Reading SF

Caught the first book in this series after seeing a recommendation somewhere. Can't remember where, but bought the book two years ago (Dec 2020) and it sat on my to be read pile. Got around to reading it in February this year and I was hooked.

Seriously hooked.

I read the first book and immediately ordered the next two books to read, and then finished them too, and ordered the next four. I've bought the first sequel on the 24th of February and finished reading the whole series by Mar 22. 

That's 14 books in a month.

While the writing itself is nothing to write home about, as Skippy would say, the story is awesome. Trust the awesome.

Wonderfully entertaining story, full of humor, filled with excitement and fun. Totallly moreis, because you can't just read one.

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.

The Compleat Bolo

The Compleat Bolo by Keith Laumer is one of those books that anyone who has an interest in military science fiction refers to. The eponymous Bolos are giant self aware tanks, which can also be referred to as cybertanks.

To say that these stories are seminal to military SF is understating their importance.

Regardless of what one might think about the literary merits of classic SF, and the Bolo stories are rooted in sixties science fictional sensibilities. But their impact on the genre can be summed up by the fact that both TVTropes and Wikipedia have pages on the series.

I have my treasured copy of this book from 1990. And if you know me, you will know that I had to downsize my collection in the mid-nineties. This was one of the books I kept.

Anyway, The Compleat Bolo is a compilation of two previous Bolo books, and runs to 314 pages, about 110,000 words.

The two previous books were called, Bolo: The Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade, and Rogue Bolo.

The first book is a collection of six short stories. The second book has two longer stories. The first is the novella Rogue Bolo Book One, which runs out at 100 pages, roughly 35,000 words, and the second is the novelette Rogue Bolo Book Two, which runs to 50 pages, roughly 17,500 words.

The combined edition adds an extra bonus piece called, A Short History of Bolo Fighting Machines.

If you want a critique of the Bolo stories then I'm afraid you'll have to go elsewhere. I read for enjoyment, and these stories are still bringing me enjoyment nearly thirty years on. So much so, they have inspired me to write my own take on artificial intelligent tanks, and that I think that says it all.

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 3

 

My sudden spurt of reading has been driven by seeing the size of my unread book pile.  My original count was 38 novels sitting around, gathering dust, and generally sniggering at me while lowering property values.

That's a joke for those with no sense of humour.

This motivated me to dive into my unread pile, but I have to confess that I have recently bought some new books.  The new arrivals include the William C. Deitz's novel Into the Guns, which is the first in a new series; Tanya Huff's new Confederation novel A Piece Divided; and Larry Correia's Monster Hunter Siege, which I bought in hardback because I couldn't wait despite knowing I won't read it immediately I had to have it.

Colour me a fan of the Monster Hunter series.

So my unread novels currently stands at 30 books: made up of 16 new books, and 14 old books to be re-read.

I've known about William C. Dietz's work for a while, but like all things, it can take me a while to get around to reading an author.  He's known for his Legion of the Damned series, but I didn't start there, but rather with his prequels series that begins with Andromeda's Fall.

I found this an enjoyable read.  

The heroine, who starts from a place of comfort,  has to escape assassination when the new Empress takes to the throne and decides it is a necessary thing to kill all the supporters and relatives of the old emperor.  It's a reversal of the rags-to-riches plot with added murder, death, and intrigue set against the French Foreign Legion in space!  And by this I mean Dietz uses the heritage of French Foreign Legion as the framework for a future version as the setting of his story.

It works for me, it may not work for people who are not interested in or who abhor military history being seen as something other than a blot upon humanities record as a species.  

I breezed through the series, made easier by the fact that each book starts where the other finishes.  So, this is truly a trilogy, and not a series of three books set in the same universe.  The ending is clearly delineated, and though I've not read the main series, it serves the purpose of being a prequel for the Legion of the Damned, and is a good introduction to Dietz's Legion setting.

The fact that I bought a copy of the first book of his new series tells you all you need to know.

The Vang: The Battlemaster

And now I've finished the third book in Christopher Rowley's The Vang series, the first being  Starhammer, and the middle book being The Military Form, and what a ride it has been.

This is not your usual series, or even for that matter trilogy, the story being far looser than what one has come to expect when reading either.  Yet it has elements of both.

It's a series, if one considers the first novel to be a prequel written to define the setting, which it is because it lays down a lot of world building stuff that underpins the sequels.  However, given the settings are separated by a thousand years they're not exactly sequels except for the theme that links them all together.

