So, the conversation goes along, and I mention that I drink four cups of tea a day. She asks me if I really feel the need for that much caffine, and I say yes.

"Nothing like some CO2 for me," she says.

And instantly, I'm thinking, okay, didn't know you liked to gather up poisonous gasses and make them cold enough to be liquid. So I say, "I didn't know you had a stash of carbon dioxide hidden in your fridge."

"Carbon dioxide? What do you mean?" she asks. She's not exactly the smartest person on Earth, and I like to point out anomalies in what she says to make sure that's what she meant.

"CO2 is the chemical makeup of carbon dioxide," I reply. "Two parts of oxygen for every one part of carbon."

"Really? I meant water."

"That's H2O."

Well, the conversation went more or less like that for another fifteen minutes, at which point she said she had to go somewhere. I let her go, because I consider my conversations with her more or less a waste of valuble reading time, and then I continued with my book.

 A huge huge thanks for Frontline books for putting up with me all this time.

 Drew xxx 

    Then the small postman started singing La Traviata. Is this space opera, I thought? For while I have always liked sci-fi I have never been that au fait with its terms and conditions.

    Sci-fi, like masturbating your supposedly straight best friend into an old sock in the gazebo of his house after just having high tea with his lovely family, and your two god children! is something of a guilty pleasure. It is not something you talk of at the literary high table. Well I don’t, never being invited there. My tea is normally eaten at the £15 Ikea table in my kitchen on either my blue or red chair.

    (In an aside and just to set the scene I have the football on behind me. It is Russia and Spain. One of the Russian players is called Jerkov. That can’t be right, can it?

    Oi Jerkov, over here. On the head.)

    (In another aside (for the scientists amongst you who have googled your way to this entry, does that make this blog a triangle?) have you all been following the release of the new Bond book? In my opinion asking Sebastian Faulks to write in the style of Fleming is a bit like getting Posh Spice to rework Beethoven. Anyway, I am sure he is laughing all the way to the French resistance.

    ‘Listen carefully, I shall say zis only once.’

    For those of you who don’t know, that was a quote from Faulks’ book, Charlotte Grey.)

    I’m just kidding. Perhaps Faulks, like Posh, has a handsome young footballer locked up in his cupboard. That would explain his jovial smile, wouldn’t it?

    Asides aside I think I have been thinking about sci-fi for two reasons. The first is I read Damien Walter’s rather fine piece over on the Guardian website. And secondly I bought Star Trek Generations from the new iTunes movie service and watched it last night in my bed on my iPod.

    I was excited. It was like seeing a digital watch for the first time. Mum and dad ran a pub and they took me downstairs to the bar one night. This chap was selling them. Wow, I thought. It tells the time! It doesn’t have hands!

    We all watched the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on the tv together as a family. (I have all 5 radio series on CD now and listen to them often.) I liked Dr Who, Blake’s 7. I read George Orwell, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Aldous Huxley and slightly older I found I liked a bit of Dick.

    Who doesn’t?

    When I was living in Australia I read Red, Green and Blue Mars. I think I’ve written about them before. My then boyfriend throwing Red Mars into the sea, travelling almost naked on a city bound bus.

    But I wouldn’t say I was a sci-fi fan. Or more that I know what I’m talking about when I talk about it. I don’t know that I can talk about anything seriously. I’d like to be able to, but writing for me is a bit like running. It’s fast.

    And I’m dumb. But I have passion and I care.

    George Bernard Shaw said the saddest thing was to live and not to have a passion. Or maybe it was my neighbour who said the saddest thing was to have one of those donkeys you get from Spain in your window.

    I get confused.

Currently reading - The Steep Approach to Garbadale - Iain Banks

Currently listening to - The Best of Radiohead

(All writers steal. Thanks to Aliya Whiteley and Neil Ayres who wrote similar pieces to the one below. They also stole it from someone else.)

I was 28 and I had just come back from two years in Australia. I decided I wanted to write. I moved into my old room in my mum’s house. I didn’t work. I wrote. The result was The Brothers Mostecsky. It was hand-written, two hundred and fifty thousand words.

