« 2007-10 | HomePage | 2007-12 »
Friday, 30 November 2007
Pedant's Blog, Stardate 30-11-07
We have just jumped out of Limboland's orbit and are now waiting for the starship UPS Mail Freighter to reach us with our life-saving cargo of proofs. Scotty is sitting making party banners in the engine room and I am up here on the bridge writing this to you.
The party times have now been posted and you will find full details on the Live Journal crew-deck, Danny_Volume_2, ici . (And now we are doing Star Trek in French. Actually, that has potential…)
I will expect to see you all there on the night/day, wearing unflattering lycra one-pieces, letting off party poppers, throwing streamers, and in five stages of intoxication, stoned on sheer happiness that the chief object of your heart's desire is now so close you can almost taste it. (Hands up all those who are getting all antsy, sensing it in the ether? No-one? Hmm, just me then…)
Yes, folks, the good news is the DANNY Volume 2 proofs are on their way to us, scheduled for delivery Monday the 3rd of December. So, technically we can okay proofs that day and they go into production and dispatch within 48 hours. The printer is also our distributor so he will dispatch the books straight to you – they don't have to come to us first.
Supposing there's nothing wrong with them, of course. Oh, the agony, the anxiety. I swear this is killing me by inches.
However, if all goes well, DANNY 2 is still on schedule and those of you who have pre-ordered, no matter where you are in the world, should have your books within the week.
If you have pre-ordered from Amazon it may be longer – as long as Amazon takes to get their ass in gear. They can take up to a fortnight to show stock in their warehouse, but they may dispatch pre-orders straight away. I don't know, I've never pre-ordered anything from Amazon, and asking them is a waste of time. You'd have your books by the time an actual human answered the actual query.
So, in short, if everything goes well, those of you who have pre-ordered from us will have your books next week, as promised. (You notice the repeated superstitious use of the phrase 'if everything goes well'? Yep, don't quit praying yet.)
I've given the party times for three time zones in the UK & US (you can see 'em on the banner below). I know I have Canadians reading this blog (but no book sales there, to my knowledge – do correct me if I'm wrong), and Australians reading the blog and owning DANNY 1. If any of you need to know times let me know. Or, of course, there are time conversion clocks all over the web. (What a Lewis Carroll image that conjures up – virtual white rabbits and all.)
Which brings me to the pedant's part of the evening's entertainment.
This next bit is for sticklers, nit-pickers and those who have not outgrown their white socks (male or female). It may also, of course, be of interest to those who are so involved with DANNY that they even care about Choices in Grammar and Punctuation, and Their Influence on the Works of Chancery Stone. (Feel free to use that any time for your PhD.) Frankly, I'd have thought that was my job and of no interest to anyone but me, but apparently not… so here goes.
I had a little pocket of sneering, with the first volume, about my creative use of punctuation. I, personally, thought my changes were as bold and outrageous as a trip to Marks & Spencer, they were hardly Finnegan's Wake, but apparently I offended the gods of Proper English – and those people who still have their original copy of Black Beauty. When I tried to explain my decisions (big mistake) I was subjected to an even more vitriolic barrage of contempt summed up by the phrase "Does she think we're stupid?" (Now you are tempting me.)
Therefore, in view of this history, I am going to go on record BEFORE DANNY 2 is published and explain patiently and kindly, for the very last time, ever, anywhere, why I have done wot I done in this book. (And that spelling error/ bad grammar was deliberate, to convey a joke. I'm being sarcastic, pretending to… oh, never mind.)
Right, major really bad things Chancery has done in Volume 2, deliberately and with malice aforethought:–
No full stop after ellipsis. This offends American editors. I do it and I am not sorry. If I wish to denote a new sentence or thought after the cliff-hanger of the ellipsis I do something daring and controversial – yes, I use a Capital Letter. Most people are bright enough to realise this means a new sentence.
Why do I break this Really Important Law? Because to me …. looks longer than … Mostly because it is. This evil extra dot might suggest to my reader that there is a longer pause. If there is not a longer pause then I don't want it to look like there is. It can also, paradoxically, look emphatic and decisive, making a break in the flow of what is, for me, usually hesitant and uncertain – no solid stops. You're getting it now, aren't you?
I put a space on each side of em dashes. This is an em dash – . They are used to indicate asides, like this – Christ, I can't believe I'm doing this – to show I thought that while I'm supposed to be concentrating on writing this drivel for you. It is very bad to put a space anywhere near em dashes. American editors don't allow that either. Yah, boo to them!
