It's a red letter day in the Savile house. The mailman woke me up at an ungodly hour to deliver Western Skies, the new Roddy Frame cd. Anyone reading this most likely knows that way back when I was a young impressionable chappie still at school Roddy fronted Aztec Camera, and since then we've basically grown up together without him ever realising :)

So, in honour of that, I'm republishing something today that appeared a while back on Storytellers Unplugged. After we get past that, I'll prattle on a little about something that's been on my mind of late - vultures... curious? Stick around.

The Bugle Sounds Again
-- Steven Savile

The vampires made a killing,
Filled their pockets up with shillings
Saying someone has to pay.


I'll make my apologies right up front this time, for the nostalgia ridden nature of this essay - as is my wont, I've been wallowing in The Jam, Adam and the Ants, Madness, The Alarm, Lloyd Cole and other great songs of my youth, most notably, my one true love . . . shhhh don't tell the missus . . .

Aztec Camera.

What's this got to do with writing?

Well, bear with me while we do that whole amazing time travel gig that words can do so much more completely than science has thus far managed . . . back to . . .

1983

The year that changed my life. I was 14, I had outgrown the Hardy Boys and Brian Daley's extended wanderings into the Star Wars galaxies, found Stephen King, JRR Tolkein and Hammer House of Horror, more though, I had found a friend in music who would see me through dark days, long nights, wild adventures, a host of firsts, and still be there when morning came. Roddy Frame was something of a child prodigy, 18 or 19 I believe at the time his first album, High Land Hard Rain, a good old honest to god vinyl 12" with two sides and Picassoesque sleeve, was released. These were the days when I earned 50p for pocket money and an album was 3.49 - seven weeks of hard saving away. There was a godsend though, Bourne Hall library - incidentally across the street from Oliver Reed's house, yep THAT Oliver Reed, he was an Old Boy from my school, had the same maths teacher AND was a werewolf at the same time, as I had just learned that Friday night. So the library, not only a source of book loans, but also a haven for my burgeoning musicality. I borrowed four cassettes this one week, Big Country by Big Country, Rattlesnakes by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, Joan Armatrading's Track Record, and High Land Hard Rain by Aztec Camera.

I listened, and I fell, there was no grace to it. No gentle realization that hey, this kid is good. The other songs came and went, returned to the library for someone else to discover, but I knew, even then, that High Land Hard Rain would become the soundtrack of my life.

I fell in love to Roddy Frame's voice for the first time, with a girl named Sascha, who sat beside me for 3 years in school and then walked out of my life and became a recurring ghost in just about every story I have written (I didn't realize this until a reviewer picked up on it in Angel Road and remarked that he wondered exactly who Sascha was - well, there's the secret spilled, first love, age 13 - who knows, one day she might find herself on the internet in one of my pieces and laugh at my childish infatuation?), my first kiss had Walk Out To Winter playing in the background, my first breakup was to Pillar to Post, my first serious fumble was to Down the Dip, my first story written to Still On Fire, from the Knife CD - yeah, I re-bought all the old albums on CD when I got my first CD Player (the ones you were supposed to be able to spread marmalade over the discs and they would play fine . . . didn't work, believe me.) It was a terrible story, but a great song. Whenever I move house, the first cd I play, every time, is LOVE, so I can hear Roddy's pop-vocal jangling out Somewhere In My Heart. In 1989 I took a girl I was madly in love with to see Aztec Camera in Newcastle, on Roddy's birthday, and he sang Somewhere in My Heart for her. We nearly kissed but I was a shy boy and the next night she met the man she married. I kicked myself for MONTHS about that. Our noses touched, all I had to do was tilt and she'd have been mine. Hey who said it was all going to be good stuff?

Not I. Life can be missed opportunities as well, remember.

So, where, apart from memory lane, am I going with this?

Last month I walked down Killermont Street in Glasgow, and found myself singing the refrain from, you got it, that song - Killermont Street. I'm a shower singer - certain songs I know off by heart, including Oblivious, Walk Out to Winter and The Bugle Sounds Again.

