The Book of Lost Nights

So, I saw "New Moon" this weekend, which I spent in Guildford, housesitting for K and R. I could attempt to offer clever social commentary on it, but for God's sake, why bother?

"New Moon" is cut from exactly the same emo-rocking, eye-gazing, tree-infested, blue-colour-saturation school as its predecessor "Twilight", and in that sense it more than delivers. It has a similar problem to the book in that the strapping young wolfman is clearly in a different league of attractiveness to the non-threatening veggie vampire Edward and his excessively pink lipstick. When Taylor Lautner takes his shirt off in the first third, the entire audience burst into uncomfortable tittering and shifting about. It was actually kind of awesome.

You wonder what the heroine is thinking of. Not much, would seem to be the answer, as Jacob and his werewolf chums run about in little shorts and running shoes like a lycanthrope boy band. You keep expecting the entire pack to burst into synchronised song and dance.

I was, I must confess, a little shocked at how bad some of the effects were. The first werewolf action shot was so poorly rendered it looked like two guys in a wolf suit. The legs didn't even seem to more in rhythm.

I also finally got around to finishing The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest. The titular Girl spends the book largely confined to hospital bed with a Palm Pilot while the Millenium staff, who Larsson is clearly much more interested in, beat a secret runaway section of the Swedish Security Police at their own game. Their actions are all about Lisbeth Salander, apparently, and each section of the book is prefaced with hilariously over-the-top commentary on the role of the female soldier throughout the ages, but this is nothing short of hyperbolic false advertising of the most egregious sort.

Salander, as if aware that she could never live up to such hysterical billing, instead lurks shiftily in the background of her own novel, while other characters talk about how dreadfully she's been treated and scheme to rectify things before her trial. She responds by giving them all the silent treatment.

Without her polarizing presence, the ongoing unsubtlety of the villains is quickly wearing - it's not enough to be in a conspiracy to commit an innocent woman to a mental institute, for instance - you've also got to have a hard drive full of child pornography. It's not enough to falsely believe her guilty of murder (though she actually is by intent, which is all kind of dropped), you also have to believe that she's a lesbian Satanist motorcycle gang member. And so on.

And while this was actually kind of fun and gripping in the first two books, which had the unpredictable Salander more centre stage so there was more to go wrong as the villains' high pressure hit her cold front, it's not working quite as well this time out, which is a shame.

That said, there were a couple of nice touches - there is a shocking early suicide, and a subplot about Berger being harassed in her new job which does not lead to the most obvious and signposted place - it is, in short, a genuine red herring, which Larsson does not normally do. I think, on balance, that the second book is the best of the series - and it really is tragic that his talent was cut off so young.

In other news, Sleepwalker continues apace, and the characters are now about to have their "about last night" chat... so looking forward to writing that tonight! And Faber and Faber very kindly sent me a copy of We Need To Talk About Kelvin by Marcus Chown. I am always desperate to lay hands on truly populist quantum theory books - for both Mephistophela and Sleepwalker, so this was extremely welcome. I'll be reviewing it here next week.

Currently Reading: We Need To Talk About Kelvin by Marcus Chown

I've frequently whinged about the rather dispiriting lack of anything resembling a proper popular cultural history of the Middle Ages. There's loads of great Tudor era material, but not much from earlier. I have my much-loved copy of The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer, which is an utter life-saver, but unfortunately it concentrates on the Fourteenth Century, and the character in Sleepwalker is actually from the Thirteenth. Furthermore, he's a Crusader; specifically a Knight Templar.

I had of course done some reading on the Crusades just out of general interest before I started writing Sleepwalker (they'd been a matter of personal fascination to me since I'd visited Jerusalem as a student), and I'd particularly enjoyed The New Knighthood by Malcolm Barber, the multi-volume History of the Crusades by Steve Runciman, and also the very populist but no less fun and interesting The Crusades by Alan Ereira and Terry Jones.

