a lot of what Ishbel has told me today won’t appear in any book, but it will influence the writing and what happens when. Hopefully, someday, I’ll put together a book where the APT is the main character, rather than the glory-grabbing pathologist you always see on the telly. Tell it like it really is… Amanda Burton has a lot to answer for.

I have a date with a lovely lady from the morgue...

And I bet all of you wish you could say the same thing. Tomorrow I’m having high tea with Isbel, chief Anatomical Pathology Technician at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. All the books you see focus on the clinical, but vulnerable Pathologist, but in the real world it’s the APT that does all the work. OK, the pathologist does the actual cutting, but the APT is the caddy on the eighteen holes of death – without them everything’s just hooks and slices.

Tommorow I’m going to learn all about post mortem procedure and what formalin smells like (probably not kittens is my guess) unless someone dies of course… Actually that’s a strange sentence to type. My meeting tomorrow depends on someone not dying. Hmm…

Hope she’s not late.

Stag, or mouse night?

Well, it’s the three hundredth fifty sixth day of Little Miss’s dominion upon the earth – fuzzy nonsense since 2004 – tomorrow she’s one whole year old. To commemorate this auspicious occasion she has decided to make sure a dormouse’s family remembers this day forever. Or however long dormice live. Going out on a limb, I’m going to say it’s probably slightly less time than your average Egyptian pharaoh. And with much, much smaller pyramids.

Once more we’ve been presented with a near-perfect dead rodent. Not a mark on him/her. If the KGB, or CIA are interested, Grendel seems to have come upon the perfect, undetectable method of inhumation. But then she’s a cat, so no shock there.

At least she hasn’t got round to leaving the half-eaten corpses all over the place yet.

Dah-da-dum-dum...

The interview questionnaire thingie I did for CrimeSquad.com is now up and running along with a very nice review, thank you very much. Shame about all the bearded ramblings, but such is life.

What do you get for the cat who has everything?

Well not everything, I mean she doesn’t have worms* or anything like that (not that we know of anyway), but other than that she’s pretty well pampered. A nice warm house, plenty of erudite conversation, and all the wicker frog’s** feet she can eat. Yup, for Little Miss life is pretty damn sweet.

The only trouble is she’s just not a kitten anymore. In addition to recent multiple shrew homicides (drive-by pouncings mostly) she’s also about to cross that Rubicon from which there is no return. On Wednesday she becomes one year old. After that it’s all wrinkles and crows feet. Only in this case they’ll probably still be attached to the crow.

I’m planning a modest bash, just Madame La Peep and She Who Must Wear A Party Hat Or She’s Not Getting Any Cake, some balloons and maybe a couple of them little furry mice things made out of rabbit fur.

What do you mean that’s not normal?

* Otherwise I would recruit them into my Secret Ninja Worm Army and then we’d see some bloody changes round here, oh Hell yes!
** Well, we only have one wicker frog, sot technically it’s only four feet, and she’s not allowed to eat them anyway. She just does.

The Gospel According to Kwik Fit

Hark unto me sinners and unbelievers and people who own cardigans, for today I have been mostly praying to the MOT Gods, beseeching them to be kind and not wrathful. To bestow their bounteous favours upon mine five year old Renault Clio and not let the damn thing fail and cost a bloody fortune to fix. Verily I divined the portents this morning (three sheep on the front lawn, which I chased off dressed only in mine holy garments – in this case a blue towelling bathrobe that’s seen better days – as the little sods were eating the roses) and was sore afraid that the high priest at the temple of Kwik Fit would maketh the sound of hissing whilst looking upon mine Clio and say unto me, “Oooooh, goona cost ya, mate!” But lo, it came to pass that the mighty Gods of MOT did look kindly upon mine Clio and when the high priest didst phone up at half four (having started an hour later than the time of mine appointment due to having to exorcise a Citroen Zara Picasso that did smell mightily of wet Labrador) he didst say, “Well, there’s only two things wrong with it, and of them’s the number plates, the other is the fact your roll bar isn’t connected to the car any more.” And lo it came to pass, once I didst regain consciousness, that this is but a trifle to fix, except that the bits do have to be dispatched from the great Renault cathedral and ‘tis unlikely that they’re gonna be here before Tuesday. Sore was mine disappointment until he did then go on to say that this will only cost me £90.00 in tithes to appease the Gods and I did dance like an monkey on amphetamines for I had been expecting to have to sacrifice an arm and indeed an leg to prove mine worthiness.

Only trouble is that this delay, though decreed by the MOT Gods, will anger the vengeful Gods of Road Tax. And they’re a right bunch of bastards when they set their mind to it. Verily, I may still have to make a sacrificial offering of mine limbs.

My Kingdom Of Slugs!

Never mind the Secret Ninja Worm Army, I currently have unholy legions of slugs at my command (‘Command’ in this instance meaning ‘all over my bloody garden’). The rotten little buggers are everywhere, on the lawn, on the path, one the roses, on the broccoli… pretty much everywhere they can get their nasty rubbery bodies to leave a snotty trail. You can’t hurl a sharpened rock around here without slicing an appendage off at least three of the little sods. And have you ever hacked a slug’s head off? It’s like squeezing a neoprene toothpaste tube full of slimy-black gunk. Squoooooosh, it all comes out.

