My God, It’s Raining

Following delivery at Alt.Fiction, here is the three-minute piece I wrote for the open mic panel.

Mr Ipkiss, and the monkey who poops pomegranates

“I’m so glad you could come, Stanley.”

The man’s name was Ipkiss, according to the nameplate on his desk, and Stanley was so overcome by the strangeness of him that he had quite forgotten about his toothache. There was nothing spare about the man, as if all the excess that could afflict a human being had been winnowed clear. He put Stanley in mind of a stalk of wheat, albeit a giant, talking one that was standing over him wearing a look of polite apprehension.

“I’m…glad I could make it?”

It was, apparently, the correct response, as Mr Ipkiss clapped his hands together in satisfaction.

“Excellent, Stanley. Quite excellent. Now, if I might trouble you with a question, do you know what we do here at the office of fair trades?”

“You throw the book at shopkeepers who fiddle their books?”

“Ha!” said Mr Ipkiss. “The book! That’s very good, but not quite it. We at the OFT are concerned with maintaining balance.”

“Like a bank balance?”

“More universal, but essentially, yes. We work very hard – strive, one might say – to keep the natural accounts of our world in the black.”

Whatever it meant, he sounded very passionate. Stanley wondered how far it was to the door. “That sounds…complicated,” he said.

“It is, Stanley. I agree. Sometimes the fate of everything can depend on one small item. Empires have crumbled on the turn of a playing card. Imagine the chaos that could result from a single, tiny seed.”

“A seed?”

“Yes, Stanley. The seed that’s stuck between your teeth right now has a destiny, and we’ve asked you in to help us realise it.”

“Well, I was going to see the dentist…”

“Oh, there’s no need.”

A strong, long-fingered hand gripped Stanley’s jaw, expertly popping his mouth open. He jerked in surprise, trying to come to his feet, but discovered he was unable to move. As his head was tilted back, a pair of gentle, simian eyes met his own.

“I’d like you to meet Charlie,” Mister Ipkiss said. “He’s one of our agents in the office.”

Charlie the monkey reached into his open mouth. There was a strong tingling sensation and a twist, and as quickly as the operation had begun, Stanley found it was over. He prodded weakly around the inside of his mouth, expecting to find a gap. Instead, the tooth had been replaced, and the ache was gone.

The monkey hopped onto the desk, popped the seed into its mouth, and appeared to swallow. Stanley found his voice.

“All that for a monkey to swallow it?”

“Ah yes, well, normally, of course, we grow our fruit, but in this case expediency demands a different course.”

A burbling gastric rearrangement rang out from the belly of Charlie the monkey. There was a moment of tremendous, terrible pressure, of expansion and release, followed by a thud as something round, dark, and ripe landed on the desk. Mister Ipkiss produced a handkerchief and moved deftly to sweep it up, before presenting it to Stanley with infinite courtesy. Foolishly, Stanley accepted, and was treated to a sensation he would never forget; the warm, tacky weight of a freshly-laid pomegranate, heavy against his palm.

“Thank you again, Stanley,” Mister Ipkiss said. “It’s been an absolute pleasure. I’d shake your hand but-” he cast a look at Stanley’s hands, “-well, you understand.”

I have a special place in my heart for Alt.Fiction. It was the first con I ever went to when I decided that I was a) sick to the back teeth of simply walking into bookshops and trying to psychically divine what books I should buy and b) sorely confused about what the hell I was doing with regards to the desire to write things and have people other than my brother read them.

It was very hard going, that first con. I don’t think I talked to a single soul for the first three hours after arrival until I finally recognised someone from an internet forum and then trailed in her very understanding wake for the rest of the event.* I did, as hard as it was to get started, enjoy myself immensely and resolved to keep coming along to events like it.

My con experience had changed somewhat in the two years since.

I think Alt.Fiction has been the first con I’ve been to where I have managed to miss every single panel. I did make a determined effort to attend the New Writer’s panel, but due to space issues it was not to be. Other than that, almost every single moment of my weekend was spent talking to people and having a great time doing it. This is not a criticism of the con and the content of the programme; it just turns out that’s the kind of person I am. I perpetually found myself either catching up with people I knew, getting to know better people I had kind of met before, and meeting entirely new people altogether. Since it’s a fairly small convention and a fairly small space, the event and the venue were perfect for doing just that.

