Dec

16

The Celery and the Ivy

Filed Under Other people, Things I like | 2 Comments

Toby Frost has done it again! A year on from last year’s splendidly festive Space Captain Smith Christmas special, “When Slay Bells Ring”, he’s just brought out “The Celery and the Ivy”. Here’s the blurb:

Toby Frost has put aside his iMelodiatron to decree:

By popular demand it has been declared that the universe of Space Captain Smith must get even more exciting, so we are proud to present The Celery and the Ivy, in which Isambard Smith, Polly Carveth, Rhianna Mitchell and Suruk the Slayer set out to bring Christmas cheer to a remote research station.

With Suruk seeking to feast on Stephen, Carveth yearning for equine company and Rhianna wanting to get her hands on Smith’s nut roast, how will the sole inhabitant of a biological research station take to his visitors?

Find out by downloading The Celery and the Ivy, by Toby Frost – and then feel free to pass it on to all your chums, especially if they are yet to discover the wonderful world of Space Captain Smith.

I think the only thing wrong with this is the idea that there is anyone out there who is yet to discover the wonderful world of Space Captain Smith. Surely everyone on the planet is a fan? At least, that’s the way it would be if there were any justice in the world.

So what are you waiting for? Download it here. Oh, did I say it was free? Well it is. So no excuses whatsoever, then. Pass it on.

Dec

11

Bits and Pieces

Filed Under The Literary World, Things I like, Writing | Leave a Comment

I’ve been away and otherwise busy over the last two or three weeks – hence the rather sporadic posting. So here are a few random sweepings from the floor …

1) On Tuesday night this week, I took part in the NYC Midnight “Tweet Me a Story” competition. Basically, I got a word at midnight UK time and then had five hours (yeah right, I said midnight UK time) to write three twitter stories using it. The word for group 19 was “attack”, which could have been a lot worse. Anyway, I threw my three together in half an hour. I find out next Tuesday if any of them are going to go forward to the next stage of voting.

2) I’ve just sent my story off to Jim Wisneski’s ‘Twelve Days of Christmas” project; I’m one of the ones doing “Eight Maids a Milking”. It’s a rather odd piece altogether. I’ll let you know when it appears.

3) I’ve decided that the perfect in-flight movie is “GI Joe – The Rise of Cobra”. Why? Because it’s full of action (read “guns and explosions”), has an idiotic plot and (crucially) you don’t need to be able to hear any of the dialogue in order to follow it. There is no excuse for watching it outside a plane, however.

4) Weirdly, two out of the five writers shortlisted for the National Short Story Award (Sara Maitland and Jane Rogers) were judges in competitions where I won prizes this year. Following this logic, if Zoë Heller wishes to make an impression on the NSSA next year, she knows what to do. OK, Zoë?

5) By the way, well done to both of them for getting onto the shortlist, and especially to Sara Maitland for getting the runner-up prize. I read her collection “Far North” earlier this year, and I can strongly recommend it – especially the title story, which is quite extraordinary.

Oct

24

Something Rather Inspiring

Filed Under Things I like | 2 Comments

In case anyone out there’s feeling a bit, you know, icky after watching this week’s Question Time, here’s something that I picked up from Vanessa Gebbie’s blog that will go some way towards cleansing the image of Nick Griffin’s ugly fat face from your mind. It’s a talk given by Chimamanda Adichie at TED on the dangers of the single story. If you haven’t seen it already, I really suggest clearing 20 minutes of your day to give it your attention. Trust me: you will feel better after this.

Aug

22

The T.E.Lawrence Approach to Editing

Filed Under The Publishing Industry, Things I like | 2 Comments

Talking of Lawrence of Arabia (well, we were two posts ago – work with me here), my father recently had to move out of his house and I’ve been sorting through some of his old books. In the middle of this I came across an old two-volume hardback edition of Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”. As it happens, I’ve never read this (although I’ve seen the film, of course), but I think I want to now. Because the preface contains this wonderful exchange between the editor and the man himself:

Hands up who else could hear Peter O’Toole reading that. It’s brilliant, isn’t it?

Aug

10

Light Bulb Moment

Filed Under The Publishing Industry, Things I like | 4 Comments

I had a light bulb moment today.

I’m finding that my new computer has had some unexpected effects on my on-line life. One of these is that I’ve found that Safari has a way of managing RSS feeds that is just that bit neater than Internet Explorer, with the result that I’ve been collecting RSS feeds with wild abandon over the last couple of weeks. I’m now following far more blogs than I used to, and as a consequence I’ve come across loads of interesting new stuff. I came across the one that I want to share with you today via Tania Hershman’s blog, and it’s a fascinating piece about the state of short story publishing, and a lot of excellent points may be found therein, along with the associated comment stream.

But it set me thinking: why are short story collections the cinderellas of the industry? I’ve often thought (and I’m clearly not the only one) that in the era of MTV attention spans, short stories really ought to be aggressively marketed as the saviours of the publishing world. I’ve been reading a whole load of short story collections lately (mainly as a result of trying to support Salt Publishing’s extraordinarily successful Just One Book campaign), and it is quite cool to be able to absorb an entire story (or two) in the duration of a commute into London.

One thing did strike me, though. Short story collections are – of necessity – patchy. If they were entirely consistent, they would be dull. A good collection should show a writer trying out all sorts of different things. Some of them will work, and some of them won’t. A case in point: some time ago at If Shakespeare …, my mate Ian Cundell recommended a collection by Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) entitled “Running from Legs and other stories”. In particular, he raved about a story entitled “Terminal Misunderstanding”. As it happened, I liked it, but I didn’t think there was anything special about it. However, I thought that the story that came next in the book, “The Sharers”, in which a black man is aggressively patronised by a white man who insists on sharing his ride to work, was absolutely wonderful.

