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Monday, 22 May 2006
Think I'll Go Eat Worms
Please click to view Poison Pixie's fantastic new Saul Bass trailer for DANNY VOLUME II (Takes approx 4 minutes to download)
Hi, taking a break from editing to come talk to you all. No idea what about, but feeling bored, restless and undecided and can't settle to anything.
Still no further forward with the new DANNY website. We try ideas, mock them up – don't like 'em. Everything looks old and tired and hackneyed. We've got Flash to do the new website and Max has bought himself a load of manuals and tutorials and we try out this effect and another effect, but we're missing the most important part – the fucking point.
Neither of us seems to be able to get an overall picture. We get bits, half-formed images, tenuous ideas but no cohesive whole.
Part of the problem here is DANNY is such an epic book, and covers so many genres, with everything from full-blown romance to the Marquis de Sade, via film noir and soap opera, that you already have a major problem on how to project it. What do I emphasise? What do I play down?
You know it is a purple cow. It has more uniqunesses (now there's a word the language needs) than you can shake a stick at. I'm not short of things to sell it on – and that's partly the problem.
I remember when we were launching the book on Orkney and it was very famous because it was in a relatively small area (18,000 – 22,000 people – they argue over the true figure). During that time, both pre and post launch, I got some very strange feedback on what DANNY was. My favourite was when a complete stranger came up to me on the street (which was common) and said, "Oh, you're her that wrote that sick book, aren't you?" I agreed that indeed I was.
When I had first arrived on Orkney I was always very flippant about what the book was about. You go through a very strict series of questions with new people which are uniform no matter where you live. It goes like this:-
Interested native: "So what do you do?"
Suffering author: "I'm a writer."
I.N: "Oooh really? What do you write?"
S.A: "Novels."
Now at this point in the conversation humans split into two strict groups. The straight to the chase crowd:- "Really? Will I have read anything you've written?" This really means, Are you famous and/or rich and will I be able to brag I've met you? Or group two, who are more polite/subtle, and who say, "Really? What kind of novels?" Of course they will follow that by asking the same are you rich and famous question as the rest. But they are much worse because if you are not a genre writer you then have to describe your book.
Now it will come as no surprise to you that I used to be glib with this one to get out of trying to describe DANNY to a lot of people who frankly couldn't care less if you were writing Bomb-making for Beginners. With the dreaded 'What kind?' I generally fell into the facetious reply of, "Dirty ones" or occasionally a sardonic, "Well, it's a kind of family saga."
Yeah, the kind where they're all fucking each other – when they're not burning each other or beating each other up.
But this problem was really just a forewarning of the bigger problem to come – how to describe DANNY to all the world.
We tried cautious permutations of 'sex without suspenders' but I never wanted to veer very far into that territory because you get that slapped on your book and you're stuck in a rut so deep and dirty you'll never climb out. Likewise I didn't want gay. Partly this was because, like sexy, Danny isn't gay. We get homosexual but we don't get gay. We get sex but we don't get sexy. We get violence but we don't get shoot-ups. We get mystery but we don't get locked libraries. We get cops but no L.A. We get corpses but no serial killers. You see my point?
This is the problem with subverting the genre/s, not to mention bunging them all in together. How the fuck do you convey that?
Maybe I should just sell it as the book that subverts all genres. Yeah, and then they'd think it was art. And Danny's art is in not looking like art. So then they read the extracts and say, "Huh, I don't see no subversion" because the talking dog doesn't get the purple goldfish. Anyway, he's outed and never wins the presidency.
So here I am. Out the house too long, trying to escape my own nightmare. Sitting in Burger King, deep in the basement where nobody goes, and fighting out long discussions on why slash is all wrong and fandom is all wrong and sex is all wrong and Goth is all wrong and a million other things are all wrong, but nothing is fucking right.
To top it all I've been reading Robert Rodriguez, hoping he'd, if not give me some insights, at least cheer me up with his 'independent fights the might of Hollywood'.
Does he fuck. Now I know why I don't like his films. The film that inspired him to make movies was Escape From New York – a good movie, but no statement of artistic integrity, for want of a better phrase. He turns out to have been people pleasing from the age of six (I exaggerate, but almost) and has built all his films on a kind of 'if others laugh at it and call it cool it must be good'. The man has fucking nothing to say – he just wants to be class clown.
Shit. What a life. Good, that I now understand why I don't like his movies, but a fucking pisser that another role model bites the dust and yet again I join the moron-who-does-their-own-thing-must-be-fucking-nuts-brigade.
Can you tell this is getting to me?
It's being compounded by the fact that we're not sure whether to just pick up and go to the States right now. This is also being complicated by Rodriguez. I've always had a (fond?) belief that Americans didn't give a fuck about tradition and 'rules'. That they would be happy to throw them all out the window in favour of 'Will it sell?' As you know, when I was writing DANNY, all those aeons ago, I was firmly convinced it was a bestseller. I really believed this book was big – I could feel it. I still do, but it's changed. Now I have the sneaking suspicion that the world is going to take a hell of a long time to realise just what it has in DANNY. I see a lot of it around me, even in fans of the book, some of whom have a very tenuous hold on what it is they are really seeing. If the fans can miss the point what chance does it stand out in the bigger world?
You can see where a miss-step can go so wrong here. This is the chief reason why I avoid niche markets, such as gay and slash and all the permutations thereof. They are cul de sacs to nowhere, dead ends. They are too female, too specialised, too not right. See what a useful thing intuition is? It comes up with great phrases like not right. Gee thanks.
Ah, ignore me. Just thinking out loud. Maybe I'll just pick up sticks and go to the States, see if that love of 'selling' is their strong point or yet another road to disaster. Certainly Rodriguez in Hollywood makes me never want to go near the place. It's not so much that they wouldn't know talent if it jumped up and bit them, it's that they only see talent as something to exploit – and they do it so badly. It's a commodity that they 'value' then systematically destroy by trying to pull it into mediocrity as fast as their little hooves will take them. Because, as we all know, mediocrity sells.
Enough. If any of you believe in Gods of any sort add me to your prayers tonight. If ever a lost soul needs guidance I am that soul. Too many marketing books, too much market research, too much looking at other people's art. I need divine intervention now.
Bring on the voices in my head. They can't be any worse than my own.
Not yet read DANNY? Find out what all the fuss is about at www.poisonpixie.com or check it out on Amazon here Or rub shoulders with DANNY's rich and famous readers at Chancery Fans
There is also an independent Live Journal DANNY Discussion Board run by fans, C Stone's DANNY. As this is new there isn't much on it yet. However, if you would like to talk about the book Jill & Jodie are experts, so please go along and say hello. I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.
21:26 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Email this
Comments
Hi!Q
Great site!
Posted by: azazello. | Thursday, 25 January 2007