Doomscrolling the Day Away

I have spent most of the past week trying to shake off a particularly tenacious cold. I'm usually quick to shake them off, but this feels like some mutant covid hangover. Very achy. The days start well but by the evening it has rallied again. It's left me feeling drained, and it is in this feeble state that I've been watching the internet reach a hysterical crescendo on the subject of AI. It is no longer coming for your job, it is here and ready to take it. I am reminded of the "THEY'RE HERE!" trailer for Poltergeist, only this time it isn't ghosts that are going to fuck your life up, it's tech billionaires. Is this a form of a mass psychosis? It certainly feels like something big is coming. As a software engineer, this year more than ever it seems like the coming wave is something that I have to figure out how to surf or get wiped out. It's existentially terrifying. 

If you are also feeling unglued from your previously imagined future, allow me to recommend some places to escape from the coming white-collar apocalypse. 

A CAVE

This is the classic retreat from modernity, as demonstrated by hermits through the ages. With no electricity there's no danger of accidentally doomscrolling the day away on X. I would recommend one somewhere in the warmer parts of Europe as the cave winters can be brutal. Since you'll be avoiding all human contact the language barrier won't be an issue. You can even put a sheet across the cave's entrance to give yourself an extra level of abstraction from the real world.

A BUNKER

AKA a new build cave. This comes with all the exorbitant costs of new build accommodation. On the other hand, bunkers are hot now, albeit very billionaire-coded. They are most likely outside your budget unless you can acquire an old missile silo in the middle of nowhere. A great hack for acquiring a bunker is to get employed as private security for a billionaire. When they inevitably screw the global pooch and retreat to the perceived safety of their own bunker, it will only be a short time before their head of security kills the now powerless idiot who hired them. Stay on his good side and you're golden.

A DESERT ISLAND

Another classic isolation destination. People usually end up there by mistake, which suggests they are easy to chance upon. There is a real danger that the island will sink as increasingly massive server farms accelerate global warming and melt glacial ice. The weather's bound to be good though. Pack a hat.

ANTARCTICA

The aforementioned global warming should make the place a bit more hospitable. The penguins can be quite noisy and the smell of their guano takes some getting used to, so take both ear and nose plugs. On the positive side, I am 100% confident that no penguin will ever be mad enough to add AI to MS Notepad.

THE MOON / MARS / SPACE IN GENERAL

The ultimate isolation but difficult to achieve. Also there is a non-zero chance that you find yourself stuck with Elon Musk.

#booktok

I've spent a lot of time on #BookTok lately. For the uninitiated, #BookTok is the subslice of TikTok that caters to everything to do with writing. It was, at first, illuminating. It is now frequently unhinged. It is everything I hate about the process of publishing a book. Now, I have only ever self-published a book, so I'm aware I'm very much firing shots from afar on this subject.

I'm not going to single out any particular content creators here. There isn't any single person I think is repeatedly giving terrible advice, it's just such a hotly contested subject that the massive spectrum of opinions is bound to contain some clunkers. So without further fanfare or handwringing, here are my favourite worst forms of bad advice on #BookTok and social media in general.

