Giant Thief ... Closing Thoughs

Ever since I read a piece by Aliette de Bodard analyzing what she felt she got wrong and right in her "Obsidian and Blood" trilogy*, I knew I wanted to do something similar.  In fact, let's be honest, I knew I wanted to shamelessly rip it off.  So now that the Tales of Damasco are complete and out to buy, and now that I've had time for all the emotional dust to settle, here are my thoughts on where I messed up and where I can conceivably claim to have nailed it in my first novel Giant Thief.

Let's get the bad out of the way first, because then I get to finish with all the good stuff:


THE BAD

• There are a couple of overly slow chapters in Giant Thief, a couple of places were the plot doesn't move on as swiftly as it should, and in general the pacing is a bit off.  It was bad planning, basically, and I think it's the one area in which Crown Thief and Prince Thief are unquestionably better books.  That said, I do like how damn fast the thing moves, how little it lets get in its way, how blindly determined I was to throw in action at every opportunity.  I'm glad, on the whole, that I wrote a fast paced, action-packed first novel with a couple of slow patches than the other way round.

• I overestimated the tolerance readers would have for an obnoxious protagonist.  I wanted Easie Damasco to be unconventional, and the convention I had my eye on was the lovable rogue.  Rogues, in my experience, are anything but lovable, and I wanted to write a thief who was every bit as despicable, immoral and self-centered as a real life thief would be.  But while I still feel that that was a worthy intention, I see now that I should have leavened all those flaws with a few more virtues, so as to make Damasco slightly more pleasant company (although, see the successes for more thoughts on this.)

• I should have found a way to get more of my villain Moaradrid's back-story and motivation into Giant Thief.  I knew it, bits of it were implied, and it almost all gets told in Crown Thief and Prince Thief, but that isn't good enough, and it weakened an otherwise strong character.  I like Moaradrid, I think he's an interesting portrait of how good motives can be warped in a moral vacuum and he gets some cracking lines, but I can see how his apparent lack of character logic frustrated a few people.

THE GOOD

• I'm proud of my core cast.  One or two reviews suggested that they're mostly archetypes, and that's not entirely unfair - there's the witty thief, the harsh-but-fair guard captain, the kind-hearted monster, amongst others - but I think that misses the point of what I tried to do with those archetypes.  Every character, even the ostensibly heroic ones like Estrada and Alvantes, have deep flaws, and it's those flaws more than their virtues that define where they go after the first book.  But of everyone, I'm proudest of Castilio Mounteban, a man who does something irredeemable in Giant Thief and then spends Crown Thief and Prince Thief striving to be redeemed anyway, mostly in the worst possible ways and all in the name of love, albeit a deeply warped interpretation of it.  To me, that's one hell of a character arc.

• Following on from that, and perhaps a slight cheat since it doesn't really come to the foreground until Crown Thief, but I like the degree of moral complexity in the Tales, and all the more so because I was writing in a genre that isn't particularly known for moral complexity.  Plenty of people do awful things, and few more so that Easie Damasco himself, but nobody once does anything that they can't justify to their self, (except the once, and I just covered that, above.)  Perhaps more interestingly, characters frequently try to do right and end up doing considerable harm, and no good deed goes unpunished.  It's not easy to do the right thing in real life, so why should it be in fiction?

• I'm glad that I didn't write about white men running around a thinly veiled misinterpretation of medieval Europe.  We've had that book too many damn times, and I sleep a little easier at night for knowing that, whatever else I got wrong, I didn't add to the Tower of Tolkien.  By Prince Thief, I have an almost entirely non-white cast** and two well-rounded female characters who get to do things like run towns and entire countries without, necessarily, being Strong with a capital 'S'.  None of that necessarily makes it a good book, of course, and I feel a little bad even bringing it up because in a perfect world the art we create would represent the diversity of our species and we wouldn't even have to talk about it ... but, this world not being that one, I'm glad that I get to be one of the tiny handful of authors in 2013 (perhaps the only?) with a black and an Hispanic protagonist sharing their cover.

So those are my thoughts, anyway.  If you strongly disagree, with the good points or the bad or both, then I've love to hear about it.



* Which I now can't find for the life of me.  Anyone remember where it was published?
** The arguable exception being the giants, who are sort of grey.

My First Eastercon, the Necessarily Short Version

Because, after all, I was only there for about three hours.  I listened to seventeen seconds of a panel debate, wandered around the art show and the dealers room, got lost a lot, helped steal a table for the Angry Robot signing, sat in the bar with AR editor Marc Gascoigne and friends for a while and then went home (or tried to - we'll come to that.)

