Technophobe

Back to work today as the blotches had all disappeared. To be greeted with the news that the firm is once again in consultation with the union about getting rid of another 15 workers. Happy Xmas!!

Anyway, I watched 'The Gadget Show' on C5 last night. Jason (the bald geek) wnt to South Korea, which was recently recognised as the most connected country in the world. Japan came 2nd, no surprises there. South Koreans enjoy Broadband speeds of 100mbps. Makes my 1mbps look a bit sick. And to think that BT were recently getting excited about testing a 24mbps connection in some parts of London. Let's face it, we are way behind.

While there, Jason visited LG, (the fifth largest electronics manufacturer in the world) to look at what we can expect in a few year's time. Wafer-thin TVs are just around the corner, as was the slim TV screen that was completely wireless and operated perfectly so long as it was within 35m of the base unit, or sender. And in 2010, LG reckon they will have cracked hologram TVs. Jeez. Makes you wonder, with all this rampant development, if it's worth upgrading for a few years. Anything you buy seems to be obsolete -- or last year's technology -- before you've even got it home and set up properly. I'm still baffled by anything more complex than analogue and five terrestial channels.

Flat packing

Yesterday, the blotches subsided to a level where I felt I could handle tools, so I had a go at assembling some wardrobes and drawer sets we've bought for Heather's bedroom.

Carefully read and familiarise yourself with the instructions and check the contents. Okay, I need to use 6 x #13 shallow head pilot screws first. Are these diddy little screws the ones? Or these other diddly little screws? They look damn near identical to me! So I went through the conents list and worked out that ther were a total of 34 of the tiny screws, 20 of one sort, 14 of the other. I had 33. I'm gonna hate this, I thought.

Hours later ....and step 36: Slide and tap home the wooden dowlings in the side fins. Grunt, they 're a tight fit but... tap, tap, tap, split! I phoned the shop who hardly let me finish before telling me they'd send some more fins. Methinks this is a common occurence, which gives a modicum of comfort. Taking no chances, I shaved the dowlings down with a craft knife for the other fins and they went in a treat.

As I write, I've still another unit -- a set of four drawers -- to put together. Oh, joy.

Still blotched

The dreaded blotches have spread, so where as yesterday I was white with red blotches, today I am one big, boiled lobster boy.

The worst place seems to be my hands, which feel tight and swollen and itch. My bottom lip is also badly swollen and deserves the appellation pendulus. The corner of my eyes feel dry and sore and, yup, I'm feeling a little sorry for myself. I've also got a sore throat and feel quite wheezy, so I reckon that all this is some sort of weird response to a viral infection. Viral infection. No one has colds these days, they have a virus or a chest infection or the flu. A cold just doesn't cut it in the 21st Century.

But I've had to cancel a dental appointment, so it ain't all bad.

Blotches

It's just gone nine o'clock in the morning. I should be at work! But . . . I've got blotches.

Blotches. A rash I used to get quite often when I was a kid. Big patches of raised skin in random shapes from just a couple of inches in size to great big landmasses that cover my entire arse or back or belly. This morning I'm covered from head to toe. My eyelids are swollen and my lips look like Mick Jagger's. It's not itchy so much as warm and sensitive. Which makes it sound like something Speilberg would film, but it's not that interesting really. Then again, he did AI so maybe he would.

When I got it as a kid Mum would whisk me away to the doctor's. He would examine me, say "Um" a lot and pack me off home with a bottle of medicine. I had some this morning, and that lovely minty taste just melted away the years. Hmmm... Piriton.

What causes it? Search me. The doctor's opinion was some sort of allergy to a foodstuff, maybe strawberries(?!), but that's never really stood up to close scrutiny. Stress was also mentioned as a possible factor, and one I'm more inclined to go with. I've had blotches three times as an adult, and both the previous occasions were presaged by highly stressful events. The first time was after a motorcycle ride around north Wales with some of my brother's mates, who all had quick tackle while I was bouncing around and tying myself in knots on a soggy Kawasaki GT550. The next day: blotches. The second occasion was discovering the Friendsreunited website. Oh dear.All those dark memories of being an awkward teenager, the loneliness and of being a square peg in a round hole surfaced . . . in blotches. If ever I needed a lesson in the power of the mind then this was it. Dwell on the past for a couple of hours and whumph, blotches. No coincidence, surely.

