I am an Amazon best-selling author

 

It’s true, I am.

Look:

A best-selling author who clearly isn’t a best-selling screenshot capturer, earlier.

This best-selling author status comes with caveats – I’ve got caveats coming out of my ears. It couldn’t be any other way, though, not really, I couldn’t be a best-selling author without caveats coming out of my ears. Such caveats include, but are in no way limited to, the following:

1. It’s tenuous and niche as hell. I am the best-selling author in a small ‘Card Games’ sub-section of Amazon and have only been there over the last day or two. If the handful of people who I’ve browbeaten into buying my book refuses to grow, my best-selling author status will evaporate by the end of the weekend.
2. You don’t have to sell many copies to become a best-selling author in a niche sub-section. I couldn’t, for example, buy an island with my royalties. Nor could I buy a plane ticket to an island. I couldn’t even pay for a taxi to the airport. I could afford to buy some stamps and put them on postcards and send them from an island but that, seriously, is about it.
3.  It’s not really a book. Perhaps this should have been at the top of these caveat-bullet-points. Notes from the Poker Trenches is a collection of poker columns from 2012/2013 that have been annotated. These annotations have allowed the 2018 me to emotionally and psychologically beat up the 2012/2013 me. This has been somewhat enjoyable; 2018 me has liked doing this.
4. Seriously, it’s not really a book. It’s self-published and so I’m not sure it qualifies as a proper book.
5. The cover is an homage to Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground. It’s not just chucked together because I (a) couldn’t afford a cover designer, (b) was incapable of designing a cover myself or (c) just had some vague feeling that “the words should speak for themselves”.

So, yes, caveats. Over the next week or so I will be detailing the process, from the seedling of an idea (in this instance, someone suggesting I collate a bunch of my old poker columns), through formatting (easy), cover design (even easier), publication (press a button that says ‘Publish’) and marketing (this post). Bet you can’t wait.

In the meantime, if anyone fancies maintaining my status as a best-selling author then please feel free to click on this highlighted bit here and part with £1.99. Seriously, it would make me happier than you could imagine.

 

The Secret

Regular readers will be well aware that this project (if you can call it that) has more or less been a psychological, emotional, financial and matrimonial (and pretty much any other al-suffix) bap-up since its inception in 2009. Plus: brackets. Way too many brackets.

But then this afternoon as I was idly dodging work and hiding from the scarier corners of my life (read: all of them), I realised that all along I had been doing the whole thing wrong.

By the whole thing, I mean pitching and writing articles. And by wrong, I mean wrong.

Let me explain.

This afternoon I watched the Cambridge Analytica press conference in its entirety. Cambridge Analytica, as many readers will know, are credited with some degree of orchestration in the Trump and Brexit campaigns and have been implicated in the illegal hoovering up of data from tens of  millions of Facebook users. And so today, in order to clear things up, Cambridge Analytica held a press conference conducted by Clarence Mitchell, a former “BBC journalist and PR specialist,” according to the Guardian, who gave a statement before brusquely fielding questions from various journalists.

So far, so normal. I don’t really understand the mechanics of such things, but if I were in Cambridge Analytica’s position that’s exactly what I would do: get a person in to be its spokesperson, preferably someone who doesn’t have any history with the company and who, at a press conference, can answer questions badly (or not at all) about what said company been up to.

One exchange in particular really struck me. It was as if, oh I don’t know, as if Clarence Mitchell held some sort of key to the secret of journalism (and the secret to life, perhaps) and here he was, in all his blunt glory, offering it to me.

Below is a brief transcript from this afternoon’s press conference:

Journalist: “If Cambridge Analytica’s position is that no work was carried out by Leave.EU, why did it invoice Leave.EU?”

Clarence Mitchell: “Because if you understand anything about business, you’ll understand the pitch process, i.e. a bid to get the contract, to get the work, involves a certain amount of time and effort and personnel…” 

And suddenly it all clicked. There was a me before this press conference and a me after. I realised that before I didn’t understand anything about business but that now, after hearing some words from my new guru Clarence Mitchell, I did. I’d been wasting my time. I didn’t need to write for these magazines, I just needed to pitch them. And the pitch didn’t even need to be any good, thank god, as long as it involved a certain amount of time and effort and personnel. After that I could invoice.

A journalist post-invoicing, earlier. 

Frankly, I’m delighted with this new slant on getting paid for stuff, of doing business. But it’s not the only thing that I’ve learnt from – and subsequently been delighted by – Cambridge Analytica in the last couple of months. In February 2016 Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix wrote in Campaign Magazine that, “We have already helped supercharge Leave.EU’s social media campaign by ensuring the right messages are getting to the right voters online.”

