Rain From A Clear Blue Sky

I've got into the habit of blogging about how various short stories have been written following their publication. Continuing this theme, here is the background to my story, "Rain From A Clear Blue Sky", which was published this month in Black Static #33. Please note there are spoilers in this blog which might affect your enjoyment of the story if you haven't already read it. (Incidentally, following on from an earlier blog post about writing to music, I wrote "Rain From A Clear Blue Sky" whilst listening to "Takk" by Sigur Rós).

Sometimes having a day job can be beneficial. One of my co-workers, Neil, pointed out an article he had seen on the Dyatlov Pass incident. Immediately I was intrigued by this true story where the deaths of nine skiers in Russia had been officially investigated and attributed to a compelling unknown force. To summarise from Wikipedia - and without giving too much of my story away - "Investigators at the time determined that the hikers tore open their tent from within, departing barefoot into heavy snow and a temperature of −30 °C. Although the corpses showed no signs of struggle, two victims had fractured skulls, two had broken ribs, and one was missing her tongue."

Artwork by David Gentry

Naturally this mystery appealed to me, but I was loathe to write about it directly. For starters, real people had lost their lives. I didn't want to fictionalise them purely for entertainment - and as I wanted this to be a horror story (albeit, a slight one) any 'explanation' of what might have happened would inevitably be horrific. Whilst it would be unlikely any relatives would read the story, I wanted to avoid such directness with those involved. The idea then came to me that I would write the story from the point of view of a new group of travellers also journeying in the region, with the idea that knowledge of what had happened before would prey on their minds and would be implicit in their own reactions to the circumstances they found themselves in.

I usually need several ideas to mesh together before getting a full plot for a story. One of these is the title. I already had "Rain From A Clear Blue Sky". The title came to me quite naturally, during a rain shower from a blue sky. Sometimes the natural world can throw up surprises, but also metaphors. Something unusual which might be naturally explained appealed to me within this story.

Finally, upon thinking of wilderness scenarios, I remembered stories of the third man. I was aware there have been instances where lost explorers have felt there was an addition to their party during times of trouble, and who they felt might have guided them out of difficult situations. The third man is usually described as helpful, but it crossed my mind what would happen if they were malignant. Or maybe if the third man had an identity crisis. It didn't take long for me to realise my party of explorers would have a third man with them. And also that the third man should be the narrator of the story.

So, there we have it: the Dyatlov Pass incident, the title, the third man. All these elements came together in this story. If you've read it, please comment below. If you haven't, then please consider buying the magazine which also contains fine stories by James Cooper, Carole Johnstone, Michael Kelly, Tim Casson and Gary McMahon, with DVD and book reviews and comment columns. Black Static is the UK's finest magazine and further information about this issue is here.
 

From Book to Film

I recently read "Rosemary's Baby" by Ira Levin and thoroughly enjoyed it. Having already seen the movie adaptation directed by Roman Polanski several times I was struck by how exactly Polanksi had followed the book. In fact, it felt more that I was remembering the book rather than reading it. The adherence to the story, dialogue, indeed every element, was incredible. A perfect adaptation, some might feel. Indeed, Polanski was such a stickler for detail that Ira Levin later claimed he had been telephoned by the director to ask which issue of the New Yorker a character had been reading which featured an advert for a shirt as Polanksi wanted to ensure he could use the same edition in the film!

It got me to thinking about other books I had read which have been adapted into movies. Which of those I thought were successful, and which less so. And why this might be the case. So, here's a few examples that came to mind.

I love the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, whose blending of fantasy and reality strikes me as very slipstream (the core of my own fiction). "Norwegian Wood" is one of my favourite books that I've read, and I feel the movie adaptation directed by Tran Anh Hung captures the mood of the novel exceptionally well. It's not a scene by scene 're-make' as was "Rosemary's Baby", but the essence of the novel is translated finely to the screen. Both book and film are highly recommended.

Less successful is the adaptation of "The Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger. The book is sublime. I picked it up without any expectation of thinking I would enjoy it, and was swept away. The ending is perfect - a logical summation of everything the book was leading up to and manages to be honest, terrifying, and beautiful simultaneously. The movie, however, compacts the story into confusion; and totally trashes the ending of the novel to the extent that I couldn't help but loudly declaim it as I left the cinema. I realise a movie doesn't have to religiously follow a novel's plot for it to be successful or for it to work on it's own terms, but a blatant disregard for the source material smacks of commercialism over artistry. If you've read the book, avoid the movie at all costs. If you've seen the movie, please read the book.

