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Been quieter on here recently than I’d intended. Simple reason for that is I’ve been feeling pretty stressed recently and been dealing with things one at a time. Most of the stress has been dealt with so should be more regular posts here soon enough. Thinking I might also starting talking about my IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) because it does have quite a large impact on my life and it could be useful to talk about.

In book related news, got my submission off to Hodderscape for their open submissions. They’re going to let people know if they’re interested in a submission by the end of September so fingers crossed until then.

I’ve had an editor looking over the first draft of The Word but they’ve had some issues to deal with so that’s been delayed. I’ve started to get on with getting the second draft in order, my submission to Hodderscape serving as the first 15,000 words of it. Hopefully have most of that done by the end of September.

So still plugging away at the writing, just been dealing with some things. More posts soon.

Hodderscape, the UK sci-fi/fantasy/horror imprint of Hodder & Staughton, are holding open submissions in August. It’s open to authors without agents writing and novels, and I’m going to be submitting The Word.

I went the self-publishing route for Oranje as it felt the right path for me at the time, but this time round I’m interested to see if a publisher would take up The Word. Hodderscape seem to be a very good publisher with a lot of great authors on their books.

Also look at the cover art they do:

I mean holy hell they’re good!

So i’m going to be spending the next month getting The Word up to scratch for submissions, with the help of someone I’ve hired to do some character/story feedback. I think there’s a really good book here that with some editing can shine. Only time will tell.

Travelling to work on the train the past week has allowed me to catch up on reading and on two books I’ve seen recommended a lot. Namely Annihilation, the first book in the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer; and The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. I’ll review them in the order I read them.

Annihiliation by Jeff VanderMeer: 3/5

I’m afraid to say this book just wasn’t for me. It’s well written and I finished the whole thing but it was the story I didn’t enjoy. It’s not the kind I usually read – you could argue why did I read it in the first place but been trying to broaden my horizons and it’s been recommended a lot – and it didn’t grab me. Found it interesting enough, but not enough felt like it had been resolved by the end of the book.

The whole book had a very X-files vibe to it. Secret government agencies, Area-X, strange expeditions and goings-on. The secrets behind the plot were teased overtime, mixed with flashbacks to help flesh out and give depth to the central character. The flashbacks felt like an unnecessary addition at first, but the main character ends up spending a lot of time on their own and they helped illuminate the reasons behind their actions without the usual mirror provided by the reactions of and conversations with another human being.

The plot just didn’t grab me, a few too many odd things happening and conspiracies within conspiracies for me to enjoy. But the book was well enough written that I finished the whole thing over the course of a day.

For someone who enjoys these stories more I’m sure it would be a 4 or 5/5. Just wasn’t for me.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison: 4/5

I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy this book from the first few chapters. The story, of the unfavoured 4th son of the old Emperor of the Elf lands who now finds himself replacing his dead father, should be an easy introduction to the world of the book. The main character has to learn how things go on at the Imperial court as much as we do. However the book doesn’t shy away from throwing a bewildering amount of strange terms at you and it took me a good while to settle into enjoying the book.

The plot, centered around the challenges of the new Emperor as he adjusts to the complexities of court and running his empire, I think is well handled. Most of the conflict comes from other characters, and there are plenty of well fleshed out ones each with their own motivations and lots of depth to them. The underlying story threads kept me interested and I was curious to see how each one resolved and I ploughed through the book in a couple of days.

I do wish a bit more had happened in the book. From what I understand there is no sequel planned, which is frustrating as there are a lot of unanswered questions at the book. The ending is satisfying, but perhaps more of the plot threads could have been advanced or resolved. The plot moves along at a graceful pace, and over the course of the 500 pages of it there are two big moments that happen. If the pacing had moved along a bit quicker, and more aspects of the story had been drawn to a conclusion by the end, I think this would easily be a 5/5.

But I can’t overlook the tricky opening, the abundance of terminology for readers to get their heads around – though there is a handy glossary at the back of the book – and the slow pace of the plot and the unresolved aspects of it.

A thoroughly good book which I recommend, especially for the tone of hope and optimism that runs throughout it, that personally I feel falls just shy of true greatness.

2015 is upon us and it feels like time for another progress update on my writing, but first a little look back at 2014.

2014 was…mixed. It started out well with the publishing of Oranje but the rest of the year was mostly taken up with false starts. First with the planned second novel in the September series – Choices –  and then with another series I started work on. In total I wrote almost 70,000 words on both before realising my writing was progressing in the wrong direction.

As mentioned in my last post I’m now working on The Word, effectively a stand alone novel covering the entirety of the story I had planned for the September series but as a single book. It will be the first of hopefully many novels set in a shared universe.

Got quite a few words for that done so the end of the year was much better than the middle.

Oh I’m also in the wonderful Stories on the Go anthology featuring many fantastic indie authorslike Hugh Howey.

My progress on that has slowed down since NaNoWriMo. Slowed down a lot. I’ve been focused on my day job a lot but now realise I need to make sure I keep time for personal stuff outside the office. Whilst not many words have gone down on the page I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the setting for The Word works, and how it feels to the people who live in it.

Expect some more blog posts soon about hope, characters, setting, familiarity and hopefully some snippets of parts of The Word when I get to the end of the first draft and begin to polish it up a bit.

I know I’ve said I’d do more blog posts a few time before, so harass me if I don’t! I do enjoy talking on here, even if I don’t always get my point across as clearly as I like. I also want to try and get involved in more conversations in the genre community. To start that off here’s a few recent interesting posts to digest:

• Deep Forests and Manicured Gardens: A Look at Two New Short Fiction Magazines – Jonathan McCalmont gives his usual blunt and honest thoughts on some new magazines and how they reflect on the genre.
• BLOGTABLE: The Positive Value of Negative Reviews – the first BLOGTABLE from Nerds of a Feather, a great post with multiple view points on how the internet, and different book/genre communities are affecting what reviews are like and how they are perceived.

Things have been quiet on here, too quiet. No real excuses for, work just got really busy and I chose to focus on that instead.

However my writing has also suffered over the past month and I need to change that.

There is some good news in amongst the nothing, I have had some early feedback on my next book from a fellow author which has been really useful. The new plan to write in Acts – and get people to read them as I go along – seems to be working well so far. Have a plan of action on how to improve and then do the next Act, I just need to get writing again.

Also want to get more posts up here. Going to do one soon on why I write, don’t know what else yet.

So been a bit of a hiatus but it’ll be ending soon.