That said, NaNoWriMo has succeeded in bringing new life to an old project I’d long since thought lost to my usual apathy and lack of self-confidence. I’m glad of that, especially since I really needed to start writing the prologue before the 2012 Olympics.

So here, just for flavour, is the very beginning (which may still be edited considerably) of one of the shortish, linked stories I’ve been working on, that kind of flesh out the universe that the project is located in. It’s tentatively titled The Ouseian Queen, and it’s the story that seems to have the most potential, in my mind, so far; of the other two which are working, one is the prologue which is extensively plotted but has little relation to the world I’m building except as backstory, and I’m not exactly sure where the other one is going yet.

“Neither was it a particularly good day for Poboly Coombe, who had just been surrounded by hard bastards with a point to prove.

Poboly was an Ingenier, so they said. Could make things like you couldn’t believe. Dressed like a complete pillock, of course, but these were the kinds of days where you could wear what amounted to cheap bondage gear with extra armor plating (de rigeur in Australia, for instance) and no-one would mock you, especially since you’d probably have chafed your way into a berserker fury. Pillockry was a venal sin.

Saying you’d build a massive, terrifying siege transport for a large group of Glaswegian maniacs and then pissing off down to the Tribal Hundreds with nearly all of their accumulated mechanical treasures, however, was a mortal one, especially in the eyes of said maniacs.

How can so much leather cover so little? thought Poboly, in that curiously distracted way when you are trying extremely hard to not remind yourself that there is an extremely sharp blade mere picometers from your throat.”

“Cthulhu fhtagn, Charlie Brown.”

How thankful it is that men, being only mortal creatures, thus have only mortal imaginations, and so cannot conceive the limitless horror that exists beyond the plain of the strictly material! Science itself would melt ceaselessly into air and the world that seems so ordinary, so everyday, would soon take on a grotesque hue and be of diabolical landscape were we to see things as they truly were, far removed from our arrogant supposed mastery of all nature and the supernature around us. But it is not so, for I have seen this other world, a world so horrifically real and living as to make this one a mere pastel mockery of it; a world I shall never forget.

My nightmare began as merely another ordinary day, since had I known what multitudinous terrors I was to face, I would have lapsed instantly into madness and thus been spared the horrors I would soon witness. I had lasted many years as Charles Brown, and as far as I knew, so I was to remain. I had spent some time as a base-ball player of some little repute, wishing to become as great as the all-star Joe Schlabotnik, but alas, despite continual perspertorial efforts on my part to make it “to the big time”, as it were, my character betrayed me; they said that always, I was too wishy-washy. As such, I gave up my dream and retired to a sleepy little area where time barely seemed to pass at all with my faithful beagle-hound, Snoopy.

I spent my time in the area with the odder characters of the area, aesthetes and their well-wishers who thought more of life than mere materialistic. I was instantly captivated by their charm and grace, their world view of beauty and wonderment for its’ own sake, especially the sibling duo at the centre of our little club, the van Pelts, an old established family of some influence, although the eccentricities of the current generation had lessened their reputation in the area somewhat. Lucy van Pelt had, despite her obvious charms and sterling work as a doctor of the psychiatric, a frightful temper which had alienated many of her close friends. As for Linus, the very heart of our group, he was prone to bouts of existential musings and depressive theosophy, carried around with him bundles of rags that he insisted were needed for his continued security in this material plane, and claimed to be able to see the very threads which made up the fabric of our universe. If it were not for the fact that apart from these declarations he seemed perfectly able and charming, I would have thought him a released lunatic from one of the numerous instutions at which Ms. van Pelt worked. Instead, I found him almost persuasive.

Our dinner began as it usually did, with our resident musician Schroeder, to whom Ms. van Pelt seemed curiously attached to, entertaining us with some light music as we supped. I glanced around at the assorted members of our informal group; the van Pelts, in heated discussion with one Pigpen, a man of sparkling intellect but, unfortunately, of cleanliness he knew little and as such a foul smell emanated from him so much that I hated the man deeply within my very soul, and Ms. Patricia Reichardt and Ms. Marcie Johnson, Ms. Reichardt being the owner of the local peppermint factory and the other being her companion, who displayed such affection to Ms. Reichardt that it had scandalised the local community. I looked around and realised what had been troubling me all evening. Two of our usual number, Ms. Violet Gray and Ms. Patty, were absent from our soiree. None of us missed our meeting even if sickness or injury befell us, so it was obvious that some mishap may have befalled them. I enquired about the two missing members to the van Pelts, and Linus looked at me with a disturbing bemusement, and replied to me that they were simply not needed any more, with such chilling finality that it seemed to stop the passage of the aeons.

Then Schroeder stopped, as the main attraction was to commence; Linus was about to speak. He gave a grandiloquent speech; raging against his conservative elders, saying their speech was to him as was the warbling of some comical trumpet, and that we must find some way to link with things that could not be truly conceived as of the natural world, to the great abyss of the beyond. Everything normally found good and right and moral was to him alien and disgusting, and everything terrible, ætherial and monstrous had a higher, noble quality to it. It was even more shocking than his usual pronouncements, but we did nothing but clap and clamour for more. More than that, he said, he had found what he had been looking for; a way to raise the creature he had been researching almost since birth – the Great Pumpkin, Highest of the Old High Ones, currently in dreamless sleep deep in the very bowels of the earth. He held up in his hand an ancient book, one I recognised, due to my short time studying Archaeology at Miskatonic University, as the Necronomicon, written by some mad Arab so long ago. It held the key to raising the Great Pumpkin to the world of real things and real men, whereupon, said Linus, he would shower the world with a multitude of gifts greater than we had ever seen, as long as the ritual was performed sincerely.

And so we retired to the chamber, I now feeling some great trepidation as we went down into the cellars of the van Pelt household. The basement had been set up to look like the altar in one of the raising rituals, and so we chanted, harsh alien words that seemed to have no meaning except hate, no tone except malice; “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Phum’khan R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”. And so our words and actions, both harsh and horrible, raised to a tumult of conflicting passions beyond all reason.

You must understand that I thought this all a passing fancy, an unreal idea, which was why I continued to participate in this orgiastic ritual. It was then that I was proved, to my continual dismay, drastically wrong, as a portal opened unto a black city, as awesome as it was terrifying, great black spires circling into the night covered with things beyond all human description, and the Great Pumpkin stepped into the world. Its’ fibrous tendrils, a deep green that reminded me of the grass on a grave, lay everywhere, running along everything, feeling their way back into the real, physical world than that realm of nightmare it once inhabited. My eyes were then drawn towards a flabby, bloated orange face, riven with scars and segments, twisted into a hideous mockery of something human. The others bowed to it, and it cackled a horrible speech, a speech of hatred and deceit, of destruction and chaos, of murder and revenge against those who had imprisoned it for so long. It was then that I realised that I must do something to prevent this grotesque creature from imposing its’ will upon humanity, and so attempted to kick the artefact, the Necronomicon, into the portal from whence came such a hideous visage, to pay penance for bringing it into the world.

As I shouted and ran for their sacred and terrifying artefact, Lucy van Pelt glanced upwards and gave a cruel smile more reminiscent of fiend than of mankind. With one swift, jerking motion, her eyes mocked my attempts as she pulled the idol away from me as I tried to kick it, and I fell through the altar into the area from whence the risen Great Pumpkin had crowed in unadulterated triumph. As such, I am recounting this story to you from a limbo of madness, of dark Cycloptican towers and with only the chittering shadows for company; with only Lucy van Pelt’s final words to me as my last chance to destroy their malign cult slipped through my fingers, to give me scant comfort and to keep me from remembering that I am indeed human whilst I remain amongst the creeping towers of the Great Dead City from which the Old High Ones rose:

“Blockhead.”

I know, you’re just as shocked as I am.

I’m talking about this because coming across the film late this night, I was struck by several things.

Firstly, there is possibly no finer Nineties geopolitical statement than the opening credits of GoldenEye. It was going to be overblown, as this is the Bond films we’re talking about, which are about excess in all forms. But what you have here, in all its’ glorious triumphalism, with sickles sinking, stars collapsing, hammers beating apart statues of Lenin, is The End of History, with tits.

