It had to happen. I’ve come home from the cleaners with the wrong trousers. Long and dark and in a bag. So I get them out this morning to put them on and immediately they don’t feel right and I know something’s wrong, and eventually I work out they have acquired pinstripes as well as a whole new texture , and finally, after a lot of head-scratching, I get around to looking at the label.

I am not Mrs Ronson. I’m pretty sure about that.

Also these trousers are too long. I am moved to comment on this to Adamantine Lady, as I am a fairly long fellow myself, and this may make identifying the owner of these errant trousers much easier. Really tall person, 6′6″ or more, walking around in their underpants looking pissed off.

Adamantine Lady: (pensively) (who has a minor thing going for really tall people) “Really? I think I’d like to meet Mr Ronson.”

Me: (With great smugness): “Mr Ronson? It says Mrs Ronson.” Yes, instead of acknowledging the extremely likely possibility that these trousers have been taken to the cleaners by some gentleman’s wife, I prefer to explore the extremely unlikely possibility that Brigitte Nielson’s 6′6″ Amazon half-sister a) exists and b) has her trousers cleaned in Chelmsford. There may be a certain wish-fulfilment to this line of thought. By the time I am finished with pointing out this possibility, I am the king of smug. Ha, let that teach you to jump to conclusions!

Adamantine Lady: (precisely exactly as pensively as before) “Really? I think I’d like to meet Mrs Ronson.”

Exit author under a cloud of hoist-by-your-own-petard-ness.

Mr/Mrs Ronson, I have your trousers. I do apologise. I will aim to return them shortly.

A while back I was invited into the local infant school to teach children a little bit about writing stories. I think what I actually managed to teach them was how to draw a cartoon dragon and a cartoon goblin, but hey, they liked the visuals, so here they are, in case anyone wants to try and do a better job.

The ideas I was trying to present are pretty simple, and are also pretty much how I set about writing a novel:

Start at the beginning of the story

Know who your story is about

Know what problem they need to solve

(or what challenge they need to overcome – remember I’m talking to six-year-olds here)

Know the end of the story

What is their last chance to succeed?

What is the final outcome?

(Between you and me, sometimes I do this the other way around and get the end before I even know to whom it is happening, but remember: 6 years old).

(The “story” we ran through here is pretty obvious: Dragon and Goblin want to make a book. Contrary to popular (6-year-old) opinion, Simon Skeleton in the last scene isn’t Simon Cowell…)

Now you’re ready to start. Think of the rest as setting off on a journey: You know where you’re starting, you know where you want to go, but you don’t know how to get there. You need a map (or a compass and some orienteering skills or some combination of both in practice but we’re keeping it simple, remember?).

This is the bit where you just think of a couple of things that sound fun and exciting and happen between The Beginning and The End. I have to admit I’m not very good at describing what happens here: make some stuff up. Don’t lose track of where you’re trying to go.

Anyway, anyone who fancies using the pictures, help yourself. They’re probably a damn sight better than the words that went with them.

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.

OK, I was going to write something snarky about how wonderful it was that Liverpool have finally managed to sort out the problem that’s been holding them back for the last few seasons (namely getting far too many draws). Yeah, phew, good to be throwing that monkey off our backs. Perfect record so far this season too – not a single one…

Yes. I was going to do that, and then I read this and hey, we’re all armchair football managers right, what do we know <biting back the urge to seethe about Alonso going to Real Madrid. Biting. It. Back>?

Phew.

So I’ll just sit here in bed, eating Chinese takeway, writing aimlesslessly amid a big pile of kittens, taking a break from the re-write-athon, thinking that yes, sometimes writing sucks like any other job. But not today.

Back to the un-real world next week with our silly name competition winner (still open, but the current number one is going to be hard to beat), news on the gazetteer and maybe one or two other things.

For some reason it’s been a long strange week full of stuff that has made me reel in more bemusement than usual; certainly enough material for several entries to Critical Failures. However, time is pressing so I shall be brief. Besides, I have a Ramen pot-noodle thing awaiting my attention, I’ve done the pour-in-boiling-water thing and have already moved on to stir-with-care and ensuing allow-to-stew stages.

