Hello there! No mini-essay from me again this month, as the weeks have zoomed on past me while I gaze dazedly into one computer screen or another...
Most of June has been given over to processing the Writers at Work programme, catching up on the day job and trying to get back into a regular rhythm of writing and reading. I've actually got two longform projects on the go at the moment. One is a contemporary dark fantasy novel, which I started around a year ago and have been slowly but steadily plugging away at most of the time since. I think I've probably mentioned it here before. The other is a historical Gothic novella set on the island of Flat Holm at the end of the nineteenth century. The second was the project with which I applied to Writers at Work, so I paused work on the first to get some words down on it through most of April and May.
I'm a pretty linear writer, and aside from taking the odd break to work on a short story, prefer to immerse myself completely in a project and power through to the end, so juggling things like this doesn't come naturally to me. I'll probably try to finish them off in order from this point, and in an ideal world I'd like to have both drafted by the end of the year, but we'll see.
But, in an effort to motivate myself, I thought I'd share a snippet from WIP #1. It's rough, it's
extremely
to-be-edited, but I think it gives a flavour. Here you go.
When he flops down on the settee, Dannyboy can’t get comfortable, something bunched up under his head. He scowls, digs between the cushions, and unearths a grey hoodie. CJ’s. He must’ve borrowed it; the kid never would’ve left it there, neat to the point of pathology. It still smells like him, like that stupid fucking hair gel and a faint whiff of old sweat. Dannyboy breathes it in before he can stop himself, and the sense-memory hurts in places even the River couldn’t reach. A rusty trowel to the gut.He balls up the hoodie and flings it across the room. His temples pound fit to burst.But now he can’t stop noticing the reminders of CJ strewn around his place. The laptop, still plugged in, on the kitchen table, covered in stickers for clothing brands and sports teams Dannyboy’s never heard of. The jacket hanging up behind the door. The Marigolds draped over the sink—Dannyboy sure as hell never used them. CJ was always lecturing him about being a slob, and about smoking, and keeping his eyes on the road when he drove…He jolts to his feet. There’s a small stack of cardboard boxes piled up in the corner of the room. They’ve been gathering dust there for years, ever since he moved in. He empties the unread books and chargers for phones he no longer owns out of the topmost one all over the kitchen table and stuffs CJ’s things in there instead, even the stupid rubber gloves. Then he dumps the lot on the back step.Still can’t settle. He makes toast, takes a couple of bites and decides, nah. Leaves the plate on the coffee table on purpose, because CJ would’ve made him wash up. Eventually, tired beyond reason, he slumps back onto the settee and sleeps.Dannyboy’s nan was from just outside Glasgow. Nan was how he got his nickname: she came to pick him up from school one time, and couple of the little shits from his class caught wind of her accent and started singing, “Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are caaaaalling,” at him. Just that one line, because they didn’t know the rest of it and neither did he.He tried protesting (“That’s Irish, you twats”) but it only ever made them laugh harder and the name stuck. He still remembers the weasel-faced kid responsible—Jason Evans from 8C deserves a smack in the chops—but he hasn’t thought of himself as ‘Ieuan’ in the best part of twenty years.The Scottish are supposed to be no-nonsense, but Nan could be full of it sometimes. Dannyboy remembers getting home from a mate’s house late on Halloween one year. His old man never gave a flying fuck where he was, and by then he was old enough that Mam had mostly given up on trying to control him, so he’d spent the evening with slasher movies and illicit vodka. (Halloween—too slow for his fourteen-year-old liking. Nightmare on Elm Street—yeah, that was the stuff.)He wasn’t rat-arsed, just the kind of tipsy-drunk that makes you hungry, and there was Nan, sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of bacon sarnies untouched in front of her. When Dannyboy reached for one, she smacked his hand away. “Whsht! That’s for your Auntie Ivy.”Her sister, he remembered dimly. Dead before he was born. In the morning, she would explain that it was an old tradition, leaving food and an empty chair out for the dead, but right then, she was quiet and went back to staring blankly into the space in front of her.Dannyboy didn’t know, back then, that the dark shadows he sometimes saw hanging in the air were anything more than his imagination; that the sound of rushing water he heard was anything more than a symptom of playing his music too loud. Grumblingly, he put it down to Nan being her usual mental self, helped himself to a packet of crisps from the cupboard and went to bed.He hasn’t thought about it in years. Not until this Halloween night, more years later than he cares to count, when he wakes with a start in the small hours and hears the darkness breathing around him.The window’s still open, full moon shining through it high and clear and bright as a silver coin. At first he thinks it must’ve been the cat coming in that woke him.But his leftover toast is still on the table, and the single dining-chair—dragged into the living room for the rare occasions he has more than one other person here—is occupied.He scrambles to sit upright. “The fuck?”The chair’s occupant leans forward. The moon illuminates everything: the waxy grey of his face, dripping dark water; the bitter sickle of his smile; the hypnic jerks of his twitching fingers.“Hey, Dannyboy,” CJ says. “Any chance you’re gonna listen to me now?”
Writing news
Two new stories out this month, both of which you can read for free!
First was "Remember Me as My Best Self" in the new issue of
Fusion Fragment
, a quiet near-future story about grieving and what happens when capitalism gets its hands on our memories. The print copies aren't yet available, but you can
The other is "The Forbidden Move", which won second place in the
, run by linguistics researchers at Cardiff University. It's a story about a dancer-turned-translator making mistakes and finding friendship on a faraway world, and you can
at the website.
Also this month, I took part in an online panel about the upcoming BSFA anthology,
Fission
vol. 4, which features my dark SF story, "Digital Hell is Cold". It was great hearing from some of the other contributors, and the enthusiasm and care for the stories from editors Eugen Bacon and Gene Rowe really came across. The book will be out in the near future -- keep an eye on the
for updates.
What I've been reading
One of the books I started reading in preparation for Writers at Work, but didn't manage to finish in time, was
Cloud Atlas
(the original speculative epic?). I picked it back up this week and though it's taken a little getting into, I really do enjoy the genre magpie structure and the tapestry of voices. Predictably, Sonmi's section is my favourite part.
What I've been watching
Not a whole lot, but the last thing I saw in the cinema (as part of a Scream Unseen mystery showing) was the miserably predictable
The Exorcism.
Seriously, just watch
The Exorcist
again instead.
What I've been listening to
I finished my listen-through of the first season of
What is Music?
this week, and I'm looking forward massively to seeing the Manic Street Preachers/Suede double-header show in Cardiff this coming Friday, so I've mostly been reminding myself of how much I loved their most recent album,
The Ultra Vivid Lament
. Sometimes you just like what you like, y'know?
That's all from me for this month. 'Til next time.
JL