You tell yourself you know which way things are going. Then, you find out exactly how wrong you are…

I’m not going to go on for too long- but basically, we’ve semi-decided that we’re actually going to go at the flat problem all guns blazing, and try to sort it out as soon as possible. After much stress and upset and worry and gnashing of teeth, I think it’d be better to try and tackle it now, then just let it fester. We’re going to try and talk to the Landlord tomorrow, or as soon as possible, and at least thrash out some kind of amicable agreement. From there, we’ll start advertising, trying to get people around, and getting our stuff out as soon as is humanly possible. The next few months are likely to be chaotic in the extreme… but somewhere, in the harried storm that currently lurks within my head, I know that this is the right thing to do, and that some stress now is better than nine months of guaranteed stress, misery, and not living where we want to live. We’re going to be existing by the seat of our pants, but something tells me it may be worth it in the end…

I just realised that one thing I haven’t updated recently is the current situation with the flat. After some thoughts and discussions, George and I have finally decided that while we would love to take the gamble and move out early without a financial safety net… it’s too much of a risk. The plan currently is that George is looking into getting a job down in Hampshire, because as soon as that happenned, we could put the plan to move early into effect almost immediately, and if we end up liable for some of the rent, we’d still have enough to survive (We would probably, at least initially, be moving in with George’s Mum and Dad. It’s not a perfect situation, but it will also help an awful lot having a firm base from which to find a place to live…). This could happen incredibly quickly- it might not happen until April- or we might be here until June. We do, at least, know that the refurbishment situation is not our problem, whatever the Landlord says, and there are certain advantages to being here till next June- most particularly, it may give both of us the chance to improve our driving skills before we move to the Hampshire countryside, where we’re not really going to be able to survive without them. George needs to get her licence, and I need to improve my confidence considering that I drove once a couple of months ago, and that was my first time in nearly ten years. Refresher lessons are on the cards, and finding money for that kind of thing may be a little easier before we take the big-scale gamble of moving.

Of course, another advantage of not moving out till next June is that George wouldn’t have to immediately get a job, and would instead be able to, at least for 2 or 3 months, throw herself full-time into work on the art business she’s currently running with her mother and sister. It’s a source of major frustration that she’s so far away at the moment, and I wish there was more that I could do to make things right. But, we both know that the current plan is the only workable one- we’re doing okay, but we’re not exactly flush with cash, and are still wincing from having to pay back the council £2,000 of benefits and losing £4,500 in the Highbury debacle. We do, at least, have a workable plan, and things to investigate, while knowing what our situation is has turned out to be something of a relief. After some talks, we’ve also decided that there’s not an awful lot of point in talking to the Landlord until we have something to talk about- if we’re in the situation where we’re moving, then the refurbishment is his problem, not ours. I’d be quite happy to keep conversations with him to an absolute minimum, and it seems sensible to wait until the situation is no longer hypothetical.

Whatever happens, in twelve months time, our lives are going to be very, very different.

(Gulp…)

The trouble with constantly saying “I really want you to be brutally honest”, is that sooner or later, someone’s actually going to be brutally honest. Over the last three weeks, I’ve had feedback over the book that has been extremely helpful- but has also pointed out some serious problems. At least three people haven’t gotten very far in before telling me it isn’t in a good state, which is, to be honest, true, but it’s one of those instances when artistic feelings suddenly go into tragic mode, and the idea of weeping in your garret sounds like a welcoming one. This is, at least, opening my eyes to exactly how bloody difficult it is to write a novel, and I’m getting the feeling it’s rather like making a film in some respects. You go through lots of organisation, effort and hell to shoot the thing, get to the end, feel a sense of huge satisfaction- and then realise that all you’ve got is raw footage, and if you just slashed it all together you’d have a twelve hour movie. Essentially, you then go through the process of making the film again in the editing room- and that’s close to what I’m going through.

For much of the weekend, I was carefully going through the opening chapters- the area where most people ground to a halt and which- gulp- is currently the strongest section of the book…- and realising there are ways of shortening, of refining, and of saying what I’m trying to say in a smaller, more compact space. It’s a shock to realise that you don’t have to tell the audience everything- that it’s slightly similar to a comic book, in that much can happen between the sentences as long as you choose the right words. Leave the right gaps, and the audience will fill them in for themselves. Once I get this week over and done with, I’m getting on with some serious work on the book, as I’m determined that the next time I send it to someone, they’re not going to want to give up halfway through. I’m going to learn, and I’m going to get this together, mainly because I’m certain of how good this could be if I can just get it to work. Feverish editing, and then, as long as I haven’t gone mad, I’ll get on with the next one which, at the moment, is looking like it might be a left-field version of my long-gestating SANITY CLAWS idea- madness, conspiracies and all-out weirdness in present day London. There is much to be done…

