World Book Day

 

Having finished my current novel, well doing edits, I'm enjoying the chance to read a bit more. I was also reminded that it's World Book Day. Yay!

Books I've recently finished are:

Shambleau by C. L. Moore, which is a collection containing: Black God's Kiss; Shambleau; Black God's Shadow; Black Thirst; The Tree of Life; and Scarlet Dream. That's two Jirel of Joiry tales, and the rest feature her other famous character Northwest Smith.

A very different story telling style to what I normally read or the current fashion. Besides enjoying the stories, it left me thinking about how I write. Recommended.

I've also read the next two book in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher: White Knight and Small Favor. Urban fantasy is not my go-to genre (I like rockets, robots, and rayguns too much),  but I've enjoyed the stories for what they are.

However, these last two reads have blown my socks off. Great stuff, but I can't imagine that anyone needs a recommendation from me, but recommended anyway.

  

Another book that knocked my socks off is Beholder's Eye by Julie Czernada the first of a trilogy called the Web Shifters. We had read her Species Imperative trilogy omnibus collection, and I had been most impressed by her alien biology and world building so I was on the look out for another novel from her.

Beholder's Eye starts slow, but by page 60 I couldn't put the book down.

And another, new to me author, I've read recently is the first book in the Diving Universe series, Diving Into the Wreck by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Her writing is as smooth as silk, and her ability to provoke emotions in the reader was awe inspiring. So again recommended.

Currently I'm reading Cibola Burn by James S. Corey, book four in The Expanse series. What I've read so far has grabbed me, making me want to read more. So, wishing you all a very Happy World Book Day, and let me know what you're reading.

Progress Report

I have an American first edition, alas unsigned.

So as we come to the end of January I'm still writing. Very slowly by my standards or expectations, but I am writing again. I even had an idea for a short story, which is unusual for me as I don't really do short stories.

Last week I beat my target and more importantly, I managed to get my current novel to a point where it looks like I can finish this week. We shall see.

I spent last week reading Neil Gaiman's and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens, which lightened my mood, and this weekend I re-read Wolf in Shadow by John Lambshead, which remains a delight with its witty observations of wargamers in watching an intrusion from the otherworld at the ExCel centre. It made me laugh.

More Reading

 

More books I have read, and as promised a review of A Fistful of Elven Gold by Alex Stewart aka Sandy Mitchell of the Ciaphas Cain series.

Though the title playfully makes one think of the film A Fistful of Dollars, which itself was a homage to Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, this tale of a gnome on a mission owes more to Terry Pratchetti with a soupçon of Tolkien for flavour. Not my usual reading, but I thoroughly enjoyed the romp, may there be more.

Next up was James S. A. Corey's Leviathan Wakes, which I decided to get after watching the first two seasons of The Expanse.

I wanted to compare and contrast the TV show's treatment of the story with the source material. So this was very much a study assignment. So what I have to say is a reaction to the treatment of the story in two different mediums.

The book covers more than the first season of the show, which for me was a bonus as it resolves the first story arc. However, I can't fault where they broke the story for the show, because it certainly left one wanting more. Good technique.

Story wise I think the show ends up being a slicker version of the book story. The second season therefore also only gives about half the story contained in Caliban's War.

I read the second book while watching the second season of the show. I enjoyed the TV show more because the actors brought the characters to life. Especially, Shohreh Aghdashloo, who plays Chrisjen Avasarala the UN Deputy Undersecretary of Executive Administration. Her performance is riveting.

By the time I reached the end of the show and reading the books I had gained some insights into the similarities and differences between the two forms that arise from the difference between filming a scene and writing it.

After this, and given how I've been feeling, I decided to delve into my to be read pile. I've been putting off reading the last two Iain M. Banks books because it still makes me sad that there won't be any more new Culture stories.

By mistake I read Hydrogen Sonata first, which meant I read them out of publication order. I should've read Surface Detail first, though in fact from the Culture timeline on Wikipedia says the latter takes place after the former. So not really a problem.

