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"Taut, violent, smart, and very, very technical. The Manuscript packs several kinds of punch – as if The Da Vinci Code were written by someone who wasn't an idiot." - Cory Doctorow

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At 19:32 15/05/2006, That Girl wrote:
> 
> Damn right, touche! I'm tempted to say more, but am hushing. 


Makes me weepingly grateful that I deleted the "Pictures of
sexy girls scantily clad are widely available, for free, on
the Internet" bit of my response to your wooing request . . .

Why is it, actually, that May always seems to find me broken
up and depressed and alone and melancholy? It's a striking
pattern. At least, when I was living in a college town, I got
the consolation of all the hollering, simpering students
clearing out – so I could enjoy some isolation with my
loneliness. Actually, London still now manages to feel
somehow desolate: this is either an habituated reaction on my
part or, more likely, down to the fact that I've got the
weekdays to wander around in now.

There's also of course the small matter of having just
finished a ten-year project (that of getting published) and,
you know, the Big What Now. (I feel the American writer Jim
Harrison got right to the heart of things when he said, "Our
main problem, and one that we share with all other Earthly
creatures, is what to do next.") And but then again, it's
never quite that simple.


Alright, missy, and but so you get MY day now - but in
reverse order.


• I am writing to you.

• I am straining for the sound of the rain – it has been
threatening all day. And but now, something is pouring out of
something else in the courtyard, teasing me with its
tinkling.

• Dinner is on the wok. It is for rather later tonight.
I've discovered that my big honking veggie stir fries are
even better (MUCH better) after I let them stir in their own
juices for a couple of hours.

• I am listening to The Books album on repeat (as I have
been for a couple of days). It seems quite closely to suit my
mood (more's the worse for me).

• I am halfway through, M'ashallah, my medicinally
prescribed three pints for the evening. Depressives are great
and famous self-medicators. Alcohol is a great local
anaesthetic – it goes straight to the brain. I am drinking
Champion Golden Ale – one of a vanishingly small handful of
beers I like at this point. (I'm at least as much of a beer
snob as I am an apple snob; fascinatingly, in my long-ish
period of not drinking at all, I REMAINED a huge beer snob. A
non-drinking beer snob. I'd sniff at other people's beers and
exuberantly disapprove.)

• I walked along the high street, dodging the hustlers
and smelly Antipodean backpackers (I LOVE Earl's Court – all
except the high street, ie Earl's Court Road, which I
emphatically abhor), on to the Sainsbury's Local at the end,
where I knew I could get cold Champion.

• Zig-zagged through Chelsea, where I had taken myself
to see the 4pm showing of "Brick". 4pm is too late - there
were more than two other people in the house. Almost walked
out at a certain point – was having trouble following the
machine-gun hard-boiled noir dialogue. Glad I stayed until
the end. It was very clever. In some ways, too bad for it, it
trod "Heathers" territory. But in others, it was admirable – 
and certainly very amusing. Genuinely fleshed and compelling
characters. Fantastic, (plus fantastical – ie totally
unbelievable, but that criticism is out of line) dialogue.
Think you'd like it.

• Did this and that online - including some needed book
promotion things. Knocked off a handful of the messages in my
INBOX flagged earlier as "RESPOND NOW YOU DELINQUENT SORRY
BASTARD!!!!"

• Had two pitchers of creamy frozen fruit frappe (one
banana/pineapple, the other banana/strawberry/mocha) – 
whilst sitting on my couch, devouring (and obsessively
highlighting) volume 4 of Churchill's "History of the Second
World War". I find this is just about the only thing I really
enjoy doing lately. (Ie lying on the couch reading Churchill
and drinking frappes.) The good news is that I REALLY enjoy
it. Churchill is my new hero. When he said, "History will be
kind to me, for I intend to write it", I didn't initially
realise he was speaking entirely literally. He was such a
polymath: historian, biographer, extremely talented amateur
oil painter, soldier, politician, statesman, Saviour of the
Free World. (He even wrote and published a novel, very
early on.) His account of the great struggle manages to be
both completely sweeping and intensely personal. This is
because he was at the centre of virtually everything that
happened. If you want to learn something about strategy,
persistence, organisational theory, leadership, cleaving to
principles, patience, calling things by their names, and
humility paired with unflagging faith, read these (six)
books. Totally gripping. "Never, never, never, never give
up." - Winston S. Churchill

• I slept another hour or two.

• I decided I still had no energy – and it was going to
be a record fifth day in a row of not going to the health
club. Yikes. You know it's bad when . . .

• I drank my tea, two cups of rooibos, while reading
mail, news, and obsessively checking my Amazon ranking and
the relevant literary blogs.

• I awoke to the stirring sounds of the improvised rock
quarry evidently set up by the workmen in the courtyard. Mmm,
mmm, nothing like stone and circular saws to gently draw one
from the Dream World . . .

• I slept. 


There. I talked about me. Bon apetit.

xxm



Michael Stephen Fuchs  |  msf@michaelfuchs.org  |  www.michaelfuchs.org

        Author of THE MANUSCRIPT: www.the-manuscript.com

What the critics say: "Breathless cyber-techno thriller - a great novel!"
"High philosophical ambitions."  "Clever and engaging."  "A high-energy,
enthusiastic yarn - a captivating debut."  "Dazzling - a tightly-plotted
thriller, but also a terrific literary chronicle of our Electronic Age."