Suzy, led Zeppelin and Me

 My novel Suzy, led Zeppelin and Me, 2002, reprinted in 2019.

Amazon

'You know Manx, if anyone had said to me when I was at school 'Led Zeppelin are terrible, you should listen to Elvis Presley instead', I would have mocked them. So I'd never try and tell anyone that Led Zeppelin were better than their favourite band of the moment. You can't go around listening to music that your parents liked. Anyway, I like to hear new music myself. But I must admit there have been times when I've been watching some bunch of fumbling indie kids droning on about nothing very much on stage when I'd have been pleased if a huge time warp had opened up and the mighty Led Zeppelin had marched into the auditorium.

'That's what a fucking guitar is meant to sound like,' I'd say, and dare anyone to contradict me.

Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me

Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me. My schooldays in Glasgow, and the mighty Led Zeppelin are coming to play. I always liked this book but it had an unfortunate history. Shorty after it was published, the publisher went out of business. The book disappeared almost as soon as it arrived. Soft Skull did do a decent American edition, but the book has been out of print in Britain for a long time. I've now brought it back into print myself. While preparing the book, I read through it with some trepidation, as I always would with any of my old books, wondering how much I'd hate it, and how often I'd be shaking my head muttering 'What was I thinking when I wrote this?' But that didn't happen too often and I still liked it, which was a relief. - https://amzn.to/2Vn3EJ4

Led Zeppelin, Agoraphobia

Last night BBC2 showed Celebration Day, the Led Zeppelin re-union concert, from their gig in London in 2007. I really enjoyed watching it, though I think it was a shortened version of the film. I was entranced at the sight of Led Zeppelin onstage again. 35 years after their heyday, and with their original drummer no longer around, Led Zeppelin were still brilliant. When Jimmy Page brought out the violin bow to make weird noises on his guitar - always one of my favourite moments - I had a strong vision of being very young again, and watching them live in Glasgow, as I did, in 1972.

Because of the concert on BBC, 'Led Zeppelin' was trending in Britain on Twitter. Most comments were favourable, of course, from people of all ages. I noticed one sub-strand of these tweets, from girls talking about their fathers, saying things like 'Just arrived home to find Dad blaring out Led Zeppelin in the living room' or 'Dad is downstairs playing air-guitar in front of Led Zeppelin on the TV.'

I thought that was funny, the image of fathers around the country still transfixed by the mighty Led Zeppelin, while their daughters looked on with amusement. Fortunately, all the daughters' tweets about their dads seemed sympathetic, if amused.

But the TV concert gave me a bad memory too. When Led Zeppelin played in London, in 2007, it sold out immediately, and it was hard to get a ticket. Only last month I was talking to someone who told me how difficult he'd found it to get to the gig. Well, I was offered a ticket by a journalist friend, but I couldn't go, because my agoraphobia was too severe at the time. At that point in 2007, I could hardly leave the house. So that's not a great memory. I wish I'd been able to go. My agoraphobia is not so bad these days, though it still troubles me quite a lot.

Watching the gig on TV, I almost fulfilled something from my book 'Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me,' when I said that I planned, in later life, to get a DVD of Led Zeppelin, put it on, and pretend I was a teenager again, watching them in Glasgow. Last night I came quite close to doing just that, putting the lights off in the room so I could watch it like I was at a gig, and turning it up loud. I'd have lit some incense if I'd thought about it, and bought a load of cheap, strong, Scottish beer to get me in the right mood. But even without the beer and the incense, I felt very cheerful watching led Zeppelin, 35 years on.

Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me - amazon.co.uk, amazon.com, kindle

Dead Projects, Revived Projects

I like to be writing two things at once. Something I'm concentrating on, and something else for a change. Eventually these all overlap, meaning I can end up with a lot of projects, some of them alive, some of them dormant, some of them dead. 

I've more or less finished my third book about Kalix, provisionally entitled The Anxiety of Kalix the Werewolf. It still needs a little revision. I don't have any date for a publication and I haven't signed a publishing contract for it yet. 

