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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 11:48 am:   

Every writer everywhere is an expert at blowing their own trumpet -- it's something that is normal behaviour amongst scribbling humans -- but now I want to suggest something different.

Namely, a thread where you can suck your own trumpet instead.

THIS thread...

For instance, I have just written one of the worst stories of my career. The story sucks. It starts with a highwayman who holds up a carriage with the words, "Stand and deliver!" but the carriage is full of postmen who take his words literally: they run off to deliver their sacks of mail while the highwayman is left scratching his head in bewilderment.

That basic conceit is thin enough as the starting point of a short story, yet I might have done something worthwhile with the piece as it developed. But I didn't. The story gets worse, not better. It sucks.

How about you? What crap things have you written lately? Share them here!

Don't be a smartass and say something like, "But I've never written anything bad in my life..." Bollocks! Only three writers in history have never written a dud and you sure as hell ain't one of them.

Those three authors are: Homer, Wu Cheng'en and Tonguewaggle Chipchop.

It takes far more guts to suck your own trumpet than to blow it. To blow your own trumpet just takes a certain aptitude in tactics. But to suck your own trumpet takes nobility, strength of spirit and honour. To sacrifice your own ego on the altar of entertainment by disparaging your own work... Greater love hath no other author.

So I am asking you to forget about being a tactical twat just for a few minutes and suck it. Go on, you know you should!
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 12:45 pm:   

Everything I've ever written is shit. At least that's how I feel today.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 12:45 pm:   

God help me, the last chapter of Creatures of the Pool.
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Mark_samuels (Mark_samuels)
Username: Mark_samuels

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 86.142.169.99
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 04:59 pm:   

Most of Black Altars.

Mark S.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.31.239.78
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 05:14 pm:   

A story called 'Habitus'. I'm not even going to say where it was published.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 05:56 pm:   

Lighthouse magazine issue 7
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 05:57 pm:   

That's where Gary's story was published...

Google's good innit.
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.158.238.131
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 06:04 pm:   

As a songwriter.....

A song I wrote for Rocket Box called '3 Holes'.

If anyone has actually heard this piece of shit....

All I can do is apologise:-)

gcw
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.158.58.28
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 06:18 pm:   

I wrote the worst thing ever: "The Best of DF Lewis"

THE BEST OF DF LEWIS Tal Publications (1993). Below is the review in SF EYE (1993)






<<Okay, let's get straight to it. This collection of short stories is unbelievable. No, really. It's THAT unique. I'm pretty certain that never before have so many non-sequiturs, cliches, bathetic howlers and just plain inept grand guignols been gathered together in the one place. It is astonishing, pages of incomprehensible prose studded with ridiculous imagery and buffoonesque phrasing. Just awesome.

Like - "I spoke, but my lungs felt like used condoms..." "Her voice seems to be in the cupboard and her mouth does not move at all, but it's as clear as clear: 'Give me girls when they're young and, with me proud spike, I'll make 'em into women fit to bear those bloodshot monthlings from their ratholes.'" (from "Jack The Ratter".)

Then, from "Dabbling With Diabelli," there is - "The musician was extending Beethoven's famous Diabelli variations into areas where even Scriabin and Paganini would not dare tread with their fingers." "The nostrils gaped with each bravura onslaught upon the keys." "The pair of over-nourished spiders floated above the keys in twitching stasis." (Uh, he's talking about hands-geddit?)

And - "... all the workings of the undercity being connected up via the poultries' orifices, passing through them onwards to the outlets in the water closets, where it all came back up In great spurts of recycled food..." "This job consisted of melding the birds' splintering skin with the moist undertow that he kept under his scrotum ..."(from "Dognahnyi.")

Or - "I eat baby mice. I suck the flesh off their still twitching bones . . . There's a whole nest of baby mice under my bed, knotted and twined like suckling walnuts." "Yes, mummy rat, I jellified." "I've just plucked one from the dark bunch, like a live grape. The meat comes off the tangled bones with the ease of pip mush from a pomegranate." (from "Entries.")

It gives one pause for thought. In page after page D.F. Lewis proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he can't tell a story - but he thinks he can which is why he riddles his prose with archaicisms and inane little asides and observations. And if at any point something gross or icky suggests itself to his fevered mind, then off down that tangent the story must go, regardless of what's gone before. Which might not be so bad if it was in the context of some sort of consistent use of style and content. But unfortunately he displays no real control of the language, and little ability to direct the flow of narrative in even a rudimentary fashion.

However, Ramsey Campbell and Jessica Amanda Salmondson (and, presumably, the editor of TAL Publications) don't think so. Campbell contributes a praising introduction and Salmondson is quoted on the back cover as saying, ". . . His stories aren't merely fantasies, they're dark truths."

