Jack Barrow

A personal appeal from Jack Barrow

2012-01-02T16:50:00.005Z

Okay so New Year, new marketing push.

It's always been my plan to spread the word about the Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil via the pagan network. This is my core readership but the book is clearly attractive to non pagan readers as they see it as contemporary fantasy, it is pretty fantastical in places after all.

So I'd really like you guys to help me out. If you are a pagan who has read and enjoyed The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil I'd like to invite you to spread the word amongst your pagan friends. There are a number of ways you can do that. You can simply tell people about the book, and I know that has been going on, but there are now numerous pages where people can subscribe or click to indicate their support.

There is a Facebook page about the book here.

There is a Facebook fan page about me here.

There is a personal Facebook profile about me here.

There is my Twitter feed here (@JackBarrowBooks).

And of course you can click subscribe on the link further down this blog.

However, what would be really, really great would be for you all to start writing reviews on the pages where the book is for sale. Most of the significant links to the sales outlets are shown on the sidebar at the top of this blog. If you bought the book (no matter how long ago) it would be great for you to go to the web page where you bought it and write an honest review of the book. If you bought it from a shop of from a web site that doesn't sell it any more because they don't do eBooks then find somewhere else to write a review. If it's already been reviewed then add your opinion to those of other readers. (Please only give it five stars if you feel it deserves five stars. Pure five star reviews can look a bit unbelievable so just be honest.)

Finally, and this is probably where you will have the greatest impact, if you know of pagan web sites that do reviews of pagan books then try to get them to publish a review. If you've never written a review for a web site why not try it yourself and get your own name in print (well electrons at least). If you come across a pagan web site that hasn't covered The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil, then ask them why they haven't covered it. It'll probably be because they haven't heard of it. If they say they don't do eBooks tell them that it should be back in paperback soon as I'm working on that too (as well as working on the animation promo and all that jazz).

Please also try to ask your friends whom you know have read the book to do the same as many people won't see this blog. Please don't leave it to chance and please don't leave all the success to Dan Brown as you know I can write a better pagan story then he can. I know I have lots of fans out there. (I hate that word but it's the way this works). If you want to see the next book in the series (there's four books planned, one for each element and the next one is water) then I need you to get the ball rolling. Reading the book is one thing, saying that you've read it is the next, getting other people to read it and say that they've read it is what will ensure that I can keep this going, and keep you guys laughing out loud at the bus stop or in the office or any of the other places I've heard you tell me about.

Thanks.

Jack

Steve Coogan, Alexi Sayle, Willy Russell and now Jack Barrow

2011-12-02T03:03:00.000Z

I was browsing around trying to find which eBook retailers are now listing the Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil and I found this web page.

I don't know who posted this but I think it goes back to when the paperback was on sale. Whatever the case I'm grateful to whoever it was for the association.

The hunt for The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil

2011-11-25T17:08:00.003Z

Okay, so a week on from Smashwords premium catalogue approval I've discovered that there is a delay between the Smashwords catalogue being shipped and the book appearing on the web sites.

So here's the thing.

The book is slowly due to appear on retailer web sites in the coming weeks. I've been checking the sites recently to see if the book appears but there are a few sites to check and the process is a bit repetitive. Therefore I'm offering a prize for each site.

For the first person to post a link to a retailer site where The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil is on sale I will give a free download of the book from Smashwords.

Post the links in the comment section below. The download will be in the format of your choice (see the list of formats in my post from last week). I will email you a voucher code to download a copy direct from Smashwords.

If you want to know what you stand to win you can read about it here.

The Hidden Masters and The Unspeakable Evil available worldwide

2011-11-22T13:49:00.001Z

This just a quick update that The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil has now gone into the Smashwords premium catalogue which means that it will be available on the major retailers' web sites worldwide. The Smashwords web site says this:

Kindle (.mobi for Kindle devices and Kindle apps)	Download
Epub (Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, others)	Download
LRF (Use only for older model Sony Readers that don't support .epub)	Download

They say the catalogue ships at the end of the week but I don't know how long it takes for the files to appear on the relevant web sites. If anybody sees the book on any of these sites I'd be interested to hear about it.

One final note although Smashwords sell books formatted for the Kindle they don't actually distribute to Amazon yet. Apparently that may be on the way soon. I'm told it's something to do with them having an ability to upload the files to Amazon so it's a technical matter. Until that is sorted out Kindle readers can buy the Kindle version of the Hidden Masters from other sellers and direct from Smashwords themselves.

The Hidden Masters and The Unspeakable Evil out in eBook format

2011-11-02T10:59:00.003Z

Today I am available to read as an ebook.

The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil is now on Smashwords.com

It's just a first step as the book needs to be approved for formatting before it gets into the Premium Catalogue and then onto the various retailer's web sites. That process might take a couple of weeks.

Keep watching.

New dialogue for Hidden Masters - Chapter 1

2011-10-21T09:42:00.003+01:00

The old Chapter 1 was a bit narrative heavy so I came to the conclusion that it needed some dialogue to perk it up. The trouble is the opening scene was a single character getting ready for his friends to arrive for the esbat. However the saving grace was a reported phone call that he later describes. So this is what I've added.

"Hello?"
"…"
"Oh hi Geoff, how's things?"
"… …"
"Uh huh."
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … … … … … …"
"Really?"
"…"
"Good grief!"
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … …"
"Your model village?"
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … … … … … …"
"Casinos?"
"… … …"
"Cowboys?"
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … …"
"Vegas?"
"… … …"
"Blackpool!"
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … … … …"
"Indians? What, with war paint and all that?"
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … … … …"
"Chain Mart! You mean the little everything-shop where you buy your beer?"
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"…"
"… …"
"… … …"
"… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …"
"Are you stoned?"

----------------------------------------------------------------

The eBook version is currently available from Smashwords here and should be out on major retailers web sites (Apple, Barns & Noble, etc.) sometime in November.

Passing on the stairs

2011-10-17T13:13:00.001+01:00

When I was younger we used to pass on the stairs. I remember this because we had a relative from Canada come to live with us and she made a point of telling us that she wouldn’t pass on the stairs. She thought it was bad luck or she thought she was too wide or something. I remember it making no sense at the time. She used to make a point of lots of things and she was generally annoying like that but hey, what can you do when you are eleven? Anyway, that’s how I remember that the rest of us didn't mind passing on the stairs, because she was different.

I’ve recently finished working in an office where we worked upstairs with the kitchen downstairs. All day we’d be up and down to the kitchen and frequently I’d meet someone coming the other way. The stairs weren’t nearly as narrow as those in a house, although they were not quite as wide as a double width staircase. Colleagues would always wait when someone was on the stairs, often forcing some delay. This seemed strange to me, there was plenty of room.

Is there some change in people that I've not noticed? Over all these years of working at home have I lost touch with the etiquette of stairway traffic? Are people more sensitive about personal space? Did I grow up in a family where we were happier to share out stair space? Or was I so small at eleven that I could get past anybody? Hang on…?

It's just a notion and I thought I'd share.

Does gravity push?

2011-10-12T00:23:00.007+01:00

Many years ago a friend in a pub suggested that gravity pushes and it's only the existence of a planet beneath our feet that creates a shadow that stops us being pushed away from the planet. If gravity pushes could it explain inflation and, at the same time, the increased expansion of the universe in the later part of cosmological history?

If gravity pushes and it is merely the effect of large masses shielding other masses from the gravity of the rest of the universe that pushes the whole universe apart, inflation could have occurred during a period when there was little or no matter to shield the universe from gravity thus pushing it apart at an extreme rate. Then when matter appeared inflation would have stopped dramatically because the sudden shielding effect.

Now, 14Bn years later the universe appears to be speeding up, thus the invention of dark energy to explain where this expansion is coming from. However, gravity pushing could explain this by the fact that the universe is so expanded by now that it's so far apart the shielding effect is weakened and another period of rapid expansion could be taking place. In other words gravity pushing would only have a cohesive effect on a dense universe but a universe that is sparse (or widely distributed) its shielding effect would be very weak.

Thus we can explain inflation and dark energy, which has always seemed a bit rubbish otherwise. All we need to do is wrap up dark matter in this and we might have a hat trick which could become the new standard model of cosmology.

How complicated is Facebook going to get?

2011-09-23T12:58:00.004+01:00

As a struggling author, relying on word of mouth to get people to hear about my work, I’ve been counting on the opportunity to get some key people (people who are in my target demographic and have lots of friends) to ‘like’ my Jack Barrow page. The idea is that people who ‘like’ my page will be seen to do so and their friends will be curious enough to look. I’ve always thought that this was what the like feature is all about. At the same time I'll buy some Facebook ads, do other promiotions, generally put in some effort. (I've got a list somewehere of what I need to do when the time comes.)

Now they’ve introduced the new makeover with subscriptions, conditional news feeds, features that only work on a Tuesday when there is an R in the month, etc., it’s just so complicated I despair at anyone ever understanding how this all works. I might actually manage to set up my options so that people see what I want them to see, but if I have to rely on my key people having their settings right then have I really got a hope?

I’m finally getting close to the situation where I can do a re-launch of my career. Soon, very soon I hope, my books will be on sale again, but with a broken Facebook (Twitter simply isn’t enough) then I can’t see where to go next.

Is Amazon messing up the chances of small publishers?

2011-08-23T13:45:00.005+01:00

This weekend I met a fan of my novel The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil. Apparently she read the book a couple of years ago and it was quickly circulated amongst all her friends. (I suspect there is a large streak of hedonism running through her social circle, part of my target audience.) Smelling an easy solution to her prezzie problem she decided to buy a copy for each of them for Christmas.

Unfortunately Amazon have been listing the book as difficult to source, out of stock or out of print pretty much ever since it was published in 2006. This has always been disingenuous at best if not a blatant lie. The book is print on demand so it is always available, it just takes a week or so to deliver.

So when she wanted to buy eight copies she had to buy them all second hand. Why is Amazon doing this?

Online sales are one of the few things publishers will take as a recommendation to publish a self published author. Alan Rinzler wrote a blog saying exactly this, yet Amazon is blocking our chances. This is a scandal that really ought to be brought to the attention of the industry.

Excuse me for my lack of output - formerly self published authors are a hard working bunch

2011-07-02T15:25:00.009+01:00

So things have been busy since the last post some six weeks ago. Most of my time, and more importantly energy, has been spent on writing more manuals for a laboratory incubator that detects E.coli. Still it seems it's a growing business. (See what I did there, biology joke?)

In the mean time I've almost completed the move to my new publisher, which has turned out to be a challenging experience including a few sleepless nights, especially on a Sunday before I'm due to go back to writing about the bloody incubators.

Ever since I decided to go down the self publishing route in 2006 I've been using a distributor called Gardners Books and a printer called Antony Rowe, both in Eastbourne. Antony Rowe seem to be okay, offering a proper print on demand service (they print the books as readers order them so it's never out of stock). Their printing costs are good and everybody should be happy.

Value chain

Think of it a bit like the value chain that Evan Davis likes to talk about on his business programmes. It starts with the printer or in fact the author. When the book is ordered the author pays the printer £3.00 and adds his profit bringing it up to £5.00; the distributor then sells it to the retailer for £8.00 who then sell it to you for £10.00. With sensible print on demand the distributor takes the order (and the money) from the retailer, pays the printer, and just sends the author the profit. The payment sequence and the numbers might be a bit different but this is basically it.

However, Gardners Books like to make life overly complicated. Instead of sending the author their profit every time someone orders some books Gardners send the author an invoice for the printing and invite the author to send them an invoice for the cost of the printing plus the profit. So they sell one book and invoice the author for the cost of the printing at £3.00. The author then invoices them for the cost of the printing at £3.00 and adds his profit (+£2.00) selling it to them at £5.00. They then send it to the retailer at £8.00. Worse than that they require payment in one month but they insist on paying after three months. I've had late payments from them that took up to a year.

Are you following this? There's going to be a test at the end.

What the hell's going on?