Yet when questioned by a House of Commons select committee earlier this year about such a statement, Nix said, “Let me be absolutely crystal clear about this. We did not work for Leave.EU. We have not undertaken any paid or unpaid work for them, okay?” But the Campaign Magazine stuff? “Drafted by a slightly overzealous PR consultant.”

Mr Nix also went on to say that meeting and being in contact with various groups and companies could be classed as work. This, again, is gold for me. Over the years I have been in contact with tons of newspapers and magazines about writing for them and in most instances it’s all kind of petered out. Yet because of these new, Cambridge Analytica-shaped “rules” I can now class them among my employers.

That will have to do for now, I’m afraid. It’s late, and I have hundreds of invoices to send and a new CV to write.

 

Why I stopped working for Alexander Nix: Part Three

n.b. In a breathtakingly daring move, it appears that I’ve leapt straight from, ‘Why I stopped working for Alexander Nix: Part One,’ to, ‘Why I stopped working for Alexander Nix: Part Three.’ This is (somewhat) explained down there a bit. But even though we’re not at part two, we are at least somewhere. Usually on here when I write “Updates to follow,” or “Next time I am going to be writing about this, this and this,” the updates don’t follow and we never get to hear about the this-es. So this is something, at least. 

When the Cambridge Analytica/Alexander Nix scandal (properly) broke early last week and was the lead item on BBC News at Six, I was sitting in my Nan’s living room with my Nan and my Mum.

“LOOK, LOOK, LOOK” I said to them, drowning out the opening clangs of the BBC News, “THAT’S Alexander Nix. THAT’S who I used to WORK for.”

I’m not sure my Nan believed me. I’m not sure my Nan thinks I’ve worked for anyone.

Then, a few minutes later:

“…and we now go over to our North American technology reporter Dave Lee…””

“I KNOW HIM TOO – Dave Lee. He reads Pitching the World.”

My Nan reached for her phone book and started to turn to the page marked, “NUMBER FOR STEVE’S SECTIONING”

“Oh, this is big,” I said. “And weird. Big and weird – and check out what I’m reading.”

I went into the kitchen and fished out of my bag the book I wanted them to check out.

“Look – The Nix.  This is big and weird. Not the book, the news.”

Most of the above is true. It’s true that I did find it all a bit big and a bit weird. It’s true about Dave Lee and working for Alexander Nix, too. The bit about my Nan having a page in her phone book marked, “NUMBER FOR STEVE’S SECTIONING” is (probably) not true. And I am reading The Nix. I’ve even got the book with me now, see:

That book and this post, earlier. 

So I was a little heady last week. Let’s be honest, I’m a little heady every week. To deal with these headiness I sought some kind of sanctuary in Pitching the World and wrote, “Why I stopped working for Alexander Nix: Part One,” and (somewhat) promised a part two. On Tuesday I sat around and tried to write that part two but flapped up. I tried again yesterday and flapped up some more. For example, yesterday I wrote stuff like this:

But it turns out that I am worse at leaving companies than I am at whistle-blowing because, a short while after coming back to London, I started working for them again. After slinking off, I slunk back. Some moral conviction that was. But SCL Group did plenty of well-grounded, interesting and socially benign work and I liked (and still like) doing this kind of work and was happy to work on a per-project basis. But after a while I ended up quitting again. Then I went back. This little pattern, this moral-dance, continued for a while. For a couple of years I periodically freelanced for them, mainly writing copy. Then, a couple of years after St Kitts, I went back to work directly for Alexander Nix: I started work on Monday morning, went to the pub for lunch on Wednesday afternoon, had a raft of pints, took my drinking to the park, turned off my phone for two days, and never went back.

And I also wrote stuff about finding Alexander Nix being “funny, engaging company” and said that although he used to be part-monster (we all are), in the years since I stopped working for him he appears to have transitioned to, well, if not quite full-monster then something pretty close. And yet, I wrote yesterday, when I used to know him he was involved in “a lot of good work.” He also got me a job writing for £3 a word.

I know: far out.

This aborted part two read like something I would have written had Alexander Nix tied me up in his basement, surrounded me with remote-controlled cat bombs, and was whispering in my ear, “Write that I was funny and engaging company and that I was involved in a lot of good work otherwise I’m detonating these cat bombs.”

