Wednesday, 07 May 2008
Deprestrogen - and How You Cunts Can Cure It
Between Taschen catalogues crammed full of tits & ass – and one book on penises – magazine supplements pointing out how my 'female brain' can't 'understand' men, and various films and TV where my sex gets to strip and scream, sometimes together, I seem to be surrounded – sunk in – just how irrelevant I am.
Then this afternoon I come across this article headlining on IMDB Is There a Real Woman In This Multiplex?
And a very good article it is too. A woman after my own heart.
But, there's no doubt about it, besides me and her, there seems to be precious few of us yelling about the sheer misogyny of who we are 'supposed' to be.
With the exception of getting to fend for ourselves – albeit for less money – women's lives have definitely got worse. The suffragettes could have saved themselves a lot of hunger-striking, and the women's libbers a lot of underwear. They did fuck all in the long run.
Sure, they don't marry us off to old men these days (unless you're a royal or from a fundamentalist religion), but otherwise women's lot is definitely worse than it was in your mother's day – or your grandmother's.
Think about it. We get to work, but we don't get to have a career. Some women try it, and even pull it off up to a point, but they pay a price for it that men never do.
Career women are selfish, unfeminine, ball-breakers. Even other women don't like them. They're hard, unfeminine (can't stress that often enough), cold, mean, heartless, greedy, ambitious, warped, unnatural. They treat their families appallingly, depriving their husbands of masculinity, belittling them by association. (How can a man be a man if his wife earns more, works harder, and commands more respect?) They neglect their children, putting their four-wheel drives and blackberries before everything else. They produce narcissistic, neurotic, driven children and mincing, suicidal homosexuals. Even delinquents. And serial killers.
Career women have broken down the very fabric of society, producing a generation of latch-key kids who don't know how to cook and who smoke crack.
This, of course, is because it is all women's fault. No matter what it is, it's women's fault. No matter what's gone wrong with the world – we done it.
I'd like to believe this was a new thing, part of the general malaise of modern life, because it would make my argument look so very shiny, but actually it's a very old thing; it's just got more comprehensive, that's all.
This is the list of the things that used to be women's fault:-
1. Infidelity. If he did it, it was because he was bored (because she didn't make enough effort), or because she'd 'let herself go' (his beer belly/baldness is never an issue), or she was a shrew (you don't pick fault with men – ever), or bad with money (women's families come first – always), etc, etc, etc.
If she did it, it was because she was a slut. Or because she was a slut. Or maybe even a slut.
2. Bad children. She didn't bring them up properly – end of conversation.
3. Bad husbands. If he hit her she provoked it. If he hit the children she'd brought them up badly and they'd provoked it. If he fucked the children it was for the same reasons as number 1 – see Infidelity.
4. Bad housekeeping. She was a slattern, a lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing who'd rather stand a the street corner yakking than polish her step.
And that was it, pretty much. In other words, anywhere you could go wrong would be domestic. It was up to you to keep the house running sweetly. If the house wasn't sweet it was your fault. Your domain; your fault.
Now look at how that list has grown. Here is a list of the things that are now women's fault:-
First – all of the above. Nothing's changed. Women are still considered guardians of home and hearth and custodian of everybody's feelings – even the cat's. What's more, now it isn't just your relatives or neighbours that are going to judge you – now it's everyone. Complete strangers on TV, the media – 'experts', every one – are all pushing into your home, pointing out all the things you should be doing – from taking care of your husbands 'feminine' side, to making sure your kids get enough vitamins to get them into Mensa.
On top of that we now have to worry about being essentially flawed, something that needs 'fixed'.
Only a couple of days ago I actually read on Yahoo news that women were twice as likely to get depressed as men (nooooo…) and that 'they' (the scientists) didn't know why, but that it was possibly (read probably) hormones.
Jesus Christ, yes. Why hasn't someone told us before? It's the depression hormone. All us women are fitted with a neat little depression gland that secretes Deprestrogen. It's probably behind our tits.
Men don't have hormones, you see. Nope. They have this unique biology that runs on something else, just not hormones. It can't be hormones, you see, because they're a woman thing. Because women have ovaries and wombs and shit like that, and they have these hormones that just gallop into the blood at random moments and suddenly – snap – we're engulfed in Deprestrogen, which makes us cry and rant and eat chocolate. Because men never cry, or rant or eat chocolate, never mind do anything irrational.
Where the hell do these cretins get off with this shit? Although it's been recognised for a long time that negative thought patterns are the most likely factor in depression, and that cognitive therapy is the most successful method for treating it – with no chemicals, hormonal or otherwise, involved – they are still spouting piffle like this.
Why is it that whenever anything a woman says or does is considered unacceptable that the mental illness/chemical imbalance, you're-just-a-mad-bitch crap starts pouring out?
Because we're flawed, that's why.
That's what the modern woman has attained that her mother and her grandmother and all the others before her never had – the 'proof' that you are a fundamentally flawed, genetically irreversible disaster area.
See, before we had the cure-all of the 'Women's Movement', women were still considered inferior – actually, physically, like blacks having longer arms and a sense of rhythm.
When we got the vote, and the 'right' to work our asses off for less pay and no real promotion, it became politically incorrect to consider a woman as inferior. They could be smart enough, they'd proved it by fitting all those little wires on the circuit boards for half of men's wages. The scientists had to stop talking about their inferior biology and their smaller brains.
But the horrible fact was the inferiority theory didn't go away. It's like all those people who think taking Sambo and gollies out of children's books stops racism.
Newsflash – it doesn't, it just diverts it somewhere else.
And our 'somewhere else' is our flawedness.
