Santa Claws is coming to rip you apart

I once wrote a short story called "Santa Claws is coming to rip you apart", and after I finished, it came in at a whopping 150,000 words. I changed the name to "Santa Claws" and as it is the day before Christmas, it got me thinking this morning what the story was about. I really have to get to my backlist at some point in the future. Some have been dwelling in the unconscious for years and I am looking forward to getting my hands on them again and tearing them apart. Anyhow, I thought I'd share that thought with you.

Well, another year gone. Next year is the year of the submission. Gone are the apprentice days, gone are the fiddling around days. I have novels sitting there which are so close to being finalised, it's stopping me from writing more new novels. It is so difficult having 24 hours in a day. I need many more.

Well: Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good fright.
-DK

My wife's surprise party v liver

I had a fantastic weekend. My wife's birthday is on Christmas day (yeah, even she says it sucks) and I held a surprise party for her on Saturday night. Most of her friends turned up and we got hammered. I could almost hear my liver splitting apart I drank so much. (here's a hint: never jump in a pool wearing denim without checking your belt is tight enough, but hey! I was plastered!)

We recently had extensions to the house and spent the day labouring over trying to get everything moved in, and then moving one of the kids into another room, my wife and I taking turns to fall on the lounge with our relative hangovers. Aarrr, memories.

Today, I woke up and I swear I still had a hangover. Got on the train, pulled my laptop out, and isn't it great that the muse didn't care about my hangover: oh no, he had me working like a donkey in mud and I did 4,000 words this morning, re-writing The Evil (I had to delete 30,000 words because I didn't like it but hey, they're only words. Billions more where they came from).

Still haven't heard back about The Badman. Have got it in mind to follow up February. Should have at least one other novel wanting to be published by then. I've got three close to completion. I allow my unconscious to deal with each re-write, so there's usually a long time between re-writes which is why I have so many novels going.

Which reminds me. Almost time to start writing another!

My number one rule on writing

I first started to write novels when I was a teenager. Many are lost to the world, and I have already provided an article on my particular thread of all my novels being about good people turning bad for the right reasons, even though I didn't realise it for two decades. Today, I want to share a thread I consciously use, to try and make a novel in to a great novel.

There are many do's and don't on writing fiction. Google will regurgitate hundreds. There's the popular and all-important, 'show don't tell / be a story shower not a story teller', to 'don't use exclamation marks!' (and I must say, this latter rule is stupid. Whoever wrote it must never have read Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol where there are dozens of exclamations when Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning, and it is better to use an exclamation mark than write, 'he exclaimed'.

Anyhow, some do's and some do not's will and will not work for you. You can please some of the people some of the time but not all the people all of the time. Further, they call it style for a reason, y'know. If we all had the same rules and wrote the same, what would be the point?

My particular favourite, which is much higher on my list than character development, show don't tell, and anything else, is one simple rule on writing. The rule is simple: tension or suspense on every page.

Some other writers and even a few editors and writing agents advocate my favourite rule (and I hope I meet one of each as my writing career progresses). I think this rule applies directly to horror, dark, and speculative fiction just as much as a thriller.

Many thrillers which have reached the best seller list break all the rules except for this one. They have cardboard characters, poor visualisation, sentences which could be reworded for greater impact, but they race along and carry you with them like a magic carpet and you're too interested in the ride to take notice of much else.

So, tension or suspense on every page. Make each page a page turner. When your characters are in a bad situation, make it worse, because bad things generally happen when bad things happen.

I am going to re-write a novel in my closet soon called "The Evil" - if you check through my blog you'll find many references. The first 30,000 words are rubbish. They will be deleted. The second half is the magic carpet. I recently had a person read it, to help find character and story flaws, and to check my spelling. After they read it, they said they were checking it until half way through, then the story kinda took me away and I forgot I was supposed to be checking it because it was so good.

Put your character in a bad situation. Make it worse, and, when it is impossible for it to get any worse, FIND A WAY!!

Of course, as this mountain of tension escalates, you will need to find pauses - not just for your character, but for your reader. I expect that maintaining the two over the distance of a novel will be too much.

