Really Not That Difficult
Incoming semi-rant. I apologise in advance.
I went into Durham yesterday. That in itself is nothing new; I go into Durham all the time. Hell, I live here. What made yesterday so notable was this.
I always tend to use to the Park and Ride bus rather than enter the death match that is searching for premium parking space in the city centre. Durham has a number of car parks, one of which is always chocka-block due to being the easiest to find, one of which closes at some ridiculously early time and another which has the most inconveniently situated posts and pillars you’ve ever seen in your life. Seriously, the designers of that car park should be taken out in public and be made to watch endless re-runs of Susan Boyle’s ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ audition. It’s no less than they deserve. So enter the Park and Ride facilities. Three big car parks, strategically situated at the arterial routes into Durham. £1.70 to sit back and let someone else worry about running Bloody Students[tm] over.
What made me smile was a young lad, perhaps the same age as Not So Small Anymore Son, who said ‘thank you’ as he got off the bus. Now, NSSAS always says thank you, because that’s how I brought him up. The reason I brought him up to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ was a reflection on how I was brought up. But it was really, really nice to hear another kid saying it. And it got me thinking about parenting and how far NSSAS has come since came into this world two months early almost thirteen years ago to the day.
Try saying this when someone does something nice for you. You'll be amazed.
‘Always remember to say “please” and “thank you”,’ my mother told me. ‘It costs nothing and it means everything.’ Of course, when she gave me this critical bit of life advice, I was just a child. I had no idea just how true those words were. My mum worked in the local corner shop for much of my early memory and later moved to the glitzy glamour of the newsagents when it arrived in the village. Prior to that, there was a corner shop, a butchers, a baker’s (not a candlestick maker’s, although there was a place that made saddles if I remember correctly). As such, she dealt with the public on a daily basis. She was astoundingly polite. When obnoxious school kids came into the shop after getting off the school bus, she would actively refuse to sell them anything unless they were polite. It worked, too.
At her funeral, the local vicar started his eulogy with ‘Most people knew her as the lady in the shop.’ My mum. The legend. She brought me up with a plethora of good manners and I’ll always be thankful for that. I’ll always be surprised at the reaction good manners seem to get from people, but thankful nonetheless. An example of this was yesterday in Marks & Spencer; I was at the till with a basket full of things I didn’t really need, but really, really wanted (damn you, M&S Food Hall). An elderly lady with a pint of milk and a sandwich got in line behind me and I insisted she go first as she only had a little bit. I kid you not; this lady’s eyes filled with tears and she smiled warmly. ‘What a charming young lady you are,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much.’ Random acts of kindness go a long way, you know.
There was a lady in one of the aforementioned car parks just before Christmas. She was struggling with a child in a pushchair, a toddler who was obviously tired and cranky, armfuls of wrapping paper and a pay machine that wouldn’t eat her £5 note to pay her £1.60 parking fee. ‘Can you change my £5?’ It was a desperate voice; a woman who was on the verge of crying. I checked my purse. No, I couldn’t change her £5. So I did the only decent thing. I paid her parking for her with the £1.60 I did have. She tried to make me take her £5, but I wouldn’t. I told her it was a Christmas gift and smiled. ‘I hope something wonderful happens to you today,’ she said as I picked up the bag she’d dropped. What she didn’t realise was that it already had. I’d brought a little moment of niceness into her life. That works for me.
Yeah, I know, I’m old-fashioned. I hold doors open for people. I pass the time of day with people at the till. I thank them for their help (when they deserve it) and as a consequence, NSSAS is exactly the same. I still remember him being three years old and holding a door open for someone. ‘After you,’ he said in his baby voice. Adorable? Yes. Was I proud? Yes. Is this normal behaviour for a soon-to-be thirteen year old? Apparently not as much as you would like to think. People still register surprise when NSSAS thanks them for things. He’s a rare pleasure to take out for a meal. He carefully selects his choice from the menu and orders it himself. He asks questions about things he doesn’t understand, and he always always starts his order with ‘Please may I have…’ As a consequence, on more than one occasion I’ve been stopped on the way out of the restaurant and complimented on having such a nice child. I love that. But I’m also saddened that it seems to be such a rarity. On one of the occasions this happened, there was another kid in the same restaurant, probably a bit older than NSSAS was at the time. He spent the whole meal playing with his hand-held console. His mother ordered his food and cut it up for him. He never spoke a word throughout the entire evening.
But it’s so easy. If you say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ yourself, of course your child is going to act the same way. Dearly Beloved works in retail and regularly returns home in varying states of apoplexy and assorted degrees of purple rage. One of his biggest bug bears is the Oblivious Parent; the ones who clearly don’t think that moral standards apply to them. I don’t know whether it’s a product of some poor education, something else or whether they just don’t care, but the story from yesterday was that a woman came into the shop with DB took to be a little of of about 5 years old. They picked out three games on the three for £whatever deal. One was Spyro, one was something else cutesy… and the other was Grand Theft Auto, or one of its derivatives.
‘Is this for him?’ DB asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘He likes that sort of thing. The driving, the shooting.’
