David Wake's Blog

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

Leonardo Da Vinci.

I’m approaching the abandoning point of quite a few projects.  I’m not saying they are Art, but they are carefully crafted art.  The trick is to realize when you are about to make it worse and stop.

I write using Microsoft Word and it’s been a struggle recently.  They ‘updated’ it and now tracked changes doesn’t work the same.  Some versions allow you to use ‘legacy’ comments, which is how they used to work, but not in my setup, apparently.  I wish they’d just stop fiddling with it.  Things change, and will always change, because Microsoft wizards (do they still use that job title?) have to justify their pay cheque.  So, they invent new features to wind up their users with every update.  They’re just making it worse.  Word was as close to perfection as it needs to be – it’s just a word processor, for Xxymn’s sake, not a rocket simulator.  Just stop.

However, I have been fiddling improving my own piece of software, so I can’t really talk.  I wrote a program to convert Word documents into HTML ready for conversion into an ebook.  I added features that made it worse.  So, I took them out, backtracking to a less dreadful version with less fiddling.  It works.  Stop, David, stop.

I think that sentiment should also apply to my keyboard, which, of course, I’ve been reconfiguring.  I have a key that types ‘£’ now and the Alt key is under my thumb.  But come on, it may not perfect, but it’s done.

The soon to be abandoned projects (that sounds like an awful way to say, ‘finished’) are The Crow’s Law (the second in The Daughters of Égraine trilogy) and A Dragon in the Title, written with J. R. Steel.  The latter novel took 42 years of wizardry, as it were.  It’s the first of a trilogy and there are actual wizards in it.  They are both being launched at ArmadaCon down in Plymouth and should be available on Amazon just after.

On Tuesday 4th November, I shall publish them both with abandon.

A lot of writers I know reward themselves with a treat if they write, say, 1,000 words or finish a chapter.  Given that most of writing seems to be playing small psychological tricks on yourself to knuckle down, this seems quite clever.  And who doesn’t like a Hobnob?

Except… consider this before you dunk your Rich Tea.

Recently, there was a study (and, as usual, I can’t remember where I read it, so I can’t reference it) where they took kids, primary school age, who liked doing art.  You know, sploshing water colours around, finger painting, etcetera.  Anyway, they took them to one side and let them get on with their art.  At the end of the session, they gave them a reward – a sweet, a biscuit, whatever.  I know, Jammie Dodgers, the lot of ’em.

This went on for a couple of weeks before they withdrew the reward.

Now, these kids, who had liked art for art’s sake, resented this and stopped doing their painting and drawing.  (How many future Leonardos, Donatellos, Raphaels and Michelangelos were ruined by this suddenly unethical experiment?  Not Nice – geddit?)

So, if you are giving yourself a chocolate bourbon for writing, then your writing becomes a chore, something that requires a reward to get through.

I recently flipped this around.  (And not just the chocolate digestive, which, apparently, we’ve all been eating upside down since they were invented.)

So, if I do this piece of housework, put that laundry on and do the other washing up, then I can write for a couple of hours.  Two things resulted from this.  First, the vacuuming is getting done, I’ve got clean shirts and the dishes are clean.  (And the Jaffa cakes are in the tin, not the barrel.)  Second, and more importantly, I’m enjoying writing more (one hopes that means it’s better) and I’m more productive.  I’m like the cat that got the Custard cream.

Oh, and third, I eat only the essential cookies, not the optional ones.

I did a guest blog recently and misspelt ‘guest’ such that, in my biography, I’ve been a quest at SF conventions.  This was queried, obviously, but perhaps the blogger thought, it was something we do at SF conventions.  And, you know, it could be.

I quite like the idea of being a quest.  It rather involves readers searching out the author’s books, battling extraordinary odds to defy the evil one and gain the secret knowledge.  Going on a journey as they always put on the back of fantasy books.  (Checks own fantasy book, yep.)  It sounds more exciting than just tapping the Zettle or clicking on Amazon.

