Shores of Night

Over the weekend,the BBC played Simon Armitage's Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster, and a follow up drama Porcelain about the trial afterwards. The links are here: Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster Porcelain In 2007 Sophie was kicked to death because of her appearance when a group of boys decided that being a Goth, and being happy, was enough of a reason to attack them. She died in hospital afterwards. Her mother set up the Sophie Foundation afterwards, a charity that aims to educate people about hate crimes directed at people in subcultures.  Sophie Lancaster Foundation Please have a watch and a listen and remember that the way someone looks isn't reason to discriminate against them.

We live in interesting times. The long sought after clear blue water between Labour and the Conservatives is starting to reemerge after a long period where both parties seemed to be swimming the same laps of the pool. I remember a lecturer at Edge Hill, where I studied Politics in the 1990s, saying Britain had three Conservative parties, just with different leaders. The political centre ground truncated, and shifted rightwards; almost in an echo of America. The fringe, all too often painted as dullards, extremists and worse, have been pushed to the sides; excluded from the discourse. Big boys and girls, big beasts, have pushed them out, citing a need to be realistic, grown up, about politics. What that seems to mean is allowing the Market to have its head, and has slowly mutated into a situation where it is the chief concern of government, arguably culminating in Mr Cameron's drive towards a 'weightless state' which seems to involve turning government and state into somet...

Sorry for the interruption in service, I've been running around like a  wotsit, stressing and winding myself up. In the meantime I've had a couple of pieces published on Jed Phoenix's site. You can find them here and here . They discuss the reaction of the general public to Goths, and how technology is changing things; making the scene the same, but very different.

Geek is hot these days, its everywhere you look; a trend that's been building up for at least a decade. We have a superhero films that don't suck and TV shows that are openly fantasy and immense hits. Science is hot and some of the most influential people in entertainment are gamers, geeks, and other formerly maligned groups. There seems to be more and more to be geeky over too, from the things mentioned above to computer games, comics, novels and a hundred other things. It's an expanding field, taking in new view points, including more and more people until its starting consume the mainstream. We don't just live in Gothic times, but geeky ones too. Perhaps as a result of this, I find myself looking at all the things out there cherry picking what I like out there in geekdom. I'm not a huge fan of television, simply because I find it a bit too passive; if I do watch stuff it tends to be cartoons and anime, though I would like to see Sens8 and Penny Dreadfuls as I...

I've been thinking about my dream home a lot recently, building it as a retreat from the world, if you like. Being a writer, I decided to set it down and share it. Climb the lane, the one that's barely used and is bounded by dry stone walls. Keep going for about twenty minutes and you'll find our place; a little cottage set back from the road. You'll know it when you see it, there's a little wooden gate, stained almost black, set in the wall. It's got a little American style post box next to it; one of the ones that has a flag to raise when there's post inside. Don't worry about cars, they're rare as hen's teeth around here. The last one came by weeks ago. Pause by the gate for a moment. Take in the garden; tightly packed flower beds full of roses, red and white, hellebore and poppies. An apple tree sits over to one side, just big enough to bear blossom. In a few years it will have branches heavy with fruit. Open the gate, and step through;...

The fairy tale is one the bedrocks of western culture. Cautionary tales of wonder and delight, they were created, and eventually written down, to provide moral or simple lessons to live your life by and became of particularly significance for the education and socialisation of children in the early Nineteenth Century. They are about more than just entertainment, but imparted disguised wisdom and common sense. The Grimms and Hans Christian Anderson twisted their purpose a little, to make them fit the aspirant middle classes and the gender roles of the Nineteenth Century, which were becoming steadily more separate as women were pushed into the home and men became the principle bread winners. In Jack Zipes' Fairytale and the Art of Subversion , he notes that in just two years, 1810 and 1812,  Snow White goes from simply having to tend the Dwarves' house to keep her place there, to a long list of chores and the threat of punishment for failing to do so, for example. This was a t...

Something of a cheat, while I work on something a bit bigger and pondery, I wanted to post some of my favourite poems, because I'm thinking about poetry a lot at the moment. Catherine Smith: Heckmondwycke https://peonymoon.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/catherine-smith-six-poems/ Catherine came to do a Master Class at the course I did and this poem struck me as sweet and funny and so very earthy. Kirstin Heibel-Steitz: Sublime http://ohmyfoes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/sublime.html A friend, who is a poet, a damn good poet. This poem makes me feel the winter days and appreciate them all the more. Philip Larkin: This be the Verse This has been stuck in my head for a few years, I like the gently humourous fashion Larkin's reading of it here brings it to the fore. William Blake: The Tyger A beautiful poem that speaks of such majesty. Dylan Thomas: Do Not Go Gentle into That Goodnight Lastly I love the defiance in this, the clinging on reluctant to go into...

