Taunton Writer's Retreat

I've already got my place reserved and my laptop warmed up ready.  Can't wait for this to come around so I can get some real writing done!

Below are the details.  Visit http://www.wordsarama.co.uk/writers-anon-taunton-writing-retreat/ if you're in the area and you want to book up.

HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL

Answer: Write

Ever wondered what makes a writer? Well, writers write. It’s as simple as that.
Do you:

• have a story in your head, but never seem to have time to work on it?
• always find that life gets in the way of you writing?
• feel guilty if you sit down to write knowing the dishes need doing or the dog needs walking?

If this sounds like you, then welcome to the Writers Anon Taunton Writing Retreat.
This writing retreat offers you the chance to buy a whole day out of life to simply sit down and write. No distractions, no interruptions.
Based in central Taunton, in Somerset, this is a one-day writing retreat hosted by local writing group, Writers Anon. We all know how hard it is to just get your bum in a seat and fingers on the keyboard (or pen) and that’s why we’re organising this retreat. This day will give you the time and space to write and meet other budding writers. And it’s designed to be fun. No furrowed brows and tortured artists here (unless you’re really into that, then go for it).

Writing retreat details
Time: 10am to 4pm
Date: 29 September 2012 – to coincide with Taunton Literary Festival 2012
Location: The Drawing Room, Taunton, Somerset, UK
Cost: £20 including refreshments and lunch

So what’s it all about?

Once you’ve booked your place at the retreat, simply turn up with pen and paper or laptop in hand. We have a short introduction and then it’s time to find yourself a spot and sit down and write. And that’s it. But with no household chores calling your name, no phone calls or the lure of TV and games, you’ll be surprised how much you can achieve.

You will receive a planning sheet, emailed to you in advance, to help you set your goals and ensure you get the most out of this one-day retreat. We will also provide some reference books, character sheets and writing prompts on the day, if you need some inspiration to get you going.
That book, play, article or short story won’t write itself, so get yourself to the Taunton Writing Retreat.

The Venue

The Drawing Room is a 200 year old pub, set in the historic heart of Taunton, across from the beautiful Castle Hotel and the recently restored Taunton Castle Museum. Our retreat is in the light and airy function room, offering tea and coffee-making facilities and a view over the Castle Green. With no main road nearby, we won’t be disturbed by the noise of traffic, This is an ideal location to getaway from it all for a few hours, but with the convenience of easy transport connections for when you want to get back to reality.

Luckily for us, The Drawing Room is managed by experienced caterers. The price of your writing day includes a delicious homemade buffet lunch, plus refreshments and biccies to keep us going throughout the day. And with good ales and wine available just downstairs, we think it’s a really good idea to take a moment to celebrate at the end of a hard day’s writing.
For just £20 you get time, peace and quiet, space to write, inspiration from other writers and good food. What are you waiting for?

For booking and payment details simply visit the above web address or email writersanon@hotmail.co.uk.

Spaces are limited, so book your place at the

Taunton Writing Retreat today and kick-start your writing project.

Veteran by Gavin Smith

I thought, when I bought this for my kindle, that a book from a large publishing house like Gollancz would guarantee a certain standard. Particularly given the £5.99 price tag (even on Kindle). I guess I just didn't - couldn't - believe the one- and two-star reviews it was getting on Amazon. This was Gollancz, for Christ's sake! Those reviewers were expecting something different? Maybe it was a matter of taste? How should I know? Unless, of course, I read it. So I did.

Well, I finally finished it and I now understand what those low ratings were about. 

It's not that it's a bad book. Indeed, it has a lot going for it. The settings involved some nice touches, such as the oil rig city, the nomadic country and the flooded US coast. All of them were visually powerful ideas, and well-rendered.

The main character, Jakob Douglas, is a veteran of an extraterrestrial war against 'Them'. (Can the human race, in this book, honestly not think up a proper name for their enemies. Is 'Them' the best technical and/or derogatory term the media, politicians, scientists, generals and thousands of battle-weary soldiers could come up with? Hmm. Okay, maybe.) So Douglas is a vet, now back on Earth. Scotland, to be precise. Nice. He's been cybernetically altered with loads of pretty cool hardware, which has been locked, now he's stood down, because he'd be a danger to the public if he had access to his weapons. Given his dreams, that's fair comment. The guy's head's a mess. Shortly after explaining all this to us, he's suddenly recalled and all his equipment is reactivated, leaving him to wreak havoc on some poor, unsuspecting bad guys. 
 

