Pane in the Glass

...can you squeeze into a single day? 

Today we've had frost, snow, sleet, drizzle, and now fog.  Throw in a hurricane and a heatwave and you'd have the full set.  O.o   Still, at least Monday's snow is thawing at long last and the roads and pavements look as though they'll be passable again soon.  I've been stuck indoors for two days because I don't do icy pavements.  It'll be nice if I can get out again tomorrow.

This cold snap does make me giggle.  The last few years we've had quite mild winters and the media have been grumbling on about how it never snows, it never gets cold enough to kill off the vermin, and we 'never have proper winters any more'.  This year after a couple of really cold spells they've changed their tune completely and are bandying about phrases like 'severe weather' and 'freak conditions'.  Are they *never* happy? 

Mind you, it can't be often that a Cornish harbour freezes over - that's salt water!

This was in lieu of a New Year's party, since we stupidly left it too late to book anywhere to go away for the Big Night.  ;)

Instead we had a lovely meal out at Pizza Express in Brindleyplace.  The place was bursting at the seams - I think we got the last table and the food was rather slow because the chefs simply couldn't get it out of the kitchen fast enough.  But when it did arrive it was delicious as usual.  The canals looked wonderful with twinkly fairy lights in all the trees reflected in the dark water below, and even Broad Street was festive - at least from a distance.  Close up it's still too scruffy and there are still too many closed-down bars and boarded-up shops.  Sadly it was too cold to linger and in any case we only had minutes to get to the Symphony Hall before the doors closed.

The concert was a real blast.  It was done by the London Concert Orchestra (a cut-down version of the London Symphony?) and they played a selection of 'space classics' - everything from Holst's The Planets to music used in space films (Blue Danube, Also Sprach Zarathustra) to heaps of John Williams scores from Star Wars, ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Some of the latter was a little complex (read: full of disharmonies and quite difficult to listen to) and it was noticeable that after the interval, about a third of the audience didn't come back.  Which was a shame, as the second 'half' was actually better than the first and included the conductor stripping down to a Superman costume and the choir stalls being taken over by stormtroopers!  Add a light-and-laser display and the whole thing made for a great night out.  (Although I could have done without the terminally-bored twelve year old behind me who spent most of the concert slumped in her seat and kicking the back of my chair...  Thanks, parents.  Must you take your children to things they really don't like?)

Sorry, I'm still stuffing a late breakfast in between bits of packing.  ;)  We're off to the in-laws for a few days so I'll catch up with everyone when I get back, but just wanted to say Merry Christmas to one and all.  Hope you have a peaceful, happy Christmas and a well-earned rest.  :)  See you all next week.

I've been reading simply heaps of noir lately and it's inspired me to come up with a list of rules for the genre in case anyone wants to try their hand at it.

You can find the not entirely serious results at my writing blog.  ;)

...will be resumed soon.  spent the mornign at ourl ocal A&E with supsected broken bone in my left hand after Dave had to do emergency stop in the car yesterday.  X-rays suggest it isn't broken but i'm strpped up in tubigrip and typing hurts!!  owie. 

Well, not literally.  ;)  But if there's anyone out there living in or familiar with America, please can you let me know what the US equivalent of a dustbin man is?  In other words, the men (and women) who come round to your homes and collect your trash/garbage every week? I'm assuming it's something ike 'refuse collector' or 'garbage collector' but when I googled those I got a load of rubbish (no pun intended *g*) about clean-up computer software and nothing about real life trash!

I'm writing a story for an American market and I've realised that the UK term 'bin men' will probably baffle the editors, which is Not A Good Thing.

If anyone can let me know either in the comments or by email I'll be very much obliged.  :)

Hmm, today was supposed to be fairly mild.  it's currently 4c and sleeting.  Something tells me the forecasters got it a bit wrong!  We've just given up and stuck the heating on and I'm huddled over the radiator like a starving cat on a dish of food...

I know, I'm grumbling again.  But we just had a knock at the door, and when I went to answer it, it was a couple of teenagers bawling out the first few bars of 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas'.  Yup.  Carol-singers.

Well, I use the term advisedly.  These days, nobody ever sings carols - this is the only vaguely Christmassy tune anyone seems to know - and even then they only sing the first couple of lines and then stop, and fix you with a 'pay us NOW' kind of stare.

