Mightier Is The Pen

Blooming Marvellous

This is one of my peonies! Isn’t it lovely? They’ve mostly all come out this year, and seeing it makes me happy. I wish there were more bees about to visit it, but the weather has been awful. At least it helps everything grow!

Anyway, on a related note, Covenant, my Line-of-Fire meets Underworld manuscript has blossomed too. 95,000 words and done after the fourth iteration, it has been sent off to a few beta readers, and because I saw a number of lit agents were open to submissions, I sent it to them as well.

No rest for the wicked, though. I’m not going to sit around waiting – like I said a while ago, I have a back catalogue that needs thinning out and putting out into the world. Even if no-one notices, and no busy bees visit them.

Have a great day, Adventurers. 🙂

Spotty Reception

This is a bit different to my usual fare, so please bear with me.

Parked a few metres from the entrance of the supermarket, I was waiting out a ghastly hailstorm, thankfully safely ensconced inside my car. When it tailed off, and the sun came out, I was about to get out and make the dash, when a 7-spotter ladybird appeared on the driver’s window, landing with a gentle tap-flick as it shelled it’s wings.

Silly Ladybird, I thought, about to get out of my green car and capture it for decanting onto a plant to try and hunt for greenfly, when nature – as it always does – showed me I was the fool.

I’d never thought about it, I mean, I knew that ladybirds ate greenfly and got their sustenance from them, but I’d never actually thought about them having anything else.

Mesmerised, I watched this fascinating little creature, a friend to all gardeners, approach the small spots of rain beaded on the window, inspecting each of them carefully. didn’t know what the hell it was doing, until the droplets slowly vanished.

It was drinking them.

It was so simple, it had never occurred to me, and since I’d never seen it before, this was a bit of a revelation. I was riveted, watching this tiny, humble thing go about it’s clever business, as one after the other of the little sparkling beads got hoovered up.

It was quite thirsty!

Still sat there, I watched as it cleaned up, rubbed it’s mouth, legs and tested it’s wings before it launched away to forage elsewhere. At the same moment another crack of thunder announced a second barrage of hail, and I missed my chance to dash.

It was worth it. 🙂

Have a great day, Adventurers! Watch for Ladybirds!

Cobwebs Removal

Been a while since I last updated, so thought I’d throw out a quickie to say what I’ve been up to.

Getting as many words down as possible! I’ve started putting together my occult novel, got a storyboard for it, and about 5,000-ish words. Been busy refurbishing other projects as well, so in the past two weeks, have written 14,000 to get one of them back on track.

It got me thinking to how many other projects I have languishing in production hell, and that I’m going to have to tackle them at some point and bring them up to spec. I might even shelve anything new and focus on doing that for the rest of the year. It’s a huge task, as I’d rather cut new ground than rummage through rubble, but the payoff of releasing several books in succession is quite tempting.

Anyway, that’s the snapshot – whatever you’re up to, I hope it’s going well – have a great day, adventurers! 🙂

Moving Forward

Well, New Year is over and it’s back to the boulder, although I’m having trouble deciding which boulder to push. I’ve got a lot of works in first/second draft that could use a clean up and need to get published, but I’m having a hard time deciding which.

This is, unfortunately, a common problem of mine, in the fact that I’d rather cut fresh cloth as opposed to trimming and shaping up old, and I wonder how many people and how many professional paths that translates across.

Don’t get me wrong, when I’m working on something, I crunch it until the pips squeak (or as much as I can being a one-man band – albeit with great support from friends and the occasional tame professional), but I have real trouble going back to earlier projects.

This could be because I read them and realise they’re going to be a lot of work, but also could be due to genre. This is another problem of mine – I’m a bit of a genre tart (as my regular adventurers will testify), and so it’s a bit like a kid in a sweetshop – frozen by choice, but only having one pick.

My recent work was WW1 alternative historical fantasy. Do I cleanse my palette with a gothic noir needing a third draft, or do I capitalise on a 12k investment into a WW1 sequel? Do I go to a sci-fi project that has been mouldering for two years, or re-draft a contemporary crime action thriller I’ve got kicking around?

Or do I give in and write that weird occult thriller?

Anyway, writing this gets my thoughts down, but no further forward. There’s a boulder I need to kick.

Have a great day Adventurers! 🙂

Getting Das Boot

Firstly, we’ve had a couple of new subscribers. Hello fellow adventurers!

Now, to the meat of this post. I’m no film critic, nor script genie, but I am a storyteller, and I recently watched The Making of Das Boot (the movie one, as there was a TV program as well). I was astounded they actually built partial replicas of a U Boat (which was taken out for a spin one evening, and later discovered to have been loaned out for Raiders of The Lost Ark).

