Patrick Samphire

It's summer

2008-05-09T10:24:52Z

Suddenly, in the space of just a few days, it has turned into a beautiful early summer.

Maya and I have just come back from a long walk. The woods are thick with bluebells and flowering wild garlic. Ferns are unrolling in the shade. All the trees have new, light-green leaves that let the sunlight speckle through.

In a field, we saw hares playing. One of them ran up to within ten feet of us before turning tail and racing off.

This kind of weather makes me happy.

This is nothing to do with websites...

2008-05-08T15:58:53Z

Anyone find that, I dunno, a bit much of an innuendo?

Websites for Writers: Planning your website - part 3

2008-05-08T15:30:05Z

I started this series of blog entries on websites for writers with an introduction, then I talked about whether you needed a website. In the last entry, I looked at identifying your target audience. If you're following along, trying to plan out a website, then you should make sure you've identified that audience before you go on to this next stage.

3. What are your audience looking for when they come to your website?

In the last journal entry, I said you would need to remember that the audience for your website is not you. One of the biggest mistakes most people make when they put together a website is that they think, 'What do I want on my website?'

This is the wrong question. You should be asking what your target audience is looking for.

People go to a website with specific questions or ideas about what they want to find out. If you don't give them that, they will leave, and you'll have lost them for good. For the most part, the idea of people 'surfing' the internet--randomly travelling from site to site, without a purpose--is a myth. Your visitors, particularly your target audience, want something from you, and it's your job to give it to them.

To do this, you need to try to imagine yourself into the role of someone from your target audience and think what they are likely to be looking for when they come to your website. This might not be easy, but it shouldn't be any harder than imagining yourself into a character. If you've already got an established audience, you may be able to ask them what they're looking for, but be aware that the people who answer are likely to be the ones you've already converted, not the ones who went away unsatisfied.

So, what do your audience want from your site?

If you're a short story writer, they might want to find out if you've written anything else they might enjoy. What would you have to provide to tell them that? Or they might want to contact you to say they liked (or didn't like!) it.

George R.R. Martin's readers probably want to know when the next book in his series is coming out (if ever). The want a preview of it. Because Martin writes such involving books, they also want to know more about him. They want to know what he's interested in. They want to know when he's doing a signing or talk or reading.

If you're a less famous author and your target audience haven't yet read your novels, maybe they want to find out exactly what your books are like. They want to read the opening to see if the novel is worth reading. If they have have read one of your novels, maybe they want to find out more about you and see what else you've written and what you're writing now.

If you're looking for a publisher, maybe the editor who you hope will visit your site wants to know that you're professional, have an engaging manner and understand the audience for your book.

Whoever your target audience is, try to figure out why they might have decided to visit your website and what they want to find there. You'll want to go into lots and lots of detail here. Try scribbling notes on little stickies or on index cards (keep these for later).

List all of the things you can think of that your target audience are looking for. Don't worry about organising it for now. We'll deal with that later. Just throw it down.

And while you're at it, get rid of absolutely everything that you personally thought you wanted to put on the site but which your target audience won't be interested in. Yes, this can be painful, but then so is revising a story, and you've done that. This is much the same. Put in what's relevant. Throw away the rest.

When you've done that, you can think about what your two subsidiary audiences might want. Keep those items separate from the main list and from each other for now.

At the end, you should have a large number of items listed on several different lists. We're not going to do anything with them just yet. Before we do, there's a bit more planning you need to do. In the next entry, I'm going to be talking about the impression you give with your website.

As always, feel free to ask questions or give your own opinion. See you next time.

Websites for Writers: Planning your website - part 2

2008-05-07T14:03:45Z

In the last journal entry, I talked about whether you need a website or not. If you're still reading, I assume you think you might. Now let's really start to plan out your website. As always, feel free to ask questions, argue, comment or whatever.

2. Who is the target audience for your website?

When I ask this question, most people say 'everyone' or come up with a vast, diverse list of audiences. Your audience isn't everyone. It can't even be lots of different groups.

You can't appeal to everyone with a website. If you try, it will fail. Just as your stories can't appeal to every reader, neither can your website.

Likewise, your audience isn't you. Although few people would answer the question with 'Me', that's what a lot of people seem to think. When you're deciding, as you will later, what to include, how to write it and what your site should look like, you need to keep this in mind. Your website is for your visitors, not for you.

To build and maintain a successful website, you need to focus closely on your target audience and identify who they are. The more clearly you pin them down, the better chance you have of producing a site that appeals to them.

So, who is your audience?

Your audience might be readers and potential readers. If so, who are these readers? What are they like? What are their tastes and habits? Maybe they're 11-13 year-old boys who hate sports. Maybe they're practicing scientists or the kind of person who would read New Scientist or Scientific American. (If so, what kind of people read those?)

