Graham Edwards

The author trail

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:50:00 +0000

It's like a nature trail, only better. You know how it works; you read a book by an author you never read before, get hooked and follow their trail forever after. It's a kind of literary stalking. We've all done it. There's no shame.

The author trail works in two distinct ways. First there's the backlist trail. This is where you discover a book, only to find the author's written a ton of stuff you never read before. Such trails can result in exhaustion, particularly when the list is long. I first experienced this when I discovered Isaac Asimov at some remote and tender age. Foundation led me to, well, the other Foundation books, and then to I, Robot and The Rest of the Robots and Earth is Room Enough and The End of Eternity and ... well, you get the picture. The same with Larry Niven. Ringworld begat Protector and thence to World of Ptavvs ... these lists can get biblical, can't they?

The second kind of trail is when you discover an author with their very first book. This happened to me with Pratchett's The Colour of Magic and Iain M Banks's Consider Phlebas and a host of others. This kind of trail is a game of patience, as you wait for the next delivery from your new favourite author.

There is, of course, a hybrid third kind of author trail. It's a combination of the first two. Here you discover someone with a backlist but who's also still writing. You devour the oldies and set about waiting for the newies. For me this is probably the biggest list of all. A few years ago I discovered Neal Stephenson through Cryptonomicon, read his earlier works and am now eagerly awaiting the moment I get far enough down my to-read pile to immerse myself in Anathem.

And it never ends. Stephen King's new novel Under the Dome is out today and I'm only just catching my breath from finishing Robert Holdstock's Avilion. And then there's a whole heap of talented new writers who simply have to be sampled. Check out the publishing schedule of outfits like Angry Robot Books if you don't believe me.

Some of you may be wondering where my own trail's headed. As I've mentioned here before, I'm currently tied up with a bunch of ghost-writing projects. They'll take me through into next spring. All good work but it means my own output drops accordingly. Like most writers, I do have unpublished novels in manuscript form, plus other irons in the fire in the form of proposals for novels I haven't yet written. And I'll be working on a new project over the next few weeks – something I'm really excited about but don't want to talk about just yet. But it's tough out there. So right now I'm doing what I do best: concentrating on the words and letting the deals come when they will. Following the trail, if you like. Like they say, it's all in the journey.

Green man reviews best horror

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:29:00 +0000

There's another great review for The Best Horror of the Year: Volume One, edited by Ellen Datlow, this time over at The Green Man Review. All the stories in the anthology get a mention. Here's mine:

"Graham Edwards's "Girl in Pieces" is a SF-myth-noir mash-up about a P.I. investigating the murder of a young woman after a golem claims he was framed for the murder. This is a delightfully witty and funny story and provides a much-welcome sense of B movie humor to the collection."

For more info on the story at me website, click here.

Yes, Avatar again

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:30:00 +0000

It's my duty to report that the new Avatar trailer is AWESOME.

Ghostly delivery

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:01:00 +0000

Yay - I've just delivered the second draft MS for the fantasy novel I've been ghost-writing for the past few months. Don't bother asking me what it's about or who it's for – what kind of ghost would I blabbed about stuff like that?

What struck me about this particular edit was how close I was able to get to the words. "What's he talking about?" I hear you ask. "He's a writer, isn't he? It's all words, isn't it?"

Well, yes. But on this occasion the structure and pacing of the novel were pretty much there after the first draft. That left me free on the second draft to roll up my sleeves, get right into the text and massage it to get the most out of every scene, without worrying too much about how those scenes fitted together. Good prose is all about finding exactly the right word, every step along the way. So that's what I've been doing.

Mind you, with around 80,000 words to consider, chances are I haven't nailed them all. As a famous writer once said (and most writers I know agree), you set out on every project wanting to write the best thing you ever wrote ... and end up just wanting to get the damn thing finished.

And finished it is, which leaves me free to tinker with a personal project before the outline for the third and final book of this ghostly trilogy arrives in my inbox. Who knows, maybe that one will be the best thing I ever wrote. When the damn thing's finished, I'll let you know.

Talisman and Dome

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:30:00 +0000

My appreciation of Stephen King started with the 1979 TV version of Salem's Lot, which had us all talking in the school playground about how we hadn't slept a wink after watching David Soul go up against Mr Barlow. After that initiation, my first reading experience wasn't that great. As a teenager I borrowed Pet Sematary from a friend and thought it was all a bit overblown up to the point where the resurrected kid gets hold of the scalpel. Then, at the age of eighteen, I read The Talisman ...

