I have waxed lyrical about Mr. Callis and his adventures; it’s true they hold a special place in my heart. They are probably some of the best things I’ve written, but considering how little I’ve written this is quite an easy achievement. It was, however, recently brought to my attention that despite this I haven’t actually made available all of his adventures on this blog. I have by no means been hoarding them, they have all made appearances in SFFS’ Zine. But that is of course something that not everyone will have access to. So in order to rectify this most heinous of crimes I shall be posting the rest of his adventures for your perusal. This has been made a lot easier now I seem to have overcome my abject terror of sharing the bulk of my works on the unforgiving shores of the internet.
Author Archives: The Rogue Verbumancer
About The Rogue Verbumancer
The Ghosts of Childhood
A man I know on the intertubes named Sir Marc of Jolt has a blog. Over the past few months he’s posted a few pieces describing memories from his childhood. Most recently a tale about butterflies that is at once both tragic, monstrous and terribly touching. It is in essence, childhood crystallised into words. All of these stories paint a picture of a joyful childhood, I like to think it’s done in watercolours; slightly washed out and made indistinct and fuzzy by the passage of years.
Seeing a Man About a Dog
If I am to maintain my flimsy pretence of being “a writer on the internet” as opposed to the shameless charlatan that I really am, I should probably get back to the business of writing.
I recently completed the fourth instalment of the Trials and Adventures of Mister Callis. This particular instalment, as you may now have guessed by now, is entitled “Seeing a Man About a Dog”. A delightful euphemistic colloquialism that can mean so many sly and terrible things. It fits rather nicely with the theme for Callis’ latest exploit, the rather laborious business of actually negotiating the price for a “hit”. This time the focus has shifted rather drastically from previous adventures. For a start no one actually dies.
Riddle Me This
I’ve now been ploughing the turbulent skies and seas of the blogoshpere since late February. It has, by and large, been a journey that I have made in solitude. Recently I happened upon another stalwart adventurer who has been making bold journeys into the darkest corners or the blogosphere. Now to dispense with the flowery introduction and get to the point.
The Funk
Recently something awful happened. I became ensnared by something I simply refer to as: “The Funk”. The Funk is a terrible, terrible thing. It’s not tied to anything so delightful and buoyant as the thrumming beat of funkadelic jazz. The Funk as I know it harkens back to the older meaning of the word. That great yawning abyss of empty futile hopelessness. I’m not depressed. Oh no, life’s just about as grand as it gets for me right now. This mood that’s gripped me is something pertaining more exclusively to the creative arts. It’s something quite different to writer’s block. Writer’s block is a situation where despite wanting to, you can’t think of anything to write. The Funk is something of the inverse; having plenty ideas to write about, but not the will to do so.
I had an adventure
Last week I had a package delivered. Rather unsurprisingly this happened while I was at work. And while my housemates were at work. So what was the poor beleaguered delivery man to do but slip a little card through the door telling me that we’d need to pick it up from the depot. Naturally, there were complications. The main complication being that the depot in question was six and a bit miles away in the industrialised wastelands that surround the city where I live like they do so many others. What ensued was a frantic search to find a way to get there within five days before they invoked “return to sender”. To make matters worse this was all occurring across the four-day Easter mega-weekend, scratching two possible days I could collect it. What with the depot being closed and its occupants rather inconsiderately taking the day off. Most people might have been content to wait, but not I. I wanted that package. I wanted that package bad.
The Source
Ideas, when you get right down to it, are bastards. Without them any artistic venture simply cannot get off the ground. Without an idea what do you write about? What do you paint? Not only do you have to start somewhere, but you’ve also got to actually go somewhere. Without an idea you’ll just end up sitting at your desk twiddling your thumbs and resisting the urge to trawl the sordid nether regions of the internet. But as I said ideas are bastards; they are things of whimsy and caprice. They’re not something that can just be summoned or called upon at a moments notice. Ideas aren’t something you can simply manufacture, trying to is equivalent to a blacksmith trying to hammer a sword out of the wind. A good proper idea is a rare gem, something forged in the bowels of the earth of countless millennia, something which you’ll have to shift a metric fuck-ton of shit just to get to.
Keepers of the page
When talking about books and writing there always seems to be one little thing that is forgotten and pushed to the back of the discussion. Perhaps not quite shunned and ostracised but certainly ignored for other more weighty matters. It’s like the person who stands alone in the corner at a party; not because they’re a social leper, but simply because everyone else is too busy with other things. I am of course talking about bookmarks.
Bookmarks are those little stalwart vanguards of the reading world. They held your hand when you cried during that romance novel of yours, they stood resolutely by your side as you struggled your way through that big, high-brow classic that hasn’t aged too well and doesn’t make a lot of sense, they never left your side when you were reading that trashy novel you bought at the airport which everyone said was great but was actually really shit. They didn’t judge you. They were with you every step of the way. They did all this without expecting any recognition nor thanks, because they’re inanimate objects and such a thing would be impossible for them, but they were still there! Despite the fact that we don’t give them half the credit they deserve, bookmarks are extraordinarily important things. They are a simple little device which holds our place for us, it lets us remember where we were. They are our anchorage amidst an angry and uncertain sea of words. Nearly everyone has one, even if they don’t read. They’ll be some in a box somewhere gathering dust.
Abominations of Technology
In my last post I briefly touched on the subject of e-books. Well, I didn’t so much touch upon it, as glance at it from a great distance through a pair of high-powered binoculars. Something akin to a stalker of conversation points; it’s like birdwatching but metaphorical. That and my tea is in a mug as opposed to a Thermos. There’s still sandwiches though. Sandwiches with pickle.
Now I suspect I should attempt to capture the aforementioned lesser-spotted speckled conversation point with my net of bilious words and angry grammar lest it dash off into the bushes or get eaten by a cat. It is at this point my metaphor begins to shake violently and collapse in upon its own absurdity.
So e-books then…
Size doesn’t matter
Earlier this week I was making one of my regular trawls through the shelves of my local Waterstones. I was once again searching for what I like to call “bus fodder”; something to read on the bus into work. I do enjoy being able to slip out of reality, into a world of sublime fiction and not have to face the ghastly horrors of the daily commute. During my trawl I saw that Patrick Rothfuss’ The Wise Man’s Fear had been released. Having enjoyed his previous book The Name of the Wind I went to pick it up and have a bit of a look at it. Upon picking the book up my initial reaction was simply that of “Christ! This book could choke a whale!” For you see, it is an extraordinarily large book. I have come to expect hardbacks to be slightly larger and more hefty than there soft-backed brethren but this struck me as something that, if push came to shove, could be used to quite easily kill a man. I’m sure the book is wonderful but since I already had four books in my hand (one of these being an equal large collection of H.P. Lovecraft’s works) and facing the trek back to work carrying them I decided to put it down and get it at a later date. It did get me thinking though…
The Rogue Verbumancer 