THE PEN IS MORE PORTABLE THAN THE SWORD
With reference to my good friends comment on my last post:
I feel my case is now at rest. No hair-dresser would be seen dead in this. It's a classic and the reserve of fictional detectives who live on the edge and those who pay no attention to fashion.
And it's black.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours car...
Does it count if it's not actually your neighbour, but you parked next to it at Homebase this morning? Whipped out to grab a new plug for the bath - for some reason, it just disintegrated - and there it was. Larger than life and sexier than Shakira on a sunny day. This has my name written all over it - and I want it right now!
It has everything a car should have. Personality, charm, it's black, leather seats, very cool stick indicators instead of those plastic things we all have now. It was love at first sight, but when I got back to my car, it was gone otherwise I would have left a note under the wiper blade.
I guess the guy can't live too far away. I'm not even sure what it is. I know it's a Citroen - I could see that from about 100 metres away (even with my eyes) but the model? If anybody has a clue please leave a comment. This is the very car that a fictional detective should be driving.
This has also moved me to think that yes, maybe I do need a decent camera on my phone. Again - if anybody has a killer cam-fone, leave a note if you would be so kind.
Later that same evening:
Apparently, it's a Citroen DS and is highly rated by many! Found this rather cool page hosted by Citroen is anybody actually gives a crap except me. Stunningly gorgeous, but I reckon if they'd tried a bit harder, they could have found some archive pics of the damn thing that weren't in battleship grey. If you keep going though, there's a couple of nice shots in there. There's some of the interior here as well which leads me to one conclusion. Car designers today have got a bloody cheek calling themselves designers.
Must find a new house so that there's room on the drive for one of these too if we're being stupid about it...
To the moon and back
I don't think going away for four days really constitutes a leave of absence from blogging of two weeks - please accept most humble apologies. A really cool thing to say was that I went away in search of plastic Kiss bears, but it's just not true. That said, do I want some Kiss bears on the shelf in my office? 
Yes, I really do - they would look splendid next to other Kiss items. What I really want most is a set of Kiss otters, but I don't think that's on the agenda... not this year anyway. Maybe I should mail Gene.
What I really did was jump in the car and hack it over to the other side of the country for some surfing fun. Despite going over there as often as school will allow us to, I still can't quite get my head around how different it is. It's like going to a completely different country - this time we went with some friends, which always makes it a bit different. Rhiannon still doesn't like surfing much, but I'll put that down to her being seven. Ellie on the other hand isn't far off getting on a big board. Maybe next year. Anyway, we all forsook the big boards this year in favour of the much easier to carry bodyboards. Last time I smacked myself in the face with a big board and crushed one of my teeth, so that was fine by me.
I seem to write more when I'm there too. Not sure if it's because there are less distractions or that I feel I should but some good stuff came out - most of it 2H4D related which is a good thing because it's about time we moved on to book three and got this puppy a bit more finished up. I'll continue this post later on - far too excited today by the final episode of Doctor Who to do much else...
Reading and writing
In my heart, I really don't like shopping on amazon but my bank account thinks it's a good idea. You see, some books you just have to own and John Connolly's The Reapers is one of those. Being a hardback man, it clocks in at around £20 in a real bookstore and it was £8 on amazon meaning I could buy the other two books I had my eye on for less and still have money left over! It's a weird game this discounting lark. For the record, the other two were Spares (Michael Marshall Smith) and The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost Finder which is an old classic from WH Hodgson. Out of respect to my favourite bookstore, which struggles at the best of times, I took the excess, threw in a couple of extra quid and picked up a cool looking book called Stealing the Scream which is a true life detective story about how the famous painting was once stolen and the obsessiveness of one man to find it again.
Anyway, I was telling somebody about this on my way back from the Post Office and they said "I used to read a lot, but now I can't find the time." So I thought I would rustle up a quick top ten list of ways to find time to read... or most other things for that matter.
1. Turn off the TV. Watch what you want to watch and not what they want to throw at you.
2. No really... unless you're a TV critic, turn it off.
3. Wake up. You don't need eight hours sleep. Five or six hours is plenty. Do the math yourself. Do you know how many days of your one and only life you are pissing away like this?
4. Watch out for vampires. Those blood sucking idiots that take up lots of your time when they didn't really want anything. Cut them off.
5. Avert your eyes from facebook or myspace. Speaks for itself that one!
6. Double up on jobs. Read in the bath, while you're cooking... grab some audio books for the less important books and dump them on your pod. This is priceless when you're on holiday and driving.
