Nanowrimo: and here we go.

So, it begins again. It’s November, and my mind is on my wordcount and my wordcount’s on my mind.

The link to each day’s output will be up on the link above, so feel free to peruse and comment. It’s first draft, so of course it will be rough round the edges. Porcupine rough.

Also, I have a word count widget running, so you can follow along as I creep closer to my goal. Exciting, eh?

Updates will be brief over the next few weeks, but I’ll keep you updated as to my life during Nano. Such as it is.

Now, if you’ll excuse me…

My 15 Favourite Horror Things

This is all Simon Aitken’s fault. He tagged me in a Facebook post, as part of an ongoing meme which seems appropriate for this, The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year. In short, he challenged me and his friends to list our top 15 horror films, and give a reason why we like them so much. His list is here, and I can’t argue with any of his choices.

As I started thinking about my list, I realised that some of my favourite horror moments weren’t films at all. So, as it’s me, and I believe in doing things a little differently, what comes next is a countdown of my favourite horror things. I hope you’ll find some surprises. In no particular order, then…

Continue reading My 15 Favourite Horror Things

RED and the finer points of growing up rather than old

TLC and I went to the pictures yesterday, and thoroughly enjoyed RED, a movie about Special Ops killers coming out of retirement after their lives are threatened by a spectre from their past. This makes it sounds all grim-faced and dark, and that’s exactly how the graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner reads. It is a dark little tale with very little in the way of humour or even light patches, and a very unhappy ending.

The film is nothing like that. It takes Warren’s themes and setpieces and ties them into a story that bears only passing resemblance to the book. This is a very good thing. It’s one of the most entertaining films I’ve seen in a while, with a script that understands the mechanics of the action movie, but winks and blows them a kiss as it breezes by. It’s a lot of fun, but it also has a heart and backbone, and takes time to make the point that being retired doesn’t make you useless. Far from it. Frank Moses, the RED of the title, played as Bruce Willis by Bruce Willis, is always one step ahead, always capable of thinking on his feet. He’s not an impotent old man or an easy target. And he’s even mature enough to shrug off the jibes about his hair.

There’s a wonderful moment towards the end of the film when he explains to his opponent Cooper (played with aplomb and empathy by Karl Urban, who I’m now very excited to see as Judge Dredd) about what it has taken to bring him here, and the awful lessons he’s had to learn. He is the lonely, unstoppable ronin because he has lost everything he’s ever cared about. The last hurrah that RED documents so entertainingly is his last chance at redemption, rather than revenge. It’s a chilling moment that brings home a few home truths about the process of growing up and growing old, and the things we have to lose along the way.

For me, RED’s major strength is in the casting of its female characters. These are front and centre, the engine of the story rather than the brakes. Rebecca Pidgeon is sharply efficient as the cold Control of Urban’s killer. Helen Mirren is regal and deadly, and you can just tell she was having a blast with the heavy artillery. [SPOILER ALERT] Even the commuter that John Malkovich’s character threatens with a gun comes back at him with a rocket launcher. [/SPOILER ALERT]

But it’s Mary-Louise Parker that makes the show for me. Goofy, sweet and tough all at once, always ready for a challenge and an adventure. There are no simpering dolly-birds here. You can see from the first minute of the film why Frank is so smitten with her. I am too.

Interestingly, there were a bunch of screensurfers in the back row. You know the sort, kids that’ll get in for one film then stick around all day moving from screen to screen. They were clearly intent on just chatting and pissing around, until the cinema as a whole made their feelings perfectly plain. A cinema, incidentally, full of people in their thirties and forties – the target audience for RED. An aural eye-roll (how do kids DO that?) and a muttered “Cuh, old people” was the closest we got to rebellion, and they sloped away minutes before the explosive end to the film. Their loss, in all kinds of ways. There was a lesson to be learned, if they could have been bothered to listen.

Warren gives us his insight into the story and themes of RED in a piece for the Guardian HERE. The figure of the Unretired Hero isn’t going away anytime soon.

The End Of The Affair

It always happens at about this time, with just under two weeks to go to the start of the funnest writing endurance exercise on the planet. I get the idea I need, or the spark, to get me going.

