#BookReview - Traitors

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I can't believe it's a year since I wrote a review of Carrie Clevenger's Crooked Fang, but here I am again with my review of the novella-length follow-up, Traitors.

Again narrated by sexy vampire bassist Xan Marcelles, Traitors picks up shortly after Crooked Fang. Xan is without a band, and bored in Pinecliffe, Colorado. The presence of Nin, a different breed of vampire, seems to give him something to muse about, but she's not especially trustworthy.

A late night phone call from his shadowy kinsman, M, brings Xan's past right into his present, and he's forced to pick up the threads of his previous work as a hitman of sorts, cleaning up the messes left by others. In essence, he's pretty much The Wolf from Pulp Fiction, just more prone to violence and happy to shoot on sight. Nin invites herself along, and the pair head off to Traitors, by turns both bar and vampire nest in Texas.

The thing I've always liked about Xan is, surprisingly, his humanity. He makes mistakes, and admits to them, and his fondness for humans makes him a likeable protagonist. He does stupid things, but when it comes down to it, he gets the job done, each time hoping that this time, he'll get left alone. Normally I don't like vampires due to their attitude problem but Xan's desire for peace and quiet makes him a lovable rogue. In Traitors, his time among humans has blunted his edge when required to fight, which makes Nin a useful addition to his life, and stops Xan from being one of those dull 'perfect' invincible heroes (*cough* Superman *cough*). He actually gets hurt, but he just keeps on swinging.

This being Xan, his soft spot for the ladies means there's obvious chemistry between Xan and Nin, and while I have to admit I found it really difficult to warm to Nin, she's not one of those princess type characters who needs to be rescued by the big strong men. Nin's more than capable of kicking butt on her own terms, and for that alone I suppose I have to salute her.

Traitors might only be a short work, but it's packed with action, and sets us up nicely for whatever the next instalment might be. Highly recommended, with five blunt pencils!

You can buy Traitors for your Kindle here or from Smashwords, here.

Miniature Update

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Greetings, friends!

I've been whoring myself about a bit of late to promote The Guns of Retribution, which I'm now pleased to hold in my hands as a paperback! I'm going to be having a launch party in Newcastle upon Tyne once I've finalised things with the venue, so if you're in the North East in early October, then hopefully you'll be able to come along!

In the meantime, I've done interviews with the lovely Jen Brubacher and word wizard Tony Noland. I've also managed to snaffle three reviews of the book by Helen Howell, Paul D Brazill, and Pulp Serenade. Hopefully they'll persuade you to check it out. I've also got a post up over on Write Anything about writing genre - which is kind of apt when you've done a Western.

In other news, I'm currently working on an outline for the sequel. Grey O'Donnell is a character I'm really enjoying working with, and there are plenty more adventures for him to have - especially when things take a supernatural turn. He won't be putting away his Colt just yet!

I'm also working on a story for the Bloody Parchment competition. The deadline is Halloween, and the first prize is one round of professional editing of a novella or novel-length work, while the top thirteen finalists will see their work collected in an anthology. So if you have a piece of dark fiction less than 3,500 words, get entering!

[Review] The Soulkeepers

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I've known GP Ching for a while after discovering her shorter works through the #FridayFlash phenomenon on Twitter, and I've always found her to be an absolutely lovely person, not to mention incredibly supportive of other writers. When I discovered she was releasing a book, I was naturally excited to read it since I already knew I enjoyed her writing.

The Soulkeepers is the first book in a planned series (book two, Weaving Destiny, is slated for September 2011). The blurb reads thus; The night sexy and mysterious Abigail Silva comes to Jacob Lau's bedroom window, he doesn't believe she's real let alone a supernatural force who lives just across the street. Abigail says she's his Helper sent to train him as a Soulkeeper, a gifted warrior responsible for protecting human souls. But Abigail has secrets, and as Jacob is pulled into her strange world, he learns those secrets could cost him his family, his girlfriend, and even his soul.

