SCRIPTING A DUNGEONS & DRAGONS™ VIDEO: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

(This is the full version of the blog post. When recording for video, I had to get used to noise suppression all over again. The software cut a few opening syllables from several sentences. I went in and edited the audio rather than doing a second take.)

Usually, when it comes to making YouTube videos on roleplaying games and boardgames…
   Wait a bit. You can’t hashtag board games. That’s where the one-word spelling comes in, and I am stuck with its utility now…
   When planning videos, I’ll have an idea for a Dungeons & Dragons™ explanation or something along those lines. This needs props. I film those, with one eye on the general idea. Okay, I’ll talk about this game, that publisher, and those hobby accessories.
   If I have those hobby accessories, I’d damn-well better film them. And if I don’t have the items to hand, I’ll film around them. This is how JAWS came to be a much better movie than originally envisioned. If you can’t film the broken rubber shark, film around it. Show the shark’s viewpoint, not the malfunctioning shark prop’s flippery-floppery. Rely on John Williams. He’ll see you through.
   Repeat as needed.
   For assorted copyright reasons, I won’t be relying on the score from JAWS in my video. Spielberg maintained Robert Shaw’s sobriety throughout the production by running the actor through a game of Dungeons & Dragons™. Shaw insisted on playing a cleric called Mr Blue.
   John Milius dropped in as Bear “The Bear” Bear. He and Shaw dangled Wizardy Chappie over the cliff until he revealed the secret password.
   Wizardy Chappie was played by Richard Dreyfuss, who then lied about the password anyway. This is why JAWS was a nightmare to film. And that…is a roleplaying fact.
   Lights, camera, action. Place a prop. Film it. Replace it. Film the next one. Switch camera angles. Leave a camera in shot for the sheer hell of it. Film the next thing. Usually I’ll be listening to someone else’s roleplaying video in the background as I film mine. How many shots will I manage in an hour? Enough.
   I drop those snippets into the editing software and strip out the random audio. Yes, I may move the order of shots around quite a lot. And I might have to ditch footage. Shoot things again. Or shoot a new item that I should have included in the first place.
   With the order of shots arranged around an idea, I write up a script. Shots lend themselves to talking-points. That’s why I film them in the first place. The script is done. I record the audio. That audio is edited. I throw the audio track onto the video compilation.
   That’s when the real editing begins. I extend the length of a clip or shorten it, in keeping with the narrative pace. After that, I look at the visual gaps I’ve left behind. Those must be filled. I’ll use clips from previous videos. Or I’ll film more new stuff. Maybe I’ll repeat a clip several times for effect. Gradually, I fill those pesky gaps.
   I might cut more audio out. You realise you’ve made a point that is…bullshit. It’s a technical term. There’s a statement based on shifting sands at high tide. You misread a source. Or you contradict yourself with wild abandon. The primal audio flies in the face of the civilised video evidence, and you retreat to higher ground.
   Usually, not always, I make time to throw in a roleplaying fact. These roleplaying facts are utterly fake. You’ll know this by the phrasing. And that…is a roleplaying fact.
   Or a boardgaming fact, depending on the topic. Rarely, I find that I don’t use the phrasing at all. It’s a thing on the channel, but it doesn’t define the channel. Dry understated caustic humour? That’s just the default setting in Scotland.
   For this entry, I decided to script a blog post and make it the audio for a YouTube video as well. Some people use the term DungeonTube. I asked Doctor Google about this and encountered requests for directions to The London Dungeon by means of underground rail.
   There was also pornography.
   DungeonTubers, apparently, cover topics in dungeons: specifically, that’s Dungeons & Dragons™. Generally, there is also pornography.
   Already, the wearisome term DungeonTuber has gained a pejorative aspect. Whether they’ve accepted corporate cash to shill out products or not, some roleplaying game hobbyist YouTubers…
   Damn it, I half-typed Hobbit YouTubers and I’ve lost the train of thought. It’s underground, and heading in the direction of a London-based dungeon. Hobbit YouTubers. I’m not here to disparage the height of certain or even uncertain YouTubers.
   My point, misplaced in the mists of typing, is that DungeonTuber is heading for a change in meaning. A YouTuber who makes videos about dungeons, dragons, dungeoneering, delving, and the organised looting of ancient temples…could be described as a DungeonTuber.
   Potatoes in The Temple of Elemental Evil are far too easy to describe as dungeon…tubers.
   Anyway. Point. The term is shifting to occupying the space of little more than an insult for house shills, real or imagined. YouTuber accepts money for plugging dungeon products. Oh, a DungeonTuber.
   I take in a whole load of YouTube videos on roleplaying games. There isn’t one channel presenter I can think of who uses the label. We’ll go out on a limb here. I think that’s unlikely to change.
   You always go out on stout limbs. And always fall from shaky ones.
   Speaking of presenters. Yes, we all have limited time on our hands…and around our elbows, I guess. So while recording videos, I listen to YouTube videos in the background. These are accidentally recorded onto my video clips. That’s why I strip out the audio.
   To save even more time, I listen to virtually all YouTube videos at double speed. If you start off with a fast high-pitched voice, I might listen to you at 1.5 speed – otherwise only bats can hear you.
   Why don’t I watch them? Many dungeoneering and dragon-ish YouTubers are talking heads. Low on visuals. I don’t need to see them to hear their points.
   This channel is the other way around. You see the props, miniatures, maps, and so on. My channel was based on watching a particular type of video. I won’t name the exact one. A quick check shows the one I’m thinking of has been taken down since.
   With one eye on making boardgame videos, I watched a video that was all about seeing players having fun. You couldn’t make out the board at all. The camera might as well have been in a field next to the venue.
   I went there to see the board. And, barely seeing the board, I decided I couldn’t make videos of that nature. If I want to illustrate a point in a discussion on this channel, I’ll throw in an illustration if I have to. Here’s the board. The bar is pretty low, but I still vaulted it.
   Now that I’m typing this up, I know I’ll fill in gaps in the video editing with previous shots of game boards. If I show you a game in a video, I could show the box, the game, the components, a few third-party accessories that make gameplay flow more smoothly…
   But at least I will show you the game, and not a distant shot of the house it was played in. From space.
   What else to say of making videos about boardgames and roleplaying games? I used to make videos weekly. Life got in the way. Now I make them when I feel like making them. Often, I feel like making them and life gets in the way.
   The one thing I haven’t been able to shake is cardboard damage. I open and close many a box here at this table when the cameras aren’t rolling. Preparation isn’t everything, but it’s where I start and so should you.
   As a result of all this cardboard activity, tiny particles drift across the black felt cloth. These bits and pieces build over the course of a few seconds into unacceptable levels of snowfall. I wave a magic wand and vacuum the hell out of the surface to make the gaming table semi-presentable.
   Another feature, and this may not be for you, is the unconnected background. I’ll populate the background with items from a different video. Either I use stuff I filmed last time or things I’ll put in videos next time around.
   This is a working game table. Often, I’ll leave the wooden organisers in the background with coins on prominent display. Those are signs of a Buffy game rumbling along. Buffy is a roleplaying game that uses drama points to generate twists in the plot or handy bouts of healing in the heat of battle.
   And I don’t like to disturb the display. Mustn’t knock the coins down into the abyssal depths at the back of the table. Players need drama. So the roleplaying display features in the background.
   No virtual tabletop for me. I run the table from here, in what Mary Shelley refers to as the deserts of Scotland. My players are scattered across the Cosmos. We may be in several countries, operating at different times, but we are united by different dice around the same table.
   And that really is a roleplaying fact. Here's the video.

BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA…AGAIN: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Come to this blog freely, go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring.
   Regularly, I place tree-based data-storage devices on tree-based data-storage devices. Paper books on wooden shelves. Books come in and must be stored somewhere.
   I know, yes, I know. Books come in and books don’t go out, and there’s always a Bookpocalypse looming. New books must be read. Yet…
   Old books can be read again.
   And so…I turned, once more, to Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula. What is a classic? Stoker’s tale is certainly that, but what’s the definition? We might as well go with Alan Bennett’s remark: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
   Have I read this classic work or…did I only watch the move/TV adaptation? In watching an adaptation, would I be shocked and surprised, on reading the book, to discover that diabolical liberties had been taken?
   Classics I’ve read. Time for a very brief list in no particular order. Strong Poison. Tom Sawyer. Jane Eyre. Treasure Island. Wuthering Heights. Dracula. Frankenstein.
   Adaptations, flattened to fit a two-hour movie-slot, are always going to be patchy. Better to go for lengthier TV adaptations, in which fewer diabolical liberties are taken. If you have a dedicated reading-space, and coffee, then stick with the originals if you can’t bear to see a much-loved classic knifed from all directions.
   Curl up with a good book, and pretend the awful motion-picture does not exist. (Round up the usual suspects. You know the drill.)
   Dracula opens with a lawyer, Jonathan Harker, travelling to Count Dracula’s quaint home to assist in legal matters when it comes to moving house. Spoiler. Oh, and the Count is a vampire.
   When we leave the castle behind, things don’t look too good for the abandoned lawyer. London is Dracula’s target, and Stoker fills the text with characters. Fictional London, aye, and Fictional Whitby, are both fair teeming with characters.
   Dracula’s thirst for blood is matched by the workman’s thirst for alcohol, judging by the many friendly bribes that aid the vampire hunters in their investigations.
   In the opening of this tale, at the castle, in the severe vampiric wilderness, there are precious few characters. Indeed, it is Harker’s realisation that the Count’s home is empty of servants that raises more and more suspicion in his fevered mind.
   Harker is left to the lack of mercy of Dracula’s three undead minions. Few other characters visit the castle. Over in the pub-filled stamping-ground of humanity, Stoker throws characters our way thick and fast.
   Here lies the problem of dealing with adaptations of the tale. Many characters are many characters too many. In the book, there’s space for these choir-like assemblies of voices and their different methods of conveying story. Hardly anything truly happens directly in Dracula…
   We are given a collection of notes. Letters. Diaries. Newspaper articles. Stoker warns us of the existence of many receipts and bills of lading and railway timetables, but he doesn’t bog us down in those.
   The novel is written, pencilled in, penned, typed up, noted in shorthand, and gathered at the edges by means of newspaper stories. Characters frantically chronicle that morning’s events while on the afternoon train to the next vampire hunter meeting, which, itself, will be noted in print much later.
   Only with Doctor Seward and his phonograph in action do we occasionally stumble upon an event that is happening while his recording device is in motion.
   That brings me to his patient: R.M. Renfield. Our lost lawyer friend, Mr Harker, arranged Dracula’s purchase of a property right next to Doctor Seward’s very Victorian asylum. Dracula’s new temporary abode isn’t spooky enough by itself. His new lair needs Edward Gorey levels of lunacy on neighbouring soil.
   It isn’t long before Dracula is at the asylum window, having late-night chats with Mr Renfield. They share an interest in blood. There’s a much-used method running through adaptations, to save screen-time, of condensing characters into one role…
   For some reason, it is fated to Renfield, across adaptations, to merge with the character of Jonathan Harker. Renfield/Harker is often the first condensed casualty in a Dracula adaptation. It seems that writers are hell-bent on turning the patient into the lawyer.
   The lawyer is mobile. Renfield, however, is an inmate who engages in brief bursts of movement when he escapes the confines of his cell. It’s a shame that he’s the first of many elements to go, as…
   He’s vital to the plot.
   In movies, Renfield can come across as a minor character. In the book, though, he’s significant. For a novel named Dracula, we find Dracula himself conspicuous by his absence. Stoker wisely has Dracula conspiring offstage for much of the action.
   Various unrelated newspaper accounts track Dracula’s bursts of activity across the map of London. When he appears in person, he takes the centre of the stage.
   Bram Stoker, should you look him up, would be remembered chiefly as a figure of the theatre had he not written Dracula. He kept one eye on adapting his story to the stage, after all. (And his theatrical version predated the book’s publication by the barest whisper of a vampiric sigh.)
   So don’t be surprised by the Victorian theatricality of a Victorian novel penned by a theatrical fellow. Stoker was not just any theatre-lover, but assistant to noted actor Sir Henry Irving. Much has been made of Dracula’s habits and their alignment with the temperament and physicality of Sir Henry.
   Adaptations sent me to the source, and I found I much-preferred the source. Dracula wasn’t the first vampire story, and it certainly wasn’t ever going to be the last. Stoker threw an undead quote into the book by mentioning the poem Lenore, so we see vampiric roots from an earlier time appearing in the novel itself.
   And it is to poetry that we’d look, in search of early vampire tales that were written down. Before that, as usual, to stave off the mystery of the night, you’d be huddled around a campfire trying to keep people entertained.
   If that campsite happened to be the Villa Deodati at Lake Geneva, and you knew Byron or Shelley, then the stories told would chill the very marrow of your bones. From that rain-lashed place, two classic works emerged.
   We’ll call one Frankenstein. And, just like the later Dracula, this tale faces knives from all directions when being adapted. For reasons of cheapness, a trip into the icy wastes at the novel’s end is a trip too far for most movie budgets. That chill journey is often replaced by a lab explosion.
   The other spooky story from out of Lake Geneva, scribbled by John Polidori, is titled The Vampyre. Today we’d call it highly literary revenge-porn against Lord Byron. The Villa Deodati was the prototype of an internet forum where a teenager could publish her grave-robbing fan-fic without fear of cancellation.
   A forum like that always has an edgy character in there, floating on the periphery while aiming barbed taunts at the centre, and that’s pretty much Polidori’s role in the literary space.
   Polidori gave us the aristocratic vampire preying on young women. Lord Ruthven, the vampire, or vampyre, is based on a man who had little time for the undead – Byron, though there’s a cottage industry out there trying to convince us of his own vampirism. But this blog post is about Count Dracula and not Lord Byron, and I fear we must move on before sunrise surprises us.
   In short, it’s a good while after The Vampyre before we reach Dracula, by way of Varney the Vampire and other literary routes most quaint and curious. For completeness, we should add alternative titles to the well-known tales…
   Frankenstein is all about The Modern Prometheus. Varney’s vampiric saga also travels under the guise of The Feast of Blood, and a last-minute change to Dracula deprives us of the story named The Un-Dead.
   If we are to believe the notion that Lord Byron was (and remains to this day) a real-life vampire, then we must go along with the awkward literary notion that Byron wrote everything. He penned The Vampyre, scribbled Frankenstein, created Sherlock, and wrote up his exploits as Varney…
   And then “in retirement” Byron went on to write Dracula, The Railway Children, 1984, The Phantom Menace, several episodes of the TV soap EastEnders, and, in a failed attempt at dispelling the mythology, this very blog post.
   My point, in detouring through this graveyard and that cobbled street, is to consider Dracula against the backdrop of a blood-red sky as we approach the setting of the sun. There’s before Stoker’s novel and after…
   Before, you certainly had the aristocratic vampire in fiction. After, you had a legion of aristocratic vampires. You can hardly move through fiction without encountering Count Orlok (Dracula, hiding from copyright law), Countess Dracula, Count Yorga, or every edgy aristocratic vampire character from the roleplaying game Vampire: The Masquerade.
   As to that last, I fervently avoided the aristocratic cliché when playing the game. When you think of roleplaying games and aristocratic vampires, you are led in the direction of Dungeons & Dragons and D&D’s very own Dracula photocopy, Count Strahd von Zarovich, ruler of Barovia. (Curiously, Dungeons & Dragons emerged from the American Lake Geneva. Coincidence? Byron wrote the Monster Manual, obviously.)
   Your mileage in subverting vampiric cliché in your own fiction will vary – for the dead ride quickly – but, damn it, over in the fantasy world of D&D, the Hammer Horror treatment comes across as a bite refreshing…
   Moving swiftly on…
   I revisited Dracula. It is a dramatic telling of Johnny Foreigner invading London. You can see the tabloid headlines today…
   EASTERN EUROPEAN CRIME LORD AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT CORRUPTS ENGLISH ROSE…AND MILKS OUR BENEFIT SYSTEM. HE’S EXPLOITING THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE AND HAVING A LAUGH WHILE ABOUT IT.
   Of note, I once stepped onto Ellis Island and straight into the viewing of a play on illegal immigrant Bela Lugosi’s acceptance into America. On his side, he wasn’t an actual vampire. And, today, if a vampire like Lord Byron came out of “retirement” and promised to use his vast and secret fortune to fund his own happy meals from out of a blood bank, would we use vampire as a term of abuse?
   We’re human. Of course we would. (I have to say we’re human. This camouflages the fact that the blog post was written by Lord Byron, and is fresh to print from his holiday hideaway retirement cottage in Transylvania. Cottage. Castle. The terms are interchangeable.)
   There’s so much lore around the creation of Dracula, and of Frankenstein before it, that the best thing to do is ignore all the psychobabble and delve straight into the words. Visit these books. Revisit these books. Judge for yourselves.
   I like Dracula for the framing of the story. Readers are invited to piece together the narrative as the clues come in. It’s a Victorian detective piece, and you are forgiven if you end up wondering where Sherlock Holmes is in all this.
   Stoker’s novel is out of copyright, and the Dracula/Holmes crossover is not the original idea it once was. There’s a well-worn path from Baker Street to Castle Dracula, now. I have at least one comic book adaptation on the shelves, around here, somewhere.
   From time to time, I revisit works. Some books are worth reading again, even though unread books glare at me as I pass them by to remove the stake from Stoker’s novel one more time. In literary terms, Dracula is bound to outlive all of us. The book is still in print to this day, and has taken on an Un-Life all of its own. It’s better for a classic to be an Un-Dead book than an unread one.

