Black Notes from a Dark Building

Day Two... Scars and girls

2010-03-10T16:33:00.002Z

1135 words. Today I broke the 25,000 word mark.

I can't quite remember if it was on a forum or a letter to a small press publication but some years ago, I was 'accused' (if that's the right word) of being a one-trick pony in that seemingly every story I wrote contained a guy who met a girl, or vice versa. I dare say he was right, because, well, what else is there? Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl fall out of love. Girl kills boy with a javelin of ice through the throat.

I mention this now because I've just been writing about two damaged characters who meet after a cautious 'scorpion dance'. Boy and girl. So shoot me. The other thing about them is that their damage is not limited to psychological problems. It's physical too. These people have been through the mill. Scars blemish their skin like fractures in stone. Something else, apparently, that crops up with tedious regularity in my work. My old boss, actually, pointed that one out to me. 'Why are so many of your characters scarred?' she asked. I don't know. I find scars pretty fascinating. We all have them, don't we? Show me someone who doesn't own at least one scar, a tiny scar, and you'll be showing me a freak. That isn't an invitation, by the way. Keep your clothes on...

Day One... up at 6 a.m.

2010-03-09T18:22:00.004Z

1341 words.

If I'm going to do this every day, I need to be more disciplined. Hard to do when for four days out of seven you're looking after a two-year-old force of nature called Zac. So I'm going to get up (usually around 6am) when he gets up and forego the lie in I usually have until Rhonda takes the boys to school. This morning I wrote a thousand words in two hours before Zac demanded my presence to watch his favourite TV programme, Show Me, Show Me. I got another couple of hundred words done in the John Lewis car park while Zac had his mid-morning nap. For anybody who is into the fetishism of writing, I write longhand in one of these, with one of these. When I'm working directly on to the screen I use this. Word, or Microsoft Fossil as I like to refer to it, is finished in my eyes.

Elsewhere, the estimable fantasy writer Steph Swainston warned me against blogging about word counts. 'That's not writing, that's typing,' she Capoted at me. I appreciate her concern, but counting words is something all writers do. The important thing, I think, is to do it when you've come out of the zone. I don't go the Graham Greene route, for example. Here was a man who hated the physical toil of writing to the extent that his manuscripts are dotted with little numbers where he had totted up his output so that he could put the damned thing aside once he'd reached his daily total of 500 words. Cracking writer, though, that Graham.

As is Graham Joyce, by the way, whose blog was the inspiration for this mad little exercise...

Loss of Separation

2010-03-08T07:35:00.002Z

It's been nearly two years since my last blog post. The reasons for this are manifold. Chief among them are that I always feel that the time I spend on this could be better spent writing (or not writing) the new project. There's also the suspicion that nobody even knows this blog exists and, if they do, that they have about a bzillion other, more important things to do than read it.

A number of writers I know have started blogging about works-in-progress and I think that's a great idea. So I'm going to do it too. It will mean I can put content on this blog, (hopefully regularly), and it might also gee me along to finish a novel that has to be delivered by October 15th. I'm currently 20,000 words into Loss of Separation, and this first blog will give you a little background about the novel to complement the excerpt that is currently available on the News section of my website.

I spent six months in Southwold from the end of September 2000 to March 2001. I had met my wife-to-be, Rhonda, in the April of 2000 and we both gave up our London jobs on the same day with the grand plan of renting somewhere by the sea, living on fish and wine, and writing novels. I wrote a novel called Penetralia (later to become Decay Inevitable) while I was there. And, in between long walks on the wintry seafront and mooching about in junk shops and drinking Adnams bitter, I read a shocking article in The Guardian. I can't tell you what it was about as it would prove a major spoiler for the novel, but I still have that clipping, pasted into a notebook, ten years on. I don't know why Loss of Separation (which was, for a very long time, meant to be called Consummation) has taken a decade to reach a point where I'm ready to write it, but that's writing for you. Other projects pushed to the head of the queue first, with more insistent voices. Maybe I was too young at the time to write confidently about a character who goes through so much. Whatever the reason, it feels right to do it now. The peat has shifted on the moors and the bones of what I'm trying to dig out are visible.

That said, despite its long gestation, the novel is proving to be a recalcitrant sod. I hit 20K and now I'm walking through mud. This blog will hopefully be the kick up the backside that I need.

