The Feckless Goblin's World of Dark Fiction

How to cook a human brain

2012-02-16T02:03:00.000-08:00

So you’ve finally got round to killing your boss/wife/husband/mum/dad/local-do-gooder, cleaned up the mess in the living room and put the bloody remains in the freezer.

Now’s the time, if you’re going to do it, to make a delicacy out of the brain.

If you’re a serial killer worth his or her salt, your victim’s brains need to be fresh, still with all those pesky thoughts bouncing around.

I must admit that I cheated when I did this for the first time, the brain wasn’t human but belonged to next door’s dog. It was an opportunist thing. The dog was in the back garden. The neighbour had gone to work.

Misconceptions on cooking the human brain

I always imagined brain as being like foie gras when you cook it. Foie gras is the enlarged liver of a goose that has been force fed fatty stuff, a delicacy in some parts of France. The trick is to put the sliced foie gras in a hot frying pan without oil. That’s because the pan fills with its own oil very quickly as the fois gras cooks.

It was either that or like squid – you know if you don’t cook it right it turns all hard and rubbery.

Or maybe it was like blamanche…

Hey, didn’t Hannibal slice a bit of Ray Liotta’s brain off and fry it in a pan? Did they research that? Because the brain looked quite solid, you know. More like a slither of chicken than anything else.
I digress…

Getting your brain out

Here’s the tricky part. For this you will need 1. A hacksaw 2. A long thin bladed knife, and 3. A scoop. Saw off the top of the skull and then release the brain from the vertebral stack using the long knife. Then scoop the brain out gently into a bowl.

In the movies it just pops out. Don’t expect it to be that easy. It’s messy.

Soaking the brain

First of all, before you go ahead and cook the brain, you’ve got to do a few things. You’ll need to remove the outer membrane and then try and pick out any blood vessels. Once that messy job has been done, you need to soak the brain in cold water overnight to draw out the impurities – changing the water every couple of hours.

Cooking your brains

Thankfully, the cooking part is the easiest, no more difficult than making scrambled eggs. By far the best way to cook your brains is to sauté them.

First blanch the brains in boiling water for a few seconds.
Drain.
Season with salt and pepper.
Roll in flour.
Fry in salted butter until a nice golden brown.

Serve with a simple salad or creamed potatoes. Cooking time about 10-15 minutes.
Mmmmm…it’s delicious…

Have you got a recipe you’d like to share with us? Have you eaten something particularly nasty in the last 24 hours? Have you just killed your pet hamster in the microwave? Let the Feckless Goblin know in the comments section below.

Guest Blog: The Accidental Horror Writer by Katherine Hajer

2012-02-12T01:20:00.000-08:00

I told a co-worker about seeing The Woman in Black. I admitted that I'd deliberately seen a matinee, but wound up putting on extra lights at night because I was still freaked out come nightfall.

She laughed. "Why did you go see it if you scare so easily?"

"I thought it would be scary like Skeleton Key."

Pause. "I saw that. That wasn't scary."

"Yeah it was. For me."

"Wait," she said. "Wasn't that story you got published last spring about someone being buried alive?"

Yes. Yes it was.

Horror, like its next-door neighbour science fiction, has invaded the mainstream cultural consciousness to such an extent that it can be hard to tell where the genre ends and the mainstream begins. It can be difficult for the reader, but difficult for the writer, too. It isn't necessarily horror just because it's scary, and it isn't necessarily horror because it has supernatural elements and/or gore in it either.

On both the reading and writing sides of stories, there's a tendency to feel around what a story is with syllogisms: "X recommended this to me, and I liked the last thing X recommended to me, so I will try and read this (or try to write more like that)". Or simply, "Everything I ever like to read in this bookshop winds up being from this section, so this must be the genre I like the best."

It gets tricky when the fit is less than perfect. Horror means gory much of the time, and if you can't handle a lot of gore (I can't), it means there's a lot of perfectly good and scary books and movies that you can't experience. It also means that it can be difficult to see yourself as a horror writer (or just as someone who wrote a horror story) if you associate the genre with things you can't handle, rather than the stories you enjoy.

A few years ago I wrote a short story based on a passing remark a horror-fan friend of mine made. Since I quoted what he said in the story, I passed a polished draft to him to get approval for using the quote.

When we discussed the story, he gave the names of some magazines to submit the story to for publication.

"But those are all horror," I said.

"It's a first-person account of someone reanimating after being dead for days," he said. "That counts as horror."

And maybe that's the problem with the idea of genre in general: too much overlap, too much activity at the border areas, too much debate about what is "core" and what isn't. Just because someone likes near-future thrillers doesn't mean they like space opera. Just because someone enjoys zombie films doesn't mean they enjoy serial-killer slashers or torture porn.

Maybe the accidental horror writer is a sign that it's time for the genres to be redefined.

You can find out more about Katherine Hajer at http://the-eyrea.blogspot.com/

20 tips for writing the perfect horror short story

2012-02-09T09:45:00.000-08:00

Pick something that could happen to your reader.
Pick a location that’s familiar to your reader.
Eat, drink, sleep the horror that you have created before you actually begin to write. Lie back in a darkened room and really visualise it. Scare the pants off yourself.
Go to your location or one that looks like it and sit there quietly for a while. If your story takes place on a quiet street in the early hours, find one, get up in the early hours and drink it up. Take a pad and write down some notes about what you see and how you feel.
Try to see the story from three or four different views even if they won’t be in the final version. Choose someone timid, someone thick skinned, someone religious. The choice is yours.
Take your time, build up the pressure, slowly but surely. This may be a short horror story but you’ve got more time than you think to lay out your stall.
Stay focussed. Don’t get bogged down in back story. In fact, try giving back story a miss altogether.
Anticipation is nine tenths of the horror story battle – let your reader know something bad is going to happen, lead them there by the hand.
Dig deep into that horror. Choose one that scares you. If it doesn’t scare you, how do you expect it to scare the hell out of your dear reader?
Throw a few red herrings in there, twist them on their heads. The old cat jumping out of the fridge is a bit of cliché but you get my drift.
If you’re scared of heights, go and stand on the edge of a tall building and lean over, if you’ve got a spider phobia, go and put one on the palm of your hand. Remind yourself how real fear feels.
Don’t overload your reader with gore. It becomes boring and they quickly attain sensitisation. A splash of blood here and there will do fine.
Don’t over describe. You’re not Dickens. Give your reader some credit that they can imagine your ultimate horror. Don’t be afraid that they won’t get the point.
Keep the monster/horror hidden for as long as possible.
Read the best and the worst of horror. Reread the passages that got your heart racing and try to see how the author did it. Look at the way you reacted and imagine that’s what you want your reader to feel.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with different styles. Write a couple of different versions of your story to see how it comes out.
Leave your first draft for a decent amount of time so that you come back to it fresh. For some people that’s a couple of days. For others it’s a couple of months.
Always, always read your draft through once without touching it before you sit down to edit.
Check you have the right vocabulary to scare. Choose the words to describe your fear with care. Make sure they fit and sound right. Try not to use unusual words that your reader won’t readily know the meaning to. It will break the flow. You’re trying to build fear not a larger vocab.
Don’t forget that your story isn’t written in stone. It can change. It can evolve. It can be totally different from the original. Don’t be afraid to delete stuff that doesn’t belong.

Got a tip of your own for writing a short horror story? Add it in the comments section below.

The Feckless Discussion: What really sells your book?

2012-02-08T10:31:00.000-08:00

Okay, instead of reading The Feckless rant and rave about nothing in particular, we've decided to start some discussions going. When you brought up this page, you were infected with some pretty nasty subliminal messaging that means you will...yes you WILL...contribute to the discussion.

First up is what REALLY sells your book.

Do you get all your sales from Twitter, Facebook, a combination of things?
Have you made a YouTube video that's upped your book sales by a billion percent?
Does persistent spamming and DMing people you don't know work?
Have you tried pay-per-click?
Have you done a blog tour thats been really successfully or a total waste of time?
Have you sold your soul to the devil and really don't have to bother with trivial things such as social networking?
Have you emailed people with pictures of fossilized pooh asking them to buy your book?

Those are just some of the questions The Feckless needs to answer. Make up your own if you don't like them. Ask questions. Give answers. Put a fecking smiley face there. We don't care.