His boss, with whom Douglas has some pretty bad history, instructs him to go north to neutralise a downed 'Them' before it lets loose on the general public and annihilates half of Scotland. Following its trail, he encounters Morag, a young prostitute, who convinces him the Them is actually an okay guy and insists on helping it. Douglas decides to help her and in the process surrenders everything about his character that makes him interesting. From this point on, he's more often than not an observer in events he doesn't understand and can't control. When he does get involved - usually in the action sequences - the story takes on the dimension it lacks in the rest of it. It's a real shame, because the rest of it is, frankly, a bit crap.

The core idea has some merit - the nanomachine-like 'Them' construct melds with an AI to create an IT version of God, whose purpose is to give total access of every scrap of human information to absolutely everyone. You can see why the government want to stop it, right? Well, they try. Douglas and the band of merry men he's accumulated on the way aim to stop them. 

The problem lies in how we get from Douglas locating the Them to the final showdown, which, to be fair, is pretty spectacular. The pace during the intervening stretch is slow, littered with atrocious dialogue (three pages, at one point, debating the merits of the only female character at around the level of 'She's a whore', 'No she's not', 'Yes, she is', 'No she's not'). There were several scenes that didn't really have much point - including one where he's supposed to fight to the death just for someone's amusement. I mean, please!

The standard of writing leaves a lot to be desired, bordering, in places, on amateur. It's clear no professional editor even glanced through it, and at one point I actually put the book down, went online and checked whether this writer really was published by Gollancz or if he was taking their name in vain. He's there, on their author list. Come on Gollancz! If you aim to keep your reputation, you should at least employ a copy editor before you okay a book for publication!

It would have been nice if someone had paid attention to the layout, too. Block paragraphs. Really? The 458 pages the book apparently uses is probably more like 350, owing to the extra space taken up by blank lines between paragraphs. Okay, yeah. Now I'm being picky. But it annoyed me, all the same. It meant the layout was more like a typewritten essay than a published book. What's the word? Oh, yes. Unprofessional.

The final impression I got, and this is not to deride the author who, to be fair, has probably tried his best, and is at the mercy of Gollancz and their editorial crew, is that Veteran was meant to be Gollancz's answer to David Gunn's Death's Head series. Unfortunately, it doesn't come close. Smith has a long way to go before he can call himself Gunn's rival. 

Would I read anything else by Gavin Smith? Well, I suspect this was his debut novel, and people grow. I might look at sample extracts of his subsequent novels and maybe take a chance. Maybe.

What Came After by Sam Winston

In a world where corporate greed has become the new fascism, where food has been deliberately poisoned by GM to control the masses and where fossil fuels are so limited only a small percentage of the population can access them, your best bet is to be born rich. Failing that, you have to be very smart and ready to do whatever it takes to protect your family.

When Anderson Carmichael, the richest man in the world, takes his son on a sightseeing car ride from New York to Boston, he wasn't planning on breaking down. But since the rare and ancient Hummer he's driving slips off the road and he and his boy are left stranded, what else is he supposed to do but let the local mechanic fix it? He's amazed that one of these people, these penniless workers left sick by the poisoned crops they grow, has the knowledge and skill to fix his car. He leaves the mechanic an IOU before taking off in his repaired Hummer and driving away, confident it's the last he'll ever see of Henry Weller.

But Henry Weller, isn't your usual Empowerment Zone guy. Not only is he super-smart, his five year old daughter, Penny, is going blind from eating bad food. And since the richest man in the world has left him an IOU, he decides to call him on it. This means a journey of several days, on foot, from Connecticut to New York, with his daughter on his shoulders and who knows what between them and their destination.

