Damon Lord - Dark and speculative fiction author

I love the Kindle 3G

2012-01-31T00:02:00.000Z

For Christmas I got a Kindle 3G, or Kindle Keyboard 3G, Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 3G Works Globally, 6" E Ink Displayas Amazon labels it. I have to say it is a godsend. The picture shows me holding my Kindle, with the text displayed at maximum size whilst reading China Miéville's Un Lun Dun.

Quite simply, I love it. After my eyesight became problematic three years ago, I have had more and more trouble reading books, which is a real problem for a writer like me. The Kindler is the 21st century solution to this. A Kindle does have its advantages over books in portability, so you can carry hundreds or thousands of books in one go (whereas if you're travelling you're limited to one or two), and if you get the keyboard one with free 3G connection, you get the ability to turn your book into an audiobook without having to buy the audiobook separately (an ability lacking with a Sony ereader, for example).

It's also good for the visually impaired because of the ability to change font sizes and because of the afore-mentioned read-to-me facility (a feature currently only available on the keyboard model, as far as I am aware), and cheaper than the DAISY book readers often promoted to visually impaired people.

The menus cannot be enlarged unfortunately, but you can also navigate the Kindle with a voice guide (on the 3G version) with spoken menus, descriptions and items. You have to turn on the guide separately, but you can then change between a male and female voice whilst actually reading a book, and this then applies the voice settings to the whole Kindle.

It also has the facility to access the web anywhere in the world for free, which is always a bonus, although there is a big downside in that text enlargement and read-to-me facility does not work with the web browser, so I have to resort to magnification to read the Kindle then. It also frequently freezes up and crashes when surfing the web, needing a reset to get the Kindle working again.

Another improvement would be if there was an option to invert the text. You only get the choice of reading black letters on white, and some people with visual impairments would prefer the inverse. It's not possible to do it on the Kindle itself, but it is an option on the desktop PC reader version of the Kindle.

Another problem with the Kindle is that the buttons on the keyboard are really and fiddly and difficult for me to see. With normal keyboards there are little bumps on the F and J keys that a visually impaired person can feel to know where they are on the keyboard and navigate accordingly. There are bumps on F and J, but they are so small and insignificant even the most tactile of people would have difficulty feeling the bumps.

Despite its problems, I can finally read books on the bus/train/plane/taxi/wherever for the first time since I became a blinky/speccy, without carting a laptop/PC or magnification equipment with me. I thoroughly recommend a Kindle.

Voices of the 7 Billion staff writer

2012-01-25T09:00:00.000Z

Late in 2011, I joined the writers of a new website called "Voices of the 7 Billion", dedicated to "Culture, Politics, Opinion, Comment, Analysis, Giving a platform to the voices of the world." It is an exciting project, and today it published my first article: "How to escape from the North Korean prison state: Part 1". Part 2 will follow in publication soon, but in the meantime, click here to read the first of many articles!

Top music for writing - 我給的愛

2012-01-22T13:59:00.000Z

Sometimes, when I write, I just have to get into the right frame of mind by having the right music to write along with. I like to occasionally share a YouTube feed of the song (subject to it being available from YouTube, with the caveat of I am not responsible for the link not working, etc.).

Today we have 我給的愛 (The Love that I gave), as sung by 楊乃文 (Faith Yang), a top singer from Taiwan.

It's quite a moving song, full of sadness and loss, and meant a lot to me a long time ago when I first heard it 13 years ago, but focusing purely on the writing, it works for a piece I'm working on at the moment, helping me get into the character's feelings.

Here are the lyrics (if you can read Chinese; they're in the traditional script):

深夜的風冷冷無情覺得夜昏暗
腳邊煙蒂散落一地像是我的心
被風吹起吹到那裡我在那裡沒有目的
我給的愛要不回來
你說過的話我不曾忘記
你卻離開
And on to the video itself!

Lines dedicated to the theft of cheese and wine by a celebrity chef

2012-01-09T22:28:00.001Z

The headline news today is about the theft of products from a supermarket, believed to be wine and cheese, by the celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson. I was moved by the plight of this man, who is obviously facing personal issues, to pen a few lines this evening.

Lines dedicated to the theft of cheese and wine by a celebrity chef
© Damon Lord 2012

A quick trip to Tesco was all that it took.
The coppers, they nabbed me, and brought me to book.
What was I doing? What was I thinking?
I pilfered vin blanc, and the bishop was stinking!
“Let’s look in the bag,” the policeman then said.
“Cheese theft ain’t mature.” I quickly turned red.
Floyd had his fish; Delia’s egg in Norwich.
Jamie untwizzled turkeys; and I’m doing porridge! *
Oh I was so wrong! Why did I do it?
I swiped cheese and bottles; I had to go through it.
I’ve been a bad boy, but at least I give thanks.
They didn’t find the crab sticks, down in my pants.

* (Note: Antony Worrall Thompson was actually let off with a caution)

Review of the year 2011

2011-12-31T20:15:00.000Z

All in all, it’s been a rather good year for me with the writing. With further eyesight issues, it has become even more difficult for me to write much at length for extended periods of time, but I persevere. This post on the site has taken a couple of days, for example, to write. Recently I have had to write long letters about something non-writing related, and this wiped me out for days. I suppose it will be like marathon running for me: regular training and practice will allow me to ultimately build up enough tolerance to eventually write longer pieces, but in the meantime I’ve had to stick to working on short pieces.

I particularly enjoyed the news that my short story “A Christmas Kiss” was published in an anthology in November 2011, which will bring my work to a wider section of the reading public.

Wonderful opportunities in 2011 allowed me to add performing my work to the focuses of my creativity, and my work was also featured on local BBC radio, at various events in Worcestershire and the West Midlands, and of course as part of the Worcestershire Literary Festival. Performing has been a most welcome outlet for my work, as I have been able to make many new friends and get feedback on my work, as well as presenting my writing and comedy to a wider audience. I am truly grateful to the many friends who have made this possible, and the audiences who have been so receptive.

One fundamental thing in my life which has made the literary world much more accessible to me is the acquisition of an Amazon Kindle 3 (3G Keyboard). Getting this has meant for the first time my reading speed is almost what it was before eyesight issues struck me. It has the facility to enlarge text, and there is with most Kindle format books the Text-to-Speech facility which reads out the book like an audio book. This is a Godsend, particularly when my eyes inevitably get tired of reading (how quickly that happens); rather than abandoning the book, I can just close my eyes and continue enjoying the book by listening to it instead.

So what does the future hold for me? It’s time to lay out my New Year’s Resolutions (in no particular order) and personal goals, and not all of them are writing related:

Write daily (something I don’t do at the moment).
Write something of novel length.
Continue studying Cornish to complete the Kernewek dre Lyther Gradh 1 (Cornish through the post Grade 1) course.
Compile a few of my older works into an small e-book to showcase my work online.
Read more. Much more. I can do this easily now I’ve got the Kindle.

And off we go, into 2012! Next year, Ill be working on the above goals, and also looking to add a shop facility to my site to purchase some of my works. Wish me luck!

Happy Hallowe'en!

2011-10-30T19:25:00.000Z

On the morning of the 31st October 2011, on BBC Radio Hereford & Worcester on the breakfast show (6am - 9am), one of my stories, a Lovecraftian tale entitled "The Latent Shadows", will be read out by the amazingly talented Fergus McGonigal on air (this is, of course, subject to air-time, producer approval, etc.), as part of a Hallowe'en feature on 42 Events (which I regularly perform at) and will feature the work of other great 42 writers too! Listen in!

I apologise this really is last-moment info, but I only found out about it myself on Sunday morning! In media, sometimes things move very quickly, and I'm quite excited about presenting my work to a wider audience like this!

‘42’ is Worcester’s first and only Gothic, Horror, Sci-Fi and Fantasy Open Mic Night for all those who love the genres and everything in between. Let your voice be heard! There will also be a barnstorming horrific and entertaining night for 42 Open Mic Night fans, as Hallowe'en comes to Worcester with a special Hallowe'en edition of 42! I sadly won't be there due to family commitments, but you have no excuse not to go! Check out their Facebook event page here!

Hollybush, Cradley Heath: More poetry, prose and performance!

2011-10-28T22:54:00.000+01:00

The next event I'll be attending will be on 4th November in Cradley Heath (8:30pm start), for the 43rd Spoken Word and Music event. I've had confirmation that I've got a slot for presenting more of my writing to a hopefully receptive audience! I've heard good things about this gig, and I look forward to attending!The address:

The Hollybush
Newtown Lane
Cradley Heath
B64 5EA

Hope to see you there!

Update

2011-10-18T20:20:00.002+01:00

Due to unforeseen unheavals in my personal life, I've not had much opportunity to write or perform recently. However, I hopefully will be back in action in November, particularly for NaNoWriMo. See you then.

42: Genre Fiction Open Mic Night - 31 August 2011

2011-07-28T23:15:00.004+01:00

I've been invited back to the next 42 Genre Fiction Open Mic Night in Worcester at the end of August. The date will be 31 August. I've not thought about what I'll be performing yet! However, it'll likely an eclectic mix of dark humour, fiction prose and poetry. See you there!

I'm not at Parole Parlate

2011-07-03T15:47:00.003+01:00

Further to my previous post on this site advertising my presence at Parole Parlate, I now sadly can announce I will not be performing at Parole Parlate in July due to unforeseen personal circumstances.

However, it will still be a wonderful night for enjoying prose and poetry (more details here), it's just that I won't be attending.

June 2011 round-up of performances!

2011-07-01T23:22:00.004+01:00

Well another successful few nights have gone on in the last few days. The Worcester Writers' Circle Sinister Shorts - Noir Stories went well with me up first, as we performed our work to a particularly appreciative, receptive and cosy audience. The weather was particularly bad, and it truly was a dark and stormy night!

The next appearance was at June 2011's 42, Worcester's Genre Fiction Open Mic Night, and a mixture of topical comedy, horror prose and poetry was received by a highly appreciative crowd, and it's been suggested that I return to 42 to perform more often!

More info on events and the latest on my writing as it appears, only on this site!

42: Genre Fiction Open Mic Night - 29 June 2011!

2011-06-28T20:29:00.003+01:00

I'll be performing my work again tomorrow night at 42, Worcester’s first & only Gothic, Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy Open Mic Night for all those who love the genres & everything in between.

I'll be doing comedy, poetry and prose in my fifteen minute slot, so get there for 7:30pm to be sure of getting in! It's at Boston Tea Party, 18 Broad Street,
Worcester, England, and tickets are just £4.00 On The Door (£3.00 Concessions: Students & Unemployed).

