Taming the Sterkarms

My small household gods watch over the plot

          Monday 6^th Feb
 I continue to work on two books at once, trying to plot one, and rewrite the other.

          My kitchen table is still covered with index cards, scribbled in blue ink.  Almost every time I go into the kitchen, I stop and read over the cards.  Sometimes I change the postion of one, or scribble another.

'Odin's Voice' by Susan Price

          I’ve decided that I don’t like the ending I had roughly plotted out.  It’s too close to the original idea I had, too predictable, too ‘left-side-of-the-brain editorial’.  It’s also too close to the ending of my ‘Odin’s Voice’ trilogy.  That left-brain editor obviously thought: well it worked once!  It’ll do again.  No! Not good enough.  So I’ve moved that final row of cards aside, to make space for something new.  Don’t know what yet, though I’ve jotted some notes.

          I’ve got that feeling I’ve had before – I daresay many will recognise it – that feeling that there’s something, some new idea, struggling just behind my forehead.  Haven’t got any clear idea of what it is, just that it’s there, and if I pretend I haven’t noticed, it will eventually come right to the front of my head, and I can catch it.

          I’ve also been reading Sterkarm 3 on the kindle and making rough notes in different colours.  At the suggestion of some commentators on this blog, I’ve added a dog and been very pleased with the result – except that I’ll have to rewrite the end of Sterkarm Kiss – but hey, I’ve got the rights back now, I can do what I like with it.

          I’ve also found a sub-plot that I might or might not keep or develop.  Shall have to see how the rest goes on.

          Tuesday 7^th Feb.  I’m deep into the rougher reaches of the Sterkarm first draft now, scribbling away with my coloured pens – often several colours in one sentence as the different characters meet.  It’s useful to have Per May in green and Per Changeling in red – wish I could do that in the finished novel.  It would be less head-nipping.

          I’ve found a romantic sub-plot which stops short, and which I’m going to have to fix, but I don’t know how.  I’m only mapping as yet.

          I have 22 sheets of scribbled paper, and don’t know how I’m going to see the whole thing at once.  Maybe I’ll sellotape them all together into a long strip.  I suspect that I included too much detail and it’s got a bit out of hand – literally.  Maybe I’ll make a big paper curtain and hang it on my wall – and stand on my kitchen steps to study it.

          Wednesday 8^th  I was doing my University stint and too busy to get any writing done.  And Thursday 9^th vanished in domestic and admin chores.  Friday 10^th is another University day, despite the fact that I didn’t go in because of the ice and snow.  I got students to send me their stuff by email.  So, no writing of my own.

           But next week I’m only at University for one day, Monday – so obviously, I’ll have both books sorted by the end of the week!

          And meanwhile, work on e-books continues.  This is the cover for my eighth, Christopher Uptake.  It isn't available yet - I'm still adding notes and hyperlinks - but I hope it will be soon



And here, as ever, is Blott - 

REVAMP! - Down with Vapid Vampires!

          Revamp is an on-line horror fest, the idea of two writers, Die Booth and L C Hu, aka the Mad Doctors of Literature.

          Tired of modern horror clichés, such as the swoony, teenage, angst-ridden vampire, Hu and Booth wanted to encourage a return to the older, folk-lore rooted horror story, and they posted their stories on-line and invited others to submit tales of vampires, were-wolves, ghosts and zombies.

          For a whole year, from Hallowe’en 2010 to Hallowe’en 2011, lovers of spooks and things that snarl in the night were able to dip into the site, sure of finding a good story.

          Now an anthology of the Revamp stories is available, both as a paper book and as an e-book.  I haven’t space to mention every story, but I was struck by the vivid exactness of detail that characterises all of them.  The writers understand that a monster of any kind is far more frightening if it’s present as part of a time and place we can picture ourselves in, and for that, precise observation is needed.

          This exactness, this clarity of imagination can be seen, for instance, in Die Booth’s Found – a lovely take on the classic Jacob’s story The Monkey’s Paw, and one which doesn’t suffer by comparison.  Anyone who has been in a Northern English city, with sooty, rainy streets, and poky little houses, can walk inside this story (and be chilled by it.)

          Tessa Brown, with exact detail, sets a scary ghost story on a train, and an equally scary zombie story in a biodome.  This last may not be a place most people are acquainted with, but the writer’s casual allusion to the office, the plants, show that she has imagined herself squarely inside it – and that clarity of the writer’s vision enables the reader to step inside it too.

          I very much enjoyed Booth’s Tangled Thread, for its contrasting voices.  It begins as a Victorian ghost story, and I read it while holding my breath and waiting for the false note.  It never came: Booth is pitch perfect.  If I had read this story without knowing anything about it, I would have taken it for a period story reprinted from an old magazine.  The second half of the story is told by an American street kid, in a voice that couldn’t be more different.

          Strong narrative voices appear elsewhere.  I enjoyed Michele Rimmer’s The Maggot, and loved her cool Brummie narrator (an undertaker), who addresses her one-night stand as ‘Bab’.  (I come from near Birmingham and have been called ‘bab’ a few times!)

          In L C Hu’s Natural Beast, we have an icily correct aristocratic narrator who plans to murder his brother in rather the same tone he might plan the redecoration of his rooms.  (And which is the greater beast, this story asks, the wolf or the man?)  Hu also has a chilling tale of a nascent serial killer, narrated by the killer’s mother.  The subtle glimpses of the family’s life, and the mother’s detached tone, tell us more than the words themselves.

          Many of the best stories take the horror themes and spin them, taking a sidelong, unexpected view – and the desire to reconnect with folklore is surely present in Booth’s Fourth Ape, which echoes with the tale of Bluebeard, but has its own originality.



Liebster Blog Award

            Other readers will choose other favourites from among the stories, but this is an excellent collection, with skill, wit, originality and quite a few shocks, scares and creeps!

          And you may have noticed that the blog has won an award!  Of which, more next week.

      And Blot, you ask, where is Blot?
Blot is missing.  He may be shut in a garage somewhere.  I am searching the virtual neighbourhood and banging cans of tuna with a spoon.  I hope he'll be back by next week.