Another submission!

                  Anyway, if you don't send stuff out .... I found a list of fourteen agents who are supposed to be interested in personal memoirs, so I sent out the stuff about the three buddhisty books to the first person on the list. Rob Kirkpatrick of The Stuart Agency. I'll send out a similar email every day until someone gets back to me. Of course, I'll have to be able to find the list again!

                 The photie is a random one taken at  Inverleith Park last year,

A change of tack!

                    I've had the flu for the last week or so, but this has given me a little time to think about my tactics,vis a vis, trying to make some money for my lama.

                   Well, Remote Control is an alright thriller, but it would only make me a grand of so and the agent, if he sold it, would want more thrillers. An agent isn't going to sell a thriller and then say, "okay, lets sell non-fiction books about mindfulness." No, I do not think so. It would be the same if I managed to get an agent to punt Bugtown or the other young adult title on my amazon author page.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/John-McKenzie/e/B00584I2Z8/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

                    I don't mind writing thrillers. I really enjoyed writing the young adult books, but the books I've written which couldn't have been written by someone else are the ones I want to keep writing. Well, I've got three done just now. When I've got a lot better at raising inner heat - maybe when I can dry off wet sheets - I'd like to write a final book for the series. I'd prefer writing something that might actually do someone some good.

                    So I should really go back to the beginning. The book that Dave Baillis and the Domestic Bliss liked was The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf. I think that's probably the best one as well, but I should get that published first, obviously, since it was written first.

                     I think I should continue making an effort with this, but my heart isn't really in it. What I might do is put is a hour or so every day for a month and then just forget about it.

                      Anyway, I can get on with this tomorrow when the flu remnants will be hopefully gone.

                     The photie is from nearly two years ago. It was taken about late March maybe in 2015.

                   

                   



               

Someone to read the play!!

          The email to Catherine Makin, the Traverse person, was useful. She put me onto something called the Scottish Playwright's Studio, and it seems there is some kind of national play reading scheme on the go these days. They said if you sent them a script with the pages numbered, they'd read it. Nothing like that was around when I was doing plays.

          They say the play will be read by a theatre "professional". This reminds me of a director I used to know who admitted that he couldn't judge the worth of a play by reading it. He was a top "professional" as well.

          Anyway, I'm pleased to get someone to read it. The guy said I'll hear something in two months. The Traverse won't read anything till August. I should really try hustling this play around, but I'd rather kick it into the long grass. My inner heat stuff is going so well right now!!!

          I think I can get current photies onto the computery thing now, but this photie was taken last autumn in the allotment.

Ecuador and Jock Tamson's

                  I had a very busy day today!! First of all, I read Are There Any Buddhists in Ecuador? and I really enjoyed it far more than I expected. After the second person I gave it to didn't finish it, I thought it would be much worse.

                  I've got a lot of prose I've never had published which I think is publishable (the young adult books and Remote Control, etc.), but the stuff I'd like to get published is the Buddhisty stuff. However, it seems to me now, after reading the Ecuador book, that I should go back to The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf and try to get that published first. You could spend all day sending off emails, but hardly anyone answers them!!

                    But I did get a reply from Catherine Makin at the Traverse. In all the time when I knew something about how the Traverse operates, they only did one play they hadn't commissioned. There's really no future in writing plays on spec. I think that's one of the reasons it was okay to give up trying to get ahead in drama!!

                   Anyway, Catherine Makin put me onto the Playwright's Studio Scotland. They say they will read scripts for free, so I emailed the play to them. Obviously, I don't expect the play to be produced. What I miss now is the Playwright's Workshop. I know if it was okay if I could hear a reading.

                   The photie is of my best Christmas present, Lama Rinchen and me at the Samye Ling last autumn.

Enquiries to the Traverse about Jock Tamson's

                    I've just sent and email off the a Catherine Makin at the Traverse. I re-read the play. I don't think I can do anything else to it just now. I think if I sat through a reading, there are bits I might trim back, but I think if it was performed at the right energy level, the bits I think now might be a bit slack could be alright.

                    I checked the Traverse webpage. They have a month in August when you can submit unsolicited scripts. You cannot submit a script right now. I suspect the email from the Traverse, if I get a response, will advise me to send the script to one or other of the theatres who don't do unsolicited scripts either. And there it would just die in the ditch.

                    What I need is to find someone who wants to put a play on at this year's Fringe, but hasn't got a play yet. Maybe I should look for an agent who deals with plays. Hmmm?

