Bloody Carnival Anthology Now Available

Yup, it’s finally here!

Bloody Carnival anthology, edited by Jessy Marie Roberts

The Bloody Carnival anthology, from Pill Hill Press and edited by Jessy Marie Roberts, of carnival and circus themed horror stories is now available . This anthology stands at 302 pages, several of which are devoted to my own story, “Tears of a Clown”. It tells the story of a man who loses his soon-to-be stepdaughter at a circus, and desperately scours the deserted grounds for her.

It’s available in paperback, from all good retailers including the Pill Hill Shop, and Amazon, so if you’re looking for a collection of

Bloody Carnival anthology, edited by Jessy Marie Roberts

horror from a rapidly rising small press publisher, then I’d heartily recommend this book. Nothing to do with me having a story in it, honest…

The Red Dawn

Ed Miliband, 20th Leader of the Labour Party

Okay, that sounded more revolutionarily socialist than I’d intended, but let’s run with it…

Yesterday, the result of the long, hard campaign for the new Labour leader was revealed, and Edward Samuel Miliband was elected as the new party leader. The moment itself was something of a shock, as indicated by the surprised gasp that went around the conference when it became apparent that firm favourite David Miliband had been beaten by his younger brother.

Now, those of you who follow this blog will know that Mr Miliband was not my first choice. But that doesn’t matter. One of the many positives about this leadership campaign has been the quality of all the candidates. There were none of them that I would not have been happy with at the head of the party.

But now the contest is done, and we have our new leader. The attention must turn to the rest of the conference, and to fighting the cuts that will decimate our unsteady economy. There’s still a way to go before Labour is in full opposition mode, after the Shadow Cabinet has been elected, and appointed by Ed.

What needs to happen now is a mass mobilisation of the public, against what is to come. Ed needs to work with all sectors of society, to place Labour at the forefront of the wave of public outcry which will be rising up once Coaliton cuts set in. The biggest danger he faces, and all of Labour faces, is internal division.

The last 13 years in the Labour Party were hampered by the Blair-Brown divide. What we cannot have now is that same divide manifesting through Miliband E and Miliband D camps. So far there has been no hint of that, with David’s congratulations to Ed feeling genuine and loving, if understandably a little put out.

The other danger is listening to the right-wing media. Already accusations are being made that he is a creature of the unions. It’s true, that the union vote was what put him over the top. But that doesn’t mean he’s a slave to them, or that there is something amiss about his election. Labour is the party of the people, it’s connection to the unions is long and esteemed. The union role in the leadership election reflects their contribution to the party, and ties the party to its political beneficiaries: the working people of the United Kingdom.

The Tory-skewed media is naturally going to try and bring Ed down over this. The party cannot listen to it. The only way we are going to be able to fight the Tories and the Lib Dems is if we are united. We did great things in the 13 years of Labour government, and now the average person of this country needs us to fight these disastrous cuts with everything we have. In government we could afford to have internal divisions, even if they handicapped us. In opposition, we don’t have that luxury.

So I’m adding my voice to those greater than myself, to all those in the party. We’ve gone through this election to find our new leader. We have found him. Now we need to unite behind him, and move onto the real fight. We need to present a single, strong and united front, against an already-fracturing Coalition government.

This is where we begin our fightback. This is where we make our future.

The Post Man Cometh…

The Qur'an, translated to English by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem

It’s finally arrived. My copy of the Qur’an, ordered the other week, has finally arrived.

Ironically, it dropped through the door of my girlfriend’s house, after I forgot to check the address on my Waterstones order and just assumed it would be coming to my house. Fortunately, I was there this morning when it arrived, so all was well in the end.

For those of you who are curious, the version I’ve purchased is the Oxford World’s Classics version, translated by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem. I’m not educated about the different translations (bar what I’ve already read in the introduction), so if anyone better informed about me wants to give me pointers or comments on this, they will be very much welcomed.

