Books that made me laugh Part 1

 

1889

Eighteen eighty nine. The Nineteenth Century. And we're in the twenty-first. How can a book so old make me laugh? A hundred and thirty years have passed since it was written and it seems that everything has changed. So, why is it still very very funny?

My answer is that human nature hasn't changed very much at all. Our environment, the way we conduct our everyday lives and the availability of information are very different to the 1880's but people remain people. And humour remains a constant.

It's also heartening in this world of TikTok that books also endure. The written word still provides us with news and entertainment. As a writer, you'll expect me to tell you that nothing beats a good book. So, that's what I'm telling you. Books remain the only way of putting ourselves inside someone else's head. And this is important. Everyone is doing their best, whether we recognise it or not. We can only play the hand that we're dealt. Being party to the thought processes of others is an important route to compassion.

This book is, in the words of the blurb, 'a timeless classic'. More than that, it is laugh out loud hilarious. A remarkable feat that so many aspire towards but fail. Here's the link:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Men-Boat-Illustrated-Fiction-ebook/dp/B09LRXY2WW/

I challenge you to read the first page and not be amused. The bit where he researches diseases at the library mirrors what we all do on the internet these days. He comes to the conclusion:

"I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got."

Next time I'll mention a much more recent book that still makes me laugh. We'll fast forward to 1979!

Heroes Part 2

 

There were a few dusty eyebrows raised when Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Couldn't they find some who wrote books rather than a pop musician?

My answer would be that not only was the award richly deserved but Bob Dylan is one of the most talented and influential writers that ever lived. He's another of my heroes.

He has the ablilty to tell a whole story, imbue it with emotion and enough sensuous detail to satisfy the most pernickety reader (or listener) within a few lines of lyrics. A feat that would be require many thousands of my words.

The argument that Bob is not read but listened to is a spurious one in the age of audiobooks, don't you think?

Never mind what you think of his music, his songs, his voice or his performances. Read his book, Chronicles, if you remain skeptical.

Chronicles is remarkable not only for its prose but also for the insight it allows into the mind of a very special human being. The man's humility shines from the pages. This is no puff piece. No 'look at me aren't I clever?' memoir.

My abiding impression of his early life in New York is of a young man who reads widely and voraciously. Machiavelli and Plato included. As a musician, he soaks up lessons from everyone he encounters and marvels at their unique styles. He pays his dues, in other words, then makes sure we understand how valuable his experiences are.

Like I said, his humility shines through. It has inspired me to look at the influences on my life and my writing and to give them fuller credit. From my childhood days at Tyldesley Library where I worked my way though the wonderful yellow-jacketed Gollancz published SF books. Alldis to Zelazny. Blish to Sturgeon. Delany, Ellison, Heinlein, Pohl and the rest. Thank you Gollancz, you put me on the right track.

I was sufficiently flexible to seek out a wide range of books. Not just SF but LP Hartley, Huxley, Burgess and Iris Murdoch. Then there were the disapproving looks from the librarians when I asked for Gurjieff's All and Everything (Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson) which a good Catholic boy had no right to have even heard of let alone try to read.

Stephen King once said that to be a writer you have to be a reader. Bob certainly lived up to that and I'm certain that reading widely has provided me with a solid base for my own work.

I only wish I had Bob's humility to go with it.

Heroes

 

Joe Abercrombie is the best Fantasy author in the history of the world. He's my hero, or rather one of them.

My opinion is personal, of course, and others might disagree but it's based on a pretty comprehensive and long standing fascination with Fantasy. I've ploughed my way through the likes of Donaldson, Jordan, Bakker, Le Guin and Martin. I've read Lord of the Rings out loud to my children. I love Fantasy and there are a lot of wonderful books to choose from. Joe Abercrombie stands head and shoulders above the rest, though.

There's a choice we writers have. A difficult one. Do we avoid writing in the genre we love because of the giants that have already claimed their castles on the mountain top? Or do we use the things we've learned and absorbed to create something of our own?

