ElvenSword, chapter 9

In which Fluin starts his training as a wizard, but nevertheless worries about his future.

Read it here.

ElvenSword

I've started posting the rewritten version of my novel, here.  It's a story about a world where bisexuality is normal, where women have the leading roles in society, where omnia vincit amor ( loves conquers all) and where the fight against evil is as vital as it is in our world.

I'll be posting a new chapter every week.

My main character, Fluin, looks like this.

Writing again

I've been struggling to write for ages.  There were a combination of things stalling me: I didn't think my writing was very good, I was depressed, the train in to work every morning (I used to write a lot on the train) was getting so crowded I often couldn't work on my laptop.  When I have some money I'm going to buy a laptop with a smaller screen, so I can open it properly on the train.

But.

I've been rereading Tanya Huff.  I think she's a fabulous author and I love her latest books ("The Silvered" and "An Ancient Peace").  I love all her books actually.  She makes gay and bi seem normal, and she has engaging characters and her stories are often quite gripping.  And I thought to myself: I could do this.

I've also read C.S. Pacat's trilogy which starts with "The Captive Prince".  She's a Melbourne author and she's been published by a mainstream house: Penguin Viking.  And her books were suggested to me by Booktopia the online Ozzie bookstore, even though Booktopia doesn't even have a gay-shaded section on their website (what? really? yep.)

Her writing is intensely erotic  and very readable.  Now, I've included a lot of sex in my stories for a couple of reasons.  The first is that I think sex is natural and healthy, whatever the Abrahamic religions say.  It's part of our genes.  We love making love.  We think about love and sex often.  It's kinda skewed that we have so many "murder-mysteries" when murder is so rare.  How many of us have found a body in the library?  Yet how many times have we made love during our lives?

It's true that writing sex scenes is hard, because you have to make something so intimate and personal into a text that can be read while being neither laughable nor 'off'.  

The second reason I included sex is because there is so much het sexuality out there, and I wanted to write about love and sex between men, as a counter to all that hetero normativity.  

But I assumed that because I was writing about men fucking men (and loving them and it, too), that I would never be mainstream.  After all, Fakebook insists on warning "may offend" when two men are just kissing!  Actually, I'm glad it offends.  Anybody who is "offended" by love, freely expressed between two adults deserves to be "offended".  I hope they get ulcers with it.  And bad breath.  The point is, though, that if C.S. Pacat's novels can be mainstream, so can mine.

I've also been reading Charlaine Harris, whose books are the base of the TV series "True Blood".  I didn't start reading her because of the TV series.  To be honest, I seldom watch TV.  And the reason is that you can't easily  choose what to watch.  Let me explain what I mean.  The first Charlaine Harris I bought was "Midnight Crossroad".   I was a few minutes early for my train home from the city, and so I popped into W.H. Smiths at the station, a branch of the UK "railway bookshop".  And I took "Midnight Crossroad" off the shelf by chance, and flipped through a few pages and immediately liked it.    You can't do that with TV.  You keep on watching a piece of crap hoping it's going to get better and find you've irretrievably lost an hour of your life.  Not that I don't watch DVDs.  But that's different, because I've chosen them.  Anyway, I like Charlaine Harris' novels.  And again I thought:

I can do this.

There is so much writing out there that I don't like.  Writing which bores me.  I want what I read or watch to take me away from my own life.  It's not even a question of liking second-rate writing.  I love Jane Austen and Charles Dickens.  I love Dorothy Sayers and Donna Leon.  I love them because I end up in the 19th century, in Victorian London. in 1920s and 1930s England, in Venice.  I like reading autobiographies, because I am there, wondering at other ppl's lives, admiring their resilience, their survival.  No matter the odds.  As for examples of what I dislike, take "Game of Thrones".  Horrid.  Not a single likable character.  All cinquecento murder and betrayal and pointlessness.  Or Joe Abercrombie.  Fine writing but so fucking depressing.  I see enough of that every day, out there in the real world.  The news is filled with horridness.  Enough.

So I decided to write what I liked.  Not what will sell.  Not what others urge me to write.  I must avoid self-indulgence, but equally, I'm not doing this for money, though I wouldn't mind making a bob or two.  I'm doing it for pleasure.  I'm doing it for fun.  I like my characters.  They are my friends, or at least, my acquaintances.  I love making up a new world.  I want to write about ppl I understand, the damaged, the sad, the lonely, life's failures, and give them some sort of happiness and fulfilment.  My writing would definitely be better if I put my characters through the wringer more.  And perhaps I will, because writing happy things can be too bland.  You need a bit of salt with the sugar.  But the point is, I'm going to write what I want.  With more straight and more female characters.  More fantasy, of all kinds.

And I hope, my faithful and so patient readers, who have given me so much support and encouragement, I hope you enjoy the new stories which flow from my pen.  But I firmly believe that if I write what please me, I will write more. And what I write will be better.  Creation comes from some inner conduit to the divine.  And if you block it, you can't create.  

So here goes.

Depressed ....