7. Just read - you don't need an excuse. Down tools every now and then and just get on with it.
8. It will rain eventually, so washing the car is a fools errand!
9. (Wishing I hadn't gone for ten now!)
10. See 1. because I know you're unable to stay away from it.
Now you can read - or do something else that's important to you. Simple.
Haven't looked at 2H4D all week due to schedule with Burn, but this morning my heart called me back to it and it's still got 'it'. So will spend some time with it this afternoon... right now though I have to go to the school fair. If you have kids, this will also be known as the money pit...
(Later that same day.)
So, any money that I potentially saved had I not bought excess books anyway, was swallowed up by face painting, cakes, balloons and a ton of other stuff nobody really wanted, but we all had a good time. A huge flaw in my plan was a quick visit to the book stall, where every book was but 20p.
Fatal.
Two quid later and this weeks stack of books is rather large with over dramatic crime fiction, though to be fair to myself, seven of the eight I bought for Sarah. She reads so damn fast that it's the only way I'll get to read The Reapers before she does. I can make lots of time for reading but I do like to salivate over every single word if possible.
Talking of Sarah, her brother went in for a heart by-pass this week. He's 48. That's put the frighteners on me a bit. He used to be in the army and could run for miles as well as rowing and some other things I've never heard of. Fitness aside, that would be 20 years of ready meals taking its toll then, but my diet is not much better. Note to self: get it sorted.
Currently reading: The Reapers: John Connolly (of course)
Currently listening to: 4 Way Diablo: Monster Magnet
A quick catch-up
Finding it real hard to concentrate this week. Might be something to do with the last episodes of Doctor Who coming up and that far too many people keep sending me this picture and making it worse.
It's very childish of me I know, but it's good to be excited about something outside of this round room of a mind. Ian mailed me today and said he couldn't find any info on what exactly Shocking the Monkey was about. That would be because I never said, but being as he brought it up, I'll elaborate.
It's basically an archive of poems, really short stories and meandering scraps of writing that have been lurking on my hard drive for far too long that I think deserve to be out there. Trust me. The bad stuff is lining the trash can.
At least that's how I thought things were going. Turns out that last night I began writing a short story called The Creeper. Jesus. I must have started it in my sleep because I've written a fair amount of it. Must retain focus though! That's way to many projects on the go, but I don't think you can ever have enough short stories in your arsenal. Too Hot is on ice this week while I finish up with Burn, but that's OK. It's good to have some time away from it to get a birds-eye. Charlie is beavering away at some more art. Apparently, she's been picking up Imagine FX for a while now and it comes with cool brushes on the disc. I didn't know that. I buy it occasionally just to check out what's going on in the world. If you have any interest whatsoever in digital art in all it's forms, it's normally worth picking up, though at seven quid a shot you'd best have a bloody good look at it in the store first!
I'm going to have to take some time off work soon to get my shit together. Still, it's cool to be finally finishing some things off. By Christmas, I should be sitting on a stockpile of many different writings to start farming out to the world - which is basically between Doctor Who finishing and the Doctor Who Christmas special. Just hoping that I don't get car-jacked into X-Factor this year.
Gonna write a classic:
...and if I had an attic I could write in, that's where it would be going on.
Decided to give myself a re-education in classics today, so I went out and bought copies of both Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy. Hulking monsters that they are, it might take me all week to get through them, but chewing them up and spitting them out has to be done. I've read them both a few times now but neither in the last ten years. I think a crash course in their mythology will do me the world of good. Sadly, I also bought a copy of Grant Morrison's The Filth, so those other tomes will just have to wait.
I'm not normally big on pimping my family out to Joe Public, but being as it's public domain anyway, my sister seems to be making something of herself right here. Damn you to hell for eternity for being young and doing it! I jest, honest - go for it. Lay waste to the minions who may stand in your way whilst you're building stuff in the name of progress!
Does that count as a post for today? I haven't done any work yet even if it is nearly midnight...
I want to eat you brains...
Keeping your kids safe on the web: Lesson 1.
As any red-blooded seven year old should, Rhiannon has recently become uber-interested in a) snakes and lizards b) egyptian mummies and c) sharks. I'm sure we'd all agree that any of these are much better than sniffing Pritt-Stick and mainlining glitter stars on any day of the week.
Thus:
"Dad, can I look at mummies on the computer?"
