Brown Eyes

- for Alex

Studio lamp flaring fires sharp into Brown eyes
Paper stat wisdom hauled heavy from case
A scan on the plinth and its showtime for sad eyes
Heavy cheek muscles tug smiles from his face

Footfall from stage left, more men with bright eyes
Assemble, smile gleaming and nod to the crowd
Spotless in couture, ties glare at Brown eyes
Familiar rhetoric route heavily ploughed

Make-up proof skin grey, hardened from house I's
Wraps like a shroud round political hope
In the distance, soft memory of tiny frail Brown eyes
No longer with him but on he shall cope

Seconds as minutes and minutes as hours. Lies
Ring through the air and sweep up through the lens
Highlands so far off, as far as this top prize
Perhaps soon he'll be back ‘midst the heather and fens


- PED

How to Create a Mythos

One of my favourite books of recent years is "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" by Suzanna Clarke.

It's a marvellous and weighty book - really weighty - and carries the air of the grand Victorian tale, such as anything by Bronte or Dickens or, more recently, The Quincunx by Charles Palliser. It was published in 2005, took ten years to write and stretches to 800 pages in length.

The story tells of two duelling magicians, set in the early 1800s, but covers politics, romance, relationships, war, Faeries, hell, monarchy and other things - all with a delightful dry humour, and immersive characterization.

I saw a Strange Horizons review of her beautifully bound companion short-story collection "The Ladies of Grace Adieu" yesterday, which I'm looking forward to diving in to soon. It is set in the same mythology as the main novel.

One thing that struck me in the generally favourable review was the following allegation about Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

"(It was) peppered with tangential footnotes and asides, it always seemed to be straining into the border-spaces of its own narrative. This was partly because of Clarke's desire to create a full mythology for her magically awakened England, but was also symptomatic of her interest in the marginal and the hidden, in the characters and events obscured by greatness."

I find this very interesting.

Anyone who has read JS&MN will know it does contain an inordinate amount of sub notation, practically every line offers itself up for a tangent and comment, and Clarke should be lauded for trying to create as full a world as possible. Yet this idea that it "straining into the border spaces of it's own narrative", seems both a little unfair yet accurate.

What sets this world apart from Middle Earth?

It was never levelled at Tolkein that he was straining into any border-space, his mythology was a vast crucible within which even Lord of the Rings was just a notable collection of adventurous threads.

The answer of course is volume. Tolkein developed not just a mythology but an entire legendarium. Apart from eight fully fledged novels, he wrote innumerable short stories and children's tales, all of which server to further flesh out the reality of his mythos. These stories serve as possibly the most complete archive of context still yet seen in fiction.

Suzanna Clark says she will return to the two duelling magicians once she feels ready, but that "We don’t talk at the moment"

I hope she does, and continues to flesh out the beautiful settings, times and landscapes she has started so impressively.

Can anyone ever top Tolkein for back story?

Perhaps, but it will take the length of a career and a life dedicated to come close.

Rolling Balls

It's D-Day, or rather D-Week.

I've got two or three ideas for this 500 word piece so will write them all now I've realised just how short 500 words is. They're all centred around modern fears of society, but I'll try and throw some spooky stuff in if I can. They might well be terrible but who knows.

In other news my good friend Suki Singh has just finished shooting his film Emulsion. It's now in post-production, can't wait to hear how it went, what a legend.

Rusty Gears

I haven't completed anything creative in a while, maybe three or four years.

It's pretty hard to get the rust off, but I shall. One of the biggest challenges is making that niche of regular time to do it in - and making time is not a natural skill of mine. I tend to be an evening writer.

I've had a few ideas about the story for CamRF involving a man out jogging, so will start it up over this weekend, and eventually post it here.

Feedback warmly welcome.

The Rational vs The Irrational

I touched yesterday on the difference between natural and supernatural approaches when it comes to a scary tale.

This seems pretty clear cut; the dread conjured by a thought of a nuclear strike as opposed to the fear that a scaly leviathan will rise from the sea and swallow your house whole in the dead of night.

There is another axis on which to ponder though, that of rationality.

When I was a boy I had a fear that if I closed my eyes to sleep, somewhere in the world a vampire would restart a slow walk towards my location - and would stop if I opened my eyes. My friend Ed has a mortal fear of chewing ice lolly sticks and of fish swimming towards him.

My fear whilst supernatural could be said to be rational, as being stalked by a vampire would be something to be feared.

Ed's whilst naturally occurring could be said to be irrational, since I suspect death by lolly stick may not feature highly in the NHS mortuary records. This is of course the definition of phobia.

Yet both fears were and are true and real.

There is an authentic source to both rational and irrational fear. In order for us to have become scared of something, regardless of what it is, it has to have triggered a response deep within us.

That's the nub of the art for me, and that's the challenge in the Campaign for Real Fear.

For me the master of this trigger was M.R. James (1862-1936)

His classic tales such as Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to you My Lad or Casting the Runes inch along, describing innocuous but (when combined) sinister little details. All the time the author was priming your heart, flicking little trip-switches of dread. Then the final reveal hauled up the curtain like a magician's prestige on the true terror the reader had almost unknowingly constructed.

A masterful approach, and subtle skill, and he was able to fire these cumulative inner horrors in the reader whether writing about something rational or irrational.

For me this is the approach to the craft I'd like to attempt to adopt.

CAMRF now open! 16th April deadline.

Our Changing Fears

The 'Campaign for Real Fear' poses an interesting dilemma. What is contemporarily scary?

The heritage of horror fiction is as deeply rooted as humankind's ability to experience fear.

One of the earliest re-imaginings of the gothic tale can be found in Walpole's Castle of Otranto in 1764, and horror as a genre gathered pace from thereon.

Back then, and for many years to come, the idea of a fearful tale had a permanent footing in the supernatural. Witches, ghosts, beasts and demonic pacts were all embodiments of the unknown, fearful bogey-men with the power to snatch us away in our sleep.

Even natural phenomena were attributed to gods and monsters - some Nordic folk taught their children that the aurora borealis was a host of galloping demons coming to steal their heads if they stayed out too late.

But what of now? With the torch of science sweeping across our society, revealing no evidence of anything supernatural within any physical laws, what's there to be afraid of? We tend to view the unknown these days as something as yet undiscovered, a series of secrets that will reveal themselves in time.

The real horrors appear to come from us, our treatment of each other or our demonisation of a fellow enemy. The threat has moved from without to within.

The danger is this can make the idea of horror fiction a little less magical and a little more visceral. This is born out in such films as Eden Lake or Straw Dogs But this doesn't mean that all our settings have to now be real-life ones.

I love true fantasy fiction, the invention of other worlds, beings or times - but for these tales to remain truly scary to us in the modern world, they have to reflect our own fears.

And these have changed.

What scares you?

A New Thing

So here is a new space for some fresh creative adventure.

A little dark and distant, maybe a little funny on occasion.

Mission 1: a 500 word horror premise for Dark Static's new Campaign for Real Fear

Come along with me, let's see how we get on.