Will someone shut those crickets up?

It's been a bit of a quiet week really.  The most interesting thing I've done is go and vote.  That's what you call living wild, right?  Right?

Seriously, I don't know.  I was bumped on the head as a kid and I think my wild centre was knocked out of whack.

One of these days I'm going to fulfil the aim I didn't tell anyone about and use this blog to occasionally educate my three readers.  It's an admirable aim.  Certainly far better than navel-gazing or doing the circular let's-talk-about writing thing that'll come up.

This week I'd had it in my head to talk about the sad situation of the FHM sexiest woman of the year list and how dull the number one was.  Then I realised it would only lead to a depressing discussion of how the media is turning entertainment into a mediocrity contest.  And who wants to read that trotted out again?  Not me.  If I wanted to really depress you I'd dig up the sales figures for 'Fifty Shades of Grey' – although I might have dragged some controversy my way from the people who like the badly written fan-fic of badly written fiction*.

Yes, I know the truth, and unusually, I've exposed myself to a tiny bit of it, taking one for whatever team you care to name.  The writing manages to make Dan Brown seem witty and poetic.  And that takes some going, I can tell you.  I can't imagine reading a whole book of such awkward prose.  Take a look here and get something of an insight into its terribleness, or you can go look at Amazon if you don't mind the books popping up as part of your recommendations (can you stand the stigma?).  There were excerpts that I now can't find, bugger.  You get the gist.

And I've gone and digressed.  I went and talked about bad erotica.  Are you happy now?

I'm going back out onto the porch, stare up at the sky and whittle me some words.

^* Which actually sounds like the start of something.  Fan-fic replicating like facing mirrors so long that it breaks through into the real world and WE CAN'T FUCKING ESCAPE IT!  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!  Hold me, I'm scared.


Will

It's been a while, innit?

Days upon days have passed.  I was made to look like a twat when the Lid Dems hopped into bed and started gang raping the country with the Tories. I got married.  Went to London. Gained weight, panicked and had a whining meltdown. Knuckled under and started exercising.  Neglected my writing after finishing a novel. Started another novel. Been rejected by a raft of presses and agents.  Realised that the current novel is going to be a monster. Through it all I gibbered positively and negatively on Twitter.  Got on with my life.

I think that brings us up to date.  Not a lot is it?   Then, that's what life is: a series of long stretches of existing between interludes of activity.   Nothing wrong with that unless you're some kind of adrenaline junkie who needs stimulation at all times or fucking hell I'll die!  But for those of us who burn out a little easier this is fine.

But, I shall pledge to provide my own contributions to the ongoing cultural dialogue that is the internet.   It is against my nature as an introvert, but it has been pointed out to me by the lovely Moira McPartlin as I writer I need to put myself out there more.  So here is a beginning of probably an intermittent discourse on whatever the hell I feel like.

For anyone who finds this gem and it's gone quiet for a while you can find me on Twitter drooling and being ANGRY.  I'm aiming for at least a post once a week if you're desperate for a schedule, ya fuckin' slave-drivers.


Will

The Tower Shakes, But Doesn't Fall.

I have a hard time dealing with politics. It’s full of politicians for a start – an old chestnut that, but it wouldn’t be trotted out so much if it didn’t continue to be true on a year-on-year basis. It should be something more interesting, but all the really dramatic stuff that happens is lost in a fog of dull maintenance type debate and insipid protocol. It’s kind of like watching Formula 1 except more repetitive.

Heaven knows that I’ve tried to sit through even a few minutes of overfed men – and a few frightening-looking women – get up to do their little spiel about how the parking policy in their constituency’s hospital needs an overhaul or some such. I’m sure it’s very important to the democratic process and to the people that it affects, but it makes watching televised coverage of the House of Commons a major slog.

Who knows, maybe that’s been the point all along, to stop plebs like myself – brought up on half-hour chunks of television that moves along at brisk pace – from paying that much attention to what goes on there. Maybe before they televised the Commons the MPs stripped to the waist and beat each other with sticks to determine who won a debate.