So get writing, do it from the heart as usual, and get your views down and dirty in the comments section below. Whether you're a beginner or a marketing demon, we want to hear from you...

We wait with cruel anticipation....by the way, the subliminal messaging thing...if you try to ignore it...your head explodes...

Guest Blog: Writing Horror – Screaming in the Dark by Lisamarie Lamb

2012-02-07T12:44:00.000-08:00

It seems an odd thing to do, to write horror. When there is a wealth of genres out there, when I could be writing about perfect love or fantastic dragons or gun-toting cowboys, why choose to create the most terrifying, the most soul-shredding, the most unwelcome?

My answer is a simple one: because I like it. I like horror.

I like to read it, I like to watch it, I like to think about it, and I like to write it. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t.

As to why I like it, that’s a more complicated question, with a different kind of answer.

As a child, I was scared. A lot. Most of the time. Not that I wasn’t a happy child, with a normal family and normal surroundings and normal friends. I was. Perfectly normal. But I was also perfectly scared. There was a seeping, creeping horror that hovered around me, enveloped me, and at night I would scrunch my eyes shut and hide beneath the covers in the hope that whatever it was wouldn’t see me because I couldn’t see it.

And there was, as far I can tell, as far as I can remember, no reason for it. Nothing that particularly stands out as being that one specific moment in which something happened – something ghostly and ghoulish and downright petrifying – that haunted me for the rest of my days.

I was a normal girl, but a strange one.

Being alone was bad. I hated it. These days I crave a bit of solitude, but then, when that fear stole over me, I only wanted to be around people. It’s just that sometimes, there were no people to be around. And so I created some. I reached the age of twelve and simply decided that I needed constant, immediate access to someone.

But who? And how?

I started to go to bed and instead of cowering under the covers I moulded myself heroes and heroines, safe houses and refuges. I began to make up stories. These stories became my talisman, protecting me from the real evil by pretending about it. It seemed to me that nothing in the real world could possibly be as frightening as the world I was creating in my head, and so my heroes were slain, horribly. My heroines were kidnapped and tortured. My safe houses and refuges were pillaged by monsters and demons and ghosts.

And because I’d made it all up, just me, by myself, it wasn’t so scary after all. I enjoyed it. And I began to write my stories down. I began to read other people’s stories. I began to watch the films. Because it was all safe. It was all made up.

I’ve been doing that ever since.

Just don’t ask me to read or watch any ‘true’ horror stories.

They keep me up at night.

You can find out more about Lisamarie at The Moonlit Door.

Should you hire an editor to look at your book?

2012-02-04T04:04:00.000-08:00

A big subject in the indie/self-publishing world, the general consensus is that you should have an editor look at your work and advise as if you were had been taken on by a “proper” publishing house. The problem with this for indie/self-publishers is this:

Is your work of art good enough?
Are you prepared to listen to what your editor says?
Can you find an editor enthusiastic enough to look at your book and work on it with you?
Can you afford this editor?
Then, once again, just in case you lied to yourself the first time round: Is your itty-bitty book worth the effort and the financial outlay?

How to be honest with yourself

You’ve been working on this remarkable novel for the last two years. You’ve poured your heart and soul into it, not to mention a good few litres of vino to get your creative juices flowing. You’ve finished. You think it’s the bee’s knees. Your sister thinks it’s the greatest thing that’s ever been written. Your mother has called from beyond the grave to say it’s marvellllllouuuussssoooou…

Ask yourself this question:

Is it going to set the world on fire?

In all probability, the answer to this is going to be no. Ouch! Did that hurt? I apologise.

Face the facts

90% of the self-published stuff on Kindle is crap. Yours may or may not be amongst that pile of shit-drivel, or it may be. You might be honest enough with yourself to admit that. But you have to accept the fact that, in all probability, your beautiful novel is not going to be in the top 10% of Kindle’s all time greats.

Accept this and be free: Your novel is not going to cause a major sensation, people are not going to be talking about it at bus stops and in cafes, you’re not going to be invited to posh soirees, drinking champagne and discussing shit with the glitterati, all in all no one’s ever going to know your name as a serious writer.

It doesn’t matter!

So, once more with feeling, should you fork out on a professional editor?

If you’re a good writer and you’ve written something good, and you have the money to burn, then it’s worth the effort.

However, make sure you find a good editor. A good editor will tell you before she’s even asked you for money that your book is:

Worth some effort, or
A pile of KACK

HEALTH WARNING: A good editor will charge you a decent whack but she/he won’t take you on without you being any good. If your book is a pile of KACK and the EDITOR takes it on, they’re not an EDITOR they’re just a piss-taking-fuck-wit-troll who knows a sorry ass when they see one.

Research your editor. Don’t accept them at face value. Find out who they’ve worked with. Contact those people to see if they’re happy.

If you’re one of the five zillion or so writers with hope in their hearts but not quite enough talent to make the big splash, then stop looking for an editor. The work you have created is your own. It belongs to you and it may even sell a few copies and you may get a few rave reviews from your friends and a few negative ones from people you’ve never met.

As Humphrey Bogart once said: “It don’t amount to a hill of beans.”

But do me a favour…

If you are going to self-publish. DOOOOOOOO get yourself a proof-reader. Your story might be shite but at least the grammar and the typos should be ironed out. Have at least a little respect for your dear reader.

And proof-readers cost a lot less than an editor.

Leave your comments down below as usual, you rat-arsed scribes of the dark and twisted tale..

Who or what is your favourite horror monster and why?

2012-01-27T11:12:00.000-08:00

Okay, I’ll start you off: My favourite monster is the shark from Jaws. Why? The shark is a freaking genius of simplicity.

Imagine: You’re in this big body of cold, blue water and you know damn well something is down there. None of your five senses can pick it up – you can’t see it, smell it, hear it, feel it or hear it before it’s too late. Somewhere in the depths of the ocean, this soundless behemoth is rushing up towards you, jaws open, eyes rolling back.

Bham!

Okay, you can swim. Go ahead. Knock yourself out. Swim as fast as you can dumbo, won’t do you no good!

No one can swim faster than a shark, not even Aquaman.

Here’s another thing that makes it scary: The shark exists in real life. We’ve seen documentary’s and pictures of it. People have even been in the water swimming with them. The shark from Jaws is a Supershark but it’s a Supershark with a history we already know and fear.

And here’s something else: The shark is, like any monster worth its salt, merciless, relentless and focussed.

All it wants to do is swim, eat, shit and make little sharks.

To help it catch its prey, the shark has ultra-senses that enables it be the efficient killer of the deep. It can pick up a vibration in the water over three miles away. It can scent a miniscule drop of blood in the water.

This shark has superpowers!

Above all shark can swim faster than you. You’re in its territory. Even if you’re on a boat you’re not safe. The boat can sink and, when there’s a Great White around, in books and films, the chances are the fecking boat is going to damn well sink.

The shark has a neat shape. No distracting tentacles, hideous talons or suction thingies, it’s just a big, sharp mouth on the end of a bunch of tight muscle. It’s perfectly, horribly simple. And that’s its real beauty. When you see it in the water it elicits a primordial fear in all of us. It’s the perfect product of evolution. A big, chunky, sharp toothed-fecking eating machine.

And finally: The shark has a great theme tune. Without the theme tune you really wouldn’t know that Monsieur Carcharodon carcharias was coming.

Face it, how many of you don’t know the theme from Jaws?

I rest my case, your honour.

So who’s your favourite horror monster and why? Answers as usual in the comments section below.

GUEST BLOG: 10 Characteristics of the Perfect Horror Monster by Brian Fatah Steele

2012-01-24T04:24:00.000-08:00

The perfect horror monster? Sigmund Freud would’ve had a blast with that concept. Joseph Campbell would’ve just thrown some random book of mythology at your head. Jean-Paul Sartre had the quote, “Hell is other people.” Perhaps, if anything, the truly monstrous is relative and personalized, unique to the individual.

But, hey… monsters are cool! From Lovecraft’s Cthulhu chomping on your sanity to DC Comic’s Doomsday leveling a city for giggles, we get a kick out of them. And if we should attempt to objectively describe ten characteristics of the perfect horror monster, well, that’s just fun. However, we may need to dig deeper than sharpened claws and alien origins.