And just what bloody good are slugs? Why? Even wasps have their purpose, before they become grumpy bastards and start stinging everyone for the fun of it, but SLUGS? All they’re good for is eating things, leaving silvery trails of mucus over everything, and getting stuck in Little Miss’s fur. Honestly, they’re like vast black bogies, welded into her tail, and if we don’t get rid of them for her, then she has to lick them out... Urgh. Can you imagine having to lick yourself free of slugs?


Much though I hate to say it, I’m going to have to get medieval on their asses. Maybe make some sort of crude trebuchet out of discarded lolly sticks and elastic bands and send them screaming away into the middle distance? It’s either that or the neoprene toothpaste thing.

Pudding bowl 101

She Who Must Be Locked In The Cupboard Under The Stairs With The Spiders has decreed that enough is enough: I must get a haircut. Which kinda puts the skids under the whole Ludvig Van Beethoven thing I’ve got going on the top of my head right now.

I don’t like haircuts. Haircuts are the Devil’s way of making us shorter. But She Who Thinks Layers Are Acceptable In Modern Society asserts that if I am to be pretty for my fans (a stretch, but you have to close your eyes and click your heels three times) then a haircut is necessary. And if I don’t she’s going to make my life a misery (and she’s from Fife, and that kind of thing is second nature to them – smelling of linoleum and living in caves and all that). Bad enough she made me shave today -- thus sacrificing my much envied proto-Grizzly-Adams status -- without having to go through the ordeal of a haircut as well. When no one’s looking, I’m going to go bald. That’ll teach her.

God wants me to buy a laptop

At least I think that’s what she’s telling me. The power went out today. Poop – just like that – taking down the central heating, the stereo and the computer. One second everything’s hunkey dorey and the next it’s like living in the Dark Ages. Thank The Dancing Fish I’ve been editing, which is a pen and paper pastime, rather than writing (which is 100% keyboard dependant). Otherwise I’d have to go round to the offices of Scottish Hydro Electric and go postal on their asses. I don’t think I could ever write something the same way twice, so when it’s gone: it’s gone. This is why I have the nervous 'Ctrl S' twitch. Like Tourette's only without all the swearing.

And so I sat there, looking at the blank monitor, thinking that I could really do with something that doesn’t curl up its toes at the first sign of electricity blackout. Something with a battery of its own (and yes, I know I could get a UPS, but they only give you enough power to switch everything off, so they’re hardly likely to let me keep on writing – happy thought that would make the Herald on Sunday and the Guardian), something flat and carryable with some sort of nifty thing in it that does stuff. And I have a cunning plan to help me pay for same – I’m going to knock over a post office. Or maybe do some nude modelling. But probably knock over a post office.

So if anyone asks, I was at your house all night, OK?

While the wife’s away, the cat will play...

Well, that’s another day of editing gone and I have a whole 22 pages to show for it. Wheeeee – do I rock or what… *ahem* Anyway, this evening the lovely She Who Must Go Out With Her Boozy Friends Now And Then is away into the bright lights of Aberdeen to have dinner with a couple of old colleagues. It must be said that Fiona is much better at this than I am. So far I haven’t even had a pint with my old muckas from the ISP I used to work for, or the dot.com company after that. I have had lunch with a couple of people from INoGITCH, but that’s about it. Like I said, Fiona is MUCH better at this.

The general rule is if She Who Likes To Think She Rules The Roost is off out for the evening, our bearded protagonist goes out, buys himself a steak and drinks as much red wine as he can before she gets back. It’s like one of those Iron Man challenges, only without all that posturing. And with more dancing. So tonight I’ve got a ribeye steak, a packet of value mushrooms, a bottle of Turning Leaf Zinfandel and I’m ready to rock, sweet mama (and other appropriate hippy-like sayings, oh yea, etc.). Trouble is, I don’t really like cooking for myself, so I’m still sitting here at 21:57 having done nothing more than nibble on some olives while I edit. Wow, I bet this is what it’s like to be Mick Jagger – as soon as his willowy young bride is off to her Girl Guides meeting he’s got a frying pan in one hand and a bottle of reasonably priced red wine in the other.

We’re like GODS you know.

Loquaciousness and olives

I’ve noticed a certain propensity of late for this blog to veer towards the loquacious. He said, proving his own point. I blame this on the EDIT. I’m spending all day trying to kill words from my 150,432 word epic, so the blog is suffering the inevitable backlash. Those words have to go somewhere... Words, words, words. Blah, blah and something about the kind of shoes cats would wear (I’m putting money on high heels). As such I’m going to leave you with a picture of a daisy. And then I’m going to edit it out, thus saving a thousand words from this post*.

* Ooh, deep!

