EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS

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…

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…

The Simplest Of Lunches

P1030681 — Half an hour later we were eating these. After washing and cooking them, obvs...

This time of year always gets me thinking about food. I guess that’s because there’s so much of it coming out of the garden. The onions and garlic are safely gathered in, the chilis and tomatoes are ripening nicely. Beetroot this year was a bit of a disappointment, and I’m coming to the conclusion that I love it, but not enough to grow it and have half the crop rot away before I get round to eating it. I was slow planting salads this year, but we have an abundance of tender green leaves now.

On Sunday, I finally upended the potato bags, to be greeted with a trug full of treasure. Masses of beauties, dirt fresh and ready for the eating. TLC, as always, instantly came up with a quick idea for lunch. I love it when this happens. She gives me a shove in the right direction, and I roll off and make something good to eat.

I grabbed a double handful of small spuds, and set them to steam with some dried mint that we’d harvested a few weeks earlier. While the kitchen filled with subtly minty fog (the steamer lid don’t fit so good) I chopped a couple of tomatoes, fresh off the vine, and mixed a tin of tuna with some mayo. When the spuds were tender (about ten minutes, like I said, these were small) I let them cool slightly, before mixing them with the tuna and tomatoes. A last minute spark of inspiration lit up, and I chopped some fresh parsley into the mix. Into bowls. Out into the sunshine.

It was simple but really nice. The spuds were lovely all by themselves, but the mix really brought everything together. Look, I know it’s barely a recipe, but that’s the beauty of it. It’s so vague that you can really open it up to your own interpretation. Some capers would be nice to add a salty twang. Replace the parsley with mint or rosemary. If you’re veggie, try some mushrooms cut into chunks fried up in a bit of garlic butter. Carnivore? I reckon some corned beef would go nicely, turning the whole thing into a de-constructed hash. Actually, some beetroot would go nicely with that too. Hmm, there’s a thought…

(Photo credit: TLC)

Way Out West

We went west. We had no real plans, apart from an urge to see and experience something a little different. In the course of three days, we would find a starling church, see lions and tigers (but no bears, oh well), fall in love with a dragon and meet a god. Not bad for England in September.

We rode out early on the first day, fearing heavy traffic on a road we had travelled before that had always slowed us down. Somehow, our timing was perfect for once, and the grim weather and slow movement we had feared never materialised. The sun broke through the clouds as we reached Stonehenge.

We had driven past the stones plenty of times before, but had never stopped. It was a good time to do it. We were between coach parties, and just past the school holidays. It wasn’t empty, but there was room to manoeuvre. A bedraggled Druid and his muse manned protest signs as we went under the path to the stones. They wanted better access, and a chance to use Stonehenge in the way it had been intended – as a church. As no-one’s really sure what Stonehenge’s true purpose is, I couldn’t sympathise.

It was a warm afternoon, and flocks of starlings swooped overhead, tying knots in the air. Then, as we watched, this happened.

For half an hour the starlings roosted quietly on the stones, getting the kind of access that the Druid across the road could only dream about. I couldn’t help but feel that they were using it as a meeting place, a point of community. In their still intensity, I couldn’t help but think of them at worship.

They were gone as suddenly as they’d arrived, and we walked back to the car, thinking that we’d witnessed something a little special. It will colour the way I look at the place from now on. I have a lot of respect for the major stone sites of England, and I always leave them knowing a little less, and feeling a little more wonder.

Our next stop was an unplanned one. Stourhead is a rambling estate laid out by banker and art patron Henry Hoare in the early 1700s. The gardens are extraordinary. They’re laid out to replicate some of Hoare’s favourite paintings, and there are plenty of rolling vistas, and follies and temples peeping into view.

While walking around the lake that forms the centrepiece of the grounds, we came across a spooky tunnel carved out of the rocks. We wandered in, to be confronted by …

The statue seems to glow, somehow, although there’s no obvious source of light. It’s a great bit of theatre, and a neat surprise in a place that’s full of tricks and playfulness. Loved it. Thank you, Henry.

We stayed at The Bath Arms, a short drive from our next spot. It’s a place I can solidly recommend. Good beer, great food, sharp service and well-priced. Plug over, but really, worth a stop if you’re in the area.

The next day was a simple pleasure. A trip to the zoo. Not just any zoo, of course. Longleat. I’d never been. The famous monkey jungle has been closed for a while due to a nasty case of monkey herpes. I was a bit relieved, to be frank. I’d heard enough horror stories about how the little buggers would rip off anything on the car that wasn’t bolted down. We weren’t too keen on being attacked by rage monkeys.

However, there were enough surprises waiting for us to make the lack of monkeys a distinct no-biggie.

