Something Different

So I'm at film school this year, which some of my readers may already know. For those of you that don't, well, there it is. I'm really enjoying it, and am learning a lot of practical skills for the industry. It's also only a 1 year course, so it's a really good turnaround time as far as tertiary qualifications go. It's not a full degree, but it's everything I'll need if I want to be working in the film and television industry (which I do).

As a part of this course the students choose a specialisation in either Production Management, Drama Directing and Scriptwriting, Documentary Directing, Camera Lighting and Audio, Post-Production or Art and Design. There's also a separate animation school and on screen acting course, but I digress...

I've gone for Drama Directing and Scriptwriting, mainly because I see it as being a natural extension of the writing skills I've built. I'm also taking optional skills in Presenting and Floor Managing, for the sake of diversification. As part of my specialisation I (surprise surprise) have to do some scriptwriting. I'm not new to the whole thing, having done some scripts for stage shows before, but working for the screen is still a challenge.

This last week, we did an in-school 48 hour film competition (viewings are this Friday...) We drew from a hat what style of film we would do, and were given a line, prop, character name and technical element we had to use. I drew found footage a la Cloverfield, Chronicle etc. To add to it, out cameraperson stated they wanted to make it a 1-shot film (a la Birdman).

Not afraid of a challenge, I opted for a stoner comedy parodying found-footage horror tropes by having paranoid stoners freaking out over nothing.

It was awesome.

I know this post is a bit ramble-y, but in truth I'm just enjoying the challenged of writing something totally different. We took something challenging, made it even more challenging and totally pulled it off. After a late night slapping a script together and fleshing out the major gags we set straight to filming the next day. We planned shots meticulously, often with me flailing my arms just out of frame to pass on directions to the actors (who were incredible, I might add). It was fun as hell, and to see it all come together so well in post the next day was a satisfaction I haven't felt in a long time.

I think I've made the right choice going into this industry. It's going to be hard work, and I'll go a long time before I make decent money (or even any money) but it's really satisfying work for me. In a way, it's exactly what I've been looking for.

Aside from a publisher, of course...

A Review: More Than This

This month's review will be of a wonderful book I purchased before a flight to Dunedin mid last year called 'More Than This', by Patrick Ness.

Patrick himself is known for works such as 'The Knife of Never Letting Go' and 'Monsters of Men'. He has twice won the the Carnegie Medal (in consecutive years, no less), one of which was for the aforementioned 'Monsters of Men'. He is one of seven writers to win two Carnegie Medals and one of two to have won twice in a row. Safe to say, he is a fairly well-accoladed man.

The book follows Seth Wearing, who dies.

No seriously, on page 3 he dies.

Then he wakes up, inexplicably, in the living room of his childhood home, a whole ocean away from where he died. In the center of the room is a smooth, black coffin-like pod. As the story progresses, Seth meets the girl Regine, a fellow brit of around the same age, and the boy Tomasz, a young Polish immigrant. They live in fear of a mysterious person known as 'The Driver', a black-clad humanlike figure with incredible strength and an electricised baton he uses to kill people.

I don't want to go into massive spoilers, but hot damn is the book full of twists. Throughout the story, Seth experiences flashbacks of his former life during his dreams. Through these flashbacks we start to learn about how his younger brother was beaten near to death by an escaped convict, causing his family to move to the US (hence the strangeness of waking up in the UK). We also learn about Seth's friends and school life, and his homosexual relationship with a fellow student.

The book is arguably young adult due to the age of the protagonist, but it doesn't play on the same themes as most YA fiction. In fact, the book plays more on questions that are relevant to all of us, dealing especially with existentialism. In truth, the book probably falls more in the realm of sci-fi, taking the '15 minutes into the future' approach to exploring the other.

Seth it also gay. I'm about to make a bigger deal of that than Patrick Ness did.

Actually, it was refreshing to read a book with a gay character who was more than just his homosexuality. In the same vein, it's nice to have a gay character whose prime conflict has just about nothing to do with his being gay. On top of that, his homosexuality still plays a crucial part in the plot, so the character isn't just gay for the sake of having a gay character (looking at you, Dumbledore). I may be belabouring the point a little here, but in my opinion this is the best treatment of homosexuality I've ever read.

