Time flies

I can't believe it's been almost a year since I posted a blog.

How time flies when there is so much shit to be done.

In that time I have had two jobs, my baby niece has turned 1 and I met an amazing young lady online who liked me for who I am and we were proceeding along the path that I thought meant I was never going to date anyone ever again, of course I've managed to screw that up that we went from talking all day every day to her barely speaking to me at all. All my fault cause I am a self sabotaging idiot, how much I wish I could stop myself.

We lost my Grandma back in January after a battle with cancer which sucked the fun out of life for a while. She was the strongest, toughest, little old Geordie lass you would ever meet but she loved her family like nobody else could and the loss of her presense in all of our lives is sorely felt by all of her family. I wish I had had kids before she died so they could have known her and like all of us we are glad that she got to meet our munchkin,  wee ZoZo, my niece Zoey, who is the most fun to chase around the place cause that wee cheeky smile and laugh brightens up your day.

On the creative side I am working on a number of writing projects at the same time, it's fun because when I'm writing I am not getting bored at all, funnily enough not one of them is the book that I've been sitting looking at for years that I keep on promising will get published but never seems to get there. I'm working on a Military Sci-fi novel as part of a series actually set in the Magiverse I set up for Burn, Forest City, Burn.

The second is the first book in an epic Fantasy series based on a world I've been RPG gaming in for 20 years (well 11 years but there was a 10 year gap inbetween 10 and 11) and it's not getting worked on much but it's coming along but this one has a plan that I can go back to without the fly by the seat of my pants approach I usually take to writing.

The third is actually a campaign book for the aforementioned epic Fantasy series, which due to actually playing in the world I find myself looking forward to publishing more than I do my books. It's 20 years in the making, it's something I've been tinkering with and perfecting longer than anything in my life.

I've started painting for other people, starated with my wee brother's Chaos warriors, who are nowhere near done but I have managed to finish all the foot warriors, like everything else of my own painting wise there is so much work to be done that I go back when I can. I'm putting the finishing touches on a 2nd group of Battletech figures for one of the guys at Glasgow District I regularly play against. He hands me them and says do what you want with them, I've got the 3Rd Lyran Guard, 2nd Ceti Rangers, 1st Marik Militia, 4th Arkab Legion and Smoke Jaguar Alpha Galaxy down pat. Watch this space for updates on that particular endeavour in the future.


Of my own painting I've been working mostly on my American WW2, but it's been a while since I did anything with them, my ever growing Malifaux collection, spent more money on that in a year and a half than I have anything other than booze, actually probably more than I have on booze. I've been doing bits and pieces for everything but not settling on a single project for more than a month at a time. When I got my Zombicide Black Plague (If you haven't played it I can not recommend it more, it's awesome) I worked on that a whole lot, 30 figures at a time over a couple weeks and I'm probably only half way through them.

I took part in my first Malifaux tournament at the Scottish GT last month and didn't come last, managed to beat my expectations for the weekend of getting a Victory Point in every game of the tournament, by actually winning a game, beating a friend who had up until that point alluded me beating at the game. I'll conceed the terrain, the strategy and the schemes suited my faction and the crew I chose to perfection against his which none of it was any help to him. Liking forward to my next one and an excuse to paint abother faction's worth of figures. Got three factions now, Guild, Ten Thunders and Outcasts, though I could field a Neverborn crew I wouldn't say I had them as a Faction. One of the Outcast crews is all female and I will be painting them all the colours of the Harley Quinn Rainbow, from the original, to the Arkham series probably all the way to the Suicide Squad incarnation. Watch this space for those.

I've also got a bunch of Napoleonic's sitting ready to be painted I started the foot centre company but got distracted by work and everything else.

So as for the rest of my life, the only real significant thing other than getting my degree was the young lady who I met online. Sonya. She fits all the attraction points for me, redhead, gorgeous even though she doesn't see it, fun, smart even though she doesn't think it, and tough, not just because of everything she's gone through in the past 6 and a half minus that I've known her but the mental toughness to come though the things she's had to endure over her life, if I was her I'd have rolled up into the fetal position long ago and wouldn't have gotten out of it. Of course I managed to do what I always do and sabotage myself by saying stupid shit and not stopping myself even though I know I should and have been there before. I wish I had learned by now not to do this shit. But I haven't and don't know if I ever will.

As for the martial arts and my fitness, it's not been a great year, barely been to the Grip and put all that weight I had lost back on, I'm working on getting it back off but with my work schedule being as eratic as it is I don't know where I'm going to be from one week to the next, I was up north for two days last week, three this week and two next week. It's not like you actually get to see a place either, you get there at 8 O'Clock at night, go to bed cause you are up early the next day go to the job and either go home or onto the next town where you eat and go to bed cause of the early start. But it's work and I hate nnot working.

I'm going to stop predicting when I am going to publish what because it's a waste of my time, your time and anticipation. It is suffice to say, I am working on it and will be done and ready when I am done and ready.

One last thing Grimbold books, the indie publishers that published Strange Tales from the Scriptorion Vaults and A World of Their Own, both of which have short stories of mines published within their pages if you don't already own copies of both you should cause while I am a hack at the best of times the rest of the writers are truly superb and they are both Charity anthologies so the money you spend goes to two superb literary charities. They are on Patreon to keep the publishing going, the owners have poured their hearts and souls and plenty of their own money into this venture and there are some truly brilliant writers on their various imprints, I myself am helping them keep the business afloat, granted they are my friends and I support them because of that but because they also take chances on works that no major publisher would, and the out there oddball stuff is the best. Like all Patreon's you get what you pay for it'll be worth your time and money if you are a Fantasy and Sci-fi fan.

