New books for this year from Peter Macinnis

I reserve the right to add to this.

I am, as my cohort say, of advanced middle age. That means, like it or not, I am approaching my-use-by-get-in-the-box date, and my arms and hands are decaying with arthritis. For this reason, if no other, I have been busily completing partly-completed titles.

These, I have to say, I am self-publishing, because I am tired of hawking my wares around to publishers who fail to share my vision — or any vision at all, in many cases. My concern is to get ideas out there, where young or young-at-heart minds can get into them.

Most of them need colour illustrations, and those rack the price up, so I am doing budget-level full-colour pics ebooks, and for those who must have a piece of dead-tree in their hands, they will have to settle for half-tone (black-grey-white) illos.

The first cab off the rank is The Biggest Book of Australian History, and that has been out for a couple of weeks, and if you want to kick the tyres, try this sample chapter.

To buy it, go here.

Now, because Amazon messed me about, I had to settle for their AI-directed cover, and not this one on the left (I also had to change the title to say Biggest). The National Library of Australia, after four sell-out editions, lost their creative staff and lost their impetus, so I took back my IP, and wrote a book 3.3 times the size, and instead of costing $40, the huge ebook, with all of then interesting stuff added, costs $6. Even the paperback comes in under their cost!

The next book is a bit from left-field, and it will suit a niche market, but those who need it will love it. Most writers of Advanced Middle Age will have a commonplace file or book, where they store all of the pithy and ineresting quotes that they come across, and most of those files disappear when they fall off their perch, but I had a lovely set of quotes to share, so I decided to save them in two ways: both in a separate blog, and also as an ebook that is searchable and as a dead-tree book.

I decised to make it available when  I found a quote that appears in another entry, that I saw while prepping for a tour of southern Italy:

…one, the notoriously unreliable monk Radulph Glaber (the wildness of whose imagination was rivalled only by that of his private life, which gives him a fair claim to have been expelled from more monasteries than any other littérateur of the eleventh century)…
— John Julius Norwich, The Normans in the South, 1016–1130, 1992.

You can't make up stuff like that, and you can't Google this sort of clever malice up, either, and while in a cave in Matera, I started really working on my commonplace book, with beer for sustenance. For marketing reasons, I gave it a pun-loaded title, as you can see from the cover. Unless you are familiar with René Magritte's Ceci n'est pas un pipe, you will miss the more subtle play on words. My lips are sealed.

Then there is Australianisms, and I did some work on that as well, while schlepping from Helsinki to Malta in April to June, and that one is now out in paperback and also as an ebook.

Look, if you want a damn thick square book for your shelves, buy the print version, but it is >280 000 words, and weighs 940 grams, while the ebook is almost weightless, and it is searchable: some of your best discoveries will be stochastic side-blows from a directed search, and the e-book is cheaper! Also, today, I added another 30 entries to both versions, but once you get the print version, you won't see any later bits.

I am not in this game for the money: I want to educate, but the next book is one that your friends really should not be allowed near. Your enemies, on the other hand, should be encouraged to both read it and believe it.

It is available as an ebook, and also as a dead tree book. Buy the ebook for yourself, and the dead tree version for your enemies. If you have no enemies, give this to your friends to boost your enemy ranks.

I had a boss, named Doug 'Udson (he was the original 'Udson with a haitch, and sadly he is dead because, while he was malignant, he would believe anything. When I wrote in a file that a matter was 'in train', giving a reference to the file where the matter was being dealt with, he charged me with leaving a file on a train. 

The context: he was a Hard Right member of our union, I was soft left, but given to tripping him up at Branch Council meetings. In the hearing, I explained that I was puzzled, and asked which file he thought I had left on the train, and while he stammered and muttered the case was dismissed. My judges were urbane, and kept straight faces while dismissing the charge, then thanked me after he had stalked out, but people like Doug need to be brought down, and this book will do just that.

If any sort of AI ever scoops this one up, all sorts of Hell will break loose. As I maintain that AI means Artificial Inelegance, I have my hopes. Here are some reviews for The Lesser of Two Weevils:

He would say that, wouldn’t he? —Randy Mice-Davies, Buxton Bugle.
Exceedingly dense. —F. R. Leavis, New Hearings in English Pottery.
Nobody ever erected a statue to a cricket. —Jean Sibelius (attrib.)
I wish I had as many dollars as this book has given me belly rumbles… —Gina Rinestone, The Young Exploiters’ Almanac.
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. —Franz Kafka, Cygnis ad Nauseam.

So here, you will find, not A Beginners' Guide, but A Suckers' End. If you want a sample, I post a piece most days to this Facebook page. I also share them on Bluesky, where there is less clutter. There are also some samples here.

Also to be added, Tales My Mother Taught Me (but shouldn't) and Keeeping People Is Wrong. The first is former-quiz-star smart-arsery, the latter is a very serious look at slavery in Australia.

This is my problem, you see, I keep swapping genres.