Endings - When is it time for a sequel, and when should the damn story be left alone?

Another novel comes to an end. Two Doors Down (still not happy with that title) has reached the final chapter. It's a pretty dramatic feeling.

Page 400. Never thought I'd get here.

Don't fret, this doesn't give away anything major (not that you'll know what the story is actually about). By the time this novel gets a release, you won't even remember seeing this picture. Plus, there's no way you can read every word of this. My heiroglyphics can be somewhat troublesome to decipher.

It's been a long journey with Ari (who lost her phone and needed a job to replace it) and the old bat from down the road (who gave her a job, but what a job it is). It's changed both characters (as it should - your story MUST have an arc, people!), and I've enjoyed tagging along for every minute of their discoveries. But they're about to move on without me. They don't need me anymore.

Now, I believe I've discussed endings in the past (here, somewhere, maybe), but I haven't really gone into what it means for the author. Months on end are spent with these characters and their stories. What happens when the story is done? Is there always room for a sequel? Should there be?

Even if there's never a sequel, these characters (if we've written them well, if we've made them sing) never leave us. If I was asked to put any one of my characters into a specific scene or situation, if I was asked to write them right now, I know that they'd snap immediately back to life for me. I know how they'd react. I lived with them all for long enough.

I wrote a novel YEARS ago (massive comic fantasy, I mean huge), and the lead characters Louisa Laloupe and Geraldine Floure still pop up in my head sometimes. A real pair of idiots. I loved writing them. That book was so much fun to discover. I kind-of wish I could write it again. I definitely wish I could get somebody to read about them. It was demented. Body swaps, musical numbers, extraordinary violence, supreme stupidity, Lead Astray had it all. Man, I miss it.
And we're talking 17, 18 years since I finished writing it. Gerald and Louisa are still with me. I still know what stupid things they'd do. I think that when you're having fun with a character, or you're at least interested in them yourself, then your writer's work is going well. They should be unusual. They should be strange. They should be bloody-minded. They should occasionally be cowardly in the face of dangerous. They should, at least sometimes, be stupid. They should be like us. And we should miss them when it's all over. After all if the writer doesn't miss them, then why on earth should any reader care?

Getting to the final act of A Graveyard Visible was a relief, because I thought I would never get there. That novel stopped and started so many times that I was convinced it was out of gas and would have to be abandoned in a ditch. Importantly, however, when I wrote the final line I was sad it was over and I was out of that world (for a while at least; need to let these scratchings rest before attempting the next draft), and I was also proud, because the work had that feeling of completeness. It was whole. It felt right. It felt done. It's hard stepping away when the story's done, though. I'd spent a lot of time with Caleb and Misha. They're a part of me.

Honestly? AGV is a dark place - but also an incredibly interesting one.

Layers of shadow and light.

Technically, there is room for more story in the world of AGV - but I'm tempted to leave it alone. Let it stand. Let readers make of it what they will. It's a very dark world to be in, and if I returned I would only find it darker, pitch black almost. As a contrast, Two Doors Down has been packed with lively bright energy. That's not to say that AGV is slow-paced - quite the opposite. The difference is that Two Doors Down feels complete, a story that has been told in its entirety.

It's funny how some novels you write could go on after the end, but it doesn't feel right. That's what it's all about, the feeling of completeness. If the writer goes too far and tries to wring another book out of the characters, it can dilute the appeal of the first book. It can leave a sour taste. That can't be worth it. This is probably too famous an example really, too obvious a choice, but look at the Star Wars prequels. That whole debacle should feature in writing classes - How To Ruin A Property and Really Upset the Fan Base. Never force the story. (Just noticed I wrote 'Star Wars' and 'force' near to each other. Ignore that.)

There's stuff up in the air with AGV, though. So, more is possible. Or not. I could change my mind, though.

As for Macadamian Pliers, have I said 'so long' to him? No. That story isn't over. That's going to be a trilogy. Second volume is pretty much done. No endings there yet. Reaching the end of the first book was more a case of 'so long for now'.

Macadamian Pliers

Out now. Go on.

