Brian Ruckley's News & Views

Guest Posting Elsewhere

2010-03-02T14:05:00.002Z

I am not here. I am over at the jolly good Orbit blog posting on the subject of the short life expectancy of characters in The Godless World.

MPoaF: It's Oscar Time

2010-02-26T10:33:00.014Z

My humble contribution to the feeding frenzy of the entertainment-industrial complex that is the Oscars. If you want predictions for who'll scoop the main prizes, you'll have to look elsewhere. The words 'Avatar' and 'Hurt Locker' will not be appearing anywhere in this post. (Except just there, obviously). I've seen precisely one of the ten films up for Best Picture - pathetic, I know - so have nothing remotely sensible to say. Other than that the one I have seen - District 9 - is a good, unusual piece of sf, which it's great to see on the list, and that it is obviously not going to win in a million years (and to be honest, much as I liked it ... well, I liked it, quite a lot in fact, but I didn't think it was an earth-shattering masterpiece or anything).

No, this is all about one category we can get some properly good moving images for: short animated film. Here are three of the nominees in full, for your perusal. I would have said 'for your amusement', but the humour on display here is pretty dark stuff, so your mileage may vary.

First off (and winner of my personal Oscar, I think) some nicely grim fairy tale-telling:

And next some nifty French animation:

And finally more thoroughly macabre goings on (just a bit too macabre for me to find it terribly amusing, to be honest):

The other two nominees, by the way, are Logorama, which its creators seem to have removed from most of the video sites that let you embed stuff in blogs, so I got bored trying to find a version to include here, and A Matter of Loaf and Death, which is similarly not easy to get hold of the full version of - but it's Wallace and Gromit, so you know more or less precisely what it's like already.

Answering Questions: Part the First

2010-02-18T09:33:00.000Z

People ask me questions. Which is nice. I try to answer them if I've got the time, but that's a commodity that's in rather short supply these days so I can't always be as volubly responsive as I'd like. As a fair proportion of those questions tend to congregate around certain topics, I thought I'd try the bulk purchase approach, and offer up some answers to some of the more frequent queries here. We're starting with some housekeeping-type questions today, but I promise to get to (possibly) more interesting writing-related stuff in a future episode. Onward!

The Social Networking Question. No, I'm not a member of the Twitterati, so you can't follow me there. No, I don't frequent LinkedIn or Myspace or a. n. other social network of your chocie, so you can't connect with me there. Sorry. All that stuff is appealing, but it's a prodiguous time sink which feels dangerously like doing real work without actually falling into that category. For now my social networking energies (not vast at the best of times, being the dour and reclusive soul that I quite obviously am) are fully occupied by this here blog and by Facebook. On the latter you are welcome to befriend me or befan the Godless World trilogy, the latter perhaps being the more highly recommended option since (a) the books are arguably more interesting and deserving of your affections than I am, and (b) you might benefit from one of the occasional giveaways hosted there (of which more might be in the imminent offing - I'm toying with some options for next month at the moment).

Will I Answer your Interview Questions? If you want to publish the interview in a blog, magazine, whatever, the answer is probably yes. Like most newish writers, anonymity is my deadliest foe, so I crave attention with much the same desperation as a starving man craves chocolate cake. If you can offer me eyeballs I will endeavour to offer you some answers. Can't guarantee it, but if time permits I'll certainly try. If you want to interview me for a school or college project (I never knew asking writers questions was such a popular project activity for students!) - the answer's still probably yes, but that 'probably' is starting to take on strong 'possibly'-like characteristics. It'd help if (a) there aren't too many questions, and (b) they indicate that you actually know who I am and what I write and that you've put some thought into them. Even then, I might sometimes have to say no if my to-do list is getting ugly. Don't hold it against me.

Will I Read Your Manuscript? That's a very flattering question, given the implication that I might have something sensible to say about your book/story/whatever. I never object to being asked it. But the answer's no. (Unless you're an old and dear friend friend of mine in which case: maybe, if there's a beer or two in it for me). There's a whole unruly host of reasons why I must decline, of which that bugbear of ambition, time, is by far the most important. I mean, manuscript's are big, you know? And my not exactly impregnable finances are dependent on me producing my own, not reading other folk's.

Also, consider: You are no doubt a thoroughly pleasant, grounded, sensible sort who genuinely wants constructive criticism with a view to improving your manuscript. There is another sort - a very small minority, occasionally seen frequenting discussion boards here and there - who may think that's what they want, but are actually in search of praise and validation above all else (such people, I'd suggest, are not the most likely candidates for future publication, but you already knew that, right?). They might not appreciate being told their manuscript is less than perfect (which it is - believe me, I know from personal experience that virtually no manuscript, including those that end up being published, qualifies for the description 'perfect'). So although you're not going to bite my head off, take a look at that person behind you in the queue for my notional free manuscript review service: don't they look just a little wild-eyed, a little feverish, a little ... too keen?

And honestly, what I think of your manuscript wouldn't matter all that much. I like to think I can broadly tell the difference between technically competent and incompetent writing, but beyond that my opinion isn't the one that counts to an aspiring writer. I'll certainly have one, but like everyone, I read plenty of highly successful published books that leave me mystified as to what their appeal is, so what I think really doesn't amount to a reliable guide to anything much. The opinions that matter are those of the agents, editors and publishers who control access to the sunlit uplands of commercial publication, and the only way to get their feedback is by submitting stuff to them (after you've revised said stuff to death, of course). You have to develop your own ability to assess your work, and getting rejected - or, joy of joys! - accepted by those people is, IMHO, while not the only way, certainly the most reliable way to sharpen that ability.