Thraxas lumbers back to life. I've also more or less finished a new Thraxas book, Thraxas and the Ice Dragon. I still plan to have this published as an ebook before the end of the year. Simultaneously I'll be republishing all the other Thraxas novels as ebooks. I'll need to try out the ebook publishing process with some of the early books first, to see if it works OK, before publishing the new one. While this should ene up being widely available in English, I don't know if any of the foreign publishers who published Thraxas will want the book. Will need to ask my agent to investigate that.

Manga play. Am writing manga play for young people. Confidently expect no one ever to be interested in publishing or performing this. But I like it anyway. It's a good outlet for my manga/anime enthusiasm. An enthusiasm that will spill over into my next book, I'm sure, possibly in a career-killing manga-based novel which no one will like. 

Graphic novel set in Ancient Athens. I wrote an excellent script for this. However, the artist was unable to come up with the goods, and that pretty much killed the project. Failing the mysterious appearance of a new artist or a publisher willing to back the idea with some money, I don't see that going anywhere. Still, projects sometimes do revive unexpectedly when the time is right.

Ongoing plan to write more fetish stories. No progress. Became discouraged by massive success of Fifty Shades of Grey. Nothing I wrote would be that successful.  Hum. Will do something about this some time. I have more good ideas for fetish stories.

Lonely Werewolf Girl Film - still negotiating its way through the Byzantine corridors of the film world. Not much to report, but project still alive. And indeed, there are currently film options in place for Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me, and Lux the Poet, but these are in very early stages. 

New Computer

I have a nice new MacBook. You'd be surprised how old my other Mac was. It was very out of date. Internet videos struggled, froze and jammed. But now I'm equipped to fully appreciate the modern world. Am doing this mainly by watching old glam and punk rock videos from the 70s on YouTube. Yes, it's a big step forward.

My other Macs have generally worked when I plugged them in, which was helpful. So, naturally, this one didn't. It failed to connect to the internet properly. I responded by looking disappointed, and saying "Why aren't you working? Start working properly." Then I sat and looked hopeless for a while, mumbling sadly to myself about how difficult everything is.

When this failed to produce results I phoned the Mac helpline, and to their credit, they sorted it out for me quickly. But it was a tense moment.

My old Mac, while very slow by today's standards, remains quite precious to me. I wrote a lot of Thraxas on it, and Lonely Werewolf Girl, and Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me. I also wrote Queen Vex on it, the sequel to Lonely Werewolf Girl. This is more or less finished now. But don't get too excited, it will be around a year till it comes out. Which I find frustrating, but that's standard practice in publishing. However, the good news is that's it's already contracted to be published in Britain, the USA, and Germany, and the Italian contract should be sorted out soon.

Till I transfer over various files and software, I'm writing this blog on google documents. So it's not really even on my computer. Is that cloud computing? Hmm. Also alarmingly modern. I consider taking a little picture of myself with the camera in the computer, and putting it here. But when I check the picture, I think it makes me look old. Must be something wrong with the camera. Possibly I should phone the Mac helpline again. "The camera on my MacBook is making me look old. How can I fix this?"

Book Stuff

Lonely Werewolf Girl appears in the nominations for the Fantasy and Science Fiction (Young Adult) category in the Cybil Awards (Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards ) It's a very long list, I don't know when it's distilled into a shortlist. I'm very pleased to be there.

Here's a review of the recently re-issued Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me in The Guardian.

I spent last week checking the manuscript for Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation, for the new edition by Soft Skull. And when I say checking the manuscript, I mean not looking at it at all, and just hoping it was OK. I will just trust the skills of the editors at Soft Skull, who have been doing fine with my books so far.

Hmm. May not be doing a great job of selling my old books here. Will work up more enthusiasm when it comes out. Which is early next year, I think.

When Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation was first published, in 1987, I was working as a clerk for the council, filling in forms for their heating engineers. That wasn't such a bad job.

No progress on the naval piercing. Am frustrated by circumstances. Still, nothing bad has happened. However, on the domestic front, my footstool did disintegrate with age, after many years of faithful service. I need a new one, because you cant really slump properly in front of the TV without a footstool, and I need to do that.

