(no subject)
OK, final entry for today, then what I've written so far is up to date.
From week beginning July 25th:
Have read two Kim Newman stories this week. For those who don't know him, Newman is a very talented writer of fiction, and he also writes for Empire Magazine as a film critic. His novels include Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Dragon and Dracula Cha Cha Cha. The short stories I read were called 'Castle in the Desert' and 'The Other Side of Midnight', both of which Newman introduces as his intention to include them as parts of his newest novel length project Johnny Alucard. As far as I know, this hasn't materialised yet. Shame.
Anyway, I love what Newman does, and the unashamed way he mixes literary figures with real people in his alternative world-taken-over-by-vampires novels. Check him out; his fang-in-cheek humour is ireverent and sly, and his prose well-written and snappy.
I've not been working on my vamp novel. My mind doesn't seem to want to think vampires at the moment. Instead I've been working on an original project that I abandoned in the third year of my degree. It's what I'd describe as 'real' horror; i.e. it's about real people in a real situation going through horrific circumstances, in this case stillbirth and puerperal psychosis. The concept of motherhood as horror is something that's always interested me. What, for example, could a distressed woman's mind spawn when a child is born dead? This kind of horror seems more relevant to me right now. The horror of mental illness is something I'm all too aware of.
Maybe I should begin to read more stuff pertaining to psychological horror. I want to keep the atmosphere of this piece as almost surreal, certainly from the POV of Lucy, the female protagonist. While this story is of course not set in any kind of castle or graveyard, the family home must nonetheless be seen as a place of oppression and have an atmosphere of haunting horror. The inability to accept the stark certainty of death, and the knowledge that a person is losing their mind must pervade the text, but from two POV's - Lucy's and her husband Alex's. Plus, the ghostly characters of Dillusion and the dead child, Jonathan, do fit in with the stuff I'm reading too - i.e. stories of hauntings and ghosts. The difference here between the ghost story and my work is that in mine there is no supernatural element at all; it's all in Lucy's imagination. I suppose from that POV it could be said to be Magic Realism.
I really must re-read Rosemary Jackson's book Fantasy.The Literature of Subversion. It's one of the best books on fantasy theory I've read so far.
From week beginning July 25th:
Have read two Kim Newman stories this week. For those who don't know him, Newman is a very talented writer of fiction, and he also writes for Empire Magazine as a film critic. His novels include Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Dragon and Dracula Cha Cha Cha. The short stories I read were called 'Castle in the Desert' and 'The Other Side of Midnight', both of which Newman introduces as his intention to include them as parts of his newest novel length project Johnny Alucard. As far as I know, this hasn't materialised yet. Shame.
Anyway, I love what Newman does, and the unashamed way he mixes literary figures with real people in his alternative world-taken-over-by-vampires novels. Check him out; his fang-in-cheek humour is ireverent and sly, and his prose well-written and snappy.
I've not been working on my vamp novel. My mind doesn't seem to want to think vampires at the moment. Instead I've been working on an original project that I abandoned in the third year of my degree. It's what I'd describe as 'real' horror; i.e. it's about real people in a real situation going through horrific circumstances, in this case stillbirth and puerperal psychosis. The concept of motherhood as horror is something that's always interested me. What, for example, could a distressed woman's mind spawn when a child is born dead? This kind of horror seems more relevant to me right now. The horror of mental illness is something I'm all too aware of.
Maybe I should begin to read more stuff pertaining to psychological horror. I want to keep the atmosphere of this piece as almost surreal, certainly from the POV of Lucy, the female protagonist. While this story is of course not set in any kind of castle or graveyard, the family home must nonetheless be seen as a place of oppression and have an atmosphere of haunting horror. The inability to accept the stark certainty of death, and the knowledge that a person is losing their mind must pervade the text, but from two POV's - Lucy's and her husband Alex's. Plus, the ghostly characters of Dillusion and the dead child, Jonathan, do fit in with the stuff I'm reading too - i.e. stories of hauntings and ghosts. The difference here between the ghost story and my work is that in mine there is no supernatural element at all; it's all in Lucy's imagination. I suppose from that POV it could be said to be Magic Realism.
I really must re-read Rosemary Jackson's book Fantasy.The Literature of Subversion. It's one of the best books on fantasy theory I've read so far.