The math we use to make ourselves feel better

Yesterday my dyslexic flatmate was frustrated that she spent 5 hours writing an essay outline (850 words).

I'd say 850 words in 5 hours isn't a failure. The essay outline is finished and says everything it was meant to. That makes it a successful piece of writing.

I spent 5 hours yesterday watching the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and I produced exactly 0 words during that time. The way I see it, any time spent on writing is better than none, any work produced is better than none, and any finished piece is a totally badass success of which to be proud.

Ten percent of nothin' is, let me do the math here... Nothin' into nothin', carry the nothin'...

But of course the frustration isn't the finished work, it's the time taken to get there.

850 words in 5 hours is 170 words in an hour, which doesn’t seem like many. Until you consider that it's 170 finished words an hour, so 170 words of polished, edited, shiny-happy writing. There were hundreds of other words which she threw out along the way, from outlines to practice sentences or excess trimmed out to keep the outline within ideal parameters.

The first Harry Potter is just shy of 77,000 words. If my flatmate kept producing 170 shiny words per hour for 5 hours a day, that's Harry Potter in 90 days. From 0 to Harry Potter in roughly 3 months.

Of course that's not exactly how it works. In my experience, longer novels need exponentially more editing and reworking than shorter novellas. There's an incredible amount of variation from book to book and author to author, and I would never devalue the effort of creating a finished short story. And yet, on top of my anecdotal evidence, there's the simple maths that if any chunk of writing needs X amount of reworking, the more chunks there are then the more editing and reworking.

I realized that I, a writer with a love of spreadsheets, am so used to calculating word count averages that I take them for granted. I love numbers and stats and goals. And sometimes, when you're feeling down about your writing, you have to do the quick and dirty math that will make you feel better.

The easiest example is what I did at the start of this post: think of the time you spent writing and compare it what you achieved in the same space of time not spent on writing. Maybe you got an hour of writing in today and your story didn't move far, but compare that to the eight or so hours at work in which your story didn't move at all. Congratulations, from a writing perspective you're more productive in your spare time than at work!

You can think of your writing as chunks of a finished work, or estimate how many books you'd be able to create if you kept this pace up every day for the rest of your life.


It's so easy to feel low comparing ourselves to prolific authors or even our own personal bests. We can take a step back and remind ourselves that any writing is a success and, if not a step toward a goal, then at least practice. But sometimes dirty math is the only cure to the writing blues.

I've officially watched Twin Peaks!

I recently watched Twin Peaks for the first time. If you're not familiar with it, Twin Peaks is a murder mystery TV show. Unlike most murder-of-the-week mysteries, it follows one murder over 2 seasons.

Artwork by Michael E. Kelly

(If you haven't seen the show, don't search 'who killed Laura Palmer' unless you want spoilers)

Partway through the second season, the murderer was revealed, and the show had to see if it could survive without the unifying mystery.

The fact that everyone I know is excited to see season 3 when it comes out next year proves this show has enduring appeal.

Why am I mentioning Twin Peaks? Three reasons:

1. So I can show off about finally joining this cult phenomenon

25 years late but moving fast.

2. To share my favorite quotation from the show.

3. Because it relates back to my weekly Wattpad serial, Omega Blues.

The premise of the novel so far—you want to be a werewolf and the one werewolf you love the most is the one keeping you from becoming a werewolf, only you don't realize it—has been resolved. Now it's time to see how the novel will stand when it only deals with little things like, you know, becoming a werewolf and having everything go wrong.

Five Awesome Non-romance Novels

Like most writers, I love to read. Of course I read in my genre, but I also read a lot outside of it.

This year I joined a reading challenge, as a way to make myself prioritize reading and because I enjoy working through lists. I'm just over halfway through the Popsugar Reading Challenge, a series of 40 prompts ranging from vague—a book with a blue cover, a book that's guaranteed to bring you joy—to more specific—a book from Oprah's Book Club, a YA bestseller.

Here are five books I've read and loved as part of this challenge.

Get in Trouble by Kelly Link
Prompt: A book published in 2016

Kelly Link is the Doctor Who of the literary world. Most people who read her get obsessed and talk about it non-stop, but there are a fair share of reviewers saying, “I just don't get it, what's everyone so excited about?”

Either you love it, or you don't. And I do. Kelly Link's been my favorite writer since I first read her in 2008.

I've tried to wrap other people up in my excitement but I've had mixed results. Many people say she's too whimsical—which, in turn, is what I feel about David Tennant, one of the most popular Doctors.

Get in Trouble is a short story collection with Link's award-winning control of language and all the classic Link themes—doubling, ghost stories, unreliable narrators tapping at the border between dream and reality—but with some of the whimsy honed down to leave precise and beautiful weirdness.

