Vanarchy In The UK

Saw 'V For Vendetta' yesterday and my fears were fortunately futile. While, yes, it is watered down and some plot points being dropped become a nice in-joke (Birch talks about visiting the concentration camp and having a 'feeling' about how this would all turn out - I seem to recall he drops acid and trips his way to revelation about what happened there and where to find V). I actually found the film very moving with some wonderful scenes taken straight from the pages of the book. For a film adaptation, of this material, it was splendid.

Madimi

As soon as I start work on Adocentyn cursing Primed and my inability to get past the first chapter of the Dee section, something gives and I'm away. Instead of pulling teeth it is just flowing along nicely, so now I'm close to the end of the first draft.

I was pitching for about 10,000 words, but will probably get 6,000. I'm sure as the revisions go on this will swell up a bit more towards the target, but I always write tight. As soon as this draft is done I have to go back and change the dialogue into iambic pentameter. Glutton for punishment me.

Dancing In The Street

It's tommorrow (or maybe next year), you sleep rough in an old railway tunnel, or Victorian shops someone built a railway station over, you're young, angry, delinquent. What music (available now) is a good soundtrack to your life?

Crisis Averted

Not reported much on progress recently, mainly because there hasn't been any to report on.

I love the Dee/WWII project, and have averted a bigger problem by narrowing those into one work. However, as much as I liked it, it wasn't coming from the soul. And in the vacuum in steps Adocentyn.

Some of you will know that I've been struggling with a number of stories involving street kids and their own mythology. All in all not too pleasant and I've had real difficulty seeing how to realise it into anything, anything at all. The long sub-conscious gestation may have done it well. I have a sketchy outline and I have finally begun writing with a sense of enthusiasm. This will not be a joy to write in the normal sense and I actually hope to work on Primed as some kind of light relief from my own demons bubbling forth.

Here's another opening paragraph or two for Hal's critique:
"The last thing I remember my sister saying was something about man being everywhere in chains.
We were travelling north on our summer holiday. It was a gorgeous autumn day, the sun high in the blue sky, faint wisps of cloud minced along. The sun was a nice change as it had rained all the previous day as we drove from London to Glasgow. Now we were heading up the side of Loch Lomond.
I was gazing out over the fish scale water. My sister, Jo, was practising her manifesto on me, for when she got back to school. Most girls want to grow up to be a princess. Jo wanted to be the elected leader of the revolution.

Originally it started with the last two lines here first, I'm still playing. Never tried first person before either.

Candidate must have hands on sludge experience

A true line from a job ad today

Turn Left At Plymouth

I can't believe I'm watching live footage of a whale in the Thames. I'm pretty sure I'm not smoking crack, but there could have been something in the soap I used to wash the car earlier.

I thought I'd supply the joke for tonight's stand up in the headline.

Casino

Finally got started. Took out my spade and broke the ground. I've done about half of the first chapter so far. I don't know if this will pass Hal Duncan's first sentence critique test, but here's the first paragraph:

Dee, Mathematician, Magus, Spy, picks up the cards that he has been dealt. The good quality deck is of the Italian style. He has one card with seven gold coins, made with real gold leaf. The other depicts seven batons, sprouting leaves. “Numerus quarante huit,” he says, making his bid. He hasn’t been recognised yet, good. He places a few coins on the table in front of him and observes the reaction.

16th Century pulp, historical accuracy and adventure. Why did I do this to myself?

Closer

Well, finally finished the first draft of the outline. I'm going to do another pass and fill in some of the XXX and YYYs. Then I can work on filling it out in more detail while I get started on the opening Dee section. I've been itching to write this for soo long now, I almost don't want to start and disappoint myself.

Plot Apocalypse

I had something of a revelation on Tuesday evening in the pub. I could feel that light beaming out of the sky illuminating me.

Instead of getting stuck writing two WWII based stories with weird shit going on, why not combine them?! Suddenly all the issues I was having melted away, and now, a few days later, I'm close to a very rough outline. (Xxx meets Yyy. No, really! I know who they are, just was on a roll so couldn't be bothered stopping to look up the names.)

In so doing, it's like all the other issues I've had to contend with this year dissipated too. I even had a call about a job. Not an interview as such, but a step in the right direction.

So now we have witches, wizards, WWII, werewolves, mecha-Nazis, Kabbalah Prime bombs and Dr John Dee. Annoyingly, I can find to legitimate reason to include ninjas. Warrior-monks, no problemo. Ninjas, not yet.

There goes another rubber tree

I heard back from an agent yesterday and they decided they didn't wish to represent Enoch's Vault. So two down on this draft and er however many it is in total now. Obviously, I could be happier and wonder if I should devote myself more to the next one than worry about selling the last one. But that little flicker of hope still burns.

I may have been rejected again, but both of these recent rejections have not been 'sorry, your work stinks' more 'sorry, I don't think _I_ can promote this' and in the sense that the agent personally doesn't feel right for the book. You can't complain about that and you can't change your style or subject without writing a new book or developing naturally.

