Love Amongst Strangers

"The skies filled with karura."

Recently, the first draft/promo copy of lecteur de tarot arrived for final editing.

This isn’t the actual book as you will see it as, more than likely, it will still be Mister Watts’ Particle Surge Productions that handle the final product but what you see here is the earliest edition of the book ~ think of it as the ‘pilot episode’ for the book proper.

I don’t think it would look half as impressive as it actually does without Mister Rasbury of razterized’s avian filled imagery and the interior picture of our friend the zebra-magpie, illustrated by my long-suffering wife and as seen on the sampler cover.

Both images have a history longer than their association with this title. My wife’s illustration comes from the well-worn sketchbook she used to carry about in her over-sized Paul’s Boutique leopard flower padlock bag, whilst Mister Rasbury’s cover was originally one of several designs for the new Love Amongst Strangers reissue.

More on that later.

Recently, I’ve gone back to school – at least in terms of what I’m learning about the English language. 

Courtesy of an esteemed friend, I received an edited copy of the final chapter of Love Amongst Strangers (Again) in the post today and have been duly making amends to the text in the hope that, sooner or later, some of these projects will eventually reach publication.

I have to confess that I felt slightly embarrassed reading through her corrections, not just because of the things that I feel I should know but because of my concern that the book is potentially too introspective. I have a fear that the story will be inaccessible to all who are not me.

In other news, I seem to have hit something of a creative lull. Perhaps it’s the weather but I think that a lot of this has to do with the fact that we are currently living in a place with a ‘Best Kept Village, 1983′ plaque on the bus shelter. It’s hard to write about a world of unending chaos when you wake up to gentle birdsong.

Hopefully the pace will pick up soon.

In the meantime, I have the voice of the new book’s narrator to keep me company. Unlike other characters, she doesn’t seem to have fallen silent. At present, I am putting her to work dealing with all the awkward little things in life that I don’t wish to deal with.

Love Amongst Strangers (Again) - COMPLETE

You may or may not recognise the above piece of paper from a previous post, in fact you can still see the details of lecteur de tarot’s completion (now accompanied by a word count of progress for the delayed Pulp Bonanza piece and a sketch of heronaut’s contents) but below that, marked out in yellow, green and blue marker pen is the chart detailing progress on the now complete Love Amongst Strangers sequel.

At this point, I’m very tempted to title the entire short novel, An Echo of the Way You Knew Me Under Foreign Skies ~ Love Amongst Strangers (Again), if only because I’m somewhat in love with the idea of having a full sentance as a book title. The line itself comes from the song When Everyone Forgets by ThouShaltNot which can be found on the Neil Gaiman tribute LP, Where’s Neil When You Need Him? or, alternately, can be listened to on the last.fm site. This song is one of many that has made a significant impact on writing this book, almost to the point where I’m considering uploading a track listing for a Love Amongst Strangers (Again) ‘album’.

More on that later, perhaps.

So, one more project down, only another million to go.

Once I get past cursory editing, I should have something more substantial to show off, including, possibly… freebies!

…

It’s okay, you can start breathing again now guys!

Love Amongst Strangers (Again) features a conversation between Ophelia from Hamlet and Oscar Diggs from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

That is all.

Like a true Victorian enthusiast, this week I have mostly been dealing with the depiction of death and the rites of passing. Both TetsuMan and heronaut have featured manifest ‘Death’ with her knowing smile and mischievous nature, and its arguable that, what with both stories being worked on in tandem, that she is the same character in both.

It’s hard to write Death, especially as a feminine character, without either going overboard on the Persephone-like tragedy of her nature or reducing her to a carbon copy of the popular representation featured in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Originally I attempted to sidestep this issue by incorporating aspects of La Santa Muerte but, if I’m honest, she simply converged with a certain character from Love Amongst Strangers (Again).

The musical context for the writing I’m doing at the moment has been very freeform, without properly being established again. I’ve been leaning towards pop music, one of my many genuine loves but talk of such things is probably better confined to journals that do not possess aspirations of being a professional record of my writing endeavours.

However, should my plan for a story involving David Bowie investigating the Artifice Comics universe ever manifest itself as a viable option, then I dare say there will be a lot about music being written here.