The Jackdaw’s Choice is out, finally.  I launched it at ArmadaCon with a limited edition.  It’s the first of the Daughters of Égraine trilogy.  A story I wrote all in one go!  It tells the tale of Mara going on a journey… well, she does go on a journey.  It’s managed a few five-star reviews already, which is very satisfying.

Anyway, it’s here if you want a copy.  It’ll make a good gift too for the upcoming wintery nights when going out on a journey involves boots, coats and scarves, and it’s just warmer indoors.

I hope your quests, whatever they are, have happy conclusions.

I’m updating my website (email, life choices, office…) and it’s driving me to distraction. I ought to be writing, not faffing with editing systems, WordPress, HTML, web hosting, web forwarding, klystron generation, arctron energy, etc, etc, etc. A long time ago, I worked in computer science research and I’m finding my attitude ‘It should work like this, I said so at the time’, isn’t helping me actually use the stuff as it ended up being designed. Ho hum.

Bizarrely, I’ve taken part in some PhD research into the hassles and difficulties of modern technology. The interview was due to take an hour, but two-and-a-half hours later, I was still going, “…and another thing!”

So, watch this space as it gradually lurches back to the way it was.

You should always sail into the sea of the unknown on a voyage of discovery.

I go to Science Fiction conventions, events full of… well, everything. They’re a maelstrom of activity that washes over you in a sea fury?

Recently, a convention up in Sheffield. ‘Redemption’, asked me to be one of their Guests of Honour.  Quite something.  My fellow guests included a senior lecturer on ‘War Studies’ at Sandhurst, a videogame developer, an artist and a film historian specialising in silent cinema.

It was fantastic to be there, but I missed most of it.

There was, apparently, Fight Choreography for Writers (which I think I’ve now missed at three different conventions), Lock picking, Ration Roulette (a tasting session for survival rations) and talks on The Prisoner at 50 and Star Wars at 40.  You could be involved in the cabaret, the play, the ceilidh, Morris Longsword dancing or a publishing project.  There was a sewing workshop, Victorian martial arts lessons, cookery through the ages and the now obligatory Tea Duelling.

Lectures and discussions ranged from historical re-enactment, Artificial People (a talk on robots and androids in media and reality), on dystopian fiction (perfect for those studying English), What Are E-Sports?, Post-Apocalyptic Survival, Where Next for the Large Hadron Collider, How Safe Are We Digitally to Victorian Costuming,

That covers subjects like English, Physics, History, Media, Sport and Home Economics. I can’t think of any environment, even University, that offers so much intellectual stimulation in such a short span of space and time.

Myself? My guest talk was on writing and I starred in the play, Captain Tartan – Redemption.  I also ran a panel discussion called Where Have All The Heroines Gone?, which, due to last minutes changes, turned into just me, a bloke, mansplaining feminism to a room full of women.

I sold some books.

And it had a pirate theme.

I’m back from the Lincoln steampunk festival, Asylum, so named because it started off in a building built for the insane, and I had a revelation there.

I first came across steampunk at SF conventions and it seemed like fun, a fashion that might last a couple of years, nothing more. Co-incidentally, I started writing an adventure series set in Victorian times, which featured some genre elements, and realised that The Derring-Do Club was steampunk.

However, it’s the cultural side that I want to walk about here and I think it’s why the subgenre isn’t a mere fad and has gained longevity.

The literature strand at Asylum was in a school hall and the playground was a food court. There were burger bars, vegetarian dishes and a double decker bus, a proper red routemaster, serving proper ales with a gin bar on the top deck. (See view from the top, Morris dancers elbow bottom right.)  I walked in when some Morris dancers were doing a show to the gentlemen and ladies in their finery, and it struck me, quite forcibly, that I was surrounded by Britishness.

Of course, I was: it was a steampunk festival.

