THE DEMI-MONDE

VIRGINMEDIA IS SHIT

2012-03-14T03:22:00.002-07:00

Do NOT use VirginMedia … this is my sorry saga.

I moved house on the 28^th February and decided(foolishly) to ditch BT and go to Virgin as my telephone and broadbandsupplier. They arrived on the 8^th March and connected me. On the 9^thI ‘phoned to enquire if they did a special rate deal for calls to Russia (Nellimy wife is Russian and likes to chat with relatives and friends). They did –for £2.00 a month they would take my call rate down from £1.00 per minute to10p per minute. Yippee!

So all was well until yesterday evening when at 6.30 p.m. Iget a call from Virgin (I didn’t take the girl’s name) who informed me that inthe past week I’d spent £250 on international calls. Now at 10p per minute thatworks out at a little under 42 hours worth of calls and whilst Nelli might liketalking to Russia but she doesn’t talk that much. I suggested to Miss X thatthe preferential call rate hadn’t been put through. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘but toput the changes thru you’ll have to speak to the ‘Debt Collection Department’(Debt Collection?). I’ll put you thru.’

TIME SPENT ON THE ‘PHONE TO MISS X: 37 MINUTES

Eventually I get thru to ‘Daniel’ who seems to know nothingand who eventually admits that he’ll have to refer my problem to his manager ‘KirstyAitchison’ who will ‘phone me ‘definitely before 9.00 p.m.’ to resolve thesituation.

TIME SPENT ON THE ‘PHONE TO DANIEL: 35 MINUTES

‘Kirsty Aitchison’ doesn’t call.

At 8.30 a.m. I call VirginMedia and am put thru to ‘Joanne’.After a lot of toing and froing we establish that maybe, perhaps I have beencredited with the overcharges made. But when I ask for a statement this inducesmeltdown.

TIME SPENT ON THE ‘PHONE TO JOANNE: 40 MINUTES

I am transferred to ‘Andrew’ in Technical Support whoexplains to me that VirginMedia is so cutting edge that they don’t dostatements, they do ‘on-screen billing information’. With Andre’s help I go tothe VirginMedia website. I have difficulty logging on because no one seems toknow the e-mail address my log-on details demand. Eventually I penetrate and amfaced by an announcement that ‘no billing information is available’. Andrewscratches his head and says he will flag a problem and will get back to me.

TIME SPENT ON THE ‘PHONE TO ANDREW: 28 MINUTES

I ask to be transferred to someone who can tell me how tocancel my VirginMedia account. I eventually speak to ‘Rachel’. After muchhuffing and puffing – and Rachel gets very exasperated that I don’t understandVirgin-speak – I understand that:

· I can’t see my billing information because it isonly posted monthly, and,

· It will cost me £45 to leave Virgin.

TIME ONE THE ‘PHONE TO RACHEL: 25 MINUTES

I receive 3 identical text messages from Virgin telling meeverything will be sorted in ’48 hours’.

In sum I spent nearly 3 hours (3-fucking-hours!)on the ‘phone sorting out something which WASN’T MY FAULT. Virgin screwed upand I had to waste my time unscrewing it. I’m shifting to BT!

SUMMER END PAGES

2012-02-26T08:44:00.001-08:00

The final sstep before 'The Demi-Monde: SUmmer' is put to bed is to provide the artwork for the endpages - that's the inside of the covers. Those of you familiar with the hardbacks of Spring and Summer might recall that these showed blueprints of, respectively, a steamer and a Zeppelin, but as most of the action of Summer takes place in the Coven - the Sino-Japanese sector of the DM - Nigel Robinson (who does the DM artwork) came up with a WarJunk, the 'blueprint' done Chinese style.

This is a representation of the ship that the Coven use to fight the ForthRight's Monitors, the inspiration being the Battle of Hampton Roads during the Covil War in America when the USS Monitor fought the CSS Virginia. Unfortunately I become TOO focussed on this and I missed a trick: in the book I refer to the Coven's ships as IronClads - the name that Nigel came up with, 'WarJunk', is so much better. Ah me.

MOVING HOUSE

2012-02-26T08:32:00.000-08:00

I've been very delinquent regarding my blog during February and the reason is that Nelli and I have been looking for a new house. We only came to Derby so that Kit and Ellie could take up the scholarships they won at Repton and we've never really settled here. So when the kids went off to university we decided to decamp to somewhere within better striking distance of Oxford and London. After a few false-starts we've plumped for a house in Daventry which is only 70 miles from London. It's a small town but with good amenities so I think we'll be fine there. The house we've chosen is pretty unprepossessing from the outside - bunkeresque - but inside it's really very nice indeed all open plan and split level.

Chez Rees

All-in-all I'm looking forward to the move - especially as there seems to be a very active writers group in the area!

REMINDS ME OF DECO IN THE COMMITMENTS

2012-01-31T10:13:00.000-08:00

Considering that the last week has been pretty hellish (pounding around the Midlands looking for a new house and being reminded that most houses are awful) it was quite nice to open up the internet today and find two great reviews of 'Winter' waiting for me.

The first was from 'The Trades' (http://www.the-trades.com/article.php?id=12880) written by R.J.Carter who describes Winter as 'part political satire, part steampunk, part cyberpunk and all parts downhill slalom race ... a ripper of a novel'. A great way to start the day.

The second was from the Lexinton Examiner (http://www.examiner.com/literature-in-lexington/demi-monde-winter-picks-up-where-michael-crichton-left-off-review) written by Jesse Coffey who gave a glowing review but then went a little further by suggesting that I might be the man to fill Michael Crichton's shoes! A trifle embarrassing. Crichton was a brilliant, brilliant writer who came up with some utterly amazing scenarios and storylines ... if I ever get half that inventive I'll be bloody delighted.

But reading Jesse's review reminded me of the great line from 'The Commitments' (a masterpiece of a film by Alan Parker) when Deco (the singer in the band) is told that he'll be jamming with Wilson Pickett. The line goes: 'Deco Cuffe and Wilson Pickett ... together at last!'

Trouble is that Deco and Wilson never did get together ... but I suppose I can dream.

PARADIGM LOGO

2012-01-31T07:43:00.000-08:00

In The Demi-Monde series, the virtual world that is the Demi-Monde was created by a rather secretive and unpleasant company called ParaDigm CyberResearch. Although it's rather a peripheral presence in the first three books it comes more to the fore in the last book: Fall. This being the case I decided that paraDigm needed both a logo and a motto. The logo had to incorporate a clenched fist on the basis that:

The clenched fist symbol of ParaDigm Global, adoptedby the organisation when it was formed in 1906, symbolises that five elementsare necessary to forge a successful team. These elements – as defined by thefounder of Paradigm, Beowulf Bole – are Vision, Leadership, Intelligence,Resolve and Courage. Individually they are of little worth but when broughttogether in the manner of fingers in a fist, they have a strength that isirresistible.

As for the motto, I finally settled on the latin tag: fortes modo tempus mutare possunt.
This done I let Nigel loose and he came up with three designs:
ParaDigm Logo 1:

I really liked this, especially the mirror-image of the name which signals the duplicious nature of the company. Unfortunately it was a little too complicated for what I had in mind.

Next up was ParaDigm Logo 2:

Very good, so it was a toss-up between this and ParaDigm Logo 3:

This is the one which got the final nod and will grace the cover of 'The Demi-Monde:Fall'!

SALE TIME IN THE DEMI-MONDE

2012-01-24T08:04:00.000-08:00

I understand that 'The Demi-Monde: Winter' (US edition) is now on sale for the next week at a price of $1.99. What a bargain!

BITS AND PIECES

2012-01-23T08:32:00.000-08:00

It's been an odd couple of weeks. Nelli and I are house hunting so I've had to fit my writing around trips to various properties. But still I've managed to do quite a lot.

First up I've submitted the last of the Demi-Monde books, 'The Demi-Monde: Fall'. After a bit of last minute tweaking it came in at just under 190,000 words which was my target and all-in-all I ain't that displeased with it. It'll be interesting to get reaction back especially regarding the carnage that accompanies the end of the first half of the book.

I also got the edit of 'The Demi-Monde: Summer' back from Merlin so I've been going thru that polishing and tweaking. It was subject to a pretty major overhaul after the first round of edits so reading it again gave me a chance to see how these sat and I'm not displeased. I swapped two chapters around and added and subtracted bits here and there but nothing mega. I've briefed Nigel regarding the artwork (a couple of PigeonGrams but nothing major) and given him some options for the blueprint that'll grace the endpages of the British edition.

Last week I was also interviewed by Rege Behe of The Pittsburg Tribune (amazing ... Pittsburg!). It seemed to go Okay. You can read it on http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/ae/books/s_777493.html.

Right now I'm working on a piece regarding the history of Lilith and the Lilithi for the website - good fun but difficult!

THE JAZZY DEMI-MONDE

2012-01-21T03:36:00.000-08:00

I was asked to comment on the jazz aspect of the Demi-Monde. This is what I wrote:

Consider this quote from Duke Ellington: ‘By and large, jazz has always been the kind of man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with’. Now substitute ‘science fiction’ for ‘jazz’ … see, it still works! And the reason for this is simple: SF has never been able to shake of the reputation it gained in the days of pulp SF that it was somewhat inferior … the genre has always been seen by the literary establishment as a little infra dig.

I guess it was this somewhat disreputable image that drew me to writing SF. That and the fact that SF (good SF) has the ability to transcend rules and regulations and to boldly go where other genres are too nervous to explore. I’ve never been big on rules and regulations given that they’re a simply a substitute for common sense.

I love jazz (some jazz; ragtime I can live without) and having a jazz singer as a wife I’ve become steeped in the stuff so it was natural that when I sat down to write my book I looked to jazz for inspiration. From my experience of sitting through numerous gigs I believe that the key to jazz is the ensemble: musicians being able to play together but also having the confidence in each other to solo. At its best the jazz combo is the perfect amalgam of the group and the individual. And from the word go I wanted the Demi-Monde to be an ensemble piece, with multiple characters having their time in the spotlight but then having to cede their place in the story … and all the while the story arc is maintained and driven forward.

But it isn’t just the style of the book that apes jazz music, there are more overt references too. As the opening book in the Demi-Monde series – Winter – is set a virtual dystopia populated by twelve million Dupes (digital simulacra of living people) and ruled by Reinhard Heydrich (the monster who gave us the Holocaust) I needed a lead character who would be able to handle the perverse racialism and bigotry she would meet there. Making her a young black jazz singer was a snap: if Duke, Dizzy, Miles and Ella could survive and flourish in the face of so much racial hostility, then so could a tough cookie like my Ella Thomas.

But having drawn the character of Ella the temptation to go further was irresistible. I augmented the evil Singularities (recreated doppelgängers of historical personages) I feature in the book with a few good guys and the one I had to include was Josephine Baker. For a black girl from St Louis to conquer 1920’s Europe armed only with a skirt made from bananas, a beaming smile and a bucketful of talent showed just what formidable character she really was. I had a lot of fun seeding her into the Demi-Monde. Other jazzers are referenced in later books: Cab Calloway is responsible for the ‘ReBop’ jive talk used by NoirVillians featured in ‘The Demi-Monde: Fall’ and I also managed to sneak in a reference to the great Miles Davis.

So I guess you could say that ‘The Demi-Monde: Winter’ is a jazzy sort of book and that being the case I’ll leave you in bebop fashion: plant you now and dig you later.

SPRING SIGNINGS

2012-01-09T09:39:00.000-08:00

Delivered Ellie back to LSE on Sunday and Quercus very helpfully managed to arrange some signings of 'The Demi-Monde: Spring' for the Monday. So it's thanks to Mark Bourbon-Crook at Forbidden Planet; Daniel and Therese at Goldsboro Books; and Ron Beard at Quercus. Nicola of Quercus looked after us splendidly so all-in-all a good day.
One thing I learnt ... don't do signings in a pink sweater.

Left to Right: Me, Nicola and Mark at Forbidden Planet

DARK CURRENTS

2012-01-09T09:00:00.000-08:00

I submitted a story for inclusion in an anthology edited by the redoubtable Ian Waites to be published by NewCon Press in spring and I'm glad to say it was accepted. I'm not a great fan of writing shorts - there's sod all money in it and they use up stories/characters/denouements at an alarming rate - but I wanted to give a new set of characters a run out before deciding to hand them a book of their own and I have to say that I was quite pleased with how they turned out.

The story is called 'Alternate Currents' and 'stars' Nikola Tesla the uber-genius who gave the world alternating current and all the joys of copious supplies of electricity. It'll be interesting to see what the reaction is but I've already decided to expand it into a full-length novel, working title 'Tesla Vs the Martians'. This is what I'll be working on once I've put the Demi-Monde to bed.

This is the cover art for 'Dark Currents' - excellent - and is the work of Ben Baldwin. He calls it 'Conflagration'.

HOW TO SURVIVE THE DEMI-MONDE

2012-01-07T05:08:00.000-08:00

I had a request from an on-line magazine to write a piece about surviving the Demi-Monde. This was the result. It gives me a chance to show how Ella was dressed during her adventures in the ForthRight. Artwork as always by Nigel Robinson.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

2012-01-05T15:06:00.000-08:00

OK ... I've read the book and I've seen the Noomi Rapace Swedish film version and I'd not been been convinced by either of them so sheer curiosity persuaded me to take in David Fincher's effort. And though it wasn't a bad film I was left with the distinct impression that Fincher (and I'm a great admirer of his work so I say this with some reluctance) was intimidated by expectations generated by the book and the Swedish film adaptation.

I am of the firm belief that film adaptations of books must recognise the differences between what works in print and what works on celluloid ... but when a book like TGWTDT has sold 60 million copies it takes a brave, brave director (and an even braver studio) to defy this weight of expectation ... especially when Lisbeth Salander has become such an iconic character. Doug Liman/Tony Gilroy recognised the need to mutate a book when it moved from print to screen with their adaptation of the Bourne books and I think a little of their lack of reverence would have been helpful here.

In making Lisbeth (and I though Rooney Mara's performance was excellent) a more vulnerable character Fincher opened the way for a more liberated interpretation of the book's character dynamics. And what this did was make the two rape sequences (so powerful in the Swedish version) redundant and gratuitous in the Hollywood version: BUT I guess to have deleted them would have opened both Fincher and Sony to accusations of whimping out. Yet the fact is these could have been deleted with no harm done to Mara's interpretation of Lisbeth (I would, however, have made the fight scene in the subway more visceral ... equip Lisbeth with a knuckleduster, perhaps?). The rapes got in the way ... which was unfortunate because Mara's portrayal made the burgeoning relationship between Lisbeth and Blomkvist much more believeable.

And while we're on the subject of Blomvkist, I thought Daniel Craig was terrific tho' who thought it necessary to have his daughter prompt the breakthru insight should be shot.

Yeah, it's better than the Swedish version ... the lighting's better, the acting's better ... but ... but ... but ... the script needs culling ... the tone is inconsistent ... it's too long ... the attempts to resolve the plot holes clunking ... and then there's the rape scenes. Roll on the 20 minute shorter Director's Cut.

My Score: 7/10

THE DEMI-MONDE IN NORTH AMERICA

2012-01-04T09:20:00.000-08:00

Things seem to be going well for the DM in the States and Canada tho' it's difficult to assess how well. The reviews are starting to come in on Amazon.com ... nineteen thus far with ten 5* and three 4* which ain't bad. There have been some crackers in there too so I'm quite buoyed by the positive reaction.

Local papers in the US have also been picking up on the book. The Denver Examiner (weird to have your book being written about in the US) was the most intriguing http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.examiner.com%2Fbooks-in-denver%2Fbook-review-the-demi-monde-by-rod-rees-review&h=0AQF3LN9NAQGYzERwLkYmdPxGCSWBhHzeJku_9jxjPGkUfQ in that the writer alluded to my using an assumed name and having connections with the intelligence community. I just wish I was that interesting. Next up was the Iron Mountain Daily News (you couldn't make this up could you?) http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ironmountaindailynews.com%2Fpage%2Fcontent.detail%2Fid%2F532380%2FThe-Demi-Monde.html%3Fnav%3D5087&h=QAQG8cg9PAQGLIcZkTpqKVZl8Ia11SmcWhaWng1PG_3RggA which cited me as a latter-day Jonathan Swift ... now THAT really made my day. Jonathan Swift is one of my all time heroes. Regina M. Angeli you are a star!

Finally I got this in from Toronto's 'The World's Biggest Bookshop':

2012

2012-01-04T07:42:00.000-08:00

A belated Happy New Year to all!

I had intended to open 2012 with a new slate - this in the form of having put the Demi-Monde saga finally to bed - but being an inveterate tweaker I'm still struggling to finished the the last book, 'The Demi-Monde: Fall'. It's almost there, just the glossary to polish and then it'll be in beta read mode. Probably tooooooooo long at 194,000 words (about a third thicker than the first three books) but there was a lot to cram in. What I've done is separate it into two parts - one mainly set in the Demi-Monde and one in the Real World - so effectively it's two books in one.

Am I happy with it? Difficult question to answer. I worry that the denouement - and I'm bringing a lot of story arcs together at the end - might be too convoluted and I'm tempted to include a second Epilogue to give some character resolution but that might just be over-egging the pudding. I'll decide after the next read thru.

Once 'Fall' is finally put to bed then I'll turn my thoughts about what to write next. I'm trying to chose between a SF whodunit series featuring a pair of characters called Rocco Rockman and his sidekick, JenniFur; a pulp SF series about invaders from Mars; or a stand-alone story about South Africa set in 2025. I might do them in reverse order.

New Year's Resolution; none of 'em is going to be longer than 120,000 words! I'm done with big books.

RADIO TIMES

2011-12-30T07:02:00.000-08:00

I had two interviews on American radio over the holidays and neither of them went according to plan.

The first was with Giovanni Gelati which was scheduled for 22:45 (my time) on the 26th. I 'phoned in only to be greeted by a message that I was 18 hours early ... so I recalculated and thinking that I was now wanted at 09:00 PST I called back on the 27th at 17:00. I was eventually bumped thru to Giovanni - 'hey you were scheduled for yesterday' - but fortunately he managed to slide me into the programme which featured an American crime writer 'Ben; and a lecturer in Creative Writing at UCLA called 'Lisa'. The programme lasted an hour. I'd love to be able to make an assessment of how I did but that's beyond me: I found myself concentrating so hard on the questions that I couldn't step back to make an objective assessment. Giovanni seemed happy tho', so it must have gone OK.

The second was with Dr. Alvin Jones on CBS Radio. Here I was expecting Alvin's call at 12:30 my time, but it came an hour early so minor panic ensued. It was an interesting 15 minute chat and I managed to get in my competition to win a copy of the book: all listeners had to do was answer the riddle I got in my Xmas Day cracker:

What's covered in muscles and swings from Christmas cake to Christmas cake?

MERRY CHRISTMAS

2011-12-22T05:15:00.001-08:00

THE DEMI-MONDE: SPRING PREVIEW

2011-12-20T09:49:00.000-08:00

The second Demi-Monde book - 'The Demi-Monde: Spring' - is out in the UK on the 5th January. I'm really looking forward to it: it seems an age ago that I finished it, so-much-so that it's difficult at times to remember what I wrote. It's set in the hedonistic Mediterranean Sector and introduces a raft of new characters perhaps the most important of whom is Odette Aroca - a big and very bothersome marketgirl from Paris; and the Marquis de Sade, who I don't think needs much introduction and, my favorite, the Russian economist Nickolai Kondratieff.

