New dialogue for Hidden Masters - Chapter 1

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?"

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It's currently available on Kindle and in paperback (check the links in the sidebar). Here's the You Tube promo video.

Passing on the stairs

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?

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?

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?

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

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

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

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.

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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

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

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)

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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