Gav Thorpe's Blog, page 31

Short Story Extract – A Wild Affair

This Saturday I will be attending Edge-Lit 4 in Derby. I’ve got a pretty busy schedule if you want to come and see me, as you will see:

10.30-11.20 [Cinema Two) Into the Grimdark – Is Darker Fantasy a Trend, or Here to Stay?

With Sophie Sparham, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Adele Wearing.

11.30-12.20 [Digital Suite] Workshop – Pushing the Edges: How to be Inventive.

12.20-1.15 [The Box] Lunchtime Launchtime: Fox Spirit and Boo Books.

Launch of the anthology We Can Improve You including my short story Driver Not Found (extract will be published on my blog on Saturday).

4.15-5.05 [The Box] Knightwatch Press Launch.

Launch of the anthology Nice Day for a Picnic (extract from my short story A Wild Affair, published below).

5.15-7.05 [Cinema Two] Short and Sweet – Writing and Selling Short Stories.

With Andrew Hook, Kim Lakin-Smith, Alison Littlewood and Adele Wearing.

Yes, it does seem that Aunty Fox from Fox Spirit Books is stalking me, or perhaps the other way around… Tickets are still available, and there is a slim chance you might be able to get one at the door on the day. Workshops are booked on arrival for those that want to attend them.

A full schedule can be found here: Edge-Lit 4 Schedule

And here is a sample from my short A Wild Affair appearing in Nice Day for a Picnic from Knightwatch Press.

Burning wood and straw blackened the sky and the crackle of flames grew louder and louder. Eadric watched the fires consuming Shrewsbury from a nearby hill, his standard held aloft by Osgar for all to see. To the left hung the flags of Bleddyn and Rhiwallon. The Welsh nobles jeered in their outlandish language and waved their fists at the wooden fort that occupied the hill on the opposite side of the town.

“We will let the invaders sit behind their stockade and laugh at us?” said Osgar. “We raze the homes of good Englishfolk and let the Bastard’s soldiers live?”

“And how many lives is it worth to wipe the smiles from their lips, old friend?” Eadric waved a hand toward the south-east. “We have messages that the Bastard has sent William fitzOsbern and Brian of Brittany to aid the dogs in the fort. We have no time to starve them out. To throw ourselves at the walls seems pointless. The lesson has been taught. The nobles of the West will not go idly into slavery beneath Norman masters like the cowards of the South.”

“You said they would bleed for Mercia,” replied Osgar. “We retreated from Hereford, driven to hide in Wales with the sheep. Now we leave again without taking our due.”

“The Normans are clever and powerful. We cannot strike rashly and miss again.”

“But we will strike?”

Eadric looked over at his Welsh companions and then turned toward the other English rebels that thronged the hills.

“Soon we will have a reckoning with the Bastard’s men. Very soon.”

It’s All About the Game

Carl Brown of Second Thunder prepares to meet the charge of my Norman Knights in a game of Open Combat.

I love games. I must have driven my parents insane as a child, because all I wanted to do was play a board game or cards. After my dad first ran a couple of D+D sessions for me and my brother (thanks Dad, an experience that shaped my life!) I nagged endlessly to play more.

Clever little card games, magnificent ‘Ameritrash’ whole day gamefests, slinky Euro titles, RPGs, wargames… I’ll pretty much play anything. And the best news of all, I’ve been able to turn that love into a job. Writing novels and designing games is a dream combo (I just need someone to give me millions of pounds/ dollars to run a design studio or create a Mega-city One MMORPG and I’m set for life).

Most of my work has come from the fourteen years I spent at Games Workshop. From Assistant Games Developer through White Dwarf Staff Writer, Games Developer and finally Senior Games Developer (including periods with other job titles including the wonderful Warhammer Loremaster) it’s gratifying to look back at some of the projects I have been involved with and think of how they have shaped the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 games and universes today.

There’s so much to talk about, I’ve started writing some of my thoughts over on the Games pages – I’ll be going back through my development history to talk about more of my favourites from two decades of games design.

