[AW Blog Chain] Thirteen

11 Friday Jan 2013

Tags

Absolute Write, action roleplay, Agatha Christie, aliens, Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, classical cultures, Doctor Who, Farscape, Featherstone Castle, Jane Austen, Joss Whedon, Masquerades and Massacres, Mayan Prophesy, Odyssey LRP, Photography, Predator, Roleplaying games, roman priest, Serenity LRP, Star Trek, Stargate, Steampunk, Strange and Norrell, Temeraire, Thirteen, Victoriana LRP, Waypoint LRP

With the year we are just starting having a ’13’ in it it is probably of no surprise that January’s Blog chain topic would link to this rather maligned number. It occured to me that every single article in the chain will mention Triskaidekaphobia so I thought I would get that out of the way now and not mention it again. There would also likely be many many discussions on bad luck, evil spirits and maybe even a Mayan prophesy or two (apparently, this is also the 13th Baktun which contributed to the recent ‘end of Mayan calandar means end of the world’ debacle). With this in mind, I decided not to go with the obvious topics.

Instead, I would like to celebrate the number 13 by posting here 13 photographs of something I love… Live Action Roleplay. Some of these are photos I have taken, others are taken by other more talented people. Full credit will be given where needed.

First up is this shot I took at a Mythic Age LRP game called Odyssey in summer 2012. The concept behind that game is that there are a number of classical cultures (Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Persians and Carthiginians initially but there is another one now) who coexist and in order to maintain peace on earth, the gods have restored the sunken city of Atlantis to act as a place where territory disputes can be settled in an arena rather than on the battlefield. Before each contest, the priests of each nation perform a blessing, dedicating the fight to one of their gods. Here we have the wonderful Lizy Townsend as a Roman priest sacrficing herself as she screams out a dying curse on the enemy.

From the same system, here we have two Romans fighting side by side against some Carthiginians and finally for Odyssey we have a photo that gives you some indication of how large some of the arena battles can be.

Another system I played this year was called Masquerades and Massacres or M&M (or, fairly often, Jane Austen and Aliens). This game is set in the Regency period (1820’s to be precise) and incorporates elements of Jane Austen, Strange and Norrell, Naomi Novak’s Temeraire stories, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Alien/Predator universe among others (seriously, there was a character who was an industrialist arms manufacturer by the name of Sir Anthony Stark, recently escaped from a Turkish prison…). It is a bizarre mix but it strangely seems to work and allows a lot of ballgowning… Here are some photographs from several events taken by the inestimable Oliver Facey

Waypoint was a LRP game I ran for a good few years, up until 2008 when I stopped because I needed time for other things. It was a Sci Fi system which largely riffed off a lot of things like Star Trek, Babylon 5, Farscape and similar and also inserted some elements of Doctor Who and Stargate.

The top photo shows some sci fi post apocalyptic gangsters apeing the Reservoir Dogs walk. The middle one show some techie types trying to repair a hyperspatial gate while defending themselves from attakc and the bottom one shows an assassination attempt on one of the characters…

Another game I am involed in is called Victoriana LRP which is, predictably enough, set in a Steampunk world. Here are two photos from that game:

This shows the aftermath of a fight with various injured characters being patched up with bandages.

This next one shows a scientist demonstrating a steampunk weapon….

The patch of dust on the ground is actually not the remains of someone who has been shot by the big gun. That was there for an entirely different purpose.

The next two photos are from a system based on Joss Whedon’s Firefly universe – Serenity LRP. These are all taken by the talented Ali Hancock, who was able to take them because she was playing a journalist in the game. All done in glorious black and white.

This first one is me helping to perform surgery. The second shows some players stalking through the woods looking for trouble.