Anyway, not to dwell. It’s an anti-war film, and portrays this excellently, despite all the action and tense moments. There are an array of characters, the staunch and veteran captain, who the crew trust, down to the determined, practical engineers who just won’t give up.

Even the submarine itself, U-96, is a character.

It is testament to the quality of writing, acting and direction of Das Boot that at the start, we might be uncomfortable seeing the U-Boat crew triumphant in their mission, yet by the end we are rooting for them. I challenge anyone to watch the desperate climax of the film and feel nothing.

We go on this journey with them, starting out, they are all clean-shaven and young-faced. Their uniforms are pressed and tidy and they look fit and fresh. By the end of the film, they are haggard and unkempt, hollow-eyed and sleep-starved.

This is not just a result of the experience they endured, but also a metaphor for what war does to people, changing them and changing the minds of the viewer with a clear and distinct message.

Good storytelling must be like this – invest in your characters, your story and your setting/world. Strive to make every scene do something for at least one of those, and it’ll all come good. If you can hit all those notes and still teach the audience something, that’s the true magic of making art.

Das Boot has haunted and stayed with me since I first watched it many moons ago. It keeps on giving, vignettes of the claustrophobic gloom and thinning air supply as the theme tune powers through my mind on diesel engines.

If you want something grimy, gritty and overall human, you could do worse than watching ‘The Boat’.

Anyway, that’s it adventurers, have a great day! 🙂

Building Character

For some reason, lately I’ve been watching a lot of Sherlock Holmes films, the ones starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. This stirred me to do a little research, as I’d bumped into these wartime renditions of the Great Detective before, but now, with my author head well and truly on, I was motivated to find out a little more.

The reason for this was the characters they played, especially Nigel Bruce as the bumbling comedic foil, Watson. One of the directors or producers once said if him:

“If there was a bucket, his foot would be in it, a hole, he’d fall into it…”

I disliked this Watson, because in the books, and the later Jeremy Brett adaptations – which are, to me, the perfect representations – John Watson wasn’t a buffoon. He was discerning, sharp, and grounded, a perfect foil for the aloof and mercurial Holmes.

As I noticed, however, two things remained constant across all portrayals, which I think was handled superbly by Bruce and all who came after him – Watson’s bravery and loyalty.

It is all too easy to dismiss this in the shadow of Rathbone’s rapier wit and displays of intelligence, but watch Bruce closely in each scene of danger, and you’ll see the steely eyes, the outrage at cruelty and disregard for life.

This should exist in our characters. Even if one of them is playing the foil/fool, they should have something about them which endears or makes them memorable – that the mask of whimsy or carefree abandon hides a pained or sensitive soul.

Just a few thoughts of what has been brewing in my head.

The main reason I’m spinning wheels with this, is I’m suffering a bit of writers’ inertia, trying to decide what to do next. I’ve been busying myself with preparing the Azhov novellas for inclusion into an omnibus, as discussed many, many moons ago, which will collect the three novellas with an as yet unwritten fourth instalment.

The novellas are being expanded with more material, and will be Second Editions, but in order to make it fair on those who bought them before, I will try to make the omnibus a low cost for a short period of time, so that you’re buying the new novella, but with a few bells and whistles.

Anyway, that’s all for now – and the end of this year! Where did it all go? Have a good New Year’s Eve, fellow adventurers!

Merry Christmas

Just a thank you to all the adventurers who’ve kept up with me and this blog for another year of madness and tribulation.

Thank you to everyone who bought or supported my recent book, and apologies to everyone for going on about it so much, but there’s still time to get it on Kindle! 😉

It already has a couple of 5-Star ratings, which is fabulous, and if you felt like leaving another that would be a nice bonus. Please do consider leaving a good, honest review, since all constructive feedback is important to improve and is welcomed.

With all the shameless plugging out of the way…

Let’s hope 2024 is a better one for everyone, and the peace and joy of the newborn Christ brings the world to a better place.

I wish you all a great Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

Fine Adjustments

Firstly, thank you to everyone who has purchased my books over the past week, I appreciate it a great deal and I hope you enjoy them.

As seems to always be the case, there’s a formatting error in there, which I corrected immediately upon discovery. Kindle E-books should be updated by clearing the download from your library and then re-downloading the book. This will cost you nothing. Unfortunately, any paper copies will obviously be set in stone.

I always do my best to run errors like this to ground, but sincerely apologise, and hope it doesn’t spoil the reading experience. Being generous to us penniless scribblers at this time of year is a gift…and after all, the first Harry Potter book went out with a spelling mistake…

Once again, thank you and as always put my hands up when the problem is something within my control. I always want to be honest on this journey with you.

