Burns' Night and A' That

In all honesty I've never celebrated Burns' Night - despite counting myself a member of the fine Scottish folk. I blame my parents - they moved away from Ayrshire, Scotland in the '70s and settled south of the border in London, and neither of them can stand the Burns Night stuff. It's often been described to me as "a night when fat, psuedo-Scots cover themselves in tartan and recite the same boring ol' shite." Actually they say a lot more than that - the tartan thing in particular pisses them off, what with it being a tourist thing, rather than something that all Scots historically wore. My folks are big on the whole "historical accuracy" thing. Especially where Scotland's concerned.*

Stories Make Me Feel Better

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will have noticed I've been quiet this week, and the few tweets I did were along the lines of "Stress! Too much to do, might break everything, end of the world. Argh". Well, I'm relieved to report that I didn't end up destroying myself or the online tools my department use with the changes I've been project managing*, so I'm feeling a lot more chipper than I was on Monday. To celebrate, I thought I'd write some flash fiction, and who better to provide inspiration than Chuck Wendig and his Flash Fiction challenge.

The challenge this week is to choose one option from his selection of "Sub-genre", Conflict" and "Must Feature". I used a random number generator and the gods of tale-telling have been super kind:

1. Weird West
5. Enemy at the Gates
6. Someone gone or going mad

New Year and New Challenges

First off, let's get the necessaries out of the way: Happy New Year! Hope you had a good celebration, or at least a good sleep with cool dreams, featuring unicorns and dragons.

My last post was a while ago and the main reason for that has been that I just haven't wanted to write. I've been deep in my own head these past few weeks, working out what's important to me and what's not, career-wise, and what I can do about it. But with the dawn of a new year I will hopefully find new inspiration (as well as old - see below) and get back on the writing horse.

My working life hasn't so much resembled a clear path but rather a shambolic, drunken wander through the woods, with a bag over my head and only my sense of smell to point the way. Which inevitably means I've always known what I don't want to do and not so much what I do.

The One Where I Went To Hyper Japan 2012

You ever notice that in TV episodes the characters rarely go anywhere other than work and home and that one bar/cafe they always go to? My life began to feel a bit like that lately, as I was going from home to work, to home and back again. But the weekend before last I actually stepped outside my door for a non-work and non-grocery shopping reason: Hyper Japan 2012.

Adore the designs on the fabric in the background.

Creativity and Ninjas

I've not been much in the mood to create anything lately, which has included blog posts. We will blame it on the grumpy monkey on my back. He's a miserable git, and tells me to sit and watch TV rather than do anything because, you know, what's the point? Despite him I have been getting some ideas and just had one today that is either amazing, or absolutely awful. But I like it, so will probably pursue it. Even a rubbish idea can turn out great once you get a bit of depth to the story. And to share my crazy process, here's how this idea came about.

Film Review: The Ides of March

As the real life death match day dawns in America (imagine the turnout for that kind of election), it seemed like an appropriate time to watch "The Ides of March". George Clooney directs and stars in this political melodrama, which deals with the price, and loss, of idealism. It's a solid film, with snappy performances from the leads, but sticks to a muted tone, rather than all out excitement or scandal. Like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy did for espionage, The Ides of March shows political machinations in a realistic light, where it's not so much top-down, thought out conspiracies afoot, but instead the desperate actions of individuals out to save their own skins.

"Nooooooooo!"

An impromptu post about news I've just heard: Disney has bought Lucasfilm and all its subsidiaries (Industrial Light and Magic as well as Skywalker Sound). I felt a tremor in the force when I read that (and listened to the accompanying announcement video). It turned into an "Alderaan has blown up" moment, when I read the following lines from the announcement: "Fans can expect a new feature film, Star Wars - Episode 7, in theatres worldwide in 2015". Oh, Obi-Wan, no...

If there were ever any doubt that Lucas sold his soul, here's the proof.

I love the original Star Wars trilogy. They were an adventure, and a moral guide for me growing up, something that made me aspire. Okay it made me aspire to become a Jedi Knight, but there are worst things to dream of as a kid. In fact I'd even say one of the greatest things I learnt about storytelling came from those films; start in the middle of something. I read a huge amount of the spin off books, and in fact still have them all sitting on my book shelf behind me. I played the games (even the bad ones) and thought no game would ever be better than Knights of the Old Republic. I was, and still am in some ways, a die-hard Star Wars fan, with a cacophony of useless information about the extended universe in my head. In other words, a total geek.