Unlike the above movie, where the thickness of the book might have required a restricted storyline for the length of the movie, "Where The Wild Things Are" takes its source material from the thin children's picture book by Maurice Sendak. The movie, however, whilst inevitably adding to the story, doesn't detract from the overall feeling of the book - it expands on it in such a way which doesn't trash the source material and also manages to avoid seemingly unnecessary material that might be the norm for such a 'padding'. Instead, we have a delightful, fantastical, at times sinister adaptation of a delightful, fantastical, and sinister story. Each succeed in their own right.

Adapting short children's books to film is fraught with pitfalls. I can barely type due to anger at the train wrecks of Dr Seuss adaptations: especially "The Grinch" (with it's totally unnecessary back story depicting the 'reason' for the Grinch's behaviour), and the even more intolerable "Cat In The Hat". Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" has also had a couple of mixed attempts to translate to the big screen. The 1971 version featuring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka is by far my favourite, even though the squirrels were replaced by geese (presumably geese being easier to direct in the years before CGI), and whilst the Johnny Depp Wonka is in some ways more faithful to the book, again, an unnecessary 'explanation' for his eccentricity serves only to annoy rather than compliment the novel.

Definitely not a children's book, I'm going to conclude with "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis. Whereas the film adaptation stuns with explicitness and bravery (and to my surprise, and perhaps shame, I found it unusual to be directed by a woman - not given the subject material, but the treatment. Although noting that Mary Harron was the first journalist to interview the Sex Pistols in the US I realise I shouldn't make these misogynistic statements!), the novel is much more detailed and graphic than would have been acceptable on celluloid. I guess another blog post might be worthwhile to consider the difference between the visual and the written word in terms of explicitly violent or sexual material, whether it's best for images to be contained within the head of the reader or emblazoned on the silver screen, but in relation to this specific post I feel the adaptation of "American Psycho" doesn't detract from the material left within the book, but stands as a great movie in its own right.

Writing To Music

I've got into the habit of listening to albums on a loop continuously when writing short stories. It has to be something unobtrusive; a background noise to anchor me in the moment of writing, to enclose me like a bubble until the story is written and the spell can be broken. Different stories suit different moods and some albums I use repeatedly because I know I can write easily to them. I can usually knock out a 2,500 to 5,000 word story in one session, and during that time the CD can play three or four times. Sometimes I play it in order, sometimes on shuffle. Generally, the music weaves in and out of my head and creates an ambience for the story, whilst also cutting out distractions that I might hear beyond the blast of the music.

So, I thought I'd list some of the stories I've written and their 'soundtracks'. Whether you write or not please give these artists a listen. Needless to say, I only play music that I love.

"Burning Daylight" - this recent short story combines the life of a mayfly with a human life. Blonde Redhead are a band I frequently listen to when writing, and for this story I chose their album "Penny Sparkle". The music perfectly complemented my mood, and as I know the album well the songs segued into each other almost without me noticing. I also recommend their albums "Misery Is A Butterfly" and "23" as good writing-to-music records.

"Dirty Snow" - I wrote this story whilst listening to Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express", an album I hadn't listened to before. In fact, the CD I bought secondhand was scratched but having seen the band in the news recently I wondered if I could rip it on my PC without the 'jumping' around occuring. To my surprise - although it took a while - it was successful. The monotone nature of the music perfectly suited this crime story.

"The Strangeness In Me" - On this occasion it wasn't a whole album I listened to on repeat, but one single song: "The Strangeness In Me" as performed by The Cramps. Their version is slow and melodious, and as I was using the song lyrics as part of the story (credited in my collection, "Nitrospective", where the story appeared) it made sense to keep the disc spinning for the whole three hours.

"The Universe At Gun Point" - This story was written for the Classical Book of Horror Stories anthology and I've mentioned in a previous blog the gestation of the piece choosing the music of Erik Satie as its starting point. Because of this, I found some samples of his music online and listened to these as I wrote.

Other albums I play repeatedly when writing short stories include Polly Scattergood's self-titled CD, The Flaming Lips "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots", Radiohead's "Kid A", and the music of Coeur de Pirate and Carla Bruni.