And now all you cheery chappies, male and female, who think feminists are angry lesbians, are sitting shaking your heads, sneering at what mysterious 'flaws' these might be. Like the blacks, the women get it too easy. Everybody bends over backwards for women these days – they get all the best jobs, and they get to wear skirts (oh, the envy).
Okay, let's just look at some of these silly, irrelevant, too-much-fuss-over-nothing-typical-women flaws we've acquired along with our 'rights' and votes. Here's a short list, roughly in order of fear and loathing.
1. Fat. Women are fat, fat, fat. Unless you are a size 0, you are FAT. Nowadays a size 10 or 12 (that's a 6 or an 8 in the U.S.) is likely to be referred to as 'round' or 'curvy'.
On what planet?
The average British woman is a size 16. Ms Average is even bigger in the U.S., and yet a size 12 is 'curvy'? By what standard? Why, by the standard of how in error women essentially are. It's nothing you can fix, you're just wrong.
Women have a genetic predisposition to fat. For a start we have an extra layer of it. Nature thought it would be useful for us. Nature was WRONG.
Not only that, but we put it on easily. Pregnancy, menstrual fluctuations – hey, those good old hormones that make us depressed. Wouldn't you just know it? Wrong, wrong, wrong.
2. Hair. Unless it's on your head, it's wrong. Body hair on a woman is just wrong. It grows there? That's our point: you're flawed. 'Real' women (i.e. sexy, desirable women; the only real value women have) have smooth legs, arms, faces – skin in general. Flawed, wrong women have hair in their underarms, on their legs, their faces – hell, even round their nipples. Goddamn freaks.
And don't even start us on hairy snatches. To quote the internet, ewwwwwwwwwwwwww….
See? Even the internet in the immensity of its wisdom, knows hairy snatches are just wrong.
3. Smell. Everything about women smells. Especially their crotches. Women's crotches not only smell but their smell varies throughout the month, getting more or less pungent according to how moist it is. Which also varies. Smelly and moist? Dear God, does it get any wronger?
4. Wrinkles. Women wrinkle, age, go grey. It's a disgusting lapse of taste. Real women (i.e. sexy, blah, blah, blah….) are smooth, pre-pubescent, scentless, hairless, and forever chestnut/flaxen-haired. If you're not – you're wrong.
And that lot's just the tip of the iceberg. I haven't even touched on tit size, bleeding (that's beyond wrong, that's repulsive), emotional instability, showing off, dressing 'badly', frigidity, sluttishness, eating disorders, excessive shopping, drinking and shoes, relationship problems, failure to raise child geniuses, male emasculation… The list is endless.
The simple fact is your mother and grandmother just didn't have these problems. Mothers were expected to get fat, go grey and adopt the 'peenie' (that's an apron to you, not a sex organ) as soon as they popped their first brat.
A pre-consumerism mother aspired to a weekly perm and a pot of cold cream as her beauty care. She shaved her legs, and anything else that sprouted, with her husband's razor, and her muff was her own. Only sluts meddled with their pubic hair and no-one saw your big sensible, comfortable, sane cotton pants anyway. The only things they waxed were floors and furniture and they didn't have thrush every two minutes from tight nylon underwear and vaginal deodorants.
Yes, we women, we've never had it so good. Now we have so many products to choose from, so many solutions to fix ourselves.
Roll on the next great new Celebrity Beach Nettle and Rhubarb Soup Diet. I need to be perfect. And I need it now.
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 (on the Blogspirit site) 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 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.
22:20 Posted in Blog , Books , Film , Leisure , Shopping , Web | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Wednesday, 09 April 2008
100 Reasons Why I am a Genius - no, really...
In the strangest of strange places right now. I'm chiefly engaged in writing new features for Cult Fiction to make it an "all new, all singing, all dancing" kind of publication.
So far, I have a new bio of me which confesses to my ownership of The Dirty Club – a child sex club that isn't nearly as perverse as it sounds, or is possibly more perverse than it sounds, depending on your point of view – then I have the Will I Like DANNY? 'criminal profile' i.e. a Cosmo style (not) listing of Are you the 'typical' (there's no such thing) DANNY reader? Then we have the Read a Good Movie feature which is a list of the 'if you like X movie, you'll like DANNY' variety and, last of all – at least so far – a feature entitled Subverting the Genre, about how DANNY subverts just about any genre you care to name.
And that's as far as I've got.
It's a strange place because I'm doing something I've never really done before – I'm using me as my Perfect Reader. We've had so many misfires with DANNY publicity that we've decided to throw caution to the winds and model the perfect DANNY reader on my likes and dislikes, the places I'd go (IMDB & Amazon, pretty much), things I'd see and do.
The only real basis we have for this breathtaking strategy is our most 'successful' fans share a remarkable similarity of taste in 'fiction' to mine, and our most 'unsuccessful' fans have had preferences and tastes where I'd never venture in a million years, so we figure, walk towards me and away from them and we're heading in the right direction.
Hey, it's a plan – the best one we've had so far – so don't knock it.
We've been sitting on advertising campaigns for IMDB & Amazon for ages – too scared to spend the budgets in case we cock up, or they are not the right place – but we've got to let go some time and that would be now.
Or, at least, after the 4th of July when DANNY Volume 1, the Revised Edition, officially hits the US.
It will be available here too, by the way, should you want to read The Version With More Commas as I've come to think of it. Truthfully, it will be a slightly better edition: easier to read, more graphic cover, better design generally, plus, of course, it may have some of the original beginning reinstated.
Still not entirely sure on that. After all, I cut it out the first time – must have had a reason. Personally, I think I just got the Must-Have-Striking-Opening-Scene disease and went a little nuts when I was editing it. But we'll see.
