Stephen Aryan's Blog, page 26

Interview at Smash Dragons

In the run up to the launch of Battlemage, book 1 of the Age of Darkness trilogy, there’s going to be a lot of PR and marketing going on. My name and the book cover is going to be popping up all over the place. Plus those clever people at Orbit have some great ideas for promotion.

In the meantime, Matthew in Australia over at the Smash Dragons blog, got in there first with a fairly lengthy interview. No doubt the first of many. I go into a fair bit of detail about the book, my process, where the inspiration came from, who some of my influences and some other fun stuff. You can read the interview in full here.

He also has some great interviews with some other authors who I highly recommend. I’ve read their work and can genuinely say I’m a big fan. These include Jen Williams, whose first two books (The Copper Promise and The Iron Ghost) are cracking rollicking fantasy adventures that are funny and clever and weird and just a lot of fun. I never use text speech or text abbreviations but her books did actually make me laugh out loud when reading them which is actually pretty rare. I think it comes from her acerbic charming sense of humour.

The other author I can recommend is Daniel Polansky. His fantasy books are crime novels in a fantasy skin as they are told from the perspective of people from the underworld but there is also plenty of magic and mayhem. A very unique style, an interesting approach and in some ways his books remind me of Tale of the Kin novels by Douglas Hulick.

More stuff to come later this week I think.

Supernatural: Bloodlines

The CW show Supernatural has been going for ten years now and series 11 has been given the thumbs up. I was a big fan of the show in the first five years for many reasons too numerous to get into. Created by Eric Kripke, it follows the adventures of two brothers who hunt monsters. It’s a family basis, one they inherited from their father and they and other Hunters keep the world safe for the rest of us.

After the success of the first season information started to come out that Kripke had a detailed five year plan for the show. However, at the end of the fifth season there is an ending, that is both satisfying and moving, but then like The Return of the King, there’s another tacked on ending. That extra bit opened up the door for them to do more. The show was successful, the ratings were good, so he stepped down as showrunner, someone else picked up the reigns and the show continued. Some of the seasons after were quite good, some less so, and there were some stand out characters and moments.

In the UK we’re currently getting to the end of season 9, and season 10 has just finished in America. There has been talk of a spin off show for a few years and episode 20 of S9, simply called Bloodlines, was supposed to act as a back door pilot. Spoilers ahead for those who haven’t seen it and bits and pieces from previous seasons. I don’t work in TV, so I’m coming to this purely as a fan.

Within the first ten minutes of the episode I could see why Bloodlines wasn’t picked up to be a spin-off show. Sam and Dean were in the episode, so that was familiar, but the focus was very different. It tried to create sympathetic monsters and for them to be the majority of the cast. It was somewhere between The Sopranos and Romeo and Juliet. A human gets caught up in a fight between two warring monster families, and through the course of the episode we find that there are five monster families fighting each other for power in Chicago. There is also a shapeshifter who is in love with a werewolf from another family, and at one point in the show there are knowing nods to various bits of pop culture. I think Dean mentions The Sopranos and he even calls the male character, Romeo.

In the story someone is attempting to make things worse and stir up a fight between the families. The perpetrator turns out to be a normal human who did it because he hates the monsters. They killed his son and countless other humans in their fighting. There is also an guy called Ross, just a regular guy who is unaware, who gets caught up in events, and he works with Sam and Dean to try and find out what is going on. At the end he sides with the two monsters in love, even going so far as to kill the ‘villain’, the human being.

While we’ve had sympathetic monsters in the past, this was just a step too far for me. The everyman character, Ross, whose past had some interesting hints, knew nothing about this world. The fans do. They know everything. Watching him catch up would be very tedious after nine series. Oh look, silver kills werewolves. We know. We’ve known for nine years, 23 episodes a year. Neither of the ‘good’ monsters were particularly nice or that interesting.  She appeared to be nothing more than a love interest for the male shapeshifter character, and he was an outsider who left the family business but has now returned. Very Godfather, but it didn’t grip me.

