A huge thank you to everyone who has bought it, especially those 18 who have reviewed it on Amazon (it’s sitting at an average of 4.6, with all reviews >= 4 stars).

This is absolutely staggering – when I submitted the file to Amazon on 13-Apr, I did not expect to sell this many so quickly.  And my sales are on average getting higher.  Say what you like about Amazon, the fact that they offer the indie author, such as myself, this sort of outlet is huge.  The mental pain I’ve gone through over the last five years looking for an agent and a publisher…  Well, it’s almost worth it to be in control now.  I’m not making big money (yet!) but I am really enjoying myself – the pace at which I’m attacking DEVIL IN THE DETAIL shows that.

As with last time, I’ll share my channel breakdown chart – it’s very interesting.  Bear in mind that I’m a Scottish writer, writing in a Scottish dialect, in Scottish locations about Scottish people…

One final thing, I’ve noticed that my sales tend to spike at the start of the month and then tail off towards the end.  I can’t work this out – it’s happened in June and July – other than it might be some seasonal blip, or people have a hankering for indie Scottish crime fiction at the start of the month…

Anyway, back to the editing.

– Ed

She’d been studying philosophy at University and one of the areas she particularly enjoyed was the Philosophy of Mind. This is an area dominated by Rene Descartes and his “cogito ergo sum” (or “I think therefore I am”) and its many corollaries. Gilbert Ryle classified this as a category mistake and refuted the separation of the body and the mind – Arthur Koestler expanded on this in his Ghost in the Machine book in 1967.

… And that’s where I come in. One of the abiding memories of the cupboard that my Dad kept his LPs in was of this beauty:

It is such a cool cover – evoking the retro-futurism of the early digital age, crafting the three faces of the Police members in a digital clock read-out. The red and black is visually striking too, sucking my very young eyes in. I don’t know why but it’s an image that has really stuck with me.

(The album itself is, in my entirely honest opinion, utter shite – this is the point where the Police had most definitely lost it. The predecessor “Zenyattà Mondatta” was a band on the way down, creatively, and this confirmed that. The first two records are very strong and I would recommend anyone to check them out – the last three were precursors as to why Sting is so largely reviled through the 80s and 90s. Shows that you shouldn’t judge a record by its cover…)

That album cover – rather than the content – has really stuck with me and greatly influenced me. Just be thankful that I didn’t try and rip off the album cover for the book cover.

There will be more of these, periodically.

– Ed

The reason I left so many in is that the book should reflect reality – it’s 2012, that’s how people in the central belt of Scotland speak, especially police officers under colossal amounts of stress.

It’s therefore nice to see someone else (Dina Santorelli) blog about it -

http://makingbabygrand.com/2012/07/29/writing-tip-94/

That’s one of my very favourite blogs as well – check it out.

– Ed

– Ed

We at the Archives and Museum were particularly struck by the title of one of the panels – Affect:  The Ghost in the Machine? – as we just happen to have loaned a work to an exhibition that has just opened in New York with a very similar title: Ghosts in the Machine.

The term originated in philosopher Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind, first published in 1949. Ryle objected to a Cartesian dualism that regarded body and mind as separate but complementary necessities: the “ghost” of the mind giving life to the “machine” of the body. The exhibition at New York’s New Museum (18 July – 30 September) surveys the constantly shifting relationship between humans, machines, and art, looking at the ways in which humans have projected anthropomorphic behaviors onto machines that have become progressively more human. Similarly, the conference panel looks at topics including the exorcism of the ghost from the machine in nineteenth century depictions of “poltergeists”, and cybernetic theories of psychopathology in cold war Czechoslovakia, arguing that affect can be used as a prism through which to understand concerns with new technologies, society and the self.

Indeed, the picture loaned by Bethlem Museum to the Ghosts in the Machine exhibition – James Tilly Matthews’ Air Loom sketch – can be interpreted in a similar manner. Drawn by Mathews to illustrate the machine he thought was used to control him and certain political figures in late eighteenth-century Britain, the Air Loom becomes a representation of both the mental and emotional turmoil of one man as well as the political and social unrest of industrial England in the wake of the French Revolution.

Register for the Society for the Social History of Medicine conference here.

Find out more about Ghosts in the Machine here.

