Conway - Ancient Space Travelling Humans In The Tropics Space Opera - On The Way.

Hi Guys,

Thought I'd let you know that I haven't been completely bone idle this past month or so. (I tried to be, but people and especially the cats wouldn't allow it!)

So this is the next book coming off the press - probably very shortly since it's already been through it's main revisions and edits. It's another ancient humans  from the stars space opera book - I sort of like that theme - with a few tweaks from other books. It may be slightly heavier than the Barton Villa books, and it's somewhat cynical about governments and rule (I'm just feeling that way a little lately!)

But the cover from 123RF looks glorious. Wierdest space craft I've ever seen and I love it! Actually it's supposed to be a shuttle - a futuristic steampunk space shuttle?! It took me a fair bit to get it looking like that by the way. This is the original image I purchased:

 

 

The original brilliant image is by 3000AD

And this is the first time ever the AGFA filter in Photoscape has actually been useful for me! But it gave me the start of the green grass. Then I had to use practically every other filter there was to bring up the colour and vibrancy and add some sky. It took me ages. But I love the result! It's not bad for a blind man! (At least until my cataract surgery in a few months!) 

But here's the thing - why shouldn't space craft be colourful?! Especially alien ones?! Why do they have to follow the set layout of colours and shapes - mostly metallic cylinders with pointed noses and stubby wings that the world seems to dictate? I'm not sure what the design language of this image is - kitchen utensil perhaps? - it looks to me like on of those old style loose tea brewing spoons - but I hope 3000AD has a few more of these coming!

Anyway the book is on the way, and hopefully not long after that I'll be able to actually see the computer screen again!

Cheers, Greg.

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Gorgon's Run

Hi Guys,

Thought I'd just drop you a note to let you know that the next book is in process. The first draft is done and currently I'm busy revising it. The books called Gorgon's Run, and it's an urban fantasy, a little like the Wizard at Law series. (But possibly a bit darker in tone)) Hope fully it should be out in December, well before Christmas! It's also a little different in that the main hero is actually a gorgon! (And a police officer) The artwork for the cover camer from 123RF as a lot of my stuff does these days. But just to show you how I modified it, here's the original image I purchased.

And by the way - the monster may not actually be the villain of the piece. He may just be a lonely old sea monster looking for love!!! Aren't we all?!


Cheers, Greg

Manx is Out

Hi Guys,

So my first book of the year is out – Manx – and I'm feeling good. (Apart from my back of course which is absolutely killing me! Too much sitting, staring at a computer and snacking – way too much snacking!) But anyway, I feel like I'm finally making progress instead of simply sitting in my chair, staring off into the distance and typing random thoughts, and that's a good thing.

One of the problems writers face (I say confidently as if I have any idea what other writers go through!) is motivation. Not necessarily to write, but instead to write to a program. I write because I love to tell the stories in my head. But it's a very different thing to going to work every day and working. There you have goals. Set things you have to achieve every day. On your own the only goal you have is whatever you set for yourself. I may actually work harder and for a great many more hours at my keyboard than I did when I worked nine to five, but I tend to write less productively. My daily word count is much greater than before, but for every book I write I probably have ten others which I start but then let go nowhere. Some of them are nearly complete novels. So when I complete one, it's always an achievement. This book is a definite achievement. And Manx was also one I loved writing.

I love the cover too. It fits the book because the main character in it – Maxwell Smythe (Manx) – is a librarian in a Victorian / steam-punk era library who adopts a green eyed cat – despite the fact that he can speak with cats and knows they have nothing good to say!

The cat in question – She With The Sharp Claws Who Must Be Adored – is based loosely on my own cat Tab (yes Tabby the Tabby – I never claimed to be good with names!) Tab passed away late last year after a long battle with hyper-thyroidism and then renal failure, and I have to admit the loss hit me quite hard. It's amazing how much the little fur-balls can worm their way under your skin and into your heart. But I'd like to think that a little of her seeped its way into the work. Particularly the complete lack of guilt or shame she knew when she destroyed pieces of my home! In fact she used to stare at me with bits of fluff and furniture in her mouth, and wonder what I was upset about! Purring by the way, is simply a cat's way of lying!

The next book on the line is Adrift – which has absolutely no cats in it! It's a space opera about a man abducted by aliens trying to get home. I'm hoping to get that out in the next couple of months – but sadly I often have such hopes, so we'll have to see! Still the first draft is complete, and I'll start on the edit after I've completed the paperback version of Manx.

And maybe for once, I'll finally achieve my target of four books published in a year! Who knows – it's a new decade. Anything could happen!

Cheers, Greg

Truth in Fiction

Hi Guys,

Bit of an odd post this time.

I just watched the new series of Good Omens - and it's fantastic by the way! David Tennant is a revelation as the demon Crowley and the humour is spot on. But as I was watching it reminded me of something someone wrote on Philosophy Forums before it died - that fairy tales are true. Not because they tell you that dragons are real, but because they tell you that dragons can be fought.

That thought has been resonating with me lately. Mostly because we live in a world where people - politicians though I won't mention names - are constantly lying and trying to tell the world that the news is fake and that what they say which is clearly self serving lies is in fact true. That annoys me on a level I can't even describe. But at the same time it made me think that much of the reason people like fiction of any sort is that there's truth in it. Certainly more than you'll get from a politician!

Consider Moby Dick. What's the heart of this tale? Because it isn't great white whales and amputee captains waging war on one another. At its core its actually a tale about obsession and its truth is simply that obsession will destroy you if you let it.

Lord of the Rings has a different truth - nothing to do with wizards and evil. Ultimately it's a tale about good conquering evil, and a statement that if you're small and humble you can still do extraordinary things if you have friends and love in your heart. That courage comes from the heart. And friendship is the most amazing thing.

I know. It sounds melodramatic. Romantic twaddle. But my point is this. If you want to tell a good story, whether you write it as a book, make it into a movie or simply amuse children with it, you really want to find the truth within it and shape your story around it. Be true to that truth.

Enough said I think.

Cheers, Greg.

Relativity-ly Speaking

Hi Guys,

New post this time. It's late and I'm tired, so I thought I'd give all the relativists among you a conundrum to enjoy.

This is one that's based on the theory of special relativity, and also one that I posted long ago on Philosophy Forums before it went away. You may still be able to find it under my nom-de-net of Psychotick.

This is based on the commonly known twins paradox. Most of you will be familiar with the basics of it. In essence special relativity says that if you have two twins and you stick one on a rocket ship and he flies away at high speed and comes back, because he's been traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light, he will have experienced less time. So when he comes back to Earth and meets his twin brother, he'll actually be younger than him.

