EuroStemCell non-fiction writing competiton

EuroStemCell is running its first writing competition. Non-fiction entries are sought in a range of media: poetry, comics/graphics, prose. The pieces should all relate back to stem cell research in some way. There's a €300 first prize on offer. The competition closes on 30th June 2013. Full details and some suggested approaches may be found here. There are also tips for imaginative science writing here.   

Lit Works First Page Writing Competition 2013

This writing competition is for the opening pages of unpublished novels. The first page  - plus a 150 word novel synopsis - should be entered by 30th September 2013. There's a first prize of £1,500 plus a read-through of the first three chapters of the novel by a literary agent, to include a brief critique. Runners up awards of £350 and £150 are also offered. You can find details of the competition here plus there's more information here.  

Totally4women short story competition 2013

Totally4women is running a short story competition. Stories of up to 1,500 words on the theme of "snapshot" should be entered by 5th August 2013. The first prize is a free ticket to the Writers' Workshop Festival of Writing in York In September (a prize worth over £200). More details may be found here. 

Manchester Fiction Prize 2013

As previously trailled, some more details on this year's Manchester Fiction Prize. Stories of up to 2,500 words may be entered. There's no restriction on theme or genre, but stories should be new, original and not have been entered elsewhere. There's a £10,000 first prize. The competition closes 30th August 2013. More details are available here. The organisers are running a poetry competition in parallel too, under the Manchester Writing Competition banner. Details for that are here. 

Creative Writing Matters flash fiction competition 2013

Stories of up to 250 words may be entered into this competition. There's no theme restriction. There's a first prize of £100 plus runners-up book prizes too. The closing date is 31st August 2013. Details are here. 

Scottish Short Stories 2013 Scottish Short Story Competition

Short fiction of between 500 and 2,000 words may be entered into this competition. Stories may be of any genre but must be Scots-related in some way. The competition closing date is 30th June 2013. There's a £300 first prize. The top ten pieces will feature in an ebook anthology. More details may be found here. 

Big Issue In the North New Writing Award

This new writing award is for contemporary literary fiction of up to 3,000 words. There's no set theme. The closing date is 1st August 2013. There's a £1,000 first prize. The ten best entries will be anthologised. proceeds from the competition will go to support The Big Issue In The North's work. More details may be found here. 

Book giveaway: The Silent Wife by A S A Harrison

The lovely promotional people over at Headline have let me have an advance copy of The Silent Wife by A S A Harrison to give away. Interested? Of course you are. A free book. What's not to like? Nothing whatsoever, that's what. 

I reviewed The Silent Wife here a couple óf weeks ago. I reckon it's pretty good. Don't take my word for it, though. You're on the internet, so have a search around for yourself and read what others are saying.

Here's what to do to enter. Message me on Twitter (I'm @eamonngriffin) with the phrase: "I want to read #silentwife because...", completing the sentence in one tweet. 

You don't have to follow me on Twitter to enter. Haven't got a Twitter account? Get one. You can always close the account after the competition's over!

I'll pick one reply completely at random at 12 noon (UK time) on Monday 10th June. I'll then contact the winner via Twitter, and Headline will send you the book. Simple as. 

Any particularly funny / odd / thrilling tweets may get retweeted, but this isn't a competition, so being retweeted doesn't mean you've been shortlisted. The lucky winner will, after all, be randomly selected.

Good luck!    

What I've Read: Bring Up The Bodies, by Hilary Mantel

After arranging for the divorce between Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon and the subsequent marriage of Henry to Anne Boleyn, secretary Thomas Cromwell is now charged with arranging for the marriage to be dissolved. 

And that's it. 

Bring Up The Bodies is a clearer, more confident, more commercial and yet more deft book than its illustrious and multiple award-winning predecessor Wolf Hall. It doesn't matter that this is one of the better-known and more widely-scrutinized episodes in English history. What does matter is the sheer verve in which author Mantel approaches her subject. The swagger at times is breathtaking: it's like reading Scorsese camera moves. 