Another interesting side-effect of having fjm over for dinner last week was that it’s really forced me to have a very firm think about certain aspects of my ideas. There’s something about talking about your story concepts to someone who’s tremendously brainy and knows a ridiculous amount about fantasy and science fiction, and one particular idea that came up was that I might be worrying too much about character, at the expense of the actual science fiction nature of what I’m trying to do. It’s a difficult balance to strike, and some of it is stuff I’m only going to find out by writing, but fjm also pointed out that one idea I’ve got- a Young Adult reality-bending spy story called Flipside- is currently playing more like a psychological thriller that wouldn’t actually go down well with kids, as it’s actually an inherently anti-fantasy story that presses a reset button at the end. It was one of those moments where I had to say “Bugger- they’re right, aren’t they?”, but after a little thinking, I may have come up with a solution. I am very interested in the idea of exploring the dangerous side of fantasy- the idea that it’s one thing imagining battling international spies, it’s another to actually do it- and I like the central concept of the story, so I think what I need to do is increase the stakes- and not press the reset button. Instead of a return to the status quo, with the teenage hero having learnt important lessons for everyday life, he’s actually going to have to learn to cope with and rise to the challenge of the strange new world he’s found himself in. I want it to be a mixture of stylised spy fantasy and gritty reality, a world that may be surreal and strange, but one where there is genuine risk, the laws of physics are roughly the same, and where violence damn well hurts. I always preferred kids stories and movies where there was genuine danger and it wasn’t just camp nonsense- oddly enough, one of my favourites, when I was in my early teens, was Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, mainly because of the fact that it simply had kids in it but wasn’t a kids movie. (That, and the fact that- despite the very shonky storytelling, and the fact that it’s obviously two seperate movies welded uncomfortably together- it’s the Mad Max movie that really captured the weird, semi-mythic sense of a Post-Apocalypse world that I found so unutterably cool as a teenager. As I’ve recently worked out, I often didn’t give too hoots about the story as long as someone was actually trying to assemble a cool and interesting world.)

I think, however it might make me go ‘wah!’ inside, it’s good for me to get honest feedback- it might occasionally smart, but it”ll be worth it in the end.

An addendum to yesterday’s plea for sanity in an insane world, here from the fascinating literary/political blog Making Light, underlining exactly how dangerous Bush’s current desire to throw the Geneva Conventions out of the window actually is. The quote that most underlines the point:

“Back during WWII, resistance fighters were taught to avoid answering the Gestapo’s questions for 24 hours (and you can generally do this, even under frightful torture, which the Gestapo was fully able and willing to deliver). After that, they were allowed to say anything they pleased — because by then any plans they might have been aware of would be changed. Any operations they were engaged in would have been canceled. Any codes they knew would have been scrapped. Any people they knew would be living somewhere else under new names.

Which makes me wonder: Exactly what kind of useful information do we think we’re going to get from someone four years after they were captured?”

I’m hoping that the wheels come off this particular train as soon as possible.

I’m cynical enough about the world and the way it works at the best of times, but when I read a news story like this, it just makes me feel I’ve wandered into the wrong universe. How did we end up in a situation when one of the most powerful nations in the world is being run by an illiterate, torture-happy moron? And when the hell is someone going to actually do something about it?

News of an infinitely less important nature- my vague curiosity about how exactly the situation with new Doctor Who companion Martha Jones is going to be different from the rather dull Eastenders-style set-up of Rose’s family in seasons One and Two has been repaid, with the release of who’s playing her family. So, how is the series going to be heading in a dramatically new and different direction with these characters? Well… this time- they’re black! And there’s four of them! And… er… that’s it. The fact that Russell T. Davies has decided to cast an ex-DJ and Top of the Pops presenter should tell you everything you need to know, and how exactly they’re going to do this and not just end up recycling elements is beyond me.

More Who-related talk…

MISCELLAUEOUS

This was the word that was glaring out over a noticeboard in the Citizen’s Advice bureau. The thing that was most peculiar about it was that it took me at least thirty seconds to realise that there was actually only wrong letter. It had obviously been there for a while but it just added an extra edge of surrealism to the morning. At the least, today was the day when I took on the Citizen’s Advice Bureau in Turnpike Lane, and won!

Just.

