Nov
30

Friday Flash Fiction: Because

Ok. I’m angry. Really Angry. I wrote the blog and story that follows on Friday, I posted it, I saw it live. I come home tonight from a great night out with friends to discover not only do I have no traffic from it but the damn thing is no longer up.

Now I know I posted. I know because it appeared. Albeit briefly in my facebook feed. This is the second time in as many weeks things have gone awry on here. If there’s another I’ll have to move, I simply can’t have things not going live when I post them.

So on the off chance anyone will actually read this now it’s late, here it is:

My short story “The House” will be appearing in Aphelion online from the 2nd December, also appearing in the same issue will be a story by fellow Friday Flash Fictioneer Gareth Powell.

And so this week is a linked Friday Flash – not part of the story you understand but linked. To find out how go to Aphelion sometime in December. Enjoy:

Because
By Neil Beynon

I’ve never liked attics.

They’ve always been strange dusty places, an afterthought of space, tacked onto the top of houses. Like someone built the house and realised they had a bit left over.

You can convert them: lay floors, construct false walls, even place windows into the roof but they’re still not rooms. They’re attic rooms and loft rooms. You cannot escape their oddness: the walls at crazy diagonals, the lobotomized ceiling. Space just not intended to be used.

There’s a reason they put mad women there.

One of my memories from when I was young is of an attic door that wouldn’t quite sit right in its joint. It gave the perpetual sense of being slightly raised by some thing, some thing that wanted to remain hidden.

Dad always said my sub-conscious made it up. A way of explaining things.

Of course Mary wants one. A garden too. A nice little slice of suburbia to call our own. We can’t afford much. We’d have to move to a slightly rougher area.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Mary said. “Maybe something Victorian, maybe something we can restore. Maybe we’ll find some original features.”

Original features. I nearly choked.

I’ve never really understood the obsession with the old. I mean there’s a reason why people don’t build things that way anymore. They become obsolete for a reason. Cost, efficiency, ugliness, whatever. It’s evolution. Adapt or die.

Sooner or later it all comes back to this: if you keep looking over your shoulder eventually you’ll walk into a wall. If you’re lucky all you get is a bloody nose.

Mary didn’t understand when I said no. You understand don’t you? I can’t go back to somewhere like that.

I can hear her you see.

I wish you had known her more. I wish I had known her more. She was so pretty with long dark hair that fell past her shoulders in loose waves, ice blue eyes and a warm smile. They don’t make the perfume she wore anymore but occasionally I’ll walk past a woman who’s stockpiled some. I’ll turn expecting to see her.

She’s never there.

My last few memories of her are all mixed up with what I know now but I remember how she helped me. Helped us.

When I close my eyes, I can feel her hand in my hair. When I look in the mirror I can see her hovering over my shoulder. When I walk in the woods the rhythm of her footfall is behind me. And, I’d like to believe she’s at peace. I’d like to believe in a better place. I really would.

I don’t believe though. Not in that – you see when I hear her she isn’t speaking.

She’s screaming.

And so I really don’t have a choice, I can’t go back but I can go on. I do remember how. I know I said I didn’t but I do. You keep it and you keep it safe. If I fail then it’s down to you. Nothing is more important.

We can set her free.

I have a Glock 9mm; it’s glossy, obsidian black that I can see my face in the barrel. I’ve made changes to the bullets. You’ll know what to do if they don’t work. I’ve made arrangements.

Mary didn’t understand about the Glock either. She’s gone now. I don’t expect she’ll be back and maybe it’s for the best. She wouldn’t have understood even if I’d explained.

I still can’t believe it’s up for sale once more. It’s in a different street but it’s definitely the same one, right down to the scuffed door and the broken chess board tiles on the path.

Mary brought it home with the paper. The advert carried a picture: a small faded black and white image. An attic like addition, an afterthought to draw people in. I wonder if that’s how it happened before. I wonder if it’ll happen again.