I told them I didn't have any cash in the house, and they scowled at me as if it was their god-given right to be paid, just for singing six words of a song I don't particularly like, at a time which was inconvenient since I was cooking tea.

And it's only December 3rd, fer Chrissakes!!!!!  I don't expect this sort of thing to start until well after the middle of the month....

The tv's awash with adverts for Christmas now, all glitter and glitz and dreadful old songs that have been forgotten for a very good reason.  Honestly, if I hear 'Winter Wonderland' or 'It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas' one more time I think I shall go out and strangle the nearest reindeer.  Bah humbug.  And there's another *three weeks* of it to get through.

I have made a start on my Christmas shopping, though, rather to my amazement.  With a brace of family birthdays in late November I usually have a mad flap in the last two or three weeks, trying to buy presents for everyone when the shelves are already getting bare.  But last year I forced myself to be more organised, and it was so much less stressy that I'm determined to do the same again.  So far I have the whole of one cousin's present, half the other cousin's present, and something with penguins for our penguin-mad friends.  Not much, but it's a start.

We spent the weekend huddled over a coal fire (and unlike the misers in the old joke, we even lit it).  It's been really cold again, with thick freezing fog on Saturday, frosts most nights, and snow flurries this morning.  Brrr.  The last couple of afternoons I've given up and stuck the heating on early.  I can't work if I can't type, and I've never yet found a way to type when my fingers are numb.  My father in law said in the autumn that he thought it was going to be a 'proper' winter this year, and it's beginning to look as though he was right. 

So, is it going to be a white Christmas?  :)

Credit crunch, economic downturn, call it what you like, but it's starting to get noticeable.  On our local high street in the last few weeks we've lost: a chain-store sports wear company (probably gone bust); Clintons Cards (mysteriously closed); McDonalds (yes, McDonalds - mysteriously closed); Select (cheap womens' fashions, probably gone bust); Rosebys (gone bust); and now we're likely to lose Woolworths as well.  On a relatively small high street, it makes a sizeable hole - and that's just the big names.  Other, smaller businesses are closing every week. 

Mind you, I can't say I blame them.  Last week I went into the huge W H Smith in Birmingham city centre.  it's the size of several aircraft hangars *g* with magazines etc downstairs and an enormous area upstairs for books, dvds, music, stationery, cards, and business equipment.  Apart from me, I think there were four people wandering around.  Nobody was queueing at the tills when I took my purchases to pay.  And when I went back to buy something I'd forgotten, there was still no queue - and three of the other four customers had gone.  It was a very strange feeling, in a store that used to be packed.

Is anyone else noticing the same sort of thing?

Has anyone else seen the film 'Shoot 'Em Up'?  I watched it last night and found it really strange.  I could watch Clive Owen in a commercial for drying paint *g* but I couldn't get a handle on whether this was a thriller or a comedy.  It came across as a comedy but what an odd subject - and as for that body count...  O.o  I'm surprised there were any gun-men left in America by the end!

I've been forgetting to mention that I have a couple of new stories out.

The first is in Velvet Mafia, the online gltb magazine which specialises, in its own words, in 'dangerous queer fiction'.  Oo-er.  Actually, my story isn't all that dangerous - just a naughty little tale set in a desert where nothing is quite what it seems.  The editor updates the contents every Friday so you should still just have time to catch 'Heat Haze' at the zine before it's consigned to the archives!

The second story is 'Washday Blues', a fun romp involving two men, a washing machine and a pair of navy blue socks.  ;)  It's available in the Cobblestone Press quarterly magazine CPQ, which you can download absolutely free as a pdf file from their catalogue.  The issue (which is out a little late due to editorial constraints) also contains an interview with yours truly.

Happy reading - hope you like the stories.  ;)

Did anyone else happen to see the first part of this new drama on BBC1 last week?  After the let-down of Bonekickers (and to a lesser extent Merlin, although that's aimed at kids), I wasn't expecting much but... wow.  It was actually rather good.  A little melodramatic, perhaps, but then it is about demons and exorcists, so what can you expect?  :)  It was surprisingly strong stuff, too, with scenes in a gay bath house and someone being flayed alive.  Oo-er.

I've been a fan of Martin Shaw for years, but haven't seen him looking as good as this for a long time.  A beard and black clothes seem to suit him down to the ground.


I just hope episode two lives up to the quality of this pilot.  Fingers crossed.

