Posts (page 2)

My wiki-fu has unearthed books about young Captain Jack Sparrow.  Only the fact that they're young adult, which generally is too simplistic and infodumpy in style for my taste, is putting me off ordering them.  Oh, and not forgetting that my book shelf is already full of novels I need to read and I have several things already lined up for my next amazon.co.uk order.  *is so not a book-buying addict*

Finished the second chapter of my "beth" story, posted here under friends-lock.  At the moment I'm aiming to get it to 30,000 words, and I have enough vague ideas floating round my head about the story that I think I'll manage it.  What I'll do with it then... not entirely sure.  Oh well!  I've having fun writing it; that's the important thing right now.

Got back the essay I turned in at the end of last term, and I got a B+!  Hooray!  Much better than I'd expected.  Hopefully the essay I turned in last week will yield the same positive surprise.

Subbed A TRIPTYCH off to the Iris Print "fairy tale and fantasy" anthology last night, and A SHADE OF YELLOW to the Touched by Wonder anthology on the 7th (which I think I forget to mention). 

In the 'books' section of the Times today, there was an article on how to write chick-lit.  Much to my surprise there was some decent advice in there - concerning dialogue, description, etc - but they also had tips from "stars of the genre", one of which made me want to kill someone.

"The worst thing you can do is to concentrate on plot at the expense of the characters.  As long as the characters live and breathe, not an awful lot need happen.  Don't get too complex."
~ Freya North

The first sentence I could have accepted.  A story needs good characters.  But the rest....

Admittedly, this is partly personal preference.  I like to read stories that are packed up to the eyeballs with complex plot, as well as a cast of interesting characters.  I know some people much prefer character-fiction, where plot is very much on the sidelines.  (I personally can't think of anything more boring.  Oh, wait..... Nope, more boring even than prizegiving-day speeches back at school.)

I hope wannabe-writers don't take this woman's "advice" seriously.  Not everyone likes plot-less stories, and telling writers to write them without saying it's not the way everyone wants books is rather stupid.

But then again, nothing really happens in chick-lit, does it?  The woman buys some shoes, angsts a bit about the guy she wants but can't get and about her expanding waistline, and then buys some more shoes.  Give me guns and explosions any day. 

Finished an essay.  It's assessed, and really not that great, but I have to head over to uni now to hand it in so I don't have time to make it better.  Whatever. 

Can't help but snigger at the first line in this comment to a post about getting books turned into a movies.  "Oh wow, you write epic fantasy!  How original!"  While I'm not dissing the idea of epic fantasy being good, the ratio of 'people who think they're writing The Next Great Fantasy Epic' to 'people actually writing good fantasy' generally supports my urge to snark.  But snarking in this community is NAUGHTY so I must keep it here.  (for those who've not seen it: keep scrolling down, that thread keeps getting better and BETTER)

On that books-to-movie topic, if I finish any of my weirder stuff I'd kill to have it animated by Studio Ghibli.  But that's stepping right into Totally-Awesome-But-NEVER-Going-To-Happen territory.  *keeps dreaming*

Going up to Scotland for my gran's funeral.  Will return on Saturday. 

Tim (one of my two flatmates) blessed our flat today with sacred chalk.  o.O  The best part is that I'm being totally serious.  He had a bit of chalk that had been blessed by a priest, and a little leaflet from some church saying what to write on the front door-frame. 

As soon as he finished it, I turned to Karim (my other flatmate, and a fellow atheist) and said, "You know, God is gonna get us now."  And I chased him back to his room, wiggling my fingers and saying in a weird voice, "Conveeert, conveeert!!"

=D

And, jumping once again on the meme-bandwagon, this one listing the opening lines of the short stories I completed in 2006:

A Fay of Steam:  Steam and smog clamour to control the world outside.

A Shade of Yellow:  "My side... The deal... Don't forget..."

A Triptych:  "Oh Mother, Mother, why did you ask this of him?"

Empires and Glass:  Waste magic clung to D'sil in tendrils, hanging onto his clothing and skin like seaweed to the hull of the ship on which he stood.

Flight:  The beeping woke me, sank into my hazy dream-world and pulled me to a cold morning and the incessant call of Rif's snooze alarm.  (while I wrote the original of this back in 2005, I'm counting this in my 2006 achievements because I completely rewrote it in that year)

Juniper Grave:  Gathered secretly from the cold tiles of our kitchen floor, held like eggs a-nesting in her finest silk handkerchief: my bones.

