…TRAPPED BY MONSTERS!

I’m posting this from a dark, dank, evil-smelling cavern where myself and seven other authors are currently being held prisoner, kidnapped by the very monsters upon whom we all depend for our storytelling livelihoods. Brutally, our guards only allow us access to the internet for a few minutes at a time(!!!) so here – with a quick extra line or two at the end – is a transcript of what I just posted on the blog over there:

I’m not sure what scares me most right now: the monsters or, frankly, my fellow captive authors. The way certain of my colleagues here are already slipping into classic hostage behaviour is starting to worry me. Fraternizing with our jailers is one thing (”leg stroking” indeed!) but turning on each other? Mark, I’m astonished. [And given his knife-throwing prowess and Tae Kwon Do expertise, I’m, ahem, also somewhat alarmed.]

Well. We may be stuck here in a reeking cave full of ravening beasts who will rend us limb from limb soon as look at us (that’s the monsters I’m talking about there, not the authors). We may, even worse, be short of loo roll (AARGH!!) But I, for one, will…

To that end here are some more thrilling books from Jack’s Stack.

FOOL MOON and GRAVE PERIL, by Jim Butcher. These are the second and third books from Mr Butcher’s brilliant Dresden Files series, concerning hardbitten Chicago private eye wizard Harry Dresden. Yep, “private eye wizard”, that’s what I said: as well as crime, the police, the Mafia and the media, Harry Dresden’s mean streets also contain evil magicians, ghosts, demons, werewolves, vampires and all sorts of other supernatural goodies. If that combination sounds like your bag – and it’s certainly mine – then give STORM FRONT, the first of the series, a go. These books are so much fun that I’m having to ration them to myself so I don’t munch straight through ‘em all at once, Honey Monster style.

THE GRAVEYARD BOOK, by Neil Gaiman. I wanted not to like this book. I’m not proud of that. It’s just that Mr Gaiman is at the top of his game, his previous books are brilliant and sell by the shedload, and everyone loves him. Me, I’m standing at the foot of this ‘being a published author’ mountain, gulping a lot, and I need hope. I wanted signs that the dizzy heights aren’t impossible. I wanted flaws. I’m all the more ashamed, then, when I tell you that THE GRAVEYARD BOOK is, in fact, the finest book for young people that I read in the whole of last year (the nearest competitor was LITTLE BROTHER by Cory Doctorow fyi) and it will probably end up being one of my favourite books ever. THE GRAVEYARD BOOK is tender when it needs to be tender; it’s got monsters and darkness when there needs to be monsters and darkness (which is often, for me!) It’s fast, it’s smart, it’s touching, it’s beautifully written, it’s enormous fun and once you close the book it lingers in the mind, possibly forever. -Curses! ;p

To judge from what I’ve found on the cave shelves so far (misery memoirs, celeb biogs and – yuck – so many /pony books/!!) these monsters need all the pointers to fine reading they can get, so there’ll be more from Jack’s Stack shortly. For further suggestions in the mean time, check my LibraryThing profile.

Before I pass the mic, I just want to address Mark’s laughable accusation that I’m an imposter. If I understand this right, Mark would have you believe that what I said in my blog is true: that I’m not actually Sam Enthoven, but am in fact the ugnacious Jagmat Wrelkmink, Emperor of Hell. Unhappy with the way that I, sorry, “he” was portrayed in the Enthoven’s, sorry, “my” book The Black Tattoo, I came from Hell to London, killed the Enthoven, and then, being a shapeshifter, I assumed his, um, I mean, “my” identity. Ever since then, while posing as an author I’ve been secretly preying on, sorry, I mean “learning as much as possible about” the human race. Or so Mark says.

Preposterous.

I would like to make it clear to my fellow authors here in the cave (and anyone else reading this) that I am /absolutely not/ a repulsive, shapeshifting, blancmange-like demon who belches all the time. You are all PERFECTLY SAFE FROM ME, I assure you, and there is no chance whatsoever that at any moment you may find yourself reduced to your constituent proteins as I envelop and consume you in a seething tide of hot pink digestive juices. So I hope that’s that cleared up. URP. ‘Scuse me.

…Work on draft two of Phase Three continues apace, albeit by the sepulchral flicker of the disgusting earwax candles that are the only illumination our monstrous gaolers have permitted me. My eyes hurt all the time. And the smell! Strewth! Hope you’re having a better January than me.

