Niall Teasdale's Blog, page 25
May 2, 2016
The Fox Dilema
Well, this morning I started work on the next Fox Meridian book, Emergence. Technically, I started on Sunday, but that was plotting and character planning. Today I started writing again. Rather to my pleasure, the 25k words I already had don’t need to be changed for the new plot elements I’m adding in, but as I write this I have one glaring problem: the ending.
Here’s the thing, and I’d value your opinions on this, I have three ways this could end. Essentially they follow a continuum between status quo (near enough) and extreme change. I want to go with the extreme change, but that’s a problem. Even the mid-range option has hints of the same issue, but I can work with that.
The problem these endings have is repeating myself. I want to make a big change in Fox’s life which isn’t exactly the same as something I’ve done before, but it’s so close I might as well just call it a repeat. I believe I have things to say about this which are worth it, and it’ll make several future plotlines massively more convenient logistically. I was going to do this in a later book (if I decided to go with it at all), but it just fits so beautifully into this one it’s hard to resist doing it.
I’ve now given enough away that attentive readers paying attention to throwaway scenes in the books might well guess where I’m going. PLEASE DON’T SPECULATE IN THE COMMENTS!!!
What I’d like to know is… Do you trust me to have new things to say about something I’ve done before? I’ve got a couple of weeks, at least, before I need to make a final decision. Tell me what you think.
April 27, 2016
Tax Rant
First off, this is not being posted so I can get a lot of sympathetic comments or suggestions that I’d be better off living in the US (or Panama). I know I’d be better off in the US and I don’t need the sympathy, really. I just want to get this off my chest and maybe provide a cautionary note for anyone else who might end up in this position. If you actually know something that might help, please comment.
Second, this might get lengthy. Feel free to ignore my moaning and tldr. Aside from a comment about how it’s affecting my work, this is not about books.
So, with all the glorious fun we’re having with the Panama leaks and all that, tax is something of a hot button topic. Everyone seems to be ranting and raving about rich people avoiding tax payments. Everyone hates all these large companies who avoid paying tax in various countries by exploiting the laws the people we voted for set up. I have to say that I cannot blame them, any of them, even if I think they should be paying their due.
I am not rich and I highly doubt I ever will be. Every time I think I might make some money, someone in a government office seems to decide they need it instead. I quit my day job to write full time because the income from the two jobs was high enough that I ended up paying out about what my day job was giving me in additional taxes. What was the point in working a 16 hour day (8 hours in an office and 8 writing at home) when the end result was that I only really got paid for half my time? Why not quit the job I alternately hated and disliked, and do the one I liked doing full time? So, no more day job and my tax bill for the tax year just gone should be significantly lower. Great.
And then I get a letter telling me that I have to have an interview with a man from the HMRC (that’s the IRS for you guys in America) about Value Added Tax. I had not even considered the possibility of needing VAT registration. I, as an entity, do not sell anything. I provide my books to entities who make them available for retail purchase, and charge VAT (or sales tax, or whatever) appropriately. The EU has made all that increasingly difficult over the last little while, apparently out of a desire to make sure the small business they say they wish to promote fail, but it wasn’t a concern because retailers handled that. But today I had a telephone interview involving a man asking questions and me becoming increasingly angry and frustrated the more he went on.
It seems that the government wants VAT payments from me, for services which I have not charged VAT for. Probably a fairly large amount of money is involved and, knowing how this works, additional charges for not paying it earlier. (To be fair to the HMRC, if they overcharge you, they actually pay quite a good rate of interest when they give the money back. It’s better than savings rates anyway. But they do like making you pay for your mistakes.) As far as I can see, this leaves the government getting two VAT payments for the sale of the same items (books), and me losing a lot of money. Nice for MPs’ expense accounts, not so great for me.