Think that's me for now, I will try and update this more often than I have in the past I need to just make the time.

Peace.

A World of Their Own

So, a week past on Friday A World of their own by the Alliance of Worldbuilders, a group who I was a member of when I was a member of the now defunct HarperCollins owned website, which was essentially their slush pile for potential authors, not that many people got through that, I never read any of them but doesn't mean they weren't any good, though just because anything get's published means it's any good Twishite got published.

Anyway back in 2010, the Alliance of Worldbuilders Authonomy thread began to take off and became the go-to site for fantasy/sci-fi writers to share ideas, critique each other, offer tips, and encourage one another in our writing and publishing journeys. We would constantly break the forum because our thread was so huge that they wouldn't load any longer, so we had to start again.

In 2011, we began to discuss the idea of an anthology to be published in 2012, collecting short stories and flash fiction from our members and putting it together. As we have all been on our own individual journeys in the last few years (many of the collaborators now published authors at this point), it took quite a while to finally put together and bring a real finalized product to the world.

So all the proceeds go to the World Literacy Foundation who's mission is to lift children and youth out of poverty by delivering effective and sustainable programs aimed at eradicating illiteracy.

The World Literacy Foundation was founded on several basic principles – education is a basic human right, too many people around the world don’t know how to read or write, and that literacy is the foundation to learning. Since its establishment as a not-for-profit in 2003, the World Literacy Foundation has steadily grown to align with the needs of a continually evolving educational sector.

So, basically a World of their Own is one part Charity Anthlogy other part homage to a fallen comrade, Lindsey J Parsons, or Sergeant Gummie Dragon, who we lost in early last year of a Brain aneurysm before she could complete the trilogy she was working on the Return of Effra. I personally didn't know her a whole lot but anyone who did never had a bad word to say about her and that speaks volumes about a person in my opinion.

Anyway both of my short stories We Rise and they smite and Night of a Thousand Spells were on here at some point in the past and it says I'm working on a Caleb O'Hearn book to be published hopefully in the first quarter of next year, of course since it's been published that's already changed. The first book of the Gabriel of Alba books, which was titled Burn, Forest City, Burn, but is know just Burn: Book 1 of the Magi Chronicles is going to be that book because the second draft is 80% done (and not before time it's only taken 3 years) and the first draft of Warrior Rising is only at 40%, but I'll be releasing that 3rd or 4th Quarter next year, none of this depends on if I get a publisher, I'll be self-publishing and at least sell it to the friends who like me enough to do it and the family members who feel generous.

So, if you are seeing this and haven't already bought it, please do and if you liked it leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads and any good review site, because the more people read and review it, the more money the charity get.

ISBN 13: 978-1909845817
ISBN 10: 1909845817
ASIN: B014WQS2GQ

**PAPERBACK**
US: http://www.amazon.com/World-Their-Own-Lindsey…/…/1909845817/
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Their-Own-Linds…/…/1909845817/
CA:
**EBOOK**
US: http://www.amazon.com/World-Their-Own-Lindsey-Parsons-eb…/…/
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Their-Own-Lindsey-Parsons-…/…/
CA: http://www.amazon.ca/World-Their-Own-Lindsey-Parsons-ebo…/…/

Long time coming

Jesus it's been a long time since I posted anything, been to busy I suppose.

So, onto it, well I've passed all but one of my modules for my BSc in Computer Networking, which means a resit in August which is a pain in the ass, but never mind.

The fitness regime is lets say kicking, more I'm getting my ass kicked than me kicking ass but that's cool because I've got hard muscles for the first time in ten years, also I can do proper push-ups again and I'm starting to run the belly off, I couldn't do that with just walking and running last summer. The squats are easy, it's the crunches that are a bitch, and kettlebells are awesome even if they aren't the Onnit Primal bells, they looks so cool but considering they would cost almost £300 before posting and the import tax I can do without. Also I started to do Yoga, yes me, who always made fun of guys who did Yoga, but to be fair I made fun of the new agey assholes.

Carronade 2015 was a rousing success both for the Falkirk club which had it's biggest numbers in clubs, traders and feet throught the door this year, and for the Glasgow District club as well.

We did two displays, my own Assault on Gibraltar using Dystopian Wars (my what a surprise for you all) and a Spanish Civil War game run by Balkan Dave himself.

A few photos are below including George Dick's awesome Rock of Gibraltar, the Britianians were from Bill Robertson's collection and the Prussians are mine, some of which were I will admit whole heartedly finished the night before

 

I could not honestly tell you who won or how the game was played who killed what and what killed them. I was too busy talking with the many people who came to see the game. I let Bill and Sandy do the shooty shooty but ass the landing on Gibraltar never actually happened since we ran out of time I think the Britannians won by default, (BOOOO). We actually ran out of fliers for the game midway through the day, we never run out of fliers ever and the last one went to the Wargames Illustrated's roving reporter, hopefully we'll get a mention.

Details of both games are on the GDWS site.

Assault on gibraltar

There's a Valley in Spain called Jarama

Also Balkan Dave's blogpost on the show



Next up in displays will be an all aerial Dystopian Wars game at Claymore. Yes that's right all airships and fighters. Lots of aces flying around the place. Thing is though it's seven weeks away and I've got pretty much all the Britannians and Russians to paint. Thankfully the Prussians are all done.

