I suppose...

It feels weird posting about pretty much anything at the moment, but I suppose I should point your naughty clickity mice at the following: Mark Lawson's special Front Row programme from the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. I think this is the last day you can listen to it, and I've avoided putting up a link because although I haven't listened to it, I'm sure I come across like a complete arse-biscuit.

I usually do. I'm on the sofa with Simon Kernik, Chelsea Cain, and the inimitable Zoë Sharp. All of whom will sound as if they know what they're doing. While I will sound as if I've been sniffing glue whilst sexually molesting a 'Tickle-Me-Elmo'.

But I've been threatened with violence of a violent nature if I don't do the linking thing. If you're careful you can probably stick your fingers in your ears and go 'LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!' whenever I start to talk. Plus there are lots of other clever people on the show, who aren't... you know... thick. Like highlights from the Balloon Game and some interviews.

Just remember to ignore everything and anything I say.

Bad news

Sometimes the world just likes to remind you it can be a random, fucking horrible place.

Today was one of those days.

Or maybe not...

I've been getting emails from people saying that SAWBONES is more difficult to get hold of than a greasy weasel's wedding tackle when it's dark and you're only wearing a rubber French maid's outfit.

OK, so only one person claimed to be wearing a rubber French maid's outfit at the time (and didn't explain WHY they wanted to clutch the aforementioned weasel's unmentionables, or how it had got all greasy in the first place), but we're nothing if not inclusive here at Casa Del Halflead. I myself have a rubbery cover on my iPod, so who am I to cast aspersions on anyone wanting to get done up as a wipe-clean domestic?

Anyway, the gist is that Amazon is now saying it's out of stock and some bookshops are saying the publication date's been put back. I know that last one's not true, because I've seen it for sale in my local Waterstones. So it does exist - I've not just been making this whole thing up...

Honest.

I've emailed the publishers so hopefully I'll have some sort of clue what's going on soon. And if it's in any way interesting (or it gets me out of having to think up a proper post) I'll stick it up here.

In the meantime, how come I can't buy a decent smartphone, or take-home sushi? I went into town yesterday with the express purpose of coming back with both. And managed neither. No one wants to sell me a smartphone unless I want three million minutes of talk time and half a gazillion texts per month, and am prepared to pay the GDP of a small South American country for the privilege. Right now I go through about £20.00 of air time in two and a half months. WHY would I possibly suddenly need to send a gazillion text messages? And yes, fine, it does internet connection stuff, but you know what? I have that there interweb stuff at home. Where I spend about 90% of my time. If I want to check my email, I'll go through to the study, thank you very much. The only time I'd actually need access through any sort of phone-flavoured thing would be when I'm away. And as that only happens once or twice a year, I'm not prepared to mortgage my cat to pay for it. That would be profligate and naughty. And possibly a bit illegal -- I've got no idea what the banking code says about cat-related collateral, but I guess they wouldn't be too happy about the kind of deposit she'd make.

And the sushi situation wasn't much better. Chef Jang -- who has a little stall in the market by the green -- was on holiday, so we couldn't get any sushi to take home with us. Boo! Hiss! People should not be taking holidays when I have a yen for raw fish and sticky rice! That's not supposed to be the way the world works.

I bet Brad Pitt never has these problems.

Goddamnit!

Publicate me, baby...

Publicate me like I've never been publicated before! Today is something fo a first for me - never before have I had two books out in the same year. And it's kinda cool... OK, so it's not exactly a feeling I'm going to get used to, given how bloody slow I seem to be writing at the moment, but for this year and next I'm going to be a bifurcated write-ist. Not in any physical sense you understand, just a metaphorical one. After all, we've all seen things we'd rather not on the interweb, and I really don't want to go there.

Anyhow, yesterday was the day that SAWBONES officially hit the bookshelves, but I only got my copies this morning. And they're very cool - especially the cover. The only weird thing is the thickness. From the front they look like a regular book, but from the side they've been on a diet. Having been prone to producing doorstopperish 150,000 word monsters, the sight of a scant 18,300 is pretty damn freaky.

