The old year is slowly dying

Ah yes, they always tell us that the New Year is a time for new beginnings, the birth of a whole new tomorrow. Shiny and bright and full of hope. But what happens to the old one, eh? It appears in greetings cards, done up as an old man with a long beard and an hourglass, counting off the last miserable, Alzheimer-ridden minutes of its life. An it's never a fat, happy-looking auld mannie with a beard, is it? No, it's always some wizened old prune who clearly has not been getting value for money out of his care home.

But no to worry, because he'll be dead soon enough.

And on that cheery thought, I suppose I could look back on the year that has been 2007 - make light of the highs, poke fun at the lows. Or just have a rant about how doing people favours always has a habit of coming round and biting one on the arse (incidentally, I discovered that the bigger the favour you do them, the more ungrateful the bastards tend to be). But 'tis the season to be jolly, and all that kind of monkey-flavoured stocking stuff, so to poop with it.

Anyway, it's December the 31st and I actually have a reason for celebrating: I finally finished the page proofs for FLESH HOUSE. Now I started this particular millstone on the 1st of January 2007, so finishing the page proofs today means that it's taken me an entire calender year to write the thing. A WHOLE YEAR. All 365 days of it. I now officially can't get any slower as a write-ist, or I'm going to have to forgo my yearly publication and hand my beard back to HarperCollins (it's in the contract - Uncle Rupert's minions negotiate like bastards!)

Thus we come instead to the upcoming lies for the fledgling year 2008. Or 'resolutions' as they're also known.

1. I'm going to go to the pub more often. Sitting in one's underwear, talking to the cat and telling lies about people you've made up can be fun, but isn't all that conducive to good mental health. Plus it tends to terrify the post man. Getting out of the house (preferably wearing trousers) from time to time is probably a good idea.
2. I'm going to go on holiday. And this year, 'holiday' is not going to mean turning up a half hour early to whatever event it is I'm meant to be doing so I can have a cup of tea. That is not a holiday, that is work. Holidays involve words like 'bikini' and 'yes, I will have another drink' and 'sunburn'.
3. I'm not going to take work with me when I go to festivals or on library tours. Leave the laptop at home, beardy boy and take some books with you to read instead. Other people's books, ones you've not been conned into blurbing. Which leads me to resolution number the fourth:
4. I'm going to read books for fun again. Yes, there will always be books I have to read - like the ones of people on the panels I've been conned into moderating (small hint: being on a panel is fun; moderating a panel is work). There are people out there whose writing I actually enjoy, and in 2008 I'm actually going to read some of them.
5. I'm going to start saying "no" to events. I've been a dreadful tart up till now, trying not to offend anyone by turning down their invitation to speak in some shed at the bottom of their garden, which is full of snottery school children for some inadequately-explained reason. in 2008 I'm going to have a set number of things I'll do (it'll be a secret number) and once I've done that number, I'm going to say "No, I can't come and speak to your collection of garden gnomes for six hours. I've got writing to do. And a cat. And She Who Must Be Supervised To Make Sure She Doesn't Blow Up The House Again to keep an eye on." This will also free up a lot more time to work on resolution number the first.
6. I'm going to start lying in interviews. In order to make myself seem a lot more windswept and interesting, I'm going to make shit up when asked about stuff. I'll invent great swathes of fictional backstory for myself, and do it all with a straight face. Bwahahahaha!
7. I'm going to enjoy the writing. No more slogging my nose to the grindstone every morning. Yes, it's a big enough nose and could probably stand a little sharpening, but that kind of thing leads to nosebleeds, and I've had enough of those to last me a lifetime, thank you very much. Plus it makes me a miserable grumpy bastard, and we don't want that, do we?

I think that'll do for starters.

Till then, have a happy New Year, even if you have to step over the wrinkled corpse of the old one to get at the fruit punch.

To the drinks cupboard!

Lumps

Have you ever noticed that 'Lumps' is not a nice word? It denotes unpleasant things. It's not good to have lumps in things: Custard (an irritation), Gravy (not the end of the world), Burps (not nice), Farts (even worse), Breasts and* / or Testicles (least pleasant of all).