It's a really interesting concept, and like nothing I've read before. Jacob seems to be your usual teenager struggling to fit into a new school in a new town after his mother disappears. He has trouble with the "popular crowd" and can't wait to get out of this dull new town that he hates so much. That might seem fairly run of the mill, but not many teenagers begin their books by coming back from the dead. Nor do they see their mothers fighting monsters. Most of all, they're not usually Soulkeepers - Jacob has a mystical bond with, and power over, the element of water. He encounters the local botanist, Dr Silva, who turns out to be a lot more than she appears, and she starts training him up to be able to fulfil his destiny. Along the way, he gets himself a girlfriend in the shape of Malini, a fellow social outcast.

If the word 'soul' gets you thinking that this is probably a bit deeper than your usual "teen with a superpower" fiction, then you'd be right. It's not just about teenagers throwing tantrums and pouting all over the place (are you listening, Bella?) In The Soulkeepers, Jacob encounters questions of faith, both in humanity and in a higher power, and the book really kicks things up a gear when we meet the villains of the piece - the fallen angels. They're a truly nasty bunch, which leads to an amazing setpiece between our hapless heroes and the demons in disguise, but I won't say much more because I don't want to spoil it.

Now, I've always been a sucker for angels (Michael is my favourite, in case you were wondering) but having had a fairly secular upbringing, I'm not overtly keen on religious fiction. However, GP has such a knack for storytelling that The Soulkeepers is a less a story about religion and more a story about finding faith - it doesn't necessarily have to be in a particular deity, even just faith in the universe itself will suffice. Jacob's quest for peace with the Almighty could be substituted for anything - hell, if Dr Silva was two feet tall and green, then Jacob could easily be the young Skywalker.

As far as characters go, GP has created a cool bunch here. Jacob is moody but with good cause, and Malini strikes me as being that quiet, shy kid at school who would actually be a really awesome friend if you bothered to say hi. The relationship between them feels very genuine and unfolds at just the right pace. Dr Silva is completely badass, and I actually found myself warming to her more and more as the book went on. However, favourite character has got to be Gideon - you'll see why.

All in all, I really enjoyed The Soulkeepers, and got so engrossed that I think I read the last quarter of the book in one sitting. I highly recommend it, and I award it five blunt pencils!

You can check out more about the book at its website, www.TheSoulkeepersSeries.com. You can also buy the paperback from Amazon, as well as the Kindle version, and if you have a non-Kindle e-reader, The Soulkeepers is also available from Smashwords!

[Book Review] Self-Editing for Fiction Writers

Tweet The word 'editing' often strikes fear into the heart of a writer - we just want to get the words down, we don't want to start rearranging them afterwards. Unfortunately you won't get far in the writing world if you never edit your work. With publishing houses overstretched, there is less money available to sink into a book, meaning much of the editing will be done initially by the writer themselves. Indeed, if you're planning on going down the self publishing route, then you'll need to invest a heck of a lot of time editing your manuscript before you unleash it on the unsuspecting public.

Think of it this way - filmmakers make their films, 'writing' the story on celluloid. Along comes an editor and suddenly what they've 'written' has been altered. A good editor can turn a mediocre film into something exceptional - and the same goes for your writing. However, some directors have such an authorial vision that they do as much they can during shooting to ensure that as little editing happens as possible. Take Sir Alfred Hitchcock. He used a technique known as "cutting in the camera" where he only filmed what he absolutely needed in order to tell the story as it happened in his head. He gave the editors very little to work with as their job was essentially done, and his vision remained in tact. Editing your work yourself before you send it out to query or release it as a self-publishing endeavour works in the same way. See how it's not so bad after all?

Now, it is strongly advised that you get feedback from people who know what they're talking about - other writers (especially if they've been published themselves) are a good place to start, as is anyone who has to string words together for a living. Unless your mother, spouse or flatmate have experience editing, it's probably best not to ask them. So unless you can afford a professional editor, where do you start? Well, a book like this one can certainly help. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King won't teach you the mechanics of writing, but it will teach you what editors look out for, and how to avoid making the mistakes in the first place.

The book is broken into sections to help you target particular aspects of your work. Dialogue, pacing, point of view, voice and crafting scenes are all covered, along with other tricky spots you might feel you need help with. 'Before and after' examples are given to help you see how a passage can be reworked to say the same thing but in a much clearer way, and they even cite authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald to show how writing styles have changed over time. Each chapter ends with a checklist of things to do/not do, and a series of exercises designed to get you thinking like an editor.

