I have just spent one and a half of my hard-earned Euros for a digital copy of M.R. James’ Complete Ghost Stories. The ebook is published by Macmillan in its Collector’s Library, and comes with an afterword by David Stuart Davies. This is not the only edition I have of the James stories – I have a paperback edition from Wordsworth Classics here somewhere, and you’ll find at least a James story in any self-respecting collection of classic ghost stories, of which I have a few.
But what happened is, I just wrote a lengthy post about ghosts and Christmas, for the Italian online mag Melange, and while I was preparing a to-read list, I was quite surprised by the fact that M.R. James’ stories are not so easily available in my language.
I spent some time this afternoon discussing tarot decks with a friend – my collection never took off the ground (I have half a dozen decks, nothing to write home about), but I still keep an eye out for new designs and classic reprints, and so we talked, and traded suggestions.
I often say that my definitive Plan B, should everything else fail, would be to find a corner table in a pub and do tarot readings. Indeed, it’s two years now that I say I’ll go and sit at the local pub, down in Nizza, between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, order a drink and a sandwich, and start playing with my tarot – I’m pretty sure it would attract some curious parties. And I could tip the waitresses for them to send people my way. I say this only half-jokingly – my rationale is, if there’s people that could not write their way out of a paper bag that hold courses about writing, then what the hell, I can read tarot.
After all, I read the handbooks, I followed a few online courses, and it’s been now over thirty years I’ve been reading the cards for fun (but not, alas, for profit).
Ridley Scott’s Alien came out when I was a kid and I was not allowed to go and see in the cinema. I caught it a while later, in a drive in while I was by the seaside. As a kid who grew up reading science fiction, Alien was probably bigger, for me, than Star Wars (I had seen a lot of that sort of action in the pulp stories I had been reading – Hamilton and Williamson and Brackett…) and possibly than Blade Runner.
Forty years on (my, I am old), I still love the first movie – a great atmospheric horror – and the sequel, Jim Cameron’s Aliens – the template for military SF. And I have a weak spot for the fourth instalment of the franchise, that to me always was like a lost snippet of that other franchise, Firefly/Serenity.
The third movie, sorry, I hated it. I saw it on a late-night screening with two friends, and found it blah. Too much running around, and they killed off two characters I had loved in Aliens, Bishop and Hicks.
I first saw The Abominable Dr Phibes, the 1971 Robert Fuest movie, back in the ’80s, on a late-nite horror retrospective hosted by RAI 3, the “intellectual” and “left wing” channel in Italy’s state TV. I am pretty sure I saw it in black and white, which of course is a crime, because part of the wonder of this old horror movie is the colors and the looks. So I re-watched it last night, back to back with its sequel, as I was going through a bout of insomnia.
The Abominable Dr Phibes is classified as a horror-comedy (or vice-versa), and still it is pretty gruesome and it does have a melancholic streak, and a certain tragic greatness.
So an idea came up, a sort of half-proposal about doing something new and different for 2020. And I’m always happy to do something new and different, exploring different ideas, different media, different platforms etc. And honestly, it would be a fun project. It would take about one day per week, and it’s something nobody’s done yet in my country.
The problem is, it runs the risk of branding me, of fitting me into a very tight and specific niche. Which every marketing guru says it’s a great thing, but I’m afraid it’s just not me. As I said above, I like exploring and trying new ideas, new paths. becoming a specialist was never my target – not even in academia. I always looked for interdisciplinary projects. That’s why I never got funding. And as a writer, I do all sorts of different stuff, fiction and non-fiction, in Italian and English, fantasy, science fiction, horror, straight adventure, historical, thrillers… I have been told repeatedly this variety is damaging me. “You should be the SF guy! Or the fantasy guy! Find your niche and milk it for all it’s worth.” But I am all over the place. So sue me.
So the question is – should I invest my time and very very limited resources to try and jump-start a new project that could type-cast me?
Well, the type-casting/tight branding thing is certainly a big con. But what about the pros?
I’d get to experiment with a new medium.
I’d get to work on new themes and ideas I always liked.
I might reach a sector of the public that so far I have missed.
I would have the opportunity to use a set of skills I have and have never used fully so far.
This December is flying by at an incredible speed. It’s the 7th already, and I’ve tons of stuff to do and not enough energy to comb my hair. So I’ve taken a day off, with tea and biscuits, and watched a few episodes of the old 1980s Hammer House of Horror TV series.
Yesterday I wasted 100 minutes watching for the umpteenth time Richard Lester’s Royal Flash, the 1974 adaptation of the novel by the same title by George MacDonald-Fraser. A movie that on paper should have been HUGE: great director, excellent cast, based on a fun novel and adapted by the author himself… what could ever go wrong?
For the uninitiated, Royal Flash sees our “hero” Harry Flashman (here portrayed by Malcolm McDowell) caught up the plan by Otto Bismark (Oliver Reed) to manipulate the local politics of a minor German state. The plot is basically The Prisoner of Zenda, with Flash Harry forced to take the place of a Danish prince to marry the German Duchess Irma (Britt Ekland). Lola Montez (Florinda Bolkan) has a part in the plot, and Flashy needs to match wits with Bismark’s accomplice, Rudi Von Sternberg (Alan Bates).
Karavansara 