Here’s something I found on my hardrive. A fantasy scene (a test one really) to do a little exploration of what writing in this genre was like.
There’s no preamble, three main characters without any background, so you’ll have to fill in the blanks. It’s a nautical theme, magic and battle, written back in 2007
As my first ever public bit of ‘fantasy’ you’ll have to let me know what you think.
In case you’re wondering ‘Book of Days’ is my favourite Enya single…
A few people have already written to to say ‘Yes, please’ – so here’s a first piece for your consideration. It’s not fantasy per se, but an attempt at a piece of ‘hard’ sci-fi (hard = something that could actually work and doesn’t require any ‘unobtainium‘).
As you’ll see, I didn’t get far with it. According to the file info, I started working on this one back 2002, so it comfortably predates Status Quo and Torn. You’ll recognise the names ‘Janu’ and ‘Neseva’ (they were reused back in Mutabilis).
I realised I didn’t have a good idea of where this story was going and abandoned it – thus it’s only five pages long. Having re-read it ten years later, it’s not a bad premise, but probably rather difficult to expand, and the writing needs a serious update. You also might want to know the origin of the word ‘Lhasa’.
Lhasa is actually a real place in Tibet, but I didn’t know that at the time. The reason I choose it was because it was the lovely dark colour of a classic Mk1 Golf GTI – ‘Lhasa Green’!
Let me know what you think…
To start reading ‘Terraforma’, click on your choice of reader below.
Hi folks, and happy new year!
I’m coming into 2012 with lots of ideas for my next series of books, but it’s currently just that – ideas. It’s going to be a long time before you get another full book from me… sorry! That’s just how it is – unless you can rustle up a magic wand, pay off the mortgage and get me a bursary! (Anyone? Promise to keep writing!)
However, whilst I’m putting together my next Saga, there is quite a lot of material languishing in the depths of my hard-drive which will never see the light of day directly (but might be included at some point in the future.)
This stuff isn’t polished, but there are some bits of fantasy, conflict, relationships, wars, discovery, betrayal that I’ve written for various reasons and either never used, or abandoned as not quite what I needed at the time. In volume, there is probably a couple of books worth…
So would you be interested in a few off cuts and, dare I say it, ‘unfinished tales’? Let me know and I’ll knock them into PDF and ebook formats for your delectation and delight.
I’ve given up on trying to start this in a non-clichéd way. Impossible to avoid the ‘drawing to a close’ or ‘looking back’ or ‘another year has passed…’ phrases – I’m just going to ignore them.
It was quite a significant year for me blog-wise. I launched ‘Torn‘, a book which has taken me six years to finish in its entirety. At the beginning of the year I had hopes I might attract the attentions of an agent, but that was unsuccessful – though I do have a nice series of rejection letters for when I am rich and famous. (Actually, scratch the ‘famous’ – I can’t think of anything worse than being recognized whenever you go outside.) The occasional email is far more appealing!
Anyway, ‘Torn’ is out there and 2012 will be my ‘Year of Promotion’, following on from the ‘Year of Editing, 2010′ and the ‘Year of the book, 2011′.
I also completed my ‘Oolite Saga‘ by writing two books (almost) within the year. I started Incursio in November 2010, and it was finished by August. Finis was even quicker, completed on time just before Christmas. A total of 130k words.
This was encouraging, as it means that I can crank out about a book a year, with my current home/work/life balance.
Finis has already passed 1,000 downloads, sometime around Christmas Eve apparently, and there was another big spike in downloads on Boxing day – Lots of new Kindles and iPads out there?
The Sci-Fi genre seems a pretty popular place to be writing at the moment, so I may come back to it at some point. It will likely be a bit more ‘hard’ Sci-Fi than the Oolite Saga though.
Onwards, of course – and a genre change.
I’m in the (very) early stages of planning a fantasy series. This will hopefully be 3 or 4 books. I plan on release them as ebook only (very little point in making hardcopies to be honest – even Torn has sold much better as an ebook).
Even better, the first book will be free, with the rest of the series being available at a very reasonable price. Why? Everyone likes something for free, and I figure it’s a good way to draw people in. They can get hold of the outline, get to know the main characters and hopefully get drawn into my ‘world’. Once they’re there I hope they’ll care enough to want to know what happened next. Also, I do have a reputation of ending some of my books on rather dramatic cliff-hangers…
This time I will be creating a ‘world’ from scratch. Updates here and on the facebook/twitter pages if you want to like ‘n’ follow’ my ruminations. I hope to publish a few ‘shorts’ along the way, bouncing ideas off my readership.
Thanks to all my fans, ‘likers’ and followers for their constant encouragement and feedback. Thanks to all who were there at the start back in 2006, and all those who have joined since – always wonderful to hear from folks – so please write in and let me know what you think of these stories. Also thanks the many who have helped with proofreading and so on. All hugely appreciated. You’re all fab, and I hope that in reading my books you feel it was all worth the effort!
Anyway, that is all ahead in 2012. I hope you’ve had a Merry Christmas, and I wish you a very happy new year! See you in January.
I was contacted by Sarah Bainbridge from Obooko.com this week asking whether I’d like to submit my free ebooks to her site. I did, and they’ve just appeared live.
Obooko is a great site, simple to navigate and ideal for both authors and readers. Readers get a genre specific list of books, browsable by covers. Authors get a page that tells them how many downloads they’ve received. Readers can also submit feedback as well – what’s not to like?
