Stusplace

An Old Story

2012-01-26T16:11:00.000-08:00

An interesting thing happened about twenty minutes ago. I went back to an old idea, and found that I hadn’t deleted it as I normally do when things go wrong (because I feel that sometimes old ideas can get in the way). Instead, I’d kept it, and I actually added a little bit to it. Now, I’m not saying that this has converted me to the ‘keep everything’ school (would you do that with anything else in your house? De-cluttering can be good.) It has proved quite fun though.

Fun is perhaps the wrong word. A friend of mine echoed one of the reviews of Court of Dreams when she suggested that she would have actually preferred fewer jokes because that lets me get closer to the heart of the characters. Now, she also said that she still enjoyed it a lot, so please don’t let that put you off, but it’s an interesting thought. Despite having written twenty odd novels if you include the work as a ghost-writer, I’m still learning this stuff. I suspect everyone is. So perhaps I’ll try just for a bit to simply write and see what comes out, rather than making a special effort to be funny. So far, plenty of jokes anyway, but also just some straightforward imaginative storytelling.

One thing I’m learning is to just write what I want, when I want. If I’m not enjoying it, why should anyone else? So trying to force myself to write and write is not going to happen. Probably.

Winners.

2012-01-23T12:05:00.000-08:00

Just quickly announcing the winners of the two copies of Court of Dreams I'm giving away.

The first one, being drawn randomly, had a few entries, making me resort to my old D&D dice. The result there is a copy going to April Plummer.

For the other section, only Donna Hole seems to have been inclined to tell me what was in Grave's pockets. Still, it was really quite a good suggestion, so I have no qualms whatsoever about sending the second copy her way (if you're reading this, I've sent you an email about it. If you didn't get it, let me know)

Copies will be winging their way to you as soon as I get down to the post office. Oh, and there's still a larger giveaway by my publishers over on Goodreads, should anyone want to try their luck there.

A Good Book On Writing

2012-01-23T12:00:00.000-08:00

I’m currently reading Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook’s book Doctor Who, the writer’s tale: the final chapter, which I mentioned absolutely ages ago, and part read then. I’ve just found it in the local library, so I’m drifting through it. It’s essentially just a collection of emails between Davies (main Doctor Who writer for four of the new series- covering Christopher Ecclestone and David Tennant).

It’s also turning into just about the most informative thing on writing I’ve read in a long time, because the emails are as the writing is taking place, and there are some insightful questions on all kinds of writerly topics, some of the answers to which have been immediately helpful. The big thing, and it is a BIG thing, is the sheer chaos you see here. There isn’t some neat, easily followed method the way writing’s self-help industry suggests so much as a collection of suggestions buried in among thoughts on persuading Kylie to act in the Christmas special and some particularly self-destructive writing habits.

I think the candour around those is refreshing, even if it is easy to start thinking the old clichés about writers and suffering. It’s useful not as a template, but because you can see someone working in what even he says is a less than ideal way, and still producing really good work. It’s a reminder that things don’t have to be perfect for us as writers. It’s also a very entertaining read, even if it does currently have me thinking what a pity it was that Penny Carter got largely subsumed into the Catherine Tate character Donna. She would have been such a good companion character. Or maybe not. It’s worth reading, anyway.

Giveaway Reminder

2012-01-20T16:15:00.000-08:00

Just a quick reminder that there's still time to enter my giveaway to win one of two paperback copies of Court of Dreams that I'm giving away. To refresh your memory, I'm giving each away in a slightly different way. The first is a fairly standard 'leave a comment, and I'll draw one randomly' arrangement, with extra chances to win for anyone who links back to the post, informs the world of my novel's release or puts a picture of the rather lovely cover somewhere on their blog (or frankly anywhere else I can verify)

The second copy (which no one has had a go at getting so far, despite it being rather easier) just requires a tiny bit of creativity on your part. My rather forgetful fairy assassin character Grave has all kinds of things in his pockets, so I'd simply like you to suggest something that might conceivably show up there (remember that this is someone who wanders all over space/time as we know it, so it could be anything). The most entertaining suggestion in the comments wins. There's nothing to stop you entering both halves of this, of course.

Court of Dreams and Giveaway!

2012-01-18T03:53:00.000-08:00

It's the eighteenth, which means just one thing for me- Court of Dreams releases in paperback format today! It's my humorous fantasy effort, showing that magical journeys through fairy kingdoms don't always have to make that much sense, and featuring all kinds of strange things, from forgetful fairy assassins to suspiciously australian figments of the imagination. It can be purchased either from my publisher or from Amazon (Amazon UK if you live here)

To celebrate, I'm giving away a couple of copies. I'm doing one in the traditional way, which is to select someone randomly, but with additional chances of winning if you help me to let the world know about the novel so you get an extra chance if you do either of the following:

Mention Court of Dreams' release on your blog or Facebook
Put the rather lovely cover somewhere on your blog
Mention this giveaway with a link back here

Those are all fairly easy to do, so there's really no reason not to. Just let me know in the comments if you did. Getting the second copy will take slightly more creativity. In the novel, my faerie huntsman Grave has a coat, the pockets of which seem to contain anything and everything. I'd like you to suggest something that might conceivably have ended up in there. The more outlandish the better. The strangest, silliest, most inventive suggestion in the comments wins (this is entirely arbitrary on my part). For inspiration, you could try looking at the Deja Vu Blogfest bit I did, which features Grave hunting through his pockets through much of it.

This will run until midday UK time on Sunday, after which I'll pick out winners.

Too Many Ideas

2012-01-17T10:49:00.000-08:00

I’d like to suggest an idea that seems to apply to the majority of writers. That is that most of them do not in fact suffer from a lack of inspiration the way they think they do. The majority of writers of my acquaintance suffer, if anything, from the opposite. They have too many ideas.

How can you have too many ideas? It happens when they start to be a distraction. You get excited about potential new novels when you’re partway through an old one. You add in characters and situations that don’t really belong, because you have to use them somewhere. It can even lead to total paralysis as a writer, because you can’t focus on one thing long enough to get it done well. It’s one of the things behind my occasional bouts of deletion (which seem to get a surprisingly strong response from some of you. I may have to explain at some point why I feel it is fine to delete work).

There are solutions, of course. Rigorous self-discipline and an iron will are always helpful, though annoyingly hard to locate when you actually need them, rather like car keys. Writing ideas down can also help, since that can at least reassure you that you can safely come back to them later. Expressing them in brief formats, such as short stories or poetry, is another solution.

One that I quite like though is that point where you create a kind of literary gumbo. That is to say that you just throw everything in and see what happens. The results can be surprising, and occasionally spectacular, because you get combinations of ideas beyond the well worn ones. Of course, the moment you do that you can no longer rely on your well defined structures and tropes to get through your novel, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Some tactics for getting ideas in include expressing them in sub plots, bringing them out in minor characters, making passing references to them without ever really exploring them, or showing them in miniature. Alternatively, just write the next thing to come into your head, however weird. It worked for Douglas Adams, mostly.

So why not try it? Stop separating out all your different ideas. Instead, find ways to put them into whatever you’re already writing. The results can be… interesting.

The e-book version is out!

2012-01-13T05:52:00.000-08:00

A few days ahead of the paperback version, my comic fantasy novel Court of Dreams is out in kindle format from Amazon.

It's simultaneously a parody of quite a lot of the urban faerie stuff out there at the moment and a gloriously strange adventure in its own right, featuring a full cast of evil fairy princesses, forgetful assassins, not very nightmarish nightmare hunts and figments of the imagination.

Some Villainous Last Words

2012-01-10T08:38:00.001-08:00

1. “I don’t care if you’ve grown up to wear spiky black armour. Give your dear old aunty a hug.”
2. “You know, I can’t imagine why no one has thought of cleaning out the spike pit bungee style before”
3. “Are you sure about this evil throne room open to face a very large drop? You know I like to pace while I talk to-”
4. “I will kill you all with my army of… what’s that? What do mean ‘the minions have gone on strike’?”
5. “What harm can it possibly do me? It’s only a hobbit. Now pass the eye drops.”
6. “Yes, yes, nice sword. You do realize you’ve come out in just your underwear, don’t you?”
7. “You can’t defeat me! I am invulnerable except for one carefully hidden flaw breach-able only using an object I have hidden in the depths of… oh, bugger.”
8. “You know, you don’t see many throwing axes these days. I say, that one seems to be getting bigger…”
9. “Don’t give me ‘you’re leaning against the lightning rod master’ just throw the damn lever. Wait, did you just say I was-”
10. “No, bad dragon.”

Medieval Thoughts: Countries

2012-01-06T16:40:00.001-08:00

Here’s a medieval history related thought for all those interested in the period, writing historical fiction, or writing the kind of fantasy where everything has a medieval feel. It’s about countries, and is that the notion of countries could get quite complicated sometimes.

First, the notion of a defined nation state with fixed borders existing separately from a particular collection of people wasn’t consistently in place. Philip I for example was very definitely a king of “the French” rather than of “France”. Indeed, separate peoples within a kingdom would sometimes have their own set of laws that applied to them regardless of where in the kingdom they were. So a Norman might not be subject to the same rules as a Burgundian.

Secondly, countries were very much developing in Western Europe. By which I mean that the places we think of as France or England only came into being during those periods. England as we know it today could be said to have finally been formed in 1054, with the completion of the project of bringing together smaller kingdoms like Mercia and Northumbria (literally the region north of the Humber) and the expulsion of the Vikings from York.

Then there’s the question of royal control. For much of the period it came down to personal power and influence. Most kings in the early part of the period had to essentially re-conquer the kingdoms left to them, at the very least processing around them, but often having to fight and depose lords. Many lords could end up more powerful than their kings, staying as subordinates in name only, as in France, where Louis VI began his reign as essentially master of only the region around Paris. This was the period in which administrative government only just began to extend (with kings like Henry I and Philip II creating whole classes of ‘civil servants’ and the accompanying paperwork)

Finally, remember that borders were fluid. Much of the North of England ended up owned, invaded or raided by Scots at one point or another, while at the same time, the holdings of Anglo-Norman monarchs extended well beyond England. It was a time of shifting changes, not fixed ideas of nations.

All of which means that you should be quite wary of large nation states in your fantasy. The idea of large, quite clearly ordered countries with strong collective identities and traits is common in fantasy, but it’s really not that accurate. It also might not be the most interesting way to do things, since the chaotic historical reality offers so much more scope for interesting stories.

Snowfest

2012-01-04T15:07:00.000-08:00

As another thing, I've entered Roh Morgan's snow based blogfest on the 2nd of February. I look forward to seeing you all there (I'm currently working on cutting about five hundred words from something I wrote the other week)

Free Books

2012-01-04T15:01:00.000-08:00

The lovely people over at my publisher (www.pinknarc.com, if you were wondering) have a few promotional copies of Court of Dreams to give away, and they're doing so over at Goodreads (specifically here) If you'd like to be in with a chance of getting hold of one of them, just head over there and enter their draw (I almost misspelled that as drawer, but that may just be because of a sudden urge to keep people in a very large filing cabinet).

Looking Forward

2012-01-03T03:58:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I said below that I don’t really do resolutions, but I can look forward a little to the year ahead, in all kinds of areas:

Writing- Last year, I didn’t really get much new writing for myself finished. Partly, that was because I’ve been busy writing for others. Partly, it’s because I’ve been caught up in preparing Court of Dreams for publication, and partly, it’s because I kept getting part way through things and deleting them. I’d like to get another novel written this year though, and I think I have a nice idea.

My Novels- Clearly, Court of Dreams is my current focus, and I want to do a better job promoting it than either I or my previous publisher did with my two urban fantasy novels (you didn’t know about the two urban fantasy novels? I think that makes the point). In the immediate term, that means making as big an initial splash as possible (and if anyone is feeling kind enough to mention the existence of it, that would be really kind. I’m also getting a small number of author copies in the near future to use for promotion). I’m more interested in the longer term stuff though, because these days, everyone seems to be shouting about their novel just being released. I’d like to start that with one simple request: if you happen to be one of the people who reads Court of Dreams (and if you like Terry Pratchett-esque stuff and that whole brand of funny fantasy, you really should) and you find that you like it, please tell someone that. I’m not asking you to review it on your blog, though obviously that would be wonderful. I’m asking you to tell your mum, or your friend, or the bloke sitting next to you on the bus. It’s amazing how many books we just don’t tell people about. I’d rather this one wasn’t one of them.

Fencing/Martial Arts- Fencing competitions to enter, of course. First, the Yorkshire sabre, probably, then… the world! No, hang on. Then… getting my ranking above 224, which is where it currently languishes (although that’s an improvement over this time last year). On the martial arts front, I guess I’ve now hit the stage with grappling of looking for a more complete game, so that’s the goal for this year.

Ghost Writing/Editing- I’m looking forward to being involved in some nice projects this year, but I’m also determined to demand what I’m worth for them, since in the past I have occasionally taken on jobs too cheaply ‘for the experience’ or because I’ve lacked the confidence to push for more.

Reading- I’m currently stuck reading the same old authors. That’s fine, because there are some lovely books there (I just read Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys) but I suppose I should look for something new this year.

Blogging- No, I’m not going to start a schedule or anything like that, but I am going to focus on blogging about whatever I enjoy, not just what I think people might want to read. I’m probably going to spend less time trying to tell people how to write too. I suspect most of you already know, and the world is full of so many other things.

2012-01-01T03:25:00.000-08:00

I'm not good at making resolutions for myself, but it does seem like an awfully good opportunity for a list, so here are a few that more heroic types might find themselves making at this time of year:

Lose a few pounds. No, not through more exercise. Frankly, if the average barbarian hero does any more exercise, he'll explode. I was thinking more of replacing that sword as big as them with something more practical.
Finally make enquiries into where all those maps with Xs on them keep coming from.
Put some money into a decent retirement fund (one that doesn't just consist of having a dragon sit on it). You can't keep hero-ing forever.
Finally master the ability to do that figure of eight thing they show in all the swordplay scrolls without having to engage the services of a physiotherapist afterwards.
Stop running around after every princess who bats her eyelashes and focus on the most important relationship in any hero's life (with his double handed battle axe, of course)
Continue with the anger management classes.
Find a meaningful use for some of those ten foot poles they always have to carry around.
For more wizardly types, learn some spells that don't involve frogs.
Learn to sip drinks, not just quaff them.
Finally, finally learn that just because you happen to find yourself in the company of an elf, a dwarf and a couple of hobbits, that does not mean that you have to engage in an impromptu camping holiday across all the most unfriendly terrain you can find, killing things as you go.

Court of Dreams is Nearly Here

2011-12-30T15:19:00.000-08:00

My comic fantasy novel Court of Dreams is officially going to be released on the 18th of January. My publishers have opened pre-orders for it today, making it probably the funniest thing you'll find in the January sales.

A Suitably Seasonal Story

2011-12-22T15:47:00.000-08:00

Well, it has Santa in it, at least. Sort of. Enjoy. And I hope you enjoy the holidays too. Oh, and I should probably put an official disclaimer on it: no Santas were harmed in the making of this short story. Probably.

A Very Evil Christmas

Lord Edwin the Moderately Unpleasant sat upon his Throne of Darkness and bit his fingernails in not very villainous anticipation. The anticipation was mostly because of the pair of goblins dragging a very large and very squirming sack into the great hall.

“You managed it then?” Edwin demanded.

The goblins stood to attention. One did so with gleaming elegance, the dinner jacket he always wore perfectly arranged. The other narrowly missed being squashed by the sack when his cousin let go.

“Grot assures me that he has succeeded, Sir,” the well-dressed goblin said.

“You didn’t go with him to make sure?” Edwin demanded, in what he hoped was his most boomingly villainous tone. It probably wasn’t up to much, even though he’d been practising.

“I believe I explained, Sir, that I would not be able to do so, owing to the duty coinciding with the Christmas party for the Society of Slightly Supercilious Servants.”

“Oh, yes,” Edwin said as he remembered, “that. But doesn’t that mean that your cousin did it all by himself?”

“I am sure cousin Grot is very capable, Sir. Indeed, I know from personal experience in the slime pits that he is capable of almost anything.”

Grot, on hearing his name, capered towards the front. “Grot done well,” he said. Edwin saw Tilesbury wince at the performance, though frankly, he thought it made a nice change. A henchman who actually behaved like a henchman, and who hadn’t been thrown out of hench-ing school for excessive politeness, could only be an improvement on… well, whatever Tilesbury was.

Edwin looked over to his manservant. “I didn’t know goblins even celebrated Christmas, Tilesbury. I thought they celebrated the Festival of Sludge, or something.”

“Slime, Sir.”

Grot capered some more. “Festival of Slime! Festival of Slime!”

“One likes to show willing, Sir,” Tilesbury explained, carefully keeping clear of Grot.

“Well, at least it gave me the idea for my Great Plan,” Edwin said, slotting the capitals into place with the ease of long practise.

“Yes Sir, though I feel I must point out-”

“Oh, you always want to point something out. Just because I came up with the idea to kidnap this ‘Santa Claus’ and thus hold an entire world to ransom, while simultaneously gaining stacks of presents.” Edwin rubbed his hands in satisfaction. The Big Red Eye would have to take notice of this one. Edwin might even move ahead of Lord Nasty in the league tables for villainy at last. That reminded him, he really should call round and see old Nasty at some point, it being the season, and so forth. Perhaps a small invasion?

“Even so, Sir I feel I should mention the fundamental flaw in any plan to capture Santa-”

“No. No even so-ing. Just open the sack.”

Tilesbury didn’t sigh as he opened the sack. He quite pointedly didn’t sigh, Edwin felt. A figure tumbled out. It was fat, wearing red, and sported a bushy beard. All in accordance with the explanation Tilesbury had given him.