Now about three or four years ago it occurred to me that this scenario is self defeating. (From a philosophical / logical point of view. Those of you who've watched The Good Place - which is brilliant by the way - will have heard the oft repeated complaint that "this is why everybody hates moral philosophers". Here I'm going to expand that to "this is why everybody hates philosophers!")

Okay, so lets get back to the paradox - and try and place it within the frame of special relativity. Now the first tenet of relativity is that there is no absolute inertial frame of reference. A complicated way of saying that you can't look at an inertial problem from the outside. You can only examine it from the perspectives of the - usually two - inertial frames of reference concerned. Call them A and B - or in this case the rocket ship and Earth.

Immediately you do this, you run into a basic problem of definitions - and no I don't mean that semantically. In short if we have no absolute inertial frame of reference, then it becomes impossible to say that a rocket ship leaves Earth. You can only say that if you have an external perspective on the situation such that you can see that the Earth is stationary or alternatively moving at a standard rate with no accelerative force acting on it, while the rocket ship is traveling away from it. Since you don't have this by definition of the theory of special relativity, you can't make this statement.

Instead the statement you have to make is that the earth and the rocket ship are moving apart.

I know, that sounds screwy. But within the confines of special relativity, it's correct. And you can understand it from a practical perspective too. If you're on the rocket ship and you stare out of the port hole at the retreating Earth, who are you to say that you're the one who's leaving the Earth and it's not leaving you? If you're not accelerating, you won't feel any motion. So the only thing that tells you you're leaving the Earth is your understanding that the Earth is huge and you blasted off from it. Likewise if you're on the Earth staring at the rocket ship, the sensation of gravity makes you think that you're standing still and it's leaving you, but that is no part of special relativity.

Alright, now lets hook this new definition into the twins paradox. Now according to the original paradox the rocket ship was leaving Earth. Now we can say instead that the rocket ship and the Earth are leaving each other. If that's the case than our two twins are both in the same situation. Each sees the other leaving him at whatever speed, and according to special relativity that means they're both in the position of claiming that because the other is traveling away from them at a significant fraction of the speed of light, and therefore both will expect the other to have experienced less time. Which means that when they come back together, there should be no real difference in elapsed time. Time slowed down equally for both of them.

So now we find ourselves in a conundrum - I think I'll call it a Psychotickian Conundrum! There are two options. Either the paradox doesn't hold, and we don't expect the twins to come back together having experienced different amounts of time - despite what we are constantly being told has been observed. Or the basic tenet of relativity, that there is no absolute inertial frame of reference, does not hold.

Now of course those who believe in relativity, are going to argue that it's due to mass, gravity and acceleration, none of which I would point out are a part of special relativity.

Okay, so enough of this. I'll leave you to your head scratching, and just finish with this most basic of all understandings. This is why everybody hates philosophers! We love to poke holes in things!

Cheers, Greg (aka Psychotick).

House Prices in Midsomer and Unintended Consequences!

Hi Guys,

This time I thought I'd turn my attention to unintended consequences in world building. And the title, though perhaps a little tongue in cheek, says it all. Would you buy a house in Midsomer? I wouldn't when the chances of your surviving there until old age are remote and the likelihood of suffering a gruesome death is high. (On the other hand St Mary Mead is once more a desirable place to live now that Miss Marple has gone away, and house prices in Cabot Cove are starting to rise again since the departure of Jessica Fletcher!)

I know, this all sounds very odd. But in essence it's a simple point for writers. We dream up characters and world builds and all sorts of wonderful things, but too often don't stop to think what the consequences of our dreams would be in the real world. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of science fiction and fantasy.

The reason I bring this up is that in writing more steampunk fantasy like Madness and Magic and now Callum, I've been having to concentrate a lot more on this very issue. In Madness, I had my hero riding on a steam powered motorbike - which I thought was damned cool idea, I admit. But in doing that I had to deal head on with the question - could you have steam powered motorbikes in a world full of magic? Because if everyone had magic, why wouldn't people just fly or portal wherever they wanted to go? On the other hand if magic was rare, complicated and difficult and only a few had it, why would anyone even care about it let alone desire it? Everyone would be getting motorbikes and the roads would be perfectly smooth.

This has been my struggle with world building for steampunk for the last couple of years. A tricky balancing act where I have to both advance and hold back technology and magic to explain why neither of them has dominated the world. Why there hasn't been an industrial revolution and mass production - or a magical enlightenment. What lets them compete in the world without one dominating the other.

For me I've developed and used a number of answers to resolve these questions and I think they've been reasonably coherent. Enough that my worlds don't leave people scratching their heads too much - I hope! But after handing Callum over to my editor I've begun watching more shows of late, and seen more versions of these problems popping up everywhere.

In Powers - a show I really enjoyed - I watched superheros and villains streaking across the sky and having aerial battles over the city and a question struck me - would you have air travel in a world like this? Because planes would be horribly vulnerable to attacks and accidents and the safest way to travel would quickly become the most dangerous. The industry would never take off! (They actually had a partial explanation for this in the show about flight heights and rules, but it didn't sound plausible to me.)

I re-watched Lord of the Rings and once more found myself caught with the question about the eagles. If you can simply get on an eagle and fly why wouldn't you just fly the damned ring to the mountain? I know, there is an explanation - the ringwraiths on their dragons would tear the eagles apart - but really Mordor is a big place and the ringwraiths can't be everywhere. They could sneak through. Especially at night. And more so when they have invisibility on their side.

Then there was Powerless - a fun little comedy where the employees of Bruce Wayne beaver away in their building creating all sorts of devices to protect people from super villains. But a single question arises - why haven't the super villains got together and destroyed the building and its people? They are after all villains and it is a threat to their continued villainy.

My point in this post is really just that actions - or in this case characteristics of your world build - have consequences, and that we as authors really need to sit down whenever we come up with a cool idea like wizards on motorbikes, and start asking ourselves what is this going to mean for our world? Will house prices go up?!

Cheers, Greg.

Writing Up A Storm

Hi Guys,

Just to keep you up to date on where things are at with me. First, Madness and Magic is still with the editor. But progress is being made and I hope it'll be out in the next month or two.

And while that's being edited I've been working on two other books.

One of them, possibly to be called Callum or Chase - since that's the hero's name - has finished it's first draft and is now in the sitting around phase, waiting for me to mull it over a bit. I'm not completely convinced with the ending and some of the language needs sharpening up a little. It's the tale of a hedge (wizard) caught up in a war he wants no part of, between true wizards and the fae. I don't know if that will go the self publishing route or be farmed out around agents and publishers yet.

The other book - I want to call it Wings, but the name is already taken by the tv series and trademarked - is the corollary to the Arcanist. In essence it starts out with an identical protagonist - a third son of a noble family blessed (or cursed in this case) with magic, and technological skills. But everything departs from the first tale because of one small change in the world build. In his world, magic and technology undermine one another. So spells weaken and damage technology around them, while technological items weaken enchantments etc and make spell casting problematic. Our hero lives in a technological city (think steampunk) and when he discovers his magic is forced to flee the city and head to the magical lands to the west.

This book, I'm thinking will go initially to Baen Books, given that they have an open submission system and like works to be focused on magical systems. I just hope that they don't read Madness and Magic, since the hero in it is called Baen and has a book store called Baen's Books!

Ah well, such is life!

Cheers, Greg.

New Year, Old Resolutions

Hi Guys,

So 2019 has finally rolled around, and I for one cannot say goodbye loudly enough to 2018. That's mainly because it ended in such a cruel way. Christmas day I unwrapped the most miserable present ever - a cold! And ever since I've been coughing away my nights instead of sleeping, sweating my clothes out, enduring the pain of a bleeding sore throat and a sinus filled head, and wondering when death would finally release me from this torment! Of course my blessing was a joy for those around me as I also lost my voice nearly completely for two weeks and sounded like a punctured tire losing air! Even now I can barely make myself understood. (My family are so happy!)

Which leads me to my first resolution for 2019 - I'm never getting sick again! I've considered the issue carefully, decided that there is absolutely no upside to being ill, and made my decision!

Another resolution came to me yesterday when my book cover artist Yvonne Less of Art 4 Artists sent me the completed cover work for my next book - Madness and Magic: The Seers' War - and damned if that isn't a beautiful cover! The book itself is still with the editor, and will probably be out in February.

Anyway, this was a book I loved writing - it made me laugh even as I wondered what was going to happen next (I'm pretty sure I've mentioned that I'm a pantster rather than a plotter before and so really don't know where my books will go before I finish them). Madness and Magic is another steam-punk(ish) fantasy about a wizard and the perils of being part of a family of madmen! 

And so I decided that I really need to write more books this year - or rather publish them. Two and a half for 2018 was really not good enough. So this year I'll try and stay focused on particular books instead of starting new ones half way through. It won't be easy but I will try to tame my muse.

2019 will also be the year I try to get a little fitter - proof that I can be just as deluded as everyone else when deciding on my resolutions! But really if this illness has taught me anything, it's that my twelve step program (attempting to walk twelve steps every day!) has not been enough to keep the germs at bay. So this year I will attempt thirteen steps a day - maybe even fourteen! Possibly lose a few pounds too so that my scales don't keep telling me to get off every time I stand on them!

So those are my resolutions for this coming year. I hope that all of you will have similarly achievable ones!!!

Cheers, and Happy New Year, Greg.

The Villains

Hi Guys,

Been a while since I posted last – what else is new?! But recently I was on Facebook and someone asked a question that prompted me to do some thinking and it occurred to me that it might be good to put my thoughts down in pixels. They might be useful to some of you out there working on your own books.

So the question that was asked is – what makes a good villain? Which is in my view a damned good question.

Often in epic fantasy we concern ourselves with the heroes. Painting them in all sorts of glorious shades of emotion and tragedy, giving them feet of clay and heads in the clouds. We pour our hearts and souls into them – and very often they turn out to be an idealised version of ourselves. The people we would want to be.

There's nothing wrong with that of course. It's probably the heart of heroic fantasy. Though of course a common criticism of epic fantasy writers is that the heroes are just not real. And that's probably true – but my response is pretty much always going to be – it's fantasy mate, get over it!

Having said that a lot of people didn't get over it, and as a result the genre of grimdark was born. So this is the fantasy of Game of Thrones etc where everyone is flawed and even good people do bad things.

Now personally I'm not a lover of grimdark though obviously a lot of people are. But to me the thing that screams most loudly, is the fact that the characters of grimdark are just as unreal as the heroes of heroic fantasy. At the heart of the genre is this idea that everyone is inherently both good and evil – which is probably true to an extent – and that all that is needed are the right conditions to bring the evil to the fore. The problem with this of course is that as I look around at the people I know in whatever capacity, I can't imagine any of them actually rushing out raping and pillaging the moment society breaks down a little. Yes people do contain good and evil, but in nearly all cases the good far outweighs the evil.

Now here's where I come to the question of villains. What makes a good one? And the first thing I can say is that the one thing I don't want in a villain is to identify with him. I don't want to think that there, but for the grace of God, go I. Some people may. I simply don't. I don't want a grimdark villain.

But having said that, one thing I do want in a villain is to be able to understand him.

There are exceptions – Bond villains in my view have mostly been one dimensional characters who really only have a single drive – to take over the world etc – and a few character traits that make them interesting. And they work perfectly in that role, because they become the people you can love to hate. And when they meet their terrible ends as they must, you can cheer. They aren't real so killing them isn't something we have to be bothered by.

I've used this sort of villain myself. In Dragon my villains were giant alien bugs set on conquering the universe and enslaving the human race because our manual dexterity was so much better than theirs as they had pincers. So they could steal our technology and then use us to build their world. Most important of all, my hero could slaughter them in huge numbers and no one would have felt in the least uncomfortable about it!

Having said that in most heroic fantasy, we writers have to walk a careful path between these two extremes. We can't have our villains as unbelievable superhero / Bond cut outs who only work if we don't question anything about them. And making them poor suffering creatures that we feel sorry for as in the grimdark genre, is going too far the other way.

So the key to writing a good villain for me, is to give them a back story that explains them. It may be more fleshed out in your notes than in the actual story, but enough needs to be there that the reader reads them and understands why they do as they do.

My approach is to go into the psychology of the villain. So for example in Fineas and Tusk my villain was a man born with a single gift – the ability to control others – and then I tried to work out what a child raised with such a gift would be like. And the answer is a simple one. He would be completely corrupted. A true sociopath. He would be a child who never learned the meaning of being told no. Who never learned to love – because why would he love something that he could control completely? More importantly, why would he value them? And the answer? He wouldn't.

In the book coming out next – Roar – my villain is instead an immortal. And immortality has two consequences for a person's moral centre. The first is that as the years pass and the people you know and love die and are forgotten, you become divorced from the world. You lose your family and friends and ultimately become a loner. Everyone else just becomes a transient figure in your life. And their value to you, becomes less. In the end they just aren't important. The other thing about immortality is that death becomes a strange sort of bogeyman to you. Everyone else in the world lives with the knowledge that they will die. And so they learn to accept it. But to an immortal for whom death is always a possibility but never a certainty, it becomes something more than that. It becomes an intolerable fear. A terror. So now the question becomes, what would such a man do to avoid ever having to face the spectre of death? And the answer? Pretty much anything!

So anyway, that's my approach to writing villains. Get into their head space. Don't make them someone you would want to identify with. But do make them someone who, when they do horrible things, you can understand why they did them. Unless of course you really do want to write a shoot em up – in which case make them one dimensional with lots of quirks and as unreal as possible! Then have at them!

Cheers, for now. Greg.

The Speed Of Information

Hi Guys,

Bit of a change in topic this time. First up the next book – Fineas and Tusk: The Epic Journey of a Man and His Pig, is with the editor at the moment, but since she's in the process of moving house at the moment, it may be a while before it returns to me. The image above by the way is one that I found on DeviantArt.com while I was searching covers for the book, and while I can't use it since it doesn't really match the story at all, I loved it so I thought I'd share it. I may contact the artist and get him to paint me something similar.

However, this time I thought I'd return to an old chestnut of mine – Relativity and space opera. We all know the basics, Relativity means that faster than light travel is essentially impossible, so most space opera is impossible. In essence if we want to write space opera grounded in any sort of reality we have to resort to cheats like warp drives and hyperspace. Theoretical speculations and mathematical possibilities but still things not observed. Or else write things like The Expanse and Starhunter – sub-light speed space opera contained within the solar system. Alternatively we risk arousing the wrath of hard science fiction fans and being told we're fantasists. (That may actually be true in my case!)

But as some of you may know, I have never been the most ardent believer in Relativity. Yes I know – it's one of the most tested and validated theories in physics, and even suggesting that it may not be right is like standing on sacred ground for many. But I have never been comfortable with the idea that time is mutable. To me it seems that if time can be slowed by motion or gravity, or even stopped, then it can be reversed and time travel becomes possible – and I really do not accept time travel. To me something either is completely mutable or it isn't at all. And if time is actually mutable as Relativity says, than we live in a universe of time travel paradoxes.

Naturally I don't think my speculations are going to end up on the title pages of any physics text books any time soon! In fact quite likely I may end up labelled as a Luddite! But that's life.

However in keeping with my views, I've often found myself wondering over the years, is there a way to explain the observations of Relativity without actually having to claim that time itself is somehow being bent? And the answer is yes – at least in my view. I'll attempt to explain my answer here. (Physicists avert your gazes now – this may be treason!)

So my theory is a simple one. That what is observed, has nothing to do with time being bent or slowed. It is in fact nothing more than an artifact of what I'll term the speed of information. Time is not in any way affected by motion. Only the information about it is.

Now I should say at the outset that this artifact is real. It must logically exist. So any theory of apparent time dilation must include it. I'm not sure however, if it's included in current relativistic calculations. I thought about contacting NASA and asking but could feel the laughter building!

OK, that said lets consider the old twins paradox which is what essentially buggers up a lot of space opera. Now according to Special Relativity we have one twin on Earth and the other on a rocket ship leaving Earth at the speed of light. The twin on the rocket ship has time slow down or stop for him, so that when he returns to Earth, he finds he is in fact younger than the twin he said goodbye to. And we have evidence that objects travelling away from Earth do in fact appear to be experiencing less time. Sounds like a case closed sort of thing doesn't it?!

But what I would ask you, would we expect to see if Relativity wasn't an issue? If the universe operated purely by Newtonian principles? Would we expect to see the rocket ship leaving us at the speed of light and everything as if it was happening right in front of us?

Actually no. If Relativity was not an issue we would expect to see that rocket ship which is heading away from Earth at the speed of light, seemingly only travelling at half the speed of light. And if there were portholes on that ship, we would expect to see the people on board moving and ageing at half speed. It would look like everything was in slow motion.

This has nothing to do with time dilation. Time is not being slowed in any way. This is purely an artifact of the speed with which the information about that rocket ship's travel comes back to us – at the speed of light.

To explain this, consider that the rocket ship has been travelling at the speed of light for a year. Could we sitting on Earth staring at it with our telescopes, expect to see the rocket ship one light year away? No. We would see it at the six month point in its trip. This is because the light from the rocket ship as it travels takes time to get back to us. So at the one year point in its journey, that light will take a second year to get back to us, meaning that we will observe the rocket ship at its one light year point, after two years.

To extend this point a little, if the ship is travelling to Alpha Centauri, four and a half light years away and is travelling at the speed of light, it will arrive in the system in four and a half years. But we on Earth will observe it arrive nine years after it left, without any time dilation being involved. Naturally this fits perfectly with the fact that everything we see of Alpha Centauri is four and a half years out of date.

Now lets reverse this a little. What does the man on the Rocket ship staring back at Earth see when he's travelling at the speed of light? And the answer assuming that he sees anything at all, is that he would see the Earth as if it was frozen in time. Someone had hit the pause button on the dvd player. This again is simply an artifact of the speed of information. All the light from Earth telling him what's happening there, is travelling with him at exactly the same speed. So the light that left Earth one second after he did, is still one second behind him for the entire journey.

And again to extend this point a little, when he arrives at his destination and stops, four and a half years later, he suddenly sees the Earth start moving again as someone hit play on the machine. But everything he sees is four and a half years out of date. Naturally once more this fits perfectly with the fact that everything seen of Earth from Alpha Centauri is four and a half years old.

Now lets add a third observer. This time the guy at Alpha Centauri watching the rocket ship come to him. What does he see in a universe without time dilation? Oddly, he sees nothing. The rocket ship takes off, but he won't see that until four and a half years later – at exactly the same time as the rocket ship arrives beside him. So he has the unusual experience four and a half years after the rocket ship leaves Earth, of seeing it take off, travel for four and a half years, and arrive all in the same instant. A sort of photonic boom.

So what does all of this mean for us space opera writers? It means at the very least that there is a simple explanation for why we might observe what seems to be time dilation without it actually existing. It also means there might be a very simple reason that we cannot observe anything travelling faster than the speed of light – all the information about that thing travels to us at the speed of light since it's axiomatic that light cannot travel faster than the speed of light.

Most importantly it means that we can write space opera involving faster than light travel without having to invoke the gods of hyperspace and warp drive etc, and still feel good about it! Hard science fiction be damned!!!

Anyway, must dash. I see the men with the white coats walking up the drive and I suspect they have a new jacket for me – one that straps up at the back!

Enjoy your writing.

Cheers, Greg.

The Unexpected Perils of Holding a Pen!

