My Day

I was never one of nature’s addicts. I smoked spasmodically up to thirty odd years ago then gave it up without a problem when a TV programme showed the damage I was doing to my innards. I once smoked a joint in Amsterdam and such is my abysmal tolerance to drugs that I became almost catatonic. My wife thought I was having a stroke. Luckily she was having a joint herself so she managed to see the funny side. I drink, but not to any excessive degree, in fact I thought I was immune to any sort of addiction until I began writing. This was about seventeen years ago. Since then I’ve written sixteen books published in print, many by mainstream publishers Little,Brown, plus another six e-books, several, so far unsold, scripts, some short stories and a few books started but abandoned.

In short, I write because I’m addicted to writing. I’m a retired builder who always had a couple of sidelines in stand-up comedy and free-lance painting. My writing day begins when the mood and the idea takes me, which can be any time during the 24 hour day. Many’s the time I’ve woken up in the dead of night with an idea I knew I must get down lest I forget it when I get up. I go next door into my writing room―I call it the office ―with the intention of getting the basic idea down and no more. I emerge hours later when the sparrows are singing outside and my wife’s wondering how come she’s got the bed to herself. It’s during these illicit hours when I’m at my most creative. I find my best ideas take shape when my mind is completely at rest, lying in bed having just woken up in the dark, the world is quiet and my brain is giving my ideas its complete and undivided attention.

I’ve tried writing these ideas down on a bedside pad, in the dark, reaching out from under the duvet with a sleepy arm, hoping my pencil is moving in the right direction and ending up trying to translate a page of hieroglyphics the following morning.

I play golf twice a week and never allow that to interfere with my writing. It’s a game for which a have a great love, but little talent. I need the exercise, I enjoy the camaraderie, the fun and the rare feeling of triumph when I hit a good shot. As a stand-up comedian I still do after-dinner work, perhaps a dozen gigs a year. I don’t paint much anymore. I intend to but haven’t yet got around to it, maybe I’m afraid it’ll take up too much of my time. Painting’s addictive as well.

So, I suppose my writing day is between the hours when I’m not doing anything else. There are 168 hours in a week, golf takes up maybe a dozen of these; sleep takes up 50 to 60, being a loving and dutiful husband, father and grandfather takes up time I can’t put a quantity on; leisure time is important although I regard writing as part of my leisure time so, somewhere within this 168 hours, I reckon there are about 40 or so hours when I find time to sit at my computer, happy as Larry (whoever Larry is). When the muse is upon I have been known to write for six or seven hours nonstop―as many as ten thousand words in a day. Others days I spend hours just doing corrections and improvements, not advancing the book a single word, just making it better. This is equally as satisfying. Some days, if the ideas aren’t there I don’t bother to write at all. I don’t worry because I know the words are in there somewhere, just not ready to come out that’s all. This is probably why I don’t suffer from writer’s block. Not sure I believe in it, to be honest.

Quite often, on my way to bed I’ll tell my wife I’m just nipping into the office to switch off the computer. Then I make the mistake of sitting down to take a quick look at what I’ve done that day and perhaps make the odd correction... perhaps more. After I’ve spent ten minutes or so by my writer’s inner clock I’ll switch off and go to bed. My wife will wake up and ask me what I’ve been doing in there for the last two hours. She’s a very understanding woman who realises that two hours of highly concentrated creativity can be compressed into ten mental minutes. At least that’s my excuse.

                                                     PAPER VERSUS KINDLE ?

As a writer I have to choose paper, as traditional publishers sell more of my books than Kindle. Yes I know this is not the way things are supposed to be going in this business but it is from where I am. To sell on Kindle I need to be an active marketer which I ain't. All I want to do is write my books.If they don't automatically sell themselves once they've been Kindleised there's  not much more I can do, with me being so useless at this social media lark. This is a pity because as a reader I think Kindle is great. 