Maybe they are middle-aged, middle-class women with children and a part-time job. Maybe they're people who appreciate a varied, eclectic selection of stories.

Whoever they are, dig as deep as you can and really pin them down.

Of course, the target audience for your website might not be your readers, even if you're a writer. If you're actively looking for an agent, potential agents might be your target audience, even if they don't make up the majority of your visitors.

If you are sending (or your agent is sending) your book to publishers, your target audience might be editors and publishers and marketing people. If you've sold a book but it's not yet published, your target audience might be book-buyers and librarians and reviewers.

Or maybe your audience is something else entirely. Your friends, for example. (If so, maybe you don't want a website at all; you want to join or create a social network.)

Whoever your target audience is, make sure you know them as closely and as accurately as possible.

At this stage, you might be tearing your hair out. You've almost certainly identified several distinct groups you think are target audiences. The bad news is, you can't target all of them.

Here's what I do at this stage in the process. I make a list, with no more than three items, of the main target audiences for the website I'm building. Here's my list for the website that I've got at the moment

Make a list:

Potential publishers (basically, anyone who might be considering publishing one of my books: editors, publishers, marketing and sales staff, and so on). These people make up less than 1% of the people who actually visit my website, but right now, they're the main target audience, and I'll aim my site at them.
Readers who have enjoyed some of my short fiction.
Those who might one day want to read my novels.

Because this is public, I'm not going to write down my assumptions about who these people are in any detail, but when you're making your list, in private, do that as much as you can.

In pretty much everything I'm going to do with my website, I'm going to be focusing on group 1. I'll try to make provision for groups 2 and 3, but they are going to have relatively little influence on my website, even though they are the majority.

If you have more than three groups in this list, you've listed too many. Try to eliminate some. I know that not all of the people who go to my website are on that list, but if I try to appeal to any more groups, my website will become unfocused and it won't appeal to anyone.

Feel free to share your list here if you'd like to.

When you're certain that you've pinned down your target audiences, it's time to go on to the next stage: What are your audience looking for? See you then.

Websites for Writers: Planning your website - part 1

2008-05-07T13:43:27Z

Okay, you're a writer. Writers have websites. You've probably seen them, or someone's told you should have one. You've got hold of a copy of website editing program like Dreamweaver, or you read a book about HTML, or you know someone who made a website for a friend or colleague. You're all ready to go, to build your website and be part of the web, because... Well, because...

To be honest, it's possible you don't quite know why. And even if you do know why, you may well not know what you want to do with your website when you've got it.

This is pretty normal.

It's very tempting to launch yourself into designing and building your website straight away, but if you do, it will go wrong. The time you spend planning will pay itself back later on. So, for now, no designs, no content. Let's just think about your website.

If you've already decided that, for whatever reason, you do need or want a website, you can skip the rest of this entry and move right on to the next one (coming up shortly), where we'll start to plan out your website in detail. If you're not sure, continue reading here…

1. Do you need a website?

This might seem like a no-brainer, but it's not. Not everyone, and not every writer, needs a website.

When I built my first website for myself, quite some years ago, the World Wide Web was quite a different beast to what it is now. It consisted largely of small, static websites that sat alone like islands in a sea, linked to each other, of course, but essentially independent. There were bulletin boards and newsgroups too, but if you wanted your own presence on the web, you built a website.

Not any more. In the last few years, the nature of the web has changed fundamentally. Yes, there are lots and lots of websites out there. But there are also livejournal and blogger and MySpace and facebook and bebo and wikipedia and thousands of similar sites. You don't need a website of your own to have a presence on the web.

So, do you need a website?

On the web, the idea that if you build it, they will come is simply not true. If you just build a website, the chances are that no one will come and visit, other than maybe your friends and family. Not unless you have some kind of public profile already. There are simply too many websites out there now. In April this year, netcraft counted over 165 million websites out there. That's a lot of web to be lost in.

By contrast, something with a social networking facility, something like livejournal, facebook or MySpace comes with an existing community that you can interact with. You can publish information about yourself and your writing in a place where people are likely to look at it.

A website, however, gives you much more flexibility and control over content. It can act as a repository of information about your work and you. It can have supplemental material. It can have games or quizzes related to your books. It can have stories and interviews and photos and videos and pretty much anything else you want. It can host message boards and a blog and even its own social network. But it will still be an island.

Whether you need a website of your own will depend very much on where you are in your career and what you want to achieve online. A blog might have more chance of attracting readers than a website, if that's what you want, particularly if you get involved in other blogs.

If you've published a novel or novels, you almost certainly need a website of some type. Readers expect it, and if you want to keep them as fans and sell them more novels, not having a website is a mistake.

