Stephen Deas » Critical Failures

A Parting of Ways (31/8/2010)

Stephen — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:41:00 +0000

This week’s post isn’t about books. It’s not about the state of the world. Today I need to talk about something much more personal, more intimate. I need to talk about the break-up of a relationship that’s been with me for a very long time, for a decade and then some. A relationship that was once filled with love, but which, if I am honest, has become tired and drab and has lived off its memories for years. Something I need to get out of my system.

So.

Dear Ben and Jerry

We’ve been together such a long time. that it’s hard to believe there was a time before we met. I remember it, though. I was a single guy who liked to sit down on an evening from time to time and watch some TV, or maybe a movie with a little company. I wasn’t picky about that. A bag of cheesy nachos one week, maybe some salted cashew nuts the next, or maybe a small trifle. I guess I wasn’t the sort for a long-term commitment, or at least that’s what I thought. I played the field. And then I met you. I’ll never forget the flavour your wore for our first evening together. ‘Chocolate Fudge Brownie’, I think it was, but that was mere foreplay. With ‘Pulp Addiction’, you seduced me deep into your creamy folds. With ‘From Russia With Buzz’, we should have been together forever.

But then you changed. For a while, I thought you’d left me, but then you came back, dazzling and renewed. With ‘Dublin Mudslide’, and my tongue yearned for nothing else. I thought we were the perfect couple. All those evenings we sat together on the sofa. And yes, there were children, and they took their toll, but they would have loved you too, in time. In fact, I’m pretty damn sure they would have loved you too. Let’s face it, they’re not exactly picky.

You haven’t had those flavours for me for a long time now. Sure, you came up with some others. ‘One Sweet Whirled’, ‘Bohemian Raspberry’, but they weren’t the same. It hasn’t been the same for a long time. Who are we kidding? We’ve moved apart, so far apart that you’re not even the first thing I look for in the freezer aisle any more.

You don’t excite me any more. Maybe it’s me that’s changed, but I’m fairly sure it’s you. The list of ingredients pretty much gives you away there. I don’t suppose you even care now, but it’s over between us. I have to move on. I have a new sofa-desert in my life now.

Goodbye.

Ultimate Fantasy Cover Art (24/8/2010)

Stephen — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:38:09 +0000

Abercrombie, Charlton, Sanderson, Newton, you think you and your swanky new covers look so goddamn pretty, but pretty is a relative thing…

I don’t know who the artist is, but I’d like to shake him by the hand.

Dear Activist (10/8/2010)

Stephen — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:21:05 +0000

Twice in the last few weeks I’ve come across the phrase “This is the fault of governments” while browsing otherwise interesting and thought-provoking articles on the internet. There is a risk, if I see it again, that I may poke myself in the eye with something sharp just to relieve the pain. What made it particularly painful was that, in both cases, the point being made was otherwise lucid, well-researched, references were given to source material to back up its assertions and one with which I happened to strongly agree. Hurrah! Fill the internet with intelligent, well-reasoned SOLUTIONS to the problems of the world. More please!

But “This is the fault of governments.” makes me want to rant and shout. Aside from the obvious retort (if it’s the fault of governments then quick, let’s get rid of them. Replace them with, er…some anarchy, yeah, that’ll work. Phew, the environment sure dodged a bullet there), what, exactly, makes up a government? People, that’s what. And who votes for a government? That would be people again. Who chooses to run for office? Yep, people. Who implements their decisions? Who abides by the rule they set down? Who enforces them? Er, that would be some more people again. That would be us. So when I get to “It’s the government’s fault,” or “the government is responsible,” or some such, I’m left with this powerless feeling. Y’know, that I can’t do anything, even if I want to. Which is bollocks.

The injustices, the short-sightednesses, the selfish evils, they are the fault of people[1]. But when we have a point to make, we don’t say that. We blame the government, or some other remote body (also made up of people). It’s the first rule of propaganda to reduce all data to a simple confrontation between ‘Good and Bad’, ‘Friend and Foe’, ‘Them’ and ‘Us’. Them (the government) bad, us (you and me) good and it really ticks me off whenever I see it. WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT, or at least that’s the principle that’s supposed to underlie a democracy, isn’t it? So STOP TRYING TO MAKE OUT THAT I’M NOT.