Finally, a few years ago we went to a 1930’s themed event called An Uncommon Affair. There was intrigue, Egyptian Archeology, an Agatha Christie style murder (which we had to cover up for the good of the crown) and Nazis (who had the audacity to disturb dinner). There was also a photographer with a modern digital camera subtly hidden inside the body of a box brownie. This is their portrait of my character from that game…

Of course, for this game it was possible to take our dog along. He even had a character. He was a dog. It was a bit of a stretch for his thespian talents to play this character. The location, by the way, is a Youth Hostel called Featherstone Castle which is a gorgeous building set in the wonderful wilds of Northumberland.

So, there you have it. Thirteen photographs of Live Action Roleplay to celebrate the thirteen in this year… And at no point did i mention bad luck or the day Friday… Feel free to check out the sites I have showcased above as there are more photographs to be seen on all of them…

The usual rules of the blog chain are in force. So, you have to go check out the other members of the chain or else I will send copies of those photographs we discussed on the phone last week to you know who… you do not want anyone to find out about *that* do you?

Review of the Year

30 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#amwriting, Absolute Write, BBW Romance writers, behaviour management, books, Judy Bagshaw, Ninfa Hayes, Photography, Photoshoot, Publication, Realm Fantasy Wargame, Rebeka Harrington, Skyla Dawn Cameron, spirit world, Vampires, writing

As Christmas ends and the New Year looms, everyone inevitably begins to think about things like resolutions and reviews of past deeds. My intention in this post is to look at this blog and consider what has been successful in the past year.

The Ten Most popular posts

[News From the Spirit World] Vampires		488
[AW Blog Chain] Zompocalypse		385
The Avengers UK: Crossover universes		198
A day in the life of a Fantasy Photostudio		155
About		130
Teaching: Behaviour management on BBC Breakfast		108
[AW blog chain] Otherworldly		97
Photoshoot II: Attack of the texting Zombies (with Romans)		91
[AW Blog chain] Rainy Days		85
Weird Worlds [AW Blog chain for June]		82

This table shows the most popular posts for the year. I have excluded the most popular post (at over 2,800 views) because that was ‘homepage/archive’ which basically means that someone viewed the first page. It is interesting that the most popular post this year was one I did as a link to News From the Spirit World for an article I wrote on Vampires. I am guessing that this is due to the overall popularity of Vampires in general. Many of the Absolute Write blog chain posts are also trending in this list which implies that the link from the other blogs in the chain is achieving something. Finally, the Avengers Crossover post and the various Photoshoot posts are perennial favourites that seem to pop up every now and again even months after being posted. Oh, and my ego feels quite pleased that people feel it necessary to view my about page…

Ten Most popular keywords

vampires	280
zombie	98
vampirler	29
avengers meme	17
writer	13
weird worlds	12
zombie lady	12
behaviour management	9
the chosen book review	9
vampire	9

There have been a number of weird and wonderful keywords used over the time this blog has been active. This table shows the most popular ones used. I am sure no one is at all surprised that Vampires come up top, especially given the result of ‘most popular post’. There are also a few variants on that – vampires and vampirler showing up a few times. Zombie is also a search term which again shows up frequently with a couple of variants – zombie lady being the one shown here. Finally, it is probably no surprise given the popularity of that franchise that the Avengers shows up as the most popular after Vampires and Zombies in this table. The numbers here are obviously less than those for the most popular post because search terms are by their nature more variable.

This table does not show some of the weirdest search terms used to find this blog because most of those were one offs… ‘Cute Zombie Girl’ and ‘Hot Sexy Zombie’ both came up 3 times (with other variants in there as well), ‘Ninfa Goddess’ another 3 times (though I am not convinced it was not Ninfa herself doing this search out of ego…) and ‘discipline suit’ came up twice. No idea what a ‘discipline suit’ is but I am assuming that search led them to my tirade about behaviour management… There was also a weird one ‘benedict cumberbatch as lascelles’ which I assume must have been someone searching for information about the upcoming Strange and Norrell adaptation in which I think Mr Cumberbatch would indeed make a great Lascelles though I have no idea if he has been cast or not (or if anyone has been cast in this particular adaptation…).If anyone hears about any casting news for Strange and Norrell, please feel free to let me know.

