Simon John Cox

100WC #44 - Liz

2012-05-30T11:59:00.000+01:00

100 Word Challenge #44

Prompt: Write a poem. It doesn’t have to rhyme or be specifically about the Monarch but it should capture the passing of sixty years.

Though union flags are hanging up in windows and from trees,
And remnants of an empire wave them for your jubilee,
That red-white-blue's more likely found in Brits abroad tattoos
(I bet you didn’t foresee this way back in fifty-two).
Today your droitis dieu no more, it is the common man,
And gloria always sic transits, so enjoy it while you can:
One day the world will blink its eye, then what remains of Liz?
A monument, a statue and a question in a quiz.

Apologies to all real poets out there; I hate writing poems, and only wrote one here to keep up my impressive 100% participation record (six out of six, yeah!) in the 100 Word Challenge.

Restoration Man free for one week

2012-05-26T09:16:00.000+01:00

My short story The Restoration Man will be available free, gratis and for nothing on Amazon for one week from Monday. One working week, that is. Five days. So why not download it and read it and etc.

Go on!

100WC #43 - A Child Of Fire

2012-05-23T08:59:00.000+01:00

100 Word Challenge #43

Prompt: ...the flame flickered before...

It was the only thing that he truly understood. Something that he had created, that he had brought to life from phosphorous, wax and string. There was a purity and a truth to it.

That’s what he’d say, anyway. To the psychologists.

He’d talk about a need for control. A need to purge, a need to cleanse. He’d tell them about a youth fractured by neglect. And they’d believe him, of course.

The flame flickered before igniting the curtain, and as the tongues of fire lapped upwards his eyes gleamed.

Truth was, he just liked to watch things burn.

100WC #42 - In Absentia

2012-05-18T12:46:00.005+01:00

100 Word Challenge #42

Prompt: piece must contain the words 'liberty', 'empire', 'apple', 'yellow' and 'enormous'

I watch the television from the hotel bed, my yellow robe pulled tight. The sun here is tiny, like an apple hanging from a branch. It is a different sun, cold and foreign.

Grainy images flicker on the screen: masked faces, assault rifles, broken statues. Enormous fires. A crying woman demands a trial.

I built them an empire, and they tear it down. For what? They do not remember liberty. Liberty was brutish and cruel, and I saved them from it.

Let them have their hollow trial. Let it illuminate the truth.

Let them know that no-one could have loved them as I did.

Three new Tunbridge Wells Writers

2012-05-09T07:56:00.000+01:00

I met three new writers from Tunbridge Wells last night.

Daniel Huckfield is writing a biography of 19th century Tunbridge Wells-based blasphemer, anarchist and gramophone entrepreneur Henry Seymour, and blogging about it as he goes.

Tom Revell writes a very entertaining blog called Without A Corset.

Richard Coleman is a science teacher who writes poetry at Poems From Another World.

Go and look at them.

100WC #41 - What Will Come

2012-05-08T12:55:00.000+01:00

100 Word Challenge #41

Prompt: [picture of bones]

Under hedges laid like rope the sleeping giants lie. Washed and buried these ancients wait, silenced by time and lost in stories of the past. Above them blow the sorrowful winds, above them walk the lonely hearts, and the restless men who pull them from the rocks know nothing of their whims. These bones once shook the stars, and in our arrogance we disturb their fragile peace. There are always more monsters than heroes; that is the algebra of myth. When they come –and they will come – we will love them and hate them and fear them.

This story draws on the "King In The Mountain" / "Chained Satan" folklore motif, which I have always found very romantic and highly evocative. You can read about it on Wikipedia (where else?).

100WC #40 - Jack

2012-05-02T10:36:00.000+01:00

100 Word Challenge #40

Prompt: Ruby

Jack

So I go to the basement where I know they'll bring you an it’s a filthy Dallas mornin an there’s pills in my belly an the ugly lil .38 snub in my pocket is black an cold as sin an there’s police everywhere so you must be comin an I hate you so goddamn much I feel dizzy an then you’re stood right there an the gun’s in my hand an then whamit’s done an you’re bleedin like a pig an nothin’s changed an the president’s still dead an I hope you burn in hell you goddamn lil communist.

100WC #39 - Those Who Fail

2012-04-25T12:10:00.000+01:00

100 Word Challenge #39

Prompt: ....I'm exhausted. Shut the door behind you....

Those Who Fail

“I’m exhausted.”

“Shut the door behind you.”

“What?” he says. The rain outside makes everything seem too close. The house feels like a womb.

“I need you to leave,” I say.

“I’m not going anywhere until we’ve fixed this.” He is a knight, a hero. Why now? Why not before?

“I’ve had enough,” I say, “It’s over.”

“Like last time?”

His bitterness is the rust that creeps at the edges of our relationship. I look away, and suddenly he is leaning forward, his hand on mine.

“Look, we can work it out,” he says.

The rain falls silent, and for one dizzying moment I believe him.