The only hope I currently have is that Amazon KDP and Smashwords are both US companies, so this may count as an export and be zero-rated for VAT, thus negating the problem. I’m looking into that and getting nowhere with the legalese. Maybe only EU sales apply, then I’d be under the limit for registration and it wouldn’t be an issue (the US is by far my largest market, and thank you guys for that). No decision on all this has been made, and I may be worrying over nothing, but it’s coming on top of a load of other personal crap which I have to worry about and it’s just about the last straw.
It seems like, for all the rhetoric, the last thing anyone in the UK wants is for someone to be successful. We penalise success. I was hoping to get Frostburn wrapped this week and move on to the new Fox book, Emergence (that’s the working title, btw, it could change). Right now I’m not feeling very creative. The thought of jacking it all in has crossed my mind. Don’t worry, I won’t. I doubt I could if I tried. This is going to delay things while I sort it out (in my head as much as all the paperwork I’m being asked to provide).
If you got to this paragraph without giving up: thank you, I actually feel better for writing it down. Hopefully I’ll provide an update to this post giving good news about how it all turned out okay, or not. If you find yourself writing books in the EU and having some success at it, I suggest you consult someone regarding possible VAT issues. If you’ve already met this, I’d love to know what happened.
Once again, thanks for letting me rant at you. Have a much better day than I’m having,
Niall.
PS. The musical accompaniment for this post is Meatloaf’s Life is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back. YouTube link provided.
April 23, 2016
If You’re Hunting Mink…
Ultrahuman Art Dump
Okay, I’m now working on the final edit for Hunting Mink. I am trying to get this out for tomorrow, but I’m taking this opportunity to say that I’m working through corrections in a document, while trying to hold off a blazing headache. I’ll get the book out tomorrow. I’ll work through the pain for my readers. (I will get all the sympathy I can for this.) But it’s slowing my down, and it may delay things a little. Sorry.
As partial compensation for any delay, and because I was going to do this anyway… Some art. We’ve got the cover for Hunting Mink here, and the character sheets for Cygnus, Twilight, and Mink. If you click through any of the character sheets, they’ll take you to the ArtStation page where I put all three sheets plus an extra which may give a little hint of one possible future for Twilight.
April 1, 2016
The new V8… And Other Silliness
So… I got up this morning and checked my mail, and discovered that DAZ had released V8 and that it going for free just for today. Given I’d just converted Cygnus over to G3F/V7, I figured she would be best to illustrate the features of the new model. So here she is in all her glory, beside her converted version…
Look at those cylinders! Not as flexible as the V7 version, and the posing leaves something to be desired…
Yes… They actually had me until I’d clicked the link and was waiting for the page to load. Then I remembered it was April 1st and I knew I was in for a joke. But I still downloaded it because… free. I mean, maybe I’ll need a V8 engine model at some point, right?
Anyway, it’s a pretty good ender of Cygnus.
A few other things have caught my attention today, but I wanted to point you at two on DeviantArt. This one by Shinez, and the reply from JollyJack. I just found them humerous to say the least, especially since I’ve seen the precursor drawings passing by for the last few months. Also, if you don’t know Sunstone… why not?! Same goes for JJ’s Sequential Art strip which features a lot of intelligent, buxom, furries. And what’s not to like about that? (Scarlett is my favourite.)
March 25, 2016
Because… Easter
Andrea, Cygnus, and June from New Millennium City dressed up for Easter. Because it’s Easter and I’ve been doing a lot of work with these three recently.
The eagle-eyed may notice that I upgraded the models. Those just looking at the T&A will likely not care.
March 8, 2016
Division of Labour
Okay, so most of today was lost to Tom Clancy’s The Division. It arrived around midday and I held myself back until after lunch, but I was playing it pretty much non-stop (aside from a break for dinner and Lucifer) until midnight when my controller batteries died on me in the middle of a firefight. At least I now know how long the batteries last…
I figured tomorrow was going to be lost to it, but no. Tomorrow I need to get back into the right rhythm, which means writing until at least mid-afternoon (when I usually start noticeably slowing down and have trouble maintaining concentration: yes, just like a day job). Already The Collective has fallen to not being able to figure out how to get the protagonists where they need to be, so I’ve moved on. Frostburn, the next Ultrahumans book, has been more or less plotted out and started. Looks like there’ll be two Ultrahumans books in a row. Oh, and book 3 now has a name: Hunting Mink.
