Adam Christopher - Steampunk, superheroes, and science fiction

@LeeAHarris Erm, what kind of convention is this? Did I book the right one? :P 2 hours ago
@AF82 Yep, ordering now! It basically covers my original order... so for no reason at all, they just gave me a free book. 2 hours ago

FROM the BLOG

March3rd

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Review: King Maker, by Maurice Broaddus

Posted in: Review

There are not many things I like more than a good genre mash-up – taking elements and tropes from completely different types (the more contradictory or removed the better) and jamming them together. The end result can be pulpy or high-art, and when it works, a new, eclectic subgenre can be formed. It’s also something that makes a lot of publishers nervous, as there is a perception that these kind of books are difficult to sell because they’re not easy to categorise. Having said that, urban fantasy and paranormal romance – two similar but not always interchangeable subgenres mixes – have flourished in recent years. However, even stories in these new(ish) categories are prone to falling into rigid format and type – having discovered what works and what doesn’t, quite naturally the market has narrowed to the stereotypes of urban fantasy that are known to be popular. Which is perfectly logical and quite understandable – I’m not using the term ’stereotype’ here in a derogatory sense – but it does mean that for people like me, who don’t like that kind of thing, urban fantasy is generally a genre that holds little interest. Until now.

Angry Robot Books have quickly established themselves as purveyors of fine speculative fiction, disregarding most genre definitions and restrictions in their quest to just publish some damn good stories. As a result, they’ve given us what I think is probably the first true urban fantasy – King Maker, by Maurice Broaddus.

The back cover blurb says it all:

The Wire meets Excalibur in this stunning retelling of the King Arthur legend on the streets of inner-city America.

Add that to the stunning cover, and I’m sold – hook, line, and sinker!

Broaddus’s story is grim and gritty, a world of gang crime, guns and drugs. The characters of the King Arthur legends are wonderfully and originally transposed to this setting – Uther Pendragon becomes Luther, cigarette smoke never far from his lips; Arthur is King James White, Merlin is Merle, Guinevere is Lady G, Lancelot is Lott, and so on. Each of these characters – and the many more who appear in the course of the story – are wonderfully crafted, each a unique personality. If Broaddus hadn’t managed this, a lot of King Maker would be reduced to confusing skirmishes and interludes. As it is, while the cast is large, the individual story threads are easy to follow and, importantly, easy to pick up when a character disappears then re-emerges several chapters later.

The other great strength of King Maker is Broaddus’ depiction of the bad side of Indianapolis. Although familiar with many US cities, I’ve never been to Broaddus’ home town before, but I had no problem creating an image of the place in my own mind, such is the attention to detail that the author manages to continue right through the book’s 400 pages. It’s a depressing view of a city, all desperation, futility and dead ends that come with that end of society, and while few of us ever have any real exposure to that side of life, King Maker always feels very real and believable.

Where King Maker struggles is not so much to do with this book itself, but the fact that it is just the first of a trilogy, with King’s Justice and King’s War to follow. As such, while an excellent character study, King Maker is somewhat light on plot, spending most of the time moving the various players into position for the next two books. This isn’t a bad thing, but I wonder if the trilogy would benefit from being read together a single story – perhaps Angry Robot might even reprint the series at some point as a single bumper volume?

As a result of this, King himself – portrayed so wonderfully on the cover – is really more of a background figure, slipping in and out of story for most of the book and failing sometimes to engage the reader due to his distance. While I’m familiar with the King Arthur legend, I haven’t read Le Morte d’Arthur or other “original” source materials, so I’m not sure how closely King Maker actually follows the Arthur narrative (if it does at all), and whether the light plot and lack of engagement of King himself is just a reflection of the original myth.

This aside, King Maker is a fascinating novel, a true urban fantasy in the literal definition of the term, and with assured prose and strong characters, should be on every SF fan’s shelf. I look forward to the sequels with interest.

Rating:

For more information on King Maker, check out Angry Robot Books, where you can find a sample chapter from the book. Author Maurice Broaddus can be found at MauriceBroaddus.com and is also on Twitter as @MauriceBroaddus. King Maker was supplied by Angry Robot Books as an uncorrected advance review copy.
February28th

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Review: The Incendiary’s Trail, by James McCreet

Posted in: Review

James McCreet is something of a success for the Macmillan New Writing imprint – his debut novel, The Incendiary’s Trail, was released under MNW in hardcover in July 2009, and in January 2010 arrived as a paperback via the main Pan Macmillan banner.

In 1840-something (the year is never specified), the newly formed Detective Force must employ an unusual, even controversial, tactic to stop a murdering firestarter blazing a trail of death and destruction across London. To catch their man, they resort to employing another criminal as an informant and unofficial agent, much to the horror of the police commissioner, who fears a scandal should the news reach the general public. But the risk pays off, as our detective heroes and their unusual accomplice race towards the fiery climax.

