Alexander Gordon Smith's Blog, page 5
June 18, 2012
Meme Monday No. 1: One does not simply…
Meme Mondays, because… well, why the hell not?
No, one RUNS!
June 14, 2012
Fan Art Friday No. 1!
There really is nothing better than browsing the interwebs and suddenly finding Furnace fan art and fanfic and roleplay! It’s amazing knowing that this world which started life in my brain has grown right out of my head, becoming something bigger and better than I ever could have created by myself. I think all stories are communal, because as soon as you tell a story it becomes as much the reader’s as the writer’s. When you write a book you open the door to that world, and people should be free to not just explore that world but to create and expand it too. I know not all authors agree with this, but for me it really is one of the joys of being a writer.
So I’m going to start sharing some fan art on my blog (on Fridays, more alliteration, whoop!), starting with these jaw-droppingly awesome pieces from the insanely talented DetectiveWolf over on DeviantArt. She has kindly given me permission to post them on my blog, but you should go check out her page because there’s tonnes of amazing stuff on there (and to see these at a higher res, this post just doesn’t do them justice). Thanks, Julia, for bringing the Furnace world to life!
If you’ve got any fan art / fanfic or anything else Furnace related then email it to me, I’ll try to share as much of it as possible here. And have fun with it, it’s your world now, not mine!
The Skulls!
The Dogs!
The Heart of Furnace!
So awesome!!!
Fan Art Friday!
There really is nothing better than browsing the interwebs and suddenly finding Furnace fan art and fanfic and roleplay! It’s amazing knowing that this world which started life in my brain has grown right out of my head, becoming something bigger and better than I ever could have created by myself. I think all stories are communal, because as soon as you tell a story it becomes as much the reader’s as the writer’s. When you write a book you open the door to that world, and people should be free to not just explore that world but to create and expand it too. I know not all authors agree with this, but for me it really is one of the joys of being a writer.
So I’m going to start sharing some fan art on my blog (on Fridays, more alliteration, whoop!), starting with these jaw-droppingly awesome pieces from the insanely talented DetectiveWolf over on DeviantArt. She has kindly given me permission to post them on my blog, but you should go check out her page because there’s tonnes of amazing stuff on there (and to see these at a higher res, this post just doesn’t do them justice). Thanks, Julia, for bringing the Furnace world to life!
If you’ve got any fan art / fanfic or anything else Furnace related then email it to me, I’ll try to share as much of it as possible here. And have fun with it, it’s your world now, not mine!
The Skulls!
The Dogs!
The Heart of Furnace!
So awesome!!!
June 13, 2012
Workshop Wednesday No. 1: How would you like to die?
"A better man than I am, and much beloved," is how Proust wanted to die. What about your characters?
So, I was thinking about putting some more workshops up on my blog. Nothing too fancy, just bits and pieces that I use when I’m writing. Some you’ve probably seen before, others will be rubbish, but occasionally there might be a nugget of something useful that will help you when you’re working on your books. And why Wednesdays? Well, I like alliteration, so it was the only day that would go with Workshop.
When I run workshops, I always say that characters are the most important thing in writing. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the most amazing plot in the world, if your characters look like they’ve been hacked out of cardboard then nobody is going to believe in them, and nobody is going to care what happens to them. Get your characters right and not only will people be desperate to know what happens to them, but those characters will actually end up writing the story for you. You just have to try to keep up.
I usually do a simple questionnaire for my main characters when I’m starting a book, just a quick interrogation. It helps you think about them as living, breathing human beings rather than literary devices. A while back, though, I found something a little more useful: Proust’s Questionnaire (if you read Vanity Fair magazine you’ll know all about this). Proust didn’t invent this, he was just famous for his answers (the manuscript of which sold a decade or so ago for a small fortune). I don’t think it’s designed for literary characters, it’s more about confessions, about discovering hidden truths in your own personality (so by all means have a go at it yourself). But it’s incredibly useful for getting into the head of the person you’re writing about.
Take an hour or so, sit down with your character, and ask them these questions. Don’t think too hard about the answers, try to switch off and let them do the talking. It’s fascinating what they come up with. If you have a go, post your answers in the comments section! Oh, and there’s also a version of this on Vanity Fair’s website which tells you which luminary you most resemble. Fun!
1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
2. What is your greatest fear?
3. Which historical or living figure do you most identify with?
4. Which living person do you most admire?
5. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
6. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
7. What is your greatest extravagance?
8. On what occasions do you lie?
9. What do you dislike most about your appearance?
10. When and where were you happiest?
11. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
12. If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
13. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
14. If you died and came back as a person or thing, what would it be?
15. What is your most treasured possession?
16. What do you regard as your lowest depth of misery?
17. Who are your heroes in real life?
18. What is it that you most dislike?
19. How would you like to die?
20. What is your motto?
And feel free to add your own questions too!
