Talus is coming

My new novel Talus and the Frozen King will be published by Solaris Books in April 2014. Long time to wait, huh? Yes and no. There’s plenty of work to do between now and then so I’m sure the time will just fly by. It’s the kind of grunty publishing toil that normally goes on behind the scenes, but for those of you interested in the process I’ll be posting the occasional update here on the blog as we go along. I may also offer up a few teasers about the novel itself … spoiler-free, of course!

Currently the second draft of Talus is with Solaris. Contracts are signed and a press release has been issued. The next step is editing the manuscript. I’m convinced editing is a quantum process since it permits you to hold two opposing views simultaneously, namely: ‘Holy cow, I can’t wait to see this work of dazzling genius hit the bestseller lists!’ and: ‘Holy crap, this stinks worse than week-old farts.’ Editing is a sweaty business that requires faith, fortitude and the enthusiastic downing of strong coffee and red wine (rarely at the same time) and I can’t wait to get stuck in.

By the way, the image shown here isn’t the book cover, just a quick sketch I did to accompany this post. The actual cover is still some way off. Given the general awesomeness of the recent Solaris cover designs, that’s something else I can’t wait see.

As for the novel itself … well, I guess the elevator pitch would be: a murder mystery set in ancient times. Emphasis on ancient. I’m reluctant to use the word ‘prehistoric’ because, believe me, The Flintstones this ain’t. But we are talking about the dawn of man, a time before metal was first forged and long before our distant ancestors started scribing the first written words into sandstone. We’re talking about a time when man and myth were intimately connected, when the spirit world was considered to be as real as this physical realm and when, if you wanted a detective, you couldn’t just look one up on the internet.

Hell, back then there were no detectives.

Until Talus came.

I’ve already mentioned Talus a few times on this blog, under its original working title of The Frozen King. If you want to unpick the early progress I made on the manuscript, here’s a list of all the posts where it gets a passing mention:

• Early drafts

Revisiting Cinefex (36): Dead Ringers, Alien Nation, Die Hard, The Blob

Jeremy Irons playing dead might seem an odd choice of picture for the front cover of a visual effects journal. All becomes clear when you realise this is a still from David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, a film that both advanced the craft of split-screen ‘twinning’ and allowed its director to indulge his fascination with ‘body-horror’ makeup effects. The back cover features one of the ‘Newcomer’ aliens from Graham Baker’s 1988 sci-fi/cop/buddy mashup Alien Nation. That’s both covers used up and still we’ve got two movies to go: John McTiernan’s classic action hit Die Hard and Chuck Russell’s forgotten B-movie reboot The Blob. That’s a lot to get through in just 68 pages. We’d better get started.

• A Planetful of Aliens (article by Ron Magid)
• Exaggerated Reality (article by Adam Eisenberg)
• Double Vision (article by Don Shay)
• The Right Blob for the Right Job (article by Robert G Pielke)

‘Be careful what you wish for.’ So the saying goes, and it pretty much sums up the trials of the prosthetics crew on mammoth makeup movie Alien Nation. The task of creating not just one or two alien creatures but an entire race fell on Alec Gillis, Shane Mahan, John Rosengrant and Tom Woodruff, working as a team under the Stan Winston Studios banner.

Magid’s article tracks the development of the alien designs from day one to final wrap. ‘The earlier designs tended to be more outrageous,’ says Gillis, with Mahan explaining that in the end director Graham Baker opted for a more subtle approach ‘in order to allow the character of the actor to be read through the rubber pieces.’

This decision caused headaches for Zoltan Elek, the man responsible for applying the makeups to the actors. Originally a champion of the ‘less is more’ approach, Elek found it hard to apply prosthetics so thin and smooth that ‘I could not afford to make any mistakes along the blending edge … It was a tough job.’

Makeup fans will rejoice as Gillis and the Winston team bring us step-by-step descriptions of their various life-casting and mould-making techniques. As well as revealing the magic ingredient they used to create a stubble effect on the aliens’ heads, they also bewail the difficulty of designing a body suit for an alien striptease scene and the challenge of securing the cooperation of an actor who ‘almost broke his contract because he insisted no on had informed him that his entire head would be covered by the makeup.’

But what comes through time and again is the sheer volume of work demanded by the show: some ninety sets of appliances were required for lead actor Mandy Patinkin alone, with each appliance requiring ‘at least seventy individual molds.’ Add to that the hundreds of background masks created for the film’s crowd scenes and you start to appreciate the slightly stunned tone of the team’s closing comments.