So why do I do this vicious and rightly-condemned thing? Because to me–and it's me we're talking about–what I've just punctuated, right there, in The Proper Way, looks cramped and, more importantly, like a run-on, as if I thought it very quickly. Sometimes people do say and think asides quickly, but lots of times they don't. They go off on wandery word associations, they are forcefully arrested by what has just occurred to them – Christ, I'm explaining creative decisions to imagination-deficient pedants – and they take time… to do it.
I like the elbow-room of space round my em dashes. I like my reader to pay attention to that revealing little embellishment, that amazing realisation that just struck our hero. I don't want you to glance over it as if he just realised he's forgotten to buy milk.
That is why Chancery will not, for no-one, crowd her em dashes.
Besides, it looks nicer on the page.
I have lots of partial sentences. Yippee! Hooray for partial sentences! I do not write for my Primary school teacher. I do not write for my mother, or your aunt, or an on-line grammar site. I write for me and I write for others who think/feel like me – or for those who are interested in the inherent possibilities of thinking/feeling like someone else. If only for a day.
When we talk and think we don't always get it all in one delicious, controlled, perfectly-encapsulated, prose-perfect dream sentence. Sometimes we think, Shit, I need to get milk. And potatoes. Oh, and sausages. Wait, Rolos… I need Rolos. Tripe. And some of those scented whatsits would be good. Dogs. Yeah, dogs need worm thingies. Glasses. Wine. Beryl wants…
And so it goes on. I can marshal that sentence up, put it into a nice tidy list with commas and correctly spaced em dashes and maybe a semi-colon or two, if I'm feeling all academic and wanting to show off my clever certificate-on-the-wall education, but if I did I would completely fail to indicate how that sentence was thought and, at the same time, what the character was feeling (stressed? harried? disorganised?); their personality (ditzy? forgetful? over-responsible?)
Partial sentences do a very important job. 'Good' sentences are for school reports and CV's. This is fiction, folks. It does a different job, and if you don't know that you need to go somewhere else for your kicks – cause you ain't gonna find any in mine.
The one really important change I've made in DANNY 2 is actually retrogressive, in its way. This is because I originally wanted to do this, but I lacked the courage first time out. So, this is my reward for having to put commas before everybody's names and hyphenate all my half uses (still not sure about that one – might do away with it again in 3).
In Volume 1, thoughts and in-my-head contemplations are usually in italics. This is not 'good grammar', more of a fictional convention. Not all authors do it, but most do. Stephen King, for one. And this is good, fine, I have no bone to pick with it – after all, I used it. But I have rather a lot of internal monologues (and dialogues) in my book and it always feels clumsy to me, and italics are harder to read, so I've done away with it in 2.
You still get italics if it might be unclear who exactly is talking, or thinking, and sometimes just for emphasis, or someone recalling someone else's speech – little things like that, but, on the whole, when people are talking to themselves internally you now have to figure that out for yourself.
I believe strongly in the intelligence of my reader. I won't talk down to you. I think you're a bright, shiny coin of the finest mint, and it was a severe disappointment to me, with Volume 1, when I got people nitpicking stupidities like the above, as if they were somehow crucial to understanding the book.
They are not. If I think something might be hard to grasp, or confusing, I'll change it (hence my changing the commas before names) but otherwise you're on your own. I believe you're quite big enough to work your way through DANNY without my guidance.
I can't think of anything else off-hand. No doubt I've forgotten something/s and will be roundly condemned for it and shown no quarter for the possibility that it was deliberate. But, trust me, it was. Bad grammar (no-one ever did say exactly what they meant by that) – all me. Big, fat, spacey em dashes – yep, done that. Partial sentences? Got 'em all. Commas put at the end of little pieces of direct speech "like this," where there sometimes shouldn't be any – absolutely. I done it, with glee, vigour and enthusiasm, completely unrepentant, annoying the hell out of anyone who haunts grammar porn sites looking for pictures of Lynne Truss. OOOOH YES, YIPPEEEEEEEE……… WAY!
Etcetera.
Can't be bothered with detailing any more of it. Just accept my word for it that whatever you don't like I did it. I'm to blame. So stone me (ooh, a pun – cool).
Oh, I did make one other concession. In the first book I used hyphens for em dashes because I so like white space that I wanted to give myself more of it. In this book I've used the real thing. See, I can be a good girl too.
