life

Mona Lisa Overdrive

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It’s been a pretty quiet week – one of those times when you just get on with an epic amount of work, and then blink when you realise exactly how much time has passed. One thing has occurred to me, and that is that from next week onwards, I really need to get myself back in a writing groove. I’m missing it at the moment – I’ve been giving myself a break, partly due to work, and partly due to waiting for feedback on the rewritten version of The Hypernova Gambit. But the break is going to be ending next week, as it’s time to get myself moving once again. In the meantime, this morning I’m departing for three-and-a-bit days to London, for the Clarke Awards and to catch up with various people. It’s going to be slightly odd to be back in something resembling a touristy mood in London – I don’t have anything specifically work-related happening other than the Clarke Awards – so I’m going to be doing my best to have fun. Then I’m back late Thursday, to a weekend of finishing proofreading and worryingly practical stuff like sorting out financial paperwork and taxes. Still, it’s got to be done. But for the next three days I’m likely to be somewhat quiet online – so don’t get up to anything too dramatic without me…

P.S.: A couple of links came my way over the last week. You can catch up with the posted photos of the Eastercon Rock Band experience here. And you can read the rather unexpected blog post that Tim Clague, a filmmaker and friend from my University days, has written about me (something of a surprise, I can tell you…) here.

Twit To-Woo

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That last entry has reminded me – I haven’t actually said at any point on here that I can now be found lounging around in a somewhat louche manner in the realms of Twitter. To anyone who wants to join me there, I can guarantee neither fine wine, beautiful women nor scintillating conversation, but if you’d like to become one of my currently 39-strong band of followers, then please feel free to head to: twitter.com/saxonb with all my compliments. And now, as the wine and cheese are being served, I must hasten to the Ambassador’s after-reception party. Catch you later…

The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me

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A week that’s blurred past in a flash – I’m working incredibly hard at the moment, so I must be getting something right. There’s also been some incredibly nice after-echoes of Eastercon, with various people saying hello and keeping in contact via Twitter and Facebook. Being of a somewhat pessimistic disposition, I’m always of the opinion (or fear) that anyone I initially speak to or befriend will find a fantastic excuse for not keeping in touch (and after all, Facebook has virtually re-invented the idea of ‘friendship’ as basically clicking a button, sending a message of “Hello” to someone you haven’t spoken to in years and then never speaking again) – I seem to live in constant anticipation of the glassy stare followed by the polite backing away and repeated refrains of “Yes, anyway….” But this week has been a nice surprise on that front, and has livened up what would otherwise have been a very lonely few days in my garret. For the last few days, I’ve been finishing off a set of proofreading – it’s been a head-exploding blizzard of work, and it still isn’t done. I’ve got one more day tomorrow, and then it’ll be finished. And then I’ve got a manuscript report to do. And then there’s some more proofreading. And another manuscript report. And I’m off to London next week for four days, for various adventures including the Arthur C. Clarke Awards. As I said, I’ve really got to be doing something right, as I regularly seem to be redefining how much work I can get done. But it has been a good week – and while there may be a couple of shadows on the horizon which could give me a good reason to get worked up, I’m not going to let them. Excuse me now, I must go and collapse artfully in a corner…

Shore Leave

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Okay- I’m about to collapse into bed and then get up absurdly early for the journey to Bradford and the LX Eastercon. I’ll probably be at the convention hotel from around 12pm onwards, and thanks to an entertaining bit of last-minute skullduggery, I’m going to be there for the whole shebang – I’m staying for Sunday night as well, which opens up the possibility of competing in the Forbidden Planet-sponsored game of Rock Band that’s going to be happening. I really don’t think they’re going to know what hit them… It’s unlikely I’ll get the chance to blog, so I’ll do my best to give a full and frank update once I return on Monday. But in the meantime, have a fantastic Easter…

Halfway Home

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I’ve spent the last few days recovering from a combination of finishing the current phase of a major project, and a truly fantastic party that I ended up going to on Saturday night. It was one of those unexpected appointments that come up at the last minute – Anna mentioned that she was going to a birthday party of one of her friends from her Book Group, and did I want to come along? I did my usual dance of “Umm, not sure”, especially considering there was (Shock! Horror!) going to be an actual taxi journey involved. And then I realised that I was being kind of dumb – I’m in need of all the fun I can get right now, so turning down the option of a party because it might involve spending a little money was, I realised, rather ludicrous. So, Anna and I headed along at about 8pm-ish, and the general plan was that we’d probably be there until about 11 o’clock, or maybe stretch it until midnight.

And of course, we ended up leaving at 3.30 in the morning.

