Writing and working for a future beyond sorrow.

Poetic title, I know. But it's the kind of thing I need to write after the events of the American election. I won't dignify the current president elect by mentioning their name (an expletive is the closest I want to get at the moment of writing). Suffice to say, they should never have gotten this far. It appears the world is going through terrible times in more ways than one. I couldn't do anything about it since I live in the UK, but seeing it happen to a country where our family has friends, where my very liberal publisher is based, makes me feel very anxious and depressed. We're going to see four more years of that certifiable person's actions in office, self-serving policies that make everyone suffer.

One might ask: What's the point of writing? But let's remember, people write things because they feel motivated to do so. I'm fortunate as the UK is--relatively speaking--all right. Not perfect, not by a long way, but still okay. There are loads of books that were the better for the writing, even when the country they came from had a vested interest in not letting such books be published. All Quiet on the Western Front released in 1929, its sequel The Road Back in 1931, both when Nazism was beginning to gain ground in Germany. Many anti-nationalist and anti-oligarch pieces of media have seen success in countries which have those institutions engrained within them, like Japan and even China. And when McCarthyism and the so-called "Lavender Scare" were gripping America, fiction was created that pushed back against that reality.

Fiction is a means to vent frustration, but it is also a means for people to see something that could be made into a reality. There are reasons why some books helped galvanise popular movements against something that had previously not seen a consistent and conscious move against it. Film makers broke the Hayes Code, writers can topple and ridicule regimes. It's not going to be easy for anyone. For the moment, a power has appeared in America that taps into the country's worst aspects. Elitist culture, ingrained sexism and xenophobia, unwillingness to change in any meaningful or radical way, a political system just as likely to be a rotting snake eating its own tail as a dragon sailing over the world.

There are possible (perhaps foolish) silver linings. Firstly, this is the second term, so the incoming president legally can't run a second time unless there's some kind of sacrilegious change to the law and constitution. Secondly, it is possible members of the incoming incumbent party will actually restrain the more idiotic decisions (not very probable, but one can hope). Thirdly, most horrifyingly, the new incumbent has a vested interest in not provoking too major a conflict with the other two oligarch-driven world powers currently in the world. Fourthly, cultures and attitudes surrounding sexuality and gender once firmly pushed to the sidelines have become accepted enough to the mainstream that there should be some level of pushback to attempts at censorship (indeed some of the most radical pieces have come out in the most conservative times). Finally, perhaps most hopefully, America managed to survive last time. And of course, it could all go to the deepest and coldest bowls of hell in a hand basket.

I won't say don't rage. You should rage, though not in a way that gets you easily demonised and shut up. There are dark years ahead, but for the sake of people I know in America, I will continue working towards my degree. I will continue writing about worlds where it's completely okay to be LGBTQIA+, to be non-White, to be any gender or gender-nonconforming, to be disabled, to be different in some way, shape, or form. Being different isn't a crime. We need to remember that for the next four years, spread the word for the next four years, try not to trap ourselves in any kind of echo chamber for the next four years. And maybe, during and even at the end of those four years, things can be changed for the better.

Image copyright: Square Enix. Source: SaGa Emerald Beyond

Meet...wait, who are you supposed to be again?

 This blog post has been brought to you by...me! My next book, Lost Station Circe, is releasing in July. This very month (sorry I've still got no date beyond that, my publisher is very busy). The first one, Starborn Vendetta, is available now from anywhere that sells books.

After an earlier post on ensemble casts, a comment from fellow author Stephen Cox got me thinking about a problem with ensemble casts I didn't even think of when I created that post. Emblematic, considering how many points there are about...large casts. Pardon me for mentioning the tainted name of Harry Potter, but it is an example that can help demonstrate something quickly. We get introduced to A LOT of characters in its first book alone, ten or twenty beyond what might be called the core cast. Just imagine if over half of them had never been developed further, which is almost what happens. It suffers somewhat from that problem where characters are just names, except when the story suddenly needs them not to be. Here begins what might be the ensemble cast's crippling blow: too many named characters in the kitchen.

Not every grand arcing saga needs a huge cast of characters, and not all large casts are equal, especially when it comes to an ensemble where each of them technically is supposed to have enough screen time to develop as their own people. There are plenty of examples I've either seen for myself (Firefly, Blast of Tempest) or heard about (Leverage) that succeed in developing an ensemble. But what about those that just...fumble it? Not to take too easy a potshot, but while it focuses largely on its two leads, Avatar seems technically to be attempting an ensemble between its human and alien factions. It's certainly got the runtime for an ensemble film. But outside...five characters, the other ten or so are very underdeveloped. I know there are deeper core problems with the story of Avatar, but this is one that could have made the story more digestible and enjoyable. And from what I've heard, the sequels aren't fixing the problem. Contrast it with a similar us-versus-them film Tora! Tora! Tora!, which with a noticeably shorter runtime manages to tell a compelling and heartbreaking two-sided narrative around the entry of Japan into World War II with the bombing of Pearl Harbour.

