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talks about progress on the book and has a long series of short pieces about Artifical Intelligence, including asking how far the Luddites were right.

I suppose progress happens, but how why and to what benefit is a legitimate question. In the last forty years I have become much more awate that when something is invented, how and why it is used and who makes the decisions is the real issue.

An example I don’t give is genetically modified crops �� there was a lot of hysteria about human safety which was not justified, leading to blanket bans in many countries �� obscuring some much broader issues which had some real weight to them.

I share across various platforms but I really do need regular subscribers to the newsletter as with the changing, deteriorating, state of social media, being able to keep in touch matters to any author (except the super successful ones).

It is free, you can unsibscribe at any time, rarely more than once a month, and gives access to giveaways, tip-offs, competitions, free fiction and who knows what else.

Photo: Me being interviewed by the very smart Bryony Pearce at SciFi Weekender.

SciFiEtc Weekend SFW XIV was well organised, friendly and entertaining �� and a bit bonkers. It describes itself as a SFFH weekend or a Geek Camp or a party. They were kind enough to invite me and Sarah and we had a great time. And I got to play Just A Minute with Nina Wadia.

I am struck by the difficulty of describing SFW both to people who go to other SFFH ‘conventions�� and those who lump them all together.

What they have in common is assembling people who are enthusiasts for the fantastic �� people who have different tastes in books, shows, films, T-shirts, and art can still recognise a common ‘geekium��.

There are common elements

-lots of people cosplaying �� wearing elaborate costumes. This makes me feel ‘I am with my people�� even if I don’t do it myself.

-talks, interviews, panel discussions, Q+As.

-different interests reflected particularly in the bigger events�� film, TV, books, comics, games.

-entertainment of various forms �� from folk music to rap, from standup to puppet theatre �� all with some SFFH references

-guests who are working in the field, or who stay involved despite their professional life having moved on. So sometimes actors from series in the 70s 80s and 90s.

These events can be overwhelming or small and focused, they can be commercial and hardnosed, or run so much for the fans that they put off commercial and professional attendees.

SFW had the wonderful thing common to many enthusiasms that ‘everyone here treats this incredibly seriously�� but also with a firm core of ‘of course we don’t take ourselves too seriously��. In fact, never trust any group of people who aren’t happy to laugh at themselves.

It put a lot of emphasis on the entertainment �� we were in a holiday camp. Guests like me in the Writer strand were treated as important but also expected to be accessible to the other attendees. For example, I was delighted to be given an hour where I went round six tables of 6-8 people and talked with them for ten minutes each.

I had an intelligent interview with Bryony Pearce (author in several genres) and Q+A –�� a panel discussion on fandom such as how far do fans own a topic and is that always good �� numerous slots selling my books and talking about what was on people’s minds and��

And I got to Play Just A Minute with Nina Wadia. It was a riot.

So Nina Wadia was there because she was in the Sandman TV series, which is very big, and was a first timer at any SFFH event. She was lovely and hilarious �� and I’m not sure she was expecting the friendly warmth and enthusiasm and minor insanity she got.

Just a Minute was played as a full contact sport �� like all these things you are singing for your supper and so we tried to give the audience entertainment. Nina, briefed on the rules only as we entered the stage but well able to stage a tantrum where required, me �� listened to the game as a child �� and author Bryony Pearce and actor Chase Masterton who are convention regulars and utterly ruthless players but charming and delightful with it!  I got plenty of laughs, which was a relief �� sometimes my being funny mode doesn’t switch on. The result depended more on whose buzzer was working than anything else.

It was all great and people seemed interested.  I don’t think I got snappy, although I did have to disagree with the person who thought it was ‘a shame�� no one read Asimov any more.   

All the artists had the option to meet up for dinner which meant we got to know each other better.. Extrovert mode takes it out of me and a quiet night was appreciated. Shout out in particular to Anna Stephens (prolific author and fanfic advocate), and Simon Kurt Unsworth (horror writer and calm voice of reason on panels) and Benjamin his son and also a horror writer/collaborator. And Sam and David and Matt from Area 51 and everyone else who worked on making it happen.

My two novels are suitable for strong readers aged 12+.

I don’t consider them to be Young Adult Novels.

I don’t have a problem with Young Adult Novels �� I have read a good number which are as good as anything not labelled YA and indeed, address issues which are not often enough addressed in mainstream work. Famously the Hunger Games attacked class, poverty, and state inspired violence glorified on TV at a time when many adult novels were on much less political themes. I might write a YA novel.

The wikipedia entry for YA genre is good but to my mind does not go far enough.

