REVEL BARKER -- A MAN OF IMPRESSIVE ABSENCE

There's at least one in everyone's life, I guess ... the chap who, whenever and wherever you arrive, has just left.

In the newspaper office, on the story, in the pub, it always seemed to be Revel Barker I'd missed by a whisker.

Revel Barker -- I ask ya -- what a name! It took a while, but eventually, it dawned on me that Revel Barker didn't exist at all. He was as real as a house byline in the Daily Mirror. He was the journalistic equivalent of Joe Soap. And, for decades, I'd been the butt of a practical joke that chums all over the world were in on.

"Tell Marr he's just missed Revel Barker."

"C'mon, he won't fall for that one again."

"Yeah he will. Watch."

"Revel Barker just left Manchester for London, Neil. Pity you missed him."

"Well, as't go to t'bottom of ower stairs."

"Revel Barker just left London for Manchester, Neil. Pity you missed him."

"Dash it all!"

"Revel Barker was in the chair at the White Hart -- champagne all round. He's just gone home, though."

"Bugger."

"Och, Revull Behrkerrr wuz jist in the newsroom. You were awa in the Copy Cat playin' dominoes on yer break wi' yer pals frae the model lodgin' hoose. He's jist caught the train back tae England. Maybe even London."

"Puch ma horne!"

Whenever I walked into a Barkerless bar, those already tippling didn't dash off to the gents en masse merely to stick me with the next round, as honourable journalists do ... they were in there, doubled over with laughter, hugging urinals for support, tears blinding them, that I'd fallen for the Revel Barker jape again.

I've still never met Revel Barker, of course. How could I when there is so obviously no such person? I've now seen several pictures allegedly of him, but they all appear to show different men -- sometimes pleasantly plump and jolly, sometimes lean, bearded and intense, sometimes office-pale, often with a suspiciously even tan. In some he is smiling, in others, he is standing  commandingly at the wheel of a yacht that was once owned by Adolph Hitler, or glimpsed only as a smudge on an old snap of some cricket team of Yorkshire journalists fresh from the Wayzgoose beer tent.

I left Mirror Group Newspapers in the early eighties, just before the notorious Robert Maxwell took the reins.

"Guess who's Captain Bob's Number One, Neil."

"Dinnae tell me ..."

"Aye, Revel Barker."

Then Maxwell took his famous fatal swim. What was to be found lying on his desk when news of his death broke?

"You'd hardly credit it, Marr ... it was Revel Barker's signed redundancy deal. The man's worth millions."

I escaped to France and for several years reveled in being unBarkered. But it wasn't to last.

When I turned from journalism to a more honest form of fiction and became a revered editor and courageous independent publisher, the Revel Barker prank started anew. This time, ass about tip.

"Guess who's also left the UK for the Mediterranean, Neil."

"Not Revel ..."

"Yup, Barker. He's on Gozo. I think he might own it, but he says it's only rented."

The old gag was taking a new twist. Revel Barker was now following me.

A few years after I launched the first BeWrite.net website in 2000, I got a call from an old newspaper pal in Glasgow called Terry Houston. His Sweet Molly Maguire was the first novel we published.

"I see anithurr o' the auld gang has opened yin o' thae webshite thingies," he told me.

I knew what was coming.

"Revel Barker. Great, eh!"

"Aye. Great, Tezz."

Right enough, there it was www.gentlemenranters.com -- billed as The Last Pub in the Street. Fleet Street that is. The site has become my regular Friday favourite over the years, crammed with hilarious, beautifully spun yarns of the days when Fleet Street was much more than a mere address in London EC4. Webmaster: Revel Barker. It's That Man Again!

BeWrite Books is plugging along nicely in the mid Noughties. Then, there's headline news at GentlemanRanters that an old colleague from newspaper days has decided to hop onto the independent publishing band wagon. I don't really need to tell you who, do I?