Video games are easier to forgive in this regard, as you play as one person in a medium still holding a stigma of 'story not important', so underdevelopment is less of an issue. But I shall compare two of my favourite games with ensemble casts, many of which get roughly equal amounts of screen time outside the main cast, and may come across as shallow if the player doesn't follow their optional content. Nier: Automata has one of my favourite casts, especially when you go through their side quests, but some remain underdeveloped, specifically the Commander and Anemone. They are introduced as key players, but we get little to nothing in terms of solid story and development compared to the Operators, Pascal, or Adam and Eve. And they play just as big a role in the story as the Operators, Pascal, or Adam and Eve. Meanwhile Mass Effect has an entire trilogy's worth of space to deal with its characters, and many characters move onto different things after the game where they are introduced (assuming they survive, ala Urdnot Wrex). But it suffers from a "tell, don't show" approach to its characters and world building that can REALLY drag things down, and its DLC characters show clear signs of having less attention given to them through resource issues.

I didn't want to use a bad example above, but contrast two good ones. Ensembles are difficult to get right, and it's very easy for characters to fall by the wayside. Either through forgetfulness, or necessity. Sometimes casts grow so large (insert any long-running shonen anime here) that it becomes borderline impossible to keep track of everything. You can come back and think "Wait, what, who were you again?" Good writing can compensate for that, but not always.

Now for the point where I talk about my book Lost Station Circe, where I employ an ensemble cast. And I ran into a problem straight away. Because of how the story was going, my initial core cast of seven with roughly equal screentime exploded into one of somewhere above twelve, which was stretching my ability to create a compelling story for them. I had to make some tough choices, and some that initially had a longer and more defined role needed to be scaled back to allow for fuller focus on others. It's still not perfect (IMO perfection is an unobtainable abstract so looking for it is a fool's errand), but it was either that, or the story was going to get hopelessly confusing and some of the parts I felt were essential to the story would need to be cut for time.

So...this is a thing. Following something up based on someone else's comment. Apologies if it's a little odd, unusual, not quite as polished as it might be but it's more about writing what I feel than some of my other blog posts. I also hope it's enjoyable, and that it makes you think about how a cast is written. Not ensemble fits into a story, but then not every story needs an ensemble. If you try to squeeze an ensemble where it doesn't fit, you get...well, great difficulty remembering who the heck this or that character is supposed to be. No matter how engaging the writing, it was very difficult remembering why I should be caring about Parvati Patel.

Meet the Ensemble

Characters. They are the backbone of any story. Whether Joyce’s Ulysses, or the epics of Tolkien and Martin, or the most realist and modernist of novels that make you want to curl up and think about how we live in a society, it’s borderline impossible to write a story without at least one character. It’s relatively easy for many to write about the singular first-person narrator’s path through life, or a love story with two or three people, or some conflict of one versus either another one or a group of many. The real challenge, and perhaps the most rewarding style for readers and writers alike, is the ensemble cast.

Art from 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

What do people, be they authors or readers, mean when they talk about an “ensemble cast”? Ensemble as a term can apply to groups of people (musical ensemble), or groups of objects such as buildings (an industrial ensemble). In fiction, it tends to refer to a group of characters that gets roughly the same amount of focus each across a story. The frequency of the ensemble depends on the medium. In film, where focusing on one character is easier, ensembles tend to be the subject of grand scope titles, or smaller independent productions. Ernest Mathijs in his essay ‘Referential acting and the ensemble cast’ argues that ensembles are an important tool for eliciting emotion in film, and applies the term both the groups of protagonists, or monster swarms such as zombies and vampires.

In television, the ensemble is almost required in many contexts, particularly sitcoms. Think of Friends or Cheers, where even with a debatable “main” character or couple, there was a large cast of primary characters who got roughly equal screentime. Video games naturally skew away from ensembles as their design places narrative focus on one character, the playable lead. Only in a few, like the Mass Effect series, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim or Final Fantasy XIII, do we get roughly equal focus on a large cast. And even these examples tend to have representative characters: Mass Effect may be an ensemble, but Shepherd’s the star attraction.

For ensemble casts, books are paradoxically easier and harder. Easier because there is less creative and functional restriction than there are for film, television and video games. The imagination is limitless, and so are the number of characters one can put into a story. But that strength is also a weakness. The imagination is limitless, but writing skill isn’t even in the best writers. Creating one, two or three characters and a number of smaller side characters is easier than giving each character the time they deserve, especially if you’re doing it in a single book. For instance, the Bartimaeus trilogy thrives on the development of a small core cast.

