Shores of Night

Growing out of the return of Game of Thrones and what I'm starting to call Waterstonesgate because they've made a very stupid mistake (see here, http://fozmeadows.tumblr.com/post/77118501498/with-the-upcoming-fourth-season-of-a-game-of ); one I hope they'll take steps to rectify as quickly as possible, my mind has turned to the fantasy series I want to write. I thought I'd throw the basic pitches up on here  (for my fantasy books at least). A lot of these ideas have grown out of something I've always wondered about, what happens to the heroes of the grand series once the monster or god is defeated and they've gone back to their 'ordinary world'? Despite what so many series tell us, most of the heroes are barely qualified to rule (as really killing a dragon or whatever, doesn't prepare you for statecraft). The idea of fallout is fascinating to me, something I'd love to capture is the way things fall apart as the consequence of one action (actual...

This is one of the set texts for the Reading into Writing module. I figured I might as well get a blog post out of it... The novel is about two academics discovering a link between two prominent, if fictional, Victorian poets. The plot deepens and eventually comes to a head when their secret is discovered. Which doesn't really tell you very much but more exposition would probably just confuse things. 1) The novel's characters scoff at feminism but this is very much a feminist book. One of the central themes of the book is the need for women to find fulfillment, rather than being trapped as drudges. 2) Christabel LaMotte is so obviously based on Christina Rosetti it's almost painful. (Byatt seems to have had fun plundering the lives of Victorian poets for inspiration - the exhumation of Ash's body to get to his papers is obviously inspired by Dante Rosetti's exhumation of his dead wife to retrieve his unpublished poetry). 3) The whole thing is set up around...

Last week I got the mark for my Screenwriting module, a good mark of 63. I'm very happy with it because I feared I was going to fail the course. As things stand at present all three of my marks have been in the 60s; unless I crash and burn horribly with the Final Project and Reading into Writing I think I should be leaving the MA with a commendation. Getting back into studying in a classroom has been fun and frustrating at the same time. It's great to be surrounded by fellow students but the need to break off and hurry to class has been tough. So far we've had a few sessions on Gawain and the Green Knight and I'm aiming to do something quite punk for the creative piece of the Reading into Writing assessment. I love the image of a punk with a big green mohican and arms covered with golden and green tattoos. Doing a punk focused urban fantasy story would also allow me to do something with the idea of 'losing your head' - I wonder if the whole thing could be...

Eep, a day late... I meant to post this yesterday as a Valentine's Day version of the Friday Night to do the Goth thing and... avoid the subject completely (I kid, I kid). Anyway, let's do it this morning instead. The problem is that most Goth bands don't sing love songs in a conventional sense. They sing about love or about obsession. Sometimes there are songs about love from beyond the grave but there are precious few songs, as far as I know, that do the whole 'ooh I like you and want to be yours'. That might be because Punk didn't go in for that sort of thing very much either, and also, let's be honest, the mainstream has that sort of song has it covered pretty well. Where the more lovey dovey songs exist, they tend to be covers. A lot of bands don't really get close to the L word at all, I think the closest Fields of the Nephilim get is on the Elysium where they sing 'Come in from the cold, I'll owe you my heart, Be my shelter, Be my re...