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.

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

Happy New Year

Howdy all,

A happy new year to you all.

Been a while since I posted so I thought I should probably hit one out today.


So, update on the writing, been writing a lot of back story for my Military Sci-fi series, along with all the characters, as well as working on all the armed forces. Been working on the actual books themselves but you need to put the work in too.

Also in the early process of work on a collaborative effort with my good friend Ferdinand, it's kind of a post apocalyptic Fantasy where we'll have two opposing forces of magic, in the very early stages of it working on the magic systems themselves.

My painting project this year is the Dystopian Wars Prussian fleet that I got  for Christmas, though only half of it has appeared, still waiting on Wayland Games even dispatching their half. The games a good laugh and hope to have the fleet painted in time to display it at Carronade next year for Glasgow District Wargamers Society.

Talking of displays at Carronade, this year alongside the club's Bannockburn display (Of course we're doing Bannockburn, it's the 700th anniversary this year) myself and Sandy Dewer will be pooling our Battletech collections and fighting the Battle of Bannockburn Bog on the Planet of Skye. Hoping to make it a mix of display and public participation. It's a massive switch of the regular displays by GDWS, apart from the occasional Very British Civil War display, everything I've ever seen in my many years as a member is Historical (or Semi-Historical), hopefully this switch is well received.

Apart from that College is going great, almost completed everything from the first semester of the HND, and looking forward to next year and entering the third year of UWS's Computer Networking degree, it will be delivered at Cumbernauld but it'll still a degree course.

Hoping to post more short stories up and finish off Return from the Empire but I had the plan to post a lot last year and it never materialized.

I'll sign off now and get back to doing something constructive.

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.

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.

Looking for readers

Right, ladies and Gents, I'm in the process of editing Burn, Forest City, Burn and I'm looking for people to read it for me and let me know what they think, this is the second draft and I'm hoping to get maybe another draft or two in before I submit it on the 31st of December for Fox Spirit books, and once I'm done also farm it out looking for publishers other than Fox Spirit..

I know not a lot of people have time to read and edit a book, trust me, I've been the process myself for this book, so I'm not expecting you to if you want to read the book, if you are willing to edit a couple of chapters that would be helpful, but I'll find someone to do a full edit before it's submitted.

Just email me, at davidjmmuir@yahoo.co.uk, leave a comment for me to get back to you here or message me on facebook : http://www.facebook.com/davidjmmuir.

Cheers guys.

The Next Big Thing

Do you want to play a game? No, this isn’t some weird ‘Saw’ horror malarky, but a game of ‘blog tag’ that’s circulating at the moment. I was tagged by Sammy HK Smith, who writes like me in a whole load of genres, right now she's working on Anna, a dystopian work, that is kind of outside my wheelhouse.

Thing is I don't have anyone to blog tag, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway.

The blog tag game involves answering questions about your current work in progress.

What is the working title of your book?

As with all times in the coming and goings of the world, I'm working on more than one, but currently when not affected by the worst case of writiers block I've ever had I am working on one called Magic in the Blood. I am also editing the first draft of Burn, Forest City, Burn.

What genre does your book fall under?

 Like a lot of my work recently Magic in the blood is urban fantasy, but then alot of my work in recent times is Urban Fantasy, very much in the vein of the Dresden Files, and stuff like that. But MitB in a turn around it isn't in the Magiverse (yes I coined a verse for myself) that Burn and my military sci-fi series and my short story book are based in.

 Burn is itself an Urban Fantasy book but it also has is set in an alternative world that is vastly different from our own, where magic is a power unto itself and the people who police the world don't like the normals getting invovled, which also includes elements of Sci-fi other than the alt world concept, it has alternate realities, time travel concepts and throws the history books out the window.

Give a brief synopsis of your book.

Magic in the Blood involves two primary characters, which is a bit of a departure for me, my writing in the past either involves one primary character or between three and six primary characters. I've been reading lots of different genres recently and other than the Urban Fantasy ones the books I've most got into have two primary protagonists. It's basically the set-up story, set a couple of years in the future, introducing Damien Ambrosius Caledonensis McCain Wizard of the 1st order, and Detective Sergent of the Scottish Police Force, his official title being liason between the SPF and the federal agencies of the USA, but his actual job is liason between the Magic World's law enforcement the Sheriff's and the Watchmen, operatives of the neutral Grey Council, and the non-magical law enforcement in the US. He is asked to consult with the SFPD's Major Crimes unit and Sergeant-Inspector Carmen Isabel Cortez, uninitiated daughter of Constantine Cortez, Damien's mentor, when Major Crimes is caught up in a power struggle between two rival magic houses, one of the Light and one of the Dark but with humans getting caught in the middle and getting killed by magic, pretty much a no-no even for Dark magic practitioners.

