Written in red sharpie on the back of a dentists reciept while sitting on the bus, so I'd better type it up while I can still vaguely remember what I've written (legability not being my strong point at the best of times...) Always happens the one time I don't have a notepad.

It's not much, and I might not keep it, but it's an opening.

Here we go :)

popfiend asked people to pass this on.

http://popfiend.livejournal.com/4492746.html

Much love.

Making progress on Spark, at least. Caro has fallen into the clutches of Allorise Carey, which is an interesting psychological study into the nasty mind games women sometimes play. And Alloriose is nothing if not nasty....

Word Count :

</table Nearly half way there, maybe... :)

I have written 67,007 of 150,000 words. I am now 44.67% done! no frills wordmeter

My gosh, I haven't posted a word count for nearly a month! Although Christmas and New Year didn't help much with the actual writing progress. Still, progress is happening, and today I solved... not a major point, but something that had been niggling me. I'm also playing revolving doors with my cast, so at the moment I'm dealing with an Allorise/Carousel pairing, Noble and Kayall, and, shortly, Elvienne and Spark. Chances of getting everyone on the same place by the climax are about 50-1, I think.

Have words :

I have written 61,620 of 150,000 words. I am now 41.08% done! no frills wordmeter

Getting on for halfway there, then, unless the word count ends up really far out. It's still a job to tell. Heb said she was really enjoying what she's read so far though, so that's good.
I need to do some domestic things in the next few days (Hoovering - boo!) but I will try and keep up the pace.

As LJ keeps insisting on playing dead, I have fallen behind with the crossposting again. Anyone know how to automatically link a Wordpress site to LJ, save me faffing about?

Anyway, on her own Wordpress site Claire Carter has posted the worlds first review of the finished-ish manuscript of Art of Forgetting, which I'm crossposting everywhere because it was good and I badly want some lovely agent to pick it up.

She says :

"...Art of Forgetting is a brilliant tale of discovery and equality, of the evils of humankind and of what is truly the right thing to do. All Rhodri had wanted was to regain his birth-right, to be reunited with his family, to finally know his mother. His journey is a long one and takes him from his home and into a foreign land, and in true Joanne Hall style, to a lot of pain, misery, misunderstanding, death, and finally release.

There is another side to this book that is not immediately apparent but which should be read by everyone, every adult and every child, in the hope that it will teach a little tolerance. Here is a story of racial hatred and sexual intolerance, here is a story of ignorance and misunderstanding. I hope it teaches people to think about their attitude towards that which we do not understand and maybe then we can make our world a better place to live..."

Her blog can be found here : http://clairemcarter.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/book-review-art-of-forgetting-by-joanne-hall/

I confess I hadn't thought of it as a study in racial intolerance (one character expresses surprise that Rhodri's daughter is so "dark" (his words) but beyond that there's not much talk about race.) The sexual intolerance is more explicit. I always say it as a story about inadequate parenting, both on a personal and social level - the army makes a poor substitue parent for the boys that come into it, mirroring Rhodri's lousy upbringing by both sets of guardians. But it's always fascinating to see what other people see in books!

Waking up to the sad news that Anne McCaffrey, the lady who taught dragons to fly and spaceships to sing, has passed away at the age of 85. She was the first woman to win either a Hugo, or a Nebula award, for short stories “Weyr Search” and “Dragonrider” in 1968 and 1969, and it is for her Dragonriders of Pern stories that she is best loved and will be best remembered.

I never met Anne McCaffrey, but a friend of mine at school pressed a copy of Dragonflight into my hand when I was twelve and told me I would like it. I have to confess I never gave it back, it’s still sitting on my shelf along with a dozen other Pern books, and non-Pern books. It opened my eyes to the fact that yes, girls could be heroes in fantasy, that they had a greater role to play than screaming in the corner while the hero rescued them. I wanted that. And if I couldn’t be a fantasy heroine, I would do the next best thing, and write about them. My Lydia, and I should think a great many contemporary fantasy heroines, owes a great debt to Lessa, Menolly and Moreta.

Thank you, Anne McCaffrey, for taking us riding with dragons, and opening our minds to wider possibilities. The dragons have bowed their heads today.

The Arts Trail Movement is becoming ever more popular in cities in the UK. It’s a chance to wander from house to house, seeing the beautiful things that people create, catching up with your local community, and drinking mug after mug of tea. Bristol boasts at least two annual arts trails, in the north of the city, and in Totterdown, legendary site of the worlds most famous supernatural house share…

http://www.frontroom.org.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=content.home

Juliet Fleming’s art gallery / front room was one of the host houses for this years Totterdown Arts Trail, featuring ceramics made by the hostess and Sarah Jordan, art by Terry Burke, and textiles by Grace Ingram. And and afternoon of music, brought by BristolCon regular Talis Kimberley and her floating band.