“Young adult fiction (YA) is a category of fiction written for readers from 12 to 18 years of age. While the genre is primarily targeted at adolescents, approximately half of YA readers are adults.

The subject matter and genres of YA correlate with the age and experience of the protagonist. The genres available in YA are expansive and include most of those found in adult fiction. Common themes related to YA include friendship, first love, relationships, and identity. Stories that focus on the specific challenges of youth are sometimes referred to as problem novels or coming-of-age novels.

Young adult fiction was developed to soften the transition between children’s novels and adult literature.�� (In fact, ‘juvenile novels�� were a thing long before the YA term existed..)

For me, A YA novel usually has one or more teenagers as the **main** protagonist, and contains in some measure that teenager working out themselves and their relationships with world. My work covers the following main characters

Gene and Molly start the book in their twenties

Cory an alien is a child in the first book and early adolescent towards the end of the second book �� although exact matching with his species is difficult.

Dr Pfeiffer, an adult well into his professional career, at least his late forties.

An alien adult.

So I don’t mind Young Adults reading my books, I hope they do. But I don’t see it is a specific YA book written at least half for that audience. Hope that makes sense.

I loved the Arthurian legends as a child, noble knights rescuing fair maidens, you could spot the baddies, and impressive magic. I mean, every time Arthur holds a feast, you know someone will ride in full of magic and menace and start things rolling. I think I read a great many in that proof of middle-class 70s childhood, Look and Learn.

The Cleaving is a story starting before Arthur’s birth and finishing after his death �� it is a Matter of Britain for our own age. First it looks behind the façade of chivalry and shows what it means for the maiden, the crone, the marriageable princess, or the common soldier or farmer. I also take it as a story which without preaching, asks where the great Arthur myth has led us.

Nimue is of the hidden people, who need to keep their existence and magic from mortal view. This is a sympathetic portrait of one careful about her power, kind in her instincts, and courageous in her actions.

In this godless world, the ‘crucified god�� has great power only because mortals believe their priests. Magic is powerful, dangerous, and mysterious.

Merlin openly uses magic to advance his plans to unite Logres around a single High King, who he helps create �� literally, engineering his birth, his entry to public life, and the building of his regime. Nimue observes and opposes the wrongs this can involve. Magic is the superweapon which unites then divides at a terrible price.

The Cleaving also centres Arthur’s mother Ygraine, his wife Guinevere, and the mortal Morgana �� who really shouldn’t know magic but does. Women in the legends are pliant and good �� but dangerous if they are powerful or can best men through sex or magic or riddles. Seen through women’s eyes, the rise of Arthur is rather less wonderful.

The jolly Boys Own adventure is reframed �� after all in the earlier tales Arthur is a child of rape by deception, there is incest in the family, his wife betrays him with one of his best friends �� so called ‘honour killings�� political marriages, and butchery are all part of it. We are not spared this grief and danger, and it lets us question the peace the golden age of Logres, supposedly, brings.

In the end heroic sacrifice is needed to give hope.

Arthur is a British creation myth, the English take it as an English one, although its roots are many. Let the right king rule and everyone is loyal and all will be well �� draw the magic sword from the stone. Things were better in the old days. Stick to your place and toil for your Lord and die if he needs you. Cornwall, Wales, Scotland are best when they bow the knee. A woman’s place is to serve and to breed. Above all, when times are hard, it is faith in the old king under the hill who can come again, we need the old stories rising to reassert their world, that will save us. The one chosen by unseen powers. Not us, the common folk, thinking new stories for ourselves.

Myths are stories whose emotional truth does not rely on their literal truth. Arthur is not one figure but many interpretations �� he is interpretation all the way down.

The Cleaving is a new myth, which does not place its faith in princes. Alas, they have plenty of faith in themselves.

McKenna tells a cracking tale and Nimue in particular is a character for our times.

I received a copy of this book from the author in return for a fair and impartial review.

Please share and keep sharing.

Taking Voter ID to cast your vote will be required at May local elections, byelections, and from October 2023, any general election. (It DOES NOT change postal voting.)

Do not lose your vote by not having suitable photo ID. The following is on the which also explains registering to vote, getting a postal vote, voting by proxy and lots of other cool stuff. You can get something called a Voter Authority Certificate which is a new free(ish) photo ID. (Not wholly free as you need photos) Again details on the website.

“Accepted forms of photo ID

You can use any of the following accepted forms of photo ID when voting at a polling station.

