Better than doomscrolling

Hello from the dark streets of Edinburgh

I’ve moved The Mountain on a little. The first walk is starting to take shape. It’s a little stop-and-start, due in part to all the incredible history I keep uncovering. I want to keep this to about 70k written words. It doesn’t feel like a novel, as it is more of a long-form essay in format, and I think that the word count gives it the gravitas it is demanding. I've also added another short story to it, which requires a thorough edit, but is helping me clarify the direction with the blend of history and fiction.

I’ve also started another short story, but I’m trying to write this on the fly. I use Evernote a lot for note-taking and reminders, but not for writing itself. The idea is to have something on my phone to distract me from social media noise. I'm not sure it will work, but it’s better than doomscrolling, particularly with the world in such a state.

In Evernote, I’m also writing up notes and weird ideas for Project Egon. This is going to have a lengthy ingestion period as I’m trying to consolidate a multitude of concepts into one place, including multiple storylines and characters, alongside being a historical piece. I don’t like to make things easy for myself.

I’ve also been reliably informed via an Amazon email that Crimebits 2 is scheduled for release on October 6th. This contains the opening to Mother & Son, for anyone who wants to read how it starts.

You can order it here (in the UK).

Reading

Clown Town by Mick Herron - Slough House number nine and the circus is in town. Carrying on from the previous books, and one where having read the others helps, this starts with the grisly killing of a monster that harks back to the dark days of the IRA and The Troubles. Unsurprisingly, this is just the setting for someone to try to settle some old scores, which leads inexorably to the front door of Slough House. The build-up, as usual, is methodical, but once we get to the real reason Travener is goading the Slow Horses into working for her, the dice have been played, and there is no guarantee the gamble will pay off.

Film

I watched Highlander for the first time in 20 years. It has dated, and were the sets always that bad? But in a world where everything on TV feels like two bad ideas mashed together. Films are now primarily made for streaming, resulting in a low number of original ideas, but with high-action sequences. It was refreshing to revisit something that, although poorly executed, contains more original ideas in 10 minutes than anything around today.

It reminded me that I’ve been watching The Goldbergs, which I never saw the first time around. A comedy about family life set in the 1980s, featuring a young boy who loves film, named Adam. It has my DNA all over it. Sure, it keeps getting the dates wrong - some references are the 90s - and in the later series, the kids are getting too old, with many themes repeated, but films like Highlander get a high mention count.

With the passing of Robert Redford, my local cinema, the very good Filmhouse, showed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—a classic film, featuring one of the best final shots in movie history. I’m still not sure how they filmed a shot which pauses, moves to a still image without a jump cut and then pans outwards.

I’ve just checked online - because everything is easy now - The iconic final freeze-frame of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was created by filming the actors running out of a building and shooting, then using a large-format still camera to photograph the empty set. This 8x10 photograph was then composited with the freeze-frame of the actors, creating a single pull-back shot on an animation stand.

Articles

David Bowie left behind a treasure trove of work upon his death, including an idea for an 18th-century musical set in London. A cameleon who liked to work across genres, this is hardly surprising, but interestingly, he wanted to use real events. I like work that is grounded in reality, with my own often using true events to shape them. David Bowie as Jack Shepherd would have been fun to watch.

And that’s me out for this week. As the weather turns, learn to enjoy the shortened days, the lengthened nights, and the peace of a good book or a bad film.