Here endeth the Q&A for today. More to follow in due course, including a brief meditation on one of the more interesting questions I've ever been asked: What Lies East of Anlane? On the off-chance anyone has specific questions they'd like to see me fumble around with, feel free to e-mail me, and if they're of possibly wider interest, I'll see if I can work them in to a future blog post.

Some Musical Fantasy for You

2010-02-17T09:02:00.002Z

Over at his Debatable Spaces blog the very nice sf author Philip Palmer has a weekly feature inviting fellow spec fic writers to showcase music with a science fictional or fantastical vibe. My turn this week, and you can see my choice here. You might want to browse around a bit while you're there. Lots of diverse and interesting content on his blog.

MPoaF: Bubbles Make Me Smile

2010-02-12T10:00:00.005Z

There have been bubbles blown in the house recently. Watching them, I was struck by a child's eye view (a perspective highly recommended for its ability to give the whole world a wash of wonder and fun): 'Wow. Bubbles are cool.' And for no other reason than that: bubbles!

And I have to just add: 'Wow. Dolphins are cool.'

Ear Candy

2010-02-10T10:06:00.006Z

Just a very brief pointer towards some audio entertainment:

I've recently subscribed to the feed for the Beneath Ceaseless Skies podcast. Some nice stories in there, and quite a few of them are short enough to fit into the limited listening windows I have these days. They publish lots more stories in text form online too, but I just can't get into the reading on screen thing (or the print it out and read it on paper thing) so I stick to the audio.

The ever reliable Escape Pod podcast is still going strong too. A recent listen I enjoyed: Garth Nix's Infestation. A fairly straightforward vampire story (with enough of a twist on the trope to make it just a little different) that's got a strong movie-like vibe to it and some entertaining violence.

And on the non-fiction side, BBC radio is doing a looong series of short daily shows telling The History of the World in 100 Objects. The objects in question are items from the collection of the British Museum, and it's narrated by the boss of said institution (who has a slightly plummy English accent of the sort you don't hear all that often these days, which I note not as criticism but just because I find it sort of sweet and cosy in a funny sort of way). Anyway, the episodes are pleasingly brief and to the point, and I've found much of interest in there. Struck me that almost every episode, particularly these early ones that deal with the very distant past, has the seed of a story in it when listened to with the ears of a writer.

MPoaF: JJ Abrams just talking, really

2010-02-05T10:00:00.007Z

JJ Abrams, the guy behind Lost, Cloverfield, the Star Trek reboot and other significant bits of recent popular culture (i.e. easily one of the most important figures in the early 21st century genre-as-mainstream boom), talks about what he does, why he does it the way he does, his grandfather, boxes, magic, all kinds of stuff ... Nothing especially astonishing about it, just a rather nice, well-delivered talk, I thought.

I Am Not Hard to Please

2010-02-02T09:54:00.003Z

Waking up to find an inch or two of unforecasted snow blanketing the world, and still falling ... colour me happy.

MPoaF: Making a Book in the 21st Century

2010-01-22T09:00:00.017Z

Well, one way of making a book anyway. The Espresso Book Machine is already installed here and there, including a few bookshops around the world, I think. Is this a possible saviour for a handful of the doomed bookstores I was talking about last week? I'm a bit dubious, but you can see why they'd want to give it a try. Any straw you can get hold of probably looks appealing when you're sinking fast. It is quite clever, I suppose, and it's fun to watch a book coming into existence like that.

I'm not sure it really offers much defence against the e-book advance, though. Much as I hate to dwell on the gloomier aspects of this revolution, it's stayed on my mind this last week, so a couple of further hints at what the future holds:

As pointed out by Simon in the comments on the last post, Waterstone's, the UK's last big chain of dedicated bookstores is shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic. They plan to turn their backs (partially) on the dreaded celebrity biography and give individual store managers more control over what books their shops stock and promote. It's an idea I can get behind, but will it stave off the coming storm? Somehow I doubt it. Might prolong the life of some of their stores, but can't see it saving large numbers of them in the long run.

20% of digital book buyers apparently stop buying print copies entirely. Can't make up my mind whether that's a higher or lower percentage than I would have expected. One thing's for sure, though - it's a chunky enough number (and one I'd imagine is only going to rise) to put a big ugly question mark over the viability of all bricks and mortar bookshops once the digital habit has spread a bit further through the reading population.

Lots of digital books are illegally downloaded. A staggeringly unexpected discovery, I'm sure you'll agree. Reading about it a bit more widely, it's not obvious the study's findings are exactly robust, since there's a lot of extrapolation and sampling involved, but maybe I should just be pleased to see that fiction titles are actually amongst the least affected. (But in this case 'least affected' still means thousands and thousands of copies). Again, one thing's for sure: the numbers will only rise once on-screen reading of books becomes a more widespread and deeply entrenched norm. What effect it'll have on the financial stability of the whole writing business remains to be seen, and I'm instinctively doubtful of anyone who claims to know.

And as for publishers ... well, all I can say is I'm glad it's not my job to spend all day trying to figure out where all this is heading, and whether I'll still have gainful employment when it gets there ... I'd be in a perpetual cold sweat.

My Role in the Demise of the High Street Bookstore

2010-01-14T10:15:00.014Z

In 2009, my answer to the question 'Are bricks and mortar bookshops doomed?' underwent a subtle but significant change. (No one has actually asked me that specific question, by the way - after all, who cares what I think? Well, I do, so I have regularly asked myself the question).

Anyway, up until some time in 2009, when pondering an answer to this weighty self-inflicted question, I would have to think about it a bit. Kick a few ideas and scenarios around in my head. Weigh up the exact wording of my response. And end up with: 'Probably.' Which I would then dress up with various caveats and qualifications.

