Hornsea Writers at FantastiCon 2019

This year’s fantasy, sci-fi and gaming convention featured the works of several Hornsea Writers. 

Author Stuart Aken’s fantasy and sci-fi trilogies were on offer, as were Penny Grubb’s crime novels. Popular at the Fantastic Books Store were also the charity anthologies, several of which feature stories by Stuart, Penny, Linda Acaster, Madeleine McDonald, April Taylor and Elaine Hemingway, notably Dreaming of Steam, 666, The Dummies’ Guide to Serial Killing and The Forge: Fire and Ice.

For more detail see the illustrated account on Stuart’s blog.

Meet more than writers at this holiday extravaganza

The annual extravaganza that is FantastiCon is scheduled for the full weekend of the 17th and 18th August in Cleethorpes at the space-age leisure centre. The focus is on a weekend packed with family activities around games, virtual reality, NERF wars, drone racing, a Mariokart tournament, an aqua assault course... and some Hornsea Writers too.

The event is used as a launch pad for new publications and previous years have seen the launch of sci-fi trilogies from Stuart Aken, crime drama from Penny Grubb and charity anthologies that have included several group members including Elaine Hemingway, Madeleine McDonald, April Taylor and Penny Grubb who all appeared in Dreaming of Steam; Linda Acaster and Stuart Aken in horror anthology 666; Stuart Aken was also invited to contribute to the fantasy and sci-fi collections, Fusion and Synthesis. Penny Grubb was featured in The Dummies’Guide to Serial Killing that was launched last year.

Several Hornsea Writers are regulars at FantastiCon. If you come along and can find a moment between activities and games, please drop by the bookstore and say hello.

CLICK HERE to learn more. 

An Unexpected Tribute!

Delight can be infrequent in these troubled times, so Stuart Aken was both surprised and, yes, delighted, when he received a notice from his publisher, Fantastic Books Publishing, the other day. Attached was a link to a video produced by a professional in the TV industry. Ramon Marett from Adiq had wanted to try his hand at a book promotion video and decided to use Aken’s ‘Generation Mars’ series for the project.

The author posted it on his website, and you can see the result via this link.

Videos are a popular source of information for many potential readers, so he’s spread this one everywhere he can to get maximum benefit. He says it’s also had the effect of galvanising him into trying something similar for his other books! Watch this space.

Building A Believable World

Writers spend a great deal of time developing their characters to make them feel real to the reader. Interviewing and mapping out their life choices to define them. With all that effort the environment these characters live in in is an afterthought.

But we all live in that world, right? We all know a car from a bus. We all know what we mean when we say “I’m going out for a coffee.”  But we’ll turn the channel or put the book aside because what we know to be real isn’t how the writer has shown it.

Placing your reader is vital. The story won’t work if you confuse them. It’s more imperative when you’re dealing with the fantastical, the dystopian and technological. You’re dealing with things your reader hasn’t encountered. So how do you get them to visualise what’s in your head?

Writing a long-winded description isn't the key. Tolkien may well be regarded as the start of Western Fantasy but readers don’t have the patience for paragraphs of exposition and information anymore, they want action, plot, intrigue. Don’t put them to sleep at the cost of your story.

Decide what is important about a story’s world.

Readers are amazingly clever people, they’re really good at filling in blanks. If the planet has two moons but much of the rest looks like Malta you have a starting point.  

Ask questions.

Like you’d interrogate your character, interrogate your towns and cities. Why is there a world on the back of this turtle? (Warning. Some questions lead you in circles.) What happens if there’s no fuel, what are the implications?

Research.

I’ve never been off planet but that didn’t stop me writing about another world in When The Skies Open. I’ve not been inside a mountain, but when I wrote The Blacksmith’s Arms I found articles and books that would give me the information I needed to imagine how it might be.

Beware.

Just as too much worldbuilding can kill your pace not enough will cause confusion. Because readers paste over the gaps of description and add their own they will be lost if your worldbuilding has flaws.

Ed McDonald, author of Fantasy Series The Raven’s Mark, summed up the delicate balance of worldbuilding in a recent Tweet.

All the effort helps you too. The more time you spend exploring your world the more real it will become and the easier it is to imagine.