Amazon UK page

This is really flattering and blows my mind. I really appreciate all of the positive comments raised. Being stuck in the belly of the sequel, it really helps the motivation getting such glowing praise. I’m not letting it go to my head, mind…

Some choice comments:

“Cullen the new Thorn? … Scott Cullen was an interesting character who I am sure Ed will mould into a crime fiction legend by the time he is on book 10 of the series.”

“This is a really great first book by Ed James. He has a good and believable cast of characters and you can see that there is plenty of scope to develop the character of Scott Cullen and his relationships with the other main players. … If you like Ian Rankin and Stuart MacBride, you’ll certainly want to read this.”

“If you like Ian Rankin and Stuart MacBride, you’ll certainly want to read this.”

“If you are looking for a good new author to follow then this is your man. Scott Cullen is a believable main character & has a good cast of supporting characters.”

“A gripping debut from Ed James, Ghost in the Machine is a fast paced crime thriller based in Edinburgh.”

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed it!

– Ed

I’m stuck in the dank, dark recesses of the second proper draft of DEVIL IN THE DETAIL.  I’m at 73% and I’ve just overcome the difficult middle part of the book.  All middles are difficult – there’s a point where you’re so far from the momentum of the start and from the crescendo towards the end that you struggle to determine the quality of the work.  Fortunately, I’m past that for this draft but I think there are a few skeletons in there for the next draft.

The more observant of you will probably notice that I said “second proper draft” there.  I wrote DEVIL two years ago as a novella, and I’ve recently been expanding it into the proper second SCOTT CULLEN novel.  Looking back, I had seriously skimped on things the first time though and there are a lot of complications to the case that I never investigated or progressed.  Well, I’m putting Cullen through that pain now, that’s for certain.

When I picked up GHOST again at Christmas time, it was to complete the replot I’d done in August 2010 and had made some progress towards last summer but had jettisoned in September – hey, momentum is everything and I’d run out!  The big learning for me was how to properly finish the book – my writing style improved immeasurably in the first three months of this year as I attacked the manuscript.  (There are things I’ve since learned, having published the book – v1.01 of the book which corrects typos should be published soon)

Getting back into DEVIL, I find that I’ve developed my writing process.  I created a spreadsheet which allows me to manage the book efficiently and track progress.  I’ve bought Srivener now – as my Twitter followers will note – and I am trying to figure out how this writing model could be adapted to work in that application, rather than the two spreadsheets, one txt file and one Word doc that I currently use.

To that end – and here’s an announcement – I will be working on a short story, which may become a novelette, between drafts of DEVIL called ALL IN A NAME, which picks up a tiny incidental point from DEVIL and also is set in the same time frame as WHISKY IN THE JAR.  The main purpose is to see if I can use Scrivener before I get stuck into the full-blown monster that will DYED IN THE WOOL.  NAME will be released at the same time as DEVIL – that’s my current intention, anyway, but finishing DEVIL will take precedent.  Currently, I think I’m on track for publishing in October – my panic of a few weeks ago has subsided somewhat.

Anyway, enough of this, I’d better get back to writing.

– Ed

I hear you saying to yourself “my god! Cinemarant has provided me with so much. I have reviews, recommendations, lists, more reviews, more recommendations, and then even more lists. What more could I possibly need?”. Well, I’ve decided to spice up your plate yet some more. I’m not adding a new section to the site, but rather a subsection. The Recommendations section will now be split into two categories: Films and Actors. I’m thinking of adding a Director’s subsection aswell, but we’ll see how that plays out.

Alright, so in the”Films” subsection, it’s pretty straight forward. I recommend films that I think you should all see.

However, in the  ”Actors” subsection I will be recommending actors who I think you should look into and hopefully appreciate. These will most likely be obscure names, but not necessarily. The main point is to open your eyes and introduce you to some of the people who have contributed a lot to film, often without getting a lot of recognition for it. These people most likely do not have a Bieber-fever fan group following them, hence their names go unrecognised and/or unacknowledged.

There, got it? Sweet. So now, let’s kick off with a woman I love to love:

Aww, she’s so sparkly. I totally didn’t add those lens flares in photoshop, she just looks like that.

