You might remember a while back, Jurassic London launched their series of anthologies with Pandemonium: Tales of the Apocalypse. Stories of destruction, chaos and… John Martin. It was an anthology I was very proud to be part of – I say “was” because, as is the way with Jurassic anthologies, it went out of print after one year. This meant my story in there, At the Sign of the Black Dove… apocalypsed.
Until now.
It appears in this week’s episode of the Tales to Terrify podcast, read by Simon Hildebrandt (the story starts at around the 24:00 minute mark if you want to skip straight to it) – and while I’ve still not entirely got used to the idea of someone reading out my stories – and you know, my actual words – he does an amazing job.
As well as the website. you should be able to get it via iTunes, too: search for the Tales to Terrify podcast and look for episode 71.
It’s the story of a group of friends who wander into their local pub one night for a drink, and find that they’ve got more than a hangover to worry about the next morning.
So if you missed it as part of Pandemonium and you’d like to hear it now (or maybe you’re brave enough to venture back to the Black Dove…) click away… and bottoms up.
If, by the way, you can ever get your hands on one of the limited edition hardcovers, I really do recommend it – and not purely because I was involved in it. There are some incredible stories in there by incredible writers, and you won’t be disappointed.
It’s less than 2 months to the release of BLOOD AND FEATHERS: REBELLION (eeeeeeep!) on July 9th, so I’m going to do one more giveaway. This one’s a little different to last time.
Why?
Because as well as a signed copy of the first book, I’m giving away the opening chapter of the REBELLION manuscript, marked up with notes and amendments.
This means that you’ll be able to see the changes between the draft I sent to Solaris and the text that will appear in the finished book, giving you an insight into the edits we made – as well as getting a look at the first chapter before anyone else.
Publishing being the modern and new-fangled thing that it is, all my edits are sent through in soft-copy. However, me being the Luddite that I am, I always work in hard-copy, and transfer everything back onto the screen. This does, unfortunately, mean that you’ll be getting pages covered in my scrawl, but hey.
All you have to do is tell me where you think you belong.
I’ll explain…
In the world of BLOOD AND FEATHERS, the angels are divided into choirs. Each choir has their own specific talents and gifts.
Every choir has a part to play in the battle.
Michael’s choir – like the Archangel who leads them – are the elite soldiers. They’re known for their loyalty and their single-mindedness… and the fact they tend to burst into flame. Quick to anger, they’re by far the smallest choir, but are almost certainly the strongest.
Gabriel’s choir are able to control lightning (and, by extension, electricity). They often come across as aloof and detached… but they’re simply considering all their options, and it gives them a distinct advantage when it comes to emotional situations.
Speaking of emotions: next comes Zadkiel’s choir. Able to manipulate memories, thoughts and feelings, they can read your mind – or make you see exactly what they want. It’s a more useful trick than you’d imagine. Or maybe that’s just what they want you to think…
If you’re a gambler, it pays to have Barakiel on your side. His choir are, generally speaking, lucky. This manifests itself in funny ways: some of his choir are always in the right place in the right time, some can influence the outcome of a fight or a hand of poker… some keep getting themselves in a mess. The thing is, they always get out again.
Raphael is a healer. They say time heals everything? They mean “Raphael”. Many of his choir are also healers – and others are empaths. Able to feel what others around them feel – not to alter or influence, like Zadkiel’s choir, but to understand. Sometimes, though, feeling what others feel hurts...
And then there’s the Fallen. The outsiders. The rebels. Dangerous and desperate, how many of them wish they could go back and make different choice – and how many of them like things just the way they are?
See? Easy.
Which choir do you think you would belong to, and why?
I’d love to know!
You can leave a comment on this post, tweet me or mail me. I’ll randomly draw one response this Sunday, May 19th. I’ll also collect all the entries and put them on the blog a bit further down the line – along with my own answer.
