blog post

hi everyone.

i am reading at this tomorrow night in Cardiff:

CLICK HERE for more information/directions/etc.

i think Richard Owain Roberts is going.

Richard Owain Roberts is a nice person and a talented athlete.

have a look at his blog.

hi

i have now downloaded this, in the hope that it will kind of write a novel for me, maybe, without me having to do very much or get very involved. this is my new plan. i am still just working my way through the tutorial at the moment.

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BEST BEHAVIOUR by Noah Cicero can now be ordered on Amazon. i think this is going to be the next thing i buy off Amazon. i also want to read WASTE by Eugene Marten, but it feels impossible to buy something off Amazon at the moment for some reason.

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i was thinking in the shower this morning that a good way to make money would be to start a boy band called 'NSFW'. anyone want to start this boy band with me? feel like we would need maybe 4-7 boys total, of various different ethnicities/looks, all with extreme dancing + singing + dancing-while-singing ability.

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guess most people have seen this now? i can account for about 7-8 of the views, i think.

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really liked these things by Ben Brooks (kind of NSFW (as in 'don't look at them at work, one has a picture of a vagina' not 'hey, this could be used in our boy band, maybe')

interview with Ben Myers / blogging / www.chriskillen.com

i interviewed Ben Myers recently for Bookslut.

it's just gone online.

have you read Ben's novel, Richard, yet?

i would recommend it, even if you don't like/don't know anything about the band Manic Street Preachers.

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i saw this trailer/featurette for Shoplifting From American Apparel (the movie) today, too. liked it a lot.

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blogging seems kind if impossible. think i have run out of things to say apart from links and descriptions.

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[here is the kind of thing i would type if i was still blogging:]

i think i might start a website called www.chriskillen.com

instead of a blog

it will be just a white screen.

and if you click anywhere on the white screen a voice will say, 'i'm sorry'.

and if you hold down the left mouse button and select the whole screen it will uncover one of the 1000+ abandoned drafts of my second novel, maybe.

should i buy www.chriskillen.com?

i could sell it to the footballer who is also called Chris Killen

or maybe to the tarp-surfing champion who is also called Chris Killen

do you know any other Chris Killens who might want to buy a website called www.chriskillen.com?

i would be willing to split the profits of selling www.chriskillen.com with you

[note: i haven't actually bought www.chriskillen.com yet, so i guess you could buy it and then sell it to me for a profit if you wanted. my email address is chriskillen@gmail.com, BTW]

How to Make Money Online

i have an article up on Thought Catalog called 'How to Make Money Online'.

it was fun to write.

2010 end of year review (of my blog)

January

January was a hesitant month for blogging (on my blog). i only posted two posts and both fell towards the second half of January.

i wonder what i was doing in the first half of the month.

the first post saw me commemorate the release of the B-Format edition of The Bird Room with a limited-edition, 24hr tweet. (can't remember what it was now.)

and in the second, i mention (among other things) reading Ray, a short novel by Barry Hannah. (i never finished it, despite it being only 23,727 words long.)


February

the first post of February marks not only the start of my correspondence with Ben Brooks (TBP by Canongate sometime in 2011) but also my obsession with Word Mole, the word-based puzzle game that came pre-loaded on my phone. honestly feel that the Word Mole jingle/song/advert/thing i recorded and showcased in this post is maybe the only good musical thing i've ever done.

i then seem to try to capitalise on the small spike of interest/hits from my first Word Mole post -- resulting in an over-the-top Word Mole-centric second post, crammed with real/fake (you decide) enthusiasm about the game.

following this is a throwaway third post (think it is a link to a Vice article about a cat cafe in Japan) posted maybe only to convince myself/dwindling readership that i am blogging/still a blogger/trying harder with my blog again/not someone who just posts two things a month/a great guy/a cat lover/zany/cat-focused/Vice-reading/full of great non sequiturs/a twat?


March

looking back on it now, March actually seems like a pretty interesting/diverse/not bad month for my blog (www.dayofmoustaches.blogspot.com). it started with a reasonably-well-received sitcom by Socrates Adams-Florou and myself and ended with a link to an eight-part stupid/slightly meta/mostly stupid fiction thing called Fanfiction About My Cat, published on/by Pangur Ban Party.

i'm not totally convinced about the posts in-between, but in general i feel that if anyone described March on my blog as a 'fallow month' i would have an argument with them about it.