Burn, again is a first book, an introduction for the three primary protagonists, Gabriel of Alba, Magi Warmaster, Suzie Owens, Wizard and his partner and Sarah Morrow, a Federal Investigations Bureau agent and the very different world that they live in, and by very different I mean so different that it requires a cartographer to draw a map of the world they live in. The basic story is a Pyromancer goes nuts in the City of Cleveland, and Gabriel and Suzie who work for the United Magical Investigations Agency, get sent to sort it out, aware that Sara and her team at the FIB's Unexplained Phenomina Division are looking into it, but none of their team are at this point even aware magic exists. The story has a number of twists and turns and pretty much screws with the order of things, but it sets up the series and explains some very intricate ideas without becoming too bogged down in minutae.

Where did the idea come from for the book? 

With MitB it was very much a merging of different stories and different characters that had been running around in my ideas folder for a while, the characters in it are amalgams of a number of characters I've written over the years, but the setting is different from anywhere I've ever written before, most of my stuff when the series is set in a particular city in the US, since I'm not an American myself, is normally either LA or New York, but then they are the city's I know best in the US since most crime TV series are based in these citites, but I wanted something different this time, so I did a bit of research on different cities in America and decided on San Fransisco, mainly the differences between it's Police department and most of the other departments or Sheriff's offices, inspectors instead of detectives. With the magic side of it I hadn't read anything that wasn't leading up to a crescendo, some big battle a ways down the road where good had to triumph over evil to save the world, every fantasy series has it whether it's the Wheel of Time, Dragonlance or the Dresden Files, even though Dresden's a half decent mage he's still getting in the middle of some heavy shit, and at some point some evil's needin it's ass kicked. With Damien nothing is black and white, it's just the world as it is, shades of grey and at either end there is the Light and the Dark, but he's there to keep everyone in check, he's a powerful Wizard but he's not going to save the world for the light or destroy the world for the dark, he's going to slap anyone who tries down to keep the world in balance, because for there to be good in the world there has to be evil and eveything has to be in balance.

 Burn was just something that came from my totally messed up head. At the time I started writing it I had never read any Urban Fantasy, I didn't even know there was such a thing as Urban Fantasy, I was totally in the dark about it at that point. It came about because I was sick of writing the traditional fantasy settings, your Sword and Sorcery, High Fantasy and Sword and Sandal types. I love reading them, but I didn't feel at that time that really there wasn't something that hadn't been done before, so I started work on Burn, mixing the fantasy, the sci-fi and alternative history with crime stories that I had been reading a lot of at the time, and it was just something totally different, it evolved into a series of fairly brutal stories set in this alternative world that just sprung from my head from nowhere. But as with everything else I got sidetracked and went and wrote other things, many of them in the same world as that Gabriel, Sara and Suzie inhabit, and many of them with two or three of the characters themselves involved, and it took me until almost a year after beginning the book to complete the final chapters back at the end of September beginning of October and I am working on the bits that I alreayd know needed fixing, and I don't mean the grammer.


Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

This is actually something I think about an awful lot, because I've got to admit I like having a basic facial structure for my main characters that I can go to artists, well this is their basic look, or they look like this person, and it extends eventually into the other characters. for Damien it would be hard because the guy is 6 foot six and built like the side of a house so it would probably have to be somebody that was specfically brought in to play the character, and I would really not like anyone other than a Scotsman to play the character, I find faked Scottish accents to be terrible, for Carmen I'd go with Natalie Morales, she's about the right age, got the right look, I think she's a very good actress .

For Burn, I had a very definate look at actors and the closest I ever got to Gabriel was Gerard Butler for the look and size, then I saw Game of Thrones and Richard Madden, again it's the whole people who aren't Scottish do shit Scottish accents, but yeah he'd be awesome if he bulked up. For Suzie it was always Anna Popplewell and for Sarah I always had Taylor Schilling in mind for that part, and for a couple of the minor characters I had ideas who I would like to play them, for Hjordis, Gabriel's Magi right hand, Linda Zilliacus who is Finnish, for Special agent Tyrone I was thinking probably Anwan Glover of The Wire and for Maria Adler of the UPD Martha MacIssac from Superbad.