I used to be a full-time games developer and wrote fiction in my spare time. These days the roles are pretty much reversed, although I do dedicate work time to games design when needed. I find them to be two very different creative challenges, which complement each other well. Fiction is about raw ideas shaped into a narrative, while games design is much more an exercise in process and mechanics. Both test communication skills in different ways.

The same can be said for the world creation and world building work I have done for several companies – either directly by the creation of ‘world books/ bibles’, or through pieces of colour prose as I have done for Voodooworx. These types of projects remind me of the best times at GW, working with artists and miniatures designers on concepts and imagery, taking inspiration from each other to create something greater than the parts. For all the benefits of being a novelist, it is essentially a solitary profession and the opportunity to bounce ideas around and just swap thoughts with other creatively-minded folks is a welcome addition.

I consider my games design career far from over, even if it has taken a bit of a backseat to the fiction these days. I have several projects on the boil at any given time; at the moment I’m revisiting some World War 2 rules that will form the core of a much wider range of games, as well as a card-driven futuresport and a Wild West shootout game based on Poker hands…

I’ll be keeping the Games pages updated with what’s new, and of course I’ll be blogging about my gaming exploits and future work developments.

Let Me Tell You Something…

Don’t you just hate it when everyone wants to give you advice?

Sorry.

On the other hand, it seems that people are always asking questions about getting inspiration, how to write, what a pitch or synopsis is… and editing, and how I organise my day, and whether it really is acceptable to end on a split infinitive (or something like that). So, on occasion I try to think about what I do for roughly seven hours a day and turn that into vaguely coherent advice.

(Okay, two hours, but all that internet surfing and walking to and from Costa Coffee is an invaluable part of the process.)

I actually find the idea of passing on writing advice really scary and really useful, for the same reason: it makes me think. And when I think, I realise all of the stuff I should have done on that last story, or the thing I could have done with more time, or the way I could have planned the next novel a bit better.

I learn as much from this as the folks that read the advice, but the fact that I’m still learning lots of stuff means anyone that takes a look at my work can’t help but find examples of where I don’t follow my own advice. Always keep listening and learning.

A lot of my advice drips out when I’m talking about other things, so rather than trying to codify all of the semi-random titbits of help into discrete pages, we’ve set up a series of tag searches from the blog archive. Just click on the Writing Advice button on the top menu to get started. Some of the posts might look like they are about my weekly shopping, or internet cat memes or just a release announcement, but if it has a writing advice tag there should be a nugget in there.

I do, on occasion when the mood takes me, write entire blog posts about writing, planning, editing and all of that other stuff. These are trickier than they look, because I find it really hard to pick apart my process to analyse individual aspects of what I do. My intent a lot of the time is to pose issues that you must address as a writer – it’s not my answers that will help but the process of answering yourself. Guidance, not rules. To be ignored whenever necessary.

This is particularly true when it comes to running workshops. Thinking of not only advice but actual exercises that help get the idea across can be quite difficult. I’ve tried creating a post about the workshop that I recently ran at Derby Book Festival. I really don’t know how useful it is without me explaining and answering questions, but if you have any feedback on what works or doesn’t, or topics you would like to see me cover, just get in touch on the Contacts page.

Your Way or the Highway

The most important piece of advice I can give, about all aspects of the written word and the writing process, is to find your own way of doing things. Write what you want to write. Write how you want to write. When everything is boiled down to its essential elements, writing is about doing your thing. We write stories we want to read. We explore themes we want to explore. We blow up aliens we want to blow up.

Books, Books, Books!

One of the most embarrassing facts about my old Mechanical Hamster blog was that the ‘List of Works’ page was horribly out-of-date and difficult to find. I’ve seen agents on panels complain about author websites that don’t show what they’ve written. And I’ve written a lot over the last twenty years (or near enough). That’s why the Books section really is the heart of the new website.

