Six Films...

To celebrate the release of the fabulous Off The Record 2: At The Movies (UK | US | Smashwords) and my own small part in that fabulousness, I thought I'd do a post about the films that have, as far as I can tell, had the most influence on my writing. Obviously movies have a less direct influence on someone's writing than books, but these are the ones I feel have had some effect, deep down.

The Empire Strikes Back

This was the first film I ever went to see at the cinema - my parents took me to a double-bill of this and the first Star Wars, but they got the times wrong so I saw them in the wrong order. So at a young age not only did I see the darker of the films first, but it was an even more disconcerting and ambiguous experience because I didn't know who the characters were or what was going on.. Much like my favourite fiction as an adult in fact.

Jaws

This was the first film I can ever remember scaring the shit out of me; I was probably too young to be watching it. The sequels are all dreadful but I still love this.
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Don't Look Now

I was definitely too young to watch this when I first did. The opening scene of the little girl drowning and the way the photograph seems to bleed stayed with me for years... (They fuck you up, your mum and dad etc.) I probably didn't see it again for another ten years but it always stuck with me, and I still think it's one of the best horror films of all time. And very rarely do I say this but - it's better than the book.

Alien / Aliens

Impossible to separate these two - a bunch of us were slightly obsessed with both films when we were 'inbetweeners'. I think, yet again, I saw them out of sequence - I'm pretty sure I had Aliens on a battered VHS copy before I saw Alien.

Bladerunner

A film where the nature of character and reality is called into question? Somewhere in Nottingham, a young wannabe writer was taking notes.

Kes

Still one of the saddest bloody films I've ever seen. But more than that, the way small-p political themes were unobtrusively weaved into the narrative (if you want them, they're there, otherwise you can just ignore them) was something I remember consciously realising. I'm sure I must have seen films which did that before, but this was the one where I first noticed.

Review: A Gentle Hell by Autumn Christian

If you're the kind of person who likes nicely delineated genres, then Autumn Christian is probably your worst nightmare - a writer of dark, vaguely philosophical, sometimes lyrical sometimes gruesome short stories. I guess, if you have a bookseller's mentality, you'd have to call this 'horror', but really Christian is one of those writers classified as 'horror' simply because they don't fit anywhere else...

A Gentle Hell is a collection of four stories, the first I've read by this author. Two of the stories were amazing - very original, very distinctive 'horror' stories. The other two were never less than interesting, contained much great writing, but also the odd flaw (to my mind).

The two great ones were Your Demiurge is Dead and The Dog That Bit Her. The first of these starts off with the body parts of the Old/New Testament God being washed up in bin-liners off the Mexico coast, and proceeds to get weirder from there on in. A new goddess, who seems more American politician than divine, appears, and with her new prophets. As well as telling of these events, the story is also about the disappearance of several children from a trailer-park family, and the cop investigating. The two elements come together in a compelling ending.


The Dog That Bit Her was if anything even better, the story of a relationship falling apart from the inside, about dependency and about independence. The supernatural element, which I won't specify, is gradually introduced, and dovetails wonderfully with the non-supernatural elements, being both pungently realistic and ambiguously metaphoric.

Of the weaker two stories, They Promised Dreamless Death had an interesting premise and much to commend in it, but it felt a bit too long to me, a bit too obvious in its 'message'. The Singing Grass is the most surreal story in the collection, and again has a lot of good points (some of the imagery being particularly memorable) but occasionally the prose seemed too aimless, the plot a bit too obtuse.

All four stories are certainly worth reading, and different readers may well have different opinions about their relative merits than me. Autumn Christian certainly seems a name to watch, an individual voice in amidst all the generic zombie stories and déjà-vu inducing vampire romances. Recommended.

Off The Record 2: At The Movies Out Now

[Please play the above video before reading this post]

Very pleased to say that Off The Record 2 - At The Movies is out now - a charity anthology featuring a host of great authors (and me!) including Chris Rhatigan, Steve Mosby, RJ Barker, Eva Dolan, Claire McGowan, Sean Cregan, Luca Veste, and Paul D. Brazil and a whole ton more.

All the stories are named after film titles; my own is called Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask) although due to me being an idiot it did once have a different title as you can read here.

You can download Off The Record 2 (UK | US | Smashwords) or wait a bit to buy the physical book... and as it's for charity, if you don't buy it you'll go to hell... and not just any hell, but a 'special' one, with attractions designed by all the very imaginative crime and horror authors involved in OTR2...