Last year it was as simple as a mutual misunderstanding between two friends that inadvertently gave me a title, and then a story. This year, I had a decent idea of what I wanted to do, but it was a slightly drunken trip home last week that gave me the small epiphany I needed. That, and thinking about the work of my favourite director John Carpenter. He’s been in my thoughts a lot lately, with the pointless remake of his 1982 masterpiece The Thing underway, his appearance on Mark Gatiss’ excellent History Of Horror on BBC4, and Simon Aitken coming within spitting distance of him while at the Spooky Empire festival in Florida.

So, slightly drunk, slightly dozy, the darkness outside the train window span past, and my thoughts… meshed. I knew, suddenly, how the story I wanted to tell could be told. And I could pay tribute to the siege mentality at the heart of many of Carpenter’s films.

I still have a chunk of plotting to do, and there are still gaps in the story wide enough to sail Jabba’s skiff through. But the heart and the spine of the story formed last week, and I can now tell you what I have planned.

It’s the sequel to last year’s tale of high adventure on the lunar plane, featuring the further adventures of Rory Armstrong and her family. We will find out (that’s not the royal we. I still don’t quite know how it’s gonna happen) where Arty the Artifact came from – and where her loyalties lie. We will find out that the villainous Van Hoek and the treacherous machine BOS-N may be down, but they’re certainly not out.

And above all, we will find out what happens when the people who built the cities under the moon come back to find their ancestral lands have been invaded.

This one is bigger, louder, crazier. I’ve got sequalitis, and it feels good.

It’s called GHOSTS OF THE MOON. And if you’re a Carpenter fan, you should now have a rough idea of what I have planned.

Strap in. It’s gonna be one heck of a ride.

The End Of The Affair

I knew that I would not be able to resist as soon as he walked into the room. He was tall, handsome and very French. He had a Dell Mini 10V balanced on one hand, and a USB stick in  the other.

“Rob”, he said in a thick accent that made my name sound like “rub”. “I think you will like this.”

He booted the netbook. It whickered quietly to itself for a moment, then fired up. Within a minute, it was running. It was running OSX. Flawlessly.

Readership, I was lost. I nearly grabbed the USB stick out of his hand. Gently, honourably, he took me through the procedure. Tweak this. Put this file… here. Wait a while. Be patient. Let things drift into place.

An hour after The Frenchman walked into my room, my netbook was running Snow Leopard. A few command line tweaks for sleep and keyboard issues and … done. It was a heck of a lot easier than my last Ubuntu upgrade.

No. That’s not fair. Ubuntu 10.10 dropped on Sunday (10th October, natch) and it’s a worthy move towards a proper, grown-up, easy to use OS. It’s stable, clean and quick. And better looking than Windows, too.

The trouble is, after a year of working with it, there’s still a lot about the system that I found wrong-headed or impenetrable. It struggled to pick up wireless networks on occasion, and installation could be a pain. I could never figure out how to hook up a programme from source code, even after following careful instructions from the very helpful forums. But then, I kept telling myself, it cost you £250, and it does everything that you bought it for without problems. It performs above and beyond your expectations. Stop whining.

But when The Frenchman told me about how easy hackintoshing the Dell had become, I instantly pricked up my ears. I had, after all, bought this particular model with the intention of doing that very thing, only to find the process a little more scary than I had anticipated. Downgrading your BIOS is not a job to be undertaken lightly, and it was one that I decided was beyond me.

No longer. With a hacked USB and a neat little programme called NetbookInstaller, it’s a simple job that’s easily within the reach of phucknuckled goofs like your humble author. You have to be a bit careful about OS updates, but that caveat aside, Snow Leopard runs like a dream on my little netbook. It jumps onto wireless networks like a hungry weasel, and is quick and responsive. I have two finger scrolling active, and I even think battery life is a tiny bit improved. This is the machine I dreamt of last year, and to an extent I think I was kidding myself that I would ever prefer Ubuntu to the OS in which I feel most at home.

