Take a humble bag of crisps.

Do you see what he did there? Do you see?! The master draws you right in! Right from that opening sentence you know completely and utterly that you have to read on.

No cold, bright afternoons in April as the clocks strike thirteen here. No. None of that bollocks. WE DON’T HAVE TIME!! What do we get? Crisps, and humble crisps at that. The. Humble. Crisp. But! What’s next? Biscuits? Blinis?? The tension is palpablel; cuttable with a knifable. I couldn’t look away… I had to find out what the crisps did next. Did they stay humble or was this a tale of crisp-empowerment? Did the crisp forget his humble origins until a young female crisp made him examine his past? Is he still Crispy from the block?? Who knows? Let’s find out, and find out together my friends. Come with Cuger on his journey of discovery, delving into the shady world of the crisp packet as never before.

Take a humble bag of crisps. Genius.

Is this the effect of imgrunt earworms? Should I tell The People’s Dave and his lovely wife Rupert Murdoch?

1) English Language GCSE. This will help avoid basic spelling and grammar errors like the difference between your and you’re and their, there and they’re.
2) English Language A level. This will teach more advanced practical grammar, essential for the construction of sentences. It will also including how to create voice, how dialogue works and different types and styles of writing in depth. It’ll help in one important aspect: if you can’t pass this, then you don’t have a high enough grasp of your native language to become a successful author.
3) A course (either taught or a book) teaching you the basics of story construction, including plot, narrative structure and different types and eras of literature. If you have the A levels to do so – and please note that just passing the A level English Language isn’t enough to show that you have ability – then embarking on a Creative Writing degree or an English degree might help. You’ll also be able to build up contacts and networking skills, because many tertiary education lecturers are either published authors themselves or have connections to industry.

Of course, many successful authors manage to achieve a high degree of success without all of the above, or indeed any of the above.

But these authors are not only few and far between, but they’re what we’d call innately talented. Very few people in this world have this kind of inbuilt talent, and I can honestly say that out of all the people I know, I actually only know one to be on first name terms with them.

Cuger Brant/Bruce Grant is not one of these people. He’s slightly deluded, and the reason why vanity publishers exist. Please note, Bruce, if you do ever manage to read this – and I’m not convinced you would – that there are many talented people out there who’ve gone through this process, produce genuinely original, interesting and beautiful work and who never manage to earn a living out of it. Considering all those people exist around the world – way ahead in the queue than your miserable position just ahead of the dead sperm in the washing machine waste pipe – then assume that all the smart, talented, generic writers out there would be snapped up by major houses before you’d find anyone desperate enough to waste time, money or effort on trying to polish the giant turd that is your work.

Give it up. Do your job. Retire. Die.

his utter inability to generate any form of empathy / antipathy towards the characters. They are blank slates, devoid of backstory, devoid of emotion, devoid of any form of humanity. One can easily imagine a more engaging novel based around the adventures of a waterlogged cardboard box.

So he’s only as good as Dan Brown?

a really good editor … an agent.

Unfortunately, he has missed one vital point, which is that, should CB/BG have had an editor (even a pisspoor one), or, indeed, an agent, his entire œuvre could be reduced to a single word:

Rejected

The problem with his writing is not the lack of original ideas (after all, most stories are based on combinations of one or more of a limited set of common tropes), but rather his utter inability to generate any form of empathy / antipathy towards the characters. They are blank slates, devoid of backstory, devoid of emotion, devoid of any form of humanity. One can easily imagine a more engaging novel based around the adventures of a waterlogged cardboard box.

If it is true that novelists write best about their own experiences, I dare not contemplate the emptiness of CB/BG’s existence.

In all of Cunt Barger’s environmental musings, has anyone ever seen him put forward a proposal as to how we should deal with the issue? Serious question. Has he?

Without wanting to be needlessly cruel to Mr Barger*, that would require two things:

1. An understanding of the problem.
2. An understanding of possible solutions.

Neither are in evidence.

* This is a lie.