The Book | Head Rambles

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World Book Day

Grandad March 4th, 2010

I see today is World Book Day.

This doesn’t surprise me because every fucking day is World Somefuckingthing Day, so I suppose books must get an elbow in at some stage.

I received my first cheque from the publishers a couple of weeks ago for my Magnum Opus. Quite an occasion? I brought it to my bank to lodge it, and there were the usual embarrassing scenes where the manager came out with the champagne and cigars [whereupon we had to go outside to smoke ‘em in the rain, which wasn’t exactly the ambience he was trying to create?]. He started plying me with leaflets telling me all about their fantastic investment schemes, and I told him to fuck himself, that the money was already spoken for to pay the balance on that island in the South Pacific. Did he honestly think I was going to hand my money over to a fucking bank to mind?

Anyhow, I digress.

Apparently, World Book Day is a day for encouraging people to read, and there is an emphasis on reading sessions in libraries. I have already contacted as many libraries as I can find and have received promises from them that my book will be on the reading list for the children’s sessions. It’s wonderful what a simple threat of arson will achieve? I didn’t particularly like resorting to threats, but I consider it my mission in life to broaden people’s minds, and where better to start than with the young?

I see those fucking publishers have dropped the price of The Book a tad, which means the next cheque will be a bit smaller. Bastards.

If you want to get your orders in for Mother’s Day [assuming you really hate your mother?] then you had better hurry – Amazon in the US have only five left, and there are just two left in the UK.

I see there is a new review on the US site. It’s long and rambling, but reasonably flattering. They end up with the paragraph:

Head rambles is a delightful read which makes you stop and laugh at the small things that make Irish life unique. The random order of stories and topics makes the book feel how it was meant to; like a witty, grumpy old man venting his frustrations about everyday life to the world.
You can almost see him sitting at the laptop with a cup of tea and his pipe. Highly recommended.

I wouldn’t object to this apart from the second last sentence – “You can almost see him sitting at the laptop with a cup of tea and his pipe”. What the fuck do they mean by that? “You can almost see him”?

Are they implying that it’s all a figleaf of my mind?

Do they think I am making it all up?

Fucking nerve!

The perfect present

Grandad November 8th, 2009

It may be a strange thing to say, but I had almost completely forgotten about The Buke.

The concept of having a book published and then forgetting about it may seem strange, but with my memory, anything is possible.

Back at the beginning of the year there was a lot of hype and a little publicity over it, what with radio and newspaper interviews and the like, but since then, it sort of slipped my mind.

An old friend called around a couple of weeks ago. He hadn’t been here in a year, and he commented on a yoke Herself had hung on the wall. It was a full page article about the book launch, and my friend commented on it.

“What’s this?” says he, reading the article.

“Oh!” says I, and to my own surprise I found myself telling him that I had had a book published. I had forgotten about it.

After he had gone, I took a peek into the page in Amazon to see how I was ranking on the grand scheme of things. Wow! 2,795,545th in the list of book sales. I’m in the top three [million]!!

I also found that someone had stuck in a review. It was rather flattering.

Head rambles is a delightful read which makes you stop and laugh at the small things that make Irish life unique. The random order of stories and topics makes the book feel how it was meant to; like a witty, grumpy old man venting his frustrations about everyday life to the world.
You can almost see him sitting at the laptop with a cup of tea and his pipe. Highly recommended.

They obviously hadn’t read it…..

I must get in touch with Mercier.

I must find out if they managed to sell any or all of the fifty copies that were printed.

I must find out if they have any spare copies.

I might buy a couple to give as presents.

I can give them to the Lads down in the pub, and really piss them off.

Book of the Week

Grandad July 30th, 2009

I was sitting here last night minding my own business, when I thought I’d take a look at my mail.

There were a few sitting there all right, and my first thought was that the recession has definitely bottomed out, and we are on the way back to normality. I know this, because they were offering me 80% off Viagra, but this has steadily been decreasing to 75%.

There was also a mail in there from the editor of The Irish Book Review in America.

He announced that The Book is their Book of The Week.

This annoyed me. For a start they should have nominated it as Book of The Month, and also there were a few typos in the extracts they had published. I told him my thoughts.

He neatly side stepped the issue and started pouring on the flattery. He told me how funny the book was [I knew that already] and how it well deserved to be Book of The Week [I knew that also]. He asked me to write them an article about the Irish in America [I said I’d think about it].

But he then made the mistake of telling me how he got the book for nothing, as the publishers had sent it to him. Now that really pissed me off. I hate people who freeload off the back of my blood sweat and tears.

I got another email from him -

He has promised to pay for the book.

Some people just have to learn the hard way.

Don’t mess with Grandad.

Google Book Settlement

Grandad April 23rd, 2009

For a week or so, I have been considering suing Google.

Yesterday, I decided to go ahead and started making out my case.

My case is very simple – they have gone and photographed my house again, and once again they didn’t warn me beforehand. As a result, the lawn looks shabby; my special crop of tobacco is there for all to see and worst of all, Herself had just hung her knickers out to dry. So I am suing them for breach of privacy and publication of obscene material.

Imaging my surprise then when I got a letter in the post, giving me the latest progress on my class action against Google.

I know that a class action is when a lot of people gang up together to sue someone for a common complaint. I have seen ‘Erin Brockovich’. So had my neighbours all been complaining about the knickers too? I can’t say I would blame them. It is a pretty horrendous sight.

But it transpired that this class action was over Google robbing the contents of books and publishing copyright material on the Interweb. So apparently myself and Stephen King and a few other of the lads were bringing Google to court. Nice one.

I rang the people who sent me the letter to ask when I was getting my millions. They said there had been a little mistake, and that a settlement had been reached a couple of days before my book was published and therefore the settlement didn’t apply to me. Bollox.

But they then went on to say that apparently My People are still suing Google’s People in an ongoing case. Brilliant.

I wonder what I will do with the millions when I win?

I must post Herself’s knickers over to the case as additional evidence.

I’ll have to label them as ‘Toxic Waste’.

Grandad needs liquidity

Grandad April 21st, 2009

I am fucking furious.

I was sniffing around the Interweb just now and came across this.

What the fuck is that about?

The little bollix goes off without a word to anyone and makes a unilateral decision that affects all of us. The little shit.

It’s all right for him. He can go off mincing around doing his gardening and his knitting or whatever poncy things he likes doing but what about me? I have serious commitments that require funding. I have Guinness and tobacco to buy, and ammunition to purchase. How am I supposed to manage now?

This really is serious. Like the banks, I need capitalisation and funding. My adventures cannot continue without liquidity [more Guinness].

I am loth to put up one of those Donate Here buttons because that would turn me into a beggar, and God knows you can’t walk for ten steps these days without tripping over one of them.

There is only one solution.

Get out there and buy the fucking book! I need sales in the hundreds of thousands to afford my simple lifestyle, so push the book like mad. Buy copies for your neighbours. Buy copies for your friends. Buy copies for your enemies. Get me on Oprah or whatever the bint is called.

Nuclear missiles aren’t cheap, you know.

Even on eBay.