Blood sacrifice, is that what Amazon wants?

Back in December I blogged about how I had abandoned Smashwords in favour of joining Amazon's KDP Select programme for sales of The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil. If you want to know the details you can read the blog post here but in summary I'd discovered that Smashwords sales had been appalling over the previous twelve months whereas Amazon had been comparatively good.

However, KDP Select requires exclusivity in return for some special promotional opportunities, so there were some issues when Smashwords outlets were still selling the book after I'd enrolled in KDP Select. It was a genuine mistake as it takes some time for the Smashwords servers to update and for their sellers to remove the book from their sites. At worst I was guilty of being too keen to work with Amazon and give them an exclusive deal. The first people at Amazon were quite understanding when I explained and they reinstated me but there followed some quite heavy, almost bullying, messages and eventually I found I'd been removed from the programme.

So I waited until almost two months had passed but still when I click the link to enrol Amazon responds with a pop-up that says the book still does not qualify because it is available elsewhere. So not knowing what to do, but being of the ceremonial magician persuasion (see the recent blog post here about my background) and in an attempt to link The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil to the current fashion for vampirism I've offered them a deal.

Here's the message I've just sent them:

You won't let me enrol IN KDP Select

Hi

I enrolled my book in KDP Select in December at the same time that I took it off of Smashwords. Shortly after it was enrolled there was a stream of messages between us where I told you that I had taken it off of Smashwords in all good faith but it took some time for Smashwords to process it through their servers so it still appeared on one or two seller's sites. Some of your emails were quite threatening and I felt they were unnecessarily so and when I explained the situation I was reinstated. However, later my book was removed from KDP Select again. Rather than risk upsetting you, after all you have the power to ruin my career chances, I have waited two months before trying to enrol again. However, I have just clicked the enrol link and you say that my book does not qualify because it is available elsewhere.

I would be very interested in you telling me who is selling my book elsewhere as I have done everything you have asked me. I do not believe it is available on any other web site. You have all the power here, I am trying to play by your rules but you could easily continue to say it's available elsewhere and I can do nothing to disprove it. I've offered you exclusivity, what else do you want from me? I would offer you my blood but I don't think my keyboard would really like it. Readers of all those vampire books think it's cool though, so about it, I reckon I could spare you a pint, would that sweeten the deal?

The Prophecy of Kinnaird - book review

By Cassandra Bellingham

This is a coming of age story where a teenager who feels he doesn't belong in the world discovers his true identity, breaks away from his parents and forges a place in the world.

I don't normally read childrens' books as I'm not a child and I don't have any of my own. Having said that I did read one of the Harry Potter's (until the films started coming out). However, I had just finished reading The Hobbit in preparation for the film and so I decided to try The Prophecy of Kinnaird.

irony

Interestingly I felt this was very similar to The Hobbit in style as I started to read it but as the story got going I found that there was more to it than The Hobbit. Whereas The Hobbit has a very straight plot The Prophecy of Kinnaird is quite a lot more complex, as such it's a more sophisticated book. The movements of the characters place them in situations that gives rise to quite a lot of dramatic irony which is handled quite well by the author. This all gives the reader quite a lot of involvement with the characters and does a very good job of keeping the resolution hidden until close to the end. Furthermore I found that, towards the end when some of that irony is played out, I had to stop reading as my emotional involvement was all too apparent in the public place where I was sitting as I read it.

I thought the fantasy world was quite well handled, sufficiently fantastic to be unreal but with just a hint of magic in the background that meant that they weren't casting spells left right and centre. (Too much magic can lead to the Rupert Bear situation where the characters are never really in peril as they simply have to click their heels together to escape the danger and be home in time for tea.) The other interesting feature was that the only non human race were the guppies (not fish people) introduced in chapter one and they were only slightly different to humans so no elves, dwarves or goblins dropping out of the woods left right and centre.

thing

So a good read, well pitched for the childrens' and YA market. At times it had me wishing I could carry on with it as I genuinely wanted to know what happened next. It's not my usual thing but on the whole it's a good book and I'd recommend it to anybody into fantasy or YA stories.

