LAMENT.

The Flowers of the Forest, that fought aye the foremost,

The prime of our land, are cauld in the clay.

Jane (or Jean) Elliot. (1727-1805.)

(If you find it hard to make it through Jeannie’s ballad in print, you’ll find it almost impossible to handle when a piper plays the piece. The Flowers of the Forest is Scottish on the page, but universal when carried across the air. Let the music haunt you. The word lament seems almost to have been coined for it. Herts o’ stane cannae cope wi’ the tune ower-lang.)

In a disturbing echo of the day I published my third book, traffic featured heavily a fortnight later. I had automated a series of blog posts on the 19^th of March 2012. My blog posts guided readers to an unbloggable thing. I blogged about that, in the end. My cold response to the destruction of the World Trade Centre.

   The day I published LYGHTNYNG STRYKES, I wandered the streets in something of a daze. I was struggling with reality. The third leg of my publishing plan went off with hitches. Writing stories was more interesting to me than pressing a button to launch those stories. I avoided being involved in a collision with a white van. Suddenly, I was no longer in a daze.

   A fortnight passed. I automated my blogs. Unless I kicked the door in later, and wiped the automatic process from Blogger, I would release my thoughts into the wild. Automating the process was a way of forcing myself to go ahead with that talk about the 11^th of September 2001.

   Again, I wandered in a daze. Contemplating what I’d just set up. I could tear it down – but I didn’t want to. That would have betrayed a newfound sense of freedom related to the issue. Authors Kacey Vanderkarr and Missy Biozarre had helped me see that I could untie the string and let the problem float away into the sky. Or sink like a rock to the seabed. The act of untying was the important item. Not the event that followed. Up or down.

   I couldn’t turn my back on those authors, having admitted that they made me see merit in turning the unbloggable into the bloggable. To abandon discussion was to walk the easy path. And if there’s an easy path on the road to being an author, I’ve yet to find it marked on any map.

   Geography. Instead of going here, I went there. And, in going there, I passed through a building. On leaving the building, I followed the woman in the red coat. She was too far ahead of me to grab. All I could do was cry out. There was time for that. Maybe.

   Ahead, and down those steps, she marched into the road. To my right, zooming along, was the vehicle. Woman and vehicle refused to stop. I was caught in that slow-motion world of data-processing in a moment of crisis. Yes, I could still yell CAR!

   I remembered the white van from almost exactly a fortnight before – even down to the very minute. A spooky feeling. Same time of day. And similar weather. Within sight of the other spot, where the white van had materialised.

   This time, with someone else in the firing line. The woman in the red coat. She belatedly looked right and paused, as I had done a fortnight before. I was in a daze from setting up my important blog. Was I to witness an accident? See this woman crumple against the front of a car and shoot off to the left – or, worse, go under the wheels…

   The car braked, and the woman noticed. I took in the raw speed and almost let fly my warning. Instead, I could tell that the collision was undone. It was another close call. Four people, locked in time. Pedestrian. Observer. Driver. Passenger.

   What to do, if she’d been hit? Be the professional witness, of course. She stepped out without looking, and there was nothing the driver could do. His options were limited. I’m glad it didn’t go down that way.

   Would I have blogged about a story that went the other way? Pending the outcome of legal action, yes. My thoughts went from traffic back to skyscrapers. Watching the World Trade Centre collapse on television was a small experience. No matter the size of the screen. You couldn’t get the scale of it from the window-on-the-world that is TV.

   Blogging prompted a search through my photo archives of New York. I spoke to firefighters when I was flitting around the city. Two museums take in the people at the sharp end – one is dedicated to firefighters and the other is all about the cops. I visited both. You experience the World Trade Centre’s destruction from similar perspectives in each museum.

   There is only one perspective worth discussing. Going to a museum isn’t the same as climbing the steps at the Winter Gardens to view the main location. A snapshot of 2009-vintage World Trade Centre reconstruction.

   Staring across at the gap, where massive toy diggers moved around, I finally took in the scope of the calamity. You may have watched it happen on the television as I did. That does not prepare you for the shape and size of the chunk cut from New York’s beating heart. Negative space. Hemmed in by buildings that had to be cleaned and refitted. Or replaced.

   I see Manhattan from all sides. From the air. On the two rivers. In the depths of man-made canyons. At the tops of tall tall tall tall buildings. Needles, poking holes in the blue. The Twin Towers leave an after-image.

   In the museum, packed with firefighting paraphernalia, I take an atmospheric photo upstairs. For me, there’s no such thing as the perfect photo. Great pictures might be blurry. Filled with too much light. Doesn’t matter.

   Technical expertise is irrelevant. It’s the atmosphere of the image that counts. My shot of old-fashioned wagons is very red. Slightly blurry. So what? I like it. The redness goes with fighting fires. In tribute to the generations who tackled the job, only a red carpet will do.

   I didn’t plan my itinerary to account for the numbers tumbling out of my camera. Phoenix. This is a piano-style pumper. From 1840. Preserved, these museum-pieces only hint at the dangers faced in fighting one of our fiercest enemies. It’s not a party, or a dance. You don’t beat fire at a game of cards. It’s a fight. And you don’t take in more than a hint of the real deal, in a museum.

   That is just as true of statistics. You can read them, but they hardly seem real. I think of 778 firefighters who died in the line of duty, fighting fires in New York City. They died during a period which ran from the end of the Civil War in 1865 through to the year 2001. Timespan. A century, plus a third of a century. And a little more.

   To that total, history added another 343* firefighters on one day.