I don't know whether the plural of Bigfoot is Bigfoots or Bigfeet

2012-04-17T11:22:00.000+01:00

Following on from 2011's Harlan Ellison-endorsed, charity-friendly Kindle All Stars short story anthology, in 2012 the Kindle All Stars will be putting together another anthology. The theme is "cryptozoology", and submissions will be accepted throughout October.

That's ages away, so you've got plenty of time to come up with a decent short story about the Loch Ness Monster having an affair with a yeti (and that kind of story pretty much writes itself, to be honest).

Find out more here: http://www.apiarysociety.com/kindleallstars/kas-2.html

Still, from Distant Machines

2012-04-04T10:25:00.001+01:00

The following is one of the stories from my short story collection Distant Machines. I hope you enjoy it...

Still

It is not long dawn when the man comes. You see him before he sees you, but the light is dirty and weak and when you spot him he has already come too close for you to prepare. The boy is around on the other side of the refinery, so you call him to you. There is no time to hide the barrel.

The boy arrives, looking like a shadow. He is losing weight.

“The snares were empty,” he says.

“Someone’s coming,” you say, and the boy sees the approaching man for the first time. His young face is not yet weathered enough to mask his anxiety.

By now the man has seen you, and his steps have become markedly more determined. You pull the rifle from your back and hold it across your body like a barrier, your eyes never leaving him. Above you the tarpaulin flaps in the wind, snapping against itself as though applauding his arrival.

Whupwhupwhupwhupwhup.

The man stumbles to the edge of the shelter and stops. His hair and beard are thick with dust and his clothes are rags, bound about him like filthy bandages on a wound. He is crooked, bent over, heaving for breath. He looks at you and the boy. He looks at the rifle in your hands.

“Have a seat,” you say, and you motion to one of the upturned crates beside the scar of last night’s fire. The man folds himself onto the crate uncertainly, as though his limbs might crack. You sit down opposite him, on the other side of the shelter. You rest the rifle across your knees, neither friendly nor hostile. You keep your hands on it.

“Where have you come from?” you ask as you unscrew the bottle that hangs on a cord around your neck.

“North.”

You pour some of the water from the bottle into a tin cup and offer it to him. He takes the cup with clawed fingers and drains it.

“What’s it like up there?”

“Dead,” he says, “Same as everywhere else.”

Out of the corner of your eye you notice the boy glance at you. You keep your gaze fixed on the man.

“Where are you headed?” you ask, but the man’s attention has been taken by the hulking wreck of the refinery that looms over the shelter. Its towers and outbuildings are rusted brown, half-swallowed by the sand.

“Anything in there?” he asks.

“Only snakes and scorpions,” you say, “Someone came and took everything of any use before we got here.”

The man nods once, then looks jealously around the shelter: the wall of rusted scrap metal, the machinery and boxes that it took you two days to scavenge, the precious grey tarpaulin strung from it with wire. He notices the yellow plastic barrel on the trolley. He peers at its screw cap, sees how clean and free of dust it is.

“What’s in the barrel?” he asks.

“Nothing,” you say. The man shifts on the crate. He seems restless.

“Where are you headed?” you ask again.

The man stares at you for a moment before answering.

“South.”

“What's down there?”

“People say there’s a place where they grow crops, down by the coast,” he says, suddenly animated, “Corn. And a lake nearby, with fish.”

The boy looks at you again. You’ve heard the talk before. The wind picks up, tugging at the tarpaulin, and grey dust sloughs through the shelter.

Whupwhupwhupwhupwhup.

“They say there used to be a lake right by here,” you say.

“Here?” says the man. He looks around.

“That’s what they say.”

“Who says that?”

“It was a long time ago.”

He looks at you hard for a moment, then snorts and shakes his head.

“You must think I’m stupid,” he says.

You shrug. “That’s what they say.”

You talk for a time, about little: the north, the south, the past, the future. Things of no consequence. It is necessary, this talk; a kind of anchor to a past reality. The boy doesn’t understand this. Perhaps he never will.

The man frowns.

“What do you do for food?” he says.

“There are animals out there,” you say. You tilt your head slightly, towards the wilderness outside the shelter.

“What animals? Where?”

“There are rats and things,” says the boy, “And snakes and lizards that eat them. I catch them with snares.”

The man looks at the boy curiously, as though seeing him for the first time.

“I don’t believe you,” he says.

“The beetles catch dew on their backs and then drink it,” you say, “And then the other animals eat them. They’re like water bottles.”

“Like water bottles!” The man lets out a ragged laugh. The boy shifts nervously.

“Life adapts,” you say, and as abruptly as he started laughing the man stops.

“Life adapts?” he says, “Like us? Like we have?”

He slumps forward on the crate, hunches his back, shakes his head. He smells of death. It is a prophecy, hanging at his shoulder.

“If people had adapted,” you say, “If we’d not been so addicted to oil—”

“Oil!” He slaps his leg with his hand, his eyes wide. You tighten your grip on the rifle. “If I had some oil I could take a car and drive south, get to where the crops are. There are cars in the north, I’ve seen them. I could take one of them and go south.”

