Saturday 31 October 2009
Thursday 29 October 2009
Ghostly delivery
Yay - I've just delivered the second draft MS for the fantasy novel I've been ghost-writing for the past few months. Don't bother asking me what it's about or who it's for – what kind of ghost would I blabbed about stuff like that?
What struck me about this particular edit was how close I was able to get to the words. "What's he talking about?" I hear you ask. "He's a writer, isn't he? It's all words, isn't it?"
Well, yes. But on this occasion the structure and pacing of the novel were pretty much there after the first draft. That left me free on the second draft to roll up my sleeves, get right into the text and massage it to get the most out of every scene, without worrying too much about how those scenes fitted together. Good prose is all about finding exactly the right word, every step along the way. So that's what I've been doing.
Mind you, with around 80,000 words to consider, chances are I haven't nailed them all. As a famous writer once said (and most writers I know agree), you set out on every project wanting to write the best thing you ever wrote ... and end up just wanting to get the damn thing finished.
And finished it is, which leaves me free to tinker with a personal project before the outline for the third and final book of this ghostly trilogy arrives in my inbox. Who knows, maybe that one will be the best thing I ever wrote. When the damn thing's finished, I'll let you know.
What struck me about this particular edit was how close I was able to get to the words. "What's he talking about?" I hear you ask. "He's a writer, isn't he? It's all words, isn't it?"
Well, yes. But on this occasion the structure and pacing of the novel were pretty much there after the first draft. That left me free on the second draft to roll up my sleeves, get right into the text and massage it to get the most out of every scene, without worrying too much about how those scenes fitted together. Good prose is all about finding exactly the right word, every step along the way. So that's what I've been doing.
Mind you, with around 80,000 words to consider, chances are I haven't nailed them all. As a famous writer once said (and most writers I know agree), you set out on every project wanting to write the best thing you ever wrote ... and end up just wanting to get the damn thing finished.
And finished it is, which leaves me free to tinker with a personal project before the outline for the third and final book of this ghostly trilogy arrives in my inbox. Who knows, maybe that one will be the best thing I ever wrote. When the damn thing's finished, I'll let you know.
Talisman and Dome
My appreciation of Stephen King started with the 1979 TV version of Salem's Lot, which had us all talking in the school playground about how we hadn't slept a wink after watching David Soul go up against Mr Barlow. After that initiation, my first reading experience wasn't that great. As a teenager I borrowed Pet Sematary from a friend and thought it was all a bit overblown up to the point where the resurrected kid gets hold of the scalpel. Then, at the age of eighteen, I read The Talisman ...
I read The Talisman at lightspeed, consuming the entire second half in a single sitting one wet Sunday afternoon. Jack Sawyer's adventures just blew me away. Years later I loved the sequel Black House nearly as much, for entirely different reasons. I'm not here to review these books, only to tell you to read them, and to say how great the new comic adaptation of The Talisman looks. (I have a particular interest in this as it's drawn by Tony Shasteen, who produced a couple of awesome illustrations for two short stories of mine.)
Since then I've visited Castle Rock and Derry on a regular basis. I've trekked through Mid-World with Roland and his buddies. I'm a true fan. When Mr King writes his introductions dedicated to his Constant Reader, I know he's talking to me. So am I excited about his new novel Under the Dome being published next month? You bet your boots!
I read The Talisman at lightspeed, consuming the entire second half in a single sitting one wet Sunday afternoon. Jack Sawyer's adventures just blew me away. Years later I loved the sequel Black House nearly as much, for entirely different reasons. I'm not here to review these books, only to tell you to read them, and to say how great the new comic adaptation of The Talisman looks. (I have a particular interest in this as it's drawn by Tony Shasteen, who produced a couple of awesome illustrations for two short stories of mine.)
Since then I've visited Castle Rock and Derry on a regular basis. I've trekked through Mid-World with Roland and his buddies. I'm a true fan. When Mr King writes his introductions dedicated to his Constant Reader, I know he's talking to me. So am I excited about his new novel Under the Dome being published next month? You bet your boots!