So, what other news? Well, the free extract of Volume 3 is up and running finally. You can read this via the Secret Site portal on Danny-is God (you'll find the link down below). Unfortunately it still has bold type on the first page because Mr Scratchmann has been doing a load of commissions in the US (he recently placed an online portfolio on the i-Spot after deliberating on whether he should for a mere 10 years). He was immediately inundated with work, which was nice, but which came on top of a load of commissions in the UK.
Still, never complain about work – you never know when it will dry up again. I will, however, keep chivvying his ass about getting it fixed to make it a more comfortable reading experience.
I, for my part, have decided finally to put the DANNY Elite Discussion Board (not sure it is a discussion board, but can't think what else to call it at the moment) on a whole new site, which is at neither MySpace nor Livejournal but is, instead, on Blogger, a Google site. And here is The Dirty Club.
It has been named in memory of the above-mentioned child sex club which I, disappointingly – (once again, or not) – ran as a child, and which got me into no end of trouble. Now, as then, I am going public, but we will definitely not be indulging in any actual sex, just talking about sex and its ramifications as viewed through DANNY – and other academic-sounding and fun polemics, of course.
As you can see, you have to be a member to get in and we will set up a page on DANNY-is-God in due course to let you join up.
The very rigorous testing will involve truth drugs, eyeball scanning and an oath of allegiance to the Lithuanian flag, plus some indisputably filthy hazing rituals and the sacrifice of your first child or a small pet – whichever the phase of the moon proscribes.
More details of that once we've set up the painstaking entrance exam (and I've actually written some content).
So that's my excitement for the week.
God, what a sad life I have.
Been watching Heroes and enjoying it but, dear God, it really does have fanboy coming out its ass. It's as if they sat down and thought "How can we capture that huge fanboy market out there?" and wrote an identikit story where all the fanboys get to play a part and sad losers get to have the dreaded "special powers".
As I am enjoying it, I consider myself very lucky that I saw a few episodes when it was just starting to get famous here, on the strength of which I got the box set for my Xmas. If I'd come to it from the fame end, as it were, I'd have undoubtedly run away from it screaming.
On the face of it, it seems like a nightmare scenario: geeky kids; comic artists (nooooooooooooooooooh!); Japanese geeky kids in comics (nooooooooooooooooooh!); doughnut-eating-decent-policemen-with-nasty-friends-and-adulterous-wives; cheerleaders who spend the whole thing in split-front mega-short skirts, and who look like some terrifying cross between Shirley Temple and Amber Bosoms the Teenage Slut Porn Starlet from Texas whose web cam gets more hits than Youtube, and who may regularly get burnt/beaten/broken but who never loses the curl in her hair and whose lip gloss still shimmers in 1000 degree furnace fires; evil men who have huge art collections (why?); evil English men (I would say why again but we all know it's the accent) who chop vegetables; the Petrelli brother incestuous touchy-feely thing (oh, I'm the pot and it's the kettle); the evil über-villain who absorbs power to become über-villainous so that he can rule the world and reign supreme as The Evil One Who Feels "Special".
What? You might as well put The Evil One Whose Mother Preferred His Jock Brother.
See, that's what I mean, wall-to-wall geek. But, hey, it's good wall-to-wall geek, so more power to them. I suspect that the two Japanese boys, much as they are by far my favourite thing in the show, are raging racism of the worst kind, but what the hell – we're white, right? We can say anything.
So, the inexplicable title of this blog? I wrote a piece called 100 Reasons Why I am a Genius then decided I'd never publish it, but I so loved the title I thought I'd put it on here.
Got to give you something to wonder about me in your idle moments.
P.S. The child sex club mentioned in this blog DOES NOT exist, nor has it ever existed, anywhere, ever. It is A JOKE. Tasteless maybe, but still a joke. The Dirty Club™, is a discussion forum for readers of DANNY by Chancery Stone and has nothing to do with child sex, anywhere, ever. There is no such thing as child sex.
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 (on the Blogspirit site) 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 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.
20:05 Posted in Blog , Books , Film , Leisure , Shopping , Web | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this
Monday, 24 March 2008
Twinks, Tweenies and Why Dan is so NOT the Man
So, between jobs (finished the transfer of Vol 1's MS and half-way through correcting the last pad of Delaney) and felt like writing a blog.
So, what'll we talk about then? The full horror of watching La Vie en Rose then Control one after the other? Or a comparison of the OC versus One Tree Hill?
The latter, I think.
I'm a teen junkie. Can't get enough of that teen fiction (figuratively speaking, of course. I don't read the stuff.) I love teen movies, teen TV – all grist to my voracious and unnatural teen appetite.
It has to be grown-up teen, of course – not Marybelle & Ashley, or whatever they're called.
Having watched all the series of the OC, I was looking for my next TV project – and the only other things I wanted, like Entourage 2 or Prison Break 2, were all still too dear – when the opportunity to get One Tree Hill presented itself in Tesco's. They had them cheap in the sale so I, uncharacteristically for something untested, bought the first two series.
I've just completed the first and am starting on the second. And the differences?
Hell, a whole world apart. And not just in wealth either.
First, the OC is a million miles ahead in scripting, location, characters and fashion. Secondly, it has Julie Cooper.
On the plus side, One Tree doesn't have Marissa. The joy of that is hard to replace.
I neither love nor hate Mischa Barton – she does, after all, make a fabulous clothes-horse, being so tall and thin there are no actual body parts to get in the way of drape or line. She's a sort of walking coat hanger. But her character… Dear God, the pain. If there is a more annoying Californian brat out there I've yet to 'virtually' meet her.
Marissa pouted and snivelled and flounced her way through (3?) entire series before we got rid of her. She was the proverbial Scots 'Lang dreep o' misery' (long drip of misery). She wasn't so much a drama queen as a wet sponge. For some reason whenever she came into a scene it went all soggy, like pastry left out in the rain. Even when she was smiley-happy there was something innately whingey about her.
