"People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people, Jeremy."

Not included: context, accuracy

A short line from seminal Channel 4 sitcom, Peep Show, in which Super Hans warns Jez against the risks of populism. It's a nice little line that gets a good laugh as it absurdly conflates people who like a popular but uninspiring band with supporters of history's most notoriously murderous political regime, but unfortunately it's one of those that's been picked up, turned into a GIF, and used in a million online arguments about popularity v artistic integrity, until all trace of its original context has been long forgotten. Without googling, can you remember the episode, or even the season, in which that line was used? I could guess, but I'm pretty sure I'd be wrong.

The GIF has popped up again in the last few days, as a pithy C4 response to the dreary show Mrs Brown's Boys being voted the best sitcom of the 21st Century (so far). And so people are retweeting and sharing and liking and LOLing at this quote without bearing in mind two important facts.

1) The character delivering the line is consistently portrayed as a pompous moron throughout the series (in the very first episode, he tells a barmaid not to doodle a shamrock in the head of his pint of Guinness, as he considers it corporate branding - you probably won't see that quoted in future editions of No Logo).

2) Continuing from the first point, really, the statement is wrong in one very important detail. "People" didn't vote for the Nazis.

The Nazis never polled higher than 43.9% of the vote in the days of the Weimar Republic, and even that was only after Hitler had been appointed Chancellor (after having lost a Presidential election to Hindenburg) and the Nazis had already effectively seized power following the Reichstag Fire in early 1933. Seriously, the Nazis never secured an electoral majority. Go and google it if you don't believe me.

Why is this important? In the context of an argument about British comedy, it probably isn't. Screw Mrs Brown's Boys. But the fact is that the NASDAP's rise to power through Weimar's system of Proportional Representation is a comparatively recent phenomenon and must be properly remembered and understood, particularly at a time when many in the UK are talking seriously about electoral reform along the lines of a PR system. There are serious lessons from history to be learned here, and it's no coincidence that Nazi-lite party UKIP are among the biggest voices in the UK in favour of PR. The lessons that Weimar taught us aren't going to be heeded if we allow idiots to perpetuate the crass assumption that one morning in the early 1930s everyone in Germany suddenly woke up evil.

For the record, I'm not necessarily opposed to PR. I do think the UK needs a measure of electoral reform, and PR has by and large worked across large swathes of Europe since 1945. I do however think people should read a bit more recent history before they decide which political model to pursue.

The extent that this crass assumption is already poisoning our system was revealed only too clearly in April 2016 when political dinosaur Ken Livingstone made a career-ending headline grab and said the following:

"Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews."(Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-anti-semitism-row-full-transcript-of-ken-livingstones-interviews-a7005311.html)

Red Ken, who to be fair is probably not a Peep Show fan, has since backtracked and contradicted and obfuscated over this really rather transparent statement, and has since acknowledged that Hitler did not in fact win the 1932 election, and that Hitler was not a Zionist (or "supporting Zionism"). But "people" don't read the frantic equivocations in subsequent interviews, they read the wildly inaccurate headlines. And when major political figures are getting such basic facts so horribly, and dangerously, wrong, we have a problem.

So, yes, every time I see that Super Hans quote used to suggest anything more than the fact that the character is a delusional, pompous, drug-fried music snob, I will very probably correct whoever posted it. Sometimes pedantry is important.

Short stories

I'm constantly trying to produce longer work. I currently have at least three proper full-length novels under construction, and I envisage that at least two of those will be the first parts of a series.

And yet, whenever inspiration strikes on a walk to work, or while flicking through a magazine at the day job (my day job involves sourcing advertisements from other publications, it's a legit activity, honest), I keep getting ideas for things that are obviously only going to be short stories.

And the really annoying part is that sometimes they demand to be written, these stories. A single image in my head crowds out whole novels until I submit and write the damn thing down, explore the idea, and lay it to rest on paper.

The most irritating example of this was what I can only describe as Tale of Two Cities 2. I took a few (very) small parts in an amateur production of this show - normally I'd share a photo at this point, but the chap taking the cast photos was always on stage at the same time as me, very upsetting - and while drinking at the cast party we were talking about what a shame it was that Madame Defarge dies, as she's clearly the best character in it.

I suddenly pictured Defarge opening her eyes, and escaping the scene of her death by an elaborate and very silly method involving her iconic knitting. And this absurd little scene just would not go away. If anything it became more insistent.

In the end, unable to work on anything else, I wrote it up in graphic novel script format. Because to be honest that was less work than a full prose treatment. I worked out it was about three pages of lunacy, including a splash page of Defarge's triumphant escape, because an artist friend had been moaning to me that no one does splash pages any more.