For a while now, however, my answer has not been something I need to think about too much. Are bricks and mortar bookshops doomed? Yeah, pretty much.

I'm still going to stick one or two qualifications on there, though, just to be picky. By 'bookshops' I mean mostly - but by no means exclusively - the big stores that reside in every town centre in the UK. By 'doomed' I mean headed for a potentially savage reduction in numbers and, for the surviving outlets, a future rather different from their recent past. Timescale-wise, I'm no real futurist so who knows? The evidence in the UK would seem to suggest that it's already underway: Borders UK - a small but not insignificant chain - went under late last year. Waterstone's, the last big dedicated bookselling chain, has just announced really horrible Christmas trading figures, at a time when most other high street retailers have been posting surprisingly good numbers. (I've no idea how WH Smiths, the other long-established biggish beast of high street book sales is doing, but they're not solely reliant on books for revenue so may not be so vulnerable).

I really, really like bookshops, so this is not a change I instinctively welcome, but it would be silly to ignore my personal contribution to the hammering these bookstores have been taking. Because I'm definitely part of the problem. A tiny, tiny itsy-bitsy little part of the problem, for sure, but I'm in there doing my bit to destroy their business model. I'm only human, and the forces arrayed against the poor old bricks and mortar bookstore are powerful enough to suck even me along in their seductive wake.

The price- and convenience-appeal of online shopping (not just for books, of course) is too much for me to resist, a lot of the time. Although I'm far from poor, I'm not rich enough these days to be entirely uninterested in the unit cost of my reading habit, and there's a lot to be said for being able to acquire the objects of my desire without having to even leave my house. Result: it's at least possible that in 2009 I spent more buying coffee in bookshops than I did buying actual books. And much as I like coffee (and tediously expensive as it is in such places) I don't spend nearly enough on it to keep Waterstones or any other cafe-equipped bookstore in business for long.

If it was only the competition from online sellers that the stores had to face, they could probably hang on in there. But the supermarkets have driven a coach and horses through the established price structure for bestsellers, destroying what used to be a central plank in the financial viability of dedicated bookstores. I am, at least, innocent of any complicity in this development, since I have never bought a book in a supermarket, and hope I never will. (Which is fairly easy for me to say since, to date, they don't sell the kind of books I tend to read).

And there's the third, and probably most dangerous, club bludgeoning the bookstores about the head: e-readers. Late last year I played around with one in a shop, the first time I've ever really done so with proper attention. And - sacrilege! - I found myself thinking: 'You know, I could actually read a novel like this. It's quite a pleasing bit of kit, all in all. And it would be kind of cool to have hundreds of books in your pocket ...' I might even buy one, one day. (They'll have to be both even better and cheaper, though). And that's really bad news for bookstores, because I'm a paper and ink guy through and through. If even I'm wavering ... well, the end is surely nigh. The real breakthrough for digital books is a little way off yet, but one things for sure: the market for them isn't about to start shrinking any time soon..

I expect there will still be some shops that make enough money solely from selling books to keep going - quite possibly they'll be local, brilliantly managed independent shops with a specialist interest. And there will no doubt be plenty of places that sell books alongside all kinds of other stuff. But I'm pretty sure we're in the twilight of the ubiquitous, big, dedicated bookshops in prime retail locations we've all grown up with. Eventually lots of them will go the same way so many of the music stores have gone, and the way the movie rental shops and the video game stores will probably go in due course. (Is it my imagination, or do all these places, when they close down, get replaced with mobile phone shops? Is there some law about this I'm unaware of? Is there no upper limit on the density of mobile phone emporia an area can support?)

It's just change. It's the way of things these days. Business models, even whole industries, come and go. No point in getting gloomy about it, or too nostalgic for the way things used to be - particularly when I, along with millions of other perfectly well-intentioned folk, am helping to propel the change. But there's no getting away from the fact I'll miss knowing that I can find, somewhere in the centre of every reasonable-sized town in the UK, a big open shop filled with rank upon rank of shelves stuffed with thousands and thousands of books (and pretty much nothing but books), and having the sense of being on the threshold of a great storehouse of knowledge and entertainment and craft. And cruising the aisles touching the books and turning them over in my hands, admiring them as objects. I hope that when these places are gone - or at least much rarer than they used to be - their absence won't be an excuse for people to forget how important and magical books with paper pages are (were?).

But as I said before, I'm no futurist. So who knows?

New Year, New Things

2010-01-09T15:40:00.004Z

So, everyone: welcome to 2010. (A week late, I know, but it's the thought that counts, right?) I hope you enjoy it, and that it delivers at the very least a respectable portion of all that you hope for.

Starting a new year with a new experience can't be a bad thing, I reckon, so you won't hear any complaints from me about the wintry onslaught that has subjugated the British Isles. There's been no sign of the grass on the lawn outside my window for over three weeks now, buried as it is beneath a gleaming white blanket of snow. Nothing remarkable for many of you, of course, including those living at the same latitude as Edinburgh (approaching 56 deg N, for the record - roughly the same as Moscow and the Aleutian Islands), but it's exceptionally unusual round here, where the peculiarities of climates both macro- and micro- mean most winters are all but snow-free. In fact, I don't remember seeing anything quite like it in my life.

I'm a big fan of the big freeze. Everything looks just that little bit unfamiliar and exotic. It feels like we've all travelled to some other place - one quieter, more beautiful and imbued with a faint, cold magic - without having to move. The sound of deep snow crunching underfoot seems to me vaguely romantic and wild and fantastical.