NEW COMPUTER VERSUS OLD OFFICE: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

I’ve run many offices out of cramped quarters. They were near-clones of each other. Common features? A chair at a desk or table. The computer, the screen, the keyboard, the mouse, and the printer…all present and mostly correct.

   To this day, the office remains papery. I reduce the use of dead trees and almost go paperless, until I am overwhelmed by a sudden surge in rectangular sheets that takes me back to the old ways.

   Well. Damn.

   I’ve gone about as hi-tech as I can run – the printer is wireless and sits in a different room, with actual room for it there. But I never quite manage to be 100% paperless. There is a printer in this room – I only use the scanner part of that machine. Yes, there’s always a need for paper. I scan stuff into the digital world, in imitation of the movie TRON.

   No, I don’t have a big eff-off laser or a massive vault door. One day, sigh.

   We’ll always need paper. Even if it’s just toilet paper. I have a roll of that handy, to mop up spillages that threaten to turn my chair into an electrical one if the rising tide consumes the cables. As more time passes, the cables grow longer and snakier and cablier…not less-so. If I went completely wireless, I’d be my own radio station.

   The computer sits to the left in one office. Now it’s on the right in the revamped writing lair of another set-up. Here, in an earlier incarnation, it’s still under the desk in the flashback I’m having. There, it’s on a chest of drawers next to the table and I’m being inventive with the cabling. The cable creature is the hydra-headed monster that grows two new cables for each old cable I ditch.

   As I type, I moved the new computer from under the desk to the right of the desk for around five minutes and…now, for however long NOW is, I’ve settled on a platform to the left of the desk. Low, the machine perches on a TV stand chosen for its ability to fit in the lack of space not available.

   I’m in the process of clearing the bookshelves of non-book things. Living clean, now. No gadgets amidst the stacks, away with clutter, why would I perch spare shoelaces there anyway…and so on. The TV and desk both block very easy access to the lower shelves, but those hidden planks are taken up by the cabling. Of course.

   Still with me, long into the digital age, is my reference shelf. Twenty books. There were nineteen tomes when the reference section sat, loosely, atop a small bookcase. The rule of the bookcase is simple.

   That topmost area of the wooden frame is also for books. The low bookcase just squeezed in, and made for a great stage on which my reference works strolled and acted.

   Storm after storm shook the office. And with each organisational tornado, shelves rose and whirled and flew and settled. I kept the doorstopper books on the ends, without support, to hold everything else in place.

   Now and again another bookcase acted as a default bookend of sorts, buttressing the reference works. Storms came and storms went. The reference section remained intact. Fossilised, as it turned out. I left the reference relic to sparkle, in amber, as the easy lure of the internet made it more convenient to cross-reference items.

