Simon James and Overheated

I was astonished to find a comment on my blog from local radio presenter Simon James!

It was in response to a post I'd written a month or so back, called Simon James & Overrated. That was about my predictions for the new radio station here on the south coast, Original 106. Simon James, with his buddy Hill (who I'd incorrectly called Simon Hill) are the presenters of the breakfast show on Original 106.

Considering my post was titled Simon James & Overrated I can understand why he wasn't too happy about what I'd written - although I didn't actually criticise their act beyond calling them Rude and Crude (which was a description, not an insult) and given his closing comment, I don't think that's wildly inaccurate!

Here's what he wrote, and my comments in bold.

Good evening. Simon James here. When I saw this I was excited it was going to be radio legend Simon Bates. But then I put my glasses on. Look mate, I have nothing against you having an opinion. Nor have I anything against you not liking our programme. Never said I didn't like it. I said I didn't think it was right for Original. But a word of advice.....before you start trying to be clever and outspoken and oh-so-perceptive etc, please research your facts. Firstly "Hill" is a nickname ("hence" NOT Simon James and "Simon Hill"). You know, Simon. You're absolutely right. Still, at least I didn't make the usual mistake and think Simon, James and Hill were three different people. Secondly, Original 106 is NOT a senior station and does NOT target a 55+ audience (it's actually 30+). Actually, Mate, we were both wrong - but I was closer. If you look at Original's licence application with Ofcom, you'll see in black and white (and that annoying corporate purple) that Original 106 specifically targets age group 40 - 59. So not exclusively 55+ but certainly not the same target market as TLRC stations or Wave 105. Thirdly, the playlist IS markedly different to any of it's commercial rivals. That it CERTAINLY is. But remember, my post was from before you'd even started transmitting. Your comments about us being "rude and crude" were also interesting. If you believe that to really be the case I assume that you won't be suprised to hear me describe your ignorant and pompous self as an absolute cock. Which, by the way, is precisely what you are. Meeow. Fssst! Fsst! Calm down, Mate. No reason to get personal.

First off, I'm kind of flattered that Simon James read my blog. I mean, let's be honest here. As a wild guess (until we get the RAJAR figures) I'd estimate a hundred times more people tune into his breakfast show EVERY DAY than have EVER read my blog.

Secondly, that post was written on the eve of Original's first transmission, so I had no idea about what the breakfast show would actually be like, or what the playlist would actually be. These were my opinions and predictions. Some I got right, some I got wrong.

First off, I predicated that Original 106 would soon stray from it's licence (aimed at 40-59 year olds) and try and be 'all things to all men' like TLRC and Wave 105. Simon indicated that their target audience are 30+ (when we all know they're not meant to be) which kind of makes me think I was right on that point.

But when it comes to the music, I was dead wrong.

I was expecting a neat clone of Wave 105. Somebody would see a list of the 100 most popular songs on the internet and load them up on their DAD machines. I honestly expected nothing original from Original 106 at all - but I was totally off the mark.

Original 106 have a totally original playlist. I honestly have not heard of 90% of the songs they play, although I know I'm not exactly qualified to go on Never Mind the Buzzcocks. But in Hampshire's competitive marketplace, you do need to have a station that stands out from the crowd and I applaud Original 106 for this simply because it means I won't have to listen to Lemar's 'If There's Any Justice' twenty times a day if I tune into them.

I also said that Simon James & Hill weren't right for their breakfast show. This seems to be the thing that upset Simon so much. If he'd actually read my post, he'd see I didn't criticise their show at all. Based on what I'd heard during their evening network gig on TLRC, I said they were rude and crude (and I was right) and in the mould of Chris Moyles and Johnny Vegas. And when I said that, I was referring to their style, not their waistlines. I also said they were full of themselves - not exactly an insult, since the first thing I learned working in radio is that "Everybody has an ego."

My criticism was that Simon James & Hill, who traditionally had an irreverant, youth-targeted sytle, weren't right for a radio station aimed at 40-59 year olds. It was my opinion and I'm entitled to it. Whether I'm right or not... We'll see when the RAJAR figures come in. Whatever one says about Simon James & Hill, they are consumate professionals and I'm sure no other duo will work as hard to produce a great radio show. But at the end of the day, you can't bang a square peg into a round hole.

I wasn't insulting you Simon, Mate. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of your show, but the three Sony awards and listening figures suggest that I'm in a minority. Compared to your undeniable accomplishments, I'm really not qualified to criticise. In fact, if I won a billion quid and started my own radio station, I'd probably be scrabbling to sign you up for drive-time or something.

