Shores of Night

It's Robert Jordan's fault really. Let me explain. I discovered fantasy fiction at the tender age of six, when my Grampy leant me his copy of the Hobbit. Two  years later I read Lord of the Rings, in a weekend, and I was pretty much lost to the world of realism from that point on. I'd already devoured books of myths and, as I come from a family of readers, trips to the library were common. I worked my way through the Green Smoke books, Rosemary Sutcliffe's historical novels and other books, but I always returned to fantasy and science fiction. This early deluge may be why, when my other Grandfather, who lived further away and seldom saw us, gave me Ladybird versions of Dracula, Frankenstein and the Hound of the Baskervilles they were digested and found to be somewhat disappointing. In retrospect it was the fact he told me my spine would break free of my body crawl across the floor... which it didn't, because they were Ladybird books. This may be why I have a s...

I think we all have them, books we love that nobody else seems to have read, or even heard of. I was honestly taken aback to see a friend mention the White Crow books by Mary Gentle on Twitter the other day, if only because most people don't even seem to know who she is, let alone remember gems like Rats and Gargoyles. It got me thinking, what other books are there that nobody else I know seems to have read? And so I made a little list... 1 Silk by Caitlin R Kiernan Kiernan's first novel was a heady mixture of Lovecraftian horror and the Goth scene and established her voice as a genuine outsider, something that shoots through her work. I came to read it as a result of her her work on the Dreaming, and the chronicle of Spider Baxter's strange transformation and the legacy it left seemed strange and wonderful. 2 The White Crow novels by Mary Gentle Beautifully written and esoteric, the first of the books, Rats and Gargoyles introduced me to a completely different ...

Something that's been rolling about in my head for a while is how weird communication is. We live in a world that's replete with ways to talk to each other but it only seems to make it more tenuous. Most of us have probably sent emails that we feel are urgent, only to receive the inbox version of a tumble weed. We do it with texts too, letting them sit on our phones, unanswered. I suppose we do it because they lack the immediacy of a phone call; they're static things that don't complain they're neglected, in direct contrast to the nagging tone of the telephone. Even if the person who sent them is going frantic because the lack of response looks and feels galling, we can just ignore them: the object is divorced from emotion, and from time. Social media seems to have the same timeless feeling. Something I tweeted ages ago (which went through to Facebook) sat untouched on my feed for ages. I expect that sort of  reaction with Twitter because, to be honest, I barely...

This isn't the snappiest title in the shop, and I'm shamelessly stealing the idea from one of Juliet E Mckenna's recent tweets, where she said she'd love to see something like this in print (well, what else are you going to do?). With my act of daring theft done, I started to put this list together. It feels a bit odd, I'm conscious that I'm a man, and as such this may seem patronising, which isn't my intent here at all. I'm trying to approach it as a reader rather than being defined by anything else. I don't know that there's a particular order to the books, mostly I've just put them down as they occurred to me. 1) Storm Constantine: The Monstrous Regiment One of the Constantine's first novels, Monstrous Regiment depicts a matriarchy on an alien planet and it pulls no punches. It strips the fairytale or golden age elements from the idea of this system of government in favour of a full bore assault, reflecting the idea that power ...

It's a funny thing time, I'm never sure if it goes too slowly or too fast. Half way up my mountain, it seems as if this semester has gone in a blur of the other currency, and that I've been struggling to keep up. I'm doing Screenwriting this term and, if I'm honest, I've found it hard. Film doesn't feel like my natural language, I like film but I struggle to watch anything for too long; people who know me know that I'm not one for telly. I can only really settle to watching something when I'm at the cinema or what I'm watching is animated. Otherwise, if I'm honest, just sitting watching feels too passive, I prefer the more active, intimate, experience of reading. And I'm picky anyway, there are huge swathes of films I've not watched just because they have 'that guy' in them (asking me to remember actors' names is like asking me to do nuclear physics - doomed from the start, unless it's someone like Edward Woodward or...

One of my distractions at the moment is gaming. Not actually doing it (I'm hoping to start an all female game of Night's Black Agents, which  I must confess I'm really looking forward to; but for my main group I'm still on a break), but just thinking about it. This has taken a few different modes, first realising that I've been far too conciliatory on some levels. I've given ground on games I like and really want to play in the name of getting some sort of game which all the players can grasp, even to the extent of taking a 'high concept only' route at one point to ease the way. If I couldn't explain a game's concept in 25 words or fewer I simply didn't pitch it... not ideal when I really want games about urban magic and conspiracies not only to control the world but to bind its imagination in webs so tight that aberrant thoughts become near to impossible. This has been coupled with a black mood where I worry that going back to my gaming ...

