I could fill this entire post with how much I love the man’s writing. It would be easy for me to spend hours genuflecting to his vision, his character, his sense of humour.

But I must focus my gushing : this man has inspired me to write.

I can’t get away from it; a lot of the humour in my books may be slyly referred to as Pratchettesque. Not due to the quality – I can’t hold a candle to the master – but because of the tone. He gave me a way to bring light into my work without bad toilet humour or Saturday morning cartoon jokes.

The other important thing Sir Terry Pratchett did for me was show me that humour and “drama” – by which I mean actual plot, serious character development, so on – can exist together. Quite close, so close you can barely see the space between. And neither one nor the other will suffer for it. If you are careful.

If it wasn’t for the legend himself I wouldn’t be writing today.

Thank you, Sir.

That is all.

A bit of poetry here, a spam of worldcrafting there, finishing a novel in the middle there somewhere. Just all over the shop. I’ve popped a few poems up on my DeviantArt page. I’ve worked on a couple of projects that are fairly private, and I’ve listened to a whole shedload of music.

I’ve also demolished my back, but that’s getting better.

So I’m going to lay down some ideas I’ve had, hither and yon.

1) A contemporary litfic set entirely at a music festival. Central to it are four characters that come into contact with each other in various strange ways. Focus of the story is the modern condition that is humanity, our social lives, anxiety, isolation, and the all-conquering power of music.

2) An artist is chosen by a newly birthed god – the god of surveillance and omniscience – to be his prophet. It’s about the world ending, underground art, the division between those that know and those that don’t, the clash between science and religion, and control.

3) One story told through a long series of correspondence between many different characters, not all of which know each other. Perfect for NaNoWriMo, if each letter is 1,000 words long precisely, and there are fifty letters. Themes include subjectivity, social connections in an unfriendly world, the elusive nature of the truth.

4) Your average scifi dictator/revolution story. Lots of guns, lots of tech, lots of drama, lots of philosophy.

…diaspora, no?

Well, they’ve got me writing for them now. And Tim.

Go check them out HERE. And my first bit for them is HERE.

I’d like to thank the folks at VentnorBlog for giving us a chance. It was cool of you, very cool indeed.

Now I need to edit this thing. Oh good lord.

To that end I’m taking part in a monthly prop writing exercise, nicknamed A Quiet Word. General order is maintained by my good friend David Hughes, a very talented writer himself. More talented than me, I think. He must be removed…

You can catch up on it here: A Quiet Word.

Minute Silence progresses. The decision to remove a plot – a plot somewhat too big to act as a secondary arc – has…shaken things up. I’m taking it in a different direction. If I can work out how to finish the first book, the second should flow a lot easier, hopefully leading to the third.

I need to ramp up the political unease. Easy enough I suppose. Mark catches the headline of a newspaper, or Cory has a phone call with the Mayor, or those NOT watching security tape at Cory’s see the news. Maybe when they find Bass…that’d be an interesting phone call. And from there, we have the police case at the beginning of the second book; but how to actually BEGIN the second book is eluding me, since Portent doesn’t exist anymore.

On top of that, planning a new Diabolic vid with my resident film-maker extraordinaire TJC Martin. You can catch his original here on vimeo. It’s a tasty piece of reel.

Stay tuned, cats.

Well, a lot of the time it is a crippling barrier. A sense of “why bother” can sink even the best intentions, and even the most virtuous attempts at increasing a word count. The quality of the work can likewise suffer. When you can’t objectively analyse what you’ve written or where it is going, how can you maintain direction? In short, it can be a nightmare to write when in a depressive episode.

But likewise, it can bring subtle advantages. Insight into more introspective behaviours and characters. The ability to inspire pathos – especially through dramatic scenes involving negative emotion. Despair is often hard to write if one isn’t already despairing, in keeping with the old adage, Write What You Know.

Is it worth it? Honestly, I wouldn’t know. I’m too subjective in this regard – I’ve never written a word without depression having some sway in it. It’s made me who I am, and as happy or unhappy as I may be about that, it is as it is. How can I guess who I would be if I wasn’t myself?

All we can do is keep walking, regardless of how much our feet hurt.