Violent Artsy

I went to see Only God Forgives tonight. I have a problem with it; I don't know whether it was a violent film that attempted to be artsy, or an artsy film that happened to be violent. I'm leaning towards the latter.

If you want to see a film with an easy-to-follow sequence of scenes, this isn't the film for you. If, however, you just want to look at Ryan Gosling's face for a while, then by all means head to your local cinema. Just be warned: pretty boy Gosling doesn't stay pretty. He also doesn't say very much, which certainly detracts from the idea of him as an actor. We put it much more simply: he was hired to be a model in the film, hired for his face, and that's what they spent a lot of time showing on-screen.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing the guy, and I'm not dissing the film, but there wasn't an awful lot of expression on his face - or anyone else's unless they were being stabbed or cut to pieces - and the sequence of scenes made it difficult to tell what happened, and what didn't happen. While we're willing to accept the stabbings and the shootings, we struggle with the karaoke (a word I'm unsure of the spelling of, and cannot at the moment do a spell check - deal with my guess!). I think the fact that one of the songs sung came without any sound from the guy's mouth. He was miming a song in a foreign language, and we didn't even get the subtitles.

All that said, it was an enjoyable film. If you're into that sort of thing.

For me, it brought back memories of English class. We had a particular name for film's like Only God Forgives; we called them Michael Films, so called because the lecturer, Michael, seemed to make it his goal to show us the most bizarre and/or mentally scarring films he could possibly fit into vague genre definitions. I'm still caught up over which film was more damaging to my psyche: Oldboy, Blue Velvet, or Spanking the Monkey.

This particular brand of film, however weird, almost always manages to do something: it gets me thinking.

Tonight, I ended up thinking about a book I plan on writing, and how other books I'm planning on writing seem to all fit into one vaguely described universe. It's interesting how that happened, and while I'm not sure I know which elements of stories will actually fall together neatly, I know I've got some new ideas for the utilization.

That's the fun thing about cinema night. I don't always pick the film - actually, I rarely do - and so I'm exposed to a lot of different types of cinema. Comedies, horrors, actions, violent-artsies and artsy-violents, thrown into a mixture along with films for children, superhero films and the occasional fantasy. Cinema night, and film classes, are central to my life. In the space of a couple of hours, I can see the world through the eyes of another, however disturbed and crazy a world that might be. Stories are told, lives are lived, people are cut open by sharp swords, and it makes my brain whir with excitement at the potential for stories in the future.

The Different Types of Customers in a Bookshop

With almost six years' experience of working in a bookshop, and being a fan of exploring book shops whenever I find them, I feel it's about time to take a look at customers. They come in all shapes and sizes, and more often than not fall into one of the following categories:

The I-Know-What-I'm-Looking-For Customer

My personal favourite: the customer that knows exactly what they're looking for and where to find it. Sometimes they need a little push in the right direction, but when a customer doesn't fuss over what they need and they know you have it in stock, it's a generally pleasant experience all-round.

The I-Think-It's-About-This Customer

A typical scenario, I have come to realise, is for customers to come into the shop knowing one thing about a book: what it might be about. Might. Like a war, or a place, or a person. Maybe. Sometimes, if they remember where they heard about the book, it's possible to track it down. If not, they verge on being...

The I-Know-Nothing-But-Help-Me-Anyway Customer

The worst situation I've ever had with customers is when they don't know what they're looking for. A friend-of-a-friend recommended it to them. When they were drunk. They don't know the name of the book, they don't know the name of the author, they don't even know what it's about, but they think the cover is yellow. (That's an actual, literal scenario I've had, minus the friend-of-a-friend and the inebriation.)

