Yesterday SY and I were walking home in the dark, around 7pm, past the park near our house. It’s not the best way home as there’s a long passage where on both sides there’s a tall and spiky metal fence, but we were near Sainsbury’s buying light bulbs and it’s a pain in the ass to go all the way round the other way.

In that passage, you’re hemmed in basically- and we don’t usually take that route for that reason, even though it does have lights. There’s nobody nearby either, to hear you scream- park on one side, allotments on the other.

But we took it. Ahead of us a big guy and a smaller, late middle-aged lady were walking slowly. Slight dilemma, but I figured we don’t look threatening, they don’t especially, so the lesser of two evils is overtake rather than walk behind them ominously the whole way.

“Excuse me,” I say as I pass between them with SY.

We go by, then the woman starts muttering loudly- “You can’t be out at here walking like this, you’ll get mugged.”

OK, I think.

“Or raped,” she adds.

Weird? I thought so. I turned around.

“What about you then?” I ask, not aggressively.

She bursts out laughing.

What? Was she stunned I could hear her, or stunned I said anything, or maybe she just finds the whole subject hilarious? As with the escapade on the train a few days ago, the male companion kept his own counsel and said nothing.

Who can say, really. Was she threatening rape? Was she mumbling about her own fear of rape? Was she sharing general warnings about how to avoid rape?

In the infamous words of The Doors- People are Strange.

It seems like I get into some kind of confrontation with someone about once a week now (the house seller, the gardener, the preacher at church, kids at school regularly). This after 11 years in Japan and perhaps 1 or 2 proper arguments with random people. Perhaps that was partly due to poor language skills, but also culture difference.

Anyway, this morning on the train I had a confrontation. We were packed in, and an older woman next to me in the aisle was grumbling about everybody, muttering to her partner but loud enough for people nearby to hear. She complained that nobody would move down (the common refrain on London trains is ‘Can you move down please?’), she asked a woman to open a window then complained when she didn’t open it fast enough, then she said- “and you’ve got people this one behind me here trying to push into you.”

OK, so definitely she is talking about me. I’m not pushing her especially, but people get in and you try to move down.

“You’re talking about me?” I say, almost on reflex. “I’m not pushing you,” I look over my shoulder to see her- our faces right next to each other.

She goes wide-eyed and aggressive at once. “Was I talking to you? Did I call out your name?”

“You don’t even know my name.”

“I wasn’t talking to you so shut up.”

“You were talking about me, loud enough for me to hear, so you must have been talking to me,” I counter (a comeback learned from something Kvothe says in The Wise Man’s Fear).

“It’s none of your business what I say, so shut up.”

“Why don’t you shut up? We’re all here listening to you grumble, you tell her to open the window then complain she’s not doing it right, you complain about me when I’m just standing here. We’re just trying to go to work.”

“I’m just going to work!”

“So stop complaining and insulting people.”

“What are you going to do about it, huh?” She demands. She thinks she’s got me.

“I’m doing this,” I say. “Publicly shaming you.”

She snorts. “You’re making a fool out of yourself.”

I look around. “I don’t think so. You’re the fool, and nobody wants to hear you bitch.” I wish here I’d said a la George Costanza, “We live in a? society!”

“Just shut your face!” she snaps.

“You shut yours.”

“Shut up you arsehole.”

“You’re the aresehole.”

“Oh we’ve got a parrot on the train.”

At that it stops.

She goes back to talking to her male friend. She says one mild reference about me, to which I snort manful derision, then they go back to gossiping about other topics.

On the way out at another station, a guy said to me- “Well said, mate.”

Victory? Utterly pointless? Probably. But had I not said anything, I’d have had her poison in my ear and probably be kicking myself for not saying something. A year back I still remember being a silent witness to a guy basically bullying, or trying to bully, a woman sitting next to him for wearing headphones with too loud music. I couldn’t hear the music, and I was right next to them both, so figured he was being unreasonable. She defended herself well, and didn’t need a ‘knight in shining armor’ to defend her, but for my own sake I didn’t want to have to hear him try and get some concession out of her any longer.

“Alright,” I could have said. “Settle down, that’s enough.”

Maybe they both would have rounded on me? Ha ha, better that than sit mute though.

On the other hand, yesterday on the train some girl was lost and asking where to get off, but the lady she asked didn’t know. I volunteered, and didn’t know either, but the guy standing next to me, now the request had been opened up, did know, and told her. She was happy and so were we.

I think actually she went the wrong way when she did get off, and I considered chasing her to tell her, but maybe that would be too keen.