I read The Talisman at lightspeed, consuming the entire second half in a single sitting one wet Sunday afternoon. Jack Sawyer's adventures just blew me away. Years later I loved the sequel Black House nearly as much, for entirely different reasons. I'm not here to review these books, only to tell you to read them, and to say how great the new comic adaptation of The Talisman looks. (I have a particular interest in this as it's drawn by Tony Shasteen, who produced a couple of awesome illustrations for two short stories of mine.)

Since then I've visited Castle Rock and Derry on a regular basis. I've trekked through Mid-World with Roland and his buddies. I'm a true fan. When Mr King writes his introductions dedicated to his Constant Reader, I know he's talking to me. So am I excited about his new novel Under the Dome being published next month? You bet your boots!

Best Horror reviewed in Publishers Weekly

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:26:00 +0000

Publishers Weekly have posted an excellent starred review of Ellen Datlow's The Best Horror of the Year 1:

"After 22 years of pulling the horror content for the now-discontinued Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series, Datlow (Lovecraft Unbound) goes solo with this stellar start to a new “best of” annual. As in the past, her picks confirm that “horror” is a storytelling approach with endlessly inventive possibilities. In E. Michael Lewis's “Cargo,” a haunting Twilight Zone–type tale, an airplane picks up something otherworldly as part of its latest transport. Euan Harvey's creepy “Harry and the Monkey” turns an urban legend into reality. R.B. Russell's “Loup-garou” is a highly original shape-shifter story with a subtle psychological twist, and Daniel LeMoal's “Beach Head” a bracing conte cruel with a Lord of the Flies cast. In addition to the richly varied stories, Datlow provides her usual comprehensive coverage of the year in horror in an introduction that's indispensable reading for horror aficionados."

If you're wondering, of course I have a vested interest, since one of my stories is in there...

Names from the arena

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:39:00 +0000

I have a folder on my laptop called The Arena. It's where I put my ideas. Story fragments, outline notes, lists of names or places ... you name it, it's there. Once in The Arena, they scrap it out. Only the strongest survive.

There's something in The Arena right now that wants to be heard. The trouble is, I don't really want to talk about it. The Arena's a hostile place. Sometimes the things in there just wither and die before they even get a chance to take up their weapons. But this particular project already seems to have a life of its own. I've decided to acknowledge that by presenting to you the following list, without preamble or explanation. Just to let it know I'm paying attention.

Abalone
Tiquette
Pyx
Viscero
Ghan
Pyrean

and finally

The Tilt

That's all. Make of it what you will. If the project wins through against the other gladiators in the ring, you'll be the first to know.

Read, edit, sleep, write

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:18:00 +0000

It's heads down at Edwards Mansions right now. The usual tight deadline to finish the second draft of the next fantasy novel in the trilogy I'm writing this year (yes, three books in one year and no, I'm not crazy). First task is to work through all the specific comments from the editors ie those relating to particular paragraphs or sentences. That's pretty much done now. Next come the general comments. One of the characters needs to act a little more feisty, for example – that means reading the MS again and rewriting sections accordingly. There are maybe eight or ten general comments of this sort. At the same time I'm doing all my own tinkering. This is the last time I'll get my hands dirty on this book, so I want to make the most of it. When it's all wrapped up there'll be just time for a short nap, followed by a deep breath before plunging into book three!

Best Horror review

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:13:00 +0000

The first review of The Best Horror of the Year Volume One, edited by Ellen Datlow and containing my short story Girl in Pieces, has arrived over at Charles Tan's excellent review blog. Click here to read the review.

The future of the book

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:24:00 +0000

Check out this article on the Bookseller website, imagining the future of the book. To fuel the speculation, "if:book asked some of its 21st-century experts to use their time machines and then report back from the near and far-flung future." I especially like Bill Thompson's image of books being burned to stoke the fires that run the servers that keep Google going!

Opening the 8mm archive

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 07:51:00 +0000

As threatened, here are a couple of bits of animation from those scratchy old 8mm movies I used to make back in the '80s. Since taking these first tentative steps I've had the joy of producing rather slicker pieces of work using pixels rather than plasticene. But hey, we all start somewhere!

First up is the epic opening shot of Matt Line Tidies Up the Universe, as detailed in my earlier post 8mm planetary approach ...

... followed by the previously mentioned demonic dressing gown from Fever.

