One of the great pleasures of writing the Tyrion and Teclis trilogy was getting to do my take on many of the great characters of the Elvish mythos; Aenarion, Caledor, Morathi and Malekith. I have been living with these people in my head for nearly twenty years and it was good to finally look into their's. The four characters I have mentioned are probably the most influential characters in Elvish history and upon the history of the Warhammer world. Three of them, in one way or another, are still around to the present day. The last is present only as a myth and is thus possibly the most enigmatic and misunderstood. He was also the one who was most crucial to the shaping of Elvish society as it currently exists. I am talking, of course, … [Read more...]
Kindles, Kindles Everywhere
Amazon has just announced a raft of new Kindles, including what looks like the first serious challenger to Apple's iPad, the Kindle Fire. Before the Apple fans start howling me down, let me point out why I think this is the case; it has nothing to do with utility or the OS or how wonderful the iPad is or is not. It's the price ($199) combined with access to Amazon's awesome (and, yes, I do use some of them) cloud services. The Kindle is tied to Amazon's e-commerce platform but that is no bad thing given the library of movies, tv shows, apps, games and ebooks this gives you access to. In the midst of all this Android-powered loveliness, it is easy to miss another very, very significant point. The cheapest Kindle e-reader, the basic … [Read more...]
Gamesday Report
So that was my first Gamesday in eight years. It was a lot of fun and a lot of travel compressed into a very short time. We flew into Manchester and took a train to Nottingham and checked into the hotel. I dropped in to the Studio, said hello to a few people and recorded an extract from Blood of Aenarion to be broadcast sometime on GW TV. I also picked up a couple of author copies of Blood of Aenarion which is a very beautiful looking book indeed. In the evening we went out to dinner and visited Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem. Well you've got to, haven't you, when you're in Nottingham for the first time and my family were. Saturday saw us en route to Birmingham NEC and me in the hall signing books in the company of Dan Abnett, Graham McNeill, … [Read more...]
The Absence Note
I set myself the goal of writing 3 posts a week when I started this blog. My initial plan was to do them on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Much to my surprise I have managed to keep this up for a few months now. Given the fact that my idea of a regular blog schedule used to be posting once a year whether I had anything to say or not, I think I have done pretty well. However, I am off to Gamesday on Friday-- I know this is on Sunday but hitch-hiking from Prague takes time. Just kidding-- I am actually heading in to the Nottingham Bunker on Friday to talk with the High Lords, then I will be in Birmingham Saturday signing copies of Blood of Aenarion for sale on Sunday. I'll be on my way back to Prague on Monday. On top of all this I have a … [Read more...]
Death’s Angels: the 99 Cent Experiment
Financial alert: this post talks about money. If you are one of those people who get offended when writers talk about finances, look away now! Some of you may remember that a month ago I dropped the price of Death's Angels to $2.99 to see if it had any effect on sales. The basic theory was that the more people who read the first book in the series, the more would be likely to read the second and the third and so on. The Terrarch books are an ongoing narrative; they have an epic storyline that progresses rather than just being a bunch of tales featuring the same characters therefor getting people in to the first book is important. So how did it go? So far I have to declare the results a success. Sales did indeed go up, not quite enough to … [Read more...]
The Queen’s Assassin
When I was about nine years old a group of local lads threw me into the deepest part of the Marine Lake, a huge man-made pool made by damming off an area of the harbour with a massive concrete breakwater. I had not yet learned to swim. It was sunny. The sky was blue. My mouth was filling up with salty water. I was trying to shout for help while flailing around in water too deep to stand in. It washed over my eyes and blurred my vision. The concrete ledge was covered with broken barnacles that ripped my hands bloody as I tried to pull myself up. The kids who had thrown me in watched me scrabbling away and laughed. They did not realise I was drowning in front of their eyes. Eventually, after what seemed like ages to me, but which could only … [Read more...]
Sven Hassel and Death’s Angels
I know this is a bit late but what the hell! One of the most popular parts of this site has turned out to be the Author's Notes for each of the stories. Somehow back in the day, I neglected to provide them for Death's Angels. I am rectifying that omission now. If you are a British man of a certain age (OK, my age) you probably remember Sven Hassel. He was the author of a series of pulp paperbacks that were passed around under the desks of the classrooms of my youth. They featured the soldiers of a German punishment battalion fighting on the Russian front in World War 2 and were, by the standards of the day (and even today), quite brutal. They followed the adventures of a particularly seedy and unheroic bunch of misfit warriors across the … [Read more...]
