Angry Writers

Just seen this,

http://maryww.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/the-talent-killers-how-literary-agents-are-destroying-literature-and-what-publishers-can-do-to-stop-them/

This blog post (and the comments that go with it) seems to be spreading throughout the writing community quite fast at the moment. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it myself, it's really just another frustrated writer venting their spleen.

One thing I would say is: Write For The Love Of It.

And if you're that desperate to get your work in print, then self publish. Otherwise you'll never be happy.

BFTSS Game Videos

As a follow up to the previous post, there are now some videos of the game in action available on YouTube. The vids are taken from an early edition of the game and, sadly, there is no sound.

The first video shows the ATAF in action, whilst the second shows mission gameplay.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43gvnnjwGFM


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ivSL8rtBzY

BFTSS - The game that never was

When I had completed my first draft of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS, during that period of downtime where it is good to distance yourself from the project so that you can approach it with a more objective point of view, I decided it would be fun to make a game to go hand-in-hand with the novel.

Rather than base the game on the events of the novel (that would create a considerable number of spoilers for would-be readers), I decided to base it on an element from the story instead.

When the White Knights are first selected to partake in the ATAF project, they are taken to a planet called Xalan in the Temper system. Here they undergo training at a place called the Obex Research Centre. The centre, by its nature, has a number of buildings in which a number of simulation suites exist. I figured that this could form the basis for the game.

The player would take on a role of a pilot who is using the simulators to hone their skills - It would feature a number of "real" missions and some ones that were just for fun. The fun missions would have gameplay additions not featured in the "real" missions, such as enemies dropping point and health pods when they were destroyed. They would also also require the player to finish the mission in a set amount of time, with grades being allocated at the end depending on their performance.

To begin with, the player would create a Pilot Profile. They would enter their name and then select a flight group to belong to. This was done by combining various words together, typically verbs and adjectives with a noun.

So, Golden, Fiery, Hidden, or Raging could be combined with Snakes, Bakers, Nightmares, or Banshees.

It didn't serve much purpose, other than being there for kicks. One thing I did add in, however, was to disallow the player the ability to choose a flight group that already existed within the universe of THE BATTLE FOR THE SOLAR SYSTEM. For example, the player could not choose White Knights, Red Devils, Yellow Dogs, or Silver Panthers. It would also prevent the player from choosing a name of one of the characters from the book - They would be unable to continue if they entered their name as Simon Dodds, Estelle De Winter, Patrick Dean, David Turner, etc. Curiously, it didn't block Copper Beetles or Chaz Koonan...

Once the player had gone through this, they would be able to select from a number of different missions to undertake. To start with the list would be small, but other missions would be unlocked as the player progressed through the list.

The gameplay itself was quite simplistic - Using a top-down view, the player would turn their craft (defaulting to a Tactical Assault Fighter to begin with), and chase after their enemies. The world would turn around as they did so, so that their fighter remained in the centre of the screen, facing upwards. It worked very well and was very easy to play.

As missions were completed and flight points were gained, the player would be able to purchase access to other craft, including the Dart, Ray, and eventually the ATAF itself. There was also a nice mix of different gameplay types: some missions would be the standard affair - blow up the other crafts. Others required the player to disable to vessel (such as a stolen TAF) and ensure it remained undamaged until the end of the mission. Another mission type required the player to raid a pirate base, with the aid of a number of wing mates. Multi player was something I was definitely going to explore implementing for the game too.

I envisioned building binaries for the game for Linux, Mac, and Windows, and hosting it on www.battleforthesolarystem.com. And, since the game would be licensed under the GPL, it would mean that it could be ported to a great deal of other platforms, where the fans of BATTLE FOR THE SOLAR SYSTEM could enjoy it.

I never got very far with the game, as the screenshots show. I decided that my time would be best served writing the novels and working on the writing skills. The issue with making the game would be that it would take a considerable amount of time to get right - I would have to fix bugs, test the gameplay, balance it, etc., and that time would be better spent on writing. So, in the end, I decided to push it aside and leave it be. It was a nice idea, but wasn't really worth the time.

Maybe one day I will return to it, once all the books are written, or when I have made significant progress on the second novel to warrant a break. Maybe.

New Photo

Went out and took some photos this afternoon, just because I wanted something new and different to put onto Facebook and onto the website and that.

But do I look too miserable? Usually I have a great cheesy grin, but I decided that I wanted to look a little more serious.

What do you think? Does it look okay, or am I giving out the impression that I have given up on life? ;)

On THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS

I've never spoken about why I wrote this novel, but it may be of interest to some people.

The idea for the novel first came to me back when I was 18, whilst at university. At the time I was still enjoying BABYLON 5. In my eyes (and many others) it was something that TV scifi had needed for years - it was edgy, had a fully planned story arc, was filled with drama, and had some great action sequences. I never liked STAR TREK for these reasons - it was all too nice and you never really feared for the characters' lives during pivotal moments.