Alright, so for those of you who don’t recognise Karen, she was kind of a big deal in the 80′s. Well, maybe not a big deal, but that’s certainly when her career peaked. You can look up her entire resume on IMDB yourself, but let me just say that I most fondly remember her from:

Karen only played a supporting role in this movie, but so did everyone else. It’s an ensemble cast, to which she adds an lot. With so much craziness going on on screen, it’s important to have a sweet, smiley, grounding figure in the group. Who better than Karen Allen to help bring this troop of bizarro characters down to earth and give us something more substantial to believe in? That’s not to say that she’s free of all wackyness herself.

Who can’t enjoy this movie? I mean, really. It’s the original Indiana Jones, and Allen luckily scored a part in it. It gave her a huge boost in her career, and she deserved it. She gave such incredible life, feistiness, beauty, and loveable purity to the character of Marion Ravenwood. She was the perfect romantic counterpart to Harrison Ford.

Starman is Karen Allen’s brightest shining achievement. It’s a gorgeous film with a warm heart and it places her centre stage. The movie rests largely, or even entirely, on the believability and like-ability of her character. She plays a woman who’s husband has just died. An alien arrives at her front porch and takes on his appearance, with intentions of finding a way back to its home planet. Sound ridiculous? Meh, why not? It’s actually very comparable to E. T., except obviously without the same type of creature effects. It’s also not aimed as much for children, but still works fantastically as a film the whole family can watch. And in this one… Karen Allen’s performance will make you cry.

I’m not as big-a-fan of Bill Murray as everyone else seems to be, but I do think he can be funny. However, a lot of his films often aren’t, well…not to me at least. Scrooged is different. Scrooged is funny, and it’s sweet.

Why is it so sweet? You guessed it; Karen Allen! Ok, no, there are more reasons than just her. For starters it’s an 80′s adaptation of A Christmas Carol, which is of course a classic. Also it has Bobcat Goldthwait in a fairly big role, something you don’t see a lot outside of the Police Academy movies. But of course, Karen Allen steals the show for every minute that she’s on screen. At this point she was most likely being typecast because of her pale “un-corruptable-looking” eyes, but that would only last until…

That photo essentially tells you everything you need to know. A mass murderer is killed and then has his consciousness transferred into a computer network, thus allowing him to continue his killing spree! Wait…what?

You mean that wasn’t obvious? I thought a picture was supposed to be worth a thousand words, and that was only twenty-two. Anyways, it’s your typical haunted-Microsoft movie. Cause, you know, they’re a dime a dozen. It’s full of crappy early 90′s CGI, in tandem with late 80′s practical pyrotechnics. Oh, Karen Allen’s in it too, by the way.

A small part, Karen doesn’t have a lot of lines and she isn’t a very important character. Still, her big puppy dog eyes help you to feel sorry for her as she tries to keep her sailing-boat upright. That’s not a euphemism, she really is trying to keep her boat from flipping over in a storm.

How good was Karen as Marion Ravenwood in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark? So good that they brought her back for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The first Indiana Jones film in 19 years, there was a lot of hype about it. Unfortunately it got slammed by a lot of critics and audience members. Many many people hated it to the core.

Well, I loved it. I loved having Indy back, I loved having the adventures back, I loved having that popcorn-80′s feeling back, and I loved having Karen Allen back. It was the perfect tribute to the cast that started it all, and I thank Steven Spielberg endlessly for going in that direction.

So now, I recommend that you go out and purchase something with Karen Allen in it. hopefully it’ll be one of the films listed above, as they’re the ones I think are the best, but anything will do. We should all try to support great artists wherever possible, and Karen Allen certainly qualifies.

Rant Over!

Friday nights, for Church of God (Evangelical) Singapore, are talking-to-Super-Santa-Claus nights. These hour-odd-long mass delusions include asking Santa Claus to cure the various psychosomatic infirmities suffered among the sheep. Common ailments like colds, headaches, coughs, backaches and fevers are the ones usually advertised as “healed” or “cured” by the benevolent and omnipotent old man. It is very painful to observe how people who live in the 21st century can not know how their immune systems are able to joust off viruses over time. It becomes excruciating when they attribute the “recuperation” of their medically doctored bodies to divine intervention.