So far, I’ve only read the introduction, and even that has been truly fascinating. It’s already but to bed several negative stereotypes of the Islamic faith, which I actually already thought were products of right-wing conservative ignorance. I feel like I’m learning, and I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into the text itself.

This started out of my annoyance at Pastor Terry Jones’ intention to burn the Qur’an in protest against the Ground Zero Mosque (not at ground zero, not a mosque). But actually, during the wait for it to arrive, another beast of ignorance has raised its head. Some of you will be familiar with Elizabeth Moon. Some of you will be familiar with her remarkably ignorant and offensive rant about Islam in the US. For those of you who aren’t, I’d heartily recommend reading this article about it, as well as following Lavie Tidhar’s Twitter feed.

Bigoted comments like those Moon made are not alright. They feed the hatred and misunderstanding that warmongering groups on both sides exploit to their own ends and agendas. This is why I am reading the Qur’an. Because I don’t believe that half the crap said by right-wing western fearmongers, or Islamic extremists is true, is actually in there. I don’t think that Islam is any more of a hateful and violent religion than any other religion.

To anyone else who shares this suspicion, I invite you to join me. I’ll be posting occasional blog entries updating all of you on what I’m finding with my readings, and this is an open invitation for anyone to join in. I welcome any and all comments and discussions, from Muslims and non-Muslims, as long as you don’t try to transform my exercise against hate as a way of extending it.

Sale to Wicked East Press!

Cup of Joe - Coffee House Flash Fiction Collection, from Wicked East Press and edited by edited by Jessica A. Weiss

Yup, I have a sale to announce!

A piece of flash fiction I wrote, titled “Good Eating”, has been accepted to be published in the anthology Cup of Joe- Coffee House Flash Fiction from small press publisher Wicked East Press.

The story itself is a short piece that tells the story of a pair of Russian immigrants who, having fled persecution in their own country, have opened a kebab shop in London.

I’m not sure yet when the anthology will be published, but it should be in print by December 2010. It’s also edited by Jessica A. Weiss, who edited the Silver Moon, Bloody Bullets anthology from Pill Hill Press (in which I featured).

Exciting stuff!

Devil – A Review

Anything involving M. Night Shymalan is always of interest to me. By that, I don’t mean that I’m some sort of slavering obsessive, who loves everything the man produced. Far from it; all that I’ve seen from him has varied so massively in quality that I find it something of a lucky dip whenever he has a new film out. I tend to chart them on a Shyamalan-scale, ranging from the very good (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable), to the godawful (Signs, The Village; Signs in particular being a pet hate of mine). I’ll freely admit that I haven’t seen The Happening or The Last Airbender, but since the latter is the centrepiece for a truly uninviting clique and the former has universally bad reviews, I shan’t be bothering with either too soon.

Devil

Devil is a film that has Shyamalan’s name plastered all over it, yet as I’m sure someone will smugly point out, he didn’t direct it. However, he did produce it, and write the story, so I think it’s fair to pin the success or failure to the man anyway. And my verdict? Well, if Shyamalan is going to be dragged down to the depths of filmmaking hell, it won’t be by this film.

Yes, it was actually a good one. Not quite at The Sixth Sense/Unbreakable level, but a surprisingly good film nonetheless. For the uninitiated, the film centres around five people trapped in a lift, one of whom is the Devil (thus explaining the title). I think you can extrapolate most of the plot from there, and going into it I was oddly hopeful. Small-setting character pieces can sometimes make the best films. I mean, just look at Phone Booth; it was set almost entirely in the titular phone booth, and yet the characters made it a very powerful and entertaining film indeed.

Most of the intrigue comes from trying to figure out who is the Devil, as an already limited pool of characters are bumped off one by one inside the lift, and the authorities (led by insultingly cliché “damaged” recovering-alcoholic cop) flap around trying to get them out. But I was left with the feeling that aside from one of them, the characters could have been the Fellowship from the Lord of the Rings and it wouldn’t make much difference. The portrayal of people trapped in close confines and growing suspicious of each other was fairly good, and the descent into crazy bullshit felt better paced than in, say, Exam (also a good film, if anyone is interested).