Reflecting now on the order I read these two books, I'm glad I chose to read to read Hydrogen Sonata first because I really enjoyed the elegiac feeling that the story provoked as a reflection of Iain's passing. My favourite Culture novel still remains Excession, but this is a strong contender for second place.

 

Then I read Surface Detail, which was a bit of a curates egg.

It's a richly detailed story, but I found myself disinterested in several of the POVs for different reasons. The Hell universes were just unpleasant, and the time spent in them dragged. The main villain, Veppers, just didn't do it for me. However, what I took away from this was that even an author of Iain M. Banks status doesn't always hit it out of the park.

Reading

 

Being a bit under the weather I've taken to reading to cheer me up, a mixture of old and new. The re-reads are read with half-my-mind on how the author is doing what they do. The new stories are just read for enjoyment, and with half-an-eye on whether they are worth going back to re-read.

First up was a re-read. Ian Douglas aka William J. Keith's Heritage Trilogy. It's unashamedly a favourite of mine. I first came across Bill's work via FASA's Traveller RPG supplements and then the BattleTech novels, starting with Decision at Thunder Rift. Bill has an impressive bibliography, and you can find out more here.

What's even better is that I wrote him a fan letter, and he replied.

What I like about the Heritage trilogy, and the two sequels the Legacy and Inheritance trilogies, is the way he weaves a story across multiple generations of people and their descendants. Semper Mars starts with a mission to Mars to support a xenoarchaeology expedition that becomes a desperate journey across Mars.

Luna Marine and Europa Strike take the story out to the edge of the solar system. It was while re-reading these that I realised how much Bill influenced my own work. Well recommended.

 

I recently watched Ready Player One, which is a great movie, and I should probably buy the novel. However, looking around I found Nick Cole's Soda Pop Soldier, and bought it instead, because I was intrigued by his YouTube channel. I think there's a lesson to be learnt about discoverability from that chain of events.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by the direction the story went in. A different take on conflict that made me think about how one tells stories.  Definitely on my pile to be re-read. Lots I can learn from him.

 

I then re-read another old favourite John Ringo's Aldenata Legacy series. The first book is A Hymn Before Battle, which kicks off the series with a bang, followed by Gust Front. The series was meant to be a trilogy, but it grew into a tetralogy when the third book, When the Devil Dances, had to be split into two books, the second part being called Hell's Faire.

Again, this was a re-read to study how he did... what he did. I noticed some interesting techniques that I hope to be able to use myself for my next The World of Drei novelette.

I also read another of the Harry Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty. While this is not a re-read for me, I was acutely aware of my writer brain taking note of how Jim tells a story. It left me much to think on.

 

Finally, I'm about to start A Fistful of Elven Gold by my friend Alex Stewart. Delayed because my beloved grabbed it first. All I can say is that Susan enjoyed the story. I will comment more when I've finished reading it.

That's it for now, catch you all on the bounce.

Her Brother's Keeper

Over the last few weeks I've read Larry Correia's Monster Hunter Siege, which I bought in hardback in a fit of enthusiasm, not realizing my contract would be coming to end soon.  But that's life.  Great read, and I then went back and re-read Monster Hunter Alpha, because I wanted to check out how Larry had handled his third person POV.

I then re-read Cosmic Engineers by Clifford D Simak, which was a favourite of mine from my teenage years.  And gosh that was a long time ago, but I really enjoyed the book, despite its limitations of being serialized in 1939; the story had more ideas per page than most modern novels have period.  Stephen King describes Cosmic Engineers as a terrific read, and who am I to argue with Stephen King?

After finishing those, I read Dead Beat by Jim Butcher, which was also a whole heap of fun too.  A great series that I'm glad I found, because it's outside what I would normally choose to read, but it has been real fun to get into.

So, the point of this preamble to my review of Mike Kupari's Her Brother's Keeper is that it still made a big impression on me despite me having just read a bunch of excellent books by really good authors.

What made it was when I got page 380, where he describes the unknown extraterrestrial antecedent species that has been found during an archaeological dig *cough looting of a historical repository cough*, which the brother in the title of the book is involved with.  This was so well played that I had to send Mike a message, through FaceBook, because I was so excited.

