Fifteen Minutes of Game

Little exercise in timewasting that I stole from Michael Kelly. List 15 books that will always stick with you. But they have to be the first 15 books you think of in 15 minutes. Cue much cursing when you only start thinking of really impressive books after 16 minutes.

Anyway, here's my list:

Black Light -- Stephen Hunter
Axiomatic -- Greg Egan
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams
The Drive-in -- Joe R Lansdale
The Unquiet -- John Connolly
The Hound of the Baskervilles -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Wind in the Willows -- Kenneth Grahame
Dune -- Frank Herbert
Dirty White Boys -- Stephen Hunter
Mucho Mojo -- Joe R Lansdale
L.A. Confidential -- James Ellroy
Mortal Stakes -- Robert B Parker
Dr Who and the Planet of the Spiders -- Terrance Dicks
Biggles Hits the Trail -- Captain W.E. Johns
The History of the Runestaff -- Michael Moorcock

Yakety Yak

There's a quick interview with me up on the Thomas Ligotti message
boards if you have absolutely nothing better to do.

http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?p=20889#post20889

The Reflecting Eye

A while back I was one of a bunch of authors asked to write some quick comments on their favourite novellas. My choice was 'The Reflecting Eye' by John Connolly. See the final feature at http://ttapress.com/611/their-favourite-novellas/0/5/

My bit's tucked away right at the bottom but I'm sure that's because they listed the contributors in alphabetical order and not just because no one's ever heard of me.

Tales of Mild Uneasiness

Recently read Eduardo Risso's Tales of Terror. Collection of black and white comic strips from the Argentinian artist. Nice artwork (even if I think the visuals don't always flow that well from panel to panel) but the scripts by Carlos Trillos fall pretty flat. There's a couple of okay stories but nothing special and definitely nothing scary. Probably doesn't help that originally they weren't written in English.

Anyway, samples of Risso's artwork and a more positive review of the book over at http://warren-peace.blogspot.com/2007/10/eduardo-rissos-tales-of-terror-i-didnt.html

Everybody Knows Everything

Bit disappointed with The South Bank Show profile of William Goldman. Yeah, they showed great clips from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ("Guns or knives, Butch?") and some of his other films but they skipped A Bridge Too Far and The Princess Bride.

Not to mention the fact that any Goldman fan will have heard all the anecdotes he trotted out about a million times before. I was sitting there guessing which bit of gossip he was going to supply about each clip before he even opened his mouth.

Still an enjoyable programme of course. I just wish it hadn't been so predictable.

Wire We Waiting?

So I've finally bought the last two seasons of The Wire after finding them discounted to a price that I can actually afford. I was absolutely ecstactic ... until I discovered that the series is finally coming to British TV so I didn't need to buy them after all.

Typical.

Who Just Watched the Watchmen?

Attended the press screening of Watchmen last night. I've been waiting twenty years for this film so I deliberately kept my expectations low in order to prevent myself going beserk with an automatic weapon if the film turned out to be rubbish.

Good news. I didn't kill anyone.

The film's pretty faithful to the comic. Yeah, they've had to ditch subplots and secondary characters which in turn means they've had to tinker with the main plot slightly to accomodate these changes but it's still Watchmen. A streamlined, or diluted if one were being unkind, version of Moore's story to be sure but at least Hollywood didn't turn it into Batman and Robin.

Of course it's also very obviously a Zack Snyder film. There's lots of slo-mo and both the action and the gore have been amped up just to remind people that he directed 300 and The Dawn of the Dead remake. The fight scenes are full of wire-fu and at one point become so OTT they make The Matrix look like cinema verite. Whilst the graphic nature of the many maimings and killings had the audience alternating between wincing and applauding. And my friend who blagged me my ticket for the screening was practically traumatised by a gruesome setpiece during the prison scenes.

There's about a million other points I could make about the film but the short version is that while the film isn't perfect it's about as good a Hollywood adap as we could expect. And as such it's well worth a look.

It's Clobberin' Time!

Been reading Mark Waid's run on Fantastic Four, generally considered to be the third best run EVER, coming behind the stints by Lee/Kirby and John Byrne. Jolly good fun especially as I got the first two storylines in the hardcover edition which includes Waid's initial proposal and character notes from when he took over the series. Offers interesting insights into his creative process and allows me to appreciate the choices he made while writing the series. Even the ones I didn't agree with.

Dave Bezzina

Dave Bezzina's got a new website

Features a selection of his Fantasy and Horror artwork in paints, inks and pencils.

Apart from being a British Fantasy Award nominee Dave provided half of the illustrations for my debut collection Spare Parts. (But don't hold that against him).

Dear Santa

So once again it's that time of year when people feverishly scribble out lists detailing what they desire most in the whole world. A time when people rely on the goodwill of others to restore their faith in humanity.

I refer of course to the recommendations process for the British Fantasy Awards. I've only just discovered that it started over a month ago. That's me, finger on the pulse as ever.

Anyway, here's what I've got eligible this year:

BEST NOVELLA -- 'Bliss' From We Fade to Grey

BEST SHORT STORY -- 'Nothing is Forever.' From the Pendragon FantasyCon chapbook which I've forgotten the name of. And which, due to a cock-up with the delivery, hardly anyone received a copy of. And even if they did the printers screwed up my story by presenting random passages in italics for absolutely no reason whatsoever. So obviously it stands a really good chance of winning :-/

BEST HUMAN BEING -- Me. Okay, I made this one up. But if anyone did vote for me in this category then that would be the best Christmas present ever. (Just kidding, I really want one of the awards.)

Invasion of the Seagal Snatchers

As I'm sure you're all suffering withdrawal symptoms due to me not bragging about how wonderful my stories are for a while here's a quick snippet from a review of 'Bliss' in Black Static #8:

"Young tells it like a retread of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Steven Seagal in the lead role. The result is something eminently readable and engaging, a plot driven narrative with dollops of sex and violence, but dig beneath the surface and you discover that he is addressing some serious and genuine concerns about the nature of human existence and the values that we cherish."

Customer Service

In response to Elizabeth's comment on my last post I offer this news from Chris Teague:

"In other news, the paperback edition of We Fade to Grey has sold out - a reprint is on it's way, due in the New Year - to compensate, and until Christmas, anyone who orders the hardback edition will also receive a copy of New Writings in the Fantastic (and a "subscription" to the first 3 Triquorum chapbooks). "

So hop on over to Pendragon Press.

Hot Cakes

Just heard that the paperback edition of We Fade to Grey has sold out. A second print run is due in the New Year.

Obviously everyone is rushing to buy the book 'cos I'm in it.

Blimey, I managed to say that with a straight face ...

WFTG review

Nice review of We Fade to Grey up at Matthew Fryer's blog.


He also compares 'Bliss' to "an ultra-violent, X-rated episode of Doctor Who." Which I feel is a pretty fair comment.

Hollywood Here I Come!

As you can always trust quizzes you did on the internet to guide you in the path your life should take I'm off to make my fortune in Hollywood.

You Should Be a Film Writer

You don't just create compelling stories, you see them as clearly as a movie in your mind. You have a knack for details and dialogue. You can really make a character come to life. Chances are, you enjoy creating all types of stories. The joy is in the storytelling. And nothing would please you more than millions of people seeing your story on the big screen!

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

Out to Launch

The We Fade to Grey launch went well. Even though Gary and Chris decided not to tell any of the contributors that we were going to have to give presentations about our individual stories -- and then picked me to go first even though they know I hate speaking in public. Bastards.

Anyway, just a reminder that the Horror World review has been archived at www.horrorworld.org/september_2008.htm

We Fade to Grey comp

Look! Over there! Chris Teague's running a We Fade to Grey competition!

"To celebrate the impending launch of this literary feast of supernatural thrills, which shares it's title with a well-known early 80s pop-song, both myself and the fount of 80s trivia Mark West have racked our brains to ask thee a single question:

"Who links 'One man on a lonely platform, one case sitting by his side, two eyes staring cold and silent, show fear as he turns to hide' with 'It's five and I'm driving home again, it's hard to believe that it's my last time, the man on the wireless cries again, it's over, it's over'?"

The winner shall receive the following:

- A free copy of the hard cover edition of We Fade to Grey, which will not only be numbered and signed by all contributors, but shall also be personally inscribed with whatever message they desire;

- Also, a free copy of any other Pendragon Press title (check out www.pendragonpress.net to choose).

Send your entry by e-mail to: chris at pendragonpress dot net - preferably with your message, just in case you're the happy winner...

Closing date for entries is midnight (GMT) Wednesday 17th September 2008 - the winner shall be notified on Thursday, with their books posted on Monday 22nd September 2008.

No correspondence shall be entered into and the decision shall be final.

So there. :)"

Of course everyone here will want to pay for their copy.

Launch update

Apparently the We Fade to Grey launch has been rescheduled for 1600 on the Saturday. Just thought I'd mention it because I know you'd all be distraught if you missed the launch.

Michael Davis

When I was a kid I thought Michael Davis was one of the funniest performers I'd ever seen.

There's another comic in this first video, skip ahead to 3:30 if you want just see Davis.


This video shows a great trick with a pingpong ball. (If Chris Teague is reading this, don't get excited Chris, it's not the trick you usually pay to see done with a pingpong ball.)


This clip features a crappy framing device for the comedy and uses some of the same gags from the previous videos but still contains some other funny lines.

We Fade to Grey review

Chris Teague has just pointed me towards We Fade to Grey's first review at http://www.horrorworld.org/reviews.htm

Scroll about halfway down the page for Mario Guslandi's comments on the book.