My hand is shaking as I write this.

I’m scared. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m so terrified my throat is as dry as a bone, and my stomach can’t keep anything down. But I have to silence the screams.

Not because she once did it for me. Not because I owe her. Not because we owe her.

Because I’m her son. Because that’s enough. It always was.

******************

Did you like this? If so you can check out the rest of my Friday Flash entries for free here: http://neilbeynon.wordpress.com/friday-flash-fiction/

Nov
27

Beowulf

Beowulf poster

Normally I post reviews within a few hours of having seen the film but I waited in the case of Beowulf. Why?

I needed time to digest it, to consider what I thought and to wonder if I should in fact wait to see it in 3D before making a decision. I still plan to see it in 3D but I thought it would be an interesting idea to post my thoughts on the 2D version and then an update when I get to the IMAX.

Mainly I decided I couldn’t wait after reading a fairly lengthy tirade by Hal Duncan on his blog. Hal is a writer who has me periodically shaking my head in awe at his frenetically fuelled prose and in bewilderment at some of his more outspoken views. The review is one of the latter occasions.

And I just can’t agree. Well not completely.

Yes I’m a Gaiman fan. And yes it’s been a while since I read the original poem. But that will not mean this review is a white wash, oh no – wait and see.

However, even in my semi-comatose-post-work-state, I could work out what Gaiman and Avery had tried to do with the screenplay. That it did not amount to oversimplification, that it was indeed, dare I say it, bordering on clever. It wasn’t a film with nothing to say but had stuff on the nature of fame, the nature of heroism and even a fair thrust at how history is written by the winners.

The fact that the film wasn’t brilliant, and certainly wasn’t the break through I’d heard it described as, by amongst others Gaiman himself, was nothing to do with the screenplay.

Nor was it the fault of Glover who’s performance as Grendel was terrifying and brilliant all at the same time – yes it is his movements they use, thanks to the use of motion capture techniques.

No I fear the blame has to lie with Zemeckis. The film is not a success because of the use of motion capture. It simply isn’t a good enough technology to use; it may never be because of one fatal flaw. It fails to capture the interaction between actors – if indeed there was any – and so we are treated to great individual performances from Glover, Hopkins (although using his native Welsh accent was a baaad idea, much as I love my native burrrr), Jolie and even Ray.

But they never mesh, they never connect. And that’s the problem with mo-cap.

If you want to create a hyper real world – and it really is effective for this type of material – you need to use the actual actors, on screen, together. The reason Glover’s performance is so much better than the others is simple: he’s the only one who has grasped the need to communicate his performance via his body rather than his face.

Now if you want to use 3D animation you need animators. I don’t want to sound puritanical about this but in CGI it is animators who make performances come alive. Until motion capture can capture character interaction accurately this will always be the case, and I suspect it will remain so even after that point because it’s such an alien medium. You can never just act like the real world. Movement has to be turned down a notch in some cases and turned up in others.

I’ll get off my geeky high horse in just a moment. The last criticism I have of the cgi is weight, the characters lack it and so the violence of much of the film loses its effect as characters are flung through the air. Who cares? They don’t weigh anything. They aren’t real. Indeed the only scene where a character seems to have real weight is near the end when Beowulf is hanging from the dragon. Even then it’s touch and go.

So what did I think?

I want to see it in 3D.

In 3D I’m fairly sure I won’t notice the deficiencies and that I’ll have the wow reaction I was kind of expecting. As a 2D effort I’m afraid the direction lets it down and the performances, well I’ve harped on it enough.

As a 2D offering it’s…well…flat.

Nov
25

Off again.

There hasn’t been much in the way of bloggage over the last week as the bathroom kind of took over.

Constant readers will recall that we had some fairly major house issues over the last few months and last weekend was Fix The Bathroom Weekend, it rapidly turned into Fix The Bathroom Week. It is now looking like Fix The Bathroom Month.