Like Spinning Plates...

Sometimes, writing short stories very much feels like spinning plates (or what I imagine spinning plates feels like, anyway); trying to keep the momentum going on so many different things so that they don't all come crashing down. Trying to keep so many things in my head. Currently I am:

• Writing the first draft of a story called Fifteen Minutes which is about a girl who wishes (in the fairy tale sense of the word) to become famous... and does. (If the gods want to punish us yadda yadda.)

• Writing the first draft of another story which I'm not going to tell you the working title of because it's shit, but is one of my attempts to do something different with the poor, misunderstood zombie story as per the rules I set myself in this post here...

• Writing the third draft of a story that was called Handwritten and then was called Calligraphy but is now called Mirror Writing (but which might be called Calligraphy or Handwritten again by the time I finish it...)

• Trying to keep track of the edits from assorted beta readers for the core stories that will be going into my second collection.

As well as all the non-writing bits like keeping on top of markets to submit to etc., blogging etc. 

Of course these are no one's problems but mine, and sometimes as a writer you do have to accept the sound of smashing crockery and admit that yes, you've screwed up and that story is now as useful as a cracked cup (I think this metaphor's run its course, don't you?) But at the moment, I do seem to be trying to do almost too much.

But anyway, two stories of mine should be out for people to read in the near(ish) future - my story for Luca Veste's anthology Off The Record 2 as well as a piece of flash fiction called The Men Who Value Everything In Money which will be appearing in the next issue of excellent Polluto magazine.

Free Rowan; Free Dunbar

I don't normally recommend books I've never read, for obvious reasons, but given that I've read everything else Iain Rowan has out there I'm prepared to make an exception to tell you that his young adult horror novel Sea Change is currently free. I bought this awhile back - I don't normally read much YA stuff but I'll make an exception for a writer as good as this. Don't believe me? Well screw you, because Jeff Vandermeer agrees with me:

"You owe it to yourself to discover Rowan's fiction if you haven't already had the pleasure."

 You can get Sea Change free here (UK) and here (US) and whilst you're there, you might as well add his crime novel One Of Us and his weird fiction collection Ice Age into your basket too. It will save you time in the long run.


And then, the day after today and for four days after that you can get Robert Dunbar's brilliant collection of literary horror Martyrs & Monsters free as well (UK | US).  I reviewed it here and Dunbar's story Mal De Mer is also one I've discussed in my 'Strange Stories' feature. There's also a new interview with the author here - it's the opening salvo of Occupy Horror, whose manifesto I hope will strike a chord with readers of this blog:

"The revolution is underway. The mindlessly commercial, the undistinguished and barely literate will no longer be allowed to utterly dominate the genre. Not without a fight anyway. Here … have a brick."

Review: House Of Fear

 So, holiday reading.

House Of Fear from Solaris is billed as an anthology of 'haunted house' stories, but that's not quite true. For one thing there's a haunted windmill, a haunted camper-van, a haunted doll-house... And for another, if 'haunted' means merely inhabited by a ghost then not all these places are haunted (although some most definitely are). If, however, 'haunted' means infected fear, guilt, and secrets then yes, these stories most definitely tell of hauntings... 

How do you judge whether an anthology is good or not? One can't expect to love all of the stories, after all. But by any objective criteria I can think of House Of Fear isn't a good anthology; it's a great one:

• Is the 'strike rate' of brilliant stories to merely average ones amazingly, impossibly high? Check
• Do the stories selected illuminate and contrast well with each other? Check
• Does the anthology introduce you to a load of great new authors you've not read before? Check, check, check

Here were a few of my favourite stories; I plan to write about some of these in more detail in my Strange Stories feature at some point.

Objects in Dreams May be Closer Than They Appear - Lisa Tuttle. Okay, Lisa Tuttle is not a writer who is new to me, but this story was, and it might be the best thing by her I've ever read. It's a story of our dream house (and dream life) as a trap, and it's deeply unnerving. And it would be the winner of the best titled story in the anthology, if not for:

The Dark Space in The House in The House in The Garden at The Centre of The World - Robert Shearman. Manages to combine the haunted house theme with an off the wall creation myth, a satirical look at modern middle-class life, and humour that genuinely made me laugh (especially the bits about cancer). The kind of bravura story you feel like applauding after you finish it.

Florrie - Adam L.G. Nevill. I've not read anything by this author before (despite the fact he's always cropping up in my Amazon recommendations) and I've obviously been a fool not to. A brilliant re-imagination of the tired old ghostly possession story.