This contrasting ease and difficulty means that, if the writer can’t juggle so many different characters, there are going to be those who fall by the wayside. Or, worse still, if for some reason the cast isn’t downsized, the whole comes across as underwritten. There are exceptions and workarounds. A series following the same characters, as in films and especially television and video games, can afford to spread itself out. Sometimes, unusually, shallow characters or a lack of development and explanation can be a stylistic choice. There’s also the gnarly question of whether the antagonist can count as part of an ensemble.

There is also a natural preference to go for the trials of a single character. Juliet McKenna’s Green Man series is all about one man’s urban magical adventures, and it works as that. People can have limited storage space in stories for names and events, my sister being one of them, and keeping track of more than three to five characters can be tricky to say the least. I know people who have trouble keeping track of the characters of Dune and Foundation and other great series with more than one lead character. Including me TBH.

So, like the best essays, I can’t just leave it without some opinions. Can you write good ensembles? Yes, take a stab at writing a large cast with depth without letting too many of them drop, and don’t be afraid if that’s not the way you go naturally. Must you? I’d question there being a dictate to write in a way you’re not comfortable with, as it always produces subpar work. Can villains be part of an ensemble? Maybe, but they’re a bit of a wildcard.

And as a coda, the thing which drew me to this topic in the first place. It was during the first stage edits of my upcoming book Lost Station Circe. I have to be a bit vague with some of this, because—to quote our lady of non-linearity River Song—“spoilers”.

The story started with a small group of characters, two or three, as I’d done with my debut Starborn Vendetta. But as I looked through the cast during the writing and editing process, a tight-knit seven person crew aboard the rundown cargo ship Benbow, my views began to shift. I saw them less as side characters, and more as characters in their own right. I pushed this further in the edits, and by the time it was going through line edits towards release, I had a cast of seven individual characters that, I hoped, were developed and believable.

If you reached this point, thank you for reading. And I hope you either enjoy some of the stories I mentioned, or encourage you to seek them out.

An early inspiration - Tomb Raider: Legend

 

Back in 2006, before I had even an inkling of what I might do for a career, I played a game that's recently seen an uptick in popularity with its release on the PlayStation Plus service. But for me, Tomb Raider: Legend is more than simple a game. More than any book or television show or great piece of movie history, it's a piece of media that helped inspire me to become a writer.

I first encountered Tomb Raider through its 2001 movie, which is okay if a little schlocky. I got Legend soon after its release, and after some frustration with its QTEs, I fell in love. Not simply with its gameplay, but with the dialogue, the story, and with Lara herself. She was unlike any character I'd ever experienced before. She was classy and confident, caring yet hard-edged, acrobatic and voluptuous without feeling particularly exploitative. Some of my favourite parts were the banter she had with her research team back at her mansion in Britain. There was some slightly forced family drama in there, but it was never on a distracting level, and Keeley Hawes's performance sold it and the rest of the journey Lara took across the world.

A chunk of the lines from this game live in my head. "I do my best thinking jumping off cliffs.", "Alistair, meet Tiwanaku. She's a lovely pre-Incan civilisation, currently in ruins.", "It's authentic enough for its age, but it's age isn't entirely authentic.", "Anyone between me and that stone dies.", "Basic etiquette: never arrive at a party empty-handed.", "Death by irony is always painful. Amateurs.", "Grand entrances are always impractical. It's what makes them grand.", "There's no distinction between stupid and charming with you, is there?", "All those satellites and computers just to perfect the science of talking to one's self.", and (in response to a villain asking if she's deaf) "I don't know, let's see. Try begging for your life like you did the last time we spoke."

What I picked out above are just me cherry-picking lines that work well in isolation. There are longer exchanges that are generally reinforce this image of a woman with attitude, and it's all done with nary a curse word. I can remember actively seeking to trigger optional in-level dialogue just to tear the two assistants chip in about something or argue over some of the scenery. Or Lara's propensity for climbing to extreme heights or going along unstable platforms while thinking nothing of it.

I remember wanting to create a character like Lara for myself. I'd always leaned towards creating stories, but this was a true catalyst. Within the next four years, I was scribbling stuff down in earnest, writing on a hand-me-down computer in the old Notepad format, then OpenOffice. Now I'm a published author using Microsoft Word to create stories and characters some might imagine puts Legend to shame. But I disagree. Nothing can shame Legend. It's a piece of history and art that's worthy of remembrance. There are reasons outside its story and characters, but those are the big ones.

For me, forever more, Lara Croft will remain this Lara Croft. Not the busty slight sociopath of the early titles. Not the rather whiny origin character of the second later reboot. But this one, a confident and sassy aristocrat who kicked ass, looked after her friends, and was able to be profound and quippy when exploring some ancient temple behind a waterfall in the depths of tropical Africa.

