Reminds me, somewhat incongruously, of a line from Jurassic Park…

You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox

I wonder if, as a result of progress, we produce a lot more tripe as eBooks etc than in the day when the construction of the book alone was an art? Of course we do, what am I saying?

You’ll often see me trawling the second-hand bookshops hunting for the wisdom of the ancients and the smell of a thousand musty hands. In this case, “The Outline of History” by H.G. Wells from 1919 (my edition is 1930). It was flicking through this that sparked the thought.

from "The Outline of History" by H.G. Wells

It could be considered a little disingenuous to rattle on about the poor quality of most of what is self-published – I’ll leave others to judge me on that – but, simply because it’s so easy to do, it is almost guaranteed that things that should have stayed as hand-written pages in a box file in the attic now make it into something that appears like the book world (c.f. Jasper Fforde ). The 1000+ pages of this book by H.G. Wells must have taken weeks/months to type set. This is a massive barrier to entry and one that necessitates some indication of quality before it can be crossed.

The sad fact is that at no point in the future will people be seen trawling through virtual shops and delighting and finding most of the eBooks of today. Don’t get me wrong, I support anyone and everyone writing and publishing their work. My point is that there is implied quality from something  you can pick up that has passed any quality test to make it there. And, specifically, old books are fabulous things – not just because they are old but because you can assume that, to go through the pain of making it, there must be an indication of quality. I’m sure you have come across an old rubbish book, but even the rubbish ones form part of the fabric of social history. Perhaps a lot of the books produced today will ultimately serve the same purpose but more in relation to the nature of their birth rather than their content.

The simple point is that I will always delight in the physical book. There may be elements of convenience from having an iPad full of books – but the emotional response is entirely different. Books are great and the older a book is, the more likely it is to have some merit.

Before anyone else points it out, I will say that my argument suggests that my book should similarly be consigned to the big bin of history because it failed to make it over the barrier (admittedly, I didn’t try very hard). This may be true. It doesn’t really worry me either. I’m not a writer, I’ve just written a book. It was hard work and a lot of fun.

This started as an impromptu waffle on BlipFoto and, with little further consideration, has morphed into a slightly longer waffle herein.

His long, bony fingers reached out, quivering with age. He picked up the metal tin and the unsecured lid fell to the floor; spinning faster and faster as it clattered to a halt on the tiled floor.

With a long sigh, he dipped his fingers into the almost empty tin, scraping what he could from the edges with his brown nails. Putting the tin down with painful precision, he rubbed the wax across his fingertips. A deliberate flourish brought his hands in front of his face; he drew them closer. His fingers searched like vine creepers before grasping the fine wisp of white hair at either end of his thin moustache. With a dramatic slowness, he pulled the wax along the length of the almost imperceptible hair ending with a twist at each end. After 3 attempts, the wax was all but gone.

The same bony hands reached down to the worn, wooden arms of the chair. With a myriad of creaks and groans, he unfolded skyward into the room. Sliding down the weathered blue fabric, he grasped the hems of his coat and, with a gentle tug, straightened out the creases.

The mirror was near the door next to the fire safety instructions. He stepped out deliberately and pressed the ball of his foot into a drawing pin that had fallen from the corner of the fire poster. He flinched but his ritual compelled him on, he paused and completed his slow walk to the door. With a slight limp, he turned to the mirror. The same moustache ritual was repeated. 3 traverses, each with a twist at the end and, with the mirror, arranged symmetrically across his face.

An old face looked back at him. Hundreds of stories and thousands of miles screamed out from maze of lines that surrounded his still steely blue eyes. His eyes brightened further as he pressed down on his foot to push the drawing pin a little further through his slipper. The pain filled his face with ironic delight. The joy of the memories surpassing the any discomfort. A smile crept out from under his moustache spoiling the symmetry but improving his day. He stared deep into his own eyes as they narrowed, as they always did, back then. Back when he was evil, back when only winning mattered.

