Easter Eggs

I've spent the Easter weekend knocking about the 'Juvie' manuscript. I'm making several significant changes, several structural revisions and adding in new scenes. This is going to take some time so I haven't seen much of world this weekend. However here's a list of stuff I recommend:

Dr Who - new series with Matt Smith looks good, really good (which is a relief). Moffat seems to have a good handle on the darker character led stories and Smith looks suitably alien in the role.

Great writing music to download from Ithaca Trio. Ambient and calming when all the world is in uproar. Download their new album Tesla Versus the Night.

If you haven't already make sure you sign up to the Open Rights Group and help stop the Digital Economy Bill. It's not ready yo be released yet and in it's current format it will mean innocent people (such as yourself) being cut off the internet without any trial or recourse. This can't happen. The bill is being voted on tomorrow so you don't have much time. If you can, email your MP.

And if you want a chocolate brownie sent straight to your front door order them from my friend Emily at Sugarmonkey. She kindly sent over some scanned photos of us on holiday. I've barely changed to be honest.

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Finally got around to reading some Philip K. Dick. Everyone knows Bladerunner (and if you don't - be ashamed of yourself) but Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep differs in several ways from the film. Familiar traits still exist but Dick's world is perhaps not so futuristic as dingy and decaying whilst humans just want to get ahead in life on a dying world. Deckard is more of company man than a shrewd detective and the replicants more confused as to why they exist. That said the book is good and feels only slightly dated having been written back in 1968.

Mesmo Delivery is quick read about an ageing Elvis impersonator and a tough delivery guy and what is in their truck. It's violent and funny and has art work to die for. Whilst the story is slight it's the scribbly lines and sepia tints that keep you enthralled. All written and drawn by Rafael Grampa who is going to be big.

Read this week:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

Mesmo Delivery by Rafael Grampa

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

Dr Who, I presume?

Got a nice surprise this morning when my new copy of ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ turned up in the post. This tale is one of my all time favourites, its imagery having stayed with me from when I read it as a teenager, always staying in my top ten. I think it’s up there with the best of horror from Stoker and Stevenson with beautiful prose and not a shred of over writing anywhere. What’s even better is that this version is encased in brown leather and has been put together as a limited addition by Bill Amberg. There are several companies now doing these limited finely crafted books. I mentioned the Subterranean Press before who do great Gaiman book as well as many others authors and while I don’t believe in buying every thing from these more expensive producers, when they do a book that you believe is a classic then they are wonderful to put on your shelf once your paperback has split and died.

They are about to announce the new Dr Who on the BBC…if you don’t want to know look away now (but how you plan to stay in a state of ignorance until 2010 is going to take some feat of ingenuity and no doubt some serious life style choices)….It is Matt Smith, who I think certainly looks Dr Whoish. Good Luck to him.

I read another of the Louvre graphic novels last night having thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Museum Vaults’. This one ‘Glacial Period’ is less good in so far as it feels like a much bigger story that got cut down slightly too much. It is set in the future and involves a group of arctic explorers travelling across the vast glacier that has covered Europe. It involves genetically modified dogs that talk, a hint of interspecies romance, anthropomorphic museum pieces and a misinterpretation of the history of man. The art work is nice, using thin pen lines and a simple board of colour, but it falls someway short of the previous work.

Read this week:

Glacial Period by Nicolas de Crecy

Seeing Everyone

Feels like I’ve been everywhere and seen everyone this weekend. After a boozy night in the pub last Thursday I, accompanied by Madame Vin, the Aussie and a Canadian, travelled early to Nottingham where I met up with Sammy (all the way from New Zealand) and Tash and my ‘woman of the year’ (back from LA – and doing very well. Hopefully, if she’ll let me, I’ll post some exciting news from her here soon). Then it was over to the hospital to visit my last surviving grandparent (who thankfully, looked better than I hoped) and finally to the old home of Radcliffe-on-Trent to the retirement party of the Silver Fox.

The next day it was more family, including a new arrival, before stepping out with friends, friends, friends and admittedly drinking too much.

