An Election is Announced

(With acknowledgements to Sydney Carter's "Down Below".)


Well you’re working in the dark, when you vote
Not like walking in the park, when you vote
All the bastards lie to you
And you ‘ates ‘em through and through
And they won’t do nowt fer you, when you vote

Oh, they say that things will change, when you vote
Over policies wide-ranged, when you vote
But the fact is you’ll be caught
And your hopes will come to naught
And the only change is short, when you vote.

Oh, they say they’ll turn the page, when you vote
It’s the start of a new age, when you vote
But it’s goin’ to piss you off
When some new throats starts to quaff
And it’s new snouts in the trough, when you vote.

There ain't nobody to trust, when you vote
Cos the bleedin’ systems bust, when you vote
They’re supposed to work for you
But there ain’t one as ‘as a clue
And the truth cannot break through, when you vote.

But we’ll all just go along, and we’ll vote
By the nose be led 'eadlong, ‘til we vote
Then we find the bright new way
Looks a lot like yesterday
And the bastards get to stay, when you vote.

The Prophets of Baal - Audiobook

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"The Prophets of Baal" Audiobook Pending

 

I am happy to report that a major exercise to produce an author-narrated audiobook of "The Prophets of Baal" has been completed.

The recording worked out a tad short of nineteen hours for approximately 163,000 words. This averages about 143 words per minute, as delivered to the publisher, which I hope listeners will find a satisfactory storytelling speed.

This week, I have received confirmation that the recording passed quality control and the audiobook received approval for release to retailers. I understand that it may take a couple of weeks to become available, and I will let you know when it does.

In the unlikely event that anyone cannot wait to hear a sample of my reading style, you can always check out the recordings of Yorkshire poetry on my YouTube channel.

Writing a Classic

 Classics require to be written without fear.

When I was first published professionally, I joined an online forum which had many useful features, but on which you would get demands for censorship as soon as you strayed into controversial territory. (Being English, I had very little idea of how immune to criticism certain issues were in the US). You would also get quite horrendously politically-correct offerings which, to me, were almost unreadable in their sanctimony.

I well remember receiving a criticism on a story I wrote about The Albigensian Crusade, informing me I was being offensive to Catholics. I remember thinking, if modern Catholics are offended by their own church’s history, it’s going to be difficult to write about some subjects at all.

Now, one thing we know about fashionable morality is that today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping. It also happens that modern identity politics is so destructive of social cohesion that either it, or society, cannot last long. In the former case, no one at all will want to read today’s politically-correct writing in two decades’ time; in the latter case, there’ll be no-one to read it anyway. Already half the population or more does not want to read what well-regarded writers of today are writing because they find it insufferably puritanical or intolerant.

Classics cannot be flavour of this month. Villains need to be nasty. Insoluble problems need to be stressful situations. People need to lose as well as win. The unspeakable needs to be spoken. Otherwise, we should give up writing and take up making blancmange.

What we, as writers, must resist is the temptation to self-censor because we fear the mob. Good writing may be loved by some, hated by others, but it is never bland.

How can you begin a short story without knowing how it ends? (Quora)

There is a long-standing division of practice between the planners (or plotters) and the pantsters (or improvisers) of the writing world.

The plotters are probably better placed to provide standard submissions to publishers who like specific types of story, written in ways that they know their customers are happy with. In other words, plotters can write consistent work to a consistent pattern which they know is going to sell. They are good at commercial writing.

I belong to the second group, which means I usually begin a story with no real idea of how it is going to end. Indeed, one of my main motivations to keep going is to find out how it ends. Sometimes I need to go back and adjust earlier bits of the story so as to foreshadow the end that I arrived at rather than the one I may have once thought I was working towards.

Not all original work is good. Sometimes different is worse. But every now and again, a pantster will come up with something innovatory, original, and good. And it won’t sell.

All too rarely, an original work will get past the publishers’ submissions filter system known as slush readers (or assistant editors), who are usually schooled in conformity and tend to reject submissions that don’t fit their employers’ known preferences.

If a pantster story reaches an editor who is willing to take risks, it has a chance of publication. That editor may even flag your work to ensure that future submissions also get through to him.

And very, very rarely, one of these stories will become so popular that it makes your name and a star is born.

In other words, if you shoot for the stars you probably won’t hit them, but you’ll have fun trying. If you need your writing to pay the bills, you should probably write what you already know is going to sell.