Tuesday 27 July 2010

A Day by the Sea


A few short weeks ago, the lovely "Louise from marketing", Miles "he can do anything with Final Cut" and I took a day out by the sea, to film a short video piece to promote White Crow.

After days of sunshine, the weather was not promising. White Crow is set in a hot, hot summer (this very hot summer of 2010, in fact, so please feel free to come to me with your weather forecast requirements from now on...) and so it was a tad disappointing to see the clouds, and yes, even (gasp) drizzle coming down on the Suffolk coast.

In order to get around this, we made two quick decisions. First, we concluded that since White Crow is a Gothic novel, a trailer filmed on a murky, rainy day would be much the best thing anyway. Second Louise and I went to the 'caff' for tea in polystyrene mugs and Mars bars. This is when I realised why Louise is lovely :-) Miles toughed it out on the beach, filming pebbles.

In the caff we were suddenly entertained by three things. One, the lad behind the counter trying to rig up a totally old TV set in order to watch the World Cup. Second, the lad behind the counter telling us all about the film crew that had been there the day before, and asking were we part of it, and impressing us with how many vans and crew they had. And third, the lad from the behind the counter asking if we knew who anyone who could film his really good band for him. 

At this point, Miles staggered in, looking in need of tea and a Mars bar. We gave him both, and a really promising lead for some filming we were sure he'd love to do. "He can do anything with Final Cut, you know" we assured the lad from behind the counter, sauntering back out into the drizzle.

Anyway, the filming day was enormous fun, and just as we left the coast behind, the sun came out, scorching hot once more. Shucks.

The results of the filming are now up: click here to view. My thanks to Miles and Louise.

Thursday 1 July 2010

White Crow flies the nest

Today is publication day for White Crow, so it flaps off over the horizon and into the great beyond. Kind of literally in this case, as the whole damn point with this book is one of the biggies: vad finns efter döden? ie What is there after death..?

Personally I'm hoping for a chance to put your feet up with a nice cup of tea and nice chat about this and that. You know the sort of thing, all those big questions you always wanted to ask. Like Why did You invent evil? Why do Bad Things happen to Good People? And Where do you get those crazy sandals from?


That aside, I would like to say I'm really happy with how the book turned out, looks wise, and I wish it well. So how am I spending publication day? Big do? Bottle of champagne? Nope, off to the jetty at the end of the island I'm living on, where I'm told a thing called the ölbåt is arriving later to bring merriment to the dancing Swedes. That's 'beerboat' by the way, if you're working in old money.

Ha det så bra, vi ses...