Discovering the video trailer

One positive thing about attending a writers conference was a few moments of inspiration. Or, it might be that I’m just catching up with others and possibly shrugging off the tidal waves of bad news about oil prices, possible recession, credit and other crunches, global warming and all the other debatable crises facing the planet.

I discovered a neat program on my Mac called i-movie so I got myself listed on one of these stock photo sites and decided to make a two minute video for my novel ‘Old Habits Die Hard’. And it works. You can send the little video to agents and editors in the hope it will grab their attention.

Except, in one case, a senior editor emailed back to say the book was too ‘high concept’ for the kind of thrillers he published. This from the editor who bought ‘The Accident Man’ by Tom Cain that uses the death or murder or conspiracy to eradicate Diana, Princess of Wales as a background to a fast moving action thriller.

Still, I persuaded him the read the first 100 pages. Watch this blog!

Winchester Writers Conference - a virgin’s report

It was the first time that I had ever been to a writers conference. I hadn’t realised just how many writers there are out there. When you consider a high percentage of the 500 or so delegates at the Winchester conference would be trying to get their books published by an increasingly challenged and stretched industry it just demonstrated to me that you really have to find some novel way of grabbing the attention of editors and agents (sorry about the pun).

Anyone worth their salt - and that means anybody in a real book industry - was usually attacked by a swarm of  anxious and desperate writers with shoulder backs packed with manuscripts at the ready.

When I sat back to think - over a beer in the nearest bar I could find - what I had gained from the seminars and meetings, I think I can say that, despite my initial cynicism, the experience served to make a few things profoundly clearer and that I needed to make a few adjustments to my work and general approach here and there.

By and large, however, it seemed that I was doing a lot of things right - except selling more books.

There were some good presentations from Ebury Books and from literary agents such as Teresa Chris, Lorella Belli, Philip Patterson and Marcella Edwards. And there were some amazingly naive questions from the floor (but there were writers there at all stages so it was understandable) that demonstrated that many writers don’t have the faintest idea how the publishing industry works or how it has changed (largely for the worse) in the last decade.

I suppose that if you come away from an event like this with two or three worthwhile contacts having been made and you’ve met some interesting people then the weekend was probably worth the time and money.

I suppose that being surrounded by lexicon of writers (I’ve just invented a new collective description) does give you a kind of warm feeling that you aren’t alone. I must admit, I don’t normally mix with anyone else that writes anything - except journalists - so maybe that was another thing to treasure.

The Animals, Maggie Bell, Zoot Money and naked real ale

I used to be festival goer when festivals were not the vast, heaving mass of chanting bodies they are now. They used to be smaller and more intimate. But last weekend I popped over to the nearby village of Linton where the annual blues festival was taking place over a weekend and listened to the great Maggie Bell (she must be my age and I’m not disclosing that piece of information) as well as other faces and voices from my past.

When I played in bands I gigged with the likes of Zoot Money (he wouldn’t know who I am now from Adam) and it’s great to see these guys (of both sexes) still thumping out the 12-bars. Maggie Bell’s voice is still as strong and raunchy as ever. She did a set with musicians who played with the Spencer Davis Group, Stone The Crows and the Big Roll Band. Top of the bill was the latest incarnation of that great, gritty band from Tyneside, The Animals. The original drummer John Steel was driving the band and on keyboards was the guy who must have replaced Alan Price. I didn’t catch (or couldn’t hear) the name of the Eric Burdon soundalike lead but he hammered out all the old favourites. ‘It’s My Life’, ‘Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’ and ‘House Of The Rising Sun’.

There may not have been 12 bars serving beer but there were at least 12 real ales on offer. For anyone reading this in the US or Europe, real ales have become a bit like vins du pays in France - supposedly regional flavours brewed locally and having distinctive tastes. I know a bit about beer (I have done some consultancy work for a real ale brewery)and although it’s true that small breweries and micro breweries are producing their own distinctive ales, marketing has its part to play. I can’t prove it but I’m pretty sure the same ales are being re-labelled with new names and slogans like ‘Old Grumbleworzle’.

Naked Pierce Brosnan - why the interest?