Now, pass those white socks... (See? No full stop. That's because I want to leave it dangling. Oh, enough already.)
P.S. Just remembered. When I write "Hello, Danny," or suchlike short greetings in Volume 2, I don't use the 'proper' comma (unless I want the pause of course). Yep, I write "Hello Danny". This is because there is nothing – I repeat, nothing – in that you could misconstrue. I know, there is no end to my decadent disregard for Proper English. Whup my ass… (And there I go again… Not a full-stop in sight… sigh…)
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 discovered the wonder of The DANNY Quadrilogy? You can check out all the volumes in print now at Poison Pixie where you can read an extract of Volume 1 for FREE! Or start your collection on Amazon here where you can also buy a print sampler, entitled CULT Fiction, containing an introduction to the DANNY series and an excerpt from Volume 1, for only £2.99.
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.
20:10 Posted in Blog , Books , Leisure , Shopping , Web | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Monday, 26 November 2007
Chancery In Limboland
Great news for American fans – we are now able to offer you the same reduced price pre-ordering on Volume 2 as British fans. You are paying a couple of quid extra on the postage, but still £4 less than the current postage rate for Volume 1 plus, of course, you're getting a big saving on the price of the book itself. And, of course, we see a better profit, which leads to more volumes of DANNY. Indeed a win-win situation.
The U.S. pre-orders will be dispatched from the U.S. so you won't have a delay in receiving your goodies and will, in fact, probably get your copy before Amazon.com has theirs up for sale.
When you buy direct from us you pay in British pounds and your credit card will do the conversion for you, but to let you see a comparison, the book will cost you approximately $35.22 plus $10.36 postage – a total of $45.58. So you are saving over four dollars on the Amazon price.
The link is here to BUY DIRECT. We await your call……..
On the UK pre-order front the dog edition has finally started to catch up and is now only being outsold roughly 2 to 1. A surprising number of people have bought both editions, but only one person has bought solely the dog edition – unless, of course, he does what a couple of other people have done and adds Personal Jesus onto his order before the publication date.
Even better news is that everybody is buying through us and only two pre-orders (so far) have gone through Amazon UK, both for Personal Jesus. So thanks to everybody for the support – we very much appreciate it. We also appreciate you buying it through Amazon – thank you too.
Moving on…
Stuck in Limboland right now, still waiting for the proofs. Unbeknownst to us, they are being generated in the U.S. so they got held up with the country deciding to go and throw Thanksgiving in the middle of pre-production. Jesus Christ, don't these people know I've got a deadline?
I've gone past the point of prayer now. If these books have got something wrong with them we are so screwed. We just don't have the room to manoeuvre any longer.
The Virtual Launch will be held on Live Journal. I've set up a site, Danny-Volume-2, wherein we can all do the chatting thing, chink glasses, suffer vol-au-vents, etc, etc.
I'll give you the times and so forth in due course.
Nothing else to say really.
Death In Venice is finished and has had a rough edit, and I'm just about to start on Delaney to send to the typist.
I'm considering an idea, which is strictly hush-hush at the moment, so please keep it under your hat, of offering it up for co-writing.
I thought it might be an idea to open it up for a competition, for someone to complete it, and then Poison Pixie will publish it and promote it along with DANNY. It will have a co-author credit and my fellow-author will have a standard publishing contract with royalties – but no advance. We're not rich enough as yet for that.
If the existing manuscript shows any promise (and that is the most important part, and the part that is currently a complete unknown) I would either rough edit it only, to allow the co-writer more creative leeway, or full edit it so that they would be more constrained to follow my style.
There would be no restrictions to do anything other than keep the style consistent (although you could, of course, introduce some other story-telling idea that could circumvent that 'problem'). I have no idea where the plot should go and care less. I have no desire to either have sex in it or not (at present I don't think it has much, if any). I have no concept of it as erotica or a genre novel of any sort.
In short, I have no preferences or fixed ideas. I can't even remember what it's about, other than in the broadest strokes. Currently I'm estimating it's about 150 pages, typed up. I may put a restriction on length (keeps the price down), but even that wouldn't worry me if I felt their treatment was good.
Anyway, like I say, this is very tenuous. I might read it and find it's dry as dust, plain boring, so uninteresting I don't want to do it. We'll see.