Let’s see, what else have I been up to?

A valiant if foolish attempt to recover my NaNoWriMo wordcount, I’m not going to finish by Friday but finish I will. I saw Beowulf, albeit in 2d – a review will be posted later in the week. And I had a story accepted – more on that in a week or so.

This week sees me jetting off again. This time for a work gig – should be fun although not anything like as warm as Washington. Looking at the schedule I’m not sure whether I’ll have much time to blog, but after last week’s debacle I’ve prepared some content for the next few days, including all the regular features.

Feel free to drop by, comment, whatever – I’ll be popping in when life allows.

Packing beckons…

Nov
23

Friday Flash Fiction: Elevator

As has become painfully clear to constant readers of this blog, and as exemplified by the woeful lack of a “Columbo Villian of the Week” on Wednesday, life has gotten on top of me. And so this week I find myself – for the first time since I started – running a little dry on ideas for Friday Flash Fiction.

So that’s it. Well not quite.

My pride will not let me lie down. Crap though the results may be. And so, with a big conspiratorial wink, this week I present the Elevator Entry:

Elevator Friday Flash Fiction
By Neil Beynon

Her shadow was long on the ground when she reached the snow kissed bank. The amber sun low on the horizon looked like it was falling off the edge of the world. The faint miasma from the near by processing plant the only blemish on the otherwise crisp November sky.

She fell through her memory to the last time she had stood there gazing over at the other side of the river. Hakon had been there then. They’d driven to the river in his gleaming Audi and eaten fast food from the pier as the rain had poured down on the roof of the car. She’d dropped a bit of a pickle from her burger onto the leather seats. He’d not been impressed.

That had been a year ago. An anniversary of sorts. Of course he wasn’t there anymore. Hakon’s folly, one of his many, had been to drive too fast. He’d driven right off the edge of the near by cliffs as he tried to take a corner at twice the recommended speed.

The body had been in quite a mess when she’d seen it, when she’d identified it. The silly bastard had still been wearing that ridiculous “Life is a wheel” t-shirt, turned out it was right: when Hakon’s wheels had left the road he’d lost his life as well as his car.

The thought made her smile, a bitter sweet raising of the corner of her mouth that did not reach above her cheeks.

“A penny for them dear Sarah,” said a voice behind her.She jumped.

“Easy tiger,” said the new arrival resting his hands on her hips. Warm, calloused hands that made her tingle even through her clothes. “How you doing?”

“Alright, I didn’t think you’d know where to find me?” she said.

“I told you once before: I remember everything,” he smiled.

“A cliché,” she sniffed.

“You still feel guilty about it?”
She nodded. “Sometimes I feel so bad I can’t breath. Like I have the bends or something.”
“When we were being bad, messing round…”
“When I was bad,” she corrected. “You were single.”
“Whatever,” he replied. “It wasn’t like he was the perfect gentleman, else I wouldn’t have been able to land you.”
“I’m not a fish and I wasn’t the perfect lady either.”

He grinned lopsidedly at her. “No you were The Lady – or at least his and he didn’t look after you, so he lost you.”
“It was just such a horrible way for him to find out,” she said.

Her blackberry beeped and she sighed.
“You still getting them?” he asked.
“Yes – SCL69 is determined to let me know how much they know, how much trouble I’m in.”
“There’s nothing to know, we did nothing. He always drove to quickly.”

“Do you really believe that?” she asked, turning to look at him as she did so. “Because I don’t. I see his face everywhere: in the mirror, in shop windows, in the reflection of car bonnets. A ghost in the glass, staring back at me, accusing me. That kicked dog expression on his face.

The Blackberry rang.

“You have a caller,” he said nodding at the device. He stepped away, picking some stones to skim whilst she answered the call.

“ Hello Sarah.”
“Hullo – who is this?”
“Tell me Sarah, has it all started to go wrong yet?”
“What?”
“Has your life started to slide away in chunks like wet cake? I know it will.”

