Marginal Gloss

I'm really liking this blog and not only because there was a very sympathetic write-up of "The Heritage" on there a few weeks ago (though that helped).

The Longest List

For one rather disorientating moment I thought that "The Heritage" had made the long list for the Arthur C Clarke Award. Which it has. In a way. You see it's a very, very long long list. That's because the long list is the list of all the books which are eligible for an ACCA. So I may well have come last of all eligible books. Which is probably worse than being ineligible (take a bow, all those prizes for youngsters which I undoubtedly would have won - haha - if I weren't already TOO FUCKIN' OLD). However, the screen doesn't lie and I'm up the top, thanks to the marvel of having a surname that begins with an 'A'. I'm sure Malcolm Gladwell has something to say about this but I'm not sure I can be bothered to wait and find out what it is. Anyway, I have no chance of reaching the short list, so tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1999. i.e. hide under the bed with my industrial cache of baked beans and wait for all the computers to crash.

Uncrushed, Non-recyclable (and still angry..)

I've been really surprised and pleased by the reaction to the download of "The Heritage". Thanks to all the people out there who have linked to it, to all those who have downloaded it and even to those who have complained about the formatting. I hope those of you who can cope with A4 pages enjoy reading it, too... And if not, well, it's free innit??! What have you lost?

I've particularly enjoyed all the "shame on you, Faber" stuff, mainly because it's so funny. Come on, people, what are you all so surprised about? The book didn't sell so they decided not to waste more money on trying to build me an audience. What would you have done if it was your money? And if you feel like that now, wait until you've read it...

What else? Have been on a break from the crime books, instead reading Pankaj Mishra's "An End to Suffering," "A Handful of Dust" by Mr Waugh (came highly recommended, don't ya know?) and something else which I seem to have forgotten. Ooops. I expect it was very good, anyway. Meanwhile, have been listening to "Checkmate Savage" by the Phantom Band, a promo of the superb Micachu album and Ornette Coleman's "Complete Science Fiction Sessions," the last courtesy of Spotify. Oh, and I finished a first draft of a new book, which, as I haven't sat down and re-read it, I'm still very pleased with. And now I'm listening to the new record from Juice Aleem, one of the true veterans of Big Dada. Pure pleasure. So don't worry, my friends, I am not crushed!

Download "The Heritage" for free!

So, the good burghers of Faber & Faber have decided against publishing a mass-market paperback edition of "The Heritage". I would've been pissed off, anyway, I guess, but I think would have understood this hard-headed business decision. After all, if you wanna kiss the ring of the Leather Pope then corporate capitalism's where it's at and fuck any of the considerations (art, literature, quality) you may pay lip service to. But I think my sense of fair play was piqued by being told less than two weeks before said paperback edition was supposed to be out. I mean, really, how shit is that? Sorry? Pardon? What was that I heard about putting authors first? Anyway, as the only way left to me to build any sort of a readership for what I think is a pretty good book (not a great book by any means, but not as bad as a lot of the shit out there), I'm posting it here for you to download. The file is only 853.5 KB and it downloads as a pdf direct from this link.

Take a copy, tell friends or associates who might be interested, or just email it on to them. The only thing I ask is that you forget the title 'printed' on it and think of it as "OLIVIA". This was what I'd originally named the book until I was told I needed to change it because the Faber sales and marketing people didn't feel it was "strong enough". I eventually settled on "The Heritage" almost by accident and was never happy with it as the title (I couldn't say it without adopting the tones of the guy who voices adverts for Hollywood movies). But everyone there "loved it" and, as we can all now see, it made a huge difference. What are you waiting for? DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD before they make me take it down...

Crime and Rehabunishment

An update on my crime-writing reading progress (if you catch my drift). Quickly read Daniel Woodrell's "Give Us A Kiss" between finishing Simenon and starting "White Jazz" (which turned up in the post the next day). It was lying around the house so I thought I'd give it a go, but couldn't for the life of me figure out what was supposed to be noir about this "country noir". I found it full of hokey hillbilly sentimentality and if he'd mentioned the red cowboy boots of the 19 year sexpot love interest again I would have wrapped the thing in a plaid shirt and burnt it. Anyway, I'm now well into "White Jazz". It's a long time since I read Ellroy and though I'm enjoying it, I've also remembered why I stopped.

Instinct: they're all THE SAME.

