I have young children. Some days I'm up so early I hardly have time to get into bed.
Husband, father, Fantasy author. Usually tired or asleep. Debut novel The Scholar's War out now from Divertir Publishing. Read a free sample on Amazon or Divertir website. Not rep'd yet. I ignore DM's.
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I have young children. Some days I'm up so early I hardly have time to get into bed.
Great. I take co-codamol for my knackered back, and now I have a song for it.
Not his best, but still a very good read.
I love the sentiment. Sadly though, for many, what divides Americans is more important than what unites them.
Good to hear 🙂
Why's that?
My flaw, eh? OK.
Yeah, it is already happening, but in a way designed to test resistance to it. There's not been enough, so Trump might see this incident as the right time to go a lot further.
Possible. I'm more concerned that the immediate reaction will be to move towards martial law - this is a gold-plated excuse. There may or may not then be an explosive backlash to that, and if there is then yes, it's a major inflection point.
And he might have been in jail, if 75 million-odd halfwits hadn't voted him back into office.
Christianity mystifies me anyway.
Today my old back injury means I can't sit at the PC for long, I'm hunched over and can't stand straight. Quite a lot of pain. Haven't got much done. I'll try to write tomorrow. #amwriting #novel #pain
This rather assumes there will be another Democratic President, or indeed, any fair elections in which a Democrat might stand.
For years I've said "The Running Man". The novel is full of social commentary that the Arnie film missed completely. I have high hopes for the new remake.
Clever.
Important to understand that yes, this has been unboxed by Farage etc - but it was always there. All they've done is make it permissible to show it. We've lived among unsuspected bigots for years.
It's been said that Sci-fi is stories in situations that might one day be possible, while Fantasy is in situations that will never be. I.e. SF has spaceships (possible), F has dragons (not possible). In a storytelling sense, however, there's a huge amount of overlap.
In fairness I am now quite scared of going to Chicago.
In 2024, French economic growth was 1.1%, Italy's 0.7%, Netherlands 1%, and Germany shrank by 0.5%. The UK's figure was 1.1% - as good as the best of major EU economies. Hard to tell exactly where Brexit has "fucked" the country, really.
Slow doesn't matter. Audiobooks count as reading, they ARE reading, and anyone who denies that is a boneheaded dribble monster. Here endeth the lesson.
Shear bliss!
Oh, stop it. Every third story in the world today is about how we're all going to die from climate disaster unless we wise up and go Green. How much free publicity does a party need? Holy hell, every 20 minutes there's a global conference on the need to save this or that, and the news always runs it
Because he knows how to play the publicity game, put simply. He pitches himself as a bloke down the pub when he's a former accountant in London, a finance man, and makes it convincing enough that people believe it. No Tory, Green, or Labour leader has come close to matching that gift.
Agree, that's a big part. Blair accepting the right-wing mantra of supply-side economics was a disaster too. The last 45 years of policy have enriched a very few and impoverished far too many. People know that, and resent it, so they reach for populist solutions. Reform, AfD, Brothers of Italy, etc.
That may be part of it. I think disillusionment and a sense of betrayal are a larger part. It is hard, in fairness, to be constantly told the UK is richer than ever, the stock market higher etc; and yet not to feel the benefit of that. To be worse off than our parents. What went wrong?
Not sure if you've noticed, but I haven't once spoken support for Farage. You're preaching to the choir here, Graham. My point is, again, that whatever you or I feel, a LOT of people feel as I described. Saying they're wrong misses the point. They feel that way, and it's dangerous.
I keep hearing this, and it's partly why he succeeds - people don't understand the reasons for his success. He's tapped into a well of voters who feel abandoned, forgotten and dismissed, just as Trump has, and Meloni, and le Pen. Blaming the media is lazy and wrong.
Right now, he gets the space because Reform is leading the polls. In the past it was because he built a party (UKIP) that broke into the mainstream and kept winning EU elections in the UK. Like or loathe him, Farage is the most important UK politician of the past 30 years. He's news.
No, it's not. Reform is the result of too many people feeling betrayed by the main parties. Doesn't matter if their issue is immigration, or Europe, or anything else: what matters is they feel ignored, overlooked, left behind, and forgotten.