There was a Twitter conversation the other night (I clearly spend far too much time on there – I’ve started a few posts with “So, I was on Twitter and…”) about the spaces people wrote in. Naturally, being nosy, this caught my attention. It’s always fascinating seeing how people arrange their space – be it writing space, kitchen space or living space. It says a lot about them, and about us as humans, because they’re often pretty similar.
Having gone and nosed around Laura Lam and Stephen Aryan‘s, I thought it’s only fair if I put mine up too. (And if you’re interested, you can even take a look at an agent’s desk, too: Juliet Mushens, who represents both Laura and me, has put up a photoblog of her day – including a desk shot…)
I’ve written in a lot of places – mostly because I’ve lived in 3 different houses in the last 2 and a half years, and stayed in a handful of short-term rentals too. This has led to me not being too picky about my writing setup. In our house in London, I used to write at the dining table in our living room. Then we got stuck in the middle of an awful move, which led to me spending a week or so writing the last third of Blood and Feathers sitting in the window of my parents’ Barbican flat, 13 floors up and looking out over Smithfield and towards St Paul’s cathedral. I also wrote a big chunk sitting on the mezzanine floor of the Barbican centre (interestingly, hell in the book is a labyrinthine complex of levels and stairways. It never occurred to me how closely this fits with how most people find navigating the Barbican…)
We then stayed in a few more places before we moved into our Brighton house: a tall, narrow townhouse by the seafront, spread over 5 storeys. I had a teeny study there, but as it had no insulation and was essentially a little box jutting out of the house, with external walls on 3 sides, it got incredibly cold… so I moved down to our basement kitchen, and that old dining table. And the underfloor heating.
Which brings us to here. I’d planned to work (again) in the kitchen – there must be something about the proximity to the kettle and the fridge which appeals to me – but instead, I’ve annexed the not-quite-big-enough-to-be-a-proper-spare-room bedroom…
This (somewhat dark) photo should give you an idea of my desk. It’s new and tiny and the idea was that I wouldn’t be able to cover the top of it with crap like I used to do my old – much larger – one. As you can see, that plan is working out perfectly.
The “proofin’” sofa. Technically, it’s our spare bed. The rest of the time, it’s where I read – having dislodged the cat, who likes to lie right across the middle of the thing. Because we’ve not decorated the room since we moved in, most of my pictures are still waiting to be hung up, so they sit along the back of the sofa.
There’s a couple of my friend Vinny Chong’s prints (the face is one of my favourites of his. I have a few. It’s a problem, OK?), a photo of Brighton’s West Pier lit up with lasers and a Jefferson Starship LP that my husband found in a charity shop. (It’s an in-joke and you need to have watched a lot of Supernatural to get it. But they’re horrible, and hard to kill.) Frankly, I hate the cover art but it makes me laugh every time I look at it.
My shelves. The narrow ones in the middle are mostly research books, along with some copies of Blood and Feathers, notebooks, playing cards and a tin of Monster Supplies’ Escalating Panic – just in case. If you look carefully, you’ll also see my mother’s teddy bear looking after the graphic novels. Below the printer is Fred. Fred is an antique; part of the anatomy skeleton my father bought while he was in medical school back when they still used real skeletons. I’m told his hand went missing during a medical school drama production – and I think he appeared in the same club’s version of Hamlet. Lucky old Fred.
A slightly less gloomy one of the desk (note the super-glamorous black wrist brace there. I’ve had RSI in my left arm for years, and this has been an absolute lifesaver). The grey crate on the floor is my somewhat-erratic filing system. Basically, if I’m working on it in any way, shape or form, it’s in there. The notice board is all sorts of bits and bobs: mostly drawings my little boy has done. I also have a few photos around. And teetering piles of manuscript pages and notebooks. See how that “small desk” thing’s working out for me?
