David Gullen's Blog, page 25

Friday Flash – Flash / Slash Flash!

All their friends said they were so like, chalk and cheese. One of them wasn’t even real. It was a miracle they ever met at all.

What did they have in common? Flash admired talent but he really wasn’t into rock. And Slash, that clean and wholesome lifestyle just wasn’t his thing. Maybe that was it, that opposites attract. One was the south pole, the other the north.

There was certainly something.

Slash ran his hand over Flash’s firm pecs, down over the rippling muscles of his abdomen. Down.

Flash gasped.

‘Hmm,’ Slash growled. ‘Looks like Gordon’s alive.’

 ~

This one’s a standalone, nothing to do with the ‘Beyond the Streets’ sequence. Once I’d thought of something called  ‘Flash slash Slash flash’ I just had to write it.

Top Ten Writing Tips #2 – Writer’s Block is Your Friend

There’s a lot of opinion on writer’s block, whether its exists, how to get past it, what the whole writing life thing is all about. Here’s some, and here’s some more. Not much is about why we get stuck and what it’s for. You don’t hear people talking about Bus-driver’s block or Hairdresser’s block, if Writer’s block doesn’t exist why do we spend so much time talking about it? Here’s my take* on it:

If you think about the creative process, or the problem solving process, the imagination in general, it’s quite hard to say where that initial burst of ideas that sets you on a project comes from. Pwimula Nesbytt and the Underground Empire! It’s got subterranean airships!! Battle Moles!! I’m so excited I’m hyperventilating!!!

Later on you work those first ideas up into some kind of structure – characters, story, situation, you develop and expand and embellish using your active mind, memories, imagination and current fascinations. Maybe in some great burst of creative energy, or over days or weeks, but that’s later. For me it feels like those first brilliant thoughts have been handed to me on a plate, fully formed and ready to use – a present from my subconscious mind.

General advice is that you shouldn’t listen to the little voices in your head. It’s good fine and sensible advice and writers should learn to ignore it when those little voices are your characters and they are asking certain questions.

Pwimula and Bjorn walked into a room, empty except for a table and two chairs. They sat down, Bjorn put his hands on the table. ‘What do we do now?’

Bjorn isn’t talking to Pwimula, he’s talking to you, and you’d better be listening because he’s asking for help.

It’s the same with Writer’s Block. The fact that you are stuck, or slowing down, struggling with those damned words like a sumo wrestler wading thigh-deep in molasses, is that you’re not where you should be.

The boys in the basement, the gals in the garret, however you imagine your subconscious mind, have been trying to telling you you’ve taken a wrong turn. You wouldn’t listen, so they’ve put the brakes on, they’re trying to get your hands off the shovel and stop you digging.

Think of it this way and getting stymied is a gift. It’s a positive thing and it will be transient. Think about where you are and where you should be. If you’re like me you’ll probably have to hack out some pages but you’ll get back to where you were meant to be and off you’ll go. Writer’s block doesn’t exist. Writer’s block is your imaginary friend.

Next week: Writers Write.

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*I’m just talking about the writing process here. There are many other reasons why writing can be difficult. Life can bowl you a real googly sometimes.

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Top Ten Writing Tips #1 – Tell the Reader Everything

Gaie Sebold recently posted her 10 Top Tips for Writers on Pete Sutton’s excellent BRSBKBLOG. Reading it (and you should, there’s some great advice there) I realised my Top Ten would be very different. Not better, just different. Different people focus on different things, my priorities start elsewhere and what’s in the foreground of my mind is different to hers.

Ideas become inspiration, I thought I’d write my own top ten. And in the interest of keeping it different, I’ll write about a different one each week.

1. Tell the Reader Everything.

I first came across this as a quotation attributed the Kurt Vonnegut and I had to think about it for a while before I properly understood what it meant.

What it definitely doesn’t mean is that you should overload your writing with irrelevant detail. Character descriptions don’t need to detail the colour of their shoe laces, the last time they shaved or whether their earlobes are free or attached. Neither do you need to mention every item in a room (even if it is the laboratory of Pwimula Nesbytt, explorer and pilot of the Underground Zeppelin, MoleHusband), nor the height of every mountain in a range, or the last time our hero went to the toilet or ate prawn vindaloo.

Stick to the Point.

OK, so Stick to the Point is another rule for other circumstances, but we’re not going to go into that here. I mention it because I’m Telling You Everything. Everything I need to say to make my point. Which I am sticking to.

Great. Now I’ve got eleven top ten tips. Maybe this isn’t as easy as I thought.*

Focus.

What Tell the Reader Everything does mean is this: Tell the Reader everything they need to know at that instant in the story.  This also does not mean you should give away clues before their time, a reveal is a reveal and timing is everything.  And that’s pretty much the point. This is a need to know situation. When the Reader needs to know, tell them.