• Cover letters. These are presented with the expectation that their audience is in a cargo cult. I've yet to get representation myself, but if and when I do, I'm fairly sure it will be on the strength of my submission and not driven by the cover letter. Sure, the letter is important. A dreadfully written one could mean an agent doesn't even look at your sample. On the other hand, if the manuscript is good, no agent is going to dismiss you for not having a perfect cover letter, whatever that is. In my very unpublished opinion, agents are people and people have differing tastes. Some of them like some personal details, while others just want the facts of your submission. It's a bit of a lottery as to which is which, although #BookTok is helpful there because some agents are on it. My instinct is to make sure the salient details are first and foremost - genre, synopsis, comps. Anything else is sugar.
• Authorial self-promotion. This is wild. It is the worst. You wanted to be a writer? Surprise! Apparently you also have to be a content creator. I have so far avoided doing this, beyond this veiled alter-ego blog, because it is my nightmare. I like writing. As a creative process it is almost free. You can do it in your head. All that is required to share it is pen and paper. Obviously as a society and industry we have moved beyond that, but the process is fundamentally the same. The difficult part is getting other people to read it. In the past (and this may be the sort of false nostalgia that leads to even worse opinions than I'm expressing here) you would write a book, get an agent, sell the book, and if your publisher wanted you to do some signings or similar they'd sort it out. Otherwise there wasn't an expectation on you, the author, to also be your own PR agency. It is dispiriting. I've seen authors I admire posting relentlessly, and not always about their own work. I sometimes wonder whether this isn't another form of cargo cult. Have they got hard proof that their social media traffic is responsible for their book sales? I hope they do, but in a technological landscape where platforms have the means and motive to present misleading data, I am naturally distrustful. At the other end of this are the unpublished / self-published / maybe-just-experimenting people who I don't mean to cast shade on.
• Live streaming. I find this especially unhinged. Again, I hope those doing it are seeing some sales of the back of it, but I would rather never sell a book again than put myself through it. I've seen people live writing. I've even seen someone live editing. Who is this helping? Are there people out there who find the writing process mysterious and beguiling? Honestly, it is, to quote Douglas Adams, mostly staring at a blank page until your forehead starts to bleed. It can of course be many things, but none of them make for an engrossing spectator sport.
• The bots. That tantalising feeling when one of your posts has received a reply or someone has DM'd you. The latter should immediately get your spidey sense going because bots love DMs. They waste your time with stilted small talk before clumsily trying to sell you an editing/publishing/prostitution service. To be fair I see less of them now. Perhaps they have all been put out of work by Musk's Grok, leaving space for actual people to attempt to sell you editing/publishing/prostitution services in the comments.
• Finally, the endless calls to promote your work. I know or at least hope these come from a place of good intent, but they are endless and appear to do nothing but attract the previously mentioned bots. I suppose they are mostly harmless, but in a social media circle made almost entirely of writers, it feels like we're just a pack of dogs howling in the dark.

I don't intend any of the above to sound mean-spirited. Promoting books is difficult, and everyone has to do what they're driven to do. I've even heard some lunatic is planning on releasing their book on cassette for the ZX Spectrum! This could open new avenues for literary promotion. I should consider re-releasing my novel Dead Penguins on a dead penguin. I'm sure ZSL London would cheerfully help out for a suitable donation. That said, the shipping could be expensive as well as legally problematic. So maybe posting writing tips to #booktok isn't such a bad idea after all.

Something on the Piccadilly Line is Eating the Trains

Something on the Piccadilly Line is eating the trains. I am aware that this is an extraordinary claim, but I have no other explanation for what is happening. For background, I live on the Piccadilly Line. When it runs well, it's great and gets me everywhere I want to be. However, recently there have been many times when I have wondered what the point of a tube line is if it doesn't have any trains running. According to TFL, this is because the current stock is old. It suffers from wheel flats, and frequently requires repair while we impatiently await its replacement. Its replacement, a shiny new walk-through model similar to that on the Circle Line, has been delayed for reasons that are unclear. According to TFL, partial line closures are required to make way for the new stock, but I think it's clear by now that there's something TFL aren't telling us. And that is that something is eating the trains.

Consider the evidence. A lack of trains has often been blamed on wheel flats, which is where trains skidding on slippery rails wear unevenly. But couldn't these unevenly shaped wheels also be explained by something chomping them?

I wondered whether I was the first person to make this connection, so I did a little digging in the obscure corners of the internet. It was there that I learned of the Beast of Boston Manor.

The first mention of the beast is in 1975, a mere two years after the introduction of the current Piccadilly Line stock. A westbound driver reported seeing something leap from  the platform and under the train. Fearing the worst, he hit the brakes but after inspection there was no sign of the mystery leaper. It was subsequently ruled upon return to the depot that several of the wheels appeared worn flat, as though something had eaten away at them. This was the first reference to wheel flats on the line. The driver could add little light to the shape he saw dash under the train. It was brown and hairy, and exactly the same size and shape as an Alsatian dog.

