As Radiohead once sang, “No Surprises”. The ‘experimental’ episode of New Who turned out to be largely an exercise in Russel T Davies showing how utterly fantastic, witty and adventurous he thinks he is, with a few genuinely good ideas buried under a mass of embarressing self-aware storytelling and chase sequences on loan from the Chuckle Brothers.

Still, only three more episodes to go. It’d be nice to be a little more excited, though. This season hasn’t killed my love of Who, but I think it’ll be even harder to care once Season 3 arrives next year. Old Who will live on, no matter what happens with New Who.

There are certain moments where you’ve got to be honest with yourself. Yes, it’s been bloody hot this week, the kind of suffocating heat that makes Siberia suddenly sound decidedly inviting, but the fact is that I haven’t used this week as well as I could have done. I’ve made a couple of major breakthroughs on the novel, getting good ideas and clarifying sections of the plot that were, to be honest, terrifying the hell out of me, but I haven’t used my time well. And time is ticking away- I’ve got four more days, and then I’ve got my 28 day voyage into solitude that will (hopefully) result in me having something vaguely resembling a novel at the end of it. I don’t like the fact that my determination can fade so easily- but, at the least, I have got 140,000 words to prove to myself that my determination is capable of producing something– just as long as I can go the whole hog and actually finish it.

I did, at least, manage to crack one particular plotline- and the solution I’ve come up with is, I’m slightly shocked to say, a gigantic homage to one of my favourite films, the spectacularly wonderful guilty pleasure that is FLASH GORDON. I keep worrying that I’m not being highbrow enough with this, or that it’s going to be an insane hodge-podge (the influences at the moment include James Lovegrove, Phillip K. Dick, Alan Moore, Douglas Adams, Iain M. Banks, P.G. Wodehouse and chunks of Neon Genesis Evangelion just for starters…), but then I remember that the key word is ‘romp’, and this needs to be the way I want it to be. It’s going to be a big, bold, colourful pop song of a novel. Of course, whether anyone wants to actually publish anything like that is a completely different story…

George is on her way back from a trip home– the first venture of her fledgling art business that she’s starting up with her mum and her sister, and apparently it went pretty well. Dinner will be happening soon, as she’s terribly hungry (called me from the train, you see…) so must go soon.

Out of the various films I saw this week, there was one- a thriller called ADRIFT- which sent my brain into a tailspin for a whole variety of reasons. Here’s a loose review, but one with major spoilers for both the film, and one of the films it heavily resembles. Consider yourself warned…. Continue reading →

Oh. My. God.

Life has a habit of taking interesting turns when I’m least expecting it. After a week of intermittent good sleep (and one night on a hideously uncomfortable bed) I was hoping that, having returned to the familiar world of my flat, I’d be able to get at least one seriously decent night of sleep. Not so. Instead, I’m back in the horribly familiar world where my entire flat seems to function as a stuffy, over-humid heat trap where it’s almost physically impossible to be comfortable without sticking your head inside the freezer. The fact that in about six months it’ll be so inhumanly cold in here that I’ll be wearing multiple layers even with the heating on max is, to be honest, one of the reasons I won’t be too sad to move on from this place. There’s a certain level of heat that I just don’t function well in, and this will drive me up the wall for the next week, particularly if the temperature stays in the 25-30 degrees area. The idea of emigrating to Alaska is suddenly very tempting.

The real surprise, however, is a turn that happenned last Friday when I was staying with Dad, and whiuch happenned all as a result of George wondering who’s going to feed their fish. A little explanation- Dad has, for the last few years, been converting and rennovating an old Cornish house, and has been gradually doing up the massive garden next to the house. He’s added a one-floor extension, redone the kitchen, added a back porch and decking, and is now in the process of adding a massive front porch. He’s also made a lovely pond, where there is now a thriving collection of fish, and George was wondering who was going to be feeding their fish while they went away to New Zealand for almost a month, when she said “You could stay here and finish the book!”, mainly as a joke.

But, of course, then I started thinking.