A new computer arrived in my house. I didn't really want one, but the old one was accumulating software glitches and idiosyncracies that nothing seemed to rid it of, and to be fair it was a few years old, so I bit the bullet and went shopping. Turns out PCs have got a whole lot better since I last bought one. Who knew? I mean, have you seen these flat screen things? They're all ... flat and stuff. Amazing.

Anyway, one consequence has been a big clean out and reorganising of my feeds, which gives me an excuse to flag up some new, newish or not new at all podcasts that might be of interest:

1. Tor.com has added a new podcast - the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy - to complement their existing audio fiction one. Both can be found here. The G's G to the G promises to cover a wide spectrum of geeky interests, so should be worth following. (First episode doesn't do much for me, since it's mostly about Left 4 Dead 2, and my gaming days are more or less behind me, sadly, but I'm not letting that put me off).

2. The iFanboy Pick of the Week podcast is my graphic novels and comics-related listening of choice. For any of you out there with a liking for that medium, it gets a great big thumbs up from me. (As does their video podcast, if you're a visually oriented sort).

3. Naked Archaeology offers monthly news and views on archaeological research and discoveries. Quite interesting, if you're into that sort of thing. It's a spin-off from the very well known and jolly good Naked Scientists podcast, as is the newer and potentially interesting (but I haven't actually listened to it yet, so don't blame me if it's rubbish) Naked Astronomy.

And lo, the new year brings a new look for Fall of Thanes. This is the cover for the US mass market paperback edition, due out very soon. And it is, IMHO, a thing of beauty. Possibly my favourite 'look' for any of the trilogy so far. And that's saying something, since all the way through, I've really been jolly well taken care of by the Orbit folks responsible for prettying up my books.

The new year also brings free pdfs of books. Free pdfs of 11,000 books to be precise, including quite a lot of famous ones (and a great many not very famous at all ones, I suspect). They're available at The Book Depository. Now, personally I can't read novel-length stuff in pdf form. Can just about manage a short story, but that's about my limit in that format (and even then, I'll be hoping it's a short short story). But you might be different, so go knock yourself out. It doesn't look that easy to actually find some of the freebies, admittedly, but even right there on the front page, there's links to free Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling and others.

MPoaF: Trailer Time

2009-12-17T17:19:00.013Z

I have a confession to make. I don't know if this disqualifies me from my membership of geekdom or something, but ... The Dark Knight wasn't my favourite superhero movie experience of 2008. Shocking, I know. Just shocking. I liked it well enough, and obviously thought bits of it (mostly Joker-related bits, I suppose) were brilliant. But I'm pretty sure I derived more simple enjoyment from ... Iron Man. It was a straightforward, slick, pretty confection that didn't really try to be anything more than what it was, and as far as I was concerned it succeeded pretty triumphantly. Which is not in any sense damning with faint praise: I seriously think it's an impressively well put together package, with the directing, acting, scripting and effects all working in near-perfect harmony towards a clear and shared goal. Sure, it's some way from being perfect, but I left the cinema wearing the dumb smile of the satiated seeker of eye candy.

Dark Knight, by contrast, was an altogether more complicated and ambitious beast. And perhaps because I'd fallen for the pre-release hype, it seemed to me to come up just short of the lofty targets it set for itself - aside, as I said, for some passages of seriously accomplished film-making. It's clearly the more interesting film of the two, but it just didn't deliver quite the entertainment kick to me that Iron Man did.

All of which is a convoluted (and believe me, I could go on and on, making it more and more convoluted, because I've thought about this particular compare and contrast exercise far more than is healthy) ... anyway, all of this is a convoluted way of saying that of all the big budget, sfx-heavy films promising to grace our cinema screens in 2010, this is probably the one that tickles my fancy most of all:

A Kerfuffle Aspiring Writers Might Want to Pay Attention To

2009-12-14T10:00:00.005Z

Not for the first time the inimitable John Scalzi kicked off a bit of an internet fuss recently. The particular feline lobbed unceremoniously into the pigeon house on this occasion was this post laying into a new short story publisher for offering dismally tiny payments to writers. Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth in various bits of the internet (both for and against his views), a nice sample of which can be found in this post, and particularly the lengthy comments thread attached thereunto.

Perhaps the most fruitful outcome of the whole kerfuffle - that I've seen, anyway - is a couple of livejournal posts by Anne Leckie that are, I think, well worth the attention of any aspiring writers out there. Especially writers of short fiction, but wannabe novelists as well. The first explains why getting your short stories published in certain types of venues will not help your nascent writing career, is such a thing is your goal; the second delves into the much more nebulous question of what makes for good fiction. Both are worth a read: there is a good deal of stuff in there that I think aspiring authors (and published ones like yours truly, too) could profitably ponder, whether they agree with it or not.

Much of what's discussed in the links above made me think about where my head was at when I was actively writing and submitting short stories to magazines (note that what follows is decidedly not advice; my route through the thicket of obstacles facing the aspiring writer was my own, and does not remotely constitute a generally applicable map).

Back then, I was just starting to take the idea of one day being a professional writer seriously - i.e. thinking about what was involved in getting there, rather than just daydreaming about it. The crux of it, to my simple and innocent brain, seemed straightforward: if I wanted to be a professional writer, I had to be able to write to a professional standard.

So I worked on some stories - most of which were never submitted anywhere because I was never quite satisfied with them - and sent a few out to magazines. I only sent them to what I thought of as professional-standard magazines, i.e. those paying towards the upper end of the general scale for stories, or those that were clearly high profile and respectable and publishing stories of a certain quality.

