Jude in Waterstones - a new and exciting adventure for Jude, with an unfortunate ending

Two copies of Jude in London

Waterstones are the biggest book chain in the UK, with 296 shops. They sold five hundred million pounds worth of books last year. I’m very happy about that, because I write books. In fact, Jude in London, my most recent novel, came out in paperback this month. The Observer just named it their Paperback of the Week.

The paperback is the cheaper, mass market edition. It’s the one covered in great reviews of the more expensive trade paperback, or hardback, from a year earlier. The paperback is how you reach a mass audience.

I’d had a busy year since Jude in London first came out. The kind of busy year retailers like; one that raises your public profile, and brings new people to your work. My second BBC radio play starring Jude — The Great Squanderland Roof — had picked up roughly a million listeners. My stageplay starring Jude (The Great Goat Bubble), had sold out its run, every ticket, every night. The novel itself had been shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize (former winners: Will Self, Ian McEwan, Howard Jacobson…) It was even shortlisted for the Guardian's anarchic anti-award, the Not The Booker Prize. And, since Jude in London first came out, I’d written the long narrative at the end of Minecraft. (Winning every award going, Minecraft was Time Magazine's Computer Game of the Year for 2011). Given that Minecraft had by now sold nine million copies, my work had quite possibly had more readers than that of any other quirky literary novelist this year.

One of the exciting things about being a writer is when your publisher tells you how many copies Waterstones have ordered. It is exciting partly because they completely dominate the retail market for literary fiction in the UK. (If they don’t stock you, your book is dead.) But it is also exciting because I love Waterstones. Theirs are the shops in which I browse, and buy, when I’m in England. Their staff are terrific; friendly and knowledgeable. It’s a special pleasure to ask someone in the fiction section to recommend something odd and interesting. (Last time, in their flagship Picadilly branch — which has eight and a half miles of shelves — I was lovingly introduced to Daniil Kharms.) Their Oxford Street branch is a delight, and its witty Twitter account is a must-follow. Of course, those staff and managers are no longer allowed to order anything. It all has to come from head office. But that means head office can put in a huge order. (Waterstones ordered 12,000 copies of the paperback of my first novel, back when I was even more obscure than I am now.) My hopes were, cautiously, high.

So, how many copies did Waterstones order of the paperback? Two. Two copies. Not two copies per shop. Two copies to share between all 296 stores. That's less than 1% of a copy per shop. That’s… (Does the maths on a napkin)… exactly three pages for each manager. (Hmm. That reminds me of something… It’ll come to me.)

Now, I have no problem with this. I understand that nobody wants to read highly praised novels that have been shortlisted for well-known awards, especially when they’ve been written by award-winning cult writers whose writing gets millions of listeners and readers in other media.

What’s been puzzling me is…  why did Waterstones order two copies? Why not no copies? I mean obviously they don’t like the book. Fair enough. My stuff has a strong flavour that is not to everyone’s taste. Ordering no copies would make sense. But a head office order that comes to only three pages for every shop? Why would they want… wait a minute. (Googles feverishly. Returns a couple of minutes later…)

Hey, did you know that, in the UK, the average person uses three sheets of paper to wipe their backside after a crap? Obviously, some use less, and some use more, but the UK average is three.

So, Waterstones have ordered two copies of Jude in London.

Just enough to give every manager of every shop in the Waterstones chain exactly three pages each…

Hmmm.

They REALLY don’t like my book.

Irish Writer Pardoned For Stealing Pig

 "The pig is rightfully MINE, Sir Terence!" (Photo by Sophie Gough Fives.) Actually, to contradict the caption, (which, on reflection, I realise is more Sherlock Holmes than Bertie Wooster) - I hope Sir Terry Pratchett wins. THIS time...

Well, well, well. My new novel, Jude in London, has been shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. Older readers will understand why I am so surprised (as well as, of course, delighted); younger readers will have it explained to them shortly. It involves dark literary doings, and the theft of livestock. Stick around.