See you next week for another Workshop Wednesday (any requests for workshops, just ask in the comments below)!
June 11, 2012
107,332 words later…
I feel 107,332 years older...
WOO HOO!!! I have finally finished The Fury 2, which is going to be called The Storm. Well, I actually finished it on the last day of May, but I was so exhausted by the end of it that I had to crash for a week. This one was hard work. Seriously hard work. I’m not sure why. It might be the scale of it – there are a number of main characters, and the action spans the entire planet (and beyond, kind of…). It’s a big book, too. Not quite as big as The Fury, but getting there. It’s a beast.
It took a lot out of me, and it made me think about how much of ourselves we give to our writing. We live that story. We’re right there in the blood and the mud alongside those characters. Their experiences, their battles, their heartbreak, it all belongs to us too, we share it with them. It’s no wonder it takes us a while to adjust to being back in the real world. It makes me think of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the way that the characters live a life in Narnia, and grow old together there. Then they step back through the wardrobe and they’re kids again, life has waited for them. And although they look the same as they did all those decades ago, they’re different people, old souls.
Writing is a bit like that (reading too), because you live a whole other life when you write a book, other lives. You leave your body, your world, your life behind when you step into the story, and when you finish it, when you stop typing and finally let yourself come up for air, you’re suddenly back inside your old body, like time was waiting for you to come back. I’ve said before that I don’t remember much of my own life when I’m writing – I certainly couldn’t tell you much about the last couple of months that I’ve been inside The Storm – but I remember everything about the world of the story, every argument, every punch, every tear, every laugh. Those memories are more real than the ones from my actual life. I feel like I was right there for every second of it, so no wonder it’s taking me a while to adjust to being home again!
Anyway, that’s enough of that! Some people have been asking when The Fury comes out in the US, and there’s a complicated answer to that. The Fury is made up of two books, The Fury, and The Storm. In the UK they will be separate books. The Fury came out in April, and The Storm comes out next Spring. However, in the US The Fury and The Storm are going to be compressed into one single book, called The Fury, and it will be coming out next Spring too. So although readers in the UK will be able to read The Fury first, UK and US readers will get The Storm at the same time (although it won’t be called The Storm in the US, just The Fury). So, I hope that cleared things up… I’ll explain the reasons behind this another time!
And what’s next? The Fury is now over, it was always going to be a two-book series. This is the part of writing I love best – planning the next adventure. There are a few options: an adult horror I’ve been chewing on for a while, called Brute, a couple of YA action / horror series I have been thinking about, and a book for younger readers that has been begging me to write it for years now. Or maybe I’ll take a break from the novels to write a screenplay, my sister and I have been working on a couple and it would be good to get them finished. Or maybe I’ll just play video games for a couple of months… I’ll let you know!
Stay Furious!
May 20, 2012
Weekly Catchup – 20th May!
More like a monthly catchup this one, but never mind! I’ve been on a small tour to mark the publication of The Fury, which has been fun! A big shout-out to Mansfield Library, Brunts School, The Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival, Warwick School, King Edward VII Grammar School, Battersea Park School, Ixworth Middle School, the Grampian Children’s Book Awards, Torry Academy and Oldmachar Academy! I had an amazing time, and a huge thanks to everyone who helped organise it! Here’s a picture of me in King Edward VII Grammar School, in the same room where Shakespeare was taught when he was a kid!!
Shakespeare's Old School!
It was also wonderful heading back up to the Grampians, although sadly I wasn’t up for the award this year, I was just co-hosting along with the ever-awesome Barry Hutchison, the delightful Cathy MacPhail, and the lovely Caroline Clough. It was a brilliant day, and congratulations to Malorie Blackman for winning! I love visiting Aberdeen, not least because it gives me a chance to pop in and say hi to my uncle, cousin and family who live up there. Plus it’s an excuse to drink unlimited amounts of Irn Bru, quite possibly the most amazing drink in the world! (No haggis this time, though, which is a shame!)
I’m sure I took some photos, I’ll post them if I find them!
In other news, I received a nice package of Brazilian Lockdowns this week, which is totally awesome!! I didn’t even realise it was out in Brazil yet, so it was a nice surprise to get these. It’s called Encarcerados: Fuga de Furnace! They’ve used the US cover, which is cool. I’ll be giving away a copy of this at some point over on the Facebook Furnace page, so make sure you’ve Liked it! I’m REALLY hoping that I’ll be able to work out a trip to Brazil at some point…
Encarcerados!!!!