It'll be interesting to see the reaction to it start coming in (as of today it's sitting at #49 in Amazon's Mystery chart), but no one's posted a hatchet-job review yet, so that could well change. It's a bit like taking delivery of a brand new car, and waiting for some sock-sucking cock-wad to scratch the paintwork, or bash into it with their shopping trolley, or ding the wing as they open the door of the rusty piece of crap they're long past caring about. You know the sort of people I mean.

Maybe I should just log into Amazon and post a stinker myself? Get the waiting over and done with?

Or maybe I should just knuckle down and get some bloody work done on the second draft of Book Number The Fifth? So far I seem to have been doing everything possible to avoid it.

Finger out, Stuart. Finger out.

Anyway, while my finger is still well and truly entrenched, I shall point one of my other digits to the calender and say, "See that day there? ... No, not that one, I'm pointing at Saturday the 2nd of August. ... Yes, there, now you've got it. Well, I'm going to be at the Union Bridge branch of Waterstones signing copies of SAWBONES... What? ... Oh, yeah, I'll probably be signing other things too. I'm not proud. ... Boobies? Well I don't know about that, but I dare say I could try. ... No, my pen isn't normally that cold. ... Yeah, well, anyway, like I was saying: Watersones, Union Bridge, Aberdeen Saturday the 2nd at 12:30. Be there, or be somewhere else! Like in the pub."

Right, back to work!

Harrogate-arama

Hurrah: it's Harrogate time again! Those magical 4 days in summer that reek of beer-fuelled crime-writing-related shenanigans. What could be more fun? And this time I'm determined to see Agent Phil perform his now legendary monkey impersonation. Yes, he's small, but he's wiry. I can't believe I missed it last year - that's what I get for being sensible and going to bed before three in the morning.

Well, I am getting on a bit. Mind you, I've been successfully podging up for most of the year, putting on that extra few layers of fat to counteract all that alcohol... Or I could just, you know... go tee-total for the duration. Which sounds like a radical departure from festival etiquette, but both Allan 'mine's a fruit juice' Guthrie and Zoë 'Ooh, I'd kill for a cup of coffee' Sharp* manage it on a regular basis. And they don't come across as soberer-than-thou temperance types either. Damn their un-bloodshot eyes!

And it's not as if I'm going to have much opportunity to get absolutely weaseled, I've got the TOPCNoTY presentation to go to on the Thursday night, and as I'll be on the stage I probably shouldn't be roaring drunk. Then on the Friday night I'm getting thrown out of a balloon, so again sobriety will be the order of the day. So any heathenistic excess will have to take place on the Saturday night. My panel gets out at half four and I'm free as a free thing after that. Woo-hoo!

After all there's no point wasting all this weight I've put on.

And as an extra special treat to myself, whenever anyone asks me to be in their team for the Saturday night pub quiz I'm going to fake a dose of industrial-grade haemorrhoids and slope off to the bar instead. Well, maybe not haemorrhoids, that kind of thing is likely to put off any groupies. Maybe I'll fake something more sophisticated, like gastric flu? Or leprosy?

Or I could just admit that I'd rather creosote Gordon Brown's backside with my toothbrush - and then brush my teeth with it - than sit through another bloody pub quiz?** But personally I'm leaning towards the leprosy.

* And the scary thing is, she probably could - and all she'd need would be a teaspoon and a little sachet of castor sugar.
** I should point out that I know some perfectly nice people who actually enjoy a pub quiz. OK, so there's clearly something deeply wrong with them, psychologically speaking, but you know... each to their own.

Corned beef and Sci-Fi

As you know I've been stuck in the mud a little of late. Stuck like a sticky stick that someone's stuck steeply into sticky mud. This was mostly because I was suffering from clinical PERE* in addition to my rather severe bouts of CRSD**. Taken in isolation these conditions can be bad enough, but together they lead to much moping and sighing and being a general pain in the arse... By which I mean I was being a pain in the arse, not that my arse had a pain in it. Let's face it, I know we've known each other for a while now, but there are some things that are too personal for the interweb. But don't worry, my arse is fine. Fuzzy, but fine.