The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction is the one where they give you the prize at the Hay Festival, name a pig after your book, and take your photo with the pig. A great, idiosyncratic prize, with a good track record. The Wodehouse judges discovered Marina Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, they chose Vernon God Little before it won the Booker, and last year they gave the prize to Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story.

This year, it's a very strong shortlist: the other four are Terry Pratchett (for Snuff), Sue Townsend (of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole fame, for The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year), John O'Farrell (for The Man Who Forgot His Wife), and John Lanchester (for his sprawling financial comedy of London life, Capital). Normally, natural humility would cause any author surprise at being on such a splendid shortlist. However, as regular readers of my work will know, I do not suffer from humility. My surprise at being on the shortlist comes from the fact that, last time I was on it, I disgraced myself so thoroughly that I'd assumed the judges were more likely to put me on a blacklist than a second shortlist.

Back in 2008, the first novel in my Jude trilogy - Jude in Ireland - was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, alongside Alan Bennett, Will Self, Garrison Keillor (of Lake Wobegon Days fame), and Joe Dunthorne. I swelled with pride, chiefly in the region of the head. I blogged about my joy. But... well, at this point I may as well quote from a slightly later blog entry:

"You can imagine then my dismay when I discovered, shortly afterwards, buried in the small print of the Hay-on-Wye festival programme, the odd phrase "Will Self, winner of the 2008  Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize." Winner? WINNER?!?!?!

As the festival program had gone to print before the shortlist was announced, this meant that the prize committee had picked the winner before they had announced, or perhaps even picked, the shortlist. It was a stitch-up. But worse, I had been denied my rightful month of anticipation, tingling, hiccups and giddy excitement.

Also I'd put serious money on Alan Bennett to win. His The Uncommon Reader is a little masterpiece. Something had to be done.

I thought long and hard. The prize is named after that comic god, P. G. Wodehouse, inventor of Jeeves and Wooster. What, I thought would Wodehouse have done, faced with such provocation? Sat in his room and written another comic novel, probably. That's how he reacted to everything, including World War 2. As I was already sitting in a room writing a comic novel this wasn't much help. Action was called for, dash it. So I asked myself, what would P. G. Wodehouse's greatest creation Bertie Wooster do, nobly backed by the genius of his manservant Jeeves?

And the answer came to me as in a vision - as though the ghost of Wodehouse himself whispered in my ear - he would steal the pig.

For if there is one constant in the work of P. G. Wodehouse, from Pigs Have Wings to Pig Hooey, it is that God put pigs on this good green earth to be kidnapped. Not a chapter goes by without somebody chloroforming Lord Emsworth's favourite sow, The Empress of Blandings.

And thus I made my way to the Welsh borders and, with the assistant of my trusty gentleman's gentleman, Jeeves (not his real name, but he would like to remain anonymous for some reason), I stole Will Self's pig.

I sent the organisers this, ah, pignapping video, containing my ransom demands. Tense negotiations continued up until the last minute. They, understandably, did not wish to give the prize to the man who had stolen their pig. I offered, as a very reasonable compromise, to deliver the pig to Alan Bennett's door in London if they would re-award the prize to him. They baulked - Will Self was in the program - his angry fans, denied, might rampage, torching tents, incinerating Gore Vidal in his invalid chair... The intervention of a bishop almost led to a compromise candidate (Joe Dunthorne), but we ran out of time..."

The full story is here. And in this story in The Mail. And in various pieces by Hugo Rifkind, now stuck behind The Times paywall... And The New York Times' arts blog... And in India's Sunday Tribune... I know, I know. And not a thought for my long-suffering mother.

OK, basically, I got a bit carried away. It's always a bad idea for comic writers to leave their padded cells and attempt to do things in a real world for which they are so ill prepared. Still, one learns valuable lessons, which can be fed back into the fiction. I learnt that stealing pigs, for instance, is considerably harder and more complicated in real life than in books. The paperwork for the transfer of livestock across EU borders is shockingly complex. I strongly suspect that PG Wodehouse never stole a pig in his life...

Anyway, it all turned out OK; Will Self kept the title, but I made my point, and I got a pig out of it, which, once converted into wurst and salty bacon, got me through the long Berlin winter.