Oh, fuck. That just put the image of Margaret Thatcher stripped to the waist into my head. I will now inflict it on you, good reader; I’ll be damned if I’m going to suffer that nightmare on my own. You too can wake up in a cold sweat, roused from your sleep by the thought of that evil old crone’s (because, let’s be honest, in the eighties she was still ancient, that kind of evil’s born that way) sagging body and the shrivelled dugs that passed for breasts on her bony chest, pale and blue veined as a wheel of stilton.

It’s good to share.

Anyway, I find it very hard to follow all the meta language that goes on within politics. In general a few moments of thought and I’ll know what they are babbling about and trying to evade, but I’m lazy and have other things I want to do than give too much brain-thinky time to how our government wants to screw us over this time.

(It leaves me with something of a grudging admiration for political correspondents who wade through all this political verbal diarrhoea. It’s how the bastards interpret what they’ve sifted that gets under my skin, but more on that later.)

My general difficulty following and getting intellectually involved in political debate, and the whole antipathy towards the breed known as Politician meant that I almost missed the nugget of decency from the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg that turned up earlier in the week.

Still very much in the shadow of the banks’ failure we’re seeing a bit of political upheaval in this country, after the US managed to shuck of a hideously corrupt regime, we’re going to get the opportunity to do the same; only we’ll just let another corrupt lot in right away. As I’ve said before there are more than two parties in this country, but there might as well only be two most of the time the way people vote. Except for the poor (as in actually impoverished and desperate) people who went mad and voted the unashamedly bigoted in so many ways BNP into a local government in England. It was scary, but I have a horrible feeling that as disgusting as the BNP are to the people of this constituency they may have been the most trustworthy of the lot.

Doesn’t say a lot for the democratic process though: if you feel so let down by a mainstream party, why don’t you vote for a party that has extreme views, that’ll show ‘em. Not the smartest move, I have to say, but it did seem to send a message.

It seems though, that Nick Clegg wants to make some major political changes, even going so far as reshaping Whitehall. Yes, Mister Clegg wants to shake up the whole British political map. He’s even gone so far as to get rid of a good chunk of his party’s pledges because they aren’t realistic in the current economic climate. Big words from the perennial also-rans.

But why should they always be consigned to third or even fourth place? If Nick Clegg were to even keep half of these promises it would mean the country would be a better place in which to live. It would make a great change from the continued bullshit of politicians telling the public, “You’ll have to put up with living in financial uncertainty for a few years more, but don’t worry all the people who caused this will stay rich and so will we. Aren’t you happy for us? Don’t you think we’re doing a stand-up job?”

I’ve intimated in the past that the Lib Dems are a bit of a wishy-washy, airy-fairy party, but with this kind of bold statement, and let’s be clear here it’s an honest statement (something you won’t hear me saying often about a politician of any stripe), he’s admitted that the things that his party has been promising for years are out of bounds and then he’s offered an alternative. An actual, concrete alternative. You don’t get that with the Tories or Labour, from them you get spin and more evasion. Just what the electorate want, vague assurances from the two ‘main’ parties that something will be done…but you’ll have to wait to find out what once you elect them.

In any other arena this would be called blackmail, whereas here people just shrug and go, “It’s politics,” and then go and vote for who they’ve always voted for and probably who their parents and grandparents voted for before them. They have the same kind of disinterest in politics that I try to fight through, but they don’t have the interest or energy to do even that.

Then, of course, you have the pundits and correspondents who rifle through all of these political shenanigans and give their opinions on it. I won’t say that they are all the same, I’m sure there are those who give a balanced and fair appraisal of the political climate. I can’t say, because I don’t read enough of them.

However, I’d just like to turn your attention to the BBC and their lead political correspondent and blogger Nick Robinson. The first time I saw Nick Robinson on television, he struck me as a dry and even sarcastic political commentator – just the type of person that I’d like to see giving opinions on the political landscape. I mean, he’s even had a little snarky banter with George W Bush, what a guy!

Then I started reading what he was actually saying in his BBC blog. The breaking point for me came when he varnished over Nick Clegg’s statements to burble on about the Tories and, in particular, the Labour party. He does more spin doctoring than Alastair Campbell. He does a marvellous job of taking what the Labour party says, interpreting it in such a way that it sounds like something more palatable and totally different.

