2013 | Guy Portman's Blog

Bizarre Author Deaths IV

Dec 27 2013

My final blog post of 2013 sees the return of the popular Bizarre Author Deaths series.

Li Bai

(701 – 762)

Notable works: The Hard Road to Shu, Quiet Night Thought, Waking from Drunkenness on a Spring Day

Chinese poet Li Bai was one of the two most prominent poets in China during the mid-Tang dynasty. Acclaimed for his adherence to the poetic tradition and mastery of poetic rules, the poet was an integral part of a rich poetic heritage. Themes that Li Bai explored in his work included friendship, the passage of time, solitude, the joys of nature and glorification of alcohol.

One of China’s greatest ever poets, Li Bai is today remembered for both embracing and improving upon long-established poetic forms. Approximately one thousand poems are attributed to him, some of which are still studied in Chinese schools.

Legend has it that Li Bai met a bizarre end when travelling on a boat one night. In his inebriated state, he allegedly attempted to embrace the moon, which resulted in him falling into the Yangtze River and drowning. Though some doubt the authenticity of this tale, it has long since gone down in myth.

Percy Shelley

(August 4th 1792 – July 8th 1822)

Notable works: Ozymandrias, Music, The Cloud, Queen Mab

The husband of Frankenstein author, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley was an English Romantic poet. Shelley did not achieve fame during his short lifetime, in part because publishers were reluctant to publish his work, due to his radical political and social views. Today he is regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets of the English language.

The talented poet met his premature end when he drowned in a storm while sailing off the coast of Italy. There has been much speculation over the exact cause of his death, with theories ranging from murder to suicide.

Events were to take a bizarre turn when Shelley’s washed-up body was cremated on the beach. The poet’s heart refused to burn, probably due to a heart condition that had caused it to calcify. Edward Trelawny, a friend of the deceased, removed the heart from the fire and gave it to Mary Shelley. What happened next is much debated, with some claiming that the poet’s wife kept the crumbling remains in her desk. The heart was later buried alongside her son, Percy Florence.

Click here to read Part 3 of the Bizarre Author Deaths Series.

Christmas Book Stampede

Dec 20 2013

With approximately 14% of the year’s total book sales being made in the final four weeks of the year, the Christmas period is crucial for the publishing industry.

Today’s blog post looks at some of the titles expected to compete with my humorous tale of the unexpected, Charles Middleworth, for centre stage this festive period. Here in the UK, the bookies anticipate that the following three books will be found jammed into stockings and underneath Christmas trees in greater numbers than any other this year.

(Courtesy of Cogito Books)

In order they are:

1). Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

Comment: You know its Christmas when everywhere you turn a sport star/celebrity stares back at you from a shiny front cover, a beaming smile upon their countenance. This year the former Manchester United manager’s imaginatively titled memoir is expected to give the hairdryer treatment to all challengers (by mid-December it had already sold over 79,000 hardback copies).

2). Save With Jamie: Shop Smart, Cook Clever, Waste Less by Jamie Oliver

Comment: Middle age and an expanding girth has done nothing to dampen the nation’s appetite for everything Jamie. Could the pucker chef top the Christmas bestseller charts for the fourth year in a row?

3). Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy – Helen Fielding

Comment: Oh no not again, haven’t we all had enough Bridget Jones for one lifetime. Evidently I am in the minority on this.

The popularity of these three titles is not a big surprise, especially the inclusion of Jamie Oliver, whose annual Christmas cookbooks have become as predictable as a visit from Santa. Having featured in the top three Christmas bestsellers in the UK for seven of the last twelve years, to mention nothing of his endless festive period television exposure, it would come as no surprise in several thousand years time if historians studying early twenty-first century man concluded that Christmas was in fact a Jamie Oliver celebration day.

(Courtesy of ContentBox Blog)

Across the pond comedian and Twitter deity, Rob Delaney, is making headlines with the release of his first book, Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. The bizarre titled book is purportedly a comical account of the funny man’s struggles with alcoholism in his youth.

