Well, have you got one inside you?

Christopher Hitchens, Political commentator and columnist for Vanity Fair (amongst other famous publications) once famously said:

"Everyone does have a book in them..."

And he was right, we've all got a story to tell.  It could be factual, maybe things that have happened to you that you think other people might find interesting, The sort of things you say when you've had one pint of Creme-de-Menthe too many and you suddenly stand up, throw your arms wide and shout "I once painted the CND symbol on a sleeping pig using a spray-can of orange icing and a wallpaper brush!"

Or, they could be made up, you could have an idea for a great story about a talking weasel called Chip McFlinders who can wave his little fingers and create a mirror, that can take him back in time to visit historical situations... But all the people have been replaced by other, improbably named, time-travelling weasels.  I don't know, although I think "Chip McFlinders and his waving mirror fingers." might have been the working title for one of John Grisham's books... Think it was The Pelican Brief if I remember correctly.

Fact or fiction, funny or serious, uplifting or horrifying - It's the germ of an idea that eats away at you. The more people say "You should write a book." the more you start to agree with them.  And you really should, it's wonderfully theraputic.  Whether you choose to cram it all down in a spiral-bound notebook that you've managed to liberate from work when the person with the key to the stationery cupboard wasn't looking, or tap it away into a hookey copy of Word that was on a CD that came with the laptop when you bought it from eBay.

Both equally valid, and I know people who call themselves 'Writers' that do both quite happily (Not at the same time though... That way madness lies).

But you, the people reading this, the ones that don't even call yourselves a writer, certainly not an author, will look at that blank piece of paper, or that snowy-white screen with the slowly blinking cursor and go a bit dry in the mouth, or a bit pale, or a bit cold.

Then your mind'll go blank.  Then you'll wonder what you were thinking ever imagining that a snot like you could ever write a book and you'll slam the lid/cover of your chosen writing media, make yourself a coffee and watch Jeremy Kyle, whilst all the time looking at your laptop/notebook as if it's in some way its fault.

This is the point where a lot of people give up.

The trick to getting past this point is simple, just DON'T stop! Write something, anything...

Write 'Once upon a time.'
Write 'It was a dark and stormy night.'
Write 'Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather.'

Write 'We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert.'

Write 'Call me Ishmael.'

(There are people who might think you weren't taking things particularly seriously if you used the last three though in fairness)

But the fact is, once you start, it's difficult to stop - It's addictive, like snorting cocaine, having tattoos or collecting Pokemon.  You'll find yourself sat on the train, congratulating yourself for remembering to charge your laptop so that you can write a few hundred words.  You'll find yourself on the bus, wishing that it wasn't too bumpy a journey for you to write anything and wondering whose still warm urine is sloshing against your new Manolo Blahnicks.

Most of all, you'll be kicking yourself for not starting sooner.  The sooner you start writing, the sooner you finish the book.  The sooner you finish the book, the sooner you can get it published.  The sooner you get it published, the sooner you can print out your sales figures and customer reviews from Amazon and rub them all over your body like a literary hippopotamus bathing in a sea of Kindles.

"But getting a book published is difficult and what if it's not any good?" You think to yourself when your initial euphoria has died down.  It's true, not everyone's good at everything... I mean, I am, obviously - But then you all knew that already, you read this blog.

But there are a plethora of people around and about that are more than willing to help...

*Take a deep breath and hold on to your bear-skin balaclavas, there's an advert off the starboard bow!*

People like The Penguin's Head, a group that I'm proud to be able to say that I have some small stake in.  It's three normal guys (Well, two normal guys and me... Actually it's one normal... Thinking about it, it's three pretty odd guys) who love writing and think that more people doing it will drive standards up.

We're probably monumentally wrong about that, but its gotta be worth a punt, hasn't it?

TPH will try and help get your idea out into the big, wide world.  We'll take your first-born manuscript, take an look at it and give you some feedback FOR FREE! And what do you get for free nowadays? (apart from that notepad you nicked in the fourth(ish) paragraph above) I'll tell you... Bugger all! That's what you get for free nowadays.

Once we've given you the feedback, and we've all decided whether we want to work with each other, then we talk about the services we can provide (editing, proofreading, formating, design, publishing etc.) and how much it's likely to set you back.  You're still under no obligation at this point obviously.  We haven't done anything except read a bit, and who in their right mind would charge for that?

If you carry on the relationship from that point, eventually the world officially becomes your lobster... You're an author, you'll have a book you can hold in your hand, or a series of electrical impulses you can read on your Kindle at least.

And you'll feel smug.

And you can tick off another thing on your bucket list.

And you'll never have to think "I wonder if I could write a book?" ever again, because you will have done so, and it doesn't matter that your significant other used it for swatting a fly and it's got a greasy smear on the back because it's got your name on the spine, and that is a pretty immense feeling.

