This Week, I Have Been Mostly...

READING: 'Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking' by Susan Cain. This is an absolutely fascinating book. As an introvert myself, it was full of 'well, that explains a lot' moment.

Short Stories: 123 - 142 of 500. Faves this week:

Mantis Wives by Kij Johnson at Clarkesworld
Justifiably famous, this is gorgeously written with darkly creepy imagery and emotion. I'd imagine this hits people in different ways--it hit me as a meditation on the desire for pain and loss of self within relationships. Very powerful.

No Breather in the World but Thee by Jeff Vandermeer at Nightmare
Interesting take on the Lovecraftian 'unspeakable horror' that speaks to my love of aftermath stories. The fast-moving, multiple-POV style is rare in short stories, but it really works here, adding to the deep sense of dream-like paranoia.

WRITING: 'The Visiphorical Art,' a literary paranormal flash, and 2k words on a new SF story that's on schedule to become a novellette.

WATCHING: The finale of Being Human. Oh, show. Why did you wait until the very last episode ever to make me fall in love with Hal? I need the DVD boxset and someone to cast Damien Molony in something everything immediately. I need this man back on my telly. Also the first ep on the new season of Touch. Despite a deep and abiding twenty-five-year love of Kiefer Sutherland, I found this show unwatchable. Too many coincidences and too much cheese for my blood. But having heard that S2 was a bit of a reboot, I decided to try again - and so far, I'm very glad I did. This was a massive improvement, seeming almost like the pilot for a totally new show. No nicey-nicey, a proper story arc, interesting and engaging characters and Martin being proactive, resourceful and badass. Fingers crossed this continues!

ADMIRING: These. Both the sentiment and the pictures.

LAUGHING LIKE A LOON AT: This April Fool's submission received at Shimmer. Made me nostalgic for fanfic :)

RECORDING: One-Eyed Monster. From the synopsis, this is about Tara from Buffy battling the possessed-by-aliens detached penis of porn star Ron Jeremy. It may take a while to get up the courage to actually watch this.

This Week, I Have Been Mostly...

READING: The King of Lies by John Hart. I love Hart's writing style, deluded narrators and dysfunctional families, so this was always going to be right up my alley.

Short stories: 98 - 109 of 500. Faves this week:

Sun Dogs by Brooke Bolander at Lightspeed
Gorgeous story about Laika, the dog sent into space in 1957. I have a weakness for unusual POVs, and this is a great one, managing to describe both a familiar environment and an imagined one through the filter of what is effectively an alien consciousness. The dog's experiences and memories are heartbreaking, tempered by an unexpected but highly satisfying happy ending.

In Metal, In Bone by An Owomoyela at Eclipse Online
Quietly emotional story describing the tragedy of war that's both bleak and beautiful.

The Life and Deaths of Rachel Long by Kristine Kathryn Rusch - self-pubbed
Atmospheric and evocative piece about the power of music, idealism and obsession. Manages neatly to be uplifting and unsettling at the same time.

WRITING: Revising 'Can't See a Good Thing,' a 2,537 word near-future SF, and writing 'Sweetie,' a new 1,600 word horror about a man and his tarantula.

WATCHING: The Following. Still loving it, but every ep I have to work all over again to believe the central premise that Carroll's cult exists at all. 'We all want somewhere to belong,' says Parker, and yes, that's probably true--except, surely, for sociopathic serial killers, who are not usually known for team spirit and playing well with others? Putting this lot together should be like herding cats--surely the wheels have got to start coming off this well-oiled machine soon?

LISTENING TO: All You Need is Now by Duran Duran. One of my favourite albums of theirs, this makes  great exercise music. Repeated plays of 'Being Followed' definitely influenced the paranoid vibe of the SF story.

CHECKING OUT: Wattpad. Anyone have any experience, either as writer or reader? On my first browse around, I saw a lot of nifty cover art but... maybe not so much nifty writing?

This Week, I Have Been Mostly...

READING: The Harlequin by Laurell K Hamilton. I can't seem to quit this series, although I'm not entirely sure why. Possibly it's two parts nostalgia, one part car-crash voyeurism and one part instruction of the 'what not to do' variety. This one has Edward, which is always good value, and it also has more talking than sex, which hasn't been the case for a while. I just wish so much of the talking wasn't slut-shaming.

Short Stories: 69-80 of 500. Faves this week:

The Wanderers, by Bonnie Jo Shufflebeam at Clarkesworld 
The voice is wonderful, with just the right amount of 'offness' to be credible and intriguing without becoming incomprehensible. There's a dark sense of glee in the narrator's anticipation of violence, and an unexpected pathos when it doesn't pan out--like a little boy crying because the flies he was going to pull the wings off are already dead.