It is one thing to practise thankfulness in all things. It is another to claim that the healing of one’s illness is not natural but super-natural. It needs to be reiterated that one has to rule out all natural possibilities before even proposing the supernatural. Frankly, it can never be done. But I know many christians choose to interpret even the most banal of coincidences as a bawdy yahwist-elohist magic. Their immature minds cannot accept the impartiality and meaninglessness of natural occurrences. It must always be divine magic, divine intervention.

We are all Harry Potter fans, like it or not.

While christians are always schizophrenically imagining a Chief Homo Sapien in the sky as the source of all things, I choose to acknowledge my biological parents as the real source of my life. If papa and mama didn’t fuck on a September night in 1980, if one of papa’s million sperms did not manage to violate one of mama’s eggs, I wouldn’t be born nine months later. It is so narcissistic and egomaniacal to assume that somehow, fate demands that I have to be born in June 1981. It might be counter-intuitive to imagine otherwise, but the reality of biological life is that all of us, including myself, don’t have to be born the way we did. We need not even exist.

But the fact that we did and are, becomes a spur to cherish and treasure the one and singular life everyone of us has. There is no ghost in our machines, no Caspar to woo woo out of our decomposing bodies when we die. Self-consciousness, is but a virtual programme in our brains. Benjamin dies when his brain dies.

Rational people should never attribute a child to the “blessings” of Chief Homo Sapien, but their own fertile reproductive systems. As such, childless couples should accept that they cannot produce children because of their faulty reproductive capabilities, and seek the help of modern reproductive marvels like IVF. It is ridiculous to indulge in meaningless nonsense about why god did not bless one with a child or why god allow one to be infertile.

There are no reasons – they just happen. And the moment we accept that, the happier we are. Silly superstitions which equate infertility with divine curses should be rubbished. Similarly, terrestrial disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions are due to a cooling planet that is currently overused and exhausted. Only neanderthals imagine the works of angry gods and goddesses, with nutbags blaming witches, sorcerors, the lgbt and atheist communities.

Anyhow, Friday nights for us are family nights. We dine among loved ones. Darling has a sibling sextet of five sisters (one lives overseas) and one brother. We break bread and enjoy ourselves in their presence. Unlike my very fundamentalist and dysfunctional Chew clan, Darling’s Toh clan is one very eudaimonic and freethinking gang. They are but cultural buddhists.

While bullshitting the recent City Harvest Church scandal, one brother-in-law showed surprise that I am a “christian”. I accept that as a compliment, as a “christian” often means religiously bigoted, homophobic and existentially arrogant. I mentioned to his wife at the dinner table that the majority of practising christians in Singapore subscribe to the delusion that without Jesus Christ, every other non-christian will roast for ever in a cosmic incinerator run by Al Pacino, with direct orders from Morgan Freeman himself.

I made it clear to her that I wasn’t exaggerating. Evangelical christians delude themselves into believing they have the truth while the rest of the world do not. While they rubbish the koran as a plagiarised bible 2.0, they don’t seem to realise that the old testament of their bibles do not originally belong to them too.

Oh, trust me to be the devil incarnate. I admitted to her that much of christian charity work is a load of chicken droppings – christians help the needy and the poor because of one ulterior motive – to proselytise. They will preach that Jesus loves you as you are, but will still incinerate you if you do not become one of them. Some love huh.

They do good because it is a good proselytising gimmick. They help others because they wish to blackmail them into “accepting Jesus Christ as their personal lord and saviour.”

That is utterly immoral.

One does good because it is the good thing to do. One does right because it is the right thing to do. One loves others because loving others is the right and good thing to do. Period.

To love others because of god is not moral at all. It assumes that one will start barbequeing and violating others the moment god is erased from the picture.

That is so naughty.

