First week in Chennai

I've been in India for a week now and can do nothing but reiterate what you've probably heard a thousand times about this place. It's a strange mix between the traditional and the modern, examples include the new malls that are springing up all over Chennai with their air conditioning, modern shops, cinemas, fast food restaurants, supermarkets that sell western brands all located next to streets that are falling apart, people sleeping rough, constant traffic with horns blaring and cattle walking through the chaos. Gas and electric failures are common, but the internet seems to be offered everywhere, along with Sky satellite TV. Poverty is obvious, but so is great wealth.

All the Indians we've met have been polite, intelligent, interested in the world outside their own country, but at the same time reserved in their actions, but the way they interact between themselves seems markedly different.

It's early days and there is much for me to learn about this country. On Sunday we got to go travel to Mamallapuram with some of Madame Vin's colleagues. This is a land full of temples, stretching out on the flat plains to the south of Chennai. I've included a link to photos below:
http://gallery.me.com/adamjshardlow/100008

Today we've been looking at apartments for the remainder of our stay (can't live in hotels forever, no matter how much I enjoy it). We've seen some which are basic by UK standards but a couple that are very nice. Hopefully, we can get something sorted out soon.

Back to work tomorrow with the aim of hitting page 100 of 'Cell' by Friday.

View from a Chennai Hotel

Just a quick update. A couple of photos from the roof of the hotel. Chennai in all its glory.

Madame Vin had a successful first day at work and I got plenty done on "Cell", the second book in the 'Juvie' trilogy.

Going out for curry tonight.

Welcome to Chennai

I'm installed in my hotel, overlooking Mount Road in central Chennai. It's hot, busy, cacophonous and bizarre. Wealth and real poverty side by side, a modern thriving metropolis but one rooted in ancient cultures, its a mishmash of ideas, thoughts and voices. It's going to be an interesting year.

So far I haven't gone far. A quick trip to a shopping centre through the noisome streets and to the gym (where I made a friend of the trainer and he tried to kill through exercise - which I need to do everyday).

Tomorrow Madame Vin is going on her first visit to the office and I'll start my writing regime.

In the mean time, some links:

• A biomechanical world in this stunning video
• Supernatural is getting the Anime treatment.
• "Migrating Floating Gardens" by Rael San Fratello Architects.
• A 'Super Sad True Love Story' from Gary Shteyngart "we live in such a fast-paced society that the moment you want to write about something, that instant is gone. The only way to capture the present is to write about the future."
• The age of the book is coming to an end. 
• And now that I'm India for a year, Kate Griffin has made me a little home sick for Edinburgh.

I'll try to put up some photos tomorrow.

India Tomorrow

So I'm off to India tomorrow morning. That happened a lot quicker than I expected. 'Juvie' is in and my agent likes it. That doesn't mean a publishing deal is guaranteed but it's a step in the right direction. Over the next year I want to concentrate on books 2 and 3 in the same series and start the new version of 'The Park'.

I'll keep this blog updated with my travels, work and news, and perhaps the odd photo of India.

It's gonna be one hell of an adventure.

See you on the other side.

Quick Break

Enjoying my new writing life and trying to get all sorted out for the big trip to India. My father's coming for a few days over the weekend but I hope to get the current draft of 'Juvie', plus a synopsis for the three book series to my agent before I go.


The past written on top of the present through photography.


Apparently, I'm a 'selfish elitist' for owning an iPad. I've been called worse.


A quite scary robot talks German and demands fruit.


The cheap and useful Indian computer for under $35 has its critics. This would be great if they can get it off the ground. Lets hope it's not dead in the water just because hardware companies impose high price structures.  I think we should have something similar world wide. Get everyone online, turn it into a real democratic cyber world, with a everyone participating. That's what the internet is all about, freedom. I'll follow this story with interest whilst in India.


Good website Design Mind with interesting things to say.


And I leave you with the Doctor Who Themes. All of them, showing both the continuity and the increase in tempo over the years.

A New Routine

I have to get into a routine.

Writers hours are important when you don’t have the structure of a place of work to go to. I’ve always done my writing in an evening. Two hours minimum straight from work (from about 5.15pm) with more like four hours Saturday and Sunday. This is enough to produce a novel length piece of work every year plus the odd short story. 

With going to India, that structure is gone. I’m now free during the day. Every day. For a year, minimum.

So, I have to get into a routine.