The observant among you will see a pattern emerging here, and to save any more confusion, I'll spill: last night (gives you a clue that this blog entry isn't live . . . after last month's deadline hell I figured I'd get a head start on what looks like becoming a 2,000 word essay) I spent two hours watching a considerably older Roddy Frame, in an intimate concert, just him and his acoustic guitar, singing songs both old and new, and found my self thinking how he really had grown up in public and now, 22 years since our first meeting, he was better than ever - the fire of youth had dimmed but the voice had matured into something wonderful, powerful and heartbreaking all in one, the songwriting had developed beyond boy pop melodies into songs like Surf than could so easily be said to define a generation (indeed, the blurbs on the last album come from guys like Nick Hornby who picked Small World for his 31 Songs book, and place Roddy at the forefront of singer song writers working in Britain today). He's grown up in public, from the rough cuts to the honed perfection of Rock God and Dry Land, songs so new they don't have a CD yet, but I have grown up there with him.

Indeed, as writers and artists of every stripe, that is exactly what we do. We write stories like Secret Life of Colors, when we are 21, and can see that it is very much a triumph of style over substance, but they are full of that first book energy that carries them someplace worth going along for the ride, Laughing Boy's Shadow charts the anger over a failed relationship and is filled with existential angst and the bleak outlook of a man who knows his world is crumbling down, which of course, was just another aspect of me becoming the man I am, then we write something like Houdini's Last Illusion following a grave illness, and see again where life has bent and shaped us, each new story another step on the path that is us, growing up in public.

I try to look back fondly on every story I have written - it is difficult, I am not so proud of a lot of the early stuff. I called it a triumph of style over substance - certainly a good friend and teacher, Mort Castle, once compared me to a young Ramsey Campbell, which ought to have been the highest compliment a fledgling horror writer could hope for, but with hindsight I think there was also a bit of fun in that comparison, as both Ramsey and I have written our share of impenetrable images and labyrinthine sentences. Come to think of it Richard Laymon made the same comment. Hmmmm… the secret is to remember it fondly for what it was at the time, the very best I could do, and not devalue it by calling it rubbish - which of course it wasn't, it just wasn't what I COULD do today, given the same story.

See, I've grown up, and people have had the chance to watch it, just as I have watched Roddy.

The things I can do now with words, compared with what I could do then, well, it's incomparable. Of course I couldn't be me without having been that me first. So I have to love myself at all stages of development and fend off the urge to denigrate those early efforts.

Talking of which, I remember my first ever review, which was not good, my first sales, my first rejections, and I love watching people nowadays going through the same thing. Indeed, when I rejoined the HWA this month the FIRST thing I did was volunteer for the Mentor Program because I want to help some new writers through the early stages of nerves, disappointment and hopefully successes and into the writer that they can become.

And it isn't just the reviews and the stories. The world itself is changing for us creative types - when I was younger I never dreamed of the accessibility the internet would provide us with, and certainly never imagined the way it would shrink the world as it has. I also never imagined it would make every move so damned visible either - so in the past, when you had the chance to foul up in public there was still a reasonable chance it would go semi-unnoticed, but not so nowadays. The eyes of the world are on us, and we've done it to ourselves.

Interesting things happen all the time.

Or at least so it seems.

You can make a name for yourself by making waves as well as you ever did by writing good stories - indeed those good stories may well not be enough in the age of Internet Personas and the See Me Hear Me generation. It's the wild pantomime that seems to exist purely to show us what is real. I used to say judge me by my stories, not by my messageboard posts . . . but is such a thing possible?

We wear lots of hats, us creators. . .

And those of us who are conscious of the fact that there is a world out there that can see them with its great big eye - however hidden from it we might think we are - and those of us who bravely bare our souls so that there's nothing left to strip away will always have the upper hand.

Where Roddy dabbled in Northern Soul and Pop before finding his feet with Northern Star and being brave enough to stand up, just him and a guitar, without hiding behind a band, I've dabbled in fantasy, horror, crime fiction, romance, and even erotica.

