Star light, star bright

Our lovely kitty woke me up in the middle of the night last night, something she regularly does as she is greedy. But she sometimes does it when she wants company and last night I couldn't complain - the sky was the clearest I've seen it for probably a year. Even with all the light pollution that the city usually throws up... I did consider getting dressed and walking up to the park to get a better view, see the real abundance of the heavens... But it was late and I knew Frankie wouldn't appreciate being woken up to go for a chilly walk, so I wrote instead. As I was writing, I was thinking about what could happen to reduce the light pollution...maybe the night was so clear due to the thinning of the ozone, maybe a distant solar flare twisted into a natural EMP taking everything out. Maybe it's aliens... Maybe it's just writing practice from a half dreaming mind - that way it doesn't have to make sense... :-)

* * * * *

Jenna woke up. It was just shy of 2 am and she was all of a sudden, inexplicably wide awake. The flat was silent around her, just her grandmother’s clock ticking in the living room two open doors away. She reached out a hand to her left and found the large furry mass of the cat, Marmite, prooting awake beneath her touch. Jenna frowned, yawned and rolled over, feeling Marmite get up, spin round and curl up against her spine.

Five minutes later she was still laying awake, her eyes staring into the clutter of her bedroom and her mind full of things that she could be doing if she were up - like washing up that plate peeking out from the edge of a jumble of clothing. And maybe actually folding up and putting away that jumble of clothing. Jenna blinked and looked at the window, wondering if the nieghbours had left their garden light on again. But the light ghosting in through the curtain was cool and blue, silvering everything in the room.

Jenna eased her way out of bed and peeked through the curtain, feeling the cool breeze of Marmite walking past her bare legs before he jumped up on the window sill beside her.

“Look at that Marmite... So many stars.”

The sky was a deep distant blue and completely clear. The moon, although waning and half empty was bright enough to read by and the stars...the more she looked, the more stars she saw. There hadn’t been a night this clear since she’d been a child, not one that she hadn’t slept through anyway.

Jenna ran her hand across Marmite’s thick fur and smiled, suddenly energised and excited. She knew just where to go.

Her breath was pluming around her in a silver mist as she crested the top of the hill and approached the top of the pavillion at the edge of the park. With every step the stars had bred, the curtain of the night sky drawing back further to reveal more and more distant suns, each with their own solar systems, maybe even their own inhabitants gazing up at the clearest sky for forever and smiling with enchantment. And she was smiling as she leaned on the wall, gazing up at the heavens. As were the others who joined her, their faces glowing with simple joy, their heads wreathed in clouds of glowing breath.

They stood and stared, some pointing out the constellations to each other in whispers, not really noticing as behind them the street lights began to flicker out, easing the perfect sky further and further across the city. The orange glow receding to a few distant pin pricks of light that then blinked out.

Only when the chill started to gnaw through their feet did a few turn, still smiling, with the intention of heading home, turning to see the dark city spread before them. Perfectly silvered by the moon and glittering with the beginnings of a frost.

The dark city with not a light in sight.

The dark city and beyond that, the dark world.

Ticking clocks and pumpkins...

I know. It’s been a while...

I’m sitting at home and pondering the strangeness of spare time. I actually have holiday and I am so unaccustomed to it, I’m not sure what to do with myself... The soundtrack of the house around me is one of a ticking clock and distant washing machine: a clock from my grandmother’s house, now hung on my wall and if I close my eyes I can imagine her living room, the cool silence of a family reading, my gran sitting with a poodle on her lap, her eyes distant, her hand worrying at the hem of her skirt... The sky outside looks like a vast slab of pale marble, the glitter of the rock made up of fine rain.

You’re probably wondering why anyone would take time off in October? When the sun is an irregular visitor, when the house is cool enough to warrant putting the heating on maybe once or twice a day. When even the ducks and swans on the river are questioning the good sense of being half immersed in cold, green water.

I have two words for you... Autumn and Halloween.

I love this time of the year. There’s just something about the early morning mists, the dew laden cobwebs, candle-lit pumpkins, crunchy drifting leaves, being able to wear gloves and jumpers and drink hot chocolate all the time... The Pagan year is coming to a close, the veil between worlds is thin and I feel the magic in the air and inspiration seems to come with every breath...

So why am I being baffled by having time on my hands? I think it’s partially from being inside. I need to get outside and soak up the season and let it work it’s magic on me, even with the rain and the grumpy ducks. I need to be writing again - I feel like I’ve lost a limb and the phantom sensation of writing is eating at me, the shape of the pen almost in my hand and the scratch of paper just out of hearing.

