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Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

Lurking Musings

Tag Archives: MancsterCon

Alex Campbell interview redux

29 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

A.J Campbell, Debut Novel, Durham, Frankenstein, Geek Girls, Lampton Worm, MancsterCon, Mary Shelley, North East, Northumberland legends, Sigil of the Wyrm, Vampire Month


In March, we interviewed Alex for Vampire month and she provided the exceptional ‘Vampires of my life’ post. At the time we hinted that that she may be back soon. Now, here she is literally one day after the release of her debut novel (an event I was privileged to be sitting next to her while it happened at the MancsterCon, the sight of her face when she opened the box was classic) telling us all about it.redhair

  1. How did you come up with the concept of your story?

I think all authors have a touch of magpie in them somewhere – I know I do. I see something shiny and I want to steal it and put it in a book. Sigil of the Wyrm is a nest of glittery things I’ve collected – it’s full of real places from the North East where I grew up, and a few real people have cameo parts, or have lent me bits of dialogue and turns of phrase. And the main concept, the Lampton Wyrm itself, is from a local legend and, for me, bedtime story I heard as a kid.

  1. How did you come up with the title?

With great difficulty! And a lot of discussions with my editors. Even then it changed several times in the process. Titles are very polarising for me – either there’s one title that jumps out at me immediately and it’s perfect, or nothing is ever quite right and it takes an awful lot of work to come up with something.

  1. Please provide some insight into or a secret or two about your story.

I’m very wary of spoiler-ing the ending, or of giving away secrets that are going to become plot points in book two, so this is going to be a little cryptic. There’s a very famous essay by Roland Barthes that I read at university when I first conceived of the novel. I took the title a bit too literally, and it inspired something that happens in Chapter 22. With that in mind, you should be able to work out who a certain character is based around.

SofW_Webkit_available

  1. 4. What was the most surprising part of writing this book?

The Sneak-Peak Pre-Release we did at London Film and Comic Con in July. I’m a total geek, so being told I was taking my book to Comic Con… I spent several weeks trying not to get my hopes up because there must have been a mistake somewhere, and my publishers couldn’t really have meant Comic Con… Except they did, and it was amazing. All the authors there were really friendly, and I met so many fantastic people, and I actually sold out of the copies I’d brought with me. It was a whole weekend of “I can’t quite believe this!”

  1. What was the hardest part of writing your book, and how did you overcome it?

The denouement. Chapters 20-22 took so long and so many revisions to get right, and I think that was because I was holding on to a plot element that I’d had since the beginning, but which no longer fitted. The novel had grown up and outgrown it, and it took me far too long to realise that. In the end, I just had to tear up those three chapters and re-write them from scratch, taking it in a slightly different direction, adding new scenes and even some new characters. In the end, it turned out to be the best decision I could have made, because it was a big injection of new writing into what had become a somewhat stale ending.

6. So, it’s been 5 months since you were interviewed for Vampire Month on this blog. Have the last few months been busy ones for you?

Very much so. A lot of scrambles to deadlines, plus a bit of publicity work in the run up to the launch, and the Sneak Preview at LFCC in July… and that’s even without factoring in a day-job and a social life!

7. As a newly published author, are there any differences between your expectations and what it is actually like to be published?

Not really. I mean, I haven’t made my millions yet, but then I never really expected I would (just hoped!). On the whole I went into the business with my eyes open, and with a fairly realistic view of what it would be like – both the good sides and the bad.

8. Your novel, Sigil of the Wyrm, has its roots in the Lambton worm legend. What are your earliest memories of that legend?

My Mum singing me this song to get me to go to sleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUVWdGwVBw8 It’s a bit incomprehensible if you don’t speak Geordie, I’m afraid, but I can provide a translation if required…

9. Are there any other popular legends you think might be ripe for interpretation into a novel? Do you plan to do one of these in the future?