As soon as I'd written it, complete with a coda where a shadowy figure "recruits" the escaped Defarge for some mysterious and no doubt nefarious purpose, I forgot about it. It was too League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for my tastes. I doubt I even still have the script, I have a feeling it was lost in a hard drive meltdown a couple of years later. But the block was very, very real right up until the point where I wrote it all down.

So this is a very rambling way of saying that in spite of the fact that I have far, far bigger fish to fry, I just had an idea for a quaint short story involving a mobile library travelling once a week to a scientific outpost in the far future.

Which will win? Who can say.

New Releases!

I spent the first half of this year working on short fiction, for a variety of projects. And now they're starting to appear! First up is Flash Fear, a book which I first announced last August, and which has had something of a torrid time in production. Still, it's here now, it looks lovely, and it's just £2.75 this week on Amazon!

Flash Fear contains short horror pieces from a host of authors, including yours truly. My piece Prey For The Dead, is particularly short, and hopefully funny. If I'm honest, I struggle to take anything truly seriously enough to write straight horror.

Next up is A Target For Tommy, a collection of Doctor Who fiction published by Obverse Books in support of Tommy Donbavand's battle against cancer. You can find the full story behind the book on the Obverse page. Tommy is a great writer, and a really nice guy, so I was really glad to be able to lend my support in the form of a 5,000 word adventure set during the Time War, and featuring Paul McGann's 8th Doctor. There are also stories from giants of the Who world including Paul Cornell, Paul Magrs, Steve Cole, and stories from Andrew Hunt, Simon Forward, Simon Bucher-Jones, Daniel Blythe... basically a whole bunch of people whose Doctor Who novels I grew up reading! The book is now available for pre-order in both paperback and digital formats, and it's blinding. I've been involved in Doctor Who charity anthologies before, but this collection really takes things to the next level in terms of the quality of both the writing and the book's production standards.

A Target For Tommy will be published in Summer 2016 on a very limited print run - over half of the copies have already been sold as pre-orders, so don't hang about!

Seriously, how cool is this?

There are a few other releases on the horizon, but just far enough away that I think I'll hold back the details for now. But there's a lot of my fiction coming your way over the rest of 2016. Most of it 5,000 words at a time!

I'm awful at blogging

I'm back. For someone who's had a LiveJournal since 2002 or something, I sometimes have a bit of a mental block when it comes to blogging. Who am I actually talking to? Does anyone actually read this stuff?

Things have been very busy for me, though. As I mentioned in my last post, I appeared in a charity production of Black Comedy which did very well indeed. Sold-out run, more or less (by the final night, they were bringing extra chairs into the auditorium to try and avoid turning too many people away), big laughs, and I felt the benefit of a director who reined me in a bit - avoiding the 'usual Jack-in-a-box' performance that Darrol Blake occasionally laments when I bounce on to the stage.

I then got back to writing, and it all kicked off a bit. I completed submissions for three or four anthologies and put down about 10,000 words of not-bad prose on Detective Daintypaws:1. 

I get bored saying it, because it always goes wrong, but it does look as though there should be a bit of a flurry of new books featuring my work in the second half of 2016. How many of these actually materialise remains to be seen, of course.

Life is settling down, after the crazy wedding shenanigans of last year. We have a dog, and he needs walking twice a day regardless of our plans, and that imposes a kind of structure on our lives which I think we find quite useful in a way. I find it hard to get a lot of writing done, unless I have a deadline in which case I can make time for a couple of days or so. That's fine for short stories, but I need to find more general room for the written word in my life if I'm ever going to step up to producing novels on a reasonably regular basis.

Flash Fear is now out, a collection of (very) short horror stories which includes my Prey For The Dead. An ebook version is forthcoming, apparently.

So this is a rambling bunch of nonsense, but hopefully just posting it and getting the monkey off my back will make it easier to come up with the next post. Until the next time.

Theatrical Interlude

I'm now halfway through a run as Brindsley Miller in Black Comedy at the OSO in Barnes. A community theatre project aiming to raise money for local charities, this brilliant production has given me the opportunity to act opposite my wife (playing Carol Melkett), and I've been learning a lot about reining in my impulse to chase the laughs.

Not pictured: chaotic hijinks and hilarious consequences

As these things always tend to come along in threes, like buses, I also did a rehearsed reading of a friend's brilliant play at the Arcola's Playwrought festival of new writing last week. Oh, and Grimm & Grimmer came out, featuring my short story The Frag Prince.

After the final show on Saturday 5 March, I think I'll be taking a break from the stage, unless I'm lucky enough to be asked to do Tortoise again. I've now got a good half dozen writing projects which have been on hold since New Year, and I need to get back in the author's chair!

Tickets are now very limited, but if you're in London and fancy some classic comedy, www.ticketsource.co.uk/bcp will sort you right out.