So why am I sitting here still? I feel like the day has stalled...

I need to go and buy pumpkins...

It's time to get infected...

I have just finished Justin Cronin's book, The Passage...

At the end of the book, heart in mouth and palms sweating from more than just the clammy English summer, I did something that I haven't done for a while - I found myself flicking a few pages back, skim reading again, turning the last page and staring at the last few blank pages. As if there was something I'd missed... As if by doing this I could make there be more or the promise of more...

Damn you, Cronin!

The Passage is a sprawling epic, very much in the style of Stephen King's The Stand, bringing a refreshing take on the vampire mythos that will have the Twi-hards shuddering... "I don't like it, they're not pretty like Edward, but maybe beneath the glow they have melancholy souls... Maybe if I give one a hug? God! Noooo! Garrrrrrrrrr-herrrrtzzzz... Blerg..." Sorry, a bit distracted there.

The Passage is the tale of a virus, found in bats in the arse-end of some evil heat-drenched jungle. Everything, as you would imagine when mixing said virus, government scientists and a tale of horror, goes horribly, bloodily wrong and gets wronger and wronger with every page. Until the Earth that once was, is gone and all that's left is a pocket of humanity, clinging to the light, no longer living, just surviving. Add to this a special child who seems older than her years, some feisty women, broken families, a brother with itchy feet, a geek or two and millions of glowing feral creatures that want to rip nine in ten of them apart - leaving one in ten with a bite that will forever change them...

This is The Passage.

This is the return of the Vampire as a thing to be feared.

This is a return to horror as a survival epic that makes us glad to be alive when-ever we close the pages.

This is a book that will infect you, just as those metallic teeth gently cut into the soft flesh of the one in ten spreading the disease, a biblio-bite that will leave you wanting more and wanting everyone else to read it as well.

I haven't felt like this for a while, felt exhausted from the journey of reading and catapulted from another universe at the end. Another world which though deadly and full of hurt, I miss and would re-enter in a heartbeat because I miss them, the people I met, the friends made and lost and the story left unsaid...

To say I loved The Passage wouldn't convey how I feel, parts of that book terrified me and I cried more than once. I think my reading life would have been less without it.

But there is a problem... I want more! And now! Luckily in an online interview Mr Cronin said that this wasn't a tale that could be told in one book, but something that would take three to accomplish...

So where is it?

What do you think you're doing, doing a US and UK tour to promote the book when you should be writing?

Seriously though, it's a great, scratch that, phenomenal, no... A superlative novel and I'd like to thank Mr Cronin and wish him all the best on his tour and with the next two books. Just... Faster would be better...

You can read about the creation of The Passage at the end of the product description of the book of Amazon and I can't help but think that it won't be too long before Justin Cronin's daughter, Iris, has a book out of her own...

Check out the following websites for some scary video footage of infected attacks and more info on the book and author:

www.findsubjectzero.com

http://enterthepassage.com

* * * * *

Justin Cronin will be appearing Monday 5th July at 6:30pm at Norwich Millennium Library, Norwich, UK. Tickets are £2 available from the library or Norwich Castle Street, (01603 767292). This may be our only chance to see him in this neck of the woods, before he becomes too cool for East Anglia and the infection becomes too widespread...

Addicted to the cowl...

I will openly admit that I have an addictive personality and that when I get hooked on a game I pretty much don't do anything else... But I think I only get maybe two or three games a year that I love that much. If that. And some games you play through only because you've started them... A game unfinished is a half eaten cake, it seems a shame to waste it. Although there have been a few I've turned my back on with a smile hoping they wither in misery unopened for months on end, knowing they are unwanted... You know your names...

The first Assassins Creed was a little like that. I started it, enjoying the design, landscapes, plot and game play but found the controls increasingly irritating, until in the end I gave up and cursed it to gather dust behind the pile of favoured titles.

My brother bought us the second game for Christmas '09 and I was unsure until I played it. Everything that I loved about the first game is there, the beauty in the animation, the amazing location designs, crisp rendering and morally ambiguous behaviour – but the controls are a dream. No more creeping up behind someone to slip a knife between their ribs and suddenly pulling a sword – ninja stealth fail. There is just a grace of movement and the perfect balance of flesh and metal – assassination as ballet, with a rogue-ish smile.

I won't deny that there have been times when I've launched myself off of a building to crumple a good six storeys below, due to poor aiming and that there have been moments of pure Tomb Raider vertigo, sweating palms as I try not to look down... (I know it's only a game! But heights totally freak me out!). But I consider those to be faults in the player rather than in the game. No one's perfect, right? But this game comes close – even to the extent that there's some Assassin Tomb raiding that would put Lara to shame.

