Tag Archives: Transitions

More on reviews….

17 Thursday Jan 2013

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Review of Transitions (update)

Early in December 2012, I mentioned a review of Transitions that I had heard about Transitions-AuthorCopyand even been sent some extracts from but had not been able to see the full version. Well, yesterday, quite by chance*, I managed to track down the full review which is actually by Sarah Burgess, the book reviewer for Penumbra magazine. The direct link is here:

http://musapublishing.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=436

Turns out the reason I could not find the full review was because the text of it was actually on a pdf file for an online magazine… This also means that, to be able to read the entire review for yourselves, you will have to pay to download the magazine. However, that will only set you back a very small amount of money (about $4) but for that you also get some other stuff too such as short stories and articles which you can read if you like.

Oh, and the score was 3 out of 5 and not, as I feared, 3 out of 500.

Anyway, a big thanks to Sarah for bothering to read Transitions and giving such wonderful praise (and offer some good pointers for improvement).

Reviews of Red Dwarf X

In October, the new series of Red Dwarf hit the screens… I reviewed it for Cult Britannia. The reason you are only just finding out about this now was because no one bothered to tell me about it either and I assumed my reviews had been lost or not used for some reason or other.

Anyway, apparently they were put up and here are the links:

http://www.cultbritannia.co.uk/tag/in-trepidation-of-a-trojan/

http://www.cultbritannia.co.uk/tag/red-dwarf-fathers-and-suns/

The reason I found out about these, by the way, was when I stumbled across the site of the British Comedy Awards which has extracts of the two reviews listed with my name attached. Yes, it is indeed another one of those scary ‘post something on the internet and someone notices it and does something with it’ moments like the Hawaii one earlier this week…

* Yes, completely by chance. I was not googling myself at all, no, not me. I did not in any way type in my name followed by reviews just to see what came up. I have no idea why you might think that. Shame on you all for assuming my ego was using the internet that day…

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.

Location, Location, Location… Part One: Arbeia Roman Fort

18 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Musings, Photos, Publicity, Reaearch

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A week ago I was at one of the somewhat irregular meetings of our relatively newlyformed writers’ group (which has yet to gain an official name but is sort of soldiering on under the name of ‘the Tea Society’). Among the many discussions and random witterings, including some interesting ideas regarding World Book Night which I will share with you later, we got onto a discussion about location photographs. Later that week, during the launch of Oblivion Storm, R.A Smith opened a thread which was a ‘virtual tour of London’ using Google Earth, Streetview and Panaramio to showcase locations from the book.

The reconstructed gatehouse of Arbeia Roman fort in South Shields

The reconstructed gatehouse of Arbeia Roman fort in South Shields

So this got me to thinking. When writing Transitions I used a few locations which were familiar to me and as part of the research for the book I took a number of photos to get a better feel for the locations. I was also, at the time, thinking about the cover of the book and what a cover artist may want with regards to inspiration if not actual images they could use to mock up a decent composition.

cave1

One of the many caves aong Marsden beach

I had largely considered that to be that. The photos I had taken were between me and my cover artist and have since been left on my Flickr account not doing much. However, during the aforementioned discussion of my writers’s group, Ninfa Hayes mentioned that readers often like to see such things. Thinking about it, I agreed with her so I decided to share some of these location shots with you. There are three main locations discussed in Transitions – Arbeia Roman Fort and the surrounding area, the Roman City of Aqua Sulis ( which became modern day Bath) and the University of Birmingham and surrounding area.

So, this first post is all about Arbeia. This was a fort built by the Romans in 120 AD to

A shot of Marden beach showing the lift that led down into the pub (which was closed at the time).

