Musing About Sequels

The question – to write or not to write a sequel? For me, that’s a difficult question. I can definitely see that there may be more mileage in the characters and situations I’ve written about in my novels. But then, if I really wanted to write more about them, why not just write a longer novel in the first place and use up all the situations I can?

Well, if I wrote a longer novel then I’m messing up the novel dynamics of a beginning, middle and an end. I can’t just keep having multiple beginnings, middle’s and ends, I have to settle on the one, keep the structure tight and create a story that satisfies myself and the reader.

Another reason for not writing a sequel, the best reason from my point of view, is that I don’t want to write sequels. Yes it would be easy to slip back behind the wheel of the same characters but doing that is not particularly satisfying since I’ve only got a limited time on this Earth and I don’t want to keep extending the same story. I want to write new stories.

There’s something amazing about creating new unique worlds and characters, and about saying something different every time. I try to do this although I must admit I am aware of repetitions, of thematic similarity. I suppose because with each book I’m approaching the same problem – Me - I’m writing about what I’m interested in – and I’m trying to approach it from a different angle each time. I’m trying to find something new, uncover some truth, pose the same question but find a different answer. I’m not writing a sequel, I’m not extending a story, but I am extending the exploration of the different worlds I’m interested in uncovering.

You might say – write a sequel then – but it just wouldn’t work for me, and I’ve tried. For me the characters journey is complete in the one story and it feels like I’m somehow betraying them if I send them on another. They’ve found their answers - they’ve experienced their tragedy and triumph and one way or another the world I’ve created is left in their hands. I can imagine how they will continue but I don’t need to say it and at the end of the day, the reader imagines it too.

Forgetting the writing angle, as a reader, do I like sequels and has that informed my writing? It’s true to say that I’ve read a lot more books than the three I’ve written so far and I’ve read many a series among them. What I hated reading a series when I was younger was that I would read book one and then find myself waiting two years for book 2, three years for book 3, etc, etc. I started reading ‘The Wheel Of Time’ in the 90s. I think I read the first three books thinking it was a trilogy and then discovered to my horror that it wasn’t. Starting a series without being able to finish it is reader torture. There are some series I’ve read in one go, ‘The Belgariad’ ‘The Dark is Rising Sequence’ and generally speaking if I could finish a series in a few weeks or months I was on cloud nine. When I started Game of Thrones, I wasn’t happy. Give me George R.R. Martin’s standalone novels every time. ‘Fevre Dream’ is a masterpiece, and it doesn’t have a sequel.

But as I’ve got older, even the ability to finish a series has paled. I start a series and then book 2 just seems too familiar. You read enough books and you see patterns, even in your favourite author, so I can’t even read two standalone books by the same author without detecting the author’s fingerprint. I find the best thing I can do is leave a gap between an author’s books, standalone and series alike, because that way I just enjoy them more. I forget how they write and I discover them all over again. A case in point, I’m reading book 2 of the mistborn series at the moment, three years after I read book 1. I am enjoying it. So I suppose as I’ve got older the publication gaps actually help me out, although I still like that solid feeling of knowing a series is finished before I start it. Maybe that’s just me, but if the destination doesn’t exist yet, I don’t want to start the journey.

Some books have sequels that you don’t need to read. I don’t need to read the fifteen sequels to Raymond E. Feist’s ‘Magician’ to enjoy it as a standalone book nor do I need to read the fifteen sequels to ‘Ender’s Game’. They work by themselves. Equally, John Scalzi’s ‘Old Man’s War’ doesn’t need a sequel but it has many with more to come. I enjoy book 1’s that don’t need their book 2’s and when I see that I suspect that the author’s in question never intended to write a sequel but later on thought they had to. I don’t mind that so much.

Anyway, musing over. Who likes sequels anyway, unless it’s Empire Strikes Back?