There's truth to that, yes. Still, the question was why Reform get the media attention, and the polls are part of the answer.
In fairness, when was the last time the Greens spent six months topping the opinion polls? Like Reform or loathe them, their popularity is what gives them a platform.
They're afraid. They think Mamdani might be the future, the first of a wave of young politicians who will sweep Cuomo and his like, and all they believe, into irrelevance. I hope he is.
I seem to have accidentally written a Dark Romantasy. Well, when I say 'accidentally,' I don't mean I went out to do some gardening and came back with a first draft. (Dem clever, those radishes). I mean that Dark Romantasy is not what I'd intended, but reading it back... #amwriting #novel #fantasy
Yeah, you throw a veiled comment and then deny it was meant. Heard that before. Thanks for the link.
Maybe the dream of an America that never was.
Nice sarcasm, work on it a little and you might get really acerbic. Or, you could send me a link to this Finland "work and results", which I'd appreciate.
Again, fair enough. But it really is millennia, and we really can't keep it safe.
Fair point. Me, I'm against nuclear in any circumstances, because we can't keep the radioactive waste safe. Not for tens of thousands of years.
Molly, uh, doesn't LOOK like a Thing of Evil...
Lignite, the "dirty coal", still gives Germany 16% of its power. Natural gas and hard coal give 21%. www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/g... Shall we wait until AFTER the coal plants are shut, before we celebrate?
Shows how well my WIP is going, that I wrote 950 words today and am disappointed. #awriting #booktok #author #fantasy #novel
The laws to prevent this already exist. But no wall works as a defence if nobody is willing to stand guard on it. The Legislative branch, and the Judicial, have abandoned their responsibilities. No law can be written to guard against willing capitulation to a tyrant.
Great achievement! I bet they won lots of trophies.
Hard to see Salah's tears at the end of LIVBOU. Such an emotional day. Hard as well to see racial abuse allegedly aimed at Semenyo. The sorrow for Diogo Jota ought to remind us that we're all brothers, all sisters. In all that, the football hardly matters. #LIVBOU #Salah #DJ20 #Jota #football
Showoff.
IT, Stephen King. I guess a lot of people will pick it, and with good reason. It's still scary now, when I've read it a dozen times, and it's also the best evocation of the hope and innocence of childhood that I ever read.
1988, isn't it?
Managed another 850 yesterday, so it's all good.
I've been doing this for 3 days and written 2,500 words. Sadly, the 800 I managed yesterday have been deleted. Such is life.
Slow (Kylie Minogue)
Well, I did 581 words today, and 800 or so yesterday, so I guess I'm doing it.
Both my daughters. They're aged 8 and 10, and in a world that's markedly more dangerous, unstable, and threatening than the one they were born into. I fear for their generation. They could all do with a blessing.
And so the election is stolen, without a single stuffed ballot box. No need for them.
What would you think if merpeople lived in the lagoon by your city, but none of them were female? What would you guess that means? #fantasy #amwriting #thescholarswar #novel #freesample
I agree, yes. My current WIP has magic that may or may not be sentient - nobody knows, there's no way to find out. So sometimes magic does something unexpected, and plain weird, and the people have to work out what just happened.
How can someone have not anticipated it? This lot are brutal, they're indifferent to the suffering of others, they're sociopathic, and they're fascist.
Over 3,000 words written on the WIP today. I can't recall the last time I got so many in a day. "Your heart always aches when you see the stars." #WIP #amwriting #Fantasy
Late July Basil sounds like a friend of Bertie Wooster.
Stop it. I'm 57, and I can feel 60 peering around the corner at me, but that's not right, I can't be nearly 60, I was 21 just five minutes ago.... Aaargh!
Very true. If God is real, then surely we grow closer to him in the midst of all the beauty of the world, and not inside a cold stone box.
Bad for Good (Jim Steinman)
Agree. Stephen King says the same - have a child's bike on its side in the street, to add a mundane touch. Then people will more easily believe in the aliens, or monsters.
Groundhog Day. The Deer Hunter.