So I was happy to get a chance to look at Thomas Asbridge's forthcoming book The Crusades (published by Simon and Schuster, who very kindly set me up with access to an except), and I was very glad I bothered. It proved a fast and yet authoritative read and distinguished itself on two fronts - through the device of giving equal time and consideration to the Muslim view of events (Saladin's tactics are analysed and critiqued - it's clear that Asbridge feels that it's a downhill slide for the Islamic champion after Hattin) and the book also offers more than a passing treatment of what it might actually be like to be fighting in the Siege of Acre.

Though bound to be a straightforward military history by its very nature, it's actually spiked through with lively storytelling and wonderful anecdotes, such as the scandalised Muslim historian reporting on "300 young and lovely Frankish maidens" who arrive to earn a living servicing the Crusaders (and, it is implied, Muslims) besieging Acre, who "brought their silver anklets up to touch their golden earrings [and] made themselves targets for men’s darts". Ingenious jihadis get a supply ship to the beleaguered city of Acre by shaving their beards off and filling the decks with pigs and crosses, fooling the Christian sailors manning the cordon. An emir caught transporting the hated and feared "Greek Fire" (which features in Sleepwalker, so I was delighted to see it) is captured trying to get into the city, and a Latin knight ‘stretched him out on the ground, emptying the contents of the phial on his private parts, so that his genitals were burned’.

But it's not all (admittedly grisly) fun and games: there is also the horror of starvation, disease, of being surrounded by rotting corpses which are constantly being replenished with fresh ones to the tune of up to 200 a day.

There's also a very human treatment of the main actors - Saladin is passionate, determined, but maybe a little too cautious; Richard the Lionheart is flamboyant, canny, and vain, but capable of ruthless acts of massacre. The use of evidence, historical context, and personal supposition is mingled convincingly and their characterisations drawn with an elegant economy of language. The political history is delivered with the same sprightly verve as the military history, and from the point of view of an interested amateur, this treatment worked well for me.

Apparently the word "crusader" comes from the Latin portmanteau crucesignatus - "signed by the Cross". One can forward social and political reasons that render the Crusades a matter of mere expediency, but those reasons on their own are insufficient - ultimately the genesis of the Crusades is ideological. Sadly, in the last couple of decades, the Crusades and their troubling questions of religious fanaticism and grasping political adventurism are closer in spirit to us than they have ever been. Asbridge's accessible and above all humane take on them is thus an entirely welcome approach to this very topical subject.

Currently Reading: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest - Stieg Larsson

Apologies for the late update - this week has been insanely busy. I suspect I am coming down with something again, so conversely I am growing slower on a daily basis, a bit like spilled golden syrup.

Mostly I worked on Sleepwalker, in particular when Million Monkeys, including wingsmith and davegullen (sumitsays couldn't get away) met in Shunt, the bar under London Bridge station, which is sadly closing down. Such a fabulous art space: vast, cavernous, and dark. We wrote by candlelight, while other patrons milled about, staring, grilling us, and taking pictures - they believed us to be some sort of art installation. Desperately disappointed that we won't be able to go back there, but we're looking forward to it reopening in its new venue.

All kinds of cool things were happening - there was a dance show, various elaborate performance installations, and a bar with a very eccentric idea of what composed a soda and lime. You would think that these things would prove a distraction, but conversely not - they created an atmosphere of artistic consideration and collaboration which we all agreed was extremely productive.

The plan is to have Wednesday MM somewhere different once a month, so the hunt is on for the next venue... Stay tuned!

Better late than never, I guess - I finished the copy of Her Fearful Symmetry that @vintagebooks so kindly sent me and I was pleased that I did. It was a strange and uneven read, but had some beautiful moments.

The novel focusses on a pair of twins, as one attempts to break free of the controlling influence of the other through relationships, college, and finally darker and more final forms. They have inherited a beautiful flat near Highgate Cemetery, a location that casts a long shadow over the book. A malign influence in the form of Elspeth the ghost seems to offer the more fragile Valentina the way to escape her overbearing twin, but of course everything goes horribly wrong...

