Looking for comments on my 'efforts'

Sounds good. Sounds just my kind of thing really. I go for the weird stuff - I just love Stephen King's old stuff (not the new stuff - he seems to be becoming tame in his old age!). So, you have mad thoughts at work? So do I as it goes. I work as a claims handler and it gets to boiling point here quite a lot. I feel like screaming down the phone, "Isn't there anything more important for you to do than bother me?!" Obviously not. They must love it, I can tell ya. I will post it on next week some time. I'll post the first chapter first although I might have to break it down some. Well, have a good weekend. Hope you get some serious writing done. Cheers, Karen

Hi Karen, OK, I'll try and get my first chapter up asap. I'll have to go through it and get it 'screen friendly' (sort out paragraphs etc). Stephen King, eh? Not my bag, I'm a James Herbert man myself, although he is starting to repeat himself a lot now. Horror is kind of a dead genre at the moment, I think. It needs to be reinvigorated. At one time I wanted to do that, but I moved on to other types of writing and lost interest in it. I still keep up with Mr Herbert though, but he just isn't the same guy that wrote The Rats... Anyhoo, I'll get on with my 'work' here at home, and look forward to reading your work. Cheers Callum

.. In response to your last note.. On my reading you are fresh, original, experimental (uncompromising).. ..are clear, intelligent, imaginative, pacey and have something worth saying.. IMO disregard any stylistic comparisons and concentrate instead on forging your own distinct one.. I am interested in reading more.. Particularly liked Quiet Room, Amabassadors (the), Office Notes.. damn! liked it all.

thanks for the comments 1legspider. I would say that i generally do try to ignore stylistic comparisions, and in fact have taken to not reading a lot of fiction now, because i find that it creeps into my writing too much, and the last thing i want to do is start repeating something someone else has written. I did this with Iain Banks...wrote a really bad novel then realised that it was a hotch-potch of a few of his...damn, five months wasted on it too! Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my stuff (you LIKED 'The Ambassadors'???!! I think it's the worst thing I've written in yonks! And 'Quiet Room' has been edited by the site..think it's for swearing or something, I'll edit some of the language and re-post it, because it's actually longer than the form it is in just now.) and to comment on it. Shall read some of yours and return the favour. Cheers Callum

I have taken off the story 'Do Not Adjust Your Set' from my set, as it was too long to read comfortably. It is now split into three parts : 'Televisual Nightmare', 'The War Machine' and 'Consciously Seeking (Con)Science'. They need to be read in order as they are not stand alone pieces but split for comforts sake. I'll be doing the same thing with 'Murder Story' at some point too.

karen finished reading 'A Fallen Starr' and thought it was excellent. I like the way it builds and you've captured the feelings of a young 'superstar' really well. it's pacy and has heart and soul, I like that. I think it sums up very well the way celebrities are created and torn down. A very interesting and entertaining read.

Thanks Callum So, you like Iain Banks? I read "Simplicity" which I thought was good. Saw you wrote a novel too. Have you started another one? If so, I would sure like to read the first few chapters (if you've started one). Do you have an agent yet? Maybe you should start looking round for one. I was thinking about it. (I'm in middle of a novel about a single parent - just like me in fact!). but I think maybe i should hold off until the thing is finished. Let me know. I really liked your "quiet rooms". Cheers

Hi Karen 'Like' Iain Banks? Emm, used to, but moved on. Prefer his first three novels to his later stuff, which seems a little conventional and commerical compared to the bizarre and inovative bite that things like 'The Bridge' had. My novel is crap. Well, it's my third out of four that I've written since I was 16, and although it has it's moments, I'm not happy with it at all. If you are interested, I will post the first three chapters on here. As for agents? Urgh, don't get me started! I've got a big pile of rejection letters. I read somewhere that agents very rarely actually take on clients via submissions, and that they are more likely to sign someone up through reading their work in a magazine or journal. And my stuff is too surreal for the commercial market, so I either have to swallow my pride and write something different, or stick to my principles and remain unpublished...hmm tough choice. Thanks for reading 'Quiet Room'. Glad you liked it. WOuld be interested in reading some extracts from your own novel. Perhaps we can do a swop?

Yeah, that would be good. You can either post it on here or email it to me. My email details are on here somewhere. Well, I haven't tried to get an agent as yet and I suppose what's stopping me is the rejection thing. I am known to be over sensitive so maybe I should forget writing forever. Ha ha. I've done about five chapters of mine which amounts to about £30k words. I'll have to get a guy at work to email it to me from my laptop because my computer at work doesn't have a disk drive (great). You also have to realise that the work is unedited. What's yours about? Mine's about a young single mother who finds herself fucking up just about every part of her life. It's maybe not your thing - I suppose it's targeted at young women. Oh! By the way, hope you don't mind, but passed your story round the office. They were all impressed and intrigued. It's amazing really how you've managed to get inside the mind of a murderer with such clarity. Nikki has even now joined the site. Talk about inspiring others! Anyway, gotta shoot off. See ya

