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24/12/2020 - So, What Next?

In the new year, my mentor is going to check the changes we worked out together for my book. She’s going to check my submission materials - my agent letter and my synopsis. We’re going to work together to pull a list of agents together to submit to. I’m going to submit to those agents and they’re universally going to reject the manuscript. If I get exceptionally lucky, maybe one will ask to read the full thing. My mentor may have a backup list of agents to send the thing to, but they will reject the manuscript as well.

I don’t want this to sound like a game of PLOM (Poor Little Old Me), as I’ve talked about previously, this is just about numbers. A reader for the agency Conville & Walsh wrote a piece explaining that they recieve 200 manucripts a month and, from those, an agent will maybe take on 4 writers per year. That’s 4 manuscripts out of 2,400. To put in percentage terms, Conville & Walsh pick up 0.16666666666666669%. of the writers who submit to them. Now, as previously discussed, the odds of getting picked up aren’t actually that bad, because plenty of those 200 manuscripts per month will be very bad, but getting picked up is still phenominally unlikely.

So, with that in mind, what will I do with the book once it gets rejected by everyone?

Well, I could self publish the thing. I’ve done this before, with my celebrated* novel Drown the Witch. The thing about self publishing is it’s basically a way of taking a large pile of money and then getting rid of it as quickly as possible. At the bare minimum you’ll want a cover (decent cover artists are extremely expensive), and you should probably get the thing proof-read as well. If you want an audiobook you can say goodbye to £2,000. All that’s before you spend any money promoting the thing.

I learned a lot from self-publishing Drown the Witch but I’m inclined to not try again, unless my mentor and I decide it’s the right way to go. That leaves me with limited options. Unless some sort of inspiration strikes, I’ll probably wind up sitting on the thing, like I did with the last book that got rejected. Drown the Witch, this current book and the last one are all set in the same universe, with minor connections, so my hope is, if one gets picked up, I can say ‘heeey, you like that book? Well I also have these set in the same world. You want them?’. This may be overly optimistic.

So, to cut a long story short: what happens with the next book gets rejected by everyone? Crying. Probably lots of crying. It’s going to hurt. Once I’m done crying, I’ll hopefully be able to carry on writing the book I’m working on now. Maybe that one will see more success.

*Most people who have read it enjoyed the thing - it’s got pretty solid reviews on Audible and Gooddreads, but I’ve made maybe £200 from the thing since its release in 2018. So it may be cellebrated but it’s not commercially succesful.

17/12/2020 - The Benefits of Talking Things Out

I’m plugging away at the current book. I’m 20,000 words in and should have Act 1 wrapped up sometime within the next 5,000 words or so. What I’m finding challenging is - this book has so many moving parts. There are six different groups of people, all of whom are stuck in the same situation, all of whome want different things (well, some want a McGuffin but they all want it for different reasons), and it’s… it’s just a lot.

I got stuck on one tiny plot event and I couldn’t see my way past it… so I talked to my wife about it.

My wife and I used to write together - comedy sketches at university and then a few full scripts in our first years of adult life, which didn’t go anywhere. She’s also extremely clever - certainly more inteligent than me in several areas. As a result, working through plot problems with her usually leads to good results. This also works with editors, and I think it’s something specific about talking.

The editor who I walked away from earlier this year, the one who point blank refused to explain her reasoning for making certain recommendations, also refused to do skype conversations to go over points. She has mental health problems so, sure, but it meant that past a certain point I couldn’t really understand what she wanted me to do. There’s something very specific about the back and forth of:

Them: I want you to do this.

You: But if I do that, then this happens.

Them: Ah. Okay, but we need THIS because the story is currently lacking element X

You: Could we get element X from solution A, B or C?

Them: Solutions A and B sound like they’d cause more trouble than it’d be worth, but let’s have a chat about C, because you might be onto something there…

You can get this same effect from email, but it’s much harder because you have to really hope that you’re focussing on the right things. It’s also really easy for one person to get the wrong end of the stick. Talking: writers might not like it, but it really helps.

10/12/2020 - Post Meeting Funtimes

My meeting went as well as it possibly could have - I made two pages of notes in an a5 notepad. Ten individual changes across a 97,000 word book which resulted in about a thousand words being added to the document, and maybe 600 cut. For an author, that’s the equivilent of being thrown a parade. So I’ve made the changes, found some agents and am waiting for my mentor to give the results a read in the new year.

03/12/2020 - Pre Meeting Anxiety

I have a meeting with my mentor tomorrow about this book which I think is ready to go. Now, the one thing I always want out of meetings like this is for the person with The Knowledge to tell me that I’m a genius and they already have a contract for me and I’m never going to have to worry about anything ever again. That’s obviously not going to happen, but try telling my massive ego that.

What I suspect is going to happen is my mentor will tell me the book is terrible and only a complete re-write will maybe fix it, maybe. This hopefully won’t happen, because it’s been through multiple rounds of editing and had two professionals eyeballs over the thing, either one of which would have hopefully gone ‘Are you sure? Because this seems very bad’. So I’m discounting that possibility.

The most likely scenario is my mentor goes ‘Yes, it’s good, apart from this this and this.’ If I’m exceptionally lucky, she’ll say ‘Yes, it’s good. It has this, this and this flaw but they’re not enough of a problem to worry about.’ Which, thinking about it, is an incredibly unlikely scenario. Her whole function is to root out flaws and give me the best chance possible of getting an agent. No flaws must survive.

Hunting down flaws is, of course, fractal. No book is perfect. The trick is finding the line between ‘Excelent but with minor flaws’ and ‘good but with flaws big enough to make an agent nervous’.

I’m hoping whatever changes she asks for are fairly minor because, having done a bunch of structural work on the thing, I don’t want to have to re-write half of it. Again.

19/11/2020 - Short Attention Span 2: Wait, I Forgot What I Was Saying

I have a short attention span. That being said, the writing course I was on has left me for the last few sessions in the ‘tweaking single words’ stage. Sometimes whole phrases, but basically very small stuff. They’re good tweaks, they’re worthwhile tweaks… but I’m not sure they’re important tweaks. The tutors did a checklist for the class for dialogue and description, which I’ve read and re-read a few times.

I think I might have got involved with this course too late down my novel’s track. It might be too polished to properly take advantage of it. That being said, I’ve thought exactly that thing before, about a novel which was such a disaster I’m pretending it never existed, so it’s hard to fully commit to the opinion. Still, I’ve submitted the novel to my mentor to check over to see if it’s ready for submission. Now the waiting game begins.

12/11/2020 - Art is Never Completed, Only Abandoned

I have a short attention span. Once I spend a certain amount of time on a project, I get bored and want to move on. Thankfully I tend to only want to do this once I’ve got a project into a good state, otherwise I’d have the opening chapter of 50 novels sitting on my hard drive. My short attention span has led to me writing a bunch of books. It’s also led to me moving on from a bunch of projects without spending enough time polishing them. Something I continue to struggle with is knowing where that line is, between abandoning a project too early, and spending so long on it I get completely fed up with the thing. I hate several of my books because I spent too long working on them. I’m utterly sick of anything to do with them. Others haven’t fared as badly, and I’m not 100% sure where the line between those projects is.

05/11/2020 - A&E

I spent all day in A&E today and am going back at 8am tomorrow so no blog entry today booo

29/10/2020 - Never Give Up

This is another emergency blog post that I’m writing well in advance because my health is being particularly terrible at the moment. This is about the sentiment that I shouldn’t give up on writing because I’m not getting anywhere.

I’ve written a bunch of books and submitted a load to agents. None have got anywhere. Now, every book I have submitted so far was not ready to be submitted.  Even the last book I submitted was no-where near as well edited as I would have liked (though at the time I thought it was great). It’s easy to put my failure to get picked up at the feet of these projects being less than great - although, to be clear, I think my work is pretty consistently, at the very least good.  The thing is, this can’t be all that’s going on, because plenty of absolute crap gets picked up by agents every day. This is an artistic, subjective medium. Artistic, subjective judgements happen, and this leads to crap getting picked up. Nothing can or should be done about this.

Generally, whether you get picked up by an agent, and see any success beyond that, is about a few things:

1)      Luck

I didn’t want to start with this point because it makes me sound bitter, but it is an unspoken truth of this industry that you could have the single best book ever written, and if you don’t get extremely lucky, you still won’t get picked up. This is because agents get hundreds of submissions every day and there’s no way to properly assess them all without having a breakdown. As such, the main factor to getting anywhere in this industry is luck. Fortune. Chance. However, you can reduce how much luck you need by:

2)      Having a good product with which to lure agents in

If we lived in a perfect (or even mildly okay) world, the quality of a work would be the main factor in whether it did or didn’t get picked up. And, to be clear again, the quality of all the work I have submitted to agents in the past was not up to a high enough standard. I’m working on this, but it’s important to say because otherwise I come across as bitter. Still, we do not live in a perfect world, we live in a capitalist hellscape. So, what else can you do to increase your chances of getting published?

3)      Spinning the Wheel of Fate Multiple Times

How do you increase your chances of winning the lottery? Play more than once. The same is true for getting your work picked up. Did your first book not go anywhere? Write another. This is extremely middle class advice – most people can’t afford to do this. Writing books is very expensive (find my blog entry entitled ‘27/08/2020 – Recovery’ if you want to read my thoughts on this in a little more detail), but if you can afford to, and you have the time, write more than one book. Spin the wheel again.

That last point is, when you get right down to it, why ‘don’t give up on your dream’ is actually a pretty good piece of advice. It’s also a terrible piece of advice for most people.

The reason for this is simple: You could work your entire life perfecting your writing, creating the most amazing works of fiction you possibly could, and you probably still won’t get anywhere, because luck is such an important factor in what does and doesn’t get picked up.

Genuinely, it is not a good idea to try and be a professional writer. Or a professional creative of any sort. The vast, vast majority of people who try end up failing, dropping out and going back to their day job. The reason I, personally, have not given up already, dropped out and gone back to my day job is I am too ill to hold down a day job. Writing is the only thing I can consistently do, even when I’m ill. This means it’s… what I’m doing. Even though it’s futile.

So, that being the case, let’s return to the advice ‘never give up’. As discussed, it’s both good and terrible advice. It’s also advice that doesn’t (in my opinion) really help. It takes a truly stunning amount of emotional energy to get a book to a good enough state to even submit to an agent. I have been working on the book I’m currently finishing up for the last two and a half years. I’ve worked on other stuff in that time (including a whole other novel, due out in March 2021). To contrast this, the last book I submitted, the one that wasn’t ready, I worked on for just under two years.

It’s really hard to over state just how horrible it feels when a book you’ve spent two years working on gets rejected. But you keep going, and it happens again. And again. And again. The book I’m currently writing? The one that I’ve been working on for about 30 months? That’s probably going to get rejected as well. When it does, I’m going to want to quit.

As I’ve said, quitting in response to this book being rejected would actually be the smart move. I’ve written… I don’t know. Seven books now? I’ve genuinely lost track. Two have been published, two self-published and one will be published in March 2021. The other books didn’t go anywhere and I held onto them in the hope I can resurrect them in the future. When you’ve tried something seven times and have seen really quite minimal success, the right thing to do is quit. Maybe I’m just really bad at this writing thing. Have I thought about that? I might just not be cut out for it. I certainly don’t help myself a lot of the time. I’ve joined Twitter twice to promote my work and ended up quitting both times (the second time being remarkably shitty to a friend because they tried to talk me out of quitting).

The thing is…

The thing is, if I quit after this current book is rejected, that would actually be a shame. The reason for this is: I have never been as good at writing as I am right now. I know how to plan books and how to structure them. I know my strengths and weaknesses as a writer – well, some of them. I know how to get the best out of my work by finding good editors and working with them effectively. This book I am working on currently is the first book when I got an editor on board at the point where writers are supposed to – at the developmental stage.

(The developmental stage of editing – the writer has written a first draft – it gets submitted to an editor who says ‘this works, this doesn’t, for the love of god, Michael, don’t give your protagonist a learning disability, it makes the book really hard to read’ and so on. This step is really, really important and led to me re-writing 80-90% of the book.)

In a very, very real way, the book I am currently writing is actually my first book.

It’s going to be really hard to not quit when this book I’m writing right now gets turned down. Thankfully, the book I want to write next is one I’ve wanted to get my teeth into for well over a year at this point. I’m looking forward to it, but I can’t afford to look forward to it so much I skimp on perfecting the current project.

So, the advice: ‘never give up’. It’s shit advice. It’s also true. It’s also wrong. It’s quantum advice. It’s wrong and correct at the same time. I went to a stand up show by the comedian Mae Martin and someone in the audience asked her (it was a Q&A show), ‘how do you know when you should give up’. She said something along the lines of ‘when you’re starving because you’ve spent all your money on your projects’.

This is obviously extreme advice, and everyone is different. For me, and maybe only for me, there’s something to it.

22/10/2020 - When To Disregard An Editor’s Advice

One thing I’m still trying to get a handle on is when to disregard an editor’s advice. For my last book, someone recommended that I start the story in the backstory of the characters, which I disregarded because the backstory has nothing really to do with the story. In the two years since that advice, I’ve concluded that it might have been correct, not because it’s necessarily crucial to the story, but because it would have provided a sense of normalcy from which the story would then deviate. This sense of normalcy isn’t 100% necessary but in a fantasy novel it sure helps. It eases the reader in a bit. The problem was the editor didn’t say ‘you should include this because it’s a good idea to start a story like this with a sense of normalcy from which you’ll then deviate’, she just said it’d be nice to see. One thing I’m learning about editors is they often have very good ideas and are completely terrible at expressing why they’re good ideas, so to an author they sound like complete gibberish.