Right, I'm done. Just wanted to keep you up to date and let our American readers get in on the cheap pre-orders.
Hopefully next time I speak to you I'll have something more concrete to say.
Keep praying…….
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 discovered the wonder of The DANNY Quadrilogy? You can check out all the volumes in print now at Poison Pixie where you can read an extract of Volume 1 for FREE! Or start your collection on Amazon here where you can also buy a print sampler, entitled CULT Fiction, containing an introduction to the DANNY series and an excerpt from Volume 1, for only £2.99.
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.
23:30 Posted in Blog , Books , Leisure , Shopping , Web | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Saturday, 17 November 2007
It's All Just a Cry For Attention, you know...
Mr Scratchmann tells me a few days before we finish the books that he wants to write a guest blog on designing the covers. I refrain from looking at him like he's a lunatic and saying "Why?" in a tone that suggests he's an idiot, and say, "Why not? Good idea" while mentally thinking, Hmm, save me doing one – run with it.
And here it is. Having just read it, I can tell you it's nothing do with designing the cover but is really a tragic and pitiful attempt to elicit sympathy from you, dear reader, that he can then use against me at some unspecified date in the future, by saying things like, "Your fans would never expect me to completely revise that file with a deadline of ten minutes till press. They understand the pressures of being an artist…" (sotto voce) "…working for a termagant like you."
Don't fall for it. I'm telling you, he needs an iron fist – they all do, bloody artists, need to learn their place, under the heel of my sexy, thigh-length boot. (Yes, I am a harsh mistress, but fair.)
However, at the end he does say nice things about Volume 2. Bear in mind he hasn't actually read it, just scenes – but he did, for a wonder, cry at the end, and even I didn't do that. (I had to let him read it because I was really stuck, not sure if one of the two end scenes should be chopped out or not.) He informs me he was crying "For Ian – they treat him like shit, those two." Hey, I'm just telling you what he said.
Anyway, because he says nice things, and because he cried at my book, I'm going to let you read this uncensored. I am nothing if not merciful…
Everything after this line is not sanctioned in any way by me or Sony Pictures.
Visualise the scene if you will:
My studio is in a totally chaotic state with dirty plates and cups and piles of printouts and Pantone swatches all over the floor. The area round my desk is thick with software reference books, typeface catalogues and hefty tomes of nineteenth century non-copyright woodcuts, all lying open and face down on the not-vacuumed-for-several-weeks carpet. There are proofs and cover layouts all over the pinboard and walls, most of them looking like the bleeding wounded, with slashes of scarlet that the tyrant who lives on the upper floor has daubed all over them with her dreaded red pen, and an accumulation of unfiled correspondence totters like an unsteady seventies tower block.
Lastly, there’s me, wearing a four-day-old crumpled tee-shirt, sweaty and unshaven, red-eyed and extremely tetchy. A growling, snapping monster unfit to be allowed near small animals and anything remotely human.
So, of course, it’s about now that the phone rings. The last month seems to have been an endless procession of packages that don’t appear, printers’ proofs that come back in Chinese, new software that goes AWOL and computers that have minds of their own.
I know for sure that nobody is phoning with good news.
“'Allo, Max?” says a voice with a thick South London accent, and I groan inwardly. It’s the technical rep from our new printing house, and he never phones unless he can help it, so I’m dreading what’s in store for me now. “Listen, mate,” he says in a forced blokey tone, sort of vintage Martin Clunes and Neil Morrisey combined, so that I know there must be a real shit sandwich about to be unveiled, “We’ve got a problem with one of yer files…”
For those of you not up on printer-speak, this is a Linotyper’s catch-all for “We’re fucked if we know what’s wrong - you sort it out” and I clutch my brow in despair and silently bang my head off Poison Pixie’s large grey metal filing cabinet that’s somehow made it’s home in my already over-crowded studio.
“Sure, mate,” I say in the nearest I can approximate to a matching jovial man-to-man brogue in the given circumstances, “What’s up?”
He tells me, and I allow myself the luxury of briefly visualising myself jumping headfirst into a bath of acid and broken glass, before I snap back to harsh reality and tell him I’m on it and will have the suitably doctored file with him within the hour, completely unsure at this point if I’ll be able to perform this miracle or not, but adhering strictly to the graphic designers’ Hippocratic Oath of “Never, ever, let a printer see you cry… and don’t ever bleed on the artwork, it stains” and I pretend manfully that I’m in control.