He slowly pulled his foot from the slipper, releasing the pin and pain stopped. And with the memories came the sadness. On the opposite wall a small white urn sat alone on a long shelf. On one slipper, he ambled uneasily across to face it. His bony hands reaching out again, he took the urn from the shelf and held it in front of his face.

A smile turned to laughter. Slow at first and ending with a long asthmatic giggle. With his shoulders still convulsing slightly, he returned the urn delicately to the otherwise empty shelf. Empty like so much of his life. No other people to remember. Friends and family were all long forgone in pursuit. In pursuit of the prize. All ignored to secure the prizes. Not that any were secured.

In a huge glass fronted cabinet on the other side of the room, the booty that represented a lifetime of endeavour sat fading in the occasional sunlight. Trophies in all shapes and sizes. Standard cups, rosettes, goblets, winged pillars all neatly arranged and all with one thing in common. None were for winning. Not a single first place. Despite everything he had tried, the innovation, the endeavour, the scheming, a cabinet that echoed only disappointment and bitterness. And yet he kept them. It was all he had. For such a long life there was nothing else, plastic relics of failure and a cheap china urn.

The room had a small kitchen area to one side. Leaving his other slipper behind, he shuffled towards it. Butter was taken from the table top fridge and a dry piece of bread from a creased bag in the bread bin that was handily marked ‘Bread’.

The butter was scraped unevenly across the slice. The fridge was opened again and failing eyes peered inside for something with which to turn bread into sandwich. He reached inside hoping for cheese or maybe some ham. He found a sad looking tomato. As he grabbed it, it’s over-ripe softness collapsed into his fingers and exploded in red liquid. It gave him a start and his bread fell to the ground. Butter side down. Much of the tomato joins it.

The sink is opposite and he turned to wash his hands. One foot on the bread, the other in the tomato, the old man is flung up in the air. On the way down his head cracks into cupboard. He lands firmly on his back, cracking a hip, blood flowing from his head.

Motionless, he gathered himself. He tried to move but his smashed hip was too painful. He could feel the blood pool forming around his head.

“Such delicious irony.”

His voice was weak but still had that recognisable barb. He brought up his arms and reset the moustache with the usual 3 twists on each end. And then he laughed. And laughed. Until his breath started to weaken. His laugh became a wheeze, a long breathy wheeze of a forced giggle. Such a delicious irony. And, with that, his breath was gone. He was gone. Finally. It had been wished on him many times and now all those that had wished it now had their way. But few would celebrate. A thin man, dead in a pool of blood. This was no revenge. And after all, they all had the trophies that he so desperately desired. They had already won.

A few hours later his regular lunchtime call. A knock at the door. And then a call. After a pause, keys rattled at the lock. The door swung open and a small woman peered into the room.

“Mr. Dastardly?”

Being far more of a techy than a writer, I obviously spent far more time worrying about how to organise the writing process rather than doing much writing and thinking.

Clearly I could have repeated my previous process, write in Word and backup via FTP to various places on the web. But where, frankly, is the fun in that? It’s not like I’m writing for a living, it has to be entertaining!

The surprise appearance of an iPad in my technical arsenal has brought with it a lot of new possibilities.

Firstly, I’m loving the pared down writing experience you get with iAWriter. I can’t deny tendency to be easily distracted, so the no frills environment is a major plus for me. I actually managed to write quite a bit when out and about with the iPad and indeed in the house. Combined with PlugPlayer to stream music off my server, it provides a very simple and effective setup.

Another excellent iAWriter feature is the ability to sync files with a DropBox account. I’ve never really been excited or otherwise about using Cloud technology, but this small step into it shows a little of what it is capable of. Not from any great technical perspective (although those aspects exist) but from a simplicity/usability perspective. It drops the network/host/setup out the equation. I was obviously very cool with the whole FTP thing, but there are many, many more who will never be. So “push here to magically save somewhere safe” is a pretty compelling proposition. And when you add to that the ability to access easily from anywhere, it gets an awful lot better. I have DropBox setup on the laptop and the iMac so, last night, for example, I started writing on the iMac and continued later on the iPad with no file transfers/emails/fuss. That said, with only 1 ‘active’ copy, I’ll need to be a wee bit careful doing it that way, so maybe the occasional backup of everything will still be a good idea.