This was why I ended up parting ways with one particular editor, who was a certified genius in some areas, but whenever I queried any of her points, I didn’t get an explanation for why the point was important, I just got told to trust her and/or the process. Being a little older and possibly wiser, this is now a massive red flag to me. Still, even if it was a reasonable thing to say (which it isn’t), it would still be a bad thing for an editor to say. The reason being: Let’s say an editor tells you to change your main character to a llama. This is briliant advice but you don’t know why because the editor won’t tell you. So you go through and make the main character a llama, but the change hasn’t brought about the effect the editor wanted, because she didn’t tell you the function changing the character into a llama was supposed to serve. To put it another way, if you don’t know why you’re changing something, you won’t know what direction to take the new matieral in.

15/10/2020 - Hospital

Spent large parts of this week in hospital so not getting masses of writing done. Did have a chat with my editor where we worked through some issues with a book. It’s lovely to talk to editors over Skype. Mostly I talk to them over email but you lose so much energy and potential for brainstorming in text. It’s nice to have formal reports in text so you can digest at your own pace and come back to areas again and again but really when troubleshooting the only way I find that really works is in person or Skype.

08/10/2020 - Still Forked

Still unbelievably tired. Am on the waiting list for a sleep study but a decade of the Conservative Party stripping funding away from the health service combined with Covid means I have no idea when the study will actually happen. I’m still having fun on my writing course. here’s a fun titbit I learned:

When writing your synopsis (the one page plot summary you send to agents along with your sample pages), make sure the end of one paragraph has something to do with the start of the next one. So don’t go:

“[end of paragraph 1]…Sarah decides to leave Brooklyn for good due to her addiction to dog biscuits.

[start of paragraph 2] Rachel joins the PKK in defiance of her father’s wishes…”

Those sentences don’t have anything to do with each other, so it looks like they’re unrelated events. A better version might be:

“[end of paragraph 1]…Sarah decides to leave Brooklyn for good due to her addiction to dog biscuits.

[start of paragraph 2] Sarah’s addiction to dog biscuits focuses Rachel on what she wants from life, so she joins the PKK in defiance of her father’s wishes…”

01/10/2020 - Tired

This is my emergency blog post for when I can’t even write blogs because my health is being a problem. So, this is the best way I can explain what having Chronic Fatigue is like. When I try to read a book and my Chronic Fatigue is acting up, this is sort of what happens in my head:

The engineering bay of the Phoenix Gold, the flagship of the imperial Fleet, was bustling. Huster was busy welding an engine bay back together when Pink strode up to her.
"That piece of crap gave out on me in the last battle." Pink thumped the side of the Dominica class fighter with a gloved hand in a motion that seemed caught between irritation and sentimentality. "Is it finally time to upgrade it to a mark IV engine?"
Huster didn't look away from her work. "Not with the rebels hounding us every ten minutes. Sorry, Pink, you'll have to work your miracles with the tools you're given. Don't worry, I'll get your ship patched for you. You're pretty much singlehandedly keeping the fleet together. The way you caused a chain reaction in the power core of that rebel ship was remarkable!"
Pink grinned. "Thanks, Huster, but never mind about that. I really came to talk about the bearings on the swivel chair. They've got really squeaky."
"Squeaky?"
"Yeah, like... They squeak. Not all the time, but a lot, you know?"
"Oh, sorry to hear that. I can probably fix it. All is need to do is ranto into the trinin and isolp restic tanges sdalingfoeth feessing eesn sadlp."
"Rittin casstlop?"
"Drantil sassan."
"What about trimming the leather so it doesn't scrape against the base of the chair?"
Pink renninged and trudit stantily.
"Standinil tup granforth."
[Michael stops reading the book]

24/09/2020 - Emotion Words

The world’s quickest entry today, because I’m tired and don’t really have a lot to say. However, I’ve come across a piece of advice which seems really useful - avoid emotion words when trying to establish a character’s emotional state. I.E. Don’t write ‘I was scared’ - write how the fear manifests. The feeling in the character’s stomach, their nervous tics, their dry mouth and so on. I’d already intuited this advice to a certain extent, but as a rule I quite like it. I’ve gone back over my most recent manuscript using a ctrl+F for ‘fear’ and, whilst most of them are used quite well, there was one sentence that read, in its entirety: “Fear rose in me.”

That’s not exactly a bad sentence but it smacks of telling the audience what the character feels rather than demonstrating the emotion and having the atmosphere carry that across to the reader. This sort of advice is sometimes called ‘show don’t tell’ but I hate that term, because it’s advice that comes from screenwriting. When you’re making film or television, you have a choice between showing the audience what’s going on with character action, or simply having a character tell the audience what’s going on. Show vs tell.

With text, 100% of what you’re doing is telling the reader what’s happening, unless there are pictures. The advice, when applied to novels, is better phrased as ‘demonstrate, don’t report’ or something similar, although I admit that’s less catchy than ‘show don’t tell’.

17/09/2020 –  My Problem With Self-Editing Advice

I’m going to be taking part in an editing course in October because that’s one of many areas of my writing that still needs to improve after however many years I’ve been doing this thing. The course sent over a reading list, and part of that was the book written by the two people who run the course. I got the book and I read the book. It was a good book. It had useful advice and one piece of advice I vehemently disagree with for reasons I may go into later. I do, however, have one specific problem.

After I read the book, I went back over a couple of sections of the book that’s currently out with an editor to see if I could apply any of the lessons I’d just learned and the answer was ‘…not really’.

So, there was a whole section in the editing book on expository narration – the idea that you shouldn’t just have a first person narrator just tell the reader what’s going on, and they should demonstrate it through action. Great, good advice. So I read a section I’d wrote after a particularly fraught emotional scene. In the immediate aftermath of the scene, my narrator is caring for her best friend. They’ve both been traumatised. The friend is crying and the narrator is hugging her whilst she thinks about what she just went through. She wonders if she can trust her own experiences, her own senses.

So, here’s my problem: Is it expository to have the narrator ponder things like that? Is it okay? Is it expository? I genuinely don’t know. I suspect the answer is probably ‘it might be expository and it might not, even if it is expository, it might not matter because the quality of the material might justify it, but then again, it also might not’.

The problem I’m having at the moment is my writing is good enough to not fall into a bunch of common writing traps, but it’s not good enough to not fall into subtler versions of those same writing traps.

This, as I hope you can imagine, is a little frustrating.

10/09/2020 – Starting with a Bang

I’m part of a facebook group where writers and editors discuss various technical and business issues. Recently, someone on this group posted an article talking about a subject that always gets my teeth grinding: How quickly should a novel’s plot kick in?

The TL;DR of the article was: It used to be a novel could take as long as it wanted to start the story, then it had to be within the first 30 pages, then 20 pages, then 15 and now you have to get things started within the first 10 pages.

Personally, having read a bunch of classis Science Fiction and Fantasy novels, only to be frustrated by the authors insisting on opening their novels with a load of irrelevant drivel, this sounds fine to me. People want their stories to start at the start of the novel, this shouldn’t be massively controversial. People may complain about short attention spans, but I think it’s more likely to be there are a surplus of good books being published regularly now, so we don’t have to put up with glacial storytelling.

My problem, conversely, is over-correcting. As with Sense of Place last week, I tend to want to get things started on the first page rather than let things breathe and start at their own pace. It’s something I’m working on.

03/09/2020 – Sense of Place

On the 23rd of July I wrote about my editor telling me that there was a flaw in my writing. Through a long and bloody process, I found out what that flaw was: My writing, particularly in the early chapters, didn’t have a Sense of Place.

For those that don’t know, a Sense of Place is how a text immerses the reader in a location. The text gives the reader enough information for them to understand where a scene is set, and maybe some thematic information about the scene as well if they’re feeling fancy.

I’ve always had a problem with description generally. This stems from trying to read William Gibson and Margert Atwood, whose writing generally goes like this:

“The neon lights of the alley reflected of the fetid pool of water etc. etc. etc. etc. etc for five lines.

Jane walked down the alley and saw a cat.

The cat was atypical of its kind, its matted grey fur was thinning at the etc. etc. etc. etc. for five lines.

Jane stoked the cat.

Stroking the cat reminded Jane about her childhood home, whose walls were as furry as the cat was, soft as knives and twice as spikey. The light had always hit the walls like a cat hit the ground, with all four paws etc. etc. etc. for five lines.

Jane stood up and walked to the end of the alley, where she saw a rubbish bin.

The rubbish bin was small and square, like a lie, a terrible lie that etc. etc. etc. for five lines. “

-          Every book by authors who think telling a good story is secondary to describing in exhausting detail what the lighting is like in the protagonist’s bedroom

I’m being a little unkind to two very talented authors there, but I have problems concentrating and I can’t get into a story if it grinds to a halt every thirty seconds to describe things for a paragraph or eight. Atmosphere is great, it’s very important. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle has amazing atmosphere, thanks to its description, but it also knows when to hold back.

So, for the longest time, I’ve been neglecting Sense of Place in my novels. I just went back and checked on a book I wrote that got rejected by every agent I sent it to (around fifty I think). The first two chapters went like this:

The protag is in a room (no description at all), dies, then wakes up in her bedroom (no description), she looks out of the window (the absolute bare minimum of description). She then steps out into a corridor (no description) walks up some stairs (no description) and to a room (no description) where she sees a woman (tiny amount of description), meets the antagonist of the novel (no description), brief chat with the antagonist (a little description), goes to important location 1 (no description)… you get the idea.

Now, this book is a particularly bad example because it’s set on a ship and I don’t find describing ships particularly interesting. In our heads, we all know what a ship is like, right?

Having had this pointed out to me, this is obviously terrible writing. Yes, we know what ships are like, but we don’t know what this ship is like. Is it made of metal or wood? Is it in a good state of repair? Is it a nice place to be in? What does it look like in any way? Readers do genuinely need this stuff.

I talked to my wife about this, as she has a bit of the same problem, and she said that she didn’t do description because Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books don’t have description… except (as she pointed out) they do have quite a lot of description, actually, Pratchett just made it look easy. It didn’t break up the flow like the Gibson/Atwood parody I wrote above.

So, when I realised (thanks to some poking from my editor) that this was a serious problem, I broke out three Fantasy books I like: The Lies of Locke Lamora, Senlin Ascends and Six of Crows. I went through the first three chapters, highlighting every section of description. They varied massively, but they all had at least one big block of description of the environment every few pages, and two to three lines on each page. So I went through the book I was writing and followed that formula.

Not all of the description I added is good or will improve the text, but I figured it was much better to overcorrect and put in too much description, then cut things back down, than it was to have to go through again and add yet more description.

Doing this wasn’t particularly easy. When I introduced the Lancer, for example, any description I added really messed with the flow of the scene. I only ended up including pretty minimal flavour, so I’ll probably have to go back and tweak that at some point.

Anyway, the reason this is fresh in my head is this morning, I went through the opening chapters of that book I’d set on a ship and put description of the locations and characters in. It was super fun, and dramatically improved the text. Really I should do this for the whole book but that’s a bit of a waste of time, given it’s already been rejected by everyone. Learn the lesson for the next book and move on.

I have two final thoughts:

Number 1: This lack of Sense of Place thing is an advert for those ‘are you ready to submit’ services that editing agencies operate. They would (hopefully) have picked up on this problem. This is yet another thing that makes books really expensive to write, and therefore keeps low-income authors from breaking through.

Number 2: I noticed, in the three books I read to get a feel for how much description was a good amount, each one started in a location that either was never returned to by the characters, or (in Six of Crows) was only returned to once, much later. This is probably a co-incidence, but I’d be interested in seeing how many other fantasy novels start in a place to give a sense of what ‘normal’ in the world looks like, and then just drops that location because it’s normal and therefore uninteresting.

27/08/2020 – Recovery

I finished up my edits two days ago. It felt like letting out a breath I’d been holding for nearly a month. It felt like racing for a finish line that only existed in my head and where no-one was competing against me, but I still felt compelled to race.

Yesterday I crashed, hard.

Part of having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is being tempted to fall into a boom and bust cycle when it comes to energy. The short version is: You feel tired 75% of the time, so when you feel less tired, you feel the need to do all the things that you couldn’t do the rest of the time, so you try to do ALL THE THINGS, so you burn through your energy and crash.

What happened to me in August wasn’t exactly that, but it was similar. Anyway, it’s done now. I’m happy with the state the book is in. I’ve sent it out to an editor to get it evaluated so I can find out what the next step is. For those keeping score, the current amount I’ve spent on editing for this novel is around £3,100. Just over a sixth of that was the evaluation, the rest was the developmental and line edits the book has gone through so far.

I should do a full post about this at some point, but whilst I remember: Writing books is really, really expensive. By which I mean: To write something good, you need an editor, and editors are expensive as hell, because editing requires a lot of skill.

The upshot of this is that writing is becoming extremely classist. Poor people will find it much harder to break through with their writing because they might be able to afford to get one of their books edited, but can they afford to get the book after that edited if the first book isn’t picked up? What about the one after that?

My book that’s currently with an editor is book #7. My first book wasn’t edited by anyone other than me (and WOW it shows), my second and third book were edited by friends (I should be clear that I paid them). My fourth and fifth books were professionally edited, but pretty far down the line, so there were structural problems with them that it was quite hard to deal with by the time editors got on board.

My sixth and Seventh books were my first work to have editors on board as soon as they’re supposed to, I.E. – I write a first draft and send it to an editor who says ‘yes’ to some parts, ‘no’ to others, and I then go back to make massive structural changes when writing the second draft.

The only reason I was able to do all of this is because I have ready access to money. Not a lot of it, I’m not doing massively well financially, but I can still afford to. People in lower income brackets than mine wouldn’t necessarily be able to do this. This is one of a hundred thousand ways capitalism maintains the status quo. It keeps poor people poor by blocking off ways they can break out of poverty.

This post got away from me a little.

20/08/2020 – Tunnel Vision

I’m writing this before I start editing for the day, because it turns out when I get focussed on editing I get really focussed. It’s actually a bit of a problem. My health is suffering a bit. My birthday is coming up this month and if I still have edits to do I’m probably just… not going to celebrate it and do something once the edits are done. I’ve got tunnel vision.

Hey, that’s the title of this blog thing.

13/08/2020 –  Editing

It’s 4am, it’s a million degrees in the shade and I can’t sleep, so I’m editing. This may or may not be the reason I couldn’t think of a good title for this post. I initially went for something quirky and self-referential but after about twenty seconds I couldn’t stand to look at it any more so I changed it.