Loved this book, and can't wait for the sequel.  And I'm trying to coax Mike into doing a piece for me to tell us more about the universe this story is set in, and the upcoming sequel.

Summer Reading Fun: Part 1

I met Larry Correia back when he came over to Blighty to sign a  few books and go to book fairs, and you can read my piece I wrote then here.  I'm a big fan of his Monster Hunter series, and contrary to any impression you may have of him, he is actually very nice and his wife Bridget is easy to talk to too.  So, I've had copies of his Grimnoir Chronicles sitting on my to be read pile, which has been irritating me for a while–I hate having too many unread books sitting around lowering property values, I mean collecting dust in my flat.

The problem was I had heard Hard Magic being read on the Baen Free Radio Hour podcast, and quite frankly I found it only mildly interesting to listen to.  But it had been a while so I felt beholden to read the first book before reading the sequels, and I'm glad I did.  The reading experience was far superior than the listening one, and I delved into the sequel, Spellbound, and then Warbound, the third book of the trilogy, consuming them with gusto.

On reflection I think it has to do with pace.

Spoken word speed is between 110 to 160 word per minute.  I read at around 350 to 450 words per minute, which is not meant to be a boast, it's just my average reading speed of a minute per page.  So, the experience of listening to Hard Magic had made it feel slow and dull, even though the narrator was good––it wasn't his fault––it's the format that I don't like.  When I read a book, I'm carried along by the pace I read at.  An interesting book grabs me and drives me to finish reading it.

It is amazing what a difference that makes.

Grave: Book 3 of The Queen of the Dead

Reading wise I finished the third book in the Queen of the Dead trilogy by Michelle Sagara called Grave.  I raved about the first book, called Silence, here.  I wrote about the second volume, called Touch, here.  Now I've finished the third book and have mixed feelings.  I struggled to read the book because it felt over long and drawn out, but the climax was heart rending, as in it made me cry for the characters.  If only I could write that well.

What I would observe is that book one was a tightly written novel of 289 pages, book two was 325 pages and the third volume was 450 pages.  Assuming a page is 350 words that's 101,150 words for the first book, rising to 113,750 in the second, and 157,500 words.

What I take away from this is two things.  Longer isn't better.  Trying to fill in all the characters back stories takes away from the plot's momentum.

But, I should add the caveat that I'm less inclined towards reading long books, which is why I won't be buying the novels The Expanse is based on if the show is cancelled, for pretty much the same reason I stopped reading George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series after the first volume.  This probably marks me as out of touch with the current fashion, but it's not long novels per se, just series that are made of very long novels that drain my will to read.

NB: Struggled to read is probably too strong a description of my feelings when reading this book. The book left me satisfied, and in awe of Michelle Sagara's writing ability.

Summer Knight

I have finished the next Jim Butcher book, and yes as usual I'm late to the series, but hey I got there in the end.  I'm not a critic, I'm a writer and so what I say is from this perspective.

I read Summer Knight in one day and Jim Butcher manages to draw me in despite the fact the books are light on rockets, robots, rayguns or 9mm gun action.  However, there is something compelling about the world that Harry Dresden lives in.  More importantly Jim Butcher clearly has a plot, and by plot I mean a story arc for the series that drives the narrative forward.  It doesn't hurt that his writing is smooth, like treacle running down the side of a glass: it makes you want to know more – and he avoids obvious denouements – in short he surprises me.  I'm always picking apart plots and thinking about how something is going to be resolved, so it's nice to have a book end in a way that surprises me.

I've even bought the sequel, and it waits on my to be read pile.  I can't give a better recommendation than that.

As for my writing, I've just finished off revising an article that was commissioned, which I will tell you about more later when it's announced/published.  Now it's back to work on polishing my third novel, resisting the temptations of starting a new story, which is hard because there's something compelling about facing icy wastes.  So this week ends with 17,825 words edited and I'm now at the beginning of Act 3 of Ghost Dog.

Dark Matter

I mentioned that we heard Michelle Paver speak at this years PicoCon and I had bought the hardback of her book Dark Matter.

