Vampire Books, Brian Lumley and Metamorphic Proto Flesh
So I was discussing vampire stories, in the wake of the latest Twilight movie, and realised that I've not read nearly so many of them as I thought. So let's get a couple of things out of the way. I've not read Anne Rice, Dracula, The Vampyre, Twilight, 'Salem's Lot or any of the others that I probably should have. That right there probably makes it illegal for me to discuss vampire stories, but never mind. It's after midnight and I'm running on fumes...
I'm currently reading The Evil Seed by Joanne Harris. Apparently it's her "haunting debut novel". I have to admit to being kind of disappointed when I realised it was another vampire story, but oh well. I'll keep at it on account of her prose being ridiculously readable.
When you mention George R. R. Martin people think of fantasy. Specifically, they think of his Song of Ice and Fire series and are likely to whine about the lack of the next book. Ignore them. Fevre Dream is better. It's got vampires on steamboats! The hero is ageing, overweight and anything but dashing. The story is filled with desperation and loss from start to finish. Just fantastic!
Richard Matheson wrote I Am Legend, a stonkingly good science fiction take on the vampire story. The last man on earth struggles for survival at night. During the day he hunts vampires and uses his powers of science to figure out what created them! There's also a dog. Apparently the movie adaptation sucked (never saw it myself) and was less than faithful to the original, going so far as to make the title pointless. In the book the title has a point! Read it!
Already Dead is the first book in a vampire noir series by Charlie Huston. It's set in Manhattan and stars Joe Pitt, a gritty renegade type who struggles to make a living, while avoiding joining any of the big vampire clans. It's dark, it's violent and it's a damned good read (all 1 day it'll take you per book). Oh also, the characters have no idea what makes them what they are, which means Huston can avoid all kinds of tedious discussions. Very good!
One of my writing tutors once told me that Brian Lumley is a very scary man. Judging by his Necroscope series (and it's sequels) you might be tempted to agree. But then I heard him read at Alt.Fiction the other year and he seemed very nice! But let's get this said. The Necroscope books are truly horrific. Yes I know they're horror, but damn these take it to an extreme. The first opens with a man torturing the dead for its secrets (using the dead guy's body as a "means of communication") and the fifth one features a character who "makes his own holes". That's before you get to the vampires. I hear a lot of people complaining that vampires have lost their teeth. Well look no further. Lumley's are monsters in every sense of the word. And yes they also have metamorphic proto flesh. They don't shapeshift so much as fleshcraft and create their own creatures (and houses!) from other people. This means you get to read a few rather bizarre sex scenes too! Harry Keogh, the hero, is a maths wizard who can talk to the dead! There's also psychic intelligence agencies fighting it out! And wormholes!
So if you know people stuck for interesting vampire literature, feel free to recommend any of these.
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Oh Dear… and Stuff
I kinda forgot my whole one or two posts a week rule for a while there. Can't say it'll change from here on out, but you never know. The whole purpose of this blog was to talk about writing, so when I don't have a lot to say about it...
We've started workshopping again, resurrecting the group (fortnightly on Wednesdays) that saw me through a year of fiction on the MA. We've two sessions under our belt now and I'm really enjoying it. The second session was particularly good, with people offering suggestions for improvement as well as the normal critique. I'm up next though... Should be interesting, if extremely humbling.
My own writing is very much stop/start. I've said this a million times before but there really aren't enough hours in the day. Most of them are filled with work and random house related jobs. I got another 3k words done on Hemlock Hex and started working on Breaking the Sequence again. This was "inspired by" NaNoWriMo, for which I've failed miserably to meet the average daily word count. But hey getting anything done is good right?
I bought a bike! I did have one already but it was broken down, crappy and would have required significant investment to make roadworthy. So I bought a new one through the Evans Cycles Ride2Work scheme. The voucher, that's meant to take two to three weeks to arrive, turned up two days after I placed my order, so this morning I rode in. Damn it was cold... But damn it was fun too!