Kelly Link, courtesy of her website

A personal favorite was the story Two Houses, with the crew of an isolated space ship telling ghost stories that spiral into each other.

*

I Called Him Necktie by Minea Michiko Flašar

Prompt: A book that takes place during Summer

I Called Him Necktie is a German novel set in Tokyo (the incredibly talented author, Minea Michiko Flašar, is half-Japanese and half-Austrian.

A shut-in and an unemployed salaryman meet on a park bench every day, sharing their stories in a slow-building and heart-breaking short novel. It discusses the pressure to work every day and balance work stress with the rest of life.

It's one of those rare, exquisite novels that I read at exactly the right time in my life. Sometimes the perfect book arrives just when you're in a place to need it. You and the book sync up and create a perfect resonance, which seems too unique even to justify recommending the book to anyone else. This was such a book, but I'm still confident that the theme and tone are universal.

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River Monsters by Jeremy Wade
Prompt: A book written by a celebrity

“With time now revealed as something finite, I was struck by how little I'd achieved, in any conventional sense, in my life. The weight of the things I had done was inconsequential when divided into the years.”

I was aware of the TV show River Monsters but had never watched it—I love sea monsters but I have no interest in fishing—so at first I suspected ghostwriting in the host's autobiography. Apparently though, it's quite common for him to refer to fish as “eldritch abominations” live on camera, disproving my prejudice that no one who wears cargo shorts could have access to a broad vocabulary.

River Monsters is more than a book about fishing (which, I agree, sounds like a very boring book anyway). It's a story of struggle, failure and obsession, with a dose of biology and some fascinating philosophy.

This is a Pokémon screenshot

Turns out when you spend hours—or days—sitting by a river and waiting for a fish to bite, it gives you time to form deep opinions. Rock on, you shorts-wearing philosopher.

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An Unrestored Woman by Shobha Rao

Prompt: A book about a culture you're unfamiliar with

Shobha Rao's debut collection is emotionally heavy, but worth the commitment. The stories center around the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan. The stories are often devastating and brutal, but always incredibly well-crafted.

I usually find short story collections easy to space out over a long period of time, but once I started reading An Unrestored Woman I couldn't stop. The collection took me through tears and anger and, finally, to joy.

If you can handle the subject matter, the beauty in this collection is 100% worth the discomfort. 

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Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Prompt: A science-fiction novel

The inspiration for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game, this modern translation of a 1970's USSR novel came with a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin. If that isn't a recommendation, what is?

Roadside Picnic is perfect sci-fi from start to finish. The world—Earth after a brief alien invasion—is built realistically, with few awkward infodumps.

It reminds me of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy which rocked my world a while back. Lots of exploration of weird phenomena and unsolved mysteries, laced with death and crime.

Even the title—Roadside Picnic—is weird and cool. When I read the blurb, I asked the friend who recommend the book if the title referred to aliens using earth as a picnic destination and leaving stuff behind.

From Gary Larson's Far Side

My friend said no. But, spoiler alert, it totally is.

Omega Blues: Chapter 15

My free serial novel, Omega Blues, is moving along steadily and is now up to chapter 15.

The story is at just over 30,000 words, with a chapter added every week.

The last few weeks I've been getting behind then catching back up, so we've seen chapters updated within a couple of days of each other instead of once a week. I've been juggling work and band practice with moving house. Unfortunately I've been dealing with work stress by slipping back into depressive sleep patterns, sleeping 12 to 15 hours a night, which leaves very little time for anything else.

But, despite setbacks, we're still up-to-date with Omega Blues and I'm proud of that. I have a completed chapter every week, and I'm confident I wouldn't have gotten this far in the editing of this novel if I'd just had it as a side project.

Since I'm back on track with a new chapter not due until Sunday, I have a couple of days to focus on editing my next novel, Skin and Edge; a story which is dear to my heart as it's a reworking of my first ever romance novel. Stay tuned, because I think you're going to love it!

Coin Tricks review copies

If you'd like a free copy of Coin Tricks in exchange for a review, there are still a couple slots in the Goodreads MM Romance Group's Don't Buy My Love program!

You have to be a member of the group, but it is a great group :)

Integrity giveaway!

To celebrate the release of my new mm romance novella, Integrity, I'm giving away 2 free copies!

Integrity is a rock star romance set on tour, so to win your free ebook copy all you have to do is post here (or on my Tumblr or Twitter) with your preferred ebook format and the answer to this question:

Which band would you love to see live?

It can be a current or defunct band, or even a band you've already seen!