Here's a photo of me performing at the event last April.

Sinister Shorts and numerous events

2011-06-24T09:24:00.012+01:00

SINISTER SHORTS - NOIR STORIES: Don't forget, tonight's the night if you want to hear one of my latest dark fiction pieces in a night of Sinister Shorts - Noir Stories from the Worcester Writers' Circle. I'll be presenting my story at Worcester University (City Centre Campus, Castle Street, Worcester, WR1 3AS) at 7:30pm and tickets are available at the door for just £3!

70th BIRTHDAY PARTY: A number of events during th Worcestershire Literary Festival are being hosted by the Worcester Writers' Circle, who incidentally are celebrating 70 long, continuous years of writing, and will be holding a party this Sunday (26 June 2011, further details here). They will be launching their anthology, a wonderful collection of worthy work from various members (although sadly not including me, as I was too busy at the time with our young son to send anything in when it was being compiled).

WORCESTER LAMPOON: This is an event which has already taken place. On Wednesday 22 June 2011, I got home from work and I was rather bored, and not finding much stimulation from the jokes of Nick Owen on BBC Midlands Today. I therefore sat down and wrote an amusing poem, before then heading out to enjoy an evening of comedy called Worcester Lampoon. I had intended to just be an audience member, but on arriving I was told there was a gap in the programme that needed filling. Within two hours of the poem being written, I was on stage performing it (photo above courtesy of Sylvia Herbert; I'm just glad she didn't capture me in one of my more emotive moments during the performance!). Talk about last minute! It must have worked, as I have had some great feedback on it!

42 and PAROLE PARLATE: That's not all! If you like my work, then next week on Wednesday 29th June 2011 I will also be returning to 42, Worcester's Genre fiction Open Mic Night. I also have a slot at Parole Parlate in early July (details for these two events to follow in another update).

Addendum: I will not be performing at Parole Parlate in July due to unforeseen personal circumstances.

Tuesday 21 June 2011

2011-06-21T22:40:00.002+01:00

Today has been one of those days where you wake up pained and cursing, and go to bed thanking God for all the people you have met today.

On the writing front, I may not have done any writing for a few days, particularly with my eyes in pain today, but I have a lot of good things to think about, thanks to inspiration given by the people I met today.

Just saying: thank you, to the people I met today. You know who you are.

Inspiration from publishing and marketing seminars at the Worcestershire Literary Festival

2011-06-20T00:35:00.003+01:00

On Sunday 19 June 2011, I attended a wonderful pair of seminars given as part of the Worcestershire Literature Festival. They gave a brief overview of publishing and marketing and publicity for writers. It was hosted by the Worcester Writers' Circle, and led by Peter Spalton and Sylvia Herbert.

Peter himself wrote about the seminars: "I really enjoyed them and the feedback from both events was great." I absolutely concur. I felt it was one of the best events I have attended in any subject in a long time. It was highly motivational and informative, and will be a help to my writing career for a long time to come. There were also other hints and tips about a variety of related subjects, and ample opportunity to discuss things in an informal atmosphere.

As a result of this, I have seriously had a think about the 'brand' I seek to present to the world, and inspired by the wonderful day I had, I have reviewed my twitter presence. I have a twitter account already where I witter on about languages and politics, which will remain. However, I have now launched an additional twitter account which will be specifically dedicated to my writing. You can find me there @DamonLordAuthor and I plan to tweet on topics on or close to my creative interests, writing projects, and about dark and speculative fiction and related fields.

There may also be further changes in my web presence as the weeks go by as I review things, so it's an exciting time ahead! Watch this space!

Addendum: the event has also been reviewed here by Sara Hayward.

Worcestershire Literary Festival kicks off!

2011-06-18T20:00:00.003+01:00

Crikey! I attended last night the opening evening of the Worcestershire Literary Festival. It was a wonderful night, with ten poets lined up as finalists for the title of Worcestershire's first Bard, which was won by Theo Theobald with two highly amusing poems. It was highly difficult for the judges to pick a winner. To be honest, if I had been judging, I reckon at least seven of them would have had to have shared the prize.

I did not know however that I was being watched! I went on to the Festival's blog to check out what's been going on, only to see my own ugly face as an audience member depicted clapping at the top of the page! Sat in front of me at the time (and also depicted in the picture) was Sylvia Herbert, who will be guiding a seminar on marketing and publicity for writers tomorrow, which I am looking forward to. At least it's a side view so the Festival goers don't have to suffer the full horror of my face!

Update: Worcestershire Literary Festival appearance

2011-06-18T14:45:00.005+01:00

Coming up this month, I've got an appearance at the Worcestershire Literary Festival, on Friday 24th, 7:30 pm, at an event called "Sinister Shorts - Noir Stories", an evening hosted by the Worcester Writers' Circle, where I'll be reading out one of my most recent horror pieces. Tickets are just £3!

Full details of the event are vailable here: http://www.worcslitfest.com/sinister-shorts-noir-stories/

I may have some more events coming up, which need to be confirmed, so I'll keep you posted. It's going to be a busy summer, I feel.

P.S. My other website where I discuss politics, languages and linguistics, etc., is currently down for maintenance; apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Successful 42 night!

2011-06-01T15:00:00.000+01:00

Well, after my recent performance at 42, a couple of reviews have now appeared. Of note is the pub reviews site Behind the Arras, which recently did a review of the night where I did a mix of stand-up SF comedy, a horror poem and a fantasy story. They said:

Damon Lord has one of the best opening lines I have heard: “When I type my name into Google, it says, Did you mean ‘Demon Lord?’”. This set the tone for much of his set, which was a tapestry of sci-fi stand up, which went down very well, interwoven with poetry and narrative.

A report on the event also appeared (page 14) in The Box, a Worcester local arts magazine. The photo is from that magazine.

I can't wait to perform my work again soon, and with the Worcestershire Literary Festival coming up, I should get the chance!

42 - Open Mic Night in Worcester!

2011-04-16T13:36:00.005+01:00

42 is Worcester’s first & only Gothic, Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy Open Mic Night for all those who love the genres & everything in between.

And guess who's got a slot performing on 21 April 2011? Me! If you want to come along and see a great bunch of performers (including me!) read out and present some of the most exciting genre fiction Worcester has to offer, then be at the Worcester Arts Centre, 21 Sansome Street, Worcester next Thursday.

Doors open at 7pm, £4 ticket on the door.

See you there!

Yuri Gagarin - 50 years of Mankind in space

2011-04-12T21:21:00.002+01:00

50 years ago, Mankind headed into space for the first time. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin headed out for a 108 minute ride into space, making him the first human ever to boldly go where no one had gone before.

We remember him today, and all the brave pioneers who have headed out into the cosmos over the past five decades.

We should also remember the seemingly late American programme for human exploration of space today. The retirement of the shuttle programme now leaves the USA and the West with no Western method or vehicles for getting mankind into space, and leaving Mankind reliant on the Russians to get into space to the International Space Station. In 50 years we have come so far with the Americans putting Man on the moon, but now today we're in exactly where we were 50 years ago, with the East, namely the Russians (and the fledgling Chinese space programme) able to put humans in space, with the West and the Americans currently lagging far behind.

Thoughts on the colonisation of Space

2011-03-07T18:13:00.001Z

One of the most interesting themes in the exploration of Space is the survival of Mankind; in particular, our ability to explore and colonise new worlds. Whereas in olden times, the oceans, Americas, Africa and Australasia were variously for (European) Civilisations the new frontiers, it is evident that now Space must be the new frontier. I do enjoy reading these frontier stories, and particularly loved Joss Whedon's TV series Firefly, which encapsulated certain aspects of the new frontier of Space perfectly. It frustrates me to think that, on reviewing the history of Space exploration, that the drive to get out there into the black already lost significant momentum long before I was born, after the final Apollo moon missions. I would have thought that the Moon would have been a great springboard on to other things out there, but it never was.

Time is ticking by, as it has been over forty years since those brave Americans flew to the Moon, finally landing in 1969 for the first time. Pretty soon, there will be no-one left alive who knows what it is like too stand on another world. Whatever your politics, I was over the Moon (so to speak) when the US President George W. Bush announced the plan to return to the Moon with a permanent colony there and possibly on to Mars after that, and even more devastated when President Obama cancelled the plans. With Chinese plans forging ahead to go to the Moon, it actually makes me wonder whither the American national pride may have disappeared, with no American effort to beat the Chinese back to the Moon.

But it matters not who gets us, and us meaning Mankind as a species, back into Space, whether American, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, European or Indian. Well, maybe not the North Koreans, as they've got a majorly fucked up regime, but anyhow.... The UK had a space industry once, but again, it appears to have faltered many years ago, although there are still numerous efforts, not least is the wonderful private enterprise by Virgin Galactic. I doubt I would ever have the money to take a flight into Space with them, but I can but dream. It may well be that the return to the Moon and colonisation of our sleeping satellite will be ultimately a commercial endeavour, led not by national space agencies, but I don't exactly expect to see adverts by the English comedian Lenny Henry for Premier Inn's Tycho Crater branch.

But isn't space travel a waste of money? People think of teflon-coated frying pans as the benefit of the space age, but it would be wrong to use this oft-cited example, as there are many, many further benefits. Just with the almost dormant Space endeavours by Britain alone benefits have arisen, so in particular let's take a quick look at the UK's Beagle II mission. Although a mission failure in that the Beagle II disappeared as it headed in towards Mars on its final approach to the surface of the Arean globe, it did succeed on many other levels; just one instance is that as a result of research done for Beagle II by my alma mater, The Open University, they were able to shrink a mass spectrometer right down to the size of an A4 sheet of paper (so I was told at a formal OU after-dinner speech), making chemical analysis and screening so much quicker and portable, aiding detection of tuberculosis in third world countries so much easier.

But those are on-world benefits. There naturally would be even greater benefits for getting off-world. In the medium future, tourism would be a great thing that would drive further exploration and boundary pushing, as we have seen as mentioned with the new Virgin Galactic moving forward, but the need to get off-world is great. We've seen films like Armageddon and Deep Impact, where Bruce Willis and Elijah Eood respectively save the world from a rock from Space. They may be dramatisations, and such things are such remote possibilities that they would happen in our lifetimes that it makes organisations like Project Spaceguard seem almost a waste of time, but we can confirm that a planet-buster has hit before, after all it killed the dinosaurs, and it will come again. Ultimately, if the planet-buster does come before we are established as a species as a Space-faring people, then everything we have done, everything, will have been for naught. If the planet-buster comes and destroys the Earth, then we as a species would still survive on some far-flung rock, for example. It would be even better if ultimately colonisation was on some far distant world in another solar system.

