« If I Tell You a Secret, Do You Promise Not To Share...? | HomePage | À Bon Chat, Bon Rat »
Tuesday, 24 July 2007
Secrets, Spoilers and God, I'm GOOD!
News update.
Okay, what first?
Most of DANNY-IS-GOD.com is now up and running. What you've got now is what you're going to have for the next couple of months as I urgently need to get back to editing.
That said, I have added captions to the original manuscript pages so you can now actually identify what you are looking at. And the original MS start to Volume 1 – "It was August" – is now finally there.
We have also put on the first secret website, for DANNY Volume 2. Those who own Volume 1 can now use their password to go and read the first 28 pages of Volume 2.
There's lots of shouty warnings on this (well, one shouty warning) which would seem unnecessary, common sense and all that, but, as any of you who have been following the recent Harry Potter media circus will have noticed, spoilers are a real problem, and even journalists (the New York Times, yet) are not above opening their fats mouths and belching it all out, no matter how often they've been asked not to. So, please, if you access these pages don't go public with the content and please, please don't give the password out to all and sundry. If they want to read the secret website let them buy their own bloody book.
So what does DANNY-IS-GOD.com have to offer?
Just about everything.
It's got full histories on all the books, how they are structured, how and when they were written, photos of the original manuscripts (with captions), an archive of articles on the books and writing, photos of all the book covers, a full history of its short life with Citron Press, photos of some of the original Citron publicity, photos of the Orkney book launch, a huge novel-length extract from Volume 1 FREE, and now available to read on-line as well as the PDF version, a FREE short story, Nothing But a Negro, a forerunner to DANNY, details of The Minor Works, a very comprehensive review section with everything from reader and Amazon reviews to press reviews and features, including the deathless and funny Keswick Reminder story, a DANNY fan photo gallery, the DANNY fantasy film cast, a biography of me linked to a longer biography over at www.ChanceryStone.com, and lots of other stuff that I can't even remember. Enough for a fun day out for all the family anyway.
On the other two websites, www.THIS-IS-HARDCORE.com now has a really cool little 'blue' movie with a difference on its landing page. Nothing on the site yet, you'll have to wait for that, but check out the movie. It gives you a little taste of what is to come, if you'll pardon the pun. It took Mr Scratchmann about a month to Rotoscope this little gem, frame by painstaking frame.
www.ChanceryStone.com now has, as previously stated, a longer biography of me. It's about 8 pages long and talks about isolated parts of my childhood. I find it rather strange, to be honest, since I'd sat down to write a more detailed biography and that's what came out. But, that said, it's got a certain quirky charm and, who knows, you might learn something about me.
That's all there is on there for the time being. There will be a nauseatingly comprehensive photo gallery eventually, with lots and lots of photos of me looking young and gorgeous, and with all the ugly photos ruthlessly edited out. Such is the power of doing your own publicity. Can't beat it.
Discovered a couple of new fans recently, further afield than normal, so welcome to them, and thank you to everyone who wrote (on Blogspirit and by e-mail) praising the new website. Your cheques are in the post.
Kidding aside, it's always great to hear from fans. You slog away day after day, post all this shit up and then… nothing. So it's always reassuring to know someone is actually reading it, and appreciating it. God, I'm so needy.
What else? Got a national mag waiting for Volume 2 coming out. They actually e-mailed us the same day the newsletter went out to say they wanted a copy, on PDF if necessary, so they could include it in the October edition of their mag. God, if only I could get more of them as keen as that.
And, speaking of newsletters, if you didn't receive one (by e-mail) at the beginning of last week and would like to be (or thought you were) on the list then use this link to join up: Subscribe to the Poison Pixie Newsletter.
We cleaned out our e-mail lists recently and bunched three of them together. Our Mail Chimp then did his stuff and deleted a few more. If you have been inadvertently deleted (sorry!) then please re-sign up. It's a one-click unsubscribe, so you don't need to worry about getting loads of stuff you don't want. If you don't want it, lose it.
That's about it, I think.
In between waiting for the Art Department to photograph, load, Flashify, redo tables, fix glitches and hiccups, go off to Life classes, go off to teach marketing and generally faff about, I have been reading Volume 3 and 4.
God, they're good, even unedited.
God, I love this book. And Volume 2 is just reaching that delicious stage of suddenly metamorphosing into a cohesive whole.
I actually picked up courage 2 nights ago, while getting the extract for the secret website, to have a skim through it in reader mode. It's about a month (I think – must be) since I was working on it last and I'd forgotten a lot of the changes and corrections I'd made, so they come at you fresh, as it were.
God, it's good. (Just can't get tired of saying that.)
No, seriously, it's good. I shock even myself with my brilliance sometimes.
I find myself reading 'new' lines thinking, Fuck me, did I write that? That's a great line.
Sometimes I think there's more to this being a conduit to God thing than I realise. If it is true, you do realise what this says about God, don't you? Obviously not as anti-sex as the Christians (and the Muslims and the Jews, and the…) would have you believe.
I'm beginning to have a sneaky suspicion that Volume 2 may actually be a better book than Volume 1. Never thought I'd hear myself say those words. But it just has a certain something. It's sharper, tighter, more focussed.
Even although you don't have a clue where it's going (nothing changed there, then) you know it is going somewhere, and probably somewhere bad at that. It has a real depth to it, a more obvious sense of hiddenness. I think. I hate trying to define abstract feelings, sensations.
I think you can sense it even in the 28 page extract on the secret site. Have a look yourself and see what I mean. Can't you just feel something heaving under the water there? Like some ancient sea monster hundreds of feet down in the darkness, a great amorphous shape slowly surfacing underneath the unwitting humans above.
I've read too many fairy tales.
Anyway, not sure if it's news or not, but I have a slow, steady surety growing that Volume 2 is a worthy addition to the oeuvre after all, and might just knock the almighty One off its perch.
Have fun.
You can now read this blog at the following locations:-
To subscribe to this blog on Blogspirit (my base camp) without divulging your email address click on the Newsgator button on the left-hand sidebar or simply post the following text into your RSS browser: http://www.poisonpixie.com/chanceryblogfeed.xml
Not yet read DANNY? You can check it out now at Poison Pixie where you can read a BIG extract for Free! Or grab a copy on Amazon here.
You can also see me in person on my YouTube site (as well as DANNY's various trailers and ads)here or you can see the same material on the Poison Pixie film site where you can also hear our Mr Scratchmann read his delightful comic verse in his podcasts.
Lastly, there is an independent Live Journal DANNY Discussion Board run by fans, C Stone's DANNY where anyone is welcome to go along and chat about the book till their guts bust.
19:25 Posted in Blog , Books , Web | Permalink | Email this