Adrian Faulkner's Blog, page 134

Read All About It!

Just a quick note to say that there’s an article on myself and The Four Realms inside this week’s Bracknell News, including a suitably dodgy picture of said author. If you live in the area, be sure to pick up a copy!

Readers’ Mailbag #2

It’s been a couple of months since the last mailbag so I thought I’d run another bunch of reader questions about The Four Realms. Please note that these DO contain spoilers for the book so if you are still reading you might want to bookmark this blog post until after you’ve completed it. If you’ve got a question about the book, send it in and I’ll answer it next time!

If Hell won the war vs. Heaven what did they win?

To break away and create Hell. Some say this was an excuse for some to break f...

Getting Started in Terraria

I’m a huge fan of the PC game, Terraria. Whilst I also own it for Xbox and iPhone, I don’t think it plays as well on those systems as it’s primarily a mouse and keyboard game. However, I’ve seen a lot of friends, who I think should love the game, struggle to get into it. Everyone’s tastes are different, of course, but I suspect that their frustration is from not fully understanding the game.

The easiest way to think of Terraria is as a 2D version of minecraft. You mine resources, make things a...

Gypsum Gyratory

Not everyone can get up at 4am on a Sunday morning. I’ve learnt that it takes a special kind of willpower to do so, especially when the prospect is a day of aching feet and miles and miles of walking. Still the fact that I couldn’t go geocaching for so long has resulted in a sense of freedom when I now do. And the fact I can walk so far after all that has happened is a reminder of how hard I’ve had to work to get the leg back to a stage where I can do it. Like everything in life, sometimes yo...

New Fantasy Faction Article: Using NaNoWriMo As Your Writing R&D Department

My latest article for Fantasy Faction has gone live today and this month it should be of interest for all of you thinking about taking part in NaNoWriMo this year. I have five ways you can switch up your NaNoWriMo challenge and use it to develop and stretch your writing skills. Be sure to check it out!

Reader Art: Joseph

I’m not very good at drawing so I’m always a little bit in awe of those who can. I love a really cool piece of art, and love it even more when it’s based off of one of my stories. Mark Phillips sent in this piece of art he drew of Joseph from the Four Realms. Love it! If any more readers have art based on the book they’d like to share then I’ll gladly feature it here.

On Negativity

One of the most helpful things you can do as a writer (or in life) is learn to identify the difference between negative criticism and negativity. It’s easy to get the two mixed up at times and I suspect that the line between the two varies slightly from person to person.

But in life you will meet people both critical and negative. You want to surround yourself with critical people – people who will say “I love ya, but you’re wrong”. They are honest, warm and utterly, utterly brutal.

Negative pe...

Smashing Another Personal Best

So what do you do when you’ve done the impossible? Well you raise the bar up and challenge yourself again.

Following my 133 solo cache find day last month I’ve been feeling pretty proud of myself. I realise that personal challenges are just that and may mean absolutely nothing to anyone else, but for me to come back from the leg injury and set a new solo best felt like a major victory.

But I’m still getting stronger and felt like it was time to take on another challenge. I’m happy to let my sol...

Tabletop Gaming Day

A lot of things change in twenty years of friendship. We get older and hair goes grey and starts receding. We move away, some of us get married and settle down to have kids. It’s no wonder that our get-togethers have also changed over the years

There was a time in our early twenties when we’d meet in pubs nearly every weekend, our lives a cacophony of drunkenness and next morning regret. Then as we reached our late twenties we’d meet a couple of times a year for our shared love of film. Who co...

The Final Process Challenge

So over the last couple of months I have been making some serious changes to my writing process. Whilst the old process certainly worked (it turned out a decent novel, didn’t it?) I realised that it wasn’t very efficient for what I want to achieve in the next couple of years. I was behind already because of leg-geddon and it appeared my old process wasn’t very resilient when things came along that threw spanners in the works.

When you are writing for yourself then taking years to craft a novel...