The Long Road
More spoilers for a film that this time is a mere 24 years old. The last film that has, so far, made me run back to the cinema three more times after the first viewing was this one. A modern gothic fairytale with yet another fantastic soundtrack, an alternate contemporary world that was close enough …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #3: The Crow
Oh yeah. The music, the costumes, the saturated colours, the visual style that played with realism and then deliriously ignored it to tell its story in its own defiant way, and managed to sweep me up in it. I watched this movie four times in a rather dilapidated cinema in Dundee, complete with decayed but …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #2: Bram Stoker’s Dracula
So: thoughts have been gathered, and revision begins. There is a lot to do. So right now I’m oscillating between this. And this. The thing is not to blindly rush in, or panic about how much there is to do, though that is tempting. I have to remind myself not to get bogged down …
Spoilers for a 30+ year old movie follow. And for Alien3 too. You've been warned. There are only three movies I’ve paid to see more than once in rapid succession, and each time I ended up seeing the film four times in the theatre. In each case I was lured into the atmosphere of the …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #1: Highlander
So I received my developmental notes for The Killer and The Dead last week. These notes were a collection of thoughtful comments and suggestions on plot, structure, pacing, writing, setting, and character. Plus a ton of in-text comments on specific aspects of the book, good and bad, pointing out places where improvements could be made, …
I write fantasy because I want to put words together in magical patterns that cause as much delight in others as putting them down did for me. I write fantasy because I want to say something new in a genre dominated by tradition. I write fantasy because I want to explore strange new worlds and …
Ah, my writing holiday is almost over, as I get the developmental edits on The Killer and The Dead back tomorrow. I have one more night of imagining I’ll get a note of stunned awe, and thanks for writing such a thing of searing beauty. And writers out there, you do hope for that kind …
In creative life, many do not appreciate the time taken between the hammer and the fall. Now I’m going to be all metal and talk about hammers and striking and forging, but the metaphor could just as easily be the time taken between the seed and the flower, and be about soil and water and …
I kept saying I'd do this, and finally I have got around to it! Thanks Mitch for my first ever blog award nomination!! I feel all grown up now! The Rules: Use the logo and list the rules Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog Tell your readers 3 things …
In the fantasy of my youth non-human races were always part of the magical formula that took me from the mundane here, to the fantastical there. Talking animals, creatures from greek myth, folklore figures brought to life, all of them were part of that secret world just around the corner and over the hill …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: To Write the Classic Non-Human Races, in Other Books, Later