Now I'm a writer not a businessman. (See my blog in response to Alan Rinzler's about me being an arse.) So excuse me for not being on top of this but each time an invoice came in I'd put it to one side just because of the time it would take to pay their invoice, write the cheque, write my own invoice, ensure they are all properly cross referenced and recorded in the accounts so that my account wouldn't later charge me £108 per hour to figure out what the hell's going on.

So I'd put it off and get stressed and put it off some more, all while being knackered from writing about E.coli incubators and commuting for two hours a day on top. Not to mention dealing with the lodgers, forgetting to do the laundry and generally keeping life on the go. Anyway, I try not to whine because modern life is like this for all of us but it's much easier if you don't have ambitions to become a successful novelist.

So last month they threatened to take me to court over a late payment of £7.71. Now you can see the pointlessness of this as if I have not paid them the 7.71 then I have not invoiced them for the same sum plus my profit. If I don't pay they actually end up with more money! Don't forget this is their day job while I'm writing about bloody incubators.

New publisher

In the mean time I've been slowly working towards getting my books moved out to my new publisher, but he busy as well so it's not been easy. See my last couple of blogs for the prospective cover designs.

So my response was to write Gardners a long letter telling them to get stuffed, pointing out the irrationality of their approach and suggesting that the complexity of their business model actually increases the number of late payments. I went on to accuse them of bullying tactics suggesting that, perhaps, some on-line retailers, or God, or whoever had bent them over and made them sign a deal so that they don't get paid by the retailer until way after the event. Of course being bullied they then bully whoever they can and that's the poor bloody author.

Well this isn't ethical business if you ask me. Anyway, I didn't send them the letter that started out with a suggestion that they go stuff themselves. Instead I just paid them off and told them to cancel my account in the most businesslike way possible.

Don't get me started on Amazon

I'm only able to do this as while this has all being going on, while writing about incubators, I've been working with my new publisher on getting the first of my books out. So, for the moment, my books aren't available from any retailers. The Hidden Masters (not quite) Pocket Book of Tarot is now listed on Amazon (don't get me started on Amazon) but I'm hoping to work with the new publisher to sort out some glitches before I start to promote it properly. (You could order it now if you wanted to and you'd end up with one of the rare early copies before the formatting is finally sorted.)

In the mean time people keep asking where the next novel is. Well apart from the first three chapters, which are pretty good, it’s still in my head. If I can ever get rid of this admin nightmare and perhaps stop writing about incubators I'll manage to get it written so that you can read it.

The Hidden Masters' (not quite) Pocket Book of Tarot

2011-05-17T19:32:00.009+01:00

I'm in the process of moving my books over to a new publisher. We're starting with the Pocket Book of Tarot. The new printer can't do the tiny format (90 x 140mm) the old printer was able to do so the new version is known as the Hidden Masters' not quite Pocket Book of Tarot.

Here's the cover art for the new edition.

Possibly the World's only Tarot book with jokes.

You can expect to see this available on Amazon some time in the next few weeks, in the mean time the original (soon to be collectible version) is still available.

More about the book here

You can still buy the first edition here - buy it while it's still small enough for your pocket! Just £3.99

More cover designs for the second edition of the Hidden Masters

2011-04-22T21:07:00.005+01:00

After the series of very dark covers for the second edition posted in March, a reader commented that it looked like Stalag Coronation Street or something, a friend has been enthusiastically working on some ideas. Let us know what you think. They are only rough at the moment so they'll have to be developed properly if one is chosen.

1. First of all he was just playing with ideas from the classic Las Vegas design

2. Then he adjusted it after a bit of feedback about the plane and the text

3. Then a yellow one just to see how it looked with a brighter cover

4. Then trying to combine the elements with the earlier designs

5. This was an attempt at the classic blockbuster novel front cover with the author's name writ large

6. And again combining some of the Vegas elements

7. Finally a combination of the Vegas elements, the image from the 3D model and blockbuster text

Do tell us what you think.

-----------------

If you want to know more about the Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil here are some extracts:

Chapter two on astral travel

Chapter three on breaking down on the M6

Until the second edition comes out you can still get the first edition, complete with the original typos, from Blackwells

First paragraph from the Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil

2011-04-14T15:30:00.004+01:00

In sheer terror Geoff bit down hard on his meerschaum pipe carved in the shape of the god Pan. He would have closed his eyes as the enormous double-decker bus bore down on him, but he couldn’t because his eyes were painted on. Meanwhile, the engine of the twelfth-scale biplane screamed as it carried him toward an almost certain and horrible death. It was at this very point that just one thought dominated Geoff’s mind: "Why does this sort of thing only ever happen to me when I get involved with these guys?"

Chapter two on astral travel

Chapter three on breaking down on the M6

Until the second edition comes out you can still get the first edition, complete with the original typos, from Blackwells

Megadeath singer might prefer The Old Rugged Cross

2011-03-24T15:01:00.013Z

There's currently a story on the web about Dave Mustaine, of the bands Megadeth and Metallica. I'm not a particular fan of metal so I don't really know their music but apparently he used to do a song called The Conjuring. He's now refusing to perform the song because it contains instruction for hexes. Word is he's now found religion and doesn't want to sing a song about what, we can only assume, he sees as the opposition. Or some bollox like that.

To be honest there are more complete instructions for a magickal ritual in Chapter 23 of The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil if you are feeling so inclined. A bit of vague guidance on placing the parchment and lighting candles with a reminder to use the eyelash from a black cat and a straw from a broom isn't really going to get you banned from heaven. But that would be because heaven is as fictitious as my novel. (Oops, sorry, did I lead some people to believe that Nigel, Clint and Wayne are real?) I don't fancy fighting anyone's cat for one of its eyelashes, I know who'd come off worse, and I've never seen a broom made of straw!

In a complete reversal of the situation, in my early days of hanging out with occultists (as we used to call ourselves) a friend of mine had been a singer in the folk clubs during the sixties and seventies. He had a massive repertoire because he had to be prepared to perform almost any request from the audience. He used to do a fantastic rendition of The Old Rugged Cross that he hammed up in such a schmultzy style that is was a real pleasure to hear. It's not about the song, it's about the singer.

Then we would go in the back room and conjure Lucifer. ;o)

----------------

If you want to know more about the Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil here are some extracts:

Chapter two on astral travel

Chapter three on breaking down on the M6

Until the second edition comes out you can still get the first edition, complete with the original typos, from Blackwells

Cover designs for the second edition of the Hidden Masters

2011-03-18T21:20:00.015Z

Here are some visuals for the cover design of the Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil (second edition). I'd welcome your input. I've knocked these up in Photoshop, these are to give the designer a brief. The final art will include spine details and all the bumph about price and ISBN etc.

Remember, this is still the first book in the series that many of you guys have already read in the old green cover. This is for the move to my new publisher. The second book in the series will follow when the transfer to the new publisher is complete.

Cover A

Cover B

Cover C

Cover D

Cover E

Cover F

Cover G

The images are taken from the 3D model that was adapted from the set for the animation. (The animation has been shelved until all the books are moved over to the new publisher.) Because the model was only ever meant to be seen from the alley side of the buildings the windows on the front of the houses haven't been painted in. Once we know which image we'll be using the image will be tidied up and finished off. The model as used in these images has streets going off into the distance but most of these are close into the houses so not much of the background shows.

The blurb is just a draft at the moment. If you've got any thoughts then please feel free to comment on this post or my post discussing future marketing.

And finally if you want to know what all the fuss is about here are some extracts:

Chapter two on astral travel

Chapter three on breaking down on the M6

Until the second edition comes out you can still get the first edition, complete with the original typos, from Blackwells

Are we being kept in the dark?

2011-03-12T16:41:00.023Z

Is the presentation of data to the public hindering our democracy?

Ask yourself what was the state of the national debt before the credit crunch. Remember the credit crunch? That's what we called the crisis before we called it a recession, which was before we called it the deficit.

Dear Prudence

Okay, so you could be excused for not knowing what the national debt was before the credit crunch because it wasn't big news. In fact, as far as I understand, it was news, just not big news, because I seem to remember that Gordon Brown was well on the way to paying it off. (These days they refer to the deficit but deficit is just the shortfall in money available to a government in any one year whereas the debt is the accumulation of those deficits over years, so they are different ways of expressing the amount of money the country owes.) They used to refer to Gordon Brown's famous war chest and he would talk about prudence in government spending. I'm interested in this because I get a bit tired of the current government saying that the previous government is responsible for the financial crisis due to of profligate spending. I'd like some figures to back up my admittedly alcohol befuddled memories. (See my blog for my thoughts on responsibility for the financial crisis.) But can I find any figures on this? Before the May 2010 UK election I looked on the UK Office of National Statistics web site and I could find nothing.

Okay, here's something else. A little over twenty years ago my father retired. Ever since I was a child he worked as an electrical fitter in a factory that made aircraft components. However, he had always been interested in the stock market and finance. Over the decades he built up a substantial portfolio. He also paid into his pension during the high growth years from the sixties to the eighties until his retirement just before the turn of the decade. He died a few years later in 1993 enjoying just a few years of his hard earned retirement.

At some point during his short retirement I remember a conversation when he described how the pension funds of large businesses, in the early nineties, were massively in surplus. From what he told me the boom times of the eighties, various market crashes notwithstanding, had left many large company pension funds with huge sums of money that seemed to be far more than they required to fund the pensions of the members of the schemes. From what I understood the payments into the funds had been so wisely invested that the members would be very well provided for in their retirement.

Raids on pension funds

However, he then went on to explain that the companies that ran these schemes, on behalf of their employees, had persuaded the government to change the rules so that the companies were able to claw back substantial amounts of the pension surplus to be spent by the company. Weather that money went into investment in the company or was handed out to shareholders is something I don't know but I'm pretty sure my father had an opinion on the matter.

If company pension surpluses were raided in the early nineties then that is something that should be pointed out for we are now being told that pension schemes are all in massive deficit and that we should take a cut in our future pensions. It may be true that there is a demographic time bomb in pensions but we should probably know how it came about. If this is the case we have all been robbed by the government headed by John Major. (Remember him? No few people do.)

So I've looked on various web sites to try to find the truth of the matter but can I find anything about this? Can I fuck! Of course my father may have been wrong but I'd like to check his facts myself.

What does it cost our government to borrow money?

So today I read an interesting article by Paul Krugman about how the economic debate is dumbed down in the US. (No surprise there then.) He says '...the nation is not, in fact, “broke.” The federal government is having no trouble raising money, and the price of that money — the interest rate on federal borrowing — is very low by historical standards.'

So I wondered what the case is with UK borrowing and I dutifully went to the Office of National Statistics web site. I've searched and I've browsed and I've searched some more. I've searched on 'cost of borrowing', 'cost of national borrowing', 'historical interest rates' and many more terms. Of course I'm not an expert, I don't even have an economics degree. But I do have a vote and I have an opinion that I'd like to check instead of behaving like some jumped up fundamentalist who doesn't care if he is right, wrong or just an ignorant twat!

In a world where we are all connected, where we are tweeting and blogging, facbooking or just talking down the pub, we should be entitled to know the truth. I know, I can hear you all laughing as you read this but that shows what a crappy situation we are now in. The truth is out there but we should not have to be an expert in economics just to be able to ask the right questions.

I'm not asking for a total dumbing down of data for that would be ironic in the light of Krugman's article. However, an averagely intelligent and enquiring individual should have access to information to check what we are being told by those that have their own agendas.

A graph paints a thousand words

I don't know how we do this because economics is an arcane and difficult art. However, a first step might be for official statistical compilers to present data in a way that an averagely intelligent individual can find, without having to read a dozen esoteric reports that may not turn out to contain the piece of data required, anything less is obfuscation. Further, if the government is repeatedly telling us that the last government created the deficit through its economic mismanagement perhaps we should be able to find some data on this. That information needs to be presented in a way that it can easily be found, perhaps with multiple key words pre-empting the sort of questions people will search for. That means not presenting the visitor with bewildering numbers of links and multi page reports that the average Joe can't understand. A simple graph displaying the deficit or the national debt for the past few decades would suffice, perhaps sets of well presented and easily found data for the items currently in the news. I'm not an idiot, no really I'm not, but I'd like an idiots guide to the data rather than what we have now.