We're now hurtling towards Christmas. I think I'm pretty much sorted for present buying, but there's still Christmas dinner to plan. Like fools we volunteered to host this year - it being our first Christmas in our own house - and I can feel lists of timings and alarms being planned. I've got three straight weeks booked off over the holiday too. Should be good!
Done
Well, that's it. Over. Done with. With my dissertation handed in, I've completed every requirement of this MA (short of turning up in a cap and gown and having Michael Parkinson give me a certificate).
How does it feel? Kind of empty to start with. Tired. Irritable. I'm sure it'll fade. But I won't be satisfied until I get my marks.
But, now. Not onward. Rather, to rest.
Dissertation Update
Okay so it's been a few weeks since lectures ended. With them went the best part of the course, the fiction workshops. For a week or so I floundered a bit and felt lacking in direction. Then I realised the obvious: The only person who is going to motivate me is me. Charlotte, family and friends can nag and that's awesome... but it only goes so far. Anyway. I made myself this...
I'm sitting at 9k words, which represents three chapters of the novel. By the end of this week I need to have written another 3k. The complete dissertation will be 15k prose and 5k commentary.
I have to admit to liking the schedule. It gives me the structure I need to guilt myself, should I fail to meet my target word counts. I also highly recommend a desktop countdown telling you exactly how many days are left until the deadline!
So how's it going? Quite well I think. I've got the plot outlined (a bullet-point document of many levels) and I'm still really enjoying the story. The next part is going to be really fun to write and I've been looking forward to it for quite a while. The last couple of weeks have seen a few logic kinks ironed out and a shift in the themes of the story away from abstract ideas and more towards something people can relate to. One of my course-mates put me in touch with her nephew (who sits right in the middle of my target age-range) and he gave me some great feedback too.
We've also organised our own workshops to continue where the official ones left off. It's great to have a group of knowledgable and talented people to review your work and bring you down when you need it 
ONWARD!
Moving House…
...is not a suggested activity for mid-way through your writing MA.
Regular posts will resume in the future.
Writ- CHILLI!!!
Jeremiah Tolbert suggests that writers who are seeking to build an audience shouldn't blog about writing.
In that spirit...
So last night I was cooking chilli. I'm not a natural cook so recipes are my friend. "Recipe for chilli?" you say. "But Sam it's so simple!" I know. But I want to make chilli that tastes good and when it comes spices I'm like an infant with a collection of throwing knives. Anyway. I'd bought some cheap mince (50p / 250g in ASDA) and halfway through cooking I'm noticing a significant amount of grease. I mean this stuff isn't just collecting around the edges, the entire contents of the pan is glistening. There's no way I can strain this thing and this is one heavy pan so I can't tip it out without dumping the chilli in the sink. Panic? Terror? HORROR (of Lovecraftian proportions)?
No. Refried beans. And heat. Lots more heat. And an extractor fan. In time what fatty juices the beans didn't drink boiled off and I was left with the perfect wrapping chilli. A bit of customisation (extra cayenne and chilli powder) and it was ready to eat.
So there. No writing. Just a damned fine chilli. And a mess avoided.
That One Perfect Sound
I'm always questing. It sounds pretentious? Nerdy? Daft? Well it's true. I'm always questing for that one perfect album or song that reverberates throughout my innards and lances down my back before lodging in my hind brain and demanding replay.
When writing the sounds that come packaged with the world seem insignificant, yet filled with distraction. Even the silence of deep night is deafening in its annoyance. But into this mess flow my favoured sounds; a wall of noise that grants a curious mixture of relaxation and blazing energy. Then I write.
It's not a quest that can ever be completed. My tastes, opinions, feelings and those of people around me are fluid and malleable. My brain won't tolerate stagnation. I guess the best I can hope for is a cycle of new to old, as previous favourites fade in memory and their attraction grows anew. But for now my quest continues.
The Hazards of Research
I have a love/hate relationship with research. It's necessary but it can create a whole mess of issues...
