New Years Blues!

Hi Guys,

Well I meant to start this year off with a bang (no not the one half of you are thinking of!). But things haven't gone quite according to plan. At least not my plan!

Still, there is some good news. Manx' first draft is done, and as soon as I've finished the first draft of my current space opera - sadly it can't be titled Lost in Space even though that precisely describes the plot - I'll move into the starting edit.

Manx is the story of a man who can talk to cats - but who would want to! A cat who's really above all the troubles in her servants' lives and just wants to be fed and groomed and maybe have a nice shoe or two to take a dump in! And a three eyed woman who can see into other realms. After all what would be the point of a third eye if it didn't let you do that! I suspect the book cover is going to be a problem!

The bad news is that summer has finally arrived in Rotorua, and as I sit here typing, I'm more or less dissolving in front of the keyboard - which may or may not be melting. It's hard to tell when your eyeballs are sweating!

Anyway, I'll try to keep going through the heat and the perspiration. And I'll bravely ignore the cries of my neighbors as they discover that I'm typing in the nude! (Hysterical blindness isn't a real thing!!!) And I hope you all have a great year.

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.

Fineas And Tusk Released

Hi Guys,

As you may know, the eBook version of Fineas and Tusk: The Epic Journey of a Man and His Pig has gone out on Kindle. Now I'm in the process of getting it ready for publication as a paperback edition through CreateSpace. In the meantime here's version 1 of the full cover with the back cover with blurb roughed out. It probably won't change a lot before publication but I'm rewriting the blurb.

Have to say I enjoyed writing this book. It made me laugh in places. And when I got the cover back from Andrew I practically went hog-wild over it! (Pun intended!)

By the way, for those of you who wonder about such things, the lead character isn't named for the hero from Around The World in Eighty Days. That's Phileas Fogg. Fineas is actually a modern version of the Greek name Phineas which means Oracle. As for the other main characters, Tusk was named as he was because - well - he's a wild boar! And Shanniah because I was listening to the singer when I named her! So no advanced naming strategy here!

Anyway, that's my news. Hope you all enjoy the book.

Cheers, Greg.

Fineas and Tusk - The Epic Journey Of A Man And His Pig!

Hi Guys,

Hope you all had a great Christmas and are enjoying the new year. Here in Rotorua it's been strange – weather wise at least. We had days and days of rain, intermixed with thunderstorms and endless grey skies which kept me locked inside a lot. But just at the moment we seem to have been hit with a heatwave and I can't even step outside without burning my feet off. So go figure!

Anyway all this enforced home detention has been good for my writing, and a new book is now about eighty percent complete. At this stage it has the working title of “Fineas and Tusk – the Epic Journey of a Man and his Pig.” The scary thing is that that may in fact remain the title – I haven't decided.

It's a slightly different twist on my usual epic fantasy of a hero – or more often a reluctant fool – setting out to save the world or at least some of it. In this story it begins with our hero actually plummeting from an airship a league above the ground, to land in a savage, magical land and then wanting to do nothing more than make his way home to his pregnant wife, a thousand leagues away. And once on the ground he encounters Tusk – a two hundred pound wild boar – who travels with him. While Tusk might or might not be a familiar – I've called him a companion which is simply an animal that those with magic are sometimes accompanied by – he doesn't talk, or cast spells or do anything other than what wild boars normally do. If he has a magical gift, it's eating and embarrassing Fineas as he journeys east.

My main struggle in writing Fineas and Tusk, has been in shaping the nature of Fineas. As many of you will know, I normally spend a lot of time trying to get into the head space of my main characters, and Fineas has been particularly difficult for me in this regard. He's so close to the traditional good guy in many ways, but his world view and beliefs are so different that often when he does things that seem to be what a good guy should do – he does them for completely different reasons. So if he steps into a battle where a woman is being attacked it's not because of a sense of justice or fear for her safety – it's because of his inbred need to act honourably. It would be shameful to let a woman be harmed. He will walk into a war even when he's quaking with fear and show not a sign of his terror, simply because he is a Lord and he can never fail in his duty or show such emotions. And when things go wrong as they inevitably do, the true destruction of his life isn't brought about by typical things like bankruptcy or criminality. It is again the code of honour which lays him low as he is shamed by the actions of others even when he has acted with nothing but propriety.

As I say he is close to being the generic good guy / hero, but when you cut to the heart of what makes him tick, he's almost completely alien. Tusk on the other hand is much simpler – it's always about the food!

Anyway, that's been my January. And as I sit here writing and bathing in my own sweat, I hope to have Fineas and Tusk and their epic journey off to the editor in February. After that I suppose, I'll have to start searching out cover art – and strangely there's a large dearth of covers out there depicting Lords walking with wild boars through medieval worlds!

Cheers, Greg.

The Dotard

Hi Guys,

 

Short post this time. Just to let you know that there's a new book coming out shortly. It's just gone off to the editor yesterday, and I'm now playing Skyrim and waiting for the normal round of abuse from her! But really, it has I think, the quality she most looks forward to in my books – fewer words! So that's got to count for something!

Anyway the book's called The Dotard and is a steam-punk with wizards battling one another. It's hopefully a little more light reading than A Bitter Brew, and with a little more humour. The plot's also not so convoluted though there are a few surprises in it. Even I can't spend eternity weaving plot elements into a complex tangle that only makes sense right at the end!