“There’s no oil left,” you say, “It’s all gone.”

“There must be some left. Somewhere.”

“There hasn’t been any since before he was born,” you nod your head at the boy, “I hardly remember it myself.”

“My father told me about it.”

You look at him properly for the first time and you realise that he is young, younger than his appearance suggests. Too young to remember the protests, the riots, the wars fought for the right to squeeze the last drops from the desert. His youth has been buried deep beneath that wasted exterior.

The man turns to the boy for the first time. You notice your grip tightening on the rifle.

“Do you know what oil is?” the man says. His teeth show as he talks, ragged and yellow. The boy shakes his head.

“It makes machines work,” you say.

“It’s like magic,” says the man.

“What machines?” says the boy. The last time you saw a car by the side of the road he was too young to remember it.

“Cars, trucks, aeroplanes,” you say, “Old things. Nothing you’d know.”

“I saw a car driving along, once,” says the man.

“Must have been a long time ago.”

“A long time.”

He shakes his head, his words a melancholy echo. He looks away towards the blackened horizon for a moment, then turns back to you.

“What have you got in the barrel?” he asks again. His eyes are suddenly as fierce as flints.

“It’s empty,” you say.

“Show me.”

“I said it’s empty.”

The man scowls, then leaps up onto wiry legs and darts towards the wall of debris that shelters the barrel. You jump to your feet, shout at him to stop, and in an instant you have raised the rifle and levelled it at his chest. He skids to a halt and raises his hands.

“Get away from there,” you say.

“You’ve got oil!”

“Get away from there.”

He doesn’t move, he just looks at the barrel and breathes. For an awful moment you wonder whether he is going to try to attack you, or the boy. Then, with stiff, reluctant steps he starts to move backwards, away from the barrel. Careful, careful, his body is saying, don’t pull that trigger, no need to pull that trigger. You keep the gun trained on him the whole time. You can sense the boy behind you, his breath coming sharp and fearful. The man edges back as far as the upturned crate on which he had been sitting, but he remains on his feet. When he looks at you again his eyes are different, softer than they had been.

“Give me some of your oil,” he says, “I don’t need all of it, just some so that I can head south. Please.”

“I think you’d better be getting on your way,” you say.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He clutches his hands to his chest.

“I know.”

“Please,” he is wheedling now, imploring you with his hands and his voice and his eyes, “All right, I’ll go, but let me take some food. I’ll starve without.”

“Get on your way.”

“Please!”

You don’t answer him, you just keep the rifle trained on his heart. He begs you again and again, but you don’t respond; even with the snares there is hardly enough food for you and the boy. Eventually the reality of the situation dawns on him and his face blackens with resentment.

“God damn you both,” he says, pointing at you, and he hauls himself out from the shelter and starts to make his way across the cracked earth. “God damn you both!” he shouts again and again over his shoulder as he goes.

You watch him recede. You have to squint to follow him as the sun is still low in the miserable sky.

“He’s heading for the dune,” says the boy.

“Maybe he’ll turn,” you say.

You beg him to turn, pray that he change course and go around. But the man doesn’t turn, he carries on across the baked flats towards the dune to the south of the refinery, and when he reaches its foot he begins to climb.

“He’ll see the stills,” says the boy.

“Maybe he’ll turn.”

“Dad!” You can feel the urgency in his voice.

You raise the rifle to your eye and trace the man’s progress as he ascends the fortress of sand. At the top of the dune you see him pause, then you watch as he turns around and looks back at you.

“He’s seen them,” says the boy.

You peer down the sights. The man’s head rests at the end of the barrel of the gun. Perhaps it’s not too late, you think. Perhaps he’ll come back down the dune and go around. Dust stings your eyes. The tarpaulin whips in the wind.

Whupwhupwhupwhupwhup.

The man turns away and takes a step towards the other side of the dune. Towards the stills.

“Dad!” the boy says again.

“I know,” you say, “Cover your ears.”

The rifle shot is short and vicious, suffocated quickly by the filthy clouds that press down from above. The boy winces, and on the brow of the dune the man collapses. The boy removes his hands from his ears and squints over at the dune.

“Is he dead?” he asks.

“Yes,” you say. The boy turns and looks up at you.

“Will we bury him?”

Burying the man will take time and energy and sweat, and all of these are precious. The boy keeps looking at you, his eyes innocent and accusing. He remembers you burying his mother.

“We’ll do it after we’ve emptied the stills.”

You sling the rifle onto your back, and only now that your palms are empty do you realise that they are slick with sweat. You unscrew the lid of the yellow barrel and dip two tin cups into it. You pass one to the boy, and drink the other yourself. The water is warm but pure. You narrow your eyes and scan the horizon.

“It’s not safe here any more,” you say, to yourself as much as to the boy, “As soon as the barrel’s full we have to move on. Maybe sooner. He might not be the last person heading this way.”

You and the boy each pick up two buckets and walk towards the dune where the man’s body lies.

“If we had some oil, could we get a car and go somewhere?” asks the boy, “Somewhere better?”

