Lou Morgan's Blog, page 9

Bring the Joy

I have flu. Yay. I made it as far as the afternoon of Christmas Day, and then it sideswiped me. By ten o’clock, I was hunched in the corner of the sofa, wrapped in three blankets and making pathetic “meep” noises. I was also watching THE BOURNE LEGACY, and I can tell you I have never empathised so deeply with a character as I did with Aaron Cross, sweating his virus-mojo out in Manilla. Brother, I was right there with you.

Anyway. Viruses and chems and festive woes aside, I wanted to say thank...

Clarence

[WARNING! SERIOUS POST KLAXON!]

It being very, very nearly Christmas, I’ve done what a lot of people do at some point in December.

I’ve just watched It’s A Wonderful Life.

I’ve not seen it that many times – twice, I think – but I have a huge degree of fondness for it… partly because it’s surprisingly dark for what’s usually called a “feel-good” film – after all, any film where a potential suicide attempt is crucial to the plot would be a hard sell as “fluffy”.Maybe it’s not really that surprisin...

The Nice List

My WordPress dashboard is snowing. That can only mean one thing: it must be nearly Christmas.

Look, I can’t help it – and if you think that’s a bad way of judging the start of the holiday season, you should meet Other Half. He declares it to be officially Christmas when one of his online forums puts up the twinkly fairy lights gif around the border of the page. So, you know…

Anyway. Christmas is rolling towards us like a tinsel-strewn juggernaut, and this means it’s prime festive shopping seaso...

The end of the Rebellion

The reason I’ve been so quiet lately? Oh, nothing. It’s just… well.

REBELLION’s finished, at least in first draft and has survived its first reading by Other Half.

And now I’m all:

It is only the first draft, and there’s lots of work still to do – but even so, it feels like victory.

This will doubtless turn to utter despair, and reaching for the gin once my editor Jon gets his hands on it (and that’s just his reaction…) but at just over 100,000 words in this version, it’s by far the longest thing...

The Next Big Thing

It finally got me. I’ve been tagged in the Next Big Thing meme (shout-out to Danie Ware, Paul Kane and Elspeth Cooper, all of whom cornered me and memed me into submission, as has the lovely Janet Edwards).

The idea is to answer a few questions on whatever it is you (the Tag-ee? The Be-tagged?) happen to be working on and then to pass on the tag to five other people. Think of it like Ringu, only with writers crawling through your computer screen.

Lovely mental image, isn’t it? Anyway. Let’s get...

Pledge & Turn

… and, of course, “Prestige.”

(Thank god for that. Leaving it out makes me feel like I want to sneeze.)

And the prestige is, of course, MAGIC: AN ANTHOLOGY OF THE ESOTERIC & ARCANE

Watch closely…

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Pretty, isn’t she? And it’s not just the cover that’s pretty: the interior design is also gorgeous, making this one of the nicest-looking anthologies I’ve seen. And I’m not just saying that because I’m biased. Promise.

MAGIC is released this week, with a special launch event at Foyles in Charing Cross Roa...

Ink-redible

I had a teacher at school who would refuse to mark anything not written in blue ink. Fountain pen, mind: never ballpoint. Biros were banished – I can still remember trying to get to grips with changing the cartridge in my first fountain pen during my first week there. I was six years old, and it did not end well.

Likewise, at university we had a lecturer who was philosophically opposed to black ink; it reminded him, he said, of a “geriatric spider, crawling to its death”. He may or may not hav...

FantasyCon 2012

This weekend sees the annual convention of the British Fantasy Society, FantasyCon, which is heading back to Brighton for the second year in a row. It’s a hugely friendly event with authors, editors, agents, readers and publishers all getting together to spend time together. And there’s a disco. And bars which never seem to close…

I’ve been involved in the background of this one for the first time, helping to organise the reading slots which will be running from the Friday afternoon through to...

The Rough Guide to Hell

I hadn’t intended to (a) pop back on here quite so quickly, or(b) turn this into an unofficial “Hell Tourist Information Week” (which sounds so Screwtape-y that I refuse to believe Lewis didn’t already do it), but sometimes you find stuff that’s just a bit too cool to leave out.

So, following yesterday’s video of the door to hell, I now give you your map.

The Topography of Hell.

They say there’s a different version of hell for every soul who ever lived, and that may well be true. Medieval artist...

Rue Morgue & the Door to Hell

I’ve been a bit sporadic on here of late – mostly because I’m seriously getting into REBELLION, the follow-up to BLOOD AND FEATHERS at the moment. So that means you’ll see less of me online. In theory. I still waste far too much time on Twitter, partly because it’s become my office watercooler, really, and if I didn’t have that I’d be reduced to just talking to the cat. Or possibly waiting for him to talk back to me.

Meantime, you can find me talking about BLOOD AND FEATHERS, Buffy and many ot...