Being James Joyce

That's a snap of me in profile being James Joyce last Sunday. My dear friend Kevin Jackson was making a short promo video for his forthcoming and most excellent book: Constellation of Genius, which is a history of the year 1922.

This was especially timely since I'd spent the previous three days in Dun Laoghaire, in sight of the Martello tower where Joyce spent six nights once upon a long time ago. The tower is a museum to this great Irish writer now.

I was in Dun Laoghaire (a name, as my co-host @tomdonegan pointed out, that is not conducive to auto-correct) for the superb Mountains to Sea book festival, six days of wonder and fun curated by lovely Tom and equally lovely @sarahwebbishere.

I did a couple of Raven Mysteries events, which I end with a little play performed by myself (as Edgar the raven) and five volunteers from the audience. It's almost always a complete shambles, and more fun because of that, and I'm glad to say that the plays were as smooth as always ;-) I was chortling so much I forgot my lines :-)

Tom and I took a stroll to the end of the harbour wall in DL, a spot which according to Mr Donegan proved the turning point for Samuel Beckett, who taking a similar jaunt in a force eight gale decided to move to Paris instead and leave Ireland behind him. We were blessed with extraordinary weather however and on the way back witnessed this cloud formation, sometimes mistaken for a flying saucer. (it's the one dead centre) Neither of us could recall its proper name, anyone know? Answers on a postcard please.

The following morning I just had time to witness a superb double act from @jabberworks and @philipreeve1 and then it was time to whizz home to prepare to be James Joyce.

Constellation of Genius is launched October 4th I believe. And then the next film Kevin and I work on together will be an extract of My Swordhand is Singing, shot on location in the Alps!

My Swordhand is Singing - the theatrical experience!

Here's a short film of the trial version of My Swordhand is Singing as an immersive theatrical experience.

My Swordhand is Singing @ Pop Up

Here's a bunch of photos from the Swordhand play we put on at the Pop Up festival on Saturday, including one of my favourite moments: Agnes leans in to kiss something she now knows ISN'T her boyfriend...

It was a creepy moment, made all the more creepy by the wonderful music from Eamonn O'Dwyer and the clever shadow puppet work of the cast.

I was really delighted with this first, miniature outing for the book as a play, and I think it shows what we're trying to do for the whole piece, as and when we can pull that off. The text and music collided really well and the atmosphere was spot on, and I want to thank Alex Sutton, our amazing director, as well as the whole cast: Alex Beck, Noa Bodner, Freddie Hutchins, Ruth Leavesly, Anne Leone, Gemma Sandzer and Rhys Saunders, as well as our sound and lighting team: Mitch Peters and Chris Withers.

The creepy bits were certainly a highlight but maybe the best bit of all was watching happy faces streaming out of the tent afterwards :-)

Oh, the cross at the end? That was put up by some workmen on a site opposite our tent...

Building a forest...

There's something fundamentally weird about making trees from wood...

Anyway, be that as it may, this is how the set for our Swordhand event at the Pop Up festival is coming along...

Writing for teens..?

There’s a big difference between writing Teen fiction, and writing for teens.

I’m only saying this as a preamble to what comes next, which is not meant to be provocative; simply that in the simple distinction above lies, for me, the absolute crux of good writing and bad writing.

Yes, I write teen fiction. But I do not write for teens. I write books that get published and are marketed at teens, but I do not write the books for them, or aimed at them, or with them in mind.

In every ‘dinner party’ situation I find myself in, when people find out what I do and want to know a bit more, I’m asked questions that go something like this; “But how do you get into the head of a modern teenager?” or “Who are your books aimed at?” And these are fair questions, but having been asked them enough times, and stumbling out some answers I didn’t really believe myself, I came to the realisation that I do not attempt to get inside the head of a modern teenager, nor do I aim my books at anyone. Anyone at all.

What I’m going to say next might sound arrogant, but I promise it isn’t: I don’t write for anyone else, I write for me. Why isn’t that arrogant? Because I believe that precisely the reverse is true – the arrogant thing would be for me, a 44 year old to assume that I know what a modern British 14 year old boy wants to read, or how an Australian 12 year girl thinks, or a German teen or a Brazilian or… You get the point. How could I possibly know those things? And this is really part of a much broader point – whenever anyone writes anything at all, teen, adult, horror, romance, sci-fi, they should be writing it for themselves, because to assume that any of us know what is desired in another’s head is an act of extreme arrogance.

So I write for me, and if there’s something youthful about my writing, it’s because, I believe, that those of use who write for children or teens are still deeply in touch with that part of their lives, in some part of their brain at least, and are seeking to understand it. At the most, then, I concede I might be writing for a part of me, one that is still thinking as I thought aged 16 or so.

