My to-do list for the week is
already behind which isn’t a good sign considering it is only Tuesday, although
to be fair I do have a get out clause having written ‘unless there’s a gig’ at
the top of the page. It’s my fault for thinking that I could type up my book Bowie Day all at once, which was my job for yesterday and
the job I tried to tackle with gusto today. In the end I managed about half of
it due to having to do a bit of fact checking and tidying up a few clumsy
sentences. I write longhand to start with, the old fashioned way using a pen
and paper. The rest of the week mainly involves recording, a task I have rather
ambitiously set on a one job per day basis. Once Bowie Day
is typed up and saved I intend to record the audio book for release on the same
day, and that was supposed to have been my job for today. Although once it’s
done and dusted it won’t be released until January it is something I wanted to
get out of the way as I didn’t want to forget about it until it was too late
and I miss the intended release date of January 8th. Before breaking
up for Christmas I’ll be arranging all the publicity in advance so that I can
dedicate the release date to promotional duties. The audio book will be
available to download from my Bandcamp profile as usual, but I’m considering
putting a price on it rather than the pay-what-you-like option this time. I’m
also weighing up the pros and cons of doing a one-off public reading gig with a
Bowie tribute band as the main event. My other idea is an evening read
underneath the Ziggy Stardust plaque on Heddon Street as a busking event, only
with words instead of music.
We are halfway through the
year so naturally our thoughts turn to Christmas. When I say ‘our’ I mean
certain sectors only, nobody in the real world of 9-5 Monday to Friday could
give a shit about Christmas yet. While we eat ice-cream in our flip-flops,
(although it is better to eat it out of
a cone), restaurants and pubs will be sorting their festive menus, card
shops will be blowing the dust off the stock they put away last Christmas Eve,
and in a studio somewhere it will be the season to be jolly, tra-la-la-la-la,
la-la-la-la. One of my jobs this week or next is to record this year’s now
traditional Dickens Christmas audio book. I have chosen it already, (weird to
be reading Christmas stories in June) and it will be available as before as a
free download with the option to pay if you wish. My original audio book of A Christmas Carol will be re-released as an album so you can
buy all four chapters together, probably a week before the newer one comes out.
Last year’s series of Steve’s LP Box was the final one, with episodes going out
weekly, but unfortunately I didn’t have time to record the Christmas special. The
whole thing is written but I need to record it, again it’s something I’d rather
have finished sooner rather than later and release it on the same day as this
year’s Christmas edition. All in all that will add several ticks to the to-do
list and make December a very busy one. I keep hinting to Mandi that we’re
skipping Christmas this year but she’s having none of it.
===
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