Doctor Who And The Creative Synchronicity

I'm annoyed, and instead of ranting at my wife I'm gonna get this out now, in blog form. I have just read the brief episode details of the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who, and was aghast at what I read. It seems that this upcoming episode (to be aired in five days or so) has certain striking similarities to the "original" ghost story, "Uncontainable", that I have been working on for the last few weeks. Bugger!

I hate this creative synchronicity; something you have been working on for a while, thinking it's a fairly new and original idea, and suddenly something huge comes along with the same idea, so that, in the future, anyone reading your story will simply think you have just copied the idea. Bugger again. In science-fiction terms, I don't think there's anything bigger than Doctor Who, certainly nothing that will reach so large an audience. And it's very annoying when this sort of thing happens, so that your small, original, and very modest story, even though it was written independently and/or earlier, becomes nothing more than a re-hash of "that Doctor Who episode", or whatever. It is extremely frustrating! 

Certainly I will watch the episode, although not when it is aired. I will take care to complete my story first [it is nearly done], and then watch it, to see how similar things were. No doubt, I'm just having a rant here, and the two stories will be very different [hopefully]. But Bugger again anyway!

Curiously, this has sort of happenned before, although not as simoultaeneously as this time. The last Christmas episode of Doctor Who [I forget the title, but the one with Richard E Grant in], had an idea about sentient snow. I wrote a story about this, "Snow Wonder", ten years ago; and even though this story was published on Smashwords before the episode aired, I'm sure that any Doctor Who fans who might read my story would simply think it was a rip-off of their idea. Don't imagine for a second that I'm saying that Stephen Moffat and crew are spying on my writing, in some clever science-fictional way, and ripping off my ideas. Not at all; I'm simply having a grrr at this writers coincidence. One shiny bit of fruit in the clouds though is this; if I'm having the same sort of creative ideas as the Doctor Who people, then that can't be a bad thing, really.

I have heard tales of it happening before; authors working in secret on "great-idea" novels, and just as they are writing the last page, the same idea comes out in a film by James Cameron or a Michael Chrichton novel or something like that. If I remember rightly, I think John Brosnan [as Harry Adam Knight] wrote CARNOSAUR, about genetically-engineered dinosaurs, at the same time, or before, Chrichton's JURASSIC PARK came out. I also remember that Roger Corman bought the rights to CARNOSAUR and made it into a confusing film, just so, I think, he could say that although his film came out after JURASSIC PARK, he could say it was based on a book that came out before Chrichton's novel, and thus that he sort of had the first film-rights to the idea of "genetically-engineered dinosaurs". But that's very off topic. So for now, Grrrr, and I'd better go and finish my story.

 

P.S. Jenna-Louise Coleman's character seems to be a much better companion to the Doctor; I was never really keen on Amy Pond, and I'm sick of her now [in fact, am just watching her final episodes now, about six months or so after they were shown.] But bring back Jon Pertwee, that's what I say!

James Herbert Is Dead!

JAMES HERBERT IS DEAD!

On 20 March 2013 the shock news was announced by his office that the bestselling horror novelist James Herbert had died, aged only 69. He was a true giant of the horror world, and was one of the leading horror authors to change the face of horror literature in the 70’s.  Before Herbert’s first novel THE RATS was published in 1974, the most popular author in the horror genre was Dennis Wheatley, with his leisurely and stuffy black-magic stories. James Herbert changed the landscape of horror instantly with THE RATS, with graphic descriptions of violence and horror; men, women, old people and babies being killed and eaten alive by hungry rats in the heart of London. It caused a sensation and in the days before VHS players or Nintendo’s, the novel sold 100,000 copies in just two weeks, and went on to sell millions of copies. He instantly became a bestselling writer, and he followed it up with hit after hit; THE FOG [“For God’s sake don’t leave it on Aunt Edna’s chair!” said one reviewer] was about a poison gas cloud that caused violence and horror wherever it drifted, THE SURVIVOR, FLUKE, THE DARK, SHRINE and more. He wrote two great sequels to THE RATS; LAIR had the rats grouping en masse in Epping Forest, while DOMAIN saw the rats mutated hideously after a nuclear apocalypse.

