The Desert Knows My Name

New story up on the DAC "The Desert Knows My Name"


Which you can read here

Mecha-Brick

For as long as he could remember, Mr. Yamagata had loved to read. From the moment he got up in the morning, to the point where he could no longer keep his eyes open in bed, he could be found with a book in his hand. He frequently borrowed up to thirty books a week from the Osaka Municipal Library, and his house was wall to ceiling with them.

He adored non-fiction just as much as fiction, and whilst early modern contemporary Japanese works were his favourite, he had read a comprehensive range of world literature that was second to none.

There was just one thing. He couldn't write. I am not talking about getting the odd letter wrong or mixing up his sentences, but the very act of putting pen to paper escaped him. He could not make any letters, or even a recognizable shape, with pen, crayon, stick, chalk, pencil, paintbrush, etc. Just big black blobs.

He did, however, have amazing powers of recall, and was able to recite at great length what he had read, complemented by his uncanny knack for cross-referencing. From an early age people around him had noticed this ability, and when he left school, the prestigious Shingai Corporation noticed as well. They normally only took on interns after they had proved they could survive a month on Mount Fuji Hiro with nothing more than a Casio watch, but they made an exception for him. Sadly that job came to an end after only two hours, when a secretary asked him for his signature for the keys to the office.

The only job the young Mr. Yamagata could find back then was at the local brick factory, where he would spend the next thirty years. Now do not get me wrong, reader. You may think this is a tale of woe, but Mr. Yagamata loved working there.

His job was to help load the kiln, which was crowned with two large square brick chimneys. Once the bricks were cooked, he would help unload it. The thing he liked about his job was there was a plenty of waiting around; days sometimes. This gave him ample time for reading. Another thing he loved about his job was that everyone who worked at the factory would come to him for advice (including the board), and this sharing of his knowledge filled him with a joy that made him smile as soon as he woke up each morning. He believed he had truly found his place in the world.

That was until the following events occurred, which happened all too quickly.

The brick factory owner died and his young son, Koji Fung Ming, inherited the business. In the morning, even before the funeral had taken place, the son had sold the company to Abunai! Golf. By late afternoon they had plans drawn for a new golf course, and late in the evening, a sign was posted on the gates to inform the workers they were being sacked to make way for the new golf course.

Mr. Yamagata was heartbroken when he read it in the morning. He felt his entire world had been ripped away from beneath his feet. Not knowing what to do, he sat outside the factory all day, as did some of the others, but by night he was sitting alone. It was then the idea struck him.

I've mentioned that early modern contemporary Japanese was his favourite reading genre, but his favourite book was by a medieval Arabian author by the name of Al-Jazari. The book was called Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, and coincidentally, that was the very book he had with him that day. He jumped over the locked gates and made his way to the kiln building...

If you had lived in one of the tall towers in the residential district of Fukushima-ku facing west, you would have seen the following happen at sunrise: The two chimney towers of the kiln building suddenly fall over gracefully in a perfect 90° arc. After the dust had settled, you would have then seen the tower rise, again in a perfect 90° arc, but now with the kiln building placed upside down at the top.

In a circle cut in the top, you would have seen Mr. Yamagata, and you would have seen him get a lot bigger as the chimney towers became 'legs' and he began to make his way downtown.

The old kiln used to be ignited by a smaller blast furnace, which Mr. Yamagata had reverse-engineed into a giant flame thrower and mounted on the underside of his creation. Being built of brick, he could aim it in any direction without fear of damaging his machine. His first target was to be the offices of the Abunai! golf company which he reduced to a pile of molten metal and glass. For good measure, he also took out several golf shops along the way.

With that done, he then made his way over to the house of Koji Fung Ming, who in the very short time after his father's death had obtained several flash cars. The Lamborghini, Aston Martin and Bentley were crushed by good old-fashioned stomping. The Ferrari and McLaren were reduced to ash and the Bugatti was scratched all along one side, just enough to make the repair expensive.