A shot of Marden beach showing the lift that led down into the pub (which was closed at the time).

act as a resupply depot for Hadrian’s wall. Since the fort was in my hometown it seemed an obvious place to base Gaius Lucius, my Roman character. Of course, there were a number of slight historical issues I had to contend with. Gaius Lucius, for example, is not Arabic like many of the soldiers at Arbeia would have been. Though to be fair, I don’t actually mention his origin so he could well be Arabic. However, throughout the writing of the story I did imagine him as being from Gaul. Another issue is the fact that the fort was founded in 120 AD and I had originally considered the story being set much earlier, perhaps 10 – 30 year after the death of Jesus. Instead, the timing of the fort meant I had to shift my timings to post 120 AD and opted for 123 AD as being not too long after this point. I also flanged over the fact that it is likely the fort in this period was not going to be as well established as is implied in the story. I hope you consider these to be minor issues and also points which you were likely not to have noticed until I pointed them out to you just now… 🙂

A close up of one of the deeper caves

A close up of one of the deeper caves

Of course, Gaius is never seen at the fort. Instead, he is first seen travelling along a beach to find a cave in which a mad old man lives. That beach, in case anyone is interested, was what is now known as Marsden beach. I am not aware of there ever having been mad old wisemen living in caves on Marsden beach but I accept there is a chance there could have been. There have always been rumours of smugglers there in the past , using the caves to hide goods and there is a pub, the Marsden Grotto, which popular rumour has was a place where these smugglers would hang out. I am currently drawing on this in another story which I am in the middle of writing – a sequel to Gods of the Sea. The pub is also said to be haunted (one of the ghosts being that of a notorious smuggler, as it happens) and has been the subject of one of those over the top ‘Britains most haunted’ style shows.  With all of these features, it struck me as a wonderful inspiration for a location where a Roman could meet a mad old Briton for a bit of supernatural advice.

So, there you have it. How Arbeia Roman Fort and Marsden beach inspired the first part of Gaius Lucius’s story in Transitions. In a later entry I will talk about the city of Bath and the University of Birmingham and how they are linked to the story.

Free book!

16 Sunday Sep 2012

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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’.

Transitions – Release information

20 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by in Productivity, Publicity

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Well, it is finally here…. all the hard work has come together and my novella, Transitions, is finally about to be released.

Tomorrow, in fact… but you wonderful readers of this blog get the heads up a day early and a quick sneak preview of the cover and blurb.

Click here to go to the webpage for the upcoming release

Some time soon (hopefully over the next 24 hours) this page will change to a current release and links will be added to allow you to purchase this novella as an ebook. When that happens I will do another post and give you all the links I know about for places where you may purchase it.

Note, this is an ebook release. If you want to read this novella in a more old fashioned, olde timey format such as paper you will have to wait until all the novellas in the series have been released and we put together the paperback collection of all of them. Until then, I hope you enjoy the pixelatted version…

 

Announcement: Transitions

16 Monday Jul 2012

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I have over the past few weeks made barely veiled references to ‘some news’ which will be made public over the next month or two. There has also been a vague request for a cover designer which may have given some people clues as to what is occuring.

Well, I am now going to reveal the news that I have been wanting to reveal for many many years now… more years than this blog has existed, in fact, news that has awaited announcing since the dark times BB*.

I have a release date for Transitions, my Paranormal romance novella. It is currently a ‘tentative’ release date but it is an actual date written down in an official schedule in actual pixels and everything and the chances are it will be firmed up sometime soon as it is basically only tentative because the final edits were still underway. Those edits have been completed and submitted and accepted so there is nothing for me to do now but sit and wait for things to happen…

The current release date (for the ebook version) stands at the 21st of August, 2012.

I am currently awaiting a mail with a cover design attached to it. I know that is underway because I have had an e-mail telling me that the artist wanted me to change permissions on my Flickr account so she could see some photos I took for reference of one of the locations I use. As soon as I have that cover, I will post it for you all to see.

In the meantime, sometime over the next few weeks (the 24th of July according to the most recent estimates) the first novella in that collection will get its release. Judy Bagshaw’s Opposite Attraction will be out for you to buy and read and we will have Judy herself on this blog taking a guest spot.

Then, after my release in August, we have three other novellas from the same anthology, one a month. I will release details of these when I know the order but I do know that Skyla Dawn Cameron is going to be the final author in this list and everything she writes is awesome**.

Finally, if all goes to plan, there will be a print publication of all of the novellas

Oh, and in case you might be confused… the cover designer I asked for recently is not doing the cover for Transitions or any of the above novellas. That is amply covered by the contract with the publisher. They are doing the cover design for a freebie story called The Curse we produced as a group when putting together the anthology. It was originally intended to be included in the print anthology but it would have made the book too big to be economically viable. So, we decided to self publish it and use it for giveaways.  I will be posting details of how you might get a hold of a copy of that later too…

More news will be posted here as and when I get it.