The only downside, I thought, was that I'd thoroughly burnt all my bridges to the only prize in these islands for comic fiction - pretty much the prize I most wanted.

And thus my surprise at being shortlisted again this week. I think it reflects very well on the people who run the Prize. They have shown true Christian - or Wodehousian - charity. Moral of the story (if there is one): There is greater rejoicing in the literary world over the pig thief who repents, than over the author who never steals a pig at all.

(For those not put off Jude in London by the moral depravity of its author... the free Trust Edition is available from Ben, my publisher, here. You may download it and read it for nothing. If you like it, you can pay whatever you think it was worth. More orthodox editions of the book are available here...)

The Jude in London, Not The Booker Prize, Flashmob Book Club

OK, if you want something meaningful and life-changing to do this weekend (and who doesn't?), you can join this one-off, high-speed, hold-onto-your-hats, Jude in London/Not The Booker Prize, flashmob bookclub. Will the life you change be yours, or mine, or both? We won't know till Monday.

A totally gratuitous topless shot of the author. Wearing a David Shrigley temporary tattoo. Long story.Here's the deal: my publisher and I will let you download my brand new book, for free, here. (It's usually £12.99 in trade paperback, or £4.99 on Kindle). You read it over the weekend, throwing in comments and arguing with each other (and me) in the comments section below. And if you love the book - and only if you love it - you can vote for it to win the Guardian's (in)famous Not The Booker Prize, anytime before midnight London time, this Monday (17th of October, 2011).

If you choose to vote for Jude in London to win the Not The Booker Prize, you'll need to vote in the comments on this page, and write a very short review here to prove you've read it. Also, bear in mind there's several other excellent books on the shortlist for the prize (I'm thinking in particular of Spurious, by Lars Iyer, and King Crow by Michael Stewart), so feel free to check those out, or read and discuss them instead.

And yes, when it's all over, you can pay as much (or as little) as you think the book was worth, directly to me & my publisher Ben. (We'll split it equally between us.) But if you're really poor, forget it, the book is on me & Ben. (I was on the dole for ten years, learning to write. I know what it's like to be too broke to join in the fun.)

So, it's an experiment - we're going to try and assemble a virtual flashmob book club. If you have any friends who might be interested, tell them. And I'll see you in the comments section down below, later.

Just click to go to the download page for the Jude in London Trust Edition

Oh, if you're wondering will Jude in London be to your taste, here's some recent reviews from The Guardian, The Irish Times, and The Cadaverine. (And if you want to go straight to the source and judge for yourself, here's an instant extract you don't have to download, about goats and financial bubbles: The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble...)

If you've any problems downloading the book free from here, just email me at JulianGoughsSecretEmailAddress@gmail.com, or tell me on Twitter (I'm @juliangough), and I'll email you a copy directly.

Have fun, be nice. Enjoy the weekend.

(EDIT: As soon as I posted this, and tweeted about it, the responses began - on Twitter. D'oh! I hadn't thought this through... So yes, we can talk about the book here; but also on Twitter (where I am @juliangough), using the hashtag #judeinlondon. I'll mosey back and forth. Talk soon...)

Help save civilization by reading a funny book

It's not every day you get a chance to help an award-winning impoverished author (er, that's me) solve a major dilemma, while simultaneously helping to humanise Capitalism, revolutionise Publishing, and save Civilization. But today is that day.

Jude in London - soon to be a major bookHere's the background (the dilemma will follow): my new novel, Jude in London, has just been longlisted for the Guardian's Not The Booker Prize. Now, The Not The Booker Prize is the most entertaining prize in the literary calendar; an annual online flame-war-slash-literary-debate that can be very helpful in drawing attention to unusual books. (The prize itself is a mug, worth about £1.50. But the glory is incalculable!)

BUT: For a long-listed novel to make the shortlist, readers have to nominate the book, and post a very short review on the Guardian website (to prove they've read it). The process is explained in detail here.

Here's the dilemma: Jude in London is officially published on September 6th. But the shortlist votes (and reviews) have to be in by this coming Wednesday. As my novel isn't in the shops for another fortnight, I don't have any readers yet to nominate it.

