Tag Archives: The Curse

On mentors and evil

23 Saturday May 2015

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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

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

27 Thursday Dec 2012

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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.

Free book!

16 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Musings, Publicity

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This coming week sees a very special occasion in literature, an occasion that occurs once in every 10 blue moons (often referred to as a decabluemoon) and an event that is celebrated the world over by people in all walks of life*…

Yes, that is right, it is the first anniversary of the start of this blog on the 18th of September.

Almost one year ago (on the 18th September, 2011), I finally bowed to overwhelming pressure from my own ego to make my innermost thoughts public. It is also almost a year ago that my first publication hit the virtual shelves. With my second publication now out there in the world, it seems a good time to do a freebie giveaway.

So, now you can claim your absolutely free copy of The Curse. Just click this link!

What is The Curse, I hear you ask? Well, that is a very good question. When the BBW Romance Writers were getting together to write the Paranormal Romance Anthology that became known as Shades of Love and which Transitions is a part, we also decided to do what is known as a Round Robin story. This is a story where a group of writers collaborate on it. We decided on a broad story idea (a woman cursed with the gift of prophesy) then each of us took turns to write a section each, leaving the next person with a situation to resolve. This was done until we reached the natural climax. Then Judy Bagshaw and myself did a final polish on the story to make it publishable and were forced to learn more than we really wanted to learn about Creative Commons licenses.

The whole was topped off with a rather wonderful cover*** (pictured) created by the excellent M.S Fowle who deserves a lot of kudos for her efforts at making our writing look like a ‘proper book’. If you ever have a book you need a cover for, I would definitely suggest you consider talking to her about it.

So, that was how it came to pass that we happened to have a free ebook available to give to you all. Go on, click that link and download the Zip file that contains versions of this book for many different ebook formats. Then try to guess which of the authors wrote which of the bits….

* Well, Ok, it occurs once a year and is probably celebrated by very few people and not the world over** but don’t tell my ego that, please, it does enjoy its little illusions and gets stroppy when it is thwarted.

** Though I do have a special shout out to those of you in Panama, Peurto Rico and the Ukraine who seem very interested in what I am saying here *waves*

*** Actually, she made us three covers, that is how dedicated she is. If I can get permission from her, I will post the other two covers for you to look at ‘what could have been’.