Less than a month to 5th Kingdom day,

To all those agents and publishers presently holding their noses...please concentrate on the third word of this Blog title and not just the first.

I was bankrupt before all the rest of you, so I'm obviously well ahead of the curve.

For those that feels it matters.

The Fifth Kingdom will be ready and presented to a sadly unprepared world on Jan 2nd 2010.

I have worked out that it will take just 1000 days after that to end the world.

Muah ha aha!

Well...well...well...

It's the 12th November 2009 and I have decided that I have spent enough time on Authonomy.com. Over the past year I have worked on my novel and developed friendships that I'm sure will stand the test of time. My novel is taking shape nicely and it really has grown into something much greater than the unstructured and idealised collection of ideas that I had begun with.

My partner Des has agreed to be the first editor and whilst I am slipping him some of the secrets and highlights of the novel, I'm hoping that he also gets the 'wow' factor that has been inserted in to practically every chapter.

It's a big risk, this novel because it can either fall flat on its face or it can take over the world....which basically means that I'll get trashed by the critics.

You'll read all about this soon. I intend to have the novel written and edited by Christmas. All I can say right now is....it's good.

I'm still writing!

OK. Re: The Novel.

It's called The Fifth Kingdom and selected chapters can be read on the Authonomy website:

Just click on the name of the novel to get there...

I'm slowly getting through another novel called Deathwatch:Michael.  I'd better find that space where I can write if I'm going to have hours like 5pm - 2am which means that I don't really get to bed before 4am.  Factor in 8-9 hours sleep (I'm not young) and that leaves four hours to do everything else.  

May to December

Well howdy!

So here we are, one week into my new job as a bouncer for the Celt Irish Bar.  Standing at a door greeting and controlling entry, maintaining the atmosphere collecting glasses and mopping up afterwards.  Not exactly Quantum Physics but it gets me out of the house.

Which is part of the problem.   The job leaves no time to write. 

I had a great conversation on Sunday night with a bloke called Thom who seemed to have read all the same books that I have read and has a polymath quality to him.   Definitely one who is a bit further down the road to billionaire status than myself but hey, philosophically, we're on the same road.

I start even earlier tonight (5pm) to be trained up as a barman as well so that's a step in the right direction.   We'll see how the first month goes but so far I haven't actually had any extreme nightmares. 

The fatigue, yeah that's the thing the body's kicking my arse over.  I am really going to have to start a regime of exercise as my belly's dragging at my lower back and frankly I'm smoking like a trooper.   I've spent the last three years being happily sedentary and now I've  a job that is increasingly physically demanding. 

By the end of next week I hope to know what my pay is, when my pay is and how I'm going to get any benefit from it if it goes into the bank.  

Plus ca change...

Since my last post:  I have been a busy little bee...

I have been paid for the website for the friends Short term let Apartments!  

€800 in total and not a bad site either and it's getting business for the clients.  

Have a look, see at this link:

http://www.thetricolour.com

I have joined in a team to create a new magazine here in Carcassonne.  There are two ideas on the table, both from me:

• A local interest booklet, paid for by advertising.  Based on each neighbourhood in the Aude.  We'll be using interested parties in each neighborhood to provide the content etc.  Could be cool and easy to produce.

• A high quality luxury magazine, flashy paper, posh ads etc.  for the highest end of the market scale.  Just what the world wants as the credit crunch bites.  Content provided by cultural icons and our editorial team.  Could be revolutionary.  Long term project obviously but one that might just get me on that yacht in Monaco. 
  

I've contacted a financial adviser at present he is looking into the idea of releasing equity on my home to the tune of 30%.   He is approaching this along three routes:

• A private loan from a private investor.      
• (Didn't work out.  I thought not.)
  
• A loan from a high street bank   
•  (Still waiting for a yea or nay, probably nay)
  
• A collateral exchange with the local treasury called a 'hypotheque'. 
• (Sounds interesting but the loan will be for 100% and I'm concerned about my likely behaviour with that amount sitting in the bank!.)