Read more

Aug

4

Toys for the Boys

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Where did that week go, then? I’ve been a bit quiet for the past few days because my main computer (hey, I’m a software developer in real life – I’m allowed to have loads of them) finally ground to a halt and I took the opportunity to do what I’ve always wanted to do and buy myself an iMac. I did this after working onsite at a client recently and noticing that they do all their development on iMacs – Windows and all. (I know people have told me this before, but I didn’t really believe it until I saw it.) And my God, is it a sexy beast! Finally, a user interface that’s been designed by someone who actually seems to use an interface every now and then. Not only that, but once I’d installed Parallels, it does indeed run Windows stuff alongside. Even better, it should also do the same for my Linux stuff once I’ve installed that as well. (And now that I come to think about it, Solaris 10 as well maybe – now that’s really scary.)

The only problem is that I’ve had to extract all my stuff from that clunky old PC and bring it across, including the mail, which is an absolute nightmare. So that’s why I haven’t updated this place for a few days. Normal service will resume shortly. Along with stuff about writing instead of techie porn.

Jul

27

Harry Patch and the Battle Proms

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On Saturday night we headed off down the road to Hatfield House for this year’s Battle Prom Concert, one of those truly weird only-in-England things. Essentially, the deal is that you turn up, grab a spot to pitch your deckchairs (plus your gazebo if you get there early enough – which we were, just) and settle down for a picnic. The entertainment consists of a cavalry display by a bunch of Napoleonic war re-enacters, a spectacular aerobatic display by a Spitfire and a concert programme of pieces designed to bring out your inner jingoist, including the 1812 (with real cannon and fireworks), Beethoven’s Battle Symphony (again with real cannon and fireworks – not one of old Ludwig’s finest pieces, but never mind) and ending up with Jerusalem, Rule Britannia and Pomp and Circumstance No. 1, with associated audience singalong and flag-waving. All in all, a great afternoon and evening’s entertainment.

And all this on the day that Harry Patch died, aged 111, a stark reminder (if we needed it) of what war is really all about for the poor bastards at the sharp end. My VWC chum Ian Cundell has written far more eloquently about the significance of Harry Patch’s passing over at If Shakespeare …, and I recommend that you take a look.

Jun

30

Calderdale 2009, The Brontës and The Dhol Foundation

Filed Under Competitions, Placings, Things I like | 6 Comments

A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail telling me that I’d won one of the top three prizes in this year’s Calderdale Short Story Competition, out of 420 entries. So last Thursday we headed off to Halifax (the one in Yorkshire, not the one in Nova Scotia) for the prize-giving. Despite turning up a quarter of an hour late (and walking in during Sarah Holman’s reading of her story – sorry, Sarah!) we had a great time. I was more than a little apprehensive about reading my piece, “Possible Side Effects”, because it contains a fair smattering of strong language, and it’s a bit peculiar to walk into a roomful of strangers and start swearing like a trooper. Fortunately, it seemed to go down reasonably well, and it even got a few laughs – although some of them sounded ever so slightly nervous.

In the event, I came third, behind two excellent stories from Sarah Holman and Sylvia Anne Jones, but the very slight disappointment was tempered by the fact that apparently mine was the only piece that was on both judges’ final shortlist of six. And it was good to meet the two judges, Ra Page and Jane Rogers, as well as several members of the audience.

Halifax is a fascinating and slightly scary place on a Thursday night, mainly populated by young girls with orange fake tans wearing dresses that look smaller than the average T shirt. Amidst the febrile atmosphere, Mrs P and I eventually found an excellent Turkish restaurant, whose only drawback was the lack of an alcohol licence. So I was sent back out into the night to track a bottle down. I eventually succeeded, although I think that paying £9.50 for a bottle of Echo Falls red counts as some kind of benchmark in desperation. Although, curiously, after the thrill of the chase, it didn’t actually taste at all bad.

We thought we’d make a short break of it, so we stayed a couple of nights in nearby Hebden Bridge – a lovely place, mainly populated by ageing hippies. On the Friday we left the car behind and took the bus over to Haworth, into Brontë country, where we went on an eleven mile circular walk up to Wuthering heights and back. Wonderful, and I didn’t break out into a Kate Bush impression once.

The icing on the cake came later on, when we were taking a stroll around Hebden Bridge after supper and we heard music coming from the cinema. It turned out that The Dhol Foundation were playing a gig there to kick off the local arts festival. Woo hoo! Ever since we saw tham at WOMAD a couple of years back, we’ve both been big fans of the Dhols, and as there was only an hour to go, we managed to get in for a fiver each. Oh, and they were ace as ever.

Apr

29

Choose What You Read

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I picked up on this excellent FT article via James Burt’s always entertaining blog. As it happens, I’ve been commuting into London a lot more than usual lately, and the way that the bloody free papers seem to have taken over the world astonishes me. I find it absolutely extraordinary that people who are prepared to put up with massive rises to their fares every year will avoid spending a single penny on something more worthwhile to read than Metro or London Lite. It’s probably one of the first signs of the end of civilisation, y’know.

Mar

26

Franz Kafka International Airport

Filed Under Things I like | 1 Comment

It’s the little details that make this a work of genius. Thanks to Ian Cundell of the VWC for pointing it out.

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