Tag Archives: Writing

February 28, 2014

Barrow Door

When last we met dear readers it was on a pleasantly sunny day. Being the suspicious sort that I am, I suspect that February was plotting something most heinous and most foul. Which as chance would have it, it was. As heinous and foul most assuredly describe the weather of the last month. Large portions of the country have been transformed so that they are no more a green and sceptred land. Now they’re more of a muddy brown and sort of squelchy. The boffins at the MET office claim that it is the wettest winter on record and I’m certainly not going to disagree. It is times such as this that I am glad to live nowhere near a body of water and be on the 1st floor. But as much as my genetic heritage compells me to talk at length about the weather I should probably get down to the business of short stories and tall tales.

Leave a comment | tags: Barrow Door, February, Hospitals, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Short stories, The Weather, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing

January 31, 2014

Mercury

By The Rogue Verbumancer

And thus January comes to an end, and a particularly damp and dreary end at that. The sky bleeds like someone’s made a botched attempt at amateur surgery on our once glorious firmament. I’m going to be honest, it’s been a pretty dire month as January’s go. I usually adore rain but there can be too much of a good thing, nor has the ambient temperature come anywhere close to it’s seasonally appropriate winter chill. It’s been almost offensively mild (though my electricity bill will no doubt change my view on this in due course.) On top of this I have spent the balance of this month gripped by a vague and malignant malaise of spirit and soul. A cocktail of general-all-purpose fatigue, listlessness and the continued manful battle to not vomit everywhere. It has prompted me to actually get round to registering a the local health centre. As you read this I will most likely be being poked and prodded by a crack team of physicians, chirurgeons, quacks, apothecaries and shamans. After their examination they will, to a (wo)man, declare “Well Mister Verbumancer you seem to be perfectly healthy, if somewhat clinically dead.”

You know, standard January fare.

Leave a comment | tags: Cornelius Dämmrich, January, Mercury, New Year, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Short stories, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing

January 1, 2014

January’s Pictonaut Challenge

By The Rogue Verbumancer

Today is the first day of Two Thousand and Fourteen. The day has been cold and grey, the sun a wan and sickly thing. The gloom has pervaded throughout the entire day and so has the rain. rain so persistent and unrelenting that one would be forgiven for thinking that the world is crying; mourning the passing of Two Thousand and Thirteen. The world must go on, even though its old friend is now gone. There is something comforting about rain and cloud, something reassuring, something old and dependable. And that is a good thing to have when confronted by the myriad of possibilities that lay before us all. The beginning of a thing is always the most terrifying, the most monstrous and insurmountable. For to begin a thing we must overcome the mountain of inertia and haul ourselves up from the very bowels of the potential energy well. But once that’s done? Then it’s a downhill slope. Things get easier. Either that or you encounter an unforeseen co-interaction or strange quantum phenomenon and everything either catches fire or ends up filled with gribbly abominations from the Before Time. Swings and roundabouts really.

Other things once begun continue, ad infinitum, such is their inertia that they cannot be stopped by conventional means. They merely continue, because that is the way things are. So here we are in the first day of the first month, let us visit the first of the planets, let us visit Mercury.

1 Comment | tags: Cornelius Dämmrich, January, Mercury, New Year, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Short stories, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing

December 31, 2013

Ringing in the New Year

By The Rogue Verbumancer

In May 2012 I, as I have done every month for the last two and a bit years, wrote a story. It was called Starwatcher. It was an attempt at pulpy sci-fi with a slightly alien feel to it. Though I do quite like it, in of itself, it is nothing special. The piece originally had a brief epilogue to it that was perhaps no more than twenty or thirty words. In the end I got rid of it. It felt tacked on, superfluous, unnecessary. Over the intervening year and a half, that expunged epilogue sat in the back of my mind dormant and unmoving. Then one day it sprouted and grew and then flowered into something beyond my wildest expectations. This now completed epilogue is longer than the original and has been a labour of love. Writing it and the subsequent re-readings caused me to be almost overwhelmed by “Feels.”

