Heart of Glass

A short story entitled 'Heart of Glass' and a poem entitled 'Singing the Low Down Geek Blues' are being sent to the review committee for the charity book tomorrow. The book is to be called  'the small print' and will be for sale at the Edinburgh Festival and via the internet. We are trying to get a writer and /or celebrity to write the intro, unsure who it will be so watch this space.

Working on a new story now set in a museum that might not exist.

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Some links. The underground world of Naples, I haven't been here but now want to. Stephen Smith has put together a list of Subterranean novels. I've got his 'Underground London' to read and I'm working through 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' on my phone right now.

Over on Suvudu China Mieville talks about his latest novel 'The City and The City' which sounds thrilling and I hope to enquire soon.

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Audition by Ryu Murakami is a novelette that works best as an understanding of middle aged Japanese male desires. It's a fast paced read that builds towards a dark and disturbing climax. This climax is obvious from the start, but that sort of helps to build the tension. As always with Murakami when it comes the horror is human centred and bloody.

Black Hole is a classic graphic novel (one that Neil Gaiman has been working on a film adaptation of for some time). Burn's presents teenagers as disenfranchised and lonely, and though set in the 70s it feels modern, perhaps because the raging hormones of young people are the same now as then. The back story is a STD that results in strange mutations in the kids, but in truth the story is about love, belonging and alienation, something that is heightened through the use of the wood block like black and white drawings.

A Giant Cabinet of Curiosities

According to the publishers ‘The Missing’ should be released July / August this year which would be perfect as it would tie in very nicely with the Edinburgh book festival and lots of book buying members of the public in town. The cover is going through a design process at the moment. I’ve sent in my own ideas, but as to in which direction they are going to go, I have no idea. As soon as I see some work I’ll get it posted up here.

I’m working on a short story. This is for the charity book which should be out at the same time. It’s typical, you wait for ages and then two published works come along at the same time.

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Had a trip to Glasgow and Kelvingrove museum yesterday. We went primarily for the Dr Who exhibition, but this was a bit of a let down. It’s less than half the size of the one we saw at the Olympia last year and though it advertised itself as having props from the last series and the Christmas special, these were a bit few and far between. I’m sure Scotland could have found somewhere bigger to put on the show and allowed everyone to see the full show.

I’ve put some pictures up here from both Dr Who and Kelvingrove which has interesting exhibits all mixed together. It’s like walking into a giant cabinet of curiosities.

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Finished ‘Cages,’ and all I can say is 'wow!' It’s dense and clever and witty and surreal and touches on many different aspect of being an artist and the creation of work. Principally the story concerns an artist who moves into an apartment block to work on a fresh canvas. Here he meets a selection of strange neighbours, including the woman who runs the block, a man with learning difficulties, a jazz musician and a writer escaping from his public. At the same time he draws a woman who he sees across the street. Everything is interconnected, with the woman becoming his lover, the musician discussing his art and the writer running scared from his own work which has angered the reading public and put him in the hands of a totalitarian government. At the same time the apartment block becomes a Tower of Babel and it might (or might not) have been destroyed.

All of this is helped by the simple scratchy art work of Mckean, interspersed with several large colour plates. It’s a work that deserves to be read many times over and I’m surprised it hasn’t made it’s way into the lists that denote the exemplars of the medium.

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Read this week:

Cages by Dave McKean