But I’ve learnt a lot in the last year, I’ve learnt not to be afraid of the command line. I am now more than ever a gleeful advocate of free, open-source software. And I have no problem in recommending Ubuntu to people who are sick of Windows but can’t afford a Mac. If you need a machine for simple web browsing and word stuff, then I think you should give it a try. Certainly, some of the silver surfers I’ve shown it to found Ubuntu easy to pick up and less intrusive and naggy than Windows. And because the OS is light on system resources, it’s a perfect way to give an old machine a new lease of life. My gripes and grumbles are purely down to my intrinsic need to poke and prod into the inner workings of my machines. You should not be put off by them.

So, au revoir, Ubuntu. You have been a good friend to me in a time of need, and you will always have a little place in my heart. I am certain that you and I will meet again, somewhere down the line. But for now, my needs are met by a glossy, shiny mistress with a great looking keister.

I know. I’m a bastard. But I’m a bastard with a Mac netbook, and try as I might I just can’t wipe this big-ass grin off my face.

If anyone fancies giving this a try, here’s the heads up. First, read this: http://gizmodo.com/5389166/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-10v-into-the-ultimate-snow-leopard-netbook. All the way through, and carefully. It will tell you exactly what you’re letting yourself in for. If that doesn’t seem too scary, pick up a Dell Mini10V (you need the V – it’s chipset suits the hackintoshing process in a way that it’s younger bro, the Mini10 doesn’t) from eBay. Follow the instructions to the letter. You’ll also need keyboard mapping for a British Windows keyboard, and three lines of command line typing to fix a problem where your new mackintosh might not wake from sleep. These are all easily Googlable. Or do like I did, and get a grown-up to do it for you.

Merci beaucoup, Laurent!

Nanowrimo: A Few Useful Tools

There are just under three weeks to go until the start of the 2010 Nanowrimo, and already there’s a sense of real anticipation and nervous excitement. Wordsprints (where you write as much as you can for a given period; say half an hour) and timed exercises are happening on Twitter, with the #nanolove hash getting a lot of … well, love. The forums at the Nanowrimo site have reopened, and are buzzing with activity. It always seems a shame to me that they don’t stay open for the whole year, as for November they are a hive of crazed creativity and overwrought drama. It would be great to get some of that feeling all the time.

The Nano forums are essential for those moments when you just need to bitch about how badly things are going, or crow about your rapidly expanding wordcount, or wail about your lack of inspiration. In the forums, you realise just how many other people are in this with you, and feeling and suffering and exulting in exactly the same way. Nanowrimo puts you in touch with an awful lot of like-minded people, and if you sign up to the regional forums, you could even meet up with some of them face to face!

And of course, software developers are there to help the aspiring writer part with their cash – in the name of productivity, of course. There are a few tools out there that are worth your time, and funnily the good ones are open source and free.

I had great results last year with OpenOffice, which has hella good error correction and auto-complete functions – a boon for sloppy typists. On full-screen mode it’s a good distraction-free option and really helps you bang up the word count. The team behind it have just broken away from their corporate masters at Oracle to create the new LibreOffice, which I will be viewing with interest. I’m also eyeing up FocusWriter, which seems like a neat, prettier version of the Gedit/Notepads of the world. I’m having some issues installing it on my little Linux netbook, as it doesn’t come as a prettily packaged .deb file, but I’ll get there, I’m sure. With a choice of background, word count and daily goals built in, it seems to have been designed specifically for the shenanigans in November. But frankly, I’m happy as long as there’s autocap and a little something to help out my dreadful spelling.

Meanwhile, have you got your Dropbox account yet? and if not, why not? It’s free, it’s 2gigs of storage that seamlessly syncs across all your machines (including your smartphones), it’s a complete no-brainer to set up and use. It saved my butt during Script Frenzy early in the year, and it’s an essential for me now. In fact, if it sounds good, drop me a line. If you go through an invite from me we both get an extra 256mb for free. Used in conjunction with PlainText, I can jot down ideas on my phone and know that they will be waiting in a folder in my Dropbox whenever I need them. If you’re a writer on the go like me, these two bits of free loveliness are my solid recommendations.

