Why We Write

Happy Blog Day Everyone!

Today, I want to spare a few words on why we write and what we hope to gain. I’ve been thinking about it the last couple of days. Before that though, it’s time for the weekly briefs.

Weekly Briefs

Harvey Duckman Presents…Volume 3

You didn’t think that just because Volume 2 was out and getting stellar reviews that this would be the end of it did you? Volume 3 is set for an October release, in what is proving to be a very packed month for my publisher. It will of course include a exclusive Brennan and Riz story, one that I’ll talk about that in detail after the book releases, in the coming weeks I may even share the title with you, and possibly moan about writing for a special Harvey Duckman release, but that’s all I’ll say for now.

Don’t forget, if you write Steampunk, Fantasy, Sci Fi or Horror (or a mix of the genres), then feel free to submit your work to this growing anthology! Click here for submission guidelines.

Crossing the Tees 2019

You’re probably tired of me going on about this, but I just want to bring as much attention to it as humanly possible, after all I owe everything to this competition. I promise that this will be the last time I mention it...till next year at least.

At the time I’m writing this, the final hours are ticking away to the competition deadline of Midnight 31st July, if you’re entering and haven’t handed in your entry yet, then don’t delay! If you’re reading this on August 1st...then better luck next year!
I finished my entry, going back to my original idea after having a moment of inspiration, though it was dwelling on it that led me to think of todays main presentation.

Creator Chaos

The next in our, All About Me, series is lined up, and it’s everyone’s favorite #vss365 tweeter, Kelvin Rodriguez! He will be at the mercy of whatever questions you want to ask, so please throw some good ones our way…

The latest episode of Creator Chaos is up now! Find it and please listen to it! I apologise if I kill your hearing with my version of Fly Me to the Moon... Coming soon, we’re hoping to do the first of our Guest Writer episodes featuring  some of the great writers out there!

A reminder of who the rest of Creator Chaos are:

Me – I don’t think I need to explain myself…

Kelvin Rodriguez – Fans and followers of the #vss365 tag will recognize this fellow and his creations, a master of the pun. He also has a mighty fine singing voice.

Zack Brooks – Author of the ‘Charlie the Cupid’ shorts and ‘The Trials of Amaford” novellas, the audio book version of ‘How Not To Be A Rogue’ is out now! This is a perfect chance to get in on this series, with a great narrator. A great guy and the defacto leader of our rabble.

Pete Hartog – Author of the novel Bloodlines, and currently working on its sequel. A great guy with a great taste in music and a fantastic name. He also has a blog you can find here, give it a read! He’s currently working on a sequel to Bloodlines.

Click here to listen to all the podcasts so far and look out for us on Spotify and Apples Music Service!

Vector Unit Regen Orphan’s War

Still on hiatus, but all being well I should be able to resume it September going forward. It’ll probably be a fortnightly release schedule but I do want to see this story finished.

To catch up on the series so far, click here!

Brief Mentions

Liking what you’re hearing about Brennan and Riz? Click here to look at the short story collection of their adventures so far!
Looking for newer stuff?

Click here to order ‘The Yeti in the Snow’, the standalone Brennan and Riz Christmas story. Only available on Kindle. It may be collected in a paperback version in the future.

Click here to order Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 1 which includes ‘A Walk Through The Pleasure Gardens’

Click here to order Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 2 which includes ‘The Black Cat on the Prowl’

Click here to find me on Goodreads

And now…time for our main feature presentation…

Why We Write

It’s a simple question isn’t it? Depending on the person who answers, it can also be a simple answer. I’ve seen questions like it doing the rounds on Twitter and other social media sites, and it’s used as a way to break the ice. So why am I talking about this? This week (as noted above) I finished my Crossing the Tees Short Story Contest 2019 entry, after a lot of deliberation on it. I had a plan that formed the first idea but during writing, it seemed to fall apart barely three hundred words in. I pressed on, trying the first tactic in my utility belt, blunt force writing. This is where I force myself to write, in the hopes that I either push aside whatever is blocking me, or find a groove where everything fits together. This, as you probably guessed, didn’t work.