He then turned to the house, where he knew the young Koji would be, and gave the door a kick. As the door flew off its hinges, Koji ran from the house and through the legs of the brick Mecha onto his yacht, which was was moored at the back of his home.

Mr. Yamagata took two giant steps (one crushing the house) and positioned himself in front of the yacht. He pressed the button in his cockpit and the flame thrower began boiling the sea, leaving Koji, who was now begging for his life, hopping up and down on his slowly melting boat.

Mr. Yamagata then effectively made his machine do the splits (he made a note to add knees next time) so he could get eye to eye with Koji. He looked hard at him and then tugged at his left eye and stuck out his tongue, a great insult in Japan in case you were wondering. Then he threw a brick at him.

He felt a wonderful sense of liberation upon exacting his revenge. As the sound of helicopters, sirens and tanks approached, Mr. Yamagata and his Mecha began to head out to sea.

"Maybe I will build something with glowing laser eyes next..."



my first non dead adventurers fridayflash which was inspired by the included picture done by fellow Leeds Savage member Steve James

Page 247 of the Memoirs of Martin Hardy

...and he was left standing there. Naked as the day god put him on this good earth with his plug tail swaying in the wind. The old Jack Ketch, like the crowd was in a fit of stitches. There was noway in Riley he could on gone on with the Hanging after that.

That was just one of the many wonderful characters from those months I've spent at the Newgate. Whilst I've been called a criminal many a time by a Judge, I would call myself a criminal now, if I was not to mention Madame Nicol in this memoir. For it was her that taught me everything I knew about business. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't even got as far as the Thames Estuary let alone the other side of the bleedin world.

She was a most heavenly creature to look at, but stone me when she opened that mouth of hers. Most Cantish toungue In the East end. Some even said she had the toungue of Lucifer himself, but she was a lovely sort.

She had a Buttocking shop right next to the payroll office of the East India Company. Sailors who would just be back from after six months at sea would go in and collect their wages and walk the twenty steps to her door and be claret broke by morning, ready to sign up for the first ship out of there.

We became great friends and I think what sealed are friendship was a rather amusing incident involving a Merchant by the name of Guy Brooker. He was one of your typical gentlemen at the time. Shares in several boats and owned a couple of warehouse's down Bow way with a nice house on the other side of town. Honest, respectable during the day light hours, but could be found with the rest of the low life and politicians - pardon my french, round the back of Commercial street at night. Which is where in those days, we liked to keep that sort. Away from the salt and earth.

One Tuesday evening he decides to pop in to Madame Nichols. Now, remember Mr.Grover back in chapter 12 ? I had been working for him that day and had just come into a nice bit of kelter and thought I would treat myself. One of Madame Nichols romps was an Exotic Oriental, and let me tell she was a right article with her red hair and towering statue. She emptied my purse quite a few times, let me tell you. I had just finished wetting my whistle and went down to the bar to wet me other when in walks Brooker. Now what you need to understand, is how Madame Nichols ran her girls. When a customer ...

This was done for a Leeds Savage Club task entitled 'Page 247 of a Biography''

I must apologise

If you are reading this, then my attempt to cross the Channel by giant catapult has failed miserably. I would first like to apologies, if my calculations were slightly off and you have had the poor misfortune of scraping myself off the white cliffs of Dover - a most terrible task I would imagine. Hopefully you have instead, retrieved this off my body as it bobs gently up and down in the English channel.

This postcard was bit of an after thought, for you see, I was so confident in my planning, I did not make any arrangements for in case things went wrong. I also apologies for the saucy nature of the card, but it was the only one I could find at 4am in the streets of Calais. If the image offends you, just imagine the lady is merely leaning over that car bonnet to listen out for some engine trouble. Its unfortunate the wind has caught her dress.