And for those too lazy to do that here's the most important part of the review:

"Stuart Young contributes "Bliss"a novella graced by excellent characterization and smooth narrative flow featuring two brothers facing the shocking reality of a surreptitious alien invasion of human bodies."

Trailer

Okay, let's try embedding the We Fade to Grey trailer.

We Fade to Grey launch

Just heard from Chris Teague and Gary McMahon. Apparently the We Fade to Grey launch is scheduled for 3.00 Saturday afternoon at FantasyCon. Should last for about 45 mins.

For some reason it's being held in the bar. It's almost as if they think getting all the punters drunk will help sell the book.

FantasyCon booklet

Over the weekend I put together some story notes and a bio for a promotional booklet Chris Teague is planning. At FantasyCon he's giving away these booklets featuring stories by Paul Finch, Gary McMahon and me. (Apologies to any other authors who might be included but these are the only ones I know about.)

My story, 'Nothing is Forever', is a cosmicy horrory type thingie. No idea what the others have done, but knowing those two it's bound to be horror of some kind.

The whole thing is to promote Pendragon Press and more specifically We Fade to Grey.

Normally I'd tell you to buy one but seeing as they're free that'd be kind of pointless. That said, if you did offer to buy I'm sure Chris would be happy to take your money.

That's our Chris, always looking to put the con into FantasyCon.

Sign o' the Times

I recently stuck my autograph on the signing sheets for the hardback limited edition of We Fade to Grey. Would have been an exciting moment -- the first time I've done a signing sheet! -- if my arm and shoulder muscles hadn't been all cramped up due to postural problems. This led to severe writing cramp by the time I signed the second sheet. Fortunately that left me with a mere 98 to go.

I couldn't even pace myself as there had been a delay posting the sheets round to the book's contributors so I needed to sign all the sheets in one go and post them back to the publisher. So by the time I finished I was walking around doubled over in pain, my face screwed up in agony, looking like a cross between Quasimodo and Wayne Rooney. Even more so than usual.

I wouldn't have minded so much if my signature had turned out okay but it looks awful at the best of times. A microscopic scrawl that would still be illegible even if written at a size that didn't make subatomic particles look the size of Mount Everest.

It didn't help that all the other writers had these elaborate sweeping signatures, all elegant loops and sweeping curls, that looked less like autographs and more like diagrams on how to tie the Gordian knot. Whereas my signature looked like someone had just scribbled on the page to make sure their pen was working.

Sigh.

In future I'm just going to use a rubber stamp.

Information Overload

It's that time again when I do tons and tons of research for a story with absolutely no idea which bits are actually going to make it into the final plot.

Urgh, I think my brain is going to explode.

Spare Parts

My old collection Spare Parts has been out of print for a couple of years but I've just stumbled across a retailer who still has a few copies. So if anyone is interested in seeing what I was doing before I won the British Fantasy Award here's a chance to find out. Wait, that won't convince anyone to buy it -- um, the book has an introduction by Tim Lebbon. No, still no good -- er, it's got illustrations by BFA winning artist Bob Covington and BFA nominated artist Dave Bezzina. No, still no interest -- wait, I've got it! The retailer, Fantastic Literature, has knocked several quid off the cover price so you'd be getting the book dirt cheap.

Anyway, here's where to go if you fancy looking up my book.

Or you can just point and jeer -- "No one's publishing your book anymore!"

Full-sized quotes

Just realised that the Nicholas Royle and Stephen Gallagher quotes have been edited down to fit on the back cover. Here are the quotes in full:

"Gary McMahon signally fails to keep the unpleasant and horrifying tendencies of his contributors in check in this maelstrom of evil curses, sickening violence, inevitable death, bereavement and the end of the world." Nicholas Royle

"I picked up WE FADE TO GREY last night and was kept reading way beyond any reasonable hour. As strong a collection of solid horror tales as I've read in a long time, and a great reminder of the unique qualities that British writers can bring to the field." Stephen Gallagher

We Fade to Grey trailer

Just discovered a trailer for We Fade to Grey at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWa_Gr6wu8I

As my oh so wonderful blog is still refusing to let me post links to Youtube I'll just mention that the trailer conatins a new cover quote from Stephen Gallagher -- "As solid a collection of horror tales as I've read in a long time."

The Reapers signing

Went to a signing for John Connolly's latest novel The Reapers on Tursday.

John told some funny stories about the stupidity of criminals then discussed the themes of The Reapers and spoke about the film version of his short story 'The New Daughter' which stars Kevin Costner and the girl from Pan's Labyrinth. He also read an extract from the novel he's currently working on, The Lovers. With a wicked glint in his eye he revealed that it always annoys his agent when he reads work to the public before the agent has had a chance to see it.

After the signing John invited everyone along to a nearby pub where he had reserved the upstairs bar. He recently turned 40 so as everyone chatted away several of his fans presented him with birthday gifts. Continuing a joke on John's message board about his advancing years one of the gifts was a pipe and a pair of monogrammed slippers.

From the pub we went on to a restaurant which served what are possibly the best chips in the world. Wine flowed, as did the conversation, with John regaling everyone with witty anecdotes. At the end of the evening he picked up the bill despite the best efforts of one of his fans who was desperate to pay it himself. (I'm sure none of you will be surprised to learn that this fan wasn't me.)

On the train home I read the first couple of chapters of The Reapers. At first I was slightly worried to discover that it not only dealt with similar themes as one of my forthcoming stories but it also featured a piece of research crucial to that story. Just to make things freakier John even introduced a character named Bliss which is the title of my story. By now hyperventilating at the prospect of being sued for plagiarism I tried to reassure myself that there will be more than enough differences to set the two stories apart.

After all The Reapers is a finely crafted tale, full of well-rounded characters, snappy dialogue, stunning imagery and thoughtful insights into the human condition.

And 'Bliss' has been written by me.

The Spirit

Trailer for Frank Miller's adap of The Spirit at http://www.mycityscreams.com/ Not sure about this one. I'm not a huge fan of the Eisner comic (although I appreciate its seminal status) but judging by the trailer Miller seems to have totally ignored the er, spirit of The Spirit and just done a Sin City retread.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Nothing exciting to report. I've just been having a bit of a clear out; some of the piles of books are getting so high that lowflying aircraft have to take evasive action when they pass by my house.

Up on the Proof

I keep forgetting to mention that I went through the proofs of 'Bliss' a couple of weeks back, correcting all the typos that had sneaked through ... and no doubt adding in a whole bunch of new ones.

In fact I'm going to use my poor typing skills as a get-out clause for any criticisms the story receives. Didn't like the way I described something? Well, actually I described it brilliantly, it's just that a series of typos weakened the effect. Thought a character's personality veered erratically over the course of the story? Typos interfered with my carefully nuanced portrait of a complex soul. Felt the ending was a bit weak? There's actually another three pages of text which would have ended the story just the way you wanted but unfortunately I leant on the backspace key whilst reaching over to pick up a chocolate biccie.

Of course the typo most likely to increase my sales is the one where I accidentally typed in the author's name as Stephen King.

Good news ... I think

Here's what Nicholas Royle has to say about We Fade To Grey. "A maelstrom of evil curses, sickening violence, inevitable death, bereavement and the end of the world."

At least I hope he's talking about the anthology and not the proposed launch party.

Dave Stevens RIP

Just heard that artist Dave Stevens passed away last week.

Stevens wrote and drew The Rocketeer comic that got made into a film back in '91 starring Jennifer Connelly and Timothy Dalton.

Stevens had a love for the old pulps and his illustation style reflected that. He also had a soft spot for Bettie Page, basing The Rocketeer's girlfriend on her.

Here's a gallery of his artwork. There's a fair amount of cheesecake stuff here which may be NSFW.

Old Interview

I'm far too lazy too post anything new at present so here's an old interview from just before The Mask Behind the Face came out.

NSFW

Thanks to Elizabeth for sending me this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lcmNaXmjvs

NSFW (Unless your boss has a sense of humour.)

John Buscema

Just stumbled across a website devoted to the artwork of John Buscema (1927-2002). He is one of my favourite comic book artists and is genereally regarded as one of the greatest of all time. Buscema combined the dynamism of Jack Kirby with lovingly rendered anatomy. This led to him being referred to as a comic book Michelangelo.

Buscema worked on superheroes (which he loathed) as well as romance comics and olde worlde adventure strips full of knights and wizards. But one of his favourite assignments was working on the Conan comics where he did some of his best work.

There's some great examples of his work on the site including paintings and sketches Buscema did for fun which reveal another dimension to his artwork.

And just for Simon here's some of Buscema's breakdowns for The Punisher.

Also just found a video of Buscema drawing Captain America. I've got this video as an extra on a DVD about superheroes and I love to watch it, gazing in awe as Buscema's pencil glides over the paper. Unfortunately Buscema died not long after the DVD was made. Although I never met him I was saddened to hear of his passing. The man was a true comic book master.

More Moore

Just stumbled across a press release for The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic. It goes into much more detail than my previous post on this mystical tome.

The book sounds crazy as hell but I'm looking forward to it. (Of course now it'll turn out to be hideously expensive and I won't be able to afford it.)

Lost Girls

To continue the Alan Moore theme of my previous post here's a review I did for a public interview he did back in 2006. The review originally appared in Machenalia, the newsletter for the Friends of Arthur Machen.

LOST GIRLS INTERVIEW REVIEW

The girls were indeed lost. Or at least incredibly late.

