All Posts by Bill

There’s still time to go over to the voting page on Big Al’s Books and Pals and cast your vote for The Sparrow Conundrum in the Humor and Satire section. I’ve been in London for a week and I’ve been a bit remiss about canvassing so this is a last desperate push. Voting closes at midnight (Al’s Time) on April 1^st. If you haven’t yet done so, I’d be grovellingly grateful if you’d go there, scroll down, click on the Enter to Win tab below the Amazon gift voucher prize then select Humor and Satire. There you’ll find 7 titles, with the Sparrow at the bottom. Some people have tried but failed to register a vote. This is probably because they’re using Internet Explorer and that doesn’t work on the site. The other popular browsers do, though. My thanks in advance.

Other news, the warm glow that comes when a box arrives with copies of my latest paperbacks in it. I’ve already written about my novella for young people, The Loch Ewe Mystery, UK and USA  but also in the box with it was my collection of short stories, Other People and other stories, USA  and UK. I don’t think I’ve said much about it here but it’s got samples of the different types of writing I do. Crime is well represented of course but, as I say in the short blurb on Amazon, there’s also some which are humorous, some bleak, some long, some short, and they’re all about people. If you prefer ebooks, they’re both on Kindle but, despite the fact that more of my books are bought in their eformats, I still love the look and feel of hardbacks and paperbacks.

I’m also a bit nerdy when it comes to signed copies. I love them and I’ve got lots from the great to the less well-known. But it doesn’t matter how famous the writer is, the fact that he or she has scrawled something inside makes it more valuable for me – not in terms of money but in the greater connection with the writer. So I was pleased to read in a blog on Authors Electric today  that there’s a way of getting ebooks signed by authors. It’s called Authorgraph and I’ve signed up to it. If you click the icon top right on this page, it’ll take you to my author page, where all my books are listed. All readers need to do is click on ‘Request Authorgraph’ under the relevant book and I get an email, write a message and ‘sign’ a copy which is then sent to the reader. It’s not just an automated repeat process – the author can either type the message and a signature or actually sign it.

Finally, this blog was originally going to be about a topic which came up jokingly while I was in London. I was talking about bringing unconnected things together to stimulate creativity and up came the expressions ‘existential slimming’ and ‘gastronomy for existentialists’. But commercial considerations have taken over so you’ve been spared that..

The poor old Sparrow has been taking a back seat for a while as I’ve concentrated on books I’ve published more recently. In its earliest incarnation it was my first ever novel. It’s had at least four different titles, I’ve rewritten it countless times and I still see bits I could improve or gags I missed. Way back, when I wrote the first version (in longhand on foolscap sheets of paper), I had just one aim, to make it funny. I’d laughed a lot at the earlier books of Tom Sharpe (Riotous Assembly, Indecent Exposure) although less at the Wilt series, and it was the extremes and absurdities of his comic style that suited my sense of humour. So it was a farce, a fairly blackish one but one with no pretensions beyond wanting to make people laugh.

As I came to rewrite its various versions since then, I saw different possibilities for getting more laughs out of current political and commercial stances, police procedures, and the whole spy genre. They all seemed to carry their own absurdities – some threatening, some just entertaining. I feel very strongly about many things in life, especially when our elected representatives treat us with such scorn and disdain and claim to speak on our behalf when they have no connection with the daily reality of normal people. I’d find it very difficult, for example, to write anything funny about Tony Blair’s decision to declare war on Iraq and his insulting ‘justification’ for ignoring the strongly felt opinions of millions of us ever since. And, to maintain a balance, I deplore and despise the intellectual and ideological emptiness of the present administration and the callous pigheadedness of George Osborne in dragging us ever deeper into the mire against the advice even of his own advisors.

Phew, glad to have got that off my chest. But back to the gentler, more soothing topic of Sparrow and its mayhem, violent wrestlers, sociopathic policeman, sexual peccadilloes, deaths and broken bones. Over the years, it’s had a habit of reminding me of its existence and demanding my attention and this happened in two ways a couple of weeks ago. First, there was a new Amazon review. Mostly, readers have been generous and said very nice things about it but, for the first time, this reviewer was bored by it. S/he was still generous enough to give it 3 stars but clearly for her/him, it didn’t live up to the hype. And that’s fine. There are friends who’ve read it and not been particularly amused by it. We don’t all have the same sense of humour. So don’t think I’m complaining about this review – the negative ones are as valuable as the positives. It’s just that they seem to have more power and linger longer in the mind. But then it was counterbalanced by the big surprise of an email from the review site Big Al’s Books and Pals, which gave it a great review  in April last year, saying it had been nominated as one of the seven on the short list for the Humor and Satire category of their Readers’ Choice Awards. And, with its first prize for Humor in the Forward National Literature Awards in 2011, that makes it officially my most successful novel. The rest have obviously been rubbish.

