I received an email from Amazon this morning: during a quality check they’ve spotted a major, show-stopping problem with the Kindle edition of Coffin Dodgers, and I must fix it as soon as possible.
The problem?
A single typo.
Author: Carrie
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“Self-doubt convinces us that our own failure is inevitable, an unavoidable recourse based on our own screaming lack of talent.”
Chuck Wendig wrote this post for writers, but I think it’s relevant to any kind of creative activity:
Suddenly Old Mister Doubt is jabbering in your ear.
You’re not good enough.
You’ll never make it, you know.
Everyone’s disappointed in you.
Where are your pants? Normal people wear pants.
…self-doubt is the enemy of the writer. It is one of many: laziness, fear, ego, porn, Doritos. But it is most certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, in the writer’s rogue gallery of nemeses.
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“Not just the funniest group in the world, but something serious and valuable, too”
A lovely piece by Taylor Parkes on the genius of Half Man Half Biscuit:
Even now, there’s still this perception of Half Man Half Biscuit as a comedy band: a post-punk Grumbleweeds, the indie Stilgoe. No group in history can have been so woefully misunderstood – Half Man Half Biscuit are, in fact, an antidote to wackiness, a bulwark against zaniness. Fiercely principled, highly literate, sometimes very close to angry, these are songs of open defiance; their real targets, more often than not, are stupidity as a leisure option, the hollowing-out of British culture, the slow death of the post-war settlement.
This bit cracked me up:
‘Excavating Rita’ is – despite its wince-inducing title – a beautifully complex song about a grief-crazed Betterware salesman whose devotion extends to necrophilia. Poignant, tragic, grimly explicit, sympathetic and horribly funny, it’s hard to imagine anyone else attempting a song like this
[Via TonyK]
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Sex, violence and swearing in crime fiction
I was at a book reading by Christopher Brookmyre and Mark Billingham a few weeks ago, and Billingham described some of the angry letters he gets from readers outraged that he uses the odd swear word – but not, it seems, outraged by some of the absolutely appalling things his villains do. It seems to be quite common in crime fiction: just last night, Allan Guthrie got a one-star review from somebody so outraged by the (minor) swearing in one of his books that they couldn’t continue.
I’ve said elsewhere that writers should consider whether swearing is necessary if it isn’t relevant or appropriate – if Mr Guthrie wrote gentle Victorian-era whodunnits and used language such as “it was Professor fucking Plum, with a fucking lead pipe, in the fucking study, the fucking sneaky fucking fucker” then that might be considered somewhat gratuitous – but he writes contemporary crime fiction and police procedurals.
You may not be aware of this, but policemen and women sometimes swear. Criminals too.
Ray Banks, aka The Saturday Boy, has an opinion about all of this.
Swearing is a vital part of human life, regardless of culture, and to indulge in vicarious murder as entertainment whilst eschewing the saltier language is nothing short of hypocrisy.
I read a lot of crime fiction, and I’ve lost track of the various horrible things crime writers describe – and by crime writers I mean mainstream, your-mum-reads-them crime writers, many of whom revel in detailed descriptions of the most terrible acts. If you can stomach that but not the word “fuck” then there’s something seriously fucking wrong with you.
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No more adventures in hi-fi
I love REM, and while I’m not surprised they’ve split up – that’s been on the cards for a decade, maybe more – it’s still a wee bit sad. Unless there’s a reunion tour somewhere down the line I won’t get to see them live again, and there won’t be any more records as weird and wonderful as New Adventures In Hi-Fi. It, like most REM albums, was hit and miss, but when REM got it right they were astonishing.
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The A to Z of ebook publishing
I thought it might be an idea to do a huge ebook-advice post based on the various discussions we’ve had here and on other sites, so that’s what I’ve done: an enormous A to Z of ebook publishing aimed at would-be ebook publishers. If there’s anything I’ve missed or got hopelessly wrong, I’m sure you’ll let me know in the comments.
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Lulu wants to publish your ebook
No, not Lulu the loud Lennoxtown song-shouter – I mean Lulu.com the print-on-demand publisher. The service’s new ebook wing offers “a best-in-class Word to ePub converter”, a 90/10 royalty split and distribution to other platforms such as the iPad and the Nook.
It sounds very like Smashwords: it’ll provide you with an ISBN, act as a distributor and so on, and if you’re publishing to any site that uses ePub the free converter and eBook creator’s guide are worth having.
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Two years without a cigarette
I stopped smoking two years ago today. I don’t miss the cigarettes, but I do miss being thin.
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A tentative review of the Sony Cyber-Shot HX9V compact digital camera
I’ve got two cameras, a wee Sony Cyber-Shot and a big Sony DSLR. The former’s a great wee camera but a bit rubbish in low light, especially as I have RSI-induced shaky hands, while the latter’s far too big and bulky for casual use. Could a single camera ever offer the best of both worlds?
It turns out that the answer is yes, sort of.
The Sony Cyber-Shot HX9V comes with the usual blah about sensors and intelligent this and that, but it boils down to this: it’s good in low light and it’s good if you have shaky hands.
Here’s a marketing pic:
I’ve only been playing with it for a couple of days, but so far I’ve discovered that it’s really good in Intelligent Auto mode and its image stabilisation is really, really good – it’s got an enormous zoom lens but the stabiliser does a superb job of keeping things steady. If it can do that with my shaky hands, it can cope with anything. Its HD video recording is pretty impressive, easily as good as my dedicated HD camcorder, and like other Sonys it has a very clever panorama mode that works flawlessly.
The bad? It’s pricey – about £299, although Currys is currently doing £30 off compact cameras and Sony’s offering £40 cashback on this one until the end of October – and some features can be slow, with a noticeable delay between pressing buttons and anything happening. It has some gimmicky stuff (3D, despite only having one lens; really annoying beeps that, thankfully, you can turn off), the pop-up flash is in a really weird place and it’s big and heavy in compact camera terms. But so far, so good.
I’ll do some proper shooting with it when I get the chance and report back.иконииконопис
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A review’s a review for a’ that
New Scots man-blog A Man’s A Man has written a very nice – and very nuts – thing about Coffin Dodgers. I get the impression Owen the editor liked it.