But you're in radio, Buddy. Every morning, you and Hill broadcast yourself to tens of thousands of people across the county. Not all of them are going to like you. And if that's the case, you can't go along to each and every one of them and call them a cock. Criticism is the price of celebrity.

Simon James & Hill present the breakfast show every morning on Original 106.

I'm a winner!

On day 29 - talk about cutting it close - I completed Nanowrimo.

50,000 words and change in 29 days. And don't think it was easy. I almost didn't make it. My friend Tim was keeping up with me until the final weekend when he shot ahead, scribbling at least five thousand words a day.

So I've done it... Or rather, I haven't. Because while I've completed 50,000 words, the story of The Bootleg Boys isn't yet complete. But it will be soon.

The truth is, Nanowrimo has taught me a lot.

It taught me write, even when the instincts told me not to. The toughest thing was the beginning, when the little bloke who sits on your shoulder tells you that what you're writing is no good. You need to STOP. Begin AGAIN...

You have to ignore it.

So I continued writing. And because I'd planned out the Bootleg Boys, it seemed to go fairly smoothly. But I did realise, as I wrote, that my original 'plan' for the volume of Eddy stories starting off the Bootleg Boys wasn't going work as it was.

Novels have to have a beginning, middle and an end. And so I started putting together the pieces that would make up the second half of the Bootleg Boys. A story I've called the Mycroft Auction. Something that would neatly close up the entire package into what people traditionally call a book.

Everything changed as I wrote Nanowrimo.

One thing that was never meant to change was the plot. But as I wrote Nanowrimo, something very odd happened. As the words flow and the ideas spilled out onto the page, the story evolved. And up popped something odd. A new character.

I'd planned on creating a boyfriend for Lucy Rogers - but not yet. Several stories in the future. But suddenly up he popped in the Bootleg Boys.

And I'd already planned on who he was - a stuffy councillor called Daniel Christoper. But as soon as the smarmy bastard's mouth opened, he was calling himself Alex. Alex Daniels. And he was a lawyer.

A lawyer? He wasn't meant to be a lawyer! The arrogant bastard! Didn't he know who was in charge here?

That's what I discovered, writing Nanowrimo. That writing is something that pours from deep inside and what emerges isn't always what you expect it to be. Especially when you force it.

I think it goes that 80% of people who start Nanowrimo never complete it within the 30 days. And those that do?

They create a monster!

Never tell me the odds!

That's what a asteroid dodging Han Solo yelled in The Empire Strikes Back.

I'm not facing an asteroid field - but I am trying to get my book published. And I recently discovered the website of literary agent Miss Snark who dispenses her wisdom through a frequently updated blog filled with fascinating questions and answers. If you have any interest in writing and getting published, she is essential reading.

One quote that was of particular interest to me was this:

"Publishing in general is competitive. I don't think there are any reliable statistics on query letters versus published books. I know we take on less than one in five hundred."

So that means I have a 1 in 500 chance of being published by the editor I sent Adventure Eddy off to. Wow! Tough odds.

But Miss Snarky also said that you should NEVER give up on trying to get your book published until you've received 100 rejections. I don't know if that's just masochism or what Giff Gifford called "the numbers game." But it does shorten the odds, in theory, to one in five.

It's done...

At the end of my stint with 107.2 WinFM, I was lucky enough to get leaving presents from the guys. Sally Gates knew about my plans to publish my book and bought me a great book: The Insider's Guide to Getting Your Book Published by Rachel Stock.

Rachel was a publisher who spent years choosing what books would get published or not. She's taken what she learnt doing that and put together a brilliant guide to help budding writers hone their chances to get their books published.

That, along with Ian Hocking's brilliant guide on Approaching an Agent, set me up nicely on how I was going to pitch Adventure Eddy to a publisher.



I have finally done it. I have chosen my editor and publisher - I won't mention who they are, but they're the ones I would want, in an ideal world, to take Eddy on - and put together my proposal.

I understand what the publishing world is like and I have really 'shot for the stars' by going straight to the top, but I think by aiming so high, the sting if I get rejected won't be so bad.

I am hoping, in a month of so, to hear something back.

The Zombie Dies

A while ago I posted about my writing machine - a battered, slightly unreliable e-machine given to me by an ex girlfriend. With the help of a new keyboard, moniter, CD Rom and mouse, it worked with some semblance of life.

Until the day I started writing The Bootleg Boys - long before I started Nanowrimo.

I patted out 7,000 words of my blazing new story in a single day and then, to my horror, the zombie laptop ate them all.

