Jonathan Carroll

As a side-post to the last one, I started re-reading Jonathan Carroll's Land of Laughs again the other day, when I realised that the aforementioned novella was going to similar places as that wonderful book. Just to make sure that no fictional toes were stepped on.
And I'd forgotten just how brilliant that book was. Of course, most of Carroll's books are wonderful, uncategorizable flights of fictional genius, but Land of Laughs was most people's point of entry into his world, and it remains one of his absolute best and the template for much of his work: a smart, funny, likable narrator, a sparklingly perfect woman and a romance that unfolds, and then things get weird. Dogs talk in their sleep weird.
Of late, I started to fall out of love with Carroll's books purely for the reason that the madness seems to start too early in his recent stuff; in the early books he took his time with the romance and introducing a normal world and then turned it upside down. I've tried to read White Apples and The Wooden Sea several times and just can't get into them (although I'll doubtless try again).
To that end, I've embedded this audio interview with Carroll from the Barnes and Noble website, as it's an excellent interview. I had the good fortune to meet Carroll a good ten or twelve years ago now in - of all places - Swansea. I was with Rog Peyton for a horror convention, and Rog knowing Carroll, I was introduced to him. I've never met another writer who seemed to have such an aura about them; even other authors were falling over themselves to introduce themself and looking sort of awestruck.
He arrived with a beautiful woman that Rog didn't seem to think was his wife. He wafted about the halls, giving off the whiff of an old Hollywood star; in short we were all under the influence of the magic of his books - he brought it with him somehow.
On the Sunday afternoon I took my chance to talk with him. We were in a crowded room and although our eyes didn't meet across it, no one else seemed to be able to summon up the nerve to talk with him. So I did. And we talked. And talked. And talked. During that hour of one to one, he told me about his father, Sidney Carroll, about his writing habits, about Vienna, and about his lunches with Harrison Ford and Oliver Stone (who'd both intended to make movies of his books). I in turn felt impelled to tell him about the time I was reading Bones of the Moon; it was deep in the middle of a very harsh British winter; I had taken the bus home in the snow from work with about a hundred pages of Bones to read. About a mile from my house, the bus finally gave up amongst the drifts of snow, just as I'd finished. Anyone who's ever read the book will tell you what an emotionally affecting ending that book has and I was in tears. I had to surreptitiously wipe my eyes before we all disembarked and started the trek on foot. He was enormously pleased to hear the story.
When I looked around after an hour, I realised that a lot of people had that look of why am I not talking to Carroll? I probably wouldn't be able to do it now, so I'm glad I got the chance. It's good when your heroes are more than you expect.
Here's the link...

A novella and reasons to hassle me...

In the course of bringing all the strands of a recent idea together for what will probably be a novella, I've been gathering various (and very disparate) books and research materials for it. The first seed of the idea began a couple of years ago while we were holidaying in Devon; we were in Ilfracombe at the time, which is one of those old, faded (but still deeply pretty) Victorian seaside towns. I realised that I wanted to set a story there, possibly in one of those old, dilapidated guesthouses, and probably in the vein of Don't Look Now. I wrote it down, along with a few notes and left it to percolate in the recesses of my brain.
At some point I've wanted to write a fictionalised version of the Carry On ensemble, as they've long fascinated me; Kenneth Williams in particular. And Williams at some point became a key figure in the aforementioned story idea. The camp raconteur with the acid tongue, and a faded Victorian seaside town. That's all I had for a long time.
Then a couple of weeks ago, the idea seemed to want to come out; ideas do that sometimes. They're like babies; they've come to term and here they come, ready or not. So I started taking notes, involving spiritualists and little children and the past, and suddenly the story was taking shape, and then wanting to be a novella when I discovered there was a burgeoning market for them (no money, but a market just the same). Then a little side-note to add some colour suggested something else, and I ended up discarding a lot of the plot and going elsewhere.
I ordered a book of Kenneth Williams diaries, and an annotated volume of the complete Lewis Carroll as Dodgson and little Alice were taking over the story too.
I'm hoping I can get this off the ground in the next couple of weeks as I've written nothing since completing the novel. Hence this post. Forcing myself to feel bad if I don't get this story about Alice and Carroll and Williams and the Muses in a faded seaside town done. Hassle me about it if you know me. Really. Hassle me about the novel too while you're at it...

