Limited Potential

The Hummingbird’s Tear

Every now and then a book cover goes past on Twitter and I can't help myself.

I really fell for this one.

Most of the books I pick from Twitter belong to new authors who are advertising a release promotion of some sort, or they're self-published authors trying to get the word out. They're not books I go out looking for and they haven't been recommended to me by friends. They're simply pot luck.

Sadly, in the past, great covers have proven to be a poor indicator of content. I don't tend to review them because I never manage to finish them.

This is a little different.

The Hummingbird's Tear by CM Kerley is published by Calumet Editions. Incidentally, the same publishers to bring you How to Be a Christian Psychic and Our Jewish Robot Future.

“There once was a time when the world did not exist.“ Here comes CM Kerley with the first breathtaking volume of the Barclan series. This amazing new author transports us to a unique, mythic time, and entwines us in magic and prophecy wherein sorcerers and kings, princes and trolls, move toward a disastrous war between ambiguous good and seriously nasty evil…but sometimes the lines aren’t so clear, and the fate of the kingdom depends on the wisdom and powers of two boys, who have a date with destiny. Kerley demolishes the old clichés about intrigue and treachery so that you become lost within the first page, and when you stop reading, you're surprised to be back in your own humdrum world.

The opening of this book blew my socks off. It was an extremely poetic, beautifully described creation myth which saw the gods birth, and then abandon, the world. A very impressive piece of writing.

Equally, the first couple of chapters were very inviting. The story of a village burning, two brothers setting out into the unknown, and a young boy hell-bent on obtaining magical power at any cost. Captivating stuff.

The rest of the book calms down substantially, evening out into a fairly solidly told piece of high fantasy. The brothers become part of a quest to gather up elemental gems scattered by the gods when they left. There is some nice descriptive:

The moon garden was named such because every flower that grew there had white petals that only bloomed at night and reflected the light of the moon. Butterflies and moths with transparent wings fluttered through the air, resting on one flower, then another, intent on visiting every bloom. A few dragonflies zinged through the air, and from far away a lonely cricket sang a forlorn night song.

It would have been nice to see the lyrical excellence of the opening chapter continue throughout the rest of the book. But if you enjoy fantasy set in a recognisable world of traders, seafarers and royal court intrigue, this may be a series to watch.

Ask Lovecraft

Creepy 20

Stepping back for a bit.

Creeper's Cottage seemed like such a straightforward concept when I started out. It's not just the Hookland details that have been burning my grey cells, it's a whole heap of stuff. Polish swear words were just the tip of the iceberg. A building relocation project seemed like a good idea, but then I realised I'd never built anything in my life.

I've been face-first into a report from the Black County Museum titled A Pit-pulled Cottage from Gornalwood, all about the real life relocation of one of their exhibits. I've had to research types of mortar, brick and solvents, alongside caravan models, electric generators and antique teddy bears.

Today has mostly been devoted to 3D laser imaging equipment. Thanks ever so much to Mark Russell at FARO, for patiently answering questions. It's amazing how many minutes of YouTube video you need to watch and re-watch just to get one paragraph of convincing text.

I need a break.

I have a blog post promised to someone, and I'd like to see whether I can approach Hookland from a different angle. There's a funerary theme in the Hookland Writers' Bible that I'd like to explore. I'm not sure if it'll be fit for the anthology, but I won't know until I write it. Even if it falls short, there'll be space for it in the wider Hookland mythos. 

I think it'd do me good to take a crack at a short story. 

Come back refreshed to this one.

Avocado Chocolate Mousse

Just a totally random non-writing related post.

#avocadochocolatemousse has been on my mind a lot recently.

So easy to make. 

• 3-4 large avocados 
• 1 lady finger banana, or half a big one
• 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder per avocado
• Sugar or honey to sweeten (add as you go)

Blend it all together and pop in the fridge for 30 mins.

#nomnomnom

Hookland Hootenanny

Had such a lovely day yesterday.

My questions about Hookland finally started to get out of control, so arranged to have a Skype chat with David to fill in the blanks. 

What was going to be a quick Q&A turned into a four hour discussion on folklore! So enjoyable.