DB then proceeded to pull no punches and told her about graphic sex scenes, blah blah blah blah blah. Or at least, that’s evidently what this woman heard, because she bought it anyway. As DB said, he could have refused the sale, but then the customer would have started complaining. It’s happened before.
Whilst in Curry’s yesterday, I got chatting to the sales assistant, a lovely lady by the name of Lillian. (See what I mean? I go in somewhere to enquire about a particular product and I come out with their life story). She was telling me about this family with two young children and how the parents refused to keep control of them. The little darlings were running up and down the aisle, opening and slamming oven doors… that sort of thing. Then they came over to the TV area where she was working and carried on being little tearaways. One of them shoved the other one into a display and the whole thing came crashing down… on the sales assistant. The thing that got me was that apparently the parents didn’t even chastise the kids. Not a tiny bit. Not even half-heartedly. Neither did they think to ask if the sales assistant was alright. And that, tragically, seems to be the norm rather than the exception.
It does make me worry that NSSAS is growing up in a generation of pig-ignorant fuckwads. The anonymity of the Internet gives people a shield from behind which they can inject various brands of vitriol into the ether and our kids are sucking this up. They’re growing up thinking it’s OK to be opinionated and yes… yes, it really is. But be opinionated with an open mind. Be prepared to admit there are other viewpoints. Thank someone for a good discussion. Don’t resort to mud slinging and name calling. You know what? Treat people with respect. Try checking out the Golden Rule.
Most of the people I know are decent folks. They say please/thank you and so do their children. It’s horrible that people with good manners seem to be a dying breed. Because passing that onto your kids? Well, it’s really not that difficult.
Work-Life Balance
Work this week has been… difficult. This cartoon sums it up far better than I can put into words. So I shan’t dwell on that.
This is how work has left me feeling this week. Sort of. Only more complicated.
So yeah. Work has drained a lot of the enthusiasm out of my week and that’s spilled over a little into the writing. That’s also been a bit wobbly this week due to a bunch of other issues that have just left me feeling worn out and utterly weary. Project: Loophole is still well ahead of target, though, so that’s OK.
It was always going to be pretty horrible, the first full week back at work. Getting back into the working-writing swing again has been a grind. I have infinite envy for those who work as writers full time; not in terms of word-count output, but simply the fact that you can spend your entire working day concentrating on what you have to do. Work-home-chores-writing-cooking-maybe more writing… there aren’t that many waking hours in a day after you take out the 8.5 (including driving time) that work swallows up. It’s exhausting, quite honestly, and at times, quite a struggle.
I’ve never been under any illusions that writing around my day job would be in any way an easy thing to do. In fact, I’m outstandingly proud of myself that I’ve produced two novels and about seven short stories in the last year. People have been enjoying my stuff and saying so in public fora (more specifically, people I don’t even know have been saying they’ve enjoyed it and that’s somehow even nicer). It’s been a whole lot of fun and it continues apace.
But there are frustrations. Not all of them are easy to explain or even justify, but when you’re tired and feeling more vulnerable than you might otherwise be, an offhand comment made on an internet forum can catch you off guard. You read it. You re-read it. You think ‘is that a spiteful dig at me’? Then you rationalise it; no, it probably isn’t, you say. It could refer to any number of people. Or me. It’s about me, isn’t it? No, it probably isn’t… and the cycle continues until the whole matter becomes insanely out of proportion and you’re convinced the Spanish Inquisition are going to turn up on your doorstep any time now. Then you forget about it. The pot, you think, is calling the kettle black. Different strokes for different folks. <Insert other random saying of choice here>.
I only post in a few places now in terms of fora. I took the advice of people like Dan, Nik, Jim and Graham very much to heart about it. I haven’t once gotten involved in debate on a forum when people have perhaps not been quite right in an assumption they’ve made. It doesn’t mean I don’t read the ensuing discussion, because that can sometimes be interesting. I do post when asked something directly and there’s at least one forum where there’s a very friendly, lively conversation about the Silver Skulls that’s been ongoing for a long while now. I have fun with those conversations. Those conversations add very much to the fun that all this writing lark gives me.
The harshest thing is that I’m at a situation where work-life balance isn’t the issue. The issue now is work-work-life. Two to one. I’m getting there; but it’s a slow process. I know it’ll come in time. Fortunately with ongoing advice and support, I’m doing OK. And more to the point… hard work though it is? I love every moment of it.
Have some wise words.
Word.(s). Innit.
When Senior Citizens Go Bad
I’m trying to clear up some space on my hard drive and I came across this, which was written for absolutely no discernible reason one afternoon. I wrote it whilst working at a former job where I had long periods of time to twiddle my thumbs and it was inspired by two of my older colleagues having a dead-straight-face serious conversation about Werther’s Originals.
Just thought I’d share it for the LOL value. Or not. Whatever. Also, it gets it off my hard drive. And gives me a reason to briefly procrastinate, although I’m more than half-done on Project: Loophole tonight anyway.
