Remember that competition I entered? Well, Fairytails And Inkwells got me through to the final. So, on Saturday morning I got a genre and a topic, and 24 hours to write a story of no more than 2500 words. Good game...

It's not terribly good, to be honest, and I don't have particularly high hopes for it, but at least I got something written and entered, which is the main thing.

Anyway, here's the end result. The genre was sci-fi, and the topic was neighbours.

---

Assorted interesting stuff:

On the morning of the 25th of January, a gang of drunk youths went through Bagarmossen, torching a total of nine cars over the course of an hour and a bit. Number seven was just outside my window:


Then I got back to Scotland, right in the middle of the SNOW CHAOS! that was racking the nation. And, well...



It did get a bit better that night:


The next day I went out to get a few pictures of the SNOW CHAOS! just to show my Swedish friends just how devastating the EXTREME! weather was...



So, SNOW CHAOS PARALYSES BRITAIN!!! indeed. It's embarrassing to be British, if we can't even manage a light dusting of snow.

Lifted this meme from a friend of mine, running_swift. So what the hey, here goes nothing.

( Read on, if you can bear another bloody meme... )

I have some very sad news. As some of you may know, there has been an upsurge in TV channels and newspapers among the shellfish community; unfortunately, the leading company has recently declared bankruptcy.

It seems nobody wanted Clam Media.

A while ago I set a friend of mine a challenge. I stumbled across it in my notes a moment ago, and I thought it might be interesting to see what the rest of you make of it. Who knows, if it goes well, perhaps I'll do more of them? To enter, I dunno... post the story on your LJ, a website, or maybe just email it to me. Whichever's easiest. Then I'll collect the links in one LJ post and put it to a vote. Winner gets to buy themselves a bar of chocolate.


Title: Through A Lens

Protagonist: Photographer (or photojournalist)

Primary setting: 19th-century mansion in rural England or New Hampshire

Genre: Horror or ghost story, possibly comic

Twist: One or more of the following:
- A cross into an alternate reality (see Silent Hill’s foggy world)
- A submerged building
- A demon
- A significant scene involving the moon
- A piano that plays itself

Word count: 5,000-10,000

Bonus lines:
- “AAAAAARRRRGGGH!!!”
- “All right, back a bit... to the right... that’s fine, hold it there...”
- "Merry Christmas, jackass."
- "Honestly, I'd be more scared of a headless monkey."
- "Well, who *are* you gonna call?"


Deadline: Midnight, Dec 31 2008

Opening line: “He steered his Range Rover in through the wrought-iron gates, holding his camera out through the window as he drove.”

Got a Nigeria Scam today purporting to be from the FBI, and it's a corker. Me like muchly. (For bonus points, try to decipher the grammar...)

Anti-terrorist and monetary crimes division
FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Federal bureau of investigation
J. Edgar Hoover building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001
Ref: FBI/DC/25/08
Attention: fund beneficiary,

( This is an official advice from the FBI foreign remittance/telegraphic dept... (Read on) )

Got these today; they're ever more hilarious than before!

From "Sgt Steve Morgan":

Hello Dear,

My name is Sgt. Steve Morgan, an American soldier, I Was serving in the military of the 3rd Infantry division in Iraq. I am in London at the moment, I and my partner moved one of the boxes containing funds which we believe is belonging to Saddam Hussein in March 2003, the total fund in this box is $15,500,000.00 (Fifteen Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollars) , this fund had been moved via a safe Diplomatic Courier Service to a secured security company, Click on this link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2988455.stm

basically since we are working for the American government we cannot keep these funds, since we are 3 that is involved. This means that 30 percent have been mapped out for you, while I will take 30 percent, and my partner will take 30 percent, 10 percent will be kept aside for expenses. So we are looking for a very nice apartment where we can stay and plan on how to invest and the type of investment we can go on with, but preferably Real Estate investment and to invest in Charity Home organization. Get back to me very urgent so we can move on with you to achieve this goal.

Regards
Sgt. Steve Morgan.

And this second one is particularly brilliant. It's from the Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon himself:

UNITED NATIONS COMPENSATION UNIT, IN AFFILIATION WITH UNION BANK.
Attention: Friend,
How are you today? Hope all is well with you and family?, You may not understand why this mail came to you.

