Niall Teasdale's Blog, page 12
May 30, 2020
Watching Rockets, Writing Cyberpunk
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So, I have NASA TV on in the background in the hope of seeing a rocket fly (safely) and I’m writing cyberpunk. The guys in the picture above are the main characters and I’m not going to say much about them right now. The image was inspired by part of the opening credit sequence of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, 2nd Gig, though this kind of ‘identification lineup’ image is pretty common, especially in anime, though also in one famous live action movie I can think of.
Also, I’ve been reading some of the Thaumatology books recently, so here’s a little something I put together recently…
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(No, I’m not going to do another Thaumatology book right now. But I am sort of feeling it a little more… Don’t get your hopes up.)
Meanwhile, good luck to SpaceX and NASA. Let’s hope it’s a go this time.
April 16, 2020
Update
It occurred to me today that it’s been a while since I told you guys I might have been exposed to the coronavirus. I know I vanish for long periods normally, but I haven’t normally told you I might have a fatal disease before doing so. An update feels like it’s in order, even if it’s just to point out I’m still alive.
It turned out that we were clear of COVID-19, so that turned out to be a non-problem. Thank you for all your well-wishes for my mother. Unfortunately, there was really no way short of an actual miracle that she was going to get better and she passed away in her sleep on Easter Monday. I’m staying with my father at the moment to help him through the aftermath, but I am still doing some work because it keeps my mind busy.
Out in the world, things are a bit crazy. I’m actually fairly worried about you guys. A lot of you live in America and the virus has really clobbered the US. I don’t know how many of you are in New York City, but that place has seen almost as much death as the entirety of the UK! So, basically: yes, I’ve had a bad month or so over here, but I really do hope that all of you are staying safe and having a better time than I am. I will be back with a new book as soon as I can manage it, possibly around mid-June. Frankly, I could use the positive feeling of getting some good writing done at the moment.
Also, just because I got a little time to render some stuff last night, please enjoy a pin-up of Nava in a corset.
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March 31, 2020
Bitter Wind Art Dump
Here it is, the art dump for Bitter Wind. Click on the picture to link to the collection.
March 30, 2020
COVID-19 Update
I never intended to write a post like this, because it sounds like a cry for sympathy. I am not asking for sympathy, but I do feel like you guys should know why I’m a bit slow with the next book and possibly a bit quiet.
So…
This week I had to rush off to support my father who is looking after my mother, who is basically confined to a bed now. Today, someone has decided that, since my mother has a fever and is short of breath, the house is now in 14-day quarantine in case she has COVID-19. I got told this just after I’d put Bitter Wind out for sale, which is why I went a bit quiet after doing so. The annoying thing is that something other than that virus is probably responsible for my mother’s symptoms, but no one is taking any chances. And I can’t really blame them.
While I can work from here, more or less, it’s far from ideal. I’ll try to get an art dump up in the next day or so. I keep my reference art on OneDrive, so that should be okay. What I can’t do is produce new reference art for anything new. Just the fact that I’m helping with my mother’s care is going to make things difficult, but I’ll be doing my best to keep working.
That said, most of the chaos today has been caused by our need to suddenly source food which can be delivered to the house. Yes, we’re really being required to stay indoors; we can’t go out for anything. This should be really exciting. It’s possible I just might decide to do a post-apocalyptic story after all this dies down.
Bitter Wind
March 23, 2020
No More Celebrity Lifestyle
Well, the British prime minister has just announced that the country is going into a near-total lockdown. We have to stay inside unless shopping for food, dealing with medical needs, or a couple of other reasons.
I don’t know what I’m going to do! No more parties. No more inviting groupies around to my place. I’m going to have to cancel that world book-signing tour.
Oh, wait…
March 20, 2020
Truth is Stranger Than Fiction
I said I was going to be quiet, but…
I now live in a world where the local supermarket needs to put a guard on the toilet rolls. If I wrote that in a book, people would say it was unbelievable!
Also, the British have now given up any right to that “Keep Calm and” meme. Seriously, Italy now has more deaths than China, and the Italians aren’t stripping supermarket shelves like mutant locusts.
/EndRant
March 15, 2020
Bitter Wind Cover
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The next Death’s Handmaiden novel, Bitter Wind, is due to come out around the first weekend in April and, once again, I’ve come up with a cover for it pretty quickly. So, here it is.
In other news, I may be rather quiet for a while. Some stuff is happening with my family which is occupying my thoughts a lot. This may cause a delay in the book after Bitter Wind, I just don’t know at this point. I’m sure you’re used to me going quiet for long periods by now, so it should almost be business as usual. I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but today I have something nice to offset the not so nice. Now that you’ve read the bad news, go back to the top and revel in those legs!
January 31, 2020
Weird Science
This is NOT the announcement of Death’s Handmaiden‘s release. Soon. This IS technically a spoiler for Bitter Wind, but it’s not much of a spoiler, so I’m doing it anyway.
I have just had the surreal experience of discovering that one of my outlandish ideas is a real, scientific theory.
Last week, I dropped an idea into a character’s exposition regarding the science of magic. Basically, it went like this:
In quantum mechanics, the ‘observer’ is all important. Quantum superpositions only collapse when observed.
There is a problem – the fine-tuning or Goldilocks paradox – which questions why the laws of physics seem to be so finely tuned for the existence of life.
The solution is that the universe did not really exist until the first observer made their first observation. At that point, reality ‘collapsed’ into a state which allowed that observer to exist and the possible variations which did not allow for the observer ceased to exist.
I thought this was a cute but probably wrong solution to fine tuning. I don’t really believe that conscious minds are needed to make a superposition collapse, but it was a nice solution.
Today, I bought a copy of New Scientist because they were doing a special report on the nature of reality. That stuff is always good for ideas. Then I got to a bit called ‘Do We Make Reality?’ and what do I find there but pretty much the exact same hypothesis I wrote in Bitter Wind last week. It’s a real interpretation of quantum mechanics!
Of course, it’s just a hypothesis and there are other ways to interpret the physics. The idea that a conscious observer is needed to make measurements is by no means a certainty and some inanimate objects may possess a form of consciousness (at least for this purpose). Still, my mind was a bit blown. Apparently, I can still have clever ideas. I’m pretty sure my old physics lecturers would never have believed I’d grasped enough of the subject to come up with that one.
PS. As I write this, Amazon have shifted Death’s Handmaiden back into ‘In Review.’ I may have been premature about when it’ll be ready.
