Shores of Night

A little early, perhaps, but December always turns into a chance to review the year for me, as things wind down and people get ready to go out into a new year. Over the next couple of weeks I'll write a few posts about this year and how I hope next year will go - staying on the writing/gaming (at the other blog) and reading side of things naturally. On the writing front I've started two novels, one for National Novel Writing Month and one just generally, and have got both to around 50,000 and over words. It's an exhilirating process laying down the first chapters and feeling the world take shape as I write. I do find its more of a struggle once I'm past 50,000 words for some reason but with perserverance I'm hoping to get over 100,000 words for both of them and, more importantly, get both novels finished in the spring, albeit with a damn good slog. The first novel, A Fatal Thirst, I worry crosses too many genres - it has vampirism, science fiction and post apocalyps...

I'm still reading this , and will post a full review when I've finished it. All I'll say at present is that it's just lost some points for having the protagonist have the "magic" blood of the empire's royal family through being the bastard son of the king.

In September DC Comics relaunched its universe, effectively pressing the reset button and going from square one again. The new universe is darker and edgier, with more nods towards both Wildstorm and Marvel comics; heroes are distrusted and villified rather than being held up as the lights of humanity. In some ways this is a shame as it gets rid of what was largely DC's unique voice, will there be a Flash museum in this new iteration? It seems unlikely. Rather than try to read all 52 titles I very much cherry picked my way through the new comics to see which ones took my fancy. Partly this was for financial reasons, the cost of comics means that I'm not willing to walk off with tons of books and partly it's because with the best will in the world I'm a bit tired of superheroes; for an idea that should be extremely flexible it's begun to feel brittle and restricted, as if it will only go so far before it snaps. Also the fetishism for the 1960s and 70s by DC's pub...

I picked up this book at FantasyCon down in Brighton and its taken me a while to read, I'd hoped to post this a few weeks ago and only finished the book at the weekend. It's a slim volume, with an attractive cover, even if you don't like clowns, but the real treasures lie within. The first part of the book ties into the Vampire Gene series and for people like myself who haven't read the novels (yet) they provide an interesting window into that series. The protagonist Lucy is very much an atypical vampire for today's culture. Whilst most books and films seem to delight in having the vampire struggle against their hungers Sam Stone delights in the carnal blood lust that the image of the vampire evokes. Lucy is unapologetic in her appetites for sex and blood, and arguably could stand shoulder to shoulder with the other vampire elders of literature in that regard (she's better at hiding but equally as monstrous as Dracula in her own way). The other pleasing aspect o...

Over at Sam Stone's blog ( http://sam-stone.blogspot.com ) there's a long post about stamina and how important it is as a writer. I can't say how true it is, it struck so many chords with my own experience even as a completely cack handed amateur writer that it seems untrue (almost anyway). I'd like to thank Sam for posting it. Now, go and read it. :)

I suppose that I should start by saying that I love Steampunk and the styles that it creates. I adore the look and feel of it and I also love the huge amounts of creativity that's sprung from the subculture that's grown out of the literary subgenre. Whether it's the likes of Dr Geof's cartoons ( http://islandofdrgeof.co.uk ), Herr Doktor's wonderful creations, the charm of the steambear competition at the Asylum or just the fashions sported by Steampunks around the world the subculture is brimming with wonderful ideas and concepts (not to mention that the whole thing is a hop, a skip and a jump away from a fairly coherent political philosophy). Steampunk fiction is similarly excellent, full of the strange and exotic, the dark and dramatic, with wonderful heroes, dastardly villains and awe inspiring technology. Best of all it's such a meta genre that almost anything can fit snugly under it's broad brim. It can embrace everything from alternate histories (Stea...

So I bit the bullet and entered NaWriNoMo (this: www.nanowrimo.org ), which I suspect is either going to break me or be really fun. I have a nice idea for a story, a sort of mashed up post apocalypse vampire murder mystery thing that I think will work. I've done some prep work for it, in so far as I have a plot and a protagonist and know the basics of the world but otherwise I'm going in cold aside from a bunch of ideas for scenes. Looking at it, I think that as long as I can hit about 10,000 words a week I should do alright though there may not be much in the way of editing. If the story works I may try to keep the momentum up for another month to double the length and then spend January editing the manuscript to Hell and back again, but it's all a matter of waiting and seeing at the moment. It feels a bit strange that I'm writing vampires at all, to be honest. For a long time I've felt burnt out on them. There have been too many bad movies and books with too few c...

Crap, has it really been over two years since I last posted anything here? Gonna have to fix that. I'll try to post more frequently (or really post at all) and there'll be some book reviews posted by my wife, Evie.