Salt, Sunlight and Sorrow

Here are three tales from a Scotland that isn’t.

The Western Isles are a real place. A place rich in myth, history and inspiration. My version of the Western Isles brings the myth a little close to the surface, but it’s myth rooted in the folklore of a ragged, wind-swept seaboard ravaged over the years by Vikings, Gaels, Picts and more. They all left their marks, on both the land, and the myths that linger.

The Seal Stone is a cautionary tale of the woes domestic violence.

Sunlight Trapped In Water was brewed in the Fitz in Brighton 03/09/15 listening to Delta blues, distilled in the awesomely named Grims Grenka in Oslo and aged over a large Jura (the drink, not the island). I dedicated it to my Dad, who introduced me to old whiskey and older stories.

Three Songs is a homage to all the awesome folks who’ve ever shared a song or a tale round a fire with me. You know who you are.

This is a compilation, an iteration based on musing, feedback and hopefully a little maturity now I’ve had a chance to think. I wrote these words in 2015 and published them online. This is an edit to what I first wrote. I don’t believe that anything has to be set in stone, so hopefully what you see now is a more polished version of what you may have already read.

I hope you enjoy what you read.

Salt sunlight and sorrow

The Seeds of a Thing

It’s been a while since I posted anything because I’ve had my head down writing, doing book submissions and otherwise researching for a new story set more in the real world in ninth century Viking Scotland. Along the way I’ve found many interesting things, and one of them is Rubha an Dùnain.

A bare headland at the south end of Loch Brittle on the wind-battered west coast of the Isle of Skye, you’d be forgiven for never having heard of, nor never planned of visiting Rubha an Dùnain, Gaelic for the promontory of the little fort. But it’s home to an interesting thing. Near the tip of the headland there’s a small, land-bound loch named Loch na h-Airde. Unremarkable, other than the fact that a man-made channel connects the loch to the sea. A channel cut by Viking settlers in the 12th Century or earlier, wide enough to draw ships up from the cove to safe harbour. Trading Knarrs from perhaps Birka or Hedeby, warships treading the seal-road from Dublin north to Orkneyar or Iceland or Gaelic birlinns bringing in a daily harvest of fish from the choppy grey ocean.

In 2011, the The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) stated “There is no other site quite like this in Scotland.”  A team surveyed the site form the air. Even the Google maps satellite images clearly show where old settlements stood, and though these are more recent buildings, they give a feel for  the thriving community of ship-wrights, merchants, war-jarls and settlers who conquered, traded with, married, loved robbed and murdered the local Gaels in equal measure.

Rubha an Dùnain is one of dozens of fascinating, forgotten places I’m learning about; places where Nordic settlers made an indelible mark on the Scottish and Irish coast. Its proving a fascinating backdrop to an emerging story about two estranged brothers and a girl washed up on a deserted beach. But more of that later…

Photo © 52halfs.com

 

Fear Makes The Wolf Look Bigger

Sadly, this is no more.

This gem of wisdom used to be scrawled above a surf shop in Braunton, daubed there by graffiti artist Mau Mau. Its gone now. Whitewashed over. A strange inspiration for a new tale about an alternative Scotland, perhaps?

Well, here’s the thing. Its a German proverb, or at least most of a German proverb, because the full thing reads “Fear makes the wolf look bigger than he is”. But Mau Mau’s version is more succinct. After all, if the wolf is bearing down on you, all teeth and claws and hunger, brevity is a gift. Action is called for.

This latest story is much more action than the previous ones.

Much of my writing inspiration comes from Roleplaying. The Western Isles were born long ago as part of an old D&D campaign, or at least the name was. Well, actually the name is blatantly stolen from some very real islands off the coast of Scotland. But the later incarnation of the Western Isles, the ones you are reading abut now, emerged a few years ago in a game called “The Castle”, about, well, you guessed it, a castle. Norholm to be precise.

Where Red Riding Hood (above) fits in is form Live Action Roleplaying.

Dumnonni Chronicles, to be precise.

