I had a moment of clarity during the final edit before I submitted Songs of the Earth for publication. I realised that a significant character arc didn’t belong there, it actually belonged in the next book. I removed it, and the rest of the script pinged into shape, tighter and better balanced than it had been before.

Something similar occurred during the protracted revisions of Book 2 of The Wild Hunt, and I realised that the reason I was struggling to make part of it fit was because it, too, belonged in the next book.

Now I’m a pretty good multi-tasker, but let me tell you, it’s not easy writing two books in a big fat fantasy series at once – especially if you don’t realise that’s what you’re doing. Kudos to anyone who can manage it, but it nearly turned me into a wreck. It also didn’t help matters that I’d been a bit poorly for quite a lot of the time.

Anyway, the upshot of the matter is that I’ve had to make a change or two, starting with the title. Trinity Moon is no more. All hail Trinity Rising, coming to a bookshop near you in the middle of July. Click the picture to embiggen.

This has had a knock-on effect on Book 3, because all that material that I didn’t know was missing now needs to be accommodated. I’m dealing with that now, and by crikey it’s shaping up well, even if I do say so myself.

In fact they’ve been highly complimentary. Some of them have subject lines of “Thank you”. One chap told me he’d bought the book at lunchtime and read it straight through in one sitting. The fellow yesterday said he’d devoured it like a good Sunday roast, and was aghast to learn that the sequel, Trinity Moon, won’t be available in his country until next spring.

This blows my mind.

These people took a punt on a brand-new author, handed over their hard-earned cash, and not only enjoyed the ride but enjoyed it enough that they felt moved seek me out in the dark and vasty interwebs and tell me so.

Mind. Blown.

This is what brings it home to me that yeah, actually, I can write a bit. This makes up for twenty years spent convinced that I wasn’t good enough to be published, so it wasn’t worth trying. It thrills me beyond words to know that you want to come along on this journey with me, and find out What Happens Next.

I’ll do my best not to let you down.

Unfortunately, that mention turned out to be little more than a single line of internal dialogue quoted out of context†, with the admonition that lines like that aren’t going to do anything to make fantasy cool.

Um, what? Who says a particular genre of fiction is cool or uncool? Is there a Department of Cool somewhere in the bowels of the Home Office that makes these distinctions? Do I have to apply to them in triplicate for an EC Certificate of Cool Conformity before I’m allowed to write books?

Bollocks to that.

As a reader and writer of the genre, I already believe fantasy is pretty bloody cool, thank you very much. Where else can I get to play with kingdoms all day long, and weird beasts (come on, dragons? Could they be any cooler?), and sharp, pointy weapons. Just because there’s a castle on the horizon, or we’re in some fantastical city run by thieves doesn’t mean the writer can’t examine the human condition just as deeply as anyone else – in fact fantasy writers often get to examine it from new and exciting perspectives, like the inside, amongst the tubes and wobbly bits.

Maybe I’m reading too much into a couple of sentences in a review round-up. Maybe the reviewer was not approaching from a standpoint of “I already think fantasy is deeply uncool and slightly icky, so go on, try to change my mind”. Or maybe I’ve just heard one too many people sneering at fantasy lately, because, you know, it’s all just made up stuff.

Newsflash, people: all fiction is ‘just made up stuff’. Even the kind of fiction that wins the Booker.††

It’s not my job to try to make fantasy cool to people with attitudes like that. Prejudice is their problem, not mine.

It is my job to serve the story, to tell it to the best of my ability, and transport the reader somewhere else for a few hours. My job is to entertain with words. If I happen to also inform, elucidate, illuminate or otherwise make the reader say “Huh, I didn’t know that”, then that’s just gravy.

So here’s my book. Try it, don’t try it, it’s your choice. But why not forget what all the other cool kids are doing, stop trying to be so achingly hip you can barely walk, and make your own mind up for a change. Try some fantasy; it won’t kill you. It’s rousing, riotous, heroic, horrifying, absorbing, philosophical, thrilling, heartbreaking, edge-of-your-seat fun.†††

Hell, you might even get over yourself and enjoy it.

Or is it better to be seen to be cool than be entertained?

***

† I’m not saying it was the best line in the world, but in context it was appropriate, dramatic and effective. Stripped of context, pretty much any ten words (short of Shakespeare) are just words.

†† Keeping it topical. But seriously, is the Man Booker Prize awarded to the best book of the year, or just the best book of a certain type?

††† Not necessarily all at the same time. Obviously. But some books, like Martin and Rothfuss there, will give it a damn good try.

Judge for yourself, over at the Wertzone. I’ll wait.

. . .

. . .

[whistles tunelessly]

. . .

. . .

Ah, you’re back. Well? What did you think?