And that’s not quite what I wanted. What I really wanted to say was that I stopped working for companies and people like that because I wanted to concentrate on writing things that helped people. But despite this being true, in the intervening years I’ve catastrophically failed: granted, I’ve written a handful of things that I’m proud of, but the bulk of my published work has been throwaway, morally-neutral, unimportant puff.

So where does that leave us? I suppose in one sense it leaves us here, at Pitching the World. This project is actually one of the few things I am proud to have done and from a number of messages I’ve had, it has actually helped people. One editor, who I later worked for, said that reading about the break up of my marriage on here actually enabled him to deal with his divorce better. So that’s something. And a number of people have contacted me saying that by presenting myself in a fizzy, haphazard, often lazy way they feel better about their fizzy, haphazard laziness. So I suppose that’s something, too.

Something, but not enough. Updates to follow.

 

 

Why I stopped working for Alexander Nix: Part One.

By the time you read this I may well have been prodded with a ricin-tipped umbrella, or mowed down by a car, or been blown up by a remote-controlled cat-bomb. This is what happens when you spend years shredding your mental health: something big happens in the world, something that you were a part of, so when you see a cat ambling towards you on a near-empty street your first thought is, “BOMB CAT?”

Let me explain.

Back in 2009, in the opening post of this blog I wrote, “Let me explain,” and went on to detail (somewhat) my previous life as a political speechwriter and how this harebrained scheme, Pitching the World, came about. Here is what I said:

“Prior to be stoned in Darwin, Australia I was a political speechwriter in St Kitts, the Caribbean. I left that job for reasons far too complicated and numerous to go into right now, but the main reason I left that job in St Kitts, the Caribbean was to go back to being a freelance journalist. That’s right: at possibly the worst time for freelancers I left my prestigious, well paid and more-exotic-sounding-than-it-is job to go back to journalism.” 

And so with Alexander Nix, Cambridge Analytica, SCL Group and that particular St Kitts election campaign screeching across the news, perhaps now is the time, some eight or nine years later, to go into those complicated, numerous reasons.

 Umbrellas, earlier. 

But perhaps now isn’t the time, perhaps last year was.

Last year I was sitting in a Jacuzzi in a health club – borderline homelessness, even after eight years, can sometimes be glamorous – and I thought about drawing a curtain across this blog with one final post. Now readers, I was going to begin, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for all of the support and the comments and the offers to buy my never-to-be-written book. And not only do I want to offer my thanks, I also want to offer my apologies for often conducting myself in a lazy, haphazard and monstrous way – it’s just that sometimes I am a lazy, haphazard monster. I try not to be, but I’m a bit of a let down, to be honest. Yet this project has been very dear to me, and you all have been very dear to me, it’s just that all these years later I am still in psychological, emotional and financial ribbons and, come on, I think it’s time to draw a line under all of this. Things haven’t really worked out. I grind my teeth until my gums bleed. My drinking has ballooned. Other recreational peccadilloes have ballooned. While all the good stuff – relationships, my career, industry, health – have anti-ballooned. This is what happens, I suppose, when you leave prestigious, well paid jobs. Anyway, bye.

That’s what I wanted to write. I’m quite glad now that I didn’t.

Although last year, as silly as it might seem to me now, thinking about writing those words began to overwhelm me. Particularly the bit about things being dear to me. “Oh, good,” I thought, “we can now add Jacuzzi to the various other items – boiled eggs, hamburgers, pillows, voids – that I’ve cried into.”

The only free photo I could find of a Jacuzzi (and I’m not even sure it is a Jacuzzi) earlier. 

Thankfully for me and for other guests of my health club, this Jacuzzi-crying soon stopped and segued into something better. I began to think about leaving my job as a political speechwriter in St Kitts, the Caribbean, and the reasons for doing so. And I thought that instead of writing a meandering, well-trodden final post about how Pitching the World has been an abject failure, I would instead write a post about how even though my life has fallen apart, I’m pleased that I left the Caribbean and pleased, too, that I no longer worked for or with Alexander Nix – that I might, in fact, be a good, honourable man. With piercing accuracy, I was going to call this post, “Why I stopped working for Alexander Nix.”

Because officially, I left that project on moral grounds. Unofficially, I also left on moral grounds. I’ve just re-read the email that I sent after leaving which begins with, “Gentlemen, You deserve an explanation as to why I hot-footed it out of there,” and ends with, “I feel terrible to have let you down. If it wasn’t for these bloody morals, I wouldn’t have done.”

Far out.

