Author: admincaradoc

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Aimless Wandering…

Staring at a blank screen. All white. Waiting to be filled with words. What words though? A dozen story ideas percolate in the upper layers of my subconscious, grasping them is like grappling with fog. I know if I grab harder, push more, pin the thing down and try to examine it I’ll find the thread at its core to follow. But is it ready? Am I ready? If I pull at the thread will it unwind? Dissipate back into fog after the first few feet? Which to grasp at? There are too many…

For the first time in three to four years I cleared my freelance roster, I had no deadlines looming, no things that needed to be done. I was free to write… But what to write? For a few days I did little more than open a word document and wonder what I should use to start filling that blank page. Which story idea? Which would lead somewhere? I was at a loss. At a loss I turned to what was easy, the role playing game I am working on has a list of things that need to be done. The obvious answer to the sense of gnawing indecision was to start with the first bullet point and work down. I want to write fiction though. I have the lofty goal of writing a novel manuscript this year, and yet, faced for the first time in years with the prospect of having that time I found myself doing what? Idly wondering where I should begin and actively finding other ways to fill my schedule. Avoidance, in other words.

Since late last year I’ve been catching up with a writer friend of mine regularly, and we’ve been pulling apart each other’s work. After schedules pushed our meetings back this month we finally had the chance to catch up again tonight. It was nice to talk. It was nice to mutually lament the maudlin state of indecision and the generally felt lack of progress. The talking itself was spur enough to get me moving. I am reminded of a favourite quote:


“You can’t edit a blank page.”

Variously attributed to either/both Nora Roberts and Jodi Picoult.

I must pick something, and I realise now it doesn’t really matter what. I must pull at that string, whether it leads to fog or somewhere else entirely.

I came away tonight from that catch up with a sense of purpose renewed: just pick something. I have a number of story ideas, I might pull at a few and see what unravels. Maybe they will be worth following, maybe they won’t be ready yet. But at least I have some drive returned.

We didn’t have much work to share with one another tonight, but in conversation I recovered my drive to get words down, to start something, to get things flowing again… Maybe I needed the break, even if it was just a few days, to reset myself, to stop looking at the whiteboard schedule, now empty, and wonder ‘what comes next’, and just push forward with a few things to see where they lead. It was good to talk, and good to be reminded how important talking is. I have to stop now though, there’s a blank page calling my name…

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Dogs of War, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Dogs of War is a science fiction novel by Adrian Tchaikovsky…

Ok. So, here’s the thing. I have wanted to write this review since I turned the last page and sat back in breathless marvel at the work I had just experienced. In equal measure I have dreaded writing this review too, there is so much I want to say that I’m not confident I’ll be able to articulate.

I loved this book, conceptually it is stunning, it is characterful, it is harrowing, it is all too real, and it makes you ask questions… It is also written in a number of voices that lift the characters from the page. If a book can achieve all those things, and Dogs of War does, it is an exemplary book, a work of art, and I thoroughly suggest you stop reading this and just get hold of a copy.

If I had to guess, I would suggest that this book is set in the not-too-distant future, maybe 50-80 years from now. It could even be closer. The main protagonists in the story are bioforms, genetically modified hybrid creatures, part human, part animal, part manipulation, and part technology. They are intelligent, enough to serve their function in a warzone, and integrated with a range of technologies. Rex, Honey, Dragon and Bees are wonderful, each an individual fascinating in their own right, and bound together by circumstance.

It is a curious book, staccato, the action begins in a warzone and moves, moves, and moves again. Each time the tempo and pace, the focus and problems, shift significantly. Nonetheless it is one whole story, a Frankenstein’s tale for the modern age that poses some very real and very frightening questions that are relevant now, today.

The first chapter sent me reeling, what was unsaid and implied made what was said that much more powerful and impactful. The space carefully carved out between the words instigated a chain of concepts, themes, and implications that would echo through the book.

Dogs of War begins in a warzone, gonzo action that throws up moral and ethical quandaries like leaves tumbling in an Autumn gale. It moves to the International Criminal Court and questions of identity and person-hood, of rights and obligations come thick and fast. There are questions raised of independence, morality, free-will and concerns for the future all intertwined. It is a world and a story that is within believable reach of where we sit today.