Something Recognizable. No one’s imagination springs anew from a vacuum, and even if it did, nobody else would understand what you were talking about if you tried to describe the creepy stuff in your head. As much as Howard Philip spoke of things “unknown and eldritch,” he brought up tentacles a lot, too. Readers understood tentacles, and knew they were gross. A great deal of Christian symbolism relies heavily on images of bats and goats when detailing the Devil. Why? Because humans can more easily conceive of animal parts than a living darkness that wants to torment their souls for eternity.
Something Perverted. No, not in a sexual way. I’m talking about taking something familiar and comfortable, then twisting it into horrible new proportions. This is why toys, pets, grandmas, doctors and anything we usually perceive as innocent or benevolent is instantly rendered terrifying when revealed in a distorted manner. You’ve recognized it, but now it’s been transformed into an incorrect version of itself. Hello, Pennywise!
Something Imminent. Whatever threat or danger presented by our monster, something must somehow be displayed as impending. Here we get our blood-dripping fangs, our cybernetically implanted laser guns, and our crackling beams of dark magic. We need something that can cause immediate harm, and therefor, immediate fear. Any demon-possessed maniac swinging a chainsaw at you is a good example of this.
Something Subdued. While the giant scorpion tail or exoskeleton made out of razor blades is freakin’ horrific, we need more for our perfect monster. It needs a presence, an aura of sheer malevolence that we feel in our guts. Perhaps a certain sound it makes, or the way it moves, something about it affects us on a deeper level. This is the malignancy that lingers and haunts us later. We’re now in Hannibal Lector territory, but with actual shark teeth.
Something Revealed. The horror lurking in the shadows is always disturbing, but sometimes knowing can be worse. A glimmer of knowledge, a snippet of information, that’s all we get, but it’s enough to know we’re screwed. Have we discovered its origin, its destination, its reason for eating everyone’s faces? That little puzzle box you’ve been trying to open just got a whole lot more ominous.
Something Reserved. It needs intellect, or purpose beyond being a mindless killing machine. Unreasoning zombies are bad, yes, but you can take out one with a shovel to the skull. This thing had a hidden agenda, secret abilities and maybe even disposable minions. Maybe we don’t really know it’s origin, just what it wants us to think. This is a singular monstrosity hellbent on something we can’t even fathom, deceptions behind the lies, and chances are we’ll never know everything.
Something Abstracted. In some manner, this perfect monster must transcend our rational mind. Whether from a post-apocalyptic future, the pits of hell, or the planet Yuggoth, it has to have some ties to a concept that forces us to suspend belief. This is an atrocity incarnate, so logic isn’t really going to apply here. Some part of it will factor outside the realm of reason, a large part of why it’s so terrifying. Dracula does not care if his snack believes in him or not.
Something Actualized. Dropping back into the real world, there has to be some aspect of it that we comprehend as well. Remember the giant scorpion tail? Kind of like that, but we’re more into the essence of our monster now as opposed to the appearance. Should we give it a name, or has it named itself? We understand names, and we even can conceive of the future, hell, and other planets. Nyarlathotep was bad as The Crawling Chaos, but somehow it sucks way more when it’s smiling at you from across the coffee shop.
Something Conscious. At the end of the day, our perfect monster must somehow reflect the human experience. We have to see some identifiable part of ourselves in it, and feel that connection on a cognitive level. There has to be something that makes us say, “This monster represents this,” or “Is a manifestation of that.” Whether these allegations are true or not is irrelevant, because some part of us will feel as if we’ve conquered it… right up until it tears our limbs out.
Something Unconscious. Finally, we must empathize with this perfect monster on a more emotional level. It has to speak to us in some deep, almost primitive fashion. We acknowledge it is an avatar of nightmares, a walking obscenity, and accept this fact. While we may not agree with this abomination’s existence, we agree that it does indeed exist. The monster buried inside all of us finds comfort in its more obvious abhorrent nature, but we will never voice this.

So there you go, ten characteristics of the perfect horror monster. A bit philosophical overall, but deconstructed to more base creative elements. Needless to say, if anything remotely this nasty decided to stroll down the road, I’d sob like a little kid. Regardless, I’d still love to see it through my tears those last few moments before all the screaming and the bleeding ensued.

BRIAN FATAH STEELE, a member of the indie author co-op Dark Red Press, describes the majority of his work as "Epic Horror with lots of Explosions." Along with multiple books, his articles and stories have appeared in various e-magazines and online journals. Steele lives in Ohio with a few cats that are probably plotting his doom. Surviving on a diet primarily of coffee and cigarettes, he occasionally dabbles in Visual Arts and Music Production. He still hopes to one day become a Super Villain.

http://brianfatahsteele.com

http://www.darkredpress.com

How to improve your writing whilst lying down

2012-01-24T01:11:00.000-08:00

For some reason (I wasn’t drunk or high on cocoa beans) I started thinking about the resources I use in my writing. I was sitting in front of the fire, wearing my red velour evening jacket, smoking a pipe and pondering the imponderables of life, as you do of a Sunday evening when Sherlock’s finished and your old man’s blaring La Traviata out at full crackle from his Crossley 54 Radio.

And then I thought, hey, for a hobby, you know, writing’s pretty cheap. You don’t really need a whole lot of resources – a lap top, pen and paper, the love of a good therapist.

Ah, I snort, quaffing another one of the Christmas Turkish Delights nobody else wanted and slurping the last of the Cranberry juice lifestyle coaches say is so good for you. But what about all those books you’ve bought and read over the years?

And then it struck me: My most important writing tool is my Kindle.

There I’ve said it. Happy now people?

I decided last May to take the plunge and buy a Kindle and I have to admit that I was sceptical. The usual, old timers response to new technology I’m afraid: You can’t beat the weight/feel/smell/taste of a real book.

This I quickly found to be bollocks. It’s better than a book. It doesn’t weigh you down and you can carry all your damn books around in your fecking pocket. How can that not be better? You get a wider choice of books and you don’t have to wait a week for them to turn up at your door. HOW is that NOT better?

And what about the in-book dictionary? It means I don’t have to pretend I know what a word means because I can’t be arsed to get the dictionary off the shelf, I can look it up there and then and five minutes later forget it…without hardly moving a fecking muscle!

But the thing it also allowed me to do was simply this: It allowed me, or encouraged me, to read MORE. Whereas I used to read one ordinary book a week, with the Kindle (and please note there are other equally suitable electronic readers out there) I’m reading two or three.

Currently I’m reading Cool Hand Luke. I’ve seen the film countless times but never knew there was a book until Scott Roche mentioned it in the comments section of one of my previous blogs.
And it’s a good book in its own right.

I also download a wider variety of stuff now…good and, sometimes, hopelessly bad. Of course, you learn from the good, get energised by it, but you can also learn from the bad and be energised by that too. Look at all the genres: horror, thriller, western, comedy…Okay, so I haven’t downloaded (at least knowingly) any chick-lit yet, but I may do. I may snuggle down in bed and see what Seventeen Ways to Ruin a Casserole has to offer.

I may…then again, I may not…

What other past-time allows you to improve your skills whilst lying on your back and just moving your eyes?

Guest Blog: What makes good horror by A W Marsden

2012-01-23T01:00:00.000-08:00

What’s that? Corner of your eye… no, don’t look. See. That’s it. Over there, at the very edge of your field of vision, in that fuzzy zone between colour and shadow. It’s gone now. But it was there, wasn’t it? You believe your own eyes, don’t you?

What about that noise? The little rustle from the far side of the room. Just rubbish settling, plastic uncurling in the wastebasket. Or is it?

I grew up on Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark? Every night after school, I would rush in, get changed out of my uniform, grab a plate of Jaffa Cakes from the fridge, and settle down in the living room to be scared.

Not every tale scared me.

So I started reading the books, harassing the librarians for more every week. The books did scare me. Not just when I was reading, but long after I’d put them down. Alone in my room. As I turned the lights off. It was my own imagination that scared me the most. I was hungry for more.

So began my love affair with all things dark and macabre.

These days, I still get scared. I sometimes scare myself, late at night when writing. Getting too caught up in your own little worlds is a hazard of the job, I suppose. It’s not the buckets of blood and gore that scare. It’s the sudden movement you think you saw a moment ago. The sound that you don’t recognise. The strange coolness that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck when you realise you’re the only person in the room, in the house, but the door is open to the landing and the stair just creaked and at any moment something will walk or crawl or shuffle or lumber through the door.

