Smarter than the average bear
I’ve just started up a MySpace profile for all my writing an’ that. At the moment I have no friends. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
If you’re reading this and you have a MySpace account, and you’d like to make me blissfully happy, go to my profile and be my friend!
Please.
Don’t make me beg.
As you can probably guess from the subject line, yesterday I received some potentially very exciting news regarding one of my manuscripts. I can’t say any more at the moment, but hopefully will be able to reveal all in a couple of weeks.
In other news, today I get my feedback on the last-but-one book I wrote for Egmont. Hopefully there won’t be too much work needed in the rewrite.
Got to run - currently working on a new novel for 7-9 year olds, and want to get a chapter done before lunchtime.
Today I caught up with Artemis Fowl author, Eoin Colfer. Literally caught up. I had to chase him down two alleyways, before finally rugby tackling him outside the Carphone Warehouse.
One way or another, though, I was going to congratulate him on being picked to write the next installment in Douglas Adams’ Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. He’s a lovely man, and we had a lovely chat for a bit, before I left him in peace.
I’m not sure how I feel about a new HGTTG book. I think Eoin will make a great job of it, and that his style will be very suited to doing it, but I’m just not convinced it needs to be done. We’ll see how it shapes up when it is released in 2009.
1. I make faces which correspond with what I’m writing. For example, if I write about someone scowling, I scowl. If someone smiles in a story I’m working on, I smile as I type the phrase “she smiled”. I only caught myself doing it the other day, but have since realised that I do it all the time.
2. It’s possible to write two novels in three weeks. I know because I today finished the second - a full 30 or so hours ahead of deadline.
3. That weird spot thing on my chin is a wart. Ew.
4. Since adopting Google Chrome as my browser of choice, I’ve used it once and once only. I’ll stick to Firefox.
5. Anthony Daniels (C3P0 in Star Wars) looks a bit like Eoin Colfer (best-selling author of the Artemis Fowl series). Just a bit, though.
Today i picked up a Marvel/DC crossover comic from a second hand bookshop here in Wexford. It features Superman and Spider-man teaming up to take on Dr Doom and The Parasite. There’s also a smattering of the Incredible Hulk thrown in for good measure.
Anyway, as with most Marvel and DC comics of this era (1970s - 1980s) it’s painfully overwritten to the point of being almost impossible to read. The characters explain what they’re doing in painfully intricate detail in a “look, I - the Amazing Spider-Man - am about to punch you hard in the face with my fist” stylee.
Also in keeping with other comics of the period, the writers (Jim Shooter and Marv Wolfman) are quite happy to pluck new powers out of thin air for the characters, if it provides a neat way to get them out of a tricky situation.
I give you exhbit A:
I mean really - Super-Ventriloquism?! Did Earth’s yellow sun really interact with Clark’s Kryptonian DNA in a way which made him able to convincingly throw his voice? What’s next? Super-Jazz Hands? Super-Knitting?
It’s stuff like this that gives comics a bad name …
As a writer, you have some days where everything just flows. You fingers glide across the keyboard, clicking and clacking as they perform some elaborate dance which inevitably results in several thousand words of sheer, quivering brilliance.
Other days, things aren’t so simple. On these days you fingers don’t dance, so much as hover just above the keys, tentatively prodding the occasional button as if it may explode at any minute. On these days you drink more tea than usual. The news websites are more interesting. You have to organise your email inbox and create mail folders for everyone you’ve ever met, just in case any of your long lost school friends should drop you a line out of the blue.
For me, today is the latter. I have been awake for six hours, and have yet to write anything I’m supposed to be writing. That’s not to say I haven’t been constructive, though. I’ve finally managed to track down a shop which stocks Irn Bru (soft drink of the gods) AND I’ve played Windows Solitaire for a bit. That’s a full day’s hard graft in anyone’s book, surely?
Yesterday was better. Yesterday I finished one of the two books I have to do for Egmont, writing the entire final third in the space of just a few hours. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’m suffering from burn-out. Perhaps a nice cup of tea would help. And a read of the papers. And after that, maybe just a few hands of Solitaire. That should help recharge the batteries.
Being a fool for all things Google, I’ve just downloaded their shiny new browser - Google Chrome. Only been trying it for about forty seconds, so can’t really comment, but it’ll have to go some way to knock Firefox off my Top Browser spot.
Wow, what an unfeasibly boring blog post. My sincere apologies.
I’d forgotten.
Somewhere in among our late night brainstorming sessions, our manuscript swapping, and our discussions about the series as a whole, I’d forgotten how genuinely brilliant Tommy Donbavand’s first Scream Street book - Fang of the Vampire - actually is.
Last night, I read it. I’ve read it a few times - usually to give feedback, or to see how Tommy has dealt with a problem from an earlier draft - but last night was the first time I read it with no ulterior motive. Last night I read it for the enjoyment of it. I wasn’t disappointed.