If you've published a few short stories, whether you need a website will depend on what your aims are. If you want readers to find and read other of your stories, a website is a good idea. Likewise if you are looking for an agent or publisher.

I'll talk about the aims of your website more later on. So read the next few entries on planning your website before you decide for sure whether you want one or not.

Websites for Writers: Introduction

2008-05-06T13:02:44Z

Advance Warning: Sometimes, we just have to indulge our obsessions. One of mine is websites. I've managed to hold off for a while now, but no longer! I'm going to post a series of entries on how you go about planning, building and maintaining a successful website. Particularly a writer's website. If you have no interest in any of this, just skip on past any entries that start with 'Websites for Writers', including this one. I'm sure I'll manage some other entries in between.

As some of you know, a month or two ago, I started to redesign my website. I've had a website for quite a few years now, since before I'd sold my first story, and it's been through a lot of incarnations, starting from a fairly basic creature to the database-driven, shiny one I've got now.

The web changes. The way people use it changes. What we're able to use it for changes. People's expectations of what they'll find on the web change. That means our websites need to change fairly frequently too.

So, when I decided to redesign my website, I spent quite a lot of time looking at other writers' websites. Whenever I build a website, I always take a bit of time to see what other similar websites are like. In most areas, 'standards' develop for the way websites are laid out and navigated.

Visitors who are used to certain items being in certain places, and who are used to information being grouped in certain ways, can become confused if a site doesn't match those expectations.

Some of these are generic expectations. For example, most websites have their logo and a link to the 'homepage' in the top left. Most commerce sites have a 'shopping basket' in the top right. Copyright information, privacy statements and other 'admin' stuff go in the footer.

My day job is as a website developer for a university. If you visit almost any university website, you're almost certain to see sections called 'Prospective Students' and 'Research'. It makes it easy for visitors to find the information they want quickly and unambiguously.

You don't have to follow these conventions, of course, but it always helps to be aware of them so you know what your visitors are likely to be expecting. I wanted to see if any similar conventions had developed specifically for writers' websites.

I looked at over a hundred writers' websites. I didn't find any patterns or conventions. What I did find, though, was pretty depressing. I won't claim that my survey was in any way scientific. It was pretty random. But 95% of the websites I looked at had only one thing in common: they were dreadful. Not just poor, but absolutely, uselessly appalling.

This isn't surprising, of course. We're writers, for the most part, not web designers or developers. Some of us are artistic; most of us (including me) aren't. Very few of us would know where to start in putting together a good website, let alone how to code it and make it happen.

It's certainly nothing to be ashamed of if you've created a website and it didn't turn out to be as well organised as the BBC news website or look as visually stunning as the examples you might see on the CSS beauty gallery or Stylegala. These sites are often created by large teams of highly-paid professionals.

But, shockingly, it seemed that many authors had actually paid for the dreadful sites they have. There are companies out there who advertise website design services for writers and who obviously have no idea what they're doing. Too many writers end up using these. (Not all web designers aiming at authors are terrible--I highlight a couple of fantastic ones when I talk about design later on.)

So, I thought I would put together a brief guide for writers who want or need a website. Even if you're planning to get someone else to build and design your website for you--perhaps even more so if you are--it's worth thinking about this stuff, or you may end up with a site that's taken time, cost money and which is completely useless to you.

I'm going to start off by talking about planning your website, then go on to discuss organising it into something coherent and helpful. I'll cover the issues of design, getting visitors to your site, structure, writing for the web and anything else that comes to mind along the way. If you find any of it useful, if you disagree with anything I've said, if you've got anything to add or if you want to ask any specific questions, feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to address it.

Okay, now onto the real stuff! My next entry will be on 'Planning Your Website'. See you then!

Three Sunday Things

2008-05-04T12:40:12Z

1. We've had two beautiful early-summer days, on Friday and Saturday, all warm and green and sunny. Sadly, the weather gods noticed, and now they have turned their baleful eyes upon us. It's raining again.

2. The word 'sassy' is now officially banned from the English language. Please don't use it anymore.

3. My novel still will not end. 85k and counting. No more dragons either.

Tell me three Sunday things.

Dragons, at last

2008-04-22T19:37:17Z

My novel, which is provisionally called Dragons of Mars, finally has a dragon in it. We first see the dragon at 72,910 words in. For context, this book was originally going to be 60k.

Oh, and the dragon is dead.

Still... Dragon!!! At last!!!

Nightmare or genius?

2008-04-15T14:39:52Z

In the March 15th issue of New Scientist, I read the following:

Since 2004, EmSense, a company based in Monterey, California, has been using biofeedback to help game designers evaluate new products. Testers play a game wearing EmSense's headset, which uses an EEG to record their brainwaves, and also measures their heart rate and the sweatiness of their skin. EmSense then builds up a blow-by-blow profile of the player's emotional state and levels of arousal during play so the game can be made more engaging.

