How to win friends and influence people

The time is the Persian Wars, about 20 years before the date of my first book. Xerxes, the Great King of Persia, has decided to subjugate Greece, and to do so he's assembled the largest land army the world has yet seen. A very hungry army which is eating everything in its path.

The massive force arrives at a city in Asia Minor called Celaenae, in what is now modern Turkey. They are still inside the Persian Empire, but the locals are not exactly thrilled to have their King pop in with an army that they have to feed.

I'm going to let Herodotus take over, courtesy of Penguin Classics:

Here at Celaenae a Lydian named Pythius, the son of Atys, was awaiting Xerxes, and on his arrival entertained him and the whole army with most lavish hospitality, and promised besides to furnish money for the expenses of the war. The mention of money caused Xerxes to ask the Persians present who Pythius was, and if he was really rich enough to make such an offer. "My Lord," was the answer, "it was the man who gave your father Darius the golden plane-tree and the golden vine; and still, so far as we know, he is the wealthiest man in the world, after yourself."

Pythius, son of Atys, was probably a grandson of Croesus. Yes, that's Croesus of "rich as Croesus" fame. Croesus is known to have had a son called Atys - the same name as Pythius' father - and the dates check out. No wonder Pythius is fabulously wealthy.

Xerxes, overjoyed to find one of his subjects who is not only pleased to see him, but wants to help, asks how much money Pythius has. Pythius replies:

I possess 2,000 talents of silver, and 3,993,000 gold Darics. This it is my intention to give to you; I can live quite comfortably myself on my slaves and the produce of my estates.

This is a vast amount of precious metal. Even by modern standards, Pythius would be a billionaire. Xerxes, to put it mildly, is pleased:

My Lydian friend...as a reward for your generosity, I make you my guest-friend and, in addition, I will give you from my own coffers the 7,000 gold Darics which are needed to make your fortune up to the round sum of 4,000,000. Continue, then, to possess what you have acquired; and have the wisdom to remain always the man you have proved yourself today. You will never regret it, now or hereafter.

How to win friends and influence people indeed! Pythius could have been almost bankrupted, but instead finds himself guest-friend of the Great King, which means he has the ear and good will of his absolute monarch.

So far so good. The only bad news for Pythius is he has 5 sons, and Xerxes takes all 5 of them into the army, as he has every able-bodied man in sight. Pythius is worried. He goes to Xerxes and says:

My Lord, I have 5 sons, and it happens that every one of them is serving in your army in your campaign against Greece. I am an old man, Sire, and I beg you in pity to release from service one of my sons - the eldest - to take care of me and my property. Take the other 4, and may you return with your purpose accomplished.

Sounds reasonable enough for a guest-friend to ask, a man who's offered to fund the entire war. Right?

Xerxes says:

You miserable fellow! Have you the face to mention your son, when I, in person, am marching to the war against Greece with my sons and brothers and kinsmen and friend - you, my slave, whose duty it was to come with me, with every member of your house?

Uh oh. Things are not looking good for poor Pythius. Xerxes refers to Pythius as a slave because, under the Persian system, every man was considered a slave of the Great King. Xerxes goes on in this unpleasant vein for some time. Pythius must have thought he was about to be executed by his angry king before Xerxes says:

Yourself and 4 of your sons are saved by the entertainment you gave me...

Saved! Pythius' habit of sucking up to absolute monarchs pays off.

But wait! Xerxes said 4 sons were saved, not 5...

...but you shall pay with the life of the 5th, whom you cling to most.

Xerxes at once gave orders that the men to whom such duties fell should find Pythius' eldest son and cut him in half, and put the two halves one on each side of the road, for the army to march out between them.

The order was performed, and now between the halves of the young man's body the advance of the army began.

This sort of casual brutality might not have happened every day, but it was normal and acceptable in the Persian social order, the same society which used a rather painful execution method.

Note a clear implication of this tale is that among Xerxes' staff were men whose job description included, "cutting people in half."

Xerxes does not get good press from the Greeks, for obvious reasons. He fares just as badly in modern hands. Think of the movie 300. The evil bad guy commander in that is the same Xerxes who just offed a guy in this little story because his father asked a favor.

George Orwell on working in a bookstore

Have a read of this article by George Orwell on the time he spent working in a bookstore. He wrote it in 1936. Compare it to what you're reading these days in book blogs and tweets.

