Oh my oh my

It is a cruel fact of my life that I regularly get ignored when it comes to the major literary awards - each year I wait by the phone, but always the Nobel or the Booker or the Orange Prize for Women's Fiction passes me by. But swell to report I'm in at least with a shout of a rather nice one - The Bisto Book of the Year Awards shortlist was announced this week, and my Titanic 2020 is one of ten books selected by Children's Books Ireland to be considered. They are presented annually in recognnition of excellence in writing and illustration, at least that's what it says on their website. Rather exciting. The winner is announced towards the end of May. The very night I heard that I'd been shortlisted I was making the dinner, opened the larder door, and a container of Bisto fell out, hit the deck, and spilled everywhere. This is surely a sign? But a sign of what? And if I do win, will I have to turn the Titanic into a gravy boat?

UTV Life!

.....and so the whirl surrounding the publication of a new book continues. Well, it's not quite a whirl, more like a stiff breeze. Or just a breeze. Or maybe just some cool air. Nevertheless, whatever it is, it continues. I'm appearing on UTV Life tonight on (naturally enough) UTV sometime between 5.30 and 6 pm, making this news item totally irrelevent to those of you who have proper jobs. Anyhoo, that's where I'll be, in my new suit, 'n all. Also due to appear on Ireland's TV3 on or around March 25th.

Jumpers!

The first film I ever wrote, and still possibly my favourite, was a short called 'Jumpers'. It was directed by Konrad Jaye and produced by Mark Huffam and starred Jimmy Nesbitt in a tale of suicide and Santa Claus. This was an incredible.....what, 12 years ago? Anyway, the film has now resurfaced, and if you have Itunes you can actually download it to your computer, Ipod etc. Only costs a couple of dollars and it will give you hours of wonderful fun, or indeed, minutes.

Waterford bound

If you're in the Waterford area, or indeed in the Ireland area, and are extremely bored, I'm appearing at the Sean Sunne Writer's Festival in the town on April 6th. Sean was an acclaimed poet who died tragically young.

Orpheus: We Have Lift Off

Many thanks to all those who turned up to toast the launch of 'Orpheus Rising' last night at No Alibis in Belfast. My, that Stella beer is rather strong. I didn't actually read any of the book last night - it's hard to find a passage that makes sense in small chunks - so instead read from the NEXT book, which is 'Mystery Man', and which I literally finished yesterday afternoon. Those who have been following these reports will know that I'm actually setting the book in a mystery book shop called 'No Alibis' - a FICTIONAL version of the real place. Nevertheless it's great fun to watch owner David Torrance squirm as i read! The new stuff seemed to go down well and it was good to see a lot of familiar faces. And some new ones. 'Orpheus Rising' is in many ways a much more serious book than normal; 'Mystery Man', I suspect, will give a new meaning to the term 'politically incorrrect'. But you'll have to wait and see.....

Orpheus Rising .....published!

The new novel, Orpheus Rising, was published this week folks. The one with the big pink shark on the cover. Hard to miss. Although you will if you order books through Amazon....as due to an administrative foul up the book has failed to appear there at all. Hopefully this will be rectified in the very near future.
Meanwhile, if you live anywhere near Belfast, you're invited to come and help launch the blessed thing at No Alibis bookstore in Botanic Avenue on Thursday, March 13 at 7 pm.

You can all just **** off

When I was a journalist, and a very poor one at that - both literally and financially - the rule of thumb was that you NEVER received praise from your readers, you only ever received complaints. It was a good day at the office if it was a quiet one after one of your stories had appeared. This is also pretty true of the books - I get some nice e-mails, but generally there's not a huge amount of feedback. That is until I PREDICT A RIOT and the complaints started. Hundreds of them. My cardinal sin has been to remove the swearing and replace it with a lot of ********ing. This seems to have REALLY annoyed everyone because there's not a day goes by, STILL, when I don't receive half a dozen e-mails complaining about it: some of you just like to read naughty words, some of you resent having censorship imposed on you, some of you don't like being treated like naughty children. And all of you asking why the **** I did it, and if I've turned into some kind of ******* born again Christian or something. Now I've explained it before and I'll explain it again. The Lord is the One True Way and there's no need for ******* swearing.

Or.....I Predict A Riot originally appeared in serial form in the Belfast News Letter, which is a morning newspaper here in Northern Ireland. This meant that I couldn't be using my normal quota of very naughty words, or, if I did, I had to bleep them out. So I bleeped them out. And never a complaint over the whole year the serial appeared. It may be that we Northern prods are just a lot more God fearing that the rest of you heathens. So when it came time to do the book I thought I'd keep up the ****, and also had the thought that sometimes the bleeping can be funnier than the actual swear words themselves. It works on You've Been Framed. But as it turns out you all like your swear words. You miss them. They are such a part of your daily lives that you feel bereft when someone chooses not to use them.

So MAYBE in a future edition of the book I might put them all back in. But as that would mean re-setting virtually every page, I'm virtually certain my publishers aren't going to pay for it.
In the mean time, suitbably chastised, you can all look forward to my next novel, 'The Fucking Fuckers from Fuckville'.