Plan: 30 Days of Pride

Hi. So, in my attempt to do something that is close to my heart and identity, I've decided on doing this. During Pride Month this June, I intend--as someone who fully realised their bisexuality within the last year--to do one post a day on my socials highlighting an author/creative that falls on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. One per day, for thirty days, using the hashtag #30DaysOfPride. Now, this isn't a small task, and it's also open to being royally messed up if I just set about it randomly, so I'm setting up a few ground rules.

Rule 1: The creatives in question need to be confirmed either through their own words/actions, or personal anecdotes, to be on the rainbow spectrum. That means some figures with question marks over their head, such as T. H. White, will not be counted. There may be some compelling evidence surrounding these people, but there's no confirmation about it and it's still a debated topic. That also rules out Shakespeare, since we really can't be sure about him either. See this video from J. Draper on that subject, which I heartily agree with. It similarly rules out straight creators who wrote LGBTQI+ characters. I may well miss some creatives that could have been better included on the list, and if so I apologise.

Rule 2: I'm going to try and provide a mixture of authors/creatives from across time periods. It would be surprisingly easy to go for a lot of classic and mostly now-dead creatives such as Noel Coward, but that would be too easy. Also it would be doing a disservice to multiple current authors. I also hope to get a descent amount of BIPOC creators into it, so it can be shown it's not just whites who fall along the spectrum.

Rule 3: They must have created some kind of original story in a form that is a narrative with words. This can be a graphic novel, a book or short stories, plays, or a video game. It doesn't matter the genre, but it must be a written narrative. There are a number of famous LGBTQIA+ artists, actors, singers, and similar. But this quest is for writers, the ones who can move with words. This isn't to devalue these others' work, but only to highlight creatives of narrative-based fiction. This also partly rules out non-fiction.

At the end of the 30 days, which is a Sunday and thus my usual blog posting time, I'll be bringing together all the creatives mentioned, and including a section of honourable mentions. The honourable mentions are to help incorporate some which I really wanted to include, but don't quite fit in with what I want to attempt with this. I don't know whether this will work out, but I really want it to be...something. An attempt by me to highlight a group that for a very long time has needed to work either in secret or under a veil of obscurity. And now they--we--are coming into the light.

Here's to Pride Month.

On Lost Stories

In April of this year, a story will become lost forever after ending. Originally releasing in 2021, Nier Reincarnation was created for mobiles, which in the gaming scene are notorious for leaving little to nothing behind them. This got me thinking about lost stories. Not just "lost media" in the modern sense of mobile games going offline and programs being removed or edited on streaming services without a physical equivalent to compare it to, or film print originals being altered (looking at you, Star Wars Original Trilogy). I have encountered some elements of this, pieces of the history of narrative that are either in danger of being lost, or have been lost.

The most obvious examples, and the ones with no recourse for recovery, are the plays and poetry of Grecians and Romans from antiquity. The lost tragic plays of Euripides, the vast number of comic plays that have been lost apart from the dozen or so surviving from Aristophanes, the Roman historical accounts and poetry that wasn't preserved for whatever reason, and most prominently the lyric poetic writings of Sappho and her contemporaries. In Sappho's case, the loss is particularly painful and tantalising as we have some fragments from her work. Despite her being highly regarded in her day and in the immediate aftermath in Classical times we have...drum roll please...a whole four debatably complete poems, and somewhere around six fragments. But oh my, those pieces are so evocative.

Those are the biggies, the ones that are the most obvious examples of lost stories. They were lost due to the passage of time, the archaic style of writing, and the already shaky ability for historical manuscripts to be preserved. It's sad, but sadly unavoidable, and not without hope. Many of the Sappho we do have was rediscovered through recent archaeological and scholarly work. Originally it was only one or two bits that we had. But there are cases where the reason for loss is...less misty and nostalgic. During the early television days, video tape was expensive and so television networks and stations had a policy of reusing video tape. Or they were broadcast live, so no recording happened in-house. Many surviving programs we have exist because of copies onto 16mm film. Many people will point to Doctor Who, but there we actually have the entire run intact as audio recordings, not something that can be said for most of the Paul Temple TV series, a lot of early Avengers, the first Quatermass serial, the original A for Andromeda, and so many others. All we have are tantalising glimpses through stills, clips, script fragments.

These were, for a long time, the most painful, but also quite understandable. There wasn't a strict policy or atmosphere of preservation for future generations. This was semi-disposable material, very understandable. But there is another type of lost media that's more insidious, and I think should be treated with the utmost caution. Following the scandals surrounding Savile and Harris, programs featuring or referencing them went through a session with a pair of scissors. That didn't just mean programs hosted by them were culled (completely understandable), but spoofs of them were also removed. I completely understand this approach, as what those men and others like them did is unforgivable. And then some pieces of media have been removed/disappeared because of offensive stereotypes. Again, understandable. But if you just remove them without leaving a suitably signposted way of finding them again for curiosity or serious research, where are you? You enter the realm of historical revisionism, which...you know...is what Stalin was doing. Being cautious and considerate is commendable, but clumsy damage control which harms media preservation and sets a precedent of sweeping away the unhelpful and unhealthy as 'it didn't happen' is...wrong.

