RED and TED

New York was great. Thanks to all our friends, new and old, for making it such a great week.

New York from Tash's window in Brooklyn

So the idea of India is percolating around my head as I consider the options open to me and all of the time I'll have for writing. I want to maximise the opportunity and get as much work done as possible with minimum distractions (apart from a whole continent to explore of course). I want to work on both book two and three of the 'Juvie' series and make in roads on the idea that I have mentally entitled 'The Park' (something I've been working on and off for several years). I also have an idea for a short story around the idea of augmented reality as well as the comic book idea 'Icons'. As I plan to do some photography whilst there and plenty of reading I imagine that lot should keep me busy.

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Language Deciphered by Computer
"The lost language of Ugaritic was last spoken 3,500 years ago. It survives on just a few tablets, and linguists could only translate it with years of hard work and plenty of luck. A computer deciphered it in hours."


RED
The first trailer for the Warren Ellis based comic book RED - looks good.


Augmented Reality
"Property developers won’t be wasting money on fancy architects if they can throw a skin around their building and flog the exterior to Coke. Particularly not if half the passers-by aren’t seeing their building -- lost in a reality constructed by a Belgian design studio and distributed via Specsavers."
A world we would all see differently depending on our subscriptions and opt-outs.


TED
"It's a bit like YouTube, but instead of featuring cats falling into lavatories, it has short, cutting-edge talks by the world's leading neuroscientists, behavioural economists, video artists, philosophers, particle physicists, rocket scientists, endurance athletes, Aids researchers… you name it, it's been at TED."
If you've never looked at the free lectures on TED you should drop what you're doing and go there immediately.


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Garth Ennis is  favourite comic book author and his Preacher series is one that garnered plenty of press in the last few years. Proud Americans looks at the Reverend's relationship with his friends as he goes after the captured Cassidy. The second part of the book looks at how Cassidy became a vampire and is the better of the two halves. 


The Affinity Bridge is the first in a series of books in the Newbury & Hobbes series from small press Snowbooks. It's a steampunk adventure in an alternative London where Queen Victoria's Empire has been elongated beyond her death and enhanced through technology. It has magic, risen dead and robots. I would say that the two lead characters aren't fleshed out as much as I'd like, but I imagine this is remedied in the later novels.


Haunting Museums is a non-fiction work about artefacts around the world that have strange or inexplicable stories attached to them. A sort of believe or not Warehouse 13. The essay are hit and miss and a US slant. Mildly interesting. 


Read this week:


Preacher: Proud Americans by Garth Ennis  & Steve Dillon
The Affinity Bridge by George Mann
Haunting Museums by John Schuster

Mole People

While I was in New York I was able to pick up a copy of Jennifer Toth's 'The Mole People', a book I became aware of several years ago when working at Waterstones. Due to the lowly wages I then earned I did not buy a copy but as it is was about people living under New York I noted it as a future purchase and put it on the long 'Books I plan to buy when I have enough money and enough space to house them all' list.

The book is a first hand account of the people Toth (a Los Angeles Times journalist) found living below ground during the 80s in New York City. There they had created pockets of civilisation, linking up to electrical cables and running water while surviving hundreds of feet below the surface of the city. Some used these hidden underground places as convenient stop overs, places for a nights shelter, while others never left the darkness and shunned human interaction. The people living the deepest underground, amid rumours of cannibalism, were called the mole people. They had completely given up their humanity and gone wild.

The interesting thing about this book are not the stories (told in a mix of social journalistic and tight prose) but the fact some of it is now doubted, with skeptics saying that Toth made it all up. There is lots of chatter on the net which covers both sides of the arguments (try here and here), they are many and varied.

I'm sure some of it is embellished, even with the cool, calm collected mind of a journalist (an oxymoron surely) the experience half seen in the darkness of a tunnel, deep under the city are bound to grow in stature with each telling. The underworld has a strange effect on the minds of people. Personally I'm both scared and fascinated by these places below our feet. Over Hogmany we took father down 'Mary Kings Close' where in a group of twenty we sat in darkness as ghost stories were told. Looking at that hidden street from the back of the tour group I could believe anything could happen down in the darkness and in my mind it frequently does.

The Mole People is worth reading if not for the characters, then the encroaching darkness and the heighten sense of threat that she portrays well. Whether real or not, for me doesn't matter.

Also just finished Dark Harvest, a quick frightening read that takes the reader on a roller coaster ride through a brutal world where children must fight against the 'October Boy', a manifestation with a jack 'o' lantern head. Save it for Hallowe'en.

Read this week:
The Mole People by Jennifer Toth
Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge

Hello New York!

Travelled to upstate New Jersey, the route passing through an industrial scarred land, populate by blast furnaces and large corporate buildings interspersed with wasteland given back to nature.
About thirty minutes out of New York you hit the wooded hills of Harriman State Park, now a riot of auburn and russet as the trees desperately try to hold on to the last of their leaves.
We are visiting Woodbury Common, a Mecca amongst Mecca’s for discount shopping. It is the ultimate American dream with row upon row of shops selling high end goods at knock down prices. It is also a very good place to purchase socks, which I did, along with a jumper.
That evening, back in Greenwich Village, drained of all commercial industry we went to a great bar on Bleeker St. that served ale including Speckled Hen which Madame Vin dabbled in. Had pizza at John’s, an old dive that apparently serves some of the best pizza in NY.

A Breather

Working away at the new novel right now so I haven't had much time to blog. The next few weeks should be nice and clear which means I can get plenty written before Christmas with only a weeks hiatus when I go to New York in November.

Stephen Fry has started blogging recently so if you want a long read pop over to his web site as he tends to have lots of insightful comments about a whole wealth of things that I have little experience of.

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Read this week:
Scales by Anthony G. Williams
Hellblazer: Black Flowers by Mike Carey et al
Hellblazer: Reasons to be Cheerful by Mike Carey et al
The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean