Andrez
New Member
Hi all,
I've actually just finished my novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat after an absolute eternity writing the bugger!
While it's not my first novel per se, it's the first that'll actually be published - which I'm obviously extremely chuffed about, and would like to share with you here.
You can download the PDF of the first two chapters here, but please note that the final text of the novel has been edited considerably from what you’ll find here - this is a few drafts back.
Alternatively, if you don't like downloading foreign objects (who does?), here's the first chapter below, abridged slightly:
***
Chapter 1 - fear of that misplaced black cat
The introduction here should go something like this:
I never really knew the old Melbourne before the Wall, with its sundry pub music, its boutique club glamour, and vaguely dissident art, a not-so-contaminated Yarra River, all-night warehouse rave parties, superlative eateries, and its easy multicultural charm—I was still only a pre-teen then.
What I really got to know was the xenophobic, rotting hulk of a city it became, in the epoch after the shuttering of the place to an outside world on its last legs. Now, the city is divided into a dozen culturally cut-up and socioeconomically distinct districts, you know, each occupied by swarms of police and trigger-thrilled security types, and separated from one another with blockades and fences, along with a shocking case of paranoia. The centre of the city—that’s the Dome—is a play area reserved only for the rich sorts of people. Then there’s the subterranean Hospital zone, but let’s not get into that here.
Melbourne may look a little worse for wear, a little bombed out even, but it’s
nothing compared to the ghastly ruins of the other cities out there. We suffer from a chronic case of overpopulation, it’s true, but the rest of the lot are devoid of us riffraff altogether.
Oh, I was going to tell you, wait, I was going to tell you about this guy, goes by the name of Floyd Maquina. Now, Floyd was broke and had medical bills to pay to support his ailing spouse, so the government offered him some sort—I don’t know—some sort of a job. Anyway, there he was, poor chap, unhappy as a lark, without a cent, and soaked through to the bone.
This is how the dream unravels in my plagiaristic mind—a preemptive attempt at a streetwise spot of narration, with either the cynical edge of Carol Reed’s racketeer, or alternatively the more inanely optimistic offering from Joseph Cotton’s protagonist from the Americanized version. Your choice. It doesn’t matter, it’s all plundered from the opening monologue for the 1949 classic, The Third Man. Anyway, the words are smeared just a bit into a ramshackle riot that attempts (badly, I must say) to correlate with the mood, the alternative locale, and the entirely crap circumstances of the here and now.
Hell, I don’t know if you’ve ever copped a screening of The Third Man, but if you have it’d put you in solid with me—and would certainly help out with all that descriptive nonsense we otherwise have to indulge in to set the ‘scene’ hereabouts. Oh, and don’t blame me if you’re a cinephobe and get lost here, nor crack foxy about having instead read the novella by Graham Greene—I’m not interested. We’re talking up Carol Reed and Robert Krasker’s celluloid interpretation.
So anyway, whether or not you’ve seen the flick, or even if you just need a few friendly slaps to remind you, there’s a pivotal scene over an hour into it in which Orson Welles—as the iconic Harry Lime, a character we’ve previously assumed to have been measured up for a concrete kimono—first resurrects himself, shades of Lazarus.
Cue a transient form, a man maybe, skulking in a darkened doorway alcove
off the side of a nighttime Viennese plaza. There’s a cat seated at the figure’s feet, preening itself. A light claps on in an overhead window and you get a glimpse of the man’s face, replete with a flirtatious, mocking expression—ah, forget about it. Who am I kidding?
I’ve nowhere near the smug self-assurance, let alone panache, of Orson Welles as Harry Lime when he takes that first visual splash in The Third Man. I’ve more the personality of his co-star Joseph Cotten’s Holly Martins in my lousy attempt at a B-movie opening reel.
Besides, the contemporary location shoot—in Melbourne, Australia—isn’t quite as safe, orderly, or classy as Reed’s post-World War II bombed-out Vienna, Austria. I apologize for all the confusion—chalk it up to a delusion that should be excised and dumped on the floor of the editing suite to be swept out with the rest of the trash.
So let’s try this again:
The dream starts out innocuously enough—no out-of-focus fade-ins like they
employed in the old black-and-whites, or the Salvador Dalí bender in Hitchcock’s Spellbound. Someone is leaning against a wall on some second-rate street, waiting for nobody to finish their Christmas shopping.
Cut to my aged, scuffed, and soaked-through shoe. Then my imagination starts to play tricks on me, panning to an absent film noir cat. Damn. There’s not, it seems, an available tabby or tortoiseshell to be found anywhere within this dream.
So, quickly pull back to a wide shot of the street in an attempt to resuscitate this narrative. Diffuse the colour and crinkle-cut the edges of the frame as heavy rain begins to fall. Picture it all in crackly monochrome, with a single-channel soundtrack: maybe some guy twanging away on a zither, or a shamisen. Or wait, perhaps Irving Berlin could rise from the grave to conduct a bunch of dusted-down tuxedos and cocktail-dressed dames. I could go still more self-consciously future schlock here, clutching at a post-modern rear-view mirror, and shake my tone-deaf booty on
the same trail that Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle did back in the 1970s, say something into a mic, splice ‘n’ loop the tape, sprinkle in some of my dad’s tortured guitar strumming from when I was little, and have the sheer audacity to call it this dream’s musical score.
Now tell me, am I rambling yet?
****
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed. This baby's being published at the end of this month or in February, and there's a wee bit more info here if you're interested:
another sky press » Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat now available for pre-order!
