The New Goodbye 1.5

For anyone owning an iPhone who wants money off of books at Foyles or free entry into their publisher days, then you need to--if you haven't already done so, be downloading The New Goodbye, as it's just been updated, and that is one of the new treats. Loads of Foyles goodies, plus a new free chapter, a short story and that animated video by Order.

Mr Blog

So. Aliya's treatment is apparently coming on well (see this old blogpost if you've no clue what I'm talking about), but as she readies herself to come back into day-to-day living, I've been advised to steer clear, so I'm off to the Whiteley motherland for a break at the end of the week, while she road tests her new-found sanity.

Elsewhere, the app update is 'in review' and should be with iPhone owners soon in all its Foylesy goodness.

For those of the Twitter persuasion, or not even, I'm currently over on PC Advisor of all places, talking about my work there.

And in lieu of my blog-mate's wit, I'll let someone else do the amusing stuff. Readers, I give you, Mr Blog.

First night nerves

I am very much enjoying Beth and Emma Kilcoyne's Roger And Val Have Just Got In (a new sitcom/play thing going out on BBC2 at the weekends at the moment, with Dawn French and Alfred Molina, for anyone unfamiliar with it).

Beth has a nice blogpost over on the BBC concerning the first night of broadcast.



Sorry the player doesn't fit properly on the blog.

In other news, the update for The New Goodbye app has been submitted to the App Store, along with the snazzy Foyles partnership stuff. Should be live in a week or so.

From verdant shores

Just a quick one before I have to take the toucan for a walk: my post for The Bookseller's Futurebook blog went up today, talking about my experiences trying to get published and producing The New Goodbye. And I hear word the music video has gone under the editor's knife, so that should be with us soon, in all its technicolour, stop-motion glory.

In other news, I'm surprised to find they've never heard of asparagus here.

One step at a time

Just a little update on my attempt to take over the world. Last week saw The New Goodbye and me popping up on the Indie Quarter and the Creative Review blog. Any words of wisdom you'd like to add to keep the story up there on the most recently commented panel are most welcome. There was also a piece on Bookbrunch, but you need to be a member to see that.

In farming news, I missed Countryfile, but did catch this lovely film on 4onDemand (not as good as the BBC iPlayer, but same principle). There were no farmers, but the last film is of 'Britain's Oldest Newlyweds' and is tip-top.

A round up

Exciting times. For me at least. Publicity for The New Goodbye has picked up a little. Thanks to everyone who’s tweeted about the book so far. A special shout out to Patrick Hussey at Arts & Business, who went out of his way to help. There have also been tweets from Amelia’s Magazine, Design Week, Making Hay, Art at Heart and PD Smith, plus plenty others.

Plus there’s been some more general web action. The first piece was my guest blog on Catherine Hawley’s Juxtabook. Then Aliya kindly pointed all the MNW-ers in my general direction. This was followed by a piece on Web Designer magazine’s blog, then came The Literary Platform’s Showcase and another guest spot, this time on design agency Mat Dolphin’s site. Last week fantasy maestro Mark Chadbourn flagged up The New Goodbye on his blog and yesterday also saw me take up some prime space on Me & My Big Mouth, the blog belonging to Scott Pack, publisher for The Friday Project.

Monday will see a post on the Creative Review blog, and hopefully next week will bring some more coverage too. I also have a guest post to write for Sam Hayes when I get a spare moment or two. Something around the letter K.

Meanwhile I'm off work for a week and celebrating my daughter's second birthday.

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?

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.

Hello, strangers

Aliya has gone on holiday. To Wales, no less.

I meantime, am trying to bring together all the strands for The New Goodbye. We have a cover; we have a behind-the-scenes video; we even have a bespoke song and a video team to create a music promo.

What we didn't have at the crucial moment was enough coloured card. We were due to receive two deliveries, but only got one, which meant the music video, which was due to be shot last weekend, didn't happen. Now this weekend the venue isn't available for long enough due to--get this--being double-booked with a writing workshop. Damn you writers! We can't shoot after this week due to clashing schedules, and the app submission deadline, so looks like the first iteration of the app may be without a music video. Still, if a novel, two short stories, a novelette by one of the best writers ever to grace the planet, an original music track and a demo, a beautiful cover and some great additional photography and a two metre long illustration aren't enough for you, well, you're just downright demanding!

So everything is under control. Even the press releases which I've been scribbling together like mad for the lovely ladies who are helping me spread the word, but no music video. As yet. Suggestions on a postcard.

In other news, this morning, in a professional capacity, I'm going to get to nose around the archives of Faber&Faber.

Making pictures

I thought some of you might like to see a few pics from last week's shoot. These photos were taken by Yong Ping Loo, who also shot a behind-the-scenes video we'll be including in the The New Goodbye app.

In the third image, you can see Nicole setting up the overhead camera, and an indication of what the finished cover will look like.

Shoot

Yesterday five heavy beach stones from Sussex and I went on a trip back to my motherland in east London. The purpose of the trip: the cover shoot for The New Goodbye, which took place at Street Studios.

I’ve only been on a couple of full day shoots before, as a dog handler. Dogs require far less preparation that human models and are far less patient. And if it’s one thing models need, it’s patience. I can see why Gavin James Bower wasn’t that enamoured with the life.

Dashed aspirations of a career as a male model aside, hopefully the results of the shoot will speak for themselves. (There’ll be a few sneak peeks up here over the next month or so, no doubt.)

Everything went extremely well, notwithstanding a very cloudy period around lunchtime. Nicole and Saskia (the photographer and stylist) had a very firm vision of what that wanted to achieve, and I think we managed to fulfill it. Nicole and I’d been discussing the shoot for close to a month, so when it came to it, everyone had a pretty clear idea of how things were going to work.

