Well, the Christmas tree is packed away, the turkey digested, and the presents all have their new homes (I had a faux leather desk tidy, a new keyboard and mouse, a first edition John Updike book of his golf writings, the superb Super 8 on DVD , a banker’s lamp [bloody bankers] and a whole host of other goodies). Time to put 2011 to bed and look forward into the new year. And there are lots of things to look forward to. I’m going to use this blog to highlight some of the things I’m eagerly anticipating for the coming year.

BOOKS

Although it was released last year, Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 is my most anticipated read. It’s going to be my reward for finishing my new novel, The Curve of the Earth. Other than that, Doubleday are going to be releasing a book that sounds brilliant; The Light Between The Oceans by ML Steadman. It’s about a childless couple living on a lighthouse when one day a boat arrives containing a dead body and a baby. The baby is the child they could never have and together they bring it up. Conflict arrives years later in the form of the child’s mother, who one day appears at the lighthouse. It’s out in April.

Here’s a list of books, not released this year, that I intend to read in 2012:

Underworld – Don DeLillo (yes, this is still on my shelf of shame)

From Hell – Alan Moore

The Absolutist – John Boyne

Wild Abandon – Joe Dunthorne

Writings on Golf – John Updike

Once Upon a Time in the North – Philip Pullman

Moby Dick – Herman Melville

TV

I don’t watch a great deal of TV but returning this year is the second half of the second season of The Walking Dead. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s a zombie apocalypse series from Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption, The Mist) that left off before the mid-season break on a blistering climax that had me and my girlfriend gasping. Can’t wait to see the ramifications. The show also guarantees at least one extremely cool zombie moment every week.

 Also back after a mid-season break is the best sit com in years, Community. It’s not been on British TV yet but if it does get syndicated I strongly suggest you watch it. It’s about a group of mature students at an American Community College and features none other than Chevy Chase . It’s smart and bursting at the seams with pop culture references. Oh, and there’s a stop motion Christmas episode. It’s struggling in America and NBC are dangling the cancelled brick over its head but if it does go then it would be a great loss.

I shall be watching TV this year on a 60 (that’s right, SIXTY) inch HD TV that we just inherited from Amy’s bampi, who has upgraded to 3D TV. The size of the thing is quite incredible.

MUSIC

There’s only one album for me this year: Port of Morrow by The Shins. A little known fact is that I have written an entire novel about The Shins. When I signed my book deal with Transworld it was for two novels and I spent most of 2007 writing The Girl Who Loved The Shins. The trouble was that when I finished it I didn’t feel ready to put it out into the world. I still have a great affection for it but it lies un-typed-up in about five notebooks at home. It was about an ugly, friendless thirteen year old girl suffering from a psychological disorder, and how she viewed the world. But anyway, I’m really excited about Port of Morrow . The Shins got me through some tough times and I think James Mercer is a hugely underrated songwriter. In their three albums there’re only two songs that I don’t like. They’re pretty special.

I had Ceremonials by Florence + the Machine for Christmas and have been listening to that on my way to work. Shake It Out is a stunning song.    

FILM

There are four films coming out this year that I am really excited about. The first two are pretty obvious: The Hobbit and The Dark Knight Rises. The Lord of the Rings films played a big part in my life and still remind me of Christmas. And Peter Jackson is a pretty inspiring guy. I loved Braindead and Bad Taste and think it’s brilliant how the director of those films went on to create the monumental Middle Earth trilogy. Seeing The Hobbit is going to be very nostalgic.

 As for The Dark Knight Rises, it’s going to be big! I’m a huge fan of Batman (my first published work was a letter to Batman Monthly when I was thirteen) and Christopher Nolan’s take on the caped crusader has blown me away. I’m probably the only person in the world who preferred the first film to the second but the third could top the lot. In the comics Bane breaks Bruce Wayne’s back so I can’t wait to see how it’s going to play out. Nolan has managed to put together another incredible cast yet again and Tom Hardy facing off against Christian Bale is going to be an intensity-fest that surely can’t fail.

 The third film I’m chomping at the bit to see is The Master, the latest from Paul Thomas Anderson. He’s directed my two favourite films – Magnolia and There Will Be Blood – and this outing sees Philip Seymour Hoffman setting up a cult in 1950s America (definitely not Scientology apparently…). PTA is a virtuoso director whose films leave you breathless. There’s no release date yet but I hope it’ll come out this year as I believe filming wrapped a while back. Maybe it’ll get released during the Oscar rush.

 And finally, the movie adaptation of my favourite novel. Cloud Atlas was the last book I read where, when I wasn’t reading it, I couldn’t wait to pick it up again. It’s more than a novel; it’s a blueprint for human behaviour. Its six stories span several millennia and are unstoppable in their momentum; literary, entertaining and thought-provoking. Simply put, it’s amazing. If you haven’t read it, you should. And at the end of the year the film is coming out. Written and directed by The Wachowskis (The Matrix) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) it’s reportedly weighing in at over three hours long but that’s music to my ears (there could be an intermission – the structure is perfect for a halfway pause). The concept art for the future Seoul looks awesome and Tom Hanks (he’s in it) says it’s going to be adult filmmaking on a grand scale.

