Be gentle… it’s my first time…

03 Monday Dec 2012

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I was recently informed of a positive review of Transitions. Actually, I was informed of Transitions-AuthorCopythis review a few weeks ago, but am only just getting round to posting about it now. With an event to help organise (or at least provide moral support for), real world work to plan and my insane idea to do Nano this year (that’s a whole different post…) I was actually finding it hard to do much serious blogging last month. There was also the fact that the link I was sent to the review does not actually seem to go to a page that includes my review. I was not sure if this meant my review was yet to be published, was lost deep in an archive or was only visible during the third quarter of the full moon when the month has an F in it and is more than 28 days… So, I didn’t want to post anything about it until I got some form of confirmation.

But now November is over, the event was this weekend gone and Nano is also a thing of the past. I do still have real world work to do but my time is a little freer than it was. Ok, I still cannot find the actual review (if anyone can help, I’d appreciate it) but what the hell…

So, the lovely people over at Penumbra Press sometimes review books by other publishers and they decided to pick up mine (the full review is allegedly in their reviews section but I cannot find it). The fragment of the full review that was sent to me is fairly promising, however. It included:

“Throughout this story D. A. Lascelles artfully uses his skills with words to magically paint images in the reader’s head. Not only do places come into clear focus, but the seasons and atmosphere of the locations are also imbued with a descriptive clarity and realistic essence.

Written for paranormal romance fans of all ages, Transitions successfully marries modern day and roman Britain by interspersing the memories and history of roman officer Lucius Gaius with the ordinarily mundane lives of two university students…Transitions is a fair read that will keep you occupied, even if only for a day trip away.”

And the score was apparently ‘3 books’. I am assuming and hoping that this is out of 5 and not, for example, 500 🙂

This is, in fact, the first review I have ever had. For anything. By anyone who was not a friend or family member, anyway. So far both Transitions and Pirates and Swashbucklers have avoided reviews in places like Goodreads and Amazon though Pirates seems to have been marked as ‘to read’ by a lot of people. So, as a first go at the review wheel I am happy with this result. There will likely be bad ones out there too, not that I have found any yet, so it is good to start on a positive note. Plus, my ego is telling me that I should get that first paragraph printed on a T-shirt because I really like it. A lot.

Luckily, I rarely listen to my ego.

UK Appreciation Month – Why the UK is Doomed

27 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Guest posts

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So, in October I was asked to contribute to a series on this blog (the Bookaholics book club blog) and since I had just been watching Avengers and Misfits in the same week and had been idly browsing some old Hellblazer comics the following thought occured to me:

http://bookaholicsbkcl.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/uk-appreciation-month-da-lascelles.html#.UKYSdlaRmbg.twitter

Because, lets be fair here, UK superheroes aren’t really up to much at all, are they?

Unless someone has some counter arguments to this? Feel free to comment if you do….

The Next Big Thing

22 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by in Musings

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So, I got tagged in this meme thing by Melinda Dozier (you should totally go and check out her site…) the point of which is to answer questions about your work in progress.

Here are the rules:
1) Answer the questions.
2) Tag 5 other
writers, providing the links.
3) Let the writer’s know you tagged them.

What is the working title of Your Book?

Gods of the Deep is the current working title, which is a step up from ‘Un-named sequel’ which was its previous working title. It was chosen to fit in with the previous published story which was Gods of the Sea.


Where did the idea come from for the book?

The idea for Gods of the Sea came from a LRP game I used to play (now long defunct). I decided I wanted to tell the origin story of how two of the characters met so one Christmas I got out my laptop and tapped out a few thousand words and sent it to a publisher who I knew were looking for ‘pirate stories’. It got picked up and published in the Pirates and Swashbucklers anthology. No one was more surprised at this than me.

Then, earlier this year, the publisher contacted me and as a result of that discussion the concept of ‘Gods of the Deep’ was produced – an anthology of short stories set in the same world as Gods of the Sea, including both a reprint of Gods of the Sea and some form of sequel. Again, I was surprised.

 

What genre does your book fall under?
It’s mainly fantasy with some pulp elements. And Pirates, Because you’ve got to have pirates…

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie?

