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soooooo-rry

Wednesday 15th July 2009

... but it's not all bad

A few of you have emailed me and now my Mum has texted to point out that I don't appear to have done the weighing thing AT ALL this week, and you're not entirely mistaken - I did indeed clean forget to weigh myself on Monday, decide to do it on Tuesday instead, then clean forget on Tuesday again, then remembered to weigh myself this morning but forget to post it.  I really shouldn't be posting it even now - I'm having a momentary brain-break from my many and pressing writing commitments to post this now.  This is what counts as time off at the moment. Sigh.

Thing is, you see, it's Wednesday night, so it's stay-up-all-bloody-night-writing-my-Now-Show-songs night, except this week it CAN'T be stay-up-all-bloody-night-writing-my-Now-Show-songs night because this week we're recording the show at the Latitude festival, to where I and the clan will be hauling collective ass tomorrow. 

Having only just performed such an evacuation procedure for Glastonbury a couple of weeks ago I realise just how long it takes with the kiddies in tow - we'd intended to be on the road by noon; as it was we didn't get out of the house until about 4pm.  Such shenanigans are absolutely NOT an option this time as I have to BE there by 4pm in order to do the whole Now Show read-through and rehearsal thing ahead of the recording at 7 o'clock. 

So I'm having to make DAMN sure I get my songs written by some sort of vaguely civilised hour this time, and moreover I should also do another couple of bits for my OTHER ongoing writing project, specifically the book I'm writing with Jon Holmes, which seeing as it now has an Amazon listing I might as well "announce" properly (big breath)...

Ladies & Gentlemen, introducing The History Of The World Through Twitter, which does pretty much what it says on the tin - historical events recounted in tweet-form, as if Twitter had existed since the dawn of time and all major historical characters had had their iPhones and BlackBerries on the go at all times, narrating what they saw and did. 

Now you may be wondering, Hang on, it's out in October, it's listed on Amazon, it already has a COVER design, and... he's still writing it..?

Well, yeah. Such is occasionally the way in publishing, especially when, completely out of the blue, you suddenly have a BLINDING idea for a book which HAS to come out in time for THIS Christmas or it's probably not worth bothering with, and it's already the end of May.

I don't know if the Twitterers among you remember how, over the last Easter weekend, various Tweeps including Jon & myself, started tweeting "in character" as figures from the Easter story, as if it were in fact THAT Easter? Things like (on Friday morning):

jiscariot01 Well I'm thirty quid up but I feel rubbish

and then on Saturday:

JESUS Stuck in here till Monday; got nothing to play with but me shroud and this magic marker

... well, a few weeks later, I was reflecting on how funny that had been, and how the idea could be turned to pretty much any historical incident, and how you could indeed relate The History Of The World Through Twitter and OH MY GOD THAT'S THE BEST IDEA FOR A BOOK EVER BUT IT HAS TO COME OUT BY CHRISTMAS AND IT'S ALREADY THE END OF MAY...

You see, I knew by the fact that The Now Show book's copy deadline was in June that any book aimed at the Christmas market had to be ready to go by the summer, so while the book HAD to come out this year (Twitter's not going anywhere, but it won't be the object of such intense global fascination for much longer), I'd probably had the idea literally three or four weeks too late.

This was certainly the opinion of the first bunch of publishers we approached (I'd brought Jon in immediately as the idea was kind of inspired by stuff he was doing on Twitter, and also because whatever happened I wasn't going to have time to write it alone).  Coincidentally, while this was going on, Carlton Books approached ME à propos of something else entirely, whereupon I seized this non-opportunity and pitched the Twitter book idea at them, and to my astonishment, they went for it, so it's coming out on their "Prion" label.

Carlton initially gave us a deadline of mid-July (now, basically) which they eventually extended to the 27th. Given that we're going to be moving house around then (deposit went down yesterday) I may not take full advantage of that.  If it seems a bit premature to be doing covers and Amazon listings while it's still not 100% finished (it's about 75%), that was deemed necessary to get a toe-hold in that vital Christmas market.  And it's the kind of pressure I respond to, as many of you will know.

So what with this, and this and this, I've gone from never having had a word in print to having three books coming out this autumn which I've either contributed to or co-written.  Odd the way these things happen.

Of course, in the meantime, I've got the new album to do, there's talk of a possible semi-regular TV gig in the autumn if we can work it around the tour (details as & when appropriate) and I've STILL got the Now Show to write. Which reminds me.

 

Oh yeah. 21 2 again. Need to get some exercise. My right foot's playing up; was in to the podiatrist yesterday and he's PRESCRIBED me some exercises which I AM DOING. In my boundless free time...

 

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