Jan
11
Well it took a while.
About 3 months in fact.
Which is, I realise, about as long as the book took to write! Whoops. If there was ever proof for the hypothesis that two perfect words are harder than 140,000 rambling ones, there it is. But! After a lot of stress and angst, I believe we have the final title for Urban Magic 5! Welcome, dear reader, to Stray Souls…
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kategriffin.net/2012/01/11/stray-souls/
Jan
07
Highgate Cemetery. I’d been meaning to go for years, as it seems a disgraceful thing to class yourself as a proper, let’s-turn-it-all-to-fictional-uses Londoner and not go to Highgate Cemetery. It’s famous beyond the boundaries of North London, as a proper overgrown wildness where famous people are buried amid claws of ivy and ancient, cracked stones. George Elliot is there, as is Karl Marx whose tomb is marked by a spectacularly large image of himself. Myths surround Highgate, almost none of which have any basis in historical fact – tales of nefarious goings on beneath the trees, of mystic connotations and spooky events – and frankly, walking around the place, you can see why. To my mild irritation, there’s a £3 charge to enter the cemetery, and while I can see the need to preserve the grounds, in a way Highgate only really became famous, even a tourist attraction of a kind, when it became overrun and disturbed. There are also two Highgate Cemeteries – a Highgate East and a Highgate West – and to this day I’m not sure how you get into Highgate West – at least while still breathing. If you want to have an oddly similar experience of a place where nature has run wild, then Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington provides a similar vibe, with the added benefit of no entry fee, and an option on cream teas afterwards…
But enough of words… let’s see if photos can give the gist.
This isn't actually in the cemetery, but you pass it on your way up the hill, and it gives a good idea of what's to come...
Tombstones vary hugely; this one gives special mention to the owner's pet dog.
... while this one once again proves that being part of a secret order, doesn't necessarily need to cramp your style.
Angels - heavenly or sinister? Discuss.
Sometimes, it IS about the lighting.
And finally, Karl Marx's tomb... starkly communist in style, perhaps, yet not very modest in execution...
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kategriffin.net/2012/01/07/highgate-cemetery/
Jan
04
I saw a film a few days ago, which ended with these words:
“Please use your liberty, to help promote ours.” It’s a quote from Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the Burmese National Democratic Party and the film was, appropriately enough, a biography of a large part of her life. I went to see the movie for a number of different reasons, not least the presence of Michelle Yeoh who, as readers of this blog may recall, is one of my idols along with Grommit (of Wallace and Grommit fame). Without wanting to say much about the film, I can comfortably reveal that I wept buckets, which is not something I’m prone to do.
The quote at the end was as much a statement about the woman it originated from, as it was about the movie itself. My life is, for the large part, comfortable, safe, secure, and the state is ethically obliged and socially expected to be looking out for my interests, even if I sometimes believe the methods that the state deploys and the ideology that it uses to decide how to look out for my interests, are flawed. It’s very easy, under such circumstances, to sit back and say, ‘isn’t it terrible what happens in…’ and there the thought process ends. The events on the other side of the world are, to most people in a hurry at nine a.m., as to nothing compared to the agony of trying to get on a crowded bus, or the indignation at a parking ticket – it can be hard to think yourself into another person’s shoes, let alone shoes that have walked such distant soils. Yet if the twenty first century brings anything, it is the technology to learn of a world beyond your own, and arguably, the act of knowledge brings with it a degree of obligation.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kategriffin.net/2012/01/04/promotion-of-liberty/
Jan
02
Take…
1 wendigo with a slim grasp of the use of language in the modern world
1 missing goddess and her angry pet dog
1 shaman with dubious job prospects
4 killer builders with only one smile between them
1 vampire
1 necromancer
1 troll
1 banshee
1 pack of super-strength anti-histamines
2 temples
5 murders
… and more tea than the mind can comfortably conceive.
And you have my title dilemma for Urban Magic 5 in a bag. No more, however, will I say on this subject for now, if only because the publication date for the Minority Council is actually approaching, and it will in fact be released on March 1st just as we go into our final day of tech for this musical I’m lighting (why is it I’m always in tech on publication day?!) – and therefore I kinda think the priorities should shift. (Remember! The Minority Council is the only book I’ve ever written where I am actively advising all readers to chose paper, not Kindle!) Think fairy dust and insects now… and the lost spirits of the city later…
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kategriffin.net/2012/01/02/wendigo-nights/
Jan
01
Well, another year, another solar cycle… welcome to 2012! Looking back on 2011, it hasn’t been all bad… there’s been a lot of lighting, some of it from quite wacky positions on quite unexpected jobs… there’s also been a lot of writing. The Minority Council is finished and ready to go, Urban Magic 5 is sat on the hard drive waiting for the next round of editorials, there’s The Book Which Cannot Be Named (yet) currently with my agent. There’s also been a rehearsed reading of one of my attempts at a play, a vague attempt at a screenplay for something else which Cannot Be Named, and of course I’m now sat down having a think about Urban Magic 6 and the big musical that heralds in the New Year. So, in the grand scheme of things, I’d say things were going…
… alright!
I don’t mean to sound so surprised about it, it’s just that it’s always tricky getting anything resembling an objective lookback on a year. Bad news tends to be remembered more than good, so to look back and say that, all things considered, the bad news was kept at a reasonably low level and the good news was actually kinda quite chipper, is a bit of a comfort. As for 2012… the year of the Mayan apocalypse and, in possibly not unrelated circumstances, the London Olympics… who can say?
Happy New Year, everybody!
