Evocations

evocator(n.)

[ev-uh-key-ter, ee-voh-] 

a person who evokes, especially one who calls up spirits.

On Saturday July 11th, at Edge Lit 4, I will very proudly be having my first collection of short stories - 'Evocations' - launched by the award-winning Alchemy Press. 'First' he says, like there's a whole string of them in the production line. But still. I am chuffed.

You can read a host of scholarly articles about the Art of the Short Form if you like, but for what it's worth here's what I think. Short stories - well, mine at least - are a mongrel breed. Orphans, half-fleshed things, like plants which should be out in the sun but have inexplicably found themselves stuck in perpetual shade, etiolated and wan. They wanted to be novels when they grew up but never really developed the right number of characters or the right kind of plot to feel comfortable in polite company.

Tufts of dream-wool snagged on the barbed-wire fence of consciousn...

Jeezus, will you listen to him.

I wrote some of them for competitions ('The Pigeon Bride'), some just because they made me giggle ('The Decorative Water Feature of Nameless Dread'), and some out of proper writerly outrage ('The Last Dance of Humphrey Bear'). The title of the collection comes from a story about a man with a gift for calling out the spirit of the occasion - and obviously it all goes horribly wrong - but which came out of the weird Aussie phenomenon of Christmas in July. Some of them found homes really quickly - like the one about the mummified cat under Curzon Street Station - while others like 'The Remover of Obstacles' hung around the place for years, whinging and stinking the office up and eating my pringles. Some of them got me into august company - the stories for Den of Geek were read aloud at an event where I got to hang out with terrifyingly talented people like Sarah Pinborough (yes, I'm name-dropping, but it's my blog, so deal). Some have never been seen before, and they're a bit nervous about all the attention. Please be nice to them, okay?

Orphans. By-blows. But I love the weird things which grow in places where they shouldn't. The ideas that leap out at me at the most inappropriate times, like when I'm trying to teach a bunch of teenagers about Shakespeare, and yell HEY WOULDN'T IT BE COOL IF THIS ONE GUY HAD AN OCTOPUS BITE HIM ON THE NOB! They make me feel at home.

I'll put up some links to where you can get Evocations from as and when. Hopefully I'll see some of you at Edge Lit 4, too.

Ooroo.

A Walk with Wild Edric

At the start of the Easter break I went for a walk up a thing with my mate Dan, because that's what English teachers do when they're off duty. The particular thing in question was the Stiperstones - a ten-kay long ridge of granite outcroppings which look like the fossilised spine of some gigantic dinosaur.

It's quite, quite mad.

Each of the outcrops has a name, obviously - Shepherd's Rock, the Devil's Chair, Manstone Rock, Cranberry Rock, Nipstone Rock, and finally (and presumably because they'd run out names for rocks by then), just The Rock. That photo is of me on the Devil's Chair. Not so much Wild Edric as Reasonably-Mild-If-Placated-With-Doombar-And-Chocolate-Buttons Skippy. Sorry GoT fans, but it makes the Iron Throne look like the naughty chair we used to have at the bottom of the stairs when my girls were toddlers.

I've only got wikipedia to go on for this (I've tried to verify it, but don't have time to get a Geology degree), but apparently during the last Ice Age it was the only thing visible in the area which stood out above the glaciers. It's THAT hard. And even though the day we were there was uncharacteristically not pissing with rain, we could literally go from being completely sheltered to being in the teeth of a howling, bitter gale in the space of a single footstep. You can easily understand why the surrounding area is riddled with stone circles and burial mounds - it's an unearthly, inhuman place.

But I love me a bit of local folklore, so my nerd-bone was tickled to find out that it is the haunt of Wild Edric - or Eadric Cild, or Eadric Silvaticus, depending on what you read. He was a rich and powerful Saxon thegn until the Normans kicked off; led a couple of unsuccessful rebellions and got himself a reputation for being a bit of a troublemaker. His 'wild' moniker came about either as a derivation of his status as a landowner and forester, or (and this is the more colourful version and thus almost certainly untrue), because he and his men preferred to sleep in tents rather than houses on the grounds that they didn't want to be softened up when it came to fighting them posh southern French bastards.

Frankly, I'm surprised Nigel Farage hasn't taken him up as poster boy for the glorious UKIP crusade. But then there was the whole surrendering thing and ending up helping William the Conqueror to invade Scotland, so maybe not.

More interesting is Edric's mythogenesis into a proto-Robin Hood figurehead of rebellion centuries before the earliest iteration of that particular hero, even incorporating Arthurian elements in the stories which say how he took the Lady Godda as his Faerie wife, and how they led the Wild Hunt together until she left him for his crimes against her kin, and how he now wanders forever in the twilight realm between the Faerie world and our world, until such time as the land has need of him whereupon he will return to the Stiperstones.