Yesterday I went off on an adventure, off up to Liverpool to see a friend I haven't seen for years, probably more than a decade. I haven't been to Liverpool since 2001, when I lived up there, I always meant to go back but for some reason I hadn't, just got caught up in life I suppose, and when I did go off from Birmingham it was always south, to London and all its museums and galleries. As my wife was off meeting a friend and normally I would have stayed home to write, or do something hum drum, but I wanted to do something different, and which didn't involve being pestered by cats (I love them but they're not always the most peaceful company, and as Hobbes is being kept indoors at present, he's decided I'm the best toy). So I wanted to get out, and sent my friend Lesley an email to see if she could get a day away from family.  As you might be able to tell... she could, and so I bolted out of the house yesterday morning and headed up that way on the tr...

What do we mean by patriotism? It seems simple, a love of country, a pride in country that does not reach the heights of jingoism, or nationalism. My country right or wrong, but without the nastier connotations of superiority, ethnic cleansing or simple lunacy that these last two elements can contain. A love of country that draws the line at marching headlong and blindly into a war that will kill most of a generation, as it did in World War One. Is it so straightforward though; are we actually so blind as to hand-wave everything away under the strains of Rule Britannia or the Star Spangled Banner (or whichever national anthem you choose to mention)? A note here: I don't consider myself particularly patriotic. There are things I'm proud of, that happened in my country; I'm not sure if that's sufficient to make me dyed in the wool. In the way of these things, one of those internet quizzes you find at sites like Buzz Feed or Play Buzz, got me thinking about what it mea...

On Saturday Eve and I made our annual pilgrimage to Derby for Edge Lit, a one day convention for Fantasy, SF and Horror. It's a small affair, but that only makes it better and more impressive. This year it was particularly nice to see that despite the fact they've slashed the number of panels, the day was still busy and there seemed to be a bustling crowd, one that seemed larger than in previous years. Our first event was Mike Carey (now publishing under the name M R Carey, the R is because M J Carey takes you to an erotica writer on Good Reads apparently), as he did readings and a Q&A.  I'm not sure what the first thing he read was, beyond it being a very human tale of punishment in a prison, but the second was from the second book of short stories he has written with his wife and daughter, The House of War and Witness. Both tales were compelling and the imagery they evoked was stark and fascinating. The second story in particular was very strong, but I may have like...

I love vampires, though I do think they're overused. There's something iconic about them that is attractive and their games, the cut and thrust of vampire politics, coupled with their exotic, sensuous nature makes them attractive. I'm trying to stick to literature only here, so I'm skipping over the likes of Spike, Angel and the like . I do wish there were more strong female vampires, admittedly but the way the genre has evolved still harks back to Lord Ruthven and Lord Byron (upon whom Ruthven was based). Zillah: Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite A novel set in the sleazy, liminal, back worlds of the American nightmare, replete with runaways and auto eroticism, Zillah is in many ways the perfect vampire for the times.   Omnisexual, hedonistic and cruel, he is the leader of his pack, a surrogate father who guides their steps. The fact that he usually leads them to the next meal or debauchery is perhaps something we should overlook. His influence runs throughout the no...

The Strange & Numenera The Bestiary An alien machine A database of marvels… and monsters A quest to catalogue the fauna and flora of the multiverse Unlikely heroes lost in a web of worlds Join the quest to explore new worlds and catalogue their species. Plunge into the Strange Dark Energy Network A campaign for the Strange Will you ever make it home? Strange Horizons The bodies were found in a Rio de Janeiro nightclub A new drug was in their system Something that isn’t local…. That isn’t from Earth. Now the hunt is on for the source An investigation that will lead to new worlds New dangers A campaign for the Strange Run to the edge, don’t look back. Numenera: Impossible City A city in the middle of the desert A map to something strange And conspiracy lurking in the shadows Will you discover the city’s secrets? Will you break its code? Or perish amongst its ever changing avenues? Join the Univer...