dogpoet

Don't do it DogPoet.

 

I'm sure some of us would be willing to do it in your stead.

I'm going to try pulling in a few favours: I shall only write a review myself if they tell me to fuck off (which they might...)

Why is the big nosed sort in your avatar talking to his watch?

Weak, doggie, if I may say so. Resemble British godlings? Aren't you forgetting that most saints are based on historical personages? As for dates - just a date, does nothing to erode the historicity of Christ or push him from history into myth (something that is impossible to do, really; the vast majority of historians, even those hostile to Christianity, accept the historicity of Jesus).

Well possibly, but shifting a date from sometime in October to the midwinter solstice does suggest somebody was trying to co-opt the festivities (particularly as a lot of Christians feel easter should be a bigger deal than Christmas).

As for the saints, folding a historical figure who's heard of chirst into these stories is the best way to depaganise them. I kid you not: there's a load of these figures the stories about whom predate the appearance of missionaries over here.

Christ's birthdate being slap in the middle of the winter solstice springs to mind as an example of attempts to co-opt pagan myths (it should be some time in october, apparently) as do the large number of saints who closely resemble ancient British godlings.

Judging by various internet postings, Spiderlegs is the Adrian Brown of the US con circuit.

I doubt that: bear in mind that the UK is a lot smaller so it's more possible to do all of the conventions without corporate sponsors. There's a lot more conventions per capita over there as well.

someone will bust you for it and ridicule you

 

Yes, someone :ph34r:

Or everyone, come to that.

Doggie, tell them that a yank PR pro has offered to do some work for you pro bono and he needs 5-10 copies to distribute to influencers. Have them e-mail me at work if you like and CC you on the e-mails. I'll PM you my work e-mail right now. Not sure it will get the wheels moving but sometimes when they hear that that lights a fire under 'em.

I'll mention it. No idea if they'll bite though. Thanks.

No. (It's always a good idea to make characters likable before killing them, because if they weren't nobody's going to give a damn about them being killed.)

 

I do usually, in fact I think I kill everyone I like apart from two characters. And hes more likeable than her really. But its ok because its a one shot scene, about 8 pages in a target amount of 500, set about 200 years before the rest, and by the end of the scene you're expecting him to kill her.

 

The plot drops in on people every couple of hundred years, first one just goes reclusive, second goes on a killing spree, third is a boy who digs up his father's grave, fourth is this murder, and i think ive forgotten one int here somewhere.

 

Basically man goes out for a walk in the fog, all cheery and happy, then come to a fence surrounding the park, on the other side of which is a very pretty and very innocent-looking young lady. Lady and man start talking, walking along either side of the gate, and as they get closer it suggests he might be dangerous, and you start to fear for the innocent young lady. Then they get to the gate, he doesn't actually do anything, and she suddenly stabs him through the stomach, and then head. Then she calls a victorian cabbie, and leaves.

 

Yeah, its better in full version, with the tension, and the caring and the atmosphere and whatnot. I hope.

That doesn't sound too bad, and if it's a generational thing then switching the characters around won't do it any harm. If you prefer that, there's no reason not to use it instead of what you plotted.

My characters take over all the time or, once created and set in motion, I understand them better and it no longer makes sense for them to stick to my script. So we depart. What's your story about now? Redo the plot, IMO.

He could set up a plot where this character is obviously the protagonist, which then gets derailed when somebody bumps him off at the end of the first act and spends the rest of the tale trying to hide or otherwise dispose of his charismatic and scene stealing carcass.

It's a bit of a tragic thing to do, innit ?

 

If you do write something, make sure you do so under your given name and clearly identify yourself as the author.

Yeah, this is why I'm a bit wary of it, but no bastard else has bothered, so what else can I do?

Charlie: my publishers have thus far failed to even send out any bloody review copies, though they have asked me to sign five copies for some competition on the internet.

Damn I just wrote a scene about this woman getting murdered by the star of the scene, who seemed such a nice chappie, but it made me like her character too much, and it was at 2 am, so now she kills him instead and its all so confusing. Anyone else ever have to make changes to their writing because they just can't go through with it?

No. (It's always a good idea to make characters likable before killing them, because if they weren't nobody's going to give a damn about them being killed.)

I say go for it.

You silver tongued devil, you've talked me into it!

No bugger else has and some positive write ups may sell a few copies, or even warrant me a mention in next month's Ansible...

Did you enjoy the whole story, Trace?

I loved the book until the end, and then I felt it fell apart and disappointed me.

I still highly recommend it to people, because everything that came before was that wonderful.

I dunno what this problem people have with that ending is: it's obviously been building throughout the story, the circular riff works brilliantly (which is a pleasant change) and the sudden change in scale is rather wonderful as is the fact that it leaves what happens next open.

Hey, you asked.

There's Harry Harrison as well: reading one of his worthier and more serious short stories when only previously familiar with the Stainless Steel Rat books had quite an impact. (I think it was The Rescue Mission, but it might have been The Streets of Ashkelon...)

Get your friend to convince him to get Samurai Jack back on the air...