The I-This-Book-Online-But-Don't-Realise-X Customer

I've had three scenarios pop up here. In the first, the customer doesn't realise that the book they're looking for is out of print and has been for many decades. It's impossible to get, anywhere. The one that really bothers booksellers is when the book the person is looking for isn't actually available because (can you guess it?) it's an ebook. I've lost count of the amount of times people have come looking for a book that's only available as an ebook because it's been self-published. Which is where we get sub-customer #3: the book they're looking for has a print edition, but it's with CreateSpace. I don't have any direct problems with CreateSpace, but it's annoying to see its name pop up when a customer is looking for the book. The title is only available if, and only if, the author of the book has paid for the distribution of the book worldwide to wholesalers, and if the bookshop has access to one of these wholesalers. Even then it's difficult to get ahold of one from Ireland.

The I-Think-This-Book-Exists Customer

I've had people come in looking for a book, simply because they want to read about a topic. The problem is, people think the book has to exist because they thought of it. That's not fun for the bookseller who has to look for the book. Just like...

The I-Think-Someone-Should-Write-This-Book-But-I'm-Going-To-Ask-Anyway-Just-In-Case Customer

I think the name says it all. The book doesn't exist. The customer knows this. They are aware of Google. But they ask anyway, in the hopes that somehow a bookshop will pull out the book anyway.

The I'll-Just-Get-It-Online Customer

Again, we've got two. We've got those who explicitly say they're going to buy it for an e-reader. That's not fun for booksellers. But then, neither are those who say they're going to buy it on a bookselling website. Both are knocking us out of business in some manner.

The I-Think-This-Should-Be-Cheaper Customer

Yes, this happens. People come in, grab a book, bring it to the till, then argue over the price because they saw it cheaper somewhere else. Even if we don't have a price promise.

The I-Have-A-Voucher-For-X-Even-Though-You're-Y Customer

"What's the difference?" I've been asked. This being in relation to my shop, and another shop somewhere else in the country. Because this customer has a voucher, and they want to use it. The obvious answer is the correct one: "We're not the same company." Unfortunately, that's not always good enough. "Can't I just use it anyway?" Do I really have to go on? (This also applies to: rewards cards, returns, exchanges and problems in branches where our chain doesn't exist.)

The I-Want-To-Get-A-Book-For-Someone-But-I-Don't-Know-What-To-Get Customer

Truthfully, these aren't always bad. Sometimes, it's a case of a grandparent looking to get a book for their grandchild, and they just don't know what kids read these days. (Many kids don't read...so that doesn't help.) It's perfectly acceptable to ask for help. The problem arises when (1) the customer doesn't know what someone has read, or even likes to do, ever; (2) the customer refuses to accept the help they've asked for; or (3) the customer will let you give them advice for half an hour at Christmas during the busiest hour of the day, won't let you get away, and then buys nothing. That last one might be a stretch of the imagination.

The I-Don't-Care-That-You're-Trying-Close-I-Want-To-Browse-And-Maybe-Buy-A-Book-Even-Though-It's-Two-Minutes-Until-Closing-Time-On-A-Sunday-And-You-Want-To-Get-Home-To-Your-Family-Or-Food Customer

"Kill it with fire!" might be getting a bit worked up over it, but this is too much of a regular occurence to just let it slide. After a day at work, no one should be expected to hang about for someone who decides their time is worth more than yours. Shops have closing times, booksellers have other lives to attend to, and just because you have to get someone a birthday present three weeks later than you meant to doesn't mean you have a right to keep a shop open for another five or ten minutes. It may only seem like a short while to the customer, but people have buses to catch, people to meet, and other plans for after working hours. (Can you tell this one annoys me more than any of the others? Really, compared to this sort of carry-on, other customers aren't that bad. At least they show up when we're open!)

And finally... The I've-Been-Working-Here-Part-time-For-Too-Long Bookseller

I like my job, I do. I'm glad to have it. But six years has been a long time to still work less than ten hours on a regular week, knowing that that's how it's going to continue for the foreseeable future. While I was a student - and I'm so close to the end that I barely consider myself that, anymore - it was helpful to have hours only on the weekend, but looking forward it's not really going to be of much benefit, financially speaking. I'll have all the time in the world and no way of getting to actually see the world.