“There isn’t any oil.”

“But if there was, could we do that?”

“Oil was what got us into this position in the first place.”

“What do you mean?”

“The world wasn’t always like this,” you say, “Before you were born it was different. But people are greedy and they burned so much oil that the clouds turned black and the trees shrivelled up and died.”

“Why did they burn it?”

“That’s how it works. You burn it to make energy.”

You reach the dune and climb up to where the man’s crumpled body lies. He is lying on his back, his eyes open. Blood leaks from a ragged wound in his chest and stains the sand beside him. Behind him, beyond the dune, lie the solar stills, a rash of weighted plastic sheets that pit the landscape like scars. The boy stares at the man, horrified and fascinated.

“Go and check the stills,” you say, but the boy doesn’t respond. “Go and check the stills,” you say again, more forcefully, and this time the boy’s attention snaps away from the body. “Go on. I’ll be down in a moment.”

The boy heads down the other side of the dune, his feet seeding tiny waves of sand that race ahead of him. You spend some time looking at the man’s body. He wasn’t a bad man, you understand that; just desperate, willing to do what was needed to survive. He’d have done the same as you in your position; you’d have done the same as him in his. You squat down and close his eyes for him.

After a time you follow the boy’s footsteps down the dune, but when you reach the stills the boy has already emptied most of them. He shows you two of the buckets. They are no more than half full.

“Not bad,” you say.

“Better than yesterday,” he says.

You empty the remainder of the stills with him and climb back up the dune. You stop beside the body once more, and the boy looks at it again. He seems different this time, at the second sight of it. Harder, somehow. Heavier.

“His eyes are closed,” he says.

“I closed them,” you say.

“Why?”

“It’s just something you do. It’s respectful.”

The boy nods.

“Come on,” you say, “We’ll get the water into the barrel and then I’ll bury him. Then we should load up the trolley. Get ready to move on.”

You start down the dune towards the shelter, half stepping, half sliding, the boy beside you. The boy is quiet, and seems distant. Above the wind the only sound is of water slopping around inside the buckets.

“Where will we go?” asks the boy.

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t we go south? To where the crops are?”

“There are no crops,” you say, “Not any more.”

“The man said.”

“The man’s wrong. It’s just a dream. Or a memory.”

The boy is silent for a while, until you reach the shelter; until you pour the water into the barrel. Then he speaks.

“I wish we had some oil,” he says. Water slaps against plastic.

“Forget about oil,” you say.

A sense of place - Tunbridge Wells Writers blog

2012-03-22T09:25:00.001Z

I've just written a post over at the Tunbridge Wells Writers blog about locations in fiction:

A sense of place - locations in fiction

Head over there if you want to share your favourite fictional locations, to discuss whether it's OK for a novelist to change a real place, and to let us know if there are any novels set in or around Tunbridge Wells...

Syllable - Jess Chakravorty

2012-03-19T09:25:00.000Z

My fellow Tunbridge Wells Writer Jess Chakravorty has a new website - Syllable - in which she is showcasing some of her poetry. I'm no poetry buff but I think she's really rather good, and I recommend you get over there and take a read.

Write what you know, even when it's about giant killer moths

2012-03-15T13:22:00.000Z

When you start writing fiction one of the most common aphorisms that you're likely to hear is "write what you know".

It makes sense, but I get the impression from a lot of what I read that people take it far too literally. Of course if you have expertise or experience in a particular field then you are likely to be drawn towards setting your fiction in that area, and of course there's nothing wrong with doing that, but all too often I've seen that the author gets lost in the specialism, it overwhelms the narrative and it drains the vibrancy from the story.

If you're an insurance salesman then by all means make your protagonist an insurance salesman...just don't devote large sections of the narrative to the ins and outs of selling insurance. You might know a lot about it, but unless you're a particularly skilled writer then it will just come across as dull.

This isn't just an issue for aspiring and unpublished writers, by the way; I've read plenty of published books that sacrificed the reader's interest - by which I mean my interest, of course - to the minutiae of a particular job or hobby or area of specialism.

I think that following the advice to write what you know in this way is missing the point. So what is meant when people say that you should "write what you know"?

Well, we all know stuff. Everyone with consciousness and a memory knows stuff.

Emotions. How people speak. How they respond to good things, to bad things, how and why they express joy, horror, envy. If you've lived through your teens then it's a pretty safe bet that you understand these things. It's a pretty safe bet that you understand fairly well how people work.

The good news, then, is that although the deadly diarrhoa virus or the secret Illuminati codex or the giant killer moth may seem to be what's interesting, in fact what readers find most interesting in fiction is how characters react to that virus/codex/giant killer moth.

How do they deal with the swooping nocturnal terror from above? How do their personalities clash as they attempt to avoid those antennae the size of small trees, all bushy and horrible and swooshing left and right, ooh it makes me shiver just to think of it? How do they express to one another their concerns over where they are going to find a light bulb large enough to distract the moth for long enough to thwack it upside the thorax with an impossibly vast rolled-up newspaper?