During its composition I reflected quite a lot on love, friendship, relationships and what exactly they meant. How they define people, how it changes who the are. This quickly became an act of self-reflection as I thought about the most important relationships in my life. My life has been remarkably free from romantic entanglements, the relationships which have dominated my life are those between myself and my friends. By the metrics of television and film my life should be lonely, empty and unfulfilled. But it’s not. My life is rich, richer than I often realise. So I dedicate “The Watcher of Stars” not to any individual or great romantic love past or lost, but to the relationships which have really mattered to me. The ones without which I would be less than I am. I dedicate it to my friends.

This story is for Sam and Tonks, for being there despite not being able to be there; for Sarah and Pinaz, for sharing a house with me and living to tell the tale; for Gareth and Chelle, for visiting and being so insufferably sweet together; for the two Davids, for their internet shenanigans and good natured treachery; for Andy and JP, for knowing me as long as they have and still not hating me for it; for James and Neil, for scaring my mind in ways which will never truly heal; For Amy and Vicki, for risking social suicide by agreeing to be seen in public with me; for Mick and Steve, for proving to me that I am not the worst human being in existence; and for Marc and for Jess, for always teaching me something new, and for being so singularly interesting that I could just listen to them talk for hours. And a final thanks to the ensemble cast of my life, you are legion, beyond counting and beyond importance.

Even if I have never said it before or never say it again: You people matter to me in ways I cannot quite put into words. Without you I would just be a husk of gradually expiring meat. With you, I still am a husk of gradually expiring meat, but you make me feel not so bad about the fact.

Wherever you may find yourself, in love, in life and in space; I wish you all a Happy New Year. May this coming year be filled with not that which you want, but that which you need.

2 Comments | tags: Epilogue, Feels, Friends, Love, Moebius, New Year, Relationships, Starwatcher, Watcher of Stars, Writing | posted in Writing

December 31, 2013

Pay Day

By The Rogue Verbumancer

Somehow we have made it through the festive gauntlet. An onslaught of food, drink and society mandated family contact. And now we reach the 31st of December. This is the end. Two Thousand and Thirteen lurches drunkenly and broken to its final day. Its passing left a trail of chaos and carnage that would do its forebears proud. In celebration we will leave the safety of our domiciles to roam the high streets and city centres, glasses and tumblers of intoxicant clutched reverentially in our hands. Clustered in groups of friends and acquaintances or folk we have never seen before, together we wait loud in our silence and silent in our loudness. We wait for time to tick its way onward to the edge of our Gregorian precipice, to the beginning of the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Fourteen. Well, you might. I’m going to sit in my front room and drink whisky. If I’m feeling extra fancy I might even turn the lights on.

But whatever the evening may bring and whatever the state of your wallet in the aftermath, just remember: Pay Day is coming. Pay Day is always coming.

Leave a comment | tags: December, Iyla Repin, Pay Day, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, Short stories, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing

December 1, 2013

December’s Pictonaut Challenge

By The Rogue Verbumancer

Today sees the beginning of December. Two thousand and thirteen takes one last, deep, rattling breath as it summons up a final burst of speed as it hurtles towards two thousand and fourteen. Ready to pass over the baton and see the continuation of the Gregorian calender’s endless relay into eternity. Gleefully ignorant to the inexorable wheels of time, children across the nation rend tiny simulacra of doors in twain and loot the precious chocolate totems that dwell within. The united forces of consumerism dust of their festive arsenal and array it in full force before us. Ready to assail us in full force with tinsel and baubles and carols and seasonally altered prices. War and chaos are upon us my friends, it will come hard and fast, before rising to a terrible crescendo on the 25th. To a lot of you the 25th is Christmas Day, but to me? To me, the 25th is still Pay Day.

1 Comment | tags: December, Iyla Repin, Pay Day, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, Short stories, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing

November 30, 2013

Regent

By The Rogue Verbumancer

November ends. It ends with the sound of buzzing razors and clattering keyboards. It ends with the sudden realisation that no one looks good in a moustache. It ends with the realisation that perhaps spending a whole month writing 50,000 words wasn’t the best use of your time. The end of November is a time of shames and regrets laid bare. A time of rising panic and encroaching festive malice. The end of November is not a lot of fun. But I am here to ease your woes and salve your hurts with another batch of wordascopes.

