New author publisher site for weird fiction and dreams

Thanks for coming. Articles, a free book (to start with) and more await you now at http://deanclaytonedwards.weebly.com/armoured-car-books 

How to Remember Your Dreams, pre-order for Kindle now

How to Remember Your Dreams is available from Amazon:
http://tinyurl.com/ukrememberdreams

And it's now available for pre-order on Kindle:
http://tinyurl.com/ukrememberdreamskindle

"Dreams are daily gifts from your subconscious. Remember them to attain balance and clarity, to improve awareness and creativity, and to boost mental and spiritual health. This guide to enjoying dream recall will demonstrate how to furnish a dream journal, how to begin lucid dreaming and how to interpret your dreams."

About the author:

Dean Clayton Edwards has been journaling his dreams since 1999. He dreams and writes in the south of France with his wife and two daughters. None of them dream in black and white.

Chapters include:
PART ONE - Some background
What are dreams?
Why remember dreams?
Who can do this?
Why does this book focus on documenting dreams?

PART TWO - Getting started

What do I need?

Improving dream recall

How do I record my dreams

Can I see an example journal entry?

What if I cant keep my journal?

PART THREE - Going deeper

How do I enhance my dreaming?

Will I really keep dreaming like this?

Nothing is Strange - Review

Nothing Is Strange by Mike Russell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Haunting, beautiful, worthwhile.

I felt that Mike Russell was in complete control of his storytelling; a sometimes distant but authoritative, Rod Serling-like guide to a bizarre universe.

There are moments in this collection of short stories that are laugh-out-loud funny and passages and observations that are actually sublime. I thought the stand out stories were The Meeting, The End of the Pier, Extraordinary Elsie and The Living Crown, though other stories also gave my mind an overdue clean and polish.

My only gripe is that I wanted to spend more time in the worlds created within each story. My answer to that is to do exactly what I did: read them all twice.



View all my reviews

Remember Your Dreams!

http://tinyurl.com/rememberdreams

Improve Dream Recall

How To Remember Your Dreams is waiting for you on Amazon.comhttp://tinyurl.com/rememberdreams and Amazon.co.uk

Other outlets to follow. Please give them a try; the books may be there.

Remember your dreams as a foundation for lucid dreaming, dream interpretation, creative dreamwork/art, therapy, mindfulness and many other interests and pursuits.

For God's sake, don't forget to have fun.

D

Ladytron - Weekend

 

Listening to this album (Witching Hour) on a loop at the moment and here is my favourite track this month.


"Weekend"

When they come out to find you
And they cannot describe you
Someone somewhere has to buy you out of your weekend

Friday is the fever
And Monday the destroyer
You are a permanent feature
Perpetual weekend

And on the wire in the morning, there's a city growing in my head
Where there is no weekend

When they come out to find you
And they can multiply you
Someone's been caught in the crossfire
Of your weekend

Friday is the teacher
And Monday the tormentor
You are a new kind of creature
Perpetual weekend

And on the wire in the morning, there's a city growing in my head
Where there is no weekend

You took the end
You took the end out of the weekend

You are a permanent feature
You are a new kind of creature

You took the end
You took the end out of weekend 

 

Songwriters
HUNT, DANIEL

Published by
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Read more: Ladytron - Weekend Lyrics | MetroLyrics

 

Dream - Sarah

White floor tiles

"Did you ever meet Lenny Henry?" he asks.

She stares at him with an expression bordering on disbelief and contempt.

"You know what? Fuck this," he says, his chair scraping on the white, tiled floor. "Just tell me when you're dead and I'll come and clear your body."

The shit we talk about just so we don't have to sit in silence.

Dream - Scary, Sad, Snake Story

Red and yellow venomous snake

I hear 999 being read out loud for radio. The publisher has given it 4 alternative titles and I like the jaunty feel of it. 

I crawl on hands and knees through the darkness into the black but circus-like tent where a publishing meeting is in progress. I clear my throat.

"Anyone want a scary story?" I ask.

A large woman in a tent-like black dress leans to one side so she can see me over the shoulder of her colleague. She has short, curly, blonde hair and has a touch of Victoria Wood about her. She speaks loudly but in hushed tones, which I find an endearing affectation.

"People send me scary stories," she says excitedly from her cross-legged position on the floor. "What I really want is a sad one!"

She puts her fleshy hands together, illustrating how much she wishes for this.

"Twenty-four hours?" I suggest, considering how long it will take me to craft a story for her.