I didn't try to place stories with non-paying markets, or obscure magazines making token payments; not because I've got anything in particular against such publications, but because I had a project, and it wasn't a 'get a story published anywhere' project. It was a 'learn how to write to a professional standard' project. So I was only interested in the judgement of those - the editors and publishers - who set that standard by their acquisition decisions. To paraphrase Anne Leckie: I was interested in being a pro, so I aimed for the pros. Aiming lower, I reasoned, would only teach me how to miss my chosen target, not how to hit it.

Now things worked out OK for me, because I did sell a couple of stories in the 90s (which sounds hopeless, but actually wasn't a bad hit rate, because I only ever sent out a handful). But just to prove that mine is not necessarily the example to follow, having tasted that tiny little bit of success, I stopped trying to write and sell the things entirely. Why? Because I'm nuts? Not entirely, though it's arguable. (As it happens, I do often wish I'd held onto the short story habit a bit more firmly. It's got a lot to recommend it.).

No, I stopped for my own, possibly rather eccentric, reasons. The second story I sold (to what was then called The Third Alternative and is now Black Static), was one that, before I sent it out, I was pretty sure was good enough to be publishable in the kind of markets I was interested in. For the first time, I felt I could instinctively identify a piece of my own writing as meeting a basic professional standard. Turned out, I was right.

More importantly, if I'm remembering things rightly, I submitted one further story after that sale. And it was rejected. At which point I basically stopped writing and submitting short stories. Not because I was discouraged, but because I had known, in my heart of hearts, before I sent it out, that that last story was not quite up to the necessary standard. It was OK, with some nice ideas and passages, but it didn't have that feel. Turned out, once again, that I was right.

That was good enough for me. I'd more or less learned what I wanted to. I could, at least on occasion, write to a professionally publishable standard; and I could identify the necessary quality - and its absence - in my stories before the editors passed their own judgement. (Yes, two is a ridiculously small sample size to base such sweeping conclusions on, and I was building on some very dodgy foundations there, but I did say mine wasn't an example to follow). What does that quality consist of? Ah, well ... that's a whole other, decidedly complicated story, and one I'd need a whole other post to even start picking away at. But I do think Anne Leckie's second post offers much food for thought on the subject.

And I will say this - and I guess this, despite what I said earlier about not giving advice, is advice of a sort: irrespective of what mysterious bricks that 'quality' is built from, one of the most important skills anyone who wants to turn their writing into a career can acquire is that of recognising its presence, or absence, in their own work. And the only way you do that is by writing for, submitting to, and probably being rejected by, the markets which define the level of quality you aspire to.

MPoaF: The Cryptozoological Edition

2009-12-11T14:38:00.000Z

I've got a passing interest in cryptozoology. Not in the sense that I actually believe there are dinosaurs living wild in the Congo, or hairy hominids roaming the North American continent, or plesiosaurs splashing around in a certain well known body of water not too far from where I currently sit (even though I am apparently blind to the evidence provided by Google Earth itself in that last case).

No, it's more a case that I would like to believe all that stuff, and find those who do, the stories they tell and the quests and investigations they undertake interesting and vaguely appealing. There's a certain romantic instinct - a sort of longing for mystery and strangeness in the world - that seems to be part of the mindset, and I think that's a very basic human attribute. A very high proportion of us are drawn in one way or another to the mysterious and the strange, and we find our own personal ways of bringing those elements of the world into our lives. The search for unexpected wildlife fits the bill in a lot of respects.

And although I dismissed the plausibility of some of the most famous cryptozoological icons right at the start, there are several other cases that I tend to think of as 'semi-cryptozoological' that appeal much more strongly to both my heart and my head. For example, there's the possibility of big cats living wild in the UK, eating our sheep.

Or, and here we get to the thing that really captures my imagination, and even moves me, there's the thylacine. Could there be, somewhere in Tasmania, or even mainland Australia or New Guinea, a surviving population of the largest modern marsupial carnivore? Living in the wildest places it can find, skirting the fringes of human awareness and imagination? I would be utterly delighted if that one day proved to be true, not least because it's humanity's fault that the poor old Tasmanian Tiger disappeared in the first place.

I think part of the reason the thylacine has a hold on my imagination, and that of many other people, is that we have film of what may well have been the last individual of the species. Call me a big softy if you like (my excuse is that I'm a wildlife fan by instinct and by education) but I find this clip really quite moving. Was this animal, at the time it was filmed, the very last of its kind on the whole planet, thanks to us:

Probably. But not necessarily, if you climb aboard the cryptozoology wagon. There have been heaps of alleged thylacine sightings, and even some films, including one from this very year that's now drawing to a close.

Not exactly conclusive, huh? Unless you were after proof that there are mangy-looking dogs and foxes running around the Antipodes, in which case - well, make your own judgement.

But this, out of all the cryptozoological tales, is the one I want to be true. I reckon it'd be wonderful if in one of those clips we were looking at an animal that had survived, hidden, despite humanity's best efforts - both intentional and otherwise - to rid the world of it. If I was a multi-millionaire with time on my hands, I wouldn't be remotely tempted to embark on expeditions in search of the yeti or the sasquatch; but the thylacine ... yes, I could spare a fraction of my vast wealth to mount a quest in the wilds of Tasmania. Guess I'm just a romantic at heart.

(Though if I did find something out there, whether or not I'd tell anyone, I'm not sure. If anything deserves a bit of privacy, a bit of human-free peace and quiet, it's the thylacine.)

