This autumn I’ve been revelling in the coolth (that’s a real word) and writing spooky stuff in various formats.
A little context: this type of blog post is what I decided to do instead of starting a newsletter.
You can subscribe to this blog (enter an email address, get updates when I post) using a widget that, hopefully, you can see at the bottom of the screen.
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The format was inspired by someone on BlueSky saying:
“I don’t really want to read writing advice from authors… I just want to know what they are reading and thinking and doing.”
Reading… a bit less
I have a vague goal of reading 50 books a year. It motivates me to pick up a book when I might otherwise scroll The Doom on my phone for 15 minutes.
This year, though, I’m not doing so well and might not make my target. And the downside to targets is that they can make you feel as if you’ve failed miserably at a pastime that’s supposed to bring you joy.
I’ve had to remind myself that in a year when I’m trying to write a novel (more on that shortly) it’s OK not to read so many by other people.
Since my last update, the three books I have managed to read are:
- A Guilty Thing Surprised by Ruth Rendell
- Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
- Queens of the Wild by Ronald Hutton
I’ve always admired Rendell’s writing and the way she evokes a version of England that’s so recognisable and real. Published in 1970, A Guilty Thing Surprised is very much a forerunner of the novels she would later write as Barbara Vine, dealing with sexual taboos and psychological trauma within families. It’s very much a book from 1970 – even as a woman, Rendell seems to have felt compelled to include, and describe in titillating detail, a Dutch sexpot au pair with big boobs, for example. But that of-its-timeness provides another layer of meaning over and above the artfully constructed plot.
The most notable thing about reading Picnic at Hanging Rock is how closely the famous and brilliant film adaptation follows the book. The book has, I think, fewer ambiguities, because we’re inside the heads of the characters at various points and understand their motives. In the book, for example, at no point did I think Michael might have murdered the missing girls, when that feels more possible in the film.
I read Queens of the Wild because a colleague spoke excitedly about Ronald Hutton and then, coincidentally, I saw this book on sale at the Arnos Vale cemetery gift shop a day or two later. It’s a bit of a ‘fix up’ with several related essays about female folk deities in Europe, such as the Fairy Queen. Those are bracketed with material about the general misconception that paganism survived as a shadow religion alongside Christianity and that every village festival or folk tradition is some ‘ancient survival’. Obviously, as a writer of weird fiction and horror, who sometimes dabbles in folk horror, I found lots of inspiration here. It also translated into a post for the beer blog I’ve been co-writing with my partner for almost 20 years, about pubs called The Green Man.
(One odd little thing: my copy of Queens of the Wild, purchased as new, bore evidence of someone else having read it, including folding down the corners of several pages. They’d been unfolded, and possibly even ironed flat, but I was still conscious of treading in someone else’s footsteps. Anyway, that’s another story idea filed away.)
Lots of movies and some junk TV
My mission for this year was to resist watching American films and broaden my knowledge of what used to be called ‘world cinema’. Helpfully, my local cult film festival, Forbidden Worlds, decided that the theme for their Halloween event would be ‘The European Slaycation’ so I bought an early bird full pass and saw:
- Blood & Black Lace, Mario Bava, Italy, 1964
- The Fourth Man, Paul Verhoeven, Netherlands, 1983
- Who Can Kill a Child?, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, Spain, 1976
- Stagefright, Michele Soavi, Italy, 1987
- The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, Sergio Martino, Italy, 1971
- A bunch of recent short horror films
The Fourth Man was the standout and exactly the kind of film I’d never have got round to watching if someone else hadn’t advocated for it, and programmed it. It’s a film that, in many ways, could sit comfortably on Andrew Male’s ‘Aickmanesque’ watchlist: there are premonitions, religious visions, and an overwhelming sense of impending doom. Unlike Robert Aickman’s stories, however, The Fourth Man also drips with sexuality, like a Hitchcock movie with the subtext ripped out and laid on top. My reading of the film is that Gerard Reve (Jeroen Krabbé) thinks he’s an intended victim of black widow Christine (Renée Soutendijk) when, in fact, he’s just the murder weapon.