The view from the desk. It’s one of the best things about the room: we have a huge beech hedge running alongside the house, and I’ve watched the trees go from completely bare when we moved in to… this. On windy days (like today) the leaves make the most incredible sound. The winged mug was a present from Anne Perry and Jared Shurin – the amazing powerhouse behind Pornokitsch, Pandemonium and The Kitschies. The framed dollar on the windowsill is (and this sounds absurd, but there’s a point. I think.) the first money I ever earned from writing. It was for a story that appeared in a tiny little American magazine, and that was the entire payment. $1. But it meant so much to me that I decided to frame it. It felt important. It still does.
So there you go. Where do you work? What do you have around you, and why? Is there one area of your workspace you like the most? Take photos, tell us about your desk, your kitchen table, your office… wherever it is you do what you do. Tell us about the things there that matter to you, and link it back so we can all see and compare notes!
Resurrection cheese is what resulted when, in the 1860s, a townsman of Llanfihangel Abercowyn, in the Carmarthen county of Wales, wanted to make cheese but didn’t have enough money for the proper equipment. He didn’t make a deal with the devil in exchange for a cheese-press; rather, he called upon his resourcefulness, made a trip to the abandoned graveyard in town, and with a few fallen headstones he fashioned his own cheese press.
Farmhouse cheeses were large — sometimes nearly two feet in diameter — and circular; and evidently, able to easily copy the inscription of a headstone. When this townsman sold his cheese at the market, with a clear gravestone inscription, one of his customers exclaimed, “You have resurrected this cheese from Llanfihangel churchyard!” From then on, its “official” name was resurrection cheese.
I always write (and rewrite, and edit, and all those other things…) to a playlist – and REBELLION is no exception.
The whole playlist will appear in the back of the book when it’s published on July 9th this year, and I’ll be putting it up on here too. But not quite yet.
In the meantime, you won’t be surprised to learn that this is the first track…
It sits at the top of a long, narrow drive, on the side of a hill; just outside the village of Sparkwell, looking across fields and hills and (this weekend, at least) banks of low-lying cloud, mist and drizzle.
And living in the garden of this house, there are animals.
You may well have heard of it – even if you think you haven’t.
I fell in love with the story of the zoo when I read its owner, Benjamin Mee’s book last year, and this played a large part in our rolling up to Dartmoor in the middle of a not-so-gentle April shower yesterday, wellies and all. I’m glad we did.
Even in the rain, the atmosphere is lovely: some of the animals may be ensconced in their houses (lynx, I’m looking squarely at you. Don’t think I didn’t see you in the doorway) but the keepers are incredibly friendly and approachable and even the drizzle’s not enough to put Josie the lion off her food.
We arrived just in time to see her being fed, as two of the big cat keepers (with two “keepers for a day” assisting) hung a sack filled with her food in a tree in her enclosure. It lasted about a minute and a half before she’d torn down the meat pinata and carried her lunch off to the back of her space to eat in peace.
The keepers explained that she’s only fed every other day in an attempt to keep her lifestyle as close as it can possibly be to the one she would have in the wild – so rain or not, we were pretty lucky.
The rain didn’t seem to bother the newly-introduced Iberian wolves, either, one of whom was asleep at the back of their enclosure.
Having read We Bought A Zoo, one of the animals I really did want to see was Sovereign, the park’s jaguar.
I don’t know a huge amount about jaguars – except that they’re clever. Having seen him wandering around his enclosure, looking straight back at us, I’m glad there was a barrier and a nice big moat between us. Yes. To say he’s intimidating is an understatement.
It isn’t all about the big name animals at Dartmoor – although between the bears and the big cats, there are plenty. My little boy was especially taken with the peacock and (naturally) with the meerkats, whose last feed we just managed to catch at the end of the day. I’m always a sucker for the otters, and a soft touch for a capybara.
One of my favourite things about the day was the end of Westcountry Falconry’s display, held on the front lawn of the house. We missed most of it – but arrived just in time to meet Wendy the Striated Caracara, who trotted along behind her handler when he let her out of her aviary and immediately went to look under the picnic tables in case there was anything worth her time there. Anyone who doesn’t think birds have a personality clearly hasn’t met Wendy.
