The Force Is With You This Friday we unleash the unknown stories of those lost on Alderaan. For what seems like forever, we’ve been rehearsing, performing and warming up for the only city that really matters – Nottingham. We’re splashing Star Wars all over the Nottingham Playhouse this Friday and it’s really quite exciting. Not only … Continue reading
Seaworthy Songs And Oceanically Wasted Acclaimed shanty and pirate rock masters Seas of Mirth are launching their brand new album HARK! THE HEADLAND APPROACHETH with I’m Not From London Records at the Nottingham Contemporary this Saturday. With support from 94 GUNSHIPS and GOOEY STUEY’S TECHNO CEILIDH it’s gonna be a wicked evening. Kind lads that they are, they’ve asked Captain Pigheart to … Continue reading
Two Libraries, No System While we’ve got thousands of paper books which are beautiful and brilliant, but cause us endless space problems, I’ve also got quite a lot of digital books. Kindle is spectacularly crap at managing them. The manual creation of collections and adding books is tedious beyond all 21st Century technology except perhaps the … Continue reading
Spaceship, spaceship, spaceship! Knowing that there is a science fiction thread hidden away in the Flash Pulp universe has been tweaking my Lego gland for a while. Actually, there are several sci-fi threads now, but for ages Joe Monk was the only one. I refuse to look ahead through the programme, so it came as a lovely surprise … Continue reading
What’s Going On, Man? Well, I’ve been busy. And also lazy. I feel I’ve been very lazy. When I became part-time last August I envisaged an explosion of creative activity: daily posts; wonders goddammit. I’m stunned to discover that I failed to achieve my own expectations. Instead I’ve found myself unwinding and relaxing for the first … Continue reading
Delays, Delays and Lazing I’ve had a tiny bit of a Lego brain drought since finishing this build off, and I think it’s because I hadn’t properly finished it off by doing the blog post about it. I am a fool. As you might have gathered I completed the MOC about a month ago, but endless things, … Continue reading
Making Progress I’ve finally reached a new thread in the massive Flash Pulp universe! And he’s one of my favourites too – Thomas Blackhall: frontiersman, occult magician, all round mid-nineteenth century bad-ass. He comes in to the universe with a six-parter – no mean debut. There’s some pretty awesome magic and witchery later on in the … Continue reading
Desert Crystals Part 42 – It’s A Long Way Up Previous episode, for these characters. With a strangled bellow, Tosser finally laid a sweating hand on the solid deck of the Viper. Her other hand snatched the looped rope from Guldwych’s outstretched arms and tied them off on the Viper’s railing. She let her trembling … Continue reading
Nice House, I’d Like To Build It I have been admiring, envying and been generally desirous of many of the Lego AFOL community’s cool building skills. In particular I love the insanely crumbly buildings, their twisty and off-centre lines and organic scrappy feel. These guys Derfel Cadarn and Captain Flint do lovely things: I’ve had a few attempts myself … Continue reading
So Far Behind I’m finally up to episode 6, of a mere 446 podcast episodes (excluding special episodes and a bunch of other cool things), which is slightly daunting. I built this one before Christmas, but I’ve been so busy doing, um, nothing that it’s taken me this long to sort the pictures out. Plus … Continue reading
Desert Crystals Part 41 – Sharp and Nasty The Dove’s Eye had been painstakingly tethered to a fine spire of rock. It now bobbed in the ceaseless currents passing from the blazing heat of the desert to the brutal shards of the Razor Ridge. From below it looked terribly fragile, more so knowing that it … Continue reading
Desert Crystals Part 40 – Night Thrills The sky reeled about, moons a blurred rainbow of cat-struck balls. The Sky Viper maintained its course, heading into the night while her crew dangled and spun beneath her. Guldwych Ryme had lost track of whether he was awake or in blackened sleep. His cheek smarted a little … Continue reading
Time Waits For No Brick I have been delayed, so horribly delayed in this build. A few months ago I was reading FP005 and trying to figure out a way to do it justice. It’s a very short Flash Pulp episode, even for a Kar’Wick apocalypse story. I’d already done a street scene being destroyed … Continue reading
Part 39 – Desert Blades Last episode (for these characters) The knife sharp crags of the Razor Ridge filled the view from the deck of The Dove’s Eye. The sand was hacked back by the vicious protrusion of rock, though the smooth weathered surface attested to aggressions of the desert storms. They had an uneasy peace … Continue reading
Winter Time And The Living Is Easy I have been taking it nice and easy since completing my NaNoWriMo novella on 23rd November. It has been nice, but I have immediately slacked off waaaay too far. That’s okay though because it’s given me some much needed Lego, reading and kitten playing time. It’s also still … Continue reading
Part 38 – Love Letters Last episode (for these characters) 3rd Toothember, Embrachon My darling Mehlion, I found your l second letter, at last, hidden from view. It’s fortunate that I had occasion to visit the university and pay some mind to my poor abandoned office, else I’d never have spotted it through the mirror. … Continue reading