I'll use a random number generator to pick 2 winners on Friday the 20th, then send you out your copies :)

Tyler Kostritch is famous for his honesty and straight-talking. It’s just a pity he’s lying to everyone. Ty gave up a promising MMA career to focus on his band. As the frontman of Proletarian Yell, he’s as aggressive and confrontational as he ever was as a fighter. He’s famous for the brutal honesty of his live performances—all the while hiding in the closet, never risking relationships so no one will ever find out. After years of hard work, the band finally have their big break: a tour with the hottest metal band around. It’s the best thing to ever happen to Ty. Until he meets Hale. 
Hale Tahmid, vocalist of the staggeringly-popular Funeral Kiss, is everything Ty’s not: Showy, flirty, openly gay. Hale’s the quintessential rock star from his staggering good looks to his attention-craving love of social media. The two bands couldn’t be more different, and their vocalists are opposites. They clash from the moment they meet, a constant verbal sparring and battle of personalities. Yet Ty can’t help noticing his extreme attraction to Hale. Worse still, Hale knows it and taunts Ty with his bad boy charm, every chance he gets. Ty’s hooked on the beautiful rock star and it’s inevitable that he’ll give into temptation. 
Hale’s not just a pretty face. He’s passionate and ruthlessly dedicated, and may just be the perfect partner for Ty. But Hale won’t accept half-measures. If Ty’s not fully in, he’ll walk away. Ty lives in a castle of lies that would come crashing down if he came out. He’d risk losing his band, his family, and everything he’s worked for. How can Ty choose between his love and the music he’s built his world around?

Amazon

Smashwords

All Romance 

New release: Integrity

My new rock star m/m romance novella is live! Integrity is a tense and steamy clash of will between two vocalists on tour.

Cover illustration by Kazi

Amazon

Smashwords

All Romance

Sparks fly whenever they're together. 
Tyler Kostritch is famous for his honesty and straight-talking. It’s just a pity he’s lying to everyone. Ty gave up a promising MMA career to focus on his band. As the frontman of Proletarian Yell, he’s as aggressive and confrontational as he ever was as a fighter. He’s famous for the brutal honesty of his live performances—all the while hiding in the closet, never risking relationships so no one will ever find out. After years of hard work, the band finally have their big break: a tour with the hottest metal band around. It’s the best thing to ever happen to Ty. Until he meets Hale. 
“We’re real. We’re part of a movement. You’re just a boy band playing dress-up.” 
Hale Tahmid, vocalist of the staggeringly-popular Funeral Kiss, is everything Ty’s not: Showy, flirty, openly gay. Hale’s the quintessential rock star from his staggering good looks to his attention-craving love of social media. The two bands couldn’t be more different, and their vocalists are opposites. They clash from the moment they meet, a constant verbal sparring and battle of personalities. Yet Ty can’t help noticing his extreme attraction to Hale. Worse still, Hale knows it and taunts Ty with his bad boy charm, every chance he gets. Ty’s hooked on the beautiful rock star and it’s inevitable that he’ll give into temptation. 
“I’m nobody’s dirty secret.” 
Hale’s not just a pretty face. He’s passionate and ruthlessly dedicated, and may just be the perfect partner for Ty. But Hale won’t accept half-measures. If Ty’s not fully in, he’ll walk away. Ty lives in a castle of lies that would come crashing down if he came out. He’d risk losing his band, his family, and everything he’s worked for. 
How can Ty choose between his love and the music he’s built his world around?

The original title was Prima Donna Boy, a reference to Ty's mocking nickname for Hale. But I didn't want all those words to clash with Kazi's gorgeous illustration! The new title, Integrity, is one of Ty's core defining values—one that he contradicts by being in the closet and in denial of his feelings for Hale.

Integrity is a rock star enemies-to-lovers story built around the massive tension of two huge and competing egos forced to travel and perform together day after day after day. Under that kind of strain, people snap and secrets bubble to the surface...

Here are the links, I hope you love it!!
Amazon
Smashwords
All Romance 

This is your brain on two months of serial fiction

I'm working on a serial story, a m/m werewolf romance novel uploaded free to the internet chapter by chapter. I've just uploaded chapter eight which brings the story so far to just under 20k, so it's impressive to see how a little bit every week adds up over time.

My idea with Omega Blues was to complete a draft then edit and upload it in chapters, but of course a first draft is often little more than a vague outline that shows you what you want to write for your actual story. This and the next two chapters are completely fresh and not in the original draft.