I'm brighter than a mushroom and I don't like the taste of bullshit. Basically I'd like to check my facts please. I'd like to have access to the truth.

The Robin Hood Tax - Just who is responsible for the financial crisis?

2011-03-09T16:52:00.015Z

Apparently the EU, yesterday (Tuesday 8th March), voted to support the idea of a Financial Transactions Tax (popularly known as the Robin Hood Tax) that would be Europe wide. The vote is not binding but it is a step forward because the argument that banks would move out of a jurisdiction that taxes transactions would be unlikely to apply to an area as large as the EU. Were such a tax created in the UK the banks might argue that the banks would move to Germany or some other European financial centre. However, one would imagine that they need a trading operation in Europe so they would not be able to move anywhere else.

Here's the Robin Hood Tax campaign

And here's one of the excellent videos they have produced:

So the Robin Hood Tax Facebook page posted this news today and it's unleashed the most incredible argument. I say incredible argument because one would imagine that anybody who has pressed 'Like' on the Facebook page for the Robin Hood Tax would largely be in favour of this. A little bit of debate might be expected but this debate has been almost vitriolic. It makes me wonder if we are witnessing a little bit of astroturfing, effectively the existence of fifth columnists. Of course it's possible to become paranoid but the reaction does seem to be extreme and the banks certainly have the resources and the guile to do this sort of thing.

Some people on the Facbook page seemed to be arguing that perhaps a Robin Hood Tax was not such a great idea. They then went on to repeat the line that the current government continually feed us that the Labour government was responsible for banking deregulation. That is a blatant lie and the most significant thing the last government was responsible for was that they had a leader who was unable to smile on camera without looking scary. Neil Kinnock was mostly berated for being ginger so we've not moved on in nearly twenty years.

This has led me to write something on the financial situation we are in at the moment

The Labour government didn't deregulate the banks. They were deregulated on October 27 1986 (Big Bang Day) by Margaret Thatcher's government. (Further UK deregulation followed throughout the eighties and the nineties but it was largely complete by the Millennium.) In the US the Banking Act of 1933 (Glass–Steagall Act) was steadily repealed starting in 1980 and finally in 1999.

This series of deregulations allowed high street banks to become involved in speculation. Massive amounts of cash, previously held in deposit (or reserve against hard times and bad debt) was freed up to speculate on the global markets. Those that got involved with the markets during this time made massive profits and those profits fuelled the unprecedented growth from the mid eighties to a few years ago. We all benefited from the boom time with the occasional recession, as is normal, but nothing like we have witnessed recently. During that speculation banks became involved in loans that were so obscure that the decision makers (top managers and directors) often didn't know what was going on. (Often these financial arrangements could only be understood by highly qualified mathematicians.) Many more recent loans were risky but were at high rates of interest which meant that if they paid off they would make further great profits. In an attempt to hedge their bets they passed on those risks to other institutions around the world to the point where it was impossible tell which banks were safe and which were not.

Too big to fail

This would have been fine if the banks had only been involved in speculation. However, the repeal of regulations meant that this risk was spread to individuals like every one of us. Our savings and the finance of our employers were exposed to this risk. This is the origin of the concept of being too big to fail. Had the banks only been involved in speculation rather than high street banking then they could have been allowed to go to the wall. Instead, when their risks turned into massive failure we had to bail them out and now we have the massive deficits that we are trying to pay off.

Let's all try to remember the recent past and try to be informed about what went before. If we want an opinion we have to be aware of the news. Don't say, "It's boring I'd rather watch X Factor." None of us can have an opinion if we are not informed.

Building virtual Blackpool

2011-03-05T03:52:00.010Z

Click on the image to see the (lack of) detail

Using the 3D model of the Victorian alleyway, created for the animation, I'm trying to create some art for the book cover for the second edition of The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil. Unfortunately copying and pasting something like 1000 houses, each individually defined right down to the window frames and chimneys is proving a bit of a stretch for the PC. (See the previous post on viral marketing for how it should render including the brickwork texture.) Even with a spanky fast machine it's proving too much. It's not rendered any of the textures or the small details such as the red chimney pots. It hasn't even bothered with the houses in the distance, showing whole terraces as wire frames. Notice the top of the image shows Google SketchUp as 'Not Responding'. At the time of writing it's been like that for over an hour, every few minutes becoming active then locking up again for a similar time.

The grey windows of the further streets are deliberate as the model was never intended to be seen from this angle. (All the action in the viral animation takes place within a single alleyway so the houses are only seen from the rear. Read chapter 7 for the details.) For the book cover these windows will have to be painted in individually. Also the wide screen format of modern monitors doesn't suit the portrait format of a book jacket so chunks of the landscape image will probably be chopped away. The distant houses, if SketchUp can ever be persuaded to render the middle distance, will probably have to be painted in later.

What is Paganism? - as told by a Christian

2011-03-03T12:37:00.001Z

I found this post recently, an American minister describing paganism. He does talk a little slow but his point is well made when he gets to it.

Follow this link: Demystifying Paganism

How many pagans does it take to fill in the census?

2011-03-01T00:22:00.008Z

Counting pagans is like herding cats, it's just about impossible.

At the last UK census in 2001 it was the first time that people were given the opportunity to describe their religion as 'other'. Many pagans chose to register their religious affiliation on the census, yet pagan didn't really make an impact on the figures.

Why?

The reason for this was because pagans are a varied bunch of people. They don't have a single leadership, doctrine or even a single set of beliefs. Paganism is an individualistic approach to life that has many common characteristics but many variations too.

So Druids described themselves as Druids, Wiccans described themselves as Wiccans, Thelemites described themselves as Thelemites. (I think you get the picture by now.) Pagans are people who like to describe themselves as they see fit, not as others might like to describe them. Pagans are very individualistic.

So the 2001 census results led to considerable under reporting of pagans in the UK. It's thought that pagans are the seventh largest faith group on the country but because of the variation amongst all the flavours of paganism our numbers didn't add up to much.

So the solution is to retain our individuality while banding together. The term pagan has become the most popular description of who we are as a community. Not everybody prefers it but without it we wouldn't have the recognition we deserve. Without standing up to be counted we would also face much greater prejudice in the wider social sphere.

The PaganDash campaign is urging us to describe ourselves as Pagan with an extra entry for our own chosen path. So you might express yourself thus:

Pagan-Druid

Pagan-Witch

Pagan-Shamen

Pagan-Wiccan

Pagan-Thelemite
Pagan-Magician

Pagan-Tantric

That way the census people can count pagans as a group or as subgroups according to the desires of each individual.

The simplest ideas are often the best. :o)

http://www.pagandash.org/index.html

Should I move on from Men Behaving Badly?

2011-02-13T12:52:00.008Z

Okay, so I need your help. If you've read The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil you will have your own opinions of it, hopefully positive. You may even be able to make comparisons between my style and that of other writers. However, those who have not read it won't know what to expect, and this is my problem.

In the past I've tried to give readers an idea what to expect by sharing the comparisons that other people made about the book. At book signings and readings people have pointed out similarities to Robert Rankin and Douglas Adams. I'm a huge fan of both these writers and I'm very flattered by the association. Other people have said it's a bit like Terry Pratchett which, to be honest, is probably a bit too much as he sets the bar so high. Some people have even said that it sounds like the English comic absurdity of Tom Sharpe but I think this is from people who have read about it but not actually read the book. I'm very flattered by that possibility.

Those comparisons are on the comic fiction aspect but other parallels are with fantasy and sorcery writers. I'm now using the term urban fantasy as there is magic in my stories, admittedly much of it implied, but the stories are set in the contemporary world of England in the 21st Century. So the genres here are likened to Harry Potter and Dan Brown, although I don't write children's books and I don't write about the supernatural in the way that Dan Brown does.

Based on this feedback I've pitched my marketing material at fans of these authors mentioning them, hopefully subtly enough, to give a hint of what readers will find. Sometimes I worry that readers won't believe me though, as some of these comparisons are pretty staggering. I would tend not to believe a bloke down the pub who said that his small press published books are a bit like these luminaries.

So the phrase that grew up was that The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil is a bit like Harry Potter meets Men Behaving Badly. Men Behaving Badly because the characters in the book drink far too much dark rum, smoke too many cigarettes and indulge in the occasional Moroccan woodbine, actually more than occasional.

Now I'm in the process of moving all my books to a new publisher, a small press similar to my current publisher but in a position to allow me to concentrate on writing. So it's an opportunity to make some changes in the marketing blurb.

I'm concerned that some of these comparisons are a little too strong, almost unbelievable. Others are a bit out of date or just not very well known. The Harry Potter connection was interesting because that series is now finished and readers might be looking for something new. But there are no broomsticks in my stories and no sparks flying from the ends of wands. In fact the Hidden Masters only contains a couple of events that are clearly supernatural so Harry Potter may not be that appropriate. Also some people don't like Harry Potter because they say it's derivative and unoriginal and stuff like that. However, my point is that Potter is popular and I'm only interested in comparisons that I can use to get my message across to new readers. So if you hate Harry Potter and can't put down your vitriol then I probably don't need your input. At the same time I'm wondering if the Men Behaving Badly connection is now a bit dated so should I stop using that?

So my request is this. If you have read The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil, and you enjoyed it, please tell me how I should be marketing it. What comparisons with other authors can I use to tell new readers what to expect? This naturally has to be from successful, popular, published authors but I can't help that. Of course if you can think of a way to describe the book without comparing it to published works then that would be great. My new publisher is waiting for the marketing text and I can't write it without your help.

If you want to know what all the fuss is about read the publisher's blurb here

If you don't want to wait for the new edition don't bother with Amazon, they are listing it as out of print. It's never out of print as it's print on demand. It's best to buy it from Blackwells here or order it via your local book shop on the ISBN 978-0-9515329-1-1

Hidden Masters' Pocket Book of Tarot

2011-02-08T23:03:00.008Z

The first edition before resizing

I've just reformatted the Hidden Masters' Pocket Book of Tarot. I'm in the process of moving my books over to a new small press which will allow me to be much more hands off and concentrate on just writing. The current format of the Pocket Book of Tarot is 90 x 140mm.

The blurb describes it thus: "Everything you ever wanted to know about Tarot but couldn't be bothered to ask. Well bother no more as this book gives it to you straight and simple in handy reference form, ideal for the beginner of the forgetful expert alike. Keep it with you when you are impressing your friends, so that when ignorance strikes you can just nip off to the loo or sneak under the table for that elusive definition." I suspect it's the world's only Tarot book with jokes.

However, the new publisher can't do books as small as that so it's going to be 127 x 203mm, about half again as wide and tall and almost twice the area. It was about 80 pages with all the front and back blurb but now it'll be about 50 pages.

So the question is can I still legitimately call it the Hidden Masters' Pocket Book of Tarot? It'll certainly be thin enough to go in a pocket but it'll have to be a bigger pocket than on the back of my jeans. I'm wondering if I should call it the Hidden Masters Little Pamphlet of Tarot and Joke Book. Not so snappy eh?

More about the book here

You can still buy the first edition here - buy it while it's still small enough for your pocket! Just £3.99

Chapter Titles from the Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil

2011-02-01T00:20:00.008Z

1      The Esbat
2      Elastic
3      Ritual Mechanicians
4      It’s a Beer Thing
5      More Beer
6      The Devil’s Legs
7      Illuminating Experiences
8      Dodgy Characters
9      Chocks Away!
10    The Taste of Dragons
11    Elementals My Dear Wayne
12    Creatures of the Night
13    Vortex
14    Board of Enquiry
15    The Return of The Devil’s Legs
16    Just The One Then
17    Mission Improbable
18    Dubious Infidelity
19    Death By Sword
20    Black
21    Escape to New York
22    How Many Magicians Does It Take?
23    My Number Which is 300
24    Stake
25    Trouser Negotiations
26    Round Table
27    Hit it!
28    Enheavyment
        Epilogue

If you want more click here for an extract from Chapter 2: Jack Barrow on astral travel

And click here for the whole of Chapter 3.