The relationship between the twins was deftly handled and the evocation of Highgate Cemetery itself is superb. There is a distinctly 19th century timbre to the novel which appears early on and then disappears, only to come back in the last hundred pages. Niffenegger excels in the small exchanges between characters and also the sense of doom surrounding the final crisis.

That said, I felt that Elspeth the ghost was quickly a too familiar and almost comical feature in their lives, and since everyone could talk to her, through seance appurtenances such as automatic writing and ouija boards, you are almost left forgetting that there is anything wrong with her. But the final hundred pages and their hideous bargain and denouement were wholly rivetting, and I am very grateful for the copy.
Tonight I also saw Jennifer's Body down at the West India Quay Cineworld (yay for Cineworld membership!). Without being too spoilery, there is a thematic connection between Jennifer's Body and Her Fearful Symmetry, so it was quite cool to think about. Jennifer's Body is a fun romp of a movie, much as I generally dislike the characterisation of young women as forces of social chaos (which must of course be controlled). There is a fantastically moving moment involving a necklace in the climax that actually managed to haunt me, and during one death scene the dialogue between two characters brought two girls sitting in front of me to near-tears. A flawed movie (the final coda over the credits seemed a bit tacked on when it should have been resolved in the movie proper or not at all), but definitely not a waste of time.

As for Sleepwalker, I made a real breakthrough on Wednesday, and intend to exploit this over the weekend - except on Sunday, when I have a workshop for Gaie's novel, which I am sure will do well. I am also back on the Latin lessons and next blog post I'll probably be looking at the Crusades, of all things, from a research point of view. The fun never stops, I guess, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Currently Reading: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson and The Crusades (an extract) by Thomas Asbridge

I wonder if it's a function of the clocks going back, but I was pretty much dazed all day. Work passed in a kind of slow muddle. Upon getting home, nothing would do but that I climbed into bed at 6 and slept til midnight. Wednesday I blew out Million Monkeys and last night missed China Mieville at the Litro Live event in Hyde Park because I was simply too tired to go. I think the mounting evidence suggests that I am coming down with something, and this is wildly inconvenient. Apart from Sleepwalker, I have still to write Gaie's crit up, crit the two stories, the outstanding novel, and original_niamhis still waiting for hers.

I finished Transition by Iain Banks today, while I lolled in bed after my impromptu nap, and while I enjoyed it, I'm not entirely sure I understood exactly what happened to the protagonists at the end. I strongly suspect that there is some kind of Culture SC thing going on, but it's never explicitly stated. Some fabulous set-pieces in it though - my favourite is a palace on top of Everest in a deserted Earth where everyone's been killed by a comet.

And of course he plays tricks with narrative which I think is one of the things I admire most about him and where I find him most influential, which is impossible to discuss here without being violently spoilery. But the book is itself a kind of full circle, a narrative palindrome where events are retold at the end and the added context makes it make sense.

It was also nice to see that we agree that access to multiverse travel always always ALWAYS leads to increased levels of murder, shagging, and exposure to Fascism. I approve.

Next I'm going to hit that copy of the new Niffenegger book, should I ever stay awake long enough to read anything ever again. After today, it seems unlikely. I'm like the Dormouse at present. My tasks are mounting up, as always - I haven't touched my Latin lessons for a fortnight now, and I am soon moving into the point where I will need them.

I've decided to take a leaf out of hooton's book and use the rename token I bought earlier this year. "mephistophela" was fine while I was actually writing Mephistophela, but it's probably time for a change now other books are on the go. I think I have carried over most of my friends, but I clicked on some stuff and Weird Things Happened, so if you were on my Friends list and are now not, then holler!

Since we're all about Sleepwalker now, I've been reading Transitions by Iain Banks with some interest, as it also deals with multiversal travel and its applications to do political evil. He approaches it in a very different way from me, which is probably just a measure of how much cooler he is, but one thing I especially love is that there is this concept of "fragre" in it.

The fragre of a place being a feeling regarding its history, its depth, the amount of blood spilled in it, which you can use to orient yourself in a  place. Different places have different bouquets. Such a fantastic concept, and something that has hitherto not really had a word of its own.
 
