Now aspiring novelist won’t have to wait for a publisher to assess whose style they emulate/have ripped. There’s I Write Like… a website that analyses a sample of text and spews out whose style the content most apes.

I tried this tonight (give it a go yourself at http://iwl.me/). Apparently I write like Cory Doctorow, which is fantastic as a good friend of mine recently told me to read everything of his I could get my mits on.

I know it’s a Monday night but I’d love to see you there. I’m reading a new short story called Things I am ashamed of #2. Originally, I could only think of one thing, but I’m expanding the series by writing about other people’s shame. Come on, that’s got to be worth missing Luther for, right? I promise the story isn’t about you.

Let me know if you can make it.

I was just reading Spotify’s profile of Plan B and here’s the opening line: “An East London raconteur with an ability to write in a horrifying first-person narrative (similar to Bret Easton Ellis),”

Has B.E.E just become shorthand for shocking, violent prose?

I spent the bank holiday weekend with a Texan killer from the fifties. After watching the intensely claustrophobic trailers for Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me I ran to Foyles to read the book.

The novel slips inside the head of small town Sherriff and calculating killer, Lou Ford. The reader is with Lou every step of the way as he commits a series of brutal and savage murders. The film isn’t out on general release yet, but some critics are noting the extreme violence toward women portrayed in the film (as it is in the novel).

The two female murders are slow, intense beatings. The male murder is quick, without malice. It reminds me of similar comments about American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis), fourteen deaths – seven women, brutally and slowly, seven men, quickly and cleanly.

The Killer… protagonist does reveal a hatred for women, it’s integral to his actions and the story.  This isn’t glamorising the abuse of women, it’s just documenting it through fiction. Besides, there are far more terrible examples of what women are subjected to in the news.

The trailer for the film, that started my quest for the novel, is incredibly well put together. The scenes that are shown are pivotal to the plot, yet the viewer has no idea of their significance yet. My advice would be to watch the trailer, read the novel, then see the film, all with great haste.

]]> http://www.kimelliott.net/2010/06/01/62/feed/ http://www.kimelliott.net/2010/05/29/interview/ http://www.kimelliott.net/2010/05/29/interview/#comments Sat, 29 May 2010 11:24:41 +0000 admin Writing Fiction London http://www.kimelliott.net/2010/05/29/interview/ Check out this interview with Spinetingler Magazine about being bookless.
Thanks to www.spinetinglermag.com for thinking of me.

Creative Review Blog write up John Squire’s Penguin Decades covers read the full post here

I came across the novel after reading an extract in an American short story collection. While the book was an American bestseller in the late eighties, I hadn’t heard of it. It seems no matter how much I read, there’s always something brilliant that I’m missing. I’ve got to get more recommendations.

I don’t want to know one of my childhood heroes may have slept with her father (note, I’m not referring to Anais Nin – I don’t think she was anyone’s childhood hero), or that a national icon abandoned his pregnant wife on a whim.

Almost all the tales featured heartbreak, including Herman Melville’s relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne.  The doomed tale of the two men led me to read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, so something good came from it..

You can pick up a copy here.