The Sluagh Sidhe

One of my all-time favourite fantasy novels is The Sword in the Storm by David Gemmell. It is a wonderful alternate historical fantasy about the Rigante tribe facing off against the ever encroaching armies of Stone.

For the historical buffs, yeah, you’re just one letter away from Brigantes and Stone is… drum roll, please… Rome.

But the story is superb and the folklore Gemmell weaves throughout is amazing. In particular, I always loved the Sidhe; a strange, mythic race connected to the land. Not quite fae, definitely not human, but something else entirely.

And now I find myself, thirty years later, putting my own spin on familiar legends. My latest book is an idea I’ve had rattling around the old noggin for about ten years. It started with a simple idea and then a title.

The idea: what if the Roman Ninth Legion did indeed vanish…and the children were left behind?

The title: The Children of the Ninth.

That’s all I had. Literally the idea and the title. I thought about it on and off for years… particularly when we spent a fair amount of time pratting around on Hadrian’s Wall in 2018/2019.

Various iterations (in my head) involved dragons, time travel (thanks, Doctor Who!), underground civilisations, and good old-fashioned brutal warfare, but I never put pen to paper. Until last week.

Last week I started writing. No plan. No idea beyond the basic premise and a nagging thought it should be geared as a middle-grade horror (because there’s very little out there between Goosebumps and Stephen King…and kids love scary books!) I spent bloody ages picking out cool Roman names for my characters then I killed one of the buggers in the second chapter! I genuinely have no idea what I’m doing.

Today, I hit eleven-thousands words and the Bean Sidhe made an appearance, which is really cool because I didn’t know what the hell that was this morning. I just wrote a creepy old hag into the story and then I did some research on Scottish mythology and folklore. The creepy hag became the Bean Sidhe and now she’s about to summon the Sluagh Sidhe, which means ‘host of the sidhe’ or sluagh na marb, ‘the host of the dead’.

These are dislodged souls, or the unforgiven, and they tend to attack in a great flying crescent-shaped horde. I don’t know what I’m going to do with them, but it’s going to be fun finding out.

What was perhaps even more fun finding out was the origins of The Sidhe in one of my favourite novels. I mean, I probably should have known, but until a few hours ago I thought Gemmell himself made it up. Silly me. I’m a little bit disappointed he didn’t use the alternative spelling though.

Sith really has a ring to it.

I wonder if anyone has used that before?

Thanks for reading folks x

The one written at 4am about whatever is rattling around my tired mind.

Well, 343am to be precise. I’m wide awake. Again. It’s a relatively normal occurance but I am getting a little bored of approaching the wee hours from this direction. It was a lot more fun when I was a young man coming home, putting a pizza in the oven, and then promptly forgetting about it as I passed out on the couch. But now I’m just… awake… and thinking.

Here’s a list so far…

1) if the Ninth Roman Legion simply vanished overnight in mysterious circumstances and left all the children behind, what happened to the women in the camp?

2) is there a special place in hell reserved for vanity publishers who masquerade as traditional publishers?

3) what’s that sound?

4) why is that video of Tim Minchin’s Matilda set to Dragula so freaking good?!

5) how much horror is too much horror for middle grade readers? There seems to be a huge gap between Goosebumps and Stephen King, which reminds me of…

6) the time my wife and I were shopping for clothes for our daughter and Kel loudly proclaimed, “there’s literally nothing between princess and whore!”

7) why is an extremely old lady running incredibly fast towards you such a scary image? (Give it time)

And of course, the old faithful…

8) if I fall asleep now how much sleep could I possibly get before I have to get up and function?

That vanity press one though… does my head in!

