Schadenfreude

I've been almost invisible on here recently. Crunch time marking combined with a lack of inspiration and the fact that my partner is writing their own novel that takes up evenings and so I don't write mine? Oh, they're all excuses. I hope to get back into the swing of things soon.

In the meantime a friend of my partner has written and self-published her novel. Naturally we bought a copy. It is not very good at all. The sort of book that gives self-publishing a bad name. But we can't tell this person what we really think because a. they wouldn't listen and my partner would lose a friend and b. it's too late, they've already published. How awful? In the first fifty pages there isn't a single active sentence (six fight scenes though) and 80% of sentences begin with a person's name, 'he' or 'she'. In one scene, the first stirrings of love between the protagonist and the supposed romantic lead, we are treated to a geography lesson about the city. These are the only details given about the date. They even talk about the city instead of, well, anything else.

In an effort to keep myself sane whilst reading it and alleviate the pain, I have decided that I shall rewrite it. In setting up my first draft (long hand so not on here yet) I realised that it already looks sufficiently different that I could turn it into my own story relatively easily. I may do that. Of course, as it's already a book, my rewrite will be also.

I am such a bitch sometimes, sorry!

Mood Music

One thing I find very helpful when writing, and I'm sure I've mentioned it before, is music. Maybe it's just the way my mind works but I find it easier to immerse myself in something when I have a soundtrack. It's the same in films, but mainly effective when I get to set the tracks to events in books. It's why Iron Sky was somewhat jarring in places (and why I still haven't bought the otherwise excellent soundtrack) and why I enjoyed Fifth Element so much (and did buy the soundtrack, on a whim).

To this end I have two such soundtracks to share with you.

I think I've already said that my latest bout of contiguous writing, Nothing to Fear, was written to the Pet Shop Boys, for the most part, and structured around the track listing of their Fundamental album. That was because the album was very good for creating a particular kind of political narrative suffused with various love stories, all of them vaguely bittersweet, and that was a good background for what I wanted to do. I got as far as track 4 in terms of plot, partly due to the extended nature of the war that started, and found myself bringing in extra tracks to help various scenes and ideas.

However, these were not writing tracks. They were very specific and helped me do a job. Free writing, the kind I don't have much time for these days, is best done to proper immersive music. I have +Nina Mideast Journal, who is lovely, to thank for introducing me to Wait for her, a poem set to music, that fits the bill for what I'm talking about. But she also recently reminded me of the wonderful Ludovico Einaudi whose Una Mattina and Divenire are just divine and work so well to help the flow of words onto the page.

So, the first soundtrack to share is Divenire, which is just beautiful, and always gives me images that are similarly stunning and uplifting. Except maybe Ascolta, which is just raw emotion and sadness - I still love it of course, but it is a different scene that stems from the playing of the emotions.

Musicals are another good thing to write to for me, because they have to do so much with the voice to express emotion with the lyrics. They are actors, yes, but they are forced to rely on the song to get across their thoughts and must show as well as narrate. This means that the combination of instrument and voice can really crank up the emotions if done well - a double act by singer and composer from the beginning. Even brilliant musicals can be botched and awful lyrics saved by the cast.

My second soundtrack is Closer to Heaven by, you guessed it, the Pet Shop Boys. At the moment the stand out tracks are Closer to Heaven (reprise I) and Positive Role Model, neither of which appear to be on youtube and therefore I can't share them directly. But I do urge you, dear visitor, to seek them out and listen. While the gay love story is not to everyone's taste it is a love story. I'm not gay but I can recognise the power of the lyrics and the emotions contained within them well enough - that crosses boundaries in a way that sometimes I can't quite get. For instance, I love Chess the musical but I can never quite buy the love triangle between Florence, the Russian and Svetlana - they sing well, with emotion, but I never 'get' the love. They are, of course, straight, so I should recognise it from my own life experience. But it is nowhere near as powerful as the love in Closer to Heaven.

I think I may have strayed on a tangent here...

NaNoWriMo

If you haven't heard of this, it's worth a peak.  I'm intending to try again this year, first time in a while, and, as part of the challenge, I'm intending to post up here anything that I write on a given day.  That is, without revisions, and I shall publish all of the entries at the end of the month on a date in the past for the blog (so that I don't clog this place up with needless verbiage).

In other news, has anyone else had an idea for a story based on an album?  I mean, I know I am a bit of a freak with my zeal for the Pet Shop Boys, but I always feel like there are stories lurking in their music - especially using Fundamental as a skeleton and adding things like It's a Sin and Try It to give chapters and extra plotlines...

Okay, so first post here since MAY and I'm babbling as always.