It shows what a combination of red wine, butterscotch schnaps, vodka and lots of cake will do (not at the same time, obviously – I’m not quite as demented as I look). I mean, the first hour was a little awkward, as parties where you really don’t know that many people often are, and I did my best to mingle, and chat, and it all seemed nice if a little polite… and then a funny thing happenned. It doesn’t happen every time I get drunk – sometimes I don’t even need to be that drunk to do it – basically, the barriers come down, and suddenly I’m not a nervous wreck anymore. It’s one of the things that I think always surprises people when they get to experience both sides of me – they can’t understand how someone who can act like the most ludicrously confidant and absurd person on the face of the planet can also be a jittery, nervy guy with a severe lack of self-confidence. It’s a strange thing about me and people – I sometimes feel like I don’t function well without an audience, and yet I’m habitually intimidated by the idea of having to go out and get one – I’m great in situations if they naturally evolve, but I find it really, really difficult to make them happen on my own. And the fact that I spend about 95% of my life on my own at the moment doesn’t exactly help with that, of course.

But safe to say, I had something of an impact. Anna reported to me later that apparently lots of people were coming up to her and drunkenly saying things like “We love Saxon!” and “You actually live with him?!?” People were either entertained or deeply puzzled – which, frankly, is an effect I’m perfectly happy with. I danced an awful lot, I talked to lots of people, I was exceptionally silly, and it’s one of the best nights I’ve had in a very long time (and certainly beat the hell out of the All-Nighter the previous week). And apparently, I’m officially invited to any parties they have from now on, which is lovely. Would have been nice if I hadn’t woken up the next morning (well, later that morning) feeling comprehensively dreadful and as if I’d just been run over by a truck, of course. But frankly, it was worth it.

Time Is On My Side

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Okay – it’s explanation time.

I’ve been very quiet on the blog recently. I’ve also been making veiled references to an Uber-Ultra-Secret project, and not saying much more. Well, I think it’s time I bring you roughly up to date with what’s happening. I’m still keeping some details under wraps, plus this (and any posts relating to it) will be friends-locked for the moment. But frankly, I’d like to actually be able to blog in the way that I used to. And being that I’m spending so much time on my own right now, I’m finding that I’m oddly missing it.

What I’ve been up to for the last two months… well, at the beginning of February I heard back from an Editor Who Shall Remain Nameless in relation to The Hypernova Gambit. And what I got was… well, it can safely be described as ‘interest’. The Editor Who Shall Remain Nameless was essentially turning it down and explaining why – but they also explained in quite a lot of detail the problems they had with the book. It was all done in a very open-ended way – I was welcome to disagree, ignore or do what I liked with the advice. But if I did want to take that advice onboard and try another draft, I was welcome to resubmit it.

Now, obviously this is one of those ‘good news/bad news’ situations – but the main positive thing was that it wasn’t a complete rejection. It was a possibility. And of course, when you’re looking at criticism of your work, it’s very easy to look at it and want to ignore it or disagree… but I didn’t. I looked at all of it, and I found that I actually agreed with just about everything the Editor Who Shall Remain Nameless had said. And within about a day or so, I was coming up with stuff. I was realising what needed to be done – changes I could make, ways I could take the whole thing and twist it in the right direction. A lot of these were the kind of things where you look at a story and think “How could I have been so stupid?” A lot of them were ideas where I suddenly realised that a tiny shift would make things so much better. And this is the bit that I love – getting actual feedback, being able to actually look at the whole edifice as a structure, and then making the right changes so that you can get rid of even more of the flaws than ever before. I know I’ll never get rid of them completely, but I can try my damndest.

So that’s what I’ve been doing since around the middle of February, and it’s been a lot of work. It was one of the scary things about this bit of the rewriting – I knew it would make the book better, but I also knew that this wasn’t going to be a small change. This was going to be big, and lots of smaller changes ended up happening along the way. There were certain sections that did come very easily, which was really nice – but there were also certain sections which were still difficult. And then, once I was at the end, I had to go back to the beginning and go through every single sentence of the book to try and get them to work better (and, heaven help me, I’m going to be doing it again once I’ve gotten a few people to read it). And it’s been something I’ve barely stopped at in the last seven weeks – to the extent that I think I’m slightly suffering from exhaustion having finished it on Friday.

And you know something?

It’s really good.

I’m really happy with it. It’s not absolutely done yet – there’s still work to be done – but there’s a whole selection of things in the book now that I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. And the end of the book is so much stronger. I’ve got a level of faith in it now – I understand why I got those rejections last year. I think I had to go through those so that I’d get to this point, and understand what I need to do to make it better. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get it good enough so that the Editor Who Shall Remain Nameless will actually want to take it on – but I really, really feel like something is going to happen as a result of this.

And sometimes, that’s all you need.

