‘Polishing ‘

I am currently editing a novella for older children at the moment – a horror story with a mysterious curse. I am not an expert in revising and editing (or Turd Polishing, I call it), but I do know how t read up on it and apply what I have researched.

The first useful piece of research I did was passed on to me by one of the members of my writing group. It is called Hunting Down the Pleonasm and it is great! The link I’ve provided takes you to a site to download it. However, it was a little bit of a faf, so here is the file itself for you to download:

hunting-down-the-pleonasm-by-allan-guthrie-1Download

Vivien Reis is a Youtuber with some great advice on writing. Her videos have an informative style and good content. I’ve linked two such video essays she has done on editing…

I think the main task for me at the moment is to make my manuscript as good as I can before I hand it out to beta readers and then either query a publisher or an editor.

Please let me know if you have some good advice for editing, please let me know.

She-Ra: Season 4 News!

The DreamWorks team announced the release date for the next season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. I’ve been a bit of a fan of the show on Netflix and reviewed it a little while ago.

Instead of being shorts like the last season, the fourth season is 13 episodes long focusing on, in part, newly-crowned Queen Glimmer and the new leader of the Horde – Catra.

No doubt there will be online raging about non-binary gender characters, subverting a story from the 80’s so that it is ‘woke’ but I think the remake serves its target demographic perfectly.

You can read my review of the first three seasons here.

5 Games from Fantasy Stories

Pages Below the Vaulted Sky asks an interesting question: Where are the sports in our fondest fantasy stories? It took me a while, and some prompting from others to compile a list of 9 games or recreations played in books I had read… So the following list does draw on a diverse array of fantasy fiction, not all of it suitable for under 18s! Here they are, in no particular order.

Sports

Quidditch – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling, 1997

Sport is a very important subject at school, that’s why I gave Quidditch such an important place at Hogwarts. I was very bad in sports, so I gave Harry a talent I would really loved to have. Who wouldn’t want to fly?

J. K. Rowling

Flying around on broomsticks, playing a game involving four balls, two of which are trying to kill you? Yep, this is almost as good as rugby! I actually saw the ‘muggle’ version of the game with a promotion that ran some taster sessions at my primary school where I work. It was total madness, but then, it did seem fun too. You can’t get more fantastical than a game beyond the realm of current sporting activities – Quidditch isn’t Wizard Football, it is something new entirely.

Board Games

Wizard Chess – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J. K. Rowling, 1997

Hermione:
Ron, you don’t suppose this is going to be like . . real wizard’s chess, do you?

Ron:
Yes Hermione, I think this is going to be exactly like wizard’s chess.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the film, 2001

Another entry from the Harry Potter franchise, Wizard Chess is much different in how it is presented than Quidditch. While the latter is alien, new and otherworldly, Wizard Chess is based in the familiar. It is essentially the same as chess, but with better pieces.

Kaissa – Tarnsman of Gor, John Norman, 1967

Mintar was lost in thought, his small eyes fastened to the red and yellow squares of the board. Having recognized our presence, Marlenus, too, turned his attention to the game. A brief, crafty light flickered momentarily in Mintar’s small eyes, and his pudgy hand hovered, hesitating an instant, over one of the pieces of the hundred-squared board, a centered Tarnsman. He touched it, committing himself to moving it. A brief exchange followed, like a chain reaction, neither man considering his moves for a moment, First Tarnsman took First Tarnsman, Second Spearman responded by neutralizing First Tarnsman, City neutralized Spearman, Assassin took City, Assassin fell to Second Tarnsman, Tarnsman to Spear Slave, Spear Slave to Spear Slave.

John Norman

Another game based upon chess, Kaissa uses two rows of ten pieces as opposed to the two rows of eight we use in chess. Unlike Wizard Chess, Kaissa forms a central part of the plot in several books of the the Gor series.

Thud – Thud, Terry Pratchet, 2005

“He hated games they made the world look too simple. Chess, in particular, had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the king lounged about doing nothing. If only the pawns would’ve united … the whole board could’ve been a republic in about a dozen moves.”

Terry Pratchet

It is many, many years since I read Thud (13 or 14, I think) but the idea that Thud is like chess should be discounted – Unless one means Viking Chess! The pieces represent trolls and dwarves in a recreation of an ancient battle. Which is often reenacted for real wherever trolls and dwarves meet.

Pai Sho – Avatar the Last Airbender, Anime

I always tried to tell you that Pai Sho is more than just a game.

Iroh

Not at all like chess, not at all, but more like Go from China. Pai Sho appears in several episodes of the Last Airbender, and there is some sort of secret society of master Pai Sho players. However, there are no ‘cannon’ rules of the game – though several fan-made versions do exist. The philosophy behind the game is used in several episodes as a metaphor for life.

