That wasn’t me talking: the perils of autobiographical writing

If you read creative writing books, there are usually several exhortations to plunder your own life and soul for inspiration. I agree that most characters, including the narrative voice, will have some element of the author in them – it’s inevitable. I also know that I plunder small details from real life all the time – phrases or mannerisms from my family, everyday incidents at work that can be generalised, as well as observations from being abroad in the city. However, the suggestions to start with something real from your past (Recall an argument you’ve had and write about it from your opponent’s point of view. Take one of your own memories and write it in 3rd-person) fill me with horror.

The problem with an exercise like that is, you might write something good. If the glimmer of a decent story emerges from it, you’ll want to use it, and how much can you change (to make it unrecognisable to your nearest and dearest – or worse, colleagues and bare acquaintances) without spoiling it? This is particularly a danger with short stories, where one incident can make up nearly the whole thing, and if it’s recognisably true, some people will of course assume the whole story is. There will then follow one of the following responses:

You didn’t tell me you’d been to the V&A when you went for that job interview.
(I didn’t; I made that bit up. I do remember seeing a poster for it at the time)

So that’s what happened to my gold pen! Return it by tomorrow morning and I won’t call the police.
(Nope, didn’t even know it was missing. Seems I’m not the only one to have noticed you leave it lying around when your office door’s unlocked)

You should be ashamed of yourself.
(Maybe, but only because I have a mind that works that way; I have never actually done that, nor would I wish to)

I can’t believe you could be so awful about Uncle Ken. I’ll never speak to you again.
(No, you see, a character with a similar job to mine said that about another character with a similar history to Uncle Ken. I don’t agree with her – but you’ve already slammed the phone down)

Note that the above examples are themselves fictional: though I have encountered responses along some of these lines, I have never had a job interview in London or an Uncle Ken, nor do I know anyone with a gold pen. But you get the idea.

Most writers probably have at least one pivotal moment, the kind where every time you think of it you shudder, and/or breathe a sigh of relief. If they were already in the writing mindset at the time it happened, even then (or shortly afterwards) they were probably mulling over the ‘what if’ scenarios, and it would almost certainly provide a rich store of material for heartfelt stories – the emotions would be real because they’d still be vivid years later (given the type of event we’re talking about). But if the events had that kind of resonance, would it be a sensitive issue for friends or family? Would they read the resulting tale and, recognising its source, assume that the character’s point of view was that of the author? Dangerous territory, and so far, I’m too much of a coward to wade in.

Postscript: since writing this and putting it aside to use in a few weekends’ time, I’ve read Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman. In the introduction he mentions that one of the stories in that collection (I forget which one, and the book is upstairs) is close enough to the truth that he’s had to explain to a few relatives that it didn’t quite happen that way. Which sort of proves my point, and reinforces my stand.

The criminal career takes off

Or, I have a detective story available in the brand new e-zine from New Zealand, Comets and Criminals. I urge you to check out the issue, it has some good stories in, an interesting mix of thrilling genres from authors whose other work has already appeared in some quite impressive places. My contribution is The Dovedale Affair, in which a murder in a small Yorkshire town causes panic in the mother of a disturbed young man – what does he know about it, and how?

Paris Noir anthology

I’d seen a couple of the other anthologies in this series from Akashic Books in the library before but Paris was the first one that prompted me into borrowing it, as I’ve actually been there. I figured that part of the idea behind a one-city setting was that you could immerse yourself, and it helps if you can picture the streets, hear the sounds. All the stories were translated from French, which adds an authenticity (and sometimes a confusion, though no more than I occasionally get from, for instance, American writing).

I nearly gave up on this book, I will admit – the first 2 or 3 stories I dipped into were, to my mind, more monosyllabic brutality than richly atmospheric crime fiction. However, I persevered and the next couple were OK, and then I hit upon The Revenge of the Waiters by Jean-Bernard Pouy. It takes a theme I often play around with (but have never yet finished a story on), that of the familiar stranger and particularly the way we notice their absences and wonder what’s become of them. With a welcome injection of dark humour, Pouy sets a band of bored waiters on an investigation into such an absence, with escalating consequences.

La Vie en Rose by Dominique Mainard makes good use of a technique that’s sometimes seen as old-fashioned, that of having our main character sit down and listen to a long and almost unbroken exposition of the back-story from the other main character. As an interesting twist, the listener is a proto-crime-writer pretending to be a private detective in order to gather material, but he soon finds he’s out of his depth.

