Monday, 20 June 2011
Ginger Nuts
Whew! The last week's been a somewhat hectic affair. I'll tell you all about it another time. For the moment, though, let me draw your attention to Jim McLeod's rather excellent Ginger Nuts Of Horror blog, where I'm being interviewed about various writerly things... go and have a look, you know you want to. There's even a sneak preview of the cover for The Faceless.
Friday, 10 June 2011
R101
Apropos of nothing, I love airships.
They just have a grace and beauty that aeroplanes, for me, simply lack. And, I suppose, a certain kind of old-world charm.
Britain's airship industry ended with the crash of the R101 at Beauvais, France. R101 was a magnificent sight but a sadly flawed design. According to one anecdote, the crew spent the night before the final flight saying goodbye to their friends and telling their sons to look after their families, because they knew the R101 was too flawed to reach its intended destination of Karachi.
R101 was one of two competing airship designs- the other being the R100, built by the Vickers corporation and designed by Sir Barnes Wallis. The engineering team also included Nevil Shute Norway, better known as the novelist Nevil Shute. R101 was built by the Air Ministry at Cardington, Bedford. This was at the time of Ramsay MacDonald's second Labour government, and so it became a political issue- state enterprise versus private.
Shute was very critical of the R101 and its designers, but later admitted many of his criticisms were unfair: the R100 was planned as a safe, conservative design, while the R101's brief was to push the limits of the existing technology. But the ship's designers were working effectively in a goldfish bowl, which created its own pressures- when the R100 team discovered that petrol engines would be more effective than diesel (less power, but also less weight) they were quietly replaced. The R101 team couldn't because of the outcry over wasting public money.
Political pressures meant the flight to Karachi had to go ahead, come what may. The R101 was granted a Certificate of Airworthiness despite the Inspector's misgivings, and the final flight took place. The R101 left Cardington at 6.24pm on 4th October, 1930, but struggled to maintain altitude throughout the flight. Just past Beauvais the airship went into a dive, briefly recovered, then dived again, crashing headlong into a hillside at Allonne on the morning of 5th October.
The flammable hydrogen gas used for buoyancy ignited, and of the R101's 55 passengers and crew only seven men escaped: Engineer Arthur Bell, Engineer Joseph Binks, Engineer Alf Cook, Wireless Operator Arthur Disley, Foreman Engineer Harry Leech, Engineer Victor Savory and Rigger Samuel Church. Sadly Samuel Church later died in hospital from his injuries, only hours before the arrival of his parents and fiancee.
Britain cancelled its airship programme shortly thereafter, with the R100 eventually broken up for scrap.
Maybe airships will make a comeback. They're still around in one form or another, and the emergence of the new hybrid air vehicles are a blend of airship, plane and hovercraft. You never know.
Anyway, here's the R101 on its final flight. The music is called 'Final Flight', by Ian Hubball, aka Marbury. If anyone knows where the track can be downloaded, please let me know because I love it!
They just have a grace and beauty that aeroplanes, for me, simply lack. And, I suppose, a certain kind of old-world charm.
Britain's airship industry ended with the crash of the R101 at Beauvais, France. R101 was a magnificent sight but a sadly flawed design. According to one anecdote, the crew spent the night before the final flight saying goodbye to their friends and telling their sons to look after their families, because they knew the R101 was too flawed to reach its intended destination of Karachi.
R101 was one of two competing airship designs- the other being the R100, built by the Vickers corporation and designed by Sir Barnes Wallis. The engineering team also included Nevil Shute Norway, better known as the novelist Nevil Shute. R101 was built by the Air Ministry at Cardington, Bedford. This was at the time of Ramsay MacDonald's second Labour government, and so it became a political issue- state enterprise versus private.
Shute was very critical of the R101 and its designers, but later admitted many of his criticisms were unfair: the R100 was planned as a safe, conservative design, while the R101's brief was to push the limits of the existing technology. But the ship's designers were working effectively in a goldfish bowl, which created its own pressures- when the R100 team discovered that petrol engines would be more effective than diesel (less power, but also less weight) they were quietly replaced. The R101 team couldn't because of the outcry over wasting public money.
Political pressures meant the flight to Karachi had to go ahead, come what may. The R101 was granted a Certificate of Airworthiness despite the Inspector's misgivings, and the final flight took place. The R101 left Cardington at 6.24pm on 4th October, 1930, but struggled to maintain altitude throughout the flight. Just past Beauvais the airship went into a dive, briefly recovered, then dived again, crashing headlong into a hillside at Allonne on the morning of 5th October.
