The Death of Bunny Munro is Nick Cave’s second novel following his unrelated 1989 début book “And the Ass Saw the Angel” (which, god-willing, is on its way through the post as we speak). You may need a strong stomach to digest this book, but if you’ve read Trainspotting and/or Porno by Irvin Welsh, you should be desensitized enough to get through it just fine. Bunny Munro’s brilliance comes with Cave’s descriptive genius – if you’ve heard his music it should be quite easy to imagine the fine arrangement of words Cave has for us here. It’s a moving and in places terrifyingly funny book (I caught myself guiltily “LOL”ing at some of the filthier portions more than once).

The story sees sex-crazed and morally-challenged Bunny Munro, a door-to-door beauty product salesman and his son, Bunny Junior travelling around Brighton in the wake of Bunny’s wife, Libby’s suicide. Her death – unquestionably a culmination of Bunny’s unrelenting adultery and a lifetime worth of lies, triggers Bunny’s eventual decline and fall.

As they cruise around in their Punto, Bunny goes door-to-door selling products from his suitcase and pretty well bonking (or filling?) every unfulfilled female he meets. But things are changing. A man dubbed the Horned Killer on telly terrorises women with a trident and works his way through the country to Brighton. Libby’s mum and Bunny’s dad plague him, but worst of all he keeps seeing his dead wife. Of course he still sees the lady-bits of every woman he meets in his head too, and some from women he has never met (namely Kylie Minogue’s and Avril Lavigne’s), but he can’t help feeling a sense of impending doom.

Conversely Bunny Junior is a bookish, gangly and neglected nine-year-old, seemingly unblemished by his father’s extra-marital frivolities and regular barrages of expletives. This comes as a bit of a relief, and despite (thankfully) not knowing quite what the man’s up to he worships his dad. The unorthodox, negligent and yet very special father-and-son relationship within The Death of Bunny Munro reminds me a lot of the two central characters in Mick Foley’s (yes, the Wrestler) book, Tietam Brown. And forget the equation wrestler+authorofbook=shite for a moment because it’s an amazingly well crafted little tome. But I digress, that’s the wrong bloody book. The Death of Bunny Munro is great too, just go and read it.

I was going to quote-ify this post but I thought I’d just attach this clip of Nick Cave reading chapter 3. Warning, it’s pretty (i.e. a lot) perverse and filled with expletives. You’ve been warned!

The Death of Bunny Munro, chapter 3, read by Nick Cave:

Dark Night of the Soul is a collaborative album presented by Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse and featuring the vocal talents of Wayne Coyne (Flaming Lips), Gruff Rhys (Super Furries), Jason Lytle (Grandaddy), Julian Casablancas (The Strokes), Black Francis (Pixies), Nina Persson (The Cardigans), James Mercer and Iggy Pop. As if that isn’t exciting enough, David Lynch supplies the accompanying artwork. There’s a catch, however, due to a dispute with EMI, the book only ships with a blank CD-R with the Dark Night of the Soul artwork on the cover, with a caption stating you should do with it what you see fit. You may have to look to Spotify or *gasps* some other means to hear the actual record.

- I can hear your zombie-like groans from here. To be honest though, unless Bram himself managed to claw his way out of the grave, it was always unlikely that he’d be the one writing it.

The question remains, why should anyone want to write a sequel? Who could hope to top or even equal such a classic? The odds are stacked against that happening even if it is good. I certainly have my reservations, but I’m going to see what happens. Perhaps a genuinely great idea struck Dacre and he felt he simply had to write it.

The book that springs to mind when I think about this is the disappointing Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks who wrote the book in the style of the original James Bond author, Ian Fleming. I couldn’t help feeling underwhelmed by the story and particularly the monkey-handed (yes, you heard) antagonist whose motivation seemed no more fleshed out than that of Stormbreaker’s lead villain Darrius Sayle.

According to Wikipedia “Ian Holt and Alexander Galant have completed the screenplay based on the official sequel novel.”

Let’s hope it doesn’t suck (haha).