Top Ten Countries Viewing the Blog

United Kingdom	1,971
United States	1,968
Canada	308
Australia	228
India	91
Philippines	73
Germany	68
Puerto Rico	52
France	51
Indonesia	49

Naturally, UK and US dominate this chart in the top two positions here with my fans in both countries vying for top spot and ending with a very close call (only three views in it in the end). This obviously comes from me being British and my books being largely published in the US. I also have a good mix of people from both countries on my facebook and twitter accounts (both of which get links to here posted) and a lot of US people come to me through the Absolute Write forums. Australia and Canada are on here for similar reasons – Australia due to the many fans of Rebekah Harrington and Canada due to Skyla Dawn Cameron and Judy Bagshaw’s occasional posts on this blog. It is also nice to see other countries on here to give the place a proper international feel with places such as the Philippines and Indonesia showing up there.

So, that is a brief overview of the state of this blog as the year comes to a close. I’ve found some interesting trends here and hope to find many more in 2013 when I repeat this process again. Of course, this year has been good for a few other things. In this year I managed to get involved in the creation of an entire world background for a fantasy wargame called Realm (today is your last chance to enter the competition to win some miniatures…) and also to finally release Transitions onto an unsuspecting public after many many years in ‘publication hell’. I’ve also managed to organise two successful photoshoots by bringing different people with different exceptional talents together then sitting back and watching them work magic.

In 2013 I have other plans afoot and hope to be able to announce other fun things very soon…

[AW blog chain] Otherworldly

19 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 34 Comments

Tags

Absolute Write, books, contemporary literature, google images search, Gritty realism, literature, Otherworldly, Real world, realistic portrayal, supernatural elements, writing

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…

[AW Blog chain post] Seven

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Absolute Write, Colossus, Egypt, Greece, Mausoleum at Helicarnassus, pharos of alexandria, Photography, Rhodes, Seven, Seven Wonders, Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, The Colossus of Rhodes, The Great Pyramid of Giza, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, The Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, Turkey

The number seven has a lot connected to it: Virtues, Sins, Samurai, Sages (in both Greece and China), Dwarves and Brides (with an equal number of brothers to accompany them). There were also seven Kings of Rome and equally seven emperors not to mention Shakespeare’s ages of man, Gaiman’s Endless, Tolkien’s Valar (and stones and stars and Dwarf kings, but only one White tree) and Martin’s Kingdoms of Westeros… At one point there were also seven Doctors in Doctor Who but recently they seem to have acquired some more from somewhere. We could also talk about Seven of Nine, Blakes Seven or the fact that 7 inches is the diameter of a 45rpm gramaphone record…

One of the Seven Sages of Greece – Cleobulus of Lindos, one time Tyrant of Lindos

But what I want to talk about is none of these. I actually want to talk about one thing I have missed from that list above…

Yeah, ok, I have missed a lot from that list because 7 is a very common number in a lot of things. However, I missed one thing that is obvious and probably should not require you to check the same wikipedia page I have been looking at to know about it. What I want to talk about are the seven wonders of the ancient world.

I’ve always been fascinated by these, ever since hearing about them at primary school. Things so grand and over the top that their reputations have lasted thousands of years. Of course, I am sure you all know the names of the seven ancient wonders, but just in case here is the list:

The Great Pyramid at Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum at Helicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse (or Pharos) of Alexandria.

It is interesting to note that two of them are graves (the pyramid and the mausoleum), two of them are examples of great feats of engineering for the time (the Hanging Gardens and the Lighthouse) and another two are of religious significance (the temple of Artemis and the Statue of Zeus). The odd one out is the Colossus of Rhodes which is a statue of a Titan which might therefore be considered ‘religious’ but is a bit of a weird one and could also probably count as a ‘feat of engineering’* You could therefore argue that the wonders were indicative of the interests of the cultures in those periods.

