Wednesday 29th September, 2021

I forgot to link some more Greenwood-related links since the last update, so we will do a full Greenwood recap today. By which I mean I shall include what I was / am trying to do with them and some pointers to some links!

I have three novellas in various stages of publishing / acceptance with the Other Side Books that are essentially fairy tale mash-ups that I tend to refer to as “Greenwood” or “Into The Greenwood” tales. The structure is a new story (despite my use of the “found tale” conceit) of about 15-20,000 words with five older fairy tales embedded as tales within tales to compare and contrast. I gave Run Along The Shelves an interview about them in the recent flush of reviews, and you can find that here: [External Link]

The first story is called The Knight’s Daughter, a sort of distaff Hamlet with a dose of Robin Hood and a starring role for a volcano (I have a story background for it here). Run Along The Shelves did a review which you can find here: [External Link]. And it’s available to purchase from Amazon here: [External Link]

The second installment of my Greenwood collection is the Isle of Ravens. This time around the environmental star is European Windstorms (more on the technical aspects from a day-job colleague here: [External Link]) and the heroes surviving these destructive storms are in a tale that could be described as The City of Ys meets Bisclavret for those with a more modern understanding of the world. Again, Run Along the Shelves has done a kind review: [External Link]. It can be purchased from Amazon here: [External Link]

ASIDE: I haven’t done a story background for this one. I pretty sure I owe you several, by now.

In draft state, the third story is currently under the working title of The Dragon Queen. There are earthquakes in North Wales and a whole Snow White by way of Lludd and Llefelys thing going on. Things may change and I can’t be sure when it will land simply as real life has a tendency to interfere with small press publishing schedules. (No offense or sleight intended to publishers, editors and my fellow writers, it’s just the way these things are given that we’re all doing this as an evening job.)

If you’re interested in a bit of a taster of either of these three Greenwood stories, I have the opening sections available here.

And, as I confessed to extending the collection somewhat last time, here’s a bit of an explanation of what’s going on with that. Basically, it’s fun to play with folk tales and this one is playing with Gawain and the Green Knight and a bit of Beowulf, although whether it remains that way or even gets published depends on how well I do. Beyond using the same conceit of a found tale and tales within the main tale to contrast, I’m not trying especially hard to match up completely with the feel of the first three, so the voice may be somewhat different – I finished the drafts of the original three a couple of years ago and there have been a number of other WIPs in between, so trying to match them consciously would be laborious. It is, however, still playing with the same ideas and the internal chronology of the whole, so people who notice such things may see some similarities to other characters or events even if names are continually changed in the Greenwood to protect the not so innocent.

Wednesday 8th September, 2021

Just a quick recap of some writing news and links:

We’ll start with the reminder that Dreamland: Other Stories is out from Black Shuck Books and you can find it here: [External Link]

I didn’t mention it last week, but the first draft of Under Smoke City has been removed from my Patreon account and the second draft is being published in weekly passage installments on my Buy Me A Coffee page. The new index is here: [External Link]

The second installment of my Greenwood set of stories is out now. Isle of Ravens can be purchased for Kindle from Amazon: [External Link]

Run Along The Shelves has published a rather nice review of the first Greenwood installment, The Knight’s Daughter, and you can find said review here: [External Link]

If you’re interested in a bit of a taster of either of those, I have the opening sections of all three (finished) Greenwood stories available on this site.

And, in the interests of background research, you might like to know that Isle of Ravens has a starring role for European Windstorms – and I talked a colleague of mine into doing an explanatory blog about the windstorms some time ago: [External Link] (It ties in with what the company does and, weirdly enough, storm season is coming soon. Despite several colleagues being vulcanologists, I didn’t manage to get anything about volcano eruptions…)

Finally, on the Greenwood side of things for today, I appear to be writing a fourth one. Sorry about that, folks.

Wednesday 4th August, 2021

Hi everyone, just a round-up of writerly news that’s also been mentioned in other places.