Now we come to a very modern type of "lost story". Those who could release it have it in good quality, they have the means of releasing it...but they don't, for whatever reason. This is particularly noticeable with children's television like The Basil Brush Show, The Magician's House, The Worst Witch, and others. They might receive small releases, or be rebroadcast, but they seldom get a release in any form that allows preservation. Documentaries are also beset by this issue, but the one that stands out is the series that may have been serviceable, but doesn't get any kind of later attention because it didn't really take off. One I caught by chance just on the cusp of its age demographic was Galidor. Basically designed as a tie-in with Lego's action figure line of the same name, it had an interesting sci-fi premise, and did what it could on a smallish budget with a goal of using a combination of live actors, puppetry and CGI--not a common combination at the time it was made in the early 2000s. But both series and toy line flopped, and outside a repeat in 2004 which I happened to catch, and a cancelled game that got released through Lego Game bundles, it's only accessible through legally grey online recordings. Is it a series worth preserving? Maybe, maybe not, it's not the best thing around. But it's a unique concept, and you'd be surprised how many notable directors and writers cut their teeth on it.

I feel torn about this concept of stories, whether they be books or films or shows or games, being lost or altered. It feels, particularly when the change comes from a modern moral mandate, like a slap in the face. "You're too delicate to have this, so we're taking it away, neh-neh!" It makes cases where these elements are kept with suitable warnings more noticeable, and in many ways laudable. They release the media as is, but they still acknowledge elements that would offend or upset. But when it's a case of Sappho's poetry lost to the ages, a mobile game vanishing, physical media degrading with no digital equivalent, then it's sad. All the sadder when the only means of actively preserving them treads into a legal grey area and can have publishers and distributors coming down with the ban hammer and leaving their audience with literally nothing.

If this was rambling, I don't apologise. This is a topic that can't be covered easily in a single post. Lost media, lost stories, are something that's been with us for millennia. And when they happen in the present day, it can be anything from sad to unsettling. Because whatever people say, those are still stories. And if we're kept from experiencing them and learning from them and more specifically what to avoid in them with suitable context, then how can we learn at all?

Image credit: Nier Reincarnation Season 3 - The People and the World key art - alterations done by me to illustrate the article's theme.

Introducing Author Talks: Season 2

Hi. Well, this is written in a bit of a rush, but it's an update for everyone. In my attempt to have something other than text to help show that I and my work exist, I've been creating a to-date solo podcast called 'Author Talks'. What became the first season happened over last year, and I've started the second this year. All it consists of so far is an introductory thing, and the first episode dedicated to a short story by H.G. Wells, 'In The Abyss'. I think this is a very good if rather wordy story with a fascinating twists. I'll include the YouTube link below. If you enjoy it, maybe check out the previous episodes, and the reading I did from my novel Starborn Vendetta, which is also available on my YouTube channel among other things. Enjoy!

Updates, February 2024 edition

It appears to be the vogue at the moment to offer updates on work, life, the universe, and mostly everything else. I've been a little slow with the blog recently, due to factors that will be discussed below. But hopefully things will start to change around slowly.

First, personal stuff. I'm within a few weeks/months of moving into new accommodation, which will mean disruptions to my life and work patterns. I'll be mitigating as much as possible, but there'll still be an awkward phase of making do, which I've never been good at. The current accommodation has served me well, but it's really not holding up well. This new one will be newer, and more suited to my current needs and wants as a creator and human. Also, I've been beginning what is the first module of an Open University degree, which will help me in my future career both with my writing and with other jobs.

On a work front, things have been bouncing between being stuck in a rut, and going great guns. The damage to my external hard drive where my work was stored--after forgetting to do backups in six months--has resolved into a situation where I've got everything back, plus a new external hard drive thrown in. OnTrack managed to get that all sorted out for a reasonable price given that I sent them a small and delicate device. In better news, the first round of edits for the second part of my Cluster Cycle (sample of the first one out now right here) have come in, been seen to, and sent back to my publisher. And looking through that book again gave me an odd feeling of maturity. I was able to see where my plotting and explanation had faltered, where my grammar hadn't been up to snuff, and put those to rights where sensible and possible. One project that looked promising has sadly folded for the moment as it wasn't panning out, while another is looking more promising and more...me.

The most difficult thing has been trying to works and keep my self-balance during a period where the world is going through another phase of turbulence that isn't just a localized issue, but spreading into national and international environments. We are also entering a time of new technological advances which are bringing new challenges and threats which haven't been addressed legally as yet. The world is uncertain, more than occasionally shitty, worse than Heinlein or Kojima could have envisioned it in a way. But there are still reasons to say 'this won't turn grimdark'. I just need to remember them.