Well done, Sasha. Having the grit and perseverance to see it through and finish is quite rare. Good for you.
Would you like to read the start of my novel for free? Mani speaks to the Sea-Goats, trying to learn. Meanwhile the Mad King wants to live forever, and immortality is one of the secrets the Sea-Goats guard. Can Mani's wits defeat the Mad King's power? www.divertirpublishing.com/books/tsw.html
Like Springfield and Shelbyville....
"A little rebellion, now and then is a good thing."
I would buy farms and rewild them, with forests and meadows, and lakes teeming with fish. Insects would flourish, birds would sing; and just perhaps, a part of the ancient old-growth world would reappear.
That's right. 2 years ago I only had about 12 plants, but I took care of the offshoots and now I have 45 or so. I've got 3 pounds of summer raspberries too. Lots of jam to be made!
I got about 5 and a half pounds of strawbs this year, very good crop.
The Dem establishment will be appalled. What, people on the ground trying to take control? The shock! But this is how Democrats can win.
Talent matters a lot less than work ethic.
Does it make any difference whether Congress consented? It agreed to attack Iraq in 2003, for equally spurious reasons.
These days it's often as well to leave the mapmaking to the readers. Popular books might well have online forums where people draw maps, exchange character sketches, and speculate on side stories.
The sad thing is that you've set a very, very low bar... and so many people can't clear it.
Hiram is the educated, book-smart one. Elia and Cal, a soldier and a thief, both brim with streetwise shrewdness. Lastly is Aisha, self-taught and very knowledgeable, but with big holes in her learning.
Probably, what I'll be doing is leaving them alone to enjoy their lives.
All true. I said in 2020 that people needed to vote Trump out, but doing so was useless unless people voted against him and the GOP next time, and the time after, and so on and on. They didn't. No system can survive the indifference of those meant to protect it.
Netanyahu's arrogance and stupidity are leading the Middle East into war and ruin. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9...
Different cultures, with strange customs; and creatures I've never seen before.
Name 3 books you've read at least twice: King Solomon's Mines (H Rider Haggard). Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson). Nation (Terry Pratchett).
Watching 'Reacher' at the moment, so I'm about as safe as can be.
I'm sorry to say it, but right now Trump is winning. He has soldiers on the streets to face peaceful demonstrators and no one has stopped him. From now on he can do that anytime. Opposition has become dangerous, many are cowed into silence. It's sad and horrifying to watch.
Trees have always been a big part of the answer. Plant rows of them along the streets, plant parks in the cities. Most of all, plant forests where old industry stripped the land. Air under a canopy is much cooler, and that spreads to the surrounding area.
Still works today, one of the greats.
Is this real? It's so extreme that I'm thinking deepfake, surely?
The scenery is exquisite, there's a real sense of time and place, and grandeur, and the sorrow of its loss.
I wouldn't bother either, can't be arsed. Most people are too stubborn to change their opinion even in the face of new evidence. If someone asks me about something, then I'm happy to discuss it, but these adversarial setups are a waste of everyone's time.
Good grief, no. Shuttle was always a terrible error, losing the ability to reach the Moon in exchange for reaching low orbit. It was also ruinously expensive, Newer launch systems are vastly cheaper, and can take astronauts further. Shuttle's days are over.
We should push for reforestation in our own countries. Industrialisation caused huge woodland loss, of which must could be restored.
No mention for Ed Wood?
All of that sounds interesting! I enjoy hearing other authors talk about their process, particularly. I'm happy to be a guest if you do this - my debut trad novel is just out now.
Isn't writing relaxing? I know, I know... but in a funny kinda way, isn't it?
1984, though I wish I could pick 1989 too.
I had a man called Luthien, who'd sworn an oath to God that he'd never drink alcohol, use violence etc again. I meant him to keep the oath, but reached a point where he just... wouldn't. To be true to who the character was, I had to have him break the oath. Never saw it coming.
Cutting...
It's begun.
Mine wiggle about anyway, as they fight for prime warm positions next to the stones in shallow water. Fighty little b*st*rds.
We'll make it, but not as we are now. The times they are a'changin'.