So right now, Mankind needs to establish colonies on the Moon, then start looking at Mars. Its a close neighbour, and would make a good stopping point or refinery for the mining vessels that will inevitably plunder the nearby asteroid belt.

We should also be further afield out into the stars. The nearest star with currently detectable planets is Epsilon Eridani, just 10.5 light years away. If a probe were to be sent out in the next few years, depending on what velocity it was sent at, we soon (maybe a hundred Earth years; who knows? I can't be bothered to do the mathematics right now) might have something there to send back information on the Epsilon Eridani system and tell us if there's something in the Goldilocks zone, ripe for colonisation. If there isn't something there we have thus lost nothing because we can still gain valuable data on the system, and if there is something in the Goldilocks zone that would be useful, then we have gained everything.

We don't even have to necessarily colonise other worlds; giant structures such as habitable space stations and rings could be built in the vacuum of space itself, and the materials to build the structures could be mined and harvested from the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt.

I'm not the only one to think that we should be getting out there. In 2001, Professor Stephen Hawking said: “I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.”

Mankind's very long-term survival depends on expansion into space and expansion of knowledge. To protect our species' future, it should become an imperative goal of the various government Space agencies to establish permanent colonies on other worlds.

[Image source]

IndieHorror

2011-01-24T17:15:00.000Z

Just a quick one: check out a site that looks particularly delicious that I've recently come across: IndieHorror. They're having a cannibal cook-off contest, which looks to be an interesting writing exercise. I'm still unsure if I'm going to take part in the contest, but I'll keep you informed if I do!

New year, new writing!

2011-01-23T16:38:00.001Z

Welcome to 2011! Last year didn't have much in the way of writing news, but we did have some wonderful events, with the birth of our new son. All are doing well, and although it means sleepless nights at times, I am still getting in the writing when I can.

So what is going on with my writing? I'm still writing slowly, a side effect of the poor eyesight I suffer, but it is going well on a couple of projects. I have a few notes jotted down for a SF piece to be written in the style of "new space opera", as I think the particular sub-genre is now called, and look forward to getting on to that. In the meantime, there is a horror tale set just outside of Newport, South Wales, to be finished. I don't know why I find writing so easy when the piece is horror set in Newport, I don't know.Perhaps it says something about the town, hahaha?

Poem published at M-Brane SF #18!

2010-07-01T16:31:00.000+01:00

Yes, it's good news, people, for my poem Cryo-Hell has been published, over at one of my favourite SF magazines, M-Brane SF. It made the 18th issue, published today. It's of particular note, as it contains the first SF poem they've published, and it just happens to be my poem!

Go over and order yourselves a subscription, because it's a good read (and not just for my poem!) http://www.mbranesf.com/

New member of the family

2010-05-12T20:43:00.003+01:00

Introducing the newest member of the Lord family. See you in Winter 2010!

Inspirational music

2010-05-02T14:51:00.000+01:00

Hello! Just a quick update! I've been writing hard for the last couple of months on a Lovecraftian long(ish) piece, and I hope to bring you more news on that soon. I've also crafted the first poem I've written in ages, in fact the very first poem since my disastrously winning piece in 2002, a dark SF tale in free verse, so I'll be sending that out soon too. More information as it comes in.

I'll also be able to announce some very important, big big news soon... watch this space!

In the meantime, here's a feed of some inspirational music from YouTube, Bring me to life by Evanescence. I'm off now, to do some more writing and go buy the album. Bye for now!

Onwards...

2010-02-23T21:23:00.000Z

Hi everyone!

I'm still alive. And even if I wasn't alive, I'd still be loving dark and speculative fiction.

Did you have a good Christmas? I got a Babylon 5 box set of every movie and episode (including Crusade) from my beloved wife. I am a huge fan of that show, and such terrific story telling is an inspiration, so I've been watching that a fair bit since Christmas. I reckon it'll take me months to get through it all.

There's not been much on the writing front for me recently, because I've been having a little trouble with my eyes of late (it's not from watching too much Babylon 5, honest!). This does not mean I've not been creative however, as I've been looking back over some work I'd put aside previously and have been thinking about rewriting it. I even made a short stab at it in January 2010, but again my eyes have been giving me trouble so not much progress there. Ho hum!

As I write more, I'll keep you all updated. Wish me (and my eyes) luck!

Latest story publication news

2009-12-08T23:09:00.005Z

Now it's time for some more good news of appearances of my writing.

On the 1st December my short fantasy story The Price went up at Mirror Dance Fantasy.

Today, In Vino Veritas, a vampire story, just went up at Fear and Trembling.

I hope you enjoy my work!

One year on

2009-12-01T18:09:00.000Z

It's been a year since I set up this site and got back into the saddle on the writing trail. It's not been a bad year, a few stories published here and there, and I'm getting gently back into the swing of things after taking so long out from writing in order to study.

I've had highs and lows, including losing some vision due to health issues which has majorly impacted on my life, as well as getting married this year (bad and good respectively!), but although my goals have been modified, it's not stopping me from enjoying the craft of writing. Indeed, more than ever my wife is supportive of my writing, and I've met some great people and friends over the last year through writing.

So here's to the next twelve months!

NaNoWriMo

2009-12-01T17:27:00.000Z

I mentioned in October that I was going to give NaNoWriMo a go in November. The goal was to write 50,000 words in a month.

Well, how did I do?

I nearly made it. I was on course, having had a few bad days here and there, to make it. On a good day, I was averaging about 2,500 words a day, I reckon, which would have compensated for my bad days (I needed to write a minimum of 1667 words a day to break even and get to 50K).

Then the lurgy struck in late November. A fever, sweats, sickness, all that fun. I'm still not 100% right, health-wise, but soldiering on.

And the writing? My final total for November was 32,790 words, which isn't too bad, almost two-thirds of the way there.

NaNoWriMo raises some important questions, however, the primary one being:

Was it worth it?

Yes, yes it was worth it. I learned a lot about self-discipline if I want to eventually go pro with my writing, and the necessity to write every day.

I also learned that the plot I was using during November might not stretch to novel length, and might be better off in future being rewritten as a novella. I have some things to learn about length and whether certain plots and story ideas are suited to different lengths.

But above all, I had fun doing it. I met some great people along the way, and I'll be back for more NaNoWriMo fun next year!

"Consequences" published; Facebook page now up

2009-10-31T09:50:00.005Z

My tweet-length horror story "Consequences" has just gone up on Thaumatrope (click the link, then scroll to the bottom of that page for my story)!

I also now have a Facebook fan page. If you'd like to follow me on Facebook, join up there.

Happy Hallowe'en!

The NaNoWriMo 2009 challenge....

2009-10-01T00:01:00.001+01:00

Ladies and gentlemen, non-corporeal, non-humans, un-dead, and other readers of this site, the challenge is being laid upon the table before you.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) 2009 is now only a month away.

I'm planning on taking part.

What's NaNoWriMo?

The following explanatory text is from the NaNoWriMo site:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

I must write at least 50,000 words in 30 days. That's a minimum 1,667 words a day just to limp across the finishing line with precisely 50K. There's a lot of writing to be done. And I don't have a clue yet what I'll be writing next month, either. I haven't even thought about a plot, character, or anything like that.

Click here to go to my page on the NaNoWriMo site, where, if you're a member of that site, you can befriend me as a writing buddy so we can compare word counts as we go along.

Who else is up for it?

Bring it on....

Arthur Machen - still great

2009-09-30T18:39:00.003+01:00

There was a nice piece in the Guardian newspaper yesterday about Arthur Machen, a writer of dark and fantastic fiction from down my way. He originates from Caerleon, just outside Newport (my hometown). Not a lot else to say at the moment (busy, busy, busy writing, but I should write in more detail on Machen at some point) apart from Arthur Machen is still an amazing read after all these years. The Great God Pan is particularly horrific.

Click here to go read the Guardian article.

Image from public domain source: Wikipedia article on Machen.

Plagiarism is WRONG

2009-09-30T09:00:00.001+01:00

There's nothing new under the sun, so they say, but the key to being a writer is to find inspiration, find your own original voice and spin on any tale. Think of the musical West Side Story, and compare it with William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (the play, or even the Baz Luhrman cinematic version, if you want!). In essence the same tale, but what differentiates it is the individual words, voice and many other different essentials that make it familiar yet different and original. West Side Story is not just Romeo & Juliet run through a thesaurus program, but an original reimagining of love. That's not plagiarism;it's inspiration from Shakespeare. What makes West Side Story unique is not its supposed rip-off of Shakespeare, but its own voice, atmosphere, and presentation. Apart from a few ribald words from Mercutio, you won't find beautiful singing in Romeo & Juliet, for example!

Inspiration and borrowing is sometimes a key tool for any writer, but one thing is always wrong and that's attempting to pass off someone else's work as your own, or plagiarism as it's known.

Plagiarism is WRONG. Morally and legally.

So it saddens, no, it horrifies me to find that a plagiarist going by the name of Richard Ridyard (a pen-name mayhap?), and also by the name of R. M. Valentine (would the real Richard Ridyard please stand up?), is quite simply stealing tales from others and passing them off as his own, including Stephen King. A few edits of someone else's tale by replacing some words with others from a thesaurus does not make for an original tale. However, Mr Ridyard did not think of this, and attempted to pass off a relexified tale of Stephen King's to the new up-and-coming horror magazine Shock Totem (That reminds me, I must add a link to them in the sidebar of this here site). Fortunately the keen-eyed people at Shock Totem spotted this.

Want to know more? Here's a few links to find out much, much more about this literary travesty perpetrated by Mr Ridyard:

http://www.eyesoretimes.com/2009/09/grand-theft-boogeyman.html
http://arageofangel.blogspot.com/2009/09/ive-been-plagiarizedand-im-not-alone.html
http://abrokenlaptop.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/we-interrupt-this-blog-post/
http://blog.verulamwriterscircle.org.uk/?p=607

It's important to get this information about a plagiarist out there. As it says at the top of the blogpost, plagiarism is wrong.

Current reading list

2009-09-14T09:00:00.000+01:00

I have a number of books and publications I want to read, in order to catch up with my to-be-read pile.

