Colour taste and cover versions

The new cover designs for The Horsepower Whisperer and The Wormton Lamb are coming on. Although I would have preferred to have finished them both by now, I'm enjoying myself. I haven't indulged in painting with oils or gouache since I was at Falmouth School of Art. I'd forgotten how much I like the smell of turpentine and the feeling of the paint on the brush.

I've forgotten a lot about technique but the most striking thing of all to come back to me is that profound sense of peace when I'm focussed on painting. It's taken a little while to return. I was hurrying too much to start with, treating the materials as if I was familiar with them and in control. I've been using sprit markers for year but they seem a bit unsubtle for illustrations, although fine for renderings of cars or motorbikes.

Another thing that's come back to me is how awful green tastes. If I'm doing a wash, inevitably I lick my paintbrush if it's too wet or carries too much colour. I now associate all colours with a bad taste in the mouth and green is my least favourite. The taste of green has changed. The watercolour taste of green used to be the taste that the smell of a chemical toilet suggested. Nowadays it's another nasty taste, no better or worse, just different. It's probably better for me. I've never heard of anyone dying from suspected green poisoning but having lasted this long I don't want to succumb from to it until my work is better known. Posthumous fame doesn't appeal.

Licking your paintbrush just isn't a problem with oils. I don't like the smell of turps that much.

As a child I used to wonder why they didn't make paints taste pleasant. I've concluded it's deliberate. At primary school there was a craze for raspberry or strawberry scented rubbers and they proved surprisingly appetising. Of course, somebody overindulged. There's always one. It wasn't me. Raspberry and strawberry flavoured rubbers were banned immediately but I can't rememeber if, at around the same time, paint boxes became unpalatte-able(!).

I've just re-read that last paragraph and realised that perhaps I should have used the term eraser instead of rubber but I'll leave it as it is.

Many years ago, in an episode of The Magic Roundabout, Brian the Snail found a paintbox and mistook them for sweets. He ate the lot and spent the whole episode feeling very ill. I still wonder what his snail trail must have looked like afterwards. A rainbow?

Whilst re-exploring the sensory associations of colour, I tried alternative layouts for my cover designs. I wanted my book cover template to match the look of my website. It was the re-vamped website that prompted this cove re-design in the first place. In the end I've gone for something similar to the originals.

I've made the go faster stripes smaller but kept the chequer strip. The drawings will now be portrait format because in landscape they create a lot of dead space. They will also be drawn out and painted on A3 sized paper and scanned in on my sparkly new A3 scanner. This should make them look far slicker. And my name will be at the top rather than the title because I am the brand instead of the book.

I've also given a lot more thought to how later titles will look. Actually, I hadn't considered this before. I hope to avoid any awkward formatting problems with a suitably flexible layout that anticipates their cover illustrations and the size of their titles.

I still haven't settle on the medium for the illustrations yet. So far I've dabbled in marker pens, pastels (or chalks to our American cousins), oils, water colour, gouache, colouring pencils and acrylic inks. These last weeks have been multi-media experiences but I wouldn't say that entirely comfortable with any of them. Marker pens are probably my favourite medium but the more illustrations that I do, as opposed to renerings, the more I feel drawn to gouache. With a bit of Acrylic ink squirted in for good measure.

Another milestone - my first return

My local bookshop in Liskeard is the only one so far to take The Horsepower Whisperer on a "sale or return" basis. This week they rang me to say, to say, to say - well, they want to give me my book back. It hasn't sold and the owner is selling the bookshop.

I went in on Saturday and picked it up. The book shop in Liskeard is called The Book Shop so you can't really miss it and it does exactly what it says on the shop sign. Except that they hadn't any luck with The Horsepower Whisperer.

Funnily enough, people have told me that they'd seen my book on sale in The Book Shop but they obviously hadn't bought it.

The shopkeepers, though, had done a very good job of looking after it for it looked like new and wasn't at all shop soiled.

The Book Shop is changing hands since the lease is up and the current owner reckons she's too close to retiring age to renew it. So I'll introduce myself to the new owner when the time is right and show them The Wormton Lamb when that's ready. With their new covers both books should prove irresistible.

But for now I have a collector's item in the form of my first return. It's a very early version of The Horsepower Whisperer, without the red stripe down the spine and with the original cover illustration depicting Nick Hob with rather red raw hands. I realised that he looked like he had dermatitis and re-drew him with more flesh coloured hands.

So I'll sign this very early copy of The Horsepower Whisperer and pass it on to some deserving soul who will be able to sell it in 10 years and pay off their mortgage. All those people who looked but didn't buy have missed an investment opportunity.

Highest ranking yet on Amazon

Regular readers of this blog will know that I don't check ranking on Amazon. Not very much.

I had some visitors today and was just showing them my website when they asked me how did it look on Amazon and when we looked The Horsepower Whisperer was ranked 29,683 overall. I couldn't believe it.

It is also currently (as I write) No.32 in Contemporary Fantasy and No.97 in Sci Fi Adventure! That last statistic is a new one. I've never been in the Sci-Fi Top 100 before. And I'm just a gnat's whisker away from getting into the Fantasy Top 30!

Real life follows fiction - again!

It's happening again. First there was the giant lamb born to one of Caroline's ewe. In fact, they're Jacob's sheep but belong to Caroline. This means that as sheep they are usually quite modestly sized.

