One of the surprising threads on social media after the US elections discussed the colour of Hillary Clinton's jacket lapels, many tweets expounded theories about the colour choice. Comments blended the Democrat Blue and the Republican Red into a common purple echoed in the words of Mrs Clinton's speech after the vote, and the campaign slogan "Stronger Together."
Tuesday, 15 November 2016
Friday, 11 November 2016
He was a soldier too.
I often think about him at this time of year, an old gentleman I used to see quite often. Almost every morning close to a war memorial, roughly the same time of day, about nine o’clock. Quiet, reflective, the sort of man who keeps himself to himself. Occasionally we would exchange a few words beyond good morning and then he would go about his business.
One day he wasn’t there, and he would never be again, but before that day he shared something that had a profound effect on me. He’d left a card on the memorial, asking people to remember those who had died in the second battle of them Somme. I paused to read the card and he said quietly “I wish I had died with them.”
One day he wasn’t there, and he would never be again, but before that day he shared something that had a profound effect on me. He’d left a card on the memorial, asking people to remember those who had died in the second battle of them Somme. I paused to read the card and he said quietly “I wish I had died with them.”
Sunday, 6 November 2016
Who is the masked man?
November the Fifth, Bonfire Night, the Million Mask March through London, all connected by the face of one man. Guido Fawkes. Some say he was the last man to enter the Houses of Parliament with honest intentions
Tuesday, 1 November 2016
Starting over
November 1st, another year and another challenge for hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, of writers?
NaNoWriMo swung into gear at 00:01 this morning wherever you are in the world. If you are heading out for the first time into uncharted waters with your first attempt at the fifty-thousand word - thirty-day challenge good luck and enjoy yourself, and the same good wishes go to all the veterans of past NaNoWriMo years.
I'm giving it a miss this November, focusing on completing works in progress.
The finished novels are available through the major eBook retailers, check out the links from cheekyseagull.co.uk Click the drop down menu, each title has its own page; or visit the series page at Smashwords for The Grange.
Grab yourself a piece of the action, a good thriller for the dark winter nights is just what you need.
Thursday, 20 October 2016
What did you say?
It kicked off with a conversation about language with a colleague and an attempt to introduce him to the delights of the arty bollocks generator, I've touched on this before, but this time, horror of horrors, it was off-line. Mildly embarrassing to head for the reveal and be left with "page cannot be displayed" or a similar message. Happily, the loss was temporary and before too long the generator was back at work.
The temporary denial set me clicking around the Internet, trying to discover where it had gone and in the process stumbled on a cornucopia of generators, all of the same ilk. Brothers in Arms of the ABG and I was introduced to International Art English, after David Levine and Alix Rule's 2012 essay in the TripleCanopy magazine and a variant, one might call it a dialect perhaps, International New Music English explored by Danika Paskvan in cacophonymag.com.
With a liking for word play and a fascination for how language changes, naturally and by mangling and mutilation uncovering the various generators became a serious distraction, touching on the conversation about triggers, safe spaces and the less than tolerant attitudes expressed in both these areas. I left the heavy stuff for another day; returned to the generators and International Art English.
Levine and Rule explored the premise in their essay that the language of art whether by accident or design confused, obfuscated and segregated. Knowing the language was a way of breaking into and advancing through the ranks, without the knowledge advancement was near impossible. They lay some of the responsibility for the development of International Art English with the interns of the art world, at one point describing the language as English inexpertly translated from French.
The pair take it seriously, and many of the art world do, fluency is a mark of the Insider, and Levine and Rule describe it as a unique language, English that definitely is not English. Their research involved running thousands of press releases through the language analysing software, Sketch Engine, to uncover the workings behind it all. IAE uses more words not less. Its structure under analysis pointed towards the badly translated French origin and Levine and Rule pinpoint its arrival via the magazine October, a critical journal founded in 1976 in New York and drawing on French post structuralism's ideas and prose style.
Where ever it began, the language is now as global as its parent and an established part of any exhibition or installation, for good or ill.
I digress, that's how it's been for a couple of weeks, it started with the ABG and went waltzing (without matilda) across the Internet. The original intention of locating the downed ABG sent the click rate soaring and a web of connections. Nowhere seemed safe from jargon of some description or other and the humorous generators were never far away.