My first announcement is being able to publicly admit that my short story, Sea Heart, has been accepted. The news dropped on Thursday 29th July and the anthology itself, Dreamland, will be out from Black Shuck Books [External Link] on Thursday 26th August. You can find out more and pre-order it here: [External Link]

My second announcement is for the book trailer for Isle of Ravens, the second of the Into The Greenwood novellas, and soon to be published by The Other Side Books [External Link]. This is the first book trailer editor Michael S. Collins has attempted and I think he’s done a pretty good job with these 18 seconds:

I’m still moving short stories over to my Buy Me A Coffee page [External Link] and, given how intermittent things have been of late, it’ll probably take another couple of months or three to get things shifted over. Once I have them all moved, I think I may actually delete the pages (now referrals only) on this site. It’ll cause some broken links in the site diaries but, let’s be honest, no-one goes back through the old posts, it’s mostly just me being anally retentive by keeping hold of the whole archive.

However, there will soon be a related change on my Patreon page, as announced in my recent post there, Moving Day(s)  [External Link]. The first draft of Under Smoke City (and associated posts) will be removed on Friday 27th August. I have been intermittently redrafting behind the scenes and Draft the Second will be going up on the Buy Me A Coffee page from Monday 30th. The intention is to set up the index page and the first passage for the first day and work my way through publishing passages again on a weekly basis – announcing the updates by linking the index page on my social media accounts, etc. The apocrypha will also return (backers only) and be released irregularly between passages and short story shifts.

I think that covers everything I need to tell you about. If you would like to know how the actual writing is going I crossed the 50,000 word line with my not-Gothic Lords of the Marsh thing but I’m not quite a third of the way through what I think the plot is. I have an idea for another Greenwood novella and am currently chatting with various people about various bits but I’m not so secretly obsessed wit an sf western idea, so you ca probably expect to hear more about that when I summon the energy for another update!

Wednesday 19th June, 2019

Hello!

In putting together Story Background post drafts for In Sunshine Or In Shadow and Goodbye, Snow Child, I’ve realised I owe you a couple more, so today’s update is basically a “here they are” for Let’s Stay Together (published in 2015 and again 2018) and The Knight’s Daughter (published in 2018).

Also, Passage 12 of Plumtree became available to everyone on Monday and you can catch up on the publicly available stuff from the index page here: [External Link]

Other than that, nothing much to talk about, so see you next week.

The Knight’s Daughter: Story Background

I’ve talked about The Knight’s Daughter a number of times and the particular stand out time is part of an interview on Hannah’s Book Shelf, which you can listen to here: [External Link]

(If you don’t want to sit through 2 hours of music and me talking, you need to skip to about 1 hour in.)

However, if you want a written rundown of what I was aiming for, carry on … Continue reading

Wednesday 10th April, 2019

Hello! Welcome back to the website and I actually managed to put up another post within a week! The DIY continues in small steps in meat-space but here’s the round up of things that are happening in my writing world.

I’m now more like 3/4 of the way through method 15 of 25 Ways [Not] To Kill A Vampire. There has been a minor stall this week because I’ve been focused on other writing related things.

The main bit of obvious work is that I’ve read through and made a few (slight) changes to The Isle of Ravens, that thematic follow-up to The Knight’s Daughter, making further use of that mythological Greenwood. This has, in principle at least, already been accepted by Michael S. Collins of The Other Side Books ([External Link]) for release later this year. So, I need to send that along to Mr Collins and await the editor’s edits.

(I’m sending it now, honest!)

I’ve re-read and redrafted a few bits of my Goodbye, Snow Child story. I ought to have come up with a better name for it but the working title has stuck. It’s now looking for a new home, so fingers crossed.

I’ve also made a start on that ghost story idea I mentioned last week – In Sunshine Or In Shadow. For those who think they recognise the title, yes, it is a line from Danny Boy. Which, apparently, is actually supposed to be Eily Dear when sung by a man. This may or may not have some bearing on the story I’m trying to tell.