So here's a few, which I haven't read yet, in no particular order which are on my list to read in the near future:

Not Your Father's Horseman by Valerie Griswold-Ford
Dark Moon Seasons by Valerie Griswold-Ford
Bar None by Tim Lebbon
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language by Arika Okrent
Dark Tales Volume XIII
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance edited by Trisha Telep
The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance edited by Trisha Telep
The Bloke's Guide to Pregnancy by Jon Smith
Hotter Than Hell edited by Kim Harrison
Black Static Issue 12 (You can get a free copy by clicking the link)
And, of course, some chapters written by some friends in the Writers' Circle I frequent.

So what's on your reading list?

British Fantasy Society competition

2009-08-30T15:05:00.007+01:00

Well, I'm now a married man! Good times have been had in the Philippines, and I got an interesting yet brief look at the folklore, literature and speculative fiction of the country. I'll write more on this at a later date when I get time, as this is a topic well worth writing about. I must also get round to typing up some book reviews, as well as finishing off a novella I was working on before the wedding.

Right now I'm busy, trying to polish up a story for the British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition 2009. One of the conditions is: "To be eligible, the writer must not previously have been paid for more than three stories at the time of submitting their entry." I recently joined the BFS, and I certainly qualify under that criteria currently (unless I get some more paid acceptances in my inbox before tomorrow night), so I'm giving the competition a go and keeping my fingers crossed!

Addendum: I was not a winner, but my congratulations to the winners Patrick Whittaker and Elana Gomel.

The picture you've all been waiting for....

2009-08-23T15:03:00.002+01:00

Here's a photo from the big day earlier this month.

Normal service will be resumed soon on this website.

In Vino Veritas

2009-07-11T07:12:00.005+01:00

And here's some more good news. A few days ago, I had the good fortune to have sold my short vampire story "In Vino Veritas" to Fear & Trembling. I don't have the publication date yet, but will let you know when I do, and I'll update this news post.

And speaking of drink (vino), I'm off out now to enjoy a glass or two with some good friends. I doubt very much that I'll be doing any writing this weekend, given that I'll be participating in my stag-do, although as with all things in life, a writer should look on traumatic events and happenings as something to be endured and to be treated as potential story-fodder.... Wish me luck, and expect me to write sometime soon a dark tale of a stag-do gone wrong!

Call for Submissions: Samhain Publishing Space Opera anthology

2009-07-04T21:05:00.000+01:00

Today I'm reposting below something from the Samhain Publishing blog. Samhain Publishing is a small press publisher in ebook and print format and they have a number of good authors in their catalogue. Authors with them whom I have enjoyed include Lilith Saintcrow and Shiloh Walker. Over at Samhain they're opening for submissions for a Space Opera anthology. I'm seriously tempted to see if I can get a submission ready for their deadline of 10th August, 2009 (Actually, with my forthcoming wedding, I'd have to ensure I get it ready well before that date, as I'll be caught up with tasks for the wedding and subsequent marital duties by then). In my "incomplete" folder I do have a substantial amount of writing I've been tinkering with from time to time which may be of use for this. It involves a spaceship, and an interesting crew to sail the boat, and that's all I'm saying for now.

Anyway, here's their announcement:

*Permission to repost granted. Please repost on your blogs, yahoo groups, shout it from the rooftops, hire sign twirlers, get an airplane to do a flyover with a banner, or even better, get your favorite alien to do a flyover in their spaceship with a banner…*

Get your outer space on! Intergalactic wars, space battles, alien cultures, and love (and lust) across the cosmos.

I’m very pleased to announce an open call for submissions for a new, yet-to-be titled spring 2010 space opera anthology. I’m looking for fast-paced, action-adventure space opera romances. Don’t know what space opera is? Think Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica or my personal favorite, Firefly/Serenity. For more information on Space Opera, you can check out the entry on wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Opera

I’m open to M/F, M/M, or multiples thereof, and any sexual heat level. The only rule is the story should be set mainly or entirely in space and the romance must end happily ever after or happy for now.

The anthology will include novellas from 25,000 to 30,000 words in length and will be released individually as ebooks in April 2010.

Submissions are open to all authors, published with Samhain or aspiring to be published with Samhain. All submissions must be new material-previously published submissions will not be considered. Additionally, manuscripts previously submitted, whether individually or for past anthologies, will not be considered either. Please be aware that manuscripts submitted to this anthology cannot be resubmitted at a later date unless by invitation from an editor.

To submit a manuscript for consideration, please include:

The full manuscript (of 25,000 to 30,000 words) with a comprehensive 2-5 page synopsis. Please include a letter of introduction/query letter. Full manuscripts are required for this as it’s a special project.

As well, when you send your manuscript, please be sure to use the naming convention SpaceOpera_Title_MS and SpaceOpera_Title_Synopsis. This will ensure that your submission doesn’t get missed in the many submissions we receive, and makes it easy for me to find in my ebook reader.

Submissions are open until August 10, 2009 and final decision will be made by August 31, 2009. Please send your submission to editor@samhainpublishing.com and include Space Opera Anthology in the subject line. Questions can be addressed to Sasha Knight (sasha@samhainpublishing.com).

What's going on?

2009-06-25T06:55:00.002+01:00

You'll excuse the partially non-writing update this time on this site, but a few things have been going on which I thought you, dear reader, may wish to know about.

I'm shutting down my other blog, on politics and languages (and whatever else catches my attention) for the summer. The reason? I don't have time for it as I'm getting married. I'll still have time for this writing site, though, as I'm keeping on writing.

So you want to know more about the wedding? Japes! I'm preparing to head off to the Philippines with my fiancée in a few weeks to get hitched. There may be a bit of a delay in writing updates here while I'm away, so you'll know why. It was a choice between getting wed here in the United Kingdom, or in the Philippines, so with the inevitable rain that usually drenches these Isles, off to Philippines it is. Honeymoon location still to be decided, but probably somewhere in the Philippines also.

Speaking with a Filipino recently at a barbecue, they reminded me of the wonderful tapestry that is Philippine folklore. I have decided that if I get time off from being a bridegroom, I would like to investigate the local myths and legends of the Philippines. There are some wonderful tales, stories of the aswang (a sort of a vampiric spirit), kapre (a sort of a giant), duwende (a sort of a dwarf), Maria Makiling (the spirit of a mountain in Batangas province), and so forth, that would be fascinating for me to find out more. It may inspire a horror story or two.

If I have time that is. Wedding first!

Other news: I have a number of stories out there doing the rounds at the moment, so hopefully I'll get some reply soon and will (maybe, maybe not, depends on the editors loving/hating my work) be able to tell you of any stories that have been sold! I'm also slaving away on a long horror piece set in Wales that I am really enjoying writing. Enjoyment is usually a good sign, isn't it?

My thirtieth birthday has come and gone earlier this month, without the completed novel that I envisaged would be done by that day, due to ongoing eye problems. I'm not going to worry about goals for now. I'll maybe give arbitrary goals a consideration in November for NaNoWriMo. Seriously, I'm really thinking about giving NanoWriMo a go this year. However, at the moment I am indeed back in the saddle with regards to writing, writing semi-regularly.

I also returned to my day job this week with a number of tools for my visual impairment, albeit back at work part-time to get me back into the swing of things.

The best bit of news is that I can now read again! I have been severely restricted with my reading over the past few months due to my visual impairment (which hasn't improved), and as a bibliophile and a writer, this has been torture. I could only read a page or so at normal size before I'd have to stop, which isn't conducive to reading books (although the utilities bills are sometimes more horrific than the latest Stephen King opus). However, thanks to the assistance of a wonderful charitable fraternity, I now have an electronic magnifier. Thanks to this, I already almost have my old (pre-eye-problem) reading speed back! I may post photos of this fabulous device soon.

I have a lot of books to catch up on. I will also in due course be writing reviews here of Not Your Father's Horseman and Dark Moon Seasons by Valerie Griswold-Ford. I won the books in a contest over at the author's site and promised to do a review of them when I've read them, but have been feeling a little guilty as I haven't read them yet, so it's on my to-read list also.

So there you have it. My life, particularly both writing and non-writing aspects of it, is back on track!

The Lord of the Rings - a writer's viewpoint

2009-06-16T22:32:00.003+01:00

Over at The Alchemy of Writing, there's an interesting series of blogposts, analysing Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (and here's the interesting bit) from a writer's point of view. It's going well, and making for interesting reading. Well worth checking out.

Click here to go there.

The Price

2009-06-09T21:50:00.000+01:00

Huzzah!

A story accepted!

The Price will be published in the Winter 2009 issue of Mirror Dance, an online fantasy zine. It's an interesting zine, and some good stories there too.

Only a short time ago I was speaking about finally finding a title for my story about a sword, and finally came up with a title for this particular tale after an epic struggle of nearly two years to find the right title. I sent it out last week, after finding a title at last, and a few days later an e-mail arrived to advise The Price has been accepted!

What's it about? A magical sword. And what the cost of a magical sword can be.

I celebrated this evening with a small glass of red wine.

Titles

2009-05-28T15:33:00.006+01:00

Why is it that finding a title for a piece is sometimes such torture?

Sometimes a title comes naturally. I wrote a dark story a while back and as soon as I'd finished it, the title naturally came to me, the well-known Latin phrase In Vino Veritas (Truth in Wine). It fit right in and lent itself naturally to the tale. It has been sent out, so hopefully there may be some good news on that one in due course.

Sometimes, however, it takes an absolute age to come up with a title. A story I wrote nearly two years ago has been languishing without a title; nothing I could think of was quite suitable, so it was just the unnamed story about a sword. I came up with a title finally today. The Price. It was the final missing piece of the puzzle; it had a name at last, so I sent it out.

For various projects, I am hardly ever able to come up with titles. Sometimes something will come out of the blue, With my tale Machiavellian Times, I came up with the idea, then had the title even before I had written the first word. It just flowed naturally.

Do titles ever come as a problem for you, fellow writers?

Tweet-length story accepted!

2009-05-02T10:57:00.003+01:00

I must keep this under 140 characters. Tweet-length story accepted by Thaumatrope. Publication date will be 30 October 2009. I'm happy.

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2009

2009-05-01T11:34:00.003+01:00

Today's Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2009. I've written a few words on it over at my other blog (and it took AGES to write, given my slow writing speed at the moment). It's an important thing to write about.

I was going to write something here about some favourite writers (whom I've just found out are disabled and didn't know - it shows that their words count for something, and they aren't just defined by their bodies), but I've run out of spoons today. So go over to Blogging Against Disablism Day 2009 and go click on some links, to read some of the great posts that have already been added today.

What kind of writer should you be?

