The Conorol Trilogy

I think it’s a truism that writers have many lives – one of them is lived in the world that everyone else occupies, others are lived in whatever world that person is constructing around them as part of the writing process (at least that’s the case if the writer really means what they say). For me, there are a few other worlds: it would be a terrible social faux pas to suddenly introduce undermining the industrial system in a conversation about what changes to make in village hall bookings, so I don’t. As far as most people are concerned, Keith is a person who does lots around the village – he’s not an enemy of industrial civilization (although some people do know).

And now, with Time’s Up! and Underminers established as reference texts for whoever wishes to use them, I embark on yet another life, separate from the community stalwart, the Underminer and the family man who likes to grow vegetables. As you can read, should you follow the link, I have committed to writing a trilogy of novels, known under the collective title The Conorol Trilogy. One novel has already been completed, and as I work on the second and search for a literary agent, I feel the split between this world and that of the jobbing author of young adult fiction is necessary. Underminers will continue here, but if you fancy seeing the progress in my other life, then do pop over…

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Signed Books Available

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I have a limited number of signed copies of Time’s Up! A Guide to Subverting The Machine available. The book can be signed with any message you like (so long as I agree with its sentiments), and posted to anywhere you like.

The cost is just £10 + postage (cost depends on distance). If you are interested in a copy then please contact me via the Contacts Page, tell me where you live and I’ll give you the total cost and how to pay.

Go on, you know you want to :)

Resisting Together : Full Programme Announced

It is with great pleasure that I can now provide the full programme for the Resisting Together event, taking place just over a week away in the centre of Edinburgh, Scotland (as if you didn’t know where Edinburgh is). It has taken a huge amount of effort to pull this programme together, so it would be great to have a packed room listening to interesting people, taking about the present and the future, and most important, prepared to act as a result of what they have experienced.

Full details of the event are on the special Resisting Together page; it is very important to book ahead using the online form so we know how many people are coming along and whether to allow people entry on the door – we may well run out of space the way things are going.

See you there!


Full Programme

Introduction by Sandi Hunter

DIVERSITY OF TACTICS
Adam Herriott & Lou Dudley

Adam Herriott has worked as a Parliamentary Manager for the legislators organisation GLOBE International/UK. He has been involved in Transition Brixton and Edinburgh. He has volunteered at a number of organic farms and intentional communities around the UK, and also lived at an eco intentional community in SW Wales. He has studied Permaculture with a particular interest in People Care. He is the Deep Green Resistance UK coordinator and is involved in anti-nuclear and anti-biofuels campaigns in and around Bristol. He currently works for a local organic veg box scheme in Bristol.

Lou has been a member of DGR for nearly a year now. She studied environmental education and science. She has worked with UNESCO on a local Biosphere reserve in the past, amongst other things. Lou is currently
involved with local food resilience and local currency campaigns.

TRANSITION
Eva Schonveld

Eva Schonveld has been involved in community work for many years. She was an enthusiastic founder member of the local Transition group in her home town, and helped set up community food growing spaces and a local market there. She also had the opportunity from 2009-11 to support communities around Scotland who wanted to use the Transition approach, and still loves to do so given the chance! She’s passionate about the need to build a resilient, fair and truly sustainable food system and is now working for Fife Diet, a local eating project.

EARTH FIRST!
Indra Donfrancesco

Indra’s been with Earth First! for over 20 years, an activist for 25 years and an Anarchist her whole life. Involved with anti-motorway camps in the 90’s, countless other environmental campaigns, arrested 9 times including by the Counter Terrorism Unit, raided and infiltrated. Indra, a single mum, studied Social History in Brighton, became a development worker, started a pirate radio station and an activist sailing co-op. Still deeply passionate and entrenched in the Environmental movement, she now supports eco Housing co-ops where she lives in Derbyshire.

