The Jack Heath blog

Win $250 AUD by making a MONEY RUN trailer

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:44:00 +1100

If you’re a filmmaker in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, the USA or New Zealand (or you want to be one), here’s an opportunity to have some fun, grow your portfolio, and maybe win some cash.

STEP 1:

Read MONEY RUN if you haven’t already. (Don’t worry — it’s short and awesome.) If it’s not in your local library or bookshop, copies are $19.95 here.

STEP 2:

Make a trailer for it, featuring this cover art:

It doesn’t have to be long or expensive (I made a HIT LIST trailer using free software, royalty-free photos, my own music, and my friends as voice-actors) but it does have to be exciting. Maybe it’s just a single scene. Maybe it’s kinetic typography. Maybe it’s animation, or machinima. Get creative.

Feel free to include credits so you get the recognition you deserve — and make sure you have the rights for all the footage/pictures/music you use.

STEP 3:

Upload it to a video streaming site like YouTube or Vimeo (make sure it’s embeddable). Once it’s up, send us the URL.

That’s it! Entries close on Tuesday the 21st of February 2012, and the winner will be announced (and paid) two days later, once I’ve picked the one I like the most. So what are you waiting for?

Clarifications of my year in no man's land

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:17:24 +1100

A couple of readers took offense at my last article. People often do, but for once I’m willing to concede that it might be my own fault. In the interest of clarification, here is one of the comments:

Camille: So the only way men will read women authors is if they dare themselves to do it, as a *challenge*? Like, how many weights can I lift or how long can I hold my breath? Or is this dude just trying to score feminist brownie points? I’m rather angered by this post, especially as someone who has been reading women authors for much of my reading life without feeling as if I must remark upon how amazing it is for me to have done so. I guess that’s because I’m a woman…

My opinion, upon reading the post (and not having met the person who wrote it), is that the genuine self-reflexivity that inspired it has been overshadowed by a deeper gender prejudice that appears to be entirely unknown to the author, but is evident in the way in which the discussion is framed. It’s a naivety that allows him to make certain knowledge claims about ‘women’s writing’ - the assertion about non-violence comes very close to proposing an essential ‘feminine’ style (which is embedded in what - female brain patterns? The ovaries? The womb? …) and the overemphasis on sartorial description as a hallmark of feminine writing has its roots in a well-worn distinction between writing of little importance (invariably produced by women) and that of far grander aspirations (invariably produced by men). Though Heath professes to have developed a greater appreciation of authorial attention to fashion in books, I came away with the sense that a purported intensified interest in such things does not necessarily equate to a higher valuation of the writing. There was the sense of a desperate longing to get back to the ‘real’ literature.

And here is my response:

Jack: When Angela asked me to write this article, I should probably have got someone to check it for clarity. I never meant to imply that female writing differs from male for biological reasons (e.g. brain patterns, ovaries, etc). That would indeed be a ridiculous assertion. However, society still treats women differently from men, and this has created certain trends. This is demonstrably true – various algorithms can guess your gender based on nothing more than your choice of words and syntax. http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php

Note that I didn’t say women’s writing is worse. Quite the opposite – The God of Small Things and The Blind Assassin are by far the best Booker Prize winners of the last fifteen years, perhaps because in addition to all the usual requirements, they had to overcome the prejudice of the judges.

As for ‘grand aspirations’ and ‘real’ literature, I wouldn’t have listed my favourite authors as Matthew Reilly, Lee Child and Robert Silverberg if I were concerned with such things.

Reflections on a year spent reading books by women

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:12:37 +1100

It was a little more than a year ago now that I was walking through Central Park in NYC with another young adult author (the gifted Justine Larbalestier), and she asked me if I liked any books by women. I was surprised by the question, but I shouldn’t have been. I’d just listed my favourite authors as Matthew Reilly, Chuck Palahniuk, Lee Child, Ben Elton and Robert Silverberg. There was a healthy mix of nationalities, ages and genres in there – but it was a bit of a boys’ club.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t read or enjoyed any female-authored novels. I counted Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Joyce Carol Oates’ Zombie amongst the best books I’d ever read. But for some reason it hadn’t occurred to me to name any of these authors in my top five.

Was I sexist? Or were there genuine differences between men’s and women’s writing, making me prefer blokes’ books? Or was it just a thirty-two to one coincidence?

Read the rest at Literary Minded!

My crime book's journey to publication

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 11:30:44 +1100

Before I talk about Irredeemable, I need to thank you. Yes, you. No, not that guy behind you. You. Because six books have been shortlisted to represent the Australian Capital Territory in the National Year of Reading 2012 collection, and one of these books was Hit List.

It’s rare for a YA novel to be nominated for an award alongside adult books. It’s especially unusual for a plot-based action-adventure story to get a mention in the context of a literary award (since the definition of literary fiction is almost the opposite of that). So it takes a very special group of readers to make it happen — the kind of readers who will take a chance on a new author, and who will tell everyone they know when they’ve found something they like. Readers like you.