Lots! I’ve already got several plans for book 2, which is going to draw quite heavily on a few Arthurian Excalibur myths, and also a lesser known story about a character called Tam Lin. That happens to be one of my favourites, because it’s one of the few times the girl gets to save her prince, not the other way round!

10. You are known as a feminist and a geek. What is your reaction to the claims that women cannot be geeks?

Raucous laughter? Beating them around the head with my Masters degree in Science Fiction? Point them at the vast number of women I know who have even better geek credentials than me? A massive wall chart pointing out all the fantastic Speculative fiction written by women, all the way back to the fact that a woman *invented* sci-fi as we know it (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818)? Depends what kind of a mood I’m in, but I disagree with that sentiment in the strongest terms. Luckily, I’ve almost always found Geekdom to be an open and welcoming subculture, and it saddens me that others of my gender have not always found it to be so.

AJ-Campbell-author

 

Irony in Fantasy #MancsterCon

13 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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Tags

clichés, Dwarves, elves, Fantasy, Gary Gygax, Magician, MancsterCon, Quattrofoto, Ravenchilde Illustrations, Raymond E Feist, Realm Fantasy Wargame, Terry Pratchett, tropes, William Shakespeare, Wizards


So, on the 29th August MancsterCon will be upon us and that will see myself and a few other authors sitting on a panel discussing fantasy. Specifically fantasy tropes and clichés.

Sparkles!

Sparkles!

Now, fantasy is ripe with lots of juicy cliché. In fact, the years PT (Post Tolkien, a dark time which encompasses most of the 70s and 80s) were filled with trilogy after endless trilogy in which elves lived in forests, dwarves lived in mountainous mines and there was a need for a quest to go somewhere dangerous and do something with a rare artefact that would save the world. Even some of the most well respected authors were prone to these tropes. Raymond E Feist’s Magician, for example, is one of my favourite books from my childhood and one I can still stand to read today. It had some very innovative ideas for the time about magic and many other wonderful concepts. However, in my opinion the presence of elves and dwarves in the world building, particularly ones so close to the Tolkien ideas,  was not one of them. It was almost as if they were put in there because the publisher demanded it or because the author did not think a book without elves and dwarves would sell. I feel that a lot of fantasy in the 70s and 80s suffered from this very assumption. You had to have dwarves and elves and wizards to be fantasy. It was only in the mid to late 90s I feel the Tolkien effect began to wear off and popular fantasy veered away from many of the tropes he established.

Elves and Dwarves as portrayed  by Ravenchilde Illustrations

Elves and Dwarves as portrayed by Ravenchilde Illustrations

Partly to blame may be Gary Gygax who used a lot of the Tolkien ideas in D&D and later AD&D and as they turned into major concerns, many other Roleplaying games and Wargames fed from them.  There wasn’t even really much of an attempt to make things hugely different and this I think led to things spiralling to the point where it was expected that RPGs/Wargames had these concepts because they were in novels and novels had them in because they were in RPGs/Wargames and it kept on ad infinitum. When Serious Lemon asked me to write the background for the wargame Realm, I was basically given the brief to maintain the ‘standard races all fantasy fans expect’ but to try to make them different to the usual tropes. Not sure how well I managed that, though I was particularly proud of my fascist (and actually quite evil in an ‘it’s all for the greater good’ way) Roman elves and the ‘British’ Navy Halflings turned pirate following the destruction of their island kingdom by Cthulhu. However, the point is that the ‘received wisdom’ seems to be that the readers/players expect to see the old favourites and you cannot change them too much lest you alienate your target audience. This risk averse attitude, something which Hollywood is also accused of having, might lead to effective sales (sometimes) but also might stifle creativity. I guess finding the balance between those two points may well be a kwy to success – different enough to be seen as original but with enough familiarity to keep your audience in their comfort zone.

