Still Working Away in the Heat of India

I’m still here in Chennai, India, and I’m still beavering away on book two in the ‘Juvie’ series. I’m probably about a week or two away from the first full typescript. This isn’t the first draft as it contains lots of mistakes, ideas, concepts and notes that need to be fully explored. Only when I start a rewrite of the typescript will I get anywhere close to a full first draft, which all going well should be just before Christmas.

Already ‘Stigma’, as book two is called, has changed focus once, replaced the main character and introduced new concepts into the second half of the book that need to be incorporated back into the first half.

Apart from the writing I’ve been catching up on all that reading I’ve been promising myself. This includes:

The Fry Chronicles: Lovey, national treasure, voice of the establishment. Stephen Fry is all of the above and so much more. I read his technical reviews, his regular tweets, his books and watch his shows. I remember him from the early days of stand-up (which this autobiography covers) to his more recent sell out nights at the Royal Albert Hall (where I finally got to see him, live). He writes better than anyone I know when it comes to ‘passing on a story,’ and whilst sometimes he can be just a bit too ‘lovey’ in this book, it's still worth reading.

Kraken: Mieville is one of my favourites and I was looking forward to this book which has been reviewed as a tour de force and ‘fun’ work after the serious and hidden depths of ‘The City & The City.’ It is indeed lighter, but I found it slowed down by Mieville’s own use of language. I often found myself rereading action passages to understand what was happening, plus I had to reach for the dictionary twice. This worked well in his other books, but here it slows the pace slightly. Very much like a wordy ‘Neverwhere.’

To Say Nothing of the Dog: A time travel comedy that takes it cues from Jerome K. Jerome. Winner of both the Hugo and Locus, this is a slow building, light novel that pitch perfectly picks up on the language and mores of the 1890s. If anything it made me want to read some of JKJ’s work.

Now back to writing.

Read this week:

The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry

Kraken by China Mieville

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

Normal Service is Resumed

Everything was all very exciting there for a moment, what with festival events, short stories being published, readings, seeing Neil Gaiman (three times), late night meals and friends in bars.

But now it's all back to normal.

I've picked up the new novel again, which definitely needs a name change, but ideas are coming in thick and fast. 'DarkFather' is with another publisher and 'The Missing' is still in limbo awaiting art work.

Copies of 'the small print' are still available. Let me know if you want one.

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Interesting article in the Arcitects Journal on comic book cities.

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China Mieville is one of my favourite authors. He's hard work but very rewarding with complex narrative, ideas and structure weaving through his varied and genre bending works. 'The City and the City', is probably his most demanding works so far. Written as a thriller and set in two fictional East European cities it deals with a murder that needs investigating. These two cities have history and a partition is in place for they exist in the same geographical space.

The book is a deliberation on the duality of perception, how people see the same things differently and Kafkaesque confusion. A brilliant book.

Batman Black and White is collection of short comic book stories by a who's who of writers and artists. Some of the stories work, like the sombre 'Perpetual Mourning' by Ted McKeever and Gaiman's 'A Black and White World' and others don't, like the rather staid story 'The Hunt' by Joe Kubert. The best thing however is the art work. Monochrome with many different interpretations of the Dark Knight.

'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, is the second book I've read by Cory Doctorow on my iphone as he gives his work away for free under a creative commons license. Some of his work I buy in print if I like them (such as the brilliant Little Brother) other I don't. Down and Out is one I won't buy. It's good, I found the concept and ideas of a world where no one dies and people live in the thrall of getting online support from friends (think Facebook) and strangers very good. It just didn't work for an entire novel.

Likewise Craphound, which is a free online comic based on one of Doctorow's short stories. It's not bad, but it doesn't really go anywhere and the art I found just a little simplistic with jumps in the flow which didn't make sense.

Read this week:

The City and the City by China Mieville

Batman: Black & White by Various

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

Craphound by Cory Doctorow

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.