ADVENTURES IN DUBAI: YOUR FAVOURITE NUMBER ONE BLOG BRITISH DESIGNER LIVING IN DUBAI TELLS (NEARLY) ALL
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Travels in Xanadu-du: The Book, it has Landed!
I know most of you are desperate to know about the progress of my novel, Travels in Xanadu-du. Not least because some of you have actually paid good, hard cash money to get a hold of a copy. Only a month late, I am pleased to announce that it is shipping! Not without glitches, of course. Life would be so boring if everything went to plan, now wouldn't it? The plan was that the printers would make a big pile of books. The bulk of these would be shipped to Liverpool where my publisher is based, and ten copies would be delivered to me in sunny Madrid to do with whatever I like. Hmm. Some bugger got it wrong. The doorbell rang at about noon today, and the nice (but sweaty) young man from UPS delivered box upon box of books into our micro-piso (if you've been following the plot, you'll know that we live in the world's smallest flat, but we love it because it's right in the middle of Madrid).
I've seen my name in print many times. But to stack up a bunch of books like this, well; it's a bit unusual.
So, I spent the afternoon printing shipping notes and address labels, printing and signing maps of Xanadu-du, signing the books themselves, and then packing up the pre-ordered books and taking them to the Post Office to wave goodbye to them. Please take note: no author that you've ever heard of went to such great lengths to keep his punters happy!
Actually, this cock-up didn't work out too badly: we saved a good old British pound on postage to the UAE. But we gained an extra one on postage to the UK.
Until the current stock is exhausted, you can get your book signed and personally taken to the Post Office by the author, and a signed colour map if I feel like it. So get on over to Xanadu-du, and place your order NOW!!!
What a shock! I remember when HRC was first built, and I thought 'what a crap location'. Now it's in the heart of New Dubai. I think I left Dubai at the right time: the powers that be have no idea how to build a city: they only know how to build buildings (well, some of them know how to build buildings). But cities are about much more than the buildings that they are made of: they're about soul and culture and character. Dammit.
Anyone can join this group: I wouldn't expect it to make a difference, but it would be nice to think that the authorities do take a bit of notice. Not that the evidence bears this out, of course: the Exiles and Country Club gone, Satwa and Safa Park under threat. Surely there must come a point where you stop throwing away the good stuff that you have and replacing it with tacky and soulless rubbish? Oh, sorry, this is Dubai.
Aaargh. We've had a couple of weeks of completely unexpected delay in the production of my wonderful novel. Firstly, I thought I had uploaded the files to the printer's website. There was no obvious way to verify this, so I emailed my 'client services representative', who ignored me for a few days and finally, after a whole wasted week, said the files had not been received by them, and explained the completely impossible-to-find way to find out what the situation is on their (absolutely bloody horrible) website. Marvlious.
So I uploaded the files again, and after a three-day wait the pre-flight crew in the US complained about 'multiple missing fonts'. We're talking about PDF files here, and standard practice when creaing PDFs is to embed any unusual fonts, but not to embed things like Arial or Times New Roman which are present on every PC and have direct equivalents on Macs, Linux boxes, etc. So these #$%#$^ in the US were quibbling about the absence of Arial and Times New Roman. Arial is actually used in the headers of the bookblock, but TNR appears nowhere. Anyhow, I had to produce and upload another file for the bookblock, and force the embedding of these common-as-muck fonts, and then wait another three days while they got around to opening it. Finally: two days ago the status was 'printing'. Yesterday, the status was 'shipped'.
Hopefully I will receive the proof copy tomorrow or the day after. If it's ok I can order the initial print run and fulfill the pre-orders that we have. So those of you who have not yet ordered your copy: the special offer of a full-colour map of Xanadu-du, signed by moi, still stands, but only until the point where the book goes into production. So get thee over to the Xanadu-du website and place thy order.
Driving on SZR always used to give me the willies, even in clear weather. Driving on it in fog had me turning religious and hoping there actually was a God who was listening to my prayers. Because the sad fact is that 99% of people on that road have no clue whatsoever about how you should drive in fog. This morning there has been absolute carnage on SZR. Accurate figures are yet to arrive, but we can say at least six dead, 300 injured, and 200 cars trashed. In one out of about five incidents. This is completely insane. Nobody seems to know or understand why this happened. I hate to be a smart-arse, but this is why it happened: they were going too fucking fast.
Simplissimo.
Gulf News gives some tips for driving in fog. Not bad, not wrong, but they missed the absolute crucial point. It's all to do with visibility and stopping distance. The GN article says 'slow down'. This needs to be expanded upon. What it should say is 'slow down so that you are confident that you can stop within the range of your visibility'. In dense fog, this can mean that you are travelling at 10 kmph. Or less. But it means that if you suddenly encounter a pile of 200 blazing wrecks, emerging out of the fog 6 metres ahead of you, you will be able to stop or avoid becoming wreck #201. It also means, of course, that there's a good strong chance of some other moron hitting you from behind. The only consolation is that they might be in the outer lanes while you are sticking to the inside one. If you possibly have the option: don't drive in fog.
Let me get really boring and repeat: if you can only see 10 metres ahead of you, you should not be travelling so fast that you cannot stop within, say, eight metres. Got it? Your car is probably no longer than 2.5 or 3 metres long. To be able to stop in such a short distance, you should be crawling at less than 10 kmph (166 metres per minute). And forget about being late for work. You are going to be late for work. And so is your boss and so are your colleagues. You will not score any Brownie points for beating them. Especially if you are dead.