“Aha! I told you we would get Santa, Tilesbury. And here he is! So you see, you aren't the only clever one around here.”

“Yes Sir, though I must point out that this particular Santa is wearing a false beard.”

Now that Tilesbury had pointed it out, Edwin could see that was indeed the case. Also, the Santa appeared to have a pillow case shoved up his jumper to make him look fatter. “Do they do that? You there, Santa, explain yourself or I will…” Edwin tried to think up a suitably unimaginable torment. As usual, he couldn’t quite imagine one. “Well, I’ll be pretty miffed, I can tell you!”
The man in the false beard, who looked faintly stunned, stared up at Edwin. “’m not Santa. My name’s Dave.”

“An imposter?” Edwin looked to Tilesbury. “Do they do that, Tilesbury?”

“I believe so, Sir.”

“To foil kidnappers and assassins and so forth?”

“Possibly, Sir.”

Edwin focussed on Grot for a moment or two. Given that Tilesbury was the only goblin Edwin had heard of with any concept of personal hygiene, it wasn’t a pleasant experience. “You. Where did you find this Santa?”

“In a…” Grot’s hands moved as he tried to put the concept into words. “Place. Place with shops. People. Place named after me. Grot-o. Man asked Grot if wanted to sit on Santa’s knee. Grot hit him.”

“I believe my cousin may have inadvertently abducted the wrong Santa, Sir,” Tilesbury pointed out. “Though in fact, this brings us back to the fundamental flaw I was talking about earlier-”

“Nonsense, Tilesbury,” Edwin said. “We just have to push forward, keep going, and jolly well put our noses to the grindstone until we find the right Santa. How exactly does one do that incidentally?”

“Sir-”

“One more objection from you, Tilesbury, and you’ll be spending Christmas polishing all the spikiest armour in the castle armoury.”

“I do that anyway, Sir.”

“Twice then. Now, obviously these shopping places are set up just to distract us, so we’ll just have to try a new tack. Where else did you say this Santa character might be found?”

“I believe various locations in the Arctic Circle are considered traditional, Sir,” Tilesbury explained.

“Good, then we’re going to need a sled, some suitable Things to pull it, and a map of the North Pole. Oh, and someone do something about that imposter.”

“Very well, Sir,” Tilesbury said, and pulled the lever to drop the Santa into what would have been the Big Pit of Spikes had Tilesbury not replaced them with mattresses some time before. Grot, who had been standing close by, attempting to explain that he wanted a big club with nails in it, and a pot of slime and..., fell through with a yelp.

“You know, Tilesbury,” Edwin said, “I really think this might finally be a piece of Evil worth doing. This will really show people what kind of evil overlord I am, don’t you think?”

Tilesbury sighed the sigh of someone who knew that the near future would almost certainly involve him having to rescue his employer from marauding reindeer. Not to mention digging him out of snowdrifts. Still, it was the season of goodwill, and at least all this attempted evil kept his employer out of actual trouble.

“Yes, Sir. If you don't mind, I’ll just fetch my warmer dinner jacket.”

Why watch test cricket?

2011-12-19T04:50:00.001-08:00

It’s Christmas time, which means a number of things to different people. For the cricket obsessed, however, it means a feast of Test cricket, with Australia’s traditional Boxing Day Test being the most prominent of all. This seems like a good point to answer that most common of questions from the non cricket lovers out there: what’s the point of Test cricket?

After all, there are some things about it that are hard to understand. Why does it take five days, for example? Why, after that, can you still get a draw? Aren’t all those blokes just standing about? What is this obsession with tea? Don’t they realise that most of us have jobs and things, and so it isn’t convenient for us to watch this? I mean, shouldn’t we all just watch T20 (which is conveniently packaged at the length of an evening out) instead? Well, there are a couple of answers to that, and I’m going to give you both.

The first is what we might call the historical answer. In the early days of cricket, it quickly became a sport sponsored by the aristocracy, who wanted something to bet on, and occasionally to play. So no, it doesn’t care that you have a job, because the lord of the manor didn’t. They had the time for matches that went on potentially forever, or at least until both sides had been gotten out fairly. The trouble with that answer is that it portrays cricket as a whole as unduly burdened by the past. It’s not an approach that is going to appeal to anyone who doesn’t already love the sport.

There is another way of looking at it, which is to see Test cricket as kind of the ultimate sporting challenge. I should explain. Those blokes aren’t doing nothing. Instead, they’re pushing themselves to limits most sportspeople would find hard to understand. Let’s start with the obvious, which is that cricket is complicated. It takes mastery of an awful lot of skills to do it well, most of which are tricky to pull off correctly even once.

But they don’t have to do it once. They have to do it hundreds of times. A batsman scoring a hundred might be at the crease for hours, yet one slip could cost him his wicket. A bowler might bowl twenty-thirty overs in a day. That’s 120-180 separate deliveries, assuming he doesn’t have any wides or no balls to do over. One piece of research on South African bowler Shaun Pollock suggested that he covered something like 18km a day while playing. Test cricket is about taking an essentially technical sport and combining it with a test of endurance. There’s even an element of physical courage involved, when you remember that bowlers are perfectly allowed to bowl the ball so it hits the batter, and that fielders sometimes get positioned just a yard or two from the bat.

Mostly though, it’s about a combination of sustained physical, mental and technical pressure. It’s not about pacing yourself either. The players can’t get away with playing at half power for the match to conserve energy, because those performances will be punished by the other side. A batsman who tries to hold back will probably get out. A bowler who does the same will probably be hit to the boundary, or at least will not take wickets. A fast bowler will start the Test bowling at 90mph+ and might still be bowling only a little way down on that on the fifth day. It’s about the repetition of full power skills over and over until one side achieves victory.

That’s the part that really makes Test cricket gruelling. In most sports, the one with the most points at the end of the time wins, whether it’s a football match or a boxing bout. Yet most fight fans, for example, tend to see matches that end up with a points win as inferior. Test match cricket is closer to the old boxing bouts that went on until there was a winner. Now, obviously modern limitations mean that they can’t go on forever (although even I’ll admit it can sometimes feel that way) but they can say that you don’t get to win that way. You either defeat a team outright, or it’s a draw.

That’s why I watch this strange, maddening sport.

Deja Vu Blogfest

2011-12-16T03:47:00.000-08:00

It being the deja vu blogfest, where we go back to a favourite post from the past, I thought I'd revisit July last year, when I produced this for the blogfest of death (a blogfest within a blogfest. If I keep going do we achieve the effect of standing between two mirrors?) I've picked this one because it's one of my favourite sections of writing, and because it also shows just how long the publishing process is, given that the book this is from comes out in January.

Being the second half of the first bit of the third novel (sorry, I'm in that sort of mood) my entry into the Blogfest of Death:

Grave pushed the memory away and went back to searching. A few seconds of further effort yielded a pair of neatly wrapped egg and cress sandwiches and a folded piece of paper, only slightly stained so far by its stay in Grave’s possession. He unwrapped the sandwiches and ate one handed while scanning the paper. It was always best to check these things. Three names had been crossed off, in a mixture of pens that had, in the general manner of pens, proved impossible to find twice. Three other names were still neatly printed below.

‘Elizabeth Peters,’ Grave rumbled to himself, sending a faint spray of breadcrumbs into his beard.

Something skittered in the darkness at the sound, and Grave absentmindedly kicked a discarded can in its direction. A resentful squeak told him he’d connected. He was in the right place at least. That was a blessing. There’d been that time when he’d been sent over to Egypt and had found himself on the wrong side of the Nile. He’d had to swim. Come to think of it, didn’t he still have a pair of crocodile skin boots from that somewhere? Or was that some other time?

Grave sighed. Other times. There were always other times these days. A thousand years of other times, all tangled up like the web of some giant arachnid. He’d probably hunted one of those too, back in the twelfth century, or was it the thirteenth? His memory played tricks if he let it.

A faint scent brought his mind back to the present. Like cinnamon, but not quite, mixed in with the usual scents of humanity. Even over the car-fume stink of the city, it was easy to pick out. Grave took a quick look at the remains of his sandwich, wondering whether he should finish the thing or push it back into his pockets. The first raised the possibility of trying to do his job with a mouth full of egg and cress, while the second seemed like a recipe for pockets Grave could never put his hands in again. He threw it off to one side instead, hearing the scurry of rats as they scrambled for it. Grave filed the information away for later.

For the time being though, there were more important things to do. Now, which pocket? His massive hands resumed their search, darting between the inner surfaces of his coat, and fetching out objects almost at random. A piece of string? Usable, but no. An unused ticket to an opera that had closed two hundred years before? An antique silver cow creamer? How had that got in there?

Grave’s movements grew more frantic as footsteps came closer. They were a woman’s footsteps, light and fast, with the click of heels striking concrete. That was good. Even though Elizabeth Peters took the same route back from her work each evening, it was better to be certain about these things.

It would have been good, at least, if he could just find the right pocket. A tulip bulb? No. A pair of reading spectacles that weren’t even his? This was getting embarrassing.

She came round the corner right on time. Thirty years old, attractive, though looking worn out from a day spent planning marketing strategies. Elizabeth Peters was huddled in the jacket of her business suit against the evening chill. She didn’t even look across to where Grave stood. Everything was perfect, or should have been. At this rate, he was going to have to improvise, and the foremost Huntsman of the Courts working with… he looked down… an expired library card, just wouldn’t look right.

Elizabeth Peters was past him now, making her way along the side street. Much further and he’d have to go with what he had. One more try. Grave’s hand dipped into another pocket and he smiled as his fingers closed around the hilt of a knife.

‘Ah, finally,’ he muttered, loudly enough that Elizabeth Peters turned, startled that she’d walked past someone without noticing. The movement meant she was just in time to meet the sweep of the knife as it slashed across, throat high. She held her hands to her neck for a moment, her eyes wide with shock, before her knees buckled.

Grave caught Elizabeth Peters as she fell, lowering her carefully to the ground and watching as the light started to fade from her eyes.

‘Well,’ he said amiably as he stood, ‘that was almost a complete cock up. Still, all’s well that ends well.’

Cleaning the knife, he resolved to make a special note of which pocket he put it in this time. Grave walked to the mouth of the street as casually as someone the size of a small giant could, checking that no one would be running to Elizabeth Peters’ aid. That sort of thing was always annoying. About halfway there Grave stopped, looking around, and then sniffed as something came to him on the breeze. He sniffed again, just to make sure. His broad forehead wrinkled in puzzlement.

‘Another one?’

The Central Figure

2011-12-14T15:54:00.000-08:00

I'd like to share with you an experience from a few years back. I was having a drink with a few friends (does it still count as 'having a drink' when said drink is non-alcoholic? I think so. It's more about the situation, and anyway, most of them were drinking). This was, as it happens, also the evening that happened to spark a whole clutch of zombie soft furnishing stories for me, so those who remember it will know that it really was a while ago.

I happened to mention to one of my friends that I quite liked the work of Tom Holt. To this, she replied that she didn't really see the point of reading him because Terry Pratchett was out there. This friend was not, I should point out, some kind of weirdo. She was certainly an avid reader. She just didn't see the point in reading more than one comic fantasy author.

It's a point that has stuck with me, because I have heard stories of exactly the same conversation occurring with publishers, but what interests me here is the either/or nature of the reasoning. Is there something about books, or about the genre, that suggests reading one author means not reading another? Is it something unique to the genre, or has anyone else come across instances of it elsewhere?
Or is it simply that some authors occupy such a central place in their genres that everyone else comes off to potential readers as merely a copyist?

It's an intriguing thought, particularly for someone who is going to be published in that genre come January (there are no giant turtles in my work, but hopefully you will forgive me that). I'd guess though that it's also a relevant thought for plenty of other people out there. After all, we all need to provide people with a way to understand that they should read our stuff as well as the most well known person in our field (it's at this point that I'd like to suggest that the way Tom Holt switched from those almost Pratchettesque front covers to strange minimalist ones may have played a role for him. It's not that they were ever that similar in terms of writing).

Or perhaps we should be asking ourselves a different question: how do we become that central figure? Hmm... in my case it might involve locking a number of other authors in cupboards somewhere. Just excuse me for a moment, would you?

Regression to the Mean

2011-12-11T16:30:00.000-08:00

In which I almost entirely mis-apply a statistical concept to make a point about writing. I'll point out right now that although I'm quite interested in statistics, much of my knowledge of them was obtained through the medium of cricket. My knowledge of regression to the mean, specifically, through an article by Gideon Haigh on freakish early career averages. The notion, as I understand it, is that over time the average of an expanding set of data is likely to become closer to any general average. Things become more averagely average as they go on, if you like. Also, anyone touted as the new Don Bradman will probably suffer a string of ducks to bring them back to the realms of mere mortals.

Why does this have any relevance to writing? Because of series, of course. Think of all those long series out there. Think how wonderful the first books were. How exciting. How different. Now think of the later books. They might not be bad, exactly, but they do tend to be far less original. They come back to the pack in so many cases. Why is that? Well, the first reason is that often the author isn't writing something they have been incredibly inspired to write, with all the unique plot elements that come from that. They're working more from the craft of writing. There's nothing wrong with that. Not at all. But it means they're less likely to come out with something new.

So those of us with series in our heads should probably think long and hard about them before writing the next book. I'm not saying avoid it. I'm just suggesting that we should only ever write that sequel if there is genuinely something we want to say with it that sets it apart. Otherwise, we're just drifting back, and I'm sure your writing deserves so much more than that.

Twelve Things to get the Villain who has Everything

2011-12-09T04:03:00.000-08:00

A new and improved robot of doom. This may cause some conflict with previous models. Please dispose of your old robots of doom responsibly.
Piranha. Yes, you got him them last year, but villains aren't very good at looking after their pets, and so need frequent replacements.
A small, glowing rock. It doesn't matter if it actually does anything or not. Either way, it will still become an essential part of the villain's schemes for years to come.
A collection of minions. Hireable at any good theatrical agent. Though mysteriously, they seem to refer to them as 'extras' for some reason.
One of those certificates where you get to name a star or a planet or something. That way, they can say that at least they've taken over a world this year.
Bilge pumps. Those secret sea bases tend to be quite leaky.
Evil Trivial Pursuit. Yes, all Trivial Pursuit is technically evil, but generally it doesn't feature categories such as 'Famous Assassinations', 'Secret Bases' and 'Mad Science'.
Five golden rings, each inscribed on the inside, with one designed to rule them all.
A grooming voucher for the inevitable white cat (because long haired cats take a lot of looking after beyond simply stroking them while you plot)
Evil plotter's fridge magnets. Simply rearrange words such as 'moon base' and 'laser' on any handy fridge to come up with thousands of evil plots.
Voice coaching. Those villainous laughs don't come from nowhere you know.
A genetically enhanced super partridge sitting on a long range missle disguised as a tree.

Medieval Forgery.

2011-12-07T02:36:00.003-08:00

Another thought for anyone writing anything vaguely medieval in flavour. This one is about forgery, which probably seems like a strange thing to focus on, except that it had a huge role to play through much of the middle ages, and is well worth understanding if you want to know more about the way medieval societies fitted together. I’m focussing on English examples here, but there are plenty of others.

The first thing to understand about forgery in medieval England is that there was quite a lot of it. As a historian, you come across forged or incongruous charters not all the time, but certainly often enough to make it clear that the practice went on. You find charters claiming to be older than the handwriting says they could be, seals that have nothing to do with the charters, and all kinds of other fun stuff. There are a couple of reasons for this.

One is the importance of charters and grants in that society. From the ownership of land to rights to dispense justice and collect taxes, all kinds of rights were granted to individuals and organisations through those centuries. You find Beverley Minster’s right to send just a single banner to the king’s battles, for example, alongside small grants of the right to take rabbits from the local warrens, and much broader freedoms from prosecution by outsiders for those living around particular monasteries.

Rights were not assumed to be automatic (though the law codes of even quite early kings do enshrine certain principles we can recognise today) but were instead given out. So were exemptions. The king made laws, or the pope made decrees, and immediately half the most wealthy people in the country wanted exemptions from castle building, or having to live at the religious institutions they were supposed to, or whatever.

Precedent was also vital. People, even kings, respected ancient rights. If you had a charter from Aethalstan in perpetuity granting a whole series of rights over the local area as Beverley and Ripon minsters did, subsequent kings tended to back those rights, even in legal cases against their archbishops as happened at Ripon in 1228. The thing is, of course, the charters I’m referring to in this instance were both forged, probably sometime in the twenty-five years before that case. People and institutions forged in the middle ages because it could re-shape their relationships with authority.

They also did it because it was easy. In the absence of modern forensic techniques, getting away with it was much easier. Moreover, while kings, archbishops and the rest started keeping collections of what they had handed out, there generally wasn’t one central record of every grant. People accepted too, that older charters would be copied and rewritten (my assertion of forgery above is actually only one point of view, but it seems like the most probable one, given that Beverley and Ripon suddenly acquired identical charters at the moment they most needed them). Even handwriting made things easier, with literacy being lower and handwriting being more standard as a result.

A note on forging coins. It happened. It happened a lot, despite some fairly severe penalties. Two things worth bearing in mind though. A multiplicity of different currencies could often find itself being used in different places and at different times, making ‘odd’ currency the norm, or alternatively, making someone with foreign coin seem to be a forger. Perhaps more interestingly, there wasn’t one centralised mint in England, but rather, specific individuals were given the right to mint coins on behalf of the crown. Or they assumed it. During the Anarchy of King Stephen in the twelfth century, at least one of the barons in Yorkshire started minting his own coins simply because he was the only real authority in the area.

All this is worth thinking about the next time you write a medieval fantasy, not just because it gives you all kinds of ways of causing trouble, but because I think it says something important about the way power worked in medieval England.