But don't take my word for it.  You should ask this lady... She's 'Gone through our mill.' and come out the other side reasonably unscathed.  You should go to Amazon and buy her new poetry book right now.

It's available in both good old-fashioned paperback and for the new-fangled Kindle HERE 

You should buy it, it's great.

Then you should buy a couple of my books from HERE

Then you should review them all (favourably) and settle back into your favourite reading chair and give yourself a big hug... You've just made an independent author feel good about themselves.

And THAT'S what life is all about.

(P.S. Christopher Hitchens finished his quote with, "...but in most cases that's where it should stay."  I chose to gloss over that part.)

Almost Famous? No, not really.

OK, if you know me at all, you will be thoroughly bored with me going on and on and on about the reading 'gig' I had on Saturday.

But, in case you were sat in a bibliophobic void for the past couple of weeks... On Saturday I ventured into the Wild West (Midlands) to visit Southcart Books in Walsall during their festivities for Independent Booksellers Week.

It wasn't just me, obviously... I mean there were some real writers there too.  Ones with talent and imagination and money and everything. All very imposing.

I won't bore you with the details of the trip down, it was reasonably uneventful.  Obviously the SatNav let me down a couple of times by suggesting some completely fictional lane choices at junctions that caused the DandyMobile to cover about twice the mileage that she had to.  Oh, and there was a bus that tested the very limits of my military defensive driving training on the Lichfield Road. (It was a good job that the Mehmsahib had convinced me to leave the Desert Eagle at home I can tell you)  Other than that, it was a pretty sweet trip.

We arrived about two hours into the event, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake as far as the official publicity pictures were concerned, and everything was in full swing.

Here's the group photo, can you spot who isn't there? (Photo by Craig Beas)

The shop was brimming with interesting people and I treated myself to a quick game of "Try to figure out which of these people are other authors and which are just clinically odd." - I lost, which is strange when you realised that I was just playing with myself... I mean... No, nevermind, you get the gist.

I introduced myself to Scott, the owner, and The MicroDandy introduced himself to Amy, Scott's partner and co-owner, by asking for a cake - This is one of his three standard opening gambits when meeting a new person, and the only one that involves food.

We mingled for a while, scanning the laden shelves of the Fantasy & Sci-Fi sections (Which in fairness, mainly consisted of me whispering "Goddit, Goddit, Goddit" under my breath and Mrs Dandy sighing.)

I managed to catch the end of Lucy Onions reading from her new book, Good for Nothing (Which obviously, you should all go out and buy) - We like Lucy Onions, as well as being a great author, she's a fine photographer AND the lead female vocalist of Northern Soul/Motown Party Band Soul'd Out - She also used the word 'Surreal' to describe my writing, which made me do a big grin.  She also wears great shoes.

I missed the next author's set, (This was a huge ommission on my part, see below) as my good friend and fellow Penguin's Header, Neil Sehmbhy arrived and we did some manly fist-bumps and talked about marketing strategy and cupcakes.

Then it was my turn to address the teeming throng...

Here is me, before my head went purple (Photo by Lucy Onions)

As I sat there, in front of a dozen or so people and spied the nice lady whose set I had just missed. "Feels strange sat up here, in front of all of these people doesn't it?" I said.  She looked at me oddly, which was the correct reaction as she didn't know who I was in the slightest and replied that you got used to it after a while, especially when you did the amount of shows and Cons that she did. (That might have come across sounding as if she was being a bit curt, she really wasn't) I later found out that she was Theresa Derwin, author of Horror, Sci-Fi and Urban Fantasy (You should buy all of her books too, obviously)

I'd planned to read a post from each 'Volume' of the collected Chimping Dandy, which I did.  And then I was going to finish with the famous 'Library Scene' from Windspider... But I didn't have time, you know why?  Because real people were asking me real questions about both my writing and The Penguin's Head.  I'm reliably informed that not all of my answers sounded like I was pulling them out of my rear end.  Some did obviously, but there were applause and laughs so I consider that it was all a bit of a success.

The MicroDandy, Bless his little black heart, filmed both of my readings on his KiddieZoom camera.  I present them for you below, should you be interested.

Above is me reading 'Thermodynaimcs, it's the law', the story about the relationship between my Dear Old Dad (TM) and a frozen pigeon.

And the other one is me reading 'The Price of Everything, but the Value of Nothing' which explains how money isn't actually worth anything and may as well not exist.

You'll notice that my head went purple during the performance, this is nothing to worry about and is completely natural.

During this time, the remaining third of The Penguin's Head arrived in the form of the literary Demigod (or do I mean Demagogue?) James Josiah and the rest of the afternoon dissolved into a bit of a bro-fest.

I did however, manage to hear some of Ian Billings' set, which managed to keep the MicroDandy enthralled. No real surprise as the gentleman in question was once a scriptwriter for Chucklevision. (amongst a huge list of other amazing things - Buy his books too, if you have kids that is, or if you're infantile... I'm not one to judge)

All in all, a day well spent.

