Well, it’s been a wonderful period of battery refreshing and book rewriting. The book’s in good shape now – 20,000 words shorter, more emotionally coherent and much, much more focussed. So that will be going out to various people over the next few weeks. Very exciting! And of course I’ve been doing much re-reading. InContinue reading “Swamp moralities”
Category Archives: Fantasy
A mirror and a window both
In ‘S/Z’, his wonderful, word by word dissection of a Balzac short story, Barthes notes that ‘in the text, only the reader speaks.’ There’s a fascinating point about the process of reading to be drawn out of that. When we read a book, he’s saying, we read it in our voice, hearing the words inContinue reading “A mirror and a window both”
Solomon Kane 2007
It’s an odd thing, but when Robert E. Howard (yup, the Conan bloke) wrote his Solomon Kane stories, he provided an uncannily precise analysis of a certain kind of American exceptionalism. Solomon Kane is a sixteenth century Puritan with a thirst for justice, who travels the world righting wrongs. He’s occasionally assisted by an agedContinue reading “Solomon Kane 2007”
Our needs, character needs
Well, a slightly distracted post today, as I’m at home, working on a re-draft of the novel. It’s coming together nicely; so far I’ve chopped out about 10,000 words. Key changes so far are to get rid of the very slow moving opening chapters, and sharpen up the ghostly hermaphrodite from another dimension that’s aContinue reading “Our needs, character needs”
Saluting the Deathly Hallows
allumination salutes today’s Harry Potter frenzy with a link to the ever groovy Birdchick talking barn owls, namechecking ‘Labyrinth’, and highlighting appalling predator close up vision. Who knew? [googlevideo=http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7614573884602516416&q=birdchick+barn+owl&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0]
Slaying Bob from HR
Was still pondering yesterday’s post about weakness / achievement gaps in genre fiction when I went to read SF Diplomat, where Jonathan McCalmont is fascinating on the content of fantasy: ‘Why does fantasy prefer to dwell on saving a morally simple world instead of making the best one can in a more realistic one?’ He’sContinue reading “Slaying Bob from HR”
The weakness / achievement gap
Well, the Alan Wall Guide to Writing has arrived (you can also check out his music here), and skimming through it this morning over my breakfast toast I was already feeling sparked by it. For example, here’s Wall on one of fiction’s key obsessions: ‘Fiction is fascinated by darkness and misfortune, and ‘plot’ is usuallyContinue reading “The weakness / achievement gap”
A heart of darkness
Felt a bit bummed out yesterday, so that inevitably made me think of William Hope Hodgson’s ‘The Night Land’, the book that nearly gave me a nervous breakdown over New Year 1999 / 2000. Normally, I love William Hope Hodgson. His berserk imagery, unhinged sense of space and time, and deep nautical experience (at timesContinue reading “A heart of darkness”
La Planete Sauvage
Well, as promised here’s part 1 of ‘La Planete Sauvage’ from Youtube. Alas, it’s not subtitled or dubbed – but then again, who needs language when you have such trippy music and visuals? Oh, and the rest of it’s linked to from the Youtube page.
Nostalgia for an age yet to come
Been pondering what to write about today, as it’s been a pretty distracted day, and for some reason I feel the call of Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury… in fact, of Planetary Romances. There’s a wonderful point of connection between the two writers. In one of ‘The Martian Chronicles’ stories, ‘Night Meeting’, the Human protagonistContinue reading “Nostalgia for an age yet to come”