 

Hi Guys,

 

I've been without a computer for the last week or so, since the machine decided it no longer wanted to start. But it kept telling me it wanted to – if only I'd select the right operating system from the list provided so it could automatically repair whatever was wrong with it. Unfortunately the list it presented me with was blank – something that made me think the fault might be somewhat terminal! Thankfully, as you can tell, it wasn't and here I am a week later, still kicking and screaming.

However, the computer's breakdown gave me a little time to think about things. For a start it gave me a chance to be grateful that the breakdown occurred a week after I published A Bitter Brew and not a week before! It also gave me a chance to get back to the basics of writing. At which point I discovered that my fingers have forgotten how to hold a pen!

I know. It sounds ridiculous. But it's actually true. I've been typing for so long that the actual physical act of writing with pen and paper is alien to my hand. And the script that flows from it is less than pretty. Not that it was pretty before, but things have definitely gone downhill! For those of you who think I'm kidding but equally don't write with pen and paper, all I can suggest is that you try it for yourself. It is actually quite shocking as you sit there with cramped fingers trying to remember which way the pen goes to link to the next letter!

That in turn set me to thinking about some of the other odd effects writing – either with pens and paper or computer – have had on my world. The downsides. And here I'm not talking about the traditional downsides of being an author – poverty, an ever decreasing circle of friends, a never ending need to shout from the rooftops that no one is listening to you, followed by alcoholism, death and a pauper's grave! No here I'm thinking of the ones that no one normally talks about.

One of them is what people think is shyness and embarrassment. The absolute aversion I've developed to telling people in the off-line world that I'm a writer. But it's not because I'm ashamed of what I do, or because I'm shy. It's because it inevitably leads to two questions, neither of which I know how to answer, nor want to try.

The first is –“where do you get your ideas from?” I hate this question, because I have absolutely no idea. They just come. I write and they flow. More than that I can't tell you. And if you ask me this question face to face I'm just going to have to think of some clever answer, because let's face it – “I don't know” sounds terrible!

The other question of course is that perennial favourite – “have you written anything I know?” I hate this question because the answer is mostly – no. Of course I haven't. A lot of people read what I write and some of you say nice things about it for which I'm eternally grateful. But that doesn't make me Stephen King. On top of which I only write in a couple of genres and there are hundreds of others that people read. So it's really quite unlikely that any particular person would have read my books. But saying that just makes me feel like a failure.

Another of the unexpected consequences of spending so much time writing these past few years is that I've become a grammar Nazi! I don't know when it happened exactly. And I loathe being that person. But still it's there. And the inner grammar Nazi reveals itself at the most unexpected times. For example there's a song on the radio I listen to quite often. And every time I hear it a part of me cringes as they sing part of a line “… gets me overwhelmed.” I usually end up yelling at the car radio that it should be “… leaves me overwhelmed.” As you can guess this particular song is not good for road safety in my case! And I'm already in the process of writing up the legal argument for the day that the inevitable happens! I'm not sure that anybody has ever before cited dangerous song lyrics leading to a car crash as the grounds for a civil action!

In fact the pain of hearing this line annoys me so greatly that many times I've considered writing the boy band in question a letter demanding that they fix it. (Of course they're quite safe at this stage since my fingers can't hold a pen and my computer has only just come back to life! Also I understand that they've broken up – in fear perhaps of my scathing note and legal action!)

Reading has also become problematic over the years. I find it hard to slip into someone else's prose these days – not because there's anything wrong with it, but because I've become so used to my own style and in the back of my mind there's always this little voice saying; “well I wouldn't have written it that way”. These days whenever I do any critiquing for fellow authors I have to constantly check myself as to whether I'm suggesting a change because it's good for the work or because it fits my style.

Google has become a nightmare. Yes it is my friend. But sometimes you can have too many friends! The problem is that whenever I write something and I touch on a topic I'm not familiar with, whether it's gun handling, the Ninth Legion or brewing ale, I have to go and research it online to make sure I've got it right. And the amount of research I can end up doing for a single scene or even a sentence in a book, is mind blowing. It can take longer than writing the actual book! And the amount of material I download is frightening. (Maybe that's what killed my computer!)

And then there's stress. Yes I know, who can lie around all day typing a few words, and somehow discover stress?! It seems unlikely. But it's real. All day I'm constantly wondering – will people like my latest book? Will they read it? What about typos? What if I run out of ideas? (I don't know where they come from after all so I can't tell how many might be left!) And will my cat finally claw my face off in my sleep?! (Yes that one's my own personal demon, but still it's not a nice way to finally close your eyes!)

Anyway, for those of you wanting to embark on this journey of writing, I thought I'd share some of the unexpected perils you may find along the way.

 

Cheers, and good luck, Greg.

 

 

 

Loose Ends, Tight Beginnings – And Lets Not Even Talk About The Middle!

 

Hi Guys,

 

 

 

Been a while since I posted. Mostly because I've been busy with my new book – A Bitter Brew. For the past two weeks since it came back from the first pass by the editor I've been deep in the throws of pulling my hair out and swearing at Track Changes as I tried to accept / reject the untold thousands of edits she made! And I'm sure every other author out there knows exactly what I mean.

But finally – roughly two days ago – I finished it and sent it away for its second run through and I thought I should finally write something. And this time the topic was fairly obvious. Antediluvian writing!

Now I'm not talking here about writing about the pre-flood times. (Though it is an interesting idea.) Nor about the writing that was done before the flood. (Though I'm pleased to report that I have one of the largest collections of pre-flood books in existence with exactly zero books! One of which is entitled – “What's That Big Wall Of Water Coming My Wa …!) I'm actually reflecting on my own writing style – which may be a little archaic for want of a better term.

I always get a bit nostalgic when my latest books away for editing. Especially when my editor contacts me to tell me about the latest fashions which she thinks I should try – in this case a white coat that buckles up at the back! But in this case my nostalgia was brought on by reading some of the critiques done of another fledgeling writer's work.

Now I've said this before, and I'll undoubtedly say it again. Probably until I'm in my grave. There is no right way to write a book! There are no rules of writing! Not every book should be written with minimal description and character development and constant page turning seat of your pants action! And those who give critiques are giving you opinion – no more. The challenge for the writer is to decide whether they agree with those opinions or not.

For me, I like good long reads. I like a complicated world build, an involved plot, and deep character work. My editor does a great job of curbing the worst of my excesses – or else every book I wrote would be a thousand pages long! But always as I go through the changes she's made, I sit there with a single question on my mind – do I agree with each change? Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't.

And for all of you out there going through the process of putting your work up for critique, this is the same thing you need to do. Don't simply accept what others say. And for the sake of your peace of mind, don't look at all the edits and think – shit I'm a crap writer! I guarantee the same people could make just as many edits on Tolstoy. And in any case this is not a business for the thin skinned.