It's not intended as a textbook for the craft of writing, and there are plenty of excellent books available for almost every aspect of writing that you can think of, but if you practice the techniques and pay attention to the red flags raised by the authors of this book, you'll probably find yourself writing better material from scratch, and requiring less editing at a later stage.

Highly recommended, both for new writers and experienced writers who may wish to review their approach.

Four blunt pencils out of five!

[Spotlight] Amnar - I J Black

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I J Black is promoting the latest instalment in her Amnar series, called The Inheritor, and she's dropped by to have a bit of a chat about the expansive world of Amnar.

How would you sum up Amnar for newcomers?
Amnar is an epic fantasy, set in a world very different from Earth, but where the people face the same kind of problems. It's a break from the traditional, Lord of the Rings-style of quest and focuses on politics, legal drama, personal struggles and mystery as well as a splash of illusion and the occasional dragon.

What inspires the plot lines?
I'm inspired by lots of things. I've been lucky in having had the opportunity to travel a great deal, and much of Amnar has been developed from that. Most of it came from growing up in a household where there were a lot of books and there was much interest in history. All the years of study have been poured into Amnar and I find a lot of my inspiration in reading non-fiction.

Do you ever base your characters on existing people, either in the media or that you know?
Not consciously, no. I've related or adapted the experiences of people I've met, though. I travelled through China a few years ago and one of the guides who discussed her experience of surviving the Cultural Revolution inspired me to think about how individuals cope in a hostile regime - some of her stories influenced the creation of characters like Io and Nenja.

Which of the books has been your favourite to write?
I really enjoyed writing The Inheritor, but as I'm working on the sequel to that, I'm also very much enjoying writing exchanges between Vasha and Arandes. I have managed to scare myself. The third book I wrote was full of horror, very much a psychological thriller, and I used to scare myself writing it late at night after work.

Do you outline and plan your books, or stick to the tried-and-tested "make it up as you go along" method?
I do outline and plan. Once upon a time I just made it up as I went along, but Amnar books are too complex to make that easy, and I've found that the more I plan, the better and easier it is to write.

You started out giving the books away for free on Smashwords. What prompted you to step it up a notch and branch out to Kindle?
Smashwords has had continued issues with Amazon, and getting books onto the Kindle is obviously an important step to take, as people look for books there more than they do anywhere else. I think it was a natural next step, and I like the ease with which you can put work out on the Kindle.

If you were to compare Amnar to the work of existing authors, who would you choose and why?
It's very much a cross between China Mieville (in terms of its political focus), Philip Pullman, and Ursula Le Guin. I don't write like Mieville, but I do have the same interest in politics, and you find a lot of that in Amnar. Then there's the more spiritual side, the interest in religion, which appears in later Amnar books, as well as exploration of consciousness found in Philip Pullman's work. Finally, there's the personal journey of Io and other characters, and the interest in sociological perspectives that's found in Ursula le Guin.

Do you have plans for further Amnar novels?
Yes, indeed. There are a full seven books in the Inheritor series, then three in the Execution series, plus the possibility of writing more prequel series around Arandes Nashima, where he came from, and the civilisation that predated Amnar. I could probably keep going for the rest of my life and not run out of ideas.

Say an Amnar movie is to be planned. Who would you like to see direct it, and who would you cast in the principal roles?
I'm not sure about directors, although I do like Ridley Scott's work a great deal. I'm not sure about other roles, but recently, I've been convinced that Ellen Page would make a brilliant Io. She's young, but she has the kind of determination and attitude that Io does.

What do you think draws people to the fantasy genres?
I think they like the complexity of really good alternative worlds. Writing these worlds is fantastic because you have much more freedom to experiment with new ideas and mixing up different ones. In terms of reading, it's an opportunity to let go of boundaries and play with things that simply aren't possible in our own world. I think we get the chance to be people that we simply can't be in the real world.

Do you think the so-called e-book revolution will draw people back to reading for leisure, as opposed to watching movies or playing video games?
I think it's entirely possible. I think there's also a lot of scope for branching out between e-books, movies and games, where good work can be presented in all three media. E-books have definitely made it easier for writers to reach their public, and for people to explore books they might not otherwise buy because it required going to a book shop or shopping online and then waiting weeks for the things to actually show up. It also makes books much more portable, the kind of thing you can carry around like you would an iPod.

