Goodbye to India

We're leaving India. Wednesday morning (at some ridiculous time - why are all the international flight I take out of Chennai at the sort of time when I should be sound asleep and dreaming?) and should be back in the UK for lunch.

India has been fun. Interesting - in a feeling like a complete alien, kind of way - full of history and culture and wholly itself. It is a demanding place to come and live as both an outsider, but also for the vast majority of people who live here. Poverty is rife, contrasted against great wealth. It moves at its own pace, like one of the giant oxen that lumber down the streets. It is loud and in places dirty. It is green and cool in the mountains, but dusty and humid in the cities. A world unto itself, where much of what happens in the world goes unreported and not commented upon. It is conservative and in many ways bigoted in its approach to women, homosexuals and race. It has too many competing religions. It's industry is huge and expanding all the time, cities are buildings sites where the country of tomorrow is slowly reaching for the sky. It is a country of bafflement and shrugged shoulders and smiles and colour and huge potential.

I'll leave you with some images.

 

A Man on the Moon by Paper Aeroplane

It’s my last Friday in India. I’ve had an interesting eleven months, filled with enough images, experiences and smells (I’ll never forget those smells) to fill several books. However, this period between jobs was always going to be about the writing and I’m proud that in that time I’ve been able to prove to myself that I have the heart and fortitude to spend all my time writing. If nothing else, it has allowed me to get a lot of the gunk that fills up my brain down on paper and write two novels and edit another. They are:

Juvie. 

A YA science fiction novel.

A town stranded in the Green, isolated, ruled by the Laws of the Governors; a community reeling from pain and tragedy, where nothing is taken for granted. Not a great place to grow up, not a great place to be a “juvie.”

Ben Hewitt is missing a brother. He has stopped taking his Inhibitors. He has found the gun. Now he is scared. With only a few days until the Anniversary, the musors are after him and sinister strangers have been seen in town. On the run, unable to trust anyone, Ben must learn the black secret hidden in the heart of Greenville’s residents if he is to survive. 

Time is running out.

Stigma

The follow-up to Juvie

Life in the Enclave is hard and brutal, a life lived in squalor, the decrepit block houses cramped and unsanitary, the people slowly starving; each day is nothing less than a fight for survival. Sarah thought she understood. She is Drose, tattooed with the Stigma Servitude, her short life already mapped out and beyond her control. She is destined to finish her days either on the labour battalions or at the hands of the ‘zombie’ Stigmata Guards.

When her Grappa receives a package from the Plush black marketeer Drohodo, Sarah discovers that her life is not as simple as she first thought. Now, with only a few days left before she is made Legitimate, she must discover the truth about her peoples confinement.

What is so important inside the crumpled brown paper package that so many are willing to die for it? Who is the boy from outside the walls, who talks about Governors and life in the Green? Why are her people so despised? And what of the whispers of another city, outside the Enclave, a place where freedom exists.

Waters Deep

A YA Horror novel

Something wakes in the North Sea. Creatures from myth, best forgotten. The storm rages, and the surge bares down on the English East Coast, and in the waters the creatures follow.

Joe doesn’t like Barton, it’s small town and he’s a London boy. Lincolnshire offers him very little, and he blames his family for the disastrous move. When the storm hits, he just wants to flee like everyone else, but chance transpires against him.

The town is swamped by the incoming surge, but something worse than the icy cold sea water inhabits the hidden depths of Barton. As Joe searches for his lost father, other people are spotted in town, but if they’re not part of a rescue - who are they?

A new ongoing series of YA cryptid-horror novels

Now - the first two books are with my agent, but have not been taken up by a publisher, though he assures me there is plenty of interest. I don’t know if they will sell. Today’s market is harsh for new writers and getting anything out in print (I mean as a real paper book) was almost impossible before the upsurge of electronic publishing, now it’s akin to getting a man on the moon by paper aeroplane. If it doesn’t happen with these books, then I’ll shift attention to the new horror series and try them instead (Waters Deep is finished as a first draft, but will require another six months worth of work to be complete). If that doesn’t work then I might look at just going it alone. At least the books will then see the light of day, if only read by those who prowl the self published e-book lists.

An Indulgence Project

I am down to single day digits for my time left in India. A week on Wednesday I’ll be back in Edinburgh, catching up on all I’ve missed and doing some exercise to compensate for a complete lack of anything in almost a year. 