As my mate Simon J. said once as he fell off his chair, Happy New YeAAARGH! 😀

First up, here’s a link to a page where you can download the current issue of Teen Librarian Monthly, which features an interview with yours truly. It’s a pdf, not a big file, it’s free, and it’s a fine magazine: my thanks to Masterless Samurai Librarian Matthew Imrie for kindly inviting me!

It’s nose to the grindstone time here as I bust on with the second draft of PHASE THREE. Current publication date for the next part of my sinister masterplan is Spring 2010, but that’s only going to happen if I do some hard pedalling over the next couple of months. Rather than have this blog go completely dead in that time (or, worse, fill with variations on ‘I sat here making things up and occasionally tearing the last of my hair out’ ;p) here’s something I thought I’d share with you instead…

My brother Jack and I have a tradition: whenever it’s Christmas or his birthday I put together and give him what we call a BkSTACK(tm). As the name implies, it’s basically a big pile of the finest and most thrilling books I’ve read lately – or at least the ones I reckon he’ll enjoy. If you like Black Tat and Tim then you might like these, too. Take a look! 😉

FLOOD, by STEPHEN BAXTER. A rare treat, this – a proper global DISASTER story! And the author sets a cracking pace. Within the first hundred pages London then New York fall prey to spectacularly rising tides, and the rest of humanity is left fighting for the last of the Earth’s higher ground before much longer. Surprisingly, considering it’s where stories like this can fall down (especially Hollywood ones ;p) the characters give an affecting human perspective on the catastrophe without, ahem, annoying the hell out of the reader. Also, as you might expect if you know Mr Baxter’s books, it’s packed with awesome ideas and unforgettable moments. Brilliant.

NOTHING TO LOSE, by LEE CHILD. The previous two books in the Reacher series (THE HARD WAY and BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE) weren’t /quite/ as much fun as the others, imho. I’m therefore all the more delighted to tell you that NOTHING TO LOSE is /terrific/ – right up there with my personal favourites, PERSUADER, ECHO BURNING and ONE SHOT. The way Reacher mows into town like a man-sized Godzilla is, as always, intensely satisfying. But seeing, in this one, some nutcase End Times fans meet an early personal apocalypse just gave me a special warm glow. You don’t need to read the series in order, so if you haven’t met Jack Reacher or Lee Child before, here is a grand place to start. If you like fast, thrilling storytelling you’ll be glad you did.

More from Jack’s Stack to follow over coming weeks. For further fine reading check my LibraryThing profile.

Here are a couple of pics from this week’s events, which were my last for a while. This (below) is from Wood Green School, in Witney, Oxfordshire, which I visited on Tuesday. I gave talks to two excellent groups of students there, who asked all sorts of great questions.

…And this (below) is from this morning’s talk and signing with a terrific group from Alexandra Primary School, surrounded as we were by the full festive finery of The Big Green Bookshop!

All three talks seemed to go pretty well. This was much to my relief, you can imagine, as right now I’ve got an ‘orrible COLD – coughing, sneezing, nose dripping like a tap, the works (ew). An unholy mixture of medicines and good old-fashioned caffeine abuse got me through all right, but I think I was probably even more manic than usual! 😉

That’s it, now, for events from me for the rest of this year – until April ’09, in fact. My awesome agents Penny and Gina (Hello, Penny and Gina!) made me promise not to take on any more bookings before then, because I need to focus on PHASE THREE of my SINISTER MASTERPLAN TO CONQUER THE UNIVERSE [MOOHOOHAHA!! um, ‘scuse me ;)] For the same reason, it’s possible that this blog may become somewhat sporadic again for a while. So now seems like a good minute to express my enormous gratitude to everyone I met and spoke to at all my events this year:

THANK YOU! 😀

I enjoyed every single gig. And I’m already looking forward to the ones to come. Hee hee hee!

Wotcher. Got a few different bits and pieces for you, this time.

First up, I was delighted to see a certain giant monster make a topical appearance in the current issue of one of my favourite magazines, namely Private Eye. Their ‘In the City’ column traditionally examines shady goings-on in London’s financial district. So imagine my surprise, when….

HEE HEE HEE! 🙂

Next up, here’s a question from Matthew – yep, the same Matthew who made the awesome Chinj pic from the previous post! – who really got me thinking when he asked:

After finishing The Black Tattoo and studying Hinduism, I wondered if the Dragon, the Brotherhood and the Scourge had any links with the three Hindu gods Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva, ie Brahma – the Dragon; Vishnu – the Brotherhood; Shiva – the Scourge. I was just wondering and thought I would point it out.

