Mark Hodder's Blog, page 2
December 30, 2011
Steampunk and Empire
Personally, I think it's because we live in a world in which empires are crumblin...
October 30, 2010
FROM THE CASE JOURNALS OF SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON: THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF THE CROSS-CHANNEL GRASSHOPPER (Part 2)
Burton & Swinburne in THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF THE CROSS-CHANNEL GRASSHOPPER is currently being recounted on Twitter. Every 30 tweets or so, I shall post the story so far (with amendments if necessary) here.
Chapter 1: The Dead Engineer (cont.)
"He lived nearby, I presume?"
"Yes. On Bellringer Lane."
"Then I suggest we go there at once. I would like to see where he died."
Trounce agreed, so he, Swinburne and I took our leave of Straightfellow and, thankfully, left the morgue. We boarded the hansom and set off. As we were jolted along, I asked Trounce about the Prentiss household.
"He was a bachelor," said the policeman. "And lived alone but for his housekeeper, Mrs Chant. The house is small; a parlour, a dining room, a study, a bedroom and a kitchen."
"Mrs Chant doesn't live in the house?" I asked.
"No. She works from 8am until 9pm then goes home. She found him dead this morning. According to Straightfellow, Prentiss died close on midnight. He was discovered slumped over his desk."
Over the course of the next fifteen minutes or so, Trounce and Swinburne chatted, but I didn't hear their words; I was lost in thought.
Cobra venom. Was there an Indian connection?
The hansom trundled on, moving slowly through the murk, until we finally reached Bellringer Lane. Trounce hammered on the roof with his cane. The cab stopped and we clambered out.
"Shall I wait again, guv'nor?"
I handed the cabby his coins. "No need, this time, my man. Thank you."
I had seen, through the pall, that a number of police vehicles stood nearby.
"In here," Trounce said, and led us to the door of a house. A constable stood guard outside. He nodded a greeting to Trounce as we entered. We found ourselves in a narrow hallway with a staircase to our left. A door to our right led into the study; a smallish room with blueprints and engineering diagrams pinned to its walls. It was sparsely furnished but for a large desk by the window, a drawing board, a couple of messily filled bookshelves, and a fireplace.
"He was sitting there," Trounce said, pointing at the desk. "Slumped forward with his head resting on his hands. A quick death?"
I nodded. "Yes. He was undoubtedly overcome by drowsiness, his breathing slowed, then he passed out and died. Cobra venom is merciful, at least."
I stepped to the desk and examined the articles on it. A pen, a journal, a pocket watch, a number of books, and a machine component. There was a half written entry in the journal, obviously interrupted when the poison took effect. It was extremely technical in nature. Prentiss, it seemed, was struggling to redesign a spring housing in the Channel Hopper's machinery. An Engineer to the last, poor chap. I picked up the metal component and quickly concluded that it was the very item he'd been writing about; moulded iron, nothing more.
"You handled that as if it might be a bomb!" Swinburne observed, as I placed it back on the desk.
"Of course I did!" I replied. "The venom was injected into his hand. No one had entered the room. Obviously, then, something he handled injected it. Something here."
Trounce removed his bowler hat and slapped it. "I was barking up the wrong tree, then!" he grumbled. "I suspected a poisoned dart!"
"If it was a dart, what happened to it?"
He shrugged: "Maybe some sort of ingenious dissolving whatnot."
Swinburne applauded. "Bravo, Trounce!" he cried. "You mean like the murderous dagger fashioned from ice!"
"Quite so," the detective agreed. "Exactly that!"
"It's an interesting theory," I said, picking up the pocket watch. "But from where was the dart shot? The door and window are locked."
"Chimney sweep!" Trounce offered, glancing at the fireplace. "Came down the flue and used a blowpipe."
"Ha!" Swinburne shrilled, excitedly.
"Stick your finger in the embers, see if they're warm," I suggested. Trounce did so and was rewarded with a blister. "Blast!" he cursed.
"So the fire was doubtlessly burning when our man died; hence, no boy in the chimney."
I noticed an odd seam in the body of the watch. I was being cautious; holding the timepiece gingerly with my fingernails. Held normally, its base would sit against the base of my palm. The ball of my thumb and three of my fingers would grip its sides. Carefully, I applied pressure to those areas. Nothing happened. Trounce and Swinburne were watching me as I turned the watch, considering it from every angle.
"Prentiss died around midnight," I said. "This timepiece stopped working at ten o'clock." I gripped the winder and tried to turn it. "Yet," I noted, "it is fully wound."
I turned to my assistant. "Algy, would you take out your watch, please?"
He did as instructed.
"Look at it and imagine it has stopped. Pretend that you have wound it up but it still isn't working. What do you do?"