A week of thinking

2011-12-05T08:07:00.000-08:00

It’s been a fun sort of week. I’ve been kept busy on the writing front, since including my own work, I’m working on around five novels at different stages at the moment. That invariably seems to spark the question among people of whether I get confused and start writing in the tone of one novel while working on another. I have to say that the answer to that is no. Partly, it’s because I’m quite careful about that kind of thing, partly, it’s because novels have more overlap than people like to think anyway, but mostly, it’s because ideas for me tend to have their own distinct spaces in my thoughts, making them hard to confuse.

On my novel front, since it comes out in January, I’m winding up to do the promotion for it. Obviously, I’m not just going to batter people with its existence on this blog, because I’m sure that’s not what people want from this space, but I am thinking of doing a bit of a blogfest in its honour (something reasonably straightforward, given that most of us will just be kicking off the year, more details when I’ve thought of them). Also, if anyone has any good tips for maximising publicity without making people go ‘oh, not another online author’ and switching off, I’d be grateful to hear them.

Fencing on Thursday featured a brief bout of left handedness from me, primarily because I was a bit bored, but also as an experiment. No, I’m not turning into a lefty, but I do find that with this, and with lots of other things, it pays to have ways to get more out of your practise. One of those ways is occasionally to do something very odd and difficult (like doing an activity with the wrong hand) to force yourself to think about what you’re doing more.

I’m re-reading Toby Frost’s Wrath of the Lemming Men at the moment. One of the great things about books with plenty of humour in is that they tend to support multiple re-reads, just so that you can pick out more of the jokes and references (though a good knowledge of sci-fi and stereotypical British-ness will be needed with this one).

My Cover Part Two

2011-12-02T08:33:00.000-08:00

This is the official cover for my novel Court of Dreams. I think it looks rather nice.

Where does the treasure go?

2011-11-30T15:40:00.001-08:00

Heroes, as we know, require treasure, yet there are obvious problems with that. They receive it by the bucket load, yet there they are at the start of the next adventure needing more. What is happening to it in the meantime? Some possibilities:

1. They’ve been paying it into a pension scheme that hasn’t been doing well, what with the economic problems caused when the dragons started just sitting on their wealth again rather than investing it.
2. They put it all on red in the kingdom’s largest casino, which seemed like a good bet until they realised that was not ‘mindlessly bloody slaughter’ night after all.
3. Since traditional barbarian skills don’t include much in the way of tax accountancy, they might be paying it all straight to the treasury as a way of making up for past defaults (and robberies).
4. It might have been turned into small cupcakes by passing leprechauns eager to ensure that the value of the gold at the end of their rainbows keeps appreciating.
5. A very large team of pickpockets might have been very busy for about half an hour.
6. They might be statutorily obliged to spend ninety percent or more on wine, women and song. Which could be a problem for your tea-total and tone deaf barbarian.
7. Large queues of charitable organisations might form the moment a quest is successfully undertaken. After all, without someone paying for a new temple roof, how will the priests of Xxllzgl ever get back to their traditional pastimes of sacrificing people, bringing reigns of terror, and winning scrabble competitions?

The Middle Ages. Things People Forget.

2011-11-28T04:12:00.001-08:00

If you’re writing fantasy set in a fantasy world rather than a modern setting, more than half the time, you’re writing about the middle ages. By that, I mean that people’s default setting for fantasy is knights and castles, peasants and women with those hats that look like ice cream cones. It’s chainmail and plate armour. It’s long swords and long bows. Even when they’re not specifically trying to be historical, they’re using historical elements. If you do, then here are a few random things worth remembering about the Middle Ages. There are many more, but I've forgotten them.

1. There’s no such thing as the Middle Ages. The term is a renaissance one designed to demonstrate their link to classical antiquity. It’s a way of saying ‘there’s us, there’s the Romans, and then there’s all this stuff in the middle that isn’t important.’
2. There’s really no such thing as the Middle Ages. Remember that what happened in eighth century Ireland is not what happened in fourteenth century Tuscany. What we think of as the Middle Ages is firstly a designation covering some serious geography, but also some major amounts of time (roughly 400-1500 in England, so Edward the Confessor is closer to us than those at the very start were to those at the end).
3. Knights were not initially all that noble. Knights were relatively minor blokes on horseback, a step or five up from peasants, certainly, but not automatically in the league of the barons. Those only adopted knightly habits over time.
4. ‘Chivalry’ is complicated and possibly illusory. In the early years, ‘the chivalry’ meant the blokes who rode horses (knights) rather than any code of behaviour. In fact, what was considered standard behaviour for knights generally wasn’t that nice.
5. The Church was only connected and monolithic in theory. In practice, local clergy may not have had that good an idea of what they were doing in many cases. Heresy often wasn’t just an opposition to the established church. Sometimes, it was just that people genuinely didn’t know what they were ‘meant’ to believe.
6. That said, there were plenty of international connections around, and the Church was a major part of that. If we take my beloved (ish) minster churches, even in the twelfth century, they had a great many foreign canons holding prebends. Of course, how many of them actually showed up is more debateable.
7. Kings did not sit in castles waiting for people to show up. Mostly, they processed around their domains, demanding hospitality and reminding people that they were in charge. The same is true of bishops, barons, and many others.
8. Things did not run according to a neat feudal system. Instead, they ran according to a complex series of relationships, scraps of authority, and moments of beating people over the head with swords.

Ideas

2011-11-27T13:38:00.001-08:00

One of the biggest things we need to do as writers is evaluate ideas. We all have ideas, whether good, bad or indifferent. Many of us have too many. The key thing is sorting them out into some kind of order, and working out which are worth giving up days, or in the case of novels months, of our time to. I don’t claim to have all the answers when it comes to this, but I think I do have a few of the right questions.

Question one- What is the idea? Often, we are distracted not by ideas, but by the ghosts of ideas. Faint flickerings of possible ideas work to grab our attention, but when we look at them head on, they aren’t really there. To find out if they actually are, try writing them down clearly and succinctly. It separates the real ideas from the general feelings.

Question two- Has it been done? Yes, obviously all ideas have been done, but some have been done more than others. What you need to ask yourself is whether you are exploring vampires, angels, or whatever solely because there have been a lot of books about it recently, or because you genuinely feel you can contribute something.

Question three- Can you see where it might go? Good ideas will help you to generate other ideas. They will serve as starting points, not things complete unto themselves. If half an hour after having your idea you still have one line rather than a whole page of brainstorming, you obviously aren’t that inspired by it. Which brings us to…

Quest four- Are you excited? You only have so much time, which means that you can only write so many things. Committing time to one thing means not committing it to others, so you have to be sure that the ones you decide to work on are the ones that really excite you. Trust me, that excitement will come through in your writing.

A Beginning

2011-11-24T16:14:00.000-08:00

I've known how my next novel starts for some time, because I've had three goes at it so far. Here's to number four. It starts like this:

One of the more curious things about… well, things, is the number of those things that begin in pubs. Not the biggest things, obviously. Universes only do so, for example, if they happen to be quite small, and exceptionally alcoholic, ones. For things more generally, however, pubs are traditional.
This pub, in the middle of the small town of New Wrexford was called the Frog and Spigot. It sat sandwiched between the town’s theatre, which appeared from the outside to suffer from a typically theatrical excess of architecture, and a small firm of architects, which didn’t. The landlord generally found it quite a profitable place to be, so long as he remembered not to offer any credit to anyone about to wander off on an extended tour of the Scottish Play in Madagascar. Or anyone else, for that matter.

Incidentally, I have a short story coming out sometime at the beginning of next week, in the new magazine The Empress of Mars, which is run by the ever busy Alex Wolfe. It's called 'The Green Planet' and features the words 'Martian tourist industry'. Hopefully, I don't need to say much more than that.

2011-11-23T03:37:00.000-08:00

One thing you find a lot in fantasy literature is that the heroes have to stop off for information. This usually involves a wizard, but there are plenty of other options:

The traditional hermit. Hermits are surprisingly easy to find in medieval literature, showing up all the time to help people out with tricky quests, circuit diagrams and so forth. So why not have one show up to help your heroes out? They're in somewhere unsuitable, such as a modern supermarket, you say? Well, even hermits have to do their shopping sometime.
Have a conveniently located citizens' advice bureau in the middle of that magic forest. Why? Typical government thinking, that's why (no, I don't know what sort of typical government thinking either).
Ask a rather uncooperative magic mirror. I do this a lot in stories. In fact, one shows up as a rather amusing minor character in Court of Dreams.
Demand it from a particularly legalistic group of baddies under the rules of full disclosure.
Overhear it in an inn. Or better yet, find the bloke whose job it is to whisper such things in inns and make him tell you.
Defeat dread powers in an unfathomable contest (or Scrabble, though this is only doable if the proper names of ancient Things are not allowed)
Ask a wizard's apprentice, who is the one who has actually been out to get the information.

Things to Deal With

2011-11-21T15:47:00.000-08:00

When writing, there are, inevitably, things that we have to come to terms with. At least if we want to stay remotely sane. Some of these things (like the part where we don’t have the talent of our favourite writer) will be big. Some of these things (like the universe’s ability to spontaneously generate paperclips) will be small. Here are just a few:

1. We don’t create in a vacuum. At least not without a spacesuit. Very few ideas are massively, hugely original, and waiting around for one that is unlike any other idea ever can cause significant delays. Better to get started and trust to your talents to make it unique.
2. Someone will hate your novel. Novels I have ghostwritten have received five star reviews. Novels I have ghostwritten have received one star reviews. Often, the same novel is involved. You cannot control how people will react to a piece. You can only put out the best work you can and hope that it is enough, then try to honestly assess what happened afterwards.
3. You will not always meet your writing word count goals. This is okay.
4. Your novel will not be perfect when you send it out, despite your efforts. There will always, always be some niggling little thing. If you wait for it to be perfect, you will wait a long time.
5. There will be things you dislike as you write them, but which you will like later. The reverse is also true.
6. You will never be able to prevent yourself from justifying a raid on the house’s biscuit supplies mid chapter.
7. The novel will never look quite the same on paper as in your head.
8. People will get the names and looks of your characters wrong, then insist that you have gotten them wrong.
9. Big ideas written down after dreams will never make sense in the morning light.
10. Any word learned from a word a day thing will find a way to show up at least five times in one paragraph.

2011-11-18T15:50:00.003-08:00

I should just sleep to ease the shadows’ ache
Surrender flesh to sweet embrace of night
But yet I sit, meandering here awake
As tiredness brings a different sort of sight

That sees the world through eyes too tired to care
And skips across the stumbling blocks of day
As though the universe were never there
And life, unlike my thoughts, will never stray

Too tired to sleep, I sit, and stare and wait
As everything around me fades to clear
In dreams half caught by my unsleeping bait
That will, by morning light, have disappeared.

2011-11-18T15:49:00.001-08:00

Made into a thing of silence
Of stillness, wrapped against you
Filling up less space, and less
With every movement in the dark

Every indraw of your breath
Claiming this quiet room as yours
My spaces yielding as I do
Fading to a happy second place

A spot from which to watch
The rhythmic rise and fall
Of crisp while sheets
Staying as close as me

It's not easy being small

2011-11-16T04:43:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed how fantasy quests always seem to be aimed at big people? Oh, you get the odd hobbit and dwarf roped into quests to mount something or other, but frankly, they're not that far off normal size. Big enough to swing a battleaxe in either hand, in the case of most dwarves. What about quests for the really little people, like gnomes, pixies, and so on? Here are a few ideas, taking into account a few of the differences in scale:

An epic journey to the other end of a garden to retrieve something from the fabled Patio of Doom.
A quest to slay the great armoured beast (a tortoise. Note to tortoise lovers, it doesn't have to be a successful quest).
A cunning theft, which works for the simple reason that our heroes fit into the evil wizard's pockets as he goes back into his home.
An even more cunning theft, infiltrating somewhere through a mighty labyrinth that might or might not be a collection of mouse holes.
A traditional quest for someone hobbit sized, involving a magical ring (which is about the size of a hula hoop on a very small fairy)
Fighting a giant, troll, or other creature that would seem very big even to the rest of us. The first stage is to get its attention and convince it that yes, you do really want to fight.
Protesting against the clearance of your ancient ancestral lands (someone's allotment)

My Process Writing Court of Dreams

2011-11-14T15:48:00.000-08:00

A post about re-using, or combining, ideas that probably also gives you a few insights into my process as a writer (if anyone in their right mind should want such a thing). Specifically, this is a post about the rather strange process by which my novel Court of Dreams came into existence and became the version of the story now trapped in between covers by Pink Narcissus Press and awaiting release.

The basic process, as far as I’m aware, should go something like “plot the story, write the story, edit the story into shape”. That is at least vaguely what happened with the final version (although even there, plotting took place part way through). The thing is, it’s not how the story as a whole came into being.

Court of Dreams is in fact a bit of a mash up of ideas. Way back when, before I had even completed my urban fantasy novels Searching and Witch hunt, I had a go at a novel which did not get far enough to acquire a name. I knew I wanted it to have fairy folk, and the real world, and possibly something about finding out that you’re something you aren’t. In fact, without ever having read any urban faerie, that was what I wanted to do. So I started to write a story about a young woman targeted by fairy assassins for being something special. It had an evil fairy princess, accompanied by a big, thuggish henchman. It started off in a university, largely because I started writing it in a university library. It ran into problems, and I did what I always do at times like this. I deleted it.

I had another two goes at it. Many of the same elements reappeared each time, but some differences cropped up. The MC went from being a young woman, to a young man, to a young woman again. I picked up a couple of jokes about things like architecture. I started to think about themes of family and duty. I still deleted it.

We still aren’t up to Searching and Witch Hunt, incidentally. They came afterwards, and grew partly out of a second project I worked on, called Grey Knight. This was urban fantasy, with a faerie theme again, doing the typical thing of a supernatural detective type solving a strange case. The detective in this case was meant to be a human taken by the fey hundreds of years back and kept alive by their whim. That doesn’t matter so much as the fact that it introduced me to my vaguely Celtic sounding fairy queen of choice, as well as revisiting notions of the greater good and duty in a plot that was remarkably similar to my first one. I also came up with the idea of having lots and lots of supernatural Courts rather than just the usual ones (many other people beat me to it, but I didn’t know). I actually got to the end of that one. I may even have touted it around. I forget. It certainly didn’t get any interest, for the simple reason that it wasn’t very good.

Then I wrote the urban fantasy series that can be found through my sidebar, if you really want to. I wrote it essentially because it seemed like what everybody ought to be writing at the time, which is why it’s not a true reflection of what I do. I sold it, and got on with other things. More to the point, I finally decided that I wanted to be funny.

But what to be funny on? I didn’t have a plot. I didn’t have characters. I briefly considered doing a funny urban fantasy of the same type as Searching, but with gags. I’m glad I didn’t, but that idea got me thinking about whether I could rework Grey Knight with jokes, and that in turn got me thinking about that old, discarded idea I wanted another go at. It was at about that point that I realised they both used essentially the same idea.

So I stripped it back and rebuilt it, using favourite parts where it seemed like fun. I kept my fairy queen. I kept the idea of her having a favourite advisor, though I changed her considerably. I kept my evil princess and my thug, though he grew into just about my favourite character ever. I took my old, defunct idea, redid it in a completely new way, and came up with a book I really love.

So what's my point? Maybe it's that ideas we love stick with us. Maybe it's that the way you choose to tell a story is what really matters. Or maybe it's just the power of recycling, even when it comes to stories. Which begs the question of what old ideas you have lying around, really.

Alternatives to Spellbooks.

2011-11-11T08:49:00.000-08:00

Spell scrolls, spell tablets, spell e-books. These are just the spell book in a slightly different technology. Though I'm sure some wizards will still go on about the smell of the virgins blood on the pages and the lovely feel of the vellum, plus weight and space considerations aren't such a big deal when you have apprentices around to carry things.
Have frogs that turn into the relevant spell forms with the right spell, which will presumably be stored on another frog and... well, you'll need a lot of frogs.
Have some spelling bees. Yes, that's right, specially trained bees that fly in formation to make mystic runes. Effects of eating their honey may vary.
Have all the reminders for your spells written on the back of your hand. Possibly one for wizards finding themselves under sudden exam conditions.
Spell words attached to a mechanical manservant by way of fridge magnets. Some elements of this may be hard to get hold of. Oh, and mechanical manservants aren't that common either.
For maximum permanency, carve them into a big stone wall that definitely isn't going anywhere ever, except when the Council of Mages points out that you forgot to get planning permission.
For mages with castles in the clouds, balloons, or other flying machines, cut them into chalk cliffs to be viewed from above, or grow stands of trees in the right shapes.
Have a single long piece of cloth on which every spell is written. Of course, it will need to be unwound every time you need to check an invocation.
Find a creature with a famously good memory (such as an... no it's gone again) and get it to remember things, then communicate with it through a magical device which is perfectly safe, because you put it down just... um...
Use small pieces of jewellery as physical reminders, though more powerful mages may end up clanking a little as they move.

Spell Books

2011-11-08T15:32:00.001-08:00

Why do wizards always have spell books? It’s something that has just struck me as slightly odd. They always seem to have the same kind of big, leather bound tomes, which raises some fairly obvious thoughts (to me. I’m resigned to the fact that what I consider obvious strikes other people as slightly odd).

First, where do they get them? The decline of the independent book shop (and yes, it is a phenomenon that has spread to fantasy kingdoms) surely means that it is becoming harder by the day. All right, so maybe they send off for them, but really, we’re talking about some quite specialised bookbinding skills here. Particularly when you consider the effort involved in preserving these things. Speaking as a man who has had to sit on hard chairs in archives while the books got cushions, I know what I’m talking about.