   My atmospheric photo in the museum is taken without concern for my itinerary. Things just pan out that way. The Phoenix. A creature born of fire, and ash. This primitive horse-drawn engine was there, standing, after every fire. My atmospheric photo of it carries the electronic serial number 100_9011.

How do I feel, now that I’ve talked about the World Trade Centre? I watched thousands of people die on television. My cold thought, mentioned in the blog post of the 23^rd of April 2012, is still a cold thought. There’s no escaping that.

   I’m writing this before the word is out. Time travel, again. Weeks have elapsed since I set the words down. More weeks will pass before the story emerges. I felt burdened and unburdened in the same moment. My mind turned to events long after the day itself. Random things.

   It’s the 11^th of September. The year is 2001. I’m watching it all happen on television. Time flies. I am at the Winter Gardens, staring out at the vast hole. No towers. Machines. Men working. Blazing day. Skip around Manhattan…

   I’m standing in the street. Engine 54, Ladder 4, Battalion 9. Ahead in time, right where I stand, lies a photo-opportunity for the President of the United States. My photo-shoot is somewhat less Presidential. There are plaques to fallen firefighters. The dates go back to 1870. There’s a mention for the cops, too.

   The firemen who died on that clear blue September day are photographed. I stare at fourteen faces in colour and a fifteenth in black and white. This place is on Eighth Avenue. I’m on the way to a bus tour company located in the 700s between 47^th and 48th Street.

   Now I’m at St. Paul’s Chapel. The sign tells me that this is Manhattan’s oldest public building kept in continuous use. From 1766 until? That’s a blank your descendants will have to fill in on your behalf. I’m starved of time, and only manage to tour the outside of the building. There is scope for a return.

   I do return, on a rainy day. After chatting with a firefighter. Inside the building, I see faces on memorials. This reminds me of television shows about the Second World War. The scene repeats, across documentaries. A camera passes grave after grave, noting soldiers who died on the 6^th of June. Eerie effect. We know the occasion, based on the date.

   What prompts my thought of D-Day? It’s the 5^th of June when I’m inside the chapel. That’s all. Here, in the photos, the memorialising month is September. You can tell from the photos that these dead people illuminated the lives of the people around them. There’s a face from a documentary. Wayne A. Russo. A guy in a bow-tie. It’s the last picture I take in there.

   In the afternoon, I take photo 100_9011. Phoenix.

   Next day it is D-Day. From the side, I snap a picture of a sturdy F.D.N.Y. rig. It is an improvement on the Phoenix. This one is marked www.nyc.gov/fdny. One of the firefighters is involved in a dispute with a Native New Yorker. I snap the front of the rig, lining up on the rig’s Seagrave logo.

   So I don’t actually see the firefighter’s exasperation with the Native New Yorker until I look at the left of the photo later. The firefighter gestures at me with his hands palm-up. Whattayagonnado? The memorialised firefighters were just like this guy. They all had a sense of humour too.

   Looking closely at the photo of the rig, on the window I see the white silhouette of a firefighter wielding an axe. Through that icon, the firefighters who died are memorialised on the rig itself. There is no more fitting place for a tribute.

   It’s a long day. After many misadventures, I find myself in the air. Being piloted in a Liberty helicopter. The fatal smash involving the company happened not long after. I didn’t want to know who the pilot was, in case he was my pilot. Sometimes it’s best to let things go.

   Tramping the streets, taking the subway, hailing a yellow cab in the rain, flying over the island of Manhattan. In other circumstances, this activity would pass for research into my story about the man who wants to blow up skyscrapers. I see the scale. Get a sense of the difficulties involved.

   It’s a bloody long day. After the helicopter ride, I walk around Manhattan. Really walk. I tramp the streets, heading into the sunset. Scale. Could I have written the story about the man with the plan? Yes. Would anyone have found it believable? That’s not for me to say.

Coming up. I’ll blog about feedback next time. How the audience felt, on reading my unbloggable blog post about the destruction of the World Trade Centre.

* Of the 343, two, Robert Linnane and Ricardo Quinn, were Paramedics.

NEXT BLOG: FEEDBACK.

THE RED QUEEN CALLS.

Blogging about mortality, and the need to leave instructions on contacting business associates if I’m hit by a large white van, I stare at the blankness ahead of me. The blog entry needs a little more. Recently, I tried one…

   The rest of the sentence fails to materialise. I am interrupted by the telephone at my hip. Who is calling me? I think it’s an inspirational artist, who wants a word about my publishing ventures. In the same thought, I am right and wrong. The label fits, but it applies to another inspirational artist.

   For this is the Red Queen, fabled monarch of a lost kingdom. Or the woman who provided inspiration for the creation of that character. In that interrupted blog, I stated that the highlight of my week was catching sight of a magpie. An unusually large specimen.

   Well, that was true when I wrote it. Not long after writing it, I was interrupted at my desk by the Red Queen’s message of support for my writing. From someone who was there close to the start of my quest to become a half-decent author, someone who always believed in me as a writer no matter the ups and downs, that meant more than I could put into words. And that was the real highlight of my week. Though we both agreed that the magpie was pretty cool.

   She had not put pen to paper to say anything concerning my publishing endeavours. I jokingly placed her in the category of women who mean to write letters but don’t send them. They visualise what they want to say, and believe telepathy does the rest. We laugh, as telepathy occurs between us. I am about to eat a cream-filled scone. She was just thinking about a cream-filled scone before she phoned, but couldn’t lay her hands on one.

