Tabula Rasa lj

I've found a quick review of some of my fiction in All Tomorrow's Zombies, from lastshortstory:

"Rose Tea," David Carroll, All Tomorrow's Zombies - a really nicely crafted flash fic which does everything the form needs to do - hints at a world in tiny strokes of detail, establishes character and tells a story with brevity and restraint. the description of matches lighting at the very beginning of this story was just lovely.
[hah! first flash fiction I have recced this year, I think]

A review of All Tomorrow's Zombies has appeared... on YouTube. It's the future, baby.

(It also comes as a real book, but we didn't manage to get a copy to him.)

Also, my review of Stephen King: The Non-Fiction, by Rocky Wood and Justin Brooks, is now up. It's good.

Another review is up, this time Kyla doing Temeraire: Throne of Jade.

(I think I get a mention...)

A quick note for Aussie comics people, my review of Paul Bedford's The List is up at ASif.

If I told you about the review I wrote today, for Rocky Wood's Stephen King: The Non-Fiction, would that be meta-meta-meta-non-fiction?

It's been a more or less productive weekend: more than usual, less than actually productive. Our Ravenloft game was scuttled by a combination of a medieval fair and food poisoning -- not experienced by the same person -- so we played Vampire: Prince of the City. Kyla's winning streak is becoming lengthy.

I've been updating the website for the new book (we have hit Copper status on rpgdrivethru, putting us in the top 7.5% of products, which seems good for a coupla days), and various comics, including the funky CAB: Collaborative Auto-Biography. My date for wrestling with myspace draws ever closer. First I might have to wrestle for the right not to be subjected to Nova FM at the office.

ETA: cashews! I have eaten my first nuts in 15 years. So far so good...

We have put up a review of the Night of Horror film festival. In short, we were very impressed.

On a somewhat different tack, the writing of it was an interesting experiment. Being a collaboration, we were simultaneously editing it with Google Docs, which worked quite well. I'm not convinced I'd move over to it for fiction writing, but we shall see (when I next write some fiction, for a start). It should be said it was a bit of a nightmare massaging the resulting HTML into the TR style -- but maybe I'm just finicky.

I might be considering giving up MS Word, but I still haven't found a substitute for my home-grown MS Access website. I may have come too far to turn back now.

I finished John Marsden's Circle of Flight at some ungodly hour of this morning. This is the third and (allegedly) final volume in the Ellie Chronicles, which started with While I Live and follow on from the Tomorrow series. The war is over, but with half of Australia occupied and armed militia regularly crossing the border in both directions, there is little peace to be found.

My problem with this book is that I'm not really interested in reading the book John Marsden wanted to write. I'm fascinated by the setting and by Ellie's tough and compassionate character, but somewhat less fascinated by the protracted struggle to sort out her love life and her legal guardianship of Gavin.

The actual action is good — especially the bull! — and certainly nowhere near as incoherent as I remember the previous volume being. There are also some interesting looks at the cultural mix. But it's over too soon, and what looked like it would be the preoccupation of the second half — Ellie trying to separate herself from Liberation and her acknowledged addiction to danger — passed without much comment at all.

At least, that'd be how I'd write it, so I'll try not to be snarky about John just wanting another platform for his ongoing discussion on the raising of boys.

Likewise, I'd be interested in more explorations of trauma, as would hardly surprise anyone. I guess it is nice to have characters who don't fall apart (with all due acknowledgement to Gavin in Incurable), but it still seems to me that, for example, the latter Harry Potter books do a better job of looking at young adults trying to cope with living amidst a very fragile peace. (I was sort of expecting some 'hem hems' out of Madeleine Randall.) Don't mistake me. Marsden certainly writes better prose than Rowling, and whatever its long-term effect, he has a great knack for describing trauma as it is happening. That may not be entirely enough, but makes the book worth reading.

Despite great fatigue (under which I wrote emails I probably shouldn't have) I went off to the film festival last night, with no small assistance from jack_ryder and Rob Hood. It was great to see such a large crowd — they seemed to have been moved into a larger cinema, and still filled it up — and the various organisers dressed as J-Horror icons was a nice touch.

The movies themselves were a bit more problematic. Ghost Train was a rather overwrought and by-the-number horror flick, with all the usual creepy stuff mixing with Lovecraft references and an overly-complicated plot that fell down in the execution.