Second, are they available as ebooks? Possibly not so applicable to medieval fantasy (though watch out for those magic mirror readers) but surely perfectly all right for anything urban fantasy related. Though I should point out that my urban fantasy series featured a witch who not only had the obligatory big leather bound books, but actually lived in an independent bookshop.

Third, with these books written by Things from Beyond, and various other capitalisations, do said things acquire their book deals in the normal ways? Does Xlarglpop the Destroyer have an agent, and if so, does that mean it will be postponing the destruction of the universe until after its next book signing?

Also, isn’t it worth experimenting with other approaches to aiding your memory for these things? Post it notes, for example, or carefully trained talking birds (I sense a list coming on). Why is it always the big, leather bound book?

Fantasy Priests

2011-11-06T11:52:00.001-08:00

A quick post for anyone writing anything vaguely medieval. Please get your priests right. Perhaps this is just something I notice, having written a comparative history of three medieval religious institutions as part of my PhD, but in a lot of historical fiction, historical fantasy and so forth, people don’t always seem to use their priests in ways that are remotely historically accurate. Here are just a few things to watch for:

Calling every religious figure a ‘priest’. Yes, I did it above, but there were canons and vicars, chantry priests and monks and friars and… you get the idea. Some will only be appropriate for particular time periods (no Dominican Friars in the early middle ages) while each one had a specialised and slightly different role to play in medieval life.

Not making your religious figures important enough. If you have a major lord, then why would he be hanging around with a very minor priest and treating him as an equal? For that, bring in a bishop, or even an archbishop. Remember too that for monasteries, the abbot often connected with the world much more than individual monks.

Remember that the landscape changed. Very broadly speaking Anglo Saxon England featured many more general purpose religious institutions than post-Conquest England. There was a focus on what are now termed minsters, and the system of parishes was not well defined for several hundred years. Post Conquest, we have the rise of new monastic orders, the birth of the friars, and enough other stuff to make it clear you can’t treat the whole thing as one big lump.

Remember that clerics had a role to play. They weren’t just shut up in churches. Noblemen retained minor clerics to do the medieval equivalent of desk jobs. Canons often found themselves seconded to their archbishops. Archdeacons had a constant job wandering around broad rural areas dispensing canon law. Don’t ignore them.

Worlds

2011-11-02T16:49:00.000-07:00

The thing with magical worlds is that they can show up almost anywhere. Here are just a few of the places they might, if you aren’t careful:

1. Let’s start with the classic. At the back of wardrobes. This can be a problem for anyone involved in removals and/or the antiques trade. In fact, certain antiques dealers might well take steps to deal with anything that came out.
2. Under the bed. There’s a reason there are monsters there, and it’s mostly because some bloody idiot has stuck a piece of bedroom furniture right over their back garden.
3. A crack in the wall. As I believe I illustrated perfectly well in this old blogfest.
4. Just on the other side of a locked gate, to which the key has recently been found, in preparation for the renovations of the ‘vacant’ area on the other side.
5. Just down the road that your Sat Nav tells you really is the perfect short cut. After all, these things are never actually short cuts.
6. In someone’s pocket, under a selection of sweet wrappers.
7. In a book, accessible by reading it, and possibly very dangerous if the same principle applies to the very hungry caterpillar (I was watching a wildlife thing that happened to feature fluffy bear caterpillars earlier. I can’t remember the book mentioning anything about a fourteen year lifecycle)
8. Overlayered with our world, and accessed just by some ordinary action that is far too easy to be really safe. Getting back might be harder.

Historical Pitfalls

2011-10-31T12:28:00.001-07:00

When doing history, as with almost anything else, there is a specialised body of theory that goes with it at higher levels. This is a body of thought that can be overlooked by people looking for a simple historical setting for their novel, or just looking to include a few bits and pieces here and there. That’s fine, but there are still certain theoretical pitfalls to watch out for. Things that will, in historical terms at least, be the equivalent of a big neon sign saying ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’. Politicians are particularly prone to them, being particularly fond of the now extremely out-dated Whig view of history. Here are a few of my favourites, to avoid where you can:

Historical Inevitability. Please understand, the past did not inevitably lead to this point. It was not a neat progression along an arc defined by your philosophy, whether that is the Marxist view of a defined series of stages towards a communist state, or the Whig view of an inevitable progression towards parliamentary democracy.

Indeed, the whole notion of progress can be a bit iffy, because progress implies progression towards a defined point. What point? Also, we must remember that things can be, and have been, forgotten. China, for example, largely forgot about the mechanical clock for several centuries. Don’t assume an inevitable rise of civilization/technology/little fluffy bunnies.

The notion of a single, big, easily finished off history. Thank Lord Acton for this one. In the nineteenth century, he and his fellows mostly did big history of the kings and dates kind (or History, as people tend to call it). Working from that, he came to the not unreasonable conclusion that, since there was only so much History to go around, and since the job of the historian was to get to the truth, eventually, they would. Probably by the end of his century, as it happened, leaving the remainder of the millennium off for golf so long as you kept up as you went along. Postmodernist thought about a multiplicity of histories put paid to that one, I’m afraid. Also I don’t like golf.

That rather peculiar reading of said postmodernist thought that effectively renders all history no more than mere opinion, and suggests that we might as well all go home. Yes, every historian is interpreting, and occupying a point of view. They might even be creating any sense of meaning for themselves, but that doesn’t render everything impossible. Nor does it render every interpretation of the evidence equally valid.

The idea that big history doesn’t matter. I made fun of Acton above, but there’s a danger in going to the other extreme, as some cultural historians do, and ignoring History of that type in favour of very small things that just happen to interest them. First, without an understanding of major events going on around them, it is impossible to understand those smaller points. Secondly, I happen to take quite a narrative approach to history, and I believe that it only becomes relevant as an act of communication. So if you’re doing something no one will ever want to listen to, it defeats some of the object. Worse, it can create a distorted picture of the past, where the deliberate examination of the less important can appear to reduce the place of a more important aspect (of course, there’s a whole argument about the notion of importance there).

So what does all this theory mean for writers? Possibly not a huge amount. As I said before, you can go a long way without ever touching on this stuff. There are some broad lessons to draw from it, though. My hatred of the notion of destiny in novels stems from the problems with inevitability, for example. Perhaps you will, at least be better placed now to spot one of these ideas if it should crop up in your writing.

History for Writers

2011-10-29T08:46:00.001-07:00

It’s always fun seeing the number of things people write with a vaguely historical basis. It’s not just the overtly historical fiction stuff either. Quite a lot of fantasy does alternate history. What I’d like to do, therefore, is provide two or three quick posts on the art of history for writers, drawing on the lessons I’ve learnt from my PhD in the stuff. We’ll start with a few options for doing historical research if you need some for your next project, then go on from there.

So you want to write something historical? Where do you start? The first stage is to probably pin down an era and location. That means some loose background reading until you find something that catches your eye. Here’s a clue: if you find that hard work, go into a different genre. You don’t have to like reading history, but if you don’t, why are you thinking about writing historical fiction? Look for what really grabs you. If you aren’t passionate about it, your readers won’t be.

Don’t just dive in. That’s a sure way to get yourself confused, put off, or trapped in highly technical arguments about herring renders in Domesday Book (for which, see J. Cambell, “Domesday Herrings” in C. Harper-Bill (ed) East-Anglia’s History (Boydell, Woodbridge, 2002).) First, work out what you need to know. Do you need to know specialised details of a particular area, or are you looking for more general information? Do you know which books or articles you should be looking for? It is often worth starting with the most recent general textbook you can find, and then working through the stuff it mentions in the footnotes as appropriate.

Curiously, that isn’t necessarily a question of interest. Yes, by all means read whatever catches your eye, but you will need some bits more than others. Use the general book to work out what you are going to need in detail, whether it’s more about societal structures, particular battles, or simply articles of dress. Make a checklist and tick things off as you go.

Don’t rely on purely online information. Online history can be all right, but it often isn’t. At best, much of it isn’t well referenced, so you’re only getting part of an argument. At worst, it’s out of date, incorrect, or deliberately lying. Wikipedia should never, never be anything more than a very rough outline. Even with paper sources, there are often significant arguments going on (historians are naturally argumentative) so you need to make sure you’re getting both sides. Try to be up to date.
Ideally, you want to get access to either your local university library or a specialist academic library, which isn’t actually that hard in most cases. Local libraries are good for most things, but the moment you need to do in depth research on a very specific period, they often simply don’t have the resources available.

Finally, don’t be afraid to ask. You’ll be amazed how eager some academics are to bore you with their latest theories (sorry, help you to understand things better) if you only send them a nice email. The worst that can happen is that they delete it. Many universities even offer handy academic finding search engines to let people find exactly what they need. Oh, and if anyone wants to know more about my little corner of the middle ages, I’ll probably be happy to help, if I can still remember it all.

In the event of a Last Battle

2011-10-26T03:17:00.001-07:00

Things to remember for the Last Battle between the forces of good and the evil overlord’s Horde of Doom:

1. Arrive early. Finding parking space can be difficult once all the goblins show up. Also both sides tend to operate a ‘last one there gets beheaded’ approach to timekeeping.
2. Remember to take a packed lunch. Oh, the forces of good say that it will be fully catered, but remember that those halflings, hobbits and gnomes of theirs can eat five times their own bodyweight at a sitting. As for eating anything the forces of evil have dished up…
3. All participants must report to the armourer’s tent for an equipment check before the start of the battle. Remember that it takes time to measure armour spikes and test their pointiness, not to mention establishing whether that vorpal sword of yours fits in with the latest health and safety regulations.
4. Standing at the front is not generally ideal. Especially not if you are right next to a hero. Remember that it is always the people next to heroes who are hit by the fateful arrow intended for them.
5. Standing at the back, however, means that when the evil overlord springs his vile ambush (or the heroes execute their inventive and virtuous surprise assault) you are suddenly at the front. Avoid standing there too.
6. Oh, and the middle. The middle tends to be where giant boulders and dragonfire hit. In fact, avoid standing generally.
7. Remember that unless you are one of the designated Major Characters, you are not to do anything to significantly turn the tide of the battle. All battles are to be sorted out by duels between those major characters. You and the other ten thousand assorted creatures are just there to stop them feeling lonely. Failure to comply might mean the entire battle having to be re-run.
8. Remember to check the ultimateness of the battle and act accordingly. Remember that those on the side of evil must turn and run half way through any battle designated ‘properly ultimate, we mean it, honest’ by the referees, while those on the side of good must not succeed in any battle designated a major reverse.
9. Avoid taking a book to read. You will only get mud on it.

Sport Martial Arts

2011-10-25T04:16:00.000-07:00

A lot of martial arts people profess to have no love for the sporting versions of their arts, but I am not one of them. There are arguments against them, raised from time to time either by traditionalists looking to preserve a pure form of an art, or by modern self-defence practitioners looking to highlight how well their own systems fill a particular gap. The arguments against sport arts usually run something like this:

1. They ban many moves on the grounds of safety that would be core components of a self defence system. Those moves dramatically change the game (for example, biting makes BJJs triangle choke much harder to pull off, while the rear choke is somewhat less perfect against someone who eye gouges).
2. They do little or nothing to preserve the traditions and respect of an art.
3. They narrow the scope of an art to only those aspects covered by the sport, so that Taekwondo has gone from an art with lots of kicks to an almost purely kicking art, Judo has lost touch with the strikes that used to be part of its kata, and so forth.
4. A sporting competition neither starts nor ends in the same way as a real fight.

To a certain extent, all of these observations are valid ones. Most sport arts do not cover the use of or defence against potentially very dangerous techniques. They are not a perfect recreation of a real fight. They do have comparatively narrow scopes. And it is certainly true that some sports types can be very unpleasant. However, having done some work with traditional arts, sporting arts, and more modern systems, I think there are also some advantages to the sport ones that need to be taken into account.

1. Because they work within relatively safe parameters, most sport arts allow for actual interactive, competitive practise between participants. You have to learn to do the moves on someone who is trying to stop you, in other words. I have felt the difference this makes, and it is huge.
2. While there are some singularly over-competitive and unpleasant people in sport arts, there are plenty in traditional and modern arts too. Most people you meet in sport arts, meanwhile, are genuinely lovely people. I believe it’s called being ‘sporting’.
3. Sport arts often attract younger, fitter people, who are therefore more of a challenge. I found this in my one foray into historical fencing. I’ll say now that I liked the idea of historical fencing, I could see that there was a lot in the moves being used, and the practise was genuinely interactive (plus there were longswords, which is just cool). Sadly, the club I went to was under-populated, and the students there simply did not provide the kind of challenge I could find in most fencing clubs.

Destiny

2011-10-22T14:56:00.001-07:00

Do your characters have destinies? It seems to be fairly common in fantasy fiction, and indeed almost anything where someone has taken the Hero’s Journey a bit literally. Characters come complete with the lingering sense that they are special, the chosen one, the one true pizza delivery boy. Whatever. Is it something worth doing, though? Well, there are arguments both ways, which I will now horribly mangle.

In favour is that it lends a sense of epic scope to the adventure. It tells us quite clearly that this is being played for high stakes, and that not just anybody could do it. It’s a classic trope of fantasy, so you can put in a nod to that by including it, or make fun of it marvellously. It also gives the character the chance to run away from that destiny, only to be led back to it in the classic HJ structure style.

For me, the issue with it is that a grand destiny destroys the idea of the character succeeding through their own efforts. They succeed because they can’t really do otherwise. And because they can’t really fail, there is less of a real feeling of peril that they might. Yes, I know this is fiction, and the promise of a happy ending already does that, but this does it on a level that includes the character rather than just the author and reader. I’ve also blogged before about the kind of message that ‘special’ characters put out, and why I’m not such a fan.

One final worry is what I feel it does to character motivation. A great destiny works fine as a motivation for some characters (everymen out of their depth trying to avoid it and heroes struggling to live up to it both) but what if that isn’t the story you’re telling? Isn’t there a danger that too much destiny will get in the way by telling us who the character ought to be before we know who they are?

Cupboards

2011-10-20T06:42:00.001-07:00

Things someone might find in a chest, cabinet, or other container (based loosely on the contents of any old chest of drawers, kitchen cabinet, etc.):

1. A selection of old and out of date maps and A-Zs, which might or might not be to a lost city (begging the question of what restaurant recommendations for lost restaurants would look like. Could there be such things as lost restaurants? Presumably, they are sought by intrepid parties of critics)
2. Assorted batteries and other power sources that might conceivably include the only working perpetual motion machine anywhere. Or a tiny sun.
3. String. It is a well-known fact that such places generate string, so a particularly magical drawer might spawn a whole string farming industry, or indeed some interesting theories about the stuff.
4. Assorted healing supplies (which depending on the location might be sticking plasters, regeneration rays, or ritual toads)
5. Chutney, fruit cake, and all those other things that people always seem to give other people for no good reason, and which do not go off, thus meaning that they will be present even in kitchen cupboards that have been abandoned for a thousand years. Will they be edible? That rather depends on whether you think they are now.
6. Christmas cards from people you’re sure you don’t know (who may possibly know you only because they are staring in from another dimension)
7. Since everyone seems to keep a torch in a drawer somewhere, why not other handy adventuring supplies, though some rearrangement of the laws of physics may be needed to deal with the ten foot poles.
8. An entire pocket universe, which will make things very awkward if you need to move.

What do you do?

2011-10-17T03:28:00.001-07:00

So, I’ve missed the whole of the Beverley Literature Festival again. It’s getting to be something of a habit with me, based on the twin points of not having the time, and not particularly being a ‘sitting in a room listening to other people talk about their writing’ sort of person. Also, it may have something to do with that word ‘literature’. I’ve never been sure what it means, but I am fairly sure I don’t produce it. I just write stories.

Specifically, I write them in novel and short story form, though I’m starting to wonder if I shouldn’t expand the range of forms I work in. I used to do poetry, while I’d quite like to try my hand at a script at some point, though I have yet to do so. I suspect that reluctance has something to do with the thought that, if there is one approach that is working for you, then it seems strange to jump ship into a completely different form. Yet obviously, there are many writers I like whom it has worked for, from Neil Gaiman to Oscar Wilde. There isn’t just one thing that they ‘do’ unless that thing is, again, telling stories.

Have you ever stopped as a writer to analyse what you habitually do? I’d guess that the majority of us only really do a small number of basic stories, forms and characters. I’d guess that, if you’re anything like me, you’ll find the same ideas and concerns cropping up again and again, while you write in a fairly consistent style. I know I’m saying this as someone who has hopped genres, but I think it’s true, and I don’t think it has to be a bad thing. Recognising what you do consistently is probably a strong step on the road to having a voice that is definitely your own.

Pay it Forward Bloghop

2011-10-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

This is for the pay it forward bloghop, run by Alex and Matthew I must admit to not normally doing bloghops, and if you find yourself here, please don't feel you have to jump straight for the follow button. Have a look around. Hopefully, there will be things you genuinely want on your blog feed. If not, I won't be offended.

The idea here is to link to three blogs I enjoy reading, and which I think you will like too. I've picked three that offer something a bit different, so here they are:

Estella's Revenge
The Standing Invitation
Rachel Green's excerpts blog.