Now here’s a man who played Dracula:

…and also the devil, it seems:

Apologies for not making an update in almost a week, but a lot’s been going on. Well, nothing really very interesting if you write it all down, but I’ve been doing a fair bit of writing and rediscovered my love of reading (part of why this entertainment blog’s been a bit lax). Tentatively named “Love in the Time of Zombies” is taking a long time to write, or should I say, a long time to get round to writing. My head’s been all over the place and while I do incorporate a lot of what I feel into my stories (downers, etc) I do need to chillax for the creative process to flow sometimes. For some reason I’ve felt a bit calmer this week, despite still searching for elusive jobs. I think this is partly because I dug out my original novel, Jack Knife and (having left it alone for a while) I was able to look over it more objectively. I wrote a brief synopsis and I think I’m able to nail what it is actually about more efficiently than I was before, without getting hung up on details. I may even try to pitch it to agents again soon. Of course I’ll probably fall flat on my arse, but it’s worth a try, isn’t it?!

I’ve got a few good (hopefully) tv posts coming soon.

Well, not especially, though it is cool. Listen up…

Some of you may have caught the one-off drama called Being Human last year, featuring a werewolf (Russel Tovey), ghost (Lenora Crichlow) and Vampire (Aidan Turner) who all happen to be flatmates. Apart from being a very enjoyable romp that given the subject matter could easily have been a pile of unholy cack, Being Human was a keeper. Fans petitioned long and hard and in doing so have achieved something really quite special and elusive – a full TV series. It’s been confirmed for quite a while now but I thought I’d mention it after seeing the very short promo ad on TV the other night. Check it out
on BBC3.

I’ve decided I really need to concentrate on writing rather than talking about writing. I have catalysts and the third of a book, along with what I like to call a beautiful mess (the “other book” that needs editing/shooting into space). New beginnings and my differing circumstances should afford me more time to get into the writing “zone” though, rather than just farting about watching DVDs and going to work like your normal upstanding citizens.

Happy Belated (depending on how you look at it, I suppose) New Year! Here’s a nice vid of some robots fighting:

P.S. Someone please remind me I need to pay for the rest of my Glasto ticket by Feb 1st!

Today I’ve also been reading my book on Space Travel (thanks again S!) which is helpful for details and ideas on how to get my new blog (one of two) “Nivellensem Dreams” off the ground. This’ll be, for lack of a better explanation, the diary of a spaceman. It’ll be Sci-fi in the vein of Firefly and its cinema follow-up Serenity (which if you haven’t seen, are bloody good!).

Hells bells, you may as well watch the film trailer. It’s so good it makes me want to watch the film again! Here you go:

- Yeah?! Hell yeah! Here’s a spot of Johnny Cash and Mama Cass to wind down with:

I’m so good to you.

We all met up on Sunday (the writer’s group I’m in) for a bit of a catch up session and to discuss our writing, which was great. I’ve got a few new ideas (not all of them mine!) for things to try out – mostly online things that I’ll blog about here. I’m hoping to have Sisters Noir, my online cinema project up soon, but the Love in the Time of Zombies site won’t be flashing until into 2009 (probably a blessing!)

I’ll probably do a couple of blogs before Christmas, but just in case I forget, have a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous start to 2009!

You will also notice the bloody big RSS logo over there > so you can subscribe if you like. There’s another over at the Sandwich Man webcomic to subscribe to so you never miss a page.

I’ve watched a few good films lately, including There Will be Blood, Pure, and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. I’ll add some new reviews in the coming weeks. I’ve been in more of a reading phase this past week or two. I’m mainly reading instructional/informative books like The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler as recommended by Silja. It’s a great book if you’re interested in writing screenplays or novels or are just interested in the structure of story telling. I have also bought a book called How to Write and Sell Short Stories by Della Galton but as I’ve been focussing on my “big” story (hopefully my first novel, but let’s play it down for now, eh) I’ll read this at a later date.

New Sandwich Man page coming right up. Have a nice christmas song. Laters!