Of course, I am supposed to be in control. In fact, I have taken costly and painful steps to ensure it. When I knew that a double helping of the new Volume of DANNY was imminent I gave the design sector of my studio a spring clean and made ready for the mountain of work that was headed my way. I’d been working with an ancient version of Quark Xpress for the last two years that my geek pal, Walter, had procured for me from a “little shop in Glasgow”, and which he had assured me was perfectly legal, but there was no way that this buggy old piece of tat was ever going to handle laying out two eight-hundred-page books simultaneously and I had to face facts, I needed to go out and buy the latest version from a proper shop.
So, bright on Monday morning, I bite the bullet and squeeze Poison Pixie’s protesting credit card to the tune of nine hundred quid, telling myself during the long dark hours of a sleepless night that I can, at least, claim the VAT back, and my spanky new version of Quark is quickly dispatched with the promise of next day delivery.
Ha, haaaa, haaaaaaaaa…..
The church tells us that God is all around us, and I’m sure that they’re right, but what I do know for certain is that the Devil works at UPS and hacks computers during the twilight hours. I sit in all day Tuesday but UPS doesn’t show with my software. I phone and yell at them and they tell me it will “definitely” be with me for Thursday. So I go out on Wednesday and come home to find a card from my friendly UPS man waiting for me. “We tried to deliver your package, but……” I yell at them again and they promise it for Thursday again, and, in fact, send it out, but today’s driver is a psychic and 'senses' I won’t be in (I am) so takes my package back to the depot without stopping to ring the bell. More screaming and they eventually bring it on Friday.
This is my life. I could bore you with more tales of the Pantone colour widget that, for some reason, came to me via Prague and, of course, got lost and involved me in lots of conversations with girls with impenetrable Czech accents, or of our previous printer who kept sending me proofs with weird borders on them and eventually ‘solved’ the problem by guillotining an inch off the top and bottom of the book. I could tell you of long hours in front of my Mac going cross-eyed looking at pages and pages of type, combing it line by line for glitches from old files from long-dead twentieth century computers. But I won’t.
Instead I’ll tell you about the fantastic literary achievement that this new volume of DANNY really is, with prose so gripping that time and time again I would find myself caught up in the plot, the design work forgotten, miles away in the world of the Jackson Moores. I will tell you that it has been worth every sleepless night, every cross-eyed thirteen-hour day, every agonising set-to with delivery companies and every single one of the many, many botched files and rejected designs that have passed through my work station in the last couple of weeks. The Revenant is that seldom seen entity, a second book that outshines the already brilliant original. It is The Empire Strikes Back to Star Wars, the Bride of Frankenstein to Frankenstein, Alien 3 to Alien. It is colder, harder and more beautiful than the first Volume of DANNY and, in fact, anything Chancery has ever written before and, quite frankly, anything that I’ve ever read. It is poetry. It is art. It is life itself distilled onto the page.
You’re going to love it….
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 discovered the wonder of The DANNY Quadrilogy? You can check out all the volumes in print now at Poison Pixie where you can read an extract of Volume 1 for FREE! Or start your collection on Amazon here where you can also buy a print sampler, entitled CULT Fiction, containing an introduction to the DANNY series and an excerpt from Volume 1, for only £2.99.
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.
22:10 Posted in Blog , Books , Web | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email this
Thursday, 15 November 2007
Only 18 Days Till Dog Bites God - ooh, and there's a clue right there...
Okay, so lots of news for you.
First off, and most important, is that the books have now gone to the printers. Now is the long waiting process for a proof to come through, and the praying process that neither us, nor them, nor the God of Computers has fucked anything up.
If – A VERY BIG IF – it all runs smoothly you should all see your books a day or two sooner than expected. However, let me warn those of you who are not acquainted with the esoteric ways of printers (and postmen, and gods with warped senses of humour) that the Murphy's Law of Publishing states, "Let what can go wrong, go hellishly wrong."
Next up, all the books are now available on Amazon UK. You can see 'em all together here.
You will see there is also a publication called Cult Fiction under my name. This is a sampler offering a printed extract, an introduction to The Quadrilogy, a biography and so forth in a handy little paperback. It was designed chiefly for the media, to go out with press packs, but it is obviously also ideal for anyone who is not familiar with the DANNY series to find out what it's all about and get a little taster.
This is currently in production so it's showing as not yet in stock. If you wish to buy it, wait a week or so and that £1.99 sourcing fee will disappear when it comes into stock.