Sam Winston's main character, Henry Weller, is introduced as a quiet, gentle and generous man who sees no distinction between himself and Carmichael, despite the latter's privilege and wealth. When Weller is later pressed by circumstances, he demonstrates a stunningly deep and pragmatic core. His placid obstinacy in the face of threats and outright danger make him a force to be reckoned with and even Carmichael finds himself indulging him - at a price.

In order to gain the health care his daughter needs, Weller must embark on a far more dangerous journey to a destination even Black Rose, Carmichael's private army, dare not go.

The backdrop for all of this is a stricken United States, under-populated and fallen to ruin. Where populations do exist, the people are tied to PharmAgra, the only food company in existence, who cleanse the poisoned crops the workers have grown.  The workers must then buy it back as food, or eat untreated stuff and suffer the mutations and disease this entails. The distribution of wealth and power is so unbalanced in Winston's world, it's reminiscent of medieval feudal society, even to the point where people wear brands (sub-dermal smart-chips) to announce their status.

On the minus side, the writer's style is slightly unusual and takes a bit of getting used to - there were a few points at which I had to re-read in order to work out what was intended. Once or twice the point of view wandered from one character's head to another, again disengaging me from full immersion with the story. These are minor issues - the story itself is terrific. 

Besides, it's worth a read just to get to know Henry Weller, who is a true gem of a character.

You can purchase this ebook on Amazon.

http://www.whatcameafter.com/

I Am Alive - PS3 and XBLA

In a post-apocalyptic world, devastated by global earthquakes and ongoing tremors, you walk alone. Five hundred miles from home when the Event struck, you've spent a year walking back across a ruined United States. You've travelled roads littered with wrecked vehicles and split by ravines, you've climbed ruined buildings to stay above the poisonous fog hanging low over the devastated country. Food, medicine and ammunition are cripplingly scarce. Those few survivors you've met on the way are ready to kill to protect what scant supplies they have. Others are ready to kill to take yours from you.

Now you've reached Haventon, the city where you lived with your wife, Julia, and your daughter, Mary, before the Event . But, like everywhere else, this city is in ruins. To get to your old apartment, you have to pick your way through jumbled wreckage, find a safe way around broken chasms and over the towers of debris blocking your way. In addition, you also have to stay above the fog, which saps your stamina while you breathe it, and will kill you if you don't get clear in time.

You find your apartment empty with only a letter telling you your wife and daughter were evacuated, but not to where. Back outside you hear a young child crying. Thinking its your daughter, you go looking just in time to rescue Mai - not your daughter, but still a child in trouble - from thugs who no doubt have less than good intentions. There follows a series of missions, helping Mai, her mother, Linda, and their friend, Henry, to escape the city. During these missions there's opportunity to assist others in trouble, who in return provide retrys plus snippets of information about where your wife and daughter might have ended up.

As you wander, almost blind, through deadly fog, your stamina bar slowly drops and then starts pulsing. Tension rises as you fail to find anything to climb. You can't run, that uses more stamina, and when you find something to climb you know the bar will drop all the faster, since climbing burns more stamina again. Let it drop too far without finding a resting place, your fatigue also drops, meaning you only regain partial stamina when you do rest. If your fatigue drops to zero in the fog, you die. If it drops to zero while climbing, you fall. And die.

Luckily, fatigue (and stamina) can be replaced by resources if you have them. These appear as items - of which there are three main types: those which replace stamina, those which restore fatigue and those which restore health. When you find them, be careful how you use them. They're limited. Apocalypse. Hello?

Your health bar drops during combat, and drops fast. You can only take two or three hits - less if you're up against a firearm. In that respect, the game is realistic - frustratingly so, since you only have so many retrys and some NPCs have guns, while you have limited bullets. Run out of retrys and you have to load the game from the last save, which means replaying up to half an hour of game all over again before you reach the point where you died. You also use up those retrys on climbing missions, where you have to conserve energy, pick the quickest route and find a rest point as fast as possible. Before your fatigue runs out.