So enjoying that so far.

In fact I've been pretty lucky with the cultural time-travel stuff this week, which is great on one level but unnerving on another - after all, the bar is pretty high. I caught Triangle at the movies last weekend. I didn't have particularly high hopes after seeing the trailer (it looks like a standard slasher flick) but the Empire review made it sound like it might be a bit more interesting and I was ultimately really glad I bothered. It's this kind of homage to "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner", with a dead albatross, a ghost ship, and a broken bargain, but never at any point seems overtly literary or pretentious. Some wonderful reveals in it where it is clear something has happened again and again and again... a multitude of the same lost locket visible through a grate, or a crowd of corpses of the same person, or the horror of meeting yourself and realising that one of you must die... the presentation of causality as nightmare was expertly done. I recommend it.

Today is all about more Sleepwalker - still in Hansley at present - and staying in London and chilling. May try and see The Fantastic Mr Fox later tonight.

So I never *got* Twitter when I opened my account in June.

As you probably realise by now, I'm not really a 140 character girl. When I write, I tend to write everything - the characters get in the car, they drive, they have a little lunch, they infodump, they meet some random character who just seemed to wander in out of my subconscious, they have some UST, they contemplate the plot... you get the picture. 

But lately I decided to revisit it, and it really is a rather fabulous tool for finding out what people are interested in. I was blown away by how quickly the shenanigans involving Trafigura were exposed; such a brilliant application for the technology. I'm constantly checking out new sites, new cool stuff, hearing from new people. It's awesome. But very, very addictive.

In a lot of ways, while I wait for news on Mephistophela, Twitter is providing the distraction - which is wrong, as it should be Sleepwalker. Oh well... 

The other fab thing about Twitter is that occasionally publishers and so forth that I follow have competitions and bizarrely, I have won some things. I am not naturally lucky, so this was pretty thrilling to me. 

One of the things I went in for was Belle du Jour's Guide To Men. Orion Books (@orionbooks on Twitter, always doing a lot of fun stuff) were doing a giveaway, and very kindly sent me a copy. I was ever so pleased. You've got to admit the concept is intriguing - a prostitute meets a lot of guys, and in a fairly privileged role, like a doctor or an undertaker. Presumably she sees them behaving in ways that I'm not likely to see, for instance. And it's a gender-specific thing, so it would be difficult for me to tease out in my own personal observations and use. So her views would be interesting to know, and indeed, so it proves.

What was more revelatory, at least for me who isn't familiar with her blog, was how witty she was. She struck me as someone it would be fairly fun to get pissed with. I was less convinced by her classification of women and their needs - none of her three major categories described me in any way - but then you're not buying this as serious dating advice, as evidenced by the wonderfully random Index and flowchart at the back. You're having a good laugh and picking up a few piquant observations along the way.

Recommendation: Would make a great Christmas present for a girly mate. I'm thinking of getting one for JJ.

The other thing I won was a bit more hardcore and came in two parts - I got a pair of tickets to see Audrey Niffenegger talk and won a copy of the hardback, Her Fearful Symmetry, which the lovely people at Vintage Books (@vintageboooks - follow them, for they are cool and friendly) are sending me. I can't wait to read it, actually, because at the talk Niffenegger was saying she was influenced by Wilkie Collins' "The Woman In White", and I have always loved that book. The twins at the centre of Niffenegger's book are on the cover in white outfits, and knowing the Collins book, I've an inkling of what is going to happen.

I'll say a bit more about her talk when I've read the book, hopefully by next Friday.

Finally, and awesomely, I have caught up on all my critting, with the exception of one Livejournal user who will be hearing from me in short order! The plan now is to wriggle out of as much as can between now and the New Year, and really get my head down and stuck into Sleepwalker...

 

It's a truth universally acknowledged, that trying to get your book picked up by a publisher is all about patience.

Being patient will not get you published one second quicker than anyone else, of course, but it will prevent you from tearing your own head off and eating it in a fit of frantic angst. This, presumably, is its virtue. As someone that has terrible philosophical and practical problems with delayed gratification, it's an easy virtue to overlook.