Whilst America has embraced Delaney with open arms, they have been less enamoured with former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin’s, Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas, in which the geography challenged hockey mom warns of the dangers to Christmas posed by seculars, whilst at the same time attempting to make a fortune out of it. The book could best be described as part theological statement, part recipe book. There is nothing I would less like to find in my stocking this year – with the possible exception of an incendiary device or David Hasselhoff’s album, The Night Before Christmas.

With some claiming that up to six million e-readers could be bought as presents this Christmas, vast quantities of ebooks will also be purchased. There seems little doubt that a surprise Christmas bestseller will be unearthed as a result. Here’s for hoping my humorous and insightful work of fiction, Charles Middleworth (£2.02/$3.29) will be one of them. Charles Middleworth is available from all regional Amazons in paperback and on Kindle.

Happy Christmas

(Click on image to read the great reviews)

Amazon Drones

Dec 13 2013

Question: What flies through the sky delivering presents the night before Christmas?

Answer: An Amazon Drone.

This is not the case quite yet, but may well be in the not too distant future, as most of you have probably heard by now. Amazon chief executive and robot fanatic, Jeff Bezos, plans to have a squadron of unmanned ‘octocopters’ deployed in the next five years, capable of delivering packages of up to about 2.3 kilos (86% of Amazon sales are comprised of small goods).

(Courtesy if business2community.com)

The company’s proposed new Luftwaffe will be known as Amazon Prime Air. Some have claimed that the announcement was a mere publicity stunt on the part of Amazon, but with battalions of Kiwa robots already at work in the retail behemoth’s depots, it seem likely that Amazon has ambitions to expand its empire upwards.

Conservatives, already up in arms over the erosion of Christmas traditions (c.f. Sarah Palin) are no doubt already ruing the day when children, too excited to sleep on Christmas Eve, lie up in bed, ears turned to the heavens, awaiting the buzz of an Amazon drone. However there are quite a number of obstacles to contend with before these battery fueled, GPS directed drones become a reality. Issues that will need to be resolved include:

Battery Life (currently only about 20-30 mins)
GPS Issues (notably distance)
Secure Wireless Connection
Weather
Existing Flying Safety Regulations (issues with flying over densely populated areas)
In-Flight Collisions (birds/remote control airplanes/UFOs)
Landing Issues (cars/dogs/thieves)

It would be mere conjecture at this point to comment on whether at Christmas time these Apocalyptic Santae will be dragged by robotic reindeer, will be coming down chimneys, if they will emit ‘ho ho’ noises and if they will expect to have brandy left out for them. To mention nothing of the children left wailing in their wake, having discovered that the Amazon Santa drone is not the Christmas present after all, but rather the tacky, cheap, Chinese made plastic toy it left behind.

A number of Amazon’s competitors have responded to the drone announcement with announcements of their own. Book retailer, Waterstones, have outlined plans for O.W.L.S, (Ornithological Waterstones Landing Service). Waterstones were keen to stress that it will take a number of years to train the owls to deliver books. In the United States, gift certificate company, Groupon, responded to the announcement with plans to use medieval style catapults to make deliveries.

Though Amazon’s competitors ridiculing their drone plans might prove mildly amusing in the short term, there is nothing in the history of this innovative online retailer, bent on global domination, to suggest that they will not soon be ruling the skies.

Click on the link below to view an Amazon Prime Air drone demonstration.

Click here to read my blog post about Amazon’s robotic workforce.

Bizarre Author Deaths III

Dec 06 2013

This, the third instalment of my latest series about authors, is dedicated to two more bizarre author deaths. I chose this rather macabre subject matter, in part, because death is one of the themes in my second novel, Necropolis, a humorous work of dark fiction, due for release early next year (date to be confirmed shortly).

Dante Alighieri

(May/June c. 1265 – September 9th 1321)

Notable works: The Divine Comedy, Convivio, The Vita Nuova.

Florence born Dante’s defining work, The Divine Comedy, is widely regarded to this day, as the greatest piece of literature ever composed in Italian. The description of Dante’s fictional journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio) and Paradise (Paradiso), was to prove an important milestone in the development of Italian as an established literary language.