A Graveyard Visible

Also out now. Go on, seriously

Laters.

(Hey, look, that was an ending.)
(Or was it?)

Next up, a series of spooky blogs. Halloween is coming...

Is it okay to write two novels at once?

Back to writery stuff about writering.

I've gone back and forth about this question over the years. A long time ago I used to write two novels (unrelated) in parallel, but as none of those have ever seen the light of day, it seemed safe to assume that this was not the world's greatest writing technique. I enjoyed it and got plenty done... but you've never heard of Dog Dinner, have you? No. And yes, that is a bad title. What of it?

We all have our different writing styles, favourite places to be, our preferences regarding paper or word processor, which underpants we should have on. But, should you ever take on two projects at once?

For clarification, I'm not talking about the writing of a series of books all in one go. If you plan from the outset to do a trilogy or whatever, bang 'em all out from the outset, don't pause. I wrote a sequel to Macadamian Pliers, but only after writing a couple of other books first, and man was that a task, so difficult to pick the threads up (and if people think A Graveyard Visible is dark, I'd love to dish them up a slice of Mac 2). What I'm discussing here is two completely separate stories with no characters or settings in common.

The closest I've ever come in the last 5 or 6 years to writing two stories at once would be during the creation of my latest novel A Graveyard Visible, which is currently undergoing an incredibly interesting pre-release process of review gathering - that's code for 'the reviews I'm getting are all over the place'. Halfway through, I stopped writing it. Couldn't go any further. It was dead. Tens of thousands of words in, I buried it (only ever happened once before, with a pirate story called Shanty for the Soulless which I'm currently considering for revival). So, after a period of glumness (we writers a miserable bunch of bastards) I got stuck into a new novel. I was most of the way through that when A Graveyard Visible dug itself back out of its admittedly shallow grave (one of those big light-bulb moments came out of nowhere - you gotta love 'em) and I hammered on until the end.

This is what you want - 

a bloody big idea

Since all of those shenanigans, I've finished another novel called Ten Doors Down (about a girl who breaks her phone and has to take on an incredibly strange job in order to save for another), and started my current project, Polka. It's about pigs. Oh yeah, a city of them. A whole society of pigs, a complete world, and everything a world is made of. It's become way bigger than I expected. I'm usually pretty good at getting a novel wrapped up in 80k or under, but with Polka and his personal journey I'm sailing towards eighty thousand words pretty rapidly and the middle is nowhere in sight. Now, I think the realisation of that fact freaked me out. There's a lot of work to do, and everything has to remain consistent. Polka, the titular pig, has led a small life in the walled (and guarded) city when we meet him in the first chapter, but when there's a dramatic change at the library where he works and a rebellious friend returns, his whole world flips and he starts to see what's on the other side. It's far more political than anything else I've written. It's about the disconnect between politicians and the people they govern. It's about loss, how large the pain can feel and yet how small it can seem to the world around you. It's about personal empowerment. It's about what a drop can do to an ocean. In some respects, 'Polka' is almost a playground for me to grab hold of a lot of the issues that affect me, to turn them round and hold them up in new lights.

Two months ago, it slowed to a near-stop. Not a complete halt, mind you. There were still a few words trickling onto the page. This was not a catastrophe of A Graveyard Visible proportions. The story was still there, and I knew where I was heading (or at least a had a piece of the map). But the weight of it...

We writers are always looking 

for that ray of hope.

The usual stuff - a change of activity, leaving it alone for a day or two, going for a walk, trying a chapter from a new angle - wasn't really giving me the bump start I needed. The only thing for it was a holiday. Not merely a real-life trip away for me (although by all the known gods I love getting away somewhere new). I had to get myself off to a new world.

The sneakiest and peakiest sneak-peak

of Flip.