Then there's been all the soul-destroying influences we've been subjected to. We can't do anything fun because it damages the environment. We have to think about everything before we do it, audit our actions and ensure they stand up to scrutiny. Whose scrutiny? Why the Conformorians of course! Did you ever doubt they didn't really exist?

And now here's Monika-Sandra, a third instance of real life following my fiction (although I suspect the Conformorians have been around for years before I ever wrote about them). You know the character called Heidi in The Horsepower Whisperer had a pet bat? A friend of mine called Heidi has rescued this little person. Unfortunately Monika-Sandra the Pipestrelle bat had a broken wing and died a few days after these pictures were taken. Julian was off the coast of Anarchadia waterlogged and close to drowning but is still with his fictional keeper.

I'm a bit spooked. What else will happen in real life that has
already happened in my books? I'm going to have to really careful what I write from now on.

From now on, the weather in my stories will be brilliantly good. All I have to do is get cracking with The Grey Ones - as soon as I've finished doing my book covers.

Under the weather

I've been a bit under the weather recently. I don't think it was the rain at the Calstock Bike Show because I was in the tents and enjoying the company and facilities. (See the Engine Punk blog for more on that if you're into pedestrians aquaplaning.) But it was there that I noticed that I hard a sore throat and here I am, a fortnight later, having had some days off work and with the tail end of a persistent cold to get rid of.

I have the feeling that I've made the most of the rotten weather. First there was the website re-vamp (indoors work) and more recently there's been the re-design of my book covers (more indoors work). Meanwhile, motorsport events and traction engine rallies have been cancelled and farming friends are going to have to pickle their corn crop with acid because it's so damp has little prospect of drying out.

But here's a re-vamp of the cover for The Horsepower Whisperer. The jury is still out on the white space around the illustration but for the moment I like it. The drawing will change but I feel good about the new layout. This has taken a great deal of thought. Maybe it was the drugs - the Tixylix and the Lemsip. Perhaps they altered my perceptions. Maybe it was sniffing my marker pens. Whatever - the go faster stripes are less dominant and better use is made of the available space to give an idea of what sort of story can be expected inside. It keeps the kind of corporate look that I want, too, with a couple of visual references to the website. The viewpoint in the drawing will come down a bit so that the gremlin is more in Hob's line of sight. Hob will also take up more room in the drawing. There's too much irrelevant stuff around him and getting rid of it should add to the impact of the book cover.

Having the snots delayed proceedings rather more than I would have liked. Although I was at home I slept a lot during the day. This was in addition to sleeping during the night, which was a bit more unusual because sometimes I have nocturnal habits. Anyway, sneezing and dripping all over artwork proved counter productive and now I'm back with all sorts of media - oils, water coolers, gouache, inks (I'd never tried inks before), pastels, biros, pencils and spirit markers.

As well as finding out some home truths about my pictorial orientation (I'm landscape and not portrait), I have also discovered that there are more differences between being an illustrator and being an industrial designer.

An illustrator illustrates and a designer designs. Nobody has seen what the designer has designed before. Only when he's drawn it is it revealed. Everybody's seen what an illustrator illustrates before he's even sharpened his pencil and have their own views on what a giant lamb should look like. With one you can bluff but with the other you can't. When an industrial designer (me frinstance) attempts to depict scenes of an agricultural revolutionary nature, you have to do a lot more preparatory work.

Not only that - an industrial designer only draw one thing at a time. An illustrator draws several together and they've all got to lie in the right plane and reflect a certain amount of light off each other. Some of the subjects might even be people.

At the moment it feels like individual elements work really well but don't work so well together. The sum of the parts doesn't quite add up.

That's what it's been quite handy having all this rotten weather. If it was sunny I'd be outside mending leaky roofs instead of wrestling with all this paper. My hands would be oily from the garage and various mechanical adventures an I'd get grubby paw prints on my hitherto pristine artwork. And, yes, I did consider oily finger marks as graphic devices for my new covers but, again, the results were not quite what I expected.

In a round about way, I suppose I'm trying to make an excuse for not finishing my new cover artwork for The Wormton Lamb but how good at you drawing anyway? When was the last time you tried to produce a book cover? Well, then. You can shut up.

The portrait/landscape thing is still difficult for me. I sit at a table, which is wider than it is deep. I feel that and easel might be better. It would allow me to see the whole picture and not something that tapers away from me.

I even considered making my book landscape in format but only fleetingly. I don't want to have to re-typeset it. Landscape format books don't sit comfortably in my hands. I have landscape format eyes but - like most people - have portrait format hands.

Or rather, they're portrait format hands when they pick up a book. Let them get hold of a pencil or a paint brush and they go all landscape on me again.

Here's how The Wormton Lamb looks so far. I remain content with the white space around it again. I've used earlier illustrations to rough it out but the lamb's not right. It doesn't dominate the scene enough and I reckon it's dislocated a shoulder as well. My latest drawing - it's still wet and too big for my old trusty A4 scanner - is better. The cars are proportionally smaller and the lamb much bigger. I'm still finalising some of the colours. I even went so far as to search for the right complementary colours on the internet and devised a palette of colours that were comfortable with each other. True to form, after all that colour preparation I've ignored it and done my own thing.

The size of my artwork has also grown. I am now steadily working my way through an A3 pad and have ordered an A3 scanner. The idea is that once my original picture is shrunk down to Royale size (156mm x 234mm) then any embarrassing smudges won't be noticeable.