Dark truths? What, you mean like - "The nostrils of the bulbnose gaped wider with each of Bloodbone's breaths, revealing a whole system of twitching, fatfolding bogies - a whole scabby township of them - in varying shades of pure white."? Or - "The boobs felt funny hanging on my man's chest like polythene bags full of plum pudding."? Ah, indeed. Such mastery, such a dark vision.

D.F. Lewis - a writer on the edge. The edge of hilarity, that is.>>
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.158.238.131
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 06:24 pm:   

" three Holes is all that yer mean ter me!"

Jesus fucking christ did I write that???

I like this thread.

gcw
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.31.239.78
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 07:50 pm:   

Weber, don't try and disguise the fact that you love me and follow my every move and have facts like that immediately to hand. But I've told you: if you want to raise a family, you're going to have to go elsewhere. I don't have the right . . . well, how can I describe this in a way you'll understand? I don't have the right holes. And it would never work anyway. I'm allergic to leather, for one thing, so that jacket would have to go; it's not something I feel I could ask you. I mean, I imagine you'd comply, but I'd feel guilty about it - it would come between us. And I love Nabokov, too. He's great. Every florid and enigmatic arch of him. How he bends and teases. He's a bitch. Short of my Jade Goody video-recording (each handwritten in my neatest pencil), a good dose of Nabby characterises every fine evening I spend on the coast. So . . . forget it. It would never work out. We're wrong for one another in a million ways. If you don't believe me, ask Jeeves.
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Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey)
Username: Darren_o_godfrey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 207.200.116.133
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 10:11 pm:   

I've recently come to seriously dislike parts of my novel-in-progress. Namely, the fantasy bits.

Couple of short-shorts I've had on Everyday Weirdness were pretty suck-a-licious.

And "Dysfunction" is repugnant. Unfortunately, that one appeared in an antho featuring King, so many more sets of eyes have potentially fallen upon it. That's just about the last story I'd want to have that kind of distribution.
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Skunsworth (Skunsworth)
Username: Skunsworth

Registered: 05-2009
Posted From: 92.16.18.202
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 10:40 pm:   

I reread the opening of the novel I'm working on today, and Lord but its poor.

Also, I don't like any of my stories when I come to reread them, because they always feel remarkably clumsy and lazyily written. I reserve particular ire, however, for my story in Lovecraft Unbound, 'Vernon, Driving', which I have decided I really do not like and so am not going to include in any future collection of my work!

S
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.182.227.120
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 10:53 pm:   

"Numbskull, numb nuts, pity me"!

Had to have a play of "3 Holes", gcw!
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Ian Alexander Martin (Iam)
Username: Iam

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 64.180.64.74
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 11:17 pm:   

I have never written anything good or bad, other that prose.

The world is a better place for it, trust me.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.219.40
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 12:31 am:   

I wrote three supernatural shaggy-dog stories in the late 1990s while mostly concentrating on novels, but trying to keep my hand in at short stories. To anyone who read them in the small press – sorry. At least each of them wasted no more than two minutes of your time.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 12:50 pm:   

Simon, I often feel the same way about the opening of a new tale of mine. It gets fixed in the rewrite, though (sometimes pretty savagely).
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 01:53 pm:   

Hmmm, I have Ramsey telling us that Creatures of The Pool has a bad last chapter and Simon telling us that his story in Lovecraft... is rubbish. Both books I have brought recently but not yet read.
I shall let you know what I think. (;
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 03:55 pm:   

To all you writers who have denigrated some of your own works -- fabulous! By stripping off the armour that sheathes your ego cock (or at least opening a panel on a hinge) and exposing that tender organ of self-love to the sharpened sneers of the outside world, you have demonstrated that you have a heart as large as a sea. As Nietzsche said, "Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea to be able to receive a polluted stream without becoming unclean!"

Well done, you seas!

We are all auto-munchers of the ego cock. But only the brave, the noble, the truly talented, ever have the courage and strength to stop munching even for a moment and instead stab that cock with the Dagger of Truth!

Just a few quibbles...

Zed: "Everything I've ever written is shit. At least that's how I feel today."

Not quite what I was looking for, I'm afraid... I was hoping for specific examples. Your general response seems a little too (unintentionally) contrived so that the response evoked will be along the lines of, "Don't be silly, Gary, you're a brilliant writer." I'm not saying that you were deliberately fishing for a refutation of your statement -- I'm certain you weren't -- but it was tactical by default. In other words, I don't seriously believe that you seriously believe that ALL your work is shit.