It’s funny. I put up a post about a time many years ago when I co-wrote a Celtic rock musical for the Edinburgh Festival that starred a naked (and young) Pierce Brosnan. Since then, the post has been by far the most popular on this blog - despite all the other stuff happening on the planet - and I have received more feedback and emails about this than anything else.

For the vicariously curious, I remember Pierce as being a fairly ambitious guy who even then caused female hearts to flutter but who was not particularly outstanding in the naked bits department everyone seems so curious about. I remember that I gave him a lift back to London from Edinburgh in my old and battered van and dropped him off somewhere in the north of the city.

Next thing you know he’s starring in a US TV crime series.

I suppose he is not worried too much now about the economic and spiritual paralysis affecting large tracts of western society - particularly in the UK where (religious beliefs apart) huge efforts behind-the-scenes by the organised armies of political correctness are just about strangling the life out of any vestige of moral or spiritual wonder left in the country.

Last I heard Pierce Brosnan was applying for US citizenship and you can’t blame him I suppose. It would be nice to contact him again but he’d have no particular reason to speak to me, unless it was to talk about my novels and impending film option deal.

Still, enough of this rambling. Let’s see if the words ‘naked’ and ‘Brosnan’ produce another flurry of interest. I’m dashing off to Germany for a week so I’ll check on the blog when I return.

What they say about Pompeii

I’ve had a short break from this blog because I’ve been on holiday. My wife and I went to Amalfi, halfway down the peninsula between the Bay of Naples and the Bay of Salerno. It boasts one of the most exciting yet nerve wracking roads in the world - the Nastro Azzurro. This puts hairpin bends into perspective. It’s as though someone had thrown a long line of spaghetti around the towering sheer cliffs and let it stick, twist and turn in death defying curves and bends following the terrain in staggering hairpins, through tunnels, dipping down into small towns and hamlets tucked inside fjord-like inlets and where tourist buses pass within a hair’s breadth of each other.

We took the opportunity to visit Pompeii, Vesuvius and Herculaneum as well as Capri. I wasn’t ready for the true size of Pompeii. Our guide Lorenzo tended to rush us through the site but one aspect did stop people in their tracks. The full size bodies of two of those who died had somehow carved an internal space for themselves inside the volcanic ash that buried them only for a clever archaeologist to make a mould that reproduced their bodies. They were tiny. I hadn’t realised how small these people were. And the average life span was around 45.

We were more impressed with Herculaneum which is of a more manageable size and really does bring home the everyday ordinariness of their lives which were not unlike ours. Past civilsations knew a lot more than we do about a lot of things despite our scientific knowledge. If you half closed your eyes you could almost see them again, thronging the smelly streets, drinking, trading and smiling.

Capri is a beautiful island spoiled only by the brash tourism that centres around Capri town and Anacapri. Luckily, a few steps away from the crowds took us on a beautifully quiet walk to the end of the island and a glorious belvedere with views out over the Tyrrenhian Sea.

Nearby was a surprise. A garden devoted to philosphers (the Philospophers Garden) complete with some of the most momentous insights into the human condition from at least one hundred minds. Well worth the trip just for this.

Film option for thriller novelist - press coverage

Film producer Matthew Raymond is to acquire film rights to novelist David Callinan’s as yet unpublished suspense thriller ‘Confess Confess’ (booktrade.info).

Anglo-Irish writer Callinan is the author of ‘Fortress Manhattan’ (Gollancz) and ‘Face Lift’ (Ocean House). US literary agent James Schiavone handles book rights and is currently shopping ‘Confess Confess’ – first of a series – to publishers.

“This is a highly original crime thriller with a remarkably charismatic lead character,” says Matthew Raymond. “I was delighted to have had the opportunity to read the manuscript at an early stage before it is published. I am presenting it to my international sales agent and financiers.”

Book agent Schiavone is upbeat about the potential of ‘Confess Confess’. “The book is a highly cinematic, superior heavyweight thriller and introduces Mike Delaney, ex G-force, ex Hong Kong Police and ex monk who becomes a full time avenger as he battles to find the maniac that killed his wife and uncovers a plot involving cloning of the super rich. It has an antagonist that makes Hannibal Lecter look like Little Bo Peep.”

