Video post with built-in video player
This is an example of video post with mp4 video URL, running with built-in video player.
Bizarre Author Deaths VI
This week sees the penultimate instalment of the Bizarre Author Deaths series.
Sir Francis Bacon
(January 22nd 1561 – April 9th 1626)
Notable works: Novum Organum, De augmentis, Nova Atlantis
Sir Francis Bacon was an English philosopher, scientist, statesman, orator, essayist and author. A highly successful career saw the multi-talented Bacon serve as both Attorney General and Lord Chancellor. Today Bacon is remembered as an important figure in scientific methodology and natural philosophy. His accolades include being widely accepted as the creator of empiricism, in addition to establishing popularised inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often referred to as the Baconian method.
Sixty-five year old Bacon purportedly met his demise when travelling in his carriage in the midst of a snowstorm in Highgate, it occurred to him that snow would be an ideal way to preserve and insulate meat. He immediately purchased a gutted chicken and attempted to prove his theory by stuffing the bird with snow. Unfortunately these actions resulted in pneumonia, and as he was too ill to return to his residence, he retired to the Earl of Arundel’s house in Highgate where he perished several days later.
Christopher Marlowe
(February 26th 1564 – May 30th 1593)
Notable works: Edward the Second, Hero and Leander, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
Poet, translator and dramatist Christopher Marlowe was the most famous tragedian of his time. His popular plays influenced a host of playwrights, including William Shakespeare. Little is known about the private life of this famous proponent of blank verse, a form of poetry that utilises a regular metrical form with unrhymed lines.
To this day the exact circumstances surrounding Marlowe’s death remain a mystery. The renowned playwright met his premature demise at the age of twenty-nine when he was stabbed with a knife by companion Ingram Frizer. The official story is that an argument broke out over a drinks bill, resulting in Marlowe attacking Frizer with a knife, only to be disarmed and despatched with a single thrust of the blade to the eye. Some have argued that the playwright’s death was in fact a political assassination, perhaps related to his work as a spy, whilst others claim it was because Marlowe was deemed a danger to the state, due to his reputed atheistic beliefs.
Click here to read Part V.
Twitter Reflections
December 27th 2011 – Feeling somewhat lethargic after what had been a fairly gluttonous Christmas period, I lay beached on the sofa, remote clasped in one hand, idly flicking through the TV channels. There were only two programmes that even vaguely stimulated my interest. I decided to Tweet this information to the world. The Tweet read:
‘Choices, choices – Kim Jong-il’s state funeral or George of the Jungle with Brendan Fraser?’ #Jong-il #BrendanFraser
It was a defining moment, as this was the first Tweet I had ever sent. No one responded, perhaps because I didn’t have any Followers back then. A little over two years, 4,010 Followers and 7,437 Tweets later I find myself reflecting on my time spent in the Twitter sphere. A period that has witnessed some truly remarkable Twitter events, none more so than the medium’s pivotal role in the Arab Spring.
These Twitter facts pay testimony to the influence of the social media behemoth.
- 1 Billion – Registered Twitter Users.
- 500 Million – Average Number of Tweets sent per Day.
So fascinated with this microcosm of society did I become that I was soon writing extensively about Twitter here on my blog, including posts about the various species that inhabit Twitter, Twitter annoyances, Twitter viruses, how authors use Twitter to promote their books and much more besides.
I’ve seen it all – the good, the bad and the ugly.
The Good – Making Twitter friends, particularly fellow authors. Taking part in entertaining conversations. Sharing interesting and entertaining information with others and vice versa. Utilising Twitter as a curated news feed to get breaking news.
The Bad – #TeamFollowBack. ‘10,000 Followers for $5’ type spam Twitter accounts, more often than not from an account with a profile pic of an under-age looking South East Asian girl acting as jail bait. Incessant Repeater Tweeters (e.g. authors saying things like ‘BUY NOW’ and ‘PRIZE WINNER!’ – more often than not complete with capitalisation and exclamation marks, in some instances I have seen promotional Tweets repeated up to x200 per day).
The Ugly – Justin Bieber.
What have I learnt from my Twitter experiences? As an author I was keen to use the medium to promote my book, Charles Middleworth, a humorous tale of the unexpected. These are the lessons I have learnt:
- There is no correlation between book sale pitch related Tweets and books sales.
- Twitter can be a useful tool in referring traffic to one’s blog (12% of my blog traffic is referred by Twitter).
- Increasing Follower numbers does not necessarily equate to more sales, leads, blog traffic etc.
With my second book, Necropolis, a work of dark humour, due to launch the week of April 21st, I have been considering my future use of the medium. These are my conclusions.
Future Use:
- Utilise a personal/distinctive voice to stand out from the crowd as opposed to add to the clamour.
- Avoid ‘Buy Now’ type Tweets and instead promote book through event/promotion announcements at the appropriate time (i.e. book launch, Amazon KDP, goodreads giveaway).