So if the colour of a character’s socks genuinely is important, say so. Say it in good time, so when we reach the Great Reveal at the climax of the story: ‘I knew it was Mowby Dick, he wore white socks!’ we can all nod wisely and think I knew that , or, that clever author – all the clues were there and I never spotted them.

To put it another way, never deliberately withhold information . Frankly, don’t be a smartarse and don’t try and prove to the reader you are cleverer than they are by pulling a rabbit out of a hat at the last minute. Especially if you’ve never even mentioned the hat.

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*So while I’m thoroughly off topic I’ll just mention that some people love lists. They adore lists, they really do, and would love to read a list of every single thing in Ms Nesbytt’s laboratory.

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Friday Flash – Copping a Feel

‘Carl, please come down stairs.’

Please. That was something he didn’t often hear.

His stepfather’s voice echoed in the stairwell, ‘Your mother and I need to talk to you.’

He’d known this was coming. This was how good times always ended. Family. What a word.

‘Now, Carl.’

Everything he needed was in his pockets.

Carl opened the window and climbed onto the sill. There was sadness in this new sense of freedom, he wanted something but not this. Never having had it, he still ached for it.

He looked back at his room. Then he was gone.

~

#25 in the ‘Beyond the Streets‘ sequence, a series of 100-word flash fiction.

Review – Surface Detail, by Ian Banks

Two alliances of civilisations are fighting a virtual war over artificial hells. Depending on your viewpoint the right, or the wrong, side is winning. Needless to say, the Culture has an interest in the outcome.

Bank’s penultimate Culture novel, is a hugely enjoyable and inventive story, the writing is exuberant, the story intricate, by turns intimately personal and sweepingly grand. The bad people are exceptionally bad, the Culture warships are the unstoppable juggernauts we know and love – caring, sharing machines of ultimate obliterations, the plot is vast and finely manged, and all the numbers have lots and lots of zeros in the significand.

Sometimes it doesn’t entirely make sense, a couple of plot points are simply gags, but I didn’t care. Banks was having some serious fun and as a result so did I.

Completely and thoroughly recommended.

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Friday Flash – Ayesha Wants In

Ayesha and Gould looked down at the typewriter on the hallway carpet. After all these years it was still here.

‘When I was a child I thought it was normal,’ Gould said. ‘I thought everyone’s parents were like that.’

Ayesha looked at the two bedroom doors facing each other across the hallway. ‘So they never spoke to each other?’

‘No.’

‘They just typed messages on this?’

‘That’s right.’

Ayesha bent down and tugged at the paper in the typewriter.

‘Don’t,’ Gould said.

Ayesha winked at him. ‘Famous last words?’

Gould had his gun out. ‘Just fucking don’t.’

~

No. 24 in the ‘Beyond the Streets‘ sequence, a series of 100-word flash fiction.

Friday Flash – Shop Me Deadly

He was uncertain, she was beautiful and flirtatious. His evening went better than ever before.

In his mind the moment came. She swept him with her eyes from head to foot. ‘All right.’

Inside his room he relaxed. He took off his jacket, loosened his tie. ‘A drink?’

She waited in the centre of the room. ‘Let’s get the arrangements out of the way. Then we can have fun.’

Arrangements? It dawned on him she was talking about money for services.

‘I thought you liked me?’

‘Jeez, Carl. Nobody likes you.’

‘How do you know my name?’

~

#23 in the ‘Beyond the Streets‘ sequence, a series of 100-word flash fiction.

Shopocalypse - Free Download

You can grab the first 100 pages of Shopocalypse from my main web site:

http://davidgullen.com/?p=642

Enjoy!

“…huge, enthralling, packed with bold ideas and genre-shattering extrapolations … Seriously, you need this book.” – Mike Carey

“…clever, dark and often very funny satire on rapacious capitalism.” – Chris Beckett

“Subversive. Hilarious. Touching. Brilliant.” – Jaine Fenn

“A sharp and witty take on the perils of consumerism. To be honest, it was fairly terrifying — very believable.” – Francis Knight

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Shopocalypse – Free Download

You can read the first 100 pages of Shopocalypse here.

If you enjoy it you can get the full paperback or e-book here.

“…huge, enthralling, packed with bold ideas and genre-shattering extrapolations … Seriously, you need this book.” – Mike Carey

“…clever, dark and often very funny satire on rapacious capitalism.” – Chris Beckett

“Subversive. Hilarious. Touching. Brilliant.” – Jaine Fenn

“A sharp and witty take on the perils of consumerism. To be honest, it was fairly terrifying — very believable.” – Francis Knight

~

Interview with Daniele Serra, cover artist

Daniele Serra is an award-winning Italian illustrator whose work has been published in Europe, Australia, United States and Japan. He has worked for DC Comics, Image Comics, Cemetery Dance, Weird Tales magazine, PS Publishing and many other publications. A recent commission was the brilliant cover for my short story collection, Open Waters. Daniele kindly agreed to answer a few of my questions, so here wo go:

Hi Daniele,  welcome! Please tell us a bit more about yourself.