So, if any of you would like to read Jude in London, for free, I can send you a pdf of the entire finished book, nicely laid out and readable, today. And if you like it a lot, I'd be extremely pleased if you would post a 150 word review, and nominate it for the shortlist by Wednesday. You're under no pressure to review it or vote for it: only do that if you genuinely like it a lot and think it's worthy of going through to the next round.

There you go. Anyone who wants a free pdf of Jude in London, just ask in the comments below, or on Twitter (I'm @juliangough), or email me at juliangoughssecretemailaddress@gmail.com...

Now, here's the bit where we revolutionise Capitalism. My beloved publisher Ben, who runs Old Street, has conniptions at the thought of a professional-quality pdf of the entire book escaping into the wild before publication. Understandably so - he's sunk a lot of time and money into making a beautiful book out of Jude in London. But I think the future for peculiar writers like me has to be a kind of love-based mutant version of capitalism where you trust your readers, and in return your readers help to keep you alive. Because the free market isn't going to. Bear in mind, I've gone bust and been evicted while writing this book. I've wandered Europe homeless, relying on the kindness of friends (and the occasional stranger) to get it finished. So I, too, would like to see it, somehow, earn me enough to keep going and finish the next one.

So here's the deal: I give you the book for free. You don't have to review it or nominate it. But if you really like the book, if you read all the way to the end and have a good time... I'd love you to buy a copy for a friend. Does that seem fair?

And if you do like it, and buy a copy for a friend, tell me, and I'll tell my publisher, and maybe this trust-based model (where a book is always a present, and yet small publishers stay in business and weird writers get to eat) could take off.

Jude in Tate Modern... A girl! A gun! The Turner Prize!

Here (hot from my inbox!) is a sneak preview of an illustration, and a chapter, from Jude in London (due to be published in September). In the picture, Jude is about to find out if he has won the greatest prize in art - the Turner of Turners. The crowd lift him aloft... his former lover, Babette, flips a golden coin...

No, I won't tell you who is sneaking up behind him with a gun.

For now, clicking on the picture takes you to the first book. Which is also excellent.

And here's some free new book to go with the picture. This is from a little earlier on, before the prize ceremony... Enjoy...

(Oh, by the way, the artist, Gareth McNamee Allen, once did this fine homage to Tayto crisps for my old band, Toasted Heretic's first album, Songs for Swinging Celibates. There's more of his work on his website. Top chap... OK, here we go... )

From Jude in London...

CHAPTER 80

I entered Tate Modern. The floor sloped away and down, beneath a high walkway, and out into one enormous Room. I walked for a long time, until I was in the centre of the Room, and looked around. I was obviously very early, for the Art had not arrived yet. Certainly there was more than enough blank space on the walls for it. It was a room into which you could have fitted Galway City’s great Car Park of the Roaches itself. I had never seen the like. Its scale was inhuman. Yet the Tate Family evidently still lived here, and spent all their time in this room, for their possessions lay all about me. At the far end of the room, and proof I was in the right place, a stage stood before a backdrop of vast, dead television screens. Great lights, unlit as yet, hung above the stage from steel beams.

No doubt the Prize-Giving will take place upon that stage. Oh, I hope they will not be too disappointed that I have neglected to create any Art …

Perhaps I could make up for my failure by helping to get the place ready, before the other artists’ Art arrived. I looked all about me.

There was very little furniture in the room, and that in bad order. The bed in the far left corner was in most need of attention, the sheets crumpled and filthy. The last party had obviously congregated here, for on the bed, the rug, and the surrounding floor, were empty cigarette packets, stubbed butts, vodka bottles and general debris.

Ceci n'est pas un litIt was an easy matter to collect the rubbish, turn the mattress, shake out the sheets, plump the pillows, and remake the bed. This ritual, familiar to me from the Orphanage, soothed. I sang softly as I worked. Too soft a sound to rebound in echo from the bare walls.

