On Keeping It Real

Paul Lynch (RED SKY IN MORNING), Gavin Corbett (THIS IS THE WAY) and journalist / literary scout Sinead Gleeson discuss ‘The Real Story: The Challenges Facing New Authors and the Myths Surrounding Book Deals’ at the Irish Writers’ Centre on June 18. Should be a good session: Paul Lynch’s novel is a terrific debut, while Gavin Corbett won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year last week. For all the details, clickety-click here …

“Just A Perfect Day / I’m Glad I Spent It With Youse …”

I don’t generally have much truck with Kilkenny, this on the basis that its hurlers knocks the stuffing out of Wexford on an annual basis, but yesterday, at the invitation of organiser Neville Thompson (right), I headed down country for the inaugural Castlecomer Writers’ Festival. A fine day it was too, with the sleepy hamlet bathed in sunshine and none of the locals inclined to boast that their county’s hurlers are the finest specimens of the art known to mankind, and are therefore the finest sportsmen ever to grace the planet.
  Anyhoos, I did my best to ruin the convivial atmosphere by injecting some crime into proceedings but no one seemed to take it personally, and the morning’s crime writing workshop went off without a hitch, apart from the fact that I was unforgivably late. It being Castlecomer, no one was rude enough to point out this fact, and it was only afterwards I realised it. Folks? Sincere apologies …
  Bizarre as it was to be asked for my advice on how to write (“Erm, I dunno – rip off someone good, like Elmore Leonard …?”), it was a terrific experience. Because the truth is that I’m about a half-a-rung up the publishing ladder from the folks who are currently struggling to piece their first novels together, which made the whole process a fairly chastening reality check. Mind you, the highlight of the morning was the nun who recounted how she’d taught a hardened prisoner the meaning of the acronym ‘fuck’.
  Upward and onward to lunch, where I met James Lawless, whose novel PEELING ORANGES sounds like a good one. To wit:

PEELING ORANGES tells the story of Derek Foley, who, while sifting through his late father’s diaries and his mother’s correspondence with an IRA man, discovers that Patrick Foley, a diplomat in Franco’s Spain, was not really his father. Derek’s mother, who is ailing, is unwilling to discuss the past, forcing her son on a quest that will plunge him into the early history of Irish diplomacy, taking him to Spain and later to Northern Ireland, until he discovers who his real father was – with tragic consequences.
  PEELING ORANGES is a novel full of personal and political intrigue, fraught with ideology, as it intersects the histories of two emergent nations – Ireland and Spain. It is also a beautiful and lyrically written love story of childhood sweethearts – the apolitical Derek and the passionate nationalist, Sinéad Ní Shúileabháin. “A book to lose oneself in. I highly recommend it.” – Gabriel Byrne.

  I also – finally – got to meet Garbhan Downey, who followed me outside when I slipped out for a post-prandial smoke. “I recognised you from the cigarillo,” says he. A top bloke. After lunch we co-hosted a workshop on journalism, during which I felt like a total fraud. I tried to buy a copy of OFF BROADWAY, his Damon Runyon-inspired collection of short stories, but apparently my money is no good in Castlecomer. “If I never wrote another book,” he said, handing it over, “this is the book I wanted to write.” Always nice to hear a scribe say that …
  Back into the Vizmobile, then, and off to Dublin, where I took part in a discussion on the sudden popularity of Irish crime fiction on Newstalk 106 hosted by the ever-radiant Sinead Gleeson. Tana French and I were in the studio, with Paul Charles on the line from London. The verdict? Irish crime fiction is suddenly popular because there’s a whole heap of terrific authors writing crime fiction. Here endeth the lesson.
  Back into the Vizmobile again and hey-ho for Arklow and the afters of a wedding reception, where I got quietly and very pleasantly drunk to the soundtrack of a covers band knocking out pretty decent versions of offerings from The Stones, The Monkees, The Beatles and Joe Dolan. Nice. Mind you, I did make a faux pas when I told one of Mrs Viz’s cousins that I really liked her shoes. What – aren’t married men supposed to notice women’s shoes anymore?
  Anyhoos, back home and off to Sleepytown, not neglecting to give the Princess Lilyput a little cuddle before my pillow finally claimed me for its own. A perfect day? Damn close …