Kicking off in appropriate fashion with “Juliet’s House”, followed by a haunting vocal of ”Gathering Summer In”, and new political track, “The Steps of St Pauls,” which had received its live debut only the previous evening, and went down very well with the audience.


“Drink tea, buy pots!” urged Talis, who had taken the wise strategy of splitting her act into three-song mini-sets so people could browse the pottery and grab a biscuit between numbers.

Highlights of the set included a rousing singalong of eco-anthem “Spoon”, Chantelle Smith’s gypsy dancing to classic oldie “Appleby Fair”, the mystical “Jack Hare”, and the rousing “Common Bunting”, which I think is the only song I’ve ever heard about a washing line.

If you like folky, literate songs, thought-provoking but with a generous dash of humour, Talis, and possibly some of her band, will be playing at Kingcombe Winter Fair, Dorchester, on December 4th.

http://www.talis.net/

~~~

This blog was originally posted at http://hierath.wordpress.com/ , along with a post about creating soundtarcks for novels and taking inspiration from music, which I'm not going to re-post here because it's got lots of videos in it, but if you're interested, come on over to the Other Blog!

Haven't been able to get into LJ for a few days thanks to another stupid DDOS attack. Sorry if I missed anything!

Only one more after this, I think. Thios is a writing-related one, the other one is kinda personal.

Crossposted from the Wordpress blog - there are pictures on there :)

****

“Hmmm,” said my lovely beta, reading “Art of Forgetting” for what must be the fifty-sixth time, “the second half feels like a different book. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing….”

And at first, as is my wont, I thought “Oh god, I’ve screwed up, ruined my tendons, wasted a year of my life and it’s not working!” But then I thought about it, and it dawned on me that the reason the second half feels like a different book is that, well, it’s a different book. Obvious when you think about it.

I should start by saying that Art of Forgetting is an absolute MONSTER. 198,600 words at the end of the latest edit (down from 207,000, pop-pickers!) Colin used to call it my behemoth – “how’s your behemoth getting on?” he would ask me, and I’d groan. This was before I’d even finished writing it.


As a comparison, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” is 198,227, Joe Abercrombie’s “The Blade Itself” is 190,000, which doesn’t look that hefty on my bookshelf – the version of “Deathly Hallows” I have is 607 pages, and it doesn’t look THAT thick compared to some of the other books I own. But I’m a fantasy fan. I like my books chunky!

An interesting post on word counts can be found here : http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-word-counts-and-novel-length.html

- so you can see the length quoted for the Abercrombie book is going to be pretty accurate!

But going back to what LB said about being two different books, yes. In a way it is. Because when Rhodri meets Nasira, that’s when everything in his life changes irrevocably. There’s no going back to his previous life, even if he wants to. Meeting her forces him to abandon everything he has known, everything he has been, for the past ten years. And because AoF is entirely Rhodri’s story, there has to be a divide there, between the angry, frightened boy, and the man he will become; leader, husband, father. So there is a natural split.


I think I might divide the book into two volumes that can be sold (at the discretion of the publisher I don’t yet have! ) as one volume or two depending on how they think it will go. It can be split, it does fall open like two halves of a neatly sliced apple. But the fantasy fan in me wants to see a hefty 600+ page volume, not two thinner books.

Which do you prefer, thin books or thick ones? And would splitting a large book into a duology put you off reading it?

Once again, belatedly crossposted from thw Wordpress blog - http://hierath.wordpress.com/ - a report on the fun that was Bristolcon. Enjoy :)

****

Still completely exhausted after the weekends fun, so please forgive any typing / grammatical errors.

Yes, last Saturday was BristolCon ’11, the culmination of a year of hard work, delicate negotiation, and meetings in pubs. Which meant waking up at 5.30 am mumbling something about tables in the dealers room. As you do.

Arrived at the hotel still rubbing sleep out of my eyes, trying to locate scissors/sellotape/keys/my bearings, but soon woke up when people began to arrive. And arrive they did, over two hundred of them, waving their geek flag proudly and ready to have a good time. unfortunately they ALL arrived at ten to ten and the reception desk was swamped, which meant the first two panels of the day were quite sparsely attended – a shame as they were both interesting and well received. I was on an early panel discussing self-publishing, chaired very capably by Justina Robson and featuring M D Lachlan, Alex Keller, Gareth L Powell, and Dolly Garland on her first ever panel (she performed very well, no hint of nerves!) I had met all the panelists except Mark before, but he turned out to be an affable chap with a great store of anecdotes about publishing. The panel disagreed about whether everyone who wanted to should write a book, but we all agreed that, whether traditionally or self-published, it’s vital not to skip the essential step between a finished first draft and a final draft – proper and extensive editing is the key!