Italy’s sommo poeta (supreme poet) is remembered not only for his remarkable achievements, but also for the bizarre circumstances surrounding his death. Dante died of malaria in Ravenna in 1321, which was not unusual in itself during this era. However posthumous events took a bizarre turn when Florence, the city of Dante’s birth, demanded the return of their famous son.

Church officials in Ravenna secretly hid Dante’s body in a wall to prevent it from being stolen and returned to Florence. It lay forgotten until being unearthed during church renovations in 1863, when it was discovered that parts of the body had been taken at the time of the burial. In 1878 a repentant former town clerk, Pasquale Miccoli, returned a box of bones he had stolen.

Julien Offray de la Mettrie

(November 23rd 1709 – November 11th 1751)

Notable works: Man a Machine, The Natural History of the Soul.

French philosopher and physician, de la Mettrie, was one of the first materialists of the Enlightenment era. He was widely viewed as a scandalous figure during his lifetime and beyond, due to the highly controversial nature of his writings. Considering himself a mechanist materialistic, de la Mettrie held a number of beliefs, which were in stark contrast to church teachings, including his assertion that the body causes mental processes. Though many of his theories have since been disproved by science, the defiant writer is today regarded as having influenced psychology, particularly behaviourism.

Regarded as a rampant hedonist, de la Mettrie was to meet his demise as a direct result of his excess. Invited to a banquet, hosted by the French ambassador to Prussia, de la Mettrie, either as an attempt to show off his powers of gluttony, or his strong constitution, devoured an enormous quantity of pâté de fait aux truffes (pâte made from truffles). The resulting gastric illness culminated in a slow and painful death for the controversial writer.

Click here to read Bizarre Author Deaths II

Amazon’s Robotic Workforce

Nov 29 2013

This week we take a hiatus from the Bizarre Author Deaths series to evaluate developments at surging retail behemoth, Amazon. As many of you know I have previously written a number of posts on Amazon related matters, including their increasing dominance, Asian expansion and their so-called war against publishing. Today’s post is about Amazon’s workforce.

As with most large corporations, Amazon’s workplace practices have on occasion been lambasted. Only this week the company received negative publicity in the lead up to its busiest time of year, with workers going on strike over pay at two distribution centres in Germany (Leipzig & Bad Hersfeld).

Fortunately such disruption may soon be a thing of the past for Amazon, with last year’s deployment of 1,382 robotic staff members a sign of things to come. I am of course referring to real robots not staff allegedly made to feel like robots, such as young undercover reporter Adam Littler, purportedly forced to walk 11 miles during a ten and a half hour shift in a Swansea based Amazon work camp.

It is hardly surprising that head Amazon cyborg, Jeff Bezos, should have such an interest in his fellow kind. After all this is the man/cyborg/robot/bionic being, who was described by former subordinate Steve Yegge as a:

‘‘hyper-intelligent alien with a tangential interest in human affairs.”

Bezos’s personal fascination in robots extends far beyond the $775 million Amazon paid to buy Kiva Systems, the company responsible for building Amazon’s robotic workforce. Amazon’s head honcho has also reportedly invested $7m of his own funds in another robot venture, Heartland Robotics. It would appear to be only a matter of time before further battalions of robots are deployed at Amazon distribution centres.

(A Kiva Robot – Courtesy of www.wired.co.uk)

Entertaining and eloquent in public, Amazon’s innovative leader is known not to suffer fools lightly in private. Previous comments directed at employees (human ones), whose performances have fallen below his exacting standards, include:

‘Are you lazy or just incompetent?’

‘I’m sorry, did I take my stupid pills today?’

With such disregard for human error, it seems little surprise that Bezos’s beloved Kiva robotic staff members signify a potential shift in the company’s hiring practices.