I am a 36 year old guy, I live in Sardinia, an island in the Mediterranean, I’m married to a beautiful girl and I have three cats. I have a nice collection of b-movies and gothic books. I make a very quiet life and routine, and a full-time job as an illustrator.

A writer’s training is often highly informal. Did you study art and painting at school or college? 

My course of study is very different from what I am doing now. I studied electronics, so little akin to illustration. I am mainly self-taught although I have attended two courses, one comic and one of oil painting, which I think are essential to me and have had a great importance. Before trying to work seriously in the field of illustration, I worked for seven years as a graphic designer, that has allowed me to develop professionalism that I consider basic to turn a passion into a job.

I know your work through your book cover illustrations. What other commissions have you done?  How did you come to work with DC Comics for example?

As well as working as a comic artist and illustrator I also accept commissions for storyboard and characters design. Anything that can be illustrated interests me, especially comics, which I think are a beautiful art form. Being able to tell a story has always been something that interested me, but I’m no good as a writer so working with a writer I have the chance to tell a story through my drawings. I had the opportunity to work for DC Comics for a web comic out a few years ago, a very nice experience that allowed me to grow very professionally, I hope it will happen again in the future. Now I have several projects for comics with writer friends that I hope will see the light in 2014, a lot of covers, and I hope to do some project staff with whom I would like to try my hand.

To my untutored eye the style and lighting of some of your work reminds me of the Impressionists in general and Turner in particular. How did your own individual style arise and develop?

Thank you David, I love Turner and the Impressionists , as well as Schiele, Goya and many others. I do not know honestly if I have a personal style, I start from the belief that we are what we see, hear, read , and mine is just an elaboration of something that already exists . I never put a table thinking of working in a certain style because I do not have considerable studies behind it that will allow me to use different techniques. My approach to design is very instinctive, difficult to know exactly what will come out at the end of a job. Such as for your cover, everything that I had in mind was a rough sketch with the right balance of elements and spaces. Colours, lights and small details have come to the moment, while I was working.

However, I always studied my masters (like those mentioned) reference, that have allowed me to arrive at solutions rather than technical I would say that emotional. Hope it become increasingly evident in my work. But the road is very long!

I see commissions such as covers as interpretive work – creating an image that complements the mood and style of the book. Given a free hand what subjects and themes fascinate you?

I think the cover has an important and sensitive role in the book, in some ways it is the first emotion that gives the reader a book, so I feel very empowered in this way, and I understand how the authors take us that my work is done on best as possible, that’s why I try to better interpret any subject, but my favourites are definitely the most obscure, arcane and with a sort of romantic decadence. Much also depends on the publisher and the writer, how accurate is their idea and how much space I have to play. As I said before, I always try to work on emotion than that to stylistic perfection, I very much need to communicate my emotions, perhaps because I’m shy and I do not talk, the design is a way for me to communicate what I feel and what I dream.

The support, friendship and advice I’ve had from my writers group has been invaluable. Is there any equivalent for artists?

I think so, I have artist friends with whom I like to exchange opinions, being able to compare is something very important. It’s one of the downsides of living on an island, I’d have a chance to go see more conventions, exhibitions, but the travel costs are very high. Ultimately I am not part of a specific community of artists, but this is mainly due to the fact that I’m very introverted and I struggle a lot to speak my mind. In addition, most of the artists I know are not Italian and my English is not very good…

Your art book, Veins & Skulls is just out -  a collection of original work. How did this project come about?

It’s born this summer thanks to the editor Paul Fry who proposed to me the idea of ​​creating an art book with my work. To start it was  supposed to be a collection of covers that I’ve done in recent years, but then we decided to do something completely new with a concept that could bind all the illustrations in this book. It was a job that lasted more than 3 months and finally got the art book was released just recently. I am very happy because it is a work that I care particularly, I have always worked in tandem with writers and this is my first job solely mine. The concept is right in the title: “Veins” to represent the life that flows and “Skulls” which identifies death. A comparison between life and death, with some flashes of eroticism very diffused.

Are there any other projects we can look forwards to? Will there be any exhibitions of your work?

I currently have several projects in progress including some comics that I hope to see the light soon. For the rest I always do a lot of covers and a dream: to illustrate Marlowe’s Faust. Also, I’m planning some exhibitions in Italy, we’ll see …

Thank you!

Thanks for your kindness David!

~

In 2012 Daniele won the British Fantasy Society ‘Best Artist’ award.

Veins & Skulls is available from SST Publications

You can read a review of his book here:

Daniele’s own web site: http://www.multigrade.it/

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