In relative terms, my book has only just gone out the door. It's been a few weeks. It's not even a month. And this is the busiest time of year for publishers. Frankfurt is only next week. Christmas is coming up in months. It's all going on; I just have to settle down and be patient. However, telling yourself to be patient is a bit like commanding yourself to go to sleep when you're an insomniac. It's a doubtful enterprise at best and shouting at yourself into the bargain won't help matters.

Clearly what I need to do is start getting back into some exercise. Lots of running about in the fresh air and tiring myself out will presumably leave me too exhausted for impatience. And it was with this in mind that I took myself back to sword class tonight. 

The first thing that became apparent in sword class is that I have now forgotten everything I ever learned about fighting with longswords. This is a nuisance. However, it was fun and I did feel better for going. Gaie showed up as well, as she's getting back into it too.

The class is held in a gym next door to RADA, and whenever I pass RADA I always remember my abortive audition when I was sixteen (two years younger than their recommended age, but even then I could never learn to wait). I had to catch the train to London, and stood in RADA's illustrious halls in my cheap C&A dress, doing Abigail's speech out of The Crucible and Imogen's speech out of Cymbeline (why did I choose that one? Dear God.)

It's always seemed to me that actors have it easy in comparison to writers. They turn up, they audition, they get told "We'll call you later," or  "Thanks but no thanks." But never mind. I'm not sorry I turned out to be writer instead.

I am sorry, however, that I can't get a better handle on this whole "patience" thing...

EDIT: If you're interested in learning how to become a medieval warrior, or researching a novel where people have had prior careers in being medieval warriors, or learning how to become a source of anxiety for your neighbours, or even just in watching me flail about with a piece of roughly sword-shaped wood like a half-wit, check out the Schola Gladitoria here. They do classes in London on a Thursday night (7:30, but they congregate from 7 onwards) on Gower Street.

Since there is going to be a New World Order, at least for me, and I hadn't updated this in nearly a fortnight, I have decided to formalize my timewasting bloggery.

There will be a weekly update, which will fall on Friday. It's not kicking off this Friday, as I'm insanely busy this weekend, but the decks should be cleared for next Friday. I'm also going to try and keep my blog posts under a thousand words.

Plus, they will have a point, or a theme, or SOMETHING.

At any rate, I have no idea what I will be blogging about next week, but I suspect it will be about books, as I'm reading some really good ones at the moment. The new Sarah Waters made me miss a stop on the underground heading home and then another when I headed back in the other direction. Plus the new Iain Banks and Stieg Larsson are on the pile, as well as Nick Harkaway's "The Goneaway World" and Ali Smith's "The Girl With Glass Feet". All good stuff...

CURRENTLY READING: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.

Shopping.

Hell, I could have spent that time on the running machine and would probably have worked it all off by now.

But it wasn't all bad news. I'd meant to go walking in Kent after the shop, but since it ran on, and on, and on, I had to content myself with a brief stroll along the Thames on the Isle of Dogs, where I thought about the sequels. I'm becoming very fired up on the sequels lately.

It wasn't looking good as I pulled in though. There had been fantastical lightning as I drew nearer to London - great spears of it, heading downwards and obviously grounding on the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, and five minutes out the heavens opened and my hopes of walking looked likely to be dashed. But it settled into vague drizzle and I took a turn up towards the tip on my aching feet.

First thing I passed was a ground floor flat where at least four people were playing a game of some sort. I think. Basically one girl was screaming, "Oh, oh, oh! Put it in there! No, there! Oh! OH!" while the others shouted encouragement and laughed. Meanwhile, the endless parade of disco boats played the same three tracks to their drunk, dancing inhabitants. ("Last Night a DJ Saved My Life") was one of them, which I found so ironic it inspired a fit of sniggering that managed to unnerve a couple of passing joggers. Outside the Thai restaurant on the river, four guys were having a loud drunken conversation - "No, the concentration camps like Auschwitz were completely DIFFERENT! They were for killing people wholesale! You can't compare them to..." In short, having the kind of conversation people only ever seem to have if they have leisure to sit outside expensive Thai restaurants located around very upmarket riverside housing complexes.