Seeing that it wasn’t working and that what I was writing was terrible, I turned to my back up plan and started over. This quickly went the same way. I sat down and thought about why nothing was working. I looked again and realised I wasn’t feeling anything with what I had written down, and I was doing it simply because I had set myself the deadline to get the voluntary contest entry in. This was a commitment that I had taken on myself, on top of writing the Harvey Duckman shorts, and on top of writing A Boy and A Rat. The latter which is the highest priority of anything I should be working on.

The conclusion I drew was that the two previous ideas weren’t working for me because they weren’t me, not entirely.
This brings me back to the topic here, as I forcing these stories conflicted with why I write. I write to give life to the ideas in my head, letting them grow and develop. Writing also helps me deal with internal issues I have, as I’ve spoken about before in my post about comfort zones. By forcing myself to write these ideas, they clashed with my style and dragged my creativity down an abyss. This was proved when I switched gears and went to work on a chapter of A Boy and A Rat, where I was struggling to fill a page with the contest entries, with A Boy and A Rat, I blew through three pages in no short order.

I’ve seen some people who’s motivation to write seems to boil down to ‘make money’ believing themselves to be the next J.K. Rowling, who’ll get advances worth millions based on their first novel. Here’s something I learned, they’re called advances for a reason, they’re advances based on the books sales, and if the sales total to less then the advance....Well someone’s paying that back. I’m waffling off again.

Point is, write because you love writing, write because you want to share your story with the world. Doesn’t make a difference if you’re published or not, write what you want and nothing else. If you’re not having fun writing, then you’re doing it wrong. I did it wrong, and luckily because I realised it, I was able to come at one of the ideas from a different angle, making it more in line with me and what I want to write.

That’s all for this week, but I’ll be back again next time with more Folklore Tales. Till then, think abut why you write, and embrace it. Keep writing, your stories are important.

Folklore Tales

Happy Blog Day Everyone!

Today, I want a chat about Folklore, and include a tale that I always find interesting, and maybe, one day, will find a way to incorporate it into Brennan and Riz. Before that though, let’s move on to the weekly briefs!

Weekly Briefs

Harvey Duckman Presents…Volume 3

You didn’t think that just because Volume 2 was out and getting stellar reviews that this would be the end of it did you? Volume 3 is set for an October release, in what is proving to be a very packed month for my publisher. It will of course include a exclusive Brennan and Riz story, one that I’ll talk about that in detail after the book releases, in the coming weeks I may even share the title with you, and possibly moan about writing for a special Harvey Duckman release, but that’s all I’ll say for now.

Don’t forget, if you write Steampunk, Fantasy, Sci Fi or Horror (or a mix of the genres), then feel free to submit your work to this growing anthology! Click here for submission guidelines.

Crossing the Tees 2019

You’re probably tired of me going on about this, but I just want to bring as much attention to it as humanly possible, after all I owe everything to this competition.
We’re down to the final days now till the competition deadline of Midnight 31st July, if you’re entering and haven’t handed in your entry yet, then don’t delay! I’ve started my entry, but have had to go to a back up plan as my original idea needs a lot more work, but one day…

Creator Chaos

The next in our, All About Me, series is lined up, and it’s everyone’s favorite #vss365 tweeter, Kelvin Rodriguez! He will be at the mercy of whatever questions you want to ask, so please throw some good ones our way…

The latest episode of Creator Chaos should be up any day now, so if you want to know how I sound doing Sinarta’s Fly Me To The Moon (I do badly) then keep an eye out for it! Also coming soon, we’re hoping to do the first of our Guest Writer episodes featuring some of the great writers out there!

A reminder of who the rest of Creator Chaos are:

Me – I don’t think I need to explain myself…

Kelvin Rodriguez – Fans and followers of the #vss365 tag will recognize this fellow and his creations, a master of the pun. He also has a mighty fine singing voice.

Zack Brooks – Author of the ‘Charlie the Cupid’ shorts and ‘The Trials of Amaford” novellas, the audio book version of ‘How Not To Be A Rogue’ is out now! This is a perfect chance to get in on this series, with a great narrator. A great guy and the defacto leader of our rabble.

