Coding Your Book for the Kindle

With more detail and clarity than I can offer you, Paul Drummond has added a page to his own website in which he lays out the process of setting up a manuscript for e-publication to a professional standard.

"Each chapter was copied from the original Word document, converted to HTML and added to the .ePub document. Unnecessary formatting was removed as all styling within an .ePub document is handled by a global style sheet. Generally, eBooks shouldn't contain much styling / presentation information. For example, the Kindle always uses the same typeface so there's no point specifying which font to use. Also, the size of the page text can be adjusted by the user so there's no reason to specify absolute type size such as '12pt'. After converting all the text from the novel we had a well structured .ePub document, ready for use on various readers and devices, or conversion to .mobi format for the Kindle. However, it still needed a cover."

See the full page of info here. And contact Paul if you want to look into the same service for your own material.

Follower is now in the Kindle store - I'll make a bit more noise about that in a week or so when I should also be announcing a Kindle edition of Out of his Mind, the short story collection that nabbed me the British Fantasy Award, along with a little pre-Christmas freebie.

This Wednesday

A shout-out for Ellen 'Audrey Deux', singing with Sunday's Child at the Cobden Club in Notting Hill this Wednesday evening.

From the club's website:

Nottinghill's local DJ/Producer Alistair hosts "Hoochie Coochie live Club" Every week 4 to 5 of London's finest and best acts (both signed & unsigned) from acoustic singer-songwriters to soul/jazz to ska bands to rock'n' rollers perform from 9pm-11pm.

From 11pm to close Alistair will DJ an "Eclectic Portobello sussed" set of Ska, Electro, Dub, Down-tempo, the Stones, Classic tunes, Sebastien Tellier et DJ Shadow the likes.

The Cobden is a private members' club but the Wednesday sessions are open to the public. To get on the guestlist email alistair@retrolive.co.uk.

Nearest Tube is Westbourne Grove.

Super Duper 8

I spent last Friday morning in the BBC's number 4 grading suite at the Television Centre in London. For a while I'd been looking for some way of digitising the Super 8 that I shot in the late '70s and '80s, but there was always a problem.

For all its reputation as a 'bootlace gauge', the image quality of a well-exposed piece of Super 8 film can be pretty good. I'm talking now about camera original, reversal-processed film; start making prints or copies and the quality quickly deteriorates. Before domestic video came along there was a small but healthy market in Super 8 features for home screening, where the picture quality ranged from 'not unwatchable' to 'OK I suppose'. But first-generation Super 8 is sharp and stable and has an aesthetic all of its own. That's why it hasn't completely died away.

The problem was that when I investigated those ads that promise 'your home movies transferred to DVD', what I found was never too encouraging. Bear in mind that I once worked in this part of the industry, so I know how a transfer ought to look. I was seeking broadcast quality, not a 'film chain' setup where a projector throws the image for a camera to record, nor the 'domestic quality' promised by AV houses with desktop scanning machines.

Back when I'd worked in Granada Presentation the state-of-the-art was the 'flying spot' telecine machine, and apparently it still is. Such machines don't project the image but scan each frame of the film with a moving spot of light to give the sharpest, most detailed line-by-line rendering possible. The machines are the size of a double wardrobe and cost about 250 grand. But I was only planning to do this once, so I wanted to do it right.

I thought I'd reached my journey's end when I tracked down a guy in West London who owned an ex-broadcast Bosch telecine machine with a Super 8 gate. Unfortunately the person who'd sold him the business had made off with the sound heads and he could only offer mute transfers. It was friend-of-the-blog Stan who finally steered me to the last place I'd have thought to enquire... taking your home movies to the BBC feels rather like getting Rembrandt over to paint your kitchen. But you can! Hire the BBC's facilities, I mean. Rembrandt's dead.

The department in question is BBC Studios and Post Production and it's the arm of the BBC that sells the Corporation's services to the independent sector. Remember the days when neither ITV nor the BBC would acknowledge each other's existence on air, but everyone would refer coyly to 'the other channel'? No? Trust me, they did, and it was as stupid as it sounds. Now Granada makes University Challenge for the BBC, and there's a fair chance that any ITV show you're watching may have been shot in a Television Centre studio with a BBC crew (the night before my transfer booking, we watched a recording of Harry Hill's TV Burp in the same building).

Those services include the digitisation of Super 8 and even 9.5mm film to the standard seen in the BBC 2 Home Movie Roadshow. You don't have to run a production company, the service is available to all. The drawback? It's only for material you really, really care about because it doesn't come cheap. In my case this was edited footage that had been sitting in its cans for thirty years. It's both personal record and professional training. It's fragile. But for the price of a weekend in Brighton, it lives on.

For more work by the same department have a look at the Grading/Restoration/Archive page of the BBC site. If you click through to the 'case histories' you can read about how authentic colour was restored to a black-and-white Dad's Army episode using coded information hidden within the monochrome 16mm image. The account of the painstaking reconstruction of Space: 1999 for a pristine Blu-Ray release makes me wish I liked the show more - apparently the quality is staggering.