Still not sure what's sparked this bout off. I can't think of anything obvious, beyond the every day hassles of getting to and from work with the aggro of what lies in between, so maybe it was something I ate.

Now then, when did I last eat strawberries?

Shortage of Badasses

This anthology I'm helping Chris Hall put together, I expected us to be snowed under with submissions. The publisher, Dybbuk, is putting up a $50 advance for each writer, which is not an amazing compensation for hours of toil, but it is pretty generous by small press standards. It's a reasonable carrot . . . and look, no stick!

We are getting, on average, two queries a week. And sadly, most of the stories I've looked at so far are woeful. I read a lot of unpublished work in Critters and, it has to be said, the standard of writing in that online workshop is far higher than that of those in the submissions we've been getting for Badass Horror. So even if I wasn't already convinced of the merits of joining a writers' workshop, I would be now.

Another problem, I feel, is Chris's chosen theme - Crime horror. While there are a lot of people writing horror, not many of them really explore the criminal side of it. Having someone murdered does not give a horror story a criminal element. Murder and death are almost a prerequisite in horror fiction, but we don't automatically label all horror crime. There is a distinction here that most submitters are choosing to overlook. The book is listed at Ralan.com, the first port of call for most genre writers looking for a market. Maybe we'd have more success if we could reach crime writers? I suspect crime writers would find it easier to cross the border into horror than vice versa.

Dead Kopf!

I was browsing the writers' market website, Ralan.com, today, when I noticed that Kopfhalter! (German: Head holder) magazine has gone belly up after only three issues. This saddened as I had a story called 'Memory Bones' in the debut issue. The editor, Keith Gouveia was great to work with and I was contacted by a photographer -- he had been commissioned to illustrate the story -- to see if there was anything I wanted to see in his photo. I requested daisies and lo! I got daisies. I felt like a star! Notable contributers included Kevin L. Donihe, Kurt Newton and Irving Washington, with a reprint of the classic 'Sleepy Hollow'. I looked forward to seeing the finished magazine with glee.

My contributer copy arrived. Was it as good as I hoped? Well . . . it was one of those quirky publications that you just knew was destined for a hard time of it. It featured bizarre and unfathomable cartoon strips and off-the-wall formatting with lots of half-blank pages. Nice, glossy magazine with good production values, but ultimately, I felt, too arty to succeed. I'm sorry to be proved right.

Issue 1 is now downloadable in pdf format. Click on the link below. Read the cartoons by all means, but if you understand them, keep it to yourself. My story is quite possibly the least insane thing in there.

http://www.coscomentertainment.com/KopfhalterNo1Vol1Ver3.pdf

Dreams

Some people claim they never dream, or at least, they can't remember them if they do. They should be so lucky. I seem to be cursed with a very good memory for dreams. Take last night's (please, take it!).

A Russian cookery program. The chef says "Tonight I show you how to make toffee apples, Russian style!" He flipped the lid on a deep fat fryer and poured in sixteen two-pound bags of sugar, giving it a good stir to mix with all that smoking fat.

"Now, we take from the freezer a crow. The bird doesn't have to be frozen, but it peels better." He then picked up a potato peeler and skinned it.

"Voila! Now we stick a stick up it's clocoa and drop it into our sugar-fat and wait for ten minutes. Here are some I made earlier!" And he held up a tray of crow-shaped toffee apples.

It was a silly dream. Martin Luther King had better ones, it has to be said. But it's a typical kind of dream. The night before I was trying to convince Abraham Lincoln that I was from his future and trying to sell him a poppy for Remembrance Sunday. The night before that I was riding a motorbike through a field of strawberries, and as I bumped them, giant strawberries would float up like balloons.

The thing is, I think Heather has inherited all this oddness. Even now Jill is in her bedroom trying to calm her down. The poor little mite is soaked with sweat, crying and babbling about monsters in her bedroom. It's probably the Russian chef she's seen. He was ugly.

I'm not sure I can even spell palaeontology

Strange how things come about.