The fish tank proved trickier than the bed. Enormous though the tank was, the fish was far too big for it. I estimated the poor creature at thirty-five feet. Presumably, in the way of family pets, it had simply outgrown its accommodation. The older Tate children, who loved it, had themselves, I supposed, reached adolescence, and become too busy to care for it: and the aging parents slowly forgot it, in its forty foot tank in the far right corner. It appeared to have been dead for some time. Bubbles of decomposition rocked it occasionally in the thickening water, as they emerged from the decaying grey flesh. The top of the tank was sealed, which cannot have been healthy for the fish while it lived. Certainly, it made my task of emptying and cleaning the tank more difficult than it needed to be.

Ceci n'est pas un poissonWhen I was finally done with the fish tank, I examined the room in more detail. The place was in a shocking state. The closer I looked, the more shocked I was. The very basics of child-rearing seemed to have been neglected by the Tate parents. Neither the young Tate children nor their many pets seemed to have been adequately toilet trained. There were lumps of elephant dung everywhere. Some had even stuck to the paintings, and dried there. It was a hell of a job to get it all off.

The children themselves seemed to go anywhere. I even found a bottle of urine with a crucifix in it. Sighing, I retrieved our Lord Jesus on his cross, and hung him back up on a clean wall.

I began to clean the handprints and splashes of dried mud off the end wall.

As I worked, others quietly entered the enormous room. Some introduced themselves to me, and shook my hand.

“Judges,” they murmured.

“Brian Eno,”

“Brian Sewell,”

“Brian Balfour-Oatts.”

“Fascinating piece.”

“Please, ignore us.”

“Carry on, carry on.”

They crept into the shadows, murmuring.

“And while dressed as a rabbit! Brilliant!”

“I thought Mark Wallinger’s Sleeper couldn’t be improved on, but by golly…”

“I beg to differ…”

I finished cleaning the wall, and looked around. Still a great deal of work to do, to get the place ready … Unbelievable that a family as rich as the Tates lived in such squalor. Nothing seemed to work. I decided to fix the fluorescent light, which had been flickering erratically since I’d arrived. I tracked the fault to a hidden timer that someone had mistakenly set to turn the light on and off again every minute or so. It was a simple matter to route the circuit around it.

Even their big, new, colour television seemed broken. I couldn’t get any sound out of it. It was showing a rather dull film, about a woman trying to clean a shower. The pictures had gone very slow for some reason, and were in black and white. The whole thing seemed banjaxed. I switched it off.

Then I picked up some old firebricks, which had been left lying where someone might trip. Gasps came from the shadows. Brian Sewell clapped.

I put the firebricks in an old, water-damaged shed. Its overlapping boards and weathered paint reminded me of the lakeboats of Lough Derg. A pleasing warm feeling rose in me.

Now to deal with the graffiti.

The older Tate children seemed to have thrown several parties recently, without the benefit of parental supervision. Many of their friends had scrawled their names, and worse, across all kinds of objects and surfaces. I set to scrubbing. An illiterate fellow called Chris, from County Offaly, seemed to be one of the worst offenders. I was sad to see a fellow Irishman letting the side down. “Ofili” indeed.

Tired, and in need of a break after removing the graffiti, I looked for the toilet facilities. A urinal was mounted in the centre of the room. It was mounted at a curious height, and on its back: but no doubt that was the modern way. Oh, more fecking graffiti… On its rim someone had scribbled their name, and the date or time of the party. R. Mutt. 1917? 19.17? 7.17pm? I carefully scraped it off, before urinating.

Ceci n'est pas un urinoir

(There you go. Feel free to comment below, or explore more of the book for free here.)







What I'm Doing In 2010. (Books, Mostly.)

In 2010, I plan to make lots of paper aeroplanes

Allan Cavanagh (or @AllanCavanagh, as I fondly know him) just tweeted to ask me, "have you got a poetry collection coming out?" Which is one of those embarrassingly intimate questions about shameful practices best unmentioned. Apparently he had heard the magnificent Jessie Lendennie mention it earlier tonight on Lyric FM.

But the question reminded my that I haven't actually talked about, you know, books. The things I write. And what state they are in. For a long time. So let's deal with that distasteful stuff, category by category.