'Chunks' are not so bad. Yes, it can mean the less than pleasant contents of a belch, but mostly it's available for non-pejorative use. Such as 'A chunky vegetable soup', or to describe the lovely melty bits of lamb you get in a pot of fresh Stovies. Mmm, stovies... I'd put a link up to a recipe for them, but I couldn't find one that was the same as the way I do it. That makes them WRONG!

I take my responsibilities as a fearless former of public opinion** seriously. If I'm going to lead you down the path of stovie-like goodness, it must be in the correct footwear. Or you'll all get blisters. Maybe I'll post a recipe in the new year. Because I'm that rock-n'-roll. Mayhap I'll even share with you the secrets to the staple of the North East Of Scotland's diet -- no, not 'deep-fried pies' you cheeky simians -- Mince and Tatties.

But I digress. Chunks in stovies: good. Lumps in stovies: bad. 'Lumps' suggests gristle, ovine chewing gum, nasty stuff.

And why am I telling you all this? Because I now have a cough with lumps.

Just thought I should share that with you.

* As an equal opportunities blog, we must think of those of you out there in Ladyboy-Land. Not in a sexual way, in a purely platonic kind of... look, just stop reading the bloody footnotes, OK?
** My fuzzy bum-cheeks.

Mr Grumpy-Trousers and the Gloom of Doom

And it was all going so well... OK, so not 'well' in the traditional sense, but it was actually going. Yes, that's right, Book Number The Fifth is about to lurch to a slightly embarrassed halt, like so much spaghetti hoops on burnt toast.

And the reason I have to abandon my tome of naughty wonder, only nine pages in? The page proofs for FLESH HOUSE are supposed to be arriving today, clattering through my letterbox and demanding to be read and covered in red pen before the 9th of January.

Maybe not 'covered'. I swore to myself that after the pain in the backside I was about the second draft, there was no way in Hell (or Kirkcaldy) I was going to obsess over every last word in the page proofs too. Not like last time. And the time before that. When I also swore I wouldn't be a picky bastard. Then was.

Apparently some writers just skim their page proofs, then fire them back with a big smiley face drawn on the coversheet. Jammy, sensible buggers that they are. No agonising for them, which frees up much more time for wine and cheesy nibbles.

Do you think it's a coincidence that 'nibbles' and 'nipples' are almost the same word?

Anyway, these page proof thingies are coming at a horrible time:

1. It's Christmas and I should be decking the halls with whatever's lying about at the time. Like Tipex and underpants.
2. I have a stinking cold and when not sticking up pants and correction-fluid, I should be curled up in bed with a team of nubile nurses catering to my every whim. Not that my whims are up to much at the moment, but you never know...
3. I've just spent nearly a whole week staying at a friend's flat in Aberdeen, allowing me to soak up the city's ambiance (along with a pint or two) and doing that there reasearchy stuff for Book Number The Fifth, and I don't want all that aforementioned ambiance to dribble away out of my ears before I've had a chance to use it.
4. It's pretty piss-poor to give up writing a book after only 9 pages. One of which only has a single word on it: 'burning'.
5. Have I mentioned nubile nurses?

But I have no one but myself to blame - I was far too picky during the edit, and now I have to reap the whirlwind. I am a windy reaper.

It's a romantic image, isn't it?

Because real life is so much freakier than fiction...

There's something about Christmas tunes croaking out of overworked shopping centre speakers that really inspires me. Mostly to source a high-velocity rifle and start picking off all the bastards that never say "thank you" when the door is held open for them. Or those hairy-knuckled sons-of-bitches who barge past on their way to whatever Neanderthal shoppingfest they're currently on. Or those bloody women with double buggies and a fag dangling out of the side of their mouths who're making it their life's work to break as many people's shins as possible. Or... pretty much everyone, why not just say it: I am mostly become an Christmas grouch.

