So I spent a lot of time compiling a Chance playlist yesterday, hoping that this would inspire me. It contains a lot of Mano Negra, Devendra Banhart and Smooth by Santana & Rob Thomas, for some reason. 

I’m rereading the Mervin Peake‘s Gormenghast Trilogy. I read it a long long time ago, and can hardly remember anything, so I’m giving it another go. Think maybe I was too young for it last time. I do soo love his illustrations as well. I had the good fortune of seeing his prints for Samuel Taylor’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner last year at Wordsworth’s house up in the Lake District. I love it when you get little surprises like that. 

I killed the albatross!

I’ve been thinking about genre stereotypes, or stereotypes in general, I suppose. As in: I’m trying to avoid them. Some of my pet hates, when it comes to female characters (I almost wrote as written by men here, but that would be a lie – female authors do this as well, although not to such a great extent) is the Saint or Whore female. Both are gorgeous (naturally), but where the first has dignity, self-sacrifice and Goodness (and aren’t they boooring) the second is a scheming spider who enthralls the (helpless? duped?) men with her sexual power until she gets whatever it is she wants from them and then she destroys them (or they, ultimately, destroy her). The Whore is generally a more interesting and complex character, in my own humble opinion, but sigh. So predictable. Just because you’re writing genre, doesn’t mean it has to be predictable, does it? That’s why I like reading (and writing) about arse-kicking female leads. They are no less stereotypical – it’s the Terminator 2′s Sarah Connor and Alien’s Ripley School of Heroics – but if I have to read about a fairly one-dimensional character I’ll rather she can strangle demons with her bare hands than just be a helpless victim to be saved and cried over. I’m not helpless and I resent being portrayed that way. It makes my inner Suffragette stand up and chain herself to the metaphorical gates of bloody chauvinism.

Anyway. I only recently noticed there’s a definite lack of female characters in A Game of Chance, and the ones I’ve got are all slightly deranged. Not that the male characters aren’t. Heh… In my defense, I just write the characters as they pop up in my head—I don’t really worry about gender unless I’ve subconsciously written down one of my own pet hates, like making the psychic a woman, because men can’t get visions because women have all this intuition… (gag). Not that there are any psychics in any of my stories. I’ve always kind of resented stories where there’s some damn prophecy to fulfill (and yep, you guessed it; there are exceptions to that rule – Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time and Meredith Ann Pierce’ Dark Angel Trilogy. Oh, and Geraldine Harris’ Seven Citadels, Eddings’ Belgariad, and various others I have read and reread over the years. Ok, so I’m hardly consistent. Maybe I’m just no good at prophetic stories myself— I always rebel at the thought of not having a choice.). My characters never want to conform to such restrictions. They’re too chaotic, running about causing mayhem all over the place.

Where was I? Ranting about pet hates, I think. Oh yes. There are three female to five male characters so far. Is it too ‘PC gone mad’ to do a gender count? I don’t think so. I firmly believe you should analyse your own work and determine why you’ve made a character in a certain way. Has he/she reacted so and so because of my own presumptions and can I make him/her do it any other way and still make it work? Take Kamara, for example. He is sometimes perilously close to Wise Old Man, a bit Miyagi from Karate Kid. If Miyagi was a homicidal maniac, that is. Another thing that is starting to annoy me a bit is the Gay Friend. Like the Whore, he (because it’s always a he) gets killed off or helps the heroine pick out curtains in the end scene. One of the two. I’m trying to make sexuality deliberately vague when I write, but it’s really hard to shake of one’s own conventions, I’m finding… Because I don’t necessarily want to write satire. I’ve got nothing against satire – in fact, I’m rather fond of it – but I just don’t like predictability, I suppose. Real people are chaotic, after all, and they’re all different, and they’re not terribly rational. I know I’m not.

Back to the old drawing board.

“It was only after she finished the grim job of severing the creature’s head from the rest of the body, that Tamiro realised she wasn’t alone on the roof.”… 

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of novel-in-progress A Game of Chance (working title). Word count: Aiming for 2K a day.

I can’t remember what heat feels like. Damn me for setting my story in a city succumbed by a heat wave! Those who know me are aware that I have no central heating in my house and that double glazing is but a distant memory. It may not be snowy Scandinavia, but Britain doesn’t exactly have a subtropical climate either — global warming or no global warming. 

The problem is I’m trying to describe that stage of brain boil when you can hardly string two words together and every inch of you is covered with sweat even though you took a shower five minutes ago— and I’m sitting here in front of the screen with GLOVES on, for pity’s sake! There’s probably a sun up there somewhere behind all that lovely London cloud (or possibly pollution), but I can’t remember what it feels like to move from shadow to shadow in order to escape it. I think it has been absent for a couple of years. I only remember I really hate heat (anything over 25°C anyway), but at the moment heat seems like a pretty good idea. 

I’m changing quite a lot as I go along so the first chapters don’t make a lot of sense anymore, but I’m trying to follow Very Good Advice and plow on— Go back and change it later. It’s better that I finish the manuscript, even if the draft is a bit rubbish, and then go back and revise; otherwise I will never finish. I would be revising Chapter 1 for all eternity. Know Thyself and all that.

I haven’t properly introduced myself. As no doubt millions of would be writers have said before me: I have always wanted to be an author. I write predominantly fiction in the genre that is referred to as Urban Fantasy or Dark Fantasy. Or is the PC term Speculative Fiction? Who cares? I’m pretty much unashamedly a genre writer. That doesn’t necessarily mean I follow all the genre rules (or any), but I don’t mind too much about being labelled and shoved onto a particular shelf, like a sample at the Darwin Centre. I’m not published yet, and in the meantime there will be some blogging about various things, not just writing. Basically anything that interests me. I hope it will interest you too.

More coffee and maybe even dinner if I can be bothered, some more writing (I’m sooo loving my iMac), followed by a quick run (and it will be quick; my fitness wouldn’t allow anything else) and then I have to sort out my stupid Oystercard, which has been playing up since I tried to exit Terminal 5’s tube station. I’m telling you: T5 is cursed. Maybe it’s built on an ancient druid burial ground or something. In Hounslow. Hm. Or maybe I’m reading too much horror. Nah, surely not.