Rhodies!

          Meditated under the tree shown in the first photie. The Nicotine Dragon  ...but that's a week off now. My wee cough has gone away, mostly. There's nothing quite like flowers, is there?

Getting started!

          To get the next phase of my life up and running, I've had to do several things. One of these was getting the allotment planted and that seems more or less done. I will plant some more cabbages and such like, but I'm holding back on that just now so that I can get a continuity with the croppings later. Also, I had to go and see my guru and stop smoking again.

          I started wrestling with The Nicotine Dragon last Friday after having smoked for about nine weeks. I'd tried and failed to stop over the previous two or more weeks, but I really stopped last Friday. This screws up everything. You can't even sit as easily. Your mind has difficulty focussing and jumps here and there with little notice. Couldn't believe the strength of the withdrawals, but I should be able to get down to see the lama next week and I should be able to start writing the novel after that. At the moment, this is how it starts.

          PROLOGUE

The detective was wearing a dark suit under an overcoat more expensive than you might expect, and he was flanked on either side by two other men of slightly smaller stature. None of the three men seemed seriously intent on their drinks and sat there quietly, and gave the impression of waiting for someone, or something. All of them, the detective and the two others, were too well dressed to be in such a bar. Incongruous clientele.

The walls of the Horse’s Head hadn’t been repainted in over forty years. The three men, the only patrons apart from the man asleep with his head on a formica tabletop, were sitting more or less facing the double doors. The bar was to the left of where the three conscious customers were sitting, and the bar man stopped rubbing on the beer glass he’d been rubbing on for quite some time, looked up at the clock again, then slipped through to the back.

The double doors burst open right about then and a traffic warden came running into the bar then stopped. He wore a false beard, which seemed on the point of falling off, and his face underneath was reddened, his eyes like saucers on stocks, the pupils hugely dilated. The massive dose of multifarious stimulants on top of the whisky had the sweat bursting, pounding out of him. Pulling a gun from inside his tunic, he started quickly towards the table where the three men sat, firing as he went.

Bullets went into the throat and head of the men on either side of the detective, and he was shot in the shoulder, but then the gun jammed and the man dropped it. He pulled a sharpened chisel with a custom made hand guard from inside his tunic and he grabbed the detective by the hair, knocking over the table as he dragged him onto the floor, stabbing him on the head and neck as he went.

The detective came to rest on his back, the head held down by the hair as he was stabbed in the throat, then many times in his face, then several times through both eyes. He was dead by the time his forehead was being stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and the stabbing didn’t seem to be ever going to end as a furious madness gleamed out of the face of the man in the traffic warden uniform, his lips pulled back, the gnashing teeth bared.

The traffic warden didn’t stop stabbing till the skull over the deceased eyes collapsed into his brain. There was blood all over the traffic warden, the corpse and the floor by the time the murderer finally stopped stabbing and scooped out a handful of the detective’s brains. He stood up and threw the brains, still as if in a mad fury, at the wall. Then he stretched out his arms, one hand still holding the chisel, and shouted in exultation.

Traffic Wardens, ya bass! Traffic Wardens, ya bass! Traffic Wardens, ya bass!

Two other traffic wardens came running through the door then, one with a red blanket which he threw over the killer’s shoulders. The other picked up the gun and the beard and all three traffic wardens rushed out.

The drunken man asleep with his head on the formica topped table claimed later that he never heard a thing and neither he did.

          Anyway, this event will now happen a third of the way through the book, at the end of the first act really.

More tattie plantings!

          I put more tatties in today. This involves raking up the earth in vee shaped mounds. You could plant dead bodies under there and that's what I'm going to have done at the end of the thriller I'm going to write. No word yet from Adrian Weston. That means I'll probably have to try someone else on Monday!

This wonderful life!

          When the sun shines and you don't have to go to a jobbie, and you are not skint, there can't be many better places to spend the afternoon than Stockbridge. I feel as if I'm living a wonderful life again!

           Since I was up so early today, I took a mid-morning break and walked to Home Base for stuff to kill clothes moths. You walk passed a great view of Fettes College. The photie doesn't do it justice of course.

           The main thing I did up the allotment this afternoon was transplant some strawberries and do a bit of weeding and digging.

           When I got back, I contacted Adrian Weston about Remote Control.

Agents for Remote Control!

