Category Archives: Community

Well, having a go this weekend seemed to move some, or at least got people to really read and so the project on Light of the White Bear edges unofficially over 10% and rises to 18 backers too! Thank you so much, but the reason it’s still only unofficial is that through an Australian fan and DJ in Melbourne called Sierra Jane, friends have promised to donate this week, which will at least get that £3 to edge over 10%. Brilliant.

(STOP PRESS – JUST ROSE TO 20 BACKERS AND OVER £730 and 11% ANYWAY = HOPE)

Just to note one of their friends though, or acquaintances, calling me a ‘SOOK’ on Facebook! Clearly the kind of macho Aus ‘man’ who only posts pictures of himself kissing the girls or being beautiful and likes to engage in cyber sniping from the courage of his blind window on the world. In other words a SPOOK. I keep repeating, back room bullies are always cowards and its a major problem in the ‘culture’ of Facebook and other sites. But cheers for that spontaneous act of kindness and generosity, at such a moment!

Being of a generation that doesn’t use cheap dirt farmer outback slang, a sook means a wimp, un-suckled calf or someone without confidence. Always nice to increase the vocabulary. I was going to post back on Facebook but deleted the link in my email, so a few words about it here instead. Having been published by major houses for years in the UK, Aus, Canada and America I never wanted to have to use a medium like Kickstarter and so yes, on that I lack confidence and at times it feels like failure too, or rather humiliating. In fact, after six years of fighting at a blog, reaching only 10% in a week has made me want to throw in the towel early, even hide in an ice cave, and frankly, if donations don’t triple this week I think it’s exactly what I should. But now there’s still a real chance , so we can still get there and it would be great if you could see the video and follow a finger to a Back This Project button too!

But let me ask such a generous young man (this is known as irony) what he thinks a wimp really is? When your partner and someone you loved deeply and trusted too, right in the place of work and creativity, so stabs you in the back, and with a so-called best friend of years in London too, working on a ‘book’ called Hew, Screw and Glue, but then distorts the truth and so leads to the wrecking of a highly successful career too, it can have painful, indeed sometimes wimpish effects! I prefer Munch’s Scream, which was why a novel was once unfortunately called Scream of The White Bear. Men might imagine the danger and agony of that and the rage that came out too.

But wimps do not fight them on principle for two years, while bound there in contracts – authors have no protections whatsoever if powerful private employers get corrupt – then walk away but blog the truth of it too. A truth that was so much about their cowardice in not standing up to be counted, or just stopping the vicious internal politics, the cynicism, that sadly removed my old publisher, as my editor stole his job as Vice President. Then fight a UK lawyer called Manches, funnily enough specializing in posh divorces, who attacked me, as the President of a New York publishing house banned an entire department from reading my complex blog, and talked about protecting only their careers, but I also refused to be muzzled under European Privacy Laws and went on trying to fight back, despite the invasion. A President who now sits on a board against US Censorship, Michael Jacobs, who tried to trash a reputation he had distorted in front of the US Author’s Guild, until they resisted and as ever that particular bully backed down and gave back ebook rights. This publisher meanwhile were still publishing my books and so crippling a right to proper promotion and free speech too, or any self defence over what really happened with an ex and why. As well as snatching away a livelihood and voice that had taken years to forge. Then wimps, sooks or un-suckled calves don’t build a publishing website of quality over several years single handed and give out articles, stories and poetry completely free, because they are so worried about the ‘culture’ of the internet and still believe in the power of real writing too and telling some kind of truth.

Then go on trying to return to main stream publishing with numerous book projects, although a culture has shattered in the Twitter-jerk of cheap blogging comments (like sook) that pass for Democracy and publishing is one of the most ruthless businesses there are. But also turn around and single-handed sue a publisher in the New York Supreme court last year in Manhattan. That can be a little nerve racking. So fighting not one but two major New York attorneys alone, itself so telling about a publisher’s fears and the truth, who ended up provenly perjuring themselves last year, to win their disgraceful case. Rather it was dismissed on the form of an action alone – process – that ‘Mr Articulate’ in Australia could probably not get his pretty head around if he got out of the outback and studied for years, if he can read or write that is. It was dismissed by a Justice who would not let me speak to the court and did not read it, probably because Justice Cynthia Kern can’t be bothered to pick up epics or apply a real brain, not a position won out of the legal secretarial typing pool! The ultimate result of this belief in the word is losing literally everything you can, including a flat in London. So although it may not be entirely wise, sook or wimp just does not do it! That also annoyed though because said publisher also happens to publish the world selling series Diary of A Wimpy Kid, I guess you could rename it Diary of a Sook in Australia. But since it’s probably about dealing with bullies and growing up too, or at least growing, and part of my function was as a guiding kid’s author, I’m probably on the side of the sook. Except when, years back, you’ve stood under a banner in NYC twenty feet high of that precise series, in competition at your own publisher, and been so knifed by the two editors and women you were meeting there, supposedly to promote and protect my own award winning and contracted work, one of them an ex lover who became such an appalling and dishonest friend. The muse murdered the author. Then I guess life, love or anger, not to mention writing, can get on your head a little. Not sook dear, Barton Fink! But hell, sook’s a good word, and now I am being positive, as you’ll see on a Kickstarter video (forgive the puppetry).

If you’d all like to stop judging instead though and help suckle the struggling calf of publishing Light of The White Bear properly, which means real books, and supporting Phoenix Ark Press too, you can join the Kickstarter mission this critical week by CLICKING HERE

Thank you!

DCD