The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 65,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Just to let you know that Pseudopod have given me the release date for the audio version of God Complex which will be available from their site in late March. Pretty cool. Also, if you’re a comic book fan and fancy something a little different to read this chrimbo then check out The Indifference Engine. An alternative take on alternative realities. My review at Starburst magazine spills the beans.
And as an extra christmas treat, the Hobbit trailer is now out and looking sweet.
Enjoy!
Don't get on his bad side
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed
Alfred Lord Tennyson
In Memoriam A. H. H.
1850
Tooth and Claw has finally arrived. Oh yes! The site having opened for business this very week. Tooth and Claw is a collaborative work of collected artists, writers, and musicians to produce an enhanced eBook about Werewolves.
Offering so much more than a simple book, Tooth and Claw is a dark and twisted look at the world of werewolves. Collecting several short stories by both established and up and coming authors, Tooth and Claw binds them into an unholy marriage to be downloaded at your mortal peril.
An original score by Brandon Rucker introduces the site alongside powerful, thought provoking art by the esteemed Jack Rogers. The stories are beautifully crafted, darkly moving, and tense as the mood dictates. Plus they don’t shy away from the gore when called for.
As an extra bonus, Tooth and Claw boasts a short, untold story from Graeme Reynolds’ High Moor – currently ranking in the top 100 books of occult/horror in 2011. High Moor has received critical praise of late, and if you like the look of Tooth and Claw then check out High Moor for an truly excellent read.
Tooth and Claw is available over multiple platforms, stories can be downloaded individually or as part of the collective whole. Take a look at Werewolf Contingency Plans while there and Werewolves are Real, both are free and a damn good read.
http://liquid-imagination.com/toothandclaw/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/High-Moor-ebook/dp/B0068NOYM8
You won’t be disappointed.
Enjoy!
He did.
Eek! How long since I last blogged?
Life has a habit of getting in the way but for the foreseeable future I now appear to have time on my hands. So what have I been up to? My work with Starburst magazine continues, and I’m having great fun writing articles and interviewing famous folk on their behalf.
Conrad Williams, Ramsey Campbell, and Julian Glover no less. Check out Starburst magazine for the interviews.
My short story ‘The God Complex’ has been accepted by Pseudopod for an audio podcast. God Complex was originally printed in The Terminal Earth Anthology and won the Preditors (intentional misspelling) and Editors Best Anthology award. I’ll link to the podcast when it comes out.
Tooth and Claw, an enhanced eBook about werewolves will soon be available. It has original music, art and audio for all the stories. Plus groovy sound effects. Very excited about this one. My story Red Riding Wolf can be found lurking within its pages.
Which is about everything in my world of writing that I can think of right now. More when I get it.
Best,
Neil
Came across this a couple of weeks back, and I’m a big fan of the original.
Enjoy!
Plenty has happened over the last month. The world of writing is funny that way. Long periods of silence, then a burst of activity which leaves you reeling and wondering what the hell just happened.
To begin with, Corps Cadavres was released by Pseudopod as a one-time audio podcast. Check it out here. And if you really like it – or not, as the case may be – then pop over to their forums and tell me all about it.
Also, my horror story, ‘An Interview with Geraldine’, has seen the light of day in a UK magazine called Morpheus Tales. This will be my second outing with the magazine, and a copy should be winging its way towards me soon enough. You can read an excerpt here. I’m on page 6 of the preview. Page 18 of the magazine.
I’ve recently been fortunate enough to land work with Starburst magazine. I can remember this magazine back when I was knee high to a grass hopper, and I’m honoured to be part of their team. My first article with Starburst has been released today, and can be found here.
I’ve secured two interviews with very famous authors for the magazine; I won’t say anymore in case it falls through. But I’m very excited.
Tooth and Claw is coming together. This is an enhanced e-book about Werewolves, and my short story has returned for a final proof read before being sent off to the printers.
Which about wraps up my writing for now.