Many years before I’d even considered writing Gods of the Sea, one of the organisers of the LRP game told me that they believed Professor Everyn Crowe should be played by Christopher Ecclestone. Not sure I quite agree with that assessment but I am hard pressed to find an appropriate alternative. Someone like David Tennant would be good too but I am not sure if that is not just me showing my Doctor Who geekery. Of course there is also the fact that any casting choice may have to take into account Everyn’s foreign nature as he is supposed to  have a ‘Mediterranean’ look but that has never stopped Hollywood in the past before.

Captain Rachel Drake obviously has to be played by a strong, British woman. Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary Crawley) is a possibility but there are a few other actors who would be excellent in that role. I think there may, however, be a general call for ‘anyone other than Keira Knightly’ which I agree with…

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I am still writing it so no idea. Am hoping to get it finished soon, though. It is my Nano project and completion of it is the target I have set myself for this month. However, Nano style writing is different to how I usually do things. The concept of splurging words onto the page in order to acheive a word count target and worrying about the editing later is alien to me. I prefer a slower method with less faff afterwards. However, slower methods do not let you reach deadlines so easily.

Gods of the Sea was written in a number of days, however. And not whole days, either. A few hours each day in between doing other things. Possibly the fastest I have ever written anything intended for publication that actually got published.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

 One of my crit partners did say that Gods of the Sea read a little like a Michael Moorcock story and I have been strongly influenced in the past by his work, specifically the Elric novels. So I suppose you could say that the closest comparison to Gods of the Deep would be a Michael Moorcock story in style if not in the features of the story. The fact that Gods of the Sea and Gods of the Deep are shorter fiction (Gods of the Sea is a short, Gods of the Deep a novella) which have a direct continuity with each other also fits the pattern of early Moorcock, where one novel was comprised of several shorter stories that directly followed on from each other.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

The main inspiration for the story came from the LRP game, Adventures in the Arcroc, which I played many many years ago. The Arcroc was the name of a fantasy world with a technology level roughly somewhere between 1600’s and 1800’s. It’s not particularly precise in its historical comparison because there are elements from all over history thrown in there, but the history is also an inspiration as are stories of swashbucklers and pirates and adventures at sea – anything from Sinbad to Hornblower and Pirates of the Carribean.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? How about a teaser?

There are demons… and a scene I love where Everyn runs to Rachel’s rescue, thinking he is the only one who can save her from assasination, only to find when he gets there that she has quite happily rescued herself and is now being rather suave about it in an ‘injury? What injury? Oh this? Just a scratch…’ sort of way.

“But…” he stammered. “The demon…” He waved the horse statue in the air in front of his face. “I’m here to… banish it.”

“Banish it?” She smiled as she checked the length of the blade for nicks and scratches. “No need, everything is under control.”

“But, the only way you could have banished that demon was to have empowered a suitable vessel with the correct incantations and blessings and trapped its incorporeal essence therein…”

“Not the only way, no.” As the dressing on her wound was completed, she stood and tested her weight on the leg, wincing slightly as she did so.

“Well, no, you could have physically ablated its physical form using brute force but generally such creatures are immune to most forms of weapon. Many can only be harmed by a blessed weapon or something composed of an alloy with a significant quantity of silver.”

“Hmmmmm, yes….” She held the sword up, letting the light fall on its shiny surface and reflecting on her face. “Silver alloys. I wonder where someone with my wealth could get hold of something like that?”

And so there you have it…. now to spread the infection…

I am tagging:

R.A Smith

Ninfa Hayes

Erica Hayes

Marie Roberts

And… YOU, Yes, you over there, the writer who is reading this. If you want to do the next big thing challenge, feel free to consider yourself tagged by me, just make sure you link back to me when you do…

Disney and Star Wars?

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

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Today, on this hallowed day that celebrates horror in all its forms, the internet is abuzz with news of a horror beyond even the worst imaginings of your average geek.

No, it is not that the stars are right for the rise of Great Cthuhlu from the vasty depths of R’lyeh. Despite what the great Mayan practical joke would have us believe about the end of the world being nigh, Cthuhlu is not likely to be rising anytime soon as he forgot to set his alarm clock before he went to bed.