"Sure - you know what you're doing?"
"Yeeess"
Later on, not much later, but later on enough, she came back and said she was stuck and couldn't find anything about them. Here comes lesson one people... wait for it...
When you have a different login for everybody, enforce it. Sarah had left her screen on, so instead of logging out and in again, Little Miss Clever simply stayed on it to save time. Search one for "mummys" revealed some interesting results and thankfully, she only looked at the results, didn't see anything she might like and revamped her search criteria to "dead mummys".
Being as she didn't see anything she fancied in those results either, she chose a different tact. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing and our final crackerjack search of the evening was "pulling your brains out through your nose with a stick".
At which point, Sarah walked in and saved us all from a bucketful of grief. Check out the searches for yourself. I honestly thought she was going to end up at some milf-hunter website when I heard what she'd done - thankfully, all was reasonably safe.
I think that was a get out of jail free card we just played.
Lesson of the day? Always set your wife's ability to look for stuff on the internet to as close to zero as you can get. It will save you much money in the long run as she won't be able to buy shoes.
The other lesson is obvious. Horseshoes and hand grenades and all that.
I finally picked up my Saab 900 today. It seems OK. It's not an Audi, but then again, it's no tin-pot Ford either. It's the first time I've had a clutch in about five years, so that's weird for a start. Then just about everything that can be is in the wrong place - the people at Saab have some odd solutions to living in the modern world. The ignition is down between the gear stick and the hand brake. To start the car, you have to have it in reverse with the clutch down. To get your keys out of the ignition when you've stopped, you have to put it in reverse, and then swtich the engine off before you can get them out.
I kind of like these quirly little things in a car. It has the compulsory 'check engine' warning light on the dash too which probably lit up about three years ago, but at least it doesn't pump CO into the car when you put the heater on. That's always a bonus... and I thought the boot was big in the Audi. The Saab's is like nightclub!
Those things happened outside of my head today. Inside my head, I've finally finished issue one of Too Hot For Dogs. I'm not even looking at issue two until at least the weekend. There is so much to do with regards to the business end of the stick that if I don't do it now, it will never get done. Plus all the time I've been chipping away at that, I've discovered that the other half of my brain has been busy fleshing out the remainder of Almost Human, so once I'm done here, I reckon there's a few chapters of that to be pumped out before bed.
In a tiny snippet of other news, my buddy Neil has asked me to write a few bits on Bon Jovi for his new book on er, Bon Jovi. Neat. Must go up in the loft and find my memories of "glory days long since past". I feel a New Jersey session coming on.
Silence in the Library
There is silence in the bloody library as well.
I have been totally floored by how good Doctor Who was this week. It can only be good news that Stephen Moffat is taking over the honcho position when RTD hangs up his gloves next year - not because there's anything wrong with Russ, but Moffat has certainly shown he can handle fanboy drama more than most. How do I know this - because I am constantly captivated by what he does, my kids are scared of all his episodes (Girl in the Fireplace, Blink) and even though events always run along a knife-edge, he still finds ways of dropping in some in-jokes. It's also quite cool that he doesn't have a website of his own. Annoying but cool.
So, the reason for silence in the library at home this past weekend is that Too Hot for Dogs has undergone major surgery. No sooner had I finished the first draft, I stood back, took a wider view, asked a trusted source for an even wider view and went back to the drawing board - not totally, but I've pretty much rewritten the whole script, re-layed all the design elements and even shifted entire scenes around. We decided to drop different art in to the cover slot as well, so if you like the one on the right, take a long hard look because it won't be there tomorrow!
I was pissed off on Friday but yesterday I saw that what had to be done was good and true and today I'm much happier with it than I was before the weekend. There's still about another weeks work to do on it, but that's OK I think. Charlie has submitted some more frames which have made a huge difference, but she's already on the second book with the art so I have some major catching up to do.
You know what though - I wouldn't change a thing. It just gets better every time I update it, but I will stop soon before I break it!
Meanwhile, my buddy Richie has loaded up one of my old songs to some online recording studio and has started rebuilding it from the ground up. I'm well impressed! I find it a bit weird that he still wants to keep the old band name of Spiritwalker but somehow it seems the right thing to do and sits fine with me - probably because I've had it filed under 'unfinished business' for all this time... but it's still weird!