‘Waters Deep,’ is complete in the first draft. I’m putting it aside so I can forget as much about it as possible, so that when I return the story and characters will feel that little bit fresher. I will also use the time to do more research and some work on one part of the novel that acts as the tie in for the series. 

In the mean time, I’m starting work on my first proper comic book idea, ICONz. This is something that has been hanging around in the back of my mind for some time (a couple of years, at least). It’s an indulgence project as I know it will have very little commercial appeal, instead its something I need to do, if only to prove to myself that I should never try the format again.

ICONz looks at the power of fame and the media’s interpretation of events once a person becomes a star, but seen through the concept of the super hero. A familiar trope, but one I hope to approach in a very unique fashion. At the moment I plan to write six episodes in rough, which I’ll then refine as I concentrate on the art work. If the art work is rubbish (a good chance) I might look at working with someone else. At the end of it (if I finish it, which will be years from now) I’ll probably give it away for free before collecting it and selling via one of the online POD publishers.

****

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

How Fforde manages to keep every concept and idea he has up in the air as he introduces a myriad of characters and world building is beyond me. He must have a mind like a sparking plug kept inside a well partitioned filing index. Shades of Grey is a departure from his world of nursery rhymes and living novel characters and instead sets up a world where colour hierarchy rules. Here you can, in the main, see only one primary colour, all the others are grey. Depending on which colour you see most prominently (purple the highest, grey the lowest) indicates your status in life.

Eddie Russet has been sent to the Outer Fringes to learn some humility. Arriving with his father in the quintessentially quaint town of East Carmine, with its odd ball residents, the boy find himself falling in love with a Grey, whilst realising that the once ‘black and white’ world is not all it professes to be. Dystopian science fiction has never been so amusing. 

The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón 

I have a suspicion that ‘The Angel’s Game’ was actually conceived before Zafón’s hugely enjoyable and successful ‘The Shadow of the Wind.’ Whilst it has a similar feel to the first book, it has naiveté about it, as if written by a much younger, less confident author.

It follows the life of David Martin, a young man who wants to be a successful author living in Barcelona. After a childhood of neglect he finds a sponsor and friend in a rich journalist, and soon starts writing pulp fiction under a pseudonym. As his fame increases he is brought to the attention of the mysterious Andreas Corelli, a man who makes him an offer he can’t refuse, but puts his life and soul in mortal danger.

Dark, brooding, with depiction's of Barcelona as an organic maze, this is a throw back to the gothic works of the 19th century. However, unlike his first book it seems both over and under worked in places. Good, but not a classic.

Read this week:

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Get Cracking

I'm close, oh so close, to finishing the first draft of 'Waters Deep.' I reckon that by tomorrow I'll have written the ending, but I then need to go back and add in an extra scene that is required earlier in the book. I think I'll have it finished Friday, if not Monday next week. This is good as I only have three weeks left in India. Better get cracking.

In the meantime, some light book reviews whilst you wait.

***

The Dervish House by Ian McDonald
Like his previous book 'River of Gods' (and his debut) this is sci-fi is set in a country that doesn't always figure high in the standard settings. It deals with a week in Instanbul, a city that sits between technologically advanced Europe and the old mysticism of Asia. A city that is rocked by a terrorist explosion on a tram. It deals with politics, business, corruption, nano-tech and a world accelerating into an uncertain future. Similar to his last work we have multiple view points and stories that at first seem disparate and separate but soon weave together into a central stand. The characterisation is good, but it's the love of the city that is most evident, as it's here the use of language is most eloquent and visually resonant.
A good follow up to RoG, but I wonder how many other emerging city/states can be used.

Fish + Chocolate by Kate Brown
Three short comics from Kate Brown of Warren Ellis' 'Freakangels' fame. These are explorations of womanhood, or young motherhood to be precise. The stories are simple tales, nicely executed with sparse dialogue. The real charm is the art work. Simple lines with emerging shadows and well spaced panes. It has the same colour theme as 'Freakangels', but this just adds to the slight undercurrent of weird happenings. Her drawings of the female characters are brilliant, no over compensating male fantasies, but beautiful natural modern woman.

Signal by Paul Duffield
Again of 'Freakangels' fame. This comic has no words and consists of just nine colour plates. Large format, lush and perfectly executed. The work is partially dedicated to Carl Sagan, so I'm sure there are reference and nuances I'm not getting, but anything this amazing I'm pleased to look at again and again.

Read this week:
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald
Fish + Chocolate by Kate Brown
Signal by Paul Duffield