Anne Lyle's Blog, page 8

I&E follow-along: musical chairs

This week I made a couple of changes to my new project. Firstly, I realised that the plot I’d been working on would be better if it included a character I’d intended to save until the sequel, which means that I need to swap the two stories around in the timeline and work on the other one first. This is really just a continuation of the process I started a few weeks back, of working out how my characters’ arcs intersect with wider events in the world. It’s really no different from the way you shuffle scene cards around to find the best order—only on a rather larger scale.

A smaller, but significant, change was that I realised I wasn’t terribly enamoured with the name of the principal city and much preferred that of a neighbouring one. So I’ve renamed the neighbour and transferred its name to the main city. Trivial stuff in some ways, but I’m looking ahead to the time when I have to name this series officially, and since the city plays such a major role in events, I want the option of using its name as part of that.

Of course with my usual paranoia I’ve googled it and only found a couple of obscure mentions, so I reckon I’m good to go! Now to knuckle down to plotting this other book…

 

Guest post: Michael J. Martinez

This week I’m very pleased to welcome Mike Martinez to my blog. His debut novel The Daedalus Incident is an intriguing blend of history, fantasy and science fiction, in which a near-future exploration of Mars is interrupted by the arrival of a seemingly impossible vessel: an 18th-century sailing ship with the ability to travel between planets…

On playing with, and occasionally breaking, history

As my gracious host well knows, historical fantasy is rich with storytelling possibilities. And to some, it may seem…easier, perhaps, than creating an entirely new fantasy world from whole cloth.

The British naval hero Horatio Nelson, for example, is the subject of several exhaustive biographies detailing his life and times. When I wrote The Gravity of the Affair, a novella in which he was the main character, I had much to draw from – even the other characters’ names are all taken from history itself.

But consider that my Nelson exists in a universe in which sailing ships ply the Void between planets, thanks to the mystic science of Alchemy. What sort of change might this bring to Nelson’s life? Would he find the views ‘round Jupiter humbling? Or would his already considerable pride wax even stronger? And in such an “alchemy-punk” setting, will he lose his arm at Santa Cruz de Tenerife? Or his life at Trafalgar?

That’s the real challenge of historical fantasy. What if Nelson survived Trafalgar? Where would ego and ambition take him? Or, what if he lost at Trafalgar? What if Napoleon managed to cross the English Channel with an invasion force, backed by dangerous alchemical power? Or, what if Napoleon instead managed to invade Moscow after all?

I admit, I didn’t really alter the flow of history too much in The Daedalus Incident, my debut novel. A few historical figures are out of pocket for a bit, yes, but this adventure – while encapsulating world-shaking events – does not change the timeline too much. Well, aside from the presence of Alchemy, sailing ships in space, habitable planets in our Solar System, a race of lizard-people on Venus and some very strange aliens living on the ring-cities of Saturn.

Otherwise, you know, history rolls on. George III is still King, and still mad. The British are dealing with the insurrectionists calling themselves the United States (of Ganymede). The French still either annoy or ally, depending on the day.

I’m currently at work on the sequel to Daedalus, The Enceladus Crisis, and I’m planning to alter the historical timeline in small ways…at first. I kind of envision this work as planting the seeds of something far larger, something that may rattle the foundations of history as we know it by the time I finish the third book in the Daedalus series.

Yes, I’m going to “break” history. And that, I think, is harder than writing a completely fictional world.

Cause and effect is part of everyday life, and there’s a logic to it that we expect. The same goes with historical fiction. If Napoleon invades England, for example, there are a million questions that follow, all of which need answering. (And I’m not saying any of this is in the cards for my upcoming books, by the way, so no worries about spoilers!)

So if Old Boney invades, does he take London? Does he capture the King? Where would English forces retreat, Wales or Scotland? What of the Stuart pretenders? The Irish? Does this mean Bonaparte won’t march on Moscow and lose his troops in the snow?

One question begs six more, and each of those fuel more questions. One can’t get bogged down too badly, but I’ve found that the answers need to be there several iterations out. And at some point, I may look at my setting and realize I’ve passed the point of no return – that not only did I deviate from history, but that there’s no logical, plausible way for the setting to get back on track, as it were. It will have become a whole new world indeed.

