It’s the start of the Easter Holidays here in the UK, and the weather is lovely, but we can’t go out due to a national lockdown in relation to Coronavirus. But that doesn’t mean we need to all be bored – here’s a few projects of mine (and by some friends) I think may help turn the tide of lockdown boredom!
GROWING STORM
You can read my latest short story – a 12,000 word sci-fi horror piece called Growing Storm HERE – really excited to see what people make of my latest story. It’s a “spooky sci-fi sea shanty” inspired in large part by the classic novel The Day of the Triffids – with my own twist, too!
DOCTOR WHO: REVERENCE OF THE DALEKS
I released a Doctor Who fan-film in February that I, with a compendium of lovely friends, made over the last three years entitled Reverence of the Daleks. It’s recently hit 1,000 views on YouTube so I’m thrilled by the success so far. Find out more and watch the film through my website HERE!
Also I feel it’s right to shout out two other projects by good friends that I feel are worth promoting while we’re in the sharing mood:
THE PREP DIARIES
Read my good friend Chris Kenny‘s guide to preparing for his first big bodybuilding show – it’s an honest, authentic account of a personal journey and very inspirational. You can view the ebook on Amazon HERE.
STORYMECHS
Long-time Twitter friend Sam Richards has been working hard on his interactive fiction project StoryMechs and will be running a new interactive story in April to help alleviate lockdown tedium, check out all the details on Sam’s Patreon page HERE.
I hope everyone is keeping safe and well in these unknown times and give a thought to checking out these fantastic projects!
It’s unprecedented times right now, and we’re all concerned about what’s going on. However, to find a positive in this troubling world, I have found some time to work on some creative endeavours. I’m pleased to announce therefore that I have posted a new short story Growing Storm, on my site and you can read it right now!
This started as a short story I’d initially wanted to release for Halloween 2019 but that didn’t happen for many reasons, but I’ve finally finished the story. It’s a “spooky sea shanty”, another experiment into horror/sci-fi writing that takes a lot of inspiration from one of my favourite novels, The Day of the Triffids, while hopefully doing its own thing.
This image summed up the mood of the story, and some of the key elements!
Please let me know if you what you make of the story!
In strange times like those we’re currently experiencing it’s important, I think, not to let ourselves be consumed by what’s happening in the world and allow ourselves some escapism – if anything it’ll alleviate the boredom of a long spell at home! I hope my short story – and the others here on my site help with that!
I had planned a festive short story to go out on my site today but various real-life things – a new job for starters – have put paid to those plans, which is a shame. The work in progress I’ve been nibbling at is still coming for sure and I am very excited by it – it’s still untitled, annoyingly, but can be described thusly as a spooky sea shanty, riffing a little, and intentionally so, on a classic sci-fi story from way back when.
I am, however, giving something for Christmas this year – I have made available a ~6,000-word short story I wrote in 2018 as part of my university course, Pandora’s Box. I hope it makes adequate festive reading! (Link at the bottom of the post or in the navigation!)
It’s a good story to revisit – written as part of my Narrative Techniques in Popular Fiction module that I recall enjoying quite a lot. This story was borne out of a great discussion we had in class about science fiction where an extrapolation of a real-world topic or concern.
The concern I took to extrapolate was one I am legitimately concerned about – government collection of vast amounts of personal data, and the nefarious means by which this data could be used. There’s also a hint of extrapolation against nationalising of private industry. Here’s my premise notes from my University notebook:
The story is set on New Year’s eve, a year after the radical PANDORA group swept to power promising that, after an unfortunate industrial accident that they use to highlight the “callous profiteering” of the gene-modding industry, the “immoral” practise of “buying” genetic enhancements (or screening for flaws and correcting them) to create the ideal human body would be outlawed and the technology used to ostensibly “better humanity”. This event is called the “nationalisation”.
Over the course of the preceding year, under the surface, PANDORA uses this technology to screen the population for their perceived enemies who start to disappear after the gene clinics are used to surreptitiously build a gigantic genetic database on the entire population.
How does the story link in?
A breakaway group, Nexus, is rebelling against these practises finagles their way into acquiring the master genetic database code and is able to stop the powers that be from continuing to screen the population. However, confronted with such a pandora’s box of information and possibilities, the tables turn with the breakaway group inevitable becoming just as bad as the revolutionaries before them.
