The Hunger Games and E-Books

*Contains minor spoilers for The Hunger Games trilogy*


I've just finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy and must say I really enjoyed it. I became completely immersed in this dystopian society, and as the traumatic events continued, I too became slightly traumatised. This is why I liked the ending, and was very pleased with how it was written. I felt that Katniss had the happiest ending she could have hoped for, given everything she experienced and that showed great skill (and restraint) on the part of the writer. 


I read the series on my Kindle, and whilst it was convenient and has helped me overcome my problem with storing paper books, the one negative I can identify with ebooks is that I am unable to share it with my friends or pass these stories on to my own children one day. So yes, "sentiment" and "community". Ebooks just can't compete.

"Land's End" Review

Just a very quick post to say that "Land's End" (Inkermen Press, 2008) has finally received a review:
http://newmysticsreviews.blogspot.com/2009/05/by-not-so-beautiful-sea-review-of.html

"Lucy Ann Wade starts off the stories with her take on the Calypso and Odysseus episode from The Odyssey (“Calypso”), doing so with great success as she explores the always treacherous nexus of naiveté and sexual lust. The “do as I say, not as I do” two-facedness of Calypso’s fellow Naiads made them read like a pack of modern high-school girls and not the far-off subjects of what is often (wrongly) seen as an irrelevant and antiquated tale."

Not too bad at all.

I started working on a new story yesterday, as well as adding to Chpt. 23 of IV. I'm hopefully going to be in a position where I can send off a few more submissions in the near future, so look out slush piles of the world! You have been warned.

Portsmouth

I'm typing this whilst simultaneously sitting in Frankie and Benny's waiting for my order. Portsmouth this week, and the weather is foul and my hotel room awful (ok, I can overlook what I have now discovered to be the obligatory pube on the sheets, but toilet roll that someone threw up on? No thank you).
Anyhow, went to see Watchmen and it was really good. Am going to read the novel but have been told its fairly accurate, though the film is more gory.
Will be starting to work on IV shortly, so will update later.
Ooh, steak's here. Gotta go!

I realised a couple of days ago that I had written just over 50,000 words in 2 weeks during my rewriting phase. Not bad going, right? Especially when considering that most of the words I'm actually happy with.
I'm approaching the busy time at work, which will see me travelling to Manchester, Portsmouth, reading, Sheffield and middlesex in the space of three weeks. And I still can't drive, so its good old railroad for me!
Saw The Pillowman at Curve at the beginning of the week, which was really good. The play is fantastic (sickeningly dark, twisted And funny), acting was good, and set designer brilliant. Great use of the space. It made me want to write something for the stage again. Maybe next month.

Happy Belated New Year!

Urgh. I hate it when it gets cold outside. I have a long thin cut on my hand from goodness knows where, simply because my hands were too numb with cold to feel the damage I tend to inflict upon myself. There was a time when I used to think I was quite graceful. That was clearly the delusions of youth.
Back at work now, Christmas decorations in a box in the attic, and nothing but a slice of Christmas pudding in the fridge left as a reminder that there once was a holiday. I miss it already.
Instead we get snow, first day back, and so my office is even colder than it usually is on the first day back when the university has been closed. Brrr.
Sorry, I didn't blog to complain. Guess I have the "first day back at work" blues.
I've been reading the Twilight series in the break. I need to get the third book now. It's good. *shrugs*. It works because the emotions are very real; by that I mean, the author can get away with the crazy stuff, and even some dodgy dialogue, because the emotions she presents are very identifiable, the characters are real, and empathy is established, creating this very believable, unbelievable world. It's the same sort of thing with Harry Potter - although the Potter books are smarter and have plots - and it's a nice escape. Sort of makes me wish I was seventeen again (though only just!).
I'm going to be working on chapter two of Inter Vivos later today, and I'm sincerely hoping that Meyer's characters are out of my head by then. My head is like a sponge sometimes, and I hope it's all gone before I put pen to paper (or rather, fingers to keyboard). Though half of the problem is that I don't want to put them away, I much prefer their world than the personal one that I'm in today, back at work, in the cold, with no one to talk to. How utterly depressing that sounds!