The Other Side…
First of all, Happy New Year to you all. 2012 already, eh? Or more importantly, the 1st January 2012, which means that Sherlock is on tonight. Boo and indeed ya.
So how was the holiday season for you all? Mine was… mixed. Without going into too much depressing detail, there were a couple of reasons I didn’t enjoy Christmas as much as I otherwise would have done, but I have appreciated the time off work. During this important time off work, I have written very few words and have instead enjoyed taking time out with my boys. Dearly Beloved only had Christmas Day/Boxing Day and then yesterday and today off work, but I have loved having the extra opportunities to have both him and Not So Small Anymore Son around.
Christmas haul consisted largely of DVDs and books and some pretty awesome colour-changing LED lightbulbs. Also, I FINALLY got a dock for my iPhone. This makes me content and happy. There was also an assortment of chocolate (including a chocolate orange – RESULT!). DVDs received mean that we added Supernatural seasons 5 & 6 to the collection, along with season 4 of Stargate: Atlantis. Also finally got to watch Captain America which we somehow missed during its cinema run. Was a little disappointed with it, but only relative to the other Avenger-member films that have been out so far. (For me, Iron Man and Thor have been my favourites). It was awesome to watch through the end credits and get a bit excited at seeing the names of two of our friends from LRP who were involved with the production team, though! 
So, 2012.
<Insert usual New Year Resolutions here with a couple of newcomers>:
Newcomer Resolution 1: Actively look for a new job. The thought of going back on Tuesday is not a happy one.
Newcomer Resolution 2: Build and paint those cheeky Silver Skulls. Incidentally, the main reason I picked Silver Skulls was because of the clue that’s in the name. They’re silver. This equals a much easier ‘beginner to the whole thing’ paint scheme. I want to get them built by Black Library Live! 2012 so that I can play (badly) some games against some of the Bolthole Gang. I will lose. I am a complete beginner.
Newcomer Resolution 3: Plan my writing time more effectively. Having the time to spend with the Boys was outstanding and I realised just how intense 2011 was in terms of writing. From September 2010 until now, I have actually not stopped. I did randomly work it out and in the past 15 months, I have written something like 400,000 words of Black Library – and other – related stuff. Taking this last week off was, therefore, deserved. I did do some writing so that I met my December target for Project: Loophole – and I have a fairly intense target for the next month, but it’ll all be good, I’m confident enough.
Newcomer Resolution 4: House things. Some of this falls under the <usual resolutions> header, but there are more elaborate things this year. The first and probably easiest in terms of disruption is to get the loft boarded out. Sounds simple enough, right? But bear in mind neither me nor Dearly Beloved are DIY people and you can imagine the scale of this problem. We are constantly reassured by people who have Done This Task that it’s dead easy. They’ve never met us and our tendency for household disaster. I will update you on this one. If we board out the loft, we will have more storage space and this in itself will solve the second task which is to store things! There’s a couple of other, more expensive and disruptive projects which I’ll get to in time. The first is the bathroom, the second is the kitchen. Both involve disruption, time and money. The first, we’re used to. The other two are harder to deal with.
Speaking of time and money, combined with the fact that we both enjoyed the extra time to ourselves, LRP is probably not on the cards for 2012. If we do go to any sort of live roleplaying, it probably won’t be with the system we used to play.
Things that are on the cards in the upcoming months are BLL!2012 at the beginning of March and Salute! in April. I’m looking forward to both of these events enormously.
Comments on The Gildar Rift have continued to be amazingly positive and I’m feeling very proud of myself. Initial feedback for my first WHF short story, Bloodraven which is in the Age of Legend anthology has also been pretty positive and I’m looking forward to my second novel, Valkia the Bloody going on release in July.
But for now, it’s enjoy the last couple of days of the holiday before the cycle of work-writing-sleep starts over… with the fundamental change of work-writing-funtimes-sleep.
So happy 2012, folks and here’s hoping it’s better that/the same as/mysteriously worse than* 2011!
*delete as applicable according to preference.
Edit
Oh yes! Accursed Eternity, my 40k novella, got a review!
Season’s Wotsits!
Happy Christmas Eve, y’all! Santa and his posse are out in force very soon and I sincerely hope you all get everything you desire.
This is what it's really like. Really.
I’m off work now until the New Year which comes as something of a relief. This year has been utterly manic, both in terms of the Day Job, the Other Job and just life in general. And because this is the last post I’ll write until after Christmas, thought I’d just do something of a look back over what’s gone on in my life in 2011.
January saw me listing off some personal goals for the year – all of which were pretty much met. I was also contemplating whether or not there would be a return to LRP after the – frankly – hellish previous couple of years. After years of nagging, Dearly Beloved finally got me to sit down and start watching Babylon 5. At some point, I will finish that. Things took a surprising turn for the hectic this year and many things I started didn’t get finished! I was 85k up on The Gildar Rift in January too. Wish I was that far with Project: Loophole…
February brought with it my comp copies of Victories of the Space Marines, which contained my first short story to see physical print, Primary Instinct. That was one heck of a feeling. The spectacular cover art for The Gildar Rift went public and I was finally able to share Jon Sullivan’s awesome artwork with everyone. I finished the first draft of The Gildar Rift. In non-writing news, we visited Kentfordshire and stayed in the hottest hotel room known to man, my son turned 12 years old (which made me feel a bit creaky) and we had Door Drama. We still haven’t replaced that door.
