I don’t think I mentioned that my boyfriend and I booked our first holiday together, but I’m mentioning it now. I’M IN BARCELONA!

I KNOW.

It’s so freakin’ awesome. I’ve never been on a plane before so this was kinda scary for me, but exciting none the less. You have no idea how awesome it felt (or maybe you do!) to watch myself getting launched thousands of feet into the air, seeing clouds and mountains like some kind of heaven, and not even be frightened by it. I’ve always thought that I was afraid of flying, but how can you be afraid of something you’ve never even faced before? Not even once?

It was awesome, and so easy too. I’m hoping this’ll be the first of many great trips I take, seeing as I would really love to travel around.

Today we just got to the hotel (at around 3pm) so by that point we needed a nap and a chance to unpack. Then this evening we got some milk for our mini-kettle (so British it hurts – can’t go without a cup of tea) and then took a walk to search for this non-existent Tapas restaurant, only to grow weary of walking and end up in a different Tapas place next to a Canadian woman and her daughter.

T’was cool, and they had some yummy vegetarian stuff for yours truly, even if they did overload on the olive oil a little bit. Matt had steak (filthy murderer) which turned out to cost 12 euros for a little dish, OOPS, but he enjoyed it a lot.

Oh, and we don’t speak a word of Spanish by the way, so you can imagine how much everybody loves us – fucking ignorant Brits! HAHAHAA!

Now we’re in the hotel drinking from our dinkie cups from the mini-kettle, looking forward to getting out exploring tomorrow. We’re also watching this hilarious Japanese cooking show where they’re whacking a piece of meat with mighty eroticism.

Brilliant.

Our Tapas place was called Paco Meralgo btw, and it was pretty relaxed. Our meal came to around 50 euros though, and personally I don’t think that’s at all cheap for what we had. Nevermind, though, s’all in the experience.

The weather’s lovely and sunny, by the way, for all you losers enduring the rain in England. I’m just happy I got my work in early so I didn’t have to freak out today, seeing as technically this was my last deadline day. See what hard work can do? I’m in Barcelona whilst some people were whacking out thousands and thousands of (shit) words this morning, fretting over the 4pm deadline. Good luck with that one, folks!

Luckily nobody I’m pals with was that lazy, but then again, some people have more demanding courses than others. Who am I to judge? I’m just glad I wasn’t in that position. I’m glad I was fighting my demons about flying and going on my first holiday with my boyfriend (of 3 1/2 years, ladies and gents) rather than doing work.

Tomorrow we’re going to Park Guell and the Gaudi museum, where we’ll be picnicking like true Brits in the sunshine. I’ll also be slathering on sun cream like a true Brit in the sunshine, because I’m pale and ginger, and if I don’t take these precautions I shall burst into flames. If that happens, who knows how many souls I’ll take with me?

I think the plan is more Tapas tomorrow, but I think we’ll see what we find first.

Oh, and I’ll be taking lots of pictures! Yippeeeee!

Ciao for now.

…

Or adios, even!

So after the disgusting mini-skirt-clad nurses from Silent Hill 2 and that harlot Maria, we now have these: Screamers.

Screamers are women who waddle about after Murphy Pendleton in the latest Silent Hill game: Downpour. Having watched a playthrough I decided to pluck up the courage to play the game myself, and I have to say, I was sickened by the sexism in this vile, vile game.

(I’m actually loving it so far)

Now it’s bad enough that throughout the game we’re chased down by muscular psychos in WIFE BEATER vests, oppressed by a prison guard who looks too much like Kevin Bacon for comfort (and we’ve all seen in him Sleepers) and later bludgeoned by big bald guys, but these Screamers take the biscuit. Yeah, I know, Screamers: their only defence is to whinge and whine and have extreme PMT.

Women are nothing like that.

You first encounter one of these poor women being BEATEN by a prison inmate -who has  a Village People moustache – within an inch of her life. She’s even clad in sexy heels for all the creeps who find this sort of thing a turn-on, and not only is she bloodied and confused, but her hair is in disarray and her house dress is filthy. I’m not kidding; she’s an absolute state.

Once Murphy fights off the big brute who was assaulting her, the poor lass staggers to her feet and is, understandably, dazed and confused. She teeters about on her heels, fretting over her nails, when she spots Murphy huffing and puffing with that look in his eyes. What does she do? Obviously she has to defend herself; she has no choice. She swipes with her nails and screams, screams, SCREAMS for him to back off! But what do we, the gamers – Murphy- do? We take the bitch down. With a knife -from the kitchen no less – or a very manly wrench. We can do DIY on that bitch.