I'll post a word count for the day (another reason to put my back into it... I don't want to come on here to tell you I've managed a piddling twelve words), along with any interesting titbit about the process of writing (interesting to me, that is; it might be about as interesting as All-Bran to everyone else). Please feel free to post comments or ask questions. Thanks for your time.

The Scalding Rooms

2008-05-05T11:18:00.002+01:00

I'm thrilled to see my second Howling Mile novella make it on to the shortlist for the inaugural Shirley Jackson awards. The winners will be announced at Readercon in Burlington, Massachusetts (July 17-20, 2008).

Here's a list of all the nominees. Good luck to everyone!

NOVEL
Baltimore, Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden (Bantam Spectra)
Generation Loss, Elizabeth Hand (Small Beer Press)
Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow (William Heinemann Ltd)
The Terror, Dan Simmons (Little, Brown)
Tokyo Year Zero, David Peace (Knopf)

NOVELLA
12 Collections, Zoran Zivkovic (PS Publishing)
Illyria, Elizabeth Hand (PS Publishing)
The Mermaids, Robert Edric (PS Publishing)
“Procession of the Black Sloth,” Laird Barron (The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, Night Shade Books)
The Scalding Rooms, Conrad Williams (PS Publishing)
“Vacancy,” Lucius Shepard (Subterranean #7, 2007)

NOVELETTE
“The Forest,” Laird Barron (Inferno, Tor)
“The Janus Tree,” Glen Hirshberg (Inferno, Tor)
“The Swing,” Don Tumasonis (At Ease with the Dead, Ash Tree Press)
“The Tenth Muse,” William Browning Spencer (Subterranean #6)
“Thumbprint,” Joe Hill (Postscripts #10, March 2007)

SHORT STORY
“Holiday,” M. Rickert (Subterranean #7, 2007)
“The Monsters of Heaven,” Nathan Ballingrud (Inferno,Tor)
“A Murder of Crows,” Elizabeth Ziemska (Tin House 31, Spring 2007)
“Something in the Mermaid Way,” Carrie Laben (Clarkesworld, March 2007)
“The Third Bear,” Jeff Vandermeer (Clarkesworld, April 2007)
“Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse,” Andy Duncan (Eclipse One, Night Shade Books)

COLLECTION
The Bone Key, Sarah Monette (Prime Books)
The Entire Predicament, Lucy Corin (Tin House)
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, Laird Barron (Night Shade Books)
Like You’d Understand, Anyway, Jim Shepard (Knopf)
Old Devil Moon, Christopher Fowler (Serpent’s Tail)

ANTHOLOGY
At Ease with the Dead, edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden (Ash Tree Press)
Dark Delicacies 2, edited by Del Howison and Jeff Gelb (Running Press)
Inferno, edited by Ellen Datlow (Tor)
Logorrhea, edited by John Klima (Bantam Spectra)
Wizards, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (Berkley)

Old things

2008-01-14T04:37:00.000Z

My parents donated their entire collection of vinyl to me recently. They'd downsized and didn't have the space for records they don't listen to any more (and what's the point of keeping hold of LPs when you no longer have a turntable to play them on?). I cheerily took them off their hands. Among the dross (which later went to the charity shop) I found a few nuggets of gold. A numbered edition of The White Album with its fold-out sleeve notes and glossy photographs of John, Paul, George and Ringo; most of Dylan's output from the 1970s, including the scorching Blood on the Tracks and Desire; and everything Joni Mitchell ever did (The Hissing of Summer Lawns is still one of my favourite albums). There was also some Cat Stevens. I remember Dad playing Catch Bull at Four when we lived in our house on Lodge Lane. I must have been about five or six years old. There are some great songs on that album: Sitting, Can't Keep It In and O Caritas. Dad would get me to sing the lyrics from the gatefold sleeve. So it was with a rosy nostalgic glow that I replayed the album recently, and found the songs to still be as good as I remembered.