I made a resolution a while back to deliberately not talk about my own writing at cons, if only to avoid the “please don’t pitch at me” look that crosses the faces of other con-goers (particularly industry professionals), although I’m now beginning to think that it may need some revision. One of the high points of my convention was being introduced to Ken MacLeod, who I am an enormous fan of and was struggling to think of things to say to for fear of going “you know what, I read Learning the World so many times that the book fell to bits and I had to buy another copy”. Having overheard me talking to Anne Lyle about writing, he asked what I was working on. Lacking anyone else nearby to high five about this, I found myself blathering through the world concept for Gunslinger Symphony without ever getting to the point of the story. Way to go, I thought, but no damage seemed done.  I think there’s something exciting enough about the words “frontier scientist” that it can survive two minutes of ill-thought blather.

I would like to say I improved after that, but really I didn’t. Anyone who asked about my writing rode out the ensuing blast of interesting but not entirely necessary guff about science communications on a wave of their own patience and goodwill towards me. It occurred to me later I should really take a leaf out of Tom Pollock’s book – not literally, of course – as he was able to talk in a very engaging, passionate, and direct way about his book (and the one after) that made me a) want to read it immediately and b) grind my teeth into dust out of sheer envy. Ironically, he did go on to talk about the Long Price Quartet, and asked if I knew the feeling you get when you read or talk to another author and their ideas just make you feel insanely inadequate and jealous at the same time. “It’s not just you,” I said.

I took part in a lunchtime flash fiction reading, which I thought went rather well. I came up with the title back at the SFX Weekender, where I suggested to Lou Morgan that three minutes is not enough time to tell a full story, and that the build of tension could be faked by frontloading a scene with a squick-inducing title that doesn’t pay off until the very, very end. Thus, Mister Ipkiss and the monkey who poops pomegranates, was born – a tale in which everyone is waiting with bated breath for the moment when a primate shits fruit. It worked, kind of, and I was glad I chose it over the other, more meta effort that was a bank robbery told in real time called, unsurprisingly, Three-minute bank job blues.**

Adele and the rest of the team behind the convention deserve massive congratulations for the event. I think they pulled off pretty much exactly the right mixture of space to event to attendance that meant as an attendee I always felt busy and never felt as though I was missing out. I spent the weekend with some incredibly enthusiastic and interesting people, and have come away from it feeling charged up and even more excited about the world of SF/F than ever before.***

I would love to mention people specifically, but I just can’t. I’d be at this keyboard until Wednesday. Please, go to my twitter feed @mygoditsraining, go into my “following” tab and just start following people. They are all there, they are all genuine, excellent people, they are all worth talking to and getting to know and if you ever find yourself at a table with one or more of them you will never be disappointed in the conversation.

*There is a Swedish phrase for people like this. It translates to “goldfish poop”. Apt, if you’ve ever seen a goldfish poop.

**I blame Cowboy Bebop for the repeated occurrence of (NOUN) (MUSICAL TERM) titles.

***Although after two late, late nights on the trot I now have a sinus headache that has put me on the couch with a duvet and the curtains drawn. Enthusiasm has its limits.

This post refers to the film version of The Hunger Games. From the official site:

Every year in the ruins of what was once North America, the evil Capitol of the nation of Panem forces each of its twelve districts to send a teenage boy and girl to compete in the Hunger Games.  A twisted punishment for a past uprising and an ongoing government intimidation tactic, The Hunger Games are a nationally televised event in which “Tributes” must fight with one another until one survivor remains.

Pitted against highly-trained Tributes who have prepared for these Games their entire lives, Katniss is forced to rely upon her sharp instincts as well as the mentorship of drunken former victor Haymitch Abernathy.  If she’s ever to return home to District 12, Katniss must make impossible choices in the arena that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

The question in my mind going into the movie was, “how do you shoot a book like the Hunger Games?” First person isn’t always a problem – Twilight survived the transfer from book to screen after all* – but for a large part of the Hunger Games Katniss is either alone in the Game itself, or alone on the page as she analyses her situation. Katniss is quite the chatty Cathy inside her own head, but stoic and awkward to the outside world. Without that access, how does the viewer connect with the character?