          That's a photie of the spot where I was meditating this afternoon in the Botanics. Meditations really make life a thing of wonderment!

          Anyway, I sent off my first email to an agent today. He's called Allan Guthrie. He won't be interested, but he's a good place to start because he knows the business. Folk on Facebook told me to try Agentquery, so I'll check that out after I've contacted Adrian Weston who represented me before Dave got ill and worked really hard to get me published. He won't want it either of course, but I'll probably have to try for ages till I get someone interested.

Utter Tripe!

         Found this review of TheBlissBook yesterday. You've got to laugh!!

          1.0 out of 5 stars

 Utter tripe 5 May 2013

By anon1278

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

The material on Buddhism, teaching and libraries is utterly unconvincing. All this book does is convince me that the author is in serious need of psychiatric help. I read to the end hoping I might see what the more positive reviewers saw, but I never did.
All I could think when I finished was that it was no wonder that his wife left him, his colleagues thought him strange and the pupils wanted to wind him up. Perhaps if he had been more friendly and less judgmental there would have been more help for him.
The bad language did nothing to improve the book either.
The author claims that he understands Buddhism as no others do. That is certainly true - however that does not mean his understanding is correct. The 'Buddhism' he espouses bears no relation to anything I have ever studied. The references he makes are unsupported by the scriptures in Theravada or Mahayana Buddhism, and he completely seems to have missed the point of the 'fierce' images he refer too, which are certainly not presented as examples to follow or in order to encourage violent thoughts.

          I did a lot of work in the allotment yesterday, for me anyway. I cleaned the hut out in case the ratman comes to visit and wants a look. I also re-dug a bit and planted cabbages and brussel sprouts seedlings though they did not look well. The bottom photie is of two folk who do not yet realise they are going to end up planting a lot more than pumpkins. It was a beautiful day yesterday. There's a monsoon going on right now.

          The meditations this morning surpassed everything that has gone before. People who don't meditate don't know what they're missing! This is the bliss. This is the bliss. This is the bliss.

Rats!

          I had to scare a rat out from the back of the hut today. The rats are back! I grassed the rat to the council. I'd like to get a semi feral cat for my hut. Or a ferret. I was re-digging the ground in the photie at the top when rain stopped play. It doesn't take much rain. The bottom photie is of somebody working. I feel really sorry for anyone with a jobbie. As Harold MacMillan said of unemployment. There's nothing the matter with unemployment. Most of my friends have never had a job in their lives.

          I thought I should start writing again so I had a look at this play I left about twenty years ago. Jock Tamson's Half Hearted Transformation. I only read half of it, but it was truly awful. I had an idea that I might try to do it for radio, but it's too visual and also crap. I'd have to really start from scratch and if I tried to write scripts again, I'd have to go and see folk and that would just lead to a whole lot of grief, sorrow, lamentations .... disappointment, disillusionment and despair ... suffering in this life. So I'd better stay away from that.

          I'll have a look at the crime book I've done a wee bit of work on before. I know that'll be crap, but that's okay at this stage. I'd have to change it to the first person anyway. Third person would take me too long. But I don't know .... I could just footer about with it for years. Something to write.

Barfly again

             I re-watched the end of Barfly, the movie written by Charles Bukowski, with much enjoyment. I even liked the bits I didn't like. It reminded me a bit of The Moon in the Gutter by David Goodis in that the author does not seem to like the rich, the evil basturns that they are.

          Mickey Rooney is brilliant as Henry Chinaski. You never know how good some film actors are because most of the time they are paid to act in crap. The scene where the ambulance men arrive looking for his dead body will stick with me for some time. The boy is standing there drunk out of his mind with blood stains soaking in all the way down his simmit and a bottle of whisky hanging from his hand. At that moment I was so struck by his likeness to my pal Brian Wilson that I've contacted him and we'll meet for a coffee this afternoon.

Dave B.

          Dave didn't believe in having information about himself on the web, but I thought if I was going to start up this writing business again, I should start by saying something about agents, and Dave was my agent up until he passed away just over six weeks ago.

