Start with the important stuff, right: There’s plenty of author interviews kicking around out there, but it’s not all that opften you get an interview with a muse. Check it out. Check out also the reviews for TAP…

The rewrite of Thief-Taker went back to Gollancz a couple of days back. I’m supposed to be back working on Order of the Scales, but frankly, a short break is in order. OOTS is going to be some heavy work between now and the end of June when it’s supposed to be ready, and I need to catch my breath for a moment, if only to take stock for a moment of how busy I suddenly seem to have become. It all started with this:

which very quickly turned into this:

Forgive them, for a moment, for getting the title of King of the Crags slightly wrong…

Then there’s this: The Write Fantastic’s fifth anniversary event in Oxford (St Hilda’s College no less, which is about the one college I actually recognise in Oxford) on Sunday 9th May. For anyone who doesn’t know, The Write Fantastic exists to promote fantasy fiction to non-fantasy readers, particularly younger readers.

The after that, there’s the Lincoln Book Festival, where there’s going to be a panel (1pm, Sunday 16th) on genre fiction supplied by the all-powerful John Jarrold. Fantasy, I am your representative, so you’d better all be nice to me for the next couple of months.

Finally there’s the UK Games Expo, on the 5th & 6th June. Might well be there. And of course, there’s Eastercon!

And finally finally,  I got sent these fan-pics of The Sorcerer by Michael Peinkofer! Just goes to show that certain cover-art conventions aren’t limited to the English-speaking editions…

This week, as work on their final rewrite approaches completion, we interview Syannis and Berren, leading characters in the forth-coming Thief-Taker’s Apprentice. So, guys, tell us a little about yourselves…

Berren: Ok, so I’m learning to be this really cool dude who springs about the place, whacking down bad guys and I’m totally the star of the story and everything…

Syannis: What my idiot apprentice means to say is that he’s learning the trade of thief-taking. What he has still failed to grasp is that this largely consists of talking to people. As you’ll see from his story, he used to cut purses and, literally, shovel shit for a living. I’ve taken pity on him and…

Berren: You mean you were too embarrassed that I stole your purse!

Syannis: …and taken him to teach him the ways of taking thieves. Which mostly consists of trying to batter a few manners into his head and teaching him to read and write.

Berren: And swords! You’re going to teach me swords, right. One day.

Syannis <rolls eyes>: If you ever learn your letters, yes.

Berren: That’s why I want to be a thief-taker. The first time I saw Master Sy, he killed three men who tried to jump him. It was awesome. I want to be like that.

Syannis: It was an unusual day.

(To Syannis) Are the rumours true that you only took Berren on because he’s the spitting image of someone you used to know?

Syannis: I don’t know where you heard that. I fancied an apprentice, that’s all.

Berren: No, he was just mad because I took his purse.

So, Berren, you used to be a thief and now you’re a thief-taker? How did that come about? What’s wrong with a bit of honest work in the first place?

Berren: Look, after the war and the siege and everything, there were a lot of boys and girls born without any fathers. Khrozus’ boys they call us. What happens if there’s no one to look after you in a place like Deephaven, is that you get put into a city orphanage until you’re old enough so they can sell you to someone who wants a young pair of hands. I was lucky to not  wind up on a Taiytakei slave ship. So I got sold to Master Hatchet, who sends his boys out to clean the dung up off the streets and he expects us to pay for our food while we’re at it. How? It’s not as though anyone else is giving us any money. Cleaning up the streets pays off our debt, he says. So we have to start picking pockets and cutting purses to eat. And then he has us running all sorts of other errands. Not like we had much of a choice.

Syannis: This city breeds thieves. That’s what happens when money falls out of the sky.

What about you, Syannis, what’s your story. How did you end up a thief-taker?

Syannis: I came to Deephaven about eight years ago. It seemed to suit my skills. I hate thieves.

Is there a particular reason for that?

Syannis: Yes.

Care to share?

Syannis: Not really, no. It has nothing to do with what I do now.

Berren: That’s not quite… <bites lip>

Well what did you do before?

Syannis: Nothing of any consequence.

Berren: Well where did you learn to fight like that, eh? And what about Kasmin – he called you…

Syannis: He calls me all sorts of things. I had another life before I came to Deephaven. That life is finished. There’s nothing more to say.

Berren: He called you a…

Syannis: Nothing. To. Say.