Mitt Romney before his morning cup of coffee

And no, it is not the news of a new version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice directed by Michael Bay and starring Megan Fox as Elizabeth Bennet and Sigourney Weaver as a modern, lesbian take on Mr Darcy with more explosions, car chases and giant robots than any previous version of Pride and Prejudice…*

It’s not even as horrific as the possibility of a new version of Babylon 5 written by Stephenie Meyer with a new concept for Vorlons which has them as ‘sparkly’…

No, the true horror that has gripped geekdom this Halloween is the news that Disney has bought the rights to Star Wars…

People are rightly concerned. They see Disney as a twee insititution which whitewashes over stories to make them far less dark than they actually are. They also look at John Carter and consider what a mess was made of that film. They quake in fear at the possibility of an animated Star Wars with a big goofy dog instead of a wookie and jedi with large ears and squeaky voices… and the joke memes are already coming in thick and fast.

Me, I am optimistic… While Disney is indeed guilty of the crime that was John Carter, other voices on the internet have spoken up and said such things as ‘But what about Pirates of the Carribean? And what about Avengers?’ Yeah, what about them? Disney is as responsible for those two success stories as they are for John Carter and, frankly, I think two phenomenal successes totalling two excellent films and 2 sort of OKish sequels to one of them make up for one failure.

And amidst all the discussion one possibility has arisen which has got many excited. The name Joss Whedon has crawled its way out of the lamentations… Disney got him to do Avengers, are hiring him again for the sequel… what if they also attached him to the Star Wars project?

Think about that for a moment, revel in it. A new Star Wars film, written and directed by Joss Whedon. Could it get any better than that? What would such a film likely include? Well, here are my predictions…

1) A kick arse female jedi. One thing the Star Wars films have always lacked was female jedi. They exist in the universe, there are even books that include them as characters and some of the computer games also have them, but they have never really been seen on the big screen. Whedon is known for his kick arse female characters – Buffy and River Tam being his main ones – and he even managed to give Black Widow some Buffyesque moments in Avengers. I think Whedon would take this step and make the female lead a jedi instead of a constitutionally confused princess in a republic. That or make one of the bad guys a kick arse woman in black leather. Possibly played by Eliza Dushku…

2) Smugglers. One thing I always felt the prequels lacked was the presence of a smuggler style character. A Han Solo to Luke’s clean cut farm boy, a Jack Sparrow to Will’s clean cut blacksmith. The relationship between the morally dubious Han Solo and the rest of the cast in Star Wars was an integral part of the character dynamic which was lacking in the prequels and made them so flat as a result. I think Whedon would insert such a character because he knows only too well the importance of there being friction between the characters. Now, in the ideal dream world, this smuggler character might well be played by a certain Mr. Nathan Fillion, who would no doubt leap at the chance, but that may depend on whatever other projects he is working on at the time… and at this point you have to ask yourself the very important question: Exactly how tempted would Whedon be to make Star Wars VII as close to Serenity II as he possibly can without anyone noticing?

3) Story. Joss Whedon understands how stories work. He has an almost innate grasp of structure and knows how to insert tension and plot to keep a film interesting for the viewers. The prequel trilogy seemed to drag in places, Whedon would make the story jump and move.

4) One liners. Another thing Whedon is good at are pithy one liners that get geek juices flowing. His characters quip and joke and worry about ordinary day to day things – not everything is all about the plot.

I could go on, I could regale you with endless points discussing at length the things that Joss Whedon would bring to the Star Wars franchise if someone let him get his greasy hands on it. But I think you have got the point already and I am aware that many of you may well have stopped reading at point 2 above and are currently sitting there with a dreamy expression and sighing the words ‘Nathan Fillion’ over and over again and therefore lost to any further eloquent arguments. So I will end there with only a final entreaty to Disney… MAKE THIS HAPPEN! Please…

*Note to Hollywood, just in case you do want to make this film, you can buy the rights off me. I’ll do you a good deal for it. I think the world is ready for a lesbian Miss Darcy. Have your people call my people… well, maybe wait a bit so i can acquire some people then call them or maybe just call me direct. If it helps I can pretend to be my own people and go through the rigmarole of pretending to put you through various departments until you get me. i’ll even do the voices.

[Amwriting] The City and The City

30 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Guest posts

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In my first post for the newly ressurected Amwriting site I talk about how the personalities of cities vary and give examples of three fantasy cities that are very similar in some ways and yet very different…

http://amwritingblog.com/wordpress/archives/15471

If anyone has any ideas as to which city is shown in the first photograph of that article, feel free to comment to reveal your knowledge and I may tell you if you are right or wrong… here is that photograph again for you to look at….