Yes, I'll be writing a lot, but I don't think it'll be too long before I get sick of the shop altogether. A lack of responsibility, a lack of direction, and a lack of working hours to make it feel like a real job are really making the future here look bleak. I'd rather that not happen. I'll compensate by making big decisions for myself outside of work, but eventually my time here will run out. And what a weird life that'll be.   

What Has Writing Done?

When I think about my life, I often consider how things might be different if I hadn't picked up writing in the way that I did. I don't mean writing as a child. I mean when I was alone and felt bullied and isolated at the age of fourteen. I immediately turned to writing, with no idea how to write a book. I dived in, getting lost in a fantasy world where my protagonist could travel to different worlds and redefine her destiny.

It seemed ideal. Living in her shoes and witnessing the lives of those around her, I felt empowered to keep facing my life. I didn't like school, but I had to go every day. Eventually, I found the courage to stand up for myself, and I think it had to do with realising that I could define who I was. That came from the book that only I could write. With that book, I don't know what would have happened.

Around the same time I finished writing that book, I was sitting my Junior Cert exams. Let me tell you: they are not fun. However, I was prepared for the English paper a bit better than I would have otherwise been. There's a creative writing aspect to it. I wrote a short story, I was happy with how I did, and I wasn't as panicky about the exams having found something I was comfortable with.

(In case you don't know, me and panicky go side-by-side when it comes to exams.)

By the time my 18th birthday came around, I had written two more books. One of them, Meet Sam, I wrote in a month for NaNoWriMo. My first time attempting it. I had a ton of work to do for school, but I never fell behind. When December reared it's cold and book-less face, I actually went up a grade in Maths. My theory: writing a book, while still working, taught me to use my brain more effectively. I had more energy and determination, and did better in school. I consider that a plus.

But wait, there's more. On the night of my 18th birthday party, that same book was taken by some friends and adapted into a short film. There was a lot of ad-libbing, some racism, and some private jokes, but they did it. I still consider it the best present I've ever received.

Less specific to anything else, though, was the relationship I formed over the years with the one and only Darren Shan. He taught me a lot about what it means to be a writer, through good times and bad, and it was his advice at how to keep on writing after I lost my job back in 2010 that kept me going. If I wasn't a writer, I would have been just another fan. I've kept up with his events over the years when I could, and was even blessed to get to attend the celebrations when he moved to a new publisher for his Zom-B books in July 2012.

If I skip the amount of time I spent writing material that never reached conclusion, I can arrive in 2010, summer after 1st Year in college. I wrote three novellas of varying quality and style. They helped me to explore some issues, like the new friends I had in college, the weight certain relationships had on my life, and certain existential issues that like to creep up on me from time to time. The same therapeutic effect is now felt by writing poetry, incidentally, though I still see the value in writing those stories.

The past couple of years have seen the biggest impacts of writing. I had a play on stage that helped me do a lot of good for an important charity (an act that would have been impossible if not for that very first book, or the wonderful actors in my college). I plucked up the courage shortly after it went on stage to put together a plan to write and publish a book in a week. The writing of that book, Balor Reborn, led to three more books in the year following, a set up for the next few months of my life, and my first ever published article in a magazine.

All I can say is, wow.

I doubt mean that to sound pompous or self-praising, but really, really, I never thought that would be my life. I never imagined getting to meet my hero or having something read by thousands or actually selling copies of books to people, and not because they know me. I haven't even touched upon the charity books or the Writers' Soc or the Literary Den. I haven't mentioned the wonderful friends I've made thanks to writing, or the things that we pulled off together.

I mean that. I really never expected any of this. Back when I first started writing that first book, I knew I wanted to be published. That was before the publishing industry changed. That was before I knew how to write. It was before I could set realistic expectations for what I could do as a writer.

Writing has changed my life, in ways I couldn't predict when I was fourteen. To think that the first book came from three short stories back when I was ten and eleven in primary school leaves me speechless. I didn't write them to write a book, later. I just saw the book there. I saw something in front of me, physically, and I knew it would be a book, and that it would change my life, because that's what the book was about: change.