Do I publicly want to delve into these bloody morals? Why am I even writing this? It certainly isn’t any kind of expose. And I’m pretty sure it isn’t a clumsy attempt to piggyback upon Alexander Nix’s notoriety and raise my profile. I don’t really care about my profile – I don’t even have a profile, but if I did I wouldn’t care about it. I suppose what it might be is some sort of public record in case I get blown up by a remote-controlled cat-bomb. Or it might just be a neat bookend to my Pitching the World project. Opening post: I left my job as a political speechwriter in the Caribbean. Closing post: I’m actually quite glad I did.

Beady-eyed readers will have noticed that this is called, “Why I stopped working for Alexander Nix: Part One.” This suggests there is going to be a part two – possibly even parts three, four and five. Let’s see. I’ve had a few beers since starting to write this and am starting to feel a little heady.

Anyway, bye.

A remote-controlled cat-bomb, earlier. 

 

Bear Necessities, revisited.

Imagine hearing that your best friend is chained to a radiator in a small room somewhere. You don’t know where. And imagine the radiator isn’t really a radiator at all – everyone gets chained to radiators these days – it’s a grizzly bear. The grizzly bear is full of Etorphine and won’t wake until next Friday. When she does wake next Friday, she will groggily paw your friend’s knees and ribs and shoulders for a few minutes and then rip your friend’s face off.

Imagine that.

Now imagine that you have an opportunity to save your friend. This is what happened to me earlier when I woke up. God came down and told me about the room and the chain and the bear and the best friend, but also told me I could put a stop to it all.

A radiator, earlier. 

“But how God?” I asked God. “I’ll do anything to save my best friend. Can I have a look first though? I’ve always wanted to know what a man chained to a sleeping bear in a small room looked like.”

“Always? That’s a bit strange. You can have a look later maybe,” said God.

“Why didn’t you chain him to a radiator?”

“Radiators are boring. Everyone gets chained to radia – hold on, who’s saying that I chained him to a radiator. I mean, a bear.”

“Sorry, you just seemed to know a lot about it. Okay, how do I save him? It doesn’t involve running does it? I can’t bear running. Ha, I said ‘bear’, that’s sort of a joke. Not a good one though. I should have said radiator. Let me have another go. Okay, how do I save him? It doesn’t involve running does it? I can’t radiator running.”

“Well done. And you wonder why your best friend is chained to a bear. Listen: You can only save your friend if you set up a copywriting agency by Friday.”

“That’s all?” I said.

“That’s all,” God said.

“That is quite a bit, though. And if that doesn’t happen then my best friend gets it? Well I can barely believe it. I mean: I can radiatory believe it. Doesn’t work so well the second time, does it? A bit much.”

“Yes, a bit much.” God said.

“Is this a metaphor?”

“Um, no. How do you mean?”

“Well, I’m thinking that my best friend isn’t my best friend, it’s me. And the bear isn’t a bear, it’s my writing career. I suppose the small room represents my life. So: I’m trapped in this small room, my life, and I’m chained – and I must say, I really like what you’ve done with the symbolism here God – to a career that is going to destroy me if I don’t make considerable progress within the next week. Oh, and at the moment the bear, my career, is sleeping. I wonder why I’ve made it a female bear. Is that it?”

“Yes, I suppose so. I didn’t really consider all that. I saw it more as a game you could play with yourself, to test yourself. If your friend really was chained to a bear in a room, and the only way you could save him was to set up a copywriting website could you do it. And if you couldn’t, should you just give up?”

“You’re right. And I will give up. Properly this time. Isn’t this a bit weird though, playing games with yourself like this at forty?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“You’re a bit bored now aren’t you God?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You want to go off and chain someone else to a bear don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

A bear, earlier. 

And so began my morning. I’ve clearly had enough and am clearly going a bit tonto, but it’s good to set goals. And I know I’ve nearly given up on all this nonsense before, but God wasn’t involved then and that time was only really to elicit sympathy and gain readers (it worked), whereas this time I mean it and I need to stir myself because I’m really, really, really fucked off with it all. And pretty fucked up by it all too. Apologies for the fucks at the end. I was being all respectful and doing well with the fucks up until then. Enjoy your week.

Monday Afternoon Fuck Club

Battling with this terrier-like entity though, even after only a week of it, is wearing a bit thin. He always wants to do stuff. Bad stuff. Well, bad-good stuff. Good-bad stuff. Stuff. Often it’s pub-stuff.

“Oh come on,” he says, “Let’s go to the pub. Down the old pub. Pub pub pub. You like the pub, remember?”

