Friday 29 April 2011

The Other Room - Author's Notes Part 2


... Continued From Previous Post

First Time Buyers  

It's a truism that horror stories, for all their ghosts and ghouls, are reflections of our real worries and fears. And while it's true that the Big things like Death and Fate are scary, the fact is we spend a lot of our time worrying about comparatively little things - money, our jobs. Unemployment and homelessness.

And maybe because we are worried about these things, we tend to demonise those people who are made redundant or who lose their homes. It's easier to think that what has happened to them is their fault somehow, rather than something that could have happened to anyone.

The real monster in this story is not the white figure running in the mist; like Frankenstein's monster, it's one we've created ourselves.


Schrodinger's Box

I've read a smattering of modern cosmology and physics books, and while it's fascinating I can't say I understand it all. But it's always struck me that there's huge level of imagination to such writing, a scale and scope that is awesome, in the original sense of the word.

The 'thought experiment' known as Schrodinger's Cat also has a perverse and malicious ingenuity to it - it's easy to imagine an alternative reality where Schrodinger wrote Twilight Zone style horror stories. In fact, if you believe some theories of modern physics, this reality actually exists somewhere...

The quotation that heads the story is from Schrodinger's original 1935 article where he describes the experiment, which has the marvellous title Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik. A description of the experiment and its implications simple enough for even a humanities graduate like me to understand can be found in the excellent God and The New Physics by Paul Davies.


The Watchers

This is the kind of story that makes me wish I hadn't decide to write these notes at the back of the book, as I've no idea where the central idea came from. There's some references to philosophy, and obviously the whole thing is an exaggeration of feminist ideas about the objectification of women... But other than that, I don't know. I just picked up a pen one day (I still write all my first drafts by hand) and started writing it. Sometimes it really is that easy.

Note to readers: when an author tells you where he or she 'gets their ideas' they're probably confused or lying.



To Be Continued...



Oh, and a couple of other things:


'Feed The Enemy' is now available on the German Amazon site (in English) as a Kindle Book. Click here if anyone is interested.


And this is a link to The Daily Bev, a 'newspaper' constructed from selected stories and links from my Twitter feed each day. It mainly details the ducking and diving of various indie authors, although there's sometimes a smattering of music, politics, and talking shite on there. It's a great site and easy to use, I really like the results. Check it out. (I'm @JHEverington  on Twitter should anyone care...)

2 comments:

L. David Hesler said...

Hi, James! I'm really enjoying these insights into your writing process!

I wanted you to know that you are featured in my Indie Author Showcase today! Good luck with your writing.

www.ldavidhesler.blogspot.com

James Everington said...

Hi - thanks for your comments (nice to know someone is reading!)

Off to check out myself on your site now...