As of this morning I’ve been searching on a nostalgic whim for a copy of Ocean Rain by Echo and the Bunnymen on vinyl. This album has been an intermittent soundtrack to my life. Nekyia, one of the mythical 27+ stories, was written entirely to the sounds of this album as recently as 2008 but the first time I heard the album in its fullness was ten years ago in a house in Hackney at the behest of fellow author and talented guitarist, Dave Karnstein. If you follow the link to amazon for his collection, Cats and Logic, you’ll note that the review from November 2000 from ‘A Customer’ was actually written by the author of this blog. Unlike Ocean Rain though, it appears that Cats and Logic can’t be found for under a fiver on ebay, something that is actually quite sad.

2009 is something of an anniversary year for me, not just because it’s been ten years since I heard Ocean Rain but also because it’s been ten years since I met my wife, ten years since the creation of a character named Livingston Chance (more on him later) and ten years since the publication of a book called Love Amongst Strangers.

Whilst idly going through stacks of books piled into shelves in the cluttered hallway bookcases, I found a stack of paperwork relating to the publication of Love Amongst Strangers, some of which I intend to reproduce here to serve as a kind of memorial to this most lonesome of teenage publications. One piece from the Royston Mercury, I won’t post here because it is, quite frankly, embarrassing and, whilst all of these pieces of paper are embarrassing to one degree or another, the above mentioned is the most embarrassing, therefore it can stay buried for now.

What I will post today however is a review from populist Science Fiction magazine, SFX from December 1999. This was kind of a big deal for me as no one in my circle of the time had been featured in the magazine before. I remember my girlfriend-later-to-be-wife received a phone call from her brother telling us about the review and we went out to a little newspaper stand behind a shopping centre to buy a copy. I felt that, even if I achieved nothing else, at least I had been reviewed in SFX. This was somewhat fortunate for me as I later went on to achieve nothing else. When A Nation of Shadows was published, I sent a copy to them but nothing ever came of it, which was probably for the best in light of the errors that plagued the latter novel’s manuscript.

SFX #58 p104 (part 1)

SFX #58 p104 (part 2)

There are quite a few other bits and pieces I found such as commentary on both Love Amongst Strangers and my ‘audition piece’ (a 30 odd page piece named Exorcism in D Minor that begins with the statement, “If this is not already my darkest hour then I shall do my utmost to make it so.”) but I’m going to try and stagger my posting of such information in the misguided hope that it might get you all psyched for the forthcoming sequel (go on, try).

In other news, yesterday, I finally finished my first draft of a planned story featuring yeti, yokai and a whole mountain range of snow in a Lovecraft meets Planets of the Apes inspired tale intended for release as part and parcel of a *.pdf project for the pen and paper role-playing types. I won’t claim to really be too familiar with role-playing games but hopefully my loving homage to the science fiction and fantasy genres of the 1950s and 1960s should be enough to encourage you to part with your pennies, right?

…

Should that not be the case there are some other more RPG specific pieces in the release which I’m sure will win you over, providing of course, that you have a heart.

More information on this can be found on the registry page of paizo.com and RPGLife however, I dare say that, once editing is complete you’ll hear about this from me again.

Until then, I have a cup of tea to make.

It occurred to me earlier that part of the reason for keeping a blog such as this is to spare my wife from being woken up in the middle of the night by me wishing to discuss the finer points of my own obscure personal continuity. Being the first person to read through my initial rough drafts after I complete them, I think I sometimes expect her to memorise too many of the ‘facts’ and plot points that I have rolling around in my head.

Now that I’m forcing you, dear reader, to listen to this, you will be pleased to hear that my wife sleeps better at night – certainly better than she did over ten years ago when I woke her up in order to drink cheap champagne from Tupperware cups to celebrate the conclusion of Do Not Choose to Ask My Name (and to try and convince her to begin editing).

So thankfully, she no longer has to suffer the burden of insights that come with my worries that the path of lecteur de tarot’s central character, a 10 year old boy named Maus, is comparative with the way the old woman’s journey in Sophistry unfolds. I think this is mostly because I’m the author of both works but there is a comparison to be drawn between the events of lecteur de tarot’s seventh chapter and Sophisty’s chapter five, although I guess I’m okay with this as chapter five was one of my favourites from the latter book.

One thing that’s been interesting with the current book is that, especially during the last two chapters, each part has become like its own little short story. Again, this happened in Sophistry – see chapter fourteen for an example – but not to this degree. I’m not arguing with the book about the way it’s evolving because though. Whilst Sophistry has ties to A Nation of Shadows, I made a determined effort not to re-read my previous book before or during writing it so as to avoid become wrapped up in concerns of continuity at the expense of the story I wanted to write about the old woman, the Bear and the distant king. lecteur de tarot however spans a period of time touched on in those 27+ stories of the fabled forthcoming compilation and deliberately interweaves with events in them – hopefully not to the detriment of the actual book though.