By the time I arrived (last one there, to my shame) Saskia had had already begun to lay the set, which comprised a large canvas pasted with torn-out pages from old crime paperbacks for the base. Added to this were roses, a half tonne of dead branches scavenged from the canal side outside the studio and a black bin-bag full of leaves Nicole had collected from near her home. Oh, yes, and the model of course, as the centre-piece. The title and byline were sprayed onto the canvas using stencils Nicole had hand-cut. There was also some smashed china, which helps with the light apparently. (I reckon Saskia just likes breaking things.)

We were even treated to the pleasant interlude of Johanna Basford, who has created the illustrations for the app, stopping by to ply us with Percy Pigs and Colin Caterpillars as part of her flying visit to London before she jetted back to Dundee. And everyone got to listen to the demo of the track that will be packaged with the app.

The day was documented on camera in both video and stills. The video footage will be cut together as a documentary about the process, and along with some extra bits from the day. So it’ll be almost as if you were there too. There were a number of other people involved too, so thanks to Yong Ping, Caroline, Fumi, Dave and Graham, and Alec at Street for the use of the space. I'm sure this'll be one of the first places to get a preview of the work.

Oh, and remember me mentioning lugging the stones through three counties and across the city at the start of this post? It goes without saying they weren’t used. They’re now back safe and sound on my rockery, so the woodlice had somewhere comfortable to sleep last night.

Next up, fingers crossed, is filming the music video.

351 changes, and I'm done

The New Goodbye fast approaches a 'public-ready' state. (There are 351 minor changes to implement, and it's job done.)

It's a weird feeling, being on the verge of what is essentially self-publishing. It's not something I thought I'd ever be comfortable with, but, having read through the entire manuscript now, in an almost final state, I have to confess I've never been so confident in or so proud of a piece of writing, and I seriously think there's an audience for it.

It feels like it fulfills everything I want to achieve with my writing. Can an author really ask for more?

Added to this is the fact that it's going to be part of a very special art project, and I couldn't be happier with it. Johanna has completed work on her illustrated version of The Dialogue Of The Dogs and although it took her closer to seven days rather than seven years to complete, it is no less amazing for it: a two metre-long wordless narrative full of tiny detail. I'm not really one for superlatives, but it really is a wonderful achievement.

Covers

Doug Worgul's Thin Blue Smoke is finally coming out in paperback, and it has a luvverly cover. To whit:



In other news, Aliya and I and a bunch of MNW authors met up on Monday at Brown's in Covent Garden and a nice old chat was had by all. I'm sure Matt Curran will be posting some of the pictures he got the waitress to take in lieu of not bringing him any pudding.

And also, I suppose this should have gone at the top really, a winner has been selected to be the cover model for The New Goodbye. Congratulations to Cat Lane (she's the one in the picture below, which she also took). Nicole will be shooting the cover sometime early next month.



Also included in the app as they made the shortlist are Susie Harrison, Saroj Patel, Jaci Berkopec, Sam George and Alle Mind. Thanks to everyone else who submitted.

What’s new buckaroo?

I thought some of you might find it interesting to know what’s been afoot on the Red Diesel app front. Well, the biggest change is the title of the book. I figured (and Aliya agreed) that The New Goodbye was a more appropriate title for the novel itself, short story collections of the same name by the same author notwithstanding. This means that The New Goodbye short story collection is now out of circulation. So the few hundred out there who actually downloaded a copy now have in their digital paws something of a rarity. And who knows, maybe a collectible.

Where we’re at now is the photo shoot for the cover is halfway to organised, there’s a lovely title track by my good friend Rich Watson with a kind of Bond-theme/Take That vibe and I’m having a final sweep through all of the prose one last time.

The contents for the app are shaping up to look something like the following:

• The New Goodbye (50k novel, by me) with chapter plates by Johanna
• The Dialogue of the Dogs (by Cervantes) with a very special illustrated app-thingy by Johanna
• Three of my short stories: The Leaving Present (most bits previously unpublished), Twenty-One Again (from The Elastic Book of Numbers) and The Listening (from Gratia Placenti—I just need to check the copyright status of this one come to think of it)
• Several videos, including a little documentary of the cover shoot and the music video

So, it’s coming together; it’s coming on. And a few months and it should hopefully have arrived.

In the meantime I’m working on a feature about text legibility on websites and in apps for Web Designer magazine. Anyone suitably knowledgeable feel free to chuck me some pointers.

The New Book: The New Goodbye

Yes, it's a new book by me. A short story collection to be precise. Most of the stories in there have been published previously, and the ones that haven't, well, they're better than the ones already out anyway.

Here's the official blurb:

In this collection of realist short stories, Neil George Ayres details the often overlooked depth of modern relationships. From the self-contained love story of a modern marriage, through to the microcosm of the patrons of a working class public house, all life is here. If you love Raymond Carver or Jon McGregor, you should be in safe hands.

The book is available completely free. And, as is usual with me, it's short too, being comprised of a mix of traditional shorts and a couple of stories structured from linked flash pieces.

The cover image is by the talented Jaci Berkopec. And the book is produced and distributed courtesy of the nice people at Smashwords.

The book can be read online, or in the following ereader formats and computer document formats:

Kindle (.mobi)	Download
Epub (open industry format, good for Stanza reader, others)	Download
PDF (good for highly formatted books, or for home printing)	Download
RTF (readable on most word processors)	Download
LRF (for Sony Reader)	Download
Palm Doc (PDB) (for Palm reading devices)	Download

It should also be available on the Sony ebook store and from Barnes & Noble fairly soon, but it's free, so doesn't matter too much where you pick it up from.

Review, are of course, always welcome. Hope you like it.