Stuart’s Plague-Times Newsletter Number The Sixth (Ultimate Pimpage Edition)
Way-Back-In-The-Dark-Ages PLC. is embarrassed to present: oldness
Picture the scene: it’s April 2020, and there’s a new sheriff in town. Probably only passing through. On his horse. Maybe he’s going to pick out some curtains, have a bite to eat, pick up a couple of nice postcards to send to his mum before he leaves.* When suddenly, this arrives in his inbox:
* Only to discover that he’s forgotten to buy any stamps. Doh!
Stuart’s Plague-Times Newsletter Number The Sixth (Ultimate Pimpage Edition)
Greetings lovely Newsletterers, welcome one and all to the latest travesty-word-salad of doom that has barged into your inbox like a drunken badger trying to find its house keys!
As you can see from the title, this episode is being inflicted upon you because, at long last, I have a new book out, and my publishers think it would be nice if people bought a copy. And, if you’ve been reading these so-called-“newsletter” things for a while, you’ll know that the lovely people who buy my books are supporting Onion’s food habit. Which is considerable. HUGE, in fact. They don’t call him The Feline Wheelie Bin, or Captain The Fatpants for nothing, you know. No, it costs money.
So, bearing in mind that I shall be pimping the living doodahs out of No Less the Devil as we go, let’s get this motherfudger underway, shall we?
ITEM NUMBER THE FIRST: In Which Our Bearded Protagonist Advances His Plans To Annoy His Publisher And Agent
Do you remember, last time, I told you about Fiona wanting me to write another Slightly Twisted Children’s Book For Slightly Twisted Children™? Well things are actually progressing on that front. At my end, at least. I now have a title for said STCBFSTC book:
AGENT BEETROOT AND THE ACADEMY OF EVIL
OK, so I don’t have much more than that, but it’s a start, right?
Actually, that’s a lie, I also have an idea for the plot and a pretty good idea what the final scene will be. No idea what happens other than that, but we’ve all got to start somewhere. I also have this rather natty picture of Agent Beetroot* that I did because I needed it for a secret project.
Now I think it’s pretty natty, and would make a most excellent T-shirt. Especially once I’ve come up with a suitable logo for the B.T.R.T. (British Tactical Response Team). But as has been pointed out on many occasions, I don’t get out much.
The trouble with this kind of thing – coming up with a STCBFSTC – is that if there’s one thing publishers (even nice ones) hate it’s when writers won’t stick to doing the kind of thing you’ve asked them to do and want to go rampaging off to play in other genres. And given that my agent is generally there to make sure I don’t do anything career-endingly stupid, he probably won’t be best pleased too. But I really, really fancy having fun with this one. It’s been a long time since The Completely Wholesome Adventures Of Skeleton Bob was released on an unsuspecting world and I have the itch to break out the coloured pencils and acrylic paint again…
I’ve said for years how much I’d love to write a proper children’s book, but I’ve never seriously had a proper bash at it. Skeleton Bob was published to raise money for a teaching mortuary at the University of Dundee*****, and the print run was tiny. Certainly, copies seem to be rarer than hen’s bicycles.
Anyway, I’d like to have a go. So there.
More bulletins as events warrant.
* The fictional Beetroot, not our real Beetroot, because as has been stated many, many times: Beetroot is NOT a secret agent and anyone who claims she is certainly won’t be visited in the middle of the night by people dressed in balaclavas** and bundled into the back of an unmarked van and subjected to an evening of light torture and having to listen to The Archers***.
** They wouldn’t just be wearing balaclavas****, I mean, they’d have proper clothes on and everything. The kind of people who do wet-work and black-ops for top-secret government agencies don’t tend to be naturists with cold ears.
*** I know, I know: THE HORROR!
**** This also very much depends on your definition of “balaclava”, I’m well aware that for some people a balaclava is identical to a ski mask, while for others it’s basically knitted crotchless underwear for your face. Which would probably be quite itchy and not in the least bit erotic. Unless you were into that kind of thing. Pervert.
***** Who are a seriously lovely bunch of folk, and gave me a nice honorary doctorate that I can use to make people turn their heads and cough. I mean, I don’t do that, but I’m pretty certain I’m legally empowered to, if I want.