For DANNY completests (the dictionary informs me that that's spelt with an e at the end, but it looks wrong to me – I want to give it an 'i'), if you are in the habit of reading my blog and/or using our websites there is nothing much in it that you won't already have seen. The only new information is a previously unpublished piece on the covers by Mr Scratchmann. However, we will be doing more of these little paperbacks so I'll keep you posted if anything new comes out that might interest you.
For those of you living in the U.S. who are champing at the bit and feeling a little neglected, worry not, you are at the forefront of my mind. Your books will not appear on Amazon.com till the proofs are okayed at this end. But when they are, their listing, we are assured, is instant. Although you appear to be waiting longer, the books will actually be dispatched at the same time in both countries, so relax, all is well.
The U.S. price will be slightly cheaper than the U.K. at only $49.99. It will be available from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. Additionally, if you wish to order it from your local bookshop or library simply tell them it is available from Ingram or Baker & Taylor – both large U.S. wholesalers. The ISBN will apply in both countries so just use that to order.
There is now a countdown on both Poison Pixie's site and DANNY-IS-GOD.com which reliably informs me that, as of today, there is only 18 days to go (Jesus Christ).
Lastly, we will, of course, be having a launch party, but this time, we've decided to have it for DANNY's fans, rather than locally, so we are going to host it online.
You are all informally invited to The Virtual Launch on the 3rd of December, which is, as I've said before, also my birthday. So please feel free to bring very expensive virtual gifts. I don't own a Porsche if anyone is compiling a presents list…
Don't know where we are hosting it yet – but the two contenders are presently Live Journal or an independent chat room. I'll let you know as soon as we've decided. Both of us will be there on the night to chat and take in said expensive gifts, so now's your chance to come along and ask me anything you've ever wanted to ask me (or tell me what you've long wanted to tell me – now there's an offer you can't refuse).
We will have anonymous commenting allowed, wherever we are hanging out – but just remember I'm not known for tolerating trolls gladly. That said, everybody is welcome to come along and chip in. More details forthcoming shortly.
So, that's about it, I think. Now onto the promised details of the two editions.
Like I said on the comment on the last blog, I decided to make the two editions slightly different.
Now, don't be running round the room screeching, it's only one line.
I didn't decide to do this to torture you, but because I had this replacement line that I really loved. Trouble was, the original was good too, and flowed better. On top of that the two lines put an entirely different inflection on the scene. So, to cut a long story short, I suddenly realised I had the possibility to have both. I was indeed getting to have my cake and eat it – a rare joy.
So, for your edification, Personal Jesus has the original line, like wot I wrote.
I'll Be Your Dog has the new line, and the one that I 'prefer'. I put that in single commas because I only prefer it in the sense that it feels more 'right' to me. But what that means, in practice, is it gives a slant to what Danny is saying that has implications I like. It should really have gone in Personal Jesus, because it's really more in keeping with what that volume is about, but I'll Be Your Dog is the special volume, the little, dark, truthful volume – and it belonged there.
Both books are different, not just because of that line, but because they have completely different slants in design and in the quotes and decorations. Jesus is on the balance as redemption and lost love, Dog is there as addiction and predilection and calculation.
The books have different cover copy (but related, taken from a different slant) and they have completely different quotes, both on the quotes page and contained in the end papers. The quotes in each represent the story and its motives from a different angle.
My preference?
That's a tough one. I've always loved my Nick Moss Jesus. He's beautiful, vacuous and unapproachable. Made-over to resemble Danny, he is well-nigh fucking irresistible, just about the finest representation you could make of Danny as he appears in Volume 2, short of having a photo constructed for you. But as to creativity I'll Be Your Dog wins hands-down.
I'll Be Your Dog has more sheer inventiveness. I love everything about it, from the interior typeface (a fabulous thing designed by a four-year-old) to the illustrations and the quotes.
The quote from P.G. Wodehouse is my favourite quote out of all those used across both books and it sums up Volume 2 to perfection. The fact it is from a comic writer, and is even a comic quote, really underpins the seriously black humour that runs through DANNY, a seldom realised and commented-on aspect of the book which only a couple of readers have ever acknowledged. At least, in my hearing.
Whereas Personal Jesus is beautiful, and the quotes are great, and the decorations are lovely, they're all more 'conventional'. Well, as conventional as I ever get. It's maybe way less conventional than any other book out there, but it's not as offbeat as I'll Be Your Dog.