And her on again/off again affair with Ryan… To repeat, dear God, the pain.
Ryan was the second worst thing about the OC, and his combination with Marissa just about made them The Toxic Couple to be Avoided at Parties – or just about anywhere else, for that matter. (Someday I will delight you with an essay on the semiotic metaphor of Ryan's wife-beater vest. I kid you not.)
It didn't help that he only had 2 expressions – scowl 1 and scowl 2 – and after a while of watching him schlump and sulk his Brando-lite way through another We're-so-over/We're-so-not scene with long tall Sally I would gladly have fried my brain as a welcome release from pain. They were even giving Smallville's Clark & Lana a run for their money in the most annoying Hollywood would-they-make-up-their-fucking-mind pairing. No easy feat.
Despite this being the most overused plot line in US television, and despite it annoying a large amount of viewers, they still trot it out often enough to cause motion sickness.
Yelling at the TV doesn't help either. (And yet, I do. I do.)
One Tree has been no exception to this sadly used-to-death-please-kill-it-already rule, having an on again/off again pairing between just about everybody, including the parents from hell, Mr Man-breasts himself, Dan the lug-nut head, and Mrs I-fucked-your-brother-but-I'm-innately-decent Deb.
Oh Dan, Dan, Dan – he is such a cunt, and with probably the ugliest fucking haircut that ever made it into a square-jaw soap opera. What is with that fucking fringe?
But our hero, Lucas, in One Tree, is definitely cuter than Ryan, even if he is distinctly simian in appearance. But he can act, tearing up as often as Demi Moore, with about as much expertise and glycerine beauty.
I admire that in any actor, and even more in a 'teen' boy actor. Yes, he goes at it like an old pro.
But his girlf of choice, the truly so NOT artistic Peyton (even the name's wrong)... What is with the fucking Bubble perm? The poor kid looks like she's stuck in some 80's teen flick. They've given her a leather jacket and a terribly Chloe Smallville bedroom, right down to its counterpart arty version of the Wall of Weird, but the girl does not have an artistic bone in her body.
I've known a lot of artists, some of them scatty, some shrewd; some rebellious, some conformist; some Bohemian, some frumpy, but I have never ever known one who is a cheerleader, who looks like a cheerleader, and who dates sports jocks.
I'm guessing here they thought, "Oh, off the wall. We gotta be off the wall. We need an angle, something new, fresh. She can't be geeky, gothy, nerdy, bo-ho – they've all been done before. I know, let's make a her a cheerleader."
Oh, for fuck sake, there's subverting the genre and just being plain daft. It's like casting a Greenpeace veteran as the president of the United States, or a vegetarian as the new head of the Meat Marketing Board. I mean, technically, why not? Just a job, right? But we all know it doesn't happen.
What makes it worse, is that the actress so can't handle that part of her role. Every time you see her doing something 'artistic' (bless…) she is colouring in. The poor bitch only ever gets to put tiny finishing touches, with Tippex and big, safe marker pens, to already completed projects. They are so uncertain of her talents that they don't even let her draw a big line or whack paint on a wall. I'm surprised they didn't issue her with plastic scissors to stop her cutting herself.
And what about Haley, who turned into Mormon girl? "Yes, I want to have sex with you, Nathan, it's just that it's important to me…" (soulful eyes) "I need to know you care." (I do, I do, he cries, uselessly.)
What the fuck was that all about? If they were trying to sell teens on the idea of being careful, they failed miserably. Worse, if they were trying to make it look like self-respect, they killed that concept dead in the water – and then beat it with a shovel. She came out looking like some mad, deranged frigid old-woman-teen who collected recordings of the Sound of Music and had a crush on the local priest.
These kids' shows can never resist the siren call of sanctimoniousness. You never get very far into any plot line – particularly if it is dark or 'controversial' – before it sinks into a morass of judgmentalism, often throwing little things like plot and characterisation right out the window to do it. Middle American must not be upset.
But the worst thing about One Tree has to be dear old pancake-face Nathan. No, of course we don't ever notice that his face is four shades of orange darker than his neck, desperately trying to cover up those nasty teen acne bumps, nor that he can't even rustle up two expressions – just the one.
An actor straight out of Joey's smell the fart school of acting, he flounders around like a beached whale when asked to do anything not involving balls (basket, not gonad). It physically hurts me to watch him trying to squeeze out an emotion. Any emotion.
I honestly do not know how he got cast. Sure, he's tall, dark and nondescript (and somehow so gay – that teeny toy nipple ring he coyly sports doesn't help), but after that he's a total non-starter.
So One Tree Hill versus the OC then?
Entertaining enough, but some serious acting flaws, too many square-jawed TV soap stars to be truly engaging and, sadly, with nothing else to offer us as shiny and beautiful as Orange County to save its duller moments.
Anybody want to buy two box-sets?
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 (on the Blogspirit site) 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 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.
00:15 Posted in Blog , Books , Film , Leisure , Shopping , Web | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
And Then There Were 5
In the process (just started actually) of re-editing Volume 1 for the 'new' (i.e. American) edition. Oh, how I wish I'd been less of a maverick and just stuck with the literary conventions. But, oh no, I had to make it 'accessible' (well, that one sure as hell backfired). I had to write it like people actually talked and moved and thought. I had to keep the flow, the speed, the momentum.
Arse-wipe. I needed my head looked. Now I have a loft full of an edition I hate and no way to get rid of them other than by selling them one by miserly one.
Part of me wants this second edition, because I get to do good things, like reinstate the original opening, fix things I could have said better, spot little shifts in paragraphing that time has clarified – stuff like that.