Luckily, the Gurniad is currently doing one of those "1000 Books You Must Read Before We Come Round And Beat You To Death With a Newspaper" supplements and Sunday was Crime, so that should furnish me with a few hundred more ideas...

And while we're on the subject of "Crime & Rehabunishment," my second novel "The Heritage" is due out in (cheap) trade paperback on February 5th. I can't really tell you much more, as no one at Faber has told me anything (images of baby chicks nudged from nests and left to starve, cheeping pitifully...). I will try to make more of a fuss about it between then and now, so if you haven't bought it, just get on and purchase now to shut me up. If I get to number 1 on the Amazon pre-order charts I promise to stop.

(THAT INSTINCT big: lies. Just lies.)

Oh, to make it up to you,another unsurprisingly excellent Bolaño story courtesy of the New Yorker...

Louis Scutenaire

Apparently it's the 110th anniversary of the birth of René Magritte today, at least if Google is to be believed (and why would they lie about it?). He's one of those artists who it's tempting to take less than seriously. His images have become so mediated and compromised that it's hard to look at them as anything more than blueprints for adverts. Last autumn, however, I read an article by Bernard Marcadé about Magritte's Période Vache, a kind of (failed?) revolt against the snobbery and growing dogmatism of the French surrealists. As much as the art, though, what really captured my imagination was a quote from the introductory essay written for the original exhibition catalogue by Louis Scutenaire, a fellow Belgian Surrealist and close friend of Magritte's: "We’d like to say shit politely to you, in your false language. Because we bumpkins, we yokels, have absolutely no manners, you realise.” It seemed so perfect for the book which I was just about to send off to the printers that I added it as one of the quotes at the front. The translator of the piece, Shaun Whiteside, had not seen Scutenaire's original essay, "Les Pieds Dans Le Plat," so I tracked it down to make sure the two sentences ran into one another. The first page, which I photocopied, is (badly) reproduced above. I wish someone would write an English translation of the whole piece. As for Scutenaire himself, if Wikipedia is to be believed (and why would they lie, haha) he became disillusioned with the commercialisation of Surrealism immediately after the war. So he was a little way ahead of me...

Link

Short interview with Susan Tomaselli at 3:AM here.

The Day I Bought A Controlling Interest In The Independent Newspaper Group

Okay, so I didn't. I don't have enough money. Otherwise I would've done. Because being a newspaper mogul has to be better than waiting for reviews. Just think of the yachts you can fall off the back of.

Anyhow. The Independent on Sunday did me proud yesterday and you can read the review here.

That's it.

Cap'n Bill. Got a nice ring to it.

Reviews...

Still waiting, scared to open the weekend papers, but have had a couple of nice ones:

"The Heritage is a disturbing, sophisticated and brilliant novel. With Dickensian brio, Ashon creates characters, handles plot effectively and writes so well ... a twisting, turning, riveting journey of grubby sex, criminality, sperm clinics and grim discovery. This is fresh, serious, explicit, unsettling fiction." - Irish Times

"A completely assured - if intensely discombobulating - book, The Heritage has "cult classic" written all over it, but also suggests a writer with a great future." - Word Magazine

I don't think you can read either of them in full online and, in fact, I haven't read them in fullmyself, so I can't certify 100% that they don't also say I'm a bit rubbish.

Better Late..?

Having been utterly crap at maintaining this blog over the last few months, it's now my duty to inform you (if there is any 'you' out there) that my new book is published this week.

What else can I tell you?

It's called "The Heritage" (though originally it was called something else).

As you can see it has a rather marvellous cover courtesy of Alex Kirby at Faber.

As far as I know there haven't been many reviews of it yet but Marianne Brace wrote a very nice piece for the Independent a couple of weeks ago.

I'm on Radio 5 Live with Simon Mayo on Thursday afternoon along with Anne Enright (the fear, the fear) and on the Verb on Radio 3 on Friday night, where a genuine actor will be reading a new short story by me (links to follow when I have them and if it's not too humiliating...).

Let me see... Oh yes, it's half price at Amazon but I hope is available elsewhere, too.

Anyway, I guess that's it for now. More news to follow, as long as I can remember my password this time...

Stranger Than (Cliche)

The problem with trying to write books about life now is that they're usually out of date before they come out. Which is why I'm both satisfied and horrified to hear that Mr Blair has announced that we should all be queuing up to become part of his national DNA database. But you'll have to wait a year and half to find out why I should care... That is, if you care...