Author Bio

Michael J. Martinez spent nearly two decades as a journalist and communicator telling other people’s stories before trying a few of his own. So far, it’s worked out well: He’s the author of The Daedalus Incident, out this month, and The Enceladus Crisis, coming next spring. He lives in the greater New York City area with his amazing wife and wonderful kid, and is feeling pretty lucky these days. He blogs at www.michaeljmartinez.net.

I&E follow-along: starting in the right place

So, I’m back on task after my time off to deal with copyedits for The Prince of Lies and attend a convention, which means I need to get on with this outline!

Taking a break from the outlining process has allowed me to look at it with fresh eyes—and I’ve realised that I’m not starting the story in the right place. That is, I’m trying to start my plot at the wrong part of my protagonist’s character arc, with the result that he ends up taking a back seat in some crucial events because he’s not ready for them. My solution has been to move the beginning of the external plot arc further along in his timeline, to a point where he’s badass enough to be the star of the show

My Muse is clearly happy with this change, as she’s practically dictating the opening scenes to me whenever I have a spare moment to think about the story. On the frustrating side, I’m going to have to throw away big chunks of my initial outline—but better that than throwing out 30,000 words of prose!

Convention report: Nine Worlds Geekfest

Nine Worlds Geekfest is a brand-new convention that was launched earlier this year via Kickstarter. I was one of those sponsors, because a) it looked like a cool event and b) I knew I wasn’t going to be able to attend WorldCon in Texas, which left my summer looking rather empty. I’m very glad I did so, as it turned out to be a fantastic weekend.

The convention was based at the Renaissance Hotel in Heathrow, London, just across the road from the Radisson Edwardian, where Eastercon 2012 was held. In fact the Radisson served as an overflow hotel and gaming venue, and I’ve heard that next year’s Nine Worlds will be held there, as the staff are more accustomed to hosting genre conventions. The con hotel this year was fine as regards accommodation, but the bar was expensive and there was no cheap convention bar. The main hotel bar ran out of cider early on Saturday evening, the marginally less expensive cash bar had no cider at all, and the choice of whiskies was not great either, which made for an expensive drinking experience.

Apart from minor hotel niggles, however, the convention itself was very well organised, with plenty of iced water laid out on tables to ensure everyone stayed hydrated in the hot weather, and lots of helpful volunteers manning the desks and directing con-goers to the correct rooms. In fact I heard several people comment that it felt more like an established convention than a start-up (perhaps because the organisers had wisely picked the brains of past Eastercon committees).

Nine Worlds’ intention was to create a multimedia, multi-genre convention that was welcoming to all, and in that they succeeded amazingly well. There were loads of cosplayers, from very professional looking “Aliens” soldiers and their pet xenomorph (see my sadly rather blurry photo, taken with my phone) to a lovely homemade Princess Mononoke, to various Game of Thrones characters including Danaerys, Melissandre and Robb Stark (sporting a wolf’s head a lot of the time). There were also plenty of con-goers rocking a variety of trans/gender-bending outfits, including cross-dressing cosplayers such as the female Londo Mollari whose outfit I complemented. All in all the atmosphere was very relaxed and friendly – the other comment I heard a lot was that Nine Worlds was what the Sci-Fi Weekender ought to be, i.e. a big geeky get-together without the tacky trappings imposed by a commercial events company (or the horrible accommodation in freezing cold North Wales!).

The programme was massive, covering media franchises from Doctor Who to Game of Thrones; video and tabletop games; various fandoms such as steampunk and bronies; and of course a books track that included signings, readings and literary panels. My own signing was rather quiet, as one might expect on the first night of a convention, but the panel – “Beyond Westeros” – was well attended and went very smoothly. The programme sensibly included 15-minute breaks between events to give everyone time to get around the large site (and go to the loo!), so it never felt rushed and manic as can happen at some conventions.

On Saturday afternoon I had a minor emergency – one of the screws that hold together my reading glasses had come loose. Fortunately the ladies of Asgard (the tech room) soon sorted that out, though without the aid of either gaffer tape or Thor’s hammer

This was fortunate, since I’m very long-sighted in my contact lenses alone, so without my reading glasses I would have struggled at Saturday evening’s “Once More With Feeling” sing-along (since I don’t know all the lyrics by heart, unlike some of the attendees!). This session turned out to be not at all what I expected – instead of showing the episode, they had a pianist with the full sheet music, and after the main sing-along he took requests (and I believe came back on Sunday with his sheet music for Doctor Horrible, which he had left at home). Again, it made the con really feel like grass-roots fandom instead of a commercial, manufactured event.