And it occured to me that exactly the same could be done for books. Here's what I envisage: Find a group made up of your target audience (in my case, probably 12-year-old boys), give them a headset and a copy of your book, and then measure their responses to the book, page-by-page or even paragraph-by-paragraph. You could find out exactly how they were responding to what you'd written, which bits were exciting, funny, boring, slow. You could then revise accordingly. Okay, you'd need some way of monitoring what they were reading, but some kind of camera could do that fairly easily.

So, how does that sound to you as a writer?

Is the idea that you might be so closely forced to follow the reactions of a small group a complete nightmare? Something appalling that could be used to turn you into a machine rather than an artist?

Or does it sound like a really useful tool that could give the kind of honest, detailed, unbiased feedback that you could never hope to get from a critiquer?

Someone, someday is going to decide to use this for books, if they haven't already. Would you be willing?

Three things (one weird)

2008-04-14T15:14:38Z

First. I am proud of this. See, it might seem a little weirdly obsessive, but here's what I've been doing with my novel: I've set up an Excel spreadsheet that I use to enter the running total word count. The spreadsheet then calculates the number of words done that day and the weekly rolling average, and plots these on a graph. I realise this is strange behaviour, and it's not what I'm proud of. What I'm proud of is that I've finally got the weekly rolling average up to 1,000 words for the first time. Taking into account that Mondays and Tuesdays are full work days for me and so a bit of a write-off for writing, I'm pretty pleased by it. And it looks good on the graph.

Second. I have managed to give myself whiplash in the neck by stretching. This morning, I stretched back and then came forward too quickly, and I now have whiplash. I'm trying not to turn my neck. Is this the most pathetic way to injure oneself or what?

Third. I've just sold a reprint (republish?) of my Realms of Fantasy story, The Land of Reeds, to Pseudopod. It's a fantasy set in ancient Egypt, and I pity the poor reader who is going to have to pronounce all the ancient Egyptian names and words. Not that anyone could really say they got it wrong, I guess. This is my third sale to Pseudopod. I like this podcasting thing. :)

Three quick entries about writing: Three: In which I feel sympathy for fat-fantasy writers.

2008-04-04T15:33:51Z

I think I finally understand what happened to Robert Jordan. I understand why he had so much trouble reaching the end of his 'Wheel of Time' series. I understand why George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire keeps getting longer. I understand this because I am trapped in The Book That Will Not End. Every time I think I'm about to make progress, something else happens to complicate it and put the end further back, like Alice, running as fast as possible without getting any closer to the end. Now one of my characters has been bitten by a Martian slug thing, and that's going to add a whole slew of new words. And I can absolutely guarantee that, by the time I through those, a new complication will have arrived.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's good stuff. I wouldn't be writing it if I didn't. It's the right thing to do. It's what stories are.

But. It. Will. Not. End.

P.S. 'Fat-fantasy authors' in the title? These are authors of fat fantasies, right? Not fantasy authors who are fat. Good. Glad we cleared that up. (Not that I don't feel sympathy for fantasy authors who are fat, having put on a few pounds myself in recent years...)

Three quick entries on writing: Two: In which I have to be hit over the head to realise the obvious.

2008-04-04T15:30:06Z

Steph sent me a fantastic link the other day. It's a blog entry by Mary Hershey about going to an author event by Elizabeth Gilbert. In the Q&A, Gilbert was asked about her intention when writing her bestselling novel Eat, Pray, Love. She revealed that she had written the book for a single friend, quite literally. She had been advised by her younger sister to write to one reader, and she'd taken that advice literally. In every part of her book, she'd written it as though she was writing an extended letter to her friend. She'd decided what to say and how to say it based on how best to explain it to that individual friend.

I'd never thought about writing in this way before, but it makes perfect sense. I've heard authors talk about writing books for themselves, and I've thought in terms of writing for an audience (in fact, this was the very first blog entry I ever did, back in a long-lost blog), but I've never focused it as though I was writing for a single, real person that I actually knew. Doing so makes a lot of sense. Writing is being about being specific rather than generic. We describe the singular rather than the generic when describing a scene ('we passed a sharp-sided valley', for example, rather than, 'we passed sharp-sided valleys'). We write an individual character rather than writing about 'a boy' or 'a girl'. It makes sense to extend this to the book's audience, too.

In fact, how often have you heard authors tell how they wrote a book for their kid or kids and read it to them as they wrote it? When you write for that very specific, individual audience rather than for an undefined mass, it will always be more consistent, accurate and focused. I know this. I knew this. But I may have only finally realised this when the blog entry hit me over the head with it.

Three quick entries on writing: One: In which my smugness doesn’t last long.

