Pacifist Guerilla

Very Moving

2006-10-14T15:03:00.000+01:00

Ratfink and I are leaving the PG behind us, and have set up home at LiveJournal instead. First posts - a recap of our recent interviews, and a top five books about birth and rebirth.

Stick with us, folks:

Pootle and Rattie live!

I'm sure the twitchy nosed fluffster will pop in himself to say cheerio from Blogger. See you at the new venue!

Amazing Stairs

2006-10-13T12:48:00.000+01:00

Aren't escalators marvellous?

When I was a small small child in deepest Devonio we used to travel to Exeter once a year for a Christmas treat. This involved two things - Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch and a trip up the escalator in Debenhams. My brother and I used to spend hours going up that escalator. This was back when escalators only went up and you had to walk down normal stairs to leave the building or, indeed, ride the escalator again.

Wow, that memory makes me feel Christmassy.

Anyway, the point of the reminiscence is so that I can tell you that I'm going to be permanently riding an escalator for the next year, that is, the Escalator Scheme hosted by the New Writing Partnership. The quite marvellous Michelle Spring is going to be mentoring the writing of my next book, which is brilliant, because it's a crime novel. After a fashion.

More details at the New Writing Partnership Website.

Name in pixels

2006-10-13T09:46:00.000+01:00

So now Apex has been saved, the new issue with my story, Kissing Cousins, is available. The full toc is on the home page of the site, along with the quirky cover image:

www.apexdigest.com

Don't Take It Personally #6

2006-10-10T12:30:00.000+01:00

And so, the last word in rejection for the moment comes from Sally Zigmond, ex Assistant Editor of QWF before it absconded for the younger, brighter, better looking lights of America. Sally's also a darned fine writer so we'd be wise to believe the following information regarding what would lead to instant rejection on the bumpy playing field of the short story market:

What I hated and what I know most other editors hate is anything that begins with the protagonist in bed with dawn creeping round the curtains and then spends pages explaining why he or she can't get up. Then again, if they do eventually rise, I don't want to know that they take a shower and have breakfast - unless of course, these dull daily acts have significance. Get them out of the bedroom and doing something interesting!

Thanks Sally, and good luck with your future projects.

In fact, good luck to all future projects everywhere. I kiss you all metaphorically on the lips and say, Get out there, mariners and pirates! Meet rejection with a smile, and remember, no matter how people dissect your sea slug, it's still gonna smell of your unique brinyness. They can't take that away from you.

Cast off.

On Things That Make Me Make a Noise Like A Ribena Berry

2006-10-09T10:02:00.000+01:00

The Blue Pootle wonders how to cope with the mean reds.

How about making a list of all the things that cause me to make a 'wooo' noise? 'Wooo' noises are good for serotonin levels and stimulate the production of, well, good stuff. In the brain. In the ribena cortex.

So here goes:

Number One - going fast round corners. This inevitably produces a 'wooo' from me. Although I'm not convinced that it's altogether a pleasurable 'wooo'.

Number Two - cheap nasty white toast. This creates the ribena berry factor for me, but also creates the 'argh, you gluten-ridden idiot' factor for my stomach exactly three hours later.

Number Three - otters doing their thing is a definite 'wooo' in sheer loveliness. But I don't live near any otters and even if I did, find that making the appropriate noise usually leads to their immediate departure.

Number Four - plain chocolate digestives and cutesy play station games with Japanese characters called Justin or Blade King or Ariel Sharon. You eat a biscuit, you run around a virtual world for 600 hours of extremely easy game play.

Right then, I'm off to combat the mean reds with a dose of number four. Wooo.

Grendel Song Launch Party

2006-10-05T13:40:00.000+01:00

Turning up fashionably late to the Grendel Song launch party—there’s all kindsa mad-party action there. You can catch Jay Lake’s podcast of his story The Best of Times, The Best of Men there. The first issue also has a new story by the fish/squirrel hybrid E. Sedia (along with news of our forthcoming chapbook-now all we need to do is find someone who'd like to write a scorching introduction) and stories by Forrest Aguirre and Eugie Foster.

Great Potatoes R Us

2006-10-05T13:17:00.000+01:00

Talking of root vegetables, I recently joined a Vegetable Box Scheme, which I am enjoying immensely. New and interesting vegetables, all soily and organic, turn up in a big recyclable box on my doorstep. I go away and research what needs to be done to such foodstuffs as Swiss Chard to make it palatable to the under twos, and I'm sure that Elsa isn't swallowing more chemicals than vegetables. Very highly recommended. Here's what I got in my box today (to last for two weeks):

2 types of potato
onions
a huge cauliflower
a red pepper
spinach
cavolo nero
beetroot
a spaghetti squash
avocado (yeuch)
half a dozen apples
3 big oranges
bananas (they do a fair trade deal with suppliers, I'm assuming...)
pomegranates (yumma!)

Good, eh? All recipe ideas gratefully received.

I also got a leaflet in my box entitled 'Stop the GM Spiral'. It informs me that there's new government plans which will jeopardise the growing of GM-free food.

I'm not strictly anti GM foods - the moment we started breeding types of cattle together we were dabbling in the gene pool, for God's sake - but I'm pro the right to grow, protect and sell GM free foods. So if you want to get involved, you can send an email to GMcoexistence@defra.gsi.gov.uk asking them to protect GM-free crops. Call the email 'Consultation on Proposals for Managing the Coexistence of GM, Conventional & Organic Crops'. Well, this is government - if it doesn't have 300 syllables, it doesn't count.

She can't make love, but makes great potato

2006-10-04T11:23:00.000+01:00

Ah, the mighty Sack Trick - that headline's taken from the song Microwave Sweetheart - the album Penguins on the Moon. Why have only about ten people heard of them?

Here are the lyrics from their classic I Play Bass:

I can’t get a job cause I can’t get out of bed.
I can’t go to college cause I’ve nothing in my head.
I can’t play drums and I can’t really sing
I’ve tried to play guitar but it’s got far too many strings
I’ll play bass

It’s got four strings; I only use two.
I’ve never worked out what the others do. I play bass

I’m happy here just strumming along
But I’m still not sure how to play this song
I play bass
Here we are in another verse
The first was bad this can’t be worse

I play bass
Still don’t know quite why I’m here
Never mind, I’ll get another beer
I play bass

NOW WE COME TO THAT PART OF THE SONG
THAT ALWAYS SEEMS TO GO ON FOR SO LONG
WE DON’T MIND IF YOU WANT TO NOD OFF
COS THE BASS PLAYER’S ABOUT TO SHOW OFF. GO

So if you can’t...And if you can’t...GO PLAY BASS

Even the drummer’s doin’ it!

Okay, so it's a lot better with the actual music.

Don't Take It Personally #5

2006-10-02T13:20:00.000+01:00

So many manuscripts, so few agents. Getting representation is just as hard as getting published, it seems, nowadays, so thank God for enterprises like Macmillan New Writing, where a publisher has dared to move with the times by allowing unsolicited subs by the lowest of the lowest, the unclean 'writers without an agent' sect (although if you have got an agent, that's okay too...). Plus, you submit via email and everything gets read. Not many publishing houses can make that claim.

Speaking from personal experience, and to paraphrase the man in the eye laser surgery advert, 'I highly recommend it.'

Anyway, the man at the Helm of MNW is the enthusiastic and utterly charming Will Atkins. He's a top banana kind of a guy who had this to say on the subject of instant rejection:

As for opening lines that would make me pass on something promptly – well, I try not to reject anything solely because of its opening (unless it’s really exceptionally offensive), but for what it’s worth . . . conventional Creative Writing wisdom seems to say it’s a good idea to start with a line of “intriguing” dialogue to draw the reader in. This device sometimes works brilliantly, but in my view it tends to be overused, and if done clumsily can be very off-putting.

Synopses – conciser the better.

So, all you people who binned your opening lines of dialogue on the advice of Steven Pirie (from an earlier insight into rejection at this very site) can send your manuscripts off to MNW - your foresight will do you proud!

Bonus points for anyone who can come up with an exceptionally offensive opening line. Something about corpse kissing or keeping babies in cages should cut the mustard.

Happy Birthday, Famous Person

2006-09-30T13:52:00.000+01:00

How dull and monotonous would our pathetic little lives be if we didn't have famous people to chivvy us along? I don't know about you, but I always seem to have room in my existence for a glossy mag about surgically altered partygoers who own white leather sofas and are followed by an entourage who include a full time mineral water holder and a ghost writer.

So today I'd just like to say Happy Birthday to a hero of mine. His cheeky smile has made my rotten old flabby-arsed life easier to bear.

Kieran Culkin, many happy returns. You were quite good in Father Of The Bride.

On a less acidic note, I just had a venison burger for the first time and it really was smashing, if a trifle undercooked. Watch this space for possible pukage.

What if we were all chickens?

2006-09-28T12:56:00.000+01:00

Crane fly season appears to be coming to an end in south east England. Is there any animal I would less rather come back as than a Daddy Longlegs? I don’t think so. You can’t even breathe on the things without them losing two or three legs.

I can’t think of any fiction incorporating them as a key character, but there are some great tales of anthropomorphism out there.

In at numero cinco, Pootle’s aforementioned Life of Pi, with talking tigers and other zoo-bound fauna.

Quatro, the afore-interviewed Jeffrey Ford’s ridiculously enjoyable Cosmology of the Wider World.

Y tres, Orwell’s Animal Farm

Dos, Richard Adams’ opus Watership Down—she shakes and she moves I ain’t see nothing finer (even though it has to answer to the Animals of Farthing Wood) except

Senor Kipling’s post-Aesop piece de resistance—El Libro de la Selva

Good news alerts—Apex Digest has been saved. My story Kissing Cousins will be in the new issue. Pootle’s just been declared one of McSweeney’s 13 Writing Prompts winners for her very funny untitled story about a man and his Loving Heart and my story about a Brighton-based woman and dragon trying for a baby will be in the forthcoming charity anthology SALT, being produced by Naked Snake Press for the Surfrider Foundation. Go us!

Elsa-Watch: MMR

2006-09-28T10:43:00.000+01:00

I'm a great believer in vaccination, so poor Elsa is signed up to have every jib-jab under the sun including the new meningitis inoculation when that's available. But even I had a moment of doubt about the MMR, after all the kerfuffle about autism etc. And there were far too many websites giving out less than balanced information on the subject.

Still, better the jab than a case of measles, no doubt about it, so off she went two weeks ago, and she was a right little trooper. I cried more than her.

So the injection went incredibly smoothly. The side-effects did not.

Ten days later she woke up screaming. Actually, that isn't so unusual for Elsa, being prone to bad dreams, but when I touched her she was as hot as a radiator. I could have dried socks on her. And, all over her body but mostly on her back and under her arms, was the classic measles rash.

We tried to get paracetamol into her but her throat must have been sore, because she just couldn't seem to swallow it. We couldn't pick her up because the glands under her arms were enlarged and painful. The light bothered her and her lower back hurt. Sleep was not an option unless she was being held upright with one hand pressed to her head. What a fun set of symptoms for an adult, let alone a baby who can't tell you what's wrong or understand what she needs to do to make it better.

Five days, numerous tepid sponge baths and two emergency runs to the doctor later, the rash went, the temperature dropped, and she's almost (as long as we keep dosing her with Calpol) back to normal.

Of course, all this is still better than having measles. But a little bit of warning wouldn't have gone astray. The thing that really bugs about being a parent is not being given all the information and then being blamed for making the wrong decision if something goes awry.

I don't need this extra guilt - I got enough of it when my maternal hormones arrived. Mothers are the scapegoats of the world, you know. Still, she's fine now, and presently obsessed with ducks. Quack quack.

Crash! Kerpow!! Wallop!!!

2006-09-26T15:37:00.000+01:00

Launched today:

http://www.wallop.com

Don't Take It Personally #4

2006-09-26T12:32:00.000+01:00

And so, back to rejection. It's a horrible business. I once got rejected by a committee of twelve who were determining whether I would make a suitable employee for a summer school camp for the under elevens. It hurt terribly. However, I was completely unsuitable for the job and had applied out of sincere desperation. I think the committee sensed that.

So is it better to pretend that you don't care one way or another? Or should you put on your pleading face and offer to lick underwear? Which option will get you instant rejection? Here's what Peter Tennant, small press legend and fluffy bear lover, had to say on the subject:

The editing jobs I've been involved with mostly don't allow for instant rejection. At Interzone and Whispers I've been a second stage reader, so the really bad stuff was weeded out before it got to me, while at Peeping Tom we had a check style rejection form to complete, and 'Your first line sucked' wasn't one of the options.

There have been some stories where I've found myself so out of sorts with what's taking place on the page I've only been able to tolerate the opening scenes, and invariably this is down to what I'd class as 'carelessness'. One aspect of that, of course, is bad grammar and punctuation. Another is the author failing to keep track of what's going on - one minute the hero is in his girl friend's bedsit and the next line he's in a car, with no transition at all, or wearing different clothes or speaking to different people. Argh! Seems to me there are plenty of writers who are good at the set pieces, but just don't take enough care with the details of storytelling, the nuts and bolts of language and narrative flow that hold it all together. And if they can't be bothered, then generally I won't either.

So be bothered! Lick Peter's underwear, metaphorically speaking! Transmission over.

On The Rocks

2006-09-24T16:25:00.000+01:00

The Blue Pootle understands that there is a hierarchy of alcohol that can only be ignored at her peril.

Unfortunately, once one high heel has been placed on the bottom rung of the ladder, the next rungs begin to look rather like a beanstalk that leads up to some great big golden eggs, rather than an appointment with a packet of painkillers, lucozade sport, and the bad hair fairy.

The first rung is wine. I love wine. Red wine, the kind that stains your teeth purple. If that runs out I'll drink white wine, the kind that makes your mouth feel like a pincushion. If that happens to run out, I'll switch to rose. The kind that your cousin Trevor (who likes model trains and comedy ties) gives to you as a christmas present every year and you put under the sink to give to other people who you don't like if they pop round unexpectedly.

If that all went down to the stomach lining swimmingly then I'll probably start telling Hubby that beer is the drink of the epicurean. Real Ale. We'll reminisce about the ale they used to serve in the pubs at university, and then order some over-processed, chemical, 'comes out of the tap with the head already in place' type beer and smack our lips together in enjoyment, even though our taste buds switched off three drinks ago.

Then comes the third rung - the alcopop. I hate alcopops. They look radioactive, they taste of summer fruit squash, and they cost you at least £4.00 and your personal dignity. But, by this stage in the evening, they cut down on spillage and can be left with the non-dancing member of the group to hold in collections of twenty or more. The alcopop goes hand in hand with bad dancing, hoarse shouting, and twenty minutes spent waiting for a toilet cubicle that hasn't got half-digested alcopop all over the seat.

Rung four. The last stage. If I reach this, and Hubby hasn't rugby tackled me and demanded that I step away from the barman, things are looking bad.

Pernod.

Why does Pernod always seem like such a fantastic idea at 2.30am? Is it because it's the only word your lips can form? Or is it that you've just spent the last three hours singing the theme to 'Roobarb' and 'Jamie and the Magic Torch' with your friends, and you want to revisit the aniseed ball taste from your childhood? I don't know why it happens, but it does. And a blue pootle on a pernod bender is never a pretty sight.

The Shallow Book Club Club

2006-09-23T11:36:00.000+01:00

If you're the kind of person who wouldn't join any club that would have you as a member, why not come along on PG's new venture, The Shallow Book Club Club. Let me elucidate:

Literature encourages deep thoughts, doesn't it? Isn't that the point? To expand your mind? Learn new things? See it from a new perspective?

With this in mind, I recently joined a book club. I wanted to read books that normally I wouldn't glance at. I wanted to see what I had been missing, and discuss it with others. Plus, I wanted to make some friends as I don't actually have any non-internet ones who aren't married to me or related to me. So I went along to a book club meeting and found a group of people who are at the opposite end of the spectrum to me, book-wise.

Interestingly, they're all anti deep thought. This makes for a pleasant change when discussing literature. The emphasis is not on what you felt, or thoughts you had, but what characters wore and whether you'd like them to live around the corner from you. It puts a whole new spin on reading. The book is discussed for ten minutes maximum. It is then scored out of ten on some hazy comparative scale. After that, wine and low fat crisps are served and conversation moves on to mother in laws and decorating.

So, here's the deal. Each month I'll report back on the brief thoughts expressed on the book in question. If you would like to play along, read the book and leave your own, extremely shallow, thoughts as a comment. Let's see how brief we can make this book club.

As an example, we last read Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Comments included:

- I didn't like anyone very much.
- I wondered what order they donated organs in?
- I once found something I had lost in Norfolk.
- I didn't realise it was about clones until the end.

Next up, two books: Billie Morgan by Joolz Denby and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I'll report back at the beginning of November.

Apex needs help

2006-09-21T13:42:00.000+01:00

There were two sparrows on my shed this morning. The leaves are browning and dancing from our neighbour’s horse chestnut. Darkness arrives earlier each evening. Certain individuals are baking kohlrabi covered in cream and cheese. Are these the last days of summer? Outside, it feels like July.