I have finished my book I was working on and am currently in the early stages of the first edit before I send it out to have it perused by some people to get their feedback on the various aspects of it. Still on course for the March release next year, whether it's a traditional, indie or a do it myself publishing is yet to be seen.


Also I'M GOING TO THE UFC, yes that is correct I will be in Glasgow at the Hydro on the 18th of July, one of the lucky 13,000 that will witness the first ever Scottish UFC event and what will be the loudest ever UFC event in the history of the organisation. Dana White thought Dublin was loud,  I say fuck Dublin, there's going to be twice as many of us and as everyone knows the Scots are louder than the Irish any day of the week. There's only been 9 of the 12 fights announced so far, so I'm hoping that means some trials for some of Scotland's up and coming fighters. I'm going along with the sister's baby daddy but I know of a half dozen people who got their tickets. It's the fastest sell out of a UFC event in Europe ever, 25 minutes and all the tickets were gone. To say I almost bounced off a wall when I got the tickets would be an accurate assessment, also the shit eating grin I had for a week pretty much summed up how awesome I thought it was.

Still waiting on a release date for the Alliance of Worldbuilders Anthology and will post it when I know. I know there are some issues with it at the moment, I'm not sure what they are but as I said when they are available I will let you know.


All in all not a bad report of the activities.


***EDIT*****

Oh, aye, I forgot, 53 SNP MP's in Westminster (maybe 54 if that lying Wanker Carmichael get's booted out), tae fuck wae the establishment, maybe the EU referendum will give the English the kick up the arse they need to see that the fuckin established wankers aren't working.

Progress Report number how should I know.

Alrighty folks

So, it's been a couple of months since my last update.

Just spent the better part of three months losing over 30 pounds, and any time anyone tells you excercise is fun is talking out of their ass, it's not fun if you are 50 odd pounds from healthy and want to kick that fat's ass, got another nine pounds to go before I get back to the gym and start rebuilding the upperbody and getting arms to resemble the tree trunks that are my legs.

That's going to be slowed down due to me starting my 3rd year of my degree, it started last Monday and I'm already bashing my head off of the wall at one of the modules, Proffesional Issues in Computing, more like philosophical claptrap designed so I don't go out and start destroying people's computers just cause I'm getting paid to do it. I'm already a member of the BCS, the rest of the course isn't bad so far other than the fairly heavy duty labs for Unix, but Unix is frigging important for anyone that wants to deal with more than 2% of the World's servers.

Just found out that I'm potentially going to be published again somewhere around Christmas, you may have noticed that They Rise and We Smite was removed from the blog, that would be the reason for it, there's also another couple potentials. I had submitted it to the Anthology well back into 2011 but it never seemed to ever be going to materialise, hence the posting up here, but my good friend and all around crazy worker Sammy HK Smith, author of In Search of Gods and Heroes, available at Kristell Ink Publishing, and her team at Grimbold books, who recently held a very successful Kickstarter campaign to keep the indie publishing house open for another couple years, are going to publish it, more on that when everything is finalised and I'm actually sure that I'm going to be featured, from recollection They Rise was a bit of a frigging shambles and in need of some serious editing. But I'll probably still shill it anyway since it's a charity anthology and I can resist shilling for charity.

The Falkirk District Wargames Club to which I am a member is doing a Necromunda campaign, which I bought the day it came out way back in 1995 and had been playing in campaigns on and off into the early 2000s but probably not since 2004. I was going to use Ratskins, none of the official models right enough, just some Sci-fi Native americans that I had from some game that I got for nothing that I never ever played, I had converted them and painted them and then played with them a couple of times and promptly realised it that was a slightly dumb idea to use a gang that had no heavy hitters and ancient weapons even for today's standards. So I promptly changed my mind, and decided that I would use one of the House Gangs. Back in the day I used Orlocks, cause back when I was young and stupid, I liked the look of them so I bought them. This time around I decided that I would choose a gang that was more geared to how I play games, full tilt aggresive, so I went for the Goliaths. I was just going to use the plastics I had from the two boxed sets that I had bought in 1995 and 2002 the first for a fraction of the actual price in some one day sale that the Glasgow Games Workshop had on. But the problem with the plastics was no individuality, even putting in new heads and converting heavies, it wouldn't have the flavour of my old Orlock gangs where I only used one of each of the plastic figures, so I went onto ebay to see if I could find any, find many I did, and I promptly put three bids on two of which were essentially the same models, minus one player or another, the other was a group of Orlocks incase I didn't get the Goliaths and I could just supplement my old ones with the new ones. I was thinking, I might win one but I'll never win three, nope I'm an Idiot, I went and won all three, so here I am sitting with all these models and thinking, gods damn it I'm still going to have to get converting shit, though screw trying to convert the heavies, just be two heavy stubber identical twins with some different tatts and a different hair colour.

Once they're all done with the paint jobs, I'll be uploading the pictures from each stage of the process, a well documented one, I like projects like this where every model itself is an individual project in it's self.

As for the writing of the books, it's in it's constant state of who the fuck knows, I think I started another two projects over the summer and really didn't do much of it, though I did manage to sit down and go through Burn Forest City Burn, and decided the title sucked a disesed Monkey's puss infested nut sack, and the second go at the first edit will be beginning as soon as I get a few spare days to sit and go through it, line by line, otherwise the writing hasn't been too far up the line over the last couple of months, felt a little disconnected from my creative side for a while.