This piece did well when assessed – scoring 67 marks, 3 marks off a First – and it was another one of my University pieces that garnered comments that it could work as the beginnings of a novel. I’ve pondered it myself, it’s certainly a setting and a premise I think holds legs!
A while back I discussed where I was at with the editing process with my post-apocalyptic novel The Thaw. Basically, just starting off on the wonderful journey! During that time, I happened to take a meandering, very-much-procrastinating wander onto my Twitter. I found this:
Well, I’m delighted to be able to say that, two years after I started writing the book at all (and about a year after finishing that), I now have a fully line-edited second draft in my possession! I even managed to print it out and it looks mightily impressive!
A very proud author with his printed second draft in sunny Kingston-upon-Thames! 😎
Safe to say, I am thrilled and proud of myself for making it this far. The Thaw is easily the longest single work I’ve written and I’m more proud of myself for being disciplined and making it through the edit. It’s been a tough process – it took about two months, with around 70 hours work, to get from cover to cover.
That’s longer than I’d anticipated but, in a way, unsurprising given how rough and heat-of-the-moment the initial draft was. What I’ve learned through this process is a lot – I’m certainly able to handle a work of this length, and more importantly, I’ve learned some important lessons about self-editing and how a novel evolves as a piece through successive drafts. With The Thaw I already feel the work is a lot stronger, a lot clearer and a lot more engaging than it was in its initial form.
Ultimately, thinking back, I’m extremely proud of the core idea and story at the heart of my book, and I do genuinely think it’s something I’m going to pursue publication of. It’s a good story – yes, not perfect, but making measurable steps toward – and I think it’d fit right in the marketplace.
Now, while it’s easy to bask in my own self-adulation (and the heartfelt congratulations of friends and colleagues, all of whom have helped me massively) at completing this substantive edit… it’s not the final stage. So what do I plan to do now?
Take some time away from the new draft. One of the key lessons I learned (and ignored in a way) from On Writing is to let a draft breathe after completion. As a writer, having that objective distance from your work, so it’s not so fresh in your mind to cloud your creative vision, is paramount I’ve found. It helps ease the inevitable self-doubt that will creep in. The Thaw, even in its roughest form, is a good book. In its new form, it’ll be a better book. But it’ll still take effort to make it a great book.
“With six weeks’ worth of recuperation time, you’ll also be able to see any glaring holes in the plot or character development. And listen–if you spot a few of these big holes, you are forbidden to feel depressed about them or to beat up on yourself. Screw-ups happen to the best of us.”
Read it as a reader, than as a writer. I need to let the new draft, when the time comes, soak back in. For the first draft I did partially read over it but I found note-taking at the same time as that initial readthrough was erroneous. So when I re-read the book toward the end of July I will give it a reader’s pass before reading it again and asking myself questions how to improve it.
Enlist beta-readers. I’ve approached a few trusted writer friends to read the new draft and I’m designing a feedback questionnaire. I realise the book is a lot for people to mark-up inline comments on, especially to those with day jobs and family lives. But it’s important to me to get help and guidance, to help spot errors I wouldn’t on my own.
“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.”
Explore professional editorial advice. My friend Gary Thomas has been working on his autobiography for a while. He brought to my attention an organisation called The Literary Consultancy who offer manuscript evaluation and other editorial services. I’m going to get in contact with them once a third draft is complete in August about what services they’d suggest for The Thaw – as I previously stated, I feel it’s worthy of publication and deserves the critical eye of a professional editor. Yes, it’ll be expensive but money well spent in my opinion!
As a learning process, though… there’s been some invaluable and harsh lessons I’ve learned in retrospect. Yes, I am a little regretful that The Thaw has taken so long, but I hope it’s worth it. My confidence as an author – a proper one at that! – just, at this stage, feels so very buoyed and I am excited to get started on the next phase of getting this book in front of people who could make some exciting decisions!
Plus, relief – I can breathe and relax. Enjoy video games and books (hobbies which have suffered as I’ve edited; time management skills there but I’ll go into that later).
Overall though I can’t really express how proud I am of myself for making it this far with The Thaw and I hope to be able to share some more of it soon! If you have any advice, comments or things you think I should know as I enter the next phase of this project then please feel free to send them my way.