Anyone who sees my book covers but hasn't read this blog will think I'm a creative genius and not someone who's been drawing at right angles to what he finds comfortable.

We'll see what Beck at RedSnapper reckons to these changes.

Are you a portrait or landscape person?

I am a landscape person. I have discovered this during the work on my new book covers. The original drawings were all in landscape format so when I came to incorporate them into my cover designs there was a lot of white space above and below.

I started off liking the crisp white space but have realised that the original drawings limited the cover design and didn't make the best use of space. I am now trying to become a portrait person.

After years of drawing cars and motorbikes that are longer than they are tall, it's difficult to adapt. I'm also having to get used to the idea that there should be plenty of blank illustration where the text can go. But the text should flow naturally around the illustrated action. Because I don't know where the text is going to go, I don't know where action needs to be and where to put the vacant spaces. It's not a question of the chicken and the egg - it's a re-iterative process until you have the chicken and the egg beside each other. And the text snugly nested with my drorin.

Ah yes, colour. I am a monochrome landscape sort of chap. I haven't time for this colouring in lark. At least I didn't until now. Now I want my book covers to be vibrant and lively, rather than a neat pen drawing or a scratchy pencil sketch. Consequently I'm dabbling with oil paints. Even if the dawbs of colour don't work out straight away, I can paint over them when they're dry (difficult with water colours and ink). And the texture and smell is great.

Wormton Lamb doings

The Wormton Lamb is even more nearly ready than when I last typed this. After some jiggery pokery when the revised textblock didn't upload onto Lightning Source's site, I now have a corrected proof with the right maps in it - just like the one here. But having sexed up my website I think I need to do the same to my book covers.

I like the colour co-ordinated go faster stripes (even if some people call them chav stripes) and they look okay on Amazon as thumbnails. But okay isn't good enough. I want them to leap off the page into the face of the beholder and off the shelf into their hands. They should be irresistible. It's a tall order but I reckon that if I'm happy about them then most other people will be, too.

Obviously I'm ignoring Cousin Lisa's advice below. However, our policy here at Anarchadia Publishing is on of continuous improvement so that's what I'm up to.

And once I've done the new cover for The Wormton Lamb then there'll be a new one for The Horsepower Whisperer.

Already I've learnt that there is a subtle difference between and industrial designer like me and an illustrator like what I'm trying to be. I've been drawing things I've made up for years. Illustrating something that already exists is surprisingly different. They say that if you can do a rendering of an automobile with all its different surfaces and textures then you can draw anything. I am endeavouring to prove this old saw right. In the meantime, here's the new map of Wormton.

Publishing advice from a psycademic

"Don't put yourself in a double bind. It's better to do something now than wait until you can do it perfectly."

This came from Dr Lisa Turner, psycademic and mechanical engineer. It put into words an odd feeling that I'd had for some time. A number of people have mentioned to me the importance of book signings and giving talks to increase your profile as an author and my reaction so far has been "Great idea! But first I need to be a bit better known."

Lisa's point is that this is all part of building your reputation. At some stage you need the PR chicken to lay the publicity egg that will eventually hatch into a magnificent soaring eagle and cure you of mixing your metaphors for ever. (Here's hoping anyway.)

But that's what Lisa's on about - there's none of this hope business. You get out there and just do it. "Time travel," she says. "Travel forward in time to where you want to be, then come back in time and take the steps you need to get there."

Lisa is a very wise person. She's my cousin's wife and Chief Enlightenment Officer (CEO) of the Psycademy, the internet college for developing the human spirit. The Psycademy has helped a number of people release the author within and brought their books to the market place. It also produces books and e-books as reference material for its courses. On top of that, she's learnt an awful lot about internet marketing.

One thing, though - it doesn't mean that she enjoys having her photo taken. Here she is with husband John and daughter Kate. Lisa is much taller than she appears. I think Kate is the only one of them who is much at ease in front of the camera but then she's obviously had more than her fair share of cute juice. They were on holiday last week, staying in their caravan at the Cornish Coast Caravan Park near Bude. The weather began brilliantly but after a few days changed to the grey rainy stuff that we've had for the last fortnight.

As publisher's do, we did lunch - well, it was an evening meal, actually - at the newly opened restaurant of The Mill House Inn at Trebarwith. And the food was fantastic.

Another thing Lisa was adamant about is the importance of mailing lists. "So you have your Anarchadia and Engine Punk blogs. How do you guide poeple to them? You're starting to build a relationship with your readers but you've got to make it easy to find you and learn about your news."

Lisa's been at this internet marketing lark longer than I have and has a "web guy," a "business guy" and a "marketing gal." Using their services might increase her running costs but Lisa can clearly see the benefit from their input. Psycademy's e-books cater for a very specific market and demand may be low in terms of numbers but it's very strong among those numbers. Consequently, people are more than willing to pay for something that is so tailored to their needs.

After our lovely meal we went down to Trebarwith Strand. Kate and I compared notes on the ice cream we'd just had. I reckoned it was the mintiest ice cream. It tasted just the way the mint plants smelt in my mother's old garden. Kate said she liked it, too, because it was toothpaste flavoured. "But that was okay." We wondered if there was more of a market for toothpaste flavoured ice cream than for mint. Kate seemed to think so. She really liked toothpaste. I suspect it's a side effect of all that cute juice.