A Random Name Generator in Disguise

2009-12-07T09:30:00.013Z

One of the things I occasionally get asked is how I make up names for my characters. To which the answer, if you're talking about secondary world fantasy like The Godless World, is: mostly I just make them up, playing around with sounds and letters in my head until something vaguely plausible (and roughly consistent with the other names I've already used) volunteers itself.

Generally speaking, I reckon it's worth sticking with the idea of inventing your own names, even when the creative juices are flowing sluggishly, just because names are - or should be - a pretty important element of a story. They're more than just badges: they can convey mood and character and cultural affiliation; they can create expectations in the reader's mind that you can then confirm or subvert; they can carry symbolic and metaphorical weight.

Sometimes, though, I guess a little bit of external inspiration might help, and there's a ridiculously large amount of it available.

You can just go the direct route and press a few buttons on a purpose-designed fantasy name generator (though with this, and all other methods I'll mention, I'd suggest still tweaking any results to take proper 'ownership' of the names and make sure they fit your setting and story and intent).

Or if you're looting real world cultures for a fantasy milieu, you can mine the rich and varied strata of baby name lists. They come in all flavours, whether you're looking for Celtic influenced names, or Native American.

Or you could make the quest for names a rewarding and educational process in itself and immerse yourself in some weighty historical tomes. Personally, I'd recommend trying some Byzantine history, since it covers in excess of a thousand years and a whole load of different cultures, from Roman and Greek through Turkish and Armenian and Arabic. There're some very fine names buried in there, let me tell you.

Or, and here we get to the thing that made me think about all this in the first place, you could put your faith in a weirder approach. I noticed a while back that the anti-spam comment filtering process on this, and presumably all other Blogger blogs, had subtly changed (unless it was always like this and I'd never noticed). When the software shows you some wobbly letters and asks you to repeat them back to it, those letters have started displaying a strange and appealing coherence. They are no longer random; instead, they're clearly psuedo-words. Or, more relevantly, wannabe names.

Just by hitting the refresh button repeatedly, I harvested (amongst a few clearly unuseable tongue-twisters) the following list of what looks to me a lot like name seeds for fantasy characters: phathea, miculap, porev, potlycos, sches, speres, cysedi, incia. Now these are weird fantasy names, admittedly, but there's potential there. I particularly like Porev, Sches and Cysedi as starting points for some name play, myself.

Not what the designers had in mind, obviously, but I've no doubt the cockles of their heart are warmed by the thought that they might unintentionally offer aid to the desperate and despairing fantasy writer in his or her hour of name-blocked need.

MPoaF: On the Subject of Writing

2009-12-04T12:32:00.003Z

Earlier this week I spent a pleasant hour or two in the company of the students who make up Strathclyde University's Writers' Society, inflicting upon them some of my experiences, views and prejudices regarding the whole writing thing. I've done this kind of thing a handful of times now, and so far it's always proved enjoyable. I can report that our nation's students - at least the aspiring writers amongst them - are a fine body of folk. (But when did they get to be so young? More to the point, when did I get to be so old? Surely it was only a year or two ago that I was a student myself ... oh, wait. Maybe it was rather longer than that ... don't think about it. Ignore the harsh realities of time's passing. If you don't pay it any attention, it's not really happening ...)

Some universities, it has to be said, benefit from the wisdom of writers rather more ... well, rather more consequential than me. Here, for your Friday viewing pleasure is a whole half hour of a speculative fiction legend talking about his craft at Point Loma Nazarene University. Take it away, Ray Bradbury:

Robert Holdstock

2009-12-01T11:45:00.005Z

I was surprised and greatly saddened to hear of the death of Robert Holdstock this past weekend. With his Mythago Wood series, he produced one of the most singular and significant bodies of work in British fantasy of the late 20th century. His central vision of folklore given physical form is amongst the most memorable, resonant and elegantly presented themes I've encountered in speculative fiction, and I've never forgotten what it felt like to read those books for the first time and be aware that I was experiencing something special.

I met him at the David Gemmell Legend Awards ceremony in London earlier this year. We spoke relatively briefly, about inconsequential things, and he was friendly and full of enthusiasm. But I was not on top form, and more than a little starstruck. I was introduced to him as a fellow writer, but felt entirely unworthy of such a status: I was a fan, meeting someone whose achievements I was somewhat in awe of, and was a little flummoxed as a result.

I should have told him, but did not - or certainly not emphatically enough, just how much I liked and valued his work. I should have told him, but did not, that the first story I sold to a magazine was published in an issue that included one of his own co-written works; and how much that simple fact meant to me at the time, to be appearing in print alongside a name that had so much weight and importance in my eyes.

It's nothing compared to the loss now experienced by his family and close friends, of course, but thousands of readers suffered a loss this weekend too: a creator of wonderful fictions, dying too young, with, no doubt, too many stories still untold.

Moving Pictures on A Friday 2

2009-11-27T11:30:00.005Z

I quite often like the results when science and art rub up against each other. From Semiconductor Films, here's Magnetic Movie:

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

More info on the film here, and on Semiconductor Films here (clicking on the 'Art Works' link takes you to lots more clips of their sometimes decidedly weird little films).

Moving Pictures on a Friday 1

2009-11-20T08:54:00.005Z

First in a potentially regular, but more likely irregular, unreliable and haphazard, series in which I get to post random bits of video - generally of a more or less sf or fantasy type - that have tickled my fancy for one reason or another. Exciting, huh?

With or without commentary, by the way. This one without, since it's just a bit of fun that speaks for itself:

Original is here, where if you dig around you might find a few details on how it was done.

I'm Baaaack ...