As for being a trilogy, then if the simple definition of a trilogy is three books that tell a single story then yes but, the single story is not about the humans.  It is instead a story about the Vang, and Rowley manages to generate in the second and third book quite a lot of sympathy for the plight of the Vang even as they do horrible things to the humans, which is quite an achievement.

All added up it makes for an interesting execution of what a story is, and how it can be told.

And it is very clear I've given nothing away about the plot of the story, and I'm not going to.  If eighties SF interests you, as in all that is old is not necessarily passe, then these books are well worth reading.  If one like military SF where the military side is mostly from the alien perspective, then this story will also be of interest.  If one thinks that the eighties is full of old fashioned stuff which has no value, then you probably want to skip these.

I loved it, and more importantly I want to read more by Christopher Rowley.  The biggest question is how is it that these novels aren't in print, it seems such a shame to me, as they have a lot to offer new readers coming into the genre.

The Vang: The Military Form

I reviewed Starhammer here, The Vang: The Military Form is Christopher Rowley's sequel and middle part of what is loosely a trilogy: the first book is effectively a prequel to the second book, and the third is effectively a postscript.  As I said before, the story telling is compelling, and like before I found myself picking the book up in spare moments to read a few more pages.

The story takes place a thousand years after the events in the first book, and mankind has spread throughout the galaxy, free from the threat posed the Laowans who dominated the first novel.  But, the threat of the Vang remains, mostly in remnants of their technology.  This book starts with a crew who finds something interesting in space, the kind of something that could make them very, very rich or very, very dead.

It's not much of a spoiler to say that the later is closer to what actually happens, as in lots of people die as the consequence of waking a military form Vang, which then proceeds to do what it does best: conquer lesser forms by assimilating them.  There's several twists and a wry commentary on how rulers demands mean that the military is not allowed to do what is necessary; and that's just from the Vang perspective.

Had to go away and start reading the third when I finished this, which says everything you need to know really.

Starhammer

This book is the first part of a loosely connected trilogy by an author I've not read.  It came recommended to me from a friend of a friend, and I uhm'd and aah'd about getting copies because the prices on Amazon were at one point astronomical.  Fortunately, I kept an eye on them and they dropped back to more reasonable levels after about a year.  Also, reviews on Goodreads were a bit mixed, and after reading the book I can see why, but my usual comment applies–they're wrong because they miss the point.

Let's start with the pitchline:  Aliens meet the Thing...

At one level that tells you all you need to know about the theme and the tone of these books.  If you aren't able to manage visceral shock and horror then these books are not for you.  However, if like me you enjoyed the film Aliens, and loved John Carpenter's The Thing, then this book and its sequels may well rock your boat.

However, terms and conditions apply.  This is not Colonial Marines in space kicking ass, and the alien Vang are not exactly the Thing either, being a far more rational, and disturbing exo-parasite life form.  Also, the writing has elements that would get a lot of criticism in today's market, for example, the occasional use of mind hopping in chapters.

But, this none of this detracts from the story that is compelling, driving forward from one crisis to another, that leads to the ultimate reveal of a dead alien races weapon, the eponymous Starhammer, created to fight the Vang.  Highly recommended, and I will add the Vang were the inspiration for the Flood in the Halo series.

Progress Update

It has been a while since I've made a post about my writing.

I've been going through a slow period due to a combination of factors, some in my control, some not.  My day job demands have been rising, a victim of my own success, but my manager has got that under control, and I feel a lot let stressed: not just from the work, but from the pressure of having to commit to more work than I can manage.

It's also that time of the year where the weather is miserable, it's dark, damp and cold.  I've felt run down and even went off reading, which is a thing.  I've only just managed to finish reading a second novel this year.  The first was Eric Frank Russell's The Great Explosion, actually read so I could review it for Galactic Journey, see here.

After that I started Michael Z. Williamson's When Diplomacy Fails.  I've only mentioned his work in passing back here, and it took me longer to read the third book in the Ripple Creek series as I kept putting it down.  That says more about me than the book, but the author is better handling action than he is with interior dialogues of character beliefs: as in the action grips you by the seat of the pants that is hard to match when writing reflective thoughts that are well meaning, but ultimately don't really add anything i.e.: could be removed without detriment to the story.