Unbelievable.

I was appalled.

A while later Murphy is attacked by one of these screaming bitches from behind, and he has to violently shake her off when, out of nowhere, her gal-pals arrive and start shrieking about shoes, periods, make-up and the like. Vile, absolutely vile: here we are slaughtering them when they clearly need our help. They’re deranged, wild, and looking absolutely terrible. I can’t blame them for wanting to slap Pendleton about a bit. There isn’t a nail salon in sight.

Disgusting.

So there’s sexism on two levels here: one, all the enemies are proud wife-beaters or bimbos in disarray, and two: Murphy is pounding these bitches like bakery dough. Not to mention the high heels, the nails/claws, the terrible dye-jobs; it just gets worse and worse. This is a disgusting misrepresentation of women.

Did I mention that you encounter the first screaming biatch in the basement of a HOUSE, and the second in a KITCHEN? Where there is a FRYING PAN and a vase of FLOWERS?

I know. I know.

But then we have these other bitches:

Torn hose, pink bra on show complete with slipping strap, mini-dress, smeared mascara? Oh please.

Know what these bleach-blonde, lipstick-smeared women do? They manipulate Murphy by crying and sobbing loudly, drawing him near, when out of nowhere they spawn shadow gal-pals who prance about the place and attack Murphy when he least expects it. SOUND FAMILIAR, BOYS?

Your girlfriends are nothing like that.

So shut the fuck up, brutes.

Murphy has to get to work SMASHING -yes, they make glassy-smashy-noises like the fake mannequin bitches they are- until they die horribly. If they aren’t crying they’re giggling, making fun of Murphy, who ultimately is only out for their blood, or a look at their hooters. Not to mention their gaping, blow-up-doll mouths, practically begging for Murphy’s wrench to be plunged into their moist, quiverring bodies.

Pathetic.

I am absolutely appalled. The only “strong female” in the game is Anne Cunningham, a typical daddy’s girl whose fate, ultimately, lays in the hands of -yep, you guessed it- that bastard Murphy. Oh, she might live, yeah, and they end with a sensual and highly erotic hug. So she either dies or succumbs to Murphy’s desires; not to mention what she ends up doing with Kevin Bacon Officer Sewell at the end.

Then, finally, we have this:

Look familiar, girls?

Yeah. Looks like a giant vag, doesn’t it?

Hardly a coincidence given all the other anti-female content. This void pops up at inconvenient times to suck Pendleton in whenever he’s in sight of an escape route, which parallels rather a lot with the male view on relationships, doesn’t it? Oh, when a bitch is about to lose her maaan, what’s the last resort? Give him the vag. Bastards love vag. They can’t escape that shit, right? Right. The void-vag will ultimately swallow Pendleton up unless he can run fast enough and, like most unreliable bastard men, Pendleton knows how to RUN.

Oh yes.

I think I’ve made my point. I just wanted y’all to know that this stuff hasn’t gone unnoticed, and when the next Silent Hill game comes out, we’ll be ready. Payback time. Got it, fellas? Us bitches: we’ll be waiting. We’ll be coming at you like a buzzard.

And we won’t be laughing, or crying, or screaming about shoes.

We’ll have rolling pins.

P.S Weeping Bats? Giant tampons.

There seems to be this new trend on the interwebz, where women reject the notion of sexism because they believe it compromises their position as an equal woman. I’m struggling to see whether this is positive discrimination, genuine ignorance, or just a new source of elitism for our beloved “modern woman”.

Let me explain as briefly as I can. There seems to be a new anti-feminist trend pioneered by these go-getting women who think feminism is redundant, based on a few factors:

1)Sexism against women only affects women

2) Defending human rights exacerbates the problem

3) Taking offense at sexist remarks contradicts your role as a “modern woman”.

I don’t think I need to point out how ridiculous all of the above is. However, it sickens me that we’re now being defined as “modern women” just because we demand a certain standard to be kept up. The offense itself is never the soul issue at the heart of any sexist uproar, like this incident with the jeans for example. We’ve already seen Top Man’s little faux-pas with the sexist T-shirts, and that got its due slaughtering as well, leading to the tacky attire to be taken off the shelves. For as long as this keeps happening, men and women will be calling them out on it: why?