Guess the city… answers in a comment, please…

[AW blog chain] Otherworldly

19 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by in Musings

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This month’s blog chain title is sort of inevitable, Otherworldly talks about things beyond our ken, creatures from other worlds or dimensions. Ghosties, ghoulies and long leggity beasties. It can also refer to alien worlds or wyrd dimensions. There is a lot if scope in this topic.

With all this Gritty Realism about, it is best to have a BIG gun to hand

A question I always ask myself is ‘how finely can you slice alternate dimensions?’ At what point can you say that a particular setting is ‘the real world’ rather than some alternate dimension where things are different?

The answer to that may seem easy – the ‘real world’ is where things happen exactly as they would in the real world. There are no supernatural elements, it is a contemporary setting and the writer has taken great pains to represent a realistic portrayal of the world as it is. This is certainly one possible argument and one which has a lot to support it. I imagine most people reading this will have no issues with this interpretation and to be honest, neither do I. However, I do have an alternative opinion I would like to present:

There no such thing as ‘reality’ in fiction.

Think about that for a while. Yes, writers have striven to represent reality in various different ways. We have had ever darker and grittier portrayals of various aspects of life, all with the aim of ‘showing things like they really are’. However, you have to ask how real that really is. Writers are first and foremost entertainers and entertainers have to entertain. As a result of this requirement, reality sometimes has to take a back seat or even be replaced by something claiming to be it. Just try to type ‘Gritty Realism’ into a Google images search and see what you get. The results may surprise you. It certainly gives an insight into what creative types beleive ‘realism’ is – guns, drugs and, bizarrely, Super Mario…

Douglas Adams put it rather well when he told us about Arthur Dent’s morning in one of his books… Readers do not want to hear about how a character brushes his teeth or how she combs her hair or any one of hundreds of minor acts everyone performs every day in the course of thier lives. They do not want that level of detail unless, and this is important, there is something unusual about that activity which may have a bearing on the plot. If, for example, a character picks up the wrong toothbrush and another character notices this and has paranoid thoughts about whether they really are who they claim to be.

Too much reality, therefore, is an impedence to entertainment. A writer should only be presenting to the reader the things that are relevant to the plot, interesting things that happen. The reality of many people is not interesting enough to portray in writing. Novels, films and TV shows use a ‘normal life’ as a contrast. Our hero begins the story in relative normalcy and then is quickly taken from there into whatever adventures the plot has in store for them. Ideally, you want to make these periods of normal life relatively short lest the reader gets bored waiting for the plot to happen and also insert the occasional little sting to hint at the things to come in order to keep them reading. Arthur Dent’s normal life lasts for approximately two paragraphs before a bulldozer tries to demolish his house and it is not many pages from there to a surreal conversation with Ford in the pub and teleportation onto one of the ships sent to destroy the earth.

And it does not end with sci fi and fantasy. Even in contemporary literature you never see a character undergoing a normal day. There is always some imperative to drive them forward such as a death in the family or a messy relationship which means that they are not undergoing the same sort of normal day the rest of us poor non-characters in literature endure. This is not only the case with literature but also with any narrative form such as TV, movies and theatre. Which leads me back to the original question – these ‘realistic portrayals’ are in fact nothing of the sort. Each universe presented is an alternate dimension to our ‘real’ one. The differences may be explicit (the earth being destroyed by an alien construction fleet) or subtle (the existence of fictional characters in a world otherwise identical to our own) but they are there. The presence of ‘gritty realism’ does not make your fictional world any more real and in fact may make the contrast ever more obvious by highlighting an issue such as drug abuse, rape or violence and exaggerating it for the purposes of entertainment.

So, it may be time to accept that while art may reflect life, it is always going to be a rather distorted reflection as we emphasise elements we consider to be ‘entertaining’ and devalue those which are considered mundane.

