The Luke Bitmead Bursary

Image courtesy of JKim1

I'd just like to slip in a mention for the annual Luke Bitmead Bursary for New Writers 2012, as they're currently open to submissions until 31st August.

This one's a little close to my heart as I was amongst the shortlist in 2009 for my first novel, Lucid. It really was a huge honour to be selected amongst the top ten. It provided a massive confidence boost which spurred me on to write my second, Angorichina, which was to become my debut.

The Bursary is born of real tragedy: a young author who succumbed to depression early in his career. His family have kept his aspirations alive by encouraging new talent and providing a platform for its recognition.

If you're an aspiring writer over the age of sixteen, writing in the genre of adult fiction, then this may well be for you. It really is a terrific boost for fledgling writers.

Good luck!

Fighting Fantasy

Well, well, well. 

Resurrection of a past era. 

When I was about ten or eleven, I was in WHSmith - book section (naturally) - choosing something to read on the train. I had recently gone to live with my mum, so Dad would come and collect me every fortnight for the train ride to London. 

The book that I chose was Vault of the Vampire.

My decision was based purely on cover art, I didn't bother to look inside. I was going through a vampire phase at the time. Anything with fangs had to be good.

I remember feeling bitterly disappointed when the joy of seeing how short the chapters were dissolved into the realisation that this wasn't actually a storybook at all. 

About to bin it, the sheer length of the journey forced me to take another look - thus spawning an adolescent love affair with Fighting Fantasy.

If you haven't seen them before, they're sort of a cross between Dungeons & Dragons and Point Horror. Each chapter is about a paragraph long. At the end, you have to make a decision - do you go left or right at the end of the hallway? Do you talk to the slightly dodgy guy in the corner sucking his pipe? Do you open the trapdoor?

Occasionally you get into fights. Dice are required for this, and there's a set of rules and a game sheet at the beginning. If you lose, you have to start again (or cheat). Often the storylines throughout the book are fairly complex and several choices lead to dead ends. 

It can get ridiculously addictive. But then, I was brought up on text games. Before all these swanky graphics and VGA monitors, computer games were all like this. Glorified Fighting Fantasy novels. To me, these were just the portable version (long before laptops).

Sometimes I'd forget to bring a book and Dad and I would sit on the train making up stories in the same format. We'd take it in turns to come up with a paragraph and a decision to make. Passed many hours that way. In my late teens I eventually started coding MUDs (Multi User Dimensions) - which were (are?) like huge, international FF books with lots of players.

FF cover all the major bases in storytelling: there's always a beginning, middle and end to your adventure, there's a quest - something you have to achieve - there's adversity and conflict, there's dialogue and character interaction... you're soaking all of this stuff up as you're playing.

Anyway, the other day I was sitting watching my nephew trashing hell out of Transformers on his PlayStation. I felt a swell of pride that he'd opted for Decepticons (the baddies). 

Mum wandered in and I said something along the lines of 'he's really into that, isn't he?' To which she replied 'yes, but he loves his books too.'

It's true, my nephew is an avid reader. He's currently into Captain Underpants and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Aha! thinks I. A kid who likes reading and gaming.

So, I've just spent the day rooting around in my old room, scouring the bookshelves of my (mostly mispent) youth. I've managed to find 17 volumes in total.

Plus my pride and joy:

Those last two are sort of like the fanatic's guide to all the animals and cities mentioned in the books. I remember sitting in Mum's office at probation service one Baker day, drawing ground plans for a seedy tavern in Port Blacksand. You can see they've been studied closely.

So, things come full-circle. My nephew is nine now. I've stacked them all up by his bed for the next time he visits. It just remains to be seen whether he'll take to them. I hope so. It would be nice to think they've gone to a good home.

[August 2014: the BBC have devoted an article to Fighting Fantasy.]

The Generation Game

The Generation Game by Sophie Duffy is one of the best books I have ever read.

Finished it last night, been up until 2/3am for the past few nights. Couldn't put it down. I loved it. Everything about it. Including the cover.

I cried solidly from page 106 to the end of the chapter, then from about 160 to the end of the book.

It takes skill to invent a concept like Lucas, stick it in like a knife, and then keep on twisting it all the way to the end. Exquisitely painful. You sort of enjoy the torture, because it drives home your humanity.

I know, I'm gushing. I really am. It came in the Complete Luke Bitmead collection I bought a while back. Won the 2010 bursary as well as the Yeovil Literary Prize. It's extremely easy to see why.