Due to copyright complications Dorothy, Alice and Wendy – the heroines of Lost Girls – will be unable to regale the great British public for some time yet. “So,” chuckled Stewart Lee as he settled down to interview writer Alan Moore and artist Melinda Gebbie, “we’re going to spend the next hour and a half discussing a book that won’t be published until 2008.” No one minded in the least.

The interview got underway with comedian Lee serving up witty, intelligent questions. Perhaps the most pertinent of which was how the idea of a pornographic graphic novel featuring Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, Wendy from Peter Pan and Alice from Alice in Wonderland first came about. Moore replied that sex had been creeping into his stories as far back as Swamp Thing and he had wondered if maybe, just maybe, he could write about sex without using swamp monsters. Gebbie added that when they had first been kicking around ideas she mentioned that she had previously had great success writing about trios of women. The idea of utilising Dorothy, Alice and Wendy soon followed.

Moore and Gebbie also discussed the visual motifs for the three heroines – silver shoes, shadows and a looking glass. And the many pastiches of 19th century pornographic art and literature they used throughout the book, including not only homages to that most prolific of creators Anonymous but also artists such as Alphonse Mucha whose work might not be seen as pornographic but which still carried an erotic charge. Moore also put forth a theory that war is a symptom of sexuality gone awry, explaining why the first rumblings of WWI serve as a backdrop to the book’s sexual shenanigans.

Lee suggested that the lesbian scenes were infused with tenderness whilst the scenes of male homosexuality were played for uneasy laughs. Moore responded that this was because Dorothy’s husband was so unbearably uptight that he remained a parody of British reserve even at the moment of orgasm. “And the fact that he looks like Sean Connery,” said Lee, “was that an act of revenge for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film?” “No, not at all,” said Moore. “Speak for yourself,” giggled Gebbie.

During the course of the interview illustrations from the book were projected onto the wall at the back of the stage. Gebbie had great fun persuading the onstage computer to show the slides in the correct order. When the correct images finally appeared Gebbie pointed out the different colour schemes she had created for the individual heroines – Dorothy for example was shaded with earthy colours to represent her midwestern farmland roots. Gebbie also lamented Moore’s request for certain pictures to be repeated over and over again. Moore apologised, saying that he thought she would simply Xerox the pictures rather than painstakingly recreating each one by hand!

Given that Lost Girls is a self-proclaimed piece of pornography several of the slides were of a sexual nature such as Wendy snuggling up with the Lost Boys or Alice fornicating with the cowardly lion. Stewart Lee moved over these quickly as the audience issued schoolboy sniggers. “I’m only skipping over these because we’re short of time,” protested Lee. “I’m not scared of them.”

After the interview there followed a Q&A session with the audience. How did Moore think Carroll, Barrie and Baum would respond to his handling of their characters? Did Moore and Gebbie view Lost Girls as feminist pornography? Was the book influenced by the texts used to school Indian princes in the art of lovemaking?

With the Q&A over the signing commenced. The queue seemed to stretch halfway across London with fanboys clutching copies of Watchmen, V for Vendetta and Snakes and Ladders. Moore and Gebbie chatted cheerfully with everyone. Even people like myself who initially stood frozen in dumbstruck awe before overcompensating by erupting into a torrent of babbling gibberish. I eventually pulled myself together enough to ask Machen aficionado Moore if he was aware of FOAM. He replied that he was in fact a member. That seemed a pretty good way to end the evening.

Dumb Luck

Okay, so yesterday I'm meeting a friend up London and I happen to pop into GOSH Comics on the way.

Scooping up a copy of Alan Moore's The Black Dossier I head down to the basement to check out their back issues. To my annoyance I find the staff milling around, unloading boxes of stock right next to the comics I want to peruse. Silently cursing I squeeze past them and start rifling through the comics. At that moment someone speaks somewhere off to my left in tones which sound familar but which I can't quite place. Glancing in his direction I do a double-take.

It's Alan Moore.

I can't believe it. One of my favourite writers in the whole world is in the same room as me, is less than a metre away, sitting at a table with Melinda Gebbie, both of them signing copies of Lost Girls.

Stunned, I turn to the member of staff standing beside me. "Is there a signing today?"

"The signing was yesterday. Today they're just signing stock."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But wait. There's still a chance. Maybe if I catch him at the right moment Mr Moore will deign to sign my book even though I had arrived a day too late.

Okay, first go back upstairs and buy the book. The storeowners won't be too happy if I get Moore to put a personal inscription in a book I haven't actually bought. On the other hand his autograph might actually increase the price of the book when I finally do go to pay for it. ("Black Dossier? That'll be £250 please." "That's not what it says on the sticker." "That was before it was signed." "But it's signed to me." "I'm sure we can find other customers called Stuart if we wait long enough.")

So, now the proud owner of a copy of The Black Dossier I rush back down to the basement and nervously ask Mr Moore if he would mind taking a break from signing the vast stacks of books surrounding him and sign my book instead. He generously agrees to do so and we chat briefly and he laughs at one of my jokes. (The laugh is probably more from pity than anything else but I'll take what I can get.)

Then I head off to meet my friend and fellow comics fan to see just how green he turns when I tell him of my good fortune.

We Fade to Grey introduction

Gary McMahon recently sent me a copy of Mark Morris's introduction for We Fade To Grey. It's a jolly fine intro that not only comments on the stories in the anthology but also delivers a quick history of the state of recent horror publishing.

More importantly he said some really nice things about my story 'Bliss', describing it as "deliriously bonkers ... a fast-paced romp that manages to walk a fine line between gruesomely shocking and blackly funny ... a powerful and inventive tale."

Now I don't want to brag but he obviously thinks my story is the best in the anthology. Not only that but he thinks all the other contributors are talentless hacks who should never have been allowed to appear in the same book as a literary genius such as myself. But diplomacy forces him to compliment their stories no matter how awful they are. So he grudgingly admits that 'The Narrows' by Simon Bestwick is "a brooding, claustrophobic tale which accesses some of our most primal fears" and 'The Mill' by Mark West is "a beautiful story" and 'The Pumping Station' by Paul Finch is "a tough and uncompromising tale." Although he's clearly lying through his teeth when he calls 'Heads' by Gary McMahon "a well-constructed and satisfying tale."

Going above and beyond the call of duty Mark manages to continue his introduction by saying even more nice things about these poor excuses for stories. But when you buy the book the important thing to remember is that he's only praising these pathetic tales out of politeness. My story is the only one that he genuinely believes to be any good.

Honest.

John Connolly video

Hour long video of John Connolly discussing various aspects of writing at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2racaDOvxyI

Korgoth of Barbaria

Bob Covington pointed me towards a cartoon called Korgoth of Barbaria which spoofs the old Robert E Howard Conan stories. Funny and violent with lots of monsters and buxom wenches but there's only been one episode so far. Quick clip at www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPXH12h-K-M if anyone's interested.

Random Ramblings

Watched the beginning of Shadow Man starring Steven Seagal the other day. Just one of those masochistic things I do every now and again just to see how bad his films are these days. His current fare makes his old films look like cinematic masterpieces. Especially the fight scenes.

At least in the old days he used to do all the fights himself now he just waves his arms around while the camera does a closeup of his face and then the person he's fighting will fall down for no reason. Or more likely Seagal will just use a stunt double for the fights. Because the more bloated he becomes the more OTT his fights are. Full of dodgy wire-fu performed by stunt doubles. Except Seagal really expects people to believe that it's him doing all the stunts. Come on, look at the size of him, there isn't a wire in the world strong enough to lift that amount of blubber.

But bizarrely the fights weren't actually the funniest thing about Shadow Man. 'Cos believe it or not one of the other stars was Imelda Staunton. That's right, Vera Drake was co-starrring in a Seagal film! I didn't watch the film all the way through but I'm hoping she had a fight scene with Seagal and gave him a right good slapping.

And the surreal casting didn't stop there. Also appearing was Eva Pope from Waterloo Road (you know, that school drama with Neil Morrisey; basically it's the BBC trying to fob us off with Grange Hill as primetime telly 'cos it's got a different name and has proper "stars"). And there was also Trevor from Eastenders who used to beat up Little Mo. Unfortunately Seagal didn't pay homage to this by beating him up with an iron but I like to think this idea was put forward in an earlier draft of the script.

Of course the really exciting thing about this is that now Seagal has a potential "in" with Eastenders. The soap has a fascination with gangsters and ex-coppers (which probably explains why they have an exchange scheme going on with the cast of The Bill) so Seagal would be perfect. He could play an ex-NYPD detective who's trying to trace his East End heritage. He could even run the aikido school that used to get mentioned in every single bloody episode until the writers realised they didn't actually have any ideas how to work stories around it and quietly dropped it.

And the best thing woud be that Seagal could go up against Phil Mitchell. Just think about it, they make perfect foils for each other: they're both fat, bald has-beens trying to act like hard men.

If Seagal can't persuade any of his Hollywood stunt doubles to do the fight scenes for Eastenders I have the perfect solution. Westlife. Now this isn't just 'cos I want to see the Irish crooners get beaten to death (although that does hold a certain appeal). It comes from seeing their dancing in the video for their cover of 'Home'. Whenever they get all emotional during the song they start pulling faces and clenching their fists. One of them even stands on one leg and wobbles about wildly as he tries to maintain his balance. It looks like he's tried to walk off only to discover that someone has superglued one of his feet to the floor. Or that he's doing an un-PC impression of a special needs kid playing hopscotch. Whatever, he still obviously has greater athletic ability than Seagal.