Fascinating stuff.

Also, it's scary how good a writer he was. Even in a simple essay like this, the flow, the pace, the interest, the descriptions and observations are all spot on, and all with such simple, everyday language that it seems like anyone could do it.

Book Progress

If it seems like I haven't been blogging much, it's because my head is deep in revisions.

Here's where we're at:

Book 2 is first drafted. That doesn't mean the scenes are all done. Oh no! Some scenes read well and are pretty much ready to go, most scenes look 80% okay. A couple of scenes, in the third quarter of the book, are disconnected fragments of insane ravings. That's alright, as long as they're interesting ravings, I can get them properly written. A few scenes contradict the rest of the plot. I'll have to beat them back into line. A few scenes shouldn't be there. Delete works. Three or four necessary scenes are long and boring. They're the ones that worry me.

I declared first draft at about 93,000 words. Then I began revising, fixing, replacing etc. The ms peaked at almost 97K, dropped below 91K, climbed back to 94K, and now seems to be congealing at about the 92K mark. At some point I'll start looking for aggressive cuts. While I was writing the first draft, getting it up from zero, I watched word count incessantly, because I'm obsessive-compulsive like that. I'd write one sentence and then Alt-T W to see how many words I'd added. Now that I'm in the zone, I don't care what the word count is. All that matters is making the book shine. I do though still check word count once a day out of habit and idle curiousity. The zone is about 85K - 100K. As long as I stay within there, I'm happy.

I'm constantly surprised how even little changes can improve a scene. Yesterday I rewrote the first paragraph of a scene about halfway into the story, and suddenly the whole thing was twice as funny. I wish I could post it here, because that one I know is good, but sadly that would be naughty. I added three lines somewhere else and the page became edgier. I always know when a scene's become right, because then I want to carry the laptop to my wife and read the fun bits to her.

I actually prefer revising to writing. This probably makes me some sort of weird pervert, but with revisions I have a before and after snapshot of the scene, and I can judge which is better. I know I can incrementally improve a scene once it's written, as long I can tell the difference between good and gooder. No, that should be bett and better. No...anyway, trust me, I have everything under control.

And now for something completely different...Forever Nocturne!

I write short stories to try out new things; different POVs, different techniques or styles or genres, wild ideas I'd never risk on a novel. My short stories are fundamentally lab rats.

Usually my lab rats turn out to be poor, misshapen things, that drag themselves painfully about the laboratory until I put them out of their misery.

Oh well, that's how you learn.

Sometimes the DNA comes together in a glorious fluke, and my shining golden lab rat spreads its genetically engineered wings and zooms out the window.

I watched one of my rats fly off into the distance a few weeks ago. It landed on the pages of Forever Nocturne, an e-Zine that publishes Modern Gothic Horror Romance.

That's right. I, Gary, have written an urban fantasy, and it's actually okay. They even gave me the cover! No one's ever given me a cover spot before! You can find it in the (free) download of Forever Nocturne, Volume I, Issue 3. That last link goes straight to the zine's pdf. If it doesn't work for you, try this page with links to the first three issues.

I draw your attention to the story by CARRIE CLEVENGER in the same issue. I'll never look at restaurant cutlery in the same way again.

Would you buy a book from this man?

I've done something I thought I'd never do: I got a decent photo of myself.

Months ago, when I signed with literary agent Janet Reid, she told me to get a proper head shot, not that it was certain it would be needed, but "just in case". It was explained to me proper meant not taken by my wife, friend, or random passing stranger.

I ignored her, of course. It would have been the ultimate in hubris to assume I was going to need that photo.

Then Janet sold the book to St Martin's. Now I needed a photo.

Luckily for me, my wife went to school with the talented Vicki Skarratt, who does promo photography for a living, usually for actors. It all looks very cool, doesn't it? The truth is, I am sitting on a child's chair in her driveway in tracksuit pants and bare feet. It is definitely not leather jacket weather. Between every shot I am staring into the distance so my eyes are properly focused, and on command waving my arms about and shaking my body, which apparently is an acting trick for looking relaxed. Vicki tells me most people are uptight about photo shoots, but I thought it was lots of fun.

This is not the real me, btw. This is an idealized Gary who did exist, for the fraction of a second required to snap the photo, but who alas is no more. He's gone, replaced by the grotty, everyday Gary everyone around me is stuck with.