Blurb:

Philippa Smith is in her forties and has a beautiful newborn baby girl. She also has no husband, and nowhere to turn. So she turns to the only place she knows: the beginning.

Retracing her life, she confronts the daily obstacles that shaped her very existence. From the tragic events of her childhood abandonment, to the astonishing accomplishments of those close to her, Philippa learns of the sacrifices others chose to make, and the outcome of buried secrets.

Philippa discovers a celebration of life, love, and the Golden era of television. A reflection of everyday people, in not so everyday situations.

I may only have been born halfway through this book, but there was so much I recognised that made me smile. I, too, was of a generation with Smash Hits, Hubba Bubba, the cuddly toy, and psychedelic orange squash. My smile was even wider when she mentioned liquorish rizlas.

It spoke of, and therefore evoked, so many memories of my own childhood. An era. Events: where I was when I heard Diana was dead; strangers sobbing on my shoulder; a sea of flowers. It summoned first loves, losses, realisations - an incredible achievement to chronicle a life from beginning to middle with such astounding emotive accuracy.

As another review mentions:

The story speeds up quite a bit when Philippa is an adult. I suppose that reflects our way of remembering our lives – early childhood experiences can seem so visceral, whereas later events often merge together.

Absolutely. This didn't escape me either, and added to the reality of the piece. The whole construct was technically superb, from the chapter titles to the interim breaks, the hooks, teasers, retrospective aha!s and the progression of time. I aspire to write this well.

The only problem now is what to follow that with?

Biography Bashing

Fact: I spend far too much time on social media.

For a couple of days I've been trying to find statistics on what percentage of the market is celeb-biographies and what is non-celeb. I was curious to find out whether you have to be a celebrity to write a successful biography, as it's a common saying in writing circles that your biography won't sell if you're not a household name. 

 

You would have thought this would be an easy Ask Jeeves issue by now. But, after consulting Twitter, Wiki and  a 9k-strong writing forum, I was none the wiser.

So, I rolled up my sleeves and tried hard to remember the one post-graduate quantitative research lecture I managed to stay awake through.

I thought that if I blogged my progress it would: 

1. Push me to continue making progress and 
2. Add something to the online knowledge base

First problem - where to source data? Especially when I'm not about to fork out to access any large databases. They talk in silly money, and my bank account is only little.

Word association sometimes helps:

Think books -

- think Amazon.

So, off I trundled and, sure enough, they categorise their biography section:

(click to enlarge)

Each time you click on a category, it tells you how many books are listed with that label.

A quick break down of current stock works out like this:

(click to enlarge)

There's nothing in row 1 - that's just me being messy. The number at the very bottom right is the total number of labels: 845,062.

But it's really important to remember that this is the number of labels, not books - as a book might have more than one label. That's why 'general' has so many more than any other label, because books categorised as 'historical' or 'religious' biographies are often also given a 'general' rating. Books on the Holocaust would also come under War & Espionage.

This makes things a bit tricky, so I ignored the 'general' label and this brought the total labels down to: 471,204.

I then decided to go for a trusty visual aid. To try and tidy things up a bit, I cut out everything with a 0% share of the market: any label that's percent of the market is below 0.45% - thus rounded down to 0% rather than up to 1%.

If you're not so familiar with 'rounding', 5 > (five or more '>') is usually rounded up, whereas 4 < (four or less '<') is rounded down. So, with 0.45 you round five up, which rounds 4 up to 5, which rounds 5 up to 1.0 which is 1%. Whereas with 0.44 you round 4 down to 0, which also rounds the next 4 down to 0, which leaves you with 0.0, which is 0%

See how the wonders of maths can cause entire stock piles to magically disappear?

Yes, yes, *yawn*, I know. So, anyway, this means we sadly have to wave goodbye to 'reference' biographies (compilations and photo collections, that sort of thing), 'tragic life stories' (thank heavens for that!) and 'artists, architects and photographers'. British Royalty barely scrapes through with 0.47% of the bookshelf - I'm being generous.

(click to enlarge)

I'm working from .co.uk as I'm British, and I'm lazy. If anyone would like to throw me a US or EU comparison, that'd be great.

So, as of 30th June 2012, the biggest biography label by far in the UK is Historical (22%), followed a long way behind by Politics (11%) with Religion and Social & Health Issues battling it out for 3rd place (9%).