For those who want to know where the idea came from, the book was started about a year ago on a whim. At the time I'd just read something about the then up and coming final wolverine movie and there was a piece in it about Professor X. The man with the most powerful mind in the world suffering from a deteriorating illness of the brain and losing control of his abilities. And it occurred to me – what if he was a wizard?!

So that's where the book began. Where Wilberforce Wilberton came from. With one of the most powerful wizards known, suffering from advanced dementia, losing his sanity and the control of his spells. With magical accidents happening whenever he cast a spell and him refusing to hang up his cauldron! And with a town living in fear of what he might do next. You just never know when a cow might unexpectedly fall out of the sky and wreck your house! Or your day!

Anyway that's all I have for the moment. So as they say in Skyrim – Watch the skies, travellers!

Cheers, Greg.

 

 

 

Maverick to Mage - The Pain of Sequels

Hi Guys,

New topic this time, and the title says it all. Yes Maverick, three years after I published and put it away, is getting a sequel - Mage.

 

It's a long way from anywhere at the moment, with maybe 40k written. And as yet I don't know where it will end up. I've only got to the beginning which is set up five years after the events in Maverick ended. But I am excited about it. So excited that as you can see I've done a rough draft of a cover for it.

 

I'm also pulling my hair out over it! 2015 may be the year I finally go bald!

 

2014 has been a funny year so far. As those who read my posts or my books will know, I don't write series. I generally write stories with a simple beginning and an end. It's not for ideological reasons or because I have any particular objection to series. (Actually I'd quite like to write a series since they sell better!) It's simply the way my somewhat fossilized brain works. But this year I've started three follow up books. The first is to Doorways, a book which at this stage has only the working title - Doorways II. (Original I know!) Then a month or so ago I completed The Godlost Land, and immediately found myself starting its sequel - Pluto Rising. And now Mage has finally started to be written.

 

Where it will go I don't know. I never do. Nor do I have any idea how long it will take to write. As you may have gathered by now - I can never write just one book at a time.

 

Sadly this is the curse of being a pantster - a writer who writes by the seat of his pants rather than planning and plotting. I probably have more unfinished novels on my computer than any other writer in creation. And though it hurts to admit it, some of them are very close to completion. The Arcanist for example - my first venture into steampunk has forty something chapters written and only needs another five or six - essentially the end of the book. But unfortunately each time I return to it - and it is years old - I keep writing, rewriting, refining and revising those first forty some chapters and then can't work out how the book ends.

 

With Mage however, I have a different problem. I know the direction of the story. But the details elude me. It is one giant continuity puzzle. Last night for example I spent half an hour rereading Maverick, skimming through endless references to one character, just to find out what her hair colour is. Then I had to run through my old notes looking for distances in leagues between destinations. Let this be a warning to others - never simply start writing a sequel three years after finishing the first book! (If only I could listen to my own advice!)

 

But at least to all those who have sent me emails about when sequels will be written to various of my books, I can honestly say now that some are on the drawing board. And I'm hopeful that some will be finished next year.

 

Cheers, Greg,

Villains - Sometimes We Don't Want To Understand Them!

Hi Guys,

Been doing a lot of writing lately, and the next book "The Godlost Land" is in the final stages of it's first draft.

I'm pleased with the way the book is going, and particularly with the way the bad guy - Terellion - has shaped up. He is a thorough going baddie which is what I wanted him to be. In fact to quote (or probably mis-quote) one of my favourite authors Harry Harrison, he is the perfect example of a complete freewheeling bastard!

All of which has set me to thinking about villains in general in writing. And of course how Terellion will fit in among them.

To give some background to my thinking on the subject, there has been a trend in recent years in a lot of genres to go for greater realism. Grimdark in fantasy and science fiction is an expression of this trend - the belief being that by making things somehow more horrible they will become more real. In my view this is a reaction to the unrealistic optimism, heroic victory tropes that dominated fantasy until the seventies. But also in my view grimdark is just as unrealistic as that which it replaces, and in some cases it can go too far. In science fiction the best example of this in my view would be the Gap series, by Stephen Donaldson, where the three main characters all go through cycles of being victims. And in fantasy I would argue that GRR Martin's Game of Thrones follows this same trope where all the heroes have feet of clay and the villains have reasons for doing what they do. (Except for Joffrey who is a truly horrible spoilt child king and needs to die a terrible death  in my view!)

As part of the entire movement towards grimdark and realism in the fantasy genres there has been one trend which has become particularly prevalent - the villain being another victim. Misunderstood and suffering from whatever trauma in his past, the reader is asked to "understand" and even empathise with the villain - because villains are real people too!

I understand this desire to humanise the villain, and to a certain extent I agree with it. After all in real life villains do usually have reasons for what they do. But it occurred to me as I was writing Terellion, that this is high fantasy. It isn't real life, it's escapism. And sometimes a villain should just be a villain - and preferably die a horrible death! Besides even in real life there are villains who simply are just villains. The mafia hit man Richard Kuklinski (the iceman) is a perfect example. He was a sociopath pure and simple. In every interview he gave it was clear that he never really understood the suffering of others.

So if in real life there are people like this, and if what I'm writing is pure escapism, why should my villain be more than just a sociopath?

That was the realisation that struck me as I wrote Terellion. Granted I gave him a back story to explain how he became what he did and explain his motivations, but at no stage did I as the writer want to "understand" him. I didn't want to sympathise with him. And while some readers may find my choice challenging in the face of modern grimdark fantasy which seems to be all over the book shelves, I'm happy with it.

I hope you will be too.

Cheers, Greg.