It’s Over! Thank the muses and the boozes it is complete! I’m quite chuffed. I passed 50K on day 15, which was a win for anxious writing and inept time management. Then I slowed down a bit and have skipped two days of writing entirely. It’s done now though, after a final push with Andy … Continue reading
Special? I can’t hear someone told that they’re special without thinking of two things – the first is the common everyday school use of special to mean different, difficult, abnormal. Other. The other is the one from the best work of Pixar, The Incredibles which I horribly misquote all the time in my head: ‘if … Continue reading
We had run out of fire doors. They’d proven to be highly effective defensive and offensive weapons. I’m a little surprised they don’t see more use in Jackie Chan films. I’d broken one with a policeman, smashed a machine with another and used the last two as stretchers. We were, I suspect, feeling rather too … Continue reading
Constantly paying attention is very tiring. We were just twitchy, which isn’t quite the same thing. At least we weren’t US fighter pilots hopped up on amphetamines taking pot shots at Canadian tanks. Shadows and distant closing doors made us jump, but did nothing to improve our focus. It’s very hard to keep that up … Continue reading
Flying through the air as we leaped between the roof tops made me feel like a ninja, or at least like Mary Poppins and Dick Van Dyke bouncing off bamboo poles. Happily, there was no one on the roofs to object and we hopped, skipped and bounded up and over banks and shoe shops, relatively … Continue reading
I love that feeling where you know that something has to be done – just has to be, and that every second you delay makes it more likely that it can’t be done. If you can stand the agony of waiting – that rising tension which knots you up from the inside until your arms … Continue reading
Baulking At The Brink Of Success This may be my first day this month that I have not successfully written words for my story. On the plus side, I passed 50,000 by the end of the fifteenth of the month, so as far as the basic challenge goes – nailed it. I’m now at 52,696 words! Completion … Continue reading
We couldn’t stay in the park forever. It was only early evening so in theory we had all night, but who wants to stand around in a park all night? Apart from teenagers of course. But we were all old enough to drink in pubs and take our dodgy drugs into our own homes. It … Continue reading
The night raced by us, leaving lamp posts as streamers of light in the darkness. We soon left the police cars and vans behind. I had never moved so fast – it was an unreal sensation of the world flying by and vibrating before me, but I felt almost none of it. My Watcher was … Continue reading
The pub was empty when we left. I felt bad for abandoning the barmaid, but we’d reasoned that the potential consequences of direct intervention were unknown, but suspected to be severe. We could always come back. That put the immediate hideous image in my head of the Watcher dissolving her from the outside in, her … Continue reading
It had cooled down even more as we came down the steps from the town hall, our Watchers keeping pace with us. So we were the special ones, this few hundred of us, somehow chosen by the alien Visitors to teach them about our world. At least, that’s what they had told us. I certainly … Continue reading
Part 37 – Ask Not, Get Not Last episode (for these characters) Rectangles of reflected light bounced around the cabin as a tremor ran through Traverstorm’s hand. The scalpel he held wavered and then stilled. “Give me another drink, just one to steady my hand.” he begged. “No. You’ve had two, and that’s two more … Continue reading
The lights dimmed over the Great Hall and brightened for the rostrum ahead of us. The usual murmur faded away as our school conditioning kicked in. I settled back with my half cup of tea and biscuit hoard. While I was hoping to get some useful information from the big meeting my expectations had been … Continue reading
I’m not sure how long we stood together, me wrapped in my Watcher’s close embrace. It felt like a long time before the messy physiological processes of tears and shaking finally ended. I felt wrung out but clean when we stepped apart. I felt both comfortable and uncomfortable with my Watcher – physical intimacy is … Continue reading
I didn’t know what to do. I was frozen between the window and the door. A group of people whose home I had been inside only half an hour before were being stuffed into a police van. What are you supposed to do? My Watcher was still looking at me, its face neutral but attentive. … Continue reading
With the door closed the world contracted. My recent conversation with Alison in her taped up flat, the smell of cement from the hallway, all that fell away. It was just me and the Watcher. We looked at each for a minute. Nothing happened. I fell into default British mode and went to put the … Continue reading
28,091 Words So Far That’s quite a lot. It has snuck up on me. It should be obvious, but by writing a bit more every day I end up with quite a lot more overall. I never said I could adding up. So yeah, 30K is in sight and I should hit that easily enough … Continue reading