The Incendiary’s Trail’s strength lies in McCreet’s vivid description of the seedy, putrid underbelly of early Victorian London. He’s clearly done his research, and while we track the story from beginning to end, we get various “excursions” and observations on the London underworld thanks to the book’s narrator, a newspaper journalist who is covering the amazing case of the incendiary. At time the detail is a little too thick, only there to show exactly how much research the author did, but it is written in a wonderfully Victorian style and is a delight to read, and the occasional use of archaic spellings throughout the text helps to set the scene. For this alone I’d recommend the book to anyone with an interest in 19th century life – I’m a fan of the Victorians myself, and even I learnt a thing or two!

The story itself is quite interesting, although the incendiary himself comes across more as a ruthless murderer than a flamboyant firestarter. Written in a pseudo-Victorian style, the story does tend to feature less action than a modern-day story, and while this isn’t necessarily a problem, it does show up a major flaw in McCreet’s writing – character. Large parts of the book consist of two or three people sitting down in a room to discuss the case, or swap hypotheses, or have the detectives squaring off against their unlikely collaborators. Unfortunately none of the characters are distinguishable from each other, be it policeman, detective, or the criminal masterminds Noah Dyson or “The General”. A few times my attention wandered, and after a few paragraphs of dialogue I couldn’t tell who was speaking. Perhaps more important, at some points it didn’t matter who was speaking, as dialogue-heavy chapters centred around police meetings where there mainly to push the plot. This achieved, the action would restart in the following chatper. It’s a shame, because with strong characters, The Incendiary’s Trail is a book I would really love rather than just like, but I found everyone is annoyingly two-dimensional. Perhaps this is a problem with the author’s chosen style – in trying to emulate Victorian prose, everybody talks very formally, with every 19th century dialogue cliche in evidence. This is all very well, but there is a big risk that everybody will sound the same. Unfortunately, this is the case with The Incendiary’s Trail.

The other issue I have with the book is perhaps less the author’s fault and one to ask McCreet’s editor about. There are some quite eye-popping continuity and textual errors throughout the book, which, while undoubtedly introduced by McCreet himself in his drafts, should have been picked up immediately and corrected by his editor. For example, at one point a house guest is offered tea but declines, and later the same page the host wonders why the guest hasn’t touched his tea (that’ll be because he didn’t want any?). Elsewhere, someone is sitting down, then stands up, then rests his head against the chair (so he’s sitting down again?), and then sits down. These are minor errors and in isolation they might be hard to notice, but the book has plenty more. A more serious gaff is the switching of point of view (and character, and actually location) between two paragraphs with no break in scene or even story flow (implying the change is deliberate). All of these should have been picked up prior to publication, but as it is, they make the writing feel very green, almost as if it’s the draft-before-final. Given some more work, The Incendiary’s Trail would shine. As it is, it merely glints dully. You can see the potential there, and there is enough to keep the reader intrigued, but it needs another draft and another editorial pass.

All of which makes me wonder about the Macmillan New Writing imprint. With MNW, the author doesn’t get an advance, but gets a larger royalty on sales than is normally offered. So if a book is good and does well, the author can potentially earn much more from it than if they’d gone the traditional route. If a book doesn’t sell well, the publisher has reduced their risk as they didn’t pay out a lump sum to begin with, which might never be earned back, and both publisher and author at least get something back. There are a lot of people who are of the opinion that advanceless book deals are unacceptable, and that it doesn’t even count as a professional sale. I’m steering well clear of that argument as I can see pros and cons from both sides. But I do wonder how far the cost saving/risk reduction goes with the publisher. McCreet himself has said that the editorial input on his manuscript was light, and I think this shows in the finished product. Does this mean that less is spent by the publisher on editorial time, reducing costs even further? It’s impossible to tell, of course, and such data is commercially sensitive to the publisher and, quite rightly, is none of our business. Also, I’ve read plenty of other books that made it to print but which were clearly in dire need of a closer edit! But the fact that The Incendiary’s Trail originally came from the MNW imprint played at the back of my mind as I read it.

Despite my misgivings, The Incendiary’s Trail is an entertaining read. If you are a fan of Victorian literature or just the 19th century in general, it’s a must-read. Fans of crime and police procedural fiction will also want to snap this up. While it may lack characterisation and have some distracting editorial goofs, there are some spectacular and memorable set pieces, and I am very much looking forward to McCreet’s next novel in the same setting, The Vice Club, due out later this year.