Determined to get in, I got out of bed at 6am, set off at just past 6.50, and arrived at the Bureau at 7.10. Even then, I was number 8 on the list, and after just under three hours of waiting, it turned into a bit of a scramble, with people taking the “why queue, when you can argue?” strategy, but I quietly worked my way inside, and waited. And waited. And waited. And then I waited some more. All I could think of, while I was in there waiting for my number to be called, was the waiting room in BEETLEJUICE, and I really hope the afterlife isn’t like that. I’ve done enough sitting around as it is. Anyhow, after over two hours, I was called in for the assessment interview and- shock of shocks- got an appointment this afternoon, which meant a bleary trip back home for urgently required food, and then– more waiting. This time, it was only forty five minutes, and then I got seen by a very nice black guy called Thomas.

(I couldn’t help noticing- Black men really do have the right bone structure to be able to get away with shaving their head, or being bald. No matter what, they have a rightness about them- whereas white guys tend to look either ridiculous, camp, or like a neo-nazi. Just one of the thoughts rushing through my beleagured consciousness this afternoon…)

The news about the flat situation was an interesting mix of positive, interesting, and stuff that we’d kinda suspected. Basically- legally speaking, we are bound by the tenancy agreement, and we would be liable for the rent and the bills if we just suddenly moved out, or if replacements hadn’t been found by the time we did. However, I did also find out that the landlord wouldn’t be able to just let it stand empty for ages and not bother about getting people in- if he wanted to actually take legal action to get the money we owe him, he’d need to prove that he’d tried to mitigate his losses. Also, I was told that whatever the refurbishment situation is, it’s nothing to do with us- there’s no mention of it on the tenancy agreement, and he can’t use it as a way of making getting replacements more difficult. Basically, whatever happens there will be risks involved. What we’re going to try and do is arrange to actually set up a meeting with him, rather than the usual ‘let’s nip downstairs to the stationers and see if he’s free’ strategy which tends to be the only way of getting things to happen at the moment. We are going to attempt to negotiate, and see if we can work out some form of a compromise. It might not be possible, but it’s worth a try.

I’m not sure what my image of the average Citizen’s Advice Bureau was- and I’m still not sure, as, despite a lot of effort and running around London in the early morning, I managed to miss out on access to two seperate Bureaus. The ‘opening time’ might be listed as ten o’clock, but it turns out that people tend to queue from about seven o’clock and- rather annoyingly- it’s usually only the first twenty who get in for the entire day, because the Bureaus are so undermanned. I tried the one at Turnpike Lane on Thursday, got there at 8.50, was 28th in line, and was told at 9.20 that there was no point in hanging around. I therefore had another go at the Tottenham Bureau on Friday morning, and made a concerted effort to get there early– to no avail. I reached the place at 8.00 am, only to find a big crowd of people, and someone announcing that only the first sixteen were going to get in. So, I still haven’t actually found out anything concrete about what exactly we can do relating to the situation with our house. I think it’s the amount of time left that makes it particularly difficult- that, essentially, we’re talking about nine months of our lives here, which is not a small amount of time to be going through this kind of unpleasentness. I am, at least, looking forward to explaining this situation to somebody else, so I’ll know that it isn’t just us looking at it from the wrong angle. Finding out whether or not there’s anything we can do will definitely help, even if it’s not fantastic news.

I also got some fantastically useful feedback from Neal Asher yesterday relating to the novel. What I got was the first sixty or so pages absolutely covered in a welter of corrections and notes, almost every single one of which was truly fantastic, and some of which made me laugh. One particular- to explain, there’s a sci-fi fan newsletter called Ansible produced by writer Dave Langford, and one part of it is called ‘Thog’s Masterclass’, dealing specifically with examples of bad writing. It’s usually divided into ‘departments’, and one of the most regular ones is the ‘Dept. of Eyeballs in the Sky’, which deals with people’s eyes doing apparently impossible things. With the line ‘Her eyes shot upwards to his face’, I managed something pretty damn close, and feel strangely proud (even though I’m definitely getting rid of the thing). It’s rather annoying, as a result, that I’m bogged down with work on the Del Toro interview and a collection of reviews, as all I really want to do is get to work making the book into what it needs to be.

From maudlin to bloody annoyed in ten easy steps. Must be something in the air.

