December 7, 2012 · 12:08 pm

PHOENIX INVESTMENT – A READER’S LETTER

Dear David,

I’m just thinking aloud, really, so feel free to do with this whatever you feel it merits. I realize I have limited understanding of the challenges you face in starting up a publishing company, but I imagine that funding could be something that heads up the list! I just wanted to relay an idea that came to me this week. Across the pond a new buzz word is forming in the business world – “Crowd Funding”. This has really been around for a while, but utilized mainly by charitable agencies for 3rd world entrepreneurs. Now, it seems small western entrepreneurs are catching onto the trend! Here’s how it works.

A project is tendered through an agency website, inviting the average man to invest small increments – for altruistic purposes – in any one or more of a variety of entrepreneurial projects. When the project is fully subscribed, operations proceed. Investors typically expect to recoup their original investment (although there are no guarantees), but have no further interest in the projects beyond this. Okay, so yours would be a large project! But I was wondering if this type of loan funding could be helpful to Phoenix Ark. Imagine, if 1 million people gave you ₤10.00, to see a work published – say, Scream of the White Bears – for free!! I also imagine that if you put out the word, your many fans would eagerly step up to the plate! Here is my pledge for the first increment. You need only contact me to collect. I can make payment via Paypal (preferred), or whatever other method you favour. It would, or course, be prudent to research the legalities of such a venture in Phoenix’s jurisdiction. I suppose if we received a book back, instead of our original investment, this could also be deemed a type of “advance sales”!

Best regards, and Happy Christmas, Christine, Montreal

Dear Christine,

how kind of you to write with thoughtful ideas. I have thought of this, put donation buttons on some articles, and indeed owe a good friend for a donation to support me and Scream. A Company has started in the UK called ‘Books Unbound’ I have talked to, which tries to do just that, though on a larger scale.

It has always been an irony here though that I don’t particularly like the internet and for all its positives it has many downsides for human culture, thought and interaction. So it is no way to go for an author to spend his time seeking money like that, when really he should be protected in trying to work and create. It sounds a bit grand but though nowadays all authors are expected to sell and sell and sell themselves it’s the books alone, if they are any good, that should really matter.

But you are right about the problems of investment. In terms of giving things for free I have wanted to do that because it’s the spirit you should set out with in writing, and you have already earnt a free copy when Scream emerges. The truth is I am the most terrible businessman and do not want to be a publisher but only a writer or creator of stories but have been forced into this position. Things are too difficult right now to juggle the balls well but I will certainly keep your crowd funding idea in mind.

Have a lovely Christmas too,

David

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December 3, 2012 · 1:41 pm

LOOKING FORWARD TO THE END OF EVERYTHING!

Well, it’s December, and forget Christmas, running nto the 21st/22nd is a last Advent countdown to the End of Everything. At last(!) comes the end of the Mayan Calendar, after a brief five thousand years, well, the Thirteenth Baktuun at least. It’s the solstice and hopefully a new dawn of awareness for all Mankind, which would obviously be nice!

So if we are still around, you can settle back and read the definitive thriller all about it, and Iranian Nuclear Secrets too – THE GODHEAD GAME by David Clement-Davies – A Game of Secrets, A Hunt for Skulls, A Battle of Spies.

For your FREE Phoenix Ark Press stocking filler, you can download to kindle for nothing, this Thursday, December 6th, and there will be more give aways before the world blows up (hopefully). Just CLICK HEREthis thursday. Happy Christmasy reading.

PA PRESS

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November 26, 2012 · 4:42 pm

FEARING FOR THE HOBBIT

Last year I wrote to Simon Tolkien and the J.R.R Tolkien estate with a suggestion, strictly resisted, to write a prequel to The Lord of The Rings, about those terrible, glorious figures The Nazgul, the nine riders, called The Lair of The Nine. It began to get my blood flowing and that ‘Edgar Wallace’ hot feeling at the top of my head, to be wasted in the ether of ‘nos’. But then The Lord of the Rings was for me one of those seminal books, a cross over between the world of children’s books and great adult literature, that is often so vitally expressed by fantasy fiction, ranging from writers like Tolkien to Bulgakov.