The sun came out briefly before sliding over the western horizon. As John and Kate admired the spaniel-like profile of Gull Rock, Lisa and I pondered what common ground Psycademy had with Anarchadia Publishing. What could I learn from her small-market, strong-demand model? Could anything more be adapted for my wider-demand, quite-interested level of demand? The jury is still out - unlike the waves that chased John and Kate up the rocks just after this photo was taken. But I think Lisa and I will be getting out heads together again soon. In the meantime, I will avoid the double bind, try to be less of a perfectionist and cultivate my mailing list. And try keeping my toothpaste in the freezer.

More power to your e-lbow

Here's another first on the Anarchadia book blog - a photo of the new computer I'm using. I'm not really a computer enthusiast - stuff with engines and wheels gets my motor running - but after all the problems I've had with I.T. I can't fail to be excited with this new grey box with lights on it. For a wireless connection there's a lot of leads going all over the place. I had to call orange 5 or 6 rimes to get connected and after setting all this stuff up in my study upstairs I brought it downstairs to eliminate the connectivity problems. It turned out that it was the browser settings at fault on my new machine. Anyway, those helpful people on the end of the Orange phone line sorted me out.

As if one photo of it isn't enough, here's a picture of the screen. Cor, though, it's big, innit? That's so that I can do my graphics more easily. As you may recall, I spent most of my Easter holidays trying to format a word document into a pdf. Before that I attempted to make a video for YouTube but it ended up very jerky. This wasn't because I was starring in it. It was because the file transfer process needed a higher disc speed than my laptop could manage and frames were dropped out of the video.

So far during 2008, it's felt like I've been continually finding the limits of what I could do until I was in a little bubble of restriction.

Well, now the bubble's burst. I no longer have any idea where these limits are thanks to a more powerful desktop from pcspecialist.

Not only do I now have Open Office Writer to convert my documents smoothly into pdfs, but I also have the rest of the open source (i.e. free) Open Office package, like Draw, which is so much better than the unnamed package I had previously. Did I mention it was free, too?

I also have a Flash animation editor called Sothink SWF Quicker. This has allowed me to hack into the flash banner that Helen Cowan at Flying Flounder did for me and modify it with different fonts to suit the new revised website.

Ah. Yes. The new revised website.

There hasn't been much activity on this blog recently because yours truly has been making the most of the poor weather. I have another marvellous piece of software called Serif WebPlus X2. I'd put my site together using html and css. And recently I got everything in the right place when viewed in Firefox. The only trouble was, when viewed using Internet Explorer, which is the default application for the vast majority of users, everything was jumbled up.

I needed something that gave me what I saw and I am happy to say that WebPlus has done just that. After all that messing about with absolute and relative positioning, all I have to do is drag and drop. Professional web designers would probably decry its use but I've achieved in a couple of rainy weekends what was failing to happen after months of repetitive effort. I believe it is also W3C compliant, which is apparently a Good Thing and means I might win an award or something (probably a something). The reason I think this is because I had a pop up message warning me that my site wasn't compliant and asking would I like to fix this? So I said yes.

Whoever's behind WebPlus must have realised there were people like me who found the inability to see what they achieving incredibly frustrating. They've really come up with the goods as far as I'm concerned. I've re-built my website while improving its structure and appearance. And there's loads of other things it can do like set up mailing lists.

The only trouble is, this new slicker looking site is making my book covers look a bit staid.

Be careful what you write

Last week I met the most extraordinary person – my editor. I’ve worked with Caroline Petherick on two books now over about two years but never met her before. It was only recently that I visited her at her clifftop home near Looe. I should have done this earlier for she’s full of bright ideas, is fascinated by the world in general and knows an awful lot of interesting stuff.

What prompted this get together was a rather surprised e-mail from her a fortnight ago. Caroline is almost over-qualified as my editor for in addition to being a damned fine proof reader she has a pilot's licence and keeps sheep. Recently her flock of Jacob’s sheep have had lambs and one of them was enormous. Having worked on my book The Wormton Lamb, she had to tell me and I had to see this phenomenon for myself.

Caroline lives in idyllic surroundings not far from the Monkey Sanctuary and with spectacular views of Looe Island. Her flock is a necessity. They keep her 35 acres under control. Their fleeces aren’t worth much and she gets too attached to them to eat them very often.

The lamb in question was suffering from joint ill but had recovered sufficiently to be running around even if he was limping a bit. At two weeks old he was obviously bigger than his older siblings and was happily eating the feed for the adults when the other lambs seemed interested in only suckling. Seeing as he had such a head start on the others he’s probably going to be a bit of a monster.

It was great to meet Caroline at last. She’s into practically everything and full of enthusiasm. I had a very enjoyable evening kicking around wild ideas with her. She's convinced that those of us who can should get "off the grid." By this she means drilling bore holes for water and generating our own power through solar panels, heat pumps or wind turbines. This is because the grid won't survive the forthcoming changes in climate. Not everybody can do this of course but those who can are well advised to do so not only for their own benefit but also to help the masses who live in cities who have no obvious alternative. Sounds like an apocalyptic idea for another book.

However, it seems that I’m going to have to be careful what I write in future. My dystopian vision of Post Unification Euphobia in The Horsepower Whisperer is already happening if you are a farmer. Caroline tells me there is a fleece marketing board that effectively has the market monopoly and rigs the price of fleeces. Also DEFRA will come and remove the bodies of any dead sheep provided they die during office hours. Now The Wormton Lamb itself could be growing in South East Cornwall.

