Monday, July 31, 2006

Norwegian Blue

Last Monday I came home to find my PC trying to boot up. This was a little odd as it was switched off when I left. I fiddled about but nothing I could do could induce it to switch on. After a lot of diagnosis the next day, including buying a new power supply (which I no longer need - if you're interested), it was pronounced dead at 1200 hours. It was a little like mourning a friend. That computer got me through a lot of the last year as my window on the world and my source of entertainment. No wonder it was worn out. The unusual heat finally did it in along with a failing power supply. Crispy chips are nice when they aren't silicon.

Today I'm waiting for its replacement to arrive. Not something I'd planned on getting as I crawl out of debt induced by unemployment and exacerbated by having to pay huge repair bills on my car. It cost me the same amount as the number of the beast. I choose to think of this as an amusing omen for good.

Fortunately, I had done a backup not long before and so most of my data is safe and recoverable. All that I really need from the harddrive, if it still works, is my savegames and and the story I'd started working on.

I don't know if this will make it into Adocentyn, but I'm imagining it set during a holiday my narrator/hero has and perhaps the first glimmer that his childhood is catching up with him. Taking place in the deep south of Italy, I'm taking an almost voodoo spin on the Tarantella; a dance once done to rid young women of the poisonous effects of the bites of a Tarantula. I think I've got it mapped out, but I wrote a great opening paragraph extolling the ennui of the early 21st century. While a re-write may do it good, sometimes you never capture the same intent twice.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Comical Ali

Remember the information minister for Iraq who spent a lot of time denying the Coalition of the Willing were making any headway into Iraq while huge explosions happened right behind him?

I was reminded of him today when I was listening to the radio and heard the Israeli ambassador to the UN reject a call for a truce to allow aid into Lebanon because Hezbollah are trying to create a humanitarian disaster...

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Guernica

It is a bit of a mystery to me how after one military force attacks another (usually considered a 'legitimate' target) this justifies the 'precision' bombing of an entire country and specifically the civilians.

Meanwhile the people supplying the arms just sit back and watch the show.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Saddle Up

Much of my work seems to occur at just the right time that a similar wave crops up in the media in general. Enoch's Vault takes Biblical mysteries and the whole 'alternate history' research that we see in The DaVinci Code et al. Primero, is an alternate Bond/spy story, just as there is an upsurge in these.

I'm not claiming to be in tune with the Mode of the Monde, in fact this is the problem. Someone, somewhere, decided two years before that these things would be good to publish, or make into film. So you need to either make the wave or be in the right place at the right time.

I'm back working on my misunderstood magnum opus Adocentyn. There are, I guess, the usual fantasy moments in the book, and they'll be tinged with that religious faith quest thing I seem to do, that yearning for touching the divine. I mean, it is a self styled Gnostic parable after all. Will this be good enough/ different enough? I dunno. El seems to think so and she has a gravity of opinion that outweighs most.

Here's a bit I wrote recently that I really love:

The stairwell was an odd mixture of damp, mouldy patches, sometimes with disturbing fungal growths clinging to the wall, and dry, arid regions duned with dust. Both of them made my nose itch and I fought the urge to sneeze. I didn’t want to breathe in whatever might be floating in the air.

Just as curious, in these regions, were the creatures that inhabited them - spiders with tiny bodies and long legs that made them as big as my hand skittered over the deserts, while fat, anaemic slugs writhed amongst the mildew. I imagined a polarised war between these two forms of decay and prey. Dry rot versus wet corruption.

I don’t know, now, if I realised that same war was waging within me.