Combat is about strategy. There aren't enough bullets going around to waste, so it's not a case of spray and pray. Besides, a fair number of the people you meet, especially early on, are innocents and won't hurt you. Save your bullets for the more deserving. You can walk past some folk without any conflict, though they might warn you off and will retaliate if you attack them, and you have the option to help others with your resources (for which you earn a valuable retry). Some of more aggressive NPCs can be subdued just by pointing your gun at them, and you can force them back (into a fire or over a drop) by ordering them to back up. Some are more confident and will have a go, even if they only have a machete, especially if you're pointing an empty gun. Selecting which guy to shoot when faced with a group can make the difference between death and survival.

Given the often low visibility, your general vulnerability against attackers, the limited resources available and the constantly-dropping stamina bar, it's enough to get your heart thumping on a regular basis. Either that, or you'll find the game so limited in what your character can do you'll find it infuriating. The puzzle element involved in figuring out how to get from A to B, whilst not exactly taxing, was enough to keep me interested. Walking in haze, not knowing what or who might be up ahead got my heart thumping fairly regularly. The absence of zombies, mutants and aliens was refreshing. There's enough challenge there just from the environment.

On the whole I enjoyed the game and found it challenging, especially during the last few missions. I liked the moody music and the washed out colours which gave everything a mean, dirty look. I can see why some reviewers have rated it low, though. The game's not perfect.

The visibility can be annoying when you're lost and looking for the next area. When climbing, you sometimes grab the wrong hand-hold or move in the wrong direction when the camera is positioned above instead of behind you. Not good when you're low on stamina. In combat the pistol sights will sometimes fix onto the wrong target, and when it's a case of shoot the right guy, and fast, you don't want to be messing around, and you definitely don't want to shoot the wrong guy with your only bullet.

The game concludes suddenly and at a point where you think another mission is about to start. The final shot is ambiguous and leaves scope for a prequel/sequel, or even for extending this one into a full-length game.

For atmosphere, suspense, and the sense of desolation ripe throughout the story, I felt it was worth the money, even if the ending came way too soon and was hugely disappointing.

8/10

I'm not stupid. Okay, not that stupid. I knew eReading technology meant opening the floodgates to anyone with the time or inclination to put fingers to keyboard. I knew 99% of those fingers, including mine, won't receive the benefit of a professional editor before they click 'Send' and their novel goes live on one of the many outlets now available.

Frankly, I don't mind if some indie writers aren't that good - wheat and chaff, right? There will be some bad stuff, but there'll also be some fantastic stuff coming through that wouldn't otherwise see the light of day. It makes the mediocre novels worth ploughing through if, now and again, I find an occasional nugget of gold. Thus, I'm all in favour.

So now I'm not just an indie writer, I'm an indie reader. Like Aladdin with his lamp, I have my eReader in my hot little hand ready to open the magic door to this treasure trove of wonders. But what to choose among so many sparkling jewels? Fake or flawless, you can only tell once you look more closely.

Thankfully, there's Amazon and its ranking system. If a book's any good, it should come up high on its system, right?

So I thought.

There's also Amazon's 'Look Inside' feature that gives you a preview. Gives you a taste of what's to come, right?

Hmmm. So I thought.

I'll explain.

Having offered a fairly damp review on Amazon about the uninspiring book I'd just purchased and read, I received a comment suggesting I must be too young to appreciate it, or that the plot must be over my head. 

That got my hackles up.  Made me dig deeper.  In nearly all the reviews I read on all the different books this particular author has written, the same 'customer' names cropped up, giving sparkling reviews and 5-star votes. Look deeper still, reviews reporting anything negative tended to have comments like the one I recieved (from these same 5-star reviewers, strangely enough) implying that the reviewer is 'not clever enough to understand the plot', or that they're 'young' or 'stupid'. Some were even taunted with baby speech. If that reviewer, or anyone else, then tried to defend their views, the option to vote the comment as 'unhelpful' was clicked by someone six or seven times, thus rendering it invisible to subsequent viewers.

The reason I think this is a deliberate system, rather than just a bunch of young people rushing in to support their mate, or even the author himself using a variety of alter-egos, is the way the books are written. I only read one - could only bear to read one - but looking at the more balanced reviews appearing against his work in general, his books all follow the same pattern.