Here's to a new home, a new book, a new year, a new period of education, and hopefully peace somewhere in this crazy world so we can take a breath and reflect. Stay hopeful.

Shada, or potentially SHady recycling of deAD And old projects

 What a contrived title. But hear me out.

Any fan of Doctor Who has at least heard of Douglas Adams's six-party Season 17 finale Shada. Due to industrial action at the BBC, the serial never finished production, and attempts have been made in the 1990s (narrated stringing together), 2003 (radio remake) and 2018 (part-animated remake) to bring the story back in non-text form. But Adams, who disliked the story anyway, found ways of recycling elements of his Doctor Who tenure in his own work. His original finale was reworked into Life, The Universe, and Everything, while a character from Shada was put into his first Dirk Gently novel with enough separation that he wasn't infringing copyright.

Hearing the saga of Shada, and how Adams recycled elements of his unrealized work in later projects, made me think about something of how I approach writing. While it's hard to 'take the L' as the phrase goes, sometimes you have to admit a project can't be realised. It won't work narratively, it's not what you want to do, you hit an insurmountable story issue that can't be fixed without breaking the in-game world beyond repair or rewriting from the top down. It may just be an idea that didn't get beyond the concept stage.

I realise that, in writing, some things inevitably get left at the wayside. It's just part of the process. Recycling other writing isn't just the domain of AI generation, but part of the creative process so long as you're recycling your own. There have been times when I've just had to drop an entire series because it wasn't working for whatever reason, however much that hurts the ego. If it's not working, or you no longer feel for it, why go on banging your head against a brick wall?

There are graduations of abandoned or not-working ideas. It can be something that only gets as far as jotting down a rough premise or a plan, which you leave aside and end up forgetting about. It can be the first paragraphs, or even the first chapters if it's long form, of a story that peters out for whatever reasons. In the worst case, it can be a series you wanted to carry through and complete, but it ended up just not going further than one and a little bit books. I'm not counting the author's death into this example, but a living author just not having the will to finish this work for whatever reason. Quality reasons, market trends, it just not sitting right, anything can trip up even what someone may think will be the defining magnum opus of their existence.

My Cluster Cycle series was, in part, a rapid scrabbling together of multiple abandoned story ideas with the overall concept of sci-fi tales based on old stories. How's that working? Don't know yet, the first one's only just released from a smallish American publisher. And it's early days. Another series I'm writing for them, an adventure series, had a big hiccup where I needed to just abandon a book completely as it was straying outside my own and my accessible knowledge base. I recycled some chapters of it in the penultimate book, so the research and some of the writing came in useful after all, but otherwise that story's lost to time. And I never really liked it anyway.

I'm sure there's plenty of other stories of authors who had to drop projects, or never really liked them and recycled any salvageable bits into their other projects. It's likely a more common story than many might want to admit. Authors, and I know this for a fact, have ten times more story ideas than they can normally put to electronic or physical paper in one lifetime. And sometimes they try putting those ideas to paper, and think 'This wouldn't work in a million years' and leave it in their notebooks to pick up later.

That's not a bad thing. Just because you can't realise one idea doesn't mean you can't realise them all. It just means that idea didn't gel. Sometimes, you need a few years, or a new premise, and something from that other project can be brought back into being.

Oh, and yes I've experienced Shada. I do like classic Doctor Who, and I was curious. Want my opinion? It's okay, I guess. I like the audio version best.

My favourite YouTube channels

This is an odd post, I suppose. Shouldn't I be promoting my new book left, right and centre? Well, yes technically, but I'm determined not to be that really pushy author. Plus I've been properly busy with other things. Instead, I've decided to give my readers a taste of the YouTube channels I've come to really enjoy. YouTube is both a source of entertainment, maybe something I'll use in the future, and a fascinating place to find new stuff. Here in begins a selected list of channels that I enjoy for one reason or another.

NOTE: For information videos, there is a strong temptation to take them with pinches of salt and cross-check. The channels I've mentioned below check out as very sound when I've done source cross-referencing. Also, I have stuff being uploaded on my own YouTube channel, so enjoy.

Proper Bird/Jinzee: A woman who got her start summarizing lore from The Witcher franchise, but has branched out into other areas. A channel with a criminally-low level of views and subscriptions, she's created really entertaining retrospective and analysis videos. Her side channel "Jinzee" covers her game twitch compilations, which are entertaining to say the least.

J Draper: A newer find, a London-based historian who covers...a lot of stuff. The two videos that caught my attention was her look at Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and how they influenced modern language through their preservation, and two videos on Shakespeare, one discussing his potential sexuality and one about how his plays were produced in their day. It is definitely something to enjoy.

Bernadette Banner: A dress historian who specialises in original practise reconstruction, Bernadette Banner has been going for some little time, and I found her in 2021 through her early analysis of costumes in period movies. Some of my favourites from her include her hair and beauty product experiments, her creation of a Worth-style 1890s gown, her illustrated corrections of terrible Halloween costumes and book covers, and some other random stuff.

