With Dragon In The Post at an amazing 39% some of Sol’s wonderful bird pictures and Laura’s drawings have joined Kelly Baker’s work up at the Indiegogo gallery, which you can see by CLICKING HERE. Please enjoy them there or on Facebook and contribute to a campaign too.
COME FLY WITH US AND MAKE A DRAGON PROJECT REAL
DCDxx
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Perhaps it was a note from a ‘street team‘ member today and fan of my books, or last night’s heated conversation about ‘real publishing‘ and the horrors of Facebook or the Internet that prompts this article, and in the middle of a second attempt to crowd fund Dragon In The Post. In fact it was being a bit too thin skinned that made me pull the last Kickstarter effort, before it was even half way through and when we were doing well on 37%. I think that both shocked and disappointed some and I am sorry for that, but I was selling my flat too. The truth is that putting yourself out there, as an established author or not, can be an invasive, very personal and sometimes a painful thing. That’s because, while you should really only be selling the merits of a story, if you can even be heard and so judged for it with all the Net noise, it feels as if you are having to sell your whole personality and simultaneously act as a door to door money grabber. I made a mistake then not thanking everyone who had taken part last time personally, whether they had been able to actually donate to the campaign or not, because I so enjoyed some of the conversations that went on around the world, the enthusiasm, art put up, passion and the sense of mutual effort to reach a goal. This is a thank you to them and you.
That money goal, the finishing line, can be a slightly corrupting thing though, in the sense of wanting to get it in the bag, not just for me but everyone else too. That shared sense of achievement. But I assure you it is as important people are behind hit with £5 or £500, because my heart bits a little faster every time it goes up and the moral support is crucial too. Perhaps my own personality has merited an accusation of callousness from one original backer, ie being accused of only speaking to them when I wanted the money. I don’t think that is actually true though, I give time and thought as I can, as I suggested I would do unpaid work editing and publishing others at Phoenix Ark Press. Although I have always said I don’t especially like Facebook, don’t want my life swallowed up by too much time online and so on. It is the paradox of a very personal and difficult publishing story, that took time for me to confront openly, and having to work with this medium to try and get back to real books (in the post) and build a small publisher too. Perhaps people might remember that it should not be just a ‘you scratch my back‘ thing either, as in ‘I will Like your page if you Like mine‘, which seems all over Facebook! I do Like some pages but I chose what I Like, even if people have Liked my efforts. Meanwhile if Phoenix Ark could get my books up and running again, and that is its own question mark, I have always said we might be able to give back in encouraging others to crowd fund their work with us. But that itself speaks a necessary toughness, a quality control, a business head and the kind you find with big professional publishing houses and editors, although in our case with a grass roots creative spirit too.
We all know that going online has its ups and downs, the desperate sense of wanting to be heard, sometimes even the near addiction of it, mixed I know with both fear and desperation at times. Something I have talked about very seriously in my own case, so I hope establishing its own level of trust, along with awful examples of the harm it can do in terms of isolation, bullying and so on. That’s why through this whole crowd funding journey I came up with an idea called Lifeliners, which was to encourage people to mentor others and build a kind of network that might challenge the increasingly awful capital divides out there, getting people to help build mentoring, friendship and funding projects everywhere and right around the world. If crowd funding in many spheres is going to be a working model for the future though, and the online world is such a pressing reality, or unreality, such thinking should be encouraged.
