I’m quite disappointed in myself. I’ve posted just a couple of pieces of flash in the last… what, four or five weeks? That’s pretty poor form (just like flash, the naysayers cry). All I can say is that I’ve been busy lately. I’m sure most of you reading this know what it’s like to have work kicking your ass for weeks on end, leaving you a drained and empty shell at the end of the day. Fun times, eh?

All effort to connect my laxity to the release of little-known independent title Grandiose Thieving of Automobiles the Fourth is misguided, seditious and punishable by death (unless you buy more copies of our book).

I’m pleased to say that we may have a couple of new Friday flash fictionists amongst us: Gaie Sebold, who to the best of my knowledge is the first of our Orbital ‘08 panel attendees to join us in posting flash online, and Sarah Ellender. They’ll be posting on alternate weeks; the first piece, from Gaie last Friday, is titled Folie A Deux.

My F3 for this sunny and glorious week is a continuation of Turning Point, following on from Gareth and Justin’s additions in the comments thread. Last time around I imitated Gareth’s voice, so it’s only appropriate that this time I try at Justin’s. We’re metafictional, baby!

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BINARY VISIONS

The manilla feels rough beneath Sara’s fingers, recalling Jules’ skin: flecked, pocked, cratered. But the swirling, elegant loops, inscribed with what may have been a quill pen, are Alejandro’s. There is the faintest scent of sweat and musk and cut fibre-optic cable.

Sara opens the envelope quickly, her breath held, paused, unsure. The note tucked within unfolds itself with robotic precision, sparing her nervous fingers. Distantly, Sara hears a roll of thunder. The lightning comes after but she does not notice.

The note inside the envelope is written in a cramped, childish hand. Sara gasps and sits down on the bed, pulling the perspiration-saturated sheets around herself. This is Jules’ handwriting.

It says, “Not like this.”

Sara looks up and Alejandro is before her. He is naked, standing with the casual pride that drew her to him through the Brownian motion of festival crowds. He looks at her and smiles. Sarah continues clutching the sheets to her breast, the note held before her.

“You don’t have to worry about him any more,” Alejandro says. He puts out his hand. He is holding a mobile phone. Its faceplate is aglow with blue light, and it casts Alejandro’s rich brown skin in a pallor of plasticity.

Sara reaches for the phone but it, and Alejandro, dissolve before her. They burst into the patternless dance of static, fading sharply with a pop. Sara feels the pressure in her ears lose equilibrium, and she bursts into tears as what is left of Alejandro crumbles into waste heat and fragmented clusters.

String{NO_ANSWERS_THERE} whispers the data, and it slips away through the cracks of myth and dream.

My review of Oronooko has gone live over at the Blog a Penguin Classic website.

I initially spent some time writing a medium-length review that, I felt, struck a fine balance between accessibility and insight. Then I attempted to submit the review and discovered the 2,000 character limit. That’s 327 of my words, in this instance. It’s not very much.

Still, despite having had to chip away at my review relentlessly I’m reasonably pleased with the outcome, and I think it still manages to hint at the interesting ideas and context in and of the book - even if there’s no space to explore them. It was also the first time I had to revise a wordcount downwards, and substantially so, which was actually very helpful from an editorial standpoint.

Astute RSS readers will have noticed that Illuminations has been reviewed by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro at The Fix (disclaimer: I also review for The Fix). I think it’s a very fair and perceptive review overall, and as a contributing writer I’m particularly pleased that he devoted time and effort to every story in the anthology. There’s that link again!

I’m being quite careful with this post since, as a book reviewer, I’m well aware that in most circumstances it’s poor form to respond to one’s critics. That aside - and let me note that I think all of Zinos-Amaro’s criticisms and observations of my stories demonstrate insight and even-handedness - I found it fascinating to find my work under this sort of critical microscope. It’s very different from the critiques received from a writing group, or feedback from friends. This is reviewage coming from someone with no prior awareness of me or my work, no prior expectations at all, and it shows in a way that is very helpful to me as a neophyte writer.

Here’s the section of Zinos-Amaro’s review that is me, all me:

Shaun C. Green was featured in nine stories:

The first-person protagonist of “I am Colony” has a strange experience in hyperspace which radically alters his existence, transporting his body and consciousness in an unexpected way. The premise is intriguing and the writing competent, but I found the scale of events too vast to be encompassed appropriately by this nugget-sized narrative.

When Mr. Curnow pleads with a Father for a special type of application, he encounters the insurmountable “Terminator” of bureaucratic regulations. Though the writing suffered from adverb-itis, I enjoyed the scene and the details used to convey characters and situation.

In “This Urban Aesthetic,” Raul steps through a portal into the past. Does he travel there merely to obtain a memento, or is there more going on? This unadulterated SF story contains pleasant, if not exactly shocking, observations on the relationship of humans with the past, and grounds them in an appropriate emotional context.

A man travelling across “nodes” in search of some raunchy sex is not prepared to “Slip It In.” Some of the descriptions were funny, though I’m not sure whether this was intentional. I didn’t think Green provided sufficient justification for the turn of events; considering that the narrator suggests he’s been here before, why is this the first time this happens?

Anyone burdened with the responsibilities of the viewers of “Vote Now!” ought to consider their choices carefully before casting their ballots. This piece worked perfectly for me. It offers a plausible speculation and articulates it succinctly, as well as having some fun with Space Opera settings. I feel comfortable in voting it the best of Green’s stories here.