I'll Be Your Dog is for brave souls, the ones that don't care about carrying it on the bus, the ones that love the hairy, scary aspects of DANNY and want more of 'em. I'll Be Your Dog is also for those readers that enjoy the puzzles and mysteries of DANNY.
All of I'll Be Your Dog is a puzzle. From the cover copy, to the cover itself, to the last page quote, to the illustrations that go with the quotes. Everything, absolutely everything in I'll Be Your Dog means something, if you choose to find it. It's so packed with fucking symbolism you could write a book just on the design of the book, call it something like "The Hidden Symbolism of the I'll Be Your Dog Edition of Chancery Stone's Revenant" and that PhD will be yours.
Equally well, if you just want a more shocking cover to flaunt at old ladies on the tube, then it will work for you every time, without you giving a fig for the fucking symbolism.
The fact that Personal Jesus is currently outselling the dog by six to one in pre-orders tells you all you need to know about which one of the two is the 'safe' option. Kind of sad really – I hoped DANNY had more adventurous readers than that…
Anyway, I've done the unprecedented thing of putting a foreword on the book, 'explaining' the covers. But it doesn't really – it just provides a couple of hints and clues of where to look (if you care) and, of course, being me, it throws in some little pieces of misdirection too.
Wouldn't do to let you have it too easy.
Well, that about wraps it up for now.
Be back shortly to fill you in on what's happening as it happens.
Keep your eyes on the counter!
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 discovered the wonder of The DANNY Quadrilogy? You can check out all the volumes in print now at Poison Pixie where you can read an extract of Volume 1 for FREE! Or start your collection on Amazon here where you can also buy a print sampler, entitled CULT Fiction, containing an introduction to the DANNY series and an excerpt from Volume 1, for only £2.99.
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.
19:14 Posted in Blog , Books , Leisure , Shopping , Web | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this
Monday, 05 November 2007
You, Me... Magic
Here we are – it's a historic moment. It's now 8:35 pm and I finished the final draft at 8pm exactly.
It's now downstairs in a de-formatted version, being typeset on our split new Quark (£900-odd, folks – oh, the horror). De-formatted because we always have trouble with the files, losing indents and then italics. It's all to do with it having been typed on three different types of computer over the years. As if you cared.
There, it's done.
How do I feel? Very tired, sore neck, hot face, tooth-ache, a little sad and deflated, hyper and over-excitable, wanting to run round the room and lie down and weep.
I've been stuck for the last three days trying to get two scenes right. Oh, there's always two scenes, two ugly little motherfuckers that just won't come right. You twist them, tweak them, entirely re-write them. You work till your brain's dead, beyond fagged-out, numb and flattened and wrung dry. Then you go back the next day with a – ha-ha – 'fresh' eye, and discover it's still shite – so you do it all over again.
And again.
And again, and again, and again, desperately trying to make it work.
Eventually it gets like those freaky moments in your life when you're sick or insanely tired and words like 'yes' or 'sausage' don't seem real, or even English.
That's how you end up – insane, with nothing making sense and your supposedly wonderful prose looking like something a doped-up drunk vomited onto the page. Well, at least to you.
But then your judgement's shit. You've slaved to the point when you're not really human anymore – your discernment's gone out the window…
And here I am, that person – looking at you across the void of internet silence – or is it a gabble?
Are you the first person to read this? Look at the time. How close is it to 8:35 GMT? Are you the very first person in the whole world to know the book is finished? One of you reading this right now will be the very first person in the whole world to get your copy of DANNY Volume 2. One of you will be the first to finish reading it. One of you will be the first to understand the symbolism in the dream sequence at the end that nearly fucking killed me to get right (yes, that was one of the motherfuckers that was sticking me).
Although technically, of course, Emily Dubberley (Scarlet magazine) was/is the very first person in the world to read Volume 2 (assuming she has read it and it isn't just sitting neglected on her computer). But she isn't. The real book, this finished book, is substantially different from the one she was given just a month ago. It's tighter, faster, brighter, sharper – altogether a spinier, uglier, more beautiful thing.
It makes me sorry she didn't get this version; it makes me worry that I didn't give my baby the best chance in life; it makes me nervous she'll come right back and say, "Not reviewing it, it was shit" or (maybe) worse, give it a bad review.
