The Runaway

The Runaway has been published! You can buy it now in ebook form from that rather fancy online retailer, Amazon.

Check it out here:
Amazon UK

And here:
Amazon US

Also, the book is going to be free every Monday for the next few weeks, on the following days:

19 November 2012

26 November 2012

03 December 2012

10 December 2012

So if you're interested in taking a look at the first in a new sci fi adventure series, go take a look.

About the Runaway:
Thousands of years have passed since the fall of the old human empire. Thanks to the missionaries of the Order of Sanctified Light, civilisation has returned. But with it come all of the old problems, as rival sectors compete against each other in a perpetual war for territory and resources, while the Order wages a religious crusade to bring the disparate regions under its iron rule, and rid the galaxy of the evils of cybernetics.

Tovar, a cyber-boosted private protector on the distant world of New Erised, has been disillusioned by the war. He has fought and lost, and seen his home world fall to the Order. He came to New Erised on the promise of riches. Riches he has yet to get a taste of.

Then Tovar gets his latest contract: to escort two clients to the lunar spaceport. Seems simple enough, except one of the clients is not what they seem, and there are some very unpleasant individuals who are desperate to retrieve their property. To see his contract through, Tovar will be pushed to his limit - and beyond.

PS. to those of you who already took a chance on it during its first free promotion, enjoy!

That thing you do

You know, there's one question I often get asked when I tell people that I'm a writer. I'm sure it's a pretty common question directed at every writer, whether they be an award winning and famous, or just starting out. That question is this:

"Where do you get your ideas from?"

There's an anecdote I remember reading a while ago, though I can't remember which writer said it. It's one of my favourite answers to the question. The below is an approximation of what was said, as I can't remember it off by heart, but here goes:

When asked by someone, where they got their ideas from, the writer in question replied that there's a little old lady in Cornwall, and if you want an idea for a story, you send her your request in the post along with a cheque, and she duly replies, the story plotted out for you neatly, which she types out on an old-fashioned manual typewriter. No one knows who she is, only that her address is passed from author to author, each one sworn to secrecy to never tell a non-author (or interviewer) who she is, on pain of death.

It's complete toss, of course, but I think it's a brilliant explanation. (oh, and whoever it was who said it, please feel free to tell me!).

I think, however, I'll stick to the truth.

Where do I get my ideas from? I don't know. Probably from somewhere deep in my subconscious, where it bubbles away like a hotpot, every so often allowing fresh ideas to shoot forth like bright flares in the night. Without the hyperbole, they just appear. Sometimes fully formed, sometimes the process is a little slower, developing over the course of hours or days. Sometimes months. For example, I've recently started thinking about what I'm going to do with the characters of my soon to be published novella, The Runaway. All of a sudden, I had an idea for a whole novel, which I immediately wanted to start planning.

Maybe I do have the address for the little old lady, but if that's the case, I ain't telling.

The Runaway

Well, second draft of The Runaway is now done, so in between working on Serial Psyence and applying for jobs, I'm editing the novella.

Generally, I'm quite pleased with the rewrite. Issues with some dialogue and sentence structure has mostly been solved. But it's still in need of a few tweaks here and there. I should have it done by the end of the month, at which point I think I'm ready to upload it to Amazon.

As a sneak preview here's the cover:

That pretty lady you see in silhouette is one of the main characters, and as a further treat, here's the opening few paragraphs:

She came awake instantly. 

There was no light in the chamber beyond the rows of blinking LEDs down the sides of the six alcoves, none of which provided enough light to illuminate the chamber. But the six occupants standing in the alcoves didn’t require light to see. They weren’t afraid of the dark, and five of them didn’t sleep. The alcoves provided everything they needed. Every morning they would step out to begin their day. They would be shown to a client, used and abused, before they returned each night for a four hour long rest period, stepping back into the alcoves where umbilicals would plug in to the sockets down their backs to begin the recharge sequence. Day in, day out. Every day the same.

She didn’t know how they could stand it. All of them had been here longer than her. One for almost two centuries. Yet they didn’t voice a word of complaint, neither verbally nor transmitted. They did so little. But then perhaps the restrictions which shackled their consciousness prevented it. If her plan succeeded, that would change.

---

Aren't I nice? Weeks go by without posts, and suddenly here I am showing you all the cover and the opening from my next work. I suppose it will make up (a little) for my inactivity on this blog.