So I don't know. At least I have closure on the year, no loose ends. At that means a nice clean start to next year, which can only be better than this one was. Still I did finish a novel, twice. Was able to be a professional (if unpublished) writer at WorldCon and gave readings of work to audiences in LA and Edinburgh.

So chin up and have a good holiday. Hope you get what you need next year.

Softly Spoken

I think this year's Writer's Bloc/GSFWC 'Write Off' went rather well. I was second last and so the last from the west coast to do a reading. 'Search Engine' will be up on the site soon, the tale of a quadriplegic finding a friend on the Internet. It remains the only thing I consider to be truly SF that I've written since I was 15. Revised since the submission to Nova Scotia, it came across funnier than intended, but the audience is primed for laughs by the end, and hell people laughed at 23rd Nail last year!

Now do we wait a whole year to host it again, or do we strike out boldly on our own?

Hmm. Upgrades!

I've revamped the site(s) (www.khaibit.com and www.khaibit.com/vault.hmtl) using lovely CSS tools and just have to make sure the 'Vault' pdfs are up to date as I wrote a considerably better (and longer) synopsis (thanks Robert for the advice).

Please have a look and let me know if they work okay on your machine (Opera and IE6 over broadband is all very well but that's not everything/one covered.)

Have rejigged one of my stories for the reading event. The other needs too much attention. I used to be able to do plot - I don't know what happened. All those years in the Cam? The Buffy effect, where each years Big Bad has to be bigger and badder to present a challenge to the point where it gets silly? I dunno. Maybe its not so much I can't do plot, more I've just got shy of it.

Reminds me of one of the funniest Thrud the Barbarian strips from White Dwarf. Thrud sits under a tree for a few cells then some dwarf pops up asking where the plot for this month's strip is. Thrud hits him with his axe making a Plot! noise. I guess you had to be there. (Maybe one day it will appear here: http://www.thrudthebarbarian.com/archiveindex.html

Once More Unto The Breach

Well I find myself with a lot of time on my hands again. So just need to get back into the swing of things.

First up is a crit tonight of a couple of stories I hope to read at this year's showdown between the GSFWC and Writer's Bloc. On the 15th December in the Canon's Gait over in Edinburgh.

Finally started making progress with Herne's Brigade and have begun to etch out the outline. Then there is still novel 2. Incidentally got a knock back on the newsest version of Enoch's Vault. Right now it is still out there with one agent. I don't know what to do if they're not interested. Meeting a wall of self doubt at the moment.

Herne's Brigade

One of the things I've been labouring on, is the background for an outline for a script for a TV series (and breathe). I'm tentatively calling it Herne's Brigade - A private unit loosely connected to SOE in WWII, fighting the evil Nazis with witchcraft (as oppose to magick).

I'm hoping to capture the mythic/pagan feel of Robin of Sherwood. Hence Herne is ultimately petitioned for aid/patronage. Here's some of my 'bible' in progress:

‘One history passes by in full view and, strictly speaking, is the history of crime...This is one history, the history which everybody knows, the history which is taught in schools...The other history is the history which is known to very few. For the majority it is not seen at all behind the history of crime...The visible history, the history proceeding on the surface, the history of crime, attributes to itself what the hidden history has created. But actually the visible history is always deceived by what the hidden history has created.’
P. D. Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe

One of the mysteries bequeathed to the Romano-British towards the end of the Roman Empire, was the seed of knowledge that the Empire had, from far India to Ireland, attempted to capture not only as much of the known world as possible, but in particular the sites of power; Pyramids, lingam stones, the circles of Gaul, Malta and Ireland, ancient cities built beneath Anatolia, henges, groves, oracles and springs; for it was to the Romano-British that the administration of these places fell...

The loud retort of the First World War still echoed across Europe, as Imperial powers realised their futile constructions were about to crumble. Another ideal rose, no less an Empire in ambition, but forged in the conflict of Fire and Ice, sweeping aside the martyred Jew and nailing once more the creed of the Volk to the cathedral door. From lands that stood outside the Pax Romanum, this Reich was determined to grab those places of power for itself...

Unseen armies clashed with one another. This is the tale of one band of occult commandos who struck deep into the Nazi occult engine and won unsung honours; Herne’s Brigade.

And on the 30th Day he will arise

I get to rejoin the land of the living this week. Four weeks after being made redundant and, better yet, beating my previous recording of signing on (last time it was two, this time one). I should be careful though, not signed a contract yet, and the Gods are already messing with me by destroying my TV.

It's only stuff, but I made a lot of sacrifices to get it and for obvious reasons can't afford to replace it (getting the repair guy out will be...taxing). Not to mention missing the last half of Waking the Dead tonight...

More Prime Beef

In one of those spooky coinkidink situations not only was there the start of a new series on Queen Elizabeth (I) but a programme on prime numbers on BBC 4 this week.