Sad news that Apex Digest is in serious financial trouble. If you’ve ever considered taking out a subscription, but haven’t, then now is the time to do so—Apex needs two hundred new subscribers to cover its printing costs and set it up to continue as normal.

http://apexdigest.myshopify.com/products/apex-digest-one-year-subscription

But I Started Out As A Chicken

2006-09-20T08:26:00.000+01:00

Following the pygmy shrew's revelation that he intends to write solely for himself, starting with a novella about a man who turns into a tree (yay! more trees in pulp books instead of being pulped into books, that's what I say) I list here my top five stories about transformation:

God Emperor Of Dune by Frank Herbert. Leto started out as a little boy. Now he's decided to become a God Tyrant Worm Thingie. It's all very strange and sounds extremely messy. I wouldn't want to do his laundry.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. The Tooth Fairy is on his way to a mystical transformation. Too bad this involves killing people and eating watercolours by William Blake - these are both anti-social activities, I think you'll agree.

The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. This is my favourite Batman story, and contains the most affecting transformations. An old man becomes a vigilante once more, and a young girl becomes a sidekick. Mentally ill people, upon hearing of the return of the batman and robin, become supervillains again. Poignant and disturbing.

Cinderella by Charles Perrault. Things turn into other things: mice, footmen, pumpkins, coaches, commoners, princesses. All a bit daft and brilliant.

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Gregor Samsa becomes a giant bug. Yes, you're right, I did run out of inspiration. Still, a good story though.

Whoops. It's eight thirty am. Time to turn into a responsible parent once more - now that's a transformation.

Let me not entertain you

2006-09-19T13:42:00.000+01:00

I have been toying with the idea of writing a serious book for a long time—I have quite a lot of it already written. Then this morning, I had an idea. Now though, fully dressed, trapped in the busiest part of the country and a decided distance from any foliage, in the cold harsh pre-autumn light, I’m undecided.

My idea is to turn this serious novel idea—which I’ve always envisaged weighing it at least 500 pages, and fine-tuning until worthy of a proper publisher—into a short novella about a man who turns into a tree.

The cause of this sudden whimsy: bookshops. Working in the West End—there are hundreds of the things, all stacked with piles of books; thousands of authors; hundreds of thousands of characters; millions of chapters; billions of words.

I met--a while ago--somebody who had read one of my stories, wasn’t previously known to me in any capacity and was not a writer. It was okay, but it made me realise, I’m not writing to be read. Not writing to be a skinny or fat spine on that weighted shelf on Oxford Street.

I think the reason I like to write is the reason people like to do crosswords, or meditate, or play music. I’ve nothing to say to anyone else. I’m not a preachy person. I don’t like people relying on my opinion. I’m naturally quite gregarious, but am ultimately interested in my own privacy.

I’m already an individual among billions of others—I don’t need a book of mine to be the same. I write stories to entertain me. Not you.

Don't Take It Personally #3

2006-09-18T18:33:00.000+01:00

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programme - Rejection And How To Avoid It.

Our next contestant is Fiction Editor for the ever enjoyable Whispers of Wickedness. Apart from being a spankingly good author himself, Mr Steven Pirie of Pirie-Land has this advice for budding Whisperers:

'I'm not that fond of openings with dialogue only, particularly ones with no tag.'

So there you have it. Here at PG we hope someobdy out there is taking all this in and applying these pearls of wisdom to their works of genius. We did promise the participating editors that we would be improving the quality of their slush piles, you see.

Consider yourself warned.

Puffy Sleeves and Ishiguro

2006-09-17T16:04:00.000+01:00

September's BP ramblings are now up at Whispers of Wickedness:

http://www.ookami.co.uk/html/blue_pootle_-_september_06.html

On a slightly different note, does anyone here have a recommendation for a cinema trip any time during the rest of the year, bearing in mind that this is the only time I will get to go for said year and I want to have an absolutely mind-blowing experience including at least three 'wowie!' moments and no, I repeat no, Hollywood style pseudo-meaningful drivel with swelling music or lingering close-ups of stars making internal revelations?

I'm not wasting my one night of freedom (supplied by dear friend who has agreed to babysit) on pap, if possible.

On the Escapee Tendencies of my Knickers

2006-09-13T13:04:00.000+01:00

The Blue Pootle is aware that most people have a problem pertaining to socks. Socks vanish, or, to be more precise, one sock vanishes and the other always comes to the top of the sock drawer and stares accusingly at the lone sock owner.

I don't have that problem. My problems relate to my knickers. They don't seem to want to be my knickers. They want to leave and start a new life without me. I keep buying them and the darn things keep wandering off.

But it's worse when they return. Because they always find the most embarrassing method possible to achieve their homecoming. Two examples:

1. I was living in a flat and my washing machine broke down. My parents very kindly agreed to do my washing, and my father duly carried my clothes up and down six flights of stairs for a week or so. Lovely Dad. I should have guessed that my knickers would take the opportunity to make a bid for freedom.

A month later. I open my door to go to work and find a pair of my knickers looking at me. They had been placed on the floor outside my door, I'm assuming by some other resident in the block of flats. Obviously the knickers jumped from the washing pile and hung about for a month before someone found them. And the worst part is - that someone obviously worked out by some Sherlock Holmes Style Process Of Elimination that they were my knickers and left them for me to find. How? I just don't want to know.

2. Visiting a friend who was still living with her parents at the time. Had a good time. Had fun. Didn't keep as close an eye on my knickers as I should have, knowing their evil tendencies. A year passed before I returned to visit her again (still living with her parents).

On the third day of the visit we were having breakfast in the kitchen when my friend's father asked her to help him walk the dog. As soon as they had left her mother gave me a funny look. Then she reached into her shirt and pulled from her top pocket a pair of knickers. She gave them to me and said I had left them behind a year ago. That means she had been carrying them around for three days on the off-chance of returning them to me. It also means that the whole father/daughter walk the dog thing was probably an arranged diversion, which means he was in on it too.

And the worst part of that story is - they weren't even my knickers. But I was far too embarrassed to hand them back.

I keep getting sand in my grog

2006-09-12T09:37:00.000+01:00

Big respec' to Dave, for lending me the highly amusing 'The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists.'

There's an extract here for all ye unconvinced scurvy land-dogs:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5518447

Don't Take It Personally #2

2006-09-11T08:17:00.000+01:00

Back in the world of painful rejection, we've asked the question of what constitutes an immediate withdrawal of passion and forthwith penning of a 'Dear John...' letter, to the Editor who has an eye for the weirdly wonderful, Rachel Kendall of Sein Und Werden (available in both e-zine and magazine formats).

She says:

I think the one bug bear I have, that will make me delete a sub beforeI've even read it, is when the contributor sends their story or poem or what 'ave you, either embedded in the email or as an attachment, which is fine, but nothing else. No 'dear editor'. No 'I would like to submit the following'. No 'hi, my name is...'. Nothing, nadda. It happens so often and I think, okay, I don't expect you to know my name but you could give me a 'hello', and tell me what exactly you're writing to me for.

As far as the actual story goes, I will immediately reject anything that runs into politics, religion (preachy), fantasy (in the sense of LoTR) or chick-lit territory. But that is just personal taste.

So please don't bother her with your tale of Freda the Famous Nun-Elf of Centre Parcs - it won't get a look in.

We wouldn't mind reading it here at the Guerrilla though.

A Mini Adventure

2006-09-08T15:02:00.000+01:00

A while back Rhysaurus posted this, which includes a fifty-word mini-saga. I didn't spot it at the time.

Big Dog Diary

2006-09-08T13:44:00.000+01:00

From the people who brought you Elsa Watch:

6am Wake up

6:30am Go for a walk

6:40am Dawdle

6:50am Stop dawdling as spot squirrel

7:00am Eat some bread left out for birds. Ignore owner’s calls

7:10am Find scrap paper covered in something sweet and edible. Ignore owners calls

7:15am Meet another dog. Sniff its nether-regions

7:20am Back home. Wolf down breakfast

7:21am Wait for alpha female to give me crust of toast

7:27am Get crust of toast

7:27 and a bit am Got all I want from Alpha Female. Go outside to enjoy the garden. Alpha Female leaves

7:50am Go back inside just as owner wants to take me out again

8am Concede to going out for a wee

8:12am Get Kong stuffed with tasty morsels including cheese and bits of bread

8:30 Go to sleep

11am Greet owner’s mother-in-law -to-be. Check to see if she’s brought any food

11:10am Begin walk to owner’s mother-in-law -to-be’s house, try to make it last at least an hour to be certain not to miss any discarded food on way

12:10pm Get bits of leftover food upon arrival at owner’s mother-in-law -to-be’s house

12:20 Lay down in garden

12:30 Squeak squeaky ball

1pm Lunch?

1:10pm Squeak ball

1:30 Doze

3pm Get biscuit

4pm Begin walk back home

4:35pm Say goodbye to owner’s mother-in-law -to-be. Get biscuit

5:50pm Alpha Female arrives home. Squeak ball. Eat dinner. Go for brief walk. Dawdle. Chase after squirrel. Dawdle

6:50pm Owner returns home. Squeak ball

7:30pm Any leftovers from owner and Alpha Females dinner?

7:31pm Sit in garden. Get groomed. Squeak ball

8pm Bring squeaky fluffy toy to Alpha Female just as she wants to watch Eastenders

8:30pm Whilst owner is in bath, lay down in front of Alpha Female who is on sofa. Owner now unable to sit properly on sofa as nowhere to put his feet

8:45pm Point made. Go for snooze on patio

9:30pm Come in and snooze in hallway by front door

10:20pm Refuse to come when owner calls for last toilet trip of the day

10:22pm Get up for biscuit. Go for last toilet trip of day

10:45 Just as owner is falling asleep, run up stairs and come and stand by him in bedroom. Pant heavily in his ear. Possibly squeak fluffy toy

Blood Ties

2006-09-07T13:52:00.000+01:00

Congratulations to Sam Hayes, who’s new book, Blood Ties, is out next year from Headline. This is from the Bookseller:

'Sam Hayes, a new writer of commercial women’s fiction, has signed a two-book deal with Headline. Hayes’s debut, Blood Ties, marks her as a “tremendously exciting new voice”.'

She's also another book on its way written under the Maya Hess pseudonym.

Sam's new website will be launched soon. We'll post a link here when it's up.

Don't Take It Personally #1

2006-09-06T11:38:00.000+01:00

You've packed your clothes, you've divided the CD collection, you've arranged visitation rights for the budgie. There's just one question left to ask: why? Why have you rejected me, o heartless one? Why have you stomped my soul into the dirt and then salsaed upon it?

Rejection is a painful thing, and when we are told we have been found wanting to some extent, don't we always want to know what we did wrong?

PG aims to answer this question by rugby-tackling some people who regularly dish out rejection, and sitting on their heads until they tell us this: what would make you instantly reject a story? I'm talking first line no-nos, before you've even reached the end of the opening paragraph type-binnage. Would this:

It was no good - David couldn't come up with one sentence. His writer's block was immoveable.

do it for you? Or maybe -

When Maverian felt the circular ripples of a time hole start in the centre of his chest he was not afraid. He was the bravest of the Mavolian warriors. He had defeated a great fire bather armed only with a frot knife. He could accomplish anything.

makes you want to vomit.

First up - the redoubtable Djibril, Editor of Future Fire magazine, who says...

I really did get sent this a year or two ago:

"This story ventures forth in the early fifties in the Southern South. Where old superstitions, myths, and facts occurred and This Happened To Be Fact."

I actually don't understand a word of this opening sentence, but it tells me all I need to know. The biggest turn off is poor grammar. Closely followed by a text that's clearly never been read out loud by the author, because it contains turns of phrase that make no sense or that you'd just never say. Attempts to be clever that just make you sound like Dubya are up there too.

The first line of defense against a bad story is prejudice: if something *sounds* this bad, it probably doesn't get read. The main thing that will get a story rejected after full reading is bland, unimaginative, reactionary, or smug assumptions. If a story is a thinly veiled anti-environmental allegory (paging Mr Crichton), or if the moral seems to be an appeal to neo-consensibilities, then it probably doesn't get past me, no matter how well written it might be otherwise. (Any allegory that's too thinly veiled is probably not well-written, for that matter, so even if I like what it's trying to do it has to pass certain quality requirements.)

Actually I may be over-sensitive to socio-political readings of stories, so I may be offended by things that the author isn't even aware is there. But once a story is written, l'auteur est mort... But the real sine qua non, which is so important that I haven't bothered to mention it, is that the story is good. And that the writing is good. If the latter isn't good enough to get me past the first line, then I'll never know about the former, will I?

Thanks Djibril - eminently sensible.

I woke up this morning

2006-09-05T09:54:00.000+01:00

We’ve done books and DVDs. (Hazy Jo’s copy of Don’t Look Now is with our postie friends.) It was only a matter of time before the CD competition.

We’ve defining CDs of two seminal (ie, not many people have heard of them but they’ve heard of the bands they’ve influenced) artists—John Mayall’s The Blues Alone (influence on Clapton and, er, Katie Melua) and The Vaselines’ All the Stuff and More (huge influence on Cobain and thus Nirvana and thus every post-Nirvana post-grunge band.)

The competition is to write two verses and a chorus for a traditional blues arrangement. Best gets the choice of one of the two CDs.

The perils of automatic doors

2006-09-04T13:13:00.000+01:00

I finally got along to a British Fantasy Society open night, which consisted mainly of a load of horror and crime writers upstairs in a pub. It was satisfyingly lively, and I met the gentlemanly Michael Marshall Smith, got to sit in Garth Merenghi’s chair and—tres strange—met someone who had actually read some of my stories.

Almost as eventful was the trip home, which began well before midnight, but didn’t see me home until 3am. Part of it was spent in the company of the eloquent Stefan, French editor and publisher, and his cohorts. Worryingly, my small company parted ways with the Gauls at Waterloo. Lavie, John--who happened to live not so far from me and shared my witching hour commute—and I marked their departure by purchasing wares from the Delice de France, after which we witnessed several late-night travellers forgetting to lock the train’s swooshing-doored toilet and being promptly exposed by another desperate-to-wee passenger, and, as is many people’s wont at such an hour, a fellow being sick.

Elsa Watch - Vocabulary Special

2006-09-03T06:45:00.000+01:00

Here's a list of words Elsa now says (although you may have to be her mother to make them out when in actual conversation with her):

Mum
Dad
Elsa
Apple
Pear
Banana
Please
Ta
Bear
Ball
Baaaaa
Up
No

And here's a list of words that I now say at least 50 times a day:

Mum
Dad
Elsa
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Yes
Say please
Say ta
No
No Elsa
I mean it Elsa
No!
NO!
Am I talking to myself here?
Please let go of the electrical cord...
Phew

Competition

2006-09-01T14:33:00.000+01:00

Guess this is easy to judge as there were only two entries, huh. Hazy-Jo definitely the winner for an eloquent and passionate argument. Which film would you prefer? Garry gets the other one.

Overplayed

2006-08-31T14:36:00.000+01:00

I’m not talking about the obvious Agadoos and Birdie Songs here, but certain songs have been killed by Radio Play, particularly those ‘sound of summer’ ‘anthems’. There are the rubbish ones to begin with, like Toploader’s Dancing in the Moonlight. Ugh. And Don Henley’s summer ditty about Don’t Look Now, er, Back. Sorry.

But what about those summer tunes about waking up that should bring a smile to the face, but are now—even many years on—more likely to bring a grimace: Wake Up Boo; Dodgy’s Wake up it’s a Beautiful Morning; even the esteemed Bill Withers with the sunlight hurting his eyes is in danger of having me switch off.

And yeah, I don’t like radio. So sue me.

Tomorrow—door-to-door salesmen and competition winners.

Multi-tasking Domestic Style

2006-08-30T14:45:00.000+01:00

Want to know what else you can do with your toothpaste? Wondering how to repel mosquitoes armed only with a packet of Bounce?

http://www.wackyuses.com/uses.html

You have to applaud any site that's found a use for Maxwell House, as drinking the stuff has never really been an option, has it?

Style Bile

2006-08-29T09:16:00.000+01:00

You can't teach the ideas, everyone in the writing world says. You can't teach a writer to have ideas, but you can teach them how to present those ideas. Call it technique, or perhaps, once mastered, call it style.

Don't we ever get sick of being told how to write? Semi colons upset the reader; adverbs are lazy; long sentences can confuse. And yet, when literati novelists throw all that away and write page long sentences with fifteen semi colons and a string of adverbs, that is proclaimed as style too - just style practised by someone who knows better than everyone else.

Forgive the rant. I'm actually a great believer in technique, and improvement through practice. It's just that sometimes, I wonder if all I've done in my years of honing is make myself a straitjacket that I'm now finding impossible to throw off. I look at a sentence, hate it and rewrite it. I can do that all morning, and sometimes well into the afternoon.

Usually I'm fine with this side of my personality, but yesterday I finished reading Alexei Sayle's novel The Weeping Women Hotel, and it's upset me somewhat. Like his earlier works, it shows no slavish devotion to convention. He writes sentences that I have to read three times to understand. He changes in and out of the authorial voice. He heaps scorn upon his characters in one paragraph and asks us to identify with them in the next. And it's just a brilliant book: I haven't enjoyed a book so much in a year, maybe longer. I thought new and interesting thoughts from reading his twisted, unexpected prose. I suppose you could say that makes him a master novelist. I would say that he's a triumph of content over technique. Now that's style.

Enough literary nonsense. I'm off to contemplate roundabouts.

I See Dead People

2006-08-26T10:26:00.000+01:00

Continuing the whole 'We love M Night Shymalan' flea party here on the back of the Gorilla, here's my Sixth Sense tribute list: 6 Books I Like With Dead People In Them. Here goes...