The noble Guardian newspaper announced the invention of 'hacklit' by ... yawn, yawn ... surely the Guardian should know better than to fall for the Revel Barker line. But then, even the mighty Times said: "The Gentlemen Ranters site is a brilliant compendium of reminiscences of the great days of Fleet Street," and impishly gave all the credit to you-know-who.

I sometimes get friendly emails from a man claiming to be Revel Barker on Gozo. He's even opened a PayPal account in that name so that I can buy books published by ... yup, Revel Barker Publishing.

Now, I'm big enough and ugly enough these days to know there is no such person as Revel Barker. All the nonsense you've just read is merely to recommend to you the www.gentlemenranters.com website I just mentioned. (I contribute occasional stories and am edited by ... OK, you know.) And to even more highly recommend to you the catalogue of superb books (linked from the site) by and about journalists. I've read many and every one has been a cracker.

One I found particularly compelling recently was about Liberace's successful litigation against the Daily Mirror's Cassandra column for daring to suggest that the late, flamboyant, showman pianist  -- famous for sequins, candelabra and a little honky-tonk after hours -- might not have been quite the lady killer his dear old mum believed him to be. Crying All the Way to the Bank, it's called. No prizes for guessing that the author name on the cover is that of Revel Barker.

I don't feel too bad about having been the hapless victim of the Revel Barker joke these forty-some years. I read the books from the little publishing house of that name, and I'm enjoying the last laugh.

Take a look: www.gentlemenranters.com and treat yourself to a virtual pint and a  real chuckle in the last pub in The Street ... courtesy of Revel Barker, natch.

Hoots toots the noo. Neil (Fax copy of current passport and birth certificate available on request)

THE TOR ... BY LIZA GRANVILLE ... WIN FREE COPIES

Congratulations to Liza Granville whose new novel, The Tor, is released this week by BeWrite Books.

This outstanding novel -- an apocalyptic fantasy with its feet firmly on the ground -- is Liza's third BB title ... and it really has bowled us over.

It's also one of the first titles Tony has worked on to produce, as well as the usual high quality paperback, perfect ebook versions in PDF, ePub and MobiPocket formats. That should cover pretty well every way you might want to read The Tor.

To learn more about the book and about Liza and to read an extract, just click on the open book icon in the top right margin of this page to reach the site (www.bewrite.net), opt for the book-store and click on the cover of Liza Granville's The Tor.

For those interested in the details: the book was handled editorially by Hugh McCracken, text and cover was designed by Tony Szmuk ... and we all (as usual) joined in the proof reading. Printing is by Lightning Source International in the UK and US and ebook formatting and design is by Tony.


But the star of the show is the author ... let's hear it for Liza Granville!

Here's the back cover text ... and if, after reading, you go to the  BeWrite store, to learn a little about Liza you'll know the answer to a question below that could win you a free copy.

Among the rotting ruins and open sores of a diseased Earth, Jude – sole survivor of a solitary group of hungry travellers and scavengers – is destined for a vital task ... but those who knew what that task is are all dead.

Bewildered and questing, Jude makes an epic Odyssey across a dying and decaying landscape of corrupt countryside and crumbling cities, thinly peopled by savage killers and unworldly dreamers, in a desperate bid to discover what he is meant to do.

Along the winding way, he gathers new companions: a wretched waif, rescued from slavery and cannibalism, a mysterious woman of beauty and secrets, and an equally mysterious, though anything but beautiful, old man of unfathomable prophesies and ferocious violence. At times, Jude feels his tired old wagon horse is his only true ally as the once-clear dividing line between friend and foe becomes blurred.

In this futuristic re-telling of ancient Grail legends, Jude becomes knight errant in a joust to the death between fear and duty.

Will he become the saviour of humanity or its doomed scapegoat at the end of days ... when his quest finally brings him to The Tor?

With characters that become as familiar as personal friends and enemies, a story that is both vaguely remembered and vividly fresh, and pages that seem to turn in the wind, Liza Granville inspires her reader to ask, for new reasons, the age-old question ... is our very presence on the only planet we know intimately the problem or the solution? Are we Mother Nature’s children or her killer?