I’m not sure if I’d read other volumes in the series, but if I do dip in, I’ll let you know how they measure up.

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

The most enjoyable Chevalier I’ve read for a while, Remarkable Creatures takes a few fictional liberties with two real fossil-hunting women who lived in Lyme Regis in the early 19th century; the title could refer equally well to Mary and Elizabeth, or to the fossils they found and studied.

When London solicitor John Philpot marries, he arranges for his three remaining unmarried sisters to move to a cottage in Lyme Regis, a small town on the south coast where they will still be able to live a respectable middle class life in reduced circumstances. Louise and Elizabeth have their botany and fossil-collecting, respectively, to make spinsterhood more palatable but their younger sister Margaret still has hopes, fuelled by her Jane Austen novels. Mary Anning, a local girl who finds and sells fossils to supplement her father’s income, meets Margaret through Elizabeth, and is influenced by her romantic notions.

Though there are gentle flavours of romance, intrigue and adventure, the novel is largely about fossils and strong female friendship (the phrase ‘vicious gossip and the heartbreak of forbidden love’ on the back cover refers to restrictions of class rather than gender). Tracy Chevalier has once or twice in the past fallen into the trap of dumping incongruous passages ito the narrative rather than wasting her research, but in general it is woven seamlessly into this book. Her only stumbling blocks in this regard seem to arise from the format of alternating chapters being first-person accounts from Mary and Elizabeth’s points of view, which left working-class Mary having to say a couple of things which, in my opinion (and really, what do I know about 19th century Dorset girls?) didn’t sit quite right. With Elizabeth’s chapters, however, the tone seemed to fit brilliantly, very Trollope (and regular readers will know just how much of a compliment I mean that to be).

An infuriating book to read if, like me, your blood boils at the thought of scientific women in the past being sidelined, ignored or having their discoveries stolen by male colleagues. Nevertheless, an interesting insight into the time, and a well-written tale.

The Cardinal’s Blades by Pierre Pevel

A fantasy novel translated from French, which doesn’t happen that often; it’s set in Paris in 1633, the Cardinal in question naturally being Richelieu and the Blades his finest and most elite soldier-spies, who had been disbanded 5 years earlier for political reasons. A good portion of the book is the ‘we’re putting the band back together’ section, where the Blades are located and plucked from their dayjobs, which is light and enjoyable.

Although it’s a fantasy novel, for almost the entire book except the climax it’s easy to forget that and assume you’re reading a historical swashbuckling adventure. As you might expect from the setting, it’s full of spies and double-agents, intrigue and political scheming, sword-fights and heroic rescues. And, thankfully, humour. The fantasy element arises from who some of the spies and double-agents are working for, and what additional power that might give them, though I don’t think that aspect was fully explored.

I enjoyed it, but I also enjoyed all the Scarlet Pimpernel novels, the Three Musketeers and the Man in the Iron Mask. If you don’t think they’d be your sort of thing, I wouldn’t recommend this book, but if you like high boots, doublets, rapiers and repartee, and you don’t mind the occasional dragon, I’d say you were in for a cracking read.

New twitter fiction

Having just realised that I have a piece of twitter fiction up at One Forty Fiction today, I thought I’d share. It will take you less than a minute to check it out…

Tangled typing: finding out the plot as you write

I am, like many people, a creature of habit. At the moment I’m in the habit of writing each lunchtime at work and until something disrupts it and I fall into a new lunchtime habit, it’s working well. Either discipline, or not wanting to have to think of what to work on next, is causing me to stick to stories longer than I often would; instead of moving on at the first difficult decision, I’m having to choose a path and work my way down it. You might think that’s leading me into the realms of properly planned plots, but interestingly it doesn’t seem to be.

This week I’ve come back to a story I started a year ago (at least) and have written the odd paragraph of since but never got to grips with. It began from a 5-minute free-writing exercise sparked off by a woman I passed in the street, having finished reading a Dashiel Hammett novel the night before. Now it seems to be a sort of detective story in a future dystopia, with a life of its own. I can only imagine my subconscious is working away on the plot while I manipulate data at the dayjob, or maybe I’m dreaming my way through the difficult parts; yesterday they found a clue and I was so excited, because I would never have thought of looking behind the cushions in the waiting room. Except, hang on, wasn’t it me that thought of making them do that?