Yes, I have started writing  the great Irish/French/Cathar novel.  It shall remain nameless before publication....I'm not taking any risks.  I'm posting out the manuscript drafts to literary agents this week.  I met Kate Mosse signing the French print run of her Sepulcure Novel.  I casually invited herself and her husband/partner to visit us the next time they were in Carcassonne, dropping my card off as I did.  Who knows...

I am in negotiations to be the key holder and cleaner for a British man who has flats to let close to me.  If he agrees to me doing this I'll publicise his property here and elsewhere, natch!

This evening I am meeting the aforementioned architect (see 'The man who can") to give him some costings for a similar website to the one I have built.  Finger's crossed.

If today's meeting goes well with the main player in the magazine idea, I may well be looking at earning €4K a month.  Tra la la!   However, it all sounds 2G2BT.  I'll have to horse trade a bit. 

Finally, a bit of perspective from the real world:

On Sunday the 3rd Parachute regiment got themselves involved in a shocking SNAFU that to date has not, thankfully, become a tragedy.   You may have seen it in the news.  17 injured civilians as the last salvo delivered in a 'hostage retrieval' demonstration turned tout to be live ammunition, sprayed into a crowd who, at first, thought the blood was paint.  I was just up the road in my own little 'in debt' world.

This gives great meaning to my favourite phrase:  "Relax, nobody died!"

My thoughts are with the victims, their families, the soldier who had the wrong clip at the wrong time, the hospital and emergency staff who dealt with this brilliantly and of even the 3rd RPIMA in Carcassonne who's élite status has definitely taken a hammering with all this nonsense.  

That's it!  I have just finished the last coffee I can afford in this web café until I hear back from my contacts.  Finger's crossed.

So much for Discipline!

Well, well, well!  The road to hell is paved with good intentions....

An update from a month ago.

1 I visited the building I was hoping to renovate into a backpacker hostel with a builder friend of mine.  To cut a long and painful story short, the fabric of the building and the French regulations surrounding opening a 'youth' hostel (for that's the only equivalent business model they can process) meant that I would have had to build three toilets, three showers and TWELVE wash hand basins.  To compound it all,  this water would then have to leave the building through one 40mm sewerage pipe.....hmmm....non-starter.  I sent my friend David, the owner of the building, his mail and a letter giving him his options:  

Me paying his debts NOT being one of them.

2 My networking is moving me in the right direction but (my God) is it ever slow...  One great new contact let me know about a Business Entrepeneurship course over 5 weeks run by the local chamber of commerce.  Basically it is a French bureaucracy version of 'The Apprentice' or 'Dragon's Den'.  You enter with your business plan and your idea's outline on day one and then you battle for five weeks to defend it against the pitfalls and the demands of business in France ......for five whole weeks....I did mention five weeks of this stuff, right, FIVE WEEKS?  

If you manage to have a good enough idea that is profitable and makes a smooth enough fit into the local community, your loan is guaranteed by the town.   I start in October.  

I'm thinking of a hub zone in town, a kind of fusion between coffee shop, arts and culture centre, bookshop, creative space and web café.   The initial name is DUBh.  It just sounds IRISH and TEKTONIC enough but I still haven't got the USP on that yet.

3  The Tricolour Guesthouse website is uploaded but hasn't gone live as yet.  I hope the host gets their act together within the next 24 hours as both my clients (friends!) and my bank manager are getting jumpy.  Needless to say, I'm a bit jumpy myself....they won't pay without a working website, will they?

4 Online sales of my art is not even going to feed the cat. Of course my bed remains artfully unmade but Tracey Emin got there first.   Anyway, I can't rely on fine art to support me at this stage.  I need to be more commercial with my painting talent.  Thus I am promoting a pretty cool art gift idea called Alchemic Portraits.  (Website is being built and I hope to attract 'exclusive' web based gift sites.)