(Courtesy of www.singularityhub.com)

Last week in an attempt to investigate the latest update on the non-arrival of my Amazon book order, The Legend of the Holy Drinker by Joseph Roth (currently not in stock), I phoned Amazon. As expected of the company that sets the benchmark in customer satisfaction, the call was picked up within two minutes. The call was answered by a vaguely female sounding voice – mechanical in nature, devoid of the usual emotion and intonation one expects from human interaction. My suspicions aroused I enquired if she was a Kiva robot. Without pause she replied ‘no’, before continuing with the update on my order. Still unconvinced, I remembered that there are instances of dogs thinking they are people and assuming the same might hold true for robots, I rephrased the question.

‘Are you orange, about a foot high and travel around on wheels?’

After a momentary pause she replied,

‘I’m not orange, but I’m about a foot high and yes I travel around on wheels.’

Aware that she might be referring to a wheel chair and not wishing to enter the shark infested waters that is disability discrimination, I quickly changed tack, returning the subject matter back to my missing order, having decided to leave robotic related enquiries for another day. But I digress.

One of Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos’s, favourite phrases is reportedly,

‘Work hard, have fun, make history.’

The company are undoubtedly making history, but Bezos can also be rest assured that during Amazon’s busy festive period, his Kiva robots will not only be working hard, they will be having fun (unlike poor suffering Adam Littler). The video below is of a battalion of Kiva robots, still brimming with festive cheer at the end of an arduous shift, putting on an impromptu display of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.

Bizarre Author Deaths II

Nov 22 2013

Following on from last week, here is the second instalment of my series dedicated to bizarre author deaths.

Aeschylus

(525/524 BC – 456/455 BC)

Notable works: The Persians, Prometheus Bound, The Supplicants.

Often described as the father of tragedy, Aeschylus, along with Sophocles and Euripides, are the only Greek tragedians, whose plays are still performed and read today. Aeschylus wrote an estimated seventy to ninety plays, only seven of which have survived.

The tragedian’s innovations included most likely being the first dramatist to present his plays as a trilogy. His play, The Oresteia, is the only ancient example of the form to have survived. Another of his influential works, The Persians, is unique amongst Greek tragedies, as the only example to describe what was at the time a recent historical event. The play has proved to be an important source of information for historians studying the period in which it was written.

The playwright is also remembered for the purported bizarre nature of his demise. Aeschylus met his end when an eagle looking for a hard object to break open the shell of the turtle it was carrying, mistook Aeschylus’s bald head for a rock. The eagle dropped the turtle, killing the great tragedian instantly.

Mark Twain

(November 30th 1835 – April 21st 1910)

Notable works: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain is regarded as the father of American literature. Acclaimed for his satire and wit, Twain’s quotes on politics and human nature continue to be staples amongst speechmakers. The author’s iconic works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, often referred to as ‘The Great American Novel’, remain to this day required reading in American schools.

The influential author was born in November 1835, shortly after a visit by Halley’s Comet. Twain was convinced that he would meet his end when the comet next returned to earth. He once famously said,

‘I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming next year, and I expect to go out with it.’

On April 21^st 1910, nearly seventy four and a half years after the comet’s last visit, the iconic writer’s prophetic declaration came true, when he died of a heart-attack, merely one day after the comet’s closest proximity to earth.

Bizarre Author Deaths I

Nov 15 2013

This, the first instalment of my latest series about authors, is dedicated to two bizarre author deaths. I chose this rather macabre subject matter as death is one of the themes in my second novel, Necropolis, a humorous work of dark fiction, due for release early next year (date to be confirmed soon).

Virginia Woolf

(January 25th 1882 – March 28th 1941)

Notable works: To The Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, Orlando: A Biography, A Room of One’s Own.

Novelist, essayist, publisher and critic Virginia Woolf was an influential interwar writer and an important member of the prominent Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. Regarded today as a foremost modernist and one of the major English language lyrical novelists, Virginia Woolf was an experimental writer, who achieved considerable popular and critical success during her lifetime. Her notable works include the experimental parodic biography, Orlando: A Biography, in which the hero’s life spans three centuries and both genders.