First paper reader to answer the question below in a comment to this blog post will get a free paperback of The Tor. First digital reader to post the answer in comments will get the ebook download format of choice.

QUESTION: IN WHICH COUNTRY DOES AUTHOR LIZA GRANVILLE LIVE AND WRITE?

Cheers. Neil

Author Enemy Number One Isn't Piracy ... It's Obscurity

From the fables of Aesop and the earliest books of the Bible, through Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Douglas Adams, this writing life has always been about making words stick. Literature is an inexhaustible goldmine of quotable quotes.

One simple line that registered with me recently, though, wasn't from a great man of letters at all, but from hard-nosed business scribe Seth Godin in the US. He said: "The enemy of the author is not piracy but obscurity."

Simple, memorable, to the point ... and oh so bloody true!

Take ebook piracy, for instance. The big boys of the publishing industry are frantically trying to safeguard their investments by slapping Digital Rights Management padlocks and geographical restrictions on their best sellers. At least, war on piracy is their official line.

Who're they trying to kid? The rawest young intern in the mail room knows that it's just as easy to scan and pirate a paper book as it is to hijack an electronic copy online. The most pirated books are, in fact, books that have not even been officially published in digital form. (JK Rowling, who flatly refuses to allow her publishers to release ebooks of her Harry Potter series has seen all her novels offered as free ebook downloads all over the net in all digital formats, available within hours of official launch of hardback, courtesy of the pirates.)

We've said this before, so I won't go into detail again, but -- in a nutshell -- DRM and geographical restrictions do not discourage piracy as is claimed, they merely greatly inconvenience the honest customer, garner superfluous sales ... and actively encourage frustrated readers to turn to the black market.

So that's out of the way. Piracy ain't the enemy.

But what about obscurity? How about those brilliant authors whose names are so massively and universally unknown that no self-respecting pirate would even bother to run up his Jolly Roger to give chase?

How do we turn an author into someone worth ripping off? What's the recipe for buccaneer bait?

Answers on a postcard please ... Neil

Poetry As Therapy -- By BeWrite Books Poetry Editor Sam Smith

Art, every kind of art, can be defined by its function.

When any music is played as background music it becomes by definition musak. Likewise when painting or the writing of poetry are used solely as a means of self-expression then both become by definition therapy.

Now let us suppose that there are only three purposes to writing — to explain me to you, you to yourself, and me to myself. Therapy can use the first and last of these. And that is as far as such writing goes.

Such ‘poetry’ therapy depends on the lingering superstitious belief in the runic power of words, on the use of the magic power of words to make the strange commonplace, ordinary and unthreatening — express a troublesome idea, a bothersome fixation and, by putting it into words, make it safe.

But any artist, to be worthy of the name, has to begin by questioning his or her every assumption; and assumptions are the glue which hold most individuals together. The true artist then has to go beyond assumption and question their every certainty, must question even the validity of their own experiences.

This self-regarding, this destructive narcissism, although essential to the process of making art, does not lead to psychologically well-balanced individuals. Consequently those who place art, or any other goal, as more important than equilibrium, have to be a psychotherapist's nightmare.

And yet counselling groups employ poetry as therapy? And those ‘poets’ assume their outpourings to be deserving of publication?

For any such self-expression to become art further critical self-examination is required. Because without that self-lacerating, self-disparaging self-criticism all such self-expression is but self-decoration.

That is not to say that the creator, to be a true creator, must risk his or her equilibrium.

John Clare, for instance, initially took strength from his unique talent, even though he ended as a man driven mad, driven into himself. The foundation for that, however, was laid first by a denial of his art, then by a brief and false celebration of it. What it was that destroyed him, what near obliterated his sense of self, was not his art, but the physical and social destruction taking place all around him. Making John Clare truly a poet for our time.