It was Frodo’s frantic flight to Riverdale, chased by the blood curdling nine, and the intervention of magic and the racing river, that was so consuming to me at twelve, I think I read the novel three times. The narrative power, scope and mythological complexity of that book is astounding and natural inspiration for Peter Jackson’s great trilogy of movies, now loved the world over, especially by Hollywood accountants. Of course, it was far more than just ordinary fantasy or storytelling to the likes of Tolkien, who, with writers like CS Lewis, with his deeply Christian themes in those doorways to other world Narnia books, formed the Oxford club ‘The Inklings’. For all The Lord of The Rings’ obvious echo of contemporary events, like the rise of the Nazis, the Second World War and the coming of chaos, the fear of ‘shirey’ England’s uprooting, pitted against Frodo’s quest to destroy the Ring of Power, the tyranny that threatens all, Tolkien’s inklings are about real psychic worlds too, inside and out, perhaps concepts of ‘gods’ like Jungian archetypes, and the vital tensions between the imaginative realm and ‘reality’.

But there was that other book, a far younger and gentler novel, a ‘Wind in the Willows’ breath of inspiration and harbinger to The Lord of The Rings, preparing Tolkien to be a far deeper author, The Hobbit. It is already putting fur on folk’s feet and starting to see it curl around the toes to hear that Jackson’s take will also be three films. The Tolkien estate may go on about respecting the integrity of Tolkien’s vision and mythology but they and Jackson are still prey to the temptations of money, mass media and merchandising. MMM…

Can a charming frolic like The Hobbit really sustain three films, even if Jackson does draw on obscure books like The Silmarillion? Such works are what should be kept in the backroom to Tolkien’s genius as a story teller, the Bagginsssssy equivalent of learning Klingon to Trekkies. There is much in The Hobbit, from all those dwarves, to the spidery horrors of Mirkwood, to Barrels Out of Bond and Smaug’s jewel encrusted belly and deathy hot breath. Proving of course a dragon really lies under everything. But it still needs the lightness of a younger work, a more innocent one, and battles and sword fights will not make up for it, while three films may stretch the spider’s web to breaking point. Even The Lord of The Rings films at times voided some of the depth and richness of the novels for me, though its architecture was sustained by the shere scope of such a work, that took seven years to write. Conversely The Hobbit is not epic in sweep, but a rather simple story of journey and return, and far more comfortable, like Bilbo himself and Bag End.

But if to me, though I loved them, the Jackson films rather hashed a very essential element to Tolkien’s core inspiration as writer, the earth, a pagan voice and above all those slow to decide trees, The Ents, fighting against an instinctive fear of mechanisation and the twentieth century, it is an absolute crime that and The Hobbit both void another magic element in Tolkien’s vision, in those deep roots of nature magic, the almost all-powerful Tom Bombadil. Indeed some power that could defeat any darkness, so itself a repeating symbol of needed hope. Like Shakespeare’s fairies they are characters hard to incarnate beyond the writer’s voice, but do not need much and are one of the natural springs to creative genius an author inserts to hint at where it is all coming from in the first place. Still, keep reminding us all that a film is not a book, a very different experience, and there’s lots of wonder and fun to look forward to.

DCD

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November 26, 2012 · 1:12 pm

SCREAM OF THE WHITE BEAR

From ‘Crazy’ Sophie

Hello, I would like the Scream of the White Bears for Christmas, any updates on when it is going to be out?

Dear Sophie,

and readers. I’m afraid I’m all up making apologies about Scream, except I’m sorry to you because it won’t be ready by Christmas. I hope you find something in the huge reading world you really want and love though. Readers know a little about a battle fought over it, and I hope something of why fighting your own publisher can’t produce anything worthy of books or readers, especially in those circumstances. I’ve said I would publish and now it will have to be next year, when it’s worthy of fans, and I’ve found some breathing space, so to you Sophie there is a free copy, whenever you write and ask, and to people like Tiffany, Barabara and others who have written and supported over it. The best thing about this has been talking to readers and when something’s healed well then a book can be given in the spirit my other books were. It’s happening, a cover is in design, though I doubt there will be much interest when it does, because people have waited too long! Still, a promise is a promise. Thank you for writing and very best.