My approach to this campaign then is consciously more laid back, if without sacrificing passion, work and energy, I hope. It is why I took advice and set a lower goal at £4500, during a longer period of 40 days, and why I now feel more relaxed about pages on Facebook becoming their own forums, where I do not have to be all the time, although I am alerted to them via emails. People must have their own fun with that, whether a campaign works or not, but I hope we can connect again many times, as both individuals and a united team, and I am very open to any ideas others have. I also am grateful for that, that others can be heard too, and indeed want to thank people whether they have be able to donate money or not. Of course I want to hit the target and money is an important element in life, but if that was the only thing I would never have become a writer in the first place. While I am also acutely aware of the difference in spirit among some. Meaning that those with little money have often given far more both in terms of cash and effort than often disapproving friends with money, who I know have carried two previous projects to success with little loss to themselves. That sometimes makes me angry because it seems to reflect the lack of awareness out there these days and the huge gulfs that have developed both in terms of capital divides and as importantly the real imaginative empathy with other lives and experiences. People who think it is just a stroll in the park though, whether that merits £20 or £200, might try standing up and crowd funding themselves, to know how much it can take it out of you. I have also been challenged on choosing the Indiegogo model of drawing money whether the campaign reaches its target or not. I wrestled with that and in the end fully justify it with the huge work done on other campaign and the special Opt Out Clause I introduced if anyone wants money back and we don’t hit it. But above all with the fact I am trying to build a little publisher and working now to bring my first novel Fire bringer back into hardcopy availability, so your money will be well spent. I think I may well return everything if we do not get at least close to the target, though remember if I do that without Indiegogo’s percentage taken off I will be even more out of pocket myself.
Then of course, with all that complexity, comes many hugely positive and exciting things too; the fun of really doing so well each time, the importance of trying to tell some kind of truth about Social Media or Facebook, making new and old friends, how moved I’ve been both by talking to people and hearing how my books have touched lives, and just the importance of trying. It is all in such marked contract to what happened at a big, highly commercial New York publishing house. Who knows what the future holds? If the lesson is it just does not work then it is good to learn from that and let it go. As for the mutual demands or expectations that naturally develop, especially with such personal money contributions involved, all I can say is that in the end no one owns me or my time and I must be my own person, as much as you, though I want to encourage others too. But, as Dragon In The Post tops £1250 and still with over a month to go, a big hooray and it is full steam ahead, because I am hatching many ideas to bring it to fruition this time, and hope you will become part of a Street Team and bring in your ideas too. As Jean Luc says in Star Trek “Make it so!” Thank you all again.
If you would like to “Join the story, become part of the adventure” and see the lovely work on Facebook too then why not visit the project now by WATCHING AND CONTRIBUTING TO THE DRAGON HERE
David Clement-Davies July 2014
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It has been a bit of an uphill psychological battle to realise that you and the publishing industry owe me nothing at all, although my closest friends and my American publisher certainly did owe me faith, the respect of the right editorial conditions and of several contracts too, in the most astonishing battle. But all that matters now is the quality of work and the meanings inside stories too. So once more Phoenix Ark Press turns to a new crowd funding model, not at Kickstarter this time but at Indiegogo and the relaunch of Dragon In The Post, suspended in May. This time it will run for 40 days, with a goal of £4500, the crucial difference being that we can keep anything you are kind enough to contribute. To justify that, and the fact that you will be immediately supporting a writer and little publisher, so every penny counts, during that time I will be working and using my own money to bring Fire bringer back into hard copy availability in the UK. It was wrongly taken out of print by Macmillan after 12 years on the shelves.
I need and would love your passion and support as much as ever though and achieving that lowered target, down from £6000, is perhaps even more important, as is all explained on Indiegogo. It will set a bench mark for what we can or cannot do in future. I hope you visit and love the project then, watch the film and follow the thinking in the text below. You can go there now and support by Contibuting at Indiegogo
Meanwhile you can read some of Dragon In The Post on Wattpad and the page Stories In The Post on Facebook. “Join the story, become part of the adventure”.
Thank you for spreading the word, contributing or doing anything you can and wish us luck! The other key is just to have some fun, since books are an entertainment after all.
DCD – Phoenix Ark Press
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If you think it’s all been about Phoenix Ark asking for things via Crowd Funding, we’re happy to report that DCD has just been hard at work trying to support St Peter’s Church Vauxhall, in Kennington, no longer his manor, and to find prizes for a bake off they are holding in the grounds of Lambeth palace, tomorrow, June 28th. With quite a result too, because a bit of pushing and shoving, with some wonderfully spontaneous exceptions, produced tickets for The London Eye, Sealife, dinner at the Goring Hotel, several gastro pub meals and one from Wahaca, a lunch from the Bhuddist Jamyang Centre, hampers from John Lewis and Greensmiths, tickets to the Garden and Cinema Museums, a pack of lovely cake soaps from Lush, a voucher from Evans cycles and several other goodies, including a strange bread baking pot from Lassco called a Pancheon. Sadly Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic never responded to David’s personal overtures, unlike a charming letter from Joanna Lumley, but we hope it is a delicious event.