Permanantly. There was an error while saving which turned my 7,000 word file into a 2k blip. I couldn't recover my story because there was no story on the file to recover.

It knocked my writing on it's arse for months, until I finally decided to use Nanowrimo as a catalyst to get me writing this story again.

But while Nanowrimo still continues with success, my relationship with this computer has been damaged beyond repair. And now the computer is in the same state as our relationship.

I think I was only keeping it for sentimental reasons anyway. Tina wanted to make sure the hard drive didn't have any compromising information on it. So she took a hammer and hammered out some prose of her own.

Goodbye, loyal little laptop. You will be missed.

Who killed Cock Robin?

It's always a temptation to 'self censor' a blog. Assuming that anybody reads it, you tend to try and put yourself in a decent light and it's tempting to 'gloss over' humiliating incidents.

But they don't half make for good reading...

So for that reason, I'll recount my recent thoughts on Round Robin Emails.

I hate round robins. Although I probably send more of them than anybody.



They're impersonal. They're usually tedious and basically they send the message that: "Yes, I still want to be counted as one of your friends, but I don't want to make the investment in actually writing to you individually."

This point was driven home after I set out my last 'round robin' for Thanksgiving. As I confessed, I send more round robins than anybody and I'm sure all my friends I send them to get as ticked off at them as I do.

Even more sure, actually, after I got an email back from somebody who I don't really know that well - hung out with just the once, actually - but who I've kept on my mailing list for the last couple of years.

"Hope all is well. please TAKE ME OFF your list. Best!"

It was short. It was friendly. And it basically told me to stop sending her this shit.

So I have decided, in order to maintain my presumably dwindling stock of friends, to stop sending Round Robins.

Agent

I finished editing Adventure Eddy ten days ago.

The completed manuscript took six months to write and landed up at about 126,000 words. Over the course of two revisions, I trimmed that down to 84,000 words. The revision itself took six months and involved almost as much work as writing the bloody thing. But can you imagine it? By trimming 42,000 words, I'd pretty much cut out one in three words throughout the entire book. That's quite a lot!

During that editing time, I made a cover, got my family, friends and gorgeous Power FM presenter Claire Anderson to read it and basically made Adventure Eddy as good as I could make it. I'm sure it could be better - I'm sure it could always be better - but I'm drained, now. I've lived that book for a year. Now it's over.

So for the last ten days, it's sat there.

It's time, really. Time for me to put my money where my mouth is and actually send Adventure Eddy off to an agent, to see if my months of hard work and years of dreaming will actually pay off and Eddy Newbolt will see the bright lights of Waterstones.

The truth is, I'm terrified.

If being published was all down to the amount of work involved, I'm sure I'd be in with a shot. I mean, I came up with the concept of a modern day Saint twelve years ago and have been writing adventure stories ever since then. And I followed all the rules. I didn't just sit down and start hammering away at a keyboard. I actually spent three months writing a 20,000 plot plan that ran to eighty pages. I wrote about 'what I knew.' Paris and old cars and unrequited love. I did research into hotel robberies, basing the crimes themselves on 'The Man Who Robbed The Pierre,' Bobby Comfort. I got so involved in this story that I dreamed about it. Eddy, Kat, Chuck and Valerie spoke to me, coming to life on the page.

It's weird to think that a jumble of eighty four thousand words can contain so much of my blood, sweat and tears. That it's significance in my life can be so great. It really means something to me. Does it sound pathetic that writing Adventure Eddy is probably one of the greatest achievements of my life?

By submitting it to a publisher, I'm going to let them peer at a plot plan and the first three chapters and decide then and there whether they think this book deserves to go into print or not. And if it comes back as a rejection, it's not going to be just the story they've rejected. It's going to be the entire last year of my life.

And I have to face the reality that Adventure Eddy probably will get rejected. Even Frederick Forsyth and J.K Rowling got their share of rejection slips.

I think it's a great book. I think it NEEDS to be published. I think Adventure Eddy is the first in a series of 'kids books for adults' which recapture all the magic of the Saint books that I still avidly collect from second hand bookshops.

I wrote Adventure Eddy because it's the kind of book I want to read. And I think the popularity of Lemony Snickett and Harry Potter show that there is an enormous adult market that wants to read good, old fashioned adventure stories just like mine.

So I really feel, deep down, that my book has some worth.

But unless I send it off and get prepared to face the rejection, I guess it can never happen. And in some ways, that's not too horrible a prospect. If I never sent Eddy off to a publisher, I'd never have to face that rejection. The hope and promise contained within the 384 pages of Adventure Eddy would remain there forever. It's just like Eddy's unrequited love for Kat. If it never happened - if it never came true - there would be no heartache or rejection or betrayal.