Publisher's blurb here

Don't forget Amazon aren't selling this and list it out of print. It's never out of print as it's print on demand. It's best to buy it from Blackwells here or order it via your local book shop on the ISBN 978-0-9515329-1-1

Save Our Forests - What would be the reason for buying a forest?

2011-01-25T12:27:00.007Z

The UK government are talking about selling off the publicly own forests. If I had the money to buy a public forest what possible reason could I have for doing so? I have access to such land now and, I suppose, I can use it for whatever purpose I choose so long as it's not destructive. That must therefore mean dog walking, taking the kids out, nature rambling, etc.

So why spend a large amount of my own personal wealth on such a project? The only reason that I can imagine would be to restrict access so that I alone can use it. Anybody who wishes to buy our national forests should not be allowed to do so because of that very possibility.

Sign the petition here

Danger of publisher's offer going down the pan

2011-01-24T20:42:00.004Z

Back in the autumn I submitted a couple of proposals to publishers that were accepting submissions from unagented writers. I spent weeks writing a suitable proposal with the help of a consultant who knows about these things because it's more of an arcane art than the occult practices that I write about.

Then I waited...

And I'm still waiting.

The afore mentioned publishers said that they don't enter into correspondence. I'm sure they got the text for that disclaimer from the small print of competitions on the back of cereal packets from when I was too small to sit on a chair and touch the floor. You had to read the competitions because there was nothing else to do while eating a bowl of Wheataflakes with milk and enough sugar to give you cancer.

So I find myself wondering what happens if they actually do like a submission and how much trouble they go to when they get back to you? Will they send one email or will they try to find a phone number? Or will they even try to track down your blog or even your book?

My greatest fear is that someone will reply to me and the message will end up in the spam trap only to get deleted amidst all the ads for fake Rolex watches, erectile dysfunction drugs (if you are lucky pellets of chalk that wont kill you) and special offers for septic tanks.

Observations of similarities with Terry Pratchett are to be discouraged

2010-11-30T16:55:00.004Z

The life of a writer isn’t always full of glamour. I’ve spent the last two months writing a manual for a laboratory machine that incubates water and tests for pathogens. I had the summer free because there weren’t any photocopier manuals to be written. Apparently Terry Pratchett used to be a technical author working for the Central Electricity Generating Board and he used to write press releases about how there hadn’t been a radiation leak. Really, there hadn’t! And I get the impression that he would have been about the same age as I am. So if the similarities don’t end there then perhaps there’s hope for me.

I’m currently rushing home each night in the hope that I’ll have enough energy to edit the next chapter of the first Hidden Masters novel. I’m hoping to tighten it up a bit and put it out as a second edition with a new ISBN. That way hopefully Amazon won’t list it as out of print. It’s not out print even now; if Amazon tells you that the Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil is out of print they are lying to you! Let them have me for defamation or whatever they want. I bet Terry didn’t have this trouble. Apparently he used to rush home to work on the next Discworld novel. This was before he was really famous and he still had a day job. But he didn’t have to deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous small press publishing.

What’s the point of all this? Not much really. Blogging about the publishing life means you have to post something and sometimes it’s not all that glamorous. But why should it be any more entertaining for you than me? Well okay you are the reader and I have an obligation to entertain you. So here’s a poem I once wrote about a spoon:

How I wish
I had some tea
for my spoon
so sad to me

Oh God
can’t you see
that my spoon
would wish to be
a greater spoon
a boon to me

If you could grant
just a little tea
but please quite soon
or I might swoon

So please grant
my wish so humble
treat my spoon
and I’ll not grumble

So much happier
I will be
if my spoon
could stir my tea

Inspired by Nick Harrison (who is not a spoon)

Extract from the Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil

2010-11-22T12:48:00.009Z

From Chapter 2 - The Hidden Masters on Astral Travel

The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil contains many mysteries, mostly relating to how three middle aged pauncy blokes can drink that much and still manage to save the universe. However, occasionally the book contains insights into the world of paganism and the occult. One such pearl of wisdom, from Chapter 2, covers the subject of Astral Travel.

* * *

For some years now The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, had cherished a theory about astral travel which goes a bit like this.

Many people say that it is possible to leave one’s body and travel on the astral plane to visit other places while the practitioner’s body stays put. There is also an idea that there is a silver astral cord which connects the astrally projected presence back to their body. However, there are differing ideas of how this works, and about whether it is possible to visit places that exist in reality. The question is always one of verification.

If you choose to examine the issue, the point is this. Let’s say you travel, or project, onto the astral plane and go around to the chip shop in Queen’s Square, which is a short hop from where two of our heroes live. There you see your friend Pete buying a chicken and mushroom pie and a portion of chips with a can of Coke. Quickly you return to your body and phone Pete up (assuming they haven’t yet invented mobile phones that work on the astral plane). Would it turn out that he had really been at the chip shop buying pie and chips once with a side order of Coke? In other words, do the things you witness while travelling on the astral plane really correspond with what, for the sake of argument, we have to call the real world? Furthermore, if this is the case, can horny single male magicians visit the bedrooms of women they fancy and… well, let’s not get into all that just now. (Try to stop shivering, girls, it’s never worked so far.)

This is a philosophical debate, which is a bit odd in itself because the old pie and chips experiment is probably quite easy to set up, so it ought to have been resolved by now. However, none of our heroes had ever met anyone who had successfully identified someone buying pie and chips once, with or without a side order of Coke. On the few occasions when they had heard of someone who had tried this sort of experiment the results had been less than clear. For example it turned out that the character Pete, who I have just made up for the purposes of this illustration, was in the habit of buying pie and chips on most nights. Thus it would have been a good guess that he was going to be in the chip shop anyway.

Of course, a specialist in the philosophy of science such as the Grumpy Wizard of the West might suggest that this is all nonsense. You see, his perspective would suggest that the fictitious character, Pete, is likely to be so fat, having undoubtedly eaten all the pies, that he is the first person anyone would see when approaching the chip shop from either the astral plane or anywhere else. Actually he wouldn’t say that, but what he might say is far less likely to be amusing.

What is really needed is something so unlikely and easily verifiable that there can be no mistake. So imagine you astrally projected around to Queen’s Square—apparently so named because she opened it in her coronation year of 1952, though I don’t suppose she remembers—and found Fat Pete being arrested for having broken into the Post Office to get some money to buy pie and chips. During your astral vision, there was a reporter photographing the event for the local paper which came out the following Thursday, with Fat Pete the Post Office burglar all over the front page. Then you might say that this was all so unlikely that it had to be verifiable. In this case, you could go up to the Grumpy Wizard of the West and say “Ahhhaaaaaaaa!” But then again, he’s not known as the Grumpy Wizard of the West for nothing, and even then he might try to wriggle out of it. You see, the Grumpy Wizard of the West is one of those magicians who does not actually believe in magic.

Anyway, that’s the sort of argument you will hear in the debate on astral travel when you talk to many magicians, witches, scholars of the mysteries and the like. On the other hand, there will be those who will resist all attempts at debate on such matters, and will never examine an issue in case they discover something they don’t like.

However, our heroes saw the old astral travel debate in a completely different way, for they had come up with another explanation. They had noticed that amongst their magician friends there was often an unbreakable bond to the place where they lived. Usually this bond would go deeper, attaching them to a particular location in their home, namely a favourite chair—often with a good view of the TV—known as the ‘god spot’.

The concept of the god spot, or more pointedly the concept of godhood, comes from the idea that magicians are considered to be the centre of their universe, surrounded by an ever-shifting sea of possibilities. The magus commands the universe and those who inhabit it, in a similar way to that in which the Christian God is said to command us. (Of course, all this talk of magic is okay but I’m sorry, I just can’t bring myself to believe in God!)

Now, The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, had this theory that the bond attaching the magician to his god spot was where the idea of the astral cord had come from, and any idea of astral travel was just a development of that concept. On the occasions when they had observed magicians abroad in the world, such as visiting friends far away, they had noticed that there seemed to be some sort of pull on the magician which tugged him back towards home at the earliest possible opportunity.

After all this philosophising, and the odd bottle of dark rum, our heroes had concluded that the much-debated practice of astral travel, along with the idea of the silver cord, had come from this truth that they had observed. The travelling magician is attached by a length of silver elastic, which connects him to his god spot and, inevitably, returns him there before too much time has passed.

Taken from The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil

Read another extract

Among those recently deified:

2010-11-09T17:35:00.000Z

Duke of Edinburgh: worshiped in the South Pacific by a cargo cult
Elvis: shrines all over the show for years
Princess Diana: Apparently there are churches to her now
I’ve heard of similar things happening with Michael Jackson

And on Monday morning Claire Rayner: The Patients Association on the BBC Today programme declared themselves as her representatives on Earth.

Halloween

2010-10-29T22:35:00.004+01:00

Last weekend was Halloween. Okay, so it wasn’t but for our local pagan community we made it Halloween as certain people couldn’t make it the following weekend. Halloween, or Samhain as it’s known by most modern pagans, is seen as the time of the year when the veil between the worlds is at it’s thinnest. It’s seen as a time for divinations and the like as the spirits that communicate with us at the time find it easiest to get through.

You can see this how you like. As a philosophical rather than a theological pagan I tend to see all forms of divination as being the same. Whether by Tarot cards, astrology or contact with the dead the result is the same, that we manage to gain information or insight that we wouldn’t otherwise have. All these divination systems free up our intuition and seem to enable these insights and the source becomes irrelevant.

The actual date of Halloween is also a bit of a moot point as it’s more a factor of the time of year. We are finally saying goodbye to the summer, autumn is no longer in doubt and to an agrarian dweller the world seem to be dying. So the date, give or take a week is somewhat irrelevant.

However, Halloween isn’t only about Tarot cards and apple bobbing. It’s a time for remembering our dead. Many pagans have a respect for their ancestors, but remembering some amorphous people who’s names we hardly know and certainly never met seems a little distorted when each of us most surely have been to a funeral or two. So when we come to remember our ancestors let’s pay homage to those recently departed, Aunty Jane or Uncle Bob, or even Mum or Dad. It matters not that they may not have shared our path because despite the fact that they may be different to us, may have opposed our pagan perspective or may never have known who we really are, these people are our ancestors. These recent ancestors are our flesh and blood we should remember them for, perhaps, nobody else will. And if we do then, perhaps also, those that come after us will remember us.

I am an arse - well partially at least

2010-10-13T20:34:00.004+01:00

It seems publishers are beginning to look to self published authors for their next talent. This is great news for self published authors waiting to be discovered. But look just below the surface of these claims and you discover that publishers are looking for self publishers who have achieved good sales of their self published books. So they seem to be using successful self published authors as a way of reducing their exposure to risk.

Read Alan Rinzler's blog about this here

I’m a pretty incompetent publisher. I’m a fairly incompetent marketer. I’m a completely incompetent publicist. When it comes to being a self publicist I’m a total arse! I am a self publisher.

I can’t phone up a venue to say I’d like to do a book promotion for my own book because I feel like they will think I’m a wannabe, unable to find a publisher because I’m crap. I know that’s not the case but it’s what’s going through my mind. During the brief time when I had a publicist I did readings, signings, all sorts, and I had a great time. Having somebody else to represent you gives you credibility. I can do all the web promotion, social networking, all that’s easy. When I started I chose a pen name so I could pretend to be a second person when I was acting as my publisher. That way I might disguise the fact that I was self published. It didn’t really help much because what I really needed was another team member.

I’m a writer, I’ve been writing for twenty years, mostly corporate or technical content with some copywriting and a bit of journalism thrown in for good measure. Now I’m trying to break into a new field, writing popular mass market comic fiction.

Saying that publishers are going to judge the potential of a self published book on sales seems ludicrous. I know these are businesses but, surely, when a manuscript lands on their desk they judge it on the manuscript. It’s got potential or it hasn’t. Expecting self published books to show fantastic sales is just saying that they only what to publish books by business gurus. I write deeply absurd comic fiction with philosophical themes that make people laugh out loud on the train. I know that’s true, my readers have told me so. But I don’t have tens of thousands of readers out there because I have no way of reaching the mass market. Even blogging and tweeting isn't going to bring you to the level that the industry are looking for as people follow bloggers when they have whiff of success, rarely before. Plus some of the bigger on-line sellers list print on demand books as unavailable or out of print! The industry is actively blocking the one man bands.