5 Having attended an art market in Chateau Malves gardens (Wow!  Great location, fantastic weather, no sales!)  I realise that I need to really commercialise what I am doing when I weild a paint brush.  I have found a couple of styles that do attract attention but the Malves crowd were there just to have a look.  Some Irish friends of the family visited the market and we exchanged pleasantries.  I concentrated on not appearing too desperate, you know, intelligent calm, a good dollop of professional interest in other artist's work, smiling and nodding knowingly, able to talk about the light and its affect upon my colour palette etc. etc.    

They went off and bought a big, ugly, wooden sculpture of a cat the size of a six year old child! My canvasses are flightcase friendly, dammit!   I hope Ryanair screwed 'em good.  

Seriously though, having contacted some of the other artists I realised that out of 40 exhibitors a sum total of five sales happened that day so I'm not cutting my right ear off just yet.  

6 I'm still adhering to my principles and to this end, my great master plan has had to be revised, somewhat.  That's OK, though, I was aware of setbacks and pitfalls before this blog began and I am still here.  A month and a half has passed since I first started this blog and I have done the following:

* Registered as a member of a local artists group.

* Signalled my availablility to discuss and help those on the same path as me.

* Received monies for a commission (OK it's my parents but they're getting a damn' fine painting!)

* Started work on my online portfolio and Alchemic Portrait website.  

These will be finished by the end of June. 

* Made connections with local people in every area of art, business, commerce. etc.

* Started work on the great sequence of Gary Canton novels: The Silent History.

* Developed and rejected a business plan for a backpacker's hostel 

(in a different building it's a goer!)

* Developed TWO bloody Tricolour websites and designed a professional and attractive brochure, so that would be value for money, I'd say.

*  Got back to blogging and web based research for my ideas.  

* Finally, the Alchemic Portraits idea is being looked at seriously as a business idea by a manager/agent.  This is imperative.  I'm the production end, let someone else be the sales end.

* Remained in contact with artists in the region that I had hoped to bring on a touring exhibition to all the great art markets in Northern Europe.   Obviously the credit crunch has put paid to this idea in the short term but talent is talent.

* My arse is in gear but my bank account remains the same....for the time being.

STOP PRESS:  3rd June 2008 14:15pm

The financial consultant (he that doesn't lose control of his bladder laughing at me) has finally sent me an email with a list of documents I need to apply for a personal loan for €30,000 over ten years.  I'm getting out the French/English dictionary as we speak.   Hello Solvency!

Ciao babes!  It's been all to real.  

BTW 

Conor's evil spreadsheet has been the most soul destroying exercise I have had to undertake.  I wouldn't lend me any money!    

Taking a dump may be necessary but this feels like a vindaloo and cider induced diahorrea.

Note to self: To many exclamation marks!!!!  I read like I'm a character in a bad Operetta.   

OK, ok, monsieur Web café man, I'm going, I'm going...

 

MAY 2008

The master plan so far:

1 Build and open a Backpacker's Hostel in Carcassonne at the base of La Cité.  

(La Cité is the third most visited place in France, after Paris' Eiffel Tower and Mont St. Michel)

This is a goer based on my being able to access finance.  I held a meeting with a financial consultant for that reason two days ago.  He didn't wet himself laughing at me so there's hope.

2 Complete web sites I started for friends and get paid for them.  

I should finish the Tricolour website this weekend.  So with a bit of luck, you will be able to see my work on:  www.thetricolour.com (With thanks to iWeb on the Mac)

3 Publicise my existing painted work for sale. 

This is the connection to my portfolio: www.ebsqart.com/Artists/cmd_20710

4 Get more website work and network, network, network!

Before all of that though, I do have the small matter of getting a job to do first. 

I have a painting that satirises my position.  It's called: "Will hang on walls for money".

I'm kind of like that now.  It's a good energy though.  

Money is coming my way in dribs and drabs so I realise that I've made the first important step. To my philosophy, money behaves like water in a river.  You can stand in the water and get wet but you may drown.  It is smarter to carry a vessel with you into the river and drink as much as you like.  I'm just getting my vessels together.  

Of course, this blog is part of the overall discipline.  The spreadsheet is being edited to protect people's identities and to get my sums right!

A plus, people.