But I didn't spend so much time writing this book to let it languish in a corner. I need to send it off, the consequences be damned.

In one of the books that inspired me to create Adventure Eddy, The Last Hero by Leslie Charteris, the character of Norman Kent turns to Simon Templar, The Saint, and tells him: "Nothing is won without sacrifice."

And if The Saint was a real person... No, let's say if Adventure Eddy was a real person, what would he do? He'd sling that manuscript in the post before the stamp was dry.

Because Adventure Eddy is all about embracing life, whatever it tastes like. And if I'm going to sit there and claim to be qualified to write about Adventure Eddy, I might as well make an effort to live like him. Just a little.

I will give you an update when it's done.

Stormbreaker

While in the superspy mood, we rented Stormbreaker, based on the novel by Anthony Horowitz... And it was the total opposite of Casino Royale.

Big budget, gadget filled and with more special guest stars than you can shake a stick at. Plus it was aimed firmly at the 'teenage' market - so the gadgets included a Nintendo DS with debugging and exploding cartridges.

To say I was disappointed was an understatement.

I've never been a huge fan of Anthony Horowitz anyway. A recent interview with him in The Writer's News had some interesting opinions on writing for teenagers and I didn't agree with them. I think the biggest mistake anybody can make is 'writing FOR teenagers' since teenagers are incredibly sophisticated. I was a terribly immature teenager and yet I was still reading John Wyndem and Ian Fleming, so 'dumbed down' books would have insulted me.

That's J.K. Rowling's secret of success. She wrote stories, not markets, and her books are loved by adults and children alike because the stories are true to themselves, not their intended audience.

Add this 'dumbed down' attitude to a cheap Bond rip off riddled with plot holes and the result is something slightly like a less amusing Spy Kids.

I will say, however, that Alex Pettyfer was an engaging lead and we can expect to see great things from him in the future. And what little we did see of Cornwall - a place I love - was lovely.

Casino Royale - The Verdict

In a feat of geekness unseen outside of fans of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, I wore a tuxedo yesterday. All day. And damn good I looked in it, too.

That was because Tina bought tickets for Casino Royale at the Screen in Winchester and we got to see the long anticipated film with the Carruthers (who hadn't been to the cinema for 12 years.)

So what did I make of it?

Well, I come from a slightly Bond obsessed corner. Not only was Casino Royale far and way my favourite Bond book, it was also one of my favourite books, period. So the bar was set high.

And it started great.

In black and white, the opening showed a craggy James Bond (looking remarkably like the Bond who appeared on the old Pan book covers in the fifties) bumping off two men to earn his double-oh status. Then, with an explosive burst of music, the credits started.

And what credits! None of your slyphe-like girlies dancing in the firelight. Casino Royal opened with a casino-themed cartoon that I really loved. It was bright and colourful and reminded me of a slightly gorier version of the original 1967 Casino Royale credits - and the opening to Frank Sinatra's Ocean's Eleven.

So far, things were going great.

Then the film proper started.

It started off completely differently to the book. James Bond was tracking down a terrorist, which led him to the Bahamas and eventually to Florida, where he foiled an attempt to blow up a prototype jet. It was thirty minutes of pumping, frenetic action with very little let up. The down side was that by shedding the Bond cliches (the gadgets and witticisms) the whole thing seemed to be far too similar to Die Hard. You've seen this sort of thing in a dozen films and while it was good, it has been done better elsewhere.

But then the pace of the film mercifully slowed down. Bond identified the bad guy, a sinister Le Chiffre, who wept blood from one scarred eye. Le Chiffre had apparently gambled with the money he'd banked for international terrorists and when he'd lost the lot, he planned to gamble it back in a high stakes poker game.

From this point on, only a few things are changed between the book and the film. Casino Royale is located in Monte Negro, rather than Normandy, which means some of the old world, continental charm that oozed through Ian Fleming's novel is preserved. Instead of baccarat, the game Le Chiffre chooses is poker - which is instantly familiar to most people, whereas baccarat isn't. They're both sensible changes. Less sensible is the assassination attempt on Bond. Instead of a Corsican with a hollowed out walking stick (that fires .38 slugs) we have a skanky stereotype (why is it that Eastern European women are always portrayed as hollow eyed concubines in the movies?) who slips digitalis into Bond's martini. The scene in which he restarts his heart with the handy defribulator in his Aston Martin's glove compartment is ridiculous.