By following the first rule of propaganda, we are telling people that they aren’t in charge of their destiny. We blame distant politicians and bureaucrats, whose choices may well have little to do with what ‘we’ think or want, but they are still our responsibility. Blaming ‘the government’ over and over is convenient and easy and hardly likely to start a pub fight, but it has a hidden message: Repeat after me: It’s the government’s fault. Not your fault. Them, not us. We are not them. They are not us. No wonder everyone feels so disenfranchised. The subtext of almost every piece of political propaganda from whatever part of the spectrum you care to examine is that ‘the people’ and ‘the government’ are different things. And they’re not [2]. Blaming the government seems to me to be a license for general apathy and aimless discontent. ‘They’ are in charge, ‘we’ have no say in what happens, life’s not too bad (for most of us), so what’s the point in rocking the boat? Lo and behold and look around. Is it simply that you know that you’re only preaching to the converted? Because if it is, that’s pretty sad, and not just for you.

I guess this outcome happens to suit some people. But you, dear activists out there, I don’t think you’d count yourself as part of that happy clique. So why do you keep doing it?

End of rant.

[1] So are a lot of good things, but for some reason we don’t seem to hear nearly so much about those. Which is a shame.

[2] In any country with a reasonably honest democratic process for electing one, anyway.

[3] Although if it was down to me they would be and the Dalai Lama would become dictator-for-life with supreme and unchallenged power across the globe. However, that’s a rant for another day. For now, just make sure you never vote me any kind of worthwhile power. I don’t want it and you wouldn’t like what I did with it.

Cake And Orange Juice (15/6/2010)

Stephen — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:52:37 +0000

I was at a children’s party over the weekend. The Sithlings get invited to enough that I have a pretty shrewd idea what to expect, but for those of you who don’t know, it goes roughly like this:

Most of the children will know each other. They are all ‘friends,’ although being children, they will occasionally have fallings out over nothing much and acts of random meanness may occur. Little alliances are routinely formed and then broken. However, to start with, none of this matters. Energy levels are high. Excitement fills the air. The odd little setback or contretemps is quickly resolved and forgotten.This lasts for about fifteen minutes, the exploration-of-the-new-environment stage. There may be a few minor upsets, trips, falls, random acts of perceived injustice and so forth during this time, but they are isolated and quickly repaired.

This is what we parents (behaviour regulators in the normal course of things) think of as Golden Time: They’re all off playing together, doing whatever they do that generally seems to involve lots of running and climbing and shouting, but that’s all fine because they’re doing it without any supervision, and there are few words more glorious to the parent of a small child than ‘without supervision.’

Play continues, increasingly more frantic and manic games develop as they bolt on more and more ideas to whatever basic aliens-vs-predators or plants-vs-zombies game they started out with. Restraint falls away; everyone’s playing flat-out, all striving to be the loudest, the best, the leader, the strongest, getting more and more excited and more and more hyper on less and less energy.

Eventually the inevitable happens, somewhere around the hour-and-a-quarter mark. Someone trips someone else up. Someone’s invisible friend says something to someone else’s invisible friend. Someone gets thumped. Someone pushes someone. The shouting turns to tears and the next thing you know there’s a whole gang of children shown up all crying and pointing and telling you who did what to whom and how no one is their friend any more and how they want to go home and mope in their room all day listening to My Chemical Romance, only emerging during the hours of darkness.

No, wait, that last bit comes later.

So their little worlds go from utopia to horror-filled nightmare-of-social-injustice in the space of a minute. But fortunately, we are prepared, because we know this is going to happen. So we sit them down around a table. Ten minutes of calming down, a slice of cake and a big glass of orange juice and they’re ready to again.

Anyway, we were having our peace and quiet before the inevitable crash. I was sat with a friend I haven’t seen for a little while who does stuff to do with money, so I asked him what I’ve been asking everyone who can spell ‘bank’ of late: Where did the money go?[1]

We reckon it went roughly like this:

Most of the bankers will know each other. They are all ‘friends,’ although being bankers, they will occasionally have fallings out over nothing much and acts of random meanness may occur. Little alliances are routinely formed and then broken. However, to start with, none of this matters. Energy levels are high. There’s lots of shouting and waving bits of paper. Excitement fills the air. The odd little setback or contretemps is quickly resolved and forgotten.

Eventually the inevitable happens. Someone trips over a string of bad debts. Someone pushes someone. Everyone’s invisible moneyfriend falls out with everyone else’s invisible moneyfriend. The shouting turns to tears and the next thing you know there’s a whole gang of bankers shown up all crying and pointing and telling you who did what to whom and how no one is their friend any more and how they want to go home and mope in their room all day listening to My Chemical Romance, only emerging during the hours of darkness.

