F.R. Jameson's Blog, page 18
April 30, 2018
The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie
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I spent a lot of THE MURDER ON THE LINKS distinctly worried about Captain Hastings. Firstly, he spends some time seemingly flirting with a younger, French detective, even at points seeming to agree with this interloper that Poirot is past it; then he causes a crime scene to be corrupted; and finally he actually puts himself in opposition to Hercule Poirot. As if he could ever beat his old friend in a battle of wits or a battle of nerves or a battle of anything. In later Poirot novels, Hastings always seems the ultimate loyal and reliable friend. Prone to fall for pretty face, true, but basically a steady gentleman. Here, in his younger days as it were, it appears he was a complete loose cannon. Thank the Lord he settled down, or Poirot would have to had to find another Doctor Watson.
This early Poirot story still feels fresh now. Later in her career Christie was so sure of her usual tricks and deceptions, that she almost reels them out by rote. THE MURDER ON THE LINKS however, feels like an author still learning what she can do (and most importantly, what she can get away with) and that gives us a particularly entertaining and surprising mystery. True, the character of Hastings is all over the place, but Poirot is already perfectly realised and – since his creator is still a way off from getting bored of him – is a fantastically brilliant, enigmatic and full of life character to hang a tale of murder and intrigue around.
April 27, 2018
Turning Ideas into Books – part 2
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…But then, even here, maybe I’m being too prescriptive. Maybe you don’t need to have a whole over-arching plot in mind before you begin. Maybe you just need a scene.
If you can think of two characters who are in a conflict, then without a doubt you can write a chapter.
It can be about them resolving that conflict, about them failing to resolve it, about them making it so much worse. Once you have those two characters and that conflict, you can start writing it down.
Don’t worry about the prose style as you start off. Don’t worry if the dialogue seems unrealistic and stilted.
All of that can be changed later.
Seriously, I know what it’s like to read some published writer who you love, and then try to write your own stuff and think it’s nowhere near as good.
I also know what it’s like to read that published writer and to find that your prose style has started to echo theirs.
In the first instance though, that really doesn’t matter. If you are just starting out and this is your first day with the notepad and you have your ideas and your conflict, then don’t worry about what the words look like now.
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If you are dedicated and are going to stick with writing, then that first draft will be pulled around and put back together and changed so many times before anyone lays eyes on it.
Remember this – as long as you feel good about it, nothing else in the first draft matters!
Today, when you’re writing, it’s just for you. It’s for you to start understanding the characters, to work through the ramifications of this conflict, to try to create a chapter that’s close to what you want it to be. Yes, the sentences may be wrong, the dialogue might be clunky, the characters might not be fully formed, even the conflict might not get near what you want it to be. But you have something down on paper. You have an arrow pointing in the sand that will guide you in the direction you want to go.
There are famous and hugely respected authors who wrote exactly in this way.
They say you should never meet your heroes. Sometimes you shouldn’t find out too much about them either…
If you’re interested, part one is here.
While if you’d like some short fiction by yours truly, my collection SOMETHING WENT WRONG & OTHER STRANGE TALES is available, completely free, here!
April 25, 2018
The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
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Let me put THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES into context.
Today, when there’s an endless glut of zombie movies/TV shows/books/comics/computer games, it’s hard to believe that there was a time where zombies weren’t really a big thing in popular culture. Indeed, a character in THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES has to explain what zombies actually are, just to bring the audience up to speed. If I take a gander at Wikipedia, this would seem to be the only zombie film of 1966, with none at all in 1967.
Two years later, THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD would come out and everything would change, but for now, zombies are a left-field idea for a horror movie.
[image error]A zombie making a rare appearance in 1966
The zombies in THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES come much more from a Haitian, voodoo tradition than the quasi science George Romero would employ. And yet it’s quite easy to think of the filmmakers in Pittsburgh watching this and seeing the imagery of the zombies in the graveyard and thinking they’ll have a bit of that.
[image error]George Romero took notes when he saw this
Of course, there are many differences. The stagy Hammer sets were dropped for a more contemporary setting, and Romero’s zombies don’t find themselves being forced to work in quite low stakes commercial concerns (a plot development that seems almost comical now). Yet the influence is undeniably there. Hammer left its fingerprints all over the Roger Corman/Edgar Allen Poe films, but they also lent a hand to the whole – much longer lasting – zombie explosion.
After an exposition-crammed opening, a seasoned doctor and his blonde, pretty daughter head down to Cornwall to meet the doctor’s protégé and his young wife. On the way they encounter an aggressive fox hunt and a disrupted funeral, while when they get to the town they discover the protégé beset by troubles and his wife behaving oddly. Clearly there’s trouble afoot.