‘We figured that going from … the alien queen in Aliens to these straight prosthetic makeups would be simple,’ says Mahan, ‘but it was really a lot of work.’ And while the crew clearly got great satisfaction from working on a show comparable – in makeup terms at least – with the groundbreaking Planet of the Apes, Gillis has to admit it ‘was a huge logistical challenge.’

In Adam Eisenberg’s short-but-sweet article on Die Hard, visual effects supervisor Richard Edlund describes the ways in which he and his team at Boss Film Corporation helped achieve director John McTiernan’s vision of ‘exaggerated reality’, which dictated that in this film ‘the effects could not look like effects at all.’

Star Trek Into Darkness

Sense of wonder. That’s what these big, daft summer movies are supposed to be about. In recent years, it’s been sadly lacking. Movies have been getting too frantic, directors too afraid to let their cameras linger on something beautiful, for fear the audience will get bored.

In 2009, JJ Abrams did a great job of reversing that trend with the meticulously crafted Star Trek. Now he’s delivered a sequel. So is the sense of wonder still there? Let’s find out.

First the good news. Under Abrams’s confident direction, Star Trek Into Darkness is a rousing movie that contains pretty much everything you could want from a summer blockbuster: strong story, solid cast, spectacular action. The familiar characters of Kirk, Spock and McCoy – played by Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban respectively – bounce off each other to great effect. Watching the movie, there’s a real sense that this is the Star Trek you enjoyed when you were a kid.

Nowhere was this feeling stronger than in the film’s opening sequence, in which our heroes are trying simultaneously to escape from a tribe of bloodthirsty alien primitives, extinguish an active volcano and lift off the Enterprise from its underwater hiding place. It’s such a joyful, audacious sequence that it’s no surprise the movie takes a little while to find its feet once it’s over.

Once it gets going, Star Trek Into Darkness romps along at a decent lick. Abrams is a great storyteller, equally comfortable with intimate character moments and action set-pieces. His direction is so effective that it mostly makes up for the weaknesses in the narrative – yes, I know I said the story was strong, but sadly the script creaks in too many places for it to be truly satisfying.

Take the ease with which Kirk is despatched to the Klingon homeworld with his payload of super-torpedoes (super-torpedoes – really?). I know the set-up’s meant to be hokey, but the trouble is it feels hokey, so when the big revelation comes later it’s neither a real surprise nor – if you think it through – terribly plausible.

Then there are the big action scenes. Great as they are, strip away Abrams’s assured direction and some of the best visuals you’ll see this side of the Neutral Zone, on paper they’re just a little ho-hum. The high-speed transfer between the Enterprise and the Vengeance is a rehash of the space dive from the last Star Trek outing and the final showdown between Zachary Quinto and villain Benedict Cumberbatch, while flawlessly executed, is still just a fist-fight on a moving vehicle.

Cumberbatch, by the way, is one of the three outstanding things about this movie. Good as the rest of the cast are, he acts the pants off them all. As a Brit, I’ve been enjoying his TV performances for a good few years now so it’s great to see him up on the big screen. Unfortunately, there’s just not enough of him. When you’ve got an actor as capable as this playing a villain as interesting as … as the one he plays in this movie … it’s a crime not to give him all the screen-time he deserves.

The second outstanding thing about Star Trek Into Darkness is the visual effects, delivered primarily by Industrial Light & Magic. ILM have got really very, very good at throwing enormous starships around with weight, grandeur and sheer chutzpah. They’re also very good at water. In this movie they put the two together to stunning effect. In partnership with the third outstanding thing (director Abrams) they’ve delivered what I’ve been craving for a good many years now: a whole bunch of beauty shots.

Star Trek Into Darkness is fundamentally a thing of beauty. Whether it’s the USS Enterprise rising majestically from an alien ocean or the USS Vengeance on a collision course with San Francisco bay, there are dozens of shots that genuinely take your breath away. That’s why I’m prepared to forgive the movie its fundamental silliness and casual sexism. It’s why I’m happy to forget its undeveloped villain and remember the moments of genuine emotion between its heroes.

It’s why I’m pleased to say that the cinematic sense of wonder is well and truly back.

Book deal news

I’m thrilled to announce I’ve just signed up with Solaris Books, leading UK publisher of science fiction, fantasy and horror fiction, to publish my new novel Talus and the Frozen King. The deal was agented by Dot Lumley of the Dorian Literary Agency.

What’s that? You want to know what the novel’s about? Oh, if you insist:

A dead warrior king frozen in winter ice. Six grieving sons, each with his own reason to kill. Two weary travellers caught up in a web of suspicion and deceit.