Terry Pratchett, of course, thrived on cliché. His Discworld stories are full of tropes and the subversion of those tropes and he managed to walk that creative tightrope very well. One of my favourites is Cohen the Barbarian, the octogenarian Barbarian hero who first appeared in The Light Fantastic, and his infamous Silver Horde, who debuted in Interesting Times. They manage to be both a subversion of a cliché and a cliché in themselves. On the one hand they subvert the Arnold Schwarzenegger school of barbarianism, which creates a wonderful piece of cognitive dissonance as you imagine a wiry old man swinging a sword far too big for him while wearing a loincloth and little else. On the other hand, they are also everything you come to expect from clichéd old men, including complaints about aches and pains and always having peppermints. Not to mention the wheelchair with blades on the wheels. A lot of layers there.

Pratchett’s treatment of elves and dwarves also shows these two approaches. His elves (as seen in Lords and Ladies) are a subversion as they appear on the surface to be typical Shakespearean fey as seen in A Midsummer Night’s Dream because of the effect of their glamour. However, they are actually completely emotionless sociopaths who enjoy tormenting and killing just for the fun of it. On the other hand his dwarves are an exaggeration of all the things you come to expect from them – including (at least in the animated versions) comedy regional accents for all the regions in the UK known for mining (Yorkshire, Wales and the North East). They mine, they talk about mining, they sing about gold (at one point they even sing the Hi Ho song, yes that one…) and they get into fights when drunk*. Oh and they get sensitive about their height. Pratchett’s use of cliché is, I feel, a successful one. He uses the expectations of his audience, lulls them into a false sense of familiarity, then bludgeons them on the back of the neck with the half brick in a sock that is the unexpected subversion of that cliché. This is one way to use cliché and a way I have talked about in the past.

Happily I think we are in a better place creatively than we used to be. It now seems possible to write a whole fantasy trilogy in which there are no pointy eared wood dwelling elves, no bearded mining dwarfs and no long bearded wizards. You can even have a whole long series of books in which the races are based on insects which has to be a step forward. Dwarves in fantasy now have to be the scarred and bitter dispossessed sons of cruel noblemen who have developed a clever wit as a defence against all the taunts they have endured in their life because GRR Martin is now this century’s JRR Tolkien. I am sure we can expect there to be many copies of the concepts in A Song of Ice and Fire in the future. The stagnation that had been in place throughout the PT years is no more, though I suspect we are now entering the PM (post Martin) period… Though personally I would like to see the advent of the PP (Post Pratchett) period.

So, this is written with the intent of starting a debate. I am looking for ideas and concepts to discuss at the panel… If you have a thought on clichés in fantasy, please comment below. Alternatively, please vote on one of the polls I am posting to facebook or contact me in another manner to voice your opinion…

*Well, most of them do… in Wyrd Sisters there is the playwright Hwel, portrayed with a solid West Midland’s accent in the animated version to accentuate the relationship to Shakespeare, who is a non-bearded creative dwarf who has no interest in normal dwarf pursuits.
Some of the images used here were created by Ravenchilde illustrations and Quattrofoto. Please thank them for their efforts by visiting their sites.

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

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Want a Badge? Here is how…

10 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Giveaway

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Tags

badges, Giveaways, Gods of the Deep, gods of the sea, Lurking Miscellany, MancsterCon, promotion, Tea Society


So, a few days ago I received a delivery of badges. I have 50 of them, 10 of each of 5 designs. They look awesome (even if I do say so myself) and they will be making their debut at the MancsterCon on the 29th August. You can see the designs for them here…lurkerbadge

You can purchase a badge for a not unreasonable price if you come to visit the stall. Through a simple transaction you can walk away with what I am sure will be this year’s ultimate fashion statement. However, there is another more fun way to acquire one…

Contact me in advance of an event you know I am going to be at and tell me what you can do to earn one of these very covetable badges.