In my life, I have visited the sites of three of these monuments. I went to the outskirts of Cairo to visit the Pyramids on my Honeymoon and while I did not go into the Great Pyramid itself because of the massive queues, I did see it and went into one of the lesser ones. Quite a humbling and frightening experience – small, cramped tunnels, the ever present sensation of all those tonnes of rock above and around you. Even if you are not claustrophobic you begin to get a feel for what it is like to be claustrophobic. If you are claustrophobic, I suggest you think more than twice before going in. I also visited the island of Rhodes a few years back and saw the pillars on the mouth of the harbour of Rhodes Old Town which are supposed to indicate where the two legs of the Colossus were as they stradded the bay. I have also been to Turkey and wandered around the ruins of Ephesus, including the Temple of Artemis that was there.

One of the two monuments on Rhodes harbour indicating the possible positions of the feet of the colossus.

Of the four I have not visited, at least one is probably not accessible at this time, being in the middle of what was until recently a warzone, and may well have been a legend rather than something that actually existed**. Of the remaining three, I have seen some of the statues that were purported to come from the Mausoleum in the British Museum and there are fragments of the temple of Zeus in the Louvre, which I have also visited though apparently nothing remains of the statue which was the true Wonder***. Finally, the site of lighthouse, the island off Alexandria known as the Pharos, is still there though the lighthouse itself was finally destroyed by an earthquake in the 15th century. Maybe one day I will manage to visit the sites of these. You could argue that it is a shame that these great feats of architecture were allowed to fall into ruin. However, you could also say that it is a testement to the skills of those builders that even fragments of some of them still exist today never mind almost complete structures of one of them.

*Of course, they are all feats of engineering because of their sheer scale…. but the Pharos and Hanging Gardens are examples of someone applying a scientific principle – the use of light in navigation and the use of irrigation to turn a desert into a garden – to a practical use.

** If they didn’t, then the walls of Babylon almost certainly did and apparently also qualify for Wonder status

*** There are varying stories about the fate of the statue. Some claim Caligula ordered it beheaded and replaced with his own head, others that it was lost in a fire either at the temple itself (in 425AD) or in Constantinople in 475AD.

Yes, this is a blogchain post and that means consequences if you do not follow through and read all the other entries in the chain. This month’s comedy punishment is to be buried under 200 tonnes of masonry in a desert somewhere. So that is something for you all to look forward to enjoying…

Fire and Ice [AW Blog Chain for August]

08 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

Absolute Write, AW Blog Chain, flaming eye, Mordor, Olympic flame, Olympics, psychology, religious symbology, Sauron, storms, symbols, The Shire

I have to admit that this title had me stumped. I really could not think of anything to comment upon that had happened in the world or had to do with the craft of writing which involved the concepts of fire and ice… I spent a while pondering possibilites – talking about opposites, for example, and how plots in stories often need these to create tension. However, nothing I could think of really inspired me. I mean, what has been happening in the UK recently that has involved a large flame?

Oh yeah…

Danny Boyle performed a massive ritual a week and a half ago which, according to many of my friends, transformed The Shire into Mordor and raised a massive, flaming eye above the stadium so that Sauron could get a good view of the Olympics.

How the hell could I have missed that?

Luckily, this massive ritual seems to have been successful. Not only did Sauron get his premium seat in the stadium but he seems to have blessed team GB with success. Because, suddenly, as if by magic, we are apparently good at Olympic sports*. That is some serious mojo there because, for as long as I can remember, we have always been rather middling at all sports. Plus, it cannot be denied that the Olympics, including the rather exciting wins we have had, have been a great boost to morale in the UK.