Although you may be one of the minority of people never to have battled a giant killer moth, you will have experienced at least some fear, at least some adversity, at least some conflict; well, that's what you know, and that's what you should write. It will add depth to your writing, and it will make it easier for the reader to empathise with your characters. I've never experienced the desperate murder of a traveller in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, for example, but it didn't stop me writing about it...because the important thing isn't the murder or the post-apocalyptic wasteland, it's the conflict and mistrust between the two people...and, like most adults, I've experienced conflict and mistrust.

So please, let's all try to focus less on the giant killer moths and more on people doing what people do.

Why Did You Write That? Distant Machines interview

2012-03-09T14:06:00.000Z

Distant Machines

Peter Lewis has very kindly interviewed me for his Why Did You Write That? blog.

Why Did You Write That? is a blog that is intended to provide "a glimpse into the life and mind of your next favourite author", and although I might not become your next favourite author the questions certainly provide some insights into me and my writing, and particularly my short story collection Distant Machines.

The interview contains the phrases "slightly gelatinous shredded cabbage", "all kinds of enjoyable malevolence" and "uppercut a horse", and you can read it in full by clicking on the following link:

http://whydidyouwritethat.blogspot.com/2012/03/simon-john-cox-distant-machines.html

The Proactive Anti-Prologue Ante-Room

2012-03-01T12:06:00.004Z

Before I get started I'd just like to tell you about how blogging works. Blogging is the gerund of the verb "to blog", which is itself a portmanteau of the phrase "web log", and it describes an activity in which individuals of the species Homo sapiens sapiens record their thoughts online for others to read. What you are about to read is an example of this.

There, I think I'm ready to start now.

I've only read about three fiction prologues in my life. And the only reason I've read those is because for the first one I didn't know anything about prologues, for the second I was thinking "well, they can't all be like that" and for the third one I was thinking "OK, you've got one last chance". After that I stopped reading them.

The reason I stopped reading them was because they didn't add anything. They just got in the way of the story.

I can see the thinking behind including them, of course; they are a way for the writer to dump a large amount of exposition on the reader up front, so that the reader is up to speed with whatever the writer wants him to be up to speed with once the story gets underway. A way for the writer to explain that the Horse Empire has outlawed the colour red, or that Hyperglobomegacorp has bought the Isle of Wight and is using it to intensively farm human embryos for food, or that a hak-groglurr has two penises, one of which is on his back. The things in the narrative that are not generally accepted as being part of the world in which we currently live.

I have three problems with that, though.

Firstly, information dumps are boring. They tend towards "tell" writing; show the reader what you mean instead. It's much more interesting.

Secondly, any half-decent writer should be able to include all necessary exposition as part of the main narrative (I don't remember I Am Legend or The Road having prologues to explain the events that had led to a vampire apocalypse and a common-or-garden apocalypse respectively). I understand that if you set a story on one of the eight moons of Riskibumseks IV then you need to explain something about this utterly alien environment, but do it as a natural part of the narrative - I don't want to have to read a non-fiction book in order to understand a fiction book.

Thirdly, one of the first things you learn when you start writing is to begin the narrative in medias res. That's a pretentious Latin way of saying "in the midst of things" (remember, if there's a Latin term for it then you know shit just got real), whereas prologues are by definition about something that happened before the interesting things that make up the main story.

Let's have an example. I read the prologue of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo only because I felt that I had to, as I was reading it for a reading group. It was about a man who received a pressed flower on the same day every year. It didn't introduce anything of any interest or value, the flowers weren't mentioned again, and by the time I got to the end* and learned (after having guessed almost immediately) that the flowers were being sent by the missing girl I'd completely forgotten about them and didn't care anyway, as they weren't part of the plot.

Warning: the previous paragraph contains spoilers.

Why would any author want to put content between the cover of the book and the start of the narrative that is less interesting than that narrative?

Well, my mind's made up: I won't read a prologue, and I'll never write one.

PS You'll probably have noticed by now that the first paragraph of this article was a deeply satirical observation on the value of a prologue. I think you'll all agree that I am amazing.

*It wasn't technically the end, it was just where the plot was resolved; the book inexplicably carries on for another fifty pages after the story is finished

This post is also published on the Tunbridge Wells Writers blog.

What the Dickens

2012-02-16T12:44:00.000Z

Our mutual friend

Tony Healey, over at Fringe Scientist, is trying to get a Charles Dickens reading relay off the ground to commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens. It involves voting for the Dickens book that you'd like to read (or re-read), then joining a chain of readers who will read the book, sign the inside cover, and then post it on to the next person in the chain.

Not a bad idea, eh?

Read more and sign up here: http://fringescientist.com/2012/02/14/what-the-dickens/

Distant Machines

2012-02-09T08:53:00.000Z

My collection of three definitely speculative fiction and probably vaguely science fiction short stories, Distant Machines, is now available as an ebook from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk:

I think it's also available on the .fr, .de, .it and .es versions of Amazon as well, but it's in English so they probably don't care and hencely and thusforth I'm not shouting about it. It's not that.I'm being all Luis Suarez or John Terry (allegedly) or anything. Some of my best friends are .fr/.de/.it/.es etc etc.