Tuesday 27 October 2009
Best Horror reviewed in Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly have posted an excellent starred review of Ellen Datlow's The Best Horror of the Year 1:
"After 22 years of pulling the horror content for the now-discontinued Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series, Datlow (Lovecraft Unbound) goes solo with this stellar start to a new “best of” annual. As in the past, her picks confirm that “horror” is a storytelling approach with endlessly inventive possibilities. In E. Michael Lewis's “Cargo,” a haunting Twilight Zone–type tale, an airplane picks up something otherworldly as part of its latest transport. Euan Harvey's creepy “Harry and the Monkey” turns an urban legend into reality. R.B. Russell's “Loup-garou” is a highly original shape-shifter story with a subtle psychological twist, and Daniel LeMoal's “Beach Head” a bracing conte cruel with a Lord of the Flies cast. In addition to the richly varied stories, Datlow provides her usual comprehensive coverage of the year in horror in an introduction that's indispensable reading for horror aficionados."
If you're wondering, of course I have a vested interest, since one of my stories is in there...
"After 22 years of pulling the horror content for the now-discontinued Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series, Datlow (Lovecraft Unbound) goes solo with this stellar start to a new “best of” annual. As in the past, her picks confirm that “horror” is a storytelling approach with endlessly inventive possibilities. In E. Michael Lewis's “Cargo,” a haunting Twilight Zone–type tale, an airplane picks up something otherworldly as part of its latest transport. Euan Harvey's creepy “Harry and the Monkey” turns an urban legend into reality. R.B. Russell's “Loup-garou” is a highly original shape-shifter story with a subtle psychological twist, and Daniel LeMoal's “Beach Head” a bracing conte cruel with a Lord of the Flies cast. In addition to the richly varied stories, Datlow provides her usual comprehensive coverage of the year in horror in an introduction that's indispensable reading for horror aficionados."
If you're wondering, of course I have a vested interest, since one of my stories is in there...
Tuesday 20 October 2009
Names from the arena
I have a folder on my laptop called The Arena. It's where I put my ideas. Story fragments, outline notes, lists of names or places ... you name it, it's there. Once in The Arena, they scrap it out. Only the strongest survive.
There's something in The Arena right now that wants to be heard. The trouble is, I don't really want to talk about it. The Arena's a hostile place. Sometimes the things in there just wither and die before they even get a chance to take up their weapons. But this particular project already seems to have a life of its own. I've decided to acknowledge that by presenting to you the following list, without preamble or explanation. Just to let it know I'm paying attention.
Abalone
Tiquette
Pyx
Viscero
Ghan
Pyrean
and finally
The Tilt
That's all. Make of it what you will. If the project wins through against the other gladiators in the ring, you'll be the first to know.
There's something in The Arena right now that wants to be heard. The trouble is, I don't really want to talk about it. The Arena's a hostile place. Sometimes the things in there just wither and die before they even get a chance to take up their weapons. But this particular project already seems to have a life of its own. I've decided to acknowledge that by presenting to you the following list, without preamble or explanation. Just to let it know I'm paying attention.
Abalone
Tiquette
Pyx
Viscero
Ghan
Pyrean
and finally
The Tilt
That's all. Make of it what you will. If the project wins through against the other gladiators in the ring, you'll be the first to know.
Monday 19 October 2009
Read, edit, sleep, write
It's heads down at Edwards Mansions right now. The usual tight deadline to finish the second draft of the next fantasy novel in the trilogy I'm writing this year (yes, three books in one year and no, I'm not crazy). First task is to work through all the specific comments from the editors ie those relating to particular paragraphs or sentences. That's pretty much done now. Next come the general comments. One of the characters needs to act a little more feisty, for example – that means reading the MS again and rewriting sections accordingly. There are maybe eight or ten general comments of this sort. At the same time I'm doing all my own tinkering. This is the last time I'll get my hands dirty on this book, so I want to make the most of it. When it's all wrapped up there'll be just time for a short nap, followed by a deep breath before plunging into book three!