The plot is constantly clipping along, leaving you at every turn with more questions than you think Patrick could ever answer. The use of flashbacks to tell relevant story beats from Seth's life is also surprisingly satisfying, as each time he wakes up he is left reeling from the dreams and dealing with the flashbacks just the same as the reader is. It helps us feel connected to Seth, and that strong connection is what steers us through an otherwise overwhelmingly thick plot.

The resolution ends up being the only thing it could have ever been. Still, the obviousness of it will shock you. On the whole, the book perfectly balances its YA core with broad, 'adult fiction' themes and what is arguably elements of sci-fi. It's a tricky thing to do for any writer, and in 'More Than This' Patrick Ness makes it look effortless.

11/10 with rice.

Onwards

It will have been a week by the time this post goes up since the WORST THING EVER.

I accidentally deleted 2,000 words of Lifebringer. Not just any words, good words. Hands down the best prose of Lifebringer so far. The sort that would be the benchmark when it came time to edit. I don't say this to toot my own horn, I was seriously proud of the quality of what I'd written.

And then I lost it.

I don't know how it happened. I was reaching for 'CTRL+I' to turn on italics, then I heard a sound reminiscent of the 'would you like to save' pop up, and all at once the document was closed. I was in shock.

So I looked up where Word keeps it autosave files. Thank goodness for those. I had to dick around with my folder settings just to find where they were kept, but in the end I found them.

And Lifebringer wasn't there.

In fact, the most recent document was from 2013.

2,000 words were gone.

I guess it serves me right for not saving, but something about it didn't seem right. I went and took a look at how Word is meant to autosave documents, and found something very interesting. There's meant to be an option you can check that makes Word keep the last autosave of a document even if you select 'don't save' when you close the program. In my settings for Microsoft Word, no such option exists. Where the checkbox should be is nothing.

In short, fuck Dell and their pre-installed garbage OS.


So the next day I re-wrote the section. The prose isn't as good, but I can still write good prose, and when it comes time to edit I can bring that whole section (and indeed the whole book) up to the standard I'm after. I still hit the same story beats, and the section moves the plot just as it's supposed to. In fact, I even improved one section that wasn't working before (as much as the prose doesn't drip like honey anymore).

This week has hurt like hell, and I'm amazed at how hard I've found it to deal with what happened. It really affected me, and I was shocked by how affecting it was. Still, I persevered in what I like to think was the best way I could. I couldn't just sit idle and wallow, letting the sore fester until I never touched Lifebringer again. I carried on. I muscled through it, and did something as hard as anything I've done so far on my journey as a writer.

Onwards and upwards, or at least that's what I tell myself.

Making It Official

I recently became a member of the NZSA, or New Zealand Society of Authors, and am currently enjoying such perks as a 10% discount on some books in some stores of some chains. I also attended my first meeting of the Auckland chapter, a monthly event. Let me tell you some stories...

First up, I am 20 years old. The median age for this meeting was, at a guess, 70. I didn't just feel young, I felt like a fetus. Still, they're all incredibly lovely people and frankly I'm glad they're all 'Christopher Lee' old, because that means they have more combined experience than I could ever hope to gain. That's an incredible thing to have access to as a young writer, and every single one of them was more than willing to share their expertise.

Second, I used to think I was salty. This room made me dehydrated with the amount of salt in it. Thing is, it was all incredibly justified salt. One of the things discussed in these saltmine chats was a recent award for mid-career authors being awarded to a poet-laureate who has been active for over 50 years. That struck me, and indeed everyone else in the room, as decidedly not 'mid-career'. In fact, it seemed that now this person has only 2 awards left to win; the Nobel Prize and a Junior Writer's award. Then a discussion came up about a major award finally allowing independently published authors to enter, but only mentioning this in the fine print. If anything, it seemed more like they were letting them in for the sake of inclusion without giving any indication that they would seriously consider these entrants for the award.

So what kind of country am I writing in? I'm young, and naive, so I always assume I don't know the half of what's really going on. But what I can see is a bunch of major publishers pulling out of the country, a disdain from retailers of indie publishing and a self-congratulatory circlejerk set of writing awards. What am I to make of all this? Should I unclick my pen and stop writing? It seems that none of the official bodies in this country want writers like me to succeed. It's like they've forgotten that in order to have a publishing industry, they need writers. And without wanting to sound mean, the truth is all these veteran authors getting the few publishing deals and awards are old as balls. Give it 20 years, they'll all be dead and I'll be 40. What then? Will they finally start handing these things to the rest of us when they have no other option?