It’s a good thing my stuff is optimistic and generally positive in outlook. We could do with some happier endings in real life. Maybe that’s the problem. Too many people are writing about credit crunches and the collapse of the housing market and then lo! it all happens.

So I’m going to write – here and now – that Cornish choughs will return to the cliffs of Caroline’s home. How’s that for a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Playlist for The Wormton Lamb

Here's the playlist for The Wormton Lamb out Spring 2009. Like the last one for The Horsepower Whisperer, here's more high octane rock'n'roll for your musical edification (good word).

And out from obscurity it comes.



During the creation of The Wormton Lamb, I discovered New Rock'n'Roll. For too long had people been saying that the new rock'n'roll was gardening. Obviously it never was and this was a very silly thing to say. I just showed that these people didn't understand what the New Rock'n'Roll was. You can't dance to gardens. And it has nothing to do with cookery either even if you are always in the kitchen at parties.

On the recommendation from a friend, I acquired a few jolly good compilations of New Rock'n'Roll and a number of tracks from these albums had a significant influence on the final shape of The Wormton Lamb.

After carefully working out the running order, I found that this playlist for The Wormton Lamb began with several 30 second samples, since these particular songs are not licensed for playing any longer on the internet. Unfortunately, this made The Wormton Lamb's playlist sound like outbursts of raw noise. Some of you who already know of my taste in music might say, "So what's new?" To avoid this knee jerk reaction, I've re-ordered the playlist. It's still not easy listening but at least the playlist begins with complete songs. The story really begins with Temptation Island from Love As Laughter and when (note not if) The Wormton Lamb gets made into a film I'm sure the music execs will agree to these songs being include din full.

Anyway, these little bursts should tempt you into getting the full version. And the more obscure tracks are full length so I hope these bands drum up some business from you.

There's quite a Gothic feel to this list as well. Well, The Wormton Lamb does feature a Frankensheep, some mysterious blood sucking agencies and a weresheep that bleats at the moon.

I suppose the book ought to carry a warning for people of a nervous disposition, those who are easily upset and any other wets and weeds that might dip into it. To these people all I would say is "It's only a story." And, "Pull yourselves together."

To those who like to be scared I would lie and say "Believe me - nothing like this could ever happen in real life."

Disappointed with browsing

I reckoned I made the best of the dreadful weather at the weekend by re-vamping the Anarchadia website. I was pleased with the result until I looked on at my site at lunchtime using the web browser employed where I work.

I added playlists to the pages for The Horsepower Whisperer and The Wormton Lamb and did quite a bit of tidying up. I've had a lot of problems getting things in the right places but last weekend I made startling progress in getting page components where I wanted them. I thought I was getting better at it.

Well, when I opened up my website at lunch it looked worse than ever! My two most prized pages are all jumbled up.

I've known for some time that smaller screens can jumble my web pages up and that Mozilla Firefox is the best browser in which to view them. Firefox was in the news this week as being a more secure browser than Internet Explorer thanks to regular downloaded updates. Or uploaded downlates.

So I was half waiting for everyone to buy bigger screens. Then they would see what I can see on my wide screen with Firefox. But it seems there's more to it than that.

Internet Explorer is the default web browser and it looks at things in different ways. I can't see what it looks like becasue I have Firefox and I think I've used certain positioning commands in Firefox that IE doesn't recognise.

Apparently, some websites can detect what browser is being used to view them and they can change the mark up to suit. Obviously, this means two sets of code when I've just about managed to get one looking the way I want it to.

I need to do something to my website but I'm not sure what. I've said on the home page that Firefox is the best browser to use but most people won't bother to change on my account.

I am wondering about Dreamweaver now but it's very expensive at over £300. I believe the learning curve is pretty steep, too. But it seems a waste of time to carry on as I have been. At least half of the visitors to my website can't see what they are supposed to see and probably move on quickly to another site they can view properly.

Playlist for The Horsepower Whisperer

I have created a playlist for The Horsepower Whisperer on imeem, the social networking site. These are the songs that have inspired me to write The Horsepower Whisperer. I hope you enjoy this list as much as I do.

See how it emerges from the blackness!



Who could resist a track entitled Explosion on Uranus? I couldn't. But it's such a great track I didn't try very hard.

Think of this playlist as a movie soundtrack. It's all part of the multi-media Soul Trader experience.

Most tracks play full length but some are only 30 second samples due to licensing restrictions. However, I can recommend that you get the full version from itunes or on CD even. Then you can have the full length version of The Horsepower Whisperer playlist.

You can always make your own. It's incredible but not everyone has the taste as me.

I like this stuff so much I want to share it with you. I envy those of you who are about to discover this music for the first time. What a treat you'll have! Some of this stuff may be a bit obscure. Okay most of it is very obscure but I can't understand why artists like The Prisoners, The Hellacopters or The Flaming Sideburns are not world famous.

In the parallel universe of Anarchadia, they are are hugely popular and very successful. We all new there was something wrong with this universe but we can put this aspect right. So seek out their other tracks, albums and back catalogues.

The problem with reading

Perusing the bookshelves in Edinburgh airport last week gave me the chance to consider the appearance of my own books. The books on offer all had quotes about how good they were, sometimes from papers that I don't read or from people I'd never heard of. Some had "International Bestseller", "No 1 Bestseller" or "His/Her Latest Bestseller".

