Ren Warom's Blog, page 20

Umwelt: Darkness Flows Like A River Episode 10: Parasols At Dawn

The atmosphere in the boxing parlour is taut as a whip, fit to crack. Alexander stands in the ring, fists poised, knuckles bruised and bloody. His chest heaves, bare of shirt and spattered with blood from his opponent’s flattened nose. He rubs his forehead across his forearm, never removing his gaze from his adversary; who dances from foot to foot, emanating not the quiet grace and coiled power of pugilistic sparring, but uncontrolled, ill-mannered rage.

Reginald Daxbough the third challenged...

Time Is Not My Friend.

Time is not my friend.

Given the standard 24-hour day I tend to, by distraction, discombobulation, digression, desertion and disaster, waste a good portion of the 16 odd hours I tend to spend awake. I’m just very good at being sidetracked…and delayed…and demanded elsewhere…and deplorably forgetful.

So, in all that, how do I do stuff at all?

I’d like to say, well, frankly I’d love to say, that is to say I’d be delighted to be able to say that I somehow, in some terribly heroic (or is that heroine...

Umwelt: Darkness Flows Like A River Episode 9: Silk-Dressed Savages

‘Come one, come all!’ The distant cry reverberates across the muddied grass as a straggling crowd moves toward the mouldering yellow and green stripes of the big top at the centre of the park. ‘Come to the Preternatural Circus. Such delights, such horrors, await your disbelieving eyes. Be charmed and terrified, astounded and repulsed, amazed and demoralised. Oh the sights we will show you!’

As the crowd approaches the big top, the owner of that distant voice appears from the darkness, suddenly...

Through A Dragonfly’s Wing

Arms trembling, stippled at the touch of air, I claw my way out of the dirt. As my head breaks the surface, the warm weight of sunlight causes the membranes to flick across my eyes. I see, through a dragonfly’s wing, the hazy faces of my sister Lera, my hyber-mate Rol. It is time for our days in the sun.

I pull my body upward. Flop onto the hard packed sides of the den, exhausted. The way out has taken us several hours, though our hands are strong and our bodies accustomed to the work, even af...

Subject & Object: The Critical Eye

I want to talk a little bit about subject and object. Or rather subjective and objective.

We cling a little too hard to the former at the expense (and often complete obliteration) of the latter.

See, sometimes our work just isn’t what we think it is. It’s good. It’s worthwhile even. But, if we were to be capable of stepping right back and viewing the work from a neutral distance, we’d be able to see the flaws.

Very little work (especially of the longer variety) is perfect first time out the gate...

Umwelt: Darkness Flows Like a River Episode 8: The Horror of Tranquillity

Silken, sly and deft as a cephalopod in a glass maze, it sneaks tendrils through the cracks. Wispy as smoke, with that same fluid congruence, those sneaking filaments flutter in cosmic breezes it longs to feel against its back. There is no room yet for escape, only for a tasting of the worlds. A scent. Noxious and intoxicating. Much as it loathes life it longs to be free of its prison, this confine that forces untold mass to miserable compression.

As it allows miniscule scraps of itself to flo...

AltFiction Gushery…

This past weekend I finally took the plunge and popped my con cherry at AltFiction. Re-locating this year from Derby to Leicester, under the management of the mighty Adele (@Hagelrat of twitter & a head Apoc Girl) and her team, it was held at the Phoenix Digital Arts Centre, which is a lovely venue; modern, easy to navigate, with a great café/bar.

I arrived late to Leicester and was therefore (typically) late for my first workshop, Mark Chadbourn’s ‘The Business of Writing’ but (and huge thank...

A bit of old Weird Fiction: Architecture: Infernal Machines

Step across the threshold. Darkness is a shroud, re-makes featureless jumblesto monstrous apparitions, but distant light catches the eye, another room in a large, convoluted house, crippled by time and decay.Henley Moore, in his dotage, bought it on a whim, settled in as a concrete foundation into soft dirt…it too, settled into him.

The light beckons, move toward it. The only way to reach the light is to move, and Henley sits within the light, tall, brown and unassuming, cowlicks of grey in hi...

Lucky Seven Meme

Both Colin Barnes and Fran Terminiellio tagged heck out of me for this Lucky 7 Meme post madness, this means I should probably spew out a non-Umwelt blog, right? Right. Here we go…

Rules of the game (fairly simple and fun):

*Go to page 77 of your current MS/WIP

*Go to line 7

*Copy down the next 7 lines (sentences or paragraphs) and post them exactly as they're written. No cheating.

*Tag 7 authors

*Let them know

So now you know the ruleage, here are my seven lines from (drum roll) 'Coil':

 

He's in...

Umwelt: Darkness Flows Like a River Episode 7: Stitch The Veils

Needles stitch the veils with threads of diseased ebony, crawling up and under the weft, the weave, a cramped darning of familiar colour. In the warm vortex of her core, where once struggled that tiny voice braying to be heard, there is now only blessed silence; it lends her the power to stretch out so she may touch the familiar hue, taste the life behind it. She reaches out, far, so far, across the endless worlds, touches each row of black stitching–not stitches, in truth, but the thread of ...