All of this asks the question of the significance of plot. Well, as controversial as it sounds: don't use one. To me, the next page of a novel is in the future, and I'm not psychic. I have no idea what's going to happen on the page I am writing. Hell, I have no idea what's going to happen in the next SENTENCE, yet I manage to drill out a novel in first draft within 2-3 weeks. Constantly thinking about how to make things work reaps rewards when you get used to it. Plots are static and ugly and are different from 'the story'. Tell 'the story' instead of 'the plot'.

You may find you have to compromise other rules on writing if you add more tension because you don't want to slow down the prose. You don't want to fill the reader's mind with the colours of walls or smells or other stimulating facts if there's a mad dog hurling itself at a door you're tyring to hold up and your girlfriend is throwing up blood behind you. And, if you did have a character in this situation, HOW CAN YOU MAKE IT WORSE! Fantastic brainstorming ideas here. Perhaps you can use the above example. Make up any story and put the above characters in your mind's eye. Make it worse for them. When your characters need to step back, you can slow it down, you will find time to articulate the sensory world, before you throw them back in the grinder to see how they will escape becoming Tuesday's dinner at Lorenzi's Fasta-Italiano Eatery.

Speculating about the imagination and life

I have much going on in life at present, and it is increasingly difficult to find a balance between the things I have to do, and the things I want to do. The weird thing is that I don't know if writing fiction falls in the 'have to do' or the 'want to do' pile.

I am compelled to write on most days. When I am not writing, I want to write. I can picture my future like Isaac Asimov, sitting at a keyboard and banging out stories for hours on end at a prolific pace. But there are other things I want to do with life, too. Holding down a full time job which takes me away from home and family for twelve hours a day is a substantial amount of time. My permanent job is not an investment, but a necessity. It is a 'have to do' and for the large part, is unfulfilling and numbing.

One good escape is to dream. Psychologists assert we all dream, but not all remember. I remember perhaps one or two dreams a year. They are usually brief and uninteresting. I remember three: two frogs in a shower, marrying a female priest, and living in a castle on the side of a mountain with secret rooms (sounds good, but the memory is about five seconds long).

I have a few hours left in the day to be creative, and when I put my fingers on the keyboard, oh boy do they fly! But where do the stories and the determination to write come from with such bland creativity in my life?

I have a deep interest in psychology, and I should have an interest in the answer. The paradox is that I don't want to know. Magic is best when the hand cannot be seen, when the unexpected occurs, and when the magician (or should I say muse) never reveals his secrets.

The fact is, I don't want to know how my creativity works as much as I don't want to know how my car works, or how my body works. There are important mechanisms in place for most (if not all) machines and if they are rested too long, if they are not oiled and measured and serviced, they will not work as well as they should, and some machines could be beyond repair.

I now want to tie up these thoughts. For me, life's pulse beats slowly because of illness, but that is no excuse to position oneself for failure. We must look outside the world in which we are presented and build worlds for ourselves, worlds we can live in and be there. For some, the machine of consciousness is poorly serviced and the transition is difficult and grates like metal on metal. For others, it is smooth and greased and the mind easily slips from one state to the other, whether by initiation, invocation or otherwise. There is magic in wakeful dreams. I don't want to know how the magician performs his tricks, but I would rather observe and be there and above all, enjoy the show.

Most times when we don't receive the things we strive for, is because we're not striving hard enough.

JasJam Touchscreen issue

I have an iMate JasJam phone which does everything except ... work.

It was a good phone until it broke down. The touchscreen at times seems to press buttons all by itself. There's a little iMate gremlin in there shrieking with laughter as he watches me get frustrated when I try to write SMS's. At times, the touchscreen just stops working which is good, because I can navigate with the keyboard, but when the touchscreen starts working again, the whole system is stuffed and I can't do anything. Anybody know how to fix this?

There's a clip on YouTube with the same issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWAyRLQ01oo

That's right - I have a blog

If only I could remember. I go through phases with my blog. When I have my head embedded in a novel, I hardly blog. When it's over, I pick my nose for a while, blog, do other stuff, until the next novel comes along, then I disappear into my world (and how I love disappearing into my own worlds!)