Rating:
February21st

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Writing Habits: James McCreet

Posted in: Uncategorized

James McCreet’s debut novel, The Incendiary’s Trail, was originally published in 2009 by Macmillan New Writing, an initiative/imprint of major publishing house Pan Macmillan whereby new, unpublished writers are a given a book deal with no advance, but a much larger royalty percentage than a regular contract would offer. James is something of a success story for this imprint, as in January 2010, The Incendiary’s Trail was re-published under the main Pan Macmillan banner. A sequel, The Vice Society, is scheduled for May this year, also under Pan Macmillan, and James is working on the third.

Later this week I’ll be posting my own thoughts on the first book, which is a period Victorian detective story. As James says:

I’ve always been interested in detective novels and, after completing a postgraduate thesis on the origins of the genre, I wondered if it was possible to add something to what I had already read. The idea of having multiple investigators working on a single case has since become a theme with a lot of narrative potential and I hope that I’m writing something that will interest long-time fans of the genre. Setting the books in Victorian London harks back to those origins of Poe, Dickens and de Quincey, as well as providing an exciting location of limitless novelty. I’d say the city itself is definitely a major character.

Ladies and gentlemen, James McCreet! Read More
February15th

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Escape from the Empire State

Posted in: Ludmila My Love, Rad Bradbury: Empire State, Writing

One hundred and six days and 100,615 words after I started, the first draft of Empire State is finished. True, there were some wobbles along the way. True, it needs a fair amount of work at the second draft. But for now, it’s done. I’ve written three full-length novels.

Empire State began it in November 2009, with the intention of getting half the book done as part of NaNoWriMo. That didn’t happen. Nor did I meet my first self-imposed deadline of December 31st. Or the second deadline of January 31st. Or the third deadline of my birthday, February 2nd. But hey, that’s life, right? My average daily wordcount over the writing period is a quite shockingly low 949 words – way, way off my target of 2,740 per day for 2010. But as I’ve mentioned before, some odd things happened between November and now. Suffice to say my output is much higher now – in fact, on Sunday, the day I actually finished Empire State, I clocked up 5,379 words. It’s amazing what a little motivation – like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel – can do.

Now what? Well, Empire State joins Dark Heart and Seven Wonders in a dark drawer. I’ve got a Big Fat Plan for this year, which involves taking one of these titles – along with book four – and working it up into a proper second draft fit for my beta-readers. I have a feeling it will be Empire State, although Seven Wonders might give it a run for its money.

But having written three books, I’ve noticed a change which is both logical and obvious when looked at from the outside, but which was still noticeable and even surprising as I experienced it from the writer’s point of view.

Empire State is a much better book than Seven Wonders. And Seven Wonders is a much better book than Dark Heart. Not just in style and technique, but in depth of story, character and theme as well.

Or, to put it another way, I’ve got better.

Okay, that should be obvious, right? As I write more and more, I learn more and more, and I get better and better. It’s like anything, be it starting a sport or learning a musical instrument, the more you practice, the better you get. I had a couple of odd conversations about this recently with people who expressed not only surprise but mild shock and disgust when I suggested that to be a good writer you had to bust your ass. Huh. Some people think writing is easy. Suffice to say, these people are not writers. Kevin J. Anderson had something to say about this the other day. Personally, I’d listen to him. He’s written more than 100 novels. The swine.

Having realised that I’ve improved, and having actually recognised the change in my writing since I began with Dark Heart a few years ago, it gives rise to a slightly odd feeling about book four.

Ludmila, My Love is a science fiction ghost story, but unlike the previous three novels, what came to me first was not an idea or a plot, but a theme. Having always associated theme with Proper Writing, I was quite chuffed to be able to think of Ludmila in these terms even before I had the plot nailed down. In fact, I’m still outlining now, and I don’t expect to start actually writing the thing for another week. But this is good, because along with the satisfaction of finishing Empire State came a mild depression – having lived with the characters of one book for so long, it’s always sad to leave them behind. However, in this case the sadness was short lived as it was quickly overcome with excitement for the next project.

So, a week of outlining, then two months of writing. I’ve got a good feeling about this one. Wish me luck!
February12th

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That end of book fidget, and iPad roundup

Posted in: Ludmila My Love, Rad Bradbury: Empire State, Writing, ebooks

The end of book ‘fidget’

Turns out that I’m not alone when I say I’ve got the “end of book fidget”. It’s that feeling you get when you’re within sight of the end, with a big climax to write, but your brain is on the next book.

The next book is new, fresh, and exciting. It has a killer title. The plot is out of this world. This is the book you’ll be known for. You want to start writing it now.

The old book is old, dull, stale. You know the story and the character inside out, you can’t wait for the hero to save the day so everyone can go home. You know the book needs a gosh-darned thrashing at the second draft to solve a couple of plot problems and iron out some character kinks. You’ve been living with this book for a couple of months, or more. You’re tired.