We have been having a meeting for the passed 7 months which ended 2 days ago with the then secretary to the UNITED NATIONS. This email is to all the people that have been scammed in any part of the world, the UNITED NATIONS have agreed to compensate them with the sum of US$ 150,000.

This includes every foreign contractors that may have not received their contract sum, and people that have had an unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to Government problems etc.

We found your name in our list and that is why we are contacting you, this have been agreed upon and have been signed.

You are advised to contact Mr Richard Bilton of our paying center in Africa, as he is our representative in Nigeria, contact him immediately for your Cheque/ International Bank Draft of USD$150,000. This funds are in a Bank Draft for security purpose ok? so he will send it to you and you can clear it in any bank of your choice.

Therefore, you should send him your full Name and telephone number your correct mailing address where you want him to send the Draft to you. Contact Mr Richard Bilton immediately for your Cheque:

Person to Contact: Mr Richard Bilton
Email: mr.richardbilton@hotmail.com
Phone: +234 703-803-7586
Thanks and God bless you and your family. Hoping to hear from you as soon as you cash your Bank Draft. Making the world a better place.

Regards,
Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.
http://www.un.org/sg/

It's great, isn't it? The UN finally sorting out the scammers, through their paying centre in Nigeria - fair enough - where their representative has... um... a Hotmail address? Oooookay....

I love these things. A ray of hilarity on a rainy day.

The following appeal was just posted to the Alvis Stalwart Yahoo group ("Stolly"), and since it's a deserving cause, I thought I'd post it here to spread the word.

( Read more... )

(Copied from my post on the DWCon 2008 community LJ.)

Long story short: the Con ended much too quickly, people getting withdrawal, and I like barbecue.

After some back-and-forth here on the DWCon 08 LJ community¹ and on AFP², here's what I've come up with:

WHO: Perhaps a dozen or so Discworld fans

WHAT: Hogswatch barbecue and bonfire weekend

WHEN: Weekend of the 13th of December, barbecue on the Saturday afternoon/evening. If anyone wants to arrive on the Friday, that's no problem, and I'll point you at your choice of a good chippie, a good pizzeria, a good cheap pub or a good not-quite-as-cheap pub.

WHERE: My place, near Kirkcudbright, SW Scotland

CRASH SPACE: 3 rooms in cottage (there's a living room there too, but since it's the main route through to the kitchen and bathroom it's probably not ideal for kip). I'm going over to measure it in the next day or two to see whether each room can take four or five camp beds. I'll *try* to provide camp beds. When the spaces are gone, they're gone, unless people are happy to shuffle up a bit.
If more people want to come than I can fit in the cottage - well, I'll be bloody impressed by attendance, for a start, and there's a very nice (and quite cheap) hotel down in the village.

FOOD: I'll try to stock up on burgers, bacon, venison, duck, Irn-Bru and whatever as budget permits, but it's well worth bringing a stash of your own just in case.

STUFF TO DO: Apart from the bonfire and barbecue, if there's any time left over at either end there's plenty to see in the area. Sulwath brewery tours, Bladnoch distillery tours, castles, Cream O' Galloway ice cream factory tours, Wigtown and its bookshops...

PARKING: There's space for probably four or five extra cars in the drive; I'll get the strimmer out and clear some space in the paddock for parking if we need more space.

PLANNING: I need to know who's coming, so let me know by email (perry_awm at hotmail dot com) - I need to know your email address so I can send you directions. I need to know number of people, number of cars and when you'll be arriving. As long as I know at least a week beforehand it'll be fine, but obviously I might be out of crash space by then.

STUFF TO BRING: It's December in Scotland; mild, but chilly at night. Bring a coat; non-flammable, if you're likely to be getting near the bonfire. Sandals probably aren't a good idea. Sleeping bag. If you want to bring things like Twister, Thud, Walk The Walk kit, feel free.