They're all novellas, barely. Less than one hundred pages. Admittedly, they are only around a dollar (77p) to purchase. Not enough for any one person to kick up a fuss if they feel scammed. When you see this author has a dozen titles out, though, and that he ranks fairly high on Amazon Kindle, it makes you wonder how many people are buying them. 

His sales pitch?  Aside from managing to get his rank up by receiving lots of 5-star votes, it's the Look Inside feature.  In there, you'll find a fairly engaging piece of writing, full of ideas and imagination and comparatively well-written. Purchase the full piece and get past the sample, you'll discover the writing deteriorates rapidly, the plot becomes thin, the characters cardboard - at least in the one I read. Reviews I found on this writers' other books say the same thing.

So, what I find puzzling is, am I dealing with an author who's writing to the best of his ability and is truly passionate about his stories? Are his gang of supporters just that? Defending him when an outsider dares question his awesomeness?

Or is this deliberate manipulation? Is this writer churning out junk just to get people's 77p?  Face it, he's earning more per copy than he'd get from a publisher, and if enough people buy his books he could make himself a fair stash. Are his friends (unless he's using different Amazon accounts and managing it all himself) purposefully stomping on anyone who gives a more accurate review of his work, so the next schmuck to come along won't see the warnings?

No idea.  I'm bemused by the whole thing.  But I know something.  I won't be buying any more of that writer's ebooks.

Here's the artwork, back cover blurb and synopsis of my book, Blightspawn, which was originally published under the title, Flower Maiden.  It is now available at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/156499 for the bargain price/princely sum of $3.00. 

366 pages in length and available on any eReader.  Go on, treat yourself!

Back Cover Blurb

Bethany Sweet is dead. So no wonder she’s surprised to wake up again.

Only this isn’t Earth and the beautiful body she’s wearing isn’t hers.

And it’s been kidnapped.

It doesn’t take her long to discover that she’s wanted for a brutal and bloody sacrifice - one which will stop a monster from destroying the world.

Beth can save thousands of lives, prevent mass destruction, but to do it she has to die. And she’s done that once already.

She’s not in a hurry to do it again.

Synopsis
(Bear in mind this is intended as a summary, and is not an example of the writing)

BETH is dead. But she wakes up again on another world, SPLYNE, wearing an artificial body made from flowers. She’s rescued from kidnappers by JAREN, a Maigard soldier, and his men. She soon realises her rescuers have created her new body and summoned her to Splyne only to sacrifice her to prevent a monstrous creature, the BLIGHT, from devastating the world.

Fleeing, she joins forces with a tortured assassin, HAASCH, and a revolutionary, KOSKA. She learns the CAUL, who summoned her, have corrupted the FLOWER MAIDEN’s true purpose so they can retain power on this world. Pursued by the Caul, Beth, Haasch and Koska travel north, to the ancient city of LAGULA, where the Flower Maiden was originally designed to heal an inter-dimensional tear created by a long ago accident.

Jaren captures them before they arrive at Lagula, but Haasch manages to overpower him and takes him prisoner. They travel onwards to the city, only to discover the tear in the planet has grown too large for the Flower Maiden to heal. They are then confronted by the Blight, a creature born of KAZERITE technology, the same technology which produces theotics - Splyne’s chief source of power. The Blight mediates through Haasch, who it recruited thirty years earlier, and tells Beth the Kazerite is coming from the rift as living crystals which feed on Splyne’s life-force, slowly killing it. The Blight announces that it will destroy the rift, but it requires a sacrifice. When Haasch is chosen, Beth pleads for his life, offering herself instead. Jaren, who has been crippled on the way to the shrine, volunteers instead.

They make their escape while Jaren remains behind, his purpose to sacrifice both himself and the Blight in order to save the planet. Narrowly surviving the ensuing explosion, Beth, Haasch and Koska realise that the Kazerite crystals are now dying, leaving the planet without any source of power. The Caul’s reign is over. Theotics have vanished. A new dawn has arrived.