As would be clear from listening to any of these albums, the lyrics have to be almost buried in the music and the music itself cannot be too raucous which excludes most of my punk collection, although I have written to tracks by the Ramones. If you also listen to music when writing, please comment on the blog and include your choices there.

The Novels I've Never Sold

I thought I'd make a post here about all the novels I've written and the one which I've sold. With me there's a great disparity between novel writing success and short story writing success. With short stories I've sold over 100 so far and whilst I don't have the exact figure with me I would estimate I've written about 130. As some of those were written recently I think that's a pretty good hit rate. Some of these short stories were written in a matter of hours, so - again - the turnaround from the idea to the finished product can be very fast. With novels, however, I find it a real struggle. I've finished seven so far, with one success. It takes up to six months of writing time, an age to submit and get responses, and then a battering of rejections. Of course, I might simply be a good short story writer and a poor novel writer: there are many reasons for this lack of success. Still, as I'm currently nearing the end of my 8th novel and approaching the point at which I'll need to sell it, I thought a round-up of what I've written so far might be interesting. Of course, in the unlikely event any publishers are reading this, the unpublished novels are currently up for grabs.

Reason

First novel I wrote back in 1988. A train enters a tunnel and a group of travellers find they cannot leave their compartment. The train remains travelling through the tunnel for an extended period of time which creates anxiety and confusion amongst the travellers, who eventually break out and find they are alone on the train. Probably influenced by Bunuel's "Exterminating Angel" this has all the problems of a first novel and I haven't looked at it in years.

Consumption

Second novel written around 1989. A painfully shy and self-obsessed chap moves into rented accommodation and becomes fixated by a fellow tenant who becomes his first girlfriend. When he accidentally kills her, he decides to consume parts of her body in the hope that he might transmute her soul. A cross between Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" and The Stranglers' "La Folie" this novel fails because the main character became so well defined in the first half of the novel as someone who would never do what he does in the second half.

Moon Beaver

The link above makes it clear that this became my first published novel. Please buy it! I wrote the first half in 1992 and then left it for six years and added a paragraph. I then completed the novel in 1998 and it was published in 2003 by the excellent ENC Press. I remain proud of this work which is a comic satire examining themes of individuality and immortality - themes which appear frequently in my work. It's a lot of fun and riffs a little on Tom Robbins' novels which I love.

Full Circle

I had this idea on a National Express bus journey from Norwich to London and had to keep it in my head and buy a notebook from WH Smith to write it down as soon as the bus stopped! Set in the North and South of England, in Peru and in Hungary, this sets up a N/E/S/W compass point of converging storylines which - whilst it contains some interesting ideas - ultimately fails under the weight of the inherent coincidences required for it to hum along. 'Contrived' would be a better title for the book!

Bobbing For Reality

Always liked this title, but this book's chance has been and gone. Written around 2004/5 separate stories connect a serial dater with a one parent father with a self-employed freelance deflowerer of virgins and a serial killer. Set in New York and London with a large portion of the book revolving around Internet chat rooms and the anonymity they contain, I feel that the massive increase in technology since this was written makes the computer-set-pieces dated and no longer usable. A shame, as I had high hopes for this one.

The Immortalists

Finally, since Moon Beaver, a novel I've written which I really think deserves to sell. Taking the irascible PI named Mordent from some short stories I've had published, this is a modern pulp noir crime novel that pitches two rival gangs against each other for the secret of immortality whilst Mordent investigates a missing persons case that is much more than it appears to be on the surface. I had great fun writing this, and I've had some great feedback. This novel is still being pitched to agents and publishers, together with...

Church Of Wire

My second Mordent novel. Mordent investigates a string of cases where a serial killer appears to be targeting the survivors of previous serial killer attacks and whether or not they are linked to a shady religious organisation known as the Church of Wire. As with The Immortalists this story has a healthy dose of pulp sensibility - is drenched in it, in fact - and I have fairly high hopes that both of these will someday be published. Watch this space.

Body And Soul

This the novel I'm working on at the moment. I've reached 75,000 words and am looking for 90,000 minimum. I've tried to be more commercial with this work, which is a far future SF novel set in an age where mankind has regressed technologically and has evolved into beings where for a new birth the females carry the body but the male carries the soul. Both parents have to be present at birth for the pregnancy to be effective, and this world is about to be rent asunder by demons from Earth's past. Again, I'm fairly hopeful with this, but considering the above I guess the question is:

Why do I bother with novels?

And the answer is:

because some stories demand to be told that way.

