My Unbound Diary Part 5 – Back On Track

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Catherine Smith, crowdfunding, Dianna Vickers, fame, fiction, Gethin Anthony, James Ellis, Latitude Festival, poetry, publishing, short stories, short stoy collections, social media, spoken word, stars of the week, Unbound, Word Theatre, writing

Crowdfunding a book is overwhelming. There is so much marketing to do just to eek out one or two supporters. Unbound (the crowdfunding publisher I have signed to) send you a pledge update once a week so you can see who has pledged and what level they’ve opted for. Everytime someone pledges I want to shout their name from the rooftops. In fact my book In The Future Everyone Will Be World Famous For Fifteen Minutes is, as the title suggests, about fame and I am going to offer to give top pledgers the star treatment on social media.I will make you famous for a week. This is not necessarily about the amount pledged. Here’s the first:

Last week I was a bit despondent having only achieved 13% of the required funding in a month. This week I am 26% funded! Over a quarter of the way there! This is a big deal for me; I am beginning to think that it can be done. There is about 8 weeks left to pledge. If I work really hard I can do it but I can’t do it without your help.

Amongst my pledgers this week was my old Creative Writing tutor, the wonderful poet and short story writer, Catherine Smith. When I first started writing Catherine made me feel as though I was actually good at it. She also taught me that adding a bit of poetry can lift prose into something really meaningful and thought-provoking. I write poetically, I can’t help it, I like language to flow, to alliterate, to unfold like a movie in your mind. (These days I don’t like too many similies so I don’t know why I wrote that last bit.) Catherine left me a message on my last blog post:

I loved Starlings and am so glad you are going down this route, Unbound is an excellent model, though I think UK publishers need a kick up the arse to be less prejudiced against publishing short stories, which as we know is a transcendent and exacting form.

Take note UK publishers and thank God for Unbound, who really are enabling many writers outside of the mainstream to get published.

Unbound have a Facebook support group on which shell-shocked writers can exchange experiences and come up with new ways to get pledges. One of the writers, James Ellis, is a Rattle Tales regular and I asked if he wanted to do a funding event in Brighton. Other authors in the group expressed an interest too so I’m going to book a date at The Brunswick Cellar Bar and see what happens.

I have a sort of plan –  when to contact certain people, when to push Facebook/Twitter ect. how to drawn attention to the project. One of the stories (Underneath) was performed by Games of Thrones actor Gethin Anthony and Diana Vickers at US spoken word group Word Theatre’s UK shows a couple of years ago. I contacted Word Theatre to ask if they could help promote and was told there was a video of one of the events. I was lucky enough to see the performance at Latitude Festival and it remains one of the thrills of my writing career. Here’s a short extract:

Please pledge to this book of short stories. There is something in it for everyone. For just £10 you can help bring this book to life.

https://unbound.co.uk/books/fifteen-minutes

 

 

Latitude 2015, Dracula and Political Poets

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Breaking Bad, Dracula, Hanif Kureshi, Latitude, Latitude Festival, literature, live lit, Luke Wright, Mike Figgis, pink sheep, poetry, Portishead, Rob Auton, short stories, Suffolk, The Sopranos, The Wire, Thom Yorke

I’m just back from Latitude Festival and this year was certainly one to remember.  Of the party I was with, one almost teen was carted off in an ambulance due to a crushing incident at Catfish & the Bottlemen and another left in an ambulance due to a perforated appendix. Before that everything was great! Thankfully both kids are fine and on their way to recovery. This (and events in the news) has made me aware of how precious and breakable our almost growns are. I spent much of this Latitude hanging out with my thirteen year old son. We went a day after my husband and youngest because he was on a school trip to Amsterdam. We caught the train to Diss on Friday and found ourselves sitting opposite Hanif Kureshi. He seemed at bit grumpy so I didn’t ask for a recap on his thoughts about Creative Writing MAs; instead, we just interrupted his sleep by eating crisps and watching Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Junior) on the iPad. It’s much easier by train, no massive traffic jams just a coach from Diss to the Orange Gate and you’re in.  