When I started uploading Omega Blues at the start of March, I had a 50k-or-so manuscript to work from. In the last couple of weeks I've been re-imagining the story to make it more dramatic—cutting something into 2k chunks really makes you realize where the dull, infodumpy sections are! I've tossed aside well over half of the original writing. The fresh draft couldn't have existed without the first draft, and it definitely wouldn't be shaping up the way it is if I hadn't worked chapter-by-chapter to focus in on the best story I can possibly craft.

I've wanted to write a weekly serial for years, but all the blog posts I'd read couldn't prepare me for the experience. Like with any novel, it's an experience unique to the writer and the novel. Between work stress and band practice, I've been drained this month, and I'm confident that I wouldn't have been able to achieve as much as I have if I hadn't put in place weekly deadlines.

On the other hand, editing Omega Blues each week takes days of writing time away from my next novella, Prima Donna Boy. In the past I've seen that multi-tasking on writing projects makes them all go slower so the time between publishing drags out longer and longer. While I think this is true here—I defnitely would be further through edits on Prima Donna if I didn't keep switching to Omega Blues—the weekly chapter uploads are proof that I am getting something done.

With writing there's a war between wanting to write fast and furiously, creating 'in the moment' with no breaks and no distractions, and wanting to take a break to plan and think about the story. Handling these two stories at once has forced me into the latter mindset, but I figure as writers we should always be experimenting and trialing, in our writing practice as well as in the writing itself.

There are plenty of anecdotes about famous writers and their routines and superstitions. They can be terrifying for a new writer because they're told from the perspective of full-time writers with established careers. Those writers always seem so definite: the only way to get any writing done is to do it exactly like this and yet there's so much conflicting advice.

The thing is, every writer is different and there isn't a one-size-fits-all writing habit. Before we know what's going to work for us, we have to experiment. From the time of day when we write to the level of distraction we can handle (music, a cafe, silence?) to the way the story itself is created—intricate planning or broad brushstrokes? Write from the start to the end, or from a key scene outwards? How much can and should a story change while it's being written?—every writer and every book will be different.

I've lived in isolation, writing in a cabin in the woods with no internet or phone reception, and I have Boganettes, Hot Blood Punk and Mr Wonderful to show for it. Now I'm living in a city and writing in stolen moments between irregular work hours, a reading challenge and intense band practices. I have Omega Blues to show for it and, whatever else I can produce, I know I'll be learning more about myself and my writing from the different experience.

The latest chapter of my free werewolf m/m romance, Omega Blues, is now live on Wattpad!

The Only Rule for Writing Paranormal

Whenever we write, we're creating within a framework of existing stories—all the fiction that came before us and that influences and shapes our writing.

Even if you want to create the most fresh and original story possible, you still want to create a story that people enjoy, so that means obeying basic laws of writing: narrative flow, conflict, dialogue, the story building up and increasing in tension before reaching a resolution, etc.

The vast majority of writers know the genre they're writing in, and that means expectations you need to take into account. It's hard to satisfy readers with a crime novel if the crime's not solved by the end of the book, people will be disappointed in a horror that's not scary, and so forth.

Another Earth, 2011, is rare for a successful science fiction film in that it deliberately breaks the expectations of science fiction and steps away from the fantastic.

When we write stories about the paranormal, we're not just working within story structure and genre conventions, we're also working with what people know and expect from our paranormal creatures. Because vampires and shapeshifters don't exist, there's no set definition of how they actually work.

Readers would be confused if you wrote about talking cats in a book that wasn't labelled as 'fantasy', because we've all experienced cats and never seen them talk. But with non-existing creatures, we get to decide how they'll function in our story.

Drunk is still my favorite Ed Sheeran song.

But that doesn't mean we can completely ignore reader expectations. If we're stepping too far from the accepted parameters of our paranormal creature, it can be better to call them something else. The zombies in 28 Days Later or I Am Legend are called 'virals' because they're not true zombies—re-animated corpses—but also because they don't fit the slow, shambling, totally mindless expectation of zombies.

I've heard more than one person complaining that Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series featured vampires too far out of expectations, then praising The Vampire Chronicles without caring that Anne Rice's vampires are far from Bram Stoker's or even the vampires from folklore. You don't have to like Twilight (I'm personally uncomfortable seeing abusive relationships romanticized, I dream of a world where healthy and fulfilling relationships are romanticized and I try to create my own romance novels accordingly), but it seems contradictory to criticize one book for changing vampire myths then praising another one which also breaks vampire myths.

What We Do in the Shadows, 2014, as a comedy can get away with featuring many different and conflicting kinds of vampires.

As you might have noticed from the Meyers rant, I don't like people policing what's 'real' or 'true' with non-real creatures. As long as your story stays true to itself, I don't care how you deal with the paranormal. The whole point of paranormal creatures is that they're not normal – they're not something we can see every day, like a cat, so there is no one set of rules for how they should behave.