I give it four out of five stars

Viral video for the Hidden Masters novel

About two or three years ago I decided I wanted to create a viral video to promote The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil. The original plan was to take a scene from the story and make a short film. Ideally the scene selected should show something of the nature of the story, its humour, how the magic works, how it's not bloody Harry Potter with sparks coming out of wands. All that stuff.

Well making a live action film soon proved impractical so I decided on an animation. I built a 3D model of a Victorian back alley so I could use it as a virtual film set by taking shots from different angles. Google SketchUp proved pretty easy to learn and I soon had all the background images. Next thing I spent a summer trying to learn Flash animation which proved beyond me so I gave that up as a bad job. (Oh yes, in the mean time I actually had a job for part of this time so that took it's toll on progress.) Next thing I had to learn Photoshop to paint the sky, delete all the little construction artefacts, joins in wall panels, etc. That took a year on and off including a twelve week evening class.

reefer

Finally, around Yule 2011, I had all the backgrounds and was ready to start drawing the figures. (The final plan was not to have them move or to bother with dialogue so speech bubbles were the obvious way ahead.) I wanted the figures to wear the specific clothes that they wear in the book; a flying jacket and a sailors reefer coat. The web was the obvious place to find the images but I had a stroke of luck that I found a couple of TV programmes where the actors wore the coats I wanted to feature. So I ended up with stills from TV and filled in the gaps with photos from other sources where they didn't include the angles I wanted. Of course at this time I realised that using faces of specific people for each character meant that I could find the expressions I wanted and trace them rather than drawing them from scratch. I'm really not sure where I stand on copyright having traced photos so I'm not saying who they are but if you want to Facebook me privately I might be prepared to confirm or deny a guess but no more than that. Hopefully the faces are changed enough to disguise who they are.

Anyway, it took a year to draw the figures ending just about Yule 2012. Then someone suggested that I needed a soundtrack. I looked into music but it was all too challenging to find something of the right length and tone. However, I've got a sound editing suite that I bought for preparing music for parties so that seemed the obvious choice. The sound of raindrops (unrealistically loud but you can't really hear light rain), cat noises and lightning were all easy to find and it was a matter of an evening or so to come up with the sound track.

fate

So here it is, three years in the making, almost as long as it took to write the book that's it's intended to promote. However, since my first ever book (non fiction back in 1989) described the idea of the information virus I might have accidentally invented viral marketing before the technology existed to make it possible. Was fate waiting for me to make the viral video before I could have my big break? You decide. Here's the video. You might need to enlarge it to full screen to read the captions.

I've sold my soul to the Devil

Last night, in the middle of the night, because I couldn't sleep, I abandoned Smashwords and went over to the evil empire that is Amazon Kindle.

I've been on Kindle via Amazon KDP for about a year and I started on Smashwords about a month before that, so I have sales figures for the whole of 2012 to compare the two channels.

If anybody doesn't know Smashwords is an eBook aggregator that converts your book into all the eBook formats and then funnels it out to all the online suppliers such as Apple, Sony, B&N, Kobo, Diesel, etc. Smashwords doesn't go out to Amazon because Amazon prefer to do that through their own Kindle Direct Publishing service. Therefore, to reach all the world's eBook readers you have to do the production twice.

pinko

Yesterday I was promoting The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil as a freebie to anybody who has a Kindle, iPad, Sony Reader, Nook, etc. Then I noticed that another author was doing the same on Amazon Kindle. On investigation it turned out I couldn't do a promotional giveaway on Amazon unless I signed up to Amazon's KDP Select service. To do that you have to agree to sell your book through Amazon exclusively, which sort of goes against the grain for a pinko leftie like me.

However, in the middle of the night I wondered what the real difference is between sales through Smashwords and Kindle. I know Smashwords sales had been sparse but their stats are quite hard to understand as a giveaway can be described as a sale as it goes through the sales channel with a 100% discount. I've done a few discounts through the year on Smashwords and I laid there in the dark wondering if I'd been doing myself a disservice by being so ethical and avoiding KDP Select.