Basically, the whole situation regarding the lease on our flat has just received a couple of less-than-welcome kinks. Once again, we’re just trying to sort out if there’s a way for us to be able to move out before next June 24th without it costing us a ridiculous amount of money, but the landlord seems to be going out of his way to make life more difficult. We’ve already said that, essentially, we’d be prepared to do lots of the legwork of advertising the place, showing people around and so forth, and that we wouldn’t protest about covering bills and rent until someone new was in the flat- but now, he’s decided that he wants the flat to be refurbished before someone new moves in. Now, not only is this going to take a month (I don’t think we’d be expected to pay that- but considering the crap he’s throwing at us at the moment, I’m not sure…), but also when it happens is going to be completely dependant on whether the builders he wants to use are actually available. We might be able to move out “a month early”. Might. Then again we might not. Essentially, we could be facing a situation where we’re being held hostage to fortune purely because of whether or not he can book the builders- and how are we supposed to fill the place anyway, if it’s not going to be possible to move in for another month? I’m pissed off and annoyed, and I think I’m going to deal with the Housing Agents from now on, as I’m fed up of having to deal with this. I could handle the situation before- but this basically feels like any solution we’re coming up with that might work, he’s coming up with something to throw in our path and trip us up.

I’d say “Is anyone looking for a flat?”, but even if you were, I’m not even certain how the whole situation would work. All I know is that I’m not going to be able to cope with this until June 24th of next year- whatever we have to do to get out will be easier than the soul-death just waiting for next June would put me through. Certainly, if there’s anyone reading this who knows about tenancies or anything like that (or knows good places for info), any help would be extremely gratefully appreciated.

Right. Time to attempt to cheer myself up…

I want to be a Glass Half Full person. I’d like to be a Glass Half Full person, but ultimately, annoyingly, I’m a Glass Half Empty person. And occasionally, it’s a bit exhausting.

Last night was my belated birthday party, and while only a small number of people turned up, I did have tremendous fun- but the resulting foggy head this morning has left me wobbly and unsure, and after a week of sub-editing and boring, routine normality, I’m suddenly back in the reality of ‘Writing World’ and I think I’d forgotten that it’s a slightly intimidating and scary place to be.

Essentially- and this may sound either ridiculous or like an insane amount of dithering, but I’m not sure what to do next after finishing off The Hypernova Gambit. I feel like I need to at least work out in my head what’s going to happen, mainly because I know I could very easily drift along like an idiot not being certain of what to do, when the answer is- to be perfectly honest- getting on and doing it. I’m just finding the whole path of making the decision really difficult. Again, I’m envious of those who can write short stories, as- besides the freeform burbling on Division X- I can’t really think them up very well. Big, bold and brassy stories are where I’m most happy, it’s just the point before I dive into them that’s particularly scary.

I don’t think it helped that I finished re-reading WATCHMEN today, in my funky, re-coloured, massive slipcased edition, and I’m currently in total awe of what Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons acheived in that. The level of focus and depth and reality in it… is just breathtaking, and it leaves me thinking “Waah!” I just want to get close. I want to push myself, and get closer to where I want to be as a writer, and the only way I’m going to be able to do that is buy writing like hell, and motivating myself into that position is always so bloody difficult.

Sorry. Currently tired and irritable, and not up to blogging as extensively as I should be. I’m also finding that my Mac keyboard is actually rather tough on my fingers. I’m going to try and relax for a little while tonight, and then throw myself into the fray tomorrow. Plenty of things are going to be done tomorrow, whether I like it or not!

Talking of WATCHMEN- here’s a brief little amusement. As a set-up for any non comic-geeks reading, a few years back, Marvel superhero mastermind Stan Lee did a series for Marvel’s arch-enemy publisher DC called ‘Just Imagine’, where, in a sequence of one-shots, he’d take the basic premise of DC’s major superheroes, and give his own distinctive spin on them. So, imagine if Stan Lee’s hyper-active, hilariously melodramatic style was applied to a more adult title, dealing with politics, violence and superhero sex?

Just Imagine: Stan Lee’s WATCHMEN!

(Not all the gags work, but the ones that do are ones to treasure).

I was planning to call the Apple Support line. I was planning to maybe head into town today in order to swap the iPod Shuffle over, as the next few days weren’t going to offer many chances. And then, after having left the iPod Shuffle plugged into my computer for most of the night, I tried just turning it off and turning it on again.

Stuff started to happen. Suddenly, where before the computer had refused to even recognise that there was anything there, now, there was activity. I clicked through various screens, and then… bliss… iTunes started downloading music into the iPod at random. I disconnected the thing, plugged in the white earphones (which I am planning to swap with black ones when I go out- I’d rather not be wearing a large sign saying “Please mug me, I might be carrying a £300 iPod Video!”), pressed a few buttons- and was greeted by my first track.

“I Feel Love”, by Donna Summer.

Somehow, I think me and this little device are going to get on.

(And, just to completely freak me out, it’s just switched to ‘Rebel Without a Pause’ by Public Enemy…)

* * *

(A few minutes later. As if to underline the sheer weirdness of my music collection, it’s gone from Public Enemy to ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ from 2001. Words fail me as to how much I’m enjoying this…)