The Creating An E-Book Experience

Strange as it seems there doesn't seem to be a very straightforward way of converting your novel into an e-book for Amazon. When I first tried it out way back in 2012 with 'Threshold Shift' I believed it was just a case of doing the word doc, putting in some chapter links and then submitting it to the Amazon Kindle website referred to as KDP. The resulting Kindle mobi file was readable, but for some reason you had to use enlarge the text as by default it was very very small with no apparent option to change it and there was no proper alignment or chapter breaks to make for easy navigation.

This lead too much head scratching at the time. You'd think there would be a simple way of converting the word doc to kindle using some sort of step by step program with lots of 'next' buttons. But for some reason there wasn't and after a few weeks of on off trawling of the internet, I found out that the KDP site doesn't actually like word docs, instead it wants you to use HTML, and apparently word docs don't convert into HTML very well even if you attempt to save them as HTML files. The result was the same, readable text but too small and not aligned correctly. Hardly a great experience for someone reading the book.

Then someone at my writing group told me about a program called calibre, a free piece of downloadable software that could do the conversions for you and make them look professional. Unfortunately, Calibre like KDP did not accept word docs either, you still had to save the document as HTML and that was still problematic. Enter more free software, OpenOffice. I found that if I opened my word doc in OpenOffice and saved it as an HTML file, that file was good and ready for conversion. Onto Calibre, convert to mobi file, use the option to create a Table Of Contents, and Voila, the resultant preview on my Kindle was amazing. I then jumped back onto the KDP site and tried to download my new good looking and working mobi file. KDP wouldn't accept it. Something in the file, while compatible with my Kindle, was not compatible with KDP. More frustration and a deep questioning of why Amazon didn't make this experience easier and a better understanding on why professional formatters charged money to convert your word document into a mobi file.

The solution at last presented itself on a discussion page. Don't create a mobi file using calibre, create an epub file instead. Then use the kindle previewer to open the epub file and it automatically converts into a mobi file. This is a mobi file that is compatible with KDP, does look good, is the a good size, is aligned correctly and if you have created a Table Of Contents it puts in Chapter breaks which you can use the arrow keys on your Kindle to navigate. So, got there in the end, but well aware that I may need a different solution in the future. All things being equal KDP may change in time.

The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August by Claire North - Review

This is a story about a man who relives his life fifteen times, hence the title, and clocks up around eight hundred years of experience living through the same points in history again and again from 1919 to the end, and very rarely, beyond the 20th Century. He is the illegitimate son of a rich family, the product of rape, pain and the death of his mother. His first life is not a happy one and his second one is ended by suicide. After that things change, he accumulates knowledge by virtue of an infallible memory. He becomes a medical doctor, a scientist, a college don, a journalist, a mechanic, to name but a few of his occupations. After being revealed and tortured by the authorities in one life he finds there are many others like him stretching throughout time, each living their lives over and over as he does, when creation replays again and again.

Each time it replays identically except for these few who know it is repeating and have the freedom to make different choices. Then there is an enemy, one of Harry's kind who seeks to learn an ultimate truth and is willing to sacrifice whole iterations and generations of his own kind in order to achieve it. The story not only centres on Harry's life, but his friendship with this man, and his fight against him.

The author has created a complex tapestry of cause and effect, all woven around extensive research of 20th Century events. The story is also told from Harry's point of view, but not a Harry who experiences as we the reader experiences. This is the old Harry recounting his life with all the wisdom and benefit of hindsight, an ancient who can remember his very beginnings, his feelings and rationale, but always with a certain distance. We never feel as if the character is in any real danger, but the vivid recollection of his experiences and the mainly non linear approach to the narrative make this book almost impossible to put down. I was captivated by it, and I could very easily believe that Harry August was real, telling his story, and it all happened just as he said. I read this in two days flat despite work and family commitments because I had no choice in the matter. I needed to know what happened next, the author had that power.

