A Tale of Two Authors
Last week, I couldn't think of anything to blog about. I'm a bit weighed down with essays at the moment and though some of them were about interesting topics, the last one of this year was all about work experience.
Having a whole course centred around "What Do You Want To Do When You Grow Up?" was actually exactly as boring as you would imagine. Forced to scrawl out several thousands words on the topic, my mind soon flitted off into the wondrous land of
"We're bringing the community together, dude. With art!"
"Empowerment through creativity, man. Like Che Guevara!"
What a load of bollocks. All you need to get a bunch of students together is loud music, pretty girls/good looking men, free booze and food. Haikus on helium balloons? Oh, please.
Yeah, well I could have ranted about that. I could also have ranted about how my fiber optic laser mouse of the future is slowly dying. The red light goes off and the cursor freezes. Not good for playing BF2142, let me tell you.
But, well, I was thinking today about authors. Writing is what I want to do, see, When I Grow Up. Writing in any capacity available. Magazines, newspapers, obscure web pages no-one reads... all that. But, in the end, I want to be published, you know, properly.
I want my novels in Waterstones.
I want to do frikkin' book tours, man. Of course, it probably won't happen but... well, it might. You never know.
Anyway, it got me thinking, in my life, I have only actually met two authors. And I met both at book signings.
This man:
Bernard Cornwell. Responsible for more dead Frenchmen than perhaps any other Englishman, ever. In a purely fictional sense.And this man.
Terry Pratchett, a man who is the Internet equivalent of Norm from Cheers, in my experience.
Everyone bloody loves him. I mean, don't get me wrong, there are probably whole goblin-like web-cultures where he is treated like bloody Voldemorte.
"The Chapterless One Approacheth!"
Everyone bloody loves him. I mean, don't get me wrong, there are probably whole goblin-like web-cultures where he is treated like bloody Voldemorte.
"The Chapterless One Approacheth!"But, in my wide travels, everyone bloody loves him.
I am not going to cause controversy by saying I hate him. No, sir. Despite the fact this would be akin to throwing Mother Teresa down a mineshaft, I have to say I don't hate him at all. Its just a bit of phenomenon not to have met anyone who can't stand him.
Certainly on the internet where you could say, "Oxygen is pretty great, isn't it?" and someone would end up calling you a "cockfag" or an "o2 noob" or something.
So, no, I don't hate him.
In fact, I was almost religious in my reverence of Discworld when I was younger. Unlike the other children who were spending all their money on crack and gin, I used to save up my shrapnel to buy Discworld novels.
This is not some sly boast at how, even as a child, I could appreciate the sophisticated satire of the books. Probably, I missed about 45% of the references. Funnily enough, the amount of Family Guy that goes over my head, even now, is around about the same, series by series.
Even so, the fact is, I loved the characters, the setting and the jokes I understood a great deal. It hugely influenced my writing - and, in later years, I have done my level best to drag myself away from the Discworld. This has been an actual physical effort. I mean, put it this way, when I was about 10 I was writing stories with Death in them. He even talked in capitals. Of course, I was completely unaware of the vast amount of copyright law I was breaching.
Not me, I'm sad to say. That Great A'Tuin is AWESOME, though.
Thankfully, Terry never sued.
Until about 15, I thought that it was easier to write comedy than serious stuff. Oh, the ignorance of my younger self. I tell you, if I had a time travelling DeLorean (and, God, if only) I'd travel back and slap myself around the mouth a bit while screaming, "Grow up, you stupid git!"
The reason there are about a million times the number of serious fiction novels out there, as opposed to the twenty funny ones, is that comedy is not easy to write and its easier just to fudge an approximation of what a person's genuine emotional reaction would be than write something that is properly, you know, witty.
Pratchett does the wit and he does the genuine characters. To me, Samuel Vimes is a better character, a more likeable character, a more realistic character and a more believable copper than the sixty billion hardboiled detectives from books called things like, "Love Lost" and "Traitor's Walk" and "Scarlet Opal." And he's fought werewolves.
