Publishing date etc for 'The Well of Shadows', my memoirs of the London Underground

Here's the publicity blurb (forgive the ad-man journalese):
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‘...Nobody ever notices postmen somehow', said Father Brown, '...yet they have passions like other men…’
(‘The Invisible Man’ from ‘The Innocence of Father Brown’ by GK Chesterton, 1911.)

As it is with postmen, so it is with the uniformed gateline staff on the London Underground. Invisible to most busy commuters, unless as an object of complaint or vilification, the figure in the glass box is barely credited by passengers with having any interior life at all.

Everything changes with the publication of former Customer Service Assistant Ed O’Regan’s Dante-esque memoir of over 13 years’ service in the living hell of London’s Tube network where ghouls stalk the tunnels, passengers sometimes die, Management morph into Dad’s Army’s Captain Mainwaring and the poor bloody infantry on the front line have somehow to cope with whatever is thrown at them. Some are born mad, some achieve madness and some have madness thrust upon them.

A former theatre worker and Further Education lecturer, Ed’s unlikely decision to toil beneath the city streets is prompted by an I Ching reading after experiencing a series of mid-life crises, and his account of an inglorious ‘career’ is peppered with references as diverse as Hieronymus Bosch and Morrissey, William Hogarth and The Rolling Stones.

As the wallpaper inside CSA O’Regan’s skull unfolds, no reader of ‘The Well of Shadows’ will ever see the man in the glass box in quite the same light again.


“…highly enjoyable reading.”
(The London Magazine)

“I found your project a truly interesting one and felt that your writing style is both intriguing and engaging, straight from the beginning. You have a skill for making a scene come alive before the reader’s eyes, a skill which lends itself well to exploring the subject matter you have chosen…”
(Canongate Publishers)

“We read it with enthusiasm and were impressed by its originality and engaging style.”
(The Susijn Agency)

Here's a short extract:
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THE WELL OF SHADOWS

(In which ancient Chinese Taoist sages consign me to a life of near-oblivion in the belly of the beast.)

When Joe Strummer was trying to decide whether to pack in his old band, the 101-ers, and join a highly speculative venture called The Clash, he consulted the ancient and powerful divinatory oracle the I Ching: the Chinese Book of Changes. On the face of it, this seems a very un-punk- indeed, a decidedly hippyish- course of action. But Joe and Johnny Rotten and your weary narrator were of a generation caught between two distinct cultural moments. Early photos of Johnny show him with a long, lank, distinctly unspiky barnet- rather like my own in the days when I had much hair. And so casting the old yarrow stalks was not as odd a step as perhaps it seems.

By the mid-1990’s, I was 40 and broke. My ambitions as a playwright had garnered a couple of London fringe productions, a few readings, the odd workshop and very little money. I badly needed a regular job for a while, money in the bank, and in a moment of weakness my eyes alighted on a recruitment ad for London Underground staff.

What could a poor boy do? The yarrow stalks it was. This was the Taoist response:

48 THE WELL, CHING
Keywords: Communicate, connect, draw on the water

The hexagram figure shows inner penetration flowing out into the world. Above the wood there is the stream. Turn potential conflict into creative tension. When what is above is confined, what is below is reversed. The well means interpenetrating and free communication. It is the earth in which the power to realize tao is grounded. It means staying where you are but shifting your ideas by differentiating what is right. Work for the common good at humble tasks to encourage fortunate meetings. Inner penetrating reaches to the stream and brings it to the surface. The well nourishes without being exhausted. You can change where you live, but you can’t change the well. It is the solid centre. If you only bring up mud, your rope isn’t long enough. You haven’t achieved anything yet. If you ruin the pitcher used to hold the water, you will be cut off from the spirits and left open to danger…..
(From Stephen Karcher’s The Elements of the I Ching.)

Well (sic), naturally I couldn’t make head nor tail of all this apparent mumbo-jumbo. Did it mean Yes or No? Should I join the London Underground or not? Don’t ask me why, but somehow- after much head-scratching- I came to the conclusion that it meant Yes. Perhaps I saw some superficial resemblance between a well shaft and the mouth of a Tube tunnel? I don’t know. But I joined the company, and received my first posting to the old East London line.

It was about eighteen months before the penny finally dropped.

My first posting was to Shadwell station: a deep-level tunnel section station near the Thames, notoriously wet, pumps working continuously, a near-waterfall at the end of platform 1. The parish of Shadwell was originally nothing more than a series of murky drainage ditches. Shadwell: the Well of Shadows.

Here are the details and the money bit:
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The money bit:

The full title of the book is 'The Well of Shadows: Underground London'.

The subtitle is 'Thirteen Years in the Belly of the Beast'.

The projected publication date is 14th February 2013.

The publisher is The Yellow House at Arles (i.e. me).

The ISBN number is 978-0-9575100-0-5

The medium is Kindle.

The price is £9.99.

...oh yes, and Author: Ed O'Regan

Bravo, Eddie! I always bet your real name was Ed (or Egan-- ), hope you stuck to the truth as well in the grateful work of writing



My love, my life: what we had was very beautiful | but I think maybe we didn't know how to understand each other deeply | My love, my life:

but I think maybe we didn't know how to understand each other deeply | Darling: we had a positive experience | although we didn't

Dear Rolando: let's be honest and admit | we never understood each other | you we never understood each other me


Rolando: never, ever, | in your fucking life you tried to understand me, or anybody or...


