David Gullen's Blog, page 17

A Long Time Ago, in an Office Far Away

Well, not that far actually. I think it was Uxbridge.

I recently posted on Facebook about my dislike of biros – not in an existential way, I just don’t like writing with them. They are scratchy harsh things and I’d rather use a pencil. or a fibre-tip, or a rollerball, and especially my lovely fountain pen. Anything but a biro. Though I would draw the line at quill and ink, that’s a bit fiddly for a quick shopping list.

I do all my story plotting and planning with pen and paper, and this is where my fountain pen gets most use. There’s something about the line between mind. brain, eye, hand, pen , and paper that works well for me when I’m thinking.

So what’s Uxbridge got to do with it?* Well, many years ago I worked for a well-known global oil corporation. They had biros everywhere and I took agin them. Whenever I went into my boss’s office I brought a biro with me and would leave it on his desk. This went on for a while. Weeks, months. Sometimes I needed to talk to him two or three times a day.

One day I was in there and he needed to write something down. He opened his desk drawer and inside it there were dozens and dozens of biros. Black, blue, a few red, a rare green. The draw was deep and it was rammed full of biros. He looked down at it in bewilderment, hand on brow. Then he looked at me and said, ‘I don’t understand where they all come from.’

So, Ken, in the unlikely event you read this, it was me and I’m sorry. But only a little bit.

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* What’s Uxbridge but a sweet old-fashioned notion?**

** Sorry.

A Sheath for my Axe

Last year I learned how to forge an axe head, tutored by the brilliant Nic Westermann at the Greenwood Guild. After two days of intensely hard work, learning to swing a sledgehammer with absolutely no holding back, discovering who the blacksmith really is*, and carving the handle, I had a hand axe to be proud of.

The axe is razor-sharp and has long needed a sheath for the head, so last night I decided to make one. After trying an over-complicated design I came up with something very simple and effective. Here’s the finished item, showing how the head neatly slots in, and the cardboard template I used.

When you’re making a simple sheath like this the template just needs to be about 5-10 mm bigger than the blade, depending on blade thickness.

And here it is fastened. A couple of scraps of 2mm leather, some dark brown dye, carved a little edge detail, punch the stitch holes, stitch with waxed cord, edge-burnished with gum tragacanth, a wipe with resolene, measure and punch and fit the snap fastener, and there you go.

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* Like many people I assumed it was the person swinging the sledge, but it is actually the one holding and turning the work on the anvil. The other guy is just muscle. We took turns.

Casting a Bronze-age Sword

This is what we did at the weekend! It was hard work but immensely satisfying. We traveled to the Bronze-Age Foundry in Wales, run by the amazingly talented David Chapman, sculptor, artists and bronze worker.

We used recycled copper from electric cables, which is very pure, and tin to make a 10% tin bronze mix. The copper is first heated over the flame to drive off water, as a steam burst can make the crucible erupt molten copper. Here’s the tin being added to the copper.

 

Here’s a bad picture of the copper being poured into a soapstone mould. Soapstone is excellent for casting, as it absorbs, stores and radiates heat evenly.

 

After a few minutes cooling the sword came out of the mould. Here is a stack of previously casted swords. Note the triangular sprue on the end of the hilt – first job is to cut that off with a hacksaw.

The sword we were making is a copy of one in the Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford, dated roughly between 1000-800 BCE, and found in the Thames near Limehouse

And the second job is to snip off the spare bronze along the blade edges. Like the sprue lumps all these little bits were carefully saved as they can be melted down again become part of another casting.

 

And here’s the cleaned and tidied casting, ready for the hard work – filing and polishing.

 

(We did cheat a bit with the edges.)

 

Then it was time for the main labor of the day – hours and hours of filing, smoothing with sandpaper, and polishing with finer and finer grades of wet&dry to make a mirror finish.

This was hard, hard work, and unlike the bronze-age workers, we did it the easy way.

Another job was fitting the oak wood hilt. This is made in two pieces, and is first seared onto the re-heated sword tang, to help seat it. The tang then has four holes drilled, and the hilt fastened with four headless copper rivets. Then the hilt is shaped – more filing and sanding! Finally – a wipe-over with linseed oil.

Here’s the wood being seared into the blade in a clamp.

And then it was more hours of sanding and polishing, working down the grades, all the way to wet&dry 1200, then wire wool, and finally polish. Then an inspection for scratches, and start again. And again.

The reason for so much polishing was to remove the file marks and give the blade the appearance of a true bronze-age sword.

