I can remember when I was a teen and getting big into music how excited I'd be about new releases. My mate Woodsy would fire me up and we'd nip out of school at lunchtime, bike down to town, and count out the 10p pieces to buy the new LP/12 inch/single. Downloads and CDs have never replicated that for me. I loved the covers as much as the music--in my earliest music loving years it was the album covers of Iron Maiden and Marillion that did it especially.
So it is with comparable enjoyment that I can unveil the cover for Darkness Rising Book Two- Quest. This is the second part of Volume 1 of the Prism series, and it boasts a fresh edit, a new prologue (with Torm) and an extended epilogue. I might post the extra material on the Nurolia website, for those who bought the original undivided Volume 1 which was available between Sept 11 and March 12.
The cover was done by Ceri Clark, an author previously at FIBP. Ceri is independent now, but is doing some stuff with a new label called Myrddin (appropriate as she's Welsh!). She has a fantastic style and technique and we set out to make the cover link with that of Book One (Chained). Hence we used the same model, but altered the background and colour tone to make it distinct.
The full dustcover/ wrap around displays a coastal scene with a castle/city atop a rocky outcrop. This is representative of Goldoria City, which is where the finale of the book is situated. The book begins with Emelia, wounded by the demonic humour being taken by Jem, Hunor and Orla to the sanctuary of Master Ten. En route they bump into some old acquaintances from Book One. A parallel story arc follows Aldred, Baron Enfarson's son, as he investigates both Hunor and the murder of a maiden in Eviksburg.
To me the real star of the book is Vildor, Lord of the Ghasts, whose scenes in the Dead City provide most of my quotes for Twitter's Sample Sunday. Having just written Prism book 5 (first half of volume 3) its great knowing where the story takes his character.
The book is pencilled for release in early August. I'll update on here, and on the World of Nurolia website here! Until then bask in the glory of Ceri's work, and check out her website at http://cericlark.com/
I’ve just finished reading the astonishingly good ‘ThreeHearts and Three Lions’ by Poul Anderson. It’s a book that was writtencontemporaneously to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but unlike the rather sombreprose of the master it fair bounces along. The gags are funny, the charactersgreat and I can’t recommend it enough. Yet there was one bit of it that irkedme, and that was one of the character’s dialogue.
The character in question is a dwarf (Hugi) whom Holder, themain guy, picks up on the way. He’s a Scottish dwarf and, given this book setthe standard for many fantasy works since, I have no issue with that.Unfortunately the author writes his dialogue in mock-Scottish style. I cansense the cringing through my keyboard already. For example:
‘Mon, where’ve ye been a while?’ cried Hugi. ‘We’ve beenfretted sick o’er ye. Na word or track past the lake’s edge, till ye returnsoaked and reeking o’ wicked places.’
‘Noo we maun galumph quick’s may be oot o’ this ill realm,’ gruntedHugi. ‘Sooner we’re in honest kands, better oor chances be o’ living to bragaboot this dunce’s trip.’
You get the idea! WTF? Or in Irish dialect ‘Wa thi feck?’Why on earth do writers do it? Throw in a little dialect, perhaps a fewcolloquialisms appropriate to the character, but whole speeches sounding likesomeone taking the piss? It brings to mind Dick Van Dyke’s attempts at aCocker-nee accent, which must have made the Kray twins put a bounty out on Dickback in the sixties. Or Russel Crowe’s unforgivable attempts at regionaldialects in the last Robin Hood romp, which were a whistle-stop tour of everyaccent in the British Isles.
But you can kind of pardon films. Actors are, after all,human and not all are nutters like Gary Oldman (who insisted on specific voicecoaches for his eastern European accent in Dracula, and still sounded like a campHammerhorror vampire). And it’s well acknowledged that most of the US think the UK islike a Sherlock Holmes film, all smog, cobbles and rowdy taverns (Halifax ISlike that, but most of the UK isn’t...). From authors, though, I expect adifferent standard. And for fantasy authors I expect the best. Why? Becausethose of us who write in it have to battle through years of prejudice againstit being a succession of Tolkien rip-offs, plump with dwarven singing, orcsa-chopping and wizards with pointy hats. And the mock-Shakespearean dialoguesdon’t help (my personal opinion is that only one character in the whole offiction can use phrases like ‘Forsooth’, ‘Verily’ and ‘Varlet’ and that isThor... no one else... ‘I say thee nay!’).
