Thoughts · of · a · mumbling · fantasist

Dear Mr. L Tennis Association,

I hereby submit my application to be included in next year’s Wimbledon tournament as a wild-card British entry. I realise that you may require some sort of qualifications to consider me for the main draw so here they are:

First of all I can play tennis. Not very well, but no one’s expecting me to win a match to I fail to see how that would really matter. I’ve played a few matches for my club’s second team and, with a bit of a run-up, can hit most of the shots. I don’t like volleying very much but that’s not obligatory is it?

Secondly, I have my own racquet. I have two. They are blue. I realise it would be embarrassing for you, Mr LTA, if I had to borrow one of my opponent but if I break my strings my dad’s got one I could borrow. Actually, could he and I play in the doubles, or is that not allowed now he’s a pensioner?

Thirdly, and most crucially to my mind, I could do with the money. Serious, I’m a novelist, but I’m not very good at it. A cheque for £10,000 would really help pay off the credit cards. I’d try really really hard so you’d get your money’s worth. As much as you would with anyone else anyway.

Lastly, I’m quite happy to get my ass kicked. None of the real pros would have to worry about losing, I might get a game though sheer luck but I’m not beating anyone and so would prove no more of an obstacle than the rest of the British wild-card contingent. If the ones who’re pros want to play they can go through the qualifiers, clearly I’m not good enough for that so could it be my turn next year to get money for an ass-kicking? I promise to be more entertaining for the crowd, quite possible by breaking Marat Safin’s on-court swearing record. I will also try as hard as I can to hit my opponent in the nuts, it’s something of a speciality of mine. You just ask Steve down at the club.

Anyways, hope you’re well, look forward to hearing.

Best,

Tom Lloyd. Age 30 and ¼

My parents are notoriously difficult to pin down on weekends for months in advance and now I realise part of their problem I think! It is of course also the fact that sometimes they're 'busy' when they don't want to do something like trek into the city, but sometimes months go by with them not having a full free weekend to relax in and I suspect that's how life will increasingly go for me once married life has me in it's furry grip. As someone who likes nothing more than watching the rugby of an afternoon and sitting around drinking, this is something of a concern, but I seem to have struck the bargain with my beloved that will see me being allowed to watch lots and lots of the finest team sport around in the future. The fact that I might have to sit through every horrific celeb dancing competition is something I'll just have to deal with, and at least the pain is softened by some very strokable pro dancers in skimpy dresses!

And anyway, how can I complain when I get to do things like watch Federer's historic completion of the grand slam and bum around Paris drinking great coffee and eating some lovely food? Admittedly, also getting absolutely shafted over the price of beer (8 euros 60 for a pint in one bar, unfortunately we'd just ordered it by the litre too...) and not liking the kicking the exchange rate has given us (please say it'll improve for the honeymoon in Sept...) but hey, I live in London so that sort of shock is short-lived! When the problems in my life are being moved to a crap desk for the two days a week I go to work and the summer getting a bit warm for writing in my study, I reckon I'll live!

The other thing that bugged me was the structure of the film, bad guy appears and conveniently directs the course of Kirk's life, Kirk spends five minutes screen time at the fleet academy and then heads off to chase bad guy. Continues to chase bad guy for a while, deals with bad guy. Nothing to surprise, nothing to make you think, just a lot of eyebrow waggling from Spock who looks woefully lacking in instructions from the director and is having to make it up himself. There was nothing else to it at all, some leering at women that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Roger Moore Bond film, lots of in-jokes (one of which, I forget which, I realised I was enough of a geek to realise the trivia behind it unlike most of the cinema, which just goes to show) and some pointy-ear rubbing on the part of Uhura - for reasons I suspect was the writer trying to move away from the more obvious Kirk-Uhura sexual tension and keep to the checklist of human emotions that are required in an epic film, but just failed to work at all.

Actually, there was something else. What the hell is with the propensity to give up captaincy of a ship so easily? Can't see the old Kirk doing so without a gun to his head, not anyone on BSG or B5 for example, but this lots do it at the drop of the had. Spock loses his temper for a moment and so relieves himself of command, whereas I couldn't help thinking that Admiral Adama would have choked the guy into unconsciousness, kicked him in the crotch and then chucked him bodily from the room shouting 'and who the fuck else wants some eh?' And that would just be for questioning his orders, not attempted mutiny and dissing his mother.

So, anyone else annoyed by what could have been a really good film? Or is it just me as it is on the subject of Batman Begins and the piece of toss they called scriptwriting in that movie?

I thought I should actually write something about The Painted Man, it is my job after all. Well, fantasy books, not writing about them per se. And I should encourage people to read it. It's by Peter V Brett, there's an interview with him here as a matter of fact...

