Volume three of a fab, fab, fab collection of my stories now available in print — good Lord and just in time for Christmas! Apparently, the Queen has already ordered 50 copies to be distributed as festive gifts at Buck House, London. Oh, and beware shysters — there’s a lot of them about and apparently double-vaccines, boosters, voodoo cockerels and mouthing MAGA bullshit is not protection at all against them. You were warned

Just published — on Amazon KDP, so sadly no bona fide commercial publisher involved yet (and a very wistful ‘yet’ at that) — my third collection of short stories. If you are interested, you can check it out here (and perhaps even buy a copy).

I’ve written about ‘vanity’ publishing before (and that was the old-fashioned, rather unkind though not always unfair, term for ‘self-publishing’ in the past), and I’m sure I’ve mentioned Amazon KDP (and Lulu.com who I used before Amazon).

Amazon will print your book to a very high standard and at a very good price — each book is printed as and when it is bought, which keeps costs down and the printing costs are part of the price you specify. So don’t be taken in by any of the many shysters who will charge you a fortune to do an exceptionally simple task.

There are one or two other ‘print-on-demand services, but very few — and I think all those are in the US — will do it as cheaply as Amazon. And as far as I can tell, all the UK-based firms simply have it done through Amazon themselves. As always, caveat emptor.

Many might ask you to ‘submit your manuscript to be considered for publication’ and, of course, it will always pass muster. Nothing wrong with that, of course, except for the very steep prices they will charge you for ‘publishing’ your novel, memoirs, autobiography, guide to Shanghai brothels, guide to blind sheepdogs in Cumbria or whatever other delight you have spent years writing, only to find no bloody commercial publisher is in the slightest bit interested.

To be fair to myself, I haven’t even started trying to get a commercial publisher interested in my short stories, because, to be blunt, they wouldn’t be interested. Everyone and his hamster writes short stories these days, but more to the point short stories do not sell.

I did, briefly and some years ago, try to find an agent — in the belief that if an agent thought your work would sell, which is what it is all about, they would put in the work. And if they thought it would not, they would not waste your time or theirs — with a view to getting my novel published. I could raise no interest whatsoever though I only tried three. BTW you can check it out, then ignore it here.

In short, a swift check on the net of how many ‘publishers’ there are who will help you publish our novel — and you will carry all the costs, of course, though they couch it as you ‘contributing’ to the costs — shows that all of them are pretty expensive to bloody expensive (though it is up to you how you spend your money).

It can cost you anything between £700 and £2,000 to use their services, and all you will get is about ten copies. Print-on-demand costs might be cheaper, but what with shipping etc, not a great deal. Always do your research.

Remember, all they do is format your manuscript for printing — which does not take long at all (I used Indesign) — then upload a pdf of the formatted manuscript to Amazon KDP. They might also offer your extra services such as designing your cover, editing your manuscript, ‘marketing’ your book, and it is up to you whether you choose to use them.

Some even tell you they will get your book ‘reviewed in the national press’. Bollocks. Here in Britain the nationals get enough books from bona fide commercial publishers to bother considering someone’s memoirs of dear Aunt Jane who baked the most delightful cakes.

I can’t speak for other countries, though I’m certain the large-circulation papers would not be interested. However, local press, radio and TV might be, because they always need ‘copy’ to fill their papers and programmes — but you can get in touch with them yourself and don’t have to pay some shyster to do it.

Personally I cannot think such editing will be up to scratch, and if your manuscript needs editing, it cannot have been that good in the first place and you would be none the wiser as to how good or bad the editing was.

Oh, and many make a point of saying ‘they will get your book listed on Amazon’ — but that happens as a matter of course with all the books printed by Amazon KDP. (I’ve not looked at Lulu.com for many years and don’t know what promises they make but are not one of these ‘self-publishing’ shysters. They are just a little dearer than Amazon by my no means much at all.

To put the shysters’ charges into perspective, the 100-page slim volume of short stories I am plugging here has a nominal price, listed on Amazon, of £6. Of that the printing costs just £1.70. Furthermore, you, the author/originator, can buy ‘author’s copies’ at cost, i.e. in my case £1.70.

So those ten copies your ‘publisher’ gives you as part of the £700 to £2,000 ‘service’ cost her/him only £17! As always caveat emptor.

