Piebald Bunkum

New Website

2009-04-23T00:23:00.000-07:00

I'm now blogging on my new website.

Come visit!

2008: A Photo Montage

2009-01-01T07:23:00.001-08:00

Tom works on his groove at our pad
Champions!
The romantic interlude in Oxford didn't quite work out, but I did bag a room with a view
And the High Street is still beautiful
Day Tripping with Nick and Kata
Outside Buckingham Palace
Off Piste, Val Thorens, France
On Piste!
Red Sky At Night . . .
. . . get pissed with the Irish
Global Cooling?
On route to Via Diodati on the Newhaven - Dieppe ferry looking like a true Frenchman
Downtime for David in Brighton
Italian Men seem good at attracting gorgeous girls . . . hmm . . .
. . . and losing your dignity
Tanith Lee and Harry Harrison are the famous ones . . . well as famous as SF writers get!
Dean shows how to pull off the man-bag . . .
. . . not sure about the flat cap though . . .
Lee's right-hand man is the grim reaper
Jeff ups the ante for Villa Diodati by discovering a villa outside Lyon
Best. Writer's Group. Ever.
Twins Birthday
Isle of Wight
Food Lines
Woooah . . . J E N G A!
Carn Meini, Wales

Conflict Resolution

2009-01-01T04:21:00.000-08:00

2008? Get out of here!

2009. Welcome!

So, as is the custom of the times, a swift review of the year that's gone, and a golden-tinted view of the year to come . . .

I made five resolutions exactly one year ago. Let's see how they went down.

1. Write at least three hundred words a day.
- No stats available on this one. I certainly failed to write each and every day, and even if I took the word count cumulatively and made an average I think it would be somewhat less than 300 words per day. FAIL.

2. Read a piece of short fiction every day.
- Read my three-hundred and sixth fifth story yesterday! Although I didn't follow the resolution to the letter, playing major catch-up in the latter months of the year, I'm taking this one. I'll post seperately about this monumental achievement. Ahem. PASS.

3. Keep searching for a soulmate.
- Okay, the search largely didn't leave the confines of internet dating -- I'm not one for flirting in coffee shops or supermarkets -- but I can't say I didn't try. Met many great girls, just not the right one. Work in progress. PASS.

4. Do at least thirty minutes of vigorous excercise three times a week.
- Slowed down towards the end of the year, but pretty much had this one wrapped through all the football, squash, and cycling. PASS.

5. Sell my house and buy a place in Budapest.
- Unrealistic aim what with the MSc not finishing until Sept, and now I'm not sure where the future lies anyway. FAIL.

Overall, three out of five. With the two fails not being too horrendous I can live with myself . . . biggest disappointment has to be only selling one story this year, and not continuing the momentum I built up in 2007. I can make excuses about focusing on the Masters, but the truth is I didn't apply myself enough.

Steve surveys the road ahead
Looking ahead:

1. Keep up the excercise. Nothing makes for better long-term health than regular activity, so must get back into the three-times-a-week sporting routine.

2. Cook properly at least once a week. My home eating habits have been sliding towards a few signature dishes such as bangers and mash, and chilli con carne, and, dare I say it, ready meals (Tesco's Finest, mind, or is that an oxymoron?) and it's time to buck that trend. So, Delia, Hugh, and Gordon get ready for a tiny bit more money in the coffers . . .

3. Cut-down on the XBox. Specifically, no more Call of Duty 4. Put down the controller. Step away from the flatscreen. No. Nada! Pure masturbation for the mind. But I will play other games like Fallout 3 and Dead Space -- for research purposes, natch.

4. 300 words a day. If at first you don't succeed . . .

5. Write a novel? Not sure that's an effective resolution. Maybe better would be: do shit that you need to do when you write a novel. Ideas, Characters. Setting. That sort of stuff. And the words too, I guess.

Tense Negotiations

2008-12-05T10:18:00.000-08:00

Okay, I came to a decision about the POV. The story will be written from the first-person perspective of the man under interrogation. I managed to find a critical question that both the interrogator and the interrogatee could plausibly both be in the dark about and still want to know the answer to. Hopefully, this will mean less artificial restriction of events the main character would clearly be aware of. And it allows me to hide some facts that the interrogator is aware of until the appropriate time.

The question has now moved onto what tense the two threads of the story should be written in. Personally, I don't have any problem with present tense, and I would be quite happy to write the present-day events in the present tense, with the scenes of the MC's recollections written in the past tense. This seems a natural way of enabling the reader to rapidly understand whether the current scene they are reading is past or present, and additionally gives an extra feeling of events happening *now* in the present scenes. For a first-person narrated story, there is one situation where present tense is mandatory -- when the main character dies before the end of the story. I don't think that's the case for my tale, but it is nice to keep that option open!

There are many successful examples of first person present-tense out there -- Ted Chiang's "Understand", and Frederik Pohl's "Gateway" immediately come to mind -- but it does seem to be a deal-breaker for some readers. Artistically I want to go with the present/past structure, but from a commerical point of view, perhaps the past/past structure is better. What should I do?

117 words. (Plus hundreds more in character backgrounds, plotlines etc, so not as bad as it sounds!).

Not Just Any Body

2008-12-04T16:26:00.001-08:00

Dilemma:

The present story I'm working on begins with my main character being interrogated about an act of sabotage he may or may not have committed (but was certainly involved in, in as much as he was there at the time). Through the course of the interrogation the events of the crime are slowly revealed, so that by the end of the story both the denoument to the crime and his role in it are uncovered.

The problem I'm having is choosing the appropriate POV. If I choose the guy who was involved with the crime, then it makes the story artificial in that he deliberately withholds infomation about (a) the facts of the crime, and more importantly (b) his identity in relation to the crime (in essence, is he an enemy inflitrator, or not?). If I want to retain him as the POV character (ideally, I do, because the story is essentially his) then the only way I can do this is by using third person-cinematic -- the viewpoint where there is no interior monologue, just action like in a film.

If I don't want to do that I need to switch to the interrogator's POV; this allows me to keep the reader guessing about the true identity of the captive, but does mean that we are no longer directly attached to him, seeing the world through the interrogator's eyes instead. That's nice in the sense that I can explore the theme of trust more naturally, but it does also mean that I need a story for the interrogator as well. He cannot merely be a passive observer in the piece.

Which POV would be the better choice?

450 words. And good 'uns, too!

In Their Heads

2008-12-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest problems I have with my writing (I said "one"; there's plenty of other faults!) is developing a character's voice.

By nature I often take a detached view of events, and this translates through to my prose. I usually construct my sentences slowly, focusing on clarity more than voice. This method seems to leave the unique cadences and tics of any particular character off the page.

One gregarious violation -- exactly like those two words! -- is my use of longer, more precise lexicon when it's not always faithful to the character. There are a number of ways of dealing with this.

First off, never use language -- especially filler language -- that the character wouldn't be aware of themselves. If you used the phrase "Pertaining to the matter," then as a reader you might expect the character to have a certain level of education or be in a professional firm or have had a particularly well-heeled upbringing.

Second, keep the character's focus on things they would be interested in. If a character has no expertise in star fields, then you can't begin describing the constellations in great detail even if it is just description. That would jar.

Of course, there are many more tricks: sentence length; diction; deciding on your character's overriding feeling towards the world -- cynical, joyous, depressed, envious (be aware of alienating readers with unsympathetic characters though!). Automatic writing may help to overcome your own sub-conscious imprinting of your own outlook on the writing too.

Or, the other way to go is choose POV characters who better reflect your own worldview and personality. Anyone for an emotionally detached analytical hero?!

As an example of brilliant control of character voice, everyone should read Daniel Keyes classic, "Flowers for Algernon."

298 words. Meh.

Writing Lab

2008-12-02T15:41:00.000-08:00

So, the exciting development that was hinted at yesterday!

Although I realise that my daily wordcount numbers are a fascinating statistic in their own right, I thought that there might still be ways of spicing up these posts further. Difficult, I know, but probably not impossible. And I like a challenge.

So, lightbulb moment! What about talking about some writing issue that's come up during the course of the day? That might mean anything from analysing a single sentence's construction, to what to do with all those rejection slips, to how to really piss off an editor/agent at a con (#1 Follow into the toilets one of the few people who can help you make it in the writing game, then push your shitty manuscript under the cubical door while he/she is taking a crap. No prizes for guessing what gets used as loo-paper).

Since I meant to post such a dilemma yesterday, but was foiled by a dropped internet connection, I will talk about, not one, but two issues today!

First up, what's a reasonable characters/words ratio for a first scene of a short story? I'm not talking about all those nameless goofs who might be making up the numbers -- Rebel Alliance homecoming crowds, Star Destroyer minions, you know, those kind of folk -- but the people you actually name. You see, when a reader comes across a Luke Skywalker or a Harry Potter on the first page a little memory stack in the brain gets used up. Actually, it's probably not so little. There's probably lots of anticipatory clearing of the cobwebs so that the mind is ready to begin storing everything from what little Harry ate for breakfast, to what his big conflict is. There's only so many such folk the brain can handle (unless you were born in 18th century Russia in which case a named cast of hundreds is just dandy), and nothing pisses off a reader more than Auxillary Sandwich-Machine Maintenace Engineer Billy Gimes getting stage-time in the first paragraph only to never appear again in the rest of the story. Personally, I think a 250 words per character is a reasonable maximum for the opening scene. Any more and the reader won't be sufficiently grounded in any of those characters and they'll stop following the story you're intending them to read. Of course, clever sods might deliberately name Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, and Sneezy very swiftly to engender a sense of confusion that mirrors their protagonist's feelings, but that's a special case. In practical terms, if your planned first scene is a short one, but involves all five of your main characters together in speaking roles, you probably need to change that scene. And the corollary is that you should never name any of the grunts. Let them do the dog-work anonymously!

Second conundrum. How do you slip acronyms into the text? Some are easy. Everyone knows what CIA means. You don't need to write "Central Intelligence Agency", the reader is not a moron. But what about CME? Do you know that, smarty pants? It stands for Coronal Mass Ejection. But, ahhh, your characters don't go through that mouthful every time they say or think the concept. They refer to it as a CME. Thus, satifying both your reader and your character is a mite tricky. Do you use, "Corona mass ejections -- CMEs -- flared off the sun," making an ugly halfway house that at least allows you to never again have to utter the bastard phrase , or do you just fuck the reader and write "CMEs flared off the sun," and let them work it out, or do go all skiffy and make up some new term that is understandable to the reader and plausible for the character, "Spewers flared off the sun,"? I don't know the answer, but every time I commit "CME" to the page I feel dirty. Suggestions?

And the wordcount? 458.

Checkin' In

2008-12-01T15:21:00.000-08:00

843 words. Check back tmrw for a more exciting post!

Tumbarumba!

2008-11-30T15:35:00.000-08:00

New story alert!

If you browse the interweb with Mozilla Firefox, then you should get over to www.tumbarumba.org to download a very cool Plug-In that will deliver a collection of new speculative fiction -- including my dark fantasy piece "Reunion" -- in a very novel way. If you use Internet Explorer then you'll have to wait to January . . .

In other news, I will be posting daily wordcounts in an effort to shame myself into greater productivity. Today's figure? 208. It is a Sunday!

Villa Diodati and One Hundred Subs

2008-05-07T05:27:00.000-07:00

Clones, demons, and the undead descend on rural France
The last couple of weeks have seen a couple of significant events in my writing life.

Firstly, after missing the inaugural workshop of the Villa Diodati Writers Group last autumn, I managed to get my act together and attend the group's second meeting in the small village of Jaulzy, France last week. Villa Diodati was formed to allow speculative-fiction writers living in Europe to meet-up and discuss their work, the genre, the markets etc. while enjoying good food and company. And I'm happy to report that's exactly what happened last week.

Every spec-fic workshop should be held in sight of a church and accompanying cemetery!
Writers (or authors!) resident in England, Spain, France and Germany (Ruth Nestvold, Nancy Fulda, John Olson, Aliette de Bodard, Sara Genge, Jeff Spock, Floris Kleijne, and myself) flew, drove, and ferried themselves to a small village sixty km north-east of Paris for several days of critique circles, brainstorming sessions, writing marathons, and epic meals.

Jeff roleplays a psychiatric patient
The house and garden were beautiful, if a little cramped when it came to sleeping all eight of us -- the first night, after drinking beer, wine, cassis, calvados, and champagne (we were celebrating Nancy and Ruth's birthday, nothing to do with nerves!) I eventually collapsed on the living room sofa and spent the night twisting and turning as I tried to fit my 5'9" frame onto the 5' long sofa. I wasn't alone in my sleeping difficulties -- Aliette slept in an alcove-like hallway next to the upstairs toilet and bathroom, and Ruth had to contend with the dawn light pouring through the window in the sloped roof immediately above her bed! By the second night I'd managed to combine the chaise-longue with the sofa to form an unbeatable sleeping arrangement -- so much so that I slept late and forced all the awake members of the household to congregate in the bedroom adjacent to the living room until I got up. I wish I'd got a picture of all those I found on the double bed, laptops perched in their laps, typing away!

Sara and John grab a dose of reality
The stories we critiqued were as diverse as the daytime jobs of the writers involved, but I think everyone came away from those sessions with the potential of making good stories even better. The feedback I got on my historical ghost story set in nineteenth century Viet Nam -- adding authenticity, colour, and tension -- will certainly make it more saleable. In other sessions we helped one another develop story seeds, threw out settings, devices, or first lines, and brainstormed solutions to common problems. These sessions really re-energised my creative batteries, and I came away from the workshop -- not only with fine French wines and cheeses -- but also with a renewed desire to fix up old stories and begin new ones. I'm sure the workshop will be the origin of many many sales for its members.

Even pink blossoms can't stop Jeff from crying as the workshop comes to an end
After the workshop ended and I got back home with this new inspiration, a flurry of submissions took me past my first hundred submissions. In the time-honoured tradition, my stats for this first tonne (a hundred runs in cricket):

4 sales (in audio, print, and online formats)
1 withdrawal
2 closed markets
4 outstanding
89 rejections

Longest rejection: 320 days (MechMuse)

Quickest rejection: 1 day (Lone Star Stories)

Nicest worded rejection: "I've read your story. I've even shown it to X, seeking a second opinion. And I'm afraid I have to say no. And I hate to do that, because the story has much to recommend it. The quality of writing is outstanding, better than some I've published in fact."

Happiest words to read: "We have been going through the past year's finalist stories and wanted to know if you would want your 1st quarter 2006 story, "By the Waters of the Ganga" to be included in the upcoming anthology. You would partake in the Writers of the Future workshop and Awards ceremony this summer, all expenses paid, and you would receive royalties for your story with the sale of the book."

Number of markets: 48

Signed rejection letters from editors: 2 (Stanley Schmidt, Shelia Williams)

Markets with 100% sales record: 2 (Nature and Cosmos Magazine)

Market with most rejections: Strange Horizons (7 and counting!)

Biggest jerk as editor: As if I'd tell you that! I'm trying to a be a pro . . .

Onwards and upwards!

Once More Around the Sun

2008-01-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

Three hundred and sixty five days. God knows how many hours. How are you going to spend them?

Like many of the previous thirty-one years of my existence I'm probably going to waste an inordinate number of those hours (a) hungover, (b) aimlessly wandering around my flat or the interweb, and (c) watching lots of mediocre football. However, aside from those pursuits I am resolving to do the following:

1. Write at least three hundred words every day. They can be for any purpose -- writing essays for the MSc, blogging, character and plot sketches, flirtatious emails (off to a good start in 2008 on that front as I've already made plans to elope to Tokyo with a beautiful blue-eyed girl from Leeds), stories -- but not shopping lists.

2. Read a piece of short fiction every day. As well as my subscriptions to Interzone, Cosmos, Black Static, and Zoetrope All Story magazines, I want to get stuck into several anthogies including work by Jeffery Ford, Ellen Klages, David Maursek, and Alistair Reynolds amongst others.

