Not everybody loves Derek Raymond*

Meant to say thanks also to all the other Amazon (UK and US) reviewers of One Dead Hen and the other titles. Books live or die by those things. Although mostly they just fester. And if they die they are liable to spring back up, zombie-like.

Thankfully this has happened to Derek Raymond's "Factory" novels, which have just been reissued by Melville House. I searched high and low for I WAS DORA SUAREZ years ago, finally tracking down a first edition to a basement flat in Friern Barnet. Now you can click a button and they just send it to you! But be warned - that one is strong stuff. Brilliant strong stuff.

* ...but I do.

ODH reviews and Swearing 3

You wait weeks for a ONE DEAD HEN review, then three come at once! Ain't that the way. First up this one from Ray Banks:

Williams is one of those rare comic novelists who manages to be funny. And I'm not talking about that "smile because I recognise the humour in this situation" kind of funny - I'm talking about the "I just spat on someone because I wasn't expecting to laugh" funny. That's difficult to do unless your readership is the kind of person who thinks Lee Nelson is side-splitting.

My son thinks Lee Nelson is a comedy genius, actually. But he's nine. When I was nine I thought the same of Benny Hill. Come to think of it, I still do.

Then there's Luca Veste on his blog Guilty Conscience:

But that's the beauty of the Mangel novels, everything is unexpected. From the casual, accidental violence, to the liberal use of "offensive" (if you're a child) words. It's a fantastic example of quality storytelling.

And that is a fantastic example of book reviewing, if you ask me.

Last, but not least (does anyone ever say "Last, and very much least..."? Surely the last item in a list is sometimes the least? Not that I'm saying this one is) comes Keith B Walters on his blog Books and Writers:

It’s a crime novel, but it’s a hell of a lot more than that and I loved the voice in ONE DEAD HEN and will be sure to be tracking down the earlier Royston Blake books very soon.

I heartily applaud that intention.

And if you read my recent couple of posts about Swearing, you will understand how much I dig this Amazon review.

Many thanks to Ray, Luca, Keith and Sid.

Swearing 2

OK, Heath Lowrance has inadvertently provoked me into writing that post about swearing, the one I couldn't be bothered to yesterday. There is so much to say on the subject that I didn't know where to start, but now I do.

To be fair on the guy who complained in the Amazon review, Royston Blake is a heavy swearer. But he's based on the kind of heavy swearer that we all know exists. There are tons of them out there in every corner of the western world, punctuating their short phrases with expletives and not even aware of it. The fact that people complain so much about coming across this in books (my ones anyway) just shows me how powerful language is. These are simply words, most of them only four letters, but they cause so much upset. They spark violence and high blood pressure and heart attacks. They put up huge barriers between people.

Confession: I also get pissed off by swearing. A few years ago I was watching Jonathan Ross, and I noticed that he was ramping up the "fuck" count big time. Every show of his I watched thereafter (God help me), the cuss count stayed high. It was so obvious that a backstage conversation had taken place where it was decided (probably by committee) that more swearing was the way to go. So old Wossy obliged, finding opportunities to shoe-horn in those babies no matter what. Wossy, it don't work. Swearing to shock is a dead end. Authentic swearing slips out against the swearer's will. It's natural. It's wholesome.

It's funny.

That's what I get from hanging around heavy swearers. I just love the power of these words, the explosive effect of one being dropped at the perfect moment. But what if everyone loved them? Worse still, what if people just weren't bothered by them, not even batting an eyelid at an avalanche of class A obscenities? They would lose their power, and they would just be sad little words.

Which would be no fun at all.

Because you're mine, I cross the line

From a recent reader review of One Dead Hen on Amazon:

"I don't mind the odd swear word in a story where it is relevant but there is a line and this book crosses it for me"

I was going to write an eloquent, measured riposte, touching on subjects such as authenticity of speech and the innate beauty in all language, but do you know what? Fuck it.

HIGH AND LOW

I've had some lows in my writing life this year. In February I had to abandon a half-written novel. Hopefully I'll pick it up again but it seemed dead at the time. Then I had an event at the local library where no one turned up who I didn't already know. These are the things that can happen to a writer. (This writer, at least.)

But you also get highs - I got to jet over to New York for BEA. I got to say I'm finally a full-time writer (although that's not necessarily a good thing, me being laid off from my day job). And yesterday I had the biggest high of all - finishing an MS.

I wrote "The End" a few weeks ago, but the cigar I had then didn't taste right, knowing as I did how many problems were still lurking in that MS, crying to be fixed. So I've spent the interim tackling them, and now the bug list is down to zero. I have run the spell check (never a small task with my books) and the MS is printed out, ready for one last pass of pencil editing which I have never found to be that onerous.

Out of all the milestones in all the cycles a writer goes through, I think this is my favourite. For months you walk around, weighed down by something and not even realising it. It is the problems, the battle that is always going on somewhere in your head. And that battle is won.

I took the dogs out for a walk and looked at the sun setting behind the Malvern Hills and felt like I had snorted cocaine (I hadn't, I promise). I could look at trees and birds and even dustbins and see the beauty in them. But it will be short-lived, won't it, that dustbin moment? Already I have something else planned, a great idea for a book just waiting to be put into words. Or maybe I could re-animate one of those dead MSs. And the moment you type that first sentence, the problems begin all over...