International travel

Passport issued by the UK, any of the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, a British Overseas Territory, an EEA state or a Commonwealth country

Driving and Parking

Driving licence issued by the UK, any of the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, or an EEA state (this includes a provisional driving licence)

A Blue Badge

Local travel

Older Person’s Bus Pass

Disabled Person’s Bus Pass

Oyster 60+ Card

Freedom Pass

Scottish National Entitlement Card

60 and Over Welsh Concessionary Travel Card

Disabled Person’s Welsh Concessionary Travel Card

Senior SmartPass issued in Northern Ireland

Registered Blind SmartPass or Blind Person’s SmartPass issued in

Northern Ireland

War Disablement SmartPass issued in Northern Ireland

60+ SmartPass issued in Northern Ireland

Half Fare SmartPass issued in Northern Ireland

Proof of age

Identity card bearing the Proof of Age Standards Scheme hologram (a PASS card)

Other government issued documents

Biometric immigration document

Ministry of Defence Form 90 (Defence Identity Card)

National identity card issued by an EEA state

Electoral Identity Card issued in Northern Ireland

Voter Authority Certificate

Anonymous Elector’s Document

You will only need to show one form of photo ID. It needs to be the original version and not a photocopy.��

This post is NOT to debate the law. I have major concerns about it, and in particular the fact some groups will find it much easier to have rfelevant ID already. Whatever you think of the law, do not be deprived of your vote. And remember, postal voting is not changing and IMHO is a brilliant idea anyway.

Gareth Powell’s About Writing leaps into the recommended list for anyone thinking about writing a book, or if more experienced, wanting to check their own thinking about doing so.  While obviously written by someone who specialises in SFF/horror, it is definitely broad enough to be widely useful, and includes notes on other genres.

The book has the warm, passionate, and pragmatic approach that Powell embodies in his online persona. It mixes short pithy challenges with longer, well argued chapters. 

If I was looking for a credible book on how to write novels, I’d expect the following.

The person who wrote it has actually written several successful novels (or shepherded many books to success as editor or agent.)

They have had enough experience of self-publishing and traditional publishing to talk sense about both, and hybrid forms too.

In setting out how they write, they explain why, and they don’t assert that is the only way to do it. (Since, empirically, many highly successful authors write in very different ways).

It should touch on all the challenges of starting and finishing that first book, and also, what comes after.

About Writing does all this and more, and it is hard to fault.

Powell talks about the different bits of being an author.  How ideas come, how creativity can be nurtured, how to unlock yourself when stuck.  And also the discipline and hard work needed to finish the draft and go on to make the book as good as it can be. Writers must soar to the stars with empathy and imagination then have the hard intellectual work figuring out how to restructure or reframe the vision to make better sense or take fewer words.

A book about writing needs to look at the whole picture. Powell is realistic but not defeatist about the financial challenges of writing and he talks about the business side.  There is the vexed issue of promotion and having a public side.

Powell is sound on the personal. Writing books is a mental marathon and you need to look after yourself �� the need to stay well read, to look after body and mind, to keep up connectivity offline with your friends and family. But also he’s right that’s there is joy, community and friendship to be found in the writing world. 

Finally, Powell gives us a manifesto, a case for creativity and writing stories as a great social good �� a case for trying to be optimistic as a means to create a better future �� and I love his parable that the Ugly Ducklings just need to get together and be who they are. Swans, nah.

I wish I had had this book when I started. 

This post contains modest spoilers for Klara and the Sun, and The Fear Index.

Some people in the literary world are massive snobs.  They assume that romance, or crime, which sell vastly more than other genres, must be bad.

It is interesting that Austen, Eliot and Dickens were not considered ‘great literary writing�� by the literary greats of their day.

Science fiction and fantasy are considered weird books for unwashed boys despite having enthusiastic readers. The genre feeds a great many successful TV series and movies, and the electronic games industry. And as a lifelong reader, it interesting to see journalists wrestling with issues of ethics and technology which I first met in ‘books with rockets on the cover��. John Brunner for example wrote books which kind of got how fast, disjointed, and alienated modern life might become. Where wars are fought online.

People who write in genre can be quite prickly about it. A big chunk of the literary world puts it down. It can lead to them getting protective when people breeze in and talk rubbish about it.

For example, a literary author �� let us call him Ian �� who has stopped having much interesting to say decades ago �� decides to write a book about a robot who develops feelings.  To do this he has to explain that he is writing literary fiction and therefore addressing things much better than (sniff) science fiction. In further defensive interviews it appears he has not read any SF published in the last twenty-five years or any by a woman.

The science fiction world is scathing.

The moral question of what we owe a being we created is the theme of Frankenstein and its myriad successors.  The issue of what happens when an artificial person develops feelings and seeks independence drives the plot of Rossum’s Universal Robots, the 1920s Czech play which gave us the word Robot. And myriad successors.