I had a hand in the writing of the blurb on the back of the cover. I had wanted something a bit more radical but this was not to be. I thought it would be neat to do it as one of the PigeonGrams I feature in the book thus:

Got to say I'm REALLY looking forward to getting feedback about the book.

ROD ON THE RADIO

2011-12-19T09:51:00.000-08:00

'The Demi-Monde: Winter' is out on the 27th December in the States so the promo people at HarperCollins have orgainsed a couple of radio slots.

The first is with Giovanni Gelati ('Gelati's Scoop') on BlogTalkRadio on 26th December at 4:45 pm EST (that's 10:45 pm my time) and the second is with Dr Alvin Augustus Jones on WHFS-AM 1580 (CBS Radio-Washington) this one scheduled for 06:30 am EST (12:30 pm) on the 27th December.

I suppose that's one of the consequences of having the book coming out after the holidays (prrsumably to garner some of those book token pressies) ... I'll have to stay unsquiffed all thru Boxing Day.

FREE COPY OF 'THE DEMI-MONDE:SPRING'

2011-12-11T10:21:00.000-08:00

ML has queried if I might be in the mood to give away a copy of the hardback of 'Spring'. Being a man of generous inclinations if any of you want a signed copy let me have your address via rodrees@virgin.net ... you'll have to wait until I get my copies from Quercus and my bloody stamp arrives, tho'. First five to reply get a copy. Condition is that you write a review (no pressure - write what you think - as long as your criticism is fair, I'm cool).

The stamp shows Lilith;s emblem - no prizes for guessing who takes centre stage in Spring:

Emblem of Lilith

THE DEMI-MONDE:FALL ... 50% THERE

2011-12-08T13:36:00.000-08:00

I've set myself the deadline of finishing the fourth (and last!) book of the Demi-Monde saga - The Demi-Monde: Fall - by the end of the year. I've got a rough draft - 196,000 words - and now I need to knock it into a final shape. I've decided to divide the book into two (Book One: In the Demi-Monde and Book Two: In the Real World). Book One is pretty much finished but Book Two is being a pig.

One problem is how to filter the explanation of how young Norma was lured into the Demi-Monde in the first place. It's quite a hefty piece of exposition - 20,000 words - and it slows the action down a LOT, the trouble is, if I leave it out then the whole series seems a little incomplete. One solution I'm toying with is adding it as an Appendix but there may be a better way of doing it. I'll have to have a think.

BARNES & NOBLE

2011-12-07T10:13:00.000-08:00

Having 'The Demi-Monde: Winter' coming out at the end of December in the US has meant that I'm getting a daily tutorial on publishing lore in America. The latest infodump concerns Barnes & Noble. B&N are the biggest book retailers in the USA with (according to Wiki) 717 stores, so I guess that makes them a pretty big deal when it comes to shifting books ... a bit like our Waterstones but with bells on.

The first time B&N impacted my consciousness was when I was told that their resident SF& fantasy expert 'James' had made Winter one of his SF picks of the month for December (good stuff!); that there had been an 'email blast' (love it) going out to B&N customers; and that the book would be on their 'new arrivals' table for the first two weeks of January. Sounds good.

Liz Bourke also wrote a review of Winter on the Barnes & Noble Bookseller's Picks (http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/12/not-your-fathers-computer-simulation-rod-rees-the-demi-monde-winter) which was a very nice review indeed, though Liz obviously isn't a great fan of cliffhanger endings. The important thing she said though was that with a series like the DM an interval of one year between books is too long: I agree with her ... nine months tops should be the guideline. That's what Quercus are now working towards and I think it's very sensible.

Anyway, congrats to all at HarperCollins on the good work!

MORE US REVIEWS

2011-12-01T07:55:00.000-08:00

You can tell that I'm a newbie writer (or as the Americans refer to me a 'freshman writer') 'cos I don't really appreciate the importance of some of the things that have been happening in the US. It seems that in the US there are four important industry book reviews: Library Journal, Publishers' Weekly, Kirkus and Booklist and getting 'starred' reviews from these is a BIG DEAL.

Anyway so the lovely Amanda sends me an advanced copy of the review going in the December 15 edition of Booklist and 'The Demi-Monde: Winter' has been 'starred'. The reviewer says:

'elegantly constructed, skillfully written, and absolutely impossible to stop reading. It ends with a beauty of a cliffhanger too ...'

So that goes with the 'starred' review from Library Journal (Debut of the Month no less) which said:

'Stong characters, along with the clever interweaving of seemingly disparate plot threads, make this a standout selection for fans of high-tech sf and cyberfiction.'

http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2011/11/books/genre-fiction/sf-fantasy/sffantasy-reviews-november-15-2011/

So, two down and two to go!

THE DEMI-MONDE: SUMMER ... EDIT DONE!

2011-12-01T07:38:00.000-08:00

The past four weeks have been a bloody nightmare. I've been editing the third book in the Demi-Monde series 'Summer' and it proved to be a real trial. Most of my editor's comments centred around one of the new characters, Billy, who is an eighteen-year old black guy who also happens to be a pimp/drug dealer/general low-life from New York. My editor had problems with him on several levels: she didn't like that he didn't get busy in the book until a third of the way in; she didn't like that he seemed rather peripheral when he did get going; and she sure as hell didn't like the slang I given him to mouth. Solving the first two problems necessitated a major re-jigging of the story but I'm still not sure if I've got on top of the slang issue.

I really tried with Billy's patois. I used Larry Fishburne's portrayal of Jimmy Jump in 'The King of New York' (cracking film) as a template but I also checked out 'New Jack City' (cliched crap), 'Boyz N the Hood' (boring cliched crap) and 'Juice' (Okay); read 'Playground' by 50 Cents (Okay) and 'Power and Beauty' by Tip 'T.I.' Harris (a coming of age romance gutted of emotion and passion) and numerous articles on black street jargon; and I referred to things like the Hip Hoptionary and the Hip-Hop Rhyming Dictionary. The problem is that black street talk is now very visceral and (to white, middle class ears) bloody offensive: all motherfuckers, bitches, niggas and ho's and that's what I've written.

We'll see have to see how it all comes out in the wash but right now I'm sick to the back teeth of Billy.

FICTION TO FACT: THE DEMI-MONDE MADE REAL!

2011-11-23T03:37:00.000-08:00

The publicity people at William Morrow, my US publisher, asked me to to give some answers to a Q&A they'd prepared in advance of 'The Demi-Monde: Winter' at the end of December. One of the questions was:

Is it plausible that any government is working on a Demi-Monde of its own at this very moment?

A bloody interesting question! And to answer it I decided to trawl thru the web to see if there was anybody potty enough to be trying to do just that. I didn't have to trawl very far. I put in 'Virtual Worlds + Military Applications' into Google and up popped:

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20100607_8168.php

Now according to NextGov's FaceBook page it's a leading federal technology web site, a meeting place for government and industry managers to read the latest news and discussions and to share insights on deploying IT successfully to schieve agency missions.

What NextGov was discussing that so intrigued me was the news that the US Army wants to develop a massive virtual world populated by 10,000 avatars that are managed by artificial intelligence and operate over a 32-mile square simulated terrain. That stopped me: the Demi-Monde is 30 miles in circumference and, of course, is managed by its very own artificial intelligence, the quantum computer known as ABBA.

NextGov went on: officials at the ARDEC's (the Army Research, Development and Engineering Command) Simulation and Technology Training Center said that they want a systems intergrator to put together a virtual world that includes soldiers, vehicles and weapons that can move around a landscape built from Defense Department gigital terrain data. Of course my Demi-Monde was commissioned by the US Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) based in Fort Jackson, South Carolina and the contractor chosen was ParaDigm CyberResearch. ARDEC might want to give 'em a call!

ARDEC also said in its request for information that it wants to incorporate technologies used in massively multiplayer online games. The Demi-Monde is defined as a MMP simulation ... to recreate in a wholly ralistic cyber-milieu the threat-ambiance and no-warning aspect of ... an Asymmetric Warfare Environment. Snap!

Now the similarities to the tender document for the Demi-Monde simulation produced when ParaDigm pitched for the contract (you can check this out on www.thedemi-monde.com) might be coincidental but being a suspicious sod I went back to check on the visits made to the site. Now to identify if any of them were from the US military I used http://www.uaff.info/militarytracking.htm (a very scary site so you have been warned!) which told me that I'd had two visits from an IP address which seems to belong to US Defence Information Systems Agency. Pecular, right?

Now I'm not saying I've been ripped off (I mean when the NextGov quotes a guy called General William Loomey III as the govenment's spokesman they've gotta taking the piss; whatever next Wing Commander Burlesque Bandstand?) but I just hope the similarities between what the US military is cooking up and the Demi-Monde end here, otherwise we're all in deep shit. I think they should wait for the final volume before they go much further!

I wonder if I should ask for royalties?

DM:WINTER IS INDIE NEXT'S JANUARY PICK OF THE MONTH!

2011-11-11T14:15:00.000-08:00

Some great news to begin the month! I've just learned that DEMI-MONDE: WINTER is an Indie Next pick for the month of January in the USA!

Until about two minutes ago I didn't know what this was or why it's such a big deal so here's a description from the internet:

The Indie Next List, drawn from bookseller-recommended favorite handsells, epitomizes the heart and soul of passionate bookselling. Independent booksellers are and have always been discoverers of the next big thing, the next great read, the next bestseller, and the next undiscovered gem. The monthly Indie Next List flier, sent to members via the monthly Red Box and available for download online, includes a bookseller quotation and complete title information for each outstanding book. Each monthly flier also announces IndieBound hardcover Great Reads now available in paperback. The Indie Next List is also featured on the consumer website, IndieBound.org.

I'm really chuffed!

DARK CHARISMATIC REBOOT

2011-11-09T03:59:00.000-08:00

After five weeks bloody hard work I have got 'Dark Charismatic' - my take on the Jekyll and Hyde story - into a state where I think it is now readable. I chopped about 45,000 words out so it now comes in at around 145,000 and most of the sex scenes are now on the edit room floor. I upped the gothic horror too which I think is a good thing.

This is the cover that Nigel did when I was thinking about self-publishing it two or three years ago.
I think I can ditch the bit about there being an 'erotic twist' now!

I'm now passing it over to Nelli to do a beta-read and once she's happy I'll have to decide what to do with it. It'll be a book that's all dressed up but with nowhere to go!

nooSFere

2011-11-06T11:47:00.000-08:00

Just read that The Demi-Monde: Winter will be the 17th imprint of Nouveaux Millénaires the new series of SF books that J'ai Lu (my French publisher) have launched this year. From what I can understand this is going to be a series of the best of SF so I'm in some pretty auspicious company. The first book in the series is 'Flowers for Algernon' - or 'Algernon et moi' - which is one of my all time favourite books (if you haven't read it, do so, it's brilliantly poignant) and will be followed by works from writers of the ilk of Nick Sagan and Philip K.Dick. I'm really honoured.

Of course, that J'ai Lu has entitled this their nooSFere is quite a coincidence too. Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere - the emergence of a unified global mind - is an intergral part of the fourth Demi-Monde book, The Demi-Monde: Fall. Small world ... or perhaps, better, Monde!

NEW REVIEW OF WINTER

2011-11-04T08:48:00.000-07:00

Nice recent review of Winter carried BookGeeks, see http://www.bookgeeks.co.uk/2011/10/23/the-demi-monde-winter-by-rod-rees/

For his début novel, the first in a four-book story cycle, Rod Rees has taken on the well-used SF theme of virtual reality and the consequences when worlds collide. From cyberpunk novels to some particularly well-known episodes of Star Trek (which, with its holo-decks, could conjure up virtual realities for its characters at the push of a button), it’s a popular idea – so the execution of it, and the characterisation and storytelling, are the keys to success if originality is the goal. Fortunately, Rod Rees has demonstrated considerable prowess in all of these areas in Winter.
The Demi-Monde is a totally immersive virtual reality environment created to train US soldiers in asymmetric warfare – a simulation so realistic that players can forget they’re in a game at all, populated by millions of AI characters called Dupes. Everything about the simulation is designed to foment tension – limited access to natural resources, over-population, competing ideologies and the presence of a number of Singularities, characters modelled on the despots, tyrants and hard men of history, including Shaka Zulu, Henry VIII, Robespierre and Reynhard Heydrich. But (it won’t surprise you to learn), something’s gone very wrong in the Demi-Monde: the Dupes have realised that soldiers and other visitors walk among them and have started taking hostages – since to die in the game is to die in real life, the simulation can’t be turned off. Worse, somehow, the daughter of the US President has been drawn in to the game and captured. The stakes are very high indeed.
The unlikely heroine of the rescue mission is Ella Thomas, an 18-year old jazz singer – the only person who has the attributes to exploit a back door in the programme. Behind enemy lines, she has to adjust to the unique reality of the programme – and before too long she finds herself caught up in the middle of a war, started by Heydrich against a neighbouring zone, with genocidal intent. Also fighting against Heydrich are a rag-tag Polish resistance, led by the daughter of an aristocrat who works for Heydrich. Along the way, Ella meets versions of Alasteir Crowley, Leon Trotsky and Josephine Baker, among other figures from history, falls in love, and generally becomes completely immersed in the simulation despite the fact that she should be the only person in there who knows it isn’t real. Except she’s not the only one – some of the Dupes have worked it out too.
Everything about the Demi-Monde is beautifully thought out – the Orwellian delight in perverting the English language, a consideration of what would happen if all these characters from history were alive at the same time, a well-realised alternate system of physics and chemistry, and so one. It’s a rip-roaring story that does not pull any punches, with the desperate defence against Heydrich tragically evoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in its bloody desperation. It also has some great characters, including Ella and her Dupe partner-in-crime Vanka Maykov, and succeeded in leaving this reader very keen to know what happens next. Roll on Spring!

Many thanks my Geeky friends!

GETTING READY FOR THE US LAUNCH OF 'WINTER'

2011-11-02T08:58:00.000-07:00

The US editing of 'The Demi-Monde: Winter' is scheduled for the end of December and things are starting to pick up on the promotional front which is all very exciting.

This is the advert which will go on the site 'Shelf Awareness' (and people think my puns are bad!) which, from what I can make out is the reference site for bookstores in the US.

Thank you to Mr Rollins for the kind words!

HarperCollins have also been building a very impressive FaceBook page which you can check out on

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Demi-Monde-Winter/229270873797221?sk=app_190322544333196#!/pages/The-Demi-Monde-Winter/229270873797221?sk=app_190322544333196

Now THAT is a bloody big internet address! I think the page (pages, actually) look very nice indeed (take a bow Shawn) and hopefully over the next few weeks there'll be lots of good stuff going up to intrigue and entice.

One of these is a competition to win a copy of the US edition. This has been posted on the HarperCollins blog.

http://harperlibrary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/11/win-a-copy-of-the-demi-monde-winter.html

All-in-all it looks very good. I'm pleased.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS: SPECTACULARLY AWFUL

2011-10-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

I'm of an age when I can remember with fondness the last attempt to bring The Three Musketeers to the screen, the 1977 version directed by Richard Lester, so when I saw the trailer of Paul W.S. Anderson's steampunky take of the book I thought, 'that's for me!'.

Fool.

Let's cut to the chase. For a film to be any good (for me) it has to have a decent plot, decent acting, decent directing and decent cinematography. The cinematography in this new Musketeers film is excellent, the rest is dire.

I'll begin with the plot. Look, the book the film is based on is a classic so it can't be difficult to fashion a halfway decent screenplay. WRONG! The screenwriters have ditched all of Dumas' characterisation and tension and substituted vacuous pantomime-esque nonsense. The plot holes are HUGE (I think if I tried to explain the worst involving Buckingham and Milady and the Queen's jewels I'd lose the will to live) so I have to imagine that this wasn't just carelessness on their part but sheer indifference. Those involved were just plain contemptuous of their audience's intelligence.

And the acting ... what fucking acting? Third prize goes to Orlando Bloom as Buckingham (there are mitigating factors: no man should be obliged to act while wearing such a stupid quiff) who should be obliged by statute not to play villains, he's about as threatening as blancmange. Second prize goes to Gabriella Wilde who played (played?) Constance: this girl CANNOT ACT ... she is Valium made flesh. But tonight's star prize for worst actor in a Dumas adaptation goes to James Corden who plays the Musketeers' servant Planchet. A word of advice to Mr Corden: you are not funny and even when bird shit is dropping on your face the effect on the audience is to cheer for the bird. Roy Kinnear you most certainly are not.

It was awful. BUT the special effects were great, the designer who dreamt up the air-ships inspired and I am sure that the film will be well received by the many fans of The Pirate of the Caribbean.

Makes you wanna weep. And the worst thing is that the end of the film suggests that there's gonna be a sequel. ARGHHHHHHHH!

Score: 3/10

THE DEMI-MONDE SPRING: SAMPLE CHAPTER

2011-10-20T09:01:00.000-07:00

The VERY efficient Caroline Butler at Quercus has let me have a link to the downloadable first chapter of The Demi-Monde: Spring which is out in the UK on the 5th January. Try:

http://extracts.quercusbooks.co.uk/demi-monde-spring/
It's an excellent download with flipping pages and rustling sounds and all that other excellent digital stuff so I hope you enjoy it. Odette Aroca who features is a new heroine and I've come to really like her. When I was writing her the image that kept coing to mind was of film actress Mae West (a remarkable woman!) so for those who are too young to know who she is:

One point: you'll see from the extract that the opening words are:

Beau nichon!

This was the subject of some debate between me and my editors. I had originally wanted

'Nice tit!'

but was persuaded to go with something a tad less crude so the French translation was substituted (the action takes place in the French Sector of the Demi-Monde, the Quartier Chaud). I think in retrospect I should have stuck my heels in!

ALTERNATE CURRENTS

2011-10-19T14:42:00.000-07:00

Just heard that a short story of mine 'Alternate Currents' has been selected for inclusion in the Ian Whates edited anthology 'Dark Currents' to be published by NewCon Press. The book will - hopefully - be launched next April at EasterCon 2012.

I'm really chuffed.

Whilst I'm not really a great fan of short stories (they use up ideas at an alarming rate for precious little return) I was happy to write for this anthology because it gave me an opportunity to try out some ideas I had for a new book. It's a stroy that stars Nicola Tesla - the genius inventor and thorough going oddball - and his adventures in defeating an invasion from Mars. I had a blast writing it and the short will give me a terrific platform when I start on the book for real (next month). I'm thinking of calling it 'Tesla vs The Martians' which has a B-movie feel to it that I like.

Anyway Tim Burton has already got dibs on 'Mars Attacks!'

ZEPPELIN V1 ATTACK STEAMER

2011-10-18T11:56:00.000-07:00

In anticipation that I'd need to supply a new blueprint for 'The Demi-Monde: Spring' to feature on the inside covers and which would match the one we used in Winter, I had a long think and suggested to Nigel that he design the Zeppelin V1 Flight Capable Attack Steamer featured right at the end of the book. This is what he came up with:

I'm very pleased though it might have been better (though less authentic) if he'd shown the exhaust steam from the four Polzunov Vectorable Steam Turbines been shown coming out of the V1's backside, but you can't have everything! The squadron emblem (the clenched fist) is excellent too and will get more mileage in 'The Demi-Monde: Fall'. I also like the cut away showing the underlying geodetic structure of the V1 - I pinched this idea from the models I made as a kid of the Vickers Wellington bomber.