It was an all-inclusive, welcoming crowd bringing to the fore Morris dancing, politeness, tea drinking, industrial heritage, invention, eccentricity and a pride in – yes – the Empire. (The British Empire spanned the globe, the sun never set, etc, and it did bring civilisation to the colonies along with a global Pax Britannica. OK, OK, we mustn’t forget the atrocities and stupidities, I don’t wish to white wash history, but ours was the only empire where the subjugated nations, having gained independence, joined a club, so we could all get together to reminisce and play cricket. That’s something of which one ought to be proud.)

Steampunk is a mechanism to celebrate British culture that’s a million miles away from that nonsense on the nationalistic far right, EDL, BNP tabloid reading moronic gibberish. Englishness is inclusion, not exclusion; Englishness is politeness, not raised fists and shouting; Englishness is eccentricity and individuality, not identikit skinheads; Englishness is about appreciating other cultures (Balti anyone?), not forcing tea on anyone.

For example, there was a talk about etiquette that included how to shake hands. Men and women should present their hands differently: males with the usual start, but women ought to present the backs of their hands as if to initiate a hand kiss, though it becomes a handshake. It sounds quaint, old-fashioned, perhaps sexist, but the talk went on to say that transgender people can use this to easily indicate whether they wish to identify as male or female. That’s extraordinary when you think about it. Such diversity included and celebrated by the recreation of staid, repressive Victorian values – bizarre.

But it makes sense. The Victorians for all their faults were trying: the abolition of slavery, suffrage, rights, education, etc, etc, in a stumbling fashion, perhaps, but they went in the right direction nonetheless.

Steampunk is British pride done properly. Long live the Queen.

I’ve not blogged in a long time.

I was preparing a piece on the importance of touch typing, and the irony is not lost on me. I’ve been ill. It started with a slight swelling in my right foot accompanied by numbness and a tingling sensation that spread to my legs. It wasn’t unpleasant, pulling my trousers up over a mad tingling was oddly thrilling; but, particularly when it reached my bottom, it was fear inducing terrifying. Around the same time I also caught hypochondria off the internet.

After a while, it flipped: below the waist went back to normal, but above the waist various parts took it in turn to swell up, go numb, tingle or a combination of the all three. I’ve seen eight Doctors (sadly medical, rather than the actors in my favourite TV show), who have all shrugged in various ways. What are the criteria before I can claim Wake’s Syndrome?

Finally, after weeks, it settled in my hands.

My hands!

My motor skills were still there, I could feel textures and temperature, but the ‘signal noise’ meant anything I used to do purely by touch became impossible. I couldn’t do up buttons, I couldn’t handwrite and, worst of all, I couldn’t touch type. A writer who can’t write is a truly useless thing.

I tried dictation software, correct ‘so oft were’, no don’t write ‘so oft were’, oh undo, no, not the whole paragraph, don’t type that youth king stew bit computer… and so on, until there’s just a document full of swearing. It’s affected the way I speak.

“Hello comma Andy comma how are you question mark.”

Things like being unable to get my credit card wallet out of my pocket, while the cashier looked at me disparagingly and the queue behind built up impatiently, have given me a real appreciation of disability issues.

Gradually, at a Plutonic frozen nitrogen glacial speed, it’s gradually getting better. Typing became possible with an error every other word, then two per sentence and so on, until now it just feels really strange. I’ve not tried a thousand word sprint yet, but I am back to typing – phew.

However, the idea of finishing the third Derring-Do Club novel by the Steampunk convention, Asylum, has been blown out of the water. My heroines are nowhere near surviving the terrible events of the Invasion of the Grey, but I’m finally writing their adventures again.

So, my car, a rather fetching, pink Honda Jazz, only had a CD player, a format that is well and truly being bypassed much like vinyl.  (I know, I know, there will be collectors who say that you can’t get the music quality from anything other than a shiny disk or what you need for that real genuine experience is a string quartet in the backseat, but, you know, I’m an SF writer, people expect me to be cutting edge.)  Also, I keep forgetting to change the CDs in the car, so my choice of music has become somewhat limited.