Making choices is the price of being free.

– Rex

Freedom of choice brings with it a shackling to consequence and ownership; the role of actor also brings an acceptance of responsibility. This feels to me the central fulcrum around which the wonderful character of Rex pivots. Each of the characters is artfully set-out, but Rex is the one we share the most time with, who we share point of view with. This realisation grows, as he does, and defines the journey to self-identity, and beyond.

Humanity, just as it is not constrained by skin colour, gender, or nation, is not a condition penned into any one shape.

-Dogs of War

This is a book that asks deep questions, and one where we, as readers, struggle along with the characters trying to resolve them. It is about morality and ethics, technology and the use and misuse of it, person-hood and artificial intelligence. It is a book that takes a stunning look at the coming and inevitable event horizon, and pauses a moment to really think, and to really feel.

I have skirted mapping out the plot and have avoided revealing too much (I hope). I have opted instead to sketch out my thoughts and impressions, and I hope that is enough. There is much more to be said… Honey, beautiful architect of hope that she is. Dragon, as cold as one would expect, yet not. Bees… oh yes Bees. Cloud computing in physical form and masterfully rendered. George, a perfect bastard. So much more…

When I started Dogs of War I met a monster, by the end I was bleeding in sympathy with the same. What a magnificent story, and for Rex, what a beautiful character arc…

I have failed, I think, to capture the intelligence and brilliance of this book, managing instead only the echoes of the thoughts and feelings it caused. All I can say in the end, I suppose, is that Dogs of War really is a wonderful book.

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Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

With the Amazon series swiftly approaching I thought I had better, finally, pull my finger out and read Good Omens, by authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I admire both authors greatly, and I am, in retrospect, somewhat surprised at myself for not having read it earlier.

I picked the book off my ‘unread’ pile (a teetering stack as is only good and natural) somewhere shortly after Christmas, and it didn’t take me long to chew through to the end. My initial thoughts, after the first few pages, were ‘why did this take me so long?’, and for that I’m sorry to say, I have no good answer.

This is a book about the apocalypse, the biblical one, in case anyone was wondering about ancient Mayans and alien invasions (though they are all in there somewhere). It’s also about the apocalyptic bungling of the apocalypse, with the major players all stumbling (and sometimes reeling, staggering, fumbling, and doddering) from one catastrophic and unforeseen muck-up to the next.

As I read the first few pages, the combination of writing style, twists of imaginative force, humour, and humanity, all felt so familiar, I am a great lover of both author’s other works after all. Familiar and not in a tired way, the sort of familiarity that breeds bored disinterest, but the familiarity of relaxing with an old friend. The familiarity of wriggling into a well worn armchair with a favourite drink at hand. It was embracing, comfortable, and absolutely wonderful.

I really don’t want to spoil this book by giving away too much, though I seem to be one of the last people on Earth to have decided it’s finally time to crack the cover. So suffice to say only that Good Omens is a book full of humour (as we would expect), wisdom, and heart. All these are present in abundance.

It never ceases to amaze me the way these two authors manage to shine a light on, or otherwise highlight, the foibles of our all-too human selves. All our strengths masked as the fumbling and general intention to do right or the dogged stupidity of never giving up. All our weaknesses gently mocked and placed in contexts that reveal them as the absurdities they are. There are messages throughout this book, perhaps more relevant today than when it was first penned (Pollution replacing Pestilence in the Four Horsemen quartet of the end times, being the most obvious).

All in all Good Omens is a wonderful book, one I was glad to read and gently angry with myself for not having read sooner. I am looking forward to the Amazon series greatly. Though I believe they must have had a hell of a job (no joke intended) in getting all the aliens, Atlanteans, Tibetan Monks, Witch Hunters, Bikers of Apocalypse, hell-hounds, demons, and angels lined up for shooting-wrap cast photo.

It will be fun!

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Trouble on Omned III

Trouble on Omned III is an adventure I penned for the Star Trek Adventures role playing game, published by Modiphius. I am thrilled to see it hit release!