The problem with Westlife is that these days the blonde one is a dead ringer for Boris Johnson. I keep expecting him to campaign to become the Mayor of London. But that's not as big as the other problem Westlife have. That they're shit.

Out of all the 90s pop comebacks the only group that have managed to impress me is Take That. Not that I like their music but at least they seem to have a suitably humble attitude. They appear genuinely grateful that people are buying their new records. To be honest they probably can't believe their luck. They know it's a miracle that anyone bought their stuff the first time round so having a successful comeback is something to be grateful for. Such humility is refreshing. Plus, their success will hopefully piss off Robbie Williams.

Auld Lang Syne

Happy New Year everyone.

I Am Omega

Just found this trailer for I Am Legend rip-off I Am Omega at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qwF3JV8kR0

I've got a soft spot for Mark Dacascos but this does make the Will Smith film look like the greatest film ever made.

Merry Christmas

My internet connection is a bit hit and miss at the moment due to my phoneline playing up. So I'll just quickly say Merry Christmas to everyone now in case I don't manage to get back online before the horrors, sorry, the festivities are over.

I Am Legend

I saw the press screening of I Am Legend recently. It's not bad. They've taken some liberties with the plot, the vampires (or dark-seekers as they are here) are composed of some of the worst CGI ever committed to celluloid and there's some drippily sentimental scenes but overall it's okay.

Will Smith is pretty good as Robbie Neville, showing his mental state gradually deteriorating due to his isolation -- in some respects the film is Castaway with vampires. The problem is the film tries so hard with the quiet scenes that they start to drag on and then the filmmakers overcompensate with the action scenes with bullets flying everywhere and explosions that engulf entire city blocks. (Admittedly it's only at the end of the film that this tendency gets completely out of control.)

The vampires themselves seem inconsistent in terms of intelligence and their physical abilities. And as I said the CGI is bloody awful.

The worst thing though is the ending. I won't give it away but be prepared for it to be nothing like the novel.

The people I saw it with all hated the film much more than I did saying that it had been turned into a typical Will Smith vehicle. But I think there's a simple antidote to that attitude. Whenever you think the film is getting a little too glib or is focusing too much on the action in order to make Smith look good just think how much worse it would have been if it had been made with the original choice of star. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Frank Whittle and the Jet Engine

Apparently Frank Whittle is gradually being erased from the history of the jet engine. Even though he invented the bloody thing the credit is going to German and American inventors who were working from Whittle's blueprints. Whittle deserved better than that so here's a link to a website commemorating his work.

Dollhouse

Not heard much about this proposed new TV series but Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku are supposed to be involved so I'm quietly excited.

Surprise!

Surprises can be fun.

My old copies of Crime Time sometimes surprise me. Although the magazine is still going strong I just don't have enough money to keep buying it so I'm reduced to browsing through my back issues. And although I must have read them a million times I still get surprised.

I'll have forgotten about the comics related stuff such as the features on Garth Ennis, Frank Miller and Paul Grist, and the interview with Alan Moore. I'll also have forgotten about the reviews of novels by John Connolly, Joe Lansdale, Lee Child and Stephen Hunter.

And because my tastes have broadened even the stuff I remember takes on a new relevance -- the reviews of Robert B Parker novels and the interviews with Ed McBain and Lawrence Block.

But recently I picked up anew issue of CT. Well, new to me anyway; a 2003 back issue that I picked up in a charity shop.

A whole issue of CT that I had never read. I rushed home to read it, to savour its myriad new surprises.

Ooo, look, a Lee Child interview! Reviews of books I've read and enjoyed (by Lee Child, Alan Moore, Harlan Coben) and other books I'm hoping to read soon (by Robert Crais and Dashiell Hammett).

But then the really big surprise.

This issue had a feature on The Mammoth Book of Future Cops, an anthology I had a story in. Admittedly I don't get a mention, the feature quite understandably focusing on authors people may actually have heard of such as Philip K Dick and Joe Haldeman, but it was nice to see the book did actually receive some publicity when it came out. The only press exposure I remember seeing at the time was a capsule review in SFX which again focused on the big name authors such as Stephen Baxter and China Mieville.

So, even though the CT feature didn't show my name in GIANT FUCKING LETTERS this was still a nice reminder of one of my more successful stories.

A pleasant surprise.

I Hate Computers

I've been offline for a while due to my anti-virus software telling me I had a virus. The instructions I got for removing the virus made absolutely no sense, even if the website hadn't decided to format them so that my printer chopped off the end of each sentence (printer friendly format my arse). So I had to wait for my mate Chris, who deals with all my I.T. problems, to take a look. Unfortunately it took a while for us to both be free at the same time so my computer has been lying dormant for God knows how long.

Anyway, Chris finally managed to take a look at my computer and after much effing and blinding on his part he discovered that the virus didn't actually exist, the anti-virus software was just playing silly buggers. So I could have used the computer the whole time after all and had wasted several weeks of various writing based activities for absolutely no reason whatsoever. My, how I laughed.

My mirth increased when I discovered that while I was offline my email inbox had exceeded its limit and was bouncing back anything that was sent to me. While on the one hand this has probably saved me having to delete an inordinate amount of spam it also means I don't know how many genuine emails I've lost.

So if anyone's sent me an email recently and hasn't received a reply chuck me another one and I'll try to get back to you ASAP.

Assuming my computer lets me.

Robert B Parker

I'm currently mildly addicted to Robert B Parker novels.

Parker's best known for his Spenser novels. The tough but sensitive private eye solves crimes with the help of his psychiatrist girlfriend Susan and his hitman pal, Hawk.

Then there's the Sunny Randall series about a female PI. In amongst bodyguarding duties and solving murders Sunny's trying to cope with her recent divorce. This isn't helped by the fact that her ex-husband has connections with the local crime syndicate. Or by the fact that she still loves him.

And there's the Jesse Stone books with a divorced, alcoholic L.A. detective trying to build a new life for himself as a small town police chief.

All the books contain sparse, no nonsense prose and reams of witty dialogue. Action scenes are fairly minimal in the books I've read, although it's mandatory for the middleaged Spenser to have at least one scene per book where he uses his boxing skills to prove he can beat up men half his age. To balance up Spenser's machismo there's lots of literary references, most of which I'm too stupid to get.

Parker seems to have a lot of time for psychotherapy, with both Sunny and Jesse regularly seeing shrinks to help cope with their respective divorces. Spenser meanwhile has lengthy discussions with Susan which she fills with psychobabble. This emphasis on the characters analysing their feelings openly and honestly pretty much kills any subtext but Parker peppers the books with oneliners to compensate.

Therapy sessions aside it's nice that Sunny and Jesse have personal problems, it gives the stories an edge lacking in the latest Spenser novels. The saintly Spenser seems to have pretty much resolved all his emotional problems in previous novels (which I haven't read) so now he and Susan have a blissful loving relationship. Which is all well and good but it can get a bit boring. And after their umpteenth proclamation of love and endless reminders of how attractive they are and how great their sex life is and how they are both strong, resourceful people with careers which they find completely rewarding they can come across as a little smug.

And then there's the feeling that the plots are pretty formulaic. Parker had written over 50 novels and it must be getting hard to keep coming up with new ideas. He does his best though. Even though the various 'tecs always solves their cases they don't always manage to bring the criminals to justice.

Anyway, the books are good fun. I think it's going to be a while before the novelty wears off.

Larry Hartsell RIP

Just heard that Larry Hartsell passed away on 20th August.

Hartsell was a big name in martial arts. He studied under kenpo godfather Ed Parker and kung fu legend Bruce Lee. He served as a military policeman in Vietnam and bodyguarded various movie stars. He also pioneered grappling in the martial arts long before the Gracies and the Ultimate Fighting Championship made it fashionable.

I once went to one of his seminars. As he warmed up in preparation for the seminar he chatted amiably to me and a handful of the other students. We were all too awestruck to respond properly. Then, despite being jetlagged after his flight from America, he took us through a wide variety of techniques from judo and kali. Most of the stuff went right over my head (although I'm still hoping to use one of the knifefighting techiques he made us practice in a story one day) but his skill shone through.

It was a shock to hear of his death. My condolences to his family and friends.

Holy Horrors

Just heard that I've had a story accepted for Holy Horrors. This is an anthology of religious themed horror stories (just thought I'd mention that in case you couldn't figure it out from the title) edited by T.M. Wright and Matt Cardin.

Dead chuffed about this. The final contents list hasn't been officially announced yet but from what I understand there are several big names involved. And me.

Myspace

I've finally got round to getting a myspace page. It's still a bit rough round the edges but it's at http://www.myspace.com/stuart_young1 if anyone fancies taking a look.

What a Blunt

Are you one of those people who thinks James Blunt lacks street cred? Then you obviously haven't seen this.

Take two posts into the shower?

Here's my reply to some comments on outlining stories in a discussion on the John Connolly message boards. Reusing it here is a lot easier than coming up with something original. Lazy, me?

>>Every now and again I get images and flashes of scenes, which I work toward. But they hardly ever end up in the finished story.

I think a lot of people tend to see outlining vs. making it up as you go as much more separate concepts than they really are. If you're outlining you don't have to stick to your outline, if you get a better idea once you start writing then use it. Similarly if you're making it up as you go and an idea suddenly pops into your head the idea isn't necessarily going to be something you can use at that exact moment in the story, you have to keep hold of the idea until you can fit it in, usually by steering the story towards scenes that will support that idea. Even if the idea is closely related to the scene you're writing -- e.g. "Hey, I just thought of a great way to end this scene!" -- you've still got to write the rest of the scene first and that means you're planning, if only only a very small scale.

