Alan Campbell's Blog, page 4

Free Electricity from your Phone Line

While researching the last book, I became interested in electronics and built a few simple projects in my spare time. This one in particular might be of use to folks out there, and is worth mentioning.

One of our relations lives off the grid and I've been helping him install a solar PV panel system. It occurred to me that while he had no grid electricity, he does have a phone line. Phone lines carry their own power. It's not much, about 1 watt, but that's better than nothing. I measured 48volts at about 20 milliamps. It's AC, so you need to rectify it. The following simple circuit works well enough.

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You'll need to buy a phone extension cable. I got mine for £1. Then strip the wires. Black and Yellow carry the power, so connect those to your bridge rectifier, and you're set. 48V is good for 12 LEDS, which use about 3.8V each. The larger the resistor, the less light you'll get from your LEDs. But if your resistor is too small, the phone won't work. So you'll need to strike a balance. A 1k resistor worked for me. The phone sounds odd, but it still works.

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My picture here really doesn't do the light justice. It's easily bright enough to read by, and dimly lights up the whole room at night.

But this isn't a very efficient circuit. LEDs don't need a constant supply. You can use a transistor to quickly pulse the DC current and get more light output for less amps. I think the next step would be to build a little transformer to step the 48v AC down to say 5 or 6 volts and then split the current between a series of mini Tesla coil circuits and use those to power CFLs wirelessly. I'll see how that goes, but in the meantime, I have a cool wee light - for free.

As far as I know, there's no law against using the power from your phone line.

Lye Street Epub Version

I've followed all the advice (thanks guys) and used Calibre to produce an ePub Version of LYE STREET. I've also uploaded the novella to Smashwords, which itself creates an ePub version, among other formats. This will take a couple of days to come through, and it seems easiest just to sell it through them. I have to trust that their "Meatgrinder" software produces properly formatted versions, but I've followed their formatting procedure to the letter, so it should be fine.

I have tried to link this eBook to my others on Amazon, but it hasn't worked at all. So right now, Amazon customers can't find the novella from my page on their website.

Ok, now to send out those review copies.

LYE STREET is now available

Ok, so the Kindle version of my novella is now up on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lye-Street/dp/B004YEXUMI/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304082334&sr=1-3

The Amazon website seems to have resized the cover, thereby losing part of the border, which I will try to rectify as soon as I can. If anyone would like a free review copy, please email me at alanmcampbell at gmail dot com, and I'll send you one.

I'll now see about creating an ePub version.

Thanks to everyone who offered advice and help. And congratulations to Will and Kate!

LYE STREET - Ready to go.

Thanks to some advice from a friend, I have finally managed to get the Table of Contents working. In the end, it involved going through the HTML file and manually adding tags. Still, it seems to work well in the Kindle Previewer. The .prc file opens on the Prologue rather than the Copyright or Acknowledgement pages, but that's probably a good thing, since most people skip those anyway.

I have gone through the text three times now since the original publication, and I hope I've caught any typos. If anyone spots one, please let me know and I'll correct it (provided Amazon lets me do that).

Stefan, I'll take your advice and mention that this novella includes an excerpt from SEA OF GHOSTS. Aahzmandius, thanks for the tips. I'll look into using Sigil and Calibre for producing an ePub version, although this might take me a bit longer. I'll get the Kindle version up first.

All that remains now is to upload it and publish it, which is rather nerve-wracking I have to say. Normally there's a publisher between the work and the readers.

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Update: I've uploaded it to Amazon now, so it should appear in 24 hours.

LYE STREET - An Experiment in Self Publishing

A lot of people have asked me how they can get hold of my novella, LYE STREET, which was published by Subterranean Press as a limited edition. The simple answer is, unfortunately, that you can't unless you spend a lot of money. Copies of this little book are now selling for crazy prices.

So I had a thought. I'm going to try to publish LYE STREET myself, as an eBook through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. I think it will be an interesting project. It will allow those fans who have eBook readers to get hold of the novella, and because LYE STREET is a prequel to the DEEPGATE CODEX it might also be a way to promote my other books.

The Amazon Kindle publishing process is a tad confusing, especially regarding formatting. So far, I've used an application called "Mobipocket Creator" to, well, create the required format from the original .doc file. After a few hours fiddling with paragraph spacing, it now looks fine in the Kindle Previewer. I've also edited the original manuscript to make things a little clearer for those who are new to the DEEPGATE CODEX. This version of LYE STREET will be the "writer's cut", if you like. In addition to this, I've included an excerpt from SEA OF GHOSTS, although this worries me slightly since it adds 30 pages to a 130 page novella. I'm concerned that readers might think LYE STREET is longer than it actually is. Perhaps I can clarify this in the blurb? Or should the excerpt be shorter? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

The cover was designed by Ian McQue. We opted for something simple, a design we hope will stand out as a thumbnail. I also wanted to make it clear that this is a novella rather than a novel. It looks like this:

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Lacking a Kindle myself, I'm not sure if all eBooks require a Table of Contents. Can anyone help me out there? Should I put a Table of Contents at the beginning? It seems odd to include this for a single work of fiction, but then it might make it easier to navigate. I found an article which explains how it is possible to accomplish such a thing in MICROSOFT WORD, but I don't use MICROSOFT WORD, so it's left me baffled.