Where was I?

Editing. So, I got my book back from the editor and I’ve been having fun developing a plan for how to approach the edits and subsequently starting. I’m doing some quite technical stuff right now with a focus on ensuring the sense of place in the book is rock solid as it’s a bit of a weird setting. I’m also addressing some of my editor’s easier comments as I go, and it’s one of those that I wanted to talk about today. This morning. Tonight. Whatever you call 4am.

My editor left a note basically saying the ending of the book was good, but I introduced a bunch of stuff late on which made things convoluted and messy. I thought about this and asked her if she meant these two characters that pop up in the penultimate chapter, shuffle the main characters from point to point like tour guides and then immediately disappear. She said yes.

What I found interesting was that before my editor suggested cutting the ending down a bit, I’d thought the ending was a bit rushed. I mentioned this, and she said yes, it probably does feel rushed, because you’re trying to cram things in that don’t belong there.

This interested me, because if something feels stuffed or oversaturated my instinct is always to draw things out a bit and give those elements room to breathe.

Cutting the characters in question turned out to be the right call. I learned this after I went through and removed them from the text and found they never actually did anything. They talked to the characters a bit, provided some context and lore, acted as tour guides and then disappeared. This meant that when I removed them the story still worked exactly as well as it had done before. There were continuity problems – the characters teleported around a bit, but these problems were nothing that couldn’t be solved by writing ‘and then we went here’. Although I ended up writing something with a little more character.

06/08/2020 – Quiet Week

I was having a good time writing a first draft of the next book, but then my editor got in touch to say she’s nearly ready to send the current big project back to me. So I’m having a quiet week now, trying to reset, clear my head and rest in anticipation of getting that project back. That means doing very little writing, including this blog thing, so this will be a short one.

So, let me talk about something I’ve been meaning to get down in writing for ages, even though it’s massively egotistical: What do I want from this writing thing?

When writers or creatives complain about getting harassed by internet mobs, there’s always someone in the comments saying ‘that’s the price of getting famous’ or ‘why did they start down this road if they couldn’t handle it?’.

Well, I’m going on record as saying I don’t want to be famous. I don’t want a large public profile. If I did become famous and if I did get a public profile I wouldn’t turn my nose up at it, mainly because I enjoy talking about my work and I can go on for ages about my inspirations and processes. But the fame isn’t the point. It’s not the reason why I’m doing this.

I want to make a living from my writing, whilst writing the sorts of things I want to write – innovative, diverse fantasy and science fiction. My health means it’s extremely difficult to hold down a normal job, but writing fulfils me and I can do it even when my health is pretty bad. I want to get to the point where I can make, say, £20,000 a year from writing. That’s an unbelievably unrealistic goal as the industry currently stands, even successful authors like Claire North still hold down a second job in addition to their bestselling novels. But still, there it is.

30/07/2020 - Processing The Delay of Not in My Name

As mentioned earlier, the publisher and I talked about the state of the industry right now and decided to push back the launch of my political murder mystery Not In My Name back until next year. Since then, I’ve been gradually processing how that feels.

I signed two book contracts back in May: One for Three Arachnids in a Warship, and one for Not In My Name. What this meant was I more or less knew what my year was going to look like from June on – book promotion in the wake of Three Arachnids and book promotion in the run up to NIMN. I’m a very ill person, so I probably wasn’t going to have time for much else.

I was gearing up to a massive publicity push for NIMN when we decided to push it back. I’d reached out to major industry figures for endorsements (none of whom have got back to me, which is unsurprising but still disappointing), and was about to start sending the thing out to reviewers. This means a lot of the prep has been done already, I just need to start pulling the trigger.

So, when we pushed NIMN back, I felt a little like I’d been walking up stairs in the dark and had tried to keep climbing once I’d reached the top. A little surprised, a little disappointed and a little shocked by what to do next.

I’ve started writing again. I’ve written 10,000 words of a new novel over the last week, which is fast, even for me. A lot of pieces suddenly fell into place. I had a jolt of inspiration that lined up with a project I’ve been wanting to write for months but didn’t know how to start, I was coming out of a major health crash and I suddenly had a lot of free time.

So I’m back writing again, and it feels really good. I’m feeling a little sentimental because I’m listening to the Your Name soundtrack and… I want to make people feel vibrant and alive in the way I felt during and after that film. I want to excite people. I want to surprise them. I want to take them to new worlds and tell them interesting stories there.

It’s 6am. I haven’t been able to sleep since 4am. It’s time I got back to writing.

23/07/2020 - Self-Improvement Is Hard

There is a flaw in my writing.

No. There are many flaws in my writing, but one of the flaws has been identified. I don’t know what this flaw is, because the person who has identified it won’t tell me what it is yet.

I’ve started too far into this story. Let me back up.

I currently have a book out with an editor. It went through a developmental edit, where a bunch of issues were identified and I ended up re-writing about 80-90% of the text because I’d written the protag with a learning disability and that was making the text a little opaque. One of the sad realities of writing about things like learning disabilities (like the one that I have) is you either have to make it A Thing that the text Deals With as a Primary Theme or you just have to… not go there. Learning disabilities are big things, at least in my experience, and it can be hard for people who don’t have one to gel with the text.

Anyway, so I made those changes and sent the book back to the editor for the next round of edits. She’s been playing with it for a couple of months now. She sent me an email saying she’s identified a flaw in my writing generally which is holding me back. This is really great news. If a flaw is identified then I can deal with it. If I can deal with it, I can improve. If I can improve, my writing will get better. If my writing gets better, I will write better books. If I write better books, then that’s it’s own reward, but also it will aid my chances of commercial success, which shouldn’t be a consideration, but it is because capitalism.

My editor won’t tell me what the flaw in my writing is. She hasn’t told me exactly why. She’s explained that there is a process for this sort of thing and I need to trust her. I do trust her, so I’m happy to wait.

Well, I’m impatient and want to get to the fixing part, but I’ve done enough therapy to know that’s not how life works.

This coyness about what the flaw in my writing is might seem strange to some people so let me dig into that a little. We know that people find it strangely hard to change their minds, even when presented with evidence that they’re wrong. I almost certainly believe wrong or harmful things, and would struggle to change my mind if presented with data that should be sufficient to prove me wrong. Well, this principle also applies to writing.

Whatever the flaw is with my writing, it has almost certainly been present for a long time. I’ve been writing books since 2014. That’s time for a lot of bad habits to build up. I have a degree in English Literature, and studied English at A-Level, but those were a long time ago. My creative writing has essentially been self-taught, and that can lead to problems. For example, the more I learn about things like genre and tense, the more I realise I don’t actually understand them, I’m just running on instinct. The more I learn about these subjects, the more I understand that I don’t have a base theoretical understanding to underpin my work.

What all this means is, if the editor turned around tomorrow and told me that my fundamental understanding of (for example) storytelling structure is wrong, my instinct would be go say ‘no it isn’t’, rather than to stop and listen and accept what’s being said. Even knowing that’s the case doesn’t help, because the idea isn’t to get me to intellectually understand the flaw in my writing, the key is to get me to emotionally connect with the flaw to understand it fully.

16/07/2020 - Writing The Book Is The Easy Bit

Another piece of writing advice I read a long time ago is ‘writing the novel is the easy bit’. I thought this was insane when I first read it. It’s absolutely true, if a little simplistic.

Writing a first draft, for me, in my personal experience, is one of the easiest parts of writing. In fact, let’s try for a list of things starting at what’s easiest and getting progressively more difficult.

1)      Planning a new novel (writing a plot outline, doing character interrogation etc.)

This one is a bit variable because I sometimes am able to write but not plan because of my health, but generally it’s the easiest thing to do.

2)      Write a first draft

I can bang out a first draft in two weeks. I did that last year in fact. I can only do this thanks to comprehensive planning, and I know now that this is part of a boom and bust cycle I’ve been falling to for years thanks to my chronic fatigue syndrome, but still. I can do it.

3)      Getting feedback on work

I’m aware that some people hate reading feedback on their work. I don’t really get this. I want my work to be in the best shape possible and for that, feedback is absolutely essential. It can sting sometimes, but mostly finding out something that’s bad in my work is a great opportunity to turn it into something awesome.

4)      Do a draft re-write based on editors notes

5)      Self-edit a draft

One of the things I hate about the process is working out what’s wrong with my own story, working out what I can do to fix it and then implementing those fixes. This isn’t a universal rule – sometimes an idea for a fix comes to me and I enjoy the process (one of these fixes recently led to me re-writing 90% of a draft – around 70,000 words – but it was still fun and relatively easy) so, again, the difficulty of this one is a bit variable. Generally, however, I find it easier to edit things if someone tells me what to do and why. Hooray for editors!

6)      Selling books

Back when I was a little healthier I went to a bunch of book fairs to sell books. This was tricky but fulfilling. I’m not a natural salesman, but as the end point of the process it felt good to be out there and getting my work into peoples’ hands. Selling the things is definitely harder than writing them, however. For me. People have different skill sets.

7)      Publicity

This is like selling books but way more abstract. You’re not making direct contact with customers, you’re trying to work out where and how you should spend your time to maximise potential sales, which is just… bizarre, alien and terrifying.

8)      Dealing with the financial aspect of being an indie author

Money is terrifying, and trying to be a professional writer is unbelievably expensive. In order to self-publish a novel,  and for that novel to be good, requires you to pay for multiple rounds of editing, a proof reader, a cover design, an audiobook if you’re feeling really fancy, and all the publicity stuff such as facebook advertising. You could, in theory, spend every penny you have on one single book and see less than £100 in return.

9)      Submitting novels to agents

This isn’t technically challenging, but I’ve been rejected… hundreds and hundreds of times at this point. Definitely more than two hundred times, very possibly more than three hundred. That has taken a psychological toll.

I’ll cut the list off there but I hope that communicates the truth of the statement ‘writing the novel is the easy bit’. The top 5 are all writing based, the bottom 5 are all the things that come afterwards. If I’d known this before I started writing my first novel I very well might not have started.

09/07/2020 - Adventures With Publicists

I hired a publicist for my second novel – Confessions of a Gentleman Arachnid. They worked miracles, to be honest. They got me a couple of good reviews for an incredibly niche book. These reviews didn’t translate into any actual sales, because book publishing is a capitalist nightmare and it’s almost impossible to achieve any level of real success in this or any other industry.

So, I decided after that experience not to hire another publicist. Fast forward to 2020 and I have a cosy mystery due to be published later in the year. The publisher and I have been working to source reviewers and, after a lot of googling, we have a list of 20 reviewers. 20 is a pretty terrible number, given only a third of that number might ever read the thing and even fewer than that might actually review the thing. So, I reached out to a publicist with the brief of ‘find us more reviewers, nothing else’. That means the publicist wouldn’t be making us a press release or media kit (we had that stuff already), they wouldn’t be doing follow ups with the reviewers…

Anyway, so the publicist wrote back and said: “Yeah, we’re in the middle of a plague, all reviewers are completely swamped. Our professional opinion is you should delay the launch.”

There are a lot of people in the fiction industry whose entire business model is to take money from fresh, naive writers who believe their first book is going to be a bestseller. There is an endless supply of such people. I have book publicists on this lists. So, when a publicist talks to me and doesn’t immediately say “Whatever you want, give us money and we’ll do it for you.” I listen. The publisher and I have delayed the launch.

02/07/2020 - Struggling

It used to be the case that… no matter what my health was doing, I was always able to write. For the last couple of years that’s been less true. I’ve been plodding along with this new project and it’s pretty fun but when I’m at my lowest, I just can’t bring myself to do anything, let alone write.

I think this has probably always been true and I just need to cut myself a break. Generally speaking people need to be kinder to themselves.

25/06/2020 - Planning vs Writing

When I started writing what would (eventually) become my first book, I didn’t know what I was doing. I opened a blank word document and started typing. What I ended up writing was a 54,000 word mess which started with a teleporter accident and ended with humanity ascending to a new plane of existence. I had no real plan. I didn’t have any character arcs in mind. I just started writing. I started my second book in much the same way. And my third.

It wasn’t long before I started noticing the problems this approach was causing. Tentatively, I started planning my novels out. The first time I did this, I realised a problem with my story immediately. I saved myself countless hours by scrapping that story outline and starting again. Since then I’ve found myself planning more and more and more. These days I rarely start any project without a full plot outline, character biographies and a full portfolio of inspiring artwork.

That being said, I am a very ill person. My health prevents me from holding down a job with fixed hours (I.E. almost all of them) and it has left my concentration in tatters. This means planning a novel is very hard for me at the moment. Over the past month, I really wanted to start writing a project about spies and redemption. It’s a very complex project. I wouldn’t be comfortable starting it without fully planning things out first and, sadly, planning is something that’s just a bit too abstract for my brain to deal with at the moment.

So, instead, I’ve gone back to an old project I abandoned two years ago. It wouldn’t be what I spent my time writing in an ideal world but if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we don’t live in an ideal world. What this project is is fully planned out. To my surprise, I have been finding coming back to this long-abandoned project hugely enjoyable. I can’t even remember why I abandoned it in the first place, but it was probably something to do with depression.

18/06/2020 – Reading the Text Out Loud

There are these articles on the internet with titles such as ‘How To Edit Your Novel Like A Pro!’ and most of them are filled with tips that would make anyone who’s been writing for a while roll their eyes. I picked up one piece of advice from one of these articles that was invaluable. I’ll save you the time of reading the articles and just tell you: read your text out loud.

By reading your text out loud to yourself, you spot errors and pick up on sentences which don’t scan correctly. If you stumble whilst reading your text, is there a reason for that? Could you phrase something so it reads with more clarity?

I love this advice. I’ve been enacting it since Three Arachnids in a Warship and it’s dramatically improved my editing skills. That being said, in my experience, it had one specific limitation: you can’t do it too many times.

I’m in the process of writing a short story for a publication owned by someone I get on with (it’s not what you know). I finished the story, I sent it out for feedback, I implemented the feedback and I then read the story out loud to myself. I ended up completely re-writing most of the first page because the way it was written was a little awkward. I then left it alone for a bit and came back the next day to read it out loud again.

The second read-through was important, because I spotted five errors I’d missed the first time around. Proof reading, it seems, is another of those things that is never completed, only abandoned. I was noticeably less efficient with my reading the second time around, however. I have problems with concentration because of my health, maybe I should have left the text alone for longer, but I have deadlines.

The idea of reading an 80,000 word novel out loud to yourself can seem daunting. It did to me, when I first heard this piece of advice, but take it from someone who has tried this on multiple novels now: It’s absolutely worth it.

11/06/2020 - Making the Best of Time

My mood has continued in its downward track. This is another way of saying I’m having a depressive episode. This isn’t what I wanted to talk about but- when I was still working full time and I started getting signed off work due to depression, I got really annoyed when the doctors wrote ‘low mood’ as the reason. It felt like such a weasel-y euphemism.

‘Aw, is your mood a little low bab?’ – Doctors, presumably.

I don’t mind the phrase so much anymore, probably because I’ve lived with this nonsense for so long now that I’ve become quite confident about how I’m feeling, which I definitely wasn’t when I first went to the GP.

Anyway. That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was making the best of a bad situation. I woke up at 4am today having had a nightmare about writing. I think I’m stressing about the next project. I don’t want to start it, because I’m feeling really negative about writing at the moment. The problem is, writing is also the thing where a lot of my self-worth comes from, so I only ever abandon it for short periods.

In order to try and break from some of the negativity I’ve been feeling, I’m doing a few writing exercises, although I’m not thinking of them as writing exercises, because that’s writing and writing is bad in my head right now. I’m just writing stuff down in a notebook, who can tell why? Certainly not me, the person doing it, who made a plan to do this in order to trick myself out of my own negative head space.

It’s weird having depression. I don’t know how everyone else deals with it but for me I occasionally have to just lie to myself like this in order to get anything done.

So, I have the setting, the set up and what the story is going to be about for the next project. I won’t go into details here because whenever I’ve done this in the past I’ve been mortified whenever I’ve gone back and re-read such entries.

Stop getting distracted, Michael.

Sorry, Michael.

Ssh, you’re doing it again, Michael.

Yes, I am.

So, I’ve got those bits I outlined above. What I really need now are characters and a plot outline. The plot outline can come later. What I’ve been working on today are ideas for characters, details of the settings and ideas for cool scenes that I can use for writing exercises (shh, they’re not writing exercises, Depressed Michael, don’t worry about it, shhhh)

If this entry has come across as a little confused and disorientating, that’s appropriate because I am both confused and disorientated. I have a headache.

I wonder if this entry is interesting or just a bit sad.

04/06/2020 - Three Arachnids in a Warship Has Been Released, and Why That Doesn’t Make Me Happy

I have a new book out, which is always a strange experience for me. Many, many years ago I went to the doctor. I told him I’d been feeling depressed for a long time, but I really struggled to articulate what that actually meant. I had to see several doctors because I got them to take me seriously. What finally broke through was when I explained that my first book (then called The Unexpected Death of a Soldier) had been published by an independent press, and… I didn’t feel anything. No excitement, no pressure, no expectations… just nothing. I knew intellectually that it was a good thing to get a book published. It was an achievement. Emotionally, I had no reaction.

This is still the case. Today isn’t the day a book I’m really proud of was released into the wild. It’s just Thursday.

Still, I don’t want to go on about depression, because it risks dragging the rest of you down with me. Instead, I want to tell you a little story about writing Three Arachnids in a Warship:

I love P.G. Wodehouse’s writing. This is crucial to separate from P.G. Wodehouse the man, who collaborated with the Nazis. It’s a little more complicated than it sounds, but ‘Nazi collaborator’ is a difficult label to shake. Anyway, despite loving these celebrated comic novels from the early 20th Century, I’d never read Three Men in a Boat, which was in many ways a precursor to Wodehouse’s writing.

This changed when I read the novel To Say Nothing of the Dog, which involved time travel, a mysterious artefact and has a large section inspired by Three Men in a Boat. My wife Jen read the book after me, and asked why I’d never read Jerome K. Jerome’s book. I said I didn’t know, so I read the book and loved it. When I finished it, I knew where my inspiration to my Confessions of a Gentleman Arachnid sequel would come from.

I wrote a lot of Three Arachnids in a Warship in the bath. Not the typing, I did that on a computer, boring old traditionalist that I am. I came up with a lot of the plot of the book in the bath. This was because I’d moved into a new flat and the shower broke. It was winter and we didn’t have central heating, so the flat was perpetually cold. There were only a few ways to warm up and one of them was to take long, hot baths.

So I found myself regularly lowering myself into hot water and drifting off into free association. Thankfully, Three Arachnids is the sort of novel that benefits from this loosely structured approach. I’d never be so lax as to start a project without fully planning it out these days, and these days I have dog walks for free association purposes. My publisher Charlie, when editing Three Arachnids did, however, say (I’m paraphrasing) ‘yes, Michael, this is very good, but could you maybe give us some closure on these plot threads you’ve left dangling?’

This is why writers need editors.

28/05/2020 - Pre-production

I finished up a novel draft this week, which means it’s time to start working on the next one. Normally I might have a bit of time off but we’re still under lockdown in the UK, and writing is giving me a sense of purpose.

One of the most enjoyable parts of novel pre-production, for me, is gathering a Pinterest board of inspiration images for characters, locations and miscellanea. Here is the one I did for my self-published book Drown the Witch:

I find this helpful in the early stages because it lets me think about what sort of characters I might want to include, what sort of setting I want and so on without getting too caught up in the details. It’s essentially free association planning with no consequences. ‘Would I like this sort of thing to be in the book? Maybe, save it. Would I like this? Probably not, move on.’

So, with that in mind, here is the Pinterest gallery I pulled together today for the novel I’m hoping to write next:

21/05/2020 - Commercial Success vs Creative Freedom

There is an idea that is popular on the internet: big business stifles creative expression. There is some truth to this. All you need to do to understand this truth is to look at the films put out by the largest production companies, or the games produced by EA, Ubisoft and Activision.

Obviously, if all you want is to experience less conventional art, all you need to do is watch independent films or play independent games. The ‘business stifles creativity’ argument is more about wanting more variation in high budget productions. I have some sympathy with this. I can only watch so many Marvel films before they all start to blend into one another.

I am someone who started his career writing whatever he wanted, with no consideration for how commercially viable it was. I wrote the sort of books that I wanted to read. This led to me writing a comedy of errors about giant spiders in the style of P G Wodehouse.

This is one of the big problems with the ‘business stifles creativity’ argument: Creative people are weird, and when you don’t put any restrictions on what they create, people rarely engage with the results.

Some people loved Confessions of a Gentleman Arachnid. It got a 10/10 review from a respectable magazine. Many, many people took one look at it and thought ‘Nah, mate, I’m alright, thanks’. They weren’t wrong to do this, Confessions is extremely niche.

My career so far has been about trying to write the sorts of books that interest me, but are also commercially viable. Many people would call this ‘selling out’. I call it ‘trying to write the sorts of books people would actually want to read’.  

14/05/2020 - 500 words

Here is an incomplete list of my health problems:

• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

• Depression and Anxiety, likely as a result of the CFS

• Skin Cancer (in remission)

• Dyslexia

• A possible sleep disorder

These things together mean maintaining a daily routine is hard. I can never garauntee how much I’ll be able to do on any one day. I can pretty easily garauntee that I’ll be able to work 20 hours a week… but I can’t say that I’ll be able to work the hours of 9:00am to 2:00pm, monday to friday. I spent all of my 20s and a good chunk of my 30s trying to live like that and it resulted in my health deteriorating rapidly and required several trips to hospital.

So, currently I am trying to write 500 words a day. This is pretty low by my standards. In the past I’ve peaked at around 5,000 words a day. That wasn’t sustainable and led to a crash which resulted in me being unable to write at all for about six months. Health is wierd. So far, I am finding writing 500 words a day to be sustainable.

26/01/2018

I wrote an end of year Top Ten list at the end of 2017. I am uploading it now.

Life is hard.

LIST:

Top  ten TV shows of 2017

1)      The Good Place – Series 2

What is it?

The Good Place follows four characters who are in the afterlife. In this universe there is a ‘good place’ and a ‘bad place’. In series 1, the characters are told they are in the ‘good place’. But, as we found out at the end of series one (spoilers) this isn’t true. They are actually in the bad place, being tortured.

Why is it good?

I actually abandoned series one of The Good Place because I thought it wasn’t going anywhere. Boy, was I wrong. Series two starts off at some speed and then just picks up from there. Episode three, for example, covers over a hundred incarnations of Michael’s Good Place project. Series two has switched up its formula so many times, I genuinely have no idea where it’s going. No show has managed to consistently surprise me like The Good Place. It helps that the characterisation and comedy are really solid.

2)      Dark Matter – Series 3

What is it?

A science fiction show about a crew of mercenaries on the run from their past. It features great characterisation and a plethora of entertaining self-contained storylines.

Why is it good?

Dark Matter placed second on my list last year as well, that’s fun. Dark Matter is just really good television. It’s never really great but that’s okay. The story is well written and interesting, the characters show consistent growth and act according to their motivation… it’s just really good.

Sadly, this is the last series of Dark Matter we’re going to get as it was cancelled after the end of series three. This was seemingly to prove that we’re not allowed nice things. In order to rub salt into the wound, the infinitely inferior Killjoys (Dark Matter’s sister show) was renewed for two more series. Urg.

3)      My Hero Academia – Series 1 & 2, Little Witch Academia

What are they?

Two anime shows about life in a school for superheroes & witches respectively. I’m including anime this year because I went on my honeymoon to Japan last year and that got me back into anime in a big way.

Why are they good?

I’m including both of these shows in one slot because they’re basically the same show, it’s just one is designed to appeal to boys, the other to girls. My Hero is a long running action series focusing on themes of responsibility, ambition and abuse. Little Witch is a lovely, heart warming show about friendship, perseverance and bringing joy to those that need it. They’re both great. They boast great characters, good story and wonderful animation.

4)      Game of Thrones – Series 7

What is it?

Don’t play that game, you know exactly what Game of Thrones is.

Why is it good?

Game of Thrones is only this high on the list because when it’s good it’s really good. This series saw more than a few wobbles, though. Inconsistent plotting, constant disregarding of the laws of physics and endless teleporting armies and fleets. It also decided what the series really needed was to replace Ramsay Bolton with an equally annoying, boring character. Euron Greyjoy, I hate you so much.

5)      Lucifer – Series 2 / start of series 3

What is it?

A show about a crime solving devil. It makes sense, don’t overthink it.

Why is it good?

It really shouldn’t be. There is no way in hell (ha!) that this show should be as good as it is. Despite the, frankly, ridiculous premise, it manages to be really smartly plotted and has really grown beyond its crime procedural roots. Tricia Helfer was introduced as Lucifer’s mother/Charlotte Richards in series 2 and has really helped the show explore themes of maturing, betrayal and identity. It’s also really funny.

6)      Speechless – Series 2

What is it?

A heart-warming comedy staring Mini Driver about a special needs family.

Why is it good?

Its treatment of disability is wonderfully positive. It’s really funny and (as with basically every show on this list) it has really great characters. A stand out episode this year was the Halloween special where JJ taught an Exorcist-daemon about life with a disability.

7)      Recovery of an MMO Junkie

What is it?

A woman in her 30s quits her job and throws herself into living in a massively multiplayer online RPG. Hijinks, hilarity and romance ensues.

Why is it so good?

It’s an anime that stars a non-objectified woman in her 30s. This makes it almost unique for an anime. It’s just a really cute, heart warming story. It’s got enough plot contrivances to fill a standard Shakespearian comedy but I think it gets away with it. We’ll have to see how the series progresses (only six episodes have aired at the time of writing) as there is potential for the romance between two of the main characters to get a little creepy, but so far it’s really good.

8)      Doctor Who: Series 10

What is it?

Steven Moffat’s final series of Doctor Who. I fear I may cry.

Why is it good?

Fun fact, I initially placed this series much higher on the list. The final two episodes were so good, they pretty much eclipsed the rest of the series for me. I then went back and went through the episode list to remind me what the rest of the series was like.

Not Very Good is the short answer.

Most of the episodes had decent ambition but fell back on cliched writing. Some had a flimsy premise and failed to do anything interesting with it. Others fell into the trap that has plagued Doctor Who’s revival since its inception and relied on weak, hand-wavey conclusions.

Pearl Mackie’s Bill was a great companion who had a nice arc and Michelle Gomez’s Missy was just stunning. In fact, the characterisation in this series of Doctor Who was possibly the strongest it’s ever been. It’s just a shame the storylines weren’t there to back up the characters.

9)      Brooklyn Nine Nine – Series 5

What is it?

A sitcom about a group of misfit detectives in a New York police department.

Why is it good?

Remarkably, Brooklyn Nine Nine is still really quite funny. Sitcoms never usually manage to stay funny, let alone entertaining past their second series. Nine Nine has managed it!

10)  Robot Wars – Series 10

What is it?

A fighting Robot show

Why is it good?

I’ll be honest, this year Robot Wars is only here because there haven’t been that many good shows and I needed to pad the list a bit. That’s not to say the series hasn’t been good, it’s just nothing particularly wonderful. That being said, we have seen possibly the biggest surprise of any series of Robot Wars ever this year, in that Nuts 2 won a place in the grand final. Not by luck, not by a technicality but by being genuinely better than every other robot it went up against. And it went up against some pretty good robots. I don’t think anyone expected that. I’ll be so happy if it wins the series.

Top Two TV Disappointments:

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend series 3

Last year I was worried that the writers wouldn’t be able to keep up the quality of their work. I was right to be worried.

Teachers series 2

I remember series one being funnier than that was on offer in series two.

Top Ten Games of 2017:

1)      Hellblade

What is it?

