Marzipan Books, anyone?

It’s time for a book update again. Yes, I realise this is dragging, but it feels like the end is nigh, or at least the book is near. Hold on in there. We’ve almost made it.

This week I saw the logo for my imprint name, and it is sooooo good. There’s those extra Os again, so you KNOW it must be epic.

For anyone who, like me six months ago, is unsure what an imprint is… an imprint is the name in place of a publishing company on self-published books. I am the publisher as well as the author, but I’d prefer not to put my name twice. It doesn’t look very legit, and this book is oh so very legit. So I get to choose a name. Yay. (In the case of solely e-published work this isn’t necessary. But in order to create real life paper books, an ISBN number is needed, and in order to get an ISBN number, a publishing name/imprint is needed. Anyway if you are interested in all that, you can read more here). 

I could have kept it simple and called myself Nicky Bond Publishing, but I wanted to get creative. To be honest I got very excited about the opportunity to think of a name which this, and subsequent books will be published under. Don’t worry, I did my research. I looked on my bookshelf, and made a note of other self-publishing imprints, to see the sort of thing other people chose. One author used what I am guessing are his initials. Another had what seemed to be a made up word, perhaps with a meaning only he knew. I read examples online of people choosing their home-towns or locations from their novel. It seemed there was an ‘anything goes’ mentality about it. It just had to be previously unused. 

I did the first thing that everyone should do whenever they have to think of anything. I made a list. I made a list of words and ideas that mean something to me, on even the smallest of levels. Words that evoke an image or a memory that I like. Simply put, as the song goes, these are a few of my favourite things.

• Black nail varnish
• Eurovision
• Battenburg cake
• Cheese
• Left handedness
• Independence
• Eighties
• Retro
• Tea
• Bond
• Brunette
• Charleston
• Gordon
• Nolan

I started to peter out around there. That list includes food and drink, family surnames, eras I like, and physical characteristics about me. It is as specific and as personalised as it gets. Yet, the minute I started searching the Internet, it seemed that a variety of permutations of each one already existed.

My first choice was Black Nail Books. I like black nail varnish. It’s just my thing. It felt like a lovely little nod to me, without it being blatantly about me. But as soon as I started googling away, there seemed to be all sort of literary uses of black nails, in book titles and publishing circles. I had to think again. 

It could have been so beautiful. Sob.

In the end, there wasn’t a lot of choice. Words like ‘left’ invoked a political slant to the publications, ‘cheese’ implied terrible writing, any real name had already been taken, and in the end I couldn’t bring myself to present my life’s work via a marzipan-based cake. It was all left to ‘tea’.

I think some background is needed.  Without realising it, I have turned into a bit of a Sally Albright when it comes to ordering a drink. Like a script, it is always the same. ‘Hi, can I have a large tea in a take away cup, with skimmed milk, please’. What’s so anal about that, you might ask?  Well, here’s the thing. I don’t take it away.  I sit in the coffee shop, bold as brass. I know! The madness. (It really does keep the heat better than a lidless cup. FYI)

Realising this had become a bit of a habit over the course of writing, I decided to work it into the imprint. (I edited most of this book in Costa. There was a lot of tea.) And so, after plenty more searching of domain names, and trawling the records of Companies House, I got there. My imprint name is… fanfare please... Take-Away-Tea Books.  I know.  Doesn’t it just trip off the tongue. 

Anyhow, all that was done and dusted a couple of months ago but this week, my marvellous design man at Portal - Design & Illustration asked me if I wanted a logo for it. I replied seconds later with a hearty Ed Milibandian ‘hell yeah’ and that was that. It was in my inbox a day later.  Isn’t it GORGEOUS.

The spilt tea is particularly
reminiscent of my Costa visits.

I’ll talk about the front cover another time, which is equally beautiful, but things are all coming together. After months of hanging around, I can see the finish line. 

Thanks for hanging around with me. 

Have a lovely week.

Hypocrite, thy name is Bondie...

I don’t often follow up on previous blog posts, but as discussed on 16^th January (Choose Life...Again) and in the spirit of closure, I finally saw T2 Trainspotting. It was marvellous. Nostalgic, moving, and just as before, a visceral cinematic experience. Other than that I’ll leave it to the experts, so here is Mark Kermode’s review which summarised my thoughts nicely.

Catching up with the same characters years later is always a worry. It’s not that you want the characters to stay the same. It’s that you want them to have plausibly aged the way their younger selves indicated they would. There are some lovely moments when it’s clear Danny Boyle has pulled this off, perhaps most iconically with the 'Choose Life' reference.

I had the original ‘Choose Life’ poster in my first adult home. ‘Choose life, choose a job, choose a career… ‘ and so it went on. At that time I was choosing a job and a career, and as the poster continued, I was choosing ‘washing machines, cars and compact disc players’ too. I was choosing all that back then. 

In T2 Trainspotting, Renton’s 2017 version of the monologue accurately skewers modern life once again, but one line in particular stood out.

“Choose life, Choose Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and hope that someone, somewhere cares”

Of course an updated 'Choose Life' rant would include social media. It had to be in there. I smiled in recognition of the glut of existing networking apps and their ultimate lack of worth. But later at home I found myself irked that I hadn’t uploaded anything to Instagram that day. I smirked at the dozens of people I know who live out their relationships online, but then I had the simultaneous thought of ‘Ooh, this could make a good blog post!’ as I processed my thoughts. 

