I think there's going to be violence

“Majesty?” A lieutenant commander entered the compartment with unseemly haste. Two marines followed him through the hatch.
She held up a finger, then waited until he had composed himself. “I will receive your report now, Commander.”
“Majesty, we have picked up multiple ships dropping out of AltSpace.”
“How many?” I asked. He ignored me. If it was more than a handful then it was more than coincidence.
 “The Captain recommends that we leave orbit and disperse the ships.”
“How many ships?” Asked the Empress. This time he answered.
“Twenty three, Majesty.”
“Leave orbit.” I said. “Now!” This was no random event. Either they had come for us or for the Empress.
“Gabriel, as you know, in addition to the Stobo, I have a full squadron of frigates at my disposal. I presume that Captain Ladywood is capable of handling these new arrivals. So many ships must be a fleet of pirates. It’s happened before.”
“Absolutely not. It’s a reconnaissance group.” She looked at me blankly. “There is a destroyer and four heavy cruisers in the system, and they’re looking for the Stobo.” That might not quite be true, but it didn’t matter.
“Captain Ladywood agrees, Majesty.”
“Why now?” She looked at me. “Did you bring them here.”
“No.” I hoped that was true although the end game might be just the same.
“Then it’s a remarkable coincidence.” Commented the Naval Officer. “I have orders to escort Admiral York to his quarters and confine him there. The rest of his crew are being rounded up.” Ladywood clearly thought we were the vanguard and wanted us where we could do no further harm. I would have done the same. I had an idea what had happened but, right now, exploring that wasn’t the priority. I had to avoid being locked in my cabin. If the Empress didn’t act quickly, the warships would be upon us.
“How soon before they arrive at our current position?” I demanded.
“A little over four hours.”
“Esther, you need to leave orbit.”
“Thank you, Gabriel. I think you need to go with the Commander.” I knew she had an implant and could have recorded the names of all her senior officers, but she clearly hadn’t bothered. I was surprised that she had managed to retain the loyalty of her crew for so long.
“Sir, if you will come with me.”
We were in a small compartment one deck above the ball. It had a single hatch and I knew there were four Imperial Guards outside. I couldn’t think of a way to get past them and, even if I did, where would I go? Going with the marines was a better option.
The Stobo’s two marines took up position behind me as I followed the  officer. As we turned a corner, he nearly collided with a woman who had been the ball and was now standing in the passageway. It was Cavendish. The lieutenant commander turned to shout out a warning but his face showed increased alarm as he looked past me. There was a pair of thumps and the clatter of weapons falling to the floor. He reached for his holstered pistol but Cavendish put her hand on his shoulder and spun him round, head-butting him into unconsciousness.
“We need to get off the ship.” Said Cavendish. “Team two are rounding up the crew.”
“I’m surprised you got out of the ballroom.”
“Echo created a diversion. It got us as far as the hatch unnoticed.  After that we had to resort to violence.”
I grimaced. It never sat well, having to fight with other Imperial troops.
Cavendish saw me. “There’s an Imperial destroyer in system. Everybody on the ship is dead, they just don’t know yet. I don’t see why we have to join them."
She was right. I wasn’t sure that it made me feel better but I might not hesitate when we had to fight our way through the ship’s security. She handed me a weapon. One in the chamber, safety on. The others had weapons that they’d obviously taken from Stobo personnel but I’d seen the small automatic pistol that before. It belonged to Cavendish and I was surprised that she’s managed to smuggle it in to the ball. The line of her dress didn’t allow many hiding places.

What killed all the vampires?

The most difficult part of both Echo and Clarke to write is not the characterisation, the plot, the dialogue, the background description. It's the sex.

Sex is big in novels at the moment. I'm sure you've noticed. Every time I go into WHSmith there's somebody brazenly standing in front of the huge 50 Shades section. And it's going to get worse as the massive band wagon rolls into town and bookshops have to clear away all the vampire books to make room.

If you've not read Echo (and why not?), you'll know there's sex. Twice. E winces and skips over those parts, the crowd at work read it aloud in the office, fortunately whilst I'm not there although they tell me about it.

There's an unspoken presumption that sex scenes in books are autobiographical. Hand on heart there are no polka dot pants in the house. I've no idea whether EL James did theoretical or practical research. Thnk what you like but remember it's a novel of fiction :-)

As I've said before, Echo was written with the intention that nobody would ever read it, but it was still very hard to write. And it will be even harder with Clarke because I know that it will have an audience, and a fairly merciless one at that. 