There wasn’t enough grit under the characters’ fingernails. It spent too long focusing on the family business and not enough on the characters. As fans we know the world, and if these are going to be our main characters for something independent, I wanted to really care about them. After approximately 43 minutes, I wasn’t that fussed about them and can’t really remember their names. I didn’t sympathise that much with any of them, apart from Ross, but even he didn’t engage me that much.

For me the strength of Supernatural, even for all of its ups and down over the years, is in its characters. Dean and Sam. We’ve spent so much time with them now that when Dean turns on a TV in a motel and there’s something adult on there, we know he’s going to grin, open a beer and sit back to watch it while Sam will roll his eyes. Over the years they’ve come into contact with so many people that not all of them can just go back to their ordinary lives after the monster is dead. Some of them become recurring characters over a season, or multiple seasons.

Bobby was a great character, and a surrogate father to the boys, who was in the show for many years. Ellen and Jo, a mother and daughter hunter pair, plus Ash, were in the earlier seasons.  Ruby and Bella were introduced and then later Castiel and even Crowley who have both become part of the furniture. Felicia Day’s character, Charlie, has been cropping up in the last few seasons too as she’s become a fan favourite. There are others, who have shown up only a couple of times per season, like Sheriff Mills, or Benny. There are too many to name, but in some ways I think what they would have been better off doing for a spin off show is mining the existing characters to create a new blended, ensemble show.

DC have just announced their Legends of Tomorrow show, which takes characters from Arrow, Flash and the general DC universe to create something new. Arrow and Flash were both getting a little clogged as the main cast was massive, so this was a smart move for a number of reasons. Supernatural has announced there is going to be another attempt at a spin off. Just imagine…

Imagine if Sam and Dean went back on the road, and their base was populated by a number of characters in training to be new Men (and women) of Letters and Hunters. Even if the main show ended, the boys could still crop up from time to time, or guest star with crossover episodes if it continued in parallel. I’d love to see certain characters come back and step up to embracing their destiny or just trying to make up for all of the hideous things they’ve done and find some kind of redemption.

In season 9, Sheriff Mills gets the boys involved with a vampire nest, except it’s not that cut and dried. A girl called Alex lived with a vampire family as their bait and she lured countless people home so her family could eat. At the end she turns on the monsters to save Mills. Lots of pathos and redemption, and family issues, and so much to mine. They’re both wounded, both have lost their families and in a weird way are a new family, and kind of mother and daughter.

Season 8, Aaron Bass, inherits a golem from his grandfather who fought against the Thule Society in World War II. The episode was so much fun, he was so different and so very interesting. There was so much going on that you could have a whole season around it by itself.

Garth has cropped up a few times, and is now a werewolf, but he wants to be a good werewolf with his new wife. He used to be a hunter too.

Benny. I loved the character of Benny played by Ty Olysson, and having someone like him in the mix would be great as he’s a bit of wildcard and yet is someone who is trying to do the right thing. Dean trusted him because of what they went through but Sam never really did until right at the end.

There are more, many more, that they could pull into an ensemble show and then explore in more depth. I hope the next spin off show is a success and I hope they use a lot of good material that has already been laid out because it will mean more to the fans than trying to create something new from whole cloth.

Nine Worlds 2015

So, we’re still months away from the Nine Worlds Geekfest convention for 2015, which is taking place on 7-9th August in London but I’m writing about it on here for a couple of reasons.

I attended the event last year, and it was a remarkable event which was eye-opening and the most inclusive event I’ve ever attended with a very relaxed atmosphere. It was also kind of terrifying because in addition to co-running the podcast track with Barry Nugent of Geek Syndicate fame, I also read a section from my book Battlemage for the first time in public. The panel was called New Voices and new authors stood up in front of a room full of strangers and read for about 5 minutes. I was nervous, sweaty, gassy and generally not comfortable. I’m very much someone who normally works behind the scenes, pulling strings as it were. I’m not someone who seeks the limelight and I don’t like to be the centre of attention but this time there was nowhere to hide. But I think it went fairly well, I stumbled a couple of times but people seemed to enjoy it so that was good.