Wow.

Um, to be honest with you, Matthew, the short answer is ‘no’. Hinduism had no direct influence on Black Tat – or none that I was conscious of, at least. While I’m familiar with some bits and pieces of Hindu mythology and theology, by the sounds of it you know more about it than me! But I’m sure I was influenced unconsciously by it – as I am in everything I write, by everything in the world around me.

Nothing that anyone writes or creates can ever be completely original. Whatever you do will be influenced by things that have been done before – including the things you’ve experienced or read about, the things you learned from, let alone archetypes, standard elements of a creative work such as, for stories like Black Tat, heroes and villains.

For a long time, when I was younger, that fact used to bother me. The impossibility of making something that was completely new was very frustrating. Sometimes it even seemed like if I couldn’t be completely original then it just wasn’t worth the bother of creating anything. But then I changed my mind.

Everyone has influences – a vast, bubbling mixture, some elements of which an individual won’t even be aware of. While you can (and should, I think) add to the mixture – expand your influences, by experiencing and discovering and finding out about as much as you can – there’s no subtracting from your influences or getting away from them. There’s no going back.

But here’s the thing: it’s the mixture that makes us different – the particular combination that gives a creative work, or even a person, their own special style and flavour.

The expression of that mixture in a way that excites me – and, I hope, other people! – is what I chase after in my stories.

I wish you the best of luck in chasing yours.

Lastly, while we’re talking about Black Tat, here’s something very cool that arrived in the post this week. It’s another edition, this time published in German!

As you can see, like the US paperback, my German publishers Blanvalet have gone for the classic black on white look first developed by the design team at Random House Children’s Books UK (yay!) – isolating the figure of Charlie [actually posed by Mr P’s son, Ian, fyi!] from John Jude Palecar‘s awesome painting. But that red sticker on the front is a cheeky new twist! If you can’t read it, it says “‘Kotzende Fledermause? Ich bin begeistert!’Neil Gaiman“. For a translation of that quote – and the story of how I got it! – check out this interview. Hee hee hee HEE!

Meanwhile, on the same day as my copies arrived (how’s this for speed…?) the first comment from Germany came in on the Black Tat Guestbook. If you’re reading this, Vanessa, thank you very much indeed for your kind (and beautifully expressed) words!

Floof. A longish post this time, but it’s deliberate. Fact is, I’m about to go intermittent on you again while I return to PHASE THREE, so I wanted to leave you with a decent meaty chunk to chew on while I’m off back down the story-mine. As ever with a first draft, there’s a lot of work to be done. But I’m doing what I love, so I’m not complaining! Hope you’re doing the same. 🙂

Hello!

Yep, ’tis I, fresh sprung from my slumbers. No kidding about my previous post’s ‘Sam sleep now’: Phase Three‘s first draft must have left me more knackered than I thought because for the last two weeks I’ve been racking up about eleven hours’ kip a night! But today I snapped awake for my first school visit of the new academic year – namely a return to St Augustine’s in Kilburn, London, for what were my second and third creative writing workshops, ever.

I’m still a little hesitant about workshops: I don’t like books and stories to be always associated with ‘work’. But the imagination of some of the Year 10 students in these sessions was a thrill to witness. It wouldn’t be right for me to tell you the best ideas I heard – they belong to their creators. Here are just two standout sentences to give you a flavour.

The first is simple yet chilling:

“She was alive but she was rotten inside.”

And the second…

“On the bus he reached down for his ticket – and found that his trousers had vanished.”

Today’s sessions were a bit, um, experimental in places on my part(!!) so my particular thanks to the staff and students I saw today. I hope you got something out of listening to me, because I thoroughly enjoyed listening to you.

Sam has written new book. Sam tired. Sam sleep now.

I am fully immersed in Phase Three. Even after I hand in the first draft next week I’m probably going to have to go and stick my head in a bucket of something cool and wet for what may, I feel, be quite a long time. So for now, in lieu of proper bloggage from me (whatever that is!) here’s a link to an entrancing and utterly wonderful short film called OKTAPODI.

It’s less than two and a half minutes long, and as my thoroughly brilliant brother said to me when he passed on the link: “In case the writing is a bit grim (and heck, even if not), this should cheer you right up – it’s a terrific little cartoon with romantic octopi and car chases (what’s not to like?)”

