The Right Amount of Evil

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I’ve got a new villain. One of the tricks with making these damn things is they cutter up your mind, getting under your mental feet.  I don’t naturally think in evil ways — although I’m sure Hitler thought much the same thing — so trying to come up with vile, insideous things is not a natural act for me. Still, I’m getting with the programme. I spent today writing a scene with the villain of Night’s Fall, and it gets under my skin a little.  I hope you enjoy his end as much as I will.

I Forgive You

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I’m talking about you, Destiny. Taken King came out last night.  I’m now taking methamphetamines to be able to hit my life goals: Keep my job; Write a book; Play Destiny. Working okay so far! Also, I like Nolan North as the new Ghost.  Nothing against Dinklage, I mean he was good too — but it’s nice when you get awesome twice.

Introspection

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Having a honeymoon is awesome for many non-obvious reasons. One of those is having two weeks where, for the most part (those parts not engaged in vigorous activity) you do nothing but think.  I spent a lot of time thinking — about life, what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it.  Getting priorities straight. A curious thing occurred to me: my current job is kicking my ass.  It’s hard, it’s long, and this week is the first week I’ve not been on a fucking plane to a different city in over seven months.  I love the people I work with and the company I work for, but I feel jetlagged all the time.  Worse, I feel disconnected from the stuff that’s really important: my wife, my friends, our family.  So, working on changing that … I’ve started a dialogue inside the Read More …

Progress

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How goes progress on Night’s Fall? Well.  I guess we’re about half way?  Just thought I’d keep you updated — stuff is happening.  I’d like to get it done before Christmas, but I suspect that’s not a realistic goal, because my salaried work sucks my time out through my eyeballs.

You Are Probably Awesome

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People will lie to you. I caught up with an old work colleague and friend for a coffee yesterday.  She was in this situation where her work — where I used to work — is telling her a bunch of things.  Top of mind are: You are bad at your job, and Because of this, we’re going to demote you and pay you less money. Having worked for the very same place, and experiencing at least one of those things (constant negative feedback, which we’ll get to in a moment) and a partial on the other (due to contract, they couldn’t demote me, but they avoided raises when they were applied across rest of the team), I was a sympathetic ear.  I think I was also a useful ear, because I mentioned to her that: She is in fact good at Read More …

The Rock I’ve Been Under

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Ahem. You know when you’re meeting a friendly, and they ask you what has happened since April? So, that’s me. Turns out, things are kind of exciting from my end. I’m making good progress on Night’s Fall – it’s probably at about the 50% mark as of today.  And by 50%, I mean first draft, so don’t get too excited.  I know there’s a number of you — you know who you are — who keep asking me how that sequel is coming along. You might, therefore, be asking, “Richard, so.  Tell me.  Why no blog posts?”  It’s a little like this.  The new job is very exciting and has me working at a level that is rewarding, but it’s sucking free time out through my eyeballs.  Given a choice between blogging, and writing, I would rather write – it will give Read More …

On Passwords

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Man, I don’t get why my online banking has lower requirements than the thing I would use to file medical receipts.  It’s my data, FFS, so I just dropped this in to their customer contact bin. Hi – I tried to set up my southern cross today, and got to the password page where it requires two letters and two numbers. I stopped there and won’t be continuing – you’re asking me to keep a different type of password to what I usually use, and I’d be constantly forgetting it and having to reset. Just thought you’d find the feedback useful; since it’s my data you’re holding it’s not your job to tell me security requirements as it’s my risk, and I doubt I’ll be using the service until it better suits my needs.  As it happens the password I Read More …

An Origin Story

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I love making characters. I thought you might like to hear an aborted origin story for Carter.  In case you don’t know, she’s Mason’s handler in Upgrade.  Like many of the actors in the book, I played with a bunch of ideas for her — whether she should be human or an alien, or a machine, or a collective consciousness.  It’s this last one that I found … interesting (and I can share with you, because: no spoilers!  It’s not what she ended up being). A few years ago my Dad died.  That was a hard thing as many of you who’ve gone through similar will know, but I consider myself luckier than some: not only did we have a good relationship despite living in different countries, we communicated all the time.  I have reams of letters from before the Internet, and Read More …

Girls Who Are Girls

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I was talking with a friend the other day and the topic of my characters came up. We were really talking about women and empowerment, but I’ll take it.  Anyway, what I always find interesting is that people seem to think that girls should be written differently to men.  I mean sure, I get that women tend to not call each other by nicknames like, “Bullethead,” and “Axe,” or call their friends by their surnames (unless they’re Carlisle), but why can’t they be strong, powerful, and save the world? If enough content creators decide that enough is enough and write strong women by default, maybe we’ll eventually be able to stop talking about it because they won’t be strong — they’ll be normal.    

It’s About Time

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Wow, man, starting a new job takes some time out of your life. Still, the training wheels are off: I started with Microsoft in late January, and I’ve been parachuted onto a client site already.  It’s pretty spectacular – lots to do and learn, for what feels like the first time in a long time.  Getting my writing thing back in gear has been tricky.  Mostly, time.  Good news: I’ve started to master that which means you’re going to see Night’s Fall at some point.  End of the year, maybe? Wait, what?  WTF is Night’s Fall? Sure.  I started writing Boundless last year, but it wasn’t working quite right for me.  A bunch of problems with the way I write and what I want to write like meant that shifting from a world with pop culture hooks to a new Read More …