2008-04-04T15:26:16Z

Just the other day, I gave Steph some good writing advice and felt very smug about it. Something had happened to one of Steph's characters and she (the character, that is, not Steph) was overcome by wild magic. So I advised Steph not to cure the character straight away. Curing the character would have been easier for the story. It would have enabled the protagonist to get on with what had to happen. But it would have been the wrong thing to do. Keeping the character 'infected' is going to cause all sorts of complications and difficulties for the protag (and for Steph). It's going to get in the way of smooth flow of plot. But it's going to be a whole lot more fun. Nalo Hopkinson referred to this as 'going there'. If you've got something difficult that's going to happen and your instinct is not to do it, you should absolutely do it. Go there. Don't back away.

So, now we fast forward to today. In my book, one of my characters has been bitten by a Martian critter and is unconscious. But I need to get my characters out of the Martian wilderness pretty quickly so I can get to the end of the book. My instinct was to let the character recover straight away. Steph pointed out to me that that was the easy out. But it wasn’t the most fun or dramatic. It wasn't 'going there'.

Suddenly, I was feeling a whole lot less smug.

It's amazing how many books don't 'go there'. A character is about to be kidnapped, but then the baddies fail. The character is about to be robbed, but they manage not to be. They are about to get lost, but then they find the way.

It's not dramatic. It doesn't make the book better. Obstacles have to cause real problems. They have to have consequences or they're not real obstacles. Now I shall tattoo that to the backs of my hands and I may even remember it.

Too many words!

2008-03-30T13:46:29Z

It takes me forever to get my characters anywhere these days.

For example, it's just taken me almost 8,000 words to crash my airship. This would be okay if I was writing Fat Fantasy^TM, but this is supposed to be a kids' book. There was a time when 8,000 words would have been a substantial proportion of one of my books.

Now I've dropped my characters in the middle of the Martian wilderness, hundreds of miles from where they're supposed to be, and I have no idea how they're going to get where they're going. Nor how many words it's going to take to get them there.

One day, I expect to write a novel in which no one manages to get anywhere at all. ;)

Letter Meme

2008-03-28T16:47:27Z

Via stephanieburgis, who gave me the letter "B", here's my attempt at the Letter Meme that's going around. These are my top ten favorite things that start with "B", in no particular order. If you want to play, leave a comment and I will give you a letter.

1. Border Collies (Border Collie mixes) . I never guessed that border collie mixes would be my favourite type of dogs, until I met Steph and she introduced me to Nika. Now I wouldn’t have any other type of dog. Border Collie mixes are enormously intelligent, playful, loving, loyal and fun. Nika converted me to them, and now Maya has confirmed it.

2. Bears. The ancient Finns believed the bear was the spirit of their forefathers. Koreans traditionally believe the bear is their ancestor. Most bears are shy and gentle, and will only attack humans to protect their cubs. There is something inexplicably grand about bears, the way they move and hold themselves, and there’s also something very human about them, no doubt the source of the many human-bear legends. Sadly, bears are also used in traditional Chinese medicine, meaning that many thousands are held in captivity for the appalling practice of ‘bile farming’, where the bears are farmed solely for their bile glands.

3. Behind the Rules. Steph’s short story, which is now available online at Escape Pod.

4. Beaches. I’m not really a beach person, at least not in terms of wanting to just lie there on a beach getting sunburnt. I want to be up doing something instead. But I still like beaches. The kind of beach I have in mind is small curve of a beach beneath steep cliffs, sheltered and calm and empty, the kind of beach you might come across when hiking and see below you. That’s my kind of beach. Although I wouldn’t mind a house on a beach either.

5. Banana muffins. Which I have just made. Here’s the recipe:

- 3 bananas, preferably soft and browning
- 1/3 cup of margarine
- 1/3 cup of sugar
- 1 1/2 cups of plain white flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1/2 cup of sultanas

Mash the bananas, add the sugar and mix. Melt the margarine and mix in. Sieve the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate into the wet mixture and mix well. Add the sultanas and mix in. Grease muffin tin and add the mixture. Bake at about 325F/160C for 30-40 minutes, depending on size of muffin tin.

Delicious!

6. Butterflies. Butterflies are magic. There’s a reason people use them so often in fantasy stories. Anything with wings like that has got to be fey, a fairy in its mundane, hidden guise. If I had lots of money (lots and lots and lots of money), I would want a butterfly house. The kind in an old, glass-and-white-painted-steel conservatory that arches far above you. Like the Schmetterlinghaus in Vienna or the one at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, full of exotic plants and water and butterflies everywhere. And at night, no doubt, they would shed their mundane guises and become glittering fairies.