   Today, the reference shelf is a little longer, and higher up, on an entirely different bookcase within easy sight and reach. Living on a wider bookcase, nineteen books accepted a twentieth into the ranks when I picked up a new reference work.

   A papery refugee, struggling to find a home.

   They stand, tight-packed, in there. Those books. No matter how the office is arranged, the reference shelf survives. As technology advances, the reference shelf endures. Just this minute, I’ve added eight tiny dictionaries to the reference shelf.

   Those micro-books are held in place by a large dictionary in what is now the back row. No, I don’t know how many dictionaries I own. I’m sure there are others, somewhere else. Yes, I was once trapped behind a bookcase. But I survived to have another coffee.

   Moving books from shelf to shelf is a tricky prospect. Many books loom over my workspace. I sleep on the other side of this great divide. One day, I’ll be found dead under the collected works of Dorothy L. Sayers.

   A clear slipcase of murder.

   Moving books around shelves is a tricky prospect for reasons of memory. I’m engaged in wordy toil over movies at the minute, and I was reading up on The Matrix when a name jumped off the page at me.

   That name collided with the bookcase to my immediate left. Over the past month, I’ve been accused, by three separate sources, of being surrounded by bookcases as I sit in a high-backed chair next to a roaring fire…

   Smoking-jacket, optional. Tobacco-products, not in evidence. I’m suspected of swilling brandy, most likely just for the atmospheric effect. A Mary Shelley Level of Rain™ rattles off the windows, and another lump of coal cracks and splits dramatically…

   The truth is, it’s been a good while since I sat in a high-backed chair next to a roaring fire with a shelf of books to hand…but, yes, there’s a grain of reality on that fictional beach. No smoking-jacket. The room contained an empty brandy glass. Rain rattled off the windows.

   But the real truth is…as I type, I am hemmed-in by the too-tall bookshelves that will one day deliver a succession of fatal blows from the typewriter of Dorothy L. Well, if you have to go…go dramatically, with a hint of murder and mystery.

   In other words, I’ll have vanished, on the run, after killing them all.

   My reference shelf grew based on what would fit in. A biographical dictionary sits next to an Atlas. Then there’s a dictionary on artists. Wikipedia and Google Maps are closer to hand. I’ve entered, or exited, The Matrix too many times to know what’s real.

   Another author tells me that there is still room in life for picking up a book and checking a reference. And I agree…if only to assist in keeping the fruits of my research sound exactly like everyone else’s browsing of Wikipedia.

   Top tip. On Wikipedia, I read the Talk pages as well. Mostly for the humour.

*

The last time a maintenance man was in here, he declared that someone likes to read, and left it at that. The library changes in the sense that the library grows. Bless your heart if you thought I cleared the stacks at intervals. Away with your heresy.

   That business of change is an easy business. Far trickier is the puzzle over ensuring things stand still. When the old computer dies, electronic koff, digital splutter, you move to a new computer.

   It works fresh out of the box, but it’s not the same. That’s the bloody trouble. You must house-train the young pup. Teach the new dog all the old tricks by installing familiar software. Not to go all Yogi Berra on you, but I think we’ve been here before.

   I endured a month of computer disruption. Two weeks crawled along as I used my old retired computer. At least this was familiar. I’d ported the look, the layout, and the software from the retirement home computer to the dust-free model all that time before, after all.

   Familiar, but slow – like a much-favoured brand of treacle. My computer died and I took a familiar-looking computer out of retirement. Now it was time to pass the grandfather layout to the grandson.

   But. That’s all digital. Making the new computer set-up so familiar that it resembles the computer before and the computer before that. Going back further, it was more like an offshoot of the family with little resemblance.

   This is where I came in…

   I’ve run many offices out of cramped quarters. They were near-clones of each other. Common features? A chair at a desk or table. The computer, the screen, the keyboard, the mouse, and the printer…all present and mostly correct.

   Out of the box, the new computer was a magnificent thing. As long as I had a monitor it recognised. That was sheer luck, Jeeves. And gradually, week upon week, I transformed the faster machine into a racehorse I recognised. The old racing colours flew again. That desktop is the old desktop once more.

   But.

   The new machine was…bigger as well as faster. Adding an extra reference book to my reference shelf was possible only after the transfer of the entire collection from a small bookcase to a large bookcase with longer shelves.

   I had a case problem. The new computer case was just a bit too big for the space available. Solution? Okay, I reached for a hacksaw. So what? This is what you have to do when you really have to do stuff.

   Briefly…(too late.) The old system was sideways. You walked in, turned left, shut the door, and sat in the chair. My computer sat on an old TV unit that barely fit into the alcove of bookshelves. I am, sadly, still clearing up those shelves so there are only books and hardly any clutter. Yes, I tidied. And yes, I’ve untidied the shelves all over again.

   The old TV unit wasn’t tall enough. I needed an overhang for the keyboard. In comes the upright desk thing. Whatever the gadget is called. It lets you stand at a computer and type. Height is adjustable. I had the wooden TV unit with the upright desk thing on top, and the computer itself sat down inside the glass door of the TV unit.

   Fine. It worked. Cables were all over the place and then some. But it worked and I didn’t care how it worked. So much for the Olden Times. It worked. Until the new computer arrived. And the new casing for the PC was just a shade too large to put under the TV unit inside that glass door. Not total glass. Wooden frame with a pane of glass in there.

   Right. I’m stuck with a huge unit and a too-huge computer. Is there a solution? Yes, if you chase after one. When you shut the wooden frame of the door, it buts up against a crossbar. That support is there to make the door fit snugly. It was loose. (I’ve put it back together again, and it is still loose.)

   I decided to pry this slat out. No bother. The computer now had enough of a gap to fit in there. Terrific. Only problem…the computer case was too fucking long. What to do? It is essential, if you have a library stacked with dead trees, to possess some spare bookcase shelves. Obviously, I have spares.

   Short and narrow, two of these spare planks would fit under the case and act as a platform allowing the case’s annoying feet to rest evenly and safely…

   Well, sign me up to that shit.

   Problem I see in my near-future. The two shelves together are narrow, and will slide around from right to left if I bump into the whole arrangement. UNLESS I fill the gap down the side with two pieces of wood cut just right. And I have a piece of wood left over from a chunk of packaging.

   All I need is a hacksaw. I hack and I saw. There is some measuring, of course. You can’t go around with a hacksaw, willy-nilly. It’s just not done. When the dust settles, what do I have? There are two planks of wood forming a makeshift platform, inside this cupboard area. They are jammed in solid by the wooden bracing pieces I’ve cut up…

   The computer slides in on this contraption and all is fine. It’s terrific. EXCEPT…

   Oh. For. The. Sake. Of. Fuck.