Today is kind of special because my first ever royalties arrived today. At least, the first ever royalties based on the the actual selling of some actual physical books as opposed to the idea of maybe writing a book. So that was nice and we’ll be buying a bottle of something to celebrate and life goes on. Day job, you may sleep easy, content in the knowledge that we’ll not be going our separate ways for some time to come. One or two comments I’ve seen recently, however, lead me to understand that others might have a vastly, well, shall we say uniformed view of life.

On a similar monetary vein, if a slightly different scale, it’s impossible to listen to the news without someone bleating on about government borrowing and national debt. Even those who think authors get paid in bars of hidden nazi gold must surely suffer some occasional breakthrough of interference from the real world? And am I the only one to whom it all makes absolutely no sense at all? It’s as though the whole thing is managed by some cabal of Illuminati who rule the monetary world simply by talking in every increasing spirals of gibberish whose the sole purpose is to ensure that absolutely no one truly fully understand exactly how everything works; presumably if they did, they’d be the accountancy equivalent of the antichrist and trigger some sort of global financial meltdown.

Oh. Wait. Oh well, whoever it was has doubtless since been neutralised by a special-tactics branch of the FSA by now.

Or maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s all quantum now. Isn’t that the whole point of credit? Hey – you’ll never know whether I’ve got a pound in my pocket or not until we look, but if we don’t look then I we can just assume that I have and then I can lend it to you at a small percentage and you can lend it on and so on and so on until it eventually makes its way back with a load of interest and, for some reason, a stale saveloy. But this only works if I don’t look in my pocket. So maybe our current difficulties were caused by some banker actually sticking his hand in his pocket to see what was in there for once and being sorely disappointed. Erwin Schroedinger, hang your head in shame. Look what you did.

In order to prevent future crises, all bankers are forthwith denied pockets. End of problem. Surely a simpler solution than bankrupting the entire world.

Just one little puzzlement, though, if every single developed country in the world is borrowing massive amounts of money (an allegedly conservative off-the-cuff estimate for global state borrowing for next year is, in royalty terms, about ten trillion copies of The Adamantine Palace[1]). From whom? If the entire world has a huge overdraft[2], from whom exactly are we borrowing this? The wizards or Middle Earth? The Gnomes of Zurich? The Royal Bank of Satan and His Little Minions?

No. It’s aliens. Aliens are lending us money. It’s the only explanation left. When the skies fill up with flying saucers, it won’t be an invasion, they’ll be here to foreclose. See. It’s all Science Fiction (or possibly Fantasy) really, just dressed up in different acronyms and words that no one understands. Which could all be fixed by re-aligning the phase-correlators on the FTL hub.

And people wonder why Science Fiction gets no literary respect.

Still on the stir-with-care stage on my noodles here. I really feel I’ve been caring quite a lot for some time now and that the instruction stir-with-fork might have been more appropriate.

Or maybe now, since apparently you can get buy a training machine and get some one-on-one recorded tuition from Master Yoda and learn the secrets of Jedi Mind Powers. I’d marvel at the audacity of selling such a product rather than just making it up for a joke, but since it’s going to cost me more than half as much merely to get the family to the cinema to see Up next weekend, I’m not so sure (what are they doing? Have they raised old Walt from the dead to serve popcorn in the foyer? At the very least I expect the seven dwarves to serve me ice cream). You have to wonder what part of the brain, exactly, is being activated here. I suppose if nothing else it’ll grow us up a whole new generation of wannabe-Jedis like me, except these ones will be really good at frowning.

Anyway, long story short since noodles are calling. Buy a book, save the world: Here’s the math:

• 1 alien financed global budget deficit equals
• 100,000 Virgin Galactic customers trying to spot them through the windows (just thought I’d throw that in) equals
• 100,000,000 Jedi training kits so that the next generation can telekinetically haul their green asses out of the sky and kick them back to the Funny-Potato-Shaped Nebula from which they came equals
• A mere 10,000,000,000 more copies of The Adamantine Palace that need to be bought before I can buy your collective debt off our sinister alien overlords.

For those people who think all authors are immediately made of gold, shit precious gemstones and have wanton nublies fawning at their feet, hopefully this will provide some perspective. I solemnly promise to donate half the royalties after the first trillion sales to bailing out a bank of your choice, so best get cracking, right.

Oh and there’s some real news. About books and shit.

[1] Sourced from a really reliable internet source(TM).

[2] The logical error is about here, right? So come on then accountancy types, explain it in words that make sense and can be understood. You can’t, can you.

