F.R. Jameson's Blog, page 28

Me, Writing in Note Form, in 2017

[image error]

Having a busy time of it right now, so I’m doing this week’s diary in bullet points. Apologies, hope to be more in-depth next week.

Writing things I have done the last seven days:

The corrections for my new novel, ready for the editor. I’m aiming to publish in March.
Once that’s done, I’ve got a novella to rewrite, so in spare moments I’ve been looking through that as well.
And because I’ll now have time for actual writing on my train rides in the morning, I’ve been plotting out a different novella. One linked to the other (already written) novel I’ll be publishing next year.
(Yes, that’s two separate novellas).
(And yes, I can keep all this straight in my head).
This week I also read Bryan Cohen’s entertaining and informative HOW TO WRITE A SIZZLING SYNOPSIS and started rewriting THE WANNABES synopsis based on his formula.
And finally, I started designing a promotional poster I can use in ads for THE WANNABES from now on. I’m happy with my concept, though Mrs Jameson will get final sign off.

So, a busy week. I probably still need to get a better balance between writing stuff and promoting stuff, but slowly – as one comes far more naturally than the other – I’m getting there.

Rasputin’s Legacy by Lee Jackson

[image error]

Set in the 1980s and with actual speaking roles for both Gorbachev and Reagan, this is a frothy concoction of super spies, deadly double agents, a scheme to take control of Russia and some stinking fish soup. It’s boy’s own escapism pulled off with the ghostly bearded shadow of Rasputin hanging over every page of it.

Jackson clearly wants to have as much fun as he can and so – into an already packed narrative – also throws a fiancée with a grudge and a dogged investigative journalist. I did wonder whether there might be too many component parts, if the book might be over-extending itself, as surely there was no way Jackson could get them to fit altogether. But if you go with it, it’s a cracking yarn that has all the over the top drama and excitement of an old-fashioned Bond film. A bomb-countdown finale and all!

 

If you fancy a free short story, my tale of paranoia and internal months, SOMETHING WENT WRONG, is available here.

The Mask of Satan/Black Sunday (1960)

[image error]

I’ve never seen THE MASK OF SATAN/BLACK SUNDAY before. Indeed, I must confess I’ve never seen any Mario Bava. I’ve seen Argento, and really like his work up to the point of SUSPIRA, but nothing by the original king of Italian horror cinema.

Now I have and I’ve got to say, the man knows how to conjure an atmosphere.

It’s not a perfect film. The performances aren’t great, both the actors pontificating on the screen and the English voiceover artists who dub them, let themselves down at various points; while the script is a bit ropey with lots of unnecessary contrivances (would the family really have large oil paintings of the very witches their ancestors burnt?) But in that way it looks and the creepiness of the atmosphere as it grabs you, we have here a horror classic. Clearly influenced by old Universal horror films (so much so I expected Bela Lugosi to show up at the door in a debt collector’s coat) but with the thirty years distance, it’s able to put in a lot more gore and shape itself as something different and European.

[image error]

In long-ago Moldova, two doctors inadvertently revive two witches. Actually, the plot is inconsequential, what matters is the little moments of terror. The way a victim of the witches is killed to make sure he doesn’t rise again, the holes bored into Barbara Steele’s face, the incredible suspense of the conclusion. It’s rare for a film nearly sixty years old to make me squirm, but this one most definitely managed it.

 

Fancy a free FRJ short story? There’s one available here.

Firestarter by Stephen King

[image error]

Reading FIRESTARTER for the first time in – gosh! – 25 years, I was struck by what a small piece it actually is.

It’s the tale of a father and his little girl, and the less pleasant other father figure who tries to groom her when her real dad is incapacitated. Yes, there’s pyrokinesis to provide fireworks and make sure that things occasionally blow up, but really, it’s a character piece. In the main there are only about three or four other properly drawn out people, most of the book takes place in one location and one could almost believe that it’s a strange dark drawing-room play masquerading as a door-stop novel. So much so, that even when the characters go to an airport or have flights arranged to take them elsewhere, you know they’re never actually going to get up in the air. The story is too grounded for anything else.

Andy McGee and his wife once took part in a drugs trial. It gave both telekinetic abilities. Their union also produced a daughter. Charlie McGee has abilities far in advance of her parents, far beyond anything the world has seen before. Now The Shop, the secretive government body which ran those experiments originally, want her for their own purposes, and she and her father are trying to escape its operatives.

Any criticisms I have are nit-picks (the narrative is very convenient about when it lets the protagonists escape and when it doesn’t; and you have to believe that a government employee who is already close to the sack has no one near to question his orders even when they’re absolutely crazy). The thing is though I had such a great time reading it that I’m going to let any qualms I had flicker and burn away.

At his best, King is magnificent as combining the fantastical with the mundane of everyday life, and capturing that munadnity in a way which isn’t boring and tedious and – well – mundane. The trick is harder to pull off in FIRESTARTER as there’s only a very short flashback section of the book where these characters are living a normal life. Being on the run isn’t normal. Yet, even in those heightened circumstances, King still captures the central pairing so well and so credibly. The reader believes in them as people, believes in them as father and daughter, believes in their relationship. So much so, that the real horror of this piece doesn’t come from the mind control or the fires, it comes from the possibility of their relationship being threatened. It’s a very human story, and it’s one of King’s best!

 

Fancy a free terrifying FRJ short story? SOMETHING WENT WRONG is available here.

Free today! The Strange Fate of Lord Bruton

Debauchery, comeuppance and murder – all dripping in blood….

[image error]

To celebrate its brand new cover, my terrifying tale of the gothic, The Strange Fate of Lord Bruton is FREE today and tomorrow. Please do check it out.

Just click through whichever is the most appropriate link: UK, US, Canada, Australia.