Education is a big feature of the zoo’s event programme, and this (plus the staff’s love for what they do) comes across in the “Close Encounters” sessions, when some of the zoo’s smaller residents come out to play.
We got to meet several of the reptiles, including a very inquisitive corn snake – and, after at least five minutes of dithering about it, even Small Boy was brave enough to stroke them all (and boy, did he feel proud of himself afterwards).
Dartmoor Zoo is an incredible place, with an incredible story. It’s easy to understand how someone could fall in love with it, and with the animals.
The staff and keepers go out of their way to bring all the animals’ personalities to the fore: you aren’t just watching A Lion, you’re watching Josie, who loves her food but misses her mate, Solomon, who recently died.
You aren’t just watching a family of meerkats, you’re watching a pair with two babies who were born in mid-December (there were 3, but one of them contracted pneumonia and didn’t make it).
Likewise, Kevin the boa constrictor couldn’t take part in the “Close Encounters” talk because he was wrapped around his tree and had made it clear in the most snake-like way possible that no power on this earth was going to get him to unwrap himself, thankyouverymuch. They’re all treated as individuals and visitors are encouraged to remember that’s what they are.
If you can, go. You won’t regret it, and we’ll be going back – whether it’s raining or not.
If you can’t go, read the book. Think about donating, as it’s places like this which help to safeguard some of the world’s most endangered animals, and teach the next generation about the world around us. Long may they remain.
Once again, I’ve got the amazing talent of Pye Parr to thank for this, as well as the team at Solaris Books. It perfectly matches the feel of the book, and (for once) I’m kind of lost for words.
I. LOVE. IT.
(And I hope you do too…)
You can pre-order the book from Amazon (UK) (US), BN.com, Waterstones and, of course, your local bookshop.
I was having a conversation about books (no surprise there) on Twitter over the weekend, and it veered into the amount of money it’s possible to spend on them when you really get going – and how that compares to, say, a designer handbag. I said, rather glibly, that I’d much rather go book shopping than handbag shopping… and then I started to wonder why.
Let’s start with the obvious. I’m not that fussed about expensive bags or shoes as trophies. They just don’t do much for me. I have one decent handbag, which was a gift (and which I do love. So much so that when it got damaged in the Apple Juice Incident of 2012 – details of which I’m not at liberty to divulge – I might have got a little bit sniffly and uttered the immortal cry of: “This is why I can’t have nice things…”. But moving swiftly on.) and which I use a lot. But I only really need the one good one, don’t I? After all, any others would just sit in a cupboard when they’re not being used. Alone. And, knowing my luck, slowly sinking into a puddle of juice. Christ.
But books don’t do that. I looked around my house, and I saw books. Not as many as I used to have, admittedly: I gave away boxes and boxes of them before we moved. But still, books. And because I straight-out alphabetise them (alas, I haven’t the patience for Dewey), there are books rubbing spines that you wouldn’t necessarily think of as natural companions. John Connolly and Jilly Cooper, for instance… whereas Joe and Will Hill seem like easy shelf-mates. (Me? Oh, I’m next to Erin Morgenstern… and within striking distance of the Michael Marshall/Smiths…)
The thing is, I can see them. And more than that, I remember them. Every time I look at those shelves, I’m not just seeing books. I’m seeing memories.
There, right at the start, is my mother’s collection of Judy Astley books, and her copy of Sam Shepard’s short stories which I know she only bought because she had a thing for him (and rightly so) but which are astonishingly good.
There’s the battered old copy of Joanne Harris’s Chocolat, which I’ve read and re-read every Easter since it was published. On the shelf in the bedroom, there’s the copy of How to Live in a Science Fictional Universe which I was reading when my mother died and which made me cry when I reached the last page. There’s the Lud In The Mist I nicked from my parents’ bookshelves when I was little because I liked the cover. The 3 volumes of The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship‘s by far the most battered, and actually falls open at the first appearance of Strider (what?).