Indentured by Scot McElhenay

Declan Stringfellow's toddler son is an innocent bystander, killed when a drugs deal goes wrong. Devastated, Stringfellow embarks on a vigilante crusade, earning himself something of a hero status by the local population, a wanted status by the police, and a 'kill him' status by the crooks. When one of his vigilante escapades results in him getting shot, a routine MRI scan at the hospital has unexpected results. (Though I had to ask myself why scan someone's brain for a bullet that went into their shoulder.)

Up to this point, the book works fairly well. Sadly, since that was only the introduction. When Declan then wakes up three hundred years later in a cloned body aboard an interstellar starship, the plot becomes laboured, if not downright shaky - the introduction of characters that don't do anything; twists that have little or no point, conversations that confuse rather than clarify. There's a lot that fails to be said, and too much that shouldn't be.

While the core idea is interesting (an MRI scan of someone's brain, later used as a neurological map to recreate their memories inside a blank clone) the plot, science and characters seem somewhat thin. I get the impression the author felt so, too, as the entire thing concludes in less than 100 pages. Unsurprisingly then, the pace felt somewhat rushed, with the potential for building suspense and jeopardy completely ignored . There was scope for this story to go much further, and for the characters to become more rounded and 'lifelike'. A shame it didn't happen, since the writer's enthusiasm was clearly evident.

If this was McElhaney's first novel I think he did a good job, but the book needed more meat, and a more skilled hand.

This is a kindle ebook, and comes in at around a dollar on amazon, so the fact that it's short is no skin off anyone's nose. If you like a short, sharp read that doesn't require much ponderation, you might enjoy it. For me, it's a no.

Blood and Iron (A Tony Ballantyne Book)

The events follow directly on from Ballantyne's previous book, Twisted Metal. Thankfully, the author has provided a synopsis up front, for those who haven't yet read the first in the Penrose Series.

Most of the action in Twisted Metal took place on the continent of Shull, whose robots have little understanding or interest in anything organic. In Blood and Iron, the action is divided between Shull and Yukawa, a more verdant continent whose robots have an appreciation for aesthetics and who cultivate trees, plants and livestock. Yukawa has an ‘oriental' feel to it and the robots there seem more sophisticated.

There are five main characters, Kavan, Spoole, Karel and Susan (protagonists from the first book) are located in Shull where events continue from Twisted Metal, playing out the drama which was left somewhat unfinished. In Blood and Iron, we are also introduced to Wa-Ka-Mo-Do - a warrior-poet. Strikingly beautiful, his skill, prowess and speed, as well as his rank, are admired and feared by most other robots. His tragic story arc begins early in the book, where he is summoned to the Silent City for a direct audience with the Emperor. Ordered to Sangrel, an outlying province, he is told to liaise with Penrose's newest arrivals - animals. Animals who have arrived from the stars and who have powerful weapons and machinery at their disposal. You guessed it - humans.

Inevitably, the humans turn out to be less interested in learning about the robots than screwing them over. Their MO is to leave each robot city stripped of its precious, life-giving (to the robots) metal, moments before committing genocide on them. Despite their comparatively fragile existence, the ‘animals' turn out to be a lot tougher, and a lot more dangerous than they appear. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do is caught in a dangerous dilemma between his duty to the Emperor and his responsibility to the people of Sangrel. His indecision ultimately leads to his downfall and to a terrible fate, much worse than death.

Once again, this book is written entirely from the robots' perspective, and perhaps this is why their plight puts the reader's sympathy well and truly in their camp. There is also the uncomfortable feeling that the behaviour of the humans is, sadly, all too typical, especially when big business is involved. Against seemingly overwhelming odds, the five protagonists eventually converge, quickly learning from their enemy. They manage to achieve a moderate victory, enough to see off the humans, at least for the time being, but the episode has brought to light something no robot has considered until now - that while they believed themselves to be free-thinking, they are all governed and limited by the way their wire was twisted at birth.

Tony Ballantyne writes about Penrose with such unstinting confidence the reader is naturally drawn into the story. The characters are all very different and each has enough depth to be believable and likeable. The story itself is moves forward at just the right pace, particularly as the situation Wa-Ka-Mo-Do faces becomes increasingly impossible. It's one of those books you look up from and find it's 2 am and you should have been asleep hours ago.