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Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

Lurking Musings

Tag Archives: #amwriting

#GoT : Plausible logistics in fantasy.

28 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#amwriting, #GoT, Chekov's dragon, dragons, Game of Thrones, Ravens, Three Eyed Raven, world building, World design


Game of ThronesIf you are a fan of Game of Thrones I guess it cannot escaped your notice that there were a few, shall we say, logistical issues with ‘Beyond the Wall’ (episode 6 of the latest series). Issues that included not only faster than light Dragons and Ravens but also people that can move at that speed.

In a recent interview, the Director of that episode, Alan Taylor, defended these issues.

‘I’ve only looked at one review online, and it was very much concerned with the speed of the ravens. I thought, that’s funny — you don’t seem troubled by the lizard as big as a 747, but you’re really concerned about the speed of a raven. It is true there are time issues, and I’m not exactly sure how many kilometers there are between Eastwatch and Dragonstone. But it was a bit dreary to hear somebody who said, “I cannot enjoy this episode because, you know, that speed of that raven … ” There’s was a lot of wonderful stuff going on here and if it really gets that much in your way, that’s not good to hear. But that said, Gendry’s a really great runner. [Laughs.] Ravens go super fast. And who’s to say how much time passes on that island, since it’s always sort of an eternal twilight north of the Wall? With those three ideas in mind, I think we can lay the timing concerns to rest.’

Now, this is an interesting defence and one which is not new. ‘But there are dragons’ or something similar is a statement that has been made about fantasy settings in tabletop RPGs, books, TV shows, films and LRP for decades. And on the surface it is a reasonable argument. Why are you concerned about the petty logistical issues when there are such fantastical elements blatantly on display? Surely everything can be explained by magic?

With this argument we do, however, get into one of the fundamental pillars of world building. Regardless of your fantasy elements, there need to be consistent and visible rules to govern how they function. In a post in this blog a while back I discussed some of the reasons for this and argued that not only does the human mind react badly to blatant rules breaking in settings, but also that the rules set limits on what is possible and therefore increase the tension and thus drive the story. For this to work, you have to accept that magic  cannot (and should not) be capable of solving all problems, at least not without a cost and that other fantastical elements such as mythical creatures need to have well defined specifications.

There is also the issue of pacing and direction here. Most storytelling forms can and often do play fast and loose with time. I mean we really don’t want to spend hours of screen time watching some people trudge through snow when nothing of interest is happening and a good director can play with these rather fluid perceptions of time to good effect. How long were they waiting there surrounded by an army of undead? It is heavily implied by the direction that it is a day but the above quote seems to suggest longer was intended. It feels here that the intention to fool the audience with time has backfired somewhat – certainly based on the many responses which assume the less than 24 hours theory.

Looking at the above response we have three things that are problematic. The first is Gendry being able to run, in bitter cold and hostile terrain, an unknown number of miles back to Eastwatch after an indeterminate number of days marching through the same terrain. OK, yes, he may be a fast runner and he may have inherited something of a heroic constitution from his father. However, he is not a native of that part of the world. He was born and lived most of his life in a climate that was more like southern France than the bitter cold of the north. He is strong because of his genes and his work as a blacksmith (which is what makes his strongarm antics with the hammer plausible) but he has never been shown to be a particularly good runner. We can add some points for him being driven by urgency but you still have to question how long it takes to do that journey. Maybe it would have been more plausible if it had been Tormond – a native of the terrain they were traversing – or even Jon who has Stark genes and therefore resistant to the cold? Of the three points, this one is the one that could maybe be excused on the points made, although it is stretching credulity. If they were close enough to the wall that he could get there that quickly, why not have a signal prepared for Eastwatch to look out for – a beacon or similar? Something to let them know they needed help. After all, they already had two flaming swords so fire was not an issue.

The three eyed RavenThe second issue is the speed of the ravens. Again, arguments that Westeros Ravens are fast do cover some of this. It has been established that there is a complicated and efficient mail service that uses them and so it is reasonable to assume that breeding methods, training and possibly some magic may well go into this. However, it is still stretching it to assume that even a fast bird could cover that distance in less than 24 hours. Previously the raven mail has been seen as providing delivery within a couple of days (within similar limits to a modern postal service) rather than a few hours.