Finally, as I returned to the car (while the game-playing girl was still screaming "Oh, oh, hahhahaha, OH!") another flat opened its balcony window above and a girl in a short dress came out and yelled "Hey! Hey!" and then began to dance sinuously to some music within the flat. Or possibly there was no music, except that in her head. Or she was dancing to "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life" which was playing across the waters. 

So, yeah, last night on the Isle of Dogs, ladies and gentlemen. It was all happening.  

I'm not really a space opera kind of a gal. I don't really *do* hard SF. That said, I can see its appeal. I love a good Culture novel, for instance, and I did enjoy Red Mars when I read it back in the day. In my own work, I'm more interested in commenting on things that are happening right now and then displacing them into a new context. Well, that and fights and romance and 'splosions, of course. I don't have a mission to predict things, as such, though I admire people that can do it and freely acknowledge that it is very cool.

So when I heard that the New Scientist were doing a Science-Fiction-themed event and I could come down to the Yorkshire Grey on Friday night, and meet Kim Stanley Robinson, I was more tempted by the presence of Geoff Ryman (I had, in all fairness, already met Kim Stanley Robinson and he is a really nice guy - he had a post signing dinner with the staff when he came to Dillons in St Anne's Square, for the release of Red Mars). Additionally, Paul McAuley was there, and he is supposed to be very good, though I've never got around to reading any of the work (people who do like hard SF in my writing group rate him enormously, though).

Geoff Ryman, however, I had never met. He'd done a signing for his book Was in Manchester, but for some retarded reason I cannot now remember, I wasn't there that night. The only thing I do remember was that Was was a revelation in terms of exploring what fantasy actually means, how it's generated and why we need it.

The book's about three characters - Dorothy, a troubled and abused little girl in the class of substitute teacher Frank L. Baum, who includes her in his childrens book The Wizard of Oz; Judy Garland, who plays Dorothy in the movie, and Jonathan, a gay actor who loves the characters in the book and has become famous playing a kind of Boogeyman in a popular horror movie franchise. I've never gotten over how affecting I found it, and this seemed a great opportunity to tell the author this, which I'm pleased to say I did.

Though I forgot to express my love for 253 also, which was essentially the proto-flash fiction novel with a deliriously high concept theme - a Tube train, with every seat full and nobody standing, carries 253 people along with the driver. Each of these people merit their own description, in 253 words each. Through these words, the movement of the novel becomes apparent.

Geoff Ryman was a) very nice and funny, b) astonishingly tall, and c) gives good, dramatic reading. Seriously, I recommend it. And he's said he'll consider giving us a talk at the writing group, so what a star. He told me to read Air, so that's going right in the Amazon shopping basket.

Apparently he teaches now at Manchester University along with Martin Amis. When I were a lass, the only creative writing course going was at the UEA. How I envy the young writers of today, who have so many more choices than I did!

I was really pleased by the calibre of the questions asked too, and met some very cool people, including Liz and Rob from the Future Conscience blog and Joy Chamberlain - Kim's editor at HarperCollins. 

Peter, Rosanne, Mark and Sumit out of the T Party were also there. I see them all the time, of course, but they are still cool. ;)

I really enjoyed this Alien Nation type take on apartheid - saw it at the Brixton Ritzy, a venue I have often passed by but never visited before. Joanne sees all her movies there. It was a fabulously retro auditorium, but the chairs did give me a little neckache and the glass of wine I bought before the show was godawful.

I expected the film to be fun, because of Peter Jackson's involvement, and sure enough it was. The protagonist, a fabulously selfish and desperate character who is cheerfully un-self aware (the casual use of really insulting language to describe the beings they are meant to be "looking after" was really well done) who ends up turning slowly into what he hates most and ends up sympathising with was never gushy or heavy-handed. That said, the action never really stopped for long enough. The aliens, or "prawns" as they're referred to, are presented initially as an insectile, almost idiot mass, roving through rubbish dumps, engaging in petty crime, and fulfilling all the stereotypes of poorly socialised migrants. It's not until the film kicks in that the glib conventions of the situation are discarded and human and "prawn" characters begin to communicate and interact. The ending, though not a surprise, still manages to be poignant.