As I had to go to a Honda dealership anyway due to the nearly annual car recall to fix a minor electrical part that might possible, 1 time in 10 trillion, burst into flames and oh, while you are here, do you fancy a new Honda; so, while there, I asked if there was an upgrade for the stereo – nope.  Try Halfords, they said.

So, I went to Halfords and asked if there were any options.  The chap there said he had the same problem with his Honda Civic (which as he works in a car place, probably wasn’t pink), why not try a Car Audio Specialist.

I tried the nearby Car Audio Specialists and they said, no problem at all, that’ll be £120 for the kit, 2 hours work at a sucking-of-teeth price, shall we call it a reasonable £240 all in.  I thought not.  I can surely beat £240.

There were options on-line.  I should have thought of that in the first place.  I ordered one for £21, including postage from Portugal, and I set about dismantling the car and fitting it.  It took half an hour of fear and worry to take the dashboard apart, five minutes to plug it in and say ten minutes to put it all back together again.

So, £240, including two hours of expert, versus £21 and an hour of amateur.

Even if I include the aborted Plan A, which was to build the kit from scratch, is only adds £27.75 and an hour of a faffing in Maplins.  That’s only becomes £48.75 and three hours of amateur, and I have a perfectly good soldering iron, which is bound to come in useful for something.

Since my success, I’ve added a Bluetooth receiver for £11.99, so I can play anything at all from my phone while it’s still tucked inside my pocket.  Technology eh?

But, and here’s the downside, I resent having to become an expert on so many things.  I’ve added car maintenance to bricklaying, plastering, fire installation… etc, etc, etc.

I’m an Indie Publisher, so I’m also an editor, proof reader, cover designer, copy editor, accountant, marketing director (thinking of firing myself from that one), lawyer, CEO, the poor  intern who makes the tea and so on and on.  I want to be a writer.

I���ve given two readings recently: the first at Dysprosium (the 66th Eastercon) and another in Moseley. The first was for a friend���s book, Touchstone by Andy Conway (well worth a look) leading into a discussion about Indie Publishing, and the second was to promote the Festival of Writing on Sun 26th April in Moseley���s Prince of Wales pub for the Pow-wow writing group. I read my own work for that one. By co-incidence, Andy Conway���s time travelling saga is set in and around Moseley and has a few scenes in the Prince of Wales, both today and at various points in the past.

At both I had a box of books, Andy���s and my own, for sale.

I didn���t sell any.

Of course, this isn���t that surprising; the audience for both talks were all fellow writers intent on selling their own books (or writing their own books and then selling ���em).

I remember flying at the Edinburgh Fringe and realising that the utterly packed Royal Mile was full, absolutely full, of actors, directors, stage hands and so on, all trying to sell their show to others who were trying to sell their show. There were no punters at all. People were agreeing to swap flyers. It was an exercise in getting rid of flyers, not in selling tickets.

The audience at both talks enjoyed them, I think (I hope), and that���s what it was all about. There may be another indie author created by the first talk eventually. I���m not sure we sold the Festival of Writing at the second one as such, everyone was going to go anyway. It was another flyer swap experience as we were all already in the same show.

I���m looking forward to the Festival of Writing (it was the Birmingham LitFest until Writing West Midlands created another one and nicked the name), but they don���t appear to have any programme items on Indie Publishing. To my mind, you can���t discuss publishing today without reference to this revolution. My talk at Eastercon was preaching to the converted as it was full of indies, and again it was flyers for those with flyers.

I should really have swapped the talks over: sold the festival to Eastercon, Indie Publishing to the festival crowd… and worn a different shirt.

At the end of the film The Time Machine, Filby and the Housekeeper realise that three books are missing from the shelf.�� They have been taken into the future!

There���s a scheme by Porcupine Books at the next Eastercon for people to give a short talk on a book that has influenced them.�� I���m one of the writers due to whiffle on about a book, but not one of the following three.

