The Bandstand?  Railman?  These ring any bells?

Lol.  Yeah, I’ve been a bad boy with letting a lot of writing duties slide.

Now, let’s not get carried away that by posting on the the 1st of January about this that I’ve made any bold New Year resolutions.  I have every belief that i’ll get caught up in ‘life’ just as I always do.

But I have been writing, doing a fair bit of work away from the blog.

Just keeping you in the loop. 

http://www.flurb.net

Looks like they’re looking for submissions for issue #13.  The submission window is Feb 1st to 28th of next year.  Stories between one and six thousand words with strong characters and an actual story.  Fancy that.

Time to hunt though my yWriter files and see if I have anything appropriate.

Other than this post I’ll not be thinking of NaNoWriMo.  Tomorrow is when all the fun begins and despite not having a proper coherent story I’m refusing to fret.

I discovered over the weekend that the ending I wanted doesn’t remotely fit the beginning I was planning.  I have a few scenes in mind for the start, an almost clear picture for the first two or three days and beyond that I’m in full “bluffing it” mode.

Oooh, this’ll be fun.

And if it all grinds to a halt too quickly I have another daft idea for a novel, something that Ruth and I were talking about at the weekend.  It’ll serve as a backup if the first crashes and burns!

And if NaNo goes so well then there’s no reason not to try to write both of them at once…    (this, of course, is madness talking…)

I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and I’ll not be writing anything completely new this year.  A few years ago I wrote a pulp sci-fi/horror called Planet of Snakes, the first and only time i finished a NaNoWriMo, which was a sequel to the story I attempted the previous year called Desert of Zin.  Thing is, i never finished Desert of Zin…

So, Planet of Snakes was the sequel to an unfinished novel?  Yep.  And it depended on the ending of Desert of Zin to work.

My thinking is that I’ll use Snakes and other works to write a space adventure.

It’s not strictly just an editing process.  The setting works, after a fashion, and I’ll only need to change the characters, the dialogue, most of the plot and anything else that springs to mind.

But that’s not all.  Oh, no.

It’s not about writing a 50k story this time.  It’s about writing something that actually works, that’s actually readable and is actually complete.  Planet of Snakes was a mess filled with quick fixes.  But my writing has come on in bounds.  I don’t fall into the same repetitious traps.  (Or not as much.)

Nothing quite like setting the sights high, eh?

And it doesn’t have many spires and it’s not set at midnight.

I’m sure I’ll fix that in the edit, and that begins tonight. 

Looking through the blog it seems that I started this all the way back in September/October 2009 and was dropped for not having enough ‘spark’.  Reading though it again and there’s spark there, just needing a bit of work and an ending.

This is a sequel, of sorts, to Living On Reputation and a story I’ll be sending out into the wild.  Have to make it supergood!

As a big H.P. Lovecraft fan it’s my first serious attempt at writing a Lovecraftian creeping-evil styled tale.  I don’t really know if that’s how it’s going to end up but that’s my intention certainly!

I’m away now – words to write – and I’ll update later.

Seriously though, I’ve brought the blog back to life.  I’ve been working hard on my writing – not having the distraction of a blog worked wonders for my output for a while – and…  Well, and.  Obviously it makes sense to have a further distraction to my writing, especially the very one I stopped before for that very reason…

Actually there are a few reasons why I dropped the blog.  It was getting cluttered.  It was becoming a hassle to maintain.  It wasn’t about writing fiction any more.

Bingo.  That’s why I set Desert Of Zin up in the first place, as a dedicated writing blog away from Jedimoose.org, a site I ran with Ben.  And I haven’t posted there in a long, long time.

So, plans for Zin?  I’m not sure it’ll be a personal blog space.  I’ll not have any gaming or prog rock posts.  And previous posts I’ll archive somewhere.  Writing, writing, writing.  And NaNoWriMo is coming soon.

More to come…

Five tracks, all in Italian (they released two English language albums that had new lyrics by Pete Sinfield, is why I mention that…)

PFM are one of the greatest of the classic prog bands.  I had only heard their 70′s content and of that Per Un Amico is by far their best.

It’s like Rammstein, in that I can’t speak or understand German.  The same with PFM.  I don’t have the first idea of Italian but it seems to fit the music.  Blame Jon anderson for that.  Yes tracks have nonsensical lyrics but you don’t tend to listen to the lyrics alone.  Otherwise you’d go, ‘what is he on about?’   But as songs, with all instruments together, it seems to fit.  I’m used to hearing the vocal arrangement as an extra instrument.  Different to a lot of bands/songs where the music serves the singer.  Does that make any sense?  Hmm, maybe.

Per Un Amico has a heavy use of synth across the album (and I’ve always been a sucker for good synth), in what are quite folky songs.  A good combination.

(Quick note, before I forget.  PFM reformed in the late ’90s.  I’d very much like to see them live one day.  I’ll have to keep any eye out for that.)

- Alistair

A 60s/70s band from Greece with Vangelis and Greek crooner Demis Roussos among the members.  Released three albums of which I have the third and final: 666 (The Apocalypse of John, 13/18).

Let’s not kid ourselves on, this is an exercise in absolute madness.  I heard the opening tracks “The System” and “Babylon” on a Prog Rock compilation cd the year before i found it in Stereo One in Paisley.  For the life of me I don’t know what compelled me to buy it at the time.  Oh, that’s right, I bought all manner of dodgy prog at the time…

(What’s this “at the time” nonsense?  Dodgy prog is always being bought… )

Anyone with any sense of adventure, or bloody-mindedness, has to source a copy for themselves.

It’s a difficult album to describe.  There are heavy psychedelic influences all over the shop.  But don’t let that put you off.    I have this odd idea of walking to work tomorrow, weather holding out, and if I do i’ll give whole two disc suite a try.  That might just fry what’s left of my fragile mind…

- Alistair

I’m sure I was aware of the ’80 classic Owner of a Lonely Heart, I must have been, but the first time I actually chose to listen to them was finding a copy of Classic Yes on vinyl in Glenburn Library.  It was the cover that caught my eye (of course it was…) and as a young teen I was totally overwhelmed by what I heard.  The record went back to the library and nothing more was said.

It was a few years later when I was coming out of my intensive teenage heavy metal phase when I happened upon a vinyl copy of Close to the Edge.  I bought it for £1.50 and ferried it home.  It was astonishing.  The opening of the title track was like nothing I had ever heard, the steady build-up of environmental effects then the guitar kicks in…

From there it was a downhill road to ruin, or getting in to Yes…

The studio albums are all sheer class with two notable exceptions.  Tales of Topographic Oceans is to be avoided at all costs.  And then there’s Open Your Eyes, which Neil and I like to refer to as Open Your Arse (or variations thereof).  Make your own mind up how I feel about those two. 

Their mid-eighties work was a lot more rock than prog, Owner is a prime example, but special mention has to be given to Union, or ‘Onion’ as I’ve called it.  Union was released during a period when Jon Anderson was a member of yes and part of a group of ex-members called Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe.  Can you guess why?  (And look at this.  It’s from a pay-per-view gig.  This is how it starts.  I want to die inside.)  For years I never liked Union.  You had members of both groups on it, a feeling of too many cooks…  It was like you had to peel the layers away and all that happened was it made you cry…

I’ve relaxed since then.  There’s some good stuff there.  Not the best of Yes by far but a good album.

Where to start?  Hell, give Close To The Edge a start.  Nothing like jumping in at the deep end… 

- Alistair