   This machine has a glass panel at the front. Which means all the USB ports are at the back, as expected. And all the front USB ports are on top instead of the standard arrangement. I truly need the two front ones for various gadgets.

   BUT. The top of the computer case is a shade TOO TALL. It nestles just barely under the extending desk arrangement that holds the TV monitor. The only way to access the USB is by extending the extending desk into the air and taking the TV up the way. Then there is room for the USB. Okay. Thank fuck for the extending desk.

   I stepped into difficult territory here. My archive, from my dead computer, was in a live hard drive. That hard drive sat in a cradle to make it easier to plug in with a USB for all that wonderful access. The USB went in the top of the PC. I started copying the data over.

   This took a few hours. As I came and went and did other computery things, the extending desk shuddered and dropped a little. Shit, fuck, bugger. I couldn’t unplug the USB during file transfer. So I had to sit there and catch the desk to stop it crunching down on the USB head and ruining the gadget.

   I resolved to save the day by using toilet roll. The roll was hardly touched. I place it as a brace under the extending desk. The desk later collapsed with twenty minutes of file transferring left. It landed on the toilet roll, and the roll held. I banked on the cardboard core being supported by the huge wad of paper. And I stayed with the machine for the final transfer of files. As soon as that procedure was done and digitally dusted, I switched the old archive off and took the USB the hell out of Dodge.

   And then?

   Either raise and brace the extending desk platform or change the office once more. I had to rearrange so much fucking furniture to make room for a new desk. The computer sits to the left of it on a glass TV stand, and I now face the back of the room instead of the left-hand wall. There’s less faffing about with the chair behind the door.

   I am in the same place and a much better place all at the same time. The TV is all cabled up and sits on the extending desk unit atop the new desk. It’s been a long time since I rearranged an entire office set-up to cater to a new machine.

   Here’s hoping it’s going to be a long time again before the next upheaval.

THEY SHOOT COMPUTERS, DON'T THEY? A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Not for the first time, I had a computer shot out from under me. Your average think-box dies foaming at the mouth on the slopes of a gravel pit. Luckily, I once retired a computer. This saved me much trouble…

   For the computer itself is the blessèd item I use to order up a new computer. And I can’t very well haul myself out of the gravel pit if my shopping lifeline is sparking itself to death by my side, staring down my unresponsive keyboard and indifferent mouse as the lights go out, two by two.

   I made the call.

   There’s a problem. We want you back. You remember the old set-up? We’ll concoct adjustments. Been a few changes since you were last in, checking the files.

   I had to deconstruct and reconstruct the office just to admit this Cold Warrior of a computer to the table. Have spares for everything. That cable, the one I’ll never need again? It’s the one I kept anyway. Just in case.

   A power cord extender. There wasn’t room in the office for two computers at the desk. I couldn’t run the old machine from the hallway. No screen, that way. A major wiring problem. It was easier to extend this extra cable and bypass everything.

   I created a new office space in the shadow of my video recording studio, on the floor, underneath the TARDIS console, with boxes of spare cables scattered around me. And I checked every single box for cables.

   Specifically, I looked for a cable I knew I’d need when the new computer materialised. That’s getting ahead of the story. No new computer here, no, not as I type this out.

   But there will be when this tale hits the internet.

   All writing is time travel.

   My old slow retired machine worked, connected to the internet, and allowed me to conjure its successor into existence. At a price. And the price goes beyond the monetary cost. Time. It’ll be with you by Tuesday. But not the very next Tuesday.

   I faced two weeks on the slow boat, pottering down the information country lane. This is a place with a maximum speed of not very fast. I still read e-mail, though it’s not in one handy place – the application was unfortunately disabled a million years ago.

   A disabled application on a machine no longer used, why, that’s hardly a problem, is it, unless you plan to use that ancient computer again. Oh.

   I still answer e-mail.

   But the main problem with the old machine is that everything moves through treacle. It’s irritating to open up a file and start typing. The slight lag of the creaky arthritic device annoys the hell out of me. Rapid-fire entry to, and exit from, many files in short succession. That’s all gone.

   Some software packages refuse to work at all. I’m an update or ten thousand away from reasonable use. Skype is rubbish at the best of times. The old machine has old Skype, which is only capable of recommending a move to new Skype.

   I followed the digital signposts until I reached a beleaguered stretch of the internet. A woodland fire spread across the country lane and roasted the signposts away. I may not update new Skype automatically. The gap is too vast to bridge. So I’m told.

   Instead, I am allowed to go in search of the update manually. This proved an internet workout too far, and I ended with the weights still at my feet and no sense of progress achieved. I may not update to new Skype manually, automatically, or even supernaturally.

   It rained, then. Smoke from the woodland fire disappeared. Zoom bounded across the puddles in the poorly-maintained digital lane and invited me to a meeting. I have absolutely no fucking problem installing Zoom. Meanwhile, Skype gurgles and trembles in the gutter. Cause of death? Blah, blah, blah, something, something, Dark Side.

   My dead computer remains dead. I removed the hard drive and slapped it into a cradle, connecting to my ancient machine. Surprisingly, the cradle genuinely connected. My data, backed up on an external hard drive and also on cloud storage, is still inside.

   So there’s that.

   My dead computer, still dead, is still dead. I bought it to make video editing and processing easier. The old slow machine just wouldn’t cut it. And so here I am, engaged in a spot of time travel. I can write scripts for videos here, on the machine of the past.

   And I can even run a boardgame online, relayed from the table through Zoom. But don’t ask me to process any of the material filmed. This will go out as a video talk on technical difficulties. It’ll be filmed with the aid of the brand-spanking new computer, in the far-flung future of fortnightia…a non-dystopian future. Doesn’t make it a utopian one.

   As long as my resolution of technical difficulties doesn’t fall foul of new technical difficulties, that means I’ll record a video around mid-July 2020. At the end of July I’ll have been making videos for two years, and I’m still on track to average one video per week over that period.

   It’s not a requirement to put a video out there every single week, come rain, come shine. Computers fall over and never stand up again. A virus strikes, and complicates routines. Bastards hoard toilet roll. The bastards.

   I make no apologies for delays in producing material. Life stands in the way, as ever. After a million years of computing, I haven’t lost any data yet. I still want the one fabled button that does everything.

   Yes, it has an UNDO function. And COFFEE ability.

   What of computers, and content creation? Unless a computer is shotgunned and I tumble from the saddle, I don’t generally upgrade. I’m in the business of buying a machine that will last for years. Then I’ll buy a new one, making another interstellar leap forward.

   That’s not for everyone. There are the tinkerers who add a thing after a few months and another gadget a few months after that. As I sit here using this clockwork computer from 1892, I ask myself what I’d upgrade?

   Nothing. You need a new one, hell, buy a new one. I never upgraded my dead one, or the retired one, or the machine that died before that retired one came into the house all shiny and new. My computing demands increased gradually. Machines coped without upgrades.

