A Writer’s Life 8 – I tried to warn you about Trump
Well, I tried to warn you about Palin, really. This week, I’ve taken a break from talking about my current work to say a little about Sounds of Soldiers.
Get Sounds of Soldiers-
Spinneyhead Blog
Things I’ve been doing when I should (probably) have been writing – A Writer’s Life 7
28mm Bus Shelter
Perfect for modern-era or near future wargaming, this bus shelter can be used as a waypoint or landmark on your mission. Not great for hiding behind or for avoiding zombies, but there may be a late bus home.
A Writer’s Life 6 – Cover Versions
Here are some of my early thoughts on covers for Northern Gorehouse.
More ways to get my books
I won’t bore you with the details of how I get my books distributed. But I will tell you that there are now a few more places you can find them. (I’ll fill in the links as they go live.)
A Writer’s Life 5- Bookmark This!
Another look at my process. A little bit about how I’ve started tracking inspiration and research more thoroughly than I was before.
A Writer’s Life 4 – Manchester’s New Sky Line
Another new Writer’s Life video. I went and had a look at the new version of the development that inspired the vampire tower in Zombies v Vampires/Northern Gorehouse.
A Writer’s Life 3- Mobiking Around the Northern Gorehouse
Shortly after the service launched in Manchester, I took a Mobike hire bike out for a test ride. Whilst I was about it, I visited some of the locations of Northern Gorehouse (aka Zombies V Vampires). Here’s A Writer’s Life, episode 3.
A Writer’s Life 2- Reporting from the couch
Just a quick report on what I’m planning for future videos in the series.
A Writer’s Life episode 1- the Office
First of what will hopefully be a regular series.
What Is The City But The People
This year’s Manchester International Festival opened with What Is The City But The People? Created by the same guy who did the original Manchester Day, it was a wonderful slice of city life, weaving narratives around shared and separate experiences.
I had the camera in the phone on burst shots- five of everything- and I hope I’ve picked the best of them for the album.
1:32nd scale interior details for race and drift cars
Another new 3D product designed by me. I’ve got a bunch of 1:32nd scale car models in the to-build pile, many of them Japanese. So I’ve designed some interior parts inspired by drifters and Kanjo street racers. There are extended gear shifters (one based on a samurai sword), a hydraulic hand brake, battery isolation switches and digital data loggers.
Naked Bike Ride 2017
I’ve been quite busy since the Naked Bike Ride, and only just managed to get a few images edited and uploaded. Unfortunately, Flickr won’t let me embed the gallery here, because of the flesh. But you can visit it here.
Manchester Day Parade
The pictures aren’t in order of the parade. There’s a break where I switched to taking shots on my phone because my camera’s battery ran out.
The Great Get Together
Just a few photos from The Great Get Together event in Cathedral Gardens on Friday night.
Stringer
A Western set in the early years of the twentieth century, so there was some interesting use of the telephone, with rural ‘party lines’ for communication.
‘Stringer’ McKail travels from San Francisco- where he’s one of those too-honest-to-be-rich-and-famous newspaper reporters- to Calaveras Countys, where he grew up. Not long after arriving, people are trying to kill him. Soon after that, he meets the first of a string of women who want to sleep with him.
It’s all got something to do with a stagecoach robbery fifty years earlier, and a bandito who most likely never existed- his name translates from Mexican Spanish as ‘Grumpy Joe’, and may have been a catch all to keep the ‘Anglos’ from persecuting the local Mexican community. Somebody thinks they can track down the treasure, and they’re not above killing and kidnapping to get to it.
Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness 1
Part of my research on consciousness for an upcoming project. This was more of a philosophical read on the definition of consciousness, and its benefits and problems, than about the process that may have brought it about.
Lots of interesting ideas, and the book is sprouting many coloured bookmark tabs where I found ideas worth exploring further, or springboards for ideas to put in the story.