There were no more sightings until 1988, when a train inexplicably lost power on the eastbound platform. In his incident report, the driver noted that immediately before the power cut, he had been surprised to see a passenger on the platform who looked uncannily like the writer / wizard / mall Santa / Rasputin impersonator Alan Moore. However subsequent detective work has determined that Alan Moore was in Northampton at the time.

As time passed, the age of the rolling stock became a convenient cover story for the beast. With trains being taken out of service all over the Piccadilly Line, is was clear that the beast had developed quite an appetite. Some have even speculated that it has nested in the Heathrow Loop, specifically at the suspiciously closed Terminal 1. The real reason for the delay in introducing the new stock is that during a test run, one of them was eaten there.

TFL have unofficially stated that there is no silver bullet for getting the new stock online, but they have been stockpiling actual silver bullets in stations around the network.

I attempted to contact TFL for comment, and after a couple of days received the following via email:

"Chew chew choo choo. Chomp chomp chomp. Beast will eat every train. Beast will eat everyone. Good service on all other lines."

There are Too Many Stairs in my Flat

You would think that a flat (or apartment to any American readers) would have no stairs at all, but often in the UK flats are made from subdivided houses, and sometimes you get a staircase from your front door to the flat proper. 

My flat is not like that. It is a new build with a door onto a communal corridor. It should by rights have absolutely zero stairs. This was certainly the case when I bought it, although I must admit it wasn't on my list of things to check. I've been living there for more than a decade now, so I expect some things to need repair. A heat alarm has recently packed in, which is to be expected given its age. The kitchen tap has become quite stiff and will need a plumber's attention soon. All fairly normal for a flat built to a cheap spec.

What I was not expecting to happen was that one day I would discover my bathroom was now upstairs. It first happened in the dead of night. To be fair I'd had a long evening in the pub and so it took a few crawled steps upwards to fully wake up to the situation. 

You may think the this would be an even bigger problem for my upstairs neighbour, who is presumably missing a bathroom-sized chunk of her flat. I couldn't formulate a way of enquiring without sounding like a lunatic, so instead I waited for her to complain. She did not. 

In time I got used to having an upstairs bathroom. I relished the extra shelf space the staircase offered, although I hated that I now had to hoover stairs even though I live in a flat.

I did start to worry about where the bathroom actually was. It's not like there's an abundance of space between the floors in my building. If sci-fi had taught me anything, it's that it's probably in another dimension. Hopefully one beyond Hackney council's tax banding assessors. I've watched a fair bit of horror too, and became concerned that my bathroom was now in an evil dimension. So far there hadn't been any possessions, so I'm probably overthinking it. The shower is never quite as hot as I'd like it, but that's more likely due to limescale in the thermal regulator than demonic plumbing. 

What would happen if I drilled a hole in the bathroom wall? What would I be able to see into? I put off this invasive exploration for as long as I could. It also applied to the stairs. They passed though where my bathroom used to be, even though they take up less space. 

Curiosity got the better of me so I opened the hallway cupboard to find my electric drill. However to my shock the cupboard was empty. My first thought was that I'd been burgled, but then I saw that in place of the shelves and the washer dryer was another staircase. These led down, into darkness. Using my phone's torch, I descended gingerly. At the bottom I found a small room. There was a light switch at the bottom of the stairs. I clicked it on and saw the contents of the cupboard installed along one wall. The washer dryer was even plumbed in. Plumbed into what, I couldn't say. Would I receive an extra dimensional water bill? 

This time I didn't worry about my downstairs neighbour. Presumably this didn't affect them in the same way as the bathroom hadn't affected the woman upstairs. The bathroom had been an eccentricity. The cupboard becoming a whole room was a definite improvement. 

I remembered the drill, and found it in its expected place amongst the shelves. It was time for some investigation. Walking up a ridiculous two flights of stairs to the bathroom, I selected an unobtrusive patch of wall and drilled through it. When I felt it clear the second sheet of plasterboard, I lowered the drill and peered through the hole. I could see my kitchen. I was certain it was my kitchen because I could see all the fridge magnets on my fridge door.

