BarryHutchison.com

Thanks largely to the crumbling worldwide economy which has already seen hundreds of thousands of people lose their jobs, 2008 will be considered by many as a terrible year.

For me, though, it were frickin’ ace!

Why?  Well, for starters I got an agent.  In February of this year I signed with Fraser Ross Associates, and this signalled something of a turnaround in my writing career, largely because I realised I should probably start taking it all a bit more seriously.

Also, top UK publisher, Egmont Press, published three books I wrote for them.  Beastly! Tiger Terror; Beastly! Spider Swat, and; Ben 10 Book One all came out between March and November this year.

As if that’s not enough, Egmont will be releasing three more books by me in the first half of 2009, so by June I’ll have a grand total of six novels published.  Not too shabby, eh?

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!  In October I was made an offer by one of the UK’s largest and most respected publishers for a series of six children’s books.  I still can’t give away many details at the moment, but I can reveal the series is the much-mentioned PROJECT IFR, which you can do a search for and read more about elsewhere in this blog.

Basically it’s a six-part horror series for 9-12 year olds, and book one will be on shelves in February 2010.  So a bit of a wait, but new books will be coming out every six months up until mid-2012.  It’s all very exciting, and I’ll be revealing more info here as soon as I can.

On the non-writing front, 2008 saw me move to Ireland, and then move back five months later.  All being well we’ll be heading back over during the early parts of 2009, although hopefully the pound/euro exchange rate will pick up a bit before we do.

And that’s more or less been it for 2008.  There’s GANGRENE, my comic book project too, but that has stalled for the moment while I push on with writing book two of PROJECT IFR, and redrafting book one.

I’m stealing an internet connection again, which is why this post is all very short and to the point.  Once I have a proper net connection I can be vague and rambling again, but for now conciseness is my watchword.

Although looking at it written down, I’m not even sure “conciseness” is even a word.  Let’s just agree it is and say no more about it.

There’s no danger of me being back online before midnight tomorrow, so I’ll take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy New Year, and thank you all for reading in 2008.  Hopefully you’ll join me again in 2009, which promises to be an even more exciting 12 months than the last 12.

All the best!

B.

As I’ve already mentioned, we’re back home in Fort William.  What I may not have mentioned is we’re back home in Fort William with NO INTERNET ACCESS!!

I’m suffering.  I’m suffering badly.  I haven’t gone this long without net access in years.  I can already feel my social skills improving.  If I don’t get a connection soon, I might start having conversations with people, and that would never do.

Anyway, I’ve managed to piggyback on an unprotected wi-fi hotspot for a few minutes to wish you all a Merry Christmas, as I’m not sure I’ll make it back on before then.  I hope Santa brings you everything you wish for, and that your days be merry and bright.

Bye for now!

B.

It’s almost Christmas.  Blimey.  Seven days from now, Santa Claus will already have squeezed himself down the chimneys of the world and will be zooming his way back to the North Pole, tired, drunk, and stuffed to bursting point with cookies.

Coincidentally, that’s how I’ll be spending Christmas Day, too.

Of course, when you’re an adult, Christmas is never like it was when you were a kid.  I still remember that build up – the growing excitement as more and more doors were opened on the advent calendar; the bizarre mix of hysteria and boredom of Christmas Eve, as you tried to find something – anything – to pass the time until you went to bed.

When you’re an adult, that magical build up to Christmas Day is replaced by a lurking sense of dread.  Rather than making decorations, singing carols and playing board games on the last day of school, the weeks before Christmas are instead spent rushing round crowded shops, worrying about how eight people are going to sit at a table made for four, and karate-chopping anyone who tries to fight you for the last turkey in the supermarket.

All that said, I love it really.  Having a young child helps immensely, as you get to make Santa lists, open advent calendars, and watch every Christmas movie known to man.  If watching Santa Claus: The Movie three times a day for a week doesn’t get you into the holiday spirit, nothing will …

This post was supposed to be about an entirely different subject, but somehow it turned into one about Christmas.  I’m not quite sure how that happened, but there you go.  I’ll write the other one later.

Oh, and we’re back in Scotland now.  It took a 12 hour drive through the night, with rain, sleet and snow driving us back, but we arrived at around 5am on Saturday morning, at which point I promptly fell asleep.

It’s rare that I read over anything I’ve written and think it’s any good. On the odd occasions I do, I never mention it to anyone, because I’m not very good at bigging myself up an’ that.

However …

I’ve just had a read over the latest draft of book one of my 9-12 year old series, and even I have to admit it’s pretty darned good. Yes, I still have a few twiddly bits to twiddle, and after that there will be a (hopefully) final line edit, but all in all it’s shaping up to be something I’m genuinely proud of. Hopefully my editor will feel the same.