    My biggest fear had been that I wouldn’t be able to do it, to think of a story. I saw that I could.

    I bought a Brother word processor. It became my best friend. For the next year I typed up TBM. I did three jobs. I worked for a delivery company, I worked in an egg factory, I worked as a teacher. Finally TBM was finished. And much too long.

    Make it simple, I told myself.

    My next book, The Lodger, was simple. A gay man advertises for a lodger, gets one, and then the lodger drunkenly admits he has killed someone.

    I sent it to a few publishers. I’ve never been one to send out hundreds of letters. You read about that. Luckily GMP said they would publish it. It’s not a quick process. Between sending it off and it being in the shops was two years.

    The Lodger got good reviews. I still didn’t have a computer. The first review I saw was by chance on gay.com in Derby library. That was the best thing! The Lodger was a finalist in the Lambda Awards in America. It sold out its print run.

    The Lodger took three months to write. After that I wrote a children’s book called The Fart Club (in 10 weeks). Then a book called Darts in a similar amount of time. The Fart Club wasn’t published, Darts nearly was. That’s a long story.

    I wrote a sequel to The Lodger, called Rising Camp. As I finished it I found that GMP had stopped publishing. (The parent group was instead going to concentrate on the selling of dildos - they have a bigger mark-up). I sent Rising Camp to a publisher in America who said they were going to publish. Then they didn’t. That happens.

    I wrote a more serious book called Zeitgeist. I liked this. Nobody else did. I was working full time now for National Rail Enquiries. I went back to Australia a couple of times. I had a two storey flat above a Chinese restaurant.

    I stopped writing novels. I had found a website called AbcTales. I was writing short stories. Quite a few of them got published, in magazines, in short story collections, on websites. I’d never really sent stuff off to big publishers. I didn’t ever think they’d be interested in me.

    A couple of years passed. I found that I’d written eight short stories about the same people, a pop group called Down By Law. It made a novel, if you squinted. I sent them off to an agent, just one.

 

    I was surprised when they got back to me. They liked it but wanted me to change the ending and cut down one chapter. The now novel went through eight people at the agency. A year passed. They didn’t take me on.

 

    In this time I split up with my then boyfriend. I moved into a house on my own. I was back to not having a computer. I work for the police and a computer is the kind of luxury you can’t afford - or cars, or holidays, or decent food.

 

    A year later I was checking my emails when I found one was from an American coffee shop. They wanted to buy one of my 50 word stories for a coffee promotion. They asked if I had any more. I wrote loads. I used the money to buy a Mac.

    Things started to happen.

    A couple of months after that I was sitting at my new computer and I was thinking I should try and send out the Down By Law stories again. I googled literary agent sites. I didn’t have a printer, live near a post office or have a car so I looked for agents who had email addresses. There were five. I emailed them.

    A few days later one of them got back to me. She asked to read the rest of my book and then to meet me. She took me on. We made some changes to my book, this time to the beginning. It got a new title, Me and Mickie James. We sold it to a publisher, Jonathan Cape.

    That was a year ago. The  book is now due to come out. I also have a story on Radio 4 in August, have just written a play for them as well, have also just had an erotic short story published, have another story coming out in Tell Tales 4.

    I still get plenty of stuff rejected. I don’t know if I’ll ever have another book published. This could be it.

    Or it might not be.

Currently reading -  Boys in Heat

Currently listening to - Fink

This morning I grew concerned that I was suffering from ADHD. Unfortunately I was not able to sit down at the computer long enough to fully research the matter.

   As it happens I am texting this blog to a small Peruvian lady who offers such transcription services while simultaneously shopping, eating, watching the tennis and trying to read a number of books.

    Reading is most traumatic. I fan books around me on the floor, pick one up, read a few pages, put it down, read a few pages of another, jumping from a novel, to a book on economics, to one on history.

    Perhaps this accounts for my blurring of fact and fiction. Doris Lessing said that fiction allows you to talk about things that you would not be able to in normal debate. George Saunders said the same thing of comedy.

