Wednesday, July 6, 2011

How low can they go?

The tabloid press in the UK have always been gutter scum - but the latest revelations about tapping the phone of a murdered girl show they can sink to even lower depths. Further vile revelations are following, including taps on the relatives of victims of the 7/7 bombings in London and the parents of the murdered Soham girls:

News of the World hacked 7/7 Family phones

One hopes that heads will roll over this, frankly Rupert Murdoch himself should stand down. In the meantime - don't buy The Sun, don't buy The News of the World, don't buy The Times or Sunday Times, stop watching Fox, cancel your Sky subscription, even, stop watching The Simpsons.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Half acceptance....

June was spent mostly writing a new short story which will be getting submitted to Triskaideka Books for their "Masters of Horror: Grave Grimoire" anthology. It's an undead themed anthology - my story is a mix of sex, drugs, rock'n' roll and the living dead. For once I did not have to write the whole thing and then figure out what the story was actually about and write it all again...

As is often the case though, the minor character who was there to provide a vital body organ turned out to have a lot more going for her than I realised, which is all part of the fun of writing. The story is with my current grammar/ punctuation nazi, which is always necessary, considering the way I use semi-colons in particular. Hell, leave out the semi-colon, just write two short, sharp sentences - c'oh!

This month, I will do a story for another anthology, wanting stories about Monster Hunters - I've been writing rough "treatments" - already it has switched from a story about a grizzled werewolf hunter, to one about a lady monster hunter who's after something that might be, or might not be a werewolf. Actually, I'd better pull my finger out on that one.

Some good news - my superhero story "The Girl who blew his mind", starring the Man with a Million Brains, has made the first cut of the anthology, but the Editor still has to make decisions around how much space he's got to play with.

Today's Drabble continuing the story of Oog and Sog, is partially inspired by Christopher Hitchen's "God is Not Great" - he's very angry about the whole thing, but frankly, does make a lot of valid points.

Oog and Sog gazed at the night sky. There were lots of stars but no-one had invented numbers so no-one knew how many.
“Where did they come from?” asked Sog, ignoring his hunger.
Oog thought. “Either, a burst of energy sent out lots of stuff which bashed into each other to make lots of bigger things. On our big thing, lots of that stuff mixed together over lots of time to make us, sitting here, looking at lots of other big things.”
“Or?” said Sog.
“Some bloke just switched it all on.”
“Could we ask that bloke for more deer?”