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I J Black is an author of several books, and an ex-academic with a PhD in geography and history. She has run her own business and been a cinema projectionist, a writer, a secretary and a whole range of other things. When not world-building, she runs the SkepLit book club, runs and is interested in physical fitness - a great antidote to sitting down most of the rest of the time. She also loves travelling and painting.


You can find out more about Amnar by visiting the website, while the books are available from Smashwords, Amazon UK and Amazon US.

[Spotlight] The Mythical Creatures Employment Exchange

Tweet Doing the rounds for #FridayFlash or #TuesdaySerial never fails to astound me - the sheer volume of good fiction that's being given away for free is astonishing. Of course, it's difficult to know where to begin, so I've decided to plug the stuff I enjoy reading myself. Now, there's a LOT of stuff I enjoy, so if I comment on your work regularly but don't feature you, don't be offended, I'll get to you eventually...

So I'm kicking things off with The Mythical Creatures Employment Exchange by Justin Davies! It started running in November 2010, and is currently up to part 18. It tells the story of the exchange, run by Fiona McAlister and her loyal staff - Alice, fluent in conversing with cephalopods, furry monster Ms Pinky and werewolf Neil. The Exchange gets work for mythical creatures by placing them where they're needed - where else did you think Santa got his elves?

Anyway, Alice is sent on an assignment to Norway to investigate a kraken with the wrong work permits, and ends up getting kidnapped by a shady organisation who want the kraken for their new Nautilus World attraction. It's up to Fiona to assemble a crack rescue squad of harpies, Furies, zombies, poltergeists and many more! The serial also features a griffin that I've come to refer to as "my griffin" since Justin asked for suggestions of mythical creatures to include, and that was mine. Weirdly, he wrote the griffin in before reading my suggestion, so we're possibly psychic twins.

The Mythical Creatures Employment Exchange is billed as "comedy/fantasy" and it does exactly what it says on the tin. It's very funny, full of action, and cracks along at a good pace. It's incredibly inventive, and it reminds me quite a lot of another of my favourite authors, Tom Holt. I can also attest that Justin is a very lovely guy, too! You can follow him on Twitter @flyingscribbler, and you can get started on Chapter One now. Make sure you leave him a comment and tell him Icy sent you.

Book Review - Blood Meridian

Tweet Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West was first published in 1985. As Cormac McCarthy's fifth book, it comes well before his more famous works, No Country for Old Men and The Road (both adapted for the screen in recent years). The book is a fictional account based upon both true events and a memoir - Samuel Chamberlain's book, My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue, detailing his time with the notorious Glanton gang.

Blood Meridian follows the exploits of a teenaged runaway from Tennessee who finds himself caught up in the Indian massacres along the Texas-Mexico border in 1849. We know him only as "the kid", and through him we are introduced to the rest of the Glanton gang. Real life figure John Joel Glanton, born in 1819, led his band of scalp hunters through senseless violence in the borderlands at a time when the price for Indian scalps was high. Unfortunately, Glanton seemed disinclined to restrict his butchery to Indians, with seemingly anyone he encountered falling prey to his murderous intent. McCarthy details with almost fiendish delight their depraved excesses as they traverse the unforgiving landscape in which they find themselves.

Blood Meridian has been hailed as "epic", and one of the finest novels of the 20th century, but I have to say...I can't exactly see why. The seemingly endless passages of description descend into repetition, and McCarthy's refusal to use quotation marks means trying to follow dialogue becomes a real chore - a task made even more difficult since few of the characters exist as anything more that caricatures or brief sketches, so their words can't be identified through their "voice". Indeed, it's nigh-on impossible to warm to any of the characters, particularly the blank kid. McCarthy sets up the insane Judge Holden as the primary antagonist, and while his lengthy diatribes provide an intellectual counterpoint to the mindless violence of the gang, eventually they become a parody of themselves and the comparison collapses inward.

I have no doubt that McCarthy included these repetitive exploits to highlight the senseless nature of the gang's behaviour, and to underscore the life of depravity thrust upon the kid after his own fruitless wanderings. I am sure there will be many who may say "Yes, it does go on a bit in places, and he does sometimes seem too fond of his own 'voice' when he's describing something, but that is the point!" Sorry, I'm unconvinced.

