19 February

What Have You Been Doing? Managing the Real / Virtual Life Balance
When push comes to shove, real life activity has to take priority over virtual life. Similarly - and I'm not the most fiscally-motivated person in the world - real paid work sometimes has to come before that which doesn't pay. So, what with various social activities strategically placed to give me  a break from the time-consuming, if reasonably paid work that the new semester brings, and other academic and real-life things to attend to, the writing of blogs and new rants, essays and works of fiction hasn't had much of a look in this week. This looks likely to be the shape of things for the next few weeks, maybe longer, too.

However, I have been conducting interviews with some of the truly remarkable authors who contributed to Clinicality Press' Clinical, Brutal... An Anthology of Writing with Guts' that I edited and was published late last month. Whaddayaknow, as people they're every bit as interesting and thought-provoking as their fiction.

The interviews are being posted at the Clinicality website, and so far I've interviewed Jock Drummond, Karl van Cleave, Antony Hitchin, Richard Kovitch, D M Mitchell, Dire McCain, Vincent Clasper, and, most recently, Jim Lopez in what proved to be an expansive and incredibly informative exchange. These can all be read here: http://clinicalitypress.co.uk/ClinicalBrutal.aspx

There are more to follow, inlcuding Stuart Bateman, Constance Stadler, Maria Gornell and Pablo Vision.

Please, go and read the interviews, and explore the work of these illustrious wordsmiths. There should be enough there to keep y'all going while I'm keeping a low profile...




And if you've loving my work, buy the book!


12:43 GMT  |  Read comments(1)

24 January

Slogging My Guts Out: The Day of Reckoning as Things Turn Brutal
This week is a big week for me. The book I’ve edited and been heavily involved in at every stage – from design through to promotion, and beyond – is out on Monday, the 25th. Clinical, Brutal... An Anthology of Writing With Guts is a book I’m immensely proud of. It looks the business, and the contents are even better. Of course, I can only take so much responsibility for the contents. The authors who contributed have all delivered truly amazing works – as I knew they would. As the submissions flowed in, I felt the burden of responsibility to deliver an introduction and overall book that did these pieces justice grew. I like to think I’ve succeeded. The authors I’ve had feedback from so far, and the other Clinicality staff, have been brilliantly supportive, not to mention excited.

Some of you may be aware that I’ve been conducting interviews with some of the contributing authors, partly as a means of promotion, but equally because I’m curious to dig deeper into the minds of the twisted sick fucks behind the writing. Some of these have already appeared on the Clinicality website and over on Clinicality Press’ MySpace blog. There are more to follow in the coming weeks.

However, my work is done – for now – and so I’m heading off for my annual Coleridge Kick and will be off-line for a while. I sign off with the suggestion that you buy the book – not for me, but because it’s a cracking read: the list of featured authors is a veritable catalogue or roll-call of the most exciting cult authors who’ve been making waves (and tunnels) on line in the past couple of years or so. Their work deserves to be read, and I’m proud to have worked with them on this project. The list of contributors is as follows:


Pablo Vision
Kestra Faye
Jim Lopez
Radcliff Gregory
Díre McCain
Stewart Home
A.D. Hitchin
Richard Kovitch
Christopher Nosnibor
Lee Kwo
S. F. Grimm
David Mark Dannov
D M Mitchell
Jock Drummond
Lucius Rofocale
Stuart Bateman
Karl van Cleave
Vincent Clasper
Constance Stadler
Bill Thunder
Christopher Bateman
Simon Phillips
Maria Gornell


Clinical, Brutal... will be available from Clinicality Press on Monday – either direct or via the POD printer – and will be on Amazon and countless other places, ranging from Barnes and Noble to Tesco fairly soon (it’s something Clinicality has no control over in terms of precise dates).



The Clinicality website is HERE.



06:48 GMT  |  Read comments(1)

06 January

Low Profile - Another Blog on Blogging
People – the 'general public' – have short memories. The collective memory is getting shorter, as is the average / collective attention span. This isn't necessarily indicative of an increasing level of stupidity, so much as it appears to suggest that we, as a species, have reached our capacity in terms of evolution. We can only absorb so much information, and human brain simply isn't built to process and retain everything it's bombarded with in the Internet age, this age of media and information overload – at least not on a conscious or liminal level.

