My sister Jane has been photographically experimenting with a pen and ink picture I did for her a few years back – you can see the results here. Cool. Now maybe I need to photograph or scan some of my old hand-drawn/hand-painted stuff and put it up myself … so much of what I do these days is digital anyway.
Author: Sean Monaghan
Writer. Voracious reader.
angles-moire video on YouTube
I’ve put up a new Venus Vulture video on YouTube . It’s a more blocky thing than the earlier videos, with some drum patterns built across the drifty soundscape.
Moire patterns (there’s an acute over the e, and I guess there’s some way to put that on here, but I can’t figure it) are interference patterns created by intersecting sets of lines – say when you’re passing a wire fence and the lines of another fence beyond interact to create highlights and lowlights. In the video the striations on the blocks seem to bend a flicker a little as the pixels of the image can’t quite manage to show the details. Some artifacts from various compressions through the process, but still intriguing.
Review online as part of Community Reads
The Palmerston North City Library (where I work) is having a Community Reads promotion. One of the books is Two Little Boys by Duncan Sarkies, which I had reviewed for The Christchurch Press earlier this year. They’ve kindly given permission for the review to made available online here (.pdf file) on the library’s site during the promotion.
Crime flash
More flash-fiction out for enthusiastic readers – a new Sean Monaghan story Long Jump has just been published on PowderBurnFlash. This one’s about 700 words, so the length is creeping up a bit. Thanks to MysteryDawg – there are some cool stories on the site.
New Youtube video
I’ve just put a new short experimental video up on the Venus Vulture YouTube site. A minute and forty seconds of swirly blue clouds with a gentle swirly soundtrack. I’m getting more organised on the hard-drive at the moment (decluttering, I think it’s called), and I’m sorting out new and old videos, so there should be more going up on YouTube soon.
New image gallery available
Trying to reduce the number of projects I have on the go at the moment, but I am working on a new soundscape with images, and some animation. I’ve uploaded some preliminary images in a gallery here. Still working on the sounds – will update here as things progress.
New interview on Review Yak
Two new stories published
A couple of Sean Monaghan stories have just been published on flash-fiction sites on the web. Both stories are under 600 words – easy to read at your screen – check them out
The science fiction story “How things fall” is out on AntipodeanSF*. Antipodean is a wonderful Australian short Science Fiction magazine with new stories monthly.
Another story “Air pocket” has just come out on MicroHorror. MicroHorror is a broad site with a growing archive of chilling stories.
*Update – this had now gone here into archive (only the current edition is online).
Dawn, New Life reviews
There are some peer reviews of the Dawn, New Life track here at ccmixter. Great to know people are listening and thinking about the track.
My garden turns to winter …
I stepped out onto the front verandah today and saw how suddenly the drop of winter has stripped the bigger trees, along the side of the property, of their leaves. The new trees, those I planted just two years back, have thrived and are beginning to build their own forest in the the front yard, they are still green and lush. They are evergreen natives; they take my attention. How could it be that I hadn’t noticed the other trees shedding foliage? I suppose it has taken a few weeks, but they look so bare and stark and spindly and now I look over the tops of the new trees and see right into the neighbour’s place, see their tidy almost manicured yard which seems in such contrast to the jungle in front of me. I want the natives to grow fast fast fast so that I can look out and just see trees.
Sean Monaghan - Writer 