This and similar debacles fuels the idea that, say, science fiction is a body of knowledge only the adept should tackle.  Enthusiasts say no one should write it unless they read it widely and know its canon and its roots.  Perhaps we should go so far as to say you should read terrible writers because they were once ‘important��. We are a guild, with sacred mysteries, and people should stay in their own lane.

I think this is a mistake.  It conflates three issues.

Should writers tackle themes they think are of interest? Yes. The creative imagination shouldn’t be full of demarcation disputes. It is good if people see the role of artificial intelligence and want to write about its possibilities for good and ill.

Should writers be informed about the existing works on that issue -, whatever that is? Obviously, that’s helpful.  Is it essential? No. There are so many books on some themes I couldn’t hope to read more than 5% of them.

Should writers puff themselves about their originality with no knowledge of the genre?  Well, that’s a belly flop into the cold custard.  

A better author, the late, great Iain Banks, wrote in both literary and science fiction worlds, and he said that anyone can write a detective story. To have the butler do it as a brilliant twist, they must expect and deserve mockery. (1)

It’s a good sign of someone not having read widely if they claim originality for ideas which turn up constantly. (“Magic and science in the same book�� and “orcs are good really�� being two of them.)

I have just read Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, whose narrator is an Artificial Friend, brought into the home of a teenage girl.  It is science fiction because it asks �� what are the consequences of scientific advances?

In this book Klara is a wonderfully off-centre narrator, and clearly sentient. The introduction of AI has led to widespread economic disruption.  It is also revealed that society allows some children to be mentally ‘lifted�� �� a process which is clearly imperfect �� and which creates a divided society between those families which can afford the process and the rest. (Just because we could, should we?)

Many writers would have written big symbolic clashes about these issues. What we have is a story of how it affects a couple of families, seen through a sympathetic but otherly observer, and where we readers have to fill in the gaps. It’s science fiction in a literary mode. And like Frankenstein it asks what we owe the people we create?

Another example I quote is Richard Harris�� the Fear Index, a thriller about an AI which trades on the stock market which develops sentience. It is a wonderful monster, because it figures out a better way to do what it needs to than its creators. (Just as computers which play Go develop werid moves no human ever thought of, driving the human players to re-engineer their own game as they play.)

So science fiction is good and matters. I don’t think as a writer I should tell people what they can write.  I reserve the right to mock them if they claim originality for well-trodden ideas. After all, science fiction writers often revisit well-trodden ideas themselves.

My own books sought to reach a wider audience than convinced science fiction readers. I don’t think I have ever been guilty of running the genre down. It’s a big galaxy with room for a great many approaches.

(1) It is interesting that the first comment that the butler being the murderer is a terrible cliché appears to predate any real work in which this was the plot.

Photo of robot bewildered by literary snobs by Alex Knight Pexels

George Orwell famously wrote, “Why I write�� �� a defence of truth against propaganda, and a call to arms against the ills he saw in the world. In a time when he saw lies winning, he kept going. He saw clear writing as a defence against the bullshit of his day and much of what he says is valid now.

I don’t pretend this is that essay.  We need many Orwells today, and those who write from wider perspective than he did.  But also, his fiction outlived his journalism and political essays, at least in terms of sales.

I’ve done some minor Orwelling in my time and I should be doing more. I do believe that my fiction talks about how the world is and how it could be.

I have always written. My grammar school did everything possible to stop people writing creatively or applying the truths in literature to modern life.  That urge to write still fought through, and it has seen me try poetry for a few years, run a postal roleplaying game, and run various newsletters, promoting and commentating.  My thirty years in communications were in some sense about spreading truth.

I have gone through spates of writing short stories. A writing bout in the early nineties brought me to some crucial personal revelations �� all those characters tortured by private secrets who’d be happier if they were honest. What could that have been about?

Then on holiday in 2012 I fired up a new laptop and started a novel. That’s over ten years ago, and I have two traditionally published novels out and another with my agent. And perhaps a hundred short stories, from the brilliant to the disastrous, largely unpublished.

So why do I write?

I write because it is an urge, because I like the results of my writing (sometimes), because I want to do it better, and because other people I trust, like and enjoy my stuff. I want to share my stuff and hear back from people about it. It is partly an oblique way to ‘tell my truth��.

There are not vast numbers of people who write like me �� I know few people who write in my space, and a couple of those who do are very successful, which suggests there should be wider interest.

So, I will probably carry on writing fiction. But in what frame of mind?

