Part Black Hours diary entry No.9, part fish

It’s been a week so far of getting back into the old writing routine and other writing relating gumph. It’s surprising how much disruption two weeks away can cause (I’m sure Tim Stretton will attest to this once he’s gotten through the month or so of publication-publicising and euphoria to return to the work in progress). And talking of Tim, I picked up the monthly edition of Deathray to find Tim waxing lyrical on Jack Vance. He’s posted some of the article on his blog, but like a tease he’s left the rest to the magazine buying public.
As well as Tim’s piece, this month’s Deathray puts out the usual high-quality commentary (including interviews and articles on Alan Moore, Alan Garner and Asimov's Foundation series) that I expect of a genre magazine that, in my view, is way ahead of the rest. And long may it continue (or rather force its rivals to up their game – something that’s long overdue; in my opinion Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror in this country demands at least two quality monthlies).

The second news of note is that on my return from Greece I was delighted to find a package from the British Fantasy Society, lying stamp-side up and bearing gifts – i.e. the quarterly mailing that includes New Horizons (a recent addition to the BFS publication schedule and titled so because, and I quote “the intended emphasis is on the new"). For a Macmillan New Writer this attracts me like a moth to a roman candle.

More importantly, mailed out with New Horizons was The Dick and Jane Primer for Adults, an anthology based around the old Dick and Jane children’s books but deliciously twisted. One of the stories is Envy by Neil Ayres of Veggie Box blog and one half of Whiteley and Ayres (sounds more like a solicitors firm).
I met Neil earlier this year at Aliya Whiteley’s book launch in London and he’s a really nice guy, so this feels especially good. Neil’s story (that's just a little disturbing) is up alongside such luminaries as Adam Roberts and James Lovegrove (whose book The Hope was one of the best I’ve read in the last two years), so he should be pleased with the company. It’s also another example of the high quality output from the British Fantasy Society; these publications alone are worth the yearly membership.

So apart from reading through this growing stack of publications (which has been added to by the King/Straub collaboration, The Black House – a bloody good book but almost as thick as Middlemarch and lovely example of the patterns and perils of a constantly changing POV), I’ve embarked again on The Black Hours, and the final push to complete the first draft. And I’ve done it in style, writing 6,000 words over the weekend. This time I won’t be stopping until the first draft is done and dusted (20,000 words to go, and yes The Black Hours has gone from being a slim thriller to another mini-epic) which means no more pauses and no more distractions, if only because Jane of How Publishing Really Works might try to pinch my ASUS Eee PC when I’m not looking, or its AI chip that’s been giving off a strange scent of lemons recently, might suddenly pack in or decide that it’s bigger than this author’s wishes…

Wachter der how much?!

As a little side-entry, on returning back to ole England, I checked up on Amazon UK (as you do) to find that someone there is selling Wachter der Schatten (the German translation of The Secret War) for £1,945. And it isn’t even signed (I know, because I’ve only signed two copies of the German paperback).

If this price is right, that must mean I have £5,835 worth of paperbacks sitting on the shelf over the telly.

Better tell the insurers quick…

What if…

…Two words that can mean different things to different people, almost disproportionately so. For the scientist or engineer “what if” can be a moment of genius. For the emerging kleptomaniac it will be followed by the thrill of running down a shopping mall away from a security guard with a bright pink bra flapping from their fingertips. From the lips of a pestering or ‘naughty’ child, "what if" can be the warning before the storm - histrionics or severe chiding will inevitably follow “Mummy/Daddy what if I..?”.

For the fiction writer, however, “what if” is the perfect catalyst for Story.

