Child of our time

Anyone been watching this for the last ten years (obviously gaps within viewing sessions are allowed; I don't mean has anyone been watching this permanently without at least a few screen breaks for the last ten years).

Amazing, isn't it? For those who don't know, it's a study group of children whose parents--before the kids were even born--signed them up to be followed by film crews for the first twenty years of their lives, in order to show us how human personalities evolved.

Last night's programme was a bit of a mixed bag, focusing more on the studio graphics and popular science than on the children--who are all pretty wonderful, and I know I shouldn't have a favourite but how can it not be Helena (see pic)?--but the stats it revealed were pulled from a pretty impressive study. The Beeb has results from more than 200,000 Brits who took part in this personality test, which may not be available at the moment due to millions more who seem to be going onto the site to undertake the test themselves.

You will submit!

So we did it. Today, Russell submitted the final version of The New Goodbye app to Apple.

In other news, I got my dog some prescription shampoo and ate lots of tomatoes. Oh, and Aliya, bless her little cottons, is going to be doing a bookswap not involving men in uniform of the non-RAF variety at some point in the none-too-distant future. I'm staying reasonably cryptic to help build a sense of suspense.

And Come Thou, Tortoise, yes, everyone should buy it. Forget squirrels and rabbits. Tortoises is where it's at these days.

Bring on the vegetables! (And maybe some mushrooms.)

Bloggage and an interview

After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, The New Goodbye finally gets its own little bit of the web dedicated to it. The first proper post is an interview with its illustrator, Johanna Basford.

The New Goodbye app features some video, including this interview with Johanna.

I was playing around with the test version of the app yesterday. Needless to say, I'm absolutely delighted with it. I reckon anyone who does fork out the £1.99 for it will feel they've got a rather spiffy deal.

Meanwhile, on the rabbit front, I think Aliya is just a bit paranoid.

Oh, and Aliya and I and Mr Aliya met up for 'cake' last week (they had some over-priced chicken salad affairs). There were not pictures from that encounter, but as not everyone on here pops over to the MNW blog regularly, here's not-the-most glamorous pic of the two of us from back in February, when I almost ended up paying twenty quid for just three mushrooms.

To see some other writers looking similarly delightful, head this way.

You saw it here first, folks

Here are some screenshots of the app-in-progress, including a shot of the cover. Nice, int they?

I wonder if they're open to crime writers...

In Guardian Media today there's an ad for Writers in Residence vacancies for four of her majesty's prisons. Each position comes with a fairly decent salary, for a writing position, but I only read the ad briefly, so am not sure of the additional duties it entails, though I imagine creative writing with inmates is probably on the list.

The ad isn't online yet, but I thought some of the readers of this blog might be interested.

The Literary Platform

So this lovely, sparkly new website looking at the crossover between books and digital is live now. And here's my piece on apps and art, along with the first public outing for the cover of The New Goodbye.

Also lots of other good stuff on there.

iPhone... therefore I am

For anyone paying close attention, Russell Quinn is the clever chap who’s developing The New Goodbye for me. He also produced the brand spanking new app for Creative Review (if you’re paying even closer attention you’ll know that being a part of the Creative Review team constitutes my day-job). Anyway, this brand spanking new app he’s made for CR is now available on the iPhone and iPod Touch for the princely sum of £2.99. Here’s a demo of it in action.

What of The New Goodbye? I hear you cry. Castles are all well and good but where’s the fiction, people? We can’t all speak Hebrew, you know.

Good point. So to the update. The cover artwork is all signed, sealed and delivered. Nicole has even created a quirky little stop-motion animation of it being put together, which, along with the behind-the-scenes video we have, gives a nice rounded package for that segment. We also have several lovely pictures of some of those women who would be Mila to sit alongside this.

As well as my novel and the Cervantes masterpiece, we’ve decided to include two longish short stories. One is new. Unless you happened to be one of the few hundred people to have a digital copy of the original The New Goodbye, when the title referred to a short story collection, you won’t have seen it. The second is Twenty One Again, which is taken from Elastic Press’s out-of-print The Elastic Book of Numbers, which won the 2005 BFS Award for best anthology.

At the moment, all the text is being typeset by the nice chaps at Mat Dolphin, and the other bits and bobs are being beaten into some form of coherent shape by Russell.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be putting together a Tumblr site which will have all things The New Goodbye on it.

Aside from my own efforts, there’s also a new website, The Literary Platform, going live this Monday, which will focus on the growing crossover between books and digital. There will be far more authoritative and clever people writing for it than me, but I’ll have a piece on there nonetheless.

I also have a feature in the current issue of Web Designer magazine, which looks at screen legibility for long tracts of text, such as those found in a novel. Alongside this I did a little timeline of type which I think is rather nice. I might have already mentioned this. I can’t remember. But either way, I’m mentioning it here. Again, or for the first time, I don’t believe it really matters.