It’s worth noting that writing in only plain text is actually pretty decent. You’re not tempted to muck about with pointless formatting, after all, I’m decades away from a final proof.

Recently I added the Index Card iPad app to the mix. In theory, I could write in that alone but I’m going to combine with iAWriter. A very simple app, Index Card has helped a lot with organising thoughts and, as each section completes, I’ll drop it into Index Card and I’ll be able to generate a current full draft as an RTF and easily reorder the plot etc with a simple drag and drop about the iPad screen. And Index Card saves to DropBox too, so more stuff happily wheeched off into the cloud.

Can’t say any of this will make the writing any better or worse but, if feeling upbeat about your setup helps, then I’m on the right track.

There is an obvious a delicious irony associated with me writing this post and not the book, but there’s football on so I wasn’t going to be writing tonight anyway.

Something different is the key point I think. If I’m honest, I’m going to struggle to find the time to make a lot of progress. This could easily be the busiest working year I have ever had (by quite some way), so I’m not expecting to fly through this. But, to give myself a chance, I’m going to try and write something that should be a lot of fun, for me to write at least. The research so far has, in itself, been entertaining.

I’m usually not one for aphorisms or quotes, but this Camus quote kinda sums up my approach to this book, I want to try and do something I’d enjoy in the hope that it will make the process easier and therefore achievable. After all, so few people are likely to read something that will probably take me years, I have to concentrate on the personal enjoyment of writing it.

A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

So, I found my two or three images and slung them into some madness. To say the plot is ridiculous is a bit of an understatement. It is about as far from The Beatle Man as it could be whilst still being in the same language. Although, it does share 1 plot point which the title of this post refers to. I set myself a challenge of crashing together lots of my favourite things into something that appeared to be a vaguely coherent plot. Well, I did it, in a rough form at least. And boy is it unashamedly daft.

Breath should not be held (for many reasons), I’ll be at this for years! Can’t even promise I’ll finish it. We’ll see… I really would love to get it done.

As a slight technical aside; using the combination of iAWriter and DropBox on the iPad is very nice – most of what I have written so far has been done on the move and lurks safely in the cloud.

The 4th in the Obverse Books Iris series, it has the distinction of featuring a story by yours truly. I should point out that I have never and will never receive any cash for doing this and therefore the levels of shame associated with this promotion are well within acceptable levels. I have to say, it was great fun to do but with a lingering stress that your are playing with someone else’s characters. Obviously, my main motivation for this post was so I could put an image of the stunning cover art by Paul Hanley on my blog.

A handy by-product of my appearance in this book is that my Amazon author page now has the massive credibility of two entries!

Tis very good fun writing science fiction, provided I can suppress my urge to attempt to write in a way not entirely dissimilar to Douglas Adams. Many thanks to Paul and Stuart and letting me have a go, hopefully I won’t have annoyed Iris and Panda too much.

A final wee quiz for 2009. I generated this word cloud from the entire text of a novel**. If you can guess the novel you can win a copy of the book.

Second prize is 2 copies

If you like this kind of Word Cloud type quiz there are another EIGHTY over at www.bimbogami.co.uk based on music and movies. All free and fun. And if you play you’ll make @manicmorff very happy.

Word cloud courtesy of www.wordle.net

** there’s a clue on this page

The morning evolution begins. Hunched simian gives way to an upright and scratching Australopithecus. A large stretch reveals something more hominid in form before a final flurry of blinks and groans allows my final almost human shape to emerge; pale and hairy, like those bug-eyed nocturnal animals the beloved Mr. Attenborough chases about in the dark.

Into the bathroom and the radio goes on. Someone, somewhere is moaning about something. Again. Shower on and in. Gurgle, gurgle, sploosh and we’re awake; or what passes for awake. Comatose with a smile – forced – weekday.