Our imagination, given enough fuel (by enough I mean: very little), can wreak havoc on our vulnerable nerves. When Ofelia (Pan’s Labyrinth) eats two grapes despite the Faun’s dire warnings, it is not the grotesque image of the Pale Man, eyes-in-hand, that frightens us. It is the thought of what he will do to us if he catches us that makes our hearts hammer and our knuckles bite deep into the arms of the chair. We get that not from him, but the sketches on the walls of children ripped apart and eaten.

The opening of Jurassic Park still sticks in the mind long after the film is over, a fierce yellow eye and a flash of teeth are all that hint at the poor worker’s fate before Bob Peck orders his men to “Shoot her!” A serene lake dissolves into view to the sound of gunshots, while we breathe deep and try to calm ourselves.

A trope of theatre for centuries, the worst violence almost always occurs off stage. Only the bloodied daggers are testament to the atrocity that Macbeth has visited upon King Duncan, yet in our minds eye we play over and over every cut and thrust of the blades as they pierce Duncan again and again.

Good horror, in my humble view, uses scares that we cannot see, forcing our own imagination to do the work. Even with modern CGI effects bringing every little drop of blood and viscera to the lens, the best scares are when something appears for only a moment. I’m not talking about that overused cliche ‘jump-moment’ either. That tactic is a tired, pathetic excuse for horror. Give the audience a clue, the slightest one. They are intelligent, they will scare themselves easily enough.

But why? What does horror set out to do, other than just scare people? After all, the blood, gore, monsters, death and jumps are all capable of inducing fear.

These aren’t enough, because they don’t get people to think.

There are many horrors in the world today, real, tangible. From Gaddafi’s bloodied face on the front pages of the tabloids, to the bodies falling from the World Trade Centre towers, through mutilated corpses of women and children online. These things are terrible. But people easily form detachment from them. I’ve seen young teenagers reblog gore-fest pictures right alongside fluffy kittens and cute topless girls on Tumblr as if they’re just texting their mates a ‘hey’. To them, it isn’t real.

Horror has to be real, to remind people of what is good and bad in the world. Good horror does that by scaring us deep in our hearts and souls, with the creepy sense that something is not quite right in the world. Everything is not okay, you are not okay. I am not okay, I promise. And we need to do something about it.

Now, what was that? Over there, corner of your eye…

You can find out more about A W Marsden at http://terrierandy7.com/

The Feckless Goblin Writing Competition: Hell in a Hand Cart

2012-01-21T10:07:00.000-08:00

Haven't had a competition for a while (purse strings in a bit of a knot) so thought I'd get one going to start off your newish year.

Okay doods and doodesses, and those in between, the competition is this:

Describe Hell in one sentence.

Your job, most excellent writer, is to give a chilling feel for Hell in ONE, yes ONE, sentence. Brownie points will be given for brevity but the winner will be the one who can instill a sense of dread and damnation in a just a few words. HINT: You don't have to describe a physical place.

PLEASE NOTE: I got this idea whilst drinking scotch.

But how do I enter Ziggy?

Put your entry in the comments section below. You can enter as many times as you like. Entry is, as usual, FREE. All I ask is that you let your twitter/facebook/cult followers know about the competition and link them to it.

And what do I get Ziggy? For these six hundred and sixty six hours of blood, sweat and tears trying to think of just one sentence to describe the underlying essence of Hell and chill your dear readers to the bone?

The winner will get a £20 Amazon Voucher (or exchange rate equivalent), e-mailed to them the day the result is announced.

So, get writing doods and doodesses, before I renew my subscription to My Dog's Dead Weekly.

The competition is open until the end of February. Whence I will call on Satan to judge your miserable attempts to describe his domain.

Now...back to me scotch...mmmmmmm...much nicer than fishcakes and rocket....hic...

Guest Blog: Making Good Horror by "Smokey" Joe Mayes

2012-01-21T01:37:00.000-08:00

I love good horror stories. As far back as I can remember, I’ve loved being pushed to the edge of my nerves, being terrified to the point that I couldn’t sleep, wondering if the ping, ping, ping outside my bedroom window was the sound of killers breaking in or simply magpies pecking at the dog’s dish again.

I grew up watching Dark Shadows, Night Stalker, Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, and any horror movie that was playing after midnight on the UHF channels on Friday and Saturday night.

I never stopped to think about why I liked these, let alone why certain stories had the power to frighten me. I just loved the feeling of being carried off to another world, being in the middle of the action, and being completely powerless to alter the outcome.

While I enjoyed the crisp telling of a good horror story on television and in movies, the first book I remember being truly terrified by was Stephen King’s “The Stand.” I had just completed basic military training where 30 of my closest friends and I shared not only military training but also seemingly every germ any of us had ever encountered. For more than a month, it was a continual transference of viruses so coughing and sniffles were rampant for all of us.

As the story unfolded it became apparent that during the time I’d spent in basic training, a new strain of virus had been launched on the world. I plunged into the book as I battled my perpetual cold symptoms, every sniffle and sneeze convincing me that Project Blue had claimed another victim. Captain Trips had me and I was not going to survive to the end of King’s epic masterpiece.

After I finished the book and crawled out from under the covers, I asked myself why this book scared me, why I had bought into King’s story. Why did this book scare me when others had failed?

The answer was simple: I believed this could actually happen to me.

The symptoms of King’s killer superflu weren’t far-fetched. It wasn’t like the victims were covered in paisley warts or grew third arms in the middle of their foreheads. The onset of the superflu was marked by simple sniffles and sneezes, symptoms I’d experienced often in my life and was, in fact, experiencing as I read the book. I could have been part of King’s 99% of the population affected by this killer bug.

Over the years, as I’ve watched, read, and especially written in this genre, I’ve thought back to the simplicity with which King roped me in. I noticed that all good horror stories (in addition to good storytelling, of course) presented the terror as something that could happen to the audience. It was presented as something that could happen to me.

Of course all the other elements of a good story have to be there for the horror to work. The writer must create believable characters the reader (or audience) cares about. The theme of the story has to resonate with the reader and the action must engage them, propelling the story – and reader – forward.

If the reader isn’t emotionally invested in a story’s characters, the action will have no impact. Here’s an example (as well as shameless self-promotion): the opening scene of my short story “Love Stinks” presents a graphic murder scene. A man lies dead on the kitchen floor, a kitchen knife buried to the hilt in his lower abdomen. Blood and effluvium fill the room and a woman and small child are witness to it all.

But there isn’t any horror. There is no emotional reaction to the graphic display depicted in this scene whatsoever, in fact. It’s intentionally a simple recitation of the facts, a sterile description of the scene in the kitchen. As a result, there is no horror associated with it.

Why?

First, we don’t yet know or care about the characters involved. We don’t know the man who’s been killed. We don’t know the woman or the boy who stand over his dead body. In other words, this didn’t happen to real people because we don’t know who these people are.

Later in the same story, however, there is another murder scene involving the two main characters. At this point in the story, however, there is an emotional reaction because now we know them and empathize enough to care what happens to them. The fact that the reader cares about the characters makes this scene matter. It makes it horrible.

Another distinction between horror and any other good fiction is the nature of the action. The action must be such that it creates fear for the characters and, by extension, the reader. There has to be a genuine danger and the stakes of the characters’ conflict have to be graver than in other fiction forms.

Of course, putting a character the reader cares about in danger isn’t unique to horror. For example, in John Grisham’s “The Firm,” Mitch McDeere is a truly sympathetic character. He’s presented to the reader as very likeable, someone who has pulled himself up by the bootstraps to make a life for himself and his wife. Grisham puts this likeable character in grave danger by pitting him at odds with dangerous elements, people who want him dead and against whom there appears no defense for poor, overmatched Mitch.

But while certainly a well-crafted thriller, “The Firm” would never be considered horror. We have some of the elements of horror: good story, likeable characters, grave danger, and fast-moving action.

So what’s missing? Why didn’t “The Firm” scare me?

Because I didn’t believe it could happen to me.

I am not an attorney with a high-dollar law firm. I am not – and likely will never be – in circumstances like those faced by Mitch McDeere. I care about him making it out alive but I never once fear for myself.

