Dan Tyte's Blog

Bit of news…the difficult second novel is coming out in May 2018 with the ace Graffeg Books. Watch this for the inside track.

http://dantyte.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/The_Offline_Project_1080p-1.mp4
And here’s their press release…
Graffeg have agreed world language rights in the second novel from Dan Tyte in their first fiction acquisition, The Offline Project.

Set in Wales and Denmark, The Offline Project focuses on modern social behaviours and the impact of technology on our lives, relationships and perceptions. The internet defines Gerard Kane. But after a death in the family and a dumping, can going off-grid save him? His pursuit of a life outside the internet takes him from Cardiff, and a web of family members caught in cycles of selfies and online gambling, to a new offline community in the Danish woodlands.

Dan Tyte said ‘The Offline Project is a search for self, sex and WiFi signal. If you live your life with your phone in your hand but really wish you didn’t, you’ll recognise a little of yourself in its characters. The tension in the story concerns itself with how the human race might reboot itself if the internet didn’t exist anymore, if we could create a world without being able to Google things every two minutes, whether we’ve still got it in us.’

Peter Gill, managing director from Graffeg said ‘We are delighted to welcome Dan’s distinctive voice to the Graffeg list with our first contemporary fiction title. The Offline Project is a bold and highly relevant novel that probes into our dependence on the internet, and to what extent we might be able to free ourselves from its pervasive grip.’

The Offline Project will be promoted by live author events and an exciting digital marketing campaign.

Dan Tyte was born and raised in Cardiff before studying English Literature at the University of Liverpool. His debut novel Half Plus Seven (Parthian, 2014) has been described as ‘A lethal cocktail of Bukowski and Mad Men’ by NME, ‘A coming-of-age novel snorting with energy’ by Daily Mail and ‘a raw and impressive debut’ by New Welsh Review. His short story ‘Onwards’ featured in the short story collection Rarebit (Parthian, 2014) and is frequently taught at the American University of Paris. The Western Mailnewspaper selected him as their ‘Writer to Watch’ for 2014. Dan has performed at the Hay Festival, Southbank Centre and Edinburgh Fringe and is a regular commentator on BBC Radio Wales.

The Offline Project  will publish in paperback and as a eBook (RRP: £8.99) in May 2018 with cover art by new illustrator Max Low.

The suns shone (sometimes) and I read some words (often).

Sion Tomos Owen drew this. Clever sausage.

No, not Milhouse’s French cousin (actually, take a moment to ponder that…), but a new art/lit night in Cardiff.

I read some new stuff at the second ever one on Friday night.  Good vibrations.

 

Me and Sŵn go way back.  From writing band biogs for the first ever programme to hosting an annual Kruger Magazine reunion to finding loads of music I’ve loved ever since for the first time, it’s been a touchpoint in my life for getting close to a decade.

Probably my favourite thing about Sŵn is that you can’t walk five paces without getting caught in a stop-and-chat with a friendly face.  It’s like they filled heaven with your favourite people, bands and bars.  Or maybe that is heaven.

This year not only was there souvlaki on the streets (ευχαριστώ Meat and Greek!), but Pyramid Scheme hosted the first ever literary stage.

Here’s what happened…

Trustfund Art made another sick as in good poster

BBC 6Music’s Helen Weatherhead interviews Ric Rawlins on his ‘The Rise of Super Furry Animals’ book

A moody B&W of me from On Par Productions

Holly Muller’s debut novel’s coming out on Bloomsbury in Feb 2015. Classic Christmas book voucher timing.

The kid $$$ Richard Owain Roberts

Marc Thomas made a Choose Your Own Adventure style story called The Republic of Us. So good.

Joao Morais read a story I’d never heard before. I liked it a lot. It’s available in Seren’s New Welsh Short Stories book.

Me and Rich wrote a brand new collaborative story specially for Swn.

I met Alvy Carragher when we performed together in Edinburgh. She’s incredible. She Skyped in from Galway.

Live from Austin, Texas, it’s Ana Carrete.

And Mike Bushnell, also from Austin. He was a real trip.

Then we got drunk and danced in Clwb til the early hours. Amen.

Big thanks to John, James and Huw at Sŵn and Lloyd at Gw Di Hw.

So a few weeks ago, when I should have been writing novel #2, my mind wandered. I felt hungry.  Standard. There was nothing in the fridge. Standard. I looked at Twitter. Standard.  I shared what was on my mind…

So why did I tweet that, exactly? Stick with me.  Here’s why…

Cardiff’s cooking

So Cardiff’s eating out scene gets better by the week.  From the homegrown pop-up revolution to restaurants from around the world, you could eat something amazing every night for a month and never go back to the same place twice.