In my right hand inner jacket pocket, you will find my wallet. There should be enough in there to run the following 25 words in the Times obituary section.

"Quentin Pollock, Inventor, Dreamer and transport visionary, passed away attempting to cross the channel by giant catapult. He hopes, he has inspired, and now passes on the gauntlet.

Really Sorry to bother you with this bruden, but you will also find in my wallet, the money for a pint of ale and a pie, I do hope this is satisfactory enough compensation. Once again apologies.

Quentin Pollock


The above was done for a task of the Leeds Writing Group, entitled "A Life on a postcard...."

Breaking News On The Latest Financial Meltdown

The Worlds Stock Market was in financial meltdown this monday morning, after a wave of panic selling which started late friday afternoon, continued to show no signs of stopping. On the trading floor of the Dutch Second Bank, traders who normally execute buy orders, sit by their phones, which have yet to have ring since the crisis started. On the other side, where the sell orders are exectued, it is bedlam as brokers clammer over each other and runners fail to handle the large volume of calls - a scene repeated across investment banks around the globe.

620 Billion has been wiped off the Dow Jones, 74 Billion from the FTSE and they continue to plummet. Looses not seen to this extent since the black monday of 1987, though experts have ruled making direct comparisons as the situation is vastly different.

It will be many days, if not weeks before the full impact of this crash will be felt. The government in response today issued an emergency 50 billion government bond in the hope to turn the tide of selling into buying.Many will question however, is it too little, too late ?

It seems also, we have learnt little from the recent sub prime market crash. As details of the of the current crisis, becomes more apparent:

Historically, the price of treacle has been linked with that of tuppeny rice, with approxiamatley three pounds of Tuppeny rice being worth one pound of treacle. This morning, the price stands at half a pound of tuppeny rice, half pound of treacle.

The cause being the complex financial instrument which is the Weasel. The Weasel was introduced initially as a safeguard investment, in the case of failed rice crop. Many saw an easy profit in these Weasels and they were sold and exchanged across the market without regulation. Some institutes, such as the now collapsed Barkmen Brothers took on so many other peoples weasels, they literarily "popped"

And that is how, when in years to come, when we ask what happened to our pensions and saving, is the only response we can give, as it the way, the money went.



The above was done for an exercise set by the Leeds Writing Group which was to take a verse of a song and write it as a serious bit of journalism. I had in mind a news broadcast when writing this, so its probably a bit comma heavy. If stories in finance are your thing, here is a piece I wrote a looong time ago, entitled Investment Bank Wo's

The Big Attack

11.03 am that is the official time that history will record as the start of the following events. Midday they would note that it was too late to stop it from happening.

Two hours later, out in the Thames estuary the first official sighting was made.

At 2.14pm, the Prime minister appeared on our screens and delivered the warning to the country.
Forty four minutes later and the government was to have been evacuated.
The riots saw that they did not make it.
Five pm when commuters should of been flooding onto the streets, they instead fortified their offices and hid.
The army had their barracades in place by six and seven thousand soldiers would lay down their life over the course of the night.
By seven the ultimatum came: "You have one hour to hand over one billion dollars"
It took over an hour of debate from the emergency goverment before replying "We do not give into mad scientists"
As Night fell over the city, the first of the giant rubber monsters came.
He was called "Glowing Laser Eye Fiend" and starting mowing down the east end of London.
Big Ben didn't get a chance to strike midnight as it was decapitated by "High pitch screaming looks like a wasp type thing".
An hour later, "Big thing with big claws" came along and started ripping up Soho.
The people in Westminister cried for joy when the tanks arrived and then cried in despair as “Glowing laser eye fiend” turned them into a big blob of molten metal and flesh.
At 3.17 am the RAF sent in their best, by 3.23, they were sending in their second best and 3.45 anyone who could fly a plane was being scambled.
The Evil scientist reissued his demand for a second time, this time for two billion dollars and it only took the emergency cabinet a second to respond with "WE DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH MAD SCIENTISTS".
In the twilight hours, the Japanese arrived and in a back street near Trafalgar Square they began to assemble their secret weapon.
As dawn rose, “50ft Giant Ninja School Girl” was ready and racing to our aide.
“High pitch screaming looks like a wasp thing” was knocked out of the air by a single flying kick, tearing up the turf in Hyde park as it hit the ground.
“Glowing Laser Eye Fiend” put on a good chase for forty minutes across the south London boroughs, but thankfully was bought down by a Skillful thrown Shruiken.
“Big Thing With Big Claws”, didnt even put up a fight and lied down in the middle of Carnaby street like a cat caught with the cream.
 Sadly “50ft Giant Ninja School Girl” didn’t make it in time to stop the evil mad scientist escaping in his rocket, however England was safe once more.
As the nation sat down for elevenses, the country tuned into the radio and heard the new prime minister reitereate joyful and defiantly "We do not negotiate with mad scientists"