7. Books. Does this even have to be mentioned? You literally can’t move in our house without tripping over a book or bumping into one. Part of this, of course, is that we’re not very organised so we rarely return them to the shelves, but mainly it’s because we just have way too many books to fit on the shelves and the only way we cope is by piling them everywhere.

8. Black Books. The British TV comedy series set in a bookshop. This was one of my favourite comedies of the last decade or so. Completely over the top, completely hilarious. Here’s one of my favourite clips, where Manny and Bernard decide to write a children’s book:

9. Bristol. This is my home city, where I was born and where I spent most of my childhood. Bristol is a very cool city, full of history and interesting little corners and nice cafes and restaurants. Pretty much whatever you want, it’s got. Kind of the opposite of Leeds, in fact. One day, we’ll move back there, if we get the chance.

10. Bands. Okay, I’m getting a bit desperate here, trying to think of a tenth ‘B’. Bands I like are probably 95% heavy metal bands and 5% ‘other’. Right now, if I was going to choose my favourite bands, they would include Iron Maiden, DragonForce, Nightwish, Magnum, My Chemical Romance and whole bunch of others.

At last!

2008-03-27T17:34:54Z

Okay, I've been working on my website redesign for what seems like ages now, but at last I've done it (some minor bugs in various versions of internet explorer notwithstanding). Here it is:

http://www.patricksamphire.com/

That's it!

Eastercon

2008-03-25T11:33:50Z

You all know, because you read Steph's journal (not because I told you, because I didn't) that we went to Eastercon at the weekend. We had a great time. It's always a bit dangerous naming who you met at a con, because you end up missing out someone you spent five hours talking to one evening, and then they're upset and the next time they have the opportunity to pull you out of burning wreckage, they don't, because you snubbed them on livejournal.

Anyway, cons are about meeting people, and that's pretty much what we did most of the time. (Yes, I know there are rumours that cons are about panels and readings and suchlike, but I try to never listen to rumours.) It was cool to meet people I'd only talked to or seen online before, like aliettedb , splinister and alankria, to catch up with people we've met at cons before, like Martin Owton, Freda Warrington, Geoff Ryman and Gary Couzens, and to meet new people, like ethereal_lad, palecast, Gaie Sebold and many others.

I did actually do a few con things. The panel on mythology with Neil Gaiman, Sarah Singleton, Maura McHugh and Liz Williams (along with a fifth panelist whose name I have, embarrassingly, forgotten) was pretty interesting, although I thought some of the questioners were rather stuck on the idea that there is a single, canonical version of each myth, which of course is nonsense and kind of missed the point. Charlie Stross did a really interesting techy guest of honour talk, which excited me about science fiction for the first time for ages, so much so that I went straight out and bought one of his novels. Neil Gaiman's guest of honour speech was highly entertaining, as always, and I loved the opening of his soon-to-be-released novel that he read. The talk on common physics mistakes in SF was immense fun in a very geeky way that suited me down to the ground. And Mitch Benn's concert was hilarious (check out his latest song on youtube).

The best part, though, was hanging out and chatting with people. When you're a writer, you spend a lot of time working on your own and feeling like what you're doing happens in a vacuum. When you go to a convention and find all those other people who are doing the same, who care about the same things and who have been through the same experiences, it's immensely energising.

Of course, even though it was great fun, we were desperate to get home and save Maya from the kennels where she'd had to stay. She does not like kennels, and we don't like leaving her there. I think she hardly ate or slept over the weekend, and she has pretty much collapsed with exhaustion ever since we picked her up. Right now, she's curled up behind me on the chair, asleep, making me perch right on the edge of the chair while I type this. But she's happy to be home, and we're just as happy to be back with her.

And, if I missed you off the list above, it's just because I'm crap at remembering names and faces, not because I'm snubbing you, so please pull me out of any burning wreckage you might happen to pass.

St Patrick's Day

2008-03-17T15:01:07Z

Back when I was a kid and we lived in Zambia, the nuns at the local convent/hospital used to bake a wonderful cake for me every St Patrick's Day.

One of the greatest disappointments of my life in coming back to England was discovering that I didn't automatically get a St Patrick's Day cake every year. In fact, I haven't had one since. I would like the world to take note.

Dragonfly Summer in Interzone

2008-03-08T15:20:19Z

My latest short story, Dragonfly Summer, is published in the new issue of Interzone (issue 215). Full info about the issue here. I love the illustration that's been done for it. The characters don't look the way I imagined them, of course, but it really captures the mood of the story:

There's a wee extract from the story on my website. The magazine should be in the stores any day now, but if you can't get it there, it should be available on Fictionwise sometime soon.

There are also stories by Greg Egan, Rudy Rucker, Joy Marchand, Jamie Barras and Will McIntosh in this issue. I haven't had my contributor's copy yet, but I'm really looking forward to it! TTA Press publications always look and feel fantastic.