Contact details are all over this blog (see right at the bottom of this post) so you should find it easy to find me…

Some examples are:

gods of the deep3– You can take a selection of leaflets and other swag from Tea Society members and promise to deliver them to a place where they may get picked up by interested people. This can include a local library, a book or comic shop, another form of shop (I recently dropped some in a local organic grocers) or even a bar or nightclub. You do have to know for certain that this place will totally be cool with this. I don’t want to get blamed for your littering. I’d also like to see a photo of the leaflets in place, not because I don’t trust you to do the job but because it is nice to be able to post a photo of our leaflets on Social Media.

– You can do a blog post or a review about one of us or one of our books or give one (or more) of us blog space to post a guest blog. Honest reviews, please, I do not want to be accused of buying good reviews. And of course we’d like to see the links for these posts so we can share them too.elementbadge2

– You can offer some other promotional opportunity… Impress me with your ideas.

I’m also going to offer a free badge with every purchase of a copy of one of our books. Mostly this covers books bought at events but I guess if you can show up with evidence of ebook purchase (or even go online on your smartphone and buy one there and then) I’ll pass one over to you too. Obviously this applies to all my books. As to which other authors it applies to… well I am going to be evil there and not tell you (but you can flip back to the previous post to find out or come to an event and ask).

If you contact me with a promotional idea you can also feel free to request which badge design you want. However, this is first come, first served. Bear in mind there are only ten of each design so stock is very limited (for now…).

###

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)

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tea society badge2 gods of the deep2

Not so secret society

27 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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Tags

A.J Campbell, Alex Campbell, Cosplay, D.A Lascelles, Elizabeth Morgan, Erica Hayes, Leeds, Leeds Steampunk Market, MancsterCon, Ninfa Hayes, Pat Keheller, R.A Smith, Salford, Secrets, The Tea Society


I guess over the last few months an insidious and influential group has slowly been showing its hand. You may not have been aware of them, at first. They are an organisation who were cloaked in shadow. However, you may have met some of them, maybe at an author event, maybe passed them in the street. They have guided civilisation from the earliest days, raised kings and toppled princes, manipulated the stock market and contributed to the success of numerous creative artists. They have agents everywhere. Well, mainly in the UK. Actually, mainly in Manchester really with a couple elsewhere. To be honest, not all that many even in Manchester… but, so great are these agents they don’t need many to fulfil their schemes.tea society badge2

The name of this epic organisation? Why, it is none other than the Tea Society.

And if you are at this point thinking ‘Who?’ then that is testament to our ability to so totally blend into the background.

The origins of the Tea Society go back a number of years when a handful of writers who lived in Manchester started having sort of not very regular meetings to talk about writing. The name was a joke that rose out of the fact that we could not think of a name and all we seemed to do at the meetings was drink tea and in the end it sort of stuck.

Later, after some discussions around a shared trade table at a steampunk market, we came to the conclusion that it was really difficult sharing a table as we tended to do and maintaining a solid identity for customers to recognise. So, Elizabeth Morgan arranged for there to be a banner and Rachel Bostwick (Queen of trailers and other graphic design goodness) was hired to give us some brand identity with our official logo.

The banner debuted at the Yorkshire Cosplay con earlier this year and was also seen briefly at the World Book Night event at the Fab Café. It will next emerge this weekend at the Literally Literary event at Leeds Central Library and then at the MancsterCon in Salford on August 29th.

stallSo, now that we are out in the open, you may be able to guess some of our members… they include R.A Smith, Ninfa Hayes, Miriam Khan and of course myself. But there are others such as Pat Keheller, Erica Hayes and Alex Campbell (whose book is out soon, you should totally check it out).

If you see any of us at an event, especially if we have the banner up, feel free to come over and have a chat about books in general or our books in particular (and maybe even buy some). I am also currently pondering a special deal where if you promise to do some publicity – take some leaflets to be delivered to local businesses, tweet or share on Facebook, or otherwise spread the word – you may qualify for a special limited edition Tea Society badge. I’ll get out more details of this once I work them out properly.

Hope to see you all at an event soon!

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