Personally, I there think that whatever sacrifice Grand Magistar of the Great Ritual, Danny Boyle, made to the Dark Lord Sauron to achieve this was definitely worth it.**

So, yes, the Olympic flame. It is actually a very powerful symbol supposed to commemorate the theft of fire from the gods by Prometheus (possibly the first theft in the same way as Cain performed the first homicide…) and is also an example (possibly the only existing modern example?) of what is known in religious/spiritual terms as an eternal flame (feel free to insert an appropriate joke about The Bangles here…). That is, a flame which is kept constantly tended and, rather than being put out and relit is passed on from vessel to vessel.

In fact, the modern Olympic flame is lit on Mount Olympus by eleven women representing Vestal Virgins using the light of the sun and is transferred to the new host country using torches lit from that original flame in one hell of a long relay race (which did pass very close to my house at one point, I think they got lost on the way as we are a few hundred miles north of the direct route between Athens and London). There is a hell of a lot of symbolism inherent in that set up, not least the ideas of continuity and eternity. My point? Well, I joked that Danny Boyle was performing a massive magical ritual as part of his opening ceremony but in reality he actually was. The whole Olympics, from the opening ceremony to the closing ceremony, is packed with magical and religious symbols and whether you believe in gods, magic or whatever or not these symbols still have an affect on the human psyche. Psychologically, we have been programmed over our entire evolution to put significance on these things and respond to them with the appropriate level of awe. Fire is one of the strongest of these – Olympic flames, burning bushes, burnt offerings, all have been instrumental in our beliefs throughout history.

The scars in the path here were caused by flood damage. Photo taken on Monday 6th August 2012 at Drinkwater Park, Prestwich

What about Ice? Ah, you thought I had forgotten about ice…. Well, no, I hadn’t and my Olympic theme holds true. No, I am not talking about the Winter Olympics (which does seem to get forgotten in this country, not really been talked about much since the days of Torville and Dean and Eddie ‘the Eagle’ Edwards) but about the strange thing that happened the day after what has been described as our greatest Olympic day (Saturday 4th August, when we won oh so many medals). A massive storm raged over Manchester causing massive flooding in my local area. Now, summer storms are not unusual and flooding has been known to happen on occasion. However, the really freaky thing about this storm was that it hailed. Yes, hail. Lumps of ice fell from the sky in August on a day that had been very warm. Now, I am no expert on the weather but I think I am right in thinking that this was a somewhat unusual occurence. Clearly, whatever Boyle did had side effects which affected the weather… Maybe the powerful symbol of fire needed the equally powerful ice to balance it amd restore equilibrium to the universe?

So, there you have it… Fire and Ice, important psychological symbols which still impact us in the supposedly more secular and less superstitious modern age. Whether you are writing fantasy, horror, science fiction or even a simple contemporary romance you can use such concepts to induce potent emotions in your readers. Just as the Olympic flame has induced a great passion for sport among people who would not normally care.

* Yeah, ok, we were good at Beijing too but this year we are better… Of course, despite actually being third in the medals table behind the USA and China, according to the British media we are still apparently ‘winning’ the Olympics…

** Ok, yeah, I do not deny that all our athletes are incredibly talented and have worked hard at their sport. But we seem to suffer from bad luck a lot… missing out on gold by mere inches. This year, that bad luck has evaporated and it is about damn time it did.

Ok, Blog chains… this is how it works. You ‘ve read this one so now you are legally bound to read all the others. There is a special server in the MI5 building set aside *just* for tracking who reads what on this blog chain so they *will* find you out… If you fail in this task, the IOC will have to take all the gold medals away from whichever country you are from so the honour of your country depends on this! The list of participants is below….

