About The Rogue Verbumancer
A chemistry graduate consumed by the demons of apathy and disinterest. Likes tea and cheese. Sleeps less than he should.
And so we reach the final month of 2012. This is the home stretch, the swan song, the last hurrah, the end times. December is what I would call a proper month. It’s got 31 days, the weather’s usually cold and about as awful as it’s ever likely to get, there’s holiday time; things happen in Decembers. You’ve got Christmas, you’ve got New Year’s Eve, you’ve got the inevitable fight with your family. It’s all of the things which fundamentally characterise a whole year squished up into one nice, parcelled up, 31 day period.
I’m coming to the end of a week off from work, using up my remaining holiday allocation before year’s end, pissing it away doing nothing in particular. This has been a week of rest and relaxation, a recharging and revitalisation of my mystic energies after a trying couple of months. I have done more or less nothing, and achieved more or less nothing, and this has left me utterly exhausted. Never underestimate just how tiring inactivity can be. Writing has kept me at least moderately occupied, preventing me from slipping into a coma constructed from my own listless ennui.
Anyway, enough of my ramblings, I should probably cut to the chase: it’s Pictonaut time, this month we square off against Leviathan.
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2 Comments | tags: December, Fantasy, jamie jones, Leviathan, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Short stories, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
And at long last November limps its way to the finish line, finally collapsing to the ground. November is dead. Stone cold dead and along with it many other things. The latest pandemic of winter-writing-fever should now be in remission and this years flock of moustache’s wither and curl beneath the ministrations of the razor blade, gone until next year’s season. The end of November sees a return to normality, we are now safely out of this autumnal twilight zone. The normality we now enter is of course a sham. For the normality we now embrace is that of tinsel and snow and cheery faces, of panicked buying and dashing hither and thither to find just the right material expression of our love to foist upon family and friends. With such a prospect in store part of me will miss November.
The end of November brings with it the close of Pictonaut Challenge number 15, the sci-fi bonanza of The Grid.
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Leave a comment | tags: November, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Short stories, The Grid, WipEout, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
So here we are. It’s Monday again and I’m shattering this radio silence. I’m shattering it like a milk bottle in a tumble dryer filled with bricks. A great many things have happened over the last couple of weeks, none of which I might add were entirely planned. But as Helmuth von Moltke the Elder’s adage goes “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” Whether the enemy in question is myself remains a matter of debate. The lease on my old flat was due to expire at the end of February. Rather understandably I wanted to try and find a new place to live sooner rather than later. I had originally booked this coming week off from work to do house hunting, but a quick speculative jaunt to look at a flat 2 weeks ago, just to “get a feel” for the market again set wheels in motion. Terrifying, terrifying wheels. Now 2 weeks later I’m in a new flat, I’ve moved, I’ve unpacked, the internet is even up and running. So that’s a load off my mind, I can take a deep cleansing breath and no longer have to worry about my central nervous system tearing its way out of my body screaming “I JUST CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT!”
So that’s nice.
- I possess many things…
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2 Comments | tags: Cold, Illness, Internet, Moving House, Packing, Ramblings, Reporting In, Unpacking | posted in Ramblings
The radio is dead, the frequencies awash with a white noise hiss a sound perversely organic in its deadness. Then through this sea of audio nothing comes a voice, quiet and broken, on an unending loop:
… moved house…
…no…internet…
…going dark…
…radio silence…
…my god…the boxes…
…they’re everywhere…
Leave a comment | tags: Blogging, Going Dark, Internet, Radio Silence | posted in Ramblings
At the time of writing, I am not in the finest of fettles. I am in a word, exhausted. For me weekends are important not because they allow me to not be at work, but because they allow me to do nothing. They let me recharge the leaky, poor quality batteries that sustain my crude and imperfect meat-vessel of a body. This weekend has not seen much time for rest and relaxation. I have been “doing things” and this has left me worse for wear. Saturday saw me heading on a very important quest. I headed out to Reading. My noble and perilous goal? A combination of some early Christmas shopping and buying some sorely needed new jeans for work. A sojourn that I give the slightly inappropriate name of #EpicRockStarAdventure. The jeans were a matter of some urgency. My current work jeans are full of holes, the fly on one pair finally gave up the ghost and died and to cap it all off I am not as thin as I once was. Having to move up to a 32″ waist has given me a new understanding into the mindset of those who constantly bemoan their behemoth like girth when they are in fact slim and trim. It’s all a matter of perspective I suppose. If you’ve spent the vast majority of your life slipping into a 28″ waist you’re going to really notice it when you start to put on a bit of weight and cease to be quite so svelte and hideously skeletal. And then there’s the ever looming spectre of trying to find somewhere to live.