Let Me Fall:  Rain falls like spears, slicing through any clear memories of the Circus.

Snowdrops:  Snowdrops painted the forest floor white.

Statues:  Illan could hear the zarek moving through the ruins towards her.

Tansu:  The smell of wood varnish filled the modest room.

The Beautiful Collection:  Mist curls along the high street like forgotten wisps of Rapunzel's hair.

....

Interesting little exercise. 

I've learnt that I should not begin any more titles with 'A....' for a while, and I'm surprised I started so few with 'The...'  I'm proud of the utter lack of passive tense in any of those opening sentences.  I'm wondering if the JUNIPER GRAVE one makes it sound like the handkerchief belongs to the floor (the rest of the paragraphs makes it clear that's not the case, but technically...). 
.
.
.
.
*peers over shoulder, watching out for God*

Another nice rejection from Sybil's Garage, this one for TANSU:

We enjoyed your story, however, it's not quite right for the magazine.

There's some nice writing and descriptions, and I liked the concept of "furniture magic"--though I thought that it should have been introduced as early as possible in the story (well before page 7). I wish you luck with this piece and hope you'll try us again in the future.

I can see his point about introducing the 'furniture magic' earlier, but the only way I can think of doing that is to cut off the beginning, maybe begin the story as they reach Jamako's house.  While I have considered doing that... I don't know.  I kind of like the start as it is.  Something to ponder, though, while I also ponder where to send this story next.

Both times now I've got this "almost, but not quite there" response from Sybil's Garage, which is heartening but also (obviously) a touch annoying.  They're closing for submissions on January 15th and I don't have anything else I think is suitable, but maybe next year when they re-open I'll have something.

Quite an odd thing happened this year.  From being someone who actually read very little fantasy or scifi, and preferred weird non-specfic stuff like Donna Tartt's books (which are a lot of awesome, and are the best non-specfic books I've read this year), I went to someone devouring fantasy and scifi - and some of it weird, new, non-mainstream stuff.  It happened with my summer holiday, where I finally decided I would read China Miéville's Perdido Street Station, Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Frank Herbert's Dune, as well as a random book called The Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson.  They were all fantastic.  And I haven't looked back.

Some of the books I've read haven't been fantastic.  They've been mindblowingly awesome in more ways than I can count.  They are:

4th Place:  The Carpet Makers, by Andreas Eschbach
On a low-tech world, the main industry is the manufacture of carpets of human hair.  Each takes so long to make that it is a lifetime's job for the group of men, who weave the carpet from their wives' hair and provide money from the sale for each's one son to survive while weaving his own carpet.  But the ships that take the carpets offworld have stopped arriving.  In a weave of plot threads with no main character, the reason for the carpet-making tradition and the fall of the vast interstellar empire are superbly told.  One of the more imaginative scifi books I've read.

3rd Place:  The Etched City, by K.J. Bishop
In the city of Ashamoil, gunslinger Gwynn - currently in the employ of the Horn Fan slave-trading cartel - finds himself drawn to a woman called Beth who made an etching of him.  While the cartel's fortunes are shattered by a man's desire for vengeance, Gwynn realises that Beth is not quite what she seems.  And wow, that summary does not do the book justice; it forgets Raule, a doctor who collects deformed dead babies; it doesn't quite express the dark, chimeric nature of the book.  This is real "dark fantasy".

2nd Place: The Scar, by China Miéville
Linguist Bellis Coldwine is fleeing New Crobuzon aboard a ship headed for an island colony, when the ship is attacked by pirates.  Along with all the other passengers, she is taken to Armada: a vast floating city of ships of all sizes slung together, grown over with houses and offices and gardens and more.  There, with a fellow passenger, she realises that the city's leaders, the Lovers, have a dangerous plan in mind for the city, and she becomes determined to stop it.  This book is vast, filled to overflowing with Miéville's imagination, and everything about it works - setting, characters, plot, narrative.  An absolutely stunning book. 

And the best book I've read in 2006...