The answer, it seems, is to do two things: firstly, hire an excellent actress for the part. Secondly, shoot the entire thing around her, at the cost of everything else. For the most part, it works brilliantly. The Hunger Games is a very good movie that takes a well-worn premise and turns it into an at-times powerfully emotive viewing experience. It is not without faults, but they are miniscule enough compared to the film’s successes that they are easily forgiven.

Jennifer Lawrence, as I say, is excellent in the role of Katniss. She is every bit as stoic and occasionally confrontational as the character demands, but at the same time is given room to show us a very afraid and very desperate young woman. The scene between her and Cinna prior to her entrance at the Games themselves has very few lines and little action, and yet is one of the most penetrating insights into Katniss’s character. Director Gary Ross gives her a lot of help on the way, particularly in the whirlwind of pre-Games training and orientation, where images flash and judder across the screen, and sounds fade in and out to mirror Katniss’s confusion at the riot of life as a tribute.

Once in the Games themselves, it becomes less a game of her versus the other tributes and more of her versus the Games themselves. It’s an important distinction, and one that works to the overall advantage of the film because we are forced away from sympathising towards the other characters, many of whom die in the first few minutes of the Games themselves. Certainly the “fox-face” redhead would be an alarming competitor for the audience’s sympathies if we had spent any more time on her – instead she’s left long enough be almost forgotten, only reappearing to resolve a standoff situation that looks set to drag on forever and then finally to be tied up as a loose end all of her own.

Instead, we flick back and forth between the Capitol control room and Katniss, with occasional reaction shots from the Districts outside, to show that she – and the other tributes – are being manipulated from above, and that her actions are in defiance of the puppeteers, not the other puppets. There is a great moment in the cave between Peeta and Katniss where – just for a moment – she looks up at the camera and out of the screen. It’s nothing more than a glance, but it’s enough to threaten the integrity of the in-world fourth wall and lends solid credibility to President Snow’s seething veneer of civility at the end. He – like the viewer – knows she is playing the system.

Josh Hutcherson, by comparison, comes off a lot weaker than Lawrence. Part of it is due to his character being effectively rail roaded off-screen to make more room for Katniss, but some of the blame has to ride on his own shoulders. His one great opportunity to really deliver a powerful, sympathetic moment – his half-delirious remorse for not bringing bread to her all those years ago – comes off stilted and wooden. Any chance he might have had to save the fumble with a “if we don’t get through this” speech is cut off with by a sharp shush from Katniss.

Even Rue, played by the unbearably cute Amandla Stenberg, doesn’t get to muscle in on audience share. Instead, her death becomes a foreshadowing device for the rebellious undercurrent that will flavour the rest of the film.

But like I say, these things can be forgiven. There is a lot to get through in the running time, and the story has an agenda to make Katniss believable as the motivation that drives a world to a second uprising. The ripples of her actions spread out from the arena into the world beyond, and we are led into the sequel by another very powerful scene that is again more about staging than dialogue or action: the inimitable angular Wes Bentley (sporting the most awesome beard ever, ever as Gamesmaker Seneca Crane) being led into a room to face the consequence of what has been simultaneously his best and worst Hunger Games.

With an amazing take on its opening weekend, I can’t imagine there being any problems with the summer schedule for Catching Fire maintaining its green light. I’m quite looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

*and thanks to some tongue-in-cheek cinematography, did quite well out of the move

For Lisa’s birthday, I bought her – amongst other things – a half day’s owl handling at the Falconry Centre near Thirsk. Lisa likes owls, which means that every birthday or Christmas she gets at least one owl-themed thing from someone in her immediate family. Obviously I had to get in on the action.

Warning: extremely picture-heavy post follows. Mobile internet users beware!