That’s about it for now! I’m furiously (haha, see what I did there) trying to get The Fury 2 finished before the end of the week, which means at least 4,000 words a day every day next week. Wish me luck!!
May 7, 2012
Book Review: Relentless
Relentless by Dean Koontz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
THERE ARE SPOILERS APLENTY IN THIS REVIEW!!
I have to start this review by saying that I love Dean Koontz. He was one of my favourite authors growing up, and one of the people who made me long to be a writer. I would devour his thrillers, dreaming of the day I could write a book full of such terror and excitement, and I still think his early stuff is fantastic.
I hadn’t read a Koontz book in a while, and downloaded this on my phone to read while I was on a long train journey, looking for something fast and, well, relentless, to keep me occupied. And at first that’s exactly what this book was. The story follows an author called Cubby Greenwich who falls foul of a famously acerbic reviewer called Shearman Waxx. Knowing he should just let the criticism go, Cubby instead confronts Waxx (after a fashion) in a restaurant bathroom, only for the reviewer to utter a single, foreboding word: “Doom.”
What follows is, for the most part, a wonderfully written thriller. Waxx, it turns out, is a complete nutter, and he begins tormenting Cubby and his wife and child (the threat made even more sinister by the fact that we soon discover Waxx has done this before, to other writers, with horrific consequences). It starts off small, but rapidly escalates into full-on Cape Fear-style persecution. It’s gripping stuff, and truly relentless – I honestly struggled to put the book down and almost missed my stop. It becomes clear that Waxx is not working alone, but has a powerful, shadowy organisation behind him, and midway through the book reaches a wonderful pivot point, one of my favourite parts in any thriller, when Cubby decides enough is enough and decides to turn the tables on Waxx. Relentless suddenly becomes a fantastic revenge story, and the pace picks up even further.
If Koontz had found a decent way to end it then this would have been a five-star thriller, no doubt. Instead, though, he seems to have handed the book over to a small child to conclude. Seriously, it’s that bad. At various points through the story Koontz mentions that Cubby’s six-year-old son, Milo, is a genius, and the kid does spend quite a bit of the book making strange gadgets from everyday objects like salt and pepper shakers. There are also repeated mentions of their dog, Lassie, mysteriously finding her way into very small, enclosed spaces. I wasn’t quite sure where Koontz was going with all this, and to be honest I’m not sure he did either. But when we get to the last couple of chapters – SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! – we discover that Milo has worked out how to build a machine (like I say, from a salt shaker and other bits and bobs) that can rewind time, and a side effect of this is that the dog can teleport.
Yes, you read that right. It completely ruined the book for me, because up until that point it was utterly grounded in reality. It reminded me of when I was a kid and couldn’t think of a way to end my story, so suddenly the main character would turn into a dinosaur and eat the bad guys, or discover he has laser jets in his eyes. These strange twists literally save the day for Cubby and co. I’m not quite sure how Koontz got this past his editor (probably just because he’s Koontz), but I’m fairly sure if a new, unpublished writer submitted a novel with an ending like this it would be laughed right back into its self-addressed envelope.
So… I was really disappointed with this, mainly because it started so well. I felt cheated by the laziness of the finale. Consider Relentless a five-star book right up until the end, but the last couple of chapters are little other than a farce.
I still love Dean Koontz, though 
View all my reviews
May 1, 2012
My Blog Tour!
Well it’s been a whirlwind trip around cyberspace: two weeks, ten stops, and 20,000 words! In case you missed them, here they are!
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Next I was over at Trapped By Monsters talking about my favourite undead being – the zombie!
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Hot on the heels of that I was interviewed by the lovely Bookbabblers!
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Next up I visited Mostly Reading YA for a furious conversation about anger!!
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I was over with the lovely Book Smugglers for stop eight, discussing musical influences!
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I just want to say a HUGE thanks to all the blogs that let me stop by to say hi, and another HUGE thanks to those of you who read my posts! It’s been fun (and furious)!!!!
April 19, 2012
A Furious Blog Tour!!!
To celebrate the launch of The Fury I’m going off on a blog tour!! It all kicks off today on the AWESOME Darren Shan’s website!!! As you all know I’m a huge Shanster, and I’m absolutely honoured to be the Master of Horror’s first ever guest blogger!!! You can check it out here, and take a look at the cool dooberry below for the other dates and destinations for the tour. Thanks to everyone for letting me drop in on your blogs and websites, it’s going to be fun!!
My Blog Tour!!
April 15, 2012
Book Review: The 13th Horseman
The 13th Horseman!
