Articles from July 2010

As part of my research into magic in the Middle Ages I have been reading Lives of the Necromancers by William Godwin (published in 1834). It is not the most thoroughly researched of academic texts on the subjects, but it is fine for getting an overview of legends related about a number of medieval thinkers [...]

I’m currently in the early stages of actually writing my novel Hell has its Demons at the moment. Because of the complexity of writing within a historical background I have been taking a carefully planned approach to writing and employing the techniques of the snowflake method, where you build up the plot structure of the [...]

I have noticed while reading A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin, that there are lot of viewpoint characters in this book. This owes something to the complexity of the plot and the diaspora of the Stark family perhaps, but I think it’s also a conscious technique by Martin to keep the reader [...]

If you are interested in the research of magic and witchcraft in the middle ages you may have come across the following seminal works: Henry Charles Lea‘s A History of the Inquisition (3 volumes): although this title covers all of the activities of the inquisition and therefore mainly the crime of heresy, there is also [...]

Steven Till, a fellow blogger and writer of historical fiction, has posted a very kind review of Bisclavret (The Werewolf) over at his blog. Steven found the story “engaging and thrilling. As an eighteen page short story, it reads quickly: his pacing is good, the dialogue is tight, and the plot is absorbing. His style [...]

As well as going over a 1,000 downloads this weekend, my short story The Human Factor, has also got onto the second page of results for Science Fiction in Feedbooks! I guess getting higher up the most popular list for certain tags has probably increased the popularity. I’ve certainly seen downloads actually increase the longer [...]

How amazingly self-indulgent of me, but I thought Sunday would be a good day for reflecting on some of the blog posts created over the last month that have also drawn the most hits over the last month, so here they are the top five! Review of Iain Banks iPhone App – way out in [...]

So far in my Smashwords and Feedbooks adventures I have published three stories on Feedbooks and two on Smaswords. I found it quite interesting to compare the two. Of the two stories on Smashwords, one I am charging for, Bisclavret (The Werewolf), and one, The Human Factor, I have made free. On Feedbooks I have [...]

A couple of days ago I started reading the second volume of  A Song of Ice and Fire series by George RR Martin, A Clash of Kings. I read the first book, A Game of Thrones, a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it, but I hadn’t had time to pick up the second [...]

This is the start of a regular series of posts about favourite characters from fiction. First up one of the vividly realised characters at the centre of Joe Abercrombie‘s First Law Trilogy. Logen Ninefingers (aka the Bloody Nine) is a mercenary and ex Northmen military leader. He’s a berserker with a brain, and as his name [...]