TRUST AND THE NEW WRITER

2011-10-18T02:17:00.000-07:00

One of the problems I've found with being a new writer is that (obviously) I don't have any track record with readers and that means there's a lack of trust in my ability. And this is a particular problem when - as I am - you're writing a four volume saga like The Demi-Monde.

When a reader trusts a writer they believe that he or she won't leave them dangling, that the plot holes and inconsistencies they perceive when reading a book are not mistakes, and that everything will be explained or rationalised in later instalments of the story.

Let me give you a case in point. One of the reviews that has gone up on Amazon.com (by 'silea') has cited a number of 'major plot points' which, in her (I'm presuming 'silea' is a girl, if not, my apologies) view mar the book. Now what we have here is a breakdown in trust: silea doesn't have enough confidence in me as a writer to believe that by the time she gets to the end of 'The Demi-Monde: Fall' everything will be explained (notably how Norma got into the Demi-Monde; why the US military thinks its neoFights are dying; why ABBA is so persnickety about exactly replicating its Dupes etc. etc.). But believe me, silea, all will be made clear ... trust me!

Another example was the English reviewer who chastised me for introducing technology to my world of 2018 which will be beyond our current capabilities. Absolutely correct if the Real World of 2018 was OUR world but (as will be explained in later books) it isn't. You see: he didn't trust me.

Unfortunately this trust issue is a problem I think will be exacerbated by 'The Demi-Monde: Spring'. There are a number of inferences/suggestions/hints strewn in Spring which won't be resolved until the final book. I thought this was me being tantalising until my American editors (quite rightly) suggested that I become just a tad less oblique. God knows what silea will make of Spring but it'll be interesting.

MY FAVOURITE VILLAIN

2011-10-13T11:36:00.000-07:00

Got to thinking who is my favourite fictional villain. The candidates are:

Flashman: the great character creation of George MacDonald Fraser. Utterly reprehensible (coward, womaniser, etc.) but don't you just see yourself in him and wish for just a touch of his luck?

Lockhart Flawse (aka 'The Bastard'): the wonderfully dark and sardonically comic hero of Tom Sharpe's 'The Throwback. better even than Wilt.

Griffin: 'The Invisible Man' ... paranoia personified.

Meursault: the lead in Camus 'L'Etranger' and literature's most compelling psychotic.

Moriarty: Sherlock's bete noir and a villain to admire (tho' not evil enough in my opinion).

Alex: from the masterpiece that is 'A Clockwork Orange' ... brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Funny evil and profound with it. the Droogs' patois is inspired.

O'Brien: the dark presence in '1984', the greatest book I've ever read. The fact that the political treatise Orwell puts in the middle is genius and gives me hope that my own 'Confusionism' tract won't be edited out of 'The Demi-Monde: Summer'.

And the winner is ... Alex! (by a nose ahead of O'Brien).

MY FANTASY DINNER PARTY

2011-10-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

I was asked who I would ask to a fantasy dinner party, the guests I choose can be living, dead, real, mythological or made up.

Well, to start ... my experience is that you have to invite couples to dinner parties otherwise things become a little unbalanced, so with this in mind, my couples would be:

Josephine Baker (20's jazz singer/dancer) + Richard Burton (the Victorian explorer/linguist/libertine not the overrated actor/husband of Liz Taylor). As they both had a pretty liberated attitude to all things sexual (and were hugely talented) I think they would make a pretty good pairing and add little pizzazz to proceedings. I'd have loved for Dick Burton to have made an appearance in the Demi-Monde but unfortunately Philip Jose Farmer had first dibs on him.

Marilyn Monroe + Cyrano de Bergerac. In my humble Marilyn was the greatest comedy actress of all time and Cyrano was, of course, a freewheeling genius. A match made in heaven.

Jane Austen + H.G. Wells. Jane could explain to me how to write in third-person omniscient (which I don't get) and Herbert could explain to me what it's like to be the greatest SF writer of all time (and maybe give me some plot ideas).

Eleanor de Aquitaine (a real feminist!) + John Henry 'Doc' Holliday: I wanted both of them to feature in the Demi-Monde but in the end they got squeezed out. These are two people in history who I admire because thay had the force of character to be their own people.

Billie Holiday + Charlie Parker. Okay the drugs might be a problem but the jam session after the meal would be unreal. The thought of Kit duetting with Charlie and Nelli harmonising with Billie with Ellie on bass ... far out!

Marguerita Zelle (aka Mata Hari) and Francis Walsingham (Elizabeth I's spymaster). They could sit in a dark corner and exchange encrypted billet doux. Hopefully Marguerita could be persuaded to dance. Now she and Josephine Baker tripping the light fantastic would make for an interesting evening. Zowie!!!!

Top that line up, folks!

AGENTS

2011-10-04T00:36:00.000-07:00

DRC raised an interesting point about agents (and as my computer doesn't allow me to reply to comments ...) so I thought I'd touch on the subject here.

In this world of self-publishing it's probably tempting to think, fuck it, I'll cut out the middleman (middle-men if you include publishers in that definition), stick my stuff up on Amazon and, eureka, I'll be an over-night sensation. But whilst I'm sure for some people that's a strategy that works, for the vast majority it doesn't and they languish un-read, un-discovered and un-paid in the very crowded e-backwater that is 'self-publishing'.

My own belief is that once you have a book you think worthy of being published then it's worth at least attempting to get yourself an agent. A good agent will have three invaluable abilities: he or she will have an instinct for what will sell; will be able to advise what should be done to your novel to make it sell better; and will know the people who might be persuaded to buy the bloody thing. And to this list should be added that they will be a font of good advice (and believe me you'll need it) and a receptacle of oil to be poured on troubled waters when you get really ticked off with your publisher.

I came to John Jarrold by simply Googling 'Literary Agents + Sci-fi' and then checking out what came up. In the end there were three agents I thought seemed promising, checked out their submission guidelines (please, please do this before you submit and follow them, otherwise it's manuscript interfacing with bin time) and sent my stuff off. John came back and the rest as they say is history. And that history is that whilst I've been a client of John's (three years now I think) I've become a better writer. The whole agent/publisher complex is designed in part to provide friendly criticism for a writer and such criticism is vital if you're to improve (of course, being given money to write also helps!).

Criticism is part and parcel of writing but whereas some of the critics out there have got issues and agendas, your agent will be constructive and honest.

So ... my advice: before abandoning the well-trodden path of getting yourself an agent at least give it a shot.

DARK CHARISMATIC

2011-10-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

'Dark Charismatic' was the book I submitted to John Jarrold some two years ago which persuaded him to become my agent. Unfortunately it never found a publisher and as I'm taking a break from 'The Demi-Monde' I thought this was an ideal time to revisit the book.

DC is my take on the Jekyll and Hyde story, and elements of it serve as a prequel to the Demi-Monde. I've always had a lot of affection for the book but now re-editing it after a couple of years it's easy to understand why it didn't land me a publishing contract.

First off, it's too long (190,000 words) and too slow. One of my aims is to remedy these failings by taking out extraneous scenes and speeding up the action. 150,000 words tops!

Second, the book doesn't know what it is. It's not horror (though there're horrific interludes); it's not fantasy (though there is a fantastic element about the story); it's not alternative history (though I do play fast and loose with some historical events); it's not social commentary (though there are chunks of the story devoted to just that); and it's not sexy (though there is a LOT of sex in it ... a lot more than I remember writing!). Therefore I've decided that I'll remodel it as a Gothic Horror Story.

Third, the central character, Margaret Jekyll, isn't well defined enough. I've got a LOT of work to do on Margaret to bring her into focus and to make her journey (hate that word) from Victorian wife to rebel and to make that journey credible.

Fourth, the bloody thing is sloppily written. I keep switching POVs mid-scene etc. etc. Need to tighten up. I've written 500,000 words since I penned DC and done at least 50 edits so I've doubled my writing experience and it shows.

Fifth and final, I've got to tighten up my Victorian idioms which means MORE research!

BUT and this is important, I've a feeling that inside DC there's a good book struggling to get out. It'll take me a month to make that happen.

PARCELFORCE IS SHIT

2011-09-29T01:51:00.000-07:00

I sent the hardcopy edit of The Demi-Monde: Spring back to Quercus on Wednesday and because it represented about 60 hours of bloody hard work I decided to do two things - take a copy (£26 up my shirt) and send it by the Post Office's super-dooper ParcelForce system which GUARANTEES next day delivery (another £16!).

You guessed it, the package has gone AWOL but the most aggravating thing is that the supposedly foolproof tracking system has turned out to be USELESS. All it can tell me is that it was picked up at the Hatton post office on Wednesday at 13:58 and thereafter ... NOTHING. I've tried ringing ... what a joke: all I get is automated gibberish.

I am not impressed. Roll on privatisation.

PAPERBACK TIME!

2011-09-27T00:43:00.000-07:00

Today the UK paperback version of 'The Demi-Monde: Winter' is launched! I got a few copies sent to me by Quercus yesterday and I have to say that it looks terrific, the embossed cover being especially nice. Quercus also seem intent on doing some advertising to support the launch. This is the advert carried in this month's SFX magazine:

Obviously 'The Vampire Shrink' ain't nothing to do with me!

THE COEFFICIENT OF EDITING

2011-09-23T00:22:00.000-07:00

Publishing contracts should come with a health warning. Just like cigarettes there should be a sticker on them somewhere which says something like:

SIGN THIS AND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE WILL BE SPENT EDITING YOUR BOOKS

The Rees Coefficient of Editing states that for every hour you spend writing, you'll spend at least six editing.

Now I ain't moaning (I'm just so pleased that I've won the Great Prize in Life, that is getting a contract) but it's something every novice writer should be prepared for. You write your book (and by the time it's finished I bet it's gone thru at least four iterations: edits #1, 2, 3 & 4) and you've had your beta-readers plough thru it (it's a great book but ...) and given their two-pennyworth (which you've dutifully incorporated as edit # 5). Then your agent gives his opinion (which you listen to 'cos he/she will be selling the bloody thing) and so you do another edit (that's # 6). Then a publisher buys the thing and you think ... phew ... great ... that's it ... what am I gonna write next. That's when the publisher comes back and says something like 'great book, but wouldn't it be better if this character was a woman and you brought this chapter to the beginning and what do you think about flashbacks and could we crop it by 20,000 words and, by the way, how to you feel about a new title ...'

That's edits # 7, 8 & 9. And they're BIG edits, BIG time-consuming edits, edits you take MONTHS over. But you do them and then the book goes off and you think ... phew ... great ... what am I gonna write next. And that's when you get the copy edit where the publisher lets the Copy Proof editor (whose sole purpose in life is to protect the English language from philistines like you) have a go at your book and he corrects the grammar/spelling/impression you had that you were literate, covering your opus in Rain Forest destroying quantities of red ink in the process. That's edit # 10.

But it ain't over. Once this is done it goes off to be typeset, which is the process that takes your gibberish and making it look like a book. And you've got to edit that - CAREFULLY - 'cos this is absolutely the last chance you'll have to make sure that you haven't done something stupid (and you have, betcha money on it!), so that's edit # 11.

But you do that and then you think, phew ...great ... what am I gonna write next. And then your agent phones and says 'Great news, the book's sold to the Americans'. And you think 'WOW' and then you get an e-mail from New York which starts 'great book but ...'

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER SPY

2011-09-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

Went to see the latest film version of John le Carre's 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,' on Sunday. I was quite looking forward: Gary Oldman is one of my favourite actors, the buzz was good and the source material impeccable. I came away disappointed.

Oh, all the elements were there: the cinematography was superb (I loved all those shots of documents going up and down in a lift), Oldman captured the stillness of the Smiley character brilliantly, and the Director' portrayal of a seedy, deflated 70's Britain excellent (made me quite nostalgic). The lighting was terrific too.

But ... but ... but ...

As is so often the case it was the script that let it down. I should have known what to expect when I read an interview with Gary Oldman when he said that he'd been regularly consulting with John le Carre in order to get his performance right. I am always suspicious of writers who get too closely involved with film adaptations of their work: novels and films are two completely separate mediums and in moving from one to the other the director/scriptwriter needs to be brutal with books. I think this is why the Bourne films were successful .. they were inspired by the source material, not enslaved by it.

In the case of Tinker they seem to have forgotten that what they were dealing with was, in essence, a whodunit, and to make these work the audience has to be party to the deliberations of the sleuth so they can pit their wits against him. In Tinker all the deliberation of Smiley as he tried to track down the mole were internalised and I've gotta tell you that shots of railway junctions symbolising the workings of his little grey cells don't cut it.

But where there was a paucity of information regarding Smiley's investigations, we were bombarded with a mass of irrelevant noise about characters (who cared that Benedict Cumberbatch's was homosexual; it had no relevance to the story); the Cold War (it doesn't help to be sitting next to Nelli as she mutters in your ear, enumerating the gaffs made regarding the Russians); and the protagonists' back-stories (all that angst by Tom Hardy's character about 'Irina' was a total waste of screen time). And what all this noise did was derive the major players a chance to establish their characters in any meaningful way: at the end of the film the only ones we could name were Smiley, 'C' (John Hurt so far over the top that he had sprouted wings) and er, that's it.

The girls pronounced themselves 'baffled'. I have to agree: if you haven't read the book, don't bother.

My rating: 6/10 (and Gary Oldman earned 3 of those!)

Oddly though

THE DEMI-MONDE:FALL (BETA-VERSION)

2011-09-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

Okay, so two weeks behind schedule I've finished the beta version of the final Demi-Monde book, 'The Demi-Monde: Fall'. It's still a little rough around the edges and I haven't interlaced the final chapters (I've done this in the other three books to add pace and tension) because its easier to edit them when they're separate but the story's there, the denouement is in place and I think the resolve of all the plot lines is okay.

Phew!

Now I'm gonna let it lie for a few weeks so I can hit it renewed and refreshed (anyway I've got the US edit of Spring to attend to). I think I'm gonna need all the energy I can muster; the final edit of Fall is going to be a beast. It's come in at just north of 196,000 (say, 200,000 with a 'Story So Far' and a Glossary) and I want to be sure it doesn't include 30,000 words of self-indulgence. Pace is everything!

But anyway, the back of the thing is broken and I really like some of the new characters.

SARAH PALIN

2011-09-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

I had one of those odd juxtapositions of thoughts today. I read the article on Nick Broomfield's documentary about Sarah Palin ('You Betcha' - I've got to get to the BFI Film Festival on the 14th October!) in The Guardian and then this evening sat down to watch both the original and the (fucking awful) remake of 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' on TV and I was struck by a terrible thought:

What if Gort came to call and Sarah Palin was President of the USA!!!

The answer to the question, is there intelligent life on Earth would be really worth eavesdropping in on.

SOUNDTRACK 5: AT NIGHT I BURN

2011-09-13T14:09:00.000-07:00

Last up (for now!) is the song Nelli and I wrote called 'At Night I Burn'. I think this would be especially appropriate for the scene where Josephine Baker (great, great star) is dancing in Club Resi. We'll need something up-beat and pretty sensuous and this fits the bill. I'm desperately trying to remember the name of the violin player we drafted in ... but old age has beaten me.
Anyway enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcxqQrgkEw&feature=related

SOUNDTRACK 4: DANCING

2011-09-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

For the scene when Vanka and Ella get smoochie there's only one choice of music: Nelli's take on the song 'Dancing'. 'Dancing' was written by the late, great Race Newton who played piano for Nelli for almost three years. Race had earned his chops playing in New York after the war and there wasn't ANYTHING he didn't know about jazz. He was a very special pianist and one of the few musicians I've ever met who knew that silence in music was as importaant as the notes.

Check out 'Dancing' on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bO5H8j5VWs&feature=mh_lolz&list=LLAEaad32rqyB_FAkCeiLjdw

SOUNDTRACK 3: STRUGGLE DANCE

2011-09-12T12:37:00.001-07:00

The track to accompany Ella's dance in the hounfo at Dashwood Manor was always going to be tricky mainly because it was meant to have been accompnaied by drums - by rada music. Fortunately Nelli and I had a time when we were really into dub music (the more earthy cousin of reggae) so we'd had mix of one of our songs from Nelli's first album 'Jazz Noir' re-mixed dub style.

So this is 'Struggle Dance (JubDub) Mix' which is one of my favorite of all Nelli's recordings. Hope you like it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=9wIP80Hd8gU

SOUNDTRACK 2: FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN

2011-09-12T11:47:00.000-07:00

Second track up on the 'The Demi-Monde:Winter' sountrack is the Marlene Dietrich classic 'Falling In Love Again'. Nelli had included this in her set and it always went down a storm so I had ideas of updating it and releasing it as a single. It didn't come to anything but when I was casting around for a number for Ella to do when she first comes to the Prancing Pig this was an obvious candidate.

The video is one I produced (and did the camera work for). Never quite as sexy as I wanted but still, considering it was made for £400 not too scruffy.

Check the song out on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2J5Phukc8Y

SOUNDTRACK 1: I DON'T DO GOOD

2011-09-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, prompted by Kimberley at HarperCollins idea for a soundtrack for 'The Demi-Monde: Winter' I dusted off the tracks from Nelli's never-released album that had been tentatively entitled 'Sex&Bile.'

This number 'I Don't Do Good' was written by Nelli and me and was intended to put a bit of 'oomph' in her live shows - nuJazz is all very well but it is a bit cerebral. This is the d'nb mix done by Bob and Paul. I think it would sit wonderfully at the beginning of the book when Norma is trying to escape from Clements thru the back streets of the Rookeries.

Try: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGOnScAqJiY

The link is with YouTube and the rest of the tracks are shown under 'The UnFunDaMentalists featuring Nelli Rees.

TheY WanT uS DumB

2011-09-11T06:50:00.000-07:00

Kimberley at HarperCollins is putting a FaceBook page together to support the US launch of 'The Demi-Monde: Winter' at the end of December. One of the ideas she has is putting a soundtrack together and she asked me for suggestions, which persuaded me to dust off some of the tracks that Nelli and I produced for her stillborn 2nd album and I think they stand up bloody well!

I'm going to put them up on YouTube and the first is 'They Want Us Dumb'.

Nelli and I wrote it in protest of the Anglo/US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and is, unfortunately, still pertinent four years on. I think Nelli does a great job with the Manson-esque vocals (she's more a nuJazz singer).

You can check it out on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q0qfRfKM4k under the name 'The UnFunDaMentalists (feat. Nelli Rees)'. I'll sort out a better video when I get time!

THE DEMI-MONDE:FALL ... PROGRESS ... SLOW PROGRESS

2011-09-07T10:03:00.000-07:00

I had hoped to have the beta-version (finished but rough) of the last Demi-Monde book completed by the end of August but things got a little backed up and it's proven to be a bigger (literally) task than I imagined.

As I think I've said I'll be dividing Fall into two books (all contained within the same cover) and the first 'The Battle of the JAD' is now with Nelli for a preliminary reading. It's better than I thought it would be but not as good as I'd like it to be (but isn't that ever the way with writing). I like the denouement and I like some of the new characters but as it weighs in at 100,000 words I think it'll need a little surgery just to inject some pace.