March brought Black Library Live! 2011, which was brilliant fun. It included highlights such as Katie and myself entirely failing to find the railway station to pick up Emma, Rachel’s amazing cupcakes, playing games in Bugmans and the opportunity to finally meet so many of the Bolthole gang. There was the Gildar Rift Cake which to this day is one of the most amazing things anybody has ever done for me. I started work on Accursed Eternity. Outside the world of Black Library, I attended the funeral of my dad’s cousin – who was always more like an aunt to me – and we had to get a water pipe replaced as it was attempting gamely to flood our house.
April was a comparatively quiet month that saw me still writing Accursed Eternity, but I had also made a start on both Bloodraven and Valkia the Bloody. At the end of the month, we had a few days over in Ireland with Aaron and Katie, where we variously confused them to death with our bizarre conversations, visited the Ulster American Folk Park (which was spectacular) and had a generally Very Good Time Indeed. Cripes, was it really that long ago?
May - finished first draft of Accursed Eternity. Carried on with Bloodraven, Valkia the Bloody and a little thing called Reaper. Which I will mention again at some point in the upcoming days. Realised that The Gildar Rift would be going on pre-release at Games Day 2011, which was kind of nerve-wracking and exciting at the same time. Had a falling out with Sky TV over their attitude towards existing customers versus new customers… and won. Huzzah!
June - trip down to see the Nottingham Folks included a visit to the pictures to see X-Men: First Class… which I thoroughly enjoyed. I particularly liked the whole Erik-Charles relationship and still can’t believe how much sympathy I had for Erik by the end of the film. Plus, Michael Fassbender. YUMMY. ‘Fessed up that would not be coming back to LRP in 2011. At this moment in time, 2012 is looking pretty unlikely, too. I attended Alt.Fiction in Derby, which was a very informative and highly alcohol-centric event. I spent ages chatting to Chris Wooding, at around 3am or something… it was great. The workshops were also brilliant fun and Dan’s title, ‘Shooty Death Kill in Space 101′ was very grin-worthy. And I mused on the problems I faced due to people saying ‘Oh‘, in response to asking me what I was writing.
July - started with the trip to Ireland for Aaron and Katie’s wedding… and whilst the wedding itself was utterly gorgeous, the disaster that struck beforehand still makes me giggle inanely when I think of it. I first got put in touch with the podcast guys at the Overlords and have since become a show regular. These guys are brilliant and their podcasts are full of information, fun and Swanee whistles at inappropriate moments. I was busy writing Valkia the Bloody and also provided answers to the frequently-asked question ‘Why Aren’t You Missing LRP?’
August - I had two weeks off work. A very much needed two weeks off work. We wandered around places and spent a few days down in Kentfordshire admiring the changes to Casa Abnett. We visited Rochester Castle, which was stunning and we played a game of Who’s in the Bag which was possibly one of the funniest nights of my life to date. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Dan Abnett trying to give clues to ‘Chuck Berry’ by frantically shouting ‘a man throwing a Frenchman’s hat really hard!’ At the end of this break, we called in at BL Towers and I received the first Actual Copy of The Gildar Rift. I have no shame at all in saying that it brought tears to my eyes. It was genuinely one of the most emotional moments of my life. In an entirely good way.
September - didn’t slow up. Was writing, writing, writing, and also getting a chance to Speak Out With My Geek Out. And then there was Games Day 2011, which passed in a blur of hugs, signing books and meeting some incredible people. It feels like a lifetime ago now, though!
October – got to take a trip down to the GW Plaza store in Oxford Street to do another book signing alongside m’colleague Nick Kyme. It was on Dreadfleet release day and was an ENORMOUS amount of fun (apart from the Incredible Complaining Woman on the train back). Valkia the Bloody reached first draft and I got one of the best feedback comments ever from my editor. Small Son went to France for a week with the school and I THINK he had fun. It’s hard to tell with him at times. And I got this new PC which has been ultra-mega brilliant.
November – back to Nottingham for another book signing, and the chance to nab a copy of Deliverance Lost by Gav Thorpe. I loved it! I may have developed a crush on the Alpha Legion, though. Did another book signing in Durham (my local GW store) which was an absolutely brilliant day and I couldn’t believe the number of friends who turned up to support me. I know the best people. <3 But mostly… I wrote stuff. Although November was almost blessedly quiet after a year of never having a break!
December - so here we are in the last month of 2011. Project: Loophole has been given the go-ahead and is on today’s ‘to-do’ list. Right after I get the vacuum cleaner out. I will get the vacuum cleaner out. I’ve already procrastinated for long enough writing this year’s round-up. I don’t have Not So Small Anymore Son for Christmas Day as he is with his dad and this leaves me feeling very sad. But I get him back on Boxing Day and I have my week off work to share with him.