Maya

2008-03-08T15:02:12Z

As those of you who read Steph's journal (stephanieburgis) know, we took Maya into see an orthopaedic specialist yesterday to have her shoulder properly looked at. We had to leave her there for the day so she could be put under, have her X-rays done, some sample fluids taken from her shoulder and her joint 'manipulated'. Needless to say, we found the whole thing enormously stressful and worrying.

Luckily, she came through the general anaesthetic just fine, although she's got an enormous shaved patch on her shoulder and smaller patches on her leg and neck. She's also, I think, a bit uncomfortable following the whole procedure.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to the see the vet when we picked Maya up, because he had to go home sick, and so we collected Maya from a nurse who didn't know much about the whole thing. The vet has prescribed Maya some very strong painkillers for the joint, and I've got to say, I'm not really happy with this. Maya is only about 4 years old. If she's to be on painkillers for the rest of her life, I think this would be a really bad thing. All drugs have side-effects, and I certainly wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life popping that kind of pills. I'm also not convinced that Maya was actually in pain from her shoulder. Certainly she had some moments of discomfort, particularly after she'd run around a lot, but nothing that seemed to impact her quality of life or her liveliness. It just doesn't seem that she was in need of really strong painkillers for it.

We're booked in to see the vet again in a couple of weeks, and we've decided, reluctantly, to put her on the painkillers until then. But unless they has some miraculous results before then, I just can't see us agreeing to keep her on them. It might be that we have to put her on painkillers later in life, but not now.

Yeuch

2008-02-24T17:04:05Z

I have a disgusting cold. Really disgusting. Far too disgusting, in fact, to post details on a blog.

Having a cold is bad for writing. It's bad for blogging. It's bad for just about everything other than lying around making a sound like a dying brontosaur.

On the plus side, it's given me much more time for eating truffles and birthday cake, and catching up on Raven.

Targets and birthday!

2008-02-20T11:44:56Z

At the beginning of the month, I set myself the target to write 20,000 words on my current novel (the provisionally-entitled 'Dragons of Mars') by my birthday, today.

I'm pleased to announce that I passed that target yesterday, a day early.

Here are the totals, as of right now:

'Dragons of Mars' progress:

February 20th target:

I don't know whether I'll get anymore done today or not. It's my birthday, and we have plans! The good thing is that I'm right at the beginning of an exciting, extended action scene, so it should be fairly easy to get going on it again.

I haven't decided whether to set another target like that, lacking any more birthdays in the next month, but it was incredibly helpful for my writing to have the target. I haven't been this productive for a long time. In many ways, the 20k in 20 days target was more helpful than a 1k a day target, which is what I'd done before, because some days you just have to stop and plot out what happens next, and other days you can do way more, and there's no guilt if you fall behind one day. It's also a manageable target. Even I can keep going for twenty days.

#

I'm having a great birthday so far. Maya and Steph bought me a stonking new iPod to replace the one I left in Florida. This new one has 80GB of storage, which takes all our music with plenty left to spare. I'm thinking of buying some TV shows and using the iPod to store them, seeing it has far more space than my iBook.

They also bought me some gorgeous, luxurious vegan truffles. You'd be proud of me. I haven't started them yet...

Later on, Steph is taking me to Mumtaz, our favourite restaurant, and we'll probably stop by a cafe too.

Right, now I'm off to stroke my iPod some more...

Winter morning

2008-02-20T11:30:03Z

Last night, we went to bed with the house surrounded by thick fog.

This morning, it had all gone, to be replaced by thick frost coating everything: the trees, the grass, the houses, the ground.

Maya and I took a walk down to the valley where the frost was thickest. Every twig of every tree was coated in centimetre-long crystals of frost, like a thousand fragile white needles. In the warm morning sunlight, the crystals rained down upon us, like a snow shower.

Looking out over the valley and the fields was the most perfectly wintry view I've seen all year.

We had no batteries for the camera, so I can't show you photos, only words.

Dragons of Mars

2008-02-18T20:12:23Z

Okay, I've never done this kind of journal entry before, but quite a few of you do, so I figured I'd give it a go.

This is an extract from the Work In Progress. In fact, it's part of what I wrote this morning. So, with the usual disclaimers about this being complete first draft, lots of things going to change before it's done, etc., etc., here we go.

All you need to know (well, you probably don't need to know, but what the hell) is that the year is 1816 and we're on Mars. It's a kids/YA novel, and this is about 2/3 of the way through.

Dragons of Mars - Extract

I woke to the touch of someone’s hand on my forehead. I let out a groan, and the hand was snatched back.

My head hurt. My face hurt. My neck hurt. Even one of my arms hurt.

I forced my eyes open, then immediately regretted it. The light was too bright for my head.

“You’re alive!”