Admittedly, a little work is required to format the manuscript (though then saving it as a pdf takes about ten seconds each time) which is what they will do, but only about an hour or two (depending on the complexity of the manuscript.

For example, earlier this year I published a volume of colour photographs on Amazon KDP — as a trial run to see whether it was any more complex with a colour interior and it isn’t — and what with getting the colour right 

etc, that did take a little longer (though it was still done in Indesign).

Just last week I ’published’ — that is I formatted and had printed — a slim volume of verse for children called the The Lockdown Poems by a friend and former Daily Mail colleague and although it did take a number of days, the actual work involved was minimal.

But that ‘number of days’ is a tad misleading: every time there was a change, a new illustration was added, a detail changed here and there etc, I insisted on sending Mr Potter (my friend) a new pdf for his scrutiny and approval (to

make sure if there were any cock-ups, they were not mine). And as emails were not answered immediately, and he made several changes and made several tweaks (as did I, on the monochrome — posh word for black and white — piccies in Photoshop, the whole operation did ‘last’ a few days. But the work I did (and it wasn’t ‘work’ as I enjoyed doing it) was — in total — just a few hours.

. . . 

In fact, having written all the above, I might as well offer to do the same for anyone reading this, though I would charge an hourly rate, though it would not total sodding £2,000 or whatever they think they can get away with).

I shall stress: if you know your way around Adobe Indesign, Quark Xpress, Affinity Designer or Microsoft Publisher (which I’ve not used, though) or any other desktop publishing software, you can do everything yourself, and thus it would not cost you a penny.

My offer is for those who feel a bit daunted by the ‘formatting’ and rather doubt whether they could do it or simply can’t be arsed. If that is you, get in touch. With such work vaguely in mind, I have opened a second Amazon KDP account under the name St Breward Press.

Note: you would supply a manuscript as Word doc (and any illustrations as pngs rather than jpegs) and would be emailed a pdf to check at every stage to that the final decision to ‘publish’ — have printed by Amazon KDP — is yours and noting any errors and literals etc are your responsible (although I would correct them according to your instructions.

A day after posting:

To see what’s what, I’ve just uploaded and am having printed by Lulu.com two copies of the third volume of short stories. The process is extremely simple (and all I had to do was slightly reformat my 5in x 8in volume to the 5.5in x 8.5in size Lulu offer (the closest to the original). Lulu do exactly the same as Amazon KDP but are a little more expensive: I’ve ordered two copies at $3.39 (£2.55 at December 1 exchange rate) each and with shipping ($6.41) that is costing me $13.19. Amazon copies were just £1.70.

More stories and poems (if you are interested)

More poems (bottom two rows are the latest) here and more stories (the bottom two rows).

Is it just an old codger resorting to type, or are things perhaps getting a little hairy? I hope it’s the former. I fear it might be the latter. But never mind, at least the free West is getting its beauty sleep

It’s almost a commonplace that was we grow older and are usually less adaptable to change, we become more reactionary. Perhaps. There is some truth in the view that when young folk ‘settle down’, have to start paying real taxes, face monthly bills and have children, they often abandon their ideals, or at least water down, and that explanation makes sense.

To be blunt when the oddly artificial world of our salad days is left behind and we face the daily chore of going to work — though it is not necessarily from Monday to Friday or from 7/8/9am to 5pm — and what it entails, life can lose some of that marvellous sparkle it had when we were teenagers (in between the bouts of woe and doom, of course) and everything was possible. But that early change in life is not a mirror image of what happens to many later on when their teeth become loose and their hearing begins to go.

Later on, as we hit 50 or 55 and find ourselves slowly being edged to the periphery of existence and consequence, our once central role in matters and affairs of the world (or village) being taken over by younger versions of ourselves, we might well begin to see the world in a different light. Ten years on, perhaps after we retire and lose the ‘structure’ employment gave us and feel somewhat cast adrift, a certain disenchantment might well creep in, though most of use are apt to blame everything and everyone about us rather than accept it is the prism through which we view the world which might be the cause.

