Jan
31

Day Thirty-One

And this blogger is really quite tired.

The blog-post-a-day-for-a-month experiment is rolling to an end today and it’s been fun but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t running out of steam. Tomorrow, when I’m not retrieving my niece from climbing the furniture, I’ll post what I learned during the strange topsy, turvy month that was January but I’m taking it easy today.

I posted the trailer Neil G considers his favourite but I’ll be honest the one that follows is my favourite. I used to think Neil G was joking when he said he had a library in his house and then I realised, after watching this, that he did in fact have a library in his house. Puts my four and a bit bookcases into perspective.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQC0QVXa33o&eurl=http://journal.neilgaiman.com/&feature=player_embedded]

Coraline opens in the UK on the 8th May and is out in the US at the end of next week. Original material and the director means it’s suitable for anyone who can cope with A Nightmare Before Christmas. I’m aware that many of the people swinging by here will have seen this already, this is aimed at the others and a way for me to find it easily again.

Now I’m going to laugh at Google’s FAIL moment. Yes: I am aware this doesn’t display me in a mature light.

Jan
30

Friday Flash Fiction: A short story about nothing

A  short story about nothing
By Neil Beynon

It begins on a street.

I do not know why.

Indeed I have no idea where this is going except that the street is wet from the rain and cold from the wind and in front of me someone lies bleeding. The whole thing has an air of not being real until their hand grabs my ankle then I can feel their stickiness seeping through my sock. There is someone bleeding at my feet, dying perhaps and all I am doing is standing here. My brain slips into gear.

I bend down to get a closer look at the stranger. He is bearded and familiar although I cannot place him. Perhaps I have seen him in the coffee shop or possibly at the station? He murmurs something but I cannot understand him. The blood is coming from his chest, he appears to have been stabbed but by what I’m not sure and I am reluctant to pull his other hand – the one not holding my ankle – from the wound. He is pale, skin the colour of gone off milk, and his breath is coming in long wet gasps that suggest the tearing of something important. He is not in a good way.

I look up to call for help but the street is a wasteland: no one emerging from the office behind me, no one ambling down the street and no one looking up from the main road. Not even the rubbish, travelling on the gusts, is willing to stop for me. I cannot find my mobile. I must have left it in the office. Typical. And so I call for help. Shout, actually. Yet no one comes. I am concerned now.

The man is still breathing when I help him to his feet and thank god he isn’t bigger than me, I never realised how heavy a person can be when they’re a dead weight. And that’s when I feel his wallet. Propped up against the wall as I try to help the man onto Oxford Street where we can catch a cab. It’s in his inside pocket and so full at first I think he’s armed and I’ve stumbled into a gang fight but this man doesn’t look like a gangster. Not that I know what a gangster looks like.

In any case, he is barely conscious and there is no one else around. I glance briefly back at my office block but I know I am the last to leave just as well as I know my own wallet is empty. There would be no one to know.

I pull the wallet out and sure enough it is stuffed with cash. Fumbling, I stuff it into my own inside pocket, ignoring the blood it leaves on my top and leave the man propped up against an alleyway wall. His breathing is shallow now and he no longer looks at me or holds onto me. He really does look familiar but a momentary glimpse of guilt is lost in the feel of the money in my pocket. I am struck by the sense I should feel something and I don’t – in fact I feel nothing. It won’t be long now.

I walk away. I pause at the corner of the street just long enough to check in the reflection of a shop window if I still have blood on my chest but the worst of it is gone. I muse that I should shave again because my beard is looking as untidy as that poor bastard’s. Then I’m on my way again, no one paying me any attention, nothing out of the ordinary, and I’d be whistling if it wasn’t for the twinge in my chest.

Jan
29

Digital 101: Top five mistakes

By day I earn my crust as a digital marketer for a large publisher. By night I write and try to draw as much attention to my writing as I can without people resorting to physical violence. In both cases I spend a fair bit of time online and I see a great deal of people (successfully publishing and complete novices alike) making their digital life much harder for themselves than they need to.*

1. Build it and they will come – No, actually they won’t. The classic error made by digital newbies (and a surprising number of published authors) is to build a site like a CV and wait for people to turn up. Like it or not: the marketplace is a crowded place and just having a web site isn’t enough – you have to give people a reason to visit and a reason to come back. You have to add value and that means content or community. Typically, these days it means both.