And If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next

A Minister for Propaganda Elf writes: Given that Damien Mulley and Sinead Gleeson were kind enough to link to this post, and thus generated a few comments on our behalf, the Grand Vizier has ordered that we re-post the piece to save ourselves the grief of having to scroll down half the page in order to respond. Scrolling down, Jeez … Fairly takes it out of you, doesn’t it?

It was a funny old weekend for Twenty Major (right), even by his usual standards. On Saturday, George Byrne in the Evening Herald (no link) opened his review of Major’s debut novel, THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX PARK, by referring to “the postings of Twenty Major, whose rants and observations on Irish society, life and the world in general are generally acknowledged to be leagues ahead of the barely-literate ‘dear diary’ standards of the medium.” The general gist of a broadly positive review (which name-checks Kinky Friedman and Christopher Brookmyre) runs thusly: “Treading a frequently blurred line between comedy, farce, thriller and social commentary, THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX PARK (a very Colin Bateman-esque title that ) does possess an infectious energy […] and a few cracking ideas.”
  Also on Saturday, over in the Irish Times (no link; premium content), Colin Murphy opened his review of the novel with something of a damned-with-faint-praise gambit: “THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX PARK by Twenty Major is the worst book I have ever finished.” The very negative review finishes: “The book concludes with an acknowledgments section. The last line, directed at the readers of his blog, is: “Thank you all, you magnificent c***s.” That, really, is all you need to know: either it includes you, or it doesn’t. It is, though, likely to include the twenty-something male sitting across from you on the bus home, who will be chuckling over Twenty’s violent nihilism, toilet truths and use of the word ‘c**t’. He and his mates are going to make this a bestseller.”
  On Saturday night, at the Irish Blog Awards, Twenty Major won three awards, chief among them ‘Best Blog’, the third time in a row he has won the award (congratulations to Sinead Gleeson, by the way, another three-in-a-row winner with The Sigla Blog).
  On Sunday, the Sunday Times (Irish) Culture section (no link) carried a feature by Kathy Foley, herself a blogger, called ‘Blog roll’. The piece opened with Twenty Major as its hook, Foley segueing from Major’s book deal with Hodder Headline / Hachette into a verdict on the novel: “[I]t’s a tepid, flimsily plotted satire filled with half-cocked gags.” The gist of the article is this: “We have few, if any, counterparts to the American blogging elite, whose online dispatches zing with flair, attitude and insight, not to mention – in some cases – intellectual rigour. We simply don’t produce the vibrant and considered style of blogging that dominates the US scene, where there are compelling blogs on every topic imaginable – from architecture to zoology – each with energetic, articulate writing and comments sections brimming with vitality.”
  The first thing to say here is that you could replace ‘blog’ and ‘blogging’ with ‘newspapers / magazines’ and ‘journalism’ in the above quote and it would be just as valid an opinion. The second thing is that Irish blogging is still in its infancy by comparison with America, so like-for-like comparisons are premature if not entirely unfair, particularly given the vast difference in the respective populations.
  Thirdly, most non-internet journalists seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that blogs and blogging are intended as replacements, or poor substitutes, for newspapers and journalism. The reality is that the vast majority of blogs come into being to fill a specialist niche not being catered for in the mainstream media (Crime Always Pays to promote Irish crime fiction is a case in point; The Voyage, the well-deserved winner of the ‘Best Specialist Blog’ award on Saturday night, a category in which Crime Always Pays was nominated, is another). Indeed, in another feature in the Sunday Times’ Culture section, reporting on a new Irish music magazine, State, Mick Heaney says, “The growth of the blogosphere has had a huge impact on music publishing: American sites such as Pitchfork Media are as influential as any print equivalent, and are free … State has responded by setting up a complementary website, State.ie, run by the blogger Niall Byrne, aka Nialler9. Whereas the print edition is aimed at older readers, State.ie aims to draw in a new, younger audience.”
  A ‘new, younger audience’ … ‘the twenty-something male sitting across from you on the bus home’. There appears to be a generation gap opening up between print / mainstream media and the various incarnations of on-line web presences. It’s almost inevitable that Twenty Major’s novel, springing as it does fully formed from a blog, will suffer a credibility deficit when reviewed in mainstream publications, and not least because it’s a comedy crime caper novel. There are already echoes of the initial reactions to rock ‘n’ roll, when the raw, primal sound of Elvis et al was damned as jungle music made by uppity white trash.
  THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX PARK may not be the literary equivalent of the Sun Sessions but it is nonetheless a pioneer in terms of Irish blog-to-shelf publishing. Another Irish blogger, Fiona McPhillips, has her book TRYING TO CONCEIVE published in April. Sean and Keiran Murphy are soon to publish their BOOK OF SWEET THINGS through the Mercier Press. Eoin Purcell, a commissioning editor at Mercier, has also signed up ‘Grandad’ from the Head Rambles blog to write a novel.
The blog-to-shelf route to publishing means, of course, that all these books will arrive on the shelf with an audience already in place. Many members of that audience will in turn blog about their reaction to the books, spreading a virus-like word-of-mouth. As Colin Murphy notes in the Irish Times, Twenty Major’s book will very probably be an Irish best-seller on the strength of its appeal to a young male demographic, most of whom will be web-literate if not necessarily bloggers themselves. Taken to its logical conclusion, this development means that blog-to-shelf books will have no need of the traditional reviews in print publications.
  In essence, the current media revolution involves a move away from the traditional pulpit-audience lecture to a more democratic peer-to-peer discussion. In an Irish context, THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX PARK is the latest manifestation of this trend. Is it so surprising, then, that the novel was panned in the print media on the very weekend when Twenty Major’s peers yet again voted him Ireland’s best blogger?