One of the fascinating things I’ve discovered about writing is that a writer will think that their experience is unique, that the thoughts they have and the emotion changes they go through during the course of writing are brand new, and (usually) completely wrong. The universe is trying to tell you that you aren’t a writer and you shouldn’t be trying. Your story is lame, the characters weak and two-dimensional. The plot is terrible, the prose itself is the most god-awful tripe ever put to paper. If you could just stop right now and try the next book, everything would turn out fine and writing would be less like sweating bullets.

Except Neil Gaiman gets this feeling. He said so. Michael Stackpole gets this feeling. He said so too. Most writers do, from late night amateurs honing their craft to seasoned pros with lengthy bestseller back catalogues. And then when one writer talks to another writer to tell them about the terrible time they’re having, they’re shocked to discover that the other guy feels exactly the same way.

Okay, I exaggerate. Writing is fun, and it can be easy, and it’s something I have to do. It’s not continual torture, and more often than not, the plot and characterisation work just fine. If they didn’t, I’d be in trouble.

But there are moments like the above, scattered all throughout the writing process. And at this point, as Empire State hits 95,000 out of a projected 100,000, I get the end of book fidget. And despite me knowing all the above about how every writer goes through the same thing at key points, I was still surprised to discover writer friends who knew exactly what I was talking about, or who were stuck in the exact same situation as me.

Fortunately, the solution is pretty easy. Ignore the fidget, sit down and finish the book. I suspect there are an awful lot of almost-finished novels in the world because the writer hasn’t realised that the end of book fidget is just a normal part of the process. And there are an awful lot of half-finished and quarter-finished novels in the world because the writer has succumbed to one of those other feelings of inadequacy at some point.

You gotta keep on truckin’! Empire State will be done in a few days. Then Ludmila, My Love, can take centre stage.

The iPad

It’s been three weeks now since Apple introduced the iPad. The interweb is full of speculation and opinion, so I’ll leave you to Google for it if you haven’t been keeping track of the commentary. My last post, which was far, far too long ago, talked about the things I wanted from the device. Did it deliver? Yes, on every count – function, portability, and importantly, price. UK pricing has not been announced yet, but Macworld have done a pretty good estimate. Even the most expensive model, the 64GB 3G version, only comes in at a hair under £700. For me, that’s worth every penny for a good-sized, capable internet device and e-reader.
January26th

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What I want from the Apple tablet

Posted in: ebooks

Tommorow, Steve Jobs will walk on stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and unveil Apple’s latest creation, as their media invite calls it. Unless you’ve been on retreat on Phobos, you’ll know what I’m talking about. The Apple tablet. I’m hoping it won’t be called the iSlate (= ‘is late’), or the iPad (= some digital female sanitary product), but whatever the label, this device will change the publishing world.

Don’t believe me? Hmm. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they don’t see how a tablet is anything special, or how it could revolutionise publishing. It’s not like we don’t have all the requisite technology anyway, and the Apple ‘is late’ tag is apt given that there are a lot of tablet computers out there, and a lot of ebook readers out there. Some are successful, some are not. More are coming.

So big deal. Who needs an oversized iPod touch, right?

I think there’s a misunderstanding here. It’s not that this is going to be a whole new form of computing, with new innovations in technology and hardware. It’s the way that Apple will take pre-existing ideas and technology and combine them, creating a characteristic Apple user interface and wrapping it in their award-winning industrial design to create something new.

Before the iPod was released, there were loads of mp3 players available. But the iPod had a new interface and a new design, and it caught on. Likewise the iPhone. There are hundreds, thousands of smartphones available. But the iPhone, for a lot of people, has the best UI and design.

With less than a day to go, here’s my list of things I want the Apple tablet to be and to do. This isn’t a pro-Apple rant. It’s not an anti-not-Apple rant either. These are just things I want to be able to do with an Apple tablet. Some of this should be announced tomorrow. Some of it will take a while – years, maybe – to come to fruition. But the tablet is the first step.

I want to wake up to new content

With an always-on wifi or 3G connection, I want all of my magazine subscriptions auto-synched while I sleep. On Wednesday morning, I wake up, check my emails, and have this week’s pull-list of comics from DC and Dynamite. On Thursday morning, I wake up, check my emails, and have this week’s Radio Times. Every four weeks the new issue of Fortean Times arrives. Same for newspapers, if I read them. They’d arrive every morning.