         I mentioned this to my wife, Valerie, who's an avid Facebooker. She asked me how long it was since I posted a blog and I said it was some time in 2014 but I got no comments so I gave up bothering. She said blogging isn't about bothering it's all about just sticking your thoughts down somewhere...and that's my problem. I told her that my thoughts are not really for public consumption and she said some people seem to think you’re quite witty, especially the ones who pay you good money for speaking at their dinners. So why not try this wit of yours out on them?  Easier said than done, said I. Making people laugh on the printed page isn't easy. When was the last time you laughed at a joke in a joke book? Humour is all about rythym and timing. I had to agree that I do try and write with that in mind but whether it raises a smile or not is up to the reader. Any humour I write in my books comes direct and unintentionally from my strange mind and has got me into no end of trouble over the years, mind you, it’s also subsidised me as a poverty-stricken writer. Oh sod it! Right now going to show off. I did a golf club dinner last Friday where I got a standing ovation followed a couple of days later by this email:

    Dear Ken

I would like to thank you on behalf of Cleckheaton GC for an enjoyable and most entertaining evening. Many positive comments were received and some expressed you are the best guest speaker the club has had in quite some time... A night I will certainly remember and cherish. I hope you continue with your after dinner speaking for years to come - you are clearly gifted. 

If anyone is in the market for a golf club speaker you can check on the similar comments I’ve received over the years on my Speaking page.

   Anyway, back to me writing. I have a saga, NEARLY ALWAYS (Piatkus),  due for publication in  April and a crime, DEAD OR ALIVE Severn House), due out in June and another saga, a WW1 drama called TELL ME IT'S NOT TRUE (Piatkus)  due out in November. Three books in nine months. Not that I wrote them in nine months...it took me almost two years. In fact right now I'm on with two books: a crime called THE DEFENESTRATION OF JOE SANTIAGO and a saga called ROBBERS RAGS AND RAINBOWS. I'm hoping to have them both finished by the end of the year. 'Why two books at once?'  you might well ask. Well I find that sticking a book away in a drawer for a few months allows me to come back to it with fresh eyes and ideas.

Anyway, back to humour. As I write it occurs to me that I should include an after dinner story with each of my blogs. Okay, they may make you wonder why I even get paid,

 much less given a standing ovation.

    Man staggers into a pub with sweat pouring down his face. ‘Good grief!’ says the landlord, you look in a bad way What’s the problem?’

     ‘Oh, I’ve got this woman in the back of my car in your car park,’ says the man. ‘I’ve had her there for five hours and I can’t satisfy her. She’s a real nymphomanic.’

      ‘Tell you what,’ says the landlord, ‘you take over behind the bar for half an hour and I’ll take over in the back of your car.’

       ‘That’s very decent of you,’ says the man.

        ‘Think nothing of it sir. All part of our customer service.’

         So the man takes over behind the bar and the landlord goes to the car. He’s been there about ten minutes when a policeman comes shining his torch in all the cars.

       ‘Hello, hello, hello!’ he says, shining his torch in the back of the car. ‘What do you two think you’re doing in the back of that motor car?’

         ‘It’s all right, officer,’ said the landlord. ‘I’m just making love to my wife.’

         ‘Oh, I’m ever so sorry sir. I didn’t realise it was your wife.’

         ‘No, neither did I, ‘til you shone that bloody torch!’

Usually a winner but remember, ‘its the way you tell ’em.’ I’ll try and remember to do another blog next month, including an after dinner story.

       

                                             THE HERO OF THE GRAVEYARD

I was talking to Mike, an old pal of my brother, John, in a pub yesterday and he told me a story about our kid that I can't wait to tell his family.As young men the two of them were on their way to the cinema one particularly foggy evening when our John suggested taking a short cut through a graveyard. The fog was such that Mike, walking just a few feet behind our John, could barely see him until John stopped, to look down at the foggy figure of a woman who looked to have collapsed on a grave, right in front of a headstone.
    'Are you all right?' he asked. No reply.
    So John decided to do the heroic thing and get the woman back to her feet, which he did by grabbing her by the armpits and heaving her upright. At that point the woman's husband, who had been waiting nearby, appeared out of the gloom and explained that his wife hadn't actually collapsed, she was just having a pee!