1.) Poems. Yes, I do have a poetry collection coming out. Salmon Poetry will publish my first collection in February 2010, God willing. It will contain all the poetry I've ever written that I'm not utterly ashamed of (which means, mostly, the recent poetry written in Berlin, and a mutilated fistful of older pieces), and all the Toasted Heretic lyrics that are fit to print. Working title is Free Sex Chocolate (collected songs and poems). And if anyone has a suitable cover image for such a book, with such a title, I'd be very interested to see it. It's poetry, so there's not much of a budget, but the glory! The glory! (You can contact me through the Mail Me button, off down there to the right.)

2.) Novels. Yes, Jude: Level 2 will finally emerge into the harsh global spotlight in June 2010, blinking, eating roadkill, and shagging anything that moves. It's set largely in London, and indeed may well get called Jude in London. You can read a piece from it here.

3.) Short Stories. I am very happy to be the official representative of the Republic of Ireland in the Dalkey Archive's scarily ambitious anthology, Best European Fiction 2010. If I were capable of humility, I'd be humbled. Here's a description I nicked off Amazon:

"Best European Fiction 2010 is the inaugural installment of what will become an annual anthology of stories from across Europe. Edited by acclaimed Bosnian novelist and MacArthur “Genius-Award” winner Aleksandar Hemon, and with dozens of editorial, media, and programming partners in the U.S., UK, and Europe, the Best European Fiction series will be a window onto what’s happening right now in literary scenes throughout Europe, where the next Kafka, Flaubert, or Mann is waiting to be discovered."

They've chosen "The Orphan and the Mob", which a lot of you will know already.

My exciting adventures in the categories of:

4.) Children's Books

5.) Feature Films

6.) Animated Films

7.) Theatre

8.) Computer Games, and

9.) Opera

...will all have to wait till I've had a good night's sleep.

(I'm afraid I lied about Opera. I have no plans to write an opera for 2010. Although 2011, now, is another matter...)

Radioactivity

I should mention a couple of things that are coming up on the radio in the UK and Ireland...

I'll be one of the people talking about Chekhov on RTE Radio 1, on the Arts Show, on Tuesday night.

And (far more exciting for me, as I am thoroughly sick of the sound of myself), BBC Radio 4 will be broadcasting The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble as a lunchtime play on Friday,  May 15th. I haven't heard it yet (I finished the script at 3am on the day I left Berlin for the Balkans, and it was recorded in London while I've been here), but the cast are terrific, and I'm greatly looking forward to hearing what they did with it.

Cast and info here: http://www.comedy.org.uk/guide/radio/great_hargeisa_goat_bubble/

More on that next week, but I thought I'd mention it well in advance. It should be available live, streamed, worldwide, from the BBC and I'd imagine it'll be archived for some time afterwards.

Do Not Approach This Man. He Has Just Finished Writing A Novel, And May Be Dangerous.

I have finished writing Jude: Level 2. Thus the depraved and hideous face you see above, exhausted from months of writing and rewriting. (Twenty drafts of the toughest sections... though of course by the last few drafts you're just tweaking, or - to use the more accurate technical term favoured by the serious novelist - disappearing up your own hole). Exhausted, in particular, from the final weeks of staying up till 5am every night, with no days off or weekends. By the end I wasn't entirely sure what year it was. (1987, by the look of the shirt and stubble.) I look like a released prisoner, bewildered by his freedom. Which is appropriate, because I am.

With three days to go, I developed stigmata. The skin on the backs of my hands began to break down as I wrote. I was quite pleased when I noticed. Oh you know you've given it everything, by God, when you develop stigmata in the final furlong. You haven't cheated the book by selfishly holding anything in reserve, for yourself, or those you love, or the future.

In fact I finished on Oscar night, but I've been too knackered to post until now. When I finally, finally, finally finished, at 5.30am, and hit send, and it vanished from my screen in a swirling stream of zeros and ones down the phonelines to my agent and my publisher, I ran out into the street and danced and sang and sprinted through the melting slush.