Solid, I thought. Very fair. Well pleased with the liberal use of “intriguingly” and “subtle” and “interesting”, and the lack of words like “dull” and “predictable” and “unconvincing”.

Cheers, Adam. The cheque’s in the post.

People know this, and buy me things like that one up there as presents. They’re gorgeous to look at and lovely to handle, and I imagine myself under a cherry tree on a sunny summer’s day, writing in them (with a fountain pen, naturally – I have eight or nine to choose from, including a Parker 51 that’s older than me), and what I write will be beautiful. It can’t be otherwise: on those pages, anything but sheer poetry would be an offence against nature.

And then, after I’ve oohed and aahed over them, I put them back in their fabulous presentation boxes and put them carefully on the shelf in my office and never open them again, except once in a while to admire the printed endpapers or stroke the butter-soft leather.

Why? Because they are so beautiful I can’t bear to sully their pages with something so crude and permanent as ink. I just can’t.

My husband’s bought me several Cartesios, two Rossis, and the most unspeakably gorgeous InTempo, shipped all the way from Florence (click on that picture on the left, I dare you. Go on, click on it – you will not leave the site without spending money). He’s also responsible for a large part of my fountain pen collection.

And when I try to explain to him how much I love the journals he’s bought me, and that’s why I can’t bring myself to write in them, he doesn’t understand, and looks vaguely hurt, and I want to cry.

“But you’re a writer. Writers need notebooks, don’t they?”

“Yes, but–”

“But what? They’re just paper; they’re meant to be written in!”

“I know, but I can’t!”

“You’re a freak, do you know that?”

And I nod miserably, and go back into my office, take out my fountain pen, and don’t write in them again.

Hang about in any writer’s community, be it online or in the real world, and sooner or later you will encounter a manifestation of this phenomenon. It happens with the inevitability of Godwin’s Law: just as every Internet argument will devolve into accusations of Nazism, so every place where unpublished writers gather together will throw up one of the following gems.

Editors are eeeevil

No, they’re not. They’re human beings, not the spawn of the pit. They are professional word-wranglers and it is their job to improve your work. They’re like Berocca for your book: it’s you on your best day, only better.

They’ll hack my work to pieces

No, they won’t.  Seriously, if it needs that much work, there’s little chance the publisher would have laid out money for it in the first place unless you’re a 21 year old celebrity with a sensational autobiography who can’t write worth a damn.

What an editor does is apply polish.  No matter how shiny you think your manuscript is, it’s a fact that we all make mistakes, or aren’t quite as clear as we could be. The editor will smooth out the sentence structure, weed out repetition or overwriting and then wrap it all up in house style. You should barely be able to see where they’ve been, but read the book afterwards and you’ll be amazed at your literary genius all over again.

But I’ve got no say over the changes they make

Wrong again. Your editor will send you a copy of your manuscript with all the changes in it, and you get to approve pretty much every comma, deletion and rewording they’ve done.

The editor will have a damn good reason for every change they make. Maybe what you wrote was ungrammatical, repetitious or inane. Maybe it was a poor analogy, or you’re overusing a word.  People do stuff like nod and shrug all the time, for instance, but in books nods and shrugs are, to quote my editor, “heinously overused”.

So it follows that if you want to alter something the editor has done, you must justify it. If your justification is good, you’ll probably get your way, but you’ll have to give a little to get a little. You can’t just snap and snarl like a terrier with a chew-toy it doesn’t want to give up, clicking “Reject change” on everything, and expect to be taken seriously.  That is the mark of an amateur, or the kind of pain-in-the-ass author that nobody wants to work with. Get over yourself and start acting like a professional.

Belief in your ability to write is essential in this business, but you also need a healthy dose of humility. Nobody’s prose is so golden that it is beyond improvement. Nobody’s – not even God’s (read the Bible and you’ll see what I mean; if He’d had a decent copy-editor there wouldn’t be all those long lists of begats in the Old Testament).

But seriously, when the edit is complete, and you read your book through with “Track changes” set to “Final” so you can’t actually see what the editor’s done, you probably won’t want to change very much at all.

I’ve spoken many times of how Songs started, but never where Gair came from or why he has grey eyes. The answer is in a poem. A classic some might say; others might think it’s a bit cheesy. Certainly it’s one of the most accessible poems I was exposed to as a child, and studying English Literature to A Level means I’ve read a lot of poetry. Some of it I’ve even enjoyed.

Anyway, this poem’s been stuck in my head since I was about nine years old. You’re probably familiar with it. It tells a story and poses endless questions about who and why and where and when which I’ve spent the last thirty years trying to answer. It has an awful lot to do with why I’m a writer, so if you’re looking for someone to blame, here he is.