1. Jim Crace's Being Dead. When we meet Joseph and Celice, our main characters, they have been beaten to death and are decomposing on a beach. Cue nine days of weather, insects, animals and human interference. At the end of the ninth day there is nothing left of them, apart from one gesture of love that survives their death. An objective yet moving exploration of mortality. Top banana!

2. Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca. Just because Rebecca's dead, doesn't mean she's not dangerous... The book that made me want to be a writer.

3. Toni Morrison's Beloved. The violence of her past is inescapable for Sethe: followed by the baby she killed, she can't escape the legacy of slavery. All very meaningful but a bit hard on the reader. There's only so many hankies a girl can get through.

4. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Jacob Marley is dead, in chains, and pretty pissed off. Although I have to admit to a startling hole in my education as I've never actually read the book, and much of my knowledge of it is derived from the Muppet version. I'll be really disappointed if I ever get round to reading this and find there's no friendly rat wearing a top hat in it.

5. Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black. Morris, the irritating dead bloke who trips up the living for fun and is generally a wet blanket on every occasion, is compulsive reading. Only one problem - I wanted him to be the hero, rather than the rather weak psychic Alison, who's beset by problems that she refuses to solve.

6. A A Milne's Winnie the Pooh. Christopher Robin visits his stuffed animal friends and plays with them all day long. He has no need to eat or sleep. Is this childhood? Funnily enough, I always assumed he was dead. Think about it.

And now I've freaked you out with reminiscences from my weird childhood, I'll leave you alone with my list. Good night.

The Other Side of the Doobry-Wotsit

2006-08-25T08:38:00.000+01:00

I have to say, I'm aghast to have returned from my hols to find Ratty giving away stuff willy-nilly, particularly with the carefree attitude that the prizes are somewhat overrated. Personally, I bloody love both of those films. Don't Look Now scares the bejesus out of me every time I watch it, and Sideways made me want to drink great wine and languish in the pain of possessing a sensitive soul. Call me mainstream if you will.

My idea of an overrated film is a little different. For me, the most overrated piece of cinema for the last ten years has to be The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

I really enjoyed The Fellowship of the Ring. And The Two Towers had wonderful moments. But The Return of the King zipped through a glut of action with the speed of a joyrider in the centre of Sheffield early on a Saturday morning. It barely gave a nod to characterisation - Aragorn received the news of his beloved's impending death with an expression that resembled an attempt to quietly squeeze out a fart - and instead opted for lingering shots of people jumping around on a bed together in slo-mo. If I'd wanted to see that kind of action, I could have found it on the internet for free, methinks. And is it just me, but did the back shots of the hobbits at the end look exactly like little kids dressed up in bad wigs? Maybe the illusion had fallen through for me at that point.

But yes, the bit with the elephant thingie was good. I'll give you that. Lynch me at will.

Under-rated

2006-08-24T09:46:00.000+01:00

Guess I was right about those films being over-rated. No one appears to want one.

Lavie sent me this. Despite a rocky opener, it makes quite thought-provoking reading:

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Don't Look Sideways--it's another competition!

2006-08-22T17:24:00.000+01:00

Further to my post about not looking now (see 21 August), Pacifist Guerilla have DVDs of two completely over-rated films to give away. The afore-mentioned Don’t Look Now, and the equally unsatisfying Sideways.

To win a copy, post a three-paragraph review of the most over-rated book, film or album you’ve had the fortune to experience.

Best post by the last day of this month wins their choice. Runner-up gets the leftovers.

Whatever happened to Ms Davies?

2006-08-22T13:19:00.000+01:00

Ms Davies was witty and perhaps pretty, just scraping five feet tall, with bum-length blonde hair and sun-sensitive skin, despite her being an eighth Brazilian.

She appeared an optimist and brightened a decidedly gloomy portion of existence.

Quite suddenly, as I crossed the threshold twixt gloom and glee, she vanished, disappeared as if by a conjuror.

Now I’m bound to wonder if Ms D was some fortuitous lining of silver to the cloud I had found myself beneath. Was her appearance and consequent contrary operation the doings of some keeper of Karmic balance?

Perhaps she is wondering—out there in the ether—wherever did that slight misery of a chavvie abscond to, but isn’t it funny how life has recently turned onto a sea-front of renewed dreams?

The Rat's moody, hungry and tired

2006-08-21T17:27:00.000+01:00

Missing the Pootle.

So Lady in the Water is a little under-rated. How about over-rated? How about ‘Don’t Look Now’. My little humble word, what a dire film!

Slugs Go Ape

2006-08-16T19:37:00.000+01:00

I'm off on my hols for a short time - anyone craving some BP Jelly can find me at Whispers of Wickedness, both the print zine and the website. I'm talking about the horror of the reproductive processes of slugs this month:

http://www.ookami.co.uk/html/blue_pootle_-_august_06.html

In the meantime, be gentle with my rodent friend. Remember to take the wheel out of his cage every now and again so that he doesn't run himself to death.

Lady in hot water

2006-08-15T14:04:00.000+01:00

I think Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water is suffering undeservedly at the hands of highbrow critics. It’s fun entertainment, but film critters are used to one or the other: arthouse films that take themselves too seriously, or hyper-hyped action adventures that will succeed regardless of informed criticism. They’ve no sympathy for a middle-ground film that dares to have some subtext to its happy escapism.

I thought the introductory cartoon was fabulomozy too. Reminiscent of the dreamy bits in the adaptation of Watership Down. Certainly better than Sixth Sense anyway.

Verdict: Not as bad as the hype and one for all the family.

The Portrait of Mr Ford

2006-08-14T10:34:00.000+01:00

The gentlemanly Jeffrey Ford spent some time in the Guerillas' midst. Here's what he had to say about writing, marketing and Conrad:

------------------
Jeff, the wonderful The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque and Girl in the Glass (both published by Tor UK over here) were somewhat a departure from the books that gave you your original success, The Physiognomy trilogy. Personally I got more satisfaction from them as a reader. I suspect too, being less intrinsically genre-bound (for they cross an indefinable boundary between mainstream fantasy and highbrow magical realism), they have gained you a wider audience. Is this assumption correct, and are you, as a writer not a publicist, conscious in the development of your audience. i.e. Looking back, do you think publishing The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque and Girl in the Glass before The Physiognomy would have resulted in your work being marketed differently?

To say my work would have been marketed differently is to assume that my work was marketed at all. My stuff has pretty much been cast upon the waters and left to sink or swim on its own merits. That being the case, it hasn't done too badly at all critically, but only with The Girl in the Glass have I gotten a large readership. Things may have gone differently if the order of the books was different. Who can tell those kinds of things? The Physiognomy trilogy might have benefited from having been published just a few years later than it was. It was a little early for the China Mieville, VanderMeer, Kelly Link wave that has swept through the genre, but there are many ways in which it is part of that general scene – at least as many as ways that it's not. There's a letter that exists, published at Locus online, where very early on, just after winning the World Fantasy Award for The Physiognomy, I make a case for genre hybrids, etc. Actually, it was a reaction to a letter by Rob Chilson. I heard from reliable sources that that letter I wrote pissed quite a few people off at the time. A few years later, what I was writing about in that letter had become all the rage. It's all water under the bridge and adds up to zero now. On to Las Vegas, if you know what I mean. I can only write the works I have it in me to write. I never write anything based on how it will impact on my "career." What a joke. I hope somebody likes the stuff enough to publish it and read it. Trying to predict the future of the market and/or of a readership is futile. If you run with the pack the time will always come when you will be left behind. As Emerson says, "Do your thing, and I will know you."

You're also a rather excellent scribe of the short story. I think it's great that you have short stories appearing in boutique venues like Electric Velocipede, whilst simultaneously having unit shifters on the shelves in big bookstores. This seems a common trend in the US small press, having relatively high profile writers contributing to tiny zines. What keeps you submitting to these smaller venues?

"Boutique venues?" That's a fucking crack. I started out writing for these magazines, and I'll probably end my "career" writing for them. There's a lot of energy in the independent press. There are a lot of exciting young editors and writers and some very shrewd older ones as well. I see these magazines as a place to publish work that I like but may be too "different" for mainstream publications. I always return to them because I want to stay in touch with what they are about – in my writing and in my person. The "let's put on a show," free-wheeling creativity, yes more often than no attitude is a magnet for me. On the other hand, I also like publishing in places that will give my fiction more readers. And I also like getting substantially paid, seeing as I have two kids on the verge of college and don't make a lordly sum at my day job.

Your new collection, The Empire of Ice Cream, was recently released by Golden Gryphon. Your first collection The Fantasy Writer's Assistant earned your writing many accolades. Some time has passed between the two books. How does Ice Cream differ from its predecessor?

As much as I love The Fantasy Writer's Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream is just a superior book. The stories are better, there is more selection, my writing is better. Add to that Picacio's cover and Jonathan Carroll's introduction, and it's the best collection Gary and Marty (from Golden Gryphon Press) and I could produce. Novels require a very definite narrative voice. With short stories it can be easy to pull on an old narrator, like a favourite jacket. How much time do you devote to the writing of an average 6,000 word short story? A lot of my stories are usually more than 6000 words. But an average story for me can take anywhere from a day or two to a couple of months. Actually, sometimes, stories, ¾'s finished, sit for years before I'll finish them. I always have partial stories on my computer that I start, get tired of and then go back to when I feel a path open up in the narrative. And I'd say that a short story requires just as definite a narrative voice as a novel.

In the UK last year, PS Publishing released your novella The Cosmology of the Wider World, which is a fantasy of talking animals that gives a clear tip of the hat to Kipling. To go back to the genre issue, as you're distinguishing yourself as a writer of historical fiction, and with the Kipling influence, and Conrad too, who you have stated as a big influence, regardless of how good working in the genre has been for your career so far, is there an urge to escape the bonds of being regarded as a fantasy writer?

I don't remember ever having stated Conrad as a big influence. I think someone else laid that on me. Conrad's kind of thick prose, like cutting through lead with a paper knife. The payoff can be worthwhile, as it is with Theodore Dreiser, but you're going to do your work to get there. I liked Nostromo – but many times in the middle of reading it I wondered why I was still doing just that. No, Conrad's not one of my boys, so to speak.

I’m getting confused, I meant Henry James. But to sum up, I take it you’re not someone who writes to an audience then?

I'll always write what I want to write when I want to write it. I've found I can't do otherwise. I never regarded myself as a fantasy writer. I love to write fantasy, and I'll never disown it as others have for convenience. In the long run, I just get deeper in. The Girl in the Glass just won the Edgar Allan Poe Award – a mystery writing award. Now will readers think of me as a mystery writer? The secret is to not give too much of a shit about it and just keep writing.
----------------
Jeff's website is here: http://users.rcn.com/delicate

Online and Obnoxious

2006-08-13T13:34:00.000+01:00

You may not know this, but the Blue Pootle used to have another, top secret, identity.

I am talking about Library Woman - a mousy yet frightening creature with the power to wield the mighty book stamper and change the world for the better (according to Michael Moore, anyway: see Stupid White Men for an explanation).

Every weekday I got up, left the Blue Pootle at home, donned my severe metal-rimmed glasses and neatly buttoned cardigan, and stood behind the desk of a continuously empty library, surrounded by 60,000 books and two very bored co-workers.

That is, it was continuously empty until two shiny new computers came our way and got plugged into the internet for the educational purposes of any customers who might ever happen to materialise in the future. Those computers looked lovely, on their own little desks, and it was fun to use them for a day or two for my own educational purposes. For instance, I adopted a Neopet called Zingface and achieved a great score on the most addictive game ever, Freaky Factory.

But that was before the teenagers arrived.

You see, an hour of free internet access is like a Britney Spears DVD - it tends to mainly attract teenage boys. One Wednesday morning, I opened the library doors to be confronted by two six feet tall lads with a penchant for black and absolutely no body fat whatsoever. They asked very politely if they could 'get on the computers'. Apart from the strange image it created in my mind, it seemed like a reasonable request, so I agreed.

It was the first crack in the dam. Their first action once seated must have been to e-mail all of their friends with their location, because by 11.30am we were beseiged by teenage hormones and deaf from the shouting as they greeted each other.

I swear I wouldn't mind so much if they looked at a book occasionally.

Still, once I've discounted all the bad things they've brought into the library, including chewing gum under the seats, spliffs in the loo, pornographic pop-ups, trojan horses and hearing problems for the staff, there is one good memory left, and it proves to me that not all teenagers are the cynical, wordly sorts they like to think they are.

Two lads, sitting side by side in front of one of the computers (for the sake of the recollection, lets call them Will and Gareth), had been whispering all morning in voices that carried further than they might have expected. They had spent an hour tracking down an e-mail address for that diva of pubescent dreams, Britney Spears, and had finally managed their objective through a trustworthy looking site entitled Starmail!. Now they were agonising over their love letter.

Things were proceeding nicely until a disagreement broke out. It seemed that some unsavoury comment had been typed in regards to Ms Spears' mammary glands.

Gareth: You can't put that!
Will: But its true. They are really nice tits.
Gareth: Take it out.
Will: No way!
Gareth: Take it out!
Will: Why?
Gareth: Because if you put that, she won't reply.

I feel warmly towards liitle Gareth. But I do hope he's not religiously checking his In-Box for his invitation to Britney's pad based on his immaculate e-mail etiquette.

Three Things About You

2006-08-11T15:38:00.000+01:00

For those not in the know (and there are surely few of the two or three of you that read this who aren’t in the know) Aliya Whilteley’s book, Three Things About Me, was released recently. The title’s from a game used in office training and team-building exercises, where participants reveal three things about themselves, two truths and one lie. If you tell Aliya three things about you, and she can’t figure out which is the lie, she’ll send you a bookmark. The best three things submitted by next Friday will also win a small prize. (And if she runs out of bookmarks, I’ll send you something else—a magazine or something.)

So, you seem like an interesting person. Tell us three things about yourself.

The Cuckoo

2006-08-11T09:52:00.000+01:00

In honour of the horror story I've just finished writing, some traditional lyrics for y'all:

The cuckoo she's a pretty bird
And she warbles as she flies
She brings us glad tidings
And tells us no lies

She sucks all the sweetest flowers
To make her voice clear
She never sings cuckoo
Until the summertime is near

She flies the hills over
She flies the world about
She flies back to the mountain
She mourns for her love

The cuckoo she's a pretty bird
And she warbles as she flies
She brings us glad tidings
And tells us no lies

Elsa Watch

2006-08-10T10:31:00.000+01:00

Since the last time I reported on my offspring's behaviour (just call me Desmond Wilcox) she's done the following things:

- decided that sleeping through the night is fun. Hurray!
- tweaked Hubby's nipples so hard that his eyes watered.
- and then she laughed. (Am I raising a psychopath? how do you tell? is there a psycho test for the under twos?)
- developed a taste for thai chicken curry.
- stood up on her own when she forgot to think about it.
- caught, killed and ate half of the biggest spider I've ever seen, and then smiled with three hairy legs sticking out of her mouth.
- traumatised her mother with the above.
- learned to shout at me when she wants a book that she can't reach.
- fallen in love with Poppy Cat's Pop Up Christmas.
- started giving me kisses back, with appropriate 'mwah!' noises.

I have observed that she's not really a baby any more. More of a toddler. Sob. Spose I have to get on with writing something, then.

Skipping Stones

2006-08-08T21:02:00.000+01:00

Your friend and mine, the man we like to call 'Doc Hock' in these parts, Ian Hocking had a little chat with Scott Pack, who has recently skipped 'stones.

Coincidentally, Skipping Stones, the novelette I've written with E. Sedia, has been bought by Paul Jessup, publisher of Grendel Song. It will be released as a stand-alone chapbook sometime next year.

But for now, it's over to Ian and Scott. Ian is the bold one. (Thanks very much for this, Ian.)

How would you describe the role of the chief buyer at Waterstone's? Is it as all-powerful as some would claim?

Not at all. The title was Buying Manager and that was precisely what I did – manage the buying. I very rarely actually bought any books for the business myself, I simply ran the team that did that job.

I suspect the whole ‘most powerful man in publishing’ nonsense came about because a) the Waterstone’s 3 for 2 could sell a lot of copies of a book and I was ultimately in charge of what went in there and b) I was the only retailer prepared to express a public opinion. Both points can be viewed as positives or negatives depending on your point of view.

I recently wrote a piece for The Times (5th August) that goes into a bit more detail on the whole power issue.

Since assuming your role within Waterstone's, how would you say the UK publishing industry has changed?

Oh, in lots of ways. Supermarkets and the internet have become the dominant forces. This is good news for customers in terms of price but probably bad news in terms of quality and range of books published.

The Big Read and Richard & Judy have brought reading to life for a much wider group of people than were reading before. The literati had successfully ignored the general reader for years so when something less elitist came along it was no wonder that it had such a huge effect on sales and reading habits.

Book groups have grown to such an extent that a certain type of book (your Kite RunnersorSmall Islands) can become a bestseller and stay a bestseller for a very long time.

There are many other areas but I think these are the most interesting.

You began your career at the HMV in Southend, before the HMV group bought Waterstone's. Do you feel that the book is fundamentally unique as a product, or can it be sold using the same methods that shift CDs, DVDs, and computer games?