My Cat won't follow orders and my nose hurts

I should probably point out that these things are not related, after all Madame La Peep has enough of a reputation as a killer beast of darkness as it is without adding a charge of un-elective rhinoplasty. My pain in the nose comes from catching a cold from my sister-in-law Kim, who swore blind that her constant snork and sniffing at the weekend was down to something ‘best not gone into’ that happens to pregnant ladies. Mmm, extra mucusy… However, as I’m probably I’m not pregnant, I think she may have been telling fibs. I’ve been sniffing and sneezing since Sunday, having to rely on toilet paper for nose blowing as we’re all out of tissues. And I gotta admit that this isn’t your nice, quilted, extra soft and strong variety, this is the bog-standard* cheap as chips variety we bought in a mistaken effort to save some money this year. It said ‘Extra Scratchy and Nasty’ on the packet and it wasn’t lying. As such my nose looks like the back end of a baboon after a spanking competition. Now it’s common practice, when we’re ill, to say that we’ve got So-And-So’s cold, which to me implies ownership. This cold I am suffering from is Kim’s. It is her property. It therefore follows that the products of the cold also belong to her – standard intellectual property rights, yes? As such I’m going to bundle up all the soggy scraps of bog-roll and make her a present of them. Kind of like a sticky royalty statement.

As to the other thing: the cat and I are locked in a battle of wills regarding Mr Froggie’s feet. All four of them. I am of the opinion that Mr Froggie the wastepaper basket is entitled to his wicker appendages. Grendel is of the opinion that they are a tasty, chewy treat. Only one of us can be right, and I’m pretty sure it’s me. When the cat starts paying the mortgage and cooking the meals she can dictate hand and foot consumption policy, until then it’s my prerogative. And it’s not as if MR Froggie is an isolated incident, the wicker laundry basket has also suffered to the extent that the lid won’t stay on. And given that she’s in the habit of leaping up on the thing to see if there’s anything edible going – resulting in her suddenly disappearing into the basket to visit with the dirty socks – she’s only got herself to blame. She Who Spoils The Cat Something Rotten believes there’s nothing wrong in letting Grendel consume and destroy every single item of wicker furniture in the house. I think this is exactly the kind of woolly liberal thinking that has gotten our fine country into the state it’s in today! Cats, running wild, chewing the feet off wicker animals left right and centre! Rise up my wicker brothers and fight for your freedom from feline oppression! “Hell no, don’t eat my toe!”

On the plus side, Fiona brought home some nice tissues with balsam in them. But the cat still won’t do what she’s told.

*tee-hee

Congratulations you rotten sods...

I’ve been off-line for a bit editing like a dervish, but it was with great pride – and something approaching heartburn – that I powered up the computer at the end of a hard day’s graft to see that Lynn has awarded the coveted BAM Book Awards to Stinky Jim for "Grendel slashed my wrists today..." and Dirty Darren for MacYoda Rotten wee buggers one and all ;}#

Special mention must go to Tambo, who’s promised me a quilt to hide under next time, and to Gabriele, who felt it important to not offend my delicate writer’s sensibilities by taking the Mick, like everyone else. Shrinking wallflower that I am.

No I have to think of something suitably cruel to do to Lynn in revenge…

Editing at the speed of... not very quickly

Well yesterday’s editing managed to conquer a whole thirty pages. Which is slightly (about twenty pages) less than I’d have liked. Not only that, I’ve worn my evil red pen down to a mere nub. Seriously: the little plastic nipple-thing on the end has gone from an outie to an innie. On the plus side, the metaphorical cutting floor is now strewn with the corpses of words, sentences and paragraphs. Hey, even whole pages have been consigned to the morgue, with a ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ tag tied to their toes. Which is a shame, because I REALLY liked some of those words and phrases. But, you gotta kill your darlings right? I have no idea what kind of word massacre I’m looking at right now, but I’m hoping it’s somewhere round about 10%.

Anyway, the current expenditure of red ink has the book now sitting at 50% editalicious pages. So (and you knew this was coming) if the finished book is the same height as Godzilla was in 1954 (before he started working out) then I’ve edited almost 140 tubes of Aquafresh Extreme Clean toothpaste (not the family jumbo sized ones though, just the normal 75 ml plastic tubes) laid end on end. Which is almost enough toothpaste to fill 25 pints. Not something you want to drink on an empty stomach, but it will give you minty fresh breath, on your way to the hospital.

The long and short of this is that the book is taking nearly as long to edit as it did to write. I’m going to pretend that this is a good thing.

Thank you and ‘love donuts’ for all*

(I did try to post this yesterday evening, but the people running the internet up here must have run out of coins for the meter)

The best thing about being part of this crazy thing we call the ‘Place Where We Blog’ is the view from the bathroom. The second best thing is getting the kind of reaction I got to yesterday’s post whinging on about getting another seriously crummy review. Thanks to everyone who chimed in to either rubbish the dude responsible, or pitch in with horror stories of their own (Lynn definitely wins that one by the way). Nice to know you’re out there. Next time we’re organising a lynch mob and a picnic. Mmm, egg sandwiches and swinging corpses**…

Right, that’s enough of this cheesy sentimentality, it’s back to torturing the written word for me!

* Just send a self addressed envelope with a cheque for $76.50 to cover postage and packaging!
** ‘Swinging’ being used here in its literal, rather than sexual context.