So? What’s the big deal?

What is the big deal about having games in a fantasy setting? But games are how people learn and spend their recreational time – and have for far longer than written history.

In Ancient Sumeria, the Royal Game of Ur was played, with written rules, dating back some six thousand years. Games and sports are as intrinsic to civilisation as farming and law.

So?

So, to make a fantasy setting seem more real, include games! Include sports.

I really should listen to my own advice, lol.

My Autumn/Winter Reading List

My reading list for the end of 2019/ beginning of 2020

Okay, I know that is a mad pile of books. The first three books in the Wheel of Time series is nearly 3000 pages altogether. The rest of the Mistborn trilogy won’t take me long – though I may be knackered for work because I couldn’t put them down. The rest of the Darkblade books are up there too, including the one about Malus in the Age of Sigma. Children of Blood and Bone caught my eye in Waterstones, and the hype for a Handmaiden’s Tale’s sequel made me go find the first book to see if it is all worth it. My collection of R. A. Salvatorebooks is poor, so I found a stand alone book in my local second-hand bookstore to peruse.

So yes, I know it is unlikely I’m going to be able to get through them all while working, parenting, writing and blogging but I do set aside time every evening to read so I should be able to make something of a dent into that list. Once I finish the Eye of the World, I think I’ll start on something far smaller rather than hitting the second instalment straight away.

What are you reading right now? What books should I add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

Beaten by Robert Jordan

I have been working on my own fantasy tale now for a little while and I’m coming to some really fun and interesting parts with some female cast members. In my setting, women -especially lascivious women – are better at magic. For various reasons, the gods like women who are looser with their morals in my tale.

And then I started reading Eye of the World, the first book in the Wheel of Time. I nearly DNF’d the book in the first 100 pages because it was so long-winded and – not dull, but it was nearly all dialogue. But the Fade and the Trollocs saved it, and now its a great read!

But as I read, the Aes Sedai (who are all women) seem to be the greatest wielders of magic.

This leaves me in somewhat of a bind. Do I change details of my own work so I’m not derivative or do I keep it the same? If I change it, some details of my story will need to change, some of the stakes will seem less grand. If I keep it the same, will I be judged as having copied off the late Robert Jordan?

In the short term, I think I might keep things the way I have them. I’m a great believer in the ‘Death of the Author’ and hopefully my story will be different enough from Mr Jordan’s so that it isn’t thought I lifted elements wholesale from his work. No chosen ones in my story, no real heroes either. And while it is the story of young people in a fantastical setting, I’m not even sure it could be classified as High Fantasy.

But as well, I think it would be hard to write something entirely unique without there being some similar tropes or content to other tales. The fact is, the similarity is coincidental since I only started reading the Wheel of Time this month. I have been writing Kingdom of the Lion for a lot longer. It is the way that the story is told that makes the biggest impact, I feel.

What would you do in my place? Would you change the structure of your tale if you found something you didn’t want to be accused of copying? Do you think that being derivative is to somehow be less?

Please let me know what you think with a like or a comment.

Accept that there will be good writing days and bad writing days

I’ve been looking through writing advice for years now. One of the pieces of advice I recently read struck a cord with me what with my current difficulties of fitting writing into my busy work life. Even GRRM has good and bad writing days it seems. It makes you think, too, that maybe all our favourite authors have bad days.

I read the advice from an article on ww.bustle.com :

I get up every day and work in the morning. I have my coffee and get to work. On good days I look up and it’s dark outside and the whole day has gone by and I don’t know where it’s gone … But there’s bad days, too. Where I struggle and sweat and a half hour creeps by and I’ve written three words. And half a day creeps by and I’ve written a sentence and a half and then I quit for the day and play computer games. You know, sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.

George R R Martin

What is the implication for me – for other writers who have to find that work – life – work balance? Accept that some days, writing will suffer. Accept it as part of writing and don’t sweat it (too much). We should give ourselves permission to be human. Only ‘almost perfect’.

I’m not dead!

“Pardon me for living, I’m sure.

” No one gets pardoned for living.”

Mort, 1987 – Terry Pratchet

I’m not dead. I promise. And I’m not undead either! I have just been so very busy with life. I went back to work as a Primary School teacher and had some slack to pick up which meant I had very little time for writing or for blogging. Add to that the fact that I come home late and fall asleep in my writing chair. It is not conducive to a prolific writing life.

But I have managed to do some writing. I’ve only managed to add a couple of thousand words to Kingdom of the Lion, which is over 20,000 words at the moment. I’ve edited the first chapter of Hell’s Calling too – getting it ready for some beta reading when I’ve polished the whole manuscript some. That in itself required some hard rewriting.