But there’s more than just replacing magazine print subscriptions with electronic ones. If the tablet can deliver an exemplary reading experience, I want to subscribe to publishing houses. For an annual fee, I’ll take everything from Angry Robot Books, thanks very much, delivered to my tablet on release. If you’re a Warhammer fan, how about a sub to the Black Library? Any publisher – a major house, a small press, a nice imprint – can start delivering content directly and, importantly, in bulk. There’s not a single title from Angry Robot that hasn’t been an excellent read, and I’ll happily take the rest of their output on spec. For larger houses like Pyr – likewise an excellent genre imprint – a full subscription would probably result in a phone call from my bank manager, but what about a random sub? Three books each month? Or how about all new titles released by your three favourite authors? I imagine it would be the same for fans of a particular romance publisher, or crime publisher, or whatever publisher.

There’s no manual control needed, if I choose. My subs are delivered, on time, regularly, without the vagaries of the postal service. With the full-colour, almost full-size screen, I can read all of my magazines at my leisure. I don’t need to receive paper copies of anything ever again. With good eReader software, I can become a patron of a publisher or author at the tap of a button.

I want to use it everywhere

I travel a lot, and the dilemma of book selection for a plane journey is one that should be familiar to a lot of people. If you leave tomorrow and there are still 50 pages to go, do you take that, knowing that you’ll have it finished quickly and will have to lug a redundant brick of paper around for the rest of your trip? Or do you pick a new book? Or if you’re a fast reader, do you take two, or three? Pretty soon you’ve filled your hand luggage and most likely your overstuffed suitcase for the return.

For travel I now take my iPod touch. Using Stanza, or any one of a number of stand-alone eBook providers, I can take hundreds of books with me everywhere. Reading off the screen is no issue, as most readers have a variety of options to improve the experience, such as white text on a black background, and variable text size. Sure, it takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s not a problem.

If the screen was bigger, it would be better. If I could approximate the real size of a trade paperback page, I’d probably read a lot more eBooks. This is what the Kindle, the Sony Reader, the Nook, et al, aim to achieve – more or less real-life dimensions of a print book, and with their eInk screens, an easy reading experience.

But more important than the odd plane trip, I want to use it everywhere, every day. I don’t want to lug my laptop to bed. I don’t want to flip open a netbook on the couch, no matter how petite it is. I don’t want to sit at my desktop computer for hours reading comics or books. And, perhaps most importantly for me, I don’t want to battle with the internet on my tiny iPod touch. If I’m watching TV and I want to look something up on the internet, I want to pick up the tablet from the coffee table and do it. No laptop, no keyboard, no tiny iPod touch screen that requires constant pinching and scrolling. The iPod touch and iPhone are fine for tools like Twitter or Facebook, because the interface of apps for these are designed for the small screen. But the full-blown internet experience in Safari isn’t.

eInk doesn’t matter

And this is why I don’t want a Kindle or other eInk-based device. They’re fine for straight text. They’d also be fine for newspaper content. But full-colour, glossy magazines? Nope. Browsing the web? Nope. Playing games? Nope. Checking emails maybe, but integrating with Twitter, Facebook? Nope. The Kindle and its ilk are single-use devices, and the eInk screen is no good for anything by reading text anyway.

Except here’s the thing: it’s not even needed for that. As I said, I read a lot of text off my iPod touch, with its glass-fronted, full-colour LCD panel. Glare has never been a problem. Reflection has never been a problem. Eyestrain has never been a problem. Okay, it has a small screen, and these issues would be increased with a 10″ display, but really, I’m happy to accept these potential issues for full-colour, full-motion electronic content. I don’t need eInk.

I want to be able to afford it

The tablet might be expensive. The 64GB iPod touch is $399 + tax. Apple’s base Macbook is $999. The tablet must fall somewhere into this gap – it can’t be cheaper, or the same price, as the touch for a significant larger device unless they cut the price of the touch. It can’t be more expensive than the Macbook or they’ll be in for criticism, and the Macbook is a more powerful computer anyway. The tablet isn’t a computer replacement, it’s a whole different device.

The problem is that people are too used to paying $200 for a hunk o’ junk netbook, or $500 for an under-specced, under-powered laptop. Good tech costs, although the “Apple premium” is actually a myth if you compare like-for-like. Apple simply don’t do low-end devices, they do mid- to high-end.

It’s also no use comparing it to the Kindle, or the Nook, or the Sony Reader. The Kindle is $259 (or $489 for the Kindle DX), but these are single-use devices. I know that Amazon have opened the Kindle to app developers now, but there really isn’t much you can do with that eInk screen.

The current rumour is that the tablet will be $1000 stand-alone, or $399-$499 with a 3G contract. Some sources claim the $1000 is way off. Perhaps that’ll be another surprise for tomorrow!

Can Apple deliver?

Will the tablet deliver on any of this? Technology-wise, certainly. There’s nothing new here, we have the know-how and hardware. Apple’s design – which includes software and hardware combined – will be second-to-none. All of this is possible. It might be expensive, at least to start with.