Fur-Lined Ghettos #2

As well as spending a large part of my life writing fiction I've also dabbled in editing in one form or another. I was one of the fiction editors for the short-lived magazine White Noise, was the driving force behind the multi-award winning Elastic Press from 2002 til 2009, and also edited the fiction magazine, New Horizons, for the British Fantasy Society for a number of years. Putting books and magazines together is an interesting process, they take on a gestalt of their own, with the contents becoming more than the individual words on the page. If it were simply a matter of throwing stuff together the editing and selection process wouldn't be half as much fun, but seeing how the pieces interact as well as work independently can be very exciting.

I've blogged before that I'm now co-editing a magazine with my partner, Sophie. Well, I say editing, she's doing the bulk of it and I'm there for experience. The frustrating part of it is receiving material which doesn't suit the guidelines, and the satisfaction is when the writer hits what we want right on the head.

The first issue has almost sold out, and we've reduced the price from £5 to £3 for UK orders (including postage) to sell the remaining stock. Now issue two has just been published, and we've decided to price this one at £4 for UK orders although the page count is the same as issue one. Bargain! Overseas orders remain at £5 because we make so little on those copies due to postage.

Issue two has cover art by Simanion which looks like this:

This issue features two short stories, by Daniella Geary and Douglas Thompson, together with poetry from Serena Cooke, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Peter Friedman, Howie Good, Kyle Hemmings, P A Levy, John W Sexton, Ryan Swofford and Steve Wheat. The poetry isn't any of that rhyming must-stick-to-a-specific-format stuff. It's gritty, surreal, adventurous, and not necessarily what you'd expect. Please consider buying a copy, because that way we can continue to do what we love to do. And in return you'll get some great stuff to read.

Fur-Lined Ghettos website

The Pangolin

What better way to start the New Year than by celebrating a long-snouted animal?

In this instance, it's one of my favourites: the pangolin. Here's a baby one looking especially cute.

The pangolin is also known as a 'scaly anteater' (for obvious reasons) and the fantastically named 'trenggiling' (for less obvious reasons). It's the only mammal with large keratin scales covering its skin. The name comes from the Malay word pengguling meaning something that rolls up.

I was going to post a picture of one rolled up, but the snout wasn't quite so obvious. So here's one which is balled up a little as it's taking a drink with the snout particularly extended.

So, let's have a bit of adoration for the pangolin. It looks fantastic, sounds fantastic, and - it's got to be said - just look at the size of that (dripping) snout!

My Writing Year 2012

I thought I'd do a quick blog post as to my literary achievements during 2012.

I completed one novel begun at the tail end of 2011, a crime pulp noir titled "Church of Wire", and have begun and am halfway through a new novel, "Body And Soul." This one is a far future SF/F book.

I wrote thirteen short stories this year: "Drowning In Air", "The Evening Of The Mule", "The Stench Of Winter", "The Universe At Gun Point", "Dumb Broad", "My Naked Man", "The Abduction Of Europe", "The Perfection Of Symmetry", "Tetsudo Fan", "The Aniseed Gumball Kid", "The Last Mohican", "Beyond The Island Of The Dolls" and "Rain From A Clear Blue Sky". I do like my titles!

I sold five short stories: "The Quickening" to Shadows & Tall Trees, "The Universe At Gun Point" to The First Book Of Classical Horror, "The Perfection Of Symmetry" to Chiral Mad, "Tetsudo Fan" to the Rustblind & Silverbright anthology from Eibonvale Press, and "Drowning In Air" to an anthology I cannot name til next year.

The following six short stories appeared in print this year: "Dizzy Land" in Black Static #26, "Monster Girl" in The Monster Book For Girls, "The Human Map" in Where Are We Going? (Eibonvale Press), "Things That Are Here Now, Things That Were There Then" in Dark Currents (NewCon Press), "The Universe At Gun Point" in The First Book Of Classical Horror, and "The Perfection Of Symmetry" in Chiral Mad.

I have a handful of stories awaiting publication that were accepted in 2011, a novella, short story collection, and two novels under consideration, and a collaborative story collection awaiting publication.

Not bad considering this little one was born midway through the year, and also that I work full-time Monday to Friday, work part-time alternate Sundays, freelance typeset and proofread often in the evenings, and have been co-editor with Fur-Lined Ghettos. Not often I blow my own trumpet, but it is the start of a New Year and should be heralded as such!