Kurt Vonnegut on writing

Daily Flashes 2012

I'm very happy to be able to announce that I've sold two pieces of flash fiction to Pill Hill Press for their 2012 Daily Flashes Of Fiction anthology, which will published at the end of the year. Both are reprints - Jingle Bells and Clockwork Elves, and The Captain's Chair, but it will be nice to see them in print. They're still accepting submissions and are allowing writers to appear up to four times in the book, so I'm going to send another couple of flash pieces in the hope they take another one that hasn't yet been publshed. It can't hurt!

letlive.

How I've missed this band when they're already onto their 3rd album escapes me, but I can see myself giving Fake History a lot of love in the very near future. If you're into bands like Glassjaw, Poison The Well, Blood Brothers and the ilk you're going to love this. The video is awesome as well. I don't think there's much more I need to say other than watch the video, buy the albums, go see them live. I know I will.

Alkaline Trio - This Could Be Love

Alkaline Trio have released another teaser from their forthcoming acoustic album Damnesia. This time it's a reworking of 'This Could Be Love' from Good Mourning. Unlike the version of 'Clavicle' which was just a stripped-down version of the song, this is a moody re-imagining of the track. It's dark and slow and gives the song a lot more depth. I love it, and it's made me much more excited for the album than 'Clavicle' did.

You can listen to 'This Could Be Love' here (scroll down).

Welcome To The Jungle played on 2 cellos

I don't think I can do justice to how much I love this. There's so much intensity in the performance, and I don't think I've ever heard these kinds of noises come from a cello. Just watch it.

Manchester Spec Fic

Last night I took the plunge and attended my first writing group. Apart from very brief, unsatisfactory experienes with critique groups when I was at uni (all filled with Very Serious Writers who certainly don't appreciate a good steam-powered golem, for example) I've never done anything like this before, so to say I was fairly nervous turning up was an understatement. I hate sharing my work with people who can actually look me in the eye and tell me it sucks - the internet is a wonderful thing in that I can scream at my monitor all I like and still pretend to take criticism well.

Anyway. Last night I met up with the lovely people from the Manchester Speculative Fiction at MadLab (a fantastic resource; all cities should have something like MadLab). The meeting went on a lot longer than anticipated as there was a massive turnout - lots of us newbies - but nobody seemed to mind much. My story came up last, so on top of first-time nerves there was also the lurking sense that I was keeping everybody there against their will. Sorry!

Luckily, the story I submitted was very well received by everybody, which did my ego a world of good. I also got some fantastic feedback on what I can do to make the story stronger, not least of which is cutting the hell out of it to make it a lot leaner. So that's what I'll do, just as soon as F&SF decide that it's not for them either. The act of giving criticism to the other stories was a huge help as well, as it made me really aware of what does and doesn't work in a story. It's a lot easier to be objective about work that you aren't emotionally invested in.

So. Crit groups aren't that scary apparently. I'm definitely looking forward to the next meeting. Thanks for being so welcoming, MancSpecFic, and for providing cakes. Next time I'll bring chocolate.

First sale of the year

Somebody has finally decided they like one of my stories enough to publish it. My flash fiction piece The Captain's Chair is up at Postcard Shorts (you can read it here). They're a non-paying market, but I like a lot of the stories they put up and I'm very happy to be appearing there. Go check out the story, and some of the others while you're there.

Take That - Progress 2011

I have a grudging admiration for Take That. When first album Take That and Party came out in 1992 I was six years old and already listening to Black Sabbath, Nirvana and Alice In Chains.* At that point in my life I hated everything that groups like Take That stood for - though I wouldn't have been able to tell you why - and when they split up I gleefully drew their logo on a piece of A4 paper, tore it in half with the words "Take That, Take This!" written on it, and stuck it over my bed. I was, it's safe to say, Not A Fan.

Of course, when Robbie Williams released Life Through A Lens in 1997, I loved it. Just goes to show how fickle children can be. And now that I'm older, I can fully appreciate the music I hated back in '92, and I'm happy to admit that The Circus is a genuinely good album. The six-year-old inside me still vomits a little every time I admit to that, though.