.... about my writing.  Or, actually, about my not writing.  I once really believed that I would always write, that I had to write, that I would be in some sense a writer.  I had no illusions: I knew I wasn't a great writer.  Just competent. But my characters spoke to me.  They were real.

Now they are silent.  I don't know whether it was the whole Henrik thing.  Or whether, being the aspie I am, that I've lost interest because I was always going to.  That it was just another of my obsessions, which as they all do, would pass.

I've just finished reading Richard K Morgan's "The Dark Defiles", and it is a quite remarkably good fantasy.  Very dark, very violent, very accomplished.  My writing is so tame compared with his.  I don't put my characters through the hell he puts his through.  And he's so fecking inventive.  Original.   His world sizzles with originality.   I'm in awe.   I hate him.  How dare he be a success when I am a failure!  :-)

 I've been trying to write Majorca Flats--it's just 20 or 30 episodes from the end--but I despair because they're not at my shoulder as they were, encouraging me to go on, or spread out across my sofas being slutty, or suffering and being happy and living as they used to.   It fascinates me how real my creations are--were--to me.  They were truly in some cases more alive than my real, living friends.  And now they are gone away.

Well, I think I must keep on trying, because once there was this pleasure and satisfaction, almost a lust for writing, for inhabiting the world my characters lived in, a world they created, not I, and perhaps it will come again.  Or maybe not.  What I really want to do is get back to ElvenSword and eviscerate it, to make it a fantasy which grabs you by the balls and the heart and keeps you up till 3 a.m. reading it.  I must make it happen, right?  But how?

New chapters

I've uploaded new chapters of Footy and I get no kick from champagne to my website.

Sven de Rennes

It was fantasy which first drew me into writing.  I love fantasy and I wanted to read about worlds where people like me were normal.  Not enough authors were writing stories like that, so I decided to write my own.  The result was ElvenSword and its sequels.

Sven de Rennes is an artist from Rennes in France; you can read his blog here.  This image is classic fantasy.  I love it.  Have a look also at this article in Wilde Oats about gay-shaded artists .

Writing

Yesterday I managed 960 words on Majorca Flats.  Now, for me, that's a world land-speed record!  At say, 160 words per episode, that's 6 episodes (as it happens in fact, fewer, because two consisted of 300 plus words as they were a letter and an email response)  So far, just under 20,000 words and 92 episodes written (79 published) !  All this has given me confidence to believe that I can start doing AngelFire again, and this morning I wrote just under 300 words and on the train on the way home from work, I'll be able to do another 400, which would give me together with what I've already written a (shortish) chapter.  So from now on, I'll be writing MF one day and AngelFire the next.

It's wonderful feeling the flow of creativity again, to not feel stymied by all my writer's blocks.  Writing makes me happ/y, -ier, and it helps marvellously with the blahs.

So ... holding thumbs (which of course prevents typing!!!!), I shall have a new chapter of AF up by Sunday.

When I've finished AngelFire, I'm going to go back to The Torc.  This will make 4 Tapestry of Life novels completed, and of course, there are also lots of short stories and a novella set in this world.

Onwards & Upwards

[This amazing image is from this website]

Melissa Scott

Melissa Scott writes "alternative sexuality" SF/fantasy. I did a long piece on her Silence trilogy (as well as on 3 other novels by other authors) for my column 'Quickies' in Wilde Oats. Quickies is supposed to be short reviews of gay-shaded novels and films, but sometimes I find they get a bit longer! Anyway, the whole 'Quickies' column is here.


I've included the cover pics for these three novels. Aren't they gloriously old-fashioned? I think I rather prefer them to the modern SF covers.

Aside from being great yarns (like all SF and fantasy should be) they're interesting because Silence has a multiple marriage, to the two men pictured on the cover of Five-Twelfths of Heaven. MS doesn't go into details about how they sleep together, but before the guys met her, it was just the two of them. Fascinating. How would it work out?

I have my own speculations, based on the relationships of some ppl I know, which I discuss in Footy, and which I take for granted in the Tapestry of Life series.

And this series was published over 30 years ago, by a mainstream SF publisher, Baen!

ElvenSword

Looking back on it now, I have to say I'd write it differently. A bit too florid, for me, these days. But it was my first novel, and I've already rewritten it about 10 times. So I'm not to keen on rewriting it again. Anyway I've posted another chapter at my website. I loved writing it. There was this whole fantasy (if you'll forgive the word) of a world where love is polymorphous and in some cases positively promiscuous. Men love men and women, sometimes at the same time. Something I think would be a good thing in our world, though one must always be alert to unintended consequences.

They do say that you should write your first novel then throw it away: because you learn so much doing it, and your subsequent novels will be so much better that you'll be embarrassed.

Well I didn't, and so you get to read it. Or not, as the case may be. I might still rewrite it, or rather re-edit it, but... there are so many projects still in the pipeline.

Anyway, enjoy. Oh and enjoy this image of Orlando Bloom. Mega cute.

Chapter 4 of I Get No Kick from Champagne

It's been uploaded to my website. You can read it here.

In my story, the kribothneia are like harpies, only both male and female. The pic came from here (I'll take it down if you don't like it, honest)