Something that cropped up a couple of times in the critiques for 'The Uinta Incident' was the science (in this case, palaeontology): some readers felt it was weak, implausible, wishy-washy. But I had deliberately kept it vague for the simple reason that I hate boring scientific explanations -- whether reading 'em or writing 'em. That and my knowledge is only that of the average layman, of course. In my story scientists potassium-argon date fossils and then use a time machine to go back and grab the animal as it comes to rest. Look, just take it as a given, will ya, folks.

But some folks won't. A fossil is just a cast or an impression, somebody said. Potassium-argon dating is inaccurate said another. Time travel? said yet another. Ha!

I need a friendly palaeontologist, methinks.

Later. Completely at random, I clicked on a name in the Critters biography page. Name of Geoff Habiger. My dad's name is Geoff. That's why I clicked on it in that bored, distracted way.

Geoff has moved from writing to publishing (Artemesia Publishing www.apbooks.net ) and, believe it or not (and I wouldn't blame anybody for not believing this) turns out to be a paleontologist and invites folks to contact him if they need assistance on related matters.

Now this is odd, I thought. But ... this is also GREAT!

Geoff's response to my questions -- I included the relevant passages from my story -- was nothing short of heroic. This is a man who knows his subject inside out and clearly delights in enlightening the great unwashed, like myself.

The upshot is, the science in my story was okay to begin with. Fossils can be casts, impressions or organic in nature -- not, as Geoff pointed out, it really matters in my story. But it's nice to know these things, and I'm sure as hell gonna casually drop this in somewhere.

K-Ar dating, like any radiometric dating, is only accurate to within a given range. But who's to say how accurate methods will be in 40 years time, which is when my story is set? He even offered some viable directions such methods may take. Oh, but he cheered me up, did this man.

All I need now is for someone to prove time travel is really a stroll in the park and I'm made. Failing that, I'm happy for my science fiction to be labelled fantasy.

There's always a way out. Just click randomly.

The Uinta Incident critiqued

I've just had my story 'The Uinta Incident' critiqued by my co-writers in the Critter writers' workshop. The advice I receive from my fellow writers is invaluable . . . usually. This time, though, it appears that, while almost everyone enjoyed the story, almost all of them thought it was broken. But not to worry cos they all knew how to fix it. Except, as luck would have it, their advice varies wildly. There is always a degree of contrariness when you get feedback from a couple dozen folk, but this is probably the most severe case yet. For every person that felt the pace was too slow, there was someone else complaining that it felt rushed. Some folks said I over did the exposition and needed to trust my readers more: "Let the reader work it out for themselves" I was urged on several occasions. Fine, except there were a heck of a lot of people complaining that I didn't explain things enough and left them floundering in the dark!

There doesn't seem to be one common thread I can grasp and work on. I need some time to think about this. What is perplexing is that I have already submitted this story to a magazine. I wouldn't normally submit prior to it being critiqued, but there was a submission window and it closed October 31. I'm not very confident it'll be accepted now.

I have popped another one in the Critters queue, called 'MirrororriM'. After that, well, I was hoping to have my novella 'The Reconstruction of Kasper Clarke' finished, but it continues to give me the slip.

You read it here last.

I had a story published Sunday. It was mailed out to all those lucky subscribers of 'Flashshot'. The idea here is to write a story in no more than 110 words. And subscibers get one emailed to them every single day. Some are a bit naff, to be honest, and some are even more naff. Mine, however, was brilliant. Seriously. See for yourself. BTW Ricky Gervais would be my choice for the main role -- he did such a great job in The Extras.

BIT PARTS

Barry found the studio, eventually.

“I’ve come about the bit part,” he told the man at the door.

“Which part’s that then?”

“Stu?”

“Ah, yes. Let me take your coat. Filthy night. Cup of hot chocolate?”

“Nice,” said Barry.

Later, mug in hand, he asked the same man if he needed to audition.

“No need, mate.” He nodded to the vat. “Just improvise.”

Barry eyed the steaming vat under the lights. He’d wondered about that since his arrival. Strangely tired, he felt unable to resist as the man took him by the arm. “You’re the stew,” the man said, “in ‘Cannibal Soup III’ Finish up your cocoa, you’re in next.”

Tom-Toms in ma head.