And I know I said this in the last post that I wrote about it, but I want to point out again that the fantastic cover was designed by Tony Healey, who runs Fringe Scientist.

Also my short story The Restoration Man is still available for free from all the Amazons - grab yourself a copy before tomorrow when the promotion ends. Get it here if you're a .commer and here if you're a .co.uker.

The Restoration Man breaks free for a week

2012-02-06T09:34:00.001Z

I enrolled my short story The Restoration Man into Amazon's KDP Select programme. This has two benefits: firstly it means that the short story appears in the Kindle owners' lending library, which enables people to lend it to one another; and secondly it provides me with the opportunity to make the title available for free for up to five days.

As such, I have made The Restoration Man free for one week:

So if you've been put off by the hefty price tag (99c or 79p) then now's your chance to grab yourself a copy.

**UPDATE**

Unfortunately the free week is up. Sorry.

Distant machines drawn by a fringe scientist

2012-02-02T09:16:00.002Z

Over the last few days I have been putting the finishing touches to a collection of three short stories, which I shall be putting up onto Amazon, Smashwords and other places in the near future. The stories are all set in the not-too-distant future, and they touch on subjects such as genetic manipulation, a world without oil and "designer euthanasia". If you're a genre-obsessive then you'd probably call it "speculative fiction".

One exciting thing about it is that my fellow Kindle All Star and not-too-far-away-neighbour Tony Healey has designed me a fantastic cover for it, which you can see just over there.

It's fantastic. I love it. He's managed to capture the feel of the stories in the anthology and translate the main themes into a visual style that I like (not an easy task, as I am monumentally fussy).

Meeting people like Tony has been one of the many unexpected benefits of being involved with the Kindle All Stars project. You can find Tony at Fringe Scientist.

Anyway, if you'd like to receive an advance review copy of Distant Machines then please get in touch and let me know...

You have won second prize in a synchrotron contest

2012-02-01T17:56:00.001Z

A little while ago I mentioned a competition being run by the Diamond Light Source, which as you all know is the UK's national synchrotron facility.

At the time I said that I couldn't say anything about my story because it was being judged anonymously and I didn't want to prejudice the judging process. Well, the judging is now over, and it turns out that the judges have impeccable taste because my story, The Pélissier Scroll, was selected as the second place winner.

The story is about an academic's lifelong passion to uncover the mystery of an ancient scroll, and is intercut with the mythical narrative behind the fragile, ancient parchment that he is using a synchrotron beamline to decipher. The judges described it as "beautifully written and pacy", and although I think I could have done with about 500 more words to play with (there was a 3,000 word limit) I'm pretty happy with how it came out.

The full results of the competition, as well as my story, are available here on the Light Reading website.

Subjectivity in reviews, obesity as satire and a pantomime witch

2012-01-20T16:00:00.002Z

I wrote a short story recently and, as all writers should (and as I suspect that only some actually do), I sent the draft out to people for review and comment.

There was one sentence that I put in that I was unsure about. It felt a bit forced, a bit writery, but I quite liked it so I left it in, knowing that it didn't matter because I'd come back to it later during editing and I could always refine or remove it at that stage. Out of interest (mine, not yours), it was something about a pantomime witch.

So I sent it out for review, and one reader came back and said "yeah, about that line, it doesn't really work. It comes across as a bit clunky, a bit as though you're trying too hard". And I had to agree. Confirmation that I was trying too hard.

Then another reader came back, and he highlighted the exact same line (literally - he inserted a comment directly into the text in Word because we are living in the future) and inserted the comment "Brilliant! Love it!".

So where does that leave me?

In the end I decided to change the line, because I felt that a reader confirming my own nagging doubts about it trumped another reader liking it, but it disguises a deeper issue: where fiction is concerned, the reader is never wrong.

By this I mean that the reader is never wrong in the sense that a piece of fiction is designed to prompt a personal emotional reaction, and that all personal emotional reactions are completely subjective to each individual. So if a reader likes a line that I've written then he's right to like it, but if another reader dislikes it then he's equally right to dislike it. Fiction is like food in that it can be neither "right" nor "wrong", and in that although the ingredients, portion size and nutritional content may vary, if a consumer likes it then that's all that matters.

That said, considering the worrying levels of obesity in the US/UK perhaps consumers should lay off the cheap processed junk and concentrate more on stuff that's altogether better for you. [is this just a bald statement about diet or is it in fact a cunning satire on the state of publishing? YOU DECIDE]

Just look at Amazon. For any book that has more than around a dozen reviews, even accounting for stooges and enemies of the author there will be at least one five-star review and at least one one-star review. Think about that: two people read exactly the same thing, and one thinks it is absolutely fantastic whilst the other thinks it is utter rubbish. Personal opinion is so subjective that it almost makes me wonder whether reviews have any value whatsoever.

Hmm.

