The Real David Zax

Here's part of a review of Extremadura that shows how closely the reviewer went over the pages, he wrote:

Dialogue makes this work, the writing style is sharp and brittle-very film noir-and the characters are really paper thin characatures, this is a big compliment for this type of novel; it's just what you need. The book is different; it's very good.

I'm proud of the dialogue, when I began the novel it was a weaker point in my writing, more than one reviewer commented after reading, that I should write a screenplay, the dialogue works well.

I'll put up some more review extracts here soon.

In the latter part of the eighties I spent some time in Sydney where I was in a hotel and I met a man who was from New Zealand who was so totally out of a mind full of ignorance and absolute stupidity.

Here's what he told me one night:

(Him) "I can't find any fucking food in this fucking country, I've been walking around all day and these fuckers don't know what I'm fucking looking for, I can't fucking find real food here and I think (the name of his town in New Zealand) Is the only fucking place where you can buy real fucking food."

Me: "What are you looking for?"

(Him) "Basgaddi"

(Me) Basgaddi, i've never heard of it what does it look like?"

(Him) I looks like fucking worms and it comes in fucking tins and it's in fucking tomato sauce."

(Me) "It's called spagghetti it's from Italy."

(Him) They fucking got it over there? These fucking cunts here in fucking Australia have never heard of Basgaddi."

(Me) People know about Spaghetti in Italy, they have noddles there too, they come from China."

(Him) "Fucking China, fucking pot noodles, I eat those fuckers, I thought they only fucking had e'm in (name of his corner shop in his town in New Zealand?")

(Me) Thats right in China and Italy they have Basgaddi."

(Him) Why don't they have fucking Basgaddi in fucking Australia because in (name of his town in New Zealand) That's the only fucking place in the world apart from Italy and China that knows anything about fucking Basgadd, they sell it and lots of people I know eat it."

(Me) Let me help you out here, I know where you can buy tins of Basgaddi, give me some money and I'll get some for you tommorrow.

The next day I gave him 24 cans of Basgaddi and he ate two of them straight out of the tin right there in front of me after he opened them and ate them cold with his fingers.

Can you imagine not knowing what Spagghetti is after living for over 20 years in a country that has schools you are required to attended by law for more than a decade?

True story, if you have anything like this get in touch.

Like the story I saw of the thirty year old woman on Jaimie Olivers patronising food trip to Rotherham, she had two children and she didn't know when she was asked the question how to tell Jamie Oliver when water had reached boiling point.

I'm interested here in people who hate knowledge, they seem to be in every first world nation and they openly scorn anyone who looks around them and asks simple questions about what it means to be alive.

From what I've seen there are millions of them.

A thirty year old mother of two who has a well equipped kitchen and who is not embarrassed to admit on national TV in front of several million people that she doesn't know how to boil water?

I have my work listed up on a website where the sponsors first want you to describe your work.
To be listed you have to show prospective readers two blurbs.
These are the words that you see on the back of a book cover that is trying to reel you in, hopefully words that will draw you in with such enthusiasm, you'll buy the book.

Because I have no publisher I had to write my own blurb where I have to tell everybody how great a writer I am.
There are two ways publishers want you to express what you're doing.
They want a blurb of no more than twenty five words for what they call the short blurb,that's the words they put in capitals on the back cover.
Then they want a second blurb not in excess of two hundred words.
Here's my first twenty three words I wrote for my opening blurb that has to be below twenty five words.

Frank Shakespeare has run his own business for twenty years.

After he's forced to relocate he's back on track; but for how long?

Here's the second blurb that follows:

Murderous Mafiosi swinging hammers at Peter Wankofski's girlfriends' head.
Humphrey Bogarts' honeymoon home in Madrid, the alcoholic daughter of a British newspaper heiress whose wrestling her crazed out of control husband in front of a crowd who are glad to get the chance to look at idiots brawling on a street in front of them in Athens.
The daughter of the director of a major Italian car manufacturer who is also on the board of Serie A football giants Juventus.
The fashion magazine editing offspring of doplomats and Rob Souvlaki, a Greek American who works for The State Department, all of them crossing Frank in recent weeks.
He's constantly being told he has nowhere to go, he should give it up.
Good and bad people belong in fairy tales and other fiction, who can Frank Shakespeare give himself up to?
London, Ammsterdam, Calcutta, Kuala Lumpar, Athens, Barcelona, Madrid and Extremadura, Frank's nerves are shot and he can't get free no matter where he tries to go.
Frank's locked himself inside a spinning tumble drier and he can't get out,
Is a goat shepherd's shack overlooking a village in the Autonomous region of Extremadura the place where he can pull himself together or is it the final stop?
He's about to find out.

One of the bigger pleasures I get from living in Taipei is that i'm living in a city where almost everyone knows about good food.
I'm from England and this is one reason I don't live there.
In the market the older ladies were picking up fresh produce.
It's hard to believe if you get all your produce from a giant mega market where you buy and eat the stuff that has an impossible colour and has been in suspended animation for the past two years what its like to watch serious cooks shop.

You stand behind them and watch as they harrangue a vendor to desperation before buying a kilo of broad beans off him.

I was involved waiting in such a scrum when this woman caught sight of me and ran through the crowd to pitch her product.
She had trouble getting to me because she was dressed at nine am in a human size tetra pac that advertised an American vitamin drink.
She had a green face and looked like the jolly green giant dessed in a box.

"Are you American?"

"No I'm English."

Same thing, what did you have for you're breakfast?"

"Coffee and toast."

"Would you like to lose wieght, this vitamin supplement from America will help you lose wieght if you drink it every morning."

"I don't want to lose wieght."

If you want to gain wieght the same drink will help you do it."

"You mean that same drink will help me gain wieght if I want it to, and lose wieght if I want that?"

"Yes to lose wieght you should drink a little and to gain wieght you should drink a lot."

This is what some people have been reduced to, I left her there behind me wearing her tetra pac with her green face looking for somebody else.

I sent out twenty thousand words of my novel to a group of authors who contribute to a website run by a major publishing house. It's generated an overwhelmingly positive response from some established writers, After an encouraging start that led to me to today spending four hours responding to my new e-mails I'm ploughing ahead and will be submitting it to publishers.

One company who will get a look at it say's on it's website that writers who submit work should expect to wait up to six months to get a response.

I'm preparing my submissions, if I don't get picked up i'll publish the book myself, I'll have to give the publishers at least six months to read my work and decide if they want to take me on before I decide to take that route. Whatever happens the book will be published, there are too many people now who want a copy of it.

One of the bonuses of completing a novel worthy of being read is exposure to other writers, I love writing, I'm not going to stop, I've begun the work I need to begin a second novel. I know after my first experience that given enough money from an advance that would enable me to write ten hours a day I can give up the next one inside six months.
If I have to finance it myself it may take a year.
Money from the finished article is not my goal here.
I'm a born storyteller I want to put out my work.

If I do publish Extremadura by myself, after It's out i'll give it some time to register then if there isn't much of a spark i'll publish it for free online, were looking three or four years in the future here.
For once in my life I'm not thinking here of making money, my ambition right now is to get as many people as I can to read the work. I want people to recognise me as a good writer, the rest will follow. I wish I could put it out tonight online its that good. If I had a publisher I would but I have to give the novel a chance commercially first.
The response to me releasing fifteen percent of the book has been astonishing and humbling, I have a pile of novels that authors have sent me to comment on and I love that fact.