I've done work for hire, or IP work as it's called (Intellectual Property), which I'd equate to pop, seeking out that number one hit rather than remaining true to your vision, Some look down on it because you are writing for someone else, trying to play the notes the way they like to hear them. You aren't yourself, but you are learning and certainly couldn't be the writer you are today without those experiences behind you. I've done the self indulgent stripped down acoustic's with Angel Road, playing in-jokes and symbolism to the hilt, only the voice to carry the tale, no band backing me up to make me look better than I am. That thrill I get from anthologies where I get to see my work beside not only the greats of today but the greats of yesterday as well. In Sweden I've appeared between the covers with Lovecraft, Poe, Machen and Meyrink.

Now, finally, I am growing used to the idea that as an artist I have to grow up in public - I have to suffer the good with the bad, while everyone watches.

I've stopped thinking that I have a divine right for people to pay attention to my words, and started paying MORE attention to those words themselves. I've started listening to the Story People in my head as they share their own unique pains and happiness's, and I started looking at my own bookshelf with an element of affection for where I was at a certain time in my life.

Maybe I am odd, but I can remember specific lines in stories and know instinctively what I was listening to when I wrote them, like visual triggers that loose audibles. Thankfully I am not at hallucination level just yet . . .

And perhaps it is ironic that at the time in my career where I feel I am least intrigued by the horror genre I have written my most horrific novel? It's dark, nasty, riddled with classic monsters and fiends that I've steered away from for years, but what can I say, you can take the boy out of the horror, but you can't take the horror out of the boy . . . or something like that.

My soul, it seems, is dark.

Having grown up in public, I'm all set to grow old the same way, one day I might even learn that I haven't a clue. But then I've felt the rain and called it genius.

Laugh with me, cry with me, and experience whatever life has up its sleeve with me . . . Life, the great prestidigitator. As writer that's all I can ask of anyone.

They calling all the shots,
They call us cynical
They call us lonely when we're really just
Alone
And like a funny film, it's kinda cute
They brought the bullets and there's no one left
To shoot . . .

That was Roddy.

So, about them vultures...


I know plenty of people who want to publish their writing, for all sorts of reasons. These are good, intelligent people, trusting folk that don't seem to understand that the world is full of guys looking for a fast buck - and a few of these questionable characters have discovered the vulnerability of the 'want-to-be-published' writer...
So, read on if you fall into that category.

I'm going to delve into the psyche of a few P.O.D. publishers out there - be warned, tis a scary dark place to go diving in...

There is a model of publishing that I can see providing optimum cash opportunity. It's not exactly ethical though. Hell it's downright sleazy. For now I'll call it the Rodger The Writer Up Against The Alley Wall Model. Or RtWuAtAW no, on second thoughts that's way too complicated for an acronym. So . . . we'll stick with Rodger. What is Rodger all about, you ask?

Rodger is about money, in the same way that turning tricks is about money - the prostitute gets none, while Pimp Daddy is yucking it up all the way to the bank. Let me explain. First, the ethics:

There are none. Glad that is out of the way. Hopefully the more naiive of you will pay special interest to this section, because believe me, there are plenty of Pimp Daddy's lining up to make a few bob off your lack of business acumen coupled with your literary dreams and need for validation.

Next: the model itself. It's a numbers game. Thanks to Print on Demand technology as pioneered by companies like Lightning Source and Lulu, offering cheap set up and per copy printing all you need is an ugly website and a little seed money and Bob's your uncle (okay, sorry Bob - Bob's actually a good friend of mine, and wouldn't be involved in anything shady like this would you Bob?). See, you don't actually need to worry about selling the books. Heck you can even undercut the likes of iUniverse, Xlibris, PublishAmerica, and their ilk, by not charging a set-up fee. It's great. You even get to claim legitimacy as a publisher. The author isn't paying a dime toward production costs. To all intents and purposes you are the Real McCoy and they are on the first steps of the publishing ladder. Of course, the truth is nothing like this. You can think of this as pyramid selling in print. Your set up fees are low, most certainly under one hundred dollars for the book, and contractually you aren't paying the author an advance because, alas and alack you are a new small press and don't yet have the resources to pay advances, but you assure them, you INTEND TO. We all know the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but believe me there are a few bad ones there too.