Travellin' Lu

Since my last post I have been to Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, which was quite nice, and also to London, all for work. I caught up on some Drabblecast, but barely did any writing myself. I feel so tired at the moment. Could do with a holiday, though this will only happen in the event of me winning the lottery (that I don't buy tickets for) before the end of September. Well, stranger things have happened.

I have been working mostly on my short story about Tabitha Grubb and Inter Vivos, though I'm finding it hard to stay organised as I'm writing both in the same notebook, and everything is a bit higguldy-pigguldy at the mo'.

What else have I been up to? Well, I saw Joseph for the first time ever whilst I was in London, and it was really, really good! (yes, I was surprised!). Lee Mead was excellent, he stayed in character the whole way through and didn't let the tongue in cheek nature of the show put off his portrayal of Joseph from naive peasant to mighty prince. The narrator (who was played by the understudy) was really brilliant, and the rest of the cast all just seemed like they were having the times of their lives, which made me as an audience member have a great time too. So many shows I see has a chorus who just look like they're going through the motions. So it was all good. I was sitting in the upper circle (row G) and you could still see the stage very clearly, so was value for money to boot!

I am off travelling around the country for work next week too, so apologises in advance for the lack in blog posts until I return. Maybe you can read over the archives or something to keep yourselves entertained in my absence? :-)

A New Direction

I've had a brainwave about Inter Vivos. I've thought of a new angle, so this means I don't need to finish draft 1b, and instead can just plough on with draft 2, as I need to rewrite the story. It means that I can still use first person narrative, to make the story more credible, and I can focus on exploring themes of identity, and reality, and sanity, and I'm going to tie in my research on female hysteria too. The story won't change, just the telling. This change has made me excited about the project again, which can only be a good thing!

Went to see Relocated by Anthony Neilson at the weekend. Scary, freaky stuff! Have never been so scared in a theatre in all my life.

Weekend

This weekend, I went to London and watched The City by Martin Crimp and Piranha Heights by Philip Ridley. Piranha Heights was definitely the better play. Disturbing and violent and very funny, it was extremely fast-paced and well acted. The City was alright, but, well, it wasn't easy to sit through. I mean, Crimp's dialogue is painfully awkward and unrealistic (stylistically this is what he's going for), scenes dragged for ages, and his women are terrible. Clearly, he doesn't write to get laid.
I also bought seven new books. This is after I told myself I wouldn't buy any more until a) I bought a new book shelf and/or b) I read the ones I've already got. Felt very decadent though to be buying them, and carried them nicely all around London so they wouldn't get creased, and they are now all sitting on a chair at my dining table. Not sure if I'll have enough money to eat with by the end of the month, but at least I have more books to add to my ever expanding collection!
Have been making great headway on my Dorcas Grubb sequel (can you have a sequel before you've even written the novel?). It's a short story about Tabitha, Dorcas's little sister, who in the Dorcas story is about 18 months old, whereas in this short, she is 15. It's all rather cool, and it's also allowing me to flesh out Dorcas's world more, which should help when I come to write the novel in November.
Inter Vivos has come to a little bit of a standstill, simply because I now have to type it all up before I begin draft 1b, and I haven't been near a computer recently. Hopefully though I'll have it all typed up by the end of the week.

Nox Update

Well, Inter Vivos is finally coming to an end, and my most recent contributions to the story are absolute rubbish. But, I'm moving on from this, and thinking of ways to fix it. I think draft two will be written in the third person. Whereas some of the chapters and scenes work really nicely as first-person narrative, the Maiden is turning into a Bond villian - telling their life history and motives to the captured hero before they plan to kill him. Not good. And there are some things that Nox (my narrator) just wouldn't know, that feel false to add in, and yet are pretty vital in setting up my universe.
I want to buy lots of books at the minute, but just haven't the time to read them. I'm currently reading Charles De Lint's Moonheart, and, well, it's a little bit boring. I think part of it is that it hasn't aged well - there's a bit with a Jamacian musican which seems very un-PC to my 21st century ears, and everyone is smoking all the time, and the story has just taken too long to set up - but anyway, I don't want it to be another Glass Book, so I'm going to stop reading it, and move on to something else. Possibly Le Guin. I'm also reading The Book of Lost Things, which is quite good, but hasn't hooked me yet, American Gods, which is ace, and I've been listening to Labyrinth (the Kate Mosse version; sadly not the Davie Bowie movie), which is quite dull, so far. Any good book recommendations are more than welcome.