   I offer to go mmm-mmm as I eat some of the scone. This I do. Laughter.

   We talk of many things, as Walruses and Carpenters are apt to. I speak of the days of writerly isolation, of rarely scribbling to other authors in the era of pen and paper, and of my new venture in e-publishing. Part of my job now involves chatting to authors across the time-zones. Taking advice, giving advice, and constantly learning about the business.

   This is all good stuff, she declares. It isn’t. With her Scottish accent, it’s guid stuff. Aye, guid. She hasn’t changed. Well, she’s changed her socks in all that time. I speak of giving major advice to the young American author Kacey Vanderkarr, who followed me on Twitter. (This makes me feel as though I’m Ben Kenobi. You must learn the ways of the Force if you’re to come with me to Amazon.)

   Guid.

   The Red Queen instantly comprehends that sharing hints, tips, rumours, speculation, ideas, and waffle will make the writing community a better place if we so choose. I confess that the two young Americans I’ve chatted to (Missy Biozarre being the other) make me face something grim from my own writing.

   How grim? The Red Queen declares that it’s important to acknowledge anything that’s held back. If you give advice to a writer, on facing fear in writing, and this makes you recognise fear in your own work, then it’s a positive step to cut loose of a problem. Otherwise, giving advice itself would be hollow.

   If I’m Kenobi, the Red Queen is having a Yoda moment.

   She is caught in some Celtic, or possibly Cymric, Twilight. The Lady of the Fountain is learning Welsh, prompting the agonising memory that I once decided to learn that language just to write a twelve-page Welsh folk tale. My own personal Mabinogion. What was I thinking?!

   If I had written it, she’d be able to read it now. We laugh at that. She thanks me for thinking of her and letting her know, with each book’s publication, that my work is out there. That means a great deal to her. She wasn’t there right at the start, but close to the start.

   I kept my writerly ambition secret at the true beginning of things. When I first started to discuss the desire, she was there to hear the discussion. I then stopped discussing writing for many years. Well, I blog now.

   Anyway, I’m thankful that one of the inspirational women behind my fiction thinks to call me up and tell me she always believed in me. We are old, and laugh at how young we once were. Did we really do some of those strange things? They’d be just as strange now. Why does she not feel old, as I do? I make a comment about age and she laughs, without malice, understanding why this is the state of affairs we’ve come to.

   Of course, why should she feel old? She’s the Red Queen, and in my fiction she is a timeless character. It all ties in. She wonders if the Red Queen looked after pigs in my tales. I suspect, adding details to stories-yet-unwritten, that the Red Queen had people deal with that side of things for her.

   This woman on the other end of the phone must go and hunt down a pig, in some far-off field. Or else she’ll have friendly neighbours turn into a raging mob. The torch-lit procession to her humble abode will mutter and mumble in Welsh – and she will understand the muttering and mumbling.

   At some point in the conversation I talk about the unspeakable thing from my writing. I’ll tell you, because you’re YOU. And I do. I used to tell her about my writing. Maybe I haven’t changed. (Well, the socks and other items of apparel.) So I mention this problem, that I’m wavering over. She gets it. There’s no caution in her, warning me that it would be bad to go ahead with this. No. It’s all guid.

   Well that’s settled. I decided that if I did talk about this thing, I’d do it in two stages. If I didn’t publish the first blog post, I wouldn’t go near the second. Trepidation. The microscope comes out. I glare at the results. Everything should be okay.

   Yes, I’ve been inspired, once again, by a woman who inspired my writing in that land of long-ago and far-away. I’ve written short stories older than some audience members. How did I get here, from there? I marched across the minutes of the hours in the days, the same way as everyone else.

   Flickering. I see the whole thing as a movie. It’s about us, now. With a flashback to the young writer and the young artist, colluding in our secret HQ. The actors playing our younger selves have been chosen for their lack of believability. For who would believe a word of the writer scribbling in the here and now?

   We sit in a cupboard, and she tells me about her tarantula. The story turns spookier by the second, and ends on a flourish. She has children-yet-unborn. I harbour novels-yet-unwritten. Any talent she has as an artist is right there for all to see. All the talent I can muster as a writer is rawer than an unformed oyster.

   Yet she sees that I’ve got the bug, at that ridiculous age. I had the bug at an even more ridiculous age before that. For a short period, I actually talk about my fiction. Before I build my own private Berlin Wall around the fiction factory, and get on with the toil of not writing crap.

   It’s a mixed day, for weather. A mini-storm rolls in. The girl in the cupboard in Scotland becomes the woman planning to chase Scratchy the Pig around a field in Wales. No one knows what happened to the guy in the cupboard. He disappeared, and was replaced by someone like me.

   Did we really sit in that cupboard?

   Hard to believe, isn’t it.

   The guy who became the guy in the cupboard was approached in those far-off schooldays, on that one strange day, by THEM. Contemplating writing. Just me, and the blank page. Knocking. Visitors. Unexpected. Teachers were at the door. This was unheard-of.

   Fuck, they’ve sent a hit-squad.

   That young idiot couldn’t find the key. Had to use the window. Could the young gent perhaps open the window a bit wider? The blinds would not permit this. Paranoia was stoked. They just wanted to know if this lad had decided on that subject of theirs. And tracked him all the way to his home.

   Were too many people after the subject? No. With one pupil, there was no official class. Upshot? With two pupils, the class could convene in a cupboard. Er…right. That’s how things went. The would-be author was officially signed up. That taboo remained – no teacher ever entered his place of residence. (But wait a bit, that’s untrue.)