[image error]I grew up with Jacqueline Pearce in BLAKE’S 7, so to see her so young and innocent is a shock
It’s not perfect. Some of the performances are decidedly ropey (I’m looking at you Brook Williams as the protégé) and the ending it all builds up to is messy and poorly explained. But there’s a surfeit of good ideas here. Not only was THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD influenced, but the small-town dread is distinctly echoed in THE WICKER MAN. Those are both better films, but despite its flaws, THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES is really quite brilliant.
I’ll be honest, this is a Hammer film which I’d never seen before and whose name has rarely crossed my radar. I guess like most people born after the bloody age of Hammer, I tend to focus on the Dracula/Frankenstein movies, or the Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee movies. That means I have a certain tunnel vision, but on the flip-side, it allows me the joy of discussing absolute gems like this.
Fancy some free tales of terror? My short story collection, SOMETHING WENT WRONG & OTHER STRANGE TALES is available for free right now!
April 22, 2018
The Blackbird by Richard Stark
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Apparently, Richard Stark used the Grofield novels to experiment with different types of stories. Whereas his justly famous Parker novels all follow exactly the same brutal format, these spin-offs were looser and more playful. A way for Stark to try new things and have fun doing it.
Sharing pretty much the same opening chapter as the Parker novel, SLAYGROUND, this whacks his cohort, Grofield (an actor who moonlights as an armed robber) swiftly into over-the-top international espionage which aims for James Bond, but misses a lot more than it succeeds.
Part of the problem is the apathetic leading man. By having someone who is so flippant and uncaring at the centre, it immediately lowers the stakes. If he doesn’t really care, why should us readers? Furthermore, the fact that he doesn’t want to be there, just lets the plot happen around him. He’s a passive, and more than a little irritating, leading man.
The globe-trotting gets no further than Canada and the equivalent of the Bond girl is all over the place characterisation wise. I can appreciate it as an experiment, and it holds the attention well enough to not be a waste of time. But when I was reading it, I couldn’t help wishing I was reading real James Bond or actual Parker, either of which would be preferable.
Fancy reading a slice of British noir? You can get a taster of my new novel, DIANA CHRISTMAS here.
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April 21, 2018
Confined Spaces – Free today
FREE today on Kindle, my claustrophobic short story collection, CONFINED SPACES!
Click here for your copy!
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April 20, 2018
Turning Ideas into Books – part 1
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Sometimes the best place to start is not the beginning.
I’ve been asked some questions concerning how I go about developing ideas, on how I turn them into novels.
And since I’m about to start something new in my notepads, I thought it would be fun to take a step back. To not talk about writing fast as such, but instead concentrate on how you go from having an idea that looks quite promising to turning it into a whole novel?
Now, I think I’ve said before, that I don’t suffer from a lack of ideas. In fact, my problem is that frequently I have too many ideas. So that if I’m in a phase where I’m easily distracted – like my period in the writing wilderness where I couldn’t finish anything – then too many ideas means that I lose focus, as this other thing I could be writing right now looks sooooo much better.
But let’s say that you’ve settled on one brilliant idea. That you have a story you want to tell and you have a good idea of your characters and where you want to take them. Maybe you don’t have all your dramatic beats yet, but that’s fine – that’s what re-writing and editing is for.
Then, with the story spinning around your head, you’re going to want to get it down. But how do you start? Where should your book even begin?
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I can see the paralysis of the blank page right there. Yes, you logically know that you can come back and change whatever it is you write, but equally a good start will give you momentum for the rest of the book. A novel is a long slog to write, and you’ll need to feel good about it. So, you’ll want a good start to allow you to charge on. You don’t want to begin with something that leaves you deflated and struggling.
And with that in mind, I say, why start at the beginning?
You have a big story, you have your characters. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have all detail, just pick one moment of your story that you’re excited to get to and start work on that. Get the flow of it by writing a bit that you are excited by. Get that down as well as you can and then you can start building the story from there….
Fancy some free scary and quirky short stories by yours truly? There are some available here.
April 18, 2018
Doctor Who Reviews (Extra) – The War Master: Only the Good
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The biggest problem for me with this War Master series is that it ends.
I did wonder, before listening, how the good people at Big Finish were going to bring back Derek Jacobi’s incarnation of The Master, when clearly in the TV episode he appears – ‘Utopia’ – he had no idea who he was until the big brilliant revelation in the last ten minutes.
But they do manage it. They make it all tie in so incredibly nicely, but in a way that seems to preclude any further entries.
Which is a great shame, as I really, really, really enjoyed this boxset.
Always a counterpoint to The Doctor, even when The Doctor isn’t around (he even pretends to be The Doctor in one story), this is The Master trying to be good in the most bad way possible. That is actually a great triumph for the writing here, as you can see that The Master is trying to do what he thinks is the right thing, but the very nature of who he is means he is getting it very, very wrong.
(Although, as a change of pace, we also have – in one story – The Master taking time out to set up his own vineyard. An idea which seems utterly bizarre at first flush, but really, can you not imagine the Delgardo Master sat there with a large glass of red talking about the quality of the vintage?)