That said, for some reason it becomes a real page turner. The overly florid language, which I fully believe would not suffer from the occasional insertion of punctuation, leads into a flow of sorts, and his descriptions of the landscape often verge on sheer brilliance. Many of his metaphors fall flat, but when he nails them, he perfectly evokes mood and setting. It does subvert the expectations of a Western, and the extent of his research oozes from every page - this is not a writer who feels compelled to give his work a Hollywood sheen, and he revels in the harsh reality of it all. I'd even go so far as to say that I was really enjoying it, despite its flaws, right up until the end. Or should I say, the "non-end". For a book that smouldered and burned with the inflamed sense of indignation at such unnecessary atrocities, it simply fizzled out in the last few pages.

3.5 blunt pencils out of 5

Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition

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By now, everyone knows the story of the Titanic. It has been the subject of countless novels, films, documentaries and books, and has captured the public imagination ever since it sank on April 15, 1912, claiming more than 1,500 lives.

It's no surprise that a new exhibition would be staged at The O2 in London, but Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition, is a little different. Running from November 5 2010 until May 1 2011, it features over 300 items from the ship on display, including china dinner services, the ship's wheel, porthole frames, and objects belonging to the passengers themselves. The exhibition also features recreations of parts of the ship, including first class cabins, the boiler room and the hold. I went along on Friday 12 November 2010 to try to better understand one of the most famous maritime disasters.

Upon entry, you're handed a boarding pass giving details of a passenger, including their age, the reason for their trip, and which class they were in. At the end of the exhibition, a "memorial wall" allows you to discover if 'your' passenger survived, or was lost. Naturally the survivors' list is somewhat shorter, and the plethora of names of lost souls hammers home the scale of the tragedy.

My own passenger, Annie Clemmer Funk, was a 38-year-old from Bally, Pennsylvania. She was travelling in second class to be at the bedside of her sick mother, after working in India as a missionary. Sadly, Annie didn't survive. She gave up her seat in the lifeboat to a mother whose children had already been seated. When faced with such tales of selflessness, you do wonder how you would behave in the same situation. Could you give up your seat to allow a mother to stay with her children, knowing that doing so would seal your fate?

The exhibition is staged chronologically, and begins with the initial design of Titanic in 1907. Visitors move through the exhibition to see recreations of the ship's interior, and display cases of artefacts retrieved from the ocean floor. It's rather poignant, as well as a little eerie, to look at these handkerchiefs, stockings and notebooks, knowing their owners are never going to use them again. One passenger was a perfumier  and some of his perfume samples survived - you can even smell the potent aromas. The galleries grow colder and darker until you reach the iceberg wall, which gives you some idea of how cold the sea was on the night of the disaster. Most casualties died of hypothermia, as opposed to drowning.

Naturally, the exhibition tells the story of the people on board as well as the facts regarding its doomed voyage. You hear about pursers who hurriedly tried to save the contents of the ship's safety deposit boxes, with the intention of returning the valuables to their owners. There are the five mail clerks who desperately tried to save the hundreds of bags of mail on board. It's genuinely humbling to hear about the lengths these people went to, continuing to do their jobs in the middle of a disaster. I doubt workers today would display such dogged devotion, though all stories pale into insignificance alongside the band who continued to play as the ship went down.

The exhibition also tells the stories of those passengers who weren't even supposed to be on board. Some passengers booked tickets at the last moment when their plans changed, while others were transferred to the Titanic when the coal strike of 1912 prevented the departure of their own steamers. Few of these survived. Is this just simply bad luck, or does it raise more metaphysical considerations of fate?

Essentially the exhibition is a story of a great tragedy caused by human folly, but one coloured with great courage and sacrifice. As tragedies such as this, or the Great War, disappear into the mists of time it is easy to forget the people who suffered, or were lost. However I think it is important for us to remember, both to keep us in touch with humanity and those who have gone before us, but also so that we do not make the same mistakes again. Sadly history has shown that mankind and his warfare are not to be easily parted, but in the case of the Titanic, at least important lessons were learned. For that, at least, we can be grateful.

Bluebeard's Egg - Margaret Atwood

Tweet As it is with so many others, it was The Handmaid's Tale that got me. A friend bought it for me for one Christmas, and I was hooked. Margaret Atwood has the kind of easy, loose style that I would sell body parts to be able to write myself, and when I found Bluebeard's Egg on sale in HMV, it was an easy purchase.