For this current Glasgow District Wargamers Society club year I will be doing both the Falkirk Carronade show and the Edinburgh Claymore show, both will be Dystopian Wars, Carronade will be a port strike, witht he Prussians striking a Brittanian port, possibly Malta, or Gibraltar, the port itself I won't be making, that'll be down to the esteamable George Dick who's Wild West town at this year's Claymore (At which we were fuckin well robbed of the best Public Participation game by the Political shitheads at SEWC, who I found to be kind of obnoxious and cunty) was absolutley stunning and made all the more so by his hand crafted Mine. The pictures are somewhere which I can't remember and I'll post them at a later date. The Claymore one will be probably an aerial battle between Brits and Prussians again, mainly cause between us in the club that's the most collected fleets.

Anyway, that's me all up-to-date as far as I can think of.

Adios

Long time gone.

        So, it's been about a month since I posted, been busy.

        At the beginning of the month I was at Carronade, the Falkirk Wargames show, for a display of Battletech, one of two at the show, nice to see the game getting a new breath of life. Pictures and a report will follow soon, just been busy with other things. It was a good game I think, didn't get any people into participate though the show was awash with a whole load of public participation games and the G3 battletech display was using the quick play Alpha Strike rules so it's no surprise we got no play. I did break the no buying more Dystopian Wars ships until the new rules come out rule, when I bought the Ottoman Battlegroup but the boxed set was over 30% off, and I was never likely to see that much of a discount, when you save almost twenty quid you aren't going to argue about it, also bought a blue mat for doing sea games.

       Planning on doing a Dystopian Wars game next year at Carronade, depends on whether or not I can get more assistance from members of the club next year, both GDWS' displays manned by two members a piece, would have been nice if we could have got some help.

         What's been keeping me busy is College which is nearing it's end, only got one exam to go  and that's me done, also got my conditional acceptance to Uni year three the other week which is great. I passed the second to last today with 96%, think I got the best grade in the class which just goes to show if I actually study for shit I pass it with flying colours, wish I had learned that twenty years ago.

          I've based a number of my Dystopian wars ships in lieu of the Display next year, and if I do say so myself it came out awesome, some of them better than others, and like the Falkirk Display pictures will be forth coming. I decided that the plain flight stands were kind of boring with the clear perspex so did some basing of them too, by no means is it a pro job but for my limited experience with basing (the only stuff I've ever done are the Battlemechs that I finished four years ago) they came out damn good.

          Also the writing constantly keeps me busy, more ideas keep flooding in, it's as always the discipline of stopping myself from letting my imagination run amok.

NaNoWriMo Update

Just a little update on the progress for NaNoWriMo

Wrote another two thousand odd words today, O'Hearn being a total asshole towards his enemies as is his norm, piss him off enough and he'll just kill you, piss him off too much he might actually just disable the spine.

Anyway my hand is killing me cause I did it with pen and paper, best way to be able to be able to prove that it's an original story. Now it needs to get typed up, hate having to type up notes, and I wouldn't subject anyone else to trying to read my handwriting. The fact I can't just dictate it onto the damn word processer is a pain in the ass, the fact that it costs a lot money to get a decent speach to text program is beyond ridiculous.

Anyway I'll update the end of week count on the 8th and see how far we have gotten to the total.

NaNoWriMo

Yes, I did it this year, committed Running Out of Space to NaNoWriMo, at least at this point I'm already halfway to the finish line before I even start, I know it's probably cheating a bit but here's the site.

http://nanowrimo.org/

You can sponser me doing it too, it's for charity so if you can please do.

Cheers

David

Time

Hey guys,

Been a while since I posted so I thought I would today. Basically, not had the time for a whole lot of writing other than those that are going to be submitted for anthologies and magazines, sent out a whole load of people the parts of Running out of Space that I've written so far, and currently waiting for the returns, got a short story sitting with a potential publisher int the book Fantasy for Good just waiting to hear back about that, I've got about a dozen short stories to finish writing, or even start, so Return from the Empire's next part isn't written yet, but I've got six days to finish five of the stories so when they're done, I'll go back to that and work on the magazine submissions after I've finished RftE, when I've got news on any of them I'll let you know.

A lot of free time is being eaten up by college studying and the graded unit for it so that's another reason it's been so long, so far it's going well though, hopefully in the coming weeks the free time's going to be freed up since studying won't be so intensive and the graded unit plan's almost finished weeks ahead of schedule.

Looking forward to the 25th of November for Tash Bash at the Classic Grand, a charity gig for MacMillan Cancer Support, loads of the friends that I rarely get to see should be there.

So, keep on the look out for updates on future published work (hopefully) and the next part of RftE.

Cheers

Davie

***Also for those who have already read RftE, it's been edited so it isn't so confusing and crap, alas this is what happens when you are a turd and don't edit shit when you write it.***

WRITE.

As I say, writing is what I haven't been doing a whole lot of recently.

Spent most of the past couple weeks is studying in my spare time.

I really need to start siting down for a couple hours a night writing.

But tonight while in the pub (funny that, me writing in the pub) I felt myself going back to what I had planned on being my autumn main project before Caleb of Bifrost pulled me back into the Magiverse, I began writing Crime fiction, based in Glasgow, something I'd been planning on doing back in the summer. I had got so caught up in working on the Military Sci-fi stuff, that the research I had been planning to do got put on the back burner which frankly was a little rude to Logan Scott who was going to help me out.

Any way, I think if I get a good three hundred pages out of this, it may be awesome, also it may be a pile of crap and too close to the truth.

I think the next blog may be another Blog tour jaunt, I'm drunk so I can't remember.

An excerpt and some thoughts.