I have blogged from the festival before, it is such a relaxed, happy event and it helped that the sun shone and the sheep were neon. The poetry tent rocked it this year. Every time I walked by people were spilling out of the edges, craning to listen to beat box poets, sound and word artists and the politically angry. Luke Wright’s poem/play , What I Learned From Johnny Bevan, was outstanding, heartfelt, personal and yet political with a capital P. Like all good art it wasn’t perfect, it was bit rough around the edges, but it said more about the current state British politics than a thousand episodes of Question Time.  There were lots of big names this year, Michael Rosen, John Cooper Clarke, Simon Armitage but the crowds came for the lesser-known too, and I managed to catch, and laugh along with, Emma Jones and Rachel Pantechnichon but missed out on Rob Auton on Sunday because I had to go home. Rob Auton is my poetry hero, I saw him at Latitude  a few years ago and used his book with the reading group at BHT, you should buy his book.

I was a bit disappointed in the Literary Arena, maybe most of the good stuff was on Thursday and Sunday when I wasn’t there. There was a lot of debate and hardly any short story, which is odd for an arts festival as short stories are perfect for dropping in on and listening for ten minutes. My writing career highlight was having a short story read here by Word Theatre a couple of years ago. More short story Latitude. Interestingly the best advice on creativity was given in the Film Tent by Mike Figgis. After entertaining us with tales of working with Nic Cage, someone asked him if we were in the golden age of television. No, came the emphatic answer. The writing is good, The Sopranos was great, so was The Wire, but some shows start off with a great first season from one author and by the end are produced by a roundtable of writers all trying to get as much in as possible. You have to stick to the rules of your original story. He cited Breaking Bad, watchable as it was, by the end the interesting original character was transformed into a superman who had been in remission an unbelievable number of times and could create a car with a selective machine gun that only shot baddies and not him or Jesse. I have to say he makes a very good point.

Saturday was crazy busy and broiling. Little pink lambs gambolled by a reed bank and the sound of music reverberated from all sides. We meandered around a lot not really watching anything for long, drank ice cold fresh lemonade, bumped into friends from Brighton and got chased by a grass man in the Faraway Forest.  Night fell and Portishead transported us back to the 90s on the Obelisk stage and sounded more current than most of what I’d heard that afternoon. Then over to 6 Music for The Vaccines. Most of what was on the 6 Music stage should have been on the Obelisk Stage, you could hardly get near for any of the bands, many were just too big for the tent. The same with the not very secret midnight Thom Yorke gig in the woods; thousands were queuing for that by 9.30.  

I didn’t bother; instead I went to my second highlight of this year, Action To The Word’s modern musical Dracula in The Theatre Arena. Packed to the door and glorious gory fun across the midnight hour, this was a cleverly choreographed production with its tongue firmly in its cheek (when it wasn’t hanging out of Dracula’s mouth). They combined Grand Guignol plasma and corsetry with modern rock, giving us appropriately placed versions of Foo Fighters, The Doors, Mumford and Sons and yes, Radiohead – I didn’t have to go into the woods after all.

I’m off for the summer now – see you in Sept for some exciting Brighton Prize news.

 

 

Latitude Festival, 300 Psychopaths and 30,000 Very Nice People

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David Bailey, Jon Ronson, Latitude, Latitude Festival, Nick Broomfield, Tim Henman

I spent last weekend in the Suffolk countryside at Latitude Festival. It’s taken a few days to recover from the glorious loveliness of it all. This was my fourth year and it was the best so far. The sun shone every day, there were two spectacular night-time thunderstorms, the vibe was happy; there was lots of dancing and plenty of unexpected pleasures.  Over the weekend I must have seen hundreds of bands, a German comedian, a debate on the miner’s strike, a Q & A with Nick Broomfield, interpretive dance based around a gigantic double bed, four poets and an off programme reading from Jon Ronson. The other half got to see Anna Calvi (again), David Bailey, scientists debate Orwell and lots of noisy indie music. The kids made wands, dinosaurs, fire, barbecued bread, climbed trees and swung out of them on zip wires then learned circus skills and how to be a rock journalist. There was always something for everyone.

I’ve had a quick read of some of the reviews of the festival on newspaper websites (most of them glowing) but in the comments section of nearly every article someone has written that Latitude has a shit music line up, and is basically a field full of Tim Henman clones and their kids. This is bizarre because the comment is made by a different person every time. Either it is lazy plagiarism or it is one nutter posting his ‘quip’ everywhere under many names. I’ve decided the latter is more interesting but I can’t help wondering why this individual made the trip in the first place. Didn’t he look into it before buying a ticket? Did he not see it billed as a family-friendly arts festival? More than just a music festival. Latitude is safe and welcomes any age group. It’s not like I’d put up my camping chair near the stage at Reading and moan about there being too many drunken metalheads.