But at least I'm only occasionally exposed to the horror of Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody*, the poor sods who work in the shops are subjected to it all day, every day. Maybe that's why they have that unmistakeable 'Four more days till my ArmaLite AR30-10 arrives (second class post from Lithuania), then all you bastards are dead!' look in their eyes. I was in buying something today and the poor sods behind the till had been inflicted not only with a CD of Cloying Christmas Musak, but also a wind-up music box thing that produced a tinkly and oh-so-irritating version of Good King Wenceslas every time a sadistic customer cranked the handle. Seriously - I've read the FBI's profiling handbooks, that's the quickest way you can turn a perfectly normal person into a serial killer: Slade in one ear, clinkity-clankity carols in the other. Never mind 'Going Postal' I think it's time people worried about 'Going Retail'.

And I have to wonder if that's what's behind one of the most audacious robberies I've ever heard of.

Now it has to be said that we crime writers (and write-ists) spend a lot of our time dreaming up horrible things people can do to one another. It's our job (or at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it). But even in my darkest, marmalade-induced dreams, I would never have come up with this.

Go ahead, click on the link and take a quick read, I'll wait.

...

...

Can you believe it? They stole his leg. Let me repeat that: THEY STOLE HIS LEG! from beneath the knee, so I suppose it could have been worse - they could have had the whole thing from the hip down, but still: THEY STOLE HIS LEG! Who the hell steals somebody's leg?

Can you imagine the pre-crime planning meeting, where they give each other nicknames so they can't be identified? ("Why do I have to be Mr Brown, that's like Mr Shit") And then the topic of the actual crime comes up:

"What we gonna blag? Bank? Post office? Drug shipment?"
"Nah, we're gonna blag some bloke's leg."
Pause.
"You what?"
"A bloke's leg."
"Bloke's leg?"
"Yeah. We're gonna blag a bloke's magic leg."
"Oh, it's a magic leg! Why didn't you say so, I was beginning to think you was mental, like. Magic leg. Wow ... Where we going to fence that?"

Now it's not like me to make fun of someone who's obviously been the victim of a horrific attack, but WTHAJ?** They got him drunk? How weaseled would you have be to not notice someone was hacking off your leg?

"Local people believed they could be healed of spiritual and physical problems if they touched his leg.

They also believed in Mr Kondaiah's predictions of the future"

Well, sorry to kick a man when he's down (and even if he was up he's clearly in no position to kick back - he'd fall over), but if he could really predict the future, don't you think he'd have stuck to diet Coke that night? Or maybe just not gone out drinking with them in the first place? Of course, maybe the spirits he channels are evil, devious bastards and their idea of fun was telling him, "If you go out with these men, you'll get legless..."

One is also struck by the bitter irony of the fact they took the leg with magical healing powers. Presumably, if they'd got the other one by mistake, he'd have been able to heal his missing limb with the other one.

The most chilling aspect is that last line though:

"But it is difficult to say that this was the only motive. It could also be a case of a revenge attack."

What would someone have to do to you so you'd steal half their leg to get your own back?

* Never mind Saddam Bloody Hussein, Slade should be invaded for producing what is unarguably a Weapon of Mass Irritation.
** What The Hairy-Arsed Jesus?

Nothing works

I'm beginning to think that our television is haunted. By bastards. Nasty ones* who wait till the last five minutes of whatever we're watching on Uncle Rupert's Emporium Of Televisual Tat to screw around with the picture and the sound, so we've got no idea what the hell was supposed to have happened. Now it's difficult enough to find anything worth watching on the telly these days, so it's extra vexing when you finally do turn up something that doesn't have the word 'celebrity' in it, and the bloody TV Gremlins eat the last chunk.

Incidentally (as I'm in the mood for a small rant-ette**) what the hell is wrong with production companies these days? We're constantly hearing how the licence fee is needed to produce quality programming and then they splatter the airwaves like a toilet bowl the morning after a hefty curry? Look at today's delightful offerings:

06:00 am Breakfast
Fair enough, it's the news and I'd have watched it, if my bloody Sky box hadn't been complaining about a complete lack of satellite coverage (apparently you can't see the North East of Scotland from space). But then it's:

09:15 am To Buy or Not to Buy

10:00 am Escape to the Country

11:00 am Homes Under the Hammer
So that's three programmes devoted to people buying houses. Two and a quarter HOURS of cheap nasty TV, that doesn't need sets, costumes, actors, or scripts. Tat. And speaking of tat, what's up next, Aunty Beeb?