3. Keep searching for a soulmate. Yeah, I know that sounds terribly Mills and Boon, but I don't subscribe to the philosophy that if you're destined to be with someone then fate will see you right. I believe your chances of meeting someone you can spend your life with are vastly improved by doing things like: being socialble, taking a chance on random encounters, being active.

4. Do at least thirty minutes of vigorous excercise three times a week. During the football season this is easy. We train twice a week and play a match in between. Outside of this time, my fitness regime tends to plummet. This year I want to fill the void with squash, running, cycling, and those home fitness programs that give you six-packs in six weeks . . . and maybe rock-climbing.

5. Sell my house and buy a place in Budapest. This is the biggie. Family members have been advising me against completely pulling out of England on the basis that it'll be hard to get back on the property ladder here if I ever come back. That's probably true unless previously mentioned soulmate has oodles of cash. However, life's about choices, and if I ever want to be a decent writer who does things like gets book rights sold to Hollywood, has forums dedicated to symbolism in his work, and gets to commentate on the year's defining cultural events, then I've got to be dedicated which means working full-time on the scribbling. To be honest, it's not a hard choice.

Wishing everyone luck and love in their lives. Bring it on 2008!

For the Benefit of Steve-Kind

2007-09-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

A story I wrote while in the USA called "Dating for the Wired Generation" has just sold to the Nature Futures series!

Nature is, as I hope the majority of the readers of this blog know, one of the world's leading science journals, and a nice credit to have on my, currently very modest, bibliography.

This piece is a good example of how a writer can use his personal experiences to infuse his fiction with a high level of authenticity; all those failed dates through the Guardian Soulmates website weren't for nowt.*

Mattatuk, Long Island. That's where I wrote it!

*I don't mean that. From my end they were all pretty good dates, just not with that special person.

Sleep Deprivation

2007-08-28T21:54:00.000-07:00

I can't sleep. I'm too excited about everything.

I've just read the story written by my fellow WOTF winner, Jeff Carlson. It's called "The Frozen Sky" and it's a hard-SF fan's wet dream. It's set in Europa's frozen oceans, and is an intelligent, unrelenting screamer of a story. Read it!

Joe Jordan -- my roomie at WOTF -- has just posted over a hundred pics from the workshop and awards ceremony. Everyone looks just fabulous, darling. I suspect we're only ever going to be treated better than we were this week if we become Academy Award winning actors.

Tim Powers has just sent a very full list of all the fiction, non-fiction, plays, poetry, and films we should all watch before we die. The man's just showing off now. But that's what it's all about, eh?!

Anyway, rather than just blathering about all these fine and dandy things, I've been putting my mentally excitable state (I'm imagining atomic theory for the brain's energy levels here. Picturing ideas being fired off like photons as the brain returns to a stable state) to good use and deciding my new modus-operandi for writing. It's encapsulated by the phrase "It's the Sundays, stupid!". Yes, the seventh day will not be a day of rest or worship, but it will be accorded the necessary reverance. It will be my primary writing day!

I'm figuring it like this. Monday through Friday I kick around some ideas, develop a character and a situation, and have a plot ready to go by Saturday. Then, on Sunday, I write the entire first draft of the story in one extended sitting, only breaking for essentials. The following week I re-read the story on, say, Wednesday, and clean up the draft so it's ready for a first reader by the weekend. Rinse and repeat. If it works out I'll have fifty-two new stories each year. That sounds like a reasonable level of production to me!

Tomorrow I'm going to hunt for a local glassblowing studio so I can do some research for my next piece. I'm very excited about the combined prospect of intense heat and intellectual improvement.

Twenty-four artists at one signing. That's why we're under the "Bargains" banner!

The Inside Story

2007-08-28T01:56:00.000-07:00

Rubio's helps turn salsa into award-winning fiction!
Right now I'm sitting in a departure lounge at Atlanta International Airport. In about an hour I'll be getting my connecting flight back to the UK. Halfway home: this seems a pretty good time to try and get down some thoughts about WOTF XXIII.

My mood is intensely bittersweet, probably erring on the bitter side right now . . . I always hate endings and this one was particularly sad. Partly because it was four in the morning when I had to leave the Sheraton Hotel -- I was knackered from not sleeping, nobody was around except Grand Prize Winner Stephen Kotowych, and I found it hard to party the night before we all went our seperate ways. On the drive to LAX with Randall, one of the Illustrator winners, I think I fell asleep mid-conversation with our driver . . .

Anyway, WOTF was amazing. Even if Charles Brown, editor of Locus, had told us repeatedly that only one or two of us were going to make it (whatever that means), that couldn't shake the world domination vibe that coursed through the class all week. If Charles' words are true then the odds for most the group are already worse because human whirlwind, Jeff Carlson, has got a book on the stands right now. Check out Plague Year, a near-future SF apocalypse tale.

Hanging with, da da da, "The Illustrators of the Future"
The workshop was held at the place where we were staying: the Sheraton Hotel, Pasadena. It's a long four-storey building with a nice pool, bar, and restaurant. Virgin Atlantic use it to house their crews, but as well as stewards and stewardesses (who I note are among the less photographically-challenged of the workforce who serve the skies), the building next door was hosting Miss Teen USA throughout the week. The combination of these forces made for a very attractive cast of guest -- and helped us geeks stand-out even more. In a weird aside, when one of the Virgin stewardesses (who happened to be a fiction writer) heard about the workshop she was dead keen to meet us. Andrea, being a canny matchmaker type, immediately suggested myself as a point-of-contact, and a little later I met Sonal in the hotel bar. She might join my writing circle, Montpelier Writers, later in the year.

Nerds meet geeks at JPL
On Sunday we got introduced to the core instructors, Tim Powers and K.D. Wentworth. Tim is a man with charisma in spades. A custom-tailored jacket allows him to carry up to a dozen cans of coke at any one time, and so long as the caffeine in his system doesn't fall below a critical point he is a wonderful speaker. He'll strut around like a Shakesperian actor -- without the ego -- offering gorgeous morsels of wisdom, before self-deprecatingly telling you that he actually did the opposite. "Good is bad" was one of the many gems that parted from his lips and made me really think about writing. Kathy is less performance driven when she speaks, but no less a teacher for it. Her list of first line bloopers was particularly memorable, and included the line: X. Through Monday they covered the fundamentals of writing, including their thoughts on setting, character, plot, and dialogue. This was probably more reinforcing existing knowledge for most the class, but I did pick-up some new advice, such as ways of making speech more naturalistic with interruptions and tangential streams.

KD and Tim. Like Mastermind with no wrong answers.
Speaking of the class, I'll just give a brief run-through of their names, and my personal assessment of their chances of success . . . only kidding. I'll keep the latter bit in my head (it's all part of the act-like-a-professional drive). So, in the order the class was twin-seated in the octagonal workshop room, we have: Tony Pi and Steve Kotowych (keep the Canadians together so Americans don't get any ideas about nationalised health services etc, I guess). Tony is a linguist from Toronto, and Steve is a man you might want around when you need a large piece of Lucite (see later). At the desk behind them sat John Burridge and Doug Texter. John is a writer from THAT group, you know, the group that can't help placing in the anthology every year, and has a penchant for singing. Doug works for a Eng. Lit. Dept. He's a classic writer guy -- unbuttoned shirts over vests, sandals, a voice thick as molasses-- except for the fact he writes spec-fic -- which he deservedly gets crucified for. Thanks for taking some of the flak, Doug. Behind them sat Ed Sevic and Damon Kaswell. Ed is a bit like Frankenstein without the bolts, green skin, and anger-management issues. His voice carries some major authority, which probably helps him get-by in Israel where he currently resides. Damon is a recent father, so he handled the sleep-deprivation issues of the workshop well.

Tim Powers tells Damon Kaswell that coca-cola is the secret handshake.
That's the left-hand side of the room done. Then, across from Damon and Ed, you get to Aliette and I, the Euro contingent. I'm great, obviously, and Aliette is a little bit greater than that on account of her Vietnamese ancestry (which trumps my Sri Lankan blood). Ahead of us were placed Joe Jordan and Andrea Kail. Joe is an amazingly gentle man for someone who works in war zones, and contrary to some rumours, doesn't snore in his sleep. Andrea works for the Conan O'Brien Show and is hard-as nails NY lady. Watching a fight almost break out in front of the JPL reception building over which coast was best convinced me never ever to cross her. Kim Zimring and some chump named Jeff Carlson had the final two places. Kim, being an MD was very useful in reviving near-dead early drafts, and I'm sure Jeff will one day rule the world. When the day comes, just remember who helped you get there, Jeff!

Charles Brown tells Aliette and I to give it up.
The week was too packed full of events to do justice to here, but -- and this is really for the benefit of the other participants -- I'll now pass around some reverie gum. Chew on these: Bob the Thai waiter who was a living lesson in overexplanation; Steve K doing good work for Steve-Kind until on the last night when he asked Andrea for the time and got much more than that back; the curious aroma of sewage that wafted through Pasadena; living on tacos; the unveiling of the artist's illustrations; the dos and don'ts of approaching editors with material e.g. don't slide your manuscript under a toilet cubicle door; searching for water after coming out of the Mars Explorer Environment Simulation at JPL; seeing mint condition pulps -- practically all written by Hubbard either in his own name or under a pen name.

A pair of althletes, or the hands of a giant mechanical beast?!
One thing I do have to write about here is the twenty-four hour writing excercise. It is common knowledge (as common as knowledge can be in the oxygen-deprived heights of spec-fic) that during the workshop the writers must produce a complete story in 24 hours. What's not so well known is how powerful this excercise can be for a slow-writer. In terms of my career, I have the feeling those twenty-four hours will be the most important in my life -- unless I do something really dumb like this.

Even writers look cool in the infra-red
The seeds of the story come from a random object that KD gives the writer, and a chat with a complete stranger. I got colorful star-shaped salt-shaker, and winded up shooting the breeze with a guy who had the word "Security" emblazoned on the back of his T-Shirt (making my opening gambit the fairly easy: what are you securing?"). Anyway, I don't want to dwell on his life-story, suffice to say he'd been through a lot as a penetentiary guard and then police officer. The biggest inspiration came from a line he gave me when talking about the US government: "You gotta feed the monster," he said. It took a while for the different elements to gel, but when they did they story just came like that - BAM! I wrote for approx. twelve hours non-stop, only breaking for the bathroom and lunch, and I feel I got something good down. That's a new approach for me. I'm workshopping the piece with my writing group in a couple of weeks, so I'll see what they say.

Right, I'm going to write a seperate post for the Awards event later. That's all.

Then we all just disappeared . . . hopefully not career-wise!

(Audio) Published!

2007-08-17T18:11:00.000-07:00

Trawling the interweb yesterday, I noticed that Pseudopod have already put up my story, Everyone Carries A Shadow, on their site.

What are you waiting for?!

Las Vegas: City at the End of the World

2007-08-12T19:11:00.000-07:00

Fountains of Bellagio -- spoilt by patriotic soft rock
I have a thesis about Vegas. It's not startingly original, I'm sure. But it's there nevertheless. My thesis? The rise of a city like Vegas marks the end of a civilisation.

Every aspect of Vegas is absurd, and it's only a matter of time before the contradictions at its heart send it -- and probably 21st Century civilisation -- back into the Dark Ages. Let's look at the evidence.

Lions Habitat, MGM -- don't you wish the glass would break?
One: Sin City, the entertainment capital of, not just the States, but the world, is in the middle of the bleedin' desert. Now if that's not the most epic example of suicidal tendencies, I don't know what is. Places of entertainment need copious amounts of power and water to satisfy their guests -- vacation's the time to indulge, right? Already, brown outs are a common phenomenon in Las Vegas, and with the expected growth that's only going to get worse.

Two: Vegas is growing. Walking down the Strip -- not an activity to be taken likely due to its ten mile length and hundred degree temps -- there are at least two new super hotels being built: Donald Trump is getting in on the action with the innovatively titled "Trump Hotel" -- a gold leafed affair offering condos for the very well-to-do; and whoever Wynn is, they're building an identical hotel to their first which looks like it'll be called "Encore" which doesn't sound half as good in English. Personally, I think there's some reinforcing feedback loop at work here. Each hotel begets more guests which begets more hotels which begets more guests and so on. People come here to say they've been to the world's biggest hotel/casino or highest rollercoaster which makes even more people want to come. Only some cataclysmic event will stop this loop -- something like peak oil, or global warming making living a desert untenable.

Three: To me, gambling represents the insane side to humanity. To see so many faces enthralled by the glittering lights and repetitive sounds of the roulette wheel, or the croupier's deal, or the spinning reels is scary. It's like a switch-off for the brain. Let me concentrate on this little world that I have little control of, and then I don't have to think anymore. I don't think people gamble to win money -- deep down everyone knows the odds are stacked in the house's favour. I think people gamble because they want to fantasise with the idea of winning and what they would do, safe in the knowledge it won't happen. It's a means of not living. Pretending that if the roulette ball lands on the red four then my life will change, without taking the real steps to make it change. And the more people gambling in our society, the more people sitting on the fence. Waiting for the calamity . . .

Oh no, trekkies in town!
Four: And this ones tenuous, but gives more flavour of the place. Many of the hotels have a theme. The Riveria evokes the earlier, ritzy days of the city. The Venetian brings in Venice with ridiculous gondaleers punting beneath statued pillars. The Luxor, ancient Egypt. The Excaliber, the era of Knights. And so on. All this is a means of providing a time capsule when the sands that have buried the city are dug back by future archaelogists. Have everything in one place so that nothing gets forgotton.

It's just like being in Venice . . .
I gotta say, I didn't really get into the Vegas vibe. I observed, but didn't really participate. Maybe that was more to do with me than the place. I thought about playing some poker, or pulling some one-arm bandits, but I couldn't shake off the feeling that I'd just be going through the motions if I did. Poker players seemed to be predominantly older men who smelt of stale smoke and dressed badly. The slot machine addicts seemed to be mainly women with sagging eyes and defeated looks. Maybe I shoulda played dice. The few people I chatted with weren't interested in me, and I didn't even get the opportunity to pretend to be a european banker who'd just lost a few hundred thou on the floor -- I guess my clothes gave me away. Perhaps I'd have got more involved if I gone with a crowd I already knew.

Anyway, we're staring into the abyss, people! Get ready for the Fall of Rome, The Sequel!

Michael and I

Rahul Kanakia, MOMA, and The Queen of Swords

2007-07-28T20:51:00.001-07:00

Friday was by parts: educational, desperate, surreal, drunken, caffeine-tinged, and soul-lifting. And not necessarily in that order.

Who says the diner's cashing in?
The day began in Sleepy Hollow, which as you might expect, is a sleepy town on the banks of the river Hudson. It's not hollow, though. That would be silly. I did manage to get a glimpse of the headless horseman at a local diner, however. Only a brief glimpse, mind -- Felice came tearing in, screaming at me that it was time to bounce or we'd miss our train. Egg rolls in hand, we bombed down to Tarrytown Station, parked the car illegally, and jumped on the train.

Rahul, perturbed after suffering a rare attack
We were on our way to meet a couple of Clarion classmates: the exceedingly tall Rahul Kanakia, and the guy who fondly remembers Clarion as "nerd-camp", Sean Manseau. Felice (5'1), excited by the arrival of Rahul (6'5), did her usual Super Ice Hailstorm attack on the big man which pretty much involves Felice pummeling Rahul's midriff with her piston-like fists. When they hugged goodbye later in the day the picture was even more comical -- Rahul had to lean down as if he was about to cuddle a baby.

Do you like my pretentious pic?
Greetings done, we hit the subway, going all the way to 190th Street to visit The Cloisters -- a self-contained part of The Met which houses a collection of medieval European artefacts. I learnt some stuff about Jesus that I really should already know, fleetingly improved my vocab, and couldn't shake the thought that playing Thief: The Dark Project was a way cooler means of interacting with the Dark Ages.