But part of me hates it. I want to get on and get the rest of the books out, be done with it. Well, get on and write 5 and be done with it.
Oddly, tired as I am with all things DANNY, right now I really want to write 5. Suddenly it's become kind of pressing – and I've got a hell of a long time before I get to indulge that creative urge.
I'm doing a really dangerous thing here, have been for years – I'm fucking with the creative urge.
Stephen King and I see eye to eye on a lot of things, having (from a craft point of view) a lot in common, but the one thing I am with him on 110% is Never Fuck With the Creative Urge.
If you want to write, you gotta write. It's like needing a shit – you have to do it when you have to do it, or you are in for one very unhappy gut. Ignore it too often and you might just fuck up your gut altogether.
So I'm postponing and postponing the cathartic dump of DANNY 5 to get the other books out there, all the time aware that I might be fucking it up entirely. Bad idea.
I do a kind of trade-off thing with my psyche. I'm always saying to it, "Just hang on in there. Not long to go now, and I promise you can write 5 till your heart's content. Gives you some time to think it through. Here, why don't you write down some ideas? Yeah, take a note of that. That's good. We could use that." It's like bargaining with a sulky two-year-old – and just as likely to end in tears.
Of course, none of this is being helped by the fact that taking the MS back from Quark into my computer has lost all the italics formatting (of course – why does it do that?) and I have the option to work from my hand-revised final draft that was corrected straight into the Mac (and which is buried in the loft) or work from the Mac-converted-back-to-PC version I had been going to use, but then I have to reinstate all the italics from the paper book by hand. If you can follow that. Just writing it is time-consuming.
Out of the two options, working from my hand-corrected draft seems the 'easier' option as, at least, that's in red ink, and so not so easy to miss things and make mistakes. But either option is an added drain on time and concentration – and I've barely got the energy to get through a day's work as it is.
On top of this I've got a partially corrected edition of our 'intro to the quadrilogy' paperback 'Cult Fiction' which has been sitting out of stock on Amazon since last year because I can't get the content right.
I know some of you have ordered this from Amazon UK. I promise I am working on it and you will get it – some day. I wrote two new pieces for it which are both geared to 'Will I like DANNY?' The first is almost a social (or maybe a psychological) profile of A Typical DANNY Reader, the second a list of Movies that 'if you like this you'll like DANNY'.
They are an attempt to give strangers a handle on DANNY so that they can feel more confident buying it, but I don't know if I'm really opening it up to more people or niche-marketing it to death.
Hellish. I seem to have turned overnight (if only – it's been a long, slow decline) into an uncertain, bottomless well of I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing-and-now-have-the-self-esteem-of-a-gnat. Quentin Tarantino would be ashamed of me. I don't blame him – I'm ashamed of me myself.
And I've caught a bug. Some lousy thing that makes me profoundly dizzy, falling over in shops and hanging onto the trolley like an old woman, staggering when I walk along the street, pitching on my noodle when I bend over or look up at the sky. It's accompanied by more brain fog than a-six-pack-of-Mars-bars-in-one-sitting where I spend five minutes trying to remember the word for dog.
I don't know what little fucker gave me it but I'd like to hunt him down like said dog and feed him his own testicles. Twice.
Must be my addled and dissipated life of promiscuity, bisexuality and endless (prescription) drugs catching up with me. Should never have done that porno in Rio. (No, never really did that. Did one for California though – shot in London, somewhat dully.) Hepatitis C would be easier to deal with than this.
Any other news apart from my cataclysmic moaning? Mr Scratchmann almost has an agent for his Orkney book. She's working with him piecemeal where he does a bit, sends it in and she critiques it back. Sort of writing by (very small) committee. I admire him immensely for his endurance and determination. Me, I'd probably have started a fight or thrown a hissy fit or at least a major huff by now and queered my chances. He's also tanking along doing freelance work again.
We needed the money (and then some) and he decided to send out a mailer to all his old editorial contacts and landed work within a fortnight – for the Guardian, no less. He did a piece for them (On Malcolm McLaren) then landed the commission for a monthly series. It's got club in the title but that brain fog has guaranteed I've forgotten what it's actually called. (Just asked him. Hasn't got club in the title at all. It's in the club section and is called All Ears.)
Anyway, if you read the Guardian he's in it right now. He's also got a children's book publisher interested. Somewhat bizarre, given his normal work, but, hey, what the hell.
We also got the offer to be the arts/culture presenters on a local radio station but we turned it down. I know, but it was too much work, having to go round seeing everything and interviewing people then putting the show together. But I was rather seduced by the idea of the two of us like Richard and Judy. You gotta love that.
So, that's about it. All there is to know about me and mine.
You do realise that if I do ever get as far as 5, and haven't forgotten how to write, that DANNY will actually be able to qualify as a sextet (4 single volumes and a two-parter [3]). How good is that?
The DANNY Sextet. Just can't get away from sex at all.
How droll.
Not.
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 (on the Blogspirit site) 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 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.
17:40 Posted in Blog , Books , Leisure , Shopping , Web | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
Amy Winehouse, 2 Useless Ex-husbands and 23 Pounds of Funyun Pudge
She has a Jewish nose, a dyed beehive and LOTS of mascara – crazy bitch. What's not to hate?
A couple of weeks back, Maxim magazine website was running an article called The 5 Unsexiest Women Alive. Couldn't resist that gem – off I went. And, so you can enjoy the Amy (and other crazy bitch) bashing, here it is for you, Please don't show me real women, it upsets my fragile male sense of self.
So who are the five unsexiest (no, it's not a word, but a man made it up, and only dykes argue with men) women ALIVE!!!!!!!!!! (Felt that needed a good screaming headline.)