A bit of both really. I spent as long in HMV’s head office as a buyer as I subsequently did at Waterstone’s which probably gives me a unique insight into the two industries. There are elements of music and DVD retailing that can be, and have, translated across very well and to the benefit of the book world. The biggest single factor that I believe has already been taken on board is a sense of urgency. The music industry has a Top 40 chart that changes drastically every week. It is also a very release-driven environment, customers know when new CDs and DVDs are hitting stores and it is important that new releases are on the shop floor as soon as possible. When I started at Waterstone’s it was not unusual for big new books to sit in stockrooms for several days before finally getting on to the shelves where customers could buy them. This has certainly changed. What publishers have yet to successfully emulate is the whole release date thing. It wouldn’t be that hard to have all books published on one day each week and publicise new titles around these days so that customers knew when the next Grisham, Haddon or Murakami was going to be available. Petty squabbling within retail and a fairly toothless Bookseller’s Association/Publisher’s Association set up has stopped this from becoming a reality.

A recent story was doing the rounds about the sums that publishers must pay in order to give their products a boost in terms of promotional activities and placement within branches of Waterstone's. Is there a case for making this clearer to customers, who may be under the impression that the local or district manager has selected works on the basis of quality? And, given that Tim Waterstone's built the reputation of his shops by championing the judgement of individual managers, could this climate ever return?

Firstly, a word on the judgement of individual managers. If you give the individuals in the shop complete control of their stock, what they buy and how they display it then you are effectively an organisation ‘running’ a number of separate independent businesses with no cohesion. That may be fine for some people but the Waterstone’s I joined had taken that so far that we were losing sales hand over fist. You had stores choosing not to stock the number one book in the country because it ‘wasn’t their market’. I’m sorry but if a customer walks into a bookshop they expect to find the most popular books in the country. If you don’t have them then your store is crap. What makes your store, or stores, unique is what you do in addition to the bestsellers.

All major retailers charge for their promotional space. The magazine you buy in Smiths had its space and location paid for. The CD in the window of HMV is there because the record company coughed up to put it there. It extends to all sectors. Many high street retailers make a profit from these charges. Waterstone’s do not. Every penny of marketing money they get from publishers goes into promoting books through press and TV ads, windows and the point of sale material in the store. That seems a reasonable situation to me.

The books publishers ‘pay for’ are the ones you generally find in the £s off and 3 for 2 promotions. These are by no means all of the books front of store and individual branches use a great deal of this space for their own selection. And the costs are usually minimal. If The Friday Project wanted to put a book in the Waterstone’s 3 for 2 they would have to give a bit of extra discount and pay a couple of hundred quid. That would ensure the book was FOS in every branch which is one of the best ways to sell your book. Newspapers charge thousands of pounds for a press ad and all research tells us that these ads have little or no effect on book sales. The last official industry research I saw claimed that only 1% of customers purchased a book having seen an advert for it.

Put simply, if the charges retailers ask for didn’t make sense then publishers wouldn’t pay them. And bear in mind that they have a budget to spend with retailers, there is money put aside for precisely this purpose. It would seem daft for a retailer not to take it and use it wisely.

The most important thing to stress here though is the sequence of events, something that recent press reports have failed to mention and which put a completely different spin on things. The marketing charges come in to play only once the books have been selected. The books are chosen on merit and then the publishers are asked to contribute to the marketing costs. You cannot buy your way into a campaign.

Personal recommendation, snazzy cover, review blurb: Which factors do you feel are most important between the time a customer glances at a book and the decision to purchase?

The biggest single factor has always been, and will always be, word-of mouth. Personal recommendation from a friend or someone whose opinion you respect is, more often than not, going to make you check out a book. Covers are also vital. I cannot say I know of any really bad books that were big hits purely because of great covers but I can think of dozens of great books that failed because the cover was shite. Beyond that, everything else can only contribute to a sort of cumulative effect. No one really buys a book just because of a jacket quote but it may help in making the decision.

Following on from the last question, you've written that you'd rather watch Dick and Dom in da Bungalow than suffer the beardophile review pages of some broadsheet newspapers. Given that such review sections are read, for the most part, by writers and other critics, how can we get the buzz about diverse new fiction titles to the reading public?

I will confess that I was being a tad mischievous with that comment but the essence was true: the broadsheets cater for such a narrow band of taste that they are largely irrelevant for most readers today. The significant and notable exception is The Times, especially on Saturday. Erica Wagner has produced a books section that celebrates all types of reading and is the single most important resource for book fans in this country. Other good places to get to hear about good books are websites such as http://www.palimpsest.org.uk/ where there is some healthy and informed debate. I also think the bookseller recommends sections in most high street stores are an honest and usually quite cutting edge selection of new and old titles.

There was also a practical point behind my flippant comment. I was spending 3 or 4 hours every weekend reading every word of the books pages of every newspaper only to find that they had little or no impact on what people were actually buying and reading. It was taking time away from my kids and, in that respect, was a waste of that time.

Sadly, Dick And Dom In Da Bungalow is no longer with us so I will have to find another source of highbrow entertainment.

What's the feeling within Waterstone's and the bookselling industry about new printing technologies such as Print On Demand? Is it seen as an irrelevancy? The future?

There are upsides and downsides.

Up. With agents and publishers becoming more and more impregnable it is fantastic to see an avenue open up for undiscovered writers.

Down. Most of it is shit. To qualify that, much of the work that would previously have gone unpublished did so because it wasn’t very good. POD removes that quality control filter. I would say that for every 10 self-published POD books I saw, 8 were varying degrees of bad, 1 was OK but needed a lot of work and 1, if I was lucky, could hold its own with the ‘proper’ books.

Up. POD could mean that no book ever goes out-of-print ever again. By maintaining a POD backlist publishers could ensure that all of their books are always available. I believe Virago have done something like this for their entire catalogue.

Down. If books never go out of print then publishers can retain the rights to them indefinitely. At the moment if a publisher lets a book go out of print for a prolonged period the author can claim the rights to the book back, effectively owning the book themselves to do with what they will. Susan Hill has done this very successfully with some of her early work which she now publishes herself. I suspect publishers may hang on to books forever now, claiming that POD keeps them in print.

Personally I like a vision of future which enables any reader to order any book that has ever been published whenever they feel like it. Wouldn’t that be nice? Mind you, I am not sure secondhand bookshops would agree.

You've been spotted around and about the web, posting here and commenting there. Which websites help you take the pulse of the book-selling/publishing industry?

I have already mentioned Palimpsest which is probably one of the best as it is driven by readers. I like the books pages of salon.com but am not a subscriber so only dip in now and then. It is probably dreadfully uncool of me but I do check out Amazon quite regularly (most people in the book trade do) and frequently find their customer reviews helpful as well as their recommendations feature.

You're about to start work as the Commercial Director of The Friday Project, a publisher. What do you hope to do for them as a company?

I guess the clue is in the job title, some commercial direction. They are a young, vibrant and cutting edge company with bags of enthusiasm but recognise that they need something else to compliment those attributes.

I hope to help them to get better and more organised at what they do as well as acquiring books and authors to their ever growing list. I have some ideas as to how we can use the internet in different ways which they seem quite keen on and I hope to progress them quite quickly.

For you, what makes a good book?

It is always, and will always be, the story. I had to read very widely in my time at Waterstone’s and the books that really stood out, in every, or any, genre, were those that spun a good tale. That applies to non-fiction as well.

I can’t stand authors like Salman Rushdie or Martin Amis. They are undoubtedly clever and talented writers but, for me, they are too wound up in impressing the reader that they fail to tell a good story. Many of my friends violently agree with that assessment, and they are probably right, but my taste is for storytelling first and foremost. Take David Mitchell. He is certainly as clever and talented as Rushdie or Amis, and he experiments wildly in his work, but he also spins a bloody good yarn. The same with Murakami or Auster, two other favourites of mine.

On Wisdom

2006-08-04T14:18:00.000+01:00

The Blue Pootle recently began to experience a strange sensation that appeared to be akin to the transitional phase in becoming a creature of the night.

First there was pain. Shooting pains in the head, behind the eyes. Bright light made me want to crawl away and hide in a soft, dark container, underground if possible. Strange, but could be put down to too much time spent on the computer or a bad reaction to cheese.

Next there was the inability to eat anything spicy without wincing. Could it be garlic that was having the effect? Was my mouth rejecting the hated stuff as proof of my new allegiance to the tribe of Nosferatu? It seemed the most logical option.

And finally, the itching gums. I wanted to bite down on something hard and give it a good shake, rather like a puppy with a bone. I wanted to buy a packet of rusks but was too embarrassed. The itching led to bumpy gums, and it was irrefutable. I was becoming a vampire.

I was quite getting into the swing of being an eternally cursed creature when a routine checkup to the dentists revealed wisdom teeth instead. Damn. Live and learn.

Right On The Shelf

2006-08-02T13:21:00.000+01:00

I'm here, I'm awake, I'm willing to blog. It has to mean something.

Right now reading:

Quarantine by Jim Crace. This is the second time through, and I'm hoping it'll make some sense on a philosophical/religious level. On first reading I enjoyed the characterisation and language usage too much and forgot to think deep thoughts.

Just finished:

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. Again, second time through, but only necessity returns me to the pages. My own book club are cogitating on it next month, and I had to remind myself of what happens. Answer: not a lot.

Sitting unloved on bedside table:

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. It's soooo good. I mean sooooo good. The first story was sooooo unbelievably good. Why can't I bloody well finish it? Mainly because I can't face the bloodthirstiness. I've become an utter sissy since childbirth. S'funny how some books can only be attempted at certain times in your life, and right now, I'm not ready for terrible fairy tales. Hoping I'll find the will to press on later.

Left on the shelf

2006-07-27T09:06:00.000+01:00

I am left-handed. A fact I am, perhaps, unreasonably proud of and a distinction the right-handed world at large rarely notices, considers or respects. Nearly everything is built the wrong way, and if it isn’t, lefties usually have to pay over the odds for it. (One exception is Apple Macintoshes—somebody in the design team was obviously a southpaw, as the computers are leftie-friendly. Incidentally, PCs are certainly not—this can be seen in the design of many computer mice, and the inclusion of the number pad on the right hand side of the keyboard. And some right-handed joker incorporated a configuration to set the mouse ‘left-handed’. This is about as much use as a left-handed pen. ie close to no use at all, and it’s painful to use.)

I daresay it’s intolerant of me when I naysay so-called sinistrals who state that they’re left-handed, but deal cards/pull pints/kick balls/hammer nails/play guitar with their right. I’m a militant left-hander—the right hand side of my body is practically obsolete, which leads to some problems. I’m certain I could never drive a right-hand drive car. I’m an awful driver as it is. Also, I’m sure my guitar playing is so lousy because my fretting hand just can’t cut it.

Here are five things that can cause me small embarrassment:

-Opening doors (without pulling it when it should be pushed, or whacking my head on it
-Using a pen (especially if wearing a pale coloured shirt)
-Attempting to give way to a fellow pedestrian (mostly this descends into a demented mime dance
-Going through barriers at train stations
-Telephone wires tangling themselves into knots of death when you’ve only answered somebody else’s phone once

You may think these are minor irks, but they’re daily activities. ‘Adapt’ you say? Well I have, but try stepping into my shoes for a day, you selfish rightie.

There’s a theory goes the reason that left-handed people are naturally better than right-handed people at ‘handed’ sports like tennis, fencing and, er, badminton because right-handers aren’t used to playing against the left. I reckon it’s more to do with the fact that southpaws spend their whole lives competing against the alien right.

There’s a whole cottage industry devoted to left-handed (okay, there’s a phone-box sized kiosk in Soho), but its wares are mostly a gimmicky con. And why should I pay five times the money for stationery compared to the majority who get it at the going rate.

Here the limited few things you can get designed for left-handed people that are actually life-enhancing:

-Corkscrews
-Calendar—this is my favourite. I have been using a standard calendar all my life without realising they cause me real problems. Five minutes with this baby and I felt a Karmic sense of well-being)
-Guitars—yes, I’m pretty terrible, but imagine what I’d be like without a right-handed one
-Mirror clocks and watches—work the same way as the calendars, but few leading brands bother accommodating the minority left (surprise)

In response to this diatribe, you may ask, what have left-handed people ever done for me?

Well, unfortunately the lasting legacy of the left-handers comes mainly from two of history’s most infamous tyrants. Julius Caesar pioneered the right-handed handshake, as he was left-handed and always wanted his sword arm free when meeting potential assassins. Similarly, the majority of the world drives on the right because Napoleon was left-handed, and marched his army on the right, as he never wanted to be caught on the wrong side of his sword-arm either. (The only reason the Americans drive on the right is because they didn’t want to drive on the left, like the British.)

Next week: the ambidextrous—invaluable multi-taskers or dangerous double agents

Coma

2006-07-17T16:44:00.000+01:00

Ian Hocking has more interesting things to say than me today:

http://ianhocking.com/thiswritinglife.html

Ella Minnow Pea

2006-07-14T17:23:00.000+01:00

’Ella Minnow Pea’ is a good concept novel, well worth, I believe, the author’s probably considerable time spent penning it. But the reader not interested or able to enjoy it for what it is (a rather weak story laden with drippings of wordplay) may feel their time might be better spent on something perhaps more real; ie, some hefty and unforgiving modernism or hard SF.

The story, such as it is, is an epistolary dialogue, mostly between the eponymous character and her cousin Tassie, but littered throughout with notes and notifications from various other family members and neighbours, all residing on the Pitcairn-like island of Nollop (formally Utoppiana), which is located twenty-one miles to the southeast of Charlestown, North Carolina.

The islanders pride themselves on a sense of community and the apparent equality in which all live their lives, until, that is, the cenotaph bearing the pangram attributed to the island’s favoured son, Nevin Nollop, loses one of its letters. The novel begins with a letter from Ella to Tassie, in which Ms Minnow Pea informs her cousin of this news. It doesn’t take long for the island’s mysterious Council to decree a ban on the use of the fallen letter. (‘Z’ being the particular letter in question.)

Whilst Ella sees this development as an exciting challenge, inaugurating a new era for the island, the more savvy Tassie sees through the new law and rejects it for the totalitarianism it is.

Of course it doesn’t take long for more letter-bearing tiles to begin dropping from the monument, and soon people are abandoning the island in their droves for the promised land that is the USA. (Funnily enough no mention made of Green Cards or work permits at this stage.) The Council start requisitioning the abandoned property and it's not long before the misuse of certain letters of the alphabet results in a number of floggings, imprisonments and yes, even executions, all the more disturbing when juxtaposed with the jollity of the storytelling.

All the while Dunn has ever-increasing lippogrammatical fun as his characters struggle to carry on communicating through the medium of words, remaining surprisingly coherent until the loss of the twelfth letter, the letter ‘U’, whereafter everything devolves into a brand of makeshift argot a la Russell Hoban’s ‘Riddley Walker.’ Once we reach this point though, there is obviously the necessity for a complete suspension of disbelief, as words in print and words uttered are two entirely separate entities, and it is simply not feasible that, when using a morphic vocabulary, lines between punctuation and spelling will not begin to diverge. Also, from page one I became suspicious of the lack of deaf islanders in a purportedly Utopian nation - are we to suppose that those with physical impairments offer too awkward a prospect to amalgamate in a society founded on principals of equality.

Other than the rather weak political digs that the story seems to be grappling onto for dear life in the hope of gaining some narrative credibility (How difficult is it to take a sideswipe at authoritarian extremism?) the novel revolves around the remaining law-abiding islanders pursuit of a pangram (a sentence containing all the letters of a given alphabet) made up of less letters than Nollop’s original.

And that, pretty much, is it. There’s plenty to marvel at, not least Dunn’s decision to lose the letter ‘D’ so early on. And if you love word-games, you’ll no doubt thrill at the prospect of reading this book. But if you want some of the other things many expect from a good read: strong characterisation and setting, emotional depth, vibrant, clear and unexpected plotting, you’d do well to look elsewhere.

As a literary curiosity, ‘Ella Minnow Pea’ was a revelation for me, and in spite of my criticisms, I highly recommend it. I suspect that this review will do its job well, causing the readers well suited to the read to make a mental note of it as one to look out for, and sending those not so inclined scurrying away to more tried and tested territory.

By a Spider's Thread

2006-07-12T11:23:00.000+01:00

Lavie Tidhar’s ‘An Occupation of Angels’ is available for a limited time as a free PDF download. Unfortunately I’ve lost the link. Lavie, can you add it on the comments screen?

I’ve been reading Laura Lippman’s eighth Tess Monaghan novel. Not that I’ve read any of the previous seven, but that doesn’t matter. It’s fast-paced, witty escapism for the train, and for that she should be praised.

The Angels' Share

2006-07-07T09:26:00.000+01:00

Vegetable-nurturing Sam Hayes' new novel, The Angels' Share, published under the anagrammatical pen name Maya Hess, is released today from Virgin's Black Lace imprint.

It's her first full-length erotica, following on from a gamut of short stories in various Black Lace anthologies. There's whiskey (feeels odd spelling it like that), wind-swept cliff-faces and Manx intrigue.

For more visit www.samhayes.co.uk

The London Silence

2006-07-05T13:21:00.000+01:00

Here's a review of Stephen Moran's The London Silence. Eat it while it's hot. The book's published by Pretend Genius Press.

Rather than being a short story collection - which is how it appears at first, and also how it is marketed - Stephen Moran's first release from Pretend Genius Press is more two books in one. The first part, ‘The London Silence,’ is a contemporary collection of convincing array of characters into whose lives we are offered voyeuristic glimpses.