Read more…

Due warning. There may be spoilers below the jump. I can’t promise not to spoil anything in the game because, quite simply, there’s a massive spectrum of things one could call a spoiler.

One thing I will also strive not to do (but can’t make any promises on) is bang on about what I would have liked to have seen in the game. I have carried my expectations around with me since Mass Effect was first released and while I could write a small essay regarding the story I wish I could have played through, it’s probably best for all if I just let it go. Nobody except me cares, and it would just make me sound horribly, horribly bitter.

Anyway. On with the show.

Read more…

This weekend, we drove up to Scotland to pick up my kilt. It was bought back in November, but took until the end of February for them to get round to making it. It looks great, although I am suddenly very aware of how skinny I am when I wear it. I need to do some lunges or something. Some calf raises, perhaps. Anything to make my legs less matchstick-like, really.

I was also back in the hospital, which wasn’t really my plan but my GP went to the trouble of phoning me from home to ask me to get another blood test. The Acute Assessment Unit at Glasgow Royal really is nice, by the way, so if you’re ever thinking of turning up at an A&E where they might have to keep you overnight, the GRI is definitely on the go-to list. I didn’t get a look at the tasting menu for dinner as I was fairly keen to high-tail it out of there asap (and had an argument with the registrar as a result) but it was spacious, clean, quiet, and the staff were lovely.

So. Two hospital visits in under three weeks and enough blood taken to make me suspect they are actually feeding a vampire on the sly. It’s not the best. My health is generally good, degenerative kidney disease aside, and aside from the dizziness and fatigue that are common enough issues to be encountered in taking blood pressure medication, I don’t feel too bad.

I don’t feel myself, though.

I feel stressed, and tired, and worried. I feel like I’m not doing enough to progress with the things I want to do – scratch that – I know I’m not doing enough. At the same time, though, I feel as though I need to step to one side and just breathe for a bit. I worry, because I don’t want to worry people. My natural response to everything is to be flippant about it, but more and more now it feels like a dodge, like a brittle, translucent covering over the very real urge I have to bite through one of my own knuckles in frustration.

Maybe I need a change. Perhaps I need to stop waiting, and make it come to me.

At the start of the month I literally ran out of excuses not to write. No-one wanted to play Starcraft 2 or HoN, there weren’t any movies out that I desperately wanted to see, and we had pretty much caught up on all of our tv box sets over the winter. After SFX, Lisa laid down the law regarding my terrible, indeed near-absolute, lack of progress since NaNoWriMo.

“I’m going to fit you with a shock collar,” she said. “If you stop writing, I’m going to zap your ass.”

I tried to point out that wasn’t normally where you’d fit a shock collar, but she was adamant. And, once we’d had a quick chorus of “Stand and Deliver”, I fired up Scrivener and got to work.

How has it gone so far?

So, not bad really. 1100 words a day (on average) is definitely better than zero.

Is any of it any good, though? Hard to say. It’s first draft stuff and I’ve deliberately avoided going back to fix a few sentences that don’t quite adhere to the rules of grammar (I know what I meant, I’ll fix them later), which has given Lisa some laughs when she’s read them. Her new hobby is running round the house quoting my idiosyncratic errors in a very loud voice. You’ve never regretted sharing your work more than when your significant other yomps through the kitchen cheerfully yelling “THERE WAS CLANK!” for the neighbours to hear.

I’ve also not quite thought of a title yet. I have a title, but a quick Google confirms that it – and variants of it – are fairly common and therefore I need to think of something else. It’s okay, though, I still have about 75,000 words (and edits thereof) to think of one.

Anyway. Back to writing.

It’s funny being on the periphery of things when they happen. Over the past day or so of Twitter, I’ve been following the very rapid development of a plan to encourage gender parity on panels at conventions, in particular SF/F ones. This was precipitated by Paul Cornell in a ‘blog post and has been picked up by others (such as debut author and boss of the dancefloor, Tom Pollock). There is, as I understand from Twitter-grapevine, an official 50/50 brand being developed, which would encourage awareness at a con-organisation level.

