IA: V Exciting

Having finished my Inappropriate Alphabet project months ago, I finally got round to sending it to some publishers. Whilst some recipients were no doubt disgusted and some simply perplexed, thankfully several showed genuine interest.
One of these was Anova Books. I met up with their humour/gift guy a few times and he was really nice (funny/generous) and, most importantly, he was really keen on the project and seemed to understand pretty well what I was trying to do with it.
Since then we've decided to definitely go ahead with it. Hopefully we'll be bringing the book out in time for Christmas 2008.
Now the real work has started. It was a bit weird at first, putting on a shirt to go and meet someone in a business setting to talk about the merits of just jerking off contrasted with jailbait , and discussing with absolute seriousness the chronological integrity of the narrative of 26 pages of crudeness. What is interesting is that the book works as a conversational catalyst: my publisher and I have discussed disgusting sexual acts we'd never bring up with our wives and girlfriends, and hopefully that is what is going to make it a strong gift book.

Something must be right about it anyway, because recently the IA page on my website suddenly started getting loads of hits from nowhere (well, America). Something like over 7000 people in two days looked at it, almost all coming via web-recommendation-application StumbleUpon. Look:


So now there's a lot more to be done for the Inappropriate Alphabet book. It's probably going to have a more appropriate title for a start. The too-rubbish and too-rude letters will have to be redone, some additional content will have to made up and thought will have to be given to colours and layout. I'll be putting things up on here as I progress (though not so much that you'll have no reason to buy the thing when it comes out) so stick your thoughts and opinions in the comments, I'd appreciate it.
It really is all very exciting. My dream of being a young novelist is being realised. Yes, I'm just like Zadie Smith...

A real artist

This week I had a piece of art in a gallery show (this red and white one I did ages ago and then did nothing with), at the Royal College of Art no less. This made me feel like a real artist.



Alas though, it was a charity show and so quality control was irrelevant and I can't glean to much self-worth from being exhibited (though there were a lot of really strong pieces there).
All the works were sold in a blind auction at the end, and mine went for "just under £100" but again, as it was for charity, this means nothing for my piece. Some nice person just gave a couple of pounds to the Prince's Trust and ended up taking home a free ikea frame.

Morocco

We went to Morocco. I took a home-made sketchbook.













I also took a camera and took two photographs.