Andrew’s food quiz

I’m a bit lacking in ideas about what to do for this last piece of NaNoWriMo warm up. I’ve written a bit about Emma and Tim, and if I write about the opposition at this point I’ll spoil some of the surprises in the thing, ditto writing about their friends, and besides, it’s only Emma that has any, so I’m not entirely sure what to do. I did toy with the idea of putting the original first draft opening up here, but that’s not actually me writing anything, or warming up in any way. And besides, I just looked at it again, and it’s toss.

I can’t even share the idea I had on the bus this morning for a sequel to STORMBREAK called HARD RAIN that’s even more berserk and explody than the second half of this one, because the sequel has it’s genesis toward the latter half of the story.

But on the other hand, I can cheat a bit. Here, then, with the names removed, is a rough possible opening sequence to HARD RAIN. It probably won’t get used – my first ideas for opening sequences almost never do, because I tend to start writing them before I’ve got the thing fully plotted, but still…

MAN AT CONSOLE: HE’S INCOMING.

GENERAL: IS EVERYTHING READY?

ASSISTANT: YESSIR.

GENERAL: GOOD. REMEMBER, BOYS, NOTHING TO MAKE THE LITTLE BRITISH COCKSUCKER SUSPICIOUS. EVERYTHING NICE AND FRIENDLY.

MAN AT CONSOLE: SIR? I’VE GOT ANOTHER INCOMING. ON AN INTERCEPT COURSE.

GENERAL: WHAT-

The room shakes. Plaster dust falls. Console boy falls out of his seat.

GENERAL: THE FUCK WAS THAT?

MAN AT CONSOLE (pulling himself back to chair): IT’S IMPOSSIBLE, SIR. THERE’S *TWO* OF THEM.

The room shakes again. This time, a huge crack opens in the ceiling and down one of the walls. The lights flicker crazily. Sparks fly from some of the equipment.

MAN AT CONSOLE: THEY’RE FIGHTING. AT LEAST, I THINK THEY ARE.

GENERAL: SEND A LOG OF EVERYTHING YOU HAVE ON THEM TO WASHINGTON, THEN SOUND THE EVAC.

I’M GOING TO WATCH.

More NaNoWriMo warm up

If you’re a designer, you’ll be familiar with the concept of a moodboard – a thing to which you stick elements that you’d like to see in the finished product, ideas and inspirations. A thing to refer to back to as the project continues, just to be sure that you’re moving on the right lines. I do much the same thing with music (as, I understand, do any number of other writers) I put together a soundtrack to listen to as I write, to keep them me playing the right emotional tune, make sure that I’m not diverting from the plan too badly. (Obviously, I have notes, and written plans, but I find the music helps just as much.)

So, here’s the soundtrack to Stormbreak.

NaNoWriMo Warm Up 2

I’m getting ready for NaNoWriMo. So, every day this week, a bit of short writing about Stormbreak, the graphic novel I’m going to be doing. I thought I’d start today with a bit of history of the beast, a little meta-text before the main event, as it were.

A couple of years back, I was working in Putney, and one afternoon in early summer, I was crossing the bridge over the Thames there in the electric closeness one finds just before one of those apocalyptic summer downpours when the sky cracks open and it rains fit to wash away the sins of man. I got indoors, sat down, and wrote a couple of short paragaphs about that feeling, for no particular reason other than to try and capture it in ink. I thought that’d be the end of it.

But something in it kicked and bounced about for a day or two, and I found myself with a few scrappy notes about a man called Tim Sussex, and images of Edinburgh’s Scott Monument shattering into chunks of lethal gothic masonry. But not a lot more. I knew I had a story I wanted to tell, but I just didn’t have all the bits. So I went scrabbling through the “ideas in development” folders I keep on my computer, and pulled bits together.

I grabbed Emma Chappell out of a file marked “Sideways Bar” my own warped take on the sort of concept Spider Robinson came up with in his ‘Callahan’s’ setting, a bar full of freaks and mutants with horrible stories and pasts thay couldn’t quite seem to escape, beneath the arches of a London railway bridge.

I found the power armour suits in a thing called “Phobos Station 13”, a sci-fi horror piece that they’d never really belonged in in the first place. For a while, I found a copper in “20 Scarlet Years” before deciding that no, he belonged in there, and cutting his part out of Stormbreak entirely, giving the story wholly to Tim and Emma.

The bad guy, like Tim, belongs in this story, and nowhere else, really, although if you squint, you can see traces of Matt from ‘Rust’ in Tim – they’re on a similar sort of journey, although Tim’s ends a lot more happily that Matt’s, which is not to say that Tim gets a happy ending…

Tomorrow: Meet Tim Sussex…

Blind Lawn Bowls. Made me think of my grandmother, former chairwoman of the Belfast Bowling Association, now forced to stop playing because of blindness, although not before noticing her game improving as her sight deteriorated. I fully intend to take up lawn bowls in my dotage, and hope to follow in her footsteps as a master the art of Zen Bowling, although I’d quite like to do it without going blind.

There’s someone out there with a seriously twisted sense of humour. Group Hug is an anonymous confessional, and, like all such things, you find that either people are vile or pathetic bastards, or that pretending to be vile or pathetic bastards gives far too many people their jollies. Reading it is like dunking your mind in a sewer, and is certain to make even the nicest person bitter and cynical about humans. Or possibly just teenagers.

But, as I was thinking this, I came across an entry which reads “I’m going to ask my boyfriend to marry me in February (because it is a leap year). I have been planning it all for months and I have been DYING to tall someone!! Thanks for letting me get it off my chest… I hope he says yes!“, which I thought was a nice subversion of the ghastly intent of these sorts of thing…

Lungs: 0. Worst of cold now gone. Some mucus remaining. However, the disease has done its bastard usual, and settled in my lungs, leaving me in for a week or two of a painful cough.

Wondering idly what do do tonight – not in the mood for telly (when am I ever?) but housemates will have things to watch, so will be in my room. May watch Ninth Gate. May go to bed early. Should probably try to get some work done. I’ve got three options I’m considering for NaGraNoWriMo (Have given up on the idea of doing prose. Will instead be writing a 100 page graphic novel.) in varying stages of readiness for writing, and if I’m going to do one of them, I really need to finish the bones of it – what I have now are ideas for themes and possible characters, but no sense of theme, no spine to hang the thing from, so I really ought to spend a while buried in the thing and see what I can beat into it.

On which note…

I have a cold. I am, in typical male fashion, a right moaning bastard when I have a cold. Aside from the feeling tired all the time, which drives me up the wall, and the blocked up nose, and the brain that just won’t work, what really bugs me is that I can’t taste anything.

I have just eaten a sausage and onion roll with hot salsa. Did I taste anything? No, not really. My mouth is tingling a little because of the chill, but I failed to taste the sausage or onion at all, nor the garlic, or lime, or even more than a hint of tomato in the salsa – just the chilli. Last night, I had a whisky. Glenfiddich fifteen, to be precise. I’ve got a reasonable palate for whiskey – normally, I can bore the unwary passer-by with waffle about honey and vanilla tones, the smoke in the aftertaste for up to fifteen minutes.

Last night, I might as well have been drinking Bells, a drink which I hold to be only one step above rat poison. I wouldn’t even mix it with coke.

I want my sense of taste back, dammit.