The flammable hydrogen gas used for buoyancy ignited, and of the R101's 55 passengers and crew only seven men escaped: Engineer Arthur Bell, Engineer Joseph Binks, Engineer Alf Cook, Wireless Operator Arthur Disley, Foreman Engineer Harry Leech, Engineer Victor Savory and Rigger Samuel Church. Sadly Samuel Church later died in hospital from his injuries, only hours before the arrival of his parents and fiancee.
Britain cancelled its airship programme shortly thereafter, with the R100 eventually broken up for scrap.
Maybe airships will make a comeback. They're still around in one form or another, and the emergence of the new hybrid air vehicles are a blend of airship, plane and hovercraft. You never know.
Anyway, here's the R101 on its final flight. The music is called 'Final Flight', by Ian Hubball, aka Marbury. If anyone knows where the track can be downloaded, please let me know because I love it!
Sunday, 5 June 2011
Short and Sweet
The last week's seen me writing a couple of short stories. This is interesting, because I've struggled with producing short fiction in the last couple of years.
The main thing has been the novels. As in the factor that's changed my working method, not just the projects that've taken up most of my time. I still love the short form for the intensity it offers, the focus, not to mention that it's a lot easier to take chances in a story- if you try something experimental in a short piece and it doesn't work, it's a waste of far less time, energy and work than if you do it in a novel. Much of what's best in horror is in the short form; one of the key things that pulled me back into working in the field was Nick Royle's anthology Darklands, a collation of short stories that showed the range and variety horror- good horror- could actually compass. The other, funnily enough, was Shaun Hutson, but we won't go into that...
When I started writing properly- i.e. producing work on a regular basis and sending it out- I wrote short fiction, at a rate of one story a week. Not writing every day, but mulling over the various story ideas I had and picking which one seemed ripe, then sitting down at a computer and writing it in a single sitting. Two or three if it was a long story.
Now of course you can't write a novel that way, not unless you're Philip K. Dick and off your dingers on benzedrine (not for me, thanks- as Chef once said, there's a time and place for everything, and it's called college.) That's a whole different ballgame, one that's about dailiness (to use Julia Cameron's phrase) and putting in a regular, sustainable measure of work each day. Difficult to mesh that with short-story writing, because by the time I write a novel, enough notes and a rough outline have been written that the writing can start straight away. Short stories were more intuitive, inspired, a place where I could still work on inspiration and fly blind. And I'd never written outlines for shorter work.
In the past couple of years, I've written a handful of short stories, usually for specific markets. It was difficult each time, and I was having to deal with the idea that maybe the short story part of me was running down.
But I have a deadline here- as well as The Faceless, I have to write a couple of stories involving some of the novel's characters, plus another for an anthology. And so...
I've started outlining. Just an A4 page of scribbled notes, mostly bullet-points, and then to work. And boy, has it made a difference.
One new story called The Sight was started on the 1st of June, and finished the next day. The same day I wrote the start of a new story, The Children Of Moloch, which is now just over half-finished. The outline is not your enemy if you're a writer; it's one of your best friends. You can even start writing without it and rough one out as you get a grip on what you're doing. But it reminds you roughly what you have to do, and it takes off the pressure to hold all then details in your head. Or to try and get everything done in one go.
I'll have to get back to the novel in the next week or so- there is a lot to do if I'm to to get The Faceless delivered for its September deadline- but it's just a very, very good feeling to be writing short fiction again, and to know the machine's not broken.
One last thing: music always serves as a good accompaniment to writing, but I couldn't find anything on my laptop that suited Children Of Moloch. And then I dug out a CD that I'd bought a couple of years ago and completely forgotten about: Two Suns by Bat For Lashes. It's a rich and beautiful album that I heartily recommend to you, good reader. Plus the music fits Children like a glove.
This track, particularly, seems to click with the story, so what better tune to play us out with? Till next time...
The main thing has been the novels. As in the factor that's changed my working method, not just the projects that've taken up most of my time. I still love the short form for the intensity it offers, the focus, not to mention that it's a lot easier to take chances in a story- if you try something experimental in a short piece and it doesn't work, it's a waste of far less time, energy and work than if you do it in a novel. Much of what's best in horror is in the short form; one of the key things that pulled me back into working in the field was Nick Royle's anthology Darklands, a collation of short stories that showed the range and variety horror- good horror- could actually compass. The other, funnily enough, was Shaun Hutson, but we won't go into that...