A few things surprised me. I expected Holocaust (1%) to rank a little higher, with all the interest in war memorabilia. Also with History having such a large share of the market. I also thought Sport (3%) would do better, given the number of sports fanatics and big names - but then I had to ask myself whether sports fans are also big readers...?

Multi-label data isn't the best to use, it's far from clean, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Still, that's the easy part. The hard part, and the question that started all this, is getting a sense of the celeb-biog proportion of the market verses the non-celeb - Joe on the Street - section. Are people mostly interested in reading about big names, or is there a market for everyday people with interesting life stories?

A quick glance at the biography bestseller list is quite encouraging (relatively speaking):

1. Slave Girl - Sarah Forsyth
2. Secret Diary of a Sex Addict - Amber Stephens
3. Against All Odds - Paul Connolly
4. I Feel Bad About My Neck - Nora Ephron
5. Open - Aundre Agassi
6. Confessions of a GP - Benjamin Daniels
7. How to be a Woman - Caitlin Moran
8. Life...on a High - Nick Spalding
9. Diary of a Menopausal Woman - Cheryl Reid, Toby Williams, Lizzi Eastburn
10. The Sugar Girls - Duncan Barrett & Nuala Calvi

If you class a 'celeb-biog' as one written either by or about a celebrity, then it's not looking as bad as I thought it would. Roughly a 70/30 split in favour of the average Joe.

But it is difficult. Where do you draw the line on celebrity? How famous do you have to be? Well, for my calculations 'pretty famous'. Preferably a household name, living or dead. You certainly need a Wiki entry. But then, what if a celeb writes a book about the history of Norwich? Is it the content or the author that's important for celeb-rating? I say it's still a celeb-biog because sales will increase off the back of the name of the author.

Not easy, huh? The rules need to be clear.

Next question, though - does this statistic hold true through the categories?

Method: choose three random pages from the 'most popular' category in each listing, count the number of celeb/non-celeb titles. Total sample number each category: 36 (12 per page).

Good: Random sample groups

Bad: Not proportionately representative of size of category (why? I just haven't got the time)

I decided to knock out the Royalty section as it was a bit unfairly skewed (100% celebrity) for such a small slice of the market. Thought it would be more interesting to concentrate on the slightly ambiguous labels.  As I suspected, there were quite a few repeat titles between categories.

At first glance, the gap wasn't as big as I'd expected it to be. Though it was a lot smaller than the bestsellers list led us to believe: 45% celeb, 55% non-celeb.

I had this image of biographies, and the biographical market, as being swamped by celebrity culture with no room for anything that didn't take place in Hollywood or involve a dead bard. I wasn't expecting to see a higher average per category for non-celeb biogs.

Little bit of visual magic might assist:

(click to enlarge)

And on that helpful histogram, I can conclude that it's fairly evenly matched, except in the obvious categories you'd expect celebs to dominate: Theatre & Performance Arts and Film, Television & Music. Whereas non-celebs appear to be cornering the expert markets such as Medical, Legal & Social Sciences and the more ethereal realms of Religion.

It's only a small data set, and you'd need to clarify the definition of celebrity a bit - but it's an interesting indication.

Dexter

 

Opened The Guide the other day and noticed an announcement for the sixth series of Dexter!

In honour, I'm resurrecting these two posts from a previously defunct blog:

It's hard to believe how popular Dexter Morgan has become. He first appeared in the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter in 2004, with Jeff Lindsay picking up the Dilys Award for mystery fiction a year later. The very next year, Dexter spawned his own hit TV series which is now in its fifth run.

I first saw the show in Sierra Leone where I was spending Christmas 2008. I hadn't seen TV in a long time, so I was fixated by all the moving pictures. Dexter was instantly engaging. It played on all of those baser instincts you have on days when you just really want to kill someone. But you don't. Because that would be very wrong. Plus you don't really mean it, you just think you do at the time.

But Dexter does. He really does.

For anyone who's been living in a box (or Central Africa) for the past few years, Dexter is a serial killer who only kills serial killers.

What's interesting is that, like Howl's Moving Castle, there's both the books, and the moving picture version. They're both very good, but very different.

The difference isn't in theme or in style, but in characters mostly. The ones who live and the ones who die. But I won't go into that because I don't want to spoil anything. One thing I will say, having read up to book four and watched season four, is that Dexter is a lot closer to his step children Cody and Astor in the books, for deliciously dark reasons.