So, yeah, definitely an evening well wasted.

So I saw Dorian Gray last night, thinking it would prove to be unchallenging viewing, and so it proved. It was all quite schlocky fun (only with the wonderful addition of occasional Wildean epigrams) and I can't complain.

It's been years since I read the book, but I seem to remember that the conversion of the picture was all a bit less cinematic - not so much writhing maggots falling out of eye sockets and death beetles emerging out of the frame as the titular portrait started to look a bit more saggy and smirky as time passed. Its horror was that it described a very ordinary sort of decay, both physical and moral, but hideous in itself.

There was also some ludicrous "possession" subtext about his evil grandfather. I suppose from a film-making point of view the temptation is to have a kind of external antagonist/evil force, considering this is a work where the victim and the bad guy are the same person, but it didn't really work. His Mephistophelean bargain and friendship with Colin Firth's character explained his motivation more than adequately.

There was one great montage though, with the white-suited Dorian having polite tea and scones with his society lady friends, and intercut with images of him pursuing his life of fabulous sadomasochistic erotic decadence, the red jam on the scones clearly suggesting blood. It was electric and shocking, a really great use of the medium, while the rest of the movie was merely good fun.

It helped a lot that Ben Barnes was so bloody gorgeous in it. You had a real sense of someone dangerously beautiful. So all in all, it was definitely worth a look.

Fabulous and yet terrifying news here: Mephistophela has now been dispatched to a handful of editors. Seeing the list made it seem less rather than more real - there are people in there that had a steering hand on books that I've loved, and the thought that my own has even a slight chance of being in the same company seems vaguely fantastical.

And of course, so it may prove. I shall brace myself.

Since this is the weekend of Learning to Manage My Expectations, I'm going out to the country for a walk, and then this evening I might see either The Hurt Locker or Distrct 9. I do have some Meph bits still to do - the sequel notes need a final pass, and I have been asked for a bio (Oi, wingsmith where's yours for the T Party site?) which I'm hoping to get out of the way this weekend.

But all in all, life is good. Book got wroted. I can do no more.

So.

Today I had a damn good chat with Judith and other than a few bits and pieces, Mephistophela is now Go. She liked the changes - a lot, from what I can tell. I can expect some bits of notes, but primarily she wants me to think through the sequel stuff and get that to her for the end of next week. But she's interested in the sequels, though she thinks Mephistophela 3 is a tad ambitious and a very big job, with a boatload of logistical issues. I need to think about it while I'm away.

But Mephistophela itself is to be returned in electronic format this time, as it is the Final Version, the one that will be submitted. And then we have to have a talk when I get back about where she wants to send it.

I have never been an astronaut working at NASA, which is probably no surprise to anyone that knows me. But I feel like someone that's been waiting for months to go on a mission being told to strap themselves in to the cockpit. I am about to be launched into the Blue.

Nothing may come of it. But it's just so damned EXCITING! 

One good thing that came out of the chat is that the Prologue is back in the first book. This pleases me a good deal, as I was never happy about shunting it into the main text, where it's a bit cramped and plays up the coincidental aspect. Meanwhile, the Epilogue is out, at least for now, which is hardly high tragedy.

And I am finally, finally, finally on holiday! Yay! I am going to Cornwall and going to swim and hike and drink and enslave America and eat people and imagine enormous volcanic 'splosions where millions die! It's going to be awesome! 

P.S. Is anyone else enchanted by the sudden and violent turn towards true Autumn that happened today?

In the last week or so, I have been having fun with volcanoes - or more properly, how much fun I can have writing about VEI-8 volcanic eruptions and their consequences (gotta explain that frozen Thames somehow). Last night I watched a slightly hysterical "docudrama" on YouTube called "Supervolcano", and needed an hour of Charlie Brooker fulminating on the shittiness of television in order to restore my equilibrium sufficiently to the point where I could sleep again.