I also saw the 1958 Hammer adaptation of Dracula at the cinema – gorgeous, what a treat to see it on a big screen after all these decades, I still don’t think it’s a great movie – and then watched a bunch more Hammer films at home. Watch a few of them in close succession and you start to feel as if you’re watching one long film about the same bunch of characters, in the same settings, working out somebody’s obsessions. Which is very much the point of this short story of mine.
Again, because I’m writing so much, I’ve allowed myself some TV comfort watching and have been alternating episodes of The X-Files and NYPD Blue. The former seems as popular now as it’s ever been but I don’t think it’s fashionable to like the latter, not least because it’s definitely copaganda and has a whiff of right-wing weirdness about it. Watching later seasons that I never got to the first time round, I’m struck by the consistency of its look (everything is sickly green) and tone of voice, with characters speaking what you might call ‘poetic New Yorkese’, a strange dialect invented by writer David Milch. Despite being filmed primarily in Los Angeles, it uses second unit footage of New York City, cleverly dressed and redressed standing sets, and well-chosen LA locations, to create a powerful sense of place.
Scratching the creative itch
I’ve continued to practice ‘painting’ in Procreate on the iPad.
It is absolutely miraculous to me that I managed to create a likeness of Harrison Ford without tracing a photo. In fact, I’ve tried tracing photos in the past and the likenesses have been less convincing.
I’ve learned, I think, that the essence of a person’s face is in the very smallest details. Zooming right in on my reference photos, I see that there’s a kink in the corner of the mouth, or asymmetrical slope to one eyelid. When I reflect those in my painting, boom, the resemblance intensifies.
It’s also fun to do silly doodles in Procreate, which can look quite finished with relatively little effort.
I’ve also been ‘stress collaging’. That’s what I call it when, feeling overwhelmed by life, I hunker down with a pair of scissors, a craft knife, a cutting mat, and a pile of tatty old magazines to make something. I was pleased with this set of cards made using only back copies of Sight & Sound.
And this vaguely hauntological, folk-horror-ish piece made from a British tourism propaganda magazine from 1967.
My obsession with the slow motion mode on my phone camera continues, enabling me to make things like this while I’m in the middle of a walk…
I’ve been snapping the odd photograph here and there, too. Not as many as I’d like – I’m definitely struggling to see Bristol with fresh eyes at the moment – but there’s the odd one I’m quite pleased with, like this…
Lots of writing
Despite feeling generally anxious and distracted, and constantly beating myself up about my lack of productivity, I have, in fact, done tons of writing.
My main focus is a novel, title undecided, of which I’ve now written 29,000 words. I wish that was a round number but 29,000 words is when act one reached its natural conclusion. I’ve been aiming to write 1,000 words per day which feels achievable, even when the day job leaves me wrung out. Some days I’ve managed 2,000, or even more. I want to be done with a first draft by Christmas which means staying focused and not getting distracted by other creative projects. No, Ray, you don’t need to make a zine that nobody has asked for, or record an album nobody will ever hear. Write the book. Sit down and write the fucking book.
I did allow myself a brief break from novel-writing to produce a one-off story for Halloween. It’s called ‘Piloti’ and is about a bored, lonely office worker falling in love with a brutalist building which is also a haunted forest. This also marks the first time I’ve used Procreate to create a useful, usable illustration for one of my own stories. Self-facilitating media node, &c.
The only ‘fun’ blog post I’ve had time to write was about the most perfect 2 seconds in pop history, when ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ by The Beatles segues from one take into another, creating the equivalent of an aural dolly zoom shot.
The latest edition of the General Witchfinders zine includes a small contribution from me. Editor Ross liked my longer-than-usual review of Ghostwatch on Letterboxd and asked if he could reprint it. I expanded it a little, and added some references and quotes, and that was that.
With my work hat on, I’ve continued to stick to my plan of writing a LinkedIn article every Friday, covering topics like the burden of dealing with other people’s AI outputs, and how a content designer’s brain works.
