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Found Family

One of the themes that I’ve always enjoyed in literature, film and TV is found family. I was absolutely enchanted by Monica Hughes’ Invitation to the Game as a child, reading it again and again, following Lisse as she and her schoolfriends live together and eventually band together into a strong, family-like unit in the dystopian future.

It’s a theme that pervades much of today’s literature and film, from The Gilded Wolves to The Fast and the Furious, the latter of which I’ll admit to being a firm fan of! The idea that you might not fit in with your regular – biological – family (or you can!) but that you can find another close group of friends, so close that it becomes like family, is an incredible one and speaks to perhaps some of the deepest pack instincts within us.

I can’t use that word – pack – without giving a shout out to the Assassin’s set of books by Robin Hobb, where Fitz and Nighteyes, his wolf companion, literally bond and become a very close, two-person unit, occasionally bringing in others as the journey requires.

In Parasites, Kael and Alessia (along with Basteel, and in previous journeys, Caroline) have become a kind of found family, albeit a small one. They’ve been through a lot together, weathering the last ten years and becoming close. Their journey in Parasites does begin to test the relationship, but one thing I’ve noticed is that family dynamics are almost the third (or N+1) person in the family group. The relationship between Kael and Alessia, their friendship, is essentially its own structure, and structures can be stronger or tested in bad conditions.

Basteel, their bodyguard, strengthens that family structure, and the presence of others tests it, putting pressure on the two to consider other goals and possibilities. We don’t really explore the duo’s past in Parasites, but there’s plenty of time for flashbacks and conversations about it – there’s a little at the start, about some of the more memorable experiences that the two have had together – but rest assured that there will be more revealed in books two and three.

I’ve thought about doing a short novella about them, but I’m leaning more towards the possibility of a Basteel and Caroline short story; the sturdy bodyguard and his agile partner have been through their share of scrapes, and their relationship is going to be an important sub-theme through the rest of the trilogy.

The events in Parasites certainly brought Kael – always the natural pessimist (well, he would say realist) – and Alessia, the more hopeful of the two, closer together, and taught the engineer a thing or two about optimism. It’s a fantastic thing to find ‘your people’ whether or not they’re as close as pack or found family. Relationships don’t come easily, especially when you’re not tied together by blood – but they’re definitely something worth investing in.

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First Lines

The first lines of a book are vastly important. Lots of readers are very patient and willing to give books a chance, but when you’re reading something for the first time or from a new author, it can be make or break. And the first lines of certain books become famous in their own rights, like “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen” from George Orwell’s 1984. It’s the subject of pub quizzes and trivia games across the world!

I’ve fallen in and out of love with the first few lines from some of my books – and WIPs – but thought that it’d be fun to have a quick look at a few of them. Some of this stuff isn’t ‘in the wild’ yet, so hopefully it’s an interesting teaser rather than being cruel.

It’s a garden world this time.

Genetically engineered plants and trees, huge biodomes sprawling overhead; white metal honeycombs with transparent panels, most now missing or decayed.

This is from Parasites and I’m still pretty pleased with it. I really wanted to convey what Kael and Alessia do in the first line – exploring new worlds – but to also get across the emptiness, the silence and loneliness of the worlds that they explore.

“You know, for someone who hates people, you sure do care a lot about what they think,” the man next to me says slowly. He reeks of stale body odour and urine, overlaid with cigarette smoke and cheap alcohol.

We’re friends.

This is the first line from Wild Court, my paused WIP. It’s a fantastical look at the effect of declining empathy in our society, and opens with a conversation between one of the protagonists and their friend, who is experiencing homelessness. I’m really quite fond of this; the protagonist Ben is a quiet, isolated character with occasional anxiety, and I like the contrasts in this line. I’m keen to get back to the book at some stage, because I’m very fond of Alice, the nerdy archaeologist, and Matt, Ben’s laddish best friend. That said, there’s something that’s just not quite working for me in the book. I paused after about 50k words, which isn’t like me at all.   

As I remember it, and as far as anything really has a beginning or an end, it all began when I was ten. With childlike dreams of grandeur and adventure, my friend Sam and I got lost in the Royal Albert Hall at the prom one summer.

I’m slightly embarrassed about this one. It’s the first line from Aenigma, my first – and unpublished – book that desperately needs a rewrite. I’m assuming it’s how Christopher Paolini feels about Eragon in hindsight; great themes, lovely energy, but certainly not the work of a practiced writer. A lot about this book feels too personal, too emotional, and the pacing is way off at the end – but there’s definitely something there worth rescuing! I’m playing with a few ideas for it in the future; I could definitely see a grimdark interpretation of it working, but I’m not quite sure…

“But where’s the cake?” I blurt, staring through the window bemused and frustrated. “When did this happen? Why is there an antique shop here?”