Seriously cute sculptures in the Subway
Out of the shadows, we headed back into the city for lunch. We ate ridiculously priced, but gorgeous, sandwiches in Bryant Park and talked about books. More precisely we played the "guess the story" game by summarizing great works in twenty words or less e.g. two couples shoot the shit about relationships ("What We Talk About, When We Talk About Love" by Raymond Carver). It's fun to see masterpieces reduced to their bare bones. A quick pitstop in the New York Public Library and then we were back in Starbucks -- there's one on every block.

I said "I'm on the phone!"
Sean and Felice had departed by the time Rahul and I got to MOMA. Wise move. Seems like every other tourist in NY, taking advantage of the free entry after 4pm on Fridays, had converged to see Mondrian's lines and Van Gogh's brushstrokes. The queue zig-zagged for miles and we were told it would take an hour to get in. We headed for a bar instead. Afterwards, with Rahul on his way back to DC, I went back to MOMA. The queue was gone. I only had an hour, but it was enough for a art-lite appreciation of the work. Every other painting seemed to be by Picasso, but I also got to gawp at paintings by Cezanne, Matisse, and Klimt, amongst many others. Isn't there something wholesome and life-affirming about going to museums? I always feel spiritually cleansed afterwards.

Klimt's my fave painter . . . just so you know
Enduring image . . .
So it was back to a bar to wipe away that feeling ASAP. For about thirty mins I sat alone at the bar, my attention shifting between the three games of baseball that being shown on wide-screen TVs above the spirits. There didn't seem to be many single girls around, so I sipped at my beer like a pathetic loser. Then the stool next to me was suddenly occupied. An older woman with a frizzy shock of blonde hair, and bracelets on her upper arms ordered a Mojito and began making small-talk with the bartender. What the hell, I thought, any kind of company would be good.

"Do you watch baseball?" I asked.

She turned to me. Her face was a mess, heavily made-up and strangely shaped as if she'd been sculpted from putty by a drunk. Then I noticed how thin she was, skin almost hanging off her bones. This was going to be purely platonic relationship, I thought (these things rarely go any other way anyhow!).

"Okay, watch this game," she said, pointing at the screen to the left. As she talked I tried to place her accent. It wasn't easy on the ear, and I realised her geographical centre-of-gravity was somewhere in the mid-Atlantic. Her descriptions of the plays weren't going anywhere, so I cut in.

"I can't place your accent. Where are you from?"

Natasha Veruschka -- as I later found out her name to be -- was born in India, raised in Kent, and now lived in NYC. More interesting than that, she also happened to be in the Guiness Book of Records.

"You'll find me on page ninety-three," she said. "I've swallowed twenty-seven and a quarter inches." Of sword. She was pretty short; the sword must've been half-way down her leg. Gullible (or is that honest?) type that I am, I had no doubts that what she said wasn't 100% true. That didn't stop her from pulling her scrapbook from her handbag a moment later. I flicked through newspaper clippings and photos and promotional materials while she went to the restroom. She'd swallowed all manner of swords from rapiers to halogen-illuminated ones. I was impressed.

"This looks pretty dangerous," I said when she got back.

"Britain wouldn't let me represent them because so many sword-swallowers have been killed. That's why I'm listed as American in the book."

Good ol' U S of A. Never one to let mortal danger get in the way of a good show. I guess there are alternative careers she could get into if she ever got too scared . . . She invited me to her show at The Cutting Rooms (co-owned by Mr. Big from SATC!) the following night, gave me her number, and then left. Later I googled her, and sure enough there was her website.

At midnight, back in Sleepy Hollow, I found Felice's flatmates about to go to a bar. Did I want to join them? Silly question. Women seemed to be thin on the ground, but there was plenty of booze -- incl. the inappropriately named "car-bomb" -- and I had a good time getting to know Chris and Swapnil as we crawled from place to place. On Saturday I suffered.

Think I'll give "The Top of the Rock" a miss today . . .
Prometheus . . . overlooking a cafe?!

An Interlude in Mattituck

2007-07-25T17:17:00.000-07:00

I've found my dream home! Unfortunately it belongs to Rob Levy's folks, and I don't think they're planning on selling. Not that I could afford it, anyhow. Located on the north fork of Long Island, the house is amazing for the following reasons and more: beautifully styled and proportioned interiors; a beachside plot; cool sea breezes through the garden; a swimming pool if a dip in the Long Island Sound doesn't appeal; a dozen places to perch a laptop or notepad and shoot the fictional breeze. One day I will live in such a place. J. K. Rowling move aside -- it's time for another YA heptology with film spin-offs.

I'm Mulder, Felice is Scully. Which TV personality are you most like? Check Noah Lusky's new book to find out!
Stress relief, nature's way.
Rob, Felice and I spent two fabulous days swimming, writing, dissecting relationships, cooking, lounging in the hammock, sleeping in, playing Pictionary, reading, and many other relaxing pursuits. It was bliss.

Felice does a little dance of joy -- or has she just trodden on a starfish?
A Clockwork Orange
A partial resurrection of the "Circle of Power" -- a huge glass table around which various Clarionites tapped away last summer -- meant I was able to hammer out a short piece for Nature's Future series.

A triptych of speculative power!
Harry Potter? Pah! Felice researches for an upcoming blockbuster . . .
Now it's time to head back to the city.

NYC: Fittest city on Earth?

2007-07-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

Do you see what I've done there?
New York continued its charm offensive, today.

Coming out of Sean's place I was greeted with blue skies dappled with the occasional fluffy cloud, and 29 degrees tempered by a soft breeze. I ambled down the street and headed into Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast. Purely for the cultural immersion, you understand. It's an American institution, right?! A cup of coffee and two donuts later (Vanilla Surprise, and Brownstone Creme), and I was on my way. Destination?

Central Park.

Try and spot the non-athlete
Here is where NY really begins to shine in comparison to other cities. The Park is clean, and unfouled by man or beast. There are thousands of people running, cycling, skateboarding, and rollerblading around the curved avenues that cut figures of eight. I even saw a couple of folk running while pushing their kid's pram. And they're doing it regularly, not just on nice summer days, because they look HEALTHY. Let's face it, globally the USA has the reputation of leading the world in the obesity/consumption stakes. That's unfair on NYC. In the developed world, I can't think of many places where people look in such good shape. Can you recall many people jogging around Hyde Park in London? I can't.

Breakdancing's just excercise for the hip kids
The knock-on effect of this is that everyone looks pretty good when they show some skin. Yep, sunbathing is another popular activity in Central Park. God bless America! A few places to swim would be nice, but you can't have everything.

All I Really Want is Girls
Another observation: every other person is reading the new Harry Potter book. On the subway, on benches, on the grass, on the sidewalk. I can't imagine this magnitude of readers is occuring anywhere else. Anyone got any hard data from other cities? Not only does this lend to a weird but encompassing atmosphere that allows strangers to converse about magical happenings, it also means that all these people must've read all the previous books too. That's a substantial amount of reading, and can only be helping to make NY one of the most literate (in the loosest sense of the word) places in the world. Perhaps this series of books will, when viewed in hindsight, be seen as a turning point away from lazier forms of entertainment such as television and video games. We can only hope so.

And Harry woke up. THE END.
Yesterday, Sean and I were comparing notes on our online dating lives. One aspect of this that we'd both experienced was the qualitative difference between meeting someone online (I mean through pics and email/IM exchanges) and meeting them offline. It's probably fair to say that no matter how many words you write, how many pictures you send, while the relationship remains online, you cannot replicate the experience of meeting face-to-face. There's something very visceral about who we choose to like in a romantic way. All kinds of channels of information such as the myriad aspects of speech (tone, delivery, register), body-language, smell, behavior etc which get lost when online can be decisive in determining who we like and who we don't like. The interesting question is: do these instinctive reactions matter?

Hoops: Fun Game or Mating Strategy?
Let's say you meet someone online and you get on well. A couple of weeks later you meet up. You get on fine, having good conversation, laughs, and finding shared values. However, in your heart you know this person isn't the one you would've approached in a bar -- purely from a physical POV. Can you get over this? I hoped it was possible, but in my experience things only get harder and not easier if you persist. When someone asks if you think them beautiful do you bullshit them or be honest? I like to think we're able to overcome our biological tendencies -- or, more precisely, that we must overcome our biological drives if we want to be happy in the long term. Otherwise, we're on a path to sleeping around, salivating over younger, healthier potential partners, and lying about, or exagerrating, our own qualities. I don't want to be a cynic, but is love just biology in disguise?

Shopping on Fifth Avenue under God's Eye

New York, New York

2007-07-21T15:22:00.000-07:00

. . . located on Fifth Avenue
Some miscellanea I've discovered since my arrival:

NY is a vertical city. The buildings go up and up and up. The thing is there doesn't seem to be as many people at street level as there should be to fill these buildings. Are there lots of empty floors? Or do people live in their offices, only coming out once a week to do a spot of shopping?

Blue-sky thinking? No problem!
There's a pleasing level of individuality in the attitudes, dress-sense, and behavior of the people. New York seems to be a city that embraces differences. A refreshing change from Worthing.

Amongst the hoi-polloi
Sean can lift a staggering amount of weight. I showed up at Sean's Cross-Fit gym a little early and he was still finishing his sets. I think he could beat-up most spec-fic writers no problem.

Gotham City. Home of Super Writer Boy!
Grand Central Station looks smaller than in the movies. Plus there was no frantic chase/tense stand-off with the NYPD, either. Still, it's the plushest station I've seen for a long time.

We have a fugative . . .
Talking of the NYPD, have you seen the police station at Times Square? In an effort to blend in with the neon slashed fronts of all the surrounding buildings, the Times Square police station sign is written in fluorescent flashing pink and blue. I expected the cop from the YMCA song to stroll out at any moment.

Yo, man! Are you listening to me?
Everyone's reading Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling used to be a school-teacher, and now she's probably the biggest-selling author of all-time. So, I'm 50% there . . .

You mean my physics teacher was lying?!
Scientology HQ in NY is near Times Square. Somehow, my rambling walk around the city led me to a woman giving out flyers about Dianetics. Coincidence or spooky mind-control?

Bush ain't popular here.

Cheney/Satan? That could be a pretty kick-ass combo.

[Blockbuster voice] This summer . . .

2007-07-11T05:07:00.000-07:00

. . . L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future will take you places you've never even imagined. See the future. Today! [/Blockbuster voice]

And if that isn't doing it for you, then I've got a picture of the Writers of the Future Vol. XXIII to whet your appetite instead:

Personally, I think it's a superb cover. It conveys the sense-of-wonder feeling that characterizes the best spec-fic, and at the same time keeps the intimate, human aspect central.

This isn't the only artwork connected with the book that I've come across recently. A few days ago I was sent a PDF copy of the page-proofs of my story. One of the best parts of this contest--aside from the awards, the workshop, and the publicity--is that the published stories are illustrated by the winners of the Illustrators of the Future contest. The drawing that will accompany my piece wasn't in the proofs, but the name of the artist was. His name is Artem Mirolevich. He hails from Minsk, currently lives in New York (according to his website), and he knows his stuff.

Check out a couple of his pieces here:

The Art of Artem Mirolevich

I can't wait to see what he comes up with.

A Weekend With Belgian Cycling Legend, David Le Ashton (Part One)

2007-06-26T04:42:00.000-07:00

David Le Ashton: Cyclist, philosopher, environmentalist
Recently I had the pleasure of spending a weekend with one of the flat country's lesser-known cycling greats, David Le Ashton. David's hoping to take the mantle of five times winner of the Tour de France, Eddie Meryx, and I joined him on a intensive two-day training regime in his beloved Ardennes.

Before the cycling began in earnest, David kindly let me stay at his apartment in the heart of Brussels. The view from David's balcony is a most intriguing one for an avid cyclist: he overlooks a beautiful sixteenth century square that has been turned into a car-park! David told me: "When I need to get passionate I come and stand on my balcony and look at all zees cars. They put me into a rage. Sometimes I go down in the middle of night and fly-poster the windscreens with upcoming cycling events or reclaim-the-streets marches. It makes me feel like a good citizen."

Don't mention the cars!
For some, David's sleeping arrangements might seem odd. For a semi-professional cyclist they make perfect sense. You see, David re-assembles his bed in a different room of his apartment every night. "Not only does zees make me strong and help me sleep well because I am tired, it is good training for making rapid cycling repairs with all the nuts-and-bolts action." Fortunately, David didn't make me join in this bizarre routine.

David consults the bed assembly instructions
Outside, David never takes off his cycling cap--which I found out to my cost the morning of our departure to the Ardennes. After breakfast, I tried to whip off his cap and throw it up into the branches of a nearby tree in a hilarious-jape kind of way. "What are you doing?" he screamed. "This cap is my lucky cap. The top of my head has never once got wet while I've worn this cap! Touch it again at your peril!" Later I found out that David's reluctance to remove his cap is because it is here that he stores his essential race tools--and a patch of the yellow jersey that he ripped from Lance Armstrong's back during a spectacular crash in the 2005 Tour. He denies that he deliberately caused the pile-up, but I have my doubts.

Where's Le Ashton?
Only having one racing bike, before we could go I needed to hire a bike. David took me to a rental place that only stocked ladies style bikes, and I later realised this was for two reasons. Firstly, it allowed me to be a pack mule and carry the paniers. But secondly, and more importantly, it let him beat me hands down in all the King of the Hill checkpoints that dotted our route. Seeing David's competitive spirit close-hand gave me a real thrill. He's a winner! As an aside to this, it should be noted that I did beat David in one of the flat sprints. Afterwards, he told me he'd had a puncture a hundred yards from the line, and then later, when he admitted this was a lie, he insisted I must've been cheating. He administered a urine test back at his apartment and concluded I had banned substances in my bloodstream.

Urine and Cigarette
Part Two coming soon!

Palermo, Sicily: A Photo Story

2007-05-08T03:43:00.000-07:00

Two Englishmen, an Irishman, and a man whose ancestry rivals James Brown's in its complexity, come together in Palermo . . .
. . . where, getting zero interest from the local birds . . .
. . . they hit the local's favourite nightspot and witness a fiery Italian stallion whisper sweet nothings to his beloved (or was that assault?) . . .
. . . Mark's too busy tracking down his lost luggage to care though . . .
. . . his annoyance is lifted when the boys pass a fish stall and feel a bit peckish . . .
. . . a short bus-ride later, they're sitting down at a swanky restaurant with sea views . . .
. . . where even the oyster scooper is fashionably dressed . . .
. . . sadly this sartorial elegance in no way aides the taste of the sea urchins . . .
. . . but a shopping spurge helps to erase the memory . . .
. . . where even the bigger sized man is catered for.
Afterwards, Mark continues his negotiations with lost luggage operators at Air-Italia . . .
. . . who can only offer him a fat man with an umbrella in compensation . . .
. . . a selection of cheeses accompanied by various jams . . .
. . . and a small budget that goes no way near to paying for his BOGLIOLI jacket.
With Mark on his way in style, the remaining trio skip town in hired wheels. . .
. . . and head east along the coast for glorious panoramas . . .
. . . stunning 16th century architecture . . .
. . . and very gay photo-shoots.

Showtime!!!

2007-02-22T16:05:00.000-08:00

When you tell people that you're a writer, the inevitable first question is: have you published anything?

Rather than clearing my throat, shouting "Look out!" and pointing across the room/street, and then running, I can now answer with a cautious affirmative. L. Ron Hubbard's "Writers of the Future" anthology will -- barring acts of God etc -- contain my Losing Finalist story, "By the Waters of the Ganga"! As well as being my first publishing credential, I'll be joining the real winners in LA for the annual workshop and award ceremony -- and I might even get to meet Tom Cruise or John Travolta.

This is a huge milestone for me. Thanks to everyone who's helped me get this far.

Pest Perfect

2006-12-18T16:55:00.000-08:00

Castle District, Buda
"Hey, Steve!"

"Hey, Tibor! How are you?"

"You look fat."