“”I don’t want to go to the pub. I want to go swimming.”

“Swimming? What are you – five? Who goes swimming these days?”

“I go swimming these days.”

“Right,” says my terrier, “let me get this straight. You spend two decades in the pub. You whisk me in there before midday sometimes and then slope off well after it gets dark. You swan in there on the slimmest of pretexts at all hours – I barely know where I stand half the time – and feed me all of these treats and now…this? What even is this? You used to spend days in bed with a bottle of wine glued to your lips now you’re just snatching it away, now you’re giving me…fucking mackerel.”

“That’s right, now I’m giving you fucking mackerel. I’m giving us mackerel.”

“What about Fuck Club?”

“What do you mean, ‘What about Fuck Club?’ Now you’re just showing off. We’ve never been to Fuck Club.”

“No, but we could. People sell crack all around Fuck Club. We could buy some crack and smoke it and go to Fuck Club. And fuck in there, obviously. You’d be happy then. It’d be good for your writing, your precious writing. Monday Afternoon Fuck Club.”

The terrier has a point.

“We don’t smoke crack. And we’re not going to any sort of fuck club. We’re playing tennis instead. Then yoga. Then weights.”

“I hate weights.”

“I hate weights too. Now eat this spinach.”

“And that’s how it is?”

“That’s how it is.”

And that is how it is. Bit of a battle, this, but one I appear to be winning. Sometimes I have to talk to the terrier as if it’s a convalescing grandma (“Come on, twenty minutes in the sun and you’ll feel a whole world better”) at other times like an errant schoolboy (“Look, this is getting silly. One way or another these push-ups are getting done…”) but we’re making good progress.

Monday afternoon Fuck Club does sound fun though. Much more fun than tennis and spinach and industry. Updates to follow.

This is Forty

Monday.

For days now (I have no idea how many) every minute of every waking hour I’ve either had a drink in my hand or been within three feet of one. The only times I haven’t had this luxury of proximity is when walking to the pub. I say walking, but the sheer elation I know I’m going to feel at getting inside one of those things, coupled with body and mind screaming out for alcohol means it’s less walking and more half-shuddering, half-body popping. I know, not ideal.

Yesterday I was forty. Today, I woke up thinking I was a Greek fishing village. I didn’t feel like me. I didn’t feel like anyone else either. I felt like a Greek fishing village, thought I was a Greek fishing village and contained everything that was going on there. There is no other way I can put it. 

Naturally, I’m both simultaneously fascinated and terrified by this peculiar turn of events. Wine helps to ease the struggle of getting through the day as a geographical oddity. Later my brother says, “I once thought I was the rock of Gibraltar,” which immediately thrills and comforts me, before adding, “But that was in a dream.” I crumple.

A Greek fishing village, earlier.

Tuesday.

Everything aches. I sit in a hot tub in the rain. I almost fall into the hot coals in a sauna, then almost wish I had. I drink.

Wednesday.

Wake up with almost unbearable tinnitus: a deep, whirring hum in one ear and a high-pitched yelping in the other. I’ve had years of this. I’m not sure I can take much more of it. If there were a nest of vipers at the foot of my bed I would happily slither in and join them. If a canyon full of broken glass, shards of metal, and wild animals existed outside of my bedroom window I wouldn’t think twice about leaping in there. Unfortunately there isn’t, so I settle for attacking my mattress and beating up my pillows for ten minutes. The rest of the day is spent drinking. 

Thursday.

Trying to get off to sleep on Thursday night I soothe myself with thoughts of that time I worked out in Singapore, or that time I worked in the Caribbean, or that time I took a train with my then wife through the centre of Australia and how much I enjoyed seeing the seemingly endless miles of scorched red rock. I feel calm thinking of having lunch under a jungle canopy.

Then it stops calming me. I don’t think of it as me going having lunch in the rainforest, but my brain. It’s not me slicing through the centre of Australia seeing things, it’s my brain interpreting light waves and sound waves and making sense of things. My brain is making my fingers punch numbers into a phone and it’s making sounds come out of my mouth, then it’s making my limbs carry bags and whisk it off to the airport and it gets me to feed it booze and gets me to stick my hand up my then wife’s dress to give it pleasure. My whole sense of self dissolves, and I’m just this terrier-like entity, this mush, this interpretation-machine, existing in my skull. I take quadruple my usual amount of sleeping tablets.

A nest of vipers, earlier. 

Friday.