The new one's called Flip (this flipping is a lot more literal than Polka's series of revelations), and for now I won't say much more, other than there's humans, and magic, and monsters. Starting a new story is always brilliant, and even though I'd had a false start with this one back in NaNoWriMo, a second attempt at the start of February went very quickly indeed, and I got a lot done (for me, anyway) in a short space of time. Now, I had a bit of a concern here. Writing lots is great, but what if I just kept writing Flip, and Polka died? What if I couldn't go back? The thing is, I was writing again, the energy was back, and as soon as I returned to Polka, the pages started flowing again.

Now, if they were both set in similar human fantasy worlds, and both had magic, and both had horror elements, and both were from the same point of view, then I don't think this would be feasible. There would be bleed between the two pieces. There would be forgetfulness, there would be a stylistic blur, and it would simply become too difficult. However, the fact that Polka and Flip are so very different actually helps me bounce from one to the other. Flip may never be finished. But if it's only reason to exist is to help me get to the end of Polka, then I will be forever grateful.

To conclude, I think it's possible to pull off this two novels at once thing... but only if both stories are very different. There can be little-to-no cross-over in regards of character type, theme or, if possible, style. Otherwise, everything could blend together and you'll end up with two indistinct piles of mess.

The moral here? Go on holiday, real or imagined. It's good for you.

Laters.

P.S. A Graveyard Visible is out soon - April 27th 2018. The horror novel that reviewers love to love, or love to hate. Go pre-order it now. The dead won't wait much longer...

Get off the damn phone

So A Graveyard Visible doesn't have a phone in it. 

I've only just realised this. In amongst everything that happens, nobody's gone anywhere near a mobile. It was such an odd thought that I had to stop and go back through the story and double-check. 

As it turns out, AGV is told in a fairly tight space (not in terms of Time, though - we've got a bit of drift there, back and forwards). There are a few sets, all relatively close to each other. Graveyard, garage roof, playground, Gramps' house, and that strange old Manor at the end of the road and round the corner.

It happens that the story is such that the presence of a mobile phone would not affect the outcome in any way. Have I created this situation on purpose? No. But yes.

Mobile phones are a part of life. I need to shove them in. How do I fix this then? I pondered moving the whole lot back in time, to the 80's. No mobile phones there. In fact, the original idea was to base the story in the era of my childhood. A part of me really wanted to talk about being a boy back then, with the technology we had. This turned out to be the reason why A Graveyard Visible took so long to take off. I wanted to talk about things that did not fit with the story that needed to be told.

I realised that the characters had the answer. Caleb, you see, he doesn't really have anyone he'd call. Father is barely present, Gramps is going a smidge loopy and wouldn't be able to work the dang thing, and Mum... well, she's not with us any longer. Misha? She spends as much time as possible as far away from people as she can, so why would she want to be contactable on a phone?

The AVG universe, quite simply, does not have mobiles. And that's fine.

Real life does. It's utterly unavoidable. Leave the house, have a very short walk, go to the shop, and you absolutely will see someone on a mobile at some point doing something. On the bus to work, you use it to listen to music and read a book at the same time (if you're like me). Waiting in the doctors, there's always time for a quick flick through your Instagram feed. Whenever you get a second, you're checking for an email about that publishing contract (maybe, maybe...).

But the thing is, I'm not in the middle of an adventure wherein graveyards are expanding and strange men are lurking in the rain. Would I be phoning people up to say that I've just measured a fence and it's about two metres longer than it was yesterday? Unlikely, because it's far too weird. Would I be calling the police to tell them I've seen some people looking vaguely suspicious in suits around a grave? Doubt it, because what's so suspicious about them anyway? And no-one's going to believe anything about paranormal stuff because that stuff's not real so who would believe it?

I don't really need to add in scenes where Caleb takes a minute to muck about with Snapchat filters while he waits for the revenant to turn up. It won't bring anything to the story if I have him scouring the internet for information on strange old Manors. I think I'd be wasting everyone's time if I chucked in a bit where Crosswell tries and fails to get Google Maps to work while he's out hunting for murderous things. (Actually, I quite like that last one. Back off, I've bagsied it.)