I've actually just finished my novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat after an absolute eternity writing the bugger!
While it's not my first novel per se, it's the first that'll actually be published - which I'm obviously extremely chuffed about, and would like to share with you here.
You can download the PDF of the first two chapters here, but please note that the final text of the novel has been edited considerably from what you’ll find here - this is a few drafts back.
Alternatively, if you don't like downloading foreign objects (who does?), here's the first chapter below, abridged slightly:
***
Chapter 1 - fear of that misplaced black cat
The introduction here should go something like this:
I never really knew the old Melbourne before the Wall, with its sundry pub music, its boutique club glamour, and vaguely dissident art, a not-so-contaminated Yarra River, all-night warehouse rave parties, superlative eateries, and its easy multicultural charm—I was still only a pre-teen then.
What I really got to know was the xenophobic, rotting hulk of a city it became, in the epoch after the shuttering of the place to an outside world on its last legs. Now, the city is divided into a dozen culturally cut-up and socioeconomically distinct districts, you know, each occupied by swarms of police and trigger-thrilled security types, and separated from one another with blockades and fences, along with a shocking case of paranoia. The centre of the city—that’s the Dome—is a play area reserved only for the rich sorts of people. Then there’s the subterranean Hospital zone, but let’s not get into that here.
Melbourne may look a little worse for wear, a little bombed out even, but it’s
nothing compared to the ghastly ruins of the other cities out there. We suffer from a chronic case of overpopulation, it’s true, but the rest of the lot are devoid of us riffraff altogether.
Oh, I was going to tell you, wait, I was going to tell you about this guy, goes by the name of Floyd Maquina. Now, Floyd was broke and had medical bills to pay to support his ailing spouse, so the government offered him some sort—I don’t know—some sort of a job. Anyway, there he was, poor chap, unhappy as a lark, without a cent, and soaked through to the bone.
This is how the dream unravels in my plagiaristic mind—a preemptive attempt at a streetwise spot of narration, with either the cynical edge of Carol Reed’s racketeer, or alternatively the more inanely optimistic offering from Joseph Cotton’s protagonist from the Americanized version. Your choice. It doesn’t matter, it’s all plundered from the opening monologue for the 1949 classic, The Third Man. Anyway, the words are smeared just a bit into a ramshackle riot that attempts (badly, I must say) to correlate with the mood, the alternative locale, and the entirely crap circumstances of the here and now.
Hell, I don’t know if you’ve ever copped a screening of The Third Man, but if you have it’d put you in solid with me—and would certainly help out with all that descriptive nonsense we otherwise have to indulge in to set the ‘scene’ hereabouts. Oh, and don’t blame me if you’re a cinephobe and get lost here, nor crack foxy about having instead read the novella by Graham Greene—I’m not interested. We’re talking up Carol Reed and Robert Krasker’s celluloid interpretation.
So anyway, whether or not you’ve seen the flick, or even if you just need a few friendly slaps to remind you, there’s a pivotal scene over an hour into it in which Orson Welles—as the iconic Harry Lime, a character we’ve previously assumed to have been measured up for a concrete kimono—first resurrects himself, shades of Lazarus.
Cue a transient form, a man maybe, skulking in a darkened doorway alcove
off the side of a nighttime Viennese plaza. There’s a cat seated at the figure’s feet, preening itself. A light claps on in an overhead window and you get a glimpse of the man’s face, replete with a flirtatious, mocking expression—ah, forget about it. Who am I kidding?
I’ve nowhere near the smug self-assurance, let alone panache, of Orson Welles as Harry Lime when he takes that first visual splash in The Third Man. I’ve more the personality of his co-star Joseph Cotten’s Holly Martins in my lousy attempt at a B-movie opening reel.
Besides, the contemporary location shoot—in Melbourne, Australia—isn’t quite as safe, orderly, or classy as Reed’s post-World War II bombed-out Vienna, Austria. I apologize for all the confusion—chalk it up to a delusion that should be excised and dumped on the floor of the editing suite to be swept out with the rest of the trash.
So let’s try this again:
The dream starts out innocuously enough—no out-of-focus fade-ins like they
employed in the old black-and-whites, or the Salvador Dalí bender in Hitchcock’s Spellbound. Someone is leaning against a wall on some second-rate street, waiting for nobody to finish their Christmas shopping.
Cut to my aged, scuffed, and soaked-through shoe. Then my imagination starts to play tricks on me, panning to an absent film noir cat. Damn. There’s not, it seems, an available tabby or tortoiseshell to be found anywhere within this dream.
So, quickly pull back to a wide shot of the street in an attempt to resuscitate this narrative. Diffuse the colour and crinkle-cut the edges of the frame as heavy rain begins to fall. Picture it all in crackly monochrome, with a single-channel soundtrack: maybe some guy twanging away on a zither, or a shamisen. Or wait, perhaps Irving Berlin could rise from the grave to conduct a bunch of dusted-down tuxedos and cocktail-dressed dames. I could go still more self-consciously future schlock here, clutching at a post-modern rear-view mirror, and shake my tone-deaf booty on
the same trail that Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle did back in the 1970s, say something into a mic, splice ‘n’ loop the tape, sprinkle in some of my dad’s tortured guitar strumming from when I was little, and have the sheer audacity to call it this dream’s musical score.
Now tell me, am I rambling yet?
****
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed. This baby's being published at the end of this month or in February, and there's a wee bit more info here if you're interested:
another sky press » Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat now available for pre-order!