And now, an upgrade. Or, more precisely, an update. The tired old clockwork computer accepted a message on the end of a y-shaped stick, brought in by a gasping mechanic. Thank you, gasping mechanic.

   Windows provided an update, bridging the gap. I thought it worth a shot to see if I could, after all, fix Skype. Skype accepted the party invitation and is now back to respectable levels of being generally shitty.

   The one-stop-shop for e-mail lies, sadly, beyond reach. Not to worry. Every hour shortens the distance between the fading of the clockwork saviour and the arrival of a new dawn in computing. I will have my video processing powers restored. Just draw sword from stone. Plug socket in. Flip switch. Save the clock tower during a storm. And we’ll be back to the future of electronic tomfoolery.

   Buy spares for everything. Keep all the spare things you bought. When a piece of equipment becomes obsolete, think long and hard before throwing that item away. If a computer doesn’t explode while in use, that computer retires. It’s there for you, slow, quirky, and semi-useful.

   But it is there for you, and it connects to the internet. And it’s all good. That’s not true. It’s mostly averagely bad. As long as the vital bit works, an old clockwork computer sparks and steams along with a sense of purpose.

   Not with a sense of urgency. That’s too much to ask of it.

   Going back one computer is a grim trip down fossilised memory lane. I stared at shortcut icons for software bypassed by better applications several computer lifetimes ago. If I had to, I’d go back two computers to an emergency laptop. That’s if I could find it. I know the laptop is around here somewhere.

   If the computer I am typing on now is a clockwork machine straight out of Verne or Welles, then the laptop is steeped in deeper, more arcane, science – the sort that fits right in when described by Mary Shelley.

   I write under the hammer of the virus, of course, and if you can limit human contact then you should limit human contact. My computer lifeline, allowing me to order a better computer, is the internet. Without a back-up machine, and a back-up of a back-up for use in direst emergencies, I’d be forced to make use of a friend’s computer.

   Out come the masks, the wipes, the spray, the soap, the wire brush, the industrial-strength tinfoil hat. You must wear a tinfoil hat to protect you from computer viruses while typing. And that…is a computing fact.

   Technical difficulties shouldn’t affect you beyond the street in which you live. Will my new computer work straight out of the box? I’ll duplicate this text as a blog post and as a video. We’ll see how quickly I can set up both. Same day production would be a miracle.

   I’ll have to scour for video production images to nudge the narrative along. Thematically, I feel I must settle on footage from a CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE boardgame. That video caught a dose of sub-standard audio, and had to be abandoned for technical difficulties. Gremlins. Never get them wet. Don’t involve them in a land war in Asia.

OVERLY-LITIGIOUS OLD GROPER HARLAN ELLISON IS DEAD: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Who was he? Good question. What will he be remembered for?
   Groping Connie Willis in full view of the world. Demon with a brass neck.
   HERE'S A BLOG POST ABOUT THAT. I'll wait for you.

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Disclosure.
   I never read Ellison's fiction. Given his mistreatment of Connie Willis, I am unlikely to purchase his books. It's improbable that I'll return to Asimov's material, given Isaac's groping days at conventions.
   In an attempt to avoid compiling a blog post that's just going to turn into a long and tiresome list of sci-fi gropers whose books I've never read/will never read again, I'll stick with this non-obituary format instead.
   Ellison.
   If he read my fiction, he kept quiet about it. (He never read my fiction. I have a doctor's note to prove it. Jekyll is the fellow's name. More on him, anon.)
   The closest I came to reading Ellison's fiction was inside the pages of The Rocketeer, by Dave Stevens. Harlan wrote a grumpy introduction, as required under Montana law. Much of his grumpiness stemmed from the loss of everything.
   You know the drill...
   Old Farts misbehaved and misremembered how things never used to be. Young pups don't know they are born and won't live to be old pups. The knowledge-base is gone...
   Except.
   We can all ask Doctor Google about that shit now. It is possible to locate this unfindable forgotten stuff that Ellison wanted to keep to himself. Well, 13% of it.
   I was bemused to find Ellison haunting the internet. He railed against so much that he was paid royalties by train companies. True, he made me laugh out loud.
   He came on the interwebs to inform us, in all seriousness, how to pronounce Jekyll.
   Just like that.
   And, just like that, not being Scottish, Hurling Elision mangled the name Jekyll. I seem to be having some difficulty pronouncing Harlan's monicker.
   The author's name, Robert Louis Stevenson, was rattled out rather quickly by Harlan on this video clip. Therein lies another pronunciation problem.
   Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson. When written in full, and read out loud, there's less temptation to hurl elision at the audience. To omit Balfour is to allow Louis and Stevenson to merge, altering the sound of the author's name.
   LouisStevenson.
   We know from Stevenson's writing that his name is pronounced Lewis.
   Jekyll is pronounced tae rhyme wi' meikle. You might write that as meekill, to give a better idea of what to say.
   Onywey...
   Much of my knowledge is pre-Google. With a writerly mind, I had to uncover random weirdness on my own by catching that late-night never-repeated TV show, listening to half a radio documentary, scribbling notes as I devoured data...
   Dead magazines surfaced in out-of-the-way places. Books practically fell into my lap at a convenient time. (Thank you, Mary Shelley.)
   This is how things were, in the used-to-be. The beforeness of now.
   Ellison was the sort of guy who'd grump his way through a conversation expecting to be the only guy in the room old enough or old enough and in the right place at the right time to remember whatever the hell he decided to talk about.
   Any young pup who knew a scrap of detail about the subject under discussion? That pup would be seized on as a space-time anomaly. How the hell do you know about that?! Feigned admiration from the old warhorse.
   Derision followed, of course. Scorn for the 99% of the audience not lucky enough to have been around back in the day, deprived of the Old Fart status that allowed all this misremembering of how things never quite were.
   I used to think about that sort of nonsense when dropping arcane references into my fiction. Because I had that pre-Google writerly mind. Same as Ellison. Not as dusty or Old Farty.
   But we walked the same long fucking road back in the day when you couldn't point-and-fucking-click your way from A to a very distant B.
   Here's a deleted scene from one of the Terminator movies.

The Google Company is incorporated Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line on September 4th, 1998 August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic advertising defence.

   Google Skynet begins to offer results learn at a mosaic geometric rate. It becomes indispensable self-aware at 2:14 am, Eastern Time, October 31st August 29th. In a panic, they try to delete the porn search history pull the plug.

