May 2011
10 posts
8 tags
How Motorhead's Lemmy got his nickname
Contrary to any popular, urban myths that you might have heard, Lemmy told me (when I worked for Hawkwind as a roadie, many many years ago) that his nickname came from his childhood fondness (and ability to impersonate) a character called “Lemmy” Barnet, who was a ‘techie’ in a British science fiction radio programme called “Journey Into Space”. It was written...
9 tags
"Interview with a Timelord" - Extract 3
It is a time of innocence and a place of no consequence as we soar through the night air, carried along by the vibrations that inform, educate and entertain a nation. Over the moonlit, Christmas-cosy rooftops and between the softly smoking chimney pots of suburban Middle-England, we see avenue after crescent of semi detached houses. Closer now, we see the glow of hearth and home, illuminating the...
9 tags
"Interview with a Timelord" - Extract 2
“Good afternoon. Do you have anything on valve radios?” says a mellow voice that rings through the willows and elms, almost making the pond ripple in reverberant sympathy.
“Reggie!” I call as I turn and there he is, dressed in his familiar Gabardine raincoat and tweeds and he lifts his hat as he greets me with that huge, silly grin of his.
“How the devil are you, you old goat?”
I pull the...
12 tags
Surprise visitors
This isn’t the usual kind of post that I would normally make but this week has seen some extraordinary activity on Tumblr that I couldn’t let pass without some acknowledgement.
I am in the process of ‘workshopping’ my current work in progress: a valvepunk comedy epic psychological adventure, and from now on, various chapters and extracts will appear amongst the usual...
9 tags
"Interview with a Timelord" - Extract 1
(First draft)
~
Every Sunday I do this. I take the scooter down to the pond and feed the ducks. I like to have a little routine in my life, you know? A little routine goes a long way: it helps pass the time and it’s nice to have something to look forward to. Monday is Post Office day - I like to check my balance and then on the days when it’s due: collect my pension (ach, it’s not much but then...
7 tags
Crisis of confidence
For every writer, there sometimes comes a point where they take the ‘big picture’ and think “what the hell am I writing about?” Unfortunately for me, this has happened this week.
After spending a year and a half nurturing my baby with tender loving care, feeding and tending it on a daily basis, this week it looked up at me and said ‘what the hell have you made me?...
All roads lead to somewhere
“The sound of the distant motorway at nighttime is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard, for each speck of sound in the entirity of the landscape, (that’s 100 people going away, 100 people leaving people behind and adventuring, 100 people tired and happy and laughing and feeling, 100 people revisiting familiar places and 100 people coming home.) makes me want to cry” -...
9 tags
Life can be stranger than fiction - EMBRACE IT!
A good writer should have their radar on at all times. Life has a way of hurling incidents that, when viewed with ‘novel-goggles’ has a perspective which makes them larger than life and absolute gold dust when it comes to the tricky business of inspiration.
There was an incident which happened to me today which I have to admit was unlike anything I have ever experienced before. So,...
6 tags
Writing - The Traumsprache method
I find it completely fascinating the way that the mind is able to process ideas and thoughts in ways that we least expect . This is most obvious when we analyse our dreams and find that there have been certain aspects of our lives that have been lurking there in the shadows whilst we go about the daily business of whatever it is we have to do. For example, the other night I was awoken from a...
4 tags
Where love blossoms
Audrey’s husband, not known for his open displays of love in life, managed to get a message through to her on the anniversary of his passing.
—- ‘If only Jim were here. He wouldn’t have let it get this way,’ thought Audrey as she looked through the kitchen window and across the bedraggled, overgrown garden. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, she just didn’t have the energy any more, or if she...