Neighbour No. 13 was a lot more interesting, both because of its gritty and inventive style, and because it was far removed from the polite (high-rise) suburbia of most Japanese flicks I've seen. The actual ending was rather cryptic — but I'm fairly sure I worked out was was happening (unlike, say, the original Grudge which confused me greatly). Even so it had its problems, as what might be called the central conflict of the movie never really went anywhere, but it's definitely worth a watch. (I have only now realised Takishi Miike had a cameo, as the first victim of No. 13, for those interested in such things.)

Nicole Murphy has a new review of Prismatic up on AS if!.

I really don't like leaving novels unfinished, but I'm quarter of the way through a book and see no particular chance of improvement. It's just bland, with no passion or colour — the protagonists seem to be wandering around a maze of white cubes labelled 'jungle' and 'political intrigue'.

OK, maybe it's not that bad, but I've been reading Lucius Shepard's film reviews so you can tell I'm a bitter man (hope I get my facts right). And indeed there has been one paragraph thus far that I thought was very nice, and it wasn't as actively disagreeable as the last example of its ilk I read, but still.

Maybe this is what I get for supporting local product, or modern fantasy fic, but I do have hopes for both. I should probably go back to A Song of Ice and Fire (which is not exactly what I'm after, but does what it does very well) and Boudica (one book to go).

Of course, if people want to support local product and grab a copy of, say, Prismatic, I shan't complain, even if you then go and make veiled complaints about it on your lj. I'm sure it's been done.

Here's the review, written by Lucy Sussex for The Age, July 9.

Prismatic, by Edwina Grey.

Not many novels are written by a triumvirate. Nor do they have the ill-luck to appear after a publishing takeover saw their imprint hit the corporate dustbin. But Prismatic is not committee work, and it is about the lives of young, urban Australians – a rarity in ozlit, YA apart. The latter seldom ventures into the area of piercings, tatts, and drugs. Prismatic does, and takes no prisoners. Plague has erupted in Sydney, and an ambitious three-strand narrative links today, the epidemic of 1919, and early white settlement. Dark suspense is one description, so is contemporary thriller. Gripping despite my flu (not plague).

Succinct but very nice.

Apparently the Age has reviewed Prismatic, so we're trying to get a hold of a copy.

To tide us over, some short reviews of my own.

Haunted, by Chuck Palahnuik: Very clever indeed. I wouldn't call it a total success (the stories tend to work a lot better than the framing device), but he sure has a knack of finding the right details to throw his situations into sharp relief. He makes a empassioned plea in his afterword for the use of prose to push the boundaries; like other parts of the book, I'm not sure I agree with his reasoning, but his conclusions are fascinating.

If nothing else, this should become required reading for Clarion attendees.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Almost entirely tedious.

Jenifer: This is Dario Argento's entry into Masters of Horror, and it's an interesting failure. Well made, but not enough details come together, and the ending is far too obvious.

The Potato Boy: (An episode of American Gothic.) Probably best seen immersed within the more conventional episodes around it, but brave and beautiful nonetheless.

Call of Cthulhu: Made by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society, it's a loving re-creation of twenties cinema, with more than a little suspense of its own.

Out first review has appeared, courtesy of horrorscope_aus: Prismatic review.

Meanwhile, we got some signed bookplates for Carnies today (also reviewed), which were very cool.

Thanks for all the nice comments, people.

I think this is going to be a fairly orderly transition. In fact, I now have to starting recruiting the poor sap to replace me. There is also much training to be done (though I'm not going to be in Canberra all next week, as looked possible at one point).

In the meantime, I got a DVD in the mail, which isn't exactly a rare occurence, except that I didn't pay for this one. Yes, I'm getting review copies for the TR site. Nice.

(And promptly sending most of them on to Mr Rob Hood to do the reviewing.)

I did send Umbrella Entertainment a hopeful note, but didn't get a reply. Certainly they're the most interesting DVD company in Australia, maybe ever.

But enough about people who didn't send me stuff. Today's offering was White Noise, about which I know little beyond the surface details (I didn't take up the chance to interview real "Electronic Voice Phenomenon" experts). However, since it seems I am expected to generate some excitement, here's ( Michael Keaton looking spooky )

If you follow the comments in this journal, you will have noted Dave Hoskin (whom I used to correspond with back in the Burnt Toast days) has agreed to let me reprint two interviews with Aussie horror film-makers. Now they're up:

• The Spierig Brothers, makers of Undead
• Martin Murphy and Ian Iveson, makers of Lost Things

Good interviews too, so check them out.

I quite like this reprinting business. I might do something about that.