Let me start by saying I’m not sure where to start. This is the first book review I have ever written. In fact, it’s pretty much the first review of anything that I have ever written – well, since I was about ten when I wrote a review of a Norwich City football match because I was so shocked at the disastrous performance of the keeper (who let in a bizarrely awful goal then managed to knock himself unconscious). Anyway, whereas that review was stoked by outrage and disappointment, this one exists for entirely different reasons: Barry Hutchison’s The 13th Horseman is staggeringly, breathtakingly, absolutely fantastic!!
You may think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. In fact I’m being entirely literal in my praise. It’s staggeringly fantastic because the story – which involves a young lad called Drake who finds the three Horsemen of the Apocalypse living in a magic shed at the bottom of his garden, and discovers shortly afterwards that he is the new fourth Horseman, Death – was so engaging that I could not put it down, and staggered from place to place attempting to read it on the move. It’s breathtakingly fantastic because it’s so hilarious that I often found myself laughing so hard I couldn’t get air into my lungs. And it’s absolutely fantastic because the action scenes are so intense, and I got so caught up in the drama, that for those periods of time this story was utterly absolute, nothing else in the world mattered.
Drake, his new best friend Mel, and the horsemen find themselves battling a previous Death (the high-stress job has a very high turnaround of staff, as Famine explains at one point by listing the fates of Drake’s predecessors: “Mad, mad, suicide, mad, quit, mad, goldfish, suicide, mad”), who is very keen to usher in the end of the world a few millennia early. My favourite scenes were the ones where Drake is training to be the new death – something he takes to like a fish… well, like a fish training to be the new death. A superb mix of wonderful Biblical mythology and “high-tech-mumbo-jumbo” keeps the action scenes racing along faster than an apocalyptic horseman’s flying steed (which is very, very fast). The pace really is relentless as Drake, Mel and the horsemen find themselves up against ever-more deadly threats, culminating in a heart-stopping final battle for the fate of the world.
For me, though, it is the humour that really makes this story stand out from the wealth of mythology-related books out there. It seriously is one of the funniest books I have read in a very long time. The source of that humour is the horsemen themselves: War (grumpy, impatient and Scottish), Famine (morbidly obese, perpetually starving, fond of Cornettos) and my favourite, Pestilence (hypochondriac, ever-fretting and, well, suppurating). They are an amazing comedy trio, as perfectly suited to each other as the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges. They have been hanging around for thousands of years waiting to usher in Armageddon, and spend most of their time either arguing or playing board games or arguing whilst playing board games (the Guess Who sequence was my favourite). The dynamic between the horsemen is absolutely pitch perfect. Well, okay, maybe a couple of the jokes fall flat, but I was reading a proof copy of the book and they may well have been trimmed out. But either way, I really was giggling all the way through. They are one of the most amusing – and endearing – trios in children’s literature. In fact, at times during the novel they pose a danger of overshadowing the main character – although fortunately Drake is so well drawn out and developed that this never happens.
It’s a clever book, too, in the way it deals with issues of faith. The horsemen, after all, are right out of the New Testament, and writing a story like this could easily have caused problems for its author. But Barry handles his subject matter perfectly – talking about the mythology in a tongue-in-cheek way that also manages to be respectful. It’s his fondness for his cast that does it, I think, a real love and affection for the horsemen and the tradition they come from. And it isn’t just Christian mythology here – in this universe there is room for all beliefs, because it’s faith that makes things real. As Pestilence says – putting right a common “mistranslation” from the Bible – “Faith can make mountains.” It’s actually a really positive and tolerant message to pass on to young readers.
The 13th Horseman is the first part of Barry’s new Afterworlds series, which from what I can gather is a series of books set in the same universe (with its own vast lost property room), but with different characters and settings in each one. It’s an intriguing and exciting prospect, and Barry has done an excellent job here of setting the groundwork and the ground rules – there really is an unlimited multiverse of possibilities to work with. All I can say is that he’s going to have a hard job reaching the bar he has set for himself with this first volume. But as a writer who has already proven himself over and over (his Invisible Fiends books are brilliant), I have no doubt that he will. And I sincerely hope that wherever he goes next, War, Famine and Pestilence (and with any luck the Alfred Randall X-perience) get to go along for the ride.
I could go on, but in the interests of brevity I’ll wrap it up here by saying READ THIS BOOK! The combination of fantasy and gentle humour, and the ability to find the absurd in the everyday, is definitely reminiscent of Terry Pratchett (and I’m talking about early Pratchett here, which is for me the best Pratchett), but this is very much Barry’s world and Barry’s sense of humour, and with this book he is seriously proving himself to be one of the funniest and most exciting writers around. 13 may be unlucky for some, but for Barry Hutchison it’s an absolute winner.