Since my last blog we've voted to leave Europe and are in the process of getting a new prime minister and I didn't think it was all that long since I did my last blog. Must buck my ideas up. In fact since my last blog I've had two books published...properly published by mainstream publishers. Not that I'm knocking those only publish on kindle, I've got six published only on kindle myself. However I've got another book due for publication by Piatkus in November. It's called Tell Me It's Not True and is set during world War One. The book title is a repeat of words uttered by one of my female protagonists who has been told her husband has been killed in the war only she feels him to be still alive. Is she right? You'll have to read the book to find out.

Right now I'm writing two books in concert. It's OK I've done it before. Perhaps I'm the only writer who can work that way but I find it helps when the ideas stop flowing on the book I'm currently writing and yet I've been piling up ideas for my other book and making notes of them. Right now I'm about 50,000 words into a saga, currently called RUNAWAYS and 40,000 words into a crime called THE DEFENESTRATION OF JOE SANTIAGO. I'm just about to move onto the crime book and add another 30,000 or so words to it by which time I'll have enough ideas stored up to go back to RUNAWAYS. It could be that I'm the only writer who works that way. I'd certainly be interested to hear from anyone else who does.

I've just been writing some stuff "of interest" for my publishers marketing people, and I mentioned the boys comics I read when I was a lad. There were four main ones: THE ADVENTURE; THE ROVER; THE HOTSPUR AND THE WIZARD. The stories were all crammed inside in a tiny font, no more than 7, with around 2,500 words per page. The pages in the comics varied from 15 to 20 which means that on average a comic held around 44,000 words, and, using the schoolboys' swap system, I read all four comics each week. Had I spent that much time on my homework I'd have been a genius.

Kindle Versus Paper

As a writer I have to choose paper, as traditional publishers sell more of my books than Kindle. Yes I know this is not the way things are supposed to be going in this business but it is from where I am. To sell on Kindle I need to be an active marketer which I ain't. All I want to do is write my books.If they don't automatically sell themselves once they've been Kindleised there's  not much more I can do, with me being so useless at this social media lark. This is a pity because as a reader I think Kindle is great. 

         I mentioned this to my wife, Valerie, who's an avid Facebooker. She asked me how long it was since I posted a blog and I said it was some time in 2014 but I got no comments so I gave up bothering. She said blogging isn't about bothering it's all about just sticking your thoughts down somewhere...and that's my problem. I told her that my thoughts are not really for public consumption and she said some people seem to think you’re quite witty, especially the ones who pay you good money for speaking at their dinners. So why not try this wit of yours out on them?  Easier said than done, said I. Making people laugh on the printed page isn't easy. When was the last time you laughed at a joke in a joke book? Humour is all about rythym and timing. I had to agree that I do try and write with that in mind but whether it raises a smile or not is up to the reader. Any humour I write in my books comes direct and unintentionally from my strange mind and has got me into no end of trouble over the years, mind you, it’s also subsided me as a poverty-stricken writer. Oh sod it! Right now going to show off. I did a golf club dinner last Friday where I got a standing ovation followed a couple of days later by this email:

    Dear Ken

I would like to thank you on behalf of Cleckheaton GC for an enjoyable and most entertaining evening. Many positive comments were received and some expressed you are the best guest speaker the club has had in quite some time... A night I will certainly remember and cherish. I hope you continue with your after dinner speaking for years to come - you are clearly gifted. 

If anyone is in the market for a golf club speaker you can check on the similar comments I’ve received over the years on my Speaking page.

   Anyway, back to me writing. I have a saga, NEARLY ALWAYS,  due for publication in  April (Piatkus) and a crime, DEAD OR ALIVE, due out in June and another saga, a WW1 drama called TELL ME IT'S NOT TRUE due out in November. Three books in nine months. Not that I wrote them in nine months...it took me almost two years. In fact right now I'm on with two books: a crime called THE DEFENESTRATION OF JOE SANTIAGO and a saga called ROBBERS RAGS AND RAINBOWS. I'm hoping to have them both finished by the end of the year. 'Why two books at once?'  you might well ask. Well I find that sticking a book away in a drawer for a few months allows me to come back to it with fresh eyes and ideas.

