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Vikings and cider. What’s more to want? ]]> http://www.jackofravens.com/2011/05/21/moira-canal-festival/feed/ 1 http://www.jackofravens.com/2011/04/20/warm/ http://www.jackofravens.com/2011/04/20/warm/#comments Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:42:03 +0000 MarkC http://www.jackofravens.com/2011/04/20/warm/

…at the Bath Spa Hotel.

Sexy CLOWN? Really? Way to cause deep-seated sexual trauma and years of therapy…

(From Fun with Cole)

Yes, it’s a church. Deconsecrated recently. Apparently, the neighbours are not happy. Robert Plant held his album launch here just the other day. Nonetheless, it was a venue with gravitas for such an important milestone for my publisher.

Although, for a company which does very nicely out of Dan Brown, I expected the floor to open up and a quest through the catacombs to find the canapes.

Sounds like a great buy for a collector. Ellison has been a major influence on me, both in terms of writing and philosophy, since I read Deathbird Stories in the back of the car on a long holiday trip when I was 12 or so.

Santa has left the mothership.

You can pre-order Destroyer of Worlds in hardback here…

And you can pre-order the trade paperback here.

Edit: Cover below edited to viewable size. Thanks to Lizzy for her help.

I can’t write without music playing. I tend to have pretty eclectic tastes, with a range of different modes to conjure up the right atmosphere. But I’m always on the look-out for something I haven’t heard before.

Send me your music recommendations…

Actually, I didn’t get very far on the book front – I’m still wading through House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski. ‘Wading’ is perhaps the wrong term – I do love the book – but it is hard-going. It’s a very modern, scary, supernatural story, but written without a hint of familiar genre-isms, and designed to put the reader through as many torments as the characters. In the tale, a tattoo artist inherits the notes of an aged academic investigating a seemingly-famous Amityville-style house with an otherworldly labyrinth – except no one beyond the academic appears to know about it. In that description, you can already see the layered density of the story. Yet the design of the book has been created to mimic the house’s labyrinth, with footnotes sending you back and forth, appendices, upside down and mirror text, hidden codes and more. You wonder if the footnotes are even slightly relevant until you get to, say, number 313 and find buried away a one-line revelation that explains a character’s entire psychology. A great book, particularly for navel-gazers and self-styled intellectuals, but it does take time following that cord through the twists and turns.

Some comics caught my eye over the last few days. House of Mystery, the new release from DC’s Vertigo imprint, written by Matt Sturges and Bill Willingham with art by Luca Rossi, was very enjoyable. I was a fan of this title back in the seventies, when it was a straightforward horror (or ‘mystery’) anthology, with art by such greats as Neal Adams, Berni Wrightson, Alex Toth and Sergio Aragones. In Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing and Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, the house and its caretaker Cain was established as a residence that existed in dreams. In this incarnation, the house has been stolen and re-sited ‘somewhere else’. A group of strange characters are forced to live there telling stories to pay for their board while they attempt to find a way back to the real world. The first issue sets up lots of mysteries, so it comes across a bit like Lost, only creepier.

I also started a collection of the first five issues of The Exterminators, another Vertigo title (now cancelled) about a group of bug and vermin exterminators operating in the more sordid parts of Los Angeles. At first it appears a great slice of life story with strong characterisation, until a hint of fantasy arises like the first sign of one of the infestations – the bugs are becoming stronger? Smarter? Looks like there’s a war brewing. Great writing by Simon Oliver and suitably grimy art by Tony Moore, who made a name for himself on Image’s The Walking Dead. Highly recommended, as those critics like to say.

I also read the first issue of DC’s summer blockbuster Final Crisis by Grant Morrison and J G Jones. It’s early days yet, and there’s a lot of clear set-up for story to come, but again very enjoyable. Grant can do no wrong in my eyes, from Zenith for 2000AD to Doom Patrol, Animal Man and The Invisibles, which is why I name-checked his excellent Seven Soldiers series in The Burning Man.

On the movie front, my tastes have always been eclectic, but I can’t imagine many people reading this enjoying the early 1940s films of British comedians Arthur Askey and George Formby. Kept me happy, though. I also finally got round to seeing SF greats This Island Earth and Invaders From Mars. Ones for fans only, I think, though there’s a pleasantly creepy aspect to the latter.

Do not play if you have an unnaturally weak stomach.

This happens all the time round where I live.

I’m usually so far behind in my reading that my book of the year was normally published five years ago, but if it’s good it deserves a mention, although I did manage to hit the mark at least once in 2007. Mostly the questions are about books, films and TV so maybe I’ll mention my music top raters here.

1) I used to play bass in the revolutionary and rightly unremembered Midlands band, Symbols of Malice. We split up after I had an affair with the lead singer who was the unrequited object of affection for the guitarist. She went off to be (briefly) a stripper. He went off to be a hairdresser. I went off to believe, yes, rock and roll is indeed the best business in the world.

2) I had a six-month course of anti-rabies injections after being bitten by a wild dog in the South of France. The biggest needle you have ever seen in your life, in the gluteus maximus, once a week. It was the only suspected case ever to happen in my area and the vaccine had to be shipped in specially. And to add insult to my injury, my local paper decided this was worthy of front page coverage so I had to endure six months of people stopping me in the street to ask, ‘How’s your arse?’

