Video Games
When I'm not writing, and don't have chores of one kind or another to attend to, I spend most of my time playing video games. Gaming is a big part of my life and I particularly enjoy any context I can...
View ArticleA Madness of Angels
This isn't really a book review, but if it is, it's a review of A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin. With that in mind, let me start by recommending the book, very highly, to anyone who likes...
View ArticleFailure for Writers
My writing marathon to finish The Second Realm is going well. Yesterday I finished the third of four episodes in the final story of the series. I set myself the goal of approximately 25,000 words by...
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The Second Realm 8.1: The Future I Saw
First Episode - Previous Episode - Season 1 Hub - Season 2 Hub - Season 3 Hub - Smashwords (all major ebook formats, pay what you like)Logic and Reasons1. The Future I SawThe glare from the electric...
View ArticleThat 'hit by a truck' feeling...
I finished the first draft of The Second Realm on Monday. Well, actually, by the time I finished it was the small hours of Tuesday morning, but as far as I'm concerned it's still Monday until you go to...
View ArticleA Character by Any Other Name...
So it turns out the biggest problem with moving on from The Second Realm is that creating a new set of characters for a new story means coming up with a whole bunch of new character names. My next...
View ArticleDepression
I was going to blog this week about how much I hate decorating (we're in week four of a big four-room job around our house, with at least another three to go), but then Robin Williams died yesterday...
View ArticleHome is where you AREN'T DECORATING
I really hate living with the decorating process. Five rooms in the shared house where I live have been scheduled for decorating this summer, with my room as the fourth. I just finished moving out...
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The Second Realm 8.2: Mother of Fate
First Episode - Previous Episode - Season 1 Hub - Season 2 Hub - Season 3 Hub - Smashwords (all major ebook formats, pay what you like)Â Logic and Reasons2. Mother of FateRel let himself fall through...
View ArticleHome Towns
Decorating, for whatever reason, has me thinking quite a lot about 'home'. It's a weakness of my writing that my characters rarely have strong ties to their homes - in The Second Realm, most of the...
View ArticleLondon, and the rest of Britain
I'm looking for some book recommendations. Specifically, can anyone recommend to me a recent (last 20 years or so) urban fantasy novel by a British author which isn't primarily set in London?I ask...
View ArticleTaking my own advice.
I've talked before about how I think Facebook is a bad setting for political debate, and how it's all too conducive to a very unproductive kind of anger. Well, I've strayed a bit lately from the...
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New words
More from the book of 'Things that really irritate Rik':No, not the first part, the second. The bit about how new words are killing the language. I actually followed this one up to check if Conan...
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The Second Realm 8.3: Ash
First Episode - Previous Episode - Season 1 Hub - Season 2 Hub - Season 3 Hub - Smashwords (all major ebook formats, pay what you like)Logic and Reasons3. AshAlong the bottom of the valley, the air...
View ArticleMajikthise and Vroomfondle
In Douglas Adams'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there is a well-known sequence in which Deep Thought, the "the second greatest computer in the Universe of Time and Space" is asked to provide the...
View ArticleChanging the World
Epic fantasy, the (sub)genre I feel most at home in, is about the changing of a world. Done well, as for example by Janny Wurts, Robin Hobb or Patrick Rothfuss, it is about the changing of a world...
View ArticleEndings
As I said last week, I'm spending most of this month on posts relating to the end of The Second Realm (a week from Saturday!). Today I'm tackling a topic that's been on my mind most of the year: what...
View ArticleAcknowledgement
Lynne Hunt has been my beta reader/crit buddy for The Second Realm since episode 3, back in February of 2012. I'd initially planned to try to get a different test reader for every episode, which...
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The Second Realm 8.4: Rain That Doesn't Fall
First Episode - Previous Episode - Season 1 Hub - Season 2 Hub - Season 3 Hub - Smashwords (all major ebook formats, pay what you like)Logic and Reasons4. Rain That Doesn't Fall Late in the morning,...
View ArticleNew Realms and Old
So, it's done then. The Second Realm is complete.What the hell do I do now?Actually, before I get to the future (...he said as if he wasn't entering it right now), I'd like to take a moment to look...
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