I'm late to the party with this, mostly because I get my news second hand these days (I stopped paying attention when it became clear the game was over and we live in a elected dictatorship where the only things that change are the faces, not the policies). Putting my bitter, cynical shell aside for the moment (if I can, I mean it's really tasty); when I found out about this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24440923 , through Charles Stross' site I felt I should say something (honestly, I think we should). It seem fairly typical of our Prime Minister that he would try to co-opt the centenary of the First World War for his own ends (and why are we celebrating the start, should we not mark the end instead?). It fits with so much of what he's done during his tenure of the position; from the bread and circuses of the Diamond Jubilee and the Royal Wedding to the historical stumble that put Britain in a supporting role during World War 2 during a visit to the USA, this is a ma...

Last night was a brilliant one, for a number of reasons. Firstly it was my wedding anniversary yesterday, my wife and I have been married five years and I feel blessed that she sticks with me through everything. We exchanged gifts but spent most of the day asleep because we were both tired. In the evening, we went out to a night of horror readings, organised by the marvellous Fringeworks/Darkside Press. We had readings from Theresa Derwin, Jasper Bark and many others. All the stories and readers were brilliant. It was great too to see some other folks, Catherine and Laurence from Crafty Miss Kitty were there for instance and its always great to see them.

As mentioned a while ago I've stopped playing RPGs for the time being. What I'm doing instead is reading and thinking about games and what I want to get out of them. I've been particularly taken with FATE and some of its bolt ons (that's rude in the Isle of Man apparently, which means I'll be using it as often as possible). Specifically I like the game creation idea in the core rulebook, the idea that the players and GM decide the setting together is something I've been chasing for a long time. I love the idea of a game where everyone chips in details and ideas equally and you all develop it together. In the light of this, Diaspora's cluster generation system seems particularly good and I've had some fun mucking around with generating worlds and their relationships. I like the fact that even though Diaspora is a hard SF game (for hard SF read, no gravity drives, no psionics, no real alien races and so on) the cluster generation system is clearly po...

If you could make three wishes, what would they be? I started thinking about this partly because of the Split Worlds books, where the protagonist, Cathy, is granted three wishes and wastes two of them almost immediately. The third, turns out to be the truly defining moment for the character in one of those 'wishes versus work' sorts of ways that are so prevalent in modern fairy tales.Admittedly I finished reading those a couple of weeks ago and I've only just throught of doing this post... the wheels of my brain must grind slow. The other thing that made me wonder is the Museum of Curiousities, the BBC radio show that's currently on (and had both Amanda Palmer and Andrew O'Neill on in a brilliant episode, if you can find it have a listen). It prompted me to remember that both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman contributing devices concerning time, or the lack of it. That's my starting point I have to admit: I wish I had more time.  In between work, commuting ...

So... Things have changed. A few weeks ago I withdrew from my gaming group. There were a few reasons, partially the fact that I want to focus on writing meant that having a day off during the week really disrupted the flow of the book, making it harder to get back into it. Given that I often have to force myself to write and fight off the distractions, I felt I was struggling to get anything done. The other reason was similar to the one my friend mentioned when he quit - though in my case it wasn't that it felt like we couldn't get a long game out of it but that in many ways it feels like all the games we play have become, 'bash things and get loot'. In some ways it feels like the first gaming I did, back in Uni, was more grown up and I miss the feeling of 'stretch' that came from playing games like Mage. It also makes games feel predictable, it 's just a matter of counting the minutes to guns being pulled out, swords drawn and the tedium that is combat ...

Hey, Its been quiet in my neck of the woods, there's been the Birmingham Literature Festival, but I only went to two events, Rosie Garland's book launch and the New Voices which featured Emma Newman. Beyond that I'm back at Uni, studying Screenwriting this time (and torn between doing a Viking Vengeance plot or a weird thing inside the head of a woman in a coma which is very Matrix/Inception like in my head). I've abandoned at least two ideas for my dissertation and it now looks as if I'm going to be doing a book of short stories spinning out of Sacrifices which I hope will allow me to have something to take to market once the course is over - I'm sort of terrified of having wasted two years. I'm ploughing on with Fatal Thirst and getting somewhere with it, albeit more slowly than I'd like. I'm sure it'll get there, but writing this post is making me glad that I've decided to drop gaming for a while as it's making me realise how much...

