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De Batz

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About De Batz

  • Rank
    Registered User
  • Birthday 23/08/1981

Personal Information

  • Location
    Sheffield
  • Interests
    Writing and playing guitar
  • Occupation
    Teacher
  1. Are you still looking? I'm trying to get something started with a mate looking at basically recreating our own distant youth (the 90s) with a few covers of Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins and so on... Your sort of thing?
  2. I'm working on putting together a band to play, initially at least, stuff from the early 90s. So far, there's (me) a guitarist, and a bass player, both with very limited vocal talents. So if anyone would be up for learning some covers to begin with (think Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, perhaps Smashing Pumpkins) and joining us with a view to doing some gigs and perhaps writing some of new stuff in that sort of style, get in touch. It may be possible for me to negotiate access to a permanent rehearsal room for a nominal cost (rather than hiring one by the session), with at least some kit available to borrow. Anyway, would be interested to hear from whoever is out there waiting for this to happen. We're both old enough to have been there (ish) the first time round, so have a bit of experience of gigging and recording between us. No plans for world tours, though, just a bit of fun to get going with...
  3. I know this thread is old, but thought it would be worth adding to it: Mixed experience today, going in to look generally at anything interesting they had, and asked to try a couple of guitars. I was met with the unnecessary and patronising response of 'you can if you're interested in buying them'. Now, I don't buy a guitar every week, but I have previously bought a guitar from Wizard (in the 'old days'), and having only bought around ten in my lifetime, that's a decent proportion of my business that they've had. I should also add that I'm not a spotty teenager (not for a long time) and I'm not in the shop every other week trying something and not buying it. I've probably had a grand total of five guitars in my hands there. I will also add that it wasn't the boss man that spoke to me in this manner. He seems nice enough. Well, I've finished ranting. But I would suggest a bit of customer service goes a long way, particularly in the face of stiff competition from RichTone in terms of prices if not characterful guitars.
  4. Issue 1 is available now in print, for those that prefer a physical book in the hand. £3 from Amazon and also available from Saturday from La Biblioteka on Pinstone Street. Submissions for issue 2 being collected right now. Any poets, writers, illustrators, crossword setters or whatever you want to put out there, get in touch. ---------- Post added 08-10-2016 at 18:34 ---------- Me again. For those of you who don't know La Biblioteka or don't venture that far down, we're also for sale in Rare and Racy on Division Street. Get out there are buy the writings of actual people from this here forum and elsewhere for the practically nominal sum of £3. Keep your eyes on here for more bookshops as we get stock out there.
  5. I don't think RichTone will do repair work unless it's warranty stuff. I've just picked up Michael Aitken (search for Aitken Audio) and he does good work, and isn't expensive. Wavelength have a good bloke or two for guitar stuff - Steve Gaines - and again, I'd recommend him as doing good work and not being too expensive.
  6. Issue 1 of the Magpie is available to download now! Let me know what you think, and do get in touch if you've got anything for the second issue.
  7. Glad to hear that folk are interested in this. The first issue is up to perhaps 20000 words so far, so will fill a decent-sized print magazine, but there's still more than enough scope for both adding to the first and getting something into the second. If you're interested and you've not got in touch yet, please do! If you have, there are a couple of questions for you: one is 'are you happy to appear on the list of collaborators on the website, and if so, under what name?' and the other is 'do you want to append any kind of profile, picture or otherwise self-promotion to your work?' Cheers for all the replies, and keep an eye out on this thread and your emails if you're interested!
  8. Most definitely. I'm planning a summer release for issue 1, which is getting close to having enough to go ahead, but also an autumn release for issue 2, so even if anything you have doesn't make it into the first one, there'll definitely be space in issue 2! PM me or have a look at the website for more details on how to send something over. Cheers, Andy
  9. Thanks for the heads up. For the magazine itself, I'd need a way of getting the illustrations that doesn't have either copy protection (the ibook - I haven't tried it but I assume that it would) or dreadful quality (me trying to screen-grab from youtube). I'd be delighted to use it either just as text, or with the full set of illustrations if you can get them to me. I'll PM you my email address. When I put my books on KDP, I ended up preparing something like a publisher file. Do you still have that? I could use it, I think.
  10. Now then. It's a while since I've posted on here, as I've been working on a book, and a blog, and another book, all sorts of stuff in fact. But mainly procrastinating furiously and failing to write stuff that I want to write. BUT! I've had an idea. It's not an original idea. Other people have had the same idea before. I'm going to start a journal of curios and ramblings. It's called The Magpie, and it's basically a collection of random writing of all sorts. If it's good and it's interesting, it can/will go in. Poetry, puzzles, artworks, essays, short stories or extracts from longer stories, first chapters... All considered! Writers typically want to be paid for their work. Well, cards on the table: I'm fully intending to get The Magpie to be profitable in the long term, but there's no money for anything beyond a copy to each contributing author at this point. If you're sitting on a goldmine of amazing new work, perhaps send me a chapter or even a few paragraphs. See it as free advertising rather than giving away your work... Once I've got some physical copies, I'll try to get them in the local shops, and expand that way, but most likely it will be a digital edition through the website that people will see (and therefore not be paying for). I don't intend to have any advertising of any other sort (once I've found the cash to upgrade the Weebly site) either on the website or in the journal. For any of you who know that I'm in fact Andy, Charles de Batz is me as well, as my handle on here suggests. Anyway, get in touch either through this thread or PM me for an email address. Cheers! ---------- Post added 02-06-2016 at 20:53 ---------- Website link... http://www.themagpiejournal.net/
  11. Steve Gaines is a good person for this sort of thing. He works in Wavelength on a Tuesday and Saturday (I think). Very friendly, reasonably priced and does good work. Richtone say that they do their own guitars and warranty work, but not 'walk-in' stuff. (On the website, at least - I've never asked in person.) I didn't think Wizard were especially good - and this is even under the new management - specifically, I went in asking for a new nut and they ended up trying unsuccessfully to fix the old one. Good luck. Andy
  12. When you write this length of piece, are you editing a lot back out before 'publishing' or is it largely as you wrote it on the first pass? I have a slightly unhelpful (morbid!) fear of cutting stuff that I wrote, which makes really short pieces quite tough for me. I did have a conversation with another writer (a family member) who was saying that he didn't always find that he could be productive even when time was available for writing - I have the exact opposite problem, which is not having enough time to write the things that I could!
  13. I'd also be interested in this. I'm local-ish, and very much keen to learn from others about their experience of the whole process. PM or email andyemcc (at) gmail (dot) com...
  14. There used to be a 500 word monthly competition on this forum; that I would describe as flash fiction. Once you're up to a few thousand words, you're into the realms of short stories. In very general terms, short stories will range over a thousand to a few tens of thousands of words, although some people would describe this sort of length as a novella. I suppose I would also say that short stories are recognisably stories, in that they begin, they have a middle and an end. Flash fiction seems to be characterised by not following that convention, but that's only a very limited observation. What's the context?
  15. Tomorrow, it will be free. £0.00, free download, none of that Kindle Select Untalented nonsense. Today, it is not free unless you sign up to their thing. And the time they use is an American time, so tomorrow begins at six in the morning or something like that. People have downloaded it through Kindle Select - you can keep track of when they actually read it - but many more have got hold of it through these free promotions. Kindle only, I'm afraid... If you're interested in how good it is, read the (free) sample chapters on iauthor...
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