In some respects this was to be expected. As built, the bathroom does share a wall with the kitchen. The cupboard however had expanded into a room. What would happen if I drilled into the walls there? I decided that was enough interdimensional tunnelling for one day. 

I woke up that night gripped by the realisation that the hole between the kitchen and bathroom could be turned into a perpetual motion machine. If I fed a hosepipe through it, then down the stairs and back into the kitchen I could join it in a loop where water would constantly flow downhill. Were my practical skills up to the task of turning this into a generator and cutting my electricity bill? Something told me that breaking the laws of physics would have more severe consequences than fiddling my electricity meter. I put the idea on the back burner. I would probably manage to electrocute myself anyway.

In the morning I discovered that my idea was moot. The kitchen, which is usually a nook at the back of the living room, was now also upstairs. Like the cupboard, it was also now significantly bigger and included an island. I had never imagined I'd be posh enough to have a kitchen island, yet there it was. The fridge, which has once loomed, now looked rather small. I wondered how I would explain the mysterious floorplan of my flat when the fridge inevitably breaks and needs replacing. Maybe this sort of thing happens all the time and everyone's afraid to mention it. Perhaps there's a corner of the internet where people swap stories. If there are, hook me up. I'm enjoying the extra space but worry where it will end. Also, sometimes when I'm in my expanded cupboard room, I am anxious that it might suddenly revert to its specified dimensions, which would almost certainly crush me to death. I read once about a hoarder who had been crushed in a tunnel collapse in her house. The tunnel had been through her room-bursting collection of tat. But what if her house had also spawned extra staircases to bigger rooms? What if she actually had the space for all that crap until suddenly and tragically, she didn't? 

I know what you're thinking, but no, this isn't an elaborate allegory. It isn't a tortured warning of staircasing shared ownership flats, although I do sometimes think it's a psychological manifestation of owning one. They are not without their problems, but they are all well documented in new articles featuring photos of glum couples sitting on their sofa, their latest crippling service charge bill laid bare on their IKEA Lack coffee table. I really do have three staircases in my flat, which is definitely three too many and there is not a whisper of such phenomena in the pages of the Guardian. Maybe I should give them a ring. I could explain how it has made me learn to do my own plumbing, which is no mean feat when you don't know what unearthly realm your pipes pass through to get to the bathroom. I have had to learn this because as hard as it is, it's easier than explaining the situation to a qualified plumber.

There is some good news however. The flat seems to have settled at three staircases. I might not be able to entertain any guests without them being a whole thing, but I have grown used to them. So why am I telling you all this? Well, mostly because as I mentioned earlier, they are an absolute bugger to clean. Can anyone recommend a lightweight vacuum cleaner with a really long lead?

Make Burgers Great Again

We used to call them beefburgers, on the very sensible basis that they are made of beef. As we have fought against transatlantic currents this has been shortened to simply burgers. Burger is short, to the point and crucially doesn't need bother you with its content. This is fine, and I have no problem with this linguistic shift. What I do have a problem with is the shift in proportions of said burger.

Burgers are essentially sandwiches. This makes even more sense when considering sandwiches outside of the relatively spartan prepacked meal deals of the UK. Burgers are substantial sandwiches, but fundamentally they are still meant to be eaten with your hands. Now, I know this isn't a particularly original observation, but at some point burgers went from a squat shape to a tall one that no longer fits in my mouth. This is something that perennially irks me. Why does it need to be so big? The ratio of height to diameter of some is now so large that it's almost a good eating strategy to skewer it through the centre of the buns and gnaw at it like corn on the cob. Inevitably I resort to pressing it down in an attempt to flatten it, removing slippery tomatoes or slicing it into more manageable chunks. Ultimately however I end up with grease everywhere and cheese stuck to my chin. There is little dignity in the process.

For some of you, this may not seem like much of a big deal. In fact some people may even enjoy the messiness of the process. If this is you, then I have good news - very soon your entire digital experience will be one gigantic, misshapen calamity that you will be incapable of handling without getting mess everywhere.

