1925 – the Great War is seven years over, but still it casts a long shadow over Britain. In the shadow, the mediums thrive, holding their seances for anyone who wants to talk to the dead – for a price. Spirit communication doesn’t come cheap and secrets and reputations are common currency. Following the death of his mother, musician Benjamin Brown is about the discover that doubt is considered nothing short of betrayal, and that keeping the secrets of the dead can be a very dangerous game.
Set in the murky, sexually-charged world of fraudulent spiritualists, Summerland explores the public and personal duel between belief and scepticism – a conflict respectively framed by the figures of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini, and offers a fictionalised look at one of the strangest episodes in early 20th Century history – Harry Houdini’s ‘Own Secret Service.’
The average American encounters eight supernatural beings in a given week. 98% of these occurrences go unnoticed. One in fifty paranormal happenings are aggressive in nature, and of these, only 5% are ever reported. As an Analyst for the Department of Paranormal Study and Defense, Tom Bell’s job is to respond to that 5%.
After a routine arrest-and-exorcise op goes wrong, Tom finds himself having one hell of a week. What is the connection between the entity and rich paranormal broker Harold Saldana? Who is the seductive woman he meets at Mirror, Tokyo’s premier club for the professional possessed? Why is he having nightmares about a single tree in the desert?
And how much of this will matter when a horror from Tom’s past literally comes back to haunt him?
obviously i havent read these books, maybe the authors are very talented (they arent) but heres a promising looking title
In this collection of dark but humorous short stories, Anthony Wright weaves his past travels in Australia, South East Asia, Mexico, and Central America to create a lively pattern of outré tales, interlaced with the supernatural, in which the author’s outsider philosophy is central to the thread of existence.
yeah more supernatural bullshit but check out this review
In an extremely imaginative and well-written collection of vignettes from travels to adventurous non-tourist destinations, Australian Anthony Wright has invoked Burroughs, Bowles, Dostoyevsky, Kerouac, and even to some degree Joyce as he searches out the sacred and profane of contemporary society. Every bit as depraved and supernatural as Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude, Wright’s Smoke Ghosts exposes the soft, desperate underbelly of humanity.
-Tom Hibbard, author and poet
Impper posted:i like the story. there's a funny idea in there about going to the crowd and becoming whatever it is regardless of your intent. the switch in tones was hilarious, i thought, as far as it going from a folksy immigrant cheese story into a pair of bros following the energy and taking drugs. i found it hard to read the second part. it does need a line edit it seems, but i don't know why that would matter.
the dialog does need to be worked on. there's a certain kind of writing-realistic-dialog that is missing............ it's a difficult concept to explain, maybe. the goal in writing is never to get realistic dialog that might be heard in real life, but to be entirely what a person might say, stylised and compacted, and working perfectly. most of the time you have it but there r a lot of specific parts where it falls short
Yeah dis, thanks imps. Who would you say writes dialogue well in that sort of way? i wouldn't mind reading something to get a better idea of how dialogue plays out
Also when the cybercowboy from Alpha-Base 1 comes in it ties the whole thing together
"101010101010 howdy" he exclaimed westernly from his space-steed"
http://www.amazon.com/Lecture-Lydie-Salvayre/dp/1564783510/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1352928550&sr=1-2&keywords=the+lecture
Yeah i guess in my story a lot of that exposition would work better as a thought or recollection rather than dialogue
There were also a few of Lutine’s friends, high lords in the aristocracy of letters. That portly British novelist, one of those ex-Trotskyites who may have long given up historical materialism but continue to wage class warfare by not tucking their shirts in and smoking into middle age. Urtid hadn’t read any of his books. Chatting to him was that American, with a velvet smoking jacket and pince-nez, the one whose stories were all about the infidelities and sexual neuroses of Jewish academics. Near them stood the French philosopher who had described high heels as ‘fractal phalluses, sigils of patriarchal dominance.’ She was, Urtid noticed, wearing a pair herself, furiously clutching a glass of wine. There was also Lutine’s newest boyfriend, Anton, a pale lad who didn’t look a day over seventeen: the famous omnisexual was, of course, basically just an old-fashioned pederast. Lutine introduced Urtid to everyone, as if he had known him for years; they all asked the same questions. Was he still writing, like his old collaborator? Did he have anything out they could go and read? No, he told them. He taught history at a secondary school, he hadn’t written a word in decades, he watched TV: he was content. This seemed to take them all rather by surprise. Well, if he ever chose to start again, being fictionalised in the Poet of Peace’s first novel would ensure he’d have no problems with publication, wouldn’t it? Lutine’s greatness would be sure to rub off on him; he’d certainly win a prize or two, even if just by association. And from the book, Urtid certainly seemed to have been an excellent poet…
EmanuelaOrlandi posted:cormac mccarthy also has really good dialogue as well too
Don’t remember the dialogue so I dunno if this is a joke or not but I loved blood meridian
someone i know went to school with this guy (who is like an even more unlikeable and annoying version of steve roggenbuck) so i just basically heard a lot of stories about how horrible he was and how everyone in the writing department / various undergrad literary publications hated him and his bad poetry so i went to their (his+roggenbucks) poetry reading here when they were on "tour" together
they basically just read generic tweets off their phones while mugging for the livestream and it was really bad and annoying, the reason why is obvious to anyone who watched the previously posted youtube above this one ^^^ and i mean it's literally just rich kids who arbitrarily chose to be poetry majors screwing around so theres no reason to hate it more than any other random gross rich ppl fashion thing but the fact that im even seeing these ppl get posted in a "ugh look at this shit" way is aggravating to me for some reason
also roggenbuck claims his "style" of poetry is a direct result of being a vegetarian and buddhist lol
tentativelurkeraccount posted:probably the thing where he doesn't use quotations for dialogue so it just melds in with the terrain of the text.