Weekly Post

For some reason, I am currently only managing to write one post a week. How strange. I will endeavour to write more regularly in future.

However, despite the inactivity of this blog, I have been very active in terms of my own writing, though I have to confess that IV still isn't finished. "Almost" is all I can really say at the moment. Nearly finished draft 1a, and then it's on to draft 1b, before the fun begins with the second draft. Oh joy! Isn't it weird though how, even though I'm trying to concentrate on writing this one thing, other ideas keep popping into my head, pleading with me to write them instead. The Dorcas idea is practically wetting its pants with desparation, but that has to wait til November. And I've had a few ideas for short stories, and for turning play ideas into short stories until I get round to writing them as plays. So at least my procrastination is productive.

I got a short but sweet rejection email from 'Podcastle' for Lupus, which could be due to the fact that it's not quite fantasy enough, or its too rude, or too short, or its just not their cup of tea. Oh well. Still haven't heard about Calypso yet from the other place. Two weeks and counting. I am so not a patient person.

I went to see Chess in Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, which was really brilliant, though was annoyed that Svetlana has an extra song in this production than she did when I played her. Josh Groban, Adam Pascal, Kerry Ellis and David Bedella were amazing. Marti Pellow was not.

Post-Manchester

I shouldn't be allowed to go to the theatre. It's too distracting. I went away to Manchester for 2 and a half days for work, hoping to come back with plenty of Inter Vivos written, and I return with 2,500 words of IV, half a short story on Calypso, and two pages of dialogue for a new play. Well, I say 'new'; it's actually the Munitionettes story, but seeing as the novel wasn't going anywhere (and now that I'm a sci-fi/fantasy writer, darlings...) I am writing it as a play.
The Royal Exchange Theatre was a very inspiring space. It's in the round, with 2 galleries looking down on the stage almost like a telescope. Hoodies, in the way that it is written right now, couldn't be staged there, but if I changed the location of the play from loitering outside of a shop to loitering in a park on a kiddies roundabout, maybe add a swing set, it would look wonderful. It's great how you can take one thing you've felt has gone a bit stagnant and flip it and make it fresh again.
The play I saw on Wednesday, The Children's Hour, was a really good, strong production (though the first act was better than the last). As an aside point, it was also nice to have a play with a majority female cast that didn't make a point of the fact that it had a majority female cast, and the actors weren't there simply as someone's wife/daughter/sister/mother. Sometimes these days it seems like the playwright/director/marketing people are trying to Raise Issues when they do a play with women as the main characters, but this was a good story that just so happened to have women characters in it. Kate O'Flynn was particularly impressive as the manipulative school girl Mary.
So anyway. Theatre = good. Inter Vivos is coming along - Nox has met Thaddeus and learned a bit more about The Maiden, so we're edging closer to the start of the final act. I'm getting close to writing one of the scenes that I've been imagining in my head for the past two years, which is exciting. Aside from my day job being knackering, I'm in a really good place creatively so far. I will keep my fingers crossed that it stays that way.

A Mid-Way Book Review

I am half-way through reading The Glass Book of the Dream Eaters, and it has turned into a chore to read. For one thing, the chapters are painfully long (the one I'm currently reading is 74 pages!).
My main gripe is that I still haven't been told any more about 'The Process' since they described it in the first twenty pages, and the story hasn't actually moved on since then at all, aside from the characters physically going from this house to the next in search of some answers to a question they are not entirely sure of. So we get the same events told three times over, and our three narrators aren't defined enough to make the narratives different or interesting, relying heavily on stereotype to bring the characters to life but doing little to explore these stereotypes or make them anything more than two-dimensional. There are a few erotic passages which do break up the monotony a little, but they don't seem to serve any other purpose except to say "the Process makes you lose your morality", which has been (over-) stated already. It tries to be a mystery novel, but the mystery doesn't seem to be all that exciting, or dangerous, or mysterious enough for me to actually care if they solve it or not (I'm optimistic enough to think that perhaps that's because there's an exciting part to the puzzle that has not yet been revealed, but I'm starting to lose hope).
I'm just thoroughly bored now, but determined to read to the end. I hope the ending is worth this effort. There's actually a sequel coming out, which makes me think that if they don't conclude things in this book (at 784 pages), then the writer has some serious issues.