In summary, this year has been one of the busiest, most surreal and all-round wonderful years of my life. I’ve visited lovely places, met up with friends old and new, have been ‘properly published’ for the first time in my life… I am incredibly lucky and I appreciate it massively.
All that’s left is to wish all of you out there a very happy holiday season and I hope that 2012 brings you everything you want.
Happy Christmas!
Plan Ahe
Re: title of today’s blog. That always used to make me laugh. In fact, I had a badge with it on. I also had a badge with a smug looking dog and the caption ‘Don’t Eat Yellow Snow’ as well, so draw your own conclusions.
(Complete tangent: I chucked a few old CDs onto iTunes earlier, including a Best of Disney CD. Don’t judge me. But ‘The Best of Friends‘ from The Fox and the Hound just came on. Just hearing the opening bars makes me tear up. Damn that film. There is no film more capable of reducing me to incomprehensible weeping than that one. I own it on DVD. I’ve never been brave enough to sit and watch it since I bought it).
Anyway, planning ahead.
I’ve just started work on my next big project, known as Project: Loophole. At the moment, I’m entirely uncertain how much I can say about it. Probably more than I’m saying, but you know. Being cagey is fun. But it’s a longer term project, which means setting myself goals and targets. I enjoy doing that bit. I’ve cleaned off my whiteboard which was full of stuff I’d already finished and I’ve put down my upcoming targets. I’ve set up my new progress spreadsheet (because I really am that nerdy). I’ve even actually started the writing part of the project. I’m already complaining inside the cavernous confines of my own mind of course.
This is what it's always like for me at the start of a project. Honestly.
It’s a bit of a lie actually. Things haven’t yet gone horribly awry, but I’m not being as productive as I’d like to be. I’m going to blame Christmas. Even that’s difficult because this year, for what’s probably the first time ever, I’m actually prepared for Christmas. In fact, I finished the majority of my shopping at the beginning of December. This confuses and upsets my usual last minute panic self. I’ve changed, man. I’ve become organised. I’m a traitor to the rebellious youth I was. I even came in from work tonight and sorted out a pile of stuff that’s been sat there for probably as long as we’ve been in this house. Which is… uh… eight years this year? Something like that. Shameful, I know.
(Sha la la la la la don’t be scared, you’ve got the mood prepared go on and… kiss the girl).
Anyway, Loophole.
Every time I start something new, I think ‘shall I approach it in a different way than before’? This time I’m feeling less inclined to beat myself up over word count because I know that when it matters, I can deliver. I also need to avoid something I did with The Pact which was to edit as I went along. That style of writing really, really didn’t sit well with me. I much prefer to get the words nailed down onto the page and then tweak them around. Then my editor beast gets his paws on the finished product and so far, I’ve found the editing process extremely useful. I’d like to say that I get frustrated at the editing stage just so I can use this picture.
This is all true. Or a lie. But that might be a lie also.
I’m excited about Project: Loophole because it’s something a little bit different for me and gives me a chance to get pretty creative. It also allows me to use a few characters who have been sitting around in the brain closet crying out for attention. They’re going to get their moment in the sun. So that’s keeping my mind pretty occupied for now.
Feedback on The Gildar Rift continues to slip in and it’s all still good. It got a four-star review in issue 217 of SFX Magazine, which made me feel pretty proud. Age of Legend, a WHF anthology is also now out in the wild and my Valkia short story Bloodraven has met with an apparently good reception. Valkia the Bloody comes out in July next year and I’m really looking forward to people seeing that one, because I am seriously proud of how it came out.
One of the other things that’s been nice to see is the number of people who have arrived here at the blog searching for Accursed Eternity which is my 30k Space Marines Battles novella, and one of the Architect of Fate arc. It’s a nice thought that people have read TGR and are looking for more stuff. Accursed Eternity is currently available as an e-book download, but comes out in a physical, new-book-smell form in May 2012 as well.
(Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side).
Right, well that’s my blog update sorted. That wasn’t even in the plan for tonight. See? Planning ahead doesn’t always produce results.
Back to the grind, the slog, the coal face, etc., etc., etc…
Dear Mum (the 2011 edition)
Dear Mum
Well, it’s just gone midnight (or it will have done by the time I finish writing this) and it’s time for the annual update. Eleven years ago was the very last time I ever spoke to you in person. I remember the conversation perfectly. I remember a lot of things that you said to me in the time you were stil with us and I’m surprised how much of it actually sank in over the years.
So what did 2011 bring? I told you last year that I was in the middle of writing my first novel. Well, I’ve finished both that and a second and have written several more short stories. The writing has been amazing. The people who’ve come into my life through the writing are great and so incredibly encouraging. It seems to be going OK. I’m loving it and it’s always nice to get good feedback.
Still working in the same job; it’s not the greatest in the world, but it pays the bills. Mustn’t grumble and all that.
