Game of Bastards.

Damn you, Game of Thrones.

So the missus and me watched the HBO series based on the Song of Fire and Ice series of books by George R R Martin. It's fantastic. Its high quality production, excellent cast and tale of political intrigue with a big dollop of fantasy tossed over it made it one of the best series I've seen in years. It's astounding. If you missed it, go and find it somewhere.

It's interested me in getting the books, which I will do as soon as I have my Kindle. Money is a bit tight at the moment, boo. But, judging by the Emmy nominations and rave reviews the show got, it also suggested that fantasy as a genre has a pretty big potential that hasn't been fully explored. Most times when it’s done seriously, it becomes huge. Look at the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films. That made around two billion for New Line Cinema in gross.

Robert Jordan, David Gemmel, David Eddings, Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, Terry Pratchett, Raymond Feist. Think of the movies and the series and the games that could be mined out of them all and more. Dragonlance film trilogy? Hells yes. Discworld MMO? Splendid.

I mean, remember The Beastmaster? That film was bad-ass.

Anyway, the reason I damn the Game of Thrones series is that I was so impressed I immediately went to work on the second draft of the book - hence the non-updates. I finished it up last night. Well, I finished up all the housekeeping work. Adjusting tense, fixing spelling mistakes and cutting out terribly long winded sentences when all the character is doing it picking something up. I made my notes and my to-do list and worked out what needs to be added to make it all a bit more coherent. I've come to terms with the fact that the book isn't going to be a literary Rambo. It's a slow burner and the events come with a gentle pace. I considered cutting out huge reams of text to make it snappier but I decided against it. There are enough books out there which hammer a hundred different explosions, deaths and titties into a single novel.

I like the book and I'm happy with it. With enough work I think it could be pretty good, and leave the option open for further books in the same world.

So I'm going to leave it for a couple of days and then start writing the additional scenes. I'm also considering removing some of the start, though I'm not sure what to remove. There's a fair bit which isn't directly related to the main plot but it does provide a sense of characterisation which I think is important. We'll see.

That's about it for now. Would just like to express my condolences to all the families of those lost to the Norway attacks yesterday. Was pretty unreal watching it all unfold on the TV and the developments just got steadily worse. All our thoughts are with you.

How to lose a poem.

Alright, so that’s the end of the blog. I’ve been published. Cheers, have fun!

...

A joke, but let me clarify. I received my first acceptance letter this week. A poem I wrote, ‘Salutations’, is going to be printed in the Seeds of Inspiration poetry anthology later this year. Which is good fun, and I was pretty stoked to hear about it. Only, if I may confess something...

I didn’t remember sending it off. I didn’t remember which poem it was. I didn’t even know if it was mine.

When I received the letter it had the poem’s final proof attached. Which was handy as I didn’t fancy waiting until the book was produced before finding out what my contribution was. I remembered that I wrote it in 2009 as a challenge to someone who said most of my prose was ‘too wordy’. By that she meant I usually write in one big paragraph. I didn’t really pay much attention to pentameter or form or style. I just wrote stuff down and that was it. So I did this poem in a regular rhyming couplet format thing, and a couple of years later saw this poetry competition. After a minor revision, off it went.

(Something I found funny: I wrote it in Ireland, sent it off to United Press whilst in Vietnam, received the acceptance letter in Norway and will be printed as an English author. Tee-hee.)

Anyway, so I’m being published for the first time. What the purpose of this blog is, though, is to have a novel published. So while it’s a nice addition to my CV, and I am genuinely pleased, the mission continues!

I’ve decided to work on a new long story whilst waiting for the second draft. I’d toyed with the idea of laying it off until I was completely done with the novel I have now, but this is the first new idea I’ve been really excited about in a couple of years so I’m just going to hammer it onto the page and sort it all out at a later date. It won’t be so much a second draft when I come back to it as a big jumble of vaguely connected words. The new story includes the following; forest nymphs, twin worlds, Armageddon, sex, drugs & heavy metal... and lots of profanity. I’m of the belief that if I am going to draw from my own experiences, I have to be honest – with language, growing up in Grays around the ages of 18 to 21, everyone I fucking knew swore.

I’ve written about five thousand words so far messing around and it’s been lots of fun. I like the idea of merging the real world I grew up in and the kind of fantasy world I enjoy reading about. The result with be marketable to few people, I think, but it’s definitely a story I’m writing for my own interests. As the story runs in my head it seems too full-on for the young adult genre – I haven’t seen much drug use and utterings of the C word in the works I’ve read – and too fairy-filled for people who like stories of fucking and fighting. I also plan to have a lot of Iron Maiden in it for shits and giggles. So it’ll fall somewhere in the middle, I suppose. We’ll see.

Haha – As I’m writing this someone on Facebook said it sounds like an episode of Supernatural. Brilliant. I can promise now that in my head it isn’t much like that. Though I fully endorse the suggestion!

I’m no longer at the cabin, and am back in Arendal. I’ve got a few weeks to go before I visit home and see my excellent friends. Looking forward to a bit of a catch-up. Apologies if this entry is a bit all over the place. I’m quite sure I’ve drunk at least two too many cups of coffee.