Sometimes I read advice from other writers and I feel like I should sit down at the start of every story with a clipboard and pen, interview the characters and draw a route-map. Every now and then I try it. Once in a while it even works, but I was a reader before I was a writer and I want the thrill of discovery, I want the twists and turns, the ups and downs. I want to be wrong-footed and fall for a couple of red herrings. Somehow my disorganised, chaotic brain lets me do that while I write, and yes I might have to tie up a few loose ends in the redraft, but don’t most people? Give me untidy and enjoyable over planned and methodical any day. At least I’m following that other standard piece of advice by having a regular writing routine.

The Margarets by Sheri S Tepper

One of the books I borrowed from my local library recently was a chunky SF novel (science fantasy?) called The Margarets. Margaret Bain is a lonely little girl, the only child on the research station at Phobos. To entertain herself she creates imaginary selves with different traits and personalities: a queen, a warrior, a healer, a shaman. At major turning points in her life, the separate identities seem to take on a life of their own, even long after she has grown out of them – are they dreams, parallel worlds, or a strange reality? It’s interesting to see how different experiences shape each identity in different ways.

On Earth as an adolescent, Margaret faces the ravaged planet for the first time, with its overcrowding and damaged ecosystem which has fallen foul of the body which seems like a kind of interplanetary UN. However, Earth has some friends among the other, older races and their minor gods. When they learn of a threat to humanity, it seems they can’t combat it without the help of all the scattered Margarets, each of which is involved on the fringes without realising it.

I did find this novel a little confusing and had to resort to the reference table of Margarets, their locations and associates (which can give big hints to later plot-points so is best approached carefully) but that may be partly because of the bitty way in which I read the first half, ten minutes here and there between other activities. I also had to grit my teeth through the first part: the whole novel is first-person, from the point of view of one or other of Margaret’s identities, and since she’s a child as the story begins, that part is written from a child’s perspective and it grated a little. Overall though I enjoyed it, I thought the story was interesting and unusual, strong enough to pull me past my reservations on the style (a bit soft-focus and girly in places, not my usual fare though I’m not saying I never read anything like that). Mainly well-written, though a shiftless redneck family with members named Billy Ray, Joe Bob, Billy Wayne, Lou Ellen etc seemed a bit stereotypical, as did the dialogue of the pseudo-West-African tribes on one of the planets.

Frenzied scripting

Script Frenzy is now 2 days in, and so far I’m enjoying it. A French classical station on the internet radio (moved from the kitchen to my bureau for the occasion) – no adverts and plenty of piano. A mug of something warming (coffee just now). A computer and a dash of inspiration.

So far I’m at 6 and a half pages, which isn’t too bad considering the average of 3 and a third pages a day which would be necessary to hit the 100-page target by the end of the month, but I would like to get ahead of myself this weekend to make up for the inevitable slackening at some point during the week. The script may well end up in some adapted form as the next-but-one Ostragoth venture, though it may not. And since a graphic novel’s unlikely to take me all the way to 100 pages, I’m also planning a radio play, largely for my own amusement (kind of like 20 years ago, when friend T and I wrote a whole series of plays and radio plays with recurring characters, which certainly entertained us).

Good luck to anyone else who’s currently frenzied. Back to the fray.

Know your heritage: pioneers of SF

Among the semi-random books I got out of the library recently was a collection of stories by Clark Ashton Smith under the title Out of Space and Time. Never having read anything by him before I thought I’d give it a go, but the first story, The End of the Story, put me off. The phrase ‘purple prose’ suggested itself; it was from 1930 but seemed 40 or 50 years older at least (more, even – Poe sprang to mind), a suspenseful mild horror story set in the 18th century and concerning a forbidden manuscript in a monastery library. It may be that he’d overdone it on this story as he wanted to create that historic feel, but I had a small pile of other library books demanding my attention so one story was all I gave it. It is of course purely a matter of taste, and if you like that kind of style, you’ll enjoy Clark Ashton Smith’s works much more than I did.