Funky Friday’s Free-For-All: Being A Cornucopia Of ‘Weekend Ho!’ Interweb Baloohaha

Greetings and salutations to muso-head, glamarama media babe and all-round good elf Sinead Gleeson (right), back on the interweb from blogging’s equivalent of maternity leave at the award-winning The Sigla Blog … huzzah! And felicitations too to Rhian over at It’s A Crime! (Or A Mystery!), back in the blogging saddle (the 'bladdle'?) after way too long away. Nice to have you back, ma’am. Please don’t go away again … Would you get away with murder? Try the quiz over at Quiz Galaxy, which the pesky elves discovered when they were slacking off and perusing The Rap Sheet instead of slaving in the dungeon … Kelli Stanley, who recently stood up to the best that the Crime Always Pays’ interrogation elves could throw at her, has Convivium, a short story in her unique Roman Noir style, available over at the very fine Hard Luck Stories … The Childrens' Books Ireland website had a major overhaul last week; drop by and say hello ... Staying with kids’ books, why not drop by The Third Pig Detective Agency, where Harry Pigg – y’know, the little piggie who was smart enough to build his house out of bricks – is snuffling for truffles on the mean streets of fairytale-land. The elves are bigging him up Irish-style, in the vain hope he’ll one day get around to investigating their abduction and incarceration in the Crime Always Pays palace. Aye, and pigs will … oh. Erm, forget that - here's a sample chapter from Bob Burke (aka Mr Pigg) instead ... Finally, to mark the occasion of the UK release of 3:10 to Yuma, we just felt like an Elmore Leonard fix – check out the first part of World Class Detroiters, wherein Dutch gets interviewed, does a reading, and humbly avoids acknowledging he’s the Greatest Living Writer on the Planet. “When Leonard releases a new book, it’s like Christmas morning.” Amen, brother …