Sarah and I have just returned from a well-earned break to the Greek island of Kefalonia (or Cephallonia if you’re a local). It was a week of sun, sand, sea and… not writing. And you know I almost, almost achieved the latter. Almost, apart from those two little words that have been going around my head since I was twelve years old (though probably since I was about 3).
“What if” has been behind everything I’ve written from my very first story, The Vent (“what if” I was stuck in a ventilation vent? “What if” I wasn’t alone in there?) to The Secret War (“what if” angels and demons were walking the streets in Napoleonic Europe? “What if” my lover was murdered by a slavering, unholy creature of fire and flesh?). It’s never far away, to the point that my workspace (see below) reminds me of the very reason I write: to answer that “what if” question in the best way I can, even if I have to make it up, because let’s face, that’s what fiction writers do – we bullshit our answers but try to make them as plausible as possible. Hell, if we can make you - the reader - believe them, then they must be right, right?

But I’ve rudely interrupted myself, we were talking about “what if” weren’t we? And that whole thing about not writing while taking a holiday in Greece?
Best intentions and all that, well I failed, but not spectacularly. I did write, but only a handful of handwritten notes with a handwriting pen that seemed to dry out at every crucial point in the writing (if you were in Lassi, Kefalonia last week and saw a bearded tourist, slightly sunburnt and flapping his hand around like someone with an absurd version of OCD, then that would be me trying to shake his pen into working again).

In my defence - like I need one (yeah, phoney bravado I know, but I promised Sarah I wouldn’t write while I was away) - it was Sarah who prompted the “what if”. It was Sarah who brought up The Isles of Sheffield, how she enjoyed the sound of the story/anthology and wondered what I’d do with the project now. And so I got talking about it, and while I was muttering about how little time I have to devote to it, and how the next three books seem pretty set in stone, I got that tingle at the base of my neck, the goose-bumps over my arms and those two words came into my thoughts: “what if”. In this case, it was “what if” Sheffield now resembled the Ionian Islands, such as Keffalonia? Could that be stretching the imagination a little? Not so, if you take global warming, rising seas (the core setting for The Isles of Sheffield) into consideration, and it seemed at that moment the place where we were holidaying could be the setting for the anthology: cicadas, sun and sand and sludge.

And then the following day “what if” went that little bit further. What if there were no more sunbathers? What if it was too dangerous to sunbathe, or because the world has moved on, no one has time to sunbathe? There are no more bikinis, the brown frothy slop of the sea is no longer fit to swim in, and the sandy beaches are under many feet of stagnant water. Yet, in this fiercely hot world, on a bank of wasteland and shit-coloured swill that stinks like swamp, a lone sunbather appears. Why is she there in a world that has moved on, horribly and catastrophically so? Where did she get that washed out bikini that’s frayed around the edges? Who is she doing this for? “What if…”

So there it goes, how it starts, and the rest is history written on the page in quickly congealing ink. Honestly, I didn’t write much of the story while I was away. I spent very little time on it, and Sarah wasn’t really mad with me. I think. But when those two little words take hold, it’s hard to shake them loose.

Paperback Writer

January 2009 sees the paperback publication of The Secret War and those talented folks at Pan Macmillan have dusted up one helluva cover for it, too:


(There’s also a cover for The Secret War book 2: The Hoard of Mhorrer that I’ll publish here when I get a sharper jpeg of it from Macmillan.)

Oh, by the way, you can pre-order the paperback of The Secret War from all good booksellers now…

The Black Hours diary entry No. 8: Aftermath, Flotsam and Jetsam

This week, Sarah’s left me home alone. The house is quiet, and in the evenings I forget the sound of my own voice. So like any other bloke left “home alone” I’ve been indulging in those frowned-upon things such as watching b-movie pastiches (Planet Terror) watching a little Euro 2008 (never a full match, and usually while I’m reading – which is currently Simon Clark’s Night of the Triffids) and of course writing (which isn’t frowned upon exactly, but takes up two hours of an evening that I should be spending with Sarah).

With Sarah away, it means that this week my writing feels guilty-free. I have no other responsibilities, no self-imposed time limits – I can write for as long or as short as I wish. And with it being so quiet, there are no distractions.

In the aftermath of what I might call “The Hectic Train Chapter” The Black Hours has fallen back to a steady pace – for a short time. I’m now 81,000 words into the first draft, about 40,000 words away from the final chapter – so, much nearer to the end than I am the beginning. Yet despite all this, I still get distracted - this time by a shelved project: The Isles of Sheffield.

Regular readers of this blog will remember I mooted this project this time last year, but was shelved in favour of a more fully-formed project: The Black Hours (The Isles of Sheffield was turning into something of an epic – The Black Hours is but 120,000 words long).
Now the worm has turned, or rather I’ve decided to approach The Isles of Sheffield with a long term view. Instead of throwing myself into the project, I’ll be chipping away at it, writing stand-alone or connected short stories over the next five to six years, which I’ll send out for publication in various magazines and the internet.

The first of these stories is “Flotsam, Jetsam” - a bitter-sweet tale of a child who has grown up in the flooded city, eking out a living as a gondola boy and scavenger, ferrying various colourful characters across a city that’s half submerged.
I’ll have plenty of time to write it too. Already I’m 7,000 words towards my 10,000 quota for this week on The Black Hours. Tonight and tomorrow should finish that off which leaves Thursday evening and Friday to write Flotsam, Jetsam.

Disclaimer:
The first time I thought about writing The Isles of Sheffield, something bad then happened to Sheffield i.e. it flooded. So I accept no responsibility for it happening again now that my interest has returned...

Black Hours Diary No 7: Because sometimes it just won’t work

Well, I’ve hit another brick wall. And it ain’t due to mid-drafting blues or writer’s block.

It’s all down to trains. Or rather steam locomotives. In The Black Hours there’s an action sequence where the villains battle the main character across a train that’s trying to break out of the quarantine zone in London. The train is out of control, the villains have the main character in a tight spot, and there’s no obvious way of stopping the train. Like a true cliff-hanger serial, what does the main character do?

As the writer, I say, the main character bumps off most of the villains and then finds out a way of decoupling the train. In reality, there is no way of decoupling rolling stock from a steam engine when it’s moving at top speed.

So what do I do? Do I use artistic license to achieve the impossible and decouple that darn train? Or do I cut the sequence completely because without decoupling, the main character will be killed (and then The Black Hours would be just a tragic novella – not a novel).

Fuck a doodle do.

Black Hours Diary No 6: Writing enema

Right. Okay. That was a bit of surprise. From one of the most creatively constipated days in the last couple of years, I’ve gone to the most productive. Yesterday I managed to write almost 6,000 words. And I’d probably say they were 6,000 good words, “perky” words to quote Alis Hawkins.

It was even more surprising after not sleeping very well the previous night, getting that fuzzy-headed, blurry feeling the following morning without much inspiration floating about at all. So I got up, swayed about a bit, squinted at the bright blue sky over Sheffield and sat at my desk with a cup of detox-tea and a bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes, dreading switching on the laptop.

When I did find the courage to boot up the PC, I didn’t go straight to The Black Hours folder, but opened a brand new Word document and began writing a short story called “The Inheritance of Henry Judas”. It’s a story that’s been floating about my study on various bits of paper for the last few months, and I thought ‘what the hell, if I’m going to write shit today, I might as well write shit about something completely unrelated to The Black Hours.’

An hour later, I’d written 1,800 words.

‘Fuck me,’ I thought, ‘where did that come from?’ I really didn’t expect to write much beyond a few hundred words, followed by a blue funk that would be better spent in the garden catching some sun, and finishing Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card.
No, 1,800 words was certainly a surprise.
The Inheritance of Henry Judas is a character piece, about a man who profits on his dead parents’ possessions, only for those possessions to haunt him later on, and it’s a subtle story (or will be if I ever finish it). What those 1,800 words did for me that Sunday morning, was give me a creative enema that could have been a flash in the pan (excuse the pun) but in the end it proved to be very, very productive.