And thanks for everyone who has been checking out my site; it topped over 300 hits a day this week. Wow.
Terminal Earth: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Terminal-Earth-ebook/dp/B004ELAIWQ
Growing Humans audio podcast: http://web.me.com/normsherman/Site/Drabblecast_B-Sides/Entries/2010/6/1_Drabblecast_Bsides_10-_Growing_Humans_by_Neil_Buchanan.html#comment_layer
Growing Humans: AnotheRealm http://www.anotherealm.com/2011/ar010111.php
True Love: featured in Necrotic Tissue #13 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Necrotic-Tissue-Issue-John-McCan/dp/0982496966
The Magnificent Maggot-Face featured in Morpheus Tales #11 http://www.morpheustales.com/index.htm
Waiting on the Road to Palladium featured in Best of Eclectic Flash 2010 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/eclectic-flash-the-best-of-2010/14708949
Later this year.
1: Corps Cadavres: an audio podcast featured in Pseudopod.
2: An Interview with Geraldine: featured in an upcoming issue of Morpheus Tales.
3: Tooth and Claw: an enhanced e book anthology published by Liquid Imagination.
More when I make the sales.
Shot using one camera on location in Mexico for the measly sum of $500,000 dollars, Gareth Edwards debut creature flick lives or dies by its shoe-string budget.
The trailer to Monsters reveals tantalizing glimpses of shadowed creatures and angst-ridden characters looking off-camera into thick jungle where anyone – or anything – could be hiding. The tempo quickens to a series of rapid shots, promising the delight of a tense, adrenaline-pumped action film.
Unfortunately, the actual movie is nothing of the sort, and is really a road trip romance between two tragically flawed individuals. There happens to be monsters in this film, but they serve as part of the exotic background rather than becoming characters in their own right. In fact, the aliens don’t turn up until the end, then only for a ritual mating before shambling back into the night.
To put it bluntly: nothing happens.
But how could it have gone so wrong? The premise of Monsters sounds like a sure box-office success. Probe returns to earth with alien D.N.A and crashes into Mexico. Aliens soon pop up left, right and centre. Mexico falls under quarantine. Six years later two unlikely companions are forced to travel through the infected zone to get back to the states. This should be the cue for insane chases with outrageous monsters, nasty soldiers, and all manners of inappropriate and gruesome death scenes.
Yet Monsters fails to deliver on all counts. As a creature flick we see almost nothing of the aliens. As social commentary on the grueling effects of war we see only the after-effects of an epic confrontation. Something big has steamed in ahead of the characters and left carnage in its wake. But this conflict has already ended, been and gone, and I can’t help but feel it took the story with it.
And as a romance?
The two principle characters, Samantha (Whitney Able) and Andrew (Scoot McNairy) have few – if any – redeemable qualities.
Andrew is a self-centered journalist who has lost touch with his humanity, and Samantha is a rich daddy’s girl with no concept of life and its associated woes.
Great starting points for two characters, and if any meaningful story arc then followed, this movie could have been saved. Alas, this was not the case. By the film’s end, Andrew and Samantha are still as unlikable and repugnant as they were when first introduced.
But perhaps this is the point Gareth Edwards is trying to make. As the film progresses there’s a none-too-subtle blurring of right and wrong. The aliens are revealed in a different light and the audience has to ponder just who the real monsters are, aliens or humanity?
Monsters mismatches genres and flounders when it should shine. Production design, visual effects, and cinematography are all stunning, but Monsters fails to create characters that an audience could sympathize and emotionally connect with, and in this respect is a meandering, drawn-out film which crawls towards a predictable and disappointing conclusion.
Busy. Busy. Busy.
Which about sums up my writing life over the last month. I’m expecting my audio podcast with Pseudopod to come out soon. More info when I have it. I’m also looking to have a short story published in an enhanced e-book about werewolves. Early days yet, but I’ll blog about the process as I learn more.
The last week I’ve been working on a fantasy short story as a welcome break from longer projects. This is the first 500 words for your consideration. No title yet. I’m open to suggestions.
