Skip to main content


Showing posts from January, 2018

On alchemy

Like most writers, I have a few works in The Trunk, the virtual box under my bed where works that don't work lurk.

I have two, in particular. One is a YA sf thriller I started when I was still repped by a YA agent and thought I should probably write something for that market. I like it okay but I've never really got to grips with the characters or the speculative elements. It also reminds me too much of a tough time, writing wise, when I was left in a limbo that I'm only drawing out of now, and I suppose that steals the will to continue with a work.That one, I think, will stay where it is for now.

My second trunked novel is a more challenging scenario. This one is a sf. I love the concept, I love the characters, but it's just not quite working. Part of that is a structural issue - this is a mother and daughter's combined story, told mostly by the daughter through a link to her mother's memories - which I have never fully managed to solve. Part of it is the need…

Process? I have to have a process now?!

I'm a character writer. I can't write a story until the character chooses to appear in the black hole in the back of my mind that an entire town lives in, as far as I can tell, and starts to talk to me.

I don't do character sketches. I don't muse on what type of person they'll be or how I'll add edges to them, or make them sympathetic. (That does mean that not everyone will dig the characters I write, but that's okay. I don't dig everyone I meet, after all). They just happen.

Yesterday, for instance, an entirely new charactrer made themselves known to me. They're a friend of Neeta's in Inish Carraig. They're skinny and streetwise and they're going to be a handful - and I've yet to write their point of view yet. (I might never, but I still hear their voice). They're one of three new characters so far, all of whom have appeared pretty well rounded from the first instance.

This means when anyone asks HOW to write a character, I fin…

The morass that is publishing

It's been a week of online discussions about authors' income, where various friends are placed, where I am placed, who has an agent, who has a trad deal, who made nothing on their last book, who made something, who made lots (ha! haven't actually had that conversation, anywhere...).

During that week I've learned lots of things. Like, for instance, if I had a big publisher I might not be allowed to bring out material, unrelated to the book the publisher has, and expand my writing output. In other words, if I went trad, I couldn't be a hybrid writer, picking and choosing the market as per the project's needs.

For me, that means two things. Firstly, I would lose my freedom to publish as I'd like to - and as much as I like to. But, more importantly - all those little short stories related to worlds, the Christmas freebies, the ability to expand and promote wherever feels best, would be lost. And yet, I'd have a big publisher and a bigger income. Perhaps. Or…

On Influences - 40 years of Blake's 7!

This week is, apparently, the 40th anniversary of Blake's 7, that shaky-setted, pirates in space series.

Apart from making me feel incredibly old, it also made me nostalgic (Rumours of Death might go on tonight for old time's sake) it also made me reflect on where we take influences from and why.

It's no secret that B7 was a huge influence on Abendau (along with a load of other sf from the 70s-80s like Star Wars, Dune, and the older, classical Space Operas). There are a number of B7 Easter eggs through the trilogy - Kare is named for Kerr Avon, my baddy was a woman because, after Servalan, deliciously evil male rulers lack smack. There are other, subtler, references - the shifting sands of Abendau were partly inspired by Sand and when I had to abandon my good guys somewhere awful where better than a quarry?

But it was also a huge influence on the type of characters I develop. Characters who question, who have moral codes of various ilks, who feel real. Characters with past…