I discovered James Herbert in 1994, when I was 16, and probably got the books from that windy market stall I mentioned earlier in my blog. I remember reading THE RATS and LAIR during English lessons when I should have been reading Dickens or Skakespeare and preparing for my GCSE’s. I got wrong off my English teacher Mr.Keegans when some lads in my class pointed out to him that I was reading LAIR in class. He took it off me and said something like “read it after your exams, Michael” when he gave me it back after the lesson. Little did he know I had already read most of THE RATS in his class earlier that week. Anyway, that May of 1994, so my notes tell me, I read THE RATS trilogy [as well as RED DWARF for the fifth time] when I think I should have been revising for, or doing, my GCSE exams. I love THE RATS books; not only are they fast-paced icky reads but they opened the door for me marked “Animal Attack Books”, and in the years that followed I’ve read all sorts of titles, some good [THE SCURRYING, THE SWARM, THE BLOODSNARL, DEVOUR, various CRABS books by Guy.N.Smith,  BATS OUT OF HELL, etc], some not so good [THE PIKE, PIRAHNA, THE CATS, NIGHT OF THE BUDGIES etc], but THE RATS was the original and best and kick-started my love for Creature Feature stories. Thanks for that Mr.Herbert, and I can happily say that my in-progress creature-feature novel DALE OF TEARS owes more than a little to Herberts style and substance.

Like Stephen King, Herbert had his first book published in 1974, and in his native England, in the 1980’s, Herbert regularly outsold King. Film and Television weren’t so quick to adapt Herbert’s novels; the recent three hour series THE SECRET OF CRICKLEY HALL wasn’t bad, but films FLUKE and HAUNTED stumbled at the box office, and THE SURVIVOR, the first of his books to be filmed, turned out to be a confusing mess of a movie. I love the anecdote that when James Herbert was watching THE SURVIVOR, based on his novel, he fell asleep because he couldn’t understand the story.

Over the years I’ve read ten Herbert novels, my favourites of which are the three RATS books, THE FOG, and PORTENT [about sudden and dramatic – and supernatural – climate change], while I wasn’t overly keen on HAUNTED or THE MAGIC COTTAGE [with MOON, ONCE and THE SURVIVOR somewhere in between]. His latest [and now last] book ASH  garnered quite a lot of poor reviews on Amazon, many readers apologising in their reviews for giving a Herbert book such low ratings. I don’t know why, but for a couple of weeks as soon as ASH was published it was released as a Kindle book for just 20p; perhaps the publishers had an idea this might be his last book, and wanted to nudge it to the top of the charts. His output has slowed over the years, and, although I haven’t yet read it, ASH would seem to be poor Herbert; perhaps his health, and talent, has been flagging for some time. But never mind that; the majority of authors flag towards the end of their career. Herbert’s legacy is that he pumped much-needed momentum and fresh blood into the horror genre, and during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s he was very much the face of, and the king of horror writing in England, and has left behind some cracking books; THE RATS and THE FOG in particular will be remembered with affection.

As my own small tribute to Herbert, I’ve a) written this article, and b) I’ll read another of his novels [he wrote 23], one I’ve not yet read, a Herbert classic.  

R.I.P. James Herbert.

ADDENDUM: It is now five days after Herberts death, and I am reading, and enjoying, his novel THE DARK, that has been sitting on my shelf for many years. A quick check of the Bestselling Horror charts, at Amazons’ Kindle Store [which is used for all the e-book bestseller charts you might see], and I see that all but one [THE JONAH] of Herberts books have shot into the Top 100, with 8 of them dominating the Top 10. Clearly, dying does your career no harm at all.

Sexy Crocodiles

CAUTION: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS IMAGES OF AN EX-EMMERDALE ACTRESS WITH NO CLOTHES ON. AND SOME CROCODILE SEX. SORT OF.

Another quick post. I have just hilariously noted from looking at my blog statistics that someone out there has googled the search term;

CROCODILE SEX SCENE

And, joy of wonderful joys, the clever magic interweb has brought them to my blog page. Now I hadn’t really thought of it before, but it’s true, if my blog lacks anything at all its almost certainly crocodile sex.

Now, this got me wondering. Was the googler searching for

A – scenes of human sex in a giant crocodile film.

B – scenes of crocodile sex in a giant crocodile film

C – Scenes of crocodile sex in just anything, really

D – Scenes of human/crocodile sex

Well, if it was C there are plenty of HOT XXX ADULT CROCODILES ONLY nature documentaries out there.

If it was crocodiles and humans having sex together in some strange way, that this person was looking for, then I’m sure there’s a fetish site out there somewhere. Forgive me if I don’t search for it myself, but I’ve just had my dinner. In any case, the idea is a fabulous one, with a heavily-pregnant crocodile giving birth to a croc with a human head, or possibly the other way around; they could make a film out of it. It could be called CROC-BOY or possibly just CROCK! And could premier on the Horror Channel. I could write it; I’m good at writing horse-shit, after all.