Over at Burn, I blasted my way through the final proofs of three of the main articles for re-launch and it's looking good. It's nice not to have to worry about the design and production of it for a change. That would have been a killing blow to the schedule! It's in safe hands too. JP is good egg, knows what he's doing and is hungry for it. All good things.
Until this first issue of 2H4D is done, I'm not touching any other projects but life goes on around me... my beloved Audi 100 that I've had for five years is finally dead. Well she's actually walking wounded but I refuse to drive her anymore. 170,000 miles on the clock and if I could be bothered I'm sure I could fix her up but I've lost my faith. So after ten years of black Audi's in some form or other, it's time for a change and this time I'm looking at a Saab 900 in silver. It's almost as big a wrench to the i.d. as when I had my hair cut, but I think the point of a car is to get from A to B in one piece - not going to let this one get under my skin too much! Why do we get attached to machines? I blame my parents...
Footnote: I know I said that I wasn't touching any other projects it occurred to me that it was Friday when I ran my initial idea for a kids book called The Black Wood past Charlotte and she said she would be game to illustrate that too. Damn.
Currently reading: Only my own work.
Currently listening to: Anything ipod shuffle wants to throw at me.
Currently watching: Nothing at all.
A mind is for changing
Sitting here in the kitchen with papers, notebooks and other writing devices stacked to tipping point - yeah, I'm in trouble at home - I was tidying up the synopsis for One Hit Is All It Takes and like a bolt of lightning, the title just seemed so wrong. For the want of breaking the deadlock in the head, I switched it back to it's original title of Almost Human and I'll be damned if the whole thing flows like a river going downstream.
It's a good feeling. It sat OK for a while but now I'm nearly at the end and it may have a life other than the one on the operating table, it's important to get these things right. If you're a writer and happen to be reading, don't be afraid to destroy things you create. Sometimes when you're building things, you need really strong scaffolding to get where you're going.
Smoke gets in your eyes
My, how the days whip by and before you know it, a whole week has disappeared with no posts! So, work news: in the quest for an agent, this week I have learnt a valuable lesson. the one guy who I really thought could cut the mustard for me is a jerk. Here's the timeline: mid February, I sent him an email enquiry so as not to waste his time if we were on different pages. Late March, I decide six weeks was a reasonable amount of time to wait, so I followed the instructions on his web page - which is probably what I should have done in the first place. Six weeks on from that I don't think that it's unreasonable to expect a reply that says something like "Sorry...", or "Sure, send me something..." or even "I'm busy for the next four months, I'll be ages getting back to you".
Of course, as is a writers need for rejection, I thought my pitch was maybe under-par, but then I had the good fortune to bump into an author friend of mine. I was telling her this and she said her agent was just as bad at getting back to her. She had emailed him a question about her current contract and received back pretty much the same as me. Nothing.
Anyway, turns out we were talking about the same guy. At my level, I can understand it, but if you're already involved in a relationship, that's just plain inexcusable, so I'm moving along the bus now and just chalking that one up to a lucky escape. There's hundreds of great looking agents out there - why would I want to be involved with one who can't be bothered responding somebody who was important to him a little while ago? The blogs he recommends also suck. Not even a patch on this one even if I do say so myself!
Not perturbed by this, I mailed a publisher out in the States to see if he would be interested in seeing Too Hot For Dogs. Half an hour later, I got a very cool reply saying "Sure - send it across". That's the sort of response you need from a professional. Game on brother. I salute you! It's not a blank cheque but in the quest to be published, a human response calling for action is classed as a victory.
Talking of Too Hot For Dogs, we have about four more panels left to work on and we're done on issue one. In the quest for the best issue I could deliver, I've killed off a million ideas and undertaken a live rewrite which has made it much slicker. Thus, issue one has now become the prologue and issue one will dive straight into the story without the need for all the character introductions - hence a lack of blogging around here.
The downside of a creative burst is that it inevitably throws up other ideas. Most are consigned to the trash, while others are too good to throw away. In the latter instance, the majority are soaked up into Carnival of Souls simply because it's a book where anything can happen and, more often than not, does.
This is why people like me needs publishing deals - so they can spend all day working on them instead of lining the pockets of The Man.
Meanwhile, my buddy Richie read my post about starting to play again and hooked me into an online recording project. This could be very cool. All seems simple enough - maybe some of those ideas I thought were trashy could be harnessed into something there. It's a hard life being plugged into the creative grid. First port of call is probably to reinstall GarageBand and get some tracks started up to get rid of the cobwebs. Excited about that...
