Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Hollywood Settee Spud

Just a short entry. The idea for the TV script (The Park) has taken off this week with an agent in Hollywood requesting a first look. I know nothing will come of this but it makes it feel all worthwhile knowing that someone is prepared to read my material. It makes me want to carry on and stop being a couch potato (I never refer to it as a couch preferring settee which Dictionary.com informs me comes from an alteration to the word 'settle' - I guess I'm a settee spud.).

Read this week:

Marvel 1602 written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Andy Kubert.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Ethereal Images



The water colours of Joseph Mallord William Turner in the Vaughn collection are only let out of storage every January. The rest of the time they are squirreled away to protect them from the damaging effects sunlight has on such delicate works.
They act as a counterpoint to the Canaletto's seen recently. Several of the works depict Venice. They are ethereal, half glimpsed silhouettes that loom out of the fog of memory. Whereas Canaletto is hard lines and detail, Turner is colour and light and imagery, half glimpsed and half remembered. I can't say I prefer them just that they speak to me in a different way.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

While the wind howls...

Well I think we got of lightly with the weather. Whenever I mention I live in Edinburgh on the whole the response is one of rolled eyes and allusions to snow, force nine gales and the lack of sun. Now, due to global warming, all the really atrocious weather seems to stay south of the border and with predictions of warmer summers I'm thinking of buying a bit of beach somewhere and putting up a hotel and outdoor pool. A couple of hundred years from now this part of the coast will be the new Med!

Last weekend on a trip to Nottingham I was able to say goodbye to Van the Man, who along with his lady friend, are planning to spend the next year travelling the world and seeing what it has to offer. A party was held in celebration and it was nice to see so many old faces in one room. Drinks were drunk, stories told and many a back was slapped as memories were dusted off and hoisted up the flag pole.

First port of call is Delhi were the web tells me it’s a nice twenty degrees but the humidity is 81 and that snakes & ladders was created by the 13th century Indian poet saint Gyandev. It was originally called 'Mokshapat.' The ladders in the game represented virtues and the snakes indicated vices. The game was played with cowrie shells and dices. Later through time, the game underwent several modifications but the meaning is the same i.e good deeds take us to heaven and evil to a cycle of re-births.

Next up to have a leaving bash is PC Benny, who has accepted a position in the police force that protects the borders of Devon and Cornwall against pirates and those that would rob them of their scones and thick cream. He is also having a leaving do but we'll be travelling back from Florence when it's on.

Went to my first meeting of the Coffee and Comics brigade and reviewed Pride of Baghdad. This is a beautifully illustrated interpretation of the real life escape from the Baghdad zoo of a family of lions during the invasion of Iraq. It's a poignant story about the freedom of the people, the tyranny of the ruling classes and misguided judgement of the American forces.

I have also just finished Blackberry Wine. This is a favourite of Lady H's and one which she persuaded me to read (and I'm glad she did). It falls into the area of magical realism while
Harris describes the book as "a relative - a second cousin, perhaps" to Chocolat (I've seen the film, but plan now to read the book). The idea of magic and ghosts permeate throughout the novel but it's done so subtly. I like it that way, I never want the magic explained because then it's just a cheap parlour trick.

Tomorrow I plan to go and see the January Turner's. Works of art that are only allowed out the box for one month of the year - I wonder what they do the rest of time, when no one is looking?

Read this week:
Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan with art by Niko Henrichon
Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

A Book Review or Two.

I've been reading Author Hill's new book this week. I'm always concerned when I read something written by someone I know, for fear I'll find it lacklustre, or boring or (even worst) badly written and that the next time I see them they'll ask me to comment on it. I'm not very good at lying beside I always want my own creations to be critiqued with honesty. If it's bad tell me its bad…I know I can't please everyone and tend to write for my own pleasure more anyway.