Hints and tips brought back from Fantasycon 2009 and a few reminiscences.

So you’ve written a novel. You’ve got the craft of putting words together into coherent sentences, choreographing those sentences into scintillating paragraphs, corralling your paragraphs into scenes and assembling a story. How do you get from there to seeing your name up on the shelves in the local Waterstones? The internet will fall over itself to tell you what you can do. All sorts of books will do that too. Trouble is, do any of them really work?

1. Write such a good novel than no one can possibly turn you down.

Yeah, but what do you do if they do? The rewriting trap seems to be one that a lot of people fall into, and that certainly included me once upon a time. It’s true that there are first novels out there that were worked on for years and eventually got noticed and turned out to be exquisitely good and immensely successful. The trouble is, there are several reasons why this might fail (the powers that be think the market is already saturated for whatever you’re writing; the powers that be think the market isn’t ready for what you’re writing; the powers that be just don’t like it for reasons you will never understand; the power that be don’t even get around to picking it up off the slush pile until after your grandchildren have started drawing their pensions).

Yes, absolutely make your novel as good as it can possibly be, but what are you going to do after you submit it? For the love of god don’t be sitting there twiddling your thumbs imagining you’ll ever get a quick answer to anything. Write something else while you’re waiting. And then something else. In fact a good plan would be to have your next project loosely figured out so you can get right on with it when the first one goes out. Reasons to do this include a) it keeps you occupied as you grow old and grey waiting for anyone to respond b) through writing something different you might learn something new you can feed back into the next rewrite of the novel you just sent. c) you might  write something better. d) Your typing fingers won’t atrophy and become useless. e) planning for your inevitable success. Think about it; it is very, very unlikely that anyone, including you, wants to publish exactly one of your books. f) planning for your inevitable failure: Best to get right back in the saddle, eh?

At the very least, if you have two ‘Best Novel Ever’s on the go then you can alternate so there are no awkward gaps between rewrites.

2. Write the most commercial novel you can.

Also has definitely worked for some. If you can still love the story you’re writing and the characters in it then do it. Seriously. Writing a story about <insert The Next Big Thing here> is vastly more likely to result in success that writing an equally good story about, say, an action-adventure romance about a were-piano, it’s battle against a secret society of super-evolved flat-pack bookshelves and its secret angsty relationship with a broken trombone.

Two little catches. The ‘equally good’ and the <insert The Next Big Thing here>. Equally good is up to you. If you don’t love your work then neither will anyone else and nor will it love you back, but if you love both ideas, then for the sanity of everyone around you, pick the commercial idea first. You can always write that story about the were-piano later. The Next Big Thing is a bit harder, but not as impossible as some people make out. Research (it helps to work in the genre section of a bookshop). Find out what’s coming out soon. Find out what new authors various publishers are excited about. Really what you want to be able to do is simultaneously mind-meld with all the genre editors and agents in the field and find out what they’re thinking, what they’re excited about that’s coming out soon, rather than what’s already a big hit. Do the work to get to know who all the relevant people are and keep track of who they sign and what they’re putting out (these things are generally announced well before books hit shelves). There’s nothing editors like more than enthusing about their latest great find (and they mean it too – they have to, otherwise there wouldn’t have been a deal in the first place). If you can get hold of an editor or an agent, they will usually be willing to talk and they will have a better idea of where the genre is going than most. Since they’re only human and thus still get it completely wrong from time to time, spread your bets. This is what conventions are good for (although not Fantasycon this year for some reason). Alternatively skip all that hard work part and write about some spunky woman in complex relationships with some sort of supernatural creature. My tip for for The Next Big Thing is currently Kung-Fu Vampire Dragons In Love. But that’s my idea and if you steal it, you deserve all the rejection letters you’ll get :-p

Yeah. Don’t imagine The Next Big Thing will be several of the current Big Things mashed together. Someone always tries it, someone always publishes it and it usually sinks like a depleted uranium balloon[1] [2].