2009-11-07T18:05:00.009Z

Enough of this Autumnal blogging inactivity. Got to take baby steps back into the habit for fear of straining my moribund blogging muscles, of course, so just a couple of quick notes to start with:

Czech edition of Winterbirth emerges blinking (and perhaps even bawling?) into the world, under the title ZROZENI ZIMY. It sports a distinctly striking cover - not sure who, if anyone, the specific characters are supposed to be, but they definitely look ... alarming. Tempted to think of them as some heavily-armoured version of Wain and Kanin, but who knows? Thanks to reader Martin for sending me a useable jpg of the cover.

My parents were awesome. A completely and unreservedly true statement, of course. In fact, they still are awesome, but that's not the point. The point is this: the My Parents Were Awesome blog. I don't know if it's just me, but I find it an extraordinarily affecting, interesting, hypnotic, moving, evocative etc etc site, given that it is such a simple idea: reader-submitted photos of their parents, mostly as young(ish) adults, offered without commentary, without location or context or anything but the most simple identification. Page after page of them, and as I work my way through them it feels like I'm looking into lives, into stories, into the past, into other worlds almost; and I invariably find myself thinking 'Why, yes. What obviously awesome people. Just look at them. They look wise, and fun, and kind, and thoughtful. Awesome.'

It's a silent, restrained archive of childrens' love and respect for their parents, an acknowledgement that those parents lived lives as rich and strange and individual as anything their children have managed. Fantastic stuff.

More waffle here soon.

It's All About Me

2009-09-25T11:46:00.003Z

Further worrying evidence for the progressive contamination of the internet with me-related material.

First, I do the interview thang at Moon Drenched Fables.

Second, I do the fantasy casting for the movie-of-the-book thang at My Book the Movie. Not something I actually gave any thought to while writing the Godless World, but I think some of the casting possibilities I came up with are quite promising. And - I only realised after I'd finished - it's shaping up to be an all-Brit cast, which either means I'm terribly parochial or that we've got all the best actors. I incline towards the latter possibility.

Third, someone else does the review thing for the small press anthology Rage of the Behemoth I've got a story in, over at The Cimmerian. A fitting home for a review, given the anthology's focus on heroic fantasy of the sort Robert E Howard excelled at. Nice, too, that the book gets the thumbs up. I've been gradually working my way through my author's copy, and can confirm there's some fun stuff in there for fans of this kind of thing (i.e. warriors, monsters and mayhem). Copies still easily available for purchase in both the UK and the US.

Odds and Ends from Around the Net

2009-08-28T12:26:00.006Z

A few choice items from internetland that caught my eye recently:

My all-powerful editor and publisher, Tim Holman, the head honcho of Orbit, had started up a rather good blog - The Publisher Files - which has recently included some great stuff. First off there was graphic evidence for the intuitively obvious tendency of fantasy book covers to feature certain genre props with great (perhaps even monotonous?) regularity.

Then, there's the still more interesting numerical analysis of the astonishing rise of urban fantasy in the US sf/f market. It's not often a distinct sub-genre comes from (almost) nowhere to frankly kick the butt of all the other longer established forms of a genre. Lots of interesting and thought-provoking tidbits in the article and the comments.

Meanwhile, over at the Grasping for the Wind blog, two fun posts in which a whole army of sf/f bloggers (must be a better collective noun than that for sf/f bloggers? Can't think of one right now ...) rveal which of the many fictional fantasy or sf worlds they'd actually like to live in: part one and part two. Me, I'd go for Iain M Banks' Culture every time, I think.

And finally, I recently discovered the TED Talks page (and subscribed to its feed). An insane number of videos of talks by lots of very smart folk on interesting topics - just about every topic under the sun seems to be in there somewhere, in fact (if you're in an apocalyptic state of mind for example, there's Stephen Petranek on ten ways human civilisation could be destroyed, and what to do about them, and Martin Rees on humanity's potentially grim future).

Edinburgh Meanderings

2009-08-12T14:31:00.018Z

I did virtually no specific research for The Godless World, but things are a bit different now. The Edinburgh Dead requires me to drag myself away from the computer now and again, and do some proper work. There is, incredible as it might seem, some stuff that - as far as I can tell, anyway - the internet does not yet know, which suits me just fine because I seriously like a bit of research: digging around in old books (courtesy of the excellent National Library of Scotland) or, as I was doing yesterday morning, descending into the bowels of Edinburgh City Chambers in search of the City Archives. And once I got there I spent a very happy couple of hours perusing an unpublished phD thesis from 1996 on the subject of the 19th century beginnings of Edinburgh's police force. Now and again this writing lark is very cool. (this depends, obviously on your definition of cool: and yes, mine does include discovering and reading vaguely obscure documents in slightly strange places. I'm funny like that.)

It's a strange feeling, making fiction - and fantastical, dark fiction at that - out of bits of real history. It's trespassing in the lives of real people, and putting words into their mouths and deeds - sometimes downright villainous ones - into their hands. It feels like taking a liberty with their memory, even the ones who were downright disreputable and murderous in reality. The city itself, though, is a much easier subject to work with. Edinburgh's soaked to its rocky bones in history, much of it darker and stranger than anything a mere writer could come up with, and using it as the stage for a drama feels entirely natural and appropriate.

I've got the perfect excuse, now, to wander around Edinburgh's Old Town, tracking down ancient alleyways that have been the scenes of murder, debauchery and mystery for hundreds of years. Even now, in the midst of the Festival(s), when the main streets are so full of tourists you can hardly move, the canyon-like closes are still and quiet and full of atmosphere. They feel old, and patient. Perfect venues for fictions.