I've complained about AI and enshittification before. This is definitely part of the problem, but it's dangerously lazy to think that the worst will be done by AI being sloppy. The absolute worst will be done by people using it well. These people will be those who want to make money from you, and they will come at you from both ends of the law. At the one end, which currently drifts in a haze of legal possibilities, is privacy at scale. The zettabytes of data that now links us all in in a global network is ripe for exploitation. The boundary of that exploitation is constantly shifting, but as more wealth and power transfers to the tech giants, its direction of travel is a weakening of data protection in its most absolute sense. Exceptions are made, and with them our sense of what is normal shifts. When Facebook first introduced facial recognition there was a backlash of concern over privacy. However since then Google Glass has been and gone with less fuss, police forces routinely use facial recognition in western democracies and Ring have announced it as a new feature for their doorbell cameras. The latter is significant. The ubiquitous doorbells have enrolled large swathes of society into surveillance culture, to the point at which facial recognition has become an acceptable convenience.

So who cares if they're being recorded and maybe even recognised as they walk past someone's house? Aren't we all being recorded everywhere already? Absolutely, yes, we are. In most urban environments the major modes of video surveillance are traffic cameras, street-facing security cameras and internal security cameras in businesses and homes. Some of these are more secure than others, either by accident or design. It is theoretically possible to track your movement all day long by using these. What generally stops this being a real concern unless you have _really_ pissed off the authorities, is that all these systems are separate. It would take a team of skilled people to track you across such a network. Government agencies, with access to more private data such as interactions with contactless payment devices and so on stand a better chance of success. So why worry if you haven't done anything the government would be interested in?

Well, step in our old chum AI. The bottleneck that has been preventing the real-time surveillance of individuals is the greater than real-time required to process the colossal amount of data available at any one time. Chomping though this sort of data is something that AI is very good at however. It can easily (for some values of easy) compile details of a person's activities by collating video data matched by facial recognition and non-video data matched by location.

Again, you may think this is nothing to worry about. Why would people with such technology be interested in you? 

The problem at this point is that it will no longer be just the authorities that can do this. Other actors with different ambitions will seize the opportunity. We already see this in action through older technology. Cold callers talk pensioners into investing into a scam. Phishers trick you into clicking on the wrong link. Some of the latter can be hard to spot if you're not paying attention, especially on a phone, which is where most of our online interactions are right now. Can you trust that the person who sent you the link hasn't been hacked or spoofed? You're internet savvy, you can figure this out. But then, while you're trying to work out whether to click on said link, you get a facetime from your sister. Her car has broken down again and she can't pay for the repair. Your phone doesn't recognise the contact but that is barely noticeable. You recognise your own sister. So does your phone - it helpfully tags her onscreen. Besides, the last few Facebook posts you'd seen from her had been griping about how her car was on its last legs. And you can afford to lend her the money after that #cheltenham win. Just click the convenient link she's provided and give it no further thought.

It's an audacious scam, but one which will be automated. It will be automated at some point in the near future, but it will mostly operate in the past. This isn't a time-travel conundrum. It's the other part of the AI surveillance puzzle, which is our collective internet history.

Interacting with the internet is rarely completely anonymous, especially if you spend any time in some form of public space, be that a publicly available website or social media platform. You have a history, and unlike your browser history, flushing it is not a one-click operation. It's all out there for anyone to find. Again, in the recent past this was not necessarily a problem unless you attracted a determined stalker. But here comes AI again, with its tireless ability to search and collate information. It can work through social networks and the wider internet, discovering trusted connections between people, be they family or friends. Furthermore it can use their conversations to work out which connections are most easily exploited - it can see your sister complaining about her car. It has seen you boast about your winning bet on the horses. That is the tricky part, and will be played like traditional email spam, as an overwhelming numbers game where they just need a few bites to make it worthwhile. The easy part is the part that used to be hard. With a trail of photos and videos behind you both, it will be trivial for the same AI agent that targeted you to create a live simulation of your sister. It will look and sound like her. It will know her history from her online history and use that to engage with you and keep you on the parameters it has been tasked with keeping you on until you transfer the money. It can even use the previously mentioned public and unsecured cameras with facial recognition to track you both so it can work out the most opportune moment to initiate the scam.