Seven trillion pounds. Most expensive cake-and-orange-juice ever.

[1] I once had this silly naïve little thought that banks ran short of money when they lent it to people and didn’t get it back. But no. We’re talking about stuff that’s not actually real, but serves a useful purpose as a psychological prop. That sort of money. So, in essence, they run short of money when their invisible friend falls out with someone else’s invisible friend. And that, I’m afraid, is as good an explanation as most of us are ever likely to get.

Racing to Twarmageddon (2/6/2010)

Stephen — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:13:37 +0000

I think I came close to some sort of mental collapse when Guilliermo del Toro quit The Hobbit. Not because of the event itself (bad enough), but because everyone, EVERYONE had to announce it. Even days later, my twitterstream was still reading something like this:

eastingspaghettibolognaisetonightDELTOROQUITSHOBBITfacebooksucks DELTOROHOBBITSHOCKisrealiskillsomemorepeoplebutnoonecares GUILLIERMODELTOROTOLEAVEHOBBIT!!!

Alright already. Can I not mourn in peace? Fortunately the Twitter servers didn’t collapse into an information black hole, there was no naked banality unprotected by a sense horizon and the four 140-character horsemen of the twapocalypse didn’t emerge to systematically convert the world to moronic matter at a subatomic level. Although I gather it was a close run thing.

Anyway…

I’ve been playing a Shadowrun game on and off for the last couple of months while our regular GM moves house, sorts his plot out and my Diamond Cascade posts catch up with where we’re actually at. Shadowrun, for those who don’t know, is a point’s based game which allows you to take certain inconvenient character traits in exchange for better skills at stuff. Things like having a bomb in your head that will explode when someone yells ‘Oi! Dickface!” at you, for example. Everyone should have one of those. Particularly people who drive Audis and BMWs. They should have really big ones [1].

Anyway, I’m a mathematician. Presenting someone like me with the opportunity to min-max a system I’ve never played before is a bit like going up to a crackhead, giving them a big lump of crack and then asking very nicely if they’d mind just looking after it for a bit and not smoking it. Fortunately this is a system that doesn’t allow you to go completely mental and end up with an immobile brain-in-a-jar with enough psychic powers to dissolve an entire planet into its component atoms every twelve hours or so (I miss you, Champions, I really do). So I have a media addiction. My character must spend two hours a day, every day, mindlessly surfing the internet. For this, I have earned myself half an extra point of charisma. Or logic. Or intuition. Or something. What a race of supermen we could become if the real world worked like that too, instead of the other way round.

[1] Sorry Dave [2]

[2] Yes, it did occur to me that you’d end up blowing yourself up too. Sometimes that seems like it would be worth it.

Be The Dragon (24/5/2010)

Stephen — Mon, 24 May 2010 08:00:14 +0000

Someone complained that there hadn’t been a Critical Failures post for a while (totally neglecting the awe-inspiring poetry of Wu-Tome Clan, I note). Well fine. You want rant. Have rant. It’s a slow news week anyway. Mostly what I’ve done is write a prologue for The Warlock’s Shadow, been very pleased with it, realised that it’s not absolutely essential and will therefore feel the wrath of my prologue-hating editor[1] and then hit myself around the head with a brick a few times.

Ha! Well the prologue in Order of the Scales is cunningly disguised as a chapter. If that doesn’t work, I’ll cunningly hide it as a flashback somewhere on the middle. Cut my prologue then, mister editor…

This wasn’t supposed to be about prologues. So I guess so far this has all been a …

Right. Characters. That was where I was supposed to be going. Sometimes people ask whether there is any part of me in my characters, but I think that asks the question the wrong way round. Yes, obviously there has to be and there are parts of what I see in other people and so on and so forth and buy me a beer at a convention and we can talk about that for hours. But what about the other way round? No one ever asks that, but the should! My characters, they sneak out of the page and into me, you see. They affect my thinking. I can spend a few days writing about a grumpy world-weary amoral sell-sword and I start turning into a grumpy, world-weary, amoral . . .

Oh. Right. Maybe that’s not such a good example.

In all seriousness, though, they do. I slip in and out of the heads of my characters to write them and every time, I come away with a little bit of them inside me. I take the point of view of an alchemist for a few days, I start wringing my hands about how short-sighted people are. I take the point of view of a sell-sword for a bit, I’m exactly the person I was wringing my hands about only a few days before. I write a chapter as the Night Watchman, and suddenly I’m the household sergeant-major. I exaggerate, of course, but it’s true – they do all leave a little mark when I’m with them that takes a little time to fade. Wierd, huh?