The second book (section, part, whatever) has the working title 'Battle for the Real World' and is proving to be an absolute bastard. It's very complex and although I've resolved all the multiple threads of the story (I wish, I hope) it's VERY convoluted and some of it's quite demanding. My target is to have it in beta-mode within a fortnight and then to go at it with an axe. It's currently weighing in at 105,000 words - way too long - and there's still a longish chaper to write.

What I've learned from all this is I will NEVER, EVER do a book this sizeable again. It's almost impossible to edit the bloody thing, almost impossible to keep track of all the ins and outs and it drains your will to live.

In future it'll be 120,000 words tops! Frank Herbert must have been a bloody masochist!

PUZZLE

2011-09-07T05:46:00.000-07:00

I need a puzzle in 'The Demi-Monde: Fall' which turns on deciding what the next number is in a sequence, and I'm trying to decide if the one I've come up with is too hard/easy (delete as applicable). The sequence is:

1 5 2 3 2 7 8 11

This sequece is referenced in the book by a piece of doggerel:

This is the stairway to heaven.

Salute the Trinity that is

The Nothingness …

ABBA …

And the Duality of Being.

So come, embrace ABBAsoluteness.

When consciousness blossoms

And flowers beyond the confines of the mind.

Then, Time will have no meaning,

No relevance.

To progress to the embracing of Ying.

To stand beyond Time

HumanKind must conquer Time

And bring the Column to its resting place.

But to err, is to die.

The clue is in the numbers 1, 2 & 3!

THE SWIRL WITH THE DRAGON ON TOO

2011-09-07T00:59:00.000-07:00

I was asked by Quercus for cover art for the third book in the Demi-Monde series: 'The Demi-Monde: Summer'. Quite a bit of the action takes place in the Sino-Japanese Sector of the DM - the Coven - when one of my heroines is help captive in the Forbidding City by the dastardly Empress Wu. There she is introduced to the now outlawed philosophy of Confusionism.

Based on the teachings of the mysterious Master as recorded in the two MasterWorks – the iChing and the BiAlects – Confusionism differs from all other religions in the Demi-Monde in that it is refuses to provide a definitive guide to its followers as to what Confusionists should believe and how they should act. This ‘confusion’ inherent in Confusionism is a result of the Master’s teachings being represented by the diametrically opposed views of two mythical opponents and their inability – and, it must be said, unwillingness – to fuse these views into a single teaching. The two Voices of the BiAlects – the Sages Wun Zi and Too Zi – represent contrasting and irreconcilable interpretations of human life and purpose; of the Creation; of the ultimate Fate of the Kosmos; and of the existence and role of ABBA in human affairs. It is the aim of all Confusionists to reconcile the two Voices (‘the Fusion’) and to know the Answers to the five FundaMental Questions posed by the BiAlects. The Master informs us in the Ninth and final Book of the BiAlects that the Fusion will not come until the Time of Enlightenment, when Yin and Yang are merged in the form of Ying, and all knowledge – both Self-Knowledge and Knowledge of the Kosmos – are revealed to HumanKind.

Therefore the idea I had - which Nigel so mastefully interpreted - was that we should take the usual yin/yang emlem, introduce the dragons (the symbol of Empress Wu) but have them spiralling together into Ying. I thing it works pretty good!

THE EVOLUTION OF A COVER

2011-08-23T01:32:00.000-07:00

Amanda, my editor in HarperCollins, has just sent me the final cover of the US edition of ‘The Demi-Monde: Winter’ (out January 2012, folks) and mighty fine it looks too. Amanda was kind enough to involve me (and by default my designer mate, Nigel) in the design process so I got to see how the cover evolved. I think it’s quite an interesting process.

It all started when I got an email from Amanda in the beginning of April saying that HC were having a cover concept meeting and did I have any thoughts regarding which design elements might be useful for inclusion in a design. So I had a think and below is a précis of what I sent (edited so some of the spoiler bits have been taken out).

The Demi-Monde is an ensemble story told over four books of the protagonists’ adventures in a virtual dystopia locked in a Victorian timeframe. While the story deals with what I hope are serious issues (fascism, racism, eugenics and anti-semitism) I’ve tried to do this in a satirical way and invest the books with humour. They are written to be fast-paced and fun. I’ve also attempted to introduce a Lost-like unexpectedness to maintain the readers’ interest throughout the four books and keep them intrigued. I call this script-tease. The words/phrases I think (hope) best describe the Demi-Monde series are fast-paced, dark-humoured, surreal, thought-provoking and fun. It appeals to females as well as males (and this has certainly been borne out by the reaction in the UK). It is not hard SF.

The basic themes which permeate the four volumes of the Demi-Monde are as follows:

SEASONS: Each volume of the DM is contained within a particular season, Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. Quercus is intent on showing this via the use of the cover colour (Blue for Winter; Green for Spring etc.).

LOCATION: Each volume is set in a different Sector of the Demi-Monde viz,Winter in the Rookeries of London and in Warsaw; Spring in Paris and Venice; Summer in Peking; and Fall in Istanbul and the walled city of the JAD (a faux Jerusalem).

REAL CHARACTERS: There are new historic characters (‘PreLived’) introduced in each volume. Each of these will be shown on the website by means of a cigar card.

DUALISM: Dualism is a key feature of the Demi-Monde series, viz the virtual Demi-Monde and the physical Real World; and Norma Williams and her doppelganger Aaliz Heydrich.

PURSUIT: The single connecting theme of all four books is Norma Williams and her ‘journey’ from being spoilt teenage brat to sage and peacenik. By the suffering and anguish she endures as she is pursued through the Demi-Monde she grows in maturity and stature.

BLOOD: Blood is very important in the Demi-Monde. All the Dupes inhabiting the Demi-Monde are blood dependent.

STEAMPUNK: The Demi-Monde is technologically ‘fixed’ in the year 1870, but some of the tweaks the Dupes have made to their world are quite steampunky (steamers are their equivalents of cars, they use PigeonGrams to communicate etc.).

RUNES: There is a flavouring of Seidr magic in the books and hence quite a few references to runes and other Norse elements. The Valknut rune is the emblem of the quasi-fascist unFunDaMentalists while the combined Laguz sinister and dexter is the symbol of Lilith.

RELIGIONS: Each Sector of the Demi-Monde has at least one religion: UnFunDaMentalism; ImPuritanism; Confusionism; HerEticalism; nuJuism; and HimPerialism.

This I followed up towards the end of April by a selection of ‘reading lines' I’d dreamed up (I’ve already blogged about these) and then at the beginning of July Amanda sent this cover mock-up through:

The consensus of the UK jury (me, Nelli and Nigel) was that it was a good cover – a sort of cross between ‘The Lost Symbol’ and ‘1984’ (not bad references) and that the eye was clever – but we had a few concerns. These mainly centred on the thought that the cover's two parts (the cityscape and the rest) don’t seem terribly well integrated. The cityscape looked a little like an after-thought and whilst the cityscape we used on the website was an amalgam of the skylines of Washington, London and Berlin (with the Eiffel Tower shown in the background) the one on the cover didn’t communicate this feeling of wrongness. Perhaps, we opined, if St Basils from Moscow was shown near to St Pauls with the Eiffel Tower across the river, this would give a better sense of unease.We also suggested that there should be more steamships on the river (it is 1870, after all). Nigel wasn’t too happy with the title font (but then Nigel's got a font fetish) thinking it neither fish (Victorian-esque) or fowl (digital). There was a thought that the title would be better if it were centred and that ‘Winter’ could be strengthened.

A couple of days later this is what came back. Heaps better, especially regarding the make up of the cityscape! But ever one to push my luck, I observed that it might be better to run the gold border into the rip off of the cityscape i.e. no horizontal border 2/3rds of the way down, the one bifurcated by the Valknut. I thought that if this was ditched it would lessen the impression of there being two parts to the cover, especially if the rip wasn’t so square to the edge. I was still missing my steamships on the river and I wondered why we needed to state that it’s ‘a novel’. I also showed the cover to Kit, my writer-in-waiting daughter, and she liked it BUT didn’t think it was very girl-friendly, so I added one thought: how about making the eye a female eye? Nigel STILL didn't like the font!

Amanda had also been pondering on reading lines, now leaning towards “Where nothing is as it was … or as it will be.” Or “Trust nobody … not even yourself.” Or “Someone’s always watching”. I weighed in with “A Past that wasn’t … a Present that isn’t … and a Future that mustn’t be.”

This was the final iteration of US cover Mark I and I thought it pretty damned good, especially that the burn/tear line was no more asymmetrical and the horizontal gold border had been ditched. This was the cover that went off to the Sales/Marketing Meeting that makes the final judgement on covers.

They obviously weren't keen. It seems they thought it a tad too travelbook-esque and wanted something funkier.

So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the final US cover of 'The Demi-Monde:Winter' (and bloody brilliant it is too!!!!!!) ...

SPRING COVER

2011-08-18T12:54:00.000-07:00

I got to see the final cover of UK edition of The Demi-Monde: Spring today, that's the second book in the DM quartet. Each of the four books is set in a season so following on from the blue of winter we have the green of spring. I think it looks pretty good and I'm quite happy with the blurb on the back (I should be, I wrote most of it!). I had wanted to do something a little more radical with the blurb: pigeongrams feature quite heavily in Spring so I concocted a Blurb-o-Gram which went like this:

I thought it added a certain je ne sais pas but the consensus was that it was too much. Shame
This second book features the character of Lilith quite heavily so I thought it appropriate that she was there on the front cover. Book sellers' sensibilities were such that she couldn't have any visible nipples so this is what Nigel came up with in the end. Anyway, the upshot is that this is the book which will be hitting the bookshops in the UK on the 27th December!

BECALMED

2011-08-02T10:50:00.000-07:00

I've been neglecting my blog. I've set myself a target of having the beta-version of the final Demi-Monde book 'The Demi-Monde: Fall' finished by the end of August and although the first half of the book (confusingly called 'Book 1) which takes place inside the Demi-Monde is in pretty good shape, the second half (you've guessed it 'Book 2'!) which takes place in the Real Wolrd has proven to be a real pig.

In Book 2 I'm trying to pull together three main plot threads which although interlinked are bloody complicated in their own right so all I seem to have been doing is wrting reams and reams of exposition. Not terribly exciting to write and a damned sight less exciting to read. It all came to a head this morning when I sat down at the keyboard and hadn't a bloody clue what I was doing there. As I've always found from experience the last thing to do is give up, so I started writing 'filler': bits I might be able to use to up the thrill quotient in the story. Once I've got some mileage done I always feel better, so after ponding out 1,500 words of total crap I had a little ponder and bits started to drop into place. It ain't perfect and it'll need me to go back and re-write a couple of chunks I'd thought were done and dusted but there is certainly light at the end of the tunnel.

I've also got a killer twist for a denouement.

REVIEW FROM SOUTH AFRICA

2011-07-26T06:18:00.000-07:00

Just to show the power of the Internet, I give you a review of The Demi-Monde: Winter that's came winging in all the way from South Africa. Penned by Dave-Brendon de Burgh you can find it on:

http://davebrendon.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/review-the-demi-monde-winter-by-rod-rees/.

Dave is a writer and an aficionado of all things fantastic BUT more importantly seems to be quite even-handed in his critiques so this was one review I was looking forward to. You can learn a lot from people like Dave. But the problem I find with reviews by writers is that they approach books in a very analytical way, a sort of, 'where would I take this story if I was writing it' tip and Dave is no different. He's already looking forward to the last book, Fall, and how the series will end - his guess with either the Demi-Monde or the Real-World in rubble - so I better be careful and keep everybody off-balance thru Spring and Summer.

Talking of being off-balance that's currently where I find myself with Fall. I'm 170,000 words in and STILL struggling with the ending but I've a feeling that the last of my made-up 'isms' - InfoCialism in this case - will play a big part.

Oh, and well done, Dave: that 'our world in the novel' comment deserves a coconut!

ON AND ON AND ON

2011-07-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

I've been so caught up in sorting out The Demi-Monde: Fall that everything else (including this blog) has been neglected. I've been trying to resolve the second phase of the book which has been an absolute swine but now I can see light (or possibly an on coming train) at the end of the tunnel. Problem is that in doing this I've twigged a better way of resolving the ending which will require a LOT of words. QED it's going to be a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG book so I thought I'd better touch base. The consensus seems to be that hitting 220,000 words (cf Winter, Spring and Summer which will weigh in at circa 150,000 words) ain't too bad. So I'm ploughing on with what looks to be a real beast.

I had a break today to speak with Amanda and the marketing people at HarperCollins re the ePromotion of Winter. All terribly exciting. Gonna be neat having posters of The Demi-Monde up at ComiCon!

SFF CHRONICLES

2011-07-11T00:50:00.000-07:00

Got chatting to a guy called Jeff Richards at Alt-Fiction and ended up giving him a copy of The Demi-Monde: Winter to review. As good as his word Jeff reviewed the book, posting it on SSF Chronicles. You can find it on:

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/532518-the-demi-monde-winter-rod-rees.html#post1512557

Jeff made some interesting points. He wasn't a great fan of my cliff-hanger endings (which is a shame because there's at least two more to go). I thought long and hard about this when I was writing Winter, whether to make the books self contained or not. The problem is that if you put a resolve at the end then you've got to unresolve it at the start of the next book which always seems a bit artificial to me. The other thought I had was that as the action in each of the books is set in a different Sector with different supporting characters then the reader is going to have quite enough exposition to cope with without a long explanation as to why the protagonists are in danger again. But in the end, the real reason I use them is that I was brought up on Saturday morning pictures when I was a kid where every episode ended with a cliff-hanger ('Can Batman escape from the concrete block the fiendish Joker has encased him in. Tune in next week ...'). I'm addicted to the bloody things.

He would also have liked to have had more explanation as to how Norma got to be in the DM. Now, Jeff, this is all written, but I ain't had room! Fifty thousand words is a lot to drop into a book. I had hoped to do it in Fall but that would tip the book way over 200K which is too LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG. I'm thinking of doing it as a stand-alone story and maybe wrapping it up with the origin story of another key character appearing in Spring. I've got 50K written about her too. We'll see.

Finally, you're right Jeff, the Demi-Monde ain't steampunk. It's a thriller with an SF/Fantasy tip!

Anyway, thanks for the review, Jeff, much appreciated.

THE DEMI-MONDE FALL: 150K BARRIER

2011-07-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

To me breaching the 150K word barrier is the time when I can actually start thinking that I am really going to finish a book before the book finishes me. There are certain points in a book's life that go something like this:

20K: there's still time to stop and start again. What I've been writing is crap.

50K: there's still time to stop and start again but the pain of bining a month or two's work is immense. What I've been writing is crap, but it's a lot of crap.

100K: I've written so much that I can't start again but I'm losing the will to live. Maybe I should go back to accountancy. I don't know how to resolve the plot. All my characters are anodyne. What I've been writing is crap and it's incoherent crap.

120K: maybe some of what I've written ain't too bad. I have to dump/rewrite a couple of characters, usually the ones I spent the most time researching. Now is the time for a major read thru and assessment. I can't think of an ending. I'm fucked.

150K: I have a big pile of crap which needs to be polished (d'oh?). I still can't think of a denouement. There's too much sex/violence/swearing/exposition/boring shit. What I've got is mileage, which is great if I was laying a road, but unfortunately I'm writing a book.

180K: This is when I stop. There should hopefully be within this heap of over-written poo a half-way decent story of 150K. I start editing. I edit for three months. Nobody talks to me. I don't talk to me. I go to parties and stand there mentally editing my book. I refuse to read books on the grounds that these cocky bastards have finished their edit and are just taunting me. I change the ending. I change the ending again.

150K: I abandon my book and instead send it off to my agent. Why should I suffer alone?

THE DEMI-MONDE SPRING: COPY EDIT TIME

2011-07-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

The copy edit of Spring came thru on Friday. The copy edit is the last editing process in the pre-published life of a book, when the minutiae of the story is examined: spelling, punctuation, inconsistencies, that sort of stuff.

I must be getting better. Last time, Merlin (the name of my copy editor) covered Winter with a sea of red ink corrections but this time it was more of a puddle (and done in a rather sweet lilac colour). BUT hidden away in all this was a real bomb. Merlin made the observation that the revelation at the end of the book regarding one of my characters (I ain't saying who) didn't square with some of the earlier action. This was a real boot in the balls. Neither of my two beta readers or my editors had made this comment so it came as a bit of a shock.

A worrying shock. Inconsistencies can ruin a reader's supension of disbelief and smacks of sloppy plotting so I had to take it seriously. So Saturday was spent pulling together all this character's scenes and trawling thru them. In the end I didn't think there was too much of a problem but to be on the safe side I put in half a dozen or so additional sentences/phrases. It was all a bit belt and braces but I felt better at the end of the exercise.

Anyway, eyes down and hopefully the book will be winging its way back to Quercus on Tuesday.

THE DEMI-MONDE: FALL - A PROGRESS REPORT

2011-07-01T23:56:00.000-07:00

I'm now well on with the fourth and final book of the Demi-Monde series. I had a rocky spell a couple of weeks ago when I thought I might be writing myself into a cul-de-sac but this I put down to lack of concentration - there was so much happening at Chez Rees that I was writing in spurts of a couple of hours. Now I've been able to put in a couple of solid days at the typeface, I'm starting to get a grip.

Yesterday I breeched the 135,000 word barrier and although some of it is in a pretty incoherent state most of the major elements of the book are now in place or I know how I'm going to shape them. The only big plot hole relates to Trixie and Wysochi and here I'm still waiting for inspiration to strike. I think I've got some interesting characters too - Judas Iscariot and Saladin strut their stuff as does uber-badnik, Thaddeus Bole - so I've had some fun writing them. Some of the reveals I'm pleased with too: I think only the most diligent of readers will have picked up all the clues scattered through the books so hopefully there'll be some 'wow, of course' moments.

What my major problem has been is the 'fun' element. The denouement is pretty messy for all concerned and it's difficult to crack jokes when people (and characters) are dropping like flies. I'll have a long ponder when the book is finished and in beta-mode.

Currently I'm thinking of splitting the book into two parts: one part set in the Demi-Monde and one in the Real World. My instinct is against doing this as I think the duality of the books is better preserved by interlacing the story relating to each domain but interlacing is bloody difficult to pull off and can be bloody confusing for the reader. This is especially the case as I've a feeling in my water that Fall is going to end up considerably longer than the 150,000 limit I set for the first three books. I'll have to have a think.

Got a day off today. It's the girls' final day at their school so it's speech day with the Ball tonight. Got a new tux!

RENEGADE WRITERS: 29TH JUNE 2011

2011-06-30T07:31:00.000-07:00

RENEGADE WRITERS: 29TH JUNE 2011

Welcome to new attendee Gerry!

Congratulations to Jan on the nomination of her short story ‘Otterburn’ in the British Fantasy Society Awards 2011 short story category.

After the standing-room only attendance of last week we were down to just six of us this week, but small in number though we were the quality of the writing was good.

Jan kicked off with a new short story called ‘Midnight Twilight’ set on a desolate artic island ‘somewhere north of Fennmark’ and involving the experiences of an intrepid reporter Ellie as she tries to get to the bottom of the nightly appearances of a mysterious sledger. We were all agreed that the piece was well written and the planned hook a good one. Specific comments were:

• Ellie (as a novice arctic-nik) seemed remarkably unphased by the strange dawn/duck ambience and her ability as a cross-country skier a little too good.