Anyway, back to humour. As I write it occurs to me that I should include an after dinner story with each of my blogs. Okay they may make you wonder why I even get paid much less given a standing ovation.

    Man staggers into a pub with sweat pouring down his face. ‘Good grief!’ says the landlord, you look in a bad way What’s the problem?’

     ‘Oh, I’ve got this woman in the back of my car in your car park,’ says the man. ‘I’ve had her there for five hours and I can’t satisfy her. She’s a real nymphomanic.’

      ‘Tell you what,’ says the landlord, ‘you take over behind the bar for half an hour and I’ll take over in the back of your car.’

       ‘That’s very decent of you,’ says the man.

        ‘Think nothing of it sir. All part of our customer service.’

         So the man takes over behind the bar and the landlord goes to the car. He’s been there about ten minutes when a policeman comes shining his torch in all the cars.

       ‘Hello, hello, hello!’ he says, shining his torch in the back of the car. ‘What do you two think you’re doing in the back of that motor car?’

         ‘It’s all right, officer,’ said the landlord. ‘I’m just making love to my wife.’

         ‘Oh, I’m ever so sorry sir. I didn’t realise it was your wife.’

         ‘No, neither did I, ‘til you shone that bloody torch!’

Usually a winner but remember, ‘its the way you tell ’em.’ I’ll try and remember to do another blog next month, including an after dinner story.

THAT ALICE IN WONDERLAND THING

When I was twelve I slept in the same room as my elder brother, John. One night I awoke in a state of serious disorientation. It seemed to me that the world around me just wasn’t right, whether my eyes were closed or not. It threw me into a panic to the extent that I jumped out of bed and ran into my parents’ room shouting, ‘Our John’s done something awful!’

Hard on my heels was my brother, quite truthfully protesting that he hadn’t done anything. My parents assumed it was some sort of nightmare and we were sent back to bed. However to me it wasn’t a nightmare as I was wide awake and the problem was still there. I made no further mention of it as I, at that age, didn’t have the words to describe it. The ruffles in the bedclothes seemed as big as monstrous waves in the sea, my fingers felt like sausages and the bedroom door, perhaps twelve feet away, might well have been fifty feet high and a hundred feet away. Eventually I fell asleep, and when I awoke in the morning the problem was gone. I sincerely hoped it would never return.

Some days later I was off school with a migraine― an ailment for which my mother found me a surefire cure in Beecham’s powders (not the pills, I hasten to point out). My mother had to go to work that day as she had a part-time job and I’d been left in bed with a supply of this stuff, to take whenever my headache came back. I was fine with this. Staying at home on my own was never a problem with me...until then.

I went downstairs and sat in the front room, perhaps to read a book or a comic, when the problem returned. Everything around me seemed out of perspective, big and distant; my own body felt wrong; my mind was disturbed in a way I could never describe, even to this day. I was twelve and I thought I was going mad. There was no escape from this, closing my eyes wouldn’t shut it out, all I could do was hope it would go away, which it did after a couple of hours. By this time my mother was back. Once again I didn’t tell her about it as I didn’t have the words, besides I didn’t want her to think I was going potty. I certainly didn’t tell our kid about it, as he already thought I was potty.

At frequent intervals, over the next two or three years this problem returned. Not once did I mention to anyone, not even to my friends. It was my personal problem and I didn’t see how anyone could help. It came and it went and, as I got older and perhaps mentally tougher, I learned to live with it because I knew it would go away after a while. After a couple of years, when I felt the problem coming on, I decided to take it on, live with it, try to figure it out, even have fun with it. Somehow, once I’d started to cope with it, the problem began to leave me. For a few years I got the strange feeling in passing, but it didn’t stay with me.