When I started writing properly- i.e. producing work on a regular basis and sending it out- I wrote short fiction, at a rate of one story a week. Not writing every day, but mulling over the various story ideas I had and picking which one seemed ripe, then sitting down at a computer and writing it in a single sitting. Two or three if it was a long story.
Now of course you can't write a novel that way, not unless you're Philip K. Dick and off your dingers on benzedrine (not for me, thanks- as Chef once said, there's a time and place for everything, and it's called college.) That's a whole different ballgame, one that's about dailiness (to use Julia Cameron's phrase) and putting in a regular, sustainable measure of work each day. Difficult to mesh that with short-story writing, because by the time I write a novel, enough notes and a rough outline have been written that the writing can start straight away. Short stories were more intuitive, inspired, a place where I could still work on inspiration and fly blind. And I'd never written outlines for shorter work.
In the past couple of years, I've written a handful of short stories, usually for specific markets. It was difficult each time, and I was having to deal with the idea that maybe the short story part of me was running down.
But I have a deadline here- as well as The Faceless, I have to write a couple of stories involving some of the novel's characters, plus another for an anthology. And so...
I've started outlining. Just an A4 page of scribbled notes, mostly bullet-points, and then to work. And boy, has it made a difference.
One new story called The Sight was started on the 1st of June, and finished the next day. The same day I wrote the start of a new story, The Children Of Moloch, which is now just over half-finished. The outline is not your enemy if you're a writer; it's one of your best friends. You can even start writing without it and rough one out as you get a grip on what you're doing. But it reminds you roughly what you have to do, and it takes off the pressure to hold all then details in your head. Or to try and get everything done in one go.
I'll have to get back to the novel in the next week or so- there is a lot to do if I'm to to get The Faceless delivered for its September deadline- but it's just a very, very good feeling to be writing short fiction again, and to know the machine's not broken.
One last thing: music always serves as a good accompaniment to writing, but I couldn't find anything on my laptop that suited Children Of Moloch. And then I dug out a CD that I'd bought a couple of years ago and completely forgotten about: Two Suns by Bat For Lashes. It's a rich and beautiful album that I heartily recommend to you, good reader. Plus the music fits Children like a glove.
This track, particularly, seems to click with the story, so what better tune to play us out with? Till next time...
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
Interview at Read Horror with Jonathan Oliver
That nice Mr Jonathan Oliver, Commissioning Editor of Abaddon and Solaris Books, is being interviewed here at Read Horror, where he says much that is true and worthy, not to mention nice. Tide of Souls gets a mention, as does The Faceless. So do please check it out.
Monday, 23 May 2011
Busy busy busy... Ooh! Good news!
Hello folks. Did you miss me?
It's been a busy few weeks- The Faceless has been taking up a great deal of my time, not that I begrudge it. Anyway, I finished the first draft a week or so back (11 minutes into Friday the 13th- how cool/apt/worrying is that?) But of course, that means the real work is just beginning, as the process of rewrites sets in... but I'll blog more about that soon.
In the meantime, two pieces of good news! Black Static have accepted my short story, 'Dermot'. Don't know yet which issue it'll appeared in, but I'll let you know. I'm still buzzing off the acceptance...
Also worthy of mention is that I now have a chapbook forthcoming from Simon Marshall-Jones' very fine venture Spectral Press: Cold Havens will contain two short stories of mine, 'Comfort Your Dead' and 'The Climb'. Release date, again, TBC. Rest assured you'll know when I do. Me, I'm looking forward to September, when the ever-reigning Cate's Nowhere Hall is released. Spectral are producing some fantastic quality work, both in terms of the fiction and its presentation, and all at very affordable prices. If you like your horror and your dark fiction, they're well worth a look.
Right, well, can't faff about on t'internet all morning. These novels won't rewrite themselves...
It's been a busy few weeks- The Faceless has been taking up a great deal of my time, not that I begrudge it. Anyway, I finished the first draft a week or so back (11 minutes into Friday the 13th- how cool/apt/worrying is that?) But of course, that means the real work is just beginning, as the process of rewrites sets in... but I'll blog more about that soon.
In the meantime, two pieces of good news! Black Static have accepted my short story, 'Dermot'. Don't know yet which issue it'll appeared in, but I'll let you know. I'm still buzzing off the acceptance...