1st Place: The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden, by Catherynne M Valente
A girl has been cast out into the palace's gardens for a strange marking: the skin around her eyes is stained black, with stories written in tiny handwriting.  She tells these stories to a daring boy, and the fairy-tale stories weave in and out of each other with beautifully imaginative lyricism.  An absolutely amazing book, brimming with ideas and beauty.
Read the prelude, and then the beginning of the stories.
Also, read her short stories:
The Maiden-Tree
Bones like Black Sugar
Urchins, While Swimming

And, quick life update:
- My gran died on Friday.  Looks like it was in her sleep.  I'm okay (she was 90, and very frail, so this isn't exactly unexpected) but then I'm not quite okay, you know?  I'm not depressed or anything, and I cried once and probably won't again until the funeral, so don't worry about me.  Still, I miss my gran a little, and I think it will hit more when I go up to Scotland for the funeral (whenever the hell that is - because she died unattended, the doctor won't simply sign off on her death certificate, so there has to be an autopsy.  She was 90, WTF?  Heart gave out, or a stroke, or some other kind of system failure.  Stupid people.) 
- Working tonight.  Closing, out at 10pm-ish.  What a rocking New Year's Eve I shall be having.  Ohhh riiight, sexy time!  Though, I will be home before midnight, and will try to finish off Catherynne M Valente's book The Labyrinth - so the moment of 2007's beginning will actually be quite good, despite the McDonald's smell clinging to my hair.
- Sent off TANSU to Sybil's Garage a few days ago. 
- Finished a first draft of A TRIPTYCH, for the Iris Print "fairy tale and fantasy" boy's love anthology.  It's currently 6,500 words, which is about twice as long as I expected.  I think I like it, quite a lot actually, but I need to re-read, see what it looks like in dawn-light, and some tweaking will probably be in order before I send it to Rhi for beta-ing.
- Still excited about THE BEAUTIFUL COLLECTION being accepted.  Can I call myself a writer yet?  I don't know.  But I'm not a not-writer either.  And yeah, I know, anyone who writes is a writer, but am I a writer?  I think there is a difference, be it just the flimsy barrier of published/not-published.  But I changed my LJ profile from "a hopeful writer" to "a writer" and it feels a little odd, still. 

That faint, high-pitched squeeing sound you can hear drifting across the Atlantic to America or round the world eastwards to Australia?  Wonder what it is?

It's me.

Email Subject: Submission Accepted: The Beautiful Collection

Dear Alex,

We loved your story and we would like to include it in our February
2007 issue!

It's with Crimson Highway webzine, who like "dark fiction, horror, or dark fantasy that has a romantic element", and have a very attractive layout compared to a lot of webzines.  Romantic isn't normally my thing, but this story is a slight exception.  It's about obsession with a flavour of magic, and as the email says it will be available to read from February 1st on their website. 

I am rather supertastically happy about this, especially when coupled with STATUES being a quarterfinalist in the Writers of the Future contest.  After the rejections I've had since starting this whole short story malarkey back in October - and yeah, 11 rejections really isn't all that many, I know, but they still bite - it's super cool to finally get some positive responses.  And when I think that while THE BEAUTIFUL COLLECTION is a good story, some of my other ones are (in my opinion) even better - well, hopefully I'll be getting more acceptance emails in the near future.  *is hopeful*

Yay me!

And sadly that's not the real meaning of the word 'knackered', just the Brit slang of being bloody tired.

Cumulative tiredness of longish shifts during week + 9hr shift yesterday + party last night with alcohol and 4hrs sleep + early 6hr shift today = tired Alex

But, but, there is news!!

STATUES, which I subbed to the Writers of the Future contest back in September, placed in the quarter-finals.  This is what their website has to say about my ranking:

There are 4 levels of placement in the Writing Contest: Winner, Finalist, Semifinalist and Quarterfinalist. Quarterfinalist entries are stories that are of exceptional quality which are in the top 10-15% of all entries for the quarter. It is meant to give special recognition as such.

I'm too tired to bounce of the walls, but I can appreciate that this is very, very awesome.  I mean, obviously I didn't win or anything, but still, it's amazing to see real recognition that I'm not such a bad writer after all.  Yay me!  Now when I submit stories I can say, "Look what my story did!  Love me!"

I turn 20 in 2 days' time!  Yay me again!

Now I have to stay awake for the small family thing (just my aunt and her husband and maybe both of her kids) in half an hour's time.

MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all for tomorrow!!  Wishing sparkle and shiny presents and yummy food for everyone!

Amusing story from work:  The cute young Shift Running Manager was telling me that Dave, one of the other crew members at work who will at some point in the near future be taking his Floor Manager exam, was considering cheating on his mock.  Aside from the obvious pointlessness of cheating, the cute young Shift Running Manager wanted to know how he intended to do this.  Dave replied that he would type 'AMC exam' into google and see what came up.  Well, cute young Shift Running Manager did this and guess what he found at the top of the hits?  My blog.  Apparently he had an amusing time reading it, and particularly loved my posts about Verity back in the summer.

Tee hee.  I have no idea if he still reads it, or if that's a one-off, but now I have to call him the cute young Shift Running Manager and mention him as much as realistically possible. 

The less amusing part of my shift on Tuesday was scraping ice off my car at midnight while wearing a short skirt and a thin fleece over my shirt and vest.  Knowing my luck, I'll be doing the same thing tonight and tomorrow night too.  Oh joy. 

Writerly Update

Rejection from Shimmer for TANSU.  They said:

I thought the strongest part of the story was the woman's ability to enter the furniture; that's a neat idea, and those passages held my attention very well. But I'm afraid the rest of the story did not live up to the potential of those parts. It all felt rather too convenient.

I'm not entirely sure what's convenient about it.  The only thing I can think of is that they assumed Bunia was the only person with that ability, thus it's convenient she was chosen to evaluate the furniture because she was the only one who could find out the secret.  Which means I'll be slipping in a mention that she's not the only person with this ability.  Other than that, I can't think of anything.  Once I've gone back through the story, I think I'll send it to Sybil's Garage.

I have a feeling that an entry for the Shimmer pirate issue isn't going to happen, but as the deadline is end of January there's time yet, I suppose.  Just that so far I've had the faintest of faint inklings of a plot, and I need somewhat more before I can write it. 

However, I have been working on an entry for the Iris Print 'fairy tales and fantasy' anthology, which has a deadline of 15th January.  Originally I was going to write something that followed on from SNOWDROPS, and some time I might still write the piece, but yesterday I changed my mind.  After having so much fun with the 'Juniper-Tree' fairy tale, I decided I would play around with pre-existing fairy tales / mythologies, and as I've recently stumbled across a literary form called a Triptych (where the story consists of three short stories that have some kind of connection, thematic or character or whatever - similar idea to the art form) I decided I'll tell the story in that way.  So there'll be three stories about relevant parts of the life of Isouso, my main character, and that includes the development of a relationship with another guy.  So far I've drawn on 3 Brothers Grimm tales, and there's a selkie and Baba Yaga too - and it's being wicked fun to write.   Tentative title is A TRIPTYCH.

PA is decidedly on a break.  I don't want to call it hiatus, but it's on a break.  I think I need more time before I go back to it. 

Sex, Money and... what else was it?

The cute young Shift Running Manager also thought my blog needs more sex, money and something else.  Well, can't deliver on the thing I can't remember, and nothing exciting is happening in my bank account (it's positive, hooray!), but I can deliver on the sex side of things.

- Skip the rest of this if you don't care about / don't want to know about my sex life -

So there's this guy I went to Sixth Form with (last 2 years of high school), and from pretty much the first week there's been a bit of sexual tension between us.  It's waxed and waned over the years since, but it's been there, and we made out back in 2004 but didn't do much.  When he came down to Karim's 21st we were flirting, and he offered sex, but I declined (wanted to enjoy the party with all my friends, not with just him), and he kissed another girl (he's a manwhore).  Then, at Andy's party last Friday night, we went back to my flat together and had sex.

And considering the years of sexual tension, and his bragging that he's amazing, it was.... pretty fucking anticlimatic really.  Sure, it wasn't awful, but I suspect that's more to do with me having gone 3 months without before that, so it was like "OMG penis wooooowwww.... that's it?".  I somehow doubt I'll be sleeping with him again. 

Oh, I also kissed a Chinese guy called Kenneth at the same party.  Just a little chaste kiss on the lips, but we'd been sort of flirting earlier, and we exchanged mobile numbers.  I have no idea if I actually want to go anywhere with him, but heh, we'll see. 

That's all!