The practical upshot of this is that now, instead of a vague arrangement for late June and July where I was going to try and earn plenty while doing as much work on the book as possible, I am now going to exit London on the 22nd of June, and I’m not back until the 20th July. I will, for 28 days, largely be on my own in a large, comfy house that’s out in the middle of nowhere (there’s a relatively busy road next to it, but that’s one of the only concessions to civillisation), and I will be spending most of my time getting the book into shape- filling up all the gaps, and then giving it a really brutal rewrite to actually get it into the right state. It’s a slightly scary idea, and the fact that it will close off certain (but not all) ways of earning money is a little intimidating, but it’s happening at the right time. I can just about afford to do this, and once I get into August, I’ve got Edinburgh, bits of Frightfest, and then the London Film Festival- for about four months, my life is going to HAVE to be solid movies. My hopeful plan is to get the book into a state where I can actually send it to someone before Edinburgh. It’ll take an awful lot of work, but it’s not impossible. The next few days are going to be screening hunting, and next thursday, I’m off to write. This blog may get even stranger before the end…

Week Nine of Who- and it was still great fun, even if it fell prey occasionally to the “Let’s make important speeches” school of writing, the logic was creaky in places, and the steals from ALIEN really did get utterly shameless. Also, the solution for the ending was just a little too convenient, but overall one of the best stories of the new series so far. Next week, we have RTD writing, an “experimental” story, Peter Kay guest starring, and more from Rose’s mum. Colour me unexcited…

Lots to do. Not enough time.

Think cold thoughts. Think cold thoughts…

Green fields. Buzzing insects. Hardly a hint of civillisation. Cornwall may have its disadvantages, but it’s a gorgeous contrast from London, and the time I’m spending here is doing me the world of good. Since the last entry, we voyaged down to my sister’s place in Devon, had a beautiful trip up onto Dartmoor (plenty of sun, for once, which actually has me worried- the whole place was looking kind of dusty and yellow, and this is at the beginning of summer before the major sun has kicked in), had a trip on Sunday to meet up with my Mum that turned dramatic for a wide variety of complex (and not easy to describe) experiences, ate pizza, watched a whole lotta movies (Revenge of the Sith for the second time- it’s the best of the prequels, but deary me there’s still some dodgy dialogue there. Take the eye candy away, and that film would be in serious trouble), ate some gorgeous cheesecake, and then headed down to Cornwall on Monday evening. Since then, life has been slower and quite lovely- Dad’s place is a distance away from anywhere inparticular and has a truly wonderful garden that’s full of exciting nooks and crannies.

Yesterday we spent lolling around and being lazy, but today we went for a walk through Tehidy Woods, and down into Portreath, the village where I grew up. We went along a route that I haven’t been along for a very long time, and there were quite a few eerie moments when my memories were almost being “overlaid” onto what I was seeing. Strange, deja-vu-but-not-deja-vu moments, but it was great getting the chance to do that with George, who was very game for the walk despite not feeling fantastic when she first woke up. We eventually descended all the way into Portreath itself, ended up walking past the house where I grew up (again, a weird experience), and were finally picked up by Dad. All on a nice, warm day, and a walk with plenty of shady spots. There was enough variety and enough moments where there wasn’t anyone else around to make it very, very satisfying. I can see us wanting to get as far away from civillisation as we can as we get older.

Week Eight of Who- and because of my sister’s slightly bizarre decision to (a) buy a highly expensive Hi-Def compatible television and (b) not actually plug the video recorder into it (instead, there’s a slightly confusing collection of audio visual equipment upstairs, wired into an arial-less telly), this was the first Who episode since 1983 that I didn’t get to record. And, of course, it turned out to be one of the best of the season so far- a minimum of cheery one-liners, and a maximum of genuinely atmospheric spookiness. All a huge rip-off of Event Horizon, but none the worse for it.

Hopefully, we should be able to meet up with my friend Tris before we head back- something which doesn’t happen often enough. Other than that, the plan is to relax, stay calm, and take stock of the situation with the novel. It’s possible that I’ve actually cracked one area of the characterisation, although it’s possible that I might think differently once I actually come to write down what’s in my head. Only time will tell…

Setting off for Devon tomorrow. I’m mostly packed, but afflicted with a horrible sense of fatigue that makes me terribly paranoid that I’m not going to remember everything. At the least, I have printed out the entirety of the novel as it stands at the moment. 262 pages of very small, widely formatted single space type. The grand total? 141,000 words. And that’s still with bits missing, and gaps to fill. I’m looking forward to getting out of London, and not having to think about the book for a little while. Everything is too hot and too clammy here. Still, the journey begins.