Finally, this is from Small Places, my current WIP. I’m really undecided about it – the first two chapters are told from the perspective of the protagonist when he’s ten, so everything has to be from a slightly childlike-but-growing-up-fast perspective. I’ve changed it a couple of times, but quite like the indignation.

There we go; I’d be interested to hear of first lines that you love as well – what stands out for you?

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What’s Parasites all about?

Parasites is about hope, adventure and found family, which are perhaps the three of the most important things in the world to me. It’s a science fiction novel in the genres of solarpunk and hopepunk; it takes place towards the very end of the universe, when the very fabric of space itself is cooling and contracting.

It follows two explorers, Kael and Alessia, in their exploration of thinnings: patches where two universes rub together, overlapping and allowing travel between worlds in different places. The discovery of thinnings has allowed the people on their resource-poor planet, Lyra, to survive and colonise other places in other universes.

Alessia’s father, also an explorer, died two years prior to the start of the novel, on a mission that – until now – she knew nothing about. But when Kael and Alessia find a message hinting at a ‘solution’ to the problems of the universe, she jumps at the chance to follow in his footsteps and uncover the secrets of the past, recruiting Basteel, a family friend and their bodyguard, to keep them safe.

Parasites is set across a weird and (hopefully) wonderful set of places; planets and space stations with their own cast of creatures and hazards. It’s a journey with friends.

I’m conflicted as to whether Parasites is YA: the protagonists are in their mid to late twenties, but the narrative is also fairly straightforward. It’s on the verge of being hard sci-fi, but my background in the sciences is flimsy to say the least: let’s just say that I’ve tried to make it accessible, which is something that runs through my fantasy books as well. There are no long lineages of characters to remember, no geography to memorise, no large casts, no tough scientific things to get your head around. There’s technology and magic, but it’s my aim to explain it all in a simple way that allows you to just be immersed in the story.   

You can read more about the book using Amazon’s ‘Look Inside’ feature. If you’re concerned about trigger content, you can find a list of trigger and content warnings for all of my books on this page.

You can also keep up with me and what I’m up to on this blog, my twitter feed and (less frequently!) my Instagram page. You can also email me on mail [at goes here] theabditory.co.uk.

One last thing – if you were hoping this book was something to do with the Oscar-winning Korean film, I apologise – but I hope that I’ve piqued your interest!

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A weighty tome

That’s how my father would describe large books, and it always evokes images of ancient hardbacks, leather-bound spellbooks or something equally mysterious! For some reason, the phrase stuck in my head and made me wonder – just how weighty are the books that we lug around each day? And perhaps more importantly, what’s the heaviest?

Well, armed with my trusty kitchen scales, I set out to investigate. My mind first settled on A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, the concluding novel in the Wheel of Time series. It’s a chunky one in a series of hefty books.

On the scales, it comes out at 1.16kg, certainly a noticeable bulge in your bag if you’re carrying it to and from work each day.

But I thought that we could probably do better, and given that we’re on Brandon Sanderson, I had a look at Words of Radiance, also in hardcover, which clocks in at a pretty impressive 1.52kg! I briefly had a look at Oathbringer, but the UK version scrapes in at 1.48kg, so was barely worth a mention. I do also have the paperbacks of the first four novels in the Stormlight archive, which together come in at 1.63kg – very much more transportable than the hardcovers.

But wait! As many of you will know, I’m a huge fan of Clive Barker’s work, and some years ago, picked up the hardback versions of his Abarat saga as they came out. The first one is a relatively swift read at just under 400 pages, but it’s printed on really heavy paper because it has Clive’s original illustrations in it. The second and third novels are a bit longer, so I fished them all off the bookcase and put them on the scales.

The first novel – Abarat – clocks in at a fairly chunky 1.1kg. The second – Days of Magic, Nights of War, hits 1.2kg, but the third is the undisputed champion, clocking in at a huge 1.58kg, an extra 60g on Words of Radiance, but with barely half the page count!

With books like this, who needs a gym membership, eh?

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Editing is not my strong suit…

When I was a kid, I read Maggie Prince’s Memoirs of a Dangerous Alien three times straight because I couldn’t bear to leave the world it was set in. Later, I found my sister’s hardback copy of The Time Traveller’s Wife, read it and immediately set out to find a signed paperback copy and read it all again, in all its sharp, painful beauty.