If New York is the city that never sleeps, then Berlin is the city that doesn't have to get up in the morning (because it doesn't have a job), so there's always something on. And so I ran, singing, around the corner to the Babylon Kino, where they were still screening the Oscars, live from LA - nine timezones away - on the big screen. I arrived in the middle of Kate Winslet's acceptance speech, stayed till the end, and talked to friends afterwards. There was a great buzz in the cinema, as the crew for Spielzeugland / Toyland were there, and it had won an Oscar for Best Short Film earlier in the evening, to mighty cheers and screams. So, between them snaffling an Oscar and me finishing my book, there was a bunch of very happy people jumping up and down on the pavement on Rosa-Luxemberg Strasse at 6.30am, as the birds on the roof of the People's Theatre across the road cleared their throats and thought about singing.

Spent the last few days recovering, and dealing with the backlog of a life that has been on hold for months. Visited the doctor with my stigmata (they are beginning to heal). Today was the best day yet, I had a brilliant plan and I carried it out: I stayed in bed all day, dozing, reading, drinking coffee, and eating chocolate.

So, now, back to work. Radio play. Screenplay. Poetry. Life.

I'm reading in Berlin on Saturday

Phil Rose took this picture of me in Berlin a while back

I'm reading a new piece from my next book (Jude: Level 2), this Saturday, January 24th 2009, at 4pm, in the Johann Rose in Kreutzberg. Why? Because the magnificent Nikola Richter asked me. Only a fool would say no, and my mamma didn't raise no fools. (Her Wikipedia entry is in German, but here she is in English.) I gather I'll be reading in the Hinterzimmer Salon (in the back room... I'll be everybody's darling...)

There will be cake. (In fact, I am being paid in cake.) This is, bizarrely, my first reading in Berlin. And I've never read this piece live before, so it may suck. But it may not. Anyway, it's free, so no whinging. Here's the address:

CafeBar & Lounge
Johann Rose
Forster Str. 57
10999 Berlin
U1 Görlitzer Bahnhof

Tel.: 0049 (0) 30- 55 10 35 90
news@johannrose.de

Elis will also be reading... Heck, read all about it in German (the key phrase is "Eintritt Frei"!)

Herzliche Einladung zum ersten Hinterzimmer-Salon im Johann Rose im neuen Jahr!

Come visit!

24. Januar: Wild komisch

Bei Kuchen und Kaffee und Musik vom Plattenteller geht es im Januarsalon am Samstag, den 24.1., darum, wie man eigentlich das Lachen in Texte hineinschreibt. Die Gäste sind:

Julian Gough ("Juno and Juliet", "Jude: Level 1"), Gewinner des BBC National Short Story Awards 2007, Sänger und Texter der literarischen und legendären irischen Band "Toasted Heretic", die mit "Galway and Los Angeles" einen Top Ten-Hit in Irland erzielte. Hier kann man erfahren, was er über den satirischen, lyrischen Autor Clive James denkt: http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10530 Julians eigene Webseite findet man hier: http://www.juliangough.com/

Und Elis, Mitglied der Berliner Lesebühne LSD (Liebe statt Drogen), die jeden Dienstag im Lokal auftritt. Berühmt sind unter anderem seine McGyver-Geschichten bei der leider nicht mehr existenten Lesebühne O-Ton-Ute. Er liest neue Texte und vielleicht singt er auch eines seiner "Lieder für Kühe". Mehr hier: http://www.myspace.com/eliscbihn und hier http://www.liebestattdrogen.de/

Eintritt frei, Hutspende erbeten

----

Eine gemeinsame Lesereihe von Nikola Richter, René Hamann im Johann Rose, http://www.johannrose.de

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

I've measured out my life with this image I keep borrowing from Marcelo Souza too.

People who drink coffee see and hear things that aren't there, says a new study.

Well, duh. Of course they do. They're called novelists.

Anyway, here's an article in the Independent on the report, and here's an extract:

"People who consume coffee and other caffeinated products are more likely to have hallucinations, according to a study published today.

The more caffeine students had, the more likely they were to hear voices, smell things and see things that were not there, researchers at Durham University found. They suggested that increased levels of the hormone cortisol caused by caffeine could be behind the link."