Woolf’s existence was not without its tribulations however. The talented writer suffered from depression throughout her life, several episodes in her younger years being so severe that she was sent to a mental institution. It was the onset of World War II and the destruction of Woolf’s London home in The Blitz, alongside the poor reception of her biography of late friend Roger Fry that were to send matters spiralling out of control.

Shortly after finishing the manuscript of her last novel, Between the Acts (posthumously published), Woolf entered a deep depression. On the 28th March 1941 the author put on her overcoat, filled the pockets with stones and walked out into the River Ouse near her home in Sussex. After her body was finally discovered on the 18th April, Woolf’s husband, political theorist and author Leonard Woolf, had her cremated remains buried under an elm tree in the garden of their home in Rodmell.

Tennessee Williams

(March 26th 1911 – February 25th 1983)

Notable works: The Glass Menagerie, A Street Car Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

American playwright Tennessee Williams found fame with his play The Glass Menagerie (1944), a big hit on Broadway in New York. More success followed and by 1959 Williams had two Pulitzer Prizes, three New York Drama Critics Awards, three Donaldson Awards and a Tony Award to his name.

However the glory was not to last and the 1960s’ and 70s’ saw the talented playwright facing professional failures and personal problems. These may in part have been due to his increasing alcohol and drug consumption, as well as the death of former partner Frank Merlo in 1963. Beloved sister Rose being diagnosed with schizophrenia and his own dysfunctional upbringing, Williams’s father was a heavy drinker with a violent temper and his mother overbearing, could also have been factors in the playwright’s descent into depression, drugs and commitments to mental health facilities.

On the morning of February 26th 1983, Williams was found dead in his suite at the Elysee Hotel in New York. The medical examiner’s report indicated that the cause of death was Williams having choked to death on a cap from a bottle of eye drops. It was noted that alcohol and drugs might have contributed to his demise, as they may have suppressed the gag reflex. The bizarre nature of the playwright’s death was to be the subject of much scrutiny over the forthcoming years. A forensic detective who reviewed the file stated that it was an overdose that killed Williams, whilst friend Scott Kenan claimed someone in the coroner’s office invented the bottle cap scenario.

Amazon Versus Publishing

Nov 08 2013

The ongoing battle for dominance of the publishing industry saw Amazon emerge victorious from the ‘Ebook Wars’, its heavily armed Kindles decimating Barnes and Nobles’s woefully under-equipped Nooks. The ‘Pricing Wars’, which included an ambitious offensive by vigilante book retailer Overstock, who implemented an aggressive bestselling titles discount campaign, is now little more than a skirmish after Overstock made a predictable tactical retreat thereby avoiding being annihilated by Amazon.

Amazon’s ambitious empire expansion plans have entailed a campaign to lure customers to switch allegiances to them. The company’s strategy of rolling-out a series of new programs has had the dual purpose of distinguishing themselves from their competitors while crucially keeping Amazon in the media spotlight. Recent innovations include – Kindle First, Kindle Matchbook, Amazon Smile, Day One, Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Kindle Freetime subscriptions.

(Courtesy of www.clker.com)

Kindle First and Kindle Countdown are arguably the two programs that offer the most benefit for readers, authors and publishers alike. Kindle First allows Prime Members the opportunity to download one free ebook per month ahead of an official launch, whilst the Kindle Countdown, which is open to all customers, highlights discounted ebooks, at the same time putting pressure on customers to make quick purchases due to the timer which ticks down the days, hours and minutes until the deal expires. As with Amazon’s Kindle Select offering, publishers are only eligible for inclusion on the condition that the given title is exclusive to the Kindle platform (i.e. the title has been removed from competitors platforms) and is discounted by at least a dollar (£0.62).

Amazon’s approach has no doubt been successful to date, the fact that they control about 75% of the ebook market in the US and Canada pays testimony to this. Amazon is also striving to expand its empire into new markets, particularly Asia, as well as various other territories, including countries like Poland, where ebook sales are expected to increase more than ten times between 2011 and 2016.

