M T McGuire Authorholic

Hello everybody peps! Welcome, once again, to Box 010; a bit of light whimsy which is, in no way, inspired by the popular BBC programme Room 101. Here’s now it works. Every two weeks, my special guest will pop in and then present us with five things they would like to see consigned to the dustbin of existence. This week’s special guest is David Haywood Young, who has two novels published; a supernatural mystery and a romance/mystery with a bit of Gypsy ghost story, along with a book of short stories which he says are ‘mostly strange’ and therefore, in my view almost certainly to be recommended. He is running a giveaway on his site at the moment so you can try his books, for free, and it’s also worth keeping an eye out for his new release, which will be out in a few weeks.

Hello there David.

Hello.

Thank you for visiting us today. Before we attempt to consign your pet hates to history, please can you tell us a little bit about yourself.

If I exist at all, there’s a good chance I’m a bit odd by nature. Even-tempered, though. At six years old I began writing (and binding!) books for my younger brother and sister. I taught them both to read, as I needed an uncritical audience. Eventually the day came when my parents no longer gave me lunch money. I considered burglary (I still consider it fairly often) but ended up combining software development and professional poker…for more than twenty years. But I shut down my company last year in favor of writing. We’ll see how it goes. It feels fairly wonderful so far.

As MTM mentioned, I’ve published two novels and a collection of short stories (mostly strange). All three are available, one per customer (on the honor system), via a giveaway I began on the solstice: http://davidhaywoodyoung.com/blog will get you there until 21 July 2013. Though leaving my site again will be entirely up to you, as there’s nothing in it for me.

Also, I’m @DHY_writer on Twitter if you’d like to say hello there. Which you can actually do twenty-eight times in a single tweet, and I think that’s awfully friendly.

Phnark, it is too… I will be trying it out shortly! Mwah ha hargh. Alright then, let’s get onto the action. David, what is the first item you’d like to throw into Box 010?

Lists: Yes, all lists. My wife creates them daily, and I love her very much, and this prohibition will resolve all related issues. Also, if it doesn’t, we won’t know. Besides, I once heard someone say that a plan is just a list of things that don’t happen. I figure it’s better to strike at the root than to attempt to model an entire universe—even supposing we only have the one to deal with—and all its myriad interactions on chewed-up tree pressings. Even Post-its, in my opinion, are not truly adequate to the task. Life should be experienced as is, not interpreted via coercive flights of predigested (and appallingly limited) fancy. Or so I suppose.

This is very true, McOther makes lists and thinks things through, I find that any list I make will be overtaken by events anyway… like my to do list for today, for example, which went pear shaped about five minutes after leaving the house.

Sorry, where was I, ah yes, Thing 2. What is your second candidate to set adrift in the darkness of Box 010, never to be seen again?

Constraints:  This certainly includes the list (see issue #1 above) of restrictions you sent me. I’m not to include items people have previously identified as unnecessary/hated/expunge-worthy?

Mwah ha ha hargh! No! Those were the things that are already in Box 010 so in theory you can’t throw them in a second time because they don’t exist, although they do because I’m in Box 010 now, because McOther was thrown into it with all other Lawyers last week. Phnark.

Fine! But this is the beginning of the end. Once we start down this path, we’re on a path, and that means we’re probably not paying as much attention as we ought to various less-than-obvious dangers I obviously can’t enumerate (see above, and also counting is by nature too limiting). So…excuse me, were you saying something? I was to make a point? Oh. Well, too bad. Now what?

You loony! Now, I think we should move onto your third item.

Agriculture: All right, enough fooling around. This one is serious. I’m a natural hunter-gatherer type, by which I mean I’m too lazy to do much until the need for food (or cash) becomes pressing. Yet another source of marital friction! She feels we should put something aside for emergencies—and once that’s done, well, we might need more for a more serious emergency. Fine! I declare an end, right here. If we can stage a zombie apocalypse (even if without actual zombies), and go back to proper societal norms (meaning I hunt when hungry and do very little else, but as a noble primitive rather than a slacker) I think the world at large will run much more smoothly.

Hmm… I get the logic in that but I’m a poor hunter and I like to know where the next meal is coming from. Being  a lazy slacker though… that sounds cool.

Mathematics: An easy one. Not that math-

Eh?

Remember, I’m roughly American. Not that math(s) is inherently horrible, but so many misunderstand its function! It’s another system for modeling reality, sort of like—wait for it—lists. People start thinking the system we’ve made up can somehow override reality, as if two chairs are always precisely twice as good as one when a body wants to sit. Mathematics can model bits of the real world, but fails to replace them. Nonetheless folks believe they can prove things about the physical world via appallingly simple flights of mathematical whimsy…and so we develop perversely boring religions all over the place. No more! Leave the math to the computers, I say. And don’t believe anything they say either.

