Barris Debris – New Science Fiction/Horror story coming out soon

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

My science fiction/horror story “Barris Space” has been accepted into the Lame Goat Press No One Can Hear You Scream anthology, which is cool. Lame Goat Press is really developing very quickly into something of note, and I’m pleased to be associated with it through my stories. Great work by Chris Bartholemew and Christopher Jacobmeyer, and Mark Crittendon, on getting this anthology together – there are some top authors, regulars and new, on the list.

The picture here isn’t the cover – Mark’s cover is amazing – this is just a doodle I did in a meeting.

Okay – this is a Saturday post, which falls out of my schedule, but that’s okay. See you Monday (or Sunday if you’re on Pacific time).

Sounds The Songs of Seabirds

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Sounds The Songs of Seabirds is prolific Vancouver artist Bob Singley. With an extensive catalogue of ambient and experimental music available to stream and download on his Bandcamp site, Sounds The Songs of Seabirds has hours of exquisite background sounds to tickle your ears as you work, rest and play. Some of the releases are long – over 100 minutes – one, the archive, stands at over 340 (like, six hours) and is growing. Suffice to say I haven’t listened my way through everything yet, but a couple of albums in I’m liking it so far. Most of the music is free to download, but with some nice self-deprecating humour there one album is billed as a fundraiser: “Hello. This album is a fundraiser for myself. I am trying to raise up money to pay my rent. And buy some eggs …” It’s $1 (or more, if you want). Cool that if you buy it, there’s a 25 minute bonus track which takes the running time up to an hour twenty (ie – burn a CD of it). The next album, Soorya Namaskaram, is a crisp work, droney with enough whiskers of melody and strum to keep it interesting – you can listen from the embed below, but do check out his download site, or his myspace page. While much of this is improvisational and live and doesn’t quite have the polish of many professional releases, it’s still very cool, with a freshness and immediacy that’s inspirational. Great stuff.

Thursday book – Witchsong

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I blog about Kim a bit, so it’s probably no surprise I’m starting my regular “reading for writing” series, proper, with one of her books – I’m a definite fan. Part of what’s cool about this book is how it shows Kim’s versatility – she writes adult horror/fantasy/supernatural novels, adult romances (as Kimberly Freeman), children’s novels and young adult novels. She’s even written an early reader and a picture book. Anyway, Witchsong is the fourth book in her young adult series about psychic Gina Champion, and perhaps the scariest yet as Gina is faced with a ghost hell-bent on retribution.

What’s cool about reading this, as a writer, is how well-balanced the novel is. Gina has to contend, as in the earlier books, with the supernatural events, sceptical police, busy friends, distant parents and added into this, very nicely, is her almost estranged relationship with her adult sister. Throughout the book things keep unfolding and the danger increases, as you would expect from a thriller, but Wilkins dials it back at times, really heightening the tension, with everyday things that have to be done. It’s as well-tuned as a racing engine.

There are many, many “how to” books on writing a novel out there, but the best guide, I say, is actually reading novels to really understand how to write a novel. While Witchsong might be targeted neatly at a teen audience, it’s still worth checking out for would-be writers.

(Kim recently changed the theme of her website, which runs on wordpress, to Chaotic Soul, the same as I’ve been using for ages! I guess there are only so many themes, and this one must be popular amongst horror writers – Graeme Reynolds is using it too).

Scott H Young dot com – super learning

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Scott H Young’s site on getting more from life is worth checking out.* Often I find I’m reading into websites just for little motivational pushes to help stay focused on the goal line, and beyond. I especially like Scott’s article on reading and how to read more (70+ books a year) and read more effectively (I do like the “cut down on TV” idea in there, though I think there are other ways of speedreading – I do it without the finger).

Okay, as per my previous post this is a Wednesday – random what’s up post. Tomorrow will be a reading for writing post on what I’m currently reading, which kind of relates to the above – reading 70 books a year. At the moment it’s more like 52 at a stretch, and if I’m going to post every Thursday about a new book, then I need to get cracking.

*Another guy, without the H – just plain Scott Young – has a site on getting more from life too, just from a different focus. Don’t confuse the two, though for some people I’m sure they are quite complementary.

What is this blog about?