I Heard You Got a Cat, I Heart You Named Him Charles by M. Bennardo at Daily Science Fiction.
A perfect flash, with so much story told in so few words.  Plus, this is creepy with a capital CREEP.

WRITING: A 4k contemporary fantasy about a goddess who goes for life coaching.

WATCHING: 

• Django Unchained, which I thought was tremendous: some absolutely wonderful performances. 
• The first Black Mirror, 'Be Right Back'. The central idea was almost identical to that used in Caprica, but--possibly because this was so much more 'right around the corner'-- it was far, far creepier here. I spent most of it cowering, yelling 'haven't you ever seen any piece of science fiction EVER? This stuff Does Not End Well.' The actual ending, although still very unsettling, came as kind of a relief. 
• The Losers, which was a very generic action film but really made me miss John Winchester. 

WONDERING:

• When you hear a cover version of a song before the original, do you tend to prefer the cover?
• What percentage, roughly, of the stories in any given issue of a magazine would you buy for your own, if you had one?

BEING GRATEFUL FOR: the fact that beginners can benefit from the wisdom of those who came before us, like this by Helena Bell on cover letters. Gotta love the Internet!

PUBLISHING: What Doesn't Kill You, a 4,500 dark fantasy from Transient Tales Vol 1, as a standalone e-short. It's great that we can now release stories individually, like singles, as a taster. Gotta love the Internet part 2! (Link goes to Smashwords: Amazon in progress)

This Week, I Have Been Mostly...

READING: Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut. I found this easy to appreciate and admire, but a little less easy to love.

Short stories:  63 - 68 of 500. Faves this week both come from Daily Science Fiction:

The Needs of Hollow Men by K A Rundell: I love empath stories, and this is a good one. Excellent internal descriptions and an unexpectedly sweet finish.

For the People by Ronald D Ferguson: If you can buy the premise (and in the increasingly-virtual world, it gets easier each day) this is a satisfying story.

WRITING: a 3.5k cannibal horror story, plus 2k of a lightly-comic superhero story.

WATCHING: The Following, with Kevin Back and James Purefoy. Some of my top narrative kinks are charismatic sociopaths, manipulative puppetmasters, broken obsessives and people who go to insane lengths. This show was MADE for me. Also Rizzoli and Isles, which I love more and more each ep. It's so nice to see a female bromance (is there a word for this?) for a change.

LISTENING TO: Battle Born, by The Killers. Great album, IMO their best since Hot Fuss.

SHOPPING FOR: my holiday: Muse, The Killers, Slipknot and Rammstein t-shirts. Roll on New York!

WORRYING ABOUT: having a money spider lay eggs in my brain after I tried to lift it out of my hair and accidentally snorted it up my nose instead.

This Week, I Have Been Mostly

READING: Double Dexter by Jeff Lindsay. Privilege subtext, where the reader knows more than the character, is a great storytelling technique, but it's slightly overdone here -- rather than me feel superior and creating tension, it made Dex come across as a little obtuse. But that said, I do love this series and it's fun to see characters, such as Doakes, that aren't in the TV show any more.

Short stories: up to 50 of 500. Faves include:

Child-Empress of Mars by Theodora Goss reprinted at Lightspeed
I've never read the 'Mars adventure' stories that this is riffing off (note to self: you should rectify that) but it was still interesting to see this kind of thing done from the aliens' perspective, and I liked the themes of performance and storytelling. The world-building initially seemed random and overwhelming, but quickly became charming.

Dysphonia in D Minor by Damien Walters Grintalis at Strange Horizons
Sweetly melancholy story of love and destruction, using an interesting song-creates-buildings metaphor as backdrop. It's a shame we don't find out more about Lucia's motivations, but it's still an effective story.


WRITING: a short SF tale set on a red planet and featuring the theme of 'wherever you go, there you are'. Which is not necessarily a good thing.

WATCHING: Utopia, on Channel 4. Only seen the pilot, but what a pilot it was. Interesting, diverse characters, an involved plot, great bad guys and a nightmarish, creepy vibe. Definitely coming back for more.






LEARNING: how to create epub and mobi files by hand, without using conversion software. It takes a while to get your head round it, and it's fiddly, but once you've got the basic structure (and templates) down, it's not that hard. And you know you're getting nice, clean, stable ebooks that a) do what you want them to do and b) are easily updated with new links etc. It takes time, but it's worth it. Which leads on to:





PUBLISHING: Transient Tales Volumes 1 and 2 - 20k collections of short SF, fantasy & horror stories.