 So that’s about it for this blog. Happy new year everyone and I hope 2012 treats you kindly. Let’s hope those pesky Mayans were wrong…

My season’s reading is already lined up. Having just polished off the extraordinary Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, about a girl searching for her missing father in the American Ozarks, I’m moving on to Michael Crichton’s last novel, Micro. The files for this final book were found on his computer following his death and in the same way that the gaps in the dinosaur DNA of Jurassic Park were filled by amphibian sequences, so the gaps in Micro were filled by Richard Preston, author of the superb Hot Zone. Not sure if Preston is known to spontaneously change sex though. It sounds like vintage Crichton – microscopic robots run amok – and I can’t wait to read it. Jurassic Park was the book that made me fall in love with books. I devoured his novels as a teenager and have always bought his new releases. It’s going to be sad to say goodbye to these big, fun stories but hopefully they’ll go out with a bang. (Sidenote: I read Robopocalypse by Daniel H Wilson earlier this year. He’s supposed to be Crichton’s successor. It’s really good, not as good as MC in my opinion, but Steven Spielberg is directing the film of it in 2013.)  

In December I always read a Neil Gaiman novel and this year I’ve picked out Neverwhere, a tale about a dark, alternative London . Neil Gaiman is a hugely entertaining writer with a giant imagination so I’m sure there are treats in store.

I’m currently writing my third novel and that is taking the front seat at the moment but my reward for finishing is Haruki Murakami’s massive 1Q84. I’ve deliberately avoided reading anything about it, ignoring even plot details, but the three books are in my house, waiting to be opened. They are beautifully designed, but that’s all I can say about them. Murakami is possibly my favourite novelist because he’s produced so many high quality books. Being able to produce over and over again is something I greatly admire. And the way he describes these strange, reality-bending worlds is close to sublime.

Last year I read the superb haunted house story, House of Leaves, by Mark Z Danielewski. This week it was reported that he’s signed a million dollar deal to produce a 27-volume sequence that will be entitled The Familiar, with each segment coming out every three months between 2014 and 2018. His books always experiment with the form of the novel and it’s good that there are people like him out there, especially when the novels are backed up with genuinely good work (House of Leaves is brilliant not only for its original way of telling a story and book production techniques but because of the story at its heart).

And that’s about it for now.

The air changed this week. It got colder, there was cold moisture in the air. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I felt Christmassy for the first time. There’s a certain magic in the air when the warm seasons diminish, magic that promises romantic walks through damp autumnal parks, the smell of bonfires on dark November nights, the prospect of Christmas. The sensation reminded me of a time when I was a kid, in the year of 1987, or maybe ’88. At the time I was into He-Man and Thunder Cats. I had outgrown simple ideas of space and dinosaurs and needed to flesh out my imagination with characters. I was hoping to get either the open-top flying device that He-Man used to fly around in or the big tank in which the Thunder Cats figures could sit and enjoy some downtime. For me, I enjoyed the times when my figures were between adventures, just hanging out, being themselves.

I was so excited this particular year that I remember attempting to stay up on Christmas Eve to get a glimpse of Father Christmas. Christmas Eve was cold that year, so cold that a latticework of ice molecules had crystallised in the air. You could feel them on your face as you walked. I spent the afternoon kicking a football nervously against a wall, a solitary game of soccer tally. Dusk gathered itself about the afternoon and a mist came in off the river. I remember quite clearly thinking that if ever I was going to see my great hero then tonight would be the night.

I retired to bed at my usual hour of eight o’clock , with a mug of warm Ribena and some light reading material. I read for a while and then made loud stomping noises to the light switch so that my parents below would assume that I was preparing for sleep. Oh how wrong they were! For when I climbed back into bed I had on my person my Formula 1 car which was actually a radio, a torch, and a portable digital clock. I tuned into a comedy show and though I wasn’t old enough to understand the jokes I was thrilled at hearing adult voices talking about things I was not ordinarily privy to. Every now and again I would check the portable digital clock, watching the digits creep ever so slowly by. It seemed odd that episodes of He-Man were twenty minutes long and they flashed by when here in my bed twenty minutes seemed more like an episode of Songs of Praise.

But I am nothing if not immensely stubborn. It got to eleven thirty and I heard a rustling sound not from downstairs, where the fireplace lay in wait, but in my parents’ bedroom. I knew that our chimney was not closed – hail stones landed on the hearth when there were storms – and so I knew that old Santa would not enter the house through a window. I stayed put. Bide your time, Rhys, I told myself. Bide your time.

I was getting tired. I closed my eyes for a while and must have drifted off because soon after I found myself waking up. After recovering from a mild panic attack due to the fact that I had fallen asleep with my face under the blanket, hence leaving myself susceptible to death by asphyxiation, I checked the digital clock. 4:15am ! I remember the time vividly because I had never been awake anywhere close to that time. I had once crept downstairs at 1am after my parents had hosted a house party and accidentally mistook whiskey for delicious Coca Cola, a mistake I never repeated until, some years later in Harry Ramsdens, my brothers substituted my Coca Cola for vinegar whilst I was in the toilet. But 4:15am was completely new territory. I was nervous. Officially it was Christmas Day – was it too late for Father Christmas? How exactly did he conduct his night’s work?

I was already heading down the stairs, freezing in my Gremlins pyjamas that I had outgrown some years previous. When I reached the door that led to the living room I paused. There was someone in there. This is a true story. I pressed my ear to the door and quickly sucked in a shock of breath. The baubles on the Christmas tree were jangling. I got scared for a second and thought about waking my mum and dad but then I thought, no, I have to go through with this. I’ll never get another chance to meet the great man. Slowly, I opened the door.      

The curtains were not drawn; moonlight lit the room. This was only a side thought that slipped in through my open mouth. There was something in the living room, or lounge as we used to call it. And it had heard me. Its back was to the room, and it had paused. The thing wore a thick coat that might have been red, it was hard to tell in the light. The collar was shrouded in some ethereal cloud of white. It wore a hat made of an unidentified animal’s fur. Two pointed ears stood upright either side of the hat. Long, pointed ears. As I waited, my hand on the freezing door handle, it sniffed the air. And then it started to turn.