So there’s the Order of the Scales. Back to working on that, I am. Polishing and making shiny. And if there’s one thing it’s got more of than the first two books, it’s dragons. As in time spent in the company of and sometimes sharing the thoughts of. Be the dragon, that’s what I want. They don’t think like people. Humans are food, barely significant at all to a woken dragon. I’m going to be in that head a lot for the next month. So if you talk to me before the end of June and I’m all ‘HUMANS ARE A CONTAMINATION OF THE EARTH AND SHOULD ALL BURN,’ that’s just a bit of dragon I’ve brought back with me. DO NOT BE ALARMED. Just don’t, whatever you do, spill barbeque sauce over yourself.

Oh, and in July and August I’ll be spending most of my time as a randy teenager with a cleavage obsession. God help us all.

[1] To be fair, I think he only hates unnecessary prologues. Whereas I would probably write a book made of nothing else, given half a chance.

Wu-Tome Clan: Too Hard Kill (11/5/2010)

Stephen — Tue, 11 May 2010 18:11:53 +0000

Because Sam Sykes asked me to, that’s why. Is that not reason enough?

[kung fu sample]
They told me, what happened, alright
You’re still young, and things like that always happen
When you’ll learn, then you’ll know not to make those mistakes

[Inspectah Lenk]
Really? These dudes don’t want it with Lenk, no, my sword glow
Hate it or you love it, but you gonna respect though
You ain’t got to know my name, check the blood, sweat & tears
For years fish-men know I bang
I’m a made killer, caking what you call a boss
On my own two, never taking orders from ya’ll
On a ship, get the god-men involved, it’s wreck on the yard-
arm. It’s Undergates, son, it’s more than hard
The life that’s all clamour and shit, best believe
On the flip side, killer, it’s them demons and fish
Wanna live in high fashion and rich, so we scramble the ship
The Tome, son, with they hand on the grip
Ain’t nothing gon’ stop Lenk from getting his due
No, your feets not big enough to fit in his shoe
I don’t rock what you rap, fishes, they be pole
God of War, just not HBO
They under fire, this crew that I come to know
They know they time up, guess that’s why they hate me so
But yo, they will never take me though, I had to go like
Psychotic, licking, slicking crazy blow
Still I be Hard to Kill like Seagal
Warrior built, big shield and long sword
Fucked up in my head, doing it, king size
Salutations, that’s respecting the king eyes
For those that follow my lead, attract to the fight
At the same time, marvel the speed
I’m so dope, I can bottle it free
The most influential, modern day murderous he

[U-Gariath]
Yo, deep in the bungalo, stomping the motherload
Carving my own path, taking another road
I need to boss the fight, he brought the troops with him
It sound apocalyptical, that’s the truth within
Want just the I to die with glory, that ain’t no bandinage
I’m on the warpath, death with no camouflage
And my way is hard, the Wolverine skeleton
I be the dragon man, crushing life out in my hand
But my anger is a brand, light up the darkness
I’m brute strength killer, yeah, I’m heartless
My heart rent to a hole I’m unstoppable,
Half frenzy, half indestructible
I told you before, under worser conditions
Crotchboxing, Daenos, you in a dead body position

[Masta Kat]
Aiyo, it’s time to make cash dinero
I’m coming from the Shictland concert to bash your hero
Lie up in your bedroom, smash your bureu
We looking for the Tome, man, divide by zero
Demons in the house, pass the book
And, we don’t want to have to stop to look
Cuz we ain’t gon’ be laughing then
One Shict bitch, take on your whole staff and win
Look, humans stay messing with the Kat’s future
And that weighs on me heavy like Rasputia
But I still keep spitting coz I hotshot
I’mma be still dissing your opinon as the arrow pop
From the bow of my rage to make your heart stop
Bleeding on the beach like a short cop
It’s your girl Kat, Undergates’ own
All you purple-ass rap dudes, please stay home, come on

I had to, you understand. I was not given a choice.

Now go and vote TAP for the Gemmell Awards

Careful What You Wish For / The Wrong Trousers (26/01/10)

Stephen — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:50:27 +0000

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.

Story-Writing 101 (20/1/2010)

Stephen — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:20:07 +0000

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.

Travelling Hopefully (30/12/09)

Stephen — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 08:34:45 +0000

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… ) 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.