First up, a disclaimer. Tommy is one of my best friends. I’ve known him for a decade or so, after meeting online at a screenwriting website. Over the years we have critiqued each other’s work, and have now earned the right to be able to say ‘That’s rubbish’ if so required. Likewise, in this review, I would have no hesitation in pointing out things I felt were wrong with the book.
If only I could find any.
Fang of the Vampire is the first book in the 12 part Scream Street series, and quickly sets the scene. Luke Watson is a normal boy, aside from one teeny tiny thing: He changes into a werewolf. Okay, so not all that normal.
When he starts to prove dangerous, Luke and his mum and dad are snatched from their home and transported to a new house by a group of creepy faceless men known only as The Movers. This new house - as you may have guessed - is located on Scream Street, a place where undead lifeforms are sent in order to keep them away from the blissfully unaware human race.
Mr and Mrs Watson find it difficult to cope. Well, when you’ve got a family of vampires living next door, surf bum zombies living down the road, and the local shop is run by a witch, anyone would have trouble settling in.
Luke - determined his parents shouldn’t have to suffer because of what he is - sets out to find a way to escape from Scream Street, so his mum and dad can go back to their safe, normal life.
And that, very roughly, is the concept behind the series. Luke teams up with Resus Negative (a hapless vampire) and Cleo Farr (a calamity prone mummy) and sets out to find the six artifacts which will open the door back to the real world. It’s a fairly simple concept, and it in itself doesn’t make the book stand out.
What does set the book (and the series) apart is Tommy’s writing. Characters such as these could easily have been wafer thin, Hammer House of Horror stereotypes, but Tommy has breathed life (unlife?) into each and every one. From Luke, all the way down to the most minor of supporting cast, each one is a fully rounded, perfectly drawn personality, and they all interact in such a way as to create the impression that Scream Street is a real, functioning community. If a very weird one.
The book is billed as horror, but is it scary? Scary enough for its target audience, certainly, although it’s unlikely to induce any night terrors. Is it funny? Yes. God yes. It’s filled with the kind of gross-out slapstick comedy kids love, but it’s packed with enough subtle gags to keep any adult on bed time story duties amused, too.
The action moves at a breathless, breakneck pace, but is backed up by a carefully plotted storyline, so you never once feel the book is short on substance.
Two years or so ago, when Tommy first mentioned his idea for a street filled with the undead, I thought ‘yep, sounds good.’ Had I known then just how it would have turned out I would have climbed onto my rooftop, stripped naked in the pouring rain and bellowed at the top of my voice: ‘SCREAM STREET IS COMING’.
Because it is. In October. And it’s going to be huge! Scarier and funnier than a zombie on stilts. This is one street that everyone should visit.
I have just been chased around my kitchen by an incredibly persistent wasp. Fortunately, I survived, which is reason enough for me to post this letter I wrote to the wasp species as a whole a few years back.
An Open Letter to Wasps
Dear Wasps,
Well…where to begin?
This letter has been a long time coming to be honest, but it was only the events of the past few days which finally prompted me to sit down and write it. More about those in a moment.
I realise that the summer is almost over and that you’ll soon disappear for several months, so it’s probably too late for you to take on board my comments this year. Perhaps during your mass hibernation you could have a think about some of the issues I’m about to raise which have compelled me to write to your entire species as a whole.
Firstly, would you care to explain exactly what I’ve done to make you hate me to the extent you do? I recall no wasp-related cruelty instigated by myself at any point in my life. In fact, if you remember I was actually the one who used to stick up for you and the insect population in general when other kids insisted on burning you from the sky with home made deoderant flame-throwers. I could have stood cheering with the rest of them, or even just kept my mouth shut and silently disapproved, but no, I expressed to everyone involved how much I thought what they were doing was wrong, completely alienating myself from my peers in the process.
I defended you, wasps, at great personal cost, and yet you choose to repay me by making my every venture into the outside world a scene from 1978 B-Movie masterpiece "The Swarm". Only without Michael Caine or Richard Chamberlain in a major role.
I don’t actually recall the exact specific moment I realised you were victimising me more than the rest of mankind - the day I realised I had been singled out for special attention.
It may have been when I was seven years old and found three of you hiding in the sack I was using in my school sports day sack race. Perhaps if you had not announced your presence by simultaneously stinging me on the legs and crotch as I leapt valiantly towards third place I may not have been typing this letter to you now.
Or perhaps it was when one of you waited outside my house for me to come out, then pursued me for over a mile before vanishing, only to unexpectedly buzz loudly in my ear as I stood talking to a girl from my fourth year Math’s class who I found especially attractive. While the frenzied, breathtakingly elaborate dance I performed in an attempt to get you to leave may have worked as a mating ritual for certain members of the animal kingdom, I assure you that such performances do not win points with the female half of the human race. It would be wrong of me to blame any and all subsequent failings with the opposite sex on you, but you should at least take some of the responsibility.