So this story, why don’t you tell us about what happens?

Berren: Like I said, we’re these really cool dudes who spring about the place, whacking down bad guys and there’s this gang of pirates we’re after and then there are the snuffers and there’s this girl, Lilissa, who’s really sweet and she gets into trouble and then there’s Jerrin who used to be one of Master Hatchet’s boys who’s got it in for me for some reason and he’s doing all this stuff and…

Syannis: Mostly it’s about how hard it is to teach Berren anything that he actually ought to learn. Like how to read and write.

Berren: And I stow away on this boat and there’s this big fight and…

Syannis: And how to keep out of fights.

Berren: Oh, and then there’s this time when I caught out in The Maze and I have to hide…

Syannis: And how to stay out of trouble.

Berren: And then there’s this time when Master Sy fights four men at once! (Looking at Syannis) and the time when I saved your life and you cut that bloke’s hand off. And then there’s that weird scary warlock down at the House of Cats and Gulls that Master Sy knows, and there’s this knife…

Syannis: (pointedly) And how to keep his mouth shut.

Berren: And then there’s this really big fire…

Syannis: And that thief-taking is mostly about talking to the right people and a little bit of detective work and that once you finally know who it is you’re after, you send in a big posse of militiamen while you wait at the back… Fire? What fire? I don’t remember a fire.

One final question. You’ve seen the cover art for your story now. What do you think.

Berren: I think we look cool.

Syannis: Wait, that’s supposed to be us?

Berren: Can I have a big black cloak like that? With a hood? That looks so sweet. I bet it billows out behind you like a great black cloud when you run, too.

Syannis: I bet you’d trip over it.

Berren: Have you actually got a cloak like that? Does that mean I’m going to get one too? And a sword! I have a sword! When do I get my sword?

Syannis: When you learn your letters.

Berren: Yeah, I think the picture’s really great. That’s exactly how I want to be in a couple of years. It’s really us. We’re going to be the most feared thief-taking team in the whole of Deephaven.

Syannis: With a hood? So that all that being feared is completely wasted when no one can recognise you?

Berren: Yeah. All dark and mysterious. Girls go weak for a tall dark mysterious stranger.

Syannis: Firstly you’re a short-arse, and secondly, no generally they don’t.

Berren: Especially with a really cool sword. I think it’s great. As soon as I can, that’s the way I want to look. I’m going to get some clothes like that right now.

Syannis: I think it makes us look like a pair of virgin wannabe snuffers.

Berren: Well you look like an old shopkeeper in your stupid old coat. Those new cloaks are great! When do we get them?

Syannis: And clumsy old cavalry swords left over from the war? I don’t think so. Try using one of those in a narrow alley. You probably couldn’t even hold it properly…

The Thief-Taker’s Apprentice is published in August 2010

It’s a Tuesday so it must be time to witter about something. There’s not much book-news to get excited about at the moment. Am rewriting the last quarter of the Order of the Scales after finally figuring out what was bothering me about it (yes, something is getting cut). Am waiting impatiently for Thief-Taker to come back from my editor (impatiently because I have free evenings coming out of my ears at the moment and there’s only so much Bioshock a man can play. Well, actually there isn’t, but there probably ought to be).

Still: Last night was the annual Orion bash, and a couple of comments still ring in my ears. Amid the Amazon vs. Macmillan malarkey, iPads and other shenanigans and the poorly advertised possibly-not-actually-a-fact that the e-book version of The Adamantine Palace will have something pushing 60,000 words of extra material in it, I’d somehow gained the impression that e-books were, somehow, well, y’know, important? Apparently not. According to Peter Roche, chief executive of the Orion Publishing Group, there is the possibility that e-books will expand greatly in 2010, possibly up to a whopping great 2% of total sales. Woo-hoo. Yes, the trend will doubtless continue and yes, it will vary from genre to genre (cookery e-book? Better be sauce-proof). But still. Woo-hoo. I’ll do the bonus material but I’ll not be rushing out to acquire a system developers tool-kit for iPad apps just yet.

This was a statement made during the annual Orion state-of-the-union address. The second most thought-provoking comment came from Adam Roberts, which went something along the lines of ‘What? You’re just going as a tourist? You’re not even doing research?’ This in response to me being off on a little trip in a couple of months. I didn’t have an answer to that, and it’s taken me a full day to realise why. So in lieu of being on the panel about fantasy research at Eastercon, here’s my ha’penny on researching for epic fantasy. It’s simple, really. Everything is research. I’m never a tourist. I was doing research last night in the Royal Opera House, listening to the acoustics and looking at the shape of the ceiling. I will be doing research in the Andes, on the look and feel of mountains. Not all that long ago I did some research on what it’s like to stand on the open top of a tall tower (very windy). Right now I’m researching how to share your lap between a laptop and a cat (tricky and prone to typos). Research for fantasy is endless. Go visit every terrain the world will offer you. Master geography. Understand how every culture works and why. Learn how science and technology developed. Get your head around the sum of human history. Slide into the heads of other people and figure out what make them tick. Do all of that and you’ll have everything you need to build worlds that are effortlessly real. “You’re not even doing research?” Doesn’t have an answer because the question doesn’t compute.

In theory I’m supposed to be taking a couple of weeks off between completing the proof-reading of King of the Crags and launching into the last rewrite of The Thief-Taker’s Apprentice and then the very-far-from-last rewrite of Order of the Scales. So I absolutely haven’t started working on something else and it absolutely isn’t called The Black Mausoleum and there absolutely aren’t 10000-odd words of this already laid down. Absolutely can’t have happened. It’s my fortnight off, after all.

In the meantime, as the UK celebrates(?) its biggest ever lottery win, I note that this would equate to selling roughly 100 million books. I’m estimating a roughly 50/50 chance of achieving this before the sun explodes [1].

For those of you looking for anything more substantial, I have left a mess over on John Scalzi’s blog, in which I fantasize  that there might be some sort of element of vicarious satisfaction or even satire involved in writing stories about enormous fire-breathing monsters burning the shit out of people who badly badly deserve it.

Oh, wait, that doesn’t happen until later…

[1]  All right all right, swells up into a red giant and vapourizing everything, strictly isn’t the same as exploding.

Meh. There’s blogs aplenty to tell you about the SFX Weekender. Here, here and here, for example. For those who had to stay overnight in the actual chalets, I offer my apologies. There was an attempt to burn them down about fifteen years ago when the place hosted Euro-Gencon, but my pyromantic powers had not reached their peak at the time and the effort failed. As for the rest, I can’t really comment, having spent most of the time in the bar with the other Gollancz authors, cheering each other on through the readings and interviews there.

Readings. Yes, and in a bar. Having them there caused some debate, mostly of the ‘it’s too bloody loud in here’ variety, but I’m not so sure about that. I’d draw the line at having to complete with the pub televisions showing the six nations at the same time as someone’s trying to read aloud – that was a bit harsh, even for Science Fiction authors – but the basic idea, I thought, was sound. Would I rather listen to someone read and talk with a pint in my hand and a bit of atmosphere, or would I rather listen in a sterile room tucked away in some part of the hotel that I can’t even find (yes, Fantasycon, I’m looking at you)? I’ll take the bar. As for the reading… I can understand why the background noise annoys some people, but set against that there’s the ebb and flow of people, because as panels and movies end (and we readers where certainly a mere sideshow in all of this), the bar is the natural place for people to go. So they come, and we were there to entertain them. So not all bad, and I felt we were honouring older traditions of story-telling by reading in the bar. Sure, some people weren’t interested. There was talking and noise in the background. But people came, and it was down to us and our stories to be interesting enough to keep them. It’s not the same as reading to a room where everyone has come specifically for the person who’s going to read, but I don’t see that makes it better, only different.

I, however, had none of this to contend with. What I had was Tom Baker on the main stage somewhere above me, and you can guess who got the better of that one. My thanks to those who stayed and listened anyway, particularly the two or three people who weren’t from the Gollancz or SFX crew.

I had fun, but then that’s a pretty easy thing to say when all you’ve got to do is show up at the seaside, sit in a bar all day and be offered drinks and Thai takeaway while watching the occasion sith lord order Doritos from the bar. I mean, really, what’s not to like? So apart from opinions on giving readings, go ask someone else what it was like.

A quick warning for anyone taking an RSS feed off me: There’s about to be (in the next few hours) some restructuring and part of that restructuring is going to mean that the Diamond Cascade pages are getting converted into a blogroll. Which means that, for better or worse, they’ll be streaming your way soon.

A report on the SFX Weekender may follow later.