Though this is not the sort of story I would normally pick up, it's a ghost story, the research that Michelle puts into her novels made me want to read it.  It is beautifully written and disturbingly atmospheric, reminding me of H. P. Lovecraft but without the baggage he can bring to a story.  Up until the end the narrative can be read one of two ways: madness or the supernatural.  And to some extent even by the end the interpretation is that the narrator believes he experienced a supernatural horror but the evidence is based on the narrator telling us what others said and saw.  As such, given that he clearly has a nervous breakdown and the whole over wrought emotional milieu one is left to decide for oneself.

The scenes and the description of the landscape are stunning and while I'm undecided about reading any other of her books, I need to go away and look them up, I can recommend this to anyone who wants to read something different for a change.  It's certainly inspired me to have a go at writing my alien Arctic waste novel.

Yesterday we went into town.  Town being what people who live in London call the West End.

The trip involved my partner buying a new pair of shoes, popping into Selfridges, the halls of Mammon, and having a coffee – marveling at the extravagance of everything (feeling like proles from District 12 visiting the Capital of Panem – you can tell we have recently watched the Hunger Games series), and then we went on window shopping before having lunch in a small family owned Italian restaurant called Rossodisera.

After that it was time to go to Forbidden Planet, check out the books and then off to Orcs Nest to pick up this month's issues of Miniature Wargames & Battlegames, a bottle of paint and a Y-Wing to complete my Gold Squadron.  After that it was time to come home and put my feet up and have a nice cup of tea.  In short, we had a lovely day out together, which is after all what nice memories are made of.

December Flying By

Time is flying by with a plaintiff wail of where has it all gone?  This is mostly down to Xmas parties which cut into my writing time, but are a necessary part of being sociable, and not becoming a boring old recluse.

Like last time I'm in full on archery geek mode after my third lesson this week.  They put the targets out to twenty yards and after calibrating our sights we shot five dozen arrows and I managed to only miss the butt once.  The downside of doing so well is that next week the target is moved out another ten yards but it's fun.

I've been reading Diana Rowland's White Trash Zombie series sequel Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues.  I enjoyed the second book so much that I immediately picked up the third book to continue reading.  What can I say?  They're a fun read.  Brains!

Writing wise I've managed to revise a further 14,408 words of Ghost Dog this week.  This means I'm 29,945 words into my 98,360 third novel which is not that good in terms of speed but hopefully I'm catching the common typos that I usually miss this time round, because practice makes perfect.  Really that's one of my biggest concerns as an aspiring author is how to write clean text?

That's it.  Catch you all on the bounce.

Chapelwood

Chapelwood is Cherie Priest's sequel to Maplewood: The Borden Dispatches which was a re-imagining of the Liz Borden axe murder case as a Cthulhu Gothic Cosmic horror story.  I reviewed it here.

I will say that this sequel is real ballsy.  By that I mean Cherie Priest takes the hero of her first novel and runs the story forward thirty years.  That takes real authorial courage.  It would've been so much easier for her to say one year later or five years later and have Lizzie start another adventure involving swinging an axe at the minions of the Great Old Ones.

I enjoyed the way the novel unfolds in a languid fashion, slowly building the suspense by showing us the transformation of the South in the 1890s through to the 1920s.  I felt that I actually learnt something about the craft of writing from reading this book.  The way the sentences were broken down to counter balance the pace of the story which evolves through the different character viewpoints; some new and some old.  The story blurs protagonist and antagonist and there's a real feel of Lovecraftian horror where knowledge is not power but damnation.

I love it.  The story ends in a manner that felt true to the mythos, reminding me of when I used to play Call of Cthulhu RPG and the heroes ended up changed, scarred by their experiences.  It will be interesting to see where Cherie Priest goes next with this series because I truly hope she comes back to this setting.

As for my work it's been a bit of a week.

Injection in my wrist for my tenosynovitis which was not exactly unpleasant, but needle stuck into wrist is not something one has done to one on an everyday basis.  My doctor informs me there's a 68% chance of the treatment working and I'll know in a couple of weeks.  He said the wrist would hurt more, and he wasn't wrong about that, but it was a strange pins & needles type of pain that was a bit disconcerting.

It should come as no surprise that I didn't sleep well that night.