Now, onto less happy news.

As long time readers will know, my family and I moved to Ireland in July 2008, from the Highlands of Scotland. For various personal reasons, we are now moving back.

We’ve had a great time in Ireland, and have met a lot of fantastic people who we will truly miss. We could not possibly have been made to feel more welcome than we were. Hopefully, once things are sorted out back in the UK, we’ll return.

As a result of the massive upcoming upheaval (we are moving in three days from now. THREE DAYS!) I’m going to have to cancel my planned special Christmas blog postings. My intention was to write 12 short Christmas themed plays, and publish one every day here on the site. They’d be The Twelve Plays of Christmas. See? Clever, that.

But now they won’t be. Maybe next year.

On an entirely different and more cheerful topic, I’m hoping to hear back this week on NLT – the 7-9 year old novel I wrote in the space of a few hours a night over four nights, while penniless and destitute in a hotel in Dublin.

Well here I am, sat by myself in the back room, working my way through another rewrite.  It’s a solitary life, this writing lark.  Why, if I didn’t have you, dear blog readers, I think I’d go quite, quite mad.

Actually, I’m finished the bulk of my rewrite, and am now doing the twiddly bits.  Basically I’m going through the thing, line by line, and making adjustments no-one will ever notice but me.  Removing a word here, restructuring a sentence there – little things, but they all help to make the finished book read as smoothly as possible.

Someone asked me the other day what I prefer – writing a first draft, or doing rewrites.  It’s a tricky one to call.

On the one hand, writing a first draft of anything is hard.  You have so many ideas whizzing around in your head, and – in my case – only the vaguest of outlines to guide you.  Writing a first draft is exciting, terrifying and frustrating in equal measures.  For those new to writing, getting to the end of draft one is a massive achievement.  Even for those who have been doing this for a while, it’s a huge occasion when you finally reach that final paragraph.

But then the work begins.  The first draft is called the first draft for a very good reason.  You’ll note it’s not called the last draft.

Where a first draft is often fuelled by passion, subsequent drafts have to be guided by common sense and logic.  That scene you thought was brilliant when you were writing it?  It doesn’t further the story, so it needs to go.  That character you fell in love with?  They’re inconsequential to the plot, so they must DIE BY YOUR HAND!

While I do enjoy the process of writing a first draft, I think overall I enjoy rewriting more.  It’s only in the rewriting stage you get to see your vision coming closer to being a reality.  It’ll likely never be as good as it was when it was in your head, but after 10-20 rewrites, it might at least be somewhere close.

I’m not sure what draft this is I’m working on.  It says Draft 4 on it, but – like software updates – between this and draft 3 there were any number of three-point-something revisions.  If we were to count all the times I opened the document and made some change – however minor – this would be well over draft one hundred.

And now I really should get back to it.  Those twiddly bits aren’t going to twiddle themselves.

Let the trumpets play, let the dancers dance, and let all of us be merry – ’tis the 100th post here on BarryHutchison.com!

Although I stated my intention a while back to become a kind of mutant book/butterfly hybrid when I reached my 100th post (see here for details), I’ve decided not to bother.  This is partly because I have contractual obligations I need to adhere to, and partly because such a transformation would be against the laws of science, nature, and all known gods.

So instead let’s commemorate this, the 100th post, by taking a look at some of the more random photographs I have stored on my mobile phone.  It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Click on the photos to see them larger.  Just if you want, like, I’m not going to force you.

I love Indiana Jones.  I also love LEGO.  What could be better, then, than a near life-sized Indy made entirely out of LEGO?  I spotted this gorgeous piece of work in the window of a Toymaster in Dublin back at the start of October, and had to take a photo.  He stood about four feet tall, which is short for an action adventure hero, but fricking huge for a LEGO man.

I’ve always wanted an Indiana Jones style Fedora, but I’ve just this minute realised I want one made out of LEGO even more.  What an ice breaker that would be.  “Hi, I’m Barry”.  “Hello.  Um … is your hat made of LEGO?”.  “Yes.  Yes, it is.”

Also while in Dublin, I spotted this stand of BEASTLY! books.  They were in a big bookshop, but I forget the name of it.  They looked good, although were criminally overshadowed by the Rainbow Fairy books.  No surprise there, though – at last count there were over a hundred million Rainbow Fairy stories in publication, every one of them exactly the same.

Back in Wexford, myself and the family joined thousands of other people in attending the opening festivities of the Wexford Opera Festival.  As well as a wide range of live music and entertainment, there were also ruddy enormous skeletons.  See if you can spot any in the picture above.  Full marks if you can spot both.  (Hint:  They’re wearing hats).