11:30 am Car Booty
A programme about people selling any old crap they find around the house at a car boot sale. A CAR BOOT SALE!!! Don't believe me? To quote from the BBC website: "Maureen Kurn calls in the team to help her clear out some of her clutter and raise some money for a new bathroom suite." Stunning! And I thought all those house-buying programmes were cheap, they're bloody Life On Mars compared to following some twonk to a car boot sale. And you know what comes next?

12:15 pm Cash in the Attic
"Emma Chisholm wants to downsize and calls in the team to help her get rid of some of her clutter." Tell you what, Emma, why not get together with those wags on the programme before you and hump the lot down to your nearest CAR BOOT SALE! AAAAAAAAAARGH! So after two and a quarter hours of people buying houses we get an hour and half of people selling off the crap they've filled them with.

Christ's sake...

At least there's nothing in there where vacuous celebrities no one's ever heard of do something no one bloody cares about, but might get voted off in a telephone poll that will later turn out to be a big scam used to fleece the viewers. Mind you, if they're stupid enough to watch the bloody stuff in the first place, maybe it's nature's way of separating the wheat from the cow-pats?

And it's not just the BBC***, it's all over the place. The digital world is rife with this kind of mindless pap. Bring back the bloody test card, that's what I say. What's the point of having 3,000 channels of 24 hours, wall-to-wall programmes if you have to make cheap and nasty rubbish to fill them?****

Anyway, it's not just the telly that hates me - the DVD player has developed a shitty sense of humour too. It doesn't matter how often we clean the laser lens with one of those hairy CD things, the picture still skips and jumps all over the place. Freezes... then leaps forwards with a loud farty bellow.

And speaking of loud farty bellows, the Inerlopers go home tomorrow! I've got their little feline hats ready by the door, and their catty dufflebags are packed. Soon Casa MacBride will return to normal! NORMAL I TELLS YOU!

* As opposed to the 'nice' kind of bastards we're always hearing about.
** Actually that's a lie -- this is a full-blown rantathon.
*** And right now I can just about hear Agent Phil screaming in agony as he desperately tries to convince the BBC to option a TV series from my books. But I'm guessing the people who make 'Car Booty' aren't actually involved in the production of decent, God-fearing television, so screw them. In the ear. With a frozen fish.
**** What's even more disappointing is the fact that the BBC are capable of making some of the best programmes in the world. Their drama stuff can be spectacular. So why do they keep commissioning the visual equivalent of gonorrhoea?

Blast from the past

Well, last night I faced my demons. And by 'demons' I mean my secondary school English teacher. It wasn't exactly a smackdown style event with three falls, a submission or a knock-out deciding the outcome, but a battle of wills nonetheless. Well, maybe not a battle per say, but... look, who's telling this story, you or me?

Anyway, this clash of the titans came to pass in Westhill Library last night -- my last event of the year -- in front of a crowd jammed in elbow to elbow, desperate to hear my rambling non sequiturs and collection of rude jokes involving 'Hog Nuts'. And only two people fell asleep this time! Something of a personal best that.

I knew something was amiss pretty much straight off the bat - I did me first reading, rambled for a little bit, then said, "And if you've got any questions at any time, don't keep them to yourselves--" and BANG! there was a question from the second row. And not just any question either - it was a question that sounded like someone had actually thought about it. A perfectly formed question of depth and insight.

This is not the kind of questioning I like to encourage. It's the kind of question that rapidly exposes bearded write-ists as the idiots they are. And if that wasn't bad enough, it turned out that the person doing the evil questioning was Mrs Craig -- my English teacher at Westhill Academy, back when I were but a lad, and my beard little more than a fantasy for that dreadful cradle-snatcher Claudia Schiffer (honestly, the woman doesn't know the meaning of 'Restraining Order').

Now, I have to confess -- well, obviously I don't have to, this is my blog and I can lie with impunity: how are you ever going to find out? -- that although I didn't like English (because I was shite at it) I did like Mrs Craig. Which I think is pretty damn big of me, considering she made me read the part of Macbeth in class for weeks on end*. Puberty was tough enough without having to deal with iambic pentameter at the same sodding time. But she was a good teacher, very enthusiastic about the subject. And she'd sometimes bribe us with Polo Mints.