Personally even when I'm working from a very detailed outline it tends to deal more with story structure than the actual words I'm going to use. So there's still a lot of improvisation in terms of the dialogue and descriptive writing.

Michael Moorcock discusses this at length in Death is No Obstacle. He is a big fan of outlining a story's structure but he still makes things up as he goes. He likens it to jazz improvisation, if he finds that he has used a few similies or metaphors relating to say, mirrors he doesn't think, "Oh crap, I'd better change that so I'm not constantly repeating myself" instead he turns it into a motif and tries to tie it in with the themes of the story.

Sorry, I'm not trying to come across a know-it-all, I realise that the writing process is different for everyone. A lot of times when I said "you" in this post I probably should have said "I" but I was just trying to give my ramblings a little more sense of immediacy.

Basically there's no one surefire way to write a story. Just use whatever works for you. But if your usual method suddenly stops working for whatever reason (it's happened to me) remember that there's other methods out there you can experiment with until normal service is resumed.

Chuckle

Speaking of people who write long books ...

Illusions of Style

One thing I neglected to mention when moaning about book length is font size. Generally speaking old books seem to contain smaller typeface which obviously helps contribute to their shorter page count. Although there are exceptions to this. A year or two back I read a David Baldacci novel which was over 600 pages long and had a typeface so small you'd have trouble reading it with an electron microscope. I had a headache by the time I finished reading that bastard.

Another important factor when it comes to long books is writing style. Some long books seem shorter as they have a breezier style. I recently read John Connolly's The Unquiet and found it a joy to read, much easier to digest than his previous novel in the Charlie Parker series. Although admittedly I wasn't in the best of moods when I read The Black Angel which might go some way as to explaining why I didn't enjoy it as much. But anyway Connolly claims that although a lot of people found TU the quicker read it is actually the same length as TBA. (My copy of TU seems to be shorter but that may be due to the difference in page size between paperbacks and hardbacks.) Connolly says that he took a different approach to writing the two novels as TBA was an epic novel full of metaphysical conceits and a sprawling plot that spanned the decades plus two continents whereas TU was a much more intimate affair. Therefore TBA just feels longer.

Coincidentally I recently read an old interview with Lee Child and he said that for his first novel The Killing Floor he deliberately avoided using long sentences as he didn't want to do anything to alienate his readers. He was trying to sell the novel before his redundancy money ran out and he didn't want to do anything to jeopardise his chances. Once he sold the first novel his style seems slightly less clipped but based on the novels I've read he's still making sure that you don't need a degree in English Literature to understand his prose.

And legend has it that James Ellroy created his staccato pseudo-beatnik style after the manuscript for one of his novels was too long and his agent advised him to cut out all the unnecessary words. This allowed him to cram tons of plot into a single book.

Of course if had been a Fanatasy novel his agent would have told him not to change a single word. They'd just cut the book into three sections and sell it as a trilogy.

The Long And The Short Of It

I think one of the reasons I got pissed off with some of the books I've been reading for the last couple of years is that they seem so bloody long. As I've been sorting through my bookshelves recently I've noticed that a lot of my old books are only about 250 pages long. Nowadays it's hard to find anything under 350.

Not that I used to seek out short books, it's just that most of the writers I liked tended to write shorter novels. Which did me a favour because when I did read a long book I didn't feel any pressure to get it finished quickly in order to make time for all the other massive tomes I needed to read. The way I do now.

Now I know you're thinking, "Hang on, 350 pages isn't long!" And you're right, it isn't. But when the shortest books I can readily find are all 100 pages longer than what I used to read it soon starts to mount up. Especially as all the books that used to be 350 pages are now around 500 pages.

It used to be that if I didn't like a book I didn't mind so much because I hadn't wasted much time on it but now I'm ploughing through 500 odd pages in the hope that the story will turn out to be halfway decent. (Okay, I should be able to tell if the story's any good well before I finish the 500 pages but unless the story is truly awful I like to give the author the benefit of the doubt.) Whereas when I waded through Crime and Punishment as a teenager only to decide that Russian literature wasn't really my thing I didn't feel too bad, I still had lots of other novels that I could zip through.

I miss being able to do that. I miss being able to read a Michael Moorcock trilogy in a weekend. (Admittedly, that 's probably longer than it took him to write it.) Because then I had plenty of time left to tackle the longer stuff. And also because I like to reread stuff. Back in the day I read Dune three times; if I was going to attempt a book of similar size now I'd have to check my diary to see if I had time to read it even once.

I don't mind if a book is long because it needs to be but a lot of them feel padded. Even with authors I like such as Stephen Hunter and Lee Child I'm often left thinking that their longer books don't really need to be edging towards 600 pages.

I'm guessing a lot of this is due to the publishers. They think that the punters want long books. And seeing as the rare 250 page book that does get published these days go for the same price as a 500 pager then yes, the public probably do want longer books if only to feel that they're getting their money's worth. Because it won't occur to the publishers to charge less money for a book unless it's part of a promotional offer.

So a lot of modern books put me off with their length. Most of the cutting edge SF writers I hear about produce books the size of housebricks. The same with Fantasy (and then it's usually the first instalment of a bloody trilogy.) I think Horror might not be so bad, although to be honest I don't read a lot of Horror novels. Of course back in the Eighties and Nineties Horror novels were bloody massive in order to emulate Stephen King. There was an old Jonathan Carroll interview where he said he'd been interested in writing a full-blown Horror novel until his publisher told him it would have to be at least 600 pages. Carroll decided to stick with his usual Dark Fantasy stuff.

Anyway, I'd better stop now as I've just realised that this post is about three times longer than I intended it to be. Oh, the irony ...

Our survey said ...

There's been some comments made over on John Connolly's message board that not many SF/F/H fans have heard of him as most of his novels are marketed as crime. Just out of curiosity how many of you had heard of him before I mentioned him here? And out of those who had heard of him how many realised that his novels contain a supernatural element?

Dark Knight

Dark Knight teaser trailer.

John Connolly on Youtube

Quick interview with John Connolly chatting about signings, violence in thrillers and deep themes vs. entertainment value in novels.

Robot Chicken

Stumbled across the Robot Chicken Star Wars spoofs on Youtube. Some are funnier than others but this is probably my favourite.

Sod it

I'm fed up reading stories I don't enjoy.

Time was I enjoyed nearly everything I read. Oh, there'd be the occasional misstep where a book would catch my eye and then fail to deliver upon its promise but for the most part my reading experiences were happy ones. But for quite a while I've found more and more books are leaving me dissatisfied. And I think I know why.

More people are recommending books to me than ever before.

As a child discovering a new author was often a happy accident. Stories on Jackonary would catch my interest, a film I enjoyed would be novelized, or I might spy a book in the local library and closer inspection would lead me to believe that I would enjoy reading it. And of course people would recommend books to me.

But these recommendations were reasonably scarce, tending to come from only one or two trusted sources, friends who shared similar tastes to my own. Nowadays I'm constantly assailed by people badgering me to read their favourite authors. And it's not just people I actually talk to, it's the people on message boards and websites and newsletters and magazines and all the other stuff that I never used to bother with as a child. All of them saying, "You must read this new book!"

This would be a lot easier to ignore if it wasn't for the fact that I'm a writer. As a reader I can just read whatever I want to read and to hell with what anyone else thinks. But as a writer I'm supposed to have a solid background in all kinds of fiction. I'm supposed to be wellversed in the classics, to have a thorough knowledge of the history of the various genres that I write in as well as keeping up to date with all the current developments in those same genres. Plus, I'm supposed to read outside these genres in order to prevent myself merely recycling the cliches of the kinds of fiction that I write.

So when people tell me about an author who is a literary genius or whose work had a profound effect on a particular genre or who is currently redefining a genre I add that author's name to the list of stuff I'm supposed to be reading. Which means I'm relying on other people's recommendations on what I should read instead of my own judgement. Hence my reading so much stuff that I don't actually enjoy.

Now as a writer I'm not supposed to actually enjoy everything I read, the reading is supposed to be part of my work. But -- and I don't know if I'm alone in this -- I find that the more stuff I read that I don't enjoy then the less I actually write. The dreariness of the work I'm reading permnates my entire being and robs me of any desire to write any stories of my own. Now you can say this is just my excuse for being a lazy bastard, and you wouldn't be entirely wrong, but it is true that the less I enjoy the stories I'm reading then the harder I find the writing process.

Therefore I am currently saying the hell with it and am concentrating on reading stories that I think I will like and not what other people tell me I should like.

So there.

Popcorn

Quick thoughts on some films I watched recently:

Die Hard 4.0. Okay, I'm of the school of thought that says they should have stopped making Die Hard films after the first one as they're never going to improve upon it. So I tried to view this less as a Die Hard sequel and more as the continuing adventures of John McClane. That way I'm not constantly judging it against one of my all-time favourite action films. (Yes, I'm aware that this is a bullshit rationalization that only makes sense inside my own mind but it's my mind so I can do what I like in there.)

Anyway...

Good things about the film: Justin Long is a likeable sidekick, and his presence isn't just shoehorned into the film like Samuel L Jackson in the previous film. The FBI chief isn't a complete moron like most authority figures in action films; he actually comes across as good at his job, it's not his fault that the villain is even better at his. And, most importantly, Maggie Q looks great in her slinky black outfits.