And while I'm wandering around with my head in the 19th century, searching out the bits of the past that have survived, pondering the dastardly deeds - real and invented - that I'll populate these byways with, everyone else is milling about in a crazy, Festival-fuelled present in which mermaids pose beside statues of great philosophers (David Hume, famous son of Edinburgh, in this case)

Funny old world.

What I'm Writing

2009-07-30T08:24:00.005Z

As promised in the last post here, some brief details on the new book I'm writing. Yes, the fine folks at Orbit, in their infinite wisdom, seem to feel that the world could withstand further literary output by yours truly. (I say wisdom, but it might just be some ghastly administrative error on their part, of course. No matter. They signed the contract, so they're stuck with me now).

The working title (and so far everyone, including me, seems to quite like it, so I imagine it'll probably survive all the way through to publication) is The Edinburgh Dead. The setting is, as you might guess, Edinburgh; specifically, Edinburgh in the first half of the 19th century. Since I write fantasy rather than history, though, it's not quite as simple as that.

I'm taking some gruesome and rather famous aspects of Edinburgh's past and spicing them up a bit with veteran warriors, magical conspiracies, killers both human and decidedly not, desperate combat and sinister goings-on in general. In short, it's a dark, heroic fantasy set in 19th century Edinburgh. With swords and gaslamps.

As for publication date - because I know someone will ask about that sooner rather than later - I can't say exactly, but I'll be delivering the manuscript next year and barring exceptional circumstances it takes at least nine months, more likely something approaching twelve, to go from that point to publication. So you can do the math yourselves.

I'm having a lot of fun working on this so far. It's a stand alone novel, and that makes a very pleasant change after turning out a hefty trilogy like The Godless World. I'll no doubt report back here on the creative process and progress (watch out for that mid-book slump of despair and self-doubt!), but I'll leave it there for now. Got stuff to write.

What I've Been Reading

2009-07-23T13:57:00.006Z

Not enough is my standard answer these days to people who ask what I've been reading lately. So much stuff to read, so little time. But still, I'm fitting a little bit of quality time with the written word in here and there, so a quick update.

On the books front, there's been Pavane by Keith Roberts. Something of a mosaic novel: scenes from an alternate history, describing a 20th century Britain that has languished under a repressive and anti-technological Catholic yoke ever since the counter-factual success of the Spanish Armada. The details of the world are fascinating - clanking steam engines hauling land trains, a secretive Guild controlling the gigantic semaphore machines that transmit messages over long distances - but it's the tone and quality of the writing that struck me most. Large chunks of the novel read almost like literary fiction, eschewing grand drama and concentrating at least as much on the evocation of setting and the inner world of the characters as on plot. It's a book that gradually draws you in and although in some ways not a great deal happens, the cumulative effect is immersive and, for me anyway, quite memorable.

And there's also been Vietnam by Stanley Karnow. Fairly regularly a nagging voice turns up in my head and points to some piece or period of history, ancient or modern, saying "Look, don't you think that might be interesting? You don't know nearly enough about it. You need to know more. Go on, buy a book. You know you want to." And I, being of weak will, do as I am told, buy the biggest and most detailed-looking book I can find on the subject in question and spend the next little while discovering that yes indeed, it is interesting, and I did need to know more about it. Hence, this time around, Vietnam by Stanley Karnow.

On the graphic novel front: Rex Mundi, written by Arvid Nelson, volume 1 and volume 2 so far. I can't describe it any better than the author's own 'elevator pitch' for the story: "a quest for the Holy Grail told as a murder mystery, set in a Europe where the Catholic Church never fell from power and sorcerors stalk the streets at night". So yes, it's another alternate history focusing on the role of the Catholic Church, this time with some magic thrown in. It's also got a very considerable amount in common, plot- and background-wise, with The Da Vinci Code (which it started to be published before, and than which IMHO it is better). Good fun, though the second volume flails around in the treacherous quicksands of exposition and info-dump a bit. I'll be reading more.

And then there are webcomics. Which are, of course, being digital, touted by some as the future. There's certainly been an explosion of them in recent years, and some seriously talented artists and writers are getting involved (though as far as I can tell they run up against exactly the same problem that so much that is internet-based does, i.e. it seems to be only a small minority of creators who can actually generate any significant revenue from their online exploits, unless they make the transition to print). Anyway, those I'm following at the moment (not counting things like PvP online and xkcd that everyone surely already knows about) include (all the following links are, by the way, to the first page of the comic where possible):

The Abominable Charles Christopher. The webcomic that got me interested in the form in the first place, and which I've praised before here, so I won't go over old ground. But it's still good.

Kukuburi. The surreal adventures of a delivery girl who passes through a magical doorway into a dream (or possibly nightmare?) world. Terrific art, and a wild visual imagination at work. Lots of funny and bizarre characters. Pretty light-hearted stuff that's just plain fun.

Sin Titulo. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what's going on here. It's a mystery, with noirish overtones, but it's also got dream sequences, biographical reminiscences, strange and possibly supernatural goings on. I've no real idea where it's heading, but I find the journey interesting.

The American Dream. Completely different from the above, this is a gentle, engaging dream narrative whose basis is explained in the first panel: 'I dreamed there was no America'. Though it updates regrettably infrequently, I really, really like it. The art is simple, cartoonish, but I find it quite beautiful.

The Futurists. This one's only just started, so here's a chance to get in on the ground floor. Set in India towards the end of the 19th century, it says it's about 'the quest for eternal life gone horribly wrong', which sounds promising to me. The art's certainly quite nice.

So there you are. I've not been entirely delinquent in my reading duties. Up next: What I've Been Writing. Yes, by some mysterious quirk of fate, my novel-writing career is not yet over. News on that front here next week. I'm sure you can't wait.