Even though I buy CDs and download MP3s, I still own a turntable and don't want to disconnect myself from the magic that records possess. It's dirty magic, with all those scratches and hisses, but compelling all the same. There's a fetish involved that isn't there in the shiny mirror of a CD, or the intangible code of bit torrents. The size and splendor of the sleeve, the thin, glassine sheath from which you slide the vinyl into your hand, the smell. The ritual of wiping the surface with a cloth. The swing of the stylus. The expectant crackle as the music is wound towards its needle. The play of reflected light, like an infinity sign on the wall... In the same way I wouldn't be without my Remington Noiseless typewriter (noiseless? Yeah, right....) or the Bakelite telephone I salvaged from a skip in Belsize Park. Close relics of an age I lived through, but already I find it hard to believe that we didn't always have mobile phones or email or home computers.

Anyway, I'm glad I listened to the album again, because that spirit of nostalgia gave me the title for my latest published story, O Caritas, in the Solaris Book of New Fantasy. It's a futuristic story, a sequel to London Revenant, but despite all the polished steel and glass, travel by gossamer, death squads in the street and a crisis in the tunnels, there's still space for some vintage Cat Stevens:

Ah, this world is burning fast,
Oh, this world will never last,
I don't want to lose it, here in my time,
Give me time for ever, here in my time.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is on my shit list

2007-11-26T17:35:00.000Z

The chair I bought to complement my shiny new desk was from Habitat. A couple of years ago they approached a number of prominent names and got them to design stuff for their 40th anniversary. Ewan McGregor designed a fold-up director's chair with extra padding that initially went on sale for £150. Well I got one from Habitat's Clearance Department in Wythenshawe for £40. And I was robbed. I've had it for less than a month and it's torn right down the middle. I'm not Jabba the Hutt, but it's collapsed on me. So I've got to dig the receipt out from somewhere. And then find McGregor and slip a red hot light sabre under him as he sits down in his own director's chair.

The Minutiae of Writing - 2. The Desk

2007-11-26T16:46:00.001Z

My old desk is in Leicester, at my wife's father's house, a big place with a big room where a lot of our stuff has been stored for (gulp) over five years now. He's a nice man, that David Carrier. Patience of a saint. Or maybe he just forgot about the room and we can keep our stuff there for another five years...

Anyway, this desk is a bit of a tank. It wouldn't fit through the door of my study. So I got a new one. From IKEA. I bought some legs that double up as shelves and a big piece of frosted glass to go on top. It looks nice and it's good to work on, even if I still have visions of crashing through the middle of it during a period of key pounding. On top of the desk I have the following:

Two Apple Macintosh laptops (one battered old iBook, one nice new MacBook)
One plastic storage cube with four drawers for my little bits of junk (dice, marbles, lip balm, pebbles, chocolate, lens filters, Post It blocks, notebooks, photographs, glue, badges, tins, plectrums, batteries...)
Speakers for the laptops
A halogen lamp
A pair of headphones
A graphite sketch set
A cutting mat
A white mug with an apple core in it
Two organisers filled with stolen stationery from boutique hotels
A cricket ball
A wooden box filled with ink cartridges and dried rose petals
A wooden pen pot bought in Seoul
A stone bowl containing coins, MiniDiscs and a phone charger
A stack of CDs
A bigger stack of notebooks

I like a big desk. I'd love to have two desks and me sandwiched between them. You can't have too much desk space, I say.

What's next?

2007-11-26T16:19:00.000Z

I don't know. I always get this scary stretch of white space unfurling in my head when I finish a novel. It's an ideas path. And there's nothing on it. Well, that's not true, but I often feel that the ideas I do have aren't going to see me through 300 pages of story.

I've always written what I've felt like writing, what occurs to me, but now that I have a publisher keen to promote me as a horror writer, and with THE UNBLEMISHED having made some impact, there's pressure on me that I've never felt before. Do I produce more of the same? Do I go off in a completely different direction? Probably I should produce something similar in scope and tone to TU and then think about writing something unusual. That, I think, is the smart thing to do.

So I have an idea for a new novel to equal, if not better, TU's epic feel, although at the moment it's very raw. It's an idea for the first half of a novel and I'm struggling to work out how the second half might develop from the first. It's an idea that will require a shedload of research, depending on whether I begin the story before or after the first half's key element (what was it Vonnegut said about starting as close to the end as possible? I think he was on to something with that). I don't know how to start it. All I have is a working title, a lead character and the knowledge that it will be written in the first person. I think. And I have a year to get it done.