So, here's the thing. Did I choose not to write the latest smartphone tech into my story, or did my story make that decision for me? I guess we writers have to see what's good for the story, what keeps it going, and allow those decisions to happen. The story will drive itself on, and our job is to throw as few obstacles in its way as possible. Any author knows that they themselves are an obstacle to the telling - the poor story has to go through us to get out into the world.

Laters

I'm an author without a website!

I know, shocking isn't it?

Actually, it's really bad that I've left it so long. It's only because I've committed myself to updating this blog with info on how my promotion work is going (long sentence, breeeeeathe) that I even realised I'd made such an oversight.

During my research into the things authors should have/should be doing/cannot possibly function without, post after post after post reiterated the same thing: as an author, you must have a website. It's essential. It's like your store front, it's a central hub for everything you do, it's the first thing prospective readers are going to look for.

Here's an example of what I'm on about. This is taken from Publishing... And Other Forms of Insanity. It's an amazing website for authors of all levels. Honestly, there's so much content here it's ridiculous.

Even if you have not yet been published, you absolutely MUST have an author's website. Websites are not optional; they are a requirement for anyone with something to sell. (Authors are not only selling their writing, they are selling themselves.) At the very least, put up your first page (bio and photo), a blog, and a contact page. If you want to talk about your current writing project, do so on your blog.

Not optional. A requirement. Lordy.

(Go here to read more of this article, and then get yourself totally lost in all the links: http://publishedtodeath.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/everything-i-did-wrong-part-2-designing.html)

Long past time to get cracking, then.

Now, I should say that I did have a website already in place - and it's still up. Macadamian Pliers was due for release, and I knew I had to at least try to do something to get that novel some space on the interweb, and everything has a website these days. But instead of making an author website with a page or two about the book with links to go and buy it, I did something slightly different. And by slightly I mean radically. The website I created was put together from the point of view of the novel's characters. Yeah, that's right, it's a site from within the Macadamian Pliers universe, as if he was real and Cherry and Frank were real and all the stuff that happened was real. Yeah, I did that. Spent hours on it. Thought I was really clever.

I suppose it might have been clever if I was an established author, or there was lots of buzz around the book and people were aware of it, but in hindsight it just came across as confusing.

It's still online, I can't bring myself to kill it off - this is the link: http://ihatemacadamianpliers.weebly.com/

So, Life-Threateningly Important Point Number 01 - you must build your brand first. You must be clear. Do not muddy the waters. Save the funky tricks for later, when there's a chance that someone might know who you are. Put yourself in the position of a potential reader/buyer coming to your website. Show them the most important things first. Latest book. Upcoming releases. Make sure your reader/buyer can see these products and can get to them easily. They want to know who you are and what you've written, so make it easy for them. Not like I did.

I've kept a couple of aspects of this website made by an insane version of myself, and put them in the new one, although they are far from the main feature. The books are up front, everything else is there to explore if the visitor wishes.

Ah, straight away, Life-Threateningly Important Point Number 02 - Get the books up front! With links TO BUY! The first thing you see now on my brand new website is the front cover of my upcoming novel, with a link to Pre-Order. Actually, I've literally right this second just discovered the pre-order button is not functioning. So....

Life-Threateningly Important Point Number 03 - Check EVERYTHING. (These Life-Threateningly Important Points are coming thick and fast all of a sudden.) And check it again. And AGAIN. When I first published my new website, I trumpeted loudly about it (always happens after too many dry roasted peanuts) on Facebook, Twitter, all that stuff, confident that it was looking good, even though a few of the lesser pages weren't yet in place. A day or two later, I found the time to have another look at it. There were two pages of wildlife photography hanging over from the original template, there was a weird heading about 'Fotographia' that I couldn't get rid of, links weren't working, nightmare, nightmare, nightmare. It looked incredibly unprofessional (and don't you dare say it still does, I will cry). Check your work, people. Check it, and check it again.