  Little bit of Running out of Space, one of my works in progress, it comes in after the main character Caleb O'Hearn has been talking about the history of Psionics and language in the Magiverse to demonstrate his genetic memory from his Magi heritage, that bit is about six hundred words itself and it's a little bit lecturing but part of the rolling history into the story without it being just flung at you so I'm not going to post that. After the excerpt there are a few thoughts of mine on shared universes and collaboration between writers and shared timelines.

****************

'But it's funny to watch you drone on and not even realise it though, but also educational. Learned a little piece about my own heritage while bored shitless about yours.' Kerry-Anne told him and he flipped his middle finger at her. 'That wasn't Magi ancestor knowledge, all of your Magi ancestors were Hunters, Guardians and Soldiers. Where did that come from?'

'Sarah of Trenton, her sire's sire was a Professor of Germanic Languages at the University of New Amsterdam.' He replied with a grimace. 'When the hippie pothead wasn't on a commune.'

'Your warrior attitude would be an embarrassment to him as much as he's an embarrassment to you.' Kerry-Anne chuckled at him. 'Hell his granddaughter was an embarrassment for joining the FIB. He considered the whole notion of war and Big Government pointless.'

'War is fuckin pointless.' O'Hearn sighed and Kerry-Anne gave him a look of surprise. 'Show me a true warrior that wouldn't rather he never had to fight again, and I'll show you a damned liar or a homicidal maniac that should never be in uniform, like dear old dad. It is true, I am never more alive when I am chasing down prey or fighting hand-to-hand in a struggle to the death, but I've been stabbed, shot, sliced open, gouged, blown up, and had to heal from those wounds too many times in what has not been the longest life. I would really rather that I could spend the rest of my considerable life time with my feet up until I'm old enough that it's the end for me and one last battle for me to shuffle off the mortalish coil and sit in Bilskirnir until I am needed  once more.'

************************************

 This plus everything else I'm working on, is running through my mind constantly, interlinking all the Magiverse stories can be a bit of work, especially when you are jumping two thousand years from the time of Gabriel to the time of Caleb,  and even when I jump just under a hundred years to my cyberpunk work, totally inspired by Continuum and Shadowrun, Corporate governments and Megacorporations.

Haven't seen series two of Continuum beyond the third episode been too busy with writing and painting soldiers. I can have TV shows in the background if I've seen them before but if it's new I have to actually sit and concentrate on it. But I'm getting off topic.

When I'm doing the Cyberpunk I have to remember what the map of Gabriel's Terra looks like even though it's all in my head (not the best idea, right now it's a bit fluid), trying to fit the Corporate Nations later in the timeline to nations from earlier in the timeline and then having to remember to use the right names in Caleb's time can hurt your head sometimes but I love reading shared universe fiction, and seeing how they evolve and how the stories evolved from where, granted you don't normally see three different periods on a timeline at the same time but that's me, glutton for the punishment I put upon myself.

I always wanted to be one of those authors that inspires collaboration with his fellow writers, I think that's what makes the Roleplaying, Comic book and TV & Movie shared universes so fun to immerse yourself in is the vibrant and many voiced reality, that no-one person is telling the story. Don't get me wrong they always need a strong hand to guide the ship and some of my favourite books series are written by one hand but I still believe it doesn't happen nearly enough in Sci-fi and Fantasy fiction that many hands help to form a better universe unless they tie in with a TV series or Movies or RPG's. 

Often enough authors will have others write for short story anthologies from their Universe which they edit,  but I think personally that D&D settings especially the Forgotten Realms Novels and even the Games Workshop forever dubbed the Evil Empire, fictional universes are made so much better, deeper and more real by the dozens of authors that write in the universe, though I'm sure most authors wouldn't like giving up money they would make writing their own work. 

People I'm sure will quote the expansions of the Cthulhu Mythos, the Man-Kzin Wars that added to Larry Niven's Known space, the expansion of Asimov's Foundation series and the adding to Lyman Frank Baum's (A prophet was he) Oz, the additions to Robert Howard's (Himself a Cthulhu Mythos expander) Conan, to me but I will also point out none of these except the Man-Kzin wars were ever done in the original author's lifetime.

But I won't deny that's always something nice to see, people trying to anticipate what would this author have written about next if he hadn't passed onto the halls of Valhalla, and I do applaud that, I would however like to see more authors collaborating to expand their own universes.

That's my end for today, off to the Falkirk District Wargames Club tonight, so dinner and work out an army, which I should have done last week when I was sitting on my arse at the club.

Submit I tell you

Okay, it's been ten days since I last posted and I've submitted stories to two places that pay for submissions, and a horror Anthology Burial Day's Gothic Blue Book for 2013 and I've had one rejection back, but funny that it didn't really bother me at all for some reason, but I worked it out after some deep thought, I realized I really don't care where something get's published as long as it eventually does which has spurred my writing on just a little bit.

It might just be because I've only ever before submitted one piece for professional publishing before in Strange Tales from the Scriptorian Vaults which means I'm on a 50% for pro-publishing, I'm sure after dozens of rejections from all over the place I'll feel differently, what I'm wondering is, what if I don't give a even after that possoibility.

I have as big an ego as anyone and I like to know my writing is good or bad or in the middle but when i saw the rejection all I thought was, maybe the next person I submit the story to will like and if not maybe the next, it freaked me out a little that I wasn't freaked out by it. And when I submitted Mississipi Mayhem to Burial Days all I thought was on to the next one which you don't really need to worry about it cause it's half done already. It's only just when I've stopped and thought about it  started to worry where the hell was the guy who was worried sick about his submission to Strange Tales.

All in all I've come to one conclusion.

I'm just weird.

O'Hearn

There was a blog here that was written for the Military Sci-fi series main character I am writing but since I changed a whole lot of things about the story the story didn't actually fit in with the character and the path he was taking it just didn't work with the arc.

 

Interesting

Yeah, so, for the last say 12 hours, (yes, it's after 6 in the morning here) I've been working on nothing other than huge amounts of back story for My Military Sci-fi series (not got a name for it yet, as we all know I suck at titles) what I've been doing was firstly set up the way that the main character's Star Nation's Navy was set up, how each individual section of a fleet from a fleet all the way down to the lowest possible level, which is a huge amount of planning for me, and I actually enjoyed it even if I've just realised I screwed up with the other organizational chart I made up, for the particular section of the fleet that the main character is about to start serving with at the beginning of the book, but I've got every CO for every ship that I've set up so far, every flag officer for each of the fleets, but what's so interesting to me is that this has got me wanting to go forth with writing this despite the fact I've still got the next draft of Burn to finish (I left it alone to do this because part of it was doing my head in, I know the bit I was working on does work because I had the additions and the subtractions to make it work written down, but I can't find the damn pad that has it.

My normal thinking is write, write, write until I sparko from sleep deprivation, if I don't start seeing things and convince myself I've had conversations with people I haven't, one time I was convinced a week had gone by, this is after 4 days of no sleep working on a project that I should have had finished weeks before I did, that was funny, but I have taken a step back and allowed myself to digest everything, that I'm doing, I'm adding character that otherwise, if I just wrote as I always do, wouldn't be there. Don't get me wrong, every single named character I write, even if they're barely in a page of text, all feel real, but this makes the whole world feel more real, and it's weird.

If this seems rather rambling, I've been up since half five Tuesday afternoon, so it's fairly sure to say that I'm a bit tired.

Progress report #1

So, after yesterday's vehement rant I thought I would return to sanity for a little bit and give you all a low down on what's been happening as it comes to my writing.

You may have read a couple of the posts with short stories, and seen a couple of new ideas for characters, but a couple of the characters I've been working on I haven't written short stories for.

I'm of course working on the newest draft of Burn, Forest City, Burn, adding new bits and losing crap bits, once I'm done what I've got down on paper into the computer, I'll have probably added just under ten thousand words and only taken away three or four, leaving it in the 70k range. The original story I felt concentrated too heavily on the good guys without really fleshing out the dark side of magic in the Magi universe.

When I need time away from Gabriel and co but on the same block as them, I've been working on a series called Daemonhunters surrounding the escapades of Maximus Kane, a Daemonhunter, specialist wizard and his sidekick Sarah Bardot, human Cop in the city of Omaha. They're fun characters to write, because they are easy to write, in my mainstay sub-genre of Urban fantasy, so different from Gabriel and co.

Also been working on some Military Sci-fi when I need a break from the fantasy genre, it's still in the same universe as Burn, but ten thousand years later when the human race has reached for the stars and expanded across the Milky way galaxy, befriending, enslaving and decimating alien worlds as we have gone along, and what was once a United Earth has been split asunder by warlords and politicians. Main character is a Naval officer who has many adventures. I'll get around to a short story for it eventually but now it's just something to jump to when not working on other things.

  Lastly when I want to get a little bit more realistic (though it's me, if I tried to do something without a little fantastical fun it would be weird) I've been working on a comic book hero, who I eventually want to write the script for comics but right now I'm doing an origin story novella, and a series of short stories, when I'm done with the first short story I'll be posting it up here. As a huge fan of the comic book medium, but with absolutely fuck all ability to draw, paint or sketch, I'm pretty much screwed when it comes to comic books, so I'm writing what I am. It is really good fun, the character is kind of a cross between Cyborg and Batman, with a little Slade Wilson thrown in for good measure (Yes, DC characters, I know so unlike me to be dropping the DC).

So, hopefully I can finish this draft of Burn by the time my 30th comes along, that's twenty-six days away, if I don't quiet make it I'm sure I'll hit it there abouts, once that's done I can concentrate on something else while it's away, waiting with anticipation for the return.

Saturday Night blogging (part 1)

 Okay dokey folks, bit of a double header tonight. First up a brand spanking new adventure of Gabriel of Alba and Susie Owens, written in around 60 minutes, it's around 1100 words, I had no plan for what I was writing I just wrote, if you think it's any good let me know, let me know if you don't. I've not read it back, I haven't edited it, it's just going up. This is one of the ways I keep my mind on what I'm writing in the novel without writing the novel and getting writers block, which I hate and try and avoid at all costs.

You can't ever win.

"What?" Gabriel of Alba asked Susie Owens as she growled at him.

"You know fine well what." She replied, covered in the goop from a Layoch daemon, her brown hair caked in it. "You slice it's stomach open, it's insides burst out and I got covered in it."

"So what?" He was confused by the look on her face.

"Gabriel, I'm wearing a nice outfit, that cost quite a bit of money, because I was meant to be going on a date." She shouted at him, pointing to her short and muscled body and the mess that the dress and the shoes were in. "Now the outfit is ruined, and I'll have to phone my date and tell him that I won't be able to make it because my idiot of a boss dragged me into something he could have dealt with himself."

"He's a mage, he knows me, he'll get it." Gabriel said with a shrug.

