Category Archives: Odd scratchings

On the difficulty of Lovecraft

11 Friday Nov 2011

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Zompist gives an intelligent newb’s impression of first encountering H.P. Lovecraft (specifically, the classic At the Mountains of Madness). This may just about sum up some people’s reaction to a great deal of Lovecraft and similar ‘old fashioned’ writing, among those who buy such books expecting all the streamlining of a modern ‘speed-read’ supermarket novel…

“What stands out about both stories is the narrative technique, which I find so antiquated that it’s hard to deal with. Bluntly, the narration hides the good stuff as long as possible. It approaches the theme from way off, teases us with ambiguous details, goes out of its way to suggest that there may be rationalistic explanations or it may all be mad hallucinations. This was kind of standard for the period, of course, but Lovecraft takes it to an extreme. I let him go on and on, but I think it’s not to modern tastes.”

The new Conan movie

07 Monday Nov 2011

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I saw the new Conan movie yesterday. A paint-by-numbers Hollywood plot, but certainly not as bad as the newspaper reviewers say. It’s very watchable entertainment if you know what “pulp” is, and it’s not as smothered with political correctness as I’d feared. It starts very well indeed, anchored by the memorable Ron Perlman and by the accomplished boy actor who plays Conan as a child. The film’s world-design is well established, and the editing is first-class. The action sequences all look terrific throughout the film, are exciting, and are crisply shot and edited. As with many action movies, it’s the ‘love interest’ who drags it down. Here we get a dull ‘Hollywood eye-candy’ female lead with a hideously contemporary American accent — you’ll yearn for the moments when she stops talking with Conan and gets into some fighting. The dialogue in general occasionally creaks badly as the film progresses. The mattes and scenery are very accomplished, and imaginative within the genre restrictions. The narrators’ voiceover lacks gravity or conviction, and the sense of travelling long distances is not conveyed effectively — there’s a great map in the intro but we never see it again. The sound design is workmanlike, but doesn’t add to the movie in any real way. The music does its job but is completely unmemorable. Overall it’s a rather flawed but entertaining sword & sorcery movie, and one that’s surprisingly faithful to the spirit of the Robert E. Howard stories as I remember them.

Spyders of Burslem, now on the Kindle

01 Tuesday Nov 2011

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The hand-coded ebook edition of my The Spyders of Burslem novel has just landed on the Kindle. It’s now available from Amazon USA and Amazon UK. If you’re in France or Germany, it’s there too.

“It is the year 1869 in the English Midlands pottery town of Burslem, where a new age of industry and learning struggles to be born. A young graduate has arrived to teach the workers, but finds himself on the trail of a deadly evil.”

60,000 words, hand-coded, linked table of contents. Five passes of extra proof-reading for the Kindle edition.

CeltX, free writing software

21 Friday Oct 2011

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Looking for software that can help you wrange your creative vision? How does “free” and “open-source” sound? CeltX is rapidly moving toward a version 3.0. It started off as storyboarding software for animators and movie-makers — but now includes templates for organising and shaping screenplays, comic books, novels, radio plays, and even stage drama. It’s also nice to see documention books appearing for it. Graham Higson of the UK’s Falmouth University M.A. Writing course has just written a long review of the ebook of the new book Celtx: Open Source Screenwriting Beginner’s Guide.

Robert Aickman

03 Monday Oct 2011

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Bookslut has a new appreciation of Sheridan Le Fanu and Robert Aickman. Robert Aickman is a new name to me, but he sounds fascinating. Sadly, he’s yet another author who can’t be purchased for the Kindle, despite being published in print by Faber and Faber (three print volumes: Cold Hand in Mine, The Wine-Dark Sea, The Unsettled Dust). You might think publishers wanted people to go get the pirated versions.

I was delighted to learn that the first story in Cold Hand in Mine is set in Wolverhampton. I’m always keen to find horror and fantasy stories that arise from my own West Midlands of England…

“The Swords” is one, a seedy [horror] tale of adolescence and first love, set against a grimy industrial background of Midlands Britain, replete with carnivals, snakemen and two-bit whorehouses.

Aickman also co-founded The Inland Waterways Association, along with L.T.C. Rolt, a grassroots organisation which so wonderfully restored the old canals of the Midlands.

Dandelion Wine to be filmed

03 Monday Oct 2011

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Weird. Why can’t I buy any Ray Bradbury books on the Amazon Kindle store? Not a single one is listed, on either the USA or UK store. Does he despise ebooks? Or does he just have a lousy publisher these days?

Anyway, according to The Hollywood Reporter there’s a new planned cinema version of Dandelion Wine, with the 91 year-old Bradbury set to adapt the screenplay.