Elves and Imagery
Your high school English classes probably left you somewhat suspicious of all talk of imagery and I don’t blame you. I have memories of having poems and stories dissected in front of my eyes by my own teachers. Often it was like being present at a surgical operation where the patient died on the table while the surgeon pulled out his internal organs and explained their function. All of which rather misses the point. Imagery is an integral part of story and its purpose is very simple. It reminds readers in a subliminal fashion of the ideas that the writer wants them to be reminded of. It can be used to comment on the narrative, to make a point, and in an odd sort of way to provide a structure. In the very wonderful Death Is No Obstacle, … [Read more...]
The Ossuary at Sedlec
At the weekend my old friend Barry was in Prague. He wanted to see the Ossuary at Sedlec so we headed out there on what was the hottest September day I can remember. It's been a long time since I visited the Bone Church, maybe 15 years, and I had forgotten quite how strange a place it is. King Ottokar of Bohemia sent Henry, the Abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec to the Holy Land in 1278. The holy man returned with what was believed to be earth from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the abbey cemetery. This made the graveyard a very fashionable place to be buried indeed. During the Black Death in the mid 14th century and the Hussite Wars in the early 15th century, thousands of people were laid to rest there. Around 1400 the Gothic … [Read more...]
Writing the Tie-In Novel: Structure
So how do you go about writing a novel then? Well, I don't know how you do it but here's how I go about it. I start by writing a very simple synopsis. This can be anything up to 1000 words. It covers the basic flow of the action, names the main characters and settings. That's it. There's no description, no dialogue, no bits of business of any sort. It's just the bare bones of the story set down in the most basic way. Once that is done, I go through this very basic outline and I start expanding upon it. I add a bit more detail and I break down the action a little bit more. I keep working away until I have reached anywhere between 2000 and 5000 words. This will provide me with the skeleton of the story. In the old days, I would then switch to … [Read more...]
Living In Writer’s Time
Just like deadlines some special occasions sneak up on you. It's Gamesday in a couple of weeks and Blood of Aenarion is going to be released there and yet somehow, while wittering on about writing and Macharius and short stories, I have forgotten to talk about it. You're probably wondering how that is possible. I mean it is a major hardback release with the most astonishingly beautiful cover and it features some of my favourite characters ever. It's also my first new book for Black Library in what-- 8 years? (Bloody hell!) How did this escape my notice? The secret, young padawan, is that, like most writers, I live in a different timestream from the one you see. Most people connect to writers through their books and they can only do that … [Read more...]
Revising Macharius
This is the part I always enjoy. The grunt work of writing the first draft is out of the way and I am now going through The Angel of Fire in Scrivener with an eye to improving it. I took a short break away from the book last week so I could come to it cold for the rewrite. In an ideal world this interval would be longer than a week, but even that small amount of time has given me some distance. Since it's been several months since I wrote the earliest parts of the book, I have plenty of distance from them. Now its time to get down to revising. What does this process actually involve? Pretty much what you would expect. I am going through the manuscript and re-reading it and making changes where needed. I will hopefully notice some of the … [Read more...]
Great Scrivener Tip From David Hewson
David talks about how to quickly mark scenes for revision here. I've been using this program for four years now and this has never occurred to me. While I am writing this I may as well mention that I highly recommend David's book Writing a Novel with Scrivener available from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com. In it David takes you through every step needed for getting a book done in Scrivener, even as far as epublishing it onto the Kindle. Hewson is a former tech journalist and a bestselling detective/thriller writer and he really knows his stuff. The book is a model of clarity and full of sensible advice. It's also full of useful screenshots. … [Read more...]
What Do Angels Have To Weep About?
Two weeping stone angels guarded the entrance to the tomb. Their features were weathered which just made them look even more mournful. I wondered what it was angels had to weep about? Priests say it's the sins of mortals but none of the angels I ever talked to cared much about our sins. They were more concerned with their holy war. There in one paragraph is the reason I love writing fantasy. It starts with a concrete description and progresses to a throwaway line from a bitter, disillusioned man who has lost his faith then, in the last couple of sentences, we learn that the speaker has talked to angels and their concerns were not what he expected. The man talking is Erabys, sometime enforcer for the Wizard's Guild, on his way to fight an … [Read more...]