Exit, Pursued by an Author

2011-10-13T08:09:00.001-07:00

When we write, the scenes and chapters we produce have different combinations of characters in them that work to advance the plot. Those characters might start a scene already grouped together, but it is also often the case that they do not, and one or more has to enter. Others might need to leave later on. The entries and exits of characters need to be tightly controlled by you as an author if you are to avoid potential problems. Here are some of the things I think you absolutely have to consider:

1. Who is going to be needed in the chapter? If you can work it out ahead of time, then it becomes much easier to have all the characters around, rather than trying to introduce them at odd points. Are particular characters needed to perform particular actions? Could they conceivably be done by others?
2. Have a good reason for arriving/leaving. People do not go to see one another without a reason (and ‘seeing someone socially’ counts as a reason) so make sure that your characters do. They might need to talk urgently, or might be visiting, or might even genuinely need a cup of sugar. The point is that they need to show up for a better reason than ‘I’m the author and I need them there’ and leave for another reason, even if it’s just that they’re bored with talking.
3. Make sure that they can get there. I once heard that British soap opera Eastenders times journeys across its square so that characters don’t just jump from location to location. If true, it’s certainly fun, and highlights an important point. Unless you’re writing sci fi, your characters probably aren’t teleporting everywhere, so the character who was in Scotland one minute should not show up in Wales the next.
4. Asides should be rare. In fiction of a certain kind, people always seem to be pulling one another to one side. Now, I’d like you to imagine what you would do if someone butted into the middle of a conversation you were having with someone and took them away so you could not hear what was being said. Unless it was in a context where secrets were normal, you would be curious, wouldn’t you? You might even be a little offended at being excluded like that. So shouldn’t your characters be? Again, this is a device for the author rather than something coming out of the character’s behaviour.
5. How do they know where they are? A variation on point three. If your main character has wandered into the middle of a safari park a hundred miles from home and their next door neighbour just happens to show up to chat, well, how did they know? Did they have a tracking device? Had they been told? Was it all a coincidence (which then needs to be written up as something surprising, not ignored)?

With all these points, the same principle applies. Even though characters are acting in the ways you decide to further the needs of the story, they should not appear to be doing so. They should appear to be acting in natural, or at least explicable ways. Ways that make sense to them, and to your audience. And remember, if you’re stuck for a way to get them out of a scene, you can always do what Shakespeare did, and reach for an enraged bear.

Sidekicks

2011-10-10T15:43:00.000-07:00

Sidekicks interest me. They’re such a staple of fiction, whether it’s the companion who’s cleverer than the hero, some mild comic relief or an excuse for someone to get beaten up and kidnapped on a regular basis. Where would the Lord of the Rings be without Sam? Blackadder without Baldric? Granny Weatherwax without Nanny Ogg? The right sidekick in the right place can totally transform a character.

I think there are probably a few things to remember. The first is who your hero is. The thing with sidekicks is that they seem funny and brilliant right up to the point where you decide to give them real attention, whereupon it usually turns out that they don’t have enough to sustain the novel. Or they steal so much of the scene from the main character that we all stop caring.

One big question is ‘what does this secondary character tell us about the main one?’ More specifically, what does the way the main one behaves in the relationship tell us about that main character? Going back to Pratchett’s Esme Weatherwax, we learn quite a lot about her from her constant bickering with Nanny Ogg, not least because Gytha Ogg is the one who sees through her best, having known her for years.

In a lot of ways, the sidekick is a lens through which we see an otherwise difficult character. Think of what Watson did for Holmes, serving as a device to let us into a mind that might otherwise have seemed too alien in its brilliance. Or the way Doctor Who’s companions provide a human insight into situations, allowing the Doctor to work in his own odd ways.

The real trick with a sidekick is to do that without sacrificing their own identity as a character. One easy way to achieve that is to give them either a fractionally different take on a central issue, or to have them less totally absorbed. Let them be the one who has family, and normal hobbies, and friends, while the hero is the totally obsessed one. It’s just one way of doing things, but it has possibilities.

York Open

2011-10-08T14:58:00.000-07:00

I fenced the York University open today, and I always feel when mentioning this sort of thing that I should be announcing great victories to the world rather than a mid-low table finish that probably won’t accrue any ranking points. Though whether they matter is an open question. I mostly fence competitions for those moments of getting to play against people I don’t know well. It’s kind of the sporting version of blogging, if you like, because you aren’t just talking to the same few people.

It’s the Beverley Literature Festival next week and as usual, I haven’t quite gotten around to signing up for anything. I imagine one of the workshops might be useful, or even that going to one of the readings might be interesting. It just tends to be one of those things I think I ought to do rather than just doing.

I have a galley proof copy of Court of Dreams, sent over from my publisher just the other day. It’s nice to see it so real. Paperback just feels so different to an e-book in that respect, and it’s great how thorough everyone is being with this. It certainly puts some of my other publishing experiences into perspective.

I’m currently reading both Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey (which I’ve been slowly plugging through for a while) and Wodehouse’s Psmith in the City, which starts with a wonderful cricketing moment that is perfectly, quintessentially English, and also nicely funny. It’s well worth reading if you get a moment.

2011-10-06T04:18:00.000-07:00

A quick list of lists that might conceivably show up anywhere, given the tendency of shopping lists to wander off. Perhaps even at the bottom of that treasure chest your heroes are opening:

A list of instructions for using the dungeon the heroes have just conquered, warning that catastropic failure (i.e. the place falling down) is likely to result if the things on it aren't followed very carefully. Which they haven't been.
A list of warranty provisions for a magic sword, that your hero then has to follow, making fight scenes that much harder. No use against class 2 Things. No use more than twice per cycle of the moon.
A list of evil overlords invited to a gala ball, which must be recovered at all costs so that someone can work out a seating plan that doesn't involve them all killing one another.
A recipe or list of ingredients for the Big Red Eye's eye drops, essential for currying favour with that most despicable of villains.
A list of wizardly nicknames, so that a new wizard can find a hue that hasn't been taken already.
A list of monsters for heroes, arranged like those lists birdwatchers have of rare birds, only slightly more than spotting will probably be involved.
A list of the contents of a magical library, which must be found if the hero doesn't want to spend the next three centuries cataloguing.
A list of people to be eliminated by a gnomish hit man (what, you didn't think they were standing in your garden for no reason, did you?)

Castles

2011-10-04T02:52:00.001-07:00

If you write fantasy, then the odds are you have castles in there at some point. They seem to be an inevitability; the one part of the medieval flavour no one can avoid. Yet castles are both older and more complex than that. The romans had square walled wood and turf forts, for example, while even iron age peoples probably had a certain amount of defence in mind with their hill fort enclosures. So here are some things to bear in mind:

1. What kind of castle are you writing? As far as I can tell, writers generally either write the Disney castle, or a classic concentric arrangement with successive walls. Yet there were so many other options, from motte and bailey stuff to simple keeps.
2. Is it dragon proof? Remember that castles evolved as an efficient way to keep out enemy armies. If said enemy army can fly, or reduce your wooden walls to ashes, there isn’t much point. If you create a fantasy universe where that sort of thing is common, you have to expect that people will have come up with answers.
3. Black spikes with everything. Castles were as much about show as function. That’s why you find castle-y stuff on relatively minor houses in parts of the UK. They were about a claim to status, and about extending power. So make sure yours shows off.
4. Castles need peasants. Castles were full miniature economies, needing a lot of people. More importantly, one of their functions was to extend power over an area, which needs to include people for them to serve a useful purpose. They aren’t just somewhere for knights to live.

Awards You've Never Heard Of

2011-09-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

Because I've made them up. Being a series of made up awards for all things fantasy, and thus an excuse for a list:

The Big Red Eye Award for outstanding services to evil. Awarded annually to... well, whoever steals it first.
The Guild of Extreme Cartographers Are We Nearly There Yet Award. For the individual who has found the most fiendishly lost city during the year. Or lost the most obviously found one.
The Thing Owners Club Breeders Award. For the breeder of the best in show, with the ideal tentacle to eyeball ratio.
The Barbarian Beer Festival Award. Barbarians spend so much time quaffing that they're probably the best placed of all fantasy types to award this one. Though given what happens when barbarians get drunk, T-shirts saying 'I survived Barb-Fest' aren't as common as they might be.
The Humble Minion Awards. Or Squishies. Awarded in a number of categories, including most servile grovelling, fastest escape from a castle being overrun by heroes, and most gratuitous Wodehouse rip off.

A Brief Post

2011-09-27T15:12:00.000-07:00

Preparations for the York University Open continue with me trying not to panic about all the things I've identified as problematic with my fencing technique (it's only my grip/distance/long attack/guard position/feinting). Plenty to work on in the next two weeks.

I'm currently reading Tom Holt's Open Seseme. Of all his books, I think it has probably been the slowest read for me, though that may just be that I rather overdid things on his back catalogue.

Incidentally, an idea for every person who ever has too many ideas, or trouble trying to choose between them. Simply write down everything you would ever want to see in a book, stare at the resulting mess of a list, and then have a blinding flash of inspiration as you see a single coherent thread through it. And no, I haven't.

2011-09-24T07:47:00.000-07:00

All kinds of things have been going on this week. I'm edging along slowly with a novel that I've been working on for a while now, although I'm slightly worried that I only vaguely know where I'm going with it. I suspect this one may be just something I do bits of more for the process than anything, though hopefully it will come out all right. I always think you can tell when someone is enjoying writing something.

That's something that very definitely applies to the short stories I've been working on. Helping to put together a short story collection is harder than it sounds, not so much because individual stories are difficult, but because you have to write them to order, and write quite a lot. But this one is so much fun it's not a problem.

I picked up a copy of the Wind in the Willows earlier in the week, and I'm reading it now for the simple reason that I never did so as a child. Is that something you ever do? Go back to things you wish you'd read? I'm enjoying it quite a lot. There's something about the whimsy of it that suits me.

On the martial arts front, I've picked up a couple of regular gigs writing about them, just putting together small blog posts and articles. One thing I've found with ghostwriting is that it's actually these smaller, regular gigs that give you peace of mind, because you know you have a certain amount of basic income coming in, without taking up so much space that it gets in the way of the bigger, one off jobs.

And finally, the start of the fencing season has rolled around, meaning that, as usual, I'm worrying about my technique. That's pretty much a given at this time of year, though.

We Have A Cover

2011-09-22T03:57:00.000-07:00

My publisher has just unveiled the front cover for my novel to the public. It's probably a bit early for heavy promotion yet, since we're looking at a January 1212 release what with all the stuff you have to do first, but facebook-y types can see it over at Pink Narcissus Press's account if they feel that way inclined. I would show you, but it's not in a file format that blogger seems to like, at the moment.

On the ghostwriting front, I'm working on a collection of short stories with Arran Gimba, which has so far covered the zombie apocalypse, meditations on lost cities, and building universes in sheds. I should also be starting work on another novel in a day or so, for a client who, understandably, wants to be named rather less than Arran does.

Just out of interest, did anyone have a look at the history one I did with Keith Lenart? It's one of the weird things with being a ghostwriter that while technically, the reviews don't matter to you, in practice, they generally do, because they're the best feedback you're going to get on what you're doing. Although, as I know from one of my more regular gigs, you do then spend your time staring at the bad reviews and trying to work out which bits were down to you, and which bits were assorted other people involved. Mentally shifting the blame is the first skill of the writer. It's rather like being England cricket captain in the 1990s in that respect.

Your Approach

2011-09-17T15:35:00.001-07:00

The start of the fencing season has rolled around, and with it my usual concerns about whether I am fencing sabre correctly. To which the short answer is not exactly. I won’t bother you with the fine detail of my technique except to say that it is different enough from the normal one to be noticeable to me, yet not so different that opponents are constantly wondering what I’m doing.

The big point, however, is that it works for me. And this is where it spills over to writing, because as occasionally useful as I think the whole industry teaching us to write ‘better’ is, I think that people occasionally take it too seriously. They think that you have to write their way, when in fact, you should be writing in yours.

There is a caveat to that, however, which is that you should be writing in yours if it works, and if you aren’t getting better results from other approaches. The slight quirks of my sabre technique have not been adopted on a whim, but are rather an attempt to both disguise my major weakness and open up greater precision in my blade work. I adopted them only after working for some time with the precisely orthodox approach, and I still go back to it from time to time to keep connected with it and what it offers.

If you have a radically different approach to your writing, in other words, that’s fine, but it needs to be based on a deep understanding of what you’re doing. Some people are so quick to jump off into what they think is their unique voice that they don’t realise no one else is doing what they’re doing for a reason. Make sure you’re following an interesting path as a writer, not a dead end.

Dividing up the year

2011-09-15T03:53:00.001-07:00

It’s the last day of the county championship season today, with Warwickshire needing to finish off Hampshire if they’re going to win the league. Coincidentally, tonight happens to be my first fencing session of the new season.

That particular combination has me thinking about the ways in which we divide up our lives. I’m not just talking about the big events; the rites of passage as Van Gennep called them. I’m talking about the little markers each of us has in the year as part of that very human tendency to carve time up into manageable chunks. They might be holidays or birthdays, the start of a sporting season or the official first days of the real seasons. They might, given that we’re writers, involve the regular appearance of NaNoWriMo (No, I’m not. I never do. The last thing I need is another deadline) or the publication of a favourite anthology. We have markers.

So what about your characters? How do they mark the passage of time? Is there any sense of it? This is particularly one for the fantasy writers out there, because I’ve got a pretty good idea what some of you will do. Mostly because I’ve been there as a writer and seen it as an editor. You’ll have the change of the seasons, and maybe a holiday linked to that, but there won’t necessarily be those other markers. Yet they’re so easy to introduce.

Just consider a few very traditional markers in rural communities for a moment. There are the first and last days of harvesting, which was a much more important endeavour in the days before mechanisation stopped it being something for whole communities. There were the major markets, which in some communities came around for just a few days each year, covered by royal or episcopal charters. There were the days when fishing fleets or regular trade fleets set off or came back. Normal life, in other words, and it’s always the sign of a good fantasy novel when there’s normal life going on in the background.

A Writing Day

2011-09-13T15:42:00.001-07:00

Today featured writing bits of a lot of short stories in front of the TV while watching the final county championship cricket of the season. Yorkshire are relegated, and the chairman is already making noises about how the players need to pull their socks up. That seems a bit rich coming from a committee that is happily and hugely in debt, and which initially didn’t want a run getting overseas player because they couldn’t afford one.

Where exactly does pulling one’s socks up come from? Does anyone know? I can’t see how it can imply taking things more seriously, or being ready to take things on when Nora Batty out of Last of the Summer Wine was always ready to take things on, often with her broom, and never knowingly had her socks unwrinkled. They make us pull our socks up when fencing too. Apparently, a thin layer of wool will stop us getting stabbed in the shin should a sword break.

Going back to short stories, it’s interesting how trying to write ten at once feels different to one at a time. Whenever you get stuck on one, you sort of flit sideways to another. Presumably, it still takes as long to produce them, since I managed about the same number of words as usual, but it feels less like I’m trying to tackle the hard bits head on.

If you haven’t heard anything about my novel Court of Dreams in a while, it’s because we’re waiting for things like the cover and the galleys and the final proofing. It feels like a much more involved process than with either of my first two novels, and I am taking that as a good sign. Eventually, I imagine I should beg all of you to help me out with arranging a suitable blog tour to draw attention to it, but possibly not until I know little things like the release date.

I actually have a sequel to it in first draft form (or possibly second, given that I started again on a different tack after I decided I didn’t like the first version.) I’m wary of doing much with it until I can see that the first one is doing well. It makes fun of vampires in much the same way that Court of Dreams makes fun of the whole urban faerie thing. While still having a story of its own, of course.

I’m also working on the thing that I deleted not that long ago after trying to write without a plan. I have realised that this is something I do. I actually went through three or four attempts at Court of Dreams before we finally got to the finished version, complete with Grave (who remains my favourite character ever. Imagine Hagrid as a forgetful faerie assassin in a truly amazing coat and you’ll be nowhere near what I actually intend, but probably near enough to get an idea.)

On Goblins

2011-09-11T02:56:00.001-07:00

Goblins always seem to get such a raw deal in modern fantasy literature. For one thing, they don’t show up that often. Entire series full of elves and dwarves, undead and suspiciously derivative short people on long journeys can go past without a single goblin. That’s particularly true for many urban fantasy series. In fact, I can only think of two off hand that bother with them.

The second problem is that people treat goblins like they’re stupid. Like they’re cannon fodder. Like they don’t matter or have individual personalities. Like they are, in fact, straight out of Lord of the Rings. The trouble is, those that show up there are essentially just target practise for the heroes. If it’s not Lord of the Rings, it’s the dungeons and dragons view of them, which again goes ‘stupid short green people for heroes to kill’.

Contrast that with the goblins who show up in European literature and folk myths. Firstly, they aren’t uniformly short and green. Goblin is a term used for almost any mischievous or unhelpful spirit, and so can cover a lot of ground. Just think of the wide range of ones set out by Christina Rossetti.

They don’t have to be stupid, either. In fact, if you look at most of the tales pre-fantasy, they’re actually brighter than most humans. They’re tricksters, albeit very dangerous ones. They’re as clever as your heroes, and they may actually be more cunning.

Of course, my own occasional goblins are a bit weird. I am coming mostly from the standard place, because I want to make fun of it, yet I have a certain fondness for goblin man-servants who seem to have read too much Wodehouse. It’s kind of a combination of the two approaches, because they manage to be cannon fodder by type, but far too clever to actually get caught up in it in practise.

I Hate Elves.

2011-09-07T07:41:00.000-07:00

I’ve come to realise that I hate elves in fantasy literature. No, that’s not quite right. I hate the kind of shorthand that lets fantasy writers just say ‘elves’ or ‘vampires’ or ‘merfolk’. I hate what elves have become.

I quite like the idea of fantasy literature that features woodland folk cut off from the human world, or ancient, long lived people who don’t see the point of the petty squabbles around them, or even magical creatures with faintly pointed ears who like to use intruders for archery practise.