Why aren't they encouraging writing in this country?

Anyway, last of all there was a small competition. We were given the prompt 'It was a very nervous voice in the male choir...' and had a limit of 150 words. We had weeks to prepare if we wanted to enter, so naturally I wrote my entry 10 minutes before leaving the house. I came runner-up and won a copy of 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies'. Here was my entry:

Pronouns

          It was a very nervous voice in the male choir that sang the pronouns wrong. In the audience was the man who would wink at him each Sunday, and in the pulpit was the man who frowned. The voice wavered on, unknowable save if you were listening for it. All the tiny rebellion went unnoticed, and if anyone had noticed, no-one would have cared. It was not their place to judge, and had the voice known their disinterest it would have sobbed. How alarming, don't you think, that the voice thought it was interesting only for its desire to be stopped by a stuffed-in cock. Such a shame, don't you think, that the voice couldn't think of itself as a person, as something more than its substituted pronouns.

2spooky

Here's a bad Creepypasta. I got bored at 3AM.

Photographs

Let me tell you about Julia. Smart girl, quite pretty I would say, strong-willed, altogether a level-headed and sensible person. She had one hobby that I found frankly quite intriguing, and it was perhaps the one aspect of her personality that demonstrated her powerful capacity to pursue that which she loved. She would go on long hikes, sometimes for days, alone in the wilderness.

Julia was a smart person, like I said, so she was always exceptionally well-prepared for these trips. The first few were with other people who knew what they were doing, but pretty quickly she started going on these walks by herself. I would ask her about it often, ask why this one activity in particular roused her passions so strongly. She could explain to you so many things and was always in full understanding of her emotions, but when I’d ask her that question, she’d always say,

“I’m not sure, I just enjoy something about it.”

I could respect that, and I totally did. I worried a little for her safety, like anyone would, but she wouldn’t just wander around in the woods at night or something, she’d go on a full-on hike in some mountains or something like that. Different place each time, actually. It was just something she loved to do.

She got a camera one year at Christmas from her boyfriend at the time. The boyfriend was gone pretty quickly, but that’s a different story. She started taking the camera with her on hikes. It was an oldschool one, where you’d develop the film later at a shop. She took some amazing pictures of landscapes I would never see, and slowly the labours she put herself through for her hobby began to bear fruits. I told her she could probably sell those photos to a magazine, so she did. Two months later she’s writing articles about places she walks and the things she thinks about on her journeys. It gets pretty heavy at times, but it’s always amazing stuff. Baring one’s soul always produces 

something amazing.

She went for a hike in these mountains one time about an hour’s drive from where she used to live, a real middle-of-nowhere kind of place. When she got back we met up to chat about it, because by then I had become her boyfriend, and decided to get the photos developed that same day. Now, we didn’t end up picking them up until the next morning for reasons I don’t feel I need to explain, but when we did we decided to walk up to this lookout point and sort through the photos. She was telling me the stories behind the ones I thought were the best, and the things she shared about herself struck me as being things that hadn’t been said out loud before.

I’m sitting there, shuffling through these photos that this beautiful girl took on a hike alone in some far away mountains, and out of nowhere there’s this photo.

There are two more almost exactly like it right after. Three photos of her sleeping alone in her tent.

She didn’t go on anymore hikes after that.

A Bite-Sized Story: Just Fun

I asked Twitter to give me a prompt for this post, and Twitter delivered. Thank you to everyone who gave their suggestions, and a special thanks to @RogerDColbym whose prompt won out. He sent me this:

'Something exists just at the edge of your vision and when you look it vanishes.'

Here's what I came up with.

Language warning ahead.

            Just Fun

            I feel bad about it. I'm meant to, it's my job. It's just so funny though.

            "He still hasn't figured it out." I giggle.

            "No, he hasn't." my co-worker replies

            Oh Jesus it's killing me, this is just too funny.

            "Again, again, one more time." he says.

            I nod, smile all wry and twisted. What have I become? Oh whatever, it's still funny. My co-worker leans in close and whispers "You're a faggot."

            I'm right on the ball with my response, whispering "No, don't listen to him."