Pete Hartog – Author of the novel Bloodlines, and currently working on its sequel. A great guy with a great taste in music and a fantastic name. He also has a blog you can find here, give it a read! He’s currently working on a sequel to Bloodlines.

Click here to listen to all the podcasts so far and look out for us on Spotify and Apples Music Service!

Vector Unit Regen Orphan’s War

Still on hiatus, but all being well I should be able to resume it September going forward. It’ll probably be a fortnightly release schedule but I do want to see this story finished.
To catch up on the series so far, click here!

Brief Mentions

Liking what you’re hearing about Brennan and Riz? Click here to look at the short story collection of their adventures so far!
Looking for newer stuff?

Click here to order ‘The Yeti in the Snow’, the standalone Brennan and Riz Christmas story. Only available on Kindle. It may be collected in a paperback version in the future.

Click here to order Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 1 which includes ‘A Walk Through The Pleasure Gardens’

Click here to order Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 2 which includes ‘The Black Cat on the Prowl’
Click here to find me on Goodreads
And now…time for our main feature presentation…

Folklore Tales

So by now, you’ll have learned that I love me a bit of Folklore, the more local the better. I’m helped in this regard by the fact I live in the North East of England which is a hot bed of Folklore tales in all directions I look. Sometimes I do make my own up but that’s only to grow my world, which will always have proper Folklore at its heart.

This means there’s quite a few elements to enter the stories, and quite a few stories to tell. I do want to make a distinction though, that I also include ghosts sightings in Folklore, as a few of them date back centuries and their origins form Folklore of their own, which is the case with one particular tale harking from Northumberland, the Shade of Percy Reed.

It is one of the oldest ghost stories in the area and the haunting is of a lonesome figure walking amongst the bed of the River Rede in Redesdale. This is the spirit of Percy Reed, a man who once had the title of Keeper of Redesdale which meant a big deal back in the day. This annoyed his close neighbours, who of course, made plans to get rid of him. By conspiring with his enemies, a trap was laid and sprung. Poor Percy fell asleep during a hunting trip with his presumed friends and woke up, weaponless, to five opponents. I don’t think you need me to tell you what happened next. The results were so bloody that a bed sheet had to be used to carry what remained to his home. His neighbours were ran out of the area for their part in his death. Poor Percy though, all that remains now is his spirit, doomed to wander the area of his murder...

 A chilling tale? Perhaps, but this is perfect for me, as I can approach it in several ways, would I deal with the pair trying to move Percy on? Would I instead deal with Percy approaching the pair seeking revenge so he can move on? I’m not going to say more as I do have an idea in mind on how to approach it...

But that’s not really Folklore...Or at least, the Folklore you’re expecting me to talk about, so how about the Lambton Worm? The ‘Worm’ in this context isn’t the humble earthworm but comes from the Old Norse ‘Ormr’ meaning Serpent or Dragon. This is why the term crops up in Folklore as it really means the tale is about a Dragon of some description (Hint: not the one you generally see on TV). This tale starts with a rash young heir fishing on a Sunday in the River Wear near his family’s castle, Lambton Castle (which was torn down in the latter 18th Century). In the days when the story is set, fishing on a Sunday was generally a no-no. Anyway John Lambton caught a strange little worm as his fist catch of the day, what did he do? He threw the pitful creature down a nearby well. Big mistake, as even though he quickly forgot about it, the creature grew and grew. Years past and the Worm started eating livestock and causing destruction on a massive scale.

The lord of Lambton at the time, tried to appease the beast by offering troughs of milk, while also getting the best knights in the land to come and kill the worm. Each one failed and even those that managed to cut it in two, found that it just put itself back together again. Then John came home from the Crusades. Seeing his home in danger, and recognising the Worm as the one he threw down the well, he takes it on himself to get rid. Now learning that all the other knights failed, he seeks the counsel of a wise woman who tells him to stud his armour in spikes.

 The thinking here is that he beast likes to constrict it’s enemies, so when it tries it with John, it’ll kill himself. The information comes with a price though, that of a command John must do. If he’s successful in killing the Worm he must kill whatever he sees first afterwards less he and his line be cursed for nine generations. He thinks he can outsmart this though, and concocts a plan that when the worm is dead, he’ll blow his horn and the father will send out one of the loyal hunting dogs, the poor dog will take the chop and no curse.