What I hate is when people write ‘elves’ like writing it is enough. When it’s obviously shorthand for ‘I know you know what I mean, because we’ve all played too much D&D/read Tolkien’. When the things we know about them aren’t things that the author has told us, but things that we just have to assume. When their place in the world is… well, not an integral place in the world. There’s nothing about them that comes from the idea of the world. They’re just elves.

For me, strange creatures should tell us something about the world we’re in. Yet too often, what they tell us is that the writer is lifting ideas from the general mythos rather than coming up with something brilliantly unique. Or that they can’t be bothered with description.

Not too long ago, I wrote something with elves in. At least, I think they were elves. I was never really sure. I certainly never used the word. And each one was their own person, rather than just a dull fantasy cliché. That’s not a claim to any particular brilliance on my part. Pretty much anyone else could do the same easily. It’s just that sometimes, people don’t, and I really can’t see why not, when it could do so much good.

The Next Word?

2011-09-05T10:17:00.001-07:00

A thought on the craft of writing today, and structure, with particular reference to that most obvious source of information on it: music theory.

All right, maybe not that obvious, but I do think there is something to be learned. For those who don’t know, I play the guitar. A few years ago, I was really into learning music theory, learning things out of different music instructional books, and picking up lots of different bits and pieces from guitar magazines.

That was great, except that I never seemed to get quite as much out of it as I hoped. I’d pick up the odd lick here, or learn a new mode there, but there always seemed to be something missing. It took me quite a long time to work out what it was. It was my creativity. I was going into these books looking for entirely the wrong thing, because I was looking for someone to tell me what note I should be playing next.

That’s not how it works. Scales, arpeggios and so on are great as far as they go. They give you a quick way of getting a particular sound if that’s what you hear in your head. Yet no one will ever tell you what you should play, because that’s your decision. And when it comes to many of my guitar heroes (notably Carl Verheyen, Guthrie Govan and Paul Gilbert) they have actually gone on record as working the other way round. What’s in their head comes first, and all the massive technique and theoretical knowledge at their disposal is just to aid in getting that out.

I sometimes think, as writers, that we can be caught up in the same trap. We go looking around in books on the craft of writing, not so much to understand what it is we’re doing, as in the hope that someone will tell us what we ought to be writing. We forget that the ideas we have and the natural ways we tell stories sometimes count for more than the rest of it put together. And that’s a shame.

Unlock your inner villain

2011-09-02T15:34:00.001-07:00

Villains are useful in so many ways. So much so, in fact, that I think there are definitely some things we can learn from them as writers:

1. Plans for world domination invariably go wrong. You cannot decide that your book is going to be the most popular in the world, because you cannot directly control the actions of your readers (put that mind ray down at the back there). What you can do is enjoy the process of writing, do your best with the book, promote it well, and if you happen to achieve world domination as a result, well, at least you’ve saved yourself the expense of a robot army.
2. It’s vital to have minions. Publishing a book is a team effort. Even writing one is. The people around you are vital in making it easier for you to write your best, and in staying connected to the real world.
3. It’s easy to come back. Just as villains are rarely stopped by little things like falls into lava pits, and always find some way to show up in the sequel, it’s vital as a writer to be able to find ways to come back after setbacks. To find new ways to approach what you’re doing.
4. But occasionally, they should stay down. The key here is ‘new ways’. If something isn’t working, don’t just beat your head against a brick wall (there’s probably some furry underpant wearing barbarian type happy to do it for you anyway if you’re a proper villain) There are times when you have to acknowledge that merely working harder isn’t enough and you need to give up on a project, even if it doesn’t involve giant mutant penguins. In fact, especially if it doesn’t involve giant mutant penguins.
5. Check your plan for flaws. How many villains have been undone by some hitherto unforeseen problem with their grand scheme? Don’t be that person. Don’t settle for a plan or starting point that is good enough. Work on it until it is great.

Going Home

2011-08-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

A piece of flash fiction I was originally intending to make a little longer:

The man they called simply the Grey looked down from the hillside above the village where he had been born, taking in the cars and the houses, the neat lines of the roads and the little church on the way into the place. He stood, and he watched, and he tried to remember his name. Norman? Neville?

So much had gotten in the way. So many other places. So many other worlds. A long lifetime of experiences racked up, ever since he had walked out of the taproom of the village pub aged eighteen, too young and too drunk to know better than to follow a man who claimed to be a wizard. He’d sobered up soon enough, when he’d seen the dragons.

Neil? Nigel? He felt certain it had begun with an N. Or maybe not. There were too many other memories.

The time he’d spent walking across the moors of the mist-lands, for example, hunting after wraiths that should have been invulnerable to mortal weapons, yet dissipated at each touch from a silver spoon given by a farmer’s daughter in exchange for a kiss. And more than a kiss when he’d brought it back.

Perhaps it was an M rather than an N. Perhaps he was a Mark. Did he feel like a Mark?

That brought back thoughts of the great city of Arn where thieves ran the night and the Grey had learned that everyone was a potential mark. In his time there, he’d picked pockets there and cut purses, run over rooftops and made his way up walls as easily as walking. He’d stolen gems as big as chicken eggs, and found himself stealing chicken eggs to eat when he’d gambled away the money.

Matthew, Maurice? Names slid through his memory without even touching the sides.

The Pit of Darkness. Now there had been an adventure. Diving into it, pursued by a dozen Things too hideous to contemplate, then climbing out of it over three days with the aid of a pair of elven twins cursed so that only one could see at any given time. How many creatures had they slain on the way back up? And there had been the sword sticking out of the rock half way up. If he hadn’t paused to retrieve it, would both twins have lived, in the end?

Adam, possibly? No, not Adam.

Memory gave way briefly to regret, as he recalled all the ones who had died on the way. There had been the Erracan dancing girl sacrificed on the altar of the Mad God, and the whole Company of the Hawk in the battle before the gates of Prel. The bard Illian had died trying to outdrink a mountain giant, while too many others to count had fallen to the sword.

Door, perhaps? Book? No, those weren’t even names.

How could he, of all people, have forgotten this? He who had learned the names of demons, and spoken the true names of fallen gods. He who had helped to build the tower of the seven mages, then brought it down again when they dedicated themselves to darkness. How could he find himself so stymied by one little word?

Perhaps he should just give himself a name and have done with it, the way he had when the northern folk had held their naming contest, bragging about their achievements and their victories. He had stood up on the stage then and said simply, ‘I am Grey’ and that had been that. Would that be enough here to make him Barry or Daniel, Stephen or Zackary?

Zackary, he liked the sound of Zackary. Zackary could become Zack, or even just ‘Z’ if he acquired any friends close enough to warrant it. Zackary sounded like the sort of man who had a minor hobby that interested him a lot more than it did his girlfriend, who went to the pub with his friends once a week, and who held down a nice job in marketing. The Grey believed that Zackary would be a nice man.

He stood at a sound behind him and found himself facing Lillia the Red, greatest thief in the Five Kingdoms since… well, him. Since she only made any noise when she wanted to, the Grey nodded to her, assuming that she wasn’t there to try to kill him this time. Though she had once tried that tactic back in the ruins of ancient Kar. Had that been the time they’d ended up in bed together too?

“I brought you a present,” Lillia said, fishing a rolled up piece of paper out of her belt.

“A map to some lost temple? A spell no mortal mind can hold?”

“I think we’ve both seen enough of them for the time being, don’t you? Read it.”

The Grey read. It was a birth certificate. There was a name at the top.

“This is mine?”

Lillia shrugged, then nodded to the village below. “What do you see in all that, anyway?”

The Grey read the certificate again, rolling the syllables over in his mind the way he would some complex incantation, trying to find a way for them to fit. Finally, he rolled the certificate up again, and ignited it with a word of power.

“Not as much as I was hoping to.”

Tom Holt: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages

2011-08-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

A quick review for the Tom Holt book Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages, which I’ve had lying around for a while, but have only just got round to finishing. It’s one of his post Portable-Door series ones, taking the same world, full of corporate magicians and strange monsters in a world that is so everyday it might as well be Wales on a wet Tuesday afternoon, but running new ideas through it.

Dimensional travel, in this case, with a full set of strange occurrences adding up to a dimension shifting plot that takes most of the best bits of Holt’s time travel routine and does away with the tendency of time travel to destabilise the plot. He also plays around cleverly with the notion of character archetypes by having the same basic characters appear in a number of interdimensional incarnations.

The jokes and observations on the world are as witty as ever, with a dry tone that I really like, which gives his work a very different feel to Pratchett’s, for example. In particular, Holt has the knack of pushing the logic of things to the extreme, while still remembering what people are like with just the right amount of cynicism. If magic were real, we all secretly know that we would end up in a world where we needed to fill in form 23b before using it.

There are a couple of minor down points. The plot manages the trick of both being a little tricky to follow in places and giving away the surprise ending fairly easily, which makes it feel like the fundamental story is a little secondary to the laughs. There’s also a sense that you really need to be someone who has read all the portable door series if you’re going to get the full effect of the world being written. At the same time though, it’s a nice, funny book that should please Tom Holt fans, even if I’d suggest that, of his more recent works, May Contain Traces of Magic might be a better place for newcomers to his stuff to start. (Or buy one of the lovely omnibus editions of his early stuff)

Bad Jobs For Fantasy Characters

2011-08-24T03:45:00.000-07:00

In the current environment, many people are changing career path, but fantasy characters have to be careful about that sort of thing. Here are some particularly poor combinations:

Wicked queen as shop assistant. She'll never be able to say that somebody looks great in what they're trying on without trying to have them killed, after all.
Barbarian traffic wardens. It's bad enough that people write tickets, without burning down your entire city and slaughtering the population every time someone parks on a double yellow line.
Gnome building contractors. Because not every house should look like a toadstool.
Orcish fast food vendors. Actually, what am I saying? It can't taste any worse than the usual stuff bought at two in the morning from these people.
Hobbit motorcycle couriers. Because not every trip should be accompanied by rampaging hordes of Nazgul trying to stop you.
Wicked Witch image consultants. Mostly because they always think that small, green and croaky goes with everything.
Evil overlord marketers. Their idea of a persuasive marketing strategy is to horribly torture people until they hand over the cash, after all, and the ASA would probably have something to say about that.
Wizardly librarians. Not that they don't like books. It's just that I can see everything in their care quickly transforming into tomes full of knowledge man was not meant to know, which is a bit awkward if you'd just popped in for the latest Jackie Collins.
Goblin party entertainers. Never trust a creature whose idea of a fun evening is a game of 'hunt the toenail'.
Things. Anywhere.

2011-08-18T02:45:00.000-07:00

I've been working away on other people's novels as usual this week, and making good progress, but one thing I have noticed is that it has made me suddenly very picky about my own work. I'm less inclined to say of an idea 'that's good enough' and trust in myself to make it better as I go along. I think that's partly just a time thing. I have less time for my own projects now (which I'm sure is true of anyone with a full time job) so I have to be more cautious about what I commit time to. There's also the question of seeing things done over and over again. I see so many stories at the moment that I know I want to do something better, something different. Something that catches my mental eye so much I just have to do it. I'm toying with a couple of ideas at the moment, and I'm still not quite sure which I'll end up committing to.

On an entirely different note, the martial arts class I have been going to has closed. They tend to. One of the things you find with classes is that there tend to be a lot in any given area, which spreads numbers thinner. Plus, people still invariably want to do the same one or two arts. I'll be looking for somewhere else to train, but I've realised that I've become, if anything, even pickier about that kind of thing than about novels. Still, I'll probably end up at a small submission grappling class somewhere (it apparently has to be that rather than BJJ because I've just learnt that the latter has all kinds of rules about having to do my beloved leg locks badly if you want to do them at all.)

If anyone hasn't seen the post below this, plugging Keith Lenart's 'What Really Happened' e-book, I advise you to look at it now. It's just over a pound, and it has lots of my short stories in (I'm named as a contributor on this one, so I get to say it.)

I'm currently reading three Tom Holt books at once. It's fun trying to remember which bit of plot goes where.

What Really Happened

2011-08-15T02:22:00.000-07:00

A plug for a book I've worked on. Anybody who likes a mix of humour and history will (I hope) love this collection, which gives the inside (and frequently made up) track on important events from history. I contributed quite a few stories to this one, covering everything from the real reason the Danes lost Stamford Bridge to Julias Ceasar's travel diary of Britain. It's available in ebook form in the UK here, and elsewhere here.

Hatred Blogfest

2011-08-12T03:01:00.000-07:00

This one is for the Hatred Blogfest over at Tessa's Blurb, and is about the way that the big, grand hatreds of heroes and villains don't always spread all the way down the ranks. Enjoy.

Hanalf the Dire and Rubens the Paladin of Light faced off across the space of the battered ruins, brandishing weapons, making faces, and promising violence with layers of detailed unpleasantness that even most professional wrestlers would have found a little distasteful. It was only to be expected. One was, after all, a master of the evilest arts, sworn to cruelty and general nastiness, while the other had been voted ‘hardest smiter’ for the forces of Light several years running.

As the two figures glared and prepared for battle, two slightly shorter and less muscular figures crept their way through the ruins, meeting up somewhere towards the middle. They nodded to one another.

“I am sent,” one declared, “on behalf of the good Rubens to offer your master the chance to surrender himself to the forces of Light.”

“Funny that,” the other one said, “I’ve been sent to ask your lad to bow his knee before the forces of Darkness. Any chance of that, do you think? They’ve promised to only horribly torture him a bit."

“It’s more than my one has promised. He’s got the thumbscrews all lined up. For a paladin of light, he’s bloody quick with that kind of thing.”

The evil one’s representative nodded. “So how have you been keeping, Henry?”

“Oh, not bad. You, Trevor?”

“The same. Squiring for the Light’s lot treating you well?”

Henry shrugged. “Same as usual. Plenty of armour to polish, prayers before breakfast, trying to work out how you get curtains to go around a horse, that kind of thing. How’s the hench-ing?”

Trevor’s shrug matched Henry’s. “Well, I’ve got to blacken the armour, and it’s more horrible sacrifices before breakfast then trying to work out which bit of a Thing is which, but it’s basically the same.”

Henry sighed. “It always is.” He took out a small bag and offered the contents to Trevor. “Jellybaby?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Trevor chewed thoughtfully for a bit. “So I take it your lad’s not about to give in then? Too seething with righteous anger and all that?”

“Got it in one, Trev.”

“And my one’s just generally seething. Oh, and you know better than to call me Trev. It’s bad enough, mine calling me ‘Igor’ half the time without you going round calling me Trev.”

“Sorry,” Henry said, putting away the jellybabies. “So, there’s no chance of reconciling this then?”

Trevor shrugged. “Is there ever? Right, I’d better get back to give his nibs the good news. He gets stroppy if I keep him waiting.”

“Not as stroppy as mine. Did I mention the thumbscrews?”

Trevor considered that. “Oh, before I forget… are you going to Aunty Vera’s this weekend? You know she likes to see us.”

Henry nodded. “I’ll see you there. Though it’ll be meatloaf again.”

Trevor shrugged once more. “It’s always meatloaf. Anyway…”

The two subordinates of good and evil trudged back out of the ruins, paused halfway, and then trudged in the direction they were supposed to be going, secure in the knowledge that mere centuries old hatred’s between good and evil didn’t hold any terrors next to Aunty Vera’s cooking.

2011-08-07T14:57:00.000-07:00

In fairy stories and much fantasy, princesses are boring, or at least, presumably, quite bored. According to the traditional archetype, they sit around, waiting to be rescued, kidnapped and so forth, with little that's fun to do. Some things they could be doing to liven things up:

Kissing frogs and perfecting the perfect puckering of the lips to turn them into different things (some slightly more useful than princes, which are presumably in plentiful supply in most castles anyway)
Tapestry, assuming that they can get people in assorted battles to stand still long enough.
Rocketry. Those pointy hats (wimples?) have to be for something, so why not nosecones?
Practicing with a very sharp frisbee (yes, I know it's a chakram) so that they can be upgraded to a warrior princess in the next act.
Practising holding their breath so that they can stay underwater long enough to lift a sword out of a lake.
Reading Magic Mirrors Monthly to see who this month's 'fairest princess' is (the reference to which presumably makes more sense to those people who've read my story in Rapunzel's Daughters. Yes, I'm still shamelessly plugging. Just imagine what I'm going to be like when the novel comes out.)
Reading all the books on evil magic needed so that they can be a witch queen when they grow up, as well as trying to work out how exactly you fit into the kind of clothing required.
Coming up with more useful than usual mirror rhymes (For spread betting: Mirror mirror, sitting still, will Arsenal win the cup one-nil?)
Waiting for their mirror to download essential updates.
Trying to keep up with who they're technically married to this week as part of some very complex medieval style politics. This is a situation in which what a princess really wants is to stop having dream weddings.

Why The Monomyth Doesn't Work

2011-08-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

I'm doing some work at the moment with the heroic journey structure of writing (not particularly by choice) and one of the documents I'm working with makes the rather annoying claim that there is essentially only one way of writing, and it follows that structure. You have no idea how angry that makes me, because it not only isn't true, but I actually suspect that the approach proposed will make it less likely for an individual writer to produce good work.

Let's start with a couple of claims made for the method. The big one is that everyone, whether they know it or not, writes like that. Shakespeare used this, apparently. Except that he didn't. Or at least, there's no evidence I know of for him doing so, because we simply don't know enough about him to make that sort of comment. What's true is that you can look at his work and impose this structure over it if you try, just as you could impose almost any other conceptual structure as a tool of analysis.

That's one of my other big issues with it. Highly detailed structures are about analysing literature and picking it apart. They do not provide a guarranteed route to producing great, or even good, work any more than a painting by numbers set makes you Van Gogh. Far too many people make the claim for their story structures that because they can pick apart a bunch of famous films, you can automatically write things just as well by reversing the process.

