Shores of Night

Hello! My serial with Fiction Vortex has launched this week and it's up at the link. The first part is free to view, so check it out! http://www.fictionvortex.com/catalog/free/fallen-ep1/ And there's a playlist to listen to as you read, too!  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoQMkZp9vOLX1EOlVsSsKSaZAe8eje4i4 , so check that out and enjoy!

Cities change things, that's just the way it is. Old ways fall away and new ways rise up, usually while the past and the old ways of doing things lose their original meaning and become idolised without a proper context. Urban Fantasy is more or less based on this idea, along with the obvious 'things are not what they seem' angle that's common to the genre. Monsters, which in horror would have single-minded and rather shallow motives (kill humans, possess humans, feed off humans etc, etc) suddenly are part of communities and have to deal with issues like politics, or love... Or paying rent on a space to live, Other issues become prevalent as well, can a werewolf really risk hunting and killing prey inside a city's borders, can vampires rely on nightclubs for their blood when there's a shortage of virgins to go around? They change and new priorities arise as they interact with other communities and with protagonists (who may or may not be monsters themselves, ...

I am an introvert. It's something I've felt growing in importance in who I am and how I define myself. Last year I actually started looking at the Myers-Briggs system, via a website called  Personality Hacker  which I've found interesting and helpful in coming to understand myself (I'm an INFP, which Personality Hacker label as 'introverted exploring'  and for good and ill seems to fit me to a tee). It was particularly interesting to learn that INFPs are heavily focused on authenticity, and also (possibly vexingly) very much devoted to being 'unknowable' as in there's a desire to keep people at arm's length a lot of the time. As a consequence, my MBTI type may have a little more to do with the next statement than I care to admit, but I feel I have to say it. I hate the stuff I see on Facebook about introversion a lot of the time, it seems devoted to making introverts feel their difference even more than many of them do. I see stuff about how ma...

An Urban Fantasy classic, War of the Oaks was first published in 1987 and has now be rereleased by Penguin with a foreword by Naomi Alderman. The novel is set in Minneapolis, in the 1980s and centres on Eddi McCandry, a guitarist and vocalist who at the start of the novel makes a fateful decision and ends up in a situation that's beyond her wildest imaginings. Chosen to be a champion of the Seelie Court, purely to bring death to the battlefield in their war against the Unseelie Court (their opposites). Burdened with a phouka bodyguard and without a practical way to make money, Eddi is forced to start another band and the novel focuses on the development of that as well as her involvement in the war. Her relationships also fall under the novel's scrutiny, as she becomes more a part of Faerie and her involvement in their conflict spreads out to include her bandmates. The book is very much about passion and growth, Bull takes pains to reflect the messy, but growing, nature ...

Okay, I've been meaning to write this for a couple of weeks, ever since the White House revealed that 'hostile' press agencies would no longer be able to attend White House press briefings, but life got in the way. It was a move quite unprecedented, as far as I'm aware there has never been a moment in American history where the President exiled the press. Indeed the majority of commentary has always pointed towards the relationship between the first and fourth estates being too cosy in the USA. From a British perspective where the press is often too happy to collect politicians' scalps to keep the stories interesting, or honest, the marriage of President and Media has often seemed as if there's too much mutual backwashing going on. This, then, indicates a change in tone, a sea change that will have further ramifications. The most important thing is to realise that this gambit is actually a freeing one. Without access to the White House, the newspapers and TV...