Juno...your caseworker

Juno is a really good film. I'm not very good at film reviews, suffice to say it was, well, really good, and I wish that I could write something as real without it turning into sentimental bullshit. My inner greetings card often gets the best of me.

Things I like this week:

1) Toblerone Martinis (courtesy of The Lansdowne). A bit sickly, but nice.

2) Shopping for B&Bs in Canterbury. They're so quaint!

3) Pigeons in Leicester. Well, to look at anyway. I'm starting to get over my bird phobia, and pigeons are actually quite pretty, in their way (that bit of irredescent green on their necks is rather cool).

Things I don't like this week:

1) How thin my new coat has turned out to be. Brrr.

In terms of my writing, Inter Vivos is currently laying neglected, as my job has suddenly become a) very stressful and b) very busy. I think I'm going to have to quit my second job, or at least not take on any extra shifts for a few months; I've not had a two-day weekend since 19th January, and I can't even remember when the one before that was. I think one of the problems with Inter Vivos at the moment is that Nox still isn't really that well defined in my head - I know what happens to her, but not who she is. It's like she's under a layer of glass, like at the zoo. I know how to fix the problem, but will probably have to leave it until I've coughed up this first draft - I'll just add it to the pile of revisions I need to do!

On the plus side, I've had loads of great ideas for Dorcas Grubb. It's really coming along now, and I haven't even written one word. I'm so glad that I didn't start to write it as soon as the inital idea popped into my head, as I know it would have constricted the story too early on, and it has really benefited the plot to have the ideas bubbling and expanding in my brain (the characters pretty much appeared fully formed the instant I created them).

Sorry about the long post, but I hadn't blogged in a while, and when I was drafting this in the pub last night (fuelled by the aforementioned toblerone martini), I realised I had quite a lot of catching up to do!

Potter-Who

OK, so my brain is a little unfocused at the moment. What I mean by ‘unfocused’ is actually ‘consumed by Doctor Who and Harry Potter’. I’m verging on obsession. It was the last episode of Doctor Who series 3 on Saturday, and I can’t wait until Christmas for my next Who instalment! And Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (which I think is a fancy name for Horcruxes) comes out in (at time of typing) 17 days, 8 hours and 7 minutes. I just can’t wait! I’ve decided now that I’m going to go down to Waterstone’s to collect my precious copy of the last Potter book, although I feel guilty as I’ve already pre-ordered it on Amazon and will have to cancel. I’m hoping it will be an Occasion, rather than a few tired shoppers with hyper-active five year old ‘wizards’. Hopefully I won’t embarrass myself by being the only over-twenty-*cough* person there.

So aside from Harry Potter and the ever sexy David Tennant infiltrating my brain, I have also been busy, theatre-wise. Still no news from TWP about the festival, so I’m starting to think I may have dreamt the whole thing. On Saturday I went to Leeds to watch Amanda’s Bollywood Jane and I really enjoyed it. True, the opening scene was very ‘Taste of Honey’, but I think as a whole it was very good, and looked superb. The West Yorkshire Playhouse is a lovely theatre, really spacious. I was very impressed by the two revolves on the stage as well (yes, it doesn’t take much!). It made me sad to think that Leicester right now doesn’t have a theatre of its own, and I am worried that the new one will be this big white elephant. I mean, I’d have rather they spent all that money on filling the inside with state of the art equipment and using the rest of the money for show budgets and hiring directors, etc, rather than making this big façade with glass walls and no backstage area. The Yorkshire Playhouse isn’t pretty on the outside, but it’s functional, and that’s what you want from a theatre. Anyway, perhaps I’ll be wrong and it’ll be the best theatre in the universe once it is finished. Somehow I doubt it though.

Am going to try to write something to submit to Transmission magazine over the next few days, as I’ve just remembered the deadline is next Monday. Oh well. Inter Vivos is still coming along, though I think I’m going to have to change some information as to what Inter Vivos is and how it works as I’ve realised that even in Sci-Fi, some things just don’t wash! But I’m still optimistic, still trying to get the first draft finished before I’m eighty.