But it made no difference: I was still dreadful at English. I blame pens. Pens are the Devil's own pubic hairs, pulled straight then dipped in the dark, sticky ochre of his suppurating hemroids. I can't spell with a pen in my hand. Seriously. Keyboard? No problem. Pens? Neevr gonig to heppan.

Now I could point out that there has been a history of dyslexia in my family, but that would be obfuscation**. The reason is that I'm basically a bit thick. And my fingers are slow and lazy. A pen doesn't go anywhere near fast enough for me - by the time I'm halfway through writing one word I want to be writing the next one. So I do, letting the start of the next word jumble its way into the letters of the current one. A keyboard moves much faster. Yes there are typos, but I can get a little closer to keeping up with the voices in my head.

But I digress. After a spirited debate about who was responsible for the occasional outbreak of gruesomeness in the books (personally I deny all responsibility - whatever goes on in your head is your own business, just because I point you in the right direction doesn't mean you have to go rushing over there, buy the T-shirt and ask for a photograph of you and the corpse), with some gentle fun poking, the event came to an end.

And my English teacher disappeared. One minute she was there hovering in the background***, then a nice bloke and his wife hove into view to get a book signed, and the when I looked up Mrs Craig was gone.

Maybe I offended her with my ribald manly ways and talk of barbecued pig testicles?

Or maybe it was when I called her a saucy minx? I know that can get the ladies all excited. Curse me for being so damn sexy...

*ahem*

Oh shut up.

* She vehemently denies this. She says it must have been Hamlet, but I'm pretty certain it was Macbeth. After all, she'll have had THOUSANDS of nasty little children through her classrooms in her day, but for me it was one huge, traumatic Shakespeare-related incident. I still have nightmares.
** See - I can spell that with a keyboard.
** Not literally, that would be creepy.

Well... it's too late to worry about it now.

This is, of course, a big fat weasel-humping lie. It's never too late to worry about stuff. Even after it's happened you can go on worrying about it for as long as you like. Years even. OK, so it's unhealthy and you'll probably die alone and wrinkly from angst-ridden ennui and nose hemroids, but if it makes you happy, I'm not going to stand in your way*.

In this particular instance, the thing getting worried over is Book Number The Fourth. When I did finish writing this happy slice of family entertainment, I sent it off to Agent Phil, my Editoralistas, and a handful of trusted test readers. Well, when I say 'handful' I actually mean 'two', but it sounds more impressive if I kid on that I have an army of experts at my disposal, picking their way through the manuscript in much the same way an oxpicker bird rummages its way through a Cape buffalo, feasting on little parasitic goody-bags. Mmm, they go 'pop' when you chew them.

But handful of reader number one liked the book. This is what is known as a result. Handful of reader number two... well, I heard nothing back for ages, so fearing the worst I got in touch and asked outright: was it a sack of festering armpit warts?

It turns out that handful of reader number two couldn't finish the thing. It gave them the galloping nightmares. And this is a reader who doesn't scare easily. This is a reader who writes some pretty damn visceral stuff. But this is a reader who couldn't finish FLESH HOUSE.

One reaction would be to say, "Cool, this book is so frightening it gives people nightmares!" After all, what lies at the sticky nougaty centre of Book Number The Fourth is some pretty scary stuff. It's meant to be. I wrote it that way on purpose. But what if I've overstepped the mark here? What if I've drifted out of the cosy land of cuddly crime and wandered across the border into HORRORLAND -- where they kick you in the testicles before checking your passport?

Just between the two of us, I do actually fancy writing a proper horror story at some point, but this wasn't meant to be it. This was supposed to be a Serial Killer Thriller Chiller. What if I've gone too far?

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the nub of today's worrying.

* Though I may dance on your grave if I've got time. Honestly, my dance card's filling up pretty quickly these days with the names of people who's burial plot I've got to dance upon when they finally turn up their tootsies and stop being a skidmark on the Y-fronts of life.

Things what are on my whiteboard...