This was enough for me. I slammed the door shut and bolted up to my parents’ room, shaking them awake. I was screaming by this point. I eventually managed to get them out of bed and downstairs. My dad switched on the main light of the lounge, which was now completely empty. There was no sign of anything having been there. I blinked and took in the landscape. There were stacks of presents everywhere.

‘See? He’s been,’ my mum said. ‘But you can’t have seen him because he was here hours ago. You must have had a bad dream.’

But I hadn’t. I had seen that thing. I had.

We got up the next morning and conducted the annual Thomas ritual of gathering on the stairs outside the lounge and asking the question, ‘Has he been, has he been?’

I already knew the answer.

In the lounge the other Thomas children ran around with wild excitement, collecting up bundles of presents in their arms. I sat in my seat and cautiously peeked inside my Christmas sack. Everyone was acting like it was the greatest day ever but something had changed in me. Something was tainted.

After a few minutes my siblings calmed down and were preoccupied in their present unwrapping processes. I watched them one by one; Rhid, examining a new microscope; Chris, despondently staring at a tangerine; Anna – Anna, my sister… but not my sister.

There was a strange girl in the room, unwrapping presents, wearing the same Care Bear nightgown that my sister owned, acting as if she was meant to be here. But she wasn’t. This girl was not my sister. She was approximately the same, same hair, same size, but her face was different. A poor facsimile. The bridge of the nose went up between her eyes and her cheeks were like they had been moulded from clay. It wasn’t Anna. Why had nobody else noticed?

I looked at my mum whose face was painted with a faint smile as she regarded her children’s reactions. When she looked at Anna it was as if she was looking at her own daughter. ‘What have you got?’ she said to her.

‘My Little Pony,’ said the girl thing, holding up a pink horse with a blonde mane.

‘Who are you?’ I said to it.

When her eyes met mine they looked not like human eyes but those of a cat. The pupils were two long slits. Her irises were golden. They seemed to be absorbing me.

‘Rhys,’ scolded my mum. ‘Don’t argue.’

‘What? Mum, that’s not Anna.’ How could she not see? ‘It’s a stranger. They’ve swapped her. They’ve taken Anna away.’

My mum looked angry. ‘What’s the matter with you? Why have you got to be like this?’

‘Yeah,’ said the copy. Its voice was a croak, something coming slowly from a set of tinny speakers. ‘Why can’t you ever behave?’ A wide crack split across its face and it tilted its head to one side.

I bolted up from my seat and pointed at the thing. ‘You shut up! What have you done with her?’

‘Rhys,’ my mum shouted. ‘That’s enough.’

I turned to her. ‘Mum, it’s not-’

‘I don’t care. Get upstairs to your room.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. Get upstairs. You’ve always got to ruin everything.’

‘Dad?’

‘Do as your mother says.’

This was scary. My parents never got angry like this. Not this quickly, anyway. All the while the distortion-girl gazed at me through those horrible eyes.

‘Now,’ my mum screamed.

I leapt up, bounded to my room, threw myself down on the bed and buried my face in the pillow. This was crazy. Something completely alien was happening. My house didn’t feel like my house, my family not my family. I thought of my sister and was scared for her. Wherever she was, she was not here in her home. She was alone on Christmas day. Almost immediately I found myself entertaining the idea that I might never see her again.

There was a knock on my door. My dad came in and sat on the end of my bed.

‘You okay, Rhys?’

I rolled over onto my back and sat up. I shook my head and started crying. My dad grabbed me up and hugged me.

‘Come on, kiddo, you’re just over-excited. It’s ok.’

And then something strange happened. A blackbird slammed into my window. Me and my dad jumped at the loud crack. The bird flapped out of sight, leaving a smear of blood on the windowpane. My heart beat fast at the shock. My dad raced over and looked down into the garden. When I joined him, the blackbird was twitching on the patio, trying to flap its wings but one was broken and it was turning in a circle. And soon it wasn’t moving at all. We watched it for a moment until my dad put his arm around me and told me it was time to go back downstairs.

In the lounge Chris and Rhid were playing with their new toys but the girl pretending to be Anna was nowhere to be seen. She’s getting changed, my mum said.

When my sister came down, though, she was still wearing her Care Bear nightgown. But this time it really was Anna. I have no way of explaining it but my sister had somehow come back. The thing that had taken her place that morning had gone back to wherever it had come from and Anna had been returned. After Christmas dinner I took her to one said and tried asking her about it but she had no memory of anything, as if whenever she thought about it her mind slipped away from whatever she had been through.

A week later I was walking through the local woods and came across some Christmas wrapping paper, all ripped up, in a holly bush. When I approached it I noticed that there was a scrap of cardboard stuck to it. I picked it up and had to double-take. The present had been a He-Man flying device, a gift I had failed to receive on Christmas day. And there was a tag that read simply: To Rhys, Merry Christmas, from Sinterklaas.        

So I needed to do a little spot of light banking today. I rose early and got there for the 9.30am opening time. I was shown to a nice lady called Denise, a Barclays personal banker who kindly explained that she had an appointment and that she couldn’t speak to me for long. 

My banking plans were quite simple. I wanted to move some money I had saved from my savings account into an ISA . I really wanted an account where I couldn’t touch the money for a year because money tends to burn a hole in my pocket and so I explained this to Denise. She told me that “actually” I had to transfer funds into an ISA online as she was not allowed to access my savings account, where my money was. Also, I had instant access to my ISA fund and there was nothing I could do about it. In fact, she told me, Barclays offer no accounts where you can put money away without being able to touch it. I still don’t quite believe this to be true but there you go.

I had taken a day off work to go to the bank to sort out my savings and was told to do it myself on the internet.  