          I signed a literary agent contract with Dave three years ago now. This was maybe six months after he'd been handed the black spot and he wasn't expecting to live more than another year or so. Because he was no longer working, he asked to read The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf and liked it so much that he asked me if he could send it off to a publisher who had just started up in Glasgow at the time. Although I had an agent then (a proper literary agent!), I said alright and Dave and I thought we'd sold these Glasgow folk the book. £750 and 16% off sales is what we shook on. Since my agent had failed for three or four years to sell anything despite his best efforts, I signed a contract with Dave. Of course, the Glasgow boys were never heard of again. And Dave didn't know anything about being a literary agent. That didn't really matter since signing the contract with Dave wasn't really a business decision.

           I'd known Dave since about 1972. Most of the folk I met at Edinburgh University were the usual progeny of the evil bourgeois; arrogant, venal, snidey basturns, making their little fuss at uni before growing up to become local government agents of some kind or another. But Dave was a very nice person. In fact, I don't think I've known a nicer person. I never saw Dave angry, or even being judgemental about folk. And he wasn't greedy. Just an extremely helpful, nice, iintelligent, clever and positive guy.

          Nobody else I know would have wanted to help me get books published  You have to have great generosity of spirit. Most people want other people to fail. It's really because of Dave that I'm writing this blog in more ways than one. It was because of Dave that my ten books are on Kindle. Dave put most of them there and helped with the proof reading.

          Anyway, I haven't got an agent any more.  It looks as if looking for an agent is what I should be doing to get back into this writing business. Funnily enough, I was just finishing a book for the other agent which I hoped he could sell. Crime pays, he says, so I re-wrote a crime thriller I had put aside from years ago. So I'd like to find a agent primarily for Remote Control, but also for the two books I have for 10 to 14 year olds. I'm sure they're publishable, but you need an agent because that's the way the publishers and agents have rigged the game.

         

       

Raking!

          For years I've been wondering about what to do about the missing soil at the edge of the allotment. Every year the old basturns must have been sneaking up and stealing my earth so that edges of the allotment looked quite precipitous. Last year I covered the edges with old carpet, thinking I'd kill the couch grass then them dig it out and replace it somehow. That didn't really work last year. But I think I've solved the problem now with the rake. You just move the topsoil a couple of feet and the cliff disappears. Voila!

Onions are in!

          Today I put the onions in.

           I haven't seen any of my deep dear friends - apart from  the one who passed away six weeks ago - since before Christmas. But I just got a phone call from the Wild West and a very old friend is coming to see me tomorrow night with a bottle of malt, he says. Most synchronistic since tomorrow evening marks seven weeks since my partner passed away and seven weeks is the kind of official mourning time I've been doing.

             Though I consider myself in the same religion as anyone who meditates, my guru is a Tibetan and they consider seven weeks as long as anyone spends between births.

               So what with being on the Holy Isle at the start of the year, going through the bereavement and the seven weeks of meditations  .... well, that's why I haven't been seeing anyone.

                 I'll start writing again, or at least do some writing business, from Monday, but I know these days that meditation is my obsession, so I'll just wait and see how I feel. I think living on my own I can probably write for three hours a day or so and still have at least six hours to meditate in. We'll see. Roll on Monday.
 

In another country.

          I was speaking to a pal of mine, one of the few who are not a part of the evil bourgeois, about the bedroom tax. Since he is employed, I assumed it wouldn't affect him. But, no, he's been put on a three day week at his driving job and this lets the benefit system get its hooks into you. (as part of their support for employers who pay low wages!) So he's been told by the council that he'll have to move or lose money.

           He was put in his council house with three bedrooms because they didn't have any with two  bedrooms at the time. He has two sons by two different women. One of the boys stays with him all the time (since his mum is an alkie) and the other visits at the weekend. So through the week one of the bedrooms is empty.

            He was told the two boys could share a room. He said there would be murder committed in that case. Both are teenagers. It seems the best solution for him would be to get a council tenancy with one bedroom for the son who lives with him, and one for himself. Then the boys would not kill each other and the son who visits could have his room at the weekend and he could sleep on the couch.

              Only folk who could think that a council house could not be a home could come up with the bedroom tax. This is what can happen when we leave the welfare state in the hands of toffy nosed, bourgeois basturns. This would not happen up here if we had control of the benefit system. The boy with the two boys didn't bother too much about politics till all this shit started landing on him. Of course, he's voting YES for an independent Scotland now.

A victory in the war against the machines!

