A quick aside - Suvudu Cage Match

The ultimate winner in the finale was Quick Ben from The Malazan Book of the Fallen, while Perrin Aybara from The Wheel of Time took out the consolation match.

I will also be able to publish a few reviews that I have been sitting on this week (now that I am on holidays), including a few of the major releases of the past month - Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick, The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham and Black Halo by Sam Sykes. The big daddy of them all, The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, will have to wait until next week.

What I've been up to...

A week ago I mentioned my secret project. Here's the (big) reveal!

I've been investigating the possibility of writing articles and reviews for existing sites (as well as continuing with my blog) and my first such piece has now been posted. The folks over at The Ranting Dragon have taken me on provisionally as a reviewer. Here is my first effort for them (in their format, so it's a little different), a review of Legend by David Gemmell.

Any material that I post for these other sites (there are two more in the pipeline) I will obviously link here, since I created the content. So from now on some of my reviews will simply be links to those sites - I am obviously happy to engage in a bit of cross-promotion.

Secret Project (+ some links to recent genre discussions)

For the last few days I've been occupied with my secret project. Of course it isn't that big a deal and I probably don't have to keep it secret but it's much more fun for me this way.

Anyway, the secret project has occupied most of my non-fiction writing time, so the blog took a bit of a hit at the end of last week. Rest assured things are back to normal and today I'll be posting a pair of mini reviews that I should have gotten to a long time ago.


If you are keen for some reading, consider delving into the discussion of genre characteristics, specifically femininity. Two links to start you off are here:
N. K. Jemisin and Kate Elliott - two smart ladies that write wonderfully.

Then to get the controversy ball rolling go here:
Black Gate

And when you are sick of any such discussion head over to visit Sam Sykes.

Making a return...

No the blog didn't die at the hands of irrelevance and apathy, but the six weeks overseas didn't help. It is very difficult to put life on hold for that length of time and expect to come home and hit the ground running. The catching up is almost done and so it's back to blogging. In fact there is likely to be a saturation of material in the next few weeks the like of which this blog has not seen. Stay tuned...

Good intentions

I had some good intentions to make something of the blog this week, but final preparations for a six-week holiday to Europe have won the battle for my time.

I won't promise, but you can expect occasional updates about my European adventures over the next couple of months. This blog has been officially hijacked.

A very lean November... and an obese December

In previous years it has felt like the school year really winds down in the last few months (I'm a high school teacher). Of course that was not to be the case this year. In fact November, the month I had hoped to set aside for a genuine tilt at NaNoWriMo, proved to be the busiest work month of the year. As a result I completely bombed out on the 50,000 word challenge (I wrote 0 useable words, though I felt I did some worthwhile outlining) - if you follow me on Twitter you may have already seen me lamenting that fact. Any time I had I tried to devote to writing rather than reading/reviewing/blogging. I haven't thrown in the towel for this blog after only a month or so.

In five days my wife and I leave for a six week tour of Europe. Over the next few days I will actually put up some content for the blog that reflects its intended purpose, beginning tomorrow with my favourite reads of 2010 and possibly two or three reviews I drafted at random points throughout November. I know my rabid subscriber base is starved for new book-related content.

However, for the six weeks or so after that the majority of any posts I make will be holiday related. Before the end of the week I will probably upload my journal from our trip to Japan in January (as peripheral pages attached to the blog, rather than posts). If that interests you, brilliant!

Things Scalzi and I don't have to think about today...

It certainly wasn’t my intention to base the content of my blog on the thoughts of others. However, for the second time in two days I find myself referencing a post from John Scalzi on his (insanely popular) blog, ‘Whatever.’ If you read blogs, and you’ve come to this one, chances are you already read Whatever. However if you don’t, read the post 'Things I Don't Have To Think About Today' here. Really, you should read it even if that means you navigate away from this page. If you don’t read it, what follows will be fairly meaningless. Scalzi is essentially drawing attention to the life of the privileged and the many difficulties that they (we) do not have to endure, most of which are related to the perceptions of other people.

This puts me in the dangerous territory of seeming like a Scalzi fanboy, which I can reasonably say I’m not. My attention was drawn to the post by the attention it received on Twitter.

See, there I go second-guessing myself. If I was a Scalzi fanboy, why shouldn’t I embrace and enjoy, instead of making excuses for the things I like that may conflict with other people’s tastes. I often find myself telling people about my writing or what I read, then I start defending my love of genre fiction and my desire to engage in the Speculative Fiction community before they even get a chance to respond.

Today I don’t have to think about the possibility that people will mock the things I love.

This is a relatively insignificant example, and citing it reminds me that I am about as privileged as it is possible to be. Yet I have been fortunate (if that’s the word I want to use) in having my perspective refined by some difficult experiences.

I can be shy about what is essentially my hobby – it isn’t a patch on how shy I can be in revealing something much more fundamental about myself; my Christian faith. I didn’t start this blog for discussion of beliefs, but the nature of Speculative Fiction material is such that I know it will come up. I won’t hide… but I’m sure times will come up when I feel like doing so.

In my experience the Speculative Fiction community, perhaps unsurprisingly, isn’t all that sympathetic to Christianity (and God knows plenty of people calling themselves Christians don't exhibit much sympathy either). I’ve heard or read comments from some of my favourite authors that were far from complimentary. Significant voices in the community will acknowledge their respect for the work of writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Gene Wolfe while strongly criticizing their beliefs. People are entitled to their opinion – that’s one of the joys of free will, and I am happy to engage in discussion or debate. I won’t conceal the fact that I am a Christian, even if that means losing credibility in some people’s eyes.