In The Stand, 99% of the population was affected and I could easily imagine myself in that 99%. I could imagine myself as a writer in an empty Colorado hotel, tormented both by guests from yesteryear and by writer’s block (King’s “The Shining”). I’ve been to the beach and could be eaten by a shark (Peter Benchley’s “Jaws”). I could even imagine myself as one of the poor citizens of Haddonfield, tormented by the killing machine that was Michael Myers in “Halloween.” These horror stories all stir the nerves because they present situations in which I could imagine myself.

And triggering that imagination in the reader is the real challenge facing the horror writer. It’s not the horrific action alone that gives the audience the chills. Don’t believe me? Check out any of the “Final Destination” movies. Absolutely horrific events happen in these stories but, frankly, the stories are pure camp because the elements of a good story aren’t there. It’s gore for gore’s sake and leaves the audience laughing rather than hiding under the covers.

So the final element of delivering a good horror story is to know thy audience. The writer has to know who will be reading the story and how to manipulate their imaginations to the point that they put themselves in the middle of the action, or at least could imagine a scenario in which they could find themselves there.

In other words, the writer has to be at least as invested in the reader as the reader is in the story.

It’s the only way to make them believe it could actually happen to them.

Find out more about Smokey Joe Mayes at http://smokeyjoemayes.blogspot.com/

10 Films that lived up to the original book

2012-01-20T05:10:00.000-08:00

You know how it is Avid Reader. Your favourite book is about to be made into a movie starring a major league actor, you wait with heart beating fearfully, you go to the cinema with sweaty palms…and you weep into your hideously expensive diet coke and popcorn because the director, the actors, the scriptwriters, the producers and even the damn second reserve camera man have all conspired to rip the heart out of your…yes YOUR…story.

In truth, it’s easier to find book to film failures than it is to find successes. Our Dear Avid Reader can name at least 100 films that disappoint compared to one or two that live up to the dream.

I’ve put together a list of 10 films that I think did the original book justice. This is my personal list and not based on anything other than my likes and dislikes. It’s also based on the films I’ve actually read the book for and then seen the film.

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler: While the novel is one of my favourites and a great example of the genre, with great one liners and sharply drawn characters, the film is also in my top 10 list. Humphrey Bogart nails the role of Philip Marlowe and when I read the books again, I can’t see anyone else but him.
Jaws by Peter Benchley: To be honest, Benchley’s novel was no great shakes and could have sunk into the depths much the same way as his shark did in the final scene of the book. It took Spielberg’s early magic to bring it to the big screen and make it one of the blockbusters of the Seventies.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Both versions were faithful tellings of Larsson’s original tale. If I had to choose I’d put the film just ahead of the book.
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist: Okay, here’s an admission. I’m not keen on films that have children as lead characters. I made an exception here. The original Swedish film uses the vampire myth to tell a story of isolation and is quite a faithful retelling of the book.
The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King: Alright, alright Avid Reader, I know this is from a short story (Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption) but it counts as well. Of all authors, Stephen King has the worst track record of print to film. Most of the films of his books are fatally flawed so it’s nice to see that at least one works.
The Haunting by Shirley Jackson: The original attempt at Jackson's novella is one of the most atmospheric ghost films ever - forget the sometimes hammy acting and concentrate on those breathing doors and don’t forget the spiral staircase. It was followed much later by the Liam Neeson/Catherine Zeta-Jones remake, probably one of the worst adaptations of a novel ever, ever, EVER!!
Hombre by Elmore Leonard: I started reading Leonard because he writes great dialogue and it’s something I feel I’m weak on. Hombre is one of my favourite westerns, not only for Paul Newman’s stellar performance but because it has oft forgotten bad guy Richard Boone in it. The book’s not bad either.
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene: Again dear Avid Reader, the original not the remake. Dickie Attenborough’s performance of the malign and ruthless Pinky still rates him as one of the best on screen psychos in my opinion. If you haven’t read it, Greene’s novel also is a brilliant insight into 50s gangland life in England.
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy: I like McCarthy’s writing style in both this book and The Road. The No Country film was helped by great performances from the leads including the always reliable Tommy Lee Jones. If I had to make a choice, I prefer the book to the film but it’s a close call.
Blade Runner by Philip K Dick: Known to all sci-fi geeks as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The novel is much less known than the film now. Despite being continuously dragged out with a new directors or remastered cut, Blade Runner remains one of the most enduring Sci-Fi films of the last 30 years.

Okay that’s my choice. Now where’s yours? It’s easy, as I said, to pick your bad films from favourite books, so rack your mushy brains and come up with your favourite adaptation…Answers in the comments section below as usual.

Guest Blog: Great Horror Must Not Be Horrible by Carl Plumer

2012-01-18T02:42:00.000-08:00

Horror can’t suck (no pun intended). It has to scare the pants off you.

It has to be the devil’s rollercoaster ride. You have to feel something. And that something is FEAR.

The best horror, for me, makes you feel two things when it’s over:

thank god I’m alive and
thank god that wasn’t me.

You want to be so scared you can’t move and you can’t look away. You have to feel that the protagonist, whether he or she matches your gender or not, is YOU. You have to feel not only empathy, but a personal involvement at a core level. If he/she doesn’t make it out, then you don’t make it out (of the cave/house/woods/swamp/planet/the belly of the beast, etc.)

Here’s what I think.

Too much stuff masquerading as horror misses the point. I don’t want to see bodies ground up (I’m just not turned on that way.). I don’t want to see people tortured (See previous comment.). I want to see people put in a perilous, no-way-out, impossible-to-survive situation...and survive. I think that such a situation is both akin to real life and the opposite of it.

Here’s what I mean.

It's my belief that daily we are all caught in a life-and-death struggle, only we don’t know it. We live at a superficial level of life, never diving beneath the surface. But the reality is, DEATH is watching. In the form of cancer and other diseases, car wrecks, plane crashes, suicides, poisonings, a cruise ship capsizing, stray bullets, and all that.

We ignore these truths, perhaps because it’s the only way to get along in life, to take care of our day-to-day necessary chores, to keep our bodies functioning and a roof over our heads. We sedate ourselves with drugs, alcohol, sometimes religion, and always TV.

But Death doesn’t care.

So a good horror movie or book or audiobook or podcast or even old radio show provides you with a means to look over the edge and into the abyss. It gives you time to reflect that you will die. Probably not as horribly as described in the horror vehicle of your choice. Perhaps, if you’re lucky, even slipping away in your sleep. Or, in my hoped-for exit scenario, whilst saving a small child from destruction, such as swiping it out of the way of a runaway vehicle, while sacrificing your life in the process. But that’s just me.

Horror lets you be scared. Because you should be. But you’re too busy working, laughing, playing, dreaming. Good horror not only lets you be scared, it lets you defeat Death for one more day. Because good horror, true horror must adhere to the Unspoken Rule: somebody must survive in the end. And that somebody must be the hero or heroine, because that somebody represents US.

They are us and we need more time!

Enjoy your life while it lasts (and may it last a long, long, long time).

For more such rants, see my blog at www.carlplumer.com. Thanks for reading.

And now it's your turn: What makes good horror? Answers on a postcard or in the comments section below.

What can we learn from old B Movies?

2012-01-12T03:02:00.000-08:00

I've rediscovered some old, black and white film gems on YouTube recently. This one looks as though it was made on a shoestring budget using a detergent bottle for the exploration vehicle. It reminds me of the imagination you needed back in the days of yore when then was no such thing as CGI.

Some of you may decide this is rubbish, but I think it's a little gem. And it's free. It also reminds me, much like the legendary films of Ed Wood, not to take my own work too seriously. In the 50s and 60s B Movies were dished out nineteen to the dozen without much thought to structure, deeper meaning, good acting or whether the sets wobbled, they were there to entertain.

10 dumb writing facts for aspiring writers

2011-09-20T02:27:00.000-07:00

If you put a 100 monkeys in a room with typewriters, the chances of one of them completing a copy of a Shakespeare play in its lifetime would be 1 in 6 million billion.
If you took all the books that had ever been written, tore out their pages and placed these pages end to end, they would stretch to the moon and back 13.6 times.
If you took all the books that had been read by more than a 100 people and did the same thing, then it would only just stretch into the upper atmosphere of our own planet.
37% of newly bought books spend 6 months on the shelf before they are actually read. 49% of these never actually get read.
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco has been unofficially named as the most unreadable book on the planet, closely followed by Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.
You are statistically more likely to be injured by a falling toad than write the year’s number one bestseller. Whilst there is normally only one winner in the bestseller list, in 2010 17 people were injured by toads that “just fell out of the sky” following violent storms, including one fatality (figure from the NATSUSA).
18% of budding writers admit that they write because there is something lacking in their lives. 23% say that they write for money. Only 4% admit that they write because they don’t have any friends.
Writers who write their books directly onto a PC/laptop, write their novels on average 36% quicker than writers who write the old fashioned pen and ink way and then transcribe onto a PC/laptop. However, writers who begin with pen and ink are 13% more likely to finish and publish their work than someone who writes directly onto a PC/laptop.
Most grammar experts believe that the apostrophe will disappear from writing some time before the end of the next decade simply because of the evolution of language.
62% of writers will buy a boat of some description within 10 years of becoming successful. Of these boats, 84% will sink within the first 5 years.