But the good stuff remains, taken directly from the novel. First off it the ridiculously powerful cocktail Bond invests and names after the Bond girl, Vesper:

3 ounces gin
1 ounce vodka
1/2 ounce Lillet blonde
Stir with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a orange peel.

Since he drinks these constantly through the movie, it's not surprising that he's the victim of a brutal car crash (exactly as it occurred in the book.) He'd probably have been paralytic by the time he got behind the wheel of his Aston!

Also remaining is the brutal torture scene, in which Le Chiffre cuts out the base of a chair and tortures Bond's testicles. Daniel Craig plays this scene brilliantly, roaring a defiant: "I'll tell them you died scratching my balls" to a frustrated Le Chiffre.

In fact, every ingredient that made the book so compelling was kept in with the script. And much like the original 1967 movie version of Casino Royale, this film seemed to be of two halves. The second half much better than the first.

The finale, when Vesper's loyalties are questioned and the bullets start flying again, finished in classic Bond style, in a villa in Venice that crumbled during the conflict (as a history buff, I was a bit upset at this.) The fact that some of Bond's final words mirrored the finale of the book: "The bitch is dead now" cemented the fact that the people who'd reinvented the Bond mythos had really done their homework and went into the project with as much passion for the source material as sad old gits like me.

So as the screen faded out, with Daniel Craig's craggy features beaming at us, I had to admit that the film I'm been so skeptical about had delivered on just about every level. It took the old world, cold war magic of Casino Royale and managed to deliver it in today's techomaniacal world. And the character of Bond, once so suave and sophisticated, was reinvented as the 'blunt instrument' that Ian Fleming had originally envisaged.

Casino Royale was occasionally ugly and violent, yet simultaneously beautiful and poignant. And even if people don't class it as a Bond film because it breaks all the 'Bondage' rules, it has beaten back the competition to become one of the most cerebral action movies ever filmed.

The Bootleg Boys...

Well, today marks the beginning of the second half of Nanowrimo. It is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. To paraphrase Winston.

Despite a wobbly patch last week, I have managed to keep up with my word count and last night, I beat 25,000 words to mark the beginning of the end of The Bootleg Boys.

Except it's not. Based on my 11 page plot plan, I'm about a third of the way through.

It's been an interesting experience. I've noticed my writing style seems to have deevolved with Nanowrimo. I've left the pretty nice style I'd developed during Adventure Eddy and have returned to the quick-fire dialogue heavy prose I'd tended to sink into during my previous writing. My inner critic is screaming in frustration - surely what I'm writing is crap - but the whole idea of Nanowrimo is to silence that voice and just keep writing.

The goal is to write 50,000 words by November 30th. I will achieve that, but I imagine it will take slightly longer to actually finish The Bootleg Boys. And when I do, I've worked out that the story fits neatly into a three story 'arc.' So God knows if it's publishable or where it would go!

But still. I'm writing and that's always good.

Recently, I was reading Ian Hocking's website, This Writing Life: (American) National Novel Writing Month or 'Exploding in a Shower of Blood' and he directed us to a page somebody had written about Nanowrimo. And it made me angry!

You can read the post here. It's on a site called Metaxucafe and written by Mark Leahy.

The reason it made me angry is because it's a post written by a writer. And there's nothing worse than a writer who thinks they're qualified to write about writing.

I'm a writer. I've been a writer since I was twelve years old, when my parents gave me an electric typewriter and I hammered out Kid Rockson: Private Eye.

It's only been within the last six months that I've been officially paid to write. But does that elevate me to some higher level? No. It just means I've got the experience, ability and luck to have found a job where my passion for assembling words is appreciated. But even if I never managed to become a paid writer, I'd have kept on writing. If I don't write, those words build up in my head and some day my cranium would have exploded, showering people with half digested sentences.

However, it's evident from Mark Leahy's post that he feels superior to those other poor, passionate people who decide to write a novel in 30 days. He thinks it sullies his art. Unqualified people, it's apparent, shouldn't muddy the waters with their amateur literary efforts.

Perhaps Mark has forgotton how he entered the writing industry. Unless he was an idiot savent (although he's apparently half there) he must have scribbled and typed an awful lot of crap before something good came out of it. He did his groundwork and now he's snootily looking down at everybody else trying to do it.

He's a member of the growing Snoberati, as I've titled them.

More on Casino Royale

Casino Royale is by far and away the best novel Ian Fleming ever wrote.

Written in 1953, after marriage and heart trouble retired him to his beautiful Jamaican beach house, Goldeneye, Ian Fleming set about writing 'a fantasy of sorts' featuring a rough, rugged spy by the name of James Bond. A common piece of trivia is that the name James Bond was stolen from an author of a book on Bird of the West Indies. Fleming liked it because it was plain and simple, just like his character.