After a break to make another drink, I transfered my writing space outside to take advantage of the glorious weather; I set up the garden furniture, brought out my trusty ASUS pocket laptop, and settled down to work on The Black Hours, with still a little trepidation. Last week’s writing was saggy in places and I expected more of the same stilted prose…

After an hour, I’d written another 2,000 words.

I’m on fire. Bloody hell. Is that what being possessed is like? I don’t actually remember writing those 2,000 words; it was all a bit of a daze. I remember looking at the laptop and my hands dancing over the keyboard, but not the actual effort of creating. It was odd. When I re-read what was typed, it was even odder. The words just leapt from the page – some of the best writing I’ve done in years.

By three in the afternoon, I’d written 4,000 words, and under the merciless heat of the sun (how hot was it yesterday?) I called it a day, utterly spent and very pleased with myself.

I’m not sure how it happened. I’m not sure if it was divine intervention (I doubt it), but there was definitely a blockage last week, and writing that short story cleared it. I didn’t need to take anything, was completely sober and didn’t even have to resort to taking a long walk. I’m not even sure where the inspiration came from – it was just there, hiding in the shadows.

So I’m back now, the mid-draft blues have lifted and I’m very pleased, if not slightly bewildered as to why. I promised that if I did find a cure I’d tell you all, but I’m not honestly sure what the cure was.

Maybe it was just timing.
Maybe it was the lovely weather.
Or maybe it was down to the inheritance of Henry Judas…

Black Hours Diary Entry No. 5 Mid-Draft Blues

Today was the most creatively constipated day I've had in a while. The kind of day when even a fart of words is better than nothing at all. And that's all I managed, one lousy fart of a couple of hundred words.
And I'll tell you why: the Mid-Draft Blues

It had to happen at some point. It certainly happened during the writing of The Hoard of Mhorrer, and I reckon it happens to other authors too. It’s not writer’s block, nothing so disastrous, but it’s still a mighty pain in the arse. It’s that moment during the first draft where the momentum suddenly collapses and the writing grinds to a halt like an old banger attempting to climb a hill. There can be a number of reasons for it, from the distraction of pre-publication, to publicity of post-publication, to not being in love with the project from the beginning, through to being more in love with another project of the future. (This list is not exhaustive). The main reason for my current mid-draft blues, is the distraction of another project – sparked in part by the recent proofing of The Hoard of Mhorrer.

Ever since I excised out an entire sub-plot from Book 2, I’ve been thinking about a short novel that fits nicely between The Hoard of Mhorrer (Book 2) and The Fortress of Black Glass (which was Book 3, but is now Book 4 – is this too confusing?).
The “new” Book 3 will be called The Traitor of Light, and will tell a story that runs parallel with The Hoard of Mhorrer. It’s a Dar’uka story (it might even be subtitled that way) and by concentrating on the Dar’uka and their unearthly adventures over the course of 250-300 pages I’ll be able to explore the characters in a way I couldn’t in The Hoard of Mhorrer.

Admittedly, I fell into a trap in the original edit of The Hoard of Mhorrer that turned the Dar’uka into bores – sanctimonious immortals that seemed a little too ignorant and arrogant, similarly to how the Jedi knights are portrayed in Lucas’ let down, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
As the creator of The Secret War books and the mythology, I know the Dar’uka are more than this, but that means nothing if the author doesn’t write this down. And in the original edit of The Hoard of Mhorrer, I didn’t – so it was cut.

With The Traitor of Light I get the opportunity to write what I wanted to about the Dar’uka. And it won’t be easy, because I’ll be treading the tight-rope of making the Dar’uka interesting while at the same time trying not to dispel the mystery surrounding them. Familiarity breeds contempt, they say, so to keep the majesty of these “beautiful horrors” the blade needs to reveal marvels, but not cut too deep.