However new threats to Amazon’s continuing dominance of the ebook market have emerged in the form of supermarkets. In the UK, Sainsbury’s have declared a discount war against Amazon. Last month Sainsbury’s offered ebook titles from bestselling authors at 99p for periods ranging from one day to an entire month. These ebooks are accessible through Android, Adobe Readers, Kobo devices and Nooks, but crucially not via Amazon’s kindle offerings. Sainsbury’s nemesis Tesco are also getting in on the action, having recently brought out their own-brand tablet, the Hudl (modestly priced at £119). To date the Hudl has been well received by customers and analysts alike.

(Courtesy of www.droid-life.com)

Despite the fact that Amazon have established a position of dominance, the future remains uncertain. It was not so many years ago that Microsoft were in complete ascendency of their market yet now that supremacy is being eroded.

Click here to read my post about Amazon’s Asian expansion.

Alcoholic Authors IV

Nov 01 2013

Here is part four of my Alcoholic Authors series.

Truman Capote

(September 30th 1924 – August 25th 1984)

Notable works: In Cold Blood, Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Born Truman Streckfus Persons, Capote went on to become a prolific writer of short stories, novels, plays and nonfiction, whose accomplishments include at least twenty films and television dramas having been produced from his works.

Capote, who had a turbulent upbringing marred by divorce, long absences from his mother and periods of poor health started writing at a young age. By his late teens he had achieved considerable success and with the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966) international renown.

The author was a notorious heavy drinker. While writing In Cold Blood, Capote would allegedly have a double martini before lunch, another with lunch and a stinger after. On numerous occasions he sought help in various clinics, including Silver Hill in Connecticut, after being arrested for drink driving in Long Island. However he was to never kick his addiction, dying aged fifty-nine from liver cancer.

Capote once famously said, ‘I drink,’ …. ‘because it’s the only time I can stand it.’

Charles Bukowski

(August 16th 1920 – March 9th 1994)

Notable works: Post Office, Factotum, Pulp.

The German born Bukowski was a novelist, poet, short-story writer and columnist, who was described by Time in 1986 as a ‘laureate of American lowlife.’ His writing included the acclaimed novel Post Office, a semi-autobiographical account of Bukowski’s hand-to-mouth years existence whilst employed in a menial job at the post office and Pulp, a humorous and vulgar parody of the detective/mystery genre. The author’s writing was heavily influenced by his home city of Los Angeles.

Bukowski started drinking at aged thirteen and never looked back. A prodigious smoker and bar frequenter, he was a controversial figure renowned for his bravado. In later years the author preferred to drink at home, more often than not whiskey being his beverage of choice. Though by his own admission he suffered three hundred hang-overs a year, Bukowski never quit the habit. Despite this extraordinary excess he lived to the relatively old age of seventy-three.

Bukowski once said, ‘Alcohol is probably one of the greatest things to arrive upon the earth – alongside of me.’

Click on the links to read my reviews of Post Office and Pulp.

If you missed it here is Part III of my Alcoholic Authors series.

Aberdeenshire

Oct 25 2013

Last week I took a break from working on my second novel to visit Aberdeenshire on the east coast of Scotland (see map below).

(Courtesy of wikipedia.org)

On exiting Aberdeen airport I came across these remarkable spider web patterns on a hedge by the car hire depot.

Commercial forestry is very important to Aberdeenshire’s local economy. Picea sitchensis or Sitka spruce, a coniferous evergreen tree originating from the west coast of North America has become the predominant species in recent years, replacing the native coniferous species. Sitka’s popularity is due to its rapid growth even in poor soils. Sunlight struggles to permeate dense Sitka forest, resulting in a dearth of life on the forest floor (see below).

Peterhead, Europe’s largest whitefish port, sits at the easternmost point of mainland Scotland. British residents may be familiar with the port from the popular television series, Trawlermen. On entering Peterhead I was greeted by the sight of this fishing vessel.

Seals love the port (no prizes for guessing why). Below is a photograph of a Grey seal that I saw. It was so close that I might have been able to reach down and touch it. Their reported ferocious bite was enough to prevent me from attempting to do so.