2009-04-30T09:50:00.002+01:00

Hat-tip to Genreality.

This online test is fairly accurate, for me at least. I started off seriously writing SF, and then diverged into other speculative fiction fields.

You Should Be a Science Fiction Writer

Your ideas are very strange, and people often wonder what planet you're from.

And while you may have some problems being "normal," you'll have no problems writing sci-fi.

Whether it's epic films, important novels, or vivid comics...

Your own little universe could leave an important mark on the world!

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

Goals

2009-04-28T06:48:00.005+01:00

Let's revise my writing goals. I will be now looking to complete a novel by the end of the year, hoping that my vision may improve sufficiently by then. My other, perpetual goal, is to enjoy the Craft of Writing, which I do anyway. Mostly. It's not without its hindrances, but it's generally fun.

In the meantime, the sending out of stories continues, in line with my goal to have some sales by the time my third decade ends and I bid goodbye to my twenty-ninth year in the summer (in other words, by my 30th birthday).

I'm typing slowly, got some good ideas going on at the moment, in a couple of genres: fantasy, SF and horror. Stay tuned....

RIP J.G. Ballard

2009-04-20T19:37:00.006+01:00

It is with great sadness that I heard today about the passing of J.G. Ballard. J.G. Ballard was a great writer, and I enjoyed what I've read of his immensely; his story Billenium undoubtedly had an influence on my first published tale Machiavellian Times.

It is his dystopian vision that will perhaps remain formost in our minds; in fact a new word has come about thanks to him, as apparently reportedly recorded in the Collins English Dictionary:

BALLARDIAN: (adj) 1. of James Graham Ballard (J.G. Ballard; born 1930), the British novelist, or his works. (2) resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard’s novels & stories, esp. dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes & the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.

Goodbye, J.G. Ballard. You'll be missed.

How's the writing going?

2009-04-16T09:00:00.004+01:00

Thanks for dropping by for an update.

This year has proven to start off bit slower than I had hoped, but we're getting there. I'm going to ~~revise~~ scrap my plan of completing a novel by my thirtieth birthday; my physical condition has knocked that on the head for now. Health-wise, there's been hardly any progress with the recovery of my sight problems, but we won't let that stop me from being a writer.

I'm crafting words, very slowly, only a few sentences a day, but enough to say I fell off the horse, and I'm indeed getting right back on it again. As long as I keep writing, even just a few words at a time, then I'll be on course. I must ensure I beat James Joyce's reputed total of seven words in a day ("but I don't know what order they go in!"). If I do that, then I'm doing all right for now.

I've been getting plenty of ideas for stories and tales (including a new approach to vampires), but I need to focus on a few things first. They're going in my idea file for storage until later.

I'm also looking in to entering a few competitions including one for writing something of educational value. I'll update you as and when I approach those.

In the meantime, my revised goal for the next few months is to write and sell a few stories. It's achievable; I just have to take my time and acknowledge my physical limitations due to ongoing sight issues, and above all, keep writing.

Update (17 April 2009): I've already sent one story out the door today. I'll hopefully find out if the intended magazine likes it or not in due course. You'll hear about it here first, dear reader....

Sunshine

2009-03-26T16:05:00.004Z

With ongoing eyesight problems, as previously posted here, writing is turning out to be far more difficult than anticipated. But I'm getting to catch up with a few films I haven't seen, and a bit of TV.

Two years ago, over at my other blog, I posted a piece on a then up-coming film called Sunshine. I really like the work of the writer Alex Garland, and had been looking forward to watching the flick. Unfortunately, I did not get to see it in the cinema, but it was always on my to-see list. I finally saw it on DVD yesterday when my beloved fiancée Angie bought it for me to watch. She also bought Kung Fu Panda and forced me to watch that. Sigh.

Anyway, I was concerned at the time that a SciFi plot-bunny I was then developing would have similarities to the plot of Sunshine. I am now happy to report that it was in no way similar, and actually is a very good movie, which I heartily recommend. Due to the non-similarity of my plot-bunny and the film Sunshine, it means that I can get my SF story idea off the back-burner at some point in the future when I can write more and soldier on with it.

Writing is hard

2009-02-26T10:05:00.002Z

Writing is indeed hard. Not just the process of putting one word after another, getting a plot and story together, creating the characters and ensuring they gel well with the story, which sometimes may come as difficult for a writer anyway, even after years of practice. But at the moment for me, what is particularly hard is the process of writing itself.

I face problems currently writing, whether by keyboard, pen or pencil, or PDA. With my ongoing sight problems, I find it difficult to write. Angie assists me often, and has helped type up these blogposts, particularly at my other blog where I mostly do my blogging, but my hope is to get enough sight back to be able to work on a computer for more than about half an hour at a time without my eyes hurting and getting tired. Even then it has to be bold, superlarge size font, just so I can see it.

This means that the horror novel I was working on which I mentioned before, named the Village project for convenience at the moment, has had no progress on it at the moment since the beginning of the month. I had a few ideas for a story or two whilst I've been recovering (one of which was inspired by a dream about the gorgeous actress Naoko Mori, but the less said about that, the better!), but unable to write them at the moment. I tried writing some stuff at size 72 font, but got tired after a paragraph of barely fifty words and had to stop and save, but it was a start.

Even if I don't get my full vision back, it's not the end of the world for my writing career. Other famous writers have had visual impairments: Milton, Ὅμηρος (Homer, although he was actually an orator, not a writer; details, eh?), Sue Townsend, Didymus, Jorge Luis Borges, and James Joyce, for example. Professor Stephen Kuusisto is a brilliant particular example that also stands out.

In the meantime, I'm storing the ideas up, so that when I hopefully get enough sight back, I can write more than a paragraph without getting exhausted. My goal of becoming a published novelist still stands; nothing is going to get in the way. There may be (and in fact currently are!) a few hindrances en route, but I will get there.

Health update

2009-02-10T18:24:00.000Z

For those interested in how my eye and health are doing, go to my irregular blog.

Website suspended

2009-02-05T20:58:00.001Z

Due to personal health circumstances this website is suspended until futher notice.

Top tips for werewolves

2009-01-29T09:09:00.000Z

An acquaintance of mine has come up with some important information that perhaps all dark fiction writers and readers should have a look at, note carefully and then chuckle.

Simon Dyda writes: Top Tips for Werewolves. Follow the link and be educated.

How he came by this information, I'm not sure, but I have my suspicions (having once met him) that it may not be imagination but experience that has prompted him to write (only joking!)

By the way, as an aside, if you haven't seen the British film Dog Soldiers, it's a very funny dark film I heartily recommend.

Being Human

2009-01-23T00:11:00.006Z

This Sunday on BBC3, there'll be a new series starting called Being Human. The premise is that a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost share a house... in Bristol. Having previously worked in Bristol.... actually, I'll not comment on that for fear of upsetting my Bristolian friends. ;)

I saw the pilot last year and enjoyed it, and with this reboot, where the events and story of the pilot is non-canon, it promises to be interesting. With my tastes for dark and amusing plots and tales, I look forward to seeing how this will develop and will be tuning in.

By the way, for an exceedingly well written and editted video introducing the Annie character, got to http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/beinghuman/2008/12/annie.html. I haven't had time to check out the other videos, as the dongle's playing up, but I expect them to be just as good.

Saturday writing

2009-01-18T10:44:00.002Z

I'd say Saturday was a pretty good day. I got a fair bit of work done on the writing front, bringing in an important character with just the right amount of menace into my current WIP (Work In Progress).

It's time for a review of how things are going. My plan to get a novel finished by the middle of June is well under way. With about five months to go, I'm about 6500 words in to a piece, with a great opening and a pivotal middle scene already in the bag. I'm not so good at finding titles in the early stages of an opus, so I'll call this for the sake of convenience "The Village Project" for now. I'm currently typing my way on to a rather grisly, important and dramatic scene ahead in the first chapter, so there's fun to be had there when I get to that. Actually, I might leave it for the second chapter, leave the end of the first chapter on a cliff hanger, but we'll see about that when we get to that bit. It's coming up soon though. Things aren't going as fast as I'd like, but that's the downside of having a day job in the week in addition to being a writer.

I also managed to get a bit of thought into the next bit of the story too. Angie and I took a drive on Saturday afternoon across the wintry, barren counties of Worcestershire and Herefordshire. The skeletal trees arched over the narrow rural lanes we chose to venture down, with only rarely other drivers in their cold metal moving containers, and more often black crows and ravens looming ominously at the roadsides and occasionally flapping overhead. The Malvern Hills, beautiful and sharp against the sky as they were in the distance, were close-up quite cold with decay-brown bracken on the verges.

We stopped for a late lunch in the village of Bransford in Worcestershire, a place neither of us had been to before, in a lovely warm pub called The Fox Inn. The interior was faux olde worlde, with neat wooden beams across the ceiling (not buckled, curved and twisted beams as you'd find in a real old building), and old bottles and such mounted on the shelves, but it had a suitably warm welcoming atmosphere and even a real log fire inside. The food there is amazing, and to be recommended if you're in the area. I jotted down a bit of writing whilst in the pub; I was inspired.

Now all that remains is to get inspired in time to sort out a story by the end of the month. I have a couple of magazines in mind that I want to submit to, but at the moment I am doing work only on "The Village Project".

I had other plans for the evening but Angie and I had to focus on some paperwork so I didn't go out; I stayed in and we worked through the papers. To finish off, Angie and I sat down with a film on DVD. I hadn't actually seen Shaun of the Dead before, so it was a perfect time to watch the DVD and enjoy. Oh, how I laughed! I wondered how such a brilliant film had passed me by, so it's increased my resolve to work my way through (at some point) the list of films I want to watch that I have jotted down.

More Dämonic writing news soon....

How Jayne "Garden Gang" Fisher was my inspiration to write

2009-01-17T09:02:00.003Z

When I was young, I enjoyed reading; in fact I enjoyed it a lot. Some of my favourite books were the Garden Gang books published by Ladybird, a series of tales about anthropomorphised vegetables and fruit, written by Jayne Fisher.

I loved them, and read everything in those books, even the back cover, where there was a picture of a nine year old girl, the author of the books. Being much younger than nine at the time, I resolved that I, too, would be a published author at the age of nine. I didn't quite make it, but this was the first time in in fact my young years I had become aware that books had authors, and I remember the text on the back of the little hardboard covered books:

Jayne Fisher is the youngest ever Ladybird author. She was only nine years old when she first started writing these charming stories about fruit and vegetable characters. Writing and drawing aren't Jayne's only interests. She has studied for the Ribbon awards of the Royal School of Church Music, and plays the classical guitar and the recorder. Jayne sews, bakes, reads avidly, plays chess and keeps two gerbils and breeds stick insects. But it is perhaps her own garden at home which gave her the ideas for these stories. Jayne's bold, colourful felt-tipped pen illustrations are bound to appeal to young children and we can all learn a few lessons from the characters in the Garden Gang.