More details soon…

I don’t like blogging when I’m feeling depressed. It feels wrong, or like it would be rather self-indulgent, so I’ve been slightly avoiding it for the last few days, simply because getting sustained work done on the novel has become very, very tough. There have been plenty of moments that have been the equivalent of getting 3/4 of the way through building a skyscraper only to look down at the foundations and think “Uh-oh…”, but I think I have actually succeeded in getting past them. It’s been affecting my sleep, as well- I’ve been getting up progressively earlier (5.30 am, which has left me feeling somewhat zonked), but thankfully I’ve got one more day, and then George and I are off to my sister’s place in Devon for the weekend, and then I’m down in Cornwall with my dad for the rest of the week.

I’m going to try and leave the book alone for that entire week, so that I can get back, do some furious rewriting, and hopefully be in a good enough headspace to also begin some film journalism work as well. It’d be very easy to continue in this mode for a very long time, and while it’s been fantastic saying “Bollocks to it!” and doing very little other than writing for the past month and a half, I am going to have to balance it out with some genuine work soon in order to survive longer. I am, at least, paid up to survive on my current monthly wage (which isn’t much) until the beginning of September, and that’s with attending the Edinburgh Festival as well. I am terribly tired at the moment, and intermittently convinced that the weird, sexy, action-packed comic-book-style sci-fi romp that I’ve been writing doesn’t actually work, but I know that this has been exceptionally good for me. Whatever happens, I’ll be able to get to the end of this year and say “I have written my first novel!” I might not get any further than that, but hell, it’s better than a lot of people manage. I’m going to get there. And it’s going to be fun.

Week Seven of Who continued the downward spiral- especially disappointing considering it was written by the usually reliable Mark Gatiss. Maureen Lipman as a camp, evil TV intelligence shouting things like “Hungry!!” and “I’m going to eat you up!” is something I could definitely have done without…

My life for the last two weeks has been mainly typing, typing and more typing, followed by some stress, a Doctor’s appointment, a minor foot injury that’s not in a hurry to go away quickly, and a general sense of disbelief that I’m well over 100,000 words into the novel. I’m not quite at the “light at the end of the tunnel”, but I can at least smell the air coming in from the other exit. I’ve still got an awful lot of work to do, and I’m still having to conceptualise certain sections of the story, but it’s going well. I’m being a little too slapdash at certain points in my working methods- the next one of these that I do, I’ve got to be much more organised. No way in hell am I stopping with this one…

Last week’s Who? Well, it had some decent moments, but was otherwise a bit of a runaround disappointment. The cascade of “WTF” moments shows no sign of stopping.

For sheer, unadulterated ludicrousness, however, look no further than X-MEN 3. If it was a stand-alone movie, it’d be a mediocre, overcrowded superhero flick with plenty of spectacle but little else. Coming on the heel of X2, however, this is a real mess- bland, unengaging, and on the verge of turning into a Chekov play with the number of people staring moodily out of windows. It’s a typical example of a studio setting a date for a Blockbuster, hiring a journeyman director who’ll meet deadline, and ending up with product that’ll get a nice opening weekend but will piss off most of the fandom who liked the first two movies. Not only is it horribly overcrowded (winged character Angel- a major player in the trailer- gets a grand total of about four lines), it’s also incredibly daftly thought out with major lapses of logic, continuity (It goes from golden sunset to pitch black instantly) and reason. On top of everything else, they totally screw up the potential of the ‘Dark Phoenix’ saga, instead turning Jean Grey into a witchy zombie-like sex kitten who spends most of her time standing around looking moody. And that’s not even mentioning Vinnie Jones, or the fact that Halle Berry makes a dull superhero- AGAIN! It’s as much of a misguided mess as ALIEN 3, but without any of that film’s ambition or reach. A big, big shame.