Then there's the issue of price. Amazon gives a 70% royalty rate for eBooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99, and 35% for those priced lower. $2.99 seems too high to me, so I think I'll opt for an initial price of $0.99, and see how that goes. I'm keen to see how pricing affects sales.

Anyhoo, I expect to publish the book in the next couple of days, so I'll keep you updated.

HBO's Adaption of Game of Thrones, and that NYT Review

Critic Ginia Bellafante, who writes in the New York Times, has angered fantasy fans by suggesting that HBO's adaptation of George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones is 'is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population's other half.'

She explains:

'The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise.'

In other words: Action and gore for the boys, some sex for the girls. Stereotypes aside, this strikes me as odd, given that there has been – to date – far more bonking than bloodshed in Game of Thrones. Using this warped logic, it would make more sense to describe the series as 'girl fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population's other half.' However, both these statements are naïve and condescending. Game of Thrones is so much better than that.

The overall tone of Bellafante's review is one of vaguely sneering condescension:

'The series claims as one of its executive producers the screenwriter and best-selling author David Benioff,' she writes, "whose excellent script for Spike Lee's post-9/11 meditation, "25th Hour," did not suggest a writer with Middle Earth proclivities.'

'If you are not averse to the Dungeons & Dragons aesthetic, the series might be worth the effort.'

Such comments suggest different reasons for this critic's dismissal of HBO's production. What she is really saying is that no woman alive would watch this because it is fantasy. But what, exactly, is wrong with fantasy? Ms Bellafante explains:

'Since the arrival of "The Sopranos" more than a decade ago, HBO has distinguished itself as a corporate auteur committed, when it is as its most intelligent and dazzling, to examining the way that institutions are made and how they are upheld or fall apart: the Mafia, municipal government ("The Wire"), the Roman empire ("Rome"), the American West ("Deadwood"), religious fundamentalism ("Big Love").
When the network ventures away from its instincts for real-world sociology, as it has with the vampire saga "True Blood," things start to feel cheap, and we feel as though we have been placed in the hands of cheaters. "Game of Thrones" serves up a lot of confusion in the name of no larger or really relevant idea beyond sketchily fleshed-out notions that war is ugly, families are insidious and power is hot.'

Since all institutions are made, and then are either upheld or fall apart, then Ms Bellafante is saying that HBO is at its most intelligent and dazzling when it examines institutions. But only real world institutions. When those institutions are fictional, then it's somehow "cheating".

This same attitude explains why so many publishers declined Orwell's Animal Farm. Talking pigs? Getoutahere! It seems to me that there are many people (often those with leanings towards literary fiction) who dislike, or have trouble accepting, fantasy because rather than simply holding up a mirror to human conflict, fantasy takes that conflict and applies to it a process of abstraction, whereupon the real world is often viewed through the lenses of metaphor, analogy, allegory or satire. These are lenses of the imagination. Some people have no trouble peering through them, but others struggle. They see no worth in examining human conflict or human institutions if they are presented outside recognisable real-world parameters. What's the point of imagining anything beyond our own experience? Dragons?Fairies? Minotaurs? Gods? Giant Beanstalks? Talking wolves and magical glass slippers? Getoutahere! Such foolishness, they seem to snigger, has no real value. I disagree, of course. But then, I, like all fantasy readers, have this odd ability to suspend disbelief, to let myself wander happily through places that I know don't exist. It's one of the benefits of having an imagination.

Game of Thrones, like all stories, is about people. It's about conflict, power and love. It does have dragons in it. And it is superb.

And the Best Scary Book Cover From the 1960s Goes to...

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I love these pulpy horror and fantasy covers from the 60s and 70s. This one is a classic. I actually bought this book on the strength of that cover. Genius.

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Teleporting Breakthrough as Scientists Transport Light Particles.

Scientist Noriyuki Lee and his team at the University of Tokyo have teleported the information associated with a packet of light, as Clara Moskowitz from livescience.com explains:

"Lee and his team accomplished this by linking a packet of light to one half of a pair of entangled particles. They then destroyed the light and the particle it was linked to, leaving only the lone particle of the entangled pair. The remaining particle retains the link with its entangled partner, though, including information about the light, which enabled the researchers to rebuild the light in the exact configuration at the other location."

Read the full article here.