So, in my dressing gown I sat at my PC at 3.45am and looked at the figures for both channels. Amazon had generated a steady stream of eBook sales through the whole year. Not many, but enough to show that they were worth the effort and each sale was paid for, no freebies as I hadn't signed up to the KDP discount deal. However, Smashwords had a stream of downloads for free but had generated just two real sales over the year. Shocking!

crack

At that point my ethics went out the window. To sign up to KDP Select I had to remove all references to other eBook suppliers, take it out of the back of the book, take it off the blog here, etc. I uploaded it again to Kindle and by the time I got up, at the crack of lunchtime, Amazon had approved it for the KDP Select service. I've unpublished the book from Smashwords and I'm having serious doubts if I'll ever go back.

Have I sold my soul? Yes, probably, but KDP Select will set me up for short term lending so that people can download my book for free, thus increasing my readership and hopefully generating more reviews. Amazon already has the biggest collection of reviews for the book so far. All the free downloads on Smashwords generated just one review on the Smashwords site. All those free copies generated no result. Something for nothing, perhaps, has no value? How do I feel about selling my soul to the Devil? Well some people might imagine that's what I write about, writing about the occult. I don't actually write about the Devil, but now I'm in league with him.

Here's the Kindle version on Amazon.com

Here's the Kindle version on Amazon.co.uk

Just to maintain a shred of ethics I tried to link to it as a paperback on B&N, where it clearly was before, but I can't see it now. You just can't help these people.

The state of ceremonial magic in the twentyfirst century

A few years ago I went to a magical conference having heard about this fantastic event populated by proper magicians in a spectacular location. I say proper magicians because I'm drawing the difference between magicians and the sort of people you get at many other 'pagan' events where the goddess phenomenon seems to have taken over completely.

This is a post that I wrote for their forum after my second visit. That visit left me a bit disappointed. I've published it here because I found the notes for the post while I was cleaning out some old files from my PC. I've tried to remove any direct references to the event (no names, no pack drill) as I want this to be a more general comment on the state of ceremonial magick today but the experience leaves me with some good examples of how things might be going wrong. After I posted this on their forum some members posted some valid reasons for using that temple as a lounge and I sort of understood, but other responses were less constructive and more unwelcoming of criticism; still, each to their own. The organisers may have resolved some of these issues as I've not spoken to them since but my point is about the way magick is going generally and that point still remains.

When I first went to the conference I hoped to find serious magick practised by people with experience and a care for the outcome. For years I've attended rituals where there seems to be little thought about structure with some consideration of symbolism but not applied in a way to have any real impact. Further, since the advent of magick that is less hidebound than it was 50 or 100 years ago there seems to be lots of rituals where magick is treated so lightly that it simply isn't magick any more. Simply put, the magick seems to have been thrown out with the holy water.

spiders

So in 2009 my girlfriend and I went to this conference with high expectations. When we arrived we were not put off by the cold castle (as it was promoted) that was really a fortified house built for the shooting parties of the landed gentry converted into a school/prison camp/whatever, because it was still a really cool place even if the castle bit was slightly over sold. We were not put off by the uncomfortable beds and scruffy, draughty interiors. We were not put off by the spiders falling on the two of us while we were trying to have a shag. We were not even put off by the 600 mile round trip. We were certainly not put off by the ticket price with excellent, all inclusive food and great fellowship.

At the end of that first weekend someone asked us what was our high point. My girlfriend had to stop me half way through my response when I was about to say it was our trip to Steel Rigg on Hadrian's Wall. (Honestly, if you have never been to Steel Rigg, you have to go some time, even in the rain. In fact the wind and rain might actually make it better so long as you are dressed for it.) Her concern was that my high point was something that was nothing to do with the conference, but that was true. So I smiled nicely and gave a diplomatic response and said something polite about the venue, or the food, or the effort the organisers make to get it all together. However, I couldn't bring myself to praise the rituals so I said nothing about them.

I made the 600 mile round trip for the rituals; I went for the magick; I went for the magicians; I went for the people. However, I was disappointed, not by the people, but by the way the people treated the magick that is the very reason for my being.

expectations

In 2011 I went again, actually because of the castle/food/spiders on the ceiling/600 mile drive/great food at Tebay motorway services/getting lost in the corridors/spending time around the wonderful open fire. I went for all that. However, on that visit I didn't go for the magick. My expectations of quality magick have diminished over the years and I've become a bit cynical about it.

