Scott H Young dot com – super learning

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Scott H Young’s site on getting more from life is worth checking out.* Often I find I’m reading into websites just for little motivational pushes to help stay focused on the goal line, and beyond. I especially like Scott’s article on reading and how to read more (70+ books a year) and read more effectively (I do like the “cut down on TV” idea in there, though I think there are other ways of speedreading – I do it without the finger).

Okay, as per my previous post this is a Wednesday – random what’s up post. Tomorrow will be a reading for writing post on what I’m currently reading, which kind of relates to the above – reading 70 books a year. At the moment it’s more like 52 at a stretch, and if I’m going to post every Thursday about a new book, then I need to get cracking.

*Another guy, without the H – just plain Scott Young – has a site on getting more from life too, just from a different focus. Don’t confuse the two, though for some people I’m sure they are quite complementary.

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.

Avatar by Roger Dean

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been a fan of Roger Dean’s art for a long time now – I bought his book Views when I was a teenager. As soon as I saw the Avatar previews, I could see the similarity to Dean’s work from the nineties. There is a bit of controversy about how much Avatar’s designers have borrowed Dean’s ideas – a quick Google search will give you a sense.

I did love Avatar. It’s a great rollercoaster ride that kept me mostly engaged for the three hours and it was worth travelling to a city with a 3D theatre to see it with specs on (yes, I live in a rural city). I do think the designs and ideas were extraordinary, and the 3D unobtrusive.

Certainly the covers of the Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe – Live and Yes – Keys to Ascension albums predate Avatar’s design. I would guess that many of the Avatar designers were infants when ABWH came out. There is some good discussion of the similarities – like this post: more than I can say. I guess if it had been my paintings at the very least, a credit would have been nice, some consultation would have been nice, too, even without the idea of remuneration. I wonder now, though, how Dean’s long-held idea of a movie dealing with his floating islands would pitch to the studios.

Jerome Faria, 17:14 ep on bandcamp

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve just listened to Jerome’s new ambient/glitch ep 17:14 (yes, that’s the duration and the title) – here on his Bandcamp site. It’s a moody, drifty piece, with little hints of melody, tiny quiet jabs of subtle static and some delicious drones. Jerome usually releases music as NNY, and has a pretty full catalogue of downloads and media. Some of his work is a bit edgy and too glitchy for my taste, but this new ep tags it just right – enough drone and melody to balance the strong frequencies and clicks. Great music to write to – available both as a stream and free download.

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.

New venusvulture.com site is ready and working

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 4 Comments

New index screen at venusvulture.comWhew. It’s been a while in the making, but the new Venus Vulture/Sean Monaghan website is running. It’s tidier and more streamlined. The homepage probably goes against conventions, but I like the look – going for minimal. There are still some bits to update, but it’s always a work in progress.

I promised this a while ago – there’s a screenshot in this post from late last year of how the site used to look.