• The time spent describing the dogs was probably excessive.

• Jan has to check her speeds and distances.

• Maybe Ellie should be on a mission to check out all the unexplained legends (Yeti, BigFoot, the Abominal Sledger etc.).

Peter read a short story entitled ‘Ghost House’ which was a tale of a sceptic challenging his disbelief by spending some time in ‘the most haunted house in Britain’ where he has a close encounter of the weird kind. Again a good, strong story. Comments were:

• The Edwardianesque syntax of the girl threw one or two of the listeners, maybe more could be made of her being an en-actor?

• There was a feeling that the ending should be made shorter and punchier and that Peter should find a way of communication the lead characters scepticism earlier.

• Not make the lead character married so the sexual chemistry between him and the girl could be played up.

I read an excerpt from the end of ‘The Demi-Monde: Spring’, the sexy bit involving the seduction of one of his characters. It seemed to go down well with the listeners. Comments were:

• Perhaps make it a little snappier in places.

• One particular switch of POV has to be emphasised for clarity

FREEBIE

2011-06-29T06:42:00.000-07:00

Amanda from HarperCollins has just sent me a few copies of the white-label copy of the US-edition of 'The Demi-Monde: Winter' which is being given out to the William Morrow sales force. I'm now getting knee-deep in various versions of the book (I'd like my dining room back please) so if anyone would like a copy I'd be delighted to send one. Just drop me your address on rodrees@virgin.net.

ALT.FICTION: PART DEUX

2011-06-26T00:27:00.000-07:00

I attended the panel discussion entitled 'The World of Publishing', the panel being John Jarrold (my agent), Lee Harris (editor of Angry Robot), Julie Crisp (editorial director of Tor), Jon Weir (publicity manager for Gollanz) and David Thomas Moore and editor).

Some of the points raised bear repeating. It seems that 90% of submissions to agents/publishers torpedo themselves by not following submission guidelines and by being infested with poor spelling/grammar/punctuation. This results in them heading binwise. New writers have got to realise that publishing is a business and hence has got to be approached in a businesslike manner. I emphasised this at my workshop: getting these hygiene factors (grammar/spelling/layout etc.) is essential. If a writer can't be arsed to spellcheck his or her work then they are signalling that the chances of them meeting editorial deadlines etc. are piss poor. Of course, the corollary of this is that if you do get them right then you're immediately in the top ten per cent of all submissions.

On the subject of self-publishing the panel was surprisingly dismissive. They acknowledged that some new writers had come thru the Kindle ranks but noted that these were amazingly small in number (a handful out of the 3 million books self-published last year in the States) so really nothing much has changed.

There was a comment that some writers, tho' talented, had written books which were perceived as not commercial enough (been there with 'Dark Charismatic'!).

They also looked for enthusiasm in their writers: if a writer wasn't passionate about their work then i) it showed in their work and ii) how were they supposed to be enthused about a book if the writer wasn't.

Food for thought.

ALT.FICTION 2011: PART ONE

2011-06-26T00:02:00.000-07:00

Attended Alt.Fiction held at the QUAD in Derby today. The big change in the twelve months from the last one is that this year I was there as a delegate rather than an attendee. I didn't realise that being a delegate was such bloody hard work!

That's the back of my head folks,
my best side.

I kicked off at 10 am hosting a Writing Workshop entitled 'That Killer First Page' (see a previous blog for details) and what was nice was it was well attended ... eight people which was about eight more than I expected. It seemed to go okay too, helped by the audience being smart and enthusiastic. I rambled on for the prescribed hour, answered questions as best I could and I hope gave some good advice.

Following on from this I enjoyed a coffee with Alison Drakes (lovely lady) re the book she's working on 'Ad Infinitum' and which she'd sent me the first chapter to have a look at. I hope what I said was constructive and helpful and look forward seeing her book in print.

From left to right: me, Pat Kelleher,
Colin Harvey and Guy Haley

Next up was a panel discussion entitled 'Breaking into Writing'. This was my first PD so it was fortunately that I was flanked by people who seemed to know what they were talking about (Guy Haley, Colin Harvey and Pat Kelleher). The room was packed (twenty people?) so it was standing room only and bloody hot. I'm afraid my advice differed a little from that of the other panellists but I suppose it's good that there was a variety of opinions on offer. It was transmitted as a PodCast so I'll post the link as soon as I have it.

Then it was lunch with my agent, John Jarrold, which was very enjoyable. I'm going to be pitching an idea I have for a vampire
whodunit to John which I'm excited about: it'll make a change from the Demi-Monde! I drank too much merlot, tho'.

Tony Ballentyne with two minders

Got back to the QUAD in time do a reading with Tony Ballantyne. Tony read an excellent short story about an enterprising owner of a Chinese restaurant and I read (slightly blurred by merlot, it has to be said) the intro to the Demi-Monde which seem to be well received. We'd finished inside fifteen minutes and I thought it was early shower time but the questions kept coming and we had a really enjoyable forty-five minute discussion. Excellent.

The last thing I attended was the panel discussion entitled 'The World of Publishing' but I'll talk about that at length in a separate blog.

GREEN LANTERN

2011-06-25T23:46:00.000-07:00

Nelli and I took in Green Lantern last night. Kit (+ boyfriend) and Ellie had opted for Pirates (Johnny Depp!!!!!) and as five is certainly too many for company and I didn't want to see Pirates (Johnny Depp!!!!) we finally picked Green Lantern (I mean, the alternative was Kung Fu Panda!). I did this with a certain trepidation having been disappointed by both 'Thor' and 'X-Men: First Class' and with the GL reviews being decidedly mixed. We were both pleasantly surprised.

I have to admit to being a closet fan of GL. I was always drawn to the 2nd tier of superhero comics. I bought 'Metal Men' (now that would make a great movie!) religiously before it folded so prematurely and had a real soft spot for GL. I liked the back story and the reasoning behind GL getting his powers seemed more 'oh, why not' than kids being bitten by atomic spiders or coming to live under yellow suns.

The film's story is pretty straightforward. Hotshot test pilot Hal Jordan - troubled, rebellious, irreverent, defier of authority - in love/hate relationship with classy girl, is a man with a damaged psyche (dad died testing an aircraft). All this angst doesn't stop him being selected to take over as a Galactic Guardian by a dying alien and given the power ring which turns his thoughts into green-tinged reality (cue some really impressive SFX). Taken to alien planet where he is pronounced useless. Goes back to Earth to discover himself. Ultra baddy shows up looking like a cloud with attitude. GL battles cloud and comes out on top. GL gets girl and comes out on top.

Okay, okay ... I know. We're not talking Kubrick here and you won't be seeing a landmark in cinematographic history but shit GL did everything it said on the tin: it was fun, with an engaging hero complete with a mischievous sparkle in his eye, good-looking love-interest, a story that was by-the-numbers but with enough irony to carry the day (though it did get a bit creaky in the middle), some scary moments (too scary for a 12A?) and a few good one-liners. Yeah, it was a good solid Saturday night movie and not a bad way to spend two hours winding down after a hard day.

The big plus was Ryan Reynolds: I thought he nailed the cocky, engaging bastard bit, tho' what Tim Robbins was doing and what role he was playing heaven only knows.

I'd vote it the best superhero movie of 2011 thus far (tho' the Cap America trailers looks terrifc) but that, folks ain't saying a lot.

Score: 7/10

THAT KILLER FIRST PAGE

2011-06-23T03:53:00.000-07:00

I’m holding a workshop at Alt-Fiction in Derby this coming Saturday and I chose for my subject ‘That All-Important First Page’. I did this for the simple reason that unless a would-be author gets this right then all the work he or she has put into their novel is just a waste of time.

Apparently people select their mates on the basis of the first ten seconds of interaction – eyes meeting across a crowded room and all that – and that once this initial impression is forged it is almost impossible to overturn it. It’s the same with books. My agent told me once that he knows by the end of the first paragraph if the book’s any good, and I’m guessing that if a book hasn’t jingled the jangles of the reader (be they agent, publisher or punter) by the end of the first page (max!) then it’s bin time.
On this basis you’ve got 300 words to prevent your magnum opus interfacing with oblivion, so you’ve got to make each and every word count!

Now I’m no expert on creative writing but from what I’ve read (and here I’m referring to the SF/fantasy genre) it seems to me that there are certain things that get me hooked.

1. An intriguing, odd set-up. One of my favourite novels of all time, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ begins like this:

‘What’s it going to be then?’
There was me, that is Alex. And my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.’

How can you resist reading on? I know the odd language might be daunting (a criticism that has been levelled at The Demi-Monde) but to me this communicates a really subversive feel and also that Alex isn’t quite operating on all cylinders.

Then there’s the classic: ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen’. Genius!

2. A crisis, with the hero/heroine in danger. Let’s begin with a cliff-hanger! This is the one I chose for The Demi-Monde (see below) and to make it work you’ve got to avoid passive writing (essentially telling not showing), over-complexity and too much description. Try:

‘The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.’ Stephen King, ‘The Gunslinger’.

3. Mystery. Everyone’s a sucker for a puzzle and well-written mystery will persuade the reader to turn that page in order to find the answer. I suppose the modern master of this is Dan Brown (yeah, I know he ain’t SF but I’m buggered if I can think of a great SF whodunnit. Now there’s a thought ...). If you check out The Lost Symbol (great first page, rotten book) how’s this for a hook:

‘Since the beginning of time, the secret had always been how to die’.

But as they say, physician heal thyself, so I thought I’d analyse the opening page of ‘The Demi-Monde: Winter’ to see how I stacked up.

****

PROLOGUE

Probably a mistake: it seems that a fair few readers don’t read Prologues. Strange but true. Probably better to have been Chapter 1

The Demi-Monde: the 37th Day of Winter, 1004

I used this to communicate that we were in a different world and a different time. Also as I hop between the Demi-Monde and the Real World in the rest of the book it’s a useful device to flag to the reader just which world they’re in.

Norma ran. Picked up her skirts and ran as she had never run in her life. Ran as though the Hounds of Hell were at her heels.

I wanted a short, sharp and exciting opening, this to signal that the book is a thriller. It also introduces my lead protagonist Norma and shows she’s in danger. I put the ‘picked up her skirts’ thing in as an afterthought to show that she’s dressed a little unconventionally.

Fuck it…the Hounds of Hell were at her heels.

Norma’s a feisty modern girl who calls a spade a spade so the use of the ‘Fuck it’ was deliberate to comunicate this. The thought lines are a substitute for dialogue.

And as she ran she heard a crackle of gunfire behind her, the sound of the shots ricocheting through the curfew-silent streets of London. The gunfire told her that Mata Hari and her Suffer-O-Gettes had kept their word. They had tried to delay those SS bastards for as long as they could. Suffer-O-Gettes died hard.

I’m told that the best hooks in a first page are sex and death ... I used danger. The juxtaposition of Mata Hari and the Suffer-O-gettes was an attempt to show that the Demi-Monde is out-of-kilter with our own world.

Run, Norma run! Mata Hari had screamed at her as Clement’s SS-Ordo Templi Aryanis thugs had smashed down the pub’s door. And she had run. She couldn’t - wouldn’t - let the SS catch her.

Mad, evil bastards.

But she was running blind.

Snow-blind.

The short elliptical sentences and paragraphs are designed to give the opening a breathless aspect, just like a running Norma would be.

The snow was so thick that she could barely see a dozen strides in front of her, snow that the icy wind was whipping into her eyes, making them water with pain.

Scene setting: the book is ‘The Demi-Monde: Winter’ when all said and done.

Angrily Norma shook her head, ordering herself to ignore the pain, ignore the cold, ignore the frosted numbness crawling along her fingers and her toes, ignore the protests of her mutinous body. Ordered herself to ignore everything but the need to put as much distance between herself and the animals chasing her as was humanly possible.

The repetition of ‘ignore’ is a writing device called ANAPHORA which consists of repeating a sequence of words thereby lending them emphasis. I did this to help build the tension, to show that Norma was starting to panic and to mimic the rhythm of her running.

She had to forget everything but the need to run. Forget that duplicitous, scheming, treacherous, underhand, slimy, son-of-a-bitch Burlesque Bandstand.

Bastard.

Over-the-top I know but Burlesque is an important character, but he doesn’t make an entrance for a hundred or so pages so I wanted the reader to remember him and Norma’s loathing of him.

****

Considering it's almost three years since I wrote these words I'm not too disappointed with them. I'd probably tweak the opening few words - Run, Norma run! - but other than that it's okay. Got me an agent and a publishing deal anyway, which ain't too shabby!

THIRD PARTY OMNISCIENT

2011-06-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

At one of the recent meetings of the Renegade Writers' Group I attended I betrayed my lack of knowledge of the writing process. One of the attendees read out a story and listening to it I had the distinct impression that the POV jumped around a bit and said so. I was then informed (firmly) that the story had been written in Third Person Omniscient.

D'oh?

It seems that TPO is written from the viewpoint of an all-knowing narrator and not from the POV of one of the characters. I had never really thought about it before so I did some investigating and low-and-behold it seems that it's the preferred aspect for such luminaries as Tolkien, Jane Austen and John Grisham, to name just three. The advice is that it's particularly suited to sweeping fantasy tales and those with multiple characters.

My opinion is that it's also bloody difficult to write effectively. The problem seems to me that written badly it evokes a lack of involvement, everything seems to be at arm's length and it takes a master (or mistress, in Austen's case) to prevent it coming across as flat and emotionless. Of course, it's a personal thing but that's probably why I've never been a great fan of 'The Lord of the Rings', it was just too uninvolving. Grisham pulls me in because his books are so dialogue heavy and the peerless Ms Austen does it by using a device which is anathema to modern editors, lots of letters (too much 'tell' and not enough 'show' for modern sensibilities).

No, I think I'll stick to Third Person Multiple for the time being: at least then I'll always know which character I am at that point of time ... though it's a bugger when you're writing the fourth book of a quartet remembering what each character knew or didn't know. But at least they get to live a little.

Oh hum.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

2011-06-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

The Rees family took a break from revising for A-levels and editing books to take in a movie yesterday. The vote on what to see was split but finally on a minority vote we opted for 'X-Men: First Class'.

Mistake.

Now I'm getting to think that I shouldn't be reviewing superhero movies as I seem to be genetically inclined to loath them but that's not always the case: I loved 'Kick Ass', 'Batman Begins' and am probably the only person on the planet that liked 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.'

I think my problem is that I appraoch superhero films expecting them to aspire to the same emotional content and the same 'suspend disbelief' rigor I demand of every movie I watch. And this is where First Class comes up short.

What underpins the movie's story is the relationship between Charles Xavier (rich American) and Erik Lehnsherr (Jewish auschwitz survivor) who are both possessed of amazing mutant powers. Erik's outlook on life is deformed by his experiences at the hands of the Nazis especially those suffered as a result of him falling into the clutches of a despicable item named Sebastian Shaw. As might be expected, Xavier's attitudes are much more middle-class and liberal. This is an excellent and intriguing premise for the movie and the reason why I wanted to see it in the first place.

So far, so good and the first quarter of the movie (though a trifle long and exposition heavy) augers well. Then we slip into familiar 'superhero origins' territory and the mutants come at us thick, fast and increasingly superficial. With most of the action set in the early 60's it's almost inevitable that the Cuban missile crisis should be the centrepiece of the story (tho' Kennedy's assassination might have been more resonant) and here things start to become unravelled, the killer question being why would Shaw be inclined to precipitate WWIII when as many mutants will die as Normals?

And while the plot is flimsy so unfortunately is the casting. Michael Fasbender as Lehnsherr/Magneto is good, but James McAvoy/Xavier is both too old (Xavier is portraited as a 12 year old in 1944 which makes him only 30 in 1962, not McAvoy's 40) and too British. But while the male characters are bearable the female ones are awful. Coming after the class turn of Rebecca Romijin as Mystique in the first three X-Men films why oh why did they think that Jennifer Lawrence could fill her ... whatever. And January Jones as Emma Frost is nondescript to say the least.

In all the film is too long, too predicatable, has zero emotional heft, has all the characterisational depth of a puddle, has some surprisingly ropey effects (Beast's make-up was appauling) and the historical accuracy is suspect (it was the USSR in 1962 boys, not Russia).

A boring disappointment.

Score: 4/10

eBOOK SPECIAL EDITION

2011-06-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

Being of the opinion that the eBook revolution sweeping thru the publishing world is a Good Thing and that in future books will need to be written to accommodate the abilities of eBooks I was delighted that Quercus were up for giving me a shot at showing what an eBook really can do.

I had written the Demi-Monde so that it would be a submersive experience but unfortunately this is impossible to communicate in print but with eBooks ... the sky is as high as your imagination. The one thing I didn't want is for these features to look tacked on, to be an afterthought. They had to add to the suspension of disbelied by the reader.

Quercus obviously feel the same way so Nelli, Nigel and I went to Quercus on Friday to meet with their new eBook Technician, a chap named Nick Barreto and his boss Iain Millar.

Good meeting.

What has been decided is that there will be a ‘Special Edition’ of the DM Winter eBook, which will take full advantage of all the features available on eBooks to create something unique in the fantasy/SF canon, with a tentative launch date around that of ‘The Demi-Monde: Spring’ hardback (27th December 2011). The extra features to be include are, inter alia:

1. Deleted chapters (totalling about 20,000 words) including

A scene in the White House introducing all the major players in the ForthRight;
A scene showing how Vanka Maykov fell foul of General Skobelev;
A scene showing how Trixie Dashwood met Dabrowski;
An extended scene at Dashwood Manor.

2. 'Woodcut’ pictures illustrating five key incidents in the book. These in the style of the ones used in ‘The Strand’ to illustrate the Sherlock Holmes stories. Ideas we're thinking about include:

The hounders tracking down Norma;
The battle of the barges;
Ella dancing in front of the hounfo;
Terror Incognita seen from the balloon;
Atop ExterSteine.

3. A whole bunch of appendices to include:

The cigar cards of the main characters;
Illustration of how the hounfo trick was done;
ParaDigm’s ‘Product Description Manual’;
The existing Glossary; this hyperlinked to the first use of the term in the book proper.

4. Other extras including a forward by moi (giving me a chance to explain the use of camelCased words and other idiosyncrasies of the DM) and some easter eggs which (natch) we're keeping quiet about.

It's all terrifically exciting!

HOW DID NORMA GET INTO THE DEMI-MONDE?

2011-06-11T00:41:00.000-07:00

Slow Reader has just posted a retraction of part of his review of 'The Demi-Monde: Winter' where he had a little pop at yours truly for not explaining how Norma (my lead character) got into the Demi-Monde.

Having recovered from the shock of a critic apologising (and with my computer STILL not allowing me to post comments) I will explain.

I have written how Norma was traduced into entering the DM, but it would have dragged the pace of 'Winter' if I'd have digressed to explain so I opted instead to indulge in a little script-tease and leave it to later books. Unfortunately having got to 'Fall' (where I had intended to do the final reveal) I suspect that that book's gonna be so long I won't have room. Maybe I'll post it on the web site when all four of the books are out there. I also have to work out how to have Norma use the Ampi-Tor devices without it getting too gynaecological!

