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.