The new King Ruin cover is in and done- yet to be applied to the book itself, but this is what it will be as soon as I get time to update the book file:?

Wow, right?

I said it was sexy. I think it may look a little more cartoony than the Mr. Ruins cover, and I have mild concern that with a title of King Ruin, it is a little confusing to see a woman on the front, but other than those which I think are mild issues, it is fantastic.

Sex and blood and twin red suns in the sky. I am smitten.

I will definitely do an adventures in book marketing post for King Ruin, now that this is done, and the book has had three covers already. Without a doubt this is the best.

I can’t wait for the third and to have the set.

Buy now on Amazon US

Buy now on Amazon UK

We had a gardener, and now we do not.

She was my mom’s gardener, a lovely older lady who both SY and I had worked alongside in my mom’s garden- both of us kind of hired help for the day- with whom we got along very well. Her son is teaching English in Japan right now, which I did for 11 years, so we bonded over that.

A month back we invited her to our new garden, to pick her brain about our sick eucalyptus and to potentially design our garden for us. A ballpark figure of 500 pounds ($750) was agreed upon, for design, work, plants, everything. Work commenced at once, with the holly lolly getting the trim I mentioned in an earlier post.

Work continued on a later Monday, with SY working for 5 hours right alongside her. SY got sick because she worked herself too hard- one sign that we were feeling in the backseat compared to the gardener. Then it came time to purchase plants. SY pressed (I wasn’t there, I can’t take time off work) for receipts, lists of plants, and to keep the cost down.

Yesterday we learned the gardener had spent 400 pounds on plants, with no receipts, and a 100 pound charge for her shopping time. Since there are no receipts, its impossible to argue if this is good value. The main point was- we were left with a budget for plants and shopping alone which themselves added up to our total budget.

We both felt sick. How much longer would this go on, and how much would it cost when it was done? Were we being taken advantage of? We didn’t know.

We penned an email asking to see receipts, stating the costs had gotten out of our control, and suggesting it may be best if she just leave the plants at our house so we’d do the planting ourselves (thereby cutting off around 250 pounds of her work and ‘vision’ costs).

We called her the next day (today) to discuss this. She was most unhappy, stating she was disappointed in us. I had expected something like this. She said she only worked on trust, and that most garden centers to tradespeople do not offer receipts. Also she said she cannot cut the number of plants in half to make it cheaper, as that does not conform with her vision.

I asked for a hard estimate on the new total cost. It would be, yes, 1000 pounds. A significant outlay, double the 500 we’d expected to pay, which in itself was already quite significant.

I said I was sorry she was disappointed, and we’d get back to her with our decision.

We have decided to no longer hire her. I emailed her the news, stating her vision for our garden was just too ambitious for us, and we were uncomfortable with no receipts. Happily she had said in the phone call that she could find another use for the plants- so we shouldn’t be on the hook for them.

Did we do the right thing?

It probably reads like a simple choice, but it feels to us, and may very well feel to her, like something of a betrayal. We trusted her completely, within reason, to or around a budget of 500. She thought she had our complete trust, and us asking for receipts was too suspicious.

Who knows. I don’t think though that asking for receipts is rude or inappropriate. Neither do I think being unhappy that a project is running to double the budget is so unreasonable either.

Hopefully we can part on good terms.

SY went to a sewing class in Seven Sisters only to find nobody there and the phone number unresponsive.

So… we went to see Spectre instead. James Bond is the perfect tonic for such frustrations. He just gets it done (every girl kissed and every guy killed). I enjoyed the movie very much (and will probably review properly soon).

Writing

My artist finished the new King Ruin cover. It is very sexy- I’ll show it here soon. He’s starting work on the Cerulean cover and God of Ruin too. I’ll be much more confident promoting these books now I think- with covers I can really be proud of.

Last weekend we finally got around to painting the study- the color is called Dancehall. The pedestal desk and old filing cabinet thing were antiques bought online, while the desk at right was the one I had as a kid, which SY uses now. Originally I believe it belonged to my Dad.

The room prior to painting.

Post painting. Yes, that is Canadian Mike’s painting of Killin Jack above the desk.

Pedestal at left, my old desk at right.

Right now there are fireworks popping somewhere off to the left through the window, 9pm. It is after all Bonfire Night. I find these kinds of events can just pass me by completely if I’m not wary. No one mentioned it today at work. There was nothing about it on the BBC.

When we were kids on Shorefield Mount in Bolton, building up the bonfire, and going round begging for wood, was the excited work of months leading up to the actual night. Now I don’t even know it’s coming.