“The government today unveiled plans for mulching newborn babies and using them as fertiliser. Let’s go to Nick Robinson…”

“When the Gordon Brown says he wants to mulch newborns, what he is in essence saying is that more should be spent on Primary Schools.”

I’ve seen this kind of thing a lot on the BBC. We see a politician saying one thing in the Commons and we go to a studio where the presenters tell us a completely different story of what happened. I mean it’s well-known that Politics is full of double-dealing and linguistic jiggery pokery, but can the meanings be that different from what politicians say and what they mean?

We need a more even-handed way of having politics (and the news in general) presented to us. The BBC have bought into the glossy American style of reporting current events that values bias and big events over telling us what’s happened, although they’ve yet to reach the depths of vacuous hideousness that Sky News (the British arm of Fox News, really) has delved. If they pull back again, they’ll probably be fine.

And this brings me onto the insane and shadowy world of the public opinion parts of news sites, but that’s for another time.


Will

The Delia Dream.

I have a dream. Not a recurrent dream just a…persistent one. It involves Delia Smith, the doyen of British cookery and woman with some complicated ideas about cooking Christmas dinner. I imagine if she’d gone down the Keith Floyd route of mixing booze with his presenting.

This is informed by something that happened a few years ago. In which the erstwhile television cook stormed the pitch in the middle of a Norwich City game and proceeded to inform the fans, in a coherent and sober way, what her thoughts were.

Now imagine the scene, our host is standing at her traditional homely kitchen counter, in her traditional homely kitchen (in her very own home we are shown through loving exterior wide shots) the ingredients for the upcoming recipe arrayed all nice and tidy around her with the appropriate utensils. And a glass of wine, with bottle nice and handy.

That last detail is important – watch it carefully.

She launches into her opening salvo; a lovely little starter that involves pancetta and cheese. She stutters and stammers a bit, but let’s be honest, that’s just her style. Saint Delia can be forgiven any kind of inarticulate garbling because she has our best interests at heart, she wants us to learn to cook and enjoy it. Bless her heart.

Try not to be distracted by her earrings, as mesmeric these adornments are – looking like those head phones that people really serious about music wear – you do not want to miss any of this wonderful, tasty recipe. The food is the important thing, not the preposterous jewellery.

Seriously.

During this segment she sips daintily at this wine. Stuff that is probably quite expensive, but that she has a cellar the size of your entire house full of. After all Delia’s a very wealthy woman and rightfully so. She’s worked hard over the decades to bring good cooking and awareness of fresh ingredients.

Y’know until this controversial tome came along, but we won’t worry about that either. Oh no.

At the end of her guide to creating this culinary treasure she looks pretty relaxed and the wine bottle is looking a little over half empty.

It’s all good for Delia.

She now guides us over to another worktop. Homely as the first, forgetting the fact that you’re now being guided through a kitchen that a family of three could live in with room to spare for garage. It doesn’t matter, it’s the illusion that she’s just like you and I, and she happens to know all these wonderful things about cooking.

Our loosened hostess carries the glass and bottle of wine with her to this second counter. There’s already two bottles of wine waiting there, open, for her, but this is neither here nor there.

Her next dish is a, let’s say, stew, full of fresh vegetables, spices, herbs and whatever meat might be in your brain at the moment. A game stew. How’s that? A mix of venison and partridge perhaps. Yum.

The wine takes something of a bashing in this section, as this dish requires a lot of cooking so poor Delia is becoming rather thirsty. And giggly. Really it’s infectious, how much fun she’s having chopping and browning meat and cooking vegetables. She even makes some potatoes to accompany the dish, as well as a nice red currant jelly.

It’s all a lot of work and she babbles with increasing ebullience. Sometimes meandering away from the task at hand, pointing at the camera man and laughing at that oh-so funny birthmark that looks like an ejaculating penis on his face or becoming quiet and contemplative as she ruminates about how much she loves her husband, he’s a pain in the arse, but that doesn’t matter, because we’ve been through so much…

Now watch as an empty wine bottle is discreetly taken from the counter. Delia isn’t even aware as she sloshes some more wine into her glass, gets confused, asks if that was supposed to go into the stew and is told that’s the bottle of red on her right.

