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I'm rather pleased with this image.

Networking

Last Saturday I was on the panel at a Writers’ Networking meeting, run by Writing West Midlands. I was accompanied by Kate Long (The Bad Mother’s Handbook) and Jan Edwards (The Alchemy Press Book of Ancient Wonders).

Kate talked about her writing career – how she became a successful published author. It was an interesting tale, one that involved all the usual: perseverance, thick skin, talent, and luck, etc. I then discussed the small press – focussing on The Alchemy Press, obviously – and mainly in the SF, fantasy and horror field. Jan then had to finish off and made a lot of valuable points about submitting one’s work to an anthology (most important of which was ‘read the guidelines’). Judging by the feedback after the formal part of the meeting, our words were well received.

I was glad to see that several members of our writers’ group – Renegade Writers – turned up. Fortunately they didn’t heckle, as they had promised to do so. Thanks, guys.

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Here's another of my Altered Images.

Playlist for 2013 - Part 2

In an earlier post I listed the first 31 tracks on my 2013 playlist. Here are numbers 32 to 59 – in other words, February’s five–star songs.

32    Rheostatics – Legal Age Life at the Variety Store

33    Special Needs – Francesca

34    Theatre of Hate – Do You Believe in the Westworld?

35    Quatermass – Black Sheep of the Family

36    Belle & Sebastian – The Boy with the Arab Strap

37    Ultravox – Vienna

38    Two Gallant – Las Cruces Jail

39    Hapshash and the Coloured Coat – The Wall

40    Python Lee Jackson – In a Broken Dream

41    Small Faces – Lazy Sunday

42    Mumford & Sons – Little Lion Man

43    Saints – This Perfect Day

44    Tim Rose – Morning Dew

45    Neil Young – Like a Hurricane

46    Juicy Lucy – Who Do You Love?

47    Panama Ltd Jug Band – Round and Round

48    Groundhogs – Garden

49    Patti Smith – Because the Night

50    Janis Jopin – Cry Baby

51    Rolling Stones – Let it Bleed

52    Kevin Ayers – The Oyster and the Flying Fish

53    Adverts – Gary Gilmore's Eyes

54    Clint Eastwood & General Saint – I Can't Face Another World War

55    Strawbs – New World

56    TV on the Radio – Poppy

57    Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around

58    Bob Dylan – Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts

59    Remy Zero – Save Me

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The original photo was taken at one of the Tolkien weekends, a few years ago. Edited to remove the background kids eating ice cream cones.

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I've had another go at drawing, using charcoal pencils and oil pastels. Then I scanned them into Photoshop and had a little play with them.

Then I had a go at drawing a monster -- you'll probably guess the inspiration for this beast. I did the Photoshop jig on this picture, too. But I'm not sure it quite works.

Easy Reads?

Did you know that DC Thompson & Co publishes a series of slim books under the Bridges & Knight imprint? Every month they publish four short novels, two crime and two romance, at £1.99 each. The one I bought was 140 pages – so that’s pretty good value for money. I came across the range quite by chance on the magazine rack in a local supermarket – and that should’ve been a clue. I bought Stolen Sister by Maria (or Marie) Maher from the Crime: Suspense line. Well, you have to give these things a go, don’t you. Here are the first few lines:

‘“No, no, you will not convince me, Adora!” said Mrs Fleetwood forcefully. “There is something not right with Angelika, I know it! […] I had such a horrid nightmare last night. Angelika was trapped in a tiny room just like a cell! […] Please, go down to Barcelona and look for her, or I won’t rest […] your sister is in trouble. I can feel it – here!”’

I won’t inflict further on you. All I’ll say is that the narrative doesn’t improve from there. Or at least it didn’t by the time I gave up reading it. I did glance at the last page and the final few lines made me groan – with relief that I didn’t persevere.  