The subtext, though, is becoming clear: the old saw about power corrupting, and absolute power...

We know the story doesn't end well. But Cromwell doesn't. He's too wrapped up in the present (another gift of the immediacy Mantel's present tense gives us) to contemplate possible futures. Bring Up The Bodies delivers in terms of being a character study, a political thriller, an historical piece, an act of sustained writing.    

There's a third volume on the way. Bring it on. This is, folks, about as good as it gets. Recommended.  

Mantel, Hilary. 2013. Bring Up The Bodies. London: Fourth Estate. 482 pages, 978-0007315109

What I've Watched: The Purge (2013, directed by James DeMonaco)

The US, 2022. After a reorganisation of government, the New Founding Fathers have decreed that for twelve hours - 7pm to 7am - one night a year, all laws are suspended. This is to give people an outlet for their rage: to quell the anger that was threatening to tear America apart. For one night, there is no crime because everything is legal. This night is called The Purge.

Security systems salesman James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) is doing well out of the insecurities of the new America, living in a recently-extended home in a gated community with wife Mary (Lena Headey) and his two children, even though there are tensions in the home. So when the annual one-night lockdown comes, he feels well-prepared. Until... 

The Purge flirts with plenty of issues without really settling on anything. This is, on reflection, a good thing. Surveillance society, game shows/reality TV, social divisions, generation conflicts, civilization/brutality. Class, gender and race issues. Neighbourhood tensions. All of these and others are touched upon. At its heart, though, The Purge is a straightforward home invasion flick, a violent exploitation piece happy to rack up the tension and possible break points. 

Intriguingly, the script doesn't give us someone to root for. There are no obvious heroes here. The film's happy to play with liberal sensibilities too. 

There's one showy performance, some neat imagery, a couple of low-budget corners are cut and the same frustrating narrative trick is done repeatedly. So, no, The Purge isn't perfect, but it's an interesting (and an interestingly non-SF inflected piece for something set in the future), but it's got a handful of ideas it flirts with as it gets on with the main course of suspense and violence (which may or not be cathartic). 

At under 90 minutes, The Purge doesn't outstay its welcome either. A pleasure to see this sort of movie get a UK cinema release. Worth checking out, especially as part of a double-bill with something more mainstream.          

Reading update: Joyland, by Stephen King

USA, the present. The now middle-aged Devin Jones tells the story of the summer and autumn of 1973. The year he had his heart broken for the first time, worked the summer at a fading funfair, saved some lives, became a man, and nearly met a ghost.

Stephen King's second short novel for the Hard Case Crime imprint is less of a shaggy dog story than its predecessor The Colorado Kid. It's probably the better of the two books as well. Very much the kind of thing that might once have been packaged as a 'long short story' in one of the prolific King's collections such as Different Seasons. Joyland, nevertheless, is a satisfying standalone. 

King's strengths and weaknesses as a writer are fully on display here. If his uncertainty with endings, his generosity towards overlapping supernatural elements, his at-times meandering pace and his ambivalence towards research irk you, then there's plenty to annoy. If, though, his patience with his characters, his sense of place and his understanding of not so much what happens as why we're being told about it, then there's plenty to enjoy. 

Joyland is old-fashioned in plenty of ways, not least to those who've grown up reading King their entire lives. This is a recommendation. We're at ease in King's world here, and he's at ease relating Devin's story. At 280 or so pages, this is a very pleasant evening's entertainment. No more, no less. 

King, Stephen. 2013. Joyland. London, Titan Books / Hard Case Crime. 283 pages. 978-1781162644   

What I've Watched: Star Trek Into Darkness (2013, directed by JJ Abrams)

After a mission in which Kirk's decision-making saves a pre-industrial society at the cost of violating the Prime Directive, he's stripped of his captaincy of the Enterprise, and its crew is disbanded. But when a terrorist attack on a Starfleet archive reveals that an old enemy is back and is seeking vengeance, Kirk, Spock and the others band together to battle their foe and seek justice. 