The one about a work in progress

When we had the launch party for The Book and the Blade, my mate Mitch did an awesome job of MCing, filling any potential awkward silences on my part by asking questions. One of those question was, what are you working on at the minute? The answer then (and still now) is a comedy fantasy called, Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Orcs?! This is a story that came about after a conversation with a friend’s partner (now also friend) the first time we met. We were chatting over a mutual love of Lord of the Rings (of course) and he mentioned the scene from the movies where the orcs shout, “looks like meat is back on the menu, boys!” We talked about the implications of this one small line. Not the cannibalistic tendencies of the orcs as evidenced by the word ‘meat’, but the deeper implications of the word ‘menu’. The idea ran from there and tickled around my brain for about a year. I finally started writing in November 2022 for NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month). I wrote mine and Stu’s conversation down as best as I remembered it as part of a prologue and went from there. In November, I wrote 51k words. Then I didn’t look at it for four months.

For the last two weeks, I’ve largely been bed-ridden, and certainly housebound (which is shit! I’m on holidays!) so there’s been very little else to do apart from think about, and occasionally write about, orcs. We’re now up to 68k words, the prologue has gone, and I think we’re approaching the final act.

The story is a massive piss-take, while also being a love-letter of sorts, to my beloved fantasy genre. It contains every trope you can imagine; from the golden-haired hero to the nefarious dark lord, to elves in forest and dwarves in mountains, to witches, wizards, trolls and unicorns. Speaking of unicorns…

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The main protagonist of my story, however, is none of the characters mentioned above. This story is written from the point of view of a young orc called Gary, and his best mate, Frank. They find themselves, as the tropes of their world dictate, pulled from pillar to post across a fantasy-scape that leaves no cliché unturned (or subverted). This, ladies and gents, is what happens when you devour Gemmell, Eddings, Pratchett, Tolkien, Brooks, Jacques, Cornwell et al from a young age (while also developing a sarcastic-prick trait a mile wide).

But I like it. Sure, I get the feeling I might have gone a little “too Alex” with this one, but it’s only the first draft and it isn’t finished yet. Who knows how things will pan out?

Oh, and fun fact, my wife tagged me in this post this morning…

My reply was “are you f*cking kidding me?!”

For those keeping track, a similar thing happened a month after I finished writing Rock Zombie (still, by the way, in some sort of publishing-development hiatus) a story about a zombie and ghost coming from the same dead guy. Kel found a meme shortly after with damn near the same idea!

I’ve decided this demonstrates one of two things – I either have my finger on the pulse in an almost savant-like manner, or I have never had an original idea in my life.

Hopefully, there is enough unique humour and bastardisation of Latin to get me a pass with Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Orcs?! (The dark lord who dies in the very first chapter is called Dark Lord Dominus Tenebris III… translation… Dark Lord Lord of Darkness III. Pratchett, it is not! :-D) And if that isn’t enough, my world has a wall, no one has done that before, right? Look, I’m not messing around here… it’s called The Threshold… you have to cross it to get to the main highway… The Road of Trials.

Additional fun fact; I did something stupid today (I know!). One of my favourite podcasts is called The Failing Writer’s Podcast, and in their first episode of season 3, the fellas put a call out for anyone willing to send in the first three chapters of a work in progress. They haven’t decided what they will do with any they might pick…critique it? read it out? take the piss? review? Either way, I figured, sod it, why not? Nothing might come of it, but it will be fun to find out if I really have gone too Alex with this one. We’ll wait and see.

Anyway, so that’s what I’m up to. I expect to finish the first draft by the end of April. After that, who knows? If you’re working on something yourself, please let me know!

Thanks for reading.

The Book and the Blade | Albert The Great Australian Dragon | Reindeer Games | Pleased!

At least when I write stories I (mostly) control what happens…

It has been an interesting few weeks to say the least… Arthur was published on 28th Feb, we had an amazing book launch on 11th March, I threw Albert into the world on the 26th March, work ended on Friday, and I got sick Friday night (this is like the shittiest version of that Craig David song).