And oh look, Scrivener is rolling out a major update in time for November! Scrivener is brilliant for thwacking out a first draft and letting you organise it at the same time. I used it exclusively for my first three Nanoes, and it’s still a favourite. The upgrade will set you back about $25, $45 for a new licence, with a thirty day free trial – just enough time to complete your Nano challenge. Totally worth it.

But these are only tools. When it comes down to it, Nanowrimo is about a very simple act. Writing 1700 words a day for a month, and being consistently surprised at what comes out. I know I always am, and that’s what brings me back year on year.

Want to know more? Feel like giving it a go? then start HERE. And if you need a friend, then this is me.

The Messiest Sandwich You’ll Ever Eat

The title above is a bit misleading, as I have no idea if what I’m about to tell you is indeed the case. (In fact, go ahead and share your messy food stories in the comments. As long as they’re not, you know, too saucy…) Certainly, this is not the messiest sandwich I ever ate. That would be a pulled pork roll at Sear’s in San Francisco, which drooled delicious barbecue sauce down to my elbow. I couldn’t lick it off, no matter how hard I tried, so TLC had to help. We got some strange looks that day, I can tell you.

But this sandwich will be in the top five, especially if you make it yourself. Are you ready to get messy?

Chop up a couple of small beetroot1, some overly ripe tomatoes, half a can of corned beef and a green onion for colour. Don’t go too fine with this. You want flavour and texture. Something to grab onto.2 Moosh everything together with your hands. Yes, you can use a spoon, but why would you want to? Wash your hands first, obvs. No sense in giving health and safety an aneurysm.

Let that gorgeous mixture get acquainted while you grate up some cheese (a decent strong cheddar preferably, although a soft garlicky number rings the changes well) and warm up a couple of pittas. Open those bad boys up in whichever direction feels right, and pile in the filling and cheese, topping everything off with a big dollop of ranch or Caesar dressing. Dig in. The sandwich will ooze, sag and squirt. You will end up wearing some of it. There will be filling in your lap if you’re eating with the appropriate level of gusto. Your hands will be stained pink from the beetroot. It won’t matter. It will be delicious. You will have a very happy tummy.3

Serves two, unless you have my appetite, in which case; serves me.

Best eaten with a goddamn beer, because there’s no point in pretending this is at all healthy, and the wholemeal pitta isn’t fooling anyone, lardychops.

1. By beetroot, I mean either veg you have grown and cooked yourself, or the stuff in vacuum packs without vinegar. Pickled beetroot never worked for me, and it will fight the overalll sweetness of the filling here. Don’t do it to yourself.

2. This is an appropriate mantra for life in general, and my life in particular.

3. I can’t think of a decent veggie alternative for the corned beef here. You want something salty, fibrous and crumbly. Any suggestions, herbivores?

Relish The Opportunity

As always, autumn has taken me by surprise. One minute, I’m hazing out in warm late summer sunshine, the next I’m slipping on wet leaves and trying to remember where I stashed my scarf. It always feels like a switch flip. There’s no buffer zone, no warning. Boom. It’s Halloween season. Time to put the heating on.

The bugger of it is that the cooler weather hit before the bulk of our tomatoes had a chance to fully ripen. This left me with four pounds of green toms. Well, you know how the saying goes. When life gives you green tomatoes, make relish.

So, yesterday’s rainy overcast gloom was cut by the bright sharp fug of cider vinegar, onions, peppers and apples cooking down with the toms to create a tart, fruity little number that will go down nicely with cold meats and cheeses. The remainder of the ripe toms were roasted with garlic, red onions and jalapenos from the garden to create a spicy roast tomato and chili sauce to warm our cockles. We had some of that with sausages for dinner, and it was just the ticket.

And that, oh Readership, is how you deal with a glut.

There’s plenty of relish if anyone wants a jar…

Front: roasted tomato and chili. All else: green tomato relish. A Sunday well spent!

Sibling Rivalry

I guess you have to have a brother to appreciate the evil genius of Ed Milliband’s stealth insult to his brother David during his acceptance speech as the new Labour leader. It was beautifully crafted and exquisitely judged for maximum impact in an arena where the older boy could do nothing about it.