If you find yourself in Walsall with a spare five minutes, you could do a lot worse that moseying down to Southcart books and taking a look around - Tell them that I sent you and you'll get a free "What are you talking about? Who's the bloody Chimping Dandy?" from the owners.

Southcart Books
20-21 Lower Hall Lane (You know, the white-painted one that used to be the hairdressers?)
Walsall
WS1 1RL

Ding!-Ding! Round Two!

No, this isn't about that Mr Groves being taken down in the eighth by a 'Georgia Peach' delivered by Carl Froch.

It's about me... Because: My Blog.

Some of you will know that in early November of 2013, I published a book called 'Mumblings of an Irate Pangolin' Volume 1 of the Collected Chimping Dandy- The link will take you to Amazon UK, where, if you have no financial or literary sense whatsoever, you can buy a copy.  It looks a bit like this:

Yes, I know it looks a bit amateurish, it was my first go.

But, I hear you say, "I've already got a copy!"  Well, you both have and haven't. You see, this is the second edition, it has a picture of a penguin in a bowler hat on the frontespiece and some spelling mistakes and grammatical errors have been removed.

(Not all of them though, as the nine year old MicroDandy informed me last night... Technically it's considered 'Bad Grammatical Form' to end a sentence with both an exclamation mark and an ellipsis, as you're finishing what you're saying with a *bang* but implying that there's more to come.  My considered reply was "Just go to bed." which may sound a bit draconian, but in fairness it had been a long day.)

Anywho, back to me.  On Friday, I released Volume 2, 'The Pangolin Yodels' (Again, the link points to Amazon UK, go now, buy many copies.) Which looks considerably more professional, which is odd, because it was thrown together by the same person, i.e. me.

Can't you almost smell the professionality?

It's pretty much more of the same really, lots of idiot things my younger self has done, some rants about idiot things other people have done and continue to do, a couple of serious essays that I wasn't actually going to include (But I had to really, because they were so popular.) and even some fiction.  If you enjoyed the last volume, you'll probably not completely hate this one... Well, not completely.

This one also has a picture of a penguin in a bowler hat in it, and this is important.

You see, this book wasn't as much of a one-man-band affair as the first edition of 'Mumbles' was.  It was produced with the assistance of 'The Penguin's Head' <-- This link takes you to their Facebook page, you should go there and like it immediately, you'll be glad you did, in the long run. 

Who are The Penguin's Head?  Well, they're a group of friends for whom writing is a real passion, I mean, you might think that bacon's important, and it is, but for them, writing is like having a bacon sandwich, but replacing all the bread with bacon, and the brown sauce, and probably the bacon itself too - It's like bacon cubed (Which is different from cubed bacon - which I call lardons, because I'm posh)... They're sort of a 'Writers Collective', if you like, but without all the post-gulag socialist ideals and scruffiness that that usually entails.  Currently, there are three of them:

James Josiah - Founder of the tremendously popular The James Josiah Flash Project, which launched the careers of many popular young authors. And has, spookily, also spawned a couple of (Kindle only) books Which you can download Here, that despite what it says, wasn't written by me & Here, which wasn't written by me either, but I did illustrate the cover 

Neil Sehmbhy - Who gets all of his writing published in massive anthologies written on real paper and keeps winning writing competitions and making me feel inadequate.  He is hugely prolific and was one of the main contributors to TJJFP - A couple of my favourite pieces of his flash were 'Derailed' & 'Finding Danielle' If you like your writing dark, you'll like his stuff.

And... Erm... Well... Me really.  I won't bore you with any more links to my stuff, but if you troll through the pages of TJJFP you'll find plenty of my flash fiction there. Plus, you know who I am already, right?

Here is a picture of a penguin in a bowler hat (Yes, it took ages to get the suit on it, and it panicked as we tightened the tie, and none of us are allowed to go to the Antarctic anymore, but it was definitely worth it):

The excellent logo of The Penguin's Head

This is the sort of thing that you can have displayed in your book if you decide to let us help you with it.  Did I mention that we help people write books?  Well, we do.  If you have an idea for a book then we can probably help you get it in print - Whether you just need someone to talk to about the process involved, or if you need a proofreader, or an editor, or you'de just like to hand a full, but scabby, notepad to us and eventually get a stack of stylish 6x9 paperbacks shoved roughly through your mail-slot then we're your men.

We're reasonably cheap and reasonably good at it.  Well, pretty cheap, considering...

Anywho, get in touch with us, it costs nothing.  You never know, you might be the next E.L. James. (Please note: Proofreading erotic fiction can take slightly longer than the more vanilla subjects, you know, when you take into account cramp and having to stop for a bit of a lie down and stuff)

OK, that's it for today... Hopefully, I'll have more news for you all tomorrow.