Lou Morgan's Blog, page 5

The Hidden Mother

I stumbled across this piece on the BBC News site earlier, and… look, I get the idea. It’s about keeping the focus on the child as the subject, isn’t it? But blimey, if you don’t end up with some hella creepy photos as a result…

In Pictures: The Hidden Mother

Take a look and see what you reckon. And then try to forget what you saw. Brrr.

The Black Month

Breton tradition calls November “the Black Month”. It’s the month of the dead, set aside for remembering them. For appeasing them. It’s an old tradition which isn’t much kept these days – not now there’s light and heat and even the fiercest winds can be shut out. But still. The Black Month it remains.

It was this time of year that I heard Frankie (not his real name) had died. A few years ago now – and more since I’d seen him. I’ve talked about him before, I think – and probably with a differen...

Halloween in the Hall of Corpses

If you follow some of the Team Mushens (as in Juliet Mushens, our lovely agent. Yes, she has a posse. I know.) group on Twitter, you’ll probably have heard about the Halloween Shorts thing we’ve got running, arranged by the marvellous @mygoditsraining.

I say “we”, because I’m kind of cheating on this one and going slightly off-campus. While the others have all been terribly good and clever and written proper actual new short stories for Halloween, I’ve not had time and am horribly disorganised...

It’s Aaaalive!

I’ve been away. I know. There was Nine Worlds (which was brilliant, by the way, and if you weren’t there, why weren’t you?) and then I went on holiday and then I Just. Needed. A. Break. Which is fine. Because – let’s face it – I do go on a fair bit.

So. Hello. Still alive.

And what is it, you might ask, that has roused me from my rubbishness? Is it some fantastic piece of news?

Well, no.

It’s this.

The trailer for I, Frankenstein.

Right.

I’m conflicted.

There’s no two ways about this. I just don’t kn...

Nine Worlds

Next weekend (this weekend? I always come unstuck at the start of the week. Unstuck in time, unstuck in reality… all of that. Anyway. Moving on) I’ll be at the new Nine Worlds convention near Heathrow, along with many, many awesome people.

The convention runs from Friday afternoon through to Sunday, with pretty much everything you could think of on the programming somewhere: books, games, TV, film, cosplay… the works.

There are also live-gaming streams happening and – somewhere – I’m sure I saw...

All Un-Quiet on the Western Front

The last time I was heard from, I was about to venture up to EdgeLit 2 in Derby, wasn’t I? Did you think you’d lost me? No such luck…

EdgeLit was fun and very, very hot indeed. I got to hang out with some of my lovely writer-friends, which was brilliant, and I really enjoyed the panel on urban fantasy’s popularity, which covered everything from Buffy as the archetypal “kick-ass” female character (and the fact that she works as such because she has flaws: she may be able to put a vampire throug...

Edge-Lit 2

This weekend sees the return of the one-day Edge-Lit festival up in Derby (Edge Lit 2: Edgier!) and I’ll be dropping by to chat and take part in a couple of panels.

At 5pm, I’ll be involved in the “Urban Renewal: what makes urban fantasy so popular?” panel, along with Suzanne McLeod, Emma Newman, Freda Warrington and my Solaris stablemate Gaie Sebold; and after dinner I’ll be talking with Adam Christopher, Gary McMahon and Gavin Smith about where it all started on the “My first genre reads” pa...

Asylum Architecture

To get away from anything angel-related for a bit, I came across this fascinating article on asylum architecture yesterday.

I’ve mentioned it before, but because I’m interested in urbex, and stumbled across that fantastic photograph of the hall of Hellingly asylum which I now have on my wall, I’m completely enthralled by the idea of “institutional architecture”: that it has set constructs and conceits and can be used both for good and for ill.

I can’t remember where I read it now, so you’ll hav...

Rebellion breaks out in the UK

Running in very quickly (because you’re almost certainly sick of me going on about it) to say that BLOOD AND FEATHERS: REBELLION is officially out and in the wild in the UK, and you should now be able to find it in all places that books can be found – especially, seeing as it’s Independent Booksellers’ Week in the UK, in your local indie. Here’s the Hive link for Rebellion, if you’re wanting it…

I’ve been incredibly busy doing some guest posts and interviews for some lovely blogs, which I’m li...

Launching the Rebellion

It’s a strange thing, launching a book. A lovely strange thing – but a strange thing nonetheless. You see, when you launch it, you take it from being something that is yours (and, grudgingly, your editor’s. Grudgingly.) to something that belongs to… everybody.

Well. I say “everybody”. More truthfully it’s “anybody who cares to pick it up”, because let’s be sensible here.

So it’s exciting and nerve-wracking and brilliant and terrifying, and ohgod will I lose the power of speech halfway through m...