It wasn’t until I got much older that I heard a friend talk of ‘That Alice in Wonderland thing.’

I asked him about it and sure enough it was what I’d been getting. Just like me he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone but somehow, in later years, he’d found out it was a recognised syndrome in children, with the nickname that Alice in Wonderland thing― a pretty good description.

According to Wikipedia it seems that the syndrome was first discovered in 1955 (two years after I’d first suffered from it), by  psychiatrist called Dr John Todd who worked in a mental hospital not ten miles away from where I was living. It’s officially called Todd’s Syndrome but it’s also called the Alice In Wonderland Syndrome after Lewis Carroll who was thought to have experienced it and used it to describe how Alice grew big and small in Wonderland.

Last week I was watching a hospital drama, Holby City, on TV with my wife who has an unusually wide knowledge of things medical, to the extent that she can usually tell me what’s wrong with a patient well before the TV doctors come up with their diagnosis. On this occasion the patient was a young woman who was displaying all my old symptoms (although hers were somewhat more dramatic).

‘She’s got that Alice in Wonderland thing!’ I declared, much to my wife’s amazement. Up until then the patient was showing no signs of anything other than not being right in her head. The problem continued to baffle both the doctors and my wife until five minutes from the end when the doctor pronounced that she was suffering from Todd’s Syndrome. My gave me that look told me I was wrong but in her next breath the TV doctor went on to say how it was also called the Alice In Wonderland Syndrome. Now I’m not a great one for triumphalism in the home but I have to say that my arms shot up in the air like they do when England score a rare goal.

I now wonder how many people have suffered such a thing without actually telling anyone? I’m writing a crime book whose main protagonist is Septimus Black, a man with psychiatric problems. Such is the value of personal experience that Septimus also had the Alice in Wonderland thing when he was a boy.

Today, yesterday and tomorrow.

I was never one of nature’s addicts. I smoked spasmodically up to thirty odd years ago then gave it up without a problem when a TV programme showed the damage I was doing to my innards. I once smoked a joint in Amsterdam and such is my abysmal tolerance to drugs that I became almost catatonic. My wife thought I was having a stroke. Luckily she was having a joint herself so she managed to see the funny side. I drink, but not to any excessive degree, in fact I thought I was immune to any sort of addiction until I began writing. This was about seventeen years ago. Since then I’ve written sixteen books published in print, many by mainstream publishers Little,Brown, plus another six e-books, several, so far unsold, scripts, some short stories and a few books started but abandoned.

In short, I write because I’m addicted to writing. I’m a retired builder who always had a couple of sidelines in stand-up comedy and free-lance painting. My writing day begins when the mood and the idea takes me, which can be any time during the 24 hour day. Many’s the time I’ve woken up in the dead of night with an idea I knew I must get down lest I forget it when I get up. I go next door into my writing room―I call it the office ―with the intention of getting the basic idea down and no more. I emerge hours later when the sparrows are singing outside and my wife’s wondering how come she’s got the bed to herself. It’s during these illicit hours when I’m at my most creative. I find my best ideas take shape when my mind is completely at rest, lying in bed having just woken up in the dark, the world is quiet and my brain is giving my ideas its complete and undivided attention.

I’ve tried writing these ideas down on a bedside pad, in the dark, reaching out from under the duvet with a sleepy arm, hoping my pencil is moving in the right direction and ending up trying to translate a page of hieroglyphics the following morning.

I play golf twice a week and never allow that to interfere with my writing. It’s a game for which a have a great love, but little talent. I need the exercise, I enjoy the camaraderie, the fun and the rare feeling of triumph when I hit a good shot. As a stand-up comedian I still do after-dinner work, perhaps a dozen gigs a year. I don’t paint much anymore. I intend to but haven’t yet got around to it, maybe I’m afraid it’ll take up too much of my time. Painting’s addictive as well.