Where does it fall down? Well, the logic of cause and effect. I can understand that Harry is born again and again and that is possible if he is alone in that condition. All the circumstances leading up to his birth, every coincidence, every incident, every flap of a butterfly's wings, would repeat flawlessly in each iteration of time to create him anew. However, if there are others born before him then circumstances change. Even if just a few hundred of his kind exist before he did, they live different lives each time, which in turn would create different effects spreading forward in time. Even if the general flow of time remained the same, it is the smallest details that would change, the difference between crossing the road at a certain time, or missing a train. Time would change. Instead the novel posits that time can only be changed by a tipping point in events. As long as the repeaters do not change things too much, time plays out identically around them. It is only when one of their number, Vincent Rankin, decides to speed up the advancement of science for his own end that time becomes broken.

The only way to kill Harry, Vincent, and the others for good, is to find a point of origin and have someone born beyond that point murder the parent before the child can be born. Under the rules of the novel, once this happens a person dies for good and can never be reborn again. Time is reset because the changes they made are never made in the next iteration of creation.

I loved this book, and despite the cause and effect logic not quite working, it didn't matter to me. In the context of the story I accepted those rules. It is a compelling read, and while it does echo some of the themes of the novel 'Replay' by Ken Grimwood, it feels thoroughly original in its approach and execution. It has action, but at its heart it is a contemplation of eternity and of living without end. What choices would you make?
 

SFX Weekender 2015

This last weekend I had the privilege of meeting such sci-fi alumni as Sylvester McCoy, (The Seventh Doctor Who - if you didn't know), Julian Glover (Credits too numerous to mention, but notable to me for 'Quatermass And The Pit', 'For Your Eyes Only' and 'Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade) and James Cosmo (Highlander, Braveheart, Game Of Thrones).

Sylvester McCoy was funny and energetic on stage, but unfortunately by the time I got him to sign my Curse Of Fenric DVD he was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open. My ticket was 142, which gives you an idea of how many things he had already signed.


Julian Glover, the consummate villain is 80 this week, has hearing problems but nevertheless was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. They say this about actors who play villains, and it turns out to be true. I can only surmise that all their 'evil' is drained away by the acting process leaving only goodness behind. He told an interesting story about his death mask from Indiana Jones, which was lying in his garage until his wife forced him to throw it out. A few years later a dealer offered him £17000 for it. He was mortified.

James Cosmo is tall, tough and very friendly, even though I could barely say two words to him, he still shook my hand and posed for a photo. One anecdote from his long career was taking a thirteen year old Christian Bale scuba diving and his greatest regret was never being cast as a romantic lead.

I also went to a lot of science fiction author panels and met the likes of Gareth Powell, Bryony Pearce and Danie Ware. Gareth has written various novels about a brain enhanced monkey named Ack Ack Macaque as well as a book of short stories call 'The Last Reef'. I have to admit to preferring his short stories which are eloquent and stick in the mind. The man himself was big, looming over me, well spoken but maybe a little held back. Bryony Pearce has written books I have not had the pleasure of reading and was very forgiving when I almost sat on her later in the evening. (The chairs in the arena are not very wide). Danie Ware was happy to answer many of my questions even when I realised they were questions she had been asked very recently already. I can't say I learnt anything new about writing, but that in itself was reassuring, as by listening and speaking to the authors I discovered I'm on the right track at least.

Cosplay wise there was an awesome Chewbacca there, a Michael Keaton Batman near perfect, an array of Judge Dredds, Darth Vaders, a Nicholas Angel, a Poison Ivy looking similar to a Jean Grey Phoenix and many many more. They did a good job of walking up to people and trying to catch them unawares. The weather was good, the people were friendly, and the food was edible. A good weekend had by all and a solar eclipse thrown in on the bargain.

Will I go again? We'll see.

New Reviews Of Hunter No More

I've had some great reviews in the last few months which as they have been appearing on a few different blogs, I decided to post for posterity.

My thanks to all the reviewers who took the time out to read my book and post these reviews:

http://www.iheartreading.net/book-tour/book-review-and-giveaway-hunter-no-more-by-g-d-tinnams/ 

Hunter No More is a fascinating piece of science-fiction, a novel combining several concepts and crafting them into an engaging story that, although scifi, does sound realistic. The story alternates between the POV of several different characters, giving an all-around experience of what’s happening and the consequences for everyone. In that sense, the book reminded me of Game of Thrones. Different characters tell different parts of the story and in the end you get a well-rounded tale.

The main focus of the story is the battle between humans and artificial intelligence. The story is believable and the characters are engaging. The action is flawless. It starts on the first page and is still going strong by the end. At the same time, the author manages to provide food for thought for the reader, about machine intelligence and what would happen if one day they decide to rule the world. The book features a lot of intrigue and mystery, and so many twists and turns you simply can’t stop reading until you’ve reached the end.

I’d recommend this one to all science-fiction fans and thriller fans.

http://deborahjayauthor.com/2014/09/17/blog-tour-hunter-no-more-by-g-d-tinnams-review-giveaway-ya-sf/


Starting out with a breathless action scene, Tinnams drags the reader by the throat into a world where things are not as straightforward as they initially appear. The panic of the night flight amid rioting is truly heart pounding, and the relief once all are safely on board the escape boat is a welcome breather, even though something is clearly amiss between the two male leads, Roger and Keith.

This is an accomplished piece of writing, and the concepts explored are fascinating and well realised: AIs that wear ‘biotech’ (synthetic human bodies that house their consciousness when they need a physical form other than their space ship), a war between machine minds with human beings as unwitting casualties, and how a random event can put a spanner (or a hammer – read it, you’ll understand) in the works – or perhaps be fortuitous, depending on whose point of view you take.

My small quibble with the book was the – to me – slightly uneven structure. There are 5 viewpoint characters, opening with what seems to be a typical teenager, Samantha, which lured me into thinking this would be a standard YA novel revolving around the teen character. Chapter 2 is from her father, Keith’s viewpoint, and then the story alternates between the two for several chapters before the 3rd person, Josella, is introduced. Fine so far, but then when the action really ramps up (and it does, believe me – the sequences on the Amberjack are mind-blowingly good), Sam is left behind on the planet, and almost half the book takes place without her. This made it feel almost like reading two separate books, and I expected to at least have Sam’s viewpoint again at the very end, to ‘showcase’ the story, but that doesn’t happen, and I felt a tiny bit cheated, not seeing her response to the tragedy in the final showdown.

Having said that, I would still highly recommend this book, for the concepts, the depth of characterisation and the action – well worth the read.

I received this book to review for a blog tour – my opinions were in no way influenced by this.

http://msnoseinabook.com/2014/08/21/blog-tour-book-review-hunter-no-more-by-gd-tinnams/

I had been itching for a good Sci-Fi book to read so when I saw that was going on tour I jumped at the opportunity to read it. Hunter No More is exactly what you want in a Sci Fi read complete with a mechanical species threatening the human race, emotional distress, fast paced action and a heart breaking and rather beautiful conclusion. I was riveted from the beginning to end. At 140 pages it is a fast, light and yet satisfying read.
Hunter No More

While I enjoyed this book and the story enough to give it four stars I really wish it was longer but that’s just selfish of me because I liked the story alot and felt like the action and drama could have gone on awhile longer. I loved the story itself and was really interested in the civil war going on with the humans and the hunters themselves were fascinating to me and their way of thinking about and dealing with humankind. I do like how Josella, at the start of the story seems to be a minor, sort of sidekick type character but ends up being a pretty central focus of the story. I think that was great. I feel like all of the characters, except maybe Anna and Skylar each were equally important (at least perspective wise) to the story. I love books that are written from multiple perspectives, I always like to see the differences in the story as it occurs character to character. This book was no exception to that, I really enjoyed the delivery. One thing I loved about this story is that it never stops with the action and I love my Sci Fi reads to just be full of gut punch action where you can feel the adrenaline pumping almost like you are experiencing it for yourself. Hunter No More was like that for me.