Sam

Why I Write -- Hugh McCracken

When I was first asked to speak to a Writers’ Group, I wondered what I should talk about. I’m a writer not a speaker and writing is essentially a solitary occupation – you lock yourself away from everyone else and snarl at any interruptions. Lyn and my family knew that.

    But there is another side. When you are not writing, you watch, you listen, you take note in writing or otherwise. These are skills I learnt and polished as a young adult in one of my early careers.

    When did I start to write? In one sense as long ago as I can remember. I was one of those children, irritating to other children, who as a small boy when playing make believe games with my friends was always the one who came up with the scenarios. I would become furious when the other ‘actors’ in the game deviated unknowingly from the ‘script’ which was only in my head.

    That stage of play ended as we twelve-year-olds moved into secondary school but not before it had resulted in fights when I, angered at my beautiful plot – again known only to myself – being ruined by the action of some stupid player, would shout, “You can’t do that!”

    “You’re not the boss,” would come the reply. “”I’ll do what I bloody well please.”

    And the fight was on.

   Ever since I learnt to read I consumed every book I could lay hands on and it eventually dawned on me that putting my scenarios on paper was probably a less hazardous procedure than trying to direct. However, the plots always grew so complex and convoluted that invariably I ended ripping up the sheets in disgust.

    Essay writing in school – a hated chore to my chums – was an opportunity to put my thoughts on paper for someone else to read. My mother wasn’t so pleased at the ocean of red ink on my ‘good’ essay jotter. (long before the days of spellcheckers).

    “How a boy who spends half his life with his nose stuck in a book can’t spell, I’ll never know,” was her comment.

    She wasn’t at all mollified by the comments at the end, also in red: ‘A good story’ or ‘Nice ideas, well presented.’ It was the: ‘Rewrite into some recognizable hieroglyphic, AND USE A DICTIONARY ‘ that always caught her eye.

    It was one patient English teacher, Mr Henderson, whose classes were undisciplined nightmares that taught me to set an essay aside for some time then come back to it to edit and proof. He also taught me an invaluable lesson in gauging what my editor wanted. A skill that stood me in good stead later as a freelance writer for periodicals.

    He had set the topic, A pleasant Saturday evening and emphasized the idea was to convey pleasure to the reader. I wrote an essay about wandering the streets of Glasgow having fallen out once again with my chums and seeking shelter from the rain in a school hall where there was a political meeting in session. I closed the essay with, ‘Some Saturday night, I’ve spent better evenings with the toothache.’ 

    I`m afraid my view of politics hasn`t changed.

    Mr Henderson made some very flattering comments about the style and tone of the essay and gave me an F, Fail. ‘Read the assignment.’

    Some of my teachers when I visited the school part way through my first year at university were surprised at my choice of Science and not English. However, jobs for graduates in the sciences and engineering were better paid than those for English literature teachers and I felt I could always write later.

With adult jobs, writing became reports and analyses with little time for thinking of fiction. It was not until the mid-1980s that I started to write short stories again and it was not until 1992 that I started to think seriously about writing and publishing fiction. After all most of my superiors in different walks of life considered my reports largely fiction anyway.

    So in 1992 when I retired from teaching I became a freelance writer. 

    One of my early assignments for a monthly magazine for the building trade was a 1,400 word article on recent innovations in plumbing. When I protested to the editor I knew nothing about plumbing his encouraging reply was: “Right, those who do know about it can’t write. Educate yourself.”

    Armed with my tape recorder I visited every plumbing warehouse in Winnipeg interviewing plumbers and their suppliers. The article came to over 2,000 words and the editor threw it back. 

    “I’ve got space for 1,400 words,” he said. “I told you that.”

    Mr Henderson’s ‘F’ grade came back to my mind. I rewrote the piece and I never again missed my assigned allotment by more than plus or minus 50 words.

    I wrote for that magazine for the better part of four years on a variety of building subjects I knew nothing about before I started the articles. I used the same technique of going to the sources and much to my surprise at a party for one builder, celebrating winning a contract, their architect congratulated me on the articles saying, he and his partners found them very useful for keeping up to date with new products.