We're expected to take in and retain more than is physically possible. When presented with so much information from so many sources, it comes down to a simple choice between quality and quantity. The popularity of Twitter, flash fiction, etc., etc., suggests that the latter wins out almost every time.

Small wonder, then, that if you're not receiving constant updates, tweets, bulletins, and all the rest, people soon forget. Failure to update a blog for a few weeks and it's dead, the audience moves on, because they want new material and they want it now! Celebrities can make headlines on account of their inane Internet postings, or similarly sink without trace. If you're not on-line, then really, you don't exist. And having a media bod or one of your 'people' take care of such business isn't good enough: social networking has created a certain expectation that personal pages and profiles equate to a direct line to the artist. An unreasonable expectation? Perhaps, but keeping the fans happy is what it's all about. They're the ones paying the wages of any given artist.

The trouble is, creating and maintaining a web presence requires a degree of effort, and is time-consuming. Indeed, maintaining any kind of profile and remaining in the public eye – without reaching overkill – requires a degree of effort, and is time-consuming. Do you really think it's possible to do a Salinger nowadays?

I recently read an article on writing a successful blog. Unsurprisingly, it was presented in the form of a list – ten essentials for a successful blog or somesuch. One of the points was that content should be new, original and exclusive. Fair enough. The article – which I refuse to link to and grant it further unwarranted authority – also suggests that a successful blog should be well-written. If only! I've seen no shortage of incredibly successful (if one measures success in terms of popularity, which seems to be the general benchmark in blogging terms) blogs that are atrociously written. It would also have been nice if the author had taken her own advice.

Another point was that a successful blog must be updated daily. At least. The author's contention was that readers demand new content, and if a writer can't keep up with that demand, why should they expect readers to return to their blog? Now, I've long believed in the adage 'content is king.' But my interpretation of this is that content should be considered, and have a degree of depth – actual content. After all, there's no shortage of superficial fluff, and a little bit of real meat can go a long way. This returns us to the quality vs quantity debate.

Obviously, writers write, and many writers of books – fiction or otherwise - through the years have relied on other forms of writing, such as journalism, as a means of establishing a steady income and raising their public profile. It beats working in a fast food joint, after all, and is good exercise. Continual writing keeps one sharp, can improve a writer.

Today, whether it pays or not, everyone is expected to have a blog. And what writer wouldn't have a blog? The trouble is, meeting the expectations and obligations maintaining a blog brings can take a writer away from their actual job of writing. It's all very well promoting oneself and one's writing through blogging, but it's counterproductive if one reaches the point that there's nothing to promote and the blog becomes the end in itself.

It's possible that we're now reaching the point that blog saturation will bring about a new wave of blog abstainers. So many blogs, so little time! So much writing, and for what? How much more content does the world need? I for one can't possibly read all the blogs I subscribe to, and find it impossible to work and read blogs concurrently. I'm not necessarily convinced that, as Stewart Home claimed in his final 'Mister Trippy' blog that blogging is dead, or even that the days of the blog are numbered. However, I do think that the blogosphere may be subject to change, and (hopefully) shrinkage as we move into the new decade. Ideally, there'll be fewer blogs, with the crap, crass, poorly written and substance-lacking ones falling by the wayside. I daresay that the reality will be the exact opposite, but I can dream.

As for me, I intend to keep on bloggin' for the time being. Do the blogs raise my profile? Possibly. Do they help sell books? Maybe, just a few. But as I do have some bigger projects I'm wanting to concentrate on, don't be too surprised if the blogs are less frequent.

One final word on blogs, though: remember, success is all relative...



 And if you're loving my work, there's more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk... and hey, there are always the books you can buy.


13:02 GMT  |  Read comments(0)

23 December

A Reflection on 'A Reflection,' or, 2009: A Year of Four Quarters
Well, I did it: I wrote four stories and published them as limited-edition pamphlets at quarterly intervals through 2009. I can’t exactly recall how or why the idea came about, but the objective was to release the literary equivalent of a series of singles that together form a set. I could have published a collectiom of short stories, but having done that in 2007 with ‘Bad Houses’ I decided I needed a new strategy, a new challenge. Moreover, as the publishing industry is as fucked as the music industry, it’s down to the writers themselves to come up with innovative new strategies for getting their works not only out there, but sold. There’s no small irony in the fact that, as a music obsessive, I elected to employ an old music industry tactic in the form of the limited edition for my 2009 project. After all, there’s nothing like a limited edition to create buzz, not to mention a potential future collectable.