Monday 12 October 2009
Best Horror review
The first review of The Best Horror of the Year Volume One, edited by Ellen Datlow and containing my short story Girl in Pieces, has arrived over at Charles Tan's excellent review blog. Click here to read the review.
Friday 9 October 2009
The future of the book
Check out this article on the Bookseller website, imagining the future of the book. To fuel the speculation, "if:book asked some of its 21st-century experts to use their time machines and then report back from the near and far-flung future." I especially like Bill Thompson's image of books being burned to stoke the fires that run the servers that keep Google going!
Thursday 8 October 2009
Opening the 8mm archive
As threatened, here are a couple of bits of animation from those scratchy old 8mm movies I used to make back in the '80s. Since taking these first tentative steps I've had the joy of producing rather slicker pieces of work using pixels rather than plasticene. But hey, we all start somewhere!
First up is the epic opening shot of Matt Line Tidies Up the Universe, as detailed in my earlier post 8mm planetary approach ...
... followed by the previously mentioned demonic dressing gown from Fever.
First up is the epic opening shot of Matt Line Tidies Up the Universe, as detailed in my earlier post 8mm planetary approach ...
... followed by the previously mentioned demonic dressing gown from Fever.
Wednesday 7 October 2009
Electro-plasmic genre fiction!
In case you were wondering where I got the idea for my latest book, Cosmonoiac, set in a dystopian Antarctica, in which a young techno-obesessed geek stumbles across a dream-inducing drug which spurs him into conflict with a megalomaniacal dictator (all with the help of a leather-clad female with shades and welding gear), culminating in a daring rescue preceding a giant explosion ... check out Wondermark's fabulous Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator!
Dig the demonic dressing gown
One of my earliest adventures in fantasy film-making was the epic Fever, made in collaboration with my long-time buddy Phil Tuppin. It was a four-minute horror movie made with a Standard-8mm clockwork camera and entered for the BBC's Screen Test Young Film-Makers of the Year competition. And, yes, it actually got broadcast in the Highly Commended category, although they censored the second half for fear it would "give younger viewers the heeby-jeebies"!
The key special effect in this epic is a shot of a demonic dressing gown crawling across a boy's bedroom floor, shortly before throttling said boy (who's lying unconscious in bed with a fever) to death. We did it using good old stop-motion animation. Each frame, I extricated myself from behind the camera, picked my way across the room without disturbing any of the artfully-arranged props, moved the gown the requisite inches, then clambered back out of shot ready for Phil to click the shutter. Our rudimentary lighting apparatus meant all this was done under the searing glare of bare 200W bulbs positioned close enough to our faces to act as sunlamps. Back-breaking stuff, but so rewarding to see it all come to life when we got the processed film back from Kodak a fortnight later – yes, this was pre-video and definitely pre-digital.
Most of the other gown shots were puppeteered with garden canes taped into the arms. But that hero shot of the thing crawling across the floor was a real winner. Once again, sadly, I'm posting before sorting out screen grabs from the DVD transfers of these ancient movies (see my previous post 8mm planetary approach), so stand by for a bumper crop of stills soon!
The key special effect in this epic is a shot of a demonic dressing gown crawling across a boy's bedroom floor, shortly before throttling said boy (who's lying unconscious in bed with a fever) to death. We did it using good old stop-motion animation. Each frame, I extricated myself from behind the camera, picked my way across the room without disturbing any of the artfully-arranged props, moved the gown the requisite inches, then clambered back out of shot ready for Phil to click the shutter. Our rudimentary lighting apparatus meant all this was done under the searing glare of bare 200W bulbs positioned close enough to our faces to act as sunlamps. Back-breaking stuff, but so rewarding to see it all come to life when we got the processed film back from Kodak a fortnight later – yes, this was pre-video and definitely pre-digital.
Most of the other gown shots were puppeteered with garden canes taped into the arms. But that hero shot of the thing crawling across the floor was a real winner. Once again, sadly, I'm posting before sorting out screen grabs from the DVD transfers of these ancient movies (see my previous post 8mm planetary approach), so stand by for a bumper crop of stills soon!
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