Until I get the dustbin moment again.

One Dead Hen on the NOT THE BOOKER PRIZE longlist

Hey, Royston Blake is getting some minor recognition. Obviously what he really wants is to win the Nobel Prize for Doormanship, but in the meantime ONE DEAD HEN, his latest outing, has been put on the longlist for the Not The Booker Prize.

In order to reach the shortlist, he needs votes. The book has only just come out, but if you can, please give this book the nod. Shortlists are pretty thin on the ground around here! Voting is a little bit of a pain, but here is what you have to do (bastardised from the Graun's own instructions):

1. Go to this page for One Dead Hen

2. Write a review of no fewer than 150 words in which you try to give a flavour of the book and of its plot and explain why you think the book is important and why others might like it. Then hit submit.

3. Once it has appeared on the page, hit the "link" button that appears in the top right-hand corner of the box containing your review. When the link text appears, "copy" it.

4. Return to this Not the Booker prize page. Go to the comments box at the bottom. Type Vote: Charlie Williams, One Dead Hen into the comments field. After that you type something like: "Here is my review." Highlight that text with my mouse, and hit the button above the comment field that says "link". A prompt box appears asking for a "web address". Paste the copied text in. Hit "post your comment".

5. Get yourself a beer.


This is all a bit academic - the book has only just come out and not that many will have read it. But hey, one can hope. Eye of the tiger! And to whoever nominated me, thanks"

Three Live Reviews

One Dead Hen gets the Nerd of Noir treatment over at Spinetingler:

One Dead Hen is an oil-black comedy, with many of the biggest laughs (and I no-shit laughed audibly many times, in public even, like a fucking keep-your-kids-close creepo) coming from Blake’s misunderstanding or pointed misrepresentation of a given situation. But while the comedy may keep you laughing (even when, say, Blake accidentally smothers someone to death in hopes of seeing if they were just pretending to be unconscious), Williams is also constructing a sly mystery around our hero, and it’s up to the reader’ careful attention to Blake’s context clues (and some insane newspaper articles) to figure out what’s really rotten in Mangel.

Also some great recent reviews at You Would say That, Wouldn't You? and The Paper Tiger's Roar Feed. Mucho grateful to all three of these top bods for taking the trouble. And to you, dear reader, for thinking about checking the book out for yourself. Oh, you weren't, you were just checking the latest riot reports on Sky News.

One Dead Hen Day

ONE DEAD HEN is published today. I must admit, I sometimes wondered if this day would ever happen. But Royston Blake is back, which is cause for celebration, right? Unless you live in Mangel. If you live in Mangel, very little is a cause for celebration - least of all the presence of Blakey.

If you want to find out what Blakey did next - or you feel like supporting something different - you can get it here (UK), and here (US).

To coincide, I did a piece about the book (and Blakey in general) for the Kindle Post blog.

One Dead Hen in the Guardian

Hey, check out p9 of today's Guardian Review for a great, erm, review of One Dead Hen, the new Royston Blake vehicle. Or just read it here.

And while we laugh at the absurdity of the story, Williams does just enough to create the nagging worry that it isn't so unreal after all; that Royston is only as much of a caricature as the sensitive intellectual in the Hampstead novel or Jonathan Franzen's troubled Americans. The hideous town of Mangel, meanwhile, with its casual violence, unmanageable drinking and psychotic conservatism, offers up a vision of Britain that seems all too familiar. Royston may have trouble with words of more than two syllables and antediluvian attitudes to everything, but he produces one of the most challenging social commentaries you are likely to read this year. AmazonEncore has rescued an excellent book.

So Royston Blake gets all the credit yet again. Typical!

Many thanks to Sam Jordison for the review.

Writer waffles about writing

Interview with me over at Iain Rowan's excellent "More News from Nowhere" blog. Check it out if you want to know what I think about writing. Then go check the other interviews with the likes of Ray Banks, Julie Morrigan, Keith Brooke, Paul D Brazill, Gary McMahon and literally shitloads of other top book writing folks. Then go and download Iain's collection, Nowhere to Go, onto your Kindle.

Elsewhere, an article about the Royston Blake books with a Facebook angle on Norway's Stavanger Aftenblad newspaper. If you cannot understand Norwegian, fret not - it just looks really interesting. And the word "fart" is in the title.

Blakey on Tour - Aside #6 and final

I have purged Blakey on Tour from this blog. Sorry if you were planning on going back to it (for whatever strange reason). Fact is, I have been working it into a novel offline, which is nearing the end now, so I don't want people discovering the first draft on here. Actually I don't care, but it seems neater this way. Hmm... maybe deleting it all wasn't such a good idea? Fuck it - done now. I'll let you know how the novel goes. If I can only find it...

Meantimes, ONE DEAD HEN publication date is drawing near. You can pre-order it here and here, "like" it here (go on), and read about it here and here. Any way you look at it, Blakey is on his way back.

One Dead Hen

The new Royston Blake book, ONE DEAD HEN, comes out on August 9th. I have set up a Facebook page to get things going, so if you are a fan of Royston Blake (or just want to support an author) and you are on Facebook, please "like" it. I will be presenting a random "liker" of the page with a free ARC of the book EVERY DAY between now and the 9th. Am I making it worth your while or what? So get liking. And then get reading.