Although George R. R. Martin‘s A Song of Ice and Fire series are fantasy fiction, and therefore anything goes, there is no denying that it is set within a fairly strong medieval setting. The Knights, titled Ser rather Sir, ride warhorses, joust with lances, feast in castle halls etc. I think one of the strengths [...]

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 [...]

The main character of The Easy River to Success is a government minister by the name of Benetus. This character is a Machiavellian type who has used cunning, his way with words and also a bit of magic to gain prominence at court. I really wanted to steer away from the cliche of having a warrior or [...]

I thought it would be interesting to give some more background on my recently published short story The Easy River to Success. The story was published recently by Planet Magazine and is available there for free viewing. Please go over and take a look. I would be interested to know what you think of the [...]

With reference to my last post about Devices and Desires, the characters have become a lot clearer and different for me now – the realisation for me happened after about 300 pages. I won’t say how exactly but the main characters slowly seem to accrue more differentiation in their manner, style and motivation. Perhaps the [...]

This looks quite interesting, and the plot is definitely up my street: “14th century crusaders take a woman accused of witchcraft to an abbey where the monks will examine her and determine if her sorcery is the cause of the Black Plague which has decimated Europe.” Video Trailer for Season of the Witch And here: [...]

The Bookseller released some statistics today on the top 100 selling authors in the UK market from 2000 to 2009. I have extracted the fantasy authors from their data to put together the following list: 1          Rowling, J K                    27,556,478 units, revenue of  £215,876,812.77 6          [...]

How do you write a good combat scene? I set myself an exercise over the weekend of analysing what works for me as a reader in some of my favourite fantasy books. Tolkien’s Avoidance The weird thing that I found was that in some cases where I thought there would be quite a bit of [...]

A bit of a rant about Genre As a participant in some online critiquing networks I come across a fair amount of unpublished stories written by authors, like myself, who want to get publish. These networks tend to be genre orientated – so for fantasy and science fiction for instance. I hope I’m not slagging [...]

I saw this over at Enter the Octopus and felt to get the word out – looks like an excellent – a number of short interviews with the likes of Peter Beagle, Karen Joy Fowler, Michael Swanwick, Mary Rickert, Jeffrey Ford, John Kessel, Delia Sherman, Ellen Klages, Gene Wolfe, Charles de Lint, and Fantasy and [...]