Still, Williamson is one of those authors who I will buy his latest book when it's available in paperback because he delivers high octane action goodness.  Inspirational too.

So, looking at my diary this year I've only managed to work on my second novel a total of four days out of a possible 16: with some caveats I might say eight days because writing for my blogs and other people's blogs take time, as in they don't write themselves and the Galactic Journey pieces take a lot of research time to do too.  That's not a complaint, just an observation.  But, assuming that I'm now only going to realistically write one day a week it has consequences on how long it's going to take me to finish the edits on my second novel.

Currently I'm at chapter 16 of Strike Dog out of 62; OK some of those are very short chapters.  Words wise I've done 31,209 words out of 97,578 with 66,369 to go, which doesn't sound so bad: a third of the way through rather than just a quarter.  However, this doesn't take into account any extra writing I will do to add sub-plots etc.  There's a lot resting on this second novel, given that the first was rejected, because the publisher wants to see my second one.  I really want to nail it so they'll want to publish my story, because it would make my life so much easier than having to self-publish, given the demands of my day job.

Finally, rewatched Predator over the weekend.  Thirty years old and still eminently rewatchable.   As the old saw goes, they don't make them like that anymore.  And that's not sarcasm, this movie is a streamlined, pulse-pounding action flick that grabs one from the opening scene and keeps the roller-coaster ride going until the end.  Neither of the sequels are as good even though both have merits, the third being better than the second because the second hasn't dated well.

The Dresden Files: Storm Front

I'm running two days late this week in posting something on my blog.  I've been ensconced in my writing.  Well maybe not exactly ensconced, as it hasn't been totally comfortable, but there's the satisfaction of finishing something that I found hard to do; and for once being relatively happy with what I've written.  So I finished the first draft of the new chapter one of Strike Dog, having managed to write 1,146 words yesterday afternoon.  When added to my running total for the week this makes 3,382 words written in total.

So I'm pleased to have gotten this done.  It has been difficult for me, because I still have my head in the re-writes of Bad Dog, where I'm in a holding pattern while my new Beta readers do their stuff.  My plans for the long late May Bank Holiday weekend is do some model making, and read some books.

Talking about reading I've have finished Storm Front (Book 1 of The Dresden files) by Jim Butcher, and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Given that it's urban fantasy, which is usually not my thing, this says a lot about the writing and story telling.  It's definitely a story that makes one want to keep turning the pages to find out what happens next, and I like his writing style, it's easy to read.  The main character is interesting, and there are a lot of promises of other stuff going on in the background that makes me want to read more.  Next time we're in town and can drop into Forbidden Planet we'll pick up the next book in the series.

I've also read Andromeda's Fall by William C. Dietz, which is a novel I've had sitting around on my to be read pile for quite some time.  Probably over a year in fact.  It was bought on one of our visits to Forbidden Planet when we were looking for novels with a female protagonist.  My partner read it, and then it got put in a pile to be read and forgotten about.  I enjoyed it, and it certainly rollicked along, but I have to wonder at some assumptions American authors have about the nobility and class.  Still it was nice to see the French Foreign Legion in action in space!  Again I shall also be looking out for the sequel in due course.

I've also just started reading Max Tegmark's book Our Mathematical Universe.  This is a big hardback that basically expands upon the ideas found in his articles on cosmology written for magazines like the New Scientist.  This book allows Dr. Tegmark to lay out his ideas on the nature of reality, and expand upon the idea that we live in a Platonic multiverse.  It's written in a simple to understand and straightforward manner, for what is rather mind blowing stuff.

Anyway, that's all I have time for this week.

Semper Mars

I've started re-reading the Semper Mars, the first book of The Heritage Trilogy, by Ian Douglas a pseudonym that William H. Keith uses to write under. 

The book came out in 1998 and some of the near future predictions are now set in my historical past, hence the XKCD cartoon at the bottom of this post. As a result, some events read a little odd.  What I learnt from this is to set your novels far enough in the future that they can't be overrun in your own lifetime, which is making me rethink and reappraise a couple of events that I've alluded to in my first novel.  

I found myself enjoying rereading Semper Mars despite some-completely-over-the-top rah, rah, rah the US Marines rock hyperbole.

Also setting up the United Nations as the main enemy of American progress seems to me misjudged, because the UN probably couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery – let me unpack that comment.  