On Saturday, I am heading to Emerald to hang around the wonderful new bookshop, Highland Books, and talk a little bit about Arthur… but this morning, I received notification that Australia Post, in their great wisdom, have decided to delay the delivery of my author copies by a week. No reason. No explanation. Just a mocking little green badge that says ‘On Time’. On time, my arse! So, there’s a very real chance I will be heading to a book signing with ONE copy of The Book and the Blade (the reason for the signing in the first place!) and ten copies of Albert the Great Australian Dragon (the daft, local story I self-published for a laugh).

When I ordered author copies in the past, they have always arrived within a week. This time, I placed the order over two weeks ago… so there is still a small chance it’ll work out… but it’s also Australia Post, so who knows?

For those of you in the UK, Australia Post is basically the same as Royal Mail… in EVERY way.

All I can do now is… wait. What’s that old poem? Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to not jump on Twitter and call Australia Post a bunch of twats…

There is literally nothing I can do to make things work out. So, I might as well write, right? At least I can control the things that happen on the page… but even that isn’t entirely true. Yesterday, a main character in my wip died under my tippy-tappy fingertips and I didn’t see it coming. It is a very strange moment indeed when your brain slowly catches up with the words appearing on the screen and you realise where the end of the sentence is heading. I didn’t plan on killing he/she/it. And I certainly didn’t plan on it happening in such a brutal and sudden fashion (I’m pretty sure I used the words fucking eviscerated). It really works though. It’s a good scene, it made me chuckle, but honestly, it’s really buggered the rest of the story. Where the hell do I go now he/she/it is dead?

So that’s what I’m going to focus on today… where to take a 50k word story now one of the main characters is spread all over the ceiling… you know, the things I can (mostly) control.

But if anyone knows the secret cheat code to make Australia Post work more efficiently, I’d really appreciate a whisper in the ear.

Cheers!

Fly my pretty!

Reflections on launching a book into the ether

At one point on Saturday I found myself sitting on the floor of a raised stage while all around me people I knew, people I’d just met, and people I’d never seen before talked and laughed and drank together. The pub was full, a long narrow hall of arcade machines and graffiti-covered walls pressing folk together to share tables and seats… something that could not have happened a year or so ago. Another book was thrust under my nose by a workmate whose grin told me he thought the whole thing was just as ridiculous and surreal as I did. We both laughed and I took another drink… a pint glass in one hand… a pen in the other. That was my name on the cover. My book.

“Sign this for me, mate!”

“Happy to!”

“Book wanker.”

“Yep!”

Saturday saw the launch of The Book and the Blade, and it was absolutely magic! For a few hours I stood, or sat, or leaned against Street Fighter II in a packed pub and talked about a book I wrote. I was surrounded by amazing people, and we were all there for something fun… and creative. The walls were covered in art, arcade games and pinball machines offered a nostalgic soundtrack, and for a short while I lived a dream.

In hindsight, I should have prepared. The writer should at least have written a speech, right? But I didn’t, and so when my friend, Mitch – our impromptu and excellent MC – introduced me to the crowded room I took hold of the mic in what might have been nervous fingers. But they weren’t… not when I got going… not when it mattered. It felt like the most natural thing in the world and I loved it! My wife and friends had made magic happen! I stood on a stage and looked out at the faces of people I knew and loved… friends and family from all over the country who had made the trip, new acquaintances I met in an online writing group who were even more awesome in real life, lovely guests, lovely strangers, and even a few amazing ex-students. Complete magic! It was a whirlwind. I started by thanking everyone but then gave special thanks to my wife… I read the dedication from the start of the novel and explained the truth behind it… the facetiousness… the tongue-in-cheek-ness.

All the best ideas are Kels. Including, and this cannot be stressed enough, to actually have a book launch in the first place!

It almost never happened.

I’m one of those strange characters who can seem a complete extrovert but will quite gladly do nothing if that is an option. I’d already written the book. Hell! It was already published. Doing nothing seemed to be a viable option to me… not to Kel. Only a month or so earlier to this mad day she convinced me to say yes to a launch. I remember the look on her face when I said, ‘Okay, babe. Make it happen.’ There was that smile I love so much followed by the frown of business and she got to work. She called Amy and that was that… game over, Al. Just turn up and do as you’re told!