Anyway, if this googler person is looking for option A up there, then I have wrestled my brains to think of what he could be looking for. Now, understand that I enjoy Giant Crocodile films for their artistic value, the prowess in the make-up and prosthetic departments and the subtleties and subtexts of the story. And sometimes for the crocodiles [although I have seen one or two crocodile films that didn’t have any crocodiles in them!]. Never for the sex scenes. Well, not much anyway.

Which brings me to what lingers in my brain like a cold smelly minestrone soup; in the film BLOOD SURF [which I have on good old-fashioned video] I remember there being a memorable sex scene. It has a bloke and a young Eastern woman [not a crocodile] going for gold in a small rock-pool. The scenery is lovely, and the water nice and clear, and these two are clearly having a fun time, until I believe, the giant crocodile asks for a threesome and spoils it all. I remember this scene quite vividly, particularly ‘cos we watched it one day when my mum had popped round for her tea. Obviously, I’d forgotten about the sex bit, and thought it was a “Mam-Friendly” film to put on while we all ate our fish fingers [or whatever we ate]. The film is also known as KROCODYLUS or something like that, and actually, as giant crocodile films go, isn’t bad.

Anyway, if that google searcher revisits then hopefully that might help to answer his question.  I don’t remember any other particular sex scenes in crocodile films without googling it myself [which I’ll do later! {I won’t later “google myself”; that’s not what I meant at all.]}. I do however remember Roxanne Pallett, a young actress who used to be in Emmerdale in the UK for quite a while, who went to Hollywood to make it serious as an actress. She whipped off all her clothes for the camera and went for a swim in giant crocodile film LAKE PLACID 3, which, I suppose if you’re writing a PH.D on Sex In Giant Crocodile Films, you’ll probably need to take a look at.

Right. I,m going to go and find some pictures on the internet, which, magically, are already above. Int' technology brilliant!

Thanks For My Review!

Just a quick post here to shamelessly promote my writing, and mention my latest review, for my story Horse-Flesh, recently posted, for free, on Smashwords. I always enjoy reviews; one single review is better than two dozen downloads, as it tells me that at least someone has read it. This particular reviewer of my story appears to have gone to a certain length; checking out their Smashwords profile, it would seem that this person has created his account solely to kindly review my story. It is effort like that which makes me particularly encouraged as a writer. It is a very short review, and I will re-produce it here, in full. The reviewer awarded my story with one star and commented:

“This is more of a horse-shit story than the horse flesh story.”

Thanks for that one. Thanks for taking the time to join Smashwords, create an account, and leave your comments; I’ll treasure that. Right, I’m off to write some more horse-shit.

HORSE-FLESH --- Download it Today  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/287702

Windy Market Stalls Full Of Books

Richard Laymon was a Californian horror writer, who died early, at the age of only 54, on February 14th 2001. He was primarily a novelist and always in the horror genre; his books featured supernatural themes and vampires, mutant beasts etc, but most often Laymon's books were about human pyschopaths; oddballs, freaks, weirdos, generally people you don't want to sit next to on the bus. I began reading Laymon when I was 15. I found his book DARK MOUNTAIN on a windy market stall -  [I loved that market stall and went there eagerly every Saturday morning in the early/mid 90's. The bloke who had it was called Bob, and he had a big van, like a removal van, and the back of it was just filled with stuff, mainly books. He would spread out as much as he could on his stall or in boxes around it, but also kept the back of his van open sometimes; when I'd become a regular to his stall he would let me get in the back of the van and rummage around among the books; I remember, at its fullest, it was like exploring a mountain of books, the ground forever slipping, and books falling out of the back.

After I'd had a rummage and found an armful of books, I'd get out the van and have to spend about ten minutes picking up the books that had fallen out. Many-a-time I remember happily walking home with lots of books; I remember occasionally having two carrier bags full. They were mostly old paperbacks, of all different genres, but I was most interested then, as I am now, in the horror, fantasy and science-fiction titles, and his paperbacks were all around 20 p or 6 or 7 for a pound, very affordable for a not-very-rich teenage lad like me. Here, among hundreds of books, was where I discovered all the names of the genres; E.E. Doc Smith, Graham Masterton, Asimov, Heinlein, Moorcock, Guy N. Smith, Lin Carter, and carrier-bag loads of wonderful oscure 60's onwards titles; I found and devoured many anthologies, The Pan Books Of Horror Stories, Fontana Ghost Books, Lin Carters fantasy collectiions, and half a dozen books with weird covers, edited by a guy with a weird name called August Derleth, and featuring odd olf-fashioned stories by writers I'd never heard of; H.P.Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E Howard etc. -- Saturday afternoons were often spent looking over and through my books, and putting them in ever-changing order of when I would read them. Sometimes I even DID read some, on those Saturday afternoons, but mostly that came later. Then I was just happy to spread them out on the floor and examine the covers and the contents, my imagination squashed out all over my bedroom floor in bright lurid illustrations.