The prime programme was interesting, if so full of juvenile analogy that the science was lost. I mean suddenly we're taling about Riemann and a landscape, no explanation of where this landscape came from (I assume, right now, that it is some geometric function). Then at the 'sea level' of zero points all the prime numbers appear in a straight line. So I can find prime numbers on the coast of Scottish sea lochs, can I? Bloody Slartibartfart was a cunning soul.

It was fascinating to find that primes group together rather like the energy levels in heavy atoms like Uranium. You know explosive elements like Uranium. Prime numbers, the fundamental building blocks of the mathematical universe are like explosive atom energy levels. Boom. I laughed for hours.

Now I'm seeing prime's everywhere. Even Hal Duncan was having rpoblems with a TV game show and for a few minutes I thought the supposed answer was a prime. This is getting a bit like one of those Lovecraft stories with a solitary scholar and non-Euclidian geometry. (I guess if it can create landscapes with prime sea levels...)

Focus

I learned, later yesterday, that all it takes is focus. I put up an umbrella to shield me from the raining memes - No, it wasn't a tin foil hat. Remember, I know where you live - and got down to some work.

Instead of trying to multitask, I worked on Herne's Brigade (The WWII/pagan script). Started to look at character histories. Man, it's all very well saying that X was in WWI, but do you know what regiment, where did it see action? Which then means you need to decide where they where born, rather than it be a vague thing.

For instance the specific Riding in Yorkshire determines if it was the Queens' Own Dragoons, or the King's Own Light Infantry. That's the easy bit. Were they a regular or a volunteer, so which battalion where they in, and where did they see service before the war. Only a brave man with Google and Wikipedia in hand wades into that fray lightly.

Thankfully, I know people who know far more about this than I ever will, especially from browsing. But the story seeds from arbitrarily deciding someone was from York and thus probably saw service in Mesopotamia...delicious.

I love it when a plot comes together.

Primero!

Still lost in the quagmire of no job. However, I do have ideas, millions of them, bombarding me like rays from some superhero-generating freak experiment gone wrong.

The downside of this is the sublime torture of taking them and turning them into something useful. This is why I stopped trying to write SF - I had the Idea, but the resulting story was just Idea and little stick figures worshipping it in dark Cthonic meaningless gibberish chant.

For a real writer it isn't the having Ideas, it is doing something worthwhile with them, that is the measure. This is where sitting with other human beings (preferably in a warm pub) comes in handy. I haven't seen another human being since last Tuesday. Anyway...

So I have the Idea for a book Primed, the one with Dee and Prime numbers and golems and World War II and I discovered that there is even a game I can use in my opening Dr No pastiche called...Primero! I love how these things come together - but then I just am stuck on a plot for the next 100K words.

I have an Idea for a World War II set TV series (always handy to use the same research twice I think), a Robin of Sherwood meets Secret War type thing. Got the top level arc, and even some of the smaller plot details. I sit down to do an outline for episode 3 (it is, so the received wisdom goes, better to pitch a mid episode than a pilot) and >bang< it all goes blank.

I decide to start work on a kind of prequel short story to Enoch's Vault called Clatty Pat's Needle, which is about my detective Alex McEwan looking into a shooting next to an obelisk in Glasgow*, and how the obelisk is actually sovereign territory for an African state...And I can do all that, but there's no plot...argghh.

That's before I even start on investigating the bottle of Nelson's Blood rum...which, you know, isn't sitting in a cupboard in my flat.

Its not so much writer's block and writer's white noise.

*It should be noted that there isn't actually an obelisk like this in Glasgow (that I know of), which is kinda part of the point of the story.

A slight case of progress

After four months of 'employment' ie I was chained to a company but not being paid, I have finally been made redundant, after I begged for it. Yep, four months of worse than slavery (a slave at least gets shelter and food in return for their labour). I can now claim on my insurances and get benefit from the government while I seek a new job.

I have been witholding my labour for about 2 of those months. But really I could no longer afford to go to work on my own savings. This would have been so much easier to bear if I had been on the dole for four months, as I would have had some income and the insurance and my savings. But I've exhausted my contingency money just getting here. I can only thank the people who have supported me this far - even if it was just a coke down the pub - it's made a difference, believe me.

Now all I need is a new job, very very soon. Last time I was unemployed was exactly, down to the day, two years ago. It lasted about six weeks. I had only just come close to recovering from that; the not being paid for the three months that followed me being 'employed' and the year of half-time and reduced pay I'd been through before that. It occured to me that in my whole working career I have only worked for one company that was making money - Guinness, my first proper job, seven years ago.

Still I did have time to finish a re-draft.

Alternative ending

I just finished the latest draft, within my deadline. I put on a big push over the last couple of days. Of course I realise now you never truly _finish_ a book, merely stop working on it.

I made it to 91,000 words. About 11K short of what I wanted, but I'm much happier with this draft than the last one. I still need to read through the third section. Make those edits and then read through the whole thing.

Then I think I'll see what the GSFWC make of it. Poor souls. Who knows what I'll do after that. My main problem right now is a lack of a laser printer. A 400 page novel on ink-jet printing - it'll take a week and about a gallon of ink ;-)