Now, writing is at the very core of my identity. The things I've written have led to the greatest accomplishments in my life. My aspirations in the field of writing have led to the plans I have for the future. Writing makes the future less uncertain, the present less terrifying, and the past more understandable. I can't live without writing, because writing is the one thing that stayed with me, the one thing I've had with me that was mine, ever since I was a child.

Writing has made me the person I am today, and set me up to become the person I'll be in the future. Ten years ago I had finished the last of three stories that would become a book. Ten years from now..?

A Journey Into Irish Stories

The past few years have seen a couple of changes in publishing. Most notably for writers, the decision to self-publish is no longer considered to be a result of rejection from publishers, or a mistake made by the writer. Self-publishing has allowed numerous authors to come into the spotlight in some way. At the same time as this was happening, Irish comic book artists were stepping up, and a name is beginning to develop for Irish artists. Rather than focus on my own experience publishing an Irish story, however, I'll highlight some of the figures I've encountered since these changes in publishing began to be noticed, either because I began to know the artist a bit better, or because I've found their work.

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The very first of these artists I came into contact with is Anthea West, a comic book writer and artist from Dublin. I first encountered Anthea through Bebo (so you know we're going back a few years!) back in 2007 (or possibly 2008 - it's hard to keep up with this stuff, sometimes.) We were both part of a writers group I set up in 2007, and both contributed to a book of short stories for charity. However, Anthea's biggest break came in 2013 when she published her first graphic novel: The Earthbound God. Aside from containing fantastic artwork, the book demonstrates what's possible for a young artist in Ireland. She wasn't restricted to selling the book online, with Forbidden Planet and Sub City in Dublin both selling copies. Few Irish artists her of her generation have made it as far on their own, and fewer still had a poster for their book in a shop window for weeks on end.

You can find out more about Anthea and The Earthbound God at her website: http://dustbunny-studios.com/ (check out the store to get your hands on a copy of the book, too!)

***

Shortly after joining Twitter, I came across a fellow Irish author: Alison Wells. Aside from being a mother of four, she's also one of the first Irish authors in recent years to successfully self-publish a novel that found its way into Irish bookshops. Publishing Housewife with a Half-Life in 2012, Alison was accepted into Hughes & Hughes Dundrum for her launch night. The book was launched by Colette Caddle, greeted warming by friends and family and other Irish authors from Twitter, and demonstrated clearly that it's possible to write and publish a book in Ireland, it can be done with four children to take care of. Somehow, she managed to pull together three ebooks of short stories, too.

Check out Alison and Housewife with a Half-Life (and all her other books, too!) at her website: http://alisonwells.wordpress.com/

***

In April 2012, I made my first encounter with one of Ireland's biggest and best known comic book artists: Will Sliney. Hailing from Cork, he sat for hours in Forbidden Planet at the launch of Avengers Vs X-Men doing sketches for those who attended (I came out with Nightwing, though I'd asked for Nightcrawler; I still laugh about it to this day - Will remembers me by that sketch). When it came to his published work, it wasn't until Fearless Defenders #1 came out in 2013 that I got to see what he was really capable of. As one of the few Irish artists to ever make it into the illustrious ranks of Marvel Comics, things became even more exciting when his first graphic novel was released by O'Brien Press: Celtic Warror: The Legend of Cú Chulainn. An adaptation of the story of the Táin, it emits a battle cry that Irish comic book artists are to be taken seriously!

You can find out more about Will Sliney by looking at his blog: http://sliney.blogspot.ie/. Celtic Warrior is available in bookshops and comic book shops across the country.