DCD

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November 8, 2012 · 7:26 pm

ALISTAIR COOKE AND THE CORRECTIONS

I haven’t read Jonathan Franzen’s ‘The Corrections’ but have a sense of what it might be about. So, to prove we all get things wrong, to a correction of this blog, and my understanding of sad events regarding the stealing of Alistair Cooke’s bones. I remember hearing some very sad report, but perhaps I was wrong, because his relative told the story on TV of how his ashes were sprinkled in Central Park. She got eleven plastic cups for friends from Starbucks and they sprinkled his ashes, then spoke of passing the sight and thinking how he added vigour to the Astors. Rather lovely, but the passing of real shadows and dust.

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November 7, 2012 · 12:43 pm

WELL DONE AMERICA!

Not so much ‘God Bless’ as well done America, in choosing the right President. Especially in a time of still very high, though falling unemployment, it is remarkable that Obama was re-elected so strongly, and though Romney seemed an attractive and not so extreme figure, in the last throws of the election, Americans can surely feel proud of re-electing a figure of true balance, statesmanship, humanity and stature. Though now we will see how he makes good, especially with the January financial crisis looming, and how it carries around the world.

But one of the ‘prophecies’ in the thriller, The Godhead Game, has just come true, Obama’s second term, as we get closer to that imaginative ‘end of the world’, in this December’s end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar. Not some doomsday proof of apocalypses, though the world is always starting and ending for someone, each moment of our lives, but perhaps an intuition about world events. Perhaps it will be fun seeing how much a thriller gets things right. But very worrying signs are on the horizon, if we don’t all wake up to something, not least in the single most dominant foreign policy issue, Israel’s mounting paranoia about Iran and Nuclear weapons.

They, and the Mayan Long Count, are all themes inside a story and thriller, in The Godhead Game, A Game of Secrets, A Hunt for Skulls, A Battle of Spies, available HERE

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November 2, 2012 · 11:52 pm

ALISTAIR COOKE AND THE SADNESS AND GENIUS OF AMERICA

The Late Review just ran a piece about veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke and the new archive. What a treasure. But deeply personal here, especially in how I used to listen with my father to his broadcasts. His intelligence and civilisation, his subtle ironies, were entrancing, but how funny to hear reviewers arguing about his talents, or patrician style and relevance. He tried to speak beyond the immediate, at a cultural level, but I woke up to a true life sadness out of one event only. Namely that the master of those ‘Letters from America’, much themselves about a translation between a US and changing British World, had died, but then had had his bones stolen in New York City. What would he have said, with a smile, but that life is getting quicker and quicker, but all passes in shadows and dust, and probably everything returns too?

DCD

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November 2, 2012 · 11:33 pm

DERREN BROWN’S ‘APOCALYPSE’

A lot of interest here has been about blogs on ‘illusionist’ and hypnotist Derren Brown. Watching the second part of his ‘Apocalypse’ is a good chance to plug that great thriller, that does not have the power to push itself, The Godhead Game, based around this year’s supposed ‘Apocalypse’, the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar, this December, 2012. (Available but flopping on Amazon.) It’s point is precisely the opposite of ends of the world, since, for all the violence or fear, life and energy are very hard to destroy, as are repeating stories.