But that was not all. Although Barclays could not help me with my savings as I was to take responsibility for such boring things on my own, Denise was all but slathering at the mouth at the prospect of lending me money. With tremendous gusto she slammed her hand into the side of the pivot-stand of her monitor to treat me to a screen-load of all the delicious instant loans Barclays could give me. Particularly pleasant to my ears was the offer of £21,000 that, because I was such a good customer, I was entitled to at the lowest interest rate band. I explained to Denise that I didn’t really want to borrow £21,000 just now. “Well how’s about a mortgage? Have you got a mortgage?” A mortgage?! I don’t want to divulge my yearly wage but if you multiply it by the traditional 3.5 then it would hardly buy me a modest toilet cubicle. How can she possibly be offering me a mortgage? I wondered. But she was. She scrolled down the screen with her mouse and line after line of available credit flashed up on the display.

“I just want to put my money into savings!” I wanted to yell. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just do this thing that is the foundation stone of banking. Or at least it used to be. Denise knew I was trying to save money and yet she was trying to ram all this credit down my throat. She kept talking, telling me the things Barclays could lend me until I finally had to stop her and say that really I’ve decided to just put the money in my good ol’ Post Office account. That’s the sort of account I really like – one where you have to fill in a form and send it off by post to get to your money. I like to imagine a George Bailey type character in the Post Office Banking Department taking care of the nickels and dimes of us savers.

“So can I just withdraw my money?” I asked.

Of course not! Good lord no. Denise explained that for me to get my money I would have to return home, go on the internet, transfer the money in my savings into my current account, return to the bank with two forms of ID, preferably my passport, and withdraw it at counter. I want my savings to be difficult to access, but not in that way! 

So I’ve come home to sort out my savings online. What a hassle. But I’ve also been having a think about the interest rates that, as we all know, are very low at the moment due to the Banking Crises. So here is what I don’t understand. The Barclays ISA , their best savings account, offers me 2.2% interest. Inflation is around 4 or 5% I believe. So my real money is going down and there’s no choice in this. It’s not a savers market.

But then the Bank of England’s interest rate is around 0.5%. So let’s get this straight: Bank of England interest rate: 0.5%. ISA interest rate: 2.2%. If you save the banks don’t give you much reward. I can accept this. Interest rates do need to be low at the moment. So why is it then that Barclays are charging 17.5% interest on the Barclaycard credit card? If I decided to take out the loan of £21,000 that Denise so kindly offered me then I would end up paying back £39,000 because the interest rate is a whopping 13.9%! She didn’t tell me this at the time. Aren’t interest rates supposed to be low? Similarly on current account overdrafts rates are set at 18-19% and you actually have to pay a monthly fee for this bargain. The interest rates for savers have plummeted and yet interest rates on loans have stayed the same, increased even. How is this?

What I’m trying to say is that the banks don’t seem to have learned anything from the meltdown. They weren’t interested in me when I was a saver but when Denise started talking about borrowing she was all over me. This is the kernel of the problem. 

They tried to offer me a loan of £21,000. If I paid it off over the longest period, 5 years, then it would cost me £329 a month. But this would be a large chunk of my monthly earnings that I could never, ever repay. It’s demented. The Bank of England have low interest rates to help money circulate again but instead of living up to their responsibilities the banks have used this to cut interest payments to savers whilst continuing to nail borrowers. In short, they have used the interest rates to line their pockets even more than before.  

I have heard City bankers blaming the public for the Credit Crunch because “stupid” people were borrowing money they couldn’t repay. This is only slightly true though. The real truth is that bank workers are trained to prey on people, encouraged by commissions to lend lend lend. Loans are sold to people so aggressively that you need a lot of will power to say no. We’re told we can easily afford loans with modest monthly repayments and the loan companies do all they can to obscure the fact that anything over £150 is a hell of a lot of money to most people. The public may have taken the loans, yes, but the banks and loan companies were more than complicit. They have vast call centres filled with people calling you up to sell you expensive money. They created the debt for a quick injection of profit, knowingly exploiting people’s naivety in order to make themselves a fast fortune, before selling the debt on and getting the hell out. It was not the public’s fault – it was the banks. 

Barclays made £6bn profit last year. Bob Diamond, the CEO, has struck a cool £27,000,000 pay deal which included £6.5m in 2010 as bonuses, according to The Guardian. Why is enough never enough for these people?

Bankers get paid as much as they do purely because they are holding the keys to the world’s money. Their job is not difficult. Yes, some of the brightest people go into banking but it’s because of the pay, not the challenge. I can’t help but think of how much banking is affecting our advancements as a species purely because so many great minds are being wasted in the pursuit of wealth so great that it becomes meaningless. If some of these genuinely brilliant people would re-focus their attention on important things like science and inventions then we could be way further down the line. Banking should be simple. Lend money with interest rates double those of savings accounts. That’s all you have to do – there’s no need for the complexities. Bankers will tell you there is but there isn’t – capitalism didn’t build modern world, human ingenuity did. If you make banking simple, remove it as an industry and turn it into local branches doing simple and honest business, then you can release the great wealth of human intelligence on Wall Street and Canary Wharf into the real world. There is surely a way of changing the culture of greed into something better.

NB There are other banks that are not Barclays

The paperback version of my second novel is out today. On The Third Day is an apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic novel all rolled into one. I wrote a few blogs around this time last year to explain a little about the story and themes that you can read here:

BLOG 1

And here:

BLOG 2

In a nutshell it presupposes a biblical disaster in the modern world, “God’s back and this time he’s angry!”

It’s funny that the paperback is already out. It seems like only yesterday I was still writing the thing. I’ve had some proof copies of the little version sent to me and they look beautiful in the new package. I’m very happy with how it’s turned out. If you are looking for something to read then you can buy it from the usual places.