    However, the writing bug had settled well in – for it is an affliction, I could no more stop writing than I could stop breathing – and although articles and writing speeches brought in cash it didn’t satisfy the bug. I wanted to write fiction.

    One of my stories, Rules of the Hunt, started off as a short story. On the Island my sister lives on, a wood is closed to the public by its owner for twenty-four hours each year. This is to prevent it from becoming a public right-of-way, but local children tell the tale it is haunted for that time and any who enter when it is closed, vanish. Three twelve-year-old boys, neighbours of my sister, told me the story. The characters ‘grew on me’ and before I knew it the short story had become a novel. It was largely written in my last year as Headmaster – Principal of a private school. At monthly Board Meetings I scribbled furiously in my steno pad in shorthand. Board members were sure I was conscientiously making notes, but, in fact, I was writing a novel.

    Doing this at one Board meeting took my mind back almost forty years. I had been taught a form of shorthand, although at the time I felt I didn’t really need it. (See Heads up for Harry.) Sitting on the top deck of a London bus I was scribbling – practicing really– on a steno pad when the conversation of two rough looking characters in the seat in front of me caught my attention. It struck me as incongruous they should be discussing holiday resorts and the food in the terms they were using when suddenly the words Broadmoor and Peterhead came through – two of His Majesty’s prisons for really serious criminals. At that point they looked back at me sitting pencil-in-hand poised over the steno pad. 

    I never left a bus, before or after, so quickly, jumping off when it slowed only slightly rounding a corner.

    I smiled at the memory and the Board member who had been speaking said with a frown: “Did I say something amusing?”

    Other books followed although Kevin and the Time Drum managed to get published before Rules of the Hunt.

The Hunt series was originally marketed as a Young Adult but several readers and reviewers have compared it favourably with Lord of the Flies and suggested it is more of a general readership book. The third volume of the series was just released in August of this year. The final draft was completed in Dunoon the week before Lyn died. She had been bugging me to: “Get the damn thing finished,” but when she read the draft she said: “No, that won’t do. You can’t end it like that.” I had closed the series killing off one of the characters, Davey, and for some reason Lyn had a soft spot for him, rogue that he was. So the final two chapters had to be rewritten plus an epilogue so that as Lyn said: “That’s better. It leaves an opening for Davey to have a book of his own.”

    I always enjoyed reading detective novels and police procedurals and The Knotted Chord came from some conversations with RCMP officers of my acquaintance – over drinks I must admit. The publication history of Chord was not without its complications. I had sent it to a publishing house in London and their reply, although encouraging as to the writing ended with: “A little too ‘meaty’ for our readers and the provincial setting unfamiliar.” The setting is Toronto! Mentally I replaced ‘provincial’ with ‘colonial’. But I did learn a lesson. Research what the publishing house actually publishes – that is, its target market.

    With the second publisher in England the manuscript reached the final proof, a cover was selected, then the company went bankrupt! I had a nine-months battle with the Receivers in Bankruptcy to regain my rights before I finally published it through Bewrite under my pseudonym Alistair Kinnon.

The use of a pseudonym arose when I realised that anyone who read The Knotted Chord or the sequel, The Tangled Skein, would certainly never buy a book by that author for a teenager. When I finally finished Heads up for Harry my older son, David, on reading it said it should also have been published under a pseudonym. My failure to realise this gave rise to an amusing incident at Lyn’s funeral. My niece, at the reception after the funeral, was telling me that since her twelve-year-old son had thoroughly enjoyed Rules of the Hunt, her father-in-law had given him another of my books. At her reply, Heads up for Harry another guest almost choked on his whisky. At his explanation of what that book was about, Susan’s comment, “That explains why the book has vanished. It’s hidden somewhere in Scott’s room,” started him laughing again. Susan did start speaking to me again some weeks later.

Following publishing through BeWrite I was asked to become one of the partners and senior editor which I now am.

Hugh