It is important too, especially with so many local people getting involved, because it is the 150th anniversary of that church, which will see a drive to raise money to restore the windows, clean the apse and fix the organ, in what is a very remarkable building architecturally and a symbol of the nineteenth century arts and crafts movement. The foundation stone, laid by the Prince of Wales for a church that stands smack bang in the middle of the old Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, the altar supposedly on the site of the old fireworks tower, was laid concurrently with the founding of the local arts school. It is all much in line with blogs here about Edmund Shakespeare, Southwark, and the Garden Museum, but we very much think any funding drive should attempt to draw on interest in the history of the entire South Bankside of the river. Which is also why it was so delightful that the local restorer to some very venerable buildings, Szerelmy, have so kindly agreed to give a bit of free advice on costings. They have been in the neighbourhood as long, indeed it’s likely the business was involved with the original works.
PA PRESS
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To honour today’s D-Day Celebrations and the soldiers of WWII, Phoenix Ark Press reblogs a cultural essay.
Normandy, this Sunday, on a grey, early-February day, seemed empty and almost closed. Apart from the chattering and irreverent French school group, snaking down from the magnificent medieval gothic cathedral of Bayeux, vaulting in its simple brilliance, through the defiantly haute bourgeois and rather charming town of Bayeux. With its original 16th century wooden cross-beamed buildings, the lovely centre presents a French-Tudor aspect, to a head rooted in Shakespeare, though on the roundabout sweeping you into town, arms at his hips as ever, legs set attentively apart, is a far more modern vision, in the large metal statue of General Montgomery, with a stone gateway behind, staring towards the city of Caen, that he paused to attack for two months, for fear of casualties. But it is armed with a taped guide, piping jaunty medieval music at you, that you can enjoy Bayeux’s most famous ‘World’ attraction, that almost thousand-year…
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Oh what a joy to hear Stephen Fry narrating a program on Dolphins and Whales last night called DEEP THINKERS. I adore dolphins but didn’t know their brains are larger than humans, only topped by Whales, and that they share Spindle Cells, which may be the key to developing a higher aspect of consciousness – self awareness – and so adaptive cognitive thought. Perhaps shared primarily by humans, Cetaceans, primates and elephants, although I believe the weave of Super Nature to be far more mysterious, in the emergence of consciousness itself. But first to the joy and play of those delightful creatures, so magical and mysterious because they seem, unlike man, so at one with the element they inhabit. Perhaps in life we should all just be studying a capacity for freedom and deep play, as happened when the scientists placed a bubble ring machine at the sea bottom and then watched the dolphins first investigate then begin to sport with it, diving gloriously through the expanding rings, or trying to eat them. The idea seemed so cleverly in tune too with the next sequences of what Humpback Whales do so naturally themselves, apart from all that echo locating (um, do whales echo locate too?) or underwater song – bubble netting vast catches of herring, as they breach like hungry Titans. There are very few who are not somehow spiritually moved or even repositioned by encountering those creatures in the wild, hence the animal’s celebrated healing powers, just as so many have said that looking into a whale’s eye brings a connection. Then to the placing of a mirror in an aquarium and seeing dolphin fascination as they came to explore, try to look behind the thing and realizes that they were seeing themselves. For more than a moment you could be forgiven for thinking a dolphin had just smiled and winked at you.