Now, as it happens, it seems that my books work well for teens, or so I’ve been told, and I’m also often told that I don’t seem to patronise, or talk down to teens, and if that’s true, then you can guess why I believe that is – because to try and guess the mind of anyone else, adult or teen, is to patronise them.

That being said, I am realistic enough to know that what I’ve put in a first draft might need to be edited a bit, adjusted, changed – but I promise you that in all the edits I’ve ever made to a book, none of them, not one, was because I was thinking of my readers as young people, not adults – every change I’ve ever made in a redraft is towards one goal only – to make it a better book, no matter who reads it.

You should write the book you want to write, and do it as well as you can, with as much truth and passion and energy as you can. And when you’ve done that, you can then hope that something in it will be something that someone else might want to read, but at least you’ve been true to one person – yourself. And with that start, you might just have something.

Closed graves...

Sorry not to have tweeted much (i.e. at all) on the second day of Open Graves, Open Minds, the Bram Stoker Centenary Symposium held at Keat's House - it was a busy day, which kicked off with a tour of the house and then moved on to the sessions proper, starting with a double act from your humble blogger and my friend Kevin Jackson.

I did a 45 minute slot on the folklore of the vampire, and how it differs from the vampire we have come to know from fiction and films. In this I was aided by my friend Thomas over at That Elusive Line, who drew me the handsome vampire you see here.

Then Kevin spoke about various vampirical things, and showed his 10 minute vampire film, Pavane for a Vampire Queen. Take a look if you haven't seen it - it's beautiful :-) And for the eagle-eyed features a cameo by, well, me.

The whole day was a great success, I thought, but the highlight for me was the closing talk, by Sir Christopher Frayling, a man whose books and TV programmes I have admired since I was young. He spoke about pictorial representations of the Gothic in art and film, and it was flawless and fascinating. It was based in part on material first considered in his show Gothic Nightmares from 2006 at Tate Britain, still available in the show catalogue. It was a total fan-boy moment for me, as we traded folkloric aspects of the undead.

Then came vampire themed canapés; black pudding on coffin shaped blinis, stakes through steak etc, and we all went home very happy, and much more enlightened about vampires in general. I'd like to thank Dr Sam George of the University of Hertfordshire for inviting me, and for organising the weekend.

My first published writing...

Here for your delectation I am going to put up a small piece of writing - the first thing I ever had published, as a teenager, which I recently re-discovered when at my mother's house.

Back in the late Dark Ages (1985, I think) I entered a 500 word maximum horror story competition run by the fanzine of my favourite band at the time; Siouxsie and the Banshees. I will embarrass myself by telling you that I won, however, having just re-read the second place entry, I suspect these may have been the only submissions...

Nevertheless, I guess at the back of my mind, it may have planted the seed that it was actually possible to get your writing published, though at the time I was more pleased with winning a tour jacket.

The one thing is does show however, is that I've always been a gruesome little oik, and I present it here just as I wrote it, with a few spelling mistakes corrected, because it's never too late to get your homework right.

The other thing it shows is that I was always destined to be spare with my writing - the limit was 500 words and I coasted in at 325. Such parsimony!

It's called Just a Joke, and it goes like this:


JUST A JOKE

The coffin of nurse Amy West had been exhumed, and now the crude box lay before me. As head surgeon of the city morgue it was my duty to perform an autopsy; demanded by the Police; only now after her burial. She had apparently died of fright. I opened it; my assistant choked as he gazed in; ‘oh Lord.’ My eyes fell to the lid’s interior. The cheap wood was scratched as if by wild animal’s claws, and was stained dull red in places. Then my view sank to the girl, to her fingers; a bloody mess, to her ripped nails, to the huge splinters piercing the once sensitive flesh, exposing bone, to her bloodied dress, and finally to her dry eyes, staring from a face frozen in fear… ‘She wasn’t dead.’

So what had happened..?

As a student nurse she had initially been squeamish, like all the other students, except one girl who never spoke to the other nurses, except to make cynical remarks about their lack of guts. Naturally the other girls hated her, but when they observed an amputation for the first time, they saw her smiling, and they decided to get even for her callousness. Amy was supposed to take the amputated arm to be incinerated, but this is not what she did. That night the nurse took the arm, daubed it with green fluorescent paint and hung it in the strange girl’s room, so that it reached towards the door. They waited next door in Amy’s room for their victim to come off nightshift. Eventually footsteps stopped at her door and went in, then, nothing… Two minutes of silence, then Amy nervously went next door. Seconds later a chilling shriek caused the others to scramble out after Amy, just in time to catch her she turned from the open door and fell, her face writing with confusion; and why…? Behind her, on the bed, the girl crouched, eating the arm…