Yarr, me apologies mates. I’ve been vastly slack in the provision of tales for ye enjoyment. In truth it’s been a busy month or so and what stories’ve been in the preppin’ have lain dormant in me scribblin’ book.
Things that have occupied me
Well. Much. As ever it’s the joy of improvised comedy that draws my eye away from Pigheart – we had two full shows last month, first at the Carnival of Monsters which was awesome fun. New place, new people. I think I did my finest monologue so far – about the importance of downloading music on a Tuesday because of the black holes above the Earth which gather sheep for the purpose of extracting lanolin which is then deposited through white holes into the atmosphere allowing cyclones to form from the moisture. It made sense at the time.
We also had a showing at the Oxjam Beeston Takeover weekend, though due to the sheer number of acts we only got a twenty minute bit for improv. It was a knackering afternoon for me because I compered it, as well taking part in the improv and reading the Cetacean Adventure. Turns out that pirate stories actually hold up pretty well alongside stand up, improv and musical comedy (courtesy of Misk Hills Mountain Rambler, whom you really ought to check out).
We’ve been in improv training too, did a bunch of terrifying musical singing improv which was amazing. I need to keep working on that to get the confidence levels up. We’re also doing extra weekly sessions in a small group, just to get better y’know. A very silly video from the musical weekend is here.
We finished off the month with our regular show at The Glee Club and we were thrilled to discover that we’d been bumped up to the massive top room! Super exciting. It was a really fun show and we had a fantastic audience (bigger than the stand up downstairs!). Best of all we had our dear MissImper Charlotte back for the night on a most welcome trip from New Zealand.
I’ve also been running Pub Poetry for Oxjam Beeston which have drawn in some fun people. There’s another one on Monday at the Canalhouse – the comedy joy literally never stops. I shall read some Franklyn de Gashe I think.
So what about the writing?
Well. Not much. I have a longer story which will start showing up on the site on Monday – ‘Goodbye Mister Bimbolino’, which is a Galaxy Team story but narrated by Alex Trepan (the trepanned private investigator), who I like as a character but have never found much to do with him. He’s investigating a bunch of clown murders while on the hunt for the freaks in Galaxy Team. Eagle eared listeners of Flash Pulp might guess that it was inspired by one of Jrd, Jessica May and 0popanax’ conversations in a Flash Cast some time ago. It’s gonna be a multi-parter, and don’t worry – it’s all written but it’s taken me ages to type up. I’m now polishing it one chapter at a time. Probably going to be four parts. Maybe three. Maybe five. We’ll see.
I have managed to do a couple of Alphabetic Dialogues, which I find fun to write (you may or may not find them fun to read…) and I’m considering recording them as short audio stories. Thoughts? Speaking of audio stories I’ve recorded two stories for inclusion on the Flash Pulp Flash Cast – you can listen to the first one here, and I think the second, The Gelatinous Adventure will be featured next week. Exciting!
I’m halfway through a Franklyn de Gashe story which has taken a weird Lovecraft-ian turn. Not sure where that’s going to end up. Plus there are a couple of Pigheart bits which I need to tie together.
I’ve been reading a lot, and I guess I ought to try to do some kind of book review thing once in a while. The list from the last month or two, in case you’re interested, is:
The Execution Channel – Ken McLeod, Finch – Jeff Vandermeer, Broken Angels – Richard Morgan, The Demolished Man – Alfred Bester, Glasshouse – Charles Stross, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson, Woken Furies – Richard Morgan (again), The Doomspell Trilogy – Cliff McNish, Pygmy – Chuck Paluhniak, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies – Seth Grahame-Smith, The Girl Who Played With Fire – Stieg Larsson, The God of Clocks – Alan Campbell, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest – Stieg Larsson, Storm Front – Jim Butcher, Ghosts of Manhattan – George Mann, all the free short stories from Shadows of the Apt on the web – Adrian Tchaikovsky.
So that’s taken up some time too. I will almost definitely, certainly, probably do better at writing this month. Honest!