No convention is complete without a trip to the dealers’ room, and since I’m currently replete with books, t-shirts and jewellery I decided to go for something a bit different. I spotted this bad boy on a leather-crafter’s stall and realised that not only did it match my outfit (and I was at a con that positively encouraged dressing up!) but it was almost an exact match for the main gauche that Mal wields on the cover of The Alchemist of Souls. How could I resist?

The highlight of the convention for me was the workshop with Miltos Yerolemou, better known as Syrio Forel in Game of Thrones. I saw Miltos’ demonstration at Eastercon 2012, so when tickets went on sale for a hands-on workshop with him, I was one of the first to sign up!

Since the session was marketed as “Water Dancing with Syrio Forel”, I was expecting a workshop in the fighting style used on Game of Thrones, or perhaps the style he demonstrated at Eastercon, where the aim is to make the fight look good without ever being in danger of hitting your opponent. Yeah, no. It turned out to be a session on how to fight realistically with bastard swords!

After a brief warmup with our souvenir daggers (see below), we paired up and “fought” with pointed fingers in the place of swords. The idea was to come up with our own short choreographed sequence by exploring our respective strengths and weaknesses relative to our partner. For example I’m rather short, so it makes sense for me to go for the legs of a tall opponent and watch out for attacks to the head! The session also confirmed something I had begun to suspect in my beginners’ fencing class – I can parry and block pretty well on pure instinct, but I’m not so strong in attack.

When we had our routine worked out, each pair came out in front of the group in turn, and Miltos gave us a pair of wooden bastard swords and helped us turn our “draft” moves into a realistic yet safe fight sequence. This was great fun – well, except for when my partner (an experienced fencer, and thus accustomed to moving fast and light in heavy padding, not slow and careful and unarmoured!) hit my hand and gave me a bruised knuckle!

The workshop ended with Miltos signing our souvenir daggers. Mine says “Anne – Fear cuts deeper than swords”, which is of course one of Syrio’s lines

By now it was late Sunday morning, so I went to one more talk (on Doctor Who villains) and then decided to call it a weekend before my energy ran out altogether. A hard decision – there were still some interesting panels to go to – but I knew there were engineering works on the Tube lines back into London, and I didn’t want to wear myself out completely.

Nine Worlds will be back next year over the same weekend, 8-10 August 2014, which puts it the weekend before WorldCon. I’m sorely tempted to sign up, but we’ll have to see if my energy levels are up to two big conventions on successive weekends. I guess this October’s BristolCon/World Fantasy double whammy will be a useful dry run!

Back to school: fountain pens

I know a bunch of my writing friends share my passion for lovely pens and notebooks, so I thought I’d share one of my collections with you…

When I was 11 I was admitted to the local girls’ grammar school, a somewhat old-fashioned establishment with pretensions of grandeur. It was the first school I’d been to that had a uniform, and to go with the blazer and tie (yes, we wore ties, like blokes!) my parents bought me a leather satchel and a fountain pen. On our first day we were sternly instructed that all homework must be written in fountain pen; the lowly biro was for rough work only. Sadly I don’t have that original fountain pen any more (though I do still have the satchel), but my love of this very traditional writing implement has only grown with the years.

I’ve recently taken to doing the bulk of my note-taking in fountain pen (in an assortment of Moleskines), so my collection has grown rapidly of late! It may be small compared to some people’s, but most of them are in regular use. So, without further ado—the pen porn!

These are the core of my collection, and span my entire life. From top to bottom they are:

Conway Stewart 28 (late 1950s/early 1960s)
Parker 45 Flighter (late 1980s, I think)
Parker Sonnet (2000s)
Parker IM (2013)

The Conway Stewart was bought online a few years ago, in memory of a similar pen that I had as a teenager (I wasn’t a teenager when the pen was made—I’m not that old!). Sadly the nib is a bit rough so it’s not good for actually writing with, but maybe one day I’ll splash out on a vintage pen with a mint condition nib

The 45 is my everyday workhorse of a pen; I think it’s the same model that I used at school, though my current one is a replacement. It’s a nice weight for my rather small hands, and the nib is fine enough to write neatly in a Moleskine without being scratchy. The other two Parkers are backups/alternatives—I like to have a choice of ink colours to hand for variety!