Most likely, however, the time I realised I was wasp enemy number one was when I opened that bin at the Glen Nevis Visitor Centre near Fort William. You remember that one, don’t you wasps? You remember my reaction as I opened the lid of that bin one otherwise pleasant Summer’s day, only for countless legion of you to erupt from within and launch a full scale attack on my person. There were hundreds of you zipping around me - I’m sure some of you were even attacking in formation. One onlooker likened it to the Rebel attack on the first Death Star, although unlike the Galactic Empire, I feel I had done nothing whatsoever to deserve it.
How many stings did I get that day? Six? Seven? Did it go as high as eight? I honestly can’t remember, since each specific and isolated pain soon merged together to form one collective agony so severe it required several days of medical attention.
Since then our swords have crossed many times. That day you hid under the door handle of my front door waiting to sting me on the hand. The time one of you landed on my Walls Strawberry Cornetto approximately one fifth of a second after I removed the protective paper, instantly rendering it inedible.
And, of course, let us not forget the time you stung the leg of a friend of mine while he drove us along a twisting country lane, causing him to swerve off the road and roll the car fifty yards down an embankment. Despite it almost bringing about my death, I have to admit that this was a masterstroke on your behalf, and the wasp or wasps responsible should be praised for their inventiveness and ingenuity.
Over this past Summer it seems I’ve been unable to go anywhere or do anything without you being there to turn it into some kind of Hellish Sphekosophobiac nightmare. The trips to feed the ducks with my son; The walks home from work; The day trip to Mallaig. Wherever I went, there you were. I couldn’t understand it.
It wasn’t until I found your nest under my house that I figured out how you could possibly have known I was going to be in all those places. Suddenly it all made sense. You had bugged my house. Literally.
I’ll admit that I lost it a little at that point. I’d tolerated the abuse you’d dished out for so long without retaliation, but at that point I felt something had to be done. That’s why I went to the hardware shop and bought that powder stuff to kill you all. I’m sorry, but I felt I had to do something to try to demonstrate to you that I’d had enough.
Even then, as you know, the light sprinkling of the powder I left outside the vent through which you were entering and exiting my home did little to harm you or dampen your determination to make my life a misery. I’m sure I actually saw little wasp footprints in the thin layer of white dust one morning when I checked it. I was half expecting to find a tiny snowman in it somewhere, but mercifully never did.
What happened next you should not hold me responsible for. Instead you should blame the member of your species which elected to sting me on the back of the neck while I peered down at the apparently non-toxic substance I had sprinkled round your front door. It was his fault I bought those cans of Raid. It was his fault I cobbled together my home-made anti-wasp suit. It was his fault I rained down death and destruction upon you to the extent I did.
Ironically, this time it was I myself who had to be prevented from burning you all with a deoderant flamethrower. My next door neighbour was good enough to point out at the last second the consequences of projecting a jet of flame into combustible areas of my own home.
And you know what? As I lay in bed that night I actually thought that perhaps that had been your plan all along. Maybe those dozen or so wasps living beneath my kitchen had sacrificed themselves in the hope I’d burn down my own house in my haste to eradicate them. Was that the plan? Or am I giving you too much credit, wasps? Am I reading too much into all this? I just don’t know any more.
This week I visited Blair Drummond Safari Park with my partner and our young son. But then you know that, don’t you? Judging by the amount of planning you put into my misery I must assume you knew about it for some time before we went.
The sting you gave me I could handle. It wasn’t the first, and I’m reasonably confident it won’t be the last. But did you have to later sting that goat while I was patting it to show my son there was nothing to be afraid of? Frankly I’m unsure if he’ll ever go near another animal again after witnessing at close quarters a previously docile nanny goat suddenly start acting like it had rabies. He hasn’t even been near his goldfish since that day, and no longer wants the puppy he has been asking for every day since October 2003.
So where do we go from here, wasps? I’d love to think we could draw up some kind of peace treaty which would see your species as one leaving me the Hell alone, but I have my doubts you’d go for such an agreement.
I am willing, however, to sit down around a table with you and discuss your reasons for hating me this way. Maybe there’s something I could do to make amends? I’d love us to even get to the stage where you harass me no more or less than my fellow man, but unless you tell me what I’ve done wrong, I can see no way for me to rectify whatever it may be.
I sincerely hope you take this letter to your Queen and that she takes the time to read it through. I know we won’t ever be friends - too much has gone on for that to ever be a possibility - but perhaps we don’t have to be such sworn enemies.
It’s a big world out there, wasps. I think there’s room in it for both of us.
Regards,
Barry Hutchison
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