Have a great day, Adventurers.

Changing Track

Something a bit different from me today, just to prove I’m not a one-note wonder. I’ve just finished watching Mel Gibson in ‘The Fatman‘ (2020) and it’s incredibly dark, but I have to admit to liking it. Bear with me whilst I explain – I’m not a movie critic, but I wanted to share my thoughts on a ‘Christmas Movie’.

There are many reasons I like this film. Despite some very dark scenes, there’s a hint of humour, not quite enough to offset the unsettling themes, but it’s welcome enough when it happens. It also tries to do something different, which I applaud, because same-is-same might be comforting and cosy, but an intelligently changed perspective really catches my attention.

It reminds me of two other genre-twisting ideas: The first is Arnie’s film Last Action Hero, which was a poor performer at the box office, largely IMHO because critics and moviegoers didn’t know what the hell to make of it. This is both good and bad, because it was a perspective shift satirising Hollywood, and not a big-budget Arnie blockbuster action flick.

Good on both counts.

It was dark, gritty and had some of the most intelligent and ruthless villains I’ve ever seen in a film, Charles Dance is excellent as the deadly hitman, and the hero gets beaten so badly at one point there’s a realistic scene in an ambulance where he’s dying of a sucking gunshot wound to the chest. Contrasted to ridiculous fart jokes, movie tropes and schlock within the same film and this is terribly dark and jarring.

Let’s move on briefly to the other example, which isn’t a film this time, but a TV Series called Grimm. Now, this was a program which tried different as well – reminding the audience that Grimm’s Fairy Tales as we know them are quite sanitised and have been given a saccharine sugar coating by Hollywood, but in truth, good readers:

They ain’t nice. Not one bloody bit.

Starting off well, Grimm was a take on monsters amongst us, and all the social commentary that comes with it (Season 4 and 5 devolved into absolute tripe though), but it shared that exploration of dangerous, inhuman things, violent monsters and horrible ways to die.

Between Arnie’s shooter and Grimm’s gore lies The Fatman. A tale of a mythical being made real, the same way Interview With A Vampire tries to make bloodsuckers real. It takes hearsay and common fable and drops it all together to produce something believable.

The writing has several golden moments, the dialogue being overall very good, and the actors seem to be having a fairly good time, elevating the script and film to a much higher degree to give a solid performance for something different.

And on that note, it’s a wrap.

Have a good day, adventurers!

Oh, and er, time’s running out to get your stocking filled – Santa knows whether you’ve been naughty or nice – so why not treat yourself to a definitely different read…?

War Mages: Sharpshooter…?

Season’s Treatings

The festive season is usually reserved for the pursuit of cheer and happiness with good friends and family, but sometimes, when they drive you mad, you just want to escape into a different world. Well, I have several different flavours of escapism for you.

Something warm with a dash of sharp:

My first middle-grade book, aimed at 10-12 year olds, The Knitted Knomes can be read by anyone who likes a touch of magic and woolly mayhem!

If you don’t believe me, trust my reviewers…

“This makes for a relatively short read, but that’s covered by a really nice and heart-warming story. It is not the big one about saving the whole world. Even though it does saves some worlds – even if they are small and very personal ones. That is why a lot of the characters became precious to me very fast, especially the two main protagonists.”

“It has everything a good Knomes story needs. Adventure. Mischief. Drama. Love. Pain. Sorrow. All in just the right amount.”
Reviewer ‘Jeneha’ April 2022

Alternatively, if you’d prefer something distinctively for grown-ups, and a touch grittier, but still on the nobler side, you could do worse than pick up my power-armoured knight’s tale, The Ares Gambit.

Regrettably, no-one has left any reviews, but that just means you get the chance to be the first, right? 🙂

Further tales of derring-do and heroic adventure can be found in my magical realism driven, alternative historical fantasy, War Mages: Sharpshooter, which pits our gallant crew against the horrors of war, dropping them into danger and desperation…

This is quite popular at the minute so why not join in? I must be something right…!

And last but not least is my military sci-fi horror Children of the Glyph, a dystopian, grimdark murder-fest, which has jetpacks, jump boots and super-sharp kukris cutting down swathes of abominations and cyber-megalomaniacs from outer space!

Again, please don’t hesitate to download a sample, or check out some of the reviews which only serve to reinforce how much a ripper this one is.

Anyway, please don’t delay if you want a festive treat, as with printing and delivery, it’s going to be a big ask for Santa to get them under your tree!