While I'm writing about Bob and his market stall, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to him, twenty years later, for stealing one of his books; even though they were really cheap, and he seemed to let me have them even cheaper ["Oh," he'd say after glancing at a pile of books I had selected, maybe 15 or so paperbacks, "just give us two pound for them ones."], I still stole one book from him, because, at about 13 or 14, I was too embarrased to buy it; it was CONFESSIONS OF AN ASTRONAUT, or somesuch title like that, and had a very risque cover, and hints of all sorts of strange sex happening inside the book. I don't remember exactly, but I must have hidden it in my pocket or up my jumper or something, paid for my other books, and then, away, I had done it, I was a thief. I'm pretty sure, now, that if he'd somehow caught me - if the offending "adult" book had fallen out of my jumper at an inopportune moment - he wouldn't have carted me off down the cop-shop, but just looked dissapointed at me [which would have been worse] and probably told me just to keep it anyway, "you little 'scallion.".

Anyway, I'm sorry I nicked that book Bob but young teens didn't have the internet then, and the sex-on-a-friday night Channel 4 programmes hadn't started yet. If it's any consolation to Bob, or to my three blog- readers, then I DID read that book, CONFESSIONS OF AN ASTRONAUT, and it was crap, a huge dissapointment, like buying a blow-up doll with a puncture, and - hang on, I'll consult my notes - yes, here we are - it was by a guy called Jonathan May, I read it in 1992 [no exact date unfortunately], I gave it 4 3/4 out of 10 [in my complex rating system], and gave it the one-word review "different", but I remember differently, and believe me, it was crap; in fact I think it was one of those books you read when you're young and think "I can write better than this crap." Also any sex scenes or whatever were pathetic, and there were much more explicit scenes of sex in the pulpy horror novels I had been reading, or would soon read. I think just 'cos there was a bum or boobs or something on the cover it was going to be life-changing. In fact, I'm going to try and find the cover now on tinterweb, hold on - there it is off to the side, looking embarrassingly not very embarrasing. I also found another, look, how much fun is this: I wonder how much Jonathan May made from writing all these awful books.

Confessions Of A Something-Or-Other

 Anyway, I don't know exactly what happened to the book but I don't have it now; I probably sold it to a second-hand book store like dozens of other books, some of which I wish I'd kept.

Incidentally [and I think we'll get back to Richard Laymon another time; I've gone off on a tangent] aren't my book-notes really cool: they go back to mid 1992, and list every book [yes, really] that I've read since then. It's often really interesting and amusing to read some of my comments on books I'd read; here are some choice picks [from 1992];

        TITLE          AUTHOR       SCORE [out of 10] ---- Original Comnment

     A DRAGON IN CLASS 4 - ---- - 4 3/4 ----- Childish     (It was a childrens book!)
     SPACE 1   ---- Varied Authors ---- 6  ------   Anthology   (Helpful comment, that one).
     JULIUS CEASER  ---- Shakespeare--- 4 ---- Hard To Understand  (Nothing changed there, then.)
     DIARY OF A TEENAGE HEALTH FREAK -- ... - 6.5 -- Ideal For Teenagers
     MOONFLEET -- J.Meade Faulkner --- 1.5 ----- Crap!    (Followed by, a few entries later,...)
     MOONFLEET --- J. Meade Faulkner ---5.25 ----- Actually Not Bad  (I had to read it properly for school.)


After that my comments began to get more mundane and a bit more sensible.


Anyway, all those books from the market stall; I loved them, and even though I got rid of quite a lot, I still have lots of them today on my shelf. Though its difficult to remember exactly which ones I got off that stall [my notes sometimes help a bit, or sometimes I have written a date of purchase in the book cover] I recognise some of them, and know that there are quite a few, perhaps a dozen or two, that I never got round to reading at all. Poor books. I really should get around to reading them, seeing as I've had some of them for over 20 years now. Proper book hoarder me...

Ok, well, this post was originally going to be about Richard Laymon, his works, his writing techniques, and his problems with publishing houses, as I've recently read his intriguing autobiography/writers notebook A WRITERS TALE. But that'll have to wait for another time now, cos I've used up my spare time writing this, instead of writing the ghost story I'm supposed to be writing. Oh well.