Eyes Open

An explosion of noise followed by the shower of stones jerked eyes open that hadn’t even been aware they were shut. Somewhere beyond the ethereal white of the night’s fog a new morning threatened and was held at bay by the pitiful pile of sandbags making up their parapet. There was a coffee cup resting near the periscope somewhere but he couldn’t make his eyes focus clearly.

A flick, a spark, inhale, burn. It hadn’t been as long this time but splashes of mud and shocks of flame made no heroes of the sentries supposed to be out in strength but, in reality, cowering from the fury from above in fox-holes clawed into frosty earth. Shrapnel buzzed over his head and was acknowledged with a nonchalant nod of his unshaven face. He didn’t look over the lip to the scene beyond, it would be lost to the smoke and flame of a preparatory bombardment like the sounds of birds and rats had been lost to the express train roar. Soil bounced off his helmet from a nearby gout of force and his breath curled in tortured air. They had one more day left and that cold hope had been chilled further by the knowledge that they were coming this time rather than simply giving them something to think about.

Another close-call and he sighs, retreating to the Stygian gloom of his own officer’s foxhole surrounded by wooden planking and protected by another low beam of sandbags. All soldiers believed in luck, any that said different were lying, and he felt he was pushing his luck too far for the moment.

“Sorry about that, mate. Beans always give me gas.” Smiler greeted him with forced levity and an actual smile.

His nerves were too taut. “It wasn’t funny the first time,” clipped and angry for no reason, “And it’s not funny now!”

“Lay off, Sarge,” plaintively; not his actual rank but his nickname after the duties that he carried out for the section, “We’re all tired.” The complaint of the dead.

“Shut up. Just shut up, you bastards.” The real sergeant of the band sat alone and aloof in the corner. He was a veteran, a man who had seen everything before and the oldest irritable member of the section. He was at least twenty-two. “He’s coming.” Smoke billowed from his nostrils as he focussed his watery eyes on some ephemeral fixed point beyond the supported earth of the wall. The last time, two months previously, it had been a concrete wall, a safe haven in the maelstrom; now it was wood and chalk and mud. Before there had been a stove, electric lighting and even a heater; now there were rats, bad drainage, candles and winter wet. No one rightly knew what the sergeant saw in that steady gaze of his, just that it allowed him to act as oracle.

“Misty.” The returned sentry announced it as if it explained the constant dull rumble outside. It reminded them all uncomfortably of the first week all over again, conditions were similar, but it had only been a day so far. “Wet.” Despite being used to the noise it was still enough to reduce communication to the lowest common denominator.

“This sodden place is always misty. He’ll still come.” His stare never left that point beyond the wall, ignoring the rodent eyes peeking back. Did he see the end of all things in the mud and filth or else the firm compost from which all growth sprung? Hope or depression? Reality or illusion?

“It’ll be a week again. They always move slowly. One more day and the uplanders will be in, let them get it up their backsides for a change.” The latrines caved in at the first salvo, no one had bothered to replace them nor dig for the Captain. His hand made for an interesting centre piece on the planks of wood that stood for a table.

“Aw, just put a sock in it you whining piece of shit, he’s coming soon. He switched to shrapnel an hour ago, next it’ll be smoke or, if the wind picks up, gas.”

His instincts, never failed, the section trusted them before and would trust them again. Maybe he saw them in the layers of earth before him.

Glow, inhale, breathe out; ignore the dull noise echoing in ears, punching lungs and heating the back of the throat with dry dust. A decision no one makes and swearing on the inside. Despairing look at what remains of the cheap tobacco rolled in thin paper, discard it with barely disguised contempt and drag on the arid heat and the mist. Drill took forty seconds to set up the shrouded centrepiece of the section and be ready. “How long?” So much for university education.

“Half an hour.” Conviction. Not a good thing.

“Time for tea?”

“Supplies are late.”

Supplies are always late. Constant bombardment somewhere on the line, phone lines always cut, movement dangerous. Sappers routinely sent home. Food late, cooks aren’t heroes either.

“There’s a slab of Kelly on the plate, knock yourself out. Coffee in the usual.”

Shrug, remember the coffee outside, sit and stuff the slab half heartedly into the saliva. Silence. Alliteration, refuge of the ravenous. Hold out part of it to Smiler as he sits playing with the last six of his playing cards. Grunt, wordless now in anticipation, uniform scratching the skin at the neck, nothing to do but wait, try focussing beyond the latest shift of dust. It was smoke now. He declines.

“How can you eat at a time like this, Sarge? We’ve only got a day and then it’s all someone else’s problem. Aren’t you the least bit excited?”