Then there's the claim that all stories are basically this journey. Yes, if you stretch the idea like a rubber band. If you do that, of course, you're moving a long way from the simple point by point outline proposed.

And there's my final issue with it, which is far more practical. I spent much of today (and will spend much of the weekend, probably) messing around trying to come up with an outline that hit every point in order, the way the job in question wants me to. I have just read the results. I would NEVER write that story. It's awful. It's far, far worse than anything I have plotted in those ways I normally find comfortable, and I can't see a way to make it better without ripping all the annoying framework out of my way and doing the job properly.

If you're using this with success, I'm happy for you. I'm happy you have a method that works for you. I just get annoyed when people make over inflated claims for their methods, while simultaneously being unable to tell the difference between a construct for human understanding and the real essence of something.

Princesses

2011-08-03T05:57:00.001-07:00

Has anyone else noticed this about YA fantasy literature: that none of the teens portrayed are ever normal?

I don’t mean that they turn out to be werewolves, or vampires, or whatever. That’s fine. What I mean is that they always, always seem to end up being the long lost chief vampire, or a princess, or someone who is fated to run the world, or whatever. They’re not just special, they’re more special than anyone else ever.

It’s something that is starting to annoy me slightly, because I have to ask what kind of message this is sending to young people. I think it’s reasonable to suggest many of the YA authors involved would like to convey the message that their readers are all special in their own ways, and should make the most of their talents. Yet to me, that is almost exactly the opposite of the message being conveyed.

Instead, they say that it is not enough to be yourself. It is not enough to have a talent, or to be smart, or whatever. Only princesses are enough. You can’t succeed in their books and still be an ordinary (ish) person. There has to be that big extra revelation that says to the reader that it’s okay that the character has dealt with the situation, because she’s secretly the ruler of the fey. That immediately says to me that all the positive qualities the author wanted to show are worthless. They aren’t why the character has achieved anything, after all.

I’m not saying that this kind of ploy can’t be fun. I use it myself. Yet for me, it is part of the set up. It is a way of creating more problems, and it is frankly something that I am making fun of when I use it. I’m sure some authors will come back with “yes, but don’t people want to be princesses and rulers? Don’t they want to be important people?” and suggest that it’s just wish fulfilment.

My point, if you’re writing YA, is that your readers are important people already.

Capital Letters

2011-08-02T15:15:00.001-07:00

One of the more amusing concepts I like to play with when I write is the difference between what you could call the ‘capital letter’ version of something and the ordinary one. If we take evil, for example, it isn’t much fun. It is, frankly, unpleasant. Proper Evil, on the other hand, merely knows that it is very cool indeed to wear black and twirl your moustaches.

Or take heroism, which possibly has more depth to it even if you don’t get to do as many pits with spikes in jokes. As we all apparently know (because people tell me that we all know it) Sam is the real hero of The Lord of the Rings even though he does the least traditionally Heroic stuff. Exploring that gap can make for great comedy, as well as some touching moments as your characters realise that all the Heroic stuff they were doing wasn’t the
point.

It’s not just a comic fantasy thing. Gritty modern fantasy plays around with the idea of unheroic heroes, while villains who are just ordinary people on the other side are a staple of practically everything. It has the potential for great fun all round, as well as the opportunity to breathe new life into old stereotypes.

Things to Do

2011-07-30T16:20:00.001-07:00

The second Test seems to be determined to be as dramatic as possible, what with Stuart Broad’s hat trick, England’s low score, assorted injuries, and so forth. I saw most of the first day (working in front of the TV being a perk of freelancing) but ignored much of today.

I was outside for some of it. I realised today just how much I take living on a beautiful farm for granted, and how little I actually go outside. Also how rubbish I am at identifying plants (I thought some raspberries were nettles). The cat hid in a hedge and stalked me while I hunted down a solitary blackberry.

I went back to an old short story yesterday. I tucked it away as not worth sending out, but one re-read (and quick change to 1st person present) later, it’s looking good. I’m also trying to think of what my next personal project should be. My initial feeling is short stories, since they can help promote the novel as it comes out. I also have a couple of other novels tucked away (the possible sequel to Court of Dreams and my YA Brian Northington one) that will need some attention.

Yet I’ve just started writing a list of things I might include in a different novel. I’m not sure about the most basic details of it yet, such as whether to start in this world or work entirely in a fantasy one, yet I already know I want to include both evil rites learned from a mail order course and redecorating villains. No, I don’t know how either.

A post about history

2011-07-27T16:10:00.001-07:00

I keep meaning to dip my toe back into the waters of history, but given how things went during the PhD, I’m a little cautious about going for it full bore. As a way of seeing how much it excites me now, and as a source of blog posts, I thought I’d write a few on general historical/medieval subjects, and go from there. I’d like to start with the simple task of summarising my entire PhD thesis in one blog post (it might be quite long):

The Minster Churches of Beverley, Ripon and Southwell 1066-c.1300

In the Anglo-Saxon period in England, churches called ‘minsters’, from the Latin ‘monasterium’ came in all kinds of shapes and sizes, but could often be at the heart of their local areas. Gradually, however, changes came to the organization of the English Church. Those changes came particularly quickly in the two and a half centuries after the Norman Conquest. The structures of the Church changed, while new types of institution, particularly new monastic forms, came to compete with minsters and parochial churches. Across the country, many minsters became little more than parish churches, while others (such as Howden) became mere subdivisions of larger bodies.

Those of Beverley, Ripon and Southwell changed too. In fact, they converged. Specifically, they converged on a common institutional model based loosely on that of the cathedral at York. They acquired broadly similar prebendal structures (a prebend is a living for a type of priest known as a canon. Secular canons in the case of these ones, to distinguish them from the regular canons of quasi-monastic institutions). They acquired similar office holders. They acquired similar regulations. There were significant local variations, but the similarities far outweighed them.

Once we accept that, we have to ask how and why it happened. If we look at powerful figures connected with the institutions, successive archbishops of York stand out. They had a kind of consistent contact with, and power over, the minsters that kings and even popes often didn’t. They even served as a kind of buffer when dealing with those figures.

Yet seeing the change as a top down plan from the archbishops isn’t enough. We know that the archbishops didn’t have complete control over the minsters (things didn’t work that way in most cases in England in the period, and in any case, there are specific examples of resistance). We also know that the archbishops often had close links to the minsters, and so might not have wanted to impose their will for the sake of it.

Additionally, the minsters had much closer links with one another than might occasionally be supposed. They communicated. They sent men to work for the archbishop together. They occasionally shared personnel (either consecutively, as a kind of career progression, or concurrently, with what were known as pluralists). Beverley and Ripon even engaged in a spot of forgery together.

As such, it seems reasonable to suggest that the minsters would have played a role in their own remodelling. It certainly accounts for the blend of similarities and differences better than most of the alternatives. It also suggests something rather wonderful.

You see, as I said at the start, pre-Conquest, ‘minster’ could mean all sorts of things. Yet for these three, it came to mean broadly the same thing. So much so that they were grouped together quite often, as if they represented a particular class of institutions, even though they didn’t in any technical sense. What that did was to create a kind of shared definition of what a minster was for these three at that time, as a kind of secondary institution within the archdiocese, which the archbishop could use as an extension of his power over some of the further reaches of a very large area by English standards.

They effectively re-defined what a minster was, creating a definition of it that allowed them to survive as relatively important institutions in a world where other minsters came to be squeezed out by outside pressures, new monastic houses, and other difficulties. What we see here is a perfect mix of need- from the archbishops, in needing to control their archdiocese, and from the minsters, in needing a new role. The result sheds light on the ways change happened in such large institutions, as well as on the exercise of power over them.

Another Review

2011-07-27T06:28:00.001-07:00

Another review of Rapunzel's Daughters here. Oh, and I get a mention in this one, which is nice.

The Summer Season

2011-07-26T15:53:00.001-07:00

I’m getting nicely excited about the new Jim Butcher book, Ghost Story, which releases in a day or two, as well as a couple more new books on the horizon, which are presumably released for the summer holiday reading season. I’m not sure why there is such a season, exactly. Everyone knows that all books taken onto beaches become cheap thrillers regardless of what they started out as, so why not just take any old thing.

In fact, reading any old thing can be fun. Old books have a certain charm to them, particularly if they’re out of print, and you can be certain of reading something that practically no one else has for years. I have a few very cheap second hand books on cricket around the house, and it always intrigues me to read them. They’re like a time capsule, yet at the same time, many of them are still at least vaguely relevant. Plus they give me a chance to go ‘Oo’ at odd moments of recognition, such as when the commentators on the first Test with India happened to mention that the only spinner with a better Test record at Lords than Grahame Swann is Headly Verity, whose book on bowling I have tucked away somewhere.

My own novelling proceeds apace. Apparently, there’s a good chance of getting preliminary sketches back in the next week or two for the cover, and that’s always a great moment. Some of the ghostwritten stuff is taking a little longer to get on with, but it’s still going at a decent pace.

I had a go at contacting someone connected with the Beverley Literature Festival the other day. I haven’t heard back yet, but it might be nice to get involved, because I know the area has a lot to offer creatively, and I am one of those people who is in danger of doing the whole ‘sitting in a garret’ thing otherwise. A laptop and an Internet connection can connect you to the world in theory, but they can also provide an excuse not to go outside for… actually, I’ve just worked it out, and it’s been a rather scary six days worth.

On Zombies

2011-07-22T16:04:00.000-07:00

The problem I generally have with zombies in stories is that most of them don’t have much in the way of motivation. They’re the shambling hordes. They don’t want anything (except brains, which raises the worrying possibility that the scarecrow from the wizard of oz might have been one). There are exceptions, of course. Shadow’s late wife in American Gods is one, while Mike Carey’s zombies in the Felix Castor novels are always much more individual. Anyway, a few things zombies could want:

1. To stop themselves falling to bits. The most common motivation for self aware zombies in fiction.
2. Revenge, making them essentially corporeal versions of ghosts.
3. Nothing very much, so that they are as much of a zombie now as they were when alive.
4. To get on with some work for the large multinational they work for, unencumbered by things like lunch breaks.
5. To complete their stamp collection (because zombies should have boring hobbies)
6. To have a drink in every bar in the known universe (they only shamble when they’re drunk)
7. To paint the town… um, grey, making up for all the fun they missed while alive.
8. To watch every zombie film ever released. In chronological order.
9. To achieve levels of cool normally reserved for vampires.
10. To get an official apology for the whole ‘undead’ mess out of a particularly long winded civil service department.
11. To be accepted in a wildly inappropriate job (children’s party entertainer?)
12. To go around to excitable evil cultists’ houses and explain patiently why endeavouring to raise zombie armies to take over the world just won’t work.

Faerie Tale

2011-07-21T16:31:00.000-07:00

If she hears things now
Out on the edge of sound
Where faeries used to call

If she sees them dance
With shining glamoured flesh
Beneath the setting sun

If the fey announce their hunt
Beneath the harvest moon
She does not say it now

She is a sane girl after all
The doctors told her so
And all the faeries of the world
Will never make her mad

Review

2011-07-19T04:24:00.001-07:00

Another review of Rapunzel's Daughters.

Release Dates

2011-07-17T03:16:00.000-07:00

Revisions for Court of Dreams seem to be almost done, assuming that nothing obvious springs out now that the first few rounds are done. Hopefully, therefore, I’ll be able to tell you all more about the final thing shortly.

Including, hopefully, when it will be out, though I want to be certain on that front before I say anything. Release dates strike me as potentially one of the trickier issues when it comes to books, and not just novels. Having an official release date for things is helpful, because it obviously allows you to plan announcements, contests, blogtours, invasions by tentacled Things to celebrate, and so forth. I know from my first couple of novels that, when I only really found out about their release by accident, it didn’t make for a well organised initial campaign.

I’ve also noticed that it can be problematic to announce these things too soon, however. Specifically, problems arise if you put something down on the calendar before it’s done enough as a project to be certain about. This happened with one book I was ghostwriting. I got it in, but then the editors didn’t like lots of bits (the jokes, mostly), and the whole thing dragged on as they picked it apart, with the result that the thing just wasn’t there for the planned hoopla, and it hasn’t done quite as well as others by the same person, despite being one of my better efforts.

Or take a whole clutch of books I’m vaguely intrigued by in my role as an occasional submission grappler (or at least victim to those that can do it properly). Along with most of the jiu-jitsu world, I’ve been looking forward to Eddie Bravo’s Advanced Rubber Guard for ages, and I’ve also been looking at a couple of other books by the same publishing house, which seemed to be incredibly well organised, given that it was releasing several titles at once, all on the tenth of this month. Now of course, it turns out that was just some kind of provisional date, and no one seems to know when these things are actually out. It’s discouraging.

So, for now at least, I’ll be careful about suggesting when Court of Dreams might be out. When I do know more, I’ll undoubtedly jump up and down pointing to a big foam cut out of the date, but since you won’t be able to see that, I’ll also post about it.

The Fairies You Don't Hear About

2011-07-14T15:26:00.001-07:00

You know how you have flower fairies, each exhibiting characteristics appropriate to particular flowers? (And here I must thank Sir Terry Pratchett for the existence of Nanny Ogg and that wonderful name for a flower fairy, Fairy Hedgehog). Well, why can’t there be fairies of other things?

1. Brick fairies. As in ‘Ho there, Fairy Breezeblock!’ Probably not very good at flying.
2. Kitchen fairies. After all, we know about the washing up liquid one, so why wouldn’t there be yellow, explosive ones of powdered custard, or slightly frazzled looking microwave fairies?
3. Stationary fairies. Otherwise known as the little buggers who steal all the paperclips when no one’s looking.
4. Shed fairies. Logically, if they live in the garden, at some point, specialised fairy forms are going to evolve to deal with sheds. They’re probably the reason hosepipes get so tangled.
5. Electronic gadget fairies. Currently at war with the gremlins who stop them working.
6. Sock gnomes. Technically not fairies, but nonetheless irritating, as they take hosiery in an effort to distil potent alcohol through it. No, I don’t know how either.

Review

2011-07-13T15:57:00.001-07:00

Another brief review of Rapunzel's Daughters here

Pauses for thought

2011-07-12T15:22:00.003-07:00

Gaps and pauses are odd things in fiction, when you think about it. On one level, they’re absolutely essential to timing and rhythm in writing, whether it’s the characters taking some downtime before the next big event, or literally the words ‘he paused for a moment before speaking again’ in the middle of a conversation. They break things up, slow them down, stretch them out.

And yet, if you think about it, there are no pauses. Not really. Oh, maybe there are divisions, with sentences and paragraphs and chapters, but those are gaps meant to be spanned. Writing, meanwhile, is continuous and flowing, because that is simply the way we read. When I write, ‘nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen for a good five minutes’ do you pause for five minutes to get the full effect? Of course you don’t. The pauses, like so much in fiction, don’t really exist. There’s probably a clue in the word fiction, now I think about it.

But what do they do? Mostly, I think they draw attention. A pause isn’t a real break in time, except in the sense of the second it takes to process the words before going on to the next sentence. Instead, it’s a symbol, or a flag, or a big flashing neon sign that we know means either something significant has just happened, or something significant will. Occasionally, it’s a way of showing a character’s need to think about things, or a way of showing embarrassment.

It is never just a pause though.

Cities

2011-07-10T15:31:00.000-07:00

Fantasy cities are fun. Because they're never really normal places. They're accumulations of potential backgrounds for scenes, tacked together with an overarching feel and maybe a lot of oblongs drawn on a map (I used to do this, before I realised why it was pointless)

For me though, it's the feel that's the important bit. All my favourite cities in fiction generally, not just in fantasy, aren't about down to the last detail descriptions of the place. Guidebooks don't manage that, after all, so a novel certainly doesn't have time.

The best bit is that you get to create your own city out of even a real one, just by the feel you give it. It's the same way that painters could paint the same place, and still produce different works. My take on York is probably nobody else's, but it's the right place for a couple of my novels.

I particularly love places that show up in fragmentary phrases, just in passing, and you know it would be cool to set something there some day.

Take this passage from a MG/YA fantasy novel I've got laying around:

Varansburg, in Illthria’s Border Marches, is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the most important city in the known multiverse. Or one of the top couple of hundred, for that matter. It will never, for example, match the bustling industry of the great ant cities of Hive. Nor will it come close to the mind boggling oddness of the city of Corner, where other dimensions impinge almost at random, and where it is frankly impossible to nip down to the shops for a pint of milk without wandering through a couple of spare worlds, a trackless desert, and the storerooms of the British Museum. As for keeping up with the sultry delights of the cities of the Isth peninsula…

Okay, maybe not my most wonderful writing, but I knew as soon as I wrote those places that just from those simple ideas, there would be something fun there. I might even revisit them at some point.

Failure.

2011-07-09T10:04:00.001-07:00

You may recall that a while ago, I said I was going to have a go at writing without a plan just to see how it went. Well, it's been. And gone. I deleted the resulting saggy mess just a short while ago. Essentially, it confirmed my long held beliefs about that approach, which are that you get a few brilliant scenes from pure inspiration, and the rest doesn't have enough behind it to keep up. Back to the drawing board. I might switch to short stories for a bit, since I have a novel coming out soon enough anyway.

Why The Baddies Do It

2011-07-08T15:09:00.003-07:00

A quick thought on villainous motivation. Everyone who writes these days seems to get that your baddie, or main opponent, or whatever you want to call them so that you don’t feel they should be twiddling their moustache, needs to have a reasonable motivation to do what they do (for a given value of reasonable. I consider it a perfectly legitimate comedy motivation that the character is trying to be as villainous as humanly possible, because otherwise, Lord Nasty will make some very snooty comments down at the club)

What gets less of a mention is that it’s often interesting if your villain’s motivation ties in to your hero’s. At a minimum, what they want should be the thing that creates conflict with the hero, but why they want it can create whole new layers of meaning.