You are called away from a routine science mission to intervene and mediate a dispute that has erupted on Omned III, on the border between Federation space and the Talarian Republic. Inhabited by the Shean, Omned III is teetering on the brink of civil conflict. While few in numbers, the Shean possess an insular and rigidly structured society, with the ruling and military classes living in a single large space station while the working classes live on the planet’s surface.

The Shean of Omned III are infected with a subtle parasite that manifests as an apparent genetic disorder, which they call the ‘Omned Curse’ meaning that they age at a vastly accelerated rate.

A vaccine farmed on the surface of Omned III prevents this debilitating disorder from taking hold but in the last month, the vaccine shipped from the surface has failed to take effect. With unprotected newborns suffering, and recent cases of the disorder beginning to activate in adults, tensions between the upper and lower castes are at a breaking point.

As the situation deteriorates even further, can you find a way to avert Shean civil war and help find a cure for the Omned Curse?

While a plain Word document is nice enough, it can’t match a nice LCARS layout!
(which was designed by Matthew Comben and laid out by Thomas Deeny).

Trouble on Omned III is the fourth adventure I have written that has made it to release, with another five, for the Infinity Role Playing Game, on the way. I hope those people who play it have at least half as much fun as I did writing it!

You can find Trouble at Omned III in the Modiphius online store, here. Or on DriveThru RPG, here.

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The Three Body Problem, by Liu Cixin

The Three Body Problem, by Liu Cixin and translated into English by Ken Liu*, is a science fiction book of enormous scope and stunning imagination. It’s a book that successfully manages to hypothesise fantastic technology and base it in believable science. The Three Body Problem is also frightening. Implications echoing from the revelatory chapters midway through the book had me pause, and made me think again of all of those warnings we read and hear when it comes to the exploration of the universe and the consequences we might unwittingly find there. I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Three Body Problem is the first book in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series, and begins in the bloody and violent idealism of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I loved the beginning of the book, and the chaos, violence, fear, and blind nationalism so succinctly and horrifically expressed lent a whole new dimension to everything else I had read about that period of Chinese history. It is also fundamental, because all those things; that mess of emotion and idealism, nationalism and fervour, drive the story through the wounds they leave on the heart and mind of one of the key characters Ye Wenji. Her own moral compass so inextricably linked to her experiences, and so brutally damaged by them that the decisions she makes and the chain of events she willingly initiates are both perfectly monstrous and perfectly understandable rolled into one.

As the book shifts from the Cultural Revolution to the modern day we are introduced to our main protagonist, Wang Miao, a nanomaterials researcher who becomes embroiled in an investigation that slowly peels back the layers of a threat to reveal the terrible truth: it is deeper, larger, and more dangerous than anyone could have believed. I struggled pushing on through the first part of the modern day setting, but as the layers were slowly revealed whatever was holding me at arm’s length relented and I ploughed through to the end.

On reflection it really is a stunning work, and the science fiction aspects are so thoroughly well imagined and imaginative that it really does capture the famous statement from Arthur C. Clarke: “Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.” It reads like magic, every technological reveal, every discovery, every revelation, feels like magic. Yet, it is also so grounded in scientific theory, in the concepts of quantum physics, that there is enough of an air about the magic of reality that it is believable. Frightening, and believable.

I don’t want to spoil any more of the story than I have, or give away key plot twists, because the uncovering of them throughout the book is a series of paradigm shifts that are enjoyable to discover. Yet, choosing not discuss the detail, which is where the devil is after all, limits my capacity to discuss the deeper aspects of The Three Body Problem. I will simply state what I believe to be one of the key themes in this book: humanity faces a threat of catastrophic proportions, and yet, the book seems to ask, are we our own biggest problem? Has our legacy sown the seeds of our own destruction?

While I found myself flagging at one point while reading The Three Body Problem, the book really is a wonderful read. The science fiction is stunning, and it asks some big and quite believably relevant questions of us today. I would recommend this book, and for myself, I will be reading the next two. I, for one, welcome our new dehydratable overlords.