I squeezed my eyes into focus. Putty was leaning over me, looking worried.

I nodded, very slowly. Through dry lips, I said, “What happened?”

“Oh.” Putty sat back on her heels. “Well, Dr Blood kept going on about his rocks and how one of them had been chipped when Cousin Charlie knocked them off the table, and then I tried to tell them about how the photon emission globes worked, because they’re really interesting and quite clever, but no one was listening, and--”

“I mean to me,” I croaked. “What happened to me?”

Putty’s face fell. “Doesn’t anyone want to hear about the photon emission globes?” She looked around. “What happened to you?”

“Help me to a chair,” I managed.

Putty grabbed my painful arm.

“Other one!”

She released me. “You’re a complete mess, Edward.”

“I was attacked,” I said.

“Oh.”

Together, we managed to get a chair upright and me into it. My legs were still shaky, but things were slowly coming into focus.

“Where’s Charlie?” I asked.

“That’s what I was trying to tell you. I was telling everyone about the photon emission globes--except they weren’t listening--and then Charlie said he thought you’d been gone too long, and would I go and look for you. Only--” she frowned “--I think he might just have been trying to get me to stop talking and go away.” She looked up at me. “He wouldn’t do that, would he?”

#

I'm guessing that that makes no sense at all out of context, but...

Here are the target updates:

'Dragons of Mars' progress:

February 20th target:

Raven

2008-02-17T14:56:48Z

We’ve started watching children’s television.

No, this isn’t a sign that we’ve finally regressed all the way back to being ten years old. It’s just that... really, apart from Torchwood, there’s absolutely nothing worth watching on adult TV at the moment.

And we’ve had a revelation: some of the most exciting, creative and imaginative television is children’s television. Seriously. No doubt there’s a load of crap out there, but there is also one piece of sheer genius.

I’m talking about Raven (also see this). If you don’t know what Raven is, the conceit is that Raven, a magician, is training children to become the ultimate warrior, to fight the big bad/dark lord at the end. They have to perform various challenges--balance across a high bar up in the trees, fire a catapult at a floating platform, dodge swinging boulders while crossing a bridge, and so on--competing against each other, gathering golden rings and trying not to lose their lives. The theme, obviously, is high fantasy. The kids are all dressed up in pseudo-Medieval outfits and Raven himself is dressed in a cloak of black feathers.

There are great fantasy special effects, and, almost the best part, Raven talks in that Tolkien-derived high-fantasy speak that you feel guilty enjoying but love nonetheless: “Warriors! Behold the blasted mountain. It is an awesome sight, is it not? And a terrifying one. [...] This passage under the mountain is known to only a few, and fewer still dare enter it, but enter it you must [...] Quickly, my friends, the mountain has sensed our presence.” The mountain in this scene, of course, is completely CGI, but you’d never guess it from the way the kids react. It’s all done utterly seriously, and the kids are completely into it. There's no postmodern, ironic sneering here. Nobody is ashamed of any of it. In fact, the kids are the best part of the show. They are totally buying into it. They’ve all been given fantasy names, and their own standards. They are the kinds of kids that we all would have wanted to be.

Folks, this is where fantasy really is. This is the kind of thing we all wish we could get away with writing, if we had the chance. It’s creative, fun, unselfconscious and utterly involving. I only wish I’d discovered it before.

And now let's compare it with another kids’ show that really doesn’t work. It’s a show that is trying to do the same thing, but which just doesn’t get it. This is The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. It's kind of a J K Rowling-themed show. The premise is that a bunch of kids are competing to learn magic so they can become The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Off they go to an old country manor, dress in Harry Potter-style robes, and learn magic. Should be fantastic, right?

Except it’s not. It’s not fantastic because the makers have turned it into a kids’ version of Big Brother (the reality TV show) or Pop Idol/American Idol. They’ve managed to recruit the most egotistical, obnoxious, vain and self-obsessed bunch of kids you could imagine. Ones who misbehave to get attention, who smirk and who whine horribly that they don’t get to wear their stylish clothes and spend hours on their hair. These are exactly the same kind of jerks you get on Big Brother, desperately showing off, shouting me-me-me. Yuck. There’s not a single one of them I could sympathise with. And their whining and showing off is what the show focuses on, not the magic or the competition.

Compare this to the kids on Raven who are sincere, determined and totally buying into the game. Those are the kids I want to write for. They’re not--at least on the show--self-conscious or egotistical. They are open and genuine and creative. If I could get a job writing for Raven, I think I’d be in Heaven.

If you get a chance to watch Raven (no idea if you can get it on BBC America) and you’re a kids’ writer, you should. These are your audience, and they’re ready to believe.

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It’s been a while since a writing update, so here we go:

'Dragons of Mars' progress:

February 20th target: