Tuesday 28 February 2023

Get finishing those damn books!

 As I was scrolling through Facebook just now, this advert popped up...

It's as if Facebook can read my mind. January and February have been rubbish months as far as the productivity of this line of crime novels I'm supposed to be writing, in conjunction with Hev Tweed, under our new pen name, which is going to take the market by storm and make our fortune. (Long story, still labouring under the delusion that this is possible). 

To recap. In September 2021 Tony Lee gave me the 20Booksto50K talk, about self-publishing crime novel series. "They don't have to be well written" he says. Since which time he's been earning half a million quid a year doing it. So, as he said after six months, "where's your book?"

September 2022: Hev and I discuss ideas. I start writing.

Sept 21 2022: First draft of Murder At Her Maj completed. But it's only 20,000 words long!

Nov 1 2022: 2nd draft completed, up to 48,734 words.

Nov 1 2022: Start writing Book 2, Dead Man's Jest, with NaNoWriMo.

End of Dec 2022: 1st draft completed, stands at 56,500 words.

January 2023: Printed out dummies of both 1st drafts, to help editing. Start getting feedback from Hev. Obviously lots of rewriting needed.

Wrote short story, The Queue

Feb 1 2023: Write 2nd short story, Tea Shop.

Feb 28 2023: To Slay The Dane (1st book, was At Her Maj) stands at 53,165 words.

                    Dead Man's Jest (2nd book) stands at 59,578 words.

So, it's Tuesday Feb 28th, I'm in Edinburgh with a day in which there's nothing to do but write, a result of a teacher's strike cancelling a school visit but it being too late to cancel the flights, parking and hotel. I must find myself a cafe and, in JK Rowling style, write a masterpiece. (Or, more accurately, do the rewrites and additions that will turn these under-length first drafts into full-length publishable books).

Let us see how well I do.

Update Feb 28: After 2 hours writing in a cafe in Edinburgh, and a tiny bit of writing in my hotel room in Glasgow, DMJ is up to 60,403 words (I'm rewriting, so that involved losing as well as adding words).

My Books and where to get them:


Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy 
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon Etsy 
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Lulu
Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Vol 1 Amazon -  Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Vol 2 - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Best Of British - Amazon
Doctor Who Colouring - Amazon - Lulu  - Etsy 
Punk Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
70s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
60s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
Scottish Pop Star Colouring - Amazon

NB: Etsy editions are signed and posted by me, and generally cheaper


Sunday 26 February 2023

Book change on Amazon, again


So Amazon closed my KDP account. Again. Or rather, to be fair to them, they closed a second account I'd opened, because you're not allowed to open a second account. They'd closed my first account, in error obviously, because they said I didn't own the rights to my content, which of course I did. But there's no appealing with Amazon, so once again I have no official Amazon KDP account. Howewver, I have still have my books on Amazon via Lulu and Blurb. 

And the good news is a new one has popped up there, which I didn't think was going to. So now you can get the Unofficial Eurovision Colouring Book - Best Of British and Irish, featuring a brand new image of Sam Ryder, plus a selection of images from volumes 1 and 2. Here it is.

Ooh, the new A4 version of Scottish Pop is up there, via Lulu, too. Hoorah.

As for all my books, they can now be found here:

Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy 
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon Etsy 
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Lulu
Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Vol 1 Amazon -  Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Vol 2 - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Best Of British - Amazon
Doctor Who Colouring - Amazon - Lulu  - Etsy 
Punk Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
70s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
60s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
Scottish Pop Star Colouring - Amazon

NB: Etsy editions are signed and posted by me, and generally cheaper

For archive purposes, here's where they were until this week:

Kev Book, where they were until Feb 25 2023:
Findlay Macbeth - Paperback - Kindle - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Paperback - Kindle - Etsy 
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Paperback - Kindle - Etsy 
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Paperback

Tales From The Bible - Paperback -  Kindle -  Etsy (signed)

Bowie By Robot - Paperback -  Kindle
Eurovision Colouring Vol 1 Amazon -  Lulu £10.94 - Etsy £6.99
Eurovision Colouring Vol 2 - Amazon £15.32 - Lulu £10.72 - Etsy £6.99
Doctor Who Colouring - Amazon £11.84 - Lulu £9.98 - Etsy £6.99
Punk Colouring - Amazon £15.61 - Lulu £10.98 - Etsy £6.99
70s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon £10.98 - Lulu £10.98 - Etsy £6.99
60s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon £12.69 - Lulu £10.98 - Etsy £6.99