Bad things about the film: Kevin Smith's dire cameo. The increasingly ludicrous action scenes -- I'd be watching them thinking, "Yeah, that's great, just stop there and that'll be a pretty cool scene. No, seriously, stop 'cos if it goes on any longer ... okay, they've ruined it." And Bruce Willis's invulnerability -- there's one bit where Willis and one of the bad guys receive almost identical injuries yet the villain dies and Willis just gets a flesh wound.

Hot Fuzz. To be fair I was a bit tired when I watched this but my initial reation is that it's nowhere near as good as Shaun of the Dead. Too much stunt casting. Not enough decent jokes. All the supporting characters are caricatures. The hero is too uptight to actually do anything to get the audience to sympathise with him -- and if he's such a wonderful supercop why does it take him so long to unravel such a simple case? The references to action movies are blatantly signposted and are used as a substitute for characterization. The shift in tone from Heartbeat to Midsomer Murders to generic action flick never really convinces. I could go on but I can't be bothered. Now that my hopes have been dashed I might watch it again and enjoy it on its own terms but right now I can't help but feel that Pegg, Frost and Wright just pissed about while making this film, relying on the good will from Shaun to produce good box office.

X-Men: The Last Stand. After the panning this film got from the critics I'm surprised how much I enjoyed it. Granted, it's no masterpiece and it's riddled with plotholes and bad acting but it never seemed to become truly awful. Yes, Cyclops is criminally underused yet again. Yes, Vinnie Jones cannot act to save his life. Yes, Magneto's characterization veers inconsistently from one scene to the next. Yes, the film has not one but two cop-out endings (watch right to the end of the final credits). Yes, it expects you to care about characters who have bugger all screentime (the Beast, Angel, Kitty Pryde, Collossus and a cast of what seems like thousands). But somehow it captures the spirit of the comics better than Singer's efforts. While Singer made the better films they felt more like SF films than X-Men films. X3 feels more like the comics. Not the best of the comics to be sure but it did capture that sense of leading inexorably to a massive super-battle that is pretty much the cornerstone of superhero comics -- "We're dealing with complex ethical issues here which should be discussed in a mature and rational ... oh, sod this. FIGHT!!!"

Admittedly, from what I understand Singer was planning to take X3 in a similar direction anyway and he probably would have made a much better job of it than Brett Ratner. And I'm pretty sure X3 won't stand up to repeated viewing (I've already had someone point out a major plothole that I hadn't spotted) but it was kind of fun at the time.

Deja Vu

Weird thing happened whilst I was watching House last night. The episode revolved around House treating someone he had been dreaming about despite House never having previously met the person. Fair enough, but about halfway through the episode I found I could predict what was going to happen in each scene.

This was a little strange. This was a new episode so I couldn't have seen it before. And why could I only predict the second half of the story? Even if I had somehow managed to see the episode prior to this I would have remembered the whole thing due to its interesting premise and the cool opening scene. Plus the geek part of my brain would have remembered that the patient was played by Marc Blucas who was Riley in Buffy.

Puzzled, I continued to watch the episode.

Eventually I realised what had happened. A couple of months back I was thrown when a scene dealing with a subplot felt jarringly out of place with House's continuity. That same scene was in last night's episode but now it felt right at home continuity-wise. Okay, Five had obviously screwed up and shown the episode ahead of schedule and now they were showing it in its correct place. But why couldn't I remember the first half of the episode? I don't have a definite answer for that but the simplest solution is that I just missed the first half when it was previously aired. That would also explain why I didn't remember the Buffy connection; for the portion of the show that I remembered Blucas only made a brief appearance and had a shaved head due to aborted brain surgery.

Mystery solved.

Apart from the freaky coincidence of my experiencing deja vu due to a vague memory whilst watching a TV show where the main character experiences deja vu due to a vague memory. *Twilight Zone theme plays in background*

Mutants, Supermen, Aces and Crooks

Here's some quick thoughts on some of the comics I've been reading recently.

Astonishing X-Men: Torn by Joss Whedon. Third volume of the Buffy-man's X-book. Plenty of action and humour along with some nice character moments. Whedon's a big Chris Claremont fan so the book has a classic feel but with a modern sheen. One problem with the book might be X-continuity, if you haven't read enough of Claremont or Grant Morrison's runs you might not quite get who some of the villains and supporting characters are supposed to be. But if you're an X-expert I'm told that some of the plot twists are a little predictable as they're new takes on old ideas. Fortunately I seem to have just the right amount of continuity knowledge for neither of these problems to bother me.

All Star Superman by Grant Morrison. An attempt to squeeze all the essential elements of Superman lore into one book. So sarky Lois Lane doesn't realise that klutzy, awkward Clark Kent is really Superman. Jimmy Olsen is a master of disguise. Lex Luthor is a hissably evil megalomaniac. Superman's powers can be distilled into a poition. Supermen of the future drop by at a moment's notice. It's all very Silver Age with a large splash of Christopher Reeve's take on Clark Kent but Morrison seems to be trying too hard. For all the book's brightly coloured sense of wonder Morrison has never been great at writing characters I can warm to, the archness of his style creating distance. He does try to generate emotion but he always seems more interested in moving on to the next piece of crazy super-powered sci-fi.

Battler Britton by Garth Ennis. North Africa WWII. Wing Commander Robert Britton and his squadron are assigned a bunch of US pilots and are told to show them the ropes. Cue much bickering between the war weary Brits and the trigger-happy Yanks. Ennis does his best to make this interesting, with a mixture of idiots and sympathetic characters in both camps but this still feels like storytelling by numbers. The cast is too large for anyone to develop a real personality and having everyone in uniform sometimes makes it a little difficult to distinguish between characters. Still, Ennis obviously has fun writing the exploits of one of his childhood comic book heroes. And he drops in lots of authentic details about WWII aerial tactics.

Criminal: Coward by Ed Brubaker. Picked this one up on a reccomendation from Simon. Leo is a planner, and a cautious one at that. The first sign that one of his criminal schemes might go awry and he's out of there. He never takes risks. But of course that makes for a very boring story so he ends up being coerced into a job where he has to take risks. Lots of them. Gritty characters spout gritty dialogue as they doublecross each other. Much more subdued take on crime than say Sin City, with the emphasis on character interaction over mindless violence. Even so, you know it's just a matter of time before the bullets start flying.

Don't I know you from somewhere?

Caught a repeat of Sharpe's Justice the other day. Surprised to see how many of the cast went on to star in SF/F/H fare.

Obviously Sean Bean played Boromir in LotR. But you also had a pre-Life on Mars Philip Glenister, a pre-Primeval Douglas Henshall and a pre-Buffy and Angel Alexis Denisof.

And then last night I watched Sharpe's Challenge which had Bean fighting Toby Stephens. Both men had previously played Bond villains.

A less interesting version of this game can be played with Dr Who, trying to spot which programme the actors playing the supporting characters had appeared in before Who. Eastenders, Eastenders, Eastenders, Casualty, Eastenders, Eastenders ...

Kane

I've got way behind with Paul Grist's excellent crime comic Kane so the other day I read The Untouchable Rico Costas and Other Short Stories. Great fun. Continues the story of disgraced cop Kane as he attempts to bring down crime boss Oscar Daarke. The dramatic main story is nicely balanced out with some silly jokes and parodies of wellknown comics characters and Grist's B&W artwork is as delightful as ever. At first glance the cartoony art looks pretty crude, as though the Wallace and Gromit team have tried aping Sin City, but that just helps bridge the gap between the gags and the drama. One minute you're laughing but the next minute you really care whether Kane and his partners are going to get screwed over by an Internal Affairs investigation.

Well worth a look.

Zombie King

I'm a bit late with this but I just discovered Frank Cho's Zombie King #0 is available online.

WARNING FOR ELIZABETH: You won't like this link.

Doodling

Been going through one of my sporadic attempts at learning how to draw. Nothing fancy, just using photo reference to try and improve my abysmal grasp on human anatomy (apparently people are only supposed to have two arms).

The figures tend to look pretty stiff so the other day I spent a while sketching out copies of comic book poses. The theory was that if I drew some really exaggerated postures then some of that dynamism might carry over into my photo reference stuff, loosening the figures up a bit. Kind of worked, although most of the subjects of my sketches still look about as relaxed as someone who's about to receive a rectal exam.

Also spent a bit of time yesterday trying to figure how best to draw the female nose. Delineating the bridge of the nose tends to turn every sketch into Barbara Streisand but leaving out the bridge creates mutant women with these perfectly flat faces with a pair of nostrils burrowing straight into their skull.

The really worrying thing is that if anyone sees my sketchbook the content goes from pictures of glamorous women to a whole page of noses. This gives the impression that I have a rather strange fetish. I mean, these aren't the kind of hooters that most men go for.

Flash Point

Hong Kong legend Donnie Yen's new film FLASH POINT features UFC style grappling amongst his usual chop socky stuff. Although he still manages to make it incredibly acrobatic.

Trailer 1
Trailer 2
Shooting Diary

Bath Time

Just remembered that one of my old stories is available to view online.

Hi, I'm a Marvel ... and I'm a DC

I keep forgetting to post about this. Hilarious spoof of the Mac/PC ads with Marvel and DC characters comparing their various film projects. To make it funnier the superheroes are played by their action figures. To make it even funnier they actually give better performances than the actors in the real films.

I think there's about eight of them available now. Keep an eye out for new ones.

