Nick Bryan

Archives for March 2013

#FridayFlash: “Wake Me”

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This actually started as a nice Easter story about rebirth and stuff, although it seems to have changed since then. Never mind, at least it still has some mild science-fiction.

As ever, more Friday stories available on the FridayFlash website, and if you’ve enjoyed this piece, why not read my comedy-detective serial, which has a lot more jokes.

Wake Me

Anna was expecting drops of moisture inside the tube, but it was dry as a bone. Not that she’d ever touched a real skeleton, and soon she wouldn’t be able to feel her own. Or would she?

“So,” she finally muttered to Liam, “I guess this is it.”

“Yeah.” He was hanging back at the door, watching the tube nervously, as if he thought it would freeze him too if he came near. “I guess.”

“Come in, Liam.”

He glanced at the doorframe, as if checking for traps, and finally stepped towards her. There were six of the glass pillars in the room, four occupied and one open for Anna. The final tube was dead, not humming or lit up. Everything in here was so clean, and why? She’d be frozen solid, surely germs wouldn’t affect her?

After all, if cryo-stored people could still get sicker, why was she doing any of this?

Liam had finally reached her now, having made a two metre walk last as long as possible. And she duly collapsed into him, despite promising herself she wouldn’t make a scene – maybe she should’ve let him stay over there after all. Now she’d just embarrass herself in front of the six CCTV cameras.

“It’ll be fine,” he nodded. “They’ll find a cure and wake you up. The guy says it’s only a year or two away.”

She nodded her head against his shoulder without saying anything. Finally, she pulled away. Apparently she was going to compensate for the dry cryogenic freezing tube by moistening her own face. “And you can get me out of here whenever they’re ready.”

Liam sighed. “What if it takes longer than they think and I’m old?”

He looked really stricken by this possibility, so much she just laughed. “You’ll be able to show off your much younger girlfriend to the other wrinklies, it’ll be fine.”

“Mm.” He didn’t laugh.

And neither of them had time to say anything else, before the intercom on the wall binged a sharp noise, then hissed out a message: “Miss Parnes, please enter unit #3432E.”

Like many public announcements, it was sitting right on the line between human and automated robot, Anna cocked her head for a moment as she thought about which it was. There had been a quiver of annoyance in there which betrayed it as a real guy, she suspected, a bored jobsworth watching the CCTV, rolling his eyes and muttering at her to stop making small talk with her boyfriend and get in the damn tube.

“Okay, I guess it’s time to chill.” She gestured at the tube and forced out a smile, without making any movement towards it.

“Yeah.” Liam glared at a camera, seeming angrier than she was with the snotty nature of that announcement, but rightly didn’t waste their last few minutes together bitching about it. He was a practical guy, and she liked that. After all, she was being pretty sensible right now herself.

And it wasn’t really their last minutes together, after all, because she’d wake up.

“What if I just miss you?” Liam’s eyes slid back onto her. “How long do I wait for that?”

“They can’t re-freeze me,” she sighed, “so a while.”

“Yeah.”

The intercom binged again, but before it could utter a single passive-aggressive syllable, Liam looked straight into the camera above his head and told it to “kindly fuck off”. She almost didn’t jump on him and kiss him, until she remembered she might not get to do it again for a decade or two.

Then again, she thought, as she pulled away from him, that decade wouldn’t seem like any time at all to her. What a horrible selfish thought.

“Love you,” she added, mostly because she meant it and not just to compensate for that.

“Love you too,” he nodded back, with a amusingly inadequate small wave. And then, deciding that was a good note to finish on, she finally stepped inside the strange, dry glass tube.

She might feel a slight shock, apparently, as the cold took effect. The door hummed shut, and she suddenly realised something.

“Liam,” she said, pressing herself against the near-soundproof glass, “wake me, okay? Eventually, before it’s too late, even if they don’t cure… I don’t want…”

And then the cold came and Anna’s mind jumped out of her skin.

A Storm Of Swords by George R.R. Martin – Untimely Thoughts

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A Storm Of Swords - George R.R. Martin

Last week, I finished A Storm Of Swords, the third book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire series. Of course, these are among the most prominent fantasy books in existence right now, thanks to their TV adaptation Game of Thrones, so I doubt I’m alone there.

Having read the other two books after watching their screen equivalents, I thought I’d try this one the other way round. So, how was the experience? Has it affected my expectations of the upcoming series?

SPOILER WARNING: If you’re following the TV show, haven’t read the books and want to remain totally unspoiled for events beyond season two, best not read this.