Writing

The wrestling match with Cerulean’s story is ongoing. I feel today like I’m on top, after 2,000 words erased and a fresh 3,000 put in their place. The battle is epic and legendary. The word count stands at 45,000- and plot arc-wise it’s at almost the same point I was up to with both The Last and The Lost, so that bodes well.

Do you recognize this blue door, with yours truly so humbly posed before it?

That’s right, it is the fabled Blue Door from the movie Notting Hill!

Here is Hugh Grant running over to it in the title sequence of Notting Hill. Of course it is not as blue now as it once was. Maybe this still is the only shot where we see Hugh actually in shot with the blue door. There are plenty of Spike, of course, standing there in his underpants posing for the papparazzi, but none of Hugh.

We went to Notting Hill two weeks back to meet up with one of SY’s co-workers and family in a cool cafe/restaurant for a late lunch. Apparently they’ve seen Daniel Craig in there before. It’s very central and hip, and exceedingly expensive to live.

Her friend’s husband took us on a Notting Hill tour after lunch- the blue door, the Travel Book Shop, the spot where Will spilled OJ on Julia. I know this movie very well- after using it as an extensive reading text for one of my classes back in Japan for a couple of years.

For a whole term they’d read the graded reader version of the movie (also written by Richard Curtis), answering questions I’d prepared, then at the end at Christmas we’d watch the movie. In the second term it was Love Actually.

Apparently (according to my guide) Richard Curtis owned this house at the time of the movie. He since sold it.

I had a fresh cover update made for Mr. Ruins a few months back and have been waiting for the others in the series to be completed before unveiling it or doing any kind of promo, but what the heck- here it is 🙂

Why have I done an update? Several reasons:

• The old one hasn’t sold in months, and if I pay for another promo for it, I want to get a bit more traction.
• Though I loved the old one, on reflection I was certain it wasn’t communicating the genre or feel enough. The old ship held no threat, and perhaps not enough mystery. It didn’t look very pro- and that came down to typography as well as the image.

Now here is this new one! I love it. I think it gets across the central conceit way better- vampires of the mind. At some point I’ll update the Book Adventures in Marketing post for Mr. Ruins to reflect these changes, and fully explain all the iterations.

Also I need to update this site with new covers! I’ll probably do that when I have all three covers done. I’ll make a box-set too, and promote them all.

Further- I’ve been editing all 3 books to make them more accessible. They won’t lose anything, hopefully they will only gain by becoming more comfortably readable.

Intrigued? Amazon already has the updated version of Mr. Ruins here-

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon CA

The church I go to seems to never have the vicar himself preach- but rather a ‘lay’ preacher from the congregation, who gets up there and gives us what for. Our favorite lecture (sermon?) is still the first one we attended, where ‘meekness’ was contrasted with ‘weakness’ as the prerequisite for getting into heaven.

Then there was yesterday, and the social conservative who got up to speak the good word. He started off well, with a joke, then got in talking about the persecution of Christians (by way of Daniel in the lion’s den). I’m aware of this riff from following American politics, where the religious right are often concerned that Christmas is under assault, gays getting married are assaulting their freedoms, and similar.

I’d never heard any of it being said in the UK before though- and the last place I expected to hear it was in church.

The lay preacher started a bit odd, then got odder, then bordered offensive:

• Women who go to fertility clinics and get pregnant without any involvement of a man are wrong. (I started muttering disagreement at this point.)
• Halloween is sinful and celebrating it, according to a study done by the Vatican’s exorcism specialists, increases the incidence of depression and suicide in young children. (At this point I was chuckling. While ridiculous, it didn’t seem very harmful.)
• Christians are persecuted by ISIL. (OK, can’t argue with that.)
• Muslims wanting to build a mega-mosque near us, that can hold half a million Muslims at once, maybe shouldn’t be allowed? He wasn’t too clear here with why this wrong, but there was a very clear impression that this was not-our-sort-of-thing. (About this I was nonplussed. I think he’d love it if Christians were rallying to build a new church half a million in capacity, but unfortunately the enthusiasm doesn’t seem to be there…)
• Finally he gets onto the gays. A baker was put out of business for refusing to make a gay wedding cake, in accordance with his/her religion. The lay preacher said this was persecution of Christians. He made the analogy, would it be OK if he went into a Jewish butcher and demanded pork? No. It’s the same thing, he says. Call this THE ARGUMENT 1. (I started mumbling stronger dissent here, and was conflicted about standing up to offer a counter-argument).
• Finally he rounds out by saying he’ll probably get in trouble with the bishop for saying all this, despite the fact that he has a gay cousin, went to a gay friend’s funeral, and once sponsored a black preacher to speak at the church. This is the ‘some of my best friends are black/gay defense’.