Over in the park next door, some cheap ass prick let his dog attack one of the swans who was protecting his cygnets. When the swan came at it, I thought he was going to smack the dog one with the stick he was holding, but instead he let the swan have it. I was over the other side of the lake or quite seriously, I would have been over there... next time brother, next time. Cock.
Currently listening to: Advance copy of Brigade: Come Morning We Fight and The Outline: You Smash It, We'll Build Around It.
Currently reading: The Lies of Locke Lamora: Scott Lynch and er... Who Are You Stripey Horse?: Jim Helmore/Karen Wall (awesome kids book!)
Currently watching: CSI New York: Season Four
Clip of the Day: It's a surprise
Objects in the rear view mirror, growing older disgracefully and a band called Baby Dynamite...
I've just been reading this book about how time is not a linear chain of events but rather happens all at the same time and the 'linearness' of it, is just how we are programmed to receive it. If that is indeed the case, then the past is only a nano-second away at any given moment.
Which was kind of proved to me tonight when my old buddy Lee caught up with me. I haven't spoken to him in what must be 14 years. That alone makes me feel old, but there's worse to come. He's still playing in a band! He was our bassist in Baby Dynamite and now he's playing in a biker band doing biker rallys... very cool. I'm really pleased that he's still going.
Then he tells me that he tracked down Dean who was our guitarist from hell. He's playing in a band called Twin Method who seem to be doing the business.. I checked them out online and, yeah.. OK, I might be a bit jealous. I'm the one who was supposed to have made it! I was the one who had something to say! That combined with some old pics he sent me, got me into a nostalgic spiral. What with Nate and Pete playing together (albeit pub stuff), and just about everybody else I ever played with still doing something, I'm starting to wonder what the hell happened?
Well, I know what happened. It broke my heart and I couldn't go backwards... but time passes and everything happens for a reason. Playing again is something I've been chewing on for a while and it seems that this evening has been a bit of a catalyst. I did it for so long, kicking it in again will be like falling down the stairs! Is there room for another project? Of course there is... always room for another!
Anyway... hooking back up with Lee has been cool. He has a better memory than me, so it's filled in a whole load of blank spaces for One Hit.. things that were actually important that I'd forgotten about!
At least I still have all my own hair! That's known in the trade as a good start...
The best job in the world?
I went to the store earlier this evening to grab some milk and a packet of "these will kill you eventually". On my way back to the car, I bumped into one of the school mums who was swearing at her phone..
"What's up"
"I've called four cab companies and they're all busy. How can they all be busy?"
"Jump in, I'll give you a ride"
Chatter, chatter. Chatter, chatter... how's things, what's going on with..etc..
Then:
"My boyfriend is moving down here next week"
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"A good thing! It will change everything. We won't be so broke all the time."
"What does he do?"
"He's a ghost rider"
Man, I stomped on the brake so hard we both nearly went through the screen!
"He's a what?"
"A ghost rider"
"That's fucking awesome! I don't even want to know what that is - in fact, don't ever tell me because it can't ever be as good as I imagine it to be!"
Imagine that! A freaking ghost rider!! A ghost rider... brilliant..
A bloody ghost rider! Killer!
Ride a White Swan
It's about 300 degrees down here today - not quite hotter than the sun, but close! Not as hot as my brain either which is completely fried. I had an idea for Too Hot For Dogs which in essence, is as great idea, but it also has implications... implications of rewriting the whole second half of the plot. So be it. It's a much better plotline than it was originally and art-wise, will also be a lot more bombastic than what I had originally intended.
I don't know why it took me so long to figure out that the sinner619 character who currently resides in Carnival of Souls belongs in 2H4D more than anywhere. I guess it's one of the 'can't see the wood for the trees' moments that complete idiots have when they're busy. Anyway, due to the way Charlotte creates her art, this means I have to rustle up a photo shoot in character. This is both good and extremely bad. Good because it will make me create him fully formed in every detail and bad for exactly the same reason. On some level that's probably karma at it's very best as so far I've made Charlie pack suitcases when she wasn't going anywhere, bully her kids friends into standing around like lemons, punch the crap out of a cake in Tesco and travel halfway across the country in search of the most splendid remnants of our pagan ancestry.
This has become the weeks priority and that's fine with me. We need to get this first issue finished up soon so we can commit to publishing it in some fashion, but one thing is for sure - 2H4D will rock your house down!
