Physics for Poets

I was inspired in part by Arthur Nersesian’s The Fuck Up which catalogue’s in gritty and loving detail the urban chaos of New York in early 80′s.  I loved the way NYC received as much lavish attention as any of the other characters of the book.  I started Physics because I wanted to capture a sense of Durban on the cusp of the nineties, a cultural snapshot of the moment.  I’m not saying that’s what I’ve actually done! But it’s what I set out to do.

Physics is my first novel.  I had a short story published before called Table 18, about an upmarket restaurant manager’s wrangle with a celeb.  I had written scenes for Physics through the years, all very badly.  One night, armed with a South Australian Shiraz and a book of post-its, I plotted out a possible story on the wall. Over 8 months I wrote pretty close to the scenes I had plotted out that first night, until I had 50k words.   And then I edited and edited some more.  And when I was done with that I had someone who knew what the hell they were doing edit the first three chapters.  I submitted those 3 chapters to six South African publishers.  Penguin SA came back about 6 months later and asked to see the rest of the novel.  I still remember the beer and pub where I saw the email come through on my phone.  What a great beer.  So I spent a crazy week fixing the bejesus out of it with my editor and gave him an insulting amount of money in return.  I sent it off.

And every day for the next 6 months I woke up expecting to get the email.  The email that said Yes!  We love your manuscript.  Some days I knew it was going to be a no and others I let myself hope.

When they finally said thanks, but no thanks I took it my stride, going on a three bender, smashing up a 7-11, a children’s shoe shop and a drive through bottlo.  After the trial I decided to publish anyway and here we are.  All up, it’s been 2.5 years since I wrote the first line.  I hope you like it.

I wrote a book

and it got released yesterday.

It is set over 6 months in Durban, South Africa at the end of 1989, during the slow crumble of Apartheid.

Charl and girlfriend spend the remainder of their disintegrating relationship, drinking, smoking and groping their way through their long summer holidays.  Pensive, rash and ultimately lazy, Charl feels like he has little going for him. When Belinda finally tires of his self-absorbed melancholy and dumps him, it looks like he might just be right.
From a school suspension for carving a giant Anarchy sign outside the assembly hall, staggering through a disaster-inducing relationship with the girl of his dreams and dropping Acid in a club filled with lava, to selling APLA T-shirts and meeting Nelson Mandela after toilet sex, Charl’s meandering path cut through the new South Africa seems to have little in common with making choices.

Here’s the Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Poets-Nick-Darcy-Fox/dp/1466462108/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322910128&sr=8-1

You can also get it from Createspace which actually gets me a better commission but I’m not sure what the postage scenario is.  If you use Createspace let me know if you have any issues.

https://www.createspace.com/3711328

Thanks for reading!

The good news for me is that now that I have released the book it means I can move onto the next book which I’m pretty excited about. It’s holding title is ABOUT:BLANK, but we’ll see.

Viva La Tour

Some incredible footage take from the 1962  Tour De  France.  How they ate food (ice creams, anyone?), replacing liquids (stop in at the local, run in grab as many bottles of juice you can fit in the back of your shirt. Don’t pay. Jump on your bike again).  Not a helmet in sight.

Its not about the winners and its not about the advertising or the even the race, its about all those that participated. If we think this is a tough race now, imagine what it was like then before race radio and carbon fibre and cleats, or even having your team ride you back into the race.

Sourced from:http://www.cyclingtipsblog.com

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Minty-Fresh™.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,200 times in 2010. That’s about 5 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 20 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 63 posts. There were 14 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was March 4th with 34 views. The most popular post that day was Gonzo: The movie.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com, obama-scandal-exposed.co.cc, en.wordpress.com, imobilereview.com, and michael-jackson-secret-exposed.xpac.info.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for gonzo, hunter s thompson, logo porsche, hunter s. thompson, and banksy.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Gonzo: The movie September 2008
2 comments

2

Porsches “creeping takeover” of VW November 2008

3

Banksy authentication September 2008
6 comments

4

New A380 Singapore Airlines Suites, but what is it missing? October 2008

5

Exit through the Gift Shop February 2010

Bret Easton Ellis – recording

BEE recorded at the Melbourne Writers Festival as promised, like months ago.  An incredibly funny guy.  Please excuse the rather drunken and unprofessional laughing going on – clearly I’m not an expert.  And a little drunk.  Ok, you happy? I said it.

Bret Easton Ellis

It’s a dirty story of a dirty man and his clinging wife

So starts the lyrics for Paperback Writer.