3. Promote yourself to death at conventions and over the internet.

Oh there are so many ways to do this, aren’t there? Where’s a budding writer to start? There’s Twitter and Facebook and MySpace and LiveJournal and Blogging and Podcasting and LuLu and Self-Publishing and Conventions and and and and and…

There are a lot of stories about people having built a successful publication deal on the back of some form of self-promotion. These are the exceptional people. They are the exceptions to the rule and that is why they get talked about. Anything might work, but anything also very probably won’t. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is. If there was a magic bullet then everyone would be doing it and it wouldn’t be magic any more. I know there are some very successful writers who have squillions of Twitter followers or else have very popular blogs; in almost all cases, the successful writing came first and the on-line following came later. In microcosm – are you reading this blog because of The Adamantine Palace, or are you going to buy The Adamantine Palace because you’ve read this blog?

The one thing I’ve (very slowly) picked up from talking to people at Fantasycon and the like is that the people who’ve been picked up and had some success because they managed to promote themselves into a publishing deal generally had two things going for them. The first is that they had genuinely good material to back up the self-promotion. The second is that they not only worked bloody hard at promoting themselves, they also had a particular something at which they were particularly talented and exploited that talent. So if you’re going to promote yourself, don’t try and do it in some particular way because it happened to work for someone else – chances are they were a lot better at that particular thing that you are and worked a lot harder then you think to get where they got. Look at your own talents. Start with what really interests you and what you happen to be good at. Then figure out how to use it.

4. Make statistics work for you.

My personal favourite, since this is what worked for me. Do all of the above. Fail at most of them but don’t let that bother you. Write shit-loads of material. Try and try and try again and don’t stop. Luck has a lot to do with who gets published and who doesn’t but you can at least make luck work for you a little bit. I tend to think of it as throwing darts at a dartboard while wearing a blindfold and then someone stuck legs on the dartboard and made it into a sort of dartboard-spiderman hybrid that scrabbles all over the wall shouting abuse. Being able to write a good story is the equivalent of being able to throw a dart accurately and have it land exactly where you want it to: Necessary but no damn use when someone keeps moving the board. When that happens, all you can do is throw lots of darts.

[1] Like a lead balloon but heavier and with more environmental protesters.

[2] And anyway, there’s almost certainly already a bunch of films from Hong Kong about Kung-Fu Vampire Dragons In Love.

“Where do you get your inspiration?” That’s a question that most authors seem to get asked at some time. It’s almost something you can’t avoid. The usual response is to refer to a few previous significant works in the applicable genre, maybe a film or a television show, and some moderately classic works of general literature, or maybe a historical figure or two. Example:

Fictional interviewer: “So, Mr. Deas, where do you get your inspiration.”

Author: “Oh, from a great variety of place. I’ve always been a fan of Conan and Elric, that’s the kind of fantasy that really pulled me in. Hong Kong fantasy martial arts movies like Zu Warrior of the Magic Mountain and, more recently, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and so forth. Anything Chinese really. Medieval Chinese history and culture fascinates me. Everything is on such a grand scale and they somehow did things in a different order. Oh, and Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle has probably had an influence I could point to on half the stories I’ve written. And Joseph Conrad, when I’ve got the willpower to plough through it. And, and…”

And and. Lots of easy answers. Not that this sort of answer isn’t true, and it certainly does answer the question, but it’s far from complete. Far, far from complete.

Trouble is, delve too far and the answers start to become downright uncomfortable. Example:

A few days ago, Abdel Basset Mohamed al-Megrahi was released from prison on compassionate grounds and sent back to Libya to die in the comfort of his own home (no this isn’t a cut and paste error from a different blog – bear with me) and with his family. I’ll nail my colours to the mast and say that I thought this was the right thing to do. I noticed that a lot of people didn’t, and then I noticed that not only did some people disagree, they were really very angry about it. Why? Were they afraid that he’d go and do it again (a reasonable thought, perhaps, given he’s going to die soon anyway)? But that didn’t seem to be it. Were they afraid that the wrong example was being set? That his release was somehow undermining the deterrent of being locked up for such horrible crimes? Again it’s an argument that could reasonably be put forward, but that didn’t really seem to be it either, although. No, it was about the feelings of the relatives of those he’d killed (or supposedly killed, if you’re into the conspiracy theories). So that’s where I went. Hypothetically, at least, into their heads to see what it was like to be them. I won’t pretend that I can tell you what it’s really like to have someone killed by a terrorist (or a drunk driver for that matter) for no better reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I can tell you that I’ve tried, though. I can tell you that in trying, I’ve come to understand a little bit more about revenge, that engine that drives so many stories (imagine, for a moment, what literature would be like without any revenge. How many great stories would be wiped away?) I can understand a little better why letting someone who’s done something like that to you go free, for ANY reason, is so repugnant. And one day I will use that understanding to make some character in some story just that little bit more real. That’s the dark side, if you will, of inspiration.