Bluebeard's Egg is a collection of short stories, mostly told in the present tense, and all revolving around the fragile and complex nature of relationships. One girl finds that her love life mirrors extreme weather conditions, while a middle-aged woman suffers apocalyptic visions during intimacy. The narrators are mostly female, while the title refers to a story one character must write for a creative writing class.

Many of the stories are set against a Canadian backdrop, which Atwood sketches in with a deft, practiced hand. I don't know that much about Atwood so I don't know how many details are gleaned from her own experience, but so many of the stories have a particular quality to them that I wonder if many are rooted in real life. Naturally, using a first person narrator often renders the narrative autobiographical, but there is a richness and depth that you wouldn't expect to find in pure fiction.

Not much actually seems to happen in the stories - some of them seem almost like flashbacks, while others take on a confessional tone. Still, Atwood is trying to capture a sensation, or a moment, and the subtext is layered to allow the reader to infuse the stories with their own experiences. Indeed, one particular story stands out for me since I can relate to the experience of floundering around in society, too entrenched in your own quirky personality to truly understand the expected patterns of behaviour.

They're all highly readable, and just the right length to communicate her point in one sitting. Perfect reading for tube journeys or lunchbreaks, I recommend Bluebeard's Egg for Atwood fans, and aspiring short story writers alike. It's like a class on short story writing in one book...

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies

Tweet I've written about literary remixes, or mash ups, before (here) but I've only just managed to finish Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, credited to Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. I tried to start it as long ago as last August, convinced that I would love it. Truth is, I didn't. I kept putting it aside in favour of other, more enjoyable, books. Well I've eventually slogged through it, and I cannot say that my final impression is altogether that favourable.

I love Pride & Prejudice. It's one of my favourite books, and the only thing that even approaches its genius is the BBC's serialised adaptation in 1995, starring Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth and Colin Firth as Mr Darcy. I also have a penchant for zombies, so you'd think that anything that could combine the two would be amazing.

Ah, if only it were the case! At the beginning of the book, the somewhat liberal application of zombies feels jarring and implausible, not to mention lazy. In many cases, he simply changes one word in a sentence in order to allude to the 'plague'. He also tinkers with characters in order to make their "mastery of the Deadly Arts" fit within his plot, but this renders their actions as regards the Pride & Prejudice to become incoherent. For example, pious bookworm Mary is transformed into a highly focussed, zombie slaying Warrior, yet this doesn't work when Mr Bennett continues to refer to his younger daughters as "three f the silliest girls in the country". There is nothing remotely silly about Mary after Grahame-Smith's treatment - so why not change ALL of the text accordingly?

Another problem is the use of terminology. The girls are originally described as following the code of the Samurai, and they wield Katanas, but by the time Elizabeth has gone to Rosings, we discover she studied in China, and not Japan. It's this lack of consistency that jolts the realm of believability, and distracts from the plot.

By the middle of the book, Grahame-Smith hits his stride, and his substitution of Elizabeth's piano display at Rosings for a sparring match between Elizabeth and three of Lady Catherine's ninjas is perfectly normal. Likewise for Elizabeth's meeting with Darcy at Pemberley - no more is he encountered having just gone for a swim in his pond. No, now he appears on horseback to defend an unarmed Elizabeth against a horde of zombies (somewhat bizarrely referred to here as a 'herd').

Sadly, as the end of the book draws near, it feels like Grahame-Smith has forgotten what he set out to do, and several pages go by with only one or two vague mentions of the zombies. All that does is make me remember how much I enjoyed the original. If anything, he's written a spectacular advert for Pride & Prejudice, while failing to distinguish himself at every turn. If anything, his own book feels more like the outcome of one of those "Wouldn't it be funny if...?" questions, which seldom turn out to be as funny as the author would like.

If you want Austen and zombies, I'd recommend that you read Pride & Prejudice, and then go watch Zombieland. You'll have far more fun.

Shutter Island

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I went to see Shutter Island at last today. I've never been the biggest fan of Martin Scorsese, but I am a fairly big Leo fan, so off I trotted to my local cinema to see if the so-called 'Gothic thriller' would live up to expectations.

