Ash by Mary Gentle

I just finished re-reading Mary Gentle's Ash, having devoured it joyously when I first got the paperback in 2001. It's an alternative history of the 15th century, told through the eyes of warrior-mercenary Ash, who's kind of a cross between Joan of Arc and Ellen Ripley.

The period detail is compelling, but the novel's real hook is the interweaving of Ash's exploits with a set of present-day correspondence between the translator of Ash's chronicles and his publisher. As the translation progresses, he - and we as readers - gradually learn that Ash's world is not entirely like our own. Something is up with history.

No spoilers here. Suffice it to say this long novel swiftly evolves from historical adventure to mysterious fantasy. It's full of battles and armour and medieval siege strategy ... but there's also stone golems and a healthy dollop of quantum physics. Towards the end there's a battle scene that positively drips blood, yet is so charged with both emotion and narrative drive I could hardly breathe. And Ash herself - powerful, confident, geautiful, scarred, vulnerable, and ever mindful of "the picture she makes" when she strikes a heroic pose - is undoubtedly one of the great characters of modern fantasy literature.

Ark by Stephen Baxter

I first read Stephen Baxter when I picked up Voyage, his first 'alternative NASA' novel. It posits a history in which Kennedy shrugs off Oswald's bullet and the Space Shuttle gets rejected in favour of a manned Mars mission. Voyage tracks that mission in obsessive detail and, along with The Time Ships, remains one of my favourite Baxter books.

Now Ark may have to join them. Baxter's new novel chronicles the aftermath of a catastrophic flood and humanity's attempts to survive it by building a spacegoing ark. What's extraordinary about Baxter is his ability to make his epic ingredients (global annihilation, interstellar travel to a new world) utterly plausible. He doesn't fudge the physics (well, maybe a little) - somehow he makes you believe we could actually travel to the stars. Right now.

Most important of all, he keeps it human. Everything's presented from the point of view of his key characters (many of them typical Baxter Strong Women). No godlike authorial voice here, everything's down and frequently dirty.

In many respects, Ark is the culmination of everything Baxter's done to date. It has the epic scope of his early Xeelee novels, combined with the ultra-realism of the later ones. He skips along a narrative line spanning many decades with a light touch and an eye for critical detail and emotional pinch-points. And if the story was a little slow to start, I forgave him because, by the end, he'd pretty much taken my breath away.

The novel is done (2)

Having completed the first draft, I've now finished my initial polish and delivered the MS to the editors. So that really is the end of phase one. My own brief editing process (brief by necessity of a tight deadline, the curse - and blessing - of a ghost-writing project) shaved about 1,000 words off the MS. It's still a little flabby, but it's better to give your editor something to manhandle. We could well lose up to 5,000 more words in the final draft.

So now I wait while the editors do their stuff. Next month I'll get the MS back, peppered with corrections, suggested alterations and comments. I'll have five or six weeks to work through it and create the second draft. For me, that's where the process ends. The editors will continue to make minor revisions through to publication, but by that stage it should be 99% there. And my job is 100% done.

The hiatus gives me a chance to (a) catch my breath and (b) turn my attention to The Next Project, which is a set of historical novels I'm trying to get off the ground. You might think that's a big departure from fantasy fiction, but it's not. Writers use the same tools whatever the genre. The big challenge for me with this project is research, as I'm no historian. So next stop is a bunch of material on the early 17th century ... with caution.

Why caution? I know from experience that it's possible to do too much research. Or at least to let that research take over. You get so seduced by all this great stuff you've dug up - so interesting, so detailed! - you let it take over the story. It's like a movie director pointing his camera at the scenery and not the action. In all fiction, story rules.

Still, as they say, the devil's in the detail. So for me, for a while, it's back to school!

The novel is done (1)

Yes folks, I've reached the end. The epilogue is finished, which means the novel is finished, which means I now have precisely 200 pages of completed MS - around 84,000 words - with a beginning, middle and end.

Yay!

The reason I've added a (1) suffix to this post header is that I now have 12 days before my delivery deadline to rewrite and polish. Given the timescale I'm working too, that's pretty good. In a perfect world, of course, I'd put it aside for a month or two before getting into the editing. And spend a lot longer doing it. But that's the way of this ghost-writing lark.

So watch out for a post coming soon with a (2) suffix. That'll mean I've finished polishing and actually delivered. At that point, I'll be putting my feet up, at least until the edit comes back from my client. Then it'll be time to start whipping the second draft into shape ...

In the meantime, am I happy? As a clam!

Novel update

Just finished chapter 33. More action, the bad guy revealed, some strange magic and the death of a major character. Quite a tally for a Sunday evening. I've now got 79,000 words in the bank and only a couple of chapters (and just maybe an epilogue) to go before the first draft's complete.

Mystery Women and Black Star Crime

Mystery Women magazine has published a nice review by Radmila May of the entire launch selection from Black Star Crime, the short-lived crime imprint created by Harlequin last year. The six titles are:

A Narrow Escape by Faith Martin
Double Cross by Tracy Gilpin
Murder Plot by Lance Elliott
Lost and Found by Vivian Roberts
Runaway Minister by Nick Curtis
Tuscan Termination by Margaret Moore

Why am I telling you this? Partly because you can now get them all as ebooks for Amazon's Kindle. And partly because I am Nick Curtis. You can find out more about Runaway Minister, and how I came to ghost it under a pseudonym, on my website here.

Radmila calls Runaway Minister a "fast-paced, well-written thriller, with lively, sharp dialogue." To my delight (and genuine surprise), Radmila also picked it out as her favourite of the six books. I say download the lot and make your own mind up.

Battle scene

Just managed to squeeze in an hour's writing this morning, after staying up half the night drawing up design concepts for the day job. The writing was mostly editing, actually. Not something I encourage in first draft but with the deadline looming I figure it's worth breaking the rules.

The editing was partly to fix a classic problem, namely straying too far outside the 'tight third person' POV of the narrative. This is a single-viewpoint novel, which means everything is narrated from the main character's perspective. Now, when you're writing a big battle scene (and yes, this one's a lot bigger than the big one I wrote earlier) it's easy to slip out of that mode and get too authorial. The literary equivalent of sticking a wide angle lens on the camera, if you like.

So I've rewritten with a view to zooming in a bit, made sure everything's described from the point of view of our hero, not by an author with a god's-eye view.

At the same time, I killed off someone I wasn't expecting to kill off. It's a character who played a very minor role in the outline I was given to work from (this is a ghost-writing project remember). Throughout the MS I've elevated him to play more of a part in the story than originally intended, for various reasons. And suddenly, in the middle of the battle, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to ice him. Sorry, old chap, but you just had to go.

For the record, word count is now around 74,500. Anticipated chapter count still a little fluid - the battle took longer than expected, for instance. But the story's shaping well, so who needs stats?

Time to change hats again, put the MS down and take last night's drawings into work. Next chapter: the Big Confrontation (insert musical sting of your choice).

The end is nigh

Phew. Sorry I having been posting so much but I've been putting in too many hours in the day job and even more on the novel as I fight to keep it on schedule. This weekend's been great though.

I've hit 72,000 words and I've got just four, maybe five chapters to go. The narrative's rolling at a huge lick, all the plot threads are coming together and there are some big scenes written and even bigger ones looming. So after struggling through the middle chapters I feel like I've got the wind at my back at last.

Still, there's a lot to do. I've got enough time planned in at the end of the schedule for a light edit and polish. As long as I can keep my head down I'll achieve that. But it's going to be tight. Then, when it's all over, I'll find time to do other things, like shave and maybe eat.