As a writer, I have to say I'm in awe of Jeff Lindsay on this one. The boy done good. Not only did he come up with an extremely original idea, but he well and truly made it fly. Accepting the opinion that there is 'no such thing as an original idea' (and therefore someone is bound to crawl out of the woodwork at some point and try to sue him), this was a lightning bolt of sheer innovation.

You know it's good because, for the first half of the first book, the TV series hardly deviates. Even the lines are straight from the page. Which means it's very good.

Entertaining, atmospheric, appealing and just a little bit challenging on occasions, Dexter is one of those stories that you welcome into the world.

As most people are more familiar with the TV show, and as I'm all about books, I thought I'd copy the blurbs to tempt you to rush out to your local independent Watersone's and get reading:

Darkly Dreaming Dexter: A serial killer with a heart...be grateful it's not yours. Dexter Morgan appears to be the perfect gentleman. He leads a normal, quiet life working as a forensic officer for the Miami Police. He has a nice, shy girlfriend and is liked by her young children. But Dexter has a secret hobby. He's an accomplished serial killer.

So far he's killed dozens of people and has never been caught, because he knows exactly how to dispose of the evidence. And there are those who would rather he wasn't caught at all, because Dexter is a serial killer with a difference. He only kills the city's bad guys.

Then Dexter's well-organised life is thrown into chaos. Another serial killer is invading his territory - and he wants Dexter to come out and play...

Dearly Devoted Dexter: Serial killer or family man...or both? A charming monster. A macabre hero. The serial killer who only kills bad people is back on the prowl - at least he would if he could shake off his permanent shadow. Ever since their paths first crossed, the handsome, charming homicidal maniac Dexter Morgan has been pursued by Sergent Doakes. Dexter may well be a Miami PD blood-spatter analyst, but Doakes has a pretty good idea of how Dex likes to spend his free time, and he's determined to catch him in the act.

Then a body turns up, horribly mutilated and barely breathing. To trap the torturer, Doakes and Dexter will have to work together - and one of them will have to be the bait...

Dexter in the Dark: No place for the wicked. Dexter Morgan, Miami PD blood-spatter analyst, is accustomed to seeing evil deeds - he occasionally enjoys committing them himself. Guided by his Dark Passenger - the voice that helps stalk his prey - he lives his outwardly normal life according to one simple rule: he kills only very bad people.

But everything changes when Dexter attends a gruesome double homicide. Dex realises he's dealing with someone a lot more sinister than he is, and it sends the Dark Passenger into hiding. And if the Dark Passenger is scared, it has to be serious...

Dexter by Design: Bad blood runs deep. Married life seems to agree with Dexter Morgan: he's devoted to his bride, his stomach is full and his homicidal hobbies seem nicely under control. But old habits die hard and Dexter's work as a blood-spatter analyst never fails to offer new temptations that appeal to his offbeat sense of justice...

Luckily for Dex, there's someone out there with particularly twisted tastes. Dexter may have never been a big fan of art - but the discovery of an artfully displayed corpse naturally piques his curiosity. Dexter is back in business.

Just be aware that the plot and course of the two mediums take rather different paths. Attack them with the intention of loving both in their separate, yet wonderful, ways. The third Dexter novel goes deeper into what the Dark Passenger is, and where it may have originated from.

I actually came in halfway through the second series and kept watching largely because it involved Jaime Murray, who played the slightly deranged Lila Tournay, but whom British viewers might be more familiar with from Hustle.

 Jaime Murray

Off-stage appeared to unravel several dramas of its own, including the news that lead actor Michael C. Hall was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, and eloped with co-star Jennifer Carpenter, who plays Deborah Morgan, Dexter's sister.

As a fan of the show, the books, and the entire concept, let's hope for many more stories of heartfelt butchery in the name of entertainment.

Jennifer Carpenter & Michael C. Hall 

**** 

The other week, the Guardian's Guide included some interesting facts, which I thought I'd pass on.

Name: Dexter Morgan

Age: Five Seasons

Famous For: Serial Killing, Blood, Pork Sandwiches

Opening lines of the first episode: Tonight's the night. It's going to happen again and again.

Approximate amount of fake blood used in season five: 25 gallons.