For the most part, it did. Set a thriller in a creepy mental institution on a remote island, lashed by a hurricane and staffed by Max von Sydow and Sir Ben Kingsley, and your suspicions will instantly be aroused. Sure, we've seen this before, so Scorsese throws in a staccato strings soundtrack (perhaps Hitchcock misplaced it after making Psycho), weird dreams of a dead wife and some Holocaust flashbacks, and ends up with a bizarre concoction that doesn't seem to be able to decide what it wants to be. Psychological noir-thriller? Surreal horror? Knowing pastiche of an entire genre?

Mental institutions are rarely depicted as calm sanctuaries of healing. Arkham Asylum, possibly the most famous cinematic institution, is usually a Gothic pile full of dark cells and screaming inmates, while even superhero pisstake Mystery Men featured a fortress-like asylum on an island off the mainland, home to Geoffrey Rush's delightfully insane Casanova Frankenstein. Scorsese has taken this on board, and added flourishes borrowed from the decaying Danvers of Session 9, to give us Ashecliffe.

Rachel, played by Emily Mortimer, is a patient at Ashecliffe (home to the criminally insane). She has murdered her three children, but is so unable to acknowledge her crime that she lives in a fiction, in which Ashecliffe is her former home and the other patients are neighbours. She manages to disappear from inside a locked room, leaving behind her shoes. Apparently Jonathan Creek wasn't available, so they call in Teddy Daniels, a US marshall (played by Leonardo DiCaprio, still looking as youthful as ever), to investigate. Partnered by the affable Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), Teddy starts digging, although if you dig up the past, all you ever get is dirty.

Conspiracy theories are never far from the surface, particularly in a film set in 1954 (a time when 'the Reds' were hiding everywhere - if you weren't careful, you might even find one in your morning bowl of cereal), and soon Teddy doesn't know who to trust. Believing there is more to Ashecliffe than meets the eye, he finds himself stranded on the island, and convinced he is being kept there to prevent him 'blowing the lid' off what really happens at the institution (shades of The Wicker Man, anyone?). His dreams grow weirder, seeming to encroach on waking life, and the backdrop of the hurricane ramps up the tension. Frequent references are made to his time as a GI in WWII, particularly his involvement in the liberation of Dachau, although whether we are supposed to take this past as an explanation for his defensive, paranoid state of mind is unclear.

It's beautifully shot, perfectly evoking the 1950s through its excellent wardrobe stylings, and references to 'the H-bomb'. At the same time, it also brings to mind the stark film noir of the time, with typical chiaroscuro lighting and inmates - sorry, patients - who wouldn't look out of place in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Watchmen's Jackie Earle Haley plays a disfigured patient in a dank cell, proving that he can play more characters than psychotic Rorschach by playing...another psychotic. Leo is as watchable as ever, although he's perhaps a teensy bit too earnest in his portrayal of a haunted, paranoid detective. Kingsley's Dr Cawley is just the right side of sinister, although von Sydow's German doctor is too one-dimensional and stereotypical to really work.

I would recommend it, particularly since it's different from the other films currently on release. I enjoyed it far more than Alice in Wonderland, which I didn't like enough to even write a post about. This is madness that you can not only believe in, you can fear...after all, how would you ever know if you were so crazy that the world around you was simply your invention?

Iron Council; Or how I learned to love China Mieville

Tweet I'm quite pleased with myself today - I finally finished China Mieville's Iron Council this morning, meaning that I have started on the right path towards completing one of my New Year goals. That is, I wanted to read at least one novel every month for the whole year.

Now, I'll be honest with you. I didn't always like China Mieville. My good friend Simon was determined that I'd like him, and loaned me Perdido Street Station a couple of years back. It sounded interesting, and I wanted to like it so much since Simon clearly thought a lot of it. Trouble is, I didn't like it. Not at first. I persevered with it for Simon's sake, getting bored with the length of time it was taking for anything to happen. Then, about 3/4 of the way into the book, it did. BAM! I couldn't put it down.