Electro-plasmic genre fiction!

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:03:00 +0000

In case you were wondering where I got the idea for my latest book, Cosmonoiac, set in a dystopian Antarctica, in which a young techno-obesessed geek stumbles across a dream-inducing drug which spurs him into conflict with a megalomaniacal dictator (all with the help of a leather-clad female with shades and welding gear), culminating in a daring rescue preceding a giant explosion ... check out Wondermark's fabulous Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator!

Dig the demonic dressing gown

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:03:00 +0000

One of my earliest adventures in fantasy film-making was the epic Fever, made in collaboration with my long-time buddy Phil Tuppin. It was a four-minute horror movie made with a Standard-8mm clockwork camera and entered for the BBC's Screen Test Young Film-Makers of the Year competition. And, yes, it actually got broadcast in the Highly Commended category, although they censored the second half for fear it would "give younger viewers the heeby-jeebies"!

The key special effect in this epic is a shot of a demonic dressing gown crawling across a boy's bedroom floor, shortly before throttling said boy (who's lying unconscious in bed with a fever) to death. We did it using good old stop-motion animation. Each frame, I extricated myself from behind the camera, picked my way across the room without disturbing any of the artfully-arranged props, moved the gown the requisite inches, then clambered back out of shot ready for Phil to click the shutter. Our rudimentary lighting apparatus meant all this was done under the searing glare of bare 200W bulbs positioned close enough to our faces to act as sunlamps. Back-breaking stuff, but so rewarding to see it all come to life when we got the processed film back from Kodak a fortnight later – yes, this was pre-video and definitely pre-digital.

Most of the other gown shots were puppeteered with garden canes taped into the arms. But that hero shot of the thing crawling across the floor was a real winner. Once again, sadly, I'm posting before sorting out screen grabs from the DVD transfers of these ancient movies (see my previous post 8mm planetary approach), so stand by for a bumper crop of stills soon!

Dig the forced perspective ...

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:31:00 +0000

... in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. How can you not be charmed by the simple trick of putting actors at different distances from the camera in order to make one look bigger than the other? By combining this age-old technique with artful set and prop design and cunning camera moves, Jackson and his crew overcame what could have been a major stumbling block by keeping everything in-camera and avoiding (mostly) tricky post-production effects.

Samurai fantasies

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:18:00 +0000

I just watched the DVD of Ran, Akira Kurosawa's epic reimagining of King Lear. What's that got to do with genre fiction, I hear you cry? Well, it occured to me (between marvelling at Kurosawa's crystal-clear storytelling, epic staging, beautifully defined characters and jaw-dropping art direction and cinematography) that for the average western audience, the Orient is pretty close to being an fantasy environment. No coincidence, then, that so many western science fiction and fantasy movies have plundered Asian culture for their production design. You can see Samurai motifs in Lucas's stormtrooper costumes, for instance, and even the spacesuits worn by the crew of the Nostromo in Alien. And Joss Whedon's American/Chinese cultural mash-up lends his Firefly universe just the right touch of otherworldly charm.

Watching Ran, I found myself enjoying it on the same level I might enjoy a good fantasy story. The parallels are many: it's set in a simplified feudal society of warlords, where family and honour are top of the agenda. Archetypal characters struggle against the whims of fate in a stylised world of castles and hostile landscapes. There are big battles between huge armies waving colour-coded banners to denote their allegiance. On top of that, because I'm a simple boy from Somerset, medieval Japan looks simultaneously foreign and familiar, and as seductive as all hell.

Reading and standing still

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:12:00 +0000

In a few days I'll be getting back the manuscript for the latest ghosting project. A couple of weeks of rewrites and edits and that'll be another book put to bed. I counted up the other day and that brings my total output to twelve novels (including two unpublished) with the thirteenth due for delivery in February.

During the lull I know I should be working on any number of other things, like the proposals for the steampunk and horror novels, the zombie short story I need to finish and the urban fantasy I need to start ... Instead I've got my head firmly inserted in other people's books, namely Stephen Baxter's Flood, which I've just finished. Highly recommended this one – smart, accurate prose, an engaging set of characters driven by the narrative to explore all corners of a drowning world, devastatingly detailed accounts of one flooding scenario after another. Roland Emmerich's new film 2012 promises to be an entertaing slice of goofy Hollywood hokum – Baxter delivers the real deal.