Just like the land itself, legends are always much older than you think.

I am SO using this in the next book.

Couple of related links for you in case you're interested in following up any of the literary connections:

Mary Webb's 'The Golden Arrow'
Malcolm Saville's 'Lone Pine' series of children's stories.
A bit of D H Lawrence, just for laughs.

Ooroo,

JB

Urban Mythic 2

I think for me the highlight of FantasyCon 2014 was hearing that the Alchemy Press had won the BFS Award for Best Small Press. Pete Coleborn, Jan Edwards and their happy and slightly unhinged band of editors (including Jenny Barber, who co-edited Urban Mythics 1 & 2), have produced some brilliant work over the past decade and a half, and it was great to see that recognised. I'm proud to have had a few stories published by them, and so as part of the promotional shenanigans here's a mini-interview I did to try and explain what the feck was going through my head when I wrote 'How to Get Ahead in Avatising.'

http://alchemypress.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/james-brogden-interviewed-2/

Attack of the GISHWES

My daughter, who is currently running herself ragged trying to fulfil as many of Misha Collins' insane GISHWES dares as she can, asked for a story; apparently it needs to be by an actual published author and no more than 140 words long, featuring Collins himself, the Queen, and an Elopus (some kind of elephant/octopus hybrid thing). Couldn't resist this on so many levels - here's the result:

Misha watched in growing alarm as Her Majesty approached along the red carpet, shaking hands with cast and crew. There was a slight circular depression in its surface, and the more he looked the more he was convinced it was the right size for a man-hole cover.

The kind of man-hole from which the elopus - an ambush predator with a taste for royal blood – loved to attack.

Then she was before him, offering her hand, and he took it just as the carpet beneath her collapsed and she hung suspended over a gaping hole. Pivoting, he swung her to the safety of a bodyguard, overbalanced, and plunged in – but grabbed the guard’s gun as he fell.

Tentacles slithered away from him in the gloom.

‘Goddammit,’ he muttered. ‘It’s just like Cannes all over again.’

And set off in pursuit.

Project Tezlar is Finished!

Here we are, ladies and gentlemen: the tezlar gun in all its glory:

Right-handed configuration; power controls are on this side so as not to interfere with holstering:

Left side:

View from above, looking at the battery gauge and voltage regulator:

Bit of an angle for you, just to make things dramatic...

...as demonstrated by Counter Subornation Cadet Officer (First Class) Eden Peppercorn.

Oh yeah. If you're a suborning dreamer from the Realt, this is the last thing you're going to see before several thousand volts expel you from our world.

Battery pack:

Battery pack controls:

Insignia of the Department for Counter Subornation Tezlar Division. The quartered circle represents the world, with the electricity bolt guarding it.

Detail of tez-gun power cable and battery pack socket:

How it all fits together...

... and in the holster (special thanks to Jacklyn Hyde Creations for that one)

Come one, you know you want to wear it too. And you can - pop along and see me at any of Showmasters' London Film and Comic Cons. Failing that, you could always read about how this lovely piece of kit works in Tourmaline. I suppose I've got no excuse to get back on with writing the sequel now, have I?

Project Tezlar: Working Trigger Action

Well I find it exciting, anyway.

Project Tezlar: Electronics Sorted

I have discovered the joys of the Dremel.

Spent this morning in the school DT workshop and snipped out the car-dash socket along with much of the excess wiring. Knowing precisely nothing about electronics, never mind plasma balls, I got first, second and third opinions from my colleagues there. After some head-scratching, the consensus of opinion was 'Yeah, that'll probably work.' Always listen to the professionals, that's what I say.

Anyway, it worked, and I only burned myself a bit. Next job is to fit everything into the casing, basically as below, but with some gentle prodding and grinding.

Ooh, I feel all manly.

Project Tezlar: Fiddling Around the Edges

A bunch of stuff arrived today: some decorative doodads from Vintage Jewelry Supplies and a bunch of old toggle switches off ebay. The former I can handle fine - superglue, blu-tack and a small stick. The switch is going to require expert technical advice from the guys in the Design & Technology Dept. at school, just as soon as we've all survived coursework season.

The 'silver' thing on the grip is to cover up the original "Elite"logo; I like that it looks a bit like a tentacle, too. The brass leafy viney thing is just because.

Project Tezlar: Basic Respray

Got the basic colours sorted out - you can still see hints of the original blue here and there but those will disappear with the final touch-ups and dry-brushing. Plus the hedge is looking rather neat at the moment - a good thing because I can't foresee any actual gardening getting done this spring.

Colour Test & Undercoating

Bought spray paints today. Tested "copper" on a random bit:

Have started undercoating in satin black. Yes, that's my toe at the bottom. Pretty good flesh tones on that, I think.