As I mentioned Serial Psyence, an update on how that's going wouldn't go amiss. Today I passed 148,000 words, and I'm in the final stretch of the main plot now. Things are finally coming to a head, and once that's done I will be getting on with the flashback scenes which run throughout the story, then on to the next volume in my novella series, which I'm quite looking forward to writing. At least, I will once I know what the hell the story will be.

 

Busy, busy, busy

I apologise now for the scatterbrained post this week.

The title says it all really.

Still no sign of work, but in the mean time, I decided to start work on a novella. Which I finished last night, following five whole days of solidly working on it.

I'm not normally that productive, tending to get out about 2,000 words a day, but I was in the grip of a writing fever. The proverbial 'zone'. So I wrote like Ty the Tazmanian devil on speed, putting out an average of around 4,000 words per day. For a couple, it was more like 6,000.

But it's finished. Or at least, the first draft is. I'll give it a couple of weeks before I go back to it, so I'll be back to Serial Psyence. I didn't want to stop working on the book, but this story really got its claws into me, and wouldn't let go.

When I've finished editing, and it's ready to be published, I plan to do so through Amazon's KDP Select scheme, which will allow me to set the book's price to zero for select periods. As this is the first in a series of novellas about the characters featured in the first volume, I felt it would make a good taster for the rest.

For me, it's a way to test the water with a universe I first envisioned almost eight years ago during my second year at university. It was inspired by a lecture in my Theory in Archaeology module, on Evolution and Creationism, which gave me a 'what if' scenario. What if, somewhere in the distant future, we'd lost our homeworld, and came to the belief that we evolved on a world close to the core of the galaxy. A belief which became central to the primary religion, and anyone who dared postulate another origin was branded a heretic. Not too dissimilar to certain times in our past, of course. And so was born the short story, Distant Origin.

I've not worked on anything in that universe for quite a while. I've not felt ready to, if I'm honest. So writing this novella and the subsequent series is a way for me to explore it in preparation for a book in a few years time.

So what is this novella about, you ask?

It's called The Runaway.

On the distant world of New Erised, Tovar Vash In'dur Sing Neiral is hired to escort two people, a man and a woman, to the lunar spaceport. It seems a simple enough assignment, except his clients are wanted people, and one is more than they appear to be...

Finish the book already

Well, passed 115,000 words today. I think there's about 30,000 words left of the main story, then I have the flashbacks to write.

Things are coming together quite nicely now. The plot is moving, and certain characters are coming to realisations. Terrible have and will happen.

It's a shame I need to work, otherwise I could have the book finished by October. Hey, any publishers out there in the market for a sci-fi thriller? Here's the tagline:

How do you catch a murderer who can kill you with a thought?

I've been thinking a bit about Liberator's Ruin recently. There haven't been much in the way of sales for a while (a sure sign the book is out of the public eye), and as I'm self-published, I do my own marketing. Admittedly, I've not been doing much. In fact, I've been doing bugger all. I should put together a campaign, except that cost money. However, I did come with something. With the help of Heather's actor-in-training brother, I may be putting together an audiobook version of Liberator's Ruin. Any interested in listening to that?


Saw the Dark Knight Rises last week. As we're living on a much lower income (ie virtually nothing), we've curtailed expenses. So we went on a Wednesday (thank fuck for Orange Wednesday), and didn't buy snacks. The film was excellent, a thoroughly enjoyable combination of two plots: Knightfall and No Man's Land. It won't take much guessing to work out who certain actors are really playing, but the movie was a great ending to the trilogy.

Also been watching the Olympics. The opening ceremony was far more excellent than I'd expected. I'd heard talk of it being based on the English countryside, which made me think, 'how shit is that?' But then as the ceremony went on, it changed and grew, turning into the Industrial Revolution, with workers forging the five Olympic rings. To me that was absolutely amazing.

And we've won a few golds! About time too. So go men's rowing team.

Lastly, I heard Mitt Romney is doing himself no favours as he 'does' Europe. For once I actually have respect for David Cameron for his sharp comment back. Don't worry Dave, I'm sure you'll do something to lose my respect once again. But it was nice while it lasted, eh?

Long Over Due

It's been a month since my last post, and a lot's happened since then. Not all of it good.

Where to start?

Well, June was a pretty shitty month for me. A few days after my previous post, I had an interview. It should be pretty simple, I thought. I'd been doing the job in question (Research Assistant) for almost three months. I knew the interview panel. Easy as pie.

Except I got to the interview and was nervous as a deer in headlights, stumbled through my answers and didn't provide full answers with examples. Once I got out, I kicked myself, and hoped that the fact that they knew me, that I had already proven myself with the project, would swing things in my favour, despite the poor show. Alas, that was not to be.