We adopted the saying as the slogan for a band of Norse we played, corrupting Oðin stycar ulfin (Odin feeds the wolves – apologies to any scholars of Old Norse for my probable spelling errors) to mean “fear makes the wolf look bigger”. After all, one of our group lives just up the road from the above-mentioned surf shop, and every time we went to visit we drove past Red in all her glory.

The phrase stuck with me ever since.

I’ve used it as a chapter title in my book, attributing it to one of the characters’ father – Kai to be precise. So three stories into the adventures of Cal and Mol, I thought I’d give them a break and introduce Kai. You can get to know her more if I ever manage to get the book published, but for now, here’s a taste…

Fear Makes The Wolf Look Bigger FINAL

Three Songs

Time for another dark tale called Three Songs.

I’ve just submitted my first novel to a bunch of agents and an open call at a publishers. Wish me luck!

But in the meantime, here’s a little story as an early Christmas gift. It’s not very Christmassy. In fact its not at all Christmassy. Its about songs and finding inspiration.

The picture of from Dumnonni Chronicles, courtesy of and copyright to Roy Smallpage.

Enjoy…

 

 

Gaming Cats and Dogs. Why Being Different is Good.

I’ve loved roleplaying games since I was about 10. I blame my cousin. He turned up one day with something called “Dungeons and Dragons”. Maps. Weird dice. Goblins. Elves. That was it. I was hooked.

I gamed my way through school and university, moving on from AD&D 1st ed, 2nd ed and on to other classics like Call of Cthulu, Cyberpunk, Warhammer and the like. I’ve bought and sold dozens of gaming books, but I still have the old trusty AD&D books on my shelf, more for the memories than anything else. I’ve played and run games in all sorts of genres with all sorts of rules and rolled every conceivable shape of dice.

But then things changed.

I discovered live action roleplaying, and I discovered storytelling. And I read an article called Gamesmanship in White Dwarf magazine all about putting the mystery back into AD&D. It set my gaming on a different path. A path where story trumped rules and led me to use lighter and lighter weight game systems until I ditched the system all together.

So for about 10 years I’ve been running an entirely systemless, diceless horror game which I’ve loved. It’s still going, but has had a bit of a hiatus as real life and other interests have overcome our little group. It’s the reason for this blog’s name, as we always met on Thursday nights. But recently we’ve started up again with someone else in the GM’s seat for a while.

And we are back playing D&D.

No longer AD&D. Now streamlined into 5th ed and I’m really impressed with the game.
I’m also really surprised how much I’m enjoying using all the mechanics of the game. Back to the funny shaped dice, maps, miniatures and the whole nine yards. It’s fun. It’s challenging me to think differently about how I’ve run games for a couple of decades now.

I still don’t think that the rules are more important than the story. They can, and do, get in the way and can, and should be ignored in favour of story, drama and entertainment. But the element of chance that doesn’t exist in a purely diceless game is exciting. For a long while I’d considered story driven and rules driven gaming to be polar opposites. Incompatible. Like cats and dogs.

I’m rethinking that stance.

But this is primarily a blog about writing, not gaming. Other than an excuse to publish a couple of cute gaming animal pics, is there a moral to this little story? Well, yes. And one I will apply to how I game, but also how I write. I, like most people alive, am guilty of finding winning formulas and sticking to them. Gaming. Writing. Cooking. Hitting the gym. My professional life. You name it. Everyone does it. You find your groove and you stick to it. It’s called a “winning strategy”. Management coach Tracy Goss defines it as:

“A Winning Strategy is a lifelong, unconscious formula for achieving success. You did not design this Winning Strategy, it designed you. As a human being and a leader, it is the source of your success and at the same time the source of your limitations. It defines your reality, your way of being, and your way of thinking. This, in turn focuses your attention and shapes your actions, thereby determining what’s possible and not possible for you as a leader.”

It holds you back.

If you only ever do what you’ve only ever done, you’ll only ever get what you’ve always got.