*It’s worth noting the translator, Ken Liu, because scattered throughout the book are footnotes and explanations that really add depth and context to the little details that readers not immersed in Chinese history or culture (as I am not) could easily otherwise miss. I imagine there are whole layers in there that for those familiar enough with the period and cultural motifs, would add more diamond sparkle to this gem of a book. Ken Liu is also a highly successful author in his own right, and I plan on picking up his fantasy novel Grace of Kings in my next book order.

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Keeping Track…

Sometime in late September I decided it would be a good idea to track how many words I write on a nightly basis. Why? It’s a question I am still wondering if there is an answer to, I think I heard someone mention they do it on a writing podcast, or a social media post, or maybe I dreamed it… who knows.

I started tracking the words I was writing in October of last year, every night after I had finished my work for the evening I’d run a word count and plug the figures into a spreadsheet. I still am, and intend to keep going for the foreseeable future. Not everything I write is in there, copious emails go uncounted, which is a shame in some respects, but writing I do for my freelance jobs, for my own games, and my own fiction, all get counted and added.

Three and a bit months in and it has been interesting. I have found it variously depressing, uplifting, and informative. It has been a spur to action; to get the numbers up. It has also been affirming. One of my goals is to write a novel, and the question hangs like the sword of Damocles: but can you? Well, I knew I could get words on paper, but having some idea of how many has made a big difference to how I think about it. I have learned I can certainly write the required number of words for a novel, so that’s one tick.

Drilling into the numbers has been interesting, and from the outside it looks like no more than a bunch of numbers on a page; very nice, well done. What is has done is to highlight patterns. Importantly, those patterns relate to the types of writing I have been doing at the time. I know for example that I usually write between 1000 and 2000 words a night (in usually between 2 and 3 hours), when I am working on setting material for a role playing game. I know that when I am writing adventure material that rate increases. I know that when I write fiction, it typically decreases.

All of this is useful information that has given me a better understanding of what I am capable of given the tasks before me. I need to write an adventure? I know I can get the words down fast, but I also know that there is more pre-planning involved. Setting material and background? I can be more accurate about how long it’s going to take, but research is fundamental here. Fiction? Well, I really need to work to increase those numbers, but I am reasonably sure that the fact I do less of it than the other two is a factor in the word rate.

What it doesn’t show is also important, and perhaps there is an easy way to track these things, I haven’t given it much thought. It doesn’t show how much research and reading is involved. How much time I spent looking at maps of San Francisco. How much time I spent finding common Vietnamese surnames (and Vietnamese naming conventions). How long it took me to read about the structure of the UN Security Council. The hours spent finding out details about private military companies. Nor does it indicate the time invested into dubious searches about what materials are required to make various drugs and explosives (yes, I have no doubt I am on a watch list somewhere, probably all writers are).

Tracking the numbers has been informative, and I intend to keep doing it for a good while yet. Some of things I hope to learn include how the time of the year and the various things that happen at those times influence my productivity. January is quiet, everyone is getting back and getting moving. December is full of ‘Nights Off’ a short hand for anything that keeps me away from the keyboard, and at that time of year means functions, family, work and so on, in the build up to Christmas. I’m sure the availability of freelance work will influence my productivity as well, the last few years I have had jobs lined up months in advance and no time for anything else. How that fares into 2019 and beyond will be interesting.

Would I recommend doing something like this? Yes, I think I would. There are nights when I don’t hit 1000 and I feel guilty, like I failed some unspoken agreement. I have to remind myself I’m not racing anyone, and that even a night off, or a few hundred words is ok. It’s something. The last three months of 2018 saw me write about 76,000 words, and a lot of words are not included in that. That information is affirming. I have averaged about 25,000 words a month, and that’s not bad, not that I have a yardstick to compare it to, just my own little self. The point is to keep going, keep writing, keep practicing. The only way forward to improvement is effort, and I feel like I am growing and developing. Keeping track of the words has been something I have enjoyed doing, and while I can sometimes beat myself up over not hitting the invisible benchmark I set myself, it tells me I’m moving forward, and it helps me work out where my strengths lie, and what I need to push harder at.

Annndddd…. at this point in the post I have reached about 925 words… and yes, they will be added to my daily total.