Once out of the car finally, we took the rest of the day exploring the ground, and found a couple of memorable places.

The cheap-looking Old Toms Mine doesn’t look like much from the outside, but it’s home to a colony of bats. Unlike most bat enclosures I’d seen, there’s no barrier between them and us. It’s basically a big dark room full of bats. And it’s wonderful. They whizz past your ears, fluffing your hair as they zip around. They perch upside down, chirping at you. They dangle from fruit laden skewers. Sometimes they fall off, landing in a comedy heap. They’re goofy, sweet and hilarious. We walked out with big grins on our faces. Anyone that has a fear of bats needs to check these little guys out. They’ll change your mind in a moment.

We went to the petting zoo. Yes, alright. We’re soppy. But we fell in love with someone completely unexpected. I had an encounter with a Giant Hissing Cockroach, so friendly and used to people that he couldn’t be goaded into hissing for me.

And then we saw him. Our eyes met across a crowded room. Our new best friend. The Bearded Dragon.

He’s dry and cool to the touch, with the softest belly. He laid in my hand, and promptly rested his chin on my thumb and dozed off. I think it may have been love at first sight.

WANT.

Heading back the following morning after good food and splendid beer at the Bath Arms (seriously, try the Horningsham Pride. I could drink it all night. Ok, I did.) we headed east, stoping off at Lacock, home of a stunning medieval abbey, and the place where William Fox Talbot made the first photographic negative in 1835.

This was a spur of the moment visit, but a big thing for both of us. TLC and I are both taking more photos these days, and although we’re digital, every shot we take owes a debt of history to Fox Talbot and his pioneering work. He took inspiration from his surroundings, and it’s completely understandable. The Abbey and it’s grounds are places where pictures jump out at you. By accident, and without foreknowledge, TLC managed to replicate Fox Talbots original photo.

As we headed for home, we felt sure that we’d done everything that we set out to do, and more. Every time we spend a couple of days touring this country, we find sights and experience that fill us with wonder and joy. This is a good place, and it’s good to be here.

For LOADS more pics of our adventures, hie thee to Flickr, where TLC has a fine set of our day at Longleat.

Habeas Corpus at Frightfest, and other good news.

Frightfest 2 — L-R: Clive, Paul, Simon, some idiot, Brendan.

Frightfest is one of the biggest horror film festivals on the planet. For five days around the August Bank Holiday, it serves up an unrelenting feast of movies, Q&As and surprises. Frightfest is all about the terror.

That wasn’t the reason why, on the opening night of the festival at about 9:15, I was as scared as I’d ever been. I was about to walk onto the stage at the Empire, Leicester Square with the rest of the Habeas Corpus Crew and introduce a teaser trailer in front of a packed house of hardcore horror fanatics. You can understand the nervousness.

There’s a hell of a lot of work in that 94 seconds. Although the shoot was only a day and a bit long, there was a week of editing and polishing, probably six weeks of pre-production and an awful lot of tears and heartache before Clive, Simon, Paul, Brendan and I ended up in a nervous huddle underneath a screen that suddenly seemed very big indeed.
I was by far the least involved of the five. I had only been tangentially moved into play towards the end of the process. The other four seemed calm and quietly certain. I felt like I was the only one that was bricking it.

I needn’t have worried. The Coming Soon banner was met with a roar of approval. To be frank, the Frightfest crowd will always respond to a pretty girl licking a zombie. We’re scoping right in on the core needs of our target audience. As fans ourselves, we know what they want.

I want to take a sec just to thank everyone that gave so freely of their time and talent to get our teaser up at Frightfest. From the crew on the day of the shoot, to Marcelo who did a grand job on the sound design, Jon whose music makes the piece, Jaeson for the incredible comic-style imagery, and of course Emily Booth, the best zombie licker in the business.
Guys: here’s to next year!

Finally, some very good news. After a year of graft, knockbacks and heartbreak, Simon has a couple of festival dates for his vampire drama Blood + Roses. He will be screening THIS SATURDAY at the Portobello Film Festival. 3:30 at the Westbourne Studios. That’s free to get in, and I can recommend it on the big screen.

Even cooler, he will be at the Freakshow FilmFest in sunny Orlando, Florida, between the 8-10th of October. This is international recognition for a film that really deserves a wide audience. I couldn’t be happier for Simon. Looks like it’s the start of big things for him!

Scott Pilgrim Vs The Movies

It had stunning reviews, gob-smacking word of mouth, an ad campaign that was arguably more expensive than the film. So why, then, did Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World open low and drop further in it’s first two weekends at the box-office? Why did I, a long-time fan, walk out at the end of it feeling a little hollow, a little underwhelmed?