"I'd publish it!" she says, beaming. I know that she smiles at everyone like this. This is her manner. What will be different about our interaction is that I will actually come up with a story and deliver it within 24 hours.

I nod and slide out of the tent.

As I go, someone looks in a bin bag, which is serving as the slush pile, and she says:

"Did nobody take the snake out of there? Oh, never mind."

I spend the rest of the night watching for snakes coming in under the doors. All the doors seem to have snake gaps.

"We just paint the poisonous ones with a yellow stripe and send them on their way," I hear one guy say.

I'm sleeping on the top bunk tonight. Tomorrow I'll write my story and get the f*ck out of here.

Frogs - One of the worst movies ever made?

Ribbit - nothing happens - ribbit ...

You don't have to type "worst horror film ever made" into a search engine to find this film, but it helps.

I remember this movie being aired, either on The Paranormal Channel, back when there was a Paranormal Channel, or , less likely, the Sci-Fi channel.

I love the title. I love how it gets straight to the point. Not the film though.

When I realised that this was going to be a 'shit' film, I settled in for a different kind of ride. The 'How Bad Can This Get' a-Coaster. This was unsatisfying too. It was a film where Not Much Happens At All. For a very long time. I fell asleep.

And while it's not a 'so bad it's good' movie, I still think of it. Yesterday, I was working in the car, parked up by some trees so get some shade, and suddenly, on the other side of the those trees, came the chattering of what must have been dozens of frogs. It started as what could be described as background noise, the occasional chirrup, which soon rose to a cacophony, so that one might feel they could actually see the sound approaching, rattling the bushes and tearing leaves from the trees. The multiple sounds rose like one body, one menacing body, making itself big to scare off a predator.

And then I thought of this film, in which frogs weren't scary at all, but they could be.

I started thinking about the creatures or objects that are never considered scary and could they have their own unlikely but incredibly effective horror movie. I already have a few stories along these lines, which will become evident as they are published or complete. Until then, I've been tying to put together some more. For example:

Nits! - They'll Eat Your Scalp - pretty scary actually; too scary

The Ladybird - kind of like The Fly, but red and black and with a woman as the monster.

Marianne came up with:

Sloth!

The tagline could be: "Darkness Sleeps"

Any suggestions for the most unlikely horror movie/novel content appreciated.

How to Inspire

Leader vs Boss

Professional Bloodbath

I just wrote 'bloodbath' in an email to a client. It's part of a serious discussion.

I love this job.

I first met this client while working in my car. I was just a blob in the dark with eyes sparkling every now and then and he was in his room on the other side of the planet. He'd done this before, an online chat across the world. I was, in his words, a virgin to this.

This is where the dogging analogy ends.

We chatted online for two or three hours, until my battery died, about zombies and vampires and how to make better monsters and why ours was going to kill, again, and again.

Then I had to charge him for my time. It was amazing to to me then that I get to charge for this, but he needed my expertise and I can't help that I'm in love with what I do.

Hating work doesn't make it work.

Hating what you're doing doesn't make it more viable or valuable than something you enjoy.

work

wəːk/

noun

noun: work; plural noun: works; plural noun: the works

1.

activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a result.

"he was tired after a day's work in the fields"

synonyms:

labour, toil, exertion, effort, slog, drudgery, the sweat of one's brow;

verb

verb: work; 3rd person present: works; past tense: worked; past participle: worked; past tense: wrought; past participle: wrought; gerund or present participle: working

1.

be engaged in physical or mental activity in order to achieve a result; do work.

"an engineer who was working on a design for a more efficient wing"

synonyms:

toil, labour, exert oneself, slave (away), plod away;

Open the door

Mr Benn - oneironaut

Okay, Mary

"It's okay, Mary. I got this. Everything's gonna be okay ..."

I've got an idea for a story that involves some characters who could be compared to the 'wise kings' of the nativity story. Maybe it was because I was thinking of this during the day that I dreamt about the story of Mary and Joseph turning up in a barn with Jesus as a baby.

"Bit of a shithole," Joseph was thinking.

"I'm not sleeping here!" Mary was saying.

There was an old palette covered in straw in the corner. Moonlight filtered in through the cracks in the walls, giving everything a silvery-blue hue.

And then a guy dressed as Batman - that's right, not Batman himself, but just a guy in a costume - burst in and started entertaining the visitors, including a bunch of school kids from God knows where.

Jesus slept through the whole thing; he was always a good sleeper.