I don't know the answer to this. I have a nagging urge to erase my internet presence completely, but (a) the internet is kind of home at this point and (b) I'm not convinced it's possible. So maybe I can solve the burger problem instead. Is it fundamentally about keeping a low profile? I'm not sure, but in the interests of fending off attention from future malignant AI agents, I find them all too expensive for what they are.

I'm Going to Write a Bestseller

To date I have self-published one novel (Dead Penguins, still available via Amazon), written a second and third that I haven't published yet, and am in the final stages of editing a fourth. The first would stretch the definition of the word seller, leaving bestseller a distant fantasy. Of the others, who knows? However I wrote them before I stumbled upon the formula for writing a guaranteed bestseller. You can write one too by following my meticulously researched guide, available as a PDF upon payment of, let's not be greedy, £20. 

I kid of course. Social media is littered with such schemes, mostly spearheaded by unscrupulous people whose real skill is getting suckers to part with their money. On the modern internet, it seems everyone's in it for a quick buck, and the corner frequented by writers is no exception. DMs purporting to be friendly exchanges rapidly turn into an attempt to sell you a service or product. More often than not these days it isn't even a person contacting you, but a sketchy AI bot operating on a sketchy person's behalf. It can be quite demoralising. 

But take heart! It isn't all bad. I really do have a guide to writing a bestseller, and furthermore I am presenting it right here, for free. You're welcome. There is one small catch however, which some of you may have already spotted. That's right, I have not actually published a bestselling book yet. This is a minor detail, especially since you are getting this low-down for exactly zero of your hard-won pounds / dollars / groats. 

THE FIRST CHAPTER IS THE MOST IMPORTANT 

Readers don't have time to waste working out whether your novel is worth reading. You have to sock them in the chops with a massive metaphorical fish in not just the first chapter, but the first page. Specifically, slush pile readers and agents don't have time to read much beyond the start so it's essential that your book should be what is known in the trade as 'unputdownable'. Don't attempt to achieve this by putting superglue on the cover, I tried it and subsequently couldn't get the book out of its envelope. 

You should hit the ground running in the first chapter. Consider how much introduction the characters and plot really need. If it takes time to get a scene in motion, start halfway through it. Maybe start with chapter two instead. Why is your book so long anyway? Who really needs the first half? Start the story halfway through. Better yet, start at the end and work your way backwards. Non-linear storytelling is hot and you can edit by constantly rearranging the order of the chapters until it makes sense. 

THE FOURTH CHAPTER IS ALSO IMPORTANT 

This depends on how long your chapters are, but you will expend so much time and effort getting the first three positively crackling with energy that you will inevitably take your foot off the accelerator and let the whole thing kind of coast for a while. This is bad. This is where you have not just given yourself a break - you have given your reader a break too. There is a very real chance that they will not resume reading after they have been to the loo or gone to the pub or done whatever it is you imagine your imaginary readers do. 

The accelerator analogy is apt. Your book should be like the film Speed (but not Speed 2. See later point about boats) in that you want your reader to think they might die if they stop reading it. Do not take this literary advice literally by writing the fourth chapter in the second person and telling your readers that the cover is coated in a highly toxic substance. This would most likely send them first to the hospital and then, in my experience, the police. Instead, write something exciting, or at the very least make it interesting. I shouldn't have to tell you this, but you'd be amazed how many books have seemingly been written without bearing it in mind. 

YOUR BOOK IS NOT A BOAT 

This section exists mainly as a callback to an earlier cheap gag. That said, your book is not a boat, it's a book. Hang on though - a book that is also a boat could be a popular novelty for people who like to read in the bath. Right, I'm claiming dibs on this idea, so don't get any notions about making a book with an inflatable cover or shaped like a fish. Although on second thoughts you can have the fish idea. That's a whole other thing that I don't want to get into. 

THE PLOT SHOULD BE WATERTIGHT 

I know I've just said your book is not a boat, but it should go without saying that the plot needs to be watertight. While some of your readers may not notice the more subtle plot holes, they still run the risk of sinking the whole business. Look, okay - maybe your book is a bit like a boat after all. 