Food bloggers do an amazing job in filtering out the ‘oh-my-god-it’s-incredible’ from the ‘ewww’’ and their hard work can mean you don’t have to risk a dodgy daal or a bad bolognese.

For the past few months, I’ve had Gourmet Gorro’s blog on some of the best places to eat in Cardiff bookmarked. You’ll find everything from shish to sauerkraut being served across the different districts of city, from Broadway to Splott, City Road to Crwys and Cowbridge Roads.

But…

The Rugby World Cup has brought billions of Barbour and/or beret-wearing tourists to our city.  But in the blogs pushed out by Visit Cardiff to guests, the focus is on eating Welsh cakes in the Bay or pizza in city centre chains…

It seems like the writers were working within the confines of a strategic decision by the people marketing the city to funnel visitors into the city centre and Bay.   And I get that.  It’s safe.  It’s close to the stadium.  You can’t go too far wrong with the chain restaurants.  And some of the areas where some of the best food in the city can be found might not be the most salubrious.  Even so that when I spoke to some local foodies who dine out regularly, they don’t even consider going there to eat.

A side of scuzz

I got to thinking about what I look for when I travel. Whether it’s Kreuzberg in Berlin or the Lower East Side in New York, Vesterbro in Copenhagen or Dalston in London, the scuzziness seems to be sidestepped when you’re searching out the best burger in town.  And this doesn’t mean that cleanliness (or even gentrification) should be avoided and that bin bags should mound up on the streets, just that it shouldn’t be used as a reason to ignore these places.

As a capital city, I felt like we needed to grow up a bit and offer a wider, more authentic offer. Then one night I was eating with some friends (inc @iammarcthomas) at Shaam Nights on City Road and talked about this, about ‘rebranding the area into a food destination a la Brick Lane’.  Everyone agreed it was a good idea. Then I went back to eating my baba ganoush.

A few days later it came back to me and I sent that tweet.

Lots of people agreed.  But talking about it in 140 characters was a bit limiting.  So Marc wrote a great blog on Medium and we arranged a dinner.  Yep, at Shaam Nights.

The first supper

Everyone from foodies to food bloggers, web designers to hyperlocal journos, intrepid travellers to destination branding experts came along- everyone had two things in common, they loved Cardiff and they loved eating out.  We broke (Syrian) bread and shared ideas.

 

Here they are:

We need to think about how the neighbourhoods of Cardiff can become part of the wider narrative of the city- plans should be made not just for the Roath area, but for Canton, Pontcanna, Whitchurch etc. Arguably this is already most established in Roath so it’s a great place to start
While Visit Cardiff seem bound to market businesses who pay annual subscription fees, a new, more affordable and relevant scheme could be brought in for local businesses in the neighbourhoods
Cardiff was home to the UK’s first multi-ethnic communities. Since the development of the Bay has displaced this, focusing on the City Road area could revive and be the next chapter in this important part of our story
Other cities like Manchester with the Rusholme Curry Mile, Bradford as ‘Curry Capital of Britain’, Liverpool’s Chinatown and London’s Brick Lane can be examples
The area in question could include just City Road, or include Crwys Road and even Whitchurch Road
The area could be branded- initial ideas included ‘The World Mile’, ‘The World on City’, ‘Tiger Town’, ‘The International Mile’.
Bunting- the kind you see when big events are in the city- could be hung permanently from the lampposts displaying the brand
A cheap and easy idea would be to supply small flags displaying the country of the restaurant’s cuisine to each restaurant
Maps could be produced and available in hotels, tourist destinations and online
A food (or wider neighbourhood) festival could take place on City Road, with traffic stopped for the day- on Oct 22nd the Council announced plans for a traffic-free day– and food from the restaurants available in the open air. Alternatively, the lanes behind City Road could be used to avoid traffic issues.  The Cathedral Quarter in Belfast actually got its name following a similar festival. This could be the best way to engage and recruit the restaurants to get behind the idea.
The disused Gaiety bowling alley on City Road could be reborn as an international market selling foods from around the world. These are some of the most popular tourist attractions in cities around the world- think of La Bouqeria on Las Ramblas in Barcelona..  Ditto the Made In Roath festival.
The Council needs to ensure that the cleanliness of the area/bin collection is improved dramatically.
Neil Cocker has helpfully created a list of the restaurants along City Road here – eat your way along there!