Publishing insiders claim that there isn’t a wall around the industry. Saying that self published writers are welcome, then picking up one or two as an example to show how open the industry is, just means they have extended the wall to block a minor breach. The rest of us are still on the outside.

Druids are recognised religion - Daily Mail journalist turns out to be mystical seer

2010-10-05T20:13:00.002+01:00

The past couple of days we’ve heard that the druids have been recognised as a religion. As I understand it the truth of the matter is that The Druid Network has been granted charity status by the Charity Commission and this was because they needed some sort of legal status due to the fact that they are collecting money from their membership. The fact of the matter is that they applied for charitable staus, presumably because their organisations isn’t set up to make a profit and one might imagine that there are no shareholders. We might imagine that the Charity Commission have had to have a box to put them in and the only box available was religion. The alternatives might have been anything from a sports foundation an animal welfare organisation. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are recognised as a religion by the state but apart from the relationship between the Monarchy and the Church of England I’m not sure that the UK recognises any religions anyway.

Today there was a wonderfully disapproving article in the Daily Mail by Melanie Philips complaining that the whole world is going to rat shit and no doubt Christianity should be the one true faith and all that.

See the Daily Mail article here

Ironically I think Melanie Philips (see Daily Mail article) has a surprisingly good grasp of the changing times we are living through. She's just raging against the new reality. She recognises the weakening of heavily structured top down faiths and its partner, heavily structured rational perception. She understands how there is a continuing upsurge of bottom up, grass roots religions where people gain some autonomy but also have to have a sense of responsibility rather than externalise all their experiences both positive and negative. What she fails to understand is that there are other established faiths and practices, such as Buddhism, which don't have this top down structure and they are stable if not growing.

So apart from that last little oversight I reckon Melanie Philips, bless her undoubtedly Tory cotton socks, should be revered as a prophet and a seer. ;o)

Read my book about this very subject here

Extract from the Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil

2010-09-24T15:18:00.009+01:00

Chapter 3 – Ritual Mechanicians

Having broken down on their way to Blackpool, to save the place from becoming a seedy, tacky and depraved town, our magickal heroes are wondering how they will be able to continue their journey.

Inside the crowded motorway services at Knutsford, The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, sat around three cups of coffee and three doughnuts. Nigel’s hair steamed gently as it dried off in the warmth of the café. Around them, the sound of The Girl from Ipanema wafted gently above their heads in a version almost, but not quite, specifically designed to induce madness.

“What do you propose we do now?” asked Wayne.

“Well, I left my tools at home, so I could get all the gear in the boot,” replied Clint.

“That was a spectacular idea,” responded Wayne with a sarcastic tone.

Clint looked at Wayne with an irritated look, but didn’t have time to say anything as Nigel spoke. “I’ve got a multi-tool.”

“‘Scuse me, can I borrow your sugar?” asked a burly caricature of a truck driver. He sat down at the opposite table with a copy of Steven Hawkin’s Brief History of Time and a folded copy of The Sun newspaper.

Wayne passed the sugar to the truck driver who proceeded to pour a long stream of its contents into his steaming mug of tea.

“A multi-tool?” quizzed Clint.

“Oh yes,” replied Wayne enthusiastically, “rather clever, brushed steel devices similar to a Swiss Army Knife, except that they have spanners and scissors and contraptions attached. They are awfully good.”

“I had a Swiss Army Knife once,” said Clint, “it was made in China.”

“That would be a Chinese Swiss Army Knife then,” responded Wayne.

“That’s what I used to call it.”

“Can I look at it?” asked Wayne of Nigel.

“No, that’s a bit personal. Piss off!” replied Nigel.

The truck driver glanced across at them briefly over the rim of his mug.

“I think he means the multi-tool,” said Clint.

“Oh yeah, sorry.” said Nigel in response “It’s in with my stuff for the weekend.”

“Surely not in with your magical equipment?” asked Wayne with a mock tone of shock.

“No, with my spare t-shirts and clean underwear and stuff.”

Clint raised his eyebrows at Nigel. “You brought clean underwear! I bet you won’t use it.”

“There speaks the voice of a true festival goer,” replied Nigel.

“That all depends what we come up against this weekend,” injected Wayne in sympathy. “I remember the last time we saved the universe, I nearly …”

Nigel interrupted before Wayne could say anymore, “Too much information!”

Clearly, Wayne’s grammar school education, which he sometimes claimed was a fee paying education, had only influenced his accent and had not affected his sense of vulgarity, or rather lack of it.

“We could try to suss out what’s wrong with the car,” said Clint bringing the subject back on topic. “The way it happened so suddenly, it sounds like electrics.”

“On the other hand, it could be mechanical,” added Wayne.

“Or fuel,” continued Nigel.

“Well, that would just about cover all the options,” said Clint completely unimpressed, “I suppose, I should check it out.”

Clint was definitely the most mechanical of the trio, not that he did much of that sort of thing these days, preferring to trust to the infinite cycle of the second-hand car. Having been in the Royal Navy as an engineer, he had experience of all sorts of machines from the huge Deltic diesel engines, used in locomotives and ships, right through to some of the first nuclear power plants in submarines. Having left the navy so many years ago, he didn’t do much with engines now. These days he drove a road sweeper for a living, described as having more instruments than the Starship Enterprise.

“I think we should enchant to get it started,” said Nigel hopefully.

Clint looked scornfully at Nigel. “No way, man, you can’t do a ritual to repair a car!”

Nigel continued. “Well, if it’s an electrical fault, and a wire has just come loose, then surely a microscopic or quantum level of change might just be enough to make a contact.” The truck driver raised an eyebrow, glancing up from Stephen Hawkin as he took a longer look at the trio.

“I think you’re a bit out on the edge there,” responded Clint.

“We could draw a sigil in the oil on the top of the engine and perform an enchantment.” added Nigel becoming enthused.

“Let’s have a look at that multi-tool of yours,” replied Clint, trying to ignore Nigel’s madness, “and who said there’s oil on my engine?”

Nigel was, by now, scrawling a phrase on the back of the till receipt that read ‘Get us to Blackpool’. He crossed out all the letters that occurred a second or third time in the phrase and was quickly left with ‘GETUSOBLACKP’.

“Look dudes,” continued Clint, “you two are weirding me out! I can’t believe you are even thinking about this!” Clint’s complaint was tempered by an attempt to avoid raising his voice. Looking about, he checked that there was nobody paying any attention to them.

Wayne looked on silently for a moment then added, “Perhaps it would be a good idea to add something pertaining to getting us home again?”

Nigel stopped and gazed into the distance for a moment, as he is inclined to do. Some think that at these times he is consulting his inner oracle while others suggest he is listening to the voices, others believe it’s down to indigestion. “No I don’t think so. Once we’re there we’ll be fine. We’ll get back okay,” he replied with confidence.

“I think, perhaps, I can detect a Ten-inch Pianist coming on,” said Wayne with a note of concern, but without any care for people who might overhear the statement.

The truck driver glanced up briefly from his book and frowned.

* * *

The Ten-inch Pianist is a term The Three Hidden Masters use for any magical working which could go awry. The idea came from the joke about the man who walked into a pub and put a tiny man and a piano on the bar. When the barman asked for some explanation the customer explained how he met a Genie who gave him his wish for a ten-inch penis, but he happened to spell his request wrong. It’s an old joke, but it serves a purpose. So the Ten Inch Pianist is used for acts of magic where the magician gets exactly what is asked for, rather than what is desired.

The fact that the truck driver and a couple of other people in the café thought they heard Wayne say ten-inch penis was completely missed by our three heroes.

* * *

Nigel tore off and discarded the part of the till receipt with the original phrase, so he had just the string of letters remaining. Then, on a separate scrap of paper, he started to draw a diagram made up of each of the letters in the string. This left him with a jumble of letters, some large, some small, some upright, some inverted, which people in the know will recognise as a sigil. Those of you not yet in the know can think of this as a magickal symbol. The original piece of receipt, with the string of letters, was discarded into the ashtray and he held up the finished sigil.

“Okay, orrff we jolly well go,” he declared.

As The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, got up, they nearly bumped into the truck driver as he stood up to make his way towards the toilets. Stepping back carefully, the truck driver let them go in front of him making a mental note to avoid any contact with them again.

* * *

Out in the drizzly car park, now with more wind than rain, they stood in front of the slightly descript Japanese car. The bonnet was up as Wayne held a torch for Clint as he looked at the engine, gently tugging wires and leads to see if any had come loose.

“Here it is,” said Nigel emerging from the boot as he squeezed from between Clint’s car and an elderly Volkswagen Beetle which had parked close behind them. He proudly held aloft a small elongated leather pouch with a press stud closure.

“That is nice,” declared Wayne taking the pouch from Nigel. He was fascinated by the quality of the workmanship as he looked at the fine stitching and smooth hardened leather. “This looks like one of those devices available from Sunday supplement catalogues for executive toys.” He popped the press-stud and removed the smart brushed steel multi-tool from inside.

The folded device was about ten centimetres long and perhaps two or three centimetres across. The ends were pleasantly rounded with a pair of rivets through each end. The rivets at one end were connected by a hidden hinge between the two sides and each side had a small elliptical cut out, which Wayne grasped as he pulled the two sides apart.

Unfolding the device, he pulled the two sides outwards and back on themselves as they rotated around the rivets at the connected end. This left Wayne with a pair of pliers about 15 centimetres long and a series of other tools now revealed where they had been hidden in the handles.

“Where did you obtain this delightful device?” asked Wayne as he passed the tool to Clint.

“Oh, I treated myself to it when I left my last job,” replied Nigel as Clint examined the various penknives, screwdrivers and things for getting boy scouts out of horses’ hooves. “It was in the shop at work where you can buy all sorts of executive stuff like in those Sunday supplement catalogues.”

* * *

What none of our heroes knew was that Nigel’s multi-tool was an imitation of a device known to many as a Leatherman. Quite where Nigel’s multi-tool originated they knew not, but it may very well have been from China. Of course this would be another example of synchronicity and the interconnectedness of all things. Perhaps then, all multi tool copies—whether they be Chinese Swiss Army Knives, imitation Leathermans (Leathermen?) or other such cheap versions of useful camping equipment—are connected in some way by a sort of symbolic representation of handy screwdriver and boy scout removing essence. There may even be a demi-god of imitation multi-tools, subordinate to the god of genuine branded multi-tools, all paying homage to the greater god, Grand Old Penknife himself who leads the pantheon from his palace in the shape of a neat little pouch hanging on the belt of the supreme deity of all campers, Ray Mears … or something.

* * *

As Clint tried the various options offered by the multi-tool, tightening screws, fiddling here and there, Nigel leant forward to look at the top of the engine.

“Has it cooled?” Nigel asked.

“Sure, it’s okay,” replied Clint “Try turning it over,” he said looking up at Wayne.

Wayne climbed into the driver’s seat and tried the ignition…

Nothing.

Clint continued to fiddle under the bonnet, but he knew it was really just for show.

“I don’t think this is really doing any good.” Clint was growing a little frustrated by the situation. “We’re hung up without my full tool kit.”

Nigel leant forward over the engine and brushed his finger across the edge of the air filter cover. Looking at his finger tip, he observed a thin film of blackened oily grime. “Hmmm.”

Clint looked up at Nigel but said nothing. His silence, however, was enough to show his disapproval at what Nigel was clearly suggesting.

Wayne stepped out of the car and stood with the other two staring at the engine.

“I think we should put our robes on,” declared Nigel.

“This is rubbish!” replied Clint.

“Well, we have to do it properly, if we’re gonna do it at all,” responded Nigel to Clint’s complaint.

“What sort of magical weapons would you recommend?” asked Wayne.

“Not you as well!” said Clint increasingly irritated as he tried crimping a wire as a last ditch attempt at rationality. “I suppose you’ll suggest you want to use the sacred soldering iron of the art!”