*******

]]> http://allaussiehiphop.com/2012/07/02/grey-ghost-ghost-in-the-machine-mixtape/ Mon, 02 Jul 2012 00:25:47 +0000 Jim Steps http://allaussiehiphop.com/2012/07/02/grey-ghost-ghost-in-the-machine-mixtape/ http://edjamesauthor.com/2012/07/01/ed-james-international-12/ Sun, 01 Jul 2012 09:31:19 +0000 edjamesauthor http://edjamesauthor.com/2012/07/01/ed-james-international-12/ Had a few queries this week asking where people could find my book not on Amazon UK or US.  Well, it’s available on multiple Amazon channels (France, Spain, Germany and Italy) as well as Smashwords (which covers all regions plus all formats).  Here is a list of where you can buy GHOST IN THE MACHINE internationally (I’ll update the book page with this) albeit in pig ignorant Scots rather than having the “ken”s and “aye”s translated:

Amazon UK - http://amzn.to/Ih2ros

Amazon US - http://amzn.to/IzknfQ

Amazon DE - http://amzn.to/MKKeDr

Amazon FR - http://amzn.to/N9H6Pj

Amazon ES - http://bit.ly/LpB5xl

Amazon IT - http://bit.ly/KUdBDJ

Smashwords - http://bit.ly/Iy1dpJ

… and in the European Cullen book Championships, Germany are beating Italy 2-1…  

– Ed

The other day I posted that I had sold my hundredth copy of GHOST IN THE MACHINE – turns out I’d done so an hour or so earlier as I’d missed out my first German sale at the end of May (Amazon’s tracking is done by week or month with the same overlap problems I have to expend so much effort on during my day job).  

I used to analyse my sales daily which is total mental behaviour, so I now look at it on a Sunday morning which is when the Amazon weekly reports come off.  The interesting thing is that 96% of my sales are through Amazon, with a staggering 20% of the total coming through the US – there’s obviously a reasonable market for Tartan Noir in the US (I could make a joke about the differences in pronunciation of Noir, i.e. Ne-war vs Noyre, but I won’t).  Interestingly, something has really booted my sales up the arse in the last week – I’ve had some great reviews, I fiddled my categories, I fiddled my tags, I’m regularly in the top 7k sales, I’m regularly in the top 40 on Hard-boiled Crime Fiction, I’m almost at 2,000 followers on Twitter, I launched my Facebook page, but who knows – and I sold more last week than I did in the entirety of May (I went long days during my mental daily tracking without a single sale).

In the spirit of transparency, here is my sales by “channel” (e.g. UK Amazon, US Amazon, etc) – note that I’ve not yet burrowed through the Smashwords premium catalogue yet so I’m not listed on iBooks, Barnes & Noble etc:

Sales by Channel

I don’t want this to seem like I’m blowing my own trumpet because I’m not.  I’m trying to thank those who have bought and enjoyed (or not) a copy of GHOST IN THE MACHINE.  Doing it this way, I’m very unlikely to be able to do this for the money so having a modicum of success is the thing that keeps me going.  When I was writing to get a publishing deal, that was a motivation/pressure, but now it’s much purer – I’m writing for the enjoyment of it and for the people who are buying my books.

DEVIL IN THE DETAIL

I keep getting asked about when the sequel – DEVIL IN THE DETAIL – is out.  I’m currently working hard on it (though I’ve had a stinking cold for the last few days and I’ve ended up taking on management of another three teams at work) during my commute or travel.  When I published GHOST I set myself a target of publishing DEVIL by “late summer”, which is likely to mean October…  ; )  There’s a hell of a lot of work is required before then – I have roughly 50,000 words to write, another 17,000 to edit (which will eat into the 50k), some forensic research to do, and I somehow agreed to include a Big Issue seller called “Whammy” into the mix.  After that, there will be a hardcore start-to-finish edit plus another readthrough.  THEN, it goes to my two editors, while I collapse into a heap / plot the next one.  There is then a fortnight or so of me reworking it based on their comments.  Finally, there is a proof read (which I stupidly rushed for GHOST).  That’s a hell of a lot of work but I’m heartened by the fact that the plot I have got is much more solid than GHOST which was a hell of unpicking three times over.

The future

I’m still thinking through what comes after DEVIL.  One thing I will probably do is write a short story / novella called ALL IN A NAME which will be set after DEVIL and will likely be given away free or very cheap to help publicise DEVIL (the plot for it will be set up in DEVIL).  I’ll probably write it in the editing gap.  One thing I need to decide is what book three will be – DYED IN THE WOOL or BEAST IN THE SHADOW.  DYED flows from GHOST and DEVIL but I’m struggling with the plot a bit (though to be fair to myself I haven’t tried anything) whereas BEAST has a load of great ideas already forming but there’s something in it that I want to get some distance from.  I’ve got months to make a decision.