In a distant time long before our own, wandering bard Talus and his companion Bran journey to the island realm of Creyak, where the king has been murdered. From clues scattered among the island’s mysterious barrows and stone circles, they begin their search for his killer. But do the answers lie in this world or the next?

Nobody is above suspicion, from the king’s heir to the tribal shaman, from the servant woman steeped in herb-lore to the visiting warlord whose unexpected arrival throws the whole tribe into confusion. And when death strikes again, Talus and Bran realise nothing is what it seems.

Creyak is place of secrets and spirits, mystery and myth. It will take a clever man indeed to unravel the truth. The kind of man this ancient world has not seen before.

Meet Talus – the world’s first detective.

That’s all for now. Rest assured I’ll be blogging about the book some more as we head towards publication in the spring of 2014. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with some kind words from Solaris head honcho, Jon Oliver:

Graham’s novel is a murder mystery like no other. A richly evoked past draws you into this unusual thriller and the characters of Talus and Bran have to be one of the most entertaining crime-fighting duos ever. A startlingly innovative book and a corking good read!

• Solaris Books

Ngahlulele Junction

I have no clue where story ideas come from. Maybe it’s science – something to do with misfiring neurons or mangled memories or eating too much spicy food. The truth is, I don’t really care. Creative writing is mostly about slog and self-doubt; there’s little time to philosophise. The ideas come and the ideas go, like animals migrating across the African plain. If I can separate just one from the herd, I reckon I’m doing well.

Just occasionally, I’ll experience one of those precious moments of epiphany, when the herd scatters to leave a single prime specimen staring me right in the eye. Think god rays beaming down from the heavens and all the hairs standing up on the back of your neck. It really does happen, you know.

It happened to me yesterday while I was taking my lunchtime walk (ideas often arrive when I’m walking or driving and that’s probably science too).  Three things in my head suddenly collided and the god rays came down. If there hadn’t been people around, I’d have cried.

The first of those three things was a childhood memory. As a kid, I was an enthusiastic modelmaker. At one time my bedroom was home to over a hundred plastic construction kits: fighter planes, galleons, tanks, you name it. But my pride and joy was a model railway. I had little interest in the trains themselves, just spent hours building a tiny world to sit them in. I’ve jotted the words ‘model railway’ in various notebooks over the years, knowing that one day I’d write about that meticulous miniature world but never knowing how or why. Now I’ve worked it out.

The second thing was the realisation that my children have become adults. If, like me, you’re a parent suddenly discovering the nest is a lot emptier than it used to be, you might recognise the complex broth of emotion that accompanies this revelation. The closest I can get to describing it today is sweet pride salted with grief; that’s nowhere near good enough but it’ll do for now.

The third and final component was a traditional Zulu song I first heard at a Soweto Gospel Choir concert. It’s called Ngahlulele. Music frequently informs the words I put down, although I prefer to do the actual writing in silence. Turns out this song is the soundtrack for the end of my story.

As clearly as I see these separate components, I’m still none the wiser as to why they chose that moment to collide in my head, nor why the collision generated the story idea it did. In reading the above, you’ll most likely be puzzled or confused. I’d like to think you’re intrigued. No matter. The important thing now is writing the story down. And that’s the really, really hard part. Unwritten stories are china shops and, like most writers, I’m a bull.

If I do manage to get the words down without breaking them, I’ll let you know. And if I screw things up? Well, in that case you’ll probably never hear again about a story with the improbable working title of Ngahlulele Junction.

HENRi

Right from the opening voiceover I could tell that Eli Sasich – writer/director of the 20-minute indie science fiction film HENRi – grew up reading the same books as me. Anyone who talks about positronics and names his female lead Dr Calvin clearly knows his Asimov, and who else but a devotee of Philip K Dick would tackle a storyline in which a robot questions what it means to be human?

HENRi tells the story of a lonely soul trapped inside a disembodied human brain that’s being used to run the control systems of a spacecraft. Through the course of the film, HENRi – whose name is an acronym standing for Hybrid Electronic/Neuron Responsive Intelligence – gradually evolves into an autonomous being. Meanwhile, lost memories of HENRi’s forgotten former life are beginning to resurface, challenging this curious entity to make sense of what – or who – he truly is.

It’s a simple, affecting tale told eloquently through the use of a remarkably expressive animated robot and some stunning miniature sets. The film has a majesty that belies its miniscule budget, thanks to Sasich’s uncompromising vision, some top-drawer cinematography from Tim Angulo, a rich score by Kevin Riepl and solid voice and cameo performances from Keir Dullea and Margot Kidder.