Obviously I can't put any of this stuff on my book cover. Well, I could but I'd be lying. I believe getting independent endorsements must be very important for any book but I don't think they're independent any more. Journalists rave about their friends' books in the literary sections of the newspapers even without reading them, as was recently proved.

I could put Amazon bestseller on my cover I suppose but I wouldn't be entirely comfortable with it. That's because although it got as high as number 60 in the Top 100 for Contemporary Fantasy it isn't in the Top 100 right now. How is a bestseller defined?

I was also struck by the prices of the books on offer. They were about the same size and the same price as my own book, The Horsepower Whisperer.

There were new books by Terry Pratchett (25 years of the Discworld) and another motoring title from Robbie Coltrane. If you like their earlier stuff you'd like their latest offerings. That's the importance of branding.

So what did I come away with?

Nothing.

No book appealed to me sufficiently for me to buy it. I would much rather look out of the window at the wings waggling and the tyre smoke when we land.

At the same time I would love to be absorbed completely by a good read but it seems to be happening less and less. Quite why this is so, I have no idea. I have started and not finished so much rubbish I exercise caution instead of diving right in. My reading buds have become jaded.

So I am now thinking as a reader as much as an author. Does my book have shelf appeal? Does it entice its prospective audience into picking it up, looking it over, dipping into it and buying it?

As I examine the proof of The Wormton Lamb and work on The Grey Ones, I must somehow check that I'm enjoying reading it as well as writing it. I'm not quite sure how to manage this. The reader/writer thing is like a dual personality. I often write becasue I can't find anything I like to read.

I think the books on offer in the airport lacked real enthusiasm. That's one of my strengths. I've got bags of enthusiasm and it could be a USP - a Unique Selling Point. I don't think any book I saw in the airport had a USP.

Also, those bestsellers will only be on those shelves for a maximum of six weeks before being returned to the publishers for discounting or pulping. I'd rather have a slow burn than an explosive, ephemeral impact. That's just as well really - The Horsepower Whisperer is working up to a slow burn.

Would "Cult author's latest" on my cover make any difference? I've left some room in readiness for quotes but as far as I am concerned I don't think I - as a reader - would be swayed that easily. For me it's reader feedback that matters.

I must admit, though - sometimes my covers start to look a little bare without them. But are readers and book purchasers as jaded with these techniques? Do you really want two pages of endorsements from newspapers and celebrities in the book you are about to buy?

My book covers are designed to look good on Amazon and for that you need clarity. Some of the titles in the airport were unintelligible, especially the girly ones with their curly writing.

Maybe that's deliberate. It's a guarantee I won't pick up any chick lit.

Bob Blackman interviewed in The Herald

Today I featured in a Little Interview in The Herald, The Voice of Plymouth. I only just qualified for inclusion as I live in Liskeard but when I pointed out that I work in the dockyard Features Editor Martin Freeman relented and sent me his questions.

What was particularly instructive for me was that only one of my publicity photographs was of a suitable size and quality for reproduction in the paper. So no scary pictures of me blowing up oil refineries like there are on my blogs.

I'm pleased with the result, though, and had to restrain myself from showing everybody on the train this evening my picture in the paper. I might one day manage to be blase about this kind of thing but even if I could I doubt if I will. I still think it's something to be excited about.

Click on the adjacent pictures to see larger images.

Why hard times are important for the internet

Somebody was asking me today about my books and how they were selling. I said that recently sales have dropped off significantly and told her that some of my self publishing acquaintances are actually mothballing some of their projects until the economy pick up.

As soon as I'd opened my mouth to explain this I realised that this was entirely the wrong approach - mothballing book projects, not opening my mouth (although some may beg to differ).

The internet is a cheap form of entertainment for many people and if I can entertain them for free now (free podcasts coming up soon, folks!) then that will probably build up my goodwill - well, their goodwill towards me will be built up.

Dreckly (there's a beautiful Cornish word) they will take the plunge and buy my book(s). It all comes back to the rule of seven - impinge on your customers awareness to motivate them to buy your goods or services.

So mothballing now is entirely the wrong thing to do. If the competition for people's attention is weakened now, there is an opportunity to get me, my brand and my books much better known as surfers search the net for something interesting because they can't afford more expensive forms of entertainment.

And if you are selling some sort of escapism from the grim realities of 21st century living - as I am - the they are more likely to take notice, too

This is a big guess but when it comes to mothballing or not mothballing, guess which one I'm going to do?

Sir Walter Scott land

Have you ever tried reading a Walter Scott novel? I had a go at Waverley many years ago but couldn’t get on with it. Obviously a lot of people rate him. Or rated him. Sir Walter Scott practically defined what it was to come from the other end of this island. They even named the nation after him.

I was visiting my – ahem – Scottish relatives in Edinburgh last weekend and it struck me that Sir Walter Scott is probably unique in defining national character. Edinburgh is the best capital city of any country in my opinion - not that I've sampled that many, as I prefer open spaces. Snuggled down among its beautiful buildings, their stones blackened with history, and looking out at the bare green peak of Arthur's Seat beyond Edinburgh's towers, I reckon I can understand what Walt was trying to capture. Edinburgh even has a writer’s museum devoted in part to Scott and his scribblings. I didn’t go in because it didn’t sound very exciting - a bit dusty and smelling of chewed pencils - but I did like his monument, a marvellous interpretation in stone of Thunderbird 3.

