Gutter 10 line-up announced - Freight Books

I have a couple of poems in the new edition of Glasgow's finest, Gutter Magazine. This is my first appearance in Gutter, so I'm thrilled to be included in the new issue. The two pieces are 'Borges' Paradox' (the poem formerly known as 'A Short Variation on Borges' Paradox'), and 'The Girl Who Got Onto the Ferry in Citizen Kane'.

More info and copies available here: Gutter 10 line-up announced - Freight Books

Memo to Self: Do a Fred Vargas

                                                                                                                                                                                             Photo: Alexandre Isard / Corbis

Just back from a tour of some local charity shops, where I picked up a copy of Fred Vargas's Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand - not one I'd read. I've read a few of her books, and loved their intricate plotting and general strangeness. Inspired to read up a bit about her online, I found a few interviews with her from the last few years where she's mentioned that she writes her first drafts in three weeks flat, and then spends a few months revising.

This reminds me that one of the most dangerous habits a writer can develop is obsessing about detail when writing a first draft. I speak from experience. Quite a while ago, I was writing something set in the C17th, and had a scene set at Xmas. I became completely stuck on what a middlingly-well-to-do household would have eaten for Xmas Dinner. It never occurred to me to just write something in with a view to changing it later ('Yorkshire pudding and roast turkey with lashings of gravy and roast potatoes'). Oh no. I had to find out exactly what would have been on the table. And the end result: my writing ground to a halt.

Now, writing something else, I find the same bad habit looming: how would a C12th person leave a house to someone in a will? Where would a monastery have got its parchment from? Luckily these are issues I've managed to resolve with not too much digression (although mediaeval law is very interesting), but must be on my guard against 'Dutch Xmas Dinner Syndrome'... the need to research at the cost of productivity. Having had one good idea completely grind to a halt over something trivial, I don't want to repeat past mistakes. I suspect Fred Vargas doesn't worry about such things when doing her first drafts in three weeks... 

The Cathars - Cover for New Edition

This is the cover for the new edition of The Cathars, due out in March. Spot the difference between this and the original cover!

Folie À Deux - Now Available to Buy or Rent

Folie À Deux, the feature film I co-wrote, directed and produced, is now available to buy or rent here HERE. Happy New Year!

Facebook Page Launched

I've set up a Facebook page for my books: https://www.facebook.com/sean.martin.author

I will continue to blog here, but posts may end up on FB as well. 

Tarkovsky and Zen - A Talk in Edinburgh this Saturday

I'll be presenting a paper on Tarkovsky and Eastern Spirituality and Aesthetics this Saturday in Edinburgh. The talk is part of a conference on representations of spirituality in art. All welcome. £3 entry fee,  0930 for 1000, although my talk is on after lunch. More details are on the poster below, and a full running order can be be found below that.

Representing Spiritualities and Cosmologies in Art

Saturday 7 December 2013

From ancient times, ideas and beliefs about spirituality and cosmology have been mediated

through the arts. This one-day conference explores how artists from different cultures working

in various media have approached the problem of how to represent the world of the spirit.

PROGRAMME:

9.30am-10am: Registration

10 Representing the Otherworld

Dr Louise S. Milne

10.30 The supernatural seascape of Orkney and Shetland

Erin Catriona Farley

11 COFFEE

11.30 Colouring the Divine in Celtic, Insular and Late Anglo-Saxon Art

Dr Heather Pulliam

12 Photographs and death in Athens

Dr Ariadne Xenou

12.35pm: LUNCH

1.30 From Breath to Dance: Music and Movement as Languages of Experience in an American

Sufi

Dr Neil Douglas-Klotz

2.10 A World in a Drop of Water: Representations of Eastern Spirituality in the work of Andrei

Tarkovsky

Sean Martin

2.50-3.45pm: The alchemical imagery of dew

& alchemical films

Richard Ashrowan

4pm: ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION

4.30pm-5.30pm: RECEPTION / REFRESHMENTS

Celtic and Scottish Studies, the University of Edinburgh, 27 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8

9LD / Registration: 9.30am-10am / Conference: 10am-5.30pm / Cost: £3

Jointly organised by the Edinburgh International Centre for Spirituality and Peace, (EICSP,

Scottish Charity, SC038996), and the Traditional Cosmology Society

Booking recommended as there is limited space:

Contact: Neill Walker: mesp2013@hotmail.co.uk

Louise Milne: louise.milne@ed.ac.uk

The Cathars - New Edition, New Subtitle?

I'm mulling over the possibility of changing the subtitle of The Cathars for its first UK paperback edition, due in March 2014. I've never liked 'The Most Successful Heresy of the Middle Ages' - it's some odd form of success to get wiped out in a crusade.

So I'm wondering if 'The Rise and Fall of the Great Heresy of the Middle Ages' or something like that would be better?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.