Well, it's pretty much a straight job-share between successful, older celebrities and young CRAZY (I'm really getting into this tabloid thing) bitches that do unseemly things in public.
You know, they used to lock women like this up in lunatic asylums. Nothing guaranteed to get a woman in the loony bin faster than doing things that any average bloke does of a Saturday night – you know, the drinking, snorting, public brawling kind of thing. When women do it it's CRAZY. Only now we can't lock them up any more.
Oh, wait a minute didn't we lock up Britney Spears recently? Yeah, she got in an altercation with the police when they were coming to take her children away. Wow – weird, crazy bitch. Why the hell would anybody freak when someone comes to take their children away? I hear she had some dodgy tooth brushing habits too. These celebrities, where do they get off?
And now that I come to think of it, isn't Lindsay Lohan always getting dragged off to psychiatrists, or threatened with psychiatrists, or introduced to psychiatrists, by Oprah, her father, mother, Jay Leno, President Clinton and the National Enquirer? Hell, haven't you signed the petition to have Lily Allen, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan put away as CRAZY BITCHES WHO SHOULD BE LOCKED UP AND STOP ENDANGERING THE AMERICAN WAY… OR SOMETHING.
Okay, I promise I won't use any more big letters suitable for small children. But you have to promise me that you will get a T-shirt and a marker pen, pin a picture of the Crazy Bitch Celebrity of your choice on your front and write underneath it, "I once ate 2 sponge cakes – deliberately. Now let's see you lock me up, motherfucker."
No-one will have a clue what you're talking about but we'll all know. It will be like a secret club.
Today, of course, as part of the general 'Amy Winehouse is Ruining Our Way of Life' hate spiel (remind me again – what did she actually do?) Yahoo has a headline with a picture of Amy looking like the Wicked Witch of the West (not difficult, Amy looks like a harsh Jewish Princess) with the sneery headline "So… who wants to look like Amy then?" with the not-hidden-at-all inference that no-one – I repeat, no-one – would want to look like Amy.
She's launching a fashion/perfume range, you see, and Yahoo just can't get past the fact that a drunken no-good, crazy bitch like Amy, who is no conventional beauty (but rivetingly imperfectly delicious) dares to think that young people might want to buy into some of that bad girl chic. The bitch, the bad, evil, crazy, successful, wealthy, incredibly robust bitch. (Dd we get to lock her up yet? Why isn't she collapsing under the barrage of this constant assault? After all, Britney folded, Lohan's showing cracks. Oh, fold, you crazy bitch – fold.)
We used to burn them, of course, and then we tried locking them in convents and, finally, lunatic asylums. That's what we do with 'crazy' – i.e. disobedient, mouthy, badly-behaved – women. Then we had to stop burning them, locking them up, tarring & feathering them. Now we are much more crafty. Now we burn them at the publicity stakes. Now we send packs of jackals after them to photograph their every move, post the most unflattering pictures we can find. If they're not too fat they're too thin (Kate Moss, bad, snorting not-role-model nearly-crazy-bitch anyone?). If they're not compulsively eating, drinking or snorting, they're compulsively shopping, partying or tanning (Paris Hilton, Mrs Beckham, the Ritchie girl?).
Oh, Crazy Bitch comes in lots of flavours, but it's always about excess, un-ladylike behaviour. And, of course, being very public. We really hate them for being everywhere – like it was their fault. In the case of Paris or Posh you can blame them for publicity seeking – if you really feel that publicity seeking is a terrible cruel thing to do and your small children should not be exposed to it. But Winehouse, Allen, Spears and co. are not big on hunting it out – it's more a case of them not being able to out-run it.
Nobody seems to question the validity of what is credited to the ladies as 'wild' behaviour. Male rock stars have been trashing rooms, puking up and decking people since the year dot. They're just living the rock star life – those wild guitar heroes. What about Oliver Reed, whose behaviour makes all of the girls' naughtiness together look like Noddy on an outing with Big Ears. Ah, Oliver, such a character – what a bloke, eh? Funny, I don't remember anyone locking him up, and he spent his entire life drunk, never mind a week or two. Shane McGowan – never sober. Keith Moon – don't even start.
To my knowledge never once sectioned, any of them. Nor were they called crazy, other than as the most flattering, blokey headshaking epithet. And what wild Oliver stunt has Britney pulled? She hit a car with a brolly. Oh, and she shaved her head. Wow, scary shit. No wonder her dad wants to take her money off her – just to manage it, of course, until she gets better. Yes, poor Britney, she's losing it. Literally, if dad has anything to do with it.
Or Amy, what about her? She had a fight. With her husband. In public. There was blood. She also – and please stop reading this if you're under eighteen – smudged her mascara and looked messy.
And we won't even start on Lohan. She once went out without any pants on.
What I want to know is what were the paparazzi doing sticking lenses up her skirt anyway? Bet no-one ever dared stick a Pentax down Oliver Reed's trousers to see if he was going commando. Hey, maybe she should have hit him with her brolly, then she could have got herself sectioned and given her fortune to her father. That would have been the proper thing to do, show young women you can't just smudge your mascara in public without paying the price.
So, I'll just leave you with this little witch-burning thought, care of Maxim's delightful list on just how we women fail to be sexy, so that you can make sure you don't do this and LOSE YOUR MAN (sorry, couldn't resist one last yell).
Don't get menopausal (Madonna), don't be in a hit TV show or have a boyish figure (Sandra Oh), don't let your drug use outstrip your boyfriend's (it threatens his manhood, Amy), don't have children or gain weight – any weight (Britney), don't ever, ever wear short skirts and behave like anyone out of Sex in the City – oh, and don't get famous, rich or successful.
Feminism is dead – long live Celebrity Culture! God, I am one crazy bitch……..