By the end I was pretty angry, and couldn’t get into singing hymns or even saying The Lord’s Prayer- which I like. I started turning over in my head if I’d done the wrong thing by letting these words from the pulpit go unanswered- but it was hardly protocol to stand up and debate in the middle of a sermon.

On the other hand, neither was it protocol, surely, to espouse social conservative viewpoints from the pulpit. He was breaking a covenant and overstepping his authority.

So I fumed. I thought about THE ARGUMENT 1 and came to the reason why his Jewish butcher scenario is not a fair analogy. It’s simply this:

Jewish butchers do not sell pork. They don’t sell it to anyone. End of story.

Whereas bakers do sell cakes. For it to be a true analogy, let’s say I’m not Jewish and I go to a Jewish butcher and I ask for a nice shoulder of lamb, but they don’t give it to me because I’m a gentile. That is the same thing. That is discrimination that should be illegal. It shouldn’t matter what I am. Everyone has a right to some delicious roast lamb, if they want it. You can’t turn me away based on my religion or sexuality.

Therefore, it is not persecution to redress this balance. The persecution was being conducted first of all by the offending baker. They were persecuting the gays, trying to push their religious beliefs into the public domain.

True persecution would have been the government going to this religious baker’s home and telling him to bake gay cakes for his family, or telling him he had to recant his beliefs, or eat gay wedding cake all day, or even become gay himself.

None of that happened. The baker’s life was his/her own. The business however, in the public domain, must conform to the mores of modern society.

BUT- I also heard this case was possibly less about the gay cake, and more about a gay slogan. It is entirely possible the gays were activists who tried to force the baker to write a slogan like:

We should all be massive gays!

On the cake. I think the baker is within his/her rights to not write this. You can’t force speech. A cake, fine. The names of two gay guys on the cake, fine, grit your teeth and do it. But if you want a pro-gay slogan, you can’t expect someone anti-gay to write that for you with their own hand. It isn’t fair.

But- if the baker was a printers, I think they’d have to print a poster with that slogan. The printer doesn’t have to type it by hand, it’s all data now. Run it through the machines. And yet, there are things you couldn’t force them to print, surely. For example, they could surely say:

No, I’m not printing this SS regalia.

There are limits. There are reasonable things we can expect and can’t expect. It is not a crime that these boundaries, or mores, might shift. They needn’t be absolute. We’re all striving toward a more perfect society, and we should be. That’s evolution.

So I stewed. After church, I went to talk to the lay preacher directly.

“I’m not too happy about your lecture,” I tell him. “It’s plain you’re a social conservative. I’m not. But I have no problem with your beliefs. I don’t seek to argue with you about them. But I don’t think the pulpit is the place for them, when there is no possibility of counter-argument, and you’ve got the authority of the church behind you.”

He took it very well. He said he had expected this, and maybe the vicar would take him off the preaching circuit for saying it. He said these were his beliefs and he was trying to express them honestly. He complimented me on my courage for coming up to speak to him.

“I understand,” I said, “but can you see it from my point of view? I have a different idea of what Christianity is. But when you stand up there and inject politics I don’t agree with, saying ‘this is what Christianity is’, when you’re in the pulpit with the weight of the church behind you,? it makes me and others like me feel excluded. You mentioned how you were glad the church was growing, but part of that growth is me starting to come here. Do you want to exclude me?”

Credit to him, the gentleman apologized for any offense caused. I suggested maybe next week on Sunday some counterpoint might be added. Not even an apology, but an admission that his view was not the only view.

It was very cordial. It was also I suspect fairly obvious to everyone in the church that we were having a heated discussion in the vestibule. I wonder what will come of it? It’s mostly old people in our congregation, so maybe they fall in line with him? Of course age is not an accurate predictor of such things.

One lady came out as we were finishing and shook his hand and said, “That was a wonderful sermon, it’s about somebody stepped up and told the truth.”

“She’s one of yours,” I said, then headed off.

Ah, well. Afterward I began to feel that perhaps I had been the bully? The Political Correctness bully, stepping my boot down on the neck of feeble Christians just trying to be mildly intolerant. Hmm. Off the pulpit it didn’t bother me. I could get along very well with this gentleman, I believe, in normal life.

Just not from the pulpit, with the weight of Jesus, God and all the host of angels at his back.

Amen.