Not so long ago I waffled on about my family history and how I was going to concoct a fictional legend about one man and his really big sword (not a euphemism). It’s been slow work. As with nearly everything I write it oft feels like I’m writing it by smashing my head against a brick wall in the misguided hope that the resulting splatters of blood and flecks of cerebral goo will form some interesting sounding words, or at least something that wouldn’t look too out of place in the Tate modern.
Category Archives: Writing
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.
Fire in the Night
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.
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.
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.
The Rogue Verbumancer 