Some of the stories feel a touch hurried, but Moran's prose is for the most part executed beautifully, with little narrative clutter, a technique that serves to help his characters breathe. He also makes great use of anchoring his similes in his characters' world. Take this from the opening story, Panic:

“The youths were uttering swear words as if they were prayers.”

Moran fails when he calls for us to withhold our disbelief, as in the fantasy-fuelled ‘Beacon and Numbskull.’

Other than in the trite ending, ‘Kenny,’ the story of a man's relationship with his canary, ably demonstrates the author's strengths, as well as his themes: there is bewilderment, loyalty, and a love requiring investment to survive, rather than just being.

For all that is good about ‘The London Silence,’ it is badly packaged, included as it is as the predominant part of a book that contains a wonderful novel, the second half of the book being ‘All Those Endearing Young Charms,’ a novel in reverse, like a protracted, less convoluted ‘Memento’ in print, being written in reverse order, and being about the early life of one Joseph Murphy, an outstandingly well-rounded but sensibly under-stated creation. Moran does not always manage to avoid cliché, but what cliché there is he infuses with such humanity that it barely matters.

This brief novel is a great work. It has all the poise and precision of the earlier stories, but due to its extended length is far more engaging. Each chapter works perfectly as a stand-alone piece, but it is when read as a whole it is best appreciated.

Not all of Pretend Genius' releases are of such merit, and there is some standard-fare indie-press 'experimentalism' in their stable, but they have an edge over many of the other independents, in that there is a co-operative of devoted staff behind their releases, and on them the success or failure of each publication weighs heavy. And they (however small an organisation currently) have put their money where their mouth is, by producing high quality good-looking books using traditional printers.

All in all, both ‘The London Silence’ and Pretend Genius Press come with my sincerest recommendation.

Your Space, Not Theirs

2006-07-02T11:31:00.000+01:00

This is me completely not following the brief I was given for an article for Aesthetica:

Glen Duncan’s latest novel, The Bloodstone Papers, highlights rather charmingly the weakness of the hit-hungry media-giants. Two of the characters write down the main headlines on AOL’s welcome page and read them to one another. The first example of these is ‘Iraq captors kill American hostage. Fear grows for Briton after second hostage beheaded Plus Kylie’s prim new look.’

Whilst media giants scramble for what they mostly scramble for, the highest audience by providing to the widest audience, they are being undercut by indie enthusiasts, who provide specialised content for small groups of specific users. These indies are beginning to draw advertisers, who would rather spend their budgets on the sniper approach, guaranteed of hitting target, rather than gambling on the blunderbuss method of wounding their consumers on the huge battleground of a general interest site.

And it’s a two-pronged attack on the mainstream, as millions of writers, artists, filmmakers and musicians post their material for the rest of the online world to devour, whilst steering clear of capitalism altogether, with activists like Cory Doctorow and a large proportion of the scientific community at the forefront of the information revolution that demands open access for all.

Whereas media companies like Time Warner and Rupert Murdoch’s News International are clamouring for substantial pieces of the Web 2.0 pie, the editorial staff they employ urge caution. There’s an undercurrent of suspicion among many journalists, and in fairness this is with good reason. Recently the big US news magazines have made huge cuts in non-domestic print media to concentrate on developing their Internet services. Newsweek substantially reduced its overseas circulation, Business Week stopped printing outside the USA and Time made a swathe of editorial redundancies, including the removal of its Europe editor in favour of an international editor-in-chief.

But with the Web 3.0 onus on further interactivity and community, big media seem to be struggling without strategy. Murdoch’s well-documented purchase of MySpace has yet to prove its staying power; with the possibility the anti-establishment youth that comprise a large proportion of its users abandon it in droves for a similar, less corporate service. Besides which, Internet users are not the captive flies traditional media is used to snaring; anyone online is also a spider now, and not only able to traverse the Web, but spin strands of it.

Book publishers seem to have been missing a few tricks too. They’re happy for Amazon to provide an amazingly convenient outlet for their produce, but have been slow to exploit the Internet themselves, with independent publishers and adventurous authors leading the way.
Genre authors, especially those in the US, seem to have a knack for building up their fanbase online. Aside from the obvious big hitters like Gaiman and Doctorow (who maintains BoingBoing.net, one of the most popular sites in the world), there are cult figures like Caitlin R Kiernan and Jeff Vandermeer have accomplished much through use of the Internet. Up-and-coming writer Catherynne M Valente, whose exceptionally popular LiveJournal account probably helped her seal a multi-book deal with Bantam, was understandably irked when the publisher asked her to remove links from her website to the account, ostensibly for fear of alienating readers.

British blogger and author Ian Hocking [interviewed here by Blue Pootle last week], who made substantial ripples with his first book, Déjà Vu, through clever use of the Internet and skilful self-marketing, believes the reason the US is so receptive to this form of self-publicity is Americans are simply more au fait with the technology.

Things are beginning to change here though. The blindingly obvious reason for the much-reported triumph of Saatchi’s YourGallery is that it provides the ideal service to users: free hosting, with content creators able to reach a large target audience, and a peer-reviewed system of the content for the audience itself.

Due to prohibitive costs of printing and mailing, independent art scenes have remained regional and control of information has remained mainly with the corporations. With the arrival of widespread broadband (excuse the pun) in the UK, the word-of-mouth potential of online communities has been proven by the success of Arctic Monkeys, Nizolpi and Sandi Thom’s recent number one single. These recent achievements are due to the fact that blogs and messageboards offer nothing original, but are an evolution, providing a simpler platform for creativity.

This helps explain the phenomenal success of MySpace. Like the psychedelic comics and hand-made punk zines before it, it looks homemade, unpolished and unapproachable to the non-initiated. All hope is not lost for AOL then, as it has at least one of these traits.

Attack of the Blob

2006-06-30T21:17:00.000+01:00

I've been very busy with my new job the last week, but normal services will resume. Today's featured fiction is, alas, from me.

Attack of the Blob
It was Crystal who suggested it. Her argument was that if I insisted on staying cooped up in the flat all day with only the television, stereo and computer for company, it was the only way I would meet someone. I did the rest of my shopping online, she said, so why not use it to shop for a man?

One of the men she worked with had met his wife through an Internet dating agency, so that was our starting point.

Crystal helped me fine-tune my personal details. We were perhaps over-generous with my vital statistics, but that, she told me, was to be expected. We found a picture of a young girl too, as I didn’t have any digital ones of my own. It’s all a bit of fun for now. If I meet someone I like I can explain about the picture closer to the time.

After a few false starts a guy contacted me and the more I got to know about him, the more I liked him. I was thrilled to discover that the sentiment was mutual! We liked the same films, the same music. We even shared the same favourite type of flowers: white roses.

I kidded with him that things must have been getting serious between us, because I was willing to miss Hollyoaks whenever he came online. (Usually he got in from work around half six and was logged on to chat with me almost straight away.

After a month of digital banter and flirting, we agreed to meet.

*
The man waited beneath the clock on platform one at Kings Cross station. He had salt-and-pepper hair and wore a white rose pinned to the lapel of his best suit. He also sported a day’s worth of stubble, because she’d once mention she liked that.

He had arrived over fifteen minutes early, but was now anxiously looking at his watch as his date was a good ten minutes late. Fashionably late, he reassured himself.

When he looked up from his wrist the final stragglers debarking the train at the platform were staring at him with jaws slack and eyes wide. He was about to ask what their problem was when he realised that they were not staring at him, they were staring beyond him.

He turned to face a wall of undulating, pink jelly. It filled his vision. He took a step back and saw that the top of the thing stopped a couple of inches shy of the clock-face. It must have been fifteen feet high at least, and one and a half times as wide. It must have come down the stairs that led to the bridge.

As the man began to run, he thought he heard it call his name.

On The Dancing Viennese Toad

2006-06-30T19:55:00.000+01:00

While we wait for the Wastrel Rodent to resume normal service, I thought I'd just pop in to talk to you about Vienna. I went to Vienna recently, and came back again.

I experienced a cathedral, a ferris wheel, three palaces, four stately gardens, a zoo with a baby elephant called Bumbo, a wide range of horses, an art movement, a communist monument, six types of cake, five types of coffee, eight types of alcohol, and one very annoyed tram ticket inspector.

But what sticks in the mind particularly is the dancing toad.

Whilst eating at a restaurant with Hubby, too much alcohol (see above) was consumed and talking in a fine Austrian manner became difficult. Therefore, whilst asking for the bill, Hubby asked for the 'zahnung'. The waiter looked confused and walked away from the table.

He had made up a new Austrian word! What did it mean? We had visions of being presented with a range of options apropos to our request. A human finger wrapped in clingfilm? A used matchstick stuck to a tube of superglue? We settled on a dancing toad. It seemed like the perfect choice for our Viennese setting. We awaited our dancing toad eagerly.

The waiter returned with the bill. When we asked him, he explained that 'zahnung' and 'rechnung' basically mean the same thing.

So no dancing toad. I wonder why it seemed like such a good thing to receive at the time.

Return of the Rat

2006-06-26T21:01:00.000+01:00

I have returned from a rather nice break to a rather nice full blog courtesy of the Blue Pootle. You might be seeing more of her. Stay posted.

Elsa-watch

2006-06-23T09:58:00.000+01:00

This is my last day as guest blogger on the back of the old Guerrilla, and normal service will be resumed on Monday by my favourite muffin, Mr Ayres. But I can't let you go without an update to Elsa-Watch, which is a regular feature on my forum over at www.aliyawhiteley.com.

Elsa will be a year old at the beginning of July, and what a slow/fast year it's been. Funny how, with a baby, time can slow to a crawl while racing along. Anyway, in the past two weeks while I've been posting here, Elsa has:

- learned to walk if I hold her hands
- started scraping her own spoon around her bowl at mealtimes and sometimes even got food on to it
- started saying 'bob' (her cuddly maimed giraffe thing)
- touched the plug socket and waited, with a big smile, for me to say 'no' approx 43 times
- slept through the night three times
- woke in the night fourteen times
- cried at the sight of dental receptionist twice
- bitten me twice
- pulled at the bars of the baby gate while wearing her Prisoner Cell Block H expression five times
- laughed at my funny face approx twenty times
- cried when I caught her toe in the bathroom door once
- splashed in the bath thirteen times
- given me a cuddle approx thirty times

And, on that note, thanks for having me, and so long, pardners....

Seeing Red

2006-06-22T08:43:00.000+01:00

A little quiz today: how many times does the word red appear in this story?It can appear in words, across words and across paragraphs... Yes, there is a prize. Yes, it's a surprise prize. Get counting!

Edison was a red squirrel who roamed the outer edge of the Floredge Forest looking for nuts to store. Day after day he beavered away, only resting at the appearance of the red rays of sunset, sleeping soundly in his bed ere dawn arrived.

One day, in late summer, while collecting nuts, Edison heard a strange sound which made him feel rather edgy. He was worried it would be a predator – he was, of course, very scared of predators. He hovered on an upper branch, unsure, doubtful. Then he saw his enemy. There, deep in the undergrowth, lurked a fox. Whenever Edison moved, the fox glared at him and took another delicate step forward.

To his credit, Edison didn’t panic. He retreated along his branch. Only his red tail quivered. He spoke to the fox.

‘Hello over there.’

Doubtless the fox considered himself better than Edison. He didn’t reply.

The squirrel tried again. ‘Greetings! What are you called?’

The fox’s hard expression altered. ‘Devere,’ he muttered.

‘Do you wish you were up here, Devere?’ daring Edison said. ‘Would you devour Edison, for that is my name, given the chance? Are foxes partial to hot buttered squirrel? Or fried? Baked? Maybe shredded with pancakes?’

Devere ducked out of the undergrowth. ‘I don’t eat meat,’ he offered. ‘I was born and bred as a vegetarian predator.’

That was hardly believable. However, Edison was not a very clever, educated squirrel. He scampered along his branch, getting closer. ‘R-really?’ he stuttered.

‘Would I lie to you?’ Devere said, looking very credible. ‘Can we be friends?’

Edison considered. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Good! Then, as a friend, would you be prepared, dear Edison, to offer me a nut from your store?’

‘Don’t see why not!’ Edison teetered on his branch as he leaned over to offer Devere a nut.

Were Devere a nicer fox, he may have allowed poor Edison to escape. But he was not nice. He reached up and snapped the red squirrel up, who was hardly prepared for such a horrid result to their educational conversation.

Some things should be remembered: encounters with predators should be treated as perilous, at least until their real intentions have been uncovered!

On Top Of Old Smokey

2006-06-21T09:42:00.000+01:00

The Blue Pootle has today discovered that she is not meant to be a writer. She, in fact, has a God Given Talent (called GGT for short) for miming to pop records.

It came as quite a revelation. There I was, singing along as usual to Marvin Gaye whilst performing my ablutions, busily 'thinking about my baby' and 'picket lines and picket signs' and feeling sad for poor old Tammi Terrell, when I experienced the sudden urge to switch to the radio for a few moments instead, just for a change.

A man was singing about being crazy and I must be crazy and you must be crazy, and I had mastered the lyrics within a few seconds. I started to sing along. Then I made the startling revelation that the whole thing sounded infinitely better if I stopped singing and simply mimed for the benefit of the bathroom mirror instead.

Then I understood - modern music is meant to be mimed, not sung! The words have a deliciously pouty effect on the lips and yet absolutely no effect on the brain if spoken aloud.
Therefore I have reached the conclusion that the next logical step for the music industry is to simply ask the artist to pout appealingly throughout the track and save the listener from trying to make any sense of the lyrics.

So let me know when 'Mime Idol' starts up so that I can audition, and make sure that my GGT is not wasted. I'm off to practice my repertoire, which, incidentally, is trapped in my head and driving me crazy.

Pitch The Publication

2006-06-20T11:02:00.000+01:00

Who's got time to read a four paragraph review which is really about how clever the reviewer is? Not me. And I certainly haven't got time to write one, so let's cut to the chase and get clever and succinct at the same time with some one-line reviews. Hopefully these will help you decide if these books are for you whilst reducing them to one idea which is easy to understand. It's almost like I turned them into a movie for you:

Cell by Stephen King - The Stand with mobile phones and Baby Elephant Walk

On Beauty by Zadie Smith - Howard's end may be pathetic, but it impresses the young with its aesthetic qualities

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey - Marathon Man with less believability

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver - Seventies horror pastiche (The Omen, Rosemary's Baby) updated with new millennium maternal guilt

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby - pathetic middle-class 'problems' elongated by failure to commit to something, even suicide

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger - romance means he is free to travel, she has to wait for him to make an appearance: nothing new there, then

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini - guilt can be both domestic and political

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrananian by Marina Lewycka - a lot of people still find Ray Cooney farces and stereotypes very funny

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro - Jean Paul Sartre does The Island

So there we have it. Apologies if I've made any of these sound better than they actually are.

Blogging Blog Blogster

2006-06-19T08:53:00.000+01:00

Ian Hocking has fast become one of the essential bloggers when it comes to matters writing-related. Funny, insightful and constructive, his thoughts on the writing and marketing processes are invaluable for anyone playing the small press game. And apart from all that blogging, he manages to be a bloody good and productive writer. I don't know how he does it. So I thought I'd ask him...

Q You keep your blog informative and entertaining in equal measure - is there any writing topic which you wouldn't want to blog about, for instance, successes, failures, upcoming projects?

A. I think I've been fairly honest in my blog posts, and, in retrospect, it works both ways. But one of my rules is that I don't censor myself on grounds that a post may present me in a bad light. For example, my book, Deja Vu, received a hatchet job in a science fiction publication, and my reaction was natural: murderous rage! Well, things didn't reach a point where the police needed to be called, but I outlined how I felt on my blog and, so doing, I drew attention to the review. I'm trying to get at the writer's perspective on publishing, the craft of writing, and what sacrifices you make when you attempt to build a career as a writer. That's why I don't comment on literary news per se. One day I might blog about how to energise a scene, the next about a great - or not so great - book I've read. My blog is like the 'lucky dip' aisle at Lidl, only with fewer socks.

Q. You've been very creative at marketing your first novel, Deja Vu. What ideas did you come up with to promote the book and which ones do you think were most and least successful?

A. I'm not sure that I've been particularly creative. It is certainly the case that, as an author published by a small press, the kind of publicity surrounding my book was never going to take the form of that granted the latest Stephen King. The usual stuff - radio interviews, high-profile reviews, speaking engagements and so on - is quite expensive and often takes a talented publicity officer to arrange. Playing to my strengths, I tried to stay lazy. I sent emails to authors I admired and asked them to read my book. That's how I got the great quotes from Ken Macleod, a science fiction author, and Ian Watson, the screenwriter of Stanley Kubrick's AI. My other rule was this: If anybody within publishing asked me for a copy of the book, I'd give it to them. I got about fifteen published reviews by this method (a success rate of about 25%, I'd guess). Some reviews were in high profile publications, such as the Guardian, whereas others were more specialised, like literary blogs. Speaking of blogs, of course, my main publicity outlet has been my own blog. A blog is a long-lasting ember once the initial flash of publicity has passed.

Q. You're currently working on a follow-up novel to Deja Vu (sci-fi), and also a comic novel set in Cornwall; what do you find are the challenges of working on two such different projects simultaneously?