Stickers of Central Manchester
At a loose end in the city centre yesterday evening, I decided to start photographing stickers I found on lamp posts and elsewhere. Sticker bombing street furniture feels like a relatively new development to me, but I’m probably wrong, and have only just noticed it.
I’ve added some older sticker pictures to the album, and there’s one legitimate, screwed down, sign that’s made its way into the collection as well.
Funky little Renault 5 Turbo
I have a magazine full of custom cars and comics by a French artist called Pascal Meslet, which has somehow managed to survive since 1984. I’ve always wanted to make some models based upon the pictures in it, and finally managed to.
It’s a far from direct copy, but this little Renault 5 was inspired by the image it was photographed on top of. It’s been practically finished for over a month, I just kept putting off painting the rear lights and gluing them in.
I need to get more modelling done, I reckon.
Minor Birthday
“Happy Minor Birthday.” Seth held his shot glass up over the table.
Frankie raised her glass and clinked it against Seth’s. “One day, soon, I’m going to make you stop forcing me to celebrate this.” she said, wincing at the clumsiness of her declaration. They knocked back the spirits, throats burning and lips strangely numbed.
“Never! You’re a first. A trail blazer! A miracle! A….” Usually, Seth had to be much more drunk before he started describing her birth in these terms.
“Freak?”
“Not a freak. Never a freak. I mean, look at all the bag babies there are now. All those preemies who wouldn’t have lived before you. And you, the first of them.”
“The first to survive. All the ones before me died. There’s a reason my middle name’s Miracle. I know they would all have died anyway, they were so premature. But I have to wonder how I survived and they didn’t. Sometimes I imagine their ghosts looking at me, all angry because I got out alive and they didn’t.” Frankie turned her shot glass over and tapped the table top with it. “What is this stuff? Why’s it filling me with melancholy and misery?”
“It’s one of Will’s concoctions. He gave me the shots free for feedback. Wants to make up a batch and sell it across the bar. You don’t like it?”
“Maybe I’m just not in the mood. I need brandy.”
Seth turned in his seat and leaned on the bar. Will spotted him immediately, and navigated his way around the bar staff. “Well?” he asked.
Frankie unrolled her phone and checked her messages. She didn’t want to give her opinion on the drink. Seth’s hand waggled in the air, the wavering sign for so-so. Will hid his disappointment well. “Double brandy, and a pint of the Earl Grey lager, please.”
“Dinesh is stuck on a tram. Everyone else says they’ll be here in the next half hour or so.” Frankie told Seth when he put the tumbler of dark gold liquid down before her.
“Including the dishy Darius?”
Frankie blushed. “Can we not mention the Minor Birthday thing to him. I haven’t told him yet.”
“If he’s with the others, one of them will have blabbed already. And I may, maybe, have already mentioned it’s your Minor Birthday when I invited him. Just the name, not the full, gory explanation.” Seth turned to pick up his lager, avoiding her glare.
“Fucking wonderful. Everybody wants to know all about the procedure when they find out. ‘You were taken out of your mother’s womb how many months early?’ ‘Are those bags really see-through? Could you see the lab you were grown in?’ ‘What was it like?’” The voice Frankie put on got squeakier with each question. She picked up the tumbler and swirled the brandy around.
She wasn’t angry at Seth. He meant well. Sooner or later, with everyone she met, the subject of her birth came up. Everyone was interested in the process. Too many had an opinion on the ethics of bringing a baby to term in an artificial womb when they wouldn’t survive in their mother’s. The worst were the ones who thought she needed protecting.
Seth had a smile, that annoying one that meant he knew something she didn’t. “What?”
“Oh, nothing. I mean, I’ve already let out one person’s secrets today. I really shouldn’t do it.”
“What is it? Something about Darius?”
“Well, speak of the devil.” Seth pointed over Frankie’s left shoulder.
She turned quickly, and there was Darius, over by the door. He spotted them, smiled and waved. He was achingly gorgeous, about as beautiful as any man could be. Was he some sort of freak, just like her?
Oh, she hoped so. She really did.