That said 'Blade of Fire' (the second book in 'The Icemark Chronicles') is a better book than the first and pretty much thumps along at a thrilling pace. The story takes place many years later with Thirrin and Oskan all grown up and ruling their northern kingdom while having had a brood of children. The youngest of these is
Charlemagne, the runt of the litter, crippled by polio when he was a babe. Though the parent's obvious favourite, Charlemagne (or Sharley as he is none to family and friends) feels unable to perform as a true macho Prince of the Icemark. This is a nice touch and differentiates the character from the first hero Thirrin.

Enter Scipio Bellorum, the imperial commander of the Empire, still smarting from the loss of the war in the first book returns with his sadistic sons in tow and a larger mechanically enhanced army ready to wipe the Icemark off the map.

Sharley is given the role of taking the countries refugees out of the Icemark, across the sea to the deserts of the south. Smarting and hurt that he is being made to leave when even his gothic sister Medea is allowed to stay he is none the less intrigued by his father's prophesy that he will return to the north, "a blade of fire in your hand."

After this the book splits in two. We get the views of Sharley and his adventures as he travels to lands familiar to the YA reader and yet somewhat alien and fantasised. A city based on renaissance Venice, a desert kingdom reminiscent of Saudi, and a land populated by Zulu type warriors. This bringing together of different peoples with Sharley's own Nordic people plus the creatures of the Icemark, their differing cultures, ideas, mythology and religion contrasts against the stark atheistic, colonial society of Bellorum. In one society all work together through understanding in the other ideas are imposed. It is perhaps in this area, more than any other that its intended young adult market is noticeable.

God and Goddesses also play a large part in the book, but though minor deities are evident, the true Gods, though alluded to, never make an appearance. May be all these differing Gods are one and same, if they are they remain firmly apposed to interference.

One section that did surprise was the ending - (***SPOILER ALERT*** if you intend to read the book turn away now…go on shut your eyes…stop peeking!). The story is one of war, and the author does not pull any punches, it's bloody vicious and dirty. The final defeat of Bellorum is quick and decisive and his execution swift but without little meaning, brutal when seen through post Saddam execution eyes.

It's also Author Hill's birthday tomorrow and I look forward to catching up with him soon here or in Leicester.

I also quick read through 'The Homecoming' by Ray Bardbury. This is a short but gothic Halloween story, with a cast of vampiric and mummified aunts and uncles decending on the home of another young and crippled boy, though this child is merely psychologically crippled by the fact he does not have any of the weird traits when compared to the rest of his family.

The story is old (originally published in Mademoiselle in 1946), but this new version has been illustrated by Dave McKean. If you have not seen his work, go and look it up now…right now. It's wonderfully scratchy and atmospheric and dark and innocent and sunset struck…all at once and at the same time. Beautiful.

Read this week:
Blade of Fire by Stuart Hill
The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury and illustrated by Dave McKean.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Whooooosh!


That was the sound of Christmas and the New Year celebrations flying past without the common decency to stay around long enough to be fully appreciated.

We spent Christmas just the two of us. Lady H was persuaded to stay in bed until a reasonable hour before tearing into her presents. I must admit that this year we seemed to have done very well on the old present and card front, though we are somewhat closer to the action this year. It's also nice to be somewhere that you get, if not a white Christmas, then at least a coldish one. I always thought that Santa and his all his little helpers looked somewhat out of place and were probably drenched in sweat in New Zealand and Australia. They must have real problems trying to persuade the old fat man down the road to don the red hat and beard when all he really wanted to do was join the others for a barbecue.

New Years was a little slow due mainly to the previously mentioned cold weather. We had planned, along with visiting Mater and Peter to join the swell of crowds that throng Prince's Street for the Scottish Hogmany (nothing to do with roast pork I was quite disappointed to find out). But, the winds got up and the whole thing had to be cancelled at the last minute.

Still gambling and drinking in a warm flat is better than nothing.

I was hoping to bring photos of the events but obviously there are none so you will have to make do with a photo from the start of Hogmany and the burning of a wicker man. We arrived a little late so I don't know whether any live sacrifices were made this year, though there was a distinct smell of bacon in the air.