The final issue is, of course, the dragons. Again, these can be fast but there to be some consideration of the people on the back of the dragon. An exposed dragon rider going at anything more than the speed of a car is going to be exposed to a lot of elements. Think about the issues of driving a motorbike or one of the old fashioned biplanes. You need goggles and protective clothing to prevent wind chill and damage to the eyes from insects and dust even at relatively low speeds. The fastest WWI biplane (arguably the fastest plane an exposed pilot could be on before you get into vehicles that require a completely  enclosed cockpit and pressurisation) is listed (ironically enough) as the Sopwith Dragon with a top speed of just under 150mph. Beyond that speed you can imagine it would be difficult even with protection for a human to be safe and comfortable and here we have a rider with no such protection. OK, again you can argue the Targaryen genes here – her family has been riding dragons for centuries so there has to be some adaptation happening there – but still to push the speed much beyond that 150mph is not really practical. Point being, unless dragons can teleport, it is stretching it to be able to say they can cross a continent so quickly.Dragons in Game of Thrones

The goal has to be the suspension of disbelief. The writer, having set the rules of the world in place, needs to then make sure that these are maintained and, if it is necessary to break them at all, it is done in a way that seems plausible. I think the main issue here is the fact that there were many ways the same effects could have been achieved without breaking that suspension. I have already mentioned the possibility of a signal to Eastwatch – a very quick communication tool which, if the guards had been on alert, would have got the message there much quicker than a running person. The rest can have been achieved with some advance planning using existing features of the world that have already been well established. For example, Bran as the Three Eyed Raven has the ability to communicate across vast distances and could have got that message to Dragonstone almost instantly. A raven to Winterfell from Eastwatch in a short space of time is a lot more believable than one all the way to Dragonstone. But there is an even more realistic way to achieve it. What if the dragons had already been en route in preparation for this very thing? What if they were already at Eastwatch waiting for word? Easy enough to establish with some scenes of them arriving, much to the consternation of the Wildlings in the fortress, or even a scene where it is Daenerys who comes out of the fortress to find Gendry collapsed with exhaustion at the gate.

You could even have it so that Bran at some point delivers a prophesy to Daenerys – telling her she needs to be there at a certain point but there will be a dire cost (which any who watched the episode already know). She angsts about it for a bit, not sure what to do, which is more important – her war with the Lannisters or the war against the undead? But then, finally, gives the order to mount up and arrives just as she is needed, maybe dramatically almost but not quite too late to save the day entirely.

There are probably other ways to achieve the same thing, all of which end with the same awesome scene of dragons flaming through undead hordes. I’d argue that a surprise appearance of dragons that was signposted in advance (Chekov’s dragon) is far more satisfying a conclusion than ‘suddenly dragons’ in a way which leaves confusing questions about plausibility. It was not that the scene was overly fantastic or that questioning the plausibility was pointless in the face of fantasy elements. Rather, it was that three rather ludicrous situations had to occur at the same time in order for the plot to work and even in a world where dragons are a thing people will still subconsciously  take those dragons more seriously if they can see a logical set of rules that govern them. Once you start to mess with perceived plausibility you lose suspension of disbelief and once you lose that you lose the audience’s trust.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On mentors and evil

23 Saturday May 2015

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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#amwriting, BBW Romance writers, Judy Bagshaw, Skyla Dawn Cameron, The Curse, The Evil League of Evil Writers, Writing mentors


On Thursday evening, I got a piece of bad news about an old friend. An old friend who I had never actually met who is now in a critical care ward in Canada, apparently in a bad way. This news came to me from another friend who I have never met. Said friend being a member of an organisation calling themselves the Evil League of Evil Writers who are dedicated to performing evil* for the good of humanity, she posted this blog post:

Evil for Judy

This post says more about Judy Bagshaw than I ever could, about the sort of person she is and why she deserves acclaim. Not surprising as it was written by someone I consider to be a great writer. I urge anyone reading this to go visit the blog linked above, read it and perform at least one of the tasks of ‘evil’ that are requested. When done, leave a comment so Skyla can read out your deed to Judy and let her know that there are people out there doing evil on her behalf.