As someone who doesn’t really have a role in the SFF community aside from being a guy who turns up at a couple of conventions every year, I think it’s great. One of the things I’ve noticed about Paul Cornell is that he’s a nice guy. Super-nice, in fact. I can well imagine the headache he has caused for convention organisers this year, but I can’t help but think that a year or two from now we’ll be looking back and thinking his sudden impulse, that little flash of inspiration that made him go right, here’s how *I’m* going to play my part was worth the headaches and the inevitable ten-minute muddles that are going to crop up in panels across conventions for the rest of 2012.

As a con attendee, I like the idea of parity. I think there are a lot of interesting female creators and critics out there who would come across very well on panels. I think female creators deserve as much right to exposure as men – while I don’t think authors should be sat on a panel simply to plug their books, I will freely admit to having picked up books on the sole basis of an interesting performance by the author on a panel.

I can well understand that it is a mind-buggeringly difficult task to organise a convention, and to organise panels within that convention, and to match the topic to the guests to the moderators, and then have to schedule it all so it fits into a weekend with as few conceptual overlaps as possible. But I think that while this is the case, introducing gender parity is a great step forward towards reducing the bias that the SF/F community struggles to shed itself of.

I can accept there are going to be problems – and some blinding arguments – on the way there, but as Mr Cornell puts it,  there is only one moral unit I am in control of.

Me.

So what I’m going to do is simple. I’m going to turn up to the conventions I can afford and find time for, as I usually do. If I go to a panel and a guest drops out to achieve parity, I’m not going to grumble. I’m not going to complain, or moan on Twitter, even if it’s a guest I really, really wanted to see. Instead, I’m going to applaud.

Even if it takes up half the time slot with seat changes and introductions and arguments and wrangling, I’m going to applaud. Because at the very heart of it, people are making an effort.

I begin with a caveat. Should I forget at some point to mention someone who I met, or indeed had a long conversation with and have temporarily forgotten, I apologise. I did toy with the brief notion of agonising over a list before I started writing this but decided against it. Let the chips fall where they may and if I do miss someone they are welcome to snub me at a future event by way of reparation.

So. The SFX Weekender was held in Prestatyn, in North Wales. I was labouring under the false misapprehension that I had never been to Wales before, which got me all excited until I remembered that Llanberis isn’t an especially English name and I’ve been there climbing and walking quite a few times in my misspent youth.

Read more…

Around April last year, I kind of lost my mojo for doing anything other than work.  I didn’t burn out exactly, but I was feeling the pressure quite badly with all my spare time devoted to writing things up so that I would be prepared for the next working day.

As a result, a lot of things suffered.  My fitness nose-dived precipitously, and my writing ground to a sputtering halt.  The novel I was working on at the time still sits unfinished, partially because every time I go back to it I remember the experience of sitting looking at it and just not wanting to write anything.

Towards the latter half of 2011, I changed tack and started writing shorts, which worked a bit better for me…and was paradoxically worse because my short stories don’t turn out quite as strong as I hope.  Quit e a lot of attempts get binned off because they are chapters of much longer pieces than self-contained stories when I go back to them and look.  Still, I was getting stuff done again which was a step up from nothing at all.

it took NaNoWriMo to get me back onto the novel path.  My NaNo novel was, sadly, absolute guff after the first ten thousand words, an almost stream-of-consciousness mash of conflicts that went from back-street stabbings in one chapter to a bake-off challenge in the next. It was fun – I was actually quite proud of the bake-off –  but also very very hard going because every shred of common sense wanted to bin off the larger part of it and start again.  Only the goal of buying Scrivener for Windows (with the winner’s discount) kept me going.*

Now, I’m working on a new novel. I’ve got a couple of stories in the works, but mostly I’m focussing on the big project, chosen from a conflicting list of four similar-stage projects simply because I like the title (working) the best.

We’ll see how it goes. Lisa has noted that sometimes my writing is like her knitting – she gets new-project-itis and has no corresponding cases of get-it-finished-itis.  Hopefully in 2012 I can buck that trend.

*I’m not that much of a cheapskate, by the way.  I made a reasonable donation to the Office of Letters and Light to redress the balance