Next morning I had to take my truck to Aldershot.  Unlike last year where I used the wrong postcode for directions, this year I got there without getting lost.  The biggest hassle was pumping up the tyres because the air at the petrol station was anaemic.  It took me fifteen minutes to inflate four tyres which was incredibly hard work as I had to keep the hose pushed on the valve.  My sore wrist didn't help.

So this week I finished the third draft of Strike Dog editing a total of 21,027 words.  Yay!

The running total for my second novel now stands at 92,854 down from the second draft total of 102, 343 words.  My plan now is to go back to Ghost Dog, but before I do I have a short story to critique, all part of the quid pro quo of having a friend Beta read my work in return.

Its Time of the Season

A call out to The Zombies, because this week I've read two zombie books.

The first is My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland, which you can probably tell by the title is not World War Z.  My partner bought it after reading an excerpt somewhere online and  suggested I should read it.  The title pretty much tells you what it's all about.  It's a light-hearted rags to riches urban fantasy story that takes the topic and treats it to an off the wall approach.  I really enjoyed this even though I wasn't expecting much.  I'm very much looking forward to reading the two sequels.  BTW brains taste nice.

The second zombie book I read this week was Feed by Mira Grant aka Seanan McGuire, which is set in a post zombie World War setting.  The title has a double meaning as the story is about bloggers who write about the news; in this all the zombie news that's happening, with a shout out to people like the late Steve Irwin etc.  So replace crocodile with zombie and you're good to go.  I really like the writing in this book and I certainly will be acquiring more books from her.  But, be warned she has a touch of the George R.R. Martin about her, in that she kills off characters.  Minor spoiler warning – she kills the kitten that one of the characters has saved from a zombie outbreak, which really shocked me.  So all I'm saying is don't get too attached to characters.  There again it wouldn't be a zombie book otherwise.

As for my writing this week I have to be honest and say I got very little done.

I've not been able to face up to re-reading Strike Dog again out loud.  So I spent the time researching stuff for my next novel instead, which is tentatively titled The World of Drei.  It's an expansion of my short flash fiction piece called Territory, which I first commented on here.   I submitted it to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and I had a very nice rejection back from them.  You can read the original idea for the short here.

London Falling & Severed Streets

When I was preparing to write this piece I was going to say and see my review of London Falling, only to find that said review exists only in my imagination.  Well this post is going to transfer my thoughts about reading London Falling and its sequel Severed Streets from the interior of my mind into something that can be read on the internet.  Such is the power of the blog!

A disclaimer.  I vaguely know Paul Cornell, but there again I'm acquainted with a lot of authors, but only because we tend to hang out at the same places; conventions and parties.  It's not some secret members only club or anything like that.  I met Paul at a SF convention.  I saw him on a couple of Dr Who panels, and threw a few questions at him about the Time Lords and the Daleks, which garnered a reply of, "Have you been spying on our writing meetings?"  We've also talked in passing, as well as being on a panel together.  In short he's a likable person.

I've said before that urban fantasy is not my core interest, but I will read books that have interesting premises written in the urban fantasy genre.  We heard Paul read an extract from London Falling at the Olympus 2012 British SF EasterCon, which led us to go and buy a copy.

London Falling is promoted as the first book in the Shadow Police series, and introduces a grimdark London where all is not what it seems.  It's effectively a realistic present day police procedural novel set in an urban fantasy setting.  Overall I quite enjoyed the story, but there were times when the tone of the novel went places that were not very entertaining.  Or to paraphrase my friend Roger said in his review (warning spoilers), the story is full of unpleasant people doing unpleasant things to other unpleasant people.

However, I enjoyed the first well enough to want to read the sequel.

Severed Streets starts well enough, delivers a shocking development, and then the middle wallows around until the highly telegraphed plot twist, where it all picks up again, and comes to a reasonably satisfying conclusion.  But Paul Cornell's tendency to fall into describing the nostalgie de la boue does at times overwhelm the joy of reading the story.  My main gripe is that the novel does not deliver what it promised at the end of the London Falling.  Namely what happened to the old guard?  My friend Roger has a review with spoilers here.