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Two Steps Forward, One Step Back…

Last post I put on my rose coloured glasses and gazed back into the mists of the year just gone. With the quiet determination of someone desperate to prove to themselves that their time was not wholly spent on Netflix, Twitter, or picking LOL Dolls up off the floor after my daughters, I busied myself with looking at the achievements of the year. That done the next task is at hand, looking forward, setting goals, gazing at the metaphoric mountain peak that lies somewhere in the cloudy distance of 2019 and plotting the climb. Of course, I’ll probably stay at the base camp for a while… It’s warm, has good WiFi, and watching the social media rage of a bunch of people upset that Gillette dared to suggest that being a decent human being is worth the effort is both depressing and amusing, though mostly, I fear, the former.

Where was I? Ah, Goals! A capital ‘G’. Not capitalised for any of the normal grammatical reasons of course, but for it’s significance. Goals are those things we too often tell ourselves we would like to achieve while quietly recognising that, yes, it would be nice to achieve that, but the scones are warm, the beer is cold, and the cricket is on. Tomorrow will be the day I leave the metaphoric base camp…

The beautiful thing about tomorrow, of course, is that it’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, tomorrow will be tomorrow, and so on. Last year I managed to tick off a bunch of things, and I’m glad about that, but did it get me any closer toward my overall goal? What even is my overall goal? My five year plan? Well ultimately I’d like to Write. Write with a capital ‘W’, as in Write for a living rather than a hobby. So this year, my goal is to take some steps in that direction.

Now, I wrote a lot last year, and the year before, and the year before that. Somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 words a year for the last three to four years at least. That’s good. Plus it’s nice to be paid for that work, but it’s not my own fiction, it’s not my own produce, it’s produce for other companies. It has helped me to build muscles I wasn’t sure I had, like the ability to sit down and write every night, to plot and plan and execute, and to hit deadlines. It has taught me to save, save, save, then back up those documents I saved, and make sure they’re backed up, and then just to make sure, save again. It’s taught me that sometimes I feel like writing and sometimes I don’t, and that the words that were dragged from my fingers, a month later, are impossible to differentiate from those that positively flew. Those are all good lessons. But now I need to make sure that 2019 moves me a couple more steps in the direction of my ultimate Goal (note the ‘G’). I need to write more fiction. I need to write more things that are mine.

So onto the goals!

I want to maintain my freelance work. It doesn’t pay brilliantly, especially in the Role Playing Game industry, but I enjoy it, and it has helped me get better. I have made some good contacts, and worked with great people. I’d like to keep all those things up.

I want to write at least one short story a month. Just one isn’t a lot, but there are other goals here, and other writing to do, so one is enough for now. I’d like to edit them, rewrite them, and submit them.

I want to finish plotting out one of the many novel ideas I have. I’d like to select one of those many and write it. I mean actually write it this year. Like hit 80,000 words by the end of the year. They don’t have to be brilliant words, they don’t have to be the best words, but they have to be written words. As the saying goes: you cannot edit a blank page.

For some reason or other I started writing a role playing game last year, rules, setting, the lot. I’d like to finish that this year. I’d like to finish it, and then decide what I’m going to do with it next, maybe not in that order. If it feels good I may look for a publisher, I may look to Kickstarter, I may just publish it as an indie game online, but I want to do something with it. It feels good right now, and I want to explore it further. I like the foundation, I like the setting concepts and themes, I like this beginning I have, and now I need to add flesh to that skeleton and see if I can bring it to life.


I want to keep up with the writers group thing I started doing with a friend of mine. It’s been good, and encouraged me to write more, even if just to keep up. Meet up every fortnight, and maybe connect to other writers in our area, who knows.

I want to read, I know it seems silly, but it’s easy to relegate the things you assume you’ll do at some point to some other point that isn’t now. I read more last year than I have for many years, and I want that to continue. I used to read voraciously, and while I have other ways to spend my evenings now, the curse of being an adult, I need to read.

I want to role play on a regular basis. I managed it for most of last year, so it shouldn’t be too hard to replicate that goal. Testing the adventures I am writing for other companies, testing the system I am developing for my own RPG, playing another published game, whatever, just playing.