Test readers are good for spotting flaws in the plot, but ideally you want to deal with them at the planning stage. If you make up the plot as you write, then well done, but you will need to keep your eye on the plot as you go. In either case, you will also want to be careful when editing, because a change of order here, an embellishment there and deletions everywhere can leave the reader without crucial context to make sense of your story. Writing an outline helps, but ultimately the only defence is careful reading of your manuscript, considering what the reader and the characters know at every turn. If you do miss something that is later picked up by readers, there is a potential way out. Simply bluff that you wrote it that way because the ambiguity makes it interesting. In the film world this technique has worked well for Ridley Scott in his recuts of Blade Runner which everyone agrees added ambiguity despite the suggested reading making absolute nonsense of much of the plot. 

MAKE A SACRIFICE TO THE ELDER GODS 

The UK bookselling world is dominated by Amazon and Waterstones. You could try appealing to them but you are less than an insect on an elephant's back to them. Instead you should appeal to the elder gods. Now almost forgotten, they will hear you much more clearly. Before anyone contacts the police or the RSPCA, I'm not advocating the sacrifice of anything living. Instead it should be something totemic, such as a library card or book token. Place them upon a makeshift altar, douse them in petrol and set fire to them while incanting a prayer to WH Smith. 

WRITE ENGAGING CHARACTERS 

This may sound a bit similar to the advice about writing something exciting, but there is something more specific about characters. Market research shows that people enjoy characters that they can see themselves in, so try to think about what sort of character your readers would see themselves in. Resist the urge to make the protagonist a wealthy person who spends all their money buying your books because that could get weird and recursive. 

There's an old canard about authors basing their characters on people they know. This is of course a terribly embarrassing thing to do, and you should avoid it by basing your characters on people you don't know instead. These tend to be famous people, and as such, the mettle of the personalities has already been tested in the public arena. Alternatively you could devise a character from scratch, but unless you name the derivative one Captain Lames T Berk, I doubt anyone would notice. 

INCLUDE THESE ELEMENTS IN YOUR BOOK 

Finally, a paper cut from the bleeding edge of modern fiction. I have had a large language model analyse the synopses of the last five years of bestsellers, and had it use that to predict what's going to be hot in the next couple of years. So here, in no particular order (it didn't want to order them no matter how much I begged) is a list of themes, subjects, settings, etc. that will boost your chances of success: 

• The seasonal change from autumn into winter

• Foxes

• The number 23

• Exactly five bananas

• The internet as an allegory for religious doubt

• Seismometers

• The dollar price of a barrel of oil in 1972

• Wealth in a post-capitalist society

• Cat videos as blank verse

• The last TV programme

• Fridge magnets in a world with no fridges

• Frank Muir: Lust for Glory

• Geiger counters

• Gerhard Richter keeps getting the same number

• Tech billionaire is sad

• Kidderminster

• People who work from home and never see anyone

• International espionage via internet-enabled fridges

• The price of a Tesco meal deal vs the number of people dating via apps

• Talking dogs

• Sweatshops in the UK

• Your dustbin has reported you to the council

• What would Garfield do?

• Nailing the front door shut from the inside

• Telepathic fish

Page Turner

(Excerpt from How to Publish a Book by Timothy L. Marx, 1928)

My so-called chums at the club have been getting rather snippy about our friend Cuthers lately. Asking how his latest novel is coming along, and whether it's been translated into English yet, that sort of barbed cajolation. It's water off a slow duck's back to Cuthers of course. The man could withstand a full verbal assault of his mental faculties and remain cheerfully aloof. If only I were the same. Since I have effectively become his literary agent, I take these slights against his admittedly also slight talents deeply personally. Something would have to be done about the situation before I responded in a way that would get me censured by the club.

On leaving one evening under a considerably pregnant cloud, I strode down Wardour Street at a pace that only a man propelled by his own furious disappointment can fully maintain. This was certainly true in my case, as I ran out of steam turning the corner into Brewer Street, whereupon I paused to collect myself. On a nearby wall a poster was picked out by the streetlight. It was advertising a public reading of Conan-Doyle's Sherlock stories. I groaned with such gravity that a passing lady, who I recognised as a regular around those parts, cackled at my misfortune in a way that unsettled the gentleman who was escorting her. It was then my turn to be amused as she turned up her feminine charm before he made his escape, leaving their transaction incomplete.