Swinburne raised his watch to his ear. "Confound the pesky thing!" he cried, melodramatically, then shook it. He looked at it again, and tapped its glass with a fingernail. He smiled at me and shrugged. I nodded, then imitated each of his actions. When I tapped the glass, the thing that I had half expected occurred. With a click and a whirr, a little spike shot out of the watch's base. It retracted in an instant. "By Jove!" Trounce yelled. "Fiendish!"
"And deadly!" Swinburne added.
I raised my eyebrows and said: "Gentlemen, I venture to suggest that the murderer is a Technologist!"
End of Chapter 1
The investigation is continued on Twitter @StrangeAffairs
October 28, 2010
From the Case Journals of Sir Richard Francis Burton: THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF THE CROSS-CHANNEL GRASSHOPPER
Burton & Swinburne in THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF THE CROSS-CHANNEL GRASSHOPPER is currently being recounted on Twitter. Every 30 tweets or so, I shall post the story so far (with amendments if necessary) here.
Chapter 1: The Dead Engineer
Detective Inspector Trounce is investigating a curious murder. A businessman was found dead in his study, horribly blue and swollen. Poison! But how was it administered?
The man, Cuthbert Prentiss, had locked himself inside the room. He took no drink and no food in with him. His landlady is minded that her master had been acting oddly this past week. That he locked himself in his study seems to support this. As Trounce observed: "It appears that Prentiss knew himself to be in danger. Why? And from whom?"
I shall have to visit the morgue.
The squealing from outside signals that Swinburne has arrived. He always argues with cab drivers. He's loathe to pay more than a shilling.
"Algy," I tell him. "Will you never learn that the cost of a cab journey is calculated by the distance travelled?"
"Nonsense!" he shrieks.
We take a brandy to steel ourselves for the ordeal ahead. I must confess that morgues never fail to unnerve me. Algy has no such reluctance. He simply enjoys brandy. He empties his glass in an instant and looks over my shoulder while I write in my journal.
"Your assiduous scribbling is admirable, but, Richard, must you note everything?" he asks.
"I fear so," I grumble. "It is a mania of mine. Besides, these notes may prove useful."
"Then order the blessed entries!" he exclaims. "Number them, at least!"
It's a good point. I have the habit of writing on anything at hand. If I number everything, then I can at least arrange my notes properly when I glue the scraps into my journal. Why did I not think of that before?
I don my overcoat and top hat, retrieve my cane, and with a farewell to Mrs Angell, Swinburne and I step out into a London pea-souper. The weather is appalling. Fortunately, it is never so bad that the city's cabbies cease to ply their trade. We wave down a steam hansom.
"To Chelsea Morgue, driver!" I cry.
"Are yer sick o' life, guv'nor?" he quips. "These blessed peculiars gives everyone the gripes!"
The cabby pulls a lever and the steam-horse gives a shudder and a cough and a growl. The hansom lurches into the road. We are on our way!
According to Trounce, Cuthbert Prentiss was one of a group of five engineers who've been working on a new type of insect-based vehicle. The Eugenicists are growing grasshoppers to an absolutely phenomenal size. The Engineers kill the insects and scrape out each carapace. They fit into the empty shell a powerful clockwork mechanism and a number of specially designed passenger seats. The vehicle is wound up. The driver pulls a lever. The spring mechanism is released with tremendous force and the grasshopper leaps more than two miles into the air. Once at its optimum altitude, its wings open and it begins a long descent. Its initial jump and consequent landing are extremely abrupt. Passengers, though, are cocooned inside specially designed seats that cushion them against the shocks. The intention is that the grasshopper contraptions will provide an inexpensive, and fast, ferry service across the English Channel.
It is a typically odd Technologist scheme and does little to assuage my conviction that the caste is filled with deranged lunatics.
Swinburne finds the whole idea hilarious. "My hat!" he screeches. "What do they call the blessed things? Channel Hoppers?"
"As a matter of fact," I reply, "yes, just that."
His squeals of amusement cause the cabby to stop and ask if we're quite all right.
We continue our journey. It is three o'clock. The sun cannot penetrate the fog. Gas lights struggle against the oppressive gloom. A dark snow is falling; ash and soot mixed with ice. They call it the "blacks." When the fog is this dense, one must wear a scarf over the mouth else suffocate.
The hansom jerks to a halt. Its engine barks and lets loose a tremendous hiss.
"Right you are, guv'nor!" the driver calls. "The morgue!"
We disembark and Swinburne fishes a shilling from his waistcoat pocket. I hurriedly push him aside and pay the driver myself. I have no desire to complete every cab ride with my assistant's customary histrionics, so I always nip him in the bud before he ignites. The cabby points at a darker patch of fog. "That's the mortuary there, guv'nor."
"Would you wait for us?" I ask.
"Certainly, sir," he replies.
Algy and I enter the building and are shown by a clerk to the Cold Room. Detective Inspector Trounce is there, with another man. "Hallo, chaps! This is Doctor Straightfellow."
