Hozier - Take Me to Church

I love this song, and this video.

In a time that seems filled with trouble on our planet, this video reminds me of the something good my generation has done.

People can love openly now. No matter what their gender.

We have a long way to go, of course, but that's what we're here for, isn't it?

Bring. It. On.

There are no pictures of me crying. Otherwise, I might put one up  here.

Oh my god, Ferguson. Gaza, Robin Williams. Amazon fighting Hachette. People calling Lee Child a bully. People attacking Chuck Wendig for having an opinion. Like eighty school shootings in America in a few months. American police forces acting like invading armies.

So. Much. Chaos.

Everyone is on edge right now. Today a lady's tweet was retweeted into my timeline. It said 'RT if you'll still be mad about black men being shot by police a year from now. Tryna see something.' I retweeted it. So did a lot of other people.

Someone who follows me, a crotchety British fellow who I had developed a reasonably good relationship with on Twitter, replied to us both saying that he wouldn't be mad about black men but about anyone shot by police.

What does a person do in this situation? I tried to appease both sides by saying that it was true that we didn't want anyone shot, but right now the numbers are leaning toward people of color.

In my way of handling disputes, I did my very best to gently assert right while trying to make sure everyone expressed themselves. The lady, a stranger to me, was lovely and gracious about it all. The guy wrote out a string of expletives and names, including racist and the c word. He also told the lady to 'die.'

This is not a time or place where it seems like a good idea to gently explain why people of color can't be racists. (Prejudice plus power equals racism. No power, you just have prejudice.) It's hard enough to try to get the uninitiated to buy race theory at the best of times.

So I simply apologized to the lady. And held my breath. And then I said to the guy, "I can't interact with you when you talk to people that way. It's unnecessary." Which given what he'd said to a perfect stranger in my timeline, seemed pretty reasonable.

His response was to block me. Great.

I'm a law abiding person. I tend to think of myself as lawful neutral. But actually that's a stretch. I'm more like lawful good or on very rare occasions, I'll pull a chaotic good card out of my pack. I like to feel like a good person, a blameless person. It seems there really isn't much way to be blameless in the world right now.

Does this really have to be so hard? Yes, I guess it does. Very easy to get dismayed about things.

Can everyone just be a little bit patient with everyone else right now? We're going to need it.

In other news, I wrote one of my famous, mental emails to President Obama, reminding him that we need him right now, and not just to be Presidential, but to react with human emotions.

I'd love to tell you all about the drama that's going on in my personal life, but I can't. Someday I'll be able to. Someday it will make a good memoir. Or Wikipedia entry.  But until it's all resolved, I'll keep silent. I know others must be going through difficult stuff as well.  And I always try to think about what might be happening in other people's lives that might be making them behave the way they are. 

I mean, maybe that guy isn't flipping you the bird while he swims. Maybe he's drowning, you know?

I edited this anthology of cosmic horror stories: Cthulhu Lives! An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft. (That link will take you to the publisher's website.)

It's got a lot of great stories in it. A few of the writers who worked on 'Red Phone Box' are in it, a lot of other people, too.

Leeman Kessler, a Canadian actor who does this cool, funny YouTube show called 'Ask Lovecraft' (imagine Lovecraft answering people's questions about how to live their lives) wrote the foreword.

John Reppion of the dynamic writing duo Reppion/Moore has a story in it. That pleased me greatly.

It's about an even mix of American and British writers with a sprinkling of Canadians and Australians. (And one Hungarian, always impressing me with his fluent English skills.)

And S. T. Joshi, the award winning writer and Lovecraft biographer, was kind enough to write us an afterword.

I take great pleasure in the fact that some of the authors included in this anthology are being published for the first time here. There's a particular kind of joy that happens when a writer gets published, and when I look through the book, I remember the excitement expressed by these writers. I believe you'll be seeing more of them.

The book is available for pre-order now on Amazon US and Amazon UK. You can also get it at Book Depository, useful if you're in Australia. It will be released officially  on August 26.