   The Red Queen had a mild mischievous streak to her. Very mild. We were handed the key to the cupboard. A temperamental key it was, too. The failure of the key later resulted in my being locked in the cupboard with a brunette and a blonde.

   Oh hush, audience. It wasn’t deliberate.

   What was? The Red Queen’s mischievous comment. As this was our new home, I had to carry her across the threshold. I’d like to say that I had the presence of mind to agree to this nonsense on the off-chance that I’d later rehash the tale in my writing.

   Ridiculous. Carry this young artist across the threshold of our own personal stationery cupboard, and settle down? Discussing her art, my fiction, in our own little world. Ridiculous. I can laugh about it now. These things seemed very serious at the time. When we were young.

NEXT BLOG: I TELL THE TRUTH TO SOME OFFICIALS.

MORBID THOUGHTS, DOOM, GLOOM, AND THE END OF ALL THINGS.

In my country, I’m classed as an optimist.

   WRITER? MADE A WILL? IT ISN’T ENOUGH. Once more I run over the concept in my head. On the internet, typing in block capitals is considered SHOUTING. Leading me to conclude that using italic type is leaning into the wind, and underlining a word means I’m walking on a tightrope. ^Superscript denotes the use of uppers, _subscript the ingestion of downers. Bold writing…I’m unsure. Perhaps the paint is just thicker there.

   I felt like a SHOUT. Of gloomy intent. I’ve become interconnected, and leaving important documents inside a fireproof safe is no longer enough. Images of actresses adorn the wallpaper on my computer’s desktop, reminding me that I take an interest in things beyond typing stories. I go off and watch stories, too.

   There is a rectangular black hole on that desktop where a photograph of an actress once resided. A flash of yellow invades the darkness. My gloomy beacon, my lighthouse of mortality. It signifies the end of all things.

   The canary colour belongs to a folder icon. In blogging it’s best to avoid using white type against a dark background for the main body text, though this design element works well in limited form – for titles and headers. I use white on black for titles and headers, not the main show. For I am human, have limits, and can only read white-on-black text for so long.

   This large black patch on the desktop is meant to be noticed. The yellow folder, with its white title, is also meant to be noticed – by anyone else. Some random person. Not by me. The great danger in life lies in being more organised than anyone else in your life.

   I am disorganised. With the best will in the world, I hope to avoid criticism of those close to me. Bless them, faults and all. Those faults make those people worth knowing. I am the most organised person out of the whole bunch. And must leave a signpost for chance.

   Chance is a fine and unfine thing. In the week that I published my third e-book, LYGHTNYNG STRYKES, I avoided becoming roadkill. Chance, infrequency of traffic, plays its part in that. I continue to avoid becoming roadkill, as that sounds like the best policy to me. Highlight of that week?

   I had a few highlights. The top spot goes to chance. I leave my office and head for the kitchen. Plan. Dump some rubbish. Go! Time spent on the act is short. I face the window for a few seconds. In that thin slice of my life, a massive magpie lands on a post. It gives a shake of the old wings, sorts itself out, then launches into the cold wet day.

   Not an earth-shattering event. I see this by chance. And it makes my whole week. I have that writerly mind, lodging the incident in the rusty memory banks. Might come in handy, one day. I return to the office, with its computer, computer display, desktop, desktop icons, and. My lighthouse of mortality.

   At the time of writing, in the year of the Maya calendar’s last gasp, my published work carries © protection lasting seventy years beyond my demise. Something I must prepare for. We pretend existence goes on for all time, but no one gets out alive.

   If I am killed unexpectedly by some drunk or undrunk driver, my blog will cease. Unless it’s been set to automatically publish while I’m on a holiday that results in my death. If I suddenly stop blogging unannounced, have I gone to join the Choir Invisible? Perhaps.

   Internet contacts will tentatively e-mail, noting that I’ve been quiet of late. How am I doing? Have I given any thought to the latest publishing news? Afraid to open the box, and discover whether or not this particular cat is still alive. Leading to the old joke.

   Is he dead?

   I hope so – they buried him.

   Though in my case, instead of burial, my ashes should be scattered where deranged and non-deranged devotees cannot find me. I long-ago concluded that my fate was to become a cult figure’s cult figure. Not guilty of crimes, war or otherwise, I’ll still be lumped in with those whose last known rest remains determinedly unknown. Barring accident, presumably somewhere in Sunny Scotland.

   (I’ve noted that writing on the internet cleanses my work of irony and filters sarcasm from the end-product. Using Twitter to describe LYGHTNYNG STRYKES as epic porn robbed the statement of all humour, and made the declaration seem as though brought down from a mountain on stone tablets. Which made the whole thing so much funnier – to me, if no one else.)

   If I am the most organised person out of the whole bunch, it falls to me to arrange a trail of breadcrumbs for distraught persons to follow. Dealing with death is not pleasant. Unknown contacts must be located.

   I speak, in general terms, of helping an author on the internet. What does that actually mean, to those I leave behind? Nothing much. That fellow-scribbler could have engaged in minor contact with me. Who to contact, with bad news?

   Multiple e-mail accounts and social networking appearances are phantom shapes in the misty terrain of my life. I must determine a list of business contacts worth bludgeoning with the grim knowledge. And I must place that list inside the fireproof safe.

   The list is of no immediate use there. It is useful to the one who has instructions to retrieve the fireproof safe from my abode, on being informed of my departure. So, for reasons of immediacy, the list of contacts must go inside an envelope left sitting prominently on an actual desktop.