That was the moment it sunk in that I was really back in Budapest. I appreciated Tibor's frankness to be honest. Most places, people will bend over backwards not to offend you. Here it's not seen as rudeness, just honesty. It can take some getting used to. I think in the developed economies of the West, we try to convince ourselves that we're living in some materialistic utopia and we don't do anything to destroy the vision. The economy's growing at record rates! My house went up 20% this year! We've broken new records on living standards! Waiting lists are down! There's less criminals! When was the last time you said something honest, something that matters, to someone who wasn't a friend? The English are a nation of tip-toers, hoarding their frustrations until they can use it as serious ammunition on loved ones. From overhearing conversations on the street, and through the interviewing job, I would go far as to say that the tip-toeing is no longer a deliberate ploy. It's become ingrained.

Anyway, I digress. The point was that six months outside Hungary and I'd lost sight of the blistering honesty that locals bring to the conversation. When I teached at the state school in Csepel, I can now remember some of the painful exchanges I had with the other English teachers.

"How was your weekend?" I'd ask.

"Nothing special. I looked after my dying mother, and wondered if my contract would be extended. How was yours?"

It's easy to see why this directness might translate into a national spirit that is, above all, depressed. On balance, I think I still prefer it to the English tendency to brush everything under the carpet and attempt to turn that grimace into an ironic grin though.

The trip got off to auspicious beginning. Heading out of the Metro at Nyugati, a big grin on my face from being back in this amazing city, I heard a shout from behind.

"Hey, swan!"

I turned around. Lo and behold, it was my host, Nick. Had he been waiting for me? No, it was just a happy coincidence.

"You're going the wrong way," he said, somewhat spoiling the moment. "You didn't listen to my directions this morning, did you?"

"No, I was panicking about missing my flight."

That's the best thing about good mates. You can slip straight back into the old routine, no need to have those kind of conversations with relatives where they ask you where you are in your life, what your plans are, whether you're ever going to get a real job. Those conversations are important, of course. They're just hard to answer in easily digestible sound-bites of less than twenty words to people who are already thinking of the next question.

We went to Nick's new place, a spacious one-bed apartment in a great location, a couple of hundred yards from West End City Centre (a shopping mecca). There was some good news. The day of painting that Nick had cunningly arranged for the weekend was off. The wall's need more preping before painting could begin. Shame. Second after watching paint dry, painting is my favourite holiday activity. Next time, Nick! Next time. Instead, we ducked off to a local computer store with Nick's dying PC where he harangued the shop assistant in German, and I witnessed Hungarian staff motivation techniques--"You're shit, underling. This is all your fault.", "No boss, this is your fault...asshole."

A true bachelor...
Since it was only Wednesday, we had a low-key night that wound up with my brother and I in a deserted Cha-Cha-Cha's. Now, Cha Cha Cha's is located in the underground. When it's empty it doesn't have the best vibe, what with the homeless winos and the distant rumble of trains. When it's crowded you wouldn't even know you were in the underground, the sheer mass of bodies giving you an unimpeded view onto the next person's armpit. Still, we had an entertaining hour with a former squadie who'd served in Iraq, and an over-intense Australian who was looking for answers to life, the universe, and everything.

The next morning saw me plonked down bang in the centre of the cut-throat world of high-finance and property as I visited James's offices. One of the "property consultants", Dominic, was reading the latest Ashes debacle, my brother was making the tea, and the boss, Rich, was sorting out his skiing hols. December is a quiet month, apparently. Dreaming of a mortgage-less future I looked at some apartments on their database, and made some appointments for the following afternoon. Apart from the weather, the gloom, the language, and the lack of peanut butter, I could quite happily live in Budapest. Having no rent to pay would certainly make the science-fiction writing aspirations easier.

Yes, I have just come with unbridled joy
For alcoholics, Budapest is nirvana. Best of all, a penchant for pilsner is open to all stratas of society, regardless of money or status. In every corner of the city, from station platforms to chrome-and-glass shopping complexes, there's always a sörözo nearby. They come in all shapes and sizes. In the backstreets you might stumble past a crumbling building that houses a student hangout with threadbare sofas and cheap beer. In the tourist district you'll find plush bars with surly table staff and aquariums for walls. In the metro mezzanines, between a newsagent's and a cheap clothes vendor, you'll find super-slim bars with dirty glass fronts and ancient fruit machines. Over the weekend we sampled the entire range. What surprised me most was the ability of the city to always throw up new places of unique charm. About half the places we frequented were new to me, either newly opened or older and previously undiscovered.

Friday morning I met up with Mate, one of the few Hungarian friends I'd made during my two years living here. He took me to a joint that specialized in főzelék--a thick, gelatinous soup that comes in flavours like pea, onion, and cabbage, garnished with frankfurters and served up with chunky bread. It's a real peasant's dish and I've got to say it's not my favourite Hungarian food. It reminds me of lukewarm, stodgy school dinners. To wash away the taste we headed for the nearest bar--a darkened basement of an establishment with an 80's jukebox and industrial strength vodka. Mate's a unique guy. He feels old-skool to me. Someone whose family was steeped in the traditions of Hungary and isn't as keen to the ditch the past as many of his compatriots. Not that he's into secret police forces or five-year plans or anything. He's very academic, very civic oriented, and surprisingly good at football considering his wiry frame. At present he works at a school for disadvantaged kids while he studies. The hours are horrendous, with shifts of eighteen or more hours, and the kids are hard work. I could see that the effort was killing him. The problem is money, or rather, the lack of it. Mate's a principled man and he knows that if he doesn't work these hours one of two things will happen: the other teachers will have to work even harder to cover him, or the kids won't get the care they need. That's not a path he's willing to go down, and I respect him immensely for it.

Spare a thought for the hard-pressed locals
Later, James showed me some apartments. Inside, they're beautiful. High ceilings, cavernous rooms, wooden floors, and a sense of solidity which is lacking in many modern builds. Some of the layouts needed a re-think, but by-and-large, they'd make fabulous homes. The problems stem outside. First, the external conditions of many of the buildings are terrible. I'm talking more than needing a lick of paint. The walls are scarred, some looking straight out of a war zone, and it's difficult to assess how serious the damage is. Then you've got the dog-fouled streets and the unrelenting greyness of the city. All this has to be balanced with the vibrancy of the city--Sziget festival, State Opera House, a politicized and active population, lively nightlife. I'm not torn as of yet, but in a couple of years when the MSc is over I could be.

Friday night I was billy-no-mates. Everyone I knew was having their company xmas do, and weren't coming out until later. I ate a plate piled high with gyros at West End city centre and then went on a mammoth excursion trying to find a place I could have a drink on my own without feeling like a loser. Forty-five minutes later I settled on Szimpla Kert, a huge, grungy student place with cast-iron garden furniture and peeling wallpaper. Within moments of arrival I bumped into some Hungarian acquaintances who all spoke excellent English and my preliminary social outcast license was revoked. The guys showed up in dribs and drabs over the course of the next hour in various states of inebriation--from Nick's flu-induced sobriety to Dean's mid-sentence-semi-collapse-and-recover-at-the-last-minute lurch towards Mark's crotch. Around one we stumbled on to a hip Latin-vibed bar where things got hazy and possibly rude . . . Mark.

Bill: Deano, you sure we're playing cricket?
Saturday began with palacsintak (pancakes) followed by 5-a-side football. Perhaps the reverse order would've been more sensible. Profuse sweating, near-vomit experiences, and dodgy shooting were the hallmarks of the game. Still, it was fun not being the eldest for a change, and the camaraderie that the Szigeti team has is something very special. Afterwards, in a swanky bar, feeling like a pick-up I ordered some mulled wine. Or at least that's what I thought I was ordering. You see, mulled wine is translated as "hot wine" and I'd asked for "warm wine"--or by another more slangy translation, "gay wine". The waitress looked gobsmacked until she understood my mistake. Five hours later, after watching the new Bond film and supping on Nick's signature dish, mushroom pasta, we were re-energised for the night. We went back to the hip Latin bar of the night before and discovered it was their anniversary. Free drinks all night--if you could convince the barman the round of five beers you'd just ordered wasn't only for yourself. There were girls galore too, and hanging around with my birth-and-namesake, Steve Wooten, I got introduced to some very attractive, very tall women. Thanks, Steve. Sadly, they weren't headed where we were headed so we parted company before jumping in a taxi for Nagy West Balkans, the new, big-brother of decayed student haunt, West Balkans.

The place was a cross between the Addams Family home and a field hospital. To get to the place you had to walk across a rubble-strewn yard and down a canvas walled corridor partitioned with those perspex curtains you find in supermarket warehouses. I think it's a noise reduction thing. Entering the space proper a wall of sound hits you. A long spartan bar stretches off to the right and a motley collection of chairs and tables to the right. Far ahead is the dance floor packed full of sweat and hormones. The cloakroom, oddly, is at the farthest point from the entrance. You have to go across the dancefloor and up a couple of flights of dimly lit, crumbling staircases to reach it. Not many bother so at least there's no queue.

Nick and I talked to/at a lot of girls that night. Although we still only had each other by the end of the night, the thing I like about Hungarian places is the variety of people. We met girls who were so vain they wore mirrors on the soles of their heels to check their asses. We met geeky girls with big NHS specs and underlying beauty. We met gorgeous women who weren't egomaniacs with it. We met drunken girls--one who said to Nick after his long opening spiel: "I don't know what you said, but I'm very drunk and I don't want to have sex with you." It was a fine night. I recommend a visit if you're ever in Budapest.

On Sunday, a traditional English breakfast, including black pudding, helped to sink the awful aftertaste of gyros from the (v. late) night before. We watched the Old Firm derby and then Nick wrangled a swim/sauna at his workmates swanky apartment complex. It was heavenly, darling! Except when we tried to make the sauna as hot as we could...

Boy, am I glad the chests are out of shot!
The evening was spent on the links at Lee and Linda's new place--we had a marathon session of Tiger Woods Golf on the PS2 while their superstar cats went nuts. One of the features of the game is the ability to create player models...down to the level of nasal hair length. Since Lee, Linda, and Nick already had their models built (or semi-built--Nick didn't have the patience to do a proper consultation and ended up with a Pinochio nose and close-set eyes making him look like one of Gary Larson's monsters) I had to have the treatment too. It wasn't so bad. I ended up looking like Seve Ballesteros--partly because I began with zero cash and got kitted out in standard sleeveless blazer and slacks. I didn't play like Seve though.

Who said Lee's chained to the sink...it's the cooker!
We got a taxi back and crashed. The next day I flew home. Even the two-hour delay couldn't wipe my good mood...now I just needed a break...luckily Xmas was round the corner!

Five Nights in Bri(gh)t(o)ney

2006-11-21T08:04:00.000-08:00

The bleak midwinter was enlivened this weekend by the arrival of mates from Budapest. Or rather, the arrival of a mate, singular. Out of the anticipated set of Nick, Dean, and Mark, only Nick managed to get here--and that wasn't without his own share of difficulties that I won't go into....

Magical Brighton
Of course, as any orgygoer knows, a twosome is a rather different beast to a foursome. Instead of the brash, outspoken hurricane of testosterone that characterises any gathering of men larger than three in number, a party of two is a far more civilised affair. As a general rule, the behavior of three or more guys is governed by the group's psychological centre of gravity with individuality subsumed into a meta-identity. Conversations are tidal, and often breakdown into 'banter' and 'taking the piss'. When out in public there's a safety-in-numbers attitude that allows the group to do things no one on their own would even think about doing. I'm not knocking it--it doesn't always have to involve downing pints of your own vomit, or visits to A&E--it's just it wasn't that kind of weekend.

Regency Rainbow
One problem that I did have was the two spare tickets to the Pompey-Watford game on the Saturday. How could I save Dean and Mark shelling out forty quid each? More on that later.

So, Nick and I slipped into a schedule more suited to two girlfriends, but hey, we're metrosexuals so that was fine. First night, we cooked, got pissed on wine instead of beer, and had frank, deep, constructive conversations about relationships. What we ate and talked about I've largely forgotten, but I definitely remember the wine. And the shot of Unicum from the bottle Nick had so kindly given me as a reminder of Hungarian hardships.

Next day, the Friday, saw us hit the highstreets and exclusive boutiques of Brighton like a pair of celebs without the paparazi, bling, or cash. Nick found a fashionable woollen cardie that looked like something my gran might have knitted in the mid-eighties and pounced. A gent of an assistant spotted loose stitching near the zip and offered Nick the garment for half-price. Bargain! I succumbed to the zeitgeist and bought ready-faded-and-creased jeans and a couple of T-shirts with meaningless squiggles daubed on the front. We were ready for the weekend like a pair of fashion jackals high on lines of the cutting-edge.

Come back! My gran could never knit that...
Shame we ended up in 'The Gloucester' then. For those not in the know: 'The Gloucester', or TBG (The Brighton Gloucester) as it's been cunningly re-titled, was an early nineties hangout for the freaks of society--you know, the nerds, the goths, the metal-kids--basically anyone not from the standard-issue cookie template of short hair/white reeboks (boys) and highlights/wonderbra (girls). It was always dark, always dingey, and whatever grip you had on your shoes was always lost by the end of night from the still drying laquered floor of spilt beer and alcopops. They played a lot of angsty music and talking to girls didn't carry the double risk of humiliation or a glassing. I had many a good night there.

Now, over ten years later, despite an extensive revamp, the original magic of the place hadn't been lost. There was sweatiness, there was flailing limbs on the dancefloor, and there was negotiating the Labrinyth-esque layout. So, apart from looking a little out-of-sorts in my achingly hip clothes, I felt right at home. And, I can only imagine that since Nick grew up in Germany, where David Hasselhoff was and still is a genuine legend, he felt the same.

In fact, the night took a turn for the better when Nick found the cojones to slide up to an olive skinned beauty and dazzle her with his linguistic fireworks. "Where are you from?" he asked, hands behind his back like an army major. The simple question and passive body language worked, and soon Nick was on a rollercoaster of a conversation, discovering facts such as what she was doing and what were her feelings towards Hungarian-American men who'd grown-up in Germany. The girl's name was Maria, she hailed from Espana, and she was out with her Spanish girlfriends.

I spied an opportunity and elbowed Nick in the gut. "Would you and a friend like to watch a game of Premiership football tomorrow?" Nick asked, while I made weird shapes in the air. "Steve and I are going to see Portsmouth against Watford and we've got a spare pair of tickets."

"Who's Steve?" one of the other girls asked. Nick pointed at me. The girl hesitated.

"Do we look like a pair of murderers?" Nick said.

"You, no." The girl eyed me suspiciously. "Him, maybe."

Charming. That's what long hair and bad dancing gets you these days. Fortunately, another of Maria's friends, Lidia, was willing to take the chance that I wasn't the next Peter Sutcliffe, and agreed to make up the foursome. Game on! Outside, we exchanged numbers and made plans to be in the contact the following morning, before saying our goodbyes in a fashion that tried to hide our relative anonymity to each other. Don't you hate goodbyes? I hate goodbyes. I'm a bad good-byer, especially with acquaintances.

Next morning, after sending a meticulously composed SMS, we got our rendezvous-point and set-off. We'd agreed to meet at the Clock Tower in Brighton at midday--an iconic meeting place, full of romance and history, only let-down by the fact it was impossible to get to by car. I parked and waited while Nick walked the last hundred yards alone. 12:05 and he's still not back. 12:08, still no show. Had the girls had a last-minute change of heart?

Stop frontin' and start navigatin'!
Of course not! At 12:11 Nick came round in the corner, sandwiched between two gorgeous women. Obviously the delay was due to their wanting to look their very best for Fratton Park, that bastion of high style. Kisses on the cheeks all round, and we were on our way. As we drove along the seafront road, the crisp sunlight glimmering on the waves beyond the esplanade, I remember spending an inordinate amount of time staring into my rear-view mirror. Was there really two women, two stunning women, sitting with big grins on their faces in the back seat? I trusted my eyes, and decided not to pinch anybody to make sure....

Mirror...mirror...mirror, signal, manoeuvre
We stoppped at home to shower (since we'd crashed at my Dad's place and hadn't brought a change of clothes), and arrived in Portsmouth just in time to make kick-off. The game wasn't great, but it did follow a nice pattern for the home supporters--fall behind, equalise, and then go onto win in the last five mins (from a very dodgy penalty). We joined in, and joked that we'd look out for the girls celebrating on MOTD.