The second panel I was on was about cover art. I think I might have been there to make up the numbers – I’m interested in cover art but I can’t draw stick people, and I was in the company of Jim Burns, cover artist extraordinaire (Seriously, when we announced Jim as Guest of Honour there was SO much excitement from local artists), Steve Upham who not only writes but publishes, Dolly (again, hard-working girl had done a panel in between too), Jaine Fenn – who confessed she can’t draw either, and Officially the Nicest Man on the Planet, Paul Cornell. Jim and Steve talked about the process they go through when a cover is commissioned, and we talked about trends in cover design, and what makes a good and bad cover. Dolly and I agreed that, as lovers of maps and pointy metal, the original covers for Joe Abercrombie’s First Law Trilogy were striking examples of really good modern covers, and we touched on the disturbing practice of “whiting up” books which have non-white protagonists, and how it can alienate even very young readers.

Then I had a couple of hours off, and got to race around the dealers room and chat to a few people, including Terry Martin from Murky Depths and Dave and Ben from Solaris, who were experimenting with selling ebooks at a convention for the first time (apparently it was a great success, so take your flash drive next time you go to a con, because I think that’s going to be much more common in the future).

Jaine Fenn and I shared a second panel in the afternoon, in the other programme room, which was slightly more stuffy and, thankfully, crowded (I did spot a good friend of mine and committee member, who shall remain nameless, nodding off in the front row. I’m going to assume it was because it was warm, not because she was bored ) This was a possibly slightly controversial panel inspired by Neil Gaiman’s famous “George RR Martin is not your bitch” blog post – apparently there’s a song as well? My knowledge of internet novelty SF songs begins and ends with “Fuck Me Ray Bradbury”.

Anyway, the panel was very skillfully moderated by horror/sf author Wayne Simmons, and included that nice Paul Cornell chap again, Jaine Fenn, me, and Anne Lyle, who I had spoken to on Twitter but not previously met. Anne later did a reading from her forthcoming novel which will be published by Angry Robot in March and it sounds great, can’t wait to get my hands on it!

I’m digressing. Wayne kicked the panel off by asking the audience what they wanted to discuss, which was a nice touch. We talked about rejection, how you can’t take it personally and how, if you want to get anywhere in this writing business, the first thing you need to do is grow the hide of a rhino. Anne made Jane and I exceedingly jealous with the thin state of her rejection file. And we discussed readers expectations; how not every fantasy writer will go on the be JK Rowling, how writing is not all sitting around swigging gin while your minions peel you grapes, how a close relative of Paul’s thought that when you’re writing comics, they arrive already drawn and all you have to do is fit the words in the speech bubbles (the mind doth boggle!), and how unfair it is that whenever poor GRRM goes online to say “Yay, the Jets scored!” fifty people jump on him and go “wrargh! Why aren’t you writing?” To my mind, the price he has to pay for success seems a little too high.

I was also lucky enough to be present at the launch of Aeon Press’s Transtories, edited by the late Colin Harvey. Transtories was always meant to be launched at BristolCon, and the launch became a tribute to Colin and his skill as an editor. Tomas L Martin, Priya Sharma, Sharon Reamer and Rob Rowntree all read extracts from their excellent contributions to the anthology, and I would have read too, but we were sadly pressed for time so I gave up my slot. I hadn’t read the story since before Colin died, and I would have liked the chance, but I did get to hear Gareth L Powell read from The Recollection again, which is always fun.

I did get to do one reading though, a piece from The Feline Queen, which people seemed to enjoy, and I sold a few copies. One of the highlights of the day was being caught up with in the art room by Kathleen who had been looking for me so I could sign a copy, because I do love signing books and chatting to readers.

After that, with people drifting towards the exit, it was time to start tidying up. Talis Kimberly had brought her band and they played in the bar, and I managed to catch a lot more of her set than I did last year, before settling back with a coke and watching other people do the quiz. I couldn’t join in the quiz, because I wrote it, but it was entertaining to hear people cursing and see them sinking their heads into their hands – yes, it was BASTARD hard! I think at one point I actually heard crying

Of course, there had to be a winner, and this year the prizes went to the two geekiest men in the room, Paul Cornell and Tim, the manager of Forbidden Planet in Bristol, making up for the FP team’s humiliating defeat last year – well done guys!

I wish I could have seen more panels. Mike Shevdon’s archery panel and the Battle of the Books seem to have been two real highlights, and I missed the Guest of Honour talks too, but that’s one of the prices you pay for running a convention. I did get to catch up with some of my favourite people, and meet some new people who I hope will also become friends, and I’m intending to go to FantasyCon next year so I can enjoy a con I’m not involved in running, and hopefully see these people again!

If you couldn’t get to Bristolcon, we are hoping to put up podcasts of some of the panels on the website over the next few weeks, so you can at least hear what you missed. And if it sounds appealing, why not come along next year?

www.bristolcon.org