Bad science is forever with us. Next time I hope they'll obey best practice, control properly for bias, and ask the students how many of them sip their cappuccino while trying to write their first novel, play, or epic poem.

T.S. Eliot put in best, in the best poem of the last century, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room."

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to sink a pot of Lavazza Rosa, and hallucinate the last chapter of Jude: Level 2.

Blogging Live from Prague

Well, I've just had two blindingly good days in Prague. Met enough lovely people to hold a World Hugging Championships. Read to two of the finest, most receptive audiences ever assembled (in the Globe, and Shakespeare & Sons). They were both engaged and engaging, which is a heck of a feat. Sold all my copies of Jude: Level 1, which shows you how fabulously discerning they were. Wrote some of the new opening to Jude: Level 2 while sitting sipping cappuccino, in the sunlight, outside a cafe in Náměstí Míru (Peace Square). Bought all of Kafka's short fiction, again. And spent many fine hours in bars where the smoke grew so thick you could lie down on it and have a brief nap before returning, refreshed, to the scintillating conversation.

In short, I have been having far too good a time to blog, so that'll have to wait till I'm back in Berlin.

The Latest on Jude: Level 2

 

A bunch of people have been asking me what's happening with Jude Online. (Hi Iarla! Hi Liz!). Or rather, what's not happening, as there hasn't been a new episode posted since October 2007.

Well, it's all my fault. Back in October, I had an idea for Jude: Level 2. I thought it would improve the book, and I asked Ben Yarde-Buller, my publisher at Old Street, to hold off putting up new episodes of Level 2 while I  took off my clothes, oiled my muscular torso, and wrestled with the manuscript in front of an open fire.

I didn't say anything earlier because I wanted to be sure the rewrite would work. Months later, it does. But rewriting Level 2 has had interesting consequences, and I now feel it makes a very interesting book in its own right, with its own unique flavour. So Old Street are going to publish Jude: Level 2 as a book, sometime in 2009. (Level 3 will follow in 2010, and THEN a handsome omnibus will collect all three.)

I know, I know, publishing is the slowest business in the world. Blame the retailers. Chains like Waterstones say they need to see the finished book, cover and all, at least six months in advance of publication, or they won't look at it and they won't order it. And you need even longer to organise proper media coverage. (Why, I don't know. A plane falls out of the sky, there's no problem getting radio, TV, newspaper and internet coverage immediately. A novel falls out of the sky, and it takes nine months. Go figure.)

We're still figuring out what the heck to do about the online version. I don't have a finished version of the new Level 2, so I don't want to show it online yet. I'm extremely happy with how the rewrite is turning out but, having already written one big new section, I've realised I now need - for aesthetic reasons with which I shall not bore you - a new opening for the book.  Which I've just begun writing. (Given that I like to put my stuff through an absolutely ferocious number of drafts and polishes before I publish it, and given that, like most authors, I spend the vast majority of my time idling beneath a coconut tree eating barbecued hummingbirds when I should be writing, it's going to be quite a while before it's ready.)

Also, publishing Jude: Level 2 as a physical book has loads of implications which we haven't worked through yet. (For example, if Jude: Level 2 is to win the Booker Prize it so richly deserves, the online edition would need to be published the same year the physical book is published...) So we're going to keep Jude Online on hold till we've worked all that out. Anyway, best guess is that we'll eventually get back to putting Jude: Level 2 up on the Jude Online site, but closer to the publication of the physical book.

If you've any questions about any of this, ask away. All questions and comments welcome, either here or in the forum. If it's a private remark or question, feel free to email me directly (there's a Mail Me button lurking down there somewhere on the navigation bar.)

And if you'd like me to tell you when Jude: Level 2 is coming out, email me and say so. I'll put you on my mailing list, when I finally put my mailing list together. (Been meaning to do that for a year... hi all you old Toasted Heretic fans who asked to be put on my mailing list, I'll get it together soon! Soon!)

Thanks for your patience. I know I'm being infuriatingly Artistic, but it took seven years to write the entire saga, and another couple of years to get Level 1 published, so an extra year or two won't make much difference. And I think it will be worth it.

 
I hope you, or your descendents, will, eventually, agree...