Part of the reason I wanted to try this collection at all was the feeling that I hadn’t read many of the classics of the genre. I read Jules Verne and HG Wells when I was an adolescent (and Edgar Allan Poe, for that matter), and naturally I’ve delved into Tolkien and Philip K Dick, but there are plenty of other names I’ve heard often enough but have no first-hand experience of. I don’t think I’ve read any HP Lovecraft (I might have read one story in an anthology but it obviously hasn’t seared itself on my brain), I haven’t read any Edgar Rice Burroughs, EE “Doc” Smith, Michael Moorcock, Robert Heinlein, Kurt Vonnegut… Given my cynical assumption of Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome whenever ‘classics’ are mentioned, I’m often in two minds whether to read them or not. On one hand they’re important influences, it’s a way of tracing the history of stories that I have enjoyed, and I might find that I enjoy some of these classics themselves. On the other, many of them are quite old now, possibly old-fashioned or in a style that’s not to my taste; some of them (I’m thinking sci-fi rather than fantasy here) are even irrelevant and eclipsed by later discoveries.

For when I’m in the mood to read the old stuff, I have discovered a rather wonderful site where you can download (for free) thousands of public domain books in several languages and formats, including a whole host of science fiction, fantasy, gothic and horror (and a pulp section which covers plenty of SF). A bibliophile’s paradise.

Fantasy novels I recently left unfinished

When I put a book review up here, it’s always of a book I finished reading. That’s a fairly obvious statement, but it means that due to my more recent policy of abandoning books if I’m not enjoying them (life is short, but the bookshelf is long), if I’m reviewing it it’s a fairly safe bet that I enjoyed it. There are the odd exceptions, where I’ve had high hopes so I’ve given the book as much of a chance as I could, and read the final page with a sense of disappointment, but in general if it’s not grabbing me, I stop reading (I do still give each book more of a chance than OneMonkey does – he has been known to fling it aside after page 1, but it depends what mood he’s in).

I took my own advice for a change and got 10 books out of the local library in the past couple of weeks, largely at random from the sci-fi/fantasy and graphic novel shelves. With barely a scan of the back-cover blurb I chose a selection that either OneMonkey or I (or both) might enjoy, some by authors I’d heard of, some not. There were some triumphs (Finch, for instance) and some I didn’t choose so well. So I thought I’d tell you about a couple of those – not to pull them to pieces, but because someone else may well enjoy them.

Jasmyn (by Alex Bell) had an interesting premise and enticing artwork on the cover but ultimately left me unsatisfied after a few chapters and I’ve still got most of those Doctor Who novels to read. Jasmyn’s a young woman whose husband has died suddenly, very sad, one of those things, life goes on. Except Jasmyn’s finding it very hard to let life go on and is instead moping around in her pyjamas (quite understandably in my view) and has arranged to take a term off work (she is a music teacher, as I recall); her husband’s family, who never seemed to approve of the marriage, are being less than supportive, and she starts to feel isolated. Then she discovers strange things are happening (or appear to be happening, but she does consider that she might literally be mad with grief) and her husband may have had a whole other side to his life that she never knew about.

Jasmyn’s husband wrote books on mythology and folklore, and the whole set-up and cover-art had a dark fairytale feel to it, despite the contemporary suburban setting. However, the style also seemed quite fairytale in the sense that the language, construction, and elements of repetition gave it a simplistic feel which wasn’t really for me. Or perhaps I wasn’t gripped enough by the story to overlook it.

Death Most Definite by Trent Jamieson: I wish I’d been able to read this to the end, OneMonkey enjoyed it, but there was just too much death (I know, what do you expect from a title like that). To give a quick overview, reaping souls (‘pomping’ them into the afterlife) is sort of a franchise but it tends to run in families, so Steve is a young man who has drifted into the family business but gives the impression that he’d have been fired by now if he wasn’t related. This book is the first in a series, and is set in contemporary Brisbane (what a refreshing change from American SF – not that I don’t like American settings but it’s good to get a different perspective sometimes); it’s first-person, in a light conversational style with plenty of references to rock music, films and SF, even in the few chapters I read. The premise is that someone’s making a play to be the next regional manager for all of Australia, and to do it they need to eliminate the competition. Which is pretty much anyone capable of doing the job, including Steve, his family, and most people he knows. From what OneMonkey tells me it does sound like it got quite tense and exciting, and even had a bit of romance in there, but the scale of death (and some of the detail) was harrowing and I couldn’t plough through it. My loss, I think.

Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

Finch is at least a couple of books in one. It’s a detective thriller in the noir tradition. It’s a novel of resistance and rebellion in occupied territory. It’s other-world urban fantasy. Whichever one of those attracts you, read it.

John Finch is a detective in Ambergris, a city-state that’s featured in a couple of Jeff VanderMeer’s previous books (which I haven’t read). It’s a city occupied by the oppressive grey-caps, a race of something like walking mushrooms who took over the city a few years earlier. The essential otherness of all the non-human characters was conveyed well, and the organic technology and all-pervasive fungal growths were vividly imagined and described.

The novel opens with Finch being called in to investigate a murder he’s not sure is a murder; he does get the feeling that if he gets it wrong (in the eyes of his grey-cap boss) then that will be the end of the road for Finch, so a lot is resting on this case. The detectives are toyed with by their fungal superiors, fed parts of the picture and left to flounder. Finch clearly has a Past, which we are allowed to glimpse gradually as we are let into the backstory of this city – civil war, long years of building aggression, spies and double-crosses, shifting temporary alliances. Betrayal.

As well as being a gripping adventure (a bit bloody in places but nothing gratuitous) this is a poignant and moving novel about friendship, trust and allegiance. What (or who) do you hold onto when everything else is lost? The souvenirs from a dead past that allow you to hold on to the last of your sanity.

N-Space, a Larry Niven collection

I couldn’t quite tell who this collection was aimed at. There’s a very long introduction with quotes and comments on Niven’s work by other writers, so much in fact that I wondered (knowing nothing about him) if this 1990 collection had been released as a retrospective on his death, but no – as far as I can ascertain he’s still out there writing. Then comes a long prologue from Niven himself which rambles entertainingly enough through anecdotes and background, but a lot of references are lost on the newcomer. These chatty introductions precede almost every story and excerpt in the book, giving background and insight for the fan. But if you’re already a fan, why would you want excerpts (several pages at a time) from 5 of his novels? And if you’re not a fan already why would you want to read 5 lengthy, out of context excerpts from the middle of his novels? I skipped those – I’d like to read more Larry Niven after this, and I didn’t want to stumble over any spoilers.

That still left 20-odd shorter pieces that are mostly well worth a read if you’ve often read Philip K Dick and longed for solid, nuanced characters and something closer to lyrical prose (not that that’s always lacking in PKD, but usually the plot comes first by a long way). I’ll mention a few of my favourites here:

All the Myriad Ways falls under the sub-genre that’s fast becoming my favourite: alternate history/alternative timeline crime. A series of inexplicable and apparently random crimes are giving Detective-Lieutenant Trimble a headache. He thinks solving them will make him feel better, but as the pieces slot into place he’s no longer so sure about that. Gripping, well-written, a neat idea and great style for the ending. This story had sparked off an idea of my own before I’d read more than a couple of pages (then I got worried that all I’d done was semi-predict how All the Myriad Ways would turn out, but it’s OK, it seems I’m not that smart).

For a Foggy Night is another multiple timeline story but with a completely different feel from All the Myriad Ways. Always thought fog was just water droplets in the air? Think again.

The Meddler apparently started life as a satire on the likes of Mickey Spillane. The result is a hard-boiled private eye trying to deal with a meddling alien who can’t quite bring himself to observe quietly from the sidelines. Interesting idea, fun to read but also thought-provoking.

The Fourth Profession was, in my opinion, one of the best examples of Niven’s well-drawn characters. A bartender, a travelling alien detached from his compatriots who are in diplomatic talks, pills that give knowledge or ‘train’ someone for a particular job, a potential international incident – those are the basic ingredients but of course there’s more to it than that. Well-judged detail and properly tense in the right places.

I’d just read Inconstant Moon when the recent solar flare was in the news, which added a slight thrill (and some shared graveyard humour with OneMonkey, who read this a while ago). What do you do when your scientific training lets you read all the signs that seem to point to the end of the world? What would you do if you thought this was it? And what difference might it make if you keep your head when all around you are losing theirs?

Night on Mispec Moor seems like a straight fantasy/horror story, but then comes the internal logic of the local science and all is rationally explained and dealt with.

Flare Time. The nuisance of travel writers, and the need for tourism in backwater planets. Wonderfully imagined and described flora and fauna; I was practically standing among it all.

Brenda was another story with some great character depth. I would say it’s about the passage of time, redemption, and how you shouldn’t condemn someone because of what they’re born into.