Even Pratchett has said himself, about Lord of the Rings, that (this is a bad paraphrase) "There's something wrong with you if you're 13 and you don't think its the best book ever. There's also something wrong with you if you're 35 and you still think so."
I can apply the same wisdom to his own series. After my deliberate I MUST READ WIDER policy, I haven't really gone back to Discworld. The novels with the stories I particularly like I have probably read about 3 times or more anyway.
This gives you some indication of what I thought of the man, anyway.
The point is, at the book signing I went to, for whatever reason, the guy took my copy of The Last Continent, asked what my name was, signed my book and went, "Next!" Maybe I was a bit like a child seeing the Hogfather and trying so hard not to piss down his leg that I looked retarded or something, but he didn't even speak to me.
I mean, I didn't cry afterwards. I can say that, at least. But it wasn't anything like I hoped it would be. Thinking back, it was a little like that one day you first realise that your Dad isn't the All Powerful God Of The Universe you thought he was.
Pratchett was not wearing a big floppy hat and he was grumpy and bored and silent, more like a hostile badger than anything really. I'm surprised he didn't gore my face.
The thing was: he seemed to be labouring under the impression that the reason I was there, and what interested me most, was getting his name in my copy of his bloody book. As if I gave a rat's arse about that. I wanted to meet this chap and just, you know, chat a bit. For the thirty seconds allotted time I was allowed.
I mean, sure, I had just rushed from school and I was still in my uniform, sure I wasn't dressed as Rincewind and I didn't bring all his other books in a large black plastic bag and expect him to sign every single one. You would have thought he'd be bloody glad I wasn't in a cowl and carrying a scythe and about to quote footnotes from The Light Fantastic at him verbatim. You'd think.
He didn't even look up when Dad asked if he could take a picture. I have a photo of the top of Terry Pratchett's bald head. And its fuzzy. But that's not really Terry's fault. My dad is rubbish at taking photos.
The point here is not that Terry is a bastard. There could be any number of reasons why he looked like wanted to throttle me and my Dad and everyone there with our own intestines. I mean, put it this way, I don't think he's been down to Cornwall since. It was hot and it was stuffy and the queue was halfway down the street and he must have done about a billion book tours and they had doubtlessly been better organised in New York or whatever...
Maybe he hated me. This is something I've had to accept over the years. The idea that Terry Pratchett might have got one look at my teenage face and thought, "What a little shit."
It was just a bit sad, is all. It'd be a much nicer memory if he'd said... well, I don't know. Something funny or something.
Now, Bernard Cornwell. My Dad joined the Sharpe Appreciation Society as a bit of a laugh, way back in the olden days. We went to this sort of thing in London and, I suppose, in many ways, it was sort of like a Sharpe Festival. You could maybe call it that. If you wanted.
There's nothing shameful about going to Sharpe Festival with your Dad...
Sean Bean wasn't there. I bet he'd have hated me too.
... is there?
Anyway, I suppose Cornwell was in a good mood because we were relatively near the front of the line and he hadn't had hundreds of people shout "Form Square!" or whatever (what do Sharpe fans shout, anyway?) yet. But he was an absolute gentleman. Really friendly and chatty and he took a real interest in me and Dad.
This is perhaps because he moors one of his boats in Falmouth, so knows Cornwall a bit. And it was the height of the foot and mouth thing and he asked us if we were affected by it at all, perhaps assuming (wrongly, I might add) that, as we came from Cornwall, we were farmers. And perhaps also assuming, in the back of his mind, that I do my sister up the jacksie.
I don't even have a sister.
At the time, I liked to think it was because whole bloody swathes of land were impassable, all over the county, because of the disease and that was inconvenient if you wanted to, you know, walk anywhere. I mean, Dad and I don't look or talk like farmers. Really, we don't.
Maybe Bernard was happy because the Sharpe Festival (or whatever it was called) was essentially a day devoted to his genius. I mean, its hard to be particularly sad when everyone there is united in their love for your French killing, scar-faced bastard murderer, isn't it?