   That information is repeated inside the electronic file folder glowering in the black space where an actress used to linger on my computer’s digital desktop. And the folder is marked IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH. Same as the envelope, sitting on the black desk behind me.

   E-mail addresses, and what to say to those who should be informed. Not precisely. Loosely. I can’t very well be asked to note the nature of my own passing in advance. Not without ploughing a very deep furrow of morbid humour.

   Here lies RLL, telling lies about a demise that happened before or after sunrise. It was quick/slow, quick, quick, slow. Painless. Sudden. Agonising. Drawn-out. Delete as inapplicable. Died a hero. Wasn’t missed. Endured death by a thousand (and three point five) cuts. Didn’t feel a thing. Victim of a tragic sequence of outré events, considered funny under other circumstances.

   The legacy? Championed the words arcane, outré, #unhashtagging, and whom. Will be remembered for writing EPIC porn. Had no sense of internet humour, though was marginally funny in unreal life. Believed the best villains had a V or K lurking in their names. Remained hostile to the Net Book Agreement. Like Nelle Lee, praised the repeal of the Corn Laws. Until the last, held an irrational fear of irrational fear.

   The reality is that my death will be late in getting to those who should be told. It’ll run perfunctorily, with a slot in the subject line taken up by SAD NEWS. You were one of RLL’s business contacts, and it falls to me to note…

   Wisely, unwisely, I hold an empty view of my literary legacy. I consider my writing disposable. It is supposed to earn money to pay bills. If someone somewhere in the world gains a degree of entertainment from my writing, I’d say that’s good. Well, I would. Wouldn’t I?

   Will my writing change the world? No. Inspire other authors? Too soon to tell. I hold stern views on SOURCES OF INSPIRATION. If I inspire other authors, it’ll be nice of me to take the blame. I don’t think in terms of literary legacy. All writing is experiment, to me. I haven’t the time to plan a monument to myself. You’ll find me in the lab, not in a studio carving narcissism in marble.

   In the meantime, I’ll continue to dodge large white vans that appear from virtually nowhere. Recently, I tried one

Tried one what? I have no idea. The Man from Porlock haunts this blog. I speak of Sam Coleridge, composing poetry. (The blog entry on FREEFALL opened with a reference to Coleridge. Must be something in the air.)

   In Xanadu did Coleridge write. Until his epic poem was interrupted by a knock at the door. Enter Porlock Man, who engaged Coleridge in banter that has gone missing from the history books. The poem Kubla Khan ends with the milk of Paradise because Porlock Man broke Coleridge’s chain of thought.

   My blogging was interrupted by a telephone call from the Red Queen. She almost appears in Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords. If I’m not hit by a white van, she’ll feature in other stories. Though SOURCES OF INSPIRATION ARE MEANINGLESS, that particular source of inspiration is meaningful. I’m unexpectedly forced to blog about the Red Queen.

   Next time. For now, I am left wondering what I recently tried. I know I tried one. Something tells me I didn’t try two. Maybe I did. Who knows? Damn the Man from Porlock. Robbing us of the rest of that poem. Damn the Red Queen? Never. My writing has no lasting literary worth, and whatever I was about to say is lost, shot to hell, without a scrap of thought for its importance.

   The Red Queen works her magic, and all is right with the world. For the first time in my life, I speak about the unspeakable topic that I consider unleashing on my blog. She thinks everything will be fine. It’s a vote of confidence that tips the balance in favour of open discussion. Stay tuned.

   To end, I’d just like to add this. Recently, I tried one. Good job I wasn’t killed after writing that, as I haven’t left instructions for dealing with the rest of the sentence. I wonder what it was I tried. Can’t have been important. Unless it was.

NEXT BLOG: WON’T BE ABOUT TRYING ONE.

#UNHASHTAGGING.

What do I mean by that title? Perhaps it’s my way of simply cutting loose. Looking back at the first phase of my mad science experiment in self-publishing on Amazon Kindle, and pondering the distance I’ve covered. Did I achieve much? Pardon my bias. The answer is YES.

   I published three books, as planned. That’s 600,000 words of material, stacked on my electronic bookshelf. My approach was simple. Do it. I did. No great secret. I made formatting mistakes down in the lab, so that I wouldn’t make them in the marketplace.

   For the most part, my writing was of the written-and-rejected variety. I added a few thousand words here, and some publishing notes there. Pre-publication blogs were scribbled down, and boosted the word-count. I even made the time to write short stories – unfinished business – over the weekend leading to the launch of my short story collection.

   Yes, I embraced the immediacy of self-publishing on Amazon. Rejected Book One went on sale. I had six weeks to give my short story collection the fiction factory treatment. A second Deployment-Day came and went, and I had six more weeks to give a massive book the eyeball before pushing it out of the aeroplane. There it goes, floating on the breeze.

   I could have written books from scratch within that same timeframe, and published them. A brutal schedule, if I’d aimed for the same word-count at the end of the period. But possible, at the rate of a knee-weakening 15,000 words per day every single day. Rain or shine. Rabid activity.

   Wouldn’t give much for the quality of that material, without editing time thrown in. Or the state of my sanity, come to that – especially given the state of my sanity to start with. Stories must have time to breathe. Some distance is required, to deflect the contempt thrown up by familiarity and over-familiarity with the text.

   Not too much time to breathe. The artist lets the paint dry, and the painting is sold. Apply that rule of business to the publication of fiction. The cake was made, and had to be eaten before it went bad. A poor choice of image – digital stories on the electronic bookshelf have a long life. Still, you seem to be absorbing the general idea.

   So the first phase of the plan is done. Do I resort to burnout, and throw material up for grabs every six weeks from now until I keel over? No. To tackle slim*thriller, I must spend time training. Deciding how I want to handle the visual elements in that story, then learning how to prepare the piece for Kindle.

   Other considerations knock at my door, tug at my elbow, and seek my divided attention. In the closing phase of editing LYGHTNYNG STRYKES, I was plagued by industrial levels of static electricity. I’d have found this ironic, but for the inconvenience. My sense of humour clicked off.

   In my last blog entry, I spoke of traffic. The single greatest consideration in being published was not quantity of material written. Quality of material didn’t come into it either. Style. Editing. Pricing. Availability. No.

   My single greatest consideration, with roadworks all over the place, was traffic. Before publishing LYGHTNYNG STRYKES, I avoided a car that came out of nowhere. My avoidance was massive. After publishing LYGHTNYNG STRYKES, I made a critical error glancing back at an obstructive road sign.

   An optical delusion almost turned me into a pancake. Somehow I paid attention, and avoided being painlessly steamrollered by a van. I recall telling myself, caustically, that throwing my flimsy frame in front of a van just AFTER publication would be as bad a career-move as doing so just BEFORE. Everyone’s a critic.

   Battling streets, I was in a post-publishing daze. I struggled to reconcile my view of reality with actual reality. Through treacle, my brain operated. Pointing out the car. For weeks I’d worried that I’d be hit on my way to publish a book. Foolishly, on that third publication day, I gave less thought to returning from publishing. The van and the car missed me by miles. Well, shorter distances.

   This sort of nonsense is the stuff Twitter seems to have been invented for. The Twitter, the Facebook, the Google+. Not forgetting the E-post. The Blogger. I don’t quite sing about bodies, electric or otherwise. People who can’t sing shouldn’t.

   In thinking over social and anti-social networking, I catch sight of a long-lost pal. Paper. It’s strange that I recycle so much paper, at a time when my use of paper has declined. As an author, why don’t I care about seeing my books on my own shelves?

   I just don’t. E-publishing is the route to market. Not a paper deal. LYGHTNYNG STRYKES doesn’t contain any Nin quotes. The book does contain handy page-references for the quotes I wasn’t granted permission to use. How the hell could I get away with that, through a paper publisher? I’d be informed that this was a jolly bad show. Not par for the course. Underhand. Let me pause to take the matter up with my publisher.

DARTH SINISTER: What is it?

MOFF LARKIN: Lord Sinister, the Nin estate has refused permission to quote breathless prose.

DARTH SINISTER: Set the DEATH STAR on course for Louveciennes.

MOFF LARKIN: Is that…wise?

DARTH SINISTER: Perhaps I could blow something else up.

MOFF LARKIN: You propose another target? A literary target?

DARTH SINISTER: I was more concerned with parking, if I’m honest. Well, we can always skip the quotes and just list the page-numbers. Leave us.

MOFF LARKIN: As you wish, my Lord.

DARTH SINISTER: Moff Larkin…

MOFF LARKIN: Er…

DARTH SINISTER: Check the hull integrity.

MOFF LARKIN: There’s precious little integrity in Hull. And I should bloody know.

   The digital world surrounds us. Social networking is no use to me if it serves to note my collision with a van. Paper is something I scribble notes on. I become a publisher of my own fiction, and take out the rubbish as well. It’s just me, at the keyboard…

   As far as storytelling goes.

   Oh, there are ghosts at my elbow. Literary figures. Influences. Sources of, ahem, inspiration. But I am alone with my thoughts and the sound of my speech as I go into Silly Voice Mode. Writing is not a team-sport.

   Yet the digital world surrounds us. Self-publishing involves a crowd of writerly contacts spread across the globe. People ask for help, receive help, or just float through in a neutral way – observing. In some cases, old-fashioned paper letters are sent out. Then there’s the Twitter, and the Facebook, and the body electric. Walt Whitman was an internet fan. He just died before he could realise that.

   I see a great round wonder rolling through space,

   I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping,

   And the sunlit part on the other side,

   I see the cities of the earth and make myself at random a part of them…

   Hell, I’ve done that from a mobile phone. Cheers, Walt. I’d used belaboured comedy to note that this blog would have no set text. This week’s ramble feels disjointed, but I don’t care. If someone, somewhere, shaded or sunlit, gains the merest scrap from the blog...good.

   Writing is solitary. Self-publishing need not be. The writerly community is all over the text-based internet. It’s a story-thing. A business item. There’s no uphill or downhill online. You are free to learn anything from anyone.

   If you are far ahead, along the road, it’s still possible to look back and learn from those nowhere near as far-travelled, or bloody world-weary, as yourself. Give advice, gain advice in the giving. Ponder, then act. Don’t forget to act.

   The obvious upshot of that image is that there will be people ahead of you, toiling away in the distance. It can be a struggle to reach them, but you can help those writers too. These lonesome roads don’t all have fiends lurking way behind you. There’s no pride to swallow, if someone further back helps you with directions.

   I’m staring at books of poetry. You may want to check these people out. Simon Armitage. W.H. Auden. Ted Hughes. T.S. Eliot. Wendy Cope. Philip Larkin. Sylvia Plath. Seamus Heaney. Siegfried Sassoon. Let’s add Walt Whitman to that list.