David Callinan is already working on a follow-up work, tentatively titled: ‘Old Habits Die Hard’. He lives in the UK.

Whatever happened to all the wild young children?

I am watching a TV programme about ‘Wind In The Willows’, the all-time classic children’s tale of the river bank with some of the greatest quotes of all time. Kenneth Grahame based his mythical story on the Thames side village of Cookham, where he lived as a child.

The programme made the point that as a boy, Grahame wandered through hill and dale throughout the wild wood, closely attuned to the natural world.

And it struck me that today’s children are so imprisoned in a cottonwool world of political correctness and fear that they would never be allowed to wander free like modern day Tom Sawyers, paddling in streams, making fires, scrumping apples, sleeping in hay barns. Today, both urban and rural parents seem terrified to let children have any freedom although, having said that, we don’t want them to end up as dangerous street corner louts that terrorise housing estates all over the country.

A theme I return to in many of my books is that you can’t legislate to truly change people’s behaviour. Laws, restrictions, ASBOs, wars against religious extremism and social engineering is not going to stop people behaving like animals. We are living through an age that the Hindus call the Kali Yuga - a dark age where a very high percentage of humankind has lost touch with the divine - that spiritual essence that we sometimes feel but seldom embrace or truly experience.

So, bring back the age of innocence - that rare and undervalued quality that Kenneth Grahame captured in the stories of Mole, Badger, Mr Toad, Ratty and - of course - The Weasels (there always needs to be a bad guy).

Naked Pierce Brosnan is not the only tall story

It must say something about people’s predelictions and interests but my post about a young, naked Pierce Brosnan (perfectly true) seemed to get more hits than any other post on this blog. I thought it might be the inclusion of the word ‘naked’ that seemed to tag readers. I’m just glad that a few people have come across this blog.

Since that post I have finished my young reader fantasy novel - the first of a proposed trilogy - and have spent time polishing it and I am now looking around for an agent that specialises in children’s and young adult fiction. So, this makes two full length novels written in the last 12-months which I think is pretty good going.

I was going to turn up at the London Book Fair but, having trawled the halls in years gone by, I reckon that, in common with the attitude of the publishing business in general, writers (the people that produce the goods) are largely marginalised. So I didn’t go this time. But I read some reviews and realised I was probably right not to bother.

One of the big themes this year was not the size of Pierce Brosnan’s 007, but the issue of digitisation.I am not entirely sure what this means but here is a link that may help.

Send me your scams

I’ll bet I’m not the only one who gets inundated with spoof emails from someone claiming to be an African prince down on his luck or the beneficiary of a will who just needs some schmuck to help him move six million dollars out of the country. These scams come thick and fast and I suppose, given that they do, they must fool some people some of the time.

I’d like to start a collection.

If everyone who reads this post can remember to save all the spurious emails, stick them into a folder then send them to me, I would like to compile them.

So, SEND ME YOUR SCAM EMAILS. You can send or forward them to me at confess-confess@btconnect.com.

There’s no prize being given but I might starta competition to vote for the funniest or the most outrageous.

80% of us dead by 2100

Well, it’s official! At least, it is according the scientist, futurist and Gaia proponent James Lovelock. By the year 2100, 80 percent of the world’s population will have perished; victims of climate change, or in Gaian terms, the revenge of the planet. He proposes that our current obsession with sustainability, banning plastic bags, Kyoto agreements, recycling, energy saving, wind and wave power, carbon footprints and other attempts to curtail our fate is just too late.

We have gone too far, too quickly already.

I remember going to a press conference to report a fight back by the plastics industry and by the Carrier Bag Consortium at which a list of doomsday scenario predictions made in the last three decades were read out and demolished one by one, They never happened.

So, will the highly regarded James Lovelock’s predictions of doom meet a similar fate?

He is a quite brilliant inventor who, amongst other things, is working on an idea to sink massive tubes into the sea bed to increase the ocean’s take up of carbon dioxide.

Shame he can’t be like my fictional creation in ‘The Kingdoms Of Time And Space’, Rufus Lane, who creates a microbe that can eat pollution and reverse climate change within two years.

If only fiction was as strange as truth.