Sunday was home, rest and Sunday dinner.

At least I got a lot of reading done.

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The Graveyard Book
I'm not afraid to say it - I love Mr. Gaiman. He has the most beautiful style of writing, summing up an emotion, a feeling or a character in a simply yet eloquent fashion. The Graveyard book is one of his novels for children that can be read by adults (think Coraline). Based loosely on the Jungle Book in its construction, the story deals with Nobody Owens and his life growing up in a graveyard high on a hill in an English town (it reads like Lincoln but this might just be the reader putting his own experiences on top of the narrative).
Starting off as a baby and escaping from a dark shadowy figure who has just murdered his family Bod is taken in by dead people, who view their deaths as just an interesting event on life's highway and see it as no reason why it should interrupt their living.
Each chapter is spaced several years apart with Bod growing and learning about life and being a human via the ghosts, spirits, ghouls and more mythical creatures that inhabit his living space. The first few chapters could be read as short stories while the last four allow Bod to work out where he came from and where he's going. Magical!

Death: The High Cost of Living
Another Gaiman. Set in his Sandman mythos, every century Death must become mortal for 24 hours so that she can find out about life. This story is slight and amusing with the Goth personification of Death spending her day in New York with a young man who begins by contemplating the taking of his own life and ends by understanding its worth and magic. The comic has been under review for several years as a possible movie and within Sandman is probably the only possible filmable story arc.

Little (Grrl) Lost
It is such a shame that Charles De Lint is not better known in the UK. His stories are magical and human and deep and mythical all at the same time. He has created a world (Newford) where anything can happen (and usually does) but it always makes sense and seems perfectly logically. Rarely do I see his books on the shelves of Waterstones or the larger book stores and have to rely on independent shops and US imports.
T.J. is a teenager suffering from the anxiety of having moved from the country to a strange city, leaving her friends and her horse behind. She is suffering from the mental growing pains all teenagers go through and feels hard done by. She meets Elizabeth, an older girl who is spunky and cool and forthright but has her own problems being only eight inches high.
Elizabeth is a Small and she lives behind the skirting board. This is 'The Borrowers' for the modern age, mixing in texting, broken families, email, punk and motorbikes and coming up with something that is uniquely De Lint.

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I read three other books but they are all reviews so you’ll have to read Dark Horizon’s for my low down.

I was out Friday night but a clip from the new Doctor Who was shown on the Beeb as part of Children in Need. You can see it again here.

Read this week:

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Death: The High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman
Little (Grrl) Lost by Charles De Lint

Hanging around the graveyard

I've been fortunate enough to meet a few of my heroes (Woody Allen, Dave Mckean) and thankfully never had to suffer the shock that they were not the sort of people I would care to share a long train journey sitting next to. Tuesday night I added another name to that list. Neil Gaiman is well known for really pulling out all the stops when it comes to his fans, his legendary long signing sessions, his diligent updates to his blog and the fact he dedicated one of his books to them makes him a much admired writer. You'll be glad to know he did not disappoint.


The Church Hill Theatre seats over 600 people and it was full to bursting (Ian Rankin was in the audience). After a read through of Ch. 5 -Dance Macabre, delivered in Gaiman's softly spoken butter-dripping drawl he started the signing. I had Big Gary along and somehow managed to land myself at the front of the queue. He signed a few things for me and then I got to ask him the big question. He said yes and that he would be "honoured" - so, a Gaiman character will appear (as a name on a list) in the DarkFather.

The Graveyard Book is one of Gaiman's works which can be read to children but work just as well for adults (like Coraline). I haven't read it yet but I've heard most of it as the Gaiman and his publishers have made every chapter available online. If you get the chance have a listen, you won't be disappointed.

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I'm in London this weekend I just found out Terry Pratchett will be doing a signing at Forbidden Planet at roughly the same time I'm there. I should have got my copy of Good Omens signed by Neil and then by Terry - Damn!

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Sad to hear that Dr Who has a planned regeneration coming up (at the end of 2009). Tennent has been excellent - gurning and grinning through the role but at the same time adding just the right hint of madness and darkness.