Brian’s been released into the wild, with analogue and digital versions on the shelves and available online.

Big thanks to the Sandstone Press team for the graft and love they’ve put in.

… takes aspects of many genres and combines them with staccato sentences that punch with such precision that the experience of reading the novel borders on the delirious. Quite simply, The Folded Man reads like Coetzee with ADHD.

Dan Ellis, probably better known as @utterbiblio, has written a belting review of THE FOLDED MAN for Litro magazine. Dan gets right into the guts of the book (bad language, aggression and nastiness included) and comes out the other side with some very lovely stuff to say. ‘Chuffed to bits’ doesn’t really cover it.

For a smallish lump of squashed, sliced, graffitied tree, this beautiful-looking thing causes one of the weirdest feelings. Or even twelve of them at the same time: chufties, relief, embarrassment, hope, fear, pride, anxiety, awkwardness, gratefulness, nakedness, bewilderment, gratitude.

To be honest I’m still waiting for Jeremy Beadle to bob over and show me where all the hidden cameras are. But if he doesn’t show up, there will be wine. So come and help me launch the bugger at Waterstones Deansgate, Manchester on 16^th May, or Daunt Books Holland Park, London on 22^nd May. I’ll be there, pretending as though I have a single clue what I’m doing.

Pretty much exactly two years ago I wrote a little post about nine things you can do to get yourself in the mood for writing.

It’s taken about that long to think up some more. But since writing is like MRSA – grows resilient to the same old tactics, and then kills you with cigarettes, alcohol, or collapsing shelves, depending on how successful you are – I reckon it’s good to stay on your toes.

So: here are seven more ways to trick yourself into writing.

Don’t tell anyone what you’re writing

You know those things you do when nobody looks? That you’d criticise someone for doing if you caught them?

I mean things like picking your nose, or fiddling around with your genitals.

That’s how writing should be.

Writing should be a dirty little habit that no one catches you doing. That makes you feel a bit good and a bit naughty and even a bit shameful if it’s truthful. Writing isn’t meant to be glamorous. It’s a process. It’s like rolling around in tonnes of letter-y shit for months on end. So be the pig, stop worrying if it doesn’t feel amazing all the time, and get stuck in.

Continue reading →

Sandstone Press label-mate Zoe Venditozzi, whose just-published novel ANYWHERE’S BETTER THAN HERE you should definitely read (and whose surname I can never spell right the first time), tagged me in that Next Big Thing writers’ meme doing the rounds. About a month ago.

At the risk of giving everyone FOLDED MAN fatigue – no known cure – with five months still left before publication, I’ve only just got round to putting them up here. Sorry Zoe.

What’s the working title of your next book?

These days it’s called THE FOLDED MAN. Which I’ve rammed down enough throats already. But at one point it was called THE BRITTLE MERMAID, which was too obvious and made it all sound a bit Robert Rankin.

Where did the idea come from for the book? 

Not in rivers of inspiration, but in those drips you can hear from the bathroom tap at 3am.

I think I caught bits from one of those awful manipulative documentaries about a girl born with Sirenomelia (mermaid syndrome), which the novel’s main character has. A person I knew in real life who’d lived with his disabilities for a long time. And Manchester itself, its history and its characters, and all the little contradictions and quirks that you learn flitting between the hub-towns and the city centre itself. And then some dodgy fringe politics, conspiracies. Too much time on the internet.

Continue reading →

Imagine me whispering for a second.

Sometimes I get pretty bored of writing.

Really.

It’s why I know I don’t have the stamina and the diligence for non-fiction. The staying power for a whodunnit. The wherewithal to bash out a tense techno-thriller. Or the super-stretchy imagination you need for hard SF.

It’s why I look at all these writers on Twitter saying they’ve written six million words that day and want to puke all over my laptop.

It’s also why the idea of going on a writing holiday makes me want to put my head in a blender.

Continue reading →

There aren’t many ways to announce these things without sounding like a right bloody sod-sock. But I’ve always  liked the classic, this-is-still-a-kind-of-job way — let’s call it the Philip K Dick way — of saying you’ve sold a novel to a publisher. Possibly because it sounds like you might be able to eat again.

So: on the back of the Dundee International Book Prize shortlisting, my brilliant agent has sold The Folded Man to Sandstone Press. Further proof as if it weren’t already obvious from the blurb that agents and publishers do take risks. That the world of publishing doesn’t always tread carefully. And for me, affirmation that even if it’s a tricky sell, a prickly concept, belief goes a hell of a way.

Owing to the time necessary to get the prize-winner’s book made, I’ve known for quite a while now. I’ve just been sitting on it, fizzing away. And now Mr Jacob Appel has been announced as the worthy winner of this year’s prize, it’s lovely to say that being one of two runners-up still feels like winning.

A bit like Will Young and Gareth Gates.

Excited doesn’t even come close. I’m a very lucky boy.

Not long back, Caroline Smailes put out a submission call for 100-word pieces of fiction inspired by songs on the YouTubes. Every penny from the resulting anthology would go to One in Four – an important charity that supports victims of sexual abuse and violence.

From today, you can buy the finished anthology as an e-book from Amazon. It’s called 100 RPM; it features handsome Mr Kershaw from the 1980s; and in there you’ll find a hundred stories including ‘Toilet Reading’ by me, which is mainly about moles, but not those little buggers who ruin lawns.

My story draws inspiration from The Rat, by The Walkmen, which is a prickly song that reminds me of a prickly person. But it’s not mine you should download 100 RPM for: this is a sparkling collection and it’s well worth your quids. Or quid.