According to the ‘making of’ documentary that accompanies the movie, 90% of the robot scenes were achieved by integrating a CG character into the practical model sets, with a minority of shots being nailed by using a quarter-scale rod puppet. It was Sasich’s original intention to make the whole movie using the puppet, but disappointing results prompted the switch to CG. It’s to Sasich’s credit that he bit the bullet and did what was needed to make the movie succeed. And succeed it does, with its robot lead delivering a genuinely moving performance.

HENRi is just one of many independent creative projects funded through the Kickstarter website. As a sci-fi short placing heavy emphasis on traditional, practical techniques, it’s in good company, having much in common with Phil Tippett’s Mad God and the recently launched Harbinger Down, a creature feature from ADI’s Alec Gillis.

Projects like these are important for the skills base of the movie industry. While I don’t personally buy the argument that practical effects are better than CG (please, let’s respect all the tools in the box, guys) I think it’s important that such undertakings are supported and funded, because they may be the only way to ensure that the old techniques survive.

Maybe some of the current detractors of CG could take a leaf out of Eli Sasich’s book. With HENRi, Sasich has demonstrated integrity with his original desire to create a film with a traditional look and feel, yet shown enough smarts to embrace digital solutions when it was clear his vision demanded it. The result? A fine short film that promises even finer things to come. I’m looking forward to seeing where Sasich’s journey takes him next.

• Download the movie from the official HENRi website
• Kickstarter
• Mad God
• Harbinger Down

Urban Mythic – Table of Contents

Just a quick post to unveil the complete list of contributors to the upcoming Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic. The list includes, uh, me …

James Brogden – The Smith of Hockley
Joyce Chng – Dragonform Witch
Zen Cho – Fish Bowl
Graham Edwards – A Night to Forget
Jaine Fenn – Not the Territory
Christopher Golden – Under Cover of Night
Kate Griffin – An Inspector Calls
Alison Littlewood – The Song of the City
Anne Nicholls – The Seeds of a Pomegranate
Jonathan Oliver – White Horse
Mike Resnick – The Wizard of West 34th Street
Gaie Sebold – Underground
Adrian Tchaikovsky – Family Business
Ian Whates – Default Reactions

… as posted by editor Jenny Barber on her blog.

Ray Harryhausen 1920-2013

I was sad to hear that legendary filmmaker Ray Harryhausen died yesterday at the age of 92. I say filmmaker because, although most people think of him as a master of animation (which he undoubtedly was), Harryhausen’s hands-on approach to almost every aspect of his craft puts him firmly in the ranks of cinema’s auteurs.

When I was a kid, nothing was more likely to keep me glued to the television than a Ray Harryhausen movie. I waited with bated breath for those characteristic wide shots where the grain of the film jumped up just enough to tell you the monsters were about to make their entrance. And what monsters! Dinosaurs, a gigantic bronze statue, a squad of sword-fighting skeletons! What treats for an impressionable young mind. And what great memories.

But here’s the thing: they weren’t just monsters. They were characters. A huge part of Harryhausen’s skill lay in his ability to imbue even the most fantastic creatures with real personality. The word animate derives from the Latin word animus, meaning spirit. Animation is about more than just blessing something with movement. It’s about filling it with life.

What’s more, in breathing life into his puppets, Ray Harryhausen also energised an entire generation of filmmakers. Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Peter Jackson – among many, many others – have all expressed their debts of gratitude to Harryhausen and his work. George Lucas has said that ‘without Ray Harryhausen there would likely be no Star Wars.’  The online community is awash with tributes, but the one that’s stuck in my mind comes from actor Patton Oswalt:

If I believed in God, I’d want him to be like Ray Harryhausen – nudging us one frame at a time toward the sublime & fantastic.

• Official Ray Harryhausen website
• The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation

Revisiting Cinefex (35): Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Willow

Cinefex #35 contains behind-the-scenes stories on two big films of the late 80s, although both front and back covers feature just one: Robert Zemeckis’s milestone marriage of live-action and animation, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? While the front is dominated by Roger himself – looking as manic as ever – the back is reserved for his curvaceous spouse, Jessica, a cartoon drawing responsible for triggering impure thoughts in around 90% of the men in the average theatre audience. The second movie under discussion is Ron Howard’s 1988 fantasy Willow, notable from a visual effects standpoint for its innovative use of computer morphing for a magical character transformation scene. Two films. 68 pages. Let’s go!