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kategriffin.net/2012/01/01/2012/
Dec
28
Don’t judge a book by its cover, the old adage goes. But let’s face it, we do. Perhaps more interestingly, we – or at least, I – also judge a book by its title. Remarkable how a few words, or sometimes even one, can tell you everything you need to know about a novel.
A title instantly tells you genre; a thriller might be a couple of punchy, weighty words, like The Unforgiven Gun or, the one I’m currently wading through with cries of ‘no, but really?’ – The Killing Fields. (Featuring, it has to be said, a man so manly that I can’t help but wonder if anyone’s ever sat him down and invited him to consider the wonders of a gentle back rub, a relaxing music and some sushi. I believe I don’t violate any copyright when I inform you that the tag line of this novel is: Jack Reacher. Men Want To Be Him. Women Want To Be With Him. More, do you need to know?)
A title can tell you about the quality of the book – perhaps it’s light and fluffy – Three Shops, Two Shoes and a Honeymoon – or maybe it informs you in a single word that what you’re about to sit through will not be a bundle of laughs – Sorrow. It can suggest period – The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle, for example, instantly implies an age when the author’s name was a couple of initials on the spine, and the title not only gave you the gist, but also attempted to encapsulate the plot – being a witty tale of disaster, betrayal, magic and what not to do with magnesium oxides, brought to you by C.W., the cover could perhaps explain.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kategriffin.net/2011/12/28/more-title-woe/
Dec
25
Another year, another Crimble… more food, hopefully more presents, with any luck a bit of snow. Absolutely failing to watch the Queen’s speech (and who can blame us) but definitely watching Dr Who or else Christmas is really rather ruined. Hopefully some Wallace and Grommit to see us through, and maybe a walk on Boxing Day before the annual cooking of Mum’s Christmas Curry Surprise.
To all who read this blog, old and new…
Merry Christmas!
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kategriffin.net/2011/12/25/merry-christmas-3/
Dec
20
This will be a post mostly in pictures, owing to the fact that I managed to burn the finger that does the letters ‘u’, ‘j’, and ‘n’ on a soldering iron, and as a touch typer I’m really not coping well with trying to write with a plaster the size of an elephant’s slipper on my hand.
But! Parliament Hill. According to local mythology, it’s named so in honour of the Gunpowder Plotters, who stood on top of it waiting for the Houses of Parliament to blow up in 1605… and were disappointed. I went walkies there with a technician friend, and studying the maps we reached the rather pleasing conclusion that it could well be possible to walk from Golders Green to Highgate Cemetery with little more than 200m of streetwork all the way. It juts onto Hampstead Heath, where in the summer it’s more than possible to find people paddling away in the bathing pools (I will not be among them) and where, according to popular cinematic tradition, spies meet to exchange mutual understandings of a shifty kind. Something which always surprised me, in the sense that it’s a good uphill walk to Parliament Hill, best accessed by Overground, and thus rather inconvenient for any agent who is based in Vauxhall or Cheapside… but who are we to question the rigors of espionage? Dog walkers are another universal norm, and once the weather warms up, picnicking and kite flying are among some of my very few childhood memories of the place. On a good day, you can see all the way across London to the South Downs, and looking north towards Highgate it’s a useful reminder of the fact that London, while mostly flat, is essentially built in a river valley, though the river itself was long lost behind the houses and towers of the city below.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kategriffin.net/2011/12/20/parliament-hill/
Dec
17
When playing Hamlet, it must be such an advantage, having big hair. In fact, thinking through the Hamlets I’ve seen, only one didn’t have big hair, and I can’t help but feel that he fell back on obsessive cigarette smoking to make up for its absence.
Big hair, though, is great. You can tug it, pull it, twist it, run your fingers neurotically through it, hide behind it, peer from within it, cower beneath it and generally drag the stuff around like a protein-fibre embodiment of the inner, tortured soul. And while big hair wasn’t the main thing I noticed while watching the latest Hamlet I’ve seen, down at the Young Vic, it is the first thing that leaps to mind as I sit down to write this entry. Big hair is great… big curly hair, even better. All the satisfaction of self-mutilation by hairdo, with added twist for that extra-special sense of the universe unravelling chaotically all around. What more could you possibly require?
I was not, I feel I should explain, deliberately angling to see Hamlet. It’s not that I wasn’t interested – I always am – but somehow in the great mess of Stuff That Needs To Be Done, I kinda missed the boat on this particular production, right up to the point where an old school friend said, ‘hey, I’m in town, going to the theatre, wanna have dinner?’ Sure, I wanted to have dinner, and we met up on the South Bank to be within spitting distance of her show. ‘Hey… it’s at the Young Vic… how’d I get there?’ she inquired, and hell, it’s not like I was going anywhere better, so off we wandered down to the Cut, a peculiar road that links Blackfriars and Waterloo, and which hasn’t quite worked out if it’s the height of trendy, arty fashion or a sensible place to buy groceries.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kategriffin.net/2011/12/17/big-haired-hamlet/
Dec
13
Finished!
Finished finished finished!
Finished finished finished finished finished!
FINISHED!!
(This is not going to be the most edifying post of my career, I hasten to add.)
And have I mentioned….
I’ve finished!
But what, I hear the strangled cry, have you finished? Urban Magic 4 (the Minority Council) and Urban Magic 5 (title row still ongoing) are both completed. It seems a little early to have even started Urban Magic 6 so what, but what, has got you deploying multiple exclamation marks?
Well….
… you may ask…
… but what kind of crappy writer would I be if I gave the game away already?
Whatever it is, all you need to know for now is… it’s FINISHED!!!
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kategriffin.net/2011/12/13/whoopee/
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