Ben Hennessy's Blog, page 3

A little bit of not a lot.

Ok, since I’ve just finished twelve hours in the office, I can’t be arsed writing another award-winning blog post. Instead, here’s an excerpt of a non-Queen of the World related fantasy-ish novella I tinker with from time to time. It’s completely unedited, it’s full of sweary language bollocks (seriously; if you don’t like curse words, don’t bother), and it’s about two chapters in. Writers might find it useful to read a raw, unpolished first draft piece. Non-writers who have enjoyed my work p...

You can’t eat words.

I spent the past few days in Cork, Ireland, visiting some of my old friends I worked with at Blizzard Entertainment. The time was mainly spent drinking alcohol, eating in cafes and pubs, and not sleeping. We took in a bandeoke night (karaoke with a live backing band!), a dude playing a tiny guitar singing pop classics (who could teleport, apparently), and generally had a bit of a laugh. I really enjoyed myself, and am looking forward to doing it again pretty soon.

Then some of the pictures of...

Fit the second.

So here’s the run in.

Now that I’ve started editing the second draft of the sequel, I think it’s about time to get the whole online presence deal started up again. As such, I’ll be updating this blog once a week from here on in, with articles and features about the second draft, how a sequel differs from the first in the series, various observations about story and structure etc. I’m also going to be providing little teasers and explorations of characters of Queen of the World, following an id...

From you to me to you.

My last few blog posts have been as boring as watching a single brick in a gymnastics competition. So let’s have fun with the ever reliable ‘What did people type into Google to find my website’ list! Basically any time someone reaches any page on my site, the search term they entered is logged by WordPress. It picks up phrases, links to pictures and repeated words. What do we have so far, Jim?

i’m gonna have me some fun x 2

You came to the right place, sir! Providing you expected literary enter...

In space, no one can hear you eat cheesecake.

I’m a snob.

Now that doesn’t mean I look down on things with an air of distaste. Hell, my favourite genre of music is screamy heavy metal, my favourite comedians curse like they have a bomb strapped to them that will explode if the comic uses less than one ‘fuck’ per sentence, and I find comics and anime simply wonderful. I can hardly pull the cultural superiority card. What I mean is that I’m a snob when it comes to the quality of a product’s delivery.

Take my amazing Christmas present from my...

Little by little.

The Queen of the World sequel is inching towards completion. Every time I think I’m at the end I realise there’s a little bit more to go, like a five pound note tied to a string being yanked along the road by an evil child. Soon, my pretties. Soooon.

It’s a bit of a weird stage of my writing career. As I’ve mentioned in my last couple of posts, I’m now working full time in an excellent job I’m having a lot of fun with. So my writing time has been cut down drastically. I’m throwing more words i...

Bashing it out all over the shop.

I haven’t updated this for a while. I’ve done nothing but work, sleep and write for the last six weeks and, quite frankly, I’m exhausted. There isn’t a wonderful amount to blog about, so I’ve been storing it all up so I can do a post which isn’t just fluff. What happened was I formed the idea to write a blog post about my blog not being fluff. Capiche? Thought so.

I’m not a writer who’s into hardcore self promotion. I completely admire those who seem to have boundless energy, enthusiasm and de...

Bloody liar.

So how did the thirty-thousand-words-in-three-days go?

Well, being honest, I was never going to do it. And anyone who knows me could have told you that from the start. But that wasn’t the point of the last post. My experiment – for that is what it was – involved an adjustment of my immediate productivity goals.

I ended up writing fourteen thousand words in two days. Which isn’t bad, really. It means I wrote more on Wednesday and Thursday night that I’ve managed for the rest of September. Puttin...

Risin’ up, back on the street.

The last twelve thousand words for the first draft of Queen of the World were written in a single day.

I’m going to (try and) quit smoking (hahahahaha) in October, along with some of my new work colleagues, as part of Stoptober.

This means I have five more days left to smoke… heavily. When I don’t smoke, my writing productivity goes to shit.

So I need a headstart.

From now until Saturday, I’m going to write. From breakfast until bedtime. I’m aiming for ten thousand words a day. This is partly bec...

I want you to want me to slap you.

“Would you sleep with me for a dollar?”

“What? No, don’t be stupid.”

“Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?”

“A million?”

“Yes.”

“….Yeah, I think I would.”

“Okay, so we’ve established that you’re a whore. Now we’re just negotiating price.”

Evil characters are fun. They usually get the best one-liners, they have the lesser moral code to inhibit them, and as I’ve mentioned before on this blog, they usually have an amazing human resources department.

Within that, though, there’s a trend for the...