13 Minutes

13 Minutes, by Sarah Pinborough

I have a day job where I run the advertising on a very large magazine, that has a small book review section. This book came in, among dozens of others but the editorial team passed on it. So I took it, because I like Sarah's stuff and I was a bit sad that we didn't get it in the magazine. My disclaimer would be something along the lines of "Some people I work with received a free advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. But they didn't fancy it, so you got me instead." Still, it's not as bad as the time a small press publisher tried sending one of my books in!

Early one winter's morning, a popular, attractive, intelligent sixth form student is pulled from the river. Natasha is resuscitated after spending 13 minutes being dead. Her best friends are acting suspiciously, and she received a mysterious text message in the middle of the night.

With no memory of the preceding eighteen hours or so, Natasha and her childhood best friend Rebecca rekindle their relationship as they start investigating the incident. While also worrying about boyfriends, playing chess, and working on the school's drama production of The Crucible. How could perfect Natasha have ended up in the freezing water? And what are her friends failing to tell her?

Sarah Pinborough captures perfectly the shifting alliances, insecurities and rivalries of teenage life, while never descending into stereotypes - the "needy" girlfriend turns out to have pretty good reasons for being clingy where her older boyfriend is concerned, for example. Creating five fully-developed and believable teenage female characters is no mean feat, and when most of their parents also pop up in significant supporting roles, not to mention the police, teachers and other adult cast, you're left with a packed guest cast.

While partly a study in how vile teenage girls can be to each other, 13 Minutes is mostly a thriller, however, and it is constructed tightly. Not a single comment in Natasha's diary is superfluous, not a single plot detail is extraneous (even if it turns out to be a red herring later). The fact that the girls are involved in a production of The Crucible resonates with the plot sometimes, and serves to misdirect the reader at other times.

With any thriller aimed at the YA market, a jaded adult can probably spot the odd plot development before it hits. Sarah's masterstroke is to signal some of her jabs just enough to make them satisfying for readers of any age, whether you predicted them or not, before hitting you with the next twist. "Didn't see that coming, did you, smartarse?" you can almost see her saying.

The girls drink, smoke, take drugs, shag, and are eye-wateringly catty to each other. This is very far from being an idealised depiction of young adulthood, and the plausible use of social media and messaging throughout (a notable Achilles heel for many a writer) adds up to a thoroughly modern novel.

13 Minutes is a gripping, funny and closely observed book that has been crafted to perfection. Everything is both not as it seems, and exactly as described. The book rewards careful reading, re-reading, and deserves to be a smash hit for a very hard-working writer at the height of her powers.

Casanova: The Story Of My Escape. Get It While It's Cheap!

The Story Of My Escape is my most popular and enduring book to date. Casanova (yes, that Casanova) is partying in Venice, when the Inquisition lock him up in The Leads, a notorious prison in the lead-lined roof of the Doge's Palace on St Mark's Square. After 15 months of vermin, illness, boredom, fear, and insanity brought on by reading a bad book, the libertine attempts the most audacious and flamboyant escape in history.

If everything you think you know about Casanova comes from a certain TV serial starring David Tennant then, yes, the book covers the bit when Casanova was locked in prison for five minutes before hearing some bad news about his girlfriend and punching his way out through the wall. The full story is... somewhat more convincing (but still not necessarily entirely true).

It's a brilliant book, a truly marvellous book, and I was staggered to discover it had never been made widely available in English before. At the suggestion of Kate Orman, I translated it from French myself (though Italian, Casanova tended to write in French in order to reach a bigger audience. I surmise from this that he would only have approved of my attempt to render his tale in English).

In the two years that the book has been available, it's sold several hundred copies all around the world, in e-book and paperback. If my interest was purely commercial, I'd be a fairly satisfied self-published author with a modest success in my catalogue.

But I have delusions of scholarship, and I feel this is an important book. The moment I began receiving emails from people thanking me for finally publishing a text for which they'd been searching for years, and from people who letting me know how much they'd enjoyed reading it after completing the Secret Tour of the Doge's Palace and seeing Casanova's actual cells (a trip I've still not made myself!), I knew this book needed to get out of the self-publishing ghetto and in front of as many readers as possible.

People need to read this book, to discover what a witty, ruthless, brilliant man Casanova could be, to be entertained by his philosophical reflections, which can switch from thoughts on bravery and honour to urine within a couple of paragraphs, and back again. In the course of this book, Casanova is as broken as anyone can be by both mental and physical illness, but still bounces back to leave a snotty note for his jailers before breaking out of his cell. The French edition was a huge bestseller across Europe in the late 18th Century. It's been a long time reaching the English market, but now it's here I want people to read it.

To that end, the e-book is currently on sale at just £0.99 / $0.99 on Amazon, until Tuesday 16 February, and is being heavily promoted around the interwebs. Enjoy The Story Of My Escape.