Conan-Doyle had caused me some recent headaches, but returning to the fly poster, I saw that it wasn't the great writer himself doing the reading. It was someone I'd never heard of before. I don't recall the name exactly, but the fact I didn't recognise it got the old brainbox beating a happier drum. What if I got Cuthers to do a public reading? Not of his own work of course, that doggerel won't stand up to the public scrutiny of an auditorium. However it seemed that Sherlock Holmes was fair game. I could coach him into reading some Sherlock Holmes tales, then flog his knock-offs to the audience afterwards. I was so delighted with this revelation that I winked at the poster before wending my way home.

Persuading Cuthers was surprisingly easy. In retrospect I had vastly under-estimated his ego, and there was no question that he would want to undertake a public reading, even if it were somebody else's text. At the time of course I was merely delighted that he was so agreeable to the idea, and quickly arranged the use of a room upstairs in a pub in Fitzrovia. This may seem small given my prior mention of auditoria, but I thought it best to start small, given how badly wrong schemes involving Cuthers had gone before.

I should not have worried. The reading went well. Cuthers proved to be an engaging reader, and perhaps this is his best role, acting as a conduit between a genuinely talented author and a willing audience. In a way he was pipe in a plumber’s scheme, and to my delight I managed to route some money through that pipe. The audience was modest, but I sold a few copies of Cuthers' books. With each one, I was anticipating larger future audiences and greater profits.

My plan went swimmingly at first. The bookings increased, as did the books sold. The possibility of breaking even on this whole ridiculous enterprise was tantalisingly close. Then, alas, I booked him in at a small theatre in Islington that I am forbidden to name by legal agreement.

The crux of the problem was one of projection. According to Cuthers, reading from a book in front of a small audience in a relatively small room was fine because everyone could hear him clearly enough, even when he was also occupied with the whole business of turning the pages of said book. He further explained that he had been to see a classical pianist perform recently, and he had someone sitting behind him who turned over the sheets of music for him. That, he said, would be appreciated in an oratory scenario such as that we were about to enter.

I was in two minds about this. My most immediate thought was that I wasn't going to pay someone to turn the pages of a book for him. The second was that the premise was ridiculous. For pianists, changing pages of the score takes a hand away from the keyboard, whereas when reading aloud, no hands are required. I put this to him and after a worrisome period of mental digestion Cuthers agreed that he could in fact read and turn pages at the same time in a larger venue.

The argument settled, I introduced him on stage then left to set up my bookstall at the rear of the theatre. I was only as far as spreading an attractive silk sheet over a trestle table when it became apparent that my star had become frozen in the limelight. I hurried along stage left to reach a position where I could anonymously hiss at him from the wing.

He held the book against his face to hide the words he mouthed at me. Apparently he didn't think he could project his voice far enough with a book held in front of him. Ideally, he explained, the words would be projected nearby, somewhere in front of him so that he could read them without the distraction of the physical book. I told him he was talking absolute kedgeree and fiddle-poke. There was no way I could devise such a contraption in time for the reading, which I reminded him was supposed to be happening at that very instant. He should just get on with it. We could discuss improvements afterwards.

He was adamant, and the crowd was becoming restless. I weighed the important considerations, such as how many books I needed to pay for the hire of the theatre, and relented. I magnanimously emerged from the wings to take up the offer of page turner. I make no bones about it being beneath me, as my main thoughts were with getting out of there financially ahead. Had Cuthers played me? I cannot say, as matters become even murkier when he accidentally chinned me while handing me the book.

What happened next is unclear. Cuthers excuse is that I had snatched the book from him in a very agitated manner, and caught off-guard, he hadn't immediately released his grip. The consequence of this was that I punched myself in the face with the hand clutching said book. The less clear turn of events is what followed the punch. I regard myself a gentleman, so the reports of my stripping down to my waist and demanding settlement by the Queensbury rules is both unthinkable and also likely, in that order.