As someone who hasn’t passed a maths exam since the age of 9, think maths is a cracking candidate for Box 010. Then we wouldn’t need money, either and we’d swap stuff, which is so much simpler. OK, what’s your fifth and final candidate for the Box of Doom that is, 010?

The rule of law: Well, look, this one really applies more to the rulers than the ruled…and who could argue that their behavior (Yep, I’m still American) has been what it ought to be of late? Or at any other time. So, the heck with it. From now on, I say we all do just as we please—

Hmm… but David, what pleases you might be a complete pain in the arse for—

What, you’re interrupting me again? Yes, of course this will be mandatory. How else could it work? Giving orders is ridiculous, but come the revolution anyone caught following them will be first against the wall! Because I said so.

There, that told me! Thank you so much for joining us, folks, this week’s guest has been David Haywood Young, who you can also find on twitter, saying hello a lot so you can follow him here @DHY_writer. Now the time has come to vote. So, Ladies and Gents, do rules appal you? Is planning, like spare tyres, for whimps? Only you can decide…

Vote here.

Hello Ladies, Gentlemen, those who aren’t quite sure and, of course K’Barthans. Welcome, once again, to Box 010; a bit of light whimsy which is, in no way, inspired by the popular BBC programme Room 101. Here’s now it works. Every two weeks, my special guest will pop in and then present us with five things they would like to see consigned to the dustbin of existence. This week’s special guest is Will Macmillan Jones, writer of the acclaimed Banned Underground humorous fantasy series, fellow authorholic and petrol head. Will is also branching out into horror with his first book The Showing, out now and more promised. You can find his blog here .

Hello Will.

Mary, good afternoon.  Unless you are uploading this in the morning of course.

Come on! You know me, consistently late despite being still alive.

True, but then as the song says, ‘It’s five o’clock somewhere’*.  That’s a good maxim to live by, I always think.

Very true, so, can you tell us a little more about yourself?

Those who know me are aware that I write fantasy, and a little horror. I’ve got a little horror too, only she’s becoming quite grown up now and will be away to University next year: I might get some peace and quiet to write a bit more then.  Alternatively I might suddenly come across the TV remote whilst cleaning her bedroom, and get distracted, although (as you will see) that’s rather unlikely.

Hmm… TV and procrastination, the two great enemies of writers everywhere, OK then, I’m dying to know, what’s your first candidate to go into Box 010?

So, what would I consign to Room 010?  Jim favoured beaurocracy. I can’t agree with him there – it has been a wonderful source of inspiration to me.  I remember once reading a provision in one of the Finance Acts in the 1970s that was approximately fifty lines of closely printed type, entirely devoid of meaningful punctuation.  Photocopies were being passed around the Inland Revenue – where I worked at the time – and there were rumours of a prize for anyone who could correctly interpret the intended meaning. It was probably a promotion, such a competition being the only remaining route to professional advancement at the time.

Mwah ha ahhargh. I can believe it. But stick with the programme, Will. Focus. Your first item..?

Yes, sorry, I digress.  My first consignee would be anyone who records those dreadful noises I hear occasionally when retuning the radio.  I think it’s called ‘Drum N Bass’.

Drum N Bass Artists: Everyone involved in any way within the music industry has fixed ideas about the musical qualities of those who play those instruments.  No smoke without fire, say I.  I loathe the stuff.  I don’t mind the fact it’s repetitive, just that every single track I’ve ever heard appears to be completely interchangeable.  There’s clearly some clever bloke in a cellar somewhere who recorded the initial track, and now leases it out to all the others who are too lazy to learn to play something different.  I must be getting old, and hankering for a time when musicians could actually play their instruments, and sing without the need to have their voices electronically altered, or even mime.

I have to say, I am absolutely with you there Will. I am a curmudgeon, I know but even when I was a kid, and supposed to like it, I loathed that kind of thing.

My next target will be dear to your heart too, Mary.  There is a particular breed of driver who should be shot.  I can cope with the elderly drivers in their elderly Nissans who bumble around the country lanes at fifteen miles an hour.  You can identify them easily, and know what you are dealing with.  It’s the same with farmers in their preferred transport, middle aged Freelanders.  You know that they are likely to stop at any or every field gate, and that brake lights are an optional extra (which being farmers, they are on average too mean to buy).

Oooh easy tiger, I can think of several people who are going to have stern words with you over your comments about farmers. Sorry, do go on.

My ire is reserved for those who buy reasonably quick cars, and then take them out onto lovely curving roads for a spin, and still drive them at what seems like fifteen miles an hour.  Just last week I was out looking for a bit of legitimate and legal fun (trust me, whatever you were using, if you drove along this road at the legal speed limit you would very quickly have been taking flying lessons.  The first lesson being: cars have a very poor glide angle) on a Welsh road that rather resembles the beautiful road used in the James band film Goldfinger.  And who should I end up following?  Some muppet in a convertible going round corners as slowly as possible.  Grrrrrrrrrrrr!