By using the same artwork but in a different colour for each publication, the thematic unity of the contents would be reinforced by the visual presentation (while also recreating the effect of coloured vinyls – sort of). Having declared that I would be producing these pieces, I then had to do some serious writing. At the same time, I was aware that there was a very grave danger of overkill after a fairly prolific couple of years, with ‘Bad Houses’ and ‘C.N.N.’ in 2007, ‘THE PLAGIARIST’ and ‘Postmodern Fragments’ and a proliferation of magazine publications in 2008. Consequently, I decided I should cut back on other works save for a few carefully and strategically selected contributions - primarily in Paraphilia Magaine, which I believe is the best zine out there right now, and THE place to be seen.

I didn’t set out with any specific theme in mind, although other pieces I had already been working on suggested emerging concerns – obsessions may perhaps be a more accurate choice of word – and so I decided to focus squarely on these issues in ‘Lust for Death.’ It didn’t so much stare death in the face as take it outside and challenge it to a bout of bare-knuckle fisticuffs, while also taking a new approach to narrative, recounting the same events from three different narrative perspectives.

Despite wanting the publications to be quite closely linked and thus evidently part of a sequence or collection of related works, it was essential to me that I tried a different approach for each story, and set myself a new challenge. As such, the styles of the stories are varied, although I’ve been pleased with the results on each occasion, while also feeling a sense of achievement  knowing that I had pushed myself every time.

 ‘Before the Flood’ took a slightly more oblique approach to issues of (im)mortality. Taken from a much larger piece the tone was also rather different, and more overtly literary. The third pamphlet, ‘Counting the Hours’ was a more introspective piece, with events confined to a single hour in the life of an agoraphobic first-person narrator. Because I was in the process of moving house at the time of its publication, I didn’t do a great deal to promote it, and this was reflected in the sales, which were, frankly, abysmal. Disappointing, to say the least, as this is, in my opinion, the strongest of the three (not to mention the longest by far).

I was almost tempted to ditch the project at this point, but having some this far, I got back on that bike and rode it... hard. The result is the fragmented, multi-voiced, many-angled ‘A Reflection,’ which revisits many of the themes of the preceding works of the series, and even echoes some of the narratives contained therein, while interweaving these with my own personal reflections on events, concepts and even the writing process of the series and other (dis)connected texts. It’s as close to autobiography as I’ve come in any of my (published) works, although it’s a most postmodern literary exercise, in that it intentionally blurs the boundaries between author / narrator / character, fact / fiction, biography / fabrication. Moreover, as much as it is ‘a reflection’ on the past tear and the closing decade, it’s also a hint of the direction my writing is heading, the avenues I’m inclined to pursue over the next couple of years.

I intend to publish less still in 2010. Paid work and a focus on the completion of longer works mean that shorter pieces will simply not be viable. In addition, I have a substantial hoard of works – including 2 novels and 2 novellas – that lurk unpublished, and submitting work is easily as time-consuming as producing it. The reviews and blogs will continue, and there will be more fiction and rants. But less is more, and while exposure is the way forward in any quest for ubiquity, there is such a thing as overkill, and there are other avenues yet to be explored.

Anyway, 2010 will kick off in dramatic style with the launch of the ‘Clinical, Brutal’ anthology that I’ve edited and am inordinately proud of, and I have a stack of pamphlets in the office just waiting to be dispatched. They’re only available via christophernosnibor.co.uk and are sure to be worth a packet in another ten years’ time!



'A Reflection' is officially published on December 30th. Orders are being taken now at Christophernosnibor.co.uk.



12:20 GMT  |  Read comments(1)

22 December

Over the Border(s) (RIP): The Changing Face of Consumerism VII
While there’s been talk of ‘green shoots’ and other such piffle relating to an imminent recovery in the market and of the economy, the evidence of recent events suggests that such positively has been, and remains, somewhat premature. Now, it’s my opinion that those who say that the end of the recession is in sight are those who are gullible enough to believe what they hear in the news. Of course politicians want us to believe that things will be rosy in next to no time, and talk up ‘consumer confidence.’

The trouble is, I can’t see where this additional consumer spending is going to come from when redundancies are being announced on an almost daily basis – or where these people with cash to burn are going to spend it given that there are a diminishing number of shops trading.

