Shores of Night

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.

My story Whispers in the Flame was published at this site at the start of August. The site has a poll of favourite fiction, and whilst it seems a bit cheeky... could you head over and vote please? http://www.fictionvortex.com/2013/08/readers-choice-poll-for-august-2013/

So we chatted about gaming last night, just to check where things were with the group and decided to keep playing Shadowrun and keep to our current structure - short adventures with call backs that link things together. Our Shadowrun GM has plans to spirit the group off to Europe and UCAS (not the admissions service) for a while whilst the heat dies down. I asked the players to look at the games I had on my list and they decided to play Yggdrasil, so I have a year to tilt at that windmill and build something awesome. Unsurprisingly I already have ideas about the game, its just a matter of getting everything down on paper and statted up, but that should be fun in itself. Its something I'll be doing very slowly because of my course and plotting and planning to do a PhD. So far my plans involve a mcguffin, some breathtaking scenery and as much skullduggery, monster hunting and low cunning as you can shake a stick at. Oh and much drinking of ale and mead too. 

I'm a gamer, I like dice of many different sides and colours. I like sitting around with friends to make up stuff about imaginary characters who, if they chose, could probably snap the players like twigs. I like to think that it goes hand in hand with my other pastime, writing (though the two should never be confused, I've learnt the hard way that gaming is gaming and writing is writing). As I write this I'm looking down at a year long stint as a player, because I'm not going to run a game until Autumn 2014, after the MA I'm doing is done. One of the longest serving members of the group, also a GM, has just taken a break, citing reasons of burn out. Which leaves the other GM with the dubious pleasure of a full year of running games. On the one hand that sounds like Heaven, on the other, well it's a lot of work and strife he's potentially facing. Despite my long stretch as I finish off the MA and work on my (now trilogy) of novels, I'm going to take t...

The first book of the Shadows of the Apt series, Empire of Black and Gold, is a thick brick of fiction. In many respects that's to be expected, it is a fantasy novel and in particular it's of that stripe of fantasy that's grown fatter over the past few decades. It has a relatively detailed map as you might expect if you're familiar with this sort of fiction, though the list of characters and places only appears at the start of book 2, Dragonfly Falling. I'm quite glad to see the list, because if I'm honest I did find that at times in Empire, I had trouble remembering who the various characters were, the book's so busy. As I mentioned in my review of Tchaikovsky's book of short stories, Feast and Famine, I've owned Empire of Black and Gold for a long time and it's only in the last couple of weeks that I've started reading it. Approaching it I was cautious, I'd enjoyed his voice in the short stories but I was less sure about a 611 page no...