The UN sometimes manages to run relief operation with a multinational task-force.  Some have even been quite successful, but having the UN unite Europe and other countries around the world to oppose the United Sates is a bit of a stretch.  There again Keith had to have a bad guy, and I imagine at the time when the book was written neither Russia or China could fit the bill.

Anyway I'm nearly finished, and I wondered why I still like this book?  

I have a certain fondness for Keith's BattleTech novels, call it nostalgia if you like, but I still enjoy reading them, and his Warstrider series is certainly a much more interesting take on future conflicts than a lot of military SF.  So I think the answer is that he projects a certain optimism.  

No matter how grim things get there's a way forward to a better outcome, which is a refreshing thing to read for a change.

My own writing this week edged over from new content into editing, as in a negative number for one day's total.  Looking at the progress I've made I see 2,773 words added to the current draft, bringing the running total up to 88,810, which when adjusted to remove the glossary etc means the novel runs to 85,601 words of story.

Today I have stripped out the six third party story arcs into their own documents.  This is so I can more readily look at how each of their perspectives adds or detracts from the main story.  I also want to make sure I've not missed or forgotten anything important to the their respective stories.  Then I plan to run through the various reiterations of the heroes day, and do the same thing to her scenes.

It's an interesting exercise, but it can be quite disheartening job at times.  Well that's it for another week, see you all on the bounce.

Orphanage Legacy

What a difference a week can make.

Last week I didn't post as I was too tired from being ill after LonCon.  This week the con crud resolved itself and I felt a lot better, and was able to get back into the saddle to work on Bad Dog.  Last night I finished what I'm calling the fourth draft.  I've decided that drafts will now be categorized as revisions that occur as a consequence of reader input, rather than I've taken it into my noggin to rewrite a chapter etc. during the course of a week or so.

Why?  Because keeping track of every revision was driving me mad.

I'm not going to record the total amount of words Scrivener told me I wrote this week, because it really doesn't tell me much of any use.  What I will say is that the current draft stands at 85,732 words, which is down from 93,075 I started with at the beginning of this year.  In a fit of excitement I sent a copy to my Alpha reader for review.  She got back to me with I love the opening chapter, and Susan now has her head in her laptop reading the whole novel.

Last week I finished reading Balance Point, which is book three in the Orphanage Legacy series, itself a sequel to the Jason Wander series.

Robert Buettner’s 2004 novel Orphanage explored the war against the alien others, with troops encased in power armour, which is what attracted me to it in the first place.  However, the series is more than just a power amour combat fest.  It deals with the psychological costs of joining the military, and what it does to change people and their relationships with others who have not been through the grinder.  

It's in my opinion one of the best military SF series of the last few years.

I was pleased to see that the setting not only featured space battles, but also brown water naval actions.  The latter is not something you see much in military SF. 

The follow-on Orphanage Legacy sequel series features tanks.  Buettner's father was a tanker and he wanted to write something dealing with his father's experiences as told to him.  This is good, because it means I get to read stories that cover the whole spectrum of war, and the reasons why wars are fought.  I very much enjoyed the intelligence spy-craft aspects of the series, and the inclusion of operational aspects affected by logistics was good to see.  

The question of how does one compel an opponent to stop doing what you don’t want them do is very much at the heart of the Orphanage setting.  The only downside of the series is that the story stretches the plot quite thin at times.  Still the big shout outs to A E van Vogt's War Against the Rull means I loved the books.

Watching wise, we've gotten through sheds loads of good TV series on disc over the last couple of weeks.  

Finally got to see season two of Person of Interest.  Oh wow, words fail me on how great this series is.  Acting, plot, dialogue, character development, it doesn't drop the ball.  Season two's ending underlines that the story is about what happens to a world where there is an AI that can monitor everything, and can predict what we are going to do.

After that we finished watching season four of The Professionals.  

A show very much of its time.  Despite this, and the last season repeating certain tropes, there were a couple of outstanding episodes that are still as relevant today as they were when written back in the late 1970s.  The acting by Gordon Jackson and Lewis Collins remains the highlight for me.  I find Martin Shaw's acting, by comparison, less than it could've been.

We also watched Edge of Darkness, the original 1985 BBC drama series that with the The Professionals helped to inspire me to write my first novel, The Bureau.  Yes this means that I'm back in the saddle next week working on my fourth novel.  I also have an idea for a sequel of sorts, which is changing how I think about plot development in The Bureau.

As I write this we are near the end of watching season two of Elementary.  