AMAZON LINK

I’m not doing much to celebrate the release. In fact, I’m about to head to the library to write some more of a presentation I’m giving for the Cowbridge Book Festival next week. Oh the glamour! Without meaning to sound cheesy, I love writing so this is actually a perfect way for me to celebrate. I might also buy myself something nice for dinner because my girlfriend’s out with her friends tonight. It’s a toss up between a Chicken Orleans sandwich from Greggs or I might push the boat out and get some noodles from the New Empire in Whitchurch, Cardiff. If you ever go there, it’s number 38 on the menu. Nom nom, as they say on the internet these days.  

In other news, I’ve been asked to read at the Green Man festival at the end of August. John Williams (author of the Cardiff Trilogy) is arranging it and I’m honoured to appear. Having been to the festival three times in the past it’s pretty great to be invited as a guest there. I know the Flaming Lips are playing this year, and hopefully a few anti-folk people will be there too. I’ll have to check the line-up.

So all is well. What I really need to do now, though, is knuckle down with my third novel. Working full time and writing a book is proving difficult but I’m well into it and enjoying the challenge. More importantly, I’m enjoying the story which is always a good sign.

Finally, last Monday I went to see the Uncaged Monkeys show last week. This is a science/comedy show hosted by Robin Ince and featuring Brian Cox, Chris Addison, Ben Goodacre and Simon Singh. It was really, really great and I urge you to check it out if the show comes to your town. Simon Singh, who wrote “Big Bang” proved that Teletubbies are evil on the night and I’d like to share with you how (hope Simon doesn’t mind).

Teletubbies are made with time and money so:

Teletubbies = time x money

Axiom #1: We all know that time is money so…

Teletubbies = money x money

Or

Teletubbies = money²

Axiom #2: We also know that money is the root of all evil

So if money = √evil

Then money² = evil

So Teletubbies = evil

It’s quite simple really.

In May, Cowbridge is holding its very first book festival. Cowbridge is a small market town in the Vale of Glamorgan, and it also happens to be the place that inspired the town in my first book, The Suicide Club. I’ll be sure to mention that at my event. I’ll be reading at the book festival, on May 19^th at 11am . Also at the festival are Alistair Campbell, Niall Griffiths, Jamie Owen and fellow Transworld author, Jo Carnegie.

You can visit the festival’s website at

www.cowbridgebookfestival.co.uk

Cowbridge is a lovely little town and the perfect setting for the book fair. I hope it goes well for the organisers not only because of all the hard work they’ve put in but because it is something that could be enjoyed by lots of people from the surrounding area. Things like this are a little sparse where I come from. 

Since my last blog I’ve been doing quite a lot of work on my next book, which is shaping up quite well. Of course I have crippling fears that it’s all terrible and that I should hurl my laptop into the river, but there are also times when I’m happy with it. It’s going to be about climate change and set a few hundred years in the future at a time when there is simply not enough food to feed the population.  

I’ve also written a short story about a Japanese particle physicist who comes across a mysterious window when he moves to a new house. I’m quite happy with this story. It was one of those that pop into your head fully formed, ending and all, and you feel that you have to stop everything and write it at once.

Since moving to Cardiff I’ve been walking along the Taff Trail fairly regularly, a path that leads from Cardiff Bay all the way to the Brecon Beacons. I intend to cycle a large chunk of it soon and when I do I will write a blog about it.

I need to go now. I always feel a little guilty about blogging when I should be working on the book. Adieu. 

With great excitement I unwrapped my main Christmas present. I had an idea of what it was because I’d dropped enough hints. You see, I’ve been catching the bus a lot lately (often with disastrous consequences, but that’s another blog) and I’ve had to leave my bigger books at home because they are simply too heavy. As much as I love my misprinted, hardback, first edition of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, carrying it the half hour walk from the bus stop after a hard day’s toil would break my back. Instead I’ve been settling for small, light books on my commute. But I don’t really want my choice of reading to be affected by the physical dimensions of a book. And so it was that I came to be holding in my hand a brand new Amazon Kindle on Christmas morning (in my other hand was the Kindle holder with built-in light).

I have to say that I love it. It’s sleek, supremely easy to use, it makes for a lovely reading experience and you can get loads of older books for free (I downloaded On The Origin Of Species). It’s good that you can get free books because, I’ve now realised, I’m never going to pay for a book on Kindle instead of getting the print version. As much as I admire the Kindle for its practicality it still can’t compete with actual books. I find the tactile physicality of books comforting, a type of comfort that can’t be replaced by a piece of technology, even one as beautiful as Kindle.

And yet I really do want to use my Kindle for commuting and holidays (if I even go on another one). In an ideal world I want the physical copy of a book to read at home and an electronic copy to take out and about. But paying for a book twice seems a waste of money. And that is why I think Amazon should start offering customers the Kindle Code.

To explain. I paid £10 for Jonathan Franzen’s new book (it was on offer in Waterstones). To get the same book on Kindle costs £8.99. It’s too heavy to carry round comfortably and I also don’t want it to suffer wear and tear because it’s a first edition and I’m weird like that.

But how great would it have been if, when I took Freedom to the till, the bookseller had said, ‘Would you like a Kindle Code with this?’ and I’d said, ‘Why, yes please,’ and he’d said, ‘Okay, that’s an extra £1 please,’ and then I’d paid and got in return a copy of the book and a printed-out code that allowed me to go home and download the electronic version? Pretty great, is the answer.