Lidia y I
Chopstick Classes
On the drive back we got invited to a tapas bar, but on arrival the restaurant was full so we ended up in a sushi joint. And that was the last we saw of Maria and Lidia. I think there's a mutual desire to see each other again, but circumstances may conspire against us. Even if there's no feelings beyond camaraderie, I'd definitely like to hook up again.

Nick's big plan: win the jackpot and fly us all to Budapest
Sunday found us strolling on Brighton's pebbled beaches and up and down the pier. Afterwards we tried to catch the new Bond film, but it was sold out so we bought tickets for 'The Prestige' instead and killed time having a smoke while sitting in the car overlooking the marina. The film was far-fetched though still enjoyable, and working out the twists and witnessing the foreshadowing events was fun.

Who's up for a pot of gold? Ready, steady, go!
On the last night, after spending the day getting through the first two series of 'Peep Show', we went to a Rancid concert at the Brighton Dome. Strange venue for a punk band--teenagers dressed all in black, cosying up to the glass panelled, brightly lit bar and then being id'd. We people watched and then swayed a little at the back. Rock on!

Sub Bitch

2006-10-10T15:30:00.000-07:00

So, the study grant came through. Being loyal to my geek roots, rather than blowing the cash on perennial student favourites like beer and drugs, I took out a few magazine subscriptions.

The chosen titles should allow me to:

a) feel smug about supporting the arts,

b) never be short of conversation for dinner parties, and,

c) provide me with plenty of material to rip off and crowbar into my own fiction.

I still have a little money left in the kitty, which I will put into my Nintendo Wii fund.

The Beautiful Game

2006-10-05T13:36:00.000-07:00

I made it....eventually.

Sunday's second trial led to a pool of fifty or so players who would make up the three squads. So, it was back on Tues evening for the third and final round of trials, where everyone would be assigned into either the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd teams. We began with fitness again, where my unfit bastard credentials were plain to see. I can manage running at a constant pace fine. It's when phases of sprinting and jogging are mixed that I have problems. Since football is all about intense periods of activity followed by recovery, this is worrying.

Next came two rounds of squat thrusts, press-ups, sit-ups, and something else. I say something else, because the lack of discipline in the excercises meant you could do pretty much whatever you liked, as long as you made it from one side of the area to the other. Some people were practically jogging across, bending their knees as a replacement for the excercises. Pointless. I tried to do it properly, but quickly started cheating so I wasn't singled out as the slow one. I can't believe how weak my arms are.

Things got better after that. We did some ball skills work--mini-dribbles from left foot to right, dragging the ball across the body, control-turn-pass etc--and then played keepy in teams of three in a 15sq. metre area. After that was an 11-a-side game on half a pitch. I'm not sure what the coaches could tell from that as it was so congested, but I think they'd made up their minds by then. I was told to go inside. This turned out to be a good thing as the pool of players inside made up the 1st and 2nd teams. I was through!

But the evening hadn't finished....the muscles had relaxed, the stiffness had begun, but we had to go back out and play a match! It was here I found out I'd made the 2nd team in my preferred CM position. Then we played. It was so exhilarating. Our keeper, Dimitri, had strict instructions to throw or pass the ball out to the full-backs as much as possible. Only full-backs with sufficient touch, composure, and movement, can handle this kind of responsibility. It's certainly not easy, but Kev and Kenji excelled, and for the first time in many years I was part of a game played the way football is meant to be played. Pass, move, pass, move. A good team is like a smoothly functioning piece of machinery. Every player must perform certain actions according to the state of the game. For example, when the full-back collects the ball, the centre backs must be available for a pass backwards, and a central midfielder must be available for a pass inside. You need to be constantly alert and moving--which is why fitness is critical to success. Good teams move the ball around so quickly that it can be a frustrating and tiring experience for the other side...but when your team has possession it's a beautiful thing.

And if you can cap a intricate passing move with a goal there's no better feeling. We didn't manage that, but we did get a goal from a corner--a near-post header by yours truly! We beat the 1st team 1-0!

They got their revenge pretty quick. The next day we played a full ninety minute game, and they won 4-2. By the end, they were running rampant--a combination of better shape, sharpness, and fitness giving them a significant edge.

Anyway, apart from shredded feet from wearing new boots, I'm enjoying every minute.

Back to School

2006-09-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

So, I'm now officially that old dude who goes to uni to be ridiculed by all the youngsters. Actually, that's not true. A combination of not looking my age and a being amongst a group of more mature students, meant I blended in okay. Here's the evidence to prove it.

There's about twenty or so students studying Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems (EASy). Only three or four are doing it part-time, like me. It was a little disconcerting when the course organiser kept mentioning part-timers, and the special requirements they have. The phrase part-timer always has an air of slacker about it. Which in my case is about right. I probably could do this course full-time, but I want to study more leisurely and give myself plenty of time to write over the next two years.

During the induction we we told about the various modules and got a flavour of how this course pans out. Basically, because it's such a cutting-edge area, there are no textbooks written, no this-is-how-it-is style teaching. In the seminars they want us to read papers and then have great ideological and technically debates amongst ourselves. Needless to say, this is in stark contrast to my physics degree where most the theories were developed hundreds of years ago by stuffy gentlemen in tweed jackets, and repeated ad nauseam to legions of drolling nerds. Bring it on!

Also the MSc will involve lots of hands-on work--from programming projects to robot design. There's a lab dedicated for the EASy students. It looks like a cross between a child's play area and the computing section at the local library. An enormous table takes up the whole of the middle of the room, laden with lego bricks and wheels and electronic equipment, while PCs line the walls. It's open 24 hours a day, so if I get into this shit, I could be spending a lot of time in there. For myself, as a part-timer, this term only involves Maths and Programming modules, which should be easy, but not especially exciting. The good stuff will start next term.

After all this geekery, I went on to the football trials. There must have been over a hundred and fifty trialists. The first thing we did was fitness work which was going fine until we had to do the running version of the cycling Madison without the slingshot part. As a pair, both guys run around a 100m track. One has to run 3/4 speed while the other jogs. When the 3/4 speed runner catches their partner, they tag them, and swap roles. Do this five or six times and you'll be knackered! I definitely didn't shine here. Shortly after this, some passing drills began, and it was at this stage that people were told to drop out. "Guy in the Converse shoes. Thanks very much, you can go now." Everyone started getting nervous with their touch....

Fortunately, I survived the cull and made it to the 11-a-side trial games where I performed alright. Still lack fitness, but I passed well, ran a lot, and helped organise the team. Back for the final trial on Sunday, where, fingers-crossed, I'll make one of the teams.

Submission Frenzy

2006-09-26T04:33:00.000-07:00

They say: You gotta be in it to win it.

That applies as much to the National Lottery as publishing fiction, but it's never made me cross my fingers and buy a ticket. It is the same reasoning that has made me wary of being a submission junky. Although my writing process is very methodical, afterwards, my judgement of a piece is based on intuitive feelings. Aside from some stupidly optimistic vibes right at the beginning of my current writing life, the main feeling I have had for my work has been mild dissatisfaction. It's like the shape of the story on the page isn't the Platonic one in my mind, but an ugly facsimile. Editing helps, but it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Under these circumstances, it is hard to send a story out. You know it's almost certainly going to be rejected, and if it is accepted, part of you will be disappointed that it isn't quite as you'd like it. It reminds me a goal a team-mate scored in a football match many years ago. He was on the half-way line and the keeper was out of position off his line. He took a chance and scored. Everyone on the team was ecstatic (it was turning point in the match) except him. He bent over and shook his head. Because he hadn't intended to score in that exact fashion--he'd sliced the ball slightly--he was disappointed. That's where I'm coming from in my submission reluctance.

However, I think I've managed to get past this stage now--partly because I have more belief in my stories since Clarion. I can tell more easily why something doesn't feel right, and I can begin to make amends.

So, my stats thus far:

Submissions: 35
Acceptances: 0
Rejections: 27
Withdrawals: 1
Pending: 7

The silver-lining of rejections is that, provided you keep generating fresh material, you end up with more and more subs in play, and can cling to the "You gotta be in it to win it" motto.

Devonshire Cream

2006-09-26T04:13:00.000-07:00

I spent many summers holidays in Devon and Cornwall, and despite the intervening years, it is still a magical part of the country.

A few of my favourite things here: cream teas, coastal walks, Alice-in-Wonderland cottages (expect a bruised head from the low doorways), Cornish pasties, the smell of dung, games of Backgammon, the UK surf scene (Hawaii, it ain't), reading nooks, seaspray, sandy beaches.

If you visit England, make sure that you come here.

It's a Wind-Up, right?

2006-09-07T16:17:00.000-07:00

While in Corfu, I ploughed through Murakami's six-hundred pager "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", smashing my fifty pages a day goal in the process.

The great thing about Murakami is how easy he is to read (that's based on only two of his novels, mind, "Dance Dance Dance" and the above. Which perhaps isn't saying much as they're almost identical in tone and structure). He begins with Okada, the first-person protagonist, an unemployed paralegal, cooking pasta to classical music. Somehow, he makes it riveting, and before you know it you've joined Okada in his gentle unease, precipitated by a strange phone call from an anonymous woman telling him if he gives her ten minutes then they'll "understand" one another.

WARNING: SPOLIERS AHEAD

We join this most ordinary of men through such adventures as plodding up and down the bricked-up alley behind his house, spending eleven days staring at the faces of shoppers, and sitting at the bottom of a dry-well. Sounds fascinating, doesn't it? Well, Murakami has a way with words, and actually makes it fascinating. I think the tension and suspense has two sources. First, Okada is your stock everyman. Few words are spared on his description. The effect is that the things in this novel aren't only within the domain of exceptional people. These things can happen to anyone, including yourself. Secondly, Murakami makes you, as a reader, confront everyday reality and realise that the events we take as ordinary are anything but on close inspection. He makes you want to go out to, for example, the dry-cleaners, like Okada, and really study the surroundings.

What is frustrating, however, is the lack of cohesion. Perhaps, the tapestry of very loosely connected stories is a thematic device, but overall the plot suffers as a result. By the last page there are numerous plot threads still hanging and plenty of unexplained happenings. The way I read it undermined my sympathy for Okada. Instead of a being a mystic, channelling latent historical forces and supernatural abilities, Okada is in fact, a fool. Coincidental events taking on cosmic meaning seems to be a strong element of Murakami's fiction, but for me, this doesn't work. There's just too much hand-waving when it comes down to the mechanics of what's going on. To take one example, an old Japanese soldier is given the chance to kill his Russian master in a work camp in Siberia. The Russian gives the soldier a gun and two bullets, and allows him to shoot at point-blank range. He misses. Twice. The explanation? The Russian is evil and fated to live. That's just too much of an intrusion into physicial reality for my liking.

Still, all the individual tales are extremely readable in their own right, so it's always a pleasure to read Murakami at the chapter level. Now, if only he can wrap things together in a more satisfying way...

As regards my own writing, I've finished re-drafting one of my Clarion stories. It's even got a shiny new name thanks to Sean. "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" (is it okay to nick song titles?). Anyone want to read and give me final thoughts? It'll bring you good karma if you do, rest assured.

A Week in Corfu

2006-09-07T10:41:00.000-07:00

I'll let the pics speak for themselves and only mention a couple of things.

Despite only being a small island, Corfu seems to have enough room to satisfy the Club 18-30 crowd AND those seeking more leisurely times. If you hire a scooter you can get to deserted villages or beaches within twenty minutes. The most surreal moment was getting back to Corfu's airport and seeing all my fellow passengers from my flight out--most looking worse than when they came. On the plane I even sat next to the same couple as I'd flown in with. Weird.

If you visit you should try to get to Benitses--a laid-back village about ten km south of Corfu Town--and in particular, go to a restaurant named "Chicken George" at the south end of the town. There you will meet Alex, the generous host, and if you're lucky, Viki, the gorgeous, friendly waitress.

nanbanjin

2006-08-23T10:25:00.000-07:00

Eoin, Malcom, and David wonder if the OAP home was the best choice of venue
Maybe six-forty, on a rainswept Wednesday evening in August, wasn't the ideal time for a gig, but nanbanjin (meaning: southern barbarians) still played their hearts out.

It's just a shame the audience didn't respond to the energy on the stage. I think I was the most involved audience member with my slight head-banging and hands in pockets.

Anyway, the occasion was more about catching up with Eoin, who was a fellow student on the Celta teacher-training course in Budapest in 2004. And as a big bonus, it just so happened that Greg -- another Celtee -- was acting as manager for the band's tour of England. Apparently, the tour hasn't been so rock-and-roll -- Greg's been supplying fitness lessons rather than hard drugs...

Sarah tries to ignore Greg's fitness instructions. Well, look at the state of him!
Other bands followed Nanbanjin, but none could live up to the quality of the first act. Why they weren't put later in the bill, was a mystery. By nine, there were at least fifty people in the audience.

The next day they played in Bude, Devon -- about a five hour drive away -- after a stopover in Reading for sleep. Seems being in a band means getting well acquainted with roads...

There's no accounting for popular taste

Despair to A New Hope in 24 Hours

2006-08-17T16:55:00.000-07:00

First off, a big congrats to Nye, Livia, and Will who have sold, sold, sold!

So, Wednesday saw me at a low ebb -- completely unrelated to my classmates' successes, of course. Why? I went through all the critiques of my Clarion-written story "Core Temperature" (crap title, I know). Twenty-five annotated manuscripts, whose insights, for some masochistic reason, I decided to transfer to the laptop. Every single issue with the piece flowed through my fingertips, and I realized just how much it sucked. Sucky ending, sucky characterisation, sucky structure, sucky use of the rich environment, sucky psychological relationships, and on and on....a complete re-write was on the cards.

Luckily, after a night's sleep, I choose to salvage what I could. Today I came up with a new scene breakdown and a better handle on the characters. Right now I'm 2300 words in and am feeling much better. It's probably still melodramatic bullshit, but there's no one around to tell me that, so I can indulge in the fantasy that it isn't...also, I found a quiet place to write -- less than a metre from my bed no less!

Reading: The Handmaid's Tale
Words: 900

Where the...ahem...magic happens

Books Are Evil

2006-08-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

So, the package of manuscripts from the States arrived today (my manuscripts, annotated with the clever thoughts of my fellow Clarionites), but of course I was still asleep when the postman called. This meant a trip into town. I got on my bike, focused on the mission in hand, but thinking I'd just stop off at the Oxfam store to see if there's anything new in. (One of the up-sides in living in a town with a vast geriatric population, aside from the easy muggings, is the quantity of second-hand bookshops).

Then I saw the "Everything Half-Price" ticket in the window. I'll buy a couple of books, I thought, and still have plenty of room for the scripts in my backpack.

Didn't happen.

Thirty minutes later I came out with twelve books for a tenner. This is what I bought:

Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkein (previously read, but purchased for completeness)
Hyperion - Dan Simmons
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Ghostwritten - David Mitchell
Gates of Eden - Ethan Coen
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicler - Haruki Murakami
Regeneration - Pat Barker
Black Holes - Ed. Jerry Pournelle
Enduring Love - Ian McEwan
Dreamsnake - Vonda M. McIntyre
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

I went home happy but manuscript-less.

Procrastinating

2006-08-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

Experiencing the usual reluctance to start a new story....have managed to avoid beginning by going into town for book porn (there is so much I want to read -- and that's just in the SF section), spending ages in WHSmith assessing potential magazines to subscribe to, doing some shopping, reading a min. of 50 pages from "Beggars in Spain" and then working on the travel blog.

So, this post is to announce the resurrection of the Back by Christmas 2003 travel blog. The days ahead look free so I expect to post daily. Check it out.

I spent ages looking for the invisible cafe, too...

The English

2006-08-12T16:25:00.000-07:00

Stoning for the Modern Age
For those people not caught up in the airport chaos, Saturday afternoon offered a great British knees-up by the river.