Because everybody is too busy taking the piss, it's almost impossible to get any constructive feedback  about those scenes. I read the first too chapters of 50 Shades and they're terrible, so I can only presume that the sex (page 115 onwards, apparently) is truly badly written as well. Is it possible to write a "good" sex scene, or do writers leave their critical facilities at the door as well?

I've never actually questioned why I left those parts in or what they add to the book, I just wrote them. I suppose that I could leave the scene with the closing of the door.

But where would be the fun in that?

I've been expecting you, Mr Bond

What makes a good villain?

I've been beta reading something recently and one of my constructive criticisms was that the characters I perceived to be the bad guys just didn't cut it for me. Their motivation was around climbing the corporate ladder and getting their own back on people who had spited them previously.

Should a villain be evil? Evil isn't that interesting. True evil is sad little men finding themselves in positions of power and murdering millions of people through the application of bureaucracy. Who was the most evil character in Star Wars. It wasn't Darth Vader, it was Grand Moff Tarkin who blew up an entire world. Nor is evil attractive (to those of us that consider ourselves to be sane).  The moors murderers have been in the news a lot this week and nobody can consider them anything other than abhorrent. 

Do we need a villain? Writing courses talk about the antagonist. The person whose sole purpose in the story is to place barriers in the hero's path and potentially be the source of threat. Does the antagonist need to be a villain. In Echo the main antagonist is trying to kill York and those around him, but their motivation is as much about preservation of the Empire rather than personal gain, spite, underlying character flaw or psychopathic tendencies. If you want to judge, then remember that York is responsible for something in the reason of 50,000 deaths on the nineteen ships destroyed by the Nemesis during the war and Echo cheerfully murders her way through the entire book. In Echo 2 I'm starting to work up a couple of antagonist characters but both are honourable, honest, professional people with great integrity. If the book was written from the point of view of the Realm, they would be the heroes and Echo and York would come across as monsters.

In most books an antagonist of some kind is necessary. Until they're dead/ imprisoned / exiled/ rehabilitated then there's no closure. But I've concluded that they don't need to be evil. They do, however, need to have a clear reason for being the bad guy and, if possible, they need to be interesting.

Cats are optional

The joys of the West Yorkshire Road Car Company

Blogs are like buses. You don't blog for ages and then several ideas come at once. Blogging is different to authoring in that, as I've discovered and many other writers will tell you, just putting words on the page will eventually kick the muse into action and then you can delete all the dross. With a blog, it's different. I try to find something to say reasonably frequently so that I can then tweet about it and, at the moment, each blog/ tweet appears to generate one sale.

I should probably post more stuff from E2. Lots has happened in the last few chapters and it was quite exciting to write. The difficulty is that I need to select a bit that will work out of context. And without giving too much of the story away, after all, I'm looking to you lot to buy the next one. The tax man will eventually be looking for me to make a profit, rather than the UK subsidising Cathy Helms and the US revenue.

An unforeseen consequence of the iPad is that the blogger site doesn't seem to handle it particularly well. Hard returns (does anybody remember typewriters?) and  speech marks just seem to be ignored, so the final product is all bunched up without the dramatic spacing I wanted. Never mind, still think the iPad is the best thing since sliced bread for writers on the move.

Next blog will look at giving your book a title. Hopefully see you then. Single to Aireworth Road, please.

Doing the Tango with Brucie

I'm getting ahead of myself. Although I've just finished chapter 8, I'm starting to think about the end of the process. Book 1 only became "Echo" quite some time after it was finished. Echo herself only become Echo a day or two before hand. Prior to that she'd been called Chorus, after the narrator in some of Shakespeare's plays. At some point over tea one night,  I was persuaded that it wasn't a great name and I changed the names of the three constructs around. Surprisingly I've thought of her as Echo rather than sticking with the name she'd had for the previous twelve months in my head. A day or two later I decided to name the book after my main protagonist.

Throughout the writing the working title of book 1 was Scenario Five.

'Five basic scenarios.’ She ticked them off on her fingers and I noticed that the tip of one was missing. ‘Guard, Hot insertion, Cold insertion, Pursuit and, number Five, everybody’s favourite, Lost contact. Whenever we find whatever it is we’re looking for there are inevitably dark corridors full of traps, xenomorphs, madmen. Danger and destruction.’