Goss’ The Last Word in Power, and “The Art of Possibility” by Rosamund and Ben Zander, are fascinating reads for anyone looking at challenging themselves to do something new.

So don’t be stuck being just a cat or just a dog. Try something different once in a while…

The Art And Science Of Planning

I used to be a project manager. I know how planning works.

When I write for work we have a very structured process. We use a “pyramid structure” where everything has a main heading, then subheadings and bullet points in increasing detail. So every sub-point beneath a main heading always supports the overall argument of that section, meaning each section is self-contained and complete. One of our ex-editors Josh Bernhoff explains it here.

It works. For business reports.

I didn’t apply this approach when I started on a novel. I had a rough idea of my story. I knew the end. I spent time working out the characters (backgrounds, motives etc – much of which changed as I wrote) then I sat down and started typing. I had a blind faith that everything would fall into place. It didn’t. I stalled 3 times.

Here’s some sound advice form Karen Miller’s blog that I wish I’d read a year ago.

Having rewritten my first 5 chapters 3 times before I got beyond that, I realised I needed a new approach.

I built a plan.

A chapter by chapter plan which gave a single paragraph synopsis of each chapter. I then worked backwards form the chapter count and created a quick spreadsheet to estimate how long each chapter had to be to hit somewhere between 80 and 100k words. When I then sat back down to write, it happened very quickly. It took roughly 4 months to write 20k words 3 times. Then about a month of planning. Then about 3 months to write the remaining 75k words.

Planning rocks.

Three Creepy Ladies

These three creepy ladies are on display in the Roman Bath Museum in Bath. A fascinating and inspirational place where myself and my wife Denise had the pleasure of staying last night. Thanks to work for a sponsored stay in a posh hotel and a swim in the actual hot spring.

But these girls stood out on our tour. Why? Well threes of things are very Celtic. And Celtic stories are at the heart of a lot of what I’ve been writing. The novel I’ve been working on, “What Lies Beneath” leans on such themes, and given I’m now planning the sequel (may be two, as after all things come in threes) then this image seemed pertinent.

Three crones. Fates. Norns. Triple goddess. All of that.

Oh yeah, come find me on Facebook.

What Lies Beneath Book Blurb

I got fed up with writing a tight synopsis, so here’s a more playful shot at the back cover blurb for “What Lies Beneath”. The manuscript is with some proof readers right now, but I’ll publish the intro here asap.

I’m curious on comments on this. Would you pick this book up? Would you buy it?

What Lies Beneath Blurb DRAFT

Synopsis Struggles

I spent most of yesterday REALLY struggling to write a synopsis of my book. Way harder than I expected. So as much for my reference as anyone elses’, here are a couple of useful links…

Basic, straight forward advice and more links…
https://janefriedman.com/novel-synopsis/

A helpful structured guide which I worked through and found helpful…
http://www.how-to-write-a-book-now.com/how-to-write-a-synopsis.html#

A ton of useful examples deconstructing movies…
http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/synopsis-writing

My challenge is that I’ve written a story with three main characters, and most of the advice assumes one central character. I got it down to 1000 words, but its very functional. Then I found this…

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/how-to-write-a-synopsis-when-you-have-lots-of-characters-in-your-story

…which turned out to be VERY helpful and I now have a much tighter draft.

Thanks!

Because Everyone Loves A Map…

Much of what I’m writing at the moment is set in “The Western Isles”. Its a not-quite-Scotland set in the not-quite-dark-ages celebrating the fact that much of my childhood holidays were spent on the shores of rain-drenched lochs or half way up rain-drenched mountains. Mix that with the folk tales of the Borders and that’s the essential ingredients of the Western Isles.

Now, the Western Isles are real. Real in that the ragged archipelago of wind-blown islands also known as the Outer Hebrides really do exist. But my version of the Western Isles are subtly different. Bleaker. Colder. Darker. The dead really do walk and witches really do exist. Different geographically as well from their real-world cousins. So here’s a little map to anchor what’s to come…