It brought back so many memories of wildlife travel writing for UK National newspapers, years ago, and getting to do some really astonishing trips too. Like searching for Bottlenose dolphins in the Cotto Golphito in Costa Rica, when I was stupid enough to take off my shirt on the little dingy hugging a slimy sea and got secondary burns, within a couple of hours. Or touching the primeval thrill of spotting a hammerhead shark, half way up a mast on a beautiful Ketch sailing in the Azores, or feeling my heart cope with the sudden fear and desire to hyper ventilate, as I came up just ten feet above to six foot reef sharks navigating a gully diving in Lombok. Breathe, and be at one! Weirdest was a nigh time drift dive in the red sea, when a US marine very literally had to take me in hand, I got so spaced out by how the night shift came online on the reef: Crustacea with burning eyes, waving fluorescent anemone, ghoulish faces poking from the living coral and prawns that seemed to be wearing cloths ‘like the falring skirts of Spanish dancers’. Such wonders, that so make me so want to support the likes of Kelly, a young ecologist who has written here so well on her work with Coyotes in California. That trip to the Azores though, where once the seas had turned blood red with the spear whaling of remarkably brave if misguided whalers, before those mighty bodies were melted down in giant vats, was a kind of spiritual Cetacean fest. Like seeing pilot whales, with their shiny black alien heads nosing up to us out of the wild spume, or something like sixty Sperm whales breach, thundering into the skies and turning the sea into a riot of sunlit splashback. The best moment though was in a dingy at the side of that ketch when a mother Sperm whale, guarding her calf, suddenly dived and only half a boat away the fluke of her gigantic black tail rose before me, a kind of sub-equatic miracle, like a living tree dripping with new rain, before she slipped back into the deep.
The film though was such a glorious antidote to the awful and damaging documentaries that are often pumped out there, especially in the US, I’m afraid, exploiting the melodramatic or sensationalist, like the ‘killer this or that‘, essentially to encourage that most tragic human capacity, irrational fear, for all the awareness we do need in and of the wild. It is one of the things we have always done best, thanks to the likes of Sir David Attenborough. With Sol’s bird photos though being so wonderfully posted on the Facebook page “Stories in The Post – the Dragon tries again”, or Socrates, Kelly’s chum, the marvelous dogs, cats and horses (and of course Kate’s mice, to cheer on a musical CHEESE!) that I’ve seen among the Kickstarter street team and now Charlie posting about the attack on Romanian forests, such a preserve of bears and wolves in Europe, perhaps we can all connect our Spindle Cells, to affect each other and the world in some small way! Please do come and join the Facebook party too then and help breath life into a more mythical creature too, a little Fire cutting Dragon called…!
DCD
Dragon in The Post is now being blogged in part on Wattpad, at David Clement-Davies’s page there and on Facebook. It is in preparation for another Kickstarter campaign and attempt to create a crowd funded publishing model. The photo is a public domain Wikepedia image of a pod of Dolphins in the Red sea.
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Well, you heard it here first, but CHEESE is done, bar several songs, like Monsieur Malleece’s ‘Now fear is here‘ and one a Composer suddenly decided to use in a different musical! Hope you enjoyed it, but perhaps this is the spirit of the thing, in the vein of ‘let’s put on a show, right here and now‘…. as the Mousettes return to fight for art and entertainment and Victor arranges a fishy denouement for Scarapina’s new dress and, with Zola and The Desperate Crew, they drive the rats and Monsieur Malleece the secret policeman from the old Paris theatre forever.
LYRICS – ONLY A DAY TO PUT ON A PLAY
Only a day
To put on a play
Prop up the set
And learn what to say
Only a day
To stitch in her stay
Sew up these seems
How utterly gay.
Then you’ll see there’s going to be a show
Oh no!
Only a day
To set up the lights
Work on your lines
And pay for the rights
Only a day
To fill in the holes
Write some more words
But what should I say?
Oh how divine, is our time
When we’re treading on the boards
(The Mousettes get to work)
Only a day
To prop up our play
Learn how to act
NO, that’s not the way!
Only a day
To put on a play
Learn how to fight
Why don’t we pray?
Soon you’ll know – there’s going to be a show
Let’s go!
When you’re in the theatre
And you’re really near ta…
Lights up, wigs on, open up the doors
Then you raise the curtain
Never really certain…
Chin up, eyes front, working that applause…
(Reprise)
We work and slave just to earn some cheese
But soldiers, we’re singing a stirring reprise,
We toil and chore just to meet our debts
A family together – the brave Mousettes!
Only a day,
A dwindling day
Nearly the time
To put on our play
Only a day
To put on the play
Work on the scenes,
Get out of my way!
Only a … hey
No more of the day!
I’ll break a leg
Now what did you say?
Only a day
To polish our play
Will it succeed?
I think it just may!
(CORAL CRESCENDO)
Only a day
To polish our play
Will it succeed?
I think it just may!
Only a day
To polish our play
Will it succeed?