DC Thompson missed a great trick. These slim volumes should’ve opened up the market for many for our more-talented friends and thus provide readers with well-written *suspense* stories. Instead, this particular one is weak and feels as if it was written by someone who predominantly writes romantic tales – and hence Stolen Sister didn’t engage with this reader. And – oh dear – I’ve just noticed that on an inside page these books are called “easy reads”: that says it all.

Maybe the line has ended: the DC Thompson website doesn’t seem to mention Bridges & Knight. It does remind me, though, that I forgot to buy the last ever print issue of The Dandy.

Playlist for 2013 - Part 1

It seems that entertainment programs (such as Spotify, the last time I looked) and hardware (MP3 players) all include the facility to create playlists of your favourite music. Usually, I can’t be bothered; I just take pot luck at whatever turns up next. However, what if I had to form a favourites list … what would I include? So I’ve decided to create my own playlist for 2013, choosing one track per day, everyday. That means, by the end of the year I will have picked 365 songs. I am posting these daily on my Facebook page with links to YouTube videos. The tracks are in no particular order – just as the fancy takes me.

I decided to follow a few simple rules:

[a] All must be music I can listen to over and over again without becoming bored with it. In other words, all would be five-star tracks.

[b] I may pick only one track per band or performer. This ‘rule’ will be relatively easy to obey for the first few months. But if it becomes more difficult to select five-star songs I may relent and re-use favourite performers.

Anyway, for the record, here are the first 31 tracks, selected during January.

1          Fleetwood Mac – Oh Well

2          Black Sabbath – Paranoid

3          Capt Beefheart – Autumn's Child

4          Jethro Tull – A Song for Jeffrey

5          Inspiral Carpets – Beast Inside

6          Melanie – Leftover Wine

7          Animals – When I was Young

8          Finbar & Eddie Furey – Her Father Didn't Like Me, Anyway

9          Jefferson Airplane – Lather

10        Nirvana – Rainbow Chaser

11        Jake Bugg – Lightning Bolt

12        Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs

13        Lightning Hopkins – You're Gonna Miss Me...

14        Only Ones – Another Girl, Another Planet

15        Ronnie Lane – How Come

16        Psychedelic Furs – Flowers

17        Ed Banger – Kinnel Tommy

18        Snow Patrol – Run

19        Tom Lewis – Fairwinds

20        Gallon Drunk – In the Long Still Night

21        Wedding Present – Brassneck

22        Cerys Matthews – Oxygen

23        Manfred Mann – I Got My Mojo Working

24        Canned Heat – On the Road Again

25        Grant Lee Buffalo – Teardrop and Jupiter

26        Siouxsie & The Banshees – Helter Skelter

27        Ike & Tina Turner – River Deep, Mountain High

28        Sparklehorse – Beautiful Widow

29        Kristin Hersh – Listerine

30        Joe Cocker and the Grease Band – With a Little Help From my Friends

31        Richard & Linda Thompson – Shoot out the Lights

Repeats

Don’t you just love local newspapers, the way their reporters write their pieces and then have them edited – or not? Here are a couple of sentences from last week’s paper about a proposed market upgrade in the town:

… the owner of the High Street site … said the current market would carry on as normal at the present site.

And in the very next sentence:

He said: “We will be carrying on as normal…”

One thing’s for sure: we know that the current market will carry on as normal. But why is this fact repeated, especially in the following line? Do they (the reporters and editors) really think that the readers are dumb and need things explained twice? This is something I see time and time again in the local press.

While on the topic of smart writing, I posted a few lines about using common courtesy when writing to an editor of an anthology to which you hope to contribute. You can read them on The AlchemyPress website.

New Year resolutions?

No, I am not going to promise anything that I will all too easily break. Therefore I will not resolve to post a regular daily/ weekly/ monthly blog. But I will try to be here more often -- here and on the sister blogs, The Alchemy Press and Piper at the Gates of Fantasy. In the meantime, I wish you all a very successful and happy 2013. Heaven knows, we need a good year.