Participants and posts:
orion_mk3 – http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (link to this month’s post)
Ralph Pines – http://ralfast.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)
areteus – https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Catherine Hall – http://theelephantinthetemple.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
bmadsen – http://www.bernardmadsen.com/ (link to this month’s post)
pyrosama – http://matrix-hole.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
magicmint – http://www.loneswing.com/ (link to this month’s post)
meowzbark – http://erlessard.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)
tomspy77 – http://thomaswillamspychalski.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)
BBBurke – http://www.awritersprogression.com/ (link to this month’s post)
writingismypassion – http://charityfaye.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Proach – http://desstories.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
randi.lee – http://emotionalnovel.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
BigWords -http://bigwords88.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)

[AW Blog chain post] Independence and slavery

18 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Absolute Write, AW Blog Chain, Benjamin Franklin, Lascelles, Olaudah Equiano, slave trade, The Battle of Hastings, The Lunar Society, The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade

Independence has tumbled out of the Topicatorium for this month’s blog chain post. I think it has something to do with some celebration some country somewhere is having about something that happened a while back. I think there was a King involved, one of the Georges. And some tea party in Boston, wherever that is.

This is absolutely not a picture of the Boston Tea party.

Yet again, I demonstrate how much the education system in my country bothers with things that happen outside the UK… that or how well I paid attention in History…

Seriously, this month we have decided to talk indepenence and slavery and, until the Americans finally figure out that the Revocation of the Declaration of Independence* wasn’t actually a joke but a serious Royal Declaration, July the 4th will remain a day of Independence. My words today will be about slavery and, in particular, some very personal anecdotes on the subject.

My story starts in a pub in Birmingham. I was there for a social get together with some friends and was having dinner at the pub in question. I ordered my food and paid by card and the barman noticed my name. “Oh, that’s the same name as my grandfather’, he said. I was momentarily confused as to why ‘David’ was a noteworthy name. I mean, it’s not that uncommon. Then I realised he was talking about Lascelles which is, I have to admit, an unusual enough name. We talked for a while and it turned out that it wasn’t his grandfather’s surname that was Lascelles, it was his first name. Apparently it was quite a common name among some West Indian communities. We pondered at this for a while then shrugged it off as a strange coincidence. I ate my food, drank some beer and chatted with friends and went home thinking nothing more about it.

Fast forward a few years and we decided to attend an interesting looking exhibition at The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. The exhibition was about the life of Olaudah Equiano, a former slave who made a name as an author and whose autobiography was significant in the cause of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. There were artifacts and information panels about his life, his writings, the other members of the society (especially those members who were also members of the Lunar society which was a local club of intellectuals) and the slave trade in general. A lot of it was very sobering.

However, the big shock came at the end of the exhibition where there was an info panel about slaves being freed and the ways in which it could be achieved (being freed by the owner, buying their freedom, etc). Amongst all that information, it was mentioned that freed slaves often took some aspect of their owners’ name as their own. Prominent among the examples was the name Lascelles.

So, there was the explanation for the ‘mysterious coincidence’ noted in the pub that time. At some point in the past few hundred years, a family with the name Lascelles had owned slaves in the West Indies. Since they seemed to be noteworthy enough to be mentioned in a museum exhibit, they probably owned quite a few of them. The barman’s Grandfather had been named because of this tradition**.

The Battle Roll showing the knights who fought with William at the Battle of Hastings. This is not a high enough resolution copy to see it but the name is there…

Now, I have no way of knowing if the Lascelles’s who were owning slaves in the West Indies were related to me in any way. In much the same way as I have no way of knowing if I am related to the Lascelles who charged into England at Duke William’s back in 1066 and was guilty of ‘causing affray’, ‘accessory to regicide’ and theft of land (crimes they have yet to be called to account for and are unlikely ever to be). I haven’t done the geneology and don’t have the patience for it. However, seeing your own name connected with such a serious historic and social issue is rather ground shaking. I have to admit, I felt incredibly guilty, even though I personally had never condoned nor participated in the trade. I suppose the slave trade in general tends to incite strong feelings in many people, especially if you have a modern liberal outlook, and a personal link, however tenuous, makes it a hell of a lot more immediate.