Volume 1: Amazon UK / Amazon US / Smashwords / Kobo

Volume 2: Amazon UK / Amazon US / Smashwords





FINDING USEFUL: The Submission Grinder by Diabolical Plots. I always kept my subs on a spreadsheet (because, spreadsheets!) so I didn't feel the loss of Duotrope that much, but I did miss that sense of being in a Rejections Submissions Gang. It's nice to see all the reports coming in -- makes it feel that much less lonely.

WORKING WITH:  the Vampires Tarot of the Eternal Night, which gives surprisingly upbeat, positive, self-help style readings. It creates a bit of cognitive dissonance to get a 'Woo, yeah, you can do it!' pep talk from vampires, but I like it.

This Week, I Have Been Mostly...

READING:
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Nice to see a book live up to the hype for once. Loved every calculating, misdirecting, manipulative line.

Short stories: Up to 40 of my 500 target for the year. Faves:

Final Corrections, Pittsburgh Times-Dispatch by M Bennardo  at Daily Science Fiction
This is great fun, with a tremendous dry sense of humour. Original format, and a lovely example of what flash does best: telling you the story without actually telling you the story.

The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairytale of Economics by Daniel Abraham, reprinted at Lightspeed
This kind of reminded me of a serious Discworld story. Thoughtful and entertaining, and just goes to show what you can do with Word of the Day-style prompts.

Luna e Volk by Mercedes Yardley in Beautiful Sorrows
Not everything in this collection  has worked for me so far, but this was gorgeous--a poetically violent and tragic love story.

WRITING:
A 5k horror story about two sisters and an ill-judged deal with a demon. Just Say No, kids.

WATCHING:
American Horror Story: Asylum. When you find yourself watching from behind a cushion, muttering, 'Please don't let the deranged Nazi rape the dead nun,' this is the only show it can be. It's a mad mix of every horror trope there's ever been, and I love it to death.

DISCOVERING:
That it looks like JJ Abrams is going to direct the new Star Wars films, and a fair few people seem to think this is not good because he fucked up the Star Trek reboot. Yikes, did he? I thought that film was brilliant! It always worries me when that kind of thing happens, because I think, what did I miss?

LEARNING:
How to code html, and build epub & mobi files by hand. It's been a hell of a learning curve, but I think I just about climbed it.

WANTING:
One of these: zombie teddy bear How awesome?

Read: The Irrisistble Inheritance of Wilberforce

The Irresistible Inheritance Of Wilberforce by Paul Torday
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I found this almost unbearably sad. The reverse timeline was fascinating to me, as my assumptions about Wilberforce and his backstory were deconstructed. Wilberforce himself wasn't a traditionally sympathetic character but I found him equally fascinating. As his life and that of those around him implodes in slow motion, it's a compelling and tragic read. This is the 4th Paul Torday book I've read and cements him as one of my favourite authors.

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Heartsick by Chelsea Cain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A compelling and chilling killer (I love the Master Manipulator type), an interestingly self-aware screwed up detective and a plot that's satisfyingly complex without collapsing under its own weight. A very promsing set up for this series, and I will definitely be looking out for the rest.

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Read: 'Heartstone,' by CJ Sansom

Heartstone by C.J. Sansom
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love Shardlake, and the 5th instalment in the series doesn't disappoint. Reading these is an immersive experience in the history and atmosphere of Tudor England, and this one is particularly compelling in its depiction of the feverish energies of war. The mysteries and machinations surrounding what was done to both Hugh Curteys and Ellen Fettiplace are well paced and presented, and Matthew investigates with his customary tenacity. A thoroghly enjoyable read.

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Read: '14,' by JT Ellison

14 by J.T. Ellison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am enjoying this series, even if the prose isn't the most sophisticated on offer (but then I have John Connolly for that). The Nashville setting is used to great effect, and Taylor is an engaging lead. The break-neck pace makes for a zippy read, and the premise is an interesting one. I also like the relationships and interactions between the characters -- the Taylor/Baldwin relationship is so unfeasibly perfect that I am waiting for the inevitable messy implosion with bated breath.

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Read: 'Seed,' by Ania Ahlborn

Seed by Ania Ahlborn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This has its strengths, the uncompromising ending being one of them. Personally, however, I found the pacing odd: it's structured like you'd expect a mystery to be, whereas we learn very early in the story what's really going on. I also found Jack an amazingly (and annoyingly) passive character, content to watch and wait and metaphorically wring his hands for large sections of the book. The backstory is interesting but rather clumsily handled, and some integral questions are left unsatisfyingly vague. It would also have benefited from a final edit to catch some remaining typos and repetitions (I lost count of how many times characters smirked, even -- especially -- when smirking wasn't an appropriate response).

I'm not sorry I read it and I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading it, but I wouldn't rush to recommend it either.

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