Have you got a favourite writing statistic? If so, then add yours in the comments section below.

And the winner is...

2011-07-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all those who entered the Great Opening Bits writing competition and deepest apologies for the time it's taken for me to announce the winner...The judge for this competition was trainee supervillain, film scholar and writer of Westerns, horror, adventure and gothic fiction Icy Sedgwick. You can find out more about her work at www.icysedgwick.com

And now, for the winner...who is, and always shall be known to the world as Rabid Fox (or Wagthefox if you're on Twitter.

From my bedroom window in the house where I grew up, I used to watch the hayfield sway with a gentle wind. Gusts like angels raced through the grass. I wished I could run with them, follow them to whatever heaven they called home, but the house is gone now, the field fallow, and I'm fairly sure I'm dead. I'm not breathing, anyway.

Rabid will be getting a £30 (or dollar equivalent) gift voucher to use on Amazon.

Thanks again for all of you who entered.

Welcome to hyphenation land

2011-07-12T14:40:00.000-07:00

I watched Battlefield: Los Angeles the other night.

It ticked all the boxes for the alien-invasion-taking-over-the-world-ain't-life-full-of-fecking-heroes-shit scenario. It had a Staff Sergeant who had lost all his men in Iraq or Venezuela or some such place and had to earn the respect of his crew by shoving a grenade up the ass of a passing alien whilst playing the banjo (the Staff Sergeant, not the alien) and eating a pack of spicy Doritos. It had a uniformly distributed range of ethnicity to suit all film-goers and a suitably large CGI budget for blowing things to kingdom come.

The aliens were bog standard mindless drones and somewhere in the plot it transpired they were being controlled from a central source (believe it or not they were hiding in a hole nearby, as dumb-ass aliens tend to do) so there was a chance for Sergeant Fantastic to save the day and the human race in one fell swoop with the aid of his, by the end of the film, bloody faced men. These included black-man-whose-brother-you-got-killed-but-who-will-learn-to-love-a-white-man-who-just-wants-to-blow-shit-up, as well as those adoring follow-you-anywhere-die-hard, fuck-who-sucked-out-my-brain marines with equally stereotypical lives.

Yeeh-hah. Hell, no!

I have to admit, I quite enjoyed it.

It went well with my red wine and Chinese spare ribs and Char Sui rice.

I could write that shit. Sure I could. With my eyes closed, while shooting fecking aliens, playing the violin and sucking the dick of the nearest horse whilst singing dixie (me, not the horse).

To keep the war theme going, I'm also reading a book. Norman Mailer's The Naked and The Dead. None of the characters in Mailer's book are really like-able. Whereas the characters in Battlefield: Los Angeles stand up as cardboard cutouts, the one's in Naked and The Dead are 3 dimensional, fleshy, warty, broken, twisted and human. It's a long book. But it has depth.

The characters spew. And I don't use that word lightly.

So I ask, while flicking peanuts at the cheese plant in the corner, do my own characters have depth? Do I have something to say about them or are they just cardboard alien-fighting-ethnically-correct cutouts, the same as a million other genre characters that pretend to have flesh but are just poor cutouts on a well-trodden stage (see what I did there, I did metaphor...or is that an analogy...I forget...).

Here's the thing. Writing shit is easy.

Hey, but writing is just writing, yeah? You put pen to paper and get all that crap out and someone's bound to like it. Who knows, maybe in a hundred years it'll be seen as a seminal work of fiction and people will read me in schools, if they still have those things when we're all underwater stroking our gills (look, I did a euphemism).

Am I proud that I finished the damn thing? Or am I proud because it was damn good?

Any dick brain can write and finish a book. They just have to sit at their PC long enough and drink enough. But the thing is, at the end of that hard long slog, it's got to be worth something, hasn't it?

I was having a conversation with an old work colleague of mine (she's not old, we've known each other for a while, I mean). I like a bit of photography but have gone off it since I went to Chester Zoo and every one had a camera. Flicker is full of photos. I have a friend who can actually call himself a photographer. But thinking about me, I have to have a reason to take photos. It's easy to take good photographs nowadays. You just point and shoot. But your photos have to say something, and though I'm reasonably competent, I've never thought that mine said much. Got nice colour in there, nice posing, but hell, it's just like everyone elses.

I have nothing to say photographically. I can point and shoot. But I ain't doing much more.

Which brings me back to my writing. I know I overdo the angst bit on this blog, but it has a reason. Does what I write have any point? I asked my friend this and she countered with: but you're a good writer.

There are a lot of good writers out there, there are a lot of good photographers out there. The point is what separates the best from the rest.

I'm not talking about the ones who write the most or the ones who sell the most. I'm talking about the ones that endure. The one's, when we read them, we remember. Not only their name but also their characters and there plotlines. The one's that are not just another book (or film or photo) but something that transcends, the one's that stay with us.

So if you're a writer think about this (and here I'm going to go back into metaphor or fecking analogy or some fecking stuff), what kind of hack are you: are you an alien drone dishing out the same old crap or are you the staff sergeant who's going to blow-up the aliens sorry ass????

See what I did there, huh? See? And by "blow-up the aliens sorry ass" I mean with a grenade not mouth to ass...

Dementia Rules: Wheelie Bins and Broken Plates

2011-06-15T03:57:00.000-07:00

My dad has been in the bin. Not actually in it, per se, though he almost fell in, but he’s been in the bin outside.
Looking for stuff.

Specifically, looking for his favourite plate. He glued his plate together a while back when it first broke and gets a bit tetchy if he doesn’t have his evening meal on it (mangy tray and all). Over the weekend, Big Chris, my brother-in-law, broke it again while he was doing the washing up. Naturally, he said sorry and then put it in the bin.

Monday morning, I look out the window, and there’s dad, leaned over in the wheelie bin, frantically scrambling for something. At some point I think he’s going to tip over and go head first. My first thought is that I could rush out and close the lid, seal it shut. Then say my dad has gone missing. Imagine the headline: MAN FOUND IN WHEELIE BIN. Then again, that wouldn’t be fair.

My second thought is: God forbid. That’s when he suddenly emerges with the two halves of his favourite plate. He looks around furtively (as only kids and those with dementia can) and then sneaks down the side path to the back of the house and the safety of his shed where he hides it.

He’s intending to glue it back together.

But dementia is a terrible thing. You forget stuff.

And for the moment, my father has forgotten that the plate is there. He will find it sometime in the near future, pick it up, look at it, put it down, pick it up, look at it, trying to fathom why it’s there and what he was going to do with it. He may actually get round to gluing it together again if he can remember how to do that and the fabled plate may suddenly appear on the washing tray at some point in the distant future.

My dad doesn’t like change.

It confuses him. Agitates him. And then he forgets. But then he’ll remember and he’ll get agitated again. He looks for stuff, long lost, in bizarre places where no one in their right mind would put a thing. When I ask why he is looking for said object in such a strange place (e.g., the back of the fridge), he replies: Well, you don’t know.

Meanwhile, my dad's three legged cat, Mr Tibs, has been trying to scratch its ear with its missing limb. It's a bizarre sight. I may have to record it for You Tube one day...

The Feckless Goblin guide to surviving The Rapture

2011-05-18T13:07:00.000-07:00

In case you’ve been hidden away in a barn with your pet goat these last few weeks, you’ll be aware that Saturday 21st May marks Judgement Day with the onset of The Rapture. For all those who have been striving to make their careers as Indie Writers, this, of course, will be a bit of a bummer.

Stop writing now, kids. The Rapture is a coming.

My dad’s cat is looking forward to it. Yes it is. For quite a while, the cat has been trying to convince us that The Rapture will actually happen and that we should drop everything and open our hearts to the big JC.