So, if you follow me already, I’m not dead. Pinky promise.

Let’s Review: The Final Empire

Here is an admission: I have never before read anything by Brandon Sanderson. Nothing at all. Nada. Nowt. But I had heard lots and lots about how good his work was. Hell’s bells – he was even chosen to finish Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

So, with a sense of anticipation, I spent a whole Tenner on The Final Empire, book one of the Mistborn trilogy (the first trilogy, I’m informed). And then I got home and opened it up and…

Well, actually, I have some gripes.

Gripe One – Skaa and Grammar

On the blurb of the book, Skaa is correctly capitalised. Skaa are a class or ethnic group of people. If they were from China, they’d be called the Chinese. That is fine and dandy. However, in the book, every single instance of the word Skaa is written in lower case. This is wrong – and each time I saw it, it dragged me out of the story to grumble and grouse.

I’m not a grammar nazi but I do spend hours teaching children the basic rules. Sorry Mr Sanderson, I found this really annoying.

Gripe Two – A World Defined a Thousand Years Ago

Brandon Sanderson’s world-building – in the literary sense – is great. But his entire world is based on a single event that happened a thousand years ago. This is a bit hard to swallow. It would be like saying 1066 was the last word about British Monarchy, disregarding all that has come since in terms reform and restoration, ignoring the Magna Carta, the beheading of Charles the I, abdications, civil wars (two!) and all the rest. People’s loves aren’t defined except in the broadest terms by events in the past that far distant.

Okay, I know it is a fantasy story but there is a focus on realism within the tale, even alongside the fantastic elements. It felt a little forced is all.

Gripe Three – The Ending

Arrrgh! Why?! No spoilers here, but damn I was annoyed at the ending of the story. Not for the way it happened, not the climax, not the drama or the build-up to a resolution, but the last few paragraphs. Why would the Skaa do that, I had to wonder.

BUT

I think the best indicator of how I felt about the book is that I went out and bought the other books in the series to read and enjoy. Because it isn’t perfect, but it is very, very good.

I wasn’t that invested in the main character, Vin, in the beginning. But it took about a hundred and fifty pages, and I couldn’t put the book down.

I think, perhaps my tweets can illustrate how good the books is…

What do you think of the Final Empire? Did my gripes annoy you or did you nod along with them? Let me know in the comments. Please like and follow.

Five Characters in need of an Attitude Adjustment

Ever read a book and find you want to take a character outside and give them a good kicking?  I have – and recently too.  Here are five individuals that need their attitudes violently adjusted from fiction.

And as an aside – Don’t beat people up, please. Use common sense and don’t think it is totally fine to bop idiots on the noggin. Using me as an excuse is not an excuse.

So, first of all, we have…

I have just finished The Final Empire, the first book in the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson, and by God, what a ride!  I’m a bit under the weather and can’t go far from home at the moment, or I’d be off to get the Well of Ascension already, but in any case…

Camon is a thief crew leader who decides to beat a girl on his crew to death for simply trying to leave. She escapes but not due to her own actions, and this propels her into another thieving crew and to grand changes in the world of Mistborn. He is vile and deserves everything he gets later on.

One of the more recent books I have read…

The Running Man is a book written by Stephen King under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was first published in 1982 and is about man (Ben Richards) who is forced to enter a reality TV show where he is chased by the police and celebrity hunters and gains money for each day he survives. The money he plans on using to pay for medicine for his sick and dying child, and to stop his wife being forced to turn tricks to make ends meet.

Killian is the presenter of the show, the Running Man, and he is also the boss of the TV corporation that seems to run all programming across America. He is also a total bastard. No spoilers, but he destroys Richards, utterly. All the way through the story, King is great at promising the reader at least a better ending, at giving hope. Killian kills all hope. And that is why I hate him.

Perhaps the fastest read book 2019, for me, was…

13 Bullets is a book written by David Wellington and reviewed on this blog! Read that review here. In short, it is a story about a woman and her descent into the secret world of vampires as she hunts for the mass-murdering bloodsuckers.

One of the main characters is Arkeley, almost a mentor to the protagonist – Laura Caxton – and hunts vampires. He is very good at it. He is also a bigot. His central belief is that vampires will do anything for blood. He tells us this all the way through the book – he depicts his foes as less than human, less than intelligent. Let us just say he’s wrong. But because he is wrong, so many people who didn’t need to die as a consequence.

