Vlogging a Dead Horse

Well hello there, you're looking remarkably well. Have you been working out? Me neither.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing this post is to tell you about a new thing I'm doing - Vlogging a Dead Horse - a new series on YouTube about writing, books and whatever else pops into my head. Plus, there'll be all kinds of other surprises and whatnot. 

The first episode is up now and features a WORLD EXCLUSIVE Joe Cowley short story set before the first book. So what are you waiting for? Watch the thing so I can become one of those big time YouTubers like Zoeena or Danzig and Philbert.

My Embarrassing Dad's Gone Viral!

Greetings! 

Ben Davis here with a blog about my new book, My Embarrassing Dad's Gone Viral!

It's the story of Nelson - a twelve year old boy whose mum disappears one day, leaving his dad to look after him and his five year old sister, Mary. After a search turns up no clues, Nelson thinks that the best way to get Mum back is to become a famous YouTuber and make enough money so that she'll want to return. However, that plan goes awry when Dad moves the family to the middle of nowhere and enforces a strict no computers or TV rule on them.

Despite that, Nelson continues to secretly make unsuccessful videos until one day, his Dad unwittingly becomes the star of the show and is catapulted to internet fame. Can Nelson get his mum back before his dad finds out just how famous he is? There's only one way to find out!

I made a video about the book for my publisher's sales conference which you can view below:

And to top it all off, MEDGV! has been named a 'Book We Like' by BookTrust (review here) as well as a Young Writers Recommended Read and a Bag of Booklists Book of the Month.

My Embarrassing Dad's Gone Viral! is out now from all the usual places.

An Interview with Joe Cowley

Sophocles, Kant, Schopenhauer, that old bloke off Gogglebox. These are the great thinkers of human history. Joe Cowley is not in their league, regardless of what he might tell you. 

To celebrate the publication of the first volume of his secret online missives, I sat down with Joe for an exclusive interview. I wanted to find out more about the boy behind the blog.

I wish I hadn't bothered.

Hello Joe. Thanks for agreeing to do this interview.

Yeah. OK. Cheers.

Sorry, what’s this about again?

Nothing much. I just wanted to talk to you about your blog.

My blog? I haven’t got a blog. You must be thinking of some other person. Some blogger with the same name as me.

I mean, what is a blog anyway? My mate Ad thinks its what happens when you eat loads of blue smarties and then go for a dump.

So, as I was saying, I haven’t got a blog.

Who told you about my blog?

That’s not important.

Yes it cocking well is. It’s supposed to be private. I bet it was Gav. Sweet Jesus, that moron is determined to RUIN MY LIFE.

Calm down, Joe.

That’s it. I’m just going to have to leave the country. I hear nice things about Estonia.

It’s OK, you don’t have to leave the country. Tell me, why did you start your blog?

I suppose I did it to try and sort my life out. I mean, I just had so many bad things happen to me that I thought writing them down would help me make sense of them. And now it seems I have one more to add to the list.

So you had a lot of problems?

Did I have a lot of problems? That’s like asking Counsellor Troi if she has a lot of emphatic powers.

Um . . . does that mean yes?

You bet your stinking bum it does. I had so many problems, it would have made Jay Z cack himself.

Can you be more specific?

About Jay Z cacking himself?

No (takes a moment of compose myself) I meant about the problems that led you to start your blog.

All right. Try this on for size:

• ·       My so-called best mates were trying to get me killed in a bid to win £250 from You’ve Been Framed.
• ·         My arch-enemy Gav James’ campaign of terror against me showed no signs of letting up.
• ·         My parents got divorced.
• ·         I threw up over Louise Bentley at the fair after the waltzers made me nauseous.
• ·         I gained the nickname ‘Puke Skywalker’ at school for the above reason.
• ·         The love of my life, Lisa Hall didn’t even know I existed.
• ·         Even if she did, I couldn’t talk to her without going all weird. This once, she asked me the time, and I replied ‘September.’
• ·         IT WAS APRIL!

 That does sound like an awful lot to deal with. So, did keeping the blog help you sort your life out at all?

Did it hell. If anything, things got even more complicated.

So why did you keep it up?

I don't know, really. I suppose I like to think that thousands of years from now, when humanity is extinct and aliens come and look over the wreckage of our once-great civilisation, they will find my blog and figure out why we were doomed as a species.

You sound like a very gloomy person, Joe.