    I can run with it.

    The blog is late this week. Last Tuesday I took my cat to the vet to have a tooth out. At 11:00 I got a call from my ex-partner, with whom I share custody of the cat.

    “Turn the music down,” he said. “It’s H. He’s got cancer.”

    The vet said we should have H put down straight away. He would only live for another week, and then in discomfort. It was a shock, because I had no idea he was ill.

    I wanted to write this whole blog about H, going to get him from the rescue place, worrying about him every time he went out, remembering how he used to grab your feet under the bottom of the duvet, sleeping with his head on the pillow.

    But it’s a bit difficult, all this reality. Enough to say, I loved him. As did Gary, my ex. When we went back to his after, he went and got this black lacquer box.

    “Look,” he said, “I’ve kept his whiskers. Every time one fell out over the years. I kept it.”

    We’ll miss him.

    Doris Lessing has a cat called Yum-Yum, named after a character in the Mikado. She was interviewed by Alan Yentob on Imagine.

    “Watch out for him,” she said, “he’s rather spiky.”

    Rather like Doris herself. I loved watching the interview with her, and the clips from her life. She didn’t want to talk about leaving her children. “Look, I’ve talked about that before” and I loved the way she imperiously dismissed other interviewers.

    “When I took mescaline I rather wish they’d left me alone.” Because it’s all about putting on a face. At 88 she doesn’t have to bother.

    “It doesn’t matter if they think I’m a loony now.”

    Interestingly the warning on the iPlayer states of the Lessing programme ‘Contains very strong language’. For Kiss of Death it states, ‘Contains some strong language’.

    Kiss of Death also contains in the very first scene, a body cut into pieces, later a head full of maggots, scenes of graphic torture, kidnap, imprisonment and murder. And Danny Dyer.  

    No warning for that necessary apparently.

    I wonder if that’s what Lessing means when she decries the death of culture. What comes across though is her love of life. Even going out into the garden her eyes light up as she gazes out across her plants and trees. That was the biggest influence of her life she said, gazing up at the stars (her dad let her stay up to do this). It makes you feel very small.

    Indeed.

Currently reading - The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein

Currently listening to - Catch the Brass Ring, Ferraby Lionheart

It’s been a good week all round. Which is disconcerting. Weeks aren’t normally round. They start on Monday and head in a straight line through to Sunday. Then it starts all over again. Until you die.

    I didn’t need any fake breasts after all. This was on Monday when I went to London for my photo shoot in the glamour palace of Bethnal Green.

    “I’ve seen this nice tree,” was the first thing the photographer said to me. “Then we can go to the park. There are some really big slides.”

    The park was great, enormous. I imagined myself running to the centre of it and disappearing like that character in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up. I wondered if it was shot there. Then I walked through some trees.

    “The light is great.”

    It is, I thought. Sunlight, what would we do without it? Then I sat on the promised slides. They really were big. Everyone has nice memories of slides but my favourite one was Aqualand, South of France, zipping down it, laughing.

    There is something very Zen about having photographs taken of yourself. Perhaps that’s what all those Buddha statues are about. A statue being a more concrete representation than a flat image. Therefore more Zen.

    Everyone has their favourite Buddha statue. Mine was in Japan, Daibutsu. You could walk inside him if you wanted and there was enough room to spread out a picnic blanket. That day I ate potato ice-cream and my Japanese gave me this small bottle to drink out of. It was supposed to give you special powers.

    (I didn’t hold out much hope. I had had my fortune told to me in a Japanese temple - ‘You won’t die in a car crash’. Goodo!)

    “You seem relaxed,” said the photographer.

    Clickclickclickclickclick.

    On Wednesday I received four nice emails. 1) From the BBC, the studio script for Teeth for me to check. It’s being recorded on 5th June. I also found out who’s going to read it. 2) From the editor at Gaydarnation re my interview with them. 3) The editor of Tell Tales who have accepted my story Gus. This will be published in October. 4) From my publicist at Random House to say the finished copies of Me and Mickie James are in.