OK, chaps, this is a blog chain and so you have to do your duty by God, King and country by contributing to the other blogs on the list. If you don’t, then we will come round your house and kidnap you and put you in the Big Brother house or, worse, on X Factor. You can then experience all the Gritty Realism you like…

Participants and posts:
Ralph Pines: http://ralfast.wordpress.com (post link here)
randi.lee: http://emotionalnovel.blogspot.com (post link
here)
Aranenvo: http://www.simonpclark.com (post link here)
pyrosama: http://matrix-hole.blogspot.com (post link here)
hilaryjacques: http://hillaryjacques.blogspot.com (post link here)
meowzbark: http://erlessard.wordpress.com (post link here)
slcboston: http://fleasof1000camels.blogspot.com (post link here)
areteus: https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com (post link
here)
bearilou: http://theglassopossum.wordpress.com (post link
here)
dolores haze: http://dianedooley.wordpress.com (post link
here)
SuzanneSeese: http://viewofsue.blogspot.com (post link here)
bmadsen: http://hospitaloflife.wordpress.com (post link here)
Linda
Adams: http://garridon.wordpress.com (post link here)
Alynza: http://www.alynzasmith.blogspot.com (post link here)
Orion
mk3: http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (post link
here)
BBBurke: http://awritersprogression.blogspot.com (post link
here)
SRHowen: http://srhowen1.blogspot.com (post link here)
Damina Rucci:
http://thegraypen.wordpress.com (post link
here)
CJMichaels: http://christinajmichaels.blogspot.com (post link
here)
wonderactivist: http://luciesmoker.wordpress.com (post link here)
Lady Cat:
http://carolsrandomness.blogspot.ca (post link
here)
xcomplex: http://arielemerald.blogspot.com (post link
here)
debranneelliot: http://www.debragrayelliott.blogspot.com (post link here)

[News From the Spirit World] Vampires

15 Monday Oct 2012

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Those of you who follow this blog will know I have a thing about vampires. I even declared March Vampire Month (and I hope you are all preparing for next year’s celebrations). So it should come as no surprise that when News from the Spirit World asked me to contribute to their Halloween postings I leapt on the Vampire topic.

Here is the post:

http://newsfromthespiritworld.com/2012/10/15/3-vampires/

Fantasy Writing contest: The results

11 Thursday Oct 2012

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Well, the results are in for the contest I entered:

http://fantasywritingcontest.com/category/judges/

As you can see, I am not on the short list. Not an unexpected result as there were a lot of high quality writers entering this. So, not too disappointed about the result and, in actual fact, there is a beneficial side effect from failing to get a place in the contest. I have another use for the story I submitted – a story about an old woman with a magical dagger called The Final Sacrifice.

A few months ago, I was asked to follow up Gods of the Sea*. I agreed to do a novella and a series of shorts to make up a short novel length anthology. I’ve been working on that ever since, whenever I get the time to write. When I was considering what stories I had already written which had yet to be published could be included in this anthology, The Final Sacrifice stood out as one which could definitely fit the brief. I am therefore actually quite pleased that there are now 4000 words I do not have to fill with another story as yet unwritten…

So, my writing plans over the next few months involve plugging away at this new anthology. Currently about half way through…

In the meantime, while you are waiting for me to actually get round to finishing this anthology, you can still enjoy my paranormal romance Transitions… It has Romans in it. And Goths. But not the Barbarian tribe… You can also still get a free copy of The Curse. It has Witches in it. Well, mad prophetic dreams…

* And it seems it has reappeared in paperback on Amazon again….

Amwriting is back!

06 Saturday Oct 2012

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Earlier, I mentioned that Amwriting, the writer’s blog site that I sometimes contribute to, had been on hiatus. Well, on the 1st of October it came back with a vengence!

So, you may now go direct to http://amwriting.org/ to view the home page of the site and see what lovely content the other contributors have been putting up there since the relaunch.

You may also go direct to this link:

http://amwritingblog.com/wordpress/?s=Lascelles&posttype=post&widget=advanced-search-widget-2

Which will take you to a rather nicely laid out page showcasing all my content on that site. That includes the infamous Mighty Red Pen of Justice article which scored so many hits recently…. Of course, while I am all in favour of you going to see what other writers are up to, I much prefer if you stay faithful to me and go direct to this page… 🙂

A new post on News from the Spirit World

01 Monday Oct 2012

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Posted under my name as a wordpress login but actually the work of Dr Jo Bath…

http://newsfromthespiritworld.com/2012/10/01/witches-wonderful-news-from-the-north-by-dr-jo-bath/

Look out for more posts on this site in the future, including my take on Vampires which I am currently in the middle of writing….