Leave a comment | tags: Dishonoured, November, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Regent, Short stories, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing

November 1, 2013

November’s Pictonaut Challenge

By The Rogue Verbumancer

And so we find ourselves on the home straight of 2013. The days evaporating away into the æther only to rapidly condense into the sticky and turbid liquid that will become 2014. November is a silly month. Scores of you will now be desperately trying to grow a manly moustache (and almost certainly end up looking like a prat.) Others of you will be hammering away at your keyboard like it has dishonoured you and your ancestors, as you vainly try and churn out 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo. These 50,000 words will almost certainly be purest, unadulterated dross. But for those of us who are follically challenged or don’t much fancy the idea of chaining ourselves to our desks for a whole month, I have an alternative. For as ever, the Pictonaut Challenge rumbles ever on with Regent; with gunpowder, treason and plot (Adjust proportions to taste.)

1 Comment | tags: Dishonoured, Guy Fawkes, November, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Regent, Short stories, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing

October 31, 2013

Hunting

By The Rogue Verbumancer

I come to you now from a world draped in cobwebs, festooned with skellingtons and dotted with lanterns both Jack-o and Snanny (it’s a Northern thing, we make them out of turnips.) The night covers the world, and with the setting of the sun comes the return of that which does not belong in our world. The dead stir in their graves and walk upon this earth once again. Ghosts, ghouls, poltergeists and malign spirits slip through the cracks in the fabric of existence and embark upon a mission of mischief, mayhem, madness and all-purpose merry-hell. Obviously the only sensible response to this is to dress up, devour high-calorie sugared snacks and inappropriately add the adjective “sexy” as a prefix to thing which it does not rightly belong. Or if you;re me: turn-off all the lights and pretend you’re not in just so people will go away and stop knocking on your door. But even with all this frivolity, frippery and social cowardice there’s a lingering feeling that there really might be something out there in the cold autumn night. Something hungry, prowling darkened streets and hiding in the bushes. Something on the hunt…

2 Comments | tags: Dmitry Maximov, Hunting, October, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Short stories, Space, Submarines, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing

October 1, 2013

October’s Pictonaut Challenge

By The Rogue Verbumancer

Arguments can be made for October being the worst month of the entire year. These arguments tend to hinge of two factors. Firstly there is Halloween. Halloween on its own is perfectly fine and innocuous, at least from a conceptual perspective. What isn’t innocuous is juvenile humanoids cruising the streets, jonesing for a sugar fix and pelting your front door with eggs if you have the temerity to be out when they come a calling. And secondly there’s the clocks changing. While we all sleep, time creeps into our bedrooms and gives us all an extra hour in bed. Now you’re probably thinking “Mister Verbumancer, sir? How is an extra hour in bed a bad thing?” Well for me it’s the equivalent of taking a 3 kilogramme lump of hardened steel, fitting it to a stout wooden support pole and using the resulting contraption to smash the bejeezus out of my careful recalibrated diurnal rhythms. I clutch the shattered and broken corpse of my sleep patterns, cradling it within my arms; I weep and I realise that I have to start all over again. Time is insidious, it takes and takes and whatever gifts it gives are all poisoned. It is callous, unforgiving, relentless and never around when you really, really need it. It hounds us and hunts us our entirely lives and then, in the end, it devours us. Cheery thought isn’t it? And by that extremely tenuous segue we come at last to October’s Pictonaut Challenge Hunting.

1 Comment | tags: Dmitry Maximov, Hunting, October, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Short stories, Submarines, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing

The Rogue Verbumancer

Tag Archives: Writing

Barrow Door

Mercury

January’s Pictonaut Challenge

Ringing in the New Year

Pay Day

December’s Pictonaut Challenge

Regent

November’s Pictonaut Challenge

Hunting

October’s Pictonaut Challenge

Old Ramblings

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