A friend of mine gave me three books for my sorry, birthday.�� They were The Mortdecai Trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli, Einstein���s Monsters by Martin Amis (for the essay Thinkability) and Who Will Remember the People by Jean Raspail.�� The three books that influenced his life.

What are these books for me, I wonder.

I think they are The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, Introduction to Pascal (Second Edition) by Jim Welsh and John Elder and Let���s Get Digital by David Gaughran.�� It���s rather an odd collection now I write it down.

The Day of the Triffids is also rather a stand-in.�� I could have chosen The Chrysalides, also by Wyndham, or any number of others.�� I trying to recall that book that got me into Science Fiction, but I���m not sure I remember it or that there even was one.�� I wish there was one, but there really isn���t.�� It might be one of the Target Doctor Who books.�� The Hitch-Hiker���s Guide to the Galaxy came much later and I���m a fan of the radio (and perhaps a theatre) version.�� Telly with Doctor Who and Blake���s 7.�� It���s all a bit rubbish compared to those who say The Lord of the Rings changed my life.

On the other hand, Introduction to Pascal was the manual of a life change.�� I went to University to do Civil Engineering – mad idea, what was I thinking – and I realised my enormous mistake about four weeks into the course.�� Somewhere I have the very fluid mechanics test that left me high and dry, and pushed me over the edge and into deep water – as it were.�� I turned the page over and made notes on the back as I went through the University prospectus to find an alternative course, any alternative course.�� So, after Anthropology, Astrology, Astronomy, Biology and Carpentry had all turned me down, Computer Science was next in the alphabet.�� They accepted me on a Friday to start the following Monday.�� I was four weeks behind, I panicked.�� (As it turned out I was further behind in Civil Engineering than I was in Computer Science, but I didn���t realise that at the time.)�� I bought the only book on the recommended reading list that I���d been told about and I read it cover-to-cover – twice.�� I didn���t think I followed it at all.�� During the first workshop on programming, we were given twelve questions and I was hopelessly stuck on Question 6.�� You can���t turn a computer round and make notes on the back about Cover Design, Drama, Education or English Language.�� (As if I���d do any of those.)�� Oh god, I thought, I have just wasted my life.

I turned to one of my brand new colleagues and whispered, ���I���m stuck on Question 6 – help!���

���What!��� they replied, ���but we���re all stuck on Question 2.���

I love programming in Pascal, still do, even though it���s now hidden in an IDE called Lazarus.

Let���s Get Digital by David Gaughran did change my life.�� I wanted to know where I was academically with writing, so I did the MA at Birmingham City University.�� I sort of walked it, but then I had been doing all the modules on an ad hoc basis over and over for the past dozen years.�� I wish I���d not done the intensive version and spread it out over two years, because I enjoyed it so much and it would have been nice to appreciate the scenery during the journey.�� I even snuck into film course I wasn���t doing run by Andy Conway.�� (It���s his book I���ll be whiffling about at Eastercon.)�� We got chatting, I started to give him lifts home and he said I should self-publish.

���Oh, but isn���t that vanity publishing.���

���No, not at all, read this ebook by David Gaughran.���

So I did.�� Interesting, I thought.�� By page 5, I thought I must get a Kindle one day; by page 10, it was on my Christmas list; by page 15, I���d ordered one and by page 20, I was coding in html.�� My conversation from occasional playwright to committed indie publisher was faster than someone with a road map to Damascus asking for a bit of light to read by.

Would I take these three books off to the future with me?

Probably not, because I���ve read them.

A Kindle can contain more books than you can read in a lifetime, so, if you could only take three books to the future, surely you���d choose a Kindle and… two other Kindles.

You know, perhaps I should have added the first novel I published to this list of books that changed my life, but it���s kind of cheating.�� Or should it be the first one I completed? ��To steal and paraphrase an anecdote from Peter Ustinov, the favourite book of my own is, of course, the next one.�� (Actually, it���s not as it���s being a bit awkward.)

And your three books?