I've been feeling lately like I've ignored my online friends, and in fact, my IRL friends, to a level where I need to explain myself. I don't know if everyone feels this way when they get busy, but I struggle with my imagination. Perhaps everyone I know thinks I'm ignoring them now. Maybe they think I fancy myself some sort of ... I don't know. Success?

The truth is, I'm swamped. Utterly swamped. Imagine me in a flooded room with just enough air at the top, up by the ceiling, to breathe. But to get it, I have to keep swimming. I don't know if you've noticed, but this swimming for air thing makes it kind of hard to Tweet. Come in with me. Let me show you.

So here's how it is. (Keep paddling. I'll talk.) My partner, Tim Dedopulos started a small press almost five years ago. In the past couple of years, I've been working with him on it. After some meetings and discussions with a business person, we decided to do what we had to to make it grow. I took on, voluntarily, the role of project manager. After a steep learning curve, which has since leveled just a bit, I've been working my behind off to do everything that was assigned to me (by me) and to oversee the entirety of several book projects.

This sounded like no big deal when I first started it. Nothing that my whole life working for other people, my two graduate degrees in writing, and several years of editing other people's work hadn't prepared me for. But it turns out that this is the hardest job I've ever had. It's also insanely rewarding. I get to help people make their books better. I get to help them get the books out into the world. I get to discover (in a Christoper Columbus like way) new books fresh off the mental presses of wonderfully creative people.

I also get to try to figure out (with the help of a small collection of other people) who will read them, who will like them, where and when to showcase them, what to say about them, what work they need, what their covers should look like, what will make their authors happy.

Luckily I'm working with a great team of people. There's no way I could do all this without them. But even so, I'm working ten or sometimes fourteen hours a day, six or seven days a week.  I wake up tired and go to bed barely able to move. This is obviously not sustainable long term, for me personally. And it's not meant to be.

Once this next set of book is birthed, we hope to hire more staff. But now is the critical time.

Sometimes I tell myself I'm forgetting to enjoy my life. But I love this work, and I feel this is what's required of me now in order to make this project a success for everyone involved. This is what I have to give right now. A lot is riding on this, and I'm determined to help it flourish.

So if you think I forgot you, please stop right now. I think about you, probably, every day. But someday you're all going to be proud of me. And right now, I'm having the weirdest kind of non-monetary success I can imagine. I'm learning to how to work hard and smart.

Love, Salome

Note: We gave the book away on Saturday, 22 February to Benjamin Goldsmith.

Red Phone Box, the genre bending dark fantasy/noir/thriller co-written by 28 writers from around the worldhas been ranking in the top ten in Dark Fantasy on Amazon this week. Now here's a special signed hardcover that you can only get here.

This is the book. It's a beautiful thing. With Victorian maps of London on the endpapers, drop caps, phone box spacers, and the full collection of story-chapters that make up this gestalt novel, written and edited in two and a half years.  And it's signed by most of the 28 writers who worked on it, including Warren Ellis. It took five months for the signing pages to travel around the world, quite literally, from London to London via the Middle East, Australia, the US, Canada and finally Europe and back to and through the UK.

Most of the signed books were spoken for from the beginning. We had a couple of extra ones made in case anything went awry. So this book is of some value. I don't mean monetary value, but it's really the symbol of all that so many people put into the book itself.

Red Phone Box Twitter Graffiti contest

So here's the deal. After looking at all the options for giving it away, we've decided that the people who've had to deal with the most publicity for this book should have a chance to win a signed copy. So that means you, my lovely Twitterites. So here's how you can enter to win:  between now and Friday, tweet something following this example:
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Win this signed copy of  #RedPhoneBox [Maz Fishbein is a wizard and he burns things.] http://www.salomejones.com/1/post/2014/02/signed-special-edition-hardcover-giveaway.html
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
'Maz Fishbein burns things' is an example of Red Phone Box graffiti. If you know nothing about the book, you can just use that. But if you've read the book, you can make up something about one of the characters. 
Please be sure and use the hashtag, the link, and the 'Win this signed book,' so we recognize your entry. Please don't tweet it directly to me, though if you want to you can cc: @call_me_salome at the end of the tweet.