Nigel was not at all fazed by Clint’s sarcasm. “Well, there is an argument to suggest that in this sort of circumstance the mediaeval elements and weapons would be inappropriate.” As he spoke, he was already carefully copying the sigil from the scrap of paper onto the flat circular space on the air filter. “Grab my robe from my box, will you Wayne.”

Wayne opened the boot and pulled his robe from his violin case and then rummaged around for Nigel’s from the tarot chest.

“All right then dude! Just what sort of magical weapons would you suggest?” Clint spoke in a defiant tone.

“I’ve got a multi-tool!” exclaimed Nigel smiling. He was clearly gleeful at having got the better of Clint.

Wayne handed Nigel an unkempt bundle of grey fabric as he struggled to pull his own black robe over his head.

As Wayne and Nigel climbed into their robes, Clint looked on in some disbelief. The large car park was quite dark with cars peppered here and there but mostly away from where they were parked. Their robes were of different designs, but they were similar in that they were both hooded and very flowing. Nigel’s hood was detachable where it was attached to a diamond shaped tabard the width of his shoulders. Once in place, the matching grey tabard came to a point at Nigel’s waist both at the front and back.

Wayne and Nigel tied knotted white cords around their paunches, leaving the loose ends hanging down to one side. They pulled the hoods up, giving them some protection from the wind and rain, but also obscuring their view as the deep cowls were blown across their faces.

“I’m getting in the car,” said Clint. “You two are going to get us busted!”

“Ready?” enquired Wayne. Nigel nodded in response.

Unnoticed by the two magicians, a figure came out of the building and started walking towards them.

“The abbreviated version I think?” asked Nigel of Wayne in a deliberately overacted voice with more than a touch of pretension.

Wayne nodded in response as the wind blew their robes flat against their bodies causing the rolls of fabric to outline their contours as they billowed like sails.

Holding up the multi-tool, Nigel began his magic with the standard incantation that he used in most of their rituals. This was the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram. There is a Greater Ritual of the Pentagram, but they tended to use the lesser as it was easier to remember and they couldn’t be bothered with the extra complications of the full version. It was adapted from the works of Aleister Crowley, who undoubtedly got it from someone else, probably McGregor Mathers who, in turn, had probably got it from someone further back in history, in much the same way that second-hand cars change hands.

The Greater Pentagram ritual can be used for both banishing or invoking, but The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, tended to use the lesser ritual, just for banishing at the beginning and end of their ceremonies. Effectively, it was like a magical air freshener, which banished the mundane world at the beginning and banished any unwanted magical influences at the end. (The Grumpy Wizard of the West might have interpreted this with the idea that it primed the mind for magical practice and made you feel like a magician.) This time, because of the circumstances, Nigel shortened the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram even further to its most basic elements.

Bringing the multi-tool to his forehead, he spoke with a deep, vibrant, serious tone, “Ateh.” Touching the tool to his chest, “Malkuth.” Touching his right shoulder, “ve-Geburah.” Touching his left shoulder, “ve-Gedulah.” Clasping both hands to his chest with the multi-tool between them, “le-Olahm.”

As the truck driver approached he stopped dead for a moment, almost dropping the collection of chocolate bars, CDs and other stuff he had just bought in the shop along with his copy of A Brief History of Time and The Sun newspaper. As he stood there, he felt the wind gusting, blowing the rain into his face.

Holding the multi-tool in his right hand, Nigel drew a five-pointed star in the air above the engine and chanted, now in a more guttural tone, “Ye-ho-wau, Adonai, Eheieh, Agla.” When delivered, each word was almost reduced to a single syllable, forcing the words out with a punch on each breath.

Extending his hands out to either-side, he spoke again, his voice now strong and clear, the bat-wing sleeves of his robe blowing dramatically. “Before me, Raphael; Behind me, Gabriel; On my right hand, Michael; On my left hand, Auriel. For about me flames The Pentagram, and in The Column stands The Six-rayed Star.”

Dropping his left hand to his side, he raised the multi-tool to his forehead again and repeated the first sequence of movements, only this time with greater resonance. “Ateh, Malkuth, ve-Geburah, ve-Gedulah, le-Olahm…”

The wind seemed to blow stronger, his voice trailing off on the wind and rain as he paused, standing before the car in silence save for the sound of the weather. Clint looked on in continued disbelief from his position in the driving seat.

Looking around to see if anyone else was taking any notice, the truck driver continued to walk towards his car. Apparently he wasn’t a truck driver at all, or if he was it was his day off. He ducked his head down to escape the worst of the rain in his face.

Nigel stepped back, his work complete for a moment, as Wayne took his place and began to enchant with his face raised to the heavens and the wind and rain lashing his thick black beard.

Nearly all of Wayne’s words were lost to the lorry driver as he neared them. He did hear something sounding like ‘give us the swiftness of the beasts that we might run’ as he skirted round the back of the Volkswagen Beetle, fumbled for his keys and quickly climbed inside. He never took his eyes off the two robed figures standing in front of the Japanese car, dripping with rain by the time he sat behind the wheel.

Wayne finished his incantation and stepped back from the engine of the still silent car.

Clint sat in the drivers seat with the door partly open, not daring to look at the figure whom he had seen climbing into the car directly behind. He called out to the two magicians. “I told you man! You can’t start a car by magic!” The others seemed oblivious to the off duty lorry driver behind.

The lorry driver sat and stared at the antics, as he watched Wayne lowered the bonnet while Nigel approached Clint’s door.

“Do you feel better having tried that?” enquired Clint.

Thinking it was time to leave, the lorry driver, grasped the gear leaver of the Volkswagen Beetle, depressed the clutch and turned the ignition key. The engine of the Beetle burst into life, his wet foot slid off of the worn clutch pedal and the car shot forward at as much speed as an ancient Beetle might muster under such circumstances, perhaps even more!

There was a crunch, as the front of the Beetle pushed forward into the slightly descript Japanese car, denting the rear—so making it that little bit more descript—causing its boot lid to close as the whole car rolled forward. Having been left in gear, with the ignition on and the handbrake off, something microscopic took place deep within the mysteries of the engine, and the Japanese car burst into life continuing to roll across the car park, towards the exit.

Wayne, still standing in front, leapt out of the vehicle’s path as Nigel looked on in amazement. Their hooded faces looked at each other across the space where the car had been, stunned for a moment, as it started to move away from them, the engine revving as it receded. Then, taking to their heels they chased after Clint as he wound the window down shouting for them to get in.

The driver of the Beetle–now half sitting, half standing in the open door of his car—called out to the disappearing magicians, shouting after them.

“Sorry … my foot slipped!”

Wayne and Nigel clambered into the back of the increasingly descript Japanese car amongst a flurry and tangle of hoods, batwing sleeves and general hanging out robes. At the same time, music started to emerge from the tape player, something appropriate about leaving.

“Who left it in gear then?” asked Clint of Wayne.

“You must have left the handbrake off,” replied Wayne.

“And you left the ignition on,” continued Clint.

“I would have sworn that bloke was a lorry driver when he sat down next to us in the café,” said Nigel, “it just goes to show how you can never tell people by their appearance.”

Meanwhile, back in the car park at Knutsford Services the driver of the elderly Volkswagen Beetle thought exactly the opposite as he spoke to himself.

“You can always tell a bunch of weirdoes when you see them!”

Taken from The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil

Read another extract

Have we reached the peak of the scientific model of reality?

2010-09-23T16:11:00.013+01:00

Radio 4’s Today programme, today, had a short feature on the thoughts of a physicist named Russell Stannard. In his new book he suggests that we may be coming to a point where science has made the majority of its major advances and that we may not be able to learn a great deal more about the universe.

This is very interesting as this concept is the absolute core of the subject of my first (non fiction) book written back in 1989. In Satanic Viruses I suggested that by observing astrological events I could predict that the Age of Aquarius, that people thought had been a flash in the pan, would really begin to take off in the last decade of the twentieth century and continue to accelerate into the new millennium. People may not remember how the seventies and eighties really were but many of the ideas that have come to be acceptable in our culture simply would not have been given air time or a place in people’s thoughts before the turn of the nineties. We can easily see the flavour of the change in that we have gone from a culture that asks ‘where do we live?’ and ‘how shiny is my Porsche?’, to one that also includes concepts of ‘how are we going to survive as a community, or even as a species?’

Without repeating the whole book my thesis was that we were moving from an age that was characterised by heavily structured modes of thinking into one that would be more fluid. Religion, for two thousand years, has been characterised by hierarchical, top down, structures but those religions would soon be faced with the prospect of people seeking more personal bottom up solutions to their philosophical and theological dilemmas. People would seek answers from within rather than from a god that lies without or above.

Over the same two thousand year period, hence the subtitle of the book ‘The fall of the Roman Empire and how to bring it about’, science has developed hand in hand with the dominant religions of the world. However, science, as we know it, is also greatly dependant on those heavily structured models of thinking. So my thesis was that we might be about to witness the end of science as the dominant world view.

Now it seems some scientists are beginning to say something strikingly similar. Russell Stannard, described in the Observer as a high energy nuclear physicist at the Open University, has written a book titled The End of Discovery. He seems to be suggesting that humanity may soon reach a time when the peak of scientific discovery may be behind us.

Much of what science now investigates, particularly in his field of physics, now requires such massive experiments, such as the Large Hadron Collider, that we will soon no longer be able to investigate the next level down. Apparently Stephen Hawkings cherished M-theory, associated with string theory which few people really understand, would require a collider the size of a galaxy to perform the required experiments. It seems some physicists are so attached to M-theory, despite its lack of an equation to define it, that they are saying it must be right because it is elegant. Elegance is often a feature of that which is described as truth in science but it’s hardly the only test. This is beginning to sound like faith and may be evidence of the change taking place before our eyes.

It strikes me that we have been faced with other apparently insoluble problems in science for some time. One example is complexity theory, where our models have to be so complex that we can no more predict their behaviour than we can that which they model. Weather forecasting improves with the increase in computing power but there may be a scale of diminishing returns as the models become more complex. Another field that may suffer from the complexity problem is the study of consciousness which has been promising results just over the horizon for as long as I can remember. However the brain is so complex that we can’t model it for the same reasons as we can’t model the weather.

Obviously Stannard, and I, may be wrong as this sort of end of science has been predicted before. The Observer article describes how, in the 19^th century, it was predicted that science had discovered everything that there was to discover. I remember an old issue of the Fortean Times that quoted a Victorian gentleman who said that transatlantic communication would be impossible because the flag would have to be as big as Ireland. Clearly there are some developments that we can’t predict but this time things may be different. Science has become massive and expensive. Some research can only be performed by nation states or even conglomerates of nation states and many companies are unwilling to fund blue skies research because they want a return within a reasonable period.

It may turn out to be the case that there is research to be done but who will want to fund or perform it? If, as Stannard suggests, new developments start to become less frequent over a longer time scale, people may just decide to do other things with their lives.

However it comes about, either by us feeling we have learned as much as we need, or finding that’s its just too much trouble to learn any more, the result will be the same; a diminishing of the influence of science and, perhaps, a consolidation of the benefits we can glean from what we already know. It seems then, the end of the road might be within sight. Of course with a two thousand year time scale the end may not be any time soon but it looks as though it may be on the way.

Link: Satanic Viruses - The fall of the Roman Empire and how to bring it about

Link: Observer interview with Russell Stannard on his new book The End of Discovery

Just remember I said this in 1989.

Barrow's Law

2010-09-10T19:08:00.000+01:00

Social media promotion expands to fill the time allocated for the creation of that which is being promoted.

Has anybody said this before I wonder?

The importance of feedback from readers

2010-09-10T18:27:00.000+01:00

I was talking with a reader of mine on-line earlier. He was asking about my next novel and I mentioned that the Knights Templar will feature significantly.I've edited the conversation slightly but it went something like this.

Jack Barrow:

The Templars are due to be a major theme of my next novel if I can ever get around to writing it.

A Reader:

That sounds right up my alley! I may have to get a copy when you are done with it. I'm nearly done with Hidden Masters, some of the humour in it is brilliant - "You breathe it in. You've got a cold, not constipation!" What area of the Templars will you cover? A comical quest for the Holy Grail?