We’ve tried to make everything as accessible as possible, for those just joining the fun and those completionists out there who have to make sure they’ve got every last Dark Angels short or all of the audios… Even so, it’s not always obvious the ways in which some of the books and stories overlap and interact. For that reasons I have put together a Readers’ Guide to some of my work to help those wondering where to start. If more linked titles are released the guide will be update accordingly.

Spread the Word

The Books section is not 100% complete. Our priority was to list all of the currently available stories and novels, and then those most recently published working back through the catalogue. In the end we’ve got all of the novels, novellas and audios on the site, but some of my earliest short stories are only in old print anthologies. If something gets republished or digitised we’ll add it, of course, and in the longer term we hope to go back and make a catalogue of those Inferno! Magazine issues and early anthologies that might pop-up in a second-hand bookstore or Ebay.

Another major step forward has been the ability to share reviews more directly. Reviews and recommendations are the cornerstone of support for authors, and invaluable to fellow readers. I ask anyone that reads a book to post a rating online, if not a few lines of review if you feel the urge. With that in mind, if you have a review of one of my books you think I should link to (either one we’ve missed or a new one) please let me know via the Contacts page.

All the new titles will be added onto the website as and when they are officially announced or confirmed. The best way to keep up with new releases is to sign up for my email newsletter. As well as release information I am going to try to sneak into the newsletter the occasional pre-release excerpt or cover preview.

Time Well Spent

Looking over that long list is like walking down memory lane. So many characters and tales, so many twists and turns. On novels alone I have written in the region of 2.5 million words. On average that works out as 2,500 hours of writing. Not planning, or editing; over one hundred days of my life spent tapping words on a keyboard.

So, yeah, I look at that list with some satisfaction, but not complacency. As much as I loved writing all of those novels, novellas, short stories, audios and essays, the most exciting projects are always the ones just around the corner. I have at least another 20 years to go, if not even more. Another 30 novels? At least. Another 50 short stories? I hope so.

The opportunity to do this every day, full-time is something truly special. I would like to thank each and every one of you that has read my work, for enabling me to live this great life.

Here We Go Again…

This is my website. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Hello, thank you for visiting my brand new internet home. It’s been a lot of work over the last few months, but finally the moment has come to release this critter into the wilds. We’ve strapped a monitor to its back, let’s see where it takes us.

Right off the mark I would like to thank Pete Borlace for the design work he has done, and Darren Turpin for the web management. There will be a future post looking at the development of the site in more detail. The biggest thanks have to go to my partner, office manager and newly elevated web guru, Kez. Not only is she the mother of my child, she is the mother of my new website!

It is, of course, all shiny and fresh, which also means there might be the odd spot where the paint hasn’t dried yet. We’ll be tinkering and updating things for a while, I expect, and we would love to hear what visitors think. All suggestions and comments welcome. The best way to do that would be through the new Contact page. We are keen to get feedback from anyone with accessibility issues as we would like to make the site as inclusive as possible.

I’m going to be covering the different elements of the site over the next few weeks, explaining our thinking and basically waffling on a bit too much, but here’s the quick tour.

First of all, please sign up for the mailing list. The newsletter will be about once a month, with the occasional extracurricular special missive for important announcements. As well as getting you the highlights of what’s been happening, the Gavmail (working title) will bring you exclusive news, early event and release information, free extracts and even some full fiction pieces. On top of that everyone on the mailing list will be in with a chance of winning signed goodies, as we’ll be holding a regular prize draw (the first book you can win is a copy of the third and final book in my Legacy of Caliban trilogy, The Unforgiven).

Elsewhere you will find the new incarnation of the Blog – expect the usual mix of event news, random stuff, hobby musings, pictures of irrelevant things, new releases information and other updates.

The Books section contains a lengthy (but not quite exhaustive) guide to every piece of fiction and non-fiction I have written over the last twenty years or so. This will be updated with upcoming and new releases as and when the information is made public (I know you see some dates on Amazon first, but they aren’t always set in stone…).