(If you were there you would have met Amy! She was everywhere! A total legend! I hear her and Mitch even walked through the airport yesterday carrying a poster, still advertising my book!)

So, I did just that… as I was told. I stood up in a room full of people and spoke about my first novel… and I had a bloody great time! When there were gaps that threatened to spread into awkwardness, they were jumped on by Mitch and others who threw questions at me and the whole thing seemed so natural and wonderful that, honestly, I can’t quite believe it really happened. We sold every book and every single bit of merchandise (we had merchandise! Ridiculous!), we gave novellas away, and I signed my name wrong a hundred times, and it was just bloody lovely. People laughed and smiled and even applauded! (madness!) And then it just kept going… social media exploded (in a safe, localised and contained kind of way) with people saying the most wonderful things, and as much as I’m usually reluctant to write stuff like this for fear of tooting my own horn and sounding like an arrogant twat, I figure there are some instances where it’s okay, right? This was one. It was magic. And I loved every second.

My little book is in the world now. Officially launched. In the hands of the gods.

Kel tells me I have to stop being so self-deprecating when I finish these things or when I create ads on social media. “Stop saying I hope you enjoy my book… unless it’s shit”. That sort of thing. So, I promised her I wouldn’t. Not this time. This time I will absolutely not end by saying I hope people don’t think my book is shit.

See.

Much love!

A SOMETHING of SOMETHING and SOMETHING

I feel like I’ve missed a trick with The Book and the Blade. It would seem that I did not get the memo regarding the standard structure of novel titles in the contemporary market. Absolutely everything seems to be some combination of A____ of_____ and _______ , and with less than ten days to go it is probably a wee bit late to change things.

A Book of Shadow and Blades?

A City of Drunks and Deceased?

A Blade of Sharp and Pointy?

A Man of Inebriated Regret?

A Midnight Panini of Cajun Chicken and Cheese? (Now THAT’S an in-joke I squeezed into the book for a small number of people!)

Well, folks, regardless of marketing reservations it is officially too late to do anything about it now. The Book and the Blade will be released to the world on February 28th of this year… just 9 short days away at the time of my writing this! To say I’m a tad excited would be like saying Trump was a little bit controversial, but it is an excitement heavily tempered by a creeping pessimism. Imposter syndrome really is a kick in the tits. If it wasn’t for my best friend and amazing wife (same person…also my biggest critic…in a good way!) I would have already closed the door so to speak. It is a really odd thing to write a book…to put everything out there, to create something new you hope people love, and then to tie yourself in knots at the thought of people actually reading the damn thing! With that in mind, it is perhaps no surprise I have let things get this close to release day without doing a damn thing about it.

Kel has different ideas.

Last night, while we waited for our daughter on her first official date no less (where did that time go?!) I officially gave in to my wife’s polite suggestions for a launch party…so now things are going to happen. It’ll be in Brisbane…somewhere. The Saturday after the release date…sometime. And I promise I’ll turn up…maybe.

All jokes aside, it has been an amazing (and stressful) few weeks…writing, editing, doing interviews, checking final proofs, panicking, hyperventilating, drinking…and, of course, unboxing my debut novel!

I hope that if you buy it, you enjoy it, or at the very least, don’t hate it so much you start a campaign against the author that goes viral and he never works in this town again and gets sacked from his day job for bringing the English language into disrepute and is then bundled out of Australia by immigration because they just can’t tolerate such amateurish shite on these sun-drenched shores and then his wife leaves him for being such a failure and his kids change their names to completely disassociate and he ends up selling moody-gold from the back of a car on a racecourse market where he rummages through the discarded betting slips for that one small glimmer of hope (or because he can’t afford toilet paper and needs must) and then he wanders off into the mountains only to be found in a bush hugging a tattered copy of the Beano that reminds him of his shattered hopes and dreams.