Currently my thinking is write in the morning. I’m better at this time, the work seems fresher. I want to get about ten pages done a day. I can probably get that done by about 1.00pm. After lunch I plan to focus on redrafting, reading, small projects (photography, film, art) and getting some exercise (very important when your place of work is about 30 feet from your bed).

That’s the routine.

I’ll let you know if I stick to it.

Comic Book Reviews

Mister X - The Archives 

Mister X helped to change comic books from the all encompassing days of tights wearing super heroes, white-hatted cowboys and WWII GI’s into something more grown up, more thought provoking, more weird. It’s a tale of a city built to be a utopia but instead sends its inhabitants mad. Part German expressionism, part noir detective tale it follows the mysterious Mr. X, an architect of the madness inducing city, as he tries to right the effect his built environment is having on the populace.

Drawn by a series of artists using pulp film references the stories start out going for the big story. Unfortunately (no fault to the writer Dean Motter) Mr. X did not have a very successful run and was cancelled several times. In this book Motter has attempted to finish the story but it feels slightly rushed. 

God Save the Queen 

A one shot about fairies and drugs. Set in modern London, the story follows Linda, a rebellious teenager, enticed by a mysterious group of hip layabouts she meets at a rave. They introduce to the drug Red Horse which in turn opens up her world to the entities living on the fringes. Based on characters started in Sandman this is a thrilling ride that makes good use of its modern setting and actually portrays modern teens in a realistic light. Written by Mike Carey of ‘Felix Castor’ fame and drawn by the brilliant John Bolton, this adds colour and complexity to the Vertigo world.

Salem Brownstone

This is a beautifully produced and written gothic tale about a young man who’s left a strange house by his estranged father. On entering for the first time he’s attacked by strange creatures and saved by a mysterious attractive contortionist. Taken in by a local circus troupe he soon realises all is not as it seems. 

Drawn like a fin-de-siecle Beardsley and with echoes of Edward Gorey this is a dark, out of this world gothic masterpiece.

30 Days of Night Collectors Set

The three chronicles of the 30 Days of Night Franchise. This has a brilliantly simple premise, the town of Barrow, where the sun sets every year for thirty days thus becoming the perfect hunting ground for vampires.

Unlike the current popular undead (who seem to do nothing but moan about their condition) these vampires are mean and nasty and love nothing better than ripping their prey to bits. It reminds me of The Thing (all that snow). A quick entertaining read.

Read this week:

Mister X - The Archives by Dean Motter & co.

God Save the Queen by Mike Carey & John Bolton

Salem Brownstone by John Harris Dunning & Nikhil Singh

30 Days of Night Collectors Set by Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith

Writing advice

Good writing advice from Janet Fitch, author of WHITE OLEANDER & PAINT IT BLACK from an article in the Los Angeles Times (thanks to Jonathan Carroll for the heads up).

1. Write the sentence, not just the story
Long ago I got a rejection from the editor of the Santa Monica Review, Jim Krusoe. It said: "Good enough story, but what's unique about your sentences?" That was the best advice I ever got. Learn to look at your sentences, play with them, make sure there's music, lots of edges and corners to the sounds. Read your work aloud. Read poetry aloud and try to heighten in every way your sensitivity to the sound and rhythm and shape of sentences. The music of words. I like Dylan Thomas best for this–the Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait. I also like Sexton, Eliot, and Brodsky for the poets and Durrell and Les Plesko for prose. A terrific exercise is to take a paragraph of someone's writing who has a really strong style, and using their structure, substitute your own words for theirs, and see how they achieved their effects.

2. Pick a better verb
Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an atomic bomb. You know the ones: Was, did, had, made, went, looked… One-size-fits-all looks like crap on anyone. Sew yourself a custom made suit. Pick a better verb. Challenge all those verbs to really lift some weight for you.

3. Kill the cliché.
When you're writing, anything you've ever heard or read before is a cliché. They can be combinations of words: Cold sweat. Fire-engine red, or phrases: on the same page, level playing field, or metaphors: big as a house. So quiet you could hear a pin drop. Sometimes things themselves are cliches: fuzzy dice, pink flamingo lawn ornaments, long blonde hair. Just keep asking yourself, "Honestly, have I ever seen this before?" Even if Shakespeare wrote it, or Virginia Woolf, it's a cliché. You're a writer and you have to invent it from scratch, all by yourself. That's why writing is a lot of work, and demands unflinching honesty.