Really, all of this should have been done already. I just put making a real author website off. I told myself, what difference will it make anyway? And I still don't know if it will make any difference at all. However, and here's...
Life-Threateningly Important Point Number 04 - Your books CANNOT sell themselves. You need to do everything you can, and if sites like Publishing and Other Forms of Insanity are telling you to have an author website, then damn well get one. Make it yourself, get a friend to do it, pay for it to be done, whatever. But get it done. Maybe it won't be much help. But if you don't have one, then it DEFINITELY can't generate sales. It's your space to talk about your work, to show off your work, so why not? I thought of it this way - Every time I read a Clive Barker book or think about one, I head to his website to catch up on what he might be doing next (more specifically, when is he going to release the next bloody Abarat book). So if I'm doing that, others are.

It all makes sense.

Honestly, take advice from someone who's done everything wrong.

(Edit: I wrote a piece about websites and didn't even put a link into mine. Amazing, right? www.steveconoboy.com )

Laters

*******Pre-order A Graveyard Visible on Amazon now!*********

Endings part 2. (Will it ever end?)

There's nothing worse than that git at a party who won't bugger off home. It's particularly annoying when it's your party in your house. We've all had a lovely time (some of us a bit too lovely), but if good things aren't allowed to end they become boring, agitating things that beg to be kicked out of the door.

You don't want anyone to feel that way about your book, do you? What I'm trying to say is, it's very important to know when to wrap things up. More words isn't necessarily better value.

Now don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed The Diviners by Libba Bray. I went through a period of a couple of days where I was picking up a book, and not getting much further than a page before deciding it wasn't for me. Sometimes I get really fussy, and nothing will do. So for The Diviners to tickle my interest was no mean feat.

Seriously good cover.

But boy did it take a long time to end.

I REALLY enjoyed the book. The author gets a great handle on the time and place, makes the reader feel the atmosphere of Manhatten in the 1920's, the excitement of the nightclubs, the danger of Prohibition. The lead character is a bit wild, so when she does anything a little crazy it doesn't feel out of place.

I had a little niggle with the book as it went along, and it had to do with the horror elements. There were a couple of sequences involving the Big Bad at the centre of the story (as there had to be), where he stalks and kills his victims, and they felt a little strong, a touch out of place. Overall though, this book is pretty much the berries (you'll get the reference when you read it (and you should read it)). But the ending. It goes on a bit.

After the climactic battle with the Big Bad (won't tell you who won!), there are a lot of pages left to go. Not many of these are spent wrapping up loose ends. The majority of this space is filled with placing some brand new threads, a whole bunch of them left dangling in a not so subtle manner which says 'There's another book coming and now you're going to have to read it'. I don't mind a book that has all its characters (however many survive) at the end and it is clear that there is a possibility of more adventures. I also don't mind if there's a larger arc make crystal clear from the beginning, then I know what I'm in for. But ending a story and suddenly sticking in a bunch (and I do mean a bunch) of conspiracies and mysteries that need solving? One a time, please. One at a time.

Everything seems to have sequels these days. It seems almost impossible to pick up a book and find it's a stand alone beast and not one of triplets (at the least). That's okay - unless it feels forced. Three stories stretched to breaking point, or one that is complete and whole and satisfying? That's a pretty easy choice.

Two Doors Down (the novel I've nearly nearly finished) seems to have a similar problem. The big climax is done with, and it's a pretty damned action-packed sequence if I do say so myself. There's a few things to wrap up afterwards, but my concern is that it's going to be a bit of a drag after all the fun of the finale. Usually, once I've had my blockbuster end sequence, I tend to wrap up the novel pretty quickly. I mean, I really don't like to hang around. When the story's done, it's done. No hanging about to see how the characters lives turn out after all the hoo-ha. This time, there are events that legitimately have to happen after the adrenaline sequence, there's no avoiding it, no changing stuff around because it simply wouldn't make sense any other way. I feel okay about myself in that way - the writer must always be true to the story, and most importantly true to the characters. All developments must come naturally. A reader will always sense any wrongness, and there's no worse cheat than a fudged ending.

However, things need to be tightened up in Two Doors Down. Remember the famous equation: Second draft = first draft -10%

Basically, fellow writers, rock up at the party, give it some groove, show your trick, then get out while they're still clapping.

