29 December 2015
Hello!
And whoosh, oof, another year has gone. We’re one year closer to the extinction of the sun. One year farther on from the breakup of The Beatles. The glories of Rome grow ever more faded. Fewer and fewer people remember white dog poos.
Alas.
Time is cruel. But heck, humanity has also achieved a few things. Life isn’t all bad. Plus, we’re one year closer to the new series of Twin Peaks.
And that’s just about enough New Year’s blather, don’t you think? I did consider writing a review of our year here at Galley Beggar, but these newsletters get long enough anyway. Besides, along with a few fellow independent publishers we were lucky enough to share a few thoughts on 2015 in The Guardian.
It’s been a good year, artistically. Our authors have written some damn fine books. To set the seal on this happiness, a lovely review for Playthings just arrived in the New Scientist.
Vic James writes:
“In Playthings, [Pheby] doesn’t merely narrate Schreber’s illness. He invites us to inhabit it – using writing that is both precise and beautiful. His disjointed prose conveys disordered thinking. Readers are fully immersed in paranoid psychosis, yet unlike Schreber, remain in full possession of their faculties.It’s an experience that remains with you long after the last page has been turned and the door to Schreber’s asylum cell has swung open. Conjuring his delusions so acutely reminds us how far, despite neuroscience’s best efforts, we are from understanding the interior state.”
Score!
Now then. A charity ebook collaboration with our friends at Salt:
This special ebook is a collection of stories about refuge, designed to provide refuge for those in need. It’s a co-production between Salt and Galley Beggar Press. All proceeds will be directed to aid organisations on Kos.
It’s got a mighty roster of authors:
Marina Warner
Anthony Trevelyan
Nicholas Royle
James Miller
Toby Litt
Penny Hancock
Paul Ewen
Stella Duffy
Carys Davies
Ruby Cowling
James Clammer
Adam Biles
Elizabeth Baines
We released it just before Christmas, and so far we’ve gathered £200 to send to Medecins Sans Frontieres. Salt have been busy raising money on their site too.
If everyone on this mailing list bought a copy, we’d be able to up that to a mighty £5000. That’s money that can make a real practical difference. It can make a few of our fellow humans feel a little more comfortable - and hopefully even a little more loved. Anyway, the book’s here, it's £5, and the stories are wonderful, so your altruism will get some reward right away.
Elsewhere, I’m sorry to fill this newsletter with requests for good deeds when I expect you’re knackered after Christmas and, if you’re anything like me, feeling broke as all hell. But I have to mention that we’ve received an appeal from our friend Kevin Duffy at Bluemoose books. He’s looking to help restock the The Book Case in Hebden Bridge, which lost all its books in the recent floods. So, if you are a publisher, agent, author or anyone else with access to new books you can spare, drop me a line and I’ll direct you to Kevin. (If you don’t have new books to spare, but still want to do something, there’s also a flood relief appeal here.)
Right. Now for something lovely:
It's our latest £1 Single. Here's the blurb:
“You need to go away,” she says, but she passes me a piece of gum when she gets one for herself from the pack. I smell her Juicy Fruit breath as she leans down. I take the stick of gum, strip off the foil and put the flat sugar-dusted piece into my mouth.A drive-in cinema. A young man. A moment of passion. Ray Else's story is brimming over with lost youth, yearning and all the special things that make us sigh.
There’s just something aching about this story. I hope you enjoy it. I hope it leaves you wanting more, too. We’ve got a great line-up of Singles planned for 2016 - and some fine novels and works of non-fiction too. More on them next month. For now, that’s just about it from us in 2015 - with thanks and gratitude to all you readers who made it happen.
It’s been a fine year, all in all. Although, of course, I’m sorry to say that Amazon’s founder and leader Jeff Bezos has not yet received due comeuppance. In 2016, he has possibly actually achieved more evil than ever. Most of these karmic crimes and affronts to humanity are well known.
Just in case you missed them, a few highlights:
This year, we saw the expose of appalling working conditions in the US and here in the UK.
We were again told about pitiful amounts of tax paid.
We discovered amazon has been selling illegal weapons.
We also said “what the fliiping heckins” when Amazon plastered Nazi style symbols all over the New York Subway.
So much for the public face of Amazon. But what about the things that went under the radar? The secret things that haven’t yet been reported and he is hoping will never be revealed? Well, luckily, I’ve been able to find out. My discoveries have been pretty shocking.
You will be horrified to learn that:
Jeff Bezos has been adding extra orange creme flavoured sweets to packets of Revels and eating all the toffee ones himself.