Because our principals matter.

If we lose our principals we lose our dignity and self-worth, negating our right to speak out (which men and women fought for), and eventually forfeiting our human rights entirely. People fight against what they believe in, however small, because it educates the world in equality and over all makes the world a better place.

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person, was it purely because she was tired? No, it was because principally it was wrong, and she was brave enough to defend that fact. Was she a civil rights activist purely because she felt obliged as a black woman to keep up this role for the fun of it? No, it was because she had principals beyond gender, beyond race. The fact that she took offense and fought against it does not negate the core issue, or its impact on the world at large.

You cannot prove your protest against inequality by turning to stone.

Look at people like Janet Street Porter, for example, or Mary Portas. Similar, boisterous characters, I feel, and I appreciate both of them. However, what I don’t appreciate is this hard woman persona that people cling to when they do their magpie routine; selecting pieces from women like the aforementioned to form this mutant alpha-female in their minds. The alpha-female of the mind is hard, ready, and believes in her own equality so blindly that she ignores sexism when she sees it. Why? Because apparently, the very uprising of the issue validates it.

In simpler terms: finding sexism offensive validates it as an issue, which contradicts your role as this modern, Janet Street Porteresque woman.

(I doubt Janet would appreciate the monster born in peoples’ minds from their cutting and pasting of alpha-females in the media)

This is utter crap, of course, and any intelligent person can see that. I resent the notion that showing offense is a sign of weakness, and that it is exclusive to “modern women”. What is this modern woman? Someone so iron-willed that sexism isn’t a blip on their radar? This is an age-old issue; this isn’t exclusive to people today. When we defend ourselves against sexism, whether we’re male or female, we are keeping up the standards we’ve fought for. This is nothing less than condescension.

Are victims of bullying weak for admitting they’re being bullied?

As for the notion that sexism only effects women, let’s get real here. Sexism demeans everyone. I don’t expect men to sit by and put up with tacky, anti-female slogans being hidden inside their jeans as if they’ve all got this uniform sense of “blokish” humour. It’s degrading for men to have to shop in stores which plaster sexist slogans over their garments like a badge of honour, ignoring how far we’ve come as a society to rise beyond this kind of discrimination.

Rejecting these lower-than-low standards is not a sign of weakness, or diminutive of our roles as males and females: it is the refusal to lower our standards. We needn’t do so just to prove they don’t affect us; we needn’t stop speaking out just because it’s all been said before. Sexism is not made redundant by blind ignorance of the fact it still exists. You can wear your alpha-female-mask and declare you’re above sexism, but remember this: when you, or someone you know, is affected by sexism and it is brought to justice, you’ve got us nit-picky hairy-legged feminists to thank for it.

And all those nit-picky hairy-legged male feminists to thank for it too.

In fact, you can thank just about anyone who ever stood up for basic human rights, because things like this go beyond feminism. This is about our rights to live as equal individuals and not allow the slacking standards of ignorant retail outlets to undermined our sense of self respect.

As a little side note: Imagine the mutant alpha-female I spoke about before. Mary Portas’ hair, Janet Street Porter’s face, their equal colossal height, and what? Vanessa Feltz with terrible PMS? Add into the mix a corporate outfit complete with heels and mini-skirt, a bad dye-job and a huge mouth spouting “I AM WOOOOOMAAAAAAAAAAAAAN” on repeat in Lois from Malcolm In The Middle‘s voice, and you’ve got my worst nightmare: there is your mutant alpha-female.

If you can draw me a picture of that, you’ll win a prize: a pair of my knickers in the post, unwashed, with “Give ‘em to your man!” stitched on the label.

I’ve been reading Margaret Cho’s blog and I think I’m in love with this woman. Finally, someone who is genuinely unique -not some Tyra Banksalike pretending they have a soul. Someone down to earth, thoughtful and compassionate, giving their honest opinion on body image issues. She talks about what it’s like growing up as an Asian-American being bullied for her “flat face”, for being “too fat” and how, even when she got her dream career, she was either “Too Asian” or not “Asian enough”.

As a result she spent a long time torturing herself and developed an eating disorder, which in the end caused Kidney failure. It took her a long time to come to the conclusions that she’s come to, and she’s gone through a lot of crap. This woman knows what she’s talking about. So, if you want some truly wise and uplifting advice, or even just a kick-arse opinion, go see her blog. Also, she’s a hilarious stand-up comedian. Love  her.