John goes to battle and the plan works, the Worm goes in for the kill but only ends up killing itself, and with the Worm dead, John blows his horn. He was probably thinking how clever he was at outwitting the Wise Woman, but his father got too enthusiastic and ran out to congratulate his son. Not wanting his father to die, he blows his horn again. This time a servant releases a dog, who reaches John first and dies for the honour. As you can guess, this didn’t work and a terrible curse was placed on the Lambtons, and for nine generations, no Lambton died peacefully...

This is an epic piece of Folklore, and shows that you shouldn’t try and cheat your way out of a deal, especially if it’s with a powerful being, in this case the Wise Woman. Again this tale is one definitely one that I’ll be covering with Brennan and Riz as there’s a good way to take it, one that should make for an interesting story.
Okay, I’ve covered two I will use, and now for one that’s a lot a harder to use...Why? Well you’ll see.

This tale is called, the tale of Johnny Reed, who was a parish clerk in a village near Newcastle upon Tyne. One night, Johnny Reed was walking back to him home when he spotted nine cats lurking near a country gate. One of them turns to him and shocks him by talking. It says: “Johnny Reed, Johnny Reed, tell Dan Ratcliff that Peg Powson is dead.” Frightened beyond belief, he races back home and told his wife of the encounter, his own cat, on hearing the name Dan Ratcliff jumped up from his resting place by the fire. With a start he shouted: “If Peg Powson is dead, it’s no time for me to be here!” After that outburst, the cat then ran out of the house, never to be seen again.

There’s no more information that I can find on this story, but the book I first read it in (Supernatural North East by Tony Liddell) does question if the person who first told the tale enjoyed drink a bit too much to come up with a story like that!

Now, with this one, there’s not a lot to it, and it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever and reads like a drunken encounter. However Riz is a talking Rat...So talking cats...Out of the question? Or do I have more to use then I first realised. This is what I love about Folklore, and what I love in delving into the tales as I come across them. Every time I look at one, I’m inspired by what I read and think of new ways to torture Brennan and Riz (The number I gave in the All About Me is now out of date as it has risen. I’ve got Brennan and Riz stories for years)

That’s all we have time for this week! Thanks for bearing with me while I waffled about three different Folklore Tales, and if this goes down well...I’ve got a lot more where these came from! Keep writing my friends!

Highway to the Comfort Zone

Happy Blog Day Everyone!

Today, I want to share a few words on comfort zones. Won’t be a long one as I’m currently fending off a very nasty cold, brought on by the constant change of weather here. Don’t worry, got a bigger blog planned for next week to make up for today’s shortness. Let’s move on to the weekly briefs!

Weekly Briefs

Harvey Duckman Presents…Volume 3

You didn’t think that just because Volume 2 was out and getting stellar reviews that this would be the end of it did you? Volume 3 is set for an October release, in what is proving to be a very packed month for my publisher. I submitted the Brennan and Riz story for this volume this past weekend, after having promised it for a while!

I had to pull my finger out to get it down, but I’m happy with it after the many, many revisions I made, but of course, like always, I’ll talk about that in detail after the book releases.

Don’t forget, if you write Steampunk, Fantasy, Sci Fi or Horror (or a mix of the genres), then feel free to submit your work to this growing anthology! Click here for submission guidelines.

Crossing the Tees 2019

You’re probably tired of me going on about this, but I just want to bring as much attention to it as humanly possible, after all I owe everything to this competition.
There’s only a couple of weeks left now till the competition deadline of Midnight 31st July, if you’re entering and haven’t handed in your entry yet, then don’t delay! I’ve started my entry, but it will be going out of my comfort zone again…Which oddly enough, is the theme for today’s blog! Funny that…

Creator Chaos

The next in our, All About Me, series is lined up, and it’s everyone’s favorite #vss365 tweeter, Kelvin Rodriguez! He will be at the mercy of whatever questions you want to ask, so please throw some good ones our way…

On Sunday, we recorded the latest episode, with Kelvin as the host. Everything went well and now Zack has gathered all our audio up to begin the fun task of editing. I’m not one hundred percent sure when this episode will get released, so keep an eye out for it. By the way, I sing Sinatra on this one…Yes, it’s as bad as you’re thinking.

