>>Nostalgia For Infinity

This weekend turned out a bit busier than I had planned, so no review writin’ was achieved. I didn’t even get to play with my new home recording gear (very sadface). I’ll probably stick up some photos of that once I’ve got it all set up. Modern technology is great. All I need now is a drum machine or some bucket drums (I’m trying to decide which of the two options appeals more).

Did I mention that my band has a name now? We’re Wrecktheplacefantastic, and we’re gearing up for our first gig which is a mere two months away. Two months! That must sound like an eternity to other, more competent musicians.

Anyway, in lieu of any writing from yours truly, here are some other cool things and stuffs by other peoples on the intertron (done manually, since I’ve not gotten round to fixing my del.icio.us autoposts yet). Small Town America just stuck up their fourth Public Service Broadcast, which I’m still listening to but thus far my ears have been pleased by Disco Drive and Baddies.

Elsewhere, the aforementioned Greg has successfully located his blog and uploaded his first post, which is a consideration of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, and Seb over at Comics Daily has posted a thorough(ly entertaining) trashing of something called DC Universe Decisions. I hear tell that it is a comic, which is a little like a cartoon except the pictures don’t move and you must read the words yourself.

Once again I’ve tried to produce something a bit different to what I normally write. I’m not sure if it succeeds – I think I hammered it out too quickly for that – but I quite like the style at points, if nothing else. If you have a read please let me know what you think; feedback is always appreciated.

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My apologies for the lack of real updates, everyone. I’ve recently been enjoying being busy, a little stressed-out, and not sleeping properly, which is never a good combination. Hopefully things will calm down soon and I’ll be more inclined to write and blog.

Apropos of the ridiculous focus on whether or not posting rejection letters is common practice/professional/legal/cuddly/appropriate/blue rather than on the exposure of crude and offensive racist language, I’m officially declaring it Post A Rejection Letter Friday. Here’s mine!

Hi Shaun,

Thanks for this, but I felt it was very overwritten, especially for a
first-person story told in the present tense. Perhaps if the
character were looking back at these early events, if he had enough
distance to both recall the experience and evaluate it, the story
would be more interesting. As it stands, by keeping him solidly in
the moment, the character has little to do but recite every action he
takes, only a few of which are compelling.

Hey, check out all those racial slurs that aren’t in this rejection letter.

Context: this, and those links I posted yesterday.

You may have noticed that, after the frenetic multiple daily posts of last week, things have quietened down a bit at NFI. It just so happened that my scheduled Neverscapes reposts coincided with a big bundle of other writing. There’s not much on the cards this week, although as usual there’ll be the del.icio.us link round-ups to sift through for tasty Intertron plankton, plus Friday Flash Fiction at the end of the week.

Speaking of F3, I missed out last week which was a bit unfortunate as it was something of a special date. » Read the rest of this entry «

(The is the first of a short series of old posts retrieved from NFI’s predecessor, Neverscapes. Look out for the remaining posts over the coming week.)

So, the first series of ITV’s new dinosaur & giant bug time-travel-thriller is over and, since I was fool enough to watch all six episodes, I thought I’d offer my thoughts on it. By which I mean take the piss out it.

Let’s begin with a brief overview of the central cast.

This is Nick Cutter. He’s the main man. He has a lovely Scottish accent and tends towards the take-no-shit school of, uh, evolutionary zoology. His wife has been missing for eight years and according to the Primeval website, he likes Joy Division. Cheer up Nick! » Read the rest of this entry «

March 13th 2007 – July 27th 2007
Died of neglect.

As my first attempt at a serious blog Neverscapes was doomed to failure from the outset, but I learned a bit about PHP and blogging from trying it and it was good fun for a while. I left it up after I started Nostalgia For Infinity (which I’m happy to say has already greatly outlived its predecessor) because there were some posts I thought were neat. However as it’s attracting more and more spam, I’m going to steal away the best content, repost it here, and delete Neverscapes.

As it turns out, “best content” amounts to three posts, with most of the rest being either poorly written or… what’s the opposite of timeless? Is it “shit”? No, wait… “Timecop“.

Anyway, these three blasts from the past will be appearing on the coming Monday, Wednesday and Friday respectively. Enjoy!

Here’s my flash fiction for the last Friday of June – I hope you enjoy it. I think it may be the first thing I’ve ever written in second person so I’ll be interested to hear if you think it works.

I’ve just noticed that in exactly one month I’ll have been writing F3 for a full year. So far I’ve posted stories on 32 of those 48 weeks, which I think is pretty good going.

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My review of the lengthily-titled Penny Arcade Adventures Episode One: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness has gone online at the multimedia shrine to geekdom that is Den of Geek. It’s my first piece for the site, and hopefully the first of many. Check it out here.

I did quite well with the achievements for this game, and I’m not normally much of an Xbox Achievement hound. By the time I finished the game I’d gotten 155 out of 200 points, and would have done better if I weren’t rubbish at counterattacks and blocking. Clearly I didn’t spend enough of my youth playing beat-’em-ups against my friends (although I did beat Civilization on the Emperor setting, so it wasn’t a total waste).

I should probably point out that this story is partly a response to all those coming-of-age anime shows in which a teenage boy gets a giant robot to stomp about in, or discovers he has incredible ninja powers. They are usually “geniuses of hard work”, and when a battle looks bleak they just get really, really angry and level up discover hidden reserves of strength. I think relying on getting beaten up and pissed off when you’re piloting multi-billion dollar hardware is kinda silly. Thus: this! Although, sadly, it features no giant robots, because I didn’t want it to be just a response to daft animated fun.

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