BYE WORM

^

pinhedz wrote:Just in time for Christmas--and it looks like a winner judging from the teasers so far.

Needless to say, I want to be on the list of those requesting a digitally signed copy. [and two copies of T-boy's "erotical" version ].

And--first priority (since ER has the numbers ATU lacks)--we have to keep the "Well of Shadows" thread on ER bumped up until everyone is done with their Christmas shopping.

You're an absolute charmer, Pinz.

Happy Xmas to you and Mrs Pinz.

pinhedz wrote:Just in time for Christmas--and it looks like a winner judging from the teasers so far.

Needless to say, I want to be on the list of those requesting a digitally signed copy. [and two copies of T-boy's "erotical" version ].

And--first priority (since ER has the numbers ATU lacks)--we have to keep the "Well of Shadows" thread on ER bumped up until everyone is done with their Christmas shopping.

Christmas 2013 judging by the publication date of February next year.

...eddie!!!!

congratulations.

I've been writing to the copyright holders of quotations by other authors, song lyrics & visual images for use in 'The Well of Shadows'.

I find myself presently engaged in a correspondence with the Paris agents for the estate of the late French philosopher, M. Jean-Paul Sartre, about permission to use appropriate short quotations from the great man, such as "Hell is other people" (from 'Huis Clos'). The context I've supplied- about the London Underground being hell on earth- ought to appeal to French feelings of superiority about the Paris Metro system.

It's all straight out the 'Pepperpot' sketches in Monty Python.

blue moon wrote:...eddie!!!!

congratulations.

Hi, Moony. Long time...How's things?

A museum in Vienna has just charged me £80+ for a b/w reproduction of a detail from Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 'Tower of Babel' for the front cover of 'The Well of Shadows'. The institution in question is called, appropriately enough, something like the Kuntsmuseum. Think I'm going to be drastically reducing the number of illustrations in 'The Well of Shadows'.

Here it is, except in b/w:

I thought old paintings or writings didn't charge for reproduction

soʎnʇ sol ʎ sǝıʇuɐd sıɯ wrote:I thought old paintings or writings didn't charge for reproduction

Unfortunately, with much damage to my wallet, you'd be wrong- about most visual images (except, apparently, engravings), at any rate. Literary copyright expires after 70 years, but this is not true, it appears, of 'old master' paintings. Copyright law is very strict. If I screw up on just one reference/lyric/image, I'll be dragged through the courts, and whatever meagre profit I might make on this enterprise would be wiped out- in spades. You've got to be VERY careful.

Doc Watson wrote:

pinhedz wrote:And--first priority (since ER has the numbers ATU lacks)--we have to keep the "Well of Shadows" thread on ER bumped up until everyone is done with their Christmas shopping.

Christmas 2013 judging by the publication date of February next year.

then it'll have to be everybody's valentine's present

and if eddie included a photograph of it he or someone not claiming money had taken he wouldn't have to pay? shouldn't it be in any case they should have charged the photographer directly? or if they charge the photographer the money to be paid varies depending on its last use?

pinhedz wrote:I think the situation is that the copyright expires--which means no money is due to the original artist--but a copy still has to be obtained from a party that already has a copy, so you have to pay the owner of the copy to get a copy of the copy.

Yes, that's more or less the position. Mad, isn't it?

I'm publishing this book on a limited budget, so I'm just going to have to drastically reduce the number of visual images I'd like to use. Shame really: some good joke-captions will have to be cut.

But anyway, it's the quality of the actual writing that counts. I think mine is (mostly) good enough.

soʎnʇ sol ʎ sǝıʇuɐd sıɯ wrote:and if eddie included a photograph of it he or someone not claiming money had taken he wouldn't have to pay? shouldn't it be in any case they should have charged the photographer directly? or if they charge the photographer the money to be paid varies depending on its last use?

As I understand it, if I took a photo of the Mona Lisa, I would own the copyright on that image. But sadly, the Louvre know this all too well, so they don't allow photographs of any quality to be taken of the painting. Cleft stick.

eddie wrote:Hi, Moony. Long time...How's things?

It's great to see you posting again eeddie. Things are good.
I've been in remission from posting for a while.
I went south to visit my youngest daughter for 3 weeks, then east to visit my eldest.
Then back to work. The season's over, the fleet's in and the trawlers unloaded. I've got a dodgy elbow and 2 damaged fingers from wayward prawn cartons, but I think time'll heal all.
The Wet season is in full swing...the heat is toxic and the deluge is about to begin, and the threat of a cyclone won't be far away.
Not great to be refitting boats at the moment...under the blistering sun.
But I'll have a break soon. Some of the trawlers are going to go to New Guinea to be slipped, and I'll be doing the delivery on one of them...a nice cruisy job. The trawlers have extreme air-conditioning!

Publishing...who knew the rigours?

blue moon wrote:2 damaged fingers from wayward prawn cartons, but I think time'll heal all.

A sentiment the like of which is rarely encountered in Bow Common Lane, E3.

pinhedz wrote:" ... so there ain’t nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I’d a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it, and ain’t a-going to no more."

Precisely. Thank God it'll all be done and dusted by February.

I'm still in the stone age about online books and publishing.
But I'll download your book and print it...I've some lovely paper I bought in Vietnam that should do it justice.

um...how do I go about accessing it when it's available (stone-age, remember).