Hello folks

Howdy folks,

Been while since I've posted, so lets get an update for you, my computer went ballistic on me, as in total fuckin Armageddon of the system, so haven't been PC gaming at all in almost six weeks, been using this netbook that I'm using to write this.

This is due to the fact that I realized that i spent far too much time gaming and if I can't game then I won't, though I still watch far too much TV for my own good. So, basically, I still fart about with too much time spent watching downloaded TV but I write more than I had been.

Netbooks suck ass though, they are waaaaayyyyyyy too small and waaaaaaayyyyyyy too slow, which is why I have my keyboard and mouse plugged into this thing and don't try and do too much at the same time.

Anyway, hoping to have some short stories up soon, and will update on status of Burn when I have any updates.

Cheers

David

It's ma Birthday

Yes, today I turn 30, and unlike most people I'm sure would do, I'm not going to look back at my life so far with nostalgia, I have plenty of that when I bump into old workmates or friends that I haven't seen in ages, and I get nudged towards the nearest decent pub for a quick drink and a blether before they have to go meet their significant other or get their sprogs. Me on the other hand, I just go to my pub, the pub that I tend to end up in even if I've been elsewhere in Glasgow on a night out, Rufus T. Firefly, my spiritual home, where half of my best writing is conducted, while heavily under the influence of Pints of Strongbow Cider or very occasionally double vodkas.

No, today I am looking to the future, and hopefully by the time I hit 31 being on my way to publishing Burn, Forest City, Burn, (since I haven't bothered my ringhole doing any editing, because I've been busy on other stuff, in the past four weeks, I really have to get on that) or one of the other novels I'm in the midst of writing.

Also by that time maybe I'll have met my future wife, but I highly doubt that, you have to actually bother your arse chasing skirt to do that, something I can't really be arsed with. I'm as shit at it as I ever was, well maybe not as bad as I was when I was a spotty, bumbling 16 year-old with no clue about life, all I could talk about was Football, Ice Hockey and RPG's but at least now I have added several more topics to my repertoire, like more sports, different types of games, comics, fantasy and sci-fi in general, but also current affairs and by that not who the lastest media darling is dating, instead why on the Gods' green fuckin Earth would the Congress of the United States which in my opinion is filled with the biggest bunch of backwards, moronic, Right Wing Conservative and Bleeding Heart Liberals yahoos you could ever meet, would take two weeks off that would coincide with their fuckin government going broke

 Yes, I am a massive geek, so what, I'm also highly intelligent, just foul mouthed and never know when caution is the better part of valor, the number of jobs or units I've been removed from for saying far too much or bollocking the wrong person, is more than I can count on my fingers and toes.

All I want to do today is veg and booze, so I will bid you a good day

Bored

Yeah, so it's been a couple of weeks since the last post and I have been writing but I still have not even bothered editing Burn since I decided I'd have this round of edits done by my 30th which is on Wednesday, so I'm not holding my breath on that one. I've been working on other things, but also I've been reading a lot, mostly stuff that I've already read, re-read the Vatta's war books, and some others, but a few things for my friend who runs a publishing imprint, read some good stuff, some not so good stuff and some truly terribly written crap.

I've been re-reading the books by a guy called Clive Owen, former Bobby (that would be Police officer in Great Britain, not that it's so great), he wrote four books about Police and policing in the late 70's, and they are top of the drawer fan-fuckin-tastic, they are hilarious, at times a little disturbing but I read them and can see in the cops in the book cops I personally know, and pine for the good old days when crooks got what they deserved and got treated like the scum they are.