I have a habit of having themed dreams- I once went through an entire phase of dreaming up versions of Star Wars: Episode III (pre-release) that were a hell of a lot more interesting than what we got (In one, there was a scarred, half-burned Anakin with a wiry, Akira-style prosthesis on his arm, and in another, all the TIE Fighter pilots were exact clones- but were played by Robbie Coltrane…). Well, I’ve recently been going through variations of the TV series Lost in my sleep- last week there was one where (after a brief interlude involving me having to clear up the drunken mess caused by the drummer from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers), I was actually on the mysterious island, out in the cold, wearing a bathrobe (for unknown reasons) watching new people arrive in the middle of the night by bus (yes, I know it’s an island. Who said it had to be logical). The buses started unloading, and people were getting out looking very confused- and among them were my old school friends Heidi, Dave and Viv, and I was in the process of trying to bring them up to speed with what the hell was going on when I woke up. My dreams tend to be incredibly vivid to the extent that even when they’re mind-blastingly weird (one bit of the dream above- Charlie and Claire from the show encounter this alien technology-style metal tentacle that swoops over both of them and, for some reason, doubles as a shower) I’ll wake up genuinely confused as to whether or not they happenned. Although, in the case of the one which involved me accidentally finding a book all about Eighties TV series Airwolf co-written by the star Jan-Michael Vincent which was half-biography and half a collection of- I kid you not- “Erotic Stories” about the show- I was actually quite glad that it didn’t happen. Although I would have loved to have shown my Airwolf-loving friend Tris if it had…

Anyway, I mention it because I saw the season 2 climax for Lost this week- and a really interesting mix. Part frustrating, part amazing, part annoying, part incredible. They didn’t quite manage as tense and rip-roaring a time as last year’s pirate-ship, dynamite-shifting, hatch-blowing action, but a hell of a lot of answers came our way (along with plenty of new questions), and lots of examples of what Lost does best- tying up new revelations with stuff that’s already happened. It gives the show a very novelish feel, and it is best appreciated in one go, so I’m looking forward to the DVD release.

Another DVD experiece I’m undergoing is Firefly- having missed the boat previously, and being entertained but slightly underwhelmed by Serenity, it’s interesting to try and get an idea of why people have getting quite so orgasmically excited about the show. To be honest, it’s great fun, but I’m not at all suprised that it didn’t last long as it’s an utterly bizarre mash-up of different genres- like someone took Deadwood, Blade Runner and Blake’s 7 and threw them into a bag. For me, it plays best when it’s not overdosing on the Western iconography and having its heroes wielding space-age six-shooters and experiencing traditional bar brawls, and instead just concentrates on being a gritty, earthy space saga. There are moments which feel overdone- the violence sometimes feels very out of place in what’s a good-natured romp for 90% of the time (in one episode today, there were people dying via bleeding from every orofice- not the nicest sight). The characterisation’s great fun, and it would have been nice to see it at least get a full season (the rather dull looking Invasion managed it before it kicked the bucket), but half the problems I had with the movie are still there, and it does feel like it’s missing the iconic central concept that Buffy had driving it. It’s fun, but it really wasn’t the Second Coming.

Lots to do. A week to go, and then I’m on holiday in Cornwall. I don’t know if I’m going to get the book finished by then, but I’m going to have a damn good try.

Week Five of New Who- and while it wasn’t anywhere as good as last weeks, it wasn’t bad. Just a pity they had to cast the less-than-convincing Roger Lloyd Pack as the villain, and also that they’ve essentially nicked the origin of the Daleks and given it to the Cybermen. Whatever the flaws, however, Tennant is seriously growing into the role, and is hugely watchable even when the story is going through shonky patches.

Another week begins- today is going to be a sorting out, processing, charging up day with a little writing involved– and then tomorrow, things really knock back into gear. My friend Claire came over yesterday, and despite the fact that I essentially talked at her for almost 3 1/2 hours about the book, she still claimed she had a good time! It was really useful, and it’s meant that I’ve got some firm ideas about how to deal with the pacing issues in the first six chapters. Writing the thing is still a bit of a struggle at the moment, but I’m going to clamber my way over this mountain even if it kills me. Which it might.

For anyone who watches the series, this will raise a smile!

Not always in the habit of doing this, but browsing through some web stuff yesterday, I unearthed this fantastically interesting discussion about the American right wing, and how the anti-abortion and anti-contraception lobby (the whole “preaching abstinence” thing is something I find both scary and utterly incomprehensible- do none of these people actually remember being teenagers?) is essentially anti-sex, or at least, anti the idea of sex as something that can be fun. The idea of a woman actually enjoying sex and not just treating it as a process for making babies seems to be something they find absolutely terrifying. Anyway, even if you don’t agree it’s well worth a read.

Gosh. Must stop talking about the real world, must stop talking about the real world…