This is how much I love you guys.

So, thank you for this honour. If you’d like to vote for Hit List (only two clicks required) you can do it on the ABC’s website, or at your local library. I’d like to congratulate the other authors on the shortlist: Kel Robertson, Marion Halligan, Alan Gould, Dorothy Johnston, and John Clanchy.

Irredeemable, my new crime novel, is building momentum, slowly but surely. I’ve now received feedback from my agent and my dad. My agent sent me a text message which said the manuscript was “weird, addictive and thoroughly brilliant”. I was cautious; agents and publishers usually offer compliments right before they send their criticisms. Sure enough, I then received an email from her querying some plot points which she felt had been less than clear.

My dad, who may have been an agent in a past life, said he thought it was a good story well told, but. The protagonist’s overwhelmingly repulsive actions made him almost impossible to like until the last couple of chapters. He suggested toning down some of the violence.

Again, I wasn’t disheartened by this. First drafts are never, ever perfect. Laura, one of this blog’s regular commenters, recently asked how the revision process would work if I got contradictory feedback from my readers. Here’s a perfect example — my dad wants it to be less gruesome, but, as I said in my last post, my fiancée wants it to be more gruesome.

The solution is to look at the motivation behind each criticism. What my fiancée actually wants is for the narrative to be more shocking and scary. What my dad actually wants is for the main character to be more identifiable. These goals are much more compatible. If I keep the same amount of violence but describe it better — more sensations, smell and sound and taste — that will make it shocking. Meanwhile, I’ll ramp up the protagonist’s sense of guilt and self-loathing, as well as finding more opportunities for him to perform selfless acts. This will make him easier to empathise with.

With feedback from three trusted accomplices, I’m ready to start the second draft. This is the one that my agent will submit to publishers.

Round One

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:56:25 +1100

A few people get to read my manuscripts before they’re published. The first round includes my fiancée, my brother, my parents, my agent, and occasionally a trusted friend or two. The novel will be re-edited based on the feedback I get from these people.

The second round includes my publisher and her team of editors. The book is emailed back and forth, and re-edited two or three more times. In the third round, it goes out to reviewers and sample readers, whose feedback is mostly used to generate publicity and to encourage booksellers to pre-order it. It’s too late to change anything at this point.

I’m now at the first round with my crime novel, currently titled Irredeemable. It usually takes everybody a couple of weeks to get back to me; so far the only person who’s finished reading the manuscript is my fiancée. She said that it’s not gruesome enough, that two of the characters are paper thin, and that the twist at the end is wildly implausible.

I wasn’t too discouraged by this. The Lab and Money Run both had scenes described by my editors as “ludicrous,” “impossible,” and “preposterous,” and they’re scenes that I left in. I’ve found that the trick is to change not the event, but its context. You can make a reader believe almost anything if you include enough clues in the leadup to it. I won’t change the twist at the end of Irredeemable, but I will foreshadow it more thoroughly. I will also flesh out the cardboard characters and make the violence more explicit – but not until I’ve heard back from some more of my first-round readers. I wouldn’t want them to be giving me feedback on an outdated draft.

My fiancée also said she what she liked: the plot overall, the philosophical epilogue, and “the sexy bit.” It’s more important to know what a reader enjoyed than what they didn’t – they’ll recommend a book based on its strengths, not its lack of flaws. I’ve resolved to make the book more philosophical, and more sexy – but again, not until I’ve heard back from my other readers. (My parents, for example, might want it to be less sexy.)

In the meantime, I’ve started writing another manuscript. I usually start the next book on the same day as finishing the last one; over the past twelve years, I can’t have spent more than ten hours “between books.” This is a crucial part of the process. I need to forget all about Irredeemable so as when I come back to it, I’ll be able to see the big picture, and I’ve found the best way to do this is to get working on something else. Also, every book teaches me to be a better writer. Maybe I’ll learn something from this one that I can use to improve Irredeemable - when it’s time to start round two.

MITIFOTIT: (Most Interesting Thing I Found On The Internet Today)

Speaking of philosophy, I love this:

http://www.make-everything-ok.com/

Life as an unpublished author, take two

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 12:05:00 +1100

As far as I can tell, there’s no “typical reader” of this blog. Some of you are fans of the Ashley Arthur or Agent Six books. Others are just wandering folks who enjoy humour, philosophy, or pseudo-political rambling. Several of you are my friends and family. Hi Paul.

But one thing I do know is that many of you are aspiring writers. This is an audience I don’t cater to often, perhaps because dishing out writing advice feels too much like work, or perhaps because my road to publication was so unusual that not much can be learned from it. (I posted The Lab to just one publisher, unsolicited, as a 17-year old boy without an agent. It got published internationally. Very few authors are that lucky.)

However, I’ve found myself with a rare opportunity. After almost three years of work, I’ve finally finished writing my first crime novel for adults. After my usual celebration (playing video games in my pyjamas for a full day) I submitted it to my agent. And now, I’m going to document the rest of the publication process on this blog.