First there's procrastination. You're really into the idea behind your story. You want to know more so you can understand it better. You read and discuss and read and discuss (ad infinitum) all under the guise of better understanding your characters. You know that if you keep it up for long enough you're going to get that fantastic little insight that will make your story unique. But of course you aren't writing. You aren't getting the story finished. An unfinished unique story is always worse than a well written, finished piece without a shred of original thought.
Next there's world building. The world in your mind is so amazing, so fantastic and so awesome... If only you knew enough to anchor it in a reality people can relate to! The problem here lies with balance. As soon as you fall in love with your world more than you do your characters the balance is off. I'm sure there are people who love to read well crafted descriptions of interesting worlds where nothing really happens, but for the rest of us you need to reign it in. Your characters live in the world not the other way around. The other problem with over-building your world is one of credibility. The more you write, the more people have to pick holes in. You want to write just enough to make your world believable and enjoyable. Nothing more!
Then there's lack of focus. The things you research have to relate to your characters and their immediate world. It's so easy to imagine how your idea could have wider reaching implications and let your mind wander so far that your passion is for the idea rather than the story. Worse yet, you could find that the characters you've just written about for ten thousand words aren't nearly as interesting as those that just popped into your head. The chances are if you've written that much then it's worth forcing yourself to stick with an idea and see where it takes you.
You can scare yourself too. When dealing with big ideas it's easy for a writer to come to the conclusion that it's too big for their story. The idea that there are too many complications, implications and variables to keep track of just isn't true. Even the biggest idea can be boiled down to the following question: How does it affect my character? Your readers aren't there for an essay on the next big idea. They want to be engaged by interesting characters that experience interesting things. You're more than capable of doing that so don't be afraid.
This is far from exhaustive but those are just a few of the issues I've faced. They can be overcome with confidence, determination and blind ambition.
Career Writing? LOL
I'd like to start off by saying that I already have a career. I'm happy with that career. I don't expect to ever make significant amounts of money from my writing. This isn't pessimism based on a lack of confidence in my own work. Rather it's based on observations and teachings. If there's one thing that my MA course has hammered into me over the last two years it's that there is very little chance that the time I spend writing will (on a £/hour basis) rise above (or even come close to) minimum wage.
But like I said at the start, I'm comfortable with that. I'm not so sure that can be said for many other people on the course.
The following article pretty much confirms my feelings and emphasises the importance of taking away transferable skills...
Is Creative Writing a Pyramid Scheme
Here's a Guardian article by Ian Jack making the point with a little more fervour...
The Age of the Gifted Amateur Has Returned
Someone else agreeing with him...
An article responding to Ian Jack and attempting to shift the blame away from creative writing courses and back onto publishers...
Creative Writing Courses are Protecting Our Literary Future
Regardless of how this reponse shifts the blame, the fact remains that a successful and financially dependable career in writing is far from a choice. Other issues with the refutation are described in the following article.
Depressing? For a lot of people probably. For me not so much. I love the idea of doing things myself, publishing online, offering e-books and printing on demand and just getting my stuff read.
But then you have to remember what a publisher really is: A marketing machine. Don't think of a publisher as someone who turns your words into a book. Think of them as an entity with the power to force people to read your book. Three for two in Waterstones, window displays, train station billboards etc. etc. If no one (other than friends and family) reads your work then is there a point to the writing in the first place?
The internet is a game changer but the issues of publicity alone are a problem and that's before you take into account people's dislike of reading more than 3k words on screen, the allure of the book and the horrifying lack of quality control in self-published work. If you think the average blockbuster novel is poorly written, imagine what the world will be like when everyone has equal ability to have their work read...
Anyway... Lots to think about... Some believe the solution is to diversify their work as it relates to literature. But that brings us back to the first article.
I maintain that writing is a fun hobby and not a career choice.
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First Draft Complete
I'm officially declaring the first draft of my dissertation prose complete. Five fairly long chapters and 15433 (according to Scrivener) words later and I'm relaxing a little. Tomorrow I can start editing.
The plan is...
That should about cover it.
Onward!