Hi Karen I wouldn't be too worried about rejection letters from agents, it's something every writer needs to get used to. Mostly they are looking for something they can make money from anyway, so the quality of your writing doesn't really come into it: just look at some of the crap that gets published these days! OK, what I'll do is post the first three chapters of my novel on here, that way others can read them if they want, and if you like, you can do likewise. Any feedback I'll probably email to you direct rather than post here. What's it about? Em...good question! Ha! No really, it's about this young, bigoted Scot's bloke (a bit like the 19 year old that wrote it! moved on, not like that anymore!) who has some serious issues to address. He has been haunted by the disappearance of his younger cousin for years, and he returns to his family home on the island of Arran to uncover things. He has surreal dreams and hallucinations etc (well, you've read my stuff!) and loads of strange things happen. It's difficult to describe. It was a reaction against all the really bad horror I read as a teenager, and so I inverted into the head of the character, where all the terror happens. Issue wise, I'm really addressing male brutality to women (no...really, honest!), and on a wider level, society's brutality in general. You're novel sounds interesting. I'm from a single parent family myself, so I will be able to relate to it. I look forward to having a read. no I don' t mind you passing my story around your office...kind of the best place to read it really! getting inside the head of the character wasn't hard, since it is generally how I feel throughout my working day. I don't kill people, true, but then does the character in the story?? Hmm, I'm not sure myself whether it is delusion or reality. best left up to the reader to decide. Always nice to know that people enjoy what I've written...even if it freaks em out a bit! That is ultimately the point. Cheers Callum

just read quiet room. interesting, experimental effort playing with the definite article. this is the kind of stuff i come onto the site to read, and don't often find. will comment further and read more of your stuff when i'm back from my lunch break. initial impression - was rather impressed.

Hi! Just read "Office Notes" whilst at lunch. At first, I must admit to being a little shocked and wondered where it was heading. But then, when I read further, I found myself reading on to find out what happens. Obviously, there is hook in the story. Hope this is not non-fiction by the way! What a naughty boy you would be! I liked the punchy style of your writing. As if, like the story titles suggests, you are writing notes as opposed to a proper story. All in all, I liked it but I do like disgusting themes (no offense). Maybe it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. Nice one. I will try and read some more. If you could, could you have a look at mine? I am under the name "maize". Now I have critiqued yours. Bye ta-ra KD

have just read office notes. a stream of consciousness, hallucinatory piece. i'd recommend it for pick of the day. this was a difficult read, a serious read, a skewered, super-negative critique of modern life. you make no concessions to the reader, and i admire your directness. there's no let up. we're inside a speeded up mind, a mind on overload, a mind filled with garbage because garbage is all that's on offer in the world. by the end of it, i felt like i was going mad. contains some nice comic touches too."Remember the toilet. Ever reliable, it brings me off again" made me laugh. i love the way that physical objects, the external world, get co-opted into the narrator's mental stream, and subverted so that they run in accordance with its surreal direction. good literary writing should be as like life as possible, and this felt like life to me. you cover life - all of it - the self-disgust, the wanking, the work, the whoring, the banality - all of it. liked the circularity of it too, the way it ends as it began. didn't think the "and thus begins another week" was necessary though and would have eliminated that final line - it is clear from the final paragraph repetition that the narrator is trapped in a circularity. intelligent, powerful writing - here's someone with something to say, and a flick-knife style to say it with. i think you're quite a catch for the site.

thanks to you both (chant & Karen) for reading my stuff and for comments. No karen, it isn't non-fiction, although the sentiments expressed by the characters in my work are based on my own frustration and boredom of work. I sit and day dream and try to skive as much as possible, and these stories are the result. Chant, i'm interested in what you said about 'Quiet Room' : playing with the definite article - what do you mean? I'm not that aware of grammatical stuff, I just write what comes into my head, but I'm always keen to learn. I agree about the final line of 'Office Notes' probably take that out. Thanks for the kind words though, much appreciated!

Office Notes - liked a lot. Reminded me of the good bits of four writers *ahem* the pace and syncopated technique of Ellroy's later stuff, the intensity and grime of Bukowski (plus futility of work setting) and early Irvine Welsh and the better bits from Martin Amis' London Fields - by comparison :- "Keith loved pornography. He wanted it on all the time. He wanted it on when he was asleep. He wanted it on when he wasn't THERE." I think there are some sentences in your piece which come close to that sort of quality. I'm officially jealous. http://www.abctales.com/abcplex/viewStory.cgi?s=18029

Andrew - thanks! I am totally unfamiliar with all the writers you mention (i know who they are of course, just never read em - lazy me!), but I'm glad you liked it. Shall look at your own stuff. Cheers Callum

karen, just read 'The Telephone' and your other short pieces. Loved 'The Telephone' - made me laugh, and appealed to my sense of frustration about that exact kind of thing...and I'm not a massive fan of poetry, but I really liked that. Your longer story, 'A Fallen Starr', I haven't finished (gotta go make tea!), but shall do so, as it had a catch, a hook. The pace was really good and the story moved along at a nice speed, like it was building up to something...I want to know what!! Shall report back when I have found out! Callum

Thanks Callum, I belong to a writers group and the lady who runs it, who is q.old and very much set in her ways, didn't like it too much. She just shook her head a little. But I aint bothered as she critisises everyone's. I'm gonna read more of yours. Will let you know, Karen

Karen - writer's groups...phah! Not to put your own one down (cos I don't know what it's like), but been there and not got a lot of feedback. I was a member of a group when I lived in York about 2 years ago, and I was the only non-uni student there, and I was really made to feel stupid, they were actually really taken aback that I could spell never mind write! They were especially unkeen on my surealist bent. Write for yourself first, anything else is selling yourself short. Write what you enjoy, and to hell with anyone else who says what you are doing is wrong. People have been telling me that about my stuff for ages ('oh that doesn't make sense...blah blah blah...'). But you know all this already, I can tell from your writing that you enjoy it. Callum