Eastercon Adventures

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It’s just over a week until Eastercon – only seems like yesterday that it was around six months away. I’m looking forward to it, and it’s also going to be a rather mind-boggling contrast to my usual existance, like a concentrated adrenaline shot of socialising. I’m also on a couple of panels – fewer than last year, but I’m making up for it by doing two in a row, on Saturday night no less. Yes, I will be doing a two-hour performance, and the subjects are:

The Reign of Russell T Davies Sat 20:00
“What effect has the resurgence of Dr Who had on UK TV SF and fandom?
Did it give us Life on Mars, or just Robin Hood?”
Tony Keen (moderator)
Jane Killick
Saxon Bullock
Paul F Cockburn

Adapting comics for the big screen Sat 21:00
“What makes a good adaptation of a comic book – faithfulness to the
text, or willingness to change it for the screen? Can you film the
unfilmable? What makes The Dark Knight so good, and The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen so bad?”
John Coxon (moderator)
Lilian Edwards
Persephone Hazard
Andrew Hogg
Martin McGrath
Saxon Bullock

Comics and Who. Not two subjects that I have a great difficulty talking about…

Budget has meant that I won’t be around for the Monday, and am instead vanishing off late-ish on Sunday night. But I will be there from Friday morning onwards, and will be doing my best to have fun….

The Wonkiness of Pop

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Last night, I dreamed I went to Manderley again…. no, wait a minute…. Last night what I actually did was go on my first serious night ‘out’ in a very long time, and my first genuine all-nighter since around 1997. It was to a club called Sankeys, and the occasion was a night called Wonky Pop, which had an interesting selection of live acts (most interesting of which was upcoming electro-pop act Little Boots). It was mostly fun, and it’s a long time since I’ve seen any live music… and yet it was also the kind of experience you have to do in order to find out that you don’t necessarily have to do it again. It’s just another area where I feel like I don’t quite belong – for various obvious reasons I’ve been feeling somewhat lacking in a sense of belonging for a while, and last night didn’t really do anything to help. But one day, something will. And I am going to keep looking.

The whole night was pretty much fun until 3am – the final act turned out to be a somewhat tuneless electro-pop duo fronted by a guy who looked like he’d just wandered in from waiting tables at a Greek restaurant, and who also proved that while some people have stage presence, some other people don’t and all the posing and effort in the world won’t help. After that the DJs proceeded to play a selection of clashing and unattractive house music (interrupted by occasional oddities, like the 12” of ‘Controversy’ by Prince, or ‘Push It’ by Salt ‘N’ Pepa), and it was a bit of an effort making it to 5AM when I finally made a break for Picadilly Gardens and was able to catch a bus. Like I said – I’m glad I did it, but I’m not going to be in a rush to do it again.

As a completely seperate aside, one thing I located today that really made me laugh: blogger MightyGodKing has been doing a regular look at the old edition of DC Comic’s Who’s Who, plucking out some of the more obscure entries and ripping the hell out of some of the truly ridiculous heroes and villains who have populated the DC Universe. As a pointed look at the sheer insanity of superhero universes, it simply can’t be beat – have a look, and goggle in wonder.

Don’t Trust Others: If You Dislike Them, Report Them

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Since I don’t live in London anymore (and haven’t been there since last October), I hadn’t heard about the Metropolitan Police’s latest insane ad campaign to basically inform us that we should be suspicious of everyone and everything (you can see the ads here), and the fact that it also ties in with the way that Britain is now a place where anyone with a camera can be hassled and threatened with criminal prosecution for simply taking a picture in a public place. It’s the kind of thing that really makes me keen on moving to another country, and makes me angry – because in so many respects, the ‘War against Terror’ has already been lost because, frankly, the terrorists set out to cause terror, and that’s exactly what they’ve done. And the Government’s response is more security, more paranoia, and more ways of making the general populace frightened, paranoid, and likely to turn on anyone just because they’re different.

(As an aside – on my recent air trip (to Cornwall, obviously a terrorism hot-spot), I had to throw away a tube of hair-gel I’d accidentally left in my hand luggage. Not news, of course, but it was mostly empty – the amount in the tube was well below the limit they set but, in one of those feats of nonsense there’s just no point in arguing with, the limit is determined by the amount that the tube was designed to take. And when are these rules finally going to be relaxed? Never, because there’s never going to be a point when anyone can say conclusively that the War on Terror is over. It all just makes me want to throw my hands up in the air…)

Anyhow – I wouldn’t have heard about this if it wasn’t for wonderful blog BoingBoing, and they’ve just put up a selection of remixes of the posters, many of which are quite brilliant. Have a look, enjoy, and let’s just hope that the downward spiral doesn’t continue. I was always hoping the future would turn out to be 2001: A Space Odyssey – unfortunately, it’s looking more like Terry Gilliam’s classic dystopia Brazil…