3) I have a Harry Potter-esque jagged scar on my forehead and another more severe one on the side of my head. The first came from a fight when an opponent decided to bludgeon me into submission with a rock. The second came when, in a drunken stupor, I attempted to break into a club that had refused me admission. Not big, or clever, but in my defence I was very, very drunk. And young. And stupid. But clearly I do have an extremely thick head.

4) I have saved the life of two people and watched one person die.

5) I was severely beaten up by racist thugs outside Leeds United football ground while leafletting for the Anti-Nazi League. Rather than deter me, it set me up for a lifetime believing that you fight for what you stand for or the other side wins.

The rules of the game say I now have to tag others so James Barclay, Chaz Brenchley and Leah Moore, you are ‘it’. Check out their blogs to see what they have to say.

At the moment, I’m looking at a completely new forum rather than a re-build of the old one, which frankly had reached the end of its shelf life in technological terms. That means you will probably have to re-join, but at least it wil make life more difficult for the spammers.

Away from the main hall:

…2000 AD comics writer Simon Spurrier offering to slip the tongue to a dessicated, fried sea bass head. The sea bass turned him down…

…an up-and-coming author loudly berating the oeuvre of a famous writer without realising said writer’s son was sitting a few chairs down.

…Novelist Graham Joyce getting cornered by two extremely drunk middle-aged women in the Trip to Jerusalem pub (oldest one in Britain) and forced to play a medieval game of skill. Which he then lost. And he was sober.

Here’s my very good friend, fantasy author James Barclay, entertaining all and sundry at the bar in his louche tones. James delivered a heartfelt tribute to David Gemmell who died earlier this year. He won’t thank me for saying it, but I reckon James must be in line to follow in Gemmell’s shoes as the new king of UK heroic fantasy. Good bloke, good writer. Check out his books.

New convention buddy Sarah Pinborough showed she’s a better horror writer than she is a pool player. Plus she’s not going to make friends and influence people by sticking her tongue out at passers-by.

There were more pictures on my crappy cameraphone, but either I was too drunk or the subjects were too unpleasant for them to come out…

Which is by way of explanation for my silence here. But with the help of trusty web expert Ariel I aim to continue posting while I take a large hammer to these bits of machinery to get them working…

What the report failed to mention was whether or not the fire was tinged with blue…

[That last paragraph sponsored by the department of Chadbourn in-jokes.]

–Ariel–

John writes an insightful overview of the book, identifying the main themes, avoiding spoilers, and most importantly assessing the work purely on its own merits – even whilst Admitting that he hadn’t realised it was a continuation of Mark’s earlier work, which he confesses hadn’t read before – and concludes that Jack of Ravens is “a real bravura display from the author, a very successful attempt to offer readers something truly different from the standard fantasy fare.”

A well-written review, IMHO. But then, Mr Berlyne is rather good at those…

–Ariel–

On which note, I’d like to point you all in the direction of Mark’s recent piece on the Write Fantastic Blog, which makes for a quite revealing insight into the life and working habits of a full-time professional writer. Just in case any of you were foolish enough to think of pursuing that path yourself…

Or they may not.

But what many people don’t know is that I also earn a crust as a screenwriter.  Today I’ve just finished the second episode of a new science fiction series I’m developing with the BBC.  It’s still a long way from appearing on your TV screen, and, in fact, may never do so.  It’s a long, exhausting and arduous task to get a series from idea to commission, with numerous, increasingly higher hurdles to jump over.  And even if you’ve finally shaped the best idea in the world, it can still fall at the last because there’s not a free slot in the schedule.

Yet to a novelist, used to toiling away in a lonely room, it’s a fascinating, invigorating process.  You get to work with other committed, creative individuals who take your idea in a surprising direction, and then you get to do the same with their ideas.  (Whether I would enjoy it so much if I didn’t have the singular visions and sole authorship of my novels to fall back on, is a different matter – you can’t beat being in complete control).

I’ve also got another supernatural series in the early stages of development, and a movie project.  And there’s been some initial movie interest in World’s End.

It’s all wait-and-see, but that’s part of the excitement.  You never know what’s going to be around the corner.

I normally sell my books to my publisher on the basis of a synopsis.  For the last six contracted books, none of the titles in the pitch document have ended up on the spine.  The real titles always come during the writing.  The Devil in Green was originally called Slouching Towards Bethlehem for no other reason than I like the quote (besides, Joan Didion got there first).  DiG was the title of the first novel I ever wrote (which has never been seen by anyone and never well), so I cannibalised myself.  But that book has since felt like it could never have been called anything else.

In the pitch document, Jack of Ravens was called The Land of Always Summer, the next book was called The Waste Lands (and then The Great Dominions) and the third and final was Rex Mundi.  The series itself – Kingdom of the Serpent – was The View Across Existence.

I’ve spent all afternoon writing – and baking – in the garden and the title for the next book still hasn’t surfaced from the mire.  When I finally get a hook in it, I’ll let you know.