The Listeners by Walter De La Mare

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

‘Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:-

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Naturally I don’t want to tempt fate by pronouncing a deadline in public.  That would be, to quote Pterry, like standing on top of a hill during a thunderstorm, in copper armour, shouting “All gods are bastards!”

But let’s just say that a certain work-in-progress is reaching a conclusion.  The orchestra is tuning up, and in her dressing room the Fat Lady is performing her vocal exercises.

Stay tuned.

It’s been a fairly grim couple of months. Progress on Trinity Moon was agonisingly slow, and every few hundred words I managed was hard work. Let me rephrase that. It was sweating-bullets, squeezing-blood-from-a-stone Hard Work. I was even beginning to doubt my abilities as a writer and stressing that I would miss my deadline to deliver the book.

Every day was an effort to drag myself into the office and stare at the computer screen.  Some days it was an effort just to drag myself out of bed. It was frustrating, demoralising, depressing.

In September, I had the first of two emergency admissions to hospital. Acute pancreatitis and jaundice. I couldn’t even drink water without vomiting. I spent my third wedding anniversary holding my husband’s hand in casualty for 6 hours, and the next two days on IV fluids. This also meant having to be catheterised to measure my hydration levels. After four days, they let me go home. I could eat again, but had no interest in food. All I wanted to do was sleep.

A month later, I was back in A&E, this time with acute biliary colic, and spent another 48 hours in hospital.  At least my liver function was normal this time; I was just in pain. In the hospital, they ask you to grade your pain on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the worst pain you’ve ever experienced. I’ve had a fractured spine, and a post-lumbar puncture headache, so I like to think my tolerance for pain is quite high, but even with 10mg of morphine in me, acute biliary colic hit a 7.

Two weeks ago, I had my gallbladder removed. The surgeon said it was “ready to come out” which I think is consultant-speak for “it was a bag of gravel ripe to cause lots more problems, so you’re better off without it”, and discharged me the following morning.

Keyhole surgery is something of a misnomer. They should call it keyholeS surgery. Four incisions, and a couple of random holes – whose precise purpose was unclear. I was a bit sore for the next few days, but as the discomfort faded I started to feel better. So much better that I could look back and see just how shitty I’d been feeling since the summer. No the wonder I wasn’t writing much, or well.

I’m still not massively interested in food, but at least now I know I can eat without worrying whether it will trigger another trip to casualty.  I’ve had enough morphine to last me a good while, thanks.

It’s a widely-held view that fantasy as a genre is one in which the writer can pretty much dispense with research. It’s all made up, so as long as you make sure there are certain natural laws by which your world functions and you stick to them, you can do what you like. It’s your sandpit. You make the rules.

Except it’s not that simple. Even in fantasy, there are some elements where a little research will prevent your reader frowning and thinking “That’s not right.” I mean, they might write to you and complain.

For example, there’s likely to be horses in the book somewhere, so it pays to know the hairy end from the end with the teeth. How to get on and off. How far you can ride one in a day.

If the blokes on the horses are knights, you’d better know your hauberk from your pauldron, and where to find the vamplate (it’s the bit which guards your hand as you grip your lance, in case you didn’t know).

So I was sitting at my desk, putting the finishing touches to the second book of The Wild Hunt series, and I had a sudden thought. An epiphany, even. One of those moments of realisation which is often—nay, almost inevitably—followed by “Oh, shit.”

What I realised was that I have spent mumblety-mumble years thinking, dreaming and writing about folk for whom a sword is a part of everyday life, and I’ve never laid hands on one. Seen a few in museums and so on, but never actually wrapped my hand round a hilt.

My imagination’s done the work up to this point. I knew not to pick it up by the pointy end, for instance, and was fairly confident I could score at least 6/10 on a naming-of-the-parts pop quiz. I also knew that they don’t weigh nearly as much as people imagine, but even three pounds is going to feel like it’s ripping your arm out of its socket after half an hour’s earnest use.

What I didn’t know, and had to rely on my imagination for, was the specifics. Which muscles does it pull on as you start to tire? Where do you get the calluses, and what does it feel like in your hand when the sweat—and worse—begins to run? What does it feel like in your hand, full stop?

So I bought one. A replica of a 15th century longsword (also called a hand-and-a-half, or a bastard sword, depending on your era of origin and local preference). Not a lightweight copy of Andúril that comes with a fancy plaque to hang on the wall, but a traditionally-made, full tang, edge-ready, functional sword. And it’s sharp.

Well, I’m not going to know what a real sword feels like in my hand unless I’m holding a real sword, am I?

Apologies for the crummy pics–it’s pouring with rain and even with the lights on I can barely see what I’m doing. Click to make them bigger.