Category: WRITER

Changes to my blog – Editor for Hire

You will see a new link to the right – Writer for hire. With the decision to write full-time for this year at least, if possible, comes the challenge of making enough money to live on. I estimate I need to sell about 12000 titles per month or 450 per day. This translates to a need to increase sales by 45/day per month until the end of the year. I don’t want to compromise too much what I am actually doing in the writing sphere so I am going to suppliment my income by hiring out my writing skills. You will find details and rates on the Writer for hire page if you click the link to the right.

New Features on Blog – RSS and Emails

Dear subscribers, you will now notice that you can subcribe for email delivery of notifications for this blog as well as RSS feeds, and you can recommend me more easily too. You can also translate this page into many languages, follow me on Google+ and follow my twitter feed (although I cannot work out why you can’t see my latest 5 tweets here, which is what this service is supposed to do. If anybody knows why, please let me know). Finally, if you already follow this blog, you will probably like to add yourself to my Google+ circle or use one of the above methods to make sure you get the blogs. Until now I have only been able to notify you by commenting on my own blog which sends an email to a custom list I created. I am not going to do this for much longer.

Latest project updates – Iron Book III

So What Have I Been Doing?

You are probably wondering what the lazy Lazlo geeza has been doin’. I haven’t posted for a while. There is the excuse that I have been writing furiously. As you will see below, it has been a very creative period. However, now that I am writing full-time, I will endeavor to post at least once per week. On this blog you will find information about the latest project developments, and even some sneak-previews of what is to come.

Current project updates:

Ordo Lupus Series – there are currently no plans for a Part 3

Iron Series: Part 3, now (still provionally) titled ‘Worlds Like Dust’:

I am about 1/3 through the first draft. As I will probably post here about in the near future, the focus of the plot is evolving as I evolve as a writer. I have left off it for a while while I settle on a plot line that will satisfy me, and hopefully the reader. Continue reading “Latest project updates – Iron Book III” →

Review of George Lucas’ Red Tails

What a wasted opportunity for George Lucas. Here we have the story of the first black (is that the correct term now?) fighter pilots in WWII and their struggle to be allowed to fight for their country, up against entrenched and endemic Racism. Not only did they succeed, but they won a combined award for their outstanding bravery and performance. Their job was to protect American Bombers raiding Germay, and they were the only Squadron who managed to lose not one single Bomber during their missions. So you have: politics, heroism, great action, technology in abundance, lots of potential personal stories and history all in one story. You also have the guy who made Star Wars at the helm. It should have been great; it was barely better than pap.

In fact I resigned myself to watching it purely for how bad it was – before the title credits. It opens with a really dire CGI bit of action with American P-40 Kittyhawks(?) fighting Me109s. The German pilots are portayed as ice-cold manifestations of the devil who speak like Cybermen. Somebody has been reading too many Eagle comics. The stereotypes were just way too much to take. The dialogue was pretty bad too. Continue reading “Review of George Lucas’ Red Tails” →

Self-imposed deadline approaches

I am hoping to publish Ordo Lupus II: The Devil’s Own Dice in August. The cover design is under way and the result will be much simpler and cleaner than the last one. I have completed the final edit and I am pretty pleased with it. I did a double take when I realised its only got seven chapters! The book is the shortest I have written for a long time – perhaps ever, but it’s all there. I think it works. On a different note, I have joined a forum for the Stirling Aircraft Society. I will give then a slight boost by posting a link below. The other reason is to remind me where it is! For some reason, (dunno if its anything to do with the new sharing function whereby when you are logged in you get links relevant to your previous, and your mates, searches) some days there is a bunch of links there to it when I type ‘Short Stirling Recovery’ and then the next day there is none! I can search for hours and not find it. Very frustrating. I must be better organised. Also, where on earth is this trend leading. Will I end up being broke when I am retired but owning a rusty bit of Short Stirling fuselage? Stirling Aircraft Society.

The Sparrow, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I have been in Spain for almost 3 weeks – just soaking up the sun really and doing what I do best – philosophy. Okay, okay so I know the saying: a philosopher is someone who has abandoned (left?) their community. But I rarely get time to think properly so it was nice to have some time. Plus Spain at this time of year is gorgeous and …. NOT RAINING.

I did manage to squeeze in some reading: The Lost Road by Tolkien (well, by Chris Tolkien as much as John, but nevertheless an interesting take on Atlantis), A Spanish/English Dictionary and phrase book (yep- I plan to retire there so I have to learn), The Sparrow and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Not sure if I will get both the latter reviews down tonight but I want to say something so I will give it a go.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson

I must admit, I have a big problem with this book. I have many smaller problems and I will start with those: first of all I found myself on page 5 and still not really engaged. I was no wiser what the premise of the story was until around page 100! I had to keep rereading the back cover to remind myself why I had got suckered into trying it. Basically loads of people had recommended and of course it sells very well, so being an author, I wanted to see what this guy had got. I soldiered on but when I came to a bit which said (and I am writing this from memory because I simply don’t want to open the book again): ‘She pulled him down to her breasts. Then she asked him if he wanted to stay the night.’ I threw the book down in disgust. “Women just don’t say that!” I shouted at my apartment walls. There was much worse to come and while the main protagonist’s mistress was a dominatrix editor and super-stunning (apparently) she seemed to be a docile sop in bed. I just couldn’t buy it. I had to literally force myself to read on because several times I felt sick at the stupid misogyny that seemed to fester within these dark pages. Every woman in the book seemed to either suffer an extremely unpleasant and violent death or cause one. I was nervous for Lisbeth – the eponymous character of the book’s title, thinking that she too would meet some awful, sticky end and I won’t give the plot away by revealing her fate. I also found that I guessed the main ‘twist’ in the tail of the story by page 120, although I was partly wrong. I was close enough to make reading the rest rather pointless but I soldiered on just so that I would qualify to write a review. How can I criticise if I haven’t read? Continue reading “The Sparrow, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” →

Sci-fi Author Ray Bradbury has Died. R.I.P.

Much loved Sci-fi author Ray Bradbury has died – probably best known for Farenheit 451.

From Wikipedia:

Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include the coming of agenovel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen the Stars (2001).