Hope it does the same for you. Ink you later! ;p

At something like 9pm last night I wrote the last sentence of my new book. Or, heh, at least I wrote the current last sentence, as you never know how these things are finally going to end up. But yes, I’m getting there with Phase Three.

…Floof.

My brain has turned to porridge, so since right now it doesn’t seem able to say much more about how I’m feeling than ‘Floof’, here’s a pertinent passage from one of my very favourite books about writing, namely THE UNSTRUNG HARP, OR MR EARBRASS WRITES A NOVEL, by Edward Gorey, who was a genius. If you don’t know about Mr Gorey already you’re in for a treat: to whet your whistle further you can read the whole of TUH and see his beautiful illustrations here. Meanwhile, this bit describes the day after Mr Earbrass gets to the end of one of his for the first time…

I don’t have a week. Or rather I do, but in that time I’ve got to bust on back to the beginning – to stitch the chapters together, Frankenstein-style, and administer the necessary jolt of lightning for the Phase Three beast to lurch to its stumpy feet and lumber off to its editors and agents by the deadline of Sept 1st (or, um, very soon thereafter!) -Yikes!

I’m /also/ – GLEE! – going to be heading off to Edinburgh, Scotland to take part in THIS. Quite apart from how much fun that’s going to be, it’ll be great to get away from this desk and interact (for a change) with people I haven’t made up. ;p

Watch this space. Oh, and if you haven’t been to see HELLBOY 2 yet, do. In true Del Toro style it’s got more imagination, monsters, fun, heart, colour and monsters (QUALITY monsters!) per square inch than pretty much anything else around right now. Give it a wallop, I say. 🙂

Today I’m taking a little bit of time out from writing Phase Three to write this instead. Partly that’s because this blog is (gulp!) a month out of date, and partly because…

Yes! I’m not into cake – strange I know, but true – so the above is exactly what it looks like: my lovely girlfriend Laura stuck a bunch of candles into an enormous tomato [one of my favourite things – that’s tomatoes nb, not candles, which tend to coat the tongue a bit I find] and rested it on a bed of [another of my favourite things] pistachio nuts.

Mmmmm. Pistachio nuts. 🙂

This post is mainly by way of an enormous THANK YOU – to anyone who happens to be reading this, but particularly to the people who have been sending me kind and lovely messages over the last month or so, whether via the Black Tat Guestbook, the Tim Guestbook, Jagmat’s MySpace, my Facebook, LibraryThing and Bebo profiles, or any other way they’ve managed to reach me. I’ve had my nose pressed pretty firmly to the Phase Three grindstone lately, and your encouragement is VERY MUCH APPRECIATED.

As, um, a token of gratitude – for whatever it’s worth! – I’d like to present an old short story of mine that I recently dug up from the archives and dusted off. It’s called Tongues and Other Parts. You can find it on the ‘Who Is Sam Enthoven?’ page of the Tim website, or just click here.

While you’re in a links-clicking kind of mood, check out the Black Tat Reader Art Page, where (if you scroll right down) you can see a beautiful butterfly that looks like it’s come straight off Esme’s wall – thank you, Daisy-May!

And now, also via my Bebo page, here’s an excellent bit of Q&A that neatly sums up exactly what I’ve been doing (and feeling) for most of the last six weeks, and probably will be for most of the next. Take a bow Beth, who says:

grr
i am a little annoyed with you at the moment
i am trying to write a short story (but it is turning into a long one)
anyway you write good books and they are really cool and i can’t write anything good. the plot either goes too fast or too slow. when i try to leave a bit of mystery in my characters it ends up that we don’t know enough. it is very annoying.
on second thoughts it’s not your fault it is just a bit annoying!
grr
p.s. Any tips??

Beth, I know what you mean: writing is incredibly frustrating sometimes. If it’s any consolation, I don’t really feel any different! I’m working on a new book right now, I’ve got lots of ideas for it, I’m very excited about it, but when it comes to /writing/ the d&mn thing it often feels as though all I’m turning out is SLUDGE! The difference between what you want to do and how a thing comes out first time is just infuriating. I’m sorry to tell you there’s no easy way around it. It’s always like this!

But at the same time, YOU WILL GET THROUGH IT: if you’re determined enough; if you learn to ignore (or trick) the critic in your head that tells you that everything you do is rubbish; if you /keep going/.