The answer lies in my immediate first response after seeing the movie. I wanted to go home and read the books again. I wanted to remind myself of the things that the film had chopped out, or compressed, or glossed over. Once again, I realised, Hollywood had done what it always does to comics. The adaptation process had pulled the spine out of the story.

Scott Pilgrim is a six-book series that tells the story of the lovelorn hipster of the title, and his struggles to win the girl who has been skating through his dreams. It’s a wry, funny and frantic tale that sucks in video game, manga and anime references and squelches them together in a lo-fi zine-centric aesthetic. It’s cartoony, it’s typesetting is (perhaps deliberately) wonky, it’s all black and white. The fact that it’s packaged in the small-footprint form of most of the manga we see in this country only helps to strengthen these references.

It doesn’t rush things, either. The books are by their very nature episodic, as comics should be, and time passes in a natural, relaxed way. The group that Scott is a part of hang out, go to gigs and parties, and fumble their way through life. Everyone makes mistakes. They fall in and out of relationships. A major character comes out. We’re privy to six months in the life of Scott, Wallace, Steven, Kim, Young Neil, Stacy and Julie, and you end up involved in all their troubles and joys.

All of this subtlety is lost in the film. It becomes a one-note Battle-Of-The-Bands with added Streetfighter gloss. The sense that we’re seeing things through Scott’s eyes and that he’s not the most reliable narrator is wiped away in favour of a clean clear line of character progression. He often has to be reminded about how horrible he has been to the women in his life, or about how events simply didn’t pan out in the way he remembers them. This isn’t to say that he doesn’t learn and grow in the course of the story. But there’s more to it than grabbing a power-up and suddenly not just Getting A Life. He gets hurt and has to grow up.

Then there are the fights. They’re the engine of the tale. They keep things moving. But in the film, they become kind of the whole point, and they take up more and more of the running time. This is never the case in the books. The fights are a necessary part of the story, but they never overwhelm the comedy, pathos and drama that goes on around them. Unfortunately the film structures the whole film around the fights, to the detriment of a lot of really cool character-based humour.

A note on the characters. Over on MovieBrit, WDW has described the women in the film as “angels or stalkers”, which I think is a little unfair. It negates Stacey’s role as advisor, Kim Pine’s place as the coolest kid in the room AND lynchpin of Sex Bob-omb, and Envy and Roxy, equally wounded by our hero and heroine. Again, there’s lots more going on around Scott and his precious little life than we’ve been permitted to see in the film.

I think I knew going into the film how I would feel afterwards. It’s a fun movie, with a lot to recommend, and I’d hate to think that I’m talking you out of going to see the film, Readership. Because you should. It works in it’s own right, and some of the visual invention that Edgar Wright layers onto the screen works really well. I’d love to see more panel and subtitle commentary appearing in films.

But to my mind Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is a Cliff Notes version of a much richer and more complex story, and I hope that it’ll encourage the curious to pick up the books. You owe it to yourselves to get the full story.

Big News about Habeas Corpus

Readership, I have been keeping things from you. This is obviously a betrayal of the trust we have built up over the years, and I can only apologise. But I had very good reason. And the time has finally come when I can talk a little about what’s been happening with a project that’s about to take up quite a bit of my time and attention.

Today, I want to talk about Habeas Corpus, the anthology horror I’m making with a lot of my friends and fellow travellers. We’ve all been working hard on the film. My previous announcement that the scripts were just about locked was a bit … well, previous really. Leading Man Clive has come into his own here, making sure that we’re delivering nothing but our best work. The final draft of livedeadgirls is one of my best. Very different to how I originally thought of it, but that’s a good thing. Less angsty. More … horrible.

Obviously, we want to let people know what we’re up to. With that in mind, Team Corpus came up with a super special surprise that we showed at Frightfest, one of the premiere horror festivals on the planet, in London’s glamourous Leicester Square. It’s a 90 second thing, a little standalone teaser that was shot over a long weekend at the end of July. It stars one of our directors, Paul Davis, and in a bit of a casting coup, scream queen and face of British horror Emily Booth. This is a really big deal for us, and it’s great that as horror fans we got to launch our biggest project in front of an audience that’s as committed and passionate about the scene as we are.

You wanna see it, right? Well, here you go.

The reception so far has been really positive, and we’re hoping that Frightfest weekend will give us the kick the project needs to get it properly rolling. For the meantime, you can read more about the project on Dread Central, and here’s a rather nice review of the teaser from Brendon Connolly at Bleeding Cool.

And please, join the Facebook group. Your support will help us to make something that we can all show with pride.

I’ll tell you more about the events of the weekend as it wears on. For now, keep the faith, Readership.