Author: Sean Monaghan

Writer. Voracious reader.

Igneous Flame – Intox – gorgeous ambient

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I have a couple of Igneous Flame albums – Intox and Oxana. Both are wonderful drifty drone-ambient pieces. Intox is a little over an hour long – so it suits me for a writing spell. It’s good music to be more concentrated to, there’s nothing too invasive or requiring too much attention (unless you want to to really give it attention). Oxana has some shipping forcasts later in the album which adds a little edge.

I still like CDs for variety and some of Igneous Flame disks are still available at Shopsonic, but you can stream music from the Igneous Flame MySpace page. There are also some neat videos at the NME site.

Frantically editing the novel

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

Late post here – I spent the weekend editing the novel and re-writing the last chapter. Mostly the edits are okay – minor changes to sentence flow here and there, for the most part it seems to be working, though that may all change when the editor looks at it. What did need a lot of work was the ending – it was all over too suddenly, so I have rewritten that from scratch. The 400 word final chapter has become three 500 word chapters and rounds it out much better. Of course it’s still draft material, and will take some revising, but it fits the pace and tone better so I feel a little closer to the end. I do want to get it submitted before I’m too caught up in tutoring. That was my weekend.

Where I Write – a photo project by Kyle Cassidy

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

Professional photographer Kyle Cassidy has a wonderful project of photographing science fiction authors in their writing space. Where I Write is a quick and cool insight into the variations in how people write – Michael Swandick’s bustling busy office, Will De Smedt’s orderly space, Ellen Datlow’s living room approach. I think my favourite is Joe Haldeman handwriting in notebooks by candle- and lamplight.

Deep in the heart of reading for tutoring

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

I’m tutoring in creative writing again this year, and the first portfolios are due in a little over two weeks which means the early first ones will probably arrive in week. I’ve gotta be prepared and that means reading the book of readings and the study guide so I both refresh myself (this is my fifth year with this course) and settle in, plus keep up with anything new. The first portfolio is poetry, so I’ve been reading Frost and cummings and Wendy Cope and Basho. It’s refreshing and directed. I know that tutoring in this course has helped my own writing hugely. I recommend creative writing courses to all: they’re not the be-all and end-all, but they have a lot of value, both if you’re a student or a tutor (or, I imagine, a lecturer).

Gustavius’s “am-bee-yent” photo set

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Gustavius's Thumbnails

Gustavius added one of my little flickr photos (the distorted car) as a favourite, which was flattering (since my flickr page is singularly unvisited – most visits seem to come from people clicking on the picture in the sidebar here, and the blog is relatively unvisited). Anyway, having a look at his flickr site I discovered his am-bee-yent set of photos (see ultra-mini thumbnails there) which are pretty cool and would look great as the covers of some ambient albums. I’m guessing this is the same Gustavius I remember from the 12k Forum online forum for discussing minimal and ambient music. Anyway, there are nearly 200 images and they’re fabulous – try running them as a slideshow with some music playing. Very Zen.

[The Core] by I Awake

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I Awake – [The Core] is a 60 minute-plus album (it has a “hidden” track at the end) that’s probably more chill than strictly ambient. There are a lot of beats compared to some of what I listen to. Nothing too fast or imposing and much of the record is made up of atmospheres and gentle drifty melodies, supported by some deep bass, choir sounds and a little singing. [The Core] is made up of shorter tracks – mostly between four and five minutes, unlike many ambient albums around which often have tracks which clock in at 15 minutes and upwards. I like to write to this album when I’m wanting to be fast and punchy – the music is an hour with energy and drive, ebbs and flows and this gets reflected, I think, in slightly more upbeat writing.

Like other releases on the exquisite Ultimae label, this comes with a gorgeous 16 page booklet of photographs.

Missed the boat on Howl

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

The soon to be published Lame Goat Press anthology Howl looks to be a stunner. I had an idea for a story, but had so much else on that I put it aside – life is a series of choices about what not to do. Part of the reason for wanting to submit to the anthology was the fabulous cover, but it’s growing and growing. There’s now a fantastic book trailer for the volume, which is also on YouTube, one of the stories has been podcasted on archive.org, and the contributing writer’s list includes lots of my faves (Jodi, Angel, Mark Anthony Crittenden, to mention a few). I’m green. Still, it’s cool to be associated with Lame Goat Press and great to see it going from strength to strength.

(whoops – my bad, and see the comments, Laura’s not in this anthology, but she is in a couple of others – Diamonds in the Rough, and Flash! out soon. Sorry Laura).

Pecha Kucha consumes weekend

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I put my hand up, perhaps foolishly, to participate in a local Pecha Kucha event. Pecha Kucha nights are presentations of 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds, while the presenter talks for the 6 minutes and 40 seconds. It sounded straightforward when I agreed to do it, but coming up with a theme (music, writing, graphics?), then an engaging talk, then trying to match slides to it all has left me drained. I’m perhaps halfway there, but I’ve got to have my slides delivered by Thursday, and the event is being held on March 25th. Had I realised how much work I was getting myself in for, especially when I have other stuff on too. At least it has been good for my right-brain/left-brain stuff – thinking in different modes has got to be good.

“Can’t You Find Anything Up There” – new flash sci-fi story on 365Tomorrows

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The wonderful team at 365Tomorrows have published my story Can’t You Find Anything Up There. This is another light-hearted Mars story, of explorers and researchers. I noticed a little formatting thing that I forget with the web – my fault – there were originally line breaks between the two story threads as they swapped back and forth, but they’ve been lost in the translation from .rtf to .html. Whoops – I should use asterisks. Anyway it might take a little reading with patience to keep track of who is where and what is how and so on.

As the name would suggest, 365Tomorrows publish a new science fiction story every day. Each story gets a full day as leader on the home page, then drops to archives as the next story goes live. There’s a strong community based around the site – a cool forum with some intriguing discussions.