Jack Barrow:

The Templars are involved on the Welsh borders in the modern world. I can’t say too much until it’s written.

I don't recognise that quote. Are you sure you're reading my book?

A Reader:

The scene where Clint is making a herbal remedy for Wayne’s cold. p.131 Templars story sounds good, how far along are you with it?

Jack Barrow:

Okay I remember, the infusion scene. That scene is one of the ones that might get chopped in the second edition. It doesn't do much for the story but I suppose it does help develop Clint as a character. The new book is about two chapters done, but has been stuck at that for about 198 months.

A Reader:

That's a shame, I do like the side scenes. I feel it gives an insight into their relationships with one another and the one liners are brilliant.
Ah, good luck with it. Lets hope it doesn't take another 198 more.

Jack Barrow:

Oh, sorry, typo, it was meant to say 18 months but it does feel like 198. Interestingly though if the side scenes help to develop the characters then perhaps they should stay. Feedback like that is always useful. I might blog that.

So here I am thinking now that the bits of the story that don’t add much are more important that I thought. What can you do without feedback?

Stuck on viral marketing

2010-09-09T15:50:00.034+01:00

Coming soon to a viral marketing campaign near you

So here’s the thing. I’ve talked in the past about doing an animation to promote my first novel. (I’ve only written one novel so far but there are plans for a further three in the series, honest!) The book was published a few years ago but since then I’ve decided it needs more polish and would have a better chance in the pagan community if I corrected a few mistakes that some people can get a bit indignant about. (Interestingly these issues don't apply to my non-pagan readers who just take it at face value and laugh out loud on the train, apparently.) I’ve not been deliberately offensive, well not much anyway and those aren’t the bits they complain about; more that some people don’t like to be miscategorised. So the second edition is in the pipeline.

So here’s the other thing. I really, really ought to use viral marketing to promote my work. Back in 1989 I had some ideas that I put together into my first book. Satanic Viruses was a non fiction essay about how I thought the years ahead would see a change in society. The thesis suggested that the purely scientific perception of reality that had been taking hold of the world throughout the twentieth century would weaken and a more holistic perception would take its place. That holistic perception would have space for philosophical perspectives such as is evidenced in modern neo-paganism and there would be a weakening of more structured theological traditions. To this day I am convinced that the rise in religious fundamentalism that we have witnessed is a part of the death throes of the major religions. In the future religion will be much more bottom-up rather than hierarchical and structured.

Just add figures and darken the surrounding background

Anywho, at the same time I had another idea that, for the want of a better way of getting it out there, I tagged onto the end of the book. That idea was the information virus. Back in those days there was no Internet to speak of, only academics and a chosen few had email and there was no world wide web. However, it struck me that, if presented in the right form, easily copied and with a reward to pass it on, an idea could spread like a virus. Richard Dawkins had written about memes about ten years before but it wasn’t his idea and he hadn’t suggested a formalised mechanism. My solution was cumbersome and unworkable, involving photocopiers and chain letters, but the theory was there. About six years later Tim Berners-Lee came up with the web and viral communication became a real possibility. Satanic Viruses was republished in 2008 with considerable additions to the original text. I’ve looked and I can’t find anything published on viral marketing that predates the nineties and the whole idea may not have been written about other than on web sites until some time after the millennium.

There is a very real possibility that I came up with the idea that led to viral marketing, so it sort of makes sense that I use viral marketing to promote my work. But how do you make a viral about a book? After discussing this with a few people, including some people who work in the new field of viral marketing (I don’t remember getting a thank you for creating their jobs), the idea arose for an animation of a part of the Hidden Masters story. A scene from Chapter 7 was chosen as it shows the nature of the characters and contains good examples of the humour and magic.

Minor artefacts of construction, such as seams, will be removed in Photoshop

To cut a long story long I’ve built a 3D model of the location that I can move into any position to present the characters in front of. I’m currently trying to create a storyboard so that I can either continue with the project or hand it on to an animator to complete. An experience with an animator last year, while I was committed to other things, has taught me that I need a storyboard at least to be able to communicate my vision so I have to do that myself.

I’m currently trying to figure out if I can develop the skills to draw the characters onto the backgrounds. (Actually, at the moment, I’m writing this and not getting on with it.) I’m using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to sketch some characters in. Or should I just try to figure out why my scanner hasn’t worked for years and draw the figures on by hand and scan the whole lot in?

So ultimately, I’ve been stuck here for months. I need to produce a viral video to go with the second edition now I’ve learned that I have a potential readership. I know that if I can just reach enough people they will make comparisons to Dan Brown, Douglas Adams, Robert Rankin and even Terry Pratchett, though the last one is a bit of a stretch. I know they will make the comparisons because those comparisons have been made already. Should I be making these claims? No, my agent should be making them but I can’t seem to get the attention of anyone in the publishing industry. (A smart middle class woman at the Hay Festival once asked me who I was with when I handed her a flyer a few years ago. I fumbled my response and undoubtedly missed an opportunity.)

The camera can be put anywhere as in a virtual film set

This all has to be ready to run a campaign on Facebook, Twitter, the blog, and generally around the web.

Now I don’t really know why I started writing all this, probably to avoid trying to learn how to draw in Illustrator. So if you know an animator, graphic artist, agent or even a publisher, you could save me a whole load of crap because the second novel is there, ready to go with a couple of chapters written and I’d really rather be doing that.

Oh and I’m told that publishers these days are looking for writers with more than a single book and with the web and IT skills to take on some promotion. If that’s the case, see above!

Glue sniffing out of fashion, what is the world coming to?

2010-08-24T11:48:00.009+01:00

This isn't the image on the BBC site, but it's much funnier

The BBC today are carrying a report on how protesters are now gluing themselves to things to make their protests.

Apparently campaigners have been following in the footsteps of the suffragettes and have glued themselves to structures in Edinburgh, Bristol and the House of Commons over recent months. A particularly good example was when a protester from Plane Stupid, who campaign against airport expansion, glued himself to Gordon Brown’s sleeve a couple of years ago. Still I suppose he’s lucky enough to have more than one suit.

Reading the report I find myself wondering, are we witnessing a hidden example of the general level of ignorance of adhesives, despite the wealth of DIY programmes on Channel 4? For the glue used by protesters is super glue, a fast acting adhesive that bonds instantly when the surfaces make contact and air is excluded. It works particularly well on skin as it is water tolerant and has been used to close wounds in surgery. The BBC, however, has clearly used an image of a two part epoxy resin which, while very strong and quite goopy when mixed, takes hours to set and would have required considerable cooperation from Gordon Brown or from the police outside the Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Is the it the fact that we don’t hear so much about glue sniffing these days that means picture editors in the media don’t know their cyanoacrylate based fast-acting adhesives from their two part epoxy resin?

I recently read a blog that said that one of the five things that is expected of a man to attract a mate is to be able to fix things, along with being physically strong, a high earner, etc. Obviously this was image was chosen by a woman or a wanker.

BBC story

There was no need for you to say anything

2010-08-23T17:39:00.001+01:00

At the weekend I went to a party with some friends and I met the most amazing couple. Strangely I thought I’d met the woman before but she swore we had never met.

She turned out to be with her husband and within a moment I registered that there was something unusual about them. He first appeared completely normal, in his fifties I’d say, she perhaps ten years younger, both of them quite attractive. However, when he spoke he sounded drunk, slurring his words slightly. Not too much but enough to be noticeable.

I’ve had a lot of contact with people with learning disabilities over the years as my sister has cerebral palsy. Not all the conditions I’ve encountered are the same and most of them are whole life conditions rather than acquired later in life. However, I can tell the difference between someone who is drunk and someone who has a disability.

It was fairly obvious that he didn’t have learning disabilities and I figured out quite quickly that he had some sort of brain injury, a stroke perhaps. Her manner towards him was very caring and patient and she was obviously thinking of his needs as well as her own; she ensured he had a drink, that they both had food, etc, rather than just fending for herself. She might have exhibited a very occasional indication of slight impatience which was a shame.

They must have been around for an hour or so, mixing and circulating, when she mentioned in passing, that he had an injury from an accident. A quite bad accident she added, before quickly moving on in the general chit chat. I read this to mean that she was explaining his speech impediment and making sure that we didn’t think that he was drunk. Now bear in mind that at all times he was completely alert, awake and lively and the only thing you might notice was when he spoke. But at this moment he bowed his head for a few seconds sitting there as he looked at the ground.

The comment seemed totally unnecessary. Perhaps some people might misinterpret his speech impediment negatively but fuck em! Here was a couple that had obviously gone through the most horrendous experience. Their relationship must have been tested to destruction however, they are still together.

I felt like saying, ‘That’s okay, you don’t have to explain, life can be really shit, for some people much more than others, but you don’t have to explain.’ Of course I didn’t say anything.

We only have one life, at least I believe so, and in a more secular world that view has implications that often play out in the form of selfishness. It’s just great to see two people that, despite the challenges, have stuck to each other (her in particular) when they might have split up hoping for something better. I don’t know what I would have done.

I’d like to believe that they were so in love before his accident that their love has sustained them. A more cynical perspective might wonder if he has an enormous amount of money or that his injury has not affected his ability to be the world’s greatest lover or the world’s greatest chef. On the other hand it may be the case that despite his injury the only affect on him is his speech and that he is undamaged apart from that, but from the way she took him by the had and led him away when they left, I suspect not.

Hopefully they still have enough between them to keep it going.

Templates for Blogs

2010-08-23T16:52:00.001+01:00

I'm thinking about dumping this blog template. I can't find a way to put an opaque background on the side bar so it's difficult to read the bio and the archive.

Any suggestions?

Oh and if nobody says anything it's really going to look like nobody reads this blog so speak up at the back there!

Uproar over maintenance of Dovedale stepping stones

2010-08-19T13:14:00.004+01:00

It’s been reported that there is an uproar about the maintenance of the famous stepping stones over the river Dove at Dovedale in Derbyshire.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1300509/Dovedale-stepping-stones-Derbyshire-concrete-make-over.html

I would have thought that reasonable maintenance is appropriate. We look after our cathedrals to stop them falling down (Yorkminster has been massively underpinned). Were Stonehenge in a more complete condition we might consider maintaining it. It's only because it's frozen in time that leave it as it is and I'm sure that there is subtle maintenance that many of us aren't aware of. (Isn't one of the uprights of one of the triathlons underpinned with a concrete support to stop it collapsing? Or is that one of the stones at Avebury that I'm thinking of?)

Surely, if the stepping stones are worn and people are in danger of falling then the thing to do is to sensitively replace them with new stones here and there rather than top them off. The idea that they are 'a part of the natural landscape' is just fantasy.

Some people seem to believe that anything old is good and that anything new is bad. In that case don't drive or use a computer. The past was never preserved in aspic and it's probably only since the Victorian era that we have had this idea that the past in an unchanging era of romantic loveliness.

Dan Brown meets Douglas Adams

2010-08-12T16:35:00.003+01:00

Radio 4 (Open Book) just said it so it must be true? Apparently one in every 49 books sold is a Dan Brown title. He must be rolling in it. What really galls is that I’m writing in the same paranormal adventure genre (with a strong touch of Douglas Adams).

I used to say my work was Harry Potter meets Men Behaving Badly, I think I’m now going to describe it as Dan Brown meets Douglas Adams, which is probably a better description.

So, if I could capture one percent of his readership, and I know I could, I could make a publisher rich and make lots of people very happy. I just need to find a way of reaching them.

Revisionist history

2010-08-10T14:26:00.000+01:00

Denying the original pronunciation of 'Nestle', it seems the You Tube videos of old Milky Bar Kid adverts have been edited so that nobody can say that it was ever any different. This is rebranding taken to extremes as they try to cause us to doubt our memories. Didn’t this happen in a sinister sci-fi movie? They'll be denying the holocaust next!

After all Cesar dog food don't deny the Mr Dog era nor does Snickers deny Marathon.

After posting this as a thread on Facebook I was asked to comment the original pronunciation but I'd rather not lest the brand police kick my door down in the night!