As in the days of yore, there is no charge in the electric toothbrush. As brushes go, they don’t brush very well. I scrape and drag a bit. That’ll do.

Pants, trousers, shirt, socks. Socks? Off black, dark black, scudding gray, formerly approximating to black, black with a stripe, black with a slightly thicker stripe, black with Homer Simpson, black with a ridge band a the top, black with a slightly wider ridged band at the top. That’s close enough, the last two will do as a pair.

Shoes on and it’s once a again an awful long way down to the laces. Cue that noise old men make when they get out a chair. Ergo, mmm… best not say it out loud.

The car keys are usually in one of 97 possible places. I find them in place 93. Which I take as a positive. The glass may only be 4 out of 97 parts full but some days that’s enough.

In car and radio on. Some so-called expert is explaining why someone, somewhere who is moaning about something should stop moaning while someone from a so-called pressure group guffaws in contempt to the annoyance of the presenter. I sneer at them all. No one notices.

The drive out to the motorway is more stop than start. This would seem to defy a few laws of physics, but that’s how it feels with the two left hand pedals getting more involved that the right hand side one. Lights, cameras and not much action. Weaving idiots and fat arsed cyclists before the open-road sanctuary of the motorway looms; the 10 seconds of accelerating joy ahead of the nose-to-tail trundle.

And we’re off and there goes Mansell. There stops Mansell. A bus overtaking a truck. There endeth the fun. After a couple of miles I sneak past the sleepy-tacho-trucks and stick the MP3 player on to lighten my mood. Yes indeed, it is a Pleasant Valley Sunday, you’re right, how rude of me not to notice. Pah.

But still, the road is quieter, I’m making progress and leaving more things behind me that there are in front of me. Actually, there is quite a lot, quite far behind me. I strain in the rear view mirror but it looks like everything has backed off behind me to quite a distance. I’m not going quickly but nothing is keeping pace. No idiots in BMW’s careering up my rear, no leather-cased bloodbags on bikes hurtling to their next accident. Nothing for almost a mile at least. Odd. Anyway, on with the journey, turn up the music, all the better for me to have the road to myself.

And then I see them. Blue lights. One, then two, maybe more behind those. With the rest of the traffic still far behind a phalanx of traffic cars was making its way up towards me. I turned down the music and turned round to check what I thought the mirror was telling me.

It was only then I saw the hand appear against the rear windscreen…

When it comes to reward for effort, writing a book has to feature at the very lowest reaches of the league table. Months of effort and toil on The Beatle Man and I get 46p for every copy sold on Amazon (or other sites). I’m not complaining, such is the way…

Recently, I was playing about with the Amazon Affiliate widgets (as is my wont, I like a widget) and I set up the links (on here and elsewhere) to allow people to buy the book via my site. Some kind person did and I got 50p for it.

So, 2 minutes of effort to put a link in a blog produces more reward than months of writing. Obviously, it’s not about the money, as Stu and I have been discussing a lot of late, it’s much more about the cheapies. So, I’ll keep writing, and maybe add some more links!

The book itself is really well produced and looks great. I know this because I received my complimentary copy today. It is hardback with colour and images and… “Hang on“, I hear you interrupt, “your complimentary copy? How so?“ “Oh“, I reply, “Didn’t I mention that I had a story in it?“ “No you didn’t“, you continue, astonished, “Did you get paid?“ “I will receive some recompense, yes.“ “But won’t that make you a professional satirical writer?“ “Well, I rather suppose it does.“

But seriously, it is genuinely funny, despite my very short and heavily abridged contribution. I encourage you all to check it out.

“I still wonder if attempting to deliberately create an artificial authorial voice with your second novel is altogether wise.“

He has a point. I think I’d need to be far better than I am to pull off what I was trying to do. I need to have a think. Do I try to pull it off? Do I stick with the first person at all? I have so little time to work on this now, I’ll never finish it with too big a false start. I need to think…