So here’s my point. I’m currently in the midst of my “monthly gift” and as usual I feel fat and disgusting. As usual, I’ve woken up determined to starve myself, and after caving in during the day I have, as usual, beaten myself up over it. Something has occurred to me, though: this cycle isn’t exclusive to my period. This shit happens all month long, and indeed, has happened all my life long.

I’m 21 now. I remember being 5 years old, my first time as a Bridesmaid, looking at the wedding photos. I’m with two of my cousins, and at just 5 years old, I remember crying over that picture. I remember being disgusted with myself. I remember how I hated the fact that I couldn’t look skinny just ONCE, and my “skinny” cousins were there looking adorable. As a kid I had a chubby, round face. I wasn’t fat, but I remember distinctly thinking it, and I remember hating myself at that age. It isn’t fair. Why? Because I was a lovely, fucking adorable little kid. I was a talented kid. I had a beautiful smile, a freckly face – I looked just as sweet as my cousins did.

But as a result of feeling that way from an early age, I grew up believing I was worthless, and hideous, and less than female. I grew up and began over-eating because I’d given up on trying to have a nice body, and little did I know, I already had one. Sure, I wasn’t size 8 – I was size 12 at my smallest (and I’m a size 12 now), but I was accepted. I was just fine the way I was. Besides, here I am still banging on about sizes: who fucking cares what number is on your clothes tag?

I’m an indiviual who is very conflicted about their image. On one hand I’m this bare-faced feminist Vegetarian who eats whatever she wants and smiles in the face of bullies. On the other, I’m still the girl cowering in her dorm room because she felt that she wasn’t good enough to be seen out in the world. She was a girl who thought the concept of walking around with everyone else was arrogant and presumptuous; how dare I think I have any business walking around amongst beautiful people?

What beautiful people? Life is full of ugliness. Confidence over-rules everything. That’s why when you’re an adorable kid, or a genuinely good person who gets picked on for their image, you get these ugly, ugly bullies getting away with making you feel bad. So you have body issues, and now people want a piece of you too?

Fuck that. Seriously, fuck that. Life’s too short for beauty, and ugliness, and any definition you can give. It’s irrelevent. In 100 years the chances are your face will be forgotten. It’s the things you did with your life that will last beyond your death.

I’ve heard a few ignorant dickheads say that only ugly girls are feminists.  But if it’s true that “beautiful” girls don’t have to care about this stuff, then does that give them the right to belittle others as a source of power? Doesn’t that mean their “beauty” gets them nowhere? Don’t they need their ugly insides to do the dirty work? What’s more, who the fuck decides who’s beautiful anyway?

Why do we get the choice between being a walking Plus-size “body confidence” advert or a stick-thin bitch? I can’t stand the whole media opression with skinny models thing, but I’m equally annoyed by the whole “real women have curves” thing. They’re both forms of oppressing women. They’re both ways of bullying people for their size or body shape, which is something most people cannot control. We get what we’re given.

When are we allowed to just be us? Undefinable us?

It’s all bullshit. Absolute crap. Beauty and ugliness doesn’t exist. It’s either in our own heads, or we’re making it up to abuse some sort of power; using it to judge others and raise ourselves up. Whichever end of the spectrum you consider yourself to be in, the truth still remains. Our image isn’t the problem: it’s our shitty, nasty, bitter little heads. It’s the crap we allow ourselves to say to eachother, and to ourselves.

I’ve booked a trip to Barcelona with my boyfriend, and you know what’s been ruining my excitement? The fact that we’re going to go to the beach, and I’m wondering how I’m gonna cover myself up enough. If I don’t want to see my hideous, blotchy, stretch-marked body, then I can bet nobody else will, right?

Yet I’m not actually bitter about the fact I can’t get away with a bikini. I’m bitter about the fact that I am 21 and I should fucking know better than this. The fact that I understand my dilemma and it’s irrelevance to the world and my life at large doesn’t matter one jot. It’s negated by the unrelenting presence of the inferiority complex in my head.

I shouldn’t be worrying about my stupid swimming costume. I should be looking forward to how great the water is gonna feel.