A walkie-talkie/third person hack and slash game starring a woman with severe psychosis.

Why is it good?

It’s good just good, it’s great. The story is amazing, the graphics are wonderful, the gameplay is inventive… but most of all, this is a game that provided me with a completely unique experience. I have never felt like I understood what it is like to have psychosis before this game. I now feel like I’ve taken a glimpse into that world. It’s pretty bloody amazing.

2)      Prey

What is it?

Sci-Fi Dishonoured

Why is it good?

Prey took everything I liked about Dishonoured and turned it up to 11, whilst losing a lot of the more tedious stuff. Its middle act is a bit weak but I still love the freedom the game offers. The story is surprisingly smart and I had a great time with mimics.

3)      The Sexy Brutale

What is it?

A game where you prevent the murders of your best friends, who are caught in a time loop.

Why is it good?

It’s got a nice original gameplay gimmick (for those, like me, who haven’t played Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective) and a really good story. The design and characters are really good and it’s got some nice, if simple, puzzles.

4)      Echo

What is it?

A third person action game where the game learns from your actions and uses those actions as the basis for the AI.

Why is it good?

This isn’t so much a unique idea as a refinement of something that has been tried multiple times before. It works so well in Echo because it doesn’t try to hide the process by which the AI learns from you. On the contrary, it draws your attention to every new move it learns from you. Because of this, the game is never unfair, it’s just very brutal. It’s a great horror game. It’s oppressive and relentless. It also boasts a good story and wonderful art direction. It’s only so far down this list because there have been so many great games this year.

5)      Wolfenstein 2

What is it?

The sequel to my joint favourite game of 2014.

Why is it good?

It boasts the same awesome gameplay from The New Order, which helps a lot. It is quite a lot darker, at least in the early hours, which is both good and bad. There are a few dud levels and it does struggle to follow in The New Order’s footsteps. There are a few great moments and the gameplay is as good as it was… it’s just that there are a few mis steps and missed opportunities. We didn’t need to know the protagonist’s back story, for instance. Also, it’s a real shame we never really got to massacre the KKK, especially in the current political climate.

6)      What remains of Edith Finch

What is it?

A walking simulator about the Finch family who may be cursed or may suffer from being absolutely terrible human beings.

Why is it good?

Edith Finch made it onto this list because of the Cannery level. Those that have played the game know why. Generally, it’s a good walking simulator. It didn’t grab me as much as Gone Home and it’s not as inventive as either of Davey Wreden’s efforts. Still, it’s good, just (in my opinion) not great.

7)      X-Com 2: War of the Chosen

What is it?

It’s an expansion to one of my favourite games of last year.

Why is it good?

Well it’s not great. There’s a bit of a quality dip at this point on the list. War of the Chosen is good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not exactly mind blowing. It makes X: Com 2 a fair bit better, but it compensates for this by fucking the difficulty curve up really badly. For me, the game was either far too hard or annoyingly easy, depending on how the random elements fell. 

8)      The Surge

What is it?
A Souls-like game with fewer boss fights.

Why is it good?

I’ve never played a Souls-like game before because I hate hate hate boss fights. The Surge was pretty fun. The gameplay is good, the fight system is entertaining. I think the difficulty is a bit of a crutch. The game levels are really quite small and I’m suspicious that the game is so difficult in order to disguise the fact that this is a five-hour game stretched over thirty hours.

9)      Dishonoured: Death of the Outsider

What is it?

A stand-alone expansion for Dishonoured 2.

Why is it good?

It’s not really. Not that good anyway. Death of the Outisder really needs you to have played the expansions from Dishonoured 1, which I haven’t. So the plot had nothing for me. And when you’re not on board for the story, Death of the Outsider doesn’t have much to keep the player around. The levels are fine, but not great. It particularly suffers given it came out in the same year as Prey.

10)  Mass Effect: Andromeda

What is it?

The latest Bioware disappointment.

Why is it good?

It’s fine. It has some good characters and some good plot moves and some fun gameplay… but it’s nothing special. The days when Bioware used to be relied on to make the best games around are well and truly behind us.

02/11/2017 - Pre Production

I'm in pre-production of my next book, it's very exciting.

When I wrote my first book, I didn't even know I was writing a book. It just happened. I started off writing a short story that got really out of control. More or less the same thing happened with my second and third books (the third book is sitting on a hard drive waiting patiently. I haven't decided what to do with it yet.)

Since then I've become ever more enamoured by planning. The more I planned my work out in advance, the better the end result was and the less re-writing I needed to do. I've still needed to re-write an awful lot. The book I've just finished a draft of had to be completely torn down and restarted from the beginning. I made some characterisation mistakes which made it a lot less good than it could have been.

For the book I'm currently in the process of planning, pre-production is being amazing. I'm working on character journies, plot and world building. I'm doing this in Scrivener - a writing tool I've fallen in love with. I still need to make a few maps (something I thought would be a waste of time but turned out to be invaluable in the last book) and write a chapter by chapter breakdown.

What's surprising is how fun pre-production is. When I first started writing I avoided planning because I thought it would be boring. I couldn't have been more wrong. Endlessly re-writing things because you made mistakes in the early stages and can't work out how to fix them? That's boring.

30/05/2017 - A Writing Holiday

As you can probably tell, I don't blog much.

This is mainly because I have limited concentration for writing, so when I write, I want to be working on useful stuff. Right now, this means my books. But I'm on a little holiday from my current book, so I thought I'd do an update.

Why am I on a holiday?

That's an excellent question, voice in my head. I've been doing a writing course, that's why.

Why have you been doing a writing course?

Another excellent question.

I keep making elementary mistakes.

Well, that's a little harsh. Basically, my second novel, Confessions Of A Gentleman Arachnid, was a bloody mess when I first wrote it. It was only because I got a very talented editor on board that it turned out to be anything other than shockingly terrible. I learned a lot through doing that.

So, once Confessions was done, I tried to write a follow up to my first book: The Unexpected Death Of A Soldier. This did not work. This was mainly because I was trying to do a send-up of the story from the first Mass Effect game (this is too long a story to go into now) and it really just fell apart.

I then wrote the sequel to Confessions, the first page of which is down this blog somewhere.

I then hit a few road blocks.

I'd wanted to write a young adult novel for a while, so I tried to write one. After about four months, it became obvious that I had 45,000 words that had some potential, but was mainly one massive mess. So I wrote something else. This was... okay, but also had some pretty serious problems. I then wrote another thing. That's what I'm working on now.

This project (currently called 'Can Anyone Hear Me?' - I'm terrible at naming things) is going... mmm... it's going decently. But I reasoned that I kept... making... mistakes. Mostly to do with character motivation and narrative flow, so I decided to do a writing course.

Writing courses are quite interesting things. The one I'm on runs for twelve weeks and is done online. I was signed up for an in person one but I switched over. My disability was playing up and I didn't think I'd be able to attend the classes. Online is nice anyway. You chat with your peers on a little forum thing and watch videos of your teacher lecturing you.

The teaching so far has been... fine. I haven't really learned a whole lot but we'll see how things progress. The interesting stuff has been the round robin of feedback the course takes part in.

Every week, three students submit a three thousand word section from their work for the group to provide feedback on. You get feedback from the tutor as well as fourteen other people.

It's a quick and easy way of getting a lot of opinions very quickly, which is super useful.

The feedback I got on the stuff I've submitted so far was mostly wonderful. Glaring flaws I had not noticed were identified whilst some sections of my work were universally praised. That made me pretty happy.

What I found interesting was the massive variation of quality of the work on the course. Some students are really damned good. Others are writing at sub fan-fiction levels. This, it turns out, is actually quite useful. I've taken to reading people's feedback and checking their work to see if I should be taking their advice or not. I listen to the good writers more than I listen to the bad ones.

That said, a good point is a good point, no matter who makes it.

Anyway, I was implementing this feedback on my book. I'd been working on it pretty solidly for about three weeks. I find editing exhausting and frustrating. I was getting worse and worse at it. I'd started skipping sections and had largely managed to forget what I was supposed to be keeping an eye out for. So I decided to go on a one week holiday and here we are. Here is me, blogging. BLOGGING I SAY.

If I do some more of this, I might do something more interesting than just talk about my life. Maybe.

09/12/2016 - The 30 Day Video Game Challenge

(all in one day)

My buddy Steve has been doing a 30 Day Video Game challenge on Twitter. I didn’t fancy doing this as I knew I’d lose interest after a few days if I didn’t forget, so I went ahead and did it all in one go.

The challenge gave you a series of prompts (the stuff in bold). Here are my responses:

1)      Your first video game

It’s hard to tell but it was possibly Chuckie Egg:

2)      Your favourite character

I don’t have a single favourite so I’ll pick one form the list. I’ll go for the Narrator from The Stanley parable:

3)      A game that is underrated

Mass Effect 3. That game got so much hate despite being the best game in the series (in my opinion) both in terms of gameplay and story. Yes, I even like the ending.

4)      Your guilty pleasure game

I don’t feel guilty about playing things I enjoy so this question is invalid.

5)      Game character you feel like you are most like (or wish you were)

They don’t really make games about depressed administrators so I can’t answer this either.

6)      Most annoying character

Sera from Dragon Age: Inquisition. I don’t know if it was the way she was written or her voice actress but she annoyed the living shit out of me:

7)      Favourite game couple

I find it too hard to pick between Yenn & Geralt or Triss & Geralt from The Witcher 3 so I’m going to go ahead and pick Liara & Shepherd from Mass Effect 3.

8)      Best soundtrack

This is basically impossible to answer but the Thomas Was Alone soundtrack is probably the one I’ve listened to the most in my life because it calms me down:

9)      Saddest game scene

Thane’s death in Mass Effect 3 (Spoilers I suppose?) was unbelievably sad. This is all the more remarkable as before the scene I hadn’t given a single solitary fuck about that character:

10)   Best gameplay

Another question that is completely impossible to answer but possibly the purest expression of gameplay that is both simple and complex, easy to understand and impossible to master and utterly, viscerally satisfying is One Finger Death Punch:

11)   Gaming system of choice

The PC. I have an Xbox One but I only use it for watching television and playing Rock Band 4.

12)   A game everyone should play

This is a stupid question because not everyone likes the same things. I’d like everyone to at least try The Witcher 3 because it’s my favourite game and no-one other than me and my wife have played it.

13)   A game you’ve played more than five times

By ‘played’ I’m going to go ahead and guess this question means ‘completed’ because any game I’ve played for more than a few hours has been played over more than five separate occasions.

The thing is, I’m not sure I’ve completed any game more than five times. Unless you count The Stanley Parable.

14)   Current gaming wallpaper

I’ve got a series of pictures from The Witcher 3 on rotation. This is my favourite:

15)   Post a screenshot from a game you’re playing right now

Hearthstone:

16)   Game with the best cut scenes

Another tricky one but I’m going to go with Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 as the cut scenes are literally the entire reason to play that game. The gameplay is fine but it’s all about the cut scenes.

17)   Favourite antagonist

Spoilers but Davey from The Beginner’s Guide is a seriously amazing antagonist.

18)   Favourite protagonist

Geralt from The Witcher 3 – the character that cemented the idea that pre-existing RPG protagonists are preferable to blank slates in my mind.

19)   Picture of the game setting you wish you lived in

20)   Favourite genre

RPG

21)   Game with the best story

For this I had to strike off all RPGs because they all have massively bloated stories. Adventure games are similarly gone… which basically leaves us with Walkie Talkies. With that in mind, I’m going to say Gone Home. It might not have the most affecting, emotional or complex story… but in terms of construction, pacing and overall quality, it is the best. In my opinion.

22)   A game sequel which disappointed you

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. That’s a series that has never managed to make the original Modern Warfare’s magic reoccur.

23)   Game which you think has the best graphics or art style

Again, there are too many answers to this question but Braid is a personal favourite.

24)   Favourite classic game

This was a surprisingly easy one. The original Deus Ex. No classic game had such a great story or such compelling gameplay.

25)   A game you plan on playing

I’m planning to play Icey.

I don’t know if I’ll like it but it sounds really interesting.

26)   Best voice acting

The best cast of voice actors and actresses has to be the Mass Effect series. Apart from male Shepherd there basically isn’t a performance in that cast which is anything less than fantastic.

For best single performances I have to fall back on the usual suspects of Glados from Portal, the Narrator from The Stanley Parable and the Narrator from Thomas Was Alone.

27)   Most epic scene ever

It’s not actually great out of context but I’d go with the Victoria fight from Hitman Absolution:

28)   Favourite game developer

For sheer quality of games produced, growing steadily as a developer and for supremely ethical behaviour it has to be CD Projekt Red.

29)   A game you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving

I really expected to hate Life Is Strange. I can’t even remember why now but I love that damned game.

30)   Your favourite game of all time

This is an easy one. The Witcher 3. No other game has such awesome gameplay, characters, story and design. It’s such an amazing game. I can’t wait to see what CD Projekt Red do next. 

06/12/2016 - The best games and television of 2016

Television:

It’s been a bit of an odd year for Television. Two of my favourite 2015 shows were renewed for a second series… but they wouldn’t broadcast until 2017. Doctor Who, similarly, took a year off. No, I have no idea why. Still, we’ve had no shortage of good shows this year. Some of them are even from the same country I was born in! How surprising, it turns out Britain still knows how to make good television. Who would have thought it?

Well, let’s get started.

1)      Game of Thrones: Series 6

What is it?

Don’t play that game, you know what Game of Thrones is. It’s everyone’s favourite fantasy series with dragons and mysterious frost zombies.

Why is it good?

So, it turns out that George R R Martin was holding Game of Thrones back. Significantly. Series six started slowly… but then again show me a series of Games of Thrones that doesn’t start slowly. Aria Stark was given something to do that wasn’t washing bodies (hooray) and managed to get her way out of that tedious plot arc in Bravos. Jon Snow did some Jon Snow type stuff, culminating in a wonderful and disturbing battle. Titanic shifts of power happened in the North, the Iron Islands and in Kings Landing. The Narrow Sea is finally being crossed and Dorn might have some fun stuff next series.