ITEM NUMBER THE SECOND: In Which People Are Reading The New Book And That Always Freaks Out Our Bearded Protagonist
There’s this weird point in a book’s life when it ceases to be a collection of words, carefully organised into what’s hopefully a pleasing / exciting / readable manner that have never been inflicted on anyone but myself, and becomes a Real Thing. There are several steps on the way to that, of course: editing and copy editing and proofreading, but even by the time we’ve got to the end of that process there’s probably fewer than a dozen people who’ve read it* so even when the finished, hardcovers of loveliness arrive at Casa MacBride it’s still not made that transition to Real Thing.
No, it’s not till the book’s released into the big sticky world that it makes the transformation from wriggly caterpillar to beautiful butterfly … or slimy slug, depending on the reader.
It’s my personal belief that, like quantum particles, a novel exists in a superposition of states, both good, bad, and everywhere in-between until someone actually reads it. Then its wave function is collapsed, and we find out if it’s butterfly or slug. Or even a butterslug**.
If you think that’s just hairy nonsense, I invite you to consider Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was an international phenomenon, a bestseller that romped to the top of the charts and stayed there for ages, spawning a whole cohort of Scandi Noir imitators. I couldn’t make it past the third chapter. Absolutely hated it. Thought it was the biggest case of Emperor’s New Clothes I’d read in years. But you might’ve loved it. And that’s OK. Someone liking or loathing the book doesn’t change the book, it’s still the same words in the same order, but for one person it’s the Best Book In The World and for someone else it’s a Load Of Old Codswallop Wrapped In Nettles And Smeared With Poop. Same book.
*shrug*
Where was I going with this?
Ah, right: No Less the Devil is venturing out and about, getting read by people, and I don’t know if they’ll love it, hate it, or deem it a complete and utter butterslug. But someone sent me a link to a tweet by @AlexJBooks who’d recently read it, and they say:
“80% crime thriller 20% complete insanity. Loved it! Out at the end of April, be warned it’s absolutely 🦇 💩 crazy!”
I’ve never had a book described as “bat-emoji poop-emoji” crazy before, but I’ll take it. I wonder if Transworld will put that on the posters…
* And they’re all usually very nice about it, because we’re all on the same team and they’re nice people and they know that I’m very clued up on how to kill them and dispose of their corpses without attracting attention to myself.
** Which sounds better than a “slugerfly” for some reason. Less slimy…
ITEM NUMBER THE THIRD: In Which A New Game Is Born And You Are All Encouraged To Play Along At Home
Every now and then a little snippet of dialogue pops unbidden into my brain – usually at a wildly inappropriate moment – and I’ll scurry off and write it down, or occasionally try it out on Fiona. If it makes her smile, it’s worth keeping for a book. If it doesn’t there’s no need to waste a Post-it note.
One such occurrence happened a couple of days ago, at lunch, while we were listening to the World at One on Radio4, because neither of us is a “hep young thing” any more. I shan’t go into too many details, because I want to include it in the next book. Not the one I’m writing / editing now, for next year, but the one after that.
Yup, that’s how far in advance I prepare these things, and do I get a parade, shiny medal, and a special hat to wear? Do I bumholes.
Anyway, yes: dialogue.
Actually, it’s not just dialogue that ambushes me whenever it feels like, little chunks of narrative do too. I was lying in bed at half-four this morning, asleep, when I was woken by about half a page of a short story I’ve been meaning to write for years, called Vinnie’s Zoo. It was all character stuff, in a really strong voice, and as it required much in the way of non-standard spelling I couldn’t click it out on my phone with nimble thumbs – CURSE YOU AUTOCORRECT! – so had to head downstairs and fire up the computer instead. Only we call it a “pooter”, for reasons I won’t go into at this current time. And having fired up the aforementioned pooter, I was stuck there for an hour and a bit wrangling with a thick New Yoik accent, ya sumbitches. Because Vinnie wouldn’t let me get back to sleep until I’d written down what he wanted to say.
So, back to the main point of this whole Item Number The Third, part of the dialogue that came unbidden to my delicious sticky mind that lunchtime expanded itself into a new game for bored police officers to play. Meaning the 2024 book is probably going to feature at least one stakeout. The game is simple, and played as follows: one person says somebody’s name, and the other person has to posit if that somebody is a “fud” or a “fanny”. These are probably more west-coastisms – which means I’m probably going to have a Glaswegian character in the book – but I think, if you’re unfamiliar with them, a simple example will clarify things.