The real thing that made this film for me was the atmosphere. Thinking back on it, I think the music contributed a lot. From grand, chilling score over the introduction on upside down (literally) Philadelphia, to elevator Muzak driving the prisoners mad, to jumpy and pace setting background music as the horror unfolds. The sense of isolation with something evil, and helplessness on the part of the authorities outside, was very well set up, and worked a deep sense of fear into the whole thing.

My only major complaint was the ending. It wasn’t right… I know that sounds like an awfully vague complaint, but if you watch it (and it is well worth a look, even despite this), you’ll see what I mean. It seemed to peter out rather than end with any sort of bang or even conclusion. It wasn’t the ending to a horror film, and it was a shame to see it fall down at that final hurdle.

But still, as I said, it’s a fine film, and a welcome addition to the roster of good Shyamalan films. This jaunt into the lucky dip bin has come out trumps, and whilst I’m not convinced about the reported two sequels already in the pipeline, it could have been a lot worse. It could have been a sequel to Signs…

Getting Stuck In

So this evening was my first Constituency Labour Party meeting.

I went with a mixture of excitement and nervousness, with little idea what to expect. I’d been looking forward to this since joining, and I’d really wanted to get stuck in and involved. But when I was walking from the car park to the actual venue, I didn’t really have a clue what to expect.

Labour is local, every bit as much as National, and that local presence is what can make an immediate difference

Thank God, then, that the Maidenhead Constituency Labour Party are such a great bunch. Really, from the moment I went in I was completely welcomed. I spent the evening in a room with ten to fifteen people, feeling thoroughly part of something big and important. It wasn’t a huge CLP, but then this is Tory heartland, so I wasn’t expecting an army. What it was, was a group of people who shared the same principles as I do, and the same ideas about how the country should be run.

And the talk given by Cath Arakelian, on the real meaning of the Big Society, was fascinating. She went into the ramifications of the Tories’ ideological devolution to community bodies, and the sacrifice of national strategy that will result. It was in depth, but accessible, and she was a very capable speaker. For any party members yet to cast their ballot, I’d urge them to strongly consider casting a vote for her in the National Policy Forum elections.

The upshot of this evening, is that I feel positively inspired. I want to get more involved, I want to do more to fight the Con-Dem government, and to stir things up in the middle of Torydom. Anyone who is considering their political stance and alignment would do well to consider that the Labour Party isn’t just about leadership elections and the central party. The Constituency Labour Parties are every bit as important, and can help you make a real difference to your own community.

I also came away with a pile of leaflets, so tomorrow I’ll be going Tory-bothering, hehehe…

If it ain’t broke…

Firstly, apologies for the grammar in the title. It was a momentary indulgence, and I shall endeavour not to allow it to happen again. However, it makes my point a whole lot more effectively than this blog post is likely to, so maybe it’s excusable on that grounds. Or maybe that just means that the post in general is equally guilty. Who knows? Who cares?

Basically, this is a response to and a result of several things. The most immediate being when I logged into my WordPress dashboard this morning, to find that the graph had changed. It sounds awfully petty, and I agree that it is. But it’s more of a “straw that broke the camel’s back” situation.

The basic complaint about the graph, is that I don’t get why anyone thought that change was worth making. The area under the graph is now shaded. Thanks. I was having trouble working out which part was above the graph and which part was below. I know it doesn’t matter a drop in the ocean, but it’s the principle. Why are you messing with things that work perfectly well? Especially when you’re not actually improving a damn thing.

Never mind hating the iTunes 10 icon, what about the bloody program?

And it’s not an isolated incident. In recent days, Apple have introduced the newest version of my least favourite unfortunately-essential-in-today’s-world software. Yes, I am of course talking about iTunes 10. We are not friends, I’d like to clear that up. Think of me and iTunes like the Cold War, the US and the USSR. There’s no actual war, but we’re still trying our best to ruin each other’s shit. Now, I have to make do with iTunes. I accept that. A lot of people love it, worship it as an extension of Steve Jobs (cough*Satan*cough), and would probably marry each and every Apple product if they could. But this seems to be getting a lot of hate across the board.