It’s my hope that this will be useful to unpublished authors, because most of my advantages have been stripped away. For the first time in six years, I don’t have a contract, nor a publisher angling for one. My established audience won’t make it any easier to sell the manuscript, since I’ve never written in this genre or for this market. All I have is a book, my wits (what little remained after the video games) and a damn good agent.

When I hear back from her, I’ll let you know what she says. Thanks for joining me on this journey.

MITIFOTIT: (Most Interesting Thing I Found On The Internet Today)

Sometimes people ask me what kind of music I listen to while I write. It’s this:

<a href=”http://paulkopetko.bandcamp.com/album/mr-runner-2-original-soundtrack” _mce_href=”http://paulkopetko.bandcamp.com/album/mr-runner-2-original-soundtrack”>Mr Runner 2 Original Soundtrack by Paul Kopetko</a>

The apocalypse we forgot about (afterwards)

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:31:00 +1000

Two days ago, Labor Senator Darren Cheeseman was ridiculed in Parliament for a speech he wrote in 2009. This speech included the following warning about the impacts of carbon pollution:

“The Great Ocean Road, Mr. Speaker, an icon of Australia and the engine room of our local tourism economy, will be largely destroyed. It will be breached in place after place, if sea level rise is as expected. Huge swathes of the Bellarine Peninsula will be inundated. Current areas of the mainland will be cut off and become islands. Queenscliffe will become an island. The area from Barwon Heads to Breamlea will become an island. Many areas of heavy industry will be over-run and inundated. Key public infrastructure facilities, such as caravan parks in Ocean Grove and in other parts of the Bellarine Peninsula will be inundated and lost. Many private homes will also be lost.”

Cheeseman was mocked for his alarmist views, and it’s easy to see why. Of all the prophets who’ve predicted the apocalypse, how many have been proven right? Depending on how you define “apocalypse”, the answer ranges from “zero” to “zilch”.

Although this guy might be on to something.

And, as the Liberal senators were quick to point out, climate change is an inexact science, and the rising sea levels are decelerating (ah, the old “things are getting worse less quickly” defence). The proposed carbon tax, they say, will simply make goods more expensive for hardworking Australian families.

While writing The Lab as a teenager, I was aware of climate change, but I can’t say I was all that frightened by it. The novel contains a simple answer to the problem – put a big wall around the country. Who cares about the rising ocean when there’s sixteen metres of concrete between you and it? Australia’s surf culture will be obliterated, along with our much-loved bikini industry, but otherwise, life goes on as normal.

If someone had told me that carbon emissions could make the very air unbreathable, turn the seas to acid, and wipe out almost all life on Earth, I would have laughed. If someone had told me that this had actually already happened, well…

…someone (named Science Daily) did just tell me that, and it doesn’t feel funny anymore.

It’s called the Permian-Triassic Extinction event, and it was probably the worst thing to happen in our planet’s history. 251 million years ago, rising levels of carbon in our atmosphere started a chain reaction which wiped out 95% of all species. Some creatures couldn’t stand the heat. Others couldn’t breathe the air. Still others starved to death, because their prey was suddenly extinct - and then the animals who preyed on them died out in turn. For thousands of years, Earth was almost as lifeless as Venus. Scientists call this period “the Great Dying”.

Humans should be thankful that this happened; without it, we couldn’t have evolved from the surviving scraps. But we should be pretty terrified of it happening again. It’s easy to feel invincible, in this world of buildings and transport and central heating and refrigeration and the internet - but we are squishy, vulnerable creatures, and there’s little use for hairdressers and lawyers and programmers and novelists in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. How long could a modern man survive, sleeping on bare gravel, once the last can of spaghetti was scraped dry and the only remaining food was the flies that circle our withering remains? (But enough about my time at university.)

With temperatures going up and the Liberals still banging on about jobs, we might soon find out what the end of world feels like first hand. Tony Abbott is the Mayor of Amity Island, keeping the beaches open despite all the evidence that there’s a hungry shark in the water. But perhaps something even smarter than us will evolve from the ashes. (Something smart enough to vote against its own extinction.) And hey, at least petrol will be cheap for the rest of our lives. Right?

MITIFOTIT: (Most Interesting Thing I Found On The Internet Today)

I always try to be relatively polite when I’m discussing politics – but it’s a lot of fun to read articles by those who don’t bother. If you can handle a bit of coarse language, please enjoy “You Shut Your Goddamn Carbon Taxin’ Mouth” by Heathen Scripture.

A riot is always everyone else's fault

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 21:42:49 +1000

A reader recently asked me if I felt responsible for the youth riots in the UK, since my book (in which the teenage heroine becomes a thief after a lifetime of poverty under a corrupt police force) was published there only a few weeks ago. I said no – firstly because I’d be astonished to learn that it had sold enough copies to have such an impact, secondly because I suspect people who smash windows and torch cars probably aren’t keen readers, and thirdly because the core message of the book is that thievery is an extremely poor career choice.

