If you’re roughly my age and Canadian, you probably remember Count Floyd from SCTV. If you don’t, you’re on the internet, you’ll find a video soon enough.
I think I’ve mentioned I’ve been busy at work. Yesterday was ridiculous. Thus, here I am, watching the sun set on Hallowe’en itself, the night promising to bring nothing but wind to our door, setting up what should have been yesterday’s bumper crop of scares.
But I image you’re all sitting at home in semi- or quasi-lockdown, too.
Yesterday’s pen, from beyond the grave!… well… on-deck box: Parker 75 Yesterday’s really spooky ink: Edelstein Olivine
A very small stone on that mountain was paperwork associated with joining the board of directors of the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild.
Which seemed like a brilliant idea right up until the point the voting closed.
No, no, I’m just being dramatic for funnies. It will be an interesting and useful experience, and as far as I can discover not one of my predecessors disappeared mysteriously or met with foul play while serving. It’ll be fine.
We’re heaving ever closer to the Best Day of The Year, and I feel like I’ve gotten an early present.
You don’t exchange Hallowe’en presents in your family? How very usual.
I’m probably late to the creepy party on this, but I was only yesterday introduced to a non-existent American cable channel with some delightful seasonal programming.
No. I’m in a stressed state, as are we all, and I thought I would give my brain a little time off. The little Twitter items are still happening, and being collected at my other establishment, and of course there’s bits of stories developing like yeast colonies all over my brain… at least, I’m pretty sure that’s what they are, and not actual yeast colonies.
†STILL no sample on the site yet, and it may go another week yet.
A thing that a lot of writers get stuck inside their heads is “I must keep my ideas secret, lest other writers make off with them!” This even though we all know that there’s only (variable but small number) stories in existence.
Apart from a very few seriously unique notions that need to be sprung on an unsuspecting world, like, “How about zombies, but fast?”, most of us stop worrying about that. We still keep ideas to ourselves, because (a) they’re often a little embarrassing, and (b) blabbing about them before they’ve fully gestated is a good way of killing them.
Others stealing the ideas, though? I’ve seen some big name authors shout WHO CARES?! at that, because no two writers will tell a story in the same way. Case in point:
I will make an exception to the preceding for film adaptations of The Three Musketeers. Unless it’s “In Space” or “set in the Cars universe”, you’re utterly wasting your efforts when the 1973/74 diptych exists.
ps: I haven’t mentioned it here (apart from the automated side-bar reference) but over on the writing site, I’m archiving creepy nanofictions which I emit daily on Twitter.
I’m actually going to do a content warning today. There’s a touch of domestic violence in today’s film, which the extreme stylization of the characters seems to make more shocking rather than less.
It does, however, have something I often like to find in scary things; spectral justice.
As the old saying goes, revenge is a dish best served on a bed of carmelized onions.
OK, I guess it is, but it started on Friday, and will look, smell and taste like a Friday entry, with a small sprinkle of ire on top.
Sometime between the posting of last week’s Progress Report and my attempt at the Friday nonsense, WordPress decided that everyone shall now enjoy the new editing mode that they’ve invented. This… became a problem.
It should not have. Apart from my own super-genius powers of adapting to new protocols on the computer (a legacy of having been a user of the things since 1983), you can set it to be functionally similar to the editor that I’ve been using without complaint for…
…um…
…eleven years? What? Really?!
Anyway, what happened when I made the attempt on Friday was a merry little message came up, on a red background: Sorry! You are not allowed to edit this entry. No reason, no “click here to find out more”. Just a slightly polite “bugger off”.
Google didn’t help much. That message had vexed WP users in the past, but I couldn’t find anything about the current newness. And then I had to get back to work.
It turns out the solution was to thoroughly log out, on all platforms. So now I can edit and save and stuff, and with 48 hours of fuming I’ve calmed down enough after this discovery to actually fill the gap. There is a reason that I was so vexed, too– I had news I wanted to share. My story “Wilden Klausen” has been picked up!
I don’t know it the cover art for the anthology is what I’d have picked, but I’m not an editor.
I mean… I’m not against it, but it’s not necessarily selling what’s within. Don’t judge a book by its cover, I guess.
I’m also, WordPress, not a fan of that way of presenting images, but I may find a way of editing that in future. That aside, the book will be out in December (surprise!), and the proceeds will be going to a charity voted upon by the contributors. I will, of course, be returning to this topic as details become available.
Now, the film I was going to offer on Friday, under the title “Terrifying Cultist Chanting” to start October off right:
OK, it’s maybe not cultists, but I’ll bet a chill would run up your spine if you heard it coming from the basement of a disused church.
What's up at Ravens March. 