Goodbye Bear

Please visit Editorial Bear to see Dinsey's last post - plus a neat little music video.

What can I tell you? The bear's got style.

Last Lampeter

This weekend, Gavin and I made a final pilgramage to where we'd spent three very long years at college - St. David's University, Lampeter.

It was very weird to be back. The place had hardly changed - and nor had the students. That being said, Gavin pointed out that there seemed a lot more ginger people on campus than there were in our day. Perhaps my influence had rubbed off on the place.

Fellow ginger classmate Emma was there, with Jodi. So we spent the Saturday doing what it is people in Lampeter do. Which turns out to be drink. There's not one hell of a lot else to do in a sleepy little Welsh farming town.

As we left on Sunday morning, I realised this would probably be the last time I'd ever go back to Lampeter. Over a decade has passed since I first turned up there in my rusty TR7. Back in those days, that sleepy little town was my world. My horizons have got a lot bigger since then.

Goodbye, Lampeter. Thanks for the memories.

Adventure Eddy...

Well, I got my second rejection today... Adventure Eddy has officially been kicked to the kerb twice.

And you know what?

I've sucked it up. I think the book in it's present incarnation is not publishable.

This doesn't worry me as much as it should. Working in media for the last couple of years, I've learnt a lot. Taking a lot more interest in the publishing industry, I've learnt even more.

The fact is, RULE NUMBER ONE of publishing is that books need a hook.

You need to sum them up in a single line. The hook is....

Da Vinci Code? Guy discovers Vatican have hidden secret of the Holy Grail.

Harry Potter? Teenage boy discovers that he's a wizard.

What was the hook of Adventure Eddy? There wasn't one.

You see, I'd made the mistake of thinking about character and story before concept. And in today's world of 30 second attention spans, CONCEPT is everything.

So I need to rewrite Adventure Eddy.

And it's not just CONCEPT that needs to be looked at. It's the whole thing. But I think step number one is how to make people hear about the book and want to pick it up. In one line, I need to make Adventure Eddy exciting.

So I have a story. I have characters. But I need to reexamine how I tell it.

I have had two ambitions recently. To move to America and to get my book published.

I've SO nearly managed to achieve one of those. Now it's time to look seriously at the other.

Happy Birthday!

Today began the inexorable countdown to the big 3-0.

365 days to do all those things I'd promised I'd do before I was thirty.

Really, there were only three of those.

1: Move to America (almost there.)
2: Get my first book published (well, at least I've written it)
3: Earn a living writing (you call this a living?)

I'm completely astonished at how fast time has gone. Especially the last couple of years.

Where have they gone? What have I become? How come I look in the mirror and see somebody I hardly recognize? Can anybody tell me where the witless, but well dressed adventurer went and who this chubby, scrubby writer is?

During our week in France, I found a big box stuffed with photos. Pictures of my from years ago, when I was a kid living in Hampshire. Then more, from school in Devon, lots from university and then piles of smiling photos of me, looking sleek and well dressed for perhaps the only time in my life, with my arm paternally around the shoulders of myriad American girls with beautiful tans and big teeth.

Hard to think I spent my last summer in Paris over two years ago - and that was the end of an era. Since then I've become a veteran of the radio business. I say veteran - this is the kind of show in which people have short, glittering careers and then go a bit nuts and drive their cars through the door of their radio station. However the REAL vets, like my old boss Gordon Drummond, have been in it for donkey's years.

Anyway. Now I work in Media. I wear jeans to work. I don't shave every day. I have got a bit tubbier. I get grumpy if I don't eat lunch.

It's so weird to have 'grown up,' because I don't feel I have at all. My insecurities and ambitions burn just the same. I keep thinking I've got all the time in the world - but days like this make you realise it's trickling inexorably away.