Most of the complaints seem to be geared around its ugliness, and the new icon. I don’t know if it’s ugly. I have notoriously bad judgement when it comes to the attractiveness of digital interfaces. Probably because I’m not attracted to them. And I really couldn’t care less about the icon. What I am bothered about, are the idiot changes that have been made, for no reason, which detract from the already painful experience of using the bastard. The example I’ll use, is that when I’m lying in bed, watching a video on iTunes, I can no longer click anywhere on the screen to pause. I must click the comparatively tiny pause button, instead. How, I ask you, is this anything like an improvement?

And, not to be outdone, other groups have started to get in on the act too. Twitter last night launched their “New Twitter” (which I

Will the Fail Whale still have a place in New Twitter? If it does, is that really a good thing? Does anyone care?

suppose is a little more original than Twitter 2.0, but not by a whole lot). My initial reaction is…eh. So far I haven’t seen anything that annoys me as much as the iTunes 10 niggles, but I’m left with an overwhelming sense of “Why?”. Everything is still there the same, it’s all just been moved around. So far as I can tell, the interface isn’t any more intuitive, or easier to work out. It’s like someone grabbed hold of it an shook it. Though the “infinite scroll” thing does seem to be tripping up Chrome, which gave me a giggle (though it’s bound to get old quickly).

This is the kind of bullshittery that shot Microsoft in the foot. They ruled the market, massively outweighing all competitors. Then, just as Apple were gathering force with their ridiculous March of the Posers, they brought out Vista. I think everyone is familiar with that particular incident, but my point is that the changes that really bugged people were the ones that messed with an interface that they already knew, and confused the crap out of them. It didn’t add anything noticeably, and everyone had to work twice as hard to find the sodding Control Panel, or whatever.

Yeah, I’m all in favour of progress, of improving things. But graphical alterations alone aren’t good enough. Not for me. If you’re going to fundamentally alter something that I and a lot of other people use, you better have a good reason for doing it. To make it look prettier doesn’t fly.

Now I’m going to go and wait for Facebook to notice all this, realise they’ve been outdone on pointless, irritating changes (something that they seemed to pride themselves on), and make their interface into a banana. Or something.

Enough of the Ignorance and Hate

Yes, I’ve had enough. There comes a day, when all good, intelligent-thinking people must stand up, and say “Enough of this shit”.

Islam is in the news a lot at the moment. I don’t know if you’ve noticed. It ranges from the Ground Zero Mosque (which is not a mosque, and not at Ground Zero), to the ongoing Qur’an burning rubbish. I wasn’t going to blog about it, because far better commentators than I have already done so, and to do them would feel rather like a little child dressing up in his father’s clothes.

But as I’ve demonstrated in previous blog entries, me saying I’m not going to write about something doesn’t always (usually) matter a grain of sand in the Sahara. Or maybe the Arabian Desert would be a more fitting allegory in this situation.

 

Terry Jones is at the moment a figurehead of the Islamaphobia gripping the western world, but he is by no means the whole of the issue.

 

So yes, I’ve been incensed enough by the current media climate to give my own incoherent view on the matter. Apologies in advance if I offend you, but the whole of the media seems full of utter ignorance at the moment. It’s not just Terry Jones who seems to be intent on encouraging hatred these days. As idiotic and ill-advised on so many levels that his “International Burn a Koran Day” is, there is unfortunately the same sort of hatemongering on a day-to-day basis.

Take a look in the papers. There are endless stories about Islamic terrorism, and it’s not always made clear that these people are a minority. Yes, I know that the terrorists who committed the 9/11 atrocities were Muslims. That does not however mean that all Muslims are terrorists, or deserving of suspicion, as so often seems to be the reality.