Something I’ve been meaning to pick up again…

The Amtrak Wars are a series of six books, written by Patrick Tilley, that are a.m.a.z.i.n.g.  Seriously, read them. They are set in the distant future, after a nuclear war, when humanity is divided into several groups such as the Iron masters, the Amtrak Federation and the Muties. The story is about a central prophecy that would see the wounded Earth healed and restored to being a bright, green place.

One of the main protagonists gets right up my nose. Cadilac is a mutie who likes to get drunk, whore about, steal, murder, lie and cheat. He isn’t a hero in any way shape or form. No spoilers, again, but his douchiness is almost necessary for the prophecy to come true.  But still, he’s vile and needs a slap. I hated him when I first read the series (I was about 16 at the time). My hatred of him has stayed with me since, even when I reread the books more recently.

And instead of saying Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter…

Who Let the Gods Out is a children’s novel by Maz Evans and released in 2017. There is already a second instalment in the series, I believe – and possibly a third. And if they are anything like the first, they are really good.  Who Let The Gods Out follows Elliot as he tries to thwart Thanatos with the help of a slightly strange Greek pantheon and one of the constellations. (Shout out to Hermes!  Bosh!)

Thanatos is a good bag guy. But the real villain that I hate is not some demon, but a very greedily little lady called Patricia Porshley-Plum. By God, she is evil. And great. But so evil she gets right up your nose. I can’t divulge what she does because spoilers, but she is the most wicked of the antagonists Elliot will have to face.

That’s my list – what’s yours?

Let me know in comments. Don’t forget to like and follow!

Would You Rather?

Would you Rather?  It is a staple of blogs and Youtube channels everywhere and who am I to disagree or try and be different?  The problems with this is that there are no one set of questions. And some of those questions are… YAWNsome. However, Cam from Wolfshot Publishing has come up with a great bunch of questions.  And there are NO loopholes.

And here they are.

Would you rather… spend one year travelling abroad in Middle Earth (from Lord of the Rings), Neverland (from Peter Pan), Wonderland (from Alice in Wonderland), Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory or Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (as a muggle)?

Well damn. This is a hard choice. First of all, I can rule out Wonderland – tis a silly place filled with stupid critters and dangerous monarchs. Much like modern life, it seems!  Neverland does seem alright, but being nearly 40, I think I’d rather hang out with the pirates and that means evading a large croc. The chocolate factory would see me become the living avatar of type II diabetes.

So the choice is Middle Earth or Hogwarts. Here is the thing – Hogwarts is fine and all, but it is a school. I already work in a school. Who wants to spend all that time in a school?  That way lies madness!  So, off to Middle Earth I go!  I’ll send you a postcard of me and the Uruk-Hai!

Would you rather… be able to remember the last 100 books you have read word for word but only be able to read about 60 words per minute OR remember the last 10 books quite well and read a book incautiously?

This one is a no-brainer for me. It would have to be the latter – Reading slowly sends me to sleep and so I’d never finish a single book let alone remember 100 of them. Sorry, Cam. Too easy! Lets try another.

Would you rather… remember how awesome all the books you loved reading were but for them to be erased from existence OR remember all your favourite reads but never be satisfied by another book again?

A hard one for me, this one. Dammit Cam! On one hand, I could rewrite the books I loved and hope to do as good a job as I could so that they could be shared with the rest of the world, but we’d lose wonders such as the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, the entire Trudi Canavan catalogue, works by Dan Abnett would vanish, and worse, Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell would vanish, Huxley’s brave New World wouldn’t have existed… This is too high a price to pay for my own selfishness, I’m sorry. So rather, I’d have to find alternative means of entertainment – because if I can’t read, I wouldn’t be able to write either.

Would you rather… be on the run from Aria Stark from Game of Thrones or Mia Corvere from Nevernight?  You have one fictional character to protect you, so who would that be?

I’ve always thought that it is better never to know when death takes you. And having never read Nevernight, I’m unsure if that describes Mia. Aria is a badass – and evil. I think I’d not choose her unless Mia was as psychopathic. However, I would choose Vin from The Final Empire to protect me. She’s so sneaky and insanely powerful and a Mistborn, so she could probably take both of them as long as they used metal weapons!

Would you rather… every time you read a book, every two pages you get a papercut OR you have to yell every single word you read as loud as possible?

Since I read mostly in the evening, with a three-year-old in bed, shouting is out. She never sleeps as it is.  Papercuts it is.  Someone bring me a blood IV!

Would you rather… only be able to read books on your phone or only be able to listen to them as audiobooks?

As anyone who knows me can tell you, I hate phones. Hate them. Hate. Them.  But audiobooks have such a limited range. This is a hard choice, but my hatred of phones would probably mean I wouldn’t read at all. So audiobooks win!

If you want to try these questions, please let me know how you get on! Would love to see how people decided.