Fortunately, the protesters aren’t blaming me. Some of them would have you believe the riots were caused by the police, who fatally shot 29-year old Mark Duggan. But only a fraction of the rioters seem to know who Duggan was. (“Some guy got shot, I think?” I heard one looter helpfully explain on ABC radio.) Most simply appear to be opportunists, seizing the unexpected chance to steal everything they’ve ever wanted, pausing only to scream about the inadequacies of a government which has deprived them of their prospects for education and employment. Why not go down fighting, when you have so little left to lose?

The government, meanwhile, is pointing back at the police. If there were more of them, or if they had more powers – say, the right to remove the facial coverings of pedestrians – perhaps the concept of law and order wouldn’t have evaporated overnight. The police, for their part, are sensibly saying that the riots are the fault of no-one but the rioters, who are nothing more than a horde of violent criminals.

Everyone agrees the riots are terrible, and everyone agrees that it’s someone else’s fault.

Blame-shifting is precisely the reason that crowds are such dangerous creatures. If you steal a TV on your own, are 100% responsible for the theft. If you’re just one of a hundred people, all stealing TVs, then you only feel 1% responsible. If you’re one of a thousand, you barely feel any guilt for the damage - even if the damage is a thousand stolen TVs and fifty terrified, weeping shopkeeps.

But who am I to judge? A few short paragraphs ago I was defending myself - my book hasn’t sold enough, rioters don’t read, the main character isn’t such a bad role model. I’m not to blame, I swear.

Perhaps I should donate some money to Oxfam. I suspect my dollars will go towards feeding Somalis rather than repairing shop windows, but instead of judging rioters and politicians and believing - without a scintilla of evidence - that I would behave differently in their places, I should do some good to balance out the harm which all human beings inflict every day, pausing only to mumble our excuses.

MITIFOTIT: (Most Interesting Thing I Found On The Internet Today)

I usually put a joke here, but it’s not every day you get the chance to save someone’s life. Oh, wait, yes it is, thanks to Oxfam. They’re currently trying to raise $2,000,000 to save millions of starving people in East Africa, and every little bit counts.

(My next blog will be funny, I swear.)

An interview with Jack Heath

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 22:07:04 +1000

by ThirstforFiction

Jack Heath is the author of the middle-grade novel Money Run, which is just being published here in the UK by Usborne, and as part of his Blog Tour he’s here to answer some questions I had for him which will hopefully be of interest to you too! I didn’t expect too much from Jack- but he’s almost written an essay for each question!

ThirstforFiction: How did you get into writing and subsequently publication at such a young age?
Jack Heath: I’ve always been a gluttonous reader, so I guess I had a head start. At thirteen years of age, I found the books I was being asked to study in school much less exciting than the ones I was reading of my own accord, and I started to wonder why. Once I was examining the differences between an entertaining book and a boring one, it wasn’t long before I started trying to write my ideal novel.

As for publication, I was very lucky. I finished the book when I was seventeen, and the first publisher I submitted to happened to be looking for someone to crack the teenage boy market. The action-packed manuscript I had sent them was exactly what they had in mind. It was published as The Lab when I was nineteen, and I’ve been writing one book per year since then.

Read the full interview at ThirstforFiction!

Writing for the video game generation

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 20:34:00 +1000

Most of the authors I’ve met have no interest in video games. There are a number of reasons for this, ranging from the practical (those who devote their lives to literature usually don’t have room for much else) to the demographic (based on my observations, authors are usually women aged 35 and over, and while games are less and less exclusive to teenage boys, we haven’t reached equality just yet).

I’ve never had a problem with the idea of video games as works of art. As a child I noticed that Metal Gear Solid (a game which significantly influenced the plot of my first novel, The Lab) had a story far more original and stimulating than most of the movies I’d seen. I do, however, have a problem with the notion that games are responsible for a worldwide decline in literacy. If, as writers, we accept that we’re losing our readers to games, then maybe we should also accept that games are offering something our books are not. So are we going to wring our hands and ask what the world is coming to? Or are we going to write differently, focusing on the things books can provide and games cannot?

If you’re wondering what those things are, fear not. I think I’ve got it figured out.

Three of the five senses

Immersive as games are, they can only show the player how something looks, and how it sounds. They cannot describe taste, smell or – despite the best efforts of motion-control creators – touch. It’s more crucial than ever before to include these sensations in novels, so that readers really feel like they are present in the story. (I once fainted while reading a particularly gruesome scene in The Cleaner by Paul Cleave, and then vomited later when recalling it. Violent as video games can be, I’ve never had such a visceral reaction to one.)

Read the rest at The Book Zone!