Having put Baxter down I'm on to Alastair Reynolds's The Prefect. It's a while since I've read a good space opera so looking forward to this one. Although that reminds me about the 60,000 words of my own space opera I've got tucked away on a laptop hard drive. It's the first half of a novel called "Unsuitable Worlds" and it was going pretty well until the story flaked out on me. But there's something good in there – time to dust it off perhaps. So there's another thing to add to the list ...

Short and undead

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:20:00 +0000

For another of my occasional pieces of flash fiction, check out my latest zombie blink-and-you-miss-it story at Six Word Stories.

Fantasycon this weekend

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:54:00 +0000

I can't believe it's nearly time for the British Fantasy Society's annual Fantasycon. It's in Nottingham again this year, at the Britannia Hotel. It runs from 18–20 September – check out their website here for all the details. If you're around on the Saturday you stand a good chance of running into me. Hell, if you wave a book in my face I'll even sign it for you. See you there!

Money or love?

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:53:00 +0000

Most writers aren't rich. Most writers struggle through with day jobs and spend their nights doing what they love in the hope it might buy a can or two of soup. Not even reputation can guarantee a publishing deal – as in Hollywood, you're only as good as your last project. And economic downturns hit writers too. If you doubt me, check out this article on The Bookseller website.

Am I sounding gloomy? I don't mean to. Take note of what I just said. Writers spend their nights doing what they love. The words just turn up, you see. What are you going to do – close the door on them?

District 9

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 08:51:00 +0000

I've read reviews of District 9 that praise its edgy first half and complain that it all goes a bit Hollywood towards the end. Well, I think they're missing the point. I saw this movie last night and didn't once take my eyes off the screen, or my attention off the tale. It's precisely because the first few reels are so fresh and pacy and challenging that director Neill Blomkamp earns the right to crank up the action as the film progresses. The documentary edginess never goes away but Blomkamp's not scared to please the crowd too. There's the odd missed beat – most notably when the mismatched human and alien buddies escape a little too abruptly from a high-security research centre – but for the most part this is pitch-perfect.

In the lead role, Sharlto Copley is utterly convincing as the tank-topped, moustachioed pen-pusher whose life takes an unexpected turn while he's evicting a bunch of alien interlopers from a Johannesburg shanty town. Somehow Copley manages to take this unlikeable character from bigoted nerd to unlikely hero ... and a guy you genuinely root for. The aliens (or prawns) are seamlessly integrated into the restless hand-held footage, as is their giant mothership hovering over the city. It all romps along at a fair old lick, never flagging, always demanding your attention, whether through its grimy eye-candy or the affecting and naturalistic performances.

Prawns rule. I'll never look at seafood the same way again.

The Blade Itself

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:03:00 +0000

There's lots to like about Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself. Pithy, witty prose for one. And the characters are superbly drawn – smart new takes on the traditional high fantasy archetypes. I loved Logen's contemplative barbarian, world-weary and rather depressed that he just keeps winning all these down-and-dirty battles. Inquisitor Glokta is a joy, with his constant and bitter internal monologue that actually manages to generate sympathy even while he's pulling out the teeth of an unfortunate prisoner.

Even so, I don't think I'll be picking up the sequel.

The trouble is with me. Honest, Joe, it's not you. I've just never been a fan of high fantasy. Maybe I still think of it as "sword and sorcery" – a term that still sends shivers up my spine. The Blade Itself is still a tale of barbarians and battles in a faux-medieval setting. Instead of orcs we have Flatheads and the wizards are called Magi, but it's still all the familiar post-Tolkein ingredients mashed together, albeit with charm and wit and pace.

I picked this book up in the hope of being converted. Sadly, despite Joe Abercrombie's skill as a chef, I have to confess that this is a diet that just doesn't suit me. Much of the problem, I think, boils down to my need to know one critical thing: where the hell is this fantasy world anyway? Tolkein dealt with this question by creating a mythology that could so easily be our own. Middle-Earth is a world that has passed away, symbolised by the elves passing into the West. As John Crowley says, the world was not always as it is now.

Sadly, for me, too much high fantasy relies on the creation of arbitrary worlds. And that's a cop-out. It's one thing to build yourself a wildly imaginative adventure playground for your characters to romp around in, quite another to make that world connect with – and be relevant to – the world we live in ourselves. It's a hard job. The hardest of all, I think.

The Google Debate

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:09:00 +0000

There's very little I can add to the ongoing Google Book Settlement Debate, other than to remark that I feel like a very small fish caught up in a tsunami. Do I go with the flow? If so, where will it take me? Or do I try to swim against it? Salmon can climb waterfalls after all.