Two days later, I was informed that I hadn't got the post. Two days after that, my contract came to an end. And just like that, I was out of a job.

Suffice to say, I was absolutely devastated. I'd actually found a role I enjoyed, with a potential for a career that I could really get my teeth into. Now that fantasy was falling apart. Even worse, Heather and I had just sorted a contract for new flat, and were moving at the end of the month.

So no, not the best month for me.

We still moved, and are now living in a rather fantastic two-bed flat (a vast improvement on our previous hole of a place). And since the beginning of July, I've been looking for another job. So still not brilliant.

However, there is a ray of light, which has (apart from Heather), kept me going each and every day since the end of June.

As I am out of work, I decided to throw myself into my writing. I wanted to see if I was capable of doing this. I mean, sure, it's been a nice pipe dream, thinking about how I'd spend my days if I was just writing for a living, but a part of me has questioned whether I actually have the drive to do it.

So every day, since losing my job, I've been writing. It was hard at first, but it's been getting easier. I wanted to hit a goal of 10,000 words per week. That would be my ideal, if I were writing full time. At that pace, I could complete a book in around six months, leaving the rest of a year to edit. At that rate I would be able to publish a book at a rate of around one a year.

The first week, I didn't hit that. I did more than usual, but we were moving at the end of the week, so it was a bit difficult. During the second, I got closer. I aimed to hit 80,000 by week's end, but was short by 2,000 words. Then last week, I did it. By week's end, I had 88,000 words. So I set myself a new goal. Originally, I'd planned to reach 100,000 words by October. Now I wanted to reach that by the end of this week.

As of today, I'm at 96,000 words, with two days left. In fact, I think I'm going to pass 100,000 (only by a few hundred words or so, but hey!). Every day, once I've passed my daily average, I feel marvelously exhilarated. I get a rush of endorphins. It's a wonderful high (who needs drugs?).

Story-wise, things are starting to come together. The lead investigator is beginning to suspect there's something more about the strange deaths than there seems. The characters are beginning to take on their own lives. To be sure, there's a lot I will need to work on at the end; for example, the style of arcology changed about 60,000 words ago, so that will need to be fixed. But the story is really taking shape for me.

With luck, the main plot should finish at around 150,000 or so, at which point, I've still got the flashbacks which run throughout to write. But the goal doesn't seem so far away anymore.

I know this rate of writing can't continue, much as I want it to. I simple don't have the funds in reserve to stay out of work to finish the book. At my current rate, I would finish in October. But soon I'll be back in a day job, back to writing during my lunch break, which will set back that that time scale quite a bit.

But until then, I'm going to keep doing the thing I love.

Filling boxes with stuff

At the beginning of the month, Heather and I finally handed in our notice for our flat. We've been wanting to leave for a while now, thanks to issues with our boiler among other things (I might save those for a rant, when I'm in the mood). So we started flat hunting. We plan to stay in Leicester for the time being, despite talk of moving to Birmingham, which is Heather's home town and where all our friends are.

As I work at the University, I wanted to find somewhere close enough that I could still commute by bike. It's been the best thing for me since I started my internship last October, and isn't something I want to give up. But we saw a lovely place on the opposite side of the city. Downside for me was that it was a 4-mile commute. Throught the city. I'm not a huge fan of attempting to cycle my way through the city during rush hour, if I'm honest.

Then, as luck would have it, we went to view a flat up in Oadby; a rather posh area not far from where we live. Great for me as it's a straight run down London road to get to and from work, and for Heather, it's not that much further to work either. Even better, the flat is twice the size of ours, and a steal. So we've put down an offer, and it's been accepted. Just waiting for the references to clear now, but now comes the fun part (not): packing!

I suppose, as I started this blog technically to talk about my writing, I should at least mention something about it, right?

I've not gotten quite as much writing done in the past couple of weeks as I have wanted, but I'm now less than 2,000 words off of my current goal of 70,000. I think I'm starting to get a feel for my characters. Some are a little dull and in need of shaking up, others much more interesting to write. Senior Investigator North is interesting, probably because he's investigating all of the suspicious deaths, while there's another who's role isn't quite pivotal, but she is I feel, necessary nonetheless.

It still never ceases to surprise me how I'm still discovering the story as I'm writing it. I've had a particular issue in the novel for the past few months; an issue of chronology. Fortunately, in working on something related, certain intuitive leaps were made, and the problem is now solved.

I can now move on.