So the upshot is that I don't have anything terribly useful or intelligent to say about Eastercon.  As such, my thoughts should probably be taken with a pinch of salt or seven.  They are, in no particular order: 

• I wish I could have stayed a lot longer.  There was a heck of a lot going on that seemed worth investigating, and everything I saw was interesting enough that I wished I could have paid it more attention.
• I met a lot of really cool people in a relatively short space of time.  That has to be a good sign.  Particular note should go to spec-fic artist Jethro Lentle and alt-folk musician Jordan Reyne, two brilliantly talented people who were both willing and able to geek out about obscure movies with a complete stranger at the drop of a hat.
• Dealer passes are awesome.  They're like the con equivalent of the Jedi mind trick.
• You want to secure a conference?  Having a single reception desk at one of the nineteen or so entrances and a couple of people sitting outside particular rooms just doesn't cut it.  Single point of entry, automated gun turrets.  End of story.
• The Birmingham Hilton was not a good choice of venue.  Too big and too crazily expensive.  There just aren't that many genre fans who also happen to be oil barons.
• I hope I get to go again next year.  So long as they don't hold it in a Hilton.  Or in Birmingham.
• Angry Robot are really cool.  I mean, really.  If I pretty much knew how passionate these guys are about what they were doing before, it's absolutely burned into the crevices of my brain now.
• When you actually get to meet your publishers and hold one of their books in your sweaty paws and see how beautifully and carefully put together it is and then realise that that's going to be you in about nine months time ... well, that's worth giving up a day for.

On a slightly more coherent note, I mainly just went to say hello to some people I'd only previously met in the digiverse, so everything else was a bonus.  On that basis, it was great to put a face to such names as Lavie Tidhar, Aliette de Bodard, Andy Remic, Adam Christopher - and last but clearly the opposite of least, Dan Abnett.

I may have geeked out a little when I met Dan Abnett.  It's one thing to have been reading someone's fantastic comics work for years and then to meet them and discover they're incredibly nice.  It's quite another to suddenly get it through your head that you're signed with the same publisher.  Heck, I even bought Dan's new book, Embedded.  How's that for adulation?

Of course, what Dan doesn't know is that while he was signing it, I was secretly stealing a lock of his hair*, which will henceforth be kept under my mattress to imbue me with magical super writing powers.  If you're reading this a year from now, wondering how I managed to write fifteen books and ninety seven comics in twelve months and they all be utterly brilliant - well, there's your answer.

So not a bad day at all ... until the train "service" stranded me in Birmingham, with no money, in the middle of the night.  Want to get a train back from Birmingham to Cheltenham on a main line route after a quarter to eight, on a day that's next to a bank holiday?  Well, that's just crazy talk, mister.  And if you end up spending the night in a fleepit hotel then you've only got yourself to blame.

Let's just call it a lesson learned, eh?


* If you've ever seen Dan, you'll have some idea how hard this was.

Big News, Part 1: Agented!

As I've possibly kind of hinted on a couple of occasions, there have been some big things building at this end over the last three months or so, which I've had to sit on and keep schtum about until they became completely one-hundred percent official.

Did I say big?  I meant, of course, huge.  Gigantic.  Megalithic.  (*Consults dictionary*)  Okay, maybe not that last one.

Anyway ... I'm immensely pleased to announce the first part of that huge-but-maybe-not-precisely-megalithic news.  Henceforward, and beginning with my first completed novel Giant Thief, my writing work will be represented by the Zeno Literary Agency.

Rather than try and explain in my own words just why that's so damn awesome, here's the official blurb from the Zeno site:

Zeno Agency Limited is a partnership between veteran literary agent John Parker and freelance literary consultant and genre critic, John Berlyne. Neither can recall exactly when they first met, but undoubtedly it was at some social occasion – a book launch or more likely a science fiction convention. Over a few years, their association grew, with Berlyne becoming a regular reader and consultant for Parker who was at that time – and had been for many years – a senior agent with MBA. Never one to rest on his laurels, in July 2008 John Parker took the huge step towards agent independence, splitting off from MBA and joining forces with Berlyne whose genre knowledge and Internet savvy quickly proved indispensable. Along with the huge benefits this move offered to existing clients, the start up company was perfectly placed to help develop the careers of new authors and Zeno’s aim of bringing writers of excellence and originality to the attention of both the industry and the public is already paying dividends.

Bottom Line?  These guys know genre publishing as well as anyone around, and they're already representing some of the most exciting up-and-coming authors in Fantasy and Science-Fiction - people like Aliette de Bodard and Lavie Tidhar - and a fair few more established names as well.  Like, oh, say, that Tim Powers guy.

It's my fervent hope that Giant Thief and I can not embarrass ourselves in such prestigious company.  First step?  A decent haircut!

Anyway, here's a link to Zeno's - perhaps a little more concisely worded - version of this prodigious announcement.