C.G. Hatton's Blog, page 3

Why I love Kheris Burning…

…so much so that it’s the first Thieves’ Guild book to make it to audiobook format. The answer is complicated, as always… when is it ever not complicated?
Kheris is LC. It’s first person LC so this is him telling his story. And not only that, but he’s telling the story in the middle of a battle when they’re surrounded by Bhenykhn. It’s the line in BD when he says he owes Mendhel so much… the one liner in that second book when he says his knee doesn’t hurt anymore after hurting for so long… why he hates AIs and that nightmare he has of kneeling in the dust with a gun to his head…
And the reason why Kheris was so significant? Yeah, you don’t really find out why until Book Five, or seven… or one, depending which way you look at it, and even then it’s not the whole story… when would I ever tell the whole story?
But back to Kheris Burning… I love it because it’s raw. I almost didn’t release it because it was too raw, and too real. It’s a kid growing up in a war zone. It’s ‘if Romeo and Juliet had a kid, on a scuzz bucket, war-torn mining colony in deep space, this is what happened thirteen years later’. It’s about not belonging. It’s about lying and deceit. It’s YA sci fi, alien invasion adventures, my usual fast-paced military science fiction stuff, but this is also LC, and anyone who knows me, anyone who has read any of my stuff, knows how important LC is to me.
And that’s why Kheris Burning is so important to me, and why I had to take time out of the main series to write it. Thank you to everyone for humouring me while I got this out of my system. Thank you to Clinton Herigstad for bringing it to life for the audiobook. And thank you, as always, to Hatt and the munchkins, and the rest of my family and friends, for putting up with me.
I’m back with Hil for Book Six (eight? two?)… and I must admit it’s weird because neither of us are where we were eleven years ago. There is going to be a young LC Book Three at some point, and Redemption is next on the list for Clinton and the audiobooks. But for now, it’s the big stuff so I’m stocking up on rum and listening to old Linkin Park.
Will be in touch again, and maybe it won’t be a year from now… or maybe it will. Who knows?Cheers,CGH
ps. And yes, Book Five, Darkest Fears, is out… at last!
Kheris Burning (Thieves’ Guild Origins: LC Book One) is out now in audiobook format on Audible.
Darkest Fears (Thieves’ Guild Book Five: Bhenykhn Wars Book 1) is out now in paperback and on Kindle.
 

#NoOneMessesWithThe...

If anyone is anywhere near me, please bear with me. I’m at that stage of writing this series of books where I’m listening to music that makes me cry, and getting dragged back to all the worst times I’ve ever been through, and I’m choosing to do it because none of it is very far away.
I give my MCs a hard time to deal with the hard times. Some of them are only here because of the hard times (thank you, Hil).
I’ve been avoiding it for the past two years because I’ve not been able to deal with it and (ironically) the two books I’ve written in that time have probably been darker than any of the big books (yes, YA is amazing to write). But back to the big stuff, a bright green notebook and all my darkest fears.
So if you see me anywhere, please give me a hug. I need one.
#NoOneMessesWithTheThievesGuild

#NoOneMessesWithTheThievesGuild

If anyone is anywhere near me, please bear with me. I’m at that stage of writing this series of books where I’m listening to music that makes me cry, and getting dragged back to all the worst times I’ve ever been through, and I’m choosing to do it because none of it is very far away.
I give my MCs a hard time to deal with the hard times. Some of them are only here because of the hard times (thank you, Hil).
I’ve been avoiding it for the past two years because I’ve not been able to deal with it and (ironically) the two books I’ve written in that time have probably been darker than any of the big books (yes, YA is amazing to write). But back to the big stuff, a bright green notebook and all my darkest fears.
So if you see me anywhere, please give me a hug. I need one.
#NoOneMessesWithTheThievesGuild

Yes, Book Five is next!

Apologies if you’re wondering… but yes, Darkest Fears (Book Five) is next. I promise. I’ve been sidelined again. Not intentional. As I’ve been explaining to anyone who has asked, it’s been a bit of a tough year and with the end of Four being so intense, I’ve needed the breathing space that Kheris gave me for anther year… hence LC’s second book, Beyond Redemption.But now that that’s out, I am back to Five. And yes, it’s dark, fraught, and as fast as ever.I do still have at least one more Origins book planned for LC (might be another three…) but Five will be out next. And Six is in development. So I’m giving them all a hard time. I have a bottle of Kraken lined up for when it gets really dark. I’m hoping the new Linkin Park album will be good (but listening to old stuff in the meantime). And I’m very much enjoying Tottenham being up there chasing for the top spot in the league and playing some awesome football. Glory glory days…
The new Thieves’ Guild book, Beyond Redemption (Thieves’ Guild Origins: LC Book Two) is out now and available in paperback and eBook on Amazon

#amwriting… but what?