- Shh… I’m hunting flats
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Leave a comment | tags: Exhaustion, House Hunting, Moving House, Out and About, Shopping, Stress, Weekends | posted in Ramblings
Remember, remember the fifth of November; gunpowder treason and derp. A quintessentially British celebration of the complete and utter failure to instigate revolution. You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for Guy Fawkes. Most of us only have to deal with our mistakes for a couple of years at most, but poor old Guy is still being burnt in effigy over 400 years after his particular little misstep. On the up side it has become a marvellous excuse to set things on fire and dick about with what are essentially improvised explosives. When I was a kid we even used to cook jacket-tetties by wrapping them in tin-foil and just hoying them into the base of a bonfire. We were very sophisticated up north. I’ll be spending this Bonfire Night as I do may others, occasionally peering out the window at other people’s fireworks and dearly hoping that none of the bangs are actually gunshots. They rest of my time will be spent beavering away at a new short story I’m writing. It’s a fairy tale for submission to Homespun Theatre’s upcoming eBook.
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1 Comment | tags: East of Sun West of Moon, eBooks, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Homespun Theatre, Ramblings, Submissions, Writing | posted in Writing
November is a shambling odd-ball of a month. Were November a person you wouldn’t really like them. You’d suffer their presence quietly, hoping against hope that they’d just go away and leave you alone; you’d treat them with a passive-aggressive meanest that wouldn’t quite have the necessary understanding of social nuances to “get.” The sort of person who, the moment their back was turned you’d bolt for the nearest exit with a speed and urgency you didn’t realise you were capable of. November would have a bad moustache and no one had quite had the heart to inform them that it really didn’t suit them. November is forever going on about “their book” and how it’ll be amazing, yet no one has the heart to tell them it’s just as awful as their moustache. Add to this a distinctly pyromaniacal bent and you have the makings of someone who really should not be allowed near children.
So basically fuck November.
Perhaps I’m just bitter. I can’t grow a decent moustache and my body betraying me with maladies, plagues, facial twitches, heart-burn and fatigue has left me rather incapable of joining in with the NaNoWriMo fun. I can however still enjoy exploding showers of highly excited metal ion compounds with the best of them.
Now I’m sure many of you are embroiled in the NaNo frenzy, losing yourself to the 30 days of literary abandon. But for those not quite up to the colossal NaNo commitment I’m here to offer you an alternative. A quick jog round the park instead of a full-on marathon. It’s the start of November, it’s time for a new Pictonaut Challenge. It’s time for The Grid.
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Leave a comment | tags: November, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Short stories, The Grid, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
Be careful traveller for tonight’s 
the night,
Mischief, fun and the time for fright.
When strange things raise their head,
When the gross and rotten seem less than dead.
The night when ghouls and ghosts roam the moor,
And bring their friends knocking at your front-door.
The skein of the world’s gone all thin,
Full of enough holes to let things in.
So come inside and lock the door,
There’s horror and so much more in store.
Just be aware that you cannot leave,
For out there tonight, it’s All Hallows Eve. Continue reading
Leave a comment | tags: Hail Traveller, October, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Short stories, Weird | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
It’s getting to that time of year again
. The time when people all around the world abandon all semblance of reason and common sense and decided that it’d be a thoroughly great idea to lock themselves away for a month and write an entire book. 50, 000 words in 30 days. An average of 1666.67 words a day for a while month. It’s something that I recommend that everyone tries at least once, just to see if they can. I tried it last year and managed to “win” with a whole 6 days left to spare. It made me feel like a god, albeit a fairly minor one with a very, very narrow divine portfolio. It also left me exhausted and wanting to hide under a rock and cry for a bit. It was one of those experiences. And then a year rolled round and I found myself looking at an on rushing November and having to make a choice. To NaNoWriMo, or Not the NaNoWrimo.
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3 Comments | tags: Fatigue, Illness, NaNo, NaNoWriMo, Ramblings, Writing | posted in Ramblings
If anyone ever tells you that writing is easy you should punch them in the face. Hard. If anyone ever tells you this they are either: a) lying; b) wrong, or; c) an idiot. Alternatively they could be one of those few, truly gifted individuals for whom words simply flow out of their minds and their hands like high pressure geysers of idea flavoured water. If that is the case you should still punch them, if only to make yourself feel better. People can harp on about how the struggle to write is a character building journey which makes the end result all the more rewarding. You should punch them too, because no amount of empty platitudes are going to detract from the fact that you and not them, still have to slog your way through to the end. It’s like telling a soldier not to worry, they’re fighting for freedom and democracy and justice and that in the end, it’ll all be worth it, to which the soldier in question is more than entitled to respond with “Well that’s nice and all, but I’ve just had both of my fucking legs blown off! You are not helping! Don’t just stand there! Help me stop the bleeding!”
My own personal foray into the world of writing really began with the inception of this crass and tawdry corner of the internet; my first tentative steps into the blogosphere. That was five hundred and ninety-nine days ago. This is blog post number ninety-nine and I will tell you now, it’s not gotten any easier and I still have no fucking idea what I’m doing.
- A Map of The Blogosphere – Matthew Hurst
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Leave a comment | tags: Blogging, Blogging is Hard, Ramblings, Writer's Block, Writing, Writing is Hard | posted in Ramblings
The Rogue Verbumancer 