(It’s not the definitive Nineties cultural statement because there’s no novelty rap over the end credits.)

Secondly, I don’t think there’s a finer Bond Girl name than Xenia Onatopp. Everyone remembers the obvious contenders; Pussy Galore (“I musht be dreaming.“), Holly Goodhead. The worst one I remember was Dr. Christmas Jones in The World Is Not Enough, which was there simply for the final couple of zingers. As Bond is just about to schtupp the good Doctor in Istanbul, he comes up with “I always wanted to have Christmas in Turkey.” and “I thought Christmas only came once a year.” Sterling efforts, Mr. Bond, although M’s evaluation of you in GoldenEye as a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” is never shown to be more true. (It’s alright though, because they got M to say that! All of the Bond films’ lapses into facepalm-inducing juvenilia are absolved!).

It’s the slight attempt at subtlety I like. You do have to think about “Onatopp” for a second before you groan inwardly, though this being the Bond films they do signpost it, and Onatopp herself is a sex-crazed she-banshee who crushes men to death between her thighs.

And so, thirdly, in this post-Casino Royale world I almost forgot how ridiculous Bond was. I know, I know, it’s still plenty ridiculous, but in the same kind of way most Hollywood blockbusters are. The kind of unreality we consider the most realistic of all, because if its’ in the movies, it must happen that kind of way. Sort of. Perhaps. They wouldn’t lie to us completely, would they?

There’s nothing wrong with the kind of reversion to the Hollywood Real, though. Too much ridiculousness can drown a Bond film, and see the seeds of the simply terrible Die Another Day in this, the truly awful comedic scenes, the heavy exposition-laden dialogue early on (I get why you would have to explain what an EMP is in 1995, but still, watching three people, M, Bond, and an analyst who are supposed to be high-level intelligence operatives whittle their way through a “EMP for Dummies” dialogue in the first half-hour of the film is quite painful.). Somewhere in this film is that fucking invisible car yearning to inflict itself upon us all.

Still, the tank chase through St. Petersburg is, as they say, frickin’ awesome. It’s suggested that for the setpiece that they wanted to crush as many Ladas as possible during the chase, but they didn’t have enough and had to go about the streets buying them off their owners. There’s something apt in there about the collapse of Soviet Russia, somewhere.

We work in synchronicity, great golden shining lattices of linguistic potentiality slowly coalescing into cat’s cradles of almost readable prose.

…what do you mean we should stop speaking as if we were plural?

“It’s pretentious and slightly needy?”

Oh, all right. None of youse are any fun, anyway.

And that’s what this place is for. A place for fun, for odds and ends, for development and discussion, for criticism and creativity. It’s a bit more personal than the Other Place. Or the Alt-Universe.

And lots of alliteration. It’s, like, totally my favourite literary tool ever, yah?

I can’t say I’ve been following any media closely over the past few months or so; my situation has been such that it’s been somewhat difficult to do so. However! I have finished War With The Newts by Karol Capek, a wonderfully epic satirical comedy based around the conceit of a race of sentient salamanders, and am currently whittling my way through American Gods, Neil Gaiman’s first solo novel that was not an adaptation of earlier work. (For those keeping score, the first novel he was involved with was Good Omens along with Terry Pratchett, and his first solo novel was an adaptation of Neverwhere from the BBC series. Oh, wait, there was Stardust, wasn’t there? That was an illustrated novel. Forget everything I have said.). So you can expect something regarding these books…

…well, maybe you can. I’ve found myself to be notoriously awful at meeting deadlines, even ones I’ve set myself, so setting more can only lead to frustration and wanton destruction of property, at best. Best leave it in the somewhat less frustrating but comforting vagueness of something being done soon about something or other.

What do we want? Blog posts!

When do we want them? As soon as is reasonably possible after all stakeholders in the matter have been consulted and a full cost-benefit analysis has been published showing clear return on initial investment!

Fuck yeah.