A whole week has gone by without me injuring myself. No rogue lamp posts or errant walls, parked cars or shifting kerbs have conspired to ruin my day. Although I did cut my shin on a chair in Longton library on Saturday morning. Black, steel framed chair on dark carpet, see? Well, I didn't. See, that is. "Oops!" I said while thinking "Bloody bastard!" as one does. My own fault for trying to escape reading to Heather in the children's corner. She always asks me to read the same book: Bumpus Jumpus, Dinosaurumpus!. I mean, you try reading lines like "Tyrannosaurus crashes in, gnashing his jaws. WALLOP! on the ground go his big back claws" without raising your voice. Or "Shake, shake, shudder ... near the sludgy old swamp. Everybody's doing the dinosaur romp!"

I get these drums bangin' in ma head and ma feet start tappin'... I have to go and read a copy of Computeractive! magazine to earth myself.

Distractions

Another week at work done and dusted. Hello Weekend, pleased to make your acquaintance.

I am, generally speaking. feeling a little more chipper than I have in weeks gone by. I keep telling myself that, while anxieties about my uncertain future are understandable, letting them ruin the here-and-now is plain dumb. There will come a time when I can look back on this period in my life and I will kick myself for not making the most of what I've got. I can earn a living, and read books, watch TV, use this computer, even fetch Heather from school . . . So that's my new mantra: less bitching, more do.

Obliged

I watched 'Batman Begins' last night and thought that, on the whole, it was rather good. Christian Bale makes an excellent Bruce Wayne-cum-masked vigilante and the film faithfully represented the spirit of the comic books. Tim Burton's films, while possessing the required glossy darkness, were too . . . well, Tim Burton. As for Joel Schumacher's cobbled efforts [pun intended], the less said the better.

Anyway, I was watching 'Batman Begins', when the obligatory car chase made its inevitable appearance. And that got me thinking: it's almost impossible now to say 'car chase' without preceding it with the word 'obligatory'. If it's an action film there has to be the obligatory car chase, only as you are obliged to say obligatory, it's really an obligatory obligatory car chase, right? The point I'm making is . . . um, there is no point, I suppose. Other than I wish they wouldn't do obligatory car chases. They are boring. Even when they are on motorbikes a la 'Matrix Reloaded' or 'Paycheck' they see me wandering off to make myself some cheese and crackers or put the kettle on.

I've borrowed 'The Aviator' to watch next. I daresay it will have an obligatory plane crash.

Kasper Clarke is a pain in the . . . neck

There's this story I've been writing, on and off, for nearly a year. 'The Reconstruction of Kasper Clarke'. This story (11500 words and rising) is becoming a millstone around my neck. I've lost count of how many times I've given up on it, only to go back to it convinced that I have the missing 'something' to make it work. I've written half a dozen stories or more meanwhile, but this one somehow dodges my best efforts to nail it down. Worse, with continually picking it up and putting it down, I suspect it is, if you will forgive the writerly jargon, bitty.

Did you know Jack Kerouac wrote 'On the Road' in 14 days? And that Bret Easton Ellis wrote a 4,000 page draft of 'Less than Zero' in a month? Hell, the only way I could match that sort of output would be to lodge a pebble on my keyboard, although I doubt 500 pages of bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb would find a market. Then again, people seem to enjoy Dave & Leigh Eddings.

So what is the secret of high productivity? Well, Kerouac was addicted to Benzedrine most of his adult life, and Ellis was in a crystal meth haze when he did that monumental draft of 'Less than Zero', so maybe narcotics is the answer. Hmm. Think I'll find a pebble instead.

"It was a dark and stormy nightttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt

That was toss

Any cheer stored over the weekend fizzled within ten minutes of getting to work this morning. No lights were on in the factory. Well, some were on, but none of them were anywhere near where I needed them to get myself down to the mouldmaking shop. Not as bad as on a previous occasion where I had to stand around like a spare prick at a wedding for twenty minutes until someone chanced by, but bad enough. I used to have a couple of allies who always thought to switch them on just before I clock on but they've both had their hours cut and no longer start earlier than me. It's a minor thing, I suppose, but that is what makes it all the more annoying and disheartening.

Anyway, that's enough of that. I took the British Citizenship test today. You know, that one the government have devised to see whether immigrants are 'British' enough to stay in this septic isle. The questions feature things like the TV license, jury service and emergency numbers . . . Guess what? I failed. Which is slightly perplexing, really.