Thanks for reading this blog and for reading my books!

– Ed

Being stuck in the depths of draft two of DEVIL IN THE DETAIL (17% done, thanks), it’s a real shot in the arm. The afterword to GHOST said I’ll keep writing as long as you keep reading, so thanks for putting me under more pressure…

I’ll pull together the sales stats at the weekend but it’s been roughly 70 UK Amazon, 25 US Amazon and 5 Smashwords. It shows how dominant Amazon is, but every limitation is an opportunity.

– Ed

Now we’re at, in my opinion, the strongest season of the show ever: season 4. Do I even need to list the reasons why this season was awesome socks? Well, we’ll see soon enough. Right now, let’s just go through it episode by episode, starting with…episode #1. In this first part, Paige finally goes to trial for her season 2 rape. However, by the end, the judge rules in favor of Dean because there was no physical evidence or eye witnesses. Meanwhile, Craig gets a 10,000 dollar inheritance check from his dead abusive father for his birthday. He ends up spending 4000 dollars of that money on an expensive car. It’s funny (OK maybe it’s not funny) how they gave these two really big season 2 story lines some closure in this episode after virtually not mentioning it during season 3. ‘Bout time! OK…time for the rank. I took away Terri and Chris, and added Dylan, Alex, Ms. Hatzilakos, and Rick!

ISSUE: Rape

1. PAIGE - We also learn that she’d rather look like Lindsay Lohan than Hilary Duff. Remember when Lindsay Lohan used to actually be considered attractive? This was in 2004, y’all!

2. CRAIG - At first he’s reluctant to accept the money for obvious reasons. But then Ashley convinces him otherwise (more on her below). Also, apparently, his birthday has always been in the fall…

3. SPINNER - Buys a new car. This car will be important during the second half of the episode.

4. ASHLEY - After some awkwardness, Ashley and Craig decide to become friends…for now.

5. JOEY - He’ll have more of a presence during the second half.

6. MARCO - Hates horror movies! But he loves wearing suit and tie with jeans for the first day of school.

7. DYLAN - Inexplicably, doesn’t show up to court with Paige. I guess he’s too busy decorating his dorm.

8. JIMMY - Met Mandy Moore in LA.

9. CAITLIN - Sends Craig an incredibly corny video birthday message in front of what is obviously a green screen with a vaguely tribal landscape for the graphic.

10. ELLIE - Hangs with Alex now.

11. ALEX - Hangs with Ellie now. Hates Paige.

12. SEAN - I guess he and Jay are friends again…

13. JAY - …because the writers realized Sean would have no one else to hang out with if Jay was gone.

14. EMMA - “Chris and I broke up in July.”

15. TOBY - “Kendra and I broke up in August.”

16. LIBERTY - “I believe I was abducted by aliens over Labor Day Weekend…and Towerz and I broke up.”

17. MANNY - However, she is still happily dating JT.

18. JT - And he wears sweater vests now!

19. HAZEL - Her fine ass just makes out with Jimmy in the back of Spinner’s car. Rowr!

20. MR. RADITCH - Yeah, he’ll be gone soon…

25. SPIKE, SNAKE, RICK, MS. H - When a character doesn’t appear in an episode, they automatically get the number of players during that season, plus one.

Read, Write, ROCK!!

Rocker Writer Kid

Pink Floyd- Dark Side of the Moon

Led Zeppelin- Houses of the Holy

The Beatles- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Queen- A Night At the Opera

Yes- Fragile

The Police- Ghost in the Machine

AC/DC- Back in Black

Styx- Paradise Theater

Santana- Marathon

Van Halen- 1984

Paul McCartney- Band on the Run

Cheap Trick- Dream Police

Jethro Tull- Aqualung

Emerson, Lake and Palmer- Brain Salad Surgery

Aerosmith- Toys in the Attic

The count down has begun for me. I have approximately 10 days of school left!

Today’s interview is with Uday Gajendar. Uday is:

a principal designer at Citrix Systems in Silicon Valley. He creates attractive, useful products that enable “work and play from anywhere”.

Uday followed me on Twitter, and after reading a little about him, and reading some of his writing on Ghost in the Pixel, I was hooked and asked him to do a five question interview!