Series six did have some problems. Ramsey Bolton, for example, was a terrible character. He was nothing but an unrealistically evil villain. His role added nothing to the series that couldn’t have been performed by his father with none of the gratuitous rape scenes. Still, when it was good it was so good. Episode ten in particular was amazing.

2)      Dark Matter: Series 2

What is it?

A character focussed science fiction series about the exploits of a set of amnesiacs on the run from just about everyone.

Why is it good?

The first series of Dark Matter was really, unexpectedly good. Series 2 mostly matched that level of quality. It remained twisty and turny. Its focus on characterisation and plot was maintained, as was its dark sense of humour. Characters grew, other characters died, other characters regressed to earlier states. Series 2 was very good. As with Game of Thrones, it had a couple of wobbles… but they were nothing too bad. Dark Matter never quite rose to the heights of Game of Thrones but it didn’t have that series’ troubles either. Dark Matter isn’t truly great television. It settles for being merely very good. 

3)      And Then There Were None

What is it?

An adaptation of Agatha Christie’s best murder mystery novel.

Why is it good?

I’m cheating a little with this one as technically And Then There Were None came out right at the end of 2015. It was broadcast on the 26-28th of December 2015. My logic is it was too late for me to include it in my top 10 last year so I’m going to include it this year.

And Then There Were None did what I thought was impossible: It adapted my favourite Agatha Christie novel brilliantly. Changes were made (almost universally for the better) but the amazing oppressive atmosphere from the book was only enhanced on the small screen. There have been around twenty adaptations of Christie’s novel so far according to Wikipedia. According to reviews, most of them aren’t very good. It’s wonderful to finally have an adaptation that lives up to the novel. It even improves on it in some ways. I just wish they’d filmed multiple endings with different murderers for the purposes of re-watching the series. That would have been fun. 

4)      Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

What is it?

An adaptation of an acclaimed novel by Susana Clark. Set in the 19th century it focuses on themes of knowledge, betrayal and passion.

Why is it good?

I was really glad this novel was adapted to this wonderful series. This is because I refuse to read the book. The audio version (I only really read audiobooks these days) is 32 hours long. I find that when a book gets over 14 hours long it could do with things being cut here and there. I honestly don’t know how I’d get through a 32 hour book.

Still, now I don’t need to! The series was beautiful, well written and extremely gripping. It was never quite as good as the shows placed higher on this list bust still, it is definitely worth a watch.

5)      Westworld

What is it?

An adaptation of Michael Crichton’s film of the same name. The series focuses on an amusement park where lifelike androids entertain their human guests.

Why is it good?

I watched the film of Westworld when I was little. Probably I was a bit too young because that film is really quite dark at times. Anyway, I was cautiously optimistic when I heard HBO were going to adapt it and, so far, my optimism seems well placed. It’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s well written, it’s well acted and it’s often extremely brutal. I’m more interested in certain plot threads than others (the show seems determined for me to care about Delores. I think I used to but I haven’t done for a few episodes now) but when it’s good it’s really quite good.

I don’t think the show really gets what it’s trying to be just yet. There are a lot of disparate elements floating around each other, occasionally banging into themes of identity and loss. Big questions are everywhere (what makes you, you? Etc.) but the show doesn’t really have one core storyline or theme with which to anchor itself to.

6)      Banshee: Series 4

What is it?

The final series of a show about an ex-convict who winds up as a sheriff in a small town. It’s a gloriously pulpy series rife with gratuitous nudity and wonderful martial arts sequences.

Why is it good?

Banshee Series 4 is remarkable for two reasons. Firstly, it pulled the series back from the pretty serious quality dip that was Series 3. Secondly, it ended the show in a way that was satisfying.

This cannot be understated. I have never seen a television show end well. When shows don’t get cancelled their quality tends to fade so much there’s no point in continuing to watch. Occasionally shows will be allowed to wrap up properly. Such endings are usually a mess where the lingering plot threads are tied up in a way which is neither satisfying nor entertaining. See the finale of Battlestar Galactica for an example.

The ending to Banshee isn’t perfect, by any means, but it is good and that makes it unique as far as I am aware.

7)      Fleabag

What is it?

A BBC comedy about a foul mouthed woman and her quest for emotional and financial stability.

Why is it good?

The positioning of Fleabag in this list might be a little controversial. Certainly it was good. Occasionally it was great. It was emotionally raw and extremely funny. Still, was it better than the show in position eight on this list? Possibly not. What it is, however, is complete. I know how good Fleabag is. It’s very good. The show below this one might suddenly go off the rails next time it broadcasts an episode so on that technicality it gets stuck behind Fleabag. Hey, if life was fair my country wouldn’t have voted to Brexit.

8)      Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Series 2

What is it?

The second series of Rachel Bloom’s wonderful musical comedy about a neurotic but highly intelligent woman looking for love in a small town.

Why is it good?

Series two of Crazy Ex-Girlfirend is incomplete, so it’s hard to judge how good the complete series will be. So far it’s been… interesting. Things have changed a lot since the finale of series one. I honestly don’t know where series two is going to go from here. That’s exciting… but also worrying. Will the writers be able to maintain the level of quality they’ve managed so far? Time will tell.

9)      You’re The Worst: Series 3

What is it?

A black comedy about a series of objectionable people who make each other more mentally healthy through the power of companionship.

Why is it good?

It’s a shame to see You’re The Worst so far down this list. Series 2 was my favourite series of last year. I doubted series three was going to be able to live up to that, and I was right. It didn’t. Series three was a little worse than even I’d hoped, annoyingly. It wasn’t bad by any means, but there were a few contrivances and character developments that took the show one step closer towards being a Soap Opera. I enjoyed watching the series but the last few episodes left a bad taste in my brain. I’m not sure if I’m going to bother with the fourth series.

10)   Speechless

What is it?

A comedy about a family’s exploits and the challenges of caring for someone with cerebral palsy.

Why is it good?

Speechless is a tricky one. Only six episodes of the first series have aired so far but it’s a show I’m already very fond of. It’s hilarious and unafraid to tackle difficult subjects. I’m a big fan of any show that promotes disability awareness and Speechless gets so much right. They even cast someone with cerebral palsy to play the chap with cerebral palsy. I know it sounds obvious but this is actually really, really rare.

Honourable mentions:

Stranger Things! It was good but not better than other things on this list.

Wagnaria!! Is an absolutely hilarious and totally bonkers anime but, again, not as good as other things on the list.

Adam Ruins Everything Series 2! Or series 1.5 or whatever. The American series system is bonkers. Still, it continues to be a good show, just not quite as special now they've moved outside topics they clearly really wanted to talk about.

Last Week Tonight & Full Frontal with Samantha Bee! We've really needed biting news satire this year, more then ever. 

Disappointments:

Limitless was cancelled

What Was It?

Limitless was a television show acting as a pseudo-sequel to the film of the same name. Brian Finch takes a pill that unlocks his LIIIIIMITLES BRAIIIIIN POTENTIIIIIIAL. He then goes to work for the FBI solving crimes because of course he does. It was a really great, fun, silly show. It managed to occupy the space that has been empty since Leverage was cancelled. Unfortunately, because we cannot have nice things, Limitless wasn’t renewed for a second series.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt series 2

What was it?

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is the new show from 30 Rock creator Tina Fey.

Why was it a disappointment?

Overall, the series was decent. It struggled to have anything to say for long parts of series 2. Titus reverted to being a tedious stereotype for episodes at a time. An excellent guest role for Tina Fey brought things together a little but generally the series was killed for me by an episode that wasn’t just bad, it was also massively racist.

Class

What was it?

Another in the long line of Doctor Who spin off shows. It followed six human teenagers, an alien teenager and an alien psychopath as they deal with various threats that emerge at Coal Hill School.

Why was it a disappointment?

The first episode of Class was great. It was morally complex, had a tense, interesting plot and did a lot with a limited budget.

Every subsequent episode I have seen (I watched episodes 2, 3 and 4 before I gave up) has been just your standard Torchwood/Primeval British story of the week disappointment. There was none of the awesome moral complexity that made episode 1 so interesting. The show just devolved into the same ‘Things are attacking! Teenagers implausibly stop the things’ storyline.

You’re the worst: Series 3

What was it?

We’ve been through this one already.

Why was it a disappointment?

Okay, this one wasn’t that much of a disappointment or it wouldn’t have ended up as my 9th favourite series of this year… but it was a pretty serious step down from Series 2. Things took a few crucial steps towards soap-opera territory. Characters had fights over issues I still don’t fully understand and one twist late in the series required one character to be so completely, artificially ignorant of another character’s personality it completely pulled me out of the show.

I’m honestly not sure if I’m going to bother with series 4 or not. I might just leave the show as a pleasant memory rather than watch it decline any further.

Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life

What was it?

A four-part series of specials reviving the classic show about a mother and a daughter who are also best friends living in a small town.

Why was it a disappointment?

Because everything about it was essentially lifeless? I only watched one of the specials, because I hated it so much I couldn’t watch the others… but the one special I watched (‘Winter’) was just an extended sequence of cameos. The show checked in on characters from the show in sequence. Here’s what Kirk is up to! Here is what Michelle is up to! Here’s a bit with Miss Patty! Here’s what wacky antics Taylor is inflicting on the town!

There was no story. Gilmore Girls has never really been comfortable with story but even the weakest episodes had a basic set up which led to conflict which was then resolved. Here… it was just a load of stuff that happened. I like the Gilmore Girls characters but after sixty minutes of just… nothing happening I checked out and never really came back.

Games

1)      The Witcher 3: Expansions

What are they?

Two 20+ hour expansions to the best game of last year, and very possibly the best game ever.

Why are they good?

I’m cheating a little here. Hearts of Stone and Bood & Wine were great… but they’re not stand alone games. They’re expansions to an already great game. I’m still putting them at the top of my list. This is for two reasons:

Firstly, they’re both massive chunks of content. If CD Projekt Red had released them together as a standalone title they would count.

Secondly, nothing better than these expansions came out this year. As with last year, we’ve not really had a great year for games. There were plenty of good games, but nothing amazing. Unless you count these expansions. Which I do.

2)      Dishonoured 2

What is it?

The sequel to Dishonoured, a stealth action game set in a steampunk/fantasy world.

Why is it good?

Dishonoured 2 is basically the game Dishonoured should have been. The design is better (and less grey) the city hubs are less tedious to get through, the voice acting isn’t the worst… generally it’s just awesome. My only real complaint is that there were no levels as spectacularly beautiful as Lady Boyle’s mansion from the first game but hey.

3)      Doom

What is it?

A remake/numberless sequel to ID’s 1993 classic FPS where you kill daemons from hell.

Why is it good?

I bought Doom when I was having a really bad day. I can’t remember what happened on the day exactly but I know everything was working together to make me really frustrated and angry. Then I played Doom… and the anger flowed out of me. Ripping the heads off daemons and punching through them with a double barreled shotgun is just magical for stress relief.

4)      X:Com 2

What is it?

The sequel to the critically acclaimed turn based strategy game X-Com: Enemy Unknown.

Why is it good?

As with Dishonoured 2, I think X-Com 2 is the game X-Com should have been. It’s more varied in terms of gameplay and you’re given way more options when it comes to your soldiers. It also doesn’t have a completely insane difficulty curve, which is what always killed my enjoyment of the first game.

5)      Inside

What is it?

The new game from PlayDead – the creators of the brilliant Limbo.

Why is it good?

Inside is a really interesting game. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was just Limbo again with a slightly different theme but that would be doing the game a disservice. Inside is mechanically more interesting than Limbo. It even has a story, albeit not a particularly complex one. I’m not usually someone who gives too much thought to environmental storytelling. I generally prefer things a little more on the nose… but Inside was wonderful in the way it conveyed ideas. It’s a really rare game that manages to both have a silent protagonist and a beautiful story.

6)      Overwatch

What is it?

A multiplayer only shooter from Blizzard

Why is it good?

It’s just so damn polished. It brings absolutely nothing new to the table but it remixes enough old ideas to make the game feel fresh. It’s more successful in that regard than Star Wars: Battlefront or Battlefield 1. It provided me with hours of quality multiplayer fun. If it had a few maps released every once in a while I might still be playing it now but we’ve had a grand total of one since the game was released six months ago. As a result I haven’t played it since October but never mind.

7)      Hitman: No Subtitle

What is it?

The best Hitman game since Blood Money – you play an assassin whose job it is to wander around massive, lovingly crafted environments looking for inventive ways to kill people.

Why is it good?

First, I want to say that I enjoyed Hitman Absolution. It wasn’t better than Blood Money. I also don’t think it was any worse than Blood Money. It was different to Blood Money and the internet appears to have decided that was a bad thing. Hitman: No Subtitle takes the best bits of Blood Money and smushes them together with the best bits of Absolution. Most of the ‘innovative’ things in No Subtitle actually come from Absolution but hey.

The levels are great, although there hasn’t been anything as wonderful as the Heaven/Hell nightclub from Blood Money.  There’s lots to do and finding the perfect way to assassinate people is still awesome. It does have awful DRM, however.

8)      Firewatch

What is it?

A walkie-talkie (the less pejorative term for ‘walking simulator’ about uncovering a mystery in a remote woodland.

Why is it good?

It has really good character work, a compelling narrative and a fun focus on exploration. The opening is a bit heavy but there you go. There’s not much that can be said about it without getting into spoiler territory. It’s not as good as The Stanley Parable or The Beginner’s Guide but it’s still really entertaining.

9)      Titanfall 2

What is it?

The sequel to the original multiplayer FPS focusing on squishy humans and massive stompy robots. Now with a completely pointless single player campaign.

Why is it good?

Well the single player campaign wasn’t. Definitely not when compared to Doom. It was so linear and tedious. It lacked any challenge whatsoever. The storyline was also somewhat dubious. I was never given a reason to care about my side in the war, given Titanfall 1 had pretty clearly established that both sides were as bad as each other. The game seemed to think giving one side American voice actors and the other South African voice actors was enough to make me side with the former.