   Harlan Ellison fights back, and there's a legal settlement.
   I'm struggling to maintain the thread, here. That's no bad thing. Onywey, Hurling Elision made me laugh at his ability to correct the world's view of...Doacturrr Jeekl.
   We can hire Doctor Google to scan Harlan's world-view and see him speak about Old Fartery. I no longer concern myself with arcane references in my fiction, as e-books have the capacity to hand those references to you on a digital silver platter.
   Words are linked to articles. The missing knowledge-base? We carved an electronic chainsaw through the all-encroaching jungle of time, and there's the once-lost analogue city awaiting the first digital tour-bus.
   That stuff was digitised around us. As we grow older and grumpier, it's easier just to click from A to B.
   I think Ellison was simply grumpy at having to be Ellison. That here, in our electronic wasteland, was some suspect short-cut for writers who wouldn't have to walk in his shoes.
   Well I walked in similar boots, and I am here to tell the young pups in the audience...for fuck's sake point-and-click. You'll save the shoe-leather for when it is needed.
   Even younger pups must search engine the shit out of point-and-click to discover what a mouse was.
   There'll be a lot written about Ellison on his demise. Much praise. Some condemnation. I always knew the name, yet never sought out his work. The more I learned, the less-inclined I grew to chase down the guy's stories.
   Being an imaginative writer, a prolific writer, an influential writer, does not excuse being a groper.
   Ever. The end.
   You can cure cancer and murder someone. Doesn't mean I have to like you for curing cancer.
   So, yes, you'll unearth anecdotes about Ellison's championing of women. And you'll hear that he had a heart of gold under that gruff exterior...
   Who was he? Good question. What will he be remembered for?
   Groping Connie Willis in full view of the world. Demon with a brass neck.
   If you missed it or skipped it, HERE'S A BLOG POST ABOUT THAT.

BLOGGING ABOUT ANYTHING: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Well, maybe not about quantum physics and the effect of that topic on a cup of coffee.
   Broadly, though, yes, I'll blog about anything. Just take a gander at all those blog post labels, in that handy sidebar widget.
   Lafcadio Hearn shares blog time with Langston Hughes, Mary Shelley, Levi Strauss, and The War of the Worlds.
   Handy, if your Frankensteinian creation wears jeans during a Martian invasion that goes down during the Harlem Renaissance - all couched in terms of a bleak Japanese ghost story.

*

That's what I'd call a monster monster mash-up.

*

Last week I blogged about my one area of expertise - not being an expert in anything. Yes, I am somewhat inexpert in the area of being an expert at not being an expert. Maybe that qualifies me, or negates the whole thing. Possibly all three at the same time. I'd have said both, but I preferred to make an inexpert statement.
   Quantum physics, in action. No more talk of physics. That's all I'll say on the anti-matter.

*

Anyway, for those who came in late...

   Last blog post, I railed against being called an expert. It's not a term I'm keen on applying to writing. There's always more to learn. Now, I'll turn my baleful attention on the blog itself.

*

Should a writing blog be about the writing? If you want to drop character profiles on your audience, yes.
   Maybe you'd rather write about writing. How you do what you do. Where you do it. When. With a list of music going, in the background.
   In writing blog posts, some of us are forced to dredge up our knowledge of formatting, which isn't exactly writing - it pops a head around the corner every now and then.
   The question comes up. What is a writing blog really meant to be about? Whatever the hell you want it to be. I've posted fiction here. Formatting tips. A bit of legalese, now and again.
   I've mentioned dead writers. Live ones. Foodstuffs. Scientific lack-of-progress. Hell, I've blogged about stuff that's so obscure I'm half-sure it appeared only in dreams. Just not in mine.
   Last week's effort was the 250th blog post published here. I resisted the craving to go all anniversary-ish on people. Those review-of-the-year magazines never interested me. Tell me what the fuck you wanted to write about in December, damn it. Don't cover January-to-November all over again.

*

For a time, I blogged well in advance. And I recommend you try blogging in advance. Set those puppies up on a conveyor-belt and automate the shit out of the delivery.
   No more. For me, no. I'm looking for spontaneity again. If that means blogging about whatever-the-hell, then I'll blog it. Though...

*

I know what this blog is not. It's not about interviews with my characters, or character profiles, or recipes based on the worlds I created. I just don't feel like doing that stuff.

*

Maybe I'll blog about coffee. Not right now, for I must away and brew some.

   

AMAZON AND KINDLE PUBLISHING FILES: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Farewell, People's Republic of China. We hardly knew ye.

*

I'm not talking about the People's Republic of China. But I often thought of China when I created PRC files for Kindle books.

*

Amazon no longer supports the PRC file it pimped out to me at every fucking opporchancity. Write your story. Edit your story. Publish your story - by converting it to PRC.
   And don't forget to drop two important pieces of metadata in there before hitting the BUILD button. Fare thee well, BUILD button. Your like, we shall not press again.
   I won't speak of the arcane process involving the Table of Contents and its Frankensteinian creation. There was a ceremony for this, and...

*

My legs! Argh!
   Don't think that knee will ever be the same. It hurts on rainy days.
   Anyway, I didn't use the arcane ceremony - for the simple reason that I couldn't get the fucker to work at the last gasp.
   Instead, I used the outré method of dropping two lines of code into the PRC file's metadata - forcing Amazon's Kindle system to see my Table of Contents and, good gravy, nod in the general direction of the start of each book.
   What fresh hell is this?
   I believe a lot of writers uttered that phrase to themselves as they went through this non-process.

*

And it's all gone. Amazon shifted over to MOBI files. I didn't shift over with them. Instead, I opted to test the basic Microsoft Word file.
   No fucking around with software, metadata, no remembering codes, no fucking nothing. Write your story. Edit your story. Publish your story.
   Done. Melissa C. Water, mentioned elsewhere on the blog, wanted to put out some of her stories. I offered to format the books, using basic Word files, to see how things looked.
   After uncovering one invisible glitch, I saw that the system took the strain. Farewell, PRC. I'll miss you like rabies. Well. Damn.

*

I don't deny, I learned a lot when I put those files together. They were great for testing. But Amazon keeps advancing its Kindle products, and who am I to stand in the way of Darth Bezos?
   Besides, provided my book is formatted to within an inch of its life, just using the Word file takes away an awkward moment or two of coding shit that I need never remember again.
   And the world is a better place for that.

BOOK SNOBS.

That term conjures an image of the fur-clad Duchess of Literati sneering at ill-mannered urchins from the safety of her mink-lined Rolls-Royce Silver Spoon. What is a book snob? One who reads only the BEST. No.

   The term was used by fellow-scribblers to worry over the grim prospect of never again reading stories for the sheer fun of it, Jeeves. Becoming a writer may destroy you as a reader, if you let yourself fall into that trap. I’d walked that clifftop path before. What to say of it? Everything has its behind-the-scenes viewpoint.

   If you are a police officer, you will glare at the travesty that is the cop movie. Medical dramas placing emphasis on the heroism of overworked doctors are bound to leave nurses feeling cold. Stories about vampires will, inevitably, piss werewolves right off.