            Then we're snickering away again like two little girls. Poor kid swats at his ears like there's a mosquito about. Oh my sides.

            "Ok, ok, ok, we should stop now." I tell my co-worker, fitting words in between gasps of air.

            "No way, look at him. This'll never get old." he says, that toothy grin of his telling me it's fine to keep going. Damn is he good at his job. And I guess I'm not good enough at mine.

            I don't say anything, but he starts leaning into the kid's ear again. I don't really have a choice but to be prepared. We have to keep up appearances after all.

            "You like boys." he whispers.

            "No you don't, you're mad for pussy." I barely keep it together as I talk.

            Then we're off sniggering again. Ohhhh it's so funny being mean. I lean in again, knowing this will be a master stroke. My co-worker's gonna lose his shit at this one.

            "And even if you do, God doesn't mind these days."

            The kid slaps at where I would be standing, his hand goes straight through me. My co-worker is on his arse, full-on bellowing with laughter. I tried to keep my composure, but as it turns out I'm a comic genius and now I'm full of rolling hysterics. The kid glances nervously left and right, and my laughter redoubles. Jesus he's dumb.

            "Ohhh noooo, we really need to stop." I say, knowing I probably don't sound like I mean it. I do, deep down, but it's hard to sound sincere when you're laughing. And even then, I've already gone this far. I'm fired, sure as shit, might as well enjoy the last day on the job.

            "Haha, maybe. We can wait, then come back. God that'll really fuck with him." he says, grin still wicked with schemes.

            "Aww, come on, don't say the boss' name like that." I saw, laughter finally waning. I'm still grinning like I'm high though.

            "He won't be happy with you." says the co-worker, like he's half of my own brain. I guess he is, in a way...

            "No, not at all, not at this point. Shit though it was worth it." I saw, letting out a long breath like I've just puffed a cigarette.

            "Might as well keep going then." he says, and this time he knows I've already thought it.

            "No, come on, we can't. The kid probably thinks he's a schizophrenic by now."

            "I CAN SEE YOU!" the kid yells. I fall over laughing again, and by the time I get myself together the kid's swatting at his ears and shoulders again. "RIGHT THERE! STOP MOVING WHEN I TURN MY HEAD!"

            Holy fuck, he's 16 and he sounds like he's having a temper tantrum. We're still on our arses laughing. Then my co-worker sits up, leans into the kid's ear again, pulls back to stifle another chuckle, gets right up close.

            "We're not reeeaal." he sing-songs.

            Then he falls back laughing again, harder than ever before. I snigger a little, but damn does the kid look worked up now. We can't see much of him, mind you, but he's flailing his arms about and shaking his head like a mad dog. I can hear crashing sounds, like wood breaking. I've never been able to hear the kid's sounds before. Something isn't right.

            "I think we've gone too far." I say to the co-worker, and thank Christ I actually sound serious this time.

            "Don't tell me that, tell him." he says through his boiling laughs, nodding his head toward the kid.

            Oh Jesus, he's right. I didn't say anything right after him either. The kid's probably panicking. He'll be having a moral crisis nearly. And I was right, he probably thinks he's a schizophrenic now too. Oh shit, I've fucked this up so bad. It was funny, sure, and I'm over the job, but this kid is messed up now. What can I say? What can I say!?

            I lean in close. Something will come to me, right? That's what I do, isn't it? I'm the voice of reason.

            BOOM!

            "Fuck!" the co-worker cries.

            BOOM!

            What the fuck is going on? The sound goes again, and again.

            "He's got a fucking gun. Oh Christ, I was doing my job." he says. I know it's not true. He's just trying to justify himself.

            The bullets don't hurt us, but he's firing like mad. His arms are flailing about and he's just shooting this thing again and again. I think he was trying to aim over his shoulders, where he thinks we must be, but now he's just firing blind.

            Then it happens. He hits himself, right in the head. Chunks of blood and brain go sailing past me. Oh no, oh we fucked up bad.

            "It was fun..." mumbles my co-worker. His face looks pale as my robe. "It was just honest fun..."

            I guess the kid didn't agree.

More Milestones

A young boy, after dreaming for years of becoming a magic-wielding Priest, finally manages to bluff his way into the clergy and learn the magical arts of healing despite having no magical ability.

