I want it known that I'm getting pretty tired of people telling me this column is "better than my other writing". It's not the sort of thing I want to be told. Clear? Good. Now then, apologies for being slow to get here but - and it's a big but - I have completed the first draft of the new novel - that is the novel after Smoking Poppy. That is my "other writing". That's my excuse for letting this column slip a little lately. But let me snort into my morning coffee and admit to being pleased with how it has worked out, and how, importantly, I think I'm managing to get more humour into the writing without damaging the overall register of the novel. My title for it - and I've been promising to reveal it here for the past few months - is is is The Facts Of Life.
The Facts of Life.
Don't like it? What do you mean you're not sure about it? Go away and write your own novel.
But in the interim of course I've been busy promoting Smoking Poppy. My publishers threw a terrific launch party at The October Gallery and a lot of old friends I hadn't seen in years came along. Sadly they were all a disgrace, people of low breeding whom I foolishly associated with as a young student. And I didn't think it was a clever of ex girlfriends of mine intimidating my young students from Nottingham with ribald stories and speculations about the sources of erotic passages in my novels. Got that Anne Williams and Bobbie Stubbs? I'm on to both of you. I did nothing of the sort while at college. Anyway, inviting students along ensured that the free bar would get drunk dry and reduced the age ratio by half; plus it got one creaky old reviewer excited, cos he kept whispering in my ear, 'But who are all these >babes<?' And he was just talking about the boys.
It's all drink, this month's column. All drink. I'd switch off now if I were you.
World Fantasy Convention came and went in Montreal, some of which I remember, though the best night of the convention was the one in which I found myself having dinner with, amongst other fine company, fellow World's Fantasy Award's judge Paula Guran, publisher/editor/writer and all round good person Pete Crowther. Laugh? I nearly split my sphincter muscle as Pete recalled moments when alcohol threatened to undermine both dignity and business faculty. Strangely the name of Brit editor the Genial John Jarrold entered the conversation more than once as we competed to swop stories. But Pete out-Jarrolded all when he recalled the time he staggered home, set his alarm clock for an early business meeting and leaned drunkenly against the bathroom mirror. Time compressed into a heartbeat and the alarm clock went off while he was still trying to make sense of his own face in the mirror.
I make it a point at every World Fantasy Convention to rescue at least one drunken editor. After listening to their ravings, helping them to unroll large-denomination dollar bills from their pockets and befriending them when no-one else will, I find that they also go on to make intimate confessions and tearful revelations of the most astonishing nature. I only have to allude to these matters at a later date, whereupon they grow white-faced and instantly agree to publish my work on terms very generous to me. In this way World Fantasy Convention has helped my career considerably.
But upstaging all for Spectacular Convention Drunk Award was my good friend Jason Williams of Nightshade Press. I tried not to wince as Jason fell heavily on the sofa next to me one hand nursing a precarious glass brimful with gin and a cigarette arcing wildly through the air in the other hand. Jason addressed me in demotic San Franciscan (what the hell is a fucking >dude< anyway??). San Franciscan does actually have some linguistic rules and grammatical structures, so can be learned, but somebody had firebombed his mouth and the ruins were ghastly to even look at, let alone try to make acoustic differentiation. Anyway, he kept dropping his lighted cigarette, and instantly looking angrily around him for the small imp that was clearly set on dislodging the smoke from his fingers. Then there was the gin. He tipped his full glass down my thigh. I knew he hadn't noticed when he raised the empty glass to his lips and took several swallows of the thin air it now contained, complete with full adam's-apple throat actions and vigorous lip-smacking. Then his cigarette dropped inside his open necked shirt, and I thought oh dear, well I'm not going to tell you. Finally the smoking thing started to irritate him and he reached in to retrieve it, looking furious with me as if I'd put it there. Then the thin-air of that last gin went to his head, and I abandoned him to move on to another party, leaving Jason speaking Klingon to a potted parlour palm.
Whereupon I got my second bath of the evening. I had earlier that evening made the mistake of admiring beautiful Vancouver poet Colleen Anderson at a poetry reading sponsored by her publisher. I got to speak with her later at a party and we were chatting away very nicely, thank you, in the formal and elegant mode you have come to expect from me. There happened to follow one of those beats in the conversation where we'd run out of things to say This, it seems, is a provocation to Vancouver women. The poetess tossed her sparkling Perrier water down my other thigh. This was an act done coldly and deliberately, and in full conscience; and one for which I still await a full explanation.
I'm not going to Vancouver if that's how the women behave. But anyway I had two wet thighs, one gin, one water. This sort of experience must mean something, but what?
Mind you Quebec as a notion certainly has its eccentricities. You can get arrested just for >not thinking bilingually< in Quebec. And even if you are bilingual, it is compulsory to think bilingual in the same sized font, as it were. And don't think you can get away with ironic little tag-lines, like saying >mon brave< or >zoot alors< and raising your eyebrows suggestively at the end of whatever it is you have to say. Oh no. That's indictable in Quebec. So tyrannical are the authorities about this issue that I found myself nursing fantasies about getting a spray-paint canister and writing things on walls. Not slogans that mean anything. I just wanted to write the word ENGLISH in public places. Or impenetrable but gnomic things like One Leg Gin One Leg Water. That would confuse the Gallic in 'em.
Oh all right, I admit. My brain is addled. But really, it would make you want to move to Vancouver.
One of my MA writing students in Nottingham, Clare Littleford, just landed a big two-book contract after submitting a novel she started in my class. Now that >is< a thrill, I can tell you and a strange vicarious pleasure almost but not quite on a par with getting your own book published. So there it is - he's not teaching them rubbish - it's official. But I occasionally get invited to write a few bon mots (sorry, it's Montreal leaving its imprint) about the writing life. As an end-of-term or seasonal treat I'll share a recent one with you.
Q: What do you think about when you brush your teeth? A: the screams of thousands of microcosmic toothbrush-inhabiting cultures as beautiful and violent as our own, spearminted to death.
Q: What is your worst writing habit? A: Feverish use of the word >nacreous<
Q: When do most of your ideas come to you? A: When I don't need them. I mean, when I'm in the middle of trying to make some >other< idea work.
Q: How enthusiastic are you at the end of a project compared to the beginning? A: My grandfather used to say: admit to lying, to adultery, to greed and to cheating, admit to murder, admit to anything you like, but never admit to enthusiasm.
Q: Do the seasons affect your writing patterns? A: My imagination migrates south in the winter.
Q: What would you most like to change in your life? A: The law of gravity would be replaced by the Newtonian law of levity.
Q:Would you ever stop writing? A: Only if someone paid me.
All of which will be enormously useful to aspiring writers in Nottingham.
Ah yes, Robin Hood. Sometimes when I'm reading my kid's bedtime stories I get bored with the dismal Martha's Red Kangeroo type of fare so I resort to on the hoof reciting of Robin Hood, Jack and The Beanstalk and King Arthur etc, with full sound effects. Which is more fun. But Joe, 3, is a film buff, and in his opinion Toy Story is one of the best films of the last 25 years, closely followed by Toy Story 2. Consequently certain characters demand supporting roles in these traditional tales. So as your second end-of-term treat, and in case you haven't heard it, I thought to offer you the unexpurgated version of King Arthur and The Knights of The Round Table featuring Merlin, Excalibur and Sir Buzz Lightyear...
Seasons greetings, Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year to both my readers!
