Genre fiction
My latest story published on line is here – Bored Out Of My Skull, on the ever-wonderful The New Flesh Magazine. This is quirky weird strange horror, perhaps humour bizarro. I don’t know, but it was a fun story to write.
Yes, it’s Thursday when I usually post about what I’m reading, but truly nothing much has changed since last Thursday – still deep in the heart of reading the tutoring manual and readings. Whew.
A new story – “Bored Out Of My Skull” – is coming out on the The New Flesh Magazine on the 17th (okay, it’s already the 17th here in New Zealand, but I’ll post a proper link tomorrow).
Bored Out Of My Skull seems like a dopey title for a story – a total cliche and I do rail against using cliches. The story, however it is more literal – involving drills and helmets: the kind of thing that naturally finds a home at a place like The New Flesh which publishes flash fiction of the more bizarre and quirky kind. Originally I wrote the story with the cliche as a kicking off point, never thinking the title would stick.
This will be my third publication at The New Flesh, following the more literary “While He Lay Crumpled” and humourous “Submission”. Thanks to the editors Suzie and William for accepting my story.
I have a couple of Igneous Flame albums – Intox and Oxana. Both are wonderful drifty drone-ambient pieces. Intox is a little over an hour long – so it suits me for a writing spell. It’s good music to be more concentrated to, there’s nothing too invasive or requiring too much attention (unless you want to to really give it attention). Oxana has some shipping forcasts later in the album which adds a little edge.
I still like CDs for variety and some of Igneous Flame disks are still available at Shopsonic, but you can stream music from the Igneous Flame MySpace page. There are also some neat videos at the NME site.
Late post here – I spent the weekend editing the novel and re-writing the last chapter. Mostly the edits are okay – minor changes to sentence flow here and there, for the most part it seems to be working, though that may all change when the editor looks at it. What did need a lot of work was the ending – it was all over too suddenly, so I have rewritten that from scratch. The 400 word final chapter has become three 500 word chapters and rounds it out much better. Of course it’s still draft material, and will take some revising, but it fits the pace and tone better so I feel a little closer to the end. I do want to get it submitted before I’m too caught up in tutoring. That was my weekend.
Professional photographer Kyle Cassidy has a wonderful project of photographing science fiction authors in their writing space. Where I Write is a quick and cool insight into the variations in how people write – Michael Swandick’s bustling busy office, Will De Smedt’s orderly space, Ellen Datlow’s living room approach. I think my favourite is Joe Haldeman handwriting in notebooks by candle- and lamplight.
Food Drive has just come out on Flashes in the Dark – another dark and creepy tale as we’ve come to expect from Angel. Angel has been in hiding for a while – though there are a few upcoming stories – I imagine he is working on something grand and devious.
I’m tutoring in creative writing again this year, and the first portfolios are due in a little over two weeks which means the early first ones will probably arrive in week. I’ve gotta be prepared and that means reading the book of readings and the study guide so I both refresh myself (this is my fifth year with this course) and settle in, plus keep up with anything new. The first portfolio is poetry, so I’ve been reading Frost and cummings and Wendy Cope and Basho. It’s refreshing and directed. I know that tutoring in this course has helped my own writing hugely. I recommend creative writing courses to all: they’re not the be-all and end-all, but they have a lot of value, both if you’re a student or a tutor (or, I imagine, a lecturer).
Gustavius added one of my little flickr photos (the distorted car) as a favourite, which was flattering (since my flickr page is singularly unvisited – most visits seem to come from people clicking on the picture in the sidebar here, and the blog is relatively unvisited). Anyway, having a look at his flickr site I discovered his am-bee-yent set of photos (see ultra-mini thumbnails there) which are pretty cool and would look great as the covers of some ambient albums. I’m guessing this is the same Gustavius I remember from the 12k Forum online forum for discussing minimal and ambient music. Anyway, there are nearly 200 images and they’re fabulous – try running them as a slideshow with some music playing. Very Zen.
I Awake – [The Core] is a 60 minute-plus album (it has a “hidden” track at the end) that’s probably more chill than strictly ambient. There are a lot of beats compared to some of what I listen to. Nothing too fast or imposing and much of the record is made up of atmospheres and gentle drifty melodies, supported by some deep bass, choir sounds and a little singing. [The Core] is made up of shorter tracks – mostly between four and five minutes, unlike many ambient albums around which often have tracks which clock in at 15 minutes and upwards. I like to write to this album when I’m wanting to be fast and punchy – the music is an hour with energy and drive, ebbs and flows and this gets reflected, I think, in slightly more upbeat writing.
Like other releases on the exquisite Ultimae label, this comes with a gorgeous 16 page booklet of photographs.
The soon to be published Lame Goat Press anthology Howl looks to be a stunner. I had an idea for a story, but had so much else on that I put it aside – life is a series of choices about what not to do. Part of the reason for wanting to submit to the anthology was the fabulous cover, but it’s growing and growing. There’s now a fantastic book trailer for the volume, which is also on YouTube, one of the stories has been podcasted on archive.org, and the contributing writer’s list includes lots of my faves (Jodi, Angel, Mark Anthony Crittenden, to mention a few). I’m green. Still, it’s cool to be associated with Lame Goat Press and great to see it going from strength to strength.
(whoops – my bad, and see the comments, Laura’s not in this anthology, but she is in a couple of others – Diamonds in the Rough, and Flash! out soon. Sorry Laura).
Triple V Publishing 