Friday is better. I eat fish and plants. I play tennis and win. I swim. I try not to think about my brain. I drink one beer. When you’re better, I say to myself, you should spend the rest of your life being nicer and kinder to people. This thought pleases me. You should also, I add almost unconsciously, try being nicer and kinder to yourself. This one scares me. Have I ever been either nice or kind to myself? I meditate on this for a while until I realise that, not for the first time this year, I’m in danger of crying myself to sleep.

Saturday.

I play tennis and win. Without having to give it much thought, I play poker and win too. I eat fish and plants. I lift weights. I do some yoga. In the evening I buy an avocado in the rain. I turn off my phone. I drink one beer and wash the grill pan. Saturday.

Sunday.

Busy for a Sunday: Internet-taught yoga, internet-taught Shaolin Kung Fu, winning at poker, swimming, sauna. I feel, possibly for the first time, that I’m beginning to work as a person. Colours are sharper than normal. Flowers leap out at me and I sit and stare at them for hours. When I go to the toilet, it no longer smells of corroding metal. I stop feeling scared in my own body and in my own mind. 

People in Boscombe are buying crack cocaine and heroin when I leave the health club. People in Boscombe are on their way out for the night, happy. People in Boscombe are sitting outside drinking and look to be enjoying themselves. Temptation is everywhere here. Part of me wants to join them, to get into trouble. Part of me wants more physical and psychological scars. But another part of me – a bigger and better part – doesn’t. That part of me is intrigued by how far I can take this: this plant-eating, this exercise, this non-drinking, this new-found industry. I feel as if I’ve been on the fringes of my mind’s unedifying canyons this week and, well, I don’t want to be on those fringes  far too often. Let’s see, shall we. 

How to Pitch to FHM Magazine

………………………………………………………………………………………………….

To: Joe Barnes, FHM Editor

From: Pitching the World

Subject: Poker/Other/Better

Date: 12th May 2015

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Hello Joe Barnes,

Here I come, crashing into your life again. It’s been a while – I hope you’re in rude health. I sort of am.

Not the usual blather this time though I’m afraid, I may actually have something half-decent. Since the turn of the year I’ve been travelling around the country playing live poker. Prior to that, I spent two years trapped in a room playing online poker and writing about it. So far I’ve played in London, Southampton, Brighton, Nottingham and Aberdeen. Have you ever been to Aberdeen? Oh, you really must. I cried with happiness up there. I was so happy up there, in fact, that I booked two Megabuses to come back down to London and cheerfully missed them both.

By the dog-end of the summer I want to have played in every casino in the UK that offers live poker. Why? Lots of reasons, really. First, to make money. Second, to see if I can compete nationally in live cash games. Third, to go parts of the country that I’ve never been to. Fourth, because no-one has ever done this before. And finally (and crucially) because I think it could make me a better, stronger person. I’ve been reading a ton about Stoicism over the last few years and trying to practice it, too. The central tenet, I think, is this: Many (if not all) things in life are out of our control, but what is in our control is how we react to things. The philosophy is very much centred upon character-building. The other day I lost a week’s wages (£750) in a couple of hours and walked out of the casino beaming because of the way I dealt with it. Before, in my more shambolic days, I would have buckled. I wouldn’t have walked out of anywhere beaming, I would have walked into the toilets and curled up in a ball and moaned. 

Is there anything in this? Not in curling up in a ball and moaning, more in what I’m proposing. Could there be a feature where the framework is about playing poker in all the casinos in the UK but it’s actually also more than that: part-UK-travelogue, part-philosophical treatise, part-something-else? 

No need to reply for a while, the whole project (if you can call it that – and you can’t, not really) won’t be wrapped up for a few months. But it would be splendid if you would at least consider it. I’ve been wanting to write for FHM since I was 16. It’s good again now. Some of the features are a lot more in-depth and interesting than they used to be, hence why I thought this could possibly fit. If not, no bother. You’re doing a damn fine job there regardless. I hope you’re happy. 

While I’m here, a link to one of my poker columns. Initially the column was going to run for 2-3 months but ended up lasting 88 weeks. It’s just to show I can write about poker, really. And about other stuff: [LINK REDACTED]

Ace,

Steve

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

That’s how you pitch to FHM. Well, it’s certainly one way of pitching to FHM. It’s far from perfect – possibly too long, cloying in places, not as funny as it likes to think it is – but it worked. A couple of weeks later, the editor replied saying “we would love to have you writing for FHM” and “that the tour of UK casinos sounds like a goer.”