Over at Burn, things are starting to get busier than ever. My interviewing schedule is getting very full. Fugitiv are already under the belt and what I'm most stoked about this week is hooking up with The Dreaming who are headed up by Christopher Hall (Stabbing Westward). I'm thinking of hooking up with a whole new team of writers to give it a fresh approach... maybe that's a good idea anyway. I think the guys from the original days are probably tired of my diabolic editor ways! Hey, it comes with the territory okay!
Back on planet earth, life continues not to have to shout at me too loud because I'm listening again. I took Rhiannon to the park yesterday and the swans with the nest made from what can only be described as a forest, find themselves the proud parents of six cygnets. Well, they were yesterday. This morning, they're nowhere to be seen. You'd be amazed at what goes on out there. I went to bed about 3am last night and I could hear a dog going for it over there but last year, the seagulls where known to take them away for a tasty snack too. We used to have a swan warden who fed them and watched out for them but I think she died last year, so the swans are fending for themselves now, which is maybe as it should be. Maybe they were just asleep in the nest. I'm not that clued in on the habits of swans and cygnets but I can certainly read between the lines of this particular lesson.
When you get what it is you've been fighting for, there's always some bastard who'll come along and try to spoil the party.
Iron Man tonight! About bloody time too!
Hello, hello...
...it's good to be back, good to be back.
Well, actually it's not because I've been away for a few days and had a great time - and it's probably not such a great idea to go around quoting Gary Glitter either.
We flipped down to Devon for a few days to recharge and I've come back more knackered than I was before I left. The surf was good though - it always is down there. I have to get myself a new board - this one is hammered and now has bad karma attached to it. I got dumped off, smacked myself in the side of the mouth with the tip, cracked my back tooth that started at jujitsu and have been in agony ever since... this dental lark is not cheap anymore. Not sure how many pills I can take now but I think I've probably totally overdone it.
Still, I left the ibook at home and was offline the whole time which is a good thing to do once every six weeks or so. It forces you to think differently and pull everything into line. How you're delivering your materials, the point of them etc... there's nothing like a good cull to get things in perspective either. So it is with sadness but much lighter shoulders that I'm kissing goodbye to the Blood and Honey project as that's now been sunk into the much bigger Burn project - but that means I have a free domain name hanging around. Maybe I'll think of something constructive to do with it... maybe I'll donate it to somebody that needs some space for a little while.
Anyway, this has left me very focussed. Now I only have Burn, Dark Hollow and my writing to think about which is much easier to handle so time for an update - possibly as much for my benefit as anybody else. All Burn news can be found over at burnonline so I won't touch on that here, while the dark hollow site has also had some work done to it.. not sure if I like it though. We'll see. So, tales from the Zodiac Lung:
Too Hot For Dogs: Charlotte has been busy. This last week, we've developed some of the peripherals, things like backgrounds and incidental pieces - those items that you never think much about but if they weren't there would leave massive holes in the book. I'm still really excited about this... time to get that agent soon and start making some approaches to get 2H4D out into the big wide world.
One Hit Is All It Takes: has been sitting on the sidelines for a couple of weeks. I didn't think it would be hard to write about yourself but it is... the closer you get to the present, the less important things appear to be which means there must actually be a time restriction on what is classed as nostalgia! I wonder if it's related to quantum physics... and at what time does nostalgia become history anyway? It's stupid trains of thought like this that stop a man from just getting the work done!
Dreamers: Still kind of secret at the moment as to what it's about but it sure is fun to write! This puppy is coming along just fine - nearly at the end of the first draft already. Who knows, maybe this one will be the first out of the door. Hunter meanwhile, I might kill stone dead. It was a good idea but it ran out of steam very quickly so I think taking it's bare boned carcass and adapting it for a set piece in Carnival of Souls may be the kindest thing to do. Carnival itself is moving along again - I seem to have had a new lease of life with it - probably due to the Hunter train of thought. I really do need do need one of those Waking the Dead pane of glass notebooks you know...
Finally, Turn the Lamp Down Low is on holiday for a month. I've decided to walk away from the working of the plot and look at the characters for a few days. Some of them are weak - or maybe jsut made weak by having strong leads - either way, it needs a doctor before it moves on any further. there's no way it's going to be left to die though. Yeah.. I think it really is that good!
That's me then apart from the work I need to release Shocking the Monkey... yeah, you thought I'd forgotten. Not forgotten... just being a fussy son of a gun over the design and delivery. These things are important if you want to be sitting on Kiss Alive and not a ropey aold bootleg!