SALMON AND CIVILIZATION
Arthur Sevestre

A piece of paper says I’m a Master of Science, specialised in ecology and environmental biology. My heart says I didn’t really learn about ‘nature’ until I immersed myself in it to try and become one with it. Sevestre means ‘of the woods’. Born in overdeveloped Holland, I’m on my way back to the woods. I moved to Skye in 2008 and am trying to help build a permaculture woodland community. Being part of a community is to defend it, and the community where I live needs urgent defending against, amongst many other things, salmon farming.

COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
Alastair McIntosh

Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish writer, academic and activist.He was brought up in Leurbost on the Isle of Lewis and now lives in Govan. He is involved with Scottish land reform especially on Eigg, where he helped establish the Isle of Eigg Trust, and campaigned successfully against the Harris superquarry in Lingerbay. He is a fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology, an Honorary Fellow of the Schumacher Society, and helped to set up the Govan based GalGael Trust, an organisation which provides learning experiences anchored in practical activities that offer purpose and meaning to less socially advantaged people.

Alastair will lead a discussion on Community Resilience after his talk

UNDERMINERS – BOOK LAUNCH
Keith Farnish

Keith Farnish is a writer, volunteer and activist who, in a former life, was economically viable. He lives in southern Scotland with his wife and two children, making, growing, organising, listening, talking and being. His first book, “Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis” was put online for free in 2008, and published in 2009. His second book, “Underminers” was completed in October 2012 and, again, put online for free in the expectation that no publisher would be brave enough to touch it. Unexpectedly, it was released by New Society Publishers in 2013.

NEXT STEPS : ACTS OF RESISTANCE
A floor discussion facilitated by Sandi Hunter

Sandi is a long-time activist, campaigner and mother of two fully-grown people, who has recently cast off her settled existence for a possession-light life somewhere in Britain. Originally from South Africa, she was until very recently an inhabitant of Edinburgh. Sandi is the founder of non profit organisation Green Nation UK, who’s main objective is to purchase land in the UK to rewild as well as set up co-sufficient communities.

The event will be followed by a drink and a meal for those who wish to explore the social side of Edinburgh and carry on talking…

Interview with Rob Kall of OpEdNews

A few weeks ago the culmination of even more weeks of communication finally resulted in me being interviewed by Rob Kall. Some of you may know Rob, who is the editor in chief of OpEdNews, an excellent repository of original and reposted items ranging from the mildly political to the kind of things writers etc. like me post.

The interview took the best part of 2 hours, carried out over Skype (Rob is in Pennsylvania, I’m in Scotland) and so was bound to have a few problems. So, there was my coughing fit as I was recovering from a cold, a phone call that wouldn’t stop ringing, the complete drop-out of the connection, quite a few crumbly bits from Rob’s end and a few clanks and grinds as I moved things about. The recording was made using a Zoom H2 perched on my laptop next the the speakers relaying Rob’s questions; it was edited over the last two days by me, using Audacity, the free sound editor from Sourceforge.

Phew!

So here’s the recording – warning, it’s 1 hour and 40 minutes, but I think we ended up drawing quite a few new and interesting strands from the ongoing dialogue…

MP3 Download Link (40MB)

You can also stream the interview, and embed it by going to The Internet Archive.

Reviews Please

If anyone has read Underminers and wants to write an honest review on the Amazon or Barnes & Noble websites in North America, then I would really appreciate it. Please be honest, I would rather not have a pile of slushy reviews because you are being nice, the more critical and well-reasoned the more likely people will take an interest in the book – I never intend to brainwash anyone, just make people think for themselves.

The links are: http://www.amazon.com/Underminers-Guide-Subverting-The-Machine/dp/0865717540

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/underminers-keith-farnish/1114863922?ean=9780865717541

I don’t know if you can review in the UK yet, as it’s just out, but feel free to try: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Underminers-Keith-Farnish/dp/0865717540

Thank you very much, K.

Kickstarter Project is Now Live!

I am delighted to say that the project to fund the printing of Underminers in physical and eBook form has gone live.