Pointless prattling. His section went on the first day, joined this one afterward to replace Badger, filling large shoes. No liked him then and no one does; faux happiness, uneducated, delusion and whines too much. Played with his cards too much. His face ripe for smashing in, fists clenching in readiness but they are fought back down. He’s easier than what lies beyond the mist and flame and smoke and shockwaves because he is within reach.

On that first day there had been nothing to see, feed the thirst of the muzzle, feel the bounce of metal from metal, a world reduced to the staccato bark of a mechanical master. A summer dawn, quiet of a morning with clear blue and birdsong, listening to the steel rain, sheets of death washing over and drum behind as the set up had been completed. They had walked, disbelief and ashen faced, they just walked but could not be seen. Spared that. Eight hours and the ammunition did not run out but the light did. “Half an hour you say?”

“Maybe sooner.”

“How can you talk like this? Come on! One more day! Surely they’ll give us one more day!”

“Shut up!”

Silence then, stretches across the foxhole like no-man’s-land after the shells have fallen, all sides drawing breath. Time to think, if it weren’t for the maddening rumble just loud enough to be grating but quiet enough to keep ears working. The slab of Kelly over, cards flipping once more. Always watching, waiting, listening to the tone and then the realisation that the rhythm has changed. Check inventory: postcard from home, the last; lucky coins; spare ammunition clips; grenade; bayonet; chocolate liberated from a farmhouse, only a small amount left; and nothing that was wanted would be left behind. Kipper stows his book, Mutch fingers his enemy pistol without bullets like a man possessed, Smiler runs the joker in and out of his palm softly.

“Who’s out there?” Meaning who was supposed to be out.

“Me.” Sarcastically deliver, no hint of humour, war breeds cowards.

A grunt. “Go check, let us know if you see anything.”

Two days after that slaughter they had changed their tactics to rushes and the Brass had adopted a policy of focussed withdrawals and ambush style counter-attacks to draw them in. Within a day we had been pulled out.

Spent time in a local village with local girls and local law, common enough for men pushed to the edge. Found one with flame red hair and a body that did not display too much of the ravages caused by her business. A tactical withdrawal from the inn, to the darkness of her room, with the darkness of her touch, in the darkness of the situation. Emotions over-ridden by suppressed instinct, proximity to death brings proximity to lust. Smell, lick, bite. Panting a secret language never heard by lovers, cut and thrust of the war beneath the sheets. Breakthrough and reserves brought up to exploit the gap. Emotionless groping, mutual meaningless mental masturbation. Flesh on flesh and virginity liberated by the invaders from another land. Some of them were willing but were better when they resisted.

He was right, no shower of soil as a greeting, almost calm across the unearthly scene lit by the first rays of dawn. Bruised blue around the cloud nestled in shell craters and abandoned sapping lines, confident enough to maintain strength on watch above, frustrating attempts to peer through the gloom. Ringed by red and purple dimming to cold blue above. Nothing. A cock of the head, there really was nothing: no rumble, no gunfire, no noise but birdsong. Again. They are coming.

“Section make ready! Time to get up and at ‘em.” The last uttered in a bored undertone, another eight hours? See nothing, feed the monster. Binoculars fished from webbing, raised up and scanning the close horizon carefully. Flurry of activity close, metallic clinks and clanks as a reception is prepared for the visitors from beyond the veil drawn across the front.

“Gun up Sarge!” his complaining over, Smiler is overcome by business and drill precision. Kipper brought ammunition and Mutch the tripod. Forty-eight seconds, not really the very best but it would do for now. Our Sergeant remained out of sight, quietly ensconced with his own demons inside but no one said anything. They never did, our Sergeant was a dead man, a charm against the enemy, an innocent from the salient years before: ineffable. He pulled a knife in the village, devil of a time explaining him out of that.

Water brought closer, cold stabbing through cheap winter wool, fingers red raw and shaking with leaking shoes. Cursing, low and guttural. Anticipation and squinting to see further.

Squeaking, a spring-like release; chugging of a petrol driven engine and the first tell-tale rattle of gunfire – their machine guns; much slower and louder than our own dogs of war in response.

“Steady, wait for the targets.” Senselessly wasting ammunition is not an option. Supplies are late.

“Sarge.” Simple and immediate confirmation. To the drill.

Return to vigil, that noise getting closer, along with the rattling of metal, the chattering of fire; how were they getting their guns closer?