Still, that's a fairly bad sign if it takes me until almost 75% of a book to decide I like it. Simon was still determined that I'd like Mieville, and let me borrow The Scar. I think The Scar is a much more successful book (possibly because the location is a lot more limited - New Crobuzon's sprawling nature means that sometimes more emphasis is placed on the geography than the plot), and features a host of fabulous characters (Uther Doul, the Brucolac, Tanner Sack etc.) but it still took me until half of the way in before I liked it.

Thankfully, where Iron Council is concerned, I liked it immediately. I found it quite difficult to warm to any of the characters, since they're all either selfish, arrogant, pathetic or one-dimensional, but the plot managed to keep things cracking along at a fair pace. He divides the book into smaller books, each concerned with past events which explain the present goings-on, or with the machinations and actions of the present. Mieville has certainly got a broad vision of his continent of Bas-Lag, and his sheer invention of geography, science and history makes this an incredibly awesome book. New Crobuzon, his immense city that provides a home to countless different species, becomes a character in its own right; both backdrop, and protagonist.

If you like sprawling epics within the speculative fiction or fantasy genres, then I suspect that you just might grow to like Mieville as much as I have...

Paranormal Activity

Tweet After much hype in the press, I finally went to see Paranormal Activity today. I'd heard mixed reviews in the UK, but I have to say that despite its tediously slow start, I actually enjoyed it. By the end of the film, I was aware that my heart was attempting to crawl up into my mouth - the last film to have that effect upon me was Aja's remake of The Hills Have Eyes. I do think in part that Paranormal Activity relies too heavily upon jump-scares, although its utilisation of sound to achieve these, instead of the CGI equivalent of a ghost train rubber skeleton, lets it wriggle somewhat off its hook.

It brought to mind the more 'Gothic' tradition of horror, as opposed to the gore-soaked franchises courting controversy that we have become used to of late. A slow burner in many senses, it scatters clues about the pasts of our protagonists thought the narrative, foregoing the typical chunk of backstory exposition that many filmmakers feel is necessary. The film piles weird occurrence onto weird occurrence until the suspense is pulled so taut that you could probably pick out a tune on it. Maybe Danse Macabre?

Anyway. It's nice to see a film that never actually shows you its 'monster'. It never manages to come quite as close to the pure genius of Robert Wise's 1963 classic The Haunting, and it's not quite as creepy as Poltergeist (incidentally the only horror film to actually scare me) but its low budget, limited location and restricted point of view serve well to ramp up the claustrophobia felt by the couple. We only know as much as they know, although we do clearly benefit from some awareness of cinematic conventions, i.e. ouija boards rarely spell out good news and broken pictures are often bad omens.

Still, I'm glad to see that people are still making ghost movies, and telling ghost stories. I am personally a bit of a believer in ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties having had a few very peculiar experiences myself, and there's something a lot more unsettling about a thud during the night with no obvious source, as opposed to a zombie lurching toward you clutching the scabby remains of a human arm. I was beginning to worry that ghost stories had become a dying art, but I think there's life in the old dog yet...

Becoming A Writer

Tweet I finally finished reading Dorothea Brande's seminal text on creative writing last night. Becoming A Writer was first published in the 1930s, yet the wisdom contained within is still just as relevant today. Most writing texts concern themselves with the mechanics of writing - grammar, character, dialogue, setting etc. While these elements are clearly important, being able to implement them can only occur in the first place if you've managed to establish a set routine, and flicked that switch in your brain that allows you to write whenever, wherever. Essentially, this book is intended to help flick that switch. Brande is more concerned with the personality problems of the fledgling writer than the technical errors and it is these which she seeks to help the writer to overcome.

The language is a little old-fashioned and her insistence that the author is always referred to as 'he' is a tad annoying but considering the age of the text, it's still an immensely readable, useful book that prompts the writer into doing exactly what they do best - write.

Recommended Reading

Tweet There are a lot of creative writing manuals available, most of which teach the technicalities of grammar, style or theme. Occasionally these are accompanied by short stories to illustrate the points raised, and almost all of them include exercises designed to get the creative juices going. However, few succeed as well as Monica Wood's The Pocket Muse. Full of photographs to kickstart the imagination, as well as inspirational anecdotes, story ideas or 'fill in the blank' exercises, it's possible to follow them chronologically, as part of a homespun writing course, or you can dip in and out, opening the book at random and using the suggestion or photo as a starting point for that day's work. I think all writers, both experienced and otherwise, should own this book.