None for a while, then two come along at once! I had not one but two stories released yesterday - first the Byker Books one (see previous post) and then Aspen Mountain put out 'Shifting Perspectives 2'.

This is a follow-up, unsurprisingly, to 'Shifting Perspectives' and contains sequels to both Feathered Friend and Emily Veinglory's The Rat Burglar, as well as a brand new story (about a shapeshifting fish!) by Sharon Maria Bidwell.

In my sequel, Steal the Sky, Avery insists on entering a pigeon race but gets off course and finds himself locked, naked, in a stranger's garden shed!

As ever you can find more details including full size cover art, a blurb, and how to order the book, on my website.

Byker Books have very kindly offered to feature Any Means Necessary on their website, even though its previously-published status means they can't use it in their anthology.  It's up there right now in the 'Radgepacket' fiction section of tales of inner city life.  Do please bear in mind this is a slightly abridged version from the story that appeared in 'Men of Mystery' (Haworth Press); if you like the story enough you might consider visiting my website and splashing out on the full-length version (plus a heap of other great gay stories) in the anthology!

You can read the Byker version here (the link is a little way down on the right hand side) and you can find out where to order 'Men of Mystery' here.

I think I've mentioned before that Byker Books are based in Newcastle (Byker is a district of the city) and they seem like a fun crowd to deal with.  But please don't ask me what a radgepacket is, because not being from the north-east myself I have no idea!

Dave's away on business this week so I've been treating myself to some of my favourite films on dvd.  Last night I had a wonderful wallow with King Arthur, a recent and thoroughly original take on the Arthurian legends starring Clive Owen and Ioan Grruffud as Arthur and Lancelot respectively.  I'd seen it several times before, but I'd never really noticed the slash potential before.  There are lots of wistful glances between Arthur and Lancelot , and as for Gawain and Galahad, they practically seem to live in each others' pockets (or whatever the hell they had in the fifth century).

Lo and behold, I've just popped over to the Theban Band slash art page for the first time in absolutely ages, and what did I find there?  One picture of Arthur and Lancelot, and two of Gawain and Galahad.  It seems I'm not the only one to notice! 

Well, this wasn't on any weather forecasts that I saw for the day:



It's absolutely perishing and they're now saying it could freeze solid overnight, so heaven knows if I'll be able to get out of the front door for tai chi tomorrow.  Last time it did that we had what's known as a 'flash freeze' here in Brum and it took thousands of people up to eight hours to get home from work.  Nasty.  Let's hope it doesn't come to that.  In the meantime, I'm breaking out the winter woollies....

This is the title of a new 'flash' story appearing in the latest issue of Gay Flash Fiction, which came out yesterday.

The story involves a mobile phone call with disastrous results.  It's rather darker than my usual flashes but it does have a twist in the tail.  You can find it, together with the rest of the new batch of stories, at the magazine.

Enjoy!

One of the biggest challenges I've found in writing mostly for the American market is the little-known but surprisingly big gulf in grammar between the two languages.  Over the last few years I've argued the toss with various US editors *g* and been geuinely surprised by their explanations.  In one case, the use of passives, the difference is so great that I decided to write a little article about it, in the hope of smoothing the waters both for other British writers, and for American editors who may be tearing their hair out over the British language.  :)

The article, 'Separated by a Common Language', is up now at the British Writers Blog and you can read it here.

Usually when we go to Solihull for a shopping trip we park in a dull town centre car park.  Sunday was such a lovely day, though, that we decided to park up in Brueton Park, on the outskirts, and walk in to the shops.  And what a good idea it was. 



The park was absolutely lovely, with vast areas of grass for dogs and kiddies to run wild on, beautiful big trees that were turning every shade of red and bronze you could think of, a lake filled with ducks and geese, and a little bridge over the River Blythe.  There's even a path linking in to a new nature reserve, on a site that used to be the local council's tree nursery, but it was too muddy for us to venture far.  I guess it isn't called Marsh Field for nothing! There were some lovely views of the church spire as we approached (St Alphege's, a fine medieval building), and some interesting old buildings that we'd never noticed before including Malvern Hall, which used to be the town's grammar school until a vast new edifice was built in the 19th century.



After a coffee and a mooch round the shops we walked back through the park again, tripping over high speed spaniels and small pink bicycles.  All in all it made a really nice change.  And we caught the best of the weather, too, because it was raining by mid afternoon.