And it was worth it. they look beautiful:When all that was done, we gave the edges a deadly edge.

The blades are roughly 18″ / 45cm long, and the swords weigh 1lb 6oz / 644g.

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A New Anthology Arrives

Blimey, looking at all this! I’m proud and delighted to bring this slim anthology of stories, poetry and collodion photography into the light of day.

The Redensive Epiphanies of Pouty McNavel contains stories and haiku by BFS-nominated Gaie Sebold, *Helen Callaghan, Sumit Dam, Chuck Dreyer, Troy McClure, Sarah Ellender, Melanie Garrett, yours truly, and with photography by the award-winning Gordon Fraser.

Two print editions, an e-book, a launch party to plan. Drop me a line if you want a copy to review. (ebook pref)

More to come. Until then:

McNavel:

Victim or perpetrator, woman and man,

She’s on a journey, he’s on a quest.

Doing what we all do – trying to understand.

It’s just beyond his grasp; she’s knows it’s round the next corner.

~

* Helen’s thriller, Dear Amy, is published by Penguin this year.

Old Boots Like New

I get a lot of pleasure from refurbishing old things, bringing them back to life and making them usable again. When Gaie told me she was considering throwing away her old white leather boots I wasn’t sure what I could do but wanted to have a go.

These boots are 1970s vintage. 40 years of life, including the final few spent in that rock-and-roll lifestyle of a fantasy writer, have taken their toll. The white leather was stained and faded, so were the soles, and the black flashing had faded to grey.

The biggest problem was a detached heel on the right boot. Strong latex glue is perfect for leather, but I’d not tried a shoe repair before. A good application, 24 hours to dry with some weight in the boot, and I had a strong repair that survived a short walk.

After cleaning and de-greasing with a leather dye-prep I made a dilute wash of Titanium White acrylic paint, and gave the boots three coats. The sole of the boot in the second picture gives a good idea of how faded and yellowed the boots had become.

The lovely white boot leather showed up the black leather flashing on the leg, and the trim on the sole, so that needed re-dying and painting too – both with oil-based black leather dye. In the picture the top stripe is redyed, the bottom one is not.

 

 

 

And here’s the finished article – spick and span, and gleaming white again. All ready for a few more years wear.

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Torosay Castle, and the Cthulhu Tree

Last summer I spent a week with some friends on Mull, a large and beautiful island off the west coast of Scotland. You reach it by ferry from Oban, home of one of my favourite whiskeys.

From Mull you can then take another, smaller ferry to fabled Iona, or an even smaller boat to the mythic Fingal’s cave, on Staffa. (Although there are plenty of pictures in this post these links take you to more.)

Mull’s main town is Tobermory, with its multi-colored buildings along the quay housing some great cafe’s, restaurants and pubs. It’s also the home of another good whisky, though this one is a little too peaty for me.

While we were there I saw a notice in the local village newsletter for an open day of Torosay Castle gardens. Torosay Castle is more of a baronial pile than fortified castle and as it is privately owned open days are rare. We decided to go, and it was indeed a rare treat. There were damp mossy glades, quiet ponds, enormous beds of nasturtiums, statues – and of course the Cthulhu tree.

 

The gardens had suffered some neglect but there was plenty of work now being done. Neglect in a garden is not always a bad thing. Some plants need a few years, or decades, or even centuries to come into their own and the formal part of the garden was still very lovely.

 

 

A really charming surprise was the avenue of statues, including this mysterious gentleman, and a very nice gardener. There was a pregnant lady, a dodgy drunkard, and many more. Whoever made them had a nice sense of humour and great attention to detail.

 

 

 

 

 

There was also a pair of rather dissipated lions. I rather liked them.

 

 

 

 

 

And finally – the Cthulhu tree! We found this wood-tentacled monster of a conifer* deep in loneliest part of the garden. This picture gives a good sense of scale. Deep in the silence of the gardens it was a spooky, powerful entity. No doubt many unholy rites and sacrifices have been performed on the blood-drenched soil under these looming branches.

Images of the tree and the diabolic worship I am convinced it must have once inspired (nay, demanded) stayed with me over the next few nights. They inspired some darkly disturbing fever dreams – stories I am unlikely to ever write for the sake of my – and your – sanity.

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* As a one-time botanist I’m mildly ashamed to say I don’t know exactly which conifer, but the I was always more interested in ferns than firs and pines. I think it might be a Thuja.

