Well perhaps need is too strong a word, perhaps “would actually rather like your assistance” is more apt. It is my understanding that to become internet famous you need to reach out to your readership, make them feel involved, engage with them. That or have tits. Without the required secondary X chromosome for the latter I’ve decided that it would be more prudent to attempt the former. Continue reading
Author Archives: The Rogue Verbumancer
About The Rogue Verbumancer
Opiate of the Masses
This missive comes to you from the blasted wastelands of Berkshire. My last post came amidst the uncertainty of a move to strange new lands and the availability of the sweet, sweet balm of the internet super highway. Continue reading
We Interrupt This Transmission…
I started this blog on a dark and gloomy night in the closing days of February. Now it is five months later and I’m somehow still going. It does pain me somewhat to say that I’m going to have to stop, at least for a little while.
The Simple Things
Sometimes I think that we, the reading public, can be real snobs when it comes to books. We tend to subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) judge people based on what they’re reading. So many of us, including myself, lambaste the popularist novels, decrying the works of Dan Brown and J K Rowling, or in the case of the Song of Ice and Fire, claiming we read it before it was “big”. It’s book-hipsterism and it makes me feel a little dirty.
Stories from Old London Town
Last Friday I was in London. London is a city I’ve never really liked. I’ve never really been able to put my finger on the reason why, but I suspect it’s something to do with the bustle and the pervading sense of grime and dirt. You can never quite escape the weight of all those people. A population of nearly eight million is something you can smell in the air and feel in the ground beneath your feet, it’s an ever present fact pushing down on you. The sense of unease and oppression I feel in London is likely rooted in my roots as a quaint country lad. Throughout my life the only cities I’ve had regular cause to visit have only had populations around the 250,000 mark, some 30 times less than that of our heaving metropoloid capital. The population density of London according to data from 2009 is 12,773 souls per square imperial mile. Do you know how that compares to my quaint northern homeland? It has a population density of 160 people per square mile. One hundred and sixty! It is perhaps no small wonder then that London puts me on edge and fills me with an unspoken bitterness. Perhaps there’s also a small current of paranoia there too, as if I think the Southrons are out to get me; Northmen do not really belong in such a place as Old London Town.
Baker’s Dozen
And so ends another shockingly unproductive week as I vainly try to keep myself afloat in a sea of drudgery. The nine till five crusade and my ever continuing passive-aggressive war against my co-workers has left me somewhat drained. So in the absence of anything new I give you the last remaining story of Callis. Although I’ve stuck up an excerpt previously and posted a link to the Zine it was written for, I’ve yet to stick the whole thing here. The Baker’s Dozen was not an easy thing to write. Not because of writer’s block or a lack of motivation, but simply because it was so very visceral. Not so much dark, nor gritty. Just undiluted malice, and anger, and rage, and all the utterly horrible things that will make you do. It focuses on Callis’ youth and the events which shaped him and ultimately put him on the road to what he later became. Callis is and always will be, very much a product of the society that made him.
Smoking the Kipper
The weekend proper advances towards us with a lumbering inevitability born of a nation’s collective, desperate longing. The end of the week means another blog post, and the return of Mr Callis. Today I give you Smoking the Kipper, or as I sometimes call it Callis Goes to the Seaside. In this instalment I tried to develop Callis a bit more. By exploring his internal thoughts I hoped to make him seem a little bit more likeable and not just a horrible, murderous bastard.
The Rogue Verbumancer 