A reminder of who the rest of Creator Chaos are:

Me – I don’t think I need to explain myself…
Kelvin Rodriguez – Fans and followers of the #vss365 tag will recognize this fellow and his creations, a master of the pun. He also has a mighty fine singing voice.

Zack Brooks – Author of the ‘Charlie the Cupid’ shorts and ‘The Trials of Amaford” novellas, the audio book version of ‘How Not To Be A Rogue’ is out now! This is a perfect chance to get in on this series, with a great narrator. A great guy and the defacto leader of our rabble.

Pete Hartog – Author of the novel Bloodlines, and currently working on its sequel. A great guy with a great taste in music and a fantastic name. He also has a blog you can find here, give it a read! He’s currently working on a sequel to Bloodlines.

Click here to listen to all the podcasts so far and look out for us on Spotify and Apples Music Service!

Vector Unit Regen Orphan’s War

Still on hiatus, hoping to resume it soon! Wish there was more to say at this time but, hopefully soon, soon I can catch up with what’s going on with Drake and Ava.
To catch up on the series so far, click here!

Brief Mentions

Liking what you’re hearing about Brennan and Riz? Click here to look at the short story collection of their adventures so far!

Looking for newer stuff?


Click here to order ‘The Yeti in the Snow’, the standalone Brennan and Riz Christmas story. Only available on Kindle. It may be collected in a paperback version in the future.


Click here to order Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 1 which includes ‘A Walk Through The Pleasure Gardens’


Click here to order Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 2 which includes ‘The Black Cat on the Prowl’

Click here to find me on Goodreads

And now…time for our main feature presentation…

Highway Out of the Comfort Zone

I’m sure all writers are aware of what comfort zones are, those pesky little areas in which we’re really confident in what we’re righting (even if not confident that it will be any good or that anyone else will ever want to read it). These can be anything from genre to tropes that we include because we’re familiar with them. Looking at my recent output, you’d be quite right in saying that my comfort zones are urban fantasy...that is a contemporary setting with fantastical elements.

In my case, a rude talking Rat with an ego the size of a planet, and the fact that most folklore tales are real. Writing in this setting is a blast and I’m quite comfortable in it. I know what I can get away with, I know which elements I can do best and how much I can stick it in before people get wise to me. However, as you’ve seen on this blog already, I didn’t start with Urban Fantasy.

My first couple of years writing took me down the path of Action Horror, with guns blazing against genetic monsters born from sciences hubris and humanities greed. Then I turned to my Daemon Soul stories, something akin to what I was doing before but different at the same time. I had taken a step out of my comfort zone.

I would then spend the next few years working on Daemon Soul and its follow ups, crafting new characters and new worlds, enlarging my comfort zone to cover it all. I would then take another step out by embarking on writing a couple of short stories (Which you can read here), not only had I never written short stories before, but these were more straight up horror or weird fiction. Not that I stuck with them though, as I quickly moved on to another genre altogether.

This was the time where I was planning two very different series, Vector Unit Regen and Drache Arm Luna (both of which I’ve talked about before), these were Sci Fi and Fantasy respectively, and I put a lot of work into planning them, but nothing ever came as I quickly retreated back into my comfort zone with Daemon Soul, redrafting it, seeing it as my only hope of getting published...Of course I did try other ideas, try to branch out but I was getting stuck in the rut, a rut of my own making.

I found myself clinging to my comfort zone, afraid of attempting anything too radical, and found my writing stagnating. This led to me writing less and less. There was other reasons behind the scenes but the effect was still the same, till I read about the Crossing the Tees festival. I’ll spare the full details of Brennan and Riz’s first adventure as regular readers of the blog will know it quite well now. Writing that though pushed me out of my comfort zone for two reasons, one) it was a serious competition, so I was putting my all into it, editing it till perfection and two) it was first person, and I had so so experience in working in that perspective.