I know logically that series after series of The Master cutting his own malicious path through The Time War would start to dilute the concept. That it would be harder for him to avoid John Hurt’s The War Doctor in all this chaos (even though a meeting between the two would be impossible from both story and practical points of views). But damn it, I really enjoyed this War Master boxset, and if Big Finish can find a way to bring him back once, I hope they can find a way to do it again.
Fancy some free strange and uncanny short stories? My collection, SOMETHING WENT WRONG & OTHER STRANGE TALES, is available here!
April 16, 2018
Marvel Comics – The Untold Story by Sean Howe
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I’m not a bloke who reads a lot of comic books. I do retain a fascination with comic book heroes from my wasted childhood, and Mrs Jameson and I are mid-way through watching the whole of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (IRON MAN 3 is next), but to actually pick up some Marvel or D.C. printed offering and see what’s illustrated between the pages is something I would almost never do.
However, in the last couple of years, I have read a couple of books taking a look behind the scenes (as it were) of comic books. As a creative person, I quite like reading about other creative people and the challenges they face – even if it is in a completely different field. And whereas reading about films I haven’t seen or music I’ve never heard could leave me baffled, here, even if I don’t know the specific comic books being talked about, I know who the characters are, I can imagine them, I can appreciate the story being told.
The first half of this MARVEL COMICS – THE UNTOLD STORY is a great read, there’s Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and various other big personalities clashing as they try to get their comics out. While in the background there is a growing sense that for all the sneering they get (Mario Puzo, of all people, shows up in person to sneer) that they are doing something which impacts the world.
As the book goes on though, and perhaps reflecting the change in culture at the company itself, the story becomes more corporate and less interesting. The personalities shrink and the back-biting becomes even more petty. Or maybe after hundreds of pages of back biting, I was just a bit worn down by it.
No doubt, Sean Howe will eventually produce a sequel which details the films (we pretty much stop here at the original IRON MAN) and how this upstart comic company became one of the biggest entertainment forces in the world. No doubt that will be full of ego clashes and arguments too, but by that point my weariness will have past and I’ll probably revel in it.
Fancy some free dark short fiction? My collection, SOMETHING WENT WRONG & OTHER STRANGE TALES is available for FREE here.
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April 13, 2018
Me, Hitting My Deadline, in 2018
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Hooray! I’m back from holiday.
And hooray! I’ve pretty much got my new novel, EDEN ST. MICHEL, to the editor. I just have a few extra corrections and it will be sent out this weekend.
But, not hooray – that means I’ve been a little strapped for time this week to devote much energy to this, the latest writing diary.
(”What’s the opposite of hooray?” “Boo.” “No, not that far from hooray.”)
The plan is to write a longer entry for next week about the development of ideas. As I’ve been asked some questions about how one develops ideas into a book, and because I want to interrogate my process more, and make myself as good and efficient a writer as possible (and help others along the way, if I can), then I am going to give it some serious thought between now and next Friday.
That’s for next week though.
For now, I’ve hit the first deadline I set myself for EDEN ST. MICHEL, plus it’s Mrs Jameson’s birthday this weekend and we are going to have a lovely celebratory time with cake and wine.
Whatever you’re doing, enjoy!
EDEN ST. MICHEL is the second installment of my ‘Screen Siren Noir’ series. Not read the first part yet? Don’t worry, DIANA CHRISTMAS is available here.
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April 11, 2018
The Love Witch (2016)
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I was entranced by THE LOVE WITCH.
But then I think most classic horror film fans will be entranced by THE LOVE WITCH.
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Yes, characters do use mobile phones and they drive modern cars, but the look, the styles, the cinematography, even the acting all seems to come straight from some early 1970s Euro-film. Seriously, if I saw this without knowing anything about it, I’d have thought – even with the mobile phones – that it was an artefact of the period. There’s the rich colour, that bright red paint blood (which Dario Argento was so fond of back in the day), and a script which doesn’t flow being performed by actors who are deliberately stilted.
A young witch (Samantha Robinson, who is superb) moves to a small town – which does, fortunately for her, already have a large witch/wiccan community – carrying a desperate need for love. Unfortunately none of the men she sets her sights on live up to her standards, none of them can cope with her passion, and – even though she’s willing to do everything for them – they end up loving her so much it takes them to death.
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Okay, having rhapsodised over the film, I now have to throw in the caveat that perhaps all that artifice lends a certain distancing effect. As I found myself admiring it, while not necessarily being emotionally involved in it. It’s a film I’m not sure a lot of people will actually enjoy. Hell, I’m not sure I enjoyed it, but I did appreciate the hell out of it. THE LOVE WITCH is definitely a film that’s staying with me, one I’d recommend and definitely want to watch again.
Fancy some free horror short stories, my collection, SOMETHING WENT WRONG & OTHER STRANGE TALES is available now!
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