I think this is the way e-publishing should go. I’m never going to get the Freedom ebook at £8.99, but I would have happily paid an extra pound, and that would have been in top of the £10 I’d already paid. That’s a pound Amazon, Waterstones and the publishers will never see! I don’t think I’ll be alone when it comes to this. Music has undergone a digitisation apocalypse but I don’t think books will suffer the same fate because readers make a stronger connection with their books than they ever did with their CDs. Many readers, such as me, will always want books and if booksellers want to get a little extra from the lucrative market that is the bibliophiles then the Kindle Code could be a good idea.

It’s a no lose situation for the business end of publishing. Ebooks cost nothing to produce other than the initial costs, that are already in place for all new books. Anything taken from the Kindle Code will, therefore, be pure profit – it’s money that otherwise would have been spent elsewhere. And if customers are happy giving up physical books then they can simply continue to buy Kindle books in the way they already do. Everyone wins.

Amazon could also offer a Kindle Code direct from their website as well. So, in a nutshell, if Amazon, Waterstones, W H Smiths, the publishers, and all the indy bookshops clubbed together they could design a future for publishing where electronic books and paper books live in perfect harmony together. In a time where the future of publishing is unsure, here is a chance to have the best of both worlds. And the real winner in this equation will be the most important component: the reader.

I haven’t blogged in a long while so I thought I should post something. I’ve been writing a lot lately, working on my new novel (it’s about climate change). I have also come up with an idea that may possibly be a future novel (it’s a Christmas story).

I’ve had a pretty great few months. As well as working on the book I’ve moved in with my girlfriend so am now a resident of Cardiff . It’s good living in Cardiff ; it’s a great city with lots of things going on in it. You should visit. We live in a little close with the river on one side and a nature reserve on the other. There are several cats in the neighbourhood and we have befriended them. One of them, who we have named Henry VIII, is the strangest cat I have ever seen. I have posted a picture of him because it’s hard to explain just how odd he is.    

One of the highlights of the last few months was attending the launch of Bright Young Things, a new collection of books written by upcoming young writers and published by Parthian. After the event I bought The Art of Contraception by Susie Wild, and Amy bought Hereditation by JP Smythe. We both enjoyed them thoroughly. Then I read House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski. It’s a haunted house story at heart, written in the style of a text book, kind of a literary Blair Witch Project (as many people have described it). It’s a really fun read; you have to tilt the book to read it at points, sometimes turn it upside down, sometimes get a notepad and pen to decode messages. Very po-mo. But past the stylistic trickery lies a real story with a fantastic conclusion. I’m now reading Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and, on the bus, John Updike’s Tears of My Father, which includes Updike’s contribution to the 9/11 canon.

In September I attended Transworld’s 60^th birthday party in Mayfair . The great and the good of publishing were in attendance and I got to meet several authors, including Lee Child, Ivo Stourton and Marius Brill. I have a ton of books on my shelf I need to read but I’m definitely going to get myself a copy of The Night Climbers by Ivo next year. I also met John Boyne and that was a real treat, not only because he said nice things about my book, but because I am a big admirer of his own novels (his latest, Noah Barleywater Runs Away is awesome). It was also great spending time with my publishers and agent, something I don’t get to do nearly enough.

I got my first writing commission this year and my piece (which is about the book I’m working on now) will appear in New Welsh Review next year. This Thursday I’m doing an interview at the BBC for the radio show, Phil The Shelf.

I think that’s about it for now. Christmas preparations beckon – I haven’t eaten advent calendar chocolates since the 7^th. Have a merry Christmas everyone!

Last night I read at In Chapters, a Cardiff event curated by author John Williams and former Gorkys Zygotic Mynci member, Richard James. It's a night where local writers and musicians create new stories/poems/songs related to a particular theme. The theme this time round was Roads. My story was about the Road of Bones in Siberia, that Stalin's gulag prisoners carved in the 1930s.

I thought I'd post my story here. If you're bored in work, this could kill a few minutes!

***

KOLYMA

The road stretches backwards and curls around a bluff. There is no road before us. The Devil stands against the truck and he’s smoking a cigarette. I watch from the corner of my eye because if he sees me looking he’ll put a bullet in me. There’s always a smirk on The Devil’s face.

            I’ve come to the realisation that I’ll never see my family again and I’ve accepted it. It’s funny how the cold will tame the soul. And hunger? That’s even worse. Vaskov says he’s the furnace-man of the soul. He knows how to grow cabbage and out in this tundra growing anything you can eat is an alchemy. They keep him alive and feed him well because of his talent. And in return he feeds us hot cabbage soup and this, he says, preserves our souls for the future. The will to escape remains but it’s faded so much that it hardly feels real any more.  

The Devil throws down his cigarette in the same indifferent way I’ve seen him stand on the roof of a truck and shoot down into the top of a man’s skull. He shoulders his machine-gun and pulls his collars around his scarf, blossoms of snow spinning around him.  

‘Come on, you pigs. Dig, dig, dig. I want to go home tonight. What do you think this is? A holiday?’

Building this road is worse than mining. At least when I was mining I knew I’d get to sleep in a bed at the camp. And it’s always nice to find a piece of gold. One day I’ll go back to that mine and I’ll find my secret hiding place and recover my secret gold and become rich.

I got transferred to the road one day at the start of winter. I don’t know why but I know it must have had something to do with that bastard Chichvarkin. “Tax” he said, of the bread he forced me to give up. Tax? How can that man call himself a communist? ‘I know what you’re up to, Yevgeny,’ he’d say, the rat. ‘There’s a tax on secrets.’ Maybe he did know, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he said this to everybody. I couldn’t ask my friends because in the camps you never really know who’s on whose side. So I started eating faster, hoping I’d be done before Chichvarkin could get to me. And now I’m here, somewhere on the way to Magadan, carving this road.