You all know the story after that, the next year I entered the Crossing the Tees festival again, with a radically different piece again, a sci fi short based around the idea of an Alien tour guide taking different aliens to Middlesbrough, a place near me. To date, this remains my only science fiction work to be traditionally published. It wasn’t till I heard and entered the Write Festival that I really stepped out of my comfort zone (which grew to encompass Brennan and Riz). Like the first Crossing the Tees, this competition had a theme that we had to adhere to. The theme for this one? It had to be uplifting. This was going to be a challenge.

At first I took it to be that the piece had to be happy, but I soon realised that as long as one part was uplifting then it didn’t matter. I left the realm of fantasy and stepped into reality. The story I wrote, ‘A Portrait Named Hope’ told the story of a depressed Painter who’s life is changed, finding a new reason to continue. This was so unlike anything that I’d written before that a few people who I’d shown it to before couldn’t believe I’d wrote it. I took this as a compliment.

This brings me to this years Crossing the Tees, where once again I’m going to take a leap out of my comfort zone, not to the extent that I’m doing historical romance, there is limits to what I can do...I haven’t wrote it yet so I can’t give too many details but I’m quite serious about giving it my all.
Now you’ve read all this and you’re probably wondering what my point was. It’s this. Comfort Zones can be a good or a bad thing depending on your perspectives. For me, going out of them give me a creative boost that I needed to re-jolt my writing, pushing me on to greater heights. It also gave me some catharsis for a few...personal demons I face.

 I guess what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t feel afraid of trying something new if you’re tired of what your doing, you’ll never know what it will lead to.
Join me next week where folklore takes centre stage once again, till then, keep writing.

The Black Cat On The Prowl

Happy Blog Day Everyone!

To celebrate the recent launch of Harvey Duckman Presents… Volume 2, I thought it was only fitting to talk about the exclusive Brennan and Riz story found within, The Black Cat on the Prowl! Of course, that’s only after we get the Weekly Brief out of the way.

Weekly Briefs

Harvey Duckman Presents…Volume 2

So this past weekend saw the launch of Harvey Duckman Presents…Volume 2, and great fun was had by all, Riz enjoyed himself and all the attention he got.

Click here to purchase your copy and to read the Brennan and Riz story, and the excellent work by the other authors, some of which are first timers! Buy the book and say this Is where you found them before they became famous!

Of course, now the countdown can begin to volume 3…And yes, there is another exclusive Brennan and Riz story there as well, that’s right, they and Harvey Duckman get on very, very, well.

Crossing the Tees 2019

You’re probably tired of me going on about this, but I just want to bring as much attention to it as humanly possible, after all I owe everything to this competition.
If you live in the Teesside area, please check out this years Crossing the Tees literary festival. There’s some great workshops on for modest prices. My publisher is also holding a workshop or two, so attend and see if there’s anything they can help you with! That’s not all, the Short Story contest is also open again for entries, with the deadline being Midnight 31st July. All you need is a 3000 word story. Give it a go, as you never know, it’s through this competition that Brennan and Riz were given to the world (for bad or good, you decide).

Creator Chaos

 By the time you read this, either you’ll have a short wait, or you could already be listening to the latest episode of Creator Chaos! Zack has been working his arse off to get this ready for your listening pleasure, so please give it a listen.

The next in our, All About Me, series is lined up, and it’s everyone’s favorite #vss365 tweeter, Kelvin Rodriguez! He will be at the mercy of whatever questions you want to ask, so please throw some good ones our way…

A reminder of who the rest of Creator Chaos are:

Me – I don’t think I need to explain myself…

Kelvin Rodriguez – Fans and followers of the #vss365 tag will recognize this fellow and his creations, a master of the pun. He also has a mighty fine singing voice.

Zack Brooks – Author of the ‘Charlie the Cupid’ shorts and ‘The Trials of Amaford” novellas, the audio book version of ‘How Not To Be A Rogue’ is out now! This is a perfect chance to get in on this series, with a great narrator. A great guy and the defacto leader of our rabble.

Pete Hartog – Author of the novel Bloodlines, and currently working on its sequel. A great guy with a great taste in music and a fantastic name. He also has a blog you can find here, give it a read! He’s currently working on a sequel to Bloodlines.