2. I don’t want to be visible on search engines – Then you won’t have visitors beyond your mates. People use search engines, in many cases they are now the main way people navigate the Internet and so if your site isn’t visible to them then you’re leaving traffic on the table. There are plenty of pieces of advice out there on how to configure your site to be “Google friendly” and I’ll be posting my top tips next week. If you’re not looking for legit ways to get people to link back to you, if your web page URLs are impenetrable numeric codes and you think meta is just a type of fiction then you need to brush up on your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

3. It’s all about me dahling – Fair enough, I’m not interested. Bloggers, and I count myself in this, are particularly susceptible to this sin. To be honest regular readers, friends and family will probably have a certain interest level in reading about what’s happening with you but it won’t bring in traffic nor will it lead to people talking about your work. As I said earlier it starts with content: be funny, be interesting, be informative, start a debate, make cool art but there are no short cuts: you gotta graft. You can tape bacon to a cat if you want but if you haven’t done the graft before hand (and Scalzi did do the work) no one’s going to be around to tell the Internet you taped the bacon to the cat.

4. I don’t have time to look at other sites – Remember what I said about people linking back to you? The best way to get people to do this, in conjunction with providing interesting and entertaining content, is to find content on other sites to comment on or use as a kicking off point for a debate or to add relevant knowledge/experience to that are unique to you.

5. It’s mine precious – Copyright and the Internet don’t mix terribly well. To understand why you need to go back to the origins of the ‘Net in the Cold War and its role as a fail safe for data in the event of a nuclear war. The whole thing is built to allow rapid, cheap, easy distribution of content – it’s built into the DNA of the system and has permeated the culture of the people using it to the point where even repressive states like China struggle to stop it. You’ve got no chance and so if you’re going to get stressed about your content appearing on sites beyond your control, do yourself a favour: stay off the Internet. Equally it goes without saying you should only put stuff up online that you’re happy to stay online forever because you can’t control that either.

There you go, I hope this helps. This isn’t just for writers. It goes for photographers, artists, fanzines, webzines and pretty much anyone doing digital on a budget. In the coming weeks I will expand on some of these sins, explain how to get the basics right and hopefully get you thinking about your digital strategy in a different, more creative way.

Any questions: just jump on the comments thread or use the contact form.

* To be fair, there are people who do it well, amongst many: Neil Gaiman, John Scalzi, Futurismic, Weird Tales.

Jan
27

By way of raising a smile

The really rather enjoyable Mock The Week crew on Gordon Brown:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_Cbb7nECTs]

Jan
27

Rabbit Holes

I recall noticing a while back that there was some kind of meme coalescing around Lewis Carrol’s birthday (today) and thinking: that sounds like fun and: won’t have to think of content for that day. Today, after recovering from the shock that it was the 27th already, I noted that the meme was meant for Live Journal. I’m not on Live Journal and my day was so unspeakably mundane that, somewhat to my surprise, I can’t think of anything surreal to write.

For example, I was awoken this morning by an inanimate object that squawked at me until I got up and turned it off. Despite the sun being a good few hours away I then proceeded to eat reconstituted wheat mixed in with the milk of an ecosystem damaging mammal and stare at another inanimate object that was also giving off low-level radiation. From there I felt it necessary to walk at a speed that physically hurt to the station before running the final few yards and leaping onto a metal tube on wheels packed with hairless primates packed in so close it must have been either a mating ritual or the prelude to ritualised combat. Hot air circulated at waist level served to slacken the bowels in a bid to enhance the fight or flight mechanism whilst cold air from the various holes in the conveyance served to focus the mind.

After about forty-five minutes the train rolled to a halt in a large city made of stone and full of yet more hairless primates of varying levels of intelligence whereupon I resumed my earlier pace. Once at my final destination, a large stone building, I exchanged hours of my life for notes of paper that promised me gold if presented to the right person but not really, and for less-not-really-gold than I would have got if I presented the notes twelve months ago, and some of which I given immediately to a third party who, although having nothing to do with the whole mechanism, will lock me up if I don’t pony up. At that stone building I offer up some extra hours because you know: I have plenty and so on and so forth.*

See: nothing surreal there.

* from this point on the evening got considerably better as I met a friend for drinks and, on the way home, enjoyed listening to a very large lady talking very loudly on her mobile phone about her very inept friend on the other end of the line.

Jan
26

Don’t play poker with me

gyygbde2Long time readers of this here blog will know that I have a long history of making a fool of myself in front of celebrities and people of note (the latter category frequently including writers). Today is no exception.

I didn’t set out to spot him. I am not a paparazzi, nor do I feel it necessary to accost people on the street for the autograph and to be honest all I really wanted was a sandwich, possibly a banana. What I got was an awkward pavement shuffle with Anthony Stewart Head as I tried to return to the office. Now, I thought I did a pretty good job of masking the whole OMG-it’s-him-that-played-Giles-on-Buffy-why-do-I-suddenly-want-to-drink-coffee-from-a-red-mug moment and adopted a Vulcan like exterior as I sidestepped him. Especially considering the long flowing coat he was wearing could have been straight out of the Giles costume cupboard. But judging from the look I got he must have caught my momentary lapse of recognition.

That’s right: he gave me the Uther Pendragon patented glower.