But, by the same token, any book tour is probably 95% populated by people who love your books. There's probably some people there who are going to flog the book on ebay as soon as they get home but the majority of them, to queue for that long and so on, in the cramped aisles of an Ottakars or whatever, must have some appreciation of your novels and deserve to be treated, well, nicely.
So. One bad memory. One good one. Nothing stopped me buying Pratchett's novels.
Not until Monstrous Regiment, that is.
Ooh, buuuurrrrnnn.
--------
Jachap will always be happy and bouncy and friendly if he ever gets published.
I am not going to cause controversy by saying I hate him. No, sir. Despite the fact this would be akin to throwing Mother Teresa down a mineshaft, I have to say I don't hate him at all. Its just a bit of phenomenon not to have met anyone who can't stand him.
Certainly on the internet where you could say, "Oxygen is pretty great, isn't it?" and someone would end up calling you a "cockfag" or an "o2 noob" or something.
So, no, I don't hate him.
In fact, I was almost religious in my reverence of Discworld when I was younger. Unlike the other children who were spending all their money on crack and gin, I used to save up my shrapnel to buy Discworld novels.
This is not some sly boast at how, even as a child, I could appreciate the sophisticated satire of the books. Probably, I missed about 45% of the references. Funnily enough, the amount of Family Guy that goes over my head, even now, is around about the same, series by series.
Even so, the fact is, I loved the characters, the setting and the jokes I understood a great deal. It hugely influenced my writing - and, in later years, I have done my level best to drag myself away from the Discworld. This has been an actual physical effort. I mean, put it this way, when I was about 10 I was writing stories with Death in them. He even talked in capitals. Of course, I was completely unaware of the vast amount of copyright law I was breaching.
Not me, I'm sad to say. That Great A'Tuin is AWESOME, though.Thankfully, Terry never sued.
Until about 15, I thought that it was easier to write comedy than serious stuff. Oh, the ignorance of my younger self. I tell you, if I had a time travelling DeLorean (and, God, if only) I'd travel back and slap myself around the mouth a bit while screaming, "Grow up, you stupid git!"
The reason there are about a million times the number of serious fiction novels out there, as opposed to the twenty funny ones, is that comedy is not easy to write and its easier just to fudge an approximation of what a person's genuine emotional reaction would be than write something that is properly, you know, witty.
Pratchett does the wit and he does the genuine characters. To me, Samuel Vimes is a better character, a more likeable character, a more realistic character and a more believable copper than the sixty billion hardboiled detectives from books called things like, "Love Lost" and "Traitor's Walk" and "Scarlet Opal." And he's fought werewolves.
Even Pratchett has said himself, about Lord of the Rings, that (this is a bad paraphrase) "There's something wrong with you if you're 13 and you don't think its the best book ever. There's also something wrong with you if you're 35 and you still think so."
I can apply the same wisdom to his own series. After my deliberate I MUST READ WIDER policy, I haven't really gone back to Discworld. The novels with the stories I particularly like I have probably read about 3 times or more anyway.
This gives you some indication of what I thought of the man, anyway.
The point is, at the book signing I went to, for whatever reason, the guy took my copy of The Last Continent, asked what my name was, signed my book and went, "Next!" Maybe I was a bit like a child seeing the Hogfather and trying so hard not to piss down his leg that I looked retarded or something, but he didn't even speak to me.
I mean, I didn't cry afterwards. I can say that, at least. But it wasn't anything like I hoped it would be. Thinking back, it was a little like that one day you first realise that your Dad isn't the All Powerful God Of The Universe you thought he was.
Pratchett was not wearing a big floppy hat and he was grumpy and bored and silent, more like a hostile badger than anything really. I'm surprised he didn't gore my face.
The thing was: he seemed to be labouring under the impression that the reason I was there, and what interested me most, was getting his name in my copy of his bloody book. As if I gave a rat's arse about that. I wanted to meet this chap and just, you know, chat a bit. For the thirty seconds allotted time I was allowed.
