Confidential thoughts

I finally caught up with Julian Temple’s excellent Dr Feelgood documentary, Oil City Confidential, the other night. A few thoughts that arose while I was watching it:

• That Wilko Johnson is a bit odd, isn’t he?
• The songs I knew Dr Feelgood for - the chart hits like ‘Milk and alcohol’ and ‘Down at the doctors’ – were actually recorded after Wilko left the band. I never realised that
• Dr Feelgood were to the early 70s what The Yardbirds were to the early 60s: a shot in the arm for British blues, a shot of pure adrenaline. I wish I’d seen them live at their peak, but it was before my time
• Did I mention that Wilko Johnson really is quite odd?
• It’s also odd that no one really followed the Feelgoods’ lead. The accepted wisdom is that the energy and on-stage aggression of the band was a major influence on punk, but I’m not aware of any blues bands who picked up the baton and ran with it. Maybe it’s just that punk was so all-pervading that any potential new young blues bands went down that path instead

Talking about the Feelgoods also gives me a chance to repeat one of my favourite pieces of trivia: that every member of the band had the same name. Bassist John B. Sparkes kept his, drummer John Martin became The Big Figure, guitarist John Wilkinson became Wilko Johnson, and singer Lee Brilleaux’s real name was Lee John Collinson. What’s more, when Wilko left the band, he was replaced by Gypie Mayo, whose real first name was (guess what?) John, and he in turn was replaced by Johnny Guitar. He was eventually replaced by someone called Gordon, and that’s when the rot set in.

Amazon mystery solved!

Good news! I’ve finally worked out how a self-published author (ie me) gets paid by Amazon:

1) Customer buys book through Amazon

2) Amazon notifies a sub-contractor (Bertram Books) of the order

3) Bertram notifies Nielsen (the organisation that issues ISBNs) of the order

4) Nielsen notifies the publisher (ie me) that an order has been received

5) The publisher (ie me) supplies the book to Bertram, who then send it to the purchaser

6) The publisher (ie me) then submits an invoice to Bertram

Simple, isn’t it? Except that it took me several emails to find out about step 6, which is by no means obvious. It seems that the brave new world of self-publishing still has a few kinks that need ironing out.

In the hot seat

I did my first proper ‘press’ interview today, for a new online arts and culture magazine called The Kaje. It wasn’t remotely stressful, since (there’s no point denying it) I enjoy talking about myself and my writing. Answering questions about my other books did remind me that at some point soon, I’m going to have to get back to my new novel, which I started in the autumn and then put on hold while I set about publishing, and then publicising, First Time I Met The Blues.

Still, the effort is paying off in various small ways. MyWatfordNews, a local free magazine, is going to run a piece about the book next month, and I’ve also been asked to write a first-person piece for Blues In Britain magazine. It all helps.

I wanna tell you a story

One of Lisa’s favourite jokes is that I should adopt the first name ‘Page’, so that I can advertise my latest publication with the line “Buy the new Page Turner now”.

Joking aside, I love being told that one of my book is a ‘real page turner’, because frankly, if you can’t write a story that people want to keep reading so that they can find out what happens to the characters, you’re not doing your job as a novelist.

My perspective on this is rooted in my university days, when I studied French and German literature. This mainly involved reading landmark texts that were seen as having advanced the possibilities of the novel, whether it was the stripped-back brutalism of post-war German authors like Böll and Grass or the impenetrable nouveaux romans of Sarraute and Robbe-Grillet. Some of these authors were stronger on plot than others, but as far as my supervisors were concerned, that was very much secondary to the ground-breaking techniques the author displayed.

As a result, I left college with a rather jaded view of narrative fiction. What saved me was an edition of the literary magazine Granta called ‘Dirty Realism’. It celebrated a new wave of American writers like Raymond Carver, Jayne Anne Phillips and Richard Ford, and the introduction placed a great emphasis on their common talent for telling stories above all.

It seems so obvious now, but this came as a great revelation to me at the time, and a validation – it was saying that if you wrote fiction, you didn’t have to display technical virtuosity or create a new form of literature: it was okay if you just told stories. And when I started writing novels, that was what I set out to do. And if this means that my books will never be studied by future generations, well, I think I can live with that.

Available from all good bookshops?

My interview on Lorna Milton’s BBC Three Counties show yesterday was a qualified success, I think. Those who heard it said I sounded confident and professional, and having reluctantly listened to the MP3 my friend Andy kindly recorded and emailed to me, even I can’t find much fault with it.

I was slightly thrown by a question about what kind of people would enjoy my book (I suppose I should just have said “People from Watford who like the blues”, but that sounds rather limiting, doesn’t it?), and ended up waffling to no great effect for what seemed like some considerable time. But apart from that, I was okay.

It was still only a qualified success, though, for the simple reason that I didn’t get a chance to plug my website. The trouble is that I don’t want to promote myself as a self-published author, for fear of not being taken seriously; I reasoned that if you present yourself professionally, people will assume you’ve been professionally published.

But this ruse can work too well: Lorna gaily assured her listeners that my book was “available in all good bookshops”, and I didn’t get a chance to correct her on air. (I did explain after we’d gone off air, but I don’t know if she mentioned the website, as I asked her to do.)

Anyway, I’ll know better next time, if there is a next time. In the meantime, I’ve had 10 minutes of fame: that leaves me five more, according to Andy Warhol’s dictum - at least, in Beds, Herts and Bucks.

Listen up

As promised, details of how to listen to my interview on BBC Three Counties tomorrow afternoon:

Radio: 90.4, 92.1, 94.7, 95.5, 98.0, 103.8 and 104.5 FM and 630 and 1161 AM (but only if you’re listening in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire or Buckinghamshire, or nearby)

Online: you can listen live by clicking on the ‘Listen live’ button here, or afterwards by clicking the ‘Listen again’ button on the same page (which will take you to iPlayer)

I’m on Lorna Milton’s show, which starts at 2pm – I’m due on at around 3.30pm.

Wish me luck...

Radio on

A major step forward in my efforts to promote First Time I Met The Blues: I’ve been asked to appear on BBC Three Counties Radio to talk about it. The three counties in question are (of course) Beds, Herts and Bucks, and given that the book is mainly set in Watford, there’s a local angle that obviously appeals to them.

The interview is on April 12th - I’ll be doing it down the phone from a studio in central London. I’ll post full details of how to listen to it nearer the time.