She quaffs her drinking wine, while pouring her cooking wine into the pot. A few finishing touches and a few more slugs of wine and we can leave the pot to simmer while Delia brings us to dessert.

“Don’t you take that camera off me, ya basserds!” she shouts when the poor, penis-faced camera man moves a little too fast as she moves back to the original counter.

This counter, by the magic of television and a put-upon and unsung home economist, has been cleaned and the ingredients for the meal’s finale are placed out.

A tiramisu. Oh dear.

She goes through creaming the mascarpone and cream together, swaying and making obscene suggestions to the camera man, “Is that to scale?” she asks the poor man, pointing the mark that he’s becoming ever more conscious of. She manages this, just.

Soaking of the sponges proves too much and things take a turn for the disturbing. The coffee liqueur bottle is to her lips in a flash and its contents are guzzled with disconcerting speed. It’s quite amazing that she doesn’t spill any as she’s swaying like a sapling in a hurricane.

“Thissis boring! Less fuckin’ party!” she cries and clambers up onto the counter and starts to dance, gripping the coffee liqueur bottle, with wild abandon.

The crew look on, being showered by Tia Maria, unsure of what they should do. With grim professionalism, and perhaps a little bit of vengeful glee, the cameraman keeps his lens firmly on the action.

Delia’s warmed to this party idea and is now calling for some “fuckin’ music”. Her blouse has fallen off one shoulder, revealing densely freckled skin, much to the horror of every member of the crew. Except maybe that producer who’s had a thing for her since the early days.

“C’mon! Get yer fuckin’ clothes off! Don’t be such a buncha prudes!” she slurs, undoing more buttons on her blouse. “Get em off!”

Some production assistant has scurried out of the room to retrieve Delia’s husband, who has that ‘oh, fuck, not again’ look about him and grabs her off the counter.

Our last view of Delia as the credits roll is her being dragged out of the kitchen, stripped to her bra and screaming, “Yer alla buncha fuggin’ borin’ cunts! Aaaargh!”

Join us next week when she makes coq au vin.

That is a dream. Isn’t it beautiful?


Will

And 'Crown Wearer' ends...

And so the year-long experiment ends. Read the final parts at Crown Wearer and then tell me what you think.

To everyone who read the whole thing and supported me, you have my many thanks.


Will

The finale week...

Yes, that's right. 'Crown Wearer' has come almost come to the end of its year-long run on Twitter.

So be sure to head over to twitter.com/Crown_Wearer and get in on the last of the story.


Will

Forge Fire Press update.

Just to keep you informed about my current blogging and writing exploits: Forge Fire Press has an updated reading blog list.

The new list is as follows:

Monday--Sarah Haynes, "Mooring Room"
Tuesday--J.L. Jamieson, "Finding December"
Wednesday--Garon Cockrell, "Demonic & Other Tales"
Thursday--Cixtian Trybe, "Dark Æther"
Friday--Will Couper, "Spinal Curvature"
Saturday--Danielle Dunne-Domanski, "Never Invite a Necromancer to Tea"
Sunday--Phee Stringer, "The Violet Forest"

Fifth week in and I've posted four blogs. Read em and, y'know, open yer yap holes to tell me what you think.


Will

Forge Fire Press

Working on an idea by Warren Ellis this website called Forge Fire Press has been started, and I'm part of it.

Every day a different person adds a piece until, at the end, the results are collected in a book.

The current schedule looks like this:

Monday--Sarah Haynes, "Mooring Room"
Tuesday--J.L. Jamieson, "Finding December"
Wednesday--Garon Cockrell, "Demonic & Other Tales"
Thursday--Cixtian Trybe, "Dark Æther"
Friday--Will Couper, "Spinal Curvature"



Will

The Penny Dreadful

My story 'Cloak Man' is in the first issue of The Penny Dreadful, it's looks very nice and you should have a look if you haven't read the story before. Hell, take a look even if you have.


Will

New Crown Wearer stuff!

There's a new background story at the Crown Wearer blog. It's a gruesome piece of flash fiction, go check it out.


Will