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Nobody Said It Would Be Easy!

26/9/2012

Someone direct-messaged me on Twitter this week offering me an opportunity, that if I bought their book for 99 cents, in return they'd re-tweet my Twitter messages for a whole month! Presumably the person in question couldn't care less whether I read their book or what I thought of it, the only point is presumably to get enough sales to climb up the Kindle chart? Not only does this approach reek of desperation, but surely it's the sort of practice that can only bring indie authors into disrepute? We've all heard of authors (not just the independent ones!) who've composed their own glowing 5 star reviews, which to my mind is an even worse crime because it completely undermines the integrity of the review process. There was a report in the Telegraph recently about a fairly prominent history professor (now being sued apparently) who was using his wife to write admiring reviews for his work whilst at the same time she was cobbling together dimissive ones for his rivals. I read that this process of writing fake reviews even has a name and it is called "sockpuppeting". Personally I don't care what the practice is called, and the only word I can think of to describe it is reprehensible!

Anyone who's published a book knows how hard it is and how vitally important reader reviews are - especially for indies! It can be frustrating when someone kindly takes the time to contact you and mention how much they enjoyed reading your book, but doesn't actually get round to posting a review about it. It's also quite disconcerting sometimes how widely different people's tastes and expectations are concerning the stuff they read. I know that not everyone who chooses to read Niedermayer & Hart will absolutely love it without any reservations. I am a grown-up and I can accept this (sometimes)! Some of the people who have posted reviews on behalf of Niedermayer & Hart are known personally to me, but the majority are not; whatever they wrote about the book (known or not!) was done at their own discretion, except in two cases where I contacted the reviewer and asked them to alter a certain line which would have 'spoiled' the plot. My wife, son, friend and editor Peter Bolwell have not posted any reviews on behalf of the book either as themselves or under pseudonyms. Because of their close involvement in the project I'd consider it quite wrong if they did so.

Nobody is after bad reviews of course and we all want to sell our books. Book buyers don't always buy when they're supposed to and when they do read the flippin' book they don't always see it the way they're meant to! Seems like the only ideal solution would be a world in which I am both the author and the book's perfect reader! A kind of narcissistic love-fest!

Book-reading strikes me as one of the most subjective of all pleasures. And, as I've said, I have to accept that people have widely different expectations when it comes to the stuff they read. I don't personally understand how anyone could give Catch 22 or To Kill a Mockingbird anything less than five stars, or how anyone could fail to love Dickens! Yes, I know, shocking but true!

Niedermayer & Hart isn't a slim novella with characters named Tristram and Arabella who have fallen on hard times and are forced to rent out rooms at their chateau (a very small chateau you understand!) in Provence. N & H is a 162,000 word story that is meant to be enjoyed as a ripping yarn, grip you by the whatsits (apologies if you don't have any whatsits!) and keep you turning its pages right to the bitter end. If you buy it and read it, I sincerely hope you'll like it because I'd like you to buy and read my next book too and the one I'm currently working on after that! If you could spare the time to write a short review on Amazon or Goodreads I'd be very grateful - believe me it is so important! I'll be like a puppy with two tails if you not only leave a review but also press the 'Like' button on Amazon and my Facebook author page. Unlike the publishing houses who can introduce their new authors through newspapers and advertising campaigns etc, for us indie guys it's all down to the honest response of our readers' reviews. It strikes me as a very bad thing indeed to renege on that trust by using any of the techniques described in the first paragraph.

After all, nobody held a gun to my head and insisted that I write a book. Nobody said it would be easy! And what's more I'm doing something I totally love!

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Do Not Go Gentle ...

19/9/2012

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At the moment I'm flat-out writing by day and when I get the time to read (usually in bed at the day's end) it's generally a piece of research. I'm not complaining, it's interesting and I know it will make the new book I'm writing far better for having done it. However, recently my wife has taken to reading the much loved stories in the collection A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas, and sometimes as I catch her smiling happily at my side I must admit to feeling the occasional if teensiest pang of envy. When the prose is just too good to keep to herself, she shares a passage with me. We whoop and chuckle with delight, marvel at the colour of saying and Thomas's brilliance with words.