          The main reason why I'm down to ten and a half stone is that I've really cut back on the bevvying since last June, but I got pissed last night. Could hardly do otherwise since I was watching Barfly, the film that Charles Bukowski writes about in Hollywood. The book is about him writing the script. I've discovered how to download just about any movie you'd care to mention. I got Barfly downloaded along with Rififi, which made a huge impression on me when I saw it as a kid, and the Battle for Algiers. I can remember seeing some of that, but I was probably drunk at the time so I can't remember it really. Much the same with Barfly. Don't remember the end. Mickey Rourke is very good though. I think I'll go and watch the end again now.
            I put in six rows of tatties today. Thus the photie. Beautiful day.

Diggings Dug!

         The first photie is of my daughter; the test shot. The second photie is of the first food to come out of it this year. There are two photies of bits I couldn't dig for some reason; one has useless flowers on it and the other one has strawberries. The last photie is of the allotment right above me. They do not have weeds on that allotment. They have drunk lots of bottles of wine, those folk. Charles Bukowski eat your heart out!

No photies no more.

          I had to get out of the bath. Dring, Dring. They brought beer. I smoked and drank. I was back into Charles Bukowski. I started thinking about what I'd like to write about. This is how you sink down the chakras. Writing is like in the toilet. Before they left, I managed to tell them about the channels opening and the bliss and all that, but I know it only sounds like the noise of madness to them.
          You've got to love the solitude. Not seeing folk makes you notice things. Solitude is very mindful. This is the bliss.This is the bliss. This is the bliss.

Still in the war against the machines!

          The camera has broken down. They don't tell you that when you buy them. This digity thing never breaks down, son. Hardly any moving parts, eh? It freezes. Just like those computery beep beepy things, all of them.

            I'm still digging. There's lots of diggings at the diggings still to do. Just digging the whole allotment from top to bottom is not an intellectual activity, but only an idiot would have to do it. Only someone who didn't know anything about allotmenteering. There's a small hill emerging near the middle of the allotment, built from the weeds, clods, and miscellaneous grassy tufts, the result of the diggings. If I don't pay attention to the weeds this year, I'll end up with just the hill and a kind of moat round it.

          I was going to show you what some of the really nice allotments around me look like, but my camera has broken down.

More digging!

          It was a lovely day today for the diggings. I think it was the warmest afternoon so far. I've managed to  dig  about a quarter way down the second side, so I'm hoping to have it all dug by May.

Charles Bukowski

          Some hailstones fell as I walked to the allotment, so I took a wee walk round the Botanic Gardens instead of going to dig.

          I think I wrote in the blurb for Are You Boys Cyclists? that it might be enjoyed by someone who liked stuff by Charles Bukowski. Of course, Cyclists is not like anything by Charles Bukowski. I'd never read any Bukowski till I'd finished Cyclists and the first stuff I read by him was poetry. It was on the Holy Isle about eighteen years ago. Every now and again I come across a book by him and I almost always really like it, though sometimes the quality is a wee bit uneven. But Ham on Rye is a great book. The one I'm reading just now is called Hollywood. He tends to write the novels about versions of himself. He drinks a lot. I understand his despair. There's something desperately authentic about his stuff. I'm a big fan. He wrote this book when he was sixty five. There's hope for us yet!

Another bit dug!

          I started on the other half today. The stuff inside the green netting in the bottom photie is supposed to be broccoli and kale, but the plants went bananas and turned into monster mutations due to the weird summer we had last year. Let that be a lesson to us!

          I stripped away the netting and dug that section. I'm going to plant brussel sprouts in there and cabbages. Usually, we plant seedlings, but this year I'm trying to grow them from seed. I've rigged up a kind of seed propagator in my bedroom, as you do.

Half Dug!

          I've been digging this allotment for about seventeen years, but this is the first year that I'll be able to attend to it properly. Previously, I had a jobbie to go to or family matters to take care off for some of the week.

          I'm doing things differently this year. Normally, I dig and then plant the bit I've just dug. This time I'm going to dig the whole allotment before I plant anything. This won't make any difference if it rains like it did last summer when  the allotments turned into one gigantic slug restaurant.

           There's not much chance of me starting to write again until this allotment is sorted.

Blogging again

         
          It seems that I can post photies on this blog. Hurrah! So I'll post my photies here and when I get back into blogging, I'll blog about my writing business and such like. My main pre-occupation these days is with vajrayana buddhist meditations, and because of this I haven't written anything new for nearly a couple of years really. So I'm much more a meditator than a writer these days, but I'll try not to post anything about meditations on this blog.