One basic tactic is to give the villain a very similar situation, but have them pick a different approach to it, making them as much mirror to the hero as opponent. They should offer a different angle on the central theme of your novel. Possibly a diametrically opposed one, but it can also be fun if the difference isn’t that great, or indeed is only one of degree.

One way to check for that is to ask yourself whether your villain’s reason for their actions sounds plausible enough that, for a moment, you could consider your hero agreeing. It’s not necessarily an outright plea to join the dark side, but there should be that moment of understanding somewhere.

Not least because it is that understanding that makes your opponent so well placed to oppose your hero. Remember that the main antagonist in your story is the person best placed to expose and attack the fundamental weaknesses of your main character, not necessarily with an army of crab monsters (though they can be fun) but by encouraging them to give into those weaknesses and see the world their way. For that, you need a way of seeing the world that has at least some connection to the hero’s

Old Books

2011-07-07T13:24:00.001-07:00

Dog eared, tattered things
Spines cracked, as mine might be
By that age, pages dimmed
By years of use, to me
They are paper treasures
Bringing back the past
With leaves that reassure
In being read before, calm
The questioning mind beneath
The weight of well-loved words
Touched by other eyes, read
And thought upon, and loved.

Frog Spells

2011-07-04T16:10:00.001-07:00

Yet more thoughts on frogs. Because I can, that’s why. Specifically, an expansion of an idea that a particular witch might only be good at frog related spells. They have more uses than you might think:

1. Turning into them is obvious, but still the classic.
2. For healing. Minor ailments are dealt with by removing the frog from your throat in a very literal sense. Other problems could be transformed into greater numbers of frogs as they go. Or a cure could involve having a frog sit on the affected part.
3. For message delivery (creating a frog that hops off to the desired recipient) Get enough witches doing this, and eventually, they’ll all be telling one another about their lives using it. Frogspot.
4. Creating almost anything else by starting out with frogs. Useful if you have a princess handy too.
5. Generic attacking spells. All right, so fire and lightning are more traditional, but who really wants to be on the receiving end of a giant tree frog travelling at speed?
6. In fact, take all those classic D&D elemental type spells and substitute the word frogs at the appropriate point. Seek frogs, summon frogs, even wall of frogs.
7. For a charm/compulsion, where you either do as you’re told, or become progressively more froglike.

The Real Star of the Show

2011-07-02T12:11:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a situation where you look up from the novel you're writing and realise that the character you thought was the main one isn't getting as much of the limelight as you originally intended? It can happen so easily. A minor character with an interesting quirk starts to take over, or grabs attention, and it can be hard to stop.

It certainly happens to me. In Court of Dreams I had to work very hard to balance a relatively normal main character with a bunch of weird and wonderful minor ones. I think I got the balance right, but that will be up to the readers.

It even happens when I'm ghostwriting. In fact, it happens a lot when I'm ghostwriting, because the person providing the ideas will give me main characters ready made, and I'll find my interest caught by someone who isn't fully developed as a way to exercise creativity. Thankfully, I've learnt to use it as a way to produce fully rounded casts rather than just unbalanced books.

So, does it happen to you? Do you find minor characters suddenly become at least as interesting as main ones?

It's Out

2011-07-01T03:16:00.000-07:00

Further to yesterday's post, Rapunzel's Daughters is finally out on amazon. It's a nice, diverse collection of stories about what happens after the happily ever after, featuring some great artwork. Now that it's out, they'll actually let you look inside before you buy, so it might be worth heading over just to have a look around.

Another Review

2011-06-30T03:46:00.001-07:00

Another review of Rapunzel's Daughters has gone up here

Time Travel Part Two (Or Possibly One)

2011-06-29T03:11:00.001-07:00

I received a request on my last post about time travel for some more specific tips on how to write it well. As such, here are some things I think it is vital to remember.

1. The story is almost certainly not about time travel. Unless you sign your cheques ‘H.G.Wells’ the odds are that the time has passed when merely having a trip through time in your story is enough. The story is going to be about the usual elements of character growth and development, with time travel merely as a device.
2. Consider plotting out your story with as little time travel as possible, and then adding it in. This probably sounds strange, but it ensures you get a coherent story that plays in the right order, which is something time travel stories often have trouble with.
3. As a wider thought on that theme, treat time travel principally as a way of accessing interesting locations and characters for your story, rather than as a vital component of your plot. If you put together a perfectly ordinary ‘heroic journey’ type plot and it just happens to involve wandering through ancient Rome, the English Civil War and last Tuesday, that is a good thing.
4. On the character front, many of the interesting time travel stories I’ve read/seen simply drop a character from a different time into the story, then take away the time travel. Think of the Terminator films for a famous example. Those plots play out in linear time, just with characters from the future, and a motivation based on the future.
5. Observation is better than action. Don’t get me wrong, your character has to do things, but plots get very confusing when they start doing things that make it impossible for them to have been born, or start supplying themselves with clues from the future. What Wells did was more of an occasion for sharply observed social commentary, and probably makes more sense.
6. Avoid circularity. If your hero is doing something because they went back into the past to tell themselves to do it, then ask yourself why they went back into the past to tell themselves to do it. If the answer is ‘because at the start of the story they went back into the past to tell themselves to do it’ you have a problem. And possibly a headache.
7. Make your terms of reference clear. What can time travel do? What can’t it do? Let your readers know early, so that this stuff obeys some sort of rules, and isn’t just ‘oh, the author’s looking for a way out’
8. Finally (or, this being time travel, to begin with) avoid the typical time travel ending. They get to the end, go back, and make it so nothing ever happened. Or everything’s all right. Why not just say that it was all a dream while you’re at it?

Ten Uses For Frogs

2011-06-25T15:55:00.001-07:00

Since my story in Rapunzel’s Daughters is a take on the classic frog prince idea, I thought I’d provide some ways to get more frogs into your stories. After all, what story isn’t improved by a few dozen amphibians?

1. Turn someone into one. Go on. You know you want to. It’s a classic. There’s nothing quite like that moment when your insurance salesman secondary character utters the words “a long term endowment- ribbit!”
2. Have a plague of them. If you want to send the magical equivalent of a horse’s head in the bed to a character, why not say it with frogs?
3. Poison a character with them. Looking for an unusual way to kill off a character? Why not introduce them to a poison arrow frog in an unexpected spot?
4. Have a character keep one as a pet. Depending on the genre, it might or might not be a transformed person.
5. Use them to evoke a swampy atmosphere.
6. Have your characters plot an escape for a boxful at a fancy restaurant before they become appetisers.
7. Deliver messages with them. (So much springier than owls)
8. Have the seedy pub your character goes to feature frog racing (all the frogs inside a circle. First one to the edge wins)
9. Feature a witch who only knows spells that involve them.
10. Have a rare species of them block an important development, creating problems for gangsters, lawyers, or environmentalist characters.

Learning From Fairytales: Characters

2011-06-23T10:13:00.001-07:00

Since the publication of Rapunzel’s Daughters is getting ever closer, I thought I’d look at a few things it’s possible to learn from fairy tales. They are, after all, one of the most fundamental storytelling forms. Here are some thoughts on character:

First, think about what your characters are for. In fairy tales, characters fill well defined roles in the story. They are there for a purpose, or they aren’t there. If you’re one of those people with dozens of characters floating around, it’s worth looking at.

Secondly, they stay true to themselves. Fairy tale characters are utterly two dimensional in most ways, but one advantage of them is that they act in consistent ways. Consistency is a better word than believability. It isn’t about what a real person might do in a situation. It’s about what that character does.

Thirdly, every facet of the character, from their name to the way they look, contributes something to the character. Again, in fairy tales, that is mostly a function of being two dimensional, but for us, it’s worth consideration. What do things like your characters’ clothes and names say about them?

Finally, they are affected by their own actions. One of the most important points with fairy tales is that actions have consequences. That should be true of your characters too. As a ghost writer, I have worked with people where their plots involve things coming from nowhere. Trust me, it is far, far more powerful when the things that affect characters are down to their choices.

Green Grass

2011-06-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

One curiosity, when it comes to the martial arts, is the extent to which people get the ‘grass is greener’ syndrome on a regular basis. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, and I wouldn’t want people to think that I’m somehow claiming any kind of moral high ground here. I’m not, but it does bear remarking on.

It’s notable in the UK, for example, that western martial arts systems just aren’t that popular. Oh, there are boxing clubs, but where is the wrestling, particularly the folk styles? There are undoubtedly more people playing judo in Scotland, for example, than back-hold wrestling. And there are probably more BJJ guys than catch wrestlers around Lancashire. There are also more kendo schools than longsword ones.

This trend has almost always been the case. English sword and buckler teachers found themselves pushed out by continental rapier masters in the late middle ages, for example, despite several of their number winning duels against the newcomers. In mid C20th France, savate got into real trouble as the inhabitants turned to karate instead.

Lest you think that this is some phenomenon confined to Western Europe though, it shows up elsewhere too. The catch wrestling mentioned above is actually more popular in Japan than the UK, while one of the best sabre fencers I know is also from that country.

This isn’t some xenophobic rallying cry to only practice your country’s indigenous martial arts. It is, however an attempt to get you to think about the way you think, not just in this area, but more generally. Is something automatically better because it has come from a long way off or been handed down for generations? Are you missing out on what’s in front of you? Is the grass really that green elsewhere?

Time Travel

2011-06-20T09:17:00.001-07:00

The thing with time travel in fiction is that it’s really hard to make it work. Obviously, there are some well known examples where it has been done well, but even in these, I can’t help the feeling that sometimes, problems arise. Even Tom Holt, who is in most respects one of my favourite authors, can run into rough patches with it, so what hope do the rest of us have?

One of the biggest difficulties for the writer is that it seems to create an excuse for messing about with the structure of the story. That is dangerous. Time might be malleable, but the way a good plot runs isn’t. Ideally, the plot should still run in a meaningful order, just with some bits of it happening in twelfth century Tuscany, or next Tuesday. When you start having your end before your middle, things get really out of hand.

Then there’s the question of the plot that collapses in on itself as it gets more and more circular (spiral?) things happen because the characters set them up later in the story while going back before the start, and they do that… because they set things up later in the story because they’ve gone back earlier. You create a sort of circular logic to the story, where there’s no real initiating event, and there’s no reason for the characters to have gone to all that trouble when they could just have sorted it out easily later (or possibly earlier) on.

And then there’s the tenses. Don’t get me started on the tenses…

Genre?

2011-06-17T10:42:00.001-07:00

Most people will have considered the genre that they write at some point (and yes, literary fiction counts, given that it implies a specific sort of writing) and it’s often quite easy to pin down, even in these days when vampires don’t make you horror and the past doesn’t make you historical. I, for example, am most readily described as a writer of comic or humorous fantasy (or urban fantasy, in the case of the older stuff).

Except when I’m not. Even leaving aside the different spaces my ghost writing pulls me into (from comedy cyber-punk to fairy-tale style fantasy and even some very weird pieces of historical fiction) not everything I write is necessarily funny, or fantasy, or both. I’d guess that the same is true of you.

What’s worse is that I sometimes find myself thinking ‘right, how do I get the jokes in?’ or ‘how do I make this more obviously fantasy?’ Not often, but sometimes. And at that point, the genre has taken over. It’s like when you decide at the start that you’re writing YA vampire romance, and you make a list of points to hit that includes werewolf third point to the love triangle, refusal to be bitten, older vampires wanting to kill the MC, etc. Or you start to plot your epic fantasy, and you spend hours working out how to work in the elf, the dwarf, and the slightly grumpy old wizard.

Surely it is better to just write whatever comes out of your imagination? To spend less time sticking a label on work and more on making it your own. Who knows, they might even name a genre after what you do.

2011-06-15T03:25:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me that, when I was announcing the existence of this collection (by pink narcissus press, who are also going to be publishing my novel Court of Dreams) I didn't give you a look at the lovely front cover. So here it is.

Six Reviews at Once

2011-06-14T12:07:00.001-07:00

As some of you may know, as well as obsessing about fencing, I have also practiced a few unarmed martial arts, taking in five styles of Karate, some Feng Shou Chuan, Chi Shou, Shuai Chiao, Aikido, Tai Chi, Xing Yi, Bagua and Jujitsu. My current focus is on submission grappling (MMA without quite so much in the way of being hit) and, since I’d like this blog to occasionally reflect more than just the writing side of me, I thought I’d post some related book reviews. Six of them at once, in fact, since the same sorts of concerns and points tend to show up with all these things.

Those questions come down essentially to three questions. First, who is the book aimed at? Second, what is the quality of the presentation like, and in particular, given that it’s a field that tends to use ghost-writers, how effective is the writing? Thirdly, how useful is what’s on offer in terms of the techniques being shown? So, keeping that in mind, let’s crack on.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (Renzo Gracie and Royler Gracie with Kid Peligro and John Danaher, Invisible Cities Press, 2001): Those in the know will be aware that there is really only one surname that matters in BJJ circles, and the authors here have it. This book is designed to be a reasonably broad guide to techniques of the jujitsu variant their family founded (and its variant spelling), and it largely succeeds in that. The volume is well presented, divided up into clear sections according to the difficulty of moves, and features lots of clear photography. It’s a good place to start for any BJJ practitioner, though the lack of space perhaps means that it doesn’t go as deeply into some areas, such as the butterfly guard, as I would have liked. Since it’s ten years old, there are also a few more recent ideas that don’t get much attention, and there’s almost no emphasis on the no-gi game, with perhaps a few too many collar chokes for my taste, but it’s a solid foundational text. Though I’m told that Saulo Ribero’s Jiu-Jitsu University covers more.

The Ultimate Guide to Submission Wrestling and Killer Submissions (Both Mark Hatmaker with Doug Werner, Tracks 2002/2003): These come from a very different background, focussing totally on the no-gi side of things and using techniques taken as much from catch wrestling approaches as from jujitsu. I’m told there has been some controversy over the extent to which Hatmaker represents ‘authentic’ catch wrestling, whatever that means, and over whether he has produced enough competition winners to justify the attention, but our focus here should be on the book, and not on that. It’s what I can get from this that matters. On that front, there are certainly some interesting submissions presented, with an emphasis on ‘double wrist locks’, neck cranks, and foot locks that you don’t find in most Brazilian texts. Several of the holds are intriguing enough to add to an arsenal, while there are several variant positional ideas and escapes that could come in usful. That said, the presentation isn’t that great. The quality of the writing is quite poor, both structurally and in terms of explanations, while the photography isn’t really clear enough to learn from. I prefer the first volume to the second, despite the latter’s focus on submission chaining. I think that the broader base and more immediately workable ideas make it by far the better of the two.

Mastering the Rubber Guard/Mastering the Twister (Eddie Bravo with Erich Krauss and Glen Cordoza, Victory Belt 2006/2007): Eddie Bravo is one of the more interesting figures in the no-gi jiu-jitsu world, and his 10th Planet system is very popular. His wrestling based submission ‘the twister’ has won him numerous matches, while his ‘rubber guard’ refinement of the traditional position of controlling someone with your legs gives you a great position to attack from (and also looks very impressive, which is, I’ll openly admit, the reason I first tried it). If these books were just focussed on two techniques though, we might all feel a bit short changed. Yet they don’t. Instead, each serves as a core component of a book talking about Bravo’s entire top game, including back mount and mount ideas (for the twister) and bottom game, including half guard and escapes (for the rubber guard). I think the quality of the photography and writing in these volumes is very impressive, while the moves provide some unusual, but highly effective, options. My only slight warnings would be that neither is a book for someone without at least some grappling fundamentals, while the rubber guard book is due to be updated shortly.

The X Guard (Marcello Garcia with Erich Krauss and Glen Cordoza, Victory Belt 2007): A book from most of the same people as above, setting out another unusual guard game, and with one of the biggest names in the sport behind it. What’s not to like? Only two things, really. First, the photography. Although full colour, I found the plethora of angles slightly counter productive, as it was hard to keep track of which photo followed on from which. Secondly, although it does what it says, after reading books of the breadth of Eddie Bravo’s, one that just teaches the X Guard and the butterfly guard feels a lot more restricted. It’s notable, for example, that there’s nothing here on Garcia’s phenomenal skill in taking the back. His techniques in doing so (and a couple of X Guard moves) actually get more attention in Bravo’s work. So, where those two books might revolutionise someone’s ground game, this one will probably only improve one component of it.

Things to Check When Forming an Evil Plan

2011-06-13T03:58:00.001-07:00

1. The weather forecast. Do you think those dark and stormy nights for plotting just show up?
2. That your HR department has been able to replace all the minions slain in your last evil plan.
3. That you don’t clash with anyone else’s. There’s nothing more embarrassing than attempting a minor coup only to find that Dark Lord Nasty is going for world domination on the same weekend.
4. That enough heroes know about it to make it interesting. Have you pinned enough notes to the walls of inns with daggers?
5. That your one weakness is cunningly defended by an elaborate dungeon full of traps and things (and possibly Things). It won’t make any difference, but at least you can tell the insurers that you tried.

Rapunzel's Daughters

2011-06-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

The anthology Rapunzel's Daughters, featuring my short story 'Testing the Waters' is now available for US residents to pre-order from the Pink Narcissus Press website. Anyone who likes twisted takes on fairytales should try this one, since it contains thirty-one tales that try to answer the question of what happens after the happily ever after (giving you one for every day of the month). Those of us who live elsewhere will have to wait a little longer for a book of which even Publishers Weekly says "any fairy tale fan will find something to enjoy in this collection"