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Last, but certain not least, I encountered the duo of Jason Connor and Phil Roe through their comic book series The Wren. Radically transforming Ireland as we know it into Hibernia, with superheroes of De Danann (Irish gods) decent keeping the country safe from the Dark Sidhe (evil fairies!). Their hero, Jack McCormack, goes by the name of the Wren. He's the youngest hero Ireland has seen, and heads up an all-ages comic book series. The comic has been going since 2007, with nine issues to date (issue ten on its way in June at the 2D Festival in Derry~Londonderry.) I happened across it while looking for an Irish superhero, and was fortunate enough to find that Forbidden Planet keep it in stock. It's definitely one to check out, full or fun and adventure and suitable for parents to share with their children!

The Wren website can be found here: http://www.thewrencomic.com/

***

Each of these people have something to offer Irish publishing (though they're not alone in what they're doing). These artists have shown that Irish storytelling is still going strong, and over the past few years I've been blessed to find them and discover their work. Theirs are names to be remembered, artists to be regarded highly, with work that's worth reading and admiring for yourself.

Guest Post, by Ian Mac an Ghaill: Words, Worlds, and Gaiman

Today, I've got the pleasure of hosting a guest blog by my terribly literate friend, Ian Mac an Ghaill. He's an aspiring author, something of a genius, and while you won't hear it here, he has one of the coolest voices in the world. He's currently working on his first novel.

I'll pass you over to Ian as he talks about words, worlds, and Gaiman.

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I’ve been telling stories for longer than I remember.

That is a story in itself; told in the first person, present perfect continuous tense, establishing the embryo of a plot (protagonist tells stories) while giving some information about the character (given to reflecting on previous and current actions) and referring to the limits of the protagonist’s experience. It is not a very sophisticated story though. I could not fill 1000 pages with it (unless I wrote each word to be REALLY BIG). It’s also a true story, an autobiography.

When I was very young I decided to write a book. The book had 3 stories (3 that I remember, in any case). I wanted the story typed, like a real book. I think that I was writing by that stage but I can’t be sure and for many years my writing was largely illegible so this may have been common sense on my part. Anyway, I told my stories to a tape recorder and my Dad duly typed them up on a typewriter. Each story was about a paragraph long but the book contained several more pages of illustration (I may add that a face made up of a crude circle with dots for eyes and a line for a mouth was the pinnacle of aesthetics in these illustrations) and I was delighted with what lay between the cardboard covers.

This was my earliest independent attempt at writing a work of fiction. I believe that I have improved since then. I have at the very least written longer works with more complicated vocabulary, whether they are actually better or not is subjective. The longest piece I have ever written is just over 10,000 words and arose as a kind of ‘Marvel’s Spider-man/David Gemmel’s Drenai’ fanfic hybrid but most of what I write is between 1000 and 3000 words. Most of my story-writing has been for essays at school but I always harboured the desire to write an epic.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Rowling’s Harry Potter, Nix’s Old Kingdom, Colfer’s Artemis Fowl; these were the fictions I wanted to emulate. With one exception (noted above) attempts to do that tended to fizzle out, wasting away because I lacked the necessary craft and diligence to nourish them; my enthusiasm wasn’t enough to sustain them. I never gave up on my ambitions but I stopped trying to make novels appear through sheer force of will.

Then I discovered the stories of Neil Gaiman. I had been in the habit of only reading long fiction; the longer the better and the bigger the world, the more I wanted to know about it. I changed the way that I looked at reading and writing. That seems a grandiose and yet pointless statement; everything that I read or write changes how I read and write but Gaiman’s writing stands out to me as the catalyst for a new reaction to how I understood stories.

He used language in such interesting ways that I could not do other than notice. He even changed writing-styles within stories. Word-choice and sentence structure suddenly came into focus for me in a way that they had not before. For some reason the importance of language and style in writing had not quite clicked with me in the same way before.

There is a reason to choose the word ‘rob’ over the word ‘steal’ or ‘eldritch’ over ‘strange’. ‘Déja vu’ means ‘already seen’ yet English writers often use the French formulation. Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy were both writers of fiction in 19th century Russia but they wrote very differently. Having said that, maybe Dostoyevsky writes exactly like Tolstoy and the exactitude is lost in my English translations.