The Kiteman felt like a part of something bigger, and like many of Niven’s works it’s set in the same world as one (or more?) of his novels. The world felt solidly set-up and I want to revisit; the story itself focuses on a man (daring or mad, depending who you ask) who uses a system of kites to fly around outside the home-tree (and if necessary, between trees), and is teaching the skill to a few of the younger generation when their abilities are tested in a sudden emergency.

This book is a chronological, for the record, whole output catalogue, including essays, lists, outlines and a never-published prologue. If N-Space is in your local library or you see it going cheap, it’s worth picking up but other collections might give you more entertainment for your money if, like me, you don’t necessarily want to know where or when a story was written, who gave him the idea or how many false starts it took to complete it.

Unknown Amazonian

How disorganised does this make me sound (please don’t answer that) – I have stumbled across an email from December 9th (2010, not as bad as it could be) while clearing out my inbox. I posted the cover images of an anthology in November, which contained some of my twitter fiction, and I linked to the publisher’s website where copies were (I think, at the time) available to pre-order. If I’d been more diligent with my email a few weeks later I would have realised the book was available elsewhere – all this time I’ve been in a book you can buy on Amazon and I haven’t been bragging about it! Apologies to Folded Word for not shouting this from the rooftops earlier, and please join me in my mild smugness at a couple of months’ remove. I’ll show you the cover again for good measure…

How to hook a reader in seconds: finding a good title

What’s the first part of your story that a reader sees? Whether it’s on the spine of a book, at the top of a magazine page, or in a table of contents, it’s the title, so it had better be a good one.

Pretty much all you can see is the title

Sometimes the title is the only thing someone will see, for example a bare list of titles and authors on a webpage – you have to entice the reader to click on your link purely on the strength of that title, before they even get a chance to experience your story. It can be amusing, quirky, groan-inducing, exciting and full of promise, but it definitely has to be eye-catching. If it’s in a mixed-genre setting it may also have to suggest its genre within its limited character set.

The Menagerie. Goth Opera. The Mind Robber. Shadowmind. Mission Impractical. Doctor Who and the Green Death.

Those are all titles of Doctor Who novels, but they don’t all have the same feel. When I acquired all those Doctor Who novels recently it struck me how the titles variously suggested horror, sci-fi, highbrow fantasy, tongue in cheek comic fantasy, old-fashioned mystery, adventure story for children, thriller, or some combination of these (and other) moods. Titles have such potential, but if you’re anything like me you may often throw one at your story at the last minute, an afterthought considered vaguely acceptable and sent out into the world. If so, you and I both need to think harder.

Blame my unfortunate affection for dodgy puns on my dad (and I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again) if you like, but whatever the origin, I know I do use them in titles. Leaf Encounter for instance – their eyes met in a greengrocer’s shop and it seemed like an obvious choice; I hoped that it might also suggest to others some of the things it suggested to me, that maybe it wasn’t entirely serious and that it might involve a love that wasn’t to be.

For that reason I also use common phrases like Rain Stopped Play or Windows to the Soul. Rain Stopped Play isn’t about cricket (though it is about rain) but Windows to the Soul does have eyes as a central point. I use song-titles, some of which fit the mood (Resurrection Joe and Boys Don’t Cry are both about goths), some don’t (Wasted Years has very little to do with Iron Maiden but I still like it as a working title). Sometimes the title comes first – I have a few in my bits file that have only sparked glimmers of ideas or very rough outlines so far, and most of them will probably stay that way.

I don’t always throw in a title at the last minute, and I don’t always stick with the first title I think of – Boys Don’t Cry had two previous titles I think, but was usually known as the gothlad comic. A good indication that your title isn’t so hot is when you and your closest friends can’t remember it; I had another story recently which a friend was trying to refer to and had to fall back on a plot summary, and when he apologised for forgetting the title I had to confess I couldn’t remember it either (I’ve renamed it since, and I now know it’s called Cracks in the Foundations).

I’d already started drafting this post (see the work that went into this) when I spotted a link to a wordpress advice page about choosing eye-catching post titles, and certainly the basic principles of that also apply to story (or any other) titles. I’m not claiming I come up with good titles, in fact mainly I’m saying the opposite, but I’m trying to learn, both for stories and blog posts, and if I’ve made you think a bit harder about the next title you have to come up with, that’s probably a good thing. Just don’t blame me when you’re stressing about it.