Intrigued? Good. That's my elevator pitch for Lifebringer.
Uninterested? Good. I like having something to improve on.

On the notion of Lifebringer, it's reached the 20,000 word and 100 page marks over this long weekend just gone. The story has been more thoroughly plotted out and I'm feeling pretty confident in its direction. It's looking to be a long one, as I'm a bit under 1/5th of the way through. For comparison, Maiden Voyage clocked in at around 80,000. This one is looking more in the ballpark of 120,000-150,000. I like big numbers, they feel impressive to write...

Speaking of Maiden Voyage, it's done. I know, I said it was 'done' a few months back, but this time it's really done. It's been proofed and given a final tidy-up and is 100% ready to send out. Now all I have to do is send it...

Which is where that first line comes in. I've been doing my best to learn about how to pitch my book. To be honest, this is my first time doing this for a book so I expect that I won't be very good at it. In any case, here's what I have for Maiden Voyage.

First, the elevator pitch:

A young engineer in a post-apocalyptic Europe becomes involved with the rediscovery of lighter-than-air flight and joins in a landmark voyage across the continent.

And now, the grand display:

Malcolm Chevin is retiring at 22, after just one project as head engineer. It's been years since he fled his wealthy aristocrat parents and made for Switzerland, and it seems he's set for a quiet life. But it is not the nature of the young to live quietly.

When Malcolm volunteers himself to help build a breakthrough long-haul airship to ensure the retirement of elderly engineer Frederick Zeigler, he finds himself on the cusp of a scientific revolution, and in the midst of an arms race.

Now the airship, with Malcolm aboard, finds itself tangled in plots of sabotage, a relentless pursuit and an endless battle against the elements. Malcolm is no stranger to the military might of the Francs, but will his elderly colleague, his best friend and the ship's enigmatic captain fare so well? Or will the ship's maiden voyage be its last?

So that's that. I guess I'm posting this up here because on the one hand I want people to at least laugh at my failures, but I'd also be keen as mustard for some feedback from more experienced writes who happen upon this solemn blog.

In any case, thank you to everyone who has supported me so far, and wish me luck in this final leap into the abyss. And by abyss I mean contracts.

A Bite-Sized Story: Hello

Happy Easter!

If you're not in to that sort of thing, happy Sunday!

I wanted to post something more from The New Age of Steam, but at the same time I don't feel there's anything from Beyond the Horizon I want to put up here just yet (maybe next week...) and there's nothing to say about Maiden Voyage at the moment (waiting on the final round of feedback). Instead, I dug up an old story I wrote a while back during the first draft of Maiden Voyage.

Similar to The Deadwater, this piece is set in the same universe as all the 'New Age of Steam' stuff. However, this one is set before the time of Maiden Voyage. Well before. This piece is a soldier's thoughts on the last day on earth. A window into the apocalypse. Enjoy.

Hello

                Yesterday there was gunfire. Today there is none. We salute the oncoming silence with a silence of our own, as though this lame last-minute peace will bring change. We fought too long, losing our morals bullet by bullet. We can blame every man above us in the chain of command, and somewhere at the top they must blame God, but it's the truth now, here at the end, that we are all at fault.

                I'm leaving this out of blind human hope in case there is someone here after all of us have gone, in case there is anyone left. I had a squadron, and a commander, and an enemy. Now I have myself and my thoughts having wasted my life on begging for permanence. I've been holed up here for three days, holding this building to my last because until today I could justify what I was doing. It appears everyone else is the same way as me now, because the fighting is over.

                If there was a man at the right desk we might hear sirens soon, but why would you turn up to your job on your last day alive? That being said, I'm not sure what else that man would do. There's nothing worth anyone's life left to see here, we bombed the city to rubble, then bombed the rubble for good measure. Then we marched in and fought over it tooth and nail. I thought I was fighting to prevent them from doing the unthinkable. It turned out we were thinking the same as them. In the end, we both became so convinced the other wanted to press the red buttons that we did it ourselves. I counted the first few minutes, but now I don't know how long it is until they arrive. This is more important than counting.