I thought about my backlist yesterday; all the novels in first draft sitting on a shelf or in a directory on my computer. I think I mentioned before that without realising it, I wrote about a dozen novels with a common thread. Well, after a fair bit of researching my drafts, I found that thread, and it applies to every novel I have ever written: All my stories are about good people turning bad for the right reasons to them.

I have no idea why it took a decade to figure it out. I stumbled upon it after finalising The Badman. Talk about Eureka moments.

I went through some of my horror short stories and found the same thread, or an implied thread. I find the unconscious amazing. It has been using this thread for so long, and I never knew. Even Deliverance, my new novel/series, has that same thread. Food for thought.

DVD Review: Feast 2

The original movie "Feast" was a let down because it never came close to hitting the horror sweet spot with me, and let's face it, most horrors don't. When I started to watch Feast 2, I thought it was worse, but there's a twist.

Somehow, the monsters escaped from the original movie and found themselves in a small, isolated town with an abundant food source. Then came the biker queens, the dwarves, the women who have no idea where the trigger on a gun is. This movie is so bad, it is funny and I found myself glued to the screen - but never in a good way.

The script is terrible. The actors worse, the prospects for survival abysmal, but do you know what? Sometimes, a bad movie comes along - and you don't know why - but you find yourself liking it because it is so bad.

I don't know what my horror contemporaries think of this movie and whether we are on the same page, but entertainment at times, is a matter of personal opinion. Some will hate this movie and others will enjoy it because it is entertainment. Sometimes, bad is good, and Feast 2 falls into this category.

Ubuntu - An Overview of a Linux System

If you don't know what Linux is, have never heard of Ubuntu, and have used Windows for most of your life, you're missing out on an operating system revolution.

Linux has a similar feel to Microsoft Windows in the way it has a similar menu structure, but it doesn't have the problems Windows has. For example, there are millions of viruses for Windows. We all need antiviruses, antispyware, firewalls, and a second online antivirus scanner 'just in case'. We have to constantly upgrade and update products and pay for the newest version unless using a free product. Linux, however, is a much better system because it has no viruses. You don't need an antivirus or antispyware. You don't even need a firewall. And you certainly don't need Windows to run it.

I stumbled across Linux a year or so ago when I was looking for freeware software similar to Microsoft Office Outlook. The best by far was Evolution and Kontact, but I soon learned these were used in Linux. After a quick learning curve, I realised the benefits of the Linux operating system and downloaded one of its more popular flavours called Ubuntu.

Microsoft releases an operating system every year, ie, Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows 7. They are few and far between and they don't change unless there's a Microsoft update available. Linux is different. Ubuntu, for example, has two new releases a year which incorporates new software, faster boot times, more stability. They are pumped out with amazing regularity. In the last five years, there have been 3 Windows releases, but 10 Ubuntu releases.

Ubuntu has its own flavours, too, from Kubuntu which is a glossier, eye-candyish and visually more appealing to the Windows user to Edubuntu which is geared towards education. These flavours are called distributions, or 'distros' for short, and there are hundreds of them, all being updated, all being worked on to make it bigger, better, and more compatible. You don't wait five years for the next operating system.

I used to have Ubuntu on my netbook, an old and trusty Acer Aspire One, but recently I came aware of yet more distros specifically geared towards the netbook revolution. If you have a netbook and want to try a Linux operating system, there are many options.

Personally, I use Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It is a visually awarding distro so one doesn't have to navigate tiny menus, such is the netbook itself. It has the full functionality of the Ubuntu desktop, but with greater feel and accessibility.

Go to www.google.com and search images for "Ubuntu Netbook Remix" and have a look for yourself. I won't disarm you by placing my favourite pictures here. I want you to do it.

Another good thing about Ubuntu is that it is shipped with a catalogue of software. You choose the one you want, click 'install' and not only does it install, but it puts an item in the relevant menu, ie, if you installed the Opera web browser, it would automatically put it in 'Internet'. No need to stuff about doing it yourself. And removal is exactly the same as installing.

I will be doing a series of articles on Linux Ubuntu and the Netbook Remix. I am no expert but I want to contribute to raising awareness not only about the diversity and simplicity of Linux, but also its community and innovation, including technology - free of course, to run many Microsoft Windows programs, including Microsoft Word.