It’s like there’s a covert style-guide brought out by amateurauthors...
Step 1: add –eth and –est to verbs in a strangeunpredictable fashion. Geteth me?
Step 2: extra (silent) E’s will augmente the realisme ofthine worke.
Step 3: Reverse thine order of nouns and verbs. E,g. ‘Verilythe Emperor most darke shall be banished thus.’ ‘Smite the ogre foul, I beseechthee.’
Step 4: it’s ‘Ye’and‘Thee’ not ‘The’
Step 5: Sling around a few medieval terms... ‘thee’ ‘thy’‘thou’ ‘art’ ‘doth’ ‘mine’ (not ‘my’ as in ‘Taste mine war-hammer, orcish scum’)
No-one minds one or two, and to be fair it’s perpetuated bythe UK Touriste industry in places like York andChester (Ye Olde Fucking Tea Shoppe, my Wife ofBathe sized-arse!). But authors really screw their books up with it. Wags likePratchett and Eddings mock its usage in their books
Oddly I don’t mind modern slang in dialogue, or evenreasonable use of apostrophes in regional dialect, or even use of the word‘feck’ in Roddy Doyle’s books. It’s the bogus medieval dialogue that reallygets to me. And pirates that say ‘Arrrhhh’ a lot (unless it’s in response to acannonball blowing their leg off).
So I’ll leave you with the classic sketch from Blackadder 2in which Lord Blackadder goes in search of the wise-woman....
I was asked the other day why I didn't blog about serious stuff, you know, the sort of thing that I do at work. The answer's kind of obvious- that's work, that's what I do during the day, this is fun, this is what I do when I'm relaxing.
Nonetheless it did give me a thought, and that was 'What could I blog about related to work, the wouldn't be too gory, too boring, too technical or too confidential?'
Tough one. I split my time between Intensive Care (synonym 'Expensive Scare') which isn't renowned for laughs, and anaesthesia, which someone said is 99% boredom, 1% sheer OMG. I do have other stuff that I do, related to patient safety, management, education and so forth. And then it occured to me I could write a bit about organ donation.
Organ donation is a strange topic. I say this because it always reminds me how difficult it is to remember when I didn't know about something. Let me elaborate. Before I became a doctor I was a fairly astute kid. I watched plenty of TV, read a lot, was into science (and comics, and DnD, yeah, yeah, get to the point). What exactly, back then, did I think organ donation was?
I had almost no concept of what it entailed. I'd seen donor cards in the GPs surgery, and perhaps adverts in papers. I can recall comedy sketches about it (the bouncing heart in Airplane; the organ collectors in Monty Python's Meaning of Life). But what did it involve? Were these organs you donated when you were dead popped out days after? Weeks after? How were they put back in? Who actually needed them?
It's a very difficult thing as a doctor specialising in an area to try and think back to the days of not knowing what we know. It'd be the same for anyone who dedicates themselves to an area (whether law, education, IT, whatever). Of course, things are a little different now. In the 70s and early 80s computers were basic, and you had a homeopathic choice of TV channels. Books were the main source of info, which required forewarning and access. Now even the 10 year olds have smart phones, and Google has a frightening amount of power. Patients are far more informed, irrespective of social class and intellect. It makes the job bothe easier and harder when you are discussing topics like organ donation with them, because information doesn't always come with quality controls!
My first real experience of organ donation was as a registrar in Birmingham, about a decade ago now. Prior to this I had a mixture of ignorance and indifference, not really being aware of the benefits. In a sense I thought there was a ghoulish-ness to the process. Then I worked on a paediatric ICU, followed by liver and cardiac ICUs, and saw the patients in need of transplants. It's one thing to be told statistics; it's another thing entirely to see an eight year old dwindling day on day praying for a liver transplant.