Yes, today was the annual Adur Bath Tub Race -- an opportunity to once again prove that maritime excellence resides in the bones of every Englishman. After months of preparation approx. fifty teams gathered along the banks of the River Adur in Bramber, mid-Sussex, with contraptions that bared little relation to any boat I've seen before. There were three rules as far as I could tell. First, no engines. Second, compulsory life-jackets for the two man crews. Third, spectators could only throw flour bombs at the racers.

That's right. This was another chance for the English to (i) show what good sports they are, and (ii) be humiliated by a willing public. Kind of like a Big Brother day-out.

19, The Orange Submarine, sinks moments later - a perfect example of Directionless Britain
Okay, maybe I'm being unfair -- this was for charity after all. But there does seem to be a clear tendency these days for "doing things for a laugh" and "having a bit of fun", which I'm all for, but does it always have to be like that? As a nation we'd rather hide behind humour and cheekiness, than actually stand-up and try and be good at something. People are paralysed by a fear of failure, and don't even want to get into the position where they might be judged as such. The trouble with such thinking is that it leads to mediocrity. And that's what England seems to be to me in 2006. Mediocre. Popularity has become the touchstone for achievement. Popular soaps, popular news shows, popular products, popular people. It's so fucking bland.

And if someone IS trying to better themselves? The common response is to question their attempts. Normalize them. Make them conform. Because if they don't and they achieve something then they're saying something about you. Something you probably don't want to hear.

On the left -- Supersonic egg contrail!
Anyway. The boat race was funny and ridiculous and community re-affirming. The best moment? When Gordon -- incapacited by a wrist injury -- made me throw an egg at the motorised judging boat (which I hit) and moments later an announcement was made that eggs were strictly forbidden as missiles. Did I feel like I was bucking the system!

Gordon blames his fiance

Clarion Week Seven...err, hang on...

2006-08-10T18:09:00.000-07:00

So, since it took me until Monday to get home, I figure I've had two extra days to get my shit together and start being a writer again...which I did today by spending about six hours editing a pre-Clarion story with all the insights I learnt there. Or maybe I just assembled every single comment that my OWW critiques generated and then tailored the piece to them ;)

If anyone wants to read it, just ask. My only condition is that, upon reading it, you only offer line-by-line edits and possible markets...I am not someone who can re-write a piece ad-infinitum (actually ad-two, to be exact).

The plan to insulate myself from the world at large continues to go well -- I only left the house to go for a run today. And I've only talked to the cat in the last 24 hours. Fortunately, tomorrow night I get to see friends in wild and wacky Brighton!

It's 2.30am which is bedtime -- I have a cunning plan to keep to Clarion sleep patterns and only sleep five hours a night for the rest of my life. Sadly the first three post-Clarion nights have ended in failure. Reading "Beggars in Spain", which is about a splinter group of humanity who don't need to sleep, isn't helping.

Night.

What the %$&@? Dial-Up?!

2006-08-07T12:03:00.000-07:00

Back in UK, safe and sound and feeling like I'm out the loop. The writer's equivalent of going cold turkey...good job BK sent me a story to get my teeth into....which I'll read tonight...and maybe have a crit circle in the morning with the cat and a few houseplants...oh dear...

This feeling's not helped by the stone-age technology I have around me. Tomorrow I will hunt for Wireless Broadband...until then I'm keeping it brief and no pics...it's just too painful...

Sleep might help, I guess.

The Circle of Not So Much Power Anymore

2006-08-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

Everyone's gone. Rahul Kanakia's gone. Aimee Poynter's gone. Kelly Link, Steve Berman, and Holly Black have gone. Sean, Felice, Shveta, Alex, and people named Will. They've all gone. BK went ages ago.

I feel like bursting into tears until I realize it's gonna be more comical that melancholy to the other guests in the lobby area. Then I smile. Bittersweet is the word. I want to reflect and enjoy the memories of the last six weeks, but I don't want to get home and be pining for an experience that has ended. The present is too precious to miss. Instead, I'll catalogue (I can't help it) some of my favourite moments:

Playing a group game called "Thing" for the first time and finding I'd picked the Mother-Thing card. Baby-Things were spawned in the night!

Michael Furlong yelling "Go Team Furby" when playing volleyball and annoying the hell out of the other side. And repeatedly falling over on dancefloors, hills, etc

Nancy Kress saying she thought my story might be able to make it into Analog after revision.

Watching Alex and Will A. recite Kelly Link's story "The Cannon" for the Archives book reading. Alex has the most expressive voice I've heard, and it contrasted very effectively with Will's sly queries. Many British pounds will be rolling into the coffers of his AudioBook site shortly.

Chip Delany giving memorable advice about dogs and pushing the envelope.

Reading a manga tale that was as cool as the Ice Hailstorm Attack therein.

Seeing people write outside their usual zones...and succeed. You know who you are!

Beating Toby Buckell at billiards. Toby, as well as being an award winning writer by 21, used to make extra bucks as a pool hustler, so besting him on the (admittedly dodgy) green baize was very satisfying.

The moment the phrase "The writing was very smooth", oft used in the critique circle, tipped from sincere comment to parody.

Ordering Chinese food at 1am and not having to move to collect it. American consumer culture sometimes rocks.

Writing the last word of "Thargus and Brian" and completing six Clarion stories. Much jumping around did ensue...

Watching a five foot three (?), slight, Classical Pianist, take down a six foot six, Delany beard-impersonating, Chewbaca figure.

Seeing Sean Manseau -- weight-lifter, NYC bartender, take-no-shit kinda guy -- dressed like he'd come straight from a horrific 60s gender experiment...and Brad!

Watching BK Dunn, stoic-extraordinaire, pet his AIBO.

Harpers and goatee-beards.

Learning that Role-Playing-Games can be creepy, fun, and dramatic.

Michael Swanwick occasionally NOT being able to make a better title for a piece of work.

Discovering that my fellow Clarionites could write prose AND poetry. And then having the gumption to assemble it.

The last meal in the Owen Cafeteria. I like greasy food, but this place takes the deep-fried, butter-drenched, chocolate-coated biscuit.

Being given "Night of the Cooters" and "Werewolves in their Youth" during my 1-2-1 with Kelly Link. Just one of the countless examples of Kelly's generosity -- thanks for the Brownies, too!

Every time Will L opened his mouth. This man would be a stand-up comic if he wasn't such a good writer. I'm sorry I didn't get to know him better.

Chris Cevasco putting a box on his head for no apparent reason. Doesn't sound funny but this guy makes it hilarious.

Winning Mafia even though Steve Berman started the night-round while one of the Mafioso, Alex, was out the room. Alex walked to his seat while we, the other two Mafia, had our eyes open, and none of the villagers put 2 and 2 together in the morning.

Realizing I can probably sleep less.

Being out of England during another soul-destroying World Cup run.

BTW: Reports of Week 5 and 6 to follow. Keep checking below.

Clarion Week Five

2006-07-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

Steve Berman knows how important a fallback career is

Crickets keep me awake at night. Outside my window, a mere three feet above the ground, live the biggest crickets in the world. They rub their legs or whatever it is they rub, and make a colossal noise like a child scratching a frying pan with a stick. The sound gets inside my head and I begin to picture monstrously overgrown crickets sitting on the window ledge purposefully tormenting me. That in itself tells me I need to sleep more, but there's the rub.

I'm not helped by leaky shower faucet that offers a metronomic drip drip drip twenty four hours a day seven days a week. Thankfully my hearings not so great -- too many nights in clubland -- and I can usually phase out the sound.

I begin this entry in this manner because this is the week my body struck back. Cans of Monster (500ml Red Bull clones) are no longer helping. The combination of bad food, little sleep, near constant mental exertion, and no excercise, has finally caused my body to say "Enough!". Kelly Link and Holly Black joined us as the last fortnight instructors, but my fatigue has meant that their presence is not as concrete as it should be. They work and play hard, and they've setup discussions and excercises most days, but it's like I'm experiencing things through a thick fog. On Wednesday I missed the circle in an effort to get some extra sleep and clear my head.

In the critique circle they've definitely got their unique styles, which again is very refreshing. Kelly really makes us think about who are characters are and how we can show who they are. She has helped me understand how people think and hopefully stopped me being (i) the plot's bitch instead my characters', and (ii) so heavy handed in my character's rationalisations. It's like people can be rational, but the way they rationalise in their head isn't through sequential logic but much more through intuition. This means I should leave out a lot of explicit reasons which are implied by character action anyway. Holly takes a more holistic approach and pursues different elements as she sees fit. Both of them have a lot to say after each story has been critiqued by the group and often talk for up to twenty minutes.

And then there's R2D2...Kelly and Holly story-arc Star Wars
Post-critique discussion of stories is declining and I think that's a function of fatigue. It'll be super-fantastic if the stories we've made here steadily bleed their way into the published-world. Not only will I be stoked for the authors, it'll be a real personal pleasure to buy the magazines, anthologies etc and reminisce about the tales. So Clarionites: get those stories out there!

One excercise involved a method employed by a writer whose name I've forgotton, but was always in awe of Raymond Carver's utterly real characters. Carver told this writer that his realism of situation came from being an organic writer who just set a scene and then let it write itself without planning. One weekend the writer got layed up with the flu in a hotel room and decided he was going to write sixty first lines. After that he would write sixty first paragraphs and then pursue the most promising ones. It led to a dozen or so very good stories. So our task was to compose sixty first lines. I got to twenty-seven. And I cheated a little by sometimes writing two lines. Some of my own favourites include:

1. Cut a worm in two and you've got two worms; cut a baby in two and you've got major problems.
2. Under the kitchen table, beside an old bolognese stain, Ritchie, the mechanical ant, scrathed his hind leg.
3. Rachel's skin tasted of salt and kerosene.
4. Fucking is way more fun in zero gravity.
5. Go down Duke Street, turn left at the Hippy Happy second-hand clothes store, wait by the telephone box with the broken receiver and when it rings scream "Walstack Industries are headed by a pus-brained cocksucker!"
6. Snow-capped mountains, burbling streams, vistas of rock studded hillsides -- everything Jack talked about made me want to vomit.

I will definitely work with some of these.

Alexandra goes for slutty while Rahulia goes for coy
After the usual Friday night at Harper's -- we did make an effort to go elsewhere, but Harper's was just too good to resist -- Holly and Kelly threw a cross-dressing ball on Saturday night. Except it wasn't really cross-dressing; everyone wore women's clothes. A number of people went out to a thrift store to buy dresses -- including Michael who bought two! -- but I used my sarong and a breezy black shirt to be transformed into Stephanie. Actually, I have Shveta to thank for the bulk of the transformation. She applied eye-liner, lipstick and nail varnish, supplied bracelets and a hairclip (lost later during the water fight -- sorry!), and showed me how to cross my legs. Let me tell you, I got a lot of attention that night! -- mainly from some very butch looking women...

At the party everyone hit the drinks hard -- an effort to put out of their minds some of the horrors that stalked room, I think. This led naturally to ghost stories and later a Call of Cthulu role-playing game led by Will L. The story was a mix of Boy Scouts in the woods meets Blair Witch project. There was certainly exterior and interior conflict, for sure. Good job, Will!

Clarion Week Four

2006-07-22T20:45:00.000-07:00

Joe Haldeman's The Forever War Reignited my Love of Sci-Fi
So, the Haldemans have been and gone. Nancy Kress is a distant dream. Michael Swanwick and Chip Delany seem like people from another age. Time is passing as fast as its ever done for me; I guess that's one measure of a great time.

Joe and Gay are like your favourite Uncle and Aunt (if you have such a thing): full of wonderful stories of a life well-lived, generous spirited, and a great source of fun. For the experiences that they've been through, I think that's a remarkable thing. In many ways, their lifestyle is the one I would most like to emulate. Writing is at the heart of their lives, but it is not the master of them. When Joe writes five hundred words in a day he is happy. And since he's an early riser that leaves plenty of time for other pursuits. They cook, paint, sing, and strum -- all activities that foster interaction, unlike the major part of writing. Perhaps that's why I see them as the closest I've come to role-models so far. Plus, they're very down-to-Earth, and I mean that in a good way. I believe everyone has too much shared experience for people not to be essentially the same. That's why it's so refreshing to see a man with an IQ over 150 acting like a regular guy without airs and graces. I hope to see them again someday.

Alex Shows Inexperience in the Skirt-Wearing Department
The anticipated 'Week 4' strife hasn't really materialised, although many of us are pretty worn down and near to scraping the barrel when it comes to forward momentum with the writing. I know, for me, because I didn't come here with anything near outline stage -- just random one line ideas and no characters -- I've had to spend a lot of time brainstorming and then letting the unconscious brew on things for a while. This has necessarily limited my writing time and contributed to the shorter lengths of my work (about 5000 words). I have a slight concern too much focus on short story writing will inhibit novel writing ability, but since I don't have any plans to write a novel for at least two years it's not a biggie. Plotting and writing a whole story in one week is very satisfying though. Even if it feels like a Herculean effort at times.

Aimee Affects the British-look -- Without the Bad Teeth
Some of the relationships through the class are getting scratchy. It's pretty much guaranteed in the pressure-cooker environment that characterises Clarion. We sleep, eat, talk, read, and write fiction. And we all care passionately about this. This makes people extra sensitive, so I'm not surprised it's happened. For my part, I avoid conflict like the plague and have stayed out of the brush-fires, although give me a couple of beers and I'll start shouting my mouth off. Which is exactly what I need from time to time which is what made last night at Harpers so much fun. Quite a few people have had partners over this weekend, and I'm envious of that. They look so recharged. Hi Tammy, btw!

Unfortunately, Clarion lost a couple of people this week. BK got a call from his new HR department the week before, and he set off for SoCal on Friday morning. Luckily for him, he had company for the long ride. BK, we salute you and expect great things in the future. Also, one of Liz's assistants, Sarah, had her last day on Friday too. All her help was much appreciated and I wish her well.

The Talented Mr. Levy
The blow of these departures was lessened somewhat by the Poetry Slam that was instigated by the Haldemans and held on Thursday evening before they left. On Sunday night we picked two slips of paper from two different envelopes. On one piece was written a SF trope and on the other a poetic form. I drew Monster and Double Dactyl. After consulting Wikipedia I was able to ascertain that the Double Dactyl was in fact the poetic form and not a relation of the pterodactyl. That probably tells me something about dactyls but I can't figure out what right now. Anyway, Thursday afternoon I boned up on double dactyls and discovered they're a very exacting form. It was a good workout for my analytical brain to come up with something that conformed. I can't post the piece because I've got great plans in store for those two stanzas. Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

The Slam itself was spectacular -- and not only because of Alex's sartorial flashes. I dislike 90% of poetry, but my Clarion classmates delivered hit after hit. Perhaps that means we wrote crap, but I enjoyed it -- so much so, that I agreed to compile the efforts in one script and hand it on to Liz to print out. After the recitals -- which I realised was a very subtle way for us to get more comfortable with readings (which hopefully we'll all be doing some day) -- we ate cake, sang, jammed, and played speed scrabble. All in all, a great night -- and one that made me want to learn an instrument, probably the piano.

Also, I've started telling everyone my dream of buying a property in rural, southern, France, and becoming a bohemian artist type who entertains and collaborates 52 weeks a year. Maybe it'll happen one day. For the time-being I'll enjoy each day as it comes.

Edes alomok.

Quotes of the Week:

Joe Haldeman - "Skateboards and video games, in my old age, scare me."

Joe Haldeman - "I'm too shallow to lose confidence."

[BACK] Liz, Nye, Shveta, Caillaigh, Aimee, Will, Steve, BK, Jemma, Michael, Casey, Rahul, Felice, Livia, Chris, Gay, Joe [FRONT] Brad, Vince, Will, Robert, Sean, Alex, Steve, Sarah

A Day in the Life

2006-07-19T18:30:00.000-07:00

I wake up around 7.

Sometimes I need the alarm, sometimes I don't. It depends how active my subconcious is. For example, if I have a vague idea for a piece but haven't got to the stage of character and plot, then I'm much more susceptible to wake naturally. This morning I woke at 6, triggered by vivid images of Mayans, dark matter, and giant blue-black ostrich birds. Unfortunately this was someone else's story from the day before that resonanted with me, so it's a non-starter as a story seed.