Lovely as all these pens are, though, they’re a bit big to slip into a handbag or pocket, not to mention expensive to replace, so I’ve also been trying out some mini fountain pens:

These are:

2 x Pilot Petite 1 (one black, one blue-black)
Pilot Birdie
OHTO Tasche

The latter is particularly clever—you can see in the photo how the cap fits onto the last centimetre or so of the barrel, giving a full-sized pen when in use! I’ve started carrying it around at conventions for signing books, though I haven’t had a chance to use it yet. A pity, as I’ve equipped it with Diamine cartridges in a lovely blue-green colour. Hopefully I’ll have a few opportunities at Nine Worlds next weekend!

The Pilot Birdie looks nice but the nib isn’t as smooth as the Tasche, so I don’t use it much. The Pilot Petites, on the other hand, are great: surprisingly smooth for a cheap “disposable” fountain pen (you can get cartridges for them, so they’re not one-use). They also come in a whole bunch of different colours, which is again great for creativity.

If you’re interested in any of these miniature pens, I bought them from Tiger Pens (the Birdie is discontinued, but you should be able to get the others).

So there you have it: my pen fetish. Do you have a favourite pen you have to use for writing?

Copyedits, procrastination and paranoia

This week’s post is a bit late, mostly because I seem to be in serious procrastination mode at the moment, at least when it comes to anything writing-related. Heck, I even hoovered under the bed on Saturday rather than knuckle down to it…

The thing is, I’ve had the copyedits back on The Prince of Lies, which I have to hand in by 4th August. Not only is this the last chance I get to fix any problems with the book before it goes to press, it’s also the last in the trilogy and hence the last time ever that I’ll work on Mal’s story—the story that I’ve obsessed over for the past eight years. Eight years! A thing like that is hard to say goodbye to, and I think that’s why I’m finding it so hard to get started.

Well, that and the fact that this was the hardest book for me to plot, so I’ve been a little scared that a re-read would reveal flaws that I don’t have time to fix. That’s where the paranoia comes in. Have I really done my best job on this book? Does it wrap up the trilogy in a satisfactory manner? What if fans of the first two hate it?

Yesterday I decided I just needed to trust my editor when he says the story is fine, and focus on fine-tuning the prose, so I made a PDF of the Word file (Angry Robot has a paper-free production workflow – no hard-copy galleys or page proofs) and put it onto my iPad for easier reading. I got two chapters done in my lunch break yesterday, so if I can fit in a few more chunks during the week I should be able to get the whole thing done before the deadline.

I’m not making any drastic changes: just a word or phrase here and there, the occasional line of dialogue amended to be more in-character. Things I would have caught on the previous draft if I hadn’t run up against earlier deadlines. After that there’ll be the dread moment of pressing “Send”, when the book leaves my hands for the last time and goes off for layout and printing. I’m excited at the prospect of sharing the completion of this story with you all and yeah, just a little bit scared!

I&E follow-along: brief hiatus

This week I’ve been anxiously awaiting the copyedits for The Prince of Lies, so I haven’t been able to focus on I&E. The file arrived mid-week, so this weekend (and possibly the following week) will be dedicated to working on that, which means that this follow-along may be on hiatus for a little while. Them’s the breaks when you’re a pro writer – the paying gigs have to come first!

Book Review: Promise of Blood, by Brian McClellan

“The Age of Kings is dead…and I have killed it.”

This awesome tagline adorns the cover of Brian McClellan’s  debut novel Promise of Blood, the first volume of the Powder Mage Trilogy, and aptly sums up the political theme of the book: revolution.

After a few false starts with novels I struggled to get into, I’ve taken to downloading free samples from kobobooks.com with the intention of only buying the book if sufficiently hooked. Promise of Blood passed this test with flying colours and I quickly bought the ePub so that I could continue reading.