"The Man" - he knows nothing...
How can I create more hours in a day? I finally figured it out... I think.
I don't think I can do anything about how long it takes the earth to orbit the sun, but "the man" has got us all dancing to a 7 day week with a couple of days off for good behaviour if you're lucky. The sun/earth thing I can respect but the other.. what a waste. So I've decided to completely ignore it. With BBC iplayer and itunes catering to most of my needs and Tesco, despite being one of "the men" staying open for my other needs, I think this to be very possible.
I haven't been in a record store since Christmas and now I can watch most TV shows whenever I like, I have more time to do 'stuff', but there still isn't enough time. For instance, tonight I spent three hours building the front end of the new Burn website (not live yet) - meanwhile, on the imac not more than 12 inches away, I'm fleshing the outline for Dreamers while I'm still hot on the subject. This is the answer. More machines! I have a really old imac in the loft. Maybe I should dig that out as well.
Obviously, it's not a great idea if you're concentrating on a specific project, but for fleshing out and doing robo-work, it's the best idea in the world don't you think? In fact this very afternoon, while robo-ing some PhotoShop bits, on the other one I caught up with the new series of Waking the Dead. Even a couple of years ago, this would have been looked upon as dumb and verging on the obsessive... today, it's still pretty dumb but I'd bet good money after bad that I'm not the only one.
Enough for today. Another big one tomorrow - might even release the front page of Burn and give you something to click on.
Some blogs are more equal than others...
Despite not being in league with these devils - not yet anyway at least - hell, maybe never - I feel it my duty to raise a glass in their general direction for climbing the slippery glass mountain that is known around these parts as "doing something".
First port of call is James Moran - writer of most excellent episode of Torchwood, this Saturday's episode of Doctor Who, future scribe of Primeval and if I tell you any more, it will hardly be worth flipping over to the The Pen is Mightier than the Spork to see what it's all about. Alongside the gripping tales of screenwriting destruction, there are tales aplenty of life in the hot seat, what really happens at meetings etc... check it out, but you must set aside a whole day and start from the beginning otherwise you'll be doing yourself a gross dis-service!
Next port of call would be a trip to Jason Arnopp's blog. I like Jason a lot for many reasons - here's just two: a) I exiled him in my head because he was into thrash metal whereas I was championing all things with big hair. He wrote for proper mags but I was too busy being rock n roll to bother. Despite all of this, he writes words that look good when he puts them side by side which is really the point and b) he too can be bothered to blog words that serve a purpose... little bit of info here, little bit of entertainment there... what do you want? Blood?
Patrolling further links, David Hepworth's blog comes in handy sized chunks, best of all on there is this post. This, is the dictionary definition of 'scary' - check it here.
...and on the off chance that there is somebody on planet earth who still hasn't seen this clip, please, sit back, relax and lap it up:
http://www.youtube.com/wat
While this blog might not be the best place to launch this, I'm thinking of overhauling my image for the summer. Not something I normally ever think about having so far been one of those BrundleFly types who keeps the same clothes in heavy rotation so it's something I don't have to think about - today though, in a totally non-homoerotic way - I saw this pic of Rob Downey Jr as Tony Stark and I gotta say... it's a good looking pic y'know:
Grace Under Pressure
I went and checked in with my local bookseller today. I think she used to work for Harper Collins - she's a good egg. In fact, she's 'one of us' - one of the ones who care. She can't subsidise the books in her store like a supermarket or give away 3 for 2 like the chains do, but she still gives a damn. As a customer determined to do the right thing, it's rough going in there sometimes. I can always find things I want but my mind will total up the amount things I can get on amazon for the same outlay - but, I know that if I don't spend some cash in there, she will eventually close down, so what I do is buy my big guns product from amazon and grab the cool stuff in her store (such as Home From the Vinyl Cafe) because she makes the effort to actually stock this good shit by researching it and offering it to us.
I think that's a reasonable compromise and you should do the same. If you're a writer who's hoping to get published one day, these people can help you! Amazon don't give a flying one and if you can't see that, you don't deserve to be published.