Yet it’s a few months down the line and I haven’t written that feature for FHM. Something went wrong. In fact, two somethings went wrong. One, the editor left. Two, I went broke and had to put the project into hibernation. Still, there is hope. There is always hope. I am in contact with the features editor, still want to write it, and I have been broke plenty of times before and managed to mend myself.

It’s heartening though. That’s the first pitch I’ve sent in years and it was more or less accepted. Imagine what could happen if I pitched more than one feature idea every 2-3 years. Imagine how many more projects I could abandon – I mean, put into hibernation. Imagine how much more hope I could have, then lose. That’s right, reader: Fuckloads.

Until then.

The End of the Beginning

You’ll never guess what I found a few days ago. Go on, have a guess. You probably think that I found myself living in a bin, perhaps even turned to your partner and said, “Haha, bet he found himself living in a bin,” through a mouthful of toast before clicking on to the Guardian website.

But you’d be wrong. I haven’t found myself living in a bin. Not yet at least. No, I found this little beauty:

Life-wrecking equipment, earlier.

Whoops, what do we have here? Well, what we have here is the 2010 edition of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook. I bought it in September 2009. My plan was simple: (1) Pitch all of the 642 magazines listed in there with ideas for features, (2) write features, (3) make money, (4) write book, (5) make more money, (6) sell film rights to book, (7) make yet more money, (8) live on an island.

Regular readers will know that it hasn’t quite worked out like that. Very, very close, granted, but not quite. It worked out a bit more like this: (1) Pitch hardly any of the 642 magazines listed in there with features ideas, (2) write very few features, (3) make no money, (4) write no book, (5) make less money, (6) sell everything of value I own, (7) make even less money, (8) live in an office.

Admittedly it was a very thrilling and heartfelt attempt at the whole thing, but I fell ever-so-slightly short. I think I know why. Here’s why:

Aeroplane Monthly and friends, earlier.

This is the first page of the section, “Magazines UK and Ireland.” See what a spirited and industrious start I made? I’ve scribbled all over it – have made all kinds of notes. I’ve written “FLYING DOCS” next to the entry for Aeroplane Monthly, presumably because a month or so earlier I had visited the Flying Doctors museum in Alice Springs, Australia, and I thought that would make a good feature. Me visiting a museum. That the editor of Aeroplane Monthly perhaps wasn’t even aware of the Flying Doctors and it was down to me, a hard-nosed go-getting journalist who had visited a museum in Australia but left after about ten minutes because he was bored to highlight their fine work to both him and his readership. Underneath “FLYING DOCS” I’ve written “BRYSON GUY” but I have no idea what this means.

Elsewhere on the page I’ve written “Tax?” next to Accountancy and also “Stress?” I know, another pair of mind-blowers. Next to Acumen Literary Journal, a publication focussing on “Poetry, literary and critical articles, reviews etc.” I’ve written “Poem?” Clearly, I was on fire in early September 2009.

Rather unbelievably however, it only gets worse. There are oceans of empty space where I’ve written nothing at all. Six years I’ve had that book. Six years. I look at the F’s. The F’s aren’t good. Please don’t look at the F’s. Oh come on then, let’s have a good old look at the F’s. On one page I’ve written one thing. It’s a page containing magazines I could actually write for: FHM (I’ve written at least eight features for the current editor), Film Ireland (I’ve been paid to write film reviews before), Film Review (I’ve written features – features for god’s sake – about films), I could have even potentially have written for The Field, focussing on “The British countryside and country pursuits,” if I had sat down and thought about it for a bit.

But no. No, I seem to have bypassed all of that and made one note in this section, adjacent to Family Tree Magazine. Next to Family Tree Magazine, I’ve written “OUR FAMILY TREE?”

Inspiration, earlier. 

Nothing for FHM. Nothing for any of the film publications. Nothing for any magazines that might have paid me reasonable money. Nope, instead I’ve plumped for Family Tree Magazine, despite having practically zero interest in my own or anyone else’s family tree.

And not only that, it’s not even an idea. I don’t know what it is, but it’s certainly not an idea. Really? “OUR FAMILY TREE?” I’ve even gone an underlined the “OUR” as if to stress what a precise, unusual and original idea this is, as if when the editor gets my pitch (which I imagine wouldn’t have been much more developed than, “Dear Editor, I’d like to write about MY family tree…”) she’s going to summon her co-workers and say, “You’re not going to believe this. You better all sit down. This is going to blow you away. I received an email this morning from a writer and he wants to write about HIS family tree. That’s right: HIS OWN FAMILY TREE. How could we have been so stupid? Why are we not running this sort of stuff? It’s been staring us right in our fucking faces all of these years but we’ve just not seen it…”

Wow, the editor of Family Tree magazine is certainly sweary and colourful. Maybe I should try and write for her. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should just get rid of the book, draw a line underneath it, much like the line that I drew underneath “OUR FAMILY TREE?” But how? The obvious answer, and one you are no doubt all thinking, is: “Ceremonially burn it. You know, as a sort of cathartic experience. Go on, burn the fucker. Burn its bastard brains out.”