Dylan Thomas was probably one of the biggest influences on me as a boy growing-up. When I was five my parents moved from Aberdare in the Cynon Valley to a village called Gowerton five miles west of Swansea. The "ugly lovely town" he speaks of in a great deal of his work was also the place where I knocked around and spent my formative years. When I return to Swansea now on visits home to see my mother, the seagulls squawk the same, yet I barely recognise the place, it has changed so much. The majority of the grimy, teeming streets of two-up two-downs that stretched for miles from St Mary's Church to the Brangwyn Hall are mostly gone now. As has, as it seems to me (easy for me to say as someone who now lives quite far away!), much of the character I loved about the old town: the old bus station and the endless queues for buses and toilets; the scalding hot, weak, sweet teas always on tap in the bus station cafe, and served by the woman with the cross-eyes; the smell of fish and chips from Bellis' Chipshop, caked and drowning in lots of salt and vinegar in greasy newspaper that always left your fingers inky black; pikelets and Welsh-cakes baking at Coakley's Cafe on Oxford Street. There were plenty of unappetising smells too, coming from the dingy alleyways strewn with litter.

I had teachers at my school who'd been to school at the same time as Dylan Thomas. My RE teacher, affectionately known as Zeke, described young Dylan as a thug. I believe my English teacher was himself taught English by Dylan's father. Thomas the fallible man had of course passed away by then - but we didn't care about any of that, we had the legend! As boys with a burning passion for the arts, my friends and I ate and drank his words. He has always struck me as a writer who can speak directly and with immediacy to the youthful mind. He was undoubtedly one of the biggest culural influences upon me in my early life. On Saturday afternoons my pals and I took coffee in the Kardomah cafe because Dylan had, and after opening time, under-age we sipped our beer slyly in The Three lamps public-house, because that's where Dylan drank (the fact the original had been destroyed courtesy of A Hitler and his Luftwaffe was we felt of little or no importance!).

I've been fortunate enough to be involved in three productions of Under Milk Wood during my life as an actor, and each time, and with each production being some years apart, I've always been amazed yet again at how fresh and wonderful his language is.

I think I know what I'll be reading next.

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Sporting Failures

12/9/2012

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I once played an inept Welsh games teacher in four episodes of a series for London Weekend Television called Drummonds. They were the last four episodes of the second series and there was talk of going for a third, but sadly this wasn't to be. On reflection I hope it had nothing to do with my lifelong shortcomings when it comes to sport? I don't think so, the character was meant to be accident prone! In my first episode he fell off the wall-bars and broke his collar-bone and spent the next three episodes with his arm in a sling.

This was quite possibly the nearest I ever came to being typecast as an actor. My late father was an excellent sportsman and had he been born into another era might easily have become a professional footballer; my brother too was very skilled at sport; however, when it came to me, oh dear! At secondary school on the end of term report my games teacher Robert Evans once wrote, "Impossible to comment on this boy!" I think this suggests that whenever there was a games or PE lesson, I'd generally absented myself with a (often forged) sick note! Today, in the most enlightened schools I think I would have been diagnosed as dyspraxic rather than labelled 'hopeless' or 'useless'. When I trained to become an actor at RADA the dance and movement teachers clearly thought I was either messing about or plain not trying. Surely, nobody could be that badly coordinated?

So perhaps you can understand how I don't naturally enjoy a warm glow when I think about sport. In fact, when I think of my schooldays, it's quite the opposite. Those humiliating team-picking moments in the changing rooms, when you pray you'll be picked before it gets down to the very last boy (usually not the case!).

