Get The Car Running, I'll Meet You At The State Line

I received this very scary e-mail this morning:

Obviously, I'm deeply troubled by it.

But more amused by the fact that the above shows the subject line; the e-mail had no content whatsoever.

I'm beginning to wonder if the phishy-spamsters are losing their mojo.

Pedantry, Like Achievement, Is Often Its Own Reward

Spotted in the Reference section of WHSmith.

I think this might be an example of irony, but that's a word which has had its meaning diluted to almost homeopathic levels by that Alanis Morrisette song and other misuses, so I hesitate to call it such.

That said, though...

You've Probably Seen This Already, But If Not... Well, That's What I'm Here For.

Pretty much note-perfect, I'd say.

Yes, I Know: The Only Frequent Thing About This Blog Is This Kind Of Posting

A Buffy image, from the best part of a decade ago, and the cover of a vampire book which I saw on the shelves just today.

Hmm.

Wow, Have You See Who's In This Film?

I can't wait for this film to come out!

I love the work of Bruce Tracy and Willis Morgan!

I Used To Work With Someone Whose Parents Wouldn't Let Her Watch Magpie When She Was Young On The Grounds That It Was 'Common'...

... but looking at this LP from one of the presenters, I think that they were probably just trying to shield her from the wanton perversion simmering below the surface of a seemingly innocent children's TV programme.

Shocking, it is. I'd write to my MP if I was confident he could read.

Hands away from the swimsuit area please, Mr Robertson.

Got A Book About How To Break Away From The 9-5? Need To Design A Cover For It?

Stick some text at the top, a silhouette of someone reclining in a palm-tree supported hammock (make sure they have one leg crooked), and you're done.

Take the rest of the day off. Again.

Got A Film With The Word 'Boy' In The Title? Need To Do Some Marketing For It?

Blue background, title in big yellow letters, and your lead character front and centre.

Job done, take the rest of the day off.

I Am Now Max Clifford

One of the problems facing writers is their anonymity; the old joke in Hollywood used to be that an airhead actress was so keen to further her career that she slept with the screenwriter.

And in a way, it remains that way to this day; for every Jo Rowling or Stephen King that you might recognise, there are a hundred writers who you wouldn't recognise if you tripped over them in the street (where, I guess, they'd be lying due to the writerly tendency to seek solace in the bottle, but that's a subject for another time).

And of course there are the Salingers of this world who actively avoid publicity and camera lenses - fine for writers, but not the sort of thing you can really do if you want to be an actor or member of a band (The Residents and The Art Of Noise have dedicated, but let's face it limited, fanbases).

It's an inevitable consequence of being the one who puts the words into the heads or mouths of other people, of course, but in an increasingly personality-driven age, where celebrity (of no matter how nanoscopic a level) is the great leg-up to success, what can a writer do to increase their chances? What, what, what?

I'm glad you asked that question. I've been thinking about this a lot, and in fact I spent the whole of last night looking through my collection of Grazia and love it magazines, and I think I've figured out two of the best ways to get famous quick. They seem to work across a whole bunch of forms of entertainment, so I don't see any good reason why they shouldn't help writers (then again, I am an idiot).

Anyway.

1) Have a tragic story to tell

Maybe it's schadenfreude, or maybe it's schwarzwalder kirschtorte, but people love to hear tales of terrible tragedy. If your parents kept you in a sack in a box in the cellar even though they lived in a bungalow, then you shouldn't shy away from writing or talking about it.

In all honesty, even if you didn't have a tough childhood, you shouldn't be afraid to make it up like James Frey did. Once you've sold millions of books, you might have to apologise, but by then you've banked the money, and apologising on the Oprah show is all the more bearable when you can go home to your gold-plated mansion in the Caribbean.

Be careful not to go too far, though; whilst we all know that the audience for tragic memoirs is always keen to hear more tales of childhood neglect and abuse, know the limits: claiming to have beaten to death by a cruel step-parent might make your offering of a manuscript hard to swallow, as might getting too far into the world of make-believe; only the most gullible of publishers would stick 'Non-Fiction' on the back of the cover of your memoir of how you suffered in Narnia under the Snow Queen, or how your home in Helm's Deep was affected by a nearby battle.

