Saturday 16 May 2009

I'm going to start writing "State of the Nation" this Summer.




I actually have a whole 4 months off this Summer which means I'll be able to break the back of the new collection, "State of the Nation."

"Shooting Stars" is already finished and is currently being previewed on this blog.

"Dawn of the Brain Dead", a 20000 word novella which I originally wrote in the summer of 2007 (before then losing the lot thanks to Bill gates' inability to create an operating system that actually works and isn't riddled with bugs), will be rewritten. (After the bowel-clenching grief of losing it I finally feel ready to get going on it again).

It will also include two other stories / novellas which I don't even want to mention lest the titles give anything away.

While I hope to get all the first drafts done this Summer, there will undoubtedly be my usual period of revision and rewrites, so expect to see it some time in 2010.

The novel, "Razor Moccasins", is still ongoing.

Promo Slideshow of Reviews for "Ugly Stories for Beautiful People."

Reading of "It" from "Ugly Stories for Beautiful People."

Live Reading of "BobandJane" - Cinnamon Cafe

Sorry, video flakes out half way through.....

Unintentionally funny comic book panels

And whatever the Voice (remember him?) says, Cap has to do....




Lois Lane proving that she's no stranger to the Orgasmatron......




Women....!




A lot's been said about the Batman & Robin relationship. I'm sure it's all lies though......



oh.
And then of course, there's my favourite....



Interview at "The Short Review"

TSR: What does the word "story" mean to you?
James Burr: "Vastly, and inexplicably underrated, form of prose." I love short stories and I just don't understand why the publishing industry, and indeed many readers too, look down upon them. In these times of multi-media saturation and short attention spans surely the short story is THE medium of our times! Surely, just being able to dip in and out of a book whenever you have a few minutes to spare is the way we should all be reading now? Yet stories continue to be seen as the immature, less-devloped sibling to the novel, or worse, as a training ground for aspiring novelists. In my opinion, a good short story collection should always be superior to a good novel - the sheer range of narrative voices that can be used, the variety of characters, the number of ideas that can be explored.... Then again, while I don't write genre fiction I come from a genre background, so I see a short story as having "a point." When you read a story by Philip.K. Dick or Ray Bradbury or Clive Barker there is a definite purpose to the story - it is complete in and of itself. I wonder if the reason many people don't like reading short stories is because they read stories that are essentially notes for abandoned novels masquerading as "mood pieces" or half-formed vignettes pretending to be "character studies." This is a failing I often see in more "literary" short story collections, and it annoys me intensely. A story should be complete in itself, whether it be 1000, 5000 or 20000 words long. It isn't just "a short piece of prose" that isn't long enough to be padded up into a novel, nor is it just a single, clever idea. That isn't a short story. That's a vignette, or even, dare I say, a joke.See the rest of this interview at THE SHORT REVIEW.