(As a side note, this whole body image issue concerns men just as much as it does women. I’m just viewing this from my perspective as a woman, despite my raging PMS)

In other news (briefly):

I’ve been away a while panicking over deadlines (having finished my work early enough to spend weeks getting paranoid about what I might’ve missed) and avoiding my part-time job as well as this blog.

Truth is I’ve been down about my life. I’m graduating soon and it’s dawning on me yet again that no matter how hard I try, I cannot be fucking perfect. It can’t happen. I beat myself up over ONE MARK, despite the fact I’m streets ahead with my work and have created a wonderful magazine (will show later, it’s epic) and it’s all because I can’t accept that I’m good enough.

I can’t accept less than perfect and, considering that’s impossible, you can imagine how much shit goes on in my head as a result. I just struggle with the concept that I can put all that effort in, put all that time in, and still come out less than perfect. Muggins here is still blaming herself while the rest of the world just accepts that their best is good enough.

Reblogged from A Mad Man With A Blog:

Yours truly, trying to save the endless variety provided by libraries.

It’s strange, but as a writer one of the questions I most dread being asked is one of the most frequent: “So what do you write then?” It’s not so much that I don’t like talking about my writing- though I do get a strange modesty conflict- but more that I’m never sure how to categorise myself.

Read more… 544 more words

Matt sums up why we need libraries. Not just for the accessibility they bring to people of all ages and literary tastes, but for the unbelievable variety they make available to us.

Yay for distractions! Ashleigh gets distracted by lovely face of Ridiculously Photogenic Guy and fails her whole degree as a result: Doesn’t mind.

It didn’t take long for the interwebz to find someone who genuinely is really, really ridiculously GOOD looking.

So after laughing my arse off at Samantha Brick’s narcissistic, delusional article about how she’s tortured for being beautiful, and after laughing even harder at Tim Dowling’s hilarious spoof of the article in the Guardian, I’ve been feeling a little conflicted.

On one hand, I can see her point: being heavenly is a double-edged sword. Just the other day a man letched at me in the street under the pretence that he was worried about my untied shoelace, apparently “afraid I might trip over”. To an innocent, ugly bystander this might look like genuine kindness from a concerned stranger, especially seeing as the man was about 72 years old. But I know different, because all my life I’ve been plagued by this kind of perversion, and even more from jealous onlookers intimidated by my response to such (understandably) horny old gents.

But on the other hand, I thought she was arrogant, delusional, and really naive in two ways. One being that any bitterness from other women is jealousy and couldn’t possibly be their aversion to an arrogant cow with a superiority complex, and the second being that she could get away with writing an article like that and not be utterly slaughtered for it.

And on yet another hand – and I often have at least three hands- I feel like the Daily Mail have used and abused her to the point that they’ve actually thrown her to a pack of hungry (probably dashing and male) dogs, with a big grin on their faces! So here’s me, undecided about whether to laugh or feel sorry for her, or both, and suddenly the superiority is in my corner. Here I am, ridiculing a victim of the Daily Mail’s misogyny.

After appearing on This Morning only to feed the fire with more ignorance/naivety, I read Hadley Freeman’s article in The Guardian, which basically reiterates (if in a more refined manner!) my thoughts about whether Samantha Brick was actually being treated fairly by the people who’ve published her. The article includes some accounts of people who have written freelance for the mail, only to have their stories turned inside out to put them in a negative, ugly shade of indignity.

Now, whilst her appearance on This Morning unveils any mystery around whether she really does believe she  is really-really-ridiculously-good-looking, it still doesn’t rule out whether her article was heavily edited or not. To me it seems unlikely that it went untouched, and perhaps she just hasn’t seen how bad it’s actually made her look. Then again, I wouldn’t want to underestimate her intelligence (and I’ve already underestimated her astounding beauty, which admittedly I’m furious about) by assuming she wouldn’t have noticed if any great changes had been made to the original.

Perhaps she’s just all too happy to be used as the Mail’s personal troll if it gets her all the attention. Unfortunately, after thinking about all three hands, I have to come to this conclusion: she really is that arrogant.

Thank Cheesus that we have Tim Dowling to shed some much-needed humour on the subject.

(Ironically I do find him really attractive, and did so before he told us of his beseeching eyes and postage-stamp-collecting beard!)

So, I’ve finally gotten to the stage where I can print my magazine pages to take a look and hunt for mistakes. The thing about editing hard-copies is that you  can really nitpick, and often mistakes show up where you wouldn’t have spotted them on the screen. It’s also great for my research portfolio to demonstrate the different stages of  completing this project as a novice, and how I ensured quality to some degree.