BFS Open Night

Went along to the BFS open night on Friday. Good laugh, much better than the disastrous March open night where only about three people turned up.

Topics of conversation included:

Seeing that as David Tennant's Dr Who is written as a sex god does Sylvester McCoy resent his stint as the character not being given the same treatment?

What stuff scared you as a kid? (For me it was Dr Who, the BBC version of The Day of the Triffids and the 50s version of The Invasion of The Body Snatchers.)

How exactly will Michael Bay fit his required amount of explosions (at least fifteen) into his remake of The Birds?

And what would be the most pointless remake Hollywood could produce? My money is on a shot-by-shot remake of Gus Van Sant's version of Psycho.

Plus, due to the large amount of writers present, a lot of whinging about there not being enough markets for stories. Translated this means, "My story has been rejected so many times I've run out of people to send it to."

Let's Try That Again

In response to my last post Simon commented on how he sometimes has to write the wrong story before he can write the one he needs to be writing, peeling away the inital story until the real story emerges.

I remember doing this years ago with 'Spirits of Darkness and Light.' Originally it was a SF story but after completing the first draft I wasn't happy with it so I stuck it in a drawer and started work on something else. A looong time passed before I remembered the story was still stuck in the drawer. But when I finally dragged it out I realised that what I thought should be a SF story should in fact be a ghost story. Much more fitting for the tone and setting. Plus this change also allowed me to bring in an emotional undercurrent that had been entirely lacking in the story's first incarnation.

In theory outlining allows me to get this part of the process out of the way a lot quicker. I'm just bouncing ideas around, the plot is still fluid, malleable; I can add or subtract as I wish. Entire subplots can live and die in a space of seconds. Even if I end up mulling over them for longer periods at least I'm not distracted by the need to write beguiling prose at the same time as I'm trying to figure out the story's plot.

In Mask I realised that a plot development I was toying with wouldn't fit into the word count so I collapsed the whole thing into a couple of lines whilst still in the planning stages. Saved me having to write out a half dozen or so pages of story and then trying to shoehorn it into the rest of the plot; shedding dialogue here, descriptive passages there, all the time cursing the need for this gutting of my muse.

Other times the outlining hasn't worked so well. I've added in subplots that have absolutely no place in the story I'm writing but I don't realise until after I've finished the first draft. I then have the problem of working out how far this soon to be deceased subplot has entwined itself around the main plot, the story's heart. If small but telling details of the subplot have wormed their way into the main body of the story then continuity errors probably fill every page. So as well as the fun of cutting out all the stuff I don't want to keep I also have to rewrite all the stuff I do want to keep. This is never fun.

It doesn't help that lately I seem to have totally lost the ability to judge the intended length of a story. Scenes that are only supposed to last a couple of hundred words drag on past the thousand word mark, rapid fire exchanges of dialogue turn into bloated discussions. All of which means I not only waste time writing this rubbish but I also have to trim it all down again afterwards.

Unfortunately there's no one best method to write a story. There's only the best method to write the story you're currently working on. Sometimes you find that method first time, sometimes you have to scream and shout and pull out a few clumps of your hair first.

Outlines

Ally made a good point in her reply to my last post where she said it sometimes takes her three outlines to nail a story. I'm not sure if she means three entirely separate outlines or two revisions of her intial outline. I'm guessing that different writers have different approaches to outlining.

The method I tend to have used over the last few years is to bounce ideas around in a mind map. I create different threads for each character, thinking about who they are, how they behave and what they could within the story which would be fun or exciting or scary or whatever. Hopefully by this point I have a fairly good idea of the basic shape of the story.

Then I flip the page over and write out a scene-by-scene synopsis, adding or shedding ideas from the mind map as appropriate. With this first outline I'll try to strike a balance between brevity and detail. I'm trying to keep everything lean by only mentioning key details but at the same time I'll jot down vital pieces of dialogue, description, foreshadowing etc so I know where they occur in the story. And as I'm working in a 3-act structure I'm also figuring out where to drop the big bombshells that need to occur at the end of each act.

After reading through this outline I'll go through the adding/shedding process once more. Perhaps there are too many scenes at the beginning of the story, it's messing up the pacing. So I'll see if I can ditch some scenes or perhaps combine two scenes together so I'm still conveying the same amount of information to the reader but in a more succint manner. At this stage the outline will be much more stripped down than the first one as I've already established most of the fine detail. Whereas before I used several words to describe a scene, along with several arrows leading off to notes dealing with the embellishments, here I'm working in telegramese. "Fight. Gloating. Rescue" -- stuff that only makes sense to me.

Sometimes I nail it more or less straight away. Other times I have to polish the outline two, maybe threee times.

And sometimes the outline is more flexible than others. With the infamous "no headers" story due to time constraints I only did a bare bones outline and altered a lot of stuff as I went along. Setpieces would still be in the same place but often they weren't the setpieces I had planned.

And sometimes I don't even bother with writing an outline and just work out the whole thing in my head.

I feel the need, the need for speed

Okay, so if you've read my previous post you know I made a complete balls-up of my latest story submission. That's the problem with writing fast, sometimes you get caught up in the story and don't spot your mistakes until it's too late. When you're just flinging words down on the page it's all too easy to get sloppy.

Not that writing fast is always a bad thing. Sometimes being up against a tight deadline helps a story. For a start it's a great motivator. And it can lend a story tremendous energy.

A few years back I submitted a story to an anthology. This was well before the deadline and so I had plenty of time to polish the story before submitting it. Even better, due to the lack of pressure I didn't have to give myself an ulcer in the course of writing it. All was well in the world.

Until the story got rejected.

Although the editor loved the story and thought it was one of the funniest stories she had received she couldn't use it. Turned out I'd followed the guidelines a little too faithfully and the story I'd produced was too similar to a host of other stories she'd received.

Normally, this in itself wouldn't be the end of the world. After all, I could always send her another story.

Except I received the rejection on the final day for submissions. Anything I was going to email her I was going to have to send now.

Frantically I came up with a new idea for a story, bouncing dialogue and plot points around inside my head. Grabbing a pen I scribbled down an outline, simultaneously filling in themes and character arcs. Okay, I could do this.

Sitting down at my computer I had the whole thing written in a couple of hours. All I had to do now was submit it.

And that's when my email stopped working.

Didn't matter how many times I tried sending the email the screen just kept flashing the same error message.

"Oh dear," I said. Or words to that effect.

Several hours and one hundred failed attempts later the email still refused to let me send my story. I kept trying. The anthology was a US publication, the time difference meant that I had an extra five or six hours before I blew the deadline. All I had to do was keep trying.

It became a battle of wills. Me clicking defiantly on my mouse and my computer sneering at me as it flashed its error message. On and on we fought, no quarter asked, none given.

Finally at two o'clock in the morning my computer admitted defeat and let me send the email.

Normally this is the point where I would tell you that when I crawled out of bed I found an email telling me the story had been rejected. But apparently irony was on holiday that morning because instead I found the story had been accepted. Despite my lack of sleep I uttered a cry of triumph. Although to the casual observer it probably sounded more like an exhausted yawn.

Anyway, it just goes to show that fast writing and last minute submissions do sometimes pay off.

First Impressions

Just had a story bounced from an anthology I was trying to get into. Kind of pissed off about it -- I could really do with some good news right now -- but not entirely surprised.

I only found out about the anthology at the last minute and then wasted a few days researching an idea which I ended up abandoning as I couldn't get certain historical facts to tie up with the story. Then it took a couple of days research before I could start work on my new idea. Add in a few other factors reducing my recent writing time and before I know it the day of the deadline has arrived and I still haven't finished the story. Worse, I need to be at work in a couple of hours.

So I knock out the last part of the story, type it up, and then print it out. Okay, couple of characters still don't have names, I'll just have to make something up off the top of my head. And there's some clumsy phrasing here and there, best cut that out. Aaarghh, and I still haven't established an important prop that ties into the story's climax, so I need to shoehorn an extra bit of description into the opening scene.

I check my watch. Only minutes to go before I have to leave for work. I start writing out the email that's going to accompany my submission whilst simultaneously proofreading the manuscript. I'm only four pages into the story when time runs out, if I don't leave now I'm going to miss the beginning of my shift. Praying that somehow the rest of the manuscript doesn't contain similar mistakes to the ones I've just corrected I click my mouse, submitting the story literally seconds before I run out the door.

So I know this isn't the slickest story I've ever written. I didn't finish polishing it up, I didn't have time to insert a couple of ideas I had to increase the dramatic tension, and the bit where I tried to sound really clever and profound got cut out because the language was too clumsy and imprecise to convey even the slightest sense of what I was trying to get across. Plus, those last minute character names I came up with? Really bad.

Still, I tried to be optimistic. Maybe if the editor liked the story enough he would ignore its rough edges. He might even let me tidy it up before publication.

But then, a couple of hours into my shift, I realised I had made a big mistake. I hadn't put any headers on the manuscript. No page numbers. No title. No author's name. Yeah, okay, I had the title and author's name on the front page but after that, nothing. The kind of mistake that most editors jump on as it gives them an excuse to reduce their slushpile. "This moron doesn't even know enough to put headers on his manuscripts, how can he possibly have written a decent story??????"

The annoying thing is that every submission I've ever made has carried headers. It's the last thing I do before submitting a story, the thing that lets me know that a story is ready for an editor's perusal. But in the rush to meet the deadline I completely and utterly forgot.