All of those nerves will have to be brushed aside or buried soon as September marks the launch of Battlemage, the first book in my trilogy, so I suspect I will be doing more public readings in the near future. I might even be doing something for it at Nine Worlds but it is too early to say just yet.

Nine Worlds also marks the return of the podcasting track. This year I’m taking a bit of a step back as I’m busy writing book 3, editing book 2, and promoting and launching book 1, so my co-host on the Comic Book Outsiders podcast, Dr Scott, is helping Barry and I run the podcast track this year.

So, we have worked out what panels we are doing for the track, now we just need more people to sign up for it. So, if you are a podcaster and you want to get involved, if you want to talk about what you do, how to do it, why you do it, when and where, and all aspects in between, then sign up on the Nine Worlds website here. As I said, still months away but we need to get it sorted ahead of time.

Even if you’re not into podcasting I would recommend the event as it has more than one track for all walks of geekdom and you will find lots of things to keep you busy for a few days. In the meantime it’s back to the writing cave.

 

April bits and pieces

It is almost May and as the year races by I’m desperately trying to hold on to the seat of my pants and get stuff done. The first draft of book three is under way, and I’ve had a couple of months now to get my head back into it, completely ignore the other two books and focus. It’s been going well so far despite having to attend two funerals in two months and of course Eastercon. But despite such events being so draining I always come away feeling reinvigorated and so far that has continued as I chip away at the wall of book 3.

Two comic book projects are now cooking with gas. Flux, co-written with my good chum Pete Rogers and drawn by Maysam Barza, is getting beaten into shape and we’re editing and revising the story, making it better and leaner. When we hit a bump in the road, rather than make it even more complex we’re stripping it back, getting to the core of the story and it’s going very well.

The Promise, also co-written with Pete, and drawn by the extremely talented Simone Guglielmini, is now getting to the place where we are hoping to be able to submit it to a publisher this year. Simone has proven to be as passionate about this project as us which has been so rewarding and he’s been brilliant at throwing ideas at us, as well as sketches and amazing pages of art.

This month’s podcasts, on Bags of Action Pete and I wrapped up part 3 of our trilogy to Kurt Russell, with Tango and Cash, which was really a vehicle for Sly Stallone. You can find more information about it and listen to that here, by clicking on the link below, or via iTunes.

Click here to download Bags of Action – Tango and Cash

Over on Comic Book Outsiders, Scott and I managed to fill up a whole episode with some of the latest news from comics, films and film trailers and TV. We discussed the new wave of Marvel TV but there are no spoilers as I’ve not seen any of Daredevil yet and Scott was only halfway through. You can find more information about that here or again listen via iTunes.

I think the rest of the year is going to be more of the same, a mix of editing book 2, working on comic book projects and then getting ready for the launch of Battlemage in September. I’m at events in August and September, so that’s going to be a hectic time and then next year I’ve got two books coming out. So this year is going to seem like a gentle breeze and a warm up compared to 2016!

What happened at Eastercon 2015

This was my first convention of the year and it was a relatively quiet one. Despite that, and coming home before the convention ended, I was still shattered by the end of it. A painful journey down on Friday meant I arrived late but just in time to see the last half of the opening ceremony. As bad as my journey was, the guests of honour coming from America had a much worse trip. This involved having their plane return to the airport as they didn’t have enough fuel to fly around a storm. As a result they arrived late and had been awake for a very long time. At the end of his first panel, when Jim Butcher was asked for any closing thoughts it consisted of ‘I’m very tired’ which was fair enough after being awake for 30 hours!

The rest of the weekend seemed to pass in a blur. I spent it hanging out and catching up with old friends, such as my stalwart convention buddy Adrian Faulkner, plus I had a chance to catch up with Mr Gav Reads, as I like to call him. The always lovely CE Murphy was over from Ireland and it was so great to see her and put the world to rights. I met a couple of likely lads in the form of Rob Adams and Cameron Johnston and we shared writing stories over a pint of real ale from the bar on Friday night. I briefly ran into the award winning Ruth Booth, who picked up a BSFA award for a short story, so many congratulations to her.