You see I'm a bit tired of so called rituals where we make a noise that somebody just thought up and wave vaguely in the direction of north/south/your spirit/your genitals /etc. That's not a ritual, that's something that is the same as music and movement from when I was in primary school. Why is that not a ritual? It's not a ritual because it has no gnosis.

The state of mind that the term gnosis describes, as I understand it as someone who hasn't read Liber YXZ, is an altered state that breaks (or thins) the barrier between the conscious and the unconscious mind. It may break other barriers too but if it does that much I'm happy enough.

ceremony

Since the seventies there have been movements in magick to move away from the hidebound ceremonial approach. The ceremonial approach generates gnosis by its very nature with repetition and the comfort of familiarity, formality and reverence. That's why the Gnostic Mass is such a great ritual, as is a royal wedding, like it or not. It's what the big structured religions are so good at and probably why they have so many followers. Simply put, grand ceremony has impact and impact means that the event touches the observer in some way. Other traditional approaches use emotional tension, apprehension, fear, sex, etc. Modern forms of magick now embrace other forms of gnosis. Rule breaking or experimental magick has come into existence, once described as running barefoot in the head. So now we have gnosis from humour (difficult to manage but powerful so long as it's not forced), and other forms that would have been sacrilegious 100 years ago.

They tried to use humour at the conference. Now to use humour you don't have to be Stephen Fry, but it certainly helps. To make a situation funny on the spur of the moment is very difficult. To use humour with no structure and a vague hope for comedy is just not going to cut it. Using humour just by dressing up is more likely to make people cringe. They might laugh at such antics but that's more likely to be laughter in embarrassment and if that emotion is not directed it won't count for anything.

On one particular evening we sat down to dinner and another visitor asked about the pre-dinner ritual that had been listed in the schedule. When I pointed out that we had just seen the ritual her reply was, "That was a ritual?!" All I could do in response was to shrug. Later I couldn't even remember what took place before dinner in that so called ritual. Now let me point out the implications of that. The pre-dinner ritual had no impact whatsoever, in fact my memory has dumped it. Of course some might like to argue, in vain hope, that it had such impact that my conscious mind has erased it and its gone completely into my unconscious but I'd say that's hopeful bollocks?

gnosis

Rituals that are silly all the time are just plain silly. They have no impact and are nothing more than street theatre. In fact street theatre has more impact because the participants are likely to be trained in drama and the audience often talks about it for ages after. A proper ritual is a special moment, not just drunkenness. A proper ritual has structure and gnosis. The structure contains the symbolism and directs the gnosis to where it will have its effect. (Please don't take me to task if my use of the word gnosis differs from your normal accepted use as I live in the magickal wilderness and don't mix much with hierarchical orders that have systems and accepted terminologies.) Gnosis is the oomph that drives the symbolism to where it is intended to work. Without the two there is no point. A ritual where we make vague air or water sounds to evoke air or water doesn't really do anything. Does making a vague gurgling sound make you feel emotional as water symbolism should? Does making a swooshing sound perk up your intellect and make you pay attention as air symbolism should? Both of these are examples from one of the rituals that weekend. Of course a given symbol operates at an unconscious level but made up sounds don't really do that.

Now of course not every symbolic act, noise or smell has an immediate effect. But if you read Crowley's diaries (or somewhere I read it) he says if you want to create Tiphareth you paint (or drape) the temple yellow, adorn it with the relevant plants, fill the air with the correct incenses, eat the food of the correct correspondences and do all those other things ingrained by centuries of repeated use. The point is, he says, that everywhere you look, every image you see, every sense of your mind/body/spirit is filled with the corresponding reference. If the symbolism for your intention is related to looning around then loon around, but if it's not then don't do it!

temple

In the conference venue that I'm referring to they had a particular room that was used for the major rituals. The room was decked out with the trappings of a ceremonial temple, altars, steps, pillars, etc., all painted in the correct Masonic colours, black and white chequers, all the right details down to the Nth degree. (Again forgive me if my terminology is incorrect.) The effort these people put into building their temple is second to none and they are to be praised for that effort. However, the room was also used as a lounge and workshop venue and somewhere to chase through in something that I recollect as akin to hide and seek. (There's nothing wrong with hide and seek per-se, especially when everybody is a bit wasted in a venue that is a natural maze, but there are limits.)