Why am I involved in this? Well, I owe Judy a hell of a lot. She is the evil person who got me involved in this writing lark. Not only that she was an enabler who kept me writing when I wanted to quit. She is a true mentor, a great cheerleader and an inspiration. Without her Transitions would have never been written because I would not have bothered to try this insane experiment in romance writing. She was also instrumental in getting Transitions published and performed a lot of the really hard work involved in that.

She was one of the insane collaborators from the BBW Romance Writers group on our bizarre collaborative novella, The Curse which you can download for free from her site and has her own collection of romance novels out there for you to buy.  She beta read Transformations (now published in Lurking Miscellany) and finished her critique with a cheery ‘well done’ which remains my most awesome review yet. When Lurking Miscellany was published, she told me that she was not going to buy it from Amazon because she wanted to buy it direct from me at greater postage cost so I could sign it for her. I lied about the postage cost to Canada so she actually ended up paying less. It was the least I could do.

I beta read some of her stuff and had a lively online conversation with her that has lasted almost ten years so far. I really hope that conversation is going to continue. The last we spoke she was talking about getting Shades of Love, the novella anthology we collaborated on that includes Transitions, published as a collected print edition. That needs to happen and if she cannot do it, I intend to.

In her honour, I spoke to some of my students yesterday about reading and writing (among other things, it was a long conversation). That was my act of evil. I intend to do more of that when I get back to work. Please perform your own acts of evil and pass the details. The ELEW can’t do enough evil by itself, it really needs your help…

* I say evil. For the ELEW the term evil has a specific meaning. The following is copied from the above blog post and covers that definition very well..

“Standard Evil Explanations for Newbies:

Wait, what’s this about evil? I’m a member of the Evil League of Evil Writers. Everything we do is evil, including charitable acts.

Aren’t charitable endeavors inherently good? Judy has fostered evilty in many children, including me, who co-founded the ELEW. Also, by supporting this endeavour, that might make people cry happy tears. Making people cry is of course evil. See? It all comes back to evil, folks.

As a friend said, when the universe kicks one of us, we kick back twice as hard.

I’m kicking.” Skyla Dawn Cameron (2015)

D.A Lascelles is the author of Lurking Miscellany, Transitions (Mundania Press) and Gods of the Sea (Pulp Empires). He lives in Manchester UK. You can sometimes see him writing about Zombie porn on https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ but he mostly blogs about books, vampires, science fiction and Terry Pratchett. He is inordinately proud of the fact that one of his Pratchett articles was referenced on the French version of the author’s Wikipedia page.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaLascelles

Twitter: @areteus

Buy Lurking Miscellany (paperback)

Buy Lurking Miscellany (Kindle)

What to wear…

31 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings, Publicity

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

#amwriting, Blake Northcott, Cosplay, Frances Hardinge, Labyrinth Literary Festival, Leeds Steampunk, Leeds Steampunk fair, Manchester, Ninfa Hayes, R.A Smith, Readings, Sexy female spiderman, Signings, Steampunk, Stockton Literary festival, World Book Night


As regular readers will already know, I have been to a few public events over the last year or so. I am now a regular at the Leeds Steampunk market (in a vague, loose coalition operating under the title of the Tea Society with Ninfa Hayes and R.A Smith and others) and at World book night I did a reading in the Fab café in Manchester. Now, this coming weekend I am going to be at the Stockton Literary festival…

Me with Starburst columnist Ed Fortune in front of a TARDIS.

Me with Starburst columnist Ed Fortune in front of a TARDIS.

The problem is that I have absolutely no idea what to wear.