I met Joe at an event in Brighton where he explained the backgound to his book the Red Country. He said it was based on the Clint Eastwood film The Outlaw Josey Wales. This set me thinking that everything comes from somewhere. All writers share a vast common pool of precedent and what matters is not where the ideas originate but what we do with them.

I love telling stories. That's the basis for what I write. My technique, if I can can call it that, is to drop into a scene and observe what my characters are up to. Then I spend my time following them around until the story has been told. It sounds easy but there are times I wish I had more influence.

So my Fantasy books are very different from Joe's. Just as my thillers aren't at all like Chandler's or my SF like Iain M Banks. 

Writing isn't a competitve sport. I am happy to urge you to read Abercrombie if you haven't already because I'm convinced you'll be very happy you did.

The prompt for this reflection comes from a rather perceptive review from someone in the US who says stuff like:

'DJ Harrison does a wonderful Job of creating a story, that in my opinion, is a very different fantasy!
Filled with Demons, magic, steel and swords....YES!

But the first novels twist is that there is no clear, main character. All of them are so real, that the closest you get are Anti-heros. The human flaws that flesh them out and make them real, mean that they don't stand out in the traditional sense.'

I hadn't thought about the Secret of the Scroll in those terms. As I've indicated, my characters are a law to themselves and wouldn't recognise themselves as any kind of hero protagonist. Just like the rest of us, they're doing their best with the situations that confront them. Interesting.

Oh, the reviewer finishes off by saying:

Fans of Abercrombie will love it!

Which is where we came in.

The Price of Gas

 

The price of gas has increased tenfold. Heating our homes and operating our industries has become enormously more expensive. Ruinously so, perhaps.

However, I reckon the cost of gas has remained pretty much the same.

The cost price reflects the cash needed to extract the fuel from the ground and transport it to the point of use. I doubt there's much difference in cost between now and pre-war in Ukraine. The huge leap in price only reflects the amount people are willing to pay for the stuff.

There's also a lot of talk in the UK about us having 'our own oil and gas'. As a country we have none. We gave it all away long ago to the likes of BP and Shell who are now free to sell it to the highest bidder. And that's where the money is going. Directly into the pockets of already over-rich people who have no need for more money but feel they are entitled to it anyway.

At 20p per therm, the fossil fuel companies were making handsome profits. Now, at 200p per therm, profits have become astronomical.

How can this be? Why should people who can least afford it be paying into the dividend pot for fossil fuel investors?

It's the system. The one we've been told for decades is the only viable way to run the world. We've been lied to. Sold a pup. Exploited.

The biggest contributors to the Conservative Party and individual MP's, apart from corrupt Russian oligarchs, are the construction industry. There's a reason for this.

Let me use the construction industry, with which I am familiar, as an example of the corrupt system which applies equally to every facet of business in the country and, in fact, most of the world.

Land, like the oil and gas beneath it, ought to belong to everyone but it doesn't. Those with the might to claim vast tracts of our country grabbed it while they could. So, most of the surface of our country is controlled by a group of wealthy landowners. Like the Queen. And Chinese investment companies. And the Russian mafia, sorry, oligarchs.

So, what's the cost of land? Not a lot. Especially if you stole it many years ago.

But the price? Agricultural land can be bought for £5,000-10,000 per acre. This reflects the profit that can be made from growing crops. The exact same piece of land with permission for housing will yield over £1,000,000 per acre when sold as plots to house buyers. Our planning system is designed to enrich  housebuilders. Corruption can be no surprise when such enormous profits are involved. Influencing politicians must be extremely good value for money otherwise why invest large sums in political contributions?

In the UK, the cost of a house has little relation to its price. The price, like that of gas, depends entirely on what people are willing to pay. And their ablility to pay is more dependant on the cost of borrowing money from the banks than anything else. Bear in mind that the exact same house in one place can fetch twice the price of one in a less fashionable district. No difference in cost.

I've rambled on a bit. Sorry. I hope you get the picture. Your energy bills are stuffing the pockets of the rich. Corruption ensures this. The media make sure we remain victims because the media is controlled by the mega-rich.

It doesn't have to be like this but it's the way we've chosen. Maybe its time to choose another way.