Vague Review (no real spoilers)

Review verdict out of the way: yes, this is a good book, possibly the best of the three I’ve read. The sprawling universe Martin has created is hugely impressive, even if I sometimes lost track of exactly who was who. In many ways, that makes it feel more realistic –you have a “close” circle of people, then a raft of acquaintances.

He wraps up plot threads stretching back to book one – at times, this reads like the climax to a trilogy. There are a few slightly samey chapters of characters trudging around to get into place, but once you get to about 45% (yes, I read it on a Kindle), the pace is full-speed to the end, which is impressive for such a long book. And the climactic scenes are amazingly satisfying once you get there.

TV Murmurs (minor spoilers)

Indeed, the book is so long that it’s being spread across two seasons of the TV show, which is interesting because of all the set-up in the first half. Based on early publicity and comments from the producers, it sounds like they’re going for the Red Wedding as centrepiece to season three. That’s going to be horrific, isn’t it? I mean, just reading it was bad enough.

And then, presumably, Joffrey’s wedding and subsequent manoeuvres in season four, maybe with some material pulled forward from book four to pad out the remaining space. Danerys really doesn’t get a vast amount to do in the latter half of book three, which might mean a worrying amount of padding to keep her in every episode – which would be annoying, as they already did that in season two.

Still, it was a great read, hopefully an equally good twenty episodes of telly. Definitely got me excited for the series returning next weekend. Let me know below if you have any thoughts about all this – if you can refrain from spoiling books 4-5, though, I’d appreciate it. Ta.

#FridayFlash: Fall Of The Vampire

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Time for some horror creatures this week! Maybe because Being Human has just finished, maybe I just felt like it.

As ever, see more Friday stories on the Friday Flash site.

Fall Of The Vampire

My friend Joel said he was a vampire, but in order to get his fix without taking anyone’s life, he would just fish tampons and that kinda shite out of bins, then squeeze them into his mouth.

Said this was his gift, his curse, much like going to parties and showing off to gothic teenagers. He did sharpen two of his teeth with a metal file though, so that’s dedication to the cause, I suppose.

I mean, I still suspect he just did the thing with the tampons because he liked it. As gestures of sacrifice go, I’ve seen better. I myself am a zombie, but have discovered I can get perfectly good meat from the supermarket. They even have home delivery, so I don’t need to expose my rotting carcass to the people outside.

But am I a zombie, or do I just pick my scabs a lot?

I’d test it, but I’ve not got the guts. Much like I can’t bring myself to actually keep Joel away from his used feminine hygiene products. Truth be told, you can get by without being a crazed killer, as long as you’re not a huge gothic poser.

Or a werewolf. Those guys are screwed. I’m so tired. You don’t realise how little energy you have once you’re dead. I had no choice but to quit my shitty job and unplug the phone.

Writing Environment II – Coffee Shop Cliché Man

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The Talking Toys Are My Friends

Not even nine months ago, I did this post about my writing environment. Looking back on it now, I seem to have ditched my desk to live the writer-in-coffee-shop cliché. Damn.

But why can’t I work at home anymore? Where did it all go wrong? Isn’t my home-made photo adorable? And how long can one man sit in a coffee shop before the staff punch him?

Coffee House Rules

Turns out, quite a while. However, being there on your own does mean embarrassing things like taking your laptop computer to the toilet with you. Still, at least that I can write down any brilliant ideas that come to me on the crapper – usually, they just slip away.

Bogs aside, most coffee shop staff seem tolerant as long as it isn’t busy and you buy at least one drink every couple of hours. Admittedly, I’ve stuck to suburban branches so far, so never really had a problem with tables running out.

Still, as a man with a constant ongoing money problem, I could live without paying a few quid in caffeine fees every time I want to do some proper writing. So, why did this happen?

Obey The Murmur

In that other post, I said this: “Environment is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether I’m huddled in my pit or a nice clean branch of Pret, I will work if I’m in the mood.”

Obviously, that hasn’t entirely worked out for me. At home, I can manage the occasional TV review, but for proper concentration, I’ve started meandering, procrastinating, generally annoying myself.

I have found this website called Coffitivity, which generates ambient coffee shop noise to encourage work. Honestly, I’m cynical, just because it sounds ridiculous, but with the aid of this background murmur, I’ve produced this blog post quickly enough. So, is this the answer? Do you have an answer? What drives us from our homes?

#FridayFlash – “Placebo”

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No, this isn’t about the band Placebo – although, true story, their lead singer Brian Molko received a doctorate from Goldsmiths the same year as I got my MA. Sadly, I wasn’t at his graduation.

Anyway, new Friday story below. If you wanna vote for Hobson & Choi on Jukepop today, you can now sign in with Facebook instead of needing to actually register there.