A very strong season with no outstanding poke me in the eye gaffs about guns this time.  The Myecroft Holmes story arc has been a revelation in how to pull the wool over the viewers eyes, and then pull the rug out from under their feet.  Lucy Lui's performance gives the show real heart.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to Dr. Simon Bland  of Imperial College's Plasma Physics department for cooking at the BBQ on Friday.  I also got to meet a Ph.D student who just passed his viva and celebrate his success with good food and drink.  So I had a great time talking with scientists, a large number of whom were also readers of SF.

So that's all for this week.

Ki Agency

Well Saturday I was off to to meet and listen to Meg Davis talking about being an agent, like in the Matrix; sort of one of these novels has a future, the other does not kind of thing.  She was very entertaining, witty and handled the questions put to her with aplomb.  She certainly gave me a lot to think about, and I liked the approach she has to being an agent representing writers in the ever changing world of publishing.

This has also been another week with further storms on the internet as otherwise nice and reasonable people decide that fisking (a new word to me, which describes a person blogging about another person's blog in great detail demolishing arguments point-by-point) is in someway useful in developing a dialogue that promotes joint understanding.  

Colour me unimpressed with the way social media is leading to twitter-storms of hate.  

I am reminded that we all think that our opinions are chosen based on evidence; whereas the research shows that we find our opinions as we go along, and then look for evidence that supports our choice, and discounting any evidence that contradicts it.  This largely means that rather than being open to other peoples opinions, and generating consensus, or agreeing to disagree we see strife and division among those that have more in common than they acknowledge.

This last week has seen me working on my first novel as I go through and address some of the story pacing problems my beta readers highlighted, which I did by reordering the scenes to make for a stronger first act.  

The computer said I did 1,392 words, but my manual tracking suggests that only 399 of these were actually new words.  The rest of this weeks writing has been me working on other things, with 785 words for a review for a magazine completed, and 1,392 words review for someone else.  So after being ill for three weeks it feels like I've at least put my feet back in the water and started paddling again with a total of 3,407 done.  

As some of you may know I am an avid model maker and wargamer  and you can catch up with my hobby stuff here, which will take you to the latest blog entry. 

I read Tom Kratman's Caliphate last week, which can best be described as a near future dystopia.  He is an interesting writer, if only because he deliberately goes out of his way to bait readers with his views that are quite right wing.  Not to everybody's taste, but I think one should always be open to reading books that one finds challenging, and he certainly does that in spades.

TV wise this week was spent finishing off watching Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig.  This is one of my favourite Japanese anime shows, and while it can be a bit opaque at times for Western viewers, the themes and underlying plot that the stories in each episode illustrate are very thought provoking, while remaining entertaining too.

Writing Log 131006

This was a short week work wise for me, because I spent Monday catching up with stuff I normally do over the weekend.  Therefore this week I only managed to put my butt in the chair for four days to produce 5,822 words that brings the running total of my third novel  up to 51,295.  

Not as much as I would like to have written, but for me targets are guidelines, so no real grumbles on this front.

Saturday I went along to a writers group critique session, and sat and listened to them do what they do, which was most interesting.  I'd been told that such events were quite critical, but what I observed was largely constructive, so assuming that they'll take my money I'm joining them.  

To some extent this is going to be my new social group to fill in for the lack of a job where I meet people to talk to.  So all good I think.

On the watching TV front we are still working through Stargate SG1 and have just started season eight.  

Season seven had what I think is one of the best end of season finales the show ever did.  It was the one where Anubis attacks Earth and the SG1 have to use the lost Ancient defense base to defeat the big bad.  

All very satisfying with the X303 Prometheus and X302 fighter footage up against Goa'uld death gliders and Al'kesh attack ships while Ha'tak motherships rained fire down from orbit.  All deliciously over the top action.  Season seven also had the very moving two-parter that features the death of one of the series reoccurring secondary characters that was very well done.

One rant about the show and this is about the treatment of Samantha Carter and the writers effectively making her into the Black Widow by having all her relationships end in terminal situations.  

I know that Daniel and Teal'c both lost people and O'Neill's whole story arc centers on the death of his son and separation from his wife, but Samantha is just the crash test dummy of relationship difficulties.  

One could almost imagine it was as if they could think of no other way of developing her character.

