Hating to Love

Don't tell anyone, but I might well know something about a few of the essays in this very fine forthcoming volume...

The Black Archive Is Almost Open...

Well here's a thing.  A rather beautiful thing at that...

In case you're one of those souls whose eyesight is going due to decades spent staring at TVs or monitors it's the rather fabulous cover for the first of the Black Archive series the first four of which are released next month but available for pre-order from the modestly magnificent Obverse Books either on its own or as part of a bundle of the first four in the series.. Obviously I'd be obsequiously grateful to anyone good enough to but the book but I thoroughly recommend buying all four. 

The cover's a collaborative effort from the insanely talented pairing of Blair Bidmead and Cody Schell and you can see this and the three other spectacular covers on the Black Archive Facebook page or here. I'd say I'm absolutely delighted with it but that might be considered a ridiculous degree of understatement.  It's currently the wallpaper on my phone and I'm starting to consider texts and notifications which stop me admiring it in a near-hypnotic trance rude. 

I'll blog about this in more detail closer to the release but in the meantime keep an eye out for further announcements on the above Facebook link and feel free to get very excited at how damn fine this series is going to be.

The Joy of Having Written

It's just over 24 hours since I completed the first draft of the Black Archive for Rose and I sent it to the editor.  That's my first solo book off to the editor I have a little indie champagne* to celebrate and...

...got back to that there writing today, a ghostly short story for a friend.

That's how proper writers roll isn't it?


* Jack 'n' coke

More Me...

Not only is there upcoming work but there are also a couple of other things that I've written that have come out over the past month.

Firstly the very fine Two Unfotunates website asked me back to contribute an entry to their Football Cities series - my entry on Liverpool can be found here.  It's very much worth your while to investigate the full Football Cities series and peruse a lot of very good football writing on the rest of the site, including some chancer contributing a review of David Peace's Red Or Dead. 

Also recently released, I've contributed to a new anthology from the Cygnus Alpha collective, Secret Invasion.  It's the brainchild of the talented Tony Eccles, and the high-concept essence is 'Lovecraft in South West England'.  Tony asked us to find a suitable location in which to set our story and build from there.  Mine's set in the bleak, beautiful wilds of Bodmin Moor and takes in the ideas of holiday homes, what happens after a career in the City which might burn you out young and what sort of creature might not like to be disturbed by foreign interlopers. You can get an eBook for your e-reader of choice by donating to the fine charity MIND here or you can procure a hard copy in one of three versions ranging from a standard softcover to luxurious hardcover here.

(Art by John Swogger, not to be reproduced without artist's permission)

The Black Archive is opening...

So this is an upcoming thing...

Phil Purser-Hallard, one of the smartest people I have the pleasure of knowing, came up with a simple but brilliant idea for a range of books; in-depth studies of single Doctor Who stories by a bunch of talented writers with interesting things to say. I've got the pleasure of being included in the first batch of books with a piece on the episode that launched Doctor Who back to the heart of popular culture.  Think the Doctor Who equivalent of the excellent 33 1/3 books.

These are going to be magnificent.  Further details here and whilst you're there you really should open your virtual wallet for a few of Obverse's other fine books.

There are poppies

I’m sitting on a bench, just behind a garden I used to play in.  Technically it belongs to the neighbours, but they’re fine with this.  It’s a small garden space, with a sheep pen to one side.  The sheep are docile, and will happily let you scratch behind their ears for hours if you’re prepared to.  They belong to the couple who’re about to move in to this property.  But it’s an open expanse of green; it’s a nice space which isn’t enclosed with a high fence but a large enough fence to delineate the property.  This is a house in a rural village, not particularly worried about blackguards and rapscallions jumping over fences in the night to commit vile or mischievous misdeeds.  And it’s a lovely sunny day, summer turning into autumn with an occasional cool breeze rudely interrupting the lazy warmth.  It’s one of my perfect times of the year.  And there, in the middle of this open, green space three poppies catch my eye, almost rudely intruding on the meditative powers of this space and almost demanding attention with their vivid redness despite their relatively small size. And with it I feel hope, poppies being a symbol of memory and life growing even from death.