I push my shovel into the earth and press my feet down and the metal clunks into the icy soil. I stand on the shovel but I’ve lost so much weight it hardly makes a difference.

‘Hey!’

The Devil has seen some fun. Iosif has fallen. Tiny crystals of snow waft across the world and dapple the mud. Iosif tries to stand but it’s too hard for him, his body is a clatter-bone latticework on all fours. The zest of energy left him days ago. A brutal kick up into his guts nearly lifts him off the ground. He rolls over and splats into a slushy puddle and the gasping breath comes out as a cloud of steam.

‘Get up you lazy shit or we’ll put you in the road. How’d you like to spend eternity with the rumble of Papa Stalin’s trucks chugging over your head?’

All Iosif can do is shake his head.

‘What’s that? I can’t hear you?’

The small frame of the Moskvich clutches his fingers into winter trees as if they could stop a bullet. The Devil grins down the barrel of his machine-gun.

‘Ha! Get up, you slug. I’m not going to shoot you.’ Then he pushes the muzzle further into Iosif’s face.

Everybody watches, nobody says anything.

‘I’m just kidding with you,’ the Devil laughs. He waves to the other guards. ‘Pathetic, isn’t it? He’s like a pig.’

The other guards smile but it’s clear that even they can’t stand him. He turns back to Iosif, flips the machine-gun round and slams him in the side of the head. I see the eyes roll back in his head as he falls onto his side. Iosif was a scientist before being collected by the shadows. I spoke to him once, a hushed, stilted discourse from which I learned he was a scientist, and for putting his faith in that church, he is now dead.

The Devil kicks him a few times, trying to rekindle the spark of life but it’s never going to come back because the spark deserted Iosif weeks ago and what remained was a ticking mechanical shutdown.

We turn away and carry on digging.

The sun, invisible behind a mass of cloud, sinks and with it goes the temperature. My hands seize, the moisture on the exposed parts of my face freezes, and it is all I can do to hold on to thoughts. I think of Leningrad and the Neva , of walking the banks of the river at midnight . My two boys and my wife – where are they now? The night I was taken flashes at the back of my mind; a bang in the dark, voices, lights swinging across walls, violence. And that was that, a wound cauterised without choice, an old life ending and a new one beginning, just like that.

It is just before dark that the Devil commands us to dig a hole in the middle of the road. We work slowly and silently, just like always, and when it is done it takes five of us to carry Iosif’s corpse across to the hole where we deposit it without emotion. We cover him up and there he is, a part of the road forever, just like The Devil said. I lay my shovel down and sit in the wet mud. The line of the horizon shines a moment and I see, there on the top of the hill, the outline of a great bear. It paws a few steps and stops and its head turns to us. Nobody else notices.

When I first got transferred I calculated intricate escape plans. We were out in the wilds with hardly any guards. Having gained the trust of a few other men we would talk and laugh about how we could get away. Laugh because there was of course no escape. Even if we could get away from the guards where in hell would we go? We joked that we’d freeze ourselves in a pool until summer and then thaw out and return home bedecked in glory. Those men I laughed with died a while back now but my dreams of escape live on, just, however ludicrous. You have to keep hoping. 

The winter deepens and men fall in their hundreds and their bodies end up in the same place as Iosif. Is this road really worth this? For months I survive and know not why – everybody who came here with me died months ago. We cut our way across Siberia at a snail’s pace. The road isn’t even surfaced with anything for the most part. Wide rivers, frozen in winter’s breath, are traversed and no thought is given to the summer, when the rivers will melt and become impassable. I guess there’s maybe some other sad gulag bastards coming behind us to build bridges. We’re told nothing.

The bear is following me. I see him from time to time. He always keeps a safe distance and I put this down to the fact that he can smell The Devil. The snow is so thick in parts that it takes half the morning to clear before we can even reach the frozen soil. Still, this road will service an empire one day. We’re cutting a new vein for Mother Russia.

We have arrived at a nomadic camp and the farmers have been obliged to give us food and drink. The Devil has discovered a secreted carafe of camel milk and is taking great pleasure in watching our reactions as we drink it but the joke is on him because I actually enjoy the taste. Whether by refinement or chance it tastes sweet and watery. It’s been warmed over the fire and when it falls into my belly I feel it extend down through the root system of my body. Of course I grimace, The Devil expects nothing less.

‘Old man.’ He’s talking to the tribal elder. ‘Tell us a story. That’s what you retards do to amuse yourselves isn’t it? It’s not as if you can pop along to the local whore house is it?’ And he snorts his repulsive, forever lonely laugh. An unreciprocated laugh is the loneliest of all things.

The elder lifts his head to the vast array of stars. His Russian is poor but serviceable. The Devil seems sated.

The nomad sitting next to me nudges my ribs. ‘Here,’ he whispers, and he hands me some wet green matter and gestures to his mouth to say, eat it. I bring the matter to my lips but he stops me.

‘Later,’ he says.

At the end of the night The Devil ensures our installation in the nomads’ yurts. The animal pelts soothe and warm me and I swallow the green matter. It tastes salty and its texture is moist. I close my eyes and fall asleep…

… and awake to the sound of the moon. She breathes so softly over the world that the only thing that can feel her are the tides. I steal from the yurt and look about me. There is a guard over by the dying fire but I can tell I’m invisible to him. They don’t worry too much about guarding us at night because if we run we’ll be frozen by morning. Or maybe not. I glide silently by the guard and strike out across the surface of the frozen snowfield. I have escaped and Mother Russia will shield me from the cold because she’s whispering promises to me as I go. I find a pine forest and navigate quickly and easily through. The forest guides me and I do not feel the cold. I clamber up a denuded rock face stubbled with brush and canter along the edge of an escarpment. The moonshine makes the tops of the pines look like one massive thing that bends and throbs with the heartbeat of the planet.