UPDATE: There's a featurette on the Dad's Army colour restoration here. Apparently it's not something that can be done with every monochrome telerecording - it depends on someone having forgotten to throw a certain switch that should have removed the colour information at the time.

In Sickness and in Stealth

Back in 1984 I travelled through Finland and Russia to research the book that would eventually become The Boat House. I say eventually because it was a far from easy road. Not the travelling, that was an adventure that I wouldn't have missed for anything. Helsinki, Joensuu, Savonlinna, the towns of Western Karelia... then onto the Leningrad train and into Soviet Russia, to sneak away from the Intourist guides and find the psychiatric prison hospital on Arsenal Street. Did you know that Russian trains depart without announcement, without a whistle, without even making a sound? I didn't, until I glanced back while stretching my legs on some little rural halt's platform to see mine leaving with all my luggage, money and passport but without me. I had to run on slippery ice and get the door open before I could scramble on board, which earned me a finger-wagging from the enormous babushka in charge of the carriage.

No, the problems started when I got home, turned yellow, and was diagnosed with Hepatitis A, the form that gets transmitted by faecal contamination in the food chain. I can't be sure of the source but if the chefs in the Hotel Europiskaya were as diligent and professional as the waiters, they probably couldn't tell the difference between the sliced ham and the toilet paper.

Believe me that you never really appreciate your liver until it shuts down on you. It goes hard, and it hurts. It leaves you listless and delirious and drained of energy, and recovery takes months. Mine did, anyway, but I couldn't afford an idle convalescence. My last published novel had flopped, the one I'd written right after it was still unsold, and I was broke. We lived in a small bungalow at the time, and it was about five paces from the bedroom to the room that I used as a study. For many weeks those five paces were about as much as I could manage in one go.

The first draft of The Boat House was written in those months. At the end of the process I looked back at what I'd done and became aware of two things. The bad news was that the manuscript read exactly like the ramblings of a sick person – it was shapeless, barely coherent and certainly unpublishable. But there was good news too, because I saw stuff in there that no well person could ever have come up with. The whole thing was like one long, sustained flood of vivid dream imagery.

So for the next few months I rewrote and reshaped, putting in the craft while trying to preserve that gift of tone. I had to be pretty ruthless with the material, and a lot of interesting stuff went by the wayside because it had no place in the new, tighter narrative scheme.

I suppose The Boat House has a special place in my affections. There have been several attempts to film it, including one by a Prominent British Director who raised finance on my screenplay and then replaced me with his non-writing office assistant.

Sometimes, the crashing of a project can bring more relief than disappointment.

Rewind

When I gave up the day job back in August 1980, we took half of the advance money from Chimera and set off for the US with the intention of stretching it out as far as we could and staying until it was gone. We travelled coast to coast and spent the main part of our time in Arizona, where I had the notion to set a novel. We'd passed through Phoenix going in the opposite direction two years before, and some aspect of the place had planted a hook in my mind.

It didn't quite work out as I'd planned. We stayed for several months and had a memorable time; gambling in Las Vegas, riding down the Grand Canyon on mules, walking the rim of Meteor Crater, riding night shifts with the Phoenix Police. But the novel never quite happened. The concept had preceded the experience, and in the light of the experience the concept seemed naïve. After a year or so I received a query from the Inland Revenue. They wanted to know about this trip that I'd claimed as an allowable tax expense. Where was the novel it was supposed to have led to?

I sent them my outlines and my unfinished drafts. Ah, they wrote back. Now we can see why you didn't get anywhere with it.

Everyone's a critic.

Michael Sharvell-Martin

You may not know the name, but if you've any familiarity with British TV comedy of the last 30 years you'll immediately recognise the face... actor Michael Sharvell-Martin died of cancer of the oesophagus on October 27th.

A consistent and solid player in scripted comedy (No Place Like Home, Terry and June), and a regular in shows with Dave Allen and Benny Hill, Sharvell-Martin was also the founding chairman of The Irving Society, dedicated to the life and memory of the Victorian actor-manager.

Remaindered

Last night I got to see Lee Goldberg's stinging and accomplished short film Remaindered, and I'm going to recommend it to you without reservation. Yes, I know Lee, and no, friendship has nothing to do with it.

The tale's as well-turned as you'd expect from a pro, and it takes imaginative flight from a reality that'll be recognised by anyone who's ever faced the world over a stack of books at a signing table. OK, so not everyone's done that. But it's about those dying-inside times when your soul and your sense of self-worth are laid bare for strangers to pick at, and there's no escaping them as they oblige.

It's the mise-en-scene, to get fancy about it, that takes it to another level. The small-town Kentucky locale is perfectly textured for the story, and Lee's choices are all spot-on. From the opening shots you've a real sense of a place and its people. A special shout-out here for Todd Reynolds as Detective Bud Flanek, whose easy John Goodman-like screen charisma left me surprised to see that he doesn't have a long resume of Hollywood character roles.

When I look at Lee's film and Danny Stack's more oblique and enigmatic Origin, I'm impressed and a little depressed at the same time... I've already written about my own early efforts with a camera and although I had at least as good a time and probably learned as much as these guys, my results were nowhere near as well-conceived or presentable (someday I'll tell you about Trick Shot, the entire 16mm movie that I shot with no sync sound and a busted light meter).