I think the thing that makes me love the game the most are those moments when it pauses to revel in its own beauty, usually at the top of a synchronisation point. There is a haunting beauty about seeing your character perched on the top of a lighthouse at night, sparks from the fire below floating up past him towards the star filled heavens – followed by the dive down that you feel certain is going to break him in half. (Most of them a four-scream-Lara fall...).

Then he jumps out of the straw and struts away, letting hay fall from his clothes with a swaggering nonchalance...

Now where did I put the controller?

* * * * *

I wrote the above love letter to Assassins Creed II a fair few weeks ago, shortly before finishing the game. Between then and now...well, I got the craving to climb high places, dive into straw, slip that sharp silver between deserving ribs...

I bought Assassins Creed again and gave it another try and going back to it I have no idea why I had problems with it in the first place; the game is exquisite. Yes, there are improvements that they made in the second game that I miss in the first; the day to night game transitions are glorious and really add a dimension to the sneaking and posing at the top of towers; the ability to swim and dive from high points into water; and the story line is a leaner stealthier beast. But... Damn it, I'm as addicted to the first game as I was to the second and that says something.

It just goes to show that first impressions can be wrong; sometimes when you don't get on with a game, it's not the games fault - you just haven't developed enough as a monk impersonating, knife wielding dealer of death to appreciate it.

The problem I now have is that I and the hubby are competing to use the Xbox - he wants to shoot slack jawed yokels in cowboy hats and put women on train tracks, and that's when he's not wandering around in the dark, snivelling into his torch and wondering where all his flares went. Me, I just want to collect flags, kill the oppressors and climb real high. If this keeps up we may have to buy a second Xbox.

Now there's an idea...

Colds and damp sand

If anyone out there has the cure to the common cold, stop being selfish and share... I think I've either had one cold for five weeks or two colds humping each other for the same duration... I'm getting to the point where I'm prepared to either napalm it out with alcohol and curry or marry the damn thing - Table for two Mrs Twistedwitch-Cold?

Whatever... The last couple of weeks have been a harvest festival of book reading and dvd/tv watching; I cruised through the Steig Larson trilogy, read a couple of urban fantasy titles, a children's fantasy, a horror proof I've had kicking around for about three years and am now ignoring all else for a proof that just may be the next big thing... I'll let you know when I've finished it. Tv-wise, we've just finished watching the final episodes of Lost and 24 and one was really cool and the other was a meta-physical shambles. I'll leave it up to you to decide which was which.

Whilst we haven't made it to the cinema for a few weeks, we keep catching up with films on dvd and Holmes has to be the most recent viewing of note. I have to admit, I wasn't impressed by the trailers at the time, but Downey Jnr really stole the show. The film was a tangental re-telling of the essence of Sherlock Holmes, were he too self absorbed to be socially aware, smug with his incredible intelligence and somehow charming and utterly irritating at the same time... Like House in a frock coat really... The whole film looked authentic enough to soot up your eyeballs and Downey Jnr yet again proves that he's more than just a clothes horse for a cool costume.

Writing... I've done some. We're working on Cheesemint scripts at the moment and I have a short story to try and cobble together in the next week mixing myth and military, so wish me luck. But here's some of the random writing practice that came up in the last week - it started off really nostalgic and golden and turned swiftly towards the sitting-in-the dark-rocking-and-babbling with very little warning. Sorry about that. I'll try and curb that next time...

Deeper Than Damp Sand

The rope trails down the rock face and frays into nothing miles away from the waves kissing stone below. I could remember when there once used to be a path here, little more than a wish clinging onto the cliff and you hung onto the rope for dear life as you crept around the corner to get to the beach beyond. The beach that couldn't be seen from land or sea.

I glance behind me, thinking I hear footsteps scuffing the impacted earth and there's no one there, only the breeze shaking the brambles. I keep looking back, expecting the faces from twenty years before to tumble around the corner, sunburnt and their hair salt-styled from the sea... Somewhere above me I can hear a bird singing, its song mixing with the sea and wind into a perfect moment of summer.

The tension in my gut draws me back to the frayed rope and I grab it, feeling the years coiled in my hand. As if with one pull, the world could cast off years, the path would scramble from the sea to cling to the rock, the lines would fade from my skin and the air would be full of familiar laughter.

“Just jump in, stop wasting the summer...”