Anyway, anyone wanting to check out Slow Reader's review it's on http://slow-sf-reader.blogspot.com/search/label/book%20review

MESSAGE FOR SLOW READER

2011-06-08T06:41:00.000-07:00

Thanks for your comment re Fall - I've been trying to reply but Blogger is playing silly buggers and won't let me.

Yeah, there is a reason why it's called 'Fall' rather than 'Autumn' but I'm afraid you're gonna have to wait until then to find out why. This isn't me being coy or playing Secret Squirrel but mainly because I ain't written the bloody thing yet (and with all this editing I ain't likely to, either!), but the clue is in the word.

Oh, and thanks for the review. Rapid!

SNEAK PEEK

2011-06-08T06:24:00.000-07:00

Amanda at HarperCollins sent me the galleys of 'The Demi-Monde: Winter' and I have to say the Americans have done a cracking job. The book looks really slick and stylish. She also gave me permission to post a few pages for readers to sample so if you're interested here's the link.

http://www.thedemi-monde.com/downloads/Demi-Monde_taster.pdf

Enjoy!

EDIT-ITIS

2011-06-08T06:20:00.000-07:00

I seem to be doing more editing than writing at the moment. I only just got 'The Demi-Monde: Spring' off to Jo Fletcher at Quercus, than I had to turn back to 'Summer' in order to bring the beginning of that book into line with the amended ending of 'Spring'. And no sooner had I done that than I received the galleys of 'Winter' from the Americans! So rather than hitting 'Fall' as I'd planned, I've now got to re-read 'WInter' for about the umpteenth time.

Oh hum. No one told me that editing would come to dominate my life like this. It's a bloody nightmare.

THE DEMI-MONDE: SPRING

2011-06-06T08:56:00.000-07:00

I got the final edit of 'The Demi-Monde: Spring' from Jo Fletcher ten days ago and have been working flat out ever since knocking it into shape. Jo made some interesting observations which necessitated me doing some quite major tinkering - with a book of 150,000 words even a small change ripples through the book and care is needed to ensure consistency. She also wanted a recap of Winter at the start of the book so that had to be written and she thought that one of the new characters deserved a little more page-time. The upshot was a lot of bloody hard work.

I can though give you a sneak-peek at a bit of artwork that'll make its debut in Summer. Again this is curtesy of Nigel Robinson.

Unfortunately all this extra stuff had an inflationary effect: the book ballooned to 156K and as I'm determined it shouldn't go over 150K this required surgery. I ended up dumping one of the chapters, which had the unfortunate effect of reducing Casanova to something of a bit-player, but that's life ... or editing for you.

So, it's off to Merlin the copy-editor now which, hopefully, will be relatively painless, while I turn my attention back to Fall!

POETRY INTERLUDE

2011-05-31T11:53:00.000-07:00

I was going thru my old stuff a couple of days ago and stumbled across a poem I'd written in praise of Science Fiction. I don't want any comments about my lack of a poetical soul ... I know that!

IN PRAISE OF SCIENCE FICTION

Imagination billows the light-sails of my soul…

Here the foul streets itch and crawl

And dyslexic venom tattoos the walls.

My universe is a construct of fantastic fable...

Here kids slam down venomous vodka

To shut out a world rife with degenerate dogma.

I visit realms that exist on the cusp of belief…

Here is a world peopled by ghouls

The wise and the just ruléd by fools.

I dream of far-off worlds, of wormholes, of plasma drives…

Here hopes are turned to tears and dust,

Chewed and spat out like an old stale crust

I see heroines brave the strange unknown...

Here staccato women thinned by conceit

Live out the maxim you are who you eat.

I see heroes who stand tall and true…

Here the poor, the weak and the old

Are devoured and consumed by the vicious, the bold

I battle with ray-guns and photon torpedoes…

Here politicians fight tooth and claw

And honesty’s got more holes than a ten-buck whore

My mind travels to parallel universes...

Here I am trapped in a neo-con cage

And prescription-thinking is the new plague

I journey to the never-been-before…

Here the strong dine on broken wills

Crunching the bones until protest is stilled

I will have none of them…

they cannot imprison my imagination.

ALT.FICTION 2011

2011-05-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

I agreed some time back that I'd be a delegate/presenter/whatever at the 2011 Alt.Fiction weekend being held in the Quad in Derby over the 25th/26th June and now the timetable has landed on my computer.

The first slot I'm down for is the 10 am one on the Saturday where I'm to give a one hour Workshop. Now it'll be a miracle if any bugger turns up but I've been giving some thought to what I'll do if they do. I'm going to dedicate the session to 'That Killer First Page'. In one conversation I had with my agent John Jarrold he advised me that he could tell whether a submission was worth reading by the end of the first page (and often by the end of the first paragraph) so I guess that first sheet is something worth putting a little thought into. I mean, getting that knockout open sentence must be worth a bit of sweat mustn't it? Here's mine: ANYONE COMING TO MY WORKSHOP WITH AN OPENING PAGE OF A BOOK WILL LEAVE THE WORKSHOP WITH A BETTER ONE!

Next up is the 12 Noon gig which is a panel discussion and PodCast (wow!) entitled 'Breaking into Writing'. This makes getting published sounds like a felony but there you go. I'm to be aided and abetted by Guy Haley, Colin Harvey and Pat Kelleher so it should be fun. My aim I think will be to dissuade people from attempting said breaking in on the grounds that there's too much competition as there is.

Finally I get to do a reading in the 'Participation Space' (which sounds moderately revolting and something people making bondage gear are into) from 3pm, my partner in crime being Tony Ballantyne. I'm a tad worried about this as The Demi-Monde contains a lot of swearing, but fuck it ...

Anyway if Alt.Fiction 2O11 is as good as 2010 (which I attended as a punter) then it'll be excellent. Highly recommended and if in doubt try http://altfiction.co.uk/altfictionfest.

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS

2011-05-19T06:28:00.000-07:00

A recent comment I got from HarperCollins was that they thought that anyone who had enjoyed Tarantino's 'Inglorious Basterds' would enjoy 'The Demi-Monde: Winter' persuaded me to check the film out.

I've got a ambiguous attitude to Tarantino's work. I thought 'Reservoir Dogs' was, perhaps, one of the best lo-budget films ever made (shows the importance of a good script); I loved 'Pulp Fiction; and the script for 'True Romance' had some of the best dialogue ever committed to celluloid, but ...

But ever since 'Jackie Brown' I've become disenchanted with Tarantino's work and, frankly, a little bored by his films. It reached the point where I couldn't be bothered to go to see them anymore and that's why I hadn't checked out 'Inglorious Basterds' before this week.

So ... All in all I thought 'Inglorious Basterds' was a potentially great film torpedoed by the lack of a strong editor. It must be difficult when you have a film maker like Tarantino, hailed as a genuis and revered as an auteur, to say, 'Excuse me, Quintin, but I think this would be a better film if ...' but that's what 'Inglorious Basterds' was crying out for. It was too long, too indulgent and too bloated to be anything more than 'interesting'. Of course, the Tarantino trademarks were there: the episodic action, the somewhat surreal situations, the cracking dialogue, the neat denouement but these were undermined by a meandering storyline, some ho-hum cinematography, a real lack of tension and some truely weird acting.

I mean, who was Christopher Waltz playing and which comic book had he found him in? What is it with actors asked to play Nazi villains that they automatically reach for the pills labelled 'Over the Top'? Worse tho' was that Waltz's lack of acting chops was signalled from the word 'go' by him having to play against - and be upstaged by - Denis Menochet. That said some of the other acting was terrific (here I'm especially thinking of Melanie Laurent).

The upshot is what do I think those who liked 'Inglorious Basterds' will like about 'The Demi-Monde: Winter'? I hope it's the episodic action, the surreal situations, the cracking dialogue and the neat denouement. I also hope it'll remind them of 'Pulp Fiction' rather than 'Inglorious Basterds'.

TEMPORAL MYOPIA

2011-05-09T03:49:00.000-07:00

The first piece of for-publication writing I ever did was twenty-five years ago. I had an article published in ‘Management Accounting’ (November 1986) entitled Thinking the Unthinkable or Overcoming Temporal Myopia. The odd thing is that it’s this piece which has been the inspiration for a short story I’ve just written called Temporal Myopia.

The Management Accounting article described a phenomena I called temporal myopia – the difficulty managers have in considering possible future situations which are outside their own experience and which makes it difficult for them to conceive of discontinuous futures, to embrace the likelihood of change and to act courageously and decisively to mould their organisations such that it is in a position to survive these changes and to profit from them. It went on to explain how a consideration of long-wave economic cycles could be used to help overcome temporal myopia.

The father of long-wave cycles is a Russian economist of the 1920s, Nikolai Kondratieff – a real hero of mine and a major player in The Demi-Monde: Spring – who theorised that in major industrial nations economic activity waxed and waned in a cyclical fashion, these cycles having a frequency of between 48 and 60 years. The interesting thing is that the bottoming of the latest cycle came – you guessed it – in 2008!

It makes me wonder if what I was writing then was more SF than what I’m writing now.

UK PAPERBACK

2011-05-06T00:44:00.000-07:00

The UK paperback will be out in September so I got the proofs of the cover yesterday. It's essentially the hardback cover (though thankfully with the right map this time) but we've rehashed the blurb on the back which I think is a lot more punchy.

There are also three quotes:

'The Demi-Monde: Discworld's savage noir cousin. Welcome to holo-hell' from Stephen Baxter which is a storming piece of writing.

'Delectably dark ... A feisty and nightmarishly enjoyable debut' from the Sunday Times.

And 'The world he's created is a psychopathic mightmare, while Ella by contrast, is a touchingly vulnerable heroine whose quest is frought with both physical and psychological dangers' from the Guardian.

Personally I'd have gone with Burlesque Bandstand's 'A fucking brilliant book'.

Or even Nigel's favourite: "Occult Stalinist Nazi Vampires versus the Lesbian Supremacists."

SHOUTLINES

2011-05-05T23:21:00.000-07:00

HarperCollins in America are obviously busy with designing the US cover of The Demi-Monde: Winter because they asked me if I had any ideas regarding ‘reading lines’ which are the teaser lines which go under the titles of books (check out the 'The Future is Bones and Ruins' tag on the cover of Patrick Lee’s book). I think they’re called ‘shoutlines’ in the UK.

Anyway (with the help of Nigel) this is what I came up with:

• Evil re-Incarnate (my favourite)

• Past Present: Future ImPerfect (I quite like this too).

• Enter a world where nothing is as it was … or as it will be.

• Abandon hope all ye who enter here (terrible).

• Perversity, thy name is the Demi-Monde (even more terrible).

• $5 million for her life … but how much for her soul.

• Where reality has never been more real … or more dangerous.

• The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportionate to its strangeness (a quote from Laplace)

• Evil is a never just a game.

• Evil plays to win.

• Evil never obeys the rules.

• Virtual unReality.

• Virtual Evil.

• History has come back to haunt us.

• History takes its revenge.

• Our past has come back to haunt us.

• Our past takes its revenge.

• It’s impossible to contain evil.

• You can imagine evil but you can’t contain it.

• A game with rules and without conscience.

• Virtually evil.

• In the Demi-Monde trust nobody … not even yourself.

• Survival is never just a game.

• unReal Estate

Nigel’s suggestions were:

• The past couldn't be more intense... the future more imperfect.

• Evil unbound

• Virtually real. Practically inescapable. Totally evil.

• Get with the Program.

• Persecution, Terror, Genocide... we've got an app for that (this is too close to the apple ads, but I'm sure you could get something good out of that)

• It's not quite as simple as that...

• Now, that's strange

• Two young girls and one world war.

• A future, haunted by the past

• A whole world of pain.

• To lose one girl, Mr President, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness (not really).

• NOW your fucked! (not really, again)

• Games without frontiers. It's a knockout. (not really, again, sorry)

• "Occult Stalinist Nazi Vampires versus the Lesbian Supremacists." (really)

It’ll be interesting to see what HC finally decide but it was a fun exercise anyway.

THE WOLD NEWTON CONNECTION 5

2011-04-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

The Diary of Percy Cavor

13th December 1795 (Evening)

Bole Manor, the Village of Wold Newton, Yorkshire

Fortunately the rantings of Countess Karnstein were somewhat abruptly ended by the impact of a meteor. Not that we were immediately aware that this was the case.

There was a loud ‘bang’ presaging the arrival of this celestial wanderer which shook Bole Manor to its very foundations to be followed a few moments later by a second ‘bang’ as the meteor hit the ground. Immediately the Manor was suffused in an eerie green light and the copper wires von Frankenstein had hung about the room glowed red. Crockery was shaken from the table, several vases were persuaded to fall from the mantle, the candles illuminating the drawing room were altogether extinguished and Lady Hortense, poor delicate lamb, was knocked to the ground.

My immediate thought was that we had fallen under artillery bombardment and that those duplicitous Frogs had decided to export their revolutionary cant to these fair islands in a violent manner. So concerned was I that, in an effort to save Lady Hortense from their treachery, I threw myself across her and enveloped her protectively in my arms, the lady seeming very pleased with my gallantry. Fortunately this assumption of Gallic duplicity was soon disabused: Heathcliff entered the room to announce in a stentorian voice that ‘a black ball’s come smashing out of the sky bashing a damned great hole in a field by Wold Cottage and near taking John Shipley’s bloody head off in the process’.

It says much for the disarray of the party that no one reprimanded the man for his use of such uncouth language but I suppose we were all somewhat distracted. You will appreciate, Dear Journal, that a meteor going to ground in Yorkshire is a rare and peculiar event. For a moment all was chaos but then von Frankenstein was moved to make an urgent examination of the electro-magnetic measuring instruments he had set up, searching for intelligence regarding the effect of the meteor’s arrival. After a moment’s perusal von Frankenstein was able to declare that all those residing in Bole Manor had been subjected to a dose of electro-stimulation a thousand times greater than that ever experienced by a human being.

A somewhat sobering announcement to be sure, but on reflection not one that I was able to correlate with any physical or mental alteration to my person. As I stood away from the delightfully soft and yielding form of Lady Hortense, the only effects I was moved to note was that my hair now stood on end, that there was an odd tingling sensation in my fingers, a stiffening in my nether regions and that my sense of balance was momentarily confused (as was that of Lady Hortense, the lady being obliged to lean against me for support). But other than these I could discern no ill-effects of this electro-stimulation.

Therefore it was without a moment’s hesitation that I accepted Sir Algernon’s suggestion that we should go to investigate this singular occurrence. So, laden with devices von Frankenstein declared indispensible with regard to the prosecution of a correct scientific examination of the meteor, we all took our leave of the house to the half mile to the spot where the meteor had landed.

On arrival at the crater we scientists were denied the opportunity to examine the meteor by the intervention of the local magistrate, Major Edward Topham. It appears there was some bad blood between the Boles and the Tophams, and no matter how insistent Sir Algernon was that his august colleagues should be allowed to examine the meteor, Major Topham was equally insistent that they should not, being determined to wait upon the arrival of the local militia and their announcement as to the benign nature of the meteor. This infuriated Sir Algernon and the conversation quickly became rancorous.

I am not, Dear Journal, a man given to ill-disciplined argument and as the discussion became increasingly heated I decided to slip away and examine the countryside for other pieces of meteor debris. My decision and my footsteps appear to have been directed by Fate. Approximately one hundred yards from the crater I stumbled upon several small fragments of rock which I first took to be Chondrite. However on closer examination I came to note the rock’s amazingly light weight and its green, almost luminescent, colouration, these idiosyncrasies I was unable to attribute to any substance known on earth. I was convinced that these fragments of rock were of alien provenance having been stripped from the main body of the meteor when it entered the earth’s atmosphere.

But even more astonishing discoveries awaited me. Having secreted my rock fragments in my specimen bag, I began to walk quickly back to Bole Manor in order that I might examine my finds more closely by the use of Sir Algernon’s Leeuwenhook enlarger. It was as I passed under the branches of an oak tree that I espied the most wondrous object. There, hovering unsupported some fifteen feet from the ground, was a rock roughly spherical in shape and perhaps three inches in diameter. At first I could not believe my eyes but having clambered up the tree and studied the object from a distance of but a few inches I must tell you that its state of levitation could only be achieved by some particular property enabling it to defy gravity.

THOR: PRESUMABLY THE NORSE WORD FOR CRAP

2011-04-26T05:42:00.000-07:00

This review contains spoilers which only the limp-brained wouldn’t guess anyway!

Went to see ‘Thor’ last night and I suppose I should begin my review by ‘fessing up that he is one of my least favourite Marvel characters (Daredevil runs him close) so I wasn’t over-excited about the film but I was willing to give it a fair-minded shot.

The film’s story is typically anodyne Prologue/Three Act blockbuster fare. Expositional Prologue giving us a headsup on the whole Asgard thingy and explains how Odin (a quite embarrassed looking Anthony Hopkins, who I suspect demanded more money once he’d seen his costume) had defeated the evil frost giants and brought peace to the Nine Worlds. First Act: introduction of Hero, the eponymous Thor (a charisma-less Chris Hemsworth) who is an arrogant, overbearing lout, dazzled by his own popularity, and the Villain, his envious brother Loki (a subtle portrayal by Tom Hiddleston, but Tom, believe me, this sure as hell wasn’t the place for subtlety). A lets-show-off-our-special-effects battle scene leads to Thor being banished from Asgard and Odin having what appears to be a stroke. Second Act: Thor minus powers and his magic hammer, Mjöllnir, arrives on earth where he meets love interest Natalie Portman (so wooden I suspect a wardrobe could have given a better performance) and learns humility, modesty and how to be less of a wuss. Third Act: Redemption. Thor gets his powers back, goes home to defeat sneaky Loki and gets a hug from dad who has miraculously recovered.

I mean, is this really the best Hollywood scriptwriting could come up with? Hackneyed, predictable, and totally devoid of any tension this is by-the-numbers scriptwriting at its worst. They must have twigged how turgid it all was when they desperately tried to shoehorn some humour into the thing (mostly provided by Kat Demmings who was the best thing in the movie). Talking of shoehorning, couldn’t they have integrated the cameos of characters from the Avengers movie with a little more finesse: Hawkeye looked ridiculously out of place.

Okay, so the special effects were STUNNING but surely a movie should be more than just pyrotechnic eye-candy?

It seems that once again my opinion is at odds with the rest of the cinema-going public who have given the film a massive thumbs-up. For my part I thought the whole thing was irredeemably boring but perhaps the most telling criticism came from Nelli: she fell asleep.

Rod’s score: 4/10

Nelli’s score: 2/10

THE WOLD NEWTON CONNECTION 4

2011-04-25T02:26:00.000-07:00

The Diary of Percy Cavor

13th December 1795 (after luncheon)

Bole Manor, the Village of Wold Newton, Yorkshire.

I write this entry perplexed that I may have neither the wit nor the placidity of mind to faithfully and accurately record the many and wonderful events of this day. Oh, I thank God that He has graced me with the opportunity to see such magnificent sights, to better perceive the elegant but infinitely complex workings of his universe and to come to possess …

After breakfast von Frankenstein commandeered the library and there began to assemble the most strange and novel of devices, which combined batteries of Leyden jars (albeit of a unique and esoteric design) connected to a Franklin lightning tower von Frankenstein had Heathcliff erect in the garden. Once satisfied that his electrical engine was connected in a correct and satisfactory manner he draped a profusion of copper wire about the room such that those sitting in its centre would be enveloped by any electrical charge von Frankenstein conjured through the wire.