Big thanks to Marc Thomas, Hannah Thomas, Rebecca Pescod, Stephen Ryan Matt Appleby, Neil Cocker, Roger Pride James Koash Liam Giles Nouran Al Jandali Jonathan @cleanplateblog Rhiannon Jones

What’s next?

Who knows? Some good people in the Cardiff Council comms team have shown an interest in supporting but it’s clear that a proposal and political support are needed for something big and bold.  Clearly the restauranters need to be consulted too.  If you’ve got any ideas for what could happen next, let us know @dantyte @iammarcthomas or email dantyte@googlemail.

Right, I’m off for lunch…

The last time I was in Edinburgh I went to a Pizza Hut buffet in muddy jeans.  I managed 6 1/2 slices of deep pan pepperoni before the stares of my fellow diners got too much and I escaped to the outdoors, a social pariah under a moody sky.

This time, I got my southpaw jaw out at Literary Death Match at the Fringe at The Stand 3 on York Place. It was infinitely better.  The sun shone. The words flowed. And later, so did the beer.

Shout out to Literary Death Match’s irrepressible Adrian Todd Zuniga and Suzanne Azzopardi, judges Mark Billingham, Declan Michael Laird and Tom Salinsky, plus writers Julie Mayhew, Alvy Carragher, Alecos Papadatos and Abraham Kawa.

You can read Literary Death Match’s version of events here.

My reading got me into the final…

..where I waited for an audience member (Declan Michael Laird’s brother) to join my team in an international author spelling bee…

 

…at which we basically sucked. But come on, where was ‘Ah-Guff-Ur-Chris-Tea’?

 

Julie Mayhew and her random audience member excelled at the spelling bee, won medal, changed history

Then these people made me laugh lots. Who said the sketch show was dead? Funny haha/peculiar par excellence (plus lots of underpants. Perhaps too much underpants. Which makes it sound like I mean they should have been naked, which is the opposite of what I meant. Honestly.)

Plus I saw Jessie Cave, who would boil your bunny through a Hudson filter.

Rounded off the weekend with Sufjan Stevens. You know it’s a special show when you only get your phone out during the standing ovation.

 

PS The muddy jeans. Yeah. Blame T in the Park for that.

At the Caught by the River festival in Cardigan, I got caught in a bus.  The bus was driven Ar Waith Ar Daith, a project celebrating Wales Millennium Centre’s 10th birthday.  They’re capturing short videos with artists from around Wales. You can watch the videos in a giant cauldron at the Centre or just down below, on the internet.  You should do both.  Unless you live in Zanzibar, in which case, think of your carbon footprint and have yourself a little YouTube binge instead.  But only for a short while, get out and enjoy the archipelago instead. Life’s for living etc.

I’m hitting the road and the skies over the next couple of weeks to read words at that venerable British tradition, the festival.

 

Catch me at:

Saturday 15th August 2015- Caught By The River Teifi, Cilgerran, Cardigan, Wales

 

Saturday 29th August 2015- Edinburgh Fringe, Literary Death Match, The Stand 3, Scotland

PARTY ON.

 

 

When you sit in a room or on a bus or sometimes in a cafe  and write your novel, you never really know what will happen to it after it is born and enters the complex planet of 21st century Earth.

And then, a year later, you go to a book club and sit around a table with 30 people who’ve spent a month with your book, reading it, thinking about it, loving it, liking it, not liking it (3/30- I’ll take that), but more than anything, reacting to it.  That’s when you think: yes, this is a good thing to do with my life.

Deep novel chats on my novel Half Plus Seven

It also helps when they make you cupcakes inspired by your book.  Peace and love Cardiff Read . If you’re in the capital of Wales and want to meet/chat/read/drink with some smart folks, they meet every on the second Tuesday of every month at Canton Library, followed by drinks at Chapter Arts Centre.

Half Plus Seven-inspired cupcakes

Wales Arts Review, that venerable online arbiter, is behind a project called Story: Retold, in which contemporary writers reinterpret stories from Story: Vol. 1, the Library of Wales short story anthology, edited by Dai Smith.

I won the raffle and decided to re-do Dylan Thomas’ “Extraordinary Little Cough”.  My story is called “The Rhossili Effect”, it’s a gay-with-Alzheimer’s love story and you can read it here. A rather nifty illustration accompanies the piece.  Yes, that’s it below.

A wizard illustration by Dean Lewis.

I was interviewed, taking in everything from white boy funk to my career trajectory.  You can read that here.

And here’s a pic of Dylan lighting a fag, because, well, why not?