I want to make sure I game with my family, that’s board games, of which I have too many by any reasonable standard. But a game every night or every couple of nights as a family is the goal. Oh, and gaming with my wife, just the two of us. We used to game a lot together, and then we had kids and that became less, so making sure we spend the time to reconnect over that shared passion, a board game and the occasional movie of course.

Well, I think that’s enough for now. Some goals laid down for the coming year, hopefully achievable. We shall see!

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Goodbye and Hello

2018 has come and gone, and as the dust of the year passing settles, it is time to look back and examine what I set out to achieve, and how I fared against that target. It is also time to take pause, and think about the things to come, the things I would like to accomplish by the end of the year ahead.

At the start of the year I set out a number of goals I wished to achieve on my other blog, Castle by Moonlight. There I wrote down a number of somewhat lofty goals – to keep up the freelance work, to blog twice a month, at least, and to draft a novel. Hmm… Let’s start with the negatives, and hopefully end on a better note.

I completely failed at my goal of writing a novel. I have outlines for two novels, wrote a novella, and a couple of short stories, but I did not make tangible progress on a novel. Why? It is partly due to vacillation. Not picking a story idea and running with it. It is partly due to prioritising freelance work, and not making time for my own fiction. It is partly due to procrastination, not using the time I did have effectively. All of these are things I need to change for the coming year, because yes, writing a novel is going to feature in my goals for the coming year. I’m like a moth to a flame… as they say.

My blogging goal was to write at least two blog posts a month, and then I went and starting this blog, splitting my attention between Castle by Moonlight and here. It did not go well. Sure I wrote 18 posts on Castle by Moonlight (petering out in July), and 19 posts here. Sure, combined that is well more than two posts a month. But I haven’t felt settled. I’m not sure still whether to maintain both blogs, abandon this one, or that one, and focus on the one remaining. I get more readers on Castle by Moonlight, but I also wanted to start a blog that was less gaming orientated and more the beginnings of a vaunted ‘Writer’s Website’ (capitals required). I’m not sure what to do on this front, perhaps me posting this here is a subconscious clue I should pay heed to, but I’ve never been much good at introspection.

Freelancing. This fared better in 2018, and I submitted somewhere around 135,000 words all told, pretty much all for the Infinity RPG from Modiphius. This included a campaign of five adventures, and various contributions to about seven books. How it will fare in 2019 is anyone’s guess, the list of books to be written for the Infinity RPG is nearing completion. I have work (I hope), for Red Scar that I am looking forward to immensely, but as for more, who can say.

Unforeseen projects… Somewhere around November last year I was wanting to role play some more, I was between projects, nothing to playtest for Infinity, and the prospect of work for other companies upcoming, but unsecured. I didn’t want to start a new campaign (though I have plenty of unplayed games on my shelf), in case work did pop up that required testing… what to do? Ahh, the obvious answer: write your own setting and role playing game!

Well, I didn’t see it coming, but around mid-November last year, in whatever fit of madness took me, I started to write my own RPG. I have a number of complete and semi-complete games sitting on the shelf, but this is a project that draws on the experiences of the last five to ten years working in and around the games industry, and particularly the last three to four in the role playing sphere.

Within a short space of time I hammered out about seven or eight dice systems (I have finally settled on one, though further testing may change this), and developed a setting I rather like. I wrote the system, some setting notes, and the character creation system, and have managed a test session with my local group. I am thrilled with how it is coming together, and there are some aspects of character creation that tie to world building that I am particularly proud of. How this will develop, or where it will go, is something I haven’t decided as yet, but it is in development, and I look forward to developing it further.

Well, that is the introspective stuff done, the goodbye to 2018. I think I’ll save my look forward, the probing prognostication regarding the coming year, till the next post. I hope you don’t mind, gentle reader, but you will have to wait with baited breath…

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Writing Group

A friend and I have been talking about our respective writing journeys for some time. Tonight we had our first writer’s group. Perhaps it is better to refer to it as a meet up, since there was just the two of us, but calling it a writing group make it feel like more of a commitment, more official.