 

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For writers wanting to go deeper into worldbuilding join Shellie Horst at East Riding Theatre in Beverley on 2^nd Feb 2019. Tickets and more information on her Sci-fi and Fantasy Worldbuilding Day School is available here.

The Joys of Re-reading

I’ve always been an avid re-reader, but it occurred to me how much more re-reading is possible now than it was when I first went back to revisit a William story and discovered the joys of adventuring through the same territory – discovering things I’d never noticed before, things I’d forgotten.

These days with so much available online at the click of a button, it’s not just books that are easy re-read candidates, but stories, articles, letters, random accounts of odd experiences; things that would rarely have been contenders for re-reading. And of course ‘Joys’ is not always the word. When a lot of time has passed, things can appear in very different lights. Attitudes change, cultures change, the written word dates along with everything else. Re-reading can be a salutary experience full of more surprises than seem possible.

My latest re-reading venture (other than my well-thumbed stack of favourite books) was this series of interviews I did some years ago with a diverse group of SciFi authors. 

#SFF at Waterstones Hull, 10 November

Among her many talents, member Shelli Horst runs Humber SFF, a group which brings speculative fiction authors to Hull, 2017's City of Culture. 

This time she's blagged her way into Waterstones bookshop to host a triple author event:

Daniel Godfrey, published by Titan, writes near-future SF, so near-future it's difficult to stop the hair rising on the nape of your neck. 

Ren Warom, published by Tor, Apex and Fox Spirit, writes in the dystopian world of cyber-punk, among other sub-genres.

RJ Barker, published by Orbit, leads readers into the grimdark epic fantasy world of assassins and magic.

The event on Saturday 10th November is free, but seating is limited. Book your place HERE.

Farscape, FantastiCon and Hornsea Writers

There is usually good representation from Hornsea Writers at the annual sci-fi convention, FantastiCon, and we hope that this year will be no exception. But as yet there is no insider knowledge on whether any Hornsea Writer has a book to launch there. The usual suspect would be Stuart Aken who has launched both his Seared Sky trilogy and the start of his Mars series at the event over the past few years. I guess we’ll have to wait for further announcements.

All being well, the cast of Farscape will be shipped over from Los Angeles not only to take part in the convention but for Gigi Edgley and her brother to perform the final event of their Wanderland World Tour at the live music evening on Saturday night.

FantastiCon this year will be held in Cleethorpes at the futuristic leisure centre on the first weekend in September: 1st and 2nd. Tickets are now on sale via Kickstarter. CLICK HERE for further information on the event and the venue. 

Local publisher takes a shine to Hornsea Writers

Local publisher, Fantastic Books Publishing, published its first short story anthology in 2012. It was called Fusion and one of the Hornsea Writers, Stuart Aken, was invited to contribute.

Since then, Fantastic Books has published six short story collections and four of them feature stories from the Hornsea Writers. Stuart Aken was again invited to contribute in 2015 to Synthesis.

Horror followed a year later with the 666 anthology in which Stuart was joined by Linda Acaster as an invited contributor. The collection also included a story from Penny Grubb.

The most recent collection, a railway anthology, Dreaming of Steam, showcased four Hornsea Writers; Penny Grubb was invited to contribute and stories from Elaine Hemingway, Madeleine McDonald and April Taylor were included.

Fantastic Books’ current competition, Fire and Ice, closes at the end of February. If you feel up to producing a short tale that touches on dark, twisted and dystopian, why not follow this link and have a go. Fireand Ice Entries must be in by the end of February.

Guest Posts.

Writers, especially when they blog, or run their own website, are occasionally invited to place guest posts on sites run by other bloggers. It's a fine way of spreading the word.
Recently, Stuart Aken received two such invitations. One of the sites deals in something dear to his heart: the beauty of the world around us. He decided to produce a post about his home area, the Forest of Dean, using his own photographs to illustrate his love for this small gem of English countryside by journaling a year in the forest. You can find that post here. As is so often the case with such posts, it's generated a good deal of interest and comment.
The second invitation involved an author interview. Glen Donaldson is an Australian reader/writer who enjoys presenting posts very much in his own humorous style. Stuart tried to match his answers to the tone of the questions and the interviewer's blog. The subject was his Generation Mars series of novels and you can visit the post here.
If you'd like to see more of Stuart Aken's photography or writing, please visit his website here.