Well, I hear you. I really do. I love the sacrificial burning of books as much as the next man. But I’d want it to be dramatic, would want to take the book down to the beach late at night in a metal flower pot and set fire to it whilst barking at the moon. I don’t have a metal flower pot though, and don’t really have the means to buy one. Plus I’d need a beard. It would take me two months to grow a good one. If you’re going to set fire to a book in a metal flower pot late at night on the beach whilst barking at the moon you have to have a beard. Anything less is amateurish.

Or I could leave it on, say, a bench in the park. But then it could fall into the wrong hands, it could fall into the hands of a writer and, well, I couldn’t live with the responsibility.

So I think I’ll just throw it away. Just let it go and move on. Yes, I think I’ll do that. Tomorrow though, after I’ve had a proper think about Family Tree magazine, Flying Doctors and poems.

Am I Living in a Box?

Check me out. Go on, I dare you. Check out where I’m living these days. Guess where? You probably think a bin, may have even mouthed “bin,” or perhaps turned to your partner and said, “Haha, bet it’s a bin,” through a mouthful of sandwich before clicking on the Guardian website.

But you’d be wrong, I’m not living in a bin. I’m living in an office. And not only am I living in an office, I’m living in an office in an entirely illegal fashion. Have you ever lived in an office in an entirely illegal fashion? Oh, you must. You really must. It’s liberating. And not only liberating, but the thrill of the illegality coupled with the cut-and-thrust of business in Bournemouth makes for an ideal creative environment.

The only worry is that I’m not sure quite how illegal it is. I think I need it to be more illegal than it really is, if I really want to get all nice and pumped up creatively.

I tested the legal waters earlier. There’s a woman downstairs on reception who oversees all of this cut-and-thrust. When I first met her she stared right into me, gave me the sort of look that said, “I’d like to have sex with you.” At least I think that’s what it said. At the time I was feeling a little squashed-head-on-tracks so I didn’t attempt a fuck-stare back. A week or so later I was back to gliding around rather than stumbling around and so when I saw her I gave her my best fuck-stare. I don’t think it worked. I think she just thought I was really angry with her about something, that perhaps I was a bit demented.

So I’ve been avoiding her. Until earlier. Earlier I glided down to her office. I couldn’t make eye contact, so my eyes were just darting around the room as if a tiny bird had somehow got in there and I was following it.

“Is everything okay?” she said.

“Yes, yes,” I said, perhaps a little too aggressively. “Fine. I was working late in the office last night and, um, I fell asleep for about half an hour. Late at night.”

“Okay,” she said.

“That’s probably bad though, isn’t it? You know, against the rules. If I was to sleep in the office – that would probably be against the rule of the…building.”

My eyes kept following the imaginary bird.

“Yes, if you were intentionally going to sleep the night. You’re not allowed to sleep in the offices overnight. Are you telling me you’re sleeping in your office?”

“You tell me,” I wanted to say, while lighting a cigarette. But I didn’t, I just said “Hfft, of course not,” and semi-stumbled out of there.

So it’s definitely not allowed, which I’m absolutely delighted by. You know, creatively speaking.

This was probably my fuck-stare, earlier.

The other thing about this office, is that it is not my office. And not only that, but the person whose office it is doesn’t even know I’m here. If you haven’t lived in an office that you’re not allowed to live in, that isn’t yours, and the owner doesn’t know you’re there…well, you’ve barely lived at all.

The owner could find out of course. He could read this and then email me saying, “Hold on – are you living in my office?” Naturally, I have a ready-made reply. I’m going to tell him that of course I’m not living in his office, that his office is a literary device – a metaphor.

And if he comes back one night? Comes in after a late night flight to catch up on some paperwork and there I am on the floor in the dark, covered in towels and cardboard boxes and shirts?

“It’s okay,” I’ll say, gesturing around the room. “This isn’t what you think it is. This is all very…metaphorical.”

That’s the plan, at least. One thing I’ve learnt from illegally living in an office is that you have to have a plan. More on that next time, my house and flat dwelling chums.