Following the logic of those who object to an Islamic community centre a few blocks from Ground Zero, surely I should (as a British citizen) object to any Irish institutions existing in Warrington, Manchester, Brighton, Birmingham, or London? And, going further, since the IRA was financed by Irish-Americans, certainly no American institutions should be allowed? And there absolutely should never be an institution aimed at reconciliation between those various parties built in Warrington, right?

Now, I’m not trying to detract from the level of atrocity of 9/11. It was a terrible, horrible act of violence and murder committed by a few evil people. But it wasn’t done by the Islamic faith, and it seems entirely wrong to use it as a rallying flag for hatred of a religion, rather than as a figurehead for reconciliation, peace, and an end to such terrorism.

Perusing the letters section of the Metro free newspaper this morning, on my way to work, I was staggered at some of the bigoted comments that people were making, and felt it was okay to make, about Islam and it’s followers. I don’t for a moment believe that Islam is evil, any more than Christianity is evil (and yes, I know plenty of people will disagree on both counts, but please hold your objections ’til the end). They are in a lot of cases twisted by various people to suit their own purposes, and to apparently justify the unjustifiable.

I don’t believe the Qur’an endorses murder, terrorism, or half the things the media and the political right say it does. So I’m putting my money where my mouth is. All £7.99 of it. Yes, I’ve bought myself a copy, and I’m going to read it. Not all in one go, but before the year is out, I aim to have finished it, and if anyone cares, I’ll report back about what I’ve found. And all of you are welcome to join me on this journey away from second-hand ignorance, towards first-hand information.

So that’s my opinion, and my challenge. I may finish it wanting to burn the book, but I sincerely doubt it. You, conversely, may want to print out this blog entry and burn it. And if that’s the case, I wish you well of it.

“The Black Lung Captain” by Chris Wooding – A Review

(Golancz, 448pp, hardback £18.99, paperback £12.99)

"The Black Lung Captain" by Chris Wooding

I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. “The Black Lung Captain” is the sequel to Wooding’s steampunk romp “Retribution Falls”, a book which I thoroughly enjoyed reading last summer. I heartily enjoyed the first in the series, as a real adventure story, with a host of imagination and a fantastic sense of fun, and this one had a lot to live up to.

The books are set in a fictional world, whose most notable difference is the aerium-fuelled airships dominating the sky. We rejoin the crew of airship the Ketty Jay some time after the events of “Retribution Falls”, and finds them in a similar situation of poverty as at the beginning of the first day. So when the mysterious Captain Grist shows up, offering vast riches at the plunder of a crashed ship, Captain Frey jumps at the chance. Only it’s not quite that simple. Que a madcap race across Vardia, battling pirates, religious orders, and feral creatures that used to be men.

Wooding is a YA writer by trade, and the real selling point of his fiction is just how fun it is. Despite being a fairly sizable book, I found I raced through “The Black Lung Captain” simply because I was enjoying it so much. Peter F. Hamilton’s quote on the front cover sums it up really: ‘The kind of old fashioned adventure I didn’t think we were allowed to write any more…‘

Throughout the story, the overwhelming niggle at my mind was the similarities it bears to Joss Whedon’s science fiction-cum-western Firefly. A group of dysfunctional outcasts, led by a charismatic “honest” pirate, and including a disgraced member of the upper classes, and his “damaged” young relative. A crew struggling to make ends meet with a shortage of jobs available. It all seems awfully familiar.

Except, as I quickly decided, it doesn’t matter all that much. Darian Frey isn’t Malcolm Reynolds, and the Ketty Jay isn’t Serenity. The similarities between the two arise inevitably, I think, out of the close gene pool that the pirate genre occupies, and Wooding mixes it up fantastically here. The characters are fun, the world is immersive, and some of the writing will take you right back to childhood fantasies of pirates. In particular the aerial battle at the end was magnificently described, and had me on the edge of my seat.