This guilt was assuaged slightly in a more recent time. One of my many casual acquiantances online is a woman whose family were also involved in the slave trade. In her case she knows this involvement for definite because she has it from history passed down through the generations that several of her ancestors were slaves. We happened in the course of a long e-mail conversation to stray into the slave trade (it was quite organic – we somehow ended up on the drunken antics of Benjamin Franklin and it moved on from there…). I mentioned the above story and her comment was that, from what she had seen of the history of the trade, if a freed slave took the name of a family it was generally out of respect to the family because they had been well treated. So, I feel slightly better for that. Not much, but I take what I can get.

In many ways the slave trade was an example of how politics and economics together can cause something quite evil to be perpetuated. Greed and opportunism caused it to come into being in the first place but governments pandering to economic lobby groups and refusing to change the law for so many years was what kept it legal long after many people (like Equiano, Wilberforce, Clarkson and more) had pointed out the cruelties in the system. If there is a moral to this post beyond the obvious ‘slavery is bad’ then I think it should be to be aware of how business and governments together can conspire to create great harm. It happened with the slave trade but it is by no means a matter of history – it is still happening now.

Blog chain time again… you all know the rules by now. Read these blogs or else… er, I’ll come to all your houses and throw gravel at your neighbour’s window and claim it was you wot dun it…

* Yeah, that version is very out of date. They need to update it with the new PM. Tell you what, you give us Obama and you can have Cameron and Clegg. Two for the price of one offer, can’t say fairer than that. I think Obama would much prefer governing here, we already have the medical health care system he wanted and no one will claim he is an illegal alien because he comes from Hawaii. Just to check, though: Obama does come with the entire US government budget, right? Cos, you know, we could do with that money right now…

** I very much doubt he himself was a slave, given the timings involved, but these traditions do get passed along family lines and it is possible he was named for his Grandfather or Great Grandfather.

[Review] Absolute Visions Anthology

29 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Reviews

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Absolute Write, Absolute Write Anthology, anthology, MacAllister Stone, reviews, visions

I have talked about the Absolute Write Absolute Visions Anthology on this blog a few times before. Finally, after many months, is my review of said anthology:

http://www.epublishabook.com/2012/05/24/anthology-review-absolute-visions-edited-by-macallister-stone/#axzz1wH5gz5kO

Apparently there is no way to comment on epublish a book (I assumed there was but some people have been telling me they have had difficulties) so feel free to comment on this post if you have anything you would like to say about the review…

By the way, I do have some interesting news which I may share soon. A lot of things have been happening at once – most of them yesterday with a slew of interesting e-mails coming in.

[Review] Bites by Ninfa Hayes

10 Thursday May 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Reviews

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Tags

Absolute Write, Absolute Write Anthology, anthology, books, ninfa, Ninfa Hayes, reviews, Vampires, writing

I have been a little quiet of late, been far too busy with things other than blogging…

However, I have a couple of reviews in the pipeline. This one (out today) is Bites by Ninfa Hayes – one of our Vampire Month writers

http://www.epublishabook.com/2012/05/10/book-review-bites-by-ninfa-hayes/

I suggest you pop over there now to have a look at what I thought about it…

Another review that is likely to be due soon (depending on publishing schedules) is my review of the Absolute Write anthology, Absolute Visions. I will notify you when this one goes live…

A busy few days in blogging land…

20 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings, Reviews

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Tags

Absolute Write, books, City of Roses, Dr Watson, ghost photos, Ghost Pics, guest blogging, Kieran McMullen, Kip Manley, productivity, raynham hall ghost, self publishers, Self Publishing, Sherlock Holmes, Watson's Afgham Adventure, writing

This is what my study looks like at the moment...

I’ve not posted here much since the end of Vampire Month (apologies for that, I’ve been distracted) and you were probably expecting a post linked to the AW Blog Chain here about now as I was signed up for it this month. However, I opted out last week for personal reasons. I do intend to do next month’s blog chain, however, so look out for that in May…

In the meantime, I have been a busy bunny on the reviewing front. School Easter holidays provided me with plenty of time for reading and writing so I managed to clear some books off the big pile of ‘books to be reviewed’.