Admittedly, that may not have been the reason the story got rejected. Like I said the story wasn't the finest tale I've ever penned. But in his email the editor said he'd been forced to switch to form rejections due to the amount of submisions he received. That means a big slushpile. That means an editor stops looking for reasons to publish your story and starts looking for reasons not to publish it.

And under those cirumstances first impressions count.

Fanboy stuff

Simon Strantzas has written an interesting post on The Punisher over at his blog, comparing Steven Grant's take on the character with that of Garth Ennis. He's also drawn a nice little sketch of old Frankie boy.

Pity he didn't mention Mike Baron's run on the Punisher. Admittedly Baron lost his way pretty quickly but personally I thought the first year or so of his run was pretty damn good. But I seem to remember Simon mentioning that he's not a fan of the Baron stories.

And just to clarify, Simon's discussing Ennis's MAXX stories not his Marvel Knights take on the Punisher. The Marvel Knights version was played for laughs and didn't really appeal to me that much whereas the MAXX version is deadly serious.

Finally, I'll take Simon's quote of the last line from Grant's Return to Big Nothing and raise him the last line to Ennis's The Tyger: "And I show them a face not made by God."

Cagney

I've got fond memories of watching old James Cagney films when I was a kid. Channel 4 did a season of his films and it was a revelation. He played heroes and he played villains. He did comedy and he did drama. And he did it all wonderfully.

Here's a quick selection of scenes from his films:

Cagney acting hard http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqt1kGRsbt0&mode=related&search=

Cagney pioneering martial arts fight scenes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMJixq-LbgI&mode=related&search=

Cagney in dance mode http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6RrnsZjoYw&mode=related&search=

We Fade to Grey

Good news everybody!

Pendragon Press are publishing We Fade to Grey, a horror anthology featuring novelettes from Paul Finch, Simon Bestwick, Mark West, Gary McMahon and me.

As you can probably guess from the title We Fade to Grey features stories based around the theme of clothes losing their whiteness after repeated washing. My story, Skidmarks, revolves around a pair of demonic Y-fronts terrorising the clientele of a rundown launderette. The book is sponsored by Daz and Shane Richie will be writing the introduction.

Um, no, I just made that up. Gary McMahon did suggest a theme when he approached everyone about submitting a story but it was just something to get the creative juices flowing, we didn't really have to stick to it. In fact at WHC neither of us could remember what the original theme had been. Gary tentatively suggested that it may have been "mistakes." As in, "It may have been a mistake to invite Stuart to submit to this anthology." A feeling probably compounded by the fact that my story overshot the word count by about 3,000 words. (Look, it's not my fault, okay? I can either do short stories or novellas, don't expect me to mess around halfway between the two with these piddly novellette things. Novelettes is a stupid name anyway, sounds like a '6os girl group.)

So anyway, that's We Fade to Grey from Pendragon Press, debuting at FantasyCon 2008.

Shooter/Point of Impact

Saw Shooter recently -- you remember, the Mark Wahlberg film based on Stephen Hunter's Point of Impact?

Turned out to be an okayish action film. Obviously wants to set itself up as a franchise to rival Matt Damon's Bourne series. Does its best to emulate the more realistic lowkey action style of the Bourne flicks but can't resist turning every explosion into a gigantic Hollywood fireball -- "He only threw a hand grenade; should it have been able to destroy half a continent?"

Various changes had been made to the plot and afterwards I amused myself by trying to figure out which changes had been made in order to streamline the plot into a 2 hour film and which had been necessitated by the changes they had already made -- "We've got to keep that great setpiece but we've already written out the main character for that scene due to pacing reasons, which of the remaining characters can we use to replace them?"

The hero's sidekick Nick Memphis benefits from this streamlining insofar that he is less bumbling than his counterpart in the novel. On the downside he loses the tragic backstory that shows beneath his dithery exterior he possesses balls of steel.

On a more worrying note the potential franchise may have shot itself in the foot by excising a lot of material from POI that comes into play in the later novels. Either they're not planning to be too faithful to the novels or they're hoping cinema audiences have the attention span of an amnesiac goldfish.

The politics angle of the story had been brought to the fore which I think was largely so the director could push his political agenda -- apparently the people who sponsor and carry out assassinations and other black ops aren't very nice and shouldn't be trusted. Yes, I was shocked by this revelation too.

And being a Hollywood action film they couldn't end with the courtroom drama that concluded the novel, they had to tag on another action scene just so they could end on a bang. Which kind of backfired on them as the finale was pretty dull. Plus I'm not entirley sure but I suspect the loose ends they left to be tied up by the final shooutout actually made nonsense of the hero's actions at the end of the previous action scene.

On top of this the film made Bob Lee Swagger more brutal than in the novel. In Hunter's version he has to be coaxed back into killing, in the film he pretty much revels in it from the word go. At the end of the novel it is pointed out that during the course of this little adventure he only killed in self defence, in the film he is turned into judge, jury and executioner.

And now for the really petty irritations:

Everyone refers to Bob as Bob Lee even though it is specifically stated in POI that he doesn't like that.

No one refers to Bob by his sniper nickname, Bob the Nailer. Although to be fair in the film he's a super-secret black ops sniper not a 'Nam vet so he's not supposed to have a famous nickname.

Bob never gets to use his sniping catchphrase, "Time to hunt."

They didn't use my favourite line of dialogue from the novel where, upon learning how many kills Bob can rack up in a single mission, one of the villains comments, "Cocksucker can shoot a little."

Anyway, even though I didn't think the film was as good as the book you're probably better of watching the film first. The friend I saw the film with thought it was okay but he hadn't read the book so he didn't have anything to compare it to. So yeah, watch the film and if you like it read the book afterwards. Unless of course you have a burning desire to read Hunter's prose wihtout it being filtered through the memory of Hollywood's halfhearted adap.

The Unquiet signing

Went to a John Connolly signing last night.John read an extract from his novel in progress The Reapers then did a very funny Q&A with the audience before moving on to signing books.

Turns out he has an excellent memory for faces because he remembered me from our brief chat at last year's FantasyCon. "Wow," I thought. "Nothing could make me happier than this." That is until he said he'd read the copy of Mask I gave him and he really enjoyed it and was pleased it won the British Fantasy Award. "Okay," I thought. "Nothing can make me happier than this." And then he invited me along for a drink with a group of his friends and fans. "My God," I thought. "Nothing can possibly make me happier than this ... Unless Jessica Alba suddenly shows up offering to have sex with me."

At this point my luck ran out so I had to settle for drinks with John and his pals.

Hard Bastards

Was chatting to one of my mates about actors who don't mind being unsympathetic when playing heroes. The ones who don't need to have at least one key scene where their character is shown to be a wonderful, sensitive human being. The ones who are prepared to play hard, unlikeable, even misanthropic characters. The ones who are prepared to play real bastards.

Obviously John Wayne came up. As Ethan Edwards in The Searchers -- possibly his most famous role -- he is a bitter, racist, vengeance-driven bastard. In fact I would argue that he's not even the hero of the film. Yes, he gets the most screentime and has his name over the credits but the real hero of the story is Jeffrey Hunter. Even if you don't agree that Hunter is the film's hero he is at least its conscience. He is the moral centre of the film, Wayne is just there to act hard. The same is true of Red River. Wayne starts off in his typical firm but fair persona but about halfway through the film he crosses the line and it becomes clear that he is the villain of the piece and Montgomery Clift is the real hero. Perhaps not coincidentally The Searchers and Red River are considered to contain two of Wayne's best performances.

And James Cagney. Yes, he played heroes. He even played jolly romantic leads when he was in song and dance mode. But he is best remembered for playing villains. White Heat, The Public Enemy -- he was '30s cinema's favourite psychotic gangster. Even later on in his career he could still play bastards. His portrayal of Captain Morton in Mister Roberts is hissably evil and the film's a comedy!

Humphrey Bogart also played his fair share of villains before getting a shot at a heroic role. And then he played Sam Spade; a hard, cynical, virtually amoral bastard. Not exactly role model material. Yes, he played softer roles such as in The African Queen but he still retained his hard edge. The Caine Mutiny shows him going into meltdown, his portrayal of Captain Queeg the dramtic flipside to Cagney's comedic martinet in Mr Roberts.

Other actors come to mind. Michael Caine in Get Carter. Clint Eastwood in White Hunter, Black Heart or High Plains Drifter or the original Dirty Harry.

Wayne. Cagney. Bogart. Caine. Eastwood. And then we added another name to this illustrious list ...

Richard Briers.

Yes, I know he was the voice of Roobarb and Custard. And I know he was Tom Good in The Good Life. But let's face it, Tom was a bit of a bastard. He jacked in his job and decided to basically start a farm in his Surbiton home, subjecting his wife Barbara to a life of hardship and toil and financial destituiton and he expects her to happily go along with it. And while he continually takes potshots at his next door neighbour Jerry for continuing to take part in the rat race Jerry's the one Tom goes crawling to when he needs money. Plus there's the fact that Tom obviously fancies his chances with Jerry's wife, Margo. He sees how worked up she gets when he teases her and he suspects that this passion extends to other areas.

And in Ever Decreasing Circles Briers's character Martin is basically a little Hitler. His obsession with rules and regulations and always doing everything by the book is annoying enough but he has hardly any warmth to him, any humanity. Yes, the occasional episode would show the softer side to his character but mainly he was there to be unlikeable, his desperation to cling to his ordered little world no matter what sometimes shifting from comedy to darker, more unsettling territory.

So here's to Richard Briers. One of acting's best bastards!