Anyway, as you’ll have suspected, this is all a build-up to a request. Voting is now open (until April 1st) and it would be wonderful if the Sparrow made that final leap and won the category. And for that, it needs votes. (At this point I’m kneeling.) I’d therefore be grateful, if you haven’t already done so, if you’d go over to the voting booth, sign on, select the Humor and Satire category and vote for the Sparrow. For some reason, that doesn’t work if you’re using Internet Explorer so Chrome or whatever is better. On behalf of the Sparrow, thanks in advance. I shall definitely keep you informed..

I’ve written before about my three sisters, Gill, Ginge and Les, their energy, imagination and the hours they devote to raising money for charity (and having a bloody good time in the process). They obviously got a marketing gene which bypassed me (and probably my two brothers as well). Anyway, the reason I’m bringing them up again is because their work on flogging Rory the Dragon and Princess Daisy is an example of what we all need to do to shift more of our books.

In case you’re a new visitor I should explain that the book’s proceeds are going to charity. It’s dedicated to my grand-niece, Daisy Warn, who only lived for 16 weeks. During that time, she and her family were given wonderful care, love and support by the Children’s Hospice South West and, since then, the extended family has been continuing to express its thanks by fund-raising for the CHSW through a group called The Friends of Daisy Chain. I blogged about it in more detail in February.

OK, I wrote the story (which meant sitting on my bum in a warm room having a good time and laughing at my own jokes), my nephew Joe illustrated it (and knowing Joe, he probably quite enjoyed himself in the process, too), then I put it all together. But since then, the sisters have taken over and (although, as I said, they too enjoy themselves), they’ve been working very hard and, it seems, being successful. So, without asking her permission and therefore risking being sued by her – which would divert the book’s profits from the charity to some lawyers – I thought I’d just copy a couple of Gill’s recent emails to show you what I mean. So here they are.

March 10th. On Saturday we had a table at a sale in a local church – not much good financially but good in a networking way. Ginger’s suggestion was that we all wore black and used the bowler hats they had for the Cabaret dance at my 60th. These were decorated with a string of daisies and looked really good. We dressed the stall with balloons and all CHSW banners etc.  We created quite a storm amongst the ladies who were manning the stalls (what’s that called – is it an oxymoron?) and about 30 people came up to us and said how much they liked the hats and how smart we looked etc.  We only raised about £37.50 which was rubbish but the Herald photographer came up and asked for a photo shoot – well about 10 photos – how many constitute a ‘shoot’?  We told her the story about the book and she took some more with us holding the books and was very interested. I said I’d send her a press release.

March 13th. Back from Tiverton where we met with about 80 people. Gave a small presentation and the fundraiser had made sure there was a book on every seat so they all had one to look at.  We gave them a handout with the story and the details of all the money going to them etc. It was really well received and the fundraiser for South Somerset & Devon was taking orders while we were there. Some of the women read the book and we could see them laughing. During the presentation I made I asked them their opinion and they said they thought it was brilliant, and it was great to see them walking out with bundles of the book under their arms.
The area manager of the retail side came over and asked us about putting the books in the shops and displaying them properly etc – so that was good.  Altogether a very positive day – it’s all looking good – we also have a table in the CHSW marquee  at both the Devon & Cornwall County Shows – another good place for networking since it is mostly businesses that have marquees there as it’s very expensive to hire one. We could split our time between selling the books and going around trying to drum up sponsorship.

The  book’s aimed at the age range 5-8. It’s £4.99 and if anyone wants a copy, please get in touch with Gill at
gillytom@blueyonder.co.uk

It’s wonderful to think that, thanks to all their hard work, the book’s going to make several hundred quid for the CHSW. Now all I need to do is con the sisters into doing the same thing for my other books where the profits will be ALL MINE..