Sunday 19 February 2023

3 Different Socks Shows at Leicester


 The Socks have been doing the Leicester Comedy Festival for longer than they've been doing Edinburgh. They first appeared there, I think, in 2006 at The Looking Glass, in a show put together by Alan (Seaman, of whom more later). Since then, every Edinburgh show has had its first Preview in Leicester in February, and we've put a show on, even when we've not done Edinburgh.


With the exception of 2021, we've played every single year since. We usually do two nights, sometimes three. This year was a three-show year. 


And one of the biggest challenges come in October or November, when I have to decide what the show's going to be called. Sometimes I think I'm going to go with one idea - like the year when the show was listed as Pop, and the other year which was Art, two ideas I still want to do - and I go with something else. (I think Art turned out to be Roll Up, and Pop was 2020's show, which never ended up happening, eventually morphing into Eurovision).


This was one of those years when, like many other shows in the Leicester Comedy Festival programme, I went with "The New Show" (a lot of shows plump for "Work In Progress"). And that was the plan, four months ago. By this month, though, I'd already decided I wasn't doing Edinburgh this year, and I'd done no writing on any new Socks material at all. So whatever Leicester was getting, it wouldn't be new.


I decided, with a week to go, and no chance to change any listings, that I was going to do Eurovision on the Friday, then my two favourite shows Shakespeare, on Saturday, and Superheroes, on Sunday. 



Not being able to publicise it, I had no idea how this would pan out. Would punters be disappointed or angry not to be getting a new show? Or would they be miffed to have to watch a show they might have already seen?


Turns out I needn't have worried. Friday night's Eurovision, which had the largest advance sales (around 30) went well, though there were a few technical problems cos John's (Morris, the show runner) train was late and we had to rush to get things set up. 


Saturday's Shakespeare was even better. Starting with quieter advance sales, we ended up with as many or more in the crowd. And they laughed even more. We overran by 10 minutes. Shakespeare is a really good show, and I don't think it's dated. Yet.


Sunday's Superheroes had the lowest advance sales, standing at only 14 before the show (though I'm told that was twice as many as the other shows in the venue, smug smug). Then we start, and it's sounding like a full house out there. I think we ended up with our biggest audience yet, and another fab reception. Overran by another 10 minutes, which is always a good sign, cos that's caused by laughter and audience interaction.


In the audience for Superheroes were Alan and Sonia, who I've not seen for years and who I met up with at lunchtime. Ironically it's the first Leicester for years that Heather hasn't come to, so she missed out on the meeting. Hopefully they'll come to Chepstow soon, an open invitation is theirs.



Another novelty about this three day Leicester weekend is that it comes in the middle of my Dry February. I'm not drinking until, at least, March 10th when I have my next blood test for my high cholesterol. So no going out to see shows and drinking at the bar, not that I was that bothered, and no going back to the hotel room and drinking on my own, which frankly would have been my ritual. This time I proved I'm capable of drinking cups of tea and watching Netflix after a show, like I assume most people do all of the time. 


So, in conclusion, Leicester proves once again to be a brilliant festival to put on a show at. Hopefully next year I'll reward it with a properly new show. Maybe I'll think of the title by October, wouldn't that be perfect?




Scottish Falsetto Socks tour dates


1 Mar Glasgow

3 Mar Eastgate Peebles

15 Mar Aberystwyth Arts

31 Mar New Continental, Preston

1 April Ropewalk Barton

7 April - Rondo Bath 

14 April - Chorley New Theatre

26 April - Harlequin Redhill

5 May - Cornerstone Oxon

11, 12 May - Old Joint Stock, Birmingham


My books and where to find them:


Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy 
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon Etsy 
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Lulu
Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Vol 1 Amazon -  Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Vol 2 - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Best Of British - Amazon
Doctor Who Colouring - Amazon - Lulu  - Etsy 
Punk Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
70s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
60s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
Scottish Pop Star Colouring - Amazon

NB: Etsy editions are signed and posted by me, and generally cheaper

Saturday 18 February 2023

Shakespeare As A Comic Strip by Kev F

 Shakespeare As A Comic Strip

(I was asked to write some notes for a forthcoming schools project, about how I've turned Shakespeare into comic strips. I've written about five particular passages in my books, and how and why I did them that way, with a suggestion of approaches the pupils might take themselves).