Now that the chapters and synopses and author biometrics and bull (who can really write well about themselves – aren’t CV’s the worst kind of work?) has been submitted to 6 or so publishers we play the waiting game.  Well a waiting game for the remaining.  Macmillan got back to me in an unheard of 10 days.  And just to be clear they got back to me to say thanks but no thanks.  And you’re never really happy.  If it takes 5 months for them to read the 5000 words of Physics for Poets I sent, just for them to tell you they didn’t like it, it might seem cruel. You’re left thinking, why don’t they read the crap first and get back to you sooner?  I don’t mind hanging on half a year if, when you finally do make contact it’s with embarrassingly gushy noises.    But when they take less than 2 weeks, it’s like a slap in the face.  Or maybe a half-a-night stand.  Of course I know this is  how it works, it just seems weird when your’e in the middle of it.

So I have all this leisure time to ruminate on how underdone the submission letters were.   And read endless blogs on writing that are less than useless.  Useless might be something like: “write every day, even if it’s for five minutes.”  Or maybe “make your characters something resembling human and give them a problem they can believably solve.”  Whatever you do, don’t create a character that looks and sounds like a sentient posturing  AI set to solve a thousand year mystery in one night in 4 continents, only to find out Jesus of Nazareth married a prostitute.  That wouldn’t work. No, worse than useless is something like this: “Read. Read. Read. Especially in the genre you hope to write in.”  Just knowing that the person that dropped this bomb is published is less than inspiring.  What’s the collective adverb for disheartening?

On a brighter note I have the first 17 chapters (don’t worry they’re blog sized, not chapter sized) on WordPress and quite happy with the results. http://physicsforpoets.wordpress.com

Bret Easton Ellis at Melbournes Writers Festival

Bret doesnt get out much.  At least thats the impression you get listening to him tell you how he only does “these things” every five years or so.  Or that he has a close circle of friends in LA who hangs with and when he does go out he still remains fairly anonymous.  I had this image of him opening the front door to a knock, the front room of his apartment a catalogue of filth.  The floor littered with empty packets of Cheetos, pizza boxes, clothes, stubbed out cigarettes.  His agent would say, Its time.  Its been four years. And he would answer, I cant have been that long?  It’s four years he would reply. You need to go on the road again; plug the book.  Bret would back away, saying No, I need more time and next to the agent, outside, pressed against the wall would be a hairdresser, a dental hygenist, a dwarf manicurist and a tailor.

He is very funny.  I have most of the interview recorded and would like to upload if I could figure out how to convert m4a’s to m3′s.   Any idea’s let me know.

The question and answer session at the end was probably one of the high points as individuals from the audiance ask crazed question after crazed question.  If I had of asked one question it would have been something along the lines of how similair does he feel he is to the roll of Jeff Koons.  They’re both snappy dressers, for one.  No but seriously, I think they both mess with the idea of Trust.  Jeff asks us to believe that his work is honest, that when he makes 10 foot high metal balloon-dog he means nothing more than celebrating  a beautiful object. “A viewer might at first see irony in my work… but I see none at all. Irony causes too much critical contemplation” The question really is do you believe him?

Likewise with Ellis, he asks us, the reader to trust that the lifes that seem to close and at times one and the same (Lunar Park) is not actually his.  That its all game and that really he likes nothing more than a relaxing wine on the balcony.  And then he’ll say something to shatter it all and then build it all back up again.

Like one of the last questions which got a laugh from everyone there including myself until I went home and it started to seem contrived or if not then downright creepy.  A faceless woman in the balcony asked: “Do you ever wish someone had killed you at the peak of your career”.  And at the time it seemed like a fantastically crafty question, but afterwards when I contemplated the silence it drew from him, it seemed more like some rougue moment stolen from Imperial Bedrooms, a phantom text while he does coke and watch The Hills.

But stalking and paranoia aside, quite possibly I read too much into it.  In reply he said Yes, first of all and then when prompted about something in private from the interviewer, said “No.  No, of course not.”

Bill Murray interview

An awesome interview with Bill Murray by Dan Fierman, writing for GQ.  I’m not too sure what else he’s done, but googling him indicates that this interview must be one of his career highlights.  And it should be, its a coup just to get the guy.  But he’s also done his research, which makes the interview just flow.

Link

What Billions actually mean

Check out the infographic below for some comparisons on the billions lost, made, spent and saved.

I’m not entirely covinced about the accuracy of the data, but I think its just meant to be indicative.  And as such its a revelation.  Clearly the cost of the gulf war is just massive.  But the main thing that jumped out at me was looking at Wall Street profits compared to gargantuan GFC cost.  And even if you added all the major international markets profits together its still always going to look like a blip on the scale of what got screwed up.  

If all the possible profits from financial trading were equal to all the possible losses then you would probably be fair in thinking that’s a risk, if we manage it well, worth taking.  But if the possible losses are of such a massive order of magnitude compared with the profits then maybe we need to be rethinking the whole thing. 

Link

Big Bang Big Boom

The graffiti artist Blu has done this amazing stop start animation called Big Bang Big Boom that seems to take over the whole town.  He’s certainly ambitious with the theme.