 Most people who know me know I'm a fairly liberally minded person but I come down on the fairly harsh side of law and order, scum should be treated that way, and should reap what they sow, but then we have had too many bleeding heart liberals campaigning on behalf of us all that say criminals are humans too and should have all the rights everyone else, WRONG, they are thieving, murdering, raping scum and thus they should be treated accordingly. But thanks to bleeding hearts we are in a position where Criminals live far better lives in prison, they get there TV's, there games consoles and their satellite TV and three square meals a day, so they commit crimes they go to back to the cushy life. I mean shit, there was a massive kick up by bleeding hearts in the last election how prisoners weren't getting to vote, nor fuckin should they, they're criminals, personally I think if you've been convicted of any crime that requires any jail time at all you shouldn't get to vote at all, no matter if you've done your probation, voting should be the right for behaving like a proper member of society your whole fuckin life but what the fuck do I know. 

Anyway, got off on a tangent there. So, Clive Owen's first book in the series is called Horse's Arse, read it, it's good. And I'm going to go do something else, like got to sleep maybe since it's after twenty past three in the am.

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.

Rant time

Evenin folks,

It's time for another patented (pun intended) rant from your friendly neighborhood crazy.

A friend of mine posted this on facebook and I became fairly annoyed because of it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21380003

This is a pretty much a fuck you to the company Games Workshop, so anyone reading this from the company, try threatening me with legal action, go the fuck ahead, you can suck my balls, it's called freedom of speech assholes.

As a former player of Games Workshop games, former purchaser of your products, if find it a joke. You screw anyone who buys your products with over priced figures and games, there are plenty of 28mm producers who price their products far lower than yours and yet they are much smaller than you, don't see how you justify that same as I don't see how you justify screwing someone who is just trying to make money to do what they love doing and make some money from it, the Trademark on Space marines is meant to protect the Space Marines from being copied by others for profit, but I find it funny when you have Quake, Timesplitters, Halo, Dead Space, Mass Effect and Starcraft, which as we all know is a thinly veiled 40k knock off, you haven't sued Eidos, EA, Blizzard or Microsoft for using the Space marines in their games, it's because you are afraid that if you did you would get laughed out of court, but you sue someone who would have absolutely no way of fighting you because they don't have the money to do it back doors the term becoming IP of Games Workshop. It's not only despicable, it's downright corrupt, but then I'm not surprised by that coming from the Evil Empire of Wargaming.

I've got two words for that.

FUCK YOU.

As a Science fiction and Fantasy writer I find it absolutely appalling that you are trying to co-opt a term that has been used in Science Fiction for over eighty years, considering you assholes got the idea from Traveller and Laserburn, so my Space Marines from my Military Sci-fi series become unusable, I don't think so assholes, and you can go ahead if/and when I publish it to try and sue me, take me to court all you like, I live in the UK and oh, yeah, we have a little thing called Legal Aid, so the kind of thing that works against Americans that can't afford it doesn't happen here.

In short, FUCK YOU, you greedy, thieving assholes.

Saturday Night Blogging (part 2)

Part 1 closely followed by part 2. This is a story that has been edited a couple of times, various bits added and subtracted until I was happy with the end product because when I looked at it until that last time it just felt it wasn't right.

I felt after what I've been doing and talking about today that two examples of different ways I write, the first totally unplanned, unedited, uncut, this was submitted to a short story thread on a writing website after it had been edited a couple of times were appropriate for me to share.

Now a little of the back story of Gabriel and Susie's reality has changed since I finished this story, but I haven't edited that because it's fiction and fiction is fluid, when it get's published in a book then it'll get fixed, but now it's just this a case of this is something I've written, enjoy it and let me know what you think, this story is only about a thousand words.

Fury of the Ages

 

 

Gabriel of Alba’s fist met flesh and the Sorceror rocked back. The Gabriel grabbed his opponent by his collar and landed a headbutt upon the foul dark magic user’s nose. Blood and cartiledge exploded from and he ducked down. The War Master of the Magi’s free fist met the recidivist’s neck and smashed his spine.

His partner Susie Owens, Wizard of the Sydrian School, fought her opponenets Magic for Magic, shields being pummled with spell after spell. She faced three Priory members at once and was just about holding her own, when a lightning bolt shot from Gabriel’s hand and exploded two of the dark magic shields.