Writer’s alter-ego jumps into the future

Melodie Trudeaux (who is the alter-ego of Hornsea Writer, Penny Grubb) has taken a step sideways from children’s fantasy and published her first Sci-Fi short – the story of humankind’s route to a Utopian future – as told by a journalist seeking his first big break.

The story, The 93-E Contradiction, is available as an ebook and will soon be available as an audio short.

Read more about Melodie on her blog. 

War Over Dust: #SciFi out as eBook

The second book in Stuart Aken’s Generation Mars series, War Over Dust, is now available for Kindle. The paperback version is due to launch at Fantasticon 2017 in Hull on 2^nd September, where the author will be on hand to sign copies.

What’s it about?

The community at Marion live in eternal peace, harmony and justice under an atheistic democratic system clandestinely controlled by Artificial Intelligence. Their opposite Martian community, Marzero, is a commercially driven patriarchal ghetto ruled by the Elite, whose only concerns are personal gratification and profit. When brilliant but innocent Daisa leaves Marion to study a new phenomenon in Marzero, she precipitates a series of events with dangerous potential. Her subject, Gabriel, the Prophet of the People, believes he is the voice of God. They meet under the shadow of the Machiavellian Stefan and embark on a love affair that will test them to their limits. When injustice lands Daisa in danger of execution, will her community be able to extract her without bringing vengeance and war down from the envious city? Which colony will succeed in the ensuing battle for a better future for humanity on Mars?

You can catch up on the way this book was written by visiting Stuart Aken’s website via this link.

Honourable Mention in Roswell Science Fiction Award

This year, the Roswell Award for short science fiction stories formed part of the Pasadena Lit-Fest, which celebrates books and authors. In previous years the award was part of a longer festival dedicated to science fiction writing, which presented one-act plays by new authors as well as adaptations of the work of established authors like Neil Gaiman and Ray Bradbury. As a result of a dispute with the actors' union Equity, the plays are missing in 2017, although the organisers hope to reinstate them in 2018.

The five finalists heard their work read to a live audience before the winner of the Roswell Award was announced. Richard Larson was presented with a cheque for $500 for his story Fifteen Minutes Hate.

The contest attracted entries from all over the world. Standing out from hundreds of other entries, Hornsea Writers member Madeleine McDonald was proud to receive an honourable mention for her short story, Not My Children, inspired by overpopulation. 

Hold the date for a Fantastic September weekend

Hold the date, 2nd and 3rd September 2017, for an amazing weekend in the UK’s City of Culture. FantastiCon 2017, the annual Sci Fi and Fantasy convention takes place at the Guildhall in Hull. Tickets are now on sale through Kickstarter. Follow this link and hit the Pledge button. 

Hornsea Writers will once again be well represented. Last year our own Stuart Aken launched the first of his Generation Mars trilogy, and the Fantastic Bookstore featured his earlier work as well as that of Penny Grubb and Linda Acaster who were only two of many local authors represented in amongst the Star Wars characters, the many full sized Daleks, the live music shows and the mind-blowing virtual reality demos.

FantastiCon is a ‘doing’ convention. All the activities are rolled into the very modest ticket price. You can even get kitted out with goggles and protective clothing and join the Nerf wars. Sign up now and come and say hello. You’ll find at least one Hornsea Writer at the bookstore at all times.

First Draft Completed. What Next?

Martian surface, courtesy NASA

How do you respond to your completion of a first draft of your novel? And what do you do next? Stuart Aken has been working on the second book in his Generation Mars series since 9^th January and completed the first draft on 20^th March with 112,061 words. He was, unsurprisingly, delighted to have reached this milestone in the creation of the story.

But, of course, this isn’t so much the end of the process as the beginning of the conversion of the raw story into a readable, publishable book. In his post on his website, he details the next stages and describes the path he expects to tread on the way to that final version of his story. With much research still to do, some considerable re-reading and a programme of known changes to make, it looks as though he’ll be busy with this project for some time to come.

The first book in the series, Blood Red Dust, has earned some high praise from reviewers, so he has a lot to live up to in this follow-up book!

So, what’s your working method and how do you approach the journey from that first draft to the finished product?