"THAT'S NOT THE POINT." She roared, slapping him on the back of the head. "I don't want him to have to understand that because my boss and partner is an insensitive, pig-headed, pain in the arse, I have to cancel my date. Gabriel, you could have come and did this yourself, it was a nest of Layoch Daemon's a Greenback on their first day could have handled this on their own."

"You are the one constantly quoting regulation 12.b to me, never take on any potential danger without your partner or some other form of back-up." Gabriel shot back with a smug grin.

"Your an ass." She growled at him. "More to the point, 12.b doesn't apply in this case, 12.b is for category five hazardous situations and above, 12.a applies, inform your partner of any potential hazardous situations category one to four. A nest of Layoch's is considered to be a Category three hazard."

"No, a single Layoch daemon is a Category three, a nest of Layoch's is a Category Five." Gabriel corrected her.

"There is also always regulation 12.c, Gabriel of Alba is exempt from the previous two sub-sections unless the Hazard is of Category 13 and higher as he is entirely capable of taking care of them on his own." Susie quoted and he couldn't think of a retort. "Ha, speared by the regulation sub-section you yourself had them add, bet you wish you hadn't now, you jackass."

In all the arguing the pair didn't notice the danger that was beginning to surround them. A pack of Werekin, evil and malevolent lycanthropes turned from human beings into what they were by Truewere's, the blood enemies of the Magi, Gabriel's magical race, and Hell's mortal soldiers, immune to most magic.Werekin despised the monsters they were turned by and in turn all magic users and tried to kill them when they came across them.

"It's not my fault you didn't change when I called you. I would have." Gabriel said to her.

"Gabriel you don't dress any differently whether you're on a date or not." Susie scoffed, waving her hand up and down at the Magi Warmaster who was dressed head-to-toe in black clothes, a hoodie, a greatcoat, a pair of combat trousers and boots which were not all black but mainly black. "I've seen you in something other than this all of once in the eight months I've known you. All you did was instead of a t-shirt, you wore a shirt, and you never wore the New Rocks, you wore plain black boots."

"I'm sure that's not right."

"Oh, no, it's right, believe me." She replied as a clawed hand reached out to grab her. Gabriel's reactions were however measured in nanoseconds as a ball of white flame slammed into the Werekin and threw it into three of it's fellows. "Behind you."

Gabriel turned and lashed out with a double-headed battleaxe of white light that appeared in his hand, taking the clawed hands off of two Werekin assailants.and ducked the sword of one of the few with human-like hands in it's turned form. Lashing out with his free hand he took it in the side, and his superhuman strength sent the beast flying.

 Susie was enveloped in a spherical force shield so none of the beast could touch her. Her chin sat on her chest as her lips moved, quietly mouthing incantations as her hands lashed out, sending bolts of lightening into Werekin, holding them on the spot and electrocuting them. A number of the beasts were hammering on her shield with claws and weapons but none were getting through. 

Gabriel was in about the monsters, laying about with his axe and flicking his wrists to send shock waves into unengaged beasts, snapping bones and holding them off of him. The largest of the beasts, almost as big as a True Werewolf, and most likely turned by one, broke through his defense and scratched it's claws down his chest, tearing fabric and flesh alike. The big warrior let out a feral roar of pain and anger. Letting the axe go, he grabbed the beast by it's hind legs and tipped it over onto it's front, when he had it in the position he wanted he roared, tipped himself back and snapped it's spine with such force the break could be heard a mile away.

With their leader dead, the remaining Werekin ran for the hills, but Gabriel would not let them go, he dropped his hands to his sides and began to shake vigorously, then when the energy he needed was gathered shot his hands out with a piecing howl, everyone of the Werekin exploded in a conflagration.

Gabriel dropped to one knee from the exertion the spell had wrote on him, and Susie helped him to stand, he shook his head to try and get rid of the dizzy feeling.

"You alright?" Susie asked him.

"I'll be fine." He replied with a sigh. "Just haven't used that spell in a long while."

"Yeah, well as long as you'll be alright." She sighed and slapped him behind the head again.

"What the hell was that for?" He asked incredulously.

"That's for almost getting me killed you moron." She replied as if it was obvious. "You bring me along for what you think is a Category five hazard for what was clearly a Category five hazard with the side hazard which was category nine, and I'm still covered in Layoch leftovers, but now it's covered in Werekin entrails and blood. This is never going to wash off."

"Alright, already, I'll buy replacements." Gabriel told her holding his head in his hands. "I can never win, why do I even try."

New stuff

 Little bit of new fiction for you all, short, sweet and new characters for my readers to enjoy. Don't have a title because I suck at titles, suggestions welcome.



Two warriors stood back-to-back surrounded by the foul minions of hell.

Dog faced, goat horned, red skinned, cloven hoofed beasts standing like men, with flaming, acid dripping blades in their hands.

Sarah Bardot creaked her neck and unsheathed her heirloom Guntō in her right hand, having transferred her sidearm into her left. Her riding jacket zipped covered her heavily tattooed torso and arms with it's Kevlar armour plates, her long silky hair held back by her Omaha Storm Chasers baseball cap.

Behind her stood Maximus Kane, tall, Scandinavian and scary as hell, a Viking sword in his right hand and a flintlock pistol in his left, his long leather duster covering the belt that held their sheaths, his homburg covering his hair.

"For the Brotherhood." He bellowed at the top of his voice and threw himself into battle, blasting a hole in one of the daemons, then whipping his sword through the neck of another, as Sarah pirouetted, bellying her ballet training during her childhood in Jerusalem, dodging the abyssal blades of two daemons, slicing the hand off of one and smashing her pistol into the maw of the second and fired blowing it's brains out.