So how do I do that, you might ask?
Well, I’m picking on one of the Dar’uka and telling his story, that’s how: from mortal to immortal, a story of sacrifice/betrayal and tragedy/revelation. It won’t explain away Dar’uka lore, but it will certainly infuse them with more humanity and, inevitably, flaws. Sure they’ll still be arrogant, but the reader will know why this is, and perhaps even forgive them. There’ll also be opportunity for the big set-pieces that have been absent from the first two books, i.e. epic battles between armies of angels and demons at the Gates of Hell that some readers have been asking for. The anticipation of writing about hordes of demons clashing with the Dar’uka on a broken and ruined world far from ours has brought out the fan-boy in me. And I can’t wait to start writing it.

And so you see why I’ve hit the mid-draft blues. I’ve spent this Black Hours diary entry talking about a completely different book. So imagine what my mind is doing. It’s a tough thing to concentrate on what’s on the page before you when there’s so much excitement going on in the background, especially when a future project feels electric and new.

But The Traitor of Light is but a distraction – a project for 2009 and something to be boxed away until the right time. It’s exciting thinking about it, but then so was The Black Hours while I was putting the finishing touches to The Hoard of Mhorrer, as will The Fortress of Black Glass when I finish The Traitor of Light, and so on and so on.
(“The grass is greener” seems quite an apt proverb for my writing but only because I have an insatiable hunger and impatience to tell stories – and I have plenty of stories still to tell.)

I’m sure there is a cure to the mid-draft blues, and like Silas Eldritch (the main character in The Black Hours) I’m working on finding it.

And when I do, I’ll post it right here…

Absent Landlords and other priorities

Okay, so I haven’t blogged for a while. (Well, actually I have if you include the regular “this month’s publication” slot I do for the Macmillan New Writers Blog – but some would say that’s cheating). Indeed I haven’t done much on the internet at all over the last couple of weeks, including reading other writers’ blogs, leaving comments and generally keeping up-to-date on my regular haunts. The Blogspot of Blood has been neglected, and like an absent landlord I’ve rarely looked in on it.

For shame…

Last week I completed the proofs for The Hoard of Mhorrer to end two hectic weeks where everything was pretty much put on hold. It gave me a chance to tighten the prose, tweak continuity and iron out those unwelcome creases in the plot. The Hoard of Mhorrer now sparkles, like someone’s given it a mighty fine polish, and I’m very, very happy with it indeed (all that hard work has been worth it). But it did involve a period of intense work which wiped out my Bank Holiday weekend not to mention several afternoons of sunshine (for a Brit, not making the most of a sunny day is close to blasphemy), and of course The Black Hours has suffered as well. I’m now 15,000 words behind schedule, but I’m catching up – a few hundred words here, and a thousand there; I’m not worried by the hard work ahead of me because I’m enjoying it.

It does mean, however, than in terms of priorities, this blog is falling further down the pack, behind Sarah, writing The Black Hours and making time for friends and family (and a semblance of a social life). And it’s likely to be that way for a few months to come – certainly until my day-job becomes part-time and I can eek a semi-professional living from the writing (which might not be that far away). But I’m not the only one thinking of priorities (it must be the warmer weather…).

This week another stalwart of the blogging sphere hung up their blog account. Shameless, aka Seamus Kearney has announced he is ending his blog odyssey to concentrate on more pressing matters, and that’s good for him (though he will be sorely missed). He joins the ranks of the classic bloggers that have called it a day, which includes the likes of Grumpy Old Bookman and Miss Snark.

Blogs are like relationships, I’ve come to believe, and when you’ve been that involved with a blog over the course of years rather than months, watching it flicker out and die gradually due to other pressing commitments can be more painful than suddenly announcing its end. Personally, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I won’t be a regular blogger any more, and that I don’t religiously check my Site-meter to see how many hits I get a day. But the lack of visits doesn’t bother me. New visitors don’t necessarily find blogs because they’re popular, but stumble upon them by accident, Googling some obscure reference or finding them via a link from another’s blog or website. In my case, they might visit because they’ve read, or read about, The Secret War and curiosity has got the better of them.