Q. What is it like working at Citrix?

A. Quite simply, there’s rarely a dull moment– Creative, dynamic, and we have fun! We’re leading the way with “work shifting” and “virtual teams”. Citrix is enabling perhaps the three hottest tech trends today: mobile, cloud, and virtualization, and others like social (via our acquisition of Podio). W’re also creating a culture of “design thinking” (with our CEO’s strong support), through workshops and training sessions. So we’re quite busy! And by virtue of my uniquely positioned role as a Principal Designer, I’m involved in both thought leadership as well as short-term, high-impact concept projects, so for me it’s a great way to be involved at strategic and tactical levels of design, supporting our fantastic Product Design team, almost 85 members worldwide. In a nutshell, Citrix is an evolving hybrid of IT software, design studio, research lab, and graduate school–you’re always learning and trying new things that will challenge you!

Q. What computer do you use and why?

A. For work, I use a 2010 Apple MacBook Pro 15″ Core 2 Duo with 8 GB RAM, running OS 10.6.8 (haven’t moved to Lion yet!). Beautiful form factor, gorgeous screen, and very fast & powerful, since I’m always running multiple Adobe and MSFT apps. I also use our own Citrix Receiver which enables me to access a virtual Windows 7 system via “the cloud”. So I can run Windows–and Windows apps– on my Mac smoothly

Q. If you had to describe Silicon Valley in one metaphor what would it be?

A. It’s exactly how a friend described it to me when I first arrived back in 2000 as a college intern…A giant, mutating, living organism that’s always in a state of dynamism. People move around a lot here, and that’s just the norm. Everyone seems so excited about inventing, deal-making, questioning conventions, and having fun doing it. It’s pretty crazy yet amazing. Truly no place like this anywhere!

Q. What is Citrix’s approach to the growing tablet market?

A. Tablets (and mobile devices) are a key part of Citrix’s mobile & cloud strategy, supporting new work styles. Tablets are a big value-add for consumers and IT pros, alike… we totally recognize that, and endorse BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) for our customers. Mobile First is advocated by our CEO as well, since we can’t just be chained to old PC expectations anymore. We have held internal “mobile summits” (which I’ve helped organize) to share mobile UX knowledge. We offer Receiver, GoToMeeting, and GoToMYPC (among others) across iOS & Android devices to allow convenient access to Windows apps/desktops on the go, thus supporting workshifting based upon our “work or play from anywhere” mantra.

<p style="padding-left:120px;"Q. How did you feel when Steve Jobs died?

A. Shock and disbelief. We lost someone truly extraordinary, our “Patron of Innovation”…And profound sadness, as I considered him a personal hero (though I never met him). I remember that day well, as I had just finished participating in an all-day innovation workshop–kinda ironic, right? We’re all totally tired from the day, dutifully checking our iPhones at 5pm, when we saw the news via Twitter / text / email. Gasps and murmurs filled the room. I drove home in the dense, slow traffic reflecting on it all. Once I got home, I wrote a blog post summarizing my thoughts, then visited the Apple Store on Univ Ave, watching the flowers and notes piling up outside. It all just felt so surreal, but I went home resolved to keep fighting for damn good design just like Steve would want us to.

For Uday I wanted to incorporate that “work and play” line, into his wallpaper.

Thanks Uday!
instantbight

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/362252031/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_kinc_1_6_last#3

– Ed

“It was a good read and the fact that I feel asleep while trying to finish it isn’t a reflection on the book itself, but on my desire to find out how it ended while ignoring the obvious signs of complete exhaustion! … Priced at $0.99, this book is a great deal. I’m looking forward to the next installment, and getting to know DC Scott Cullen and his co-workers better.”

Very much appreciated!  Her site is a very good source of honest reviews and I encourage you to have a look around.

Full review:

http://juliew8.com/jrno

In other news, I’ve been a bit ill (second time in a month which isn’t good).  I’ve managed to progress some of the new draft of DEVIL IN THE DETAIL, still on track for publishing in September/October.

– Ed

http://www.facebook.com/edjamesauthor

– Ed

Our so-called leaders speak
With words they try to jail you
They subjugate the meek
But it’s the rhetoric of failure

Image via Wikipedia

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