I stumble bleary-eyed to the shower, wash in the dark (because those cubicles are claustrophobia-inducing in the light!), and then get dressed while groaning at the stack of yesterday's stories that I've read but not commented on. I sit at the desk, crank the brain machinery, and stare at the wall until a useful insight comes. When that doesn't happen I just write stuff like 'The prose is very smooth' or 'Isn't gravity 9.81m/s2 rather than 10m/s2?'. I'm a goldmine for the other writers! Seriously, I do find that I'm still fumbling around in the dark when it comes to criticising a piece, and especially, suggesting improvements. A lot of this comes down to deciding what category of fiction the story is and then answering the usual questions accordingly. For example, from one writer today, I learnt that a God's motivations, in their opinion, should never be revealed. My criticism tends to come down more on the technical or factual side of the writing. I figure a range of thoughts is a good thing for the author anyhow.

Clarion '06 Likes to Eat Out
Owen Hall's cafeteria sucks big style, but breakfast is usually safe. Around 8.30 I finish the crits and wander over. Since discovering English tea in the hot drinks area, I've pretty much stuck to tea and toast and sometimes porridge. You have to work hard to cock those up. At the table, Steve Berman is usally gesticulating wildly, but I ignore that sit down and eat. At this time, I have trouble following the conversation, never mind contributing so I just smile politely in the British way. It seems to work, but I sometimes get the impression Steve is making fun of my country.

Clarionites put Cockerels to Shame
The crit circle begins in Van Hoosen at 9. Clarion's very strict about keeping private what goes on inside the circle, but I am allowed to say that it involves goat sacrifice, bagels, and iron maidens...only kidding, bagels and iron maidens would be ridiculous. Apparently we follow the Milford technique which involves stopwatches, one-liners, and dittos. Look it up. The crits are often preceded by a mini-lecture from the instructor, but that varies week to week. Also, there is coffee. Average finish time for the circle is 1pm.

Ceallaigh, Will, and Sarah are so Tired they Stumble into a Cyclotron Tour
By this time, everyone's so mentally drained they forget how bad the food in Owen is and get sucked into the cafeteria. Halfway through meals people often realise that they're eating horrible crap, but are too tired to do anything about it. Jokes about the day's reading, collected at the end of the circle, are usually cracked. 'My God, what a terrible first line -- oh hello, Steve' etc. We drift away from lunch, one by one, as if the conversation is keeping us there when really it's work avoidance strategies. What everyone else does for the next two hours is a mystery, but I suspect it involves procrastinating and feelings of malaise, which is what I get.

Go Away! BK Follows the Steve G Method
By 3 I'm usually hunched over my keyboard, fingers moving furiously, and letting the creative juices flow. It's such a release. I do have to find a quiet place to do it though, as the lobby and the cafeteria have too many people for my taste. I normally go down to the basement and sit in the hall where cheesy music is piped 24 hours a day. I've just started to begin to write to music, but I am picky. Aimee described it as a shell of sound which is a pretty neat way of looking at it. Isolation and lack of distractions are my muses.

Taste the Power...or the Sugary Snacks
Two or three hours in one spot is usually enough. Then I often move to the Circle of Power where Sean, Felice, Shveta, and sometimes others can be found. It's a huge round glass-topped table with room for twelve, and we usually stay there the rest of the day unless there's an evening activity. Dinner is transforming into cans of Monster (like a double Red Bull) and blackberry pie early, followed by pizza or chinese later. My productivity here declines but by the end of the day I normally have 1500 words -- 2 of which are perfect -- and lots of silliness. Bedtime is around 2am. Sometimes I watch an episode of Firefly if I'm not too shattered, but that's a rarity.

Links to Pics

2006-07-18T17:14:00.000-07:00

Btw...a few Clarionites are posting pics like the one below on Flickr:

My Pics
Will's Pics
Livia's Pics

Love Thy Inner Geek

Clarion Week Three

2006-07-15T22:56:00.000-07:00

Brad, Tobias, Nancy, and Liz
It's late Saturday night at the end of week 3. Tonight everyone--minus those with prior engagements/visits from loved ones--hung out in Van Hoosen and sang and goofed around with Nancy Kress and Tobias Buckell. We played Apples vs. Apples (I think) where the stupidest draw must've been: Leeches, A Flat Tire, and Humphrey Bogart for the category 'Chewy'. Also the Quartet of myself, Livia, Aimee, and Casey sang Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

Then something got spilled and the evening ended.

Faultlines are beginning to appear. But this is to be expected. The experience of Clarion is fucking awesome (to coin a phrase), but the relentless focus on writing is stressful. I would like to be able to spend more time with people individually since cliques have developed, but time pressures make that difficult. Instead there's a lot of group hanging-out with extroverts holding court while the less extroverted types listen on. It's fun, but not a real relationship in many ways. Everyone's in the same boat regarding writing. Weekends are chances to do a lot of writing, but this means they're not the relaxing time they could be.

Drama before exposition! Omigod!
Weekends I'm managing around 3500 words which sets me up for a 5-6000 word story handed in by Wednesday. Unfortunately, the majority of the class is on this schedule so we tend to have a glut of stories late in the week. I haven't really out a freak-out time yet and I feel like it's not going to happen. I have a vague story idea mapped out for Week 5 and my Week 4 story is well on the way. What's going to happen in Week 6 I don't know.

Writing wise, I feel like I'm improving. Concentrating on dramatic scenes, and waiting for an understanding of the story before penning a word, seem to be helping. Plus I think I'm learning a lot of editing skills which I'll apply to a lot of stories I've already written. The stories from other writers are getting better too. This week I read a number of stories that with a little more loving will sell. One in particular blew me away and made me want to read a whole new genre. The whole Clarion experience, more than any technical improvements, is motivating me to keep at this, make it the focal point of my life, and for that I'm very grateful. I can't think of anything more enriching, challenging, and entertaining than writing fiction.

Brad and Nancy
Nancy Kress is a real experienced hand. Aside from their advice, all the instructors have been examples of how passion is such an essential component of a succesful career. The obstacles that Nancy overcame to get to where she is, is an inspiration. She combines a no-nonsense approach with a sardonic detachment. I've learnt a great deal from her methodical analyses. Her reading on Wednesday night was the literary highlight of the week. After listening to her story and thinking about the crits of my own story I felt like I had an epihany about writing. Stories are like houses of cards. They are far more fragile and delicate than I realised. Everything is an illusion. (Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie). Stacks can be conveyed with minimal prompting. The skill of the writer is to evoke structures (emotional, physical, metaphorical) in the reader's mind with minimal effort. Research, detail, and choice phrases are the heart of the accomplished writer. In some ways I feel like I'm losing my style, but I think I need to strip down to essentials before I rebuild. Also, I've realised every reader wants to categorise a story within three sentences. If you mess with a reader's expectations be prepared for failure unless you pull off something amazing. A lot of stories fail because they sit uneasily between established genres. It seems a short story has less license to combine tropes than longer fiction.

Already feeling melancholy about the inevitable end. The silver lining is the twenty-one plus people scattered over the States I will know. I plan to road-trip across the country someday, and although I haven't asked yet, I'm hoping for a place to bed down and write....

Of course, everyone's welcome to come to England and stay with me where we have gas lamps and boiled vegetables...

Quotes of the Week:

Hisako Tsukade: "I come for vengeance! Helloooo Ice Hailstorm Attack!"

Jemma EveryHope: "I want to feel people dying."

Anonymous: "I thought that was a smooth read."

Sean Eyeballs Every Word

Clarion Week Two

2006-07-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

Now I'll teach you to levitate!
Clarion's planned Week 2 instructor, Gardner Dozois (pronounced DOZE-WAH if you ever want to name-drop), wasn't able to make it due to personal reasons.

Instead, Michael Swanwick, spec-fic writer extraordinaire, led the classes.

On the Sunday night, he told us he was going to work as hard as was humanly possible for us. He said that if we worked as hard as he did--for the whole six weeks--we would be dead.

At the time I scoffed.

Now I'm inclined to believe him. To kick-off his work he read everything we had written during Week 1, plus our submission stories. This amounts to around sixty-six stories. And he didn't just read them. He line-edited every single one. And then he thought about the story between the lines. He razed passages, re-ordered sequences, figured out identities of characters, and reached deep into the guts of the story to find its beating, though often sickly, heart. And then he gave literary CPR. He even came up with new titles if he could find them--like a man with a divining rod. (He suggested "Hiroshima Sunflowers" for one of mine, which is a vast improvement over "Uncle Zack and the Day the Bomb Dropped").

In the critiquing circle he listened to our two minute windows like a yogic master. Bare-footed, and sat cross-legged on his chair, he seemed to be digesting our words in a different plane of existence, barely reacting to the jokes and stabbings and puns that shuttled back and forth the room. When his time came to speak he would talk like that story--or the one behind it--was the most important thing in the world. He'd gesticulate wildly, jump up to diagram character relationships, and veer off on wild tangents for minutes at a time. His analyses were always novel and thorough.

BK: You think Sean's taking his Spiderman research too far?
On the Friday we had six stories to crit. We started at eight and finished around two. After the crits Michael's schedule involved seeing all the writers who'd been on the sacrifiicial plinth that day. We each had fifty minutes with him. This meant he wouldn't free up his day to around eight or nine. Then he had to read the next day's stories. If I was of more morally dubious character, I'd have suspected pharmaceutical assitance.

My meeting came on the Thursday. Michael's apartment--a small child's stone's throw from the critique hall--looked liked a student's dorm. Styrofoam coffee cups, plastic food packages, and bundles of foolscap manuscript folders lay scattered around his chair. I sat on the sofa and Michael pulled out my stories. We talked, or rather, he talked and I occasionally made small interjections, about the details of the story and anything that sparked off those details. It was a very rich discussion and I'm glad he marked the scripts with most of his ideas, because I can't recall half of it now.

Friday afternoon a large slice of the class visited the cyclotron across the block. Liquid nitrogen was spilled, bubble track chambers fawned over, big rooms full of screens oooed at, and underaged physicists stared at. Somebody's going to hand in a atom smasher story I'm sure....

Friday night a few of us went to Harper's, a frat-pack bar in downtown East Lansing. Shveta, Felice, Vince, Robert, Brad, Sarah, Alex and myself, drank beer, played pool and busted moves on the dancefloor. Steve B made a brief appearance, but decided the music was outgunning his voice to an unacceptable extent.

Bad food, room avoidance, and episodes of Firefly also happened.

Quotes of the week:

Michael Swanwick - "No erectile tissue in Asimov's." (Forcing Chris to re-think his five page alien sex scene).

Robert Levy - "The characters dance around the protagonist's cock like it's a fucking maypole." (Frank criticism on Casey's classy hooker story).

Writers Discover Bars

Clarion Week One

2006-07-02T21:31:00.000-07:00

Dear Steve, Don't Give Up the Day Job...
It's Sunday night, 9pm. Samuel Delany has been and gone, and myself and the twenty-one other Clarionites are gearing up for the second week with Michael Swanwick at the helm (who has already given us a kick-ass pre-week talk about how hard he's going to work for us---the guy's read our submission stories and the batch of stories that were critiqued from the first week).

Samuel Delany, as well as being an iconic figure of the spec-fic world and a stand-up guy who is great fun to hang-out with because he's lived so much life, really hammered the mechanics of writing during the first week. As well as hopefully becoming a better writer, I'm becoming a better reader, too. I say that because my critical facilities that I take to a piece of writing are not up to the standard required to begin to write a high-quality piece of work. Clarion's teaching me these critical facilities. I've noticed that a piece of fiction can often mesmerize with stunning prose, or novel ideas, or interesting voice. What I'm learning here is that the best stories are all those things and more. Does the story have good dramatic structure? Is there received langauge? Has the author grounded the piece adequately? It is only when all the elements come together at the same time that there is a really satisfying reading experience.

Casey: Okay, Sarah's Acting Weird
Outside the morning critique circles, the days have been filled with reading and analysing the following days' stories, writing, watching World Cup games, bouncing ideas off one another, seeing Superman Returns (really awful--and I can tell you why in lots of story-based ways now...but I'll spare you that), attending a Delany reading, and lots of goofing around. Oh, and the occasional few hours sleep.

About my fellow Clarionites. They are talented, passionate, articulate, funny, kind, warm people. And those are the qualities of every single one of them--not a cumulative thing. From Steve's intelligent wit to Will Luwigsen's dry humour, from Livia's fascinating critiques to Felice's boundless energy, from BK's take on an American Psycho to Sean's zen-like focus, from Nye's knowledge of how to poison a man to Shveta's infinite kindness, from Rahul's laconic, guided-missile thoughts to Brad's quiet hilarity, from Vince's wild imagination to Ceallaigh's pure passion, from Alex's one-liners to Chris' editorial expertise, from Casey's flaming swords to Sarah's clay people, from Michael's alien stories to Robert's late-night bellowing, from Will Alexander's theatrical flourishes to Jemma's precocious talent, and not forgetting Aimee's fictional crows, these are people I like being around. And I'd place money that this group is going to spawn many great works of fiction in the future!

A Rose Between Two Thorns
[DISCLAIMER: CLICHED DESCRIPTIONS IN NO WAY SUGGEST THE PEOPLE ARE TOO]

Quote of the Week:

Chip Delany - "If you're going to fuck the dog, put it in all the way."

Siofok

2006-06-07T10:23:00.000-07:00

In honour of my permanent departure from Hungary, this weekend I took a trip down to Hungary's premier holiday resort, Siofok. It was a boys only affair, and we left Budapest straight from the football ground where we'd just recorded a 5 - 1 victory over league bruisers, FC Celtic. The contingent consisted of myself, James G, James B, Nick, Dean, and later, Mark. James B must've exerted himself more than most on the pitch, because on the drive down to Lake Balaton he promptly fell asleep --- on maybe it was the conversation...

We arrived in Siofok around eight and immediately Deano fell in love with a quaint, pink house topped with turrets and bunting. He bounded inside and moments later emerged triumphant. Rooms were vacant. We'd found our digs! Bags were dumped, hair gelled, deoderants applied, and during James G's turn in the bathroom shouts of 'You're a Tiger!' could be heard.

A walk down the strip (Siofok's not very traditional, bar, restaurant, and club packed street) and back, and the worst of the weather-hinted fears were realized --- nobody was here. Maybe it was early, we hoped, and settled down in a steakhouse. Of course, being practically the only patrons in the place did nothing to improve the service. We were routinely ignored, lied to, and sneered at. And the food was crap!

With stiff upper lips we headed into the night --- up and down the strip --- only to conclude that the resort really was dead tonight. Passing a small bar/club I heard the funky sounds of MC Hammer, and decided, despite the fact the only people in the place were the staff, this was where we would boogie. We tentatively entered and then huddled on one side on the place, outnumbered 2 to 1 by the sum of bartenders, deejays, and doormen. The tunes kept on coming however, and soon the vibe was good with James B flirting with a pretty member of the barstaff and Nick busting some moves on the dancefloor. Our energised presence sparked the place into life and soon we were surrounded by at least ten other people, including Nick's friend, Latzi, and two girls who alternated between jiving and snogging their men.

Deano, like a highland gorilla alpha male, lumbered to the centre of the dancefloor and did a version of the NZ rugby team's Hakka to Warren G's Regulate. Girl One took note of the new adonis on the floor. Flicking her hair she narrowed her gaze onto our primate King, otherwise known as Rik Ferrari, and began a swinging hip walk towards him. Deano started preening himself, checking his breath, and mouthing his opening line ('Have you seen my snake?'). Just as she got to conversation distance, Deano's opening word on the tip of his tongue, she shimmied right like a non-fat Ronaldo and without pausing continued onto the DJ's booth. Deano's chin dropped and the rest of us cracked up. Classic.

By the time we left the club, day was breaking, and Nick thought it a good idea to check out the lake. Cue five very drunk men feeling even more drunk because of the choppy water. How no-one threw up, I don't know.