Something like that anyway.

Cheers folks!

PARLIAMENT HOUSE PRESS / AMAZON / BARNS AND NOBLE / BOOKTOPIA

Ideas count as productivity, right?

The above tweet is not only a shining example of the kind of dazzlingly witty offering I make over on that strange platform but a fair indication of my state of mind. I am trying to write, but my brain is like a sack of cats floating along a river… some ideas are treading water, some are floundering, but there’s always one or two of the sharp-clawed little bastards clinging to the trouser leg of creativity. I am, in fact, writing almost every day and batting at a fairly decent average, but it seems quite difficult to remain focused, and I have absolutely no semblance of a routine whatsoever. I would love to be one of those sprightly people who leap out of bed at 5am, go for a walk, learn something new, and be creative all before the rest of the world wakes up, but… I am not.

If I was to wake up early, I would probably spend those extra hours mainlining coffee and giving my thumb a good stretch as I scroll through whatever unmissable, addictive bollocks happened on my phone throughout the night. God forbid I miss a Neil Gaiman tweet or yet another article from the British press about how much of a bitch Megan Markle supposedly is (Harry for king in case you’re wondering… just for the laughs and the apoplectic rage from posh English gammons. There would be top hats toppling and monocles a-poppin all over the place!)

And let’s take now for instance, this very moment as I type these words on my veranda on a cool morning while the neighbourhood dogs scream bloody murder, the lady next door roars at her children and the smell of frying bacon wafts over the rooftops… this is perfect for writing! So what am I doing? That’s right, tapping out this asinine nonsense instead of giving 100% to my latest work in progress. And do you know the reason? It’s because I’m scared. I am writing about my grandad, my hero, the shadow who has forever been with me since he left us 34 years ago. When you’re a little boy and your strong, quiet grandfather is a genuine war hero it leaves a mark on a kid. I’ve wanted to write his story since before I could read and now that I have five books being published in the next few years and THOUSANDS of words of practice behind me I am finally doing it. The working title, Shadows in the Sand, is fast approaching fifty thousand words but I have never been plagued by more doubt. I write horror stories… with a comedy twist… it seems wrong somehow to use this genre to write about the lived experiences of a soldier, of a man I care so deeply about. In fact, those are the paraphrased words of my own father when I first brought up the idea, but then dad said something else that really stuck with me… “I think Dad would appreciate the preservation of some of his experiences.” And my god, what experiences! The research has revealed stunning details, events and circumstances that just fly onto the page. I find myself writing in a mad fever and a few thousands words appear beneath my fingers as if by magic but then I get caught on a detail I MUST get right and I slow to a snail’s pace. On my best day with this novel, I wrote over five thousand words. Two days ago, I wrote 192. Yesterday, I had an idea.

That’s it, an idea. Just another cat scratching for attention, but I think it’s a good one.

And yet here I am, writing nonsense in a quiet corner of the internet instead of getting on with it.

What is it grandad used to say… “push on”.

Okay, the distractions are done with now, it’s time to take his advice.

The unprofessional professional

Let’s be honest, I’m not particularly good at this whole ‘professional author’ gig. The truth is, I’m not entirely sure I am one anyway, and I certainly won’t feel like I’m cresting that little hill until I hold my book in my hands. As I write this, my debut novel should have been out for four days (by the original plan) but due to some jiggery-pokery at my wonderful publishers, we have another few months to wait. So here I am, filling time until the release, wondering what it is ‘professional authors’ even do.

Apparently, author photographs are a thing… so I had a crack at that. All I can say is thank god for my mate, Pam, who is a(n actual professional) photographer because holy hell, I was not a professional photographee (is that even a word?)

This all came about because I started interacting in little ‘author worlds’ with people who actually are authors and they all had spanky shiny photographs on their various profiles. I, on the other hand, have a profile pic in which I’m a bit hammered and halfway down a Long Island Iced Tea… and a website ‘logo’ that looks like two deformed pigeons playing hide and seek (and with missing legs!) The publishers website looks like they’ve invited the works experience kid to play along with them… so we did something about it.