What will be harder to changing the mindset of content providers and gatekeepers, to get them to embrace this digital vision. The technology is there, we just need the will. Unfortunately, some will fight this vision tooth and claw, whether it is out of self-preservation, stubbornness, or lack of understanding.

So that’s what I want (the tablet, not the fighting!). What we’ll get tomorrow might match my requirements very well; then again, they might not. Come back on Thursday and we’ll see how my checklist squares up with the real deal.

But what do you want from a tablet? Will the tablet change the world, or will it flop like the G4 Cube or the Newton? If you don’t want an Apple tablet, what do you want?

Comments are open!
January19th

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Writing Habits: Michael A. Stackpole

Posted in: Writing Habits

Welcome to Writing Habits, Season 2!

Writing Habits is an ongoing series of mini-interviews in which I talk to creators and writers not about their books, or current works-in-progress, but about what they do to get the job done. I must admit, I’m the kind of person that likes nothing more than sitting down and writing out a really good list, so when it comes to the nuts and bolts of writing – routines, habits, schedules, goals and targets, you name it – I get a real buzz when I talk to professionals about how they do it. Of course, there are no easy answers and quick fixes and magic solutions for those of us working to build a career as a writer, but such insights are valuable, and this topic is often overlooked.

Last year I had the pleasure of speaking to a number of my favourite writers, and you can read about their Writing Habits here. I also spoke to two important novelists – SF-horror-thriller maestro and New York Times Best-seller Scott Sigler, and the new queen of steampunk-romance Gail Carriger – in more detail. You can hear them, and me, here, and on iTunes.

So without further ado, let’s kick off Writing Habits 2010 with a name that will be, I hope, familiar to a lot of you.

Please welcome Michael A. Stackpole! Read More
January8th

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Honourable mentions

Posted in: Dark Heart, Devil in Chains, News, Rad Bradbury: Empire State, Twitter, Writing

Week one of the new decade draws to a close (no, I’m not getting into an argument about whether the decade starts in 2010 or 2011. Get. Over. It), and after a bit of heaving and swearing (lots of swearing), I’m finally dragging Empire State back on track. After about two months in the doldrums, it’s a bit like that old metaphor of turning a cruise liner around. It takes a bit of coaxing, and it’s not a fast process. Anyway, one million words, here I come.

Meanwhile, Cherie Priest, the author what wrote that damned fine book Boneshaker that I harped on about earlier, seemed pretty pleased that she rubbed shoulders with Stephen King on the pages of this blog. Thanks for the link, Cherie!

And this I dig, a lot. Reader ediFanoB, whom I randomly bumped into on Twitter due to our shared love of steampunk, has a few words to say about my novella, The Devil in Chains, on his website. Now, The Devil in Chains isn’t a new release, and one of great mysteries of the publishing world is how books are all hot news on the week of release, then everyone forgets about them. I mean, Coke advertise several times a day on TV, and you can go to the store and buy a can. But I can also go to my local bookstore and buy, say, Salem’s Lot, but you don’t see Salem’s Lot advertised anywhere. Although writing is an art and a craft, publishing is about building name and brand. With that in mind, I’m pretty chuffed that ediFanoB enjoyed The Devil in Chains enough to not only blog about it, but demand I get on with the rest of the series and get Dark Heart (the first novel in the series, for which The Devil in Chains is a stand-alone prequel) edited and, heck, published even!

Well, that’s why I do it. I write stuff that I hope people enjoy. And if they do, that’s my job done. Thanks, edi!
January6th

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The awesome and radical of 2009 (part 3)

Posted in: General

Hello 2010. How’s it going? Strangely, bizarrely, impossibly, it’s already near to end of the first week of the new year. Time ticks, so let’s knock off the awesome and radical of 2009, slots four to nine.

Reading

There are a zillion blogs posting their ‘best of’ lists of books for 2009. Some are top tens, some are top one hundreds. Some bloggers claim to have read 280 novels last year, which just tells me that they are just looking at printed pages very quickly and are not actually reading. I guess it can be easy to confuse reading with looking (??).

I’m not a slow reader, but I enjoy reading and I like to think about it, so I average about one book a month, but I’m not going to post a list of what I read in 2009. Look me up on Goodreads if you want. I’m going to focus on my two favourite books of last year. These were Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, and Under the Dome, by Stephen King.

I talked about Stephen King a few days ago, and he already makes an appearance on my 2009 awesome list, but Under The Dome is really a remarkable book. It’s not horror, but is quite horrifying. It’s not science fiction, except for the nature of the invisible, impenetrable, indestructible dome that descends on the town of Chester’s Mill one October morning. It’s a story of people, and what happens to them under extraordinary circumstances. It’s an extraordinary book, and while I haven’t read any other King novels, it is being touted as his best. I can believe it.