Very much a product of it's time, the story was set in the Normandy town of Royale les Eaux and featured a gripping cold war plot. Russian agent Le Chiffre has invested Soviet funds into a failed string of French brothels and he had only days to recover the money before his embezzling was found out and the agents of "anti-Spy" unit SMERSH put a bullet between his eyes.

A skilled gambler, Le Chiffre rolled up at the Casino of Royale les Eaux (the eponymous casino of the title) in order to desperately raise money through a high stakes game of baccarat.

Somehow, the British Secret Service caught wind of this desperate scramble for cash and devised a plan. The best gambler in the Service would be dispatched to Royale les Eaux with one mission in mind. Bankrupt Le Chiffre.

Once Le Chiffre was broke, he'd be eliminated by SMERSH and the Soviet infrastructure in France would be dealt a serious blow.

The agent selected for this mission was James Bond. A recently promoted field agent, he was a 'double-o.' One of the few agents who'd killed in cold blood in the field. Described as a 'blunt instrument,' James had few passions. Women, alcohol, his 4 & 1/2 Litre supercharged Bentley Le Mans and gambling. Whatever the game, he was reknowned as the best gambler in the service.

That set the scene for Casino Royale and a tense card game, a thrilling car chase, a scene of horrific torture and an expected betrayal established the psychology of Bond for the books to come. It was famously On Her Majesty's Secret Service in which James Bond got married. However, this was the first book in which Bond fell in love.

Prior to next week's latest Bond film, Casino Royale has hit the screen twice before. First, as a TV special in America during the fifties. James was replaced by American card shark "Jimmy Bond' and Peter Lorre stared inexplicably as Le Chiffre.

Believe it or not, however, the massacre of Ian Fleming's magnum opus was made even worse in 1967, when the owner of the rights to Casino Royale (which hadn't been sold when the rest of the Bond titles had) put up the cheesy monstrosity that was 1967's Casino Royale.

David Niven and Woody Allen star in one totally ridiculous film. Peter Sellers and Orson Welles star in another, reasonably accurate version of the Fleming Story. Then both films are spliced together, buggered up a bit more with lazy editing and released to the unsuspecting public like nerve gas.

The result was horrific. Great soundtrack though.

After that day, the film makers thankfully left the beaten corpse of Casino Royale and the best of the Bonds remained in book form. Until somebody figured it was time to resurrect the old bones and see if there was some life left in them.

After all, the James Bond film franchise had been resurrected quite successfully since the days of Goldeneye and they needed to find a storyline somewhere that didn't involve an evil genius building a superweapon and holding the world ransom like they'd done before.

2004's Die Another Day was Pierce Brosnan's final outing as James Bond. Breathtakingly original, the film was a box office smash, raising over $400 million in profits. It was always going to be a tough nut to crack and it was decided that a follow up wouldn't be able to beat the all-action adventures of Pierce and Halle. So somebody had the bright idea of going 'back to basics' and showing us where Bond came from.

This is where it all threatened to go horribly wrong.

Now, I will reserve judgment until I've seen Casino Royale, but I'm worried. It is the best James Bond book. It's my favorite James Bond book. It's a brilliant, tight story and it deserves to hit the big screen as it was written, without being buggered about with. But buggering about with things is Hollywood's stock in trade.

Take for example, their star.

Ian Fleming knew exactly what James Bond looked like. Jazz musician Hoagy Carmicheal (yes, folks. He was named after the sandwich.) Black hair, blue eyes... Handsome and dark. Kind of like Pierce Brosnan in fact.

But in Casino Royale, James will be played by Daniel Craig. Who is blonde, with blue eyes... Face like a bouncer. Nothing like James Bond as he appears in the book. But quite close to what Ian Fleming looked like, to be honest.

Will this be a good choice to play Bond? I'm not sure. I like Daniel Craig. He's tough and rough and he was good in Tomb Raider (even better when he was dubbed into French) and he was the best thing in Guy Richie's Layer Cake. But Britain's top secret agent? We shall see.

He might not fit the description, but Daniel Craig makes quite a convincing 'blunt instrument.'

OPTIMISM LEVEL: High

Casino Royale

The music video for next week's Casino Royale...

My favourite James Bond book. The best one - and the most important to today's society.

I hope it doesn't disappoint. The one clip I've seen - James Bond wrecking a bespoke Aston Martin - comes straight from the book, so I'm hopeful. And for all his faults, Craig Daniel has something of the original Ian Fleming about him. Blonde and cruel.