Oh well, Stephen King mentioned how he had become a horror writer without ever really intending to (I believe I read it in his very useful On Writing book) and that he didn’t mind too much because it put his kids through college. If I’m ever in that position then I doubt I’ll be complaining too much!

It’s the same with Sci-fi – instantly I think of nerds and Star Trek, before I think of stuff like Star Wars or War of the Worlds (which in my opinion have a wider appeal – whether or not this is fact, I do not know). I refuse to buy the latest issue of SFX because it’s got a photo of Sylar on the cover doing the Star Trek sign – is that supposed to entice me?! well it doesn’t. It’s a brill magazine, though, even if the “F” in the SFX logo looks a lot like an “E” …hmm, I wonder.

Ultimately in order to work out as stories, both the above genres need similar problems that we all must face and a dollop of human condition or there would be nothing for the reader or viewer to relate to. Still, it’d be nice for a few cooler-sounding genres to appear. For example, “fantasy” could become “awesomepeoplereadthese” or some cut-down variation of this. Wouldn’t that increase reader/viewership? Just an idea.

I had a dream the other night where I was forced to leave my family home pretty quickly. I forget the details but it was some apocalyptic scenario possibly only involving this part of Devon because I think the plan was to just move up country a bit and live as nomads. Now I know full well that in situations like that you should really just leave – I think the destruction of my home was imminent because people were all panicky, but before my escape I went into my room and started selecting things I couldn’t live without.

Basically I got myself a carrier bag and stuffed in two of my story manuscripts (double-spaced), my mobile phone and my wallet. I spent a good deal of time in deliberation over what else I could cram into my straining Asda bag but pretty much settled at that little lot. It intruigues me that I glazed over my DVD collection and books. I don’t remember grabbing my mp3 player either. I must have been feeling ruthless. In reality I’d probably have spent a good deal more time trying to ransack my own room, and possibly have left it too late to leave (house crumbles/burns/is eviscerated with me inside, amen). It would be an interesting scenario to try, I’d love to be able to live without things and lead a simple life near the foothills of Alaska (is life there simple? I don’t actually know) but then I do like my DVDs. And my books.

Hmm.

I propose to do a few writing exercises over the next few weeks and post them here. These have been taken from the very good book How to Write a Blockbuster by Helene Corner & Lee Weatherly, which you should grab if you’re keen on writing and are working towards publication.

The first of these writing exercises I’m going to attempt in the space between now and when I start work (about five minutes, but I cheated and wrote the rest of this post earlier) is the following -
I’m looking at ten three books to see the problem/s facing the main characters. How to Write a Blockbuster suggests these problems may be subtle and woven into the plot, but still act to drive the story forwards. I have chosen some pretty obvious books, but when I’ve got my thinking cap on I hope to spend a bit of time putting together some more interesting suggestions. First three, here goes…

Neil Gaiman – Neverwhere

Once Richard Mayhew is forced to help a bloodied girl he soon realises that he can’t be seen by anyone living in London Above. He has no choice but to follow the mysterious girl and her allies underground to London Below, the only place where people now notice him, but it is a dangerous place where he can trust next to no one. He wants to get back to his fiance who no longer notices him and everyday life in London.

Stephen King – The Dark Tower Series (notice this is a series of books, not a book – cheat!)
Roland the gunslinger’s goal is easy, he marches towards the Dark Tower. His problems arise in each book throughout the series. In the second book, The Drawing of the Three, Roland awakens on a beach and becomes the prey of massive hybrid lobsters who take some of his fingers. Through the early part of this book he fights off the fever and learns to shoot with his diminished hand, making it more difficult for him to fend off his enemies.

Thomas Harris – The Silence of the Lambs

Clarice Starling needs to track down the Serial Killer Buffalo Bill, and in doing so, must speak with the highly dangerous Hannibal Lector, whose clues are cryptic and often misleading.

As you may have noticed I didn’t bother to re-read and/or scan these books prior to writing about them here, which I may do in a more detailed follow-up post. Note the use of the word “may“.

Jaysus it’s cold this morning.