I’ve come here to gather my thoughts after my gran’s funeral.  It’s been a fitting send off and celebration of her life as it should have been.  There’s been little sadness; she lived a good long life of just under 95 years and was active and independent right up to the end and her death was a merciful end after a stroke led to bleeding deep in her brain.  Each of us who mattered to her – both her daughters and their husbands, we four grandchildren and a few other friends and family – got to say our goodbyes, even if she could barely speak.  The end, when it came, was a mercy and, by bizarre coincidence, on my other gran’s hundredth birthday.  A day or celebration and mourning, though the birthday party was a definite tonic after ten days of waiting for an inevitable end.  The funeral has gone as magnificently as it can; we four bearers (three grandchildren and one of her neighbours) have supported her into the church, we grandchildren have managed to deliver our tributes without cracking and we’ve all been able to remember the joy of her life and pay tribute by singing her favourite hymns.  And afterwards we retired to the British Legion clubhouse over the road where a splendid spread awaited.  With gran you’d get nothing else, Welsh grannies would never knowingly see you underfed ever from the afterlife.

In truth I did nearly well up a few times before the service whilst we waited at her old house.  Wandering through a place filled with the happy, secure memories of childhood, ornaments and artefacts imbued with memories and reading cards and tributes from everyone who’d known her.  You know what she meant to you, but you can’t know what she meant to others. And all the memories spoke of joy, even if derived from a tough life.  By the age of 21 she had a premature child to look after and a senile father to cope with and all without the presence of her husband who’d been called away to the war efforts in India, Iran, Iraq and eventually up through Italy.  In the week leading up to the funeral we’ve been going through his old photos of exotic, long gone places, experiences we could have never known.  Those photos range from boy kings to executions of criminals, though of the most significant event he was present at there is no record (the stringing up of Mussolini).  We never heard from our grandpa about these events and even those closest to him were only ever told tales of the camaraderie of army life, such as him ending up being the designated driver for those of his colleagues visiting Baghdad’s brothels (and his subsequent amusement at their having to confess to where they’d caught the clap from).  And later, in 1966, when they moved from Ebbw Vale to Offenham, how she cried to be leaving her home.  I could never imagine my gran crying, she and grandpa were never that type.  They were old-fashioned in that way, dealing with life as it came with the handy aid of humour and a sense of the absurd and providing happiness and security.   And always there was a sense of pride in our achievements.  She didn’t need to say anything (though she always did).  You’d done something that pleased her and that was all the reward you’d need.  This sense of happiness that I associated with the house, of security and strength that I still felt there despite her absence… this was the sadness.  That I might not come to the house again, that part of childhood was passing forever.

We’ve been asked if we’d like any of her possessions as souvenirs. For me this is easy and perhaps a touch bizarre; it’s her old whisk.  For some reason as a toddler I loved that whisk and took it off to bed with me. It still has my toothmarks on it from that age.  I vaguely remember that the shape of the whisk made me think it was some robot – it has two legs and an arm and I used to pretend that was what it was.  I was once told it would be written into my gran’s will that I’d have it.  In the end she didn’t as she thought it a touch silly, but I know she’d kept it for me.  It’s something I’ve always wanted to have but, with the circumstances of how I got it, never wanted.  I can’t think of anything else I’d want on the day bar an artist’s portrait of my grandpa at Totterdown, the old farmhouse where he worked.  And a picture of my gran and grandpa as I knew them, but that could wait to be chosen.

So I’m sat there, considering life and death.  And the poppies catch my eye, symbolising remembrance and life going on as they did in the French fields after the world wars. And these insignificant flowers bring a tear to my eye, reminding me that life continues and that the dead are never truly gone as long as we remember them.

It’s a beautiful day.

What I've Caught Up On in May

Usual drill, the state of May's cultural landscape...

Forever Changes - Love
Original Pirate Material - The Streets
69 Love Songs - The Magnetic Fields
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa
Made In Dagenham
Top of the Pops 1980
General Election coverage
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Doctor Who - Series 8
Revolt Into Style: Pop Arts in Britain - George Melly
Deadpool: Wade Wilson's War - Duane Swierczynski/Jason Pearson
Spider Man: Spider-Man No More! - Stan Lee/John Romita Snr
I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Thoughts on American Dread, American Dreams - Mark Dery
Feersum Endjinn - Iain M Banks
Life On Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster - David Attenborough