Tomorrow Will Come… Chapter One.

As promised, here is the first draft of chapter one of my new novel, Tomorrow Will Come and It Will Be Just Like Today.

It is, intentionally, a dark, introspective psychological piece and I will, naturally, be very interested in hearing if I’ve managed to achieve this dark introspection without the reader losing his or her wish to continue. There are a couple of story hooks, and, in spite of their difficulties, I think my characters are quite engaging, but I am of course too close to it at this stage to know how successful it is (or isn’t!)

Take a look when/if you have time and feel free to share any comments here.

Tomorrow Will Come and It Will Be Just Like Today — Chapter One.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Sergeant Marches.

Former political journalist and the unquestionable star of BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing John Sergeant has, alas, decided that enough is enough and the joke has gone on long enough. After being continually criticised by the judges, and in spite of the huge public support, this funny, charming and thoroughly entertaining gentlemen has quit the show.

Whilst I certainly understand why he felt the need to do this I can’t help feeling that this light entertainment show has, in this case, lost some of the very things that made it successful. Humour and the opportunity for the viewing audience to stick two fingers up at the judges and vote for whoever they judge fit. Contrary to the insistent proclamations of some, this is not a dance contest. It’s more than that. If it were not, the old format Come Dancing would never have become unpopular and faded from our screens.

Strictly Come Dancing is purely and simply light-hearted entertainment. It’s disposable television intended for those of us who just want to turn off for a short while and watch something that demands nothing.

Let’s not take it too seriously, please. It kind of defeats the object.

John actually looking quite graceful in my humble opinion.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

The Secret to Publication.

It took Barack Obama to show me the error of my ways. Sitting here, working on my new novel (Tomorrow Will Come and It Will Be Just Like Today), I was wholly unaware of just how deluded and misguided I actually was.

You see, I was completely oblivious to the fact — in spite of masses of evidence — that in order to be a successful writer you first have to follow an unrelated career, become successful at that (“successful” being defined however you wish) and then sit back and wait for publishers to come to you! Such folly! What on earth was I thinking of? A writer sits in front of his computer, working off his squishy bits, day in, day out, produces a masterpiece and then gets published? No? Perish the thought! What an absurd notion!

Thankfully, I today found myself completely disabused of this ridiculousness when dear old Amazon.co.uk sent me a charming email (“Dear customer”… isn’t that sweet?) offering me 50% off selected “celebrity books”. Amongst them was Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Actually one of the few I might consider reading, though it did occur to me that the usual way of doing these things is to get the presidency out of the way first and then write the memoir. But what do I know?

He was in good company, however. Dawn French, Alan Carr, Fern Britton and someone I’d never heard of called Marcus Tescothick or something all have autobiographies (“alleged” autobiographies, I should probably say) out at the moment and, suitably inspired by this Celebrious deluge, I came up with, as Baldrick might well have put it, a cunning plan.

I’m going to become celebrated for something other than writing! I haven’t decided quite how I’m going to do this, yet, but I figure it need not be anything too difficult. Falling out of a nightclub, knickerless and with a footballer on my arm would probably do the trick, but it’s a long time since I saw a fanciable footballer and, well, you know, I wouldn’t want to get a chill.

So… this is your mission if you should choose to accept it. In order to achieve fame/infamy (I’m not really all that particular) and, ultimately, get my work published, what rocky route to stardom should I take?

My future, ladies and gentlemen, is in your hands.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

A World without Email.

Today we heard that, because of possible problems caused by transparency laws and security issues, Barack Obama — a textbook “functioning techie” — may have to go cold turkey, giving up emails in general and quite possibly his BlackBerry.

Now, however much some people might want me to be, I am not the president elect of the United States of America. I do not have to juggle a hundred things at once or ensure that I am briefed on everything from the name of the Queen of England’s favourite corgi to which button to press if someone annoys me a bit. Difficult decisions are not mine to make, or if they are the only lives that depend on it are purely fictional. Granted, I have many people — friends and acquaintances — that I like to keep up with, and, of course, many, many subjects interest me. Nonetheless it is fairly safe to say that the benefits that Barack Obama probably sees from using his BlackBerry/emailing/etc quite possibly far outweigh the benefits that I experience.

But I would not wish to give up the benefits I do receive from these wonderful (yes, I said wonderful!) technological developments — in the name of transparency or anything else (well, yes, all right, maybe personal security would persuade me, but you know what I mean.)

It seems quite bizarre that Obama will possibly be the first US president to have a laptop on his desk. Apart from Bill Clinton, of course, but that wasn’t quite the same thing. Yes, there are the inevitable dangers from hackers and so on and so forth. But surely that’s like telling the president he can’t eat pretzels because he might choke. Like that’s going to happen, right?

The world we live in is increasingly influenced by the electronic media. TV, Internet, email, weblogs, Twitter, Facebook — something new pops up every day (and, no, that’s not a reference to porn sites.) Let the president have his YouTube, Instant Messenger or whatever the hell else he wants, I say. I’d far rather have a tech-savvy US President who understands the world he lives in than a bumbling, technophobic idiot.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Out Of the Blue.