I liked what they did with the tephra, but I thought the full horror of pyroclastic flow was dealt with in a very offhand manner, for all that it saw off two of the cast. That to me is the scariest part, particularly the fully dilute version where a wave of superhot gases just flashes over you at hundreds of miles an hour and basically cooks you where you stand. Apparently 30,000 people got seen off in this way in Martinique one fine morning. Within minutes. Something similar happened to Herculaneum in 79 AD.

That shit just ain't right.

So the Mephistophela sequel material has now gone off, and this is the first time for months I've not got something on my desk to stare at me in reproachful and unfinished silence, just Sleepwalker frolicking on the edges of my perception, bouncing along golden Cornish sands with a beachball and saying, "Come and play, Helen!".

Though it really is true that the more you eat, sleep, and breathe a thing, the more ideas you have. There was a nice touch in the Mephistophela 3 stuff that just gave everything more context and more depth, and I also thought of a name for it, so now both of them have moved out of the Jaws territory and have their own identities. Though I don't want to jinx anything by saying what they are...

I drove out to Shepherd's Bush to deliver them at one in the morning. It's not that I don't trust the Post Office, it's just that I so loathe the liminal deadspace that is snailmail time. The Internet Age has spoiled me. It's only about a 15 minute drive at that time of night, and there is something enchanting about London when it's quiet - even the non-central architecture of roads and buildings and bridges seem impossibly huge and haunted when empty of people. Slept like a log when I got back in, possibly for the first time in ages.

Still waiting to hear back on the changes to the first one mind, so my Window of Idleness may be short-lived, and I suspect I may spend the whole of it in my day-job, which is definitely being very non-idle at the moment, so I must crack on.

But for however short a time, I feel so relieved...

So I'm off to Cornwall early Sunday morning, for the T Party writer's week. I cannot wait.

Frankly it's not a minute too soon. I am so stressed that my skin is in open rebellion with me and I am filled with the desire to eat nothing but Doritos and Ben and Jerry's. Together even, if that's all I can get.

When your diet consists solely of foods that can only legally be referred to with a trademark symbol next to them, you know you're in trouble.

I suspect I'm going to get back into Sleepwalker while there, unless Judith wants more Meph changes (her verdict on the last lot is due today, though they are having server trouble at the agency apparently). I am looking forward to giving up the stony and speculative world of Meph sequelry and getting back to the sword-flavoured romantic time-travelling antics of Sleepwalker.

I do love to write. I do hate to edit. But I guess there is no light without darkness...

So, I wanted to like this. And I think I did in parts - Shoshanna's story was quite cool and her montage to Bowie's "Cat People" was great - a nice use of anachronistic music (but then I'm a big fan of A Knight's Tale.)

However most of the rest of the movie seemed to be entirely composed of characters being questioned in achingly mannered and arch fashion by Nazis, while the good guys sweat nervously and attempt to dissemble, often for what seemed like up to half an hour, and everyone spouting self-conscious Tarantino dialogue all the while.

I was worried it would be too violent, when actually it's too self-indulgent and oddly formless, despite being divided up into the trademark "Chapters", which made no sense here as the action is all linear in time. 

So, like Kill Bill 2, I'm glad I saw it, but have no desire to ever see it again.  

So the first three chapters and the synopsis got workshopped yesterday, which was interesting. The main thing to come out of it was the stuff is pretty much incomprehensible if you haven't read the first one. Which is good to know. I saw G I Joe on Friday and apparently "knowing is half the battle", particularly if this phrase is uttered self-consciously as a catchphrase in various places in the script where it doesn't really make any sense, but hey. G I Joe, incidentally, is more plausible than Orphan, go figure.

Plans for today include having a shower, lunching, lounging, and possibly movies. Yay for a lazy Sunday! I also need to pick up a copy of the movie The Red Shoes for nefarious purposes of my own.

And I think I have a title, but don't want to jinx it by saying anything right now.