I mention this because quantum entanglement is, of course, one of those odd quirks of nature utilised by the Unmer in SEA OF GHOSTS – as several readers have been quick to notice and point out to me. One school of Unmer sorcery involves the actual transference of matter, but more commonly the information associated with matter (feelings, perceptions), across gulfs of space.

One of the things I love about writing fantasy is that you can bend reality to suit the world you want to create. In the novel, a treasure hunter postulates that Unmer sorcery is only possible if Space itself is redefined. As a writer, it's easy enough for me to do exactly that if the story requires it. So, in SEA OF GHOSTS Space becomes a measure of both the distance and the difference over time between any two particles (Space is waveform), which is handy because it means that all sorts of Unmer magic is suddenly possible – if there's no difference between two things, there is no space between them (giving us quantum entanglement, the transmission of perceptions between people, and perhaps even the summoning of demons or other god-like creatures from strange realms). Very handy indeed.

However, in the book I have tried my very best to ground this definition, so that it isn't so far removed from what we as readers actually know about our own cosmos. Otherwise it simply becomes too implausible. It therefore seemed important to me that the character who comes up with this theory uses it to understand not just sorcery, but the workings of his own universe (and by association, our universe). So readers will, I hope, recognise his references to black holes, cosmic inflation, the theories of Sir Roger Penrose, the formation of singularities, and so on. The latter was a particularly useful aspect of this character's definition, because it means that the heat death of the universe forms a singularity, since when isolated bits of matter stop fluctuating they suddenly occupy the same space. Kaboom. Hopefully, all of this is enough to make the reader think, Ok, I can just about buy that.

It is all pre-Einstein, of course, which – thankfully – allows me to get away with a lot. Gravitons? What Gravitons? X and Y bosons? Sorry, buddy, I'm writing Fantasy, not SF. Physics only has to act as the springboard from which we jump into the pool – which is all the more important, it seems to me, if that pool contains dragons.

GRRM on Fantasy Series and Genre Boundaries.

There's a nice interview with George R. R. Martin in the Guardian today (oh, how I wish the interviewer had been given more space; I could happily listen to Mr Martin all day).

Oddly enough, someone mentions my name in the comments section (it's weird when that happens, but that's beside the point).

George R. R. Martin is, in my opinion, one of the three pillars of contemporary fantasy. The other two are Steven Erikson and Stephen Donaldson. I had the opportunity to tell Steven Erikson this myself, when I met him at a conference in Poland last year. (I'm a huge fan.) The series these three writers have created – the Malazan, Thomas Covenant, and Fire and Ice tales – are some of the best I've ever read. As good as Tolkien or your money back.

It's interesting to read GRRM's approach to writing such a long series. He describes writers as either architects or gardeners – those who have everything planned beforehand, and those who know what they've planted, but aren't entirely sure how it's going to turn out. GRRM explains that he's a gardener – which, given the complexity and quality of the work he produces, is an enormous relief to those of us who write in a similar "let the story go where the characters take it" way. It shows what is possible.

It's also heartening to discover that a writer who has been at this game so long has witnessed a change in the fantasy genre. The snobbery surrounding it is lifting. Genre boundaries continue to be broken down – something that GRRM himself continues to strive for (music to my ears, of course). Great writers like Tolkien have carved such deep grooves into the landscape of fantasy, that it seems to me to be all too easy to slide into them and simply follow their well-worn courses. After all, lesser imitations can often flourish within such channels, provided they are competently written.

But is that really fantasy?

George R. R. Martin once said, "The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams."

I've said before that writing fantasy is akin to dreaming, which is why I dislike genre boundaries. Dreams are, after all, unrestrained. Fantasy has to startle and amaze, and so I try my very best to write about people and places that startle and amaze me. That's really all I can do. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any point in me writing fantasy at all.

Kindle Post

I was asked to contribute to Amazon's Kindle Blog, and I see they've put it up. As usual, I wish I could edit it, but it's too late now.

http://www.kindlepost.co.uk/

But I would also like to direct readers to a post by Justin Cartwright below it, where he talks about being a realist, and thus unable and unwilling to write in a genre such as fantasy. He doesn't decry the genre, but merely states that his writing needs a tangible starting point - a place he knows, people he understands, language he is familiar with - and is therefore ill-suited to the genre.

As a fantasist myself, I find this extremely interesting, not least because I feel exactly the same way about my writing as Justin Cartwright does about his. I couldn't write fantasy without those very same tangible starting points. However, writing fantasy - at least in my opinion - involves taking real world experiences and then putting them through a process which is akin to dreaming. You end up with a story that has hoovered up the everyday world and produced a series of metaphors that you, as the writer, recognise because they are personal to you. All you've done is added some colour. It's a process that, for reasons I can't explain, greatly appeals to me (as it must do to other writers in my genre).

So it's got me thinking again about why writers are drawn to certain genres, and what really lies behind the choices we make. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to one day sit down with a realist (in the literary sense) and discuss this.