Maybe the obsessive quipper is one of the 300 psychopaths Jon Ronson was talking about when he read from his book The Psychopath Test to a small gathering at the Pan MacMillan tent. This was one of those gigs you just stumble upon and Ronson was funny and self-depreciating.  The book is a few years old but it’s well worth revisiting. Apparently roughly one person in every hundred is a psychopath, so out of the 30,000 at Latitude there were approximately 300 milling about.  I spent much of the next few days trying to spot them – the posh bloke who pushed to the front of the Green Peace Café queue was a definite, as was the guy who knocked my twelve-year old out of the way because he was pulling his own heir to the throne too fast in a covered baby wagon. Another possible was the unseen person who threw a half-eaten avocado at us but I think this was probably because it didn’t taste like a pear and was from ASDA rather than Waitrose.

There’s no getting away from it Latitude is a nice, middle class festival. The only way to enjoy it is to accept the fact and discover its delights.  Wander through woods decorated with bright fish and feathers, splash out on a flower garland or Native American headdress, have a chat with the neon sheep (much brighter colours this year according to my kids). There’s a barber and a pedicurist in the trees and comfy sofas for lounging in and listening to acoustic sets in the Lavish Lounge as you sip freshly ground coffee or artisan lager. If you are coming for hipster bands you will find them but they are not the main focus. Latitude is about being exposed to things you wouldn’t normally go to.

Among my favourite things this year was the poetry tent. I took my son to see Rob Auton. If you haven’t seen him you should because he’s brilliant. One minute shouty and irreverent, like Rik Mayall’s people’s poet, then next bringing a tear to the eye with a poem about a Lego sunset. The audience join in, shout out and get singled out for ridicule. It was here I also caught my old tutor Catherine Smith looking glam and reading a funny-bitter poem about a dead wife stalking her husband and his new bride, and saw Michael Rosen and Attila The Stockbroker take part in Mining the Meaning about poetry and the miner’s strike. I spent more time than usual in the poetry tent this year and it wasn’t even raining!

Emma Freud interviewed Nick Broomfield in the Film Tent. The planned clips were unavailable but we didn’t need them, most of the people in there were fans already; the discussion of Broomfield’s methodology was fascinating and entertaining and the hour passed in a flash.

Outside, on a sunny Sunday morning, I watched Stories from My Unmade Bed with my youngest, a delightful dance dream with coloured feathers and fish hot water bottles, by Page One Theatre.

Music wise I didn’t rate last minute stand in Lily Allen much. I’ve decided she’s Chas n Dave for the teenies. I think I’m too old to get her. It was the same with children’s favourite Haim. Although they rock much more live than they do on their sappily over-produced album, the fact that they were on after Chrissie Hynde made them seem a bit ineffectual. Their constant swearing felt unnatural, like teenagers trying to show us how grown up they are. The large group of friendly twenty-somethings behind us agreed and spent most of the set taking the piss out of them.  German comic Henning Wehn had much to say about swearing, chiefly that Germans don’t much ‘because everything works.’ He managed to get the crowd to clap along to a German ‘folk song’ with a plea for polite interaction before informing us that it was last sung around 1945.

The best music came from people I’d never heard of. Swedish voodoo combo Goat were visually jaw-dropping and very danceable. With their astonishing outfits and nonstop percusssion they were probably the best music act of the festival. Another highlight was watching Brightonian Rag n Bone Man and his mate Stig of The Dump belt out a gravely soul hip hop hybrid. It was a perfect way to spend half an hour relaxing under the shade of a tree. Close to us was a couple with a baby and a woman in her seventies who had come in for the day to meet her kids (in their fifties) everyone enjoyed the show. This is what Latitude is all about.

If you were at The Obelisk stage on Sunday afternoon and didn’t dance to supergroup Atomic Bomb, featuring members of Hot Chip, The Beastie Boys and Scritti Politi as well as a few hundred others, you must have been asleep. There was so much joy onstage you couldn’t help but play along. I was a bit disappointed by the lacklustre set from Damon Albarn on Saturday and left early but my husband and son stayed and got to sing along to all the oldies with a thunder and lightning backdrop.  Temples in the 6 Music tent were awesome but there was hardly anyone there. The same could not be said of Sunday headliners, The Black Keys who were as brilliant as ever, and very much adored by the enormous crowd.

Overheard at the last toilet stop was an anguished cry of, ‘they’ve run out of fucking sanitizer!’ to which someone else quipped, ‘yeah and the haloumi sold out.’