So, I suppose my writing day is between the hours when I’m not doing anything else. There are 168 hours in a week, golf takes up maybe a dozen of these; sleep takes up 50 to 60, being a loving and dutiful husband, father and grandfather takes up time I can’t put a quantity on; leisure time is important although I regard writing as part of my leisure time so, somewhere within this 168 hours, I reckon there are about 40 or so hours when I find time to sit at my computer, happy as Larry (whoever Larry is). When the muse is upon I have been known to write for six or seven hours nonstop―as many as ten thousand words in a day. Others days I spend hours just doing corrections and improvements, not advancing the book a single word, just making it better. This is equally as satisfying. Some days, if the ideas aren’t there I don’t bother to write at all. I don’t worry because I know the words are in there somewhere, just not ready to come out that’s all. This is probably why I don’t suffer from writer’s block. Not sure I believe in it, to be honest.

Quite often, on my way to bed I’ll tell my wife I’m just nipping into the office to switch off the computer. Then I make the mistake of sitting down to take a quick look at what I’ve done that day and perhaps make the odd correction... perhaps more. After I’ve spent ten minutes or so by my writer’s inner clock I’ll switch off and go to bed. My wife will wake up and ask me what I’ve been doing in there for the last two hours. She’s a very understanding woman who realises that two hours of highly concentrated creativity can be compressed into ten mental minutes. At least that’s my excuse.

THE DARLING DUDS OF MAY

The title of this blog has nothing to do with its content, I hope, or maybe it has. It's May and it just popped into my mind. In fact it's meaningless. As I write I also ramble to myself. I ramble to myself even when I'm not writing. My wife often asks me who I'm talking to as I mouth my thoughts. I sometimes wonder how many people see me doing this and dismiss me as a silly old sod who talks to himself. Could be they're not wrong.

Occasionally, when I'm sitting in front of the computer screen with nothing coming to the forefront of my mind that's worth putting in whatever book I'm writing I tend to compose what I think at the time are brilliant letters about my various gripes.  Mostly I do nothing with them, having got the gripe off my chest and onto the computer but, with the advent of the email, it's just too easy to wing them to a newspaper's letters page. My computer seems to do this without my knowledge at least  two or three times a year.
     I did one a couple of days ago about the cause of the rise in house prices which I blamed on the banks and building societies. I know a bit about it having been a house builder in the past and I told the computer exactly what the solution is. Once again, the computer, without my express permission sent the letter to the Yorkshire Evening Post who published it as the headline letter on their letters page today. I'm now expecting letters of rebuke appearing in said newspaper, telling me what an idiot I am; letters which I should ignore but I won't because I'm argumentative by nature and I will compose  replies which will verbally demolish these adversaries and no doubt annoy the hell out of them, that's if the computer decides to send them to the paper.  Mostly the people who write to the papers are pretend intellectuals who talk rubbish and I'm lumping myself in with them. Or it could be that I talk rubbish as well?

Right now I'm between books. Almost A Hero was published on May 1st, my next book, Nearly Always, is finished at 105,000 words and I'm 25,000 words into another called Say It Isn't True. So I'm taking time off book writing to do a screenplay of one of my books that was only ever published in hardback.  My regular publisher wouldn't take it as their editor said it was so dark that she read 50 pages and felt like slitting her throat. I took another look at it and realised it probably has great potential as a noir TV drama so this is what I'm doing. So far I've never had any success with screenplays but this is a great story and I know I do good dialogue. I also know a couple of production companies who are interested in my work, plus I find writing screenplays to be enjoyable work, so what the hell? Get on with it McCoy.

The book is called Free As A Bird. It's only available in hardback or on Kindle and as far as sales are concerned it's probably my least successful book, but sales aren't always a reflection of a book's quality. Sales are all about marketing. A poor book with good marketing will easily outsell a great book with no marketing and Free As A Bird had zero marketing.

I played golf today. I love the game. It keeps me fit and mobile, I just wish I was any good at it. I love the challenge and the camaraderie and the dozens of good friends it brings me. See, I'm rambling again. My lips weren't moving though. At least I don't think they were. Oh heck! How can I possibly know?