So now I'm the Clinical Lead for organ donation at my small trust in Manchester, and its part of my job to try and raise awareness in the hospital about it. Because most doctors are like I was pre- my experience in Birmingham-- a little bit indifferent and a little wary. And if doctors are like that, you can see why the average Joe is even more so. About 30% of the UK population is on the Organ Donor Register, and about 800K join each year. Soberingly in the UK there are almost 8000 patients awaiting a transplant, ten times that in the USA. Most of these are kidney transplants.500 people die each year in the UK whilst waiting, of all ages. About half of donations in the UK come from living donors (kidneys obviously) which is an amazing figure.
But these are numbers, and seeing the benefit of transplants, I can say that I'm really pleased that my career has taken me in that direction. It's an amazing thing to be part of.
Serious post over... click on the link if you wanted to find out more about transplants and donation in the UK here or in the US right here.
Next time I'll be back into the realm of fantasy, but in the interim here is one of the comedy clips on how it DOESN'T HAPPEN (and feel free to contact me if you wanted more info on any of the above).
Of the dozens of influences that have snuck into my writing (and by that I mean not just the published fantasy stuff, but the unpublished sci-fi and contemporary fiction pieces) comics have to be a major part.
Those who read my sporadic blog posts will have ascertained this, from my posts on Stan Lee, Superhero movies and Bryan Talbot. There are plenty of literary comic examples which would make the comic devotee nod with agreement: Gaiman, Moore, Morrison, Wagner, Ennis. But (bar the 2000AD writers) most of those I loved as I matured. The stand out for me as a kid was John Byrne.
I got thinking about this after two 3 star reviews for my book on Amazon US. They were fair reviews- both liked the book, but commented that it jumped about a bit and spent time on characters who didn't seem to feature much. Part of that is the fact Volume One, of which book 1 Chained is only the first half of, was written as a larger book and then divided. But, to be fair, the other reason is that's my style.
I always loved stories where minor plot lines and characters were introduced, hinting at a larger future sub-plot, which developed later and linked in with the main plot threads. The comics author and artist John Byrne was a master of it, and my love of his work in the 70/80s has stayed with me since. I first recall reading Byrne during his X-men run with Chris Claremont. Inked by Terry Austin his style was awesome: he defined the look of what was to become the most popular Marvel title of the decade. Such great stories then too: Dark Phoenix, Days of Future Past, Arcade, Alpha Flight, Prometheus. Stunning. I read both US and UK reprints back then, so also caught the reprints of Iron Fist, plus his Captain America work (Union Jack and Baron Blood sticks in my brain).
So when Byrne took on Fantastic Four I was really pleased- I started collecting them around the time they went into the Negative Zone, catching up the older issues as I went. To me the FF run (perhaps 60 issues) was his greatest work. I adored what he did with the characters. The sub-plots, the acknowledgment of the rich supporting characters and prior stories. He loved both the cosmic tales (Galactus especially was done well by him) and the human (Sue loosing the baby springs to mind).
It had a huge influence on me. I compared all other writers to his style, and felt few came up to scratch. His art was excellent, irrespective of the inkers, and when he wrote Alpha Flight I was hooked on that as well (though my brother bought that one). It had the same style- the sub-plots, the evolving story-lines, almost soap opera in style. I followed Byrne for a while after FF and Alpha Flight. He was becoming a bit of a victim to his own success. West Coast Avengers was good, but he tried to screw around previous writer's work too much; Hulk didn't work for me (Hulkbusters...?). When he bounced to DC I bought a few, but I never liked re-boots and never really liked DC heroes.
My tastes in comics changed around then, becoming more interested in mature readers titles. I lost track of JB, although I saw his New Men in Forbidden Planet the other week and was tempted. His influence is obviously double-edged. When you read his work in one go the plots work great, building over time. If you read them as isolated issues then it's frustrating. My Prism fantasy series will run to six books, and when read together all the little strands knit together. I think of a few fantasy writers who do the same: George RR Martin and Erikson are two. And to be fair, not everyone likes that style. But I enjoy it, and it seems to work for me. And I have JB's influence to thank for it.