Yes, I am speaking personally, but I’ve talked about the ‘effects’ of retirement with others who have also professionally called it a day, and it seems that what I experienced and am still experiencing is common: somehow you seem to be something of a spare part, hoping you might be needed, but realising you could well not be that lucky; and we who have called it a day and have discussed it all, also agree that until you retire, you won’t know what the hell I am talking about. But that isn’t what this entry is about.

Obviously, we all react to growing older in different ways, but there will certainly be things we have in common. And, I suggest, for many one of the things we have in common is a sinking feeling that ‘it’s all going to the dogs’, a conviction which is closely tied in with viewing the past through distinctly rose-tinted specs.

I mention that because, being conscious that I, too, am equally as liable to suffer from that possible tendency, I want to try to ensure I don’t adopt it. I don’t like it and I can’t respect it. I want to try — and trying is all I can do — to retain as long as I can a balanced, proportionate outlook on life, the world and current affairs. I want to try to evaluate developments in the world with as neutral an eye as. Yet now I have made that point and considering developments here, there and everywhere, I am bound to confess that I do not things are looking too bright.

. . .

I don’t doubt that over the past 71 years of my life — 72 years on November 21 — when men and women heard the news on the radio and TV and read their newspapers, there seemed much to feel bleak about. Just five years after World War II ended, ‘the West’ faced another war, in Korea (no doubt billed to a gullible public on both sides as ‘a battle between freedom and tyranny’. Decide for yourselves who were battling for freedom in the face of encroaching tyranny.)

Later, for the Brits, came the insurgencies in what were then still its ‘colonies’, in Kenya and Malaya and elsewhere. France almost had a civil war over Algeria, and the ‘certainties’ of post-war 1950s America were wholly disrupted in the 1960s by the — then young — ‘boomer’ generation and the national divisions caused by the Vietnam War. And on it went.

Many were persuaded we were only that far from all-out nuclear war and some bright spark dreamed up the notion of the Doomsday Clock, though arguably in such terms the world is now a far more dangerous place and running even further out of time: in the 1960s and 1970s only France, Britain, the US and the then USSR had nuclear weapons. Now India, Pakistan, China and Israel also have them. As for that insufferably melodramatic Doomsday Clock’ the cause of the demise of humankind has since shifted via AIDS to global warming.

If you want melodrama — and it seems a huge number of us do — fuck off and watch your favourite soap. To paraphrase P. T. Barnum or H. L. Mencken (or whoever else claims to have originated the quote I am about to paraphrase) ‘No one ever went broke scaring the living shit out of Joe Public’ (and certainly no newspaper. Note to younger readers: when you have time, look up what newspapers were).

. . .

Bearing all that in mind, are the dangers we now face from a far stronger, richer and more determined China led by a man who is to all extents and purposes a dictator; and the dangers we face from Russia, not as strong and rich as

China, but also under the leadership of a cynical and determined — and very bright — quasi-dictator, as well as dangers posed by an increasingly nationalistic India any worse than those faced by our parent’s generation all those years ago? Are they?

Well, I’m inclined to suggest that no, they are not. But I must add that there is more than a certain nonsense in believing ‘dangers’ and ‘the dangers we face’ can somehow be graded and qualified. I know the foreign offices of governments and their backroom spooks have to do just that — grade and qualify ‘dangers’ — for practical reasons of formulating policy; but seen in a certain way, it doesn’t really make much sense: a danger is a danger. And we know from how World War I came about and was well underway in a matter of months that nothing much is neatly predictable.

As I write there seem to be two distinct dangers facing the world. One is in eastern Europe where Putin has amassed around 100,000 troops on the border between Russia and Ukraine, which might or might not be used to

invade Ukraine. A little further north the Belarusian dictator Lukashenko has — this sounds ridiculous, though is anything but — amassed several thousand migrants’ which he wants to pour into Poland.

I heard on the news earlier on that ads were put in the media of various countries where many folk are looking for a better – ‘stress-freer’? — life selling flights and visas to Belarus with a view to entering the EU. There was an enthusiastic response, it seems, though the reality was that once they arrived in Minsk, they are loaded into lorries and driven to the Polish border where they are now stuck in sub-zero temperatures. Sounds like an urban myth to me, though is was ‘on the radio’. And stranger things have happened at see.