No, what you really intend to do is this: offer no support, no publicity, no editorial assistance, and no money for the work, with the full expectancy that the author will leap at the deal because they have a dream of being in print, can give the book to friends and family and sell a few copies in their local area. If you price the book at something uncompetitive - say five nicker over the standard shop price of a real book - you need to sell maybe twenty to twenty five copies in a year to clear the set up fees and costs of production. You don't need to sell more, and remember you aren’t trying to, but you will, because the writer wants them for friends and family so actually you sell around fifty to eighty copies, twice what you need. To quote Del Boy Luvverly Jubbly. Now, if the writer is the innocent abroad we can reasonably expect him to be, he's signed a pretty ugly contract, maybe you've grabbed rights he wouldn't know to hang on to, or even better, you've got him on a Net Royalty rather than a Gross Royalty, so even though he's sold fifty copies and heck you were generous and gave a 10% royalty, which is VERY competitive for New York Publishing Royalties and gives our boy something to brag about to his buddies, it's actually a Net Royalty which means you can deduct every legitimate (and illegitimate) expense you can think of, from the obvious like printing, packaging and posting, to editorial corrections, cover layout and design fees, promotion and advertising, review copies, and proof reading, to less obvious things stationary, tea spent supping while working on the manuscript process - and of course the set up fee at the printers. So legitimately 10% of nothing is looking pretty slim.

But hey, that would give away that we're, ahem, slightly unethical here . . . so how about we fudge it a little. We won't smoosh all of the writer's royalty away in one go, what we'll do instead is explain that because of bank costs etc it is uneconomical to cut a cheque for less than hmmm lets say twenty-five of them US dollars. So our writer gets a royalty statement that PROVES he's earned some money - he just doesn't get the money.

Magic.

This one will work brilliantly with anthologies - I mean, if every writer involved gets told we won't cut a cheque for less than ten bucks or twenty bucks who's even going to work out that for fifteen writers to earn a three hundred dollar royalty on books that are clearing maybe one dollar royalty (less if we have them on the NET because, hey, we can get rid of all sorts of expenses in there) they are going to be looking at a lot of books sold. Do the mathematics. Then go through the market listings and see how many royalty share anthologies you find listed.

All well and good, but the magic of this model is it isn't just one book, because you don't care, you don't waste time editing, you don't advertise and you don't promote, you want to pull as many writers in though your door because they are your bread and butter, your salesmen and women on the street - remember it is in their interest to promote their own book, to get it seen, to sell it to every Tom, Dick and Jane they meet, in essence . . . you sign them ALL . . . You don't turn anything down (or you can be a little picky and turn the REAL drek down but remember you aren't after awards, it's all about shipping units, least effort maximum reward). You can't get them all into the system at once, so you explain there is a three month (approximately) process of editing etc (which is really buying time for the other suckers . . . I mean writers . . . to pick up another batch of 25 (because they can only get them in block units, not one copy at a time, not economically viable) and pay you for them - at their author discount of 40% if you are that in your contract as a possibility, remember you've over priced the book to make sure that you make plenty - and there is no author royalty on books sold to the author with the author discount, very important that . . . so if seed money of say five hundred bucks you could in theory put between five and ten books into the system, which would very quickly provide the seed money for ten more . . . the more you draw in, the more you make, without actually having to get off your behind and market or be in any way like a real, legitimate publisher.

Huzzah.

Instant gratification. You won't make millions but if your writers do their job for you (remember it is their dream you're playing with, so odds are they WILL), you can sit back do what you need to keep it ticking over and clear a few coins in the process. Be creative, spread yourself really thin, offer crime, horror, fantasy, romance, young adult, thriller, non-fiction, you name it, find a slot for it on your cobbled together website, it's worth a few coins even if it is complete toss (that's a Britishism for you American readers, toss=wank, you get the idea).

The Rodger model will and does work . . . heck, if you are smooth enough you can grab audio, translation, even dramatic rights, most writers won't have a clue what they are giving away . . .

As a publisher you want to be slapped for considering it, and as writer you want to be slapped for falling for it. If that's what you want go to the back of the class and put the big white hat on with the D nicely printed in the middle . . . that's the one.

So, you want to be a writer? Don't YOU deserve to earn from your work as opposed to the shysters out there? There is an easy answer - aim high, from the top publications down, and do not give your work away for free. It's not too complicated is it?

OKay, enough lecturing - back to writing the new synopsis...