    My copies are in the post. So I am going to see the final finished thing. Next it will be in the shops. Then people will be able to buy it. Or not.

    Now here’s the caveat. You work for years for this. Then it happens and you realise it doesn’t change your life. That crap job you are doing is still crap when you have a book published. That view of the housing estate outside your window doesn’t change.

    I have decided to change my life.

    Yesterday, I bought a Neil Diamond song for the first time. It’s good. But is that enough? I went to see Persepolis. It was great. I read another Albert Sanchez Pinol book, Cold Skin. This is great too, like HG Wells. 

    But I wish I had lived in the Enlightenment. London is destroyed in the Great Fire. I, astronomer select, give up gazing at the stars and design a new city. There will be broad boulevards, temples, no skip that, Big Buddhas. There will be potato ice-cream for everyone and water slides. Everyone will write books and read them. There will be public libraries on every corner. Music will play everywhere and everyone will get chance to be mayor even if you are a buffoon.

    We will all change our jobs every two years and when bad things happen we will all pull up our socks and dig in to help. We will study all our lives and pass on our knowledge to our children. Or not if we don’t want.

    And so on.

Currently reading Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine

Currently listening to Neil Diamond

Thanks to everyone who’s said they are coming to the launch. It will be great to see both of you. No, really. And yes, I will have that money I owe you. Yes, and the interest. But 27%? What are you? The bastard brother of Barclaycard.<BR><BR>

     In an effort to get the blog more widely read I have decided to make it funnier. Anyone know any jokes? <BR><BR>

    No, really. <BR><BR>

    This week I have been invited to be part of a discussion on the subject of the usefulness (or not) of writing courses at an event being put on by Pulp.net at the Guardian newsroom on 21st May. Details <A HREF=http://www.pulp.net/index.html>here</A>. <BR><BR>

    As I mentioned last week I am very busy. At the time the call came through I was asleep on the living room floor in front of the snooker. Hendry vs. O’Sullivan. One of the most exciting matches in Crucible history! <BR><BR>

    Seeing the unidentified 020 number on my mobile I was at first confused, thinking I had somehow become part of a new sex chat line. (I don’t get many calls). Then I realised that would probably be an 0800 number (would it?) and would they be calling me, this sex searching hoard? Probably not. Especially as I hadn’t had a shower for three days or changed my underpants. (Well it is the World Championships! Mind you, there is a certain market...) <BR><BR>

    But I am getting off the point. If I ever had one. <BR><BR>

    “I just need to check my diary,” I said to the nice young lady, in my best up-and-coming novelist voice. <BR><BR>

    I clicked open iCal on my Mac (very professional), clicked over to the correct month. <BR><BR>

    “Yes,” I said. “I’m free for the whole of May. You’re lucky.” <BR><BR>

    It was that final ‘you’re lucky’ that clinched it, I think. <BR><BR>

    Or the fact that I’ve never been on a writing course. Well, not exactly true. When I was at Sixth Form College we had some visiting writers. One of them, I remember, was an up-and-coming young poet who had had some poetry translated into Flemish and had been quite a success (sold three copies!) and for next twenty years she had been visiting minor colleges of education to spread the vibe. <BR><BR>

    Those interested had to submit their writing and then attend two workshops in place of our regular afternoon A level English classes. <BR><BR>

    “What we’ll do,” said this poet, “is read out the bits we like the best and then after, we can all discuss what we like about them. We won’t mention names.” <BR><BR>

    “Oh shit,” I thought. As each piece was read out I just wanted to leap up and admit it was me. You see, it was like one of those Agatha Christie novels where they are going to reveal the killer. I thought all eyes were on me. I had done it. <BR><BR>

    At the end of the eighth extract of teenage suicide and angst, actually angst and teenage suicide, that way around, the young poet stopped. <BR><BR>

    “What I liked about all your work,” she said, “was its deep and serious nature.” <BR><BR>

    I had submitted a piece about a man who dresses up as a woman in order to engage a private dick and ends up having an affair with him. It was a parody of a Damon Runyon story. It was supposed to be goddam funny! <BR><BR>