It’s 2017 already! I’m in the middle of my winter hibernation so apologies for not being in touch much (best wishes for the New Year btw!).I am still writing the fifth book in the main Thieves’ Guild big series (Darkest Fears) but I must admit, I’ve been kind of hijacked by LC again and I’m working on his second book (Hil’s in it – they’re teenagers – how could I not be hijacked by the two of them?!). I have a title for it and the cover is almost ready (!). I’ll be in touch with that soon.I have to admit also that I’ve been writing a load of stuff that will never make it into a book… the FOB from the middle of book four and the end of four featuring heavily in stuff I’m not quite done with. And I’ve been dabbling with book six too (I know, I know, I can’t help it). It’s all adding in to the whole big story of it all, though. And as much as it’s all just handwritten, illegible scribbles in my notebook at the moment, I might send some of it out into the world at some point.In the meantime, a belated but very big thank you to everyone I met here there and everywhere last year for their support and encouragement. I love writing this stuff and I’m immensely grateful to everyone who has been in touch to say they’ve enjoyed reading it.Will be in touch soon.Cheers,CGH

#amwriting… but what? (warning: spoilers)

It’s 2017 already! I’m in the middle of my winter hibernation so apologies for not being in touch much (best wishes for the New Year btw!).I am still writing the fifth book in the main Thieves’ Guild big series (Darkest Fears) but I must admit, I’ve been kind of hijacked by LC again and I’m working on his second book (Hil’s in it – they’re teenagers – how could I not be hijacked by the two of them?!). I have a title for it and the cover is almost ready (!). I’ll be in touch with that soon.I have to admit also that I’ve been writing a load of stuff that will never make it into a book… the FOB from the middle of book four and the end of four featuring heavily in stuff I’m not quite done with. And I’ve been dabbling with book six too (I know, I know, I can’t help it). It’s all adding in to the whole big story of it all, though. And as much as it’s all just handwritten, illegible scribbles in my notebook at the moment, I might send some of it out into the world at some point.In the meantime, a belated but very big thank you to everyone I met here there and everywhere last year for their support and encouragement. I love writing this stuff and I’m immensely grateful to everyone who has been in touch to say they’ve enjoyed reading it.Will be in touch soon.Cheers,CGH

#amwriting (warning: spoilers)

21.10.16 Welcome to some random ramblings. Just back from NYCC (which was awesome!) and back to writing - Book Five - which is cool. I'm going to try NaNoWriMo this year, not completely within the rules as I've started the book already, more to get my word count up. It's around 500 a day at the moment which isn't enough. I'll let you know how I get on here, together with some stuff from the new books (I'm working on LC's second book too) and some bits and pieces from the other books that are inspiring the new ones (hence the spoiler warning!) :)

21.10.16 "First thing I ever taught her - don't get involved with the target. And she goes and falls for one of yours." Frank O'Brien, HR.

21.10.16 10pm 1,500 words - yay! :)

#SummerReading #LoveToRead

50% off Thieves’ Guild eBooks until the end of July

Apologies that I haven’t been in touch for a while – I’ve been writing! I have loads to do if I’m to hit the targets and deadlines I’ve set myself and the main thing is that I’m loving it. I have to say as well that I’m really appreciating the feedback and comments from all the people who have been in touch after reading my stuff. I’m not sure people realise how much a few words can mean – so many thanks once again.
My latest news is that I’ll be at the London Film and Comic Con at Olympia again this year (in just a couple of weeks!) and also I’m really excited that I’ve been asked to go back to the New York Comic Con again in October. It’ll be great to meet up with everyone we met over there last year. As far as gallivanting goes, that’s all I’m booked in for at the moment. Weekends have become rather precious lately.
Also newsworthy is that Kheris Burning is now available on iBooks and Kobo. I dabbled with making it exclusive on Kindle but I love being able to say that it’s out there for everyone, however you read your eBooks. I know you can get a Kindle app for an iPhone, but it’s cool to be able to get it direct from iBooks.
And, all the Thieves’ Guild books are on offer at Smashwords for the rest of July. Residual Belligerence is free, of course, but you can get 50% off all the rest if you’d like to stock up on your reading for the summer or if you know anyone who might like to read them too!
That’s it for now. I’ll get back to the gang and the dramas of Book Five and LC’s second book! Thanks again for all the support. Hope to see you again soon at an event. Have a good summer!
Best wishes,
CGH

How long does it take to write a book…?