There’s my beloved copy of Only Forward, signed at the very first convention I ever went to, in Brighton. There’s Chris Fowler’s Disturbia: a book I’ve had since I don’t even remember when, and which I used as a sort of unofficial guide book to London when I moved there for university.
Books by my friends, books by people I’ve never met and most likely never will. Well. Be difficult with Dickens, wouldn’t it?
Books that have made me laugh, books that have made me cry and books that break my heart.
And when I look at those books, I realise why I’d rather have them than a bunch of handbags.
They are memories; pieces not just of their authors’ souls, snapshots of them as they wrote, but pieces of mine.
I remember the first time I read some of them. I remember the times I’ve re-read some of them – and left between their pages like a pressed flower or a leaf or grains of sand from a holiday, there are slivers of my own soul. Versions of me, be they from one, ten or twenty years ago. Who I was when I picked up that book for the first time; who I’ve been since.
There’s a famous Jean Cocteau quote, beloved of cat owners – myself included – that cats are the visible soul of a house.
Perhaps books, whether tidily stacked or jostling for space and piled one on top of each other, are the visible soul of their owner.
So Fall Out Boy are back, and My Chemical Romance are history.
Hurrah, and boo respectively.
Fall Out Boy are a band I’ve liked for a long time, and have the dubious honour of being one whose lyrics I listen to intently. There’s an interesting way with words there that – basically – I envy.
My Chemical Romance are… were… a band with whom I have history; empathy. I’ve never been particularly worried about hiding the fact I’ve long had what (for the sake of brevity) we’ll call “issues”, and I found something in My Chem that I connected with at the exact time I desperately needed it.
It sounds trite and about as far from cool as it’s possible to be (although, let’s face it, “cool” isn’t exactly the first word that comes to mind when you think of me, I know) but they were a band who made a difference to me. And that’s what art is supposed to do, isn’t it? It’s supposed to connect with you. This did.
The thing is, I was broken.
I was broken and I was feeling alone and afraid and then I realised that the music I was listening to, the music I was connecting to on so many levels, was made by people who were broken too. That mattered. It mattered because suddenly, it was okay to be broken. It was okay to be broken and scarred and afraid and flawed, because you could be all these things and you could still make… that.
It helped, and it gave me hope.
So Fall Out Boy are back, and My Chemical Romance are history, and Wentz and Way with all their scars and all their flaws are still two of my heroes.
As part of the giveaway I did a few weeks back, I promised to handwrite a copy of a short (very short!) BLOOD AND FEATHERS story for the overall winner. Which I did. And I also promised to put a version of that story up online after a couple of weeks… which I’m doing.
There’s a couple of minor differences between that version and this, but nothing significant.
For those of you who care about this kind of thing, there’s no real continuity. (It’ll make more sense, admittedly, if you’ve read the book, but it’s not mission critical!) In terms of when it fits, it’s fairly safe to assume that it takes place before the main events of BLOOD AND FEATHERS, but beyond that, you’re on your own…
THE PATRON SAINT OF WISHFUL THINKING
“It’s a bit shit, isn’t it?”
Vin and Mallory stood back and looked at the lump of metal on the bench; Vin critically, Mallory with vague dissatisfaction.
“‘Shit‘ is a slightly stronger word than I’d use…” Mallory said with a frown.
Vin just shook his head. “Go on. Say it. You know I’m right.”
“Fine. It’s shit. Happy now?”
“Ecstatic.” Stepping forward, Vin poked at the offending item – yelping as it burned his fingertip. Mallory smirked.
“Might still be hot.”
It was Mallory’s latest thing, the metal-working. He was running low on funds (again) and had decided it was probably time to find some form of gainful employment. Again.