I remember the stories only vaguely now, age having faded my memory, but all were with strong morals and fruit and vegetable protagonists that gave insight into one's own character. A list of the characters can be found by clicking here.

Over the years, I've written stories, even had a couple of articles and stories published, and am working on novels, as well as using blogging as another method of output for my writing, but it all really goes back to the day I read Jayne Fisher's CV on the back of the Ladybird books, and was inspired: I, too, can do that.

"Where is she now?" some people are asking. I do wonder, as she hasn't written under her own name since the Garden Gang series ended in the 1980s. She was first published at the age of nine in 1979, so that would make her about 38 or 39 years old by now. Jayne Fisher, come back to writing, maybe sit down and write a few more Garden Gang books one day soon? I certainly may not write in the same genre as her, but she inspired me. Thank you, Jayne Fisher, for an entertaining series of books when I was a child, and for getting me started writing.

Originally posted on my other blog here. Images on this blogpost are believed to be in the public domain and are used so; if I am in error on this, contact me and I will either credit them or remove them accordingly.

Thanks to Angie

2009-01-13T21:08:00.004Z

I just want to say a big thanks to my nearest and dearest, my beloved fiancée Angie, for her Christmas gift to me. It's had constant use ever since, and is the perfect gift for a writer.

What did I get? She got me a PDA! A Palm Z22 to be precise, a tidy little thing for writing, jotting stuff down, organising my diary, occasionally playing games, installing other programs (such as an astronomy program), etc. I've also downloaded lots of books to read into it, using the program ReadThemAll. Great for downloading H.P. Lovecraft stories and such like from Memoware.

It's a basic thing, as it doesn't have access to the web and you can't use it as a phone, or other distracting uses. It's simple, and does the job I need it to do, and that's for it to be mainly a writing tool.

I've been using to do my writing ever since Christmas thanks to its versatility and portability. It's been a godsend for writing, as it means I can do my writing almost anywhere now. Before, coming up with a good line to write for the WIP (Work In Progress) on the bus used to be difficult to jot down, but just whipping out the PDA t'other day as I rode home and I was soon into the story again, and had it written down before I forgot the important sentence I'd composed in my head.

The actual software I'm using for composing stories and writing is extremely basic; it comes with the Palm operating system software as standard and is called "Memos", with no fancy add-ons at all to distract you. And it is extremely basic, let me stress that. It's also good for the writer with obsessive-compulsive-word-check disorder, as it does not have a word count, but can store pretty hefty files in it. I'm not sure of the exact maximum amount of storage per Memo file for writing, but I downloaded a 5,000 word document into the PDA without issues, but it wouldn't have a 7,000 word document as it was apparently too large, so there are some limits, which can easily be overcome by splitting a long document into chapters or parts.

I had an inkling, of course, that I might be getting such an item for Christmas. I therefore managed to pick up the ultimate accessory, a wireless keyboard. God bless eBay; I only paid £7.01 for the keyboard! The keyboard is retailing for a lot more.

On the power consumption side, it's value for money. The battery lasts for ages too, and is charged either by connecting it dierectly to your PC or by an independent charger with interchangable heads, so useful abroad too! The battery lasts ages, and after a day of almost constant use, it had only gone down to about 50% battery. AAA batteries in the keyboard are still registering as full, nearly a month on, and apparently the batteries in the keyboard can last four months under heavy usage.

Time for a photo, methinks, so you can see what I'm on about....

One further piece of advice, however if you get/have one of these: back-up, back-up, back-up! HotSync regularly with your PC or laptop, so that if it does crash (and from having previous Palm PDAs, the operating system is nearly perfect in my humble opinion and has far, far, fewer problems than Windows as an operating system, in my experience), you haven't lost your files.

New Year's writing resolution

2009-01-04T16:01:00.006Z

Well, it's 2009 (it's going take a little while, getting used to typing a 9 instead of an 8), and it's time to look at New Year's resolutions. I'm not one for them myself, but do occasionally make a few then subsequently ignore them for the rest of the year.

So here's a resolution I made before the new year on this blog and can probably attempt to adopt as a new year's resolution, despite getting underway with it before January the 1st.

I am going to finish writing a novel by the time I'm thirty. That's just over five months away. I have been writing since I was a nipper, and it's time I completed a Big One. Whether or not it will be any good is another issue, but it's getting there that is the important thing right now.

So, what to write? I've been working on a horror novel inspired by some political, social and moral intrigue in a distant part of the remnants of the British Empire, but I just wasn't in love with the piece. The characters felt distant, I didn't quite click with them. It's a theme that I want to explore so I haven't deleted it, I'll probably soldier on with it, writing a few hundred words here and there on it, but I put it aside to work on some short stories.

The latest story I'm working on has for some strange reason become bigger than I originally intended, and is threatening to be so grand as to be unable to constrain it in the confines of a short story, and wants to grow up to be a novel. I'm not stopping it, and am just carrying on writing it to see where it takes me. It's already given me a landscape and community of characters that at the very least I will want to work with again.

This is perhaps a good thing to be moving forward thus with my writing, as for the last week I've been dreadfully ill with influenza and barely been able to make a cup of tea for myself, and certainly not doing any writing. It's not been helped by the continual freezing weather here in Merrie Olde England. I indeed had a pint for new year, but it was a pint of Earl Grey tea accompanied by a few biscuits.

I originally was thinking of finishing and sending the above mentioned story off to a magazine which has a submission deadline looming, but the problem with the piece growing up into a potential novel is that it is now unsuitable to send out due to being too large, so I now have no intended piece to send to said magazine. I have to go back to my folder of ideas and trawl through other ideas, so I can craft other stories to submit.

This writing lark isn't easy, but it is fun!

New Domain Name: www.damonlord.info

2008-12-30T09:00:00.000Z

In a display of my commitment to writing and to appear a little more professional, I've gone and got me a domain name for this little ol' writing website of mine, to make it easier for you, my dear and constant reader, to surf along here. What's the domain? Well, kindly now set thy browsers henceforth unto http://www.damonlord.info.

Nice and easy to remember, huh?

www.DamonLord.info. Write it in your browsers, diaries or PDAs. Stick it on a post-it note next to your computer.

I would have got dot com, but it's been registered by someone else, so hearty wishes and good luck to that person.

So let me just reiterate the address: www.DamonLord.info. Save it in your favourites, or in your feeds!

By the way, did I mention the new address for this site is http://www.DamonLord.info?

::: shameless self-promotion ends here :::

My nephew's going to be a writer too

2008-12-29T00:00:00.004Z

A few days after Christmas, I visited my family. My nine-year-old nephew asked to have a go on my new PDA, and rather than playing the games I've downloaded onto it, he instead crafted a story (and I can tell where the influence is from). He needs to work on punctuation a bit and pacing, and there is a distinct lack of deep characterisation, but the anthropomorphic rendering of the characters displays great potential, and further ultimately provides youthful insight into a child's viewpoint on the glory and futility of military action and conflict. He also shows promise as a writer of speculative fiction (in choosing Sci-Fi as a genre). It's very good for a nine-year-old, and he hopefully has a bright future ahead of him in writing!

Here is the story (published with permission):

Space badgers.
By J (name omitted, for obvious security reasons)

before the dawn of time a planet called badgertopia had an enemy called snakes the snakes were horrible the snakes had lasers for guns and animal skin for armour but the badgers had better weapons and armour the badgers had spaceships the biggest town in badgertopia was called badger castle it had over one billion people living in badger castle every battle they have been in they have won one year later the snakes attacked the badger planet the badgers were scared of the snakes so the badger government decided to attack the snakes the war had been going on for eight centuries after eight hundred and one years of war both of the planets were destroyed the end.

STORY - "A Christmas Kiss"

2008-12-24T22:00:00.001Z

Following from my hint at good news, I can now announce the acceptance and publication of my latest story, A Christmas Kiss by Spinetinglers.

Not only was it accepted, but it also won first prize in the 2008 Christmas competition! It will now also be published in the 2010 Spinetinglers Anthology.

Click here to read my prize-winning entry, A Christmas Kiss.

Good news....

2008-12-22T21:55:00.005Z

Remember last time I described how I was a little apprehensive and nervous about sending out a story?

Well, I've already had some feedback about this. All will be revealed in good time; just remember to come back to this blog on Christmas ~~Day~~ Eve for all the gossip....

Sending a story out - a major psychological barrier overcome

2008-12-20T09:00:00.001Z

I have overcome a major psychological barrier which affects some budding (or in my case, re-budding) writers.

It's the fear of sending something out.

It was late in the evening. I'd finished the horror story the night before; all I had to do was to send it.

But I didn't. I reread my story over and over again, checking it was as good as I could make it. I composed carefully the submission e-mail, including all relevant information, then reread that multiple times.

All that was needed was to click send.

At that's where it became a nightmare. I couldn't do that one tiny click of commitment, sending my baby out into the world, alone, naked to be judged on its own merits.

So began behaviour which was like obsessive compulsive disorder. Had I attached the right file to the e-mail? I had. Are you sure? Yes. Let me check again. Yes. And again. Yes.

I haven't sent out a piece of fiction in probably over a decade. Finally, I decided I'd need some sort of incentive to do it.

You can have a beer if you overcome your fear of clicking send.

I paced the room for a few minutes. This really was a big moment. By clicking send, I would truly be announcing to the world that I am a writer again. It wasn't even the fear of rejection that worried me. What got me was that I would be making an absolute commitment to writing once more, as I would naturally need to follow it up by writing more words to send out, maybe earn a penny or two if I'm lucky.

I couldn't take it any more. I closed my eyes, leaned over the laptop and quickly clicked send; in the movies and books, such an important moment is always slowed down but it went as if time speeded up. I left the computer and ran from the room to the kitchen and pulled the door to the cupboard where we keep the alcohol. I opened a can and poured a cold one into a glass. Just one, in celebration.

And how will it go? I had an e-mail acknowledgement within thirty-eight minutes from the ezine I'd sent it to, they were up pretty late too. As soon as I hear how it went, rejection or success, then at that point you, my dear reader, will be the first to know via this website.