I read the US “copper” edition (now to track down the regular “white” edition) although I did start the UK hardcover first. However, the UK hardcover suffers from poor internal typography, presumably to condense the 1100 pages of the US edition down to the 800 of the UK edition. As soon as my US edition arrived I switched, as I was already getting tired of the walls of text printed in the UK version. It’s a real shame, as UK readers also miss out on the US cover. If you’re a fan, or a collector, grab the US one – copper or white!

A comparison between Under the Dome and Boneshaker is both pointless and impossible, so they take the joint number one spot. Boneshaker is a steampunk adventure set in an alternative Seattle, where a mining machine ran amok and destroyed most of the city. The ruins are now walled and filled with blight gas which has turned those left behind into zombies.

Zombies and steampunk isn’t necessarily new – indeed, they’re an integral part of my own steampunk series – but the Pacific Northwest setting is. What makes Boneshaker stand head and shoulders over nearly every other steampunk novel is not just the setting, but the fact that it’s really only steampunk at a push. There are airships, and various bit of high-tech Victoriana – including some which are steam-powered – but they are very much at the periphery. Aside from the airships, there are none of the steampunk cliches or tropes here. Boneshaker is like a breath of fresh air.

Story and setting aside, what struck me about this book was the writing itself. The prose is mature, detailed, complex, and beautiful. The pacing and rhythm are almost poetic, and the whole thing is tinged with the sadness and melancholy of Briar and her situation. Cherie Priest is not a new author, and I think this actually shows in this book. Boneshaker is assured and confident, which comes, I suspect, from the assurance and confidence of the author, having honed her craft with her earlier works. Which, I might add, are now firmly on my reading list for 2010.

Boneshaker was kindly supplied to be as an ARC from Tor. Which, pretty as it is with its simple white cover, means I missed out on the jaw-dropping cover. Tor have made high-res images of the cover painting available on their site. The cover is so eye-catching, so wonderful, that I’ll be picking up the book as-published just so I can have it on my shelf.

Scrivener

As I mentioned in part 2, 2009 was the year I started taking writing seriously, and this wouldn’t have been possible without Scrivener. I’ve talked about Scrivener many times before, and was using it prior to 2009, but last year was when I fully got to grips with all it can offer. So far I’ve written two and a half full-length novels in it, so I know full-well what it is capable of and how it has helped my writing.

For the uninitiated, Scrivener is a Mac-only writing app that allows unparalleled flexibility. I’ve turned a few people on to Scrivener, and more and more authors – big names and small – are now using it. To say Scrivener transformed the way I write is an understatement. It’s a night-and-day difference, the BSE (Before Scrivener Era) and ASE (you get the drift). The best thing you can do is check out the video demonstrations on their website, and then (if you have a Mac), buy it instantly.

SomaFM

I class SomaFM as another writing tool, although perhaps not an obvious one. SomaFM is a commercial-free, listener-sponsored internet radio station based in San Francisco that offers a multitude of channels to suit a multitude of tastes. My personal pick is Indie Pop Rocks.

When I write, I need music to block out the outside world. Listening to my own music doesn’t work, as I am familiar with it and I find it too distracting. The beauty of Indie Pop Rocks is that I recognise hardly any of it, yet their gigantic playlist is more or less brilliant. In fact, writing aside, I’ve discovered many new bands that have now become firm favourites thanks to SomaFM.

SomaFM is an essential writing tool for me, just as Scrivener is.

Meeting Your Heroes

Two of them in person, one via the interwebs. Did I ever think I’d meet Nathan Fillion and Leonard Nimoy? Or spend an hour talking to Scott Sigler about his plans for world domination? Nope. But I did, and they were some of the highlights of 2009 for me.

San Francisco

I travel a fair bit. In 2009 I made it to San Francisco, and within a few days it became my favourite US city. I’ve been to a lot, and while San Diego has held my affection for eight years, there is something about SF that just pips it. Maybe because it’s the home – more or less – of Apple, MC Hammer, Borderlands bookstore, SomaFM, NaNoWriMo, Scott Sigler, Gail Carriger, Pier 39, The Maltese Falcon. Maybe it’s because – perhaps more than San Diego – it reminds me of my home city, Auckland, with its harbour and bay and famous bridges. Maybe it was because, on my very first day, the lady at the local 7-11 was the nicest person I’d ever met. Whatever. San Francisco was an amazing week.