I'm reading the sequel to The Diviners now. Honestly, I almost didn't bother because of that whole ending shenanigan - but again, I was struggling for anything else to read. (See how a drawn-out ending can potentially put your reader off coming back for seconds?) Amazingly, it's jam-packed with another one of my bugbears - dream sequences. Even more amazingly, despite all that, I'm still quite enjoying it. Miss Bray really is that good with character and place. (Note: I've read a fair bit more of the book since starting this blog, and I'm not really digging it, even with the focus on dream sequences. It's lost a bit of the party-atmosphere pizzazz of the first novel though.)

And hey, if you fancy checking out how I end a novel, click the pic at the bottom of this post, grab yourself a good horror read - and give me some grief if you don't like the way it all turns out. :)

Laters

The book I couldn't finish.

For the first time ever, I couldn't finish a book because it became too much to bear.

There's plenty of books I've stopped reading partway through, but every one of those times was the result of boredom. When I was younger I would push on no matter what. However, by the time a fella reaches my age, he's put up with a lot of crap that he shouldn't have put up with. It's very possible that I've reached the halfway point of my natural existence (or I could be past that point, maybe even by quite a distance. Oh God I've freaked myself out again). There's not enough time left for me to waste. It's no longer good enough for a book to 'get interesting later on'. Get me at the start, or I'm moving on.

The Troop is not a boring book. That is not the reason why I put it down and may never return to it ever, ever again. This, despite the fact that I would LOVE to know how it all turns out.

Nick Cutter's a pretty damn good writer. I actually read his second novel first, The Deep, and I only picked it up because of the Stephen King quote on the cover (yep, some marketing ploys really do work).

So, the world's in trouble - there's a plague sweeping the world and nobody's got a chance against it. That is, until a substance is found in a trench at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, a substance that just might be able to cure anything. Scientists have been down there in a research lab studying this discovery, but all has gone very, very quiet. It's up to a select few to go down there and find out what's going on.

There's plenty going on. There is no way that anyone getting to the end of the book will be able to say they saw any of it coming. No way.

The book is good fun, and clatters along at a pretty swift pace. That's a big plus for me. I can't stand big chunks of description or explanations the length of instruction manuals of how things work. I want a story to move, and this one gets a hurry on. It's got a bit of The Thing about it. Comparisons to The Abyss are way off the mark though.

The gruesome stuff's kinda queasy - and bizarre, impressively so. There's some wild imagination at work here, enough so that by the end I was slightly wondering what kind of guy Cutter might be, and if his family was comfortable living with him. He also does a great job of conveying the claustrophobia of being so far underwater, and the unnerving nearness of madness due to the pressures way, way down there.
The Deep is well recommended, as long as you have a bit of a tolerance for the grim and the weird.

In the back was an advert for his first novel, The Troop, and the idea of getting it lingered in my mind for a while. I read a few other books first, then, after Clive Barker's Scarlet Gospels (which is messed up in so many ways - don't read it after Abarat!), I got stuck into Cutter's debut.

Oh dear.

So, a small troop of scouts is taken on a 3-day camping trip on a little island. Unfortunately, they land there on the same day as another gentleman. He's a man infected by something terrible and man-made. Something that's driving him to eat whatever is near him (quite literally anything). Something that is devouring every trace of energy in his body. It's something that's going to get out.

Characterisation is great. The author really gets that 13 year old kids are kind-of unpleasant and gross and sweary and slap-happy with rude talk (they are, all of them - even yours, madam). They're likable too, though. Most of them. And that's a tricky bit of writing to pull off. It makes what happens to them all the more unpleasant.

Now, I grew up with horror films. I was 7 when the video nasty drama kicked off, and I had a step-family that was non-too concerned about the kinds of things I was seeing when they rented out tapes. There was a guy came door-to-door, had all the stuff that had just been banned - most of the boxes had no certificates on them, just tremendous images and warnings of the horrors inside. Since that point, I've seen that many horror films that I've reached terminal boredom with the whole thing. Spooks bother me, gore is a bore.

This book, however. Damn. It beat me.