I would like to thank anyone that posts a review or rating online, whether good, bad or indifferent. Taking that time really does support authors and also helps your fellow readers. If you have published a review (or have seen one) that you think I will want to link to, the Contact form is your new best friend.

I have a selection of pages on my Games work, focussing on big or recent projects for the time being (such as Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, and Open Combat). More than just a catalogue, this section includes some thoughts from me on my involvement with each game. This is work-in-progress and I hope to find the time to expand this considerably, going back to projects like the first Sister of Battle codex, Digganob, the last Warhammer Armies book I worked on, and so forth.

And then we get to Writing Advice. The page itself prefaces this well, so I don’t need to repeat that here. Basically this is a streamed tag search for all of my current and archived blog posts that contain even a smidgeon of advice about writing, getting published or coping with life as a freelance pirate on the creative seven seas.

The same is true of the Interviews section: a condensed list of all the interviews I have done, including podcasts and such. I am sure there are some out there we didn’t find, so if I’ve done an interview with you before and it isn’t here please get in touch. This is also a good time to remind any podcasters and website owners that I am always happy to take part in shows and interviews (schedule permitting) so don’t hesitate to get in touch and ask.

Thank you for coming along on the ride.

A Farewell to Hamster

This will be my last post on Mechanical Hamster and that’s the sort of occasion that gives me the excuse opportunity to look back over the past years and reflect on what’s happened.

On 17th March 2008, a couple of weeks after my last day as a paid-up staff member of Games Workshop, I started Mechanical Hamster with the auspicious words:

You know that feeling when somebody points a video camera at you and says ‘say something funny’?

Ha! Video camera. Not the only thing that has dated badly over the intervening years.

I blogged about a mouse.

As I have mentioned before, one piece of advice I received from Marc Gascoigne, editor supremo, was to blog often, about anything. Even if it’s just what you have for breakfast. Over the years the frequency of my posts has been up and down, mainly dependent upon my workload/ procrastination levels. Even so, I’ve managed to keep going for 7 years, which is no mean feat.

A few highlights of that time (as of writing this post last week):

• I have (including this one) posted 234 posts, and added 14 pages.

• The site has been viewed 333,830 times.

• There are 1,781 comments, of which 236 were by me.

• On the best ever day, there were 7,875 views.

• Blacklibrary.com have benefitted the most, with 2,253 click-throughs.

• The author with the most links clicked is Dan Abnett, on 1,084 – you’re welcome, Dan, I know you need the publicity

A Farewell to Hamster

This will be my last post on Mechanical Hamster and that’s the sort of occasion that gives me the excuse opportunity to look back over the past years and reflect on what’s happened. On 17th March 2008, a couple of weeks after my last day as a paid-up staff member of Games Workshop, I started […]

Less is More: A World-Evoking Workshop

This past Saturday it was my great pleasure to host a workshop at the first ever Derby Book Festival. As part of Writers’ Day at the Quad, I was among a number of writing and publishing professionals assembled to pass on help and advice to would-be and current writers of all stripes. I was the […]

Less is More: A World-Evoking Workshop

This past Saturday it was my great pleasure to host a workshop at the first ever Derby Book Festival. As part of Writers’ Day at the Quad, I was among a number of writing and publishing professionals assembled to pass on help and advice to would-be and current writers of all stripes. I was the banner-waving SF+F writer, so my workshop had to be somehow connected to that…

It’s a really broad set of genres, so the only thing that I could really settle on that set apart spec-fic writing from the others, such as YA or Thrillers, was that all SF+F is set in worlds that are, on some level, different from our own. Transmitting those differences to the reader is one of the biggest challenges for writers in the speculative genre.

It’s hard to replicate a live workshop in a blog post, so here is a not-very-close approximation. Feel free to give it a try if you like. Thanks to those that attended, I hope the workshop was useful, I certainly enjoyed running it and hearing your thoughts. If you could do this as a group or perhaps as part of an online writing forum that would be awesome.

Aim of this Workshop

A real difficulty in SF+F writing is conveying our alternate worlds to the audience. The further from our own world a setting moves, the harder it is for the reader to envision and the writer to describe without relying on ‘info dumps’ and character exposition.