I think it just may!
Now we know that we’ve got us a show
Bravo!
Mr Moliere’s Mouse, Royal Academy of Music workshop. Story, book and lyrics by David Clement-Davies, music by Michael Jeffrey. All rights strictly reserved. Phoenix Ark Press 2014
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Well, forget the rats, or a journey down into the terrible Paris sewers, and sing of the wonder Bobolan feels seeing Paris and just being alive…!
LYRICS – WHAT A CITY IS THIS!
What a city this is, what a brave new world
What people, what wonders, what streets
There’s everything here, like a banner unfurled,
Like a star-spattered heaven, where worlds have been hurled
Or a heart, that eternally beats.
What a town this is, what a marvelous dream
What houses, what buildings, what lights
A place that’s forever, where all can be seen
From a lord to a beggar, a cat to a Queen
From crime, to earthly delights
What a City is this?
EVICTION!
Walk through the city, seeking a home
People all dreaming and people all scheming
And people all alone.
Lost in the city, walk on your own
Guard for the danger that creeps in the wings
Barred like a stranger, but ready to sing
That’s the thing
Sing!
What a fable is this, yes, a story worth telling
What music, what rhythm, what tone
Though hard when the smells in the lanes are repelling
The citizens all on the point of rebelling
This Mouse is walking alone
Am I really alone?
No, I’m never alone
And I think I see home…
THE PEOPLE AND PARIS MOB SWEEP BOBOLAN UP…
Mr Moliere’s Mouse, aka CHEESE, from The Royal Academy of Music workshop. Story, book and lyrics by David Clement-Davies, music by Michael Jeffrey. Phoenix Ark Press All Rights Reserved.
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Well, after meeting all those terrible, tragic characters down in the filthy Paris sewers of course Bobolan must meet lovely Collette and sing their love song “Now I know his Face“. To hear it again just CLICK HERE. But separated from Colette and his family and getting further and further from the theatre and his dreams, now our hero falls among thieves and their leader Zola, quite a mouseketeer!
So, to take us to the interval and thunderous applause, but to underline needed rehearsal too, nervous and rather skeptical Bobolan meets the sharpest bunch of cut purses and murderous mouse pads in all of Paris, with good hearts though and plenty of courage! Who of course adopt Bobolan immediately, show him how to fight and celebrate the fact that he wants to be an actor. But who exactly are they and what do they do?!
LYRICS – SONG OF THE DESPERATE CREW
What a place, is it true?
Just sit down and listen, you.
Take some wine, break some bread
First, please tell me, who are you?
We’re the wild bunch,
We’re the brat pack,
We’re the meanest dudes around
We’re the cool gang,
On a free lunch,
We’re the keenest crooks in town.
Down here, near us,
You can’t fear us
Zola’s word will do
Though you’re here late,
Drink a beer, mate
Join our gang, won’t you?
And we’ll all gang up to show you what to do
Yeah, we’re all join in to praise our Desperate Crew!
Just budge up – why don’t you?
Then sit up and listen, do.
Take some cheese,
Break some bread.
First, please tell me, what you do!
If you knew the sew-ers,
Where the cut-throats creep,
Soon you’d learn the lesson – that our life is cheap!
If you lived in fe-ar
Starving for some bread
Nights – as black as coal – are never done with
Days – that eat your soul – you can’t have fun with
How we’ve all bled
While we’re living down here.
Where is here, is this true?
YES – sit down and list-en do!
Rob some cheese
Steal some bread
First, PLEASE tell me, who are you?
We’re the Brat Pack
In a Rat Race
We’re the keenest swords around
We’re the Cool Bunch
On a free brunch
We’re the meanest dudes in town.
Don’t be wary, down here near us
Zola’s word is true
It ain’t scary – IF you hear us
Join our gang, yeah do.
Then we’all all be here to show you something new
Now we’ve all joined in to praise a Desperate Crew!
THE CREW PERFORM FOR BOBOLAN
For it’s often fun – when you’re on the run
And your colleagues aren’t so able
And you’re not alone, in our nice snug home
And there’s food upon the table
Cheese and meat and bread and wine
But it’s really great, when it’s getting late
And you wander down the cobbles
Then you stumble son, on a very tidy sum
Stolen from the nobles!
