Quiet Thursday

Last night I was watching another episode of True Blood, which was really enjoyable. Sometime I’ll have to check out the books that the show is based on. I was also working some more on the story that I have been writing over the past couple of evenings.

It was yet another really dull and depressing day in the office as usual. I am looking forward to the weekend. NaNoWriMo starts on Sunday so that should be good.

Ghostwatch

Last night I was watching a documentary on TV called Ghosts in the Machine, which was about the depiction of ghosts and the supernatural on British TV. It was only an hour and so it was pretty condensed but it was really interesting. One of the things that it featured was this thing called Ghostwatch, which remains one of the most complained about shows ever on British TV. It purported to be a documentary about an investigation into a haunted suburban house, interspersed with segments in a studio where the presenters discussed the events in the house with experts and there was a hotline number for people to discuss their own supernatural experiences. Of course, by the end the ghost dramatically manifests itself. Ghostwatch was an entirely scripted drama, not a documentary that was made as a Halloween special in 1992. Of course, this was long before The Blair Witch Project and the whole fake documentary thing was pretty much unknown, and also it used well-known TV presenters playing themselves, and so a lot of people genuinely believed it was real and were absolutely terrified. To this date it has never been repeated. I watched it and I think it was the last scary thing that I have seen on TV or movies that genuinely frightened me, because at the time I didn’t know what they were doing and I was kind of taken in by it. I can still remember it vividly after all this time.

I also started a new short story which is completely unrelated to the NaNoWriMo background that I’ve been working on. This one is about a small town fair which receives some sinister visitors. I’m hoping that when it’s finished it will be kind of scary.

Today was pretty much the same as usual at work. Every day I just feel so relieved to get back home.

Old Memories

Last night was really quiet. I was looking through some old boxes that I hadn’t looked through for some years and found some quite interesting stuff in them, including some old photographs, some books (mainly the Anne Rice vampire books), and a microcassette recorder I have which is probably now broken beyond any hope of repair. It was really interesting to see them. I was also writing some more of the background to the NaNoWriMo story. I was trying to work out the ceremonial and kind of religious traditions of the vampires in the story. There is really only a few days until it officially starts.

Today was yet another quiet and dull day at work.

Mythology

Last night I was watching a few episodes of 24 on DVD. I was also thinking about my NaNoWriMo story for this year. I am trying to work out a background world for the creatures and spirits in the story. I’m hoping to create an entire society for these creatures along with it’s own laws, history, myths and legends. Ideally I could create a whole horror mythology right from the ground up, although that is probably too ambitious.

It was another endlessly tedious day at work. I was really glad to get back home and I really hope that the rest of the week gets better.

An Education

Last night I was watching almost the whole series of Smiley’s People on DVD. It is very good and really faithful to the John le Carre book. It’s much darker and a lot more bitter than the previous le Carre mini-series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It’s also a lot more exciting than the previous work, although that was also very good. The special feature on the DVD was a half-hour interview with John le Carre and the show’s director John Irwin where they discuss working with Alec Guinness who starred in both shows.

This morning I set out early because I was going along to the Cameo cinema with my Mum to see a preview of An Education, directed by Lone Scherfig, and a screenplay by novelist Nick Hornby, based on a memoir by journalist Lynn Barber. The film is set in England, 1961, and tells the story of 16 year old Jenny (played by Carey Mulligan) whose life is pretty much entirely devoted to passing her exams and getting into Oxford University to study English. Until that is she meets a charismatic older man, David (Peter Sarsgaard) who seduces her with his glamorous and exciting lifestyle, and leaves Jenny with some very tough choices to make. It is a hugely entertaining movie, and very funny, although it is also very emotional. It is definitely worth watching.

After the movie, Dad came to collect us and we all went along to La Tasca, a tapas restuarant, in order to celebrate Mum’s birthday which isn’t until the 2nd November. It was really nice. After that we went back to my parent’s house for awhile, before I went back home.

Birthday Present

Last night I watched the final episode in the current series of Peep Show. It was a really good season this year. It was very funny. However there will be another series (the seventh) broadcast next year.

Later on I wrote a prelude for this year’s NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) competition. It’s kind of like a short story that deals with the origin of one of the vampire creatures in the story, and I wrote it mainly to get the tone right. I do think that it turned out pretty well.