His own shield was being peppered with spells as he stalked towards the Mistress of the Priory, her people and the Daemon’s that they had conjured using the life force of a Magi child protecting her like a living shield.

He caught two of the Priory by their coat tails as they tried to flee from him, his own hand wreathed in flames and sparks igniting the cotton of the men’s coats. He knocked the men clean out so they were incinerated by the flames enveloping them.

Gabriel refused to allow the remaining children of his people to die at the hands of these soulless wretches share that first boy’s fate. Lightning bolts and fireballs flew from his hand as Priory member after Priory member fell to his fury.

The Mistress saw the fire in his eyes, white hot and filled with the fury of the light. She directed the half-ton eight foot, almost reptilian, Cordisangui daemons to either kill him or at least weaken the furious War Master.

A feral roar issued from his mouth, almost like the roar of a lion, as a double headed axe, wreathed in white flame appeared in his hand, for him to swing at the first Daemon that came into reach.

He bisected the daemon, groin to head, and then sliced the next in two, he beheaded a third and transected a fourth, each with a single stroke of the weapon.

“I am Gabriel, Son of Galdanis and Shiona, War Master and Warrior of the People. I am Death Incarnate.” He bellowed at the top of his lungs in the Warrior tongue of the Magi

His axe clove left and right, taking arms, legs and heads from human and Daemon alike. Susie had dispatched the last of the three Priory members in her path to the children, slamming him into a wall with a sickening thump. She unshackled them, but they all stared in awe of the de facto leader of their people.

The Magi War Master was like an engine who wouldn’t stop. Lightening bolts, fireballs and shards of ice flew from his free hand as the axe took apart yet more of the Priory.

He reached the Priory mistress and grabbed her by the throat, his eyes had changed into those of pure white light, and his accent was no longer that of a man born and bred in Glasgow, she had never heard the accent before.

“I am here to serve justice for the life you have taken and those that you would end.” He told the Priory Mistress who’s eyes were full of fear. “I name thee Omnino diabolus incarnatus inredux by the ancient laws of the Magical world, I cast your rotten soul back to your Dark Masters in hell.”

With a single twinge of his wrist he snapped her neck and threw her lifeless corpse to the ground, then launched the axe with eery accuracy so it decapitated the last of the remaining Cordisangui daemons.

His hands dropped, along with his head, then were lifted up to the sky and a bolt of lightning struck him. Using his body as a conduit it began forking into every living member of the Priory, electrocuting them on the spot.

Another roar issued from his open maw, the power surged through the body of the War Master and it would be awe inspiring if Susie wasn’t sure that he was no longer in control of it. She ducked and dived in order to avoid the forks as they continued to keep aloft the desiccated and charred remains of the Priory.

She reached him and tried to shake him to awareness.

“Gabriel, stop it you are going to die if you don’t stop it.” She said, almost crying at him, she realised she wasn’t getting through with his own name. “Michael, Stephen, Liam, Angus, Shaemus…”

She continued on using the names of his ancestors until she reached back almost a million years. His eyes returned to their normal colour.

“How long?” Gabriel asked her, sagging and almost falling to his knees, his voice back to normal. “How long Susie?”

“Almost before Pythia.” She replied with a concerned look on her face. “It’s getting worse Gabriel, I don’t know if I can pull you back if you push before Pythia.”

“Don’t worry,” he said with a tight smile. “You will, at least the children are safe.”

“You are far too important to let yourself lose control like that. You must not let it happen again, you are magic’s future.” She said with a wet growl, she was almost sobbing.

“No, my dearest friend Susie,” he replied with a smile, holding her tightly, and pointing to the children. “They are the future of magic, I am but a conduit for that future to spring forth and I always was.”

“They Prophecies…” He interupted her with a hand.

“The Prophecies are vague and inexact, in due time I will fulfil them and you will see just how vague.” He let her go and walked towards the children. “Come let’s return these lucky ones to their parents and break the news to the ones who are lost, may they rest in the embrace of the Great Father and Mother until it is their time to walk the world again.”