Of course, I don't think that reviews have no value. They do. I just think that all reviews are limited by the reviewer, and that no one review or reviewer can be considered to be an absolute guide to quality. At best all you can say is that if a particular reviewer's tastes seem to be sufficiently similar to your own then you are probably going to like what they like and dislike what they like...but even then there is no guarantee that your tastes will coincide on everything. We are each a unique amalgamation of genetics and experiences, meaning that no two people are identical...and meaning that no two personal tastes are identical. Some people will like something about a pantomime witch, for example. Others will not.

Those are my thoughts, anyway. If your tastes are fairly similar to mine then you'll probably agree with them, and if they aren't then you probably won't.

All that really matters, though, is what you think.

Making an 85-year-old professor of ethics kick a disabled child in the face

2012-01-16T12:07:00.001Z

After writing about narrative in video games recently I've decided that I want to come back to the genre and look at character. I think it's still on my mind partly because I reached saturation point over Christmas from the deluge of television and internet advertising for big-budget blockbuster games like Super Pope Fighter II and War War Kill War 3 and Vernon Kay's Rwandan Genocide Simulator. Sigh...part of me misses the more innocent days of Everyone's A Wally and Auf Wiedersehen Monty.

Anyway. As far as I can tell there are three types of character in video games - the "realised protagonist", the "blank protagonist" and the non-player character (or NPC).

To deal with the first two, there are only two conventions that govern the protagonist in a video game: either he (and let's face it, it's usually a he) is a fully rounded character with a history and a personality - a realised protagonist - or he is an everyman-style tabula rasa: a blank protagonist. Realised protagonists include Tommy Vercetti from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and John Marston from Red Dead Redemption; blank protagonists include the majority of early game characters, as well as the nameless protagonist from the still-brilliant Limbo, Master Chief from Halo, and arguably also Gordon Freeman from Half Life (he has a name but that's about it).

Of course, by having control over the protagonist the player projects at least some of his or her personality onto him, which means that even the fully realised characters are, to an extent, avatars of the player; game developers could design a game with an 85-year-old professor of ethics and part-time volunteer aid worker as the protagonist, but if the player directs him to kick a disabled child in the face then that's what he'll do.

For the most part game characters add a veneer of personality to an otherwise impersonal experience. After all, as I mentioned before, the primary purpose of playing a game is the gameplay - not the story, or the characters. There are a few notable exceptions, however.

Role-playing games (RPGs), for example, place a heavy emphasis on character, although this mostly manifests itself in terms of gameplay - tweaking appearance, skills, etc - rather than as something that drives narrative. One exception to this rule is the excellent Planescape: Torment, in which the player controls the Nameless One, a being who is reincarnated whenever he dies but cannot remember his own past; the game represents a slow, progressive discovery of his memories, personality and former lives, with each new revelation of the past serving as a narrative hook for the player. For me it is expertly done, and one of the only games that I have played primarily with the desire to find out what happens (or rather, happened) next.

Modern games often allow choices of gameplay (Fallout 3, for example, has a very clear moral code, and players that act morally will experience a slightly different game than those who act immorally...although I must say that I quickly discovered that the "good karma" effects accrued during formal missions massively outweigh the "bad karma" effects accrued by minor infractions during sandbox gameplay and as such although my character was considered by the game to be more moral than Jesus himself he spent the entire game stealing anything that wasn't nailed down), and this enables players to exercise a degree of freedom over the character of the protagonist, though only within the parameters of the game's system of choice.

Even without these kinds of formalised choices, however, players have a degree of freedom in how they play most games, and this can be used to lend a sense of character to an otherwise blank protagonist: run in with guns blazing, or hang back and approach with caution? Head-on assault, or stealth?

Characterisation is key to a work of fiction. We, the readers, warm to characters with whom we can identify, whether those characters are heroes or anti-heroes. A character who exists only to progress a plot - and there are plenty out there - is bland and uninteresting. A fictional character who is not fully realised is of limited interest. In video games, however, this is generally not the case. The core of the experience is gameplay, and in controlling the protagonist the player projects himself onto that character, so any shortcomings in the realisation of the character are overcome simply by dint of the player's participation in the game; the player is the character. Or rather, the player fills in the gaps in the character.

As such, video games can get away with investing far less time and effort into creating fully-rounded, sympathetic protagonists, and I think they often do...which is something of a shame. If I'm going to put several hours into completing a game then I'd much rather do so as a character that seems human (Red Dead Redemption's John Marston, Uncharted's Nathan Drake) than as just another anonymous gun-toting marine.

Games don't perform the same function as novels, it's true, but I think that there's an awful lot that games can learn from them about immersion and empathy.

Flash Fiction: "Before"

2012-01-03T08:27:00.000Z

Before

“I thought I’d see if you needed anything,” she says.

“I should be OK.” He is bent forward, lifting a cardboard box of tinned food out from the boot of his car.

“Can I give you a hand?”

“I’ve got it.”

He carries the box into the house. She waits outside for a moment, then picks up a bag of groceries from the car and follows him through to the kitchen.