It'll either be brilliant, or terrible.

My name is Roland...

Not Ronald.

Not Donald.

Not Steve, wherever the hell you got that from.

ROLAND.

New Jersey's Greatest Living Hero

Jon Bon Jovi explains green crusade
Wednesday November 8, 08:30 AM

Rocker Jon Bon Jovi is lavishing time and money on environmental charities to make up for "the huge hole in the ozone layer" his flamboyant Eighties hairstyles created.

The Keep The Faith frontman has been hailed the new Bono for his crusading efforts in recent months.

But he explains he's merely wracked with guilt at his gratuitous hairspray use, and hopes it's not too late to make up for the damage he's caused the world.

The singer says, "Do you really want to know why I'm doing all this goodwill, and why I'm an ambassador for Habitat for Humanity and why I gave a million to (Hurricane) Katrina?"

"It's because I feel guilty about the huge hole in the ozone layer my haircuts created. It's my responsibility to right the wrongs of the Eighties."

Come back, Mr Buongiovanni. The third series of Ally McBeal is forgiven and forgotten.

The Write Stuff

I am still hammering away at Nanowrimo.

It's a curious thing. If I didn't have a complete story established in my head, I don't think I'd have been able to do it. As a professional creative writer, I've quickly learned that the ideas are the time consuming thing. The actual writing is just a craft and I like to think I'm pretty good at it.

But in order to churn out an average of 1667 words per day, it's important to forget all the rules you might have set yourself about writing.

I am a terrible self editor. I read through what I've written and if I don't like it, I scrap it and start again. That's why I have so many great ideas and I just haven't done any of them. But Nanowrimo forces you to forget about the editing and just pour your ideas out onto the page. Reading through them afterwards in interesting.

Friday night, I had a couple of gin and tonics and decided to do my writing for the day and it flowed. The next day, reading it was actually like reading something somebody else had done. It was good stuff, too. It's like my ideas and my fingers had an exclusive connection, without having to go through my insecure and nervous brain like they normally do.

I tend to be a morning writer, but with Nanowrimo I have found myself writing late, until about midnight or 1am. This is out of necessity rather than choice, but I'm still getting the words down.

Am I happy with what I'm producing?

Not entirely.

Will I finish Nanowrimo?

I'm still confident.

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot - Catholics on the BBQ

Because of the difficulty in explaining the concept of Guy Fawkes Day to an American, Tina has generally accepted that the Fifth of November is England's "Burn a Catholic Day" and I am quite happy with that.

In actual fact, the words of the original Guy Fawkes poem seem to contain a verse that pretty much suggests that. But, mind you, with a Catholic plotting to blow up the Houses of Parliament the general population must have felt about Catholics the way the general population feel about Muslims these days.

It's just a pity that so many Catholics were persecuted back in those days for merely being part of the same religion as Signor Fawkes. Just as many Muslims feel they're being persecuted these days for being part of the same religion as the July 11th Suicide bombers.

Tina asked me the other day whether I still believe in God - and I do, despite my hypothosis on divinity leading me to believe that the creator of the universe was in fact Mr Ritz (this is the Holy Lampshade discussion I will have to fill you in on later.)

But I will tell you this. If we all decided to give up our religions, whatever they may be, and people stopped doing things 'in the name of God' then we'd either have a much more peaceful world, or people who did bad things would no longer have a good cause to hide behind.

As R.K. Millholland recently quoted at Something Positive - Don't Confuse the Faith with the Supposed Faithful.

I stole this poem from my friend Jo's webpage. Sorry, Jo!

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I see of no reason why gunpowder treason,
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 'twas his intent
To blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow:
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip hoorah!

A penny loaf to feed the Pope.
A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A fagot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah! Hip hip hoorah!

Torchwood

I've just caught the third episode of Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood.

In the new series of Doctor Who a character called Captain Jack Harkness was introduced. Handsome and dashing, Harkness was played by John Barrowman and distinguished himself by being incredibly vibrant, charasmatic and omnisexual.

To clarify, the character of Jack Harness would sleep with anything. Garden furniture if there was nothing else about.

This is because the reinventor of the Doctor Who franchise, Russell T. Davies, has an agenda to push, like on just about every BBC TV show. He is gay and Doctor Who has become a bit gay as a result. The first incarnation was a big, butch man with a shaved head and a leather jacket. Very, very gay.

Not that it's a bad thing. Russell T. Davies reinvented the franchise and created a new TV show that manages to be better, by several leaps and bounds, than the timeless original from which it's based. Doctor Who rocks now and part of that is it's gayness.