There is a point to setting out some rules for keeping a temple as a sacred space, for having it consecrated from start to finish, for only entering past the sacred seal by those permitted in the correct manner with reverence and suitable justification to be there, for not partying in there, for not using the temple for workshops that are not sacred rituals, for creating the most high and respected position of temple warden who is the first to enter, so that person will enforce this discipline on pain of shame for those who break the rules. There is a point to all this. That point is that as soon as you cross the threshold of The Temple (not the room that is used as the alternative lounge) you will be able to taste the gnosis before you even start.

The room I am thinking of in this venue is a wonderful space. It has some history, an appearance of majesty that implies gnosis from the start. It has two magnificent entrances that could be allocated to priesthood and participants. It has everything that makes it special. To use it for other things cheapens it. To have a Temple in the way that I describe would begin to add gnosis to the whole weekend and start to do away with the music and movement aspect that the event is apparently cursed with. If you want to party in your temple then I don't want to practice magick with you and I certainly wouldn't invite you into my temple. If that is the case you need to look up the meaning of the word temple.

party

If the only people that return each year are the members of your order, plus a few mates, then you don't have a magickal retreat (or whatever you'd like it to be). You have a party to which you allow other people to buy tickets. People who come to magickal conferences, symposia, retreats and the like, expect some things; they expect magick and not just a load of messing about; they expect rituals that are properly thought out and not pasted together from a few vague ideas. In this case less is most definitely more. A policy of never mind the quality, feel the width doesn't work.

The long standing magical orders that have names going back generations carry the torch of those that have gone before; fucking about with the flame will only blow it out. From what I can see there is but a glimmer remaining. Establishing a proper sacred space would start the process of rekindling that flame. Or you could party in your temple; continue pissing in the holy water, and wonder why nobody turns up any more.

Viral video stills for the Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil

Here's the album with the frames for the video

And here's the final video

The scandal of The Mammoth Book of Lesbians

Today I had cause to complain to Amazon, not because of their tax avoision, though it's worth complaining about, but because of their cavalier attitude to soft porn.

Dear Amazon

A couple of weeks ago I bought a Kindle book, The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Stories, or something like that. It was an impulse purchase and I don't really remember the details much. Today I got a call from my business bank asking about suspicious transactions. It turns out the transaction for the Lesbian Book of Mammoths, or whatever it was, went through to my business account and now everybody who sees my bank statements, including my book keeper and my accountant, will know I'm interested in lesbian mammoths!

I really don't remember being given a choice of which card I bought the book on but, while I admit I could have made a mistake, I usually make a judgement of which card it goes against by the delivery address. Of course with the Kindle there is no delivery address.

After receiving the call from the fraud department I checked my Kindle and browsed to the Amazon page for the Book of Mammoth Lesbians to find out what date I bought it. A few minutes later I discovered some other book on my Kindle, about submissives or some such, that I most definitely did not order! I don't even remember seeing the page or the title of the book! (I haven't looked at this book so I have no idea if these submissives are small, huge, mammorth or gargantuan, although I'm sure they are very nice in general.)

What on earth is going on? You seem to think you can set up payment options without proper consultation and place them on whatever card you like the look of.

What do you propose to do about this book that I certainly did not choose to buy and how are you going to repair my reputation with my accountant and book keeper, both of whom are women?

And if you are wondering about me publishing this blog after being concerned about my accountant knowing about my interests in mammoths, I'll say this. For a start the Internet is a very impersonal space, whereas my accountant gets to look me in the eye and say, "pay up!" However, the significant point is that I write stories about three blokes who go away for the weekend, drink way too much strong drink, smoke pot until it comes out of their ears and perform candle lit ceremonies that some people would mistakenly describe as Satanism. How bad can my reputation get?

Please write me a bad review, then we'll know we can trust you

Okay so I have a dilemma. I've been in touch with a magazine asking if they would like a review copy of The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil. They have written back asking that in return I support their magazine by buying some advertising. (No names no pack drill but I will say that I am NOT talking about Deosil Dance.)