The house is dark, but she knows it well enough to navigate without light: the narrow-framed black-and-white photographs, the thinning carpet in the hall, the cupboard with plates arranged but never used. Gold edging. Kept for best.

In the kitchen every surface is deep with tins and packets of food.

“Looks like you’re well prepared,” she says, and laughs. She sounds nervous.

“You can put that on there,” he says, and he nods towards the kitchen table.

As she lowers the bag down she notices the windows. Wooden planks have been nailed crudely across them.

“What on earth have you been doing in here?” she asks.

“Just a bit of DIY,” he says.

“Is this why the house is so dark?”

“Took me longer than it should have,” he says, “I’m not as young as I used to be.”

He glances down at his hand, and she notices the bandage.

“You’ve hurt yourself,” she says.

“It’s nothing. Don’t make a fuss.”

She can’t tell whether he is annoyed at her or at himself.

“Listen, it’s not too late,” she says. “You can come back with me. There’s room. You can stay as long as you like. Until you get somewhere new. Or...you know, longer. If you want.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“John...”

“Forty years. Forty years. I’ll be damned if they’re just going to kick me out and knock it down.”

“Please. You could get hurt.”

He doesn’t answer, instead opens a cupboard and pulls out a bottle and two glasses.

“Do you want a drink?” he asks. He clamps the bottle under his arm and unscrews the cap with his good hand.

“Do you know what time they’re coming?” she asks.

Whisky tumbles into the glass, joyful and careless.

“Sure you don’t want one?”

She shakes her head. “What time, John?”

“The letter said the diggers’d get here at nine o’clock,” he says, “Police’ll be here not long after, I shouldn’t wonder.”

She swallows hard and looks him in the eye. He seems smaller than she remembers him. As though he were slowly drying out.

“I think I need some air,” she says.

She opens the back door and goes out into the garden, and he follows. There is no wind. The sky is like a sheet of polished copper.

“It’s a nice afternoon,” she says eventually. The dying afternoon sun erases wrinkles, rubs years from their skin.

“Nice enough,” he says.

“They said it’d storm tonight,” she says, looking up at the sky, “You wouldn’t think it, would you?”

“This is the calm,” he says, and drains his glass.

Book Brouhaha review of The Restoration Man

2011-12-27T11:08:00.000Z

Alain Gomez at Book Brouhaha has written a very thoughtful and considered review of my short story The Restoration Man, giving it four out of five stars.

Read it here: http://bookbrouhaha.blogspot.com/2011/12/review-of-restoration-man-by-simon-john.html

Ghost Football, With Steven Gerrard

2011-12-23T12:40:00.006Z

A ghost footballer

Imagine the unlikely situation in which I have been signed by a Premiership football team. Let's call that team Livtottenchestersea Citynited. Imagine now that instead of actually playing for the oily badgers (which is of course the nickname given to Livtottenchestersea Citynited, who of course play in wet-look black and white stripes), I give a fee to tiny-foreheaded wayward-pass-machine Steven Gerrard, who turns up wearing a mask of my face and a shirt with my name on it, puts in 110% in the way that only a footballer can and plays far, far better than I ever could. Then imagine finally that I pick up my exorbitant wages and go home without even having kicked a ball.

It's too far-fetched to be believable, isn't it? If it actually happened then you'd say that it was stranger than fiction. If you were a vacuous reactionary right-wing tabloid columnist then you'd claim that you couldn't make it up. Even though - crucially - it is fiction and I have just made it up.

And yet, the situation that I've described above is essentially what happens in the world of ghostwriting.

Why? Why is it accepted that celebrities (and it is usually celebrities) can claim to have authored a book that in many cases I doubt they've even read? Why is it OK for someone to take credit for the creative efforts of someone else? How many industries would tolerate someone simply stamping their name on something and claiming it as their own work?

OK, I suppose I can think of a few - I doubt Britney Spears really puts time and effort into creating her new perfume, or that Jamie Oliver really sits down with pencil and paper and draws up designs for his new saucepan - but they're more about endorsing a product than claiming to have created it. You know, approving of it. That's not really the case with a ghostwritten book; it seems peculiar to the publishing industry.

It seems strange, doesn't it? The more you think about it, the more weird it seems (like the word "weapon"...read it and say it in your mind over and over again, you'll soon begin to question the warped logic that decided that such a collection of letters should result in such a combination of sounds).

Now, I'm not talking about this situation as though it's a problem - people are free to buy whatever they like, and free to believe the fiction that Katie Price really is the Saul Bellow of page three; I'm not a vacuous reactionary right-wing tabloid columnist, after all - and I don't want you to think that I am bitter about it (I am, but that's only because I'm bitter about pretty much everything) or that I think that it shouldn't be allowed. I'm just talking about it because, when you think about it, it's a funny situation, and I don't understand how we've reached the stage where the fact that it happens is both well known and tolerated.

It's weird, and that's all I'm saying.

Merry Christmas from me and all at Tunbridge Wells Writers.

NB I didn't write this blog post. Steven Gerrard did.