Before I wiped it clean, I thought it might be an idea to copy down all the stuff that's collected on my whiteboard over the last couple of months. I need the space to plot out Book Number The Fifth (which already has a title that Sarah -- Editing Ninja -- likes, and is trying to inveigle into the Marketing Department's subconscious. You never know, it might work...), and all those scribbles are taking up valuable real estate. But why throw out perfectly good words? Surely I should be embracing Greener Britain and recycling them as some sort of half-arsed blog post?

And here is said half-arsed blog post:

22lbs of Chocolate = fatal

Nigel Slater: real food

Mummys have Volvos and Daddy's have penguins, and what happens is that Daddy puts his penguin in Mummy's Volvo and they go for a drive. Then Daddy's penguin gets car sick and all these tadpoles are sicked up, and Mummy swaps them with God for a baby. And that's where brothers and sisters come from.

DI Steel's Bad Hair Day

FISH MURDER!

Heating Oil

Goatscape

William Davidson -- 1860s 1874(ish)

Deadtime Stories

The Shrubbery -- a gang who all dress up in George Bush masks to rob convenience stores.

'Perhaps we should pray for guidance?'
'Perhaps you should shut the fuck up?'

Ezekiel -- Amish porn star

'And that film, Seven.'
'It's pronounced Se7en, you idiot.'

Someone who works as God's debt collector, for those who promise to do X or Y if God saves them, but then back out on the deal.

He stands in the doorway, just like you're supposed to do when there's an earthquake. Watching them. Outside the sun shines like an x-ray, behind him it's dark as ancient blood, and he stands there in the space in-between. Neither one thing or the other.
A woman with a pushchair stops, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth -- ash falling on the head of a fat ugly toddler -- and tells him to shift his fucking arse.
He pauses for a moment.
She tells him it's not fucking funny. Shift it. Can't he see she's fucking busy? Fuck's sake.
The light or the darkness?
He smiles and takes one step back, out of her way, into the dark.
He tried. He really tried.
He feels the garrotte in his jacket pocket, then turns and follows her.
Light and darkness.
From now on everything that happens is her fault.

DATE FOR INTERVIEW

(and a picture of a naughty penguin with a pitchfork)

Rembrandt is my copilot

I did my second-last ever event two Fridays ago at Duff House (where Duffman lives! Cue thrusting of the groin and saying, 'Oh, yeah...') where I had probably the most expensive warm-up act ever.

It was the Rembrandt painting: Woman in bed. They'd put it in the corner of the room, kept safe from the strange people who came to see me, by a length of red velvet rope. As you can see, the woman in question has incredibly large hands! Huge, they are. Enough to batter the living hell out of any man daft enough to get in there with her.

Without wishing to seem sexist, I think this was one of those 'Oh dear Jesus... HOW MUCH DID I HAVE TO DRINK LAST NIGHT?' moments. Still, I'm sure she has a lovely personality, even if she does like to fiddle with her own left boob.

It were a good event, too. The pain and heartache of the (shudder as we mention the dreaded name) Burns (urgh!) supper fiasco seems to be nothing but a distant memory, only to be dragged up by evil crime writers in their polyester Oh-My-God-They-Killed-Kenny coats. Rotten sods.

Of course, the event was helped by the very, very strange people sat in the front row (all ladies) wearing their DIY Beard Kits. I nearly sprayed a mouthful of water all over our big-handed friend when I turned round and saw them. And that pretty much set the tone for the whole evening. Lots of giggling and questions. Which is nice.

I started reading the opening chapter of SAWBONES when I was down in Kilmarnock so I did that one again. Then about midway through I tossed in a reading from FLESH HOUSE. I hadn't meant to - it was an accident. Well, not really and accident, but it wasn't a pre-planned thing. I'd taken a chunk of pages up with me, just in case I got there early enough to find a quiet corner to do some editing in, and as it was there anyway...

It has singing and dancing in it. Even though I don't know the tune, and I'm not sure how to pronounce all the words. Not exactly a recipe for success, but then no one else knew how it went either, so I just made it up as I went along. Bwahahahaha!

I think I'll drag those pages along for one more outing when I do my last ever event of 2007 at Westhill Library, next week.

And after that I'm going to sleep for a week.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go clean off the whiteboard and get cracking with Book Number The Fifth. Mmmm, magic markers smell nice...