This workshop will provide insight into the methods and challenges of writing in fictional worlds and cultures for sci-fi, fantasy and other speculative fiction. Using a piece of sample text we will look at how writing conveys information about the world, both explicitly and implicitly, and the ways in which a writer can use this knowledge to evoke a fictional world in a subtle and natural fashion.

Preamble

There is an astounding amount of things we know about our world and cultures that we take for granted. In the absence of contrary information from a story, we assume that these norms apply to fictional worlds too.

The key to a successful setting is a blend of large ideas and small details. Little things can hint at big concepts, and broad visions can be illustrated with incidental details.

World creation should be treated like research – it should go unnoticed by the reader. Small aggregations of knowledge are far more effective than force feeding. Identifying how the world will be unveiled to the reader is just as important as the mechanics of the setting itself.

Exercise One – Sample Text

Read the sample text (link below) and make notes of the culture of the characters; the physical environment; the characters themselves. Divide your notes between:

1.Information conveyed to the reader about the world in which the scene takes place.

2.How that information is conveyed to the reader.

For example:

Cultural – Gambling is acceptable – alluded to in dialogue.

Physical – There are dogs in this world – referenced by proxy (dog charity box).

Character – Tom is overweight – logically follows from needing to diet.

Less is More Workshop sample text

For those who can’t take part in a discussion, I have attached a document (below) with my very basic comments. Short version – nearly everything in the sample text tells you something about the world!

The big upshot of this is that the best way to describe a world is through the characters – their actions, reactions and experiences – rather than directly to the reader. This is the ‘Show Don’t Tell’ principle, but applied in a sensible fashion. Your characters do not have to directly experience every single aspect of your world in order that you can show it to the reader.

Less is More Workshop download

Exercise 2 – Writing Exercise

Pick an aspect of a fictional world – one that you are working on, one that you are making up just for this exercise or perhaps from a favourite work. It could be a character traitor, a physical phenomenon, a superstition, anything.

Write a line or short passages that convey that aspect of the world without directly referring to it as narrator (i.e. info dump) or having a character explain it to another (exposition). Try out three or four different ways of conveying the same piece of information without direct reference.

Think about and if possible discuss the experience.

Final Note

I think that writing a piece of fiction, however short, highlights more about a world that you need to create than any amount of pre-planning. Literally having a character walking down the ‘high street’ of your main locations, or a conversation between two characters doing something mundane will help you understand you world and get under its skin so much more than world creation in abstract isolation.

A message for Stef, the lady from the Prison Service: If you would like some free books to help with your students, please contact me via mechanicalhamster [at] gmail [dot] com – Thanks!

Legends II Extract

Following on from yesterday’s news that Legends II is available to pre-order (digital version from Amazon, and you can get softback and hardback volumes from Spacewitch) I thought it would be nice to give a little sneak preview. The following extract is from my contribution, The Blessed and the Cursed.

Seven years at the monastery of Erod had taught Naldros much patience, but the continued belligerent ignorance of the wagon driver tested her sorely.

“The Creator brought everything into being,” the Castigator explained again, speaking slowly. “Dove and lion, rose petal and thorn, summer breeze and storm. Destruction and violence are nothing more than another part of the pattern the Creator wove into the fabric of the world. One can study war and know the Creator as well as finding the Creator’s will through peace.”

“But it’s murder, right?” insisted Markwell. He picked a scab on his chin with his free hand, idly flicking away the tag of dried blood. “To kill is evil, right?”

“What if I were to kill an evil person to protect an innocent?” asked Naldros. “Besides, we of the Order of Erod do not believe in an afterlife. We think of the Creator as Avenger, not Judge.”

“So we can do what we want while we live, is that it?” The driver looked dubious.

“Within the society and law we create and enforce ourselves. The Creator shaped us but he does not control us. It is only our fellow people and our own standards and conscience by which we are measured. At the point of death all that remains of us is the legacy of our decisions, whether barbaric, civilised or both.”

