Month: July 2012 (Page 2 of 2)

I didn’t get to watch this when it was first out as I don’t have sky TV but I picked up the blur-ray on an off chance it might be good. It was recommended to me so it wasn’t entirely pot luck and I do often like a good fantasy plot, on top of that I love dragons.

The first episode was like most first episodes of tv series, they had packed everything you were likely to find offensive about the series into the first episode so you’d know if you were likely to be interested or not before bothering with the rest. As such, there was a lot more nudity and gore than I would usually like in something I watch but as the series progressed it mellowed out a little. Don’t get me wrong, there were still quite a lot of sexual refrences, shots of naked women, and plenty of blood but much less than the first episode.

The plot was the shows biggest redeeming feature and if I hadn’t decided I liked the characters I’d have definitely given up after the first couple of episodes. I just, personally, don’t see the need for all the explicit stuff all the time. But as mentioned I really really liked the characters, Sean Bean was on top form and there were a few other actors who will now be on my to watch list.

Annoyingly there was not that much to do with dragons but the last episode made me hopeful there would be some more dragon stuff in the next series. All in all though I think I might try the books. I can more easily gloss over the bits I don’t like in a book so I don’t have to read about all the sex and gore.

Also at the time of writing this the ebook is only £3.99 and it’s over 280,000 words long so I’ve snapped it up and will get reading, hopefully I can review that too and say which people might prefer.

I always find new ideas a bit distracting but I got very very distracted by a blog post here about mixing genre’s and general book mash-ups. I noticed in the list of genres for insipartion my old favourite, steampunk, and remembered that a while ago I had told myself I should really see if I could come up with some kind of steampunk book. I also really like the concept of dragons. I always have, great big fire-breathing monsters with wings, who wouldn’t like them?

So I suddenly had an image in my head of a victorian style house all powered by steam, and who makes that steam, you guessed it, the posh victorian families pet dragon! Steampunk, dragon style! So far all my plot consists of is that thought and something to do with a young servant, either male or female. It’s not much to go on but it’s already got me totally distracted.

Of course I have no idea where or when to set this book (other than something vaguely victorian) but that leaves a lot to be decided. Shame I’ve got a few too many other projects to be looking at to write it just yet but we’ll see. I do want to write a choose your own adventure style book though so you never know, choose your own dragon steampunk adventure anyone?

You’re a young male servant to the lord Rushdale and live in the servants quarters there. Your main job is to feed the two young dragons that provide the fire needed to create steam for the houses many contraptions. As usual you head down to the cellar of the house and to the semi-tame pets that will already be waiting for their food. The sun is not yet up, just like the family you serve but the four deep gold eyes greet you in the deeps of the house.

The left one, coughs and lights a fire, chasing away many of the cellar’s shadows and showing you both animals. They are still just babies but almost completely trained. You chuck them the six lambs you’ve been lugging over your shoulder and watch as they chargrill them and wolf them down. The slightly larger of the sibling dragons turns it’s eyes back on you as if to beg for more, just as you notice their spiky tails have knocked a hole in the back wall.

While you’ve been waiting the sun has started to rise and you can see daylight through the opening. You walk past both animals, neither of them aggressive to you and rightly so, you’ve been training and feeding them since they arrives six months ago.

With a little extra force from a tail whip or two the opening could be made big enough for the dragons to get out. You pause, thoughtful as the male dragon nuzzles your hand, really hoping there will be more food.

What do you do?

Get some more lamb and ignore the hole?

Tell Lord Rushdale about the hole and see to it the dragons don’t escape.

Encourage the dragons to make a bigger hole?

There’s two events happening that I’d like to draw people’s attention too.

The first is happening this evening at Roseberry Road arts studio in Bath, just off lower Bristol Road, and is a literary and performance night. There’s going to be lots of writerly based activities and readings as well as some easy listening jazz and I think some other performance style things. It’s sure to be fun and on top of that any poems tweeted with the hashtag #freedomarts will be projected on a display during the evening.

I’m going to be there of course so drop in and say hi or at the least come up with some funky short poetry.

Secondly this time next week it’s my birthday and in honour of that I’m launching the latest ebook Chains of Freedom.

This has been in the works for a while and is another historical adventure with romance novel. For the launch date the price is going to be reduced to $0.99/£0.77 and then the day after it will be raised to it’s full price again. There’s a facebook event page here with lots more details and is open invite so anyone can invite anyone else.

In the next couple of days I’ll create a book page on the website here for it and post a few reviews as they come in.

In the mean time I hope you like the front cover and will consider making my birthday special and joining the facebook group.

Last Month

I’ve only actually been at work for about 12 working days of this month thanks to the jubilee weekend health issues and my yearly summer holiday so I’m not going to bother with a bullet list for my recent activities.

I’ve managed to get Chains of Freedom completely finished and that should be published in less than a weeks time. I’ll blog with more info on that very very shortly.

Other then that I’ve focused on keeping Sherdan’s going on the blog here and writing the latest novel. I update my progress bars on the right roughly once per week so you can see where I’m at there.

On top of that I’ve read a heck of a lot while resting this month and there will be some more book reviews coming up to cover the best of those.

This Month I’m still on holiday for the first week even though there’s also the literary night I’m part of tomorrow evening in Bath. For more details on that check out tomorrow’s blog.

I want to make serious inroads into shattered and get it at least close to finished this month. My aim is somewhere around 25-30k words of that. If I have time I’ll also then do the second draft of For Such a Time as This and hopefully not much after that have my edits for the rest of Sherdan’s back to progress that to the next stage. By then I’m highly likely to be into August though.