D.C. Farmer's Blog, page 2

Follow the story, not the joke.

Okay, there’s funny and there’s taking the Michael big time. A one-joke premise can seem a bit of a yawn–but then dial in a wildly imaginative script and you’ve suddenly got a cult B movie on your hands. But with Klowns, it’s clear that funny was what drove the idea, and it is a genius title, you have to admit.

This post, like the last, is about humour in fantasy. But the title should give you a bit of a clue as to what goes through my mind when I sit down and try and write one of my contempor...

Warning; could make you laugh, or hide behind the sofa. Humour in fantasy.

When you write a book about a world that doesn’t exist, or maybe does but we just can’t see it, you better have a good reason. Some are grand, like holding a dark mirror up so humanity can see their twisted faces, or, to poke a stick at people’s insistence that life isn’t funny at all. Others are less grand, like trying to make people smile a bit. What you don’t expect is people to say things like,

Since I’ve never read anything like this before, there’s nothing to compare it to. I’ve been ver...

Researching the fantasy novel. #oxymoron

When asked about inspiration, Terry Pratchett said this;

“I make up my ideas in my head, and that’s where the inspiration comes from as well. Yes, sometimes I can see, in the real world, unusual juxtapositions, or there are little triggers which happen to set something off in my mind, but usually I get my ideas by thinking logically about things that you’re not supposed to think logically about.”

So when I am asked, as I sometimes am, “tell us about how you researched your book, The 400Lb Goril...

Ebook reviews the safe way. Aaargh!

So what’s the big deal? two years ago, John Green wrote on his Tumblr that hundreds of people send him notes to say they illegally downloaded one of his books, “as if they expect me to reply with my hearty congratulations that they are technologically sophisticated enough to use Google or whatever.”

Piracy is a growing problem. How do unauthorized digital copies of books end up being shared? The short answer: easily. Before J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore began releasing e-versions of the Harry Pott...

A sense of place in fiction. How much is enough?

Jericho, Oxford.

First of all it’s a great name. But one that some find curiously irritating. One reviewer of The 400 Lb Gorilla said this:

“The Oxford setting recalled Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials rather too closely for me. Maybe those who live therewill appreciate the reasons for the author naming this or that street for the hero to run down as if hell were after him (which it is!).”

Personally, I like the street names. Waton Street, Albert Street, Canal street. Good solid names that s...

Lucky writing ideas: Fortune favours the weird.

Google ‘Luck’ and you’ll get 600 million hits. Some people consider themselves lucky, others do not. There’s a whole world of pop psych out there, some of it common sense, some of it less so–Google ‘lucky charms and amulets’ for that one.

Essentially, research has shown that a lot of luck boils down to a series of attitudes in that lucky people tend to:

Follow their intuition and explore their feelings. The old gut reaction wins here.


Do not depend on routines and are open to variety and take ch...

Review: Just One Damned Thing After Another

Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Very rarely does a book grab me and not let me go. But JODTAA is very definitely one of those. I was lucky enough to get the audio book and thus was able to listen to it on my commute to work. It made the actual time at work a complete pain and the journey to and from a delight. Initially, this was released as a free ebook on amazon while Ms Taylor struggled to garner interest from a publisher and many reviewers were irr...

Review:

Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Very rarely does a book grab me and not let me go. But JOTAA is very definitely one of those. I was lucky enough to get the audio book and thus was able to listen to it on my commute to work. It made the actual time at work a complete pain and the journey to and from a delight. Initially, this was released as a free ebook on amazon while Ms Taylor struggled to garner interest from a publisher and many reviewers were irri...

Writing fantasy, warts and all.

I posted in September 2012 about writing fantasy and the guilty pleasure it gave me. That idea came from an article written in 2005 by Sandra Miller and in this, she rehearses the responses that most of us need to prepare when we talk about ourselves as writers–if we dare.

Personally, I steer people away from the topic as much as I can and talk about warts instead. I find warts a pretty good alternative because of their universality. People can understand warts because most people have had one...

Where do you get you’re ideas from? Behind the sofa.

Borrowed from the RP site

Where I get my ideas from, or hiding behind the sofa.

I’m a science fiction fan. Hardly surprising since I was exposed at an early age. I was 8 years old when the BBC first started showing Dr Who. There’d been nothing like it on TV up to that point. And best of all, it was aired on Saturday afternoon at around tea-time.

There are several memorable things about that first episode, some of them memorable for all the wrong reasons. November 23rd 1963 was the day after Pres...