Milk and butter,
a flowing flower carpet unwinds
beneath confidently stumbling tread.
Category Archives: Writing
Thoughts about writing.
Bacon.
Thanks to @NathanHuman and @Orbette
Notes,
studied on the refrigerator door.
The cold hum,
drowned
by breakfast’s gleeful crackle.
Continue reading Bacon.
To be a poet
How wonderful,
I think,
To be a poet.
To move from town
To different town,
Each night to be ignored
Over indifferent tapas
In the bar of some
Chain arthouse cinema.
Naming convention
Disclaimer before we begin: I’m not a real writer, I’ve never been published. I’m not an authority. I just have Opinions. Also, none of this applies to sci-fi or fantasy, where you can really just go crazy with names (although getting those right is a whole other post).
Names are important. The final act of Arthur Miller’s magnificent The Crucible hinges on John Proctor being unwilling, almost unable, to put his name to a confession because it would mean signing away its integrity. In the end, he chooses to hang rather than lose his name. It’s allegorical, of course, but the point stands. Names are important.
Continue reading Naming convention
Getting Home
Wind billows
Rain grey
Through London streets
Chasing umbrellas
Making fools.
Continue reading Getting Home
I’ve written a book, redux
And it’s been published! By me! There’s a book with my name printed on the cover, not just scrawled on in marker pen. Pretty sweet. Massively thrilling.
Going to write another one. See you back here in a year.
Quick ad
OI! Go and read my pop column on MostlyFilm.com. It’s pretty good, you know.
A hive of activity
Sorry. Been busy.
Really have, too. Guardian Film Talk have banded and bonded and we’ve made something new, and GOOD, damn it, from the disaster which befell us. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it? I’m impressed, anyway. At the time of writing, my first post on the new blog is ready to go. By the time anyone reads this, it’ll be up. God, I hope it’s ok. But don’t tell me what you think here, tell me over there. We need the readers. We need the love.
Elsewhere in life; usual ups and downs, sickness, tiredness, beautiful baby, it’s all good really. She’ll be two in May. Two! I can hardly believe that. Can you believe that? No, I didn’t think so. But there it is, it’s true. Soon she’ll have her own investment portfolio.
Publishing
I’m self-publishing, not because it’s a vanity project but because I want a copy for my daughter and don’t care to hawk it round publishers in the forlorn hope of getting it one day, maybe, printed.
It’s a book of rhymes, called “Eleanor Kisses Crocodiles”. I wrote the rhymes (with able assistance from my wife, especially on the “snake” page) about my daughter, and my Dad has drawn and painted the accompanying pictures. I got the cover pic from him today. It is amazing, it’s just beautiful. I’m uploading the text as I type this, up to lulu.com, and soon I’ll put together a proper cover, with words and stuff.
I’m actually doing this. It’s a thing. It’s going to happen. I’m going to be published. YES, BY ME. I know. But still. It’s exciting, however it happens.
Spook
I don’t know why, exactly, but all I’m reading of late are ghost stories. MR James, if there are any left, but also Dickens, Hodgson’s Carnacki stories and I’ve just finished the splendidly creepy Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. I wallow in them, I find them utterly compelling, fascinating and – fuck you, David Mitchell* – satisfying.
It’s probably the season, the long nights, the early dark. It attracts ghost stories as a way to keep you indoors, huddled round the fire, talking of the things in the dusk.
So, hopefully, immersed as I am, I’ll produce that story I promised.
Meanwhile, here are some things which scare me.
Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad by MR James – you don’t know ghost stories until you know this backwards. Not that you’ll want to read it twice.
The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens – magnificently eerie short from Dickens, whose ghost stories deserve wider recognition than the regular trot-out of A Christmas Carol (as good as that is).
The Moon-Bog by HP Lovecraft – as with a lot of Lovecraft, not exactly spooky, but the atmosphere is unsettling. His longer stories (The Dunwich Horror, say, or Shadow over Innsmouth) conjure a greater feeling of dread, and there is a sequence in Innsmouth which is genuinely heart-in-mouth terrifying. But The Moon-Bog has stayed with me, for whatever reason.
The vampire of Croglin Low Hall – supposedly true story that simply scares the bejesus out of me.
*Though that whole article is confused bollocks. The fun is not in finding out what is the cause of the haunting but in following the increasing terror of the protagonist as they discover the cause.