New Year's Eve, 1977

I've been wandering around in the Millar musical memories. Which reminds me, I should mention again that the re-issue of Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me is now generally available. It's been on sale in the USA and Canada for a month or so, and is now in shops in Britain too. I still really like the cover. I like the book too, which helps.

Here's a good review of Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me in the Los Angeles Times. Aha. No doubt Hollywood's most glamorous actresses pay close attention to the book reviews in the LA Times. I'm sure they talk of nothing else. May soon find myself pursued by Angelina Jolie, Eva Mendes and Halle Berry. Not sure if I have the energy for this. Will have to let them down politely.

But the musical memory I've been thinking about recently is New Year's Eve, 1977, when I was at the Rainbow in London, at this Ramones gig. Which, as you can see from the one minute 46 seconds of this video, was a really great place to be.



(If that video doesn't work on my blog, you can watch it here.)

That was a fantastic gig!

* briefly cheerful *

* but depression sets in *

Hum. There should be some law against posting these videos on youtube. I get about three minutes of pleasant memories, followed by several hours of gloom as I realise how many years ago it was. Sigh. Must lie down on the couch. May be too old even to make it to the couch. Might just have to fall asleep in front of the computer, and drool on the keyboard.

Led Zeppelin / Sex Pistols

Was outraged to read that Leona Lewis - whoever she is - some singer apparently - wanted to change the lyrics to Led Zeppelin classic Whole Lotta Love before she sang them at the closing ceremony of the Olympics. Quite why this person should be changing the lyrics of the mighty Led Zeppelin is a mystery to me.

Considered watching the ceremony on TV, partly to see Jimmy Page play guitar, and partly to hurl abuse at Leona Lewis, but fell asleep on couch instead.

Robert Plant was the singer in Led Zeppelin. I went to see him play a solo gig in 2002, which was around the time Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me was first published. I went with a journalist friend, Jelbert. It was a good gig. Afterwards, the journalist introduced me to Robert Plant. I felt quite overwhelmed. That surprised me. I would have expected that I was too old to feel overwhelmed by meeting anyone. It's a long time since I was a young fan. I was a school kid when I saw Led Zeppelin on stage. But, many years later, I did feel strangely affected by saying hello to their singer.

Although I wasn't as affected as - travelling a long way back in time - the gigantic skinhead who I saw put his arms round Johnny Rotten at a Gary Glitter gig in 1978. The skinhead, a very large, scary-looking individual, simply enveloped him in his arms, hugging him, in silent gratitude for just being Johnny Rotten. They stood like that for a long time. The singer from the Sex Pistols looked awkward, and the skinhead practically wept with joy. I suppose Johnny had changed his life. That's reasonable enough, he changed mine too, though I never attempted to hug him.

Keyboard Filth

Catching up with more super hero movies I missed, I watched Rise of the Silver Surfer. It was OK. Better than that lousy Spiderman 3, but not particularly great. I suppose these films are made for quite a young audience. But is this an excuse? SpongeBob SquarePants is made for a young audience too, and that keeps me continually entertained. I've watched loads of episodes of SpongeBob, and the film too.

Was slightly distressed to read in the news that the average computer keyboard is 'as filthy and germ-ridden as a toilet.'

I study my keyboard and wonder when I last cleaned it. Possibly never. Take keyboard to bathroom, shake it upside down. A huge cascade of dust falls out. Shake it some more. More stuff falls out. Get bored with this. Start wiping keys with damp cloth. Layers of grim start to come off. But I get bored with this too, and give up. Fine, my keyboard isn't that clean. It's not like I'm going to eat dinner off it anyway.

Am struggling to set up the RSS feed thingy on Safari to work properly.

* shakes fist at modern world *

Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me, scheduled for re-issue in September, is arriving in bookshops in America and Canada already, and is now available on amazon.com. That's good. I suppose it will take a little longer for the new edition to reach Britain, but it should be here soon.

Quantum Pudding Transfer

This is the cover for Soft Skull's new edition of Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me. I was quite startled when I saw it, and I like it a lot. It should grab people's attention. It comes out in September.

Hmm. Am suddenly feeling old. You can't claim to be that young if you write a book about going to see Led Zeppelin in 1972. Still, as I point out in the book, I was at school at the time. May have to lie more about this in future, and pretend to have been younger than I was.

* Millar saw Led Zeppelin when he was 6 years old *

I realise my email is again piling up. I don't get round to answering something and then weeks and months pass and I still haven't answered it and I feel guilty. So if I never emailed you back, I'm sorry. I always like people emailing me, and always intend to reply, but sometimes I'm just too inefficient to do it.

Look at this fabulous pie on Germaine's blog. I want this pie. I need someone to invent a quantum pudding transfer system. Perhaps they are working on it at the new CERN particle accelerator right now.

European Championship

Am lying on the couch watching football on TV. There's a lot of it on. The European Championship is here. Sadly, neither England nor Scotland qualified. Most people here, if they're supporting any country at all, probably favour Holland or Spain for their exciting football. Personally I admire the relentless determination of the Germans. And being a dour Scot, I like their rather dour nature. But enough of racially stereotyping my fellow Europeans. I'm enjoying the football anyway.

Sainsbury changed the packaging on it's rhubarb crumble! I'm very unhappy about this. I dislike all change. These people shouldn't just go around changing the packaging on people's favourite food. Don't they know the ruinous effect it can have on the obsessive compulsives among us? Examined it for a long time, wondering if it was safe to buy. It doesn't seem right. Bought it eventually, but am very suspicious of the whole thing.

The new edition of Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me has made it onto amazon.com, though it's not released till September. It will be good having multiple books in print again, having gone more or less completely out of print a few years ago.

Had a minor alarm when I noticed, in my web stats, an unnatural amount of visits to my website by one person. Took me a while to realise that this person was in fact me. I had failed to set the blocking cookie correctly. Alarm over. I'm relieved not to be being stalked again anyway. There have been incidents in the past. You'd be surprised. But these days I am guarded round the clock by an elite team of glamorous female secret agents, so I'm not really worried.

Endless Work

It was quite a big week for literary activity in the Millar household. First I went to the local pub to met the foreign rights editor from Kedros, the Greek publisher who will be issuing Lonely Werewolf Girl later this year. After that I was busy again because the reprinting process for Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me is underway, for Soft Skull in the USA. I had to go through the manuscript again. This can be quite a tedious procedure, for an old book. Mercifully, I do still like this novel a lot, and didn't cringe with shame and embarrassment on reading it again, something I certainly would do if forced to read some of my other old books.

Then a bundle of covers arrived from Baen, for Thraxas Under Siege, eighth book in the series. Well OK, that wasn't much activity. All I had to do was open the envelope and look at the covers. It felt quite arduous anyway. Thraxas Under Siege has been out in hardback in the USA for a while. This is the paperback edition, soon to be published. It's good to have unleashed eight Thraxas books on the world. I would rather like to do a ninth sometime. (For reasons why that won't happen any time soon, see this blog.)

So that all seemed like a lot of activity. Having run out of manga and Buffy comics, I recovered by lying in the bath reading Samuel Pepys' Diaries.

February 12th, 1660 - Hence home, where my wife and I had some high words upon my telling her that I would fling the dog out at the window if he pissed the house any more.

A little harsh perhaps, but you can't entirely blame him. He's trying to write his diary and there's a dog pissing everywhere. It would be annoying for anyone. However, his wife was capable of mounting a spirited argument, so I imagine the dog survived.

2008. Hmm

Christmas at my brother's was less chaotic than I anticipated. My nephews - generally fond of rampaging around the house - seemed pleased with their presents, and retreated to their rooms to play with them.

One of these presents being a WWE wrestling ring complete with action figures which I would have quite liked to play with. But you know what children are like. Unwilling to do the decent thing, and move aside to let their uncles play with their new toys on Christmas day. Selfish, really.

Emerged from Christmas into a dedicated period of watching football on TV over New Year - Arsenal going well - finally poked my nose out the door yesterday and realised it's really cold out there, so retreated back inside to sleep on the couch and get over it all.

Plans are afoot to reprint Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me some time this year. I'm pleased. It was a good book and deserved better than for the original publisher to go out of business, thereby sinking it without trace.