I try to let plot, world and characters develop as organically as possible. One major upshot of this is that bit-part players, conjured into existence to fill a momentary need of the narrative, can take on a life of their own. If a niche arises for them, they can take on real lives of their own. Here are […]
TIme for something relatively trivial. I like MMORPGs. They're the game genre I've spent most time playing for the last seven or eight years, with occasional excursions for Skyrim, Portal 2 and a few others. When I started off there was a small number of them (1) and I played just the one. Now there seem to be hundreds and […]
Super Secret Project Zeta Go! I am very glad to announce that Tor UK have picked up a brand new novel of mine, as they announce here. This is in addition to Guns of the Dawn (1) and the new series that will start with The Tiger and the Wolf. As you'll note, the new book is […]
Shotgun Linkstorm is most definitely my new band name. Anyway, dragging myself from the hibernation pod for another year I discover it's 2014. It's way too early in January to expect anything coherent so: Super Secret Project Zeta I will most definitely have some news on this, probably even next week. It's very exciting. To me, […]
Or, time for a brief glance backwards. It's been a mixedsort of year. A lot of people I know have had a rough time of it for various reasons — illness, personal problems and the vicissitudes of the writing game amongst them. The industry has lost a lot of people. It has been something of a subdued year all told. On the plus […]
I did get through a metric crapton(1) of books this year, and a lot of them were very good. I'm not going to do a 'best of', but I want to flag up a few reads that people might not have come across, and that I think deserve some attention. If you're looking for a good, solidly written book with a different […]
"Everyone in fantasy books is always resorting to the "old magic". Why isn't the new magic better? That's what I want to know," said Obi-Jon (@jonthepo0le) on Twitter, possibly not expecting to get taken up seriously on it. My knee-jerk answer was "because then it would be science-fiction." (1) Wouldn't it? Okay, let me expand briefly […]
Well last post was Weighty and Meaningful, and today's is decidedly short on any kind of serious import. It also contains mild spoilers for Thor: The Dark World, though nothing that isn't covered in the prologue section. So, Malekith. I've read a number of reviews so far about Thor 2. I really enjoyed the film — and […]
Does SFF have a problem with women? Do women have a problem with it? A remarkable number of incidents over the last year or so have certainly put the issue in the foreground. It’s hard to avoid the feel of a storm getting ready to break. Here are some of the flashpoints. For the record, my personal opinion in […]
31st October to (counts on fingers) 3rd November is when mild-mannered bespectacled Fantasycon tears off its shirt and reveals the bare nipples of World Fantasy Convention 2013, and if we're thinking bare nipples in the UK, we must of course be talking of Brighton. I am at this, as a very minor footnote to a very large ensemble […]
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