In search of lost travels

If you could pick 3 places to go this year, where would they be? If we’re imagining I’ve come into money, got over all my fears and neuroses related to travel, and can find suitable vegetarian food wherever I might choose to go, the scope is widened beyond the UK.

Books can shape your life – I would hope that if you’re reading this blog you already know that. They can shape your dreams too, particularly if they’re long, dreamy, rambling books like A la Recherche du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust. I’ve mentioned before how it made me want to visit Venice. More than just visit, I wanted to take an apartment in a former palace for a month or more (preferably in the late 19th century, but since there are no cars even now, the timing may not matter so much), sketch in the city’s squares, stroll beside canals and meet interesting fellow-travellers.

The fact that I haven’t been to Venice yet, and if I did it wouldn’t be as I’d imagined it, doesn’t stop me dreaming of going to other literary settings – real, historical or entirely fictional. Reading Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels, where certain people are able to jump into fiction, does make me envious sometimes. I could go to Venice as Proust described it. Or borrow a certain book from Arthur Dent and hitch-hike my way to adventure. Experience for myself a genuinely Kafkaesque situation (as long as I was sure I could leave at any time!). Set up my own writing retreat in a forgotten room of Gormenghast castle.

Writing is partly visiting the places our imagination takes us to. Maybe part of the trick is visiting a Raymond Chandler novel, standing quietly in a corner while Marlowe’s being sapped, then noticing movement out of the window, sneaking down the fire escape and discovering a whole other story going on in a neighbouring street.

Where would you visit (or live?) given the hypothetical chance? Real or fictional, any time period. Surprise me.

The view from here

The February edition (issue 32) of The View From Here is now available, featuring a story of mine called The Fan-boys on Tour. Selected parts of the magazine are available online but if you want to read Fan-boys you’ll have to obtain a print copy (available by mail order from their website). It’s a reasonably short story (not micro-fiction, but what a lot of people would describe as flash – about 500 words), mainstream (i.e. non-genre) and is about brotherly love in the scuzzy underground of devoted followers of half-forgotten punk bands. For you, it may be about something entirely different, such is the beauty of fiction – read it and discover.

Only Human at Short, Fast, and Deadly

My latest extremely short story, Only Human, is now available at Short, Fast, and Deadly. While you’re over there, make sure you check out the rest of the issue too – they’re short pieces, after all.

Only Human is about never meeting your idols (even if it’s only via paper at a distance of centuries) – I gave up listening to interviews and reading biographies of anyone whose music I enjoy a while ago. Most of the time, it’s best not to know.

Hair metal and micro fiction

Acceptance for a very brief story of mine at Short, Fast, and Deadly today, which I think should appear this coming Sunday in issue 59. Excitement has ensued, naturally, and out of interest (mainly to stop myself repeating any lame puns or similar) I checked out the post I wrote last time this happened. The thing that jumped out at me there was the reference to working through the hair metal on spotify (I’m sure that jumped out at most of you, but probably for different reasons. Yes, I own most of Poison’s back catalogue. Live with it – OneMonkey has to). What did I spend much of last week doing? Working through various hair metal channels that OneMonkey just added to the menu on our groovy internet radio that lives in the kitchen. Coincidence? (Well, yes, but still kind of amusing)

The Well of Lost Plots

Having started with Something Rotten and been largely confused (partly because I didn’t know the plot of Hamlet), I’ve caught up with myself as far as Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series goes. The Well of Lost Plots is the third in the series and I think the best I’ve read so far.

A complicated and quite thrilling plot (with very little in the way of those trying-too-hard character names that marred my enjoyment of the first two books), plenty of in-jokes, literary references, and some wonderful ideas and imagery. Unpublished novels where scenery disappears because the author’s decided to use it in his new book; a black market in plot devices; slightly steampunk-esque machinery that transmits images to the reader’s mind… Trying to write a coherent review of this novel is too hard, partly because it’s the third in a series and partly because so much goes on (and not all of it makes sense) so it would be very easy to give things away. As I said to OneMonkey earlier, while I wouldn’t rate it quite as highly, I would say that if you enjoy the works of Douglas Adams or Robert Rankin (leaving aside a Dog Called Demolition) this should probably be on your To Read list.