If you're not clear on what the debate's about, there's plenty out there on the net about it. Just Google "Google Book Settlement" (oh, the irony). In a nutshell, it's about Google scanning out-of-print books in the US and making them available online. Sounds simple, but boy is it a can of worms. It's not even started its run through the US courts and already it's kicked up so much dust it's hard to see what's really going on. Suffice it to say the issues range from questions on how you both interpret and apply of the laws of copyright and intellectual property, all the way through to the future creation of a global digital library.

What do I care? Well, I'm an author with out-of-print material that falls slap into the terms of the settlement. What that means is that, unless I opt out today – and I do mean today because that's the deadline – Google will consider my books up for grabs. So for example they could take my 1995 novel Dragoncharm and turn it into an online edition. Probably with adverts for dog food or lingerie interleaved between the pages. If I opt in (a decision I can at least defer for a while) I get to choose how much of the text is made available, and possibly to benefit from future revenue streams generated by the advertising, or by any other channel.

You might think opting in sounds good. In many ways it does ... sort of. But there are lots of other things going on behind the scenes. The word monopoly springs to mind. And as an author with a vested interest in copyright law – we're talking about one of the ways I put food on the table here, not to mention my fundamental moral rights as a holder of both intellectual property and copyright – I resent the fact I've got to make a choice about doing business with an organisation that I've never sat round a table with. This particular point (and the entire debate actually) is articulated incredibly well by Nick Harkaway on his blog.

So do I opt out today, or leave myself the choice of opting in later? If I do neither, Google will probably scan my work anyway. Can I really swim against the current? As Nick remarks on his blog, "Even now, there are thousands of really good books which are not getting written because everyone is so sodding stressed about it."

Me included!

First draft complete!

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:25:00 +0000

Phew – first draft of the fantasy novel finished! Just one week to polish it before initial submission. It feels like rounding the corner towards the final straight!

8mm planetary approach

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:59:00 +0000

I've always been into visual effects in the movies. I have whole shelves full of ''Making Of' books and a pile of Cinefex magazines that may soon collapse under its own gravity. What better place to recall some of my own humble efforts at emulating the FX masters than this blog?

I made my first SF spectacular as a teenager – along with my good friends Phil and Andy. Called Matt Line Tidies Up The Universe, it was filmed using the miracle of plasticene animation in glorious Super-8mm. The opening shot of Matt Line shows our hero's spaceship (constructed by yours truly out of left-over Airfix kit parts) approaching the planet on which the beautiful Princess Arriflex is being held prisoner by the Evil Lord Multiplane.

In true Cinefex style, I'll tell you how the shot was achieved. We waited until after dark to get a true blackout, then hung the ship on black cotton out in Phil's back yard. We lit it with a single 200W bulb and shot it in the top half of the frame with a slow, steady zoom out. We then (a terrifying process this) took the film cassette out of the camera and wound it back using a temperamental cranking device. Next step was to point the camera at a previously-prepared photo of the Earth from an astronomy book, only we put a red gel over the lens to make it look all alien and, well, red. By positioning the planet in the bottom half of the shot, we made sure it didn't overlap with the ship.

So there you go. A simple double exposure. Stationary planet, judicious use of zoom to give the ship the illusion of movement. Bingo!

I don't visit YouTube much but when I do I'm amazed at the technical skill of some of the amateur film-makers out there. However, nostalgia dictates that I should call the old 8mm generation to arms and celebrate the good old days. Don't get me wrong, I've done my share of animation using CGI software and non-linear editing. I love the new ways. The joke is that half the rigs I've built in 3DSMax are virtual replicas of the kind of string-and-sealing-wax affairs we used to build in the old days.

More 8mm FX memories to come include the Demonic Dressing Gown, Tyrell Corp Homage and What Bleach Does To Kodachrome. If you're lucky, I'll dig out some stills!

Sharp TV SF

blog@grahamedwardsonline.co.uk (Graham Edwards) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 06:46:00 +0000

I finally watched Battlestar Galactica Razor last night. Just got Season 4 to go now. Yes, I know I'm hopelessly behind - get over it. It was retro-cool to see the old-style Cylons and Raiders brought out of mothballs in Razor. Greating casting of the young Bill Adama too. What I enjoyed most was the full-frontal tackling of the 'you have to make tough decisions in wartime' theme. Sharp stuff.