Lou Morgan's Blog, page 15

Ego, Ego, Ego

One of my mad-dash self-pimping posts, this. If you're averse to the odd spot of self-promotion and shoes with goldfish in the heels* then this is probably the time to look away…

If you're still here, that's good. This was worth sticking around for.

Last week, Solaris announced the line-up for their autumn anthology (you might well have read "End of the Line" or "House of Fear", which were released in 2010 and 2011 respectively). This year, the theme – and the title – is Magic.

Full details...

No Exit to Kansas

Settle down, everyone. Teacher's back in the room. I hope there was no messing around while I was gone–I'll be checking the cupboards later, you know.

I've been hamstrung time-wise by (a) two family birthdays, (b) yet another Random Virus, Probably Brought Home By Small Boy, And Which Required Tea, Stroking Of Hair and General Soothing Noises to see it off, and (c) finishing a book.

The latter has seen me spending the last few days getting up at somewhere between 5 and 6 in the morning to...

Generation Kill

I don't watch an awful lot of television these days – with one or two honourable exceptions, I tend to wait for big shows to make it onto dvd and blast my way through an entire series in a couple of weekends. I put it down to having an incredibly short attention sp… what was I saying?

Anyway. My latest discovery is twofold.

Firstly, that somewhere along the line, I've become quite a fan of modern war films.

This is something of a surprise to me–because however much I waffle on about guns–or...

Wonders & Marvels

I spent New Year's Eve with a superhero. No, really. And try not to make comments about Other Half–you'll only encourage him.

No, I finally got round to seeing Captain America: The First Avenger. And it was good.

 

 

So good, in fact, that I think it's just edged out Iron Man as my second-favourite of the Marvel superhero movies. (The latter lost the top spot to Thor pretty much as soon as I realised Thor is essentially Henry V with +1 added hero-muscles and less mud… Although now I think about i...

Horrors & Joys

[Note: you may wish to start a little background music here. I believe it's traditional at moments like these to opt for this, or if we're going a little more contemporary, we could opt for this...]

We made it to New Year's Eve.

You hear that, world?

This has been one of the strangest years I've ever known.

It was the year I lost my mother, completely out of the blue and which knocked me so far sideways it was like I'd hitched a ride on a wrecking ball. It was the year of The House Sale That...

Burning the Clocks

Yes, yes. I know. I give you a pretty picture to look at and then I disappear for a fortnight. Sorry. I have been a bit rubbish, haven't I?

If it's any consolation, I have spent most of the last two weeks running around like a cat with its tail on fire, stopping only to whimper quietly in a corner. I'm knackered. I've worked nowhere near as much as I'd have liked (although this morning's attempt at research has landed me on a website with a very scary url beginning www.secretservice… so if I s...

Angel Face

So, I have a new favourite page on the internet.

It's this one.

Yes, kids. That is the "Blood & Feathers" page on Amazon's UK site (what's that? You want to see the US one? Oh, go on then... I like that one too.) You may have seen it before. Perhaps you have. In that case, you should go and look again. Seriously, because I'm worried that if I take my eyes off it for a second, it'll scuttle off somewhere and hide. And sooner or later, I'm going to need to blink.

I have a cover. And it's, like...

Death's Head Cha-Cha-Cha

Winner of today's "ZOMG, that's the most terrifying thing I've seen since I looked in the mirror first thing" prize is this:

Yes, it looks a bit like a skull, which is quite scary enough.

However, it's even scarier than you think: that's a photo of a nuclear explosion, one millisecond after detonation.

I'm pretty convinced that this is as close to it as I ever want to get.

According to the Gizmodo article which brings us this horror, this fireball is 60-some feet high, and was taken in the...

Dem Bones

Interesting news culled from The Londonist this morning (yes, I may well be a Brightonian now, but as I've long said, cut me & I'll probably bleed London) – it appears that the London Dungeon have been harbouring a fake among their skeletons.

As in… a fake-fake.

As in… a real skeleton.

Alarmingly, it may even have been there since the dungeon opened 30-odd years ago, passing as an extremely good reproduction.

Hrrmpph. Shudder. Dislike. (Mostly, admittedly, because I dread to think what they've...

Zombie Safe-House

We live in strange days. It's true. We have many things to worry about: the economy, the state of the planet, the near-constant assault on our ears by X-Factor finalists…

But you can consider one thing to be taken care of: come the zompocalypse, if you need somewhere to hide, you've got options.

Ladies and gentlemen. For your most apocalyptic appreciation… the winners of the 2011 Zombie Safe House competition.

Made. Of. Win.