Take Jack, for example. Captain Jack is dashing and handsome and flirts with characters both female, male, vegetable and mineral. Why? Because Russell T. Davies wanted to establish that in the future, people aren't so obsessed with the labels we place on people today. Jack has relationships with people, not genders.

It would have come across as terribly preachy if it wasn't for John Barrowman, who happens to be a very cool, sexy actor who makes the character of Captain Jack totally lovable even to stuffy old Telegraph readers like myself.

He is the best thing to come out of Doctor Who since K9.

And, like K9, the BBC have decided to base a series around him.

Angel to Doctor Who's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Torchwood is darker and more adult (if you watch it, and are familiar with both Buffy and Angel, you will be amazed at how similar the two products are. Torchwood and Angel and Buffy and Doctor Who.)

It's all set in Cardiff. The rest of the cast are uniformly nondescript. The scriptwriter has taken all the juice and life of Captain Jack and murdered it.

But John Barrowman is amazing. And that, plus some great X-files type plots, lift this show up and make it worth watching. I just hope the franchise lasts from shaky first season to solid second (and further) series.

Torchwood is on BBC and repeated incessently. This is the BBC we're talking about, after all.

Writing

Wow. After a false start, I am up and running with Nanowrimo 2006. A daily target of 1667 words means I'm up to date and can finally shuffle off to bed.

Yesterday was a disaster. I started The Bootleg Boys in what I thought was a fascinating and productive new way, but it didn't work out. So today, I scratched what I wrote and started again. Fortunately, it seems to be working.

What an insane idea! 50,000 words in a month!

In other news, life toddles on. In reality, T and I are both stressed out. The future it sitting there on our shoulders like a big fat vulture. I'm desperate to return to America, but it's only nine months until Tina can apply for a British passport. In some ways, it would be crazy to leave before she gets it.

I'm still loving my job, but a horrible reality is dawning on me. Copywriters aren't rich. They're never rich. And maybe our one-up-one-down in Winchester is all we'll ever be able to afford while I'd doing a job I love.

Nobody else I know likes their job. Am I being crazy doing something I like?

Well, I have 1667 words to write a day, so I don't see what I'm doing wasting them here. Mind you, I have started a new blog at Editiorial Bear to discuss political issues. I post derisive comments targeted at a couple of the more loopy commenters on the interesting PCBS occasionally and am sick of them replying on this blog, so I've started a new one for political opions and comments - I've started with a few words about the De Menezes shooting, which is in the news again. You can find it here.

Adventure Eddy is over...

After more than six months, I've wrapped up posting Adventure Eddy on the blog.

The entire story, pretty much unabridged, is to be found here. That's eighty five chapters and about 120,000 words.

I am only going to be keeping the story up there for a short while longer before I take it down, revamp the blog and have it as an update on my efforts to get Adventure Eddy published.

Claire Anderson, the honey-voiced Power FM presenter, gave favourable reviews, which bouyed me up. It did lead to this conversation with Tina, though.

In the car:

Tina: Have you got a copy of Adventure Eddy around? I'm going to finally read it.
Rols: Yep, Claire gave me the one she was reading back today.
Tina: What did she say about it?
Rols: She said she was surprised Eddy doesn't get the girl in the end.
Tina: He doesn't get the girl in the end?
Rols: No, she actually...
Tina: Why did you just tell me the ending? You've just ruined the whole thing for me!

I hadn't actually given the whole ending way. I mean, there were the series of hotel robberies to worry about. That was kind of the major focus of the story...

Or was it? Claire's comments did make me think. Dad, when he read it, talked about the hotel robberies and the practicalities of Eddy and friends driving 600 miles in five and a half hours (in a twenty year old sports car.) Claire, on the other hand, pointed out that the love interest's eyes changed colour half way through the book and Eddy didn't get the girl in the end.

I never really thought about it, but the subplot romance between Eddy and Kat was a whole second story. It's almost like the book was split into two halves. The cool thing about that was that the boys liked the chase scenes and devious crimes - and the girls liked the unrequited crush and the will-they-won't-they subplot.

I set out to write an old fashioned boy's adventure story, but the romance part appeals to girls. Maybe the book is slightly more complex than I'd first thought!

Anyway. It has inspired me to focus more on the character's relationships in the next story.

Speaking of which, you can find my Nanowrimo blog, The Bootleg Boys, here. That's almost a direct follow up to the story of Adventure Eddy, bridging the gap between the novel and the rest of the Adventure Eddy stories I've written.

In the mean time, I'm finishing up editing Adventure Eddy and will be sending it off to publishers soon.