Trash Cinema, Weird Travel And Freaky People: Bizarre Book Club Non-Fiction Special

Merry morning my little chimpanzees in the planning stages of taking over the world. I’ve been reading lots of weird things and here they are:

Death Confetti: Pickers, Punks and Transit Ghosts in Portland, Oregan, by Jennifer Robin 

This is, no exaggeration, one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. I follow the author on facebook as well and, seriously, her status updates are miniature masterpieces.

Jennifer charts her non-linear journey from reclusive childhood to Portland artist with description as biting as William Burroughs and prose as rich as Anais Nin, but also completely unique. Sometimes she just remembers a character from her past, sometimes a full anecdote, sometimes she’s just looking at people on the bus, but all are beautiful. How can you not be fascinated by an intro like this:

“My directives, as established at seventeen—to experience real emotion, real contact with other people, all of the things you only learn by sucking cock, smoking rock, climbing cliffs, sleeping in catacombs, getting pregnant, and making a lot of mistakes—were fully enforced at this time. Within a year of my arrival I was playing in an electronic noise band. On and off-stage, we made—or perhaps “were”—performance art.”

The Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero 

I have genuinely never laughed so loudly and consistently at a book. If you’re unfamiliar with Tommy Wiseau’s complete mess of a film The Room, first of all where have you been, and second please watch it right now. Our fascination with it is hard to explain to people who don’t love terrible films. Example conversation with a friend:

Friend: Are you coming to Ian’s later?

Me: Yep. I’m bringing The Room

Friend: What? Not again. I’ve got Lolita at home, I’ll bring that

Me: Noooo, I can watch a good film anytime. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND MEEE!!!

And so on. Greg is the guy who played Mark (Oh, hi Mark) and he recounts the complete debacle from beginning to end including the first time he met Tommy and the events that led to his making the film. What elevates this above merely poking fun at an eccentric is the genuine level of affection – though sometimes tested – and desire to understand Tommy. He’s not a monster, he has real feelings and a desperate need to be an actor, and perhaps another reason we enjoy The Room is his sheer determination to make that happen. As Greg says, “The Room is a drama that is also a comedy that is also an existential cry for help that is finally a testament to human endurance.”

There is a film coming out, called The Masterpiece, based on this book. I, for one, will be watching it.

Everything Wrong With The Room In 8 Minutes Or Less:

Dandy in the Underworld by Sebastian Horsley 

“Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a peacock without a cause, I am a piece of transcendent trash – a futile blast of colour in a futile colourless world.”

If Sebastian had been born in the 1800s he would be one of those sons paid by their wealthy family to stay away. He crashes through life like a mixture of Byron and Withnail, rarely likeable but always interesting, an artist who’s biggest art piece was himself.

On a whim he goes diving with sharks, has a fling with gangster Jimmy Boyle, bets on the stock exchange and becomes horribly addicted to heroin and crack. When he has money he doesn’t respect it, when he doesn’t he’s desperate. He makes no excuses for shoplifting and generally being a louche, entitled rich boy and if he did I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed reading him as much. He died aged 47 of a suspected overdose.

(Be warned, I suspect he says things because he likes to be ‘shocking’):

A Curious Guide To London by Simon Leyland 

Yes, yes, there’s the Houses of Parliament and Trafalgar Square blah blah. Where are the corpses? A common cry, and one this book would like to answer.

Beneath the respectable layer of London’s past is a hidden world of information, such as the peculiar shrub in Chelsea Physic Garden that gave John Wyndham the idea for Day of the Triffids, St. Sepulchre’s watch house in Holborn (built to keep an eye out for grave diggers), the Haymarket cat opera (exactly how it sounds) or the leftover ‘snob screens’ in The Lamb pub which protected delicate wealthy eyes from the sight of the common man.

It’s separated into districts so you can have a flick through next time you go to London and see what’s about. If you’d like to see a bit more of weird London via a guide have a look at this spooky tour we embarked upon for Halloween.

Midnight Movie Madness by Ian Watson 

A cavalcade of truly terrible films, this collection takes you from Maniac ‘director’ Dwain Esper‘s exploitation efforts, through fifties B movies to nonsensical modern day fare. Some of the descriptions made me chuckle out loud, particularly in the WTF section.

If monster movies are your thing, or perhaps overseas oddities, each film has been separated into categories ( I like categories, don’t I? I never realised that before), making it easier to dip in according to mood. Enjoy!

Bizart – Podcast of Advice For Writers And Artists

Good day! I trust you slept well. Time to brush away the cobwebs that have grown around you and have a listen to the latest podcast episode by myself and artist friend Steve.

We discuss making art on a budget, ways to earn money using your creativity and a story by one of our listeners. Feel free to send us your own unusual tale under 300 words, just visit the podcast site for details. Unsure if it’s unusual? Send it anyway and let us decide.

Next episode we look at making digital art and scams targeting writers and artists to avoid.

Link to Podcast

The very colourful and surreal art of Rachel Maclean

I finished writing my book today, what joy! Perhaps I will start a cult and murder my followers as celebration. Or convince them to insert bread rolls somewhere unpleasant.

