Untouchable

Adrian the owner of Stutter Records finally came good on his word and included 'Untouchable' on the Electric 101 ep.  Which means after an absence of 21 years I have another release to add to my collection. 

Obviously you'll all want to share in this piece of musical history so I have included the link below:

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/thisis101 

In other music news, I have been shortlisted to appear at a festival in May and although I wont know for sure until the end of March, I have prepared myself mentally for one humongous knees'up. 

It's abroad as well, so it will be just like the good old days in St Petersburg when I would rave away  early hours in a converted nuclear bomb shelter. 

Mind you I can still talk a good rave, but in practice I am not sure if the flesh is strong enough even though the spirit still is.  (This coming from a man who put his back out dancing 'Ghangnam Style' the other week.)

I am pretty confident that I will give a damn good account of myself if I get the chance and just hope that the nerves don't get the better of me.

Strangely enough, when I am performing my stories, I never get nervous at all, I move about the floor - making eye contact, playing to the crowd etc.  Put me behind my keyboard however, and there seems to be a massive disconnection between myself and the audience.  

This is probably what put me off playing live in the first place.

Anyway May is a long way off and I have a host of things to occupy myself with until then. 

2013....Could this possibly be the year?

The last two months have seen me lose quite a lot of the momentum I have been building up over the past year.  Having made several breakthroughs on the Ebook front, I naively thought that I could finally get "There's Something Wrong with Grandad" exclusively ready for the Kindle and have it available for Halloween. 

I really should have known better. 

This is a collection of stories that has missed so many deadlines it's comical.

Originally as a short animated film with the catchy name of Zombelina.  ( The less said about that the better.)

Then as an audio book.....

then again, as an illustrated story book.  Before building up the bottle to release it solely as an ebook exclusively for the Kindle.

Lord Monty's wife from Golden Arm

. 

 

Having been dismissive of Kindle in the early days, I became their biggest fan when I found a link that converts InDesign directly to Kindle without the need to

 

 

produce in Epub ,

then use Sigil  to edit the CSS,

before finally converting it to Mobi format using Calibre. 

 

 

So armed with this, I threw myself into getting TSWWG ready for Halloween. This meant stepping up to the plate on Twitter and using Pluggio to drip feed content onto my Twitter feed, chase after followers and hopefully get them talking.

 

I even found a few more images to make up the shortfall left by Jodie, reformatted all the stories so they looked good on all of the Kindle devices - and braced myself for another smooth book release.

 

I was flying and everything looked very good.

 

But when it came to converting them, I found that the TOC (table of contents) was missing and it was back to the drawing board for another few sessions of self doubt and forum trawling.  What started off as a few days lay off, then turned into a week and then almost two months of leaving an almost complete book, instead of sitting down and getting on with it.

 

I semi nailed the process required to get the book up and running, but Christmas and work proved to be quite a distraction and in short nothing happened in December.

 

Other projects gained weight and new projects were born. (in my head, that is,)  and before I knew it I had another list of projects filling up the spaces in my head, all screaming for attention.

 

 

So here is my HPM Media Ltd list for 2013:

 

1. There's Something Wrong with Grandad:  Convert to Mobi format and publish.   Done

 

2. The Pot Bellied Cook and the Three Legged Dog:  Format and publish as a book/ebook - obtain translations and publish.  Promote and market the book, coordinate the PR and reading schedule.

 

3. Publish Farsi, French and hopefully Russian translation of the HPM.

 

 

As you can see, I have finally managed to publish There's Something Wrong with Grandad in Mobi format which is available to buy or rent from Amazon.

 

This project has been haunting me for years, so I feel good to be able to finally present it in a decent format.  I am hoping that the e-book will be the thin end of a very long wedge and am still adamant that the collection needs to be in audio and eventually visual format. 

 

Thankfully I dont need to use Sigil and Calibre anymore.  ( Not that there is anything wrong with them - but the workload has decreased dramatically.)

 

I think that covers the publishing aspect of HPM, and I will use the next blog to tell you about the music and games we have been developing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Venus in Fir ( a tale of two trees)

Each year around this time I am given a mission by the family to go out into the big wide world and hunt down the perfect christmas tree.  Each year I walk around nurseries and garden centres looking for the one that screams "pick me, pick me" and it generally takes about 2 hours of pushing and pulling, balancing trees against anything to make them stand up, noting form, branch distribution and symetry before I find the one that I want. 

It's hard when you are a former garden designer because you feel that you're on trial. 

The nurserymen all know you and scutinise your everymove - sometimes tutting sometimes offering a '50/50 shimmy' with their hands but never revealing anything.

I know it's all a conspiracy,

I know they have already found the perfect tree  and hidden it amongst the ugly conifers that you need to look at first before disregarding and carrying on your search.

This year was no different.

After 2 hours and 3 nurseries I found myself in Macclesfield Forest; freezing cold in the  and in almost complete darkness.

The day trippers had all gone home and there was just myself and 3 tree surgeons all watching me and wondering:

"Who's the small guy in the big wellies, messing about with their stock?".

Eventually I gave up and opted for that near perfect pine that almost "had it" but was missing a bit on top  ( a bit like myself).  It was no good, I didn't bond straight away with the pine which isn't a good sign but nevertheless I decided that I may as well take it.  On my way out another "punter" had joined in the game .

To my dismay, she went straight over to the pile pulled out the first tree she saw and stood it up.

As I looked at her and the tree, I could feel the envy and anger build up inside me.  What right did she have  to waltz into the yard and find the "perfect tree" so nonchelantly without having to suffer the self doubt and pine rash that I had developed over the afternoon.

Talk about "Venus in Fir",

It had form, symetry and branch distribution that you could only dream about.

A perfect height,

a perfect girth

it was "THE PERFECT TREE". 

I looked at her and tried to make eye contact, but to my surprise she wasn't at all interested in me at all

She was looking at my tree, learing at my tree, I could tell she wanted my tree...

"Did you find what you wanted?" I asked.
 

"Yeh but..... your tree is really nice, I dont suppose you want to swap?" she said hopefully.

It was like a game of poker, I didn't want to reveal my hand too soon so I stalled...trying to hide any emotion on my face...pretending to agonize over the decision. 

Should I raise the stakes and risk losing the tree, or should I just call her?

" You know what,  I will swap because its Christmas, and trees all look the same to me - I never know what the fuss is about", and with that I grabbed it and ran to the counter with it safely hoisted on my shoulders before she could change her mind.

In the eyes of my wife and daughter, I was elevated to hero status.  What a tree!!!

That evening was spent watching the girls slowly and carefully placing the designer ornaments in synchronised fashion whilst I opted to search Youtube for cheesy Christmas tunes to create the mood.

It was like the final minutes of all of those hollywood feel good movies that make you vomit - (to watch that is) but in real life it wasn't that bad.

 

Sometimes a picture really does paint a thousand words

 

A friend posted this on my Facebook page recently:

 

"Abi was talking this morning about what was real and what was imaginary. She was going through everything she could think of and categorising it, so gruffalo = imaginary, totoro = imaginary, jesus = imaginary, when it came to the Hairy Plug Monster though she decided he's real. I thought you'd like to know :) "

 

 

She obviously knows there's no such thing as the Gruffalo.

but don't take my word for it     Click here to find out for yourself

 

or for the equally brilliant Epub version Click here