As far as frequently asked questions go, this is the one that won at MCM London this year, along with the slight variations of “How long have you been writing these books?” or “How long have you been writing?”
I love talking to writers at events and my answer seemed to inspire everyone I spoke to… it’s been a long time.
I’ve been writing since I was in junior school and I’ve been writing about these characters for almost twenty five years. I have a curled-edged old notebook from around 1992 with LC, Sean, Hal Duncan and Gallagher all sketched out in outline with the basic plot of the whole thing and some random scenes that have actually appeared in the books in some form or another. NG turned up around then too (without a name, hence the FNG tag) and I have a load of short stories and more random scenes written from his POV in first person, which was always lots of fun. I think that’s why I like writing NG so much.
I started writing the first actual book, RB, in 2007 when something pretty bad happened. Hil turned up, took me by the scruff of the neck when I was in dark hole and said, “I’m going to tell this story.” He became my first real main character and writing that book was my way of dealing with a lot of anger and pain, that, to be honest, I think I needed to go through before I could really get any of it right.
RB came out in 2011 but it only took me about a year to write. The rest of those five years was faffing about, plucking up the courage to do something with it, half-heartedly sending it out to a couple of agents (who said it was good but that they didn’t ‘get’ it) and then a year of getting it ready to be actually published (the whole proofreading, typesetting, cover design and whatnot) which coincided with us setting up Sixth Element Publishing, and starting to work on other people’s books.
BD took me a year and a half to write and I pretty much had that done and finished before we brought out the first one. Book two came out at the end of 2012 so that also took about a year to get ready once it was written.
HR is another story completely. I had other stuff going on at the time that wasn’t great and I didn’t want to let NG go. This is why it’s so much longer than the first two. By Christmas of 2013, I’d already spent almost four years writing it and I was nowhere near the end. I hadn’t done any promotion for the first two books and still found it hard to admit to anyone that I was writing them. That was when Hatt connived with Andy and Steve at Sci-fi Scarborough and booked me in for my first convention, telling me that I was going to finish it and I was going to launch it properly. I had four months to finish writing it, edit it, get it typeset and proofread it. I was still checking it with ten minutes to go before the print deadline. (I ran out of time – and if anyone has a first print run copy of that first edition, I apologise for the typos in the last few chapters.)
I didn’t sleep for three weeks before that first event at Scarborough but in the end it was great. The reception we got for the books was awesome and right from the minute the doors opened, we had such great feedback it made me feel I could actually do it. At the end of that first weekend, the guys said to me, “See you here next year with Book Four?” I didn’t have a single word of it even scribbled in pencil but how could I resist?
So I wrote, revised, edited, proofread and published WD in less than a year. But that was relying heavily on the momentum of carrying on the story from the end of HR. Last year at Scarbs when we launched WD, again I had the whole, “Yay, see you next year with a new book!” So I couldn’t not. I actually started writing DF last summer, but it was all so intense after the end of WD, it was a bit much. I made the decision to have a slight breather from the main big story and write LC’s story as a kid, which was a lot of fun. Again, I managed it in a year but that was on the back of almost ten years of writing books about these characters, and ten years before that writing bits and pieces, so twenty years all together of living with and getting to know them and where they’d come from. So yes, I can write a book in a year, but that’s been on the back of an awfully long time of big thinking.

WIP: what’s next…?

Book Five! We’ve even got a title for it already: Darkest Fears (Thieves’ Guild: Book Five). It carries on the main big story from the first four books and I’m well into it already. I won’t give away who the main character is (although if you’ve seen the draft cover, you might be able to guess) but the whole cast from the other books are in there, and it’s all as intense as ever as the story builds even more.It’s good to be back to the main drama but I’m glad I took the break I did to write LC’s story as a kid. It’s been fun and I must admit, I still can’t help dabbling in my notebook with bits and pieces from his next story.But back to Book Five… I need a new album from Linkin Park and another bottle of Kraken Black Spiced Rum and hopefully it should all go to plan (…as if that ever happens!).
In the meantime, Kheris Burning (Thieves’ Guild Origins: LC Book One) is out next week. It’s available now for pre-order in eBook at Kindle and iBooks and in paperback at Amazon or Sixth Element Publishing. 
And we’ll be at Sci-Fi Scarborough on 9th/10th April. Hope to see you soon!
Best wishes,CGH