At that point the story was basically about the investigation into the loss of contact with a research station. However, as is their want, York's crew get themselves mixed up into a conspiracy that coulddisrobe stability of the Empire itself.

So, whilst book 2 is meant to be about the search for the lost Visionary Ship, the Arthur C Clarke, one of the five ships that carried humans from Old Erth to their new homes, who knows where the story is actually going to go, and I'd be a fool to try and predict it.

It's a bit too soon to start thinking about a title then, isn't it? The working title is "Clarke", but I've taken a fancy to "Outcast". I'm definitely going for a one word title as a theme through the series and currently Outcast is the word for book 2.

I have some concerns. First, that I'll end up tailoring the story around the title rather than the other way round. The other is that I came up with the title after hearing Hey Ya on the radio several times over the course of a couple of days. Not a good reason.

I'm also itching to start work on the cover. I love the work Cathy Helms did for Echo and I've no idea whether she's got any more pictures of Trout Pout and Slap Head or whether we'll have to go with something else as the part that we take through the series. I like themes and it would be good to have something that appears in all, in one form or another.

Of course, I could just write faster so that I can do the title and cover sooner rather than later. But, as a writer, it's as much about the journey as it is the end product. Oh no, I sound like I'm on Strictly (Dancing with the stars for you Yanks). I better stop there before I commit to giving 110%.

You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off

Chapter eight is in the bag. 5016 words and, unlike some of the early chapters, I really enjoyed writing this one. Actually the last three or four chapters were good fun, with lots of death and blood and destruction. One of the casualties of chapter 6 was the plan. I'd written five or six bullet points describing what happens for each of the chapters 6 to 15. I don't know why I'm surprised but, just like in Echo, the story went its own way when I started wondering what the characters would do in this situation and the answer was not actually what I intended. Again This isn't always a bad thing. Having got themselves in a difficult situation I spent ages trying to figure out how to get them out of it. I needn't have bothered. By the end of chapter 6 York's crew are different starships and in mortal danger. Ok smartarses, what now. Fortunately they're a resourceful lot and they worked out a plan. York's crew like to have a plan. By the end of chapter 8 they're well on the way to sorting themselves out. Those of you that are writers will be nodding along to my comments. The rest of you will probably think I'm nuts To continue. That was too easy I thought. Actually it wasn't easy and lots of people died (don't worry, they're not real people) but I decided to intervene (interfere) so I've just created a cliffhanger for the end of chapter 8 that sees Echo trapped outside a spaceship with her oxygen supply leaking from her damaged suit and they're under attack. Will she survive? Of course she will, I've got another sixteen chapters to write. I'm making no promises that she'll survive to the end of the book though.

John McCain wouldn't approve

I love gadgets. Some people are surprised to find that I'm not an early adopter of techie stuff, but once I've got it, I usually embrace it. I've had my iPad for about a month - I waited until it was a 3rd generation before i took the plunge, but it's like it's nailed to my hand. One of the reasons I went for a iPad 3 was that it has a voice recognition function. It works well, although it does cope better with a Scots accent than it does with my flat vowels. It's a very cool thing, however it hasn't got the use that I expected it to. Partly it's that I tend to write in the evening whilst not really watching the telly. Mostly it's because I can type faster than I can dictate. That's not quite true. I obviously type slower than I can speak, but that slight delay allows me to think through what I want to put down in a few words time. I read about writers who still write longhand, or insist on using some vintage Olivetti. I can understand that now. Dictating leads to lots of pauses and umms as I try to keep up with myself and, most importantly, the result isn't as grammatically or dramatically satisfying. Sometimes speed isn't everything. I recently watched a Programme on Quest about the development of the submachinegun. Some ex special forces type tried out all the key SMGs developed over the last seventy years. Rather than the Thompson, which had a high rate of fire, he preferred the 'grease gun'. Cheaper and less elegant, but the reason for his choice was that it had a lower rate of fire. If you watch the Die Hard series, it's all about the quantity of lead, but the real soldier preferred the better control and accuracy that it achieved. The Bad Girls clearly favour spraying about large quantities of depleted uranium rounds but Echo's weapon of choice only has eight rounds in the chamber and she has to conserve them, preferring selective and accurate fire over the room broom approach. It's still a cool button though. I'll just have to find a better way to use it.