This has been a tough but highly rewarding task, and personally I am dead chuffed with what I’ve been able to create all by myself – from figuring out indesign, to learning the difference between RGB and CMYK, to editing stories, compiling them in an attractive fashion and even designing my own front cover and artwork. Honestly, this was an ambitious project for somebody who has ZERO experience in this field, and I never expected it to be this good. You really should see my first attempts, especially of a front cover and an article. It’s laughable but understandable – I was a beginner, and I still am. However, I have learned a lot of new skills, and I know how to create a magazine. That’s something.

Anyway, my boyfriend happens to know someone who owns a printing shop, and he has kindly printed off the pages (single, not as they’d appear in the final product) on some gorgeous paper. Not only that, but he has actually gone to the trouble of pointing out some errors and marking them on the paper, which makes my life so much easier. I really did need the perspective of the person printing it, because the worst problems were probably going to be in the formatting, the thing I understood the least. So, lucky for me, I didn’t even have to ask!

Here are some pictures:

The pictures don’t do it justice! I wish I could photgraph every single page, but that’d just be insane. I can’t wait to blog once it’s finished, printed and stapled as a proper magazine!

Now, this is a student project and not the real deal. But honestly, this has taught me what’s really possible – what I’m actually capable of. If I wanted to make Urban Limbo into a real thing later on then I don’t see why I couldn’t, not from a practicality perspective. Money, of course, would be the issue – but even still, there’s no reason why this couldn’t turn into an online magazine. I personally really believe in this as a concept, and hopefully the examiners will see that in my work.

If I was to do this for real, things would be very different though. Here’s some things I’d do differently:

• Pay proper artists for illustrations and front covers. I couldn’t this time and the art department at uni didn’t reply to me, so this time around I had to make my own. I didn’t do a bad job at a basic level, but presentation is everything; if I could get some decent digital art I know this thing could really pop.
• There would be no donated stories. I know that goes without saying, but I do wish could’ve gotten real submissions for this. Thankfull my classmates and some other writers contributed for free so I could express my skills as an editor, but realistically these stories wouldn’t be put together, and most of them wouldn’t really have a place in the mag. Two of the stories take place outside of cities; one of them in a forest, for Christ’s sake, LOL. It involved a car, though, so I could scrape by. The point is it didn’t matter this time (it’s all good in the critique) but in reality the content would meet the brief.
• I would have an online presence to generate profits along with selling advertising. I’d have flash-fiction sections on the webite and an active blog. I’d also have artwork submissions and street photography to keep people coming back, and I’d make the magazine available for download as a PDF at a one-off fee or as a subscription. Obviously I’d love for it to be print, but with the current economic state I know this isn’t likely, even as a dream. Just look at what happened to Murky Depths for example.

I could go on forever, honestly. I had high expectations for this (a  little too high in the beginning) but ultimately I think I’ve done my best and, once it’s all submitted as the final product, I think I’ll be proud of what I achieved.

Everybody has to start somewhere, don’t they?

THIS IS AMAZING. And what’s more is I can’t believe how good he looks as a tranny! Oh, boys and girls, this was a welcome distraction from stressing about cock-ups at uni and stupid deadlines.

I’ve discussed this with a friend and we both agreed that if Sean Bean was a tutor, he’d give us all firsts and take us down the pub. Then afterwards he’d say “C’mon lass” and whisk me off to be his 5th wife, and years later we’d have Beanie babies with Sharpe hairdos, and he’d dress like Ned Stark every day. Yep, heaven.

Oh, and A Game Of Thrones season 2 starts this Sunday! Unfortunately Starky won’t be in it, but he’ll be in aaaaall our hearts I’m sure.

So without further ado, I’ll illustrate this post with the most amazing pics to ever grace the internet: Bean in drag. (I didn’t need much excuse for procrastination. What do you reckon his dress size is? 006? Bwahahaaa!)

Anyway, my independent project (arts version of a dissertation, complete with essay etc) is a prototype of an urban horror magazine, using donated stories for me to experiment as an editor. I had a brilliant time learning how to design, edit and create my very first magazine, and once it’s printed I’ll put up pictures for all to see.