On a lighter note, much lighter, we are burning through the last series of Xena: Warrior Princess.  Season five was very good and this one is managing to maintain the quality of the stories.

Writing wise I've been working through Alix's, one of my Beta readers, line edits.  I managed to do just over the first hundred pages before going on holiday to Provence, but only managed to restart work this week, because I became distracted by the controversy surrounding this years Hugo awards.  Looking in my diary tells me that I've edited 40,437 words this week.

So on that note I'm going to finish as I want to finish the edits for Bad Dog today so that I can start working on my Alpha readers feed back of the second draft of Strike Dog.

NB: Edited to include another link so that one can compare and contrast reviews.  Roger reads and reviews a lot of books and is well worth book marking his site.

Also, added as a reflection, this review is way too critical of a good writer. My apologies.

Touch: Book 2 of The Queen of the Dead

I have just finished reading Touch: Book 2 of The Queen of the Dead by Michelle Sagara.  You may remember that I counted Silence, the first book in the series, as one of the stand out reads of last year.  I would like to say this was as good, and it has many fine qualities, but it felt rough by comparison.  What I mean by that is there were phrases that threw me out of the text.  Another was a passage on page 218 where I can only assume a piece of text was eliminated when editing the book.  The story is also clearly the middle part of a trilogy, which ends with our heroes left with having to take down the big bad.

This is a problem lots of middle books in trilogies have.

However, all these criticisms aside, this was a book I'm glad I've read, because I like the way the characters are developed through the story.  All of the main protagonists feel like real people, and the formation of the gang who will go on into the next book to face down the Queen of the dead was nicely done.  From reading Michelle's blog I know that she had a lot of problems writing this book, but besides my minor copy-edit quibbles she delivers the story.  What more can you ask for than that?

Work wise this week has seen me restart writing my novel The Bureau.  Scrivener says I wrote 2,934 words, bringing the running total up to 40,049.  Looking back to February I see I had reached 38,957, which by my calculation makes 1,092.  This means that Scrivener is doing something very clever in tracking my word count when I rewrite things.  Anyway, in the break between then and now, I figured out what I needed to add to Act 2 to make it work, or at least make it suck less.

Susan, my Alpha reader, is in the process of re-reading Bad Dog and marking up errors in the text.  So yesterday I was editing Act 1, and today I will be editing Act 2, and when I've finished doing that I imagine I will be doing the edits for Act 3.  And so it goes on.  One of the things that is troubling me though is how long this all this takes.

Changing tack, this week we obviously watched the latest Dr Who episode called Listen.  I really liked it, but I liked all the previous episodes.  Even Robot of Sherwood, which was an over-the-top farce.  What can I say?  I'm a fan.

We also rewatched both the Marvel Captain America films this week prior to watching Winter Soldier.  Really enjoyed the series, and one can see that the writers were skillful in executing the foreshadowing and call-backs through the trilogy; though Avengers Assemble is not strictly the middle film of the Captain America trilogy,  it serves to connect the first film to the second.  The way the stories were told really show how to write the middle part of a series without falling into the usual trap of having an ending that is just the set-up for the next story.

In short make all your stories self-contained; complete in their own right.

TV wise we've started watching Xena: Warrior Princess - Ultimate Collection.  Yes all six seasons for a total of 132 episodes.  We may be some time.

The Day After Who

Well it has probably not passed by unnoticed by many people that Dr. Who has turned fifty years old, which certainly makes me feel old, because I remember the seeing the first episode way back in 1963 as a child.

The Day of the Doctor by Steven Moffat's was in one word awesome. 

 I sat and watched it with my beloved and we were both enthralled, and I remember muttering awesome as the first scene of the Dalek fleet doing their thing around the Planet Gallifrey came on screen.  

John Hurt's War Doctor, upstaging Tennant and Smith at every turn, awesome.  

Bilie Piper as the weapon, awesome.  

The Zygon breaking the fourth wall and talking about their performance and getting into role, awesome.  

The scene with Tom Baker as the curator, awesome.  

The arrival of all thirteen of the Doctor's TARDISs to save the day, awesome.  