*BB = Before Blog. A time when I only had Live Journal, Facebook, Twitter, the telephone, letter writing, semaphore and actually talking to people face to face as methods for communication. How we managed to talk to each other in those primitive times of Pre-2010 I will never know…

** Seriously, I Beta read her entry for this anthology and it was awesome when I read it as a first draft. It was the first thing I have ever beta read where I literally had no changes to suggest. I had to nit pick to the nth level just to have something to say beyond ‘this is perfect’ so she knew I had actually bothered to read it. The version you are getting has been edited even more so I am sure it will be even more awesome. She designs covers too.

A glass half empty year?

01 Sunday Jan 2012

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I’ve been looking through several reviews of the year from a number of people, mostly friends, and the overwhelming opinion seems to be that 2011 was a bad year for many. A lot of people seemed very happy to see it go, with a number of references to ‘staking it through the heart’ as though it were an evil vampire year that will never die.

I suppose many have good reason to dislike the past year. It seemed to be the year that the recession hit particularly hard in many industries – the public sector cuts hit hard and the retail sector is creating unemployment at a fantastic rate not to mention all the riots and protests that happened. So, there are arguments for it having been a bad year. However, I have seen people declare it a bad year when some really good things seem to have happened to them. Which leads me to wonder, has 2011 simply been the ‘glass half empty’ year? Have people been declaring it a bad year despite evidence to the contrary?

From my point of view, I prefer not to try to rate years in any generalised or specific manner. I don’t like to say it was good or bad, it just was. 2011 was no different. If I were to assess it any way, I would see it as a score draw. The number of good things that happened have been balanced by bad things.

In the past year I have:

 – Made a mark on the publishing world. OK, the mark in question is like a very small scratch on a large thing made out of very smooth stone, but the mark is there nontheless. As a result of my two publications (one out, the other pending still) I have also gained more opportunities which have served to increase my exposure. I’ve done guest blogs, interviews and have started doing reviews on another site as well as a rather juicy work for hire job which should prove interesting once it makes it out into the world. In all, I consider this past year to have been a success in terms of publishing. A small success but one which is building. In comparison with other years, this is a massive improvement.

 – Of course, I also started this blog which has been a strange experience. Previous blogs of mine have been more personal and intended for friends only whereas this one is intended for strangers. Sometimes the challenge in that is remembering that strangers are less interested in your day to day boring life than friends may be. Speaking which (and apologies for the next comments…)

 – I moved house. This was a massive undertaking which took almost half a year to achieve (and most of the stress and work fell onto my wife…). We relocated from Birmingham to the outskirts of Manchester and have gained much in social life as a result. Therefore this also counts as a success, despite…

 – Job situaiton. Moving house did not help my job situation. On the plus side, lots of time for writing. On the negative side, no money. While the start of 2011 had promise with a long term role in a college in Solihull and a chance to clear a lot of debt, the second half of the year has been less promising. Hoping for better job prospects in 2012.

So, as I say, overall a draw and a lot of promise for the future.

So, what is to come in the next year? Well, Transitions is due out as an ebook sometime in the first half of the year (each ebook in the Shades of Love series will come out once a month, starting from this month, until June when the collected anthology will be released in print). There is also the secret project I am working on at the moment which is due to be released soon after January 31st, assuming I can get everything done before the deadline. There is also a Mystery Antholgy I am contributing too which may come out sometime in 2012 (it is still being written). After these are out of the way, I really need to look into getting more writing out there in the big, wide old world. Several of my stories are currently doing the rounds of publishers and maybe one of them will be picked up soon…

In closing, I would therefore like to say Happy New Year to each and every one of you and hope for a 2012 which, if not better than 2011, at leasts seems to be in hindsight at the end of the year. Let us pledge on this day to make 2012 a glass half full year. In fact, sod it, let’s all complain to the management that the glass we want is a bigger glass and we damned well want it full or so help us we’ll protest or riot or throw a strop or something!