Too Much Sex And Violence #1 (a review type thing)

I’ve been reading Rol Hirst’s blog Sunset Over Slawit for quite a while now. Rol’s taste in music and film is sufficiently in tune with mine to keep me nodding in agreement and sufficiently different to be educational. When it comes to writing, though, Rol’s a professional and I’m a minor league dilletante. So when Rol asked if I’d have a look at issue one of his new comic project, Too Much Sex And Violence, I said yes.

Rol sent me a copy by return. I read it. I liked it and I thought, I must blog about this.

Then I took a week’s hiatus from blogging to finish the draft of my current novel project and Dad Who Writes – The Blog (if not Dad Who Writes – the Whinging Twitter Stream) dropped down a mineshaft for two months.

But, lo, I am returned, Rol’s comic in hand. And it’s still good.

Now, this isn’t your Avengers-type comic. This is more Garth-Ennis -writes-Adrian-Tomine-in-Grimsby with a touch of early Ramsay Campbell. It’s funny, twisted, sharp, not a little bitter and full of tight characterisation.

Grimsby Fathomsby is a tiny fishing village where “they don’t judge you like they do everywhere else.” The loosely connected stories flip from horror to domestic violence to petty organised crime and back again, sometimes all within the space of the same tale. The abrupt switches in tone could be a little jarring but Rol’s mordant ear for Northern dialog pulls it together. Each episode is drawn by a different artist. Rather than work against the cohesion of the whole project, this actually adds to it – some of the more dramatic contrasts and transitions in tone are eased considerably by the switch in art style. Some elements work better than others (not sure about the vampire DJ, though I like the idea). Others completely and delightfully blindsided me (like Dot and her marvellously termed Globes of Opiate). Rol owns up to a Psychoville influence but he sets up an ambitiously broader canvas. And he’s funnier.

You know, I think I’ll pay for the next one. Which, as it happens, is due imminently and available here at Rol’s main site.

Insecure Writers Support Group #2

Oh God. Is it January already? Beneath the impact of re-draft 3 (or is it 3.5? I’m losing count), getting married, buying and selling a house, bored and house-bound children and the insanity of my day job, I somehow let December slip.

So here’s an offering for the rainiest week this winter.

The mission statement of this writers blogging support group (mediated by Alex J. Cavanaugh) runs

The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer – aim for a dozen new people each time.

So do I have any struggles or triumphs? Well, the re-draft is at 95% and I can almost envisage (on the other side of revision) a readable draft for beta readers. The other minor triumph, even though I got told off for forgetting to post there too, was taking part in the November First Five Pages at Adventures in YA and Children’s Publishing. Most of the incredibly generous feedback I got tactfully pointed out flaw after dreadful flaw – invaluable given the intense redrafting I was working through – and the praise was equally generous. Even the odd comment I disagreed with pushed me to think twice about why I was doing something and change or review it accordingly. Great blog, great workshop.  You should check it out.

OK, off to do the catching up with other insecure writers. Mainstream blogging (I’ve missed you!) recommences when I’m back from a business trip to Dublin on Saturday.

Update: Wi-fi in this hotel crawls. So, sorry, but the commenting-on-other-writers-blogs will have to wait till Friday night, plane permitting.

Reading for a wedding

We’re getting married tomorrow, we’re selling and buying a house and I’m trying to finish up draft 3.5 of this damn novel. That’s why I haven’t blogged much or been reading blogs lately (but I miss you all).

Anyway, this is something I might ask a friend to read on Saturday. It’s slightly adapted from Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections. I do hope the Registrar won’t have any issues with it.

In my medical experience as well as in my own life, I have again and again been faced with the mystery of love and have never been able to explain what it is…Here is the greatest and the smallest, the remotest and the nearest, the highest and the lowest and we cannot discuss one side of it without discussing the other. No language is adequate to this paradox. Whatever one can say, no words express the whole. To speak of partial aspects is always too much or too little for only the whole is meaningful. Love “bears all things” and “endures all things”. These words say all there is to be said. Nothing can be added to them.

 And that’s it, right there.

Two minute improvised podcast – “Austerlitz” by W.G. Sebald

This week’s podcast is entirely devoted to W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz and comes live from Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station. I’m pretty quiet at the moment, I know – work, imminent marriage, buying a new house and an insane attempt to finish the V3.5 draft of Shaper on a #NaNoWriMo schedule is rather dragging me down.

But this book really demanded a response!

The First Five Pages Of Shaper…

…are up at Adventures In YA and Children’s Publishing. Available here, embarrassing typos and all. I’ll be responding to the long, very kindly and constructive critique already left by editor Susan Sipal (she nailed each and every one of the bloody typos – that’ll teach me not to use a laptop to proof read instead of printing it out) later when I’m home from work.

Meanwhile, if any regular readers want a taste of what I’ve been making all this fuss about,  now’s your chance to tackle the first five 1250 words. Which may well be all you need.