The final scene of all the Doctors, both moving and awesome.  In short the show was the crowning moment of awesome that Dr. Who needed.  Colour me impressed as it hit all the right emotional spots.  I stand in awe.

In other news, struggling to finish A Game of Thrones, which I feel is about a hundred pages too long.  I don't know if this is down to watching the TV series, or what?  So I hope to read the next two books before watching the third series on disc.  It's not as if I find George R. R. Martin's writing difficult to read, so I'm a little puzzled by my response to finishing the story.

My progress ha been good this week with a total of 9,239 words that brings the running total up to 92,771 words.  So I'm well into the end run and finishing the first draft of my third novel.

Writing Log 131117

As you can see I've gone blond, and I'm not sure whether to stay blond or go back to being a red head.  Neither is my natural colour, that is sort of auburn, or was, but now with a large dose of grey, hence the assistance from my hairdresser.  

So purely in a sense of fun what do my readers think?

This week turned out to be a good week for banging those words out and progressing the third novel. 

Three chapters sent to my alpha reader, the first of which blew her out of the water.  Not literally, but she was at a loss for words.  So the weekly total was 9,693 making the running total 83,564.  Checking back on my previous two works I'm now at plus one week over the time it took to finish the previous novel.

Still reading A Game of Thrones, with 168 pages to go.  I finding it okay, but it drags a bit for my tastes.  Not that it isn't a good read, but it's not my thing; a certain lack of rockets, robots, or ray-guns.

This week we watched Warehouse 13 season 4.  

The start of the season didn't grab me, but it improved, as in it went back to what it did best and so the season ended quite well.  My complaint here is that the show tried to deal with quite serious themes, but the scripts and actors couldn't carry the weight within the format of what is basically a very light hearted family show.

As an addition I see that Doris Lessing has died.  

I had the great honour of being her minder at 45th World Science Fiction Convention held in Brighton, chosen purely on the grounds that I wasn't going to go all fan googly all over her.  I remember her as charming woman who was rather bemused by the idea of being invited to the convention, who enjoyed talking to people.

Lest We Forget

Remembrance Sunday, lest we forget.

Yesterday I was at a writers critique group day, my second as a visitor, before I have to choose to become a member, which I did.  If for no other reason that I need social contacts who get what I'm doing.  I enjoyed reading both the stories that were discussed and feel I have a good chance of fitting into this group.  Unfortunately, no more meetings until the New Year.

This week has been busy with me going to the inaugural lecture of Professor Alex Blakemore who kindly invited me to attend.  This was an outstandingly good lecture on genetics and copy number variants that I took a lot away from.

Writing wise I managed 4,743 words this week, which brings the running total up to 73,559.  I got some very positive feedback from the last chapter from my Alpha reader, which is always heartening.

I'm still reading A Game of Thrones, there's a surprise, not!  He does go on a bit.

Finished watching Arrow though.  An adaptation of the DC's Green Arrow that is very good.  The first four episodes were outstandingly good.  They gripped one from the get go and I was of the mind that this was as good as Person of Interest.  

However, while both shows share similar themes, technological Batman style vigilant, Arrow is bound by its tropes, whereas Person of Interest takes the tropes, twists them and then shreds them before moving on.  

So, if you are a superhero fan then Arrow is well worth watching, if you want to see a good superhero show and don't know where to start then likewise Arrow is a good place to start.  If you are not into superheroes you may find the story a bit melodramatic and farfetched.

Fireworks

Another week and another internet outage, which means this is a day late.  On the upside I've had more time to read, because not surfing the internet and putting it to right.  

So I'm now about two-thirds of the way through A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin.  It's what I would call a page turner, easy to read and pulls you along.  Interesting to compare how the characters are portrayed in the books versus in the TV series.  There are some differences, the biggest being the ages with everyone being younger, but more care worn.  The novel feels very much like a historical fiction with a soupcon of magic in the form of the White Walkers and the dragons.

Work wise I managed 5,794 words for what turned out to be another three day week due to having to go down to Aldershot to pick up my truck.  This months total was therefore 23.398 words, which brings the novel up to a running total to 68,828 words. So definitely in the home stretch here.  