You see, for Steampunk it is easy. I actually have quite a selection of waistcoats and cravats and could even go so far as to get a top hat should I feel it necessary (I haven’t so far, mainly stuck with the waistcoat and cravat look and a gentleman would never wear a hat indoors…). Ok, I am not up there with the dedicated goggles and nerf guns with cogs on brigade but I can dress well enough to look like I belong. Most of the traders there are steampunked up to a greater or lesser extent and while there are usually many ‘non steampunks’ in the crowd, you don’t look like an idiot – the only person wearing costume.

For World book night I might have had the ‘what to wear’ dilemma. However, the necessity of having to go straight from work to the venue (via the train station to pick up Frances Hardinge) meant that I was more or less limited to wearing what I wore at work. Since that day also coincidentally happened to be the day a member of the Royal Family was visiting work, this meant I was in a rather more formal shirt and tie than normal. In the photos you can even see the cufflinks. Though I had taken off the jacket and tie by that point.

me2But Stockton is not Steampunk nor is it right after a royal visit. I therefore have more or less free choice in what to wear. This means I am being indecisive. I could do the casual jeans and nerdy t-shirt that I usually wear when not at work. I could also do a more smart casual look – a shirt with jeans. So long as I avoid looking like David Cameron on holiday (which is a fate worse than death in many areas) I will probably be ok… But then I am wondering if I shouldn’t dress up more – bring out the waistcoat and cravat look or go in an even more bizarre costume? There are rumours of cosplay possibly happening there, after all and Blake Northcott recently did a con in Canada dressed as a sexy female Spiderman…

So, while I ponder these issues, I’d love to know your opinions. How do you expect a writer to be dressed when you meet them? What have authors you have met worn for cons and events? How much does a writer’s clothing matter?

And those of you in the UK, feel free to pop up to Stockton on Tees on the 6th of September for a lot of fun…

literary festival

D.A Lascelles is the author of Lurking Miscellany, Transitions (Mundania Press) and Gods of the Sea (Pulp Empires). He lives in Manchester UK. You can sometimes see him writing about Zombie porn on https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ but he mostly blogs about books, vampires, science fiction and Terry Pratchett. He is inordinately proud of the fact that one of his Pratchett articles was referenced on the French version of the author’s Wikipedia page.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaLascelles

Twitter: @areteus

Buy Lurking Miscellany (paperback)

Buy Lurking Miscellany (Kindle)

Busy times ahead…

01 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Publicity

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#amwriting, BBW Romance writers, books, Goodreads, guest posts, reviews, Transitions, Vampire Month, Vampires, writing


Since we are at the start of Feburary, I thought it was a good time for a bit of a recap and a look ahead as to what is to come. You may not have been aware of it, but January has been a busy month for me. I’ve been beavering away in the promotion cave (as Erica Hayes calls it) and getting some good results…thecurse_BBWauthors_03

First off, I have managed to get my first review on Goodreads thanks to the Making Connections giveaway offer. You can see the review here:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16225234-transitions

I am still waiting for several other reviews from that giveaway but as we are still well within the 4-6 week deadline I am not expecting them yet. I am hoping that they will all be as good as the ones I have had so far but I realistically know that this is unlikely.

Secondly, my new facebook author page (https://www.facebook.com/DaLascelles?ref=stream) is doing well with a grand total of 52 likes, which I consider reasonable but am still hungry for more. I posted my ’50 likes’ picture a few days ago. If you want to know what it is, go like the page! And when I reach 100 likes I will post another…

I also have been answering interview questions for other peoples’ blogs and will post here when those go live. One of them says there is a 12 week backlog of interviews to post so it will be a while before that one appears but as soon as it does I will let you all know so you can read about my deepest, darkest secrets.

As for what is to come, well I have two guest posts lined up for this month already, both looking to promote newly released books. Look out for them on the 6th of Febuaray and the 21st of Feburary. I’ve also scheduled myself for a post on Amwriting.org on the 26th of Feburary but have absolutely no idea what I am going to write about yet. Finally, there is Vampire Month…

Earlier this week, I finalised the list of authors who will be taking part in Vampire month this year and they are an interesting bunch. We have:

Zoe Adams

Aaron Smith

Lynda Bester

Erica Hayes

I look forward to finding out more about them as they answer my questions and produce a guest post for March.