Caitlin Doughty: Formerly known under the title "Ask a Mortician", Caitlin Doughty is a real-life mortician, green death advocate, and co-founder of the Order of the Good Death, and organization promoting green burial options and death awareness. Her video format has shifted over the years from answering direct death questions, to long-form videos on death-related subjects from disastrous events to personal stories. This isn't clickbait sensationalism, this is a real and personal look into death. Also has some truly incredible stories for authors such as myself to use with due care and respect for their origins. (Also fun fact, the WordPress encyclopedia doesn't have 'mortician' in its lexicon.)

Overly Sarcastic Productions: A find from 2018/2019, this channel is run by two friends, 'Red' and 'Blue', who respectively do mythology/folklore/story-based videos, and history videos. Their work is relatively sound, though sometimes they fall into common traps (JEEZ, WHY CAN'T ANYONE GET ANNE BOLEYN RIGHT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!! *deep breath*). Recommended if you want stuff like Norse sagas, common story tropes, history, influential figures, and some general shenanigans.

Lindsay Ellis: Someone I found by accident, who was sadly forced off YouTube by a despicable harassment campaign due to speaking her mind. She uploads her content primarily on Nebula, but her YouTube channel is still up and still has great stuff. From analysis videos of specific characters/films to general history, it's a great time. She's also now a published science fiction author.

There are other channels I might mention, but these are the biggies. These are the ones I really enjoy, and can imbue knowledge. Here's to the future, my own and everyone else pursuing creative and/or educational endeavours, and a year that is perhaps slightly...less...stressful.

Reading - Starborn Vendetta

Apologies for the lateness on this blog, life was happening.

Hi. This week, not a very big post. That will probably come later. Instead, a little self-promo with a video of me reading the first half (roughly) of the first chapter of Starborn Vendetta. This is totally free for anyone to try, a sample of the world and characters. There's lots more after when the reading ends, but this gives you the opportunity to sample this world. Also, to hear how I am when reading something like this.

The novel is available in hardback and ebook formats, with the paperback edition releasing on April 14, 2024. Shopping links:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Bookshop

Barnes & Noble

New Podcast Episodes Available!

 Exclamations, right? Right?! Right!? Well, anyway...

It's been a busy, busy time for me in life as well as with my work, slowing but surely heading towards the completion of a new series. But I haven't been neglecting my podcast, much as it's been tempting to. So here and now, before you all, is links and summary for each episode. It's been going since May, and with the bi-weekly release plus the introductory episode, it's now five episodes long. Yeesh, so much talking into a mike and trying not to fluff too much. Here below are the episodes to date.

Episode 0: Introduction - This is...what it says on the tin.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/02OTobVeWBnQQkW8O0TMmm

Episode 1: Code Age and Short Story - The first proper episode, and...it was a lot to get used to. I basically recorded the two back to back.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6kWHun8XmDqvsvfP5leD4o

Episode 2: Vague Ramblings - I was ill that week, so yeah not the most representative episode perhaps. But you get to hear some of what's weighing down my bookshelves.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1BkA0Pwba0JC3p4Rwxo83J

Episode 3: Philosophy, and a short story - Back on form with talking and a shout-out. Also the short story in question was...interesting to read.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/14pymT3UupF1x4i3xrRbki

Episode 4: Protagonist vs. Hero - I really enjoyed this one, and it's pretty much a solid "Author Talks" moment, since I'm talking. About stuff that's interesting as an author.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2kif3uyaa2V8I1SDo7Q40A

I wish everyone -- ladies, gentlemen and everyone in-between -- a good week ahead. Here's to new adventures together. See ya!

First Draft Woes

 For this week's blog post, I'm going to talk about something that I've only just confronted full force, something that I didn't expect to happen but knew might happen at some point. The woes of the first draft.

Here's a quick breakdown of how I tend to write. First, I create the foundational idea, the main story points, the characters, if necessary the terminology, and a rough chronology. Then I write it down in e-manuscript form, drafting some scenes or sections beforehand but otherwise letting everything flow freely and naturally. Usually I have to rewrite something within that, but it doesn't need a massive ground-up rewrite. After that comes the proofing and editing stage, where I pick up continuity errors, grammar errors, spelling errors, terminology errors, gender errors, the usual.

My current project with my publisher did need a top-down rewrite for style and to improve some atrocious story decisions made during an angrier time in my life. Even then, the characters, major story beats, and even a good section of the dialogue didn't change, so I was able to get the rewrite done in a month flat. But this time, for this side project that's been slowly cooking away since January 2020, I need to do more than that. It needs some basic elements that formed the core of the project...changing.