I hear him, just like he's there and I spin round, the smile already on my face. But the path's empty, just bramble shadows and dreams.

I look back at the sea and lean over the end of the path, holding onto the rope as I watch the waves below. The water looks less blue now, like grey metal buckling a long way away. My knuckles are the colour of bone around the rope and my skin looks wrapped tight enough to split, all scars and lines.

The singing bird darts out from the hedge behind me and flutters out over the sea, swooping in its song. Before I know what I'm doing, I've kicked off my shoes and jumped. Feeling the wind rush to encourage me, the sun sparking off of those giggling waves.

The water is a cool slap, knocking laughter into bubbles as it pulls me into its blue embrace. I fight to the surface and let the laughter peal, hearing it bounce off of the cliff and ringing back at me like a memory. I tread water, surprised at its warmth, glad that the summer heat has been seeping into it for months. I flip the hair from my smile and start swimming for the curve in the cliff and the beach beyond.

The sea laps my ears as I turn the corner doing a careful breaststroke and there it is, the beach where we used to spend most of our summers. Apart from the path, nothing has changed, the cliff's shielded it from erosion and it remains a sweep of golden sand, with a few boulders bathing in the shallows.

I find the sand beneath my feet and wade through the water to the dry sand, hot and oozing through my toes. I turn, taking it all in, the shelves cut into the cliffs by the sea, the perfect sand, the sky like a polaroid from every summer that ever was. If I close my eyes I'll be eighteen again, standing here at the start of the summer, waiting for the magic to happen.

I open my eyes and walk over to the closest rock, sitting with my bare feet in the water and feeling the heat in the stone drying my clothes. I sit facing the cliff, trying to remember, where it was, where to dig...

My knees sink into the warmth of the sand as my fingers burrow deeper, into the damp layer abandoned by sea and sun, digging until my nails hit metal. The biscuit tin is heavy with emotion as I pull it from the sand, the red paint infected with a crust of rotting wet metal. I go back to the rock, back to the sunlight and rest the cold metal on my lap, watching the sea and listening to the melody of the coast.

I don't need to open the tin to know what's inside it, we each left something behind that summer; my battered yellow Walkman, Rory's horror book he was reading at the time, Paul left the folding knife he'd only just bought, Joe, the watch he'd had since he'd been twelve. And Si...Si left something else, something too big to fit in the tin. Si left his boat, buried in the sand beneath, like a warped Viking funeral, the oaks tucked beneath the seats beside bottles of water, wine and salt, and a bloodied travel blanket.

The thing inside the blanket we all left. A friendship ended, an accident, a body – whatever you'd call it. Our secret. Our oath to silence. Our lives forever changed by dumb bad luck, too many drunk teenagers on a boat and a friend caught in the undertow and washed up on our favourite beach the next morning.

I close my eyes and tip my head back into the sun, listening to the seagulls fight high above the waves. The tension in my stomach has gone now. It wasn't nostalgia dragging me back here, just guilt and sadness buried deeper than damp sand.

I go back to the hole and brush the thin layer of sand from the blanket, feeling something shifting beneath, things that were once joined, now rattling loose like promises in a tin. I put the box back and fill the hole, smoothing the sand flat with slow hands. Then I lay down and let the sun sink into me, lulling me to sleep as I wait. If I wait long enough the tide will wrap me in its whispers. If I wait long enough I'll be eighteen again, surrounded by friendship that could last forever.

If I wait long enough I won't care that there's no way off of this beach.

Catching the little fishes too...

Here's something that came up in writing practice, more complete than usual, possibly a little sweeter than I would normally find coming out of my head; I mean there's no blood, no supernatural goings on... But you can't really throw it back just because it's not the normal fish you catch...

By the way this is fiction. I don't have gold coins in my curtains, or at least not that I know of...

Rubbing Pennies

After two hours of listening to the the wind outside battling to be noticed against the double glazing and the steady breaths of sleep coming from beside me, the ache in my back and my open eyes has become too much. I slide from the duvet slowly, trying not to wake him, hoping to keep him in warm, soothing dreams.

The house is quiet, the whispering clocks getting all of the attention as they tut their boredom at me from one room to another. I walk to the patio doors, part the curtain and look out onto the moonlight barricade of weeds surrounding the house. It’s like a wild green ocean in the wind, flowers tossed from wave to wave, losing petals with every surge. I drop the curtain, noticing that the hem’s loose as it drags across the floor. I mutter a scolding to the cat, who is probably on the bed sleeping beside my husband and crouch to see how bad the damage is. The curtains were in the house when we bought it, already sun faded and thin. The lining has come away from the hem and threads trail across the floor like long albino spider legs. I sigh and add it onto the long list of things that need fixing, or replacing, the expensive list that I keep in my head. The list that makes my back ache and my eyes stay open.