I also started reading short fiction, which gave me a better idea of how to pace and structure narratives. I changed the way I approached my school essays (they were now short stories, not stories cut short) and writing short stories changed how I approached longer ones. I am in the process of writing a novel at the moment (not as far as I’d like to be, unfortunately) and I write each chapter as if it were a short story by itself. If nothing else, this makes each foray into writing seem more manageable.

That is the story of how I write stories and how I came to write them in the way in which I do. This may or may not be of any use to anyone and what works for me will most likely not work for anyone else in exactly the same way. I don’t know of any infallible rules for writing and I do strongly believe that there are none.

Joyce’s Ulysses proved that you don’t even need an easily intelligible language or much of a plot. I obsess over synonyms and the mechanics of wording. You don’t have to. You can just write the first words that come into your head. J.R.R. Tolkien was marking exams when he wrote “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” and he had no idea what he meant by writing it.

Write what you like or write what you feel compelled to write. Break whatever rules of writing seem necessary. Write.

A New Adventure

Something happened to me a couple of years ago that made me stop and look at my life as boring. I mean, I love writing. I love college, however odd that might be. I even like teaching and working in the bookshop. But I foresee a lot of repetitiveness in this life. Weekends at the shop can get very boring, especially when there are very few customers around. If I didn't need the money, and if it wasn't a handy place to work to get books and keep learning about them, I would like to leave. (In saying that, I love having a job, and I love the people I work with... I just know that I couldn't do that my whole life.)

Even teaching, however different the challenges will be every day, might become boring. (Of course, that does mean I would be doing it wrong...) I just feel that my life might become too much of a career. Yes, that's a good thing for some people, but I don't want to feel trapped by my job.

Writing will let me get away from the mundaneness of reality, but in the end it's not quite the same as living a life. There's more to life than just existing, and that's the problem with working in the bookshop and teaching for a living: there's the risk that all I would end up doing is existing.

I want to live, and that means more to me than just staying alive. I want to travel. I want to see things I've never seen before, meet new people, try new things. I don't want to just hear about life from other people. That's not good enough for me. If I can help it, I won't be staying still for most of my life (you know, unless you discount sitting in a chair to write my books).

And of course, even that life of getting around and seeing the world and meeting new people isn't complete if that's all I do. Then I just become a traveller. I want to write new fiction, push the boundaries of what I'm capable of and deliver new stories to people. Yesterday, two ideas I had for books - one of them a standalone, the other initially a series of adventures - suddenly expanded and grew. The standalone book takes my current Dungeons and Dragons character idea (I'm that cool) and mixes it with an idea for a novel I got many years ago. It's possible the standalone book will become a series or a trilogy in its own right.

The series of adventures has become something much bigger. I can't even talk about it or I'll give stuff away, but it's going to be one of the most enjoyable things I'll ever write, and it has so much potential to keep on growing. I want to write it after the Sam Richards and The Daughters of the Muse trilogies, or at least get a start on it. I couldn't even tell you how many books it will contain, at the moment, because it's just an idea, but it's going to take up a huge amount of my time.

Both are fantasy ideas, I should point out. That's the beauty of the adventure that is writing: every time I write a new story, I'm brought somewhere fantastical. Even with the Sam Richards Trilogy, set in Dublin, I'll be experiencing the world in a new way: I have to create a life I will never lead and look at the city I've known my whole life through the eyes of a different man. It's possible I'll write spin-offs to that trilogy, too, but that's all in the future when I can think about things other than the main books.

This isn't just the wild dream of a young man from Ireland. This isn't just some take on The Simpsons ("I want to live Marge! Why won't you let me live?!") or some flight of fancy that will go away. I want to get published, and not just once. I want to show people stories and I want to escape the trap of life that is repetition. So I won't be rich, not travelling and writing for a living (that's the ambition, anyway), but I know I'll be happy.

And as for teaching... well, that's for when I want to settle down. After all, aren't all teachers as old as the pyramids, anyway?