So simply thank people for their time and effort, and then go through all the comments with with that one question on your mind. Do you agree? Or put another way – if you do what they say will it still be the story you want to tell being told the way you want to tell it?

Anyway, enough whining from me. I've got to get back to writing. And this time I've got caught up in a strange plot involving the missing Roman Ninth Legion, some Celts and a few fae, an alternate world, and a mist that keeps carrying people away. If I don't keep writing I won't know where the story is going! (People keep asking me where I get my ideas. And quite frankly I'd like to know too – because some of them baffle even me!)

So as always, be good or don't get caught.

 

Cheers, Greg.

 

 

 

Getting The Little Things Right

Hi Guys,

This time I thought I'd turn my attention to one of the problems that faces all writers, but especially pantsters like myself. Getting the details right. So here I'm talking about the things that in film and tv become known as continuity errors, where for example the hero gets in an overturned yellow sports car with damage in its side and drives away in an unblemished one – Commando. It's also about the issue of major plot holes and nonsensical plots. In Powers for example one of the anti-heroes forces another to help him in a complex prison break to murder a common enemy, simply because there is a “drainer” in it that could rob him of his teleportation ability. Problem is, all he really needed was a pump action shotgun and a balaclava. Teleport in, shoot his enemy in the head, shoot the machine and jump away. Simplicity itself.

These mistakes occur in writing as well as film and television. Sometimes they can be amusing, and occasionally they can completely ruin a book. But whichever they are, they shouldn't be there.

So how do we stop them? Or rather – how do I stop them? You will all have your own ideas as writers.

There are actually two approaches to preventing them from happening. Each approach is based on the style of writer you are. For plotters – those who like to plan out their books in advance of writing them – their approach actually protects them. Not perfectly. But it's hard to write in a plot hole when the plot is already laid out in detail with all the key developments written down in front of them. For plotters the best approach is simply to up their plotting so that their plots, time lines, world builds and character bio's etc, are written down in meticulous detail. A simple fix.

But for those like me who simply like to wade into writing the book without doing anything like that – pantsters – the fix is not quite so simple. For us we generally look at these issues as problems that we get around by constantly rewriting and editing our books as we write, and by being utterly focused on our work. But this isn't always enough.

So speaking purely for myself, I use a second approach. I write out the plot, time line, world build, character bio's, beastiary etc in a second document at the same time as I write the story. And as I write the story I have this second file open beside it. Then as I write I constantly update the data file. So for example for The Wolves of War, I had the story file Wolves in which I was working, and the data file WolvesData both open on my screen at the same time, and I simply swapped between the two as I wrote.

Sounds like a simple fix? It is. And it will save you a thousand headaches, and a thousand questions from beta readers, critics and readers as they hopefully enjoy your work. But I want to extend this a little to show just how invaluable this approach is in your writing for a pantster like me.

To return to Wolves for a bit which is obviously freshest in my memory, I'm going to look at just a couple of places this approach helped me immensely. I'll start with travelling.

Wolves is a traditional epic fantasy, and like many in the genre it involves the characters travelling large distances periodically. As the writer of course, I want for that travel to be realistic. To fit with the distances involved, the terrain crossed, and the means of travel. And I want to synch everything up with the plot so I don't have unreasonable time gaps where people are either not doing anything for excessive and inexplicable lengths of time while other characters are advancing the story, or else, rushing impossibly fast to do things so it all fits together in a logical story arc.

So to do this I include in my data file, two vital sections – the map and the time line.

The map is actually not a map for two very simple reasons. The first is that I can't actually draw a straight line even with a ruler. And the second is that my data file like all my writing is done in an older version of Word which doesn't handle graphics well. So instead my map is actually a series of locations, towns, cities, realms, and their distances / compass directions from another key location. And that actually works better for me than a map would since the distance and the means of travel give me the time taken to get from point A to B. And that in turn gives me a couple of notes to add to my time line as I write. The day the journey began and the day it ends.

In practise this becomes a straight forward approach. First I have the start point of the journey set out and a distance. So say my hero Briagh sets out for the fae realm on foot and carrying a large pack on Day Twenty One. His journey is a hundred and twenty leagues – three hundred and sixty miles. And the terrain is snow covered and flat. I simply estimate how far he can travel in a day under these conditions, and make an estimated time of twenty four days which means he arrives on Day Forty Five.

Now here's where the time line becomes so valuable. Because while Briagh is busy travelling my other main hero {anti-hero?} Elan is busy with her own story arc – arguing with the Court, escaping the city and giving chase for the second time. The time line allows me to place her story, chapter by chapter, at the exact right points in the story so that she can then arrive in the fae realm and start hunting down Briagh at the right time for him to have done what he needed to.

Another section included in my data file is the characters. Now here I don't just include the basic details like name, gender, race etc. I also include a minor biography for the important characters. Who is this man? What are his values? What does he care about? It doesn't have to be much. But it does have to be there. Because in any situation who a person is will determine how he will respond. So in Wolves, Briagh was a thief and a morph. A man whose entire life was based around running and hiding. Not trusting others with his secrets. Fearing exposure. So thrown into a new environment where his secret is known – how is he going to react? The bio is there as my guide to answering those questions, and it like the time line and the plot is being constantly added to as I write the story. {This of course is especially vital when as a pantster I tend to wander between writing different books at the same time and often don't write anything on the same book for days or months.}

Normally I include a beastiary in my data file – for a couple of reasons. The first is that I want a consistent set of creatures in my work that relate to my world. Is my world based on ancient Greek / Roman / Babylonian mythology? If so then I want it to include creatures from those mythologies like hell hounds, cerberi, minotaurs and not those of other mythologies. Similarly I need to nail down the characteristics and abilities of those beasts so that I don't have them doing things that they can't or wouldn't do. For example if a manticore is an ambush predator operating from its den in the forest depths, I don't want it to suddenly be out chasing down its prey across the savanna.

Other sections I usually include are the gods and religions of the world – you never know when you need a good curse or a priest to tell your characters about right and wrong. Likewise I add a language section – terms I use through the book. So in Wolves I took a number of terms from middle English and scattered them throughout the work, simply to keep the steam punk feel of the book alive. {This can be fascinating and fun research by the way, and you can learn a lot. For example in writing the book I discovered the term 'rakefire' which is essentially an over-stayer in an inn who refuses to pay for his lodgings and needs to be booted out in favour of paying guests.}

And last but by no means least I add a comments section. This I cannot stress the importance of strongly enough for pantsters and probably plotters to. This is simply a section where as I'm writing the book I have a random thought eg 'explain the magic of scrying somewhere in book'. This matters because obviously I as the writer know what scrying is and how it works in the book, so as I reread and edit it makes perfect sense to me. But if that isn't in the book somewhere, my readers may be left scratching their heads wondering what's happening.