Once upon a time, in Chester, there used to be a record store called Penny Lane where they sold everything you could ever want along with the coolest Japanese and US imports. Now long since closed due to a lack of interest, where is a band supposed to foster it's grassroots network? MySpace is pretty good for that sort of thing, but when your faced with 15 bands offering everything on a plate vs a sacred finding in the coolest of packaging that you might just be able to afford if you skip lunch for a couple of days, it's a no-brainer. I can remember down to fine detail who I was with and what albums I passed over to buy the first Faster Pussycat album but I don't think I'm even listening to the stuff I found online last week.
I guess if you're under 20, you can claim 'fuck it - it was like this when I found it' but it's not right and even if you are under 2o, I still reckon you're not listening to the 'brilliant' thing you found last week. It's a hard game to play and there are no right answers... I was just pointing it out that's all.
So what's big on the Lung front today? We're officially a third of the way through the first installment of Too Hot For Dogs. The first issue - if you've been paying attention - will indeed be called "An Immaculate Misconception" with issue two taking over the original title of "Mad Dogs and Englishmen". Now I can see the first half as visual content, I can see where I need to turn with it and shall now be introducing some other media into the equation to make it work... to make it rock! I know it's good because I'm still really excited about it - you don't want to know how many years this has almost made it this far!
I spoke to Ian again today - he has some great ideas. I miss hanging out with him loads because we used to bounce around so much crap, we must have had about three saleable ideas a day that we later just forgot about when we worked together. Anyway, today we had a few laughs about something we once shared and in a passing comment, he mentioned it would make a great sit-com. We bounced it around again and the idea ploughed its way to the front of my brain and took over for a while and thus, we must add another project to the list - it will either be called 'Production' or 'Dreamers' - with the former being more realistic and the latter being more commercially viable, I might sit on it for a few days, but somehow I don't think 'Production Dreamers' really cuts the grain. You watch - it will end up being called something completely different eventually.
Anyway - if you're interested in seeing what he's up to, check out his blog over at vinceandlizzy - and don't forget to leave a sarcastic comment about getting the hell on with it.
Maybe that will blow the cobwebs out of his brain... but probably not. Better people have tried but he might sit up and take notice if you ask him to do a Vince or Lizzy image for a one off t-shirt if you throw a tenner in his general direction.
Hot from iTunes today for is the new Lenny Kravitz album - Love Revolution (there I go downloading music again!). It's a scorcher. Very laid back and a real trip back to Let Love Rule. Four thumbs in the air for that one. Review over at Burn will probably land tomorrow.
Another post in an hour or so... work to do...
Clip of the Day: The Losers | Warrior Soul
Did Byron have to think of things like this?
A small interlude before I begin: sometimes you can be in a good place and able to do good things from that place. Today, my buddy James Sherry mailed me a CD by a band called innerpartysystem. I'm not saying that they're going to be the next big thing, but they might be. You know those press stories where they say 'stay away from drug X - it's a one hit, no shit killing machine' - that's kind of what they're like. Don't Stop has a huge, massive sound with an even bigger chorus, so this is just a courtesy call in case you fancy a ride on my bandwagon - you can check them out at www.innerpartysystem.com - those with good memories and/or good taste need only check out the back catalogue of Gravity Kills to know where I'm coming from. Le Fin.
Meanwhile, back in the jungle, I haven't heard from my talented lazy-ass artist friend Ian for a while but this morning - far too early for me to believe it was him - he mailed me this beautiful snippet of news from bbc.com about an ex-copper who has just scored himself a publishing deal with an £800,000 advance attached for his new crime series. This restores much faith in the publishing industry in my head because only a couple of hours prior to that I found out about - and was strongly considering the pros and cons - the New Writing idea recently launched by PanMacMillan which might also have its advantages.
Now I look at the New Writing project again 24 hours later, I'm not so sure I would go for it. The deal is OK and you can't fault the logic behind it, but it's a bit like being a winner of X-Factor. Why announce a scheme at all? Unless it's for some kind of tax reason that's over my head, it makes more sense to me just just do the deal on the contract and get on with your business. Nobody will look like a charity case or have any stigma attached... maybe I'm being too harsh on it, but I think I would rather publish myself at that point. Still, never say never eh...
Anyway - back to our ex-copper - Matt Hilton (which even sounds like a great crime writing name), kicks off with his debut Dead Men's Dust in June 2009 and far from being jealous, I take my hat off to him. Good on you Sir... may you write for as long as you feel able! Like I said yesterday, it doesn't take much to make me happy.
There is a big update to come but it will have wait until tomorrow... I need a Friday night binge on it...
Clip of the day: The Perfect Drug | Nine Inch Nails