Wouldn’t you be, if you had my life?

Well, probably.

Anyway, enough about me. Who are you? Why are you asking me all these questions? Oh my God, are you an alien?

*Facepalms* Yes, Joe. I’m an alien.

Ah, brilliant. Can you take me back to your planet with you?

No. No I can’t.

[Sighs] Rejected again.

The Private Blog of Joe Cowley is available to buy from the following retailers:

Amazon

Waterstones

Foyles

The Book Depository

The Great British Bookshop

Hive

Just don't tell Joe.

The Private Blog of Joe Cowley

Right. Here we go.

So here's the thing. I've decided to write a new blog post. About my book. It's called the Private Blog of Joe Cowley. So this is a blog about a book about a blog.

I know, right?

I'm as surprised as anyone that I managed to write a book. I mean, I normally have loads of important stuff going on. Like the time when I couldn't find any bottles of Coke with my name on, so I had to improvise.

This was an hour well spent.

But I've managed it and it's actually being published and everything! Now, I've always wanted to write for teenagers, because to me, it is the funniest period of your life.

Yeah, ha ha HA. Knobhead.

Of course, it doesn't feel like it at the time, and that's kind of what makes it so funny. It's a time when you're trying to figure out who you are and where you belong in the food chain of the jungle that is high school. A time of firsts and big emotions that can lead to rash decisions and embarrassing situations.

Not only did I buy this, I also bought Mambos 1-4.

Joe Cowley isn't happy with his place in the food chain. He's fourteen, nearly fifteen and is fed up of being the butt of every joke, being picked on by idiots like Gav James, being a kiss virgin and being useless at talking to girls. I should point out at this juncture that he is in no way based on me when I was that age.

Ladies . . .

I was actually quite the stud. I seem to remember girls in my year calling me 'the Shark.' Because I was deadly. And also, if you punched me on the nose, it usually made me go away.

And I stunk of fish.

By the way, in case you were wondering why that picture of me looked familiar . . .

There we go.

Anyway, Joe wants nothing more than to climb the social ladder and become more respected. But to do that, he has to become a completely different person. This is not going to easy. Firstly because he is NOT COOL in any way. He's not interested in football or modern music, and he's obsessed with Batman comics and Star Trek. Again, completely unlike me. I am not into these things.

Not at all.

Not even a little bit.

The second obstacle Joe faces is his inability to control what he says. This is a problem I was afflicted with when I was a teenager, back in the olden days.

We used these things, you know. Sometimes we even rewound them with a pencil! Kids these days don't know they're born.

My problem was, I could never find the right words when I needed them. I remember there was this girl I really fancied, but I was too shy to say anything. One day, we were talking and she said to me, 'You know, I'd like to go out with someone nice like you.'

And who could blame her?

Of course, I didn't know what to say to that, so I panicked and said, 'WELL GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!' and just walked off.

Yep.

Joe is even worse than I was. He blurts out things that get him nowhere with girls and deep into trouble with bullies. He can't help it.

Like the time when he's apologising to Louise Bentley for puking on her at the fair.

He's a real catch.*

His explanation for the vomiting?

"It may have been the dodgy hot dog I ate, or all that candy floss. Who knows, it may have been the idea of kissing you for the first time."

Cain can't stand to watch your failure and he's the bloke that invented murder.

Even if Joe can get over his various afflictions, there is something big looming on the horizon. Something that will see his school problems and home problems collide in a way that will change his life forever. 

The important thing is, he doesn't overreact.

The Private Blog of Joe Cowley is out in April 2014 with Oxford University Press. More info can be found here.

* Joe Cowley illustration by Mike Lowery - www.argyleacademy.com

Music!

You know, many people stop me in the street, and right after telling me that they don't want me to wash their car, they ask what inspires me to write. My answer is always the same: music. Whenever I write stories for teens, I listen to the records (yeah, that's right, I said records) that take me back to my adolescence. So in that spirit, I have decided to share with you, my blog reader(s) my terrible taste in music.

Here's the first one, Frontier Psychiatrist by the Avalanches:

Because some birds are funny when they talk.

Writing

So here's the thing. I'm a writer. Now you're probably thinking, 'What gives him the right to call himself that?' And my reply is simple: how are you receiving this information right now? You're reading it, aren't you? And these words have been written down by me. Ergo, I'm a writer.