More so than my previous books, lecteur de tarot is connected with a wider world of stories, one that I want to share with you when the time is right. Hopefully you won’t be disappointed.

In other news, the original pressing of Love Amongst Strangers has turned up again on amazon.com, although the price is so extortionate that any prospective readers might be better off buying the copy listed on amazon’s Japanese site and enduring the shipping costs. Alternately, readers may wish to hold onto their money and consider the possibility that a hypothetical e-book edition could be somewhere in a hypothetical pipeline and may or may not be made available for free to those who purchase a copy of the forthcoming sequel.

Just saying.

I want to talk to you about a spoiler for Love Amongst Strangers (Again)…but I won’t. Suffice to say, it is extremely gratifying for me to finally be writing a character who is not exactly in A Nation of Shadows but appears a lot in the back-story of those events.

This week I passed the 100 page mark on the lecteur de tarot novel. I’ve been getting very anxious about the shape and feel of the book (and how very different it is from Sophistry) for some time but I’m somewhat reconciling myself to the fact that this isn’t the kind of story that can be told in one sitting.

Prior to work on the book, I’d written 27 other lecteur de tarot stories, all of them slowly building up the storyline. The first story in the series was completed at exactly 00: 44: 46 on the 15th December, 2002 as a habit of Christmas storytelling borrowed from my brother-in-law. Since then the series has overlapped a lot with whatever else I’ve been writing, making the central card game my prop of choice for magical explanations in genre fiction. Because of the nature of this, the lecteur de tarot book has become something of a ‘big screen movie’ version of a familiar TV series thus there are a lot of cameos from characters in those 27 stories and, in slightly altered form, from a variety of other stories I’ve penned over the years.

Hopefully all of this won’t be too confusing for new readers and the story of Maus and his friends travelling from the village of s’Hertogenbosch on their adventure will be exciting and interesting for people who aren’t me and aren’t as familiar with the various characters of those 27 stories.

Thus, in order to tempt you, I’m going to post a fragment of a scene here:

Her shrill cry echoed through the trees, tears streaming down her cheeks as she sat uselessly upon the forest floor, sobbing with all her heart.

Joan Winters, like many other children of Orthen, had resolved to restore Eoz and free the Mononoke king, Martin Strauss Mousk from the enchantment of the evil Empress. She had travelled thus in the company of her sister, Charley, into the forests, battling against prowling crocotta and subterranean lindworms along the way.

Both sisters, no older than 12, wore heavy plate armour the like of which was suggested in certain cards of the basic and hero decks but only reached full fruition of form in the advanced knight and associated dragoon classes.

Unlike the soldiers of Cale Corporation, the knight was more a noble progression of the hero deck, a set of additional cards that focused exclusively on mêlée weapons and sturdy, metal armour, leaving no room for magical trends or skill.

It had not been the most traditional path for two girls from Orthen to follow but, ever since they were young, Charley, the older of the two by almost a full minute, had been insistent on becoming a knight. Joan had followed because she wanted to safeguard her sister’s dream but, in actuality, she possessed little skill in combat.

The fact that she had managed to progress beyond hero level was testament more to her perseverance than her aptitude in hand-to-hand combat. Thus, when she had found herself separated from her sister and lost amongst the forest and when, upon being confronted by a curious bear in a trailing red winter scarf and a wide-brimmed Cavalier helm and challenged to a ‘nose fight’, Joan Winters’ first reaction had been to burst into tears.

The bear, a short character with gingerbread coloured fur and heavy Borametz leaf gauntlets, had frantically tried to pacify the girl following his initial challenge. He had apologised again and again, waving his paws manically, offering half-eaten bars of chocolate and sticky sweets and had attempted to explain that he was very sorry and, due to the nature of her armour and the obvious fact that she was a knight, like himself, he had thought that she might be interested in fighting. He then continued to apologise about how wrong he had been and implored her to stop crying.

There was a sudden explosion of movement and a second girl came bursting through the trees, her face red with exhaustion and her expression one of anger and panic.

Quickly the bear turned to face the new girl, noting their similarities of features as well as the differing hair colours but before he could explain himself, his words were drowned out by a fresh bout of wails from the girl sitting before him.