Comparisons with other social media platforms (my experience):
- Google+ to date has been more effective in driving traffic to my blog (Tangible Evidence: 15% of blog traffic this quarter – Intangible: weight of evidence suggesting Google+ presence improves google search engine ranking).
- goodreads – More effective than Twitter for promoting my book, communicating with readers, improving visibility and measuring results. (Supporting Evidence: Recent Charles Middleworth giveaway had 824 entries, with 319 people adding to their to-read list).
Bizarre Author Deaths V
This week’s blog post is dedicated to two more bizarre author deaths. Initially I did not envisage that this author series would have so many instalments, but with the multitude of bizarre/mysterious author deaths that have occurred down the years, I anticipate that there will be at least a further two instalments at some point.
Edgar Allan Poe
(January 19th 1809 – October 7th 1849)
Notable works: The Raven, The Masque of the Red Death, Tamerlan and Other Poems
Poe was an author, poet, editor and literary critic, whose tales of mystery and the macabre are still widely read to this day. One of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, Poe is also widely considered as being the inventor of the detective fiction genre. Evidence of the writer’s enduring popularity is the fact that an original copy of Poe’s Tamerlane and Other Poems sold at Christie’s in New York for $662,500, a record price for a work of American literature.
The bizarre events surrounding Poe’s death were as mysterious as the nature of his writing. On October 3rd 1849 Mr. Joseph Walker found Poe wandering the streets of Baltimore in a delirious state. The writer was taken to hospital, but was unable to give an accurate account of what had occurred before his demise four days later.
There has been much speculation surrounding Poe’s sudden deterioration and death. Due to the fact that he was found wearing someone else’s clothes it has been argued that he was the victim of cooping, a practice in which citizens were attacked, absconded, plied with alcohol and forced to vote for a political candidate. His sudden deterioration and demise has also been attributed to alcoholism, TB, epilepsy, diabetes and even rabies.
Dan Andersson
(April 6th 1888 – September 16th 1920)
Notable works: The Charcoal-Burner’s Tales, The Charcoal-Burner’s Songs, Three Homeless Ones
Dan Andersson was a Swedish author, poet and composer, who became a cult figure in his native Sweden posthumously. Regarded as one of Sweden’s greatest ever poets, his themes of naturalist mysticism and searching for God continue to resonate with his readers to this day.
Andersson’s memory has been commemorated with two stamps in his honour, a museum in his hometown of Ludrika, in addition to a Dan Andersson week, celebrated in the first week of every August. There is also a bust of the iconic poet in the country’s capital, Gothenburg.
The thirty-two year old Andersson met his premature demise when he went to Stockholm in September 1920 to try and secure a job at the newspaper Social-Demokraten. On arrival at the hotel he was due to stay in, the Hotel Hellman, the receptionist failed to inform him that his room had just been treated with hydrogen cyanide, in an effort to eradicate an infestation of bed bugs. At three pm on September 16th 1920 Andersson was found dead in his room.
Click here to read Part IV
My Year In Books
Shortly before Christmas goodreads emailed me a report listing the 22 books that I had read during the calendar year.
(Click on the book links to read my reviews).
Transgressive Fiction/Black Humour
As my second book, Necropolis, due out this spring (date to confirmed soon) is a work of dark fiction, a significant proportion of the books (27%) that I read last year were of the Transgressive Fiction/Black Humour variety. They were:
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Haunted by Chuck Palahaniuk
Damned by Chuck Palahniuk
Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis
Beat Generation
Maggie Cassidy by Jack Kerouac
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Queer by William S. Burroughs
Indie Books
Barry Braithwaite’s Last Life by A R Lowe
The Earth Shifter by Lada Ray
Others
Candide by Voltaire
Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Red House by Mark Haddon
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
Pure by Andrew Miller
Pulp by Charles Bukowski
Biggest Disappointments
I enjoyed 19 of the 22 books that I read last year. The exceptions were Pure, The Red House & The Men Who Stare At Goats. The following 2 shared the honour of Biggest Disappointment of the year. I appreciate that many readers will disagree with me on these, especially regarding my choice of Pure, the winner of The Costa Prize in 2011.
Paris’s oldest cemetery, Les Innocents, is overflowing, the city’s deceased having been piled in there for years, resulting in the surrounding area having been permanently permeated more….
Having greatly enjoyed A Spot of Bother and The Curious Incident by the same author, I was very much looking forward to reading The Red House more…
Favourite Book of 2013
This was a difficult decision as I really enjoyed so many of the books that I read last year. After much deliberation I decided that Fight Club, Maggie Cassidy and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich were my favourites. The one that made the biggest impression on me was Solzhenitsyn’s controversial and morose novella, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a book that I am yet to review.
I look forward to hearing about your 2013 reading experiences.
Bizarre Author Deaths IV
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
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
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.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98BIu9dpwHU
Click here to read my blog post about Amazon’s robotic workforce.
Bizarre Author Deaths III
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