Michael C Hall's salary per episode: $350,000

Salary of a blood splatter analyst: $65,000

IMDB's top rated episodes:

1. The Getaway
2. Hello Dexter
3. Born Free

Accolades:

#1 Most illegally downloaded TV show of 2010

#30 Ranking in Empire's list of greatest TV shows of all time

#7 Best TV title sequence

4 Emmys

Number of times Dexter has dispatched a victim using a:

16 - Knife

4 - Drill

4 - Cleaver

2 - Hammer

2 - Hands

2 - Rope

1 - Poison

1 - Chainsaw

1 - Explosives

Most likely to hear from his Dark Passenger whilst:

10% - Eating

10% - Driving

20% - Walking

60% - Driving & Eating at the same time

Body Count:

Season 1: 11 kills avenging 28 deaths.

Season 2: 10 kills avenging 19 deaths.

Season 3: 10 kills avenging 12 deaths.

Season 4: 10 kills avenging 10 deaths.

[Data: Johnny Dee. Sources: TV Guide, IMDB, MSNBC, EmpireOnline, TorrentFreak, AP, DexterWiki, FXUK, CelebrityNetWorth]

Tim Minchin

Had a fantastic day today.

Headed to Malvern Theatre to see one of my all-time favourite performers, Tim Minchin.

He was playing there as part of the piano festival, and there was the sexiest red piano in the foyer, a Yamaha Elton John special edition. It even played itself! Oh, dear gods, it was beautiful.

The gig itself was unbelievable. The Cont song was pure genius, complimented by all the greats: Prejudice, Dark Side and the Boob Song (Confessions).

Full standing ovation - the whole building was rocking with stamping feet and clapping. Wonderfully deserved. Ended on a very calm encore called Beauty. 

It took a while to realise it wasn't a punchline song. Sort of hypnotic. Perfect song to stem a repeat encore, because it left everyone thoughtful. Sort of sad, a little. "As you fell for her, she stole from you." Hmm. 

Totally excellent day.

Emergency Sex

I'm going to recommend this read for a couple of reasons. All the international grief going on at the moment regarding Syria, Uganda, Sudan, Nigeria... fairly unpleasant stuff. The second is that April 7th marks the 18th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. Having lived in Rwanda, and spent a day volunteering at Gisozi Memorial Centre during the memorial commemorations, it's something that I always stop to remember.

The above book is an extremely special one. 

It's the early 1990s and three young people are looking to change their lives, and perhaps also the world. Attracted to the ambitious global peacekeeping work of the UN, Andrew, Ken and Heidi's paths cross in Cambodia, from where their fates are to become inextricably bound. Over the coming years, their stories interweave through countries such as Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia and Haiti - war-torn, lawless places where the intervention of the UN is needed like nowhere else. Driven by idealism, the three struggle to do the best they can, caught up in an increasingly tangled web of bureaucracy and ineffectual leadership. As disillusionment sets in, they attempt to keep hold of their humanity through black humour, revelry and 'emergency sex'.

Brutal and moving in equal measure, Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures) explores pressing global issues while never losing a sense of the personal. Deeply critical of the West's indifference to developing countries and the UN's repeated failure to intervene decisively, the book provoked massive controversy on its initial publication. Kofi Annan called for the book to be banned, and debate was sparked about the future direction of the UN. Brilliantly written and mordantly funny, it is a book that continues to make waves.

During my time in Rwanda, one wall of the Programme Office was floor-to-ceiling books. Full of all the literature that people had brought with them on the plane, or had been sent in aid parcels from home. Occasionally, one book was so extraordinary that it ended up 'doing the rounds', which involved people putting their names on a list to read it. 

We only had one copy of this book, and it must have been read by over twenty people in a couple of months.

Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone tracks the stories of three civilians who joined the UN at one of the busiest stages in its history. From Bosnia to Haiti and Rwanda, it tells of life inside the UN from three very human perspectives.

It's hard hitting, fascinating, deeply challenging and interspersed with moments of extreme humour. 

It doesn't matter whether you're interested in world politics or not. It's utterly gripping. Those who have worked overseas will find themselves nodding and smiling along at times, whilst those who haven't will feel as though they have.

I remember opening the chapter on Kibuye whilst sitting on a bus leaving the town. It talked of the massacre there during the genocide, where I had just spent a wonderfully relaxing weekend swimming in Lake Kivu and drinking gin. The two worlds were hardly comparable - a paradox - yet there we were, me and my book.

Once read, never forgotten.