4. Variety is the key.
Most people write the same sentence over and over again. The same number of words–say, 8-10, or 10-12. The same sentence structure. Try to become stretchy–if you generally write 8 words, throw a 20 word sentence in there, and a few three-word shorties. If you're generally a 20 word writer, make sure you throw in some threes, fivers and sevens, just to keep the reader from going crosseyed.

5. Explore sentences using dependent clauses.
A dependent clause (a sentence fragment set off by commas, dontcha know) helps you explore your story by moving you deeper into the sentence. It allows you to stop and think harder about what you've already written. Often the story you're looking for is inside the sentence. The dependent clause helps you uncover it.

6. Use the landscape.
Always tell us where we are. And don't just tell us where something is, make it pay off. Use description of landscape to help you establish the emotional tone of the scene. Keep notes of how other authors establish mood and foreshadow events by describing the world around the character. Look at the openings of Fitzgerald stories, and Graham Greene, they're great at this.

7. Smarten up your protagonist.
Your protagonist is your reader's portal into the story. The more observant he or she can be, the more vivid will be the world you're creating. They don't have to be super-educated, they just have to be mentally active. Keep them looking, thinking, wondering, remembering.

8. Learn to write dialogue.
This involves more than I can discuss here, but do it. Read the writers of great prose dialogue–people like Robert Stone and Joan Didion. Compression, saying as little as possible, making everything carry much more than is actually said. Conflict. Dialogue as part of an ongoing world, not just voices in a dark room. Never say the obvious. Skip the meet and greet.

9. Write in scenes.
What is a scene? a) A scene starts and ends in one place at one time (the Aristotelian unities of time and place–this stuff goes waaaayyyy back). b) A scene starts in one place emotionally and ends in another place emotionally. Starts angry, ends embarrassed. Starts lovestruck, ends disgusted. c) Something happens in a scene, whereby the character cannot go back to the way things were before. Make sure to finish a scene before you go on to the next. Make something happen.

10. Torture your protagonist.
The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. The more we love them, and the more cleverly we torture them along the lines of their greatest vulnerability and fear, the better the story. Sometimes we try to protect them from getting booboos that are too big. Don't. This is your protagonist, not your kid.

From the desk of Adam J. Shardlow

Ipad

I'm writing this on an Ipad. This has probably reduced a select few of you into howls of derision. It's just a great big phone, I hear you cry. Another one taken in by the Apple hype, you call. Poseur, you sneer.

I'm not sure why Apple's devices cause such devotion in some and such spewed bile in others. I'm not apologising for my own love of their products. I'm a new(ish) convert to Mr. Jobs and in the last few years I've replaced all my hardware with Apple and it's been a blessing. Not one blue screen of death or dodgy joining of devices have I had since moving over to the fruity ones. Everything works as a joined up network and I no longer come close to throwing my laptop across the study (ask my wife about this).

I love Apple products - there, I've said it.

If you don't - fine. I'm not going to judge you.

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.


****


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

Hot in the city ... 2

So this is the other half of the blog the NYC blog my Blogger email account missed. Please sort out Blogger email. 

Sunday night was Tash's birthday in the Meatpacking district, frequented by drag artists and old friends. We've been over to Brooklyn this afternoon to see her and get an update on the movie. It's coming along but as usual these things take longer than expected.

Last night we saw a bit of jazz in Central Park and tonight we're at a wine tasting. Tomorrow I'm going to see the Mets play. Don't know anything about baseball so it should be interesting.

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There's a crack in the universe similar to the one in the current Dr Who series, which is either a huge cosmic coincidence or the BBC marketing department has too much money:http://tinyurl.com/389ljpv

Hot in the city...

So I'm in New York and it is hot. Damn hot. So hot bits of me are
sticking to other bits and I have to prise them apart in the evening
with a fridge cooled spatula.

Modern Media Initiative

Let's all move to Iceland (country not the shop).
A unanimous vote in Iceland's parliament has seen the country pass its
so-called "Icelandic Modern Media Initiative", giving it the mandate
to create what are intended to be the world's most stringent laws
preserving free speech and a free press.
http://tinyurl.com/367gfy4

Cool Wall
Architect Bill Peterson renovated this 14th Street townhouse so that
the living room wall rolled up like a garage, leaving it open to the
street, with an "air curtain" to keep the heat in
http://tinyurl.com/33hdotr

Links for Today

"The real problems are twofold. First, even though the content is digital, the reader loses most of digital content's benefits. I can go to the Wired website, link to articles there on my blog, share them via email or Twitter and use the power of the web to share and opine. The iPad edition offers none of that flexibility -- and it doesn't offer any of the flexibility of paper either. I can annotate my paper version of Wired, clip out articles, or even pass the entire magazine on to you and you can in turn pass it on to others. I can't do any of those things with the iPad edition."
Martin Gartenberg on the problems of digital magazines. We're just not quite there yet.