The point is that in seriously thick fog, you must think like this: can I stop within the bounds of the wall of fog I see before me? If you don't think you can, SLOW DOWN!
Looking at my last few posts here, you could be forgiven that I've turned this blog into nothing more than an advert for my book (which you can buy here). Sorry an' all that. Here's a proper post.
The majority of the world's great cities are built on or near water: rivers, canals or creeks. And where you get a body of water dividing a city, you need to build the means to cross it. Ferries and tunnels are fine, but nearly invisible. Some cities have become defined by their bridges. Think of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Tower Bridge in London, the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol or the Forth Bridge near Edinburgh. They are all marvels of engineering design.
More recently we have the Millenium Bridge in London, which is purely for pedestrians. And what a beauty it is. It opens up a vista between St Paul's Cathedral and the Tate Modern Gallery, and is a superb example of what city governments can do to improve the environment for citizens.
So, I was very pleased today to come across images of a new bridge to be built across the Creek in Dubai on the UAE Community Blog. I've always thought that Dubai needed landmark bridges. The Maktoum and Garhoud Bridges are nothing to write home about: they are utilitarian devices for getting vehicles across the Creek without them getting wet. The Business Bay Crossing is also nothing more than a road over water. The new one, as yet unnamed, although I suggest that The Keefieboy Krossing would be a suitable name, is sexy, curvy, big and bouncy, and I love it! Kudos to the designers, FXFowle of New York and even to the RTA for commissioning it.
To those of you who have already pre-ordered a copy of my book: thank you, thank you! To the rest of you, here's a little incentive. Several of my buddies have expressed a wish that I sign their copy (in the mercenary and entirely unlikely hope that I turn out to be the next J.K. Rowling). Sadly this is not possible, because the books will be printed in Milton Keynes and sent out from Liverpool in sunny England, whilst I am stuck here in Madrid in (currently) cloudy Spain. So, here's the deal.
There is a map of Xanadu-du. It will be printed in greyscale in the book, and you may well need to refer to it in order to follow the action. Pre-orderers will get a full-colour version of that map (the same size as the book), personally signed by moi. Is that cool or is that cool? So get your order in: http://www.xanadu-du.com/books.
Have we gone to press yet? No. Awaiting final proofreading by Don Colin (no pressure mate!), and then we get a printer's proof, and then we are in production. We're still aiming at the end of February.
The deal with the printer is confirmed, so we are now taking orders for my fantastic book, Travels in Xanadu-du. Orders will be shipped before the end of February. So get clicking on the banner below.
I know you're all agog to know what's happening with my book, Travels in Xanadu-du, which I suggested might be hitting the market at the end of January (2 days from now). Guess what. Slight delay. We now have an ISBN for it (978-0-9558318-0-5), which means it exists as far as the cataloguing people are concerned. But you'll have a hard time buying it yet.
The files for the cover and interior are just about to go off to the printer for proofing. Once I've received and approved the proof, we'll be ready to rock. Or roll. Or whatever. We are told to expect a ten-day wait for the proof.
We'll be flogging the book from our website xanadu-du.com/books, with a pound off the cover price. In a few days you'll be able to pre-order it from the site - I'll let you know when. In a month or two it will be available from Amazon and orderable through any bookstore. We don't expect it to be stocked in bookshops because the economics would only work if you were prepared to pay about eighteen pounds for a paperback novel - retail booksellers like to have a 55% discount - if we gave them that we would be selling the book at below production cost! We're not gonna do that on account of needing to eat and stuff.
One interesting thing we've had to deal with is shipping costs. Couriers (FedEx, DHL etc) are outrageously expensive - they want 50 or 60 Euros to deliver a package. That's the fast service. They don't seem to offer a slowish service. I think it would be ok if they would take it end-to-end and get it to wherever in about a week for ten Euros or less. But no, they don't do that, what they do is rush around like blue-arsed flies and get it there in two days. Or three if you live in Alaska or Antarctica. So we are using the British Royal Mail for delivery. This is very fine for our primary market: next day or the day after in the UK. About three days in Europe (including all of Russia!). From five days for the rest of the world. The 'from' is interesting. What it means is they will dump the stuff with the postal authority of the concerned country. What happens to it and how long it takes after that is entirely down to your local postal service (sorry UAE!). But none of it costs you, the adored customer, more than 7 Euros.
If you ever find yourself visiting Madrid (the one in Spain, not any of the impostors), you could do worse than visiting this website: rent a flat in Madrid, Spain. My buddy Mike can sort you out with a flat or apartment, a piso (unimaginably small flat) or a room in a shared flat. They are all in the City Centre, and he has a huge selection of places available as short-term or long-term lets. Mike is a very nice guy, speaks English and Spanish fluently, and will help you out with any dealings with your landlord, utilities companies and the dreaded Telefonica.
I followed the Bush visits Dubai fiasco with great interest. And not a little relief that I wasn't tangled up in it - I'd have probably blown a gasket if I had been!
Major roads were closed without warning, a Public holiday was declared at six hours notice, people were stranded all over the place, and for what? For the security of the one man who poses the greatest threat to Middle East peace today. Unbelievable.
And there's Dubya in his limo.
'Pretty quiet around here, Abdullah.' 'Mohammed.' 'Whatever. There's no traffic, the buildings are all empty, what's all the fuss about?'