“The Black Lung Captain” is, like it’s predecessor, pure entertainment, and can be massively enjoyed on that level alone. But what’s happening here is the beginnings of real growth in the characters. There’s already going to be another instalment (“The Iron Jackal”, in August 2011), and hopefully that will continue the trend that has begun here. The characters that the book finishes with are very much different to those it began with, having each undergone a lot more personal growth than the collective growth shown in the first book. All of the characters (barring, unfortunately, Malvery) are expanded on, and at some point face their own demons, and their reactions are very human, very believable, and entertaining.

So I recommend this book. Approach it with an open mind, and a sense of fun, and you will enjoy it. It’s not “War and Peace”, but that’s no bad thing. It will have you gripped ’til the end, and spoiling for an adventure of your own.

And by the way, I found that Mumford & Sons “Sigh No More” album was the perfect soundtrack for “The Black Lung Captain”.

Vendetta

Vendetta

By Matthew S. Dent

‘You can shoot me if you like,’ the old man said, sat in his armchair. ‘Or not. The choice is yours. But listen to what I have to say first. That’s not much to ask, is it son?’

‘I’m not your son,’ the young man said. His voice wavered, and he couldn’t quite hold the revolver steady, the tip of its barrel dancing as it pointed at the old man’s chest. ‘I have no father. You killed my father.’

‘Yes…’ the old man said, with a sad sigh. ‘Yes, I did. I’m sorry about that, I really am. I know how hard it must have been for you to find your father’s body in the kitchen, at such a young age.’

‘He was in the dining room,’ the young man growled, trying to wrestle his trembling hand under control.

The old man blinked. ‘Yes. You’re right, my mistake. I was getting our pasts confused.’ He held out both hands palms upfacing. ‘I’m an old man. My faculties aren’t what they used to be.’

‘Our pasts?’ The young man didn’t need this. He’d been planning this for so long. He’d announce who he was, and put a bullet through the forehead of his father’s murder. Then it would be over. But it was getting just too complicated now.

‘Yes. We’re closer than you know.’ The old man smiled, inciting a new wave of rage in his younger counterpart. ‘Do you know why I killed your father?’

No answer was forthcoming, so he continued regardless.

‘I stood in your shoes once, a long time ago. Gun in my hand, ready to be revenged on my father’s killer.’ Still no reply. ‘Do you know how long this has gone on, my boy?’

‘How long what has gone on?’

‘I traced it back as far as the sixteenth century,’ the old man continued. ‘I might have managed to get further back, if I’d had more time.’ He indicated the gun. ‘But we all have to work with what we’re given.’

‘Are you… Are you saying my father killed…your father?’ There was sweat on the younger man’s forehead. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be going. This should be easy, damnit!

The old man nodded. ‘Yes/ I found him in the kitchen. I was only six.’

‘But…why?’

‘Haven’t you been listening?’ The old man shook his head in frustration. ‘Our families are joined back through the ages. Sons avenging fathers, back through a history written in blood.’

The young man didn’t say anything for a long while, as he digested this. The old man obligingly didn’t interrupt . He hadn’t known anything about his family history. How could he? His father had died when he was only six.

‘You’re threatening me,’ he said, after a while.

The old man shook his head. ‘Not at all.’

‘You’re saying that if I kill you now, your son will hunt me down and kill me later on.’

The old man broke out in a smile, a broad grin igniting the young man’s anger. ‘What are you smiling at?’ he demanded.

‘I have no son,’ the old man said, softly. ‘I have no children. This vendetta has to end, and this is the only way.’

The young man paused. The gun barrel fell a few inches. ‘I- I don’t understand,’ he stammered, feeling six years old again. There were tears in his eyes.’

The old man smiled warmly. ‘The choice is yours, my boy,’ he said. ‘I killed your father. I admit it. I am sorrier than you will ever know. But if that isn’t enough, you may shoot me. Either way, this vendetta is over. The choice is yours.’

A gunshot echoed through the house, and a moment later the young man emerged.

He looked older. Tears were running down his face, and his hands were covered in blood. He paused in the garden, to wash them in the water feature. Strands of dark crimson diffused into the pond, and he lifted his hands out, dripping with water, clean of the blood of a hundred generations.