Ladies and gentlemen, after his identity as an author went into hibernation for a good long while, I can now proudly announce that Damon Lord the writer is definitely back.

Changing direction

2008-12-17T01:24:00.004Z

I've been working on a horror novel for the past ten or so days, and got healthily into it, thank you very much. I've just come to the end of a bit where I think I can comfortably now draw a line and say, that's the end of chapter one. It's a cliff-hanger, too, so I have to go back to it to continue.

I now need a break from the novel, even if only for a day or two. Therefore I've been writing a short Christmas horror story which I am thinking of submitting to an ezine. I think stories are going to be the way forward, short term, novels long term. Until I'm a successful novelist and working full time on the tomes (I wish!), it's important to plug away at the short stories to practice the writing craft as well. After all, stories is where most of my experience in writing thus far comes from. It also wouldn't hurt (if successful in getting a few stories accepted out there) for the writing CV.

So here's a change of direction. Still bashing away at the novel, but also now going to work on getting back into writing stories: My new revised goal is to finish writing a novel by the time I'm thirty (less than six months to go), and get a few stories accepted by then too.

Being creative all the time - have fun!

2008-12-16T10:44:00.001Z

As a writer, you're never off duty. Sat on the bus for example, you're listening to the conversations around you, looking for story fodder, maybe imagining the scenarios that led to the man on the bus talking about his cuts to his arm - had his house been broken into by a burglar armed with a sword whom he successfully fought off? Maybe he is a self-harmer, with deep psychological issues. Or he's a professional fighter?

And then there's a song they keep playing on the radio, you absent-mindedly start to rewrite the lyrics to make it funnier or different, to amuse yourself.

I had that song by Beyoncé playing over and over in my head earlier: If I were a boy. I couldn't get rid of it, even by thinking of other songs. So the creative writer in me started playing around with the words....

If I were a goat
I'd eat up all of the grass
I'd nibble anything I wanted
Like the roses at the end of the yard.

Silly I know, but it's my creativity in action. Even if nothing comes of it, just messing about like that, your creativity is still stimulated, and should be of use when it comes applying your creative thinking to writing a story, poem or novel later on.

Procrastination of the writer

2008-12-15T23:05:00.000Z

All right, let's get to work. Hmm, three hundred words is the goal to write today isn't it? Let's type. Yeah. Just put the right music on. There. Not the right track on the album though. There.

I need a drink.

Tea or coffee or cider?

Open a can of cider. Now I need food. Biscuits, or the packet of Jack and Jill crisps from the Filipino store in town? Toast. Wait for the bread to cook, pop! Butter or margarine? Hmm, I love butter but margarine is easier to spread. Right, back to typing. Cider and toast.

Finish eating first.

There. Must do the washing up. Angie will kill me if I don't do the washing up before she gets home. Bit cold in here. Heating on? I'll check. No it isn't. I'll play Age of Empires II until it's warm enough in here to type three hundred more words on my novel.

Damn I'm being attacked near the towers I put up by the coast. Save. I'll continue later. Time to write. Check the e-mail first. What's the latest on Facebook? Ah I've been invited to join a new pressure group. What's that all about? Gordon Brown is a loser. Click, join. Post something about Gordon Brown not being trustworthy.

Right, back to the novel. Ah, need more drink. Tea this time. Yes. Boil the kettle. Sugar or honey? Sugar. Earl Grey or ordinary? Earl Grey. There, a cuppa.

Sit down to write. Must reread what I previously wrote. Hmm, change a word or two there.... Now time to get on with it..... Need more tea. Back in a minute.

Procrastination in the writer's ~~friend~~ enemy. Just get on with it!

Book meme....

2008-12-13T13:17:00.002Z

I've stolen this book meme from Meghna's writing pages. I'm a sucker for doing this sort of stuff, so here goes....

What was the last book you bought?
Night in the Lonesome October by Richard Laymon. I'm looking to get back into horror, and I thought I'd read a favourite horror author. I did a Google search later for him, and was devastated to find he'd died nearly eight years ago.

Name a book you have read MORE than once
The Secret History by Donna Tartt. A perennial favourite.

Has a book ever fundamentally changed the way you see life? If yes, what was it?
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language by David Crystal. It opened my eyes to language. I thanked David Crystal for it when I met him.

How do you choose a book? eg. by cover design and summary, recommendations or reviews
Title, cover, summary of the plot on the cover, etc. If someone recommends it, that's good too.

Do you prefer Fiction or Non-Fiction?
Until recently, I would rather have gone to bed with a copy of a Danish grammar, but I'm getting back into fiction. I need to read more fiction anyway.

What's more important in a novel - beautiful writing or a gripping plot?
Plot, definitely. Let me name an author as an example: Richard Adams. His novel Watership Down was brilliant. Another novel of his, Shardik, is filled with cleverly crafted prose, but is a badly written and plotted book. Too flowery.

Most loved/memorable character (character/book)
Henry Winter in the afore-mentioned Donna Tartt opus, The Secret History.

Which book or books can be found on your nightstand at the moment?
I have a number of books there:
Umberto Eco: Mouse or Rat?
Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose
Richard Laymon: Body Rides
Laroux: The Phantom of the Opera
Tolstoy: War and Peace
Shaw: Pygmalion
Stoker: Dracula
Shelley: Frankenstein
Tim Lebbon: Faith in the Flesh
Elizabeth Kostova: The Historian
Pauline Réage: Story of O

What was the last book you've read, and when was it?
I read several books at once. This week I finished reading (or rereading):
Tim Lebbon: Faith in the Flesh
Gary Greenwood: The Dreaming Pool
Richard Laymon: Night in the Lonesome October
Stephen King: On Writing

Have you ever given up on a book half way in?
Yes. War and Peace. I will finish it one day though.

STORY - "Machiavellian Times"

2008-12-10T01:31:00.007Z

And now here's some of my work, a short story originally published in 1996 in "The Book Written in a Day", p.68, CARAD books, Rhayader, Wales. ISBN 1-900879-00-X.

The book was a project by an arts group in Rhayader to envision the bold plan to produce a book in a day, an anthology with contributions from members of the community on the theme of "Time". I gave it a pop, and what you will read below is the result of my endeavours, which appeared on page 68 of the tome.

I'm proud of this piece. It was the first piece to appear in a book with an ISBN number; to me at the time, that meant I was a real writer: I could add an ISBN number to my CV. Bear in mind that the piece was written nearly fourteen years ago, by a naïve sixteen year old (me). I hope you'll find it has aged well and is still readable. If I were to rewrite it today, there'd be some things I'd certainly change; I seemed to be (and probably still am) in love with the word "indeed", amongst other things, but let us read on to see what and how I was writing fourteen years ago.....

*****

Machiavellian Times

We send greetings, from your past, to you, our descendants. The year is 2176. We record this message on the first of January, and will seal this message, a copy of today’s newspaper, and several other items, inside a time capsule.

Today, in the late twenty-second century, many of man’s problems have been overcome. Financial problems are a thing of the past, and space travel is an everyday occurrence. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly common for people to live here, on the Moon, and commute daily to Earth to work.

Scientific advancements are being made all the time: Now the longest it will take anyone to travel to Mars is a month, and the outer planets are only a year away. This is a major advancement on the Voyager probes of the late twentieth century, which took a decade on their journey.

Other major discoveries are being made, such as the admission by the scientific community of the existence of ghosts. Obviously, it will be well documented in your era’s equivalent of history books (we use data chips, but still call them books), so we shall not go into that in depth.

Sociologically, humans have evolved, with single parent families and everyday occurrence. Indeed, it is rare for a person to make a life-time commitment to another, as solitude is a much sought-after thing in this solar system, in these times of meteoric rises in population.

Yes, our children, are your text books will tell you, the population today is in excess of sixty billion, and because of the ineffably high number of people, there is virtually no land for agriculture, and all attempts at farming the sea have failed. Indeed, the situation has become so drastic, even the richest people (and everyone today is rich) are starving, and crime are committed all the time in the name of food. The worst example of this is of a group that were so hungry that they turned to murder and cannibalism. They were stopped within a few days, but any heated discussions took place high up in the World Government whether they should be stopped, as they were reducing the population.

Our Offspring of Time: we speak to you through the ages only hoping for forgiveness, for we, at the highest positions of the World Government have committed the most heinous of crimes: we condone the murder of millions of innocents.

Although we were seen to take a stand against the gang of cannibals, we have employed assassins all around the world to rid the land of excess people, and it is slowly beginning to work. Just last year, a large area of land was cleared in Africa, after its inhabitants mysteriously disappeared. The land is now being farmed intensively.

But assassins on the streets are not the only way we deal with the population. Only the Government knows this, but regularly, spaceships loaded with people leave for Pluto, going to live at the colony there. But there is no colony on Pluto, and an accident always occurs, and it is always fatal.

We have also engineered incredibly terrible diseases to attack the population, but fortunately (for them), the diseases do not spread easily.

So, our Children of the Future, you now know the truth as to the sudden population drop we are planning for this year, and we only wish for you absolution, but we feel so wicked and sinful for our acts that we believe we shall never obtain exoneration.

Farewell, our unborn descendants. We only hope you will never have to go through such Machiavellian times.

Patience and writing

2008-12-09T10:00:00.001Z

I'm an impatient so-and-so, and in taking up writing again, I've seriously had to learn patience.

There are two areas where this has hit home tonight. I've just decided to change a major aspect of the main character (MC), namely the job and motivation, in order to improve the tale. To go back at this stage and edit it would involve going back through the manuscript (MS) so far, spending ages rewriting bits where the MC talks about the reason for taking a journey to where the book takes place, thus stopping me from making much progress tonight.

So I stopped myself from going back. Anyone opening the file will be confused as the MC changes jobs after a couple of thousand words, but at the point of the change, I HAVE WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS a memo to myself to rewrite the earlier sections at a later stage. Patience, my boy, you can alter it in the rewrite. Reward yourself with an edit once you've finished the thing.

The other thing is that writing is a slow process to start with anyway. But novels don't always get written overnight. I've already struggled at the moment (8 Dec 2008) to get my daily 300 out, and then found that by the time I'd got the 300 minimum number of words out on to screen, I was into my stride, so wrote another 500 to make sure I was going places. Still it feels like the word count is not going up much, but the important thing it is going up.

Who knows? I may even meet my previously declared goal to finish a novel by the age of thirty....