Also worthy of mention is that I now have a chapbook forthcoming from Simon Marshall-Jones' very fine venture Spectral Press: Cold Havens will contain two short stories of mine, 'Comfort Your Dead' and 'The Climb'. Release date, again, TBC. Rest assured you'll know when I do. Me, I'm looking forward to September, when the ever-reigning Cate's Nowhere Hall is released. Spectral are producing some fantastic quality work, both in terms of the fiction and its presentation, and all at very affordable prices. If you like your horror and your dark fiction, they're well worth a look.
Right, well, can't faff about on t'internet all morning. These novels won't rewrite themselves...
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Artemis 81
So, there's this film I watched a couple of weeks ago now...
David Rudkin is a playwright whose work I discovered at university and came to admire greatly. His first play, Afore Night Come, begins as a sort of rustic comedy but darkens steadily as the anxieties and frustrations of the characters- a group of agricultural workers in an orchard in the Black Country- rise to the surface and find a focus in one of the outsiders among their party, culminating in an act of ritual violence. The climax of the play- even on the page- is a powerful, dread-laden affair that stays long in the mind. Later plays like The Sons Of Light and The Triumph Of Death show him to be one of Britain's finest dramatists.
However, Rudkin has also produced an acclaimed body of work for the small and silver screens over the years. Among other projects, he adapted M.R. James' 'The Ash Tree' for the BBC. His play Penda's Fen is often cited as one of the best examples of the BBC's Play For Today series, not to mention a fine example of horror in the best sense. Sadly, I was only a month old when it came out, so it was past my bedtime and I missed it- and, thus far, it hasn't been brought out on DVD.
Artemis 81, on the other hand, has. So I eagerly snapped up a copy on DVD, to finally get to see Rudkin's work in performance...
Directed by Alastair Reid and running at about three hours, Artemis 81 is really like nothing I've seen before. I mean that in an entirely good way, incidentally. I'll try to give you some idea of what it's like.
Gideon Harlax (Hywel Bennett) is a commercially successful but emotionally detached writer of supernatural fiction. He finds material in a spate of mysterious suicides afflicting passengers who travelled on a particular North Sea ferry. Meanwhile, on an alien world with two moons, two 'angels'- Helith (Sting) and Asreal (Roland Curram) prepare to go down upon the Earth- Helith to prevent its destruction, Asrealare to precipitate it.
Also travelling on the ill-fated ferry are Gwen Meredith (Dinah Stabb), the woman who loves Gideon, even though he's unable to fully connect with her, and the organist Albrecht von Drachenfels (Daniel O'Herlihy.) Through a series of cryptic clues, von Drachenfels reveals to Gideon that he is being forced to play an unwilling part in Asrael's plans, which could lead to the destruction of the entire world. Gideon is the only person who can prevent its fruition, but to do so he has to come alive emotionally; he has already been warned he's 'dead inside'.
And then an explosion knocks Gideon out and sends him, accompanied by Helith, on an odyssey through a decaying, nightmarish city that may be a city of the dead, and into an underground complex where... but no. I don't want to spoil this for viewers, and what I've mentioned so far is just scratching the surface.
Is this a perfect film? Not quite; there are speeches in it that clang somewhat; you could get away with them in a more stylised setting, but in what's framed as a realistic scene they verge on the cod-poetic. There's a clumsy and unnecessary aside near the end where Gideon addresses us directly, which no-one's done previously in the entire film- but this is brief, and if there are lapses into the pretentious, then the overall achievement of the film more than compensates for them.
The performances are all round superb; this might be the best performance I've seen from Hywel Bennett, Sting is excellent in an almost 'man who fell to earth' type role, Curram is a truly chilling angel of death, and in his earthbound guise appears to be channelling Lugosi's Dracula. Daniel O'Herlihy gives a frankly magisterial performance as von Drachenfels- tormented, dignified, compassionate, a hugely gifted man trapped in an intolerable situation and trying to find an honourable way out of it. Throw this into a storyline that mixes the mythic and the science-fictional, not to mention a visually brilliant and deeply moving homage to Hitchcock's Vertigo, and you have Artemis 81; at times frustrating, but never less than intriguing, fiercely intelligent, and ultimately satisfying.
I'd certainly recommend this to anyone who likes their horror intelligent and who's not afraid of a challenge. Like all the best horror- like all the best genre material- it has genuine weight and heft as art. If you like the sound of it, you can buy it here.