1 - From Findlay Macbeth, page 34 to 37 "Screw your courage to the sticking place."


My starting point with this graphic novel was me thinking how I would present Macbeth as a stage production. So I chose my setting, which is a successful salesman and his ambitious wife in 1970s Scotland. I didn't have the wherewithal to stage a full cast play, but I do have the ability to make a 120 page graphic novel so that was what I did.


My inspiration was Mike Leigh's play Abigail's Party from 1977, and my Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were his characters Laurence and Beverly. So I've taken the dynamic of their relationship, and their clothes and a lot of the decor, and made it into the world of my comic strip version.


I've retained parts of Shakespeare's dialogue, but for much of the book, and indeed this scene, I have taken the action of the moment and rewritten it in my own words. My idea for a stage version was to do it as straight Shakespearian text, but for a graphic novel an awful lot needs to be abridged. I needed to keep the action and the pace, but use way fewer words.


If you wanted to do something like this, look again at the action of a scene in a play. Think of a setting where the characters could be that is of interest to you - a different location, a different time period, do they have different accents or ethnicities, are they aliens or animals even?  Then try retelling the scene entirely in your own words, thinking of how differently they'd speak in their new setting.


2 - From Findlay Macbeth, page 48 & 49, The Porter Scene.


Here was an example of me taking the gist, the original point of Shakespeare's script, and updating it. The original Porter scene is a break in the action where an actor plays a comic character and performs the simple task of opening the door to introduce the next major character, Macduff. Before he does this, he turns to the audience and delivers a stand up comedy routine about recently dead people. In the Shakespeare script, as we have it, he does a routine about "an equivocator." This is, we think, a reference to Henry Garnet, a Jesuit who'd written A Treatise Of Equivocation and was executed for treason for it. He was killed in May 1606, making jokes about his death both topical and in dubious taste. 


So in my version, set in 1977, I've had Billy Connolly play The Porter. Billy was the most popular comedian in the country in 1977, so perfect casting. He tells tasteless jokes about 1977's most recent dead celebrities, Marc Bolan, Bing Crosby, and Elvis Presley. I like to think it's what Shakespeare would have wanted.


There are many scenes in Shakespeare, especially comedy scenes, that have dated so badly they don't work any more. So why not look at their original 'point' and try and make that point again, in your own words?




3 - From Prince Of Denmark Street, page 48 - 50, "To be or not to be"


In this adaptation, set again in 1977, Hamlet is a punk rocker, living and recording on Denmark Street, which was the home of the music business. He's modelled on Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, who lived on the street in 1977. I've updated most of the dialogue in the play, keeping the action and applying my own words. For a passage like this, however, where I needed to keep Shakespeare's lines intact, I've turned them into songs.


Here the To Be Or Not To Be soliloquy sees Hamlet changing his style from punk rock to something more ballad like and pompous. This is the first indication that his mental state is changing, following the revelation of how his father died. Other speeches are given in different musical styles. So the ghost of Hamlet's father gives his speech as a musical number performed on TV; Polonius gives a speech as a pretentious prog rock number; and Ophelia gives her first monologues as hippy folk songs, turning darker and more gothic after the death of her father.


Which Shakespeare texts might not sound realistic as dialogue, but make much more sense if you perform them as a poem, a rap, or song lyrics?


4 - From Prince Of Denmark Street, page 91 - 94, the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.


Here's something that should inspire anyone who wants to create their own Shakespeare scene: the action that happens out of shot. The death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and the whole journey that surrounds it, is completely unseen in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Maybe it was written in a script that didn't survive? 


So I've had free rein to create my own version of how these two characters, Hamlet's friends turned spies, accompany him on a trip during which he's supposed to be killed, then have the tables turned on them when he finds out their plans. Having no Shakespeare dialogue getting in the way enabled me to make it one of the most visual parts of the story. Parts of it are silent save for the sound effects, using the comic strip medium to its best advantage.