So to those of you who like to write in the manner I do – by the seat of your pants – this is the approach I use, and I would commend it to you.

Here's hoping you have a great new year ahead.

 

Cheers, Greg.

A Writer's Voice - What is it and Why Does it Matter?

Hi guys,

 

 

 

The wonderful cover art was obtained from SelfPubBookCovers:

SelfPubBookCovers.com/KimDingwall

Well The Wolves of War went out just on a week ago on kindle {and two days later after much hair pulling, wailing and gnashing of teeth, on CreateSpace!}And so I find myself with a little free time on my hands to blog.

This time I thought I'd turn my attention to voice. That almost indefinable something that gets mentioned a lot by writers, and hardly ever explained. But here I thought I'd set out what “voice” is in my view, and why it matters so much.

For me the simplest definition of your voice as a writer, is that it's who you are as a writer. Many people tend to define voice as mostly about prose. Your style of writing. To me it's much more than that. It is the gestalt of everything you are when you put finger to keyboard. So it includes your prose. The way you express your thoughts in writing. And of course it includes things like active and passive writing, purple prose, sentence length and structure and all the rest. But it goes much further than that.

It includes things like word choice and phrases you use. So note that before I used the term “finger to keyboard”. Why? Because it's more representative of current writing methods? Maybe. But also because it sounded better to me to use it there than the more familiar term, “pen to paper”. That is a part of my voice. Where and when I choose to use a more common phrase and where I prefer a one off.

Voice of course goes well beyond this. It impacts on your character creation. What are they like as people? What do you want to say about them? Does it matter to you as a writer if they are pretty people? Good people? What flaws and qualities do you want to write about them? Voice is there in your world build too. What parts of your world do you want to describe? Does architecture matter? Are you more about the detail of the world? Do you prefer instead to paint in broad brush-strokes and metaphor? You see voice in the pace of your writing. Whether you choose to use short, punchy sentences, have lots of action, and be light on description. Or if you prefer longer sentences and to lovingly linger over descriptions.

It's even there in the choice of stories a writer wants to write. Do you like sci fi or fantasy? Romance? Western? Do you want your story to be happy? An epic tragedy? A contemplation on the meaning of life?

And so in everything a writer writes, his writing voice is there. It informs and guides him in a thousand different decisions. And most important of all, those decisions are not usually either right or wrong. They are simply choices.

So if that's what voice is to me, the next obvious question is – why does it matter?

Now here I'm going to start by saying that every writer is or should be on a journey. A writer's journey as they slowly become more aware of who they are as writers, and what they like and dislike. It's not just about becoming a “better” writer, it's about becoming the writer that you want to be. It's about learning to express whatever you want to express, how it seems best to you. And it feeds into self confidence which is absolutely critical.

Many of the best writers I know and love, have very distinct voices. Voices that are so strong that you could pick up a book by one of them, and know who wrote it without needing to check the cover.

So who stands out to me? Stephen Donaldson as always with his longer sentences and detailed, lovingly crafted descriptions. And also with his underlying sadness, which shows through in all his characters and their story arcs. Against him the wonderful Clifford Simak, with his simple writing and bucolic charm. The warmth that shines through in his worlds. And the wry humour too. JRR Tolkein again with lengthy prose and detailed description like Donaldson, but also with a dated {obviously I suppose} style of prose and an almost poetic turn of phrase. And perhaps most important in his work, a clear focus on moral rights and wrongs / values. Dean R Koontz for his not so horror filled horrors where you can open the book and know before you begin reading that his heroes will do okay in the end, and that they will all be remarkable characters with bad pasts who have turned their lives around somehow to become impossibly successful, and yet are just ordinary Americans. {I admit, sometimes that gets to me a little and makes me feel inadequate. Damn – if only I'd been born into unbelievable suffering I could have grown up to become an unbelievably talented and successful artist / writer / detective etc with an utterly virtuous heart!}

Anyway the point here is not that these are good writer's voices. They are in my opinion, but that's not important. What does matter is that these writers have at some point in their journey, discovered who they are as writers. They've found their voices. And as a result they've begun writing their best work. And by best I don't mean that their work is of great literary merit. It may be, but that's not the point. Nor that it is commercially successful. Or that it will go down in the annuls of history as masterpieces. By best I mean that it is true to who they are as writers. It says what they want to say how they want to say it. It is true to them.

By contrast there are a great many writers out there, most of them new to the craft, who are determined to write the next JK Rowling or Stephen King. Not that these are bad goals to aspire to, but are they the right goals for you? Do you want to write the next schoolboy wizard or sparkly vampire? Or do you really want to write the story that's in your heart? The one that's going to emerge onto the computer screen and fill you with pride? The one that's going to be “truly yours”?

As I said at the beginning, I think every writer who is serious about writing, should be on this journey to find their voice. It is probably the most important part of a writing career.

Because of this I would simply add this to those starting out on your journey. Throw away all the writing guides you have. They may be full of wonderful words of wisdom but they are of no use to you at the start. The only book that should matter to you at the beginning in terms of your becoming the writer you should be, is the book you are writing. Instead of reading what others tell you about what to write and how to write it, write what you want to write, how you want to write it.

Yes there will come a time before you are ready to publish, when you'll need to put your work out there for opinions. And it will be hard to show your baby to others and hear criticism about its eyes being too close together. That is just another, difficult step on the journey. But if you've completed the first step in your journey, you should then be able to accept the criticisms and after the tears have dried up, step back a little and dispassionately listen to what was said and ask yourself the most important question. Is what they're saying true to what I wanted to write? Or if I do as they suggest am I betraying my vision?

That is the most important stage in a writer's development. It's hard and it takes self-confidence. But if you can achieve it. If you can hear criticism, weigh it, measure it, decide if it's right for you, and then either use it or put it away when you have to, you have moved from being a generic wannabe writer slavishly doing what other people think you should and following trends, to becoming who you want to be.

You have found your voice.

 

Cheers, Greg.

Steam-Punk or Not?

Hi guys,

 

 

 

Having just sent my first draft of The Wolves Of War down to my editor earlier this week I had a little time to do some online browsing etc and I found myself intrigued by some of what I read. In particular one forum poster asked me a question the other day that stuck with me, and I thought I'd share my answer with you. He asked me what the boundaries of steam-punk are? When something is steam-punk and when it isn't.

That stuck with me because while I have written some books that I consider as containing elements of steam-punk in them – most notably of course The Arcanist and the upcoming Wolves of War {which I've posted a mock up of the possible cover to above}, I don't consider that I'm a true steam-punk writer. I'm a fantasy and science fiction writer and both of the books I've mentioned are epic fantasy.

So what's the difference? Is steam-punk a sub-genre of fantasy? Or of science fiction? Or is it a genre in its own right?

For me it's a genre simply because steam-punk can't really be fantasy if it's portrayed as possible. And it can't be science fiction if the science is essentially impossible. {I know, there are many science fiction books where you know the science can't possibly be possible – ever. Most of them are that simply because they are dated and science has now told us the truth. But all science fiction books hold out as their basis that single question – what if?} Steam-punk straddles this divide between science fiction and fantasy that makes it quite distinct. On the one hand it doesn't allow for the fantastical and mythical. There are no elves and dwarves. It tries hard to say to the reader – this is real science. But on the other hand the science it uses is completely mythical and can't be anything else.

As a genre steam-punk has two chief features that separate it from others. The first is of course the amazing, improbable if not impossible technology. And the second is of course the era. Traditionally steam-punk would slip somewhere into the Victorian era and the underlying basis of the technology would stem from them. So you would have of course steam power, the beginnings of electricity and magnetism, herbalism rebranded as alchemy or the art of the apothecary and so forth. This is in essence a romanticised vision of the outlook of a Victorian gentleman or woman, discovering these new technologies all around him and thinking the secrets of the universe are just around the corner.

To explain this perhaps a little more clearly, think of the classic Frankenstein. You can just imagine Shelley and Byron and the others sitting around in their parlours after dinner discussing the wonders of this new technological age, and in particular the experiments of Galvani as he made a frog's leg twitch with the application of electricity. And you can see the logical extension of this in their minds as they considered that he'd discovered the essence of life. And in fact there is a story {probably just a story} that Percey Shelley tried to reanimate the body of his first wife this way. From there it was a short step to the age old riddles of resurrection which was suddenly possible through electricity and alchemy. Only now it was reanimation via science, and then of course there were the inevitable consequences of playing God.

So from today's perspective, knowing that this sort of reanimation is impossible, that life and electricity aren't the same thing, that alchemy doesn't work, we can see this as an early example of steam-punk. Though of course when it was written it wasn't. It was a straight up science fiction / horror novel. Taking the knowledge of the time and extending it and then saying – what if? Which in itself raises an interesting question. In a hundred years time will the science fiction we write become the steam-punk of their age? Will our descendants laugh at our simplistic and unrealistic ideas and yet write books based on the dreams we have given our technology?

But getting back to the topic, this then is the heart of steam-punk. Putting ourselves back in the past, to an age that we can romanticise, and then taking the technological dreams and wonders of those times and fashioning them into a story. It is more complicated and confused than that of course, as there are a thousand different variations on the theme. And of course there are derivatives like diesel-punk, gunpowder-punk and maybe cyberpunk {I'm really in two minds about this genre as it's been around for so long and speaks less about the technology in my view and more about the nature of the human condition.}

The next question is when does a story go from being one in which there are steam-punk elements to a true steam-punk story? To me that's when the steam-punk technology goes from being mostly part of the world build to an actual plot element. This is why Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is not a full blown steam-punk novel in my view but rather a fantasy with steam-punk elements. Because while the story contains the elements of steam-punk – specifically the impossible technology, the mad inventor Professor Caractacus Potts {i.e. Crackpot} and indeed the car itself is practically a character in the work, it's not the basis of the plot. And in truth it's accepted in the story that what the car can do is not actually possible.

By contrast Wild Wild West for those who've seen the movie, is steam-punk in my view. The technology, though we know from sitting in our twenty first century homes that it's complete balderdash, is not just set out as completely feasible and justified by various ludicrous theories, it is part of the plot. It's what allows the villain to dream of taking over the country, and what makes the hero capable of catching him. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for all its wonder, is just a vehicle {pun intended!}

So this leads us to the other half of the question. When does a steam-punk story, leave the realm of steam-punk? Because there are plenty of stories out there where steam-punk is not just part of the world build but also a key plot element, but which are still not steam-punk.

To me there are two main reasons why a steam-punk work leaves the realm. The first is magic. And by this I don't just mean the existence of magic in the world build as a legitimate force of nature though this is part of it. I mean the acceptance either tacitly accepted or specifically mentioned, that the technology is itself magic. This is why for example The Arcanist is not a steam-punk novel.

To explain this consider Herbie – the spiritual successor I would guess to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The technological wonder of a car that does impossible things. Herbie could never be steam-punk, because it's accepted that what the car does is impossible. And the explanations given are that the car was simply built better or has a big heart. In doing so the story immediately gives away any pretence that Herbie is possible based on the technology of the time.

Then contrast Herbie with the Nautilus from Verne's Twenty Thousand leagues. The submarine even though we know it could not be built from our twenty first century knowledge, is based on the extension of what was believed to be known of science at the time. Even though the author did not have the knowledge to explain it exactly, its conception is completely in keeping with the beliefs in technology of the time. Thus Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is either tacitly accepted as living or magical in some way, Herbie is “alive” and the Nautilus is a technological wonder rooted in the imagined science of the age. It is only a wonder in that it is so advanced.

The other thing that ironically enough may take a story out of the genre of steam-punk is industrialisation. Mass production. Now here I'm not saying that the story can't take place in a world where the industrial revolution has happened. Obviously it can and in fact in Wolves it does. But the key feature is that that industrialisation cannot apply to the chief inventions themselves.

Consider the Nautilus again. It is a technological wonder because it's so advanced and nothing like it has ever been built before. But if mass production applies to it and there are suddenly others like it – it's no longer a wonder. It's just a sub and Twenty Thousand Leagues is just an adventure story set on a submarine. Think of Frankenstein. If the exact nature of reanimation is known and there are others around who have been reanimated through technology, then Adam is no longer a one of the kind tortured soul / monster looking for the acceptance of a father. He's just a reanimated man and it's a simple family drama.

The fact is that these technological wonders must be wonders even if they are rooted in the science of the world build. They must be one of a kind, extraordinary things – usually created by mad scientists in private labs or workshops – that go far beyond anything the rest of their fictional world can conceive of. They cannot be mundane.

So for example in The Wolves of War my villain who is the technologist of the piece, has a pistol that fires bombs, a bracelet that shoots lightning, and a miniature steam wagon that can drive through a forest. Things that make him a formidable and deadly enemy. And things which the rest of the characters have never before encountered and have to deal with.

Anyway guys, that's my take on steam-punk. You will all no doubt have your own thoughts.

Cheers, Greg.