I've been in publishing for over twenty years having written for newspapers, magazines, companies and myself; the rule has always been that you never mix editorial with advertising. That principle ensures editorial independence and readers know they can trust reviews or coverage of anything in the magazine.

perfectionist

However, when you are running a publication on a shoestring things are different. I know how hard it is to run a print magazine as I started The Philosopher's Stone magazine many years ago. It folded after three issues due to me being too much of a perfectionist and the magazine too much of a commitment. I can't remember if I ever asked for an ad in return for a review but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have turned one down if offered. I know I covered things without having associated ads.

But it really galls me to buy a review and I don't want to be seen to be buying one, would you trust it if I did? Of course I wouldn't be buying a review, but would they review me if I don't buy an advert. I don't know what they would say to this but I intend to ask them. I also intend to ask them if they will write me a bad review. Does the positivity of the review depend on the amount I spend? Is there a direct relationship, is it linear, inverse, a curve of some sort? There are so many questions. You know I may just buy an advert and ask them not to review my book just for the sheer hell of it.

informed

Heaven knows I need more reviews but I know that one review on it's own won't be enough. (See my last blog for the somewhat disjointed and illogical sheep shagging argument about reviews and their efficacy or lack of it.) Watch this space. I'll keep you informed of their response.

Sheep shagging - the future of publishing?

I once had a conversation with a guy who runs a small press who told me that reviews make no difference to sales. I can't remember the exact details but his experience was that a book had received a good review in a wide circulation magazine and he'd noticed no increase in sales. Now one review does not make a summer; or something like that anyway. We might assume that a series of reviews will have greater impact but that alone won't do it.

I recently heard that I've had a new review in Deosil Dance magazine but I don't expect it to make that much difference on its own. (That's assuming that the review is positive as I haven't seen it yet.) However, when the next order of books comes through, and I start mailing out samples to pagan book shops—hopefully in time for the Xmas rush, I'll enclose the press cuttings and perhaps it will make a difference. A book in a shop is worth two in the Amazon bush; or something like that.

insult

People are like sheep and that's not to insult people. I'm sure I've met some very nice sheep and any aspersions on my character regarding my relationship with sheep are purely scurrilous. But basically we, like sheep, are social animals so we depend on the opinions of others to help us make judgements. It's not a perfect system but it probably allowed our society to grow in primitive times by sharing the responsibility of making judgements of new situations.

So big publishers take advantage of this and have concerted campaigns by getting reviews at the same time as organising TV appearances, buying space on bus shelters, etc. Of course small publishers can't do that but to say that reviews do nothing is to give up. However, using press clippings constructively, doing parallel Facebook campaigns or Google ads, perhaps even viral marketing, all these are within our means; they just take time.

shagging

So when a new book hits the market we can't make judgements without information to go on, but with a little bit of help, perhaps a concerted effort and some planning we can make a decision whether it's worth shagging that sheep.

In the absence of the specific review here's a link to other information on said book including links to previous reviews, Facebook, Twitter and other stuff.

The Next Big Thing

This is a Wednesday thing, I've no idea why, Wednesday's don't have any intrinsic value, they just are. (If you want to get into the philosophy of Wednesdays then please do so in the comments.)

Last Wednesday the very sexy, and equally blonde, Debbie Viggiano posted a blog in The Next Big Thing series. Like viral marketing and chain letters The Next Big Thing is a clever way of bringing fertile new ideas to people like you. I don't know how fertile Debbie is but I'm not going to go there because she has an Italian husband. Nuff said?

(Interestingly I talked about chain letters as information viruses in the first edition of Satanic Viruses in 1989, before anybody had ever thought of viral marketing.)

Anyway, the idea is to answer ten questions about writing and the writing life, then pass the baton on to five more authors the next week. Now, I suppose, reading this blog you are into writers and the writing life; so here's the good stuff.


What is the working title of your book?
I'm currently working on the second novel in the Hidden Masters series, tentatively called The Hidden Masters and the Techno Knights. However, that might change as the story has shifted a bit under me as I've been writing it and it seems to have a bit more techno and a somewhat fewer knights.