So, there you have it. Lots of things achieved and pending. It’s only the start of the year, I hope the rest of it is as good…

Review of the Year

30 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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#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 More stats 488
[AW Blog Chain] Zompocalypse More stats 385
The Avengers UK: Crossover universes More stats 198
A day in the life of a Fantasy Photostudio More stats 155
About More stats 130
Teaching: Behaviour management on BBC Breakfast More stats 108
[AW blog chain] Otherworldly More stats 97
Photoshoot II: Attack of the texting Zombies (with Romans) More stats 91
[AW Blog chain] Rainy Days More stats 85
Weird Worlds [AW Blog chain for June] More stats 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 FlagUnited States 1,968
Canada FlagCanada 308
Australia FlagAustralia 228
India FlagIndia 91
Philippines FlagPhilippines 73
Germany FlagGermany 68
Puerto Rico FlagPuerto Rico 52
France FlagFrance 51
Indonesia FlagIndonesia 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…

Location, Location, Location… Part Two: The University of Birmingham

27 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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#amwriting, BBW Romance writers, Birmingham, Birmingham UK, books, Isengard, J.R.R Tolkien, mundania press, Ninfa Hayes, Orthanc, paranormal romance, Photography, Publication, Sarehole Mill, Selly Oak, The Bristol Pear, The Curse, Transitions, University of Birmingham, writing


A few days ago, I posted about Marsden Beach and Arbeia Roman fort. Now it is time for part two of my blog posts about locations I used in Transitions.

The university is where the contemporary action of the story happens. It also happens

The blue plaque at Sarehole Mill

to be one of the (several) universities I attended and worked at in my time as a scientist. I needed a university for my characters to be attending and it seemed a convenient one to use because I knew it so well. There were other advantages too.

One was the association with J.R.R Tolkien. As pointed out in the story, Tolkien did live for some time in the West Midlands (Kings Heath, now a suburb of Birmingham), spent a lot of time visiting places like Clent and Lickey Hills (both places we used to walk our dog) and attended school at King Edward’s school. Said school is right next to the university and does indeed have a good view of the iconic tower which was potentially the inspiration for the tower of Orthanc in Isengard (Sarehole mill being another inspiration, not to mention the dark smoke of the nearby black country). This provided a wonderful opportunity for two of the characters to be pedantic geeks.

The clock tower of the University of Birmingham

The tower itself was also a great location to use for the above scene because it looks so awesome – a huge, red brick clock tower in the middle of a courtyard made from similar red brick university buildings. Ever since I arrived in Birmingham this tower, which is visible from quite a distance away, always struck me as an ideal place for an epic battle between two powerful beings.

Of course… I use it in Transitions for a fight between two students, one drunk the other possessed. It’s hardly epic, more comedic as the drunken student is hardly competent in combat and the possessed one does not care and it ends with a piece of pedantry (like all the best arguments). However, one day I will use the tower again and this time it will be even more epic…

In the university I namecheck a number of lecturers. None of these are based on lecturers I know, though some have traits which some lecturers I have had may have shared. The names of the lecturers are, however, those of friends of mine. Professor Abigail Bath is named after two friends, one a costume maker (who also took my profile photo on this site) and the other a Doctor of History (who is also acknowledged in The Curse due to her expertise in Witchcraft). Professor Hayes is also named from a friend of mine. Not, as you may think, Ninfa Hayes (who is a friend but one I hadn’t met when I was writing Transitions) but the man she married. Finally, Dr. Gallop is named after my father in law. I do feel I have to apologise to at least two of the people namechecked here as both of the lecturers they name are not shown as the best of the breed.