For things people can actually see, Plumtree Passage 6 is now in the index [External Link] and available to everyone, so please go read!.

Wednesday 3rd April, 2019

A coat rack hanging in a hall
This is my handiwork

I skipped a week again. I’m assuming you don’t want to know about how I did nothing last week. I gave myself a cracking concussion the Friday before and it took a few days to get back to my normal.

However, today I did DIY while waiting for things to be delivered. So you can have a photo of my new coat rack because this is the first thing I’ve done that required power tools in over three years and I’m proud of it, dammit.

Incidentally, now I’m waiting for someone to turn up about a gas leak…

This week has also seen a two-part interview with Damien Seaman [External Link] go up – I’m the interviewee, by the way. You can find the two parts here:

  1. The Buzzfeed approach to writing a novel, with dark fantasy author Jo M Thomas [External Link]
  2. What to do when writing overwhelms you <[External Link]

Damien will be releasing an indepth review of 25 Ways To Kill A Werewolf in the not too distant future as well. I may be a bit nervous.

In writing news, I’m about half way through method 15 of 25 Ways [Not] To Kill A Vampire, I’m considering getting into redrafting The Isle of Ravens (thematic follow-up to The Knight’s Daughter, making further use of that mythological Greenwood) and I’ll be playing with a ghost short story idea this week or next. Pencil that in as “In Sunshine Or In Shadow”.

For my Patreon backers, Plumtree Passage 9 is now available to read (here: [External Link]). Passage 6 gets added to the index ([External Link] on Monday.

Thursday 10th May, 2018

As usual, your correspondent is abysmal at this corresponding thing. However, we have things to correspond about!

While not having much to tell you, I got around to posting two short stories that I never rehomed and have been meaning to put up for a while. So you can now find the 4,500 word (ish) science fiction story The Bugs’ War and the similar length science fiction story Spore under my Online Fiction category.

And there has since been actual news in that Other Side books has gone paperback with The Second Book of Christmas Ghosts and The Knight’s Daughter. The Amazon links on their respective pages have been updated. The knight’s Daughter briefly broke into their top 1000 fairy tales. More of that, please!

Finally, we are not far from Satellite 6, so I better mention that I shall be doing a sword-y thing for writers on the Saturday evening. Please come along and see me!

Wednesday 11th April, 2018

Hello. Last week kind of get messed up with more moving around the day-job days and having car problems but I (and the car) are currently functional, so here’s the latest round of updates for you!

FollyCon was attended and I had a lot of fun for the bits I attended, meeting up with people I haven’t seen since the last Con I attended and a few people I had never managed to meet up with before. Swords was definitely a subject that was raised. And the panel I was part of on Friday evening (Horrible Heroes) was a blast. There’s an official round up post from the FollyCon team with links to other people’s far better write-ups here: [External Link]

I really do recommend following that link. The recording of “Men in Science Fiction and Fantasy” is hilarious.

Under Smoke City Passage 13 came out on Monday (direct link: [External Link]) – although if I haven’t managed to chase you into reading it, yet, I recommend starting from Passage 1 (direct link: [External Link]). And, yes, it is an intentional riff on Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas – I just wanted to steampunk it. How do you think it’s working so far?

And The Knight’s Daughter is now available as an ebook from your local Amazon store. The UK link is here: [External Link] and you should get redirected to your local version if you click through.

(I’m obliged to tell you it’s still cheaper direct from the publisher. And you can find the link for that in my mess o’links for it.)

And on the books to buy front, KT Davies has recently released her second Breed novel as an ebook from Amazon. The first was a blast, so I can recommend book 2 – and why not get book 1 if you haven’t already?

  • Dangerous To Know: The Chronicles of Breed: Book One (formerly just “Breed”) by KT Davies [External Link]
  • Tooth And Claw: The Chronicles of Breed: Book Two by KT Davies [External Link]