I read this book in January 2013; I still remember some of the stories as clear as day. I felt it would be good to put up previously read works on this site, because I don’t read enough fiction regularly to sustain this part of the blog, I mostly read non-fiction works based on social history, religion, the occult, psychology, true stories and biographies.
For those of you who have never read Neil Gaiman or know about the book “Smoke and Mirrors” it is an anthology of fantasy, horror and dark fantasy short stories and in my opinion, prose.
Anyway, first up is “the wedding present” I don’t remember much about this story at all, other than I remember disliking it, but I can’t remember why. I do plan to re-read this book at the end of this year for revising what I think is good and bad about it all, as I am trying to teach myself how to read critically, so re-reading this story will help me remember why I didn’t like it.
The next story I liked, it was humorous, “chivalry” A little old lady goes into a charity shop and buys a chalice and she is soon pestered by a time traveling knight who declares the chalice is rather special and tries to get it off her for several weeks, she eventually relents with a surprising ending.
“Nicholas Was” is next, a very short story, or was it really prose? I don’t know what it was, but I do remember it, and it was confusing, although I did like the imagery it portrayed.
“The Price” oh my goodness was that a scary tale, I felt like crying for the cat. I think the cat was based on some kind of protective angel, but that’s well hidden in the story if that’s what the cat was. A brilliant tale, loved it, and I loved the audio of it too which is free and can be found at this website www.neilgaiman.co.uk/smokeandmirrors/audio
Another of my favorite was “Troll Bridge” I think almost every fantasy writer has written their own variation of this story at some point; I know Terry Pratchett has, although I’ve never read that one yet. Neil Gaiman’s Troll Bridge was in my opinion, unique; I found it really thoughtful and inspiring. I sometimes hoped that I could crawl under such bridge and make a deal like that, but would I really want to? Who knows…?
“Don’t ask Jack” bought back nightmares of my childhood, that’s all I am going to say about this story. I don’t like remembering it, to be honest. In fact, I wasn’t comfortable with the story so much, I had to put the book down for two months before I could read the story that came after it, and that was because I forgot the previous tale.
“The goldfish pool and other stories” Brilliant, I was so happy I picked this book up again after abandoning it, this was a great story, touching, haunting, fantastic. I was really upset it was a short story; I could have read hundreds of pages of this work easily.
“Eaten” I don’t remember this story either and I can’t remember if I liked it or not – sorry.
Again, one I loved “The white road” the imagery in my head was so lucid, I adored that. I tend to think of actors or people I know when I read books and I was seeing actors and actresses from “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “The Aristocrats” TV mini-series in 1999 one actor in particular was actually playing a Mr Fox, Alun Armstrong, he was playing Mr Fox in my mind when reading this story and the girl was a blond haired Winona Ryder for some reason. The other actors and actresses from those movies and series that I was seeing in my head were there purely as spectators of the revelation that was being said between Mr Fox and the girl.
I was a wonderful story; I loved it, such passion and a delight to read, but am I being too bold? Ha-ha.
“Queen of knives” and “The case of the departure of Miss Finch” other delightful reads. I loved them, they reminded me of one of my favorite Hammer horrors, “The Vampire Circus”, and they also had a similar air to “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern. I too, almost wrote a book similar to all four of these examples when I was fifteen years old. A story based around a circus of the night, traveling vampire gypsies picking off locals at their stops, turning some, training some, it was a good idea I thought, but at the time I was going through a turmoil. My brother had friends in publishing, they were at his house having a dinner party and I was also invited, they asked to view my work so arranged another dinner with my brother and I gave them some of my work, unfortunately I never got them back and they plagiarized my work, unfortunately still, I had no proof they did this because when I lost my completed work I lost heart in re-writing it all and burned the notes I had gathered over the two years it took me to complete it. So basically they got off Scot free and I’ve nothing to prove in court, so my loss I suppose. My brother also worked behind the scenes of major film companies, so needless to say they did make a movie out of what I wrote, but made minor alterations, I won’t mention the movie here or the people, because I don’t like making a fuss, especially when I cannot offer proof. The story was different to my gypsy vampire idea, but was vampire themed nonetheless, just this was the point of no return for me until I reached twenty one and had confidence in writing again, by this time I had forgot the idea, I only remembered the idea after reading those stories.
“Changes” I don’t remember this story either regrettably.
“The daughter of owls” now that was a beautiful fairy-tale in my opinion.
“Shoggoth’s old peculiar” made me smile because it made me think he based the story on my family, who live on the edge of the Welsh and English border, they run a pub which resembles an eighteenth century tavern and I’m sorry to say they have toad-like faces and an old fashion air about them. They are constantly cribbing about hiking tourists in their area, particularly Americans, which made this story feel it was made especially for me. Obviously it wasn’t, Neil Gaiman doesn’t know me from Adam, but still, it felt special.
“Virus” I didn’t like either.
“Looking for the girl” I disliked too. Reminded me a little bit of one of my exes, made me feel this story was based on his future life.
“Only the end of the world again” I liked, was it a sequel to one of the above stories I wondered? Or more than one – I sense an air of “Shoggoth’s old peculiar” but also “the white road”. I loved the combination if I am right, it worked amazingly well.
