about me

So, I was having a drink the other day with Ernest Hemingway, it wasn't a mojito and we weren't in Cuba, but christ it was hot.

He hadn't shaved and I said to him, I can smell you from here. He said, then sit somewhere else. I laughed. I didn't slap my knee or anything, I mean it wasn't that funny.

He belched an F major and said, did you read my book. I said, you can't write for shit. He said, I think millions might disagree with you.

I shrugged and said, well you don't know how to fish and he said, I know a hundred charter operators that would argue that being the case and I've got the photos to prove it.

I slowly nodded at him, rolling an ice cube around in my mouth as if it were a knife and this was a street fight, and I said to him, well, you know what they say about Photoshop and cellulite.

Then he stared at me, blankly, but brooding all the same, and he sipped on his drink and as he did I watched the rivulets of cold water relenting to the day's heat and they ran down the long glass, in his meaty paw of a hand, like little children escaping a summer shower and he said, what's a Photoshop.

Okay, now that I think about it, that may well have been Eric Hemming and we may well have been in Karuah, not Cuba, but we were definitely drinking, of that much I'm sure.

Either way, they sure as shit weren't mojitos.

Where was I,,,,,,oh, that's right, so I'm a marketer who has spent the past 15 years writing for clients but am now doing it for myself. I have 2 completed manuscripts and six others in advanced development (i.e way, way, well over 10,000 words).

The ones I have finished could be something approaching literary, but that's perhaps just an over-inflated view of the quality of my work. It could be under-inflated too. A point for me to ponder I guess. I will. At some point, honestly.

So, they're somewhere between commerical and literary fiction and all of the others that are now on a fast grassy slope approaching completion each sit in a different genre.

It's not that I dislike any particular genre, I just think if you can write and love writing then its the subject matter and the story that are key, not necessarily producing the same thing wrapped up in a different coloured paper each time.

Sorry, did that resemble self-indulgence or sound a bit wankerish? Perhaps. Sorry, again, I will admonish myself with a good talking to later on, I promise!

Anyway, I suppose the way I look at it, I'm a writing theme park. No, I mean it, don't scoff, bear with me.

You see, every ride you take is different, because at a theme park they don't just have ten of the same ride do they? No, of course not. That's my point.

But every ride is different, the one common feature though is that every one you take has to leave you either absolutely spent or laughing or crying or freaked out or shaking like its hypothermic, whichever.

Regardless, they're all fiction, the rides and the stories. But it's the ride, it's always, all about the rides.

Anyway, enough about me.....yawn!

Sorry, and you? So, what's cooking?

favourite books

Cloudstreet. A Man in Full. Shantaram. The Bourne Identity. Night Fall. Lodestar. The Poet. First Among Equals. Memoirs of a Geisha. The Road. Bombproof. The Camel Club. State of Fear. Dirt Music. House of Sand & Fog. Parrott & Olivier in America.

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