"sprawling and sticky spideweb-like installation"
From Hi-Fructose


"An animated short by Joe Bichard and Jack Cunningham, MARS! tells the story of, well, the planet Mars."

MARS! from Joe Bichard and Jack Cunningham on Vimeo.



Time and Again. Life, don't get me started on life. From Jacques Khouri. Comic book art animated.

time & again from jacques khouri on Vimeo.

Lost Myths

Lost Myths: new stories in an old format:
"Tinkerhorn Muziek (Lost Myths Records LM-0013) was a 10-inch 78rpm
released only in Europe in 1927. There was only ever the one pressing,
and it's unlikely that there were more than a few hundred copies
made. Only seven copies are known to still exist. The original tapes,
along with any documentation that might have helped us understand this
music better, were lost in a fire in 1940, when the Nazis invaded
Amsterdam."
From http://lostmyths.net/

EMA

Waiting for a plane at East Midlands Airport. Saw an iPad for sale, thought about it but decided to wait until New York in a week.

Wedding was good and it was nice to see so many old faces (and some of them were looking very old indeed).

Have a bit of time before my flight so I'll get on with a bit of 'Cell' as this week is very busy.

Cloud Printing

I'm off to another wedding tomorrow (what is it about 2010 that made everyone get hitched? Do they know something I don't about the end of the world? That 2012, right?) so here are a few quick links to keep you brain active.


Jan Chipchase on Cloud Printing
"whilst its not socially acceptable today, in time someone will subsidise the cost of individual prints by inserting subtle advertising by manipulating your photos."


The Leith Festival is on this weekend and my agents are sponsoring the Literature Festival. If you get the chance, pop down. 


Now, get off the interweb and back to work. 

Robots and Weird Laws

Robotics developers at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich's
Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control have built autonomous robots
that drive, dock with their peers on the ground, then fly into the air
in coordinated swarms.... http://tinyurl.com/2w42fcy

DivineCaroline.com has a list of 50 weird US laws, including the
following:
Alabama: It's illegal to wear a fake mustache that causes laughter in
church.
Alaska: Whispering in someone's ear while he's moose hunting is
prohibited.
Arkansas: It's illegal to mispronounce the name of the state of
Arkansas.
California: You may not eat an orange in your bathtub.
Florida: If you tie an elephant to a parking meter, you must pay the
same parking fee as you would for a vehicle.

'Cell'

'Juvie' 2 is currently titled 'Cell', which when you read the book will make much more sense as it has a double meaning. I'm currently about 11k words in and going strong. The book has a more dirty urban feel to it and it opens up a concept about the 'Governors' that is only hinted about in the first book.

You’ll also notice lots of new short blog post here as I’m having a go at posting them in via mail so ensure all my links and ideas are in one place. Some of them might be of interest to you.

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Wasting Time

Great little comic from Luke Ferenc which sums up mine and many others feelings about the internet

Nollywood

Nollywood is said to be the third largest film industry in the world, releasing onto the home video market approximately 1 000 movies each year. Such abundance is possible since films are realized in conditions that would make most of the western independent directors cringe. Movies are produced and marketed in the space of a week: low cost equipment, very basic scripts, actors cast the day of the shooting, “real life” locations. Despite the improvised production process, they continue to fascinate audiences. In Africa, Nollywood movies are a rare instance of self-representation in the mass media. From Pieter Hugo

Ideas are Immortal by Alan Moore

Ideas are immortal, or at least as long lived as the culture that comes up with them, whereas the objects, the monuments and even empires those ideas inspire are transient by comparison.

Though I don't agree with all Alan say's, this is an article worth digging out.

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Finally got around to reading Warren Ellis’s and got introduced to the character Spider Jerusalem (interesting as I have a character called Spider in ‘Juvie’), one of my favourite new characters in comics. He’s a gonzo journalist of a the future, a drop out city survivalist who has to return to write those books he promised his editors. It’s anarchic laugh-out-loud with plenty to say about society and where it’s going.

Read this week

Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson

Transmetropolitan: Lust for Life by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson

Minority Report Style System

Human computer interface.