Tyrant

I'm a writer of speculative fiction. I am not an expert on armed conflicts or the geopolitical history of Europe.

My main job is to create characters who then act out an interesting story. There's a tyrant king in my fantasy trilogy who might be likened to Putin.

This King has to subjugate the population with fear and suppress any form of crtiticism or opposition with the hangman's noose. Yet he lives in constant fear of something coming along that will destroy him. He, like Putin, is implacable in his selfishness.

As I write this the war in Ukraine has entered its fourth day. Kyiv still stands although it seems inevitable that the overwhelming force deployed by the Russians must prevail at some point. 

If this was a situation in a work of fiction that I was writing, I'd be at the stage of wondering what the endgame might be. It's likely that Putin has underestimated the power of the Ukrainians to resist. In my world, he'd now be turning on the generals who promised him a quick victory and holding them to account.

Invasion has created a reluctant hero in Zelenskyy. I doubt Putin anticipated this. The likely scenario Putin was relying on involved a swift run into Kyiv, capture or kill those in the government who hadn't already fled and installation of a puppet government.

Instead a folk hero, one who unites and inspires the whole country and the whole world. has emerged. 

Given this situation, where can a writer take it? Put yourself in Putin's head. Ask yourself what you would do under the circumstances. You might say that he's irrational, mentally unstable and therefore unpredictable and you'd be right. However, I believe that his actions betray his fear of losing power. The encroachment of democracy is an existencial threat and when Ukraine voted to became western-leaning Putin knew his days of being able to resist popular opinion in Russia were numbered.

Zelenskyy standing firm and remaining in Kyiv may be the most significant factor in the whole situation. Putin can no longer cling to the fable that the Ukrainian people will tolerate a Moscow-led government. He's thoroughly pissed off forty million people who, even if he manages to take some form of control in the major cities, will resist using whatever weapons they can get including Molotov cocktails.

It will all boil down to Putin's state of mind, I'm afraid. From what I understand of his character, he will cling on to power at all costs. That means the Russian heirarchy, the oligarchs and the military, will have to oust him. 

At least that's what would make a reasonably believable plot line. Unfortunately, the difference between fact and fiction is that fiction has to make sense. 

Let's pray we get a good ending.

Are you robbing me?

                                       Free!

Free books.

Why on earth would I give away my work?

Bear in mind it took me about seven years to get the Secret of the Scroll from conception to publication. During that period I rewrote it three times and added a second and third book. A conservative estimate of my time would be at least 700 hours. At minimum wage rates that would amount to £7000.

The there's the external costs of making the book fit to read. Editing included several passes of structural, a line edit and two lots of proofreading. The people I use are professionals and have to be paid accordingly. No change out of £2000 for that.

Then there's the cover, formatting etc. Another £500.

Total around £10,000 if you include my time, which, if you ask me, is very much undervalued.

But you can have the product for nothing. How can I justify that?

It's all about visibility. If I do the maths, I need to sell about 5,000 ebooks at £2.99 in order to break even.

That's not going to happen unless readers know my book is available and that it's quite wonderful. That's where my free promotion comes in. Think of Netflix. There, all the films are free once you've paid the subscription. So giving one a try for 20mins is painless and easy. If it's unwatchable, you've lost nothing but 20 mins of your time.

So, my resistance to renting an unknown film for £2.99 is far greater than trying it on Netflix. I can still feel the stinging disappointment of the ones that turned out to be a waste of money.

If you take my book for free, you will be doing me a big favour. This is how:

1. You move me up the charts. After 1 day of my free promotion the Secret of the Scroll is No. 1 in Epic Fantasy. That means more people get to see it.

2. You give me a chance to hook you with my writing. 

3. If you read my book you might leave a rating or review. Ratings are massively important for Amazon sales. Ratings also help qualify for the book promotion services with the greatest reach. Until I get 50 reviews, I'm practically invisible.

4. Most importantly, though, you might read my book. Which is the main purpose of writing it. Forget about economics, all I really want is to be read and enjoyed.

So, you're not robbing me. There's not need to wait for the price to go up. Be my guest, take a free book now and I hope you enjoy it.