I pick on this example because it’s in the news at the moment. A few weeks from now it’ll be something else and then something else again. Inspiration comes from everywhere, from everything. It comes from walks in the Southern Alps, it comes from the awe-inspiring imaginations of other writers and artists and film-makers. It comes from watching my children feeding little plastic knights to their Gigantosaurus. And it comes from plumbing the dark depths and the dizzying heights of what happens around us, from the horrible and magnificent things that seemingly ordinary people do, and from trying to go inside their heads to see the whys and the hows and the consequences. I can say my inspiration comes from all of those things and they’d all be true. But can you imagine? If I say my inspiration comes from child-molesters and suicide bombers and battered wives, that’s a bit of a concersation killer, neh? So when I’m next asked the question, I’ll probably mention Conan and Chinese history and leave it at that; but you’ll know, if you’ve read this, that that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I still think, even if he was guilty, it was right to let him go, but I sure understand now why there are those who disagree.

Meh. Finished manuscript blues. I could start on the next one, I suppose (OK, OK, I already cracked on that yesterday). I could start the rework for King of the Crags (editorial comments have now been received, and will be blogged about at sarcastic length[1] shortly). But I’m going on holiday for a week of wandering around on Cornish beaches in the pissing rain, and since I am NOT ALLOWED to take my ‘work’ with me (and since I don’t yet have a ruggedised mil-spec laptop suitable for use in Afghanistan Cornwall, what’s the point in starting something for a week only to put it away again, eh?

Meh.

Meh meh meh. Can’t even play with kittens (why do the kittens get a longer holiday than I do? Do they need one? Was the assault on my USB stick that stressful? Maybe they’re plotting. Maybe that’s it <twitch>)

Well, for a week, I’ve found a passable distraction. There’s this thing at Orbit: The Worst Cover Ever. I can’t draw for toffee (sorry Doodled Books but I did warn you). What I can do is blurb, though. So here we go.

A Stain Upon the Vastness

Fifty thousand parsecs out from the edge of the dying Galaxy, the last surviving remnants of the human race, devolved back into savagery and ignorant of the origins, float through the vastness on an artificial world. They are monitored from within by the Uppers, the elite few who have access to the vast data banks and artifical intelligence that controls the world. They are safe, self-sufficient, their survival assured.

Until they encounter the mysterious Stain, a being of pure energy that might just be God… or The Devil.

Cue some mish-mash of Forbidden Planet, old Star Trek and a reworking of the Garden of Eden myth that’s as subtle as a brick…

Man, I love that title (and the one about the dancing cyborg fairies too) I might offer up some more blurbs for the other Orbit covers. In the mean time, go check out the other titles. And vote Stain! (I didn’t come up with this. I just like it).

[1] I’ll be making almost all of this up, damn you Simon, since there’s absolutely nothing in what you’ve said that isn’t entirely reasonable and, well, at all easy to get worked up about.

Who will be the Speaker of the Realms? <dun-dun-daaaa>

For anyone who’s reading this and doesn’t already know, a significant part of the plot to The Adamantine Palace revolves around the Machiavellian manoeuvrings and machinations of a group of ruthless, selfish, murdering bastards for the position of Speaker of the Realms, a sort of Capo di tutti capi of the dragon-realms. Particularly astute reviewers have noted a sprinkling of contemporary social commentary (thank-you, Locus) present in this. Share with me for a moment, then, my amusement at the the current plight and manoeuvrings surrounding the appointment of the new Speaker of the House of Commons. Overlord of Fraud? Not for me to say; I’ll leave that to the bold men and women of the Daily Telegraph and merely observe that in many other countries, this level of expense-fiddling behaviour would be so mundane that no one would even raise any eyebrow. So let’s be glad we don’t live in any of those places, eh?

Yes, share my amusement and then share with me my disappointment at not having any say in who’s next to sit in the silly chair. Because, frankly, I’d like a say in the matter, and I’m not going to get one. Boo! Hiss!

