Acceptance!

I’ve heard this weekend that a publisher wants my historical fantasy novel, ‘The Doe and the Dragon’. It’s set in 5th century north Wales, and uses local and wider legends to tell a semi-historical story of the generation before Arthur. As usual, in case anything goes wrong I’ll wait until contracts are signed before revealing the publisher.

It’s a time and place that has always fascinated me – I even studied Dark Age Wales at university. I find the half century before Arthur is more fascinating than the period of the great man himself, with the break-up of Roman Britain and the Celtic re-emergence. It was a time of change, with civil wars and the establishment of Saxon and Irish kingdoms on the British mainland, and the beginnings of Christianity’s triumph over the old beliefs. And, of course, there are semi-magical names such as Vortigern, Ambrosius and Cunedda.

The countryside itself lends itself to fantasy writing, with hidden glens, cloud-covered peaks and stunningly-located hillforts. It seems that every stream and hill has a story associated with it.

I’ve tried to capture all this in ‘The Doe and the Dragon’.

While my name will be the one on the cover, as usual thanks are due to others whose help has been invaluable. Phil ploughed his way through my first draft and told me what did and didn’t work. Gianna and Cathy read a later version and in particular helped with the characterisation.

Finally, an acknowledgement to Emma and Peter, who walked countless miles – willingly, I think, particularly when we could find an ice-cream shop - through hidden valleys and over dramatic hillforts while I researched locations on our north Wales family holidays.

More to follow, including an outline of the main characters.

Dark Hedges

Black Horse Western author Phil McCormac sent me a postcard showing the Dark Hedges of Ballymoney in Northern Ireland.  I’d never heard of them, but I almost did a double take when I saw the card – the hedges are almost exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote ‘The Wood’. 

These trees lean over the road, with their twisted boughs and darkness.  All that is needed is a line of skulls on sticks, and The Wood sits in front of you!

Here are some links for pictures:

http://ysr23.com/blog/?p=521

http://www.archiemiles.co.uk/Images/Beech/am_Dark%20Hedges%20N.Ireland.%20jpg.jpg

http://www.photographyblog.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=85713

Gianna Bruno – Coffee Time Romance

28 June is Gainna Bruno’s spotlight day on Coffee Time Romance. 

There will be prizes and previews, and Gianna has invited me to talk about writing love scenes from the point of view of the opposite sex.

The Shoot - Reviews

Here are a links to a couple of reviews of ‘The Shoot’:

By Gianna Bruno. (This was a preview, to be picky!)

By Seriously Reviewed, who gave the book a very pleasing seventeen out of twenty!

In Praise of the Shorter Form

No, this isn’t a piece about my wife who is five foot zero and wonderful!

I’ve always enjoyed writing and reading novels, with the opportunities for sub-plots and characterisation that their length allows.  I’m not so keen on short stories, but I do appreciate the skill in writing something short and sharp that sticks in the reader’s mind.

I’ve always thought of novellas as a compromise between shorts and novels, and like a lot of compromises they often bring out the weaknesses of both rather than the strengths of either.  But I’m beginning to come around to the idea of novellas.  So, what’s changed my mind?

Well, having ‘The Shoot’ published has helped, although as this started off as a part of ‘The Wood’ that got separated I still tend to think of it in the context of being part of Wood than a stand-alone piece.

It’s being part of the Eternal Press family, though, that has really got me reading.  EP published a lot of novellas, and of course I’ve had the chance to taste several pretty good ones.  Seeing some of the techniques used by other writers has been more helpful than reading any number of ‘how to’ guides, and I’ve learned that it is possible to get everything in a novella that you see in a novel; it just has to be done differently.

While anyone wanting to see how to do a novella well could probably pick up an EP release at random, two of their books show off aspects of the shorter form perfectly.