This website

I’m a perfectionist, and a fussy one at that. Is that tautology? Perhaps. But after a lot of looking and a lot of hacking and a lot of teaching myself CSS by trial and error, I got myself a website. This website, to be precise. People seem to like the design. I’m pleased to have a proper home on the internet, and that happened at last in 2009.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some books to write. A week into the new year and I’m already behind schedule!
December31st

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The awesome and radical of 2009 (part 2) and my New Year’s Resolution

Posted in: Dark Heart, Devil in Chains, Rad Bradbury: Empire State, Seven Wonders, Writing

Two down, seven to go. Tonight it’s just one, and it’s the big one.

Writing

I don’t have a competition running against Jennifer Williams, but we do egg each other on a bit. In 2009, she wrote 120,000 words, and if her novels (one completed, two in progress) are anything like her short stories, she’s going to snap up an agent and deal in next to no time. At which point I will be very jealous, and may have to take up some form of Black Magic to make her laptop battery die at inopportune moments. Jen has christened 2010 the “Year of Writing Dangerously”. I like it.

For me, 2009 has been the “Year of Writing Seriously”. It started with me completing my first full-length novel, Dark Heart. I had started this in 2008, or even earlier, but after a year of faffing had reached 30,000 words or so. In 2009, I Took It Seriously, and churned out the next 70,000 words in just two months. Taking It Seriously seemed to work. Dark Heart (first draft) came in at 118,743 words. I even got the manuscript printed up as a trade paperback via Lulu, providing myself with a bound, portable manuscript that I could edit wherever and whenever I wanted.

Taking It Seriously worked so well that I applied the same general technique (sitting down and writing) to my second novel, Seven Wonders (originally called New Gods, but so harassed was I by Jack Kirby fans – and rightly so, and myself included actually – that I changed it). I didn’t keep a track of time on Seven Wonders, but the first draft of this, my second novel, was done at the end of August and came in at 111,073 words.

I took a break after that, and started to edit Dark Heart, but after hacking at the first third of the book I realised it was still too soon. The text was too fresh, and I remembered nearly every comma, which made it hard to judge whether something – a scene, a chapter, a character, a plot point – was actually working. So I shelved that Lulu paperback and moved on to book three.

Book three is my current work-in-progress, Empire State. I was going to write the second in the Dark Heart steampunk series (I have books two through five plotted), but I felt I needed to stretch my writing muscles and write in different styles and genres. And if I spent another three months writing book two, only to never be able to sell book one, I’d kinda be stuck. It wouldn’t have been a waste of time, far from it, but as a new writer it made more sense to have written three books and be able to pitch each of them, rather than having written three books and be able to pitch only two of them.

Empire State, then, is a SF detective noir fantasy thing. Hmm, I think I need to work on the elevator pitch… the draft stalled in November/December for a variety of reasons that I have posted about before, but the file will be cracked open tomorrow as part of my New Year’s Resolution. Empire State stands at 35,387 words. The target is, again, 100,000 words, which leaves me about 65,000 to go. It started as a NaNoWriMo project, but November is where it all went wrong, so I didn’t even crack the required 50,000 words that month. Eh. What can you do?

Aside from these three full-length novels, I wrote a short story – The Unpopular Opinion of Reverend Tobias Thackery. This Lovecraftian horror was written in June 2009, and is 7,143 words long. It was rejected by Weird Tales, and is currently with another publisher, but if there is no luck there I’ll put it up here for free, and also as another Legends iTunes eBook alongside The Devil in Chains. Short stories are not my thing – I find them too hard to write and I rarely read them either.

That’s my writing for 2009. A total of 272,346 words written. Two complete novels and one complete short story written, and one novel at the 33% mark. The Year of Taking It Seriously seemed to have paid off.

For 2010, I have just one New Year’s Resolution (I’m not sure if that is supposed to be capitalised or not… I’m assuming it should, because that makes it Important, and Important is a Good Thing). If 2009 is my Year of Taking It Seriously, 2010 is my Year of Taking It Professionally. Okay, that grammar isn’t the best, but in 2010 I will have more time to devote to writing, which means I can think and act like a Writer.

My goal therefore is 1 million words in 2010. I think I got the idea from something Scott Sigler said, that he was going to write 1,000,000 words in 2009. I’m not sure whether he hit it or not, but Stephen King also said that you need to write 1 million words before you get to the good stuff. He might be right, and it looks like I’m 25% of the way there already. One million words is 2,740 words for each and every day, which is actually quite achievable considering on a good day I can get to 5,000 words at a push. So those one million words will be, more or less, the last two-thirds of Empire State, plus seven more novels, plus revisions on two novels.

That’s the plan anyway. And it all starts tomorrow. All I need is my ass, a chair, and my computer. And tea. Lots of tea.

More of my awesome and radical things of 2009 tomorrow. Happy New Year everyone! See you in the Amazingly Utterly Awesome 2010. See, capital letters, 2010 is Important.