    After the session came to an end my English teacher came up to me. “I didn’t give them your story,” she said. “I didn’t think it was representative of what you could do.” <BR><BR>

    That’s true. <BR><BR>

    And true of what I feel about my writing today. Not good enough to be taken seriously. In my head it is serious, it just comes out funny. <BR><BR>

    That’s true too. <BR><BR>

<B>Currently reading</B> - <A HREF=http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/pandora-in-the-congo-by-albert-s225nchez-pi241oltrs-mara-faye-lethem-815122.html>Pandora in the Congo</A>, Albery Sanchez Pinol <BR><BR>

<B>Currently listening to</B> - Play Moolah Rouge, <A HREF=http://www.iamkloot.com>I Am Kloot</A> <BR><BR> <BR><BR>

<B>Story Hour in the Library, Oakley Hall with Michael Chabon</B><BR><BR>

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I don’t know what’s happened to this week. It’s like a salt and vinegar crisp someone holds under your nose. You turn your head away, you turn back, and it’s gone. Just gone.

 

    However, I have now confirmed the date for the Me and Mickie James launch party. It’s going to be on July 22nd starting at 6:00pm in Waterstones, Market St, Leicester. There will be a reading, a chance to buy the book and free refreshments and music. Afterwards will be drinks and things at The Basement Bar.

    I’m not quite sure what the things will be (a naked dancing boy? Several naked dancing boys? Lots of them?) but it will certainly be a good chance to buy me a drink. Haha. 

    Everyone is welcome. Especially as I have visions of myself standing alone in an empty room full of wine and books. Now you put it like that...

    If you want to come just email me or just turn up. Or if you have Facebook the event is here.

    In my head I have been thinking about what I want to say. This is usually witty and erudite but I will probably turn out to be more like Bukowski. He was so shy that he used to get drunk before he was on and then become abusive. People loved it. Anything like the success of his novel Post Office would be amazing. He wrote it in a couple of weeks and then it went on to sell millions.

    Of course any kind of success would be amazing. It’s quite a scary thing, wondering if this thing that has been produced with my name on it is just going to disappear.

    I’ve had two emails this week which have started, ‘I know you must be very busy.’ If being ‘very busy’ means sitting watching the snooker every day and drinking beer then I am. Definitely. I am really very very busy.

    I had a nice day in Sheffield last Tuesday thanks at the World Championship and I am there again tomorrow. Keep your eyes peeled. I will be the one in the audience naked except for a copy of Me and Mickie James strategically placed ( balanced on my nose). 

    Well, you’ve got to haven’t you? And I can’t bear the thought of being on Big Brother.

Currently reading - Northern Lights, Philip Pullman (I loved reading Once Upon a Time in the North last week and now have started on the Dark Materials trilogy. It’s great.

Currently listening - Hallam Foe, Original Soundtrack

I finally got the proof copy of ‘Me and Mickie James’ this week. I have it next to me now. It looks just like the finished thing except the cover is white (instead of black) and it has ‘Free Jonathan Cape Proof Copy’ on the back.

    It’s brilliant!

    Brilliant is my new favourite word. I went to see Son of Rambow last week. If you haven’t seen this then you should. It’s the best film ever made.

    A young Brethren boy, Will Proudfoot, sitting outside the classroom at school while the rest of his class are watching tv, (he is not allowed), encounters the school rebel, Lee Carter, who has been thrown out of his own class.

    Lee is making his own version of Rambo for a BBC TV talent contest and he bullies Will into helping him. Will, quite surprisingly, finds this brilliant! and throws himself into it.

    I heard Garth Jennings, the writer / director talking about the film on Mark Kermode’s film review show. He was so enthusiastic and excited. He said ‘Brilliant!’ about a hundred times. This is the way forward. Life should be fun.

    At work I found myself saying it.

    “You’re reporting a burglary? Brilliant!”

    I also heard from my publicist this week. She sent me a list of magazines, newspapers she had sent ‘Me and Mickie James’ and she said she would have a chat with The Independent about me.

