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.
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!
— 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.
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. I say sadly because, while he was malignant, he would believe anything. When I wrote in an official 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.
Now the thing is that he had looked up train in a tiny book called a 'desk dictionary', whereas I advised him in the trial to at least consult the Shorter OED, a reference which he failed to understand, though my two Arts-graduate superiors/judges got immediately. I, as a 20-year-old had dunked him in putrid smelly stuff with that one line.
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 with a giggle after he had stalked out, but people like Doug need to be brought down, and this book will do just that. Make sure they get it, because they certainly won't
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, or try these:
casse-noisette. A French device, whirled around on a string,
which imitates the sound of a fart.
castigate. A
small cast iron gate at the top of a high tower, overlooking the most noisome
part of a castle moat. A problematic troubadour
might often be ejected with great ceremony and heroic swearing from here, and being castigated has now come to mean
rough treatment of almost anyone.
casting couch.
Many are culled, and few are chosen.
castration. A eunuch experience.
casus belli. A Latin term for a male corset, used to hold a
wobbly abdomen in a tight grip. In mediaeval Europe, revealing that a foreign
ruler used a casus belli was seen as
a declaration of war.
Also to be added in tbe months ahead, Tales My Mother Taught Me (but shouldn't) and Keeeping People Is Wrong. The first is former-quiz-star smart-arsery about fondly-held myths, the latter is a very serious look at slavery in Australia.
This is my problem, you see, I keep swapping genres. Speaking of which, I have just published Sheep May Safely Craze, as both a book an e-book: here is a taste.
Since the dawn
of time, humans have always pondered: what is life? why are we here? is there
life after death? This book does not
answer any of those questions, but it has nice colours.
—Loki Svartifossson, R. E. M.
Loki-verification: with the exception of this statement,
absolutely nothing in this book is completely untrue.
Prologue
Reader, here, we reduce a tale of
multidimensional beings to a linear narrative. Just hang onto your hat, seat
and undergarments (also your teeth, if the Ninja
Tooth Fairy warning light is flashing). We will be as gentle as we can.
<SPOILER ALERT> To begin at the ending (and this is
quite helpful as a way of reassuring any excessively nervous readers), the
sheep had completed their quest and had very clearly won. <END SPOILER
ALERT> So now they were free from all compulsion, but the first dawn of
their new freedom saw them stuck with a great deal of filing. Some of the more
classically trained ones even muttered darkly about Pyrrhic victories.
Of course, it might have been worse, because the winners
in any quest must always meet the stern and precise requirements of the five Protocols
of Postadventurism. The rats had gone off somewhere, Eric, Alice and
the ravens were headed for Paris, and as usual, the sheep were left with the task
of tidying up and clearing away.
According to a paragraph (in somebody else’s
hand-writing, but found on an early page in Hypatia’s notes), this requirement
exists mainly to stop winners getting too full of themselves when they have
successfully completed their allotted tasks in a quest. Aided by Alice and
Eric, the sheep had completed every single task in their quest (OK. so there
was only one…), and now was the time for somebody’s comeuppance. It was No
Free Lunch time…
Even Erasmus, who had been through all of this before,
could not recall the full details of the Protocols, so Hypatia went into the
Library of Lost Manuscripts while the others stopped for coffee, read up on the
subject, and returned to tell them they had got off lucky.
“It seems we did very well,” she said, in a fruity
school-marmish contralto. “By tradition and law, those left standing at the
declared end of any adventure must meet the specific terms of a total of five
Protocols, but as things have turned out, only the last Protocol really needs
any attention. That said, even that one can be onerous, but at least it’s far
less messy.”
She went on to explain that the first of the Protocols
involves sorting out dead bodies, including body parts and portions too large
to fit in a bucket, but as they all agreed after looking around, those bits were
all entirely absent. The second item relates to damaged people and property,
along with smaller loose, lopped or separated body parts, and there were none
of those either, while the third Protocol (stitching, gluing, soldering and
minor surgical procedures) was clearly not applicable.
The fourth Protocol is mainly concerned with the mopping
up of blood, but after a quick discussion, the sheep all agreed that, even
under a generous and loose reading of the text of the Protocols, bleeding noses
caused by high-kicking IT people doing the can-can in their celebratory conga
line shouldn’t really count as Adventure-related, so the survivors could ignore
the fourth Protocol as well, and leave the robotic floor scrubbers to deal with
it.
That meant that the fifth and final Protocol was all
they had to work on. That one deals with Filing — and as finger-wagging lawyers
will tell you, that requirement can neither be avoided nor evaded. In the
aftermath, there is always a great deal of serious Filing to be done, and those
who are still conscious and upright must set to work, each in his, or her, own
way.
While it may be argued that some of their own-way efforts
did not necessarily lie entirely within the strict meanings set out in section
84 (2) (b) (iii) of the Protocols
Interpretation Act, Hypatia had decided to let that ride. Just being seen
to be filing if the inspectors came in would meet the letter of the law, so
Myfanwy was filing a callus on her right front hoof, a lump caused by the
waldos she wore for operating keyboards, phones and calculators.
Beside her, and totally unaware that all the items in
question were made from papier mâché,
King George III was filing the padlock on the ball and chain that Health and
Safety had attached to his ankle, just before midnight, as the conga line went
can-can. His file was also made of papier
mâché, but nobody said a word to George about how that choice of materials might
be related to his slow progress in the act of freeing himself.
Nobody minded his failure to contribute, because this task
kept him engaged, slightly amused, and out of harm’s way, and as Hypatia pointed out, if the inspectors did show
up, they would go after him first, and arguing with King George III invariably
made inspectors collapse into a confused slumber. George may have been short on
IQ points, but his fracturing illogic was a weapon of mass distraction.
As a group, the reserve team red sheep conga line,
weren’t very bright, either, and their Filing consisted of forming a line (after
all, as they explained to Erasmus, they were in single file) and zipping back
and forth across the floor, trying out the less outrageous of the advanced
moves that the élite top team had shown off, late on the previous night.
Wisely, these second-tier sheep elected not to try imitating the moves of the
IT people, whose can-can conga had totally eclipsed the top team’s performance.
All the same, the actions of the reserves were enough to
cause Erasmus to wonder briefly if any elements of the first four Protocols
might soon come back into play, but Erasmus often worried about the wrong
things. In hindsight, he should really have been worrying about Loki, who had donned
his blue waldos, and stripped down his abnormality projector, before using a
triangular file to give it a hair trigger, but that’s another story.
Only Erasmus and Hypatia were doing things that truly qualified
as Filing within the strict and rigid meaning of the fifth Protocol. At the
end, as Hypatia slammed the last box-file shut, a single sheet of paper flew
loose, and drifted, almost unseen, to the floor. Humming Candle in the Wind with a twisted and inverted conga rhythm that totally
wrong-footed the entire reserve team, King George III bent and picked up the
paper before he passed it up to Hypatia.
See? More smart-arsery,
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