Anyway…I would like to share this post of art by Scottish lady Rachel Maclean. I watched her short films and there is something revoltingly wonderful about the phantasmagoria. Enjoy!

The business side of getting published

If you’re writing letters and sending chapters/screenplays/er, anything else out to agents then of course you need a copy of The Writer’s and Artist’s Yearbook. I also stumbled across this post on the Limebird Writer’s site and thought some might find it useful.

Here’s what they said (original post here). Now if you’ll excuse me I need to sink back into bed with my ear infection and Red Dwarf:

“When it comes to writing an agent’s submission, amongst other things your cover letter will need to include the following key information:

– The genre and target audience for your book

– A concise summary of what this book is about – its overall theme and the central plotline i.e. why is your target audience going to love this book!

If you have one, think about your current work-in-progress. Imagine by some strange chance you find yourself sitting next to an agent actively looking to take on new writers in your genre (and as this is make-believe of course they’d be happy to wait until you’ve finished it). You’re two minutes away from the train’s final destination (eurgh after those nasty films that sounds so ominous, but I’m just talking about Kings Cross, or your main terminal here!) and this is your big chance to pitch your work.

Nervousness aside, how well-equipped are you to give them exactly the information they need to be able to identify the one piece of information all agents are looking for – is this book marketable?

A few years ago when I worked as a commercial market researcher I did a lot of research for a partwork publisher who’d set up a new venture to create children’s book series. They knew it was series that made money rather than stand-alone books so that was their start point. We did a research mapping exercise for them, exploring children’s reading habits and what they found engaging in books. They then did workshops with professional writers to collaboratively create a number of concepts for new book series. We researched these with children using depths and discussion groups and fed back which concepts had appeal, and options for developing them. Following the first wave of research they developed a book series, paid the writers freelance rates to write it, put a young handsome face to it as ‘the author’ (one of their execs) and launched it. It won two awards and was long listed for another in its first year. Since then they have placed more than a dozen children’s book series with children’s publishers.

I loved the research; I absolutely despised them for what they were doing! All the while I was doing their research, in my free time I was labouring on my writing – taking an idea and developing it into a plot, setting, characters. Writing for the love of literature. Writing a book is a creative exercise, not a mercenary business pursuit! I’d just finished my adult contemporary literature novel and I sent it out to three agents, two of whom requested a full submission. One rejected with a “Not for me, but best of luck,” the other rejected with the suggestion that I re-write it for young adults. Since then I’ve re-written it for YA and I’ve changed the protagonist from boy to girl…and back to boy again but it doesn’t get over the fundamental issue that the concept underpinning the novel is intriguing and the first third of the book is great, but then it stagnates as the plot can’t carry the concept. I don’t know if I’ll ever re-finish it. I’ve worked on numerous things since, none of which have made it to market.

Out of sheer stubbornness I refused to apply what I’d learnt doing this research to my own writing. You do not write by numbers … but you can’t argue that they’ve had huge success while I’m still just an aspiring writer! Okay so they have the huge advantage of existing publishing links, but rather than taking a labour of love to publishers (warts and all – and you have to admit, us writers do make a lot of mistakes in our work that we’re just too close to the novel to recognise) they’re taking a viable, appealing business plan.

I’m tempted to be mischievous and suggest we follow the principals of the partwork venture just to see the outraged comments and abuse that you throw my way in response! But in all seriousness, there is a business to publishing and being conscious of this from the start can only be an advantage. An agent isn’t going to want to take on a book that has no clear target audience or ‘hook’. I know it’s tempting to leave all the detail until you’ve finished (which is what I always do!), but thinking about this from the onset could have a huge impact on the resulting book.

This doesn’t mean curb your creativity or make the book’s marketing your start point. Of course not! As a writer your novel has to come from the creative space inside your head and your heart that tells you about the world and its characters you’re about to create, a world that unfolds piece by piece into your final novel. But if you do want to be businesslike about this, why not pause after that initial creative spark and think about the end result? Why not force yourself to think about who this book is for? What are my readers’ needs? How would I pitch this book to an agent? When I recently wrote about planning on my personal blog, limebird friend Kourtney Heintz had the great idea of writing your agent submission (cover letter and synopsis) at the start to really focus your mind on what you’re trying to do with your novel (and noooooooooo I don’t mean, “This is going to be the next Hunger Games!”). Of course that will change and need completely re-writing at the end, but it does help you identify what your core themes are.

It may well be you hate this suggestion and don’t even want to think about how to position your book until you’ve finished with the creativity of writing it. That’s fair enough and I should think this is how the majority of writers of first-time authors have completed their work! But at the same time when it came to pitching their books they must have been able to identify a clear target audience and engaging premise. I hope that all of you will be able to do that regardless of when you shape your thinking on these issue, but for me, I think with my next novel I’m going to think about this fairly early on in the process. What harm can it do!”

Artistswanted.org

Could be a good site for artists, they have competitions and stuff. Get on wiv it or I’ll come round and lick your eye while you sleep.

Photos of Me!

Sometimes when my friends are doing artistic projects I like to pretend I’m a real alternative model. I’m not, of course, but I have an active imagination. For Halloween this year a friend, Graeme Wallace, took some pretty pictures of me and here they are!