End of First Year Accounts

          December 29th, 2012
                                           It was this time last year that I discovered the free download promo on Kindle and it was about then really that I should count as the start of my Kindle business. In 2011 all that was to be uploaded was.

                                           I got a Kindle for Christmas and started filling it the other day. There were 36,000 odd free books on Kindle. I went through the first five hundred pages and downloaded about 200 books, but hadn't by then encountered any of my nine books which were free then. Despite that, the nine books were downloaded about 600 times. I don't suppose folk are finding these books on Kindle. They must be finding them through the relevant computer sites, but I don't see how.

                                            Since the start of the year, I've been sent about £68 by Amazon. I've probably made about £30 in the States, but they don't give you a cheque till you've made $100. Maybe next year.

                                            My books download about six a month. This is what I was expecting when I put the prices up to the 70% mark. I think it's making marginally more money at the higher price.

                                            I'm going away in a few days, probably for three months. I'm going to the Holy Isle to meditate. Anyway, I suspect I might have been selling the odd book due to the odd foray into the Meet Our Authors forum. This month I sold four books in the states, but they were all sold to someone on the Meet Our Authors thread. So I'm expecting the sales to just collapse when I'm away.

                                              There are no computers where I am going. When I get back, I'll start writing again.

                                             
                                         

First contact!

          I think I got my first book published around 1985. My first radio play was broadcast around 1981. Just once, someone wrote me a letter about one of my radio plays. No one has ever contacted me about a novel ever. There have been reviews. That was it until I looked at my seldom used Hotmail account yesterday. Someone sent me an email. They said it was okay to reproduce it, so here it is.
           

Did you really write Are you boys cyclists? It's one of my favourite books. I bought it years ago when I had lots of money and I had a phase of just buying books randomly, judging them by their covers. I don't do that any more as I don't have any money. But I loved your book. I just recommended it to an old friend, so I googled it and found your blog. I like they way you write. But you don't write it any more.

So what are you doing now? Any more books?

Cheers,

Ivan

Much better than someone telling you to go and take a flying ....

City Whitelight review!

          Unexpectedly came upon this review of City Whitelight. A four star one!

         

 Dark urban dystopia adventure, 7 Oct 2012

By 

hyperconformist "likes books"

Amazon Verified Purchase(What is this?)

This review is from: City Whitelight (Kindle Edition)

Took a chance on the kindle edition and loved it. A sort of dungeon-punk urban (Scottish!) dystopia, great writing and characters - like the previous reviewer says, the feeling and atmosphere really lingers after finishing the story. My only complaint is I would have liked more, the ending certainly feels like a set-up for a sequel. Will certainly look into John McKenzies other books now.

          It's always nice when the reviewer doesn't title the review: Excoriating!

Getting on!

          His face came up on the telly news this morning and I thought: I know him! It was Stuart Blackburn, the guy who directed and toured my play Busted all over Scotland about a year or so after he left drama school. Here's the item on him:/http://www.itv.com/coronationstreet/news/newproducerrevealed/
Anyway, he's now the producer of Coronation Street. It seems he's been producing Emmerdale. If you're into producing drama on the telly, it probably doesn't get much better than that! Ain't that great?

More Money!

          It's always nice when you get an email from Amazon telling you they're going to send you some money. It seems most unlikely! So they sent me another £11.51 the other day. That's about £58 since I had the ten books up about a year ago. A pound a week!

          Nothing much else has been happening. I sometimes post on the Meet Our Authors fora, and someone bought the kidbooks because of that last week, but I don't really think it makes much difference. But if you look at it as money for old rope, any money at all is great. And people are getting a chance to read the books.

Ancient Futures and The Fatal Shore

          I read an obituary today of Robert Hughes. It said he was an art critic. I knew him as the writer of The Fatal Shore, a book about early Australian settlement. Since it did a history degree at university, I have read a lot of wonderful history books, but  The Fatal Shore is up there with them. Loved it. I read it just before I spent a year in Western  Australia which is where I started writing Ancient Futures. There is a scene in a penal colony in this book and it was inspired by stories in The Fatal Shore. I thought I'd mention that since the boy just died. Ancient Futures is free today.