• Romancing the Rabbit (article by Adam Eisenberg)
• Willow (article by Jody Duncan Shannon)

The 1980s was the decade when traditional (by which I mean optical and mechanical) visual and special effects were being pushed to the limit. Techniques don’t get much more traditional than hand-drawn cel animation, so it was inevitable that sooner or later one of the new breed of young ambitious filmmakers would drag the well-worn concept of combining animated characters with live action into the modern age. The filmmaker in question was Robert Zemeckis, riding high on the success of Back to the Future. The film was Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Making Roger Rabbit – in which one of the lead actors is a hyperactive cartoon rabbit – was an extraordinarily complex business. Luckily we have Adam Eisenberg on hand to make sense of the madness. His behind-the-scenes article is a winner on every level as it takes the production completely apart, with detailed insights into preproduction, the gag-filled live-action shoot, the animation itself, a second ‘Toontown’ shoot with actor Bob Hoskins working his guts out on a bluescreen stage and finally the painstaking optical work needed to bring everything together.

The man in charge of Roger Rabbit‘s animated content was Richard Williams, most well-known at that point for his Casino Royale and Pink Panther title sequences. Initially sceptical of the project, he was tempted when he discovered he and Zemeckis were on the same page: ‘We both agreed that the key to doing this movie was interaction.’ Williams was finally won over when Zemeckis proved how clever the storyline was by acting out the entire first shot of the movie for him. Now that’s a deleted scene I’d love to see.

A proof-of-concept test scene, filmed at ILM and animated by Williams, set the seal on the project – and prompted executive producer Steven Spielberg to comment that he’d ‘only seen film history twice in his life. The first time was … Star Wars – and now [I've] seen it again with this rabbit.’

Your free writer’s monologue

Suffering from writer’s block? Fed up of that nagging internal monologue that distracts you from the process of writing? Fear not! I’ve created the Writer’s Monologue®, a patent-pending system guaranteed to keep your fingers on the keyboard and your mind on the job.

To use the Writer’s Monologue®, simply record yourself speaking aloud the passage below and load the resulting file on to your favourite MP3 player. Every time you sit down to write, just plug in some earphones, put the Writer’s Monologue® on REPEAT and write away!

So how does it work?

Simple! With the Writer’s Monologue® playing at low volume in the background, your brain no longer has to expend precious energy coming up with all those irritating doubts and worries. Now you can channel all your efforts into the job at hand: getting the damn writing done!

Writer’s Monologue® - it does all the agonising so you don’t have to!

Okay, here goes, time for another writing session … only this time get straight down to it – don’t waste time reading back through what you wrote before … you know what they say, keep the first draft moving forward – write now, edit later! … still, a quick flick back over the last few pages wouldn’t hurt, just to refresh your memory … here’s that last scene, you know, the one where … yes, that’s not bad … actually that’s pretty good … this is good writing, you know … God that’s good … that’s bloody good … so much pathos … the mix of character-driven action and profound insight in the human condition … this is probably the best writing you’ve ever done! … this is a guaranteed, solid gold bestseller!… not that you do this for the money … it’s all about writing from the heart … writing isn’t commerce, it’s art … still, if you could just get that book deal … hell, never mind books, this story’s got ‘movie adaptation’ written all over it … ah … wait … that sentence sticks out like a sore … no, don’t tinker … now’s not the time to start editing … just get on with telling the damn story … well, okay, it does read better like that, but is it the right tone of voice? … come to think of it, is ANY of this passage right ? … shit … oh shit … shit shit shit … this isn’t looking so good … actually it’s pretty bad … have you ever seen such leaden prose? … where’s this character’s motivation? … you know, this is probably the worst writing you’ve ever done … you’re such a talentless no-hoper … this book’s dead in the water and you know it … everything you ever wrote is shit and this is a hundred times worse … a thousand … you’d better abandon these pages and start the next scene … was that the phone? … stop, don’t get distracted … right … paragraph indent … open speech marks … that definitely was the phone … no, it’s someone at the door … never mind, they’ll call back if it’s urgent … open speech marks … did you get the lasagne out of the freezer? … open speech marks … you probably did … open speech marks … if you didn’t you can always order in pizza later, the main thing now is to focus on hitting that daily word count … okay, that’s more like it, now you’re rolling … pepperoni would be good … start the chapter with a good old action scene, that’s the way … or maybe tuna … delete, delete, delete … no, just a plain margherita will do … now how many words have you written? … forty-seven … is that enough for this session? … hard to say … if they’re the RIGHT words that should be enough … only one way to find out and that’s read back over what you just wrote … uh-huh … uh-huh … uh-huh … well, it’s crap but it’ll do for a first draft … fancy a coffee? … no, just keep writing, you can make a drink in a minute … still, a coffee would help … no, keep writing … no, coffee … no, writing … maybe a cup of tea … aaaaaaaaaaargh! [REPEAT]