You can follow along with Hookland at @HooklandGuide and David at @cultauthor

Also, every Thursday, Twitter goes wild for #FolkloreThursday/@FolkloreThurs

I think David's writing something for their website. You can also catch him at the Spirits of Place Symposium in Liverpool next month. If you get the chance, go - he's endlessly fascinating on all things mythological. 

Hookland is starting to feel like something really special. I know there are other authors and artists starting to develop projects around it. It feels like a centre point for creative collaboration.

There's an anthology in the pipeline. Once Creeper's Cottage hits 20,000 I think I'm going to step back for a week to see whether I can develop something suitable for that and catch up on a couple of blog articles I owe.

In the meantime, you can keep up to date with Creeper's progress via this tab.

CCTV makes us all data ghosts except in Hookland, where the cameras have a lot more actual ghosts to focus on. pic.twitter.com/sVXoffySz4

— Hookland (@HooklandGuide) March 8, 2016

Creepy 15

Just taken Creeper's Cottage to 15,000 words.

Now we're getting somewhere.

I'm having to put a few placeholders in. Hookland is highly complex. David's written a writer's guide akin to something like Titan. There's a lot of detail in there, down to the newspapers printed across Hookland, the parliamentary breakdown, and local cuisine.

On the one hand, that's tough because you have to stop and fact check a lot of stuff. I mentioned before, it's a bit like Historical Fiction in the amount of research it requires. That can be quite time consuming, and some things even David maybe doesn't know yet, so I need to pop a [descriptive] or [name] holder in there until he can clarify. One of my main questions at the moment is whether the Hookland Messenger is a broadsheet or a tabloid.

That's really the level of detail I'm aiming for.

On the other hand, it can be a blessing. Imagining stuff takes a lot of time. Yes, there are the odd moments when things just happen spontaneously, flowing from your noggin like it was placed there by some mad musey genius. But, most of the time, it's work. As you may know from my tweets:

So Marion, the life of a writer, what's it like? Well, for the past three hours I've been looking up swear words in Polish. #amwriting

— Marion Grace Woolley (@AuthorMGW) March 12, 2016

Every time you try to come up with a fictional place, character name, publication, you need to take a moment to Google whether it's been done before, and consider whether it's dramatic enough, realistic enough, too cheesy, room for more cheese...

Having a manual that cuts ninety per cent of that out can be a real advantage. I think some writers dislike working within other people's worlds, because they really enjoy inventing their own. I do too, but when you're on novel number eight, you kind of welcome a breather.

So, things are going well. I'm enjoying it. I have a fairly good sense of where this story is headed, though I mysteriously stumbled upon a Polish girl about five thousand words back, and she's quickly becoming a mainstay of the plot. In the words of Jamie Lawson: I wasn't expecting that.

It's not just Polish swear words I've been mining Google for. They say writers exist to confound the NSA. Some things I've looked up in the past twenty-four hours include:

• Cool motorcycles from 2012
• Can you pull a snail out of its shell?
• Stately homes near Manchester
• Stately homes near Birmingham
• Breaching (boys) - (that was a thing)
• Removing grouting
• Lime-ash mortar
• Mechanical winches
• Hydrochloric/muriatic acid 
• Hairstyles of the 1600s/1700s/1800s
• 3D/laser measuring equipment
• Kriegsmarine U-boat
• German/Polish navy of WWII
• Hardy bedding shrubs
• Latin mottoes
• Baby names

Relating to that second one, I don't really want to go into why I needed to now whether you can pull a snail out of its shell, but in the process of researching this, I stumbled across this story, and it had me in tears. Better (or worse, from the snail's perspective) than any work of fiction. I think I'm traumatised for life.

I've also been raiding Google Image, as I sometimes do, for character ideas. Writing is simply painting with words. Most of the time I can paint by imagination, but sometimes it helps to have a proverbial fruit bowl. 

Main characters usually need something that makes them stand out. I'm basing Lord Evermore around this image of Arnauld de Beaufort. He was born quite-a-little-lot later than my character needs to be, but I like his style. Especially his hair. So I'm nicking it.