Foolishly, we have ignored the cat. On Saturday, it will be able to say “told you so”, though we haven’t been able to get across to said mog that said Rapture doesn’t apply to dumb animals (or does it? You decide). It will meow in a Cheshire Cat kind of way. Then we may kick it to death.

What is The Rapture?

The day when all good people are beamed up to heaven while the rest of us poor sods suffer various catastrophes from Tsunamis to nuclear meltdowns as the world slowly implodes (be calm children of the apocalypse, apparently it’ll be finished by the middle of October).

Some right wing zealots believe that there will also be a Zombie Apocalypse but I think that may be a case of wishful thinking on the part of zombie lovers everywhere who have been wishing the end of the world on us for at least the last ten years.

For more on The Rapture, watch the following informational video from the Department of Fences (commonly known as somegreybloke):

Is The Rapture real?

Does the Pope have a glass eye? You know, a big part of me, in fact all of me, wants this to be real. Not the Pope thing. The Rapture thing. Now, in case you’re wondering, I’m not likely to be transported to the heavens come May 21st (and, let’s face it, neither are most Christians.

But, come on guys, wouldn’t it make for a more exciting world if it was all coming to an end?

Well, it is at some point, because people apparently die or some such stuff...begs the question that, if we all die at some point and get judged in some sky kingdom thing by a guy with a white beard anyway, then what would be the reason for The Rapture...or maybe God just got bored and thought: fuck it, let’s blow the whole place up and start again.

In which case none of us are gonna make it!

So, The Rapture is probably another fake, end-of-days fuck fest just like all the others. Sorry to disappoint you. The only guarantee is that someone, somewhere, is making money out of it.

7 ways to make the most of Rapture Day

Have a Rapture Party. Make sure you’re all there at 6pm local time when The Rapture in your neighbourhood starts. Be sure to invite “good” people in the hope that one of them will be beamed up in front of you.
Tell Christians who believe The Rapture that they should be at a local bus stop by 6pm. Be sure to film the queue.
Invite Christians to your party and scare the hell out of them by pretending to be Raptured. This can be achieved with the help of a few good friends, some torches, a bit of heavenly music and some cupboards.
In the run up to The Rapture, why not sell tickets on e-bay – that little bit of extra money might just get you through the ensuing Armageddon.
As The Rapture also marks the return of Christ, why not purchase a fake beard and smock and walk around your neighbourhood looking suitably pious and asking people if they have repented yet. Better still, gatecrash a church service and shout “Daddy’s home!”
Make more cash by convincing believers to sign over their worldly goods as a mark of their faith.
Take some of your old clothes and shoes and leave them lying around the neighbourhood after 6pm. Alternatively, leave tiny mounds of your grandmas ashes in strategic places like your local supermarket. Even more alternatively, leave a pile of hot pooh with the note: “Have been taken up.”

Things to look forward to if The Rapture really does happen:

Less queuing at places like Alton Towers and the soup kitchen.
More homes for the homeless.
No one to tell you that what you’re doing “is just plain wrong.”
The fun that can be had taunting the ones who thought they were going to be taken up and didn’t get taken up.
Great photo ops for all those natural disasters.
No longer having to pretend that you’re good.
I was going to say that the one downside would be all those people saying: “I told you so.” But then they’ll be beamed up and the one’s left behind will be too desolated to say such a thing.

Next week I’ll be blogging on Post-Rapture Depression.

Or maybe I won’t...See you on the other side losers.

How will you be celebrating The Rapture. Let The Feckless Goblin know, as usual, in the comments section below...

The GOB Writing Competition

2011-05-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

There are old people roaming the street, ringing doorbells. They are in pairs, wearing gingham and tweed and they look quite frightening. My dad is huffing and puffing for no particular reason. I wonder if they are connected.

Maybe they’ve come to take him away....Or maybe that’s just a good place to start a story.

As I’ve been away for a bit, I thought the best place to pick up again would be to have a writing competition.

And so here it is: Ta-Daaaaaaa!!!!

The Great Opening Bits Competition (or GOB comp for short)

You should know by now that all good stories have a strong opening hook which makes the reader read on.
Your mission, dear friends, is to write the first four sentences of a story that people will want to read. You can go scary, mystery, lovey-dovey, erotic, chaotic...the choice is yours.

But, my favourite Feckless Goblin, what will I win?

The GOB competition is open until the end of June and the person who writes best opening bit will get a £30 (or exchange equivalent) Amazon Voucher to spend on what they want.

How do I enter the GOB competition?

The competition is FREE to enter.

Just write your entry in the comments section below as per usual. You can enter as many times as you like. Remember, you only get 4 sentences per entry to entice your reader...

Once you have entered, and this is important peeps, Tweet your followers about the competition and include the hashtag #GOBcomp.

Who’s going to judge the GOB competition?

I dunno yet! Okay? I’ll find someone...maybe not someone famous but...definitely someone who’s still alive. I’ll update soon with a name (not one I’ve just made up).

Why the hell did I buy that Kindle? And other early morning thoughts...

2011-02-18T22:19:00.000-08:00

It's five in the morning and my eyes ping open. I try to get back to sleep. I try to empty my mind. But it's no use. My mind is full of junk.

First I'm thinking: Why did I buy that Kindle yesterday? I don't really need it. I've got books on my iPhone and I haven't read half of those. Then I'm thinking how I get the clothes my dad's been wearing for the last four weeks (and which are beginning to really smel)l off him and into the washing machine.

I'm becoming a dab hand with a bottle of Febreeze. I spray it at the furniture like some fussy old maid, spray the carpet, even spray it at my dad, surreptitiously of course. Unfortunately, he needs more than a good spray. Maybe I could stand him outside for a while and let the natural breeze take away some of those odours. In the meantime, the cat looks at me like I'm an idiot and my father watches New 24 for more hours than is healthy for a human being.

The early hours are good for writing if I can't sleep. Obviously, it's not much good for writing if I am actually asleep. I might discover deep truths, or at least some fabulous lies. At the moment, though, I'm too busy obsessing over whether I should have bought the Kindle. My brain is saying: unnecessary expense. It says that a lot lately. Like a beeper going off. For instance, I have to buy a car soon. My brother-in-law has managed to purloin me an old Peugeot for not very much. Ideal for running around in, which is all I need.

But my brain has suddenly decided, after 40 odd years ofsublime indifference, that it suddenly likes cars and I've been looking at this red MG that looks kinda sexy...which I don't need...not at all...but...mmmmmmm.

This has got me thinking, at five in the morning no less, that my life is full of junk. From the Kindle to the laptop I'm working on, to all the crap on my floor, including the electric toothbrush and the goddamn iPhone. It's all junk. Realise this people, someone went out and actually invented Febreeze. Somehow, I'm not sure the Great Lord of Creation had that in mind when he zapped us with his creation stick.

And I hate to harken back to the old days, when life was simpler. But it was, wasn't it?

When we lived in caves, all we had to worry about was getting food or keeping warm. Then, as if things weren't just right, we had to go and do something stupid like evolve. Primarily, this involved finding new things to worry about. We started having conversations with our neighbours, actually talking to each other, building settlements, learning "new" skills, discovering art.

Cooking used to be about just getting stuff on a plate, now you have to create a masterpiece every time you go into your mass produced kitchen where pointless gadgets gleam and whisper: use me, use me, you never needed me before, but now that you have me, you need me, need me soooo much!

Here's a crazy notion: Why don't we stop evolving and producing useless crap that means nothing and go back to living in caves...

Why? Because it's cold and damp and...yes, harsh. You don't want to live in a cave. You want to lie in a nice warm bed with a nice laptop and a nice cup of tea in your nice house with your lovely two kids and cock-eyed spaniel that's got a little snuffle and your fridge full of organically farmed beetroot and freshly laid eggs and meat cut into neat chunks by some faceless miscreant who, right this minute, is sitting up and wondering why he can't get to sleep and what the point of life is...

Ah, five in the morning. A time to ramble about things inconsequential. A time to let all those thoughts out onto the page. A time rational human beings should be asleep.

Footnote: My dad has just got up to go to the toilet, farted loudly and gone back to bed. I bet he's not thinking dumb things...

Guest Blog: The Pros and Cons of Being a Writer by Adam J. Shardlow

2011-02-16T02:22:00.000-08:00

On the plus side...