Unfortunately, it turns out that reading your own book – in the name of editing, of course – four times in a row is a sure-fire way to fall out of love with it. And maybe I’ve pushed it too hard.

I was supposed to go away with some friends at the weekend, but after a long, hard week, decided that I needed some self-care. And again, of course, that’s exactly what I didn’t do, finishing a third edit of Small Places and immediately starting on a fourth, only pausing on Sunday afternoon once I’d made the hundred and fifty-eighth change.

(In fairness, there are just over 72,000 words. Messing around with a couple of hundred each time isn’t awful)

But it did occur to me as I switched my brain off to enjoy a Fast and Furious film (guilty pleasure) that it probably isn’t the nicest thing to do to myself. So I’m slowing down a little. I’ve made a list of possible agents to query, but maybe I’ll do another edit first. Perhaps it’s best to wait until I’ve stopped dreaming of line edits and woken up thinking that there’s a massive plot hole somewhere in it.

I’m fairly sure there isn’t a massive plot hole in it.

Who knows – if all the agents say no, then it’s full speed ahead with self-publishing and you could be reading this by summertime.

I think my brain needs to recharge. And I know book blogging is hard for you guys, so please, look after yourselves as well.

I will if you will?

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Engineering Identical Hand Twins?!

Do you remember that episode of friends where Joey finds his ‘identical hand twin’? Well, I’ve just had a similar episode, only with books … kind of.

Somehow, I saw a tweet the other day from Darran Handshaw, asking “Any other authors with a science fiction fantasy novel set in a ruined futuristic city with an engineer main character want to cross-promote?  Let me know!”

And what are the chances? Parasites, my sci-fi solarpunk exploration novel features exactly this – although this is really only one location, and one of the main characters … but it’s a remarkable coincidence.

I’m not saying that we’re going to run away to Vegas together and make millions (although neither did Joey) but it certainly made me laugh, and I’ve already downloaded Darran’s book The Engineer: A Chronicles of Actaeon Story, which is very much intriguing me! If you’re interested in Darran’s work as well, you can find it on Amazon UK here and read the very positive reviews on Goodreads here. I’ll be updating and doing a full review once I’m done!  

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Thank you!

It’s not easy being an independent author, especially when you’re hoping to (one day) not be independent. It’s pretty tough when you know that being a writer is a dream for so many other talented individuals out there, people who are often smarter, more established and less weirded out by the whole prospect of self-promotion than you are.

Thankfully, I’ve found that the book community – writers and bloggers alike – is pretty much nothing but supportive (ok, some of y’all are crazy but you’re still supportive with it!) so I wanted to take a moment and say thank you. You’ve all taken time out of your busy lives to read my stuff and I appreciate it more than you can know.

So a huge thank you to my first set of reviewers, Traveling Cloak, Alex J Books, Stevo, Natazha and Alex, and an equally huge thank you to those who have it on their TBRs, Erik at Genre Book Reviews, Nighty, Kriti, Nadja, Lori, Ollie and Cassidee.

For the latter group, I really hope you enjoy Parasites – and even if you don’t, I’m so grateful that you read it and I’m really looking forward to reading your thoughts about it. There’s currently five and a half thousands words chucked into a word document with rough ideas and structure for books two and three so at this stage, you’ve potentially got a chance to affect later books!

Uh, or, well, the cessation of efforts on later Parasites books and my return to fantasy, which is actually more of my natural homeland 😛  

Again, as an Indie writer, there’s a strong temptation to just keep writing ‘book one’ of something until it gets picked up by a traditional publisher, but all of your kind words have strongly contributed to some serious thoughts about Parasites books two and three. While I kind of need to dedicate a book to my wife at some stage, you guys will get a huge shout out after that, promise!

That was pretty raw, so thank you all again, and happy trails.

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“For fans of…”

I’ve been back on Twitter for a while now, and one thing I see a lot of is authors comparing their works to those of other writers, to help indicate who might (or might not!) like it. It’s not exclusive to Twitter either, and I see it a lot on Amazon’s pages.

I can really, really understand why people do it. I quite often say to people ‘oh, if you liked x book, you’d probably enjoy y book too’. But for an author, particularly a first-time writer, I think it’s dangerous. More often than not, you’re comparing your work to a very well-established (full-time) writer, with a team of editors and sub-editors, an agent and many, many resources at their fingertips. It’s useful shorthand, but it’s also dangerous. One I saw recently said ‘for fans of Brandon Sanderson’.