The second film in the revived / alternate timeline Star Trek is a zippy, shouty, funny, shooty and altogether lesser movie than the first. 2009's Star Trek was compromised by plot holes, but just about held itself together with a mix of goodwill towards the franchise, some energetic playing, canny casting and a motivated villain. Here, we've got a lot more of the same, plus an oddball situation in which the rebooted film sequence feels the need to pay undue homage to the first sequel to the 1979 film spinoff from the TV series. 

See the problem?

A homage to a now-retconned sequel. A sequel which, if you follow Trek's now convoluted temporal logic, occurs only in a different branch of reality. 

Phew. 

So the baddie is based on a famous nemesis from the past, but has to be given a hurriedly-explained and not terribly convincing back-story (first time around, there was an episode of the 1960s TV original to refer back to), just so that a shiver-some name from the past might be invoked. 

Then we get scenes of pure stupidity. In the film's interior logic, the USS Enterprise is stranded many light-years from Earth with no faster-than-light capabilities. So Kirk, way outside the solar system, makes a real-time phone call to Earth for tech support. 

Oh. You're not even trying, are you?

From that point on, mucho stuff happens based on the notion that "we need this to occur so that the whole thing hangs together".  

Now, I don't mind a touch of arrant nonsense, and there's no harm in making up your own rules. But if you do so, you have to remain consistent to them. Otherwise, all the 'splosions, snarky comebacks, moments of visual whizziness and flickers of an interesting moral dilemma (there's a running theme about the purpose of Starfleet - exploration or military) mean little.

Star Trek Into Darkness works on the surface, and it's lovely to see Peter Weller in a movie role, but it's the movie equivalent of a bad stage illusionist act. All the twirling bikini-ed sequinned assistants and snappy patter in the world won't disguise an absence of magic.  

What I've Watched: A Good Day To Die Hard (2013, directed by John Moore)

Russia, present day. When his estranged son Jack (Jai Courtney) is arrested in Moscow on a murder charge, John McClane (Bruce Willis) travels to Russia to try to bring him home. Jack it transpires, is a CIA agent working to destabilise a radical politician. Soon, John and Jack are on the run, trying to unravel a conspiracy, save their own lives, and prevent an audacious heist.

When the best thing about your movie is the tag-line on the poster, you should know you're in trouble. So it's the fifth time out for a franchise that should really have been killed off at least two movies ago. Lest we forget, Die Hard is a stone cold classic. Die Hard 2 is a lumpy, more expansive reprise, and Die Hard With A Vengeance is lesser work, but enjoyable for the most part. Die Hard 4.0 is the kind of action film that didn't understand that True Lies was a spoof. And now we get here. 

The rules of a Die Hard movie are simple, if increasingly ridiculous each time they get repeated. John McClane is an ordinary Joe New York cop who accidently stumbles into a robbery (or similar) that's being disguised as a terrorist attack. That's it. That's all you have to do. Typically, there's a contained environment. Typically, McClane's on his own. 

Not here. This time out, McClane's a sidekick in his own franchise. A now heavily CG-enhanced franchise that would test negative for physics. This is little more than a succession of set-pieces linked together by father-son squabbling. Which I don't care about because McClane's issues are with his wife, not his kids. Know your character, people.

We get an extended car chase, a helicopter gunship attack, multiple running gun battles, the theft of weapons-grade uranium from Chernobyl (I'm not making this up), and a couple of double-crosses. We get all this delivered in ninety minutes. That's not because there's some kind of narrative economy being deployed here. It's because there's no story. There's nothing to care about here. You know why? It's because it's John McClane. He's done this four times before. He can't lose. Also, Bruce Willis doesn't carry an everyman vibe any more. He's the bald action movie guy. He's the fella who, only weeks apart from this film, was side by side with The Rock in a GI Joe sequel. He's that guy.  

