Bernie pic

Bernie pic
Bernie

Wednesday 30 January 2013

Book review of Iraqi Icicle



My reaction to  a review of my novel (Only joking)

Glenda A. Bixler is the latest reviewer of my novel Iraqi Icicle.
Glenda writes she had never heard of the band The Go-Betweens which is a regular motif in the novel. Ms Bixler went to the trouble to present a Go-Betweens sampler which heads her review.
Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together and give a big shout out to our guest reviewe,r Glenda A. Bixler.

Saturday 26 January 2013

The joy of publishing


A FUNNY thing happened – as it always does – on the way to publishing the paperback of my novel for Australia Day 2013.

Thursday 24 January 2013

I will use a metaphor or more


On a bright sunny morning, 
Elmore suddenly spoke bravely!

AUTHOR Elmore Leonard is not gunning for metaphors in his witty advice on writing style.

Wednesday 23 January 2013

Lennon and I are miffed


JOHN Lennon famously returned his MBE in protest about the war in Biafra and the Beatles single Cold Turkey slipping down the charts. I won’t be receiving any Australia Day (January 26) award to return but I am mightily miffed at my novel Iraqi Icicle slipping down the charts.

Tuesday 22 January 2013



CAN you help me achieve 1000+ free downloads of Iraqi Icicle this week through your social media contacts?
I am not begging, though I will if I have to.

Friday 18 January 2013

The whole world loves freedom



Handmade notebooks from  Libre Livre


I TRY not to trouble myself unduly with matters of commerce.
For five days next week, I am giving away my enovel Iraqi Icicle. I do this not because I think it makes a lot of commercial sense but because others tell me it does.
It seems the Amazon algorithms will discover me this way.

Saturday 12 January 2013

Post or past it the media Empire strikes back


No. Comment. "Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie" http://nyti.ms/ZvOCJe 

American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis has left a cryptic response to the instantly famous New York Times Magazine article on the film The Canyons which is in limbo awaiting distribution.

Friday 11 January 2013

Is Li-Lo Cu-Cu? No-No-


Critics praised Lindsay Lohan for the 2006 film  Chapter 27 
on the Lennon murder and now they're gonna crucify her

A GAME doing the rounds is one in which we emerging/ nobody authors are asked to name our dream cast for the film of our novel.
I played recently and said I definitely wanted Lindsay Lohan to play Crystal Speares, the femme fatale of my novel, Iraqi Icicle. I said I thought she would make a good fist of the role. Besides, I added, think of the pre-publicity she would attract.

Tuesday 8 January 2013

Mr Carr rides his hobby horse to the book-store


Of course the world is flat 
and ebooks are finished

THE flat-earth priests from the Wall Street Journal have joined their counterparts on The Guardian in pre-emptively performing the last rites on ebooks.
Nicholas Carr in a recent WSJ article  made this quite extraordinary prediction: 
…‘the initial e-book explosion is starting to look like an aberration.
‘….E-books, in other words, may turn out to be just another format—an even lighter-weight, more disposable paperback.
Of course, the WSJ lives and breathes hallowed statistics and this is what Carr’s argument rests on.
‘Sales of e-readers plunged 36% in 2012, according to estimates from IHS iSuppli, while tablet sales exploded.
As with much internet news, you get the opinionated background in the main piece and the real story, succinctly put, in the comments.
In this case, Michael Fawkes wrote:
The 36% reduction in stand-alone e-readers is irrelevant. The question is how many e-book reading devices (including tablets) were sold in 2013?
Major etailers such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble this year made FREE ereader apps readily available for tablets and smart phones. In other words tablets (with explosive  sales) became ereaders as well as retaining other functions. 
Carr admits ebook sales increased by a third last year but he puts it in such a convoluted way it sounds like failure.
‘…the annual growth rate for e-book sales fell abruptly during 2012, to about 34%.’ 
Bugger me, the industry is in crisis because ‘it is a sharp decline from the triple-digit growth rates of the preceding four years.'
Most industries would kill for a 30+% sales increase. I still completely agree with the prediction of Joe Konrath and others that print books are the ones headed for a niche in book sales.
There is a problem with real ebooks (to distinguish them from dead-tree books) but it is not about the cliché Carr recites: ‘The fact that an e-book can't be sold or given away after it's read also reduces the perceived value of the product.
The ebook critics like to toss around that one about pass-ons  because they know the ebook commercial model cannot sustain private lending in the digital world. But the fact is being able to pass on a dead-tree book barely informs the reader's buying decision. 
Commenter Steve Shelton nailed the real problem with ebooks. ‘I prefer printed books because I have found so many spelling and formatting errors in e-books.
That is it in a nutshell. Publishers are using automated programs to create books for eReaders and the programs just do not work properly. This is a technical problem which will soon be solved as with the header/ footer and page numbering omissions.
When these drawbacks are overcome and a cheap dedicated 6in X 9 inch ereader, capable of storing 1000 books is created, we will all want one.
Move on, Mr Carr. Run if you will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQIrI3N1bQQ

Monday 7 January 2013

Profane professions: background to a novel


Fortitude Valley was not named 
because it took guts to be there after dark.
It honored this ship which brought 
Scottish immigrants to Brisbane in 1849


AN American friend was surprised at the profane language Brisbane police officers use in my novel Iraqi Icicle, set between 1986 and 1992.

Saturday 5 January 2013

When Rusty snapped



Toytown: photograph by Russell Brown


RUSSELL Brown is an Aussie newspaper photographer.
He and I have worked on the same newspapers, the Pine Rivers Press and the Northern Times for more than a decade and we live in neighboring suburbs in the Pine Rivers district of Australia.
Because he is Australian, Russell has been honored with the nickname, Rusty. 

Friday 4 January 2013

CURATING WHAT JANE SAYS


Burlesque performer Dita Von Teese is a new columnist for xojane.com. They tell me hers is a stripped-down style.
YOU learn something new every day. Today I discovered xojane.com. It did not change my life.
It seems xojane is one of the top-10 women’s lifestyle internet sites. I am not a woman and many say I am lifestyle-free. Maybe that is why I am not raving about the site. To me, it looked like a online glossy tabloid.
But it has jokes. I like jokes.

Tuesday 1 January 2013

10000 ways to make up stuff


Simeon Stylites sat on a pole for more than 30 years. 
Everybody said he was a saint, but he shrugged. 
“After 10, 000 hours, you get very good at it,” he said.

NUMBERS terrify some people. Others worship them as icons. Many of us just get tricked by them.
A number con-game which has been around for a while is that it takes an author 10,000 hours to become highly proficient at the occupation.