After a bit of a trying day yesterday (not something I can currently discuss here, though nothing half as distressing as that possibly makes it sound!… email me if you want the dirt 😉 ), I today woke up with a complete novel — i.e. a beginning, a middle and an end — bouncing around in my old bonce. It was unexpected, demanding (in the sense that it really got my attention) and extremely welcome.

Now, I know some of you might be expecting me to say that I therefore abandoned my latest outline, the third outline I’ve attempted in, more or less, as many months, and started outlining this novel. But I didn’t. Instead, I abandoned my latest outline and started writing the novel itself.

A psychological thriller with the working title Tomorrow Will Come and It Will Be Just Like Today (yes, I know it’s a long title but I kind of like it… thoughts?), it’s already promising to be as dark as I want it to be, intense, claustrophobic, violent and, hopefully, emotionally complex. In short, a challenging but enjoyable novel to write.

I’ve opted for a third person narrative restricted to the two central characters. I haven’t written in the third person at length for a few years and, to be honest, it’s like a breath of fresh air. I know I’m going to enjoy this one!

I may post the first chapter when it’s complete later this week.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Hubble Directly Observes Planet Orbiting Fomalhaut.

Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter’s mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish).

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by the US- UK-Dutch Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS).

via ‘Hubble directly observes planet orbiting Fomalhaut’ by EurekAlert – RichardDawkins.net

A truly amazing discovery. 25 light years! Wow. For once I am uncharacteristically at a loss for words.

Now Winter Nights Enlarge — by Thomas Campion (1617)

A favourite poem for this time of year…

Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze,
And cups o’erflow with wine;
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love,
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep’s leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
With lovers’ long discourse;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.

And Now for Something Completely Different…

Following on from the brawling monks  video of a few days ago, a Monty Python clip that I’m fairly sure all of you will be very familiar with. It’s still one of my favourites — makes me laugh every time.

Why I Get My Knickers in a Twist.

Very occasionally, when I write about my atheistic/humanistic approach to life on this blog, I am asked why expressing my bordering-on-antitheistic position is so important to me. I mean, if I don’t believe, I don’t believe. What more really needs to be said on the subject? It’s not as if I’m being forced at gunpoint to attend church, now, is it?

And this is a valid point. Or it would be if we lived in a world where the actions and attitudes of others did not impact upon the world and people around them.

Frankly, I’ve never really hidden my atheism. I’ve never had to. But my decision to be more vocal about it, to encourage debate and to look at the issues that concern me as a human being was, it has to be said, partially prompted… substantially prompted by the overwhelming assault from Christianity I started to see online. On my MySpace page, for example, I’d selected “atheist” not as some kind of statement but merely in the same way that I had selected “male”. When I started receiving friend requests from Christians intent on showing me the error of my ways, however, I dashed along as quickly as was humanly possible to Richard Dawkins’s website and found one of those nice red “A”s to stick on my then blog over at MySpace.

There seemed a lack of balance in cyberspace. In a virtual sense, I felt as if I were at times living in the American Bible Belt.

And when I started to see similar religious attitudes creeping more forcefully into the UK, I didn’t believe that I had any choice other than to continue to openly and unapologetically express my views. The things I held dear were being gradually undermined.

And it would seem that they still are:

“Doctor Adam Rutherford has told Teachers TV News he has serious concerns over the findings of a survey on creationism in the classroom.

“Nearly a third of teachers, who responded to an email poll for Teachers TV, think creationism or intelligent design should be given the same status as evolution.

“Of the 248 science teachers who responded, 18% agreed that the two should have equal status.

“Dr Rutherford says that science teachers with those views need retraining or should be taken out of the classroom if they refuse to change their opinion.”

18%. It quite possibly doesn’t sound a whole lot to many people — and I know that some of my readers would argue (wrongly) that the 18% are quite correct. But given the number of teachers in the UK, this is a significant body of people. A body of people that does not understand scientific principles, or is perhaps taking the politically correct stance — afraid for whatever reason to challenge religious belief in the science classroom. A body of people that, as Dr Rutherford says, should be removed from their posts unless they teach the syllabus as it’s meant to be taught.

The insidiousness of creationism, it would seem, continues to make its mark in British schools, presenting a distorted view of science and attributing an utterly ridiculous equality to mythological mumbo-jumbo.

If we are to protect and nurture scientific development in the UK — continue to build a future founded on fact, logic, science and rationalism so that we all might enjoy the benefits — it’s vital that such opinions be relegated to their deserved position.

Religious Studies lessons or, even better, History.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

BBC NEWS | World | World Recalls End of World War I

via BBC NEWS | World | World recalls end of World War I

Today this feels all the more poignant.

I am currently writing (in outline) about the post-World War I period and as I do so I realise that, as well as remembering with gratitude, whatever I write about this time has to be executed to the best of my ability. I would not in any way wish to trivialise in my work those very real and, relatively speaking, still immediate travails. However difficult the times we now face may be, they are, on the whole, nothing compared to the horrors and privations of those times.

“Let us resolve afresh at the dawn of this new century… that this might be a truly pacific peaceful century.”

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

We can but hope and try.

© 2008 Gary William Murning