I think the “Bay wolf” is also like the above review, though I am confused, because I am trying to remember all the stories from only four months back and it’s difficult, particularly as I am writing this review on a day that my headaches are mild and wondering whether or not they should get worse and become the usual migraines.
“Fifteen painted cards from a vampire tarot” was also good, many stories in one. Again, this was something I was thinking about writing as an inclusion to my traveling vampire gypsies when I was a teenager, another reason was because an old horror movie with Donald Sutherland inspired me a few years previous called “Dr Terror House of Horrors”.
“We can get them for you wholesale” was both hilarious and bleak; I never laughed out as loud as I did when reading this story. I truly recommend it for people who have a sick sense of humor like me!
“One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock” and “Cold Colours” I don’t remember these stories either unfortunately.
“The sweeper of dreams” was also beautifully written and after reading it, knowing I’ve ignored my love for writing for almost two years solid, I began to wonder if the sweeper of dreams came and visited me and stole my muse away or not? But obviously it hadn’t, because I’ve started to write again, though, this time, my muse focuses mostly on poetry, not stories, like before.
I despised “Foreign Parts” it’s really not my kind of story at all.
“Vampire Sestina” was brilliant and again, too short.
“Mouse” I couldn’t remember much about mouse either.
“The sea change” was a good read too, for what I remember and that’s not quite much at all, ha-ha.
“How do you think it feels” I liked the story and I hoped for more, but no. Sometimes I think Neil Gaiman lacks the confidence to make some of his short stories into novels, it’s like he doesn’t believe in them so he makes them short but sweet.
“When we went to see the end of the world” that was a confusing read.
“Desert Wind” was nice.
I don’t remember “tastings” either.
“In the end” now that was very thought provoking and again, made me pause on the book for a fortnight whilst I thought things through and read “Enoch” and a few other non-fiction stories, for absolutely no other reason than to try and confirm my own beliefs in some strange inane kind of way.
“Babycakes” the title attracted me because when I was in college a friend of mine thought it would be good to have a name for each other, a pet name, so she came up with the name “Babycakes” I was baby and she was cakes. She called me baby because I lacked experience of the world and she felt very motherly towards me. Regrettably, the story isn’t as sweet as the one I just said above about me and my friend; it’s haunting in a bad way, terrifying because that could become a truth and I felt bad that I had read it, like it’s shameful.
“Murder mysteries” was beautiful, I liked the story outline.
Now, here comes my favorite story of the entire book “Snow, glass, apples” Neil Gaiman’s take on Snow White and it’s wonderful. Unique, tragic, he saw what I saw in the story, not a victim but a spoiled dangerous little brat, that’s what I’ve always seen snow white as, but oh, it’s wonderful how he mingled this story with vampirism and victimization of the queen. A pure work of genius!
This book was 50/50 in my opinion, 50% bad and 50% good, but the good bits are excellent, they are unique and imaginative and I love them, they inspire me to write my own stuff.
Thank you Neil Gaiman!
Writing style and narratives
Many new writers write in a first person narrative; this is very limiting and produces problems if they want to include other characters opinions and viewpoints. The main character of a story isn’t psychic, so wouldn’t know the real reasons behind their nemesis or co-inhabitants reactions to various events.
When I first started writing my vampire dark fantasy series, I was also to blame for writing in a first person narrative; this made it very complicated for me to introduce new characters with their personalities effectively. My aim was to write the series as a series of biographies of individual characters from the same story, but this wouldn’t work well as it had already more or less been done by Anne Rice and I wanted to be different. I found it much easier moving onto the third person narrative, which is what’s happening in my rewrites.
Writing in a third person narrative gives me more flexibility for my story’s direction. I can skip viewpoints and characters at will, I can write about how everyone feels simultaneously and without too much effort. Since writing in this style I have been able to write more words to my story daily, much more than before, alongside another technique I will tell you about shortly.
As a writer you must see yourself as a god, you are creating a world and these are your people; you’ve made them, you control them, you control events; you should be as dedicated to your creations as you are to your own god, you should be motivated by the sheer fact that your characters are waiting in limbo for how you are going to progress their lives. But gods have two sides to them, good and bad, cruel and kind and so you should not feel too emotional about wrecking their lives, otherwise you’ll have a happy, clappy, crappy story.
Thinking about how I structure my novels, I am not the usual can of beans; I’ll share with you why; It seems to me that most writers write a book from beginning to end, I’ve noticed I can’t dedicated myself to surprises.
I write down my ideas in my ideas book, then I put up bullet point of events on my computer that I’d like to see happen in my story; then as scenes come to mind I write them, whilst trying to write from beginning to end, then I sew it altogether and sometimes I revise but mostly I don’t – in fact, everything that’s posted on this blog is never revised, I don’t know why, maybe it’s because I don’t have faith that what I write up here is my best work?
I do have massive flaws grammatically, punctuation wise and possibly prattle on too much needlessly, this is mainly down to the fact that I’ve had limited formal education. My mother home educated me mostly and had a problem with me studying in college and university so I was put under pressure to become a drop out on seven occasions.
I must remind you too, that my main tutor at home was my mother who is dyslexic; yet I still managed to do a distance learning course when I was nineteen and got my only qualification in the world of a B grade GCSE for English Literature.
So, if I am not fine-tuned or polished, those are my excuses and I learn through tenderness. This is why I beg for criticism and comments; I need help fine tuning my art of writing.
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