His preparations complete and chairs arrange before a podium, von Frankenstein took the floor and for a full sixty minutes directed an impassioned monologue towards his small audience making the outrageous and blasphemous claim that through his enquiries with regard to those poor souls beset by Moral Insanity he had detected a second, latent species of the genus homo lurking within Man. This second species he christened Dark Charismatics or H.Singularities. In the doctor’s estimation H.Singularity was a taxon wholly distinct and wholly antithetical to H.Sapien.

Von Frankenstein further contented that the occasional rousing of the Dark Charismatic within Man was the cause of the periodic rise to prominence of exceptional and brutal individuals who, with distressing regularity, plunged the world into turmoil and revolution and threatened the order of civilisation. He cited such individuals as Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun and Vlad the Impaler as examples of those individuals whose malevolent Dark Charismatic aspect had come to dominate the kinder, more Christian, H.Sapien side. Von Frankenstein went on to state that he had - following the work of Galvani regarding the bioElectricality of the human body - amassed a body of experimental evidence which suggested that the Dark Charismatic within Man could be roused by the said body being subject to electro-magnetic radiation.

He went on to state that he wished to conduct just such an experiment but for this he would need to tap into the electrical discharges made during a thunderstorm. It was for this reason he had had the tower built in the garden. Unfortunately, as the day seemed clear and bright, the prospect of accessing such an unpredictable force of nature seemed remote,

In the discussion which followed Sir Algernon supported von Frankenstein’s theories, placing before his guests information he had uncovered whilst on an archaeological expedition to Kerch in the Crimean. Here he had been made aware of the legend of a pre-Deluge civilisation - matriarchal in nature - presided over by the Goddess Lilith. Lilith had, so the legend had it, caused three new races to rise from the soil of the earth: the Lilithi (a race of women blessed with a strange hive-like consciousness); the Grigori (a warrior race); and the Kohanim (a race of intellectuals). Bole wondered if it was the intermingling of these races with Man that had somehow given rise to von Frankenstein’s Dark Charismatics.

It was William Jekyll who took this line of speculation further, wondering if these ‘mongrels’ could, perhaps, be the genesis of such fabulous creatures as vampyres and others of their ilk.

This comment elicited a profound and excessive reaction from Countess Karnstein. The woman leapt to her feet and wagging a finger in Jekyll’s face loudly and angrily announced ‘zhat you dabble mit forces beyond your comprehension’. Fortunately before this confrontation could become rancorous, proceedings were interrupted by the arrival of a meteor.

EASTERCON: SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS

2011-04-25T02:11:00.000-07:00

Sandy Auden being stalked by Harvey

Nell and I attended EasterCon over the Easter weekend and I have to say I was disappointed.

Now as a newbie to this whole SF/Fantasy convention lark I suppose it’s a bit cheeky of me to criticise but having in recent years gone through similar experiences with the jazz fraternity I’m starting to see a lot of eerie and quite disturbing similarities.

Let’s get back to first principles. What are the objectives of conventions like EasterCon? To my mind these are threefold:

• To provide a time and a place where like-minded people with similar interests can get together, have a good time, exchange gossip, get pissed and generally hangout;

• To provide a platform where those – especially the young – who have an interest, albeit possibly nascent, in SF/Fantasy can be inculcated into the brother/sisterhood;

• To give an event where new ideas/developments can be aired and tested.

The queue for the cash machine

Now EasterCon certainly achieved the first objective. In many ways it was like wandering into a family reunion which can be a little intimidating to newbies but as everybody was very accommodating and friendly this wasn’t much of a problem. The real problem with family reunions is that they are comfortable affairs and this is where the parallels with the jazz fraternity come to mind. The jazzers LOVED moaning that they weren’t understood/appreciated/valued (delete as applicable) but actually LOVED it that they were misunderstood/under appreciated/undervalued. They loved being a minority, a little esoteric community, with its own patois and the complacent belief that the mainstream didn’t have the nous to dig what they were digging. Maybe it’s an age thing. It isn’t just attitude where the SF community apes the jazzers: its demographics are weirdly similar too. I guess the average age at EasterCon was 45 and probably the organisers should be aiming to shave at least 10 years off that if they want to avoid a pipe and slippers image.

Authors debate
the extinction of the species
WouldYouSignMyBookus

Which brings me on to the second objective: attracting young people. Young people are the life blood of any organisation and they have to be encouraged, so I was thinking what my two teenage daughters would make of EasterCon and the answer is not much. It was held in a too inaccessible venue; it was too expensive (£32 for two sandwiches and a couple of coffees is taking the piss); there was nowhere to go outside the venue; and, the biggest deterrent, the content was, to say the least, retro (more on that below). The jazzers were always yakking about ‘encouraging the young’ but they didn’t really like them at their conventions because they changed things. Maybe that’s why jazz is such a niche art form. I’d hate for SF/Fantasy to fall into the same trap.

Jo Fletcher and Peter Coleborn discuss
how they could have spent
£450 on one round of drinks

The final objective: the testing of new ideas/developments. For a conference celebrating those who like to think the unthinkable and envisage strange new futures I was struck by how traditional the programme was and how insular. I was half expecting some events to be sponsored by the electronic/internet companies exploring emerging technologies or maybe talks under the auspices of the New Scientist or even the major games companies describing how they come up with their story platforms. These, I guess, would be some of the things that would attract and hold Kit and Ellie, because today talking heads just don’t cut it. And whilst on the subject of talking heads: the occasional dissenting voice (maybe from outside the SF community) would be nice to stir things up otherwise we don’t have panel discussions, we have cosy chats.

Maybe I’m missing the point and maybe EasterCon has a purpose I just don’t get. But having been once, I’m not sure I’ll go again. EasterCon is the same age as me and I think we’re both a little too set in our ways to change.

DEMI-MONDE POSTER RAGE!

2011-04-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

I've been attending EasterCon this weekend - it's the big SF convention in the UK (more of it anon) and as I was doing a couple of signings I thought it would be a good idea to put a few posters up around the place advertising my presence and alerting people to the fact that I was giving a poster away free with each book. The poster I chose to do this was the Heydrich one.

When I arrived on Saturday ... no posters. It seemed that one elderly gentlemen had gotten really bent outta shape ('very emotional' or so I was told) about Herr Heydrich being used to promote a book. He said and here I quote 'I didn't fight in the war to see the likes of him being stuck up everywhere'.

Now, I have a big thing about censorship (any censorship) as I think once you muzzle people it's a slippery slope towards muzzling ALL the people but what was so remarkable about this particular incident is that this chap's objections were self-defeating. Presumably he fought in WWII to stop the likes of Heydrich ever coming to power again but to do that people have to remember! Unfortunately I suspect (and here I make a sweeping assumption) that the majority of those under-25 have never heard of Heydrich and his involvement with the Holocaust. Which brings me back to my old hobbyhorse: if kids aren't taught history in school then the chances of them repeating the mistakes of previous generations are multiplied.

So it's left to writers (and film-makers and the rest) to fill the gap.

The Demi-Monde portrays Heydrich (and Beria, Robespierre et al) just as they were: cold-bloodied psychopaths. In no way does it celebrate these monsters, romanticise them or apologise for their actions. Perhaps this elderly gentlemen should have read the book before he made his protest. After all, presumably one of the things he was fighting for was freedom of expression.

THE WOLD NEWTON CONNECTION 3

2011-04-24T01:33:00.000-07:00

The Diary of Percy Cavor

13th December 1795 (Morning)

Bole Manor, the Village of Wold Newton, Yorkshire.

I met the others who make up the party at breakfast. They are, I note thankful for the privacy I am afforded by this journal, an eclectic and somewhat daunting group of individuals a number of whom, if I was not a guest and hence obliged to act as a gentleman, I would be right persuaded to avoid. Such is the state of nervousness they have engendered that I am beset by an almost overwhelming inclination to run from his house.

But I must not allow such hysterical emotions to have ascendancy.

I reference the principal in our strange ménage first. Doctor Manfred von Frankenstein is a small man, pale and wan in countenance, who complains interminably of the cold, making many and very public criticisms of the drafts – of which there are many – in Bole Manor. He came to breakfast swathed in a long scarf and wearing woollen mittens, which he removed only reluctantly in order that he might manipulate his fork more correctly. His opinion of English cuisine is similarly scathing being very suspicious of the sausages he was served. Young though he is – I estimate that is not yet five-and-twenty – there is an unpleasant arrogance about him, exemplified by the way he wears his shirt collar, the wings coming high up on his cheeks giving him a disdainful look. He smells abominably too, perfumed by a rancid mingling of pomposity and piety.

I disliked the man on sight and manoeuvred myself to sit as far from him as the dining table would allow.

Unfortunately the result of this stratagem was to place me in the chair next to that occupied by William Jekyll, a man, I suspect, who has been overly influenced by the lunatics he attends. Jekyll, it transpires, is visiting surgeon at Eavesham Asylum, an establishment situate fifteen miles north of London where he ministers to the incorrigibly mad. It would appear these onerous – and according to Jekyll, thankless – responsibilities have imbued the man with an alarming number of tics and twitches. He sat on his chair forever fidgeting and sniffing like some recalcitrant schoolboy, ceaselessly dabbing his handkerchief to his mouth and flicking at his cuffs. I will not sit next to him again.

Professor Yuri Andreevich Petrov in contrast is calmness personified. He is tall and well-made, deports himself in a most dignified manner and though a Russian possesses excellent English (unlike Frankenstein’s which is distorted by a heavy German accent). I like Petrov and have decided in future I will favour his company above all others (with the exception of the delightful Lady Hortense, of course).

I leave the most peculiar guest until last. Peculiar but enigmatic: the Countess Mircalla Karnstein came to the breakfast room as though dressed for a funeral, being swathed from her hat to her shoes in the deepest and most uncompromising black. Her gown, although fashionably close cut, was made from a satin of such profound ebony that it seemed to ensnare the light in the room. Her face was covered by a veil of black tulle that fell from a small pill box hat that sat rakishly to the side of her head. With her face and features masked so effectively it was impossible to tell the age of the woman, but by the way she held herself and by the energetic manner in which she emphasised her conversation with her hands, I have determined that she is young rather than old: perhaps around thirty years of age. The Countess did not eat and neither did she engage me in conversation, but though I had no intercourse with the woman, I nevertheless felt a great unease at being in her company.

These, Dear Journal, are the dramaticus personae with whom I will pass the next few days, days I anticipate with a burgeoning dread.

THE WOLD NEWTON CONNECTION 2

2011-04-21T13:32:00.000-07:00

The Diary of Percy Cavor

12th December 1795

Bole Manor, the village of Wold Newton, Yorkshire

I arrived safe and well, if in a state of considerable dishevelment and much perturbation of mind, at Bole Manor just after seven of the clock. I will not trouble your patience with a studious reminiscence of my tedious and unpleasant journey from London: suffice it to say that said journey took seven days, many changes of carriage and the revealed understanding that the standard of accommodation offered to travellers diminishes in direct proportion to the distance hostelries are from our nation’s capital.

Such were the rigors of the journey that I find myself at a loss to understand why a personage as elevated as Sir Algernon Bole chooses to tolerate residing in such a backwater as Wold Newton. It is a pretty enough sort of place, though nondescript architecturally and very confined, but this pleasing aspect is, I suspect, slight compensation for the isolation dwelling here must, perforce, impose on a scientist of Sir Algernon’s rank, removing him as it must from the intellectual cut and thrust of London Society.

I can only assume the Sir Algernon wishes to ensure the fruits of his scientific studies remain private and confidential.

The length of the journey did, however give me ample time to reflect upon my decision to accept the invitation made so generously – and unexpectedly – by Sir Algernon to visit Bole Manor. I use the word ‘unexpectedly’ with regard to the invitation as, previous to the invitation’s receipt, I had enjoyed only the most tentative of acquaintance with Sir Algernon. I seems, however, that the paper I submitted to the Royal Society entitled ‘The Peculiar and Interesting Effects of Extreme Magnetic Flux on the Workings of the Body’ caught Sir Algernon’s eye and provoked him to offer me the opportunity to participate in the scientific soiree he is hosting in this very house tomorrow.

Quite why my enquiries regarding magnetic flux could be of interest to one, such as Sir Algernon, whose investigations are of a more anthropological bent is beyond me. But as Sir Algernon has no small reputation within scientific circles - his especial passion being the study of the ancient civilisations which flourished in preDeluge Anatolia – it would have been churlish to refuse: churlish and fiscally foolhardy. The Bole fortune is reputedly vast (being derived, I understand, from the slave trade) and has been used to generously fund the work of talented but impecunious scientists, within whose ranks I am numbered. Thus I grasped with alacrity the opportunity to meet and to discourse with a number of the more celebrated of Europe’s scientists and by doing so to impress Sir Algernon.

However, having met the man, I am of a mind to criticise the precipitous enthusiasm with which I accepted the invitation. Sir Algernon is a most singular individual with quite a forbidding disposition.

But I get a little ahead of myself.

Upon my arrival, tired and travel stained, I was ushered without the least ceremony or my being given the opportunity to repair my dishabille into the drawing room, where I was greeted by Sir Algernon and his fiancée, Lady Hortense Steele, who is to act as hostess for those select individuals Sir Algernon had brought together at the Manor.

It is with no false modesty that I attest my belief that I am a broad-minded individual, blessed with a malleable and phlegmatic temperament, and hence I was not immediately discomforted by the oddity of Sir Algernon’s form or appearance – the man is peculiarly tall, peculiarly thin and peculiarly pale – but my sangfroid was tested by his icy cold demeanour.

When I was brought before Sir Algernon there was such little warmth evinced in his greeting that my initial – and very disturbing – impression was that Sir Algernon had developed a premature and quite unjustified aversion to me. He was reluctant to shake my hand or to rest his gaze upon me except for the most fleeting of glances. But now on reflection I believe Sir Algernon to be afflicted by a most extreme and debilitating form of misanthropy: he loathes his fellow man. But there is more: as I stood in that room I came to realise that though a fine fire blazed in the hearth, the room was chilled. It was as though Sir Algernon’s antipathy drew all the warmth from the place.

I must record that the man unnerved me.

The remarkable thing is that Sir Algernon’s fiancée, Lady Hortense, is the very antithesis of her husband-to-be. She is a remarkably handsome young woman, though perhaps a trifle tall to be ever thought a beauty. She is also something of a rarity in the Society of Georgian England in that she is well-educated and decidedly well-read and out-spoken on many matters. Fortunately, for the sanguinity of mind with which I anticipate my sojourn, where Bole is frosty and aloof she is all smiles and gaiety. Together they make an ill-matched pair and one can only speculate that it is the Bole fortune that persuades her to stand at his side as his putative bride.

The conversation with Sir Algernon was mercifully brief. He advised me that the rest of the party would be arriving from Scarborough – there they had been taking the waters – tomorrow and will comprise Doctor Manfred von Frankenstein from Ingolstadt in Bavaria, who is, without doubt the most prestigious Alienist and pathological anatomist in Europe; Professor Yuri Andreevich Petrov, Head of the Natural Sciences Department of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences and a man whose papers regarding gravity I have found profound and illuminating; William Jekyll, a leading authority on lunacy and disorders of the mind; and the Countess Mircalla Karnstein, who is, it seems, the world’s foremost expert on preDeluge history.

A strange and eclectic group to be sure, especially as Sir Algernon has brought us together to debate a remarkable discovery made by von Frankenstein regarding Man’s soul and the resulting theory that H.Sapiens might be the unwitting host for a second and much more visceral species. I am advised that the Baron, somewhat whimsically, calls this his ‘Cuckoo Contention’.

In view of the sensitivity and the potentially scandalous nature of the topic – especially within Church circles – to be discussed, Sir Algernon has arranged that he and his guests will, after luncheon tomorrow, be attended by only one of his staff, his mulatto butler, Heathcliff, a man in whom Sir Algernon places immense trust.

I repaired to my room, my head abuzz with a concoction of disparate emotions: eager anticipation of meeting and debating with my fellow scientists; trepidation of further experiencing Sir Algernon’s frost; and excitement at the prospect of being in the company of the lovely Miss Hortense Steele.

THE WOLD NEWTON CONNECTION 1

2011-04-21T03:45:00.000-07:00

Lord Cardigan who blogs on Precipitation with Insight has been speculating that the Demi-Monde has a Wold Newton connection. So I suppose I have to 'fess up: there is but it's quite tenuous (or maybe not!). Much of it revolves around the discovery of Cavorite. So (with dutiful acknowledgement of the genius of Philip Jose Farmer) I thought some readers might find it interesting to learn how the Cavors came to discover Cavorite and (some) of the ramifications this had on the world. To begin ...

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

A Statement made by Professor Thomas Cavor and written on the 1st January 1947

To my unseen Reader...salutations!

A New Year dawns but rather than heralding hope and a belief in better times to come I sense that 1947 will bring misery and hardship unprecedented in human history. These are dark days. We are only a scant five months on from the rude announcement of the dawning of the Age of the Atom but already I feel the heavy hand of dread destiny gripping the world.

But is not the threat of such a fearful and uncertain future that renders me so pessimistic, rather it is the knowledge that my disagreements with Sir Roderick Bole grow ever more vehement and, as a consequence, that this will be my last year on this earth. A somewhat melodramatic statement some of you might judge, but of my imminent demise I have little doubt. Sir Roderick is a man who deals with those who oppose him in a decisive fashion and I have opposed him in the matter closest to his black heart: power.

This being the case, and having no use for the proposition that Paradise awaits me, I have devised my own way of unburdening my soul and of alerting you, Dear Reader, to the strange events that have so wilfully shaped history since 1795 and which now conspire to make Bole (and ParaDigm Enterprises) the pre-eminent power on earth. More, I do this in the hope that being forewarned you might be forearmed and careful of those such as the Boles, the Kentons and the Jekylls who would seek to subjugate Mankind and to deny us free-will.

My story will, I suspect, astonish and alarm those of you of a more hysterical disposition, and many will consider it to be nothing more than a fanciful product of a mischievous and malevolent imagination. My claims, I have no doubt, will be mocked.

So be it.

But being mocked does not alter the veracity of what I will relate. I pledge to you that the events related below are facts, but being advised by Laplace that ‘the weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness’ as proof I have appended faithfully rendered and apostilled facsimiles of the pertinent diary entries of my ancestors. These I trust, with just a modest alleviation of the narrow-mindedness of which we British are prone, will speak persuasively, such that those reading this letter and its addendums will be moved to believe. To these, the more fair-minded members of my putative audience, I say look around and if you see a congruity of your history and mine, then beware, for death and destruction walk behind you!

To begin.

Overleaf you will find the diary entry made by my great-great grandfather on that fateful day in December 1795 when he was invited to attend a scientific soiree in Bole Manor situated in Wold Newton.

Read … and prepare to be amazed.

FLIM-FLAM

2011-04-17T13:15:00.001-07:00

I’ve got an idea for a story which involves a psychic reading so I thought I’d do a little background research. With that in mind Nelli and I attended the ‘Psychic Evening’ at Ye Olde Dog and Partridge (I kid you not) in Tutbury, a village just up the road from where we live.