Reading wise I've just started Control Point by Myke Cole, but haven't yet finished it, so I feel it's too early to comment, so I'll come back to it next week.  Off now to have a Lazy Sunday afternoon, hence the Zombies song YouTube link, and enjoy the autumnal sun coming through the windows of our flat.

Anime

This week we have been watching Japanese anime to wind down in the evening.  As you may be guessing I watch a lot of films on disc, and have a fairly extensive collection of films and TV shows to watch in an evening.  

What attracts me most to the visual story telling medium is the dialogue, which is always inspirational when something pithy is said and sticks in one's head.  It certainly makes me try harder to write snappy dialogue in my stories, though I suspect I fail more often than I succeed.

So this week it was Denno Coil, which I can sum up as Enid Blyton's Fantastic Five meets the Matrix.  

This might put you off from watching it, but quite frankly I was totally charmed, bewildered and fascinated in equal turns throughout.  The use of virtual reality overlays on real surroundings through the use of Google Glass analogues, and the children's exploration of their world was enchanting.  

A very dark story for its target audience too, which only goes to illustrate the cultural differences between the West and Japan.  As a follow-up we are now watching Girls und Panzers, which is a light and froth tale where the conceit is that driving tanks is the equivalent to flower arranging; again very Japanese.

Reading wise I currently working my way through two books.  

The first is non-fiction and is called You are not so Smart by David McRaney who has a blog.  It is a collection of essays on why we as humans make so many mistakes when it comes to the way we think about things, and I highly recommend that you all go out and buy a copy as it's that good.  

No really, stop reading this and go buy it now.  It deserves a longer post than this, and I'll write something longer on my CBT blog when I get around to it.

The other book is Star Corpsman: Bloodstar by Ian Douglas, which is the first in a new series about Marines in space.  I've enjoyed reading his other USMC in space books in the past.  It's certainly an engaging tale, but I'm finding some of the story telling structure intrusive.  This may just be down to me be more critical of his writing now that I'm writing myself.

Finally, my writing log for this week shows that I wrote 10,614 words, which is not to be sniffed at, except by my computer that tells me I failed to meet my targets to finish the first draft on schedule.  This month I've written a total of 36,067 words and the first draft of Strike Dog stands at 76,803 words.

Last night, while snuggling in bed with my partner we were talking about the new chapters I'd written this week, which I got me to start thinking about the next story.  I didn't fall off to sleep easily last night because of that as ideas swam around my head, kicking down doors and just demanding I pay them some attention.  

Needless to say when recounting this at the breakfast table this morning in the cold harsh light of dawn (9.30am, but it felt like dawn to me) it all seemed a bit less than the awesomeness I had in my head last night.  Still I'm going to go now and make some notes.

Silence: Book 1 of The Queen of the Dead

Well it's May bank holiday weekend here in Britain, and Memorial Weekend in the States, so I am with my partner hanging out and generally kicking back.  Yesterday was definitely a lazy day as I didn't sit down to write my weekly progress diary, hence the one day delay until today.

I've just re-read Starship Troopers again, which never fails to surprise me each time I read it. 

This time I walk away with some new insights about the writing style and the plot of the story.  Heinlein, despite his faults, is one of my core SF writers from the time when I was a very impressionable youngster.  As such I remember the works of his I read quite fondly.  

The only book of his that I don't particularly like is Farnham's Freehold.

I also read an urban fantasy book called Silence: Book 1 of The Queen of the Dead by Michelle Sagara yesterday.  Indulging in the luxury that comes from reading a good book rather than trying to write one.  I was really captivated by the opening chapter of this book.  

The writing style is absolutely lovely, and I read the whole book in one sitting, which doesn't happen often to me nowadays.  I can't think of a better recommendation than that.

As for my own humble writing efforts this week I managed to take twenty-six letters and arrange into combinations that added up to 5,214 words, which makes my running total for the month so far 16,862 and the first draft of Strike Dog has now reached 33,951 words.

On this note, one of my readers commented that word count is a poor measure of writing progress.  

I suspect that by progress he means something more than number of words written, which is correct.  However, I'm a cognitive behavioural therapist by trade, and one thing that we do is take measures.  My diary, for me, is about having a tool to measure my progress in achieving the goal of finishing a book.  It helps me to look back at my work when I'm feeling I haven't achieved very much, and see that I've written more than I thought I had.  

I shall have to come back and unpack this more at a later date.

So enjoy the rest of the weekend and catch you on the bounce.