She threw the blackberry into the river.

“Fuck!!!!”

“That’ll be expensive.”

“They’ve managed to get my phone number,” she said flatly.
“It’s just a joke,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Look I’m going to go home,” she said. “You coming?”

“No – I’m going to stay here for a bit.” He watched her drive off from the car park before returning to skimming his stones. When the car was out of hearing he took the knife out of his pocket, it still smelt of brake fluid, and threw it in the river.

Then whistling he went over the stepping stones to the other side. It would be an eventful Christmas, the light from the setting sun bounced of the surface of the river in a rainbow cascade. Eventful indeed, he could feel it in the water.

*********

Alternatively Futurismic has a round up of Friday Free Fiction (including some proper Friday Flash from the fellow fictioneers).

Nov
20

Kindling a debate

Kindle

Amazon have released the Kindle reigniting the debate over the future of the book pulling in comments from many people such as John Scalzi over at Whatever and Paul Raven over at Velcro City. Meanwhile Neil Gaiman‘s got in on the action, you can check out his thoughts here.

Neil makes a pretty compelling argument for the Kindle’s place in the world (for people who are mobile, people in remote locations and people who need to carry lots of books around). I remain more of a skeptic, not so much about the principle as someone is going to do it sooner or later, no my doubts are more about this device and the business model.

Sure mass storage is a great boon, I travel more these days myself and I could do without that moment of panic as to whether that fourth book is going to put me over the baggage allowance, yet it is the issue of battery life that really gets me.

I’m absent minded and busy. Between my job, my writing and trying to renovate my house I forget to charge my phone, my ipod (now a new ipod touch – yay!) and various other gadgets on a regular basis. I do not want to run out of power just as Poirot is explaining who did it or King is pulling the monster out of the closet. My paperback does not require charging, is already portable and barring fire or flood pretty durable. In short I need a bit more than “you can carry more” – I’m pretty skilled in secreting paperbacks all over my personage.

So this is my question: Why can’t they produce one with a solar powered battery? Because that coupled with mass storage and a screen as readable as a book…well that would be a break through device. That would take publishing properly digital.

The other slight bone of contention is the pricing model, it doesn’t seem to have been thought out and raises all sorts of issues such as “how much goes to the author?”, “why would someone pay for newspaper subs when you can access it online for free?”, “is there even a role for the publisher?” and my personal favourite “I don’t want to buy from Amazon as I’m worried about independent booksellers”. This is a second order problem but it won’t go away.

Of course the fact that I will almost certainly run out and buy one as soon as it’s available in the UK is neither here nor there. That’s a post for a different day – possibly entitled OCD and how to live with it or Gadgets: An addiction or a choice?

Nov
16

Friday Flash Fiction: Amber

Hmmm. Not sure on this one. Let me know.

Amber
By Neil Beynon

She gazed glassily at him through eyes that did not blink as if she were watching him watching her. Mouth pursed. He knew the expression, he doubted anyone else would.

Her words echoed in his head.

“It’s over,” she said.

“It’s not you it’s me”, should have been the next line only it wasn’t. She continued: “I just don’t feel the same way you do. You scare me.”

She had nothing to fear from him. All he wanted was to preserve what they’d had. To keep things the same.

He’d tried to argue but she’d just rested her hand gently on his upper arm.

“I’m not the person you want me to be,” she’d said, her tone thick. Her hand felt hot and dry. Pity had always come to mind as a cold feeling but the notion vanished in that moment – the desert sands of her’s erasing it for all time.

Then he pleaded.

Then she told him to fuck off.

Then he pushed her.

A little thing. Not a punch or a kick but a gentle shove to let her know he was serious. The thing about little things is they’re so hard to take back.

He walked round her for the umpteenth time, circling her like you might a museum piece. The strip lights of the lab buzzed and fizzed in the background.