Yes, and the Rituals of Vinyl

Here’s my latest acquisition – £3.00 from Oxfam, and just about perfect condition. An album I have never previously owned. It’s quite nostalgic to flick through the record stacks again, my finger and thumb haven’t forgotten the technique.

I’ve been getting back into my vinyl collection recently, and enjoying rediscovering some music I only have in that format, like the Eurythmics first album, and Tangerine Dream.

I used to buy almost all my records second hand as a poor student back in the ’70s. I picked up some great music, including what is probably my most valuable album – Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter.

When CDs first arrived I loved how I could listen to an album all the way through without having to get up and turn the record over. Some months backup I overheard some younger music lovers talking about how much they liked vinyl, and in particular the ritual elements of playing a record. I was charmed they took so much pleasure in discovering technology I took for granted, That conversation made me that there is a ritual to playing a vinyl record. It also helped me remember how much I liked to hear that first bump and crackle of the needle as it touched down in the play-in groove, the faint echo you sometimes heard of the track to come – and having to get up half way through and turn it over.

I’m enjoying being interrupted again.

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Embryo novel – first peak.

No, not a novel about embryos (hmm, makes quick note), but here’s my 0.02 draft of a new SF novel. As usual this consists of a whole lot of little bits of paper laid out in rows according to Acts, scenes, events, and sometimes just little snatches of dialogue.

First rough notes are at the top, plus a quick sketch of an undergound city, and a few crumpled-up ideas that didn’t make the cut.

This is how I’ve always liked to work at this stage, which is somewhere between wild brain-storming and structured design. There’s something about the pen*/eye/paper thing that suits my mind well and lets the ideas flow.

I know a lot of people like Scrivener, and I’m sure it’s easier on the knees, but for now I’m doing things the way I like to do them. Tired now. I may eat some crisps.

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* A nice pen. A fountain pen.

The Force Awakens – Some Thoughts

This post will contain spoilers.

There’s a huge amount to like about the latest Star Wars film. It’s made with passion, the protagonists are real people, the humour works. So does the tension, and those moments of Star Wars senswunda as we see technology writ large – and in this case often in ruins – and people doing cool things with Powers of Their Mind Alone.

I was impressed by the humanisation of the stormtroopers, and the light touch with which it was done – a splash of blood, a reaching hand, that moment when the helmet is lifted away. One of the great failings of the action genre is the way it treats its human minions as disposable non-entities. The Force Awakens takes a few good steps into an interesting and more nuanced direction.

It was good to see some of the old hands back, and also good to see that their roles are sinking into the background where they belong. The new cast are strong, their characters engaging, the performances of Daisy Ridley and John Boyega are excellent, with some great secondary character roles too. This all works very well, and again – elements of humanisation of the ‘Dark-Side’ forces – jealousy, rivalry, humour, and on occasion common sense. These are all things that will draw me back to see the next film.

But woah, deja-vu! Half way through the film I’m starting to worry about the plot. That story-line…  Because we have a droid fleeing from the forces of darkness with information vital to the rebellion; a gigantic planet-busting death-star threatening the very home-base of the Forces of Good; and the only hope is a last desperate attack by a few good men and women to save the planet, the future. And yes, I am sure you have guessed it by now: the only way to destroy this bigger, badder, nastier planet-sized version of the Death Star is for a handful of X-wing fighters to mount a last-ditch attack along a heavily defended techno-gully to exploit the one point of vulnerability.

Yeah, it’s all done differently, but this is also disappointingly the same. Haven’t we been here before? Is Star Wars now locked into a gigantic and rather surreal multi-film version of Groundhog Day?

With all the multitude of things they got right with this film the screenplay comes across as simply lazy. Mark Hamill’s “Nothing’s changed really, well, everything has changed but nothing has changed…” quote now feels sadly prophetic. Was this really the very best storyline they could come up with? I think not. I enjoyed this film. It was good but it wasn’t great, and the story line was the reason. I don’t want to see the same again re-imagined, I want to see things I have never seen before, never dreamed of, things beyond my imagination like those that blew my mind when I saw the very first Star Wars all those years ago..

And it was so close, too.

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Open Waters – Now on Kindle!

My short story collection, ‘Open Waters’, from TheEXAGGERATEDPress, is now available as an e-book from all the usual places.

Open Waters has sixteen of my short stories, a mix of SF and fantasy and the strange, including four never previously published. It also features the same wonderfully moody artwork of Daniele Serra.

Like all e-books it’s modestly priced, so why get a copy? And if you do like what you read, a brief review will earn my undying gratitude – good reviews are the life blood of us struggling writers.

Enjoy!

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