   All plucked from bookshelves. Paper. The world that informed my writing, though my writing exists in cyberspace. Paperless. Unyellowing. Scent-free. Perpetually new and old. I type the body electric. Throw images down in a storm of ethereal impulses. I kidnap Philip Larkin and dress him as an Imperial Lackey. Well, if the digital shoe fits…

   I cast off fear – the fear of making obscure references. Google it all, to your heart’s content. Then you’ll know who Darth Bezos is. I’m Darth Sinister, of course. Scouring the universe in my DEATH STAR. With another DEATH STAR in reserve. Well, you never know.

   It seems, looking back over this blog post (itself looking back over my publishing plans), that I felt like waffling nonsense today. That’s how stories start. Everything is a potential plot, setting, character, or an excuse to throw down an unusual turn of phrase.

   Getting my money’s worth out of #unhashtagging may take some doing.

NEXT BLOG: BLEAK, MOODY, DOOM-LADEN THOUGHTS.

FREEFALL.

Glancing back along that lonesome road at some frightful fiend, I feel it’s time to review. Three dates set for publication. All passed, successfully. Three books on sale for the Amazon Kindle. The twelve-week fuse sparked down and the publishing bomb went off in a series of pops. With the odd hitch.

   I thought it a good thing to place the opening chapter of my first book on my blog as a pre-publication sample. That had to go when I signed the KDP exclusivity deal with Amazon. I remember a lot of fear in the air at the end of 2011, when Kindle Direct Publishing Select reared its electronic head.

   What did it mean? You couldn’t even TALK about your book if you entered into the satanic pact with Darth Bezos and his minions? Nonsense. If in doubt, clarify. (Though not with butter. Whoops. Galloping Gourmet reference.)

   I asked Amazon a few questions. Could I quote other works and not fall foul of the exclusivity clause? Certainly I could, whether the quotes were in the public domain or © to other creators. No problem. Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords opens with quotes from Winston Churchill and John Buchan. The sky did not fall in when I published.

   Readers who wonder whether or not I gained © permission to quote A. Nin, wonder no more. I couldn’t secure permission. As a self-publisher, I chose to deal with that problem in my own imitable fashion.

   Then there was the matter of pricing. I planned to charge £3.50 for the first two books and around £7 for LYGHTNYNG STRYKES. The exchange rate scuppered that plan, and I was forced to discount my third book to £6.29 to keep within Amazon’s dollar limits for the 70% royalty rate. What a hardship.

   I sacrificed small vegetables on the midnight altar to foretell that the VAT on e-books would drop. Not holding my breath, I was surprised when the VAT fell like a clichéd stone. Wonders do cease. Then they start wondering again.

   These minor points aside, I achieved my objectives. Publish, publish, publish. Now my blog is no longer tied to pre-publication posts. I am in freefall, staring at the ground rushing to greet me. Wondering if I have a parachute or rucksack on my back.

   The future holds out the prospect of guest blog posts. I’ve decided to free up the blog and my publishing plans too. It’s time to embrace the fluid nature of e-scribbling. I experimented with the immediacy of the industry when I released INCOMPLETE UNCOLLECTED SHORT WORKS.

   Yes. I had unfinished business there. Dating back…well, dating back. From my schooldays, I developed a rabid dislike of the idea of multiple narrators telling tales in the first person. Having one character start with the word I was a misfortune. To have two doing it seemed like carelessness. Or three. More. Gasp. Someone, stop the madness!

   My resolve crumbled this year, and I tackled the unfinished business of a story called The Stain Curse. I knew that this sequel to The Maltese Walnut called for the opening character to speak to the audience – I did this, I did that. But the male character had to make way for the female voice of another person using the dreaded I.

   I didn’t ditch my long-held view that THIS WAS WRONG! Well, I locked the notion in a temporary jail while the story was dashed out. I reached for that old standby, the flashback. The story within a story. Any reservations I had about the multiple first person narrative lay wrapped within a cocoon of rampant flashbackery.

   Immediacy was important to me. I rattled off stories and notes at the last minute, and published. Proving to myself that, as long as I kept a handle on the editing, I could be IMMEDIATE. Even if I had to undertake a major task – overcoming the revulsion at writing in a particular style.

   This was good. Where do I go from here? Into the land of the immediate. I see a large book looming on the horizon. Much editing and formatting there. But wait a bit. Why not be spontaneous, and get away from older slices of unpublished material for a stretch?

   Neon Gods gained a few thousand words in the telling. INCOMPLETE UNCOLLECTED SHORT WORKS picked up two new stories and a load of blog entries along the way. LYGHTNYNG STRYKES lost wayward typos that were staring me in the face.

   Where’s the new stuff? I can expand my digital bookshelf by looking at the past. But it’s hardly recharging the writing batteries. Preparing LYGHTNYNG STRYKES was wearing, even for an editing bod like me. Ludicrously, I took time from editing to assist other authors. With a deadline thundering across the horizon. Sitting here, typing away, I still find it hard to believe I did that.

   As much as I helped people, I gained assistance. That recharged the writing batteries. I’m in freefall, wondering where to land. Where do I steer this…ah…it’s a parachute. Rucksacks are slightly harder to manage.

   Yes, where do I land? I have a collection of short stories in mind. And new novels. Perhaps some articles on publishing might fall into the same e-tome, if I can set the fiction factory to churn ideas out. For nothing? Yes, I could arrange a permanently free book. Just to see how I feel about it.