Intellectually he knew she no longer existed. The forces at the centre of a singularity too great for anything to survive, the black hole’s dark heart more powerful than a star let alone human flesh. It had not been intentional but there she was. Caught in black amber for all time. There was something comforting about having her around forever, unchanged and unmoving.

She’d never get old, or rot, or decay and the accident might upset a few people but the importance of the work would ensure the singularity itself was preserved. The first bred in captivity.

Of course he’d need to explain what happened. It shouldn’t be too hard. There really was no way to tell, she looked as if she’d fallen, faintly surprised. There was no one who’d really be able to read that expression. No one other than him.

Her fear faintly edged on her lips.

It was better this way.

****************

Like this week’s Friday Flash? For more of my entries and links to other participants go here http://neilbeynon.wordpress.com/friday-flash-fiction/

Nov
16

Night Hawk

I’m back in the land of Black Cabs, Builder’s Tea and the Fine Art of Chav.

Shark Net

Our last day in Hong Kong was funny mish mash of stuff. We had a really cool gentle walk along the beach as well as a paddle in the ocean and I got far too excited about the real life shark net, designed to keep out real Great White Sharks. Of course even I could spot that a real White Shark could jump the net with ease, or that the water had a distinct absence of seals (the preferred meal) but there was a sign so it must be true.

Hong Kong airport was a breath of fresh air by comparison to well pretty much any other airport in the world, they had me at free broadband but the best steak I’ve had outside of Paris sealed the deal. The flight itself was not as good as I’d hoped; Virgin were OK but nowhere near the standards they reached in the 90s. Still it was cool flying with the night half way across the world.

I’ll be posting my Friday Flash Fiction in a few hours so keep your eyes peeled for that and tomorrow I install a bathroom (all be it under close supervision of a far more skilled individual than I). No doubt jet lag will have kicked in by then resulting in me grouting myself to the wall or plumbing myself into the sink.

Now: back to scribbling tall tales!

Nov
15

On The Peak

The Peak Sunset

So it’s my last day in Hong Kong.

We didn’t in the end get to see the Buddha, we were both completely wiped out on Tuesday opting instead to flump around the hotel and small beach. Resolving with some determination to make the most of yesterday.

Having gorged ourselves in the breakfast buffet we rolled onto the bus into Kowloon then got the Star Ferry across to Hong Kong Island. The first part of the day consisted of the inevitable rush of shopping before a brief rest-bite in a coffee shop, I also wrote the first two thirds of a short story in my notebook – G was in another shop at that point.

Then we began our ascent. The Peak is the highest point on Hong Kong island and we’d been assured by many people that this was a must have experience, offering breathtaking views of the whole of Hong Kong. We decided to time it for sunset and so in the late afternoon we made our way up the winding walk from Connaught Road past St John’s Cathedral to the Peak Tram.

The tram is off the main road and reached via a private station that has a small number of historically interesting artifacts from the tram’s history including authentic period costumes.

A glitzy video runs on a loop in the waiting room showing the ever insane Jackie Chan travelling up to the Peak complex (called the Sky Tower). He doesn’t travel inside the tram but on the roof, just how mad this is will become apparent shortly. There is also footage of the Mad One swinging from a rope off the edge of the Sky Tower viewing platform, central Hong Kong spread out like a neon circuit board beneath him.

I think he may have fallen on his head one too many times.

The tram journey was incredible. This rickety old wooden tram pulls its way up a slope that is at an angle approaching forty five degrees leaving you with the same sense of impending doom as a rollercoaster’s initial climb. The high rises of the mid levels reach up from the slope at the correct vertical angle but because of the tilt of the tram they look like they are shooting out at diagonals.

Once you clear the mid levels the whole of central Hong Kong and Victoria Harbour spring into view, neck strain is pretty much inevitable as you crane round to look at the amazing view trying not to notice the intense pressure of gravity pushing you back in your seat.

