The Star Chamber

In the interests of trying to update this blog a little more often, I’ve decided to slightly widen the range of topics which I’ll post on - here, music. Check out this clip of Bruce Springsteen playing The Ghost of Tom Joad accompanied by Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. Simply awesome.

And for a literary link, obviously The Ghost of Tom Joad refers to the character from Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath , which I’ve just started reading (prompted mostly by the song, I must admit). I’ll post more on the book in due course.

Matt

I haven’t updated this blog in ages. And after promising to do so as well! Tut tut. How awful. Really, I will try harder.

In the meantime, my friend and one-time (strictly speaking, two-time) colleague Gav Thorpe has started a blog. That’s not what he calls it, but I’ll let his first post explain that. Visit Mechanical Hamster to read this and other posts - one of which I will be responding to very shortly on this very blog. Honest.

Matt

This month’s issue of Death Ray (issue 10) features my interview with Stephen Donaldson, as you may have noticed from the post below.

As is inevitably the case with these things, a few answers had to be trimmed a little and a few others had to be missed out altogether to fit the space available in the magazine, so there’s a few outtakes and a few extended highlights which I will be posting on this blog over the coming days. For now, however, you can read the full interview in Death Ray magazine, and below is a small excerpt from one of the questions we were forced to cut for reasons of space.

In the interview, Stephen talks about his decision not to write The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - a story he conceived at the same time as The Second Chronicles - immediately after completing the two earlier trilogies, because of his feeling that he needed first to improve as a writer. I asked Stephen if the stories he wrote in the meantime were specifically chosen to help him develop his abilities in certain ways, and here’s what he had to say:

“This question comes up most often in the form of: ‘Do you know what you’re going to write next? What are you gonna do after you’ve finished The Last Chronicles. The truth is I’ve no earthly idea, but I never had had an idea. I don’t try to answer that question until I’ve finished the story that’s right in front of me. Once it’s done then I say ‘oh, ok, now what will I write next?’. And the same has been true for the past twenty years. I haven’t searched for ideas that would help me prepare for Covenant, I’ve just searched for ideas that felt like they were so exciting it felt absolute necessary to write them.”

Read the interview in issue 10 of Death Ray (on sale now) and check back here for more outtakes soon.

For any of you who aren’t already aware of it, Hub Magazine is a free, weekly e-zine providing short fiction, reviews and occasional features. The latest issue of Hub features a short story by my good friend Guy Haley, and is highly recommended all round (Guy’s work has previously appeared in issue 35). You can find the current issue of Hub, and subscribe for free, on their website.

I’ve always been of the opinion that short stories the best kind of fiction of all, especially for imaginative genres like science fiction or fantasy. Sadly, the market for short fiction has been in decline for many years and very few dedicated magazines are able to survive. Hub, as a free magazine, published electronically, but which still pays its writers, is an interesting idea and a smart attempt to keep short story publishing viable. If you like short stories, you really should check out Hub.

Just a quick note to let you all know that issue 10 of Death Ray is out now (in the UK at least). This issue features my interview with Stephen Donaldson (as well as all the usual wide-ranging content we’ve come to expect from Death Ray).

The interview should be of interest not only to readers of Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Gap saga and other books, but also all those with an interest in fiction and writing in general. Stephen talks in quite some detail about literature and provides some some thought provoking answers. I’ll probably be posting a couple of blogs about this in the near future - it’s impossible to interview somebody like Donaldson without forming your own thoughts on the themes discussed, so I’ll share those here in due course.

In the meantime, pick up a copy of Death Ray to read the interview - available from newsagents as they say.