2) Claim there was chemistry between you

This is an old showbiz trick, often used in films - if the film isn't getting very good reviews, a few well-placed leaks about some on-set shenanigans between the leads can help increase press coverage. Obviously, this is rather dependent on the film - Two Weeks [sic] Notice and, more recently, The Bounty Hunter saved a lot of money they'd have had to spend on marketing by pretending the leads had "more than just on-screen chemistry, know what I mean, nudge nudge", but it's less believable when stated of the cast of Monsters Inc, and so blindingly obvious as to not even be worthy of claiming about the cast of Suburban Shagfest 3 - Spank You Very Much.

However, to do this you'll need to have someone to claim to have chemistry with. This is fine if you're married co-writers like Nicci French, very wrong if you write with a family member like PJ Tracy, but as most writers work alone, to avoid accusations of being in love with yourself (an allegation often levelled at more solipsistic writers, who tend to be at the literary end of the scale, or bloggers), it's best to find someone else in the process to pretend to have been having an affair with.

For many writers, this will have to be an agent or editor, though this of course means you have to have been accepted (and not in that way) by them prior to this stage; it's not likely to help your submission very much if the query letter has a PS saying "if you take me on I will do things which are illegal in several EU countries" unless you're very confident both of your manuscript and of your own attractiveness, regardless of whoever opens the submission. And you'd probably need to send a picture to prove your point. A nice one, tastefully lit. With the top button undone, just to make sure. Yeah, you look good like that. Oh yeah baby, you know what I like. Uh-huh.

Um, seem to have strayed from the point a bit there, but if you're going to go down the chemistry route (either real or faked), it's probably best if you, or the person you're working with, is a known quantity to the world at large. In most writing instances, that's not likely, and even if it is the case, it may not work - Marilyn Monroe married Arthur Miller, but if she saw it as a way to get a foot in the door of writing plays, it doesn't seem to have worked.

Anyway, those are my two theories, and if you give either of them a go, do let me know how you get on. You might think I've made a mistake by telling you how to do it, but I've already started to use these approaches as a leg-up into being published, and am hanging round literary agents' offices with my shirt unbuttoned down to the waist. And if that doesn't work, I plan to write a misery memoir about my traumatic years spent trying to make it as a writer.

All the bases covered there, I like to think.

Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society Use Unwitting Kidnap Victim In Their Advertising?

Unless the design of her car is staggeringly modern, I have to respond :"No, sorry, you really aren't..."

What A Difference A Hyphen Makes

For some years since the character came into the public domain, the world of literature has seen a number of books featuring Dracula, such as this one from 1997:

As you may have read, last year the Stoker estate authorised a sequel, co-written by Abraham's great grand nephew Dacre.

Strange, then, the choice of title for it...

Ah well.

Proving That, Even In The Far-Flung Future, Intelligence Will Not Equate With Social Skills...

... in the 25th Century, Brainiac 5 demonstrates his contempt for those members of the Legion Of Super-Heroes too stupid to figure out how to make their own flight-rings.

Go on, Brainy! Flick them the rods!

The Ghost Of My Holiday Romance Toyboy Husband Shot My Conjoined Twin Baby As She Lay Dying Of Leukaemia... But I Still Love Him!

For some years now, the shelves of newsagents have been awash with... well, I don't know what you'd call them, really; tragic confession magazines? I'm sure you know the sort of thing - like the one pictured here, they're jam-packed with true tales of tragedy and woe, and yet often topped with a no-context-at-all picture of a smiling woman. Given the coverlines swirling around her, I always wonder: just what is she smiling at?

Anyway, there are a lot of these magazines, and a lot of the tales seem to focus around death or children or the deaths or illnesses of children, but there seems to be very little coverage of them; I can't help but wonder if, like their equivalent in book publishing, they're a bit of a 'dirty secret' - very lucrative, but not necessarily something that the folks involved want to admit to being involved in or talk about too much. Like being a pimp or drug dealer, or the composer of The Ketchup Song.

But, in a strange case of synchronicity, these magazines are the focus of not one, but two programmes on TV this week - one on Tuesday and another - on a different channel - on Thursday.

Hang on a mo, though... is it synchronicity... or a clever marketing ploy?

Hmm. If the latter, then my simple-minded ways have been exploited by a cruel media machine. I feel so dirty and used, like my very soul's been violated.

Perhaps I should sell my story.

No, Of Course I Haven't Seen It. I Like To Comment From A Position Of Ignorance.

You've probably seen the adverts for the film Valentine's Day. Two thoughts:

1. Can we agree that this looks rather like Love Actually, with a shift of location and time of year?

2. Given that the film was released on Friday 12 February in the UK, I hope the studio behind the film aren't going to be shocked if last weekend's box office doesn't equal that of the opening weekend...