This summer Britain has been the world's focus for sporting activity. First the Olympics, then the Paralympics, and I must say I really enjoyed every single bit I watched. It really is wonderful to see great athletes perform and an unusual experience for us Brits to see our team winning so many medals. A great boost I think to our national pride - quite welcome in light of the gloomy economic forecasts that predict some austere times may be lurking just ahead. The Olympics and Paralympics seem, too, to have helped us embrace our racial diversity and to applaud excellence in human achievement, even when it does not live up to the ideal embodiment of physical perfection. Thanks to all the athletes from all nations who took part in both the Olympics and Paralympics. Your contribution was truly awesome! I think Lord Coe and his team did a fantastic job organising it all! Incidentally, what honour can you confer on someone who's already a Lord, is there anything higher? Perhaps the Queen will consider adopting him?

And not content with a gold medal, good old Andy Murray bagged the US Open yesterday! After 76 years since the last time anyone from these islands won it, our national pride must be in serious danger of spontaneously combusting! Very, very well done that man!

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Catching Some Summer Rays!

5/9/2012

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The Roman Amphitheatre Verona

It is widely acknowledged that 'a change is as good as a rest'. Which about sums up the kind of holiday we go for here in the Johnson house. Judith and I are incapable of sitting on a beach in brilliant sunshine for more time than it takes to dry-off after a swim, get the shorts and t-shirts back on and toddle off to do something else. We tend to choose places for our holidays within easy reach of at least one cultural centre. Last year in Lake Garda we explored Verona thoroughly, as well as many of the interesting places along the lakeside like Riva Del Garda, which have either a museum or an historic site to visit.

They say travel broadens the mind - pretty often the holiday food is so good it can broaden the waistband too! But you do learn some useful things - I now know where to find the best take-away pizza in Verona! In fact I plan to write a short story some time about this particular pizza business: the honest diligent husband who was always hot, busy cooking and serving; while his wife, immaculately turned-out and looking like she'd just had a massage and manicure only appeared when the shop was full. This woman had developed a highly efficient way of accounting, because she never rounded a price down but always up to the next 50 cents. Although we came away from her shop after a week of pizzas a couple of pounds heavier and a few Euros lighter she did give me a lovely idea for a story - so, fair exchange I reckon!

Us in Austria (how do they always know we're British?)

This Summer we went back to the Tyrol, Austria, to a little village called Soll. We'd had a really lovely time there a couple of years back. The hotel we stayed at last time has since changed hands so this visit we took accommodation at the Tyrol (Tyrol Am Wilder Kaiser if you want its full name). Josef and the rest of the family team who run the hotel really looked after us well. Our room was spacious and comfortable and like everywhere in Austria it was kept extremely clean. If you like walking in beautiful mountains, swimming in mountain lakes and riding on cable-cars to your heart's delight (like we do) then I'd highly recommend both Soll and the Hotel Tyrol.

The Heldenorgel, Kufstein

We meant to go to Innsbruck (we've been before but had always felt we had unfinished business with the city having visited last time on a Monday when the art gallery was shut! And we hoped to see lots of other stuff too!) but this year we were enjoying the wonderful mountain walks and sunshine too much and ran out of time to get there. However, we did go to Kufstein on our one rainy day to see the Heldenorgel being played. The organ is set at the base of an old fortress and has been played twice daily (midday and 6pm) in memory of Ausrtria's war dead since 1931. It is an incredible piece of machinery with the organ pipes at the top of the tower (most easily reached via the funicular railway!).

The four main villages of the Wilder Kaiser region, Soll, Schefau, Elmau and Going go out of their way to make their Summer visitors welcome. Many visitors return time and time again and all the Gondola/ cable-car half-stations have great playgrounds for entertaining children. They allow the children to create their own world without imposing too much that's been thought up by adults. Our son would have loved it there I know had we discovered it when he was a child. Incidentally, I didn't see one screaming child or irrate parent during the whole two weeks.

Yes, they always know. But how?

So a change, a rest, lots of fresh air, lots of walking up and down mountains (phew!), great food, great hotel, great village and lots of nice Austrians, Germans and British people.

Now I'm back at home again and it's down to some serious writing. Lovely jubbly!

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Nobody Said It Would Be Easy!

Do Not Go Gentle ...

Sporting Failures

Catching Some Summer Rays!

M J Johnson

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