The Room Upstairs - Sarah Pinborough. Another author new to me, and another where I think I must have been missing out. I've talked a lot on this blog about ambiguity as it relates to ghosts, but in this story the reality of the haunting and its metaphorical aspects dovetail together so well it almost doesn't matter. The ending is inevitable (and brilliant) either way.

Inside/Out - Nicholas Royle. A truly bizarre tale of identical girls, Hitchcock references, dream-like logic, and a house with two doors (like Doctor Jekyll's). Excellent.

There are lots of other really strong stories in this book though, and none of them are anything less than worth a read. Heartily recommended.

Authors! Don't Be A Dick Online...

I thought it would be one of the less controversial things I've done in my life: signing this online letter against authors basically being dicks on the internet.

Bizarrely though, someone (I'm not going to say who) has got in touch by the wonders of Twitter Direct Messaging to call me a 'coward' for doing so. Lovely.

I'm not going to reply directly, as I suspect it would be pointless. But I do kind of hope the individual involved sees this. I was going to use this post to explain why I signed the letter (which I'd ask other writers, readers, and reviewers to read and consider signing too) but I think instead I'll just explain my view of how authors should behave online, and hopefully that way it will be clear why.

Anonymity, Sock-Puppets & Pseudonyms 
In my view, if you're a published author (including self-published) you are, in whatever small way, a public figure. For most of us this isn't a particular onerous burden, but one thing it does mean is that if you are commenting on something to do with books, publishing, or anything else where you might have a perceived self-interest or bias, you should be doing it as yourself. 

Note I said 'perceived self interest' - it is for the reader to decide if you are biased in some way, not you. You might not even realise your are biased. You only need to give them enough information about yourself to make that decision - your name (or the one you publish under, in the case of pseudonyms).

Reviews
Pretty obviously, if you haven't read a book you shouldn't review it because the review will be a lie. I don't know how to say it any other way. It's morality a ten-year old could understand and no sophisticated bullshit will change that.

Otherwise, as long as you do it under your own name, review what you want. Even review your own book if you're that stupid - you'll look a dick but the reader has enough information to see, so go for it.

Reviewing other writers is a minefield, no question, particularly leaving bad reviews for writers that could be considered 'competition' (I don't think of other writers as competitors, incidentally - writing isn't like The Apprentice, thank goodness) but I don't see that being a published author means you forfeit your right to an honest opinion. Like most writers I am a passionate reader and if I come across a book that's amazing I like to shout about it.I don't particularly have the time or inclination to write bad reviews, and to be honest I rarely finish a bad book so it would be dishonest of me to do so. Just by the nature of things I've reviewed books by people I know, to a greater or lesser degree, but I hope I've reviewed honestly.

But again - and you may see a theme here- it is the reader is the one who gets to judge if my review is honest and unbiased, not me. Which is why they're under my own name (unless I ever review a kettle, which is a risky business).

Finally
Other people doing immoral things on line, including mainstream publishers, doesn't in some way make it okay for me to be a dick online too. In fact it makes it more important that I'm not. Or no more than I am offline, anyway. That's why I signed.

Sex, Fear, and Dust - Luca Veste's Off The Record 2

Very pleased to say that my story Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask) will be appearing in the second Off The Record charity anthology, directed by Luca Veste and produced by Paul D. Brazill.

The first Off The Record had a neat concept: a bunch of great writers wrote stories all named after classic song titles (I reviewed it here). As you might gather from the rather spiffing cover art, and from the title of my contribution, the stories in the second volumes are all named after films...

The full list of authors can be found on Luca's site, but I will just say here that although I've never heard of Will Carver before, his story title alone has convinced me he is either a genius or madman.

But... a confession.

Somehow, despite all the clear evidence, when Luca first sent me an invite to contribute to OTR2 I completely missed the fact it was stories named after film titles this time. I managed to convince myself it was songs again. I was merrily writing a story named after Mazzy Star's song Into Dust before I realised.

There then followed language that would require a fifteen certificate at minimum.

However, and somewhat implausibly, I then realised that the title Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask) fitted the story I was writing equally well as Into Dust. So I carried on my merry way, and am quite pleased with the result (which is unusual, for me) and feeling very smug it has found a home alongside stories from such talented writers.

If you want to know what kind of story could possibly fit both titles, you will need to buy Off The Record 2 when it is released. Suffice to say it's a story about sex. And death. And dust.

See you at the movies.