Star Trek

There's little I can add to the generally across the board love for the Star Trek franchise's reboot by J.J. Abrams. I'm certainly not going to disagree with any of it. It's a fantastic blockbuster movie, made even more impressive by the eye-popping IMAX cinema experience.
The young cast are excellent. Quinto's Spock is as perfect a piece of casting as everyone expected, as is Karl Urban's spot-on 'Bones' McCoy. Chris Pine, wisely side-stepping a Shatner caricture is also absolutely excellent, playing his Kirk as defiant, rebellious and heroic and promising to only get more confident and comfortable in the role as the franchise continues. In fact all of the classic characters get a fair crack at the whip - the young Sulu and Chekov play on some old series tropes and come out well, as does Pegg's Scotty, who delivers the classic Doohan lines with relish.
The story manages to straddle the old Trek values and cliches with a knowing wink and also serves up a huge effects-laden blockbuster that barrels along at break-neck pace. This is, of course, no mean feat. Re-imagining a forty year old show for a much more clued-up generation while retaining its charm, character and look is a real achievement. It's hard these days to be really swept up by the blockbuster movie, as there's just so many of them, but the new Trek is two hours of exhilarating, unalloyed FUN. Fantastic.

The Witnesses Are Gone

...and speaking of Joel Lane, I just ordered his new novella, The Witnesses Are Gone from PS Publishing tonight.

Here's the blurb:

The Witnesses Are Gone is a first-hand account of a journey into the underworld in all the wrong places. Martin Swann, its narrator, moves into an old house and finds a box of videocassettes in the garden shed. One of them has a bootleg copy of a morbid and disturbing film by a little-known French director, Jean Rien.

Martin's search for Rien's other films, and for a way to understand them, draws him away from his home and his lover into a shadow realm of secrets, rituals and encroaching decay. An encounter with a schizoid film journalist in Gravesend leads to a drug-fuelled vision in Paris – and finally to the Mexican desert where a grim revelation awaits him.

The Witnesses Are Gone updates the Orpheus myth for a world losing touch with reality. Blending supernatural horror with eroticism and warped comedy, it takes a look behind the screen on which our collective nightmares play.

It can be found here at PS Publishing. Sounds fantastic. I'll post a review once I've read it.

Also available (but a little more expensive at $40) is a new short story collection from Ex Occidente Press, by the title of The Terrible Changes.

I may try and get hold of one at some point as it looks like a nice selection of 25 years of Lane horror, and has an absolutely tremendous cover that feels very reminsicent of the old Arkham House Lovecraft hardcovers.

Beneath The Ground and Lost and Found - A new review of an old book...

Some time ago I contributed a short story called Lost and Found for Joel Lane's Beneath The Ground anthology, which after some delays was published in 2003 by Alchemy Press. It remains one of my favourite short stories as it references a couple of subjects that have long been close to my heart: the music of Nick Drake and the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. To be able to merge the two into some kind of cohesive piece of fiction is one of my proudest achievements. Sometimes you look back on old work and you recall where and who you were when you wrote it, and see shortcomings both in your life and your work, but I think Lost and Found still holds up even now. It being for Joel Lane, who inspired and encouraged me right from the start, I felt an obligation to give him the absolute best that I could, and I think I did.
I bring all this up purely because I was pointed toward a recent review of Beneath the Ground by D.F.Lewis here

Lost and Found
This substantial story continues the river of people on the London Underground from the previous story, each story complementing and enlightening the other. I can't do this story justice. It is teeming with images that coalesce: an obsession with the London Underground finally bearing fruit as a religious epiphany with a presence that overhangs us all as well as subsuming us; a subtle narrative trick of narrators narrating being narrated in various layers of collusiveness and non-collusiveness; relationships both sibling and sexual; loss, failure, amputation, Leonard Cohen... but I was listening to Goldfrapp's 'Felt Mountain' duing the reading of this story and it imbued everything with a gorgeous sadness... "'It was like a cathedral,' he wrote. Amongst the stalagmite basins and the stalactite pillars, he could hear the sound of something like prayer. He was terrified and in awe." There are letters, too, a stack of letters. This story would not have worked in the email age. I feel as if I cannot fix this story in the kiln. It's far too diffusive - like music straight into the veins. Like trying to shape origami from air (to pinch an image from the story). Or as if trying to rediscover a place... "'It was one of those anonymous East End streets,' he wrote. 'Concrete gardens. Children playing in the road. A chip shop at one end, an off-licence at the other. It was the kind of place you'd never find twice.'"

It's nice after all these years to see that people are still discovering the anthology and the story. Strange too at this point while I'm about to start working on a short horror story that feels like it'll have a similar 'vibe' to Lost And Found. Perhaps someone's trying to tell me something...