A. My next technothriller, Flashback, is not a sequel to Deja Vu in the classic sense, but it does involve the same central character, Saskia Brandt. This novel is set in the present day, and is as much about a darker character called Kirby. Like Saskia, he is a time traveller from the future who is stranded in our present, but while Saskia retains her humanity, Kirby views the world with Kafkaesque paranoia: for him, all men and women are trapped in the amber of the past, and only he has free will; but, of course, how can he insulated himself from the forces that make zombies of everyone he sees? That's one of the dilemmas I'm trying to work through. I'm very excited by Flashback. It could be a good book if I work hard enough.
At the same time, I'm working on a novel called Proper Job, which is a comedy set in Cornwall. The whole experience has been great fun. Although I'm known as a thriller writer, my first published work was humorous, and humour is an important part of my life. When I announced my attention to be a writer, my friends were a little surprised that I wanted to write technothrillers, so accustomed were they to my smart-arsed comments. I've published the odd chortlesome word or two, but have avoided working with humour in novel-length prose until now because, frankly, humour is too much like hard work. If a story is a series of emotional states, it is easier to create the fearful states associated with a thriller, for example, than the lightness needed for humour. Fear is often universal, but humour works differently for different people. Hopefully, readers will be able to judge the attempt before too long. Proper Job has been praised by one agent as funny, honed and pacey - with luck, it will find a home soon, and then I can begin to have nightmares about bizarre ice-cream-related publicity gags...

Q. Thanks Ian - there's anything you want to plug, go ahead!

A. I'm just about plugged out...there is, of course, a great new book by Aliya Whiteley called Three Things About Me - I've heard that's very good! Thanks for the opportunity to talk about my work. If you readers want to hear more of the same, I can be found here: http://ianhocking.com/thiswritinglife.html.

Darts, Feet, and Lodgers

2006-06-16T09:50:00.000+01:00

Drew Gummerson's stories are shocking, touching and extremely funny; he has a knack of drawing sympathy from the reader for the most extreme yet vulnerable characters. Drew's first novel, 'The Lodger' was a finalist in the LAMDA awards, and his next novel 'Darts' will be published shortly by ENC Press. For more info visist his website at http://freespace.virgin.net/d.gummerson/.

Drew has very kindly agreed to let his story, 'Neighbours' be posted here for a Friday Fiction feast - enjoy!

When I get home from college I find mum in the living-room. She has her dressing gown pulled tight around her and she is peering through a chink in the curtain.
“We have new neighbours,” she says.
“What are they like?” I ask.
“They seem a little strange,” she says. “I’ve seen the boys. No sign of the parents yet. They’ll be along though. Where there are children there are always parents.”
I mutter something under my breath.
“What’s that?” says my mum. “Come on now, don’t you be standing there. There’s the tea to get on. Who do you think is going to cook?”
Later when I am in bed I hear shouting coming from outside. I get up, being careful not to disturb my little brother who is curled next to me on our single mattress, and I look out the window. In the garden of next door’s house are the two boys my mum must have seen. They both seem to be about my age, although one is substantially taller than the other. They are wearing only underpants and they are smoking. The taller one is waving his arms in the air. I guess they are arguing about something.
“What is it Joe?”
This is my brother. He is awake after all.
“Nothing,” I say and I let the curtain drop.
“I need a wee,” says my brother. He gets out of bed and pulls the chamber pot from under our bed. I watch as he pees into it and then as he pushes the pot back under the bed. There is a strict rule in our house, no use of the toilet after ten. This is one of 356 rules that are listed in a book by the telephone.
After some time I fall back asleep.

They are at the bus stop the next morning and then the taller one is in my A level chemistry class after first break. As Mr Smith hands out the Chemistry textbook the tall boy tosses it disdainfully to one side.
“I read this when I was seven,” he says.
I try to catch his eye but he is not looking my way.
Later he is in front of me in the dinner queue. His brother is with him and he is scratching fiercely at his arse. He seems to have some kind of problem there. After a while his brother grabs his hand and then there is a flurry of hands and then legs and they are both on the floor.
Other boys start clapping and cheering, standing around them. I see another fist fly and not knowing why I leap into the fray. I don’t know whose side I am fighting on or if I am just trying to split them up.
Eventually teachers arrive and we are hauled before the head. Our punishment is that we have to paint the games storeroom.

There are balls everywhere and three cans of green paint.
I know their names now. James is the short one. Paul is the tall one. They are both 17 like me.
James is still scratching at his arse.
“Come on,” says Paul. “Let me have a look.”
James glances at me and shakes his head.
“He’s alright,” says Paul. He nods in my direction. “A good fighter.”
“If there’s a problem,” I say, “it needs sorting.”
This is one of my mum’s favourite phrases, number 82 in fact. I use it although I am nothing like her.
“Come on,” says Paul.
James turns and then pulls down his trousers and pants. Without saying anything Paul and I step closer and kneel down. James puts his hands on his cheeks and pulls them apart.
I have often wanted to but the truth of the matter is that I have never looked at anyone’s bum so closely before. However, even with my comparative lack of knowledge I am sure that what I am seeing is out of the ordinary. In the hairs there are lots of very tiny people. There are hundreds of them, fully dressed, going about their business. One of them I notice is on a bike.
“It’s happening to me too, isn’t it?” says James. He hastily pulls up his pants and twists around.
“No,” says Paul, “it’s just a rash.” He looks at me.
“Just a rash,” I say.
This is the first thing that makes us complicit.

When I get home mum asks me where I have been. I point to the green splotches on my jumper.
“I had to paint the games storeroom.”
“What for?” she says
“Because it needed painting,” I say.
Her hand flashes out and connects with my left cheek. “I’ll have none of that. Put the tea on. Then there’s the floor to wash. And you brother’s pants need washing. He had a little accident. I thought I’d leave it for you.”
It is nine o’clock when mum tells me to take the rubbish out. The air is cold but it feels good to be outside. I notice that a light is on our new neighbours’ house and not thinking of the consequences I go and knock on their door. After some time, it opens.
“Look,” says Paul. “Can you come back later? I need your help.”
“I’ll try my best,” I say.

When I am sure my brother is asleep I pull up the window and shimmy down the drainpipe. Paul must have been waiting for me because as soon as I knock on the door it opens.
“I can’t do this alone,” he says.
“What?”
“You saw my brother’s bum.”
I nod my head.
“Follow me,” says Paul.
I notice now that he is holding a test tube. It has green liquid in it and smoke is coming from the top.
“What’s that?” I say.
“It’s acid. If we get them early enough it may just work. I need you to hold him down. Do you think you can do it?”
I nod my head again.
James is asleep when we go into the room, lying on his front. He has kicked his duvet away and he is wearing only underpants.
Following Paul’s lead I sit on James’ back putting my full weight on him and moving quickly Paul whips down the underpants. James is screaming now and struggling below me.
I lift myself up, a trick I learnt in other fights, and slam myself down and this must have winded James because momentarily he is still. I hold apart the cheeks and Paul empties the liquid from the test tube into the crack. The room is filled with screams and not only James.
After several minutes James is still.
“Come on,” said Paul. “I want to show you something.”
He takes my hand and leads me into the room opposite. This is the master bedroom.
“Jesus Christ,” I say.
“It is a little, isn’t it?” says Paul.
In the room are two upright coffin-sized structures that seem to be made out of a solidified green liquid. Inside each of the blocks I can see a person. There are pipes running in and out of the blocks and the room is filled with the sound of various pumps and drains.
“Your parents?” I say.
Paul nods. “Like James the little people started at their bums. Before we knew it they were everywhere, ears, nose, mouth.”
“Couldn’t you do what you did for James?”
“That much acid would have killed them for sure. This was the best I could come up with.”
“Do you think James will be ok?”
Paul nods. Then he puts his hand on my shoulder. “Look,” he says, “do you think you could check me?”
I understand what he means. I tell him to turn around and he does and he drops his trousers. I shuffle closer.
This is what I have wanted since I first saw him in the garden outside. Probably even before then. I take longer than necessary and then I stand up.
“You’re ok,” I say. “Can you check me?”
“But…”
I smile and Paul gets my meaning.
In the morning we wake up. We are in bed and we are naked. I feel safe.
I sit up on one elbow and run my hand through Paul’s hair.
“Those blocks you made for your parents,” I say. “Do you think you could make another one?”
“Sure,” says Paul. “But what for?”
It doesn’t take me anytime to summon up the words. “My mother,” I say. “She’s kind of a bitch.”
“I’ll think about it,” says Paul but from the look in his eye I know that he will. I am just about to kiss him again when James walks into the room. He sees us in bed together.
“Oh my God, you two are gross. Now will somebody check my arse. It’s got bits falling off of it but it feels ok.”
Paul beckons him over to the bed and tells him to bend over.

On The Page

2006-06-15T09:24:00.000+01:00

The Blue Pootle has always suffered from an excess of imagination and the ability to use it to escape from the mundane. Therefore, small tasks occasionally get forgotten, tasks such as gardening, shopping, going out of the house, cleaning the house, cleaning myself, whilst I amuse myself with the following fantasies:

I’m an X-Man. An X-Woman. I’m the female equivalent of Wolverine, obviously, rather than the female equivalent of Professor X. I’m the female equivalent of Wolverine who gets to shag Wolverine on the weekends. That’s Wolverine in the films rather than in the comic. Female Wolverine: I guess that makes me Bitch. Yeah. That’s my X-Woman name – Bitch. Don’t mess with me. I can scratch your eyes out and yowl a lot.

I’m Mr Tickle. Didn’t you ever want enormously long arms and the ability to bend them round corners? Think of all the fun you could have… okay, so after you’ve tickled someone from 100 yards away there really is not a lot else to do with your amazing arms, but think about it. You also get to be orange and wear a small hat and hang out with the other Mr Men.

I’m a whole heap of classic heroines, except that I realise everything is teetering on the precipice of tragedy and neatly sidestep it, riding off with Mr Rochester/Romeo/Hamlet/Heathcliffe before he gets blinded/commits suicide/stabs my father behind the arras/stays in a really grumpy mood for the rest of his life.

I’m Halo Jones. It doesn’t get any cooler than that. Space travel, Rat Kings, speaking dolphin, intergalactic warfare, robot dogs, ear collecting, sex changes, drumming, The Hoop, the SS Clara Pandy…

I’m Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing. I am extremely waspish and impossible to get along with, and I like making life difficult…hang on, that’s me already.

Fizzy Pop Time

2006-06-14T12:18:00.000+01:00

As an antidote to feeling meaningful I've been partaking of some sparkling pop recently, and this is my favourite glass of bubbly at the moment.

Blonde

Running out the door I know I’m late for work again
I just make it to the platform check my handbag then
I discover that my keys are still on the TV
Well that wouldn’t be the first time…
I’ve still got the joy of the northern line

Hey what can I do
It’s true blonde at the roots
Hey what can I do
When I’m blonde through and through

Of course it’s not like me to forget anything crucial
But a personal assistant would be bloody useful
A simple statement that only I can confuse
Well this wouldn’t be the first time, but I will carry on just fine

Blonde is sung by Kathryn James, and written by Kathryn James and Justin Grayston, producer, and creator of Jedbrah Music (http://www.jedbrahmusic.com/) You can download the Up Close EP (which includes this track) at http://www.kathrynjames.biz/. Highly recommended for singalongability.

Incidentally, I'm not blonde. Can somebody write a song about being brunette some day? You know the kind of thing - Oooo, caught the train on time, my make-up looks just fine, I'm having a pretty nice time, I'm all set... I must be brunette...

Upstream Mainstream

2006-06-13T08:22:00.000+01:00

As guest blogger, I feel I should make a token attempt to stick to the rules of the game, so here's a Tuesday review. Amy Tan's Saving Fish From Drowning was published in October 2005; apologies for such a dated subject for review, but baby Elsa has decimated my reading time since her arrival. Here goes:

I don’t trust writers any more.

I’ve read too many books where my trust has been abused: tricks have been played, key pieces of information withheld until that final paragraph, or the narrator turns out to be a clone, or a dog, or a random vegetable that shouldn’t really be interested in human affairs anyway.

So when Amy Tan revealed her narrator to be a dead woman I wasn’t surprised, but I was suspicious. It was all too obviously leading to some great big secret – except that, when I finally reached it after four hundred pages, it wasn’t much of a secret at all.

The story sandwiched between the narrator and her revelation is a tale of a group of American tourists, enjoying and desecrating the sights of Burma and getting kidnapped by a tribe who are looking for a miracle. The dead narrator makes her disdain for the travelling party obvious, and if she has no sympathy for them, why should I? I was given no reason to care, and after learning about the fate that awaited the tribe in hiding, I was far more concerned about them than the Americans.

I enjoyed some of the ideas in the book, particularly the exploration of how media coverage of events can change behaviour, but there wasn’t enough of this to keep my interest. And the hook of the narrator’s death was just one of those writerly tricks that turn me off; I felt cheated when I reached those final pages. I’m not sure if I’ll trust her novels again.

BP Hijack: On Your Bread and Butter

2006-06-12T11:03:00.000+01:00

The Blue Pootle knows where she is with jam; usually standing in front of the toaster with a piece of toast in one hand and a jam knife in the other. Jam is comforting. Jam is familiar. Unless you’re Chris Morris, jam is in no way disturbing or weird.

Jam is the only spreadable substance I can stand to be in the same room with. Yes, I hate the obvious ones, like Marmite and mayonnaise. But I also have an ocean of loathing for honey. Marmalade upsets me, with or without shreds. There’s something about horseradish that makes me want to vomit and I just have the see the colour of mustard to feel nauseous. Don’t get me started on salad cream: isn’t it just mayonnaise really? No? Then what is it? What exactly is it made of? And if you don’t know, how can you be sure it’s safe for human consumption? Tomato ketchup is a chemical-laden sauce for those who’ve ruined their tastebuds with cigarettes and coffee. Soft cheese is hard cheese for wimps. Chutney chunder. Wasabi schmwasabi.

But jam is great, though, innit? Made from fruit, it is. Fruit and sugar, one of nature’s all-time great combinations. Gimme raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, tayberry, loganberry, assorted forest fruits, plum, apricot, and damson. Any fruit can be jammed, apparently. That knowledge makes me feel that jam is right. Jam is good. Jam is in the global plan.

Apart from lime jam. What moron thought that up?

I’m off for some toast.

Eyes Like Water, Like Ice

2006-06-09T10:57:00.000+01:00

Having followed Zack de la Rocha's advice to know my enemy, I am no more enamoured by free market capitalism than I was before I came to work at Smug and Self-satisfied Towers--if anything my political leanings have moved even further to the left. But balance is paramount, I understand, and there's a place for 'small c' conservatism along with socialism, as long as human rights and equal opportunities are not compromised. The free markets are at odds with this

This week's featured fiction, Jai Clare's funny-serious Eyes Like Water, Like Ice, illustrates the preposterousness of extremism--on the one hand Western consumerism, the other Eastern spiritualism. The story was originally published in Nemonymous.

I'm on holiday for a couple of weeks from tomorrow. In my absence your host will be the infamous Blue Pootle, so expect talk of jam, green penguins and possibly some extracts from Elsa-Watch. (Like Springwatch, only with babies and probably without Bill Oddie and Katie Humble.)

------------------------------
Eyes Like Water, Like Ice
Jai Clare

The man just nodded, coolly, detached. Around him small white clothed men formed the fires, removing red and yellow flowers for paler, less frivolous ones, lighting more incense, throwing rice and saffron, placing bowls of water around the fire, laying a white sheet over the pyre. Someone began a low hum.

The man in beige closed his eyes to the woman beside him, perhaps his wife. At first she'd laughed, hopefully, at the absurdity of his request, then when it became obvious he was serious she'd stood so still, immovable, feeling her stomach quivering, her shoulders shivering. Now she pleaded with him, on the verge of crying.

The crowd couldn't understand. Those that had grasped what was happening couldn't believe it.

It was a big hall; a thousand people had crossed the country to listen to the talk from a small group of Indian mystics who'd left their homes in still, white mountains to bring a whisper of truth. Words from another, more spiritual continent.

At first, the talk had gone well. The mainly white, middle-class audience listened attentively to the words from the small, tiny men, some of whom looked so frail, so bony they must be on the verge of death, and absorbed them inside their heads, like osmosis, planned what they would say to their friends at the after-talk gathering over a bottle of wine. How they felt uplifted by the words. Walking on air, happy with the world till the next talk, the next mystic. Those tiny men, how their faces were so unlined, so pure, all that yoga and fresh air. Pure living.

They'd laughed when the men made a small joke - bright eyes like water like ice, laugh like a child, cuddly like an animal. And the people of the audience were prepared to return home content, while the Indian mystics headed for another city, another hall.

Throughout the talk, the man in beige had said nothing. He neither laughed with the crowd nor smiled, nor applauded. He wasn't here to worship. His wife had come along reluctantly. And as the talk progressed the reluctance and disbelief faded. He saw worship in her eyes.

The Indian mystics had noticed him. Not at the front of the crowd but within seeing distance. An expressionless face. A static body. He stared at them as if testing their existence. They knew he would ask for something from them.

There was always someone like him. Not always at the front, not obvious and showy, but in the wrong place nevertheless, seeking them out but never coming closer, never touching like other members of the crowd, surrounding them with desire and hope.

The fire was higher now. Just little flames eating into the wood, like rapacious insects.