Ed, while describing his brother in glowing terms, could have called him talented. He could have called him skilled, a great statesman, a credit to the party.

No. Ed called his brother “special”. And I just bet he had to resist the temptation to slide his tongue between his teeth and lower lip and jut out his jaw while he said it. It was a playground diss brought starkly into the adult world, and short of flapping his hands at right angles on either side of his face while doing it, I don’t think Ed could have made his point more clearly.* David, the heir apparent to the Labour throne, has been beaten to the prize, and Ed found a way to really rub his brother’s nose in a big stinky pile of defeat.

It’s telling, doncha think, that David has decided to back out of a role in the Shadow Cabinet. His reasoning? “Ed is my brother.” That says it all. David’s clearly at the point where he can’t even stand to be in the same room as the smirking brat who’s just stomped on his dreams. Christmas should be interesting round at the Milliband’s this year. Hilariously, the Asian Tribute has suggested that their mother may become involved in mediating disputes. “David. GO TO YOUR ROOM. I don’t care what your brother called you! ”

Like I said, you need to have a brother and be a brother to understand the dynamics at play. The battle for turf, the struggle for supremacy in the most minor way perceivable (who gets the last spud, the better birthday present, the later bedtime) is the red thread that binds the fraternal relationship together. And victory HAS to be celebrated, or else it is hardly a victory at all. Even if it’s the face pull, or the whispered insult. The fact that Ed has pulled off this simple feat in such a classy way is cause for applause. This man has what it takes to make his way in the brutal playground of the political word.

It’s a real shame that the Millibands won’t be in the Cabinet together. I have a very clear image of the first meeting under the new regime. The brothers will be seated opposite each other. There will be lots of glowering eye contact. David will make a snide comment, or Ed will mutter something under his breath. Someone will call someone else a mong. It won’t take much. The meeting will end in chaos as David launches himself across the table at Ed, his face a snarling mask.

The image of Harriet Harman prying the Brawling Millibands apart would have kept me warm all winter.

*I understand the moral and social issues behind the word and the gesture, but they’re a subject for a much more wide ranging post. This is not the time. If you take offence at the fact that I find playground disability taunts amusing, then please, meet me in the comments and we’ll talk.

Friends and Fellow Travellers Update

This is, I should immediately stress, NOT a blog about not blogging. Members of the Readership must be very used to the way I drop off the radar at this time of year, as Nanowrimo starts to loom over the horizon and work in general kicks into high gear. So, no apologies. Business as usual. I do have exciting news. I just can’t quite talk about it yet.

Instead, then, let’s talk about other people’s exciting news. First up, X&HTeam-mate Nick Scott has his short film SNAILS screening this Saturday, October 2nd, at the Shortwave Cinema in Bermondsey. It’s a tale of family tragedy and rebellion, and the script is a cracker. NIck’s scripts are always great, but Snails is especially good, and he’s done a lovely job at bringing it to the screen. It’s showing at 4pm, and the Shortwave has an especially good bar.

Meanwhile, Simon Aitken’s Blood + Roses is FINALLY getting some well-deserved love. After it’s success at the Portobello Film Festival (more on that from Simon here) it will be shown at the Cornwall Film Festival this November. This is rather fitting, as the film was shot entirely on location in that lovely county.

But the big news is that Simon will be in Florida between the 8th-10th October, screening Blood + Roses as part of the massive Spooky Empire event. International attention for Blood + Roses is really important, and can only help it get a distribution deal and start making some of that sweet sweet cash. I’m really stoked for Simon. It’s taken a while, but one of the quirkier and more interesting horror films of the past couple of years is finally getting an audience. And as an added bonus, the guest of honour is probably my favourite director, John Carpenter. I’ve already put a request in for an autograph…

And finally, this Thursday, the tallest member of The Corpus Crew, Paul Davis, will be on The Horror Channel, introducing three of his favourite films as part of the Director’s Night. His choices are curious, informed and intriguing. Much like the man himself. There’s an interview with him on the Horror Channel website, which features a nice puff piece for Habeas Corpus. Which is always nice to see.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go do … stuff. SEKRIT stuff. Shhhh…