Enjoy!
Ragged holes adorned Henri’s breastplate and marred his family’s crest. His guts slithered about his legs, and his helm was lowered over the fragmented soup of his skull. A gore-soaked spear, marked with a fluttering red banner, poked from his chest, its barbed tip caught in the leather of his horse’s saddle.
The Mastiffs of the perimeter watch barked and strained against their chains, growling at the dead knight’s approach. Sour-faced men-at-arms beat them back with whips, and as each dog passed through Henri’s shadow their snarls turned to whimpers, and their tails drooped between their legs.
Captain Deval appeared from his tent, half-naked, braces around his hips, stuffing his cock back into his pants. His face froze when he saw Henri, then he spat into the mud.
“Get him down,” he said, wiping spittle from his chin, “and bring that banner to me.” His gaze found Gaston’s across the campsite. “You wanted a fight, young lord. Looks like you’ll get one.”
Gaston shoved his way through the crowd of gathered soldiers, ignoring Deval’s remark. Early morning mist dampened his hair and face, and the accompanying chill made his bones ache. He could use another drink. Maybe then Deval’s jibes would blend into alcoholic indifference and the logistics of the coming battle put off for another day. Deval was right though: he was itching to try out his new sword.
By the time he reached Henri, the men had cut him loose from the saddle. The dead knight lay face-first in the withered grass. Chunks of meat slipped through cracks in his armor, and blood drained from his ruined face. The stench of faeces carried on the wind, and the fragmented cloth of his undergarments glistened yellow with dried piss.
Lucas stood before the corpse. A soldier of ten years he nevertheless brought his hands to his face, heaved, and spewed vomit from between his fingers.
His companion, Davius, head and shoulders above the rest, slapped him on the back. “Better out than in, eh?” he said.
Lucas nodded and stood up straight, his face devoid of color. “It’s like he’s been poured back into the armor.”
Davius folded his arms. “Seen worse: men reduced to paste at the walls of Scion.”
“You have not.”
“It’s true.” Davius scratched at three white scars that split his face. “Seen a cannonball go clean through a legion. Naught left except red sauce, an eyeball and one man’s arse.”
Lucas laughed, despite himself.
Gaston listened to the idle banter, amazed at the soldier’s casual approach to death. Still, there was a tightness to Davius’s lips, the laughter forced and contrived. His eyes betrayed a nervousness which he concealed from his companion, but Gaston was noble born of House Trevleni and knew deception when he saw it.
And besides he felt it too. The day was colder than it should be. The sky darker. It had rained for the better part of a week and the ground turned treacherous underfoot. Their aim was to meet with his father’s infantry on the pelfirth fields, but the weather had slowed their advance to a crawl. Each detail of this dead land seemed etched in his mind’s eye, every stunted tree and stagnant swamp accounted for. But there was more. A feeling he couldn’t quite place. The company of knights hadn’t seen another living soul on their ride south, yet he felt as if they were being watched, studied, and . . . despised.
As zombie appreciation month shambles along, news has dripped through the internet of Dame Judi Dench signing on to star in the upcoming zombie flick, The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet. She joins an assembly of esteemed thespians which include the likes of Sir Ian McKellen, Gillian Anderson, and Mark Williams – no less.
http://thecurseofthebuxomstrumpet.com/
Actor/director, Mathew Butler, is currently working on the project which is a natural extension of his 2010 short comedy/horror: E’gad, Zombies! Which judging by the trailer looks low budget and bloody good fun.
The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet runs along the same vein as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and follows struggling poet William Filthe and Vanity Banks as they fight off hordes of ravenous, flesh-hungry zombies in the town of Upper Trollop.
Filming has started in Cannes with scenes planned later this year in Scotland. Sir Ian has already finished his part and is free to reprise his role as Gandalf in the upcoming film adaption of the Hobbit. – so don’t panic.
I’ve included the trailer for ‘E’gad, Zombies!’ below.
Enjoy!