I mean, sure, I had just rushed from school and I was still in my uniform, sure I wasn't dressed as Rincewind and I didn't bring all his other books in a large black plastic bag and expect him to sign every single one. You would have thought he'd be bloody glad I wasn't in a cowl and carrying a scythe and about to quote footnotes from The Light Fantastic at him verbatim. You'd think.
He didn't even look up when Dad asked if he could take a picture. I have a photo of the top of Terry Pratchett's bald head. And its fuzzy. But that's not really Terry's fault. My dad is rubbish at taking photos.
The point here is not that Terry is a bastard. There could be any number of reasons why he looked like wanted to throttle me and my Dad and everyone there with our own intestines. I mean, put it this way, I don't think he's been down to Cornwall since. It was hot and it was stuffy and the queue was halfway down the street and he must have done about a billion book tours and they had doubtlessly been better organised in New York or whatever...
Maybe he hated me. This is something I've had to accept over the years. The idea that Terry Pratchett might have got one look at my teenage face and thought, "What a little shit."
It was just a bit sad, is all. It'd be a much nicer memory if he'd said... well, I don't know. Something funny or something.
Now, Bernard Cornwell. My Dad joined the Sharpe Appreciation Society as a bit of a laugh, way back in the olden days. We went to this sort of thing in London and, I suppose, in many ways, it was sort of like a Sharpe Festival. You could maybe call it that. If you wanted.
There's nothing shameful about going to Sharpe Festival with your Dad...
Sean Bean wasn't there. I bet he'd have hated me too.... is there?
Anyway, I suppose Cornwell was in a good mood because we were relatively near the front of the line and he hadn't had hundreds of people shout "Form Square!" or whatever (what do Sharpe fans shout, anyway?) yet. But he was an absolute gentleman. Really friendly and chatty and he took a real interest in me and Dad.
This is perhaps because he moors one of his boats in Falmouth, so knows Cornwall a bit. And it was the height of the foot and mouth thing and he asked us if we were affected by it at all, perhaps assuming (wrongly, I might add) that, as we came from Cornwall, we were farmers. And perhaps also assuming, in the back of his mind, that I do my sister up the jacksie.
I don't even have a sister.
At the time, I liked to think it was because whole bloody swathes of land were impassable, all over the county, because of the disease and that was inconvenient if you wanted to, you know, walk anywhere. I mean, Dad and I don't look or talk like farmers. Really, we don't.
Maybe Bernard was happy because the Sharpe Festival (or whatever it was called) was essentially a day devoted to his genius. I mean, its hard to be particularly sad when everyone there is united in their love for your French killing, scar-faced bastard murderer, isn't it?
But, by the same token, any book tour is probably 95% populated by people who love your books. There's probably some people there who are going to flog the book on ebay as soon as they get home but the majority of them, to queue for that long and so on, in the cramped aisles of an Ottakars or whatever, must have some appreciation of your novels and deserve to be treated, well, nicely.
So. One bad memory. One good one. Nothing stopped me buying Pratchett's novels.
Not until Monstrous Regiment, that is.
Ooh, buuuurrrrnnn.
--------
Jachap will always be happy and bouncy and friendly if he ever gets published.
4 comments:
I envy you incredibly. Cornwell and Pratchett are the two authors I want to meet the most, although I would hope to catch Pratchett on a rather happier day. ¬_¬ Also George MacDonald Fraser, actually. And I better bloody hurry up about that one seeing as the poor man's in his eighties.
Like you, I also want to be a writer. I still haven't given up that dream. I've got at least two books planned out and I've written a tiny bit of them. I better finish them. I HAD BETTER.
Just for the record, the two times I met Pratchett, he was lovely.
Cough. ¬_¬
Yeah, but you met John Allison and he was grumpy.
So there.
I met Pratchett once and he was fine: neither loving nor contemptuous. The most effusive creators I have ever met are Hillary Barta (who kept telling New Zealand jokes while showing me a picture of Splash Brannigan fucking the Pulveriser in the ass - nice guy), and Peter B Gillis (who was maybe a little too effusive, forcing me to weasel my way out of the conversation).
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