Anyway, now that I've got my first-draft edit notes back I can unstick myself. Lubricate myself free of the mire and forge onwards... blah, blah, blah. In an attempt to do this culinarily I decided to have another bash at something that's been a personal bugbear for years: CORNED BEEF. I don't like corned beef. I've never liked corned beef. It's all greasy and fatty and the fact it looks like someone's just haemorrhaged all over a piece of cork tiling doesn't help. But She Who Must Eat Some Bloody Horrible Things likes it, so I thought I'd get some for my lunch today. Not just any old corned yuck from a can either, this was top-notch gourmet corned beef from a butcher of some local renown.

And you know what?

...

It was bloody horrible.

Still, Agent Phil*** did have some good news for me - the cheque from HarperCollins has cleared. Not a Logan check, oh no. This is a cheque of an altogether different stripe. This is a cheque from their Voyager imprint. This is a Science Fiction cheque. HALFHEAD**** was the third book I'd ever written, and it was the one HC were thinking about when I delivered the first draft of COLD GRANITE all those years ago. So I think it's been gestating for about five or six years down there in Hammersmith, and finally it's ready to break it's waters... you know what, I'm not going to go too far down the birthing analogy, because it's going to get messy. And no one really wants to read about piles, do they?

Right, so, HALFHEAD (for which this very blog is named) is a near future thrillery-type thing with essence of police procedural thrown in. No spaceships. No aliens. Just good old-fashioned serial killers, conspiracies, and onomatopoeic weapons. And as an aside, I always think it's a bit odd that if you write a crime novel set in 1532 it's HISTORICAL CRIME FICTION, which is serious and read by serious folks what know lots of stuff. But if you write the same story set twenty years from now it's SCIENCE FICTION! With an exclamation mark. And everyone knows that SCIENCE FICTION! with an exclamation mark is only read by teenagers with more acne than skin and a serious fixation with Seven Of Nine's breasts. Allegedly. It'll be interesting to see if people who like the Logan books will be willing to take a punt on it, even if they risk being pointed at if they wander into that section of the bookshop and *gasp* buy one of the books! I hope they will... Otherwise HarperCollins might ask for their money back, and Grendel needs new shoes.

The current plan is that HALFHEAD will hit the shelves as a trade paperback sometime next Christmas-ish, and then I'll get to go to conventions where people dress up as robots and hit each other with sticks. Which will be cool. That's what's missing from Crime Writing Festivals, if you ask me: not enough people dressed up as robots.

The stuff with sticks I can take or leave.

* Pre-Edit-Related Ennui is a condition caused by delivering the first (or any other) draft of a book and then hanging about waiting for your editor(s)/agent/reader(s) to get back to you on whether or not it's a festering mound of politicians' poop.
** Cat-Related Sleep Disorder - most cat owners suffer from this from time to time, especially if their cat wants to go out at half four in the morning, but not until it's been fed cat sweeties and told how pretty it is. It can also be caused by the aforementioned cat deciding that she wants to have a quick kip on her owners lap when said owner is just about to get up from slobbing in front of the telly to go to bed. This is related to a subcondition - CRBD (Cat-Related Bladder Distress) caused when a cat does the same thing when the owner wants to go to the loo to get rid of a bottle and a half of red wine.
*** Who allegedly was well behaved at the HarperCollins Summer Party (that I didn't go to). I can only assume that Editor Sarah is right when she says that I lead him astray. And as I missed the party, I'll have to work twice as hard on the astray leading part of my job when Harrogate comes around.
**** I have no idea if we'll get to call it that, but I can't face another round of 'make up the title' right now. Just the thought brings me out in hives.

Me and the Archers, we're like that...

Well, today is the day of the big party - the one with the fluorescent green plastic invite - and am I down in London, preparing for a celeb-studded boozeathon? No, I'm at home looking out at a crappy Tuesday morning full of rain and cold. Yes, it's summer in Aberdeenshire...