*sighs* At least I didn’t nearly kill him (Noel Fielding, bicycle, Oxford street, you get the idea).

Jan
25

Getting on with it

The weekend has nearly gone again. They seem to fly by these days.

I’ve spent most of this one working on sorting out my bookshelves – I know: so rock and roll – as I could not longer find stuff I was certain I owned and, indeed, removing books from the shelf involved high risk of concussion. Anyway, they’re all back in order now and you do not need an advanced engineering degree to remove them without killing yourself. Also I found some books that I forgot I owned, I’m reading one of them now.

I had also intended to go to see The Wrestler this weekend and had I done so this post would have been a review. If the story of how I missed it was funny I’d relate it here but alas it was as mundane as it was irritating and so I’m left a little short of content today with a week still to go on my Blog-a-day-for-a-month experiment.

Speaking of which I think the experiment is going well. The traffic here has been up consistently through January bucking last year’s trend where traffic fell in the first few weeks of the year; although this weekend does seem to have produced something of an inexplicable ding and I’m uncertain how feasible it will be to carry on at this pace in February. Instead, and as more of a productivity hack for my fiction, I’m considering giving up telly for the whole of Feb.

This week promises to be pretty full on and I’m looking forward to getting back to the right side of the river next weekend.

Jan
24

Walk on by…?

Things that demonstrate bias in reporting:

1. Only reporting one side of a conflict in a positive light.

2. Using emotive language such as terrorist or heavy handed that reflects a moral judgement on one side over the other.

3. Taking up arms for either side.

4. Providing intelligence on one side to the other.

5. Suppressing material that either portrays one side in a positive light or one in a negative light.

What bias isn’t:

Helping people who are in need with an appeal for humanitarian aid.

Serious BBC FAIL. That is all.

Jan
23

RT Neil Gaiman

Kinda and because he asked:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js7wxoqeVK0]

And because Henry Selick rocks.

Jan
23

Friday Flash Fiction: Full Meta Jacket

This week is themed on idea suggested by Gareth D Jones (altered film titles), please take time to check out excellent pieces from Shaun C Green and Gareth D Jones. No doubt there will be a full round up on Futurismic later. I hope you enjoy:

Full Meta Jacket

By Neil Beynon

I’m sitting in the small airless meeting room we use for interviews. It is stark white with no exterior window and a small pinewood table that almost fills the room. The chairs are stained with the echoes of hundreds of meetings and the blinds looking out at the reception area are closed. I do not want people to look in – it’s lunchtime and I’m writing.

Or at least I am meant to be writing. What I am actually doing is chewing my pen and wondering if this is the day it happens. If this is the day the words dry up. I write a line – “There was a man with only one eye.”

I stop. I cross out the line.

I have been at this for most of the hour and now my lunch is nearly gone I don’t have much time left. My head aches in throbbing waves and my left eye is ghosting so much it’s hard to see. I’m getting a migraine.

I pop two ibuprofen and hope for the best. Washing them down with tepid tea that makes me gasp, it’s colder than I realised. In the aftershock I think of the hangover god and from there Terry Pratchett and then it’s not a big leap to Small Gods. The title spins round my head like a kid on a skateboard, grinding in the turns.

I write a description of my own small god. He is twenty centimetres tall, wrinkled like worn leather and wearing a tiny robe that might once have been white and may once have hidden his bare feet. He is not a happy god and he does not mean anyone well. Characters in my stories so rarely do.

My head is aching as I stop. It’s not a bad character idea, not a brilliant one either, but it isn’t a story and I realise I’m not going to hit my deadline. Balls.

The pain is sharp and intense like someone is pulling my hair tight enough to take away skin. My hand bats it away in a reflex I cannot control and I leap from my seat at the shock of actually having flung something across the room.

The thing hits the door and slides down to the carpet. It is still holding a chunk of my hair and blood is flowing down my neck, at least I think it’s blood.

I am mad.

No, I reason; I’m bleeding. They are not the same thing. The creature is now muttering at me in a language I do not understand. Its dirt encrusted sleeves flapping as it punctuates its meaning with a wave of my detached hair. I feel sick.

I reach for the door. To do what I’m not sure…? Independent verification perhaps…? Medical attention would certainly be wise. It doesn’t matter. The creature – the god I suppose – is forewarned this time and raises its free hand. I stop. I cannot move – It lowers its hand and I fall to the seat.

Then it leaps onto the table.

I still cannot move as it walks up to my notebook and reads the text. It glares up at me before pointing to the pad. I do the best shrug I can given the invisible straightjacket in which I am trussed up.

It points at the pad once more and my hand rises slowly and reaches for the pen. I am not moving my hand as I begin to write and although I am relieved I do not know where the words are coming from. The sound of the pen on the paper seems to soothe the creature as it would me were it not for the sound of my blood dripping onto the page.

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