    Brilliant, I thought and she asked me if I had any ideas for journalism, travel, music, gay opinion pieces and if I did she could pitch them.

    You know what I thought of that. It begins with ‘B’. I drank some wine and danced around my living room. I bought Groove Armada’s Late Night Tales this week. It’s perfect for late nights and it has a Will Self story on it too.

    Nothing may come of it and nothing in my life changes, not really. If it wasn’t this I’d find another reason to drink red wine and dance around my living room. It’s what I’m good at. I read the first chapter of M&MJ. I realised it’s my writing life transposed onto a pop group.

    Down By Law want to be famous. But that’s not the things that make them happy. It’s other stuff, like not having a toilet that flushes, or entertaining orphans of war, or maybe supporting Shawaddywaddy.

    I wouldn’t want to be famous. I wouldn’t want to present the National Lottery, appear on a game show, be in the X Factor. Those things are empty. But I would like the wine on the way.

2 other things: I’ve got some interviews lined up. To get myself in the mood I read an author interview on the Guardian website, it’s with James Kelman. Read it here. One word. Yikes!

I have also updated my website. Visit the new and improved www.drewgummerson.co.uk

Currently reading The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton

Currently listening to Reverend and the Makers

Son of Rambow

This week I got my contract from the BBC for ‘Teeth’. It will be recorded in the same studio as the Archers, although not at the same time. Then it will be broadcast in July. I’m not going to be reading it, people ask me that. Nor will I be famous. Some people say that too.

    “You’re going to be famous. You’re on the radio.”

    These are the same people who when I mention my book ask, “How many pages is it?”  Then when I show them the cover, “Did you design it?”

    That’s right. I’m a book designer. I’ve just kept it quiet.

    Then they go on to say, “It might be a film. Just think.”

    I’m thinking. I love books. I write books. I’m happy that it’s a book and that’s why I wrote it as a book. If I wanted to be famous I would have a sex change, swim the channel to the Netherlands and then tie myself to the wing of a windmill while local children throw wet flannels at me denouncing the plight of Iraqi wildlife.

    “Those bombs, played havoc with the camels. Yes sir!”

    So I’m excited, I’m going to be on the radio. It might be a film! And while we’re not talking about money I’m being paid £260. People want to ask that too.

    I admit it. I am famous and rich!

    Move out of the way of the roller-coaster of my life before you completely lose your breath and asphyxiate yourself slowly.

    This is at exciting as it gets. Today I’ve been moving between the sofa and my bed reading ‘Penguin Special’. This is a history of Penguin books. This is what the rich and famous do.

     Penguin Books was started by Allen Lane in about 1935. Before that cheap, high quality paperbacks weren’t available. Penguins were sold for 6p and you could buy them in Woolworth's. The fist ten included books by Agatha Christie, Hemingway, Dorothy L Sayers. Other publishers thought Lane was mad.

    The first twenty included reprints of ten Jonathan Cape books. Cape had a literary list second to none (and still true today - they are my publisher). Lane went to see Cape. Cape negotiated Lane’s offer up from a £25 advance per book to £40.

    Cape was described as the ‘most tight-fisted bastard’. Cape thought the Penguins would be a disaster but if they were going to be a disaster he ‘wanted to get £400 off Lane’.

    Of course they were a huge success, selling millions in the first year to the new mass market of the 1930s, offices were springing up everywhere, there was a new middle class.

    Virginia Woolf was horrified. She didn’t think that kind of person should be reading. But she wasn’t very nice, was she?

    I bought a Penguin myself this week. A new edition of The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton. It has the most brilliant cover and is part of Penguin Red Classics. In the same series, Books for Boys, are The 39 Steps, The Lost World, The Prisoner of Zenda, The Riddle of the Sands, She.

    I’ve read them all except She.

    What a brilliant world, with such things in it.

Currently reading - see above

Currently listening to - Strangefolk by Kula Shaker

Orson Wells players present - ‘The Man Who Was Thursday’