The Long Road
This is definitely a doubt based post. Unofficial doubts part 6, but for the fact that I've accepted what I'm worrying about, and am going to bulldoze on anyway. This is, admittedly, a newer one for me, but a variant I think on what I have been through in the past and led me to …
Continue reading The Writing Life: Facing Uncertainty in Editing
Time for another attempt by me to ramble on randomly about fantasy and see what falls out. No planning for this blog. I should be in bed already! If you don't have time, the title sums it up and you can stop here! (Added this line in last, haha!) When I consider characters, dilemmas, conflicts, …
Sorry for the lack of blogs, I’ve been deep in the editorial jungle, hacking away with the machete of no remorse. Oh wait, this is the developmental edit – I’ve been adding more than subtracting, as is usual for me! Part of that is recognizing where I the writer take my own knowledge of the …
This is going to be brief, because I should be editing, not blogging. I refer you to this blog. It is far more true now for me than it was a couple of weeks ago! But, here's my quick thought. Anyone who is any good at cuesports, be it pool, snooker, or billiards; often has …
So while writing about Highlander, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and The Crow, I couldn’t help but notice the common elements that the movies shared. In no particular order. 1) A narrated opening. All three start with someone speaking, telling you a story. Yes, apparently I’m five, and still like to be tucked up in bed and …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #4: Clearly I Have a Type
But for now I'd like to say I'm "Today's Featured Indie Book Review" on Kirkus. Find it here. I'm pleased with what they have to say. Bottom left of the page. Check it out. EDIT: now that my day in the sun has passed, you can check out the review directly here. And if you …
In my recent blog on Bram Stoker’s Dracula I threw in a line that while viewing that film multiple times I chose not to see its flaws. I could, if I wanted, pick away at what some might perceive as problems in the movie, but I chose not to, because I’d much rather enjoy those …
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 …