If you click on the link below (which is http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/861859782/publishing-of-underminers-in-physical-and-ebook-fo for those who like texty links) then you will go to my Kickstarter page, which lays out the basic premise for needing a bit of money. Sadly Lulu doesn’t barter, nor does any PoD publisher, so in order to get some important stuff done then I need at least £900 (about $1440) to get things moving.

I have created an FAQ below the main text on the Kickstarter page and will be adding to this as people ask questions – if you have any questions then please comment below this blog, or do it via the project page. Basically, by funding the distribution and publicity of the book you are helping make a wave of undermining get just that bit closer. And remember, I won’t be making a bean out of this – I never have done.

Many, many thanks, and please pass on the link x

Getting A Kick Start

I made a video, you might have noticed it on the front page, so I won’t repeat it here. The reason for the video was, originally, to accompany a project on Kickstarter, though I rather like it so will probebly put it everywhere – if only to make people feel morerable about civilization and my doomy voice. The Kickstarter project is modest, to say the least.

With some dismay I have seen Kickstarter projects raise hundreds of thousands of Dollars (and now Pounds) for, basically, lumps of pointless shit – such as cameras that record your every living moment, or masks that flash so you can, apparently, have more lucid dreams (yes, it’s nonsense). I like to think that my project is worthwhile and suitably modest – I need just £900 in order to produce copies of the book for promotions and thank-yous, and also to produce a professional standard eBook.

More information and a big splashy headline when the project goes live. At the moment I’m waiting for approval because apparently I haven’t made lots of dramatic statements about how incredibly risky the project is. I can’t quite bring myself to tell them that the only real risk is to the industrial system.

Interview on More Thought

I was very pleased to be asked for an interview by the author of a new website called More Thought a few weeks ago. It was especially nice because Richard Capes asked me before anyone else, based on his enjoyment of my book Time’s Up! – parhaps “enjoyment” isn’t the right word, but it was clear that he had a deep interest in my ideas for which I am gratified.

The interview is a section-by-section discussion of the main points covered in Time’s Up! although towards the end I move into talking about Underminers.

Anyhow, here is the blog, along with the embedded interview via Soundcloud…


Keith Farnish ‘Time’s Up!’ Interview

“If we don’t do something about civilization in general, it’s going to do something about itself. It’s going to collapse in appalling devastation.” – Keith Farnish

Here’s my interview with environmental writer, philosopher and activist Keith Farnish about his book ‘Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution To A Global Crisis’.

The interview was conducted by Richard Capes and recorded on the 5th September 2011.


(Note: The Soundcloud applet downloads the whole 36MB file before playing, after which you can move around)

An MP3 of the interview can be downloaded from: http://www.archive.org/details/KeithFarnishtimesUpInterview

A transcript of the interview can be downloaded from: http://www.archive.org/details/KeithFarnishtimesUpInterviewTranscript

A Synthetic Rendition

There’s something eerily appropriate about this synthetic rendition of a small part of Chapter 1. Expect a few more of these before it’s finished; I can hardly not finish it now it’s in the form of a cartoon cat.

Call for Ideas on BlogTalkRadio

Just had a few minutes on BlogTalkRadio talking to Cory Morningstar, Gregory Vickrey and Matt Stannard about the joke that is (was) 10/10/10 (or if you prefer colons, 10:10:10).

The Podcast should be available on the show website soon (look for October 09, 2010 – conversation with Cory and co starts at about 29 minutes in):

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/shared_sacrifice

Like any normal human being I only have a limited amount of knowledge, and relatively few of all the potential ways the industrial system could be undermined. That’s why – as I slightly stutteringly (Skype on internet radio is a new experience for me) explained on the show – I want as many people as possible to suggest creative and effective ways for undermining, that I will keep in a file for when the relevant target is being written about. Please first read the Monthly Underminers Tasks on The Unsuitablog so you know the kinds of things I mean – the articles are available by following this link.

My contact details are on the “About” page, or you can comment under any blog post.

Your turn now.

N.B. I don’t need any money, by “contributions” I was talking about ideas.