Writing Blood of Aenarion (Part Three)
So there I was trying to decide whether to junk yet another opening. If you’ve read the book, you already know I didn’t and you also know why. The solution to the problem was pretty simple. It had already been established (in Daemonslayer, for example, and in the Daemons of Chaos book which was causing me so much trouble) that daemons can return from the dead. You can’t ever really kill them, only destroy their body. When this happens they are banished from mortal reality for a time until they can take a new form. All I needed to do was Read more…
Year One
Exactly one year ago today I started writing this blog. Not many people noticed because I did not allow it to be picked up by the search engines for some time after that. I had tried maintaining a blog on several occasions in the past and always given up after a few posts. I wanted to see if I could produce posts on a regular schedule before risking public failure again. I wrote a few, decided it was not too difficult and pushed on. The very first post I wrote was a very short response to seeing Game of Thrones. I Read more…
What To Do When You Don’t Feel Like Writing Redux
I was planning on writing a long post about magic and military fantasy this week when reality intervened. I was recently put on medication for diabetes and my metabolism still seems to be adjusting to it. I’ve had to make some dietary changes as well which are not helping. A lot of the day I feel pretty slow, particularly just after I have taken the tablets in the morning. It’s not exactly conducive to writing either fiction or blog posts. Under the circumstances there is only one thing to do: learn, adapt and roll with the punches. I’ve spent the Read more…
The Casebook of Jack Brodie
Much to my surprise my Victorian detective novel, The Inquiry Agent, has reached the top 10 in the Kindle Historical Mysteries and British Detective categories on Amazon.com. It was in fact very briefly number 1 in both and is, as of the time of writing, in the Top 100 Mysteries. I would like to do something to encourage you all to rush out and buy a copy (or at least give you some idea of the style) but unfortunately the terms of Amazon’s Kindle Select program forbid me from reprinting any of it here. I am therefor going to post Read more…
Back To The Crusade
My current 40K novel, The Fist of Demetrius, is starting to shape up. I am about 25000 words in. An ominous cloud of intrigue looms over Macharius as he reaches the absolute zenith of his power at the height of the Crusade. The Dark Eldar are moving across the event horizon. Multiple conflicts loom, with the xenos, with ambitious generals and corrupt Imperial politicians. Macharius ,although he does not know it, is about to experience the pivotal event of his life, a confrontation with something that will turn him from the golden reflection of Alexander the Great into the dark, ruthless fanatic Read more…
High Elves, Dark Elves, All Elves
Central to the struggle in the Tyrion and Teclis trilogy is the conflict between High Elves and Dark Elves. We all know what that means, don’t we? High Elves are glittering and noble, proud and good. Dark Elves are decadent and wicked, drugged out and crazy, given to torture and malice. They are as different as two peoples can be, aren’t they? Actually, I don’t think so. I think they are exactly the same people. They are just the products of two very different societies. I believe that in every High Elf is a potential Dark Elf, and in every Dark Read more…
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