How would one react if one experienced the “O Radiance, O Blessed Light” of an angel? This a captivating premise, but the seeming lack of emotional impact to the narrator after one key event made it difficult for me to entirely suspend my disbelief. Sweeping, biblical imagery was almost redemptive enough to save it.

The drunken Joseph of “Softly Softly Catchee Monkey” thinks he hears steps, not his own, as he stumbles home. Is someone after him? I would describe this piece as a moderate success. Though its SF staple is predictable, the suspense mostly works. Unfortunately, Joseph wasn’t a character I found myself caring for, and so in a sense, I was grateful for the monkey-business ending.

The “Grey Matter” of this story’s protagonist may contain more than he lets on through his slangish diction. “Micro chipses” in the head is a familiar SF conceit, but I enjoyed the way Green focuses here on the classism and psychological dimension of the experience, rather than the technological details. The slang may make this one a bit hard on some readers, but reading it aloud will save your grey matter some unnecessary struggle.

The search for “Satisfaction” by the travelers between parallel realities in this tale brought to my mind an anti-Voltairean notion; rather than believe in the locution of Leibnizian optimism that “Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possible,” as Candide’s Dr. Pangloss did, they maintain that their search is meaningful precisely because a world better than ours exists somewhere in the infinitude of worlds. The reverse mechanism of the story, as observed by the protagonist, whereby one tends to find a world particularly ill-suited to one’s needs or dispositions, seems little more than an arbitrary narrative construct for confirming his own beliefs. I personally don’t object to the belief that a search may provide its own meaning, but I found that the message overburdened this tale.

If you missed the comments thread over the weekend, have another look at F3: Turning Point: Justin and Gareth have continued from where I left off. (Is it possible for a writer to imitate himself?) Unfortunately I’ve also been challenged to wrap it up… maybe for this week’s F3!

A chap I work with has recently published a piece of flash fiction in Tall Tales and Modern Fables, and as it’s really quite excellent and he did buy a copy of my book, I feel obliged to share. Click here to read ‘Unquenched‘ by Daniel Raven.

Another work colleague, albeit one in the realms of development rather than the glorified breaking things that we engage in, has recently put up a shiny new Wordpress blog for her one-women games studio. Check out Really Fancy Games here. Her first project is to be a point-and-click adventure game about the Bronte sisters, and she was recently interviewed by The Guardian. Intrigued? Drop by and encourage her to finish that demo.

I’ve missed the last few Friday Flash Fictions, which I genuinely regret. It’s been a tough few weeks and, in all honesty, this trend is unlikely to let up any time soon. Still, I’ll try and manage at least this one post per week!

This week’s story is short and bittersweet. It’s also me trying to imitate one of my fellow F3 writers - there’s a fabulous prize to the first correct guess who*.

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It seems that you can now buy Illuminations from Blackwell and WH Smiths, which is cool as it may generate a few more sales. We’re not on Amazon though. Probably something to do with that £2 markup on small presses. Fuckers.

As ever, the best place to buy a copy is from Odd Two Out, because that way other retailers don’t eat profits that could go to the NSPCC, and also because you can buy the eBook version for a donation (of which ALL profits go to the NSPCC).

Each of the contributors also took home a bundle of books to sell themselves, and I’m fair chuffed to report that I’ve now sold all of mine! Well, there are a few left which have been reserved by people too poor to afford one right now. Damn students / dirty unwashed hippies.

The scariest bit of news came from my mum - apparently my nan wants a copy. That’s awesome, of course, but I’m not sure how a Baptist in her 60s will react to Slip It In.

Okay, not quite. Quote Unquote records (home of Bomb the Music Industry!, We versus the Shark, Pegasuses X-L, the Riot Before and more) describes itself as “the world’s first donation-based record label”. True or not, it’s punk as fuck and I like it a lot. Kudos to all the artists featured, and especially to BtMI! for putting pretty much their whole discography online. Make sure you click the ‘Info’ link as the page describing the label is crammed full of independent charm and vigour.

You can download without donating, so why not try out a few tracks and see if you’re into any of their roster? If you like them then head back, send a few bucks their way and download some awesome new music. I personally recommend BtMI!’s Get Warmer, which is barely leaving my CD player at the moment…

Oh, and check out this Black Flag Hairstyle Timeline. Someone somewhere now has too much time on their hands, so more of this please.

Would any of my techier readers be interested in taking a peek at NFI’s Wordpress design template? I’m wondering if it would be possible to break my blogroll down into several subcategories that would display in the same way, and unfortunately my ignorant tinkering hasn’t produced the results…

Via DiS comes the news that Jaguar Love (take two parts Blood Brothers, one part Pretty Girls Make Graves, mix, shake and pour) will be playing a few dates in the UK in advance of their debut album, slated for July release.

The full list of dates:

July
4 London Wireless Festival
5 Brighton Barfly
7 Bristol Academy 2
8 London 100 Club
9 Leeds Cockpit
10 Manchester Roadhouse
12 Scotland T in the Park
13 Ireland Oxygen Festival

Nice to see a Brighton date on that short list - I’ll sure as hell be there.

Whoops - went slightly over the word count with this one. It’s just shy of 1,200 words. Hope you enjoy! And make sure you check out the rest of the gang (Neil Beynon has posted a piece, and we may yet see something from Gareth Lyn Powell, Paul Raven, Martin McGrath, Gareth D. Jones, Justin Pickard, Dan Pawley, Greg O’Byrne, Jay Lake and Ian Hocking - is that everyone, or is my list out of date?) plus the Futurismic Friday Free Fiction update (man, there’s a lot of alliteration about these days).

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