Promise of Blood follows three main characters: Field Marshall Tamas (portrayed on the cover); his estranged son Taniel, who is a powder mage; and Adamat, a retired policeman hired by Tamas as a private investigator. (A fourth point-of-view character, a young woman named Nila, makes a few brief but significant appearances.) Having discovered that their bankrupt king is about to sign a treaty with a neighbouring country that would effectively make them a vassal state, Tamas engineers a bloody coup and executes not only the royal family but most of the nobility. Naturally this does not go down well, and the two nations are soon at war—but there are far greater dangers waiting in the wings…

Whilst there are many enjoyable aspects of the book, the most interesting is its magic system. There are three types of magic-user in this world: the Knacked, who have a single magical talent (e.g. a perfect memory, or not needing to sleep); the Privileged, who are somewhat conventional sorcerors, with telekinetic-like powers over the elements; and the Marked, also known as powder mages. These latter have a specific affinity with gunpowder, being able to ignite it with a thought, use it to propel bullets without the need of a gun, and control the trajectory of ammunition, even altering its path mid-flight. They also use it as a drug, snorting or swallowing it to enhance their senses and give themselves superhuman endurance—and like a drug, it can be addictive. Each powder mage has a particular talent, which is where Taniel gets his nickname “Two-Shot”: he can direct two bullets simultaneously, on different trajectories.

On the subject of names, one slightly odd aspect of the worldbuilding is that apart from one character (and excluding Taniel’s nickname), everyone is referred to by a single name throughout: Tamas, Adamat, Olem, etc. Whilst this simplifies matters for the reader, it does feel oddly artificial. Since one character definitely has both a first name (Ricard) and a surname (Tumblar), this seems likely to be true of the majority, especially in a densely populated society as is described here, and yet no-one ever addresses Taniel as “Captain Tamas” (assuming that his father is always referred to by his surname). It’s a very minor niggle, though!

What bothered me more about the book was that I found the prose somewhat uneven, particularly in the first half. The narrative is wooden at times, especially character descriptions, which are often a bland list of clothing and hair colour/style that convey little about the person being described. On the other hand the dialogue is pretty solid; an early exchange between Tamas and his new bodyguard made me chuckle out loud and reminded me a great deal of the banter between Tyrion and Bronn in Game of Thrones.

Speaking of which, I did feel the shadow of GRRM looming over this book just a little. There’s the border guarded by the Mountainwatch, a bunch of ruffians, drunkards and other ne’er-do-wells; a political council featuring not only the obligatory senior priest with a weakness for pretty girls but also a sly eunuch with shady connections; and the overall plot arc of a group of kingdoms (here nine, rather than the seven of Westeros) collapsing into war. However these are minor resemblances that don’t detract from the overall originality of the setting, and despite the violence necessary to the theme, the tone is far less grim and depressing than A Song of Ice and Fire.

The book also benefits from a number of strong female characters, both protagonists and antagonists. Although this is a fairly historically-flavoured setting, there are women in the army (at least amongst the powder mages) and women with political influence, and even those without high status are given agency. On the protagonists’ side there’s the aforementioned Nila, who is a plucky servant girl caught up in the political machinations; and most notably the enigmatic Ka-Poel, who reminds me a little of Irisa from the TV show Defiance, being a red-headed foreigner rescued by our hero who turns out to be more powerful than he ever imagined. The only female character whom I felt was sold short was Taniel’s fellow powder mage and former fiancée, Vlora, who got very little stage-time and whose backstory made her seem rather naive and unsympathetic. Interestingly, McClellan has published a short story, “The Girl of Hrusch Avenue”, about Vlora’s earlier life, so that is now high on my TBR pile!

In summary: if you enjoy your fantasy with a political bent and are looking for something a bit different from the usual medieval setting, check this book out. I’m certainly looking forward to the sequel, The Crimson Campaign, which is due out next February.

I&E follow-along: Outlining

This week I’ve been off work, so despite the distractions of a convention I’ve managed to get most of HtTS Lesson 8′s exercises done. I still have a few gaps in my character planning, but I have the core of their story motivation so that will do for now. The rest required little or no work, since I’d already done the wordbuilding during my earlier brainstorming phase.