They even won an award recently and have a facebook page.
I’m not sure exactly when my books went live, but it was sometime between this morning and this afternoon. Already each of my books has been downloaded over ten times.
So great for me, and hopefully a few of my new readers will find their way here too. If you’ve come from obooko – welcome! Let me know what you think of the Oolite Saga!
And in the finest tradition of space in general, it benefited from an assembly of combateers from the far flung reaches of space…
…and a countdown!
Reader feedback will be added over the next few days (along with a few typo fixes) so check back to see how it’s been received!
Or should I say 20:00 GMT!
Just to co-incide with being in the pub with folks from the Oolite forum. Baring any technical difficulties, we’re on track!
Finis will be available for download in:
I’ve put the final touches to ‘Finis’ and it’s been converted to ebook formats, ready for upload. I’ve secured extra website bandwidth as a I always get a major spike when my books are first made available. (In fact, my website went offline temporarily when Mutabilis was launched – oops!)
Other than that, draft webpages are prepped and tested to make a nice clean cut over. I shall be in a pub with a bunch of Oolite combateers at the time, so as long as we get a good mobile signal all will be well!
It’s almost time for one last…. “Right on, Commander!”
Not long now, and in the tradition of my previous fan-fiction releases for the Oolite universe, here is the ‘poster’ for ‘Finis’. Hope you enjoy!
The text is still out with the proofreaders, but I hope to have that back before the weekend of the 3rd and 4th of December.
That gives me a few brief days to do final tweaks and get it converted to the various formats people prefer: pdf, epub, lrf and mobi.
Not long now!
Anne McCaffrey passed away on the 21st of November, a hugely sad loss to the world of science fiction. It would be hard to underestimate the impact her works had on me as a young man.
I was lent a copy of ‘Dragonflight’ (the first book in the Dragon series) by my Uncle, who is also a sci-fi fan. I think I was thirteen or so at the time.
I made the assumption, very wrong in hindsight, that it was going to be a fantasy story. The name of the book implied ‘Dragons’, and the cover of the book had a large fearsome dragon on it. So most people would forgive me for this obvious conclusion.
Upon reading I was drawn into a carefully crafted, and curiously non-religious, feudal world, weighed down with a sense of enormous history and modern political machinations. A world in decay, a shadow of its former self, and step by step, continuing to slowly come apart. A world where myths and legends were part of a rich backdrop where something intangible, yet very important, has almost been lost beyond recall.
At this point I was expecting the aforementioned dragons to make an appearance, but instead, the sorry tale of a disenfranchised young woman unfolds; her birthright stolen by a greedy warlord, and forced from childhood to spend her life as a drudge, her true identity unseen and unsuspected – forgotten to all but herself.
Lessa is a remarkable character. Strong willed, intelligent, scheming and often downright unscrupulous, she is an unlikely heroine. She manipulates all around her, first attempting to undermine those who rule above her, and later the dragon society in which she eventually finds a place.
The hero of the story, F’Lar, initially uses her as a tool to further his own agenda, that of trying to rouse the unconcerned dragonfolk based on his sense of impending disaster based on the aforementioned myths and legends. They tell of an approaching ‘Red Star’ that will rain a curious destruction down on the planet of Pern – ‘Thread’ – a voracious, mindless spore that consumes anything organic. Sure enough, the Red Star is growing brighter in the sky night by night as the story unfolds.
Lessa confronts bigotry, sexism, manipulation and the question of her own value throughout the story. I expected F’lar to be the main protagonist but it is Lessa who saves the day, takes the biggest risks and ultimately triumphs. She is the strongest character in the story by far, gaining the respect of everyone, male or female. Anne McCaffrey herself put it better than I can…
“I was so tired of all the weak women screaming in the corner while their boyfriends were beating off the aliens. I wouldn’t have been—I’d've been in there swinging with something or kicking them as hard as I could.”
Amen to that! Having looked back at Anne’s stories and characters I can see that she had an immense influence on my own writing. Anne’s plots are mostly character and conversationally driven, as are mine. I like well rounded characters with something to say rather than just ‘action’. My ‘Rebecca’ from the Oolite Saga, in hindsight, owes a great deal to ‘Lessa’ from Dragonflight.
And what of the dragons? They are characters themselves, not dumb brutes who eat damsels in distress, but rounded individuals with their own needs and opinions, in some ways a reflection of the human they are paired, for life, with. Essential to the story, but not actually the main theme.
I was expecting a fantasy, what I actually got was character driven romantic science fiction. It’s still a rare combination even now.
Later books introduce more characters, the female ones being far more memorable in general. Menolly, the gifted musician, is another wonderful example, another person with talents struggling against their position of birth and eventually overcoming all obstacles.
As the stories continued the ‘science fiction’ aspect grew in importance. It was revealed that Pern was settled by colonisation from Earth, but due to the depravations endured, knowledge of their ancestry had been lost. This is revealed to the population towards the end of the saga as they rediscover their past and eventually rid their planet of the curse of ‘thread’.
Despite the earliest novel in this series being written in 1968, these stories are pretty much timeless and well worth a read. Anne’s passing is a sad loss, but her treasures are left behind in those books.
So thanks for the inspiration and those wonderful characters.