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been watching my posts over recent times and realise that I’m all over the place. So, I’m going to try a little structure for a while. In general the blog has always been about creativity, whether that be writing, music or art. When I started it was pretty much all music (hence the blog name), then as my publication list began growing, the blog shifted to more of a focus on writing and, over time, has become very broad (perhaps some would say scattered). Anyway, here’s my plan for the next little while, assuming I keep blogging on weekdays**

Monday – weekend musings: how my projects have gone over the previous seven days
Tuesday – music to write to: a short review of music I’ve been listening to as I write
Wednesday – random notes on what’s up
Thursday – reading for writing: a short review of the book I’m reading*
Friday – music to write to or random

I will also, as they occur, post notes about current publications, music releases, general news, etc.

*I try to read a book a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. During marking blocks, heavy writing times and so on, sometimes I slip so I might write about something I read a last year, or the year before, or 1989 or whenever.

**Being to the left of the international dateline, if I post at, say, 9am on a Wednesday, that’s around midday on Tuesday in LA, 3pm Tuesday EST, so if my posts seem early …

Cutting words to meet limits

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Over the weekend I’ve been working on a couple of science fiction stories, reworking and whittling them for their intended markets. Antipodean Science Fiction, which has published a couple of my stories already, has a tight limit – around 500 words (they have a little flexibility, but not much over 500). 365Tomorrows has taken one of my stories and their limit is 600. My two current stories are 650 and 570 words respectively.

There’s a good article by Ken Rand here on the Science Fiction Writers of America site, about straightforward ways of cutting ten percent from stories and articles. That’s a good start, though having read the article a while ago I notice that I’ve been doing some of these things automatically anyway.

After that the question becomes, what can I remove without having the whole story collapse into a shambles? Perhaps I could drop the mention of the poker game in the longer story? Well, that’s important for character. But how else could I show that aspect? Perhaps if I took Karl’s character out of the other story and just let it be between Bayliss and Angela it would tighten up a bit? It feels like they need a foil, but could that just be done through the situation?

Well, I’ll keep cutting and see where it gets. Otherwise, I might just re-write them from scratch and see how they will fit with one of sites with longer limits – 1000 words feels like a lot to play with when I’ve been shooting for 500.

Avatar by Roger Dean

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been a fan of Roger Dean’s art for a long time now – I bought his book Views when I was a teenager. As soon as I saw the Avatar previews, I could see the similarity to Dean’s work from the nineties. There is a bit of controversy about how much Avatar’s designers have borrowed Dean’s ideas – a quick Google search will give you a sense.

I did love Avatar. It’s a great rollercoaster ride that kept me mostly engaged for the three hours and it was worth travelling to a city with a 3D theatre to see it with specs on (yes, I live in a rural city). I do think the designs and ideas were extraordinary, and the 3D unobtrusive.

Certainly the covers of the Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe – Live and Yes – Keys to Ascension albums predate Avatar’s design. I would guess that many of the Avatar designers were infants when ABWH came out. There is some good discussion of the similarities – like this post: more than I can say. I guess if it had been my paintings at the very least, a credit would have been nice, some consultation would have been nice, too, even without the idea of remuneration. I wonder now, though, how Dean’s long-held idea of a movie dealing with his floating islands would pitch to the studios.

Jerome Faria, 17:14 ep on bandcamp

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve just listened to Jerome’s new ambient/glitch ep 17:14 (yes, that’s the duration and the title) – here on his Bandcamp site. It’s a moody, drifty piece, with little hints of melody, tiny quiet jabs of subtle static and some delicious drones. Jerome usually releases music as NNY, and has a pretty full catalogue of downloads and media. Some of his work is a bit edgy and too glitchy for my taste, but this new ep tags it just right – enough drone and melody to balance the strong frequencies and clicks. Great music to write to – available both as a stream and free download.

Streamined website – why?

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to those who’ve given me feedback on the updated venusvulture.com website – I have made a couple of minor changes. I am certainly a fan of minimal and streamlined and tired of sparkly ads, flash player required, complex links and pages stuffed to bursting or that scroll forever. The index page is 1kb of html and 31kb of images. I’ve avoided Dreamweaver, etc. and just hand-coded the html (yes, typed it as a text file). Too old school? Probably. Anyway, this is the code for the index page, for those who are interested.

Ah, no metadata, no java. That’ll probably cost me hits too. Oh well. I do have a favicon, but I still can’t figure out why it’s not working – something missing in the code?