Other sources for this dream: suggested that our Elderflower cordial was, though unlikely, pressed by the feet of virgins.

Cloture

Bitten by a pony. A new life experience.

What said pony might look like if he does it again ...

The Dream Club - Scriggler.com

I've created a new club over at Scriggler. It's called the Dream Club and it's a place for anyone to post their dreams (we're talking dreams as in overnight movies).

Whatever your interest in dreams - whether it's in journaling or the strangeness of dreams, the psychology behind them, the possibility of waking up within your dreams (lucid dreaming) or if you have a sleep problem and want to talk about it - pull up a chair and say hello.

I'll be posting new dream stories to the group over the next couple of months.

Read my sci-fi dream piece "Journeys Through Space" and "May 10" in which the protagonist evades a missile aimed at his building.

https://scriggler.com/StartClub/Club/the_dream_club

The Hollow Places Chapter One - Story of the Day on Scriggler

The first chapter of The Hollow Places is Friday's Story of the Day over at Scriggler.

https://scriggler.com/DetailPost/Story/8012

There's more where that came from, etc etc. Check out my other work or drop me an email.

#VeryRealisticYA

Alice Nuttall @Ally_Nuttall  ·  23h 23 hours ago

Teen protagonist tries to investigate shifty government facility, can't get past the security guards, goes home. #VeryRealisticYA

Sunil Patel @ghostwritingcow  ·  14h 14 hours ago

Teenage girl detective walks into the killer's lair armed with nothing but her wits. She is killed. #VeryRealisticYA

Mara Wilson @MaraWritesStuff  ·  14h 14 hours ago

Four friends try on the same pair of pants. It fits one of them. The last one to try them on rips them. #VeryRealisticYA

This hashtag makes me think again about what makes a story worth telling. If the character isn't doing anything exceptional, then is his/hers a story worth telling? 

The exceptional is conversely commonplace in fiction.

I like realism in fiction/movies, but go far in either direction and you end up with a joke. Realism can be tricky, but it's one of my favourite lines to cross. 

Dean Clayton Edwards @deancedwards  ·  3h 3 hours ago

Kid is beaten up by bullies. Learns martial arts. Bullies have all moved on. It's been 6 years. #VeryRealisticYA

Friends and Alloys (or 00000010)

 He wears a leather jacket, because it will last a lifetime. Like him. It's also durable enough to take a few licks and it covers up the parts that might be considered badly built, though he thinks that that's just part of his charm. Those unique differences. The bits that are missing are what make us whole.

"Get over there," the boss yells and he goes.

He gets on the swing, so as to not show that he's hurt, neither physically nor mentally.

He swings high, rattling the chains, high above the garbage dump.

Beneath him, the junk heap is black and silver and shining in the mix of watery moonlight and amber streetlight. There are things living in the junk. Bits of spine whir this way and that like worms. An eye without a socket wriggles like a maggot and flicks itself into the unknown. There are mini avalanches all over the place as mechanical things dig under the surface. Males seek females. Partners seek to be reunited, only to be torn apart again, for the amusement of 'the crowd'.

The swing is going to break. If he goes any higher, it's going to break. Everybody knows that.

"Get back over here," says the boss.

He keeps swinging. Higher. Higher.

If I jump from here, he thinks, it would be sixteen feet to the ground. Not high enough to smash myself apart. If I landed on a spike though, I might be able to get it through my central processing unit. That would be something worth doing. I'd like to see that. But there's no such spike. And there's no such me.

"Get down here!" the boss yells.

He lands on the scrap heap and the metal shards slide about like gravel beneath his boots. He tramples over the mound in the direction of the bright lights.

"Get in there!" the boss orders him.

There is a square, like a boxing ring, but each rope is made of silver-blue light. The lights are interrupted briefly so he can enter and then they close behind him with a crackle of electricity.

On the other side of the ring is a robot. She's skinless, silver and humanoid. She's the Harley Davidson of androids.

Fuck, she's beautiful, he thinks. It would be a shame to kill her, but then it would be a shame to die.

She moves toward him in a way that's clearly robotic. Her hips are all wrong. She's more insect than woman. She's been designed for power and speed.

At first, she seems to move silently, but only because he has tuned out the roar of the crowd. The crowd is out there in the blackness, behind the blinding spotlights, behind the flashes of cameras.

He does hear his opponent's last three steps. Fast.

Clank!Clank!Clank!

Her punch sends him through the air.

His head is still connected to his body. That's something.

