ARADABAR LOST Avia fled through the ash-smothered streets of Aradabar, and the Rot’s fiery black tongue swept close behind. Moths and Butterflies thudded to ground around her, bursting on cobbled stone, their broad wings seared away by the Rot’s ashen touch. Through breaks in the city’s skyline of library towers she glimpsed the column of flame rising from the horizon, like a brilliant orange flower painted on the sky. The mountain was erupting; one last defense against the Rot, and soon the great city of Aradabar would be gone. Screams rang out from behind her, but there was nothing she … Read More
Here’s to a Great 2015
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Virtutibus igitur rectissime mihi videris et ad consuetudinem nostrae orationis vitia posuisse contraria. Te enim iudicem aequum puto, modo quae dicat ille bene noris. Sint modo partes vitae beatae. Cum praesertim illa perdiscere ludus esset. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Quarum ambarum rerum cum medicinam pollicetur, luxuriae licentiam pollicetur. Alterum significari idem, ut si diceretur, officia media omnia aut pleraque servantem vivere. Qui-vere falsone, quaerere mittimus-dicitur oculis se privasse; Non est enim vitium in oratione solum, sed etiam in moribus. Nummus in Croesi divitiis obscuratur, pars est tamen divitiarum. Si quicquam extra virtutem … Read More
MJG’s 2014 writing roundup and lessons learned
2014 has been a huge year for me, on many levels. A lot has changed with my writing, life, travel, qualifications, job, and overall existence. There’ve been lots of transitions and new developments. This post is all about my writing developments, and all the lessons learned: The story so far (up to 2014) At the end of 2013 I put out two trial balloon short story collections on amazon, self-published. The last time I dallied with such self-publishing was probably 2011, when I put up a single short story, which was also available for free on the internet in various … Read More
Great Ruins Sonata reviews!
The Ruins Sonata, my trilogy of science fiction dystopian post-tsunami apocalypse thrillers- Mr. Ruins, King Ruin, and God of Ruin -just got some stellar reviews from a review site called Bartleby’s reviews. They give away a good chunk of the plot, but not in a way that’ll ruin the books I think. Hopefully it’ll just tempt you to check them out :). To help with that decision, Mr. Ruins is free on amazon.com for the foreseeable future. Mr. Ruins review at Bartleby King Ruin review at Bartleby God of Ruin review at Bartleby
Why ‘The Girl With All the Gifts’ gives almost all I wanted – book review
★★★★ The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey is a perspective-flipping zombie road novel with a very great deal to recommend it. It starts off extremely tight-focused, homed in on one little girl and her experience of her bizarre, locked-box (Pandoran?) school, then explodes outward in a way most zombie stories don’t- digging into the science of the zombie infection, zooming into the epidemic hypocenter, and giving us a haunting sense of closure. All the gifts indeed. Yet- I can’t say I loved it. I’ll get into why after I say everything that was so good. There’ll … Read More
Ruined Cartmel Farmhouse and Priory
Cartmel is a tiny village located at the bottom of the Lake District in the NorthWest of the UK, famous for two things- a racecourse that brings in punters nationally perhaps once a year, and L’Enclume, a Michelin-stared restaurant now dubbed the best restaurant in the uk. Also there are plenty of ruins… This past weekend I went up to Cartmel with my wife SY, firstly to attend my brother’s wedding (congratulations Joe and Vicky!) as best man, which was an excellent experience, and secondly to take a mini-holiday in the middle of nature. Cartmel stood out to us because … Read More
Women’s Prayer Breakfast
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed quod proximum fuit non vidit. Videmus igitur ut conquiescere ne infantes quidem possint. Prave, nequiter, turpiter cenabat; Sic enim censent, oportunitatis esse beate vivere. Qui est in parvis malis. Quid enim me prohiberet Epicureum esse, si probarem, quae ille diceret? Hic nihil fuit, quod quaereremus. Duo Reges: constructio interrete.
God of Ruin – The Ruin War 3
God of Ruin is a Hard SF thriller, Book 3 in the Ruin War trilogy. Your heart is the door into hell. In the destructive struggle for the Aetheric Bridge, elite Graysmith Ritry broke his soul into seven constituent parts. Now those parts roam the world blinded by loss and new addictions, mopping up holdouts from the war with King Ruin. But the real war has only just begun. From the ashes of King Ruin’s defeat a god-like power rises, with a solitary decree- an unstoppable flood is coming, to wash everything clean. And Ritry is a soul divided. How … Read More
story craft #19 Weight in a Name
You’ve probably heard of the callback, a technique comedians use to get fresh mileage out of an old joke, often with exponentially uproarious results. Here’s a callback in Seinfeld: Seinfeld did these a lot, in this case it was a callback and a kind of catch phrase linking back to a previous episode, that when repeated multiple times, only gets more power. Master of my domain. I use these sometimes just hanging out with people- something gets mentioned early on, you see a chance to mention it again later, tangentially related to what they’re saying, boom, everybody laughs. Everybody uses … Read More
Why The Maze Runner outruns all logic – movie review
★★★ The Maze Runner by James Dashner (Dash is a good name for a book about running) is an infuriatingly good example of taking great liberal splashes of all the great stuff that went before (LOST, Truman Show, Hunger Games), and not learning the key lesson from any of them. It is fun, it is rollicking, but by the end (and after reading the synopses of its sequels on wikipedia) I just feel like it’s empty, like a jester’s sad bauble-bladder deflated of all air. Disappointing. But, if you’re not burned out still on the let-down cop-out ending of a … Read More