Author Gary McMahon kindly agreed to an interview for inclusion in the magazine, but as it’s a class project and not a real magazine that you can go and buy or view for free, I thought it’d be a bit of a waste if I didn’t share the interview here:

9 Questions For Gary McMahon

Q: The second novel in your Concrete Grove series (Silent Voices) is coming out soon. Do you view a series as a single story, or is each book its own complete entity?

A: “Each of the Concrete Grove novels can be read as a stand-alone story, but together they form an overall story – like a triptych, if I’m allowed to be a pretentious arse. I was really inspired by Jimmy McGovern’s TV show ‘The Street’ where each week featured a different story set on the same street. Characters would drift in and out of episodes, and everything was linked by the location, but each one was a seperate tale unto itself.”

Q: You’ve got a couple of series on the go right now: the Thomas Usher books and The Concrete Grove. What’s it like focusing on two different storylines which mix multiple sub-genres of horror? Do you have a preference for writing one or the other?

A: “To be honest, it was really difficult at first. I wrote The Concrete Grove immediately after Dead Bad Things (the second Usher novel) and things got a bit fraught. The Usher books are set in Leeds, the Grove books are set in Northumberland. I think at one point in The Concrete Grove I mention a hospital in Leeds (or is it the other way around?). Nobody noticed, but they will if they read this…”

Q: Many writers have insecurity issues with their own writing, doubting whether they are good enough to ever break through into the published world. Obviously you’ve already managed that, but did you (or do you still) have any particular approaches to keeping your morale up when that inner critic pipes up?

A: “I’m stubborn. Always have been. I have frequent bouts of self-doubt, but I just keep on writing, keep on trying to develop my craft. At the end of the day, this is all that really matters. Everything else is peripheral to the business of writing stories. So, no matter what happens, I just try to keep writing.”

Q:  The novella “The Harm” was the first piece of your writing that I read, and you’ve published other novella-length works and many short stories. Was that by design?

A: “I started off as a short story writer because that’s all I knew. I never dreamed that I’d be able to write a full novel. I had no idea about publishing – how it worked, how to get an agent, all that stuff – so just kept writing my stories and submitting them to little magazines and anthologies. At some point, I got noticed by bigger editors and by that time I’d already built up a reputation in the field.”

Q: I’ve noticed you have a fascination with urban horror (and what a coincidence too!). Does the current economic climate influence your work?

A: “God, yes. My recent work examines a lot of what’s happening in the current economic climate. We can’t escape it; the results of what’s going on are everywhere. I just choose to couch my questions in terms of horror, crime and fantasy fiction, rather than political debate. I grew up on a council estate in the northeast, so these are stories I know well. Much of what I write about in the Concrete Grove novels is based on stuff that I’ve exerienced and people I’ve known in my life.”

Q: The whole crime/horror thing is a difficult combination to get right, but I thought the balance was spot-on in Pretty Little Dead Things. Did you have any doubts about all the elements coming together smoothly?

A: “I have doubts about everything. Always. Again, I just kept on writing, and hoped that whatever the hell it was I was trying to do worked out okay. It’s like an act of faith. You just have to jump in and believe that you have the talent to make it work. I’ve always liked books that mix up genres and break a few established rules, so it just felt natural to me that I do the same.”

Q: The rise of e-books is something we’ve all come to accept now, but I want to know this: what’s your opinion of self-publishing on Amazon Kindle? A recent success story saw Amanda Hocking become a millionaire from self-publishing books that were rejected by literary agencies. Is that a good message for writers considering the Kindle publishing route?

A: “I’m still very dubious about the ebook revolution. There’s a lot of bad fiction out there, and a lot of people are talking a lot of crap about sales figures. For every Amanda Hocking there’s another 50,000 sad saps pimping their poorly written, barely edited for free on Smashwords. For now, I’m sticking with the traditional publishing template. That way, at least I get an advance.”

Q: If one of your books was made into a movie/TV series, which would it be and who could you imagine directing it?

A: “Maybe Pretty Little Dead Things, with Tim Roth as Thomas Usher. Directed by Paddy Consadine. I’d want Peter Mullan in there somewhere, too, because he’s great.”

Q: What’s the best advice you have for novice writers?

A: “The only advice I have is this: persist. Never give up. Just keep at it, and hope that one day somebody notices what you’re doing. But even if they don’t, keep on writing anyway. Writers write. Everyone else just talks about writing and thinks it’ll make them rich and famous. The deluded fools…”