I’ve got a piece up over at the Globe revealing the editorial process behind The Warhol Gang and where I got my ideas. (Hint: my life.)

I’d written a novel where I’d kept the main character at a distance.

Why? It didn’t matter. All that did matter was I had to figure out who he was. If I didn’t know, how would readers? But I was running out of time as my deadline approached. And my editors had to be growing impatient, although they didn’t show it, bless them.

So I did the only thing I could think of. After numerous edits, and when it was nearly time to deliver a finished manuscript, I rewrote the book. Up until that point, it had always been in third person, with all the emotional distance that third person brings. Now I changed everything to first person. Instead of asking, “Who is he?” and “What does he want?” I asked “Who am I?” and “What do I want?”

I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. Not my editors, not my agent.

Not even my wife.

Well, look at me. I got a facelift. And a tummy tuck. And some botox.

I’ve made some changes to the website to bring it into the Web 2.0 world. We’re still in 2.0, right? Or have we moved on? Anyway, thanks to the good people at Bluenotion, peterdarbyshire.com is now much more pleasing to the eye, and easier to navigate. Books and comics stuff in the left sidebar, other bio stuff and your comments in the right sidebar, and feeds up in the top corner. And anarchy in the middle column!

Regular posting will resume shortly, once I figure out how to log in.

The Saturday Post has an interview with me about The Warhol Gang –page WP13. The black bloc comment is most appropriate.

I keep telling people The Warhol Gang is nonfiction, but no one wants to believe me.

It awould be an advertiser’s dream: knowing the exact location in your brain that indicates whether an ad has worked, and whether you intend to buy that cat food or wear that suntan lotion. Now, some researchers claim they’ve found a region which might predict whether viewers will act on what a commercial tells them.

Damn — another fine, fine review of The Warhol Gang. I’m honoured that people are giving the book such close reads.

Thanks to Brenda Schmidt for pointing out this Globe article on the inescapability of Ikea. OK, that’s not what it’s really about. But try to find an alternative. Ikea is like the Microsoft of our home operating systems, and there’s no Apple to save us.

We may not be gadgets, Brenda, but we are accessories.

Maisonneuve has interviewed me about The Warhol Gang. An excerpt:

AV: Was The Warhol Gang modelled after a city?

PD: It’s not modelled after a city because, other than the stuff that comes with your basic geography (like Vancouver’s got a different setup than Toronto) I don’t see any difference between them. When I step into a mall, it doesn’t matter, it’s got the same Banana Republics, it’s got the same Starbucks. Your social experiences are fundamentally unchanged, no matter what city you’re in. I could drive across the border and be in a completely different country in Seattle and my experience is going be largely the same. So I deliberately didn’t set it in a city because I wasn’t talking about Canada, I wasn’t talking about Vancouver or Toronto, I was talking about a particular type of lifestyle that has come to dominate us, no matter where we are.

The other day I did a two-hour interview in a bar with Sean Cranbury of Books on the Radio. We talked about The Warhol Gang, DRM, iPhones, Stephen Harper and Canadian politics, why I hate American Idol, and a whole bunch of other stuff. The podcast is now up, along with this quick and dirty video. Check it out!

He’s designing toys for newborns:

A little while ago I did a Q&A with HarperCollins’ Savvy Reader to promote my new book, The Warhol Gang. It’s up now, and the book will be following next month.

1. Give it up –what’s the most embarrassing song on your iTunes? Why did you download it in the first place?

“Champagne Supernova” by Oasis. I don’t know how it got there. It just showed up in my library after a night hanging out in Russian chat rooms while drinking scotch. What the hell do those lyrics mean?