Even though we’d met briefly in the past I was properly introduced to Lucy Hounsom by Jen Williams and we had dinner together in the pub with Adrian, my agent-buddy Pete Newman and his good lady wife Milady Emma Newman. They were both nominated for a Hugo don’t you know for their podcast. I’m not going to get into the Hugo controversy as others have done that elsewhere and with more clarity. See George RR Martin’s blog post about it for more info. I also met the friendly Ed Cox and we shared a manly hug, and Catie introduced me to Charlie Stross at one point too. I also ran into the always kind and generous Gillian Redfearn several times over the weekend, in a corridor, in the pub, during a panel, although at one point I’m sure I saw that she’s grown some horns (see her twitter feed for photos).

So a lot of names and faces, old and new to me over the course of the weekend. As ever, this more than the panels and even the guests of honour, are what the conventions are all about for me. Connecting with like-minded, creative and clever people and being able to completely relax and mention something tangentially connected and not receive a blank stare. At one point someone mentioned Star Wars and Spaced, and that set me off quoting Simon Pegg’s character as he berates a small child in a comic shop for wanting some Jar Jar Binks merchandise.

Saturday consisted of more panels and also hearing Jim Butcher speak on a few panels during his first convention in the UK. It was great to meet him in person and get a book signed. As well as being over here for Eastercon, he is also going on a mini signing tour of the UK this week. Saturday night was a fairly late one where myself, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Peter Newman and David Tallerman put the Marvel film universe to rights. I think we got it all sorted out in the end but don’t ask me what we ultimately decided.

Amazingly I only managed to buy two books at the event, but I did receive one in my bag, The Seventh Miss Hatfield by Anna Caltabiano who I met last year on a panel at Nine Worlds Geekfest. I’m also feeling briefly smug as just after Eastercon they announced the Clarke Award Finalists and I’ve already read two of them and picked up another, Station Eleven, at the weekend. I’ll attempt to read the others but I won’t make a promise as my to read pile is already hideous.

I left just after breakfast on Sunday so I missed Adrian’s talk on storm chasing, but I’ve heard very good things about it. Check out photos from it on his blog. So now there’s a big break for me between events and the next one will be Nine Worlds Geekfest in August. I’m helping out with the Podcasting track again, but don’t expect to be on any panels. In theory, this leaves me with several uninterrupted months where there’s nothing going on and I’m going to focus on chipping away at book 3. That’s the plan anyway so we’ll see how it goes. As ever I came away from the convention tired but also happy and re-energised. Being around those kind of creative people buoys me up and makes me keen to get back to the keyboard and turn out another chapter. So that’s what I’m going to do, starting….now.

Eastercon – Dysprosium

This bank holiday weekend I’ll be at Eastercon or, Dysprosium, as it is called this year, the 66th annual event where SFF fans gather to drink, I mean, talk about books and stuff.

This year there are some exciting and interesting guests of honour that I’m looking forward to meeting, but I’m actually more excited about meeting up with friends. These are people I only get to see maybe once or twice a year. You can’t choose who you work with and I have often ended up in an environment for my day job where I’m lucky if one person shares even one of my passions and most often the number is zero. At a convention I have something in common with almost everyone and it’s a great place to just geek out, relax in good company and have all of those important conversations like, why Batman is so much cooler than Superman. It means I can get into the nitty gritty on certain characters or novels, and rake over stuff with a fine toothed comb if I want and no one will suddenly switch the conversation to their children, or pensions, or football, because they can’t join in and have no clue what I’m on about. Conventions are a great place to belong and find your tribe. They are a great place to relax where I can be myself and I don’t have to hide what I enjoy as there’s no mockery.

I can’t choose who I work with, but I can choose who I spend my free time with and, geek conversations aside, I find the people at these conventions are always well read, thoughtful and intelligent. Sadly there are always a few bad apples, and the convention organisers work very hard to prevent issues so that everyone can have a good time, but generally the atmosphere is relaxed.