That’s about it really. Sorry I’ve not been posting as often as I should – for some reason I’ve been a bit of a hermit recently.

Dissocia

Went to London last night to see Anthony Neilson's 'The Wonderful World of Dissocia', and I really enjoyed it. There were some bits that weren't as good as (in my humble opinion) they could have been (e.g. the actors seemed a bit uncomfortable during the first half, and the singing could have been better), but it was a really good play. The one point I wanted to raise though, is that why is it that when people in plays/films go to fantasy make-believe lands, at the end it's always revealed to be either a dream or that they're mentally ill or they're on drugs? Why can't the fantasy world actually exist? I mean, people didn't know that Australia existed until 1770 (apart from the indigenous people living there). Salman Rushdie wrote a brilliant essay sort of saying the same thing, but I do feel disappointed that these crazy places are always passed off as a hallucination or a cat nap in literature. It's not widely publicised, but Dorothy actually chooses to live in Oz with her Auntie Em in Book 6 of the Oz series, and yet most people take the film's "it was all a dream, and you were there, and you were there" ending as gospel. Just narks me off.

One other thing to note about being at the Royal Court is that all the girls in the building, aside from me, all looked the same. They were all skinny, flat-chested, with dark hair (mainly), all dressed in a manner that they would like you to call 'quirky', and were all talking pretentiously about this play or other (whilst drinking ridiculously small glasses of white wine). It was like the Court has a cloning factory out the back for creating it's staff and audience members. There was one girl in a group of people who was being introduced as a 'writer' to someone else, and she looked exactly the same as well. No wonder I'm perceived to not fit in there.

Skins

I watched Skins on E4 last night, and as much as I was looking forward to watching it, I was also concerned that there was a TV drama that seemed (from the promotional material) to be my entire 'Hoodies' play! Well, I can breathe a sigh of relief, cos although it's a bit similar, it's not really the same at all. Skins is about a group of 16/17 middle class kids who go to a tech college and live in Brighton and smoke spliff, party and have sex a lot. In last night's episode, the group tried to help one kid lose his virginity and they ended up driving their stolen car into the canal. I enjoyed the programme, but it was also good because it made me focus on how my play is not like this show; it helped me to define what I actually wanted to write about. 'Shilton Rec', or whatever I'm calling it at the moment, is about a group of 14 year olds who are lost and forgotten about, who drink and shag and smoke because there's nothing else to do. Society is afraid of them, so they are outcasts, sitting outside a shop, in a park, anywhere brightly lit and safe, killing time until it's bedtime and they can go home. It's about teens in the countryside, and how they're affected by social decay and the economic deterioration of their villages that saw their parents and grandparents having to look elsewhere for work. Yes, they swear and shag and get themselves into trouble, but the undercurrent of their situation is a lot different from some posh seventeen year olds from Brighton. So thank you E4!

New rota means I have to write 2,500 words three times a week in order to achieve my self-imposed deadline of a completed first draft of Inter Vivos by April. Wish me luck!

In other news, I've just had my hair cut, and my new fringe is starting to piss me off already...

Wicked!!!

Wicked, Wicked, Wicked. How remarkable was this show?! I went to the first preview on Thursday, and the atmosphere was electrifying. There were 2,500 people all eagerly anticipating the start of the show. After a few minor hiccups at the beginning (“Look there’s Glinda”, followed by silence), the show went incredibly smoothly; Leicester lad Joseph Connor did the city proud as various ensemble parts. The real star of the show was Idina Menzel, as the vulnerable yet passionate wicked witch of the west. Even with the flu, she still sounded amazing and was on another level from the rest of the cast. Miriam Margoyles and Nigel Planer were also fantastic. I’m hoping to go see it again before Idina flies back to Oz…I mean, New York.

Avenue Q

Just a short post to say that I saw the musical 'Avenue Q' on Saturday, and thought it was superb. It hit a note with me, as I'm still smarting about how the 'real world' doesn't really live up to my expectations (and how I 'wish I could go back to college'!). I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't get offended by rude language and muppet sex.