                When I last looked up I saw a chain of ropes and airbags floating off into the distance, like the city was a mother casting her last child adrift out of desperation knowing it wasn't safe here anymore. It wasn't safe anywhere anymore, and the people in those balloons would learn that soon. I've sat in this room for many hours now, suitably alone in my final moments. The silence is still alien to me. I have a window in my roof, where a bomb brushed concrete some weeks ago. I want to look up and see the last of the sky, but I know what it looks like already. It's a permanently overcast shadow of its former bright blue self, and it will stay that way for years to come. Whatever plants survive the big bombs will die out in the coming months. Nobody will make it through.

                I had thought of praying, but if I were God right now I would be looking upon the earth with disappointment and contempt. To pray on this day would be to mock God himself. I can barely believe there still is a God, for days now I have been thinking that there is only men and our history of mistakes.

                I can see a trail now in the sky, a line of slightly darker grey. I have seen my reaper. The bomb will drop soon, and I'll see the hints of a distant flash. The shockwave will hit me first, and I will hope with the last hope I have that this building stays upright. Then I will become ash, and it's likely this last record of myself will too.

                Goodbye, and if you are reading this, hello.

Setting The Scene

So Beyond the Horizon has sat quiet for a little while now, seeing as I've been pouring all my efforts into Lifebringer. I didn't want it to stagnate as a project though, so I gave myself a little challenge. I have the roadmap of Beyond the Horizon fully fleshed out, which includes all the places the characters will end up visiting during the story. I decided to bring a bit more life into those places by writing a short piece (around 500 words) describing each.

I started with a place called Brambletown, built around the wreck of some enormous vehicle that crashed into an icy spire in a time long since passed. The town itself is kept a stunning secret from the Francs, a situation which they take full advantage of. The city has managed to become the hub of a trade empire, and as with all such places someone at the top wants to leverage that influence. But then that's intrigue for another story. For now, here's an introduction to the icy jewel of the Baltic.

Brambletown

"Welcome to Brambletown" the sign reads. And what a welcome it is. Maybe you've taken the stairs, all 1072 sleeted death traps, or you've just stepped out of the elevator that groans and shakes every 30 or so metres. Either way, the first thing you see is the metal cavern of the first floor and a sad old sign saying 'Welcome to Brambletown'.

                This floor, if you're a business owner or street urchin, is where all the magic happens. The first elevator load arrives at 6 AM sharp and the first carts and truckstalls come rolling out of it. In a matter of minutes, they've parked at the far end of the floor and are open for business. The people come flooding down from the half dozen stairwells and buzz about the first few stalls like bees on tight schedules. By 6 30 the second elevator load has arrived. The chefs of Brambletown have all bought the day's fresh foods and the market starts to fill with the merchants, who will spend the rest of the day wandering about the floor speaking with the roaming truck vendors. They buy from one and sell to another, with a tidy cut in between. When the more scarce goods arrive, like petrol, apples or wool, they buy up the whole lot and sell it slowly over the coming weeks, having monopolised the supply. With their silver tongues and golden watches they quietly raid and plunder the marketplace.

                It will be 8 AM when the rest of the Brambletonians arrive. The tempo of the market reaches fever pitch, and it rattles and shakes the floor for the rest of the day. The pickpockets dart about in the shadows of the stalls, trying to make up what they lost by failing to pick a merchant. Meanwhile on the floor above, the merchants all stand on soapboxes calling out across the metal halls for the best deals in Brambletown. Their gift of the gab shines through here as they work in pairs, one auctioneer riling up the buyers and one dealer raking in money hand over fist. Between the two floors enough noise is made to shake the icy spires on which the wreck of the Bramble sits, but the ice has held for 500 years, and it'll hold for as long as Frost is harvested. It is that Frost that has driven everything that has happened here. From the settlement of Brambletown, to the construction of the elevator, to the invention of the cloudskimmer.

                The newcomers climb to the upper levels, where the walkways weave in and out of the ice through great steel caverns. Some will come for the restaurants, some for the shops, some for the mechanics. Only a few of them will bother looking up at the clouds. They seem to stretch out for miles, and never once have they abated to show the blue sky behind them. Endless grey, like mud-mixed snow. These people stop looking, before the misery of the sight consumes them. Grumbles about how they could never stand to live here escape their lips as they shuffle away from the sky. All the more's the pity for them. If they could stand to look those crucial moments longer, they would notice something. They'd see the way the clouds don't curl and drift, the way they sit stagnant in the sky. The clouds are no clouds, they are Frost. The best kept secret of Europe.