And yes, the posters for it do resemble those of He's Just Not That Into You, but you'd spotted that already, right?

I Probably Shouldn't Look Gift Advice In The Mouth, But Still...

Over on the Guardian website, they've recently published a two-part article called 'Ten rules for writing fiction', which makes for pretty interesting reading. Part one is here, and part two is here, though reading them in order is probably best.

As I say, I think there's a lot of useful advice in there, though some of it doesn't apply to all genres or whatever (I don't suffer from adverb-phobia, for example), though it's not without flaws; unfortunately one author seems to have rather forgotten the brief and veered towards details of how he writes, whilst another rather impractically suggests "When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books" - fine advice in itself, but I'd guess most Guardian readers are likely to feel it's too late to do that if they didn't at the time.

And for the few children who read the newspaper, it's preaching to the converted.

Childish and envious snarking aside, it's nonetheless worth a look, as one of the recurrent messages is the always unwelcome but equally true reminder that you actually have to get on with the writing part, until the story's finished.

Yes, yes, I know: I was hoping there'd be a magic short-cut revealed as well.

10 Things I've Learned From Watching Come Dine With Me A Smidgen Too Often

1. Anyone described as being a 'self-confessed foodie' is usually a bit of a pain

2. When shopping in your local deli/butcher/fishmonger, be sure to mention that you're holding a dinner party, and address the person behind the counter by their first name more often than is normal in conversation

3. Not supplying drink for your guests, even if it's for religious or medical reasons, usually leads to them getting a right arse on

4. Musical entertainment, whether provided by you or hired professionals, is not a good idea if you want to win

5. Any female contestant not in some kind of relationship will be labelled a 'singleton' in the commentary

6. Depending on how the group is constituted in terms of gender, a butler (with or without a shirt) may be popular

7. Don't try out something new on the night of your big event (actually, re haircuts and outfits and the like, this rule applies to much of life)

8. Rare is the person who can lift the silver salver without making the money move in some way. Less rare is being able to see the cameraman reflected in the surface of the salver

9. It's impossible to stand in the kitchen and talk to the camera about the meal you're preparing without acting like you're either Nigella L or Hugh F-W

10. Dave Lamb's voiceovers for Come Dine With Me are like the commentary for Masterchef, but with an awareness that - ultimately - we are only talking about cooking here.

...Which is probably why I watch the show a bit too much, as the above rather shows.

Slightly Further To Yesterday's Post, But Not Entirely

A new word for your dictionary...

Jedward [Jed'wood]

1. portmanteau n. Contestants John and Edward in ITV talent contest The X-Factor in 2009. Their elimination sparked a very short-lived campaign of complaints.

2. n. Slang term for any item which excites a great deal of interest for a brief spell and is then forgotten as though it had never existed. Often applied to workplace tasks whose lasting impact is inversely proportionate to the importance placed upon their timely creation at short notice, as in:

"Dave, I need a full report on the last six years' sales figures for the MD, by tomorrow morning."
"If I bust my guts to deliver it on time, will he actually read it, or is this another bloody Jedward?"

Pedantry Aside, I Really Like The Cover

I genuinely like the design of this cover, but on the basis that covers of books tend to feature the main character (and I applaud the way the artwork doesn't show the man full face, meaning that you won't have your mental image of the character barged aside), I guess that this cover shows Reilly's recurring character Jack West Jr.

But, um, doesn't he have a bionic arm made of titanium steel? It doesn't look that way from the cover picture.

Unless, of course, he got his arm back in the previous book, but I haven't read that one yet.

Perhaps I Should Just Re-jig This Blog To Make It About Pointing Out Similarities And Be Done With It

On the left, an image from a current Marvel comic, relating to their latest cross-over story, Siege.

On the right, the cover for a DVD of a performance of The Wall which took place in Berlin, with a logo dating back to when the concert took place in 1990.

Hmm.

I rather hope it's a pre-established icon or image which is being re-used here, so do let me know if you know better.

First 'Book Twins' Of 2010...

... though I doubt they'll be the last.

For the record, I have no objection to Brad Meltzer's work - I really enjoyed The Tenth Justice - it's the derivative book design I have a beef with. Though judging from his comics work, Brad and I clearly differ in our fondness for Red Tornado. Ah well, tis but a small matter.