Perhaps I need a new sub-genre, like Space Opera, but fantasy style. "Soap Fantasy" comes to mind, but that sounds a little too late-night naughty TV channel for me....any (clean) suggestions welcome.
I've been a little negligent with my blog this month, for which I apologise. Firstly work has been crazy busy/poorly, which is kind of fair enough (as I get paid for that stuff). Second there's a lot going down at the publishers meaning I've had to re-upload my Kindle book. Third, there's those three little people that live with me, whom I thought were hobbits but turned out to be my kids. Seems they like to spend time with me--quality time that doesn't involve me playing with my i-phone.
The final reason is that I've become part of a new blog. It's a writers blog, specifically its a group of us who've joined together to post stuff about our genres and writing. I thought it'd be good as I've tried to avoid droning on about my book on this blog, and the Roaring Mouse is to present others small-press/self-pub works.
It's called the Skull Dust Circle, and there are seven of us in the Circle (well, strictly its a septagon) and all of the guys on it are awesome authors that I'm flattered to be associated with. William Kenney and Gary Vanucci got the blog up and going. William is the author of In the Shadow of the Black Sun epic fantasy series, and is a superb artist as well. His own site is here. Gary is the author of the Ashenclaw books and their preludes, the Wothlanda series. His books have a very DnD/RPG bent to them, much like my own. His Eye on Ashenclaw blog is here.
Jeremy Laszlo will be familiar to those who read the Roaring Mouse as I interviewed him earlier in May. He has written three books of his awesome series Blood and Brotherhood Saga. His style is greatly detailed and great fun to read. His website makes mine look like its written on a chalkboard, and you can find it just here! Benedict Martin writes fantasy, and draws rather amusing cartoons on his blog. He's at this site. David Woods and Stefain are both new authors whom I have yet to meet, but am certain I'll be hearing more of.
So the site will be a place for us to talk about our work, fantasy and sci-fi in general, and post about topics of interest. I've posted two so far- one on David Eddings and his rules of fantasy (Fantasy by numbers) and one a re-post about anti-heroes in fantasy (anti-heroic fantasy).
Take a look over at the Circle if you get the chance. Cloaks of Elvenkind optional.
There’s a scene in the new
Avengers movie where Captain America is sat feeling like a man out of time, not
getting the cultural references around him. Then someone says a line about
flying monkeys (as in the Wizard of Oz) and he smiles and says, “That one I
get.”
It’s a scene slightly reminiscent
of a great piece in the Civil War: Frontline comic where Ben Ulrich and Sally
Floyd interview Cap in his cell and point out all the things about modern day
America he doesn’t know about or doesn’t get. That’s an aside, as this blog
isn’t about the comic (although I do love the Avengers franchise dearly)—it’s
about the changing nature of superhero films.
When I came out of the Avengers
last week, with my two eldest kids (9 and 8) we were buzzing about the movie.
What was so special about it? My son hit the nail on the head as we drove home
(as he often does). “Dad, that was awesome... it was just like the comic.”
And there you have it. The
reasons it’s so good is that it was just like the comic. From the dialogue, to the
plot, to the action, to the depiction of the Hulk. It was spot on. Now that’s
no great surprise—Joss Whedon, amongst many things, wrote for Marvel (The Runaways
was excellent, and his run on X-men was OK). But he carries something more to
it... an understanding of how to translate what looks good on the comic page
into something that doesn’t look like CGI cheese on the screen. It’s not simply
a matter of special effects- Transformers 2 proved that. It’s the actors and
the plot not coming across as too daft that makes it work.
Of course Avengers can’t claim to
be the first to achieve that. There have been some amazing superhero movies
over the years—but it made me think, when did they really start to reflect the
comics? As I supped a glass of red wine I pondered the question, with the world
becoming as fuzzy as a James T Kirk love scene
I grew up (well got chronologically
older) in the seventies and eighties. It was an era where special effects
really came into being, and marked the boom in sci-fi films and series (Star
Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner, Alien, Buck Rogers etc). There were
attempts at fantasy films that hit or missed (Hawk the Slayer, Excalibur, Sword
and Sorcerer, Conan, Krull... a rather mixed bag). And there were superhero
films.