10 Tips For Aspiring Theives

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 21:26:32 +1000

by Ashley Arthur

1 - Let people underestimate you
Forget balaclavas, body armour and utility belts. Thieves survive by looking harmless. If you’re a fifteen-year old girl like me, the best camouflage is a schoolbag and an iPod. The more boring – and bored – you look, the less anyone will suspect that you have a grappling hook launcher in your bag.

2 - Go for the big prizes
The likelihood of getting caught isn’t much decreased by stealing a hundred quid rather than a million. So it’s smart to aim high. Forget wallets and watches – seek out luxury cars and first-edition classic books. Always be on the lookout for that one big score which will get you and your family out of the gutter forever.

3 - Take only what you can sell
In 1911, a man stole the Mona Lisa and got away clean – but when he tried to sell it to a gallery, the curator had him arrested. The lesson here is, never steal anything unique. Go for things which are easily traded for cash. Diamonds are good. Gold is better.

Read the rest at Heaven, Hell and Pergatory Book Reviews!

Top tips for young writers

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:18:00 +1000

I started writing my first book at the age of thirteen, mostly to impress a girl. I discovered two things – one: that doesn’t work. Two: writing is addictive. Four years later I was shoving a complete manuscript into an envelope, scrawling the address of a publisher on the front, and pushing the package through the slot of a mailbox. Eighteen months after that, I was wearing a borrowed suit, watching the girl’s father (himself a well-known writer and academic) give a speech at my first book launch.

In the weeks that followed, I was often asked what advice I would give to young writers. I rarely knew what to say. But now, five books later, I think I have the necessary distance to see the things I did right – and the things I did wrong.

For the rest, check out my guest blog post on My Favourite Books!

Extreme book research

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:00:05 +1000

When you spend your life writing about safe-cracking, skydiving and bomb-defusing, the fastest way to lose your readers is to skimp on the research. They’re already suspending as much disbelief as they can. The more preposterous the story you’re building, the more solid the foundations have to be.

This is a great excuse to do things that are outside your comfort zone. You may not be able to find a real-life bomb to disarm, but your characters will need other skills. For Money Run, I wrote a scene in which the protagonist drove a stolen sports car off the roof of a skyscraper. I signed up for a defensive driving course beforehand, in order to learn how my car would handle high speeds in hazardous conditions. Not well, as it turns out. One of the exercises found an instructor sitting in my passenger seat as the car roared towards a stack of traffic cones at 110 km per hour. At the last second he’d shout either “left!” or “right!” Even on the few occasions in which I swerved the correct way, I always knocked over the cones.

Read the rest of my guest blog post for The Pewter Wolf!

Amazon eats Book Depository, and by the way, you've been ripped off

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:41:05 +1000

You may have heard that Amazon, the world’s biggest online bookseller, has just purchased Book Depository, the world’s cheapest online bookseller. Some people are upset about this, because monopolies are bad, or because the prices on Book Depository might go up, or because the range might go down, or because they might stop selling books all together. Amazon certainly seems to be phasing them out in favour of apps, Blu-Rays and whatever this is:

No joke, this item has a four-star rating and is called “Hillbilly Butt Pads”.

These are all legitimate concerns. But what most people are complaining about is that Book Depository has wordwide free shipping, and Amazon doesn’t. They’re worried that Book Depository’s free shipping might disappear.

I’m here to reassure you. “Free shipping” won’t ever disappear from Book Depository, or from any other website - because there was never any such thing.

No post office in the world offers free postage, which means online shops have a choice. They can pass their shipping costs on to their customers, or they can build them into their prices. (This is sometimes called “passing them on to their customers.”)

The only real difference is that if the shipping is “free”, you get overcharged if you live near the seller. Or if you buy more than one item. Or if you thought the shipping was actually free.

“But hang on,” you might be thinking. “Book Depository’s books were so cheap that their prices couldn’t possibly have included hidden shipping costs.”

I agree. In fact, when I first discovered Book Depository, I wondered how the heck they were doing it. Now I know - they were operating at a loss, in order to recruit enough customers that Amazon would buy them. Mission accomplished.

MITIFOTIT:
Most Interesting Thing I Found On The Internet Today

While I’m trying to be funny and depressing at the same time (“Ha - oh.”) you might want to check out SMBC, who does it much better.

Money Run is out in the UK!

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 21:12:19 +1000

Some of my favourite books are Ice Station, which was enthusiastically recommended to me by my Dad, Snakehead, which was left in my Christmas stocking by my Mum, Artemis Fowl, which was given to me as a birthday present by a brilliant clarinetist named Jono, and Misery, which was loaned to me by a woman named Venetia who is now my fiancée (that’s not the only reason I proposed, but I won’t say it wasn’t a factor).

These books are some of the reasons I’m a writer, and why I write the way I do. So I’m grateful to those four people, and to the dozens of others who’ve recommended books that I picked up and devoured and let haunt me in the years since.

I love my job. There are more reasons for this than I can name, but there are two on my mind right now:

The work you do keeps rewarding you years after you’ve done it.
You can take a year’s worth of effort and hold the result in your hand.