Let's have no tactical twatism here, my friends, even by accident!

Be specific, be wise, be an ego cock stabber!

For example, the crap story I have just written has an actual name. It is called 'Stand and Deliver'. If it was a condemned felon, the execution it would merit would entail having its hands and feet cut off so that its writhing body bled to death in a rubbish-choked gutter.

I ask you: if your crap stories were condemned felons, what execution would they deserve?

The same to Des: I'm sorry, but that negative review of your work by a different author isn't really a specific denunication of your own work by you. You did make the face of someone sucking their own trumpet, yes, but I suspect that really you were expelling air and sounding a subtly muted ego note.

Pick a specific story from your back catalogue, Des, if you will, and denounce it! Stab that ego cock with the Dagger of Truth, Des! Stab it hard!

We are so used to thinking tactically that tactical twatism has become a reflex. I know this is true for me. It's true for you, too! So as a rough guide, bear in mind these points:

(a) If Kroptokin wouldn't do it, it's tactical.
(b) If Tom Paulin wouldn't, it's non-tactical.

Good luck!
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.166.117.210
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 04:29 pm:   

Rhys - I genuinely believe that about half the time, mate.

Specific examples...let me see: I had a story published called "Razorblade and Knucklebone" and despite having good intentions, the tale is a bit rubbish for many reasons (clumsy, awkward, much too short for its themes). There are probably more, but I can't think of them at the minute.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 04:34 pm:   

That's more like it! So what method of execution would you choose for 'Razorblade and Knucklebone' if it was a condemned felon?

Here's a list of methods, if you can't think of any offhand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_methods

No reprieves are allowed, remember!
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.166.117.210
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 04:35 pm:   

A simple hanging would suffice. I pity the poor thng more than I loathe it.

The story's so bad I even got the name wrong: it's "Razorface and Knucklebone". :-)
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.4.63
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 04:37 pm:   

Egad... I like the scaphism description... never heard of THAT one before....
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 04:41 pm:   

Well I spelled Kropotkin's name wrong, so who am I to judge?
But on the other hand, who am I not to judge?
Not judging is far more arrogant than judging.
Judging is what human beings do all the time: since the dawn of history we have been judging other people, fairly and unfairly.
Not judging is inhuman... If you don't judge, you are implying that you are better than the rest of humanity, better than your genetic heritage!
That's arrogant!
Ergo: fair play is unbalanced!
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 04:47 pm:   

...and modesty is arrogance!

If you are modest, then you are implying that you don't think very highly of your attributes. One of those attributes must logically be your 'modesty'. If you don't think highly of something, you must oppose it; therefore if you are modest you must oppose your own modesty. If you oppose your own modesty, you must be arrogant!
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.158.58.28
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 04:50 pm:   

Pick a specific story from your back catalogue, Des, if you will, and denounce it! Stab that ego cock with the Dagger of Truth, Des! Stab it hard!
==================================
Well, I thought it was pretty good to say 'The Best of DF Lewis' is the worst thing ever.

Anyway my own review of the 'Weirdmonger' book (2003) has already many suckings of the trumpet:

http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/realtime_review_of_weirdmonger_by_df_lewis_by_d f_lewis.htm

Including this one about the title story itself:

The Weirdmonger (1988)


Another sizeable quilt of story-cells that then fail to become organic. An accretion that is counter-productive rather than expansive ... as if ‘Bobtail’ gate-crashes and gate-crashes again and grows within it or nuzzles it in the night without any authorial authorities realising.

Reading it today is very painful for me. I am not the Weirdmonger. On the contrary, he may be the author, and me the fiction. But who then is the Crazy Commentator writing these extrapolations upon the book that he simultaneously lives within? A book he never wanted to bear an overall title that is himself. Eponymity as a corruption of Nemonymity.

The story itself tells of a wandering soothsayer whose words when uttered become intrinsic truths. The relationship of self as Man and Boy. There are some startling images of a bodily nature. Whatever its faults, the ambiance of the story’s ‘Wagger Market’ is memorably accomplished. A fantasy story that is self-evidently proud of itself while its author shamefacedly disowns it. And by disowning it, he has finally begun to own himself once again. A catharsis for which this review was perhaps pre-destined to ignite. If so, the rest of this review must be a cathartic’s coda. A mistuning of truths so that we can all queue (along with all the other crazy people) for a better film inside another cinema.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 04:54 pm:   

> Well, I thought it was pretty good to say 'The Best of DF Lewis' is the worst thing ever...

That's quite stabby of the ego cock, Des. But even more stabby would be to say:

"Well, I thought it was pretty bad to say 'The Best of DF Lewis' is the best thing ever."