Actually, I completely understand this one as well, I got stuck behind a couple of middle aged gimmers driving an Aston at about 20mph the other day and I have to say, it was peculiarly distressing. So, what’s the third thing you would like to see scrubbed with Vim from the face of time?

And now we come to lawyers.  I hate lawyers. Come the revolution, let’s put them all up against the wall and open fire.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that the country would be a better place if everyone was given the right to shoot lawyers, on let’s say, one particular day of the year.  Maybe the summer solstice?  The druids would have a ready supply of sacrificial victims for their rites at Stonehenge.  Of course, this plan – clearly acceptable to all right thinking people – would have to be made into law, and that’s where the practical problem would arise.  The lawyers would have to be brought in to draft the law, and I’m sure they would make it as confusing as every other piece of legislation ever drafted by some lawyer with one eye on the enormous fees to be made from the subsequent need to work out just what the hell had been meant by the wording now enshrined in the ever growing laws that surround us.  Like everything else in our fair land, it started out with the very best of intentions with the Magna Charta (signed by King John), and has been going downhill for the last thousand years or so.

Mr McGuire hates lawyers, or perhaps I should rephrase that, he hates other lawyers. But then he works for inventors and scientists so they like plain speaking contracts that tell it like it is. What is your fourth item for Box 010?
Television:   Mostly, I cannot stand television. Endless soaps, stealing each others’ story lines and using interchangeable actors.  Endless episodes on how to improve your home/sell your home/buy another one.  They should be sponsored by estate agents.  Maybe they are.  When I’m writing, which I do rather a lot, I prefer to have some soothing music playing.  The sweet, pastoral idyll of ‘No Sleep ‘Till Hammersmith’* perchance.  Sadly my teenager commandeers the TV remote, and every evening I am subjected to the torture of endless repeats of American Dad and Family Guy.  I actually laughed at some of the jokes the first time I saw some of the episodes.  But not now.  When I was her age, I used to use some prog rock as a meditation device.  After all, if I dropped off to sleep for a few minutes and then woke up, I could be fairly sure I hadn’t missed much and would still be listening to the same track. Or at least something that sounded like the same track, even if it wasn’t.  Unless I dozed for too long of course, and the vinyl had ended.  Anyway, back to TV, which is spookily the same as prog rock these days.  Almost all the programmes are entirely awful, and quite often indistinguishable.  But then I suppose that there’s a danger that if the fools making most of these soaps and endless house improvement programmes were not allowed to do them anymore, they’d all go off and be lawyers instead and make the country even worse.  So maybe I’m wrong.

OK then Will, what is your fifth and final item?
Estate Agents:  Anyone who has ever bought or sold a house, or even rented one, will have come up against this pernicious breed. For one thing, they seem unable to fix a simple value to a house. When you are trying to sell, several slightly oily people will wander round your home with a critical eye, before pronouncing a number a wildly varying valuations, all based on their personal opinion of the property, or indeed of you yourself.  Mostly, they will all be trying to outdo each other to encourage you to sign up with them instead of their nearby competitor, of course. Then when a prospective buyer offers a substantially different and much lower sum for the house, they will all murmur:  ‘of course, the market is a little difficult at present’.  It’s always difficult, isn’t it?  And the descriptions they create of properties? I’m supposed to be a fantasy author, and I’m left gasping in awe.  Is there a training course they go on that helps them to invent these wonderful, mellifluous phrases and lie with less compunction than a lawyer?  ‘Splendid Outlook’ (a picturesque view of the local tip). ‘Unlikely to be overlooked’ (No one in their right mind would have built a house there in the first place, and even builders can learn from their mistakes). ‘Convenient for the amenities’ (there’s a car park for the local superstore and retail park on the other side of the road). ‘Excellent Access’ (If your lawyer remembers to wake up long enough to do the searches he will find that planning permission to demolish the house next door and replace it with a four lane super highway complete with roundabouts and flyovers was granted last week).  ‘Spacious Accommodation’ (The dwarfs I write about would consider it so, certainly.  The removal men tasked with teasing your expensive furniture up the narrow,steep and twisting stairs will have other views on the matter and will express them to you at length in return for tea).

So, there you have it.  My five suggestions for Room 010.

Marvellous, that’s grand! McOther will be casting his vote for this last one although, it’ll probably be from Box 010 by next week. So… Will Macmillan Jones, thank you very much for joining me.

Thank you, Mary, for the opportunity for a rare rant.

It was a pleasure.

Right, then everyone, if you’d like to vote there’s link to the poll further down the page. To find more about Will Macmillan Jones and his books you can visit his blog here,  the Banned Underground website, here and his Amazon author page, here.

Join us next week for the results, and in two weeks’ time, when we will be finding out what really ticks off Will Macmillan Jones when he puts his five most loathed items into Box 010.

Vote here….

*Motorhead’s live album.  Buy it.  Now.  See?  I even do footnotes in a guest blog.