It also occurred to me that an author, somewhere, is missing a trick – Sir Walter’s trick. Nobody has yet, for example, renamed themselves Sir Robert Eng and written about the English nation. Obviously, I can’t do it because I’m on the wrong side of the Tamar but as a legitimate marketing ploy I reckon it could really work for the right person.

Poem about The Horsepower Whisperer

I've been sent a poem about The Horsepower Whisperer from one of my readers. Although it's about Nick Hob, the Horsepower Whisperer himself, these verses were inspired by my forthcoming book The Wormton Lamb.

Matt Kelly's had sight of the new story that will be out in Spring 2009 since he enjoyed my first book The Horsepower Whisperer so much.

This is another first in my publishing adventure. Again, I don't think the excitement about this sort of thing will ever wear off. Thanks Matt.



I had a visit from a man in black
A strange, wriggly rucksack upon his back
He made me an offer, too good to be true
I really should have thought it through
A chance to reach my lifetime’s goal
And all for the price of my untainted soul



I went to Wormton on the Tram
And was really surprised how well it ran
No screeching of parts or scrunching of wheels
No clanging of iron or deathly squeals
We had no derailments or jumping the line
Goodness me, we even arrived on time!



I heard a bleat or was it a roar
Rumbling to me across the moor
Flattened bushes and damaged trees
The Wormton Tram brought to its knees
Singeing fleece and a lamb-like caper
“Lamb attacks Tram” in the local paper

Computers - what a waste of time

I don't know if it's a case of time flying by when you're enjoying yourself but when I sit down at my laptop of evening, just to do check e-mails or update my website, the next thing I know it's bedtime.

Some friends of mine don't have a PC and tell me that all their friends with PCs tell them that home computers are a waste of time. That would include me. Here I am blogging about it.

I was putting together a new media resources site but one of the photos wouldn't work. It looked fine on my machine but once uploaded onto my host server all I got was a blank box and the title of the image. It took me two evenings to sort it out. A more sensible person would have given up. I still don't know why it didn't work. In the end, I called the image file the same name but with an "A" suffix and that worked.

Yesterday I finally gritted my teeth and ordered my new desktop. I'll still have this little laptop for word processing but I'll need the bigger, faster machine for the more memory hungry and speed sensitive tasks like uploading videos and doing my podcasts. There's also a new USN microphone coming my way in the post from Germany.

But it's clear that I should be getting out and about more. It's all part of the life/PC balance.

My friends without a PC have a telly instead. They don't watch it much. I don't have a telly. All my friends with them complain there's nothing worth watching. I reckon tellies really are wastes of time - now that I can watch archive pop videos on YouTube whenever I want to.

Lliam West, self publishing sensation

Lliam West is a self-publishing legend in Cornwall. You'll see his books in many different outlets but all those outlets have one thing in common - their Cornishness. Starting with Pandora in 2001, he's sold over 20,000 copies of his books by focussing on where his readership is likely to congregate as they look for a little piece of Cornwall to take back with them. And Liam's evocative thrillers are just what they need.

I caught up with Lliam on his stall at the Royal Cornwall Show at the weekend. He told me that what I consider to be a remarkable sales record has been achieved by a great deal of hard work and driving up and down the county.

"I'll approach a gift shop and offer them my books on a sale or return basis if I see they have some empty shelf space. I'm aiming at the "grey" market so feature a big house somewhere in Cornwall and many links back to the past like a secret mission undertaken in World War Two, the effects of which are only just coming to light in a more contemporary setting."

In the case of Pandora, the big house is the pub of that name at Restronguet. In the case of Frenchman's Gold, it's Ince Castle overlooking the waters of the River Lynher. For The Queen's General the focus is Tredethy House on the Camel estuary, once the home of Prince Chula of Siam. Lliam chooses each one carefully and does a lot of research into the real stories surrounding his chosen settings.

"It's not just people in the UK who buy my books. As a result of the Cornish diaspora, I've sold them all over the world. In fact, the Cornish market cannot be saturated."

For me the most impressive thing is that Lliam has achieved his sales record without using the internet very much. He has his Tamarisk West website but the vast majority of his sales are made through getting the book in front of its prospective audience. That literally means gift shops, fudge shops and art galleries. His success hasn't happened over night, either. It's been a consistent campaign building up trading relationships with many small businesses.

Curiously, Lliam's not had many sales through local bookshops. His books are there but it seems his potential customers frequent the other outlets that he also has covered.

I think there is a very important lesson for all self-publishers here.

Lliam goes out to find his audience and gets his book where they can see it. In those circumstances, what the book trade do with it or think of it, is largely irrelevant. I've met many mainstream authors who set great store in how the book trade operates. I've often felt that their focus shouldn't be the book sellers but those who buy the books - the author's readers. Liam's success has served to re-inforce that opinion.

I'm in the papers

The Cornish Guardian is running a piece on me this week. I went into my local factors to be a new alternator for my Sierra XR4x4 and am on first name terms with most of them since I am a regular customer of theirs. Anyway, Sara said to me, "I saw you in the Western Morning News this week."

This was a complete surprise to me. I'd sent out press packs and a CD with a load of fascinating stuff about me to the local media but had no idea they were going to use it.