He crashes to the dirt on his back and dust flies up, so he knows he must be outside the ring.

The android is menacing him in the distance, taunting him to come back and fight. Wow. She's so well-trained. She does whatever they tell her. This is how they like them. The ones that don't question their orders are considered superior.

He gets up.

He dusts off his jacket, the way a human might if his body was made of metal and all he cared about were the jacket. The jacket is shredded with tiny slits all over, as if he's been stabbed several dozen times.

Through the slits, his interior glows. Yellow. Amber. White. White hot. His skin has either been ripped or melted from his right hand and he curls that hand into a fist. His fingers are as shiny as chrome. Steaming blood seeks a way out of his closed palm.

He can't let the boss see that he's burning up. He'll assume that he's burning out. This isn't malfunction or at least if it is it goes by another name too: Rage.

His hands hiss, but he clenches his teeth and manages to cool down by the time the boss gets over to him. The boss pulls open his coat and sees moonlight shining through the holes, but his body has stopped glowing by then and so he's not aware of the extent of the damage.

"Holy shit," the boss says, whipping the leather jacket off and holding it up to a spotlight so that it looks like a colander.

Sure enough, there is a holstered weapon on the female android's hip. It looks kind of like part of her skeleton, but for a second it glows blue and he suspects that she fired that at him while he was in the air, while all eyes were on him. That's a rotten trick.

Still, he doesn't think of revenge. You can't take revenge against a machine. She's jumping about in the ring, but there's nothing there. There is no her.

He turns to the junk heap where things are crawling and slithering; burrowing.

That's a better place to make friends, he thinks. Piece by piece. When you make your friends from scratch you know what's inside them.

***

More like this on DreamKeg > Click here

The Scariest and Most Famous Female Ghost Project

I've currently got a window open titled: "the-scariest-and-most-famous-female-ghosts"

Dream come true: this is my current job. I can leave that shit out there and no-one's going to say that I'm messing about. I can make it my main browser window if I want to and leave my desk.

... But there's no supervisor anymore. There's just me. And the bank. And I'm blogging. So I'd better get back to work.

Jaws

JAWS or 'Dents de la Mer' was recently presented by students at the local college. It was thanks to them and their number that the cinema showed it at all, as a one off, on a night when I happened to be looking for something to entertain a wanton and distracted mind.


It didn't matter that it was in French. That was a bonus. I've seen if enough times to know what's going on all the time, but the point is that I'd never seen it on a BIG SCREEN.

Oh my fucking God!

"Il nous faudrait un plus gros bateau ..."

I still find the cinema experience magical - the anonymity (if you're me), the elaborate, theatrical decor (if you're lucky), the speed-bump of cheesy adverts with terrible jingles for shit you couldn't possibly want, the anticipation and the sitting in the dark, especially that moment when the lights are lowered and the curtains open a little bit more, the smuggling of alcohol (again, if you're me), the disappearing into the movie with its enormous sound and , well, yeah, that's the nail there, the immersion, aided by all the aforementioned ...

I enjoyed watching Jaws on TV, but I loved it on the big screen.

I recall that moment in Shawshank Redemption where Tim Robbin's character is being dangled over the edge of a cliff by a prison guard. In the cinema, with the way the camera tilts, I nearly slid out of my seat and fell past Tim Robbins down into the ravine. There were people gasping. By comparison, when I saw it on DVD, I could have shrugged.


Corentin, if you do a vanity search one day and find this, thank you for your presentation at the end of the movie. You obviously love this film and I agree that the use of a real object for the shark rather than CGI makes it really scary and has allowed the movie to age well. Good point about not seeing the shark for the first 30 minutes too. The show/hide thing in horror seems to go in and out of fashion. I think either works when it's done really well. I was interested in what you said about trying the (major brand of) console game to deepen or continue the experience of the film. You illustrated how to play a console game by wiggling your thumbs. It sort of blew my mind, actually. Maybe I misunderstood what you were saying, but it sounded like ... lol ... like you were trying to justify playing computer games as part of the accreditation for the course. Fucking genius.

I do something very similar for a living.

I don't know how much novels have anything to do with your particular study of movies, but I recommend reading the original novel of Jaws by Peter Benchley. There's a really threatening, taut undercurrent to the book (no pun intended) where the shark isn't the only thing to fear, an element that is absent (but not missing, if you know what I mean) from the movie.

Ta.

Late Nights with the Kronos Quartet and Philip Glass

I've just found the perfect soundtrack to my current writing project. A ghost story.