THE GROG TAKES EFFECT
We’re the Brat Pack
In a Rat Race
We the keenest blades around
We’re the Cool Bunch
On a free Brunch
We’re the meanest dudes in town
But don’t be wary, down here near us
Zola’s words are true
It ain’t scary, if you hear us
Take a nap, yeah do
Then we’ll all be here to show you something new
Now we’ve all laid down to dream a Desperate Crew!
THUNDEROUS MOUSE APPLAUSE AND COMMENTS FROM THE INVESTORS!
MR MOLIERE’S MOUSE, aka CHEESE, aka LES MOUSERABLES – Story, book and lyrics by David Clement-Davies, music by Michael Jeffrey. From the Royal Academy of Music Workshop. Sound effects by Lee Crichlow. All rights strictly reserved. 2014
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It felt very odd voting in the European and local elections this morning, simply out of too long a sense of disconnection, perhaps. But have you rushed out to vote, to prove we aren’t that apathetic and to stop not only the rise of UKIP but far right parties right across Europe? Which brings up Nigel Farrage, Cheese, sewers and Romanians! The night before last there was the most tragic and terrifying report not on sewers, like those terrible Paris sewers of a blogged musical, but the tunnels beneath Bucharest, in the Romanian capital and especially the abandoned young people living there. I heard about them nearly 25 years ago, when I went to Romania just after the ‘revolution’ and the shooting of Ceaucescu ad his wife, that bitter winter. Which somehow highlighted the brutality of Romanian politics itself. A society where somehow the twentieth century met a kind of rural peasant world, stuck back 200 hundred years ago, before even the Russian Revolution. That brave Newsnight film might well make us count our blessings, know how hugely lucky we are, because in those hot house tunnels everyone is HIV positive, mostly out of sharing needles, or hooked on glue sniffing, to cut through the pain. It is still a tragedy and rather than clearing it just to try to cover up, EU money and help must be given to Romanians to help themselves, bit by bit, which will be much harder than any band aid. It is also tragic greater advances have not been made there in nearly a quarter of a Century.
Yet on the day of the elections does that make Nigel Farrage right about his supposedly throw away remark on Romanians living next door or coming here? Of course not, as the comic Stuart Lee so brilliantly spoofed one UKIP councillor talking about the Little England mentality of ‘them’ ‘stealing our jobs’, by ploughing through the history of vital British immigrant influence, from now to the Huguenots, back to the Anglo Saxons to the Beaker peoples and then to fish crawling out of the sea onto land! I would add the Normans or the story of ‘aliens, foreigners and strangers’ settling in London and especially Southwark in Shakespeare’s London, especially the Flemish and the Dutch. Shakespeare’s plays are much the friend to strangers in all foreign lands. It was the Privy Council’s resistance to pot stirring voices like Sir Walter Raleigh’s that stamped a tolerance then, in a far more violent and brutal capital, and partly just to protect business.
I don’t have a huge problem with Farrage as a man, he’s fairly bright and seems to have decency too, while political correctness is also an enemy in any democracy. I do have a problem with such single issue politics, which so often both masks and encourages atavistic hatreds, fears and stupidities, not to mention lunatic candidates, and to give people power on the strength of such issues alone is totally wrong. It is the proper function of policing and real law and justice that must deal with true criminal elements, at home and abroad, for any arguments about specific border powers and controls, not prejudice and projected fear. But it is also apathy that has for so long given the UK its real problem with Europe. Perhaps understandably out of traditions of uniqueness, independence and Empire too, we have always thought ourselves slightly better than Europeans and could have had far more positive impact on those institutions too, by playing a more direct and indeed leading role from the outset. Basically that means taking our sense of law, institutions, decency and self worth, if we haven’t lost them in little England fear and ignorance or the banking corruption that allowed the likes of Goldman Sach’s influence in Greece, back into Europe, to change the system, with the sense of what’s really Great in Britain. Then of course the truth of globalisation and the modern world is we need to see ourselves as part of one planet too. I think people should rush out to vote to mark their opposition to UKIP then, but whatever happens, voting will prove you are not apathetic or simply grumbling.
DCD
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