And as a writer, the main question I get asked (other than 'what are you doing, going through my bins?') is 'how do you write?' Well, dear reader, I'm going to answer that for you, and by following these simple instructions, you can become as good a writer as what I am.

Step 1 - Sit down

This is very important. If you do insist on ignoring this step, then I am obliged to warn you that you run the risk of back and wrist problems. 

Now, you may be thinking, 'Yeah, it's alright for you, Mr Moneybags, with all your chairs, but what about me?' Well, sitting down is not as expensive as you might think. If you don't own any chairs, simply sit on the ground. Other cheap chair alternatives include milk crates, tree stumps or your partner/spouse.

Hey! Get off your phone and start writing!

                                                 

Step 2 - Find something to write on

Are you sitting down? Good. Step 2 is arguably more important than Step 1, because even though you may have all kinds of incredible ideas buzzing around your brain, what good are they if you have nothing to write them down on?

Ideally, you will need a laptop computer. It doesn't have to be state-of-the-art like mine (pictured below) but it should have a word processing program, such as Microsoft Word, Open Office or Caxton.  

I've just got it hooked up to the interweb.

                                                      

If you can't afford a computer, then a pen and paper will do. I would urge you to buy a pack of ten Bic biros, and at least a ream of paper, as research suggests that most bestselling novels are longer than ten pages.

Step 3 - Increase your WORD POWER

Everybody knows that a book is only any good if it has loads of words in it that you don't understand. This shows that the author has WORD POWER, and a far superior brain to you.

But they weren't born that way, they had to work at it. I myself read the Oxford English Dictionary from cover to cover at least once a week, which means that my WORD POWER is now really . . . proper . . . good.

If you can't afford a dictionary and are banned from your local library, then simply start watching Countdown. 

I never miss it.

                                                                   

Step 4 - Think of something to write about

Inspiration may strike at any time so always carry a notebook. If you cannot afford a notebook, the back of your hand and/or the forehead of a friend or relative will suffice.

Struggling to come up with an idea? Don't worry, it happens to the best of us. In these situations, a good exercise is to take an existing story and give it a little twist to make it your own. For example, I wrote a series of novels about a plucky little lizard that was actually based on other books that don't have lizards in them. But it was enough of a twist to make it completely unique, and I'm happy to say that the following books are now available online:

• Larry Lizard and the Philosopher's Stone
• Larry Lizard and the Chamber of Secrets
• Larry Lizard and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• Larry Lizard and the Goblet of Fire
• Larry Lizard and the Order of the Phoenix
• Larry Lizard and the Half-Blood Prince
• Larry Lizard and the Deathly Hallows Parts One and Two
• Fifty Shades of Larry Lizard

See? Completely unique.

Step 5 - Write it all down

This is the easy bit. Don't bother planning anything, just stick it on paper. A character's name changes from Bill to Lucy in between chapters thirty and forty? Forget it, he could have had a sex change. Spelling mistakes? That's what the spellcheck is for. NB: If you are writing with pen and paper and thus don't have spellcheck, simply draw a paperclip on each page to create the illusion.

When you're finished, write THE END, otherwise the reader won't know where the rest of the book is and is liable to become confused and start digging at the table beneath the book thinking the answer is hidden there. And it almost never is.

Step 6 - Get it published

Have you finished? Good, you're ready to start sending that bad boy out to publishers.

Firstly, make photocopies of your story so you can send it to loads at the same time. If you cannot locate a photocopier, simply write your novel in fountain pen and press the page against another when it is done to create an impression.

Naturally, every publisher in the world is going to be champing at the bit to get your book, so your letter to them should reflect your confidence. Here is the letter I used when sending out my latest novel, Girl with the Larry Lizard Tattoo,

Yo, mush,

I've wanged a copy of my book in this envelope. Read it and get back to me soon as, yeah, cos I'm a busy man.

Whatevs,

BD

I only sent that last week and I've already heard back from one big publisher. Incidentally, does anyone know what 'restraining order' means?

Step 7 - Bask in glory

So now you're a bestselling novelist. Enjoy. You've earned it. 

You, earlier.

                                                                           

Now, you couldn't have done it without these tips, could you? So I want my cut. Twenty per cent, plus vig. And don't keep me waiting, 'cause I'm an impatient man, capische?

Thanks for reading. If you have any questions, then don't hesitate to get in touch. I charge £25 per question, or five for £90, which is a pretty good deal.

Happy writing!