Gianna Bruno’s ‘Hot Chocolate Kiss’ is a masterpiece of characterisation.  Keela Branford is a great character anyway: likeable, and both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.  I was really impressed with the way Gianna managed to achieve such a well-rounded heroine in only ten thousand words – many full length novels struggle to deepen a character this well.

‘Frenzy’ is the other EP release I’ll recommend.  This is a gritty story about eight men who find themselves stranded on a lifeboat in shark-infested seas.  Carole Johnstone has put together a cast of complex characters and the story is about the people themselves as much as their predicament.  Carole weaves both strands together seamlessly in only 28,000 words, but doesn’t leave any loose ends – all this without making the work seem rushed.

So, after reading other Eternal Press authors, I’ve changed my mind about novellas, and maybe I’ll have another one published one day.

The Horror of Modern Horror Writing

I read somewhere, once, that as technology moves us forward, it becomes more and more difficult to write horror set in the modern day. 

The introduction of the internet, mobile telephones and the like does tend to complicate things, as I’ve found out in a couple of recent works.  It’s certainly harder to get a character on their own, out of communications with the rest of humanity, when all they have to do is pick up a mobile telephone. 

And what about that top secret installation, miles from anywhere, where horrific experiments have been going on for years?  Or the clearing in the remote forest, where carnivorous beasts previously unknown to nature, live?  Google Earth will have spotted the installation, or the remote caves, within seconds!

Thus, the modern horror writer faces dilemmas that wouldn’t have been thought about, perhaps even ten years ago.  Andraste’s Blade was published in 2005, and even that recently I don’t think it raised any eyebrows that most of my main (modern day) characters didn’t carry telephones.

So, what to do?  Well, an obvious answer is to set a story in the past.  As anyone who knows my work will know, a lot of my writing is based around Celtic myth and set around the time of the legends.  No difficulty there, then (except the problem of getting the period right).

A second answer is to set the story somewhere remote.  Again, that’s something I tend to do anyway.  In remote places, telephone reception is often non-existent, so the problem of communication is lessened.  However, as communication networks improve, I’d expect even this to become a difficulty over the next few years.  It doesn’t take away the problem of aerial photography, though, but that isn’t something I’ve had to address up to now.

So, what about modern urban horror?  What’s to stop our hero or heroine simply ‘phoning for help?  We have to stop them doing that, don’t we?  We need out characters out there facing the horror on their own, so we have to get rid of that mobile.  Having them lose it, and then maybe looking for it, can add an interesting plot twist and a couple of challenging chapters.  Or it can be a pain.  I’ve read one novel (and I can’t remember which one) where trying to find the lost telephone was integral to the story.

So, whatever plot the writer comes up with, modern communications technology needs to be written into it.

I’m Back!

Not that I’ve been away, but I haven’t posted for a while. So, here’s an update on what I’m doing.

I had a potentially catastrophic PC crash a few weeks ago, caused by a power surge immediately before a power cut. Fortunately I back up regularly, so I didn’t lose much data, although it’s been an ongoing job to get my desktop and links and the like as I used to have them.. However, I did need to buy a new hard drive (upgrade!). I also took the opportunity to switch to Windows 7.

Writing-wise it’s been a bit quiet. ‘The Well,’ a novella about a young woman who wakes up in a…well, is with a publisher who expressed an interest after seeing an outline and a sample chapter.

‘The Doe and the Dragon’, a historical fantasy set around early Welsh legends, will be sent out to publishers soon. Anyone who knows me well will know that for my history/archaeology degree I concentrated on post-Roman Wales which has always been one of my passions (along with Aldershot Town Football Club and horror fiction). I’ve always wanted to write something based on the period, but wanted to wait until I could think of a plot that was both original and did the period justice, and I like to think I’ve managed it here. I also tried to avoid Arthurian clichés, and again I hope I succeeded. The main difficulty was that I don’t know the fantasy genre too well. I couldn’t resist putting some horror elements in, but it is primarily a fantasy work and I hope I didn’t get any important fantasy elements wrong.