On with the story. More available on the FridayFlash website if you so desire.

Placebo

“Doctor, how’s it going? Good, cool, me too.”

“Yeah, it’s a bit awkward, I know. It’s like, we barely know each other, and I’m meant to tell you all my deepest secrets. Don’t you have a couch I can lie down on or anything?”

“Bet you get that all the time, huh?”

“Hah, yeah. Why did I seek therapy? I guess… Well, it’s hard to know where to start, isn’t it?”

“Okay, so, a few years ago, I was reading a paper on the placebo effect, you know the one? You give someone sick a fake pill, tell them it’s medicine, and their condition often improves?”

“I mean, I’m not sure it would work with cancer and AIDS or whatever, but you know, the common cold, broken legs, depression, I could see that.”

“Shit, you’d better not give me any placebos. I mean, I’ll be expecting it now anyway, so it won’t work.”

“Right, anyway. Not too long after that, my wife died. My daughter was three, and she was really torn up about it. I mean, truth be told, I was almost hoping she wouldn’t know what was happening, but unfortunately she was up with it and she totally fell apart. Crying, breaking stuff, refusing to come near me. I blame television.”

“So I started writing her these letters from her Mum. Beyond the grave type shit, told her it was our secret that she’d gotten in touch and she wasn’t to tell anyone and… weirdly, she’s been fine, not told anyone either.”

“Yeah, I have found I really enjoy writing the letters too. Maybe it’s been a bit like therapy, eh doc? I’d better not tell anyone or you’ll be out of a job.”

“So anyway. She’s five now, going to school soon, I’m terrified she’s going to mention her letters from the dead to some other kid and the whole placebo’s going to wear the fuck off. Don’t suppose you have any suggestions?”

“Well, other than that one.”

“Yeah. You know, I was going to try and end the whole thing in character, or whatever, hope she’s able to deal with her Mum disappearing better now she’s a bit older. So I started writing the goodbye letter and I just can’t get through it, it’s just…”

“Urgh. I can never tell whether I’m saying goodbye to my wife again or my little girl, but turns out, it’s pretty shit either way. Who knew, right?”

“Don’t suppose you have any idea what I can say, do ya? Any pointers? If you’ve got a pre-written example around, that’d be pretty handy too.”

“Do it myself? Christ. What the hell am I paying you for?”

Plugging Stuff On Twitter – ENTER THE VORTEX

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SPAM SPAM SPAMMITY SPAM

I’d already worried for a while about how much to plug my various writing endeavours on various social networks. Mostly Twitter, but others too. Recently, though, I started doing Hobson& Choi on Jukepop, and I’m telling you, I love doing it. Wanted to do something serialised ever since my comic-loving yoof.

But Jukepop operates on a competitive vote-up system, so to succeed, I need people to go vote for me. And I already felt I was pestering people to read my work quite a lot, so… is this too much? How much is too much? Is this much of a muchness?

Let’s blog about it.

The Life-Span Of The Lesser-Spotted Blog Post

There are a lot of aspiring/self-published writers on Twitter trying to get their work out there, and if you enter that community, follow a few people, you find yourself deluged with links and promo hyperbole. It’s hard to argue with the goal, but when everyone’s doing it, how do you stand out?

I tell myself at least I’m generally plugging new material – I don’t usually push work for longer than a day or two, and TV reviews I only mention once – rather than flogging the same thing repeatedly, but ultimately, it’s still a lot of links. I can’t pretend I’m on that much higher a plane here.

Ultimately, I gotta cross my fingers and pray my followers care – maybe dial it down if the audience figures slide toiletward. But by the same token, there’s only so much I can push things to the same few people, thus why I just mention things a few times to account for time zones, then drop them.

Don’t Miss The Toilet!

After all, I also have idle life updates and toilet jokes, and I’d hate people to miss out due to unfollowing. Yes, it’s my work which I’m genuinely passionate about, but for the same reason, I don’t want it to become background noise either. And there must be places online actually intended as locations to push your flash fiction/serial fiction/TV reviews, rather than just chucking them out into the general Twitter vortex and hoping they “go viral”.

Especially if I’m looking for people to not just idly click the links, but actually invest enough to vote, maybe it’s time for a little targeted marketing. What I really need is some kind of Social Media Marketing Guru to tell me about this – anyone know where I could find one?

(Or, indeed, any thoughts on the issues raised above, shout out in the comments. How much plugging is too much? Is there such a thing? Has anyone had a relative disown them due to excessive flogging of their writing?)

(Creative Commmons spam photo by Arnold Gatilao on Flickr, by the by. Okay, enough bracketed epilogues.)