Now... Don’t get me wrong, this was a fine book, but I was wondering how long it was going to take to get to the point where the main characters were young kids still shell-shocked at the world they’re living in. I know I’m impatient and like to jump in to a plot – many readers have criticised me for just such behaviour – but by halfway in this book the only action had been folks getting ripped apart by demons and kids screaming in fear. Don’t get me wrong, fully on board with a hefty dose of demon-action and was all over it like a fat kid on cake, but I’m also a fantasy nerd who likes to see the nuts and bolts of how things work. When your premise is the Painted Man, I don’t want to see him make a crucial discovery, then jump on a few years and see the results of it. The premise is what did it for me in the first place but how it came about was glossed over rather, which was a shame.

A second thing that bugged me about this (admittedly fine novel that had me turning the pages as eagerly as The Name of the Wind but struck me as far more original) was the age of the characters. They’re all kids when it starts and only by jumping ahead several years do we get them to a point where they’re much use to anyone. Now this may just be as a result of me always wanting to write a novel a different way when I like the premise as much as this one, but it did strike me as something that I see a lot in US fantasy. I think UK authors have more freedom from the genre’s conventions than that lot over the pond, indeed that’s something that they’re trying to play up to carve out a niche because everyone knows Brits tend to do dark and nasty stuff better than Americans in general (because we’re more miserable and cynical one assumes). Isak was intended to be older than he ended up being in Stormcaller (for various, mundane reasons) and I suspect many others are intentionally moving away from the farm-boy hero, resulting in theirs being older and more grumbly, to use a technical, albeit made-up, term.

What I didn’t see is where the book’s going from here. There wasn’t much alluded to that hinted at a raising of the stakes, which was a bit of a concern. Just fighting demons isn’t so interesting now they’ve got the hang of it, but for all their talk of prophecy there wasn’t much in the way of a specific path that could be taken and I seriously doubt any writer’s just going to follow a set prophecy these days. This is of course something I’ve had to think about quite a lot in recent weeks and months – as well as doing the reverse and stopping myself thinking about it. There are numerous little scrawled notes reminding me that readers do want to see some of the carnage going on, however incidental it is to the overall plot! Three and a half books in to a quintet and finding any sort of grounding is unbelievably hard. For a stand-alone I’d know how to balance it, there’s a degree to which you can rely upon convention, but this far in I don’t really get to choose what happens most of the time. Small details sure, but so much is constrained by what has gone before (esp when you brutally kill you main character etc) that my first question to my editor when I deliver the beast is going to be, ‘what do I need to do to make this a proper book?’ I doubt I’ll be able to see it even by the end, I’m just celebrating the little victories like finally working out what role a character is playing in the overall plot, having given her page-space in three novels based upon faith that I’d work it out eventually.

Right, that’s me done for the day. Needless to say the first post I wrote was far more coherent and did have a point to it, but this one conforms to the title of the blog rather more so maybe it’s all not without an ineffable purpose after all…

So, can I even remember what I was talking about now? Not so much, can't even regain my train of thought I'm so irritated at losing a few paragraphs like that. Fuckity bye.

Honestly... Having spent the whole day with the word "fucktard" running through my brain like a Will Smith song, although less depressing, because of googling Christwire to find out whether it's it's a piss-take or not which led me to this I then ended up acting like one by grabbing the wrong keys as I ran out to buy some beer before a mate came over to eat takeaway and drink with me. A quick inspection would have made it very clear that these are not keys to my flat at all, just as a moment's thought would have led me to the conclusion that Phil NEVER turns up without beer and wine or some combination of the two - let's not even talk about the fact for genetic reasons he's usually late to things and it's pretty cold at this time of the year to be outside without a coat or phone and drinking beer on my doorstep because there's nothing else I could do when he could turn up at any time in the next 45 minutes.

I must admit that I would have been surprised if someone had looked into my future and told me that just after my 30th birthday I'd be in a hoodie and drinking tinnies on some street corner! Clearly I didn't do enough of it as a teenager. Two beers later and said booze-laden man arrives, firstly looking suspicious at the loitering white-trash criminal, then laughing a bit, but nothing like as much as the spectacular and unsurprising level of sympathy I got from my fiancee when I used his phone to call her. The girl's got a wonderfully evil cackle at the best of times, give her a few beers beforehand and it really is something to behold. Fortunately at that point I knew we could head to the pub and there we stayed, shivering until I got the chance to inhale a burger and chips and reflecting that if I'd not suggested a change of venue solely for the purposes of not spending thirty quid in the pub, I'd have not ended up fucking cold and thirty quid down anyway.

And I still don't know if Christwire is serious or not. I'd assume it's a clever piss-take, but what it was saying about Michelle Obama just looked a bit racist in a not-really-funny way. Help anyone?