Jamie… ah, now there’s a thing. Can you believe he’ll be thirteen in February? He’s almost as tall as I am now, which is more than a little unnerving. He still comes out with the greatest comments and I still harbour deep suspicions than he’s been here before. He’s a good kid, though… people always comment on it when we’re out. A waitress stopped me on the way out of a restaurant to say as much and that was great. I reckon you’d be proud of him.
Dad’s here this weekend. It sort of seems right to get him to come up. I know he appreciates the company at this time of the year. Also, as much as I reckon you’d be proud of Jamie, dad seems confident in saying that you’d be proud of me for all that’s happened this year.
It’s been an incredible year one way or the other but the thing that’s lingered in the back of my mind is how much I wish you were here to hear about it. You always told me that if I put my mind to it I could write the novel I always wanted to. Well, you were right. Why aren’t you here to say ‘I told you so’? I still get annoyed about it, but hey. The old adage is very true. Time is a great healer. I still get tears in my eyes at times, but the sting isn’t so sharp. Not now. Quiet regrets, really and an entirely selfish sense of having been cheated of the pleasure of telling you all this news in person.
But… well. Here we are. It’s the way things are and I’m not exactly stupid enough to realise that there’s anything I can do about it. What I can do about it is carry on remembering you in my own way… through writing you these annual letters, through remembering you in little ways when I see a TV show or a film you loved.
You’re always with me, mum. I miss you and always will. And as I said to someone the other day, the one bright light in the eternal gloom of loss is that nothing was left unsaid. Not everyone has that luxury.
It’s definitely gone midnight now and I’ve stayed up to write this, because I wanted to. Now, though… I’m off to bed. Sometimes I have dreams about you and I treasure those. I don’t often remember my dreams when I wake up, but I always remember the ones you were in and I am grateful beyond words that I get to spend time – however fleeting and ethereal it may be – with you.
Love you, mum. Always.
Sarah
xxx
Advent
Before I get stuck into explaining the title… first of all, a very good review indeed over at Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review, which was followed up with an interview by said reviewer. The Gildar Rift is pretty much officially ‘out there’ now: I received a text from my dad last week that simply said ‘seen it in Waterstones‘. I presumed he meant my book. I think he was proud. Actually, so was I when I went into the Waterstones in Durham yesterday and there it was on the shelf.
Bless it.
Anyway, advent.
Not, as you might think, (given the time of year) a reference to advent calendars or the countdown to Christmas in general. Instead, it’s one of those words that always evokes great memories for me. ‘Advent’ was the command line on my dad’s ancient TRS-80 to run ‘Adventureland’, the text-based adventure game written by Scott Adams about a bajillion years ago.
>load “Advent”
I loved those games and would devour them. I would oust my dad from the computer (bear in mind I was probably seven years old or something at the time) and would work my way through them with an intensity bordering on insanity. Imagine the thrill of this:-
Forest
You’re in a forest.
Obvious exits: North, South, East, West, Up.
You can also see: trees
There was such undiluted charm to those text-based adventure games. And you had to map your own version of it. And you had to struggle desperately with your computer to get it to understand what you wanted it to do. LIGHT LAMP. UNLIGHT LAMP. You wouldn’t believe how damn long it took me to get the latter one.
Here’s an utter joy, then. You can play all the Scott Adams adventures via Java online now. I’ve had so much fun and STILL struggle on occasion to find the right phrasing!
Then, a few years later, along came Prestel. And with Prestel came Micronet. And with Micronet came Shades, the first MUG/MUD I ever played. There I was, playing a text-based adventure game all over again, but this time, there were ACTUAL PEOPLE. People to whom I could speak. People with whom I could fight, win, lose, steal treasure… have quiz nights on a Thursday, throw snowballs at over the Christmas period…
It was a constant race to get from Novice to Witch/Wizard (depending upon your chosen gender… this was also my first slow discovery that men-played-women-and-vice-versa-on-online-games) in as fast a time as possible. This was before the days of anything remotely resembling broadband. Most people connected to Shades on a 1200/75 baud modem. Then there were the REALLY IT-savvy folks who had Atari ST’s and a piece of custom software called Ripper, which allowed you to create macros which essentially played Shades for you. And they all connected at twice the speed of everyone else.
Everyone hated those poeple.
And then there were the opportunities to meet up with these folks in Real Life at Shades meets… These things frequently took place at a pub on the top end of the Tottenham Court Road – The Sol’s Arms. I have no idea if it’s still even there, but I bet it heaved a sigh of relief when Micronet folded. Most of those people are still my friends today.
>w, w, w, s, grab girl, turn, n, w, n, e, dr t
Guess what? Yep. You can still play Shades online, too. Some things just never die. Despite my best efforts.
So from the humble beginnings of Scott Adams and his text-based adventure games, I’ve played a lot of these things. The Hobbit on the Amstrad CPC-464 had, y’know, GRAPHICS. This was amazing to a pleb like me. Can you believe it? Yes. You can still play all these games online now, too!
(An aside… Dearly Beloved recently invested in ‘The Ultimate Sega Megadrive Collection’. For his PS3. Seriously. A few hundred quid’s worth of equipment to be nostalgic on? Mind, I bought Lemmings for the PC not so long ago).
I graduated from the text-based school of adventure into graphic RPGs with games like Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders. And then the Monkey Island series. And Sam & Max. And Grim Fandango. And all the other Lucasarts point-and-click wonders that will never, ever be beaten. Then… then, along came Myst. Which plain creeped me out with its ambient sound effects and the sense that ANY MOMENT NOW something was going to leap out of a bush and eat your face. I had many, many sleepless nights around that game and it wasn’t all because of staying up until stupid o’clock playing it.
So in time, it was almost inevitable that I would fall to the charms of World of Warcrack… craft. It’s been particularly fun for me because I enjoy the roleplaying element of it. It’s only a mediocre game to play in many ways… after all, you can only kill so many wolves in the woods (none of whom EVER appear to have nostrils, or whatever random body part you’ve agreed to find), but the RP element and the various Extra Things That Happen when you reach level 85 kind of make up for it. Kind of. My lingering problem with WoW is that my time is sort of limited really and so I ‘ve never actually learned the more intense element of the game. I hate going into random dungeons with Unknown People, because if you don’t respond to the barked ‘buff now noob’ command that is suddenly issued within 0.4 milliseconds, you’re kicked out of the dungeon.
But I’ve lapsed. I’ve not been on WoW for a couple of weeks. That’s because I’ve been fortunate enough to be beta-testing Star Wars: The Old Republic. And oh, I’ve been enjoying it. In terms of gameplay, it’s a lot like WoW. But for me, the best thing so far has been the random groups I’ve joined to do various flashpoints with. Without fail they’ve all been pleasant, fun, cooperative and a damn good laugh. And that makes things so much more enjoyable.
The quests are more engaging because the storylines are ongoing and pull you in. I think the fact that it’s voice acting is better than being able to skip through the text. There are so many quests in WoW where I’ve only ever gone quick precis, please, and skipped to the end, as it were. And… well, it’s VERY pretty. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed beta-testing it and now that the testing phase is over, genuinely feel bereft.
Also, lightsabers.
LIGHTSABERS, MAN.
Well worth a play in my opinion, but in the meantime, go and play some of those fiendish Scott Adams adventures. Remember, kids. This was once the pinnacle of technology.
Now where did I put my bus pass?
The ‘F’ Word
Which particular ‘F’ word?
Fanfiction.
Spurred on by a post that m’colleague Jonathan Green made earlier today – although it might be yesterday by the time I finish writing this post – (see here), I just wanted to put a few of my mad, fleeting thoughts on this matter down. Capture those little bits of thought and cram them all together on a page. Much better than being left to breed inside the confines of my incubator-like mind.
Jon posted in response to an article in the Guardian by Mathilda Gregory (see here) in which she points out that not all fanfiction is about OMG LOVE AND SEXYTIMES for people’s favourite fandoms. It’s not all about the Mary Sue or Gary Stu. It’s not all about the badly written, poorly spelled monstrosities that have earned fanfiction the bad name it has earned. Jon’s point – and indeed, question – was simply ‘what is the difference between fanfiction and tie-in fiction’. If you have thoughts on that particular debate, please post them on his blog. It’s a topic which I think is worthy of having conversation about. But I feel particularly strongly about the subject of snobbery when it comes to fanfiction and so I’m going to rant a bit about it.
Let me elaborate.
I don’t dispute that there is a lot of godawful dross out there in fanfiction land. But there are also a lot of excellent tales. Some short, some long. And to dismiss fanfiction is to do it something of a disservice, I think. It appears that I am in direct opposition to the viewpoint of the illustrious Mr. George R. R. Martin, who states in a post here:-
“I also think that doing fan fiction is bad training for any aspiring writer. With the world and the background all provided, the writer does not learn to create these things for himself. Fan fiction is to fiction as paint-by-numbers kits are to painting.”
(‘Doing’ fan fiction?)
I think, with the greatest respect, that Mr. Martin is way out of touch here. Writing fanfiction is the only chance many people will ever have to write about people or places they have enjoyed reading about. Writing fanfiction is the only chance many people will have of securing themselves an audience of people who share their enthusiasm. Writing fanfiction is the only chance many people will have of finding an avenue of creativity. How can ‘doing fanfiction’, which gives a lot of pleasure to writer and reader alike be something wrong?
And as for it being a poor training ground… I totally agree with the ‘doesn’t teach an aspiring writer about how to develop their own world’ bit, but it can teach an aspiring writer how to write. It can teach them how to plot, how to develop a story, how to employ characterisation, how to maintain a ‘feel’ to a piece.
I make no secret of the fact that I am a big supporter of fanfiction and in particular, fanfiction communities that help and nurture people’s burgeoning talents. The Black Library Bolthole was originally created with this sense of community very much in mind. Many of the people who write W40K and WHF fiction over there are extremely good at what they do. They are also extremely good at supporting each other – and at the end of the day, all writers want to hear is ‘hey, I enjoyed your story. It was really good.’
The Sugarquill (a Harry Potter community) was also exceptionally good at this in its day. The team used to set challenges and themes which could extract the best out of people.
And when it comes down to it, just because we (as individuals) can look at a piece of fanfiction and sneer condescendingly at its poor grammar, its appalling spelling, its flimsy story line and its almost painfully Mary Sue-esque Sparklypoo house main character, who is a half-elf, orphaned Muggle born with eyes that vary in colour or shade depending on their mood and who will be able to turn the hardest of hearts… someone somewhere was exceptionally proud of themselves for writing a story that they made up.
The state of literacy in this country is frequently touted as being dreadful. If a child is engaged by a world and can concentrate long enough to write a story about the characters who live within its boundaries, shouldn’t this be considered a good thing? The grammar/spelling etc… they are things that can come with time. But surely we should be encouraging people of the world to express their creativity in whichever way they see fit? This should carry through to adulthood, when without lessons, people stop writing creatively.
OK, there are the horrors of slashfic, which I really don’t understand at all… but that’s again my personal choice. I don’t go looking for such things.
Parodies, the other side of fanfiction… well, these can be hit and miss. Sometimes, someone hits the nail right on the head and a good parody is sometimes even more true to form and affectionate than a beautifully written vignette by someone else.
Onwards, Upwards, Occasionally Sideways
This has been a pretty hectic couple of weeks. With a member of staff down at work, the day job became almost insane. I don’t begrudge my colleague her time off at all. But it does mean that life gets insanely busy. But you know, them’s the breaks. It does mean that my flexi-time remains at stupidly high levels, thus giving me the chance to take time off outside of my annual leave quota. So I took Friday off. I took Friday off so I could sort out Project: Bedfellows.
I have to say that this has been a complicated project for me; perhaps the first one that I’ve had any sort of ‘issue’ with. In my usual way, I’ve been trying to figure out what the problem has been and I’ve sort of narrowed it down to this fact.
Writing a short story on the back of writing two novels effectively back-to-back (with a break for a 30k novella) is a bit mental. Getting my head out of the ZOMGOOSE! EPIC! scale and back into short story land has been difficult. I keep wanting to tell more story than I need to. It’s damn good though, because it’s forced me to self-discipline the writing beast. I’ve also done the one thing with this story that I know I should never do… edit as I’m going along.
Everyone ultimately finds their own favoured way of working. For me, it’s get the story down and worry about the editing afterwards. This time, I’ve tried my hand at doing it the other way around. I won’t be doing that again. FIVE TIMES I’ve scrapped and re-started this story. I’m pretty pleased with where it is now, but that’s been quite stressful for me. Again, I think it’s because of the novel-writing mindset. I thought that switching from short story to novel would be the tough transition, but for me at least, it turns out it’s the other way around. Anyhoo, Project: Bedfellows should be finished in the next day or two. Then I can start giving thought to Project: Loophole.
So one way or the other, the last couple of weeks have been super-stressful. But I’ve had a really nice weekend which started with that Friday off work. Yesterday, myself, Dearly Beloved and Not So Small Anymore Son were down at Warhammer World. They nabbed a table and indulged in some ork-on-guard-action and I joined m’colleague Gav Thorpe in signing shenanigans. Gav was signing copies of the newest Horus Heresy novel, Deliverance Lost which I’ve been really looking forward to. I got home last night and read it cover to cover in about four hours. It’s not very often that I get a chance to do that with a book, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I enjoyed the guessing, I enjoyed the emotional rollercoaster that Poor Old Corax (and his single tear of emo man pain) goes through.
It also contains the Alpha Legion and well… I just love those sneaky little bastards, so all in all it was always going to be a winner for me. Totally enjoyable.
Check out Corax's emo MySpace shot.
It was a fun signing event. I enjoy these things, because I’m generally pretty affable and think that it’s nice to meet people. It’s all a bit crazy and overwhelming at times; there were at least three separate occasions yesterday when I felt slightly dazed by the whole thing and more than a little humbled by the people who made incredibly encouraging comments. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who asked questions about Valkia the Bloody, too – seems that she’s already got herself a lot of interest. She turns up in a short story in Age of Legend as well… doing what she does best. You know, the killing people for fun and profit thing.
Best of all was the chance to actually have a proper author-y chat with Gav. We’ve only met on a handful of occasions before and never seem to get the chance to just sit and Talk Writing. We did that yesterday and it was all pretty useful stuff. We also discussed the relative evilness of rodents and the fact that all chinchillas look like they are just waiting for the first opportunity to take over the universe.
I am plotting your downfall, pleb.
Woke up early this morning and took advantage of the fact to catch up on last night’s Strictly Come Dancing. OK, I know. But I can’t help it. I just enjoy it. Then I popped to the shop and bought bread, because I needed my toast fix… and now I have blogged and can no longer put off Project: Bedfellows…
There may be a signed-copy-of-The Gildar Rift competition later this week, once I think up something suitably evil.
And I can’t end this without sharing a link to the artwork for James Swallow‘s forthcoming Horus Heresy book, Fear to Tread. Because it features Sanguinius. And a Bloodthirster. Fighting. In the air.