I wanted to read a novel that was more like the TV shows I had enjoyed. I wanted a set of characters I could grow to know and follow the journey with. I wanted it to have a tight story line that wouldn't meander into random events just for the sake of raising the page count. I also wanted to know that the story had a definite ending and that it was actually going somewhere, and wouldn't consist of random books in-between that served very little purpose.

So, one day in 1999 I sat down and began to figure out the plot. I took a basic premise: a galactic war that focused on five starfighter pilots. After that I started to work out a the overall story. I actually worked backwards, deciding how it would all end and then working out how I would reach that goal.

Once I had that worked out I began to write out the names of the characters: I settled on Elliott Parks and David Turner as the Commodore and Admiral who would be heading up the ATAF starfighter project quite quickly. Zackaria was also a name that I came up with quite fast. I wanted a name that sounded hard and with a nuance of evil in it. The name was inspired by a book called Z FOR ZACHARIAH.

I then threw some more ideas about and wrote stuff down, though most of the story notes stayed in my head. However, despite intending to begin writing the BATTLE FOR THE SOLAR SYSTEM, I never got around to doing so. I'm not sure why, perhaps it was because I had just started working and was adjusting to life in London.

In the winter of 2006, I decided the time was right to put pen to paper and so I wrote down the entire plot of the trilogy. It only took me about a week to do so, since it was just a case of dumping the ideas in my head onto the word processor.

Like a lot of writers, I wanted to write a story that I would enjoy reading, and one thing that I find lamentable in the few science fiction novels I read (you might be rather surprised to hear that I don't read a great deal of scifi!) is the lack of space battles. Of course, I know why this is now: because they're hard to write. More often than most they will turn out to sound like one is describing a video game they just played (see previous post). Still, after much re-writing and editing, I believe that I have made a commendable effort of getting over that hurdle.

Once I was done I read it over and thought it was okay. But to be honest, it was too short. It was only 77k words long (too short for a scifi, where the UK market looks for works of around 120,000 words).

After some chopping and changing, I came up with a significant new plot device: Patrick Dean. Aside from the prologue featuring Jacques Chalmers, the original story draft actually began with Simon Dodds entering the meeting with Turner, Parks, and Hawke. When I introduced Patrick Dean's thread, it brought three new chapters to the novel. Not only that, it gave me scope for working new details into later chapters, as well as into the second novel in the trilogy.

I also changed the way the novel ended. In terms of plot, it was only one sequence that was changed, but it meant that I had to re-jig and rewrite a number of chapters, as well as add new ones. I'll write about what was changed another time (because it obviously consists of a number of spoilers), but I far prefer the new ending.

So, did the novel turn out the way I first envisioned? Actually, yes. In fact, I think that the story has shaped up better than it did when I first thought it out 14 years ago. It has grown and matured and become very different to what I started with.

What the original story was, I won't say now; that is a tale for another day. But hand on my heart, I can say that I am pleased with the direction the BATTLE FOR THE SOLAR SYSTEM has gone in. THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS did indeed turn out to be the kind of story that I wanted to read, and hopefully it will find favour with those that pick it up.

Editors (and why they are important)

Whilst self publishing and POD (Print On Demand) may be a rapidly growing industry (especially during the recession, when more authors are turning to the technology as the publishing houses tighten the purse strings), there is one aspect of the process that stands head and shoulders above all the others in terms of importance: editing.

Too many self publishers and POD users forgo this vital step (as I nearly did), because they don't believe their work needs it. After all, you've written 128,000 words, spread over 28 chapter which end either on a cliff hanger or an intriguing note; your friends have read it, you've read it ten billion times yourself, you aren't finding any more typos in all of that... what more could there be to do with it?

Again, I will go back to my own experiences: just under a year ago I believed that I was all done. I had a cover, I had the layout of the novel sorted, I had registered a dot com to promote it, I had worked out a price point that would attract readers and be competitive in the market place... but the one thing I had not bothered with was to get myself an editor.

I believed at the time that an editor would do one thing and one thing only: fix my grammar, spelling, and other typos. Maybe re-arrange a sentence or two if they didn't read properly, and replace a misused word or three.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

A good editor will not simply just tackle your spelling, but also give feedback on the feel and flow of the work, as well as advice on the structure as I discovered when my manuscript was returned to me. There were numerous suggestions for changes, ranging from bringing information further forward in the story, so that it could be appreciated by the reader earlier, to re-writing the space battles (which read far too much like a video game). There were also notes on maintaining a consistent point of view and the reaction to the characters within the story.

All of this information was invaluable, as I'm sure you can well imagine. It helped me to make my story better, as well as consider points for the next two novels in the series. At the time of writing, I actually have three copies of the pre-edited version of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS sitting in a drawer. I look at them, half disgusted and half relieved, thinking of what could have been. Not sure what I'll do with them; maybe I'll throw them away. Or give them to someone I don't like very much...

It may be tempting to believe that you can do the job of an editor yourself, but I wouldn't advise it, especially if you're thinking about self publishing. Friends and family may be able to help you with correcting sentences that don't read right, but unless they happen to have a lot of experience in publishing you shouldn't rely on them give you too much advice on what they really thought of your story. Most of the time they will be more impressed with your achievement of writing 100,000 words, as opposed to giving you critical feedback on the structure (they don't want to hurt your feelings after all).