---

¹ http://community.livejournal.com/discworld_2008/42838.html
² http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.pratchett/browse_thread/thread/8668f205a36d9ee2/

(No spoilers, probably)

Terry Pratchett's latest, Nation, arrived in the post some time ago now - around the start of the week, I think - and I only just finished it a few minutes ago; it's not a book to go into expecting Terry's usual laugh-a-minute style. It's not an easy read, though I found it easier going as I went on, and the last 200 pages or so went by in a couple of hours; perhaps the beginning is more turgid than the rest, or perhaps - more likely? - it just takes a while to adjust one's expectations.

Anyway, I don't suppose I need to summarise the story, but just in case: island in a sort of alternate universe Pacific ocean gets hit by a cataclysm, and its sole survivor has to rebuild the eponymous Nation. And you'll get all that from the dust jacket, so that can't possibly be a spoiler. There's a hint of steampunk about it, at least the bits in the "civilised" parts of the world, and of course some bits that, in feel rather than any real substance, bring to mind Rose Macaulay's classic Orphan Island - rather aptly, in fact.

Now, Pratchett's books have always contained a fair bit of philosophy, with more philosophy and subtler humour as the Discworld series has progressed. But the Discworld books have always been humour first and foremost; dark humour in recent books, but humour nevertheless. Nation feels more like a Victorian adventure novel, and not just because of its setting; even Miss Prism's thoughts on fiction are, to a degree, espoused. But Nation is a harder, slower read, and here's why:

Nation demands philosophy. The Discworld books, even the more philosophical ones, gently insinuated philosophy, like a special operations unit of thought sneaking in under cover of comedy. You'd laugh your way through Small Gods, or Jingo, or Monstrous Regiment, and you wouldn't realise until a week later that you'd been thinking philosophical thoughts ever since about religion, or war, or nationalism, or whatever. But Nation has an overall much more earnest feel about it, like a... I'm trying to avoid using that ghastly litcrity word "exploration", but it's the only one that fits, an exploration (ptui ptui) of someone's personal philosophy... which, I suppose, may well be what it is.

The odd thing is that it works. Setting it in an alternate almost-Real World helps; the tone of the book is so very different from the other DW books that I think it would have become a very difficult read, so the setting not only provides an automatic, pre-packaged backstory but also prepares the reader for the tonal shift of the story. (Indeed, much as I love the cover, it would probably have been a good idea to make it visually distinct from the DW books.)

Hm. I'm having trouble here; I'm not used to writing seriously about literature, so I find myself cringing at every sentence I write. But ho hum, Nation deserves a good stab at it.

There are parts where the book feels rather contrived - an unexpected and conveniently timed arrival, for instance, which you'll see when you get to it - but in most cases I suspect they're of the sort that were common in those Victorian adventure novels I mentioned, and so I'm quite happy to chalk them up as deliberate stylistic references. The bits that do grate, though, are a few recurring lines (I should go through the book with a click counter some time and count the number of times "DOES NOT HAPPEN!" appears...) that get rather tiresome after a while. But they're minor complaints and nothing that really detract from the story.

Where it really shines, of course, is in the characterisation and backstory. Pratchett has a remarkable knack for character, effortlessly shifting point of view from character to character, and changing style in the body text as he does so. When he's telling the story from Mau's point of view, the narration is flummoxed by trousers; when the Ghost Girl takes over the viewpoint, you get the impression that the narrator's constantly self-censoring. It's how POV should be done, and it works spectacularly well - so well, in fact, that you don't even notice it unless you look for it.

And then there's backstory, of course. In particular, the Ghost Girl's backstory; by the time it's explicitly stated you already know more or less what the backstory is, but it's all implied and suggested. In terms of storytelling, then, it's an expert at his best.

Then of course there's the book itself. The chapters are headed with marvellous little pen drawings that reminded me of the woodcuts so often found in, well, Victorian adventure novels. And it's well worth examining the maps inside the covers... There's a nice little touch there. And the cover illustration, in case I haven't mentioned it more than once, is phenomenal. Can we have it textless as a poster, please?

So there you have it. It's a very good book, if you can avoid thinking of it as a Pratchett book; a caveat that, ironically, might make it more enjoyable on the first read-through for people who haven't read any Pratchett before. Now, at school, we had compulsory philosophy lessons, with reading on everyone from Socrates to Kant - and I think you'd be hard pushed to find more philosophy, on death, gods, dogma and bullets, in their scribblings than in this. And Nation is a better read, too.