Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

RIP Sir Terry Pratchett

Posted: March 14, 2015 in Uncategorized
Tags: ,
0

I can’t remember when I first started reading Terry Pratchett – sometime in the late 80s I think, when Discworld was just starting out.  Nor can I remember what the first one I read was.  But I have been reading Discworld every since and I have a large collection of books on the bookshelf.  He quickly became one of my favourite authors.  I wasn’t alone in that – during the 90s he was UKs most popular author, only being surpassed by J.K. Rowling later on.  And his fame was not limited to the UK.  His 70 books sold 85 million copies around the world, in over 40 languages.

Waking up yesterday to hear the news of his passing hit me harder than I had expected.  He’d been sick for some time so it wasn’t unexpected and nor am I the type to get caught up in the death of famous people.  Yet in this case it did and I spent a lot of yesterday rather down.

It is sad to think that we will never get another Discworld book, which after getting 2-3 a year at his peak, will take some adjusting too.  But his prolific nature left us a large body of work to go on reading over the years.

RIP Sir Terry Pratchett.  You will be missed.

Advertisement

RIP Anne McCaffrey

Posted: November 28, 2011 in Uncategorized
Tags:
0

Anne McCaffrey, the US born author who was one of the first female writers to break into Sci-Fi has died, age 85. She is best remembered for her Dragonriders of Pern series, which started out fantasy and became more and more sci-fi as the series went on.

I first read the Pern books in my early teens and, as was the way as a very young writer, wanted to incorporate elements into my world, such as the dragon riders and pets like fire-lizards. Luckily that is long in the past and my stories are my works, not cheap knock-offs of other authors, a big risk among teenage writers.

I’ve Got To Stop Watching History Documentaries

Posted: March 21, 2011 in Uncategorized
0

So there I was last week flicking through the TV channels and saw a show coming up – A History of Scotland.  With my Scottish heritage and love of things Scottish (especially the bagpipes) I’d thought I’d check it out.

The episode covered the time from Romans first met the Picts right up to the birth of the nation of Alba under Constantine II (943-952).

And, of course, an idea for a story exploded into life.  A bit of fiddle work and the idea was expanded upon, recounting the founding of the Kingdom of the Tirhanites.  For those who have read my works, the Tirhanites feature in a few of them.  The initial idea was for the story of how one boy went from exile to reclaiming his throne to founding the Kingdom, but then as I worked on the backstory a series of other stories came to life and it looks like becoming a series of novellas.

The first story revolves around Tirhan himself, taking place one thousand years before the events in The Commonwealth Chronicles, and how he came to found the people who would in later days become known as teh Tirhanites.

So there you have it – yet another bunch of stories to add to the collection waiting to be written.

Sir Peter Jackson

Posted: January 1, 2010 in Uncategorized
Tags: , ,
0

News coming out of New Zealand is that Peter Jackson, best known for bringing us the Lord of the Rings movies is know Sir Peter Jackson, a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

New Zealand had scrapped knighthoods from their honours list back in 2000 when the previous government was in power. Their new conservative government has since reinstated it and Sir Peter Jackson was made a knight in the first New Years honours list since they reinstated the title.

Australia also scrapped the title, but there is no move to reinstate it, so there is no chance I’ll ever become a Knight, alas.

Post 100

Posted: March 10, 2009 in Uncategorized
1

Apparently this is my 100th post on this site. Bit of a milestone. During that time there have been 37 comments and a bit over 600 hits. Would have hoped there might be more, but it takes a while to build up to these things.

Of course, if I had devoted all that writing to a draft I may have completed it by now…

Are Video Games Adequately Preparing Our Children For the Apocalypse?

Posted: February 26, 2009 in General, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,
0

From The Onion comes this amusing video, which appealed to the gamer in me immensely.

Onion Video

Here we go again.

Posted: December 3, 2008 in Uncategorized
0

And so once more the old trap rears its ugly head. There I am working away at Winter Wolves and a totally unrelated story idea pops up and demands attention. Bad brain, bad brain. But I am not falling for it this time, no sir.

Instead I wrote down a brief plot idea from that random idea, saved it and filed it away for the future and forced myself to return to Winter Wolves.

What I really need is a cybernetic implant that will record all these ideas and thoughts without the need to do the actually writing. On second thoughts, perhaps not…