Click here to listen to all the podcasts so far and look out for us on Spotify and Apples Music Service!

Vector Unit Regen Orphan’s War

Still on hiatus, hoping to resume it soon! Wish there was more to say at this time but, hopefully soon, soon I can catch up with what’s going on with Drake and Ava.
To catch up on the series so far, click here!

Brief Mentions

Liking what you’re hearing about Brennan and Riz? Click here to look at the short story collection of their adventures so far!

Looking for their newer stuff? Click here for their Christmas encounter with a Yeti, or click here for the anthology containing the short ‘A Walk Through The Pleasure Gardens’, get this one and you also get a whole host of brilliant short stories as well from fantastic authors.
Click here to find me on Goodreads
And now…time for our main feature presentation…

The Black Cat on the Prowl

Picture this, you’re lost on a desolate moor. You could have sworn that you were meant to go left, or was it right? The compass is no help and you always fell asleep during Geography, the one lesson that could have helped you read those little sign markers you keep coming across. The sun is waning in the sky and the wind is playing it’s best haunting hits, blowing through the rocky outcrops. Then you see it, or at least, you think you do. A flash of black, it’s movements giving the distinct impression that you’re being stalked. You try to run, but the ground is bog like, and as you fall, you see it again, in all it’s majesty. A Black Cat, a size belonging more in the zoo then some’s home, and it bares it’s claws...

The large cats of England, pets that got released, or just folklore is up for debate. Check out these stories for very recent sightings, and note that these are very typical of these kinds of tales. The Beast of Dartmoor, a leopard in Yorkshire, each region practically has it’s own variation on the same story, sometimes with proof, others just anecdotal accounts. It was a given that Brennan and Riz were going to encounter one at some point.

Now, given most tales, the Cat’s are rooted in the real world, while most people would no doubt offer a reward for one of these cat’s brought in alive, it still doesn’t seem like a job the pair would take up, which gave me an excuse to do a bit of tweaking. The tweaking this time led to me turning the big cats into something altogether...Different.

When creating a new creature, something that I haven’t found in folklore, I try to think about what it is they’ll end up doing, and if there is a future for them in the stories. For example, Water Ghouls and Ashen, will both be featured again at some point in the shorts. This was what I wanted for these big cats (and it’s also something I’d take into consideration for the story I’m planning for Volume 3).
The first thing I had to figure out was, what I wanted their purpose to be, are they just another animal? Are they man made? Can they talk? Answering these was simple, and I took the opportunity to tie these into Riz, in a very amusing way.

I began researching the name at this point, and decided to look into one of my other favourite sources of mythological tales, Ancient Egypt. I looked here because I knew of their reverence for cats, and that they had crafted a couple of deities to look like cats, carrying on their tradition of human animal hybrid gods. The god I homed in on, was Bast. Sadly I wasn’t able to carry out the link I really wanted, but the name give me the name I needed, and so the Bastlings came into being.
At the beginning of the story, I draw attention to the fact that this isn’t the first time that the boys are on the moors, and in true fashion it is a story that I have ready to go, another pleasant story of what happens when you let Riz navigate for you. I could have gone the other way though, but I wanted to remind the readers that the order the are reading in, isn’t necessarily the right order, and that I’ll end up slipping stories in at awkward times.
The story comes in at just about two thousand words, which makes it a slim rad compared to it’s contemporaries, but I think it gets the job done, especially at helping to prove that Riz is still capable of being afraid....

That’s all I have time for this week, remember keep writing!

Harvey Duckman Presents...

Happy Blog Day Everyone!

This week, it’s short and sweet, as I’m busy squirreling away on different projects, with many of them sharing an end of July deadline. However, today’s topic is a timely one, as I’m talking about Harvey Duckman Presents…The only anthology series that you need to read…(assuming you like Steampunk, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horror and stories involving talking Rats…You know you want to read it). Time to move onto the Weekly Briefs!

Weekly Briefs

Crossing the Tees 2019

While the festival itself is over, you can still enter the Short Story contest, with the deadline being Midnight 31st July. All you need is a 3000 word story. Give it a go, as you never know, it’s through this competition that Brennan and Riz were given to the world (for bad or good, you decide).