“You!” Charley Winters cried, pointing a finger directly at him, her eyes fierce with anger, “Get away from my sister, you heartless útlagi!”

The bear waved his forepaws frantically and shook his head.

“My dear girl, you are quite mistaken!” he protested, “I assure you I am nothing of the sort. In fact, if you’ll allow me to just introduce myself, I shall soon…”

He stopped abruptly, staggering back as he parried a blow from the older girl’s trusty sword with his own rapier.

“How dare you attack my sister? Don’t you have a heart?” Charley swung the sword again and, again, the bear staggered backwards.

“Please, my girl, if you’ll just let me explain!” he protested.

“Explain what?” she hissed angrily, “Explain how you were going to steal her money and cards? Is that what you want to explain?”

“No, not at all, I simply…”

She lunged forward again, her fair blonde hair spilling out over her shoulders and her blue eyes full of anger. Their swords clashed once more and the bear struggled to hold her back with his own thin fencing blade.

“Please, my girl, this has all been a terrible understanding, you must understand…”

The opposing knight lifted her side again and slammed it down not once but twice, the metal screaming as its weight collided with the other’s blade.

The shorter Mononoke staggered again and then fell to his knees, blinking his dark eyes in desperation and struggling to find some way in which he could disarm the girl without hurting her for long enough to explain the situation.

As for those other 27 stories, I’m still hoping to compile them, together with some other material, as a short story collection but we’ll see how that goes. In relation to the events of the lecteur de tarot novel, I’m already convinced that I’m going to return to the time-frame of the book and write a side-story featuring different characters.

As I say, it’s not the kind of thing that can be told in one sitting, but rather a story that develops by continually overlaying new elements and new fiction.

Hopefully all of this will seem inspiring rather than daunting. It’s on days like these that I truly doubt my ability to communicate effectively.

Music is an important part of my life, possibly one of the most important aspects of my life. It has been there since I was a child, the familiar crackle and hiss of the family record player and the skip of the occasional line or beat in worn LPs. I wrote my first book almost entirely with headphones on and, ever since then have found music to be as significant part of my writing rituals as it is any of my other daily routines.

As I have grown older, many elements of the regime by which I write have been stripped away, I’d be tempted to say ‘refined‘ if I believed that, but in truth I don’t. Nonetheless, I still find it important to listen to music whilst writing, not all the time and not every time but I often find that the right song can set a scene or inspire an emotion with much better results than diving into something cold.

This type of writing is the second form that I find the creative act dresses in. It’s a little less inspired, a little less eager to confess its words onto paper than the spontaneous grab for pen and paper or the quickfire feed of paper in the typewriter or click on the mouse but it’s no less important.

As the weekend just gone was bank holiday, I took time to begin the first part of heronaut, a project I’ve promised to Adrian Watts for PSP’s Astonishing Adventures. The soundtrack for most of this has been a combination of My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade album and After the Goldrush by Neil Young – a fact that is evidenced in the prologue’s faux!Young lyrics.

The Love Amongst Strangers (Again) project has so far consisted of a variety of Paramore songs from their two studio albums, the Veronicas and a very specific song by American Goth revival band, ThouShaltNot whereas the playlist for the pretentiously titled lecteur de tarot side-story, 『天国のお嬢様』 has acquired two very specific Aly & AJ songs from their Insomniatic album and even a track from the original High School Musical.

These are still early days and, as I’m first admitting my obsessions with music here, I hope to go into detail later about the ’soundtrack’ of heronaut as it evolves, along with a possible breakdown of the library of tokusatsu songs that were used in my stint on Millennium Man.

By way of comparison, lecteur de tarot’s playlist is over 4GB of mostly orchestral music.

lecteur de tarot + Love Amongst Strangers (Again) progress chart

98 pages of lecteur de tarot, although the above picture of my notes – often buried beneath piles of paperwork but never too far from my keyboard – was taken before beginning today’s writing.

Beneath the tick chart and above the dates is the layout for the Love Amongst Strangers sequel, blocked out with two different highlighter pens (that’s right, count them! Two!) but don’t let its seeming lack of progress fool you – chapters 7 and 8 are roughly 80 – 90% compleat but I keep getting distracted by other projects with impending deadlines.

Adjacent to the lecteur de tarot tick boxes is a very obvious TetsuMan spoiler – points out of ten if you can see what it is.