Jeff Bezos has been deliberately walking his veruccas around your local swimming baths. That’s right. No special socks. I’m also sorry to tell you that he took a secret wee while swimming far too slowly in the fast swimmers’ lane.
Jeff Bezos has spent several of his afternoons phoning up listener request radio shows all over the world and encouraging them to play ‘Yellow’ by Coldplay.
Sometimes, he has also been working mornings for Foxtons estate agency. He doesn’t need the money. He just enjoys ‘the hunt’.
Jeff Bezos has been the person buying all the gig tickets the second they go on sale and feeding them on to touts. Jeff Bezos loves touts. Didn’t get to see the Cure? Blame Jeff.
Jeff Bezos sat opposite you on the train, opened a big pot of Wasabi stink-and-noodle soup and ate it with his mouth open.
Jeff Bezos bought shares in your local train franchise.
This year, Jeff Bezos has mainly enjoyed riding around in his BMW, failing to indicate at roundabouts, tailgating you on the straight, driving in the middle lane on motorways and refusing to pull over, even for ambulances.
Whenever he parked, he deliberately took up two spaces.
And he repeatedly chucked his rubbish from McDonalds out the window.
What a cockchafer.
Also, all year long, Jeff Bezos did not use a tissue when he sniffed. He did not use a tissue for anything.
Jeff Bezos cold-called you.
Jeff Bezos walked through the door you were holding open for him, and Jeff Bezos did not say thank you, and Jeff Bezos left a little stinky memory of his passage too.
Jeff Bezos changed your seat height when you weren’t in the office.
Jeff Bezos stole your wheelie bin, and left his own outside on the pavement. All year long.
Jeff Bezos tried to read over your shoulder.
Jeff Bezos enjoyed visiting your local cinema, where he talked and played on his phone throughout the entire film you were watching.
Jeff Bezos sent you abuse on Twitter and then wrote a needy online article about the persecution of middle aged white males.
Oh and that wasn’t dog muck you stepped in. Nope. It was Jeff.
I wish you all the best in 2016. Good luck!
Fondly,
Sam
PS As usual, I'm also going to use the end of the newsletter for a few more adverts, where you can safely ignore them, or kindly indulge me, depending on your fancy:
Firstly, please join The Singles Club so we can pay writers to write. Here's the blurb:
We have a fantastic subscription system set up for our Singles Club so that you now only have to make one payment to get hold of 12 stories. But how to go through the ins and outs of paypal payment systems without boring the dirtbox off you, I don't know. Probably the best thing to do is to head over to the relevant page on our site, where I've tried to give a brief, but to the point explanation, and to take it from there. The important things to know are that:
(1) Subscribing saves you the trouble of going to the site every month to get your fix of superb ebook literature – we'll just email you the files every month.
(2) Subscribing (so long as enough people do it) will enable us to start giving our authors money up front on for each story. Yes! We are going to pay people to write short stories. It's like the golden days of the 1920s. Only they'll be in electronic book format instead of Strand magazine… Anyway! You get the idea. This is a mighty fine way to keep authors doing what they do best – entertaining you.
(3) It costs £12 a year, or £1 a month, or less than a meal in Pizza Express. (Unless you have a voucher.)
Secondly, please be our friend! Become a Galley Buddy. It's a good deal for us, and a great deal for you.
Thirdly, to donate to Galley Beggar Press and earn yet more of our gratitude, click here.
Fourthly, go on, buy a postcard set. They're lovely:
Fifthly, like everyone else, I can’t wait for Blackstar. But let me tell you, I’m also looking forward to the new Suede album. Words I never thought I’d be typing. They lost me sometime around Trash, but oh man, they got me back with Bloodsports. But even if that album, was an unexpected treat, I’m prepared to admit that quite a good part of my pleasure came through nostalgia, and remembering them putting the awe into me and my friends at the Blackpool Tower ballroom sometime in the early 1990s. Yes, it was a fun album. But not a bid for immortality. The preview tracks and all the reports about Night Thoughts suggest it may be something else. It may - whisper it and hope to goodness it’s right - be something on a level with Dog Man Star. We’ll see. Go Brett!
Oh and if you want something you can buy right now, you can do worse than the lovely album of lullabies The Wainwright Sisters put out a few weeks ago. My daughter doesn’t like it. She thinks it’s soft and would rather listen to Dive Dive and the frantic drumbreaks on the Darkstar single. But maybe she’ll come round… She’s going to hear it often enough over the next few weeks, anyway.
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