Sweat Lodge - don’t try this at home kids

2010-08-09T14:54:00.002+01:00

It’s a little over a week since I returned from the well known pagan camp in North Yorkshire for Lammas so I think I had better post the rest of my experiences before I forget.

I’ve not done a sweat lodge before, apart from a brief attempt about 15 years ago where I came out after the first round and decided not to go back in. Since then I’ve done a few saunas and have a better idea of my tolerance so last weekend I felt more confident to try it.

Perhaps by synchronicity or just by the interrelated nature of everything in the universe, the past few days have included a news story of a guy killed in the International Sauna Championships in Finland. (I wasn’t aware that doing a sauna is a competition.) There was also the story a year or so ago of someone dying after a sweat lodge in Sedona, Arizona; a town renowned for new age and pagan activities. Therefore my reticence towards sweat lodges is probably well founded.

However, last weekend I decided to bite the bullet and get sweaty. I must say that this was a really good experience. Of course there’s the initial stuff to consider such as do you go in naked and can you stand the heat and all that, but if you can get over these sort of issues then the sweat lodge experience is to be recommended.

I’d really got no idea what goes on inside, despite knowing quite a few people who have run lodges over the years.

To the uninitiated a sweat lodge is like a sauna except built in the form of a bender with wooden poles (in this case willow) tied together, covered with blankets and a tarpaulin to keep the heat in and the light out. A hole is dug in the centre, in which rocks are placed, which have been heated in a fire for some hours before. Some of the rocks are so hot as to glow red in the darkness inside the lodge. The participants sit around the edge, safely away from the rocks as water is poured onto the rocks by the lodge leader. The process is something that needs to be done by someone with some experience because there are considerable safety issues involved but, with a little common sense and responsible behaviour on the part of the participants, Messrs Health and Safety need have nothing to do with it.

The process is designed to create a space where the participants can have a transporting experience so that the heat, humidity and darkness allows an altered state and further experiences might follow.

No doubt there are as many ways or running a lodge as there are people running them, but on this occasion there was a series of ‘rounds’ where each person was invited to speak to a given subject. During each round water was added to the stones to create steam which rose up the centre of the lodge and descended along the roof line to engulf the participants. As the participants spoke in turn the lodge became progressively hotter. At the end of each round the door would be opened to allow the temperature to drop and people could escape to douse themselves in cold water or just lie on the cool ground if they so chose. Amazingly I think there were some people who stayed in the lodge throughout which is no mean feat considering the whole process took somewhere between two and three hours.

Each person’s turn at speaking was punctuated with a series of addresses based on Native American cultural references to ancestors, the great mystery and creation, etc., becoming like a mantra before each person spoke.

Obviously it’s not for me to reveal what was said by the people there but it’s betraying no confidences to say that each round was directed towards a particular subject in general. So there was a round for general introduction, one calling for healing for people not present, one for healing of those in the lodge, and others that I really cannot remember. Some were designated to be hotter than others with more water poured on the stones. Often when the door was opened between rounds I found myself bolting for the cool of the air outside.

On the whole it was a challenging but positive experience and I can recommend it. It struck me as highly authentic, though not necessarily in the obvious sense. The Native American aspects may or may not have been authentic and to be honest that’s fairly irrelevant. The references to ancestors, Great Mystery and Great Spirit merely add flavour to the experience and you could make references to whatever culture you choose with similar results.

The real authenticity, I feel, comes from the nature of the ordeal. A sweat lodge is something you don’t take on lightly as evidenced by the recent deaths, although those may be more as a result of machismo rather than any spiritual challenge. Any act of magic or enlightenment, however you chose to frame it, should take some effort for without effort there is no energy. I often refer to this as oomph, others call it gnosis. Without oomph you are merely trotting out hollow words and actions.

Elements of the modern pagan movement suffer from the same ailments as the rest of the modern world. People want quick fixes, simple solutions and easy answers; and some so called pagans seek their enlightenment this way. But they are unlikely to find it. A dissatisfied but successful professional who pays what we think of as a month’s wages for a weekend course on how to become enlightened might return to work on Monday feeling transformed. However, this is probably the result of having some boundaries pushed very briefly or the excitement of daring to break a taboo or two. But these benefits are short lived because real transformation is a lifelong process.

The song Mythical Kings and Iguanas, sung by Dory Previn in the early seventies, tells of those that are sure that ‘everything of worth is in the sky and not the earth’. Deciding that you want a life change and bringing it about by collecting together some crystals and candles with a tarot card or two and reading a rhyme taken from a book on healing or some web site is not going to get you a result.

Tackling a personal issue, however, by facing up to the honest truths, perhaps revealing those to a group of strangers who are also putting themselves out there while putting yourself through a considerable ordeal might just shake you up enough to get a result. The sweat lodge is just such an ordeal and the serious nature of the event gives it oomph. The fallout from such experiences can take enough time to percolate through your unconscious to have a long lasting effect. Of course experiencing even a sweat lodge in isolation with no other commitment isn’t going to change you.

Back in the old days, before we started using the term pagan, we called ourselves occultists and practiced a style of magic that was described as running barefoot in the head; what we were doing was once referred to as amateur brain-surgery. Perhaps a better term might be amateur psychotherapy.

The balls of the sweat lodge, with the inherent physical risks, along with the transporting nature of the heat, humidity, darkness and discomfort, make it a practice that counts. No matter what the symbolism, be it Native American, Scandinavian, Siberian or something cobbled together from your own preferences, it’s authentic. It’s not an easy option leading to a quick ego massage. If you get it wrong it’ll fuck you up but you might just find that is stirs things up enough to wreak real change, you just might not know what sort of change to expect.

Lammas Camp 2010

2010-08-03T21:24:00.005+01:00

Yesterday I got back from a well known pagan camp in North Yorkshire for Lammas and I’m still not caught up on sleep.

It’s a three day event but I help out by running the trader’s field, laying it out and getting everybody to the right pitch etc. It gets me to camp a day earlier and I get to know everybody which I like.

I’ve always been responsible for the building of the wicca man on a Sunday too. I say wicca man, that’s a bit of a misnomer as the wicca man is more often made of wood and willow withies stuffed with straw but we’ve all seen the movie and that’s the name he was given the first year. I saw a similar straw and withy man at a camp back in the late nineties so the following year when a friend and I went to this well known pagan camp in North Yorkshire I suggested we have a go at creating our own. I’ve been in charge of it ever since.

We build a larger than life effigy of a man on a pentagram made of bound together lengths of firewood that the farm gets as off-cuts from a saw mill. Often the figure is in the region of eight feet tall. After processing him around the camp site we prop him up against the fire and burn him.

The effigy is known as John Barleycorn which is a second misnomer as the legend of John Barleycorn doesn’t describe him as being burned. Instead he is cut down, harrowed in, boiled up and generally brewed into beer. In our case we are using the name to represent the grain crop in general.

The ritual has gained in sophistication over the years and we now have a standardized ritual (the beginnings of a tradition) where someone steps forward from the crowd and complains that the figure is golden, fit and healthy at our expense of toil in the field. The crowd are invited to decide what we should do about this and, in an acknowledgement of our animal nature, the crowd demands he be burned. As representatives step forward to take up torches the crowd shout burn him, burn him. As master of ceremonies I egg them on. Finally he burns in a glorious pyre.

As the figure burns someone else steps forward from the crowd and asks 'what have we just done?' This represents our remorse at our actions. After a short discourse the crowd are invited to decide what should be done and they call for the return of John Barleycorn.

Shortly, after long enough for the shouting to reach a peak, a man dressed in straw and very little else springs into the circle and proceeds to dance around as the returned John Barleycorn. Soon everybody is inside the circle, singing and dancing with pipes and drums and the party continues until after dark.

It’s great fun, we get two or three hundred people baying for the burning and then turn them into a compassionate population again. I get to lead the whole affair and this year I lost my voice what with all the calling for burning and compassion. It’s a cross between ritual and participatory theatre.

I'll post more about the weekend when I've had a bit more sleep.

I'm a bit dissapointed with Blogger.com

2010-08-03T16:14:00.007+01:00

Hi all

New post to come shortly, hopefully today, but I want to quickly express my frustration with Blogger.com. I've found it a bit awkward to use and the search facility seems to be pretty rubbish too. Something which amazes me when you consider it's part of Google.

I chose Blogger.com because I imagined that it would come up in Google searches very easily. So I was completely amazed that I had to register it with Google and all the other search engines. I might be able to understand that with other engines but you would imagine that Google would know of a new blog on it's servers from the start. When I posted the G20/Ian Tomlinson post I was very disappointed that nobody would be able to find it. (I believe this discussion should be as wide as possible. See my post of July 22.) Of course I understand that people will chose weather or not to read my blog but if they never know of it's existence then how can people make that decision.

Lately it's been asking me to give my log in details each time and when that doesn't work it puts me through a lengthy password reset process that just drains all my enthusiasm to write when I want to. If they don't sort that out I'll be off.

I had been thinking that if it comes to the crunch, i.e. I have more instances of difficulty logging in, then I would move my full archive over to another blog service. However, my preference would have been Blogspot.com but checking that out I find that Blogger and Blogspot are part of the same service so I suppose that means that Google owns my arse now.

That's all a bit unfortunate because up until today I have always had fairly positive emotions towards Google. Please don't mess it up guys.

Storyboarding an animation

2010-07-19T16:03:00.003+01:00

I’ve been trying to do a storyboard for a promotional animation for my novel (a scene from the end of Chapter seven). It’s taking ages because I’m really fussing over the dialogue. I tried cutting it down to make it fit a two minute time slot and I just became depressed that it removed all the humour. Now I’ve restored the original dialog and I’m trying to storyboard it again.

I’ve been at this for months and I continually meet people who have animator friends (they come out of the woodwork) but I find them so frustrating because they offer to help or simply offer advice but without the storyboard they can’t see my vision. Then they ask why I've not made any progress with it.

I’m going around in circles. Trouble is I'm a writer not an animator.

Back from camp in a daze

2010-07-13T10:52:00.003+01:00

It’s Tuesday, the day after returning from Drum Camp and I’m in a bit of a haze. The camp was completely dry throughout and incredibly hot. I didn’t do a single workshop, which is fine because they can be hard work and going to camp is about being on holiday. The evenings were great though with some amazing music in the café after the stage performances. Oh and it pissed it down while we were packing up so my tent was saturated when I put it away. After drying my tent in the garden yesterday evening I think I’m now recovering.

I’ve got to get my head together because I’m meeting with a client for some writing work that actually pays money tomorrow, unlike this fiction stuff that I’d rather be doing. So I’m trying to get it together but after all the lack of sleep and sun baked mornings in the tent it’s not easy.

I’ll keep you posted if anything interesting happens.

Drum Camp tomorrow

2010-07-07T20:09:00.004+01:00

So I'm going to drum camp tomorrow. Four days of excellent African percussion, music and dance from around the world. I've been going to this for a little over ten years now and every year I'm amazed at the truly world class talent that appears in a marquee in a field in Suffolk. Musicians come from all over and they put Drum Camp on their tour itinerary just to be there.

There's workshops on drum, dance and song from all sorts of cultures. I don't tend to do many workshops as they are often waaay too early in the morning and I really there go to chill. The evenings are where its at, that and the drinking and the occasional falling over.

Am I stupid or something?

2010-07-05T18:57:00.002+01:00

So I’ve set this up, well nearly, but how the hell do you set the formatting for the about me section? I’ve tried putting in ‘para’ tags but they aren’t accepted and a ‘break’ tag doesn’t give you any spacing between paragraphs. Why does it have to be so awkward? What on earth happens to people who don’t know any HTML? I only know the basics. Surely the world of blogging isn’t restricted to the technically literate because that’s going to filter out all sorts of people and leave us with geek hell.

I guess this gives a flavour of this blog, there’s going to be a certain amount of irritation about issues of stupidity.

Actually I know bloggs aren't all geek hell so there must be something I'm missing.

Oh and as far as I can see it’s 1175 characters which last time I looked is less than 1200 characters.