The ending to this book was rather stunning…surprising to me and sad. In a good way. I rather enjoyed reading this book and I think that Sci Fi fans in need of a light read would enjoy it too! I really dig the cover as well!!

http://imaneclecticreader.weebly.com/blog/book-review-hunter-no-more

Told from the POV of a few different characters, Hunter No More is an engaging scifi story about AI vs. humanity. The book is breathtaking, fast-paced, and provides excellent writing. The author crafts an engaging scifi world and characters the reader feels an immediate connection to. An awesome read to finish this year of reading.

http://coffeehobby.blogspot.be/2014/12/hunter-no-more.html 

Samantha Marriott's  family is lucky to escape a growing political discontent in their hometown. Things would be great at their new temporary home if it weren't for the fact that aliens have decided to complete their missions of destruction and all the adults have huge secrets. Samantha and all those around her quickly decide what it is that is important to them and must fight for it...to the death.

A very smoothly written science fiction. This smoothness made the story entrancing and so believable (another that was read in one-sitting...again, one-sitting as defined by a mother of a running Toddler and a constantly jumping Preschooler). The only time that I found myself pausing for believability was when humor was at just too awkward a time (that happened a bit near the end of the story).

I like all of my characters to be very well-developed and this story had that...in a puzzling way. The action was laid out by several different narrators. For this particular story, skipping around from one mind to the other actually worked (and one might even say it was appropriate for the subject matter covered). On some level, each entity (person, machine or alien) is struggling to understand the true meaning of humanity.
(I would recommend Roger Zelazny's "The Last Defender of Camelot" for readers who wish to further think about humanity and whether humanity can be learned via will power...G.D. Tinnams can take this observation as a big compliment to his writing style.)

http://bookaholicramblings.weebly.com/blog/book-review-and-giveaway-hunter-no-more 

This is one of the best scifi books I've ever read. The worldbuilding is phenomenal, the story is breathtaking, and the author does an amazing job with character development. I liked Sam's personality - she was an easy character to relate to. Overall, it's hard to say just how good this book is, but take it from me, it's pretty great.

http://booksareforever.weebly.com/blog/book-review-hunter-no-more

In Hunter No More, Samantha Marriot and her parents have to flee their home after a violent revolution. They hope they can be safe on "The Rainbow Islands", but unfortunately their perils have only just begun. Once they arrive on the island, Sam discovers a secret her father has been keeping, and that secret changes everything. Meanwhile, the Machine Mind Hierarchy of Earth wants to get rid of the planet's remaining human population, and humanity's only hope is a damaged Hunter unit.

We meet a bunch of characters along the way: Keith, Kristof, Jostella, and many more, but the most memorable character is  Sam. She's strong, independent, intelligent, rational, and easy to relate to. Her struggles seem quite real, and her reactions to things are realistic as well.

The book is fast-paced and offers, besides an impressive cast of characters, an intruing story and solid writing.

WHO AM I? A Comment About Characterisation

First of all, and what many people have noted, I tend to give my characters ‘normal’ names such as Roger, Keith, Anna, Sam, Alicia. This was a conscious choice because when I’ve read books in the past I find it hard to get my head around weird alien names and lose track of who is who. I didn’t want my readers to have the same problem so I’d just rather keep it simple and direct. Even so a few slightly different names did creep in, like Kristof and Skylar. Again not alien names, but just a little unusual. I probably couldn’t walk down the street and meet a Kristof or Skylar, but I could probably bump into a Keith.

Names notwithstanding, once a character has a name, what do you do with them? Well in any story you have a protagonist, a character whose experiences the story is built around. Sometimes but not all the time you have an antagonist in direct opposition to the protagonist. Their conflict creates the story. Actually it’s not quite that simple, but that is a starting point. In my novels I tend to have more than one protagonist, allowing multiple points of view and multiple antagonists as well. It mixes things up more, and sometimes a protagonist can change roles and so can the antagonist. Their roles are not set, but are dictated by how each character progresses in the story.