The final scenes of the book centre on Selly Oak which is a place with a lot of student accomodation just outside the university. Specifically, a pub called the Bristol Pear

The Bristol Pear Pub, Selly Oak

which was for a while the home of the University Goth Society’s infamous ‘Friday Night Goth Shite’ nights (or FNGS for short). I tried to portray one of these nights as accurately as possible, including the description of one of the DJs. Unfortunately, FNGS (which was later joined by SNGS, no prizes for guessing what that means) is no longer based at the Pear but when I left Birmingham it was still going strong at a cocktail bar closer to the city centre. It may still be going somewhere. I like to think that someone in Birmingham can still wander into a small pub or cocktail bar somewhere and still find a goth night run by a student society.

So, there is a short tour of some of the Birmingham locations used in Transitions. Next up will be Aqua Sulis.

Note, unlike the previous article, none of the photographs here were taken by me. All credit for them belongs with the original artists who took them.

Nano Reflections

06 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in NaNo

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#amwriting, anthology of short stories, Metahuman Press, nano project, NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, Novella, Pirates and Swashbucklers, productivity, Pulp Empires, word counts, Writers' Block, writing


Last year I posted about NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month for those of you NaNoWirMo2who prefer their English unabbreviated. I talked about why I was not doing it and why that made me a heretic.

This year, in order to stay ahead of the curve and reveal my contrary nature, I opted to go ahead and do it. Because not doing it once and claiming you are doing so because it is cool not to is fine but there is no sense in repeating the pose for a second year. No sense in doing what people expect, always keep the audience guessing. 🙂

Actually, the main reason I opted to do it was to give myself a kick up the backside. Earlier in the year I had promised a publisher a complete anthology of short stories (well, one novella and some shorts) and had promised him delivery by a certain time. In the meantime, the deadline has whooshed past and I was still sat there with barely anything written and all of that painfully extracted over the course of several months. So, when November loomed I looked at my barely begun novella and decided that this would be my Nano project.

Of course, I still had the same problems as last year, which were my main reasons for not doing Nano. Work life balances getting all out of synch and all that. This time I even had a regular job to occupy me. I knew that 50K was unlikely to be a target I could aim for and still stay sane, married, healthy and employed. Instead, I opted for a lesser target. As things stood on my WIP I had just under 10K written already and I had predicted it to be about 30K when complete (various additional stories were planned to take the whole project to more than 50K, some of which had already been written and just needed tweaking). I therefore set myself two targets:

1) Write at least 20K words in order to get the total up to more than 30K

2) Complete the novella

By the end of NaNo I had written 20777 words which definitely achieved the first target and had put the novella to just under 30K words (close enough to be not worthwhile worrying about). However, I had not finished the novella…. the reason being that I realised that it is going to be a much longer story than I originally thought. I am almost at the end but there are at least another few thousand words to go and I am pondering additional scenes which may take it even higher than that.

So, I am counting my first NaNo experience as a win. I acheived one of my goals and only did not achieve the other because of changes in the goalposts. Not only that, but the process has reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the project which had been mired in the doldrums for far too long. In the course of writing I created a new character who I enjoy writing (he was intended to be an incidental local colour character, present for maybe a scene or two, but I ended up taking him further than that) and thought of some new plot ideas which I hope work. Of course, I have also produced something that is grammatically messy, likely filled with examples of bad writing and worse plot cliches but at least I have produced something and there is nothing that cannot be fixed in the edit.

Would I do it again in the future? Maybe. I suppose it would depend on the circumstances – am I working full time? Do I have a project that is languishing? I do think it was a good motivation tool and so worth doing on that basis alone. Not sure I would ever get to the point where I would ‘win’ NaNo but I am confident that it will be useful nontheless.

Be gentle… it’s my first time…

03 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Publicity

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#amwriting, Amazon, BBW Romance writers, books, Goodreads, mundania press, Pirates and Swashbucklers, productivity, Publication, Pulp Empires, reviews, writing


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.

[Amwriting] The City and The City

30 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Guest posts

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

#amwriting, Ankh Morepork, China Mieville, City, Fantasy, Firefly, Fritz Lieber, guest blogging, guest posts, Joss Whedon, Lankhmar, New Crobuzon, Personality, Terry Pratchett


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…

Amwriting is back!

06 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings, Publicity

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#amwriting, writing


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… 🙂

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