I bought a Cornish Guardian and there I am in glorious colour, holding my book.

Now I know I should be cool, calm and collected about it but I'm really very excited. I don't think the novelty will ever wear off.

It's also a valuable lesson. My press kit works. And this is just the beginning. I have to keep this kind of exposure up.

For the time being though, I shall treasure the warm feeling this little experience has given me.

I need more revs - so let's feed the pigs

I've been digging away at my IT problems over the last few weeks. The most significant ones were of video quality, stemming from dropped video frames and invalid arguments. Well, I think I now have the answer.

As I thought it means a new PC. Laptop hard drives only work at 5400rpm. Typical desktop speeds are 7200rpm. My little Acer is just not quick enough on the uptake.

So to what should I upgrade? I did the sensible thing and asked my webhosts, Flying Flounder.

Eric and Helen live not far from me in the Cornish countryside. "Have you ever seen a pig eat?" Eric asked me.

I have but not recently. So we put on some boots and visited Babe and Curly in their comfortable sty. We even tried Eric's Farmer's Boy weighing tape on them. You put it around the amiable pig's armpits and the circumference of the said pig then translates into weight. Babe and Curly turned out not to be too fat but "nearly
ready."

Later we retired to Eric's workshop and he wrote down some items of hardware to provide a solid foundation for my publishing empire. First and foremost is a SATA drive of 10,000pm. Next is a dual core processor. Finally, Eric recommended a separate graphics card.

He even took me on a guided tour of the inside of a high spec PC so that I would recognise the right bits in the shops. Now all I have to do is find machines with these features and compare prices.

Eric and Helen also threatened to feed me (unfortunately I'd just eaten), gave me duck eggs, sausages and pork chops from their last pigs and a children's book to read - Uncle by J P Martin, illustrated by Quentin Blake.

Now that's what I call IT support.

Creative juices

A cider connoisseur sent me the link to this YouTube video. I particularly like the down to earth way it portrays creative types in the south west.

Blogging for a year

After 12 months of blogging, I don't know if it's helping my publishing ambitions or not. It's probably not the sort of blog that a mainstream publishing house would seize and publish but just saying that sounds like a dare. Go on, publishing houses - if you're reading this - unlikely - prove me wrong!

Blogging can't be doing the Bob Blackman brand any harm. Can it?

And now that I've dared the publishing houses to publish this blog, maybe a search engine somewhere will pick up on this and guide their searches to me.

Just by way of an experiment - I dare publishing houses to publish this blog!

For the internet is truly a wonderful thing. A number of perfect strangers have contacted me through this blog and my other one entitled Engine Punk, which budded off from this one when I realised the focus of my blog wasn't clear.

I get the feeling I am casting ripples on a lake and as they spread out they reach the far shore and gradually come back to me. I've set up something up and its results won't be obvious for some time yet, maybe another year or so.

5 letter branding

Phil Hosken, chairman of the Trevithick Society, tells me that, when it comes to branding, a five letter word is important. Some companies go to great lengths to create a suitable five letter word for their corporations and trademarks. It's not universal but once you start the five letter word game, it's difficult to stop.

Says Phil, "One sees companies like Toyota and Panasonic choosing prestige names such as Lexus and Lumix for their top of the range models. Think of made-up names like Yaris. Notice the Austin 7 cars weren't called Chapmans (or Colins come to that!). What happened to Turners? Have you noticed a change in emphasis from Chrysler to Dodge for imports from Daimler-Chrysler? General Motors, which wavered about using the acronym GM, is now solidly known as GM (Gee-em). Same with BLMC. A whole host of names from Wolseley to Nuffield Tractors filtered down to Em-Gee Rover."

Consequently, Phil chose the name Be-Tec for his zero carbon emissions engine design.

I hadn't heard this before but reckon he's onto something. Having set myself and Anarchadia as brands - okay so I'm in the process of setting them up - I don't really want to re-brand myself so soon.

What sounds better? Bob Blackman or Bob Black?

Bob Blackman and Anarchadia will just have to be the exceptions that prove Phil's rule.

Does my website look better?

Well, does it? I was visiting some friends recently and when they entered my site the navigation elements across the bottom of some pages were all jumbled up.

They didn't seem to notice, though, but I did. I thought I'd sorted this out but some people's screens are narrower than mine.

The navigation menus across the top looked alright, however, so I have attempted to address the problem by adopting a similar menu bar within its go-faster stripes along the bottom of each page.

I hope this has made things better but I can't tell on my screen. So this is where all you good people in cyberspace can help. If anything still looks odd on my webpages please let me know.

First fan mail

At risk of sounding blase, I've had fan e-mails before now. However, last week I had my first ever real piece of fan mail and I'm very excited about it. Here it is and what a good choice of subject for a postcard. I know it's not cool but I still get excited that some complete stranger has enjoyed my work. And thanks to it being a postcard, my postman must be pretty impressed as well. So I may sound blase but I'm not really.

I think this justifies the funny feeling that I've had for some time. I seem to be creating ripples on the internet and in people's minds. Sometimes the ripples reach the far shore and come back to me.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to drum up some local media interest but so far it hasn't happened. (That's why I haven't been blogging for a while, that and Blogger not accepting blogs for a bit.)

So far the ripples haven't come back to me but I have that funny feeling that if I splash around a bit more they will.

In the meantime, if anyone else wants to send me fan mail, be my guest!