Contact Me

2008-12-07T10:00:00.002Z

Need to contact me? My e-mail address is: mail (AT) damon lord DOT eu Replace (AT) with @, remove spaces and change the word DOT to a full stop; I wrote it like that so spambot programs don't pick it up.

Published work

2008-12-06T10:00:00.034Z

Der Worte sind genug gewechselt,
laßt mich auch endlich Taten sehn!
Enough words have been exchanged;
now at last let me see some deeds!
(Goethe, Faust I)

This page is a bibliography of sorts; a library index card, if you will, of my published works.

Stories

2010 and 2011 update to come
2009

The Price, published by Mirror Dance, Winter Issue 2009.
In Vino Veritas published by Fear and Trembling, December 2009.
Consequences, a short story (tweet length) published by Thaumatrope on 30 October 2009 (scroll to the bottom of that page for my story).

2008

A Christmas Kiss — First prize in the Spinetinglers Christmas Competition. Also to be published in the forthcoming Spinetinglers Anthology 2010.

1996

Machiavellian Times, published in Time: stories round the clock, p.68, CARAD books, Rhayader, Wales. ISBN 1-900879-00-X.

Purchase by clicking here: Time: Stories Round the Clock

This story has been reproduced in full on this website. Click here to read.

List to be completed as I dig out/refind my old pieces

In particular I had two stories printed around about 1995-6 in a zine called Basically Insane; the first story was called The End, the other War of the Chickens. I no longer can find copies of these stories, so if you still have copies of the zine, please get in touch.

****

Articles

2006

Chickenese—A Grammatical Sketch in Speculative Grammarian, Volume CLI, Number 3

2002

2001

Creating and Using Fictional Languages in Your Writing in Vision (Issue 2)

Poetry

2010

Cryo-Hell in M-Brane SF #18. It's one I'm particularly proud of, as firstly it's a particularly favourite magazine I love to read, and also they don't normally publish poetry, and this was the first SF poem they've ever published!

2002

Honouring Kim Il Sung — Second Prize in the Poetry Contest for the 57th Anniversary of the Workers' Party of Korea (and the worst poem I've ever written! Read it here!)

Frequently Asked Questions

2008-12-05T02:00:00.012Z

Last updated 17 June 2009.

Is that your real name?

Yes. Yeah, I know it sounds a lot like Demon Lord, which would be an even better name for a dark fiction writer like me. but it's not that. It's Damon Lord. And not Damien/Damian, either. So you can stop The Omen wisecracks now. I've heard it all before!

Do you have an agent?

Not yet. Although if you are a legitimate literary agent reading this website, you are interested in my work and would like to get in touch, contact details are below.

Where do you get your ideas from?

All around. Look around you; everything and everyone has a story, and thinking about things can inspire a story. It's a matter of asking questions of yourself, then playing with them in your mind.

Here's a few links to articles on where to get ideas for stories:

Creative Writing Corner: 10 Places to Get Story Ideas

Writers Write: Where do you get your ideas...?

Neil Gaiman: Where do you get your ideas? This is a brilliant response to The Question.

Any tips on writing?

Yes. Write. Write a lot. And keep at it, every day if you can.

Coupled with this is reading a lot. Make sure you read a wide variety of things, lots of authors, lots of genres.

And get involved with a site like Forward Motion.

I've got this idea for a story/poem/book/play/etc.; why don't I tell you my idea, you write it, and then we'll split the profits?

Sorry, no. Thanks, but no thanks.

Who designed your site?

Any criticisms and compliments on the web design are to be directed solely to me. I'm not a pro when it comes to web design, so I'm pretty happy with what I've got going on here. I took a template from blogger.com and manipulated it until I got what I wanted, and I'm rather satisfied with what I've got here at the moment.

How can I contact you?

mail (AT) damonlord DOT EU is my e-mail address if you are a writer or involved in the writing and publishing industry. Otherwise, why not leave a comment on this site? I check the site regularly, and am happy to hear from people. Please feel free to get involved.

Impressum, etc.

2008-12-05T01:33:00.001Z

© Damon Lord

The content of this site are protected by copyright laws. Words, opinions and texts written by me here are solely my own unless otherwise stated, and are not to be taken as representative of any companies, organisations, bodies and groups I support, work for, am a member of, or am associated with.

Damon Lord takes no responsibility for the content of other individuals, such as through external feeds, or by contributors to the comments facility or external websites.

Biography

2008-12-05T01:00:00.019Z

(Updated June 2011)

Damon Lord writes dark and speculative fiction.

He divides his time between England and the Philippines with his wife, Angie, and young son. Unlike the stereotypical writer, he does not like cats. He was also exiled from his native Wales for the inexcusable shame of not being interested in the national sport of rugby.

Damon has been writing since the age of six. For a few years he took a break from crafting stories in order to study, finally completing his degree in Humanities with English Language with the UK's Open University in 2007, although he did complete a module (A174 for those interested!) in writing fiction along the way. He has now returned to writing with renewed vigour, and is currently working on his first novel.

When not found writing dark and speculative fiction, he speaks Esperanto and can be found cooking or learning obscure languages, and may even occasionally be observed holding down a day-job.

Damon Lord is currently studying for MA in Cthulhonic Linguistics and Madness at Miskatonic University, Caermaen campus.

Out for the count

2008-12-04T17:10:00.000Z

The thing is with writing, it's all about consistency. Like running a marathon, one footstep at a time, or one keystroke on the keyboard at a time. My previous attempts at writing have been in spurts, no consistency, like a hundred metres dash, say several thousand words one day for example, and none for a week after that. It takes regularity, sitting down and whacking out the words day after day after day, and that's the mindset I now need to get into.

Some writers when they write like to set a goal to attain when writing, say a certain number of pages or number of words to be done by the end of the day. In fact, the book No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty is all about that, setting the goal of writing 50,000 words in a month, with an average of 1,667 words a day.

I've tried that, and a week in to trying just could not continue, having attained 10,000 words and got disheartened when I wasn't making the daily goal of 1,667 words. I probably was torturing myself by checking the word-count every five minutes, and seeing it increase only gradually. The biggest problem with setting off with such a goal when you're not used to writing that much so quickly is that on a day when you miss your target, you realise you're so much further behind, and the total for tomorrow grows bigger and bigger until it seems impossible and you abandon the project. Or you spend so much time drawing up spreadsheets on Excel (or whatever program you choose to use) calculating the word-counts, that in the end the spreadsheet gets more attention than the WIP (Work In Progress).

But no more. Back to the writing. I guess it's like taking up exercise (not that I know what that is, having shied away from exercise in fear after the bullying at school in the gym lessons), you have to start slowly. Yesterday, for example, I started off at a slow pace, writing a little something with 302 words. I did not know how much I was going to write, but stopped when I felt I'd done enough. This seems like a reasonable start, and I aim to crack out a further 300 words today. It's not a lot, but perhaps an attainable target, write about 300 words a day. I can work on building this up in the future, maybe later setting the bar at 500 words a day, then a thousand and so on.

So what of a goal? I read somewhere that the average novel is about 100,000 words, so that's what I'm aiming at with each of my novels for now, plodding on until the story's told, with an aim of about 100K. I'm going to set up separate pages on this blog with the word-counts for each project, so that daily I can update the blog with a record of how I'm doing.

And that's the thing, it has to be done daily. No excuses, I must make time to do it when I come home from work, before going out shopping on a Saturday, etc.

No excuses.

Yeah.

I've probably convinced you, the reader, at this stage of my good intentions; I now have to convince myself.

See you later; I've got words to do.

Welcome from me

2008-12-01T23:00:00.010Z

'Ello.

This is the first blogpost on my new writing blog. For those of you who've been following my main blog for the last two years over at Linguanaut.co.uk, you'll know I like to do a bit of creative writing now and then, so welcome to my new blog.

For new readers who've not met me before, welcome also. That's me in the picture, writing. The laptop screen's absolutely kaput, so I have to use an old monitor for typing. C'est la vie. Old or new friends, you are all welcome to stay a while, tarry whilst I muse on the writing craft.

Let me tell you a bit about my writing curriculum vitae for the moment. I started writing when I was a child, many moons ago. I was inspired by Jayne Fisher, author of the Garden Gang books, as I recounted in an old blogpost on my other blog, which you can read by clicking here. There was other writing, and about ten years ago, I had a story published in a book, as well as winning an award for poetry at sixth form college. I wrote various short stories in the 1990s, and was part of a writers' group called Basically Insane in south Wales for a while, but not so much writing since then, just an occasional article and tale since, and aborted starts at novels. I felt I was doing pretty well, maybe a bit of improvement here and there, but didn't really push myself further. With my academic studies (which finally ended about this time last year), I haven't had much opportunity to do much creative writing in the traditional sense; I got into the habit of putting my writing creativity into essays, but now I feel the urge to take up once more the writing habit, and write a bit of fiction.

This blog is my public commitment to return to creative writing and get back into it, return to the swing of things. In many ways, keeping a regular blog over the last two years (although I did name it an irregular blog originally) has meant that I already feel I can legitimately call myself a writer; my goal is to now develop my writing skills enough so that I may eventually also call myself a novelist.

To do that, of course, I have to write a novel. So it's time to outline the aims of this blog. It's going to be something of a medium to communicate with my potential readers, as well as being musings on the writing craft. It's also going to be a place whereby I can set out my personal goals.

Writing is important for me as an expression of myself. As mentioned above, I have probably attempted a million times to start, but it's time to actually take the plunge and see something through to the very end. That's one of my goals, to actually finish writing a novel (preferably by the age of thirty; I've got about six months to do it if the age of 30 is a goal). That's the plan, and the idea is that having got one under my belt, it should get easier after that. That's the theory anyway.

And here's another writing personal goal. A few years ago, in the Basically Insane writing group as mentioned earlier in this blogpost, I knew some good writers called Tim Lebbon and Gary Greenwood. I don't know if they remember me, but they're brilliant writers and I heartily recommend their works to you. Gary's had four books published now, I believe. And what about Tim? On 1st December 2008, just as I was celebrating my second anniversary of taking up blogging (and thus in theory having been able to call myself a writer for two years), coincidentally I noticed that Tim celebrated being a full-time writer for two years and has now written something like a million books. My congratulations to Tim! He's an inspiration. So there's another goal, maybe a pipe-dream, maybe not: To eventually earn enough writing to give up the day job to write full-time. Not likely, but hey, I can dream....

And indeed I can dream. It's just a matter of turning those dreams into words on paper (or in the twenty-first century, words on screen), and hammering out the prose.

Join with me as I embark on a new adventure, as I begin my musings on the writing craft.