Now Elantris, Sanderson’s first work, was published in 2005, fourteen years ago. Since then, he’s written a breathtaking number of words across at least forty novels and novellas, from a quick glance at Wikipedia. I absolutely adore most of his work – Elantris, the first two books of the Stormlight archive and Final Empire in particular are truly magnificent – and I’m in awe of what he did with picking up Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time saga when Jordan passed away.

In some of his books, Sanderson’s world-creation is beyond compare. His sense of plotting is insanely tight, and his characters shine. So to set yourself up on a pedestal seems a very dangerous thing to do – sure, it might sell your first book, but you’re setting a very high bar.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but I’d rather just write a good description of a book. I’m not saying that I won’t ever do this – I’ve just replied to a tweet about my current WIP using exactly this shorthand – and I get that it’s really tough to make it as a writer. But as an author, we’re here for the long haul, and I honestly think that it’s better to establish your own character and feel as a writer than try to put yourself next to someone else. And who knows – you might just be a better writer than them in time…

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Small ‘walls’

It’s (reasonably) well-established in running marathons that there’s a period when you psychologically don’t think you can run anymore; I think it happens around the eighteen to twenty-mile mark. You’re exhausted, you’ve come a long way and you’ve still got a fair way to go – it’s understandable.

I’m not sure if the metaphor really holds, but I find myself hitting very small, similar walls when I write. I’ll get a few hundred words done and then want a break. I’ll feel reluctant to carry on, wanting to do something else – and that’s ridiculous and impractical; it’d take forever to write a book doing just a few hundred words at a time.

And often I can overcome this by just persisting, but I do find myself wondering about the cause. Have I frazzled my brain so much with social media and switching between tasks so much that I can’t focus on doing something for a long time? Maybe … although I’m certainly happy to read for a long period of time at once. But then a part of me thinks that my attention span is shorter than it used to be; in the first few days of the Christmas holidays, I really had to fight to watch an entire film at once (a crazy time-luxury) rather than watching some and then pausing.

It’s not a great state for an author to occupy, and I’m certainly going to think about cutting back on non-essential attention-switching tasks and how I structure my life at work. Unfortunately, my job does require me to hop from project to project within each day (and each hour) but I’d like to avoid any further deterioration if I can…

I’m curious as to whether other authors or readers have experienced something similar, or whether it strikes you at certain times or places? It’s odd that I can read for a long period at a time, but when something actually needs proper concentration, it can be more difficult, but without being a cognitive psychologist, it’s hard to dissect. 

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A ‘thank you’ to writers everywhere

Unless you’ve somehow come into a lot of money, or started writing when you were a student or on a career break, there’s no way around the first challenge of writing: everybody starts part-time.

And that leads rather neatly onto the second challenge of writing – and no, I’m not taking about ‘having an idea’: writing is hard.

I’m lucky enough to have a full-time job that’s reasonably well-paid, and have few other commitments; my partner also works, and the cat doesn’t require a lot. But still, coming home from the daily grind on London transport, and motivating myself to write a few hundred words … well, sometimes it’s tough.

Admittedly, sometimes it’s also joyous. I love my characters and my settings. Spending time with them, developing them can be a fantastic escape from regular life in the same way as reading or watching a good film / tv series can be, and sometimes I’ll get a second wind and just get sucked into creating. Once, when I was on the train from London to Edinburgh, I wrote just shy of six thousand words in a feverish haze, sadly missing most of the spectacular scenery.

But sometimes I’ll have to make a note that a particular chapter will DEFINITELY need more attention. I’ve got a small notepad file in the same folder as most of my WIPs with review notes. Those files tend to have sequel ideas in them, as well as points to come back to, but there’s a note in my file for Small Places that simply reads “I was in a weird place when I wrote chapter five – it might read a little flat”. I think I wrote most of it when I’d had a particularly hard day in the office!

So I wanted to just spend a moment congratulating all writers / authors for their WIPs and works, because it’s not easy. In fact, it’s spectacularly hard – to not only push your thoughts and ideas into a coherent creation with realistic, lovable (or detestable!) characters, but to do it when you’ve worked an eight (or more) hour day, when you’ve cooked dinner for your loved ones, when you’ve loaded the dishwasher, cleaned up, fed the cat (or your children) and you’d like nothing more than to slump in front of the TV and put on The Witcher.

But you don’t. You write. And on behalf of all readers, I’d like to thank you for that.