I've just scanned my draft and realised that I'm further into act four than I thought and act five is on the horizon.  At this point I'm over schedule as both the previous two novels were finished by this time, but I feel this is the best writing I've done so far, as I've certainly upped my game at a couple of points through this story.  

Of course levelling up only means the obstacles get harder, but still it's a good sign.

We've been watching Arrow on our projector this week, until the bulb died.  So I'll say more next week about this series.  What I will say is that I found the first four episodes enthralling.  

So, to end this weeks blog, may I wish you all a happy and safe Guy Fawkes night, a peculiarly British tradition when we celebrate what can be seen as the failure of religious extremists to destroy the Mother of Parliaments and the survival of democracy, or the the failure by disenfranchised citizens to send the rulers of this country a message to the establishment of this country that they suck.

Game of Thrones

Well this has been a week where Real Life (TM) has gotten in the way of writing.  

Monday it was take the car to Aldershot for its annual service and MOT and like a new lieutenant with a compass I managed to get myself lost.  

The cause; transposing two digits when inputting the postcode for the directions.  

So a simple hour an a half journey took three hours.  To add insult to injury the train back took two hours. Needless to say I was exhausted by the time I got home.  All my American friends will be sniggering about now, but trust me forty miles in Britain is not like travelling forty miles in the States.

Writing wise this week was a disappointing 3549 words, as effectively I only manage two days of sitting my butt in a chair and typing.  Still this means another chapter written and I'm very close to starting act four.  Running total now stands at 63,041 words.  

Hopefully next week will be better, but next week I have to get myself back down to Aldershot to pick up my car.

Finished watching Stargate SG1 hurrah!  

Season ten ended with a time travelling story that was actually very good as it had real consequences for one of the characters.  Stargate: The Ark of Truth the first movie was a neat wrap up of the Ori storyline that would have been told in a longer form had there been a season eleven.  

Unfortunately, Stargate: Continuum the second movie was another time travelling story that felt a bit like old rope to me as everything is neatly tied up with a paradox  that loops back on itself.  The performances were all well and good, but the story just felt like it was going through the motions.

Reading wise I've just picked up George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones.  I didn't have three dragons to pose with the books, so you get two plush kittens and Norbert the dragon instead.  

I'm not an avid reader of epic fantasy, but I really like the HBO series, so promised myself I would read the original story it was based on.  I like the writing style, very engaging.  By the way it may take me some time to read all of this series.

Sandman

This has not been a good week for me health wise with a bad bout of rheumatoid arthritis sneaking up on me and laying me out flat for three days.  Still mustn't grumble could be worse, I could have no immune system at all.

The other thing that bothered me was that I seem to have lost my comics/graphic novel mojo.  

I use to seriously enjoy reading graphic stories and restarted with Sandman written by Neil Gaiman, but have found myself tripping over the format with the pictures getting in the way of the story.  Probably a sign of getting old.

Still watching Stargate SG1, having just finished season four and now starting on season five.   

The end of Apophis story arc was actually very well done, and one actually felt sorry for his predicament that led to his death.  I've started compiling episodes into essential arc stories, supporting episodes and filler episodes; imagining how I would edit the series to cut it down to the most action packed and character developing episodes.  

This also has made me think about how I would have done the Battlestar Galactica reboot differently too, which wouldn't take that many alterations to fix the plot holes.  Such is the burden of aspiring to be a writer, one starts analyzing everything one reads and watches.

So this week my own writing has been rather limited and I only managed two days work in total for 3,036 words, which brings the running total to 33,730 words.  Hopefully, next week will be better.

I did spend yesterday doing more research for the novel I'm working on about what are minds and how to make them, courtesy of the internet and watched an interesting interview about microtubules working at the quantum level?  

Unfortunately, while I can buy that for a dollar, the presenter then drifted off into uncertain territories that would have been better left alone as he undermined the veracity of his ideas with stuff that was quite frankly loopy IMO.  

By that I mean I know enough about what he is talking about to understand that what he is suggesting is non-testable, and therefore fails the criteria for being based in scientific reasoning.