In the Far East, China’s dictator — no one has yet used the word, but it is the only realistic one to use as far as I am concerned — Xi Jinping has made if very clear that an invasion of Taiwan will take place sooner rather than later. The big question to be asked about both these situations is: how will the West react? Will it get involved? Or will it cave in?

Before I write anything more, I must candidly admit that I have no idea which reaction would be appropriate or wise. Really I don’t. It is Hobson’s Choice, and I’m not going to claim the role of Joe Wiseacre and lay down the law of what ‘Western governments’ should do.

Putin will be encouraged that when, again to be blunt, he invaded and annexed The Crimea, part of Ukraine, the West did fuck all and he was allowed to get way with it. If we are dealing in Brownie points, one Brownie point to Vladimir and none to the West.

Putin might now be calculating that if he invades Ukraine and annexes part of the country’s east, the West will again do nothing. (His excuse might be that the east of Ukraine, which has had a small-scale war for several years now, has many ethnic Russians and they need the protection of Mother Russia.) 

Certainly, we will condemn such an ‘international outrage’ in the strongest possible terms, if not even stronger (subs please check if that is possible), and we will ‘impose sanctions’ and place punitive tariffs on the import of vodka and all those delightful little dolls which fit inside each other after you unscrew the head of the bigger one (for details contact the FSB). But Russia will know we are cack-handed wankers. We need their gas more than we need to stick to our increasingly tawdry principles. Welcome to the ‘global world’.

China has long insisted the Taiwan is not a sovereign state as Taiwan itself insists, but is still one of its provinces (a point lawyers could argue about for weeks on end, of course). China recently got away with imposing its totalitarian will on Hong Kong (where you can now be locked up for a very long time for in any way being critical of China) and Xi Jingping believes he can do the same with Taiwan. He’s probably right.

On paper the US has insisted it will somehow protect Taiwan’s sovereignty — but it has been careful not to specify quite how. More to the point, though Taiwan would most certainly defend itself and it has quite strong armed forces, it is doubtful to that it could do so for long. However, what is crucial is how the US would — will — react. And how other nations in the locality who will also be pretty pissed off with China’s increasingly bullying behaviour will react.

. . .

These two dangers are compounded by unrelated but still pertinent developments in the UK, the US and Europe. In the UK our prime minister is a useless twat who even himself admits he’s not ‘a details man’. He is also losing his support in Parliament and could well be gone by the middle of next year, for a number of reasons, though none 

of which are relevant to the above. The Opposition Labour party — I use the word ‘Opposition’ purely in its technical sense in as far it is about as effective as an Opposition was a chocolate teapot — is equally as useless and the point is that at present the UK has exceptionally weak leadership and political clout.

The same problem faces the US. After the four years of chaotic, insane and damaging leadership by Donald Trump, Joe Biden is proving to be distinctly underwhelming. Germany at present has no government and various parties are horse-trading to form a governing coalition.

France is on the brink of a presidential election, one which might well see a far-right figure gain the presidency (though, to be frank, that is less likely than not given that such a development will be fought tooth and nail, though that would not rule out civil strife in France — well, Paris — which might prove equally as unhelpful).

On balance, of course, the picture is no bleaker than it has at any point in the past 50, 100 or 1,000 years. The difference and possibly a pertinent factor is the ‘global nature’ of world economies. Disruption elsewhere might well have led to shortages ‘at home’, but the sophistication of many of our economic practices — I’m thinking of the ‘just in time’ supply of parts — means some aspects of our economies could then — can then — grind to a halt far sooner than later.

An added complication is the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, which is also ‘global’ (NB I keep sticking that word in quotes because it has become something of a buzzword and I hate buzzwords and being seen to use them.) Sooner or later we will pay the bills accrued in one way or another dealing with it. Just how is that going to pan out?

Let me reiterate my initial point: the above has been written but a lad who won’t even see 70 again so please bear that in mind. Such folk — old crocks such as me — are apt to look on the dark side of life as a matter of course. But in the above I have tried to be less ‘ageist’ and more neutral. Things ain’t looking grand. The question is: is that just how I see them or are, finally, things really not looking too grand?

Answers please on a postcard. And if you can’t be bothered, just fuck off and watch your favourite soaps instead. At least they have no consequences.