It's all kinds of gross. If you've ever seen or heard of body melt horror films, this is pretty much the book version of that unpleasant genre. If you can't deal with infections or tapeworms or flesh-eating disease, then stay well away. Once the infected man lands on the island, it doesn't let up. At all. I had a pretty bad time with it, up until about the midway point, where something is about to happen to a boy's fingers. There it was - my limit. I ran out of bravery. I suspect I'm getting softer as I get older, but that scene pushed Off buttons I didn't know I had (there seem to be a lot of people on Goodreads who enjoyed the gruesome stuff to a surprising degree - it's a tad worrying). I couldn't carry on.

It's never happened before. But I suppose some things happen with age.

Mr. Cutter (I've since learned this is a pen name), I will read whatever book you attack us with next, but The Troop and I are done.

Tell me about any books you couldn't finish (and not because they were boring). In the mean time,

Laters

Is Xbox bad for writing?

We got an Xbox One for Christmas.
It was a surprise present for the girls, who had no idea it was coming. Seriously, you should have seen their faces. L didn't know what the hell was going on. E jumped on me and grabbed my head so hard she nearly snapped my neck. Took half an hour and a whiskey to recover.
Yes, alright, it was kind-of sort-of for me too.

It looks like this guy is about to punch me in the face.

He's actually hanging very still in mid-air. It was weird.

The worry was this: the games would be too big a distraction and the writing would suffer. I've had enough problems getting the words down in the last few months as it is.
Perceived wisdom states that videogames stifle creativity, that it takes over the brain, that it turns people into inactive slobs, that it teaches people how to kill (this last idea is so mental I could laugh - and if it's true, then I will be an awful murderer, because I can't shoot for shit).
Every last one of those little pearls is wrong. You will be a slob if you want to be a slob. It's perfectly possible to enjoy games and still have an active life physically and mentally. Games really are like anything else - great in moderation. Too much of one thing will always end up being negative. Like Ritz crackers and Dairylea cheese - that's a very good thing, but it makes your belly surprisingly round (seriously, you should see it - like a bowling ball).

Same applies to the idea of killers, by the way. People end up in very dark places for a complex variety of reasons, not simply because of one trigger. The urge has to be there in the first place, and it's there for deep-seated reasons. You moral crusaders want to take away games, you leave movies. Take away movies, you leave music. Take away music, you leave books. Take away books, you're left with your own stupid ideas, and those of your stupid friends.

Here's the thing: this month I've written more than ever. Five or six pages a day has become normal. In October and November 2016, I had to drag five lines out of myself screaming, and even then they wouldn't sit on the page right, like they'd run off the second I looked away. I'm almost at the end of my latest novel, Two Doors Down (a title that is not going to stick). This is a novel I started on the way to Italy in July 2015, and has stopped and started ever since (in fairness to myself, I wrote 2 pages on a train then put the story away until the beginning of 2016). I've even started this blog up again. Whether that's a good thing or not isn't for me to judge.

This is me getting fired off into the stratosphere again.

Happens far more often than it should.

I think it's a combination of effects. The games themselves tell a story. I don't just mean the campaigns in single player. I mean the multiplayer stuff too. Running around with your team, taking on the enemy - great little stories full of mad little moments.
They're interactive as well, which can actually really liven up the brain. It's well documented that gaming is great for eye-to-hand coordination, but when you've got to spend a bit of time thinking on your feet for a prolonged period of time, making split-second decisions over and over again... Yeah, it's great. Even when an Ewok drops a rock on your head when you're trying to line up a shot.

Also, it's a fun hobby to have. Trust me, it's good to think about something other than writing. Too long spent dwelling on the story can kill the story. When you're stuck? Do something totally different. The down-time will most likely give your brain a chance to find a solution on its own.
Pretty much every single time I finish a game, I get straight into some more writing. Which is nice.
However, I really, really need some outdoor active hobbies. My excuse that it's January and that January sucks is probably a tad feeble.

So there you go. Xbox is good for you. Fact.