First up we have Watson’s Afghan Adventure, another MX Publishing offer set in the Sherlock Holmes universe:

http://www.cultbritannia.co.uk/2012/04/18/book-review-watsons-afghan-adventure/

This follows the exploits of Dr Watson during his pre-Holmes days in the army. Please excuse the missing ‘of’ in the first sentence…

Secondly, I have also reviewed Wake up, volume one of the City of Roses series:

http://www.epublishabook.com/2012/04/20/book-review/#axzz1sZN6l3ZI

A strange and mystical story of faerie courts in modern urban cities, somewhat akin to Gaiman’s Neverwhere.

Finally, not a review but a commentary on a photograph:

http://newsfromthespiritworld.com/2012/04/18/ghostly-pics-the-raynham-hall-ghost/

Here I talk about another famous ghost photograph – the Raynham Hall ghost, also known as the Brown Lady – another of the shots labelled as one of the ’10 greatest ghost photos ever’ in numerous blog posts.

There is a lot more to come because the ‘big pile of books to be reviewed’ is a very big ‘big pile of books to be reviewed’ and there are a lot more ghost photos out there…

The state of the Blog

01 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#amwriting, Absolute Write, books, epublish, guest blogging, guest posts, Ninfa Hayes, Pirates and Swashbucklers, productivity, Publication, Realm Fantasy Wargame, Rebeka Harrington, respectable numbers, reviews, Secret Project

It occured to me recently that it has been six months since I first started this blog with the post New Beginnings. Actually, it was six months ago on the 18th of March so it is actually six months and, er, some weeks exactly. However, I got so distracted with Vampire month that it slipped my mind.

So, how have things been going since this blog began? Quite well in my opinion, though still plenty of room for growth. The recent Vampire month guest posts have done very well with Ninfa Hayes so far racking up the highest number of post views with her post Giving Birth to my Muse and all the other participants gaining respectable numbers of readers too. Posts I have made myself have also done reasonably well, with my post for the AW Blog Chain, Rainy Days, racking up the second most views of any post. Which is amazing since that was a random piece of nonsense I babbled out following a prompt and based on some stuff I came up with while on holiday. All of this is reasonably promising after a mere six months of activity. I am getting hits from all over the world (at one point Australia was the place I was getting the most hits from, I blame Rebekah Harrington, but the UK soon took the lead with the US second and Australia third) including some far flung places such as the Phillipines, Peurto Rico and Mexico (actually quite a lot from Mexico, I have my suspicions).

My work on other blogs has also done rather well. I am now a regular reviewer on the ePublish a Book website and on Cult Britannia. I am also starting to post on the News from the Spirit World blog and my contributions there will get more common over the next few months. I am enjoying all of these, especially the opportunity to read self published books and see what is out there – both good and bad. I’ve posted on the Am Writing blog and also on the blogs of a few other writers (and am always willing to do a guest blog if anyone out there wants me to).

I’ve also ventured into writing a wargame called Realm for a company called Serious Lemon and this, along with the royalties from Pirates and Swashbucklers, constitute my first professional writing achievements. There are a few more irons in the fire so hopefully some more writing projects will start to come to fruition in the near future.

So, there you have it. In the next six months, I am hoping for the following:

– More people reading this blog

– More people commenting on this blog

– My ascenstion to ultimate god king of the universe and ruler of all I survey.

If I manage to achieve two out of these three I will be very happy…

Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

Tag Archives: Absolute Write

[AW Blog Chain] Thirteen

Review of the Year

[AW blog chain] Otherworldly

[AW Blog chain post] Seven

Fire and Ice [AW Blog Chain for August]

[AW Blog chain post] Independence and slavery

[Review] Absolute Visions Anthology

[Review] Bites by Ninfa Hayes

A busy few days in blogging land…

The state of the Blog