I’m just going to let that sink in for a moment.

The multiplayer game was still good, thankfully, although I’d rather have had some more maps. Maybe the team making that awful single player campaign could have made some? But no, that’s crazy talk. There were plenty of changes for the better, although I think Rodeo-ing Titans was nerfed a bit too hard. 

10)   Abzu

What is it?

An experimental exploration game about swimming around beautiful seascapes.

Why is it good?

Because it’s unbelievably beautiful and supremely relaxing. There is a narrative (of sorts) but it’s deliberately vague and not really worth mentioning. The game takes you on a magical journey that’s really stuck with me. It’s a must for fans of Flower (I’m told. I’ve never played it because platform exclusivity is fucking bullshit).

11)   Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

What is it?

The sequel to Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It’s an RPG set in a cyberpunk world where player expression through mechanics is encouraged.

Why is it good?

Well it wasn’t that good or it wouldn’t have placed at the bottom of my list but it had to be quite good for me to include an eleventh game on a top ten list…

Mechanically it’s still a fun game, although it’s basically Human Revolution again with better designed hub cities. Plot wise things are a total mess, but they were in Human Revolution as well. Mankind Divided loses points for being extremely short and for feeling really quite rushed in terms of story and structure. It doesn’t have the massive dip in quality that the last act of Human Revolution did… but then Human Revolution had a last act, whereas Mankind Divided kinda… doesn’t.

Disappointments:

The Witness

What was it?

Jonathan Blow’s high profile next game. You wander around an Island and solve 2d maze puzzles until you get bored.

Why was it a disappointment?

Braid was one of my favourite games ever so I had high hopes for The Witness. It disappointed me, hard.

The puzzle mechanics were tedious and uninteresting. Solving 2d maze puzzles was fun for all of about half an hour before I wanted to do something else. The game was also obnoxiously obtuse about what, exactly, you were supposed to be doing. It got to the point where solving the puzzles was the easy bit – working out what the puzzle actually consisted of was the challenge. I hate that shit.

I like walking into a room and knowing ‘I have to get thing A to point B’ and the challenge is working out how to go about doing that. The Witness, by contrast, has you walk into a room and go ‘I know there is a puzzle at point A. I don’t know how to solve it. Any of these things in the room might give me a clue to solve it… or they might be random bits of environmental junk. I suppose I just have to guess.’

There was no story to keep me interested, there was no music to soothe me. The game world was beautiful but even that faded as my frustration and anger with the puzzle mechanics grew. I hated The Witness and I was very grateful for Steam’s new refund policy after I bought it. 

22/02/2016  - More nice people saying nice things about Confessions

Well, I must say it's lovely getting all these nice reviews for Confessions of a Gentleman Arachnid. 

'...certainly one of the most original stories I've read, not least from the characters. Clodthorpe is a character who finds himself utterly out of his depth, which renders the action that much more entertaining and the supporting characters more valuable...'

Thank you to Rebecca over at Musings of Another Writer, for taking the time to review Confessions and making it such a nice one at that!  When you write a book such as Confessions, it can be worrying when people ask questions about 'target audience' and 'demographics'.  It's always reassuring to be reminded that the type of people who want to read about space battles and social foibles in arachnid society do exist - the demographic Confessions is aiming at is 'people who like fun and wit'. 

Read the full review here

06/02/2016 - Test your knowledge of Human Studies

Those who have read Confessions of a Gentleman Arachnid will be aware that the narrator, Mr Milligan Clodthorpe, is quite the expert in Human Studies.  Subsequently the Human Studies Department at University of Oxenfurt (Ceres & Vesta Campus) have provided the following quiz to accompany the work and clarify a few of Mr Clodthorpes more unfortunate errors.

Take the quiz here

(If you put your email at the bottom, I will totally mark the quiz and send you your score.  I'm currently writing the sequel to Confessions and a bit of procrastination is always welcome...)

31/01/2016 - Spiffing review of Confessions from Starburst Magazine

"This is an elegantly written and extremely funny slice of surrealist fantasy from a writer who obviously loves the genre and has the ability to turn even giant spiders into sympathetic comic characters. Arachnophobes and arach-not-phobes rejoice! This is a darn entertaining read, no matter how many legs you’ve got!"

Those lovely chapettes and chaps at Starburst Magazine have written a jolly nice review of Confessions of a Gentleman Arachnid.

Read in full: Confessions of a Gentleman Arachnid, review by Starburst Magazine

23/12/2015 - The best games and television of 2015

Working out my list of best games this year was surprisingly hard.

The critical consensus appears to be that 2014 was this cultural dead space where nothing of real importance happened. That wasn’t really how I experienced it.

If you’ll forgive me for prevaricating slightly, here were my favourite games of 2014: Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Titanfall, Dragon Age: Inquisition, One Finger Death Punch, This War Of Mine, Alien Isolation, Transistor, The Banner Saga and Defence Grid 2.

When I look at that list, I see a lot of games that were attempted in 2015… but less well.

Rocket League was great but for sheer arcade satisfaction it had nothing on One Finger Death Punch. I love Evolve but it didn’t have the longevity or mechanical complexity of Titanfall. Dying Light was really fun but no-where near as fun as Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. Soma was an interesting horror game but was leagues behind Alien: Isolation.

There are two areas where 2015 clearly beat 2014. One was in Adventure/Narrative focussed games. The second was the big RPG of the year. And on that note:

My top 10 games of 2015

1)     The Witcher 3

Yes. Last year, Dragon Age: Inquisition came out. A year later, The Witcher 3 really showed Bioware how it should have been done. The Witcher games have always flirted with greatness but never quite reached it. The Witcher 3, though, was stunning. The mechanics, design and story were all first rate. It’s my new favourite game of all time. 

2)     Evolve

There’s a bit of a quality gap between the games I put in first and second place.

Scratch that. There’s a massive quality gap. There was nothing else released in 2015 that came close to rivalling The Witcher 3 in terms of mechanics and story. If I was being honest I’d leave the second and third space on the list blank and restart the list at point 4.

Evolve, then. It’s a good game. It’s fresh, it’s interesting. It lacked game modes but had atmosphere dripping from the wazoo. People hated it because there was loads of cosmetic DLC available on launch. Of all the reasons to dislike a game, I think this is one of the stupidest. Evolve provided hours of entertainment for me and I’m really looking forward to the sequel. 

3)     Dying Light

I hate zombies. They’re one of my least favourite antagonists because there’s nothing new that can be done with them. Dying Light, though, proved that a purely iterative game can still be really fun. It boasts strong melee fights and an excellent parkour system.

4)     The Beginner’s Guide

The first of the great narrative games. The Beginner’s Guide isn’t anywhere near as good as The Stanley Parable was but it still tugs on the player’s heart strings and has a lot of really interesting things to say about creativity.

5)     Warhammer: The End Times – Vermintide

Vermintide probably would have placed higher if it had been just a little bit more substantial. It has wonderful design, atmosphere and a solid melee system. It only has 13 maps, though, and given they take between 5 and 15 minutes each to get through, that’s really not very much. Especially as only about half of the maps are actually any good. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve played that bloody Horn of Magnus level.

6)     Rocket League

Rocket League is pure, disposable fun. It takes a little while to be properly proficient at it but once you are, it’s an absolute blast. I’m not hugely convinced about its longevity as it has even less variety on display than Vermintide but there you go.

7)     Life Is Strange

Life Is Strange is maddening. About two thirds of the game is stunning both in terms of narrative and character. It even has the gall to back this up with fun puzzle elements. It could have been one of the best games this year… were it not for the episodic format.

The episodic format (or, more specifically, the decision to end every episode with a cliff hanger ending) forces the game to make some seriously stupid narrative contrivances. One particularly shocking revelation at the end of one episode was immediately reversed at the start of the next with no lasting consequences.

Still, though, the game pushed through the worst of the cliff hangers and the final episode was pretty good.

Life Is Strange out Telltale’d Telltale because, whilst the decisions you make don’t really impact the game, because the game is primarily focussed with character rather than story, the decisions still feel like they matter, even if they don’t when considered in terms of the narrative.

8)     The Magic Circle

The Magic Circle is such a silly, meta game. I love it. It’s quick and disposable. It doesn’t have the lasting impact of Life Is Strange or The Beginner’s Guide but said what it had to say. It’s unique in its subject matter (a game about development hell? Yes please) and its mechanics (exploration/puzzle solving/vampirism/level design). It didn’t rock my world like some of the games on this list but that doesn’t stop it from being entertaining and thought provoking.

9)     Tales From The Borderlands

The story and characters of Tales From The Borderlands are great. There are couple of dodgy narrative choices but they don’t ruin the overall experience. It’s by far the funniest game on this list and has a lot of fun with the Borderlands universe. The only reason it’s so low down on this list is: The gameplay actively detracts from the experience. Its standard Telltale slow walking, threadbare puzzles and quicktime events. Life Is Strange really showed how narrative Telltale-style games should be done and Tales From The Borderlands suffered by comparison. Still fun though.

10)  Carmageddon: Reincarnation

Carmageddon: Reincarnation is fun and silly. It’s also only on this list because I haven’t bought Her Story or Undertale yet. Enjoy being on my top 10 because of a technicality, Carmageddon!

Games that disappointed in 2015

I played two games this year that really disappointed me. Here’s why:

Games of Thrones

Tales From The Borderlands showed how Telltale’s model of adventure game can survive when the focus is on character and humour. Game Of Thrones showed that Telltale’s model completely falls apart when the focus is on player choice and narrative... when the narrative is tedious and the player choices make no impact.

Here was my experience with Game Of Thrones:

I’d make a choice as a player, the game would then spend ages yelling at me for making the wrong choice. So I’d make different choices and change my strategy. Those choices were wrong as well. I started not responding to obviously rhetorical questions during character exchanges because I was fed up with the characters yelling at me. The characters then yelled at me for not interrupting them.

I know some people say that Game Of Thrones (the TV show) works because it’s grim but that’s not actually true. It works because it’s a grim world spattered with humour, fun moments and tense but enjoyable battles. Game of Thrones (the Telletale game) had no humour or levity. It had no way to get through it without feeling like you were playing the worst possible version of the story… because every version was the worst possible version.

On top of this, it also has the same terrible gameplay of Tales From The Borderlands.

Game of Thrones is a poster child for gaming missed opportunities.

Fallout 4

I didn’t really get on with Fallout 3 or New Vegas because I didn’t like the gameplay. The shooting was unresponsive and lacked punch. It also had a host of weird gameplay contrivances that took me out of the experience. Why does hitting someone with a baseball bat do more damage than shooting them with a pistol?

Anyway, I was hoping Fallout 4 would fix these issues.

It didn’t.

The gunplay in Fallout 4 was as unimpressive as the gunplay in Fallout 3, but with the added unfortunateness of combat being focussed on way more than in Fallout 3.

I also realised that one of the only things I really loved doing in Skyrim was exploring the wonderfully designed landscape. Those mountains! Those snowy plains! Those elegantly designed towns!

Fallout 4 is many things but it’s not a beautiful world to explore… and that meant (along with the unimpressive combat) it had nothing for me.

Broken Age: Part 2

So yeah, it turns out that Tim Schafer really doesn’t know how to run a project. Broken Age: Part 2 was a mess. It revisited the same locations from part 1 (none of which really deserved to have more time spent in them) and made a series of contrived plot leaps.

It was a mess, and a completely avoidable mess at that. Broken Age was late, way over budget and failed to be the old school point and click adventure its Kickstarter campaign promised. A lovely visual style and great voice acting is no good if the content is terrible.

For me, the most telling thing about Broken Age is this: In the Fig crowdfunding video for Psychonauts 2, Tim Schafer stands in front of banners for Double Fine’s previous games. There’s a Stacking poster, a Brutal Legend poster, a Costume Quest poster and a Massive Chalice poster. No Broken Age, Tim? No Spacebase DF-9? You know? The other game that got crowd funded and was then abandoned after it became clear you didn’t have the organisation or budget to complete properly?

People haven’t learned, though. At the time of writing, the crowd funding campaign for Psychonauts 2 is 87% complete with 20 days left on the clock. It’s going to get funded no matter what I say. I hope Psychonauts 2 isn’t the monumental disaster Broken Age was… but I suspect it will be.

My top 10 TV shows of 2015

I love television in the way I used to love films. I find there are way more interesting things you can do with the longer format of television than there is with 90-120 minutes of film.

This year has been a pretty good year for Television, even if several previously great shows had extremely disappointing series’ this year. First, what was good?

1)     You’re The Worst: Series 2

You’re The Worst is a sitcom about two people who are both objectionable, rude and selfish… but because they have found each other and have become reluctantly romantically involved they start to become happier, healthier people. It’s a show that enjoys depicting selfishness but doesn’t idolise its main characters. It doesn’t shy away from how deeply unfulfilling their lives are… and that comes to a head in the second series.

There is some truly masterful character work in series 2 that elevates the show from a fun, silly, brutal sitcom into something altogether more complex and nuanced. It’s always been a clever show but in series 2 it became a clever show with something really important to say. I can’t spoil what this was but believe me, it pulled it off spectacularly and with serious skill. And it managed all that whilst still being funny. Somehow.

2)     Doctor Who: Series 9

When Doctor Who is great it’s like nothing else. Its high concept brand of cleverly plotted silliness is feel good television for all the family. Too often, though, it suffers from sub-par writers filling individual series’ with disappointing episodes. Series 9, though, was wonderful. It switched to a new format (2 episodes per story was the norm, rather than the exception) and dedicated real time to character arcs. Also, after two series of wasted potential, Jenna Coleman’s Clara was finally given an interesting role!

3)     Last Week Tonight: Series 2

Last Week Tonight is the news show all news shows wish they could be. It’s funny, insightful and actively revels in tackling difficult subjects. The jokes occasionally fall flat but given it’s a weekly news show that’s more than forgivable. Also, it’s good to see John Oliver finally getting good work.