After a leisurely lunch at an American Diner, Sunday was spent detoxing: a drive round to Tihany where we wandered about, drank cappucinos, and pondered on why Lake Balaton was so popular with Germans. After a ferry back, we were soon encamped in one of the rooms watching Brazil - New Zealand: five grown men strewn over a double bed. It was during the match that Mark arrived. Boy, was he overjoyed to see us all together!

A different dining strategy for the second night (avoid the strip) paid dividends. The hospitality was great, the food good, and prices reasonable. Even the presence of a whole football team in the place didn't spoil the occasion --- in fact they were just loud enough to stop the live folk music which suited me fine. Then it was on to the strip, where we descended on a different bar from the night before. And amazingly, it filled up to bursting point. At one moment the barman cleared the circular bar of drinks, poured vodka over the surface, and then dropped a match. After the flames died, the barmaids were invited up onto the smouldering bar where they danced half-heartedly. Perhaps that experience was why one of them tried to rip me off. By the time the bartender lit the bar again, I was ready to leave. It felt like being in The Event again (a "meat-market" in Brighton I used to go to for nights of cheesy music and shattered hopes). We ended back in the same club as the night before. It was equally as empty as the first night. Perfect.

However this didn't stop the DJ playing tunes nobody wanted to hear. It was only after persistent harrasment --- finger waggling from Mark, and philosophical musings from myself ("What is the purpose of a DJ?" I asked the indefatigable mixmaster, before answering myself. "To keep the clients entertained. And who is enjoying these songs? Nobody!") --- that the DJ backed down and meekly started playing more Jacko and Warren G.

It was a fine end to a fine weekend.

I'm a Loser, Baby...

2006-05-22T02:10:00.000-07:00

...but in the best possible way:

My story, By the Waters of the Ganga, a tale of reincarnation set in Varanasi, India, placed as a Losing Finalist in the Q1 2006 Writers of the Future contest! Apparently, Robert Silverberg and Anne McCaffrey both dug the story! I'm just happy that such high-profile writers set eyes on the piece.

Being a Losing Finalist means there's still a slim chance of being published in the volume if the winning stories don't take up too much space....so, fingers crossed for plenty of sharp, short winning tales....

In Cold Blood: An Appreciation

2006-05-20T09:50:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I finished reading Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood' and since then I have wanted to get down my thoughts about why this was such a captivating read.

First off, there is the assured style of the narrative, right from the first line:

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there."

For me, that line exudes authority. You get an immediate sense that Capote is in control, that he knows what he's talking about, and that you can trust what follows. The authorial confidence allows Capote to leisurely spend the majority of those first three pages describing Holcomb, and only delivering the hook right at the end: that this unassuming town will be the scene of a night of brutal, seemingly senseless murders.

For an amateur writer, trying his hand primarily at short fiction, the detachment of the voice is interesting. This isn't the POV of any character. This is the POV of an omniscient narrator, or rather, a journalist; the style is very much of the type found in investigative journalism---and it works.

Secondly, the characterisation, is masterful. Consider the following passage where we first meet one of the two murderers:

Like Mr. Clutter, the young man, breakfasting in a cafe called the Little Jewel never drank coffee. He preferred root beer. Three aspirin, cold root beer, and a chain of Pall Mall cigarettes---that was his notion of a proper "chow-down."

In just three lines we already have a vivid, bold outline of the man. A man who prefers root beer to coffee, indicating a man who has not yet matured into a real adult. The dependence on aspirin, indicating a life of real, or perhaps imagined, pains. And lastly a chain smoker---always a sign of nervousness, of lack of control. And that last detail! A "chow-down". What a wonderful phrase---this is certainly not a man with obligations to work, family, or country---a man who can't even regulate his eating habits.

Maybe Capote had it easy: these weren't mental fabrications. These were real people, and they acted as they were. How could they do anything but? Still, the particular details he uses to sketch a character, situation, or place are always illuminating, and never boring or incidental.

With regards to the dynamic power of the novel---the element of the tale that makes it a page-turner---Capote employs an unusual device at odds with the run-of-the-mill whodunnit. Capote names the killers within the first fifteen pages. The engine that drives the readers curiousity is not the mystery of the murderer's identities. There are no conventional clues for the keen reader to spot. The mystery derives from understanding the killer's motivations. We pinball between the family members on their last day, friends, the killers, and then the detectives brought in.

For me, the driving force is the relationship between the two killers, and the insight into the procedural process as the noose draws close. In choosing this structure, Capote greatly elevates this above a piece of cheap genre fiction. Through the killer's meandering adventures after the murders we see their humanity, see their frailties, and see the way they are in no sense 'evil' in a biblical or one-dimensional way. Through the detective's work we have a mirror onto society's feelings about such men, how inadequate the response is, and how society itself is as much to blame as the men. The tapestry of narrative POVs---including a pair of tom-cats in one scene!---allows us to see the whole story and draw our own conclusions about responsibilities and consequences.

The Paradoxical Critiquer

2006-05-16T12:40:00.000-07:00

Being an aspiring writer, hanging-out, cyberspacially-speaking, with other green-fingered wordsmiths, I come across a lot of crap writing.

And not just from my own fingers!

Sometimes it has been known for other aspiring writers to commit heinous crimes against the craft of story. Laboured beginnings, nonsensical middles, unexpected, but not satisfyingly unexpected, endings. Terrible punctuation, cliched characters, incorrect formatting. Protagonists who are whores to the plot. Protagonists who aren't part of the plot. Bad science. Awkward pacing. Dialogue from Victorian England when the setting is downtown Tokyo. Adverbs! And the list goes on.

What you swiftly realise is that this writing lark, this incredibly simple process of placing one word after another (and all the words are in the dictionary! as Mark Twain famously said), is anything but simple. Danger lurks on every page, in every paragraph, in every bleedin' line and word! Being aware of the utter hardness of good writing is enough to make most potential writers mutter, somewhat self-deceptively, 'Oh, I'll write that book/scene/paragraph tomorrow/next week/when I retire'.

However, all this difficulty is all well and good, and as it should be. The journey is as important as the destination, and boy, learning to write is some journey! And I speak from the foothills of the craft. So, seeing bad writing, from myself and others, doesn't make me angry or depressed (well, only sometimes), as it makes some. No, it makes me inspired knowing people are making a crack at something very difficult.

What does make me wonder though is how much bad writing doesn't get flagged as bad writing by other aspiring writers. From some of the critiquing circles I've been involved in, I've often been astounded to find that writing, that by many standards can objectively be considered poor, is heralded as a great shining example of good fiction.

I know some people don't take criticism well, and the standard line is that all feedback should be presented in an amiable way....but....sometimes a spade should be called a spade. If a person is serious about writing, they should encourage feedback on the areas of their writing that are rough. And critiquers should make the main focus of their critique what doesn't work for them. Of course, highlighting good practice is important to let writers know where their strengths are, but highlighting bad practice is so much more valuable.

I have a couple of theories about overpraising critiques.

1. Critiquers aren't reading the stories as readers.

Reading and writing are completely different skills. As many critiquers also write, they often bring their writing-head to the table when they read. Unconsciously, or perhaps even consciously, they read the story thinking how they would write it---and since they aren't great writers they might find a lot of agreement in the choices. What I've learnt is that critiques come in two parts. Response and advice. Reader response is something everyone can give, and is by definition, always true. Reader advice is a whole other kettle of fish....be wary!

2. Critiquers aren't well read.

I get the feeling many aspiring writers have a style, an author, or a sub-genre they want to imitate. In their reading they've not pushed themselves to discover stuff outside their comfort zone. That's their prerogative. However, without an awareness of how good literature can be, and what makes it good, they will never be able to put it into their own work, or see it in others work. This is something I have direct experience of---I'm not a voracious reader. I average about thirty books a year, plus short fiction---and can honestly say I do not 'get' some award winning stuff---but I believe that if I become a better reader I will become a better writer. I really believe being a great writer comes from being a great reader---reading widely, and reading with thought. Literature doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is an ongoing dialogue between a culture and itself.

Bad Publicity?

2006-05-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

Okay. There's this writing contest for up-and-coming speculative authors. It's called "Writers of the Future". If you win, you get excellent money, great publicity, your name in print, and a one-week long holiday in LA.

No bad, eh?

But, what if the contest was called "L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest"? Would that make a difference to you? I know that for some, any link to Scientology is enough to draw a great big line in the sand and to shout "No way! You'll not use my good name to promote your dubious religion!"---notably, David Langford, a long-established SF commentator who writes the always informative Ansible. He suggests that new writers who win in this contest will later come to regret their decision, as all their later work will be tainted with association to Hubbard.

Now, is this fair?

I'm probably biased, but I would say not. Entry to the competition does not in any way affiliate me to the teachings of Scientology. I hardly know anything about the religion except it's tabloid reputation for brainwashing its members, and far-out cosmic explanations of things. That strikes me as a reasonable definition for plenty of other organisations, religious or otherwise. The whole consumerist culture, for example. Also, it seems strange that a religion that is a laughing stock to great swathes of the population would think that positioning itself alongside the next wave of speculative writers and all their fantastical imaginations would in any way garner it greater respect.

The question is, how much research are writers expected to do into the publications they submit to? Bearing in mind that most truths are decided by community consensus, it seems impossible to answer the corollary question, what does being published in this publication really mean?

L. Ron Hubbard, aside from everything else he did, gave new writers a chance to break in on a level playing field. So, I'm going to keep submitting to "Writers of the Future", and hopefully, one day, place!

Holy Moley!

2006-04-27T15:34:00.000-07:00

We got visitors!

The list of Clarion participants went out today, so suddenly this blog is being hit. Therefore, in an effort to do a spot of spring cleaning I'm adding this post and re-arranging the furniture, so to speak. My Clarion acceptance came a while back, so it's been low on my radar for a few months, especially since my life in Budapest is most hectic nowadays---in anticipation for upping sticks and heading back to the UK for my standard two year stint.

However, now that Clarion is only two months away, and my classmates have finally been revealed, my thinking is straying back to a summer of writing in Michigan. My main feelings see-saw between excitement and trepidation. The excitement comes from beginning to really imagine this thing happening. Twenty-one other writers who I've glimpsed enough of to know that they're passionate, creative, interesting people, six great instructors, and 1008 hours living in the bosom of a writing fraternity. I know I'm going to love that experience. The trepidation comes from doing the course and learning I haven't got what it takes to be good. That'll be hard to swallow. I know a great deal of writing is about mastering technique. I'm not afraid of that. My brain is wired to learn. It's one of the things I do best. What I don't think a writer can learn is, for want of a better word, heart. Characters who feel, exalt, and suffer---that comes from the wellspring of your life.

As you can see, I have a penchant for the pseudo-philosophical which can be a real drag. One type of story I will try and write soon will be a comedy---just listened to Connie, Maybe by Paul E. Martens on Escape Pod and had a good chuckle.

Where Art meets Commerce

2006-01-15T09:15:00.000-08:00

or, second-rate idea does well in world gone mad.

I was checking the news the other day, when I came across this story:

The Million-Dollar Student

To summarise, Alex Tew, a 21 year-old about to start university, has earnt over a million dollars in five months selling the million pixels of his homepage for a dollar each.

After the pangs of envy died down, after wistfully comparing the fruits of my labours in bed next to this young entrepreneur's, after getting a headache checking out the page in question, I started to think about how this could've happened and what it means to the world today.

To give credit where credit's due, it was a brilliant idea in its way. A riff on the age-old dream of making a quick-buck so that you no-longer have to go through the day-to-day drudgery of working for a living. Who wouldn't want a million pounds? Even if you'd become enlightened and were no longer concerned with material matters, you'd still like the money to help spread whatever message you thought worthy. No? And the beauty of the idea was that everyone's desire to find-out how someone can make a million bucks so quickly became the engine which drove its success. A kind of paradox for our times.

But. What has actually been achieved here? Some wealth has been redistributed from hundreds of companies and individuals into Alex's hands. Have these groups profited from the exchange? That's debatable. If you look at the page you might notice a few names, but most won't even be noticed. Perhaps with enough hits, statistics comes into play and every logo will get some attention. Really, apart from Alex and a few companies, aside from the little pleasure that comes from seeing somebody strike-it-rich, nobody else has gained.

The next time another millionaire is made, I'd like to read about how his or her million has made us all richer.

Resolutions

2006-01-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

Nearly two months since my last post; seems a reasonable time to update the world on my life....

My New Year Resolutions from last year have been scrubbed down and are going to make another appearance--only slightly changed from their previous incarnation.

First off, last years resolution to learn Hungarian will become learn Hungarian more; despite being in probably the best place in the world to pick-up the language, my progress has been on the glacial movement level. I'm sure French and German--which I learnt at school--were far easier. My present ability means I can catch about one out of three words in a typical conversation, but actually turning those words into a coherent whole is remaining far out of my mental reach. For example, I hear 'Always hsdgjgs with me hjdssh tomorrow sdjjhsd you want'. The potential possible meanings this incomplete sentence brings means I usually stand like a guppy-fish for a good ten-seconds before attempting any kind of reply.

Second resolution is to get my travel experiences from 2003 online (last years similar one was to begin a web presence which is exactly what this is). The photos have been scanned, cropped, rotated, and false-coloured (where appropriate) and are now ready to accompany the scintillating written adventures. Late January the site will go live. Watch this space--technically another space, but that's not so snappy.

Third and final resolution is to get something published. Last years equivalent was to submit at least one story to one publication which I duly did and got rejected. Followed by more rejections of several different pieces by several different venues. I'm going through the poor-nobody-understand-me phase at the present time...So this year the resolution is to be published...I've got my eye on some really obscure (and I mean really obscure--Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine doesn't come close) mags so it should be achievable. Recent good news on the writing front includes my Quarter Final placing in L. Ron Hubbard's Writer's of the Future Contest for a time-travel story (although call me old-fashioned and way behind the times, but I always had the impression reaching the quarter finals meant you got to the last eight--in the WOTF quarter finals means something like in the top eighty stories. Still some way to go!). Also I'm going to Clarion 2006 which means six weeks locked in a student dorm with other crazy-wannabee, I mean, aspiring, writers in deepest Michigan, USA. I can't wait. Really.

I'll finish off now so that I have something else to say before March...

The Right Words

2005-11-09T13:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, for the first time since June, I went back to the state school to pick up my teaching timetable for this academic year.

My contact at the school is Briggy, a middle-aged Hungarian woman, who, although not possessing the most dynamic of personalities, has bent over backwards to make me feel welcome (last year she drove me around the suburbs of Budapest trying to find the right immigration office where I could get a resident's permit, and gave me her own home-made lunch on the way).

Anyway, on the way to the school, I was trying to think of small-talk I could offer before we got down to business, and I remembered that she'd been unwell recently and had an operation. So, I thought, I can ask her if she's recovered. Then, I thought, wouldn't it be better to ask about the particular trauma in question. Trouble was, I couldn't remember exactly what the problem was.

It might of been an arm, it could of been her hip, in short it could've been anything. Should I gamble, I thought, and ask how's the leg, hoping the ailing part was localised to this region. What if it wasn't? Would that be worse than not asking at all? To my mind, it would. It'd be like saying I can't be arsed recalling the exact nature of your serious and debilitating condition, but I've mentally file it under sort of unwell.

Not good.

So then, I thought, is there a way of phrasing the question to seem specific but actually only be general. Was I trying to square the circle? Perhaps so, because I couldn't see how it could be done.

How's the muscle? How are the bits recovering?! (That might actually be safe, as her informal English is terrible and she wouldn't know that bits is the lingo old ladies use for their...well...private parts).

I conceded defeat and let my mind drift to something else.

In the end, all the speculation was for nowt, because I only got to talk to Briggy in front of her Year 12 class (a strange scenario where she pretends there aren't fifteen teenagers silent as mice watching me and her 'chat' at the front of the class) and kept the talk to business. Timetable looks pretty similar to last year with Weds and Fri free from the tyranny of kids!