Blogging isn’t a bad publicity tool, but neither is it the primary one and not the sort of tool a writer can rely on to sell books. It's bloody time consuming if you consider the work involved in creating a single blog entry that's engaging and then edited to a reasonable standard. And as I often stated before, you don't get paid to write blog entries.
When it comes down to priorities, blogging is a bit of fun, a place to blow off steam about something, or to bash out some news that someone might find interesting. And it’s that fun, communal thing that keeps me going, that makes it just a little addictive.
So no, I’m not calling it a day. A week. Or a month. One day this blog might fall silent permanently, but not yet. Not yet.

Besides, there’s still a second book on the way and a paperback and hopefully other newsworthy stuff that deserves a para or two. This blog is but an extension of the MFWCurran website, which in turn is an extension of my writing. And like all priorities, something has to come first. After all, which would people rather read? An entertaining but disposable blog or a half decent book every two years or so?

Next time: a blog entry that isn't about blogging. Probably about writing, and almost certainly about hitting the brick wall that is "The Mid-draft Blues..."

Semantics and the art of taking criticism constructively

This week has been busy. Apart from picking up “The Cost of Letters”, and of course scribbling away on the new book, The Black Hours (which has hit the 50,000 word mark this week), yesterday I received the proofs for The Horde (sic) of Mhorrer (which has now been changed to “The Hoard of Mhorrer”… both ways work, but semantically “hoard” seems more appropriate - you’ll see why in January 2009).

Over the two years or so I spent writing it, around half a dozen people have given advice or suggestions on The Hoard of Mhorrer. Most of it’s been textual, but there’s been continuity suggestions too, and historical advice. Throughout that time I’ve taken critical advice on the chin with a nod of the head and a workman-like approach. But it’s a struggle. Any revision that isn’t prompted by you is a psychological battle of sorts, because anyone who possesses just a hint of ego initially finds critical advice as… er… a criticism of what they have done.
I’m not immune to that. Not at all.
And the proofs caught me off guard a bit. I think after reading the notes from my copy-editor a few writers would have bit down on their knuckles in frustration, and had I been in a worse mood I might have too. My first response was, “you can’t be serious” and “bloody hell, more work” – a tennis-pro reaction if ever there was one. I’d spent about two years on the book already, and believed I had put it to bed before next January, so looking at the pages of notes I grimaced, winced and shook my head in disappointment.

And then I calmed down and thought about it rationally.

You see, I might have worked for two years on the text, shaping it into a story that was worth telling, but that doesn’t mean I’m immune to mistakes. Likewise, my editorial duo at Macmillan have also being involved in the process for a while, and there are certain things even they might miss – things like historical and strategic context.
The copyeditor has written some bloody frustrating notes. But they are bloody helpful too. Amazingly so. In fact some of the mistakes I would call “school-boy errors” that I surprised myself at making (especially around military strategy). The copy-editor knows his stuff – I know because I checked up on a few facts afterwards, and damn me if they weren’t spot on. My first reaction – that of cursing and muttering like some wino in a bus-shelter – was in the end quite unwarranted, but it did clear my head to see how constructive his comments were.

Finally I decided, “fair-play, I must change this.” Because if I don’t change it, and if I let my ego put up walls against critical advice, someone else will only mention those same flaws once it’s published in a magazine or newspaper, or on the great Who-Hah-machine we call the Internet (and people love a good moan about inaccuracies in books, don’t they?). But by then the cat would have bolted from the barn, and the horse would have been let out of the bag. By then the book would be published and I’ll be damned…

So, yes. More work. A distraction. But why the hell not? It’s taken two years to write this book. What’s two more weeks to get it right? To quote Airplane, “I picked the wrong time to quit drinking…” (And besides, two weeks of distraction with a monkey on your back is nothing when you have to write with cat on your shoulder…)