Today I went out and went shopping for a birthday present and card for my Mum. I got her a book called Grumpy Old Rockstar by Rick Wakeman (who used to be in the seventies prog-rock group Yes). I also got a blank notebook for myself. On my way home I got some groceries for the week.

The Long Way

Last night I read a couple of stories in Best New Horror 20. The first one was called “The Old Traditions are Best” by Paul Finch, in which a teenage burglar is sent on holiday to a small village in Cornwall with a couple of social workers, where he quickly decides to wreck havoc on the village during it’s traditional May Day celebrations, only to find that the quaint local customs of the Hobby Horse has very dark origins, that have not gone away. The second one was “The Long Way” by Ramsey Campbell, about a teenager living in a tough estate who visits his disabled uncle every weekend, and slowly becomes convinced that there is something very sinister in a boarded up house which he passes on the way. They were both pretty good stories.

Today was very quiet, but at least it’s the end of another week. This weekend I was going to try and write a short prelude to my NaNoWriMo story for this year.

Anthologies

Last night was pretty quiet. I watched the latest episodes of True Blood, and Generation Kill. Which were both really good.

it was another really quiet day at work today, but I did get a really bad shock as I was leaving work and realised that I had left my phone on the office, so I had to rush back and get it. Luckily I managed to get it okay and it was fine.

Back home, after I had eaten, I read another story from Best New Horror 20 called “Falling Off the World” by Tim Lebbon, about a girl who is carried off into the sky when she gets entangled with balloons and encounters some ghostly figures in the sky. It was pretty strange, but good. The Best New Horror books are published every year, and it’s been going for twenty years now. Basically each book opens with an eighty page overview of that year in the world of horror covering books, movies, TV, comics, video games and conventions. Then it follows with twenty to thirty of the best short horror stories published that year from well-established and famous writers as well as newcomers, and concludes with obituaries and useful or interesting addresses and websites. It is pretty good value.

Song of Kali

Last night I finished reading Song of Kali by Dan Simmons. Published in 1985, the book tells the story of American poet and intellectual Robert Luczack who is hired by Harper’s magazine to travel to Calcutta and investigate the case of a reknowned Indian poet who has reappeared under mysterious circumstances after having been thought dead for eight years. Travelling to Calcutta with his wife and baby daughter, Luczack is horrified and fascinated by the poverty and casual violence that he witnesses on the streets. Beginning his investigation he discovers that the poet was in some way linked to a powerful and bloodthristy cult dedicated to the worship of Kali, Goddess of Death. It’s a pretty gruesome book, and it does benefit from having a really strong creepy atmosphere throughout. It won the 1986 World Fantasy Award.

I was also reading a couple of stories from Best New Horror 20. The first one, “Front-Page McGuffin and the Greatest Story Never Told” by Peter Crowther was a kind of sweet and funny Twilight Zone-style story in which an elderly one-time newspaper reporter goes to visit his favourite bar for a drink with his friends, despite the fact that he is dead. In “It Runs Beneath the Surface” by Simon Strantzas, a tired commuter in the inner-city finds himself pursued by a malevolent force hiding in the shadows in the Underground system. In “These Things We Have Always Known” by Lynda E. Rucker, a sculptor in a strange small American town discovers the source of the town’s strangeness, and in “Through the Cracks” a young woman from London, visiting her sister in Newcastle, pays a call on her ex-boyfriend who is obsessed by the idea that some powerful malevolent entity is trying to get into our world through cracks.

Today was yet another quiet day at work, and it was really dull as usual.

Human Statues

It was another really quiet evening last night. I was kind of half-watching The Blair Witch Project, but I had seen it just a couple of weeks ago. I did read a story in the Best New Horror book I got on Sunday called “Feminine Ending” by Neil Gaiman, which was about a human statue (one of those kind of mimes that you see around on the streets pretending to be statues) who turns out to be a stalker. The story itself is written as a love letter from the human statue. I had a really strange night’s sleep where I kept waking up.

It was an incredibly dull day at work. The time just seemed to drag on forever. I spent most of the afternoon listening to my iPod. Which I must remember to recharge this evening, actually.