I adored the sixties Batman
re-runs as a kid, and indeed the film, which was shown fairly regularly in the
pre-VCR days. Ironically it reflected the comic at the time it was made, but by
the time I watched it Batman the comic was undergoing a re-birth with darker
stories and grittier characters. And I was never a big DC fan. Then the big
screen played host to Superman, and the little screen to the Hulk and Spiderman.
They just weren’t right. Superman
was a great film, as was Superman 2, and I got the duvet cover, the posters,
the bubblegum cards, and so forth. Superman 2 had the super-villians (kneel
before Zod!) but it still didn’t feel like the comic, which was far more cosmic
and on a different power scale. Similarly the Hulk series gave us great lines about
not making me angry, and the eternal debate about stretchable trousers, but it
was a different kettle of (green) fish to clashing with The Leader, The Abomination,
Doc Samson, The U-Foes etc. And Spiderman? Loved the wall crawling, could cope
with chunky white bracelets, but here was a dude with the best roster of
villains ever in comics. And he spent most episodes battling hoods with
pistols. Sigh.
The effects, the costumes, the
stories just couldn’t match the comics. When did that change? I’m tempted to
say with Batman, in the late Eighties. Yet even with the wonder of Tim Burton,
and I do love those first two films, there is a vibe of underlying campness to
it, a sort of silliness, that didn’t reflect what we were reading at the time (Batman
in late eighties had seminal works like The Killing Joke, The Dark Knight
Returns, Batman Year One).
It was Spiderman who saved it for
me. The X-men was close, and in retrospect probably turned the tide, but Sam
Raimi’s trilogy was perfect. I’d loved Raimi’s Evil Dead films as a student,
mainly for the brilliant Evil Dead 2, which has the best lines ever in a horror
film... and a chainsaw grafted to a stump of an arm. With Spiderman he got it
perfect—the effects, the story, the acting. The sense of pity you had for Peter
Parker that pervaded the comics from day one was captured, as was the menace of
the Green Goblin and the tragedy that follows. Spiderman 2 was even better—I
can watch and re-watch the scene in the bank where he pulls Aunt May down as
the vault door hurtles overhead.
And they’ve gone from strength to
strength. The X-men trilogy was well done, as were the two prequels. The two
Iron Man films were also great, and I loved Thor. Less certain about the two
Hulk ones, Daredevil and Elektra and I’ve never been a big Batman fan so the
Dark Knight style films have left me feeling a bit despondent. The prospect of
a Spiderman re-boot isn’t thrilling me, I’ll admit, perhaps because I’m sick of
re-boots and liked the previous films so much.
Of course, other (non superhero)
comics have had the big screen flourish. They are a mixed bag too: Alan Moore’s
have struggled notably, sadly as he’s probably the best comics writer alive
(Watchmen was OK, as was V for Vendetta, but League of Extraordinary Gentlemen contravened
the Geneva convention); 300 was cool, Wanted I’ve not even seen (although the
comic was a let down). Kick Ass is on my to be watched list (the comic pushed
the taste boundary for me too).
Now they’ve got it right, from a
comics fan perspective, I hope they stay on track. The worst thing in the world
would be to get carried away and let shite stories slip in. I’m hoping for an awesome
Avengers 2, and given the popularity of the current film I’m certain they’ll do
one. And despite all I’ve written, I loved those superhero movies/series when I
was a kid because it was still a buzz seeing characters you love coming to life
on the screen—even if they weren’t quite right.
Which would lead perfectly into
talking about The Hobbit....
But that’s a blog for another
day....
A funny Spiderman clip to finish with... Kenny Everett's take on the Web slinger...