We'll take all the tweets and choose the one that screams PICK ME! Or we'll pull one out of hat. But we'll pick one on Saturday around this time. And then we'll mail it to you. No place restrictions. This book is used to traveling.

One other restriction. If we get less than a hundred entries, we'll try again another day. So spread the word far and wide.

As always, thank you so very much for putting up with this book nonsense. Writers, man.

I'm drinking coffee.This first cup of coffee is the only 'me time' I have right now. And I'm writing this. Uh... Whatever. I'm not awake enough to notice that this isn't actually for me.

On my to-do list this week: Leave the flat. No, really. Go out of doors!

Also on my to-do list: Edit two novels (client work), several more short stories for an anthology (publisher work), make a marketing plan for another novel (publishing work), prepare a class talk I've been asked to give about revising for writers.

Also, STAY ALIVE.

We forget that on our to-do lists usually, don't we? But I just put it there as a reminder to myself. DO NOT DIE trying to do all this stuff. Remember to eat and drink water, and put on clean clothes. Move away from the windows during lightning storms. And get some sleep, for gods' sake; you look haggard. I mean that's what I'd probably say if I had time to look into a mirror.

Not all glamor, this writing thing, eh?

But on the plus side, thanks to lots of lovely people -- some I know and some I don't -- Red Phone Box is currently #5 in books>dark fantasy on Amazon. It seems like the appropriate response is just to leap around all day screaming something jubilant. And throwing gold coins. Everything is made better by throwing gold coins, don't you think? British pound coins do look a little like gold dubloons . I think I may have three of those in my purse. But since I live on the fourteenth floor, I'd probably kill someone(s) if I threw them off the balcony. Plus, I might need those . We're almost out of milk.

Anyway, I'd better get to work. Will try to post on thenakedamerican.com this week. Don't forget to leave your questions there about America or Britain in comparison.

P.S. Here's  photo of the special edition hardcover of Red Phone Box taken by my friend Eva Bradshaw. Oooh, shiny!

Just a note. I'm also writing at The Naked American about my cultural observations as an American living in the UK. I have just a few posts up there now, but I'll be writing more as time goes on. Lots to say about US/UK. I don't want to say one is better than the other, just that the differences are surprising at times.

Check it out if you feel interested: http://www.thenakedamerican.com/

Why I Write

Don’t blame it on the sunshine, don’t blame it on the moonlight, don’t blame it on the good times, blame it on the boogie: specifically the boogie as interpreted by The Beatles.  I realised, as I pondered why exactly I write, that had it not been for The Fab Four I could have had a respectable career – politics, arms dealing, running a drugs cartel, accountancy – instead of being a music lover and what William Burroughs might have called a master addict to words.

My earliest clear musical memory is of  being in the kitchen at home, aged five, just starting school. Mum was getting me ready as Radio 1, which had just started to broadcast pop music good cheer to the Never Had It So Good Generation, was playing Yellow Submarine. From then on I became obsessed with the tune and, importantly for this budding scribbler, the lyrics. I was intrigued by all these Beatles people living in a yellow submarine, by that sea of green and the man who talked about his life. Soon other Beatles tunes infected me with earworm syndrome: the harmonies, the sonic colours, the eeriness, of Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane, A Day in the Life, the strange images and magical words that seemed to speak of other worlds and other lives. The haunting beauty of melody and the playfulness of wordplay and storytelling were of a piece. Words could indeed be musical, and music could enhance the drama of words.

Throughout my childhood I loved music and I loved reading. I could already read to a high standard when I began at primary school, and I grew up in a house full of books, magazines, newspapers, The Reader’s Digest (I especially loved the Increase Your Word Power feature) and, of course, comics – those classics The Beano, The Dandy, Topper, Whizzer & Chips,  the occasional DC comic, Commando and the UK edition of Marvel. I gleaned knowledge from Tell Me Why, World of Wonder, Look and Learn, which augmented my schooling. I did a few gigs with the St. Mark’s School choir and tried to talk my parents into buying me a violin.