IAE was born out of post structuralism and post modernism got in on the act too, the post modern essay generator was high on the search rankings, click the button and another wordy treatise of intellectual gibberish appears on the screen, and business has its adherents at the commerce B.S. generator. A simple click throws up a snippet of..., click it again and another one appears.
It does seem the art world is assailed by more than its share of generators, maybe an extension of the inevitable creativity expressed through art, but that hyperbolic verbiage comes under ruthless assault - hang on a moment, did I just slip into...?
The Art speak generator offers a quick fix, the Critical Response to the Art Product - the FLA is pretty clear - offers a quick retort in a tight situation. The apposite comment you wish was in residence all the time visiting fifteen minutes after you turn the light out at night.
The right words at the right moment, what a rare gem that can be!
Tuesday, 20 September 2016
Just when you thought it was safe...
It was a sequel to Jaws, the not entirely originally titled Jaws 2, but it had the tag "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water..." A classic line from Peter Benchley.
After sifting through the Bowker review of publishing trends, 2010 to 2015 and seeing the hit the Vanity press had taken, a hit so hard that Penguin Random House ditched Author Solutions at the beginning of 2016, and the declining numbers of authors buying their product I should have known there would be something lurking around the corner. Just when you thought...
I had that feeling when I clicked on David Gaughran's blog and started reading, he is running through the latest money scamming idea from the dodgy end of publishing, Vanity Publishers pretending to be legitimate trade publishers and hiding their true colours until the author has taken the hook, been played on the line and finally reeled in.
Just go to David's blog and read it here.
I'll let David tell the story, my job tonight is merely to pass it on, at David's request!
After sifting through the Bowker review of publishing trends, 2010 to 2015 and seeing the hit the Vanity press had taken, a hit so hard that Penguin Random House ditched Author Solutions at the beginning of 2016, and the declining numbers of authors buying their product I should have known there would be something lurking around the corner. Just when you thought...
I had that feeling when I clicked on David Gaughran's blog and started reading, he is running through the latest money scamming idea from the dodgy end of publishing, Vanity Publishers pretending to be legitimate trade publishers and hiding their true colours until the author has taken the hook, been played on the line and finally reeled in.
Just go to David's blog and read it here.
I'll let David tell the story, my job tonight is merely to pass it on, at David's request!
Wednesday, 14 September 2016
Looking under the carpet
That moment, you reach the point of searching for something and lift the corner of the carpet to peer underneath, you know full well that what you're looking for isn't there, but you haven't already looked. So, the corner of the carpet comes up.
I guess it's also the moment that anything you swept under there before stares balefully back at you.
A couple of things had me looking around the other day, one was Bowker's Self-Publishing in the United States. 2010 - 2015; an analysis of print and ebook publishing trends and the other was a search at the top of the page. After wasting a few minutes, alright, more than a few minutes on the trending hashtags of twitter I moved on. I typed in Publisher's Weekly and read the search result at the head of the page; chooseyourpublisher.com.
Some time ago I posted a blog on the workings of the vanity presses in general and Author Solutions in particular, I remarked on the number of times the web page of something like FindYourPublisher had Author Solutions tucked at the bottom of the page (nothing has changed).
Chooseyourpublisher had; chooseyourpublisher. Now I was curious, so who are chooseyourpublisher, moving sideways across to an Internet domain site - I used get dotted - I searched for chooseyourpublisher found the suffixes still available and clicked on the information icon of a domain name already taken and scanned the whois information.
Sound advice for an individual is to sign up for the privacy deal, big companies and organisations aren't always so particular. The owner of the domain name was tucked into the listed information and the usual suspects' information was there on the screen.
David Gaughran and Victoria Strauss and others have long held a spotlight up to the shady world of Vanity Publishers and the recent class actions dismissed against Author Solutions notwithstanding. Some of their activities deserve closer scrutiny.
What caught my eye about the Bowker report and the trends identified within the industry shed some light on Penguin Random House's quiet release of their hold on the company in January 2016. A contrast to the purchase four years previously
PRH bought AS in 2012 with considerable fanfare, and many thought the new owners would change the MO, not so! The old practises continued and the company expanded under the new owners.