This arrived in the post today:

It’s the new edition of Money Run, which was released today in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. This story, once just daydreams and musings in my fickle brain, is now printed and bound and sitting in the local bookstores of 62 million readers.

However, it’s entirely possible that none of those readers will notice it. The cover is awesome, but so are lots of covers. The only name on it is mine, and to the people of the UK, that’s the name of a total stranger. There’s no sticker on the front saying that it’s Oprah’s favourite book. There’s no rumour about Kristen Stewart starring in an upcoming film adaptation (yet. Where’s the best place to start a rumour like that, hypothetically?) It could easily disappear into obscurity.

So, if you liked Money Run (and readers often tell me that it’s “so much better than your newer books”) and you have friends in the UK, then please tell them about it. Not just because you’ll be doing me a favour (although you will). Not just because you’ll seem cool for knowing about it years before everyone else (although you will). Do it because if you like the novel, there’s a good chance they will too. And they’ll be as grateful to you as I am to Dad, Mum, Jono, Venetia, and everyone else who helped me discover a good book.

How to save the bookshops

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 09:03:00 +1000

Last week, Minister for Small Business Nick Sherry predicted that brick-and-mortar bookshops would disappear within five years. His intention was to encourage booksellers to embrace online retail; however, all he did was make them angry. (Who didn’t see that coming? Just him, I suspect.)

“Whoa, hey, relax. What’s the big deal?”

For the record, I understand his point. Physical books sales are down. The Red Group (Borders and Angus & Robertson) recently collapsed. In the places where I used to see people reading - train stations, bus-stops, airports, park benches, cafes - I now see people playing Angry Birds on their iPhones. And Australian retailers getting online is important, not just for their own sake, but for consumers. Until 2010, I regularly had the following conversation:

Reader: “Why haven’t you written a sequel to The Lab?”
Me: “I did. It’s called Remote Control.”
Reader: “Then why haven’t you released it?”
Me: “It’s been out since 2007.”
Reader: “Then why isn’t it on Amazon?”
Me: (sigh) “Because Amazon only stocks US publications.”*
Reader: “Then where can I get it?”
Me: “Every single bookshop in Australia. Or, failing that, other online bookshops like Fishpond, Booktopia, Seekbooks or Bookworm.”
Reader: “Wait a sec. There are other online bookshops?”

But Senator Sherry missed the point a little bit. Borders went under because its strengths were range and price, two things which the internet does better. Australian booksellers getting online won’t solve the problem, because Amazon will crush them. For the most part, online book buyers browse on Amazon and nowhere else.

Instead, bookshops need to focus on the things the internet can’t do. You can’t host a book launch on the internet, with speeches and food and autographs. You can’t populate your online bookstore with friendly, well-read staff, who can make recommendations based on your personal tastes. (Online reviews are a very poor substitute for this.) You can’t fill the air with relaxing music, comfortable chairs and (sometimes) the smell of coffee…

…screw blogging. I’m off to the bookshop.

*This may not be true any more, because Hit List seems to be available on Kindle. But the Australian edition of Remote Control is still not there.

Dead Man Running: Announcement

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:00:06 +1000

I have good news and bad news. Which would you like first?

The bad news? Okay. I don’t know why I bothered asking – no-one ever says they want the good news first. You can’t enjoy the good news if you know there’s bad news coming.

The bad news is that the release of Dead Man Running has been postponed, so you’ll have to wait until 2012 to find out what happens to Agent Six.

The good news is a fact about the book that I’ve been itching to reveal for months. Before I tell you about it, you need to work out what kind of person you are. Some people hate knowing anything at all about a novel’s plot before they read it. I count myself as part of this group – I don’t read blurbs. I even try and avoid titles, to protect against spoilers. (Thanks a bunch, The Invisible Man.)

If you share this quirk, you probably shouldn’t read on, because the good news has a spoiler from page 18.

The good news is, the new Agent Six book has zombies in it. So trust me, it’ll be worth the wait. (I thought about calling the book Agent Six vs. Zombies, but I wanted at least some of my readers to be surprised when the first corpse sits up.)

A few of my readers are going to be worried that this will detract from the seriousness of the series. To those readers, I say: Trust me. I’m not turning the book into a cheesy schlock-horror flick. But since Agent Six is coming back from the dead, I figure that it’s only fair that his enemies – in their hundreds – are given the same chance.

Others will criticise me for jumping on the zombie bandwagon so late. On the contrary, as someone who’s had recurring nightmares about the living dead since playing Resident Evil 2 in 1998, it feels like I’ve been on the bandwagon for a very long time. But rest assured - I’m not writing about zombies because they happen to be in vogue at the moment. I’m writing about them because the idea of people returning from the grave, their personalities scrubbed away, their only remaining instincts being to shuffle and groan, is genuinely terrifying.

I sincerely apologise for the delayed release date. I know I’ll get hate-mail. It’s related to publishers and agents and booksellers and e-books and world rights and other complicated book-industry stuff that I barely understand. But don’t worry, the book is coming – and when it arrives, it’s going to eat your brains. (Start barricading your windows.)