One of my problems is that I tend to jam too much into a novel. There's too much going on. Some people who have read my stuff have said they'd have liked to see an entire novel written about one particular strand. I don't have the confidence to leave one strong idea alone. I fret that it won't be enough and keep adding, like a chef who isn't sure about his fish stew. So maybe the idea I have for the first half of the novel is actually substantial enough to see me through to the end. And the idea I have for the second half is a novel in its own right. What do I know?

Maybe I should just go and write an outline...

The Minutiae of Writing - I. The Study

2007-11-12T10:36:00.001Z

I love talking to other writers about the way they go about this insane profession of ours. Perhaps it's because we spend so much time alone, or perhaps it's just that I have a fetish for writing implements... So every so often I'll give you a glimpse of my life as a scrivener.

I've been lucky enough, for the past two years, to have my own writing room. I've craved a study for ever, but it's only the generosity of my wife, Rhonda (who is also a writer) and the fact that our two boys prefer to share a room that I've been able to have one. Prior to that I used to have a desk in the living room of the one-bedroom flat in London I used to own or I've worked in bedrooms and kitchens - pretty much what most writers do. But having a study is bliss. I've got my books in there, and a beautiful glass-topped desk, and all the little drawers and cupboards and tins of secrets and notes and junk that I like to have around me.

From my window I have a view of the terraced houses across our road. Not a great deal goes on, but there's quite a lot of traffic; the local hospital is almost next door and we get a lot of people parking outside. Other than that, a woman at number 19 who pops out every day to water her hanging baskets, a couple of sleek grey cats... that's it in terms of visual distractions. But I have plenty of other things to distract me from my work (I'm the world's worst at getting started on my writing).

More about them later.

The Unblemished

2007-11-12T10:25:00.000Z

The funny thing about winning the award was that I received the news on the day I finished rewriting the book... Yes, don't adjust your set, I was rewriting TU for the paperback edition which comes out in the UK and USA in April 2008. My new editor at Virgin wanted some changes, despite the great reviews and the Hollywood interest and the awards nominations. And I agreed with him. There are a few problems with the book in terms of plot and pace. A year down the line, such things become more identifiable to a writer who otherwise might be a little too close to the text. I'm sure that every writer wishes (s)he was able to give their MS one last polish before it was produced. I'm glad I got the chance to do so, and that I have an editor who knows his onions, has a deep love of the genre and, as he warned me early on, is a 'very hands-on type of editor'. Luckily, I'm not a hands-off kind of writer.

So what's changed for the paperback? Well, chapter order has been jiggled, one character has been subsumed by another, two characters die earlier than planned, a couple of chapters have been excised, a couple of chapters have been added... Structurally, I hope, it's tighter, leaner and hangs together more logically.

Of course, after all this, if TU bombs, it's my editor's fault...

Stephen King, you took one hell of a beating...

2007-11-03T20:15:00.000Z

So it's a week or so after my novel THE UNBLEMISHED won the International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel. The last seven days have been one big grin. I am so happy. A couple of weeks previously I'd been up for two awards at the British Fantasy Awards. I came away empty-handed, but there was no bitterness in my disappointment. The winners of the categories in which I had been nominated were Mark Chadbourn and Tim Lebbon, two of the nicest human beings you could hope to meet, so I couldn't exactly spit venom in their direction. In addition, perennial awards bridesmaid (and one of my dearest friends) Mark Morris broke his duck so the ceremony was always going to be a happy time.

Bizarrely, I reckoned my best chance for a gong was in the juried IHG award, even though I'd be up against a strong shortlist, which included Stephen King. Let's face it, if it wasn't for Stephen King, I probably wouldn't be writing today, and neither would the majority of horror writers. I was 12 when I picked up SALEM'S LOT and read it, seemingly, in a moment. I was, and still am, in awe of him. Recently I've re-read what must be the strongest consecutive line-up of horror novels in history: SL, THE SHINING, THE STAND, THE DEAD ZONE. Those four books alone, if he never went on to write anything else, would cement his place in horror literature. I think he went off the boil a bit after that, but IT, MISERY, THE GREEN MILE and BAG OF BONES show that he is always capable of pulling something exemplary out of his wizard's sleeve. It was a big thrill for me to win the IHG award up against one of my idols. If I do nothing else, I'll always have that. What a story for the grandchildren...

Coming soon...

2007-10-31T15:15:00.001Z

Just got to get this damned rewrite out of the way. Jeez...