April

April started with a surprise announcement post about a Turkish edition of The Bird Room, complete with an acronym for the youth-culture phrase 'What the fuck?'

in the second (and only other post of April) i include a link to a 'Booknotes' article i did for the website Largehearted Boy. i remember having a lot of fun writing this article and thinking about it and looking at the finished thing. hooray.

hopefully this optimism balances out the bleakness/lack of enthusiasm/half-hearted-ness of my only-two-posts-in-a-month relapse (see January for the other one).


May

May started with an unexpected foray into poetry (specifically haikus). it also announced the beginning of 'Other' Magazine (otherother.org) of which i was very vaguely involved with.

following on from the generally-well-received first post of May, i seem to then ruin everything with a by-the-numbers post called 'five wikipedia entries i looked at recently'. i remember, even as i was typing it, an all-consuming feeling of 'oh god, this is rubbish, why am i typing this, just trying to blog again, why am i unable to blog, what is wrong with me, my life is an unmitigated hell, etc.'

May ends with a linking post to a (maybe self-consciously 'zany') article i wrote for the aforementioned online journal 'Other'.


June

during the month of June i blogged 0 times.

**spoiler alert**

i wonder if this was some sort of ominous portent for the second half of the year?

**end of spoiler**

what was i doing in June?

was i trying to finish a draft of my second novel?

was i playing Word Mole?

was i teaching creative writing somewhere?

(honestly can't remember.)


July

ok, by looking over the first post in July, it seems i spent the month of June moving flats and sorting out a new internet connection. the fact that this first post is called 'Update 1' leads me to suspect i was planning to update my blog more frequently from then on (even if i hadn't really got anything to say).

this suspicion is confirmed by the other fourteen posts (can't be bothered to link them individually) in July. the sudden surge in blogging activity i now see (with distance) as what it was: a last-ditch attempt to blog, no matter what, just to increase hits/readership again, directly related to a fear of logging in to my statcounter account and seeing the number 0.

to try and increase hits/readership i devised two competitions/things other bloggers could get involved with. the first was called 'Desktop Battle', the second was a proposition for an annual 'ICYBT' (International Change Your Blog Template) day. both were met with a surprising (3-9 participants) amount of interest.

i think i did other things in July too, but i'm not sure what they were.


August

in August i posted once, promoting an appearance at the Edinburgh Book Festival.

i remember having a nice time at the Edinburgh festival.


September

i posted 0 times in September.

(i wonder what i was doing.)


October

i posted 0 times in October.

(i have no idea.)


November

i posted 0 times in November.

(really, no idea whatsoever.)


December

i posted 1 post in December (this one.)

i wonder what this means? (if anything?)

is this the end of my blog?

am i ever going to blog again?

does anyone care?

did i have a nice time in 2010? (yes, generally)

am i going to write a second novel i am happy with? (i hope so)

have i completed a second novel? (yes, but not one i'm happy with)

do i have a new idea? (yes)

have i written any of it yet? (no)

do i have any money? (no)

what are my favourite small-press/indie/not-yet-published novels of 2010? (Richard Yates by Tao Lin and Everything's Fine by Socrates Adams-Florou)

did i buy a nice coat at some point during 2010? (yes)

am i wearing it now? (no, i am inside)

etc. (etc.)

happy new year everyone.

update

i'm going to Edinburgh this week.

i'm reading at this event (along with John Wray) as part of the Edinburgh Book Festival.

i go home one day before Lydia Davis is reading.

there's a thing called the Readers' First Book Award -- you can vote for The Bird Room to win it here.

please vote.

i will share the winnings with everyone who voted, if i win.

not sure what the winnings are.

not sure if there are any winnings.

sorry.

please vote anyway.

i won't be offended if you don't vote, though.

i just looked at the form.

it looks like you have to write a short review to place your vote.

sounds time intensive.

if you were thinking of voting, but the idea of having to write a review has just put you off, here is a review you could copy and paste:

The Bird Room is a novel about a man called Will. It is not even a proper novel. It is maybe about 700 words or something. It's very short, anyway. Nothing much happens. I read it in one sitting. Please make The Bird Room the winner.

maybe change a word or two, though, or they might catch on and rumble us.

i feel excited now about winning the Readers' First Book Award.

wonder what i am going to spend my share of the winnings on.

wonder what the winnings are.

wonder what i will say in my acceptance speech.

wonder if i will ever be able to write another novel.

wonder if i will have a nice time at the Edinburgh festival.

wonder how crowded it is.

wonder whether Crispin Best had a nice time when he went.

etc.