So… Do I like my new game? Well, obviously, though it’s not a real certainty until it keeps me entertained for several months. However, it also has the most ludicrous concept of any game I’ve ever played (with the possible exception of the Riddler’s parts in the Batman: Arkham… series). It sounds clever and kind of realistic, but it’s totally comic book. There’s an apparently airborne virus which is spread through infected bank notes… Um… We have a vast army of ‘sleeper agents’ embedded in the populace who are basically special ops soldiers living as normal people and no one has noticed. Real special ops soldiers train constantly. No one has noticed that the girl who works in the coffee shop down the road shoots 2000 rounds a day at the firing range and runs 10 miles before going to work? Mind you, it is set in New York, so… maybe.
Anyway, tomorrow, back to superheroes who aren’t trying to be normal…
In case you’re wondering, I don’t have super-willpower…
March 5, 2016
Criminal Minds Are Everywhere
Well, they’re on Amazon and Smashwords. Criminal Minds, the 4th Fox Meridian book has now been released.
You can find it:
Smashwords
Amazon US – when available
Amazon UK
Amazon CA
Amazon DE
Amazon AU
March 4, 2016
Elsa, Where Are You?
Let it Sn(G)o(w)! (My little niece is really into Frozen. Truth be told, I rather like it to.)
Anyway, here in Manchester, UK, it’s snowing. Big, thick, sticky flakes have been falling all morning and show no sign of stopping. We’re not that high up here and it’s a little too warm and wet for anything to build up. We are not talking winter wonderland here. But we’ve got snow. Real, proper, wintery snow, in March. Not very British.
It’s a perfect day to go through proofs of a novel! Okay, so it’s never a perfect day to go through proofs, but I have no desire to go outside so… Criminal Minds is back from Kate, my wonderful proofreader, and I’m working through the edits. It takes a while. Never let it be said that writing is all fun and inspiration. Also, sometime in the next day or two I need to come up with a cover and I have no ideas for that right now. However, expect to be seeing Criminal Minds at Amazon and Smashwords before the weekend is out.
I’ve booked the next Ultrahumans book (still no name…) for proofreading in mid-April, so that is going to be the next book out after Criminal Minds. This will deal with the aftermath of the demise of the Tonaldo crime-family, finally reveal what’s going on with that mysterious find in the Southern Ocean, and take us to San Francisco.
And then… Well, next Wednesday is probably going to be a break day as I spend most of it running around a disease-ravaged New York (I’ve got Tom Clancy’s The Division coming on Tuesday, but Amazon never seem to deliver games to me in a timely manner, so Wednesday…). I’ve started writing something called The Collective, but I’m saying nothing more about that one right now because I’m not entirely convinced about it. On March 18th, Daredevil season 2 is out, and on the 28th I’ve got tickets to see Batman vs. Superman in glorious IMAX 3D (never done IMAX 3D before, which is why I’m bothering with the gimmick). This kind of sudden influx of superhero imagery could easily result in me throwing my hands up and leaping into Ultrahumans 4 which is called Frostburn (you note I know that, but I still haven’t figured out a title for book 3…). I know what’s in it, so it’s just a matter of writing it down and I’ll probably be in the mood… We’ll see.
February 13, 2016
Valentines’ Day
The title isn’t a typo.
I’m not especially big on Valentine’s Day. I’m single, so all that stuff that gets rammed down my throat this time of year appears to be just some form of suggestion that I’m abnormal. I probably am, but not because I’m single.
However, today is February 14th so… Well, those of you who have read Hunter’s Kiss will get the reference. Here’s a render of Pat from that book in a ludicrous outfit with hearts on it.
