9 March 2003

Another long break between writing. The end is in sight but once again the goalposts have changed. Whether they’re for the better or worse is unclear. We now have a fourth writer but two more chapters. Whoever pays their sixty dollars will certainly get their money’s worth that’s for sure. Aside from the epilogue at the end, there isn’t a single chapter under 50pages long and it looks like that trend will continue to the rest of the book.

In the meantime, I’ve been learning to write bits of Glaswegian for chapter 6, by reading Trainspotting and listening to Billy Connolly. I have enough problems with strong Brummie accents. Glad I’m not up north.

With less than a month before deadline, I’ve started, perhaps not wisely, to look beyond this book (hurrah) to the complete lack of things to do after Easter (boo). Having watched Jackass the Movie again, I’ve been sending CVs out to companies I have no intention of working for, just to see if they will give me an interview - I need the practice after all. My simple criteria for this treatment are: UK based, salary no less than 40k, car a nice plus, employee definitely with head up own ass - official institutes and industry journals. Pig farming weekly and so on. No idea why they would pay so much given the incredibly limited scope of some of these jobs. Probably because there’s no other reason to do the job in the first place. Ye gods, I wonder if I can say “I’ve been interested in pig futures for sometime now“ in an interview with a straight face.

Bizarrely, the one application I’ve written seriously notes that upon interview I must prove that I am not an employee. They fail to mention how exactly.

In other news, one of my reviewers has become a limited company. He looks about the same so the side-effects haven’t kicked in yet. Wonder what happens when he becomes a completely unfettered company?

14 March 2003

There we have it- the end of an era.

Wrox Press has died - it went into liquidation today.

17 March 2003

It’s been a funny week. One of those seven days when more than a few things have happened that I wasn’t quite expecting. Monday had me at Mike Keneally’s first ever UK gig - a Taylor guitars demo at a music shop - which I only found out about twelve hours before. Thank heavens for the web. Tuesday was Anthrax. These guys were the second band I ever saw at a concert over ten years ago and they still go at it like demons. It was truly awesome to watch. Wednesday saw me finally give the TwentyTwoOverSeven guys their EP just moments before their last ever gig and break up and it wasn’t until Thursday, I actually managed to sit down and chill.

Then of course, Friday saw the dissolution of Wrox Press. It’s very sad to see the company you grew up in go the way of the dodo, but at the same time sixteen months of freelancing has kind of numbed me to the announcement of its demise. Post mortem’s are irrelevant - they were in process over eighteen months ago. Time to move on.

24 March 2003

Just two weeks left on this project. At once hurrah, and at the same time, lawks! The end of a book project is just the same as the end of any other project but with the added bonus that Steve Martin doesn’t come out and make glib remarks at your expense every five minutes. And if you’re wondering where that came from, I saw Adaptation and the Oscars last night, which were on the whole - mediocre. There was no joy in it at all. Surprise certainly for Adrien Brody and the obligatory tears - this year from Nicole Kidman - but fun, no. Oh well. At least I had a week’s worth of that at the Strapping Young Lad gig last Wednesday. I remain, according to my friends, the least likely looking metal fan they know. I am good at something it appears.

31 March 2003

Seven days and counting. One chapter down and another to go. And as I don’t expect this last one to be seventy pages like this one, should go fine.

Looks like hmobius.com will be moving to a new home soon. The Wrox breakdown has meant blackwell internet have to lose their leased line and I thank them for the space on their server. So the site will probably be down for a couple of weeks. Its moving about 100 miles south to Oxfordshire.

7 April 2003

All things must end, good or bad. This book for one. At 00:35 today, the final chapter draft was written, signed, sealed and delivered to MS. At bloody last. In the process, about 17,000 words were written in fourteen days, the laptop has almost totally packed up (the end of another era - I took that to India with me three years ago, oh the memories) and I’m off on holiday in ten hours time. Talk about cutting it fine.

On other ending notes, it looks like Blackwell will shut down their servers while I’m away so bear with me if hmobius.com suddenly becomes unavailable. I’ll build version 3 when I get back after Easter. Six months on my backside and two stone heavier - I want a job outside for a while.

Signing off, Dan.