Pam is a legend. There’s a whole history there that I won’t go into but suffice to say, a few Sundays ago Pam and her lovely family rocked up at our place with all the gear and we had a blast. I’d cheekily asked Pam if she had a rock star kind of ‘rider’ – you know, requests for food and beer etc – she replied with ‘pulled lamb sliders, craft beer and purple MnMs’.

The only thing I couldn’t find was purple MnMs!

We had a ball! We drank craft beer, we ate sliders, and Pam worked her magic while I continued to drink and take the piss… because I am the unprofessional professional.

Last week, I got a batch of photographs through from Pam and despite the subject matter being me, they’re really fun. This is batch one of two. Pretty soon I’m going to have to pick which ones I’m going to use for where. Any suggestions?

(You can check out Pam’s amazing work at https://www.pjbphotography.com.au/)

Flibbertygibbets and jiggerypokery

A lot has happened in a short space of time so I thought I’d write a little post to let everyone know what the flibbertygibbets is going on.

– The Book and the Blade has a new release date – February 28th, 2023. I’ve known for quite a while that this was going to happen and I’ll be honest, I was gutted at first, but it is for the best. The reason is due to some jiggerpokery at the publishers that meant the original schedule couldn’t be kept. Not really a problem, my debut novel will still come out in my 40th year and I think that’s pretty cool.

– About that ‘debut novel’ thing. Well, The Book and the Blade might not end up being my debut after all. I still have a publisher interested in getting Rock Zombie into print… there’s a small chance it could happen before February, but who knows?

– I finished another book. This one is set where I live in Australia and is called The Last Witch in Brisbane. There is an uncomfortable number of people beta reading it for me. I’m scared.

– Speaking of other books, there are four Arthur Crazy stories in total and they are all complete. In fact, it’s really surreal to me that no one has read Arthur’s first adventure and I’ve finished a whole story arc!

– The cover for the second book will be announced sooner than you think and hopefully, the release of the four books will be more condensed than first planned.

– Each book will be available in eBook, hardback and paperback formats from pretty much anywhere you can buy books. There is also a possibility of an audiobook release but I’m not 100% on that just yet.

– Last but not least, following advice from people I really respect, I have delved into the young person’s world of TikTok. I don’t know what I’m doing and honestly, once I’ve waded past all the shiny young people waving their tits at the camera I feel more than a little uncomfortable being there… so I’m going about it with my usual sense of professionalism and attention to detail.

Oh, and I’m writing. In fact, I’m writing the story I’ve wanted to write since before I could read (🤔, but more on that later.

Cheers folks!

Premature ejaculation

Premature

Adjective

Occurring or done before the usual or proper time; too early.

Ejaculation

Noun

Something said quickly and suddenly.

I’ve had a habit of this my whole life (stop giggling and get your mind out of the gutter. We’re using the Queen’s English here). What I mean is, I regularly do or say something just that little bit too soon… whereas if I’d only wait for a bit it generally works itself out.

It usually isn’t anything major. Not like the end of The Mist (spoilers) where old mate kills everyone in the car a split second before the army arrives to rescue them (so grim. Definitely worth a watch though). It’s dumb shit like asking one waiter when my meal will arrive while another waiter is handing food to my wife. Or calling the godawful Telstra hotline if the internet has packed in only for it to start working just as Dave from Brisbane answers… that sort of dumb stuff. The small delay, I think, is worse than a long one. It just makes you look like an impatient bell-end.

Take, for instance, an excited author whose first book is due for release in two months. He hasn’t heard anything for a while (publishers are amazing, busy people, and editors, to paraphrase Stephen King, are doing the Lord’s work) so he makes a silly Facebook post about there being no news.

Then the next day he receives an email with really exciting news!

But he can’t share that with you… not yet. That would be premature.