The mortician is anything but straight. His body is horribly twisted by rickets. His knees are bent inwards at an almost 90 degree angle, meaning he has to walk with his thighs spread out awkwardly. His back is curved, too. By God, we claim to be civilised! That our children are so undernourished their bodies warp like this! Civilisation is a fiction!
Straightfellow greets us and indicates a shrouded form on a slab. "Your cadaver, gents."
"You've examined the corpse, doctor?" I ask.
"I have," he answers. "Poisoned, without a doubt. Look!"
He pulls aside the shroud. The body of Cuthbert Prentiss is revealed. The engineer is blue, mottled and swollen. I recognise the state immediately. "Cobra venom," I declare.
"What?" Trounce cries. "How?"
"Not via the snake itself," says Straightfellow. He grips the corpse's right hand and forces open the stiff fingers. "Look at this."
I take out my jeweller's magnifier and peer at the palm. In its middle, there is a single round puncture wound. "Intriguing! Did you find the cause of this, Trounce?"
The Scotland Yard man shakes his head. "No. And we searched the study from top to bottom."
The investigation is continued on Twitter @StrangeAffairs
Scrivener 2.0
Scrivener 2.0 is now installed on my iMac and it's a game changer. Not only are its new features fantastic, but syncing with Dropbox means I can now work on my novels ANYWHERE via desktop, iPad or iPhone without any inconvenience. Simply fantastic.
October 27, 2010
The Case Journal of Sir Richard Francis Burton
October 24, 2010
The Mac Writing Setup
Further to the last post, the setup will transform completely in a few days, when Scrivener 2.0 is released. The new version includes the ability to sync files to Dropbox, which means, at last, I'll be able to work solely in Scrivener on the iMac while using PlainText on the iPad and iPhone.
I've been using iThoughts HD on the iPad a lot recently, too. I't's an excellent mindmapping tool, and I find mindmapping extremely useful in the early stages of plotting a novel.
October 21, 2010
All Synced Up
For a while now I've been trying to find a way to keep my files synced across multiple platforms. SIMPLENOTE seemed to provide the answer. I used NOTATIONAL VELOCITY and JUST NOTES on my iMac and the Simplenote app on my iPod and iPhone and it all worked just fine.
The problem was that Simplenote stores all the files somewhere up in the cloud; there were no easily accessible files on my computer, which meant that if Simplenote broke, I'd not be able to access my stuff. Nasty.
So I turned to DROPBOX. Big advantage: IAWRITER is a fantastic app for the iPad. For a writer, its keyboard extensions are priceless. PLAINTEXT is good too. What I couldn't find, though, was a decent dropbox enabled text editor for the iMac. A bizarre situation ... you'd think there'd be loads of 'em, huh?
Then I realised that, since Dropbox stores its files on my local drive, I didn't need an editor that uploaded straight to it! Doh!
So I started looking for a suitable editor. I wanted something that gave me a list of files in a sidebar, as well as a decent editing area. I also wanted minimalist interface. BBEDIT came close. It has loads of features but if you don't need them you can turn them off and get it down to a nice clean window. But I'm picky and I'd rather have a sidebar than a drawer.
Then I found SMULTRON which, though no longer in development, is still available for download. Wow, I liked this one. I could reduce the interface to little more than a frame, I could set the colour of the background, and it has FULL SCREEN MODE! Yay!
So now I work with SMULTRON on the iMac and IAWRITER on the iPad and PLAINTEXT on the iPod and iPhone. The file lives on my hard drive but is synced up and down with dropbox, meaning that whatever device I work on, when I move to another, all the changes and updates are present and correct. COOL!
October 18, 2010
The Reviews So Far
Okay, so I've tried a number of blogging sites and haven't really got on with any of them. Either they were too time consuming to set up or they lacked the "blog on the go" features I wanted. This, though, looks promising, so here we go.
An intro: I am Mark Hodder, author of the Burton & Swinburne novels; currently THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF SPRING HEELED JACK (Pyr US, Snowbooks UK) and THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CLOCKWORK MAN (due in March 2011 from Pyr and Snowbooks). The third title is currently EXPEDITION TO THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON, though I'm regarding that as a "holding title" for the moment. I may change it.
I began EXPEDITION TO THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON last week and have around 15,000 words written so far. As with the previous two stories, it is set in the late 1800s ... mostly. (?) (?) (!!!)
These three novels fit into the STEAMPUNK genre, though there's a serious strand of sci-fi running through them, along with detection and a smudge of comedy.
THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF SPRING HEELED JACK has earned some seriously good reviews (yay!). Here are a few:
Little Red Reviewer
Fantasy Book Critic
Night Owl
Mel's Words on Words
Fantasy Magazine
AstroGuyz
SF Reviews
Rob Will Review
Examiner