i always wondered if this was joyces reason for doing quotes in the french style (dash) rather than quotation marks
acephalousuniverse posted:tentativelurkeraccount posted:probably the thing where he doesn't use quotations for dialogue so it just melds in with the terrain of the text.
i always wondered if this was joyces reason for doing quotes in the french style (dash) rather than quotation marks
roddy doyle of all people does it too
http://samkriss.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/the-sand-and-the-wildflower/
thirdplace posted:what i like about a lot of your writing, and this one is an example of it too but the real stand-out was nowhereland, is that you have a good focus on place. now there's a lot nerds writing kickass explorations of setting out there, but it's mostly in genre fiction and most of that doesn't have a lot to offer besides said setting. you're managing to marry good setting to good inter and/or intrapersonal stuff in some of the pieces you've been posting and i like it. i assume you've read some j.d. ballard?
thanks a lot man. yeah in workshops people tend to comment on my settings/descriptions... often positive but it has been noted that place becomes a focus to the extent that the characters moving around in it are devalued which is something i'm tryna combat... i read crash and high rise and a bunch of short stories but nothing recently actually, he's rly good tho, esp for a british dude lol
deadken posted:thirdplace posted:
what i like about a lot of your writing, and this one is an example of it too but the real stand-out was nowhereland, is that you have a good focus on place. now there's a lot nerds writing kickass explorations of setting out there, but it's mostly in genre fiction and most of that doesn't have a lot to offer besides said setting. you're managing to marry good setting to good inter and/or intrapersonal stuff in some of the pieces you've been posting and i like it. i assume you've read some j.d. ballard?
thanks a lot man. yeah in workshops people tend to comment on my settings/descriptions... often positive but it has been noted that place becomes a focus to the extent that the characters moving around in it are devalued which is something i'm tryna combat... i read crash and high rise and a bunch of short stories but nothing recently actually, he's rly good tho, esp for a british dude lol
read concrete island yo, you will like it i think
deadken posted:but it has been noted that place becomes a focus to the extent that the characters moving around in it are devalued which is something i'm tryna combat..
look at harry potter. bunch of silly made up words, basic bildungsroman for a plot, setting that rarely if ever departs from broad fantasy archtypes--and Rowling sells seven billion dollars worth of books with it . Or star wars. lucas consciously builds a world around the most barebones archtypical plot he can find and creates a brand still worth billions forty years later. lotta reasons for all of this (not the least of them marketing) but I think one overlooked one is: people got a craving for setting. they like stories, but they also like a borrowed paracosm to imagine themselves walking around in.
and b/c guys in writing workshops think things like what you relate there, the only people feeding that craving are the ones willing to live in the genre fiction ghetto: population of a few particularly dedicated writers and a shitload of hacks. the hacks reinforce the phobia, this idea that you have to choose between an interesting story and an interesting background to it, and the cycle recurses. it deprives the best writers of audiences and forces readers to make that same choice between plot and setting. but if i had a shot as giving people both in the same work and guy in a workshop told me not to do it i would tell that guy to 'go fuck off'
EmanuelaOrlandi posted:lol ballard is my fav author iwc ive read all his books i was just making fun of thirdplace for saying 'j.d. ballard'
i think you might be "trolling" me
thirdplace posted:deadken posted:
but it has been noted that place becomes a focus to the extent that the characters moving around in it are devalued which is something i'm tryna combat..
look at harry potter. bunch of silly made up words, basic bildungsroman for a plot, setting that rarely if ever departs from broad fantasy archtypes--and Rowling sells seven billion dollars worth of books with it . Or star wars. lucas consciously builds a world around the most barebones archtypical plot he can find and creates a brand still worth billions forty years later. lotta reasons for all of this (not the least of them marketing) but I think one overlooked one is: people got a craving for setting. they like stories, but they also like a borrowed paracosm to imagine themselves walking around in.
and b/c guys in writing workshops think things like what you relate there, the only people feeding that craving are the ones willing to live in the genre fiction ghetto: population of a few particularly dedicated writers and a shitload of hacks. the hacks reinforce the phobia, this idea that you have to choose between an interesting story and an interesting background to it, and the cycle recurses. it deprives the best writers of audiences and forces readers to make that same choice between plot and setting. but if i had a shot as giving people both in the same work and guy in a workshop told me not to do it i would tell that guy to 'go fuck off'
Characters, their interactions with each other, and how they grow or change are the only thing that matter.
If people want interesting settings they’ll read an atlas.