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 (on the Blogspirit site) 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 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.
23:40 Posted in Blog , Film , Leisure , Shopping , Web | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Sunday, 20 January 2008
Not in My Movie
Filmic clichés – how I loathe them.
So, in that spirit, here is Journalism Cliché Number One – The Easy to Digest Soundbite List for Morons.
Yes, it's Ten Things I Hate About Movie Cliches – a decidedly uncomprehensive list of the lazy, irritating filmmaking semiotic tricks (we know it, so we're going to [mis]use it) you will never see in a movie of mine.
1. Throwing up in the toilet. Why, in the name of God, would anyone want to put their head in a toilet when they feel sick? Would you? Yes, it maybe has the dubious benefit of being easier to flush away, but are you really thinking that rationally when you're hungover/poisoned/dying? People shit and piss in toilets. They smell. Intelligent people do NOT stick their heads down toilets. End of conversation.
2. Blue lights during sex. Okay, where are they – the blue lights? I mean, every Hollywood film has them, so where do people get them? Hotel rooms, Midwestern bedrooms, barns, offices – doesn't matter where they are, as soon as those clothes come off the blue lights come on. Stop it already. Enough.
3. Washing down drugs with booze. I'm not talking cocaine here, I'm talking headache tablets or painkillers that the hero falls back on when he loses an arm or two. Can you begin to imagine how you'd feel with four paracetamol and a triple whisky gurgling around inside? Yeah, unconscious or puking – neither of which would spruce you up to go on fighting.
4. Even more drugs. We're talking quantity issues here. Heroes never ever take the 2 or 3 tablets as prescribed on the bottle. In fact, have you ever seen a hero actually read a label? They always knock the lid off (usually with their teeth or their one remaining foot) and empty maybe ten tablets into their hand, which they then proceed to swallow dry. Have you ever tried swallowing ten tablets dry? Come to that, have you ever taken ten Paracetamol and not had to have your stomach pumped? Some of them even do it repeatedly in one movie. Are they taking painkillers designed for very small rodents?
5. Somersaulting when you can jump. Okay, I know this is part of that whole fun thing you martial arts fans go for, but Christ, it's so overdone. Nowadays even fire-fighters leap backwards out of tall buildings to save the cat. It spoils pacing, and don't even start me on believability: "Oh, no, a man with a machine gun, I must run away, but not before I do a triple somersault off this balcony…"
6. Paper disguised as money. How many films? Come on, honestly, count 'em. Yeah, you can't, can you? How many otherwise really scary shaved & tattooed or sharp-suited & slimy gangsters have you seen conned by the old $700,000,000 in one-real-bill-on-a-pile-of-blank-paper trick? My cat knows when I'm pulling a fast one. (No, this really is expensive Sheba. It just happens to be in a jumbo-sized own brand tin.)
7. Fly-wire rigged jumping, fighting, leaping, kicking, bullet-dodging. Like lighting your own farts – fun the first time, but after that? Might be original if they used it for an inventive sex scene, or an underwater ballet, but otherwise, sick, sick sick of it. Give me fight scenes a la Brick any day.
8. Serial killers who keep pretty journals. Yes, we know they're nuts, and, yes, we know crazy people write bizarre things in their journals. Reality check – some of them are barely literate, actually, but you wouldn't know that on Planet Hollywood. No, there they keep notebooks worthy of Leonardo Da Vinci, with miniscule mirror-writing and detailed collage-work and superb graphic art. Hell, they ought to give up the mass killing and take up batik and macramé – give that creative urge an outlet.
9. People who take energy saving too far. Yes, you know what I'm talking about – the chronic misuse of light-bulbs. Nobody bloody switches them on. What is wrong with these people? They go into the dark, scary, dangerous house/basement/crypt where there is a serial killer/zombie/angry stalker, AND a light. But do they ever use it? No. It's not that I object to Dark is Scary, it's just that if you want to use dark at least give us a plausible reason for it so that we're not sitting there shouting, "Turn on the fucking light, you idiot."
10. Computer nerds who save the day. The only reason we get these fantasies in movies is because Hollywood is overrun by computer nerds making homages to other computer nerds. Computer nerds never save anything. No, trust me, they don't. Even the rare bright ones are incapable of having a conversation, never mind overriding NASA. The idea that any of them could have the wits to 'save' anybody belongs in the same league as them winning the girl by force of personality. Besides, most of them really fancy the square-jawed hero anyway.
Right, that's it. I could give you more, but I won't. Cliché of Journalism Number Two – people are too stupid to handle lists of more than 10 items.
Next blog, Wanky Hitchcock. Don't know what it's about yet, but I just love the title. (Thanks be to Jodie.)
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 (on the Blogspirit site) 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 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.
21:39 Posted in Blog , Books , Film , Leisure , Shopping , Web | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this
Monday, 10 December 2007
Live Journal is Dead, Long Live Blogspirit...
I am closing my Live Journal version of this blog down, folks, along with all other related (LJ) journals, on the 16th December (this coming Sunday)
My blog will continue, of course, as normal, right here on Blogspirit. No worries.
My MySpace blog may go in due course – haven't quite decided yet. I'll keep you posted when I decide.
So, just remember that you will no longer be able to get it at Live Journal after the end of this week.
Do you a blog with more news shortly.
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.
22:30 Posted in Blog , Books , Leisure , Shopping , Web | Permalink | Comments (10) | Email this
Tuesday, 04 December 2007
DANNY Makes Guinness Book of Records...
…for World's Smallest Launch Party.
Okay, probably not the smallest… but it must have been damn close.