As the sun clears the curve of the earth and burns away the cloud into a deepness of indigo I feel sleepy and I lay down and am gone.

When I wake I remember my attempted escape. What the hell did that nomad give me? It doesn’t matter – whatever it was its effects have worn off and I now realise it’s going to do me in. I look down at my body and thank god I enshrined myself in one of the animal pelts from the yurt because apart from that I am wearing nothing. I’m going to lose my feet to frostbite and the rest of my body will follow not long after. I bet Chichvarkin will be laughing now. Well at least he’ll never find my gold. I clamber beneath the pelt and try to get my extremities inside.

The cold pierces right down to the tiny networks of pain sensors, crystallising them into furry icicles. So this is how it all ends for old Yevgeny. There’s no way I can get back to safety without decent clothes and boots. And even if I had clothes and boots the odds are still a million to one against. Still, these past few years, I’ve resigned myself to things far worse than death.

In the dark of my animal pelt I think of when things were better. In that other life I remember walking along the river to the hospital where I cured people, and taking long lunches with Vladilien, talking about politics and literature and our burgeoning love affairs, he with Svetlana, me with Valentina. I wonder what’s become of him. I simply do not know.

I think of Lev and Nik, my boys – are they still alive? There’s no information and that lack of knowledge carves into my heart, digging out great scoops.

And Valentina. My last memory of her is a scream.

I don’t know how much longer I can keep myself awake. My throat stings. I’ve been under this pelt for how long? Minutes? Hours? Days? If only I had some clothes. Then I might stand a chance. What I’d give for that comfortable pair of boots and a warm hat. Time slips and flickers and I hear a scratching sound nearby. Holding my breath I try to listen through the heavy wash of the cold. Something is looking at me and I know instinctively that it is the bear. I lift the pelt and sit up, turning my head in the direction of the sound. But it’s not the bear.  

‘You thought you could get away?’

The Devil smiles. He leans against a tree and smokes his cigarette.

I’m so cold I can’t answer.

‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like making roads? How else can we get to Magadan if not by road, huh? Aren’t you willing to put in a bit of effort for Mother Russia?’

‘P-p-please,’ I whisper.

‘Look at you grovelling. Call yourself a man? What were you thinking? You thought you could escape me? I’ve tracked a man from Paris to Berlin . I hunted a traitor in the towers of Leningrad when nobody else could find her. And you think you can get away from me in a place as open as Siberia ? The road to Kolyma might be long, but it’s not long enough for me to lose my sense of godliness.’

My teeth chatter madly in my mouth. My hands have lost feeling. I can sense my chest seizing. I want to freeze to death before he can shoot me. That at least will be something.

‘The ability to track people has always stood me in good stead. You see, the powerful spend a disproportionate amount of time simply looking for their enemies. I cut that time away like baked flesh off a bone.’ He stands upright from the tree. ‘In return they allow me certain cruelties, of which I know you have witnessed many.’ He smiles his smile again and I can see why people call him The Devil now. It’s more than just a name, there is something otherly about him. ‘I would have killed you in the end whatever. I know you used to be a doctor. You’re not some dummy and you’ve seen way too much. I’ve been a very naughty boy out on this road and I can’t have you telling tales, Yevgeny.’

My skull is being crushed by the cold. The Devil flicks his cigarette to the ground. The snow buzzes horizontal. The Devil exhales. Take me, cold. The Devil raises his machine-gun. The snow thickens. There is a dark blur of motion from the trees, the ground shakes, the air roars, the Devil turns and is thrown sideways by some great force, his whole body lifted from the ground and propelled into the trunk of a pine tree.

He tries to stand, bringing his gun back round to me; he’d rather kill me than protect himself. The bear reaches him in two strides. Its jaws open and clamp down on the Devil’s face and shakes him, shakes him so hard I think his head might fall off. The face comes away with a sucking slurp. A wheel of red sprays into the air. The Devil turns to me with his flayed face, one eyeball still in its socket, the other dangling free, and he smiles.

The bear and I gaze at one another for a series of moments. Then, disinterested, he turns and disappears back into the forest.

Using the very last inches of my life spark I crawl over to the Devil. Everything will be okay. My hope rises in a fizzing rush. I use the warmth of his body to warm my own, the life returns to me, and then I take his clothes. I pull his fur hat over my head and feel the cogs of my mind turn faster. I pull on his warm shirts and gloves and coats and boots that will keep me warm on my journey back to Leningrad . I could go back for my gold but that can wait. I need to find my family first. I take the Devil’s pack and find food and water and vodka and those cigarettes of his. The brand is nameless – there is just a picture of a green lizard with a red stripe running up its back. Then I pick my way through the pine forest, totally ignorant of the way home. I have no idea where I am or the direction in which I am travelling. In truth, I am lost.

That is until I find the road. I cross a gravel delta. Water braids its way towards the sea and beyond it the road I built appears as a shimmer. This is the first running water I’ve seen in months and this message, that spring is coming, kindles my spark. The road-workers are all east of me, digging towards Magadan. And I’m heading west. The road will show me the way.

This is just a very short blog. Through Facebook I came across a huge book report about The Suicide Club (my first novel) written by a girl from Norway called Karoline Heldal-Lund. I sent it to Transworld, who kindly translated it into English, and now Karoline has posted it on her blog.

So here for your viewing pleasure it is!

http://akimamontgomery.blogg.no/1279732957_ive_experienced_epicn.html

It’s great when things like this happen. It’s such a good feeling to know your books are really connecting with readers. This must have taken a long time to write and it shows how things like Facebook can help make connections. Awesome.