Off to a flying start!

Wow, I was amazed with the response to Santa in Space. 

647 downloads worldwide over five days!

Thanks everyone for sharing the story, and for your comments and feedback.  (Including the one about the typo – I will do an update to fix that!)

The free days on Amazon have ended, but you can still read it for free here.  I’ll also leave the Kindle version up at the lowest price possible, in case you would like to download it to keep. (Of course, if you are on Amazon Prime, you can still get it free!)

With my Christmas project all done and dusted, I’m going to spend the whole of the next week focused on the novel.  I’ll have a final update of the year for you next week, before the Christmas break.

In the meantime, please do keep sharing the stories with anyone you think will enjoy them!

I got you a present…

Now it’s December, we are officially allowed to talk about Christmas.  The lights are up, everything is looking nice and sparkly…

But oh no!  What to get people for a gift?

How about a lovely paperback copy of “The Eye of the Beholder”? 

Yes, it is finally in paperback form!  

Not only that, the Kindle version has been updated to match the paperback; so those pesky typos will vanish with an update!

And as if that isn’t enough, because it’s the season of giving, I wrote a nice Christmas story for you all. 

You can read "Santa in Space" online, or get it free on your Kindle, as from Sunday the 9^th, until Thursday the 13^th December!

I'm still here!

So it’s the last day of November, and the last day of National Novel Writing month!

How did I do?

Well, at first glance, not so well.  My word count as of yesterday evening (ok I know I technically have today too, but I’m not working on the novel today for the sake of a different project which will be revealed soon!) was 28,974.

So that’s an increase of 13,456, which doesn’t seem a huge amount.  Certainly I am nowhere near finishing the first draft; I’m not even half way through the story.

However, it’s not been a total disaster.  Factor in the fact that I had a few days off this month (it was my birthday after all!) and I completely rewrote chapter 2 (losing several thousand words), and I came up with a new direction for one of the characters to take… suddenly it actually seems like solid progress, because the majority of those words were written in this past week.

It’s actually given me a bit of confidence to see the tale begin to take shape, and I’m looking forward to ploughing on.  I want to know how it ends!

I’ve decided I’ll keep doing a bi-weekly word count update.

In the meantime; watch this space!  I have a couple of festive announcements coming up!

It’s National Novel Writing month.

There’s an official site for it and everything.  The idea is that between the dates of the 1^st and 30^th of November, you write a 50,000 word (or more) novel.

I considered signing up, but one of the rules is that you can’t have started your Novel before November.  I did start typing before then, so I’d either have to start again (which seems a little silly) or write another novel at the same time as this one.  That would be possible; but I also have a little Christmas project on the go, (coming to you in December!) and I don’t want to start getting spread too thinly.

So I’m setting myself my own challenge; to finish the first draft of my novel by the end of November.

Will I make it?  Only time will tell.  But I’m going to try to be honest about my progress, so here’s my first update:  currently I’m sitting at 15,518 words.  Not that far in; but I do have a note book full of story notes, characters, places and plots, which took a good while to put together.

So it’s a race, and winter is coming…

A Halloween Sci-fi Story!

The ship’s hull loomed up out of the darkness, their spotlights sliding over the pallid metal, momentarily bringing the husk to life before moving away to return it into the cold black.

“No response to any hails.”  Kat peered at the freighter.  “It looks old.  I wonder how long it’s been out here?”  

“Not that long.”  Mike swivelled around in his chair, and tossed a flip chart over.  “It is an old ship, but it’s been on active duty.  I matched the registration to a Mirage company freighter that was returning from the system a few days ago.  The Amazon.  Should be able to get a bounty off them for its return.”

“Okay.  We’d better head over and check out the damage.  See if we can find out what happened to the crew.” 

“We should wait.”  Robert had remained quiet up until now, just starting at the ghostly wreck on the screen. 

“What for?”  

“Do you know what the date is?” 

“Yeah.  Star date four one-“ Mike started, but Robert waved a hand.

“No, no.  I mean the proper date. On Earth.” 

“I guess that depends where you are…”

“It’s the thirty first of October.”  He glared at Kat. 

“So?”

“Halloween.  The night when the barrier between the living and the dead is at its weakest.”

The silence stretched out. 

“You’re joking, right?”  Mike started to laugh.  “Does Halloween even count in space?”

“Of course it does.  You think ghosts care if they are in space or not?”

“Seriously Rob, we’ve got a job to do here.  If we don’t lay claim to this salvage someone else might get it.  And the faster we get it back, the higher a price we can drive.”  Kat got up and went to the door.  “I’m going to engineering to update Linda and Adam on our find.  We’ll go over an in an hour.”

Spaceships are Shiny. (Or: Why Twilight isn’t crap.)

Once upon a time, I was working on some compositing for a module at university.  Part of the scene I was putting together involved a spaceship lasering another spaceship.  As placeholders for this, I quickly modelled a couple of basic ships and textured them up to look a bit battered; a few rust marks, some blast scars.  That kind of thing.

While I was part way through the work, my tutor came over to see what I’d got so far.  She wasn’t so interested in the way I’d put the scene together.  Her feedback was:  “Spaceships are shiny.  Make the ships shiny.” 

I was a little puzzled as to why she thought that spaceships had to be shiny.  After all, real life spaceships aren’t shiny.  Many of the favourites from TV and movies aren’t shiny.  In the end, I did make them shiny for her since she was the one that was going to be marking it.

Personal preference can colour a lot when it comes to art, literature, music.  Which leads me onto the second part: Twilight isn’t crap.  Before everyone protests that it really is, take a moment to think about it.  That book sold millions of copies.  Subjectively, those people didn’t think it was crap.  They enjoyed it, and went on to buy the sequels.

Maybe, at the end of the day, some people just like their vampires shiny. 

…I mean spaceships.

A bit of autumnal inspiration.

First drafts are horrible.  This is something to be accepted.  It doesn't matter if you are the best writer in the world.  You'll read it back and go: "Arg, what was I thinking?"  

But this is okay.  It's the rough sketch before you add colour; you can't expect it to be a masterpiece on the first attempt.  Details don't matter too much, you just give the impression at this stage, and add them in later.

I read somewhere that many authors will do five to fifteen drafts before they are happy with their work.  I'm hoping I don't have to do fifteen, but if that's what it needs, that's what it needs.  For now, I'll just write whatever comes into my head.