Trick Shot: screeenshots

But here's the lesson. You don't wait for someone to give you a break. You make your own. You want to be a visual storyteller but you don't want to drum up support, gather people, strongarm your friends, motivate strangers, beg favours or otherwise hustle for something you believe in? Then you're missing the point... that's actually the job.

Brooligan on the Kindle

I've just released four of my backlist titles as ebooks for the Kindle, with other platforms to follow when I can get around to putting the work in.

Formatting for a professional-looking result isn't the doddle that some would have you believe; up-converting a Word file with Amazon's own online tool gives a result that I personally wouldn't pay money for. These titles were put together by Paul Drummond, who offers a complete ebook design service from his website.

The books are Chimera (the genetic thriller that spawned the ITV series, US Kindle link here), creepy police procedural Down River (US link here), contemporary on-the-run fantasy Oktober (another ITV adaptation, with Stephen Tompkinson, US Kindle link here), and modern noir suspenser The Painted Bride (US here).


In the near future I'll be adding my Scandinavian supernatural horror tale Follower along with Out of his Mind, the short story collection that picked up the British Fantasy Award.

Amazon has (have?) kindly linked the new titles to old customer reviews. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this consists of three people who didn't care for the books and took the time to say so. While respecting their opinions (ya kinda hafta or you don't look too good) I'm crossing my fingers that others will soon chip in and provide some balance without me having to go the Orlando Figes route.

On the subject of embarrassing sock-puppetry, when researching the life of Daniel Defoe to flesh out Robinson Crusoe's backstory I found that one Defoe biographer had rubbished the most prominent book on the subject while writing his own a glowing five-star review. Unfortunately he must have misunderstood the process, and his real name appears on both entries.

The Secret in their Eyes

Okay, so I'm slow to catch on.

El Secreto de sus Ojos (The Secret in their Eyes) already won the Best Foreign Language Oscar, and here I am only now recommending it to you. And I saw it on a plane, which is hardly the cinephile way. Quality issues apart, imagine two hours of reading subtitles on that washy little seatback screen.

But I still loved the movie. Its storytelling and emotional tone won through. Someone once described my own stuff as 'melancholy mysteries' and I'm guessing that's why I connected so well with it.

Yeah, it's all about me.

Twitter

Brooligan is now on Twitter. You can find me here. I'll drop in the odd nugget about the new show that I'm developing for Fox, insofar as I can do it without tempting the gods.

You know how they love to screw with our plans.

Welcome to my World

From Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood:

Lionsgate is adapting Stanley Park, a pilot it produced in the UK for the BBC, for the US market. Giving the keynote speech this afternoon at the Mipcom TV market in Cannes, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer said that Fox “loved it.” Writer/creator Leo Richardson is now working on the pilot script, he said. The BBC though still hasn’t made its mind up. “Shame on you,” Feltheimer said.

Curses! Tagged Again

This time it's to make an A to Z list of books you've read, first one into your mind, no cheating. Here's where I get to give thanks for XENO by D F Jones (Science Fiction Book Club, 1979) and - after much head-scratching and the iron self-control required not to turn and scan the bookshelves - Gerald Durrell's A ZOO IN MY LUGGAGE.

I read the challenge from Good Dog about half an hour ago and I've got the full list now - I defy anyone who's put on the spot not to stop everything and tackle it right away. It's an open invitation so anyone can have a go. The rules are:

1. Go through the alphabet, and for each letter, think of a book you’ve read that starts with that letter (A, An, and The do not count).

2. You must write down the FIRST book you think of for any given letter.

3. You must have actually READ the book.

4. If you think of a more impressive-sounding book for a particular letter, you CANNOT change to the more impressive-sounding book.

ALL IN COLOR FOR A DIME Richard Lupoff & Don Thompson
BILL THE GALACTIC HERO Harry Harrison
CONGO Michael Crichton (one of his worst)
DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP Philip K Dick
EVERY MAN AN ENEMY William Howard Baker (Sexton Blake)
FARADAY'S FLOWERS Tony Kenrick
GREAT EXPECTATIONS Charles Dickens
HIGH CITADEL Desmond Bagley
IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN Maurice Sendak
JUST WILLIAM Richmal Crompton
A KISS BEFORE DYING Ira Levin
LORD OF THE FLIES William Golding
MARATHON MAN William Goldman (coincidence, honest)
THE NESTLING Charles L Grant
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY Kendal Burt & James Leasor
THE POWER AND THE GLORY Graham Greene
QUEST OF THE DAWN MAN J H Rosny
RODNEY STONE Arthur Conan Doyle
SOLARIS Stanislaw Lem
THURSDAY ADVENTURE John Pudney
UNDER MILK WOOD Dylan Thomas
VOICE OF OUR SHADOW Jonathan Carroll
THE WHITE DACOIT Berkeley Mather
XENO D F Jones
THE YOUNG VISITERS Daisy Ashford
A ZOO IN MY LUGGAGE Gerald Durrell

Now, back to work...