So, next up is the outline! I’ve decided I want to try outlining this book in detail, just to find out if I can make the method work for me—I have plenty of time this summer for experimenting. The idea is that if I can do it this way, I can storm through the first draft this autumn in a couple of months and end up with something that doesn’t need to be rewritten from scratch before I dare show it to my agent!

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I don’t jump straight to scene cards these days. Instead I take a leaf out of Rachel Aaron‘s book and write my initial outline as a single continuous document. Basically it’s a synopsis, but written before the draft instead of after—and later in the process I can use it as a foundation for the actual synopsis I send to my agent. Right now it stands at a little over 1300 words, but I dare say it’ll be a lot longer than that before I’m done!

I put it together as follows:

First I wrote a paragraph that briefly describes the setting: the island and empire of the series’ working title. After that I started writing out as much of the story as I already knew, in chronological order and including any necessary explanation alongside the events, regardless of when that information is revealed to the reader. The plot outline is for my information only and not intended to resemble the structure of the finished draft.

At this stage, of course, the outline is very top-heavy: most of it consists of what will probably be Act One and is almost chapter-by-chapter in detail, whereas the rest is far less complete (the climax and denouement are just a couple of sentences!). That’s OK, though. Act One is the foundation of the rest of the book, after all, so I need that to be solid before I move on to the rest.

Note that I’m not avoiding scene cards altogether. I’ve started writing a detailed outline for a potential opening scene, purely because it’s begun to unfold in my head—I’m not going to turn down a gift from my Muse when it’s offered! However this may not end up being the opening, or even appear in the finished draft at all, which is why I’m only outlining at the moment.

My plan is to get the outline finished by the end of September at the latest, and certainly I don’t expect to have it done before the end of August. In a way I see this outlining process as being a replacement for my usual “draft zero”—a rough run-through of the plot that lets me identify glaring inconsistencies and leaps of logic. It’s worth a try, anyway!

Edge-Lit 2

On Saturday I was a guest at Edge-Lit 2, an SFF literary convention held in Derby. I’d been to the previous year’s event and also to an iteration of AltFiction that was held at the same venue, so I was really looking forward to it.

Whilst I only did one panel this year, it was momentous in that it was my first time moderating. Luckily I already knew most of the panelists (see names in photo), so that helped to make it a more relaxing experience. I had sensibly prepared some notes beforehand (OK, at 11pm the night before, when I couldn’t sleep for nerves/excitement!), so it wasn’t difficult to get the ball rolling.

The topic was “The Journey Continues: Where Next for Fantasy?”, so as per my notes we talked about past trends, current fads, and favourite subgenres that we’d like to see more of (hint: swords’n'sorcery, updated to modern sensibilities). I was a bit worried we would run out of stuff to talk about, as my notes were by no means comprehensive, but after half an hour we’d built up enough momentum that we carried through to the three-quarter-hour mark with no awkward pauses.

Then I discovered the trickiest part of moderating: handling audience questions. Not only do you have to keep mental tabs on who has put their hand up each time, you have to deal with the difficult audience member who wants to monopolise the question time with a long ramble. I hope I handled it tactfully!

Luckily my panel was early in the day, so I was able to spend the rest of the convention chilling out with friends. I went to dinner with Adrian Tchaikovsky and Emma Newman and their respective partners plus a couple of other friends, then we went back to the QUAD for the quiz. I dubbed our team “The Cardinal’s Blades”, since we had one male team member (David Gullen) and a bunch of ladies (me, Fran Terminiello, Gaie Sebold and Ruth Booth) with a penchant for sword-fighting! We did pretty well, coming second overall, and I won a spot prize (a signed, limited edition hardback of Crack’d Pot Trail) for being the first to shout out the title of Steven Erickson’s well-known epic fantasy series (i.e. The Malazan Book of the Fallen). Haven’t read it, but I know my own genre!

After the quiz we went down to the bar. Unfortunately they’d put on deafeningly loud music to try and drown out the beer festival going on in the market square, so we beat a retreat to the hotel bar for the rest of the night. Hilarity ensued… (best to draw a veil over the whole conversation, to be honest!)

All in all it was a great weekend despite the scorching heat (the venue has no air-conditioning as far as one can tell), so I’ll be putting next year’s Edge-Lit in my diary (July 19th, I believe). I just hope that a) the weather is a bit cooler and b) we don’t clash with the beer festival again!