You learn how to write by doing it. You can only get better by failing first. Once you /finish/ a story, get to the end somehow, then you can go back over it and change it and polish it to make it better. But you can’t polish something that doesn’t exist.

In short, Keep Writing! Best, Sam

thank you i will keep trying!

tell me do you always know were the plot is going in your stories?? do you have to have an ending set out?? what are you working on now??
bibi
beth

We talked about keeping going, right? A planned-out plot can really help with that. If you know what’s going to happen it’s much easier to work towards it. You can also fill a story with things you’re really looking forward to writing (eg destroying the Houses of Parliament, in Tim!) And it helps give your story a structure, a satisfying shape – rather than just hoping that it’s somehow going to come together as you go. I plan my stories as carefully as I can, working out as much as possible before I start writing.

HOWEVER: there’s always a point where you realise that a lot of the answers in a story just aren’t going to come until you’re in the thick of it. The story I’m on right now basically involves nine young people who are stuck together in a small room – trapped there by something horrible. It was hard to know how those characters were going to interact (and who would survive!) until I started writing the scenes.

Still is, tbh! I’d best get back to it.
Chin chin!
Sam

Russell Hoban, who is one of my favourite writers, once said: “A writer at a desk is nothing very heroic and yet you have to find ways of feeling heroic because the effort required certainly is.”

Aside from the kindness and encouragement of others, current ways for me also include: rereading (again!) TRANSMETROPOLITAN, by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson; interviews with and dvd commentaries by John Carpenter; sushi; remembering to come out of the house and meet people who aren’t imaginary on at least a semi-regular basis – and listening at least twice a day to this. [NB: the LastFM playlist link in the post below broke about a week after I posted it, and now even if you click through to my profile you can only hear clips – why??]

Back to the bathysphere. Wish me luck. 😉

For the next couple of months my life is mostly going to look like this:

The end of the school year means no more visits for a while – which is good timing for me, because in September (eek!) I’m due to hand in the first draft of Phase Three of my Sinister Masterplan to Conquer the Universe. I’ve been working on it seriously for over a year now, but the next two months are the crunch. Yep, it’s time for me to focus on writing my next book.

My posts here may become a bit (as in ‘even more’!) sporadic. Well, as I mentioned on the Black Tat news page last time things reach this point there’s probably only a limited amount of ‘I sat here making things up and occasionally tearing the last of my hair out‘ that you’d be interested in hearing, anyhow! But if I’m not updating often enough for you over the rest of the summer, then I’m sorry. Rest assured, like the cheesiest (and best) kinds of villains, I will be back. 😉

-Couple of last things before I sign off, though…!

First up, contracts! To my great glee and delight I’ve just signed a deal for Tim to be translated into German, and I’m about to sign another for Black Tat to be published in Romania! I love the idea of my stories being translated into different languages, so this makes me very, very happy! HURRAH! 🙂

Next, here’s a lovely message I got this week through my Bebo page, from Jakub, who kindly writes:

“Dude you’re seriously so amazing (you were in the libary at elthorne i was there)
seriously you really inspired me……..i really want to like make a rock band in future and be the drummer in the band (i play the drums).
could you give me some advice?
oh and you dont have to answer this….but what music do you like?

P.S your books are awesome dude……….”

Aw, thanks Jakub! I’m blushing! ;p
Actually as a drummer (as long as you’re good at it, of course!) I think you’re in a good position. I’m a guitar player, and I can tell you there are loads more bands looking for drummers than there are ones looking for guitarists! So you shouldn’t be short of opportunities to chase that dream if you want it.

The problem, of course, is the other stuff.

Like writing, being a musician is not a steady life in terms of planning a long-term future, and that can be a problem for some people. The chances are you will have to put up with poverty at some point, and probably for what feels like a long time (learn to love veg – veg is cheap, tastes nice, and keeps you alive!!) You will have to work a day job (mine, a bookshop, was mostly fun but very badly paid) You will also have to deal with relatives – and probably many other people – who will think that you are completely mad (and like I think I said at Elthorne, they’ll probably be right!) But if you have a dream, your dream, and you’re prepared to work hard for it, you should definitely chase it. Life’s simply too short to do anything else.

As to music, well: www.last.fm/listen/user/othersam/pla…

That’s a list of things I recently picked out on Last FM – soundtracks, drum and bass, crackly old blues and other stuff I like. …But like the advice above, it’s just my opinion! 😉
Best wishes to you,
Sam