4)     Man Seeking Woman: Series 1

Man Seeking Woman came out of no-where. I have no idea how I even found it… but I’m so glad I did. Man Seeking Woman does for romantic sitcoms what 500 Days Of Summer did for Romantic Films. It’s a wonderful show because, watching it, I was never sure if what I was seeing was actually supposed to be happening or if we as the audience were supposed to be seeing an exaggeration of what the lead character was seeing.

It’s hard to explain, so here’s an example: At the start of the first episode, the lead character gets dumped. Months later, he’s then invited to a party by his ex-girlfriend. He thinks she wants to get back together but he finds she’s got a new boyfriend. And he’s Adolf Hitler.

Literally. Hitler.

It’s a show that plays with the really fun idea that of course the lead is going to think his ex’s new boyfriend is awful… and that gets represented as the character being Hitler… but because the show plays it entirely straight and the other characters around the lead think that it’s perfectly okay for his ex to be dating Hitler… it’s got this beautiful tension that kept me guessing as to what would happen next.

Man Seeking Woman was consistently hilarious and wonderfully directed. It was consistently the most inventive show this year (or possibly…. possibly ever…) and deserves more attention than it got.

5)     Limitless: Series 1

Limitless has no right to be as good as it is. It’s a TV show follow up to the film of the same name: A loser gets a pill that supercharges his brain. He can learn anything, do anything (if he’s given an hour to study it beforehand)… and because of this he’s hunted and captured by the FBI and they get him to work for them.

Limitless is mostly a procedural show. Every week there’s a Thing That Needs Dealing With (although thankfully it’s not always a murder or a robbery, sometimes it’s something more mundane but character driven) and the main characters deal with it using the lead’s fantastic drug.

The reason Limitless is more than just another procedural with a gimmick is this: It’s concerned with style and tone moreso than any other procedural since Leverage. It’s unbelievably fun and silly. The main character is charming and witty. He’s also maddening and the show has great fun pitting him against his stuffy FBI co-workers.

The show also has fun by breaking the 4th wall. The main character is a civilian so isn’t allowed to go and arrest suspects… so instead the show depicts what the main character assumes happened during the arrest. He does this in many ways but my personal favourite was this when an arrest was presented as the opening titles to an in universe 70s cheesy cop show.

The creators of Limitless could have done what the superbly disappointing Minority Report tv show did this same year: It could have sloppily adapted an existing property and hoped that the name recognition would be enough to draw viewers. Instead, Limitless was given the space to become its own thing. Its own fun, silly, ridiculous, entertaining and occasionally emotionally raw thing.

6)     Into The Badlands: Series 1

The first (mostly) serious show on this list. Into The Badlands is a post-apocalyptic show set in the ruins of a southern US state. The known world is overseen by five Barons. They’re portrayed as plantation owners (although the show avoids racial commentary, probably wisely). Guns have been outlawed completely and so law (and the will of the Barons) is enforced by ‘clippers’ – martial arts masters.

The show is a martial arts show. There are two or three really good wushu fights per episode. They’re really good. Occasionally brutal and always spectacular. Into The Badlands has taken a cast and crew who really know their fights and just let them build a show around it. It’s great. It’s what I wish Marvel would do with their films.

Into The Badlands is a good-but-not-great show. It’s a must for martial arts fans. A second series is yet to be commissioned but I hope it gets renewed. With a longer series (series 1 was only 6 episodes) and more room to express itself, a second series could become truly great.

7)     Dark Matter: Series 1

Dark Matter is a rare example of science fiction done right. It’s set of a space ship in the far future. The crew wake up having had their memories wiped and gradually discover that they’re a crew of mercenaries wanted across the galaxy for the horrible crimes they’ve committed. The tension that lasts throughout the series stems from the characters struggling to either distance themselves from their pasts… or give into them.

The character work is extremely strong and, whilst there is a fair amount of annoyance rising from the characters not sharing vital information with each other for no good reason, it’s really well plotted.

The low budget does occasionally get in the way but mostly Dark Matter is a good, solid show. It wouldn’t be particularly notable were it not for the almost total lack of good science fiction on television.

8)     Brooklyn Nine Nine: Series 3

There’s nothing I can really say about series 3 of Brooklyn Nine Nine that hasn’t been said about series 1 and 2… and that’s a really good thing. It continues to be a really funny comedy series. Considering we have now had 55 episodes of the show, maybe 50 of which have been good is pretty astonishing. Most comedies manage between about 10 and 20 good episodes.

9)     Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

The pilot of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was a bit of a roller coaster. The first five minutes were amazing. The subsequent 17 minutes were (in my opinion) terrible. The characters were clichés, the set up was tedious.

Throughout the series, though, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt grew into its own show. The characters got sharper and moved further away from stereotype (I’m looking at you, Titus)… it just got a lot better. The only reason Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt isn’t higher on this list is it just can’t stand up next to the other really great comedies we’ve had this year.

10)  Adam Ruins Everything

Adam Ruins Everything is a show where charming loser Adam Conover deconstructs aspects of society that aren’t given enough scrutiny like charity drives or the restaurant industry. The show examines the problems prevalent in the subject of the episode and explains what could be done to fix them. It even cites its sources. It’s pretty damn fun. It’s consistently funny and manages to not be overly preachy most of the time.

It’s good but in any other year it wouldn’t be top 10 material. It is in my top 10, however, and that is because:

2015 had a lot of really disappointing television

If you look at my top 10 television shows of 2015, you might come to the conclusion that I really like comedy and don’t really like drama. After all, only two of my top 10 shows consider story and character to be more important than comedy (Into The Badlands & Dark Matter) unless you count Limitless.

This isn’t because I dislike drama shows. Far from it, I love drama. The problem is 2015 is the year when a lot of my favourite drama shows went completely off the rails and nothing really popped up to replace them… except Into The Badlands and Dark Matter. Let’s work through 2015’s disappointments, shall we?

Orange Is The New Black: Series 3

Orange Is The New Black, at its best, is a great slice of life drama with compelling characters. It doesn’t shy away from the brutal nature of prison life but also has enough comedy to stop the experience being maudlin. It is slightly too fond of its characters (very few people in this prison are actually bad people, most of them are there because of circumstance or how life is unfair… which is a discussion for another time) but generally it’s pretty damned good.

Series 3, however… disappointed. It was just a bit soap opera-y. Character motivation took a step back and contrivances took a step forward. The show’s continued reliance on the character of Piper is the main problem, I think. The most compelling plots from Series 3 had nothing to do with her, whilst her stories weren’t compelling or interesting. They were concerned with wacky hijinks about used underwear.

A wacky subplot about used underwear could have been fine… but the show devoted way too much time to it and it put Piper in the spotlight when nothing about the story deserved to be centre stage.  Dogget’s story was much more brutal and compelling… but because Dogget isn’t ‘the main character’, her story was merely a subplot.

Series 3 lacked the focus on narrative that made series 1 & 2 unmissable and didn’t have anything to replace it with except melodrama. Although it was good to see Ruby Rose getting work.  

Banshee: Series 3

Banshee managed to be amazing television for two series. I should be grateful that it made it that far. It shouldn’t have. A Cinemax show about an ex-convict who becomes a sheriff of a small town with Amish gangsters and amazing fight scenes? That’s fucking madness. There’s no way that show should be good… and yet it was. For the first two series.

Series 3 of Banshee wasn’t bad exactly… but it did spin its wheels. It introduced a new antagonist and then contrived as many ways as possible for the cast to interact with them. The Chayton Littlestone storyline wrapped up in a slightly satisfying way but… none of the stories really grabbed me.

This would be enough to keep it from my top 10 by itself but the biggest sin Series 3 committed was culling its female characters.

Banshee has always had strong female characters, for all that they are all sexualised beyond realism. Series 3 killed off Siobhan and Nola cruelly and under flimsy pretexts, leaving only two strong female characters left. I’m not quite as checked out of Banshee as I am with Orange Is The New black. In my experience, when a show has started to take on Soap Opera tones, there’s no coming back. Banshee is wrapping up next series, though, so it might be able to pull things back a little. Particularly as it has a great set up.

Orphan Black: Series 3

Orphan Black is another show that has no right to be as good as it was for the first two series. Compelling characters and nail biting storylines helped but Tatiana Maslany is the main reason the show is as good as it is. She’s so good at portraying different characters I often forget that, when she’s on screen as two people, there aren’t actually two people there, it’s all the magic of television.

Series 3 wasn’t exactly bad but it did suffer from having too many storylines. The first six episodes were really good, they had a great crescendo and a series of wonderful payoffs…. And then the show inexplicably continued for another 4 episodes. The stakes were just raised a little bit too high for my taste. Series 3 didn’t feel like a personal story, it felt like a grand narrative, which doesn’t suit the show in my opinion.

Also, where the hell was Michelle Forbes? Why introduce one of my favourite bloody actresses at the end of series 2 and then not have her in series 3?

Overall, it says a lot about Series 3 of Orphan Black that Alison’s sub plot was my favourite part of the series… but it didn’t interact with any of the main plots at all.

Game of Thrones: Series 5

Series 5 of Game Of Thrones was the most disappointing series since series 2. Every plotline seemingly spun its wheels. Kings landing ended up much as it started. Across the narrow sea, things are much the same as they started (except Denny’s now been captured. Yay.) The North is much the same as it was at the start of the series. Aria became an assassin and then spent half the series washing bodies.

The only really awesome thing that happened in series 5 concerned the white walkers. Hardhome was a stunning episode.

One good episode, though, does not save a series determined to maintain the status quo. If this is George R R Martin’s grand vision I’m not sure I’m on board.

True Detective: Series 2

Why?

Why?

Why why why why why?

Jessica Jones: Series 1

Jessica Jones started badly (in my opinion) but grew into itself after the first few episodes. It had compelling characters (once the narration stopped ruining the protagonist) and its plot was pretty interesting. The abuse allegory that is central to both the protagonist and antagonist was compelling and deep. In fact, for the first eight episodes I was sure that Jessica Jones was the first Marvel property I’d seen since Iron Man 3 that was genuinely good….

And then episode 9 happened. And then episode 10 happened… and everything that was good about the show was replaced by the same comic book devices I hate in Marvel’s other properties. Nonsensical character motivations, a complete disregard for logic and common sense, a focus on empty spectacle above all else, endless bloody co-incidences to drive the plot forward and extremely dodgy morality.

Jessica Jones started as something different to the usual Marvel comic book bullshit and should be applauded for managing to avoid falling into the same traps its fellows fell into for eight episodes. Of all the disappointing shows on this list, I’m most upset about Jessica Jones because it was doing so well to avoid the usual comic book bullshit… and then it just gave in.  

13/12/15 - Confessions of a Gentleman Arachnid, OUT NOW! (Plus behind the scenes Soundcloud ramblings)

So Confessions of A Gentleman Arachnid has been out for a week or so now!  I'm really pleased that it's out in time for Christmas but will be doing a big publicity push in the New Year (no point in competing with all the Christmas themed stuff).

Anyway, in the meantime, I made a 20 minute behind the scenes audio blog (alog?) thing about where Confessions Of A Gentleman Arachnid came from and why I made certain decisions with the characters and the narrative...

It's basically 20 minutes of me talking about my process. You've been warned:

(Minor spoilers for themes and non-plot events in the novel.)

27/11/2015 - Going to Press

Confessions of a Gentleman Arachnid is going to press today!

The plan is that the book will be available for Christmas in paperback and as an eBook.  To be the first to hear when the book is available, sign up to my mailing list.

And to tide you over until you can read the full book, here's the final front cover: 

20/10/2015 - Tension and Predictability

So I want to talk about tension and predictability using the Chronicles Of St Mary’s series as a set of examples.

For those that haven’t read it, Chronicles is a series of time travel novels. There are historians who go back in time and witness historical events. There are fun characters and cartoonish antagonists and a series of really strange sex scenes which make me think that either the author is kinky in a way I’ve never encountered before or that she’s only ever heard about sex from her friends describing it to her.

But anyway. It’s a good series. Sort of.

Book 1 is genuinely good.

Book 2 gets good a third of the way through. It’s absolutely bananas before that.

Book 3 is really bad for reasons I talked about on my Soundcloud

Book 4 brought things back somewhat.

Book 5 really wasn’t very good

Book 6 was legitimately terrible and killed my interest in any further books.

There are two problems that hound this series from about half way through the first book right up until book six.

The first problem is this:

Jodi Taylor, the author, is incapable of having some historians go back to the past, have them witness a historical event and then have them come home. Something always goes wrong. This usually means they are frantically scrambling around to get home before a volcano explodes or they get trampled to death by mammoths or something.

Now: Drama comes from tension. If the book was about historians going back in time, seeing some stuff and coming home with no sense of danger, that would be dull. It would lack any tension. It would lack any drama. The thing is, when the drama always comes from the same source, it gets really predictable. I’d find myself quite enjoying an extended historical section and wondering if maybe, just this once, Ms Taylor would break the pattern of having something contrived go wrong but no. Of course not.

I understand that there needs to be tension but this can come from any number of sources: It could be inherent in the historical scene, it could emerge from conflict between the characters or they could encounter an unforeseen issue.

The second problem I have with this series is directly caused by the first problem: The need for something to always go wrong causes the characters to act in some really stupid ways.

In one chapter, the historians are being chased by guards. They’ll be imprisoned or executed if caught. One of the characters needs to use the toilet. Instead of going: “I’ll wait” or “I’d rather wet myself than get my entire team imprisoned or killed” the character gets the team to wait whilst they nip behind a bush.

Of course, the team gets caught, because the entire function of the character needing the toilet was to get the rest of the team captured for the sake of drama.

There’s this fundamental conflict in the St Mary’s series. On the one hand, the characters are smart and capable. They’re unprofessional but always get the job done. On the other hand, they constantly make idiotic decisions (many of which are out of character. Or at least, in books 1-3 they’re out of character. By book 4 they’re more the norm than anything else) for no reason other than to create drama.

I just wish a little bit more time had been spent on scenes like the one described above. If you’re going to have the team get captured, at least come up with a faintly plausible way to have it happen.

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