There have been several key changes during my descent into mid-lifeness and fatherhood. The first is that I boo all the time. Seriously, the littlest thing sets me off. I hear the strains of classical music over the scene of a kid and his dad and the tears spurt out. I can’t even think of that scene in the Lion King where Simba lifts his dad’s paw and it flops to the dust all limp. Don’t even mention Finding Nemo, I can’t even see the screen to type now. I mean, WTF? I wade knee deep in daily gore in my job and deal with grimness +10 every day on Intensive Care, but anything that reminds me of Dads and kids and poignancy gets me going.
Anyhow, the blog isn’t about that. It’s not about existential dread that life is ebbing away. It’s not about inability to drink alcohol in anything beyond a thimble or be convinced my brain is oozing from my nose in anger. It’s about how I can’t stand gangster films anymore.
Seriously, I used to be massively into them. If it had Scorcese, De Palma or Coppolla on it I’d lap it up. I’d crave the twitchy De Niro face or Joe Pesci freaking out or Al Pacino gurning. As students we used to love ‘em. Throw in a few about South-central LA and gangsta-stylie drive-bys for variety, just to dilute the crotch-grabbing, you’re a good kid, forget about it lead-ins to stiletto/vice/baseball bat/head shot scenes.
Then it changed. I can’t quite remember what film it was... perhaps it was that one with Leonardo and Jack Nicolson. I sat and watched it and then everyone gets popped at the end in a totally pointless fashion and I thought... I just don’t like this anymore. It’s like I see enough blood and stuff at work without needing a fix at home. But then it can’t be quite that, because I enjoy the gratuitous Game of Thrones...
I think it’s the gangster thing, the crime thing. There came a moment when I ceased to find them of interest, of value. There’s a genuine glamorisation of crime within film and, perhaps less so, literature. The writers and the directors seem to have an admiration for criminals, feeling that if they show some kind of compassionate side (camaraderie, loyalty, GSOH) then it makes the nasty shit they do seem a little more acceptable or understandable. The characters are usually bullies, slinging their weight around to get what they want, feeling that it’s all about ‘respect’ and so forth. Yet they’re the sort of kids who at school used to kick crap out of smaller kids. It’s that romantic notion that if you fight for what you believe (even if that belief is flawed) then it’s acceptable. It’s bollocks, really.
So what altered in me? I think the love of the gangster film and the fascination with crime boils back to the intrigue of the anti-hero (which I blogged about on Alison De Luca’s blog here.). Part of growing up is that challenge of the status quo, testing the boundaries of what we’ve been raised to believe is just and right. We are teased by the Dark Side, with glimpses of the uglier aspects of human nature. The gangster in these films is the anti-hero. He’s the one who does what we wouldn’t, who doesn’t give a shit and fights/shoots/kills to get what he wants. And clearly there’s some anti-heroes that I find acceptable and enjoy and others that I don’t, and I wonder if that’s a touch hypocritical of me? I like reading about the loveable rogue—say like Locke Lamora in Scott Lynch’s books. He’s a con-man, like a Hustler in a fantasy world. We all love Robin Hood, especially if he gives to the poor. Tyrion in Game of Thrones is great... because he’s naughty, but not downright evil. But there’s a tipping point when I can’t enjoy it, when I can’t drag up even a morbid interest in the character. And I think that threshold alters more and more with age.
So am I just a miserable old sod now? Well, yes, I am. To be fair, I do find some crime films/books entertaining—specifically I quite like the gangster-comedy ones like Lock, Stock and Snatch, mainly because I find the southern accents funny. Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is one of my favourites, perhaps because of the dialogue and its slapstick nature. On my book blog, The Roaring Mouse, I’m featuring a comedy-crime book about a contract assassin getting married that I would describe as Grosse Point Blank crosses with Meet the Parents. Perhaps that says more about me that I can stomach the gangster-violence-glamorisation when it derides itself. And I suppose that opens up a whole host of new questions...
* The Muddy Funster title refers to an old Harry Enfield sketch where he satirised the BBC and its dubbing over bad language in films. He played a Robert De Niro character in ‘Badfellas’ whose badly dubbed character asked, “Did you fun my wife, you muddy funster?” Watch it... its superb!