However reluctant AS and PRH might have been to change their ways, the world was changing around them. The attitude towards self-publishing was shifting. Middle ranking and other authors previously held by commercial publishes were moving their back catalogues and self-publishing titles as they recovered rights previously signed away.
Commercial presses were already snapping up successful self-published authors and the expansion of authors working through the medium of the Internet shared their knowledge and experience. All contributed to a decline in the number of ISBN's issued through the Vanity outlets.
Caution is needed here; the Bowker document gives an indication of the trends visible through the distribution of ISBNs, Most self published authors are aware that an ISBN isn't essential for publication, so the picture laid out by Bowker isn't the whole picture.
What that might be is anyone's guess, but one thing seems certain, change is the only constant. Have a look at the article where I found the report and a hat tip to The Passive Voice for pointing me towards the-digital-reader.
Caution should be a watchword, check the links, dig deep into those who come knocking and ask Whois looking for your book to publish it, or help you do the donkey work. protect your investment. The time and effort you have put into your creation are worth it, and if you do make a mistake, pick yourself up and have another go.
When you need that boost, that hand up to get you back on your feet. Dust yourself down and remind yourself the large lady will have to find someone else to entertain.
I guess it's also the moment that anything you swept under there before stares balefully back at you.
A couple of things had me looking around the other day, one was Bowker's Self-Publishing in the United States. 2010 - 2015; an analysis of print and ebook publishing trends and the other was a search at the top of the page. After wasting a few minutes, alright, more than a few minutes on the trending hashtags of twitter I moved on. I typed in Publisher's Weekly and read the search result at the head of the page; chooseyourpublisher.com.
Some time ago I posted a blog on the workings of the vanity presses in general and Author Solutions in particular, I remarked on the number of times the web page of something like FindYourPublisher had Author Solutions tucked at the bottom of the page (nothing has changed).
Chooseyourpublisher had; chooseyourpublisher. Now I was curious, so who are chooseyourpublisher, moving sideways across to an Internet domain site - I used get dotted - I searched for chooseyourpublisher found the suffixes still available and clicked on the information icon of a domain name already taken and scanned the whois information.
Sound advice for an individual is to sign up for the privacy deal, big companies and organisations aren't always so particular. The owner of the domain name was tucked into the listed information and the usual suspects' information was there on the screen.
David Gaughran and Victoria Strauss and others have long held a spotlight up to the shady world of Vanity Publishers and the recent class actions dismissed against Author Solutions notwithstanding. Some of their activities deserve closer scrutiny.
What caught my eye about the Bowker report and the trends identified within the industry shed some light on Penguin Random House's quiet release of their hold on the company in January 2016. A contrast to the purchase four years previously
PRH bought AS in 2012 with considerable fanfare, and many thought the new owners would change the MO, not so! The old practises continued and the company expanded under the new owners.
However reluctant AS and PRH might have been to change their ways, the world was changing around them. The attitude towards self-publishing was shifting. Middle ranking and other authors previously held by commercial publishes were moving their back catalogues and self-publishing titles as they recovered rights previously signed away.
Commercial presses were already snapping up successful self-published authors and the expansion of authors working through the medium of the Internet shared their knowledge and experience. All contributed to a decline in the number of ISBN's issued through the Vanity outlets.
Caution is needed here; the Bowker document gives an indication of the trends visible through the distribution of ISBNs, Most self published authors are aware that an ISBN isn't essential for publication, so the picture laid out by Bowker isn't the whole picture.
What that might be is anyone's guess, but one thing seems certain, change is the only constant. Have a look at the article where I found the report and a hat tip to The Passive Voice for pointing me towards the-digital-reader.
Caution should be a watchword, check the links, dig deep into those who come knocking and ask Whois looking for your book to publish it, or help you do the donkey work. protect your investment. The time and effort you have put into your creation are worth it, and if you do make a mistake, pick yourself up and have another go.
When you need that boost, that hand up to get you back on your feet. Dust yourself down and remind yourself the large lady will have to find someone else to entertain.
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