…or how, after weeks of nothing much apparently going on, all the buses arrive at once. Yes, today there’s actually some news. In fact, there’s news about four different books and a couple of appearances…

Firstly The Adamantine Palace is officially released in the US by ROC today, which seems as good a reason as any to show off the extremely gorgeous cover yet again. Love the Gollancz cover as I do, the little collection of first-edition ROC hardbacks now has a special place in my book cupboard. To, er… celebrate, there are a few interviews and articles from the last few weeks that are starting to surface. Here (interview with someone who actually read the book first!), here (complete with opportunity to win an autographed map) and here (so far). Also spotted: a late review in from Australia. Nothing that hasn’t been said before in a different way, but I did like: “Mr Deas has, in my opinion, created the most terrifyingly natural and malign dragons to have ever graced the page.” Thank-you. My work here is done.

At the same time, yesterday was the official UK release  for the mass-market paperback edition of The Adamantine Palace, and for anyone who’s been waiting for the pocket-sized version, this one comes with the map. I’m not sure why, but it does. The Adamantine Palace is Waterstones’ fantasy and science-fiction pick of the month for February, which is  a bit mind-boggling. It’s also one of the local store’s picks of 2009, but I think that might have more to do with local prejudice than anything. Credit where credit’s due, though, they’ve been immensely supportive over the last year and I shall continue to sneak into their coffee shop with my laptop from time to time. There may even be an author signing event thing in April for King of the Crags – more on that when it happens.

On the subject of which, the proof corrections for King of the Crags are almost done. OK, not very exciting after all, so here’s yet another pretty cover that you’ve seen before. King of the Crags will have the map in it too, by the looks of things. Sounds like an excuse to show off another gorgeous cover…

And then there’s the SFX weekender coming up next weekend, in which I shall orbit like a piece of small cosmic debris around such collossi as Al Reynolds and Joe Abercrombie. If you want to come and snooze for a while in a quiet and largely empty room, I shall be reading from various works, some of which might even be my own, on the appropriately named Slaughtered Lamb stage at about 2:30. If Fantasycon was anything to go by, this will be a fine place to come for a bit of peace and quiet, and I promise not to read too loudly.

Covers. Yes. The big news of the week, of course, is the revolutionary, ground-breaking cover to The Thief-Taker’s Apprentice, in which we bring you not one, but TWO hooded men. This audacious leap away from genre convention should be in the shops come August, and will doubtless be followed by a slew of imitators, culminating in covers with COUNTLESS HORDES of hooded men. When that happens, just remember who took that first leap of faith…

Work on book two, recently re-titled The Hooded Hordes will begin shortly.

Skipping ahead to The Order of the Scales, the first rewrite is all done bar the shouting. For anyone who’s interested, this is a structural rewrite (if anyone cares, largely around the story-arcs for Kemir and the Adamantine Spear). The horrible snapping rending grinding noises are the sounds of plot-bones being snapped off and attached in different places. Despite the sound effects, though, the story feels much better for it. There’s no cover I can offer up for The Order of the Scales, but I think we’re seeing a pattern here, so I’m guessing a deep red background (so the series will colour-coordinate with your Lord of the Rings extended edition DVD set, which is only right and proper after all) and three dragons this time. I’m thinking two facing each other like on the Crags cover (green and blue to match the backgrounds of the first two books) and  a third one behind them, the white one, wings spread, coming out of the page. And increased cripsyness at the edges. But I know squat about designing covers, so don’t imagine that any of that actually means anything.

In the absence of the actual cover for Order of the Scales (and I really can’t wait, because so far these Gollancz covers have been great), here is a picture of Niagara Falls in the winter of 1911. My wife showed me this, having been passed it via a friend, friend of a friend, etc. etc. (so sorry, original photographer, copyright owner, and subsequent toucher-upper, but I have no idea who you are to attribute any credit) with the observation that it was a) a magnificant picture and b) would make an excellent fantasy cover. Just stick a sodding great dragon peering down at the man and there you go – the opening scene of King of the Crags (almost).

I can’t quite tell, but f you look closely enough, is that fellow wearing a hood? Or is it just a ninja outfit?

