The Boulevard Montmartre at Night Camille Pissarro There is a quote from Pissarro I like. I read it once on one of those little white placards they have in galleries, the small micro-essays that sit beside the painting. Have you ever noticed how people tend to spend more time reading those little placards than looking…
Rather neglectful update
Starry Night Jean-François Millet It has been quite some time since I posted any updates or writing. I did consider spinning a story about how Auberon sent me off to beguile a bean-feed mooncalf, or similar, but the truth of it is that lecturing this semester has run me off my feet. I have an outline and some…
Boulders and Hills
https://vimeo.com/159069175 I was quite struck by this video. The phrase ‘exploring the wilderness of your intuition’ especially caught in my mind. I have been thinking a lot lately (maybe to a slightly unhealthy degree) about failure and how we know when we’ve failed at something. How do we know when the better course would be to accept defeat?…
A House of Snow & Apples
I have, at long last, released the second tale in The Winter King. This has taken quite some time, and much longer than I anticipated. Largely, the delay is because I wrote an entirely different book, A Charm for the Nameless Child, which was supposed to be Part Two, and ended up being a little too disjointed…
Cover: The House of Snow & Apples
I’ve just finished a (perhaps still slightly rough) copy of the cover for The House of Snow and Apples. This will now be Book Two of The Winter King. Book Three will be Fair Upon the Tor (incomplete). Book Four will be A Charm for the Nameless Child (complete, 100,000 words). I didn’t really do…
Updates and Suchlike
Just a quick update to say that Allie Sumner posted a very thoughtful review of A Treasure of Bone & Promises at her book review site Allie’s Opinions. I’m still some way off having The House of Snow and Apples ready for release, although I have at least started in on the cover art. I’ve uploaded…
The House of Snow & Apples: Second Draft Complete
I’ve now finished taking my on-paper edits and using them to make changes into the Pages file for The House of Snow & Apples. It’s only a 40,000 word novella (or novelette? I can never remember the divisions and categories), so it didn’t take nearly as long as a full 100,000 word novel would have. One thing…
Edits, Edits Everywhere
It’s a hot day outside, the sky a sort of molten, carved-out sapphire blue. It’s one of those days that you either need to embrace fully with a trip to the beach or sitting under a tree in the local park, or failing that, hide from in an air-conditioned space. I have edits to wade through,…
Second Drafts & Colours
I’ve finished the on-paper edits now for The House of Snow and Apples, and am slowly transferring them across to the Pages document I write in. It’s now sitting at about 40,000 words, though cutting and adding may change that slightly. The other thing I’ve been thinking about lately is racial diversity in fantasy. I mean…
The House of Snow & Apples: First Draft
Well, The House of Snow and Apples, Book Two of The Winter King, is complete as a first draft at 39,000 words. I just typed the last line. It took me longer to get to the end, and the story is much longer than I initially estimated. Certainly, when I started the story in mid-January I…