So, yes, if you're reading this and have been mulling over whether or not you should hire the services of an editor, then I would say that you should do so, without a doubt. Search the internet for the best service you can afford, cross reference them and look for references and testimonials, and then get in touch and see what kind of services they offer.

And hopefully your manuscript will be all the better for having an objective and critical eye cast upon it.

Rockbox Themes

Just in case any Rockbox owning Sansa e200 owners stop by, I thought I'd point out that my theme, Purple Haze AA, has been submitted to the Rockbox theme gallery.

I've actually be using it for quite a few (well over a year) but never got around to uploading it onto the Rockbox themes website (well, not the one on the main site at any rate).

If you're interested, then you should be able to find it there in the next couple of days. If not, I'll host it somewhere else for users to download.

(note - these player themes does not work on stock Sansa e200 players; you need to install Rockbox in order to make use of it. Installing Rockbox comes with many additional benefits too, such as being able to access SDHC cards, so you can break the 4GB limit of the original firmware)

On Cover Art

When I first began my publishing venture, I found that one of the most exciting aspects of the experience was that I could design my own cover art. I knew exactly what should be on the cover: something of significance within the book. The artwork should be influenced by an entity or event from the story.

Okay, that really goes without saying; I've always appreciated cover art that is subtle and classy, more than something that is really "in your face". Of course, "in your face" is easy to get right, subtle isn't.

I decided that I should pick an element from THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS that would be most memorable, both to the reader and to the characters themselves. I chose to put the lonely grey planet, Arlos, on the cover. I didn't think there really needed to be much else (space is mostly black after all), so the planet hung there against a solid black background, with only my name and the title of the novel for company. I thought it fit the mood of the planet and the events rather well: when the White Knights travel to it to complete a mission that is suddenly sprung upon them, they cannot help but feel a sense of foreboding about the entire region. The events that then take place only compound this further and it is at this point that the Knights' worst fears are realised.

Whilst I thought the cover was quite austere (and a few other did too), I was strongly advised against it. The general reaction was that it wouldn't sit on a shelf of a bookstore very well. It looked more like an astrology text book than a space opera. Some urged me to put a spaceship of some kind on the front, others suggested that I re-think it and add some colour, and one suggested that I just give up completely because I was obviously crap at art (yeah, I'm no da Vinci by any stretch of the imagination, but at least the planet looked okay!).

After a lot of tinkering around in Gimp and reading tutorials about how to make a good looking astral scene, I came up with a better looking cover. This one was greeted with a much more positive reception than the previous: it was a lot more eye catching and made people want to take a look.

When it finally went through distribution it looked good on Amazon, Waterstone's, and Barnes and Noble, much better than the previous would have done. It impressed a number of the staff in Waterstone's and other bookstores I visited too.

When it comes to creating your own art it may be tempting to just take a photo, stick some text on it, declare it done, and stick a fork in it. But 9 times out of 10 (that's generous too), it will look just like that: i.e. - someone took a photo, loaded up MS Paint, wrote My Book By A N Author on it in a bland font, and left it like that. Since the cover of a book is typically the first thing a prospective buyer will see, it is essential that it looks great. It is likely you have bought a book in the past (or at least know someone who has) on the strength of the cover art. I know I have.

Knowing this, publishers spend a great deal of time getting the cover right, and with that in mind, I took several months tweaking and thinking about what should go into the art of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS. Every day I would look at it and see if I still liked it. I read the blurb a number of times to make sure it correctly delivered the feel of the story. After a while I was satisfied I had it right and stopped tweaking the text.

In an ideal world, I would have had the Knights themselves on the cover, but my own drawing skills defeated me on that one. And knowing that my own efforts would be extremely poor (and therefore have a negative effect), I opted to push the idea aside. The current one is good enough.

Weekend Progress

After being away for a while, I thought it was time to return to my blog. There are a few reasons for it: wanting to keep a catalogue of events and that that are occurring with my novel, but mostly because the novel's website isn't the best place to talk about experiencing with publishing. Good to keep those two things separate.

Over the weekend I achieved a number of things. To start with, I created a galactic map for the universe of the Battle for the Solar System. It's just for kicks really, and to add in some more colour into the website. It didn't take long to do: I just used some of the plugins in Gimp to create clouds and stars, used some blurring to give the planets a glow, stuck on some labels, and then ran it through a video filter to give it the look of an LCD monitor. It should give present and potential readers a nice geographical view of the way the galaxy looks, even if it isn't to scale and is mostly random.

The other thing that happened, which I was very pleased about, was that Waterstone's agreed to buy in a few copies of THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS. This came as a real surprise. I thought the instant reaction would be "No". But it seems that they are willing to test the water with new authors and see how it sells. I'll be signing them as soon as I get a chance.

I'll post regular updates as to how things go. Should everything work out, then I will see if I can expand out into other branches.