The crying woman feared going near her husband or the Indian men, busy with the preparations, feeding the fires. Chanting. The man in beige stood up now. Not watching the flames but the little men, haunched over, throwing yellow petals. To him they were like little dwarves. Snow White. Happy at work. No one smiled. Or cried. They were as expressionless as him. Ones dhoti slipped down his shoulder. He looked up as he pulled it back into place and caught the man's eyes. A flicker of understanding.

Most of the crowd hadn't gone. The fire grew. They wondered how it was contained. Some at the front had moved away from the man in beige, from the fire, and huddled in groups whispering, pointing at the man. Some laughed. Some looked to the open doors for a figure of authority.

The room was getting hotter. More people moved from the centre outwards. The sound of reluctant dying wood filled the auditorium, drowning out the chanting men.

No one approached the man in beige.

He watched the men; they moved around him as if he wasn't there, as if he was a pillar, or a piece of furniture, carefully avoiding any physical contact. They were nearly ready.

Never before had they been asked to do this; and they never considered they would be asked; especially not in the spiritually bankrupt West that no amount of visits by mystics could alter. Perhaps in Northern India: some religious fanatic, a martyr, his own religious quest. But this man had not the look of a fanatic. Tall and well-dressed. Innocuous. So western. He'd spoke gently, firmly. No amount of persuasion could change him. They wondered if he'd been brooding on this matter for some time.

When he'd responded to their question of 'Is there a special spiritual function we could fulfil while in your country?' He'd stood up before any one else could ask anything. Said what he had to say and sat back. The men glanced quickly to each other, waiting for a dissenting voice, the voice of reason and moral value. Normally one amongst them, their eldest, could be relied upon to say what they were all scared of saying. He looked at the man, peering closely, whispered 'Are you sure?' The man in beige nodded. 'I have to.' and the elder leant back, nodding to his companions. 'I give permission for the lighting of the fire.'

The fire was ready. It could not be put out, not at this moment. It could only die back of its own accord. One of the Indians stood up. 'Those who'd like to leave, please do so now.' Then he nodded for the doors to be locked after the crowd had left. Only a fraction of the original crowd remained.

The eldest nodded to the man in beige to come forward. He hesitated. And for the first time glanced at the flames. But he stepped closer, not looking at his wife, ignoring the calls of the crowd behind him.

He touched the hand of the mystic and said some incomprehensible words into his face. Slowly they undressed him, like servants, handmaidens. Gradually each layer of clothing was folded and lay on the floor before him. He stood naked. Then they washed him, slowly, with warmed, light-catching tap water from their dressing rooms. The man stared frontward as they touched him, cleansed his flesh and wrapped white cloth around his body.

They showed him the fire. And stood to one side.

As the man lay on the pyre, crossing his arms, his wife numb now, dried her eyes.

http://www.jaiclare.com/blog

Moving, Just Keep Moving

2006-06-08T11:03:00.000+01:00

Well, tomorrow's my last day at The GlobalCapitalist. Just in time for Zarqawi to get killed and mess up my Thursday. But this week it might actually be worth getting hold of a copy of The Eco. The Tech supplement is about whether robots are going to take over the world.

http://www.economist.com

In more important news, the Apex Digest UK and European offer is still on. But not for long as the back stock is nearly empty.

http://www.apexdigest.com/ukspecial.shtml

Psychosocial

2006-06-07T10:55:00.000+01:00

She Eats Wood

She's eating wood
The splinters in her mouth
The heating's broken again
and her clothes are all worn out.

Chorus
She hasn't got the prettiest of faces
She's eating wood again
Peer pressure will not affect her
as she has not got any friends

Her hair is tie-dyed purple
Her world is in disrepair
She likes loud music without a beat
because it gives a voice... to her despair

Bridge
She doesn't smoke and she avoids drugs and she doesn't like to drink too heavily
she really doesn't fit in that well because everything else is so very-very mainstream

She is a true icon
of what we don't need
She hates the world as it is
but it's so hard to exist on the fringes

Fisher of Devils

2006-06-06T11:50:00.000+01:00

This review of Steve Redwood's comic fantasy predates the release of his second novel, Who Needs Cleopatra?, which is now available from Reverb and has been feted by Michael Moorcock, who's Behold the Man was the initial impetus for it being written.

http://www.readreverb.com

------------------
Fisher of Devils
Steve Redwood
Published by Prime Books

As a knockabout comic fantasy with a cheeky sense of fun, ‘Fisher of Devils’ is an absolute success. But those dismissing it as little more than this are sorely mistaken.

The book is, I would have to concur with Rhys Hughes’ perceptive and informed introduction, a classic, whether or not it finds the commercial success it rightfully deserves. It is literate, wise, intelligent, warm and absolutely leaking humanity. The only groups with any right to claim offence at its content are zealots and fanatics.

The prose is not forced or flowery or difficult but unexpectedly perfect. It is a long time since I’ve been swallowed up by a book and been sucked straight into the story, able to ignore the means the teller uses to relate it due to such skilled craftsmanship as Redwood displays.

Steve Redwood’s voice is friendlier than Robert Rankin’s and far fresher than Tom Holt’s. The only popular point of reference in the surprisingly large sub-genre of comic fantasy treatments of the Apocalypse I can happily compare Fisher of Devils to is the successful pairing of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. This culminated in the highly acclaimed Good Omens, but even judged against this titan in the field, Redwood easily comes out on top: his treatment is handled with far more tenderness and respect for the reader, and if I didn’t know any better I might suspect that Gaiman and Pratchett had got wind of Redwood’s work-in-progress (it took him almost four decades to finish and find a publisher) and attempted to bamboozle him.

Suffice it to say that Fisher of Devils is hands and forked tails above any other contenders for the crown of thorns for best in show. It is a travesty that no major UK publisher has yet signed him to its stable.

For a funny, enlightening, down-to-earth/heaven/hell/purgatory read, look no further. The only other thing I can add to this glowing report is BUY THIS BOOK!

Abaddon Books

2006-06-05T09:53:00.000+01:00

Jonathan Oliver is a short story writer, stand-up comedian and comic book fan. He is also the graphic novel editor at Rebellion, the computer game company that also owns 2000AD. This August (September in the US) sees the launch of Abaddon Books, a genre imprint for pulp fiction hoping to give Games Workshop's fiction arm a run for itsmoney. (Abaddon even shares some of its authors with GW).

Jon, how did Abaddon come about? How were the different worlds developed?

Rebellion really wanted to expand their publishing wing to include novels and they were interested in developing some properties that they could explore with some talented writers. Jason and Chris Kingsley (the directors of the company) told me the kind of thing they thought worked in this kind-of ‘series’ fiction and I added my thoughts and, together with a writer, we created the worlds which we wanted our authors to explore.

Other than books based on Rebellion's Sniper Elite series of computer games, Abaddon's books are based in specific worlds. Like games companies like Games Workshop and White Wolf, Abaddon owns the intellectual property to the material in its fiction releases, with authors having to waiver personal control over their creations. Many serious authors would baulk at this clause, but personally, considering the subject matter (Abaddon is marketed as 'Extreme Action!' and 'Excessive Adventure!'), I don't think, branding aside, there's anything to get too precious over, with Abaddon's pay rates a cut above the ones writers and artists received during the Golden Age of US comics. If authors can wrap up a book in three months for Abaddon, and produce four of them a year, then they'll be taking home a pretty fair salary. A regular income from writing alone is something most mid-list authors signed to major publishers can barely dream of.

Abaddon's first four books are penned by comic writers and games developers, these are people used to working to schedules and turning work around quickly. ( 2000AD refers to itself as a 'talent factory'.) How has the commissioning process been? Have you found some authors have just bowed out under the pressure of writing to order?

All of the authors have been brilliant and most of them have experience of this work-for-hire way of writing and, I must say, that the quality of the writing has been consistently high. When we first opened the Abaddon gates we had a pretty overwhelming response so it has been quite challenging at times to pick from all the subs that we received. I’m genuinely proud of the works I have commissioned so far and I really look forward to exploring the worlds of Abaddon with this great stable of talent and new writers. As a brand new editor, to novel-length fiction at least, it has been a pretty nerve racking experience but I couldn’t be more pleased with the way it has turned out.

Career-wise, we've shared some common ground (working in journal production for academic publishers). How did you make the transition to what must surely be a dream job for you?

People are always saying that this is my ‘dream job’ and it really is! When I first got into publishing, at the academic side of things with Taylor & Francis, I always wanted one day to be working with fiction and especially genre fiction as that is my first love. I didn’t know that it would only take me 5 years to realise this. So yes, I am bloody bloody lucky! When I was working at T&F I saw a tiny ad in the Guardian that said ‘Editor wanted for new line of high-action genre fiction’, then I saw that the e-mail address was a 2000 AD one and that the job was not a million miles away in Oxford. I have always loved 2000 AD and when they offered me the job and said, ‘by the way, mind editing our graphic novels too?’ I was over the moon. The new job has been a real learning experience. There is never a ‘normal’ day at Rebellion and I’m very lucky to be in an position that gives me so much freedom to make decisions. Bit daunting really!

One last thing, Jon, how's the comedy going?

At the moment very slooowly. I haven’t done a gig in a while but this is down mainly to having to help plan a wedding. Yes I am to be wed on June 17th! I know that will come as a crashing disappointment to my female fans but there you go.I do plan to go back to doing more later in the year though.

www.abaddonbooks.com

--------------------------------
I've samplers of Abaddon's first four books to give away. In honour of Jonathan's comedy credentials, I'll send copies to the readers who leave what I deem to be the three funniest jokes in pacifistguerilla's comments' section before the end of the week.

Lavie Tidhar

2006-06-02T09:46:00.000+01:00

If you don't know who Lavie Tidhar is by now, shame on you. Here's a story of his that first appeared in Thirteen magazine.

I've a copy of Lavie's novella, An Occupation of Angels, to give away to the first person who can tell me who wrote the introduction to the book.

--------------
Family Ties
Lavie Tidhar

My uncle Oren was sitting stoop-shouldered on a chair in the kitchen. His face was a mask of blue and green and his skin was flaking all over the floor. A small pile of multicoloured flesh lay at his feet like a tombstone.

‘Gevalt.’ said my Aunt Lily. We nodded in silence.

‘The shame.’ said my cousin Avi, who is only twenty seven but thinks he can talk because he works in a bank.

‘Who would have thought,’ said his sister Tali. She stared at my uncle’s hands, which were clenching and unclenching periodically.

‘Nu,’ said my cousin Gidi, who is from Uncle Dave’s side and who doesn’t like either Tali or Avi very much, ‘who would have thought you fancy women?’

I looked at Tali with renewed interest. I never thought she was very interesting, certainly not enough to be a lesbian.

‘Gidi!’ Aunt Lily’s voice sounded like the baying of hunting dogs, waiting to be unleashed.

‘Or that you’re -’ his next words were silenced by my aunt’s frantically waving hands, moving through the air like two well-honed blades. ‘Not in front of grandma!’

‘WHAT?’ Grandma wanted to know. She reclined on her armchair, checking the time sporadically on one of her three watches.

‘Nothing mum, nothing.’

‘WHAT?’

‘We’re just talking about what to do with Oren mum!’ shouted my aunt.

‘Don’t shout, I’m not deaf,’ grandma snapped. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

Her words were welcomed with more unhappy silence. Uncle Oren’s mouth made random snapping motions in the air. Grandma straightened with some difficulty and rummaged about for her glasses.

‘On your head, mum.’

‘WHAT?’

‘On your head!’

‘Don’t shout dear, you’re giving me a headache.’ She peered at uncle Oren intently. ‘The boy looks like death,’ she finally pronounced. She sank back into her chair.

‘That’s because he is,’ muttered my dad. Uncle Oren’s mouth gaped like a gefilte-fish, his lips pink and colourless.

‘WHAT?’

‘Nothing mum!’ Aunt Lily quickly said.

‘Enough of your cheek,’ said grandma. She checked the time on the left-hand watch. ‘don’t know why Sarah had to marry you. Told her she was making a mistake.’ She fished a mint out of her cardigan pocket, unwrapped it and sucked on it happily.

Uncle Oren rocked in his chair. His teeth shone wetly in the electric light.

‘We should blow his head off,’ I said. ‘Like in that movie.’ I pretended to shoot one of those double-barrelled guns. ‘Ka-boOM!’

‘Danny!’ It’s good parents are not allowed to kill, otherwise mum’s look would have nailed me like a butterfly in a museum. Uncle Oren looked on, blinking rapidly. A yellow fluid oozed out of the corner of his eyes.

‘Whatever the matter with him,’ my uncle Dave said quietly, ‘we can’t throw him out.’ He looked around the room, watching our faces. ‘He’s family.’

We all nodded again. ‘Family is family,’ said cousin Avi.

‘Pretentious prat,’ cousin Gidi whispered to me and winked. I laughed. Aunt Lily’s face took on a dangerous aspect, like a fog hiding a nest of bees. Deadly. I shut up.

‘How could this happen?’ Aunt Shoshi stood up and waddled across the room. ‘We buried him in the best place. The best plot!’ She was rubbing her hands together in nervous, jerky movements. ‘I thought this only happens to the goyim!’

‘Maybe they buried a goy next to him, and he infected Oren,’ suggested Uncle Jordan. He pushed his sliding glasses back up the large ridge of his nose. ‘I never did trust that undertaker,’ he added.

‘I know!’ I said. They all looked at me suspiciously. ‘What we need to do is get a barrel of acid and dissolve him.’

‘Who let the kid in?’

‘At least the kid has some ideas!’ snapped Aunt Shoshi. ‘We have to do something.’ She paced to the wall and back. ‘It’s so, so... It’s just not Jewish!’

‘He can’t stay!’ wailed Tali. She looked at us with wild eyes. ‘He’s a zombie.’

A deadly silence descended. The word was out. Uncle Oren was a living dead. A walking corpse.

A zombie.

Aunt Shoshi held her head in her hands. ‘The shame.’

‘A Dibbuk,’ said uncle Dave reproachfully. ‘I’m sure zombies are of a different persuasion.’

‘Or cut him up with a chainsaw,’ I said, still absorbed in that line of thought. ‘first the arms, then the legs, and finally...’ I paused for dramatic effect. ‘the head.’

‘Shut up Danny.’ Mum stood up. ‘Show some respect to your uncle.’ She walked to where Uncle
Oren sat and examined him for a long moment, holding her face close to his. I kept expecting
Uncle Oren to open his mouth and bite her throat off, but he just sat there looking dejected.

‘He’s family,’ said cousin Gidi.

‘Dead, shmed,’ said uncle Jordan. ‘Oren is a good man.’

‘Was.’

‘Was shmoz.’ Uncle Jordan sat down like a man whose mission was successfully accomplished.

There was an expectant hush.

‘So nu?’

Then mum straightened up. ‘He’s staying,’ she said.

Dad nodded his support.

Then, gradually, everyone else did. Even Tali.

And that was that.

It didn’t take him long to settle back in with us. Uncle Oren moved to the basement, where the fresh ground, the damp and the dark did wonders for his skin. Dad and I even suspected he had a lady friend who came to visit him some nights, burrowing underneath the soil to keep him company. There seemed to be a lot less mice and frogs and flies than usual, and virtually no door to door salesmen. No Jehovah’s Witnesses either, for that matter.

After all, as Uncle Dave said, family is family.

Margin

2006-06-01T08:33:00.000+01:00

The rather fabulous Margin has a website with a deceptively cheapy URL:

http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/margin

There's so much on the website I still haven't bothered to take out a subscription. But I should. And so should you.

She’s Leavin’ Me for Jesus

2006-05-31T09:48:00.000+01:00

Jeff Haas was asked to perform this at the American Atheists convention in San Francisco. Due to prior engagements (particularly the one with his wife), he had to respectfully decline. If you're interested in hearing the song itself, ask Jeff nicely and I'm sure he'll be happy to oblige.

She’s Leavin’ Me for Jesus
Jeff Haas

It’s early Sunday mornin’
And she’s packin’ up the car
The kids are wavin’ from the back seat
I’m all alone with this guitar

Of course she’s got her well-worn Bible
And her offerin’ envelope
But when she took the day-old doughnuts
I lost all vestiges of hope

She’s leavin’ me for Jesus
I’m just not good enough for her
She’s leavin’ me for Jesus
I sure do miss the way things were

And when I ask her for a reason
She says they met in Sunday School
She’s leavin’ me for Jesus
I’m feelin’ like a goddamn fool

I shoulda known this was a-comin’
Last week we had a terrible fight
I had to microwave my supper
When she took a covered dish on Wednesday night

And then she said she joined the choir
I started feelin’ awful sick
She might be pretty as an angel
But that ol’ gal she just can’t sing a lick

Chorus

Sometimes I go to church on Christmas
Or when I’m feelin’ really bored
I know that I should go more often
But I’m allergic to the Lord

And when she asks me to go with them
I just stare down at my feet
Against the Son of God Almighty
There’s no way in hell I can compete

Chorus

© Jeff Haas

The Last Flight of the Flamingo

2006-05-30T10:20:00.003+01:00

Review day. This review of Mia Couto's short magical realist novel originally appeared on LauraHird.com

The Last Flight of the Flamingo
Mia Couto

"To put it crudely and rudely, here’s what happened: a severed penis was found right there on the trunk road outside of Tizangara.”

Now if that doesn’t pique our interest, what on Earth will?