But the idea of writing only came to me when I started college.  I wanted to be a rock guitarist by then, thanks to Alan Freeman and John Peel, and I started guitar lessons. Typically I spent more time and effort on this than on my studies, but I began writing lyrics for a band that never quite happened. My friend Stuart wrote poetry, and I soon decided that my lyrics would be better as poetry. So I became a teenage sub-Roger McGough/Adrian Mitchell/Wilfred Owen, and filled an exercise book of thankfully no longer extant doggerel. Then I dropped out and left writing behind, concentrating on being a teenage sub-Jimmy Page/Jimi Hendrix/BB King instead. But I wanted to learn about stuff, so I kept reading, mostly esoteric cult fare, and in my late twenties began accumulating my own library. Around this time I somehow got the idea that I had to become a writer. I don’t know exactly what caused this return of the literary repressed; possibly it was a reaction to the stultifying work I was doing on a building site. Anyway, whatever the stimulus, I knew that I needed to write; so I bought a heavy mechanical typewriter, learned how to work it like a pro and began my first novel. It was never finished and it was no good in any case, but I had taken the first step on that road to financial perdition and intellectual frustration. I’m still pushing that rock of literary labour, Sisyphus style, up that damned mountain, and it looks like I’ll keep at it for the rest of my life.  At least I can hope, like my man Samuel Beckett, to try, fail, try again, fail better.
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Find J.F. Lawrence on Tw

I started this deck of Tarot cards a couple of years ago using images of people I follow on Twitter. Since I moved my site, the cards have been left to languish. I thought I'd put them up again now. I had a good time working with existing images to come up with them.I hope to complete the set at some point.

When I started Red Phone Box as a project, I wanted to see what would happen if a lot of people tried to write one story. I thought it would be like those games we used to play as teenagers where one person wrote a couple of sentences and passed the paper on to the next to write.

What I didn't anticipate was that writing connecting stories would present a different kind of challenge. In the original series, that is, the way the stories were written, 'What a Little Moonlight can do' was the first story. I wrote that story in such a way that I felt it left a lot of possible things for people to take off from. What I didn't guess would happen was that nearly everyone who wrote a story would, instead of taking off from where I left off, invent a new character and a new situation.

Now that the book's been out for a while, I'd like to take you through what I think is going on in the final version. There will be a few spoilers here, but I'll try not to give everything away.

The first story in the book,'Oh Aye, Crofton' by Gethin Lynes serves as a kind of prologue. It gives us a hint of what evil is potentially going on later on in the book. There are two perpetual villains in that story who are behind the scenes in s lot of what's going on. This could be the origin story, or part of the origin story of the magical phone box. What if that phone box that Crofton uses in his hideous ritual is the very one that ends up in Maida Vale?

In 'What a Little Moonlight can do' we meet Amber Goodman. She's three weeks out of a relationship. Her boyfriend left. She thinks he must have gone off with one of the other women she knew he was seeing. Like many a woman in a bad relationship, she still misses him. She goes for a walk and ends up in this phone box. Now skip forward. What we don't know about this phone box yet is that it's situated on top of an old crossroads. The crossroads is no longer visible, having been paved over and built around. But it's metaphysically there and so is the loa of the crossroads, Papa Legba. Papa Legba is the god who allows communication with the other gods. The telephone box has taken on another level of communication, and magically charged and placed on this spot, it is a truly enchanted place. The trouble is that it's true neutral. Which means it does whatever job it's put to, just like any piece of technology.  This phone box allows passage in time and space, and even alternate dimensions, dimensions that can be wished or worried into existence.

As a writing exercise, this is an amazing contraption. It can do pretty much anything a writer wants it to. Guess this must make me a rather positive person (I think of myself as chaotic good). Amber, my character, gets into the phone box and she gets her boyfriend back. Well, sort of. Read the first two stories and I'll carry on giving you some insight into the next batch.  Ghostwoods Books has kindly released the first two chapters on their blog for free here.