Can't really write to all those people and say, "Sorry, I didn't mean it – it's really good now – honest."
Ah well, it will just have to be what it is.
How do I feel?
How do I sound?
Frazzled, in pain, exhilarated? I am. I am. But…
Itching too. I can think of all those people, all you guys with names starting with 'J' (why? – that is bizarre), all of you others whose names start with altogether another (to me, right now) meaningless letter, all waiting to read it.
All, she says, but we haven't had that many pre-orders. Maybe there is no 'all'.
Imagine I've done all this, knocked my guts out – yet again, stupidly, futilely (and this book is good – seriously, wonderfully good) – for nothing.
Six of you, ten, twenty, thirty. How many will I sell? How many makes it worthwhile?
I don't know. Sometimes the love I feel for it (love isn't the right word, but right now my brain is the artistic equivalent of morally bankrupt, and I can't think of the right or good or true word) almost swamps me and I don't know how to convey to you how good it is, how important, how precious and real and necessary. I can say this to you, because those of you who understand this, understand this. Only those of you who particularly care about the book are reading this – of that I'm sure.
This is a rare moment, because it will only ever happen once. I will only ever be here once, you will only ever really read this once. Hey, you were here, you were at the moment when Chancery Stone finished DANNY Volume 2 and she talked to you. Only you, really.
There's between 43 and 70 of you, who will come and go, sharing this with nothing more than a sense of others passing in the night.
Why that figure? Because no matter how long I am away from Blogspirit my stats never fall below 43 a day. While I'm away for a long time, like recently, they average out from 43 to 70. That is who cares. And if you are reading this within the next two or three days – maybe four or five, at the outside – you're one of them.
When I'm writing regular blogs the stats are double that, sometimes more – they are the people that haven't read DANNY and do not care. None of what we are talking about right now is of interest to them. They do not believe. You do.
I know there will be – may be – a handful of people reading this who don't like me, only half-like or maybe even completely dislike my book. I'm perfectly aware that there are people driven by emotions other than admiration into a dedication that seems bizarre.
But right now I'm not talking to them – I'm talking to you, and you care. You understand that when I say this book is really really good, that statement is not about me, my ego, my status, the book's status or even about me selling it to you, because you're buying it anyway – even if it's crap. You're buying it on the strength of the first one, on faith, on the depth of my lunacy, a belief in the conviction of my feeling.
You know, because there is something in you that answers something in me. If there wasn't, DANNY wouldn't touch you. You would look at it in wounded perplexity, as others have looked at it in the past, wondering why it isn't fulfilling what you wanted it to fulfil.
But it does (touch you). And you don't (feel piqued, defensive, hostile, angry). The truth is you understand DANNY - even before you read it. The truth is you will understand all the volumes, even get that slightly eerie, unsettling, but somehow exciting feeling like you knew Danny was going to say exactly that; that John was going to somehow be the deciding factor, that that was exactly what Rab would do.
There will be times when you'll feel almost like you wrote DANNY, you understand it so well. That's because it's plugged into you, and you've plugged into it. Like you've plugged in to the other six, ten, forty-three, seventy people who will read it.
Then maybe the 100 after that, then the thousand.
Maybe not. Maybe it will always stay a small, secret pleasure. Maybe for all DANNY's size, its enormity of purpose and intent, it will remain marginalised, failing to convince more than a couple of hundred people, a thousand devotees, of its merit.
Maybe I will die alone, impoverished and misunderstood, a horrible cliché of the starving artist in the garret. It would be nauseating, infuriating, sick-making, but sadly not unexpected.
None of it matters anyway.
At the end it comes down to this – me and you talking across the ether. Me telling you, it's done, like an alchemist about to share something secret we thought up together in a cave. No, not thought-up. We dreamt it – you and I. We dreamt it together one night in the dead of dark, lost in a dream of long corridors and a pain in our head like black rubber and ether inflating our consciousness. We dreamt it in blood and drunkenness, and an urge to rub ourselves against strangers like a disease eating our skins. We fell in love with love, grew intoxicated on it, wishing it could destroy us, eat us up, if we could only feel it, stop feeling the pain, stop running away – just hold something fragile, delicate, tender, for two minutes, ours alone, important to us, cherished – adored.
It's done.
I'm done.
Now… how do you feel?
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 an 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.
23:00 Posted in Blog , Books , Leisure , Shopping , Web | Permalink | Comments (7) | Email this