I would like to express a huge debt of thanks to Kym Hutcheon of Kyoto After Dark for putting up a very large and froody interview about Weed and related things on the KAD site.

The splash is much larger and indulging than I could have hoped for or deserve. I am afraid I rambled on far too long, for which I apologise. I’m afraid that’s me being brief.

Kyoto After Dark is your key to the ancient city. The site offers an introduction to places to feed and water yourself, as well as cluing you in on culture and entertainment.

So that’s Kyoto After Dark, folks. Pop in for a beer.

Today’s excerpt is from p98:

toppled

I thank you.

Watch this space for more excerpts and other exciting things coming in the next life or another.

I don’t write for money. Playing the lottery is a more reliable way to earn a living than writing. However, it would be nice to get Weed and Shorts (and Un-Tall Tales when I get the damn thing prepared) a bit noticed.

I’m trying all sorts of things and I will fulminate bloggily about that one day when I have a mo. But not today.

One small but helpful way to get one’s publications better noticed is to have reader’s reviews on Kindle and Amazon. If any good soul out there has read either publication and felt like jotting down a few thoughts on Kindle/Amazon, I would be tremendously grateful — to the point of proffering a beverage if ever in the same neighbourhood.

Weed the paperback is here.

Kindle Weed is here.

Kindle Shorts is here.

I could go on the sites and write my own reviews — but if anyone saw me doing it, they’d think I was a sneaky bastard and I might get given a job at News International and I wouldn’t like that a bit.

O, frabjous day! Calooh! Callay!

It’s only taken more years and tries than I would care to count, but, well, bloody mindedness will out.

Now, I have to market the bloody thing. There, I am clueless. I read that Facebook is one avenue but I am not sure what to do with it, so if anyone has any ideas, you know where to send them.

You won’t find a paperback version of Shorts on Amazon yet, because I haven’t arranged one. And when I do, it will not longer be called Shorts, because it’s an over used name.

I’ll be boring everyone with news of that project as we go along.

Meanwhile, I should now go get my pencil out and do something with it because with Weed in paperback I have one less reason for procrastination.

However, I think the people of New Zealand have bigger things on their mind at the moment than my facetious little book.

The novel Weed and short story collection Shorts are now finally available through the Kindle store.

Weed here.

Shorts here.

Way past time too.

The two have been available since Sunday bt I have been cowed by other work and haven’t got around to mentioning the fact.

I feel a bit ambivalent about playing with Amazon after all the uncool things they have done in recent years but, sod it, they are the biggest distributor of books, e- or otherwise. I shall reserve my principles for my stories. Ahem.

Readers can download Kindle books to their Kindle readers, iPads, other tablets, iPhone, iPod touch or laptop if you have the relevant free software installed.

So, only a year and a bit after the damn things came out, here they are available through the main channel. Quite fast for me, really.

And I hope to have some other froody news later this week.

Weed at Barnes and Noble

Weed on Borders

Weed on Kobo

Inexplicably, Shorts is not listed with all the same people as Weed. I don’t know what that’s about.

As you know, e-books are in short supply, so hurry while stocks last!

No sign of Shorts on that site though. Is it possible that Messrs B&N took exception to the less-than-pristine underpants on the cover and are protecting the sensibilities of the book-buying public? Regardless, Shorts, like Weed remains available through the seemingly endless number of outlets associated with Smashwords.

Plans for paperback editions are again stalled. I am tentatively confident that the paper edition will be out some time this millennium or the next one.

Another abandoned Weed cover design

Weed is a catchy little name but, despite the genesis of the story (see last post) the story is not about dope. No, really.

There was a moment when the writing was done and I was thinking about putting it out there in the big wide world that I had an attack of cynicism in which I thought the name with its puffy associations might be a good marketing gimmick. I slap myself on the wrist for the thought.

Weed is named Weed because that’s the name it needs. It is not for or about pot heads— stoner stuff is just boring. I am bothered that I might be seen to be championing drugs. I am happy to champion drugs, but will do so on another occasion in another way. Possibly the easy associations with the name might put off certain people from reading the thing.

The story is about so much else that is far dearer to me than puff.

Back in the day, a weed was a person who was considered physically weak and who probably had poor social skills (probably as a result of being considered by others to be physically weak — how we love the Aryan!). These days, a weed might be called a nerd. A weed is actually a person who merely has different interests and priorities to the socially fragile and intellectually impaired cool kids and jockstrap brigade. There is no need for the weed-nerd to be like everyone else and it is very often the nerdy kids who go on to create cool stuff like spaceships and the internet. In the garden, a weed is something that does not fit in, that gardeners will pull up and throw away. A weed hasn’t been planted, chosen or cultivated — it is outside the control regime so bin it. However, weeds are tenacious things. You can’t get rid of them: they just grow back and multiply and if you take your eye off them for a minute they take over the whole garden. Weeds are an image of resistance. And then there is the kind of weed that you can smoke, which has its own associations of resistance to order (both mental and social).

Weed (the story) from its inception was more of a gesture or an impulse than a deliberate or reasoned thought. It came to be a free-ranging satire of this environment of manufactured pleasures, mass-produced satisfactions, pre-fabricated jobs, assigned lifestyles, and prescribed thoughts and emotions.

It has always seemed to me that getting on, getting ahead, in this environment requires a massive act of self-abnegation, one that neither Robert D Weed nor I are capable of or willing to make. To survive or progress in this made world, you have to adapt your entire identity. It’s not so much a case of playing the part as being the part. You have to give up your self. And it scares and repels me. We are trained into obedience and banality by school, colleges, the media, our employers (and eventually our own fears of exclusion). So, one of the big themes of Weed is identity. And being is another. I could now go into Marxian notions of species being but we’ll be here till the cows come home if I do. Anyway, the darn thing is a silly little comedic two-fingers at the world, so who wants to hear about Big Ideas?

So there you go. It’s not about pot. I’m off to tend the grow lamps.

Music: Craig Padilla and Zero Ohms

Mood: I wouldn’t mind one, thanks.

Reading: Natsuo Kirino’s Grotesque — READ IT IF YOU HAVEN’T!