Category: fiction

Wake by Jean David Morvan and Philippe Buchet

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Wake is a multi-volume science fiction graphic novel from the early to mid 2000s. I came across volume five, which combines story 6 (Artifice) and 7 (Maximum [in]security). The stories are fun, both brutal and humourous and a bit over the top. Navee, the main character is quirky, tolerant and at times impatient. What I really like most about the volume, though, is the illustrations. Buchet’s use of line, framing, colour and so on is hyper-real. The pictures remind me a lot of Moebius’s work from Heavy Metal. In particular I like the attention to detail – Snivel, Navee’s robot buddy, gets disected and retrofitted to two different bodies, ending up with a nice replacement, yet he always looks like Snivel. When Navee pulls on gloves from the three-fingered aliens, her middle two fingers are forced into a single finger space – not overtly done, but when I noticed that, it was pleasing to see the care that had been taken.

How does a graphic novel fit with reading for writing?

1. Read widely.
2. Graphic novels still have a story.
3. Maybe the story you’re working on but struggling with might lend itself better to treatment as a graphic novel.
4. Read widely.

Matthew Florianz

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Dutch ambient artist Matthew Florianz has a great catalogue of minimal ambient music to drift off to. His work is deep and subtle and very moody, and has been well reviewed in the ambient community. I have most of the releases on CD, and have been lucky enough to get some limited edition releases too. Niemandsland from 2006 was originally released with two disks of extra material and the three make a great developing soundtrack for a day of creativity. It’s nice to listen to CDs, rather than just streaming or listening to downloads through Winamp – in part because I can have the computer off and just edit or handwrite.

Florianz’s CDs are available through Shopsonic, and you can check out his MySpace page for updates, happenings and samples and songs to listen to while online. There is an album’s worth of tracks to listen to on the MySpace page.

Creativity

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Well, it was a busy week – I finally got my story ready and submitted for the Southern Horror Writer’s Horror Club on Flashes In The Dark. This was a story that took a lot of false starts. First it was about a Blight hitting Slope Point (Slope Point is the Southernmost place on New Zealand’s South Island), then a different version of the same premise (Blight rewrite), then a new story with the same characters (House at Bluff), then, finally, Doubtful Sound:

First started back in January, several runs at the story didn’t cut it. Not every file there is a totally new story – ultimately there are variations on each of the four. Finally, with Doubtful Sound I got something that I was happy with. You can see here, too, how I organise my files as I write – date each new version with the day I start it so that I can backtrack, give it a title that makes sense to me. I keep the old versions as I work through edits and redate the file as I make the changes on the screen.

Barris Debris – New Science Fiction/Horror story coming out soon

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

My science fiction/horror story “Barris Space” has been accepted into the Lame Goat Press No One Can Hear You Scream anthology, which is cool. Lame Goat Press is really developing very quickly into something of note, and I’m pleased to be associated with it through my stories. Great work by Chris Bartholemew and Christopher Jacobmeyer, and Mark Crittendon, on getting this anthology together – there are some top authors, regulars and new, on the list.

The picture here isn’t the cover – Mark’s cover is amazing – this is just a doodle I did in a meeting.

Okay – this is a Saturday post, which falls out of my schedule, but that’s okay. See you Monday (or Sunday if you’re on Pacific time).

Thursday book – Witchsong

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I blog about Kim a bit, so it’s probably no surprise I’m starting my regular “reading for writing” series, proper, with one of her books – I’m a definite fan. Part of what’s cool about this book is how it shows Kim’s versatility – she writes adult horror/fantasy/supernatural novels, adult romances (as Kimberly Freeman), children’s novels and young adult novels. She’s even written an early reader and a picture book. Anyway, Witchsong is the fourth book in her young adult series about psychic Gina Champion, and perhaps the scariest yet as Gina is faced with a ghost hell-bent on retribution.

What’s cool about reading this, as a writer, is how well-balanced the novel is. Gina has to contend, as in the earlier books, with the supernatural events, sceptical police, busy friends, distant parents and added into this, very nicely, is her almost estranged relationship with her adult sister. Throughout the book things keep unfolding and the danger increases, as you would expect from a thriller, but Wilkins dials it back at times, really heightening the tension, with everyday things that have to be done. It’s as well-tuned as a racing engine.