"Well, I must say, life working with you is never dull." She said with a grin as he elbow struck another daemon, he slipped his pistol in it's holster, flipped his hand open and blew the mana dust that had come off his pistol, turning a breath into a conflagration of fire which incinerated the bodies of a dozen of the daemons. "As I said, never dull."

Kane grabbed one of the daemons and snapped it's neck before grabbing a second and running his blade across it's throat. Sarah blasted away with her pistol as she held of daemons at bay with her sword. While his blade had been in his family for twenty-five generations, she had inherited hers from her grandfather, fine for dealing with minor daemons like those they were fighting but not so good for fighting higher daemons, which was the point of the pistol loads.

"I think it's about time we made our way to the boss." Sarah said to him and he nodded, pulling his hands back behind his back, he threw them forward and the force bowled over the remaining Dog daemons in front of him, shattering all the bones in their bodies. "Well done." 

He looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

"Your the wizard, I'm the muscle." She shrugged and followed him past the ruined forms of the dog daemons. "I'm sure as a daemon hunter you know what they are called."

"Hundurhelvíti." He replied, wiping his blade clean of the blood with a cloth, checking it for pitting from the daemon blood. "Islandsk for Dog of hell, pretty much literally."

"First engaged in your neck of the woods then." She said and he looked at her with a scornful look. 

"I'm from Norge, which is part of the mainland, Island, is an island." He replied, using his native language names rather than the English ones, as they moved on up the stairs, further into the dwelling of the daemon lord. Further up the stairs a bat winged daemon launched itself and dropped to land on top of him, but he launched a fist sized ball of ice which exploded like a grenade the shards fragmenting and piercing the daemon's body, slicing it apart. 

Sarah blasted away at the other daemons of it's genus dropped from the lintels they had been perched upon, Kane pulled a six-shooter from another holster and he blew holes in the backs of the daemons heads.

"Gods damned Altimors, I hate winged daemons." Sarah swore, slicing an arm off of one of the daemons that had survived the onslaught from her pistol. 

"At least these are little ones." Kane said headbutting a daemon unconscious, and replacing his hat on his head before killing the prone daemon, as a roar came from above them, both of them looked up and he swore.

"Yeah, you spoke too soon." She shook her head, two feet with huge talons slammed into the floor, the beast had a tail longer than it's legs. It's wing span was twice the size of it's little cousins. The tail smacked Sarah and sent her flying slamming her into a wall and stunning her.

"Hey, óhroða sogskál, I'm going to tear you a new arsehole." Kane growled at the daemon lord.

"Puny little mortal man, I will rip your limbs from your torso, and make you watch as I take the woman so she will bear my mortal spawn." It returned, flapping it's wings to batter him with wind.

"Bitch please, I am no mortal and I am sure as shit not puny." Kane retorted, throwing a force ball at the daemon lord, rocking it backards.

"DAEMON HUNTER." It squealed, attacking him simultaneously with it's sword and it's tail, Kane dodged both and slammed his seax into it's tail, pinning it to the floor. Kane slammed a fireball into it's jaw rocking it backwards and tearing off a length of it's tail.

"You going to give up or are you going to make me kill your ass?" Kane asked it, it swung it's sword in reply. "Fair enough."

Kane's own sword stopped the Daemon lords and he pushed it up, he followed on, picking up the seax, using it and his sword to hamstring the beast, after ducking under the monster, it dropped to it's knees and he backhanded the wings off, before launching himself onto it's shoulders. He dropped his blades to the bottom of it's neck and dug his blades into it's flesh, tearing and shearing until it's head came off, the whole time the paralyzed daemon was screaming at the top of it's lungs. 
  
When he was finished, Kane flicked the blood from his blades and cleaned them off, not bothering with the blood and gore on his clothing. Sarah pushed herself from the floor feeling her head for splits, then walked over to him.

"Who was it?" She said looking down at the daemon lord.

"Azazel." He replied, spitting on the remains. "Fallen Angel, daemon lord."

"You might not want to look behind you." Sarah said to him and he looked to where she was looking. His hat was destroyed and he just dropped his head and shook it. "Told you life was never dull around you." 

Damn brain

Hope everyone who reads the blog across the world had a Merry Christmas (A Happy Hanukkah for my Jewish readers) and a Happy New Year.

I know it's been a while since I was on but I've been rather stuck on a couple of other things, mostly playing waaaayyyyy too much Star Trek Online, I know I got pissed with it two years ago, I got pissed off with SWTOR due to the weak ass shit they're bringing up right now, the fact that they haven't fixed the shit that they were told about in the Beta and other things since but never mind, since STO is free I went and played it to see what they changed and I liked it, so I've been playing it as I said, way too much.

I was fairly drunk a couple of times over the holiday period so I did get some fairly insightful writing down, it happens all the time when I drink, get's better the sloppier I get.

Problem with the writing is I'm not sure where I want to go with it right now, I've got a half dozen ideas swimming around in my brain and I want to finish Burn but I'm still waiting on people getting back to me on their thoughts on it, can't really get back into it until I've got the thoughts on it.

I'm on a bit of an urban fantasy kick right now, all I've been reading is Urban Fantasy, pretty much all of the stories I've got in my head are urban fantasy, the Sci-fi stuffs still stuck in my head.

Anyway, some time soon I hope to have something short stories written and up on the blog and hope to have news on Burn, I really want to finish it to it's final draft before the end of June, and have publishers and agents looking it over.

Jolan tru, Qapla and Live long & prosper.