MITIFOTIT: (Most Interesting Thing I Found On The Internet Today)

I love it when people over-think things. Few people do it better than Your Brain On Coffee:

The world of Harry Potter is a strange place. I know it’s meant to be wondrous and magical and all that, but behind the glamour you really have to wonder what the ultimate goal of their education was. At school the children learn to transform objects; perform telekinesis; open locks; fight dark wizards; and play some stupid sport where two guys chase a golden testicle around and try to convince the other players that they actually matter. Who designed that education curriculum, and what were they trying to achieve?

Duh… potato?

How to beat a troll using your own ignorance

Mon, 30 May 2011 08:16:00 +1000

If you spend enough time on the internet, at some point you’re going to come across haters, flamers, trolls, and garden-variety idiots. They’re the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of anonymity, and the only tried and true method of dealing with them is to ignore them. No matter what they say, if you refuse to give them the attention they crave, they’ll eventually evaporate.

I have never once passed this test. My desire to not have my time wasted is always trumped by my desire to be a smart-arse. This often gets me into trouble — in high school once a thuggish-looking guy asked me just what the hell I thought I was staring at, and instead of telling the truth, (I’d been watching the soccer game in the distance behind him) I took a glance at his caveman-brow and said “I think it might be the missing link.” When he worked out he’d been insulted, he threw a rubbish bin at me, leading to some richly-deserved humiliation for me and a richly-deserved detention for him.

Yesterday I discovered three things. Firstly that I had a second email inbox, secondly that this was where all my YouTube notifications had been going all these years, and thirdly that I’d inadvertantly passed the test. For almost three months, abusive comments had been accumulating on my video, 5 reasons Paul W.S. Anderson is the greatest screenwriter of all time, and I’d remained ignorant of it.

“Paul W.S. Anderson is one of the worst writers out there along with Zack Penn,” said DarkoJovanovic100. “Not to mention your opinions are that of a ten year old child. You’d have to be the worst writer ever judging on the fact that you don’t know anything.”

Fair enough. I knew people were likely disagree with me when I made the video. (There’s not a lot of point voicing your opinions if everybody else already shares them.)

But what really caught my eye was almost twenty comments from a guy named “AdmiralValkyrie.”

AdmiralValkyrie: Sh**ty videos. Remove them, will you?

And, when this generated no response:

AdmiralValkyrie: These Anderson-supporters need to STFU.

I remained obliviously silent, but this did not placate the peanut gallery.

AdmiralValkyrie: writetojackheath blocks me= I win

Oh no! If I didn’t block him, he could keep making comments, but if I did block him, he would win! I was ensnared in one of the Jigsaw Killer’s diabolical traps, and I didn’t even know it.

AdmiralValkyrie: writetojackheath removes my comments =I win

Still no response from me — I was probably writing, unaware that I was being challenged.

AdmiralValkyrie: Paul Anderson can’t make films (or any form of entertainment). Even Jyggalag from the Elder Scrolls series can make better entertainment than Anderson ever could.

I was spared the embarassment of having to admit that I didn’t know who that was by the fact that I was still unaware this conversation was taking place.

AdmiralValkyrie: And unlike writetojackheath, I still have a life. ^_^

If I’d seen this comment at the time, I would have pointed out that he was the one talking to himself in an empty forum. But I didn’t.

AdmiralValkyrie: Why do I get the feeling writetojackheath is gonna go apes**t when he sees my comments? Because he’s a fanboy.

AdmiralValkyrie: I bet writetojackheath supports Anderson’s movies because he has a ***** for Alice.

AdmiralValkyrie: Hell even Al Khan can write better scripts than Anderson.

AdmiralValkyrie: When is writetojackheath gonna respond?

AdmiralValkyrie: Are you afraid of me?

My bravery was being impugned! If I’d seen this, I would have found it hard not to make a snarky reply.

AdmiralValkyrie: Reasoning with Anderson-supporters is a waste of time.

AdmiralValkyrie: Anderson IS sexist. FACT.

AdmiralValkyrie: Anderson doesn’t improve on source material.

AdmiralValkyrie: I’m pretty sure Anderson IS racist.

AdmiralValkyrie: Anderson-supporters are less mature than a two-year-old. The attitude of writetojackheath proves it. Did I get a reaction yet?

He did not. What followed was two months of silence, before I found my second email inbox. (And, as Admiral Valkyrie predicted, went a bit apes**t.)

But I’d passed the test. Using the power of complete obliviousness, I’d stonewalled a troll into oblivion. I celebrated by watching Death Race 2.

I guess the moral of this story is two-fold. Firstly, not responding can sometimes be even more fun than being a smart-arse. Secondly, if you want to send hate mail to me, don’t post it on my videos - I have a special page for it.