A ballsier film would have Willis killed off within five minutes of finding the son, and having McClane Jr get out himself. A ballsier set of producers would have said: "No. Let's wait till we have a sensible idea and make that film instead." 

The second best thing about the movie? The new Rolling Stones track played over the end credits. You're welcome.

What I've Watched: The Last Stand (2013, directed by Kim Ji-woon)

The US/Mexican border, present day. With a drug lord freshly escaped from Federal custody and headed in his direction, veteran Sheriff Ray Owens (Arnold Schwarzenegger) recruits a motley crew of eccentrics to catch the fugitive in a gauntlet before he can make a border crossing.
  

Arnie's first lead role after returning to acting from politics is a bit of a mess. The high-concept idea behind it doesn't really stand up to scrutiny (you can have fun in the quieter moments in picking out logic issues with all of the characters' motivations and especially the bad guy's plan) but that wouldn't matter if the film delivered in ridiculous amounts of badassery.

Tonally, we're all over the place. Part of the film wants to be a western, part a road movie. Some of it wants to be a comedy. A little bit of it fancies itself as a serious thriller. Yes, it wants to flirt with over-the-top action and flamboyant gore effects, but it also wants to be ruthless and have space for serious moments too. 

At its best, there's the feel of late-period Eastwood about it. There's something of an attempt to tap into the ageing action star/man of action contemplating his own mortality subtext about it - which is potentially - interesting but it's also content to go for dumb gags and corny pay-off lines.

At least the film's well-cast. Forest Whitaker, Peter Stormare, Harry Dean Stanton pitch in. Even Luis Guzman shows up. The headline-billed (but in reality very much a supporting character) Johnny Knoxville gurns from the sidelines in a fashion indicating that much of his schtick got edited out late in the day.

The script's the main issue here. Too many characters, too many storylines getting set up and then paid off. People. We're making an Arnie film. Focus on your prize asset. I don't care about the relationship between the pretty deputy and her alcoholic ex-military ex-boyfriend who comes good. I haven't paid my money to get sidetracked by a cuckoo-in-the-nest Federal double-agent plot, or by a sideline kidnap drama. None of these things matter. if you're going to give me High Noon with Arnie, then kindly do so.  

Director Kim Ji-woon, (perhaps best known for the properly delirious The Good, the Bad and The Weird) in his first American feature, displays some technical competence and a couple of ingenious shots are executed, but he gets lost in the mix like so many (Tsui Hark, John Woo, Jackie Chan) before him. Here's hoping Johnnie To never takes a studio gig in the States. By the time we get to the oddly CGed and studio-set bridge climax, you'll probably be past caring. 

Because it's such a mess, there are funny moments and glimmers of something much better sneaking in every few minutes. The Last Stand isn't actively bad, but it doesn't deliver on the one thing it promised: a return to action for Arnie.   

Reading update: Rome: The Art of War by MC Scott

Fourth and last in the Rome sequence begun in The Emperor's Spy, this completes the narrative of Sebastos Pantera. Framed around a section on spies from Sun Tsu's The Art of War, we experience the ascent to power of Vespasian through the turbulent "Year of Four Emperors": 68 - 69AD. 

The novel's told in an interlocking series of first person reports from a range of characters. Scott displays her customary and admirable mix of deft writing, solid grounding in plausible character motivations, a sure grip of the history of the era and of the continuities and commonalities between then and now. Perhaps Pantera remains a little too distant from us, but that's just me. 

The Rome sequence has, for me, been just about the best historical series of the last few years (I'd put Harry Sidebottom's Warrior of Rome series up there as well) and thoroughly deserves to break out into the mainstream. The quality control throughout has been outstanding. Scott's working on Joan of Arc next, and I can't wait to read what she comes up with next.

Scott, MC (2013) Rome: The Art of War (London: Bantam Press) 978-0593065464