We’re introduced to the Translator of Tizangara who relates a most peculiar tale of post-colonial politics, fettered national identity and some of the most bizarre situations since Kafka — though Couto’s idiosyncratic symbolism is often coupled with more reasonable explanation. Or is it?
Aside from the exploding UN soldiers (of whom all that remains are their severed manhoods), we have a narrator’s mother who is unable to see her son until she is on her deathbed, and a father, Sulpicio, who hangs up his bones on a tree before going to sleep.

Despite the quirky fable-like undertones to the book, all of the characters are detailed and convincing, from the self-important and time-spoiled Administrator of the town and his snivelling adjutant, to the as-bewildered-as-we-are investigator Massimo Riso and his guide and ours, the unnamed, passive interpreter who guides us through a firework trail of memorable faces and poetic imagery.

The author of this book renders sincerity without being patronising, and has managed to produce one of the most humanist works I have read.

’The Last Flight of the Flamingo’ is a political novel but, though it takes the author’s home-turf of Mozambique for its setting, his observations are far-reaching and, sadly, ever-more, rather than decreasingly, pertinent to us all.

The book contains a microcosm of the characters that make up this world, and Couto expertly sidesteps portraying stereotypical behaviour from his potentially stereotypical cast.

There are lines that are by turns deceptively simple, deceptively brilliant and simply deceptive.

For example, the introduction to chapter 7:

- I miss my home back in Italy.
- I’d like a little place of my own too, where I could return to and feel cosy.
- Don’t you have one, Anna?
- I haven’t got one. None of us women have one.
- How come?
- You men come back home. We are the home.

There are a couple of instances of confusing language, but on the whole Couto’s writing is vividly bright and sparkles with intelligence. Especially, and unusually, in the dialogue. There is bona fide wisdom literally crammed into every nuance of conversation. Even the stupid characters seem to have a fundamental grasp on existence that we could only crave, or else shrug our shoulders and say, Good for them.

This book will entangle us in it, and it treats language as something fluid. It is intelligent without the usual cavalier cockiness and this is something to treasure. It can teach us new things and has the potential to make us reappraise. What more could we ask of it?

And when we finish this master-class in Confucian insight, we are left with thoughts of the Tamarind tree, such a potent symbol throughout the latter half of this short but dense fiction, and one of the numerous Tizangaran proverbs to accompany its image in our mind’s eye:

What flies after it has died?

It’s the leaf of a tree.

The Alsiso Project

2006-05-28T11:18:00.000+01:00

While I'm still settling in here, feel free to occupy yourself with a Q&A I held with most of the authors who contributed to Elastic Press's first anthology, The Alsiso Project. This interview originally appeared on the now defunct Dusk. For those not in the know, The Alsiso Project is an anthology which contained stories with a common source of inspiration: the word Alsiso.

Elastic Press publisher Andrew Hook came up with the idea following a typo on the word Alison, by Elastic Press author and CWA Short Dagger winner Marion Arnott. Nineteen of the authors took part in the Q&A. Here some of their responses:

Q1: If there's more than one Alsiso sharing the name, what is it that links them all?

KJ Bishop: 1 lasso

Matt Dinniman: Everyone who looks into a mirror sees something different staring back at them. How can anyone expect there to be anything but more than one Alsiso? The common thread is that we all saw something different, yet in the end it all coalesces.

David Allen Lambert: One name in a shared language becomes many distinct Names in many personal discourses.

Nicholas Royle: Their being different.

Q2: Which (if either) is most detrimental to the human condition, and why? A life in solitude. A life in ignorance?

Kaaron Warren: Both are fine if they don't try to insist others be alone, others be ignorant.

Tamar Yellin: Hard to say. Solitude is a wonderful thing, but a life spent entirely in solitude would also be a life of ignorance.

Q3: Chaos, Order, Destiny or Synchronicity?

Andrew Humphrey: Synchronicity - I like the word and I believe it's what occurs if you let things take their natural course.

Justina Robson: Chaos. This isn't a meaning of Alsiso for me. I just chose it because I thought your questions were angling towards The Meaning of Life and this was the closest word for my thoughts on that subject in terms of cosmic significance, which is the end of the question I usually start from. If I looked at it from the other end I would have picked a different word.

Anthony Mann: I'd like to think it was Synchronicity, but suspect it's Order - I'm a control freak. I get twitchy if I don't know where the TV remote is.

John Grant: Chaos has to be the choice, because it is the most fundamental quality of all.Order is an artefact, born out of our perceptions: we perceive patterns in chaos much as we can hear melodies in white noise. Synchronicity as a notion is born out of our misperception that chaos is ordered. A logical consequence of there being order is that there be rules governing that order, one of them being the arrow of cause-and-effect. But if there is no real order, just perceived pattern within chaos, synchronicity is to be expected. Destiny is a myth.

Q4: With hindsight, what does Alsiso mean to you?

Christopher Kenworthy: Alsiso is a 'seal' (or emblem), on a tree of knowledge, akin to the Sephiroth of the Cabbala. Which is why my story has a tree in it.

Alasdair Stuart: Total literary freedom, even from the basic constraints of building a story. Being handed a word which has no meaning other than what is assigned to it and then being given the opportunity to assign that meaning was a wonderful writing experience.

Steve Savile: Alsiso is zen, Alsiso is karmic, Alsiso is a sign, Alsiso simply is... hmm did they buy that? Ok, truth then - actually it is hard to define even my own thoughts on something that does not exist. For my own take on it, I went back to the beginning, and in the beginning there was the word. So itseemed awfully fitting that, since I was returning to the beginning, the story ought to possess biblical overtones. That, in essence, was my thought process. What Alsiso became was a very difficult story to write, one that I was sure, every word of the way, was going to be quite different from anything else and would stick out like a sore thumb. I see Alsiso now as a signpost on the road of British independent anthologies, where an editor has taken a risk on a grand and quirky concept and asked the writers to really dig deep in their creative pools and I think he has been rewarded richly for that risk. Alsiso is a great book. It should be on everyone's shelves, So, I'll stick with my opening thought, Alsiso is a sign...

Marion Arnott: Fame as a lousy typist. An opportunity to write a different kind of story. The chance to get between the covers with some very fine writers.

Light Relief

2006-05-26T08:33:00.000+01:00

I'm making good progress on Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys and having to stifle smiles on the train so I don't look like a maniac. Liza Granville's mildly rude story of a naughty Pooka should raise the corners of a mouth here and there too. Liza is the author of Curing the Pig (Flame Books), a comic fantasy that does for men what X Factor and American Idol have done for quality music, and the author of The Crack of Doom to be published in September by Immanion Press, which does much the same for conceptual art... and Until The Skies Fall, which follows in January 2007, also from Immanion, which does much the same for the future of the human race. Liza's story, Dancing the Labyrinth, appeared in The Minotaur in Pamplona, the chapbook collection I edited for D-Press.

-------------------------------------
The Pwcha of Llanfairpisstiliog
Liza Granville

Once upon a time, in the village of Llanfairpisstiliog, perched high up on the Gwallgof Mountains, there lived a decent sheep farmer and his family who were plagued by a pwcha with the filthiest sense of humour you ever met in a month of Fridays.

Not know what a pwcha is when it’s at home, and you half Welsh? Well, indeed and to goodness, there’s ignorant! Whatever was your granny thinking of? A pwcha’s the creature a household had before the days of gadgets. It was supposed to tackle the housework at night when decent folk were fast asleep, and lend a hand with the boring forever jobs like churning butter, scrubbing hearthstones and rattling bedroom windows to take women’s minds off things they couldn’t do much to change.

That was a pwcha… a proper pwcha… but this one was a revolutionary anarchist, look you, and didn’t know its place.

No. Indeed. It roamed around the farm cottages making the labourers crave strong drink, the wives get uppity, and respectable wenches’ eyes roam anywhere they pleased. The creature peed on the dairy floor and let the cat take the blame. It kicked over the milk pails and bathed in the cream. On washday, it unpegged the bloomers and laughed like a drain when the goat ate them. On cold nights, it blew out the fire, covering the rag rug with hot embers and screeching down the chimney so loudly the farmer’s wife took to her bed thinking it was the Gwrach y Rhibyn foretelling a sudden death.

This damned (no doubt of it) creature regularly stole money from the farmer’s pockets on market day, shocking him to such a degree that he staggered home red faced, three sheets to the wind, and penniless. It made groins itch in public. It produced loud farts in chapel during the sermon… and at home when there were only ladies present. Worst of all, it made trouser fronts stick out during the singing of sacred songs by pretty Gwyneth-the-well-Underage.
Tried everything, they did, to get rid of that nonconformist pwcha. The farmer regularly covered the walls with religious texts – and every morning found them neatly ripped into squares, hanging on the nail in the outside privy. His wife tried draping strings of garlic across the beams. Next thing she knew the stinking stuff was floating in the plum jam and decorating her fairy cakes.

Nothing could shift it.

Eventually they were forced to pay up and bring in the parson with his bell, book and candle, but there was no way a politically aware pwcha was going to be religiously oppressed and shrunk into a bottle, no sirrah. The china rattled so hard during the droning of the rite that not a word could be heard. Chairs danced around the parlour, the windows flew open, and every last one of the candles was extinguished. A free hand goosed the kitchen maid in the panic stricken darkness.

It was last resort time. The farmer’s wife made the long trek, alone, by moonlight, naked, into the forest to visit the wise woman – or so she said. Apparently a traditional cure was suggested. All next day she sewed and stitched. That night she left a tiny coat and trousers, all made of best Welsh wool, on the hearthstone. Come dawn, they were gone. No under-clothes, mark you – must have itched like hell.

Whatever. They did the trick. The pwcha went mad and shagged the sheep until they were sick and tired of it… or so the story goes… thus starting another fine Welsh tradition.

Then it ran away to England where I’ve heard tell it fitted in very well.

Link Day

2006-05-25T11:21:00.001+01:00

I'm still working towards the completed model of how this blog will work. But it goes a little something like this:

Monday, interview with individual of interest
Tuesday, review of something or other
Wednesday, song lyrics of someone or other
Thursday, link day
Friday, short fiction from a guest author

So, Thursday today: link day. Over at Emerald City, Juliet McKenna outlines a new Arts Council funded attempt at raising the profile of genre authors. Very worthy the endeavour is too. If you're a UK-based writer, makes sense to check it out.

http://www.emcit.com/emcit129.php?a=2

And if you're living on or near the south coast of England, also worth a moment of your time, whether you're a writer or an interested reader, check out The South and Sealion.

http://www.thesouth.org.uk

Old day job

Opening Gambit

2006-05-24T13:37:00.000+01:00

In a few weeks there'll be daily posts on here, Monday to Friday.

Friday will be featured fiction day, with a short fiction piece by a guest writer apprearing, something between 500 and 2000 words, with the focus on fantasy, absurdism and magical realism. Writing will be of a high standard.

Most Mondays will feature an interview and Tuesdays a review.

There'll be music, stories, dancing and acrobats! Possibly even wild animals.

It's not Friday fiction day, but here's a taster of the sort of things to come, courtesy of Aliya Whiteley. Aliya's novel, Three Things About Me, is published by Macmillan in July. It's a tongue-in-cheek black comedy romance fantasy adventure. I suggest you buy it. My interview with Aliya will be in the next issue of Aesthetica Magazine. For more Aliya than you can shake a long dead bit of tree at, go here: http://www.aliyawhiteley.com/

------------------------------------------------
In the Clouds
Aliya Whiteley

Paul the silversmith knew that, sometimes, things fell out of the sky.

Something always fell out of the sky when he was in his back garden. Weather quite often fell out of the sky: snow and hail and rain. And creatures that could fly sometimes forgot how to, so they would tumble down and land beside him. He would give them tasty things to eat – worms if they were seagulls, seeds if they were robins – until they remembered how to fly. Then they would give him a bob of their heads and be gone, up into the sky once more, back where they belonged.

It must be good to have a place where you belonged, Paul thought.

He was weeding his back garden so his strawberry plants would have no problem in pushing out their soft leaves when the slightly chilly spring turned to summer. Nobody else in his terraced street weeded their gardens. They threw rubbish in them or argued in them in loud voices. Paul wanted to belong, but he didn’t want to change to belong. His neighbours saw nothing good in waiting: waiting for strawberries to grow, or for silver to change into a shape under your patient hands, or for creatures to remember how to fly.

He cleared the last hairy dandelion from his strawberry patch and, at that moment, felt the first drops of rain on the back of his neck. He straightened up and lifted his face to enjoy the way the rain kissed his cheeks and eyelids, when, surprisingly, something other than rain, something tiny and hard, struck him on the centre of his forehead and fell to the cement path, bouncing five times in quick succession to come to a stop between his feet.

The sudden shower of rain dried as quickly as it had arrived, and the clouds cleared to throw a perfect patch of light on the object. It glinted.

Paul squatted and looked at it. It was, he decided immediately, made of silver. He knew silver, and he knew from one glance that this was a piece of fine workmanship: it had been sculpted and shaped into perfection.

He scooped it up into his hands and brought it up to his face. Strangely, the patch of light moved with it, and he had to squint to see past the glare. But once he did he was amazed and delighted in equal measure.

A dragon lay in his hands. It was lying, stretched out, its snout lifted, its eyes screwed shut and its four legs splayed wide as if it was a cat sitting in its favourite warm spot. Every jag on its spine was a testament to skill; every scale overlapped neatly with the one before, and every claw was a pinprick on his hands. It was so beautiful that it could have been alive.

So Paul was not that surprised when it breathed, gave out a sigh that he felt rather than heard, and curled into a ball, its serpentine tail looping around its snout to scratch the back of its neck.

Paul stood in the garden for a long time. He wasn’t sure what he should do. He was worried that the dragon would get a shock if he talked to it, or moved too quickly, but he was terrified that it would uncurl its tiny folded wings and fly away without a second glance if he did nothing. He could have gazed on it forever, but the sun was going down, and even the light on the dragon was fading. The sensitive skin of his palms picked up its shivers. It opened its eyelids to reveal bright orange eyes, rolled them around, and flicked out its tiny forked tongue. Paul thought he heard a sound come from between its teeth: a high-pitched, barely audible mew.

It seemed to Paul that the dragon needed help. Maybe it was like the seagulls and the robins – it had to rest before it could fly again. And, although he didn’t know if he was doing the right thing, he decided it would be better to try to help than not try at all, and so he carried the dragon into his house, through his kitchen, past his lounge, and into his disordered workshop, that was strewn with clutter and home to the charred, beaten workbench that had once belonged to his father and now belonged to him.

He placed the dragon on his fire brick, sat in his chair, turned on the overhead lamp, put on his goggles, and reached for his blowtorch.

One press of the igniter switch and out leapt a yellow flame that he tuned to a fierce blue. He didn’t know what he was going to do with it. The dragon needed warmth, he was sure, but how to provide it? Could he simply…

Quick as a finger-snap, the decision was made for him. The dragon jumped up from the heat brick and into the heart of the flame. Its wings unfurled and flapped so fast that he could only see silver blurs, and a sound that reminded Paul of a ringing bell sprang out of the constant movement.

The dragon bathed in the flame. It stretched, it somersaulted, it performed flips and turns, and it smiled, baring its curved silver fangs as it did so.

Paul stayed there through the night, keeping the blowtorch steady even when his arm got pins and needles and his eyes could barely stay open and his hand went numb. Still the dragon bathed. Eventually, in desperation, to keep himself awake, Paul began to talk. He talked about how he had learned his trade from his father, and how lonely he had been since his father died ten years ago. He described his house and his garden, and his hope to be the best craftsman he could be, not for money or fame, but for the peace of mind of achieving what he had worked for.

He recalled the first time his strawberry plants had given him fruit and the last time he had seen his father smile. In short, he talked his life out to the dragon, and it seemed to him that the dragon listened.

When there was no more to say, Paul looked up and saw sunlight through the workshop window.

He had talked all night.

At that moment the dragon slowed the beating of its wings and drifted out of the blue flame to land on the heat brick. Paul switched off the blowtorch and laid it on the bench. Then he leaned back in his seat and stretched out his aching muscles. When he looked at the dragon once more, the dragon was staring back at him.

The yellow eyes were not yellow at all. They were iridescent, like oil on water, filled with swirls and patterns that coalesced and dissipated in rolling movements. In those eyes Paul could see many things. He could see clouds traversing the sky, but somehow he was in those clouds, not flying so much as gliding without effort, and he belonged there, flying around the Earth, following the path of the sun which blessed him with its beams and kept him warm.
Paul reached out a hand and the dragon flew up to it, landing on the knuckle of his index finger.

It observed him, its head cocked to one side, and wrapped its tail around his fingernail. A squeeze of the tail and a wink of one yellow eye told Paul what he needed to know.

The dragon was ready to leave.

He stood up, switched off the overhead light, walked out of the workshop, past the lounge and through the kitchen. He strode into the chilly brightness of the early morning, brushing past the flowers and feeling the bottom of his trousers grow wet with dew, until he stood in exactly the same spot as yesterday.

‘Goodbye,’ he said, and lifted his hand to the sun.

The silver dragon sprang away, flying upwards into the direct shaft of sunlight that had come down to greet it. With it went Paul’s loneliness. He had found his friend.

Back in his workshop, sitting at his bench, he started work on his new sculpture. It would take time, he knew: the fruit of the strawberry plants would come and go before he was finished. And it was going to be a dragon.

A dragon, to sit on his workbench and remind him of the living, breathing, silver dragon who carries his secrets through the clouds, and takes his thoughts up to where they belong.