                     My problem is that I'm not going to get off my arse. I like the writing. Everything else is just a waste of time.

                   

Is this the end for Jock Tamson?

          I read the latest and, hopefully, last version of Jock Tamson's Half Hearted Transformation. It's not likely to get any better, so that's that. I'll send an email to someone at the Traverse and see if I can get any idea of what anyone would do with a play that no one had asked for. You'd have to know folk or at least try to get to know them and ... well, maybe I'll find someone to send an email to first of all.
And then give up. At least, it's finished.
         
          I got hold of a copy of Pure Land by Alan Spence. Loved the beginning ... but when will I read it? I might have only read one novel last year, if you could call Hons and Rebels a novel, and ... well, I will read it.

          The birds were on Linlithgow Loch and the allotment was lovely today. Clear enough sky. Sun still pretty low in the sky

Feels like a new beginning!

          Now that I seem to be able to download from my phone camera .... well, back to blogging!!

           I got no replies from any agents to the five emails I sent out yesterday, so later on today I will sent out another five emails, but I'll change tactics for the moment. I'm going to start sending them out five at a time in a much truncated form .... so there will be only a couple of lines asking if the agent is interested and I will deal with agents one at a time. This means I  can get looking for agents down to ten minutes or so a day.

           Today I will have a read at the second half of Jock Tamson's and get a print out of the play as it now is.

            I went to the Botanics and the allotment for the first time this year. I couldn't go to Bellshill because of the snow, but there was little snow here till about half two.

       

           

Jock Tamson's Half Hearted Transformation

          I think I might have finished the first half of the re-write of Jock Tamson's Half Hearted Transformation. I think this is where the play was weak i.e. in what would be a second act of a three act play.

          It was a bit of a hassle re-writing this since I had to check on the version I worked on eighteen months ago .... you end up with the play on the screen and two versions, pages fluttering around et al, and this is a bit frustrating. But now I have the first half more or less finished. There isn't much to do in the second half, I hope, so I could have this off my hands by the end of next week.

          When I've finished it, of course, there's nothing I can do with it. I'll try to get someone at the Traverse to look at it, but I know no one is going to do a play by someone they don't know, whom they've never heard of. But that doesn't matter. I don't want this play in a state I'm not happy with.

           After that, I'm going to work on the second novel about the guy from Remote Control, but I'll work on it as a screenplay till I've got the plot complete, and then I'll fill in the prose. This is the method I used in writing The Real McCoy.

           I tried once again to get the photies off my phone onto this laptop and once again it failed. Right now, I'll spend half an hour sorting this out ... but, of course, in the war against the machines the machines always win since they steal your time away, and you can't get that back.

            I have been posting some current photies on facebook, something I used to use the blog for. But the photies not working ... anyway, folk on facebook seem to think I'm  a grumpy basturn, so I'm going to stop posting on that. It's back to the bloggy for me!!

           The photie is from the Singalila Ridge from last March.


           

More agent emails

            Today I sent out five emails .... to:
Caroline Michel PFD
Laura McNeill PFD ... just realised this is a duplicate. No response last time.
Alison Bonami
Francesca Dymond at jennybrownassociates.com
Yasmin Standen.

            I also sent a reminder to Angus Macdonald about the Ecuador book. He didn't reply to the last reminder.

            Thank Christ that the holidays are over. This is really the time of year that I dislike the most, but thank God it's over now. On the 9th January last year I started the nine weeks retreat on the Holy Isle so it's now a year since I last had tobacco. This year I'd really like to stop drinking, but we'll see.

             I'm really looking forward to writing again. First of all, I start on the play. When I'm done with that, I'll try to develop the plot of the crime thriller and I think at first I'll try to write the dialogue. Basically, I'll do a screenplay and if the plot works, I write in the prose.

             For some reason I couldn't get a coloured background (where did that come from?) off the email to the agents. Wasted half an hour on failing to do that.

             I'm writing this on a laptop which I took down to Newington last week. I stopped working for several days. I was told it was knackered because I'd carried it around in sleep mode. Apparently, these machines can get broke by doing that. Where did it say that? Anyway, I plugged it in again yesterday before handing it in for repair and it came on fine. No reason for anything. I hate these machines. When I start writing prose again, I'm thinking I should go back to a typewriter.

             My camera still isn't downloading to the computer, so the photie is from almost two years ago and was taken in the Zen Mountain Monastery in the Catskills. How I'd love to be going on retreat right now!!!!