Perhaps Derren Brown is a kind of modern saint, though having dabbled in religion, or perhaps feeling a victim to it, he would probably hate the word. But the push and premise of his programme, and ‘set up’ of a character who faced a created Apocalypse, and the ‘infected’, was exactly right, and deeply human, namely to test and bring out the best in his ‘subject’. The lingering question at the end though, namely do we actually need fear, as the spin of the coin on which we all exist, succeed or fail, was immediately preempted by the announcement of the coming programme about faith; Religion: Faith and Fear. The ‘problem’ with the programme was that it already drew on well established cultural ‘clichés’, in all those zombie films. Indeed the set up was an exact replay of one infection and zombie film. Fine, it exactly reflects why such dramas are made themselves.

Which feeds into the question of what drama is for and why talking of science or faith is so much just about language. Derren Brown pushes the boundaries of illusion, hypnotic control, studies of the psyche and what reality really is, if anything at all, to the limits, and there too is his genius. Perhaps he will try to touch what it is very hard to answer, namely is there truth in ‘Jungian’ ideas, that involve such notions as some ‘Collective Unconscious’, that may not be an individual experience alone of dreams, or the powerful unconscious or subconscious, perhaps controlled by a brain centre that can be hypnotised and controlled to an extraordinary extent. To the extent it can stop the nerve functions and make a body in ice cold water think it is in a warm bath, and will actually die. Then that is no more remarkable than dysfunctions people are born with, so that they do not have ‘ordinary’ nerve functions at all, which itself questions what any reality is. But the wider question is what any social reality is too, and what is happening all around us, even in the entertainment staged down a TV screen, as so much is created to advertise or control.

Still, Brown is both a genius and very exciting and inspiring about what he seeks to challenge and examine about a ‘reality’ we all appear to share, but is always so much about illusions, in our experiences and perceptions of the ‘outside world’ and an inner world too. He is doing what that Hollywood movie ‘The Game’ did and would it not be wonderful if we all played that ‘game’ with each other, but to heal and to bring out the most extraordinary in each one of us? The question, as both animal and ‘Man’, is do we need enemies and fear, and what vision and growth exists beyond that when the walls really come tumblin’ down? For those ‘loonies’ who talk some Mayan truth, for whatever reason, perhaps there are always higher states of consciousness.

PA PRESS

ps Just to be a little tedious the Greek meaning of Apocalpsye is not those four horsemen at all, but something revealed.

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November 2, 2012 · 9:43 pm

WONDERFUL AUTUMN WATCH!

What is the love and genius at the heart of British TV, perhaps the strange UK, with the likes of our National Treasure, Sir David Attenborough, for all the supposed fakery about Polar Bears, or the just viewed wonderful and delightful Autumn Watch? It’s exactly what and why they quoted Gandhi, that the key measure of any society’s moral advancement is how it treats is animals, even with all our unkindness to chickens, yum, yum. The people on Autumn Watch are so natural, and naturally eccentric, so passionate about what they do, love and share, it is as entrancing as watching the footage of animals in the wild, or interacting in the studio.

For this ‘animal writer’, who forgot nature, forgot his readers and fans and forg0t where the power and source of his writing came from, it just brings joy. Only readers are right about whatever happened in America, and all that counts is the vision and passion that stories based in the wild bring. But of course, for love of animals, there is us as well, and love of us as well, in all that difficult ‘moral advancement’, competing, seeking, trying to understand, and such extraodinary and eccentic animals too. But apart from anything else, those passionate enthusiasts on Autumn Watch have so much fun!

DCD

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November 2, 2012 · 9:15 am

A READER’S LETTER

I have read your blog, Mr. Davies, and while I don’t pretend to have a full grasp of the situation, I understand that you have been woefully wrong(ed?). Your books are inspirations and masterpieces. Best wishes for the future, and I hope to see more of your works in the future.
-Charlie M

Hi Charlie,

many thanks for those words and it made me smile because you put ‘woefully wrong’, so, since language is an uncertain tool, I’ve given an alternative in brackets(?). In a sense I went woefully wrong, perhaps, over love and friendship, but for editors, publishers and people I knew to do that should be criminal.
All best,
DCD

ps Charlie, hope you understand I was not trying to point out any error on your part, and it was wonderful of you to bother to write, it’s just my wrong or theirs is a bit of a touchy subject! DCD

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