Where did the idea come from for the book?
The book is the second in a projected series of four about The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood. They save the universe at the weekends. In the first one they went north to Blackpool after which I hit on the idea of doing one for each of the compass points. I'd like to make the adventures relate to the correspondences for the directions as used in ceremonial magic. In the first book, in the north, they dealt with money so it was earth. I'm sure there is some system that places earth in the north. (Those who are not familiar with cabalistic correspondences may know about the Tarot or Astrology and understand that Earth is often related to money, and so on with the other elements.) In the second it's going to be Hay on Wye in Wales, so west, therefore the plan is to make it water. There will be a love interest in this book; a young girl in unsuitable shoes who starts off climbing a mountain on a dark and stormy night. So really the ideas for the books are beginning to be dictated by things like cabalistic correspondence and the like. I'm not sure who is pulling my strings here.


What genre does your book fall under?
The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil is an occult adventure with trouser issues so I'm not sure there really is a genre for that; I certainly find it hard to categorise on web sites. Amazon seem to think that occult is part of horror but they clearly don't know shit! It's not horror because almost nobody dies and there is no blood. What's horrific about candle lit rituals with clouds of incense, guttural incantations and blokes in robes getting tangled up in exercise bikes? Otherwise it gets lumped in with fantasy but the books are set in Britain in the modern era and there are no non human races, perhaps apart from cats. Does that make it fantasy?


What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Which book? It'll have to be a sentence about the first book, The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil, as I don't have enough idea about the second one yet.

Three apparently ordinary blokes, who are secretly master magicians, discover a plot to build casinos in Blackpool, so turning the resort into a seedy, tacky and depraved town; so they head north on Friday night to put an end to the plot, but they have to save the universe by Sunday evening as they have to be back at work on Monday morning.


Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
 I'm pleased to say that I'm now published by a small press based in Oxford called Twin Serpents.


How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
The first book took about three years to write and another year or so to get it ready for publication. Even then it wasn't really finished until I found a new editor a couple of years ago which led me to do a crisper, sharper new edition with a glorious monochrome cover and a whole new joke. The second in the series is slow going but I have a career writing other, more profitable but less entertaining, stuff for people that takes up most of my time and all of my energy.


What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Again with the genres! Okay well I'm writing comedy, or at least I hope I am. Robert Rankin writes comedy about similar subjects drawing on sources from religion, myth and the like. They describe him as 'a mix of fantasy, occult, urban legends, etc.' That sounds like me. People have made comparisons to Douglas Adams which I'm really chuffed about. There is quite a lot of drink and drugs in the first book so it's been described as 'Fear and Loathing in Blackpool meets the Illuminatus trilogy'. The word gonzo has been used. Some US reviewers have made comparisons to other Brit comedy such as Monty Python, and Red Dwarf being absurd and silly, and again I'm dead chuffed to have that said about my writing. Hold on most of those are not books. Am I allowed to say that? Sod it, I'm not changing it now.


Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I really haven't thought about this. I'm making a viral marketing video/graphic novel type animation (see my photos on Facebook) and I'm using images of actors to draw the faces from. I'm not sure that I'm prepared to say who I'm using as models as I don't want them asking for money but I will say that both actors have guested on Have I got News for You over the years. I won't enter into any public correspondence about who they are but privately I may be persuaded to say.

There's a review on Amazon.com that suggest Peter Sellers should play the part of every character in a filmed version similar to sixties British comedy films. (I'm beginning to see a theme here about how Americans view my work and I like it.) I suppose we could dig him up.

(By the way, If you read any of the Amazon.com reviews beware. There should be a spoiler alert against giving away some of the hidden gags.)


Who or What inspired you to write this book?
I was getting drunk with these three stoner magicians one night and I decided to tell their story. Oh, did I not say, these guys really exist and they really do go to places like Blackpool and Hay on Wye for the weekends.


What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
There's already sex and drugs and apparently satanic rituals with jokes, what more could you want? (It's not really satanic but some people might mistakenly imagine that.) Oh, hang on I know what else might interest you, Debbie Viggiano… Well no she's not in it but I could, but then again her husband would probably kill me.


Thanks to the following authors for allowing me to tag them. Do go read their blogs and their books.

Jaq D Hawkins: http://indiewritenet.com/jaqdhawkins/
Rebecca Emin: http://ramblingsofarustywriter.blogspot.co.uk/
Dave Evans: http://hiddenbooks.livejournal.com/
M T McGuire: http://mtmcguire.co.uk/
Marilyn Chapman http://guernseygirlie.blogspot.co.uk/


You can find The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil here.