David Rudkin is a playwright whose work I discovered at university and came to admire greatly. His first play, Afore Night Come, begins as a sort of rustic comedy but darkens steadily as the anxieties and frustrations of the characters- a group of agricultural workers in an orchard in the Black Country- rise to the surface and find a focus in one of the outsiders among their party, culminating in an act of ritual violence. The climax of the play- even on the page- is a powerful, dread-laden affair that stays long in the mind. Later plays like The Sons Of Light and The Triumph Of Death show him to be one of Britain's finest dramatists.
However, Rudkin has also produced an acclaimed body of work for the small and silver screens over the years. Among other projects, he adapted M.R. James' 'The Ash Tree' for the BBC. His play Penda's Fen is often cited as one of the best examples of the BBC's Play For Today series, not to mention a fine example of horror in the best sense. Sadly, I was only a month old when it came out, so it was past my bedtime and I missed it- and, thus far, it hasn't been brought out on DVD.
Artemis 81, on the other hand, has. So I eagerly snapped up a copy on DVD, to finally get to see Rudkin's work in performance...
Directed by Alastair Reid and running at about three hours, Artemis 81 is really like nothing I've seen before. I mean that in an entirely good way, incidentally. I'll try to give you some idea of what it's like.
Gideon Harlax (Hywel Bennett) is a commercially successful but emotionally detached writer of supernatural fiction. He finds material in a spate of mysterious suicides afflicting passengers who travelled on a particular North Sea ferry. Meanwhile, on an alien world with two moons, two 'angels'- Helith (Sting) and Asreal (Roland Curram) prepare to go down upon the Earth- Helith to prevent its destruction, Asrealare to precipitate it.
Also travelling on the ill-fated ferry are Gwen Meredith (Dinah Stabb), the woman who loves Gideon, even though he's unable to fully connect with her, and the organist Albrecht von Drachenfels (Daniel O'Herlihy.) Through a series of cryptic clues, von Drachenfels reveals to Gideon that he is being forced to play an unwilling part in Asrael's plans, which could lead to the destruction of the entire world. Gideon is the only person who can prevent its fruition, but to do so he has to come alive emotionally; he has already been warned he's 'dead inside'.
And then an explosion knocks Gideon out and sends him, accompanied by Helith, on an odyssey through a decaying, nightmarish city that may be a city of the dead, and into an underground complex where... but no. I don't want to spoil this for viewers, and what I've mentioned so far is just scratching the surface.
Is this a perfect film? Not quite; there are speeches in it that clang somewhat; you could get away with them in a more stylised setting, but in what's framed as a realistic scene they verge on the cod-poetic. There's a clumsy and unnecessary aside near the end where Gideon addresses us directly, which no-one's done previously in the entire film- but this is brief, and if there are lapses into the pretentious, then the overall achievement of the film more than compensates for them.
The performances are all round superb; this might be the best performance I've seen from Hywel Bennett, Sting is excellent in an almost 'man who fell to earth' type role, Curram is a truly chilling angel of death, and in his earthbound guise appears to be channelling Lugosi's Dracula. Daniel O'Herlihy gives a frankly magisterial performance as von Drachenfels- tormented, dignified, compassionate, a hugely gifted man trapped in an intolerable situation and trying to find an honourable way out of it. Throw this into a storyline that mixes the mythic and the science-fictional, not to mention a visually brilliant and deeply moving homage to Hitchcock's Vertigo, and you have Artemis 81; at times frustrating, but never less than intriguing, fiercely intelligent, and ultimately satisfying.
I'd certainly recommend this to anyone who likes their horror intelligent and who's not afraid of a challenge. Like all the best horror- like all the best genre material- it has genuine weight and heft as art. If you like the sound of it, you can buy it here.
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
Claude Choules, 1901-2011
Claude Stanley Choules, the last known combat veteran of the First World War, has died at the age of 110.
And so ends an era; World War One, at least as far as its battles are concerned, has now passed out of living memory.
R.I.P Claude, and all the other men who suffered through that ugly, pointless war. The ones who came back, and the ones who didn't.
RI.P.
And so ends an era; World War One, at least as far as its battles are concerned, has now passed out of living memory.
R.I.P Claude, and all the other men who suffered through that ugly, pointless war. The ones who came back, and the ones who didn't.
RI.P.
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