Done with the disappointment now? Good. Let’s be honest, you didn’t actually care one way or another, did you? You were just pretending. No matter: Mere facts and reality should never be allowed to get in the way of a little bit of fun. Since any say I have in the matter will be purely a fictional say, I don’t see why I should stick to casting my fictional vote for people who are defined merely by their aspect of actually existing. No, far more fun to add my own candidates to the list (especially since the alternative would be ‘none of the above’, and using my fictional vote to tick ‘none of the above’ on my fictional ballet paper for a fictional election that exists only in my mind seems, well, noticeably unsatisfying).

Anyone with a serious interest in politics, look away now. They gone? Just closet geeks and nerds like me left now? Right. First the honourable mentions. These are the folks who didn’t quite make it into the top five, but deserve a mention anyway for the admirable qualities they could have brought to bear on the job, Starting with….

Conan the Barbarian: A personal favourite and old friend, Conan can be relied upon to clear up any mess, usually by turning it into a different kind of mess with more blood involved. Likely to be a short stint at the job, but probably very satisfying for almost all concerned.

Dr. Van Helsing, or indeed anyone else experienced in dealing with bloodsucking vampires. Um… because, well… because. Would probably have made it into the top five if Abnormal Lamont had still been in the house.

Severus Snape: Makes out like he’s one of the bad guys but actually isn’t. Worth a go for the withering sarcasm. “What is it now, Clegg?”

The wizard responsible for Pinocchio’s nose. Don’t know who he is, but we have people on the case.

John Connor and the heroes of all slasher flicks: They know what it’s like when everyone is out to get you and have good experience dealing with people that keep coming back again and again no matter how many times you think you’ve gotten rid of them.

Right. And now, without further ado, my own personal top five fantasy and SF candidates for the new Speaker of the House of commons:

Sneaking in at number FIVE is A Dalek! Can be any Dalek you like. Darren the Dalek, say. Rather let down by serious question marks over his ability to provide strong moral guidance, Darren the Dalek has nevertheless made the list simply for the satisfaction of hearing that the traditional call for “Order!” has been replaced by the familiar old favourite “Exterminate!” and general ensuing consequences.

In at number FOUR: HAL2000! Always calm, always patient, never losing his temper or raising his voice, HAL brings to the job a logical perfection and a guarantee to exactly follow the rules, perfectly and without question, whatever they are. May unexpectedly lock everyone out of Parliament on a point of order from time to time, but I’m sure we can live with that. Distinctive sound bite: “I’m sorry Gordon, I can’t let you do that.”

At number THREE: The X-men’s Professor Xavier. No more procrastination and tub-thumping during Prime Minister’s Questions, no with the Prof you get answers, plucked straight out of the mind of whatever minister matters. Now questions like “Does the Prime Minister truly believe that the Iraqi government is capable of deploying weapons of mass destruction against the United Kingdom in the space of forty-five minutes?” can have the answers they deserve. Like “No, actually, the Prime Minister is pretty damn sure that’s total bollocks, he was just hoping you wouldn’t ask.” Does that sound better? Thought so. Also brings a keen and willing intellect and a strong moral sense to the job. Telepathic powers may pose some security concerns, however.

At number TWO: Any D&D cleric of at least third level. Why? Silence 15′ Radius, that’s why. Extra credit may be given to higher level clerics who can throw a flamestrike or two into the mix.

But now for number one. This character brings both moral backbone and a certain flexibility to the job. He may not always be politically correct, in fact quite often he’s not, but he’s the perfect Servant to Society. With his trademark cry of “Oi! You lot! Shut it!”, expert in dealing with a rowdy rabble, my personal favourite, squealing into the lead around the last corner at the wheel of something that sure ain’t a Toyota Prius, the winner of this blog’s Fantasy Speaker award, let’s hear it for… DCI Gene Hunt!

Hmmm.

I’ve missed something. What is it?

Oh yes. Psst… Hey Cameron… “Exterminate!”

Damn. Now sitting and writing a piece about the Gemmell awards seems positively drab and mundane. I guess that can wait. Laters dudes. Got to roll with my Dalek fantasy for a while now.

I’m beginning to think this doesn’t mean what I thought it meant. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean what a lot of other people think it means too. Or else it doesn’t mean what I think a lot of other people think it means. In some contexts. Maybe.

Hmmm. Needs some Ming-the-Merciless beard-stroking this does.

More on this in the future, I think. In the meantime, anyone who thinks they actually know what this means, do speak up.