Here's an accurate representation of Fiona and I playing the game.
Stuart: “Vladimir Putin?”
Fiona: “Fud. Huge, massive, fud.”
Stuart: “David Cameron?”
Fiona: “Definitely a fanny.”
Stuart: “Donald Trump?”
Fiona: “Both a fud and a fanny.”
See? It’s a piece of cake. Fun for all the family (as long as you don’t have to explain to them what both words actually mean).
ITEM NUMBER THE FOURTH: In Which Our Bearded Protagonist Does Go Out Into The Big Wide World To Do Stuff
After the last couple of years, I’m not sure if I know how to navigate the whole ‘real world’ thing that we all used to occupy. Two-and-a-bit years of intense not-going-out practice have left me with the almost overwhelming urge to don a pair of dungarees, kick off my socks and shoes, and play my banjo on the porch. Whilst swigging moonshine and making various, and threatening, “Squeal, Piggy!” declamations.
But, go out and about I must, and if you are so inclined you can spot me from a responsibly social distance at the following magnificent emporiums of books and things:
{As ever, there’s no point listing all these again - the past is past and it can’t be unpassed. Not even if you use lube.}
Don’t worry if you’re not comfortable travelling to these public places and spending time with other people, given everything that’s going on in the world, I’m sure the bookshops in question will be happy to take orders for dedications and the like.
ITEM NUMBER THE LAST: In Which Stuart Does Recommend Other People’s Books For A Change (Again3)
I haven’t had a great deal of luck with reading books of late. I’ve started heaps of them and then given up because they just, basically, haven’t gripped me. And if I haven’t even been bothered to slog my way to the end of something, I sure as hell aren’t going to recommend it to anyone else.
That’s your basic integrity, right there.
OK, so it’s not a huge line in the sand compared to some things, but it’s my line in the sand and I won’t have crabs pooping on it.
Also, I’ve been finishing the current draft of the book that’ll be coming out in 2023, and that tends to make my brain a lot more inclined to be horribly nit-picky, instead of just letting me get absorbed by the story. I’m too aware of the mechanics and that spoils the experience for me.
That said, I have a responsibility to tell you about Things What I Did Like, because otherwise it makes a mockery of the proud tradition that is: Item Number The Last!
THE UNDISCOVERED DEATHS OF GRACE McGILL, by C.S. Robertson is a delightfully twisted take on the crime novel, and from a perspective that is both strange and new.
Grace is a troubled soul, struggling with anxiety and social awkwardness, which doesn’t usually bother her clients as they’re all dead and gone by the time she appears. Because Grace is a crime-scene cleaner, who’s speciality is dealing with “decomps” – people who’ve died and been left undiscovered for weeks or even months. By which time a lot of their remains have soaked into the mattress, or the carpet, or wherever it is the poor, lonely, unmissed souls have passed away.
But when Grace starts to see a pattern in the deaths she’s cleaning up behind, she embarks on a very dangerous quest to discover what’s going on.
It’s excellent stuff – nice and dark, with some lovely paced reveals and twists. The book has a really lovely oppressive atmosphere too.
Fiona grabbed it before me and she loved it just as much as I did. So, you know, it’s a twofer.
Speaking of Fiona, she’s had much better luck than I have on the reading front, and as such we’re able to bring to you the second in our exclusive series:
Fiona’s Occasional Book Club That Isn’t Really A Book Club Type Thing!
THE ANOMALY by Hervé Le Tellier is a bizarre mystery novel that kicks off with an Air France flight hitting some seriously freaky turbulence that doesn’t just shake the plane up, it duplicates it. Two planes. Two sets of passengers and air crew, all with identical bodies, DNA, fingerprints and memories. The weirder part, as if that wasn’t weird enough, is that the first plane has no idea this has happened until the second plane appears out of nowhere and lands three months later.
And you thought you ending up in Prague while your baggage ends up in Malaga was bad….
The book then delves into the lives of those caught up in the mystery.
Fiona tells me that she read this in one sitting, found it gripping, and is adamant that I have to read it when I’ve got through my current deadline madness.
This is what I will call, “a strong recommendation”.