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[26 Jun 2009|02:00am] |
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| Life and horror films... |
[24 Jun 2009|01:18pm] |
Last night, as part of my VideoVista reviewing duties, I watched “Laid To Rest”. It promised to be a gruesome, nasty horror film and, since Alison was out visiting a friend, I thought it’d be the ideal time to watch it. I got Dude sorted and put him to bed, washed up and watched the film.
It was gruesome, it was nasty, it also made me jump a couple of times. I began to get that odd feeling, that you never get watching a stupid comedy, that someone was wandering around behind me. I looked around, but the darkened dining room was quiet. I went out into the kitchen - there were no lights on next door and, though the sky was still quite light, the garden was dark. I got my drink and hurried back into the lounge and began to watch again.
There was a loud bang from upstairs and my imagination - overactive even when it’s resting - shot into overdrive. I rushed upstairs, flicking on lights as I went. I put on the light to Matthew’s room and went in. He was sitting on the floor beside his bed, rubbing his face, his eyes half closed.
“I,” he said, haltingly, “I, I.”
“You fell out of bed, didn’t you Dude?”
“Yes,” he said.
I picked up him, gave him a cuddle and put him back to bed, then went down to watch the end of the film. It was very good and hopefully, assuming Tony accepts it, you’ll be able to read the review next month.
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[20 Jun 2009|12:01am] |
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[18 Jun 2009|12:01am] |
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| Video Vista! More reviews and a new userpic |
[17 Jun 2009|02:52pm] |
A little late this time, but the June issue of VideoVista is now live and contains three reviews by yours truly:
Anamorph wasn’t bad,
The Tale of Desperaux wasn’t very good
Running On Empty, an Oz film from the early eighties, was pretty good.
We also watched, for pleasure, Frank Henenlotter’s “Bad Biology”. I’m glad now that I didn’t have to review it, since I’m a massive Henenlotter fan and I adore “Frankenhooker”, but this wasn’t good. His films have all suffered with pacing but, combined with more nudity and an unwise teaming up with rap stars, mark this out as not being very good at all. Which is a real shame.
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[11 Jun 2009|12:01am] |
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[10 Jun 2009|12:02am] |
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[09 Jun 2009|12:02am] |
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[03 Jun 2009|12:02am] |
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[30 May 2009|12:02am] |
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[29 May 2009|12:03am] |
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| About writing |
[27 May 2009|11:45am] |
I am currently working on a novella called “The Day It Rained”, which has been sometime in the making - I have notes on the piece dating back to 2002. It has been “my next project” on a lot of occasions, always usurped by something else, but the story kept nagging at me. I make no fight about being a great artist (though I always do my very best), but I always knew that this was a good idea and that if I did it right, it could be quite a powerful piece. Maybe, in fact, that knowledge has always been what’s scared me away in the past - that it could be good but I’d screw it up somehow.
I saw a post, on the Net, from a publishing house that I like and an editor that I respect, looking for projects. Realising, in some dim and distant part of my brain, that this could be it, I wrote a teaser synopsis of the plot and sent it away and got a nibble back.
Great, now I just have to write the thing.
I didn’t refer back to the 18,000 words of notes that I’d already made, because most of the pertinent points were burned in already. As I began work, I remembered how far the gap is sometimes between what you plan and what actually comes out in the writing, but the characters were working, the situations were working and I was over-writing like mad (it’s a novella, to be about 30k words or so and I’m almost at 20k now and they haven’t even reached the smithy, where the bulk of the action takes place!).
I hadn’t realised it in the planning, but as I was writing, I could see that I needed another character. I’d already had a strong image of how this person would die, but for some reason, the words weren’t coming. I tried it from one angle, then another and I haven’t written anything since Thursday on it. But this morning, it came to me that the injuries this person receives, whilst extremely life-threatening and potentially fatal, wouldn’t mean instant death. Which would mean this character would survive for a while, in tremendous pain - what would that do to the psyche of the other siege-sufferers (is that how you say it? Or should it be siege-ees)? And that gave me the opening, for the antagonist who is already worried about his wife - this new characters cries and screams would unnerve anyone.
And so I’m off again, but this is yet another valuable lesson that I’ll doubtless forget very quickly: sometimes, if the words don’t come easily, it’s because you haven’t figured out the story turns yet. I should have learned it with “Conjure” (coming this August, just in case you’d forgotten!) - Steve, the JCB driver, just had a cameo in the notes but ended up being the third lead in the finished book.
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[21 May 2009|12:03am] |
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[13 May 2009|12:02am] |
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| Novellas |
[08 May 2009|01:21pm] |
A couple of months back, "We Fade To Grey" was reviewed in Black Static and there were some very kind words indeed written about "The Mill". Before it was published, I was asked to contribute to a 'side-bar', regarding my favourite novella (ever!). Due to space limitations, that side-bar didn't appear but Andy Cox has now published it on the TTAPress website.
If you want to know what my favourite novella is - or those of some other luminaries of the small press horror community - click this link.
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[08 May 2009|12:04am] |
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[02 May 2009|12:02am] |
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[01 May 2009|12:02am] |
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