Do I semi-embrace social media whilst keeping it at arm’s length, or am I kidding myself and I’m just as obsessed as the next person who posts each thought/meal/family photo/business venture every minute of the day? Answers on a postcard. I have no idea.

It’s a double edged sword. On the one hand I’m a private person. I keep myself to myself, and only share who I am with a handful of close friends. But then I am deliberately developing my author platform all the time, blogging on a weekly basis about ‘stuff’, and trying to get as many people as possible to read my words - whether that be online, or ultimately on paper. (I was over the moon last week, when my blog post was viewed over 1000 times. It’s a record. I know it means nothing but it still felt like a validation. Double-edged sword, see.)

So the 'Choose Life' line stuck with me. It made me think about what I put ‘out there’. I realised I've developed my own subconscious guidelines over time, and in some ways that is quite reassuring. For example, I tend to keep Facebook for people who have actually met me. (Except for the person I accidentally friend-requested after dropping my phone. She seems lovely, though.) I don’t post much and it's usually family photos so my privacy settings are high. Twitter, on the other hand is much more of a free for all. I find myself retweeting a lot of articles that say what I think for me. I share my strong opinions masked behind a variety of Guardian journalists.

And then there’s Instagram. I’ve had an account for a few years but I've never understood it. It festered away, ignored until last month. Disclaimer - I still don’t understand it. But after reading this article I decided to post one picture a day. I think my original plan was to take exciting road trips to locations featured in my book, and share the places that inspired the story (see point 8 in the article). In reality, I scrape the bottom of the photographic barrel on a daily basis by taking a picture of whatever is in front of me. On Thursday it was this…

Scraping the bottom of the photographic barrel.

I suppose that this is really an apology. I am a hyprocite! A contradiction! An enigma! I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy asking him to love her. (Sorry, ignore that. I went all Richard Curtis there for a moment.) I aim to be as non-boring and interesting to read as possible. Yet I know that photos of my nail varnish, a bowl of nuts and what is on my TV at the time are of no interest to anybody, barely even myself. And yet as a writer, it is all supposed to help in the long run. 

So sorry, I know it is rubbish. I really do.  But on the other hand, if you want to follow me on Instagram, it’s @bondiela.

Happy Monday y’all.

This one didn't even make it on to Instagram.
 I apologise to fans of Lemsip and tissue photos everywhere. 

Don't Stop Me Now, Smash Hits...

This week I’m having a bash at music journalism.  I know.  Get me.  If only Smash Hits were still around, I’d be fielding job offers all the day is long.

People who know me will laugh.  I haven’t been a fan of current chart music since 31^st December 1989 when my favourite musical decade ended.  As we all flung ourselves into the 1990s – the decade that would contain every single one of my ‘first times’ (oh, and there were many!) the music that accompanied them tended to leave me cold.  My head was always back in the 80s and all that it entailed.  Between Bananarama, Brat Pack films and the Last Christmas video, I will always believe I was born ten years too late for the music, fashion and films I love. 

I continued to remain musically apathetic in the noughties - it’s hard to feel sentimental about a decade the gave us The Crazy Frog - and with the Cowellian overthrow of the music industry in the years that followed, I never really got onboard with current artists beyond my early teen years.  

I have tried though.  I truly believe that anything performed live has inherent merit and I have been to a few gigs in my time that were pretty special.  In recent years I’ve seen Spandau Ballet twice.  They sounded the same as they did when I was seven, and definitely caused raised neck hairs when they sang Through the Barricades just for me. (That’s how I remember it, anyway.)  I also saw Paul McCartney at Anfield in 2008.  Again, it was an epic experience and I loved every second.  But between Macca and Spandau, I’m not exactly embracing current musicians. 

This has changed in recent months, however.   Whether I’m only noticing it for the first time, or whether it’s a hot new trend, local boozers advertising regular live bands seem to be everywhere. 

Last Saturday when I was losing my mind over technology, I escaped to the pub to see my favourite local band.  I know, who knew?   I have a favourite local band!  They’re called Caution, and last week they were in The Clock Face pub, in St. Helens.  The initial lure was beer (obvs) but Caution’s set was exactly what I needed.  It included songs by Queen, Erasure, Aha, Guns and Roses and Whitesnake.  I mean, come on.  That is one helluva night right there.  (There was also some Coldplay, Mika and Killers for the young’uns.)  With the sad reality that I’ll never see Freddie perform live, this was a pretty decent alternative.  (Sidebar - I heard McCartney play Live and Let Die, nine years ago and I heard Caution play it last week.  I’m not talking rubbish when I say both versions were just as awesome to experience.  Both made me want to sing along as loudly as possible, and both gave me shivers when the chorus thundered in.  And while Anfield may have provided pyrotechnics, The Clock had no mile-long toilet queues, and far cheaper bar prices.  Win.)  

Caution - doing their rock thing.

This pub is one of several I’ve spotted over recent months that have weekly live music.  Is this a new phenomenon?  Claire, the manager, has clearly decided to make live music a focal point – (and fair play to her, as it’s definitely had an impact on where I’ve been drinking lately).  Perhaps people are finally over the assembly-line auto-tunings of the X Factor, and want some blood and guts musical passion in their faces?

All weekend, every weekend!
It wasn't like this in my day.

New trend, or coincidence, I am happy to embrace it.  So if you’re local, check out The Clock’s lineup.  If you’re further afield (hello international readers!) see what’s happening down your way.  In these politically troubling times, a night of cold beer, impromptu dancing, and screaming along with the lyrics to Don’t Stop Me Now could be just what you need.

Have a lovely week, folks.