I saw this on my friend Cara's blog ( http://ohwedo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/grossed-out.html ) and thought I'd throw together my own list. I'm not sure if these are things that really make me grossed out or just grumpy, but I think some of Cara's were possibly more in that vein than things that make her feel ill. I've tried for nine, but in all honesty I found it a bit hard to get a full list, so I'm not sure what that says about me. So I ended up with 7. 1) Interrupting - This is something I just think is rude to be honest and it makes me really annoyed, especially if I'm trying to get a point across. There's a point where I just stop caring what the other person has to say because they can't actually give me the courtesy of letting me finish my sentence. This is one thing I like about media like email or letters, they allow me to say my piece and then respond to what other people say without being talked over and made to feel like my point was a...

I've been working away at Fatal Thirst for the last week or so, trying to make it my top priority whilst I wait for course stuff to start happening. It's been interesting, as I've been ploughing through the part of the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo two years ago taking the opportunity to expand pieces of it to add what I hope are more depth and flavour. Its giving me a chance to explain how things work and think through the consequences. I'm revisiting many of the characters - part of what I'm doing with the manuscript (it feels odd to call it that, when it only exists in digital format) is fleshing out the other character arcs in the book to make them fuller. Its quite gratifying one one level to see that the stuff I wrote two years ago isn't entirely rubbish, but it has needed a fair amount of tweaking and reading it back I find that questions arise - why did x happen, how does y effect the fall out? All of which suggests I need to do more planning and devel...

I have a pile of posts waiting for me to complete them, but little time so I thought I'd do a quick round up of what I've been reading (mostly on the way to work). My main reading material at the moment is Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series, an epic fantasy series that's fascinating to read and has a host of brilliant ideas in it. The novels are well conceived and established (though it's a bit of a shock going from two very fat books to a much thinner third volume). There are a number of volumes in the house, since I've managed to convert Emma (she who is Fueled by Tea) to them soon after I'd finished Empire in Black and Gold). Em's raced ahead and has got 5 book under her belt to my three; I'm going slow because I don't want to burn out on them. I'm a bit of an urban fantasy fan (though I'm picky with it) and recently discovered the Split Worlds trilogy by Emma Newman, which I love, and I'm getting book 3 tonight. Al...

Right, that's it. I've come to a decision. You should probably put that in your diaries or something. Anyway, as I've said I've come to a decision. To whit, I've decided to have a huge push at my novel, Fatal Thirst (now on the docket to be the first in the Tantalus Trilogy) in addition to the work for University. I've decided to do this because I think I need long form work finished and ready for the time I complete my course and am subsequently casting about for stuff to do. Having something finished and ready to be published would be a really good position to be in at that point I think. My goal is to finish the rough of book one by Christmas. I think I only have about 50 or 70 thousand more words to write to get that done so it should be doable. I just have to focus and stop fannying about and letting myself get distracted. This means that I need to adopt a more stringent approach to work than I have had - I need to start applying Heinlein's first ...

As I think has been established, I'm a roleplayer (I have a largely defunct gaming blog at Hastur's Hamster but I've sort of given up on it in favour of this blog - might as well as do everything in one place). One issue we've had in our gaming group is a question over structure. It's something that first arose because one of the players entered a profession that requires her to do shift work; so she isn't always available on gaming nights. Another player is an academic and consequently isn't always around either, which rather extends the problem. Recently the issue came up again because another friend has become fed up with the fact that the games we play don't last very long - we have three GMs in a group of seven people so it's not really an ideal situation. There are a few reasons our games don't last that long, sometimes if I'm running something (and I should say that it feels like an age since I actually sat down to run a 'proper...

A few weeks ago I contacted my MP about the proposed plans to introduce an opt in clause for internet usage in the UK. I'm pretty sure you can Google for more details of the legislation, but I read what was proposed and had some questions, specifically: What does 'esoteric materials' mean in the context of this legislation? Given that LGBTQQ information will almost certainly be caught under this legislation will there be a push to develop informative web content to provide information and support for people in those sectors of society to help avoid alienation and bullying? Can the government offer assurances that this legislation will not cover politically sensitive items in the news (so for instance that if a riot police officer were filmed beating up a peace protester the footage would not be censored)? Can they assure us that there will be no function creep? Can they assure us that the information stored will not be used as a  'suss law' to create list...