I turn to go to the kitchen and my feet brush against something cold on the floor. The pennies used to weigh down the curtain have spilled out and I bend to pick them up, feeling older as I do it. Pennies in the hems, that was something my gran used to do. She always said that the real weights were just called pennies, but they were lead. Why buy something for more than a handful of change, when a handful of change would do? I smile as I shift the weight in my hand. She’d be proud of all our pinching and saving.

I turn to the kitchen, slide the pennies onto the counter and make a cup of tea by the light of the fridge, drinking standing up and staring at my half reflection in the window. After ten minutes the cold that creeps in beneath the doors has numbed my feet and I head back to bed. It takes some time but my husband’s breath is a lullaby too gentle to resist.

I stagger downstairs in the morning to the dawn chorus of washing up and the kettle boiling. At the bottom of the stairs I catch sight of my husband skipping across the kitchen, singing to himself. I’m confused but I smile. It’s nice to see him happy but I’m not sure why. He turns and sees me, rushing forward to hug me, my feet leaving the floor.

“Where did you find them? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“What?”

He drops me, grabs my hand and pulls me into the kitchen, picking up the pennies from the counter.

“Those? They’re just pennies from the curtain.”

“Look closer...”

He’d rubbed away some of the tarnish on the side of a coin. It no longer looked bronze, it looked...gold.

I looked up and met his eyes and he nodded.

“I looked on the internet, I think they’re Roman.”

The smile crept onto my face like hope, erasing the bags from beneath my eyes.

“And you said they came from the curtains...”

“The hem’s torn...”

He nodded and took my hand, leading me into the dining room, where the curtains hung askew, trailing on the floor.

“We can buy new curtains.”

The man from the blog, he say...

10 cls

20 print "yes..."

30 goto 20

yes...

yes...

yes...

yes...

It's not you, it's me...

Dear Blog,

Before I say anything else, I want to say I'm sorry. I haven't given you the attention that you deserve and my communication has been appalling. I'm so sorry if I've hurt you, I never meant to...

I need to be honest with you, I've been seeing others behind your back.

Assassin's Creed 2 was a constant companion for several weeks, Odeon Cinema, Vue Cinema and Cinema City have all taken me out a few times to the movies, with mixed results... Cheesemint Productions have been demanding and one of the projects is currently being very clingy and I'm hoping to finish it soon. What with this, Dragon Age, Bioshock 2 and Left For Dead 2 coming out and the Halo Reach Beta around for a couple of weeks... Plus the books and tv series I've been flirting with and the short but intense fling with the Stieg Larsson trilogy...

I've suddenly realised that I've been ignoring you, perhaps even been avoiding you. And it dawned on me, it's all a distraction... None of it has been serious and you and writing have been on my mind almost all the time, in the background. Making me realise that this is where my heart lies, no matter what else I'm doing to procrastinate and displace - I want to be writing. I want this relationship to work.

Is there anyway we can get past this? Is there anyway you can forgive me?

Can we start again as if the last four months haven't happened?

All my love

Twistedwitch

When the snow melts...

Happy new year one and all!

Ha ha! I bet you all thought I'd given up doing this blog, you all thought I'd lost motivation and had nothing to say!

Well, Christmas and Yule kinda got in the way and having no internet access at home kinda puts a spanner in the works, what with this being an internet blog and all...

I, like many of you, came into 2010 with good intentions of writing more often, blogging more often and generally pulling my finger out and getting on with stuff. And then came the new XBox games and lots of opportunities to go to the cinema for free... Also in the background I was deciding that I wanted to broaden the horizons of this blog and talk about movies, books, music and games more...

Last year one of my intelligent and beautiful friends, fellow Cheeseminter Georgie made an excellent new years resolution to see a new film, unseen classics or new movie, once a week - she achieved this and passed her target sometime during September I think. As I and the husband find it hard to get to the cinema due to work shifts and responsibilities I thought this would be an excellent resolution to adopt.

So far this year I've seen The Princess and the Frog, (Disney, not as good as their best but still enjoyable 6/10), Nowhere Boy, (the origins of John Lennon, genius and moving 7/10) and Up in the Air, (Clooney at his best with a great script and poignant humour 8/10).

I'll update the books read anytime soon... Maybe when we have home internet again.

And I'm working on some wordier posts... I promise.