Or perhaps I wrote this whole thing just to keep my wonderful, beautiful partner on-side with the whole games console thing, so that she never ever considers removing the damn thing from the house. Who knows?

This kind of mess happens to me a lot in games.

I'm in there somewhere.

If you happen to see a MacPliers running around in odd circles in Star Wars Battlefront or Zombies in Spaceland, that'll be me.

Just remember, people. Moderation. Leave room in your life for everything.

Laters

Oh God, this BOOK!

Oh God, this BOOK!
What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
I don't understand what's happening, I really don't. This can't be happening.

Things couldn't be going better for my career as a writer. For a start, I now actually have a career as a writer. A publishing contract. 17 years down the line. Not with a vanity publisher either. No money going from me to them. They're publishing it, making an actual hold-in-your-hands book. What better validation can there be than other people wanting to take a chance on your novel? Surely this means that I can actually write, so I can take confidence in that. Yes. Of course I can.

So why is A Graveyard Visible dying on me?

The story must be in here somewhere.

The irony! That a novel about so many coffins should bite the dust! It's chugged and chugged and chugged, and now it has ground to a complete halt.

I know. I'm not the first this has happened to. I absolutely won't be the last. Doesn't make the situation any easier to handle though, does it? Some kindly soul pats you on the shoulder and says, 'Never mind, just move onto the next thing, eh?' It's at that point one looks at the kindly soul and screams 'I've written 37,000 bleeping words and you think I can just move on?' and then one rips the individual keys off the keyboard and bashes each one into their forehead and proceeds to type 'D I E I D I O T' over and over and over again.

If that sounds like an extreme over-reaction, then you are not an author and do not belong here. Please, move along. Go find some kitten pictures to stare at.

He's doing a better job than me.

Sorry. That was mean of me. It's just that this... situation makes one a bit tense. I'm sure you understand. If you don't? Then you are not an author and you don't belong here!

Sorry. Did it again, didn't I?

Here's where I got to in my stupid bloody novel. Caleb and Misha have just come out of a fairly spectacular showdown with a kid so bad you'll want to punch his head in. There has, in fact, been plenty going on, with certain events changing the relationship between the two leads, and the story now shifts gear. It is time for Caleb and Misha to talk. She's got something very important to say, something that will alter one of Caleb's long-held beliefs (the death of his mother always looms large, and it's been a major factor in forming his world-view). They climb to the top of the fort in the playground, lie on the roof in fine rain, stare up at the clouds at her instruction...

And nothing. She's got something to say. I know she does. It's important. It drives Caleb to make his next decisions. But I can't get her to say it, whatever it is. When my dumb, stupid writery instincts took me down this cul-de-sac they advised me that this was most definitely the way to go. Everything had been fine so far, hadn't it? It wasn't fine. Misha mumbled a little bit, pointed at the fat grey clouds above like she had something grand to say, and then it all came to an end. What's worse, for some reason I can't find my way back to the road that brought me here. It's become a sealed circle.

I had a novel die at approximately the same point about eight years ago. Shanty for the Soulless it was called, a pirate story taken off the high seas. The ship, the parrot, the captain's way of life was chopped out from under him in one single swipe, leaving him floundering to find his way in a harbour town full of people who remembered him from his last colourful visit. Captain Silus de Sansa was a great character, I had so much fun with him, and yet a powerful horror dawned on me as I hit 35,000 words. After a dramatic opening, nothing had happened. Plenty of talking in different locations, plenty of meetings with figures from Silus's past and reminiscing about events that occurred before the start of the novel.

It was dead out of the water.

What really killed it was the pull of another story. I let the other story take me over, promising myself I'd go back to 'Shanty' in six months and give it another go. I never did, never will. I think it's happening again here. With Mac Pliers landing a contract, I very suddenly feel a strong urge to focus all my attention on him. Maybe I'll come back to 'A Graveyard Visible' in six months.

Except I won't. If I drop it, I'll never go back. I love this story. I do. No. I don't. I hate it. I hate it!

The gates are closing...

So what on earth (or under it) do I do?

Laters. Maybe.