Last week, our city centre Threshers began its closing down sale. Within a couple of days the shelves were looking extremely bare. Ok, so I rarely shop in there, not least of all because I tend to brew much of my own beer. I don’t think however that my lack of custom alone has brought about the demise of a chain of off-license stores.

I was more concerned by the news that Borders has gone into administration. I’m a big buyer of books, and while I do purchase a lot of my books second hand, and many via Amazon, I have been a regular shopper in Borders, too. I do think that Borders was significantly better when it was owned by its American parent company. I remember when Borders first opened in York, being bowled over by the range of books, in particular US publications. On relocating to Glasgow in 2000 and finding the largest Borders in the UK, I was in book heaven.

Valco Capital Partners, the private equity company that took over in the summer steered the chain in a more mainstream direction, serving up the same 3 for 2 offers on bestsellers as Waterstones ad WHS. And so it is that I’ve found myself increasingly forced to turn to on-line stores to obtain the books that I want. It goes without saying that commentators will blame the Internet for ‘stealing’ trade, but in instances like this, I can’t help but feel that the trade’s been surrendered, handed over to the on-line stores on a plate.

Even so, Borders still carried a far better range of stock than its competitors, and what concerns me is that once again, the disappearance of the chain can only lead to one thing: reduced customer choice. The fact that there’s choice on-line is not the same. Much of the immense joy of perusing the shelves of a bookstore is not knowing what you want until you find it. Through the years, I’ve made many browse purchases, including my first discovery of Stewart Home, whose Slow Death I happened upon in Virgin in Oxford in 99. There have been terrible days in my life where I’ve completely turned things around by going to my local bookshop, picking up something that, on the basis of the cover and the blurb and a quick flick of a couple of pages, appears to be just what I need to lift my mood – or reflect it – and immersed myself in an impulse book buy until things have improved. That can’t happen with on line shopping. I’m not impatient, but sometimes we all need instant gratification.

What’s more, browsing just isn’t the same. ‘Other people who bought this’ recommendations are all too prescriptive, too obviously designed to steer the shopper in a certain direction, can all to easily be rigged to operate as another marketing technique. Browsing is a truly random, arbitrary and physical experience. No-one else can browse on your behalf.

It’s surely through browsing that a great books are sold, and while many some have the advantage of being included in those stack ‘em high, 3 for 2 offers and therefore stand a chance of being the third bonus book that someone throws in simply because it’s free, small publishers simply can’t compete.

This is perhaps the biggest concern raised by the collapse of Borders – a chain who have been pretty good at accommodating small, even local publishers, and were forward-thinking enough to incorporate a print on demand element within some of their stores. Yes, the future of publishing is something that is affected by this latest development in the retail sector. In the first instance, no Borders equals one fewer outlet through which publishers – and consequently authors – can make their works available. For me, there’s a personal dimension to this story also: the plan had been to approach the Borders in York and Leeds to see if they would be willing to stock Clinicality Press’ Clinical, Brutal anthology, given Clinicality’s position as a ‘regional’ publisher. Granted, only a couple of the authors in the book are remotely local, but that’s hardy the point: the point was exposure, pure and simple. Another door closes...

Worse still, if new authors are more likely to be discovered by readers through browsing, then the virtual elimination of browsing from book shopping culture means that only established authors – or authors that readers intentionally set out to buy books by – are going to sell. The result will be that publishers – already reluctant to try new authors because of the increasingly tight bottom line – simply aren’t going to take risks on unknowns. Before long, there will come a point of total stagnation... and then what?

Chances are the long-term outcome of all of this will be a dramatic revision of the way books are sold, the way the publishing world operates – a brave new world, in much the same way that the music industry revolution that is currently under way is seeing bright new ways emerging from the dark ruins of what was once a seemingly unshakeable empire. But right now, it’s rather hard to be optimistic.

Some time ago, I posted a blog pondering on the future of publishing, suggesting that these are exciting times for tiny publishers with innovation on their side and for authors who are willing to adopt the punk ethic in their approach to writing and (self)publishing. I still believe this, but also believe there are some difficult times ahead. It’s going to be a long and difficult struggle for survival. But I’m up for a fight...


If you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk... and if you’re really loving it, feel free to purchase a book or two, since you can’t get them in Borders.




14:15 GMT  |  Read comments(0)