December | 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