MITIFOTIT:
Most Interesting Thing I Found On The Internet Today

Courtesy of xkcd (this really works)

A cheerful funeral

Sun, 08 May 2011 21:51:00 +1000

I’d just turned 15 when the World Trade Center fell. The newspaper told me that 3,000 people were dead, and while I knew this was a terrible thing, it took me a while to understand the world had fundamentally changed. An earthquake in India had killed 12,000 people earlier that year, and this hadn’t noticably altered the way anyone spoke or behaved or thought.

Of course, earthquakes are no-one’s fault, but the deaths in the Twin Towers turned out to be cold-blooded murder. It had never really occurred to me that someone might kill 3,000 people on purpose - that only happened in ancient history and James Bond movies. The realisation that the world was more complex than I understood came when I saw, on the news, people singing and dancing and waving flags on a street in Afghanistan.

“Why are they so happy?” I asked my dad.

“Because someone’s killed Americans,” he replied.

At the time it struck me how monstrous this celebration was, but I’d forgotten about it until last week, when the news was broadcasting footage of nearly identical street parties. The only difference was the chant (“USA! USA!”) and the reason - Osama bin Laden was dead.

An ethicist could hardly have asked for a better hypothetical. Is it permissable to celebrate the loss of human life? Most people would say no. But what if the dead man had kept five women imprisoned as his “wives”? Still no? What if he had spent two decades on a killing spree which had taken more than 3,300 lives?

I can understand all the rationalisations, and I don’t doubt that the world is better off without bin Laden. Perhaps if I lived in New York City, I’d be dancing and cheering too. But I can’t help but shiver as I watch the footage. Something tells me that what separates civilised people from al-Qaeda is that civilised people take no joy from anyone else’s suffering, regardless of the circumstance. The most it’s appropriate to feel upon the news of a villain’s death is quiet, private relief.

MITIFOTIT:
Most Interesting Thing I Found On The Internet Today

A whole blog post without a joke in it? That’s crazy talk. Here’s a borrowed one from The Perry Bible Fellowship:

Are game companies really as evil as we think?

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:06:00 +1100

In a recent video blog, I suggested that Apple products were overpriced. Amongst the usual flood of death threats, I found this interesting comment from a viewer:

btw this kind of stuff also happens in the gaming industry. it takes $10 for the game company to make one copy of the game. then they sell it to us for $100 or more. this also happens with the game consoles and computers. the truth is that all companies are out to not make profit but make HUGE profit earning him millions of dollars in a matter of months

This is a pretty common view, one that’s often used as a defence by pirates. (I’m not suggesting that commenter was a pirate - the comment was just what got me interested.) “If it only costs a dollar to burn a DVD,” says the pirate, “then why the hell should I pay $99.95 for a pre-burnt one? What a rip-off! Why shouldn’t I steal from those profiteering game companies?”

Profiteer or buccaneer?

That’s a good question, hypothetical pirate. The answer lies on the other side of some facts and basic equations:

-Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was made by 100 people.
-It took them two years.
-$2500 USD per month isn’t going to make anybody a billionaire, but it’s a pretty decent salary in the USA, and making games is quite specialised, so lets assume that’s what they got.
-$2500 x 24 (months) x 100 (employees) = $6 million

So that’s what it cost to make one copy of the game. Not $10. $6 million. Wait, I forgot the DVD burning process. Make it $6,000,001.

That’s just the first copy - every copy after that will cost just a dollar. But they can’t exactly charge $6 million for the first copy and then $1 for all the others. Who’s going to buy that first one? No-one, except maybe Nicolas Cage.

So they need to find some middle ground. If they charge $1 per copy, they’ll never break even. If they charge $10, they’ll still have to sell 1,200,000 copies just to avoid making a loss, so that middle ground is obviously too low. (Remember, retailers take 50%, and I haven’t even factored in the marketing costs yet.)

Someone in an office somewhere did some number-crunching, working out how many copies they were likely to sell, and what was a safe price. The game went on to sell 13 million copies, becoming one of the most successful games of all time, but remember, the company had no way of knowing that would happen when they set the price.

In my video, my objection to Apple wasn’t their profiteering - it was their use of high prices to trick people into thinking their products were good quality. Were the CoD4 team profiteering? I think they were just playing it safe.

You can’t be too careful.

One more thing to consider: out of those hundred game makers, a couple would have been paid just to write the anti-piracy software. If it weren’t for the pirates, the company wouldn’t have had to spend that $120,000, and the game would have been cheaper.

This is why pirates who complain about prices are hipocrytes. If you think a game is too expensive, buy a cheaper game. That brings the price of the first game down - whereas if you steal the first game, that drives the prices up.

When you pirate a game, a movie, a song, a piece of software, a TV show, you’re not actually getting something for free. The rest of us paid for it.

MITIFOTIT:
Most Interesting Thing I Found On The Internet Today

As well as being an actor and the inspiration for Agent Six, my brother is a film reviewer. I think you should let him tell you why The Prestige is among the greatest films of all time.