 

...blackmail, murder, extortion, whatever it takes :D :)

The King Of Comedy approach?

Esoteric odd and unorthodox stuff, mostly. It's probably the reason I got into SF fantasy and horror fiction in the first place...

 

Examples, please? Been thinking about this some more, of late.

Surely: brace yourself for a list post:

A lot of 2000AD's odder moments around the turn of the '80s (Nemesis The Warlock, Slaine and the like), Tanith Lee's tales of the Flat Earth and the other stuff by her it led into, a lot of the more unorthodox '60s new wave SF, Ian Watson, JG Ballard (a writer who was the distinction that his mainstream novels are often odder than his work published as SF, though I'd argue myself that a lot of these, High Rise, Concrete island and a lot of his '70s short stories are too SF), Karl Edward Wagner's horror short stories, Roald Dahl's horror short stories, Almost all of Michael Moorcock (the sword and sorcery potboilers were in an in but the other stuff has proven more influential in the long run), Clive Barker, HP Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, Brian Aldiss (anybody who can write Brothers of the Head, Greybeard, Frankenstein Unbound, Remembrance Day and The Malacia Tapestry has to have a bit of a wider range than most writers ever manange), William Burroughs (somebody else I'd say was an SF writer, regardless of what the critical consensus says), Olaf Stapledon (Star Maker and First And Last men are the two that always get talked up by SF historians but neither has the impact of Sirius), Alduous Huxley (After many A Summer is funnier and bleaker than most of Vonnegut), Alfred Bester (I doubt that there's ever been another SF writer who's packed half as much invention into their best work or followed through on the plot devices they establish as rigorously), Kim Newman (mostly concerned with having big fun by mixing genre tropes, but also a horror writer who finds the move away from social to personal concerns in the literature unappealing), James Herbert (before he lost it big time towards the end of the '80s a writer of apocalyptic SF in the Wyndham tradition masquerading as horror), David R Bunch (everybody should read Moderan), Steve Aylett, Robert Irwin (claimed by the literati, despite almost everything he's ever published apart from an unusually vicious thriller being fantasy), Jack Vance, John Calvin Bachelor, whoever it was wrote most of the better Hammer, Tigon and Amicus films of the '60s and early '70s, Robert Holdstock, Frank Herbert, Norman Spinrad...

There's a few examples, put it that way. ;)

Very interesting web-site discussing a Jewish wine storage box, I believe it is, which was carved in a Kabbalistic manner to contain mystical powers and a curse. Apparently, it's pretty potent magic. Kabbalistic magic is always very potent. I've worked with it a little bit, it's like no other magic I've ever worked with (and I have been involved in most magical traditions), although from what I've heard Voudoun may be even more potent (never worked with voodoo).

This is its story.

I guess Sam Raimi wants to direct a movie based on the history of the Dybbuk Box.

A Dybbuk is a malevolent spirit which possesses an object in Judaic lore. They are supposed to be souls escaped from Gehenna (Jewish Hell).

 

http://www.dibbukbox.com/

I thought Dybbuks were restless spirits that possessed people, rather than objects?

Ok, sow hats going on with everyone's South-Park-alike avatars? Its like a non-threatening almost intriguing conspiracy.

There's a site devoted to making these graphics (I forget where): presumably somebody's mentioned it in the docusoap forum.

What is this "docusoap forum" of which you speak? I think my wife deserves to have a South Park icon made of her.

Actually I think I'm mistaken about the docusoap thing: there was a South Park thread in this very forum a day or two back: it's probably in there.

Ok, sow hats going on with everyone's South-Park-alike avatars? Its like a non-threatening almost intriguing conspiracy.

There's a site devoted to making these graphics (I forget where): presumably somebody's mentioned it in the docusoap forum.

It seemed that Sandman was the comic book that people who felt they were far too high-brow to read comics would admit to reading, because it was counter-culture cool.

Sandman becoming a pop-culture phenomena was what made Sandman so popular. People who would never set foot in a comic shop were going to buy Sandman.

True that, but I doubt that adverts in The Shadow, Swamp Thing and what have you did it any harm. DC did have a more heterodox line back then (largely because they hadn't yet ghettoised huge chunks of it) and there probably was interplay there, if not between that and the superhero comics.

Healthful, nutricious, and good for nursing mothers. It is stout with the addition of lactose which is an unfermentable sugar. Since the lactose doesn't ferment out it leaves the stout mith a creamier mouthfeel and a slight sweetness. Watney's was/is a prime example. Dragon stout is as well.

 

I want one of those. Anychance that they're available in India?

Apart from those named above, Mathesons appears to be something similar.

Many happy returns: hope you both have a good one.

What is cream stout, anyway?

 

Healthful, nutricious, and good for nursing mothers. It is stout with the addition of lactose which is an unfermentable sugar. Since the lactose doesn't ferment out it leaves the stout mith a creamier mouthfeel and a slight sweetness. Watney's was/is a prime example. Dragon stout is as well.

Ah. Much the same as milk stout, then.

You suspect that he'd have approved of the epitaph he got from Charles Fort, in any case.