Future Sister-In-Law’s 50th birthday at the weekend, and I was rousted into doing some photo work. Used my newly acquired 55mm f1.4 Olde Manual Chinon lens since we were going to be indoors and I don’t like flash. Now I have to burn 70 images onto DVD. :(
Future Wife and Young Mr Morgan.
Very busy night for some.
(As almost always, click to embiggen.)
WHAT SHUT UP I DON’T EVEN
The roughly 54-hectare Manila North Cemetery is considered to be the largest and one of the oldest cemeteries in Metro Manila. It houses hundreds of thousands of the city’s Catholic dead while it hosts a living community of more than 2,000 inside mausoleums and makeshift personal spaces built atop “apartment-type” tombs. It is owned by the local government of Manila and has already established a conventional locale with its residents; requiring them to have titles for the space they occupy and even permits for the businesses they establish within the premises.
My interview with the charming Alex from Sci Fi London is in tonight at 8pm on Resonance 104.4 FM (London)/streamed at www.resonancefm.com and at www.panelborders.wordpress.com at nine. More details to follow when I’m not on my sham of a phone. But I’m very interesting and intelligent and sexy.
“Uh-huh. So. You asked me, now I’ll ask you: what’s it like to be you?”
“It’s fine,” she says, plodding along. “Pretty boring.”
He rolls his eyes. “Oh. Sure. I bet. The town of Dullsville, population: You.”
“Now you’re just being sarcastic. That’s not cute at all. My Daddy used to say, Darlin’, sarcasm is the first refuge of bitter men.”
“Well I say that sarcasm is a mini-mansion in the middle of Awesome-Town and there’s a pool and a room filled with puppies and a kitchen with granite countertops and a double-oven. And a cabana boy named Steve.” He walks in front of her and puts his hands on her shoulders, an act which earns him a malevolent stare. Even still he doesn’t pull away and instead says, “Atlanta Burns, you need to understand something. People are in awe of what you did. Jaw-dropping, pants-shitting awe.”
I’m up to my eyeballs in work, so this is going to be a quick capsule review (the alternative is none at all, because it takes me ages to do anything and Chuck’s a good egg all round so I feel like I should).
His hardboiled teen novella SHOTGUN GRAVY is very good indeed. The story’s snappy as a crocodile with a migraine, the drip-drip of Atlanta’s character background is expertly handled, characterisation is tight as a drum of tight things and there’s a healthy vein of dark humour running through a story that knows damn sure what it’s doing and makes sure it does it. It is, in short, a fine piece of work.
As far as things to spend three bucks on go, there’s no reason not to go for it.
Next up with my copious spare time (TM) - finishing Mosby’s BLACK FLOWERS and checking out Luca Veste’s LIVERPOOL 5.
I write books, albeit glacially slowly. I'm a freelance editor, working across all genres, at all lengths, from short stories to epic novels. This is not my office, though, more a personal space.