The tram rolls into the Sky Tower in about ten minutes, it really is quite quick and then you find youself doing a slight double take at how modern the complex is by comparison to the tram. Like many things in Hong Kong it is a fusion of new and old, east and west.

A series of escalators lets you onto the top of the Sky Tower, a wide viewing platform with panoramas of the surrounding landscape including Hong Kong, Kowloon, Victoria Harbour and Aberdeen. We arrived just at sunset: breathtaking doesn’t cover it. It made my holiday. The picture at the top of this post, taken on my camera phone, doesn’t really do it justice but hopefully it gives you an idea what it was like. In the last moments the sun disappears into the hazy mist lining the horizon as if the ocean was swallowing the lozenge like star.

As night fell the view changed. The city that during daytime hours can resemble a series of blocks arranged and painted to look like a child’s toy set changes, the concrete fades along with the grey, all becomes glass and light. It looks a little like this:

Hong Kong Night

Then we ate many, many noodles and drank green tea before sloshing back to the bottom. It was great.

Now I’m going to paddle with sharks before we have to go back to the airport.

Nov
12

Mega Monday

Megabox

Today we shopped. Well no not really, today we looked at shops. Many, many shops. My feet have stopped speaking to me, a good thing, as they would probably just say “Ow” very loudly. Basically Hong Kong can, in many respects, be thought of as a giant shopping mall, an island paradise to the worshipers of plastic, and a designer disciple’s delight. Ok I’ll stop now.

We took the MTR into East Kowloon where Hong Kong’s newest super mall had opened called Mega Box, a great big red…well box. A 16-storey complex with just about every store imaginable, an ice rink, a cinema and enough food outlets to keep the US Army supplied globally. It was a bizarre mix of east and west, fusion is not just a cuisine here but a state of mind.

For me the real highlight was the bookstore – what can I say I’m an addict and I admit it. Everything here is sized according to the average stature of the indigenous population, for G and I – who usually feel like hobbits where ever we are in the world – this is great: everything is sized perfectly. Even the books. That’s right the books are smaller, not much but enough that you’d notice.

The MTR was a lesson in cost effective efficiency. A return came to a pound, the train clean, air conditioned and spacious. London you suck at transport. Hong Kong you rule.

Right now I’m going to dive back into NaNoWriMo before I completely conk out, tomorrow I go to see a large Buddha sitting on a hillside. Although to be frank if G really wants to see a fat man sat on a hill I can just walk half way up the nearest mountain and she can take a picture.

Until tomorrow – Byeeeee!

Nov
11

Fusion Sunday

We’ve moved hotels now. For the first few days we were in a hotel in Kowloon but now we’re on Tsing Ye Island on the Gold Coast, it’s quieter but more tourist in nature. The hotel overlooks the sea and a pair of golden dolphins – the fine art of chav not having overlooked the region it seems.

Food here is a strange mix of just about everything in a style all of its own that is called fusion. For example for breakfast there was pretty much everything on offer from cooked to cereal to fruit to rice to curry to Miso soup. There was even turnip cake.

Yesterday was a bit of a mish mash of exploring as we waited to transfer between hotels. We explored along Nathan Road and Canton Road as we looked for a tailor for G’s mum, there was a throbbing, seething mass of people lining the streets looking for the latest bargains in the plethora of designer shops.

The transfer itself was a bit arduous as the hotel room was not ready when we arrived and by this point G was very tired. The working week is a lot longer in Hong Kong, they only take Sunday’s off and socializing for work goes on late into the evening. Yesterday was the first day G had to herself for over a week and so she was pretty much wiped out.

Once we got to the room we just chilled out with both of us falling asleep ridiculously early. Today is a rest day before hitting the sights tomorrow but we ventured down to the local shopping centre to do a bit of orientating to the area – then back to the hotel to chill out in the various facilities.

There have been no more signs of holy men.

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