Busy busy busy. The Adamantine Palace is coming out in the US in less than three weeks and so there’s interviews and guest blogs and and and… And a copy of the book too, and it’s a hardcover and even prettier in the flesh than it was on a screen. Two suich beautiful covers! How can you choose between them? Order of the Scales re-write number one is going slightly better than expected, the page-proofs for King of the Crags are due in a fortnight and and and…

Then there’s the Gemmel Awards to mention. Go vote! Don’t make Mr Abercrombie mad! And I’ve been reading some other titles due out from Gollancz too. Tome of the Undergates and Wolfsangel. Both will receive some more attention closer to their release dates.

Right now, though, I don’t have time to do justice to anything. So here’s a review I made earlier for Vector for a book you can (and should) go and buy right now.

Yellow Blue Tibia (Gollancz; ISBN 978-0575083578 )

Author: Adam Roberts

World War II is over. The Soviet Union has defeated Hitler and Stalin is convinced that Europe and America will soon fall. Global Soviet peace will follow; and to prepare for that peace, Stalin calls Konstantin Skvorecky and a handful of other Soviet science fiction authors to a secret dacha in the countryside. The new communist world will need some new menace to hold it together, something to give it a unity of cause and purpose. In short, it will need the threat of an alien invasion, and the job of this group of writers is to create one, a fiction but a plausible one. No expense will be spared in staging this invasion. It will begin with the destruction of an American spaceship and a huge explosion in the Ukraine…

When their job is done, the writers are unceremoniously ejected and told to forget what they have done. Mostly they consider themselves lucky not to have been shot.

Fast-forward some forty years. Skvorecky, now ex-SF writer, ex-alcoholic, part-time translator and dedicated cynic finds himself asked to act as a translator for a rather odd pair of Americans. As he leaves, he is approached by the last other survivor of Stalin’s SF cabal, now working in the KGB, who tries to convince him that the alien invasion they created is becoming reality: It’s 1986. The Space Shuttle Challenger has exploded, something is afoot in the Ukraine at Chernobyl, and aliens appear to be secretly invading the world.

So there’s the set-up. Skvorecky quickly acquires a taxi-driving nuclear physicist sidekick and proceeds to be bounced from one slightly bizarre and surreal episode to the next in what is, in the end, an exquisitely crafted and cerebral mystery.

Now, I have this idea that stories engage with readers in two fundamentally different ways. They engage with us on an emotional level, with adrenaline-pumping action, tooth-grinding tension, white-knuckle drama; with love and joy and hate and revenge and possibly too many adjectives. And they engage with us on an intellectual level, with ideas and philosophies that educate and amuse and stimulate and enrich. Yellow Blue Tibia is firmly entrenched at the latter end of the spectrum. Skvorecky and his taxi-driver never emotionally engage with the story in which they find themselves; rather, Skvorecky observes his own trajectory with a detached amusement, while his taxi-driver is a realistic depiction of Asperger’s Syndrome. These are both deliberate choices by the author and, as with everything else here, expertly crafted; in fact, this sort of detachment is probably necessary, as some of the strangeness they encounter would likely drive anyone else (reader included) to distraction trying to work out what could possibly be going on. Right up to the end, it’s not clear whether this is a mundane KGB conspiracy, a comedy of errors, a narrator who’s lost his marbles or whether there are, indeed, some aliens somewhere. Adams seems fascinated with the phenomena of UFOs, the are they-or-aren’t-they of them, the weight of the anecdotal set against the utter lack of hard physical evidence. Yellow Blue Tibia even offers a rather tidy answer.

The real strengths of this book are in the easy flowing prose (I occasionally had to stop and read a scene again simply to admire how well it was put together), in Skvorecky’s sardonic wit and in the marvellous central idea, revealed at the end, which gives almost perfect coherence and sense to all the seemingly random events that precede it.

In summary, the writing is elegant and yet straightforward, the mystery is engrossing and the idea at the core is inspired. Readers after an emotional connection may find it difficult to engage with the story, but for those who are after a piece of old-school science-fiction brain food that makes you think, Yellow Blue Tibia delivers in spades.

(Post review note: I read this in the summer of 2009 and still find myself thinking about it. It’s just such a neat idea. Even if it violates the second law of thermodynamic and thus casts the whole premise into the realms of. . . But no: that’s a battle for another day

I was having a minor grump over the holidays about how much time the rewriting of Order of the Scales was going to take (Simon, don’t expect to see it early). Well, the rewrite is going OK, but it’s still taking up a lot of time that could otherwise have been spent doing more worthwhile things like playing Dragon Age: Origins or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II or Assassin’s Creed II. But over the weekend, someone dropped me this comment:

“I’ve bought and half finished 5 books in the last month and had thought I’d lost my passion for sci-fantasy. Now I realise I’ve just been picking shitty books to read. Until now that is. I bought and finished The Adamantine Palace today and absolutely loved it. Thanks for giving me what I thought was lost Stephen!”