A black form emerges from the funeral shroud, rolls forward shouldering aside banks of roiling white as it waddles over cuts, gulleys and listening posts. A most ungainly beast seemingly balanced and alive. Spews black fumes from top and side as if all the fires of Hell burn brightly within. Without waiting a gun opens fire from the specially constructed sandbag nest. An odd response, metal ricocheting from metal, the zing and plink of bullets a swarm of hornets in an orchard. Yet the beast is unperturbed and spits its own flame lit retort from deathly black muzzles peeking from front and sides. Involuntary flinch, vision replaced with blackness then the wood of the duck board. Hissing through clenched jaw. The gun belches its answer once more to the glockenspiel medley of the mocking ignorance of the beast and war breeds no heroes.

A scramble, a fountain that erupts all over all at once then moves so that Kipper is screaming for his mother. Hands all over his jacket, spurting pulses from holes that let the light through, gurgling as he falls. Ammunition spills with blood across the trench and another recruit joins the army of Heaven. Smiler keeps firing, five minutes ago he refused to contemplate another day, now he keeps pulling the trigger long after there’s nothing left for the firing pin to strike home.

A new smell, that of fear, in nostrils made alive by acrid cordite, new warmth on thighs and crotch, a weight dribbling down the back of gooseflesh buttocks to dare to lift eyes above the parapet once more. The beast, undaunted, reaches the end of the wire with its awful mass, still it rolls onward, inhuman, fell and clanking like father’s suit of armour in childhood games.

A tread on the lip, a rotating foot pulls the bulk in, a snout into the trough to feed on the young men served as swill inside. The machine gun is still clicking as the metal form claws and grasps the far wall, lifting up and out of our home beyond, to the green fields miles behind? Why is the gun still clicking?

The answers arrive and shoot him cleanly with rifles, one in field grey tunic and winter coat readies a grenade before hurling into the hole we just left. No sign of the Sergeant. Wicked bayonet points flash with moisture in the cold sun. “I surrender!” He’s from number four section, our left flank, his hands raised in supplication to the intruders.

One of them cups his ear as if he doesn’t understand or can’t hear and it’s been done before. Tales that when the devils reached the lines after eight hours of butchery there were no prisoners taken, that they are lusting for blood and only death will satisfy. Inhuman animals, baying and cawing.

“I surrender!” He repeats his plea, clutching to last ember to light his day.

A sneer, a shot, a perfectly executed bayonet thrust, a laugh, they leave. I look at Smiler, his arm draped over the cooling gun barrel, his head blown open and leaking over the carefully arranged sandbags and his body slumped beneath. Empty eyes staring into the beyond, like the Sergeant. Nothing left in the dugout that will be missed, but there is, the Sergeant was a talisman, a guarantee now lost and all that can be done is wait, and wonder. I saw the elephant, a thick metal hide and dark eyes malevolent in the bright dawn.

Random Ideas

One idea that constantly occurs to me, after I've got past the world building of most of my novel plans and the like, is the idea of having a main character who is not the character through which we view the story.  I don't just mean by having the story in third person omniscient either, I mean by having the standard third person view but multiple POV characters who all interact with the character about whom the story and plot is.

Put another way, it would be like reading Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe books but from the points of view of Harris, Harper, Wellington etc rather than centring on Sharpe himself.  So you'd have the story of Sharpe's Rifles told by various members of his regiment, with Sharpe appearing at various points, then a gap until he appears to rescue Harper and the rest from the ambush and so on and so forth.  It would be very difficult to write but it would be really interesting.  Mainly to see if I could actually create that many realistic characters who would be 'real' enough to follow.  Each one would have their vignette and, slowly, it would become apparent that the plot was following someone else, someone who featured in all of the other stories.

I'd have to actually write it, though, and the lack of posting here would seem to suggest that this would be difficult.  However, the point of this blog is to spur my typing and I seem to get a groove on every year.  When it happens this year I just have a place to put it all.

Mission Statement

When I get this place up and running I suspect that I'll make this a page rather than the first post, but I'm conscious of the need to post something here so that I actually remember to post here with creative projects.

This is designed as a blog for me writing stuff.  An author's blog if you will where, instead of confessionals about my life and stuff, I blog about ideas and half-formed things.  There will likely be everything from half-baked plots and synopses through to scenes and conversations that serve as fragments of some larger pieces.  I hope to post a few short stories, too, the kind that are too short to ever really be published but may well provide somebody, somewhere, with a few minutes of interest.

It is designed to be public and open, so if there is strong language it will be plot related and I'll signpost it as such.  I may tackle more adult-y themes but not in a 'adult = porn' way - I mean my writings are designed for, well, me, and so probably not always appropriate for young'uns without some adulty guidance along the way.

Who knows, I may even garner a readership that will comment on what I write - even they just say whether or not they like it.  Anyway, that'll do for now.