Anyway. Anybody who hasn't been living under a rock since late last year will know that Take That - complete with a returned Robbie Williams - have just embarked on the biggest arena tour the UK has ever seen. @YvonneMcGruder was rather insistent that we get tickets, so we did, and last Friday I found myself in the City Of Manchester Stadium to watch the group I'd hated with a burning passion nearly 20 years ago.

It's a fantastic show, fully over-the-top with respect to what's going on on stage. It's more like being at the theatre than at a concert, and well worth the £50+ ticket price. The show is split into three parts, with the first few songs being Take That minus Robbie doing songs from The Circus. The second part features Mr. Williams on his own doing a mini-set of his own songs, and then the final part of the show is the whole group together again. There's always something going on on stage, from a massive game of battle-chess played out in the middle of the arena to some impressive abseiling up and down a waterfall and, of course, a giant robot that walks out into the middle of the crowd during 'Never Forget'.

It's very slick and very produced, which you'd expect, but for me that's the downfall of the show (and the reason I don't enjoy big arena gigs as a rule). I like to feel like the people stage care about the music they're making rather than simply performing choreography, and for me the most enjoyable parts of the show were Robbie's solo mini-set - when it was just him and a band on the main stage - and the piano medly of Million Love Songs/Babe/Everything Changes/Back For Good, when there was nothing else going on that demanded attention.

Still, it's a great show, and I'd definitely go again, it's just the kind of thing I derive a huge amount of pleasure from. On Tuesday, though, I'm going to see Trash Talk in Moho Live. A hardcore show in a 750-capacity venue? Much more me.



*In all honesty I was listening almost exclusively to Sabbath at that point. That was the year I found a cassette - remember those? - in my bedroom that contained Live Evil, and I played it so much that the tape snapped. A few years later (1996?) my parents bought me Heaven and Hell on CD. It continues to be one of my favourite albums of all time.

Alkaline Trio - Damnesia

Alkaline Trio have released the tracklisting for their new album Damnesia;

1. “Calling All Skeletons”
2. “Nose Over Tail”
3. “This Could Be Love”
4. “Every Thug Needs a Lady”
5. “Clavicle”
6. “Mercy Me”
7. “The American Scream”
8. “We’ve Had Enough”
9. “Olde English 800″
10. “I Held Her in My Arms”
11. “Blue in the Face”
12. “I Remember a Rooftop”
13. “Private Eye”
14. “You’ve Got So Far to Go”
15. “Radio”

There's some great songs on there, and it's good to see some new stuff I don't know. I'm a little disappointed that they've got tracks from This Addiction on there as it's only been out for a year, and 'Blue In The Face' is already an acoustic song so it will be interesting to see what they've done with it. Still, I'm excited. Not long to wait now...

Spectral Press - Abolisher Of Roses

Gary Fry's Abolisher Of Roses is the second installement in Spectral's series of limited edition chapbooks. It's been out for a while now - both it and the first book are now sold out - but I've only just gotten around to reading it.

What can I say? What They Hear In The Dark was a fantastic story to kick off with, and I wasn't sure what to expect with Spectral's second offering. Half of me was anticipating more of the same - a good old fashioned ghost story that grows with every reading. It would have been easy to go that route, and I'm glad that there's already some variety in the stories being chosen for the press.

Abolisher of Roses starts out slow, a story about the fraying relationship between a successful businessman and his artist wife. He's playing away, taking his life for granted, and you know it's only a matter of time before he gets his comeuppance. The pace and tension soon mount up, as Peter storms off into the deep, dark woods completely unprepared for what's in store for him there.

The story is a great read, although I felt like it would have been better served with a couple of thousand words more. There's a lot going on here, and it feels like Fry has had to do a hefty amount of trimming to get the story down to the right wordcount. While the story doesn't suffer for it, there's a little bit of reliance on telling rather than showing - especially in the flashback moments, which are crucial to our understanding of what exactly is happening to Peter.

That said, some of the writing is stunning. Fry has the ability to conjure the perfect image when he needs to; "It was chilly late October, the gallery's eaves dripping metronomes of dew," jumped out at me in particular, though there's plenty more where that came from.

This is almost a coming-of-age story, despite the age of the protagonist, and the pay-off is well worth the slow build. I'm definitely looking forward to issue 3.