We have a new review up on the TR site: Lost Things, a nice little flick that I can't help thinking could have achieved excellence with some tighter dialogue. We also saw a short film by the same director on the DVD, which seemed to share the strengths and weaknesses of the feature, so I guess he has achieved consistency.

Speaking of reviews, it turned out my one for girliejones wasn't alright after all, and needed another going over (which has indeed improved it muchly). Gosh -- editorial feedback. I haven't had that for a review since 1989, when my editor at the time wrote a scathing reply to my column on the actual page, as opposed to discussing it with me before hand. That'll teach me to write a more-or-less favorable review of a more-or-less pornographic comic in an university newspaper. I guess. (The comic in question being an issue of Howard Chaykin's Black Kiss.)

I've sent off my third review to girliejones' new project, so that's not going so badly.

I'm not sure when they'll be made public (I'm told the beta site has been leaked, but not by me), but in the meanwhile, check out the cover of Something Wicked, which looks fabulous. It's pretty good inside as well. Congrats to all concerned (and head off to Phase Two if you want a copy).

We had a games night last night, with special guests shellshear and Jason M. Abduction, Zendo, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Mahjong and the Very Clever Pipe Game were all given a whirl (not all by me), and it went pretty well.

Also, The Army of Darkness RPG is out, as a PDF at least. In theory it has a map which I designed within (like Sunnydale High, the castle in that movie was not shot with cartographers in mind, but I think I managed to pull a self-consistent plan out of the confusion), though I'm not actually sure it made the final cut. It also means we're a step closer to the appearance of our books, which I'll have to admit I'm more interested in at this stage.

I finished reading the revised Gunslinger on the weekend. I'm usually not all that excited by people who revise their previous work at a later stage of life. It might be a 'director's cut', but the director isn't necessarily the same person as he was first time round (Star Wars is a good example). Also, stuff that was cut from the original might have been cut for a reason (I prefer the original, leaner The Stand, even if King says it was only an economic decision).

But this one was worth doing. Some of the sparseness of the original has been lost, filled with detail that makes the book fit better with the series, but not necessarily a stronger novel (which isn't really a sin). Some things have been clarified (I understood the whole point of David better--why he took Cort by surprise), some things simplified (I was a bit sad to see 'parsecs' go, but that was pure nostalgia), and it has been filled out well. People like Roland's mother seemed to be more strongly defined, yet the extra details didn't break the flow.

A couple of prominent additions appear right at the beginning. There's a quote from Thomas Wolfe which is an excellent choice, and the phrases '19' and 'Resumption'. I'm guessing these are foreshadowing, since they don't have a lot to do with the current novel (19 does come up, and leads to a situation which almost seems like a Han Solo moment -- ie, Han being shot at first in the revised Star Wars -- but I think it works better than that).

Also, two points which I think are mistakes (since I'm a pedantic sod): In a later book we are told that 'char' only refers to 'death', and so Roland doesn't know the name Charlie. Yet there is a now a character from Gilead called Charles, son of Charles (but since he is associate with death, at least within the narrative, it might be a strange bit of foreboding). Also, Roland asks Walter about 'glammer', but the dialogue when Walter brings it up has been removed (unless it was moved somewhere earlier and I missed it).

In summary, there are no enormous improvements that have been made, and some things that a fan of the original could quibble at (Stephen King himself says the book's primary audience is not those people, but for newcomers to his world), but at the same time many of the changes have been to the book's benefit. And it's still a powerful novel, a refreshingly different fantasy and a great start to a great series.

No time for a full report, since my computer has been rebuilt and I'm programming away. But last night I finished Sara Douglass' Hade's Daughter. It had some great ideas, some evocative and well-written passages, lots of sex and violence (indeed, more hardcore sexualised gore than most horror hovels), lots of moral ambivalence, but in the end the book was just the wrong shape for its story. Too much good stuff at the beginning told in fast forward, too many words describing not much happening in the middle, too many characters who were stuck in their mould, and not enough to give a feeling of the world about them. Interesting, but I'm not sure I'll keep going (it is, of course, the first in a series...)

Also received a book I grabbed off eBay, Kenneth Cook's The Killer Koala. I usually have a low tolerance for folksy stuff like this, but since Kenneth Cook did more to introduce the truly alien and hostile image of the Australian outback than anyone else (from him such things as Mad Max and Razorback grew), I'm interesting in reading his more laid back rendition on the theme. It's a collection of stories he claims are 100% true (of course!), and "give a wry, panic-striken look at Australia's last frontier".