There are many, many “how to” books on writing a novel out there, but the best guide, I say, is actually reading novels to really understand how to write a novel. While Witchsong might be targeted neatly at a teen audience, it’s still worth checking out for would-be writers.

(Kim recently changed the theme of her website, which runs on wordpress, to Chaotic Soul, the same as I’ve been using for ages! I guess there are only so many themes, and this one must be popular amongst horror writers – Graeme Reynolds is using it too).

What is this blog about?

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been watching my posts over recent times and realise that I’m all over the place. So, I’m going to try a little structure for a while. In general the blog has always been about creativity, whether that be writing, music or art. When I started it was pretty much all music (hence the blog name), then as my publication list began growing, the blog shifted to more of a focus on writing and, over time, has become very broad (perhaps some would say scattered). Anyway, here’s my plan for the next little while, assuming I keep blogging on weekdays**

Monday – weekend musings: how my projects have gone over the previous seven days
Tuesday – music to write to: a short review of music I’ve been listening to as I write
Wednesday – random notes on what’s up
Thursday – reading for writing: a short review of the book I’m reading*
Friday – music to write to or random

I will also, as they occur, post notes about current publications, music releases, general news, etc.

*I try to read a book a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. During marking blocks, heavy writing times and so on, sometimes I slip so I might write about something I read a last year, or the year before, or 1989 or whenever.

**Being to the left of the international dateline, if I post at, say, 9am on a Wednesday, that’s around midday on Tuesday in LA, 3pm Tuesday EST, so if my posts seem early …

Cutting words to meet limits

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend I’ve been working on a couple of science fiction stories, reworking and whittling them for their intended markets. Antipodean Science Fiction, which has published a couple of my stories already, has a tight limit – around 500 words (they have a little flexibility, but not much over 500). 365Tomorrows has taken one of my stories and their limit is 600. My two current stories are 650 and 570 words respectively.

There’s a good article by Ken Rand here on the Science Fiction Writers of America site, about straightforward ways of cutting ten percent from stories and articles. That’s a good start, though having read the article a while ago I notice that I’ve been doing some of these things automatically anyway.

After that the question becomes, what can I remove without having the whole story collapse into a shambles? Perhaps I could drop the mention of the poker game in the longer story? Well, that’s important for character. But how else could I show that aspect? Perhaps if I took Karl’s character out of the other story and just let it be between Bayliss and Angela it would tighten up a bit? It feels like they need a foil, but could that just be done through the situation?

Well, I’ll keep cutting and see where it gets. Otherwise, I might just re-write them from scratch and see how they will fit with one of sites with longer limits – 1000 words feels like a lot to play with when I’ve been shooting for 500.

Streamined website – why?

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to those who’ve given me feedback on the updated venusvulture.com website – I have made a couple of minor changes. I am certainly a fan of minimal and streamlined and tired of sparkly ads, flash player required, complex links and pages stuffed to bursting or that scroll forever. The index page is 1kb of html and 31kb of images. I’ve avoided Dreamweaver, etc. and just hand-coded the html (yes, typed it as a text file). Too old school? Probably. Anyway, this is the code for the index page, for those who are interested.

Ah, no metadata, no java. That’ll probably cost me hits too. Oh well. I do have a favicon, but I still can’t figure out why it’s not working – something missing in the code?

Ghost Radio by Leopoldo Gout

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

I’ve just finished the very hip book Ghost Radio by Leopoldo Gout. It’s a quirky and challenging novel with a seemingly well-paced story, but hiding a subtle and slow build. By the time I realised what was happening, it was almost done, even though all the clues are sown throughout the story. It’s told in episodic fashion, with snippets of radio interviews, flashbacks and with shifting points of view (at times I did find it tricky to know who the pronouns meant immediately). Each chapter begins with a haunting illustration that hints at what is to come.

There seems to be a little bit of Internet hype about the book (it has been out for a while now), and Gout works with James Patterson developing some of that author’s children’s concepts for for animation so he is probably keyed into that promotion machine (Patterson is quoted in support of the book on the back of my copy). Anyway, I enjoyed it enough to hope that Gout isn’t too busy with media production to be able to put out another novel soon.

ps – just surfing and discovered that Gout has posted a deleted chapter from the novel on his Ghost Radio blog. That’ll give you a taste of the novel, plus something you can’t read in the print version.