   Hollow, is the immediate answer. For that’s how I feel when I publish books on Amazon. Here’s D-Day, for LYGHTNYNG STRYKES, in miniature…

   I soon regret the use of the letter Y in the title every bloody time I have to type it up in a blog post. Two days before publishing, I spy three i placements where the plot demands y instead. That was a bytch to write, and harked back to some of the stories from INCOMPLETE UNCOLLECTED SHORT WORKS.

   Charactersh who shpoke like an actor named Connery. That short of nonshense. I can’t see myself writing like that again. In the short stories, and LYGHTNYNG STRYKES, I was pretty much done with the idea.

   Editing and formatting is finished. Sunday night. I put the book to bed. On Monday I trek to my publishing HQ. It is cold. A spring day in March. Ice lies in patches on the ground. Frost dapples the grass. Clouds part. The sun brings no warmth.

   Even with the brim of a hat pulled low for extra protection, I face the all-encompassing sun as though undefended. Solar energy cuts through the super-dark shades on my face. The day is too bright. I’m a vampire, late to the crypt. A massive wet fountain pours inexplicably from my left eye. I don’t quite burst into flames.

   Final preparations for the book. Ticking boxes, arranging product description text. Loading the file in. And pressing the button. I feel the same as on those other Deployment-Days. Trepidation translates to an upswing in heartbeat and lethargy in brainwaves. One half of existence moves too swiftly. The other, not fast enough.

   Fingers do not fly across the keyboard. They stumble and lurch. My right leg falls asleep. I press the button. The book goes. Hours will pass before the product is available. I host a sale of Neon Gods, to mark the launch of LYGHTNYNG STRYKES.

   Then I walk away, into the light again. Brooding over the lack of elation. Hey, I published a book today. But I don’t feel like celebrating. Trepidation does not give way to elation – it blocks delight. I wander, as though some spectral figure. Invisible. Intangible. Lost to my thoughts. Which are not worth recording.

   Is this how it is to be, every single time? (What happened to third time’s the charm, eh?) I worry over what I put out there, then worry some more once it’s on its way. Oh, I can fix mistakes after the fact. But I don’t want the reputation of someone who does so to excess.

   Have I done a decent job? Is the work professional? Why don’t I run through the streets, screaming of success? For every book published is a success on that level – you did it. I’m caught up in the business, and brood. Amazon will congratulate me by e-mail. A digital pat on the back.

   No, I don’t write for the money. Piles of money. Vaults of money. Fantasy currency. I do write with the hope that I sell enough books to pay my bills. Though I’ve written for years, I’ve only published for weeks. Early, yet. I’m patient, and I’m prepared to hang in there. That’s what I do.

   The vampire in me returns to the crypt, leaves the scalding sun behind, and plots nefarious activity. What now? Return to Neon Gods. Commit to the sequels, knowing I’ve planned the antidote to the typical fantasy series of books. If I start writing book two, I must write three and four simultaneously to keep continuity on a short leash. Or…

   Format my (unslim) thriller into four volumes, accepting the necessity of delving into the technical side of things. Going back over old ground, and giving readers something I think they’d want to try. No new material, there. Or…

   Delve into the vaults. Resurrect Wednesday’s Mind. Just Another Zombie Story. Toylandt. Things like that. I created a cover for the zombie story the night before I published LYGHTNYNG STRYKES. It was a relief to type a title with no need to write Zombye, if nothing else. As for the vampire stuff, the werewolf material, and the time travel nonsense…

   It all seems to have been set down in note form, waiting to be written, by someone who was betting on self-publishing being the future without even knowing e-publishing would become exactly that. On my D-Day travels, I avoided being hit by a van. Then, later, a car.

   How many stories do we manage to publish, before we jolt into sudden unexpected forced retirement? I thought of that as I saw the eerie shape on the lonesome road. A frightful fiend. Really a car, hurtling in my direction. Two steps and I was safe. Though I didn’t feel safe. Much like pressing a button to publish a book. Saving myself from an oncoming vehicle didn’t lead to elation. Merely to belated trepidation.

   This has turned into a very gloomy blog. Or bog. Well, I was trying to capture how I felt when I published a book. Loads of people celebrate wildly. I find that odd, preferring to celebrate mildly. (A luxurious cream cake was the order of the day.) Loads of people will find my lack of celebration odd. I find it hard to escape my national character.

   There’s a man named Craig Ferguson who loves a place called Cumbernauld. Craig was once a stand-up comedian. Went by the label Bing Hitler. I think he missed a trick, and a greater career. Should have called himself Adolf Crosby. Being Scottish practically killed him. A lifetime later he made it in America as a chat-show host.

   He’s Scottish by accident of birth, but American by choice. Fair play to the man, for not dying in the gutter. He walked a hard road. American by choice. Something I could never be. I remain Scottish by choice. Wary of praise. Suspicious of compliment. Dismissive of fame. Rejecting the overpowering need for approval. I write this knowing what comes next, even though I write of wondering what comes next.

   There was a hint of fear, attached to my work. And I thought I could blog about it, in light of the help I’ve given to other authors. Being organised, I decided if I did blog about this topic…I’d blog twice. Once to set the story up, and again to flush it from my system.

   Feeling the same nerves publishing yet another book, I wondered if I could blog about an unbloggable thing. I have concluded that I couldn’t do it in two parts. First, I’d have to construct a cut-off point in this blog post. A position from which I can retreat if I feel I must. Having done that, I’ll see to random blog topics for a short while before I commit to a course of action or inaction.

   To blog, or not to blog. Reminds me, there’s that Hamlet adaptation, too…

NEXT BLOG: THERE’S NO SET TEXT. (THAT WON’T BE THE TITLE.)