Six of us showed up last night to launch DANNY 2, and that included me & Max. However, we had lurkers, possibly from the U.S., hidden under proxy servers. There could have been two or 200 – no way of knowing. What I'd like to know though is why? Why, God, WHY? Anonymous commenting allowed, no IP logging – what the hell were they afraid of? I mean, I know I'm scary, but I'm not God. Honest.
Well, it proved one thing for sure, DANNY's hardcore fans are not net people. We always kind of suspected it, but this looks like solid confirmation. Of course, I'm not a net person either – in spite of the hours I'm compelled to log up on it – so that probably figures.
Anyway, last night's party crowd entered into the spirit of the thing (too literally in my case) and it was a completely surreal evening, caused partly by me imbibing too much Amaretto and compounded by none of us being even vaguely sure of what we were doing. You could tell there wasn't a chat room junkie among us, as we spent the entirety of the first session floundering around alternately asking 'Are you there?' and 'Who's speaking please?' – straight out of Asterix, for those familiar.
Unintentionally funny and sometimes downright hilarious, it actually makes quite entertaining reading. If nothing else you can tell we were enjoying ourselves. If you want to see the interesting remains of someone else's fun, it's split into three postings (I started fresh each time LJ hit the 50 comment button, and started compacting threads, so that we wouldn't get even more disjointed than we already were).
Click onto The Drunken Fans of John to find out whether our stalwart fans want to be fucked by, loved by, or simply be John. And, of course, why Jill is known to her friends as Moll Flanders (it involves potatoes & gin, and is quite shameful). You can also see photos of yours truly, on the night, holding up the first two copies of DANNY 2 hot off the press. Click right here to see the drunken host – and the books.
Yes, you heard me right. Books arrived and were (relatively) flawless. Mr Scratchmann put all your orders through last night, during the party. They will be printed and dispatched within 48 hours, we are assured. And they do, indeed seem to get that bit right, because our last order of 101's came to us within schedule.
So… your books are on their way to you. I doubt, with Xmas post and so forth, you will see them before the beginning of next week – but you never know. Please, please, please let me know when you get them. Shall I offer a bag of chocolate coins to the first reader to get theirs? Yes, I will.
Okay, competition, first reader to get their DANNY 2 has to post an "I got it and I'm a smug bastard" posting onto Blogspirit (see link below if you are reading this on LJ or Myspace), and a bag of chocolate coins shall be yours.
Which brings me to another competition.
DANNY 2 has a blooper. I have mentioned this on DANNY-is-God, but I doubt if anyone has taken it in. I could have kept quiet about this, indeed, I probably should have, but fuck it, someone's bound to spot it sooner or later.
I knew about it straight away, as soon as I started editing, "Okay," thinks I, "not a problem, just edit it out." Aha, not so fucking easy. Turned out the whole book was built around it and it would be impossible to change. So what has happened is I've had to leave it in, and the effect of that is to transfer the blooper to Volume 1.
Unfortunately I have a stock of Volume 1 so until it's time to reprint it will have to stay. When we bring out Volume 1 in the States in the new year it will have been fixed, but all those of you owning the first British edition will have the faux blooper intact. Maybe it will make them more valuable some day.
But I thought, 'fess up or not? But given readers like Jodie it only seemed to be a matter of time before someone noticed it – so now I'm setting you the task of noticing it. But I don't want to make it too easy for you. In order to qualify for the prize you also have to spot the different line between the two Volume 2 editions.
Don't know what the prize is yet, but I'll think of something good. Tell me if there's something you'd like and I'll see if I can supply it. Signed copy, original manuscript, me to be your slave for a day and clean your cat litter tray.
Remember if you do spot either blooper or line don't blab it until you have both – don't give the competition an edge.
Okay, now we'll see who is an observant reader.
So, the only 'errors' we've found so far in the new books is Personal Jesus has too many pages and one of the ads has a typo – other than that they're looking good. We're not correcting either mistake till all the orders have been fulfilled so that it doesn't hold your books up. Those of you with Personal Jesus will have several blank pages at the end for you to write interesting notes – say, "My thoughts on my first reading of The Revenant…" which can make a basis for that review I'm going to urge you all to write.
Please, please, please again (this is my begging blog) please write a review and post it somewhere, anywhere, several wheres. Tell your friends, your aunts, your hairdresser (hairdressers are great actually – they spread the word like nobody's business).
DANNY really relies on people spreading the word. If you would like future DANNY volumes to cost less and look even better (and I very much would like to make them look and feel like the most delicious reading experience on earth) then we need more readers. Lots of them. If you think Volume 2 is good/great/shite then tell people. I don't mind if you don't like it as long as you know why you don't like it, and you sound half-way rational about it, so that other people might want to read it to see if they don't like it too.
Just tell someone, often, and loudly as you can bear/remember to do it. If you do love it then great, you shout even louder. I need you people. God, it hurts for me to say that, too many years of self-sufficiency, but I like to think you need me too, or you wouldn't be here. You want more volumes of DANNY, better volumes of DANNY, with gold leaf and velvet slipcases and tissue wraps and embossing and cut-outs and photographs commissioned for the jackets with Danny as I actually envisage him (the two Dannys I have come damn close to that though).
Enough.
Last thoughts. Dog has caught up even closer in sales (don't know current ratio). We're currently getting more new male customers than female (last three new customers were all male). And I was wrong about the puzzle quote/decoration on the last page of the books. It's in Personal Jesus, not the dog – sorry about that. My only excuse is the last few days of getting them ready were all a blur. Might actually change that round again when we do the corrections. God, there's going to be so many versions of this book it will be a collector's minefield.
Right, I need to go write a piece for a cultural website that's requested it (I know, requested – I love that.) Speak to you all again soon.
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.
18:05 Posted in Blog , Books , Leisure , Shopping , Web | Permalink | Comments (13) | Email this
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
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.