One happy reader doesn’t make a book good, but it makes an author happy too and not mind that he’s spending his evenings in front of his laptop. Also, he is apparently not alone. Been a while since a new review for The Adamantine Palace came out…

As noted my last post, my the first draft of Order of the Scales is needing rather more work than I’d hoped (largely because it was written about a year ago before King of the Crags went through its edit and the Gazetteer changed a few things). So instead of the usual two re-writes, this one’s going to need three before submission. Usually, there’s a first rewrite to iron out any inconsistencies in the story, character or background and put on the last icing and sprinkles. Then there’s a pause of a month or two while I go and do something else and then a second rewrite that all buff and shine and polish.

I like re-writes when I’ve finished them. I don’t like doing them. They’re treading familiar paths and rarely taking me anywhere new. Bleh.

Right. And that really is about it for any ’system’ I use.

Someone asked me a couple of days ago whether I plan in detail or use the ‘travel-hopefully’ method. Now being asked questions like that makes me feel all unnaturally important, as if my words and methods might carry some weight and I was all set to write a lengthy post on how to set about writing a story. Fortunately some sense prevailed; the fact is that everyone seems to write in different ways and I think everyone probably has to find what fits the way their head works.
That said, ‘travel hopefully’ does describe the way I write quite well once I get going, but having said that, there does have to be some sort of framework in place before I start; everyone has to have something, right? Otherwise how do you know where to begin? I don’t think I know anyone who sits down in front of a keyboard knowing nothing more than that they are about to write a story…

So what do I need? I need:

• A world. It doesn’t have to be fleshed out an detailed, but it needs to be there in skeleton form. In particular, I think what matters are the general rules by which the world operates. The big things that will shape it need to be thought through. The Adamantine Palace may not have that much world-building actually in it, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t thought about. For a fantasy world, is there an analogous period in history? I will always start from something real and then add bits (magic, dragons, the fact that the moon is made of cheese, whatever). These bits need a little basic thinking through, too, about what the consequences are for the base society when you add the extras. I’ll do most of this as a go along, but I need to know how the rules that govern the way the world works have changed because of whatever I’ve added (or taken away). Same principle goes for Science Fiction and technology. If you’re going to set a story in the real world, then which part of the real world and which time in history?
• Some driver characters. A few main protagonists with what they are trying to do and why and very roughly what they’re like. These might be characters who will be in the foreground of the story (example: Prince Jehal: Intelligent, cynical, callous, wants to be top dog (because being the top dog is the only place that’s safe), deep down also wants to be… <spoiler deleted>) or they might be in the background (Saffran Kuy in The Thief-Taker’s Apprentice). They are the characters who are shaping events. What they are trying to do and why they are trying to do it will define the way the world changes during the course of the story.
• Some front-line characters. These might be the same as the above or they might be different, but these are the characters who are in the foreground of the story. I find they tend to acquire their own personalities and colour themselves in as the story goes on, so all I have here at the start are a few seed characteristics that make them stand out from those around them (Angry, guilty, can swing a sword. That sort of thing).
• An end. In some ways most important of all, I need to know how the end is going to feel. Someone has to either achieve something or fail to achieve something. It’s not so much the specifics of what that I have up front, it’s how it’s going to feel for the reader (bitter-sweet is always a favourite with crushing despair a close second, but there’s always the possibility of a happy success). There may well be several ends for several different story-lines.

And that’s it. After that it’s travel hopefully time. Which has worked extremely well on some occasions and less well on others. This year’s submissions will be The Order of the Scales and The Warlock’s Shadow, both already written in draft straight off the back of their prequels (on the grounds that all the preparation work had already been done) and both examples of FAILURE of the method, dammit! The Order of the Scales in particular has rolled a fumble (er, I mean has a lot wrong with it). I can see at least three re-writes being necessary before it’s good enough to be submitted. The first one started this week, along with the stress headaches.

This would also be the time when some sort of review of the year would appear, but I haven’t got time for that right now. Here’s one someone else made earlier.