Urban Fantasy is one of the fastest growing sub genres of fantasy, one that's allied with steampunk, horror and paranormal romance (and arguably crime fiction) in recent years to create a distinctly different flavour to swords and sorcery stylings of much of the genres out put. Largely existing outside of Tolkien's Shadow, these are stories that exist in the modern world, usually in cities (hence the urban part of the name) and often in slightly noir styled surroundings. There have been a number of successful series that support the sub genre, often falling into 'magical detective' or 'cute girl that kicks arse' as stereotypes. The attraction lies in a number of places. Partly I suspect that its the strength of women in these stories that gives them that kick. You can have legitimate arse kickers without bending backwards to take account of differences in culture or historical facts about knights. It feels less incongruous to have a female vampire killer in mo...

So I didn't win the Reader's Poll after all. I was a little confused by the fact that I got an email this morning saying that Fiction Vortex wanted to know where to send my prize... Looking at the site, I found this: http://www.fictionvortex.com/2013/09/winners-of-the-august-2013-fiction-contest/  which is amazing and... Honestly I was a bit taken aback when they took the story as it had been around for so long (I first wrote it in 2009 and just kept tinkering with it)... Now that it's won something I'm even more shocked and all I can say is thank you to Fiction Vortex for publishing Whispers and for deeming it worthy of a prize and thank you to the people who voted for the story. I'm truly touched, (probably in the head but that's another story) and think its amazing that I won.

I don't usually like to put up stuff that's too much in the real world, partly because my real life is quite dull (one thing about writing is that it takes time and that cuts away from the time you could spend bungee jumping, delivering mysterious boxes of chocolates and having torrid affairs). As a result my quandary is actually writing related and is this... I'm unsure of whether I should push ahead with completing my trilogy of novels and see if I can find an agent (or pay for a professional editor and the self publish via Amazon or Smashwords or something like that) or if I should build up a good set of short stories that I can then turn to an agent when the trilogy's done knowing I'm in a position to say that I've had work in magazines x, y and z and am known and therefore hopefully it's more likely that my longer work will be picked up. I'm not sure who reads my blog but all the same, if you've got any answers, I'd love to hear them. :)

Writing is an odd thing at the best of times and there are occasions where what you're working on turns round and just tells you that you've got stuff wrong. In the past few weeks I've had one of those turns of events. The novel I've been working on, tinkering on, whatever you want to call it (the important thing I think is that its still unfinished) for ooh the past two years turned around and made it known that the amount of space I'd allocated to create it wasn't enough and it needed to be at least double the length. Now, bearing in mind that it's already 150,000 words, that really means I've got a trilogy on my hands. Part of this has been because I realised that there were plot threads that were just not going to get to a good place if I stuck with one book; in fact I wasn't giving myself space to explore all the pieces I had in place thoroughly. That didn't satisfy me as a writer, so I guess that the reader would find it frustrating as ...

Under the Trees I found you under the trees Hidden amongst the grass A jewel nested amongst Dew laden blades of green. A nest with a precious cargo Lost from sight and memory And the world disappeared The traffic, urgent and loud Fell quiet as I found you Amongst silent sentinels Their roots buried deep Beneath the city streets I breathed, let go the weight That dogged my shoulders Sitting on a picnic table Listening to boys playing Birds calling up in the trees Let life fill me up to the brim Dragging torpor from my bones There in the early morning I let the peace sink in and thoughts Slip away, until I was empty Ready to face the day.

1) Stormbringer One of my favourite novels from my teen years, the cover just screams 'epic' and looks like a heavy metal album cover. 2) Halting State This cover is just so odd and in keeping with the novel it's a cover for that it's charming. 3) American Gods This is just so iconic, the road with the lightning strike. 4) Perdido Street Station Whilst I do love the new covers for China's novels this image is just so strong. It's a beautifully wrought snapshot of an industrial fantasy city. 5) The Fire Sea The fourth cover from the Death Gate Cycle, this now looks a bit dated and 'D&D'. Still there's something very iconic the dragon rising from the lava.