Last night, someone at my writer’s group expressed her desire to stick to the day job and ‘write as a hobby��. Right now, what she wants is to get confident enough to share her work and improve.  That’s a wonderful and healthy ambition, because with determination, it’s achievable!  My parents took up music in their late forties, and that hobby gave them enormous fun, a good social life, and a retirement purpose.

They were financially secure.

For many years I loved what I did for work, and it paid the bills. The work I used to do is now beyond me. Now I want to write, it feels like my purpose, but the bills bit is rather urgent.  

So there is.

1 �� Writing what I want

2 �� Writing stuff to support my writing career

3 -Other stuff

which needs to add up to some sort of plan for the next ten years or so.

2023 will be interesting.

(Photo Amador Loureiro Unsplash)

To Parliament for the launch of an ALCS report on writer incomes.  And I used to nip in for work reasons and it is worth remembering what a strange building Parliament is.  Kind of Hogwarts. 

TLDR It is very tough living on writer incomes and much worse than even ten years ago.

ALCS is a body which collects secondary use income for authors, and they also commission the Uni of Glasgow to run an independent study of author incomes. 

The headlines are that the typical (median) author who works on it more than half their working hours has seen their income drop 60% in real terms since 2009.  That author currently gets £7000 a year from writing, which was said to be ‘shocking but not surprising��. Writing is paid a lot less than the minimum wage (and the amount of time required unpaid to promote the book is extraordinary.)

The number of writers for whom it is their full-time job has dropped from 40% in 2009 to 19% this year.

The creative industries are around £100bn.  Less and less of that is going to the author, under increasingly tough contract terms and a worrying tendency to offer contracts which have no upside if the work does very well.

MP Giles Watling spoke passionately about the importance of the creative arts. An actor and producer in a former life, he said that young actors are notoriously poor, but their careers tend to build.  He said that what the report showed him was that authors can’t assume the same will happen for them.

Amy Thomas who led on the research said that reward was very unequally distributed, with one percent of authors getting a quarter of total earnings, and the top 10 percent getting just under half the total earnings. Women, the very young and very old, and ethnic minorities were significantly less well paid.  She said this was ‘a profession approaching a tipping point��.

A freelance journalist and author listed all the different things she did to make a living. Freelance rates have barely increased in ten years and she can’t tell young writers to ‘demand what they are worth�� because they won’t get the job.

During lockdown, we read, we watched, we listened. Were the writers seeing the benefits of this? Does it matter that authors are largely juggling the writing around other jobs or caring responsibilities �� that the system favours those with private incomes and /or partners in secure middle class jobs? It is not a system set up to reward working class voices, for example.

I don’t write just for the money.  I write because I enjoy the creation. It feels like my purpose in life. I enjoy people reading my work. But to be really good, and to stand any chance of having time to do it, I have to work hard and work within this difficult market.

The industry in the broadest sense relies on people of passion and creativity who do it because they love it, and who are over-optimistic about the returns (or cushioned against them).

There’s no obvious policy fix. Researchers investigate the world, other people must find solutions, or just shrug.

A Universal Basic Income would be great, exploitation would continue but we could still live.  Ireland gives writers a significant tax break.  France prevents book discounting in theory protecting small bookshops and authors incomes, although the impact of that might be less positive than you think.  A campaign of public shaming around some of the worst practices might work �� it has begun to stop literary festivals expecting authors to appear for free.

Making payment at the time the writers�� job is done would also be a start. After all, when you get a dress or jacket drycleaned, you don’t ask the drycleaner to wait for payment until a month after you wore it.

So been reworking through John Yorke’s Into the Woods, a book on story structure I read on retreat. This is a topic I have a lot of difficulty with but I’m at the stage that I want to understand story mechanics more formally. I’ve got rather stuck with another project and I have been hoping this helps.

Woods argues that some of what makes stories work is instinctive and a writer can often get it fairly right without following a formal structure (and it turns up anyway.) He also says that all the competing structure theories largely map onto each other. His ‘Five Act Structure�� is quite openly a development of the three act structure first described by Aristole. Finally, he says people who work within the structure sometimes play with it �� so Shakespeare occasionally skips an Act and Raiders of the Lost Ark can be seen as having seven Acts.

So colour me surprised when I studied Draft Two of my Work in Progress which turns out to follow�� the five act structure.

It fits best if I discard my rough idea of what the great turning point in the book is �� the midpoint �� to something a little later which happens to better unite the different strands of plot. The story kind of works as written and the shift in conceptualising it works.

My existing method leans rather a lot, after the first sloppy draft, on not boring the reader and keeping the story going. So I look at how far into the book must A, B, and C, happen. This has a similar effect to formal planning.

Fun fact about stroy structure �� if you post on it, people immediately recommend two other books about it��.