“And you’re civilised, right?” Markwell eyed the stocky priest with suspicion. “You get to decide which is which, right?”

“We all decide, each to his own morals,” Naldros said with a sigh.

She gave up trying to explain and lowered herself down from the riding board. Gaitlin waited a few moments for her to catch up.

“So, Castigator, how goes the philosophical debate?”

“Discussing the cosmic order and inherent morality with Markwell is as rewarding as exchanging gastronomic advice with swine,” replied Naldros.

“Forgive his ignorance, he has not had the benefit of our teachings and the time to contemplate and become one with the will of the Creator.”

“Forgive him?” Naldros darted a look across to Skaios on the opposite side of the wagon. “You are mistaken, the Redeemer is over there. I am the Castigator.”

“Very droll,” said Gaitlin. He was about to add something but stopped.

Naldros felt it too. The teachings at Erod steered a warrior to finding communion with the Creator, able to sense the subtle ripples of energy and fate that continued to echo down through the ages from the moment of the world’s birth. To be attuned to those waves was to touch upon senses beyond those of other folk, granting near-supernatural ability.

The call of a mountain thrush grated in her ear. To a lesser-trained warrior nothing would have been amiss, but to Naldros and his fellow priest-soldiers the artificial call was as obvious as a war shout. The moment Naldros detected it her conscious mind gave way to instinct. By the time the second bird-call sounded the knights of Erod were already responding to the coming ambush.

She turned and swung her foot-lance before the arrow left the shadow of the tree. Gaitlin moved as well, taking a step to one side, responding to the intent of his shrine-sister. The tip of Naldros’ spear slashed through the space where Gaitlin had been a moment before. The razor-sharp edge caught the arrow mid-shaft and sliced it in two, sending the pieces tumbling harmlessly to the ground.

There were more arrows than shrine-warriors. Some of them deflected the missiles, but the horses were each pierced by several shafts. One survived the first attack, wounded and thrashing in the traces against the dead weight of its companions, whinnying in pain and terror. Markwell wrenched the brake with one hand while trying to rein in the bucking horse with the other. An arrow took the driver in the chest and he pitched from the riding board with a deathly croak.

Naldros blocked the noise and detected the crack of breaking twigs, the creak of bending bow and a pant of breath. She broke into a run even as her eyes picked out the stocky bandit crouching in the bushes to his right. Their eyes met and Naldros recognised dread in her foe’s gaze; his hands were trembling and a fat tongue lolled over fear-dried lips.

Around Naldros the rest of the group was charging in silence towards the rocks and trees, drawing their short swords. Hastily loosed arrows whickered across the road, one of them finding Heiran’s throat, sending her crashing to the ground with a spray of arterial blood.

Naldros focussed on the swaying point of the nocked arrow pointed at her and subtly adjusted her stride, leaning to the left. The brigand’s shot passed by a sword’s breadth to the right. The priestess was confident she would be upon the enemy before he had time to fit another shaft to the bowstring, but her attention was drawn to the left, where two muscle-bound bandits broke from cover, shields and swords at the ready.

Without breaking stride, Naldros turned her attention to these assailants as other bandits charged out to meet the oncoming warrior-priests. She ducked beneath the first sword thrust, slipping her sword from its sheath as her spear slashed across the bearded man’s throat, parting hairs and windpipe with equal ease. The second man pulled his shield across to ward away Naldros’ sword with a clang, but this exposed his leg. The priest’s spear punched through the knee, sending the brigand crashing to his back.

Ripping her foot-lance free, Naldros parried the fallen man’s sword and kicked aside his shield. The Castigator dropped to one knee as she plunged her sword through the man’s chest. Straightening, flicking blood from the tips of both weapons, Naldros took a moment to judge the situation.

Hope you enjoyed that. If you want to read more, and the work of a host of talented writers, please pick up a copy of Legends II, at a special pre-order rate of £1.99 it’s got to be worth it.