There were fireworks, too.  That’s them there.  It was probably the most impressive fireworks display I’ve ever seen.  The picture doesn’t do it justice really.  If you kind of jiggle up and down in your seat while looking at the photo and go “ptchoooo, wheeeeee, powwwwwch!” it helps, but it’s still not the same as being there.

You may be able to make out the vague shape of a statue on the left of the photo.  It’s a chap named John Barry (not the one who composed the James Bond theme, I don’t think).  I only mention it because my name’s Barry John Hutchison.  Every time I pass the statue I say “Heh, John Barry.  Barry John.”  No-one listens, though, and I have no idea why I continue to say it.  Maybe it’s an illness.

We took a trip out to a ludicrously expensive “amusement centre” a few days after that.  About eighty quid just evaporated out of my pocket the second I set foot inside the building.  I did spot this brilliant Elvis themed coin waterfall game thingy, though, which almost made it worthwhile.  Unusually, though, whenever anyone won it played the first verse of “It’s Not Unusual” by Tom Jones.

This bizarre contradiction made me doubt that the place was 100% legitamite and honest – a suspicion confirmed a few moments later when I saw one of the prizes on offer inside a games machine …

Ah, the world famous Wi games console.  No, it’s not the Wii, although you’d be forgiven for thinking it, what with it looking quite like it, being packaged in a similar way, and having Mario on the front.  Oh, and because it’s called the Wi – did I mention that?

You’d think the manufacturer would have considered all these things before launching the product.  Surely they must’ve known it’d only result in confusion?  They must’ve been mortified when they realised their error.

Ahem.

Now this is probably my favourite photo of the bunch.  There’s a story behind it, so bear with me.

A few weeks ago, I was minding my own business in a shop, when a man approached me and started chatting.  He seemed nice – if a bit odd – and we spent a few minutes discussing the weather and exchanging pleasantries.  Then he said something I didn’t expect.

“Do you want to see something amazing?”

How could I decline such an offer?  As soon as I said “go on then” he began rummaging around inside the briefcase he carried with him.  A moment later he whipped out the piece of paper above and held it out for me.

I took it and stared at it for a long time, not quite sure how to respond.

“I’ve made a flying carpet,” he told me in a hushed whisper.  “That’s it there.”

I nodded slowly.  “It looks nice.”

Then he said something which almost blew me away.  With absolute sincerity he told me: “That’s not a photo.”

Look again at the picture above.  I struggle to think of anyone who could mistake that image for an actual photograph of a man on a flying carpet, and I know some proper idiots.  Even if the cartoon lines and garish colours weren’t giveaway enough, we can see his thoughts in the picture!

What’s worse is I was feeling so uncomfortable at this point I just nodded again, as if I had thought it was a photograph, and was only now realising I was wrong!

I have no idea if the flight took place, or even what he was doing it for.  More than anything, though, I hope he made it.

A couple of quickies before the big finish.  Spotted the above text on the box for a toy motorbike and trailer set.  It’s not just Chongtrol or The Best Design New Thing, it’s Chongtrol and The Best Design New Thing.  That’s the double stamp of quality right there.

Incidentally, I’ve just punched “Chongtrol” into Google, and it’s as stumped as I am.

Here’s another one from the same shop.  This time it’s a truck carrying a motorbike, rather than a motorbike pulling a truck.  That’s an important distinction.

As you can see, this “handsome appliance” is Vivid and Great in Style.  Importantly, it also has Both the Quality Of Tenacity, which we all know is vitally important in today’s toy market.  To my mind, that’s where the Wi went wrong – it just didn’t have both the quality of tenacity, although looking at the box, it may well have been friction powered.

I apologise for the quality of this last photo, but I felt I had to publish it here all the same …

I’m not sure if you can make it out through the blurriness, but the label on that big weird sausage thing says “Extra Pork Headcheese”.

No matter how many times you re-read those three words, they won’t make any more sense.  Extra Pork Headcheese.  See?

It’s a very strange substance which appears to be about 50% yellowing jelly, and 50% bits of pink and black stuff.  The label says the meat content is “Pork from pork heads”.  Technically that should be “Pig from pig heads” I think.

Oddly, there’s no cheese in it.

This was the third photo I took of the thing, and the least blurry of the lot.  I’d have taken more, but a couple of Tesco staff members had started watching me closely, like I was some weird sausage fetishist or pork-based spy or something.

I should also point out that the thing is about the size of a large cucumber – the photo doesn’t do the scale of it justice.  It’s a frightening, alarming product in any number of ways.  Let us never speak of it again.

Right, that’s yer lot for the 100th Post Spectacular.  It wasn’t all that spectacular, but it was the 100th post, so at least the title is 50% factually accurate.

Feel free to discuss anything shown above, by the way.  I feel all lonely and unloved when no-one bothers their backside to comment …