It’s never as cut and dried as good versus evil. Good people sometimes do bad things and bad people do good things. Characters are not consistent, and may make a good decision one day and a bad the next, even when confronted with the same circumstances. Why? Is this bad writing? No, in real life people are equally inconsistent, I’m inconsistent. We live, we change, we make mistakes and sometimes we don’t. Characters follow suit.

I also believe that characters shouldn’t necessarily get on, even if they are on the same side, they have different interpretations of what that side is. For instance, the characters Keith and Roger in ‘Hunter No More’ actively despise each other. Keith sees Roger as small minded, Roger sees Keith as alien and arrogant. But that doesn’t mean they can’t work together, it doesn’t mean they can’t love the same people. But they are at odds, and that conflict helps to define who they are and make them more interesting as people. If they liked each other, and did everything without argument, that would make them the same person. Superficially the description would be different, but the characters would be duplicates of each other. People are all unique and different and no-one is exactly the same. In life we are all the stars of own shows, for the characters it’s no different. Even a minor character doesn’t know they are a minor character. In their own life they are the protagonist and they have to be written that way.

So we have names, conflict, descriptions. Someone is tall, someone is fat, someone is a man, someone is a woman. Gender stereotypes: the man should be strong, the woman should be weak. That is rubbish, a woman can be stronger than a man, both physically and mentally. A woman shows more emotion than a man? Maybe in feature films, but in a story we are interested in the inner voice. A man and woman can be equally afraid, equally grief-stricken, equally brave, and equally hysterical. Characters react and feel, man or woman, it shouldn’t matter. I’m not saying they should be written the same, but a writer should avoid being influenced by preconceptions about gender as much as possible. Why, as much as possible? Because we are all influenced by our upbringing, and every independent thought is tinged by that. I have no doubt that some stereotypes creep into my writing, but the trick is to avoid those stereotypes as much as you possibly can.

Finally it’s all about the layers; layers of behaviour, layers of reaction, layers of internal and external argument, layers of action. After injecting a character with enough layers, plot no longer dictates their actions, rather their actions dictate the plot. Keith isn’t going to say to Kristof, let’s blow up this place and go home. It’s not in his character. So plot hinges on how a character would act, and you can’t just throw in plot twists which don’t fit with a character’s actions. You have to write the character’s actions based on their developed traits and let the story play out as honestly as possible. That’s when it gets interesting for a writer, really interesting, because as you’re writing you don’t know exactly what is going to happen next.

Emon and the Emperor - Review

A book that is genuinely hard to put down until finished and one that I thoroughly enjoyed. The world building is done with the barest hints and the characters are built in a slow but steady flow of action and detail. Emon himself, is a decent guy, not bright but with his heart in the right place, and as such the other characters gravitate towards him, love him and are even jealous of him. He also doesn't help himself that much, his stupidity on a par with his bravery.

His relationships with Titan and Emara are the driving force of the story as much as the electric and water super powers are. They are a strange love triangle, each dependent on the other, each giving something to the others that they lack. It is Emara's story which is just as compelling, if not more so, than Emon's and the flashes I see of her past as an 'imperfect' only leave me hungry for more.

The world of the Empire itself is only hinted at in the broadest possible terms, but this is because the reader is limited to Emon's own first person world view. There are no stats about landmasses or conditions, just a place that has to marched through and experienced. While it is hinted the Empire is another world, no detail is given as to how Emon is transported there again and again. It could exist somewhere in space, or another time or another dimension. There is no way of knowing and I like the mystery of it.

The narrative is constantly moving for the most part, putting our protagonists in danger as they discover more about the Empire they are in conflict with. The twists did catch me by surprise and the mineral that affects the people of the empire in various ways proved an original driving plot device.

A good and original book, it deserves to be read.

Amazon US

Amazon UK