Saturday 10th of May 2008
May 2007
WORDS OF THE MONTH: walnuts, rain, narcotic abstinence, major label headaches, spring,
mindless Krellheads, Guinness - and lots of it, Serj Tankian, Bear Grylls, Trolleyboy,
let the folk odyssey begin...
A New Novel
Good news. My second novel The Missing Kidney has found a home at the UK's newest and most cutting edge independent
publisher Social Disease. It'll be out... soon-ish. I'll post the publication as soon as I have it.
To celebrate I shall be giving this website and my MySpace (www.myspace.com/bigbenmyers)
page a complete overhaul over the next month or two.
Last month I got arrested for poaching back on my home turf of Durham. I await my fine with empty pockets. I may write a story about it. I also recently started drinking every day again. Then I gave it up again and haven't had a drop since Easter Monday. I'd like to say this choice of date has historical/religious significance but it is actually because I dramatically vomited and can't be bothered with getting fat from beer again.
SCARECROW INTERVIEW AND SHIT FROM AN OLD NOTEBOOK
For lovers of literature I have something of a word frenzy over the excellent writing weblog Scarecrow,
alongside writers including Adelle Stripe, Stewart Home, Noal Cicero, Tony O'Neill and Heidi James.
You can read an interview with me about my novel The Book Of Fuck and other current projects here: Hodmandod5
And I have two sets of poems on the same site (hodmandod6.blogspot.com): 'Shit From An Old Notebook' and 'Welcome To Peckham'. And why not also read an editorial by Lee Rourke about 'The Off-Beat Generation' and 'The Brutalists' writing movements. Scarecrow ←
THE FLASH
The Flash, an anthology edited by Bookmunch.co.uk editor and all-round righteous chap Peter Wild, is out now.
It features brand spanking new fiction from 100 authors, including Daren King, Ian Sansom,
Nick Stone, Patrick Neate, Nicholas Blincoe, Niall Griffiths, Willy Vlautin, Sara Gran,
Gina Ochsner, Dermot Bolger, Rick Moody, Sam Lipsyte, Percival Everett, Jonathan Lethem,
Katherine Dunn, Lana Citron, Damon Galgut, Steven Sherrill, Michel Faber, Jeff VanderMeer,
Stewart Lee, Charlie Williams, Rebecca Ray, Matt Thorne, Kate Pullinger, Emily Maguire,
Christopher Brookmyre, Steve Aylett, Aimee Bender, Steve Almond, Nick Johnstone, Stella Duffy,
Arthur Nersesian, Carlton Mellick III, Fred Dutton (and 74 other writers) is now on sale!
Oh, and as previously reported it features my story 'Fish-Pie Wednesday.'
You can buy the book here, at Amazon.
IF I WERE PRIME MINISTER...
We'd all be fucked. Here's why
SOMETHING CALLED...'THE INTERNET'? As well as the usual outlets, my music biographies for the esteemed Independent Music Press can now be ordered online at: mamstore. Apparently they deliver very quickly. Which is nice.
Speaking of which the all-new updated version of my book 'Muse: Inside The Muscle Museum is out in the UK on June 16th 2007.
The first version of this book came out in 2004. The band play two sold-out shows at the new Wembley stadium that month too.
For the record, Muse are the only band I would ever go and see in a stadium. Apart from Guns N' Roses, of course.
BIG IN FINLAND
Another of my biographies Green Day: American Idiots & The New Punk Explosion
now available to buy in Finnish, through Sammakko,
esteemed publishers of life-changing writers Charles Bukowksi and
Henry Miller, amongst others. It's a pleasure to be amongst such company. And hello people of Finland.
SYSTEM OF A DOWN BOOK IN THE US
Blimey, it's all going off. My most recent music biography of one of the few metal bands worth getting excited about,
System Of A Down: Right Here In Hollywood (have you noticed a pattern emerging with theses titles yet?)
has been sold to the US, and will be coming out through the excellent Disinformation,
a publisher at the frontline of 21st century counter-culture. First published in the UK in April
2006 it has been updated and will be published in the US later on 2007. Check out one of their
'hits' ←
I've also been chatting to SOAD frontman Serj Tankian about his involvement in Screamers a new BBC-funded documentary about the Armenian genocide. The piece can be read in Kerrang! or read soadfans ←
A MAN, A SAXOPHONE Show me a man cooler than James Chance.
NEW POETRY
I think I have some work in the forthcoming issue of poetry journal Remark. I can't actually remember what,
but I'm sure it's not terrible. For more details you could go and visit Remark ←
I have also have a couple of very short poems on a new poetry weblog called Sawbuck.
You can read them at Sawbuck ←