Never having to wear a suit - As a writer you can wear whatever you like. Ageing shorts and t-shirt combo, distressed jeans coloured with last nights Chinese hoisin sauce, dressing gown that smells of sleep, Goofy slippers and bandanna. You can even do a Hemingway and go naked. This has the helpful economic advantage of keeping laundry bills to a minimum. Basically, you can wear whatever or as little as you like. No one will ever know.
A short walk to work - You get up, breakfast, watch the news and then sit down to work. No having to step out into the wilds of the city streets, no having to deal with dawdlers and bus queue pushers, no having to spare change for the man with drool hanging from the corner of his mouth or avoid the water filled pot hole. You’re at work in seconds, dragging valuable time from the lack commuting that can be put into your current magnus opus. Valuable time that is yours to do with as you wish.
At home during the day - You can order whatever you like and parcels will be delivered straight into your hands. No more worries that delivery companies will push those annoying little cards through your door telling your that you weren’t in (obviously) and your carton of brand new reading material has instead been left at a vast concrete hanger twenty five miles outside of town and you have two days to come and get it before it’s returned to sender.
Time to yourself -You sit and reflect on your current work. You have the time to be creative, to move about your apartment deep in thought, playing creative mind games and dabbling with new forms of writing style and experimental artistic projects. Your time is your own to plumb the depth of creativity. You dictate what you work on and have the freedom to follow the creative flow.
Your own space - You work at a desk in a book lined den. Your MacBook is set up and connected to the world. You have fresh coffee whenever you want it, warmed bagels for lunch. You can listen to your music, relax in your favourite chair and watch the sunset from the panoramic window before you, marvelling at its majesty, as your fingers tap away at those keys.
Forging your own path - You write what you want to write. If you decide the world needs the first ever 1000 page fictional account of the life of a parasitic pinworm, then so be it. You can create works so challenging, so original, so daringly innovative, that your place in the literary canon will be secured for generations to come.
Adoring fans - You have fans who visit your web page every day. They read your blog entries in minute detail and make insightful comments. They hang on your every Twitter and Facebook update, they send you gifts in the post. At signings the queue snakes around the block, each fan asking you in excited, nervous voices for your signature and photo. You give each fan as much time as possible, building your base, cementing sales and a world tour.
Conventions - You get invited to writing conventions where you give inspirational speeches to the next generation, many of whom remember what you say and in turn become writers because of you. Being such a guru they ask you to write the introductions for their next book, your name and fame helping them to carve out lucrative careers.
Agent lunches - Your agent takes you out for expensive lunches at fabulous London eateries to discuss your current work; how it will be marketed, showing you cover designs and giving you the tour details. All the bills are paid and they send you home first class.
Film options - Hollywood, realising the golden egg that you are, beats a path to your door to option your entire back catalogue and turn them into blockbuster movies in which you have sensibly taken a percentage payment, meaning that you can afford to buy property in London, New York and Paris. This fame however, will never change you. You remain a dedicated artist, creating great works of literature.

However...

Never having to wear a suit - You are sitting naked in front of a computer screen in the middle of the day and don’t give a damn.
A short walk to work - You’re fat. You don’t get enough exercise. You barely leave the flat and have worn tracks into the carpet from using the office wheely chair as a convenient method of transport for getting to the kitchen.
At home during the day - Morons and religious freaks, can rattlers and do-gooders, double glazing salesmen, drive tarmac-ing, collection agencies and pedlers. Each and everyone knocks on your door and expects you to answer and contribute.
Time to yourself - You check Twitter, Facebook, web bookmarks, writing blogs and other sites less savoury to mention - normally every hour. You watch the news, then catch a comedy and remember that you recorded a film two weeks ago that needs to be seen. You do the washing, read a comic book, play the latest PSP release. You Skype, IM, text and take a long lunch. You do the ironing and clean the shower, make the bed and cook a meal for the evening and then wonder where the day has gone.
Your own space - You haven’t seen anyone for two weeks. You could die and no one would know until your decaying body juices soaked through the floor into the flat below.
Forging your own path - You haven’t been paid in six months. Your bank statements only come in the colour red.
Adoring fans - Does your Mum count? Really?
Conventions - You never get invited. You have to pay the entrance fee like everyone else and spend the entire weekend in the bar getting drunk.
Agent lunches - You’re not convinced your agent knows your home telephone number and you’ve only met him once. You bought your own coffee.
Film options - You have a Blockbusters membership card. That is as Hollywood as life ever gets.

More about Adam

Adam J. Shardlow is an author. He spends his day sitting in front of a computer making stuff up until his head hurts and he can longer see straight. Many say he writes works of fantasy, others say its science fiction, some shake their heads in irritation and give a long drawn out sigh before claiming the genre is in truth supernatural thriller, whilst one clearly mad individual with a long white beard and rolling eyes chants from a street corner that it is speculative fiction. Whatever it is, it’s his own style, and on these pages you can find some of his works. Others you will have to find in a bookshop. There is also a blog where he can bore you with all the mundanity and minutia of his life.

Visit Adam J Shardlow's website.

Self-publishing: Are the alarm bells starting to ring?

2011-02-08T00:19:00.000-08:00

There you sit, master or mistress of your own destiny, Indie author extraordinaire. You have five books on the Amazon bestseller list and you’re not doing too bad on iTunes either.

Then you wake up.

It’s just a dream. A damn dream! You wipe the cold sweat off your brow. Wait. You remember. It wasn’t a dream. It was real...but...but

People got greedy

Companies GOT greedy. That’s why it all fell apart. They wanted to increase their margins (whatever they are). They wanted to maximise profits. They wanted to...dare I say it...control their product.

Control you.

Really? Those nice people at Amazon? The lovely guys at Lulu? All those fine, upstanding bods at Smashwords?

You betcha!

People generally get very greedy, very quickly.

Ka-ching! There’s money in them there hills...

You see, there’s a big market out there in cyber world. And there’s a battle going on for its soul. Companies can both take a slice of Indie authors and the people who buy their product. They can begin to dictate, they can squeeze your differentials (oooh, matron...and no, I have no idea what that means either).

They can even crash and burn those bridges and leave you without a way to peddle your wares.

We’re ripe for the picking. We should be classed as vulnerable adults. It they can abuse us, they will. If they can keep us in line and make us behave, they will. Even now, some faceless corporate whore is plotting against the Revolutionary Indie Author Movement.

Those little beeps your PC makes? Maybe that’s Amazon trying a bit of mind control (well you did download that free hypnosis MP3) or iTunes putting out sneaky subliminal messaging.

Call me Mr Paranoia

The discussion point at the Feckless Goblin is this: Are the major players like Amazon and iTunes mobilising to slap us Indies in the face? Is our brave new world about to disintegrate around us? Is it all a dream?

Your thoughts, as always, are most welcome. Jot them down in the comments section below.

Guest Blog: Pros and Cons of Self-Publishing by Scott Nicholson

2011-02-07T08:06:00.000-08:00

Because I've been both indie and trad, I've blogged this topic a few times but it always comes out fresh. I love every single aspect of my new business—writing, marketing, formatting, conceptualizing, accounting, networking—but you might not.

So maybe I can encourage you or scare you away, whichever makes you happiest. Because happiness is more important than book deals.

PROS

You are boss. The mad scientist in your own lab, cooking up your Frankenstein monster. And you always get the creature you deserve.
You keep all gross proceeds. Actually, you will be spending it on business investments, but instead of receiving 4 to 15 percent of list price, you will be earning 35 to 70 percent on ebooks and probably 25 percent on paper books.
You choose the cover, genre, and overall presentation based on your understanding of your core audience.
You have control of your content and can react quickly in a rapidly evolving landscape, without worrying about what's best for corporate shareholders or a larger structure, only what's best for you and your products.
You write whatever you want.

CONS

You are boss, but would you really hire yourself if you had to apply for the job?
A hundred percent of nothing is still nothing.
You may not understand your audience at all, or you may have no audience.
You're stuck with your content because no one wants it or buys into it.
You may suck and never know it.

More about Scott:

Scott Nicholson is author of 13 novels, including the bestsellers The Red Church and Disintegration.

His new releases are the romantic paranormal mystery Transparent Lovers and the mystery Crime Beat.

He's also a freelance editor and runs http://www.hauntedcomputer.com.