My friends! When stabbing the ego cock, let us ensure that the balls also fall off!
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.158.58.28
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 05:03 pm:   

There's something very 'intetional fallacy' about what you are asking, Rhys.

I don't really know how bad my stuff is. So I tried to be objective with that review I linked to above. As an experiment. And what you are asking here Rhys is also another interesting experiment.

I do not have an ego cock but a nemo nob.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.12.145
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 05:31 pm:   

There's too much cock in this thread. It needs balancing, with a healthy dose of c....
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 05:45 pm:   

Well now you're here that's fixed then Craig.
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.158.238.131
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 06:14 pm:   

"..."Numbskull, numb nuts, pity me"!

Had to have a play of "3 Holes", gcw!..."

noooo!

gcw
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 06:47 pm:   

Can't see what's so bad in a song about a tentative golfer. He wants to play the whole course but it takes him far too long. Quite poignant really. Like a golf version of 'San Quentin'.
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.158.238.131
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 08:29 pm:   

Suffice to say, it was soon dropped from the set....:-)

gcw
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.158.238.131
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 08:31 pm:   

..What's really scary is I wrote this steaming pile of faeces when I was about 36 not 16.

Forgive me. I have got better, honest guv.

gcw
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.122.209.76
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 09:51 pm:   

Like a golf version of 'San Quentin'.

Joel Lane - you are a treasure
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.181.87.158
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 10:03 pm:   

...and you, Lord P., have some very hidden talents!

jhg
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 10:53 pm:   

That's fucking hilarious.
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Mark_samuels (Mark_samuels)
Username: Mark_samuels

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 86.142.169.99
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 11:10 pm:   

Let's talk about how much I genuinely LOVE the film called Dean Spanley. It's based on a Dunsany novel y'know.

Errm...

Mark S.
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Mark_samuels (Mark_samuels)
Username: Mark_samuels

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 86.142.169.99
Posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 11:31 pm:   

On the other hand I have devised a torture for that author who inflicted a piece of manure called "Dedicated to the Weird" upon the world. It is, as follows:

(1) Removal of eyeballs and replacement with own testes.
(2) Slow electrical destruction of nerve-endings.
(3) Sawing off of my fingers with a butter knife.
(4) Listening to nothing but "The Lady In Red" by pop singer Chris De Burgh repeatedly in a sealed prison cell for 24 hours a day for 24 years.
(5) Drinking Carlsberg lager at any time.
(6) Being forced to take Australian citizenship.
(7) Being turned into Richard Dawkins.
(8) Knowing the nature of God.
(9) Attending a dinner party with Hitler, Stalin, Rand and Thatcher.
(10) Looking at me in the mirror every morning.

Mark S.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.131.67
Posted on Thursday, June 03, 2010 - 01:01 am:   

There's an early short story of mine called 'And Make Me Whole' that goes out of its way to be camp and acerbic. It's heavily autobiographical and my God, does it show. It's not inept but it's annoying beyond words. Graham Norton would beat it up. I hereby condemn it to be bored to death by its own self-righteous posturing.
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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.209.217
Posted on Thursday, June 03, 2010 - 07:49 am:   

I remember quite liking that one actually, Joel...

From my own back catalogue... thankfully the worst stories I wrote didn't see the light of day (thank you David A. Green, for gently turning down to of the worst offenders with probably the nicest rejection letter of my career) but... pass the cock-stabbing dagger, Rhys...

'Ribbons' which was published in 'Raw Nerve'... was it issue 8? Might have been. Oh. My. God. The sad thing is I thought it was the bee's knees at the time.

'The Tolling Of Capel Y Diawl' which appeared in an edition of Visions. Why the hell I even submitted it I do not know. A dreadful piece of overblown, sadistic trash I'm utterly ashamed of being linked with in any way. So if you see a copy of that issue for sale, please buy it. And then set it on fire.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Thursday, June 03, 2010 - 12:02 pm:   

Simon: I tried setting it on fire but it doesn't burn. Probably because Visions was printed on paper made from sloppy turds, improperly dried.
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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.209.217
Posted on Thursday, June 03, 2010 - 11:11 pm:   

Well, I wasn't going to mention the overall quality threshold of Visions. Very low. I would've loved to read a story that actually got rejected by them. If only out of morbid curiosity ;)
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - 12:46 pm:   

I've surpassed myself this time. A story called 'Mad March Stylist' that has such a feeble central conceit (and executes that conceit so badly) that even the main characters complain about the story they are stuck in and perform a nervous wordcount near the end to work out how much more of this drivel they have to endure...

Up and onwards? No, down and outwards!

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