   And writers? Don’t get me started. Oh, if you insist. Crank the starting-handle on the front of that Rolls-Royce Silver Spoon, Jeeves. The Duchess of Literati wants to go for a spin. She has her quota of ill-mannered urchins to mow down, after all.

   My fellow-scribblers bemoaned the occupational hazard a writer must inevitably deal with. This is the business of READING. At some point, readers decide to become writers. A few of those writers actually manage the transition after penning five or six novels.

   How harsh a reader do you become, in reading as a writer? Do you read for enjoyment? Are you prepared to read a story just to see how it was constructed? Do you find a book so badly-written that you simply abandon it?

   Where, along the way, do you transform into a book snob, mowing down lesser books from the back seat of your Rolls-Royce Silver Spoon? (All 0.75 regular readers of this blog will glean that the spoon in question must be non-runcible.) The difficulty for the writer, in reading, is one of being a back-seat driver. You want the story to go in a particular way, but you aren’t the one at the wheel.

   I said that I’d walked that clifftop path before. Luckily, I didn’t fall. I didn’t find myself reading a book for pleasure only to discover, shock-horror, that I was merely reading to study technique. Why not? Was I capable of disengaging the writing brain and using the reading brain to get from start to fart?

   Not exactly. I pulled stories to bits, to see how they worked. And I enjoyed doing that. I decided to read certain authors to see how particular stories were constructed. If I enjoyed the fiction along the way, great. That’s the point I’m getting at. Enjoy reading, even if you are reading as a writer.

   This was the case with the detective novels of Raymond Chandler and the Bond books by Ian Fleming. I read them to see how they were done. Sat down and planned it. I’ll buy these books, and look at particular authors. And I’ll learn. My time in the company of Sherlock Holmes was spent absorbing structure. But it was with one eye on fun, just as the other eye dealt with the mechanical side.

   Reading books and seeing faults in them from a new stance just because you’ve labelled yourself a writer…is a losing game. A clifftop path with a sudden halt. Don’t get too tangled in that pursuit of the BEST in fiction. Oh, I read GREAT stuff. But I also read GRATING stuff. I think you really have to go slumming, same as I did. You have to be prepared to read books that you suspect you may put down and give up on.

   It’s a RARE book I’ve done that with. Once I start a book, I’m meant to go through with it to the bitter end. And sometimes that end has been world-class bitter with a patent pending. I’m struggling to think of the books I gave up on. One, two, three, four. I’ll struggle some more. How many? Not many. Perhaps no more than half a dozen in a reading lifetime…oh, the crap I forced myself to read. And the crap I wrote. The books I should have given up on…let me count the ways. Ah, no time.

   See the positive side of reading. Let your stance as an author enrich your enjoyment of the experience. Better that, than to let your writerliness taint your views. Yes, you’ve read some stinkers. But the ones you finish are the ones you finish. Those finished books, good, bad, indifferent, taught you much I’m sure. I’d hope you came away from reading having enjoyed reading.

   You may demand great fiction, but you won’t always get it. I’ve read great books with appalling typos in them. That didn’t destroy my reading experience. Flip that over. Wonderful typesetting couldn’t disguise a crap book. Who decides whether a book is crap or not? Each reader. Individually. Inside each tiny mind. Thus endeth the lesson.

   So, writerly ladies, gents, and all those caught between or far outwith, are you book snobs? Writers, reading and coughing up blood simply for being writers? I think you are just trying critical hats on for size in an attempt to flog yourselves over your own worst imperfections. Nothing to do with the stuff you are reading. Everything to do with the stuff you are writing.

   Remember, those imperfections of yours may actually be key indicators of your wonderful writing style. Tread carefully. Don’t squash your own unique telling-points. Here are a few books to consider. They are not bad books. Quite the reverse.

   Does it matter to me that the characters in Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth should probably die off from lack of supplies with all the to-ing and fro-ing underground? No. It doesn’t matter to me at all. No book snobbery there.

   What is Dracula’s rationale for avoiding the major population centre of Berlin? It’s closer than his destination of London, and he has a greater grasp of the language in Germany. Why not set up his undead empire as a Berliner? He heads for London. Does this destroy the book’s plot? Certainly not.

   Dare we mention the books that JUST HAPPEN TO TURN UP in front of Frankenstein’s monster? Really, Mary? No, seriously. REALLY, Mary? The monster must be educated, so here’s Paradise Lost. WTF?! I glossed over this. Almost became a writing snob, but I reined the mare in. The clifftop path I walked that day was signposted. So I came back down, unscathed. (I like what Mary Shelley did with that book. She’s a fucking superstar. I gladly say that of the author of the next piece…)

   Okay. I have a slight problem with Jane Eyre, in that she just happens to fall in with her relatives after wandering in the wilds. But the family situation is explained. There is foreshadowing. Even so, it does come across as a thumping geographical coincidence.

   My shameless bias in Charlotte’s favour excuses this literary excess, as Mary Shelley’s excess is similarly excused – but only just. I look askance at the connection, bundled up in a sub-plot concerning inheritance, and move on. The walk along the cliffs is not for me, for there is much enjoyment to be had from Frankenstein and Jane Eyre. (Suddenly, I have a deviant literary mash-up in mind. Dr Phibes, the screens!)

   The Hound of the Baskervilles…plays a very strange game of pitting the occult against Sherlock Holmes. Is there really a huge spectral hound out there on the moors, Sir Arthur? Er…

   In Kipling’s case, style intrudes. Both editions of The Jungle Book contain a story not set in the jungle. Snow and ice intervene. Should we return the books as not representative of content under the Sale of Goods Act…

   The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L. Sayers, houses a wholly improbable cause of death within its mysterious pages. Yet that sits perfectly well within the self-contained atmosphere of the story. And that’s a few books in on the series featuring her aristocratic detective. She went out of her way to contrive many an arcane scene in her books, did Dorothy.

   Does that matter? Have His Carcase has one of the most outlandish plot-devices going for it. The scramble to secure evidence from a corpse before the sea washes clues away. Mad writing. But it works. Because, as readers, we want it to. As writers, we should want it to, too.

   Find me a book you can’t find fault with, and I’ll find fault with it. Not out of spite. This is just the way things are. A book isn’t a wheel, or a meal. You’ll know a broken wheel, or an awful meal. A book is harder to place. Flip that over. A book is harder to excuse.

   Your terrific book may not be mine. So, I say again. Find me a book you can’t find fault with, and I’ll find fault with it. With that in mind, I warn of the path to the shaky cliff. Don’t go out of your way to climb to that high spot, with its winds buffeting you.

   If you can’t read a book without finding faults, you are reading every book you’ve ever read. Buck up. Enjoy what you read. That is the point of reading. Worry about being a writer when you are WRITING. The Duchess of Literati crashed her Silver Spoon up her own backside. Don’t join her in that pursuit.

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