Look at anything that happens off-stage in Shakespeare, and make it happen before our eyes. NB: You may want to avoid Titus Andronicus here.




5 - From Midsummer Night's Dream Team, page 35 - 38, Puck and the Players


If you want to get really carried away adapting Shakespeare, you can do what I did with my version of Midsummer Night's Dream. It's already a comedy, Shakespeare's funniest in my book, so I could hardly make it any more comic, as I'd done with Macbeth and Hamlet. So instead I took the characters, and the basis of the plot, and expanded it into a story of my own, a heist movie.


In this scene, where Puck is being interviewed by Inspector Philostrate (you'll find the character in Shakespeare's play, but in a much more minor role than she has in my book), he retells the scene where we meet The Players for the first time. But there is a twist. For we learn, in Puck's telling of the story, that the players are all adopting false identities. I've incorporated elements of the movie Reservoir Dogs here, from their outfits to the line "I don't want to know your real name". 


How extreme can you be in taking Shakespeare's characters and re-imagining the story? What might have been happening behind the scenes? Could you even take characters from different plays and mash them together?



My Books and where to get them:

Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy 
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon Etsy 
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Lulu
Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Vol 1 Amazon -  Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Vol 2 - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Best Of British - Amazon
Doctor Who Colouring - Amazon - Lulu  - Etsy 
Punk Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
70s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
60s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
Scottish Pop Star Colouring - Amazon

NB: Etsy editions are signed and posted by me, and generally cheaper

Thursday 16 February 2023

Commander Nappies - new comics by kids


Two days of classes in the libraries of Bexleyheath, Sidcup, Welling and Erith, followed by a day at a special school in Coventry has thrown up a wonderful selection of comics by kids. It's half term, so a diverse bunch of groups were brought together by Bexley Libraries, full houses every one.


At Bexleyheath Library they came up with Rocco, the frog who's not a frog but a rock, and in Sidcup we got a rare example of a kid writing their name backwards. When I'm asking them to come up with names, this is one of the suggestions I make, but it hardly ever makes it through the knockout process. It is then, of course, impossible to think what to draw on the cover. Let's just say some titles are more inspiring than others.


Welling library's kids came up with a fun title that gave me an excuse to commemorate this week's big culturally iconic talking point, namely Sam Smith's costume from this weekend's Brits. Only a couple of the kids were even aware of Smith's outfit, but it was fun to draw. The drawing of Liz Truss was a mish mash of ideas from them all, resulting in a pretty naff cover.


Exhall Grange is a special school in Coventry, teaching kids with a wide variety of special educational needs. And, to demonstrate either how well I rise to a challenge or how badly they'd misunderstood the description of my workshop, two kids were brought into the class with white sticks. Yes, in the morning group (which had 30 kids in) and the afternoon group (which was only 6 strong) I had two kids who had, in one case, no sight whatsoever. One had partial sight. Both enjoyed the sound of the class, and the lad with partial sight produced some good work, though what he could see of me and the flipchart I couldn't ascerttain. The second pupil, with no sight, worked on special paper that created a raised surface, so her TA was able to draw things for her to feel. She contributed marvellously to all the verbal parts of the class, the subtitle "Fufnisasso" being one of the many fun words she creates, to the entertainment of all the group.

Mr Robinson, by the way, is a teacher whose trousers genuinely did split recently, and has become school legend. The kids described him to me for the drawing. And it is to their credit that, though they mentioned his glasses and his grey hair, none was impolite enough to mention the reason his pants had split is because he is a man of the fuller figure.


The celebrities these 6 groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip were King Charles (debut appearance), The Queen (still hanging in there), Ant McPartlin (who always gets suggested as "Ant & Dec" before I ask them to select just one of them), the Mona Lisa (most impressive and original choice of the week), Billie Eilish and, looking like the most popular choice of this year so far, Michael Jackson.


My Books and where to get them:

Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy 
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon Etsy 
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Lulu
Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Vol 1 Amazon -  Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Vol 2 - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Best Of British - Amazon
Doctor Who Colouring - Amazon - Lulu  - Etsy 
Punk Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
70s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
60s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
Scottish Pop Star Colouring - Amazon

NB: Etsy editions are signed and posted by me, and generally cheaper


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