So if you’ve not been to one of these events before I would encourage you to do so, as you’ll probably meet a lot of like-minded people who share your passions, and you’ll come away with some new friends. If you see me at Eastercon at the weekend, come over and say hi and we’ll sort out once and for all which is better, Marvel or DC comics.

A Black Time

I was going to do a post about writing, about juggling different parts of being a writer and having a day job, but then three pretty big things happened in the last few weeks.

First, Leonard Nimoy died at the age of 83. I’m sure I don’t have to explain who he was to anyone. I was going to try and write something about how important he is  and was. I was going to try and write about how important Star Trek and the principles set out in the universe created by Gene Roddenberry are to me, but I’ve not been able to find the right words. In the end, Scott, my CBO podcast co-host and I, decided to talk about why we loved Trek, why it means so much to us and the impact the various shows had on us both growing up. I’m editing the podcast at the moment and it will be out on Sunday. We wanted to celebrate all of the awesome things about Star Trek and we highlighted some of our favourite moments, as well as how we were first introduced to Trek and what we think will happen to it in the future.

The second big thing that happened this week was a lot more personal. A friend passed away. It wasn’t expected, he wasn’t old and it has hit me like a real gut punch. I was dazed for a few days and felt very listless and just not with it. A few days later and I’m back in the real world, no longer out of phase with everyone else, but that will all change again I’m sure with the upcoming funeral next week.

The third thing that happened was this week Terry Pratchett died aged after a meagre 66 years. That’s not a good run at all. Given how long people are living these days, that’s nothing. I’m not the biggest fan of Pratchett’s work, but I am close to a number of people who are enormous fans of his. They own every single book and have met him a number of times. I’ve read a few of his books over the years and despite them not being my favourites I admired him enormously. He also essentially had his own genre of fiction in bookshops. You could write a satirical and amusing fantasy novel, but if you then tried to submit I doubt many publishers would take it on. In fact I doubt any would. That was his.

Putting his work with Alzheimer’s to one side and focusing purely on the creative, he was an incredibly sharp, witty and a very funny man. I believe he had a very strong moral code and this came through in every book. To an outsider at first glance his books were nothing more than wildly fantastic stories set on a flat world. But if anyone took even five minutes and scratched the surface they would see the many layers in each story. Over the years he developed a huge following of millions around the world because of who he was and his ability as a storyteller. I admired him for his wit, his creativity, his warmth, inclusiveness and sense of humour. Several people close to me have met him several times over the years and on each occasion he was friendly, funny and just a generally lovely man.

On one occasion I met David Gemmell at a talk and book signing before he passed away. I can’t remember where the story came from now, whether it was him telling the crowd or something Stan Nicholls recalled at a convention, but several years ago David and Terry were abroad somewhere (I think it was in Europe – maybe Vienna) on a book tour. Terry thought it was would be fun for them to get to their next appearance (a radio show interview), by themselves and what followed was an adventure that meant they arrived 50 minutes late to what should have been an hour’s interview on the radio. Despite my sketchy remembrance of the details the story by itself speaks to me of a man who enjoyed himself and enjoyed life.

They were remarkable men, doing remarkable things and both of them will be greatly missed.

February’s Podcasts

As mentioned last month, the Podcasting network I am involved with has had a face lift and a kick in the pants, and now we are back on track with a regular schedule and more new content.

Pete Rogers, my co-host on Bags of Action had some very nice things to say about then new website and new logo. You should be following his posts anyway so take a look at his website. This month’s episodes are:-

CBO – Episode 170 – In honour of our first guest on the new Crash Landing, our main feature is about our favourite detectives from film and television, plus all of the latest news from geek culture.

Bags of Action – Episode 17 – Big Trouble in Little China – the classic John Carpenter, Kurt Russell film about weird things going bump in Chinatown. It’s a film full of weird magic, karate kicking, cheesy one liners, weird CGI things, flying men, swords, guns, lots of punching and even the odd romantic moment!

Crash Landing – Episode 1 – The first of a new monthly podcast. Every episode we maroon a guest on our crashing spaceship. They have one hour to salvage humanity’s most important cultural artefacts before they crash land on the planet of their choice.