Now, as one of the main characters in ‘The Demi-Monde: Winter’, a guy called Vanka Maykov, is a faux-psychic, I’d already done some pretty extensive background reading into the art of ‘cold reading’ and ‘flim-flamming’ so I went well prepared but not, I hasten to add, in a particularly cynical frame of mind. Rather I was of a mind to be amazed.

I wasn’t.

The woman (who will remain nameless to spare her blushes) looked the part – middle-aged, dreamy, sort of fey looking – and the table she was using was dressed to impress – tarot cards, ribbons, a table cloth embroidered with what looked like elves. So I sat down, she closes her eyes as though in deep thought and we’re off.

Now let’s digress a moment to see what non-verbal clues I’d given this woman just by the act of sitting down. She’d know that I’m a married man (wedding ring); that I’m around sixty (so probably retirement looming, children off and running, parents dead); that I’ve got no noticeable impediments (I don’t limp and I’ve still got the use of all my appendages); and that as I’ve come for a psychic reading then I must have a reason for being willing to part with twenty quid for thirty minutes of her time.

It was this last aspect she tested first: ‘I hope you haven’t come here to test me?’ she asked’. No, not to test, merely to learn.

Then it was ‘I see the presence of a woman hovering around you. Has your mother recently departed for the world of spirits?’ No, my mother died 15 years ago. ‘You were close to your mother’. Wrong again … actually very wrong again. ‘You are going through a change in your life’. Nope and I ain’t menopausal either. She frowned and said I was difficult to read.

She tried another tack, asking me to choose a piece of ribbon from a bundle. I chose green. She stroked it for a while and then put it down. I never did find out the significance of picking green.

‘Let’s try the cards’. I had to shuffle the tarot cards, she split them into piles (seven, if I remember aright) and I had to pick one. She turned them over, arranged them, rearranged them, frowned, took a sip of water, frowned and then put them down. ‘You have a daughter’. Good try: I’ve got three actually. ‘The youngest has healing hands’. Only if you can ply them from around your throat but I let this observation slide. ‘She is a nurse or a teacher.’ Here my psychic was making a judgement based on my age but as Ellie is the progeny of my second marriage, she’s still at school. I told the psychic this. ‘Then she’s going to be a teacher or a nurse’. Again had all the hallmarks of a bloody good guess. I’m reasonably well-spoken so the chances are my daughter will be too: therefore she ain’t gonna be working in Costa Coffee, and as the professions with the highest number of female participants are teaching and nursing, my psychic was just playing the odds.

I won’t bore you with the rest of it: suffice it to say that even the psychic got embarrassed and halved the fee to ten pounds. But what the session did was get me thinking that it would be possible to devise a foretelling programme based purely on algorithms because that, in a crude way, was what my psychic was doing, picking up cues and then making educated assumptions based on those cues.

I think there may be a story in it after all: not artificial intelligence but artificial prescience.

THE WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE

2011-04-14T01:21:00.000-07:00

Reading the blog of Lord Cardigan (Precipitation With Insight) regarding Wold Newton got me thinking that perhaps it was time to pay tribute to the great man himself, Philip Jose Farmer.

Some of you younger readers might not have heard of PJF but he was an inspirational (he certainly inspired me!) writer. Sadly PJF died last year but he lives on in his books and to my mind his greatest work was the Riverworld series which were instrumental in persuading me to populate the Demi-Monde with historical characters. If you haven’t read the books I urge you to do so: they are simply marvellous pieces of fantasy and packed with imagination.

The other thing that PJF did was introduce sex to SF. Even today his books ‘Image of the Beast’ and ‘Blown’ have the power to shock – the remembrance of what the girl with the steel teeth did still lingers.

Probably though, what PJF is best remembered for is the creation of the Wold Newton Universe. A comet crashed to earth in a tiny place called Wold Newton in Yorkshire in 1795 (a real life event) and PJF conjectured that the radiations it emitted affected the occupants of a coach travelling near the village, causing genetic mutations. These people became the precursors to a group of superheroes that are the staples of classic pulp SF: Tarzan, Doc Savage, Professor Moriarty, Allan Quartermain and many others. It was a real leap of imagination and is tremendous fun.

But what those who study the mystery of the Wold Newton comet forget, is that it wasn’t just the radiation that was to shape history. The detritus of the comet itself would have strange ramifications …

UNDISCOVERED COVERS

2011-04-12T12:07:00.000-07:00

The guys at HarperCollins were meeting today to discuss the cover for the US edition of The Demi-Monde: Winter so I was asked if I had any thoughts. This at least gave me a chance to dust off some of the ProtoCovers Nigel had done before Quercus had optioned the Demi-Monde series. I was reminded how bloody good some of them were.

A couple I've blogged about before so I'll confine myself to some of the others.

This one I think is the best of all of Nigel's efforts. It combines the steam-punky typewriter-esque font of the book's title with a London cityscape (circa 1870) - which could be amended for other books in the series which are set in other Sectors - with a rather freaky head shot of Ella showing a rather ambiguous semi-cyber aspect. I think this is a VERY strong cover.

This second one is also strong. It used the valknut rune which is the emblem of the quasi-fascist ForthRight and could, of course, be altered for other books. Too subtle? Perhaps but I've adopted the stamp for my book signings so all is not lost.

The third and final cover is good and very much in the tradition of pulp SF (a good thing, methinks!) but is perhaps a little too reverential of Philip Jose Farmer for comfort.

Just a shame the Poles didn't think of asking me if I had an unused cover going spare - 'cos I have! But living proof that Mr Nigel Robinson is one talented guy.

THE AMERICAN EDIT

2011-04-11T03:01:00.000-07:00

The American version of 'The Demi-Monde: Winter' is going to be launched on the 27th December so I've just got the edit of book back from HarperCollins (love the Camelcase!) and though it’s a lot lighter than I feared it has highlighted more inconsistencies in the text than I’m comfortable with. How can I have missed these things? I’ve only read the damned book a hundred times!

Still hopefully there’s time to tweak the UK paperback so all is not lost. I'm just thankful that the American editor was so bloody eagle-eyed.

Funny thing is that I hadn’t realised that Americans use so many z’s in their spelling – all these specialize, recognize etc. And that they don’t use blonde when describing the colour of a woman’s hair was a surprize too.

Give it another hundred years and the two languages will have all the similarities of French and Spanish.

CamelCase Gives me the Hump

2011-04-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

I would never have believed it but my choice of camelCase – sometimes known as medial capitalisation – seems to have gotten up the nose of one or two of my reviewers, so it is probably useful to remind them of what camelCase is and to tell them why I used it when I was writing The Demi-Monde series of books.

To put it in a nutshell camelCase is the insertion of a capital letter into the middle of a word for stylistic or functional reasons. As it produces a ‘hump’ in the word some wag thought it sensible to call it camelCase. Now this grammatical oddity isn't as unusually as you might imagine, we meet camelCase everyday: think ‘MacDonald’, ‘iPad’, ‘AstroTurf’, ‘WikiLeaks’ and ‘NaCl’. But although the use of camelCase is centuries old it became really evident and popular when computer programmers had to write multiword identifiers without the use of spaces between the words because these foxed the programs. This trickled down into the lexicon of designers and suddenly the use of camelCase became very hip.

It was because of this association with computer programming that I was first attracted to the use of camelCase. The Demi-Monde is a virtual world, platformed on the world’s first quantum computer, ABBA, so when I was developing the religions and the philosophies I would use in this world it seemed natural to me that ABBA would put a camelCase twist on their names. Hence UnFunDaMentalism, HerEticalism, LessBienism and the rest.

But there was another reason I used it. I’m writing about a world where there are eight religions and any number of sub-cults. Now it is asking a lot of my readers to remember what each of them are and what they stand for without there being some form of aide memoire. And this is where camelCase really came into its own: hence HimPerialism is the religion which promotes the supremacy of men; Suffer-O-Gettism is the extreme feminist cult dedicated to the subjugation of men, etc. etc.

I hope this explains things and persuades some of my more didactic reviewers to cut me just a little slack!

EAT YOUR HEART OUT, STEVE JOBS

2011-04-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

Following Steve Jobs’ announcement of Apple's new iPad 2 I thought it appropriate to preprint this announcement by ParaDigm CyberResearch of its own, vastly superior, product offering.

ParaDigm CyberResearch is proud to announce …

From the 1st March 2014, discerning users of PolyFunctional Digital Devices will be able to purchase, via reputable purveyors of electrical merchandise throughout the Empire, ParaDigm CyberResearch’s utterly new and peerless Bulldog 47 Polly.

Without doubt the Bulldog 47 is the swiftest and most convenient Polly ever to be made available to the general public, being built to a most generous specification.

Within a sturdy and most pleasing brass case is contained a circular CRT Flexi-Plexi with an embedded Feely-Screeny matrix, this permitting users to enjoy all the facilities of the Bulldog 47 even in the brightest sunlight. The utilisation of an eyeSoar Mark 47 operating system with multiple de-lux enhancements allows full and crackle-free use of the Bulldog 47’s eyeMail, eyeVid and eyeSpeak capabilities, these most speedily and promptly provided by the employment of a 10 Ghz Empire-class Aye-5 bespoke-designed, refined-performance, replete-power, system-on-a-mote. As all our customers have come to expect, connectivity is provided by ParaDigm’s very own ‘Wi-Not’ custom wireless telemetry. Ample on-board warehousing of data is achieved via a Dreadnaught-class C-wide storage unit. Last but by no means least much thought has been given to the controls of the Bulldog 47: input is achieved through the use of posterior-mounted split-Qwe/rty keyboard which enables eight-digit manipulation for speedier typing whilst twin thumb controls ensure prompt and accurate scrolling.

The Bulldog 47: the best of British

Price: £14 19s 11d (including purchase tax)

So you see sleek and sexy though the Apple iPad 2 undoubtedly is, as touch-screen tablet devices go it can’t hold a candle to the Bulldog 47 Polly. There’s simply no substitute for brass, rivets and British know-how!

Now I hear you asking “who are ParaDigm CyberResearch?” and “what in the Real World is a Polly?” but fear not, once you’ve entered the world of the Demi-Monde all will be revealed … eventually. You’ll have to trust me on this: there are still three books to go and I am a great believer in the art of script-tease.

In fact, the old adage that fact is stranger than fiction is borne out by the story of the creation of the Polly. The Bulldog 47 Polly you see above is the second iteration of the thing, being originally conceived three years ago for a book I’m still writing called ‘Invent Ten-N’. I briefed Nigel Robinson, who designs all my Demi-Monde stuff, as to what I thought it would look like and this is what he came up with.

Remember this is one whole year before the announcement of the original Apple iPad. Maybe Apple’s Steve Jobs reality distortion field is actually a window on the world of the Demi-Monde – or maybe not, I hear he's not too keen on windows. But I would have thought that reading a book before it's published is beyond even the miraculous talents of Steve Jobs. But the fact remains: ParaDigm’s Polly preceded the Apple iPad onto the market – well, a market - by a clear twelve months.

No matter. The reality is (and as all SF fans know reality is a very mutable thing) that despite the very generous insights offered by the Demi-Monde to ParaDigm’s would–be competitors, Pollys remain pre-eminent in the field of computational tablet devices. For instance, Pollys come in all shapes and sizes (in-ear devices, spectacle mounted displays, flexi-plexi screens etc.): it's a system rather than a device. And while iPad Apps are proprietary and will only work on Apple iPads (and Apple phones), meaning that they are only available to small percentage of the market, Pollys use any software made available on the Demi-Monde equivalent of the internet, the PollyNet. But then I suppose this isn’t to be wondered at: after all, ParaDigm CyberResearch is the PollyNet. Yes, the CEO of ParaDigm, Septimus Bole, has achieved what Steve Jobs hasn’t been able to: Bole has locked 100% of users in to one company. But then Bole is …

Enough of that!

I suppose my objective in bringing the ParaDigm announcement of its Bulldog 47 product launch to your attention a full three years before it is made is in the hope that if and when ParaDigm’s imitators bring out circular screens and anterior-positioned keys you’ll remember that you saw mention of the use of posterior-mounted split-Qwe/rty keyboard which enables eight-digit manipulation for speedier typing and of circular CRTs here first.

Yeah, and that a round Polly makes Steve Jobs new iPad 2 look positively square.

SUCKER PUNCH

2011-04-05T02:09:00.000-07:00

Okay … ‘Sucker Punch’ has been slammed by some of the worst reviews I’ve seen this side of ‘The Last Air Bender’ and its box office takings in the US have fallen off a cliff but I still have the feeling that ‘Sucker Punch’ will, in twenty years or so, be seen as a seminal movie.

Let me explain …

Hollywood – filmmakers generally, actually – are periodically blindsided by cultural/technological change. They were sniffy about TV and found themselves adrift in the 50’s when they were hit for six by this ‘new’ entertainment format. They were similarly nonplussed by the commercial success of games in the ‘80’s and were left floundering in gaming’s wake. And now they are struggling with the impact of the Net. All these formats Hollywood should have owned … but they didn’t. But I suspect that there are a few visionaries in La La Land who recognise a challenge when they see one and rise to it. And one of these is the director of ‘Sucker Punch’, Zack Snyder.

Until I came to ‘Sucker Punch’ I hadn’t been much of a Snyder fan: ‘Watchmen’ I thought an overblown mess and ‘300’ suffered by being too slavishly enraptured of Frank Miller’s original. It seems to me that unencumbered by fan demands that he ‘honour’ original source material, Snyder’s imagination has been given a real chance to soar. And soar it most certainly does.

‘Sucker Punch’ tells the story of a young girl – Baby Doll – incarcerated in an asylum and facing a lobotomy, who retreats into a fantasy world as she tries to engineer an escape. Now the plot has been lambasted as escapist trash but I actually think it works. The lunacy of the three levels of reality Baby Doll populates intermesh well and I thought it convincing enough to suspend belief. And the sheer visceral excitement of the adventures Baby Doll and her pals experience is astonishing: the steampunky artefacts Snyder brings to the screen are mind-blowing. This is some of the most exciting film-making I have EVER seen.

Much has been made of the girls’ costumes, that they have a near-pornographic aspect designed to titivate teenage boys. All I can say is this is hokum. Kit, my elder daughter, is a great manga devotee and she explained in detail that the costumes were manga-esque in their conception. Neither she nor Ellie (both intelligent and sassy teens) had any problem with the girls’ outfits. Sure I could see where some viewers steeped in knee-jerk feminist thought could take affront but for kids used to wearing this stuff there was no problem. In fact they saw the adventures of Baby Doll et al as quite empowering: here were a gang of girls fighting hard for their freedom and handling the knocks they got along the way pretty stoically.

On a more mundane level the colouring of the film is marvellous, the soundtrack terrific, the camera work (especially the close-ups) as good as any I’ve seen and the editing simply wonderful.

But to me, what ‘Sucker Punch’ does supremely well is conflate all the elements of modern entertainment – film, music, video, internet and gaming – and mash them up into one piece of amalgamated entertainment. It’s the first time I’ve seen this accomplished with such panache: it knocks ‘Tron’ into a cocked hat. And this is why I believe it will be cited in twenty years as the film which was the first to successfully bridge the divide between all the entertainment platforms.

I’d urge you to go and see ‘Sucker Punch’ but only if you can leave any cultural or intellectual sniffiness you might be carrying outside the door of the cinema. If you can, prepare to be amazed.

www.rrrants.co.uk

2011-04-04T03:26:00.000-07:00

Thaddeus and the Firing Squad (Kit's on the right!)

Spent yesterday in London. Kit plays saxophone in a beat poetry combo going by the name of "Thaddeus and the Firing Squad" and she had a gig at the Camden Eye pub so we all went along to support.

I hadn't been to a poetry evening for years so I was a little ring rusty, but all in all it was a very enjoyable evening. The event was organised under the auspices of http://www.rrrants.co.uk/ who are intent on taking poetry out into the world and although the quality of the poetry on offer was decidedly patchy some of the acts were terrific.

Lobby Lud (in the hat) backed by The Antipoets

Of course the Firing Squad was seriously good - Kit played really well - though I thought Thaddeus was a little subdued. The other highlights were the VERY funny Lobby Lud - if ever there was a man destined to step out of the poetry shadows and embrace stardom it's this guy. Think Tommy Cooper mixed with George Formby and you get the picture. Some of his ideas - the ukulele-playing machine, for instance - border on genius.Also worthy of mention was Karen Hayley: although she was only given time for one poem it was a cracker - a love affair between two clowns - and her delivery was comic perfection. Watch that name!

Much of the rest was simply too crude to have much interest. Shock is a useful tool in poetry but it should be used to season the poem rather than become the poem. Some of the stuff being performed was simply too gynaecological for my taste: the performers were using their poetry as a cheap form of transactional analysis, substituting verbalised shit for talent.

Still the diamonds in the smut made it a very enjoyable evening. Well recommended.

THE SUNDAY TIMES REVIEW

2011-04-04T02:08:00.000-07:00

Good review in The Sunday Times yesterday (03/04/11). Writing in the 'Culture' section, this is what Alison Flood had to say:

Rod Rees provides a delectably dark addition to the growing subgenre of science fiction about virtual reality in his debut The Demi-Monde: Winter. Dreamt up by the US army to prepare their soldiers for the nightmare of war, the Demi-Monde is a computer game peppled by simulations of the worst tyrants history has to offer: Nazi psychopath Reinhard Heydrich, Spanish inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada and their ilk. When the president's daughter is lured and trapped in the virtual world, Ella Thomas - desperate for money - is recruited to enter the rabidly racist, psychotic and increasingly self-aware Demi-Monde to rescue her. Rees is a little too enamoured of his puns (HerEticalism is a religion based on female supremacy etc.) but overall this is a feisty and nightmarishly enjoyable debut that bodes well for his Demi-Monde series.

Pretty damned good! Just a word about those puns. There are eight religions in the Demi-Monde and a number of sub-cults so when I was originally writing the books it was a bit of a bugger to remember what each one stood for so I came up with the punning-mnemonic. It seems to have worked: even the reviewers remember them.

AN UPSETTING BOOK

2011-03-31T04:30:00.000-07:00

As part of the background research I'm doing for 'The Demi-Monde: Fall', I've been reading about famous urban battles. That's why I came to read 'Leningrad: State of Siege' by Michael Jones. It describes the 900-day siege of Leningrad in the Second World War when the Nazis attempted to starve the city - now renamed St Petersburg - into submission.

In fact I only half read of the book: I found this graphic account of the suffering endured by the Russian people so harrowing that I couldn't finish it. But what I took away from the book - apart from an admiration of the tenacity of the citizens of Leningrad - was that this suffering was inflicted by maniacs posing as messiahs. That ordinary soldiers - both German and Russian - could be persuaded to do some of the terrible things they did in the name of the specious creeds mouthed by charismatic psychopaths is a warning to us all.

Yesterday on the BBC News there was the sad report of the death of two servicemen in Afghanistan, but it is chilling to remember that just seventy years ago 200,000 Russian soldiers were dying each day to preserve the power of one madman from the onslaught of another. The death toll on the eastern front was the result of the rivalry between the criminally xenophobic Adolf Hitler and the insanely paranoid Stalin.

The one lesson we must take from this is it is everyone's duty to distrust demagogues who come with a message.

This is why it is so important to teach history in schools: only by understanding the mistakes of the past can we hope to avoid them in the future