This was done as one of the tasks for the Leeds Writing Group. The task was 24 hours, 24 sentences. 

Bit of a waffle on prose and screenwriting.

I have been doing a lot of writing this year, down to joining the Leeds Writing Group (I heartily recommend joining a writing group if you need a kick up the arse)  , #fridayflash and the fact that it is cheap to do (except for the many beers at the LWG!)

When I say cheap, I mean in comparison to my main passion which is film. Sadly work has been a bit short coming on what has been an expensive year and I haven't been able to make much progress on developing my next feature film Silva Superior due to lack of funds. 

My previous feature film Mortus Illumina (if you are reading this in the future , the link might be mortusillumina.com - why are you reading this post ?) which has been going through post production hell, should finally be seeing the light in 2010.  I mention this as I have another feature length script which is set in the same universe as MI which I have decided to short-story-with-chapters-ise ( I did try finding a verb to create a Novella but with no joy - thanks for @Britmic for the suggestion) to give myself a longer writing challenge than the DAC.

Re reading the script, it feels right for a novella and it feels like its going to be about 40'000 words (script is 101 pages) in length. The nice thing about having the script is all the story elements and arcs are already there , all I need to do is flesh out the script and convert it over.

I made bit of a start on it yesterday writing what effectively is going to be the prologue which in the script is defined at the end by "ROLL OPENING CREDITS:"

Talking to Mazz in Leeds last night, we started discussing the differences between screenwriting and story writing. Firstly there are the obvious ones such as the technical nature of scripts which requires the following of certain formatting rules and terminology, but the big one,  and feel free to disagree is that when writing a screenplay you should treat the audience stupid and keep it simple.  Whilst with prose, you treat your audience with respect.

Which when you think about it is correct, a screenplay is effectively a set of instructions which is down to the the director to execute, whilst with prose,  not only have you got to get the story across, you have also got to keep your reader entertained.

A bad script does not necessarily mean a bad film and vice versa.  There are many elements that go into a film and a vast array of talents and technicians all bring their own unique flavour to the pie that the director is cooking. However, writing prose on the other hand , the writer is alone and all they have to rely on is the words they put down.

I did do a quick google (very quick) and it seems a lot more novelists extend out into screenplays,  but I can't see any screenwriters turned novelists- are there any ?

Whilst mentioning differences so far, there is one thing that both forms have in common and that is a .... Wait for it - story and the creative process for that is like for like.  It does make me wonder though, how much the differences in discipline effect film adaptions of books, or is it irrelevant ?

As for my novella, I wouldn't hold your breath as it is going to be the first casualty to be sent to the back of the shelf when I am back working and able to  get on with Silva Superior.  But, when it does get finished (I have added a word progress meter to the sidebar), I may send it out to get my first few rejection letters or alternatively link it from the Mortus illumina site.

The Picture on this post is a still from some of the VFX work which is being done on MI at the moment and there are a couple more trailers up on youtube.