Creator Chaos

Well we recorded the latest episode this past Sunday, so hopefully it won’t be long till you’re able to listen to it. It was my turn to host, so I hope I don’t bore you.

As I said last week,  My ‘All About Me’ Interview is now live and available to listen to. Please give it a spin and let me know how I did with the questions. Some of them were unexpected to say the least.

A reminder of who the rest of Creator Chaos are:

Me – I don’t think I need to explain myself…
Kelvin Rodriguez – Fans and followers of the #vss365 tag will recognize this fellow and his creations, a master of the pun. He also has a mighty fine singing voice.

Zack Brooks – Author of the ‘Charlie the Cupid’ shorts and ‘The Trials of Amaford” novellas, the audio book version of ‘How Not To Be A Rogue’ is out now! This is a perfect chance to get in on this series, with a great narrator. A great guy and the defacto leader of our rabble.

Pete Hartog – Author of the novel Bloodlines, and currently working on its sequel. A great guy with a great taste in music and a fantastic name. He also has a blog you can find here, give it a read! He’s currently working on a sequel to Bloodlines.

Click here to listen to all the podcasts so far and look out for us on Spotify and Apples Music Service!

Vector Unit Regen Orphan’s War

Still on hiatus, hoping to resume it soon! I know I’ve said this a lot recently, but I do hope to go back to it, I have plans for this series and this origin is needed.

To catch up on the series so far, click here!

Brief Mentions

Liking what you’re hearing about Brennan and Riz? Click here to look at the short story collection of their adventures so far!

Looking for their newer stuff? Click here for their Christmas encounter with a Yeti, or click here for the anthology containing the short ‘A Walk Through The Pleasure Gardens’, get this one and you also get a whole host of brilliant short stories as well from fantastic authors.

Click here to find me on Goodreads and give me a follow to see when I release new stories.

And now…time for our main feature presentation…

Harvey Duckman Presents... 

If you’ve been following this blog, you should be familiar with this title by now, I’ve been doing my best to keep you all updated on the progress of this anthology by 6e Publishing. The first volume released back in April but had been planned for a while longer. It’s an anthology that celebrates stories of Sci Fi, Horror, Fantasy, Steampunk…Why am I talking about this now? Well, because the series has been getting more traction and because Volume 2 is out this coming weekend!

My affiliation with series started with the publisher approaching me about putting a new story in as unnamed collection at that point. This was ‘A Walk Through The Pleasure Gardens’, a two thousand word story that I covered quite early on in this blog. Of course, I forgot about that story, instead focusing all the others that formed the first collection (that was Girl in the Water, Goblins in the Tunnel, Ghosts on the Moor) and then the full collection of the ten stories of that point.

My thoughts returned to it with the news that it was going to appear in the first Harvey Duckman Anthology (alongside some fantastic other authors). Things didn’t stop there with the release of the first as the second was already being talked about and I submitted another story, ‘Black Cat on the Prowl’ which I’ll be discussing next week. The idea behind these series is to give authors a chance, a chance to show what they could do, either as a writer with other work out, or as new authors about to see their first work in print. Which brings me neatly to my next point.

Do you want to give it a go? Are you a writer of Horror, Sci Fi, Fantasy, Steampunk, then test your mettle and submit a story (full guidelines can be found here), the publisher is looking for new work to show off, and it could be yours.

So the second volume, I can’t say if it will be good, as I’ve not read it yet, but I’m looking forward to it immensely because of the caliber of Authors in the first one (Read the Scarecrow). The book launches this coming Saturday (or preorder here on Amazon, either in paperback or ebook) and to commemorate this event, the publisher is throwing a launch event at the Kapow! Sci-Fi market, featuring an Authors Alley of all the Harvey Duckman Presents authors that can be dragged there and chained to tables. I’ll be there, with a special guest…You see, I came across something amazing…

Meet Riz…

Yes, if you come down to the market, you’ll get a chance to have a selfie with everyone’s favorite talking rat. He won’t bite…unless you tick him off.

So that’s all we have time for this week, keep tuned though, as I’m sure I’ll be covering Harvey Duckman again very soon.
Keep writing.