I got another 'talking to' last week about my rendition of the glorious Aberdeen weather at a book group in town. They invited me along to talk about Book Number the Fourth and for once everyone had actually read the damn thing. Now, you might think that this was a given, yes? If you're a book group and you've got a book to read, and you've invited the poor sod who actually wrote the thing, you'd think people would get off their backsides and actually put in the effort to read it. Well, you'd be wrong. I think in the whole time I've been doing this, it was only the second time everyone in attendance had actually bothered.

And it really makes a huge difference: being able to talk about the whole thing without having to be all coy about plot twists.

That said, the evening didn't exactly get off to a flying start. When I turned up there were about 19 members of the Posh Club* present, and I squeezed in on the edge of the group. Everyone had a little badge with their name on and a round sticky label. Some of the stickers were red, some green, some yellow. But the name badge of the person sitting next to me was naked. No sticker. Just her name. I smiled and pointed at her absence of round sticky thing. "Why haven't you got a sticker?" I asked, "Have you been naughty?"
She looked at me. "I wanted one with an upside-down smile on it. They didn't have any."
"Oh..." And that was when I realised the significance of the stickers - it was a traffic light thing. "Didn't like the book then?"
"I hated it."
Which is always a good start to any event, don't you think?

Still, give her her due, she didn't seem to hold it against me for more than about twenty minutes. To be honest, I actually quite like it when you get a couple of people who really don't like the book in a book group. Yes, it'd be nice if everyone loved it to bits, but in a real world that's never going to happen. And if someone really hates the book they're not usually shy about letting the rest of the group know, whereas someone who just didn't care for it is much more likely to keep their mouths shut, not wanting to cause offence. I'd much rather have a good debate on what's going on than an hour of people blowing smoke up my delicately fuzzy behind.

Apart from anything else, when someone's complaining about things it makes the group members who loved the book wade in with why, and then you get both sides of the argument. It brings out a lot of things I wouldn't have thought about otherwise. Which makes for a much more interesting life.

Of course the problem with admitting this, is that people suddenly start thinking I want them to hate the book. Or at least pretend to. I don't. It's not the same if you don't really mean it: I don't want your pity hatred. Actually, what I want is a cup of tea. And maybe a nice biscuit.

Anyway, it was a good evening - they were a very nice bunch of ladies (with one poor bloke sandwiched in at the back**). They bought me a pint and offered me mini sausage rolls. What red-blooded man can resist when plied with beer and pastry-wrapped pig byproducts? And I even managed to escape before the pub quiz started (because I bloody loathe pub quizzes). Result!

Mind you, none of this explains the title to this meandering post. The Archers and I are now buddies of a bosom-like nature, nestling as we do in the warm cleavage of BBC Radio Four. I was asked to write a short story as part of the Afternoon Reading series to commemorate 100 years of people using the acronym S.O.S to indicate that things have gone seriously poop-shaped. THE FISHWIFE'S LAMENT is a wholesome tale of dementia, fish factories, and Strawberry Mivis, and it goes out on Thursday 3rd of July at 15:30. It's also going to be available on the website for about a week afterwards as well.

In case you're wondering, it's not me reading it. You can tell, because I'm a man and the person reading the story isn't. I suppose I could have shut my privates in the door to create the necessary change in pitch, but I didn't really fancy the resulting bruised genitals and cowboy walk it would cause.

There are limits how much I'll suffer for my art***, you know.

* If you follow the linky link, you'll see a photo of me and my pint (I'm the fat beardy bloke in the middle, and my pint's in the glassy thing in my hand), with Posh Club founder: Suzanne on the right of the pic, and the lady who wanted an upside down smiley sticker on the left.
** For some reason, there's usually a maximum of one man in any given book group. Maybe he's there because he's been dragged along by his wife/girlfriend, because she thinks they should do things together not involving socks or lubricant. Or maybe he's hoping that it won't just be the books' covers he's slipping between - if you want to meet ladies, a book group's a pretty good place to do it.
*** Using the word 'art' in it's loosest possible sense.