While if you want some other free FRJ fiction, there’s some available here….

Me, Trying to look after Myself, in 2017

[image error]I’ve been thinking about the pressure I’m placing on myself.

I’m relatively new to the indie author game and it has excited my passions. Without a doubt, I’m loving the writing I’m doing now – the process and the results – and I want to keep charging on with it. In my head there are so many ideas, and I want as many of them as possible to see the light of day.

But, having all these ideas means that I’ve become too unfocused. 

There is an overarching plan and really I need to be following it step by step and not keep getting distracted!

That’s the problem, I’ve let myself get too distracted, charging on with new project after new project with the result that I’ve just piled up too much on my damn plate. The last few weeks I have been waking up at four in the morning, thinking of all I must do. A big pile of bricks sat on my shoulders, each of them needing individual attention, each of them needing space and time to lay them all down

In those dim small hours, I think through all of them and know that I have too much. That I can’t possibly do all I want to do without carving extra hours into the day or having some kind of breakdown.

Having anxious thoughts in the pre-dawn hours is never a good sign for one’s mental well-being.

I have my gorgeous wife and my lovely daughter and they are my priority. I also have my proper-job-type-job, which I need to take care of. Then I have my writing, which is my passion, my calling, what I want to do with my future. I have to give it my attention, but not in a way that leads to mild panic attacks.

So, I’m not pulling back, but I’m learning to focus better. Concentrate on what I absolutely need to do. That means some projects I’ve worked on (the Welsh story for instance) will drop to the back-burner. That’s fine though, they’ll be there to be rescued another day. For now, I just need to focus on what I need to do and make sure I get it done in as stress-free a way as possible.

I want to enjoy this, not torture myself with it.

 

Visitor to the Graveyard – part four

[image error]

The next time he went it was so dark, the slither of moon totally lost behind foreboding grey cloud. Up the winding driveway to the graveyard, the man pushed a wheelbarrow. It clattered and rattled, filled as it was with a shovel, rope, a crowbar, a saw, pliers, piano wire, a machete, a sledge-hammer and an electric drill.

He might not get to hear the bastard actually scream, but one way or another he was going to have his revenge.

 

Parts one, two and three were published earlier this week.

If you fancy another free FRJ story, there’s one available right here.

Visitor to the Graveyard – part three

[image error]

Stinking and bedraggled, the man staggered to the grave and collapsed shakily to his knees next to it.

“You!” he screamed. The word bursting forth with so much rage and pain as to make it almost inarticulate. “You!”

His head went to his hands and he squeezed the bridge of his nose, as if trying to hold himself together, as if not realising how far gone he already was.

It was first thing in the morning, just after dawn, although he’d been awake for days now. The nearest houses were a couple of hundred yards distant, but there were still a few curtains flicked at the screaming man in the graveyard.

“I should have killed you! It should have been me! Once I knew it was you who killed her, then I knew I had to murder you! It was only fair. Only fucking fair! An aneurysm? What the fuck is that? That doesn’t even sound painful. You deserved to fucking suffer, you sick bastard! You deserved to suffer at my hands. That’s what should have happened! That’s what needed to happen, you vicious, murdering bastard. Not this, never this! This isn’t right at all!”

 

If you missed them, here are parts one and two; while another free tale – SOMETHING WENT WRONG – is available here.

Visitor to the Graveyard – part two

[image error]

The second time he visited the grave it was late afternoon and he was in a more obviously dishevelled state. His black trousers were creased and his red shirt wasn’t buttoned properly. No use had been made of a hairbrush or razor that morning. He gave every impression he’d been drinking all day, which he had – virtually a whole bottle of Gordons, consumed propped at the bar of The Major Dibley public house.

“I went to her grave the other day.”

When he spoke, his words came out admirably clear. They were forced between gritted teeth, but there was no slurring.

“At least that field I think contains her grave. All those hints you gave, all those little clues. God, you were clever. Too clever for me to use any of them for the police. Far too clever for that. They were just for me, weren’t they? Just to fucking torture me and twist me around and break me down. They were for me and they were for her. To torture her all over again!”

He spat to the ground, and swayed as if knocked to his heels by the breeze.

“I bet you fucking tortured her, didn’t you?” he growled. “I bet you fucking did! That’s just the kind of thing a sick bastard like you would do. You tortured her before she died, and then you tortured her family by not giving her a grave. You worthless fuck! I can’t believe people wept at your death. I can’t believe people came here to mourn you. She isn’t officially dead and there’s nowhere to mourn her, you bastard!”

 

You can read Part one here, while another FRJ short story – SOMETHING WENT WRONG – is available for your perusal through this link.

Visitor to the Graveyard – part one

[image error]

The first time he went to the grave, it was noon on a crisp, sunny Spring day. In his pressed dark suit, he looked like a normal mourner. It was three weeks after the funeral, so he was a little late, but a man giving sincere condolences nonetheless.

When he spoke, he did so softly, almost in a whisper. Even if there’d been someone only a few feet away, they’d never have picked up on his venom. They probably wouldn’t even have picked up on the stench of gin.

“You fucking bastard! You worthless fucking bastard! I can’t believe that after all you did, they came here and mourned you. Those filthy idiots! What they said was nonsense, utter nonsense. You weren’t a great man, a lovely man, a kind man. There’s no way you could even be called a good man. You were a murdering bastard! A worthless piece of shit. You deserved pain and suffering, not a fucking band playing your coffin into the ground. It makes me sick to think about it. You’re down there and I’m up on here, but it’s like you’re laughing at me. You’re still laughing at me!”

That hypothetical observer, at his or her little remove, wouldn’t have been at all surprised when the man then broke down and wept.

 

Fancy some more free FRJ fiction? There’s another short story available here.