Photo 18-12-18, 12 25 41 am

He is currently plugging away at a webnovel (which you can find here), while I have been motoring along with my freelance work in the Role Playing Game world (which is mostly listed in my bibliography here). Both of us are wanting to write a novel manuscript.

We had previously talked about getting together and comparing notes, offering ideas and criticisms, sharing resources, and tonight was our first step in that direction. We spent the first portion of the night discussing our goals and what we wanted from our meetings, and then both read a little of each other’s work and made some comments. It was good, and while my work was woefully underdone, I walked away with a real drive to ensure that I’ll have something closer to ready for the next meeting. It was nice to be able to sit down and talk about our goals, about our writing habits, and about the things we needed to change in order to achieve our goals. The act of meeting up in order to compare notes places an onus on action, and this added incentive is something I am looking forward to especially!

 

Some links I found useful while we were planning out what our meetings could and should look like:

Writing Group Starter Kit

Jeff Goins, on Writing Groups

Inked Voices, Writing Groups 101

Joseph Massucci, 15 Tips on Writing Groups

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Revenger, by Alastair Reynolds

Revenger, by Alastair Reynolds, is a story about sail ships and pirates, about gauging the wind and mutinous talk, about being stranded, and about islands full of buried treasure. What makes this tale of adventure and danger so interesting however, is that it is science fiction. The ships are space ships and the sails are light sails, capturing momentum from the solar winds. The treasure islands are baubles, habitations and space stations, small worlds built around tiny black-holes which provide them gravity, shielded and dangerous to enter, but holding the remnants of civilisations passed by.

 

Revenger

 

Everything in this book screams the piratical theme, the beats and tropes, the events and character, even the lilt and pattern of speech. There were times when I felt this would be a disharmonious partnership, a mismatch between the spirit and the reality of the book’s internal setting, a fractious pairing that didn’t quite work, but I was wrong. I’m sure that some people will read this book and feel the setting doesn’t quite manage to pull of what it sets out to, but I am not one of them. For me Reynolds leans into the setting’s nautical spirit with such gusto that everything just works.

 

In many ways Revenger reminded me of the Treasure Island movie that Disney released some years ago – a sort of steam-punk/sci-fi revision of Robert Louie Stevenson’s seminal work. I remember thinking at the time that the movie just didn’t manage to realise the setting, perhaps a product of the visual nature of the medium. Revenger, on the other hand, works.

 

The characters in Revenger are all larger than life and pulled straight from the pages or screen of every pirate book and movie you will have had chance to read or watch. Despite this they are likable and dislike-able in equal measure, heroes and heroines you care for, villains you despise, and fools you feel sorry for. The main character Fura Ness, and her sister Adrana are the main protagonists, and in full genre style it’s not long before you, as reader, are cheering on their successes and scowling at those who seek to bring them low.

 

This is the second ‘mash-up’ novel I have read by Alastair Reynolds, in both these novels the settings step beyond the traditional tropes of science-fiction, and mash together two or more sub-genres to create something curious and involving. The first I read was Terminal World, which I reviewed here, and Revenger feels very much in the same sort of vein. Taking the tropes and expectations of one sub-genre (pirate tales), and embedding it in another (science fiction). I’m confident that this is a risky endeavour for any author, assuming the risk that they will have to juggle the weights and expectations of two different audiences (or at least what an audience might expect of a specific genre), but Reynolds has managed magnificently.

 

Revenger is a story of sailing the high seas and looting treasure, it’s a story about rascals and devils, salt of the earth sailors and tough and ready brawlers, it’s a tale of gentlemen and nobles and a tale of a dread pirate. It is also a tale of science fiction, ancient and full of technological marvels, self-aware robots and the dangers of space-walking. Somehow, against all odds, like a ship hell bent on riding out a deadly storm in a race to claim buried treasure, Revenger manages to brave the choppy waters and triumph.

 

I enjoyed this book a lot, the setting is engaging and the genre mash-up is two worlds woven together in a way that is fascinating and thrilling. Revenger is engaging, full of adventure and a whole lot of fun.