There's good reasons for this. The concept behind this project was a fantasy world with an unexpected thematic and tonal shift at its halfway point, and a style of storytelling that both delineated times and locations for a solid continuity, and deconstructed some of the established tropes of the chosen one archetype and surrounding story beats. The problem is that, looking back, some good ideas I had during the early planning stage were thrown under the bus, the tonal shift became far too extreme for people not to see the second half as gratuitous and illogical, and my wish for a meta narrative rode rough-shod over the rules of enjoyable and logical storytelling. Also there were too many throwaway concepts, and above all there were...too...many...characters.

Now, to put it as simply as possible, I wrote this book for two reasons; not to get bored with the two series I'm working on for my publisher, and to vent my frustration at the criminal mangling of characters and thematic progression present in Final Fantasy XV. You know, that oh-so-realistic game that saw a wimpy "lead heroine" with two hours screen time spread across a confusing mess of multimedia shanked without warning or context, companion characters that ranged from boring to outright abusive towards the lead, a lead that wasn't allowed to grow in any meaningful way, and a storyline that rammed you over the head with needing to obey duty at all costs regardless of what sane thought dictates. Yes, I don't mind admitting feeling cheated by its story, and it's left me wary of anything from that series going forward for fear they'd follow that trend of cookie-cutter "do your duty or else" leads, toxic relationships among their companions, and female characters either as thin as paper or relegated to background/fatal roles in favour of an all-male cast, all-male villains, and all-male supporting characters helping the very male hero on his journey. (Apologies for the rant, needed to get it out somewhere.)

Yeah, a lot of frustration there, and while that's still fuelling some of the project, I let that irritation get the better of me and override my natural instincts when writing a story. So I've decided to cut the cast down by half, and rewrite the narrative to better fit with the themes I wanted to examine, and most importantly trim the meta stuff down to something a little less...convoluted. Which entails an over 50% rewrite of the first half, and near-total redo of the second half. Irritating? Absolutely, it's a pain. Worth doing? Yes, since this book has potential. Also, there's series potential if I play it right.

So, wish me luck, y'all!

The Truly Alien

 How can you portray an alien people? Whether it be a fantasy society, or a sentient kind from another world in some universe or other? It's something that's been around since people were making up stories of otherness. From the tales of fae and deities, to modern twists on other peoples and cultures in science fiction narratives, it's difficult to find any kind of approach that can really be called 'alien'.

The most basic problem is that many can't easily see outside their preconceptions of what is a sentient being. Our only examples are Earth-based fauna, specifically a certain hybrid bipedal primate which has reached every continent on Earth, is now one of the most populous mammals on the planet, and has an unusually complex society which splinters across abstract boundaries and esoteric concepts. I mean humans, of course. Some are more obvious than others, like octopuses which have proven problem-solving abilities, or dogs and cats which can understand elements of speech and even hold conversations to a degree. But others like just fish, or insects, or rodents, when used it's almost like a conscious subversion of the norm. It's easier with fantasies, as there's a greater level of fantastical license to draw on, but science fiction's always quite tricky. See any episode of Star Trek or Star Wars to see how difficult it is to break away from the humanoid norm.

The second problem, which is often both encountered and worked around in fantasy, is how much of real-world developments to incorporate into the fiction. Of course, nothing's entirely new in fiction, just a rearrangement of what's already happened. But if you want to create something about a large pantheon, do you mix and match or mimic a specific religion from the ancient past? When you create something about a spirit or fairy, do you risk accusations of cultural appropriation, or change enough that it's more of a homage than direct use? This issue particularly arises with both living religions such as Christianity or Hinduism, and still-living folklore traditions such as those of the Native American nations. The same problem applies to social structure, living conditions, and any kind of interpersonal culture. And that's before you get to reproduction!

There is a third, more insidious problem that's been pointed out in stories such as Avatar and Bright, which had respective alien and fantasy peoples based very explicitly on ethnic minorities. Minorities, what's more, that have deeply engrained but also deeply harmful social stereotypes that these stories encouraged rather than downplayed. While many stories show the normal encountering the unusual, leading to a natural feeling of otherness, many stories have an outward sense of integration, or at least coexistence. So when stories use real-world parallels, they can encourage the kind of behaviour that is supposed to be wrong in reality, simply through reinforcement of a toxic image. Racism is senseless, meaningless, and based on a groundless prejudice. By creating specific others based on these groups, we don't break down barriers, we reinforce them.

Now, I'm not above these problems. I've had to face them, succumbed to them, and had to rethink a story to get round them. But at least I recognise them, where many other authors might not even realise it. For all those who read Tolkien's Middle Earth only for its surface narrative without seeing the deeper cultural mingling and openness he demonstrates, who were bamboozled by Ursula le Guin's approach to science fiction. I ask this. Next time you read a book, look at the story and think; "I wonder where I could find a parallel to this?" And if you can't find it, that's the mark of a true author.