When we write paranormal, just like when we write genre or any narrative story, we get to decide which expected elements we'll pay attention to and which we'll ignore. And that means being aware of the conventions of paranormal in the genre we write. Meyers vampires aren't horror vampires, but they fit within the expectations of romance vampires—like the Vampire Diaries series of YA romance novels by L. J. Smith.

You can tell they're romantic leads because they all look gorgeous.

I've never written vampires, but I do write werewolves in my Jagged Rock series. They're romance novels so the werewolves are romance werewolves—all about strength and power and beauty, rather than the terror and mystery associated with horror werewolves.

The thing is, I've often heard fans of horror werewolves saying what a shame it is that werewolves never got turned into romantic leads the way vampires have. And I want to tell them, they have! You're just reading the wrong genre!

Whitley Strieber's The Wolfen. Not a romance.

You could write a horror werewolf as a romantic lead, but it would be quite a different story than most werewolf/shifter romance readers are expecting. As with any kind of reversal of expectations—like a sci-fi that drags the camera away from its sci-fi elements—you need to be aware of the expectations so you know when you're subverting them. Because, at the end of the day, you can write anything you want; but if you want to satisfy your readers then you need to be honest with them and know what they'll expect from your genre and paranormal creatures.

I've never written vampires, but I do have a series of free werewolf romances called Jagged Rock. The second one, Omega Blues, is a weekly serial on Wattpad and you can find the fifth chapter here.

Kitchen Wolves, and what do we call chairs?

While editing Omega Blues this week, I got caught up on a tiny detail: What do I call the bar that joins chair legs? In the story, I have a wolf climbing onto a chair slowly. I described the wolf standing on the chair's 'rung' and then wondered... ladders have rungs, but what do chairs have?

Image from Visual Dictionary Online

In this picture, Visual Dictionary Online call the 'rung' part a spindle. Other places on the internet label it as a stretcher or spacer or, on circular chairs, a foot ring. My woodworking experience makes me lean towards 'spacer,' but what does it matter if no one's going to understand what I'm talking about?

With words like this, there's a balance to strike between what's technically accurate and what readers will understand. None of these words turn up in the Wikipedia article on chairs, and chairs aren't high on the search results when you google them, so I have to assume they're not in common usage and, even worse, they might confuse readers and drag them out of the flow of the story.

For the sake of making the story easy to read (in a tense moment with a wolf in the kitchen and climbing closer, every sentence is precious!) I defaulted to 'foot rest' which I think is a happy medium between accurate and easy to understand.

Of course, now that I've crawled this far down the rabbit hole of furniture names, I should talk to a carpenter about the (American) technical term and drop a reference to it earlier in the chapter: "I'd seen Will making these chairs, shaping the legs on a lathe and fitting the whojiwhatsit bar between them," to lead seamlessly to "The wolf put a paw on the whojiwhatsit of my chair." Sort of a Chekhov's spacer bar. Or perhaps I could run a quiz for my readers and see what the average Omega Blues fan calls that part of a chair—not necessarily technically accurate, but at least most people would know what I'm talking about.

But this is the sort of small detail that I get caught up in, and the reason it took me two and a half years to edit my last novel. The whole point of making Omega Blues a serial story was to hold myself accountable: I have to get a chapter edited every week, whether or not I know the correct or common word for a chair's rung.

With that out of the way, here's the link to the new chapter of my m/m werewolf romance, Omega Blues on free serial-fiction site Wattpad! This chapter is called Kitchen Wolves and has—whoa!—wolves turning up in the kitchen.

Omega Blues is a free serial story, with a new chapter uploaded every week. So you can read it as it's uploaded and enjoy the thrill of waiting (like with oldschool TV shows) or you can wait until it's finished and read the whole novel at once!

New werewolf m/m romance chapter!

The third chapter of my Jagged Rock spin-off novel, Omega Blues, is now up on Wattpad!

Omega Blues is a full-length novel that I update with a chapter every week. So you can read it weekly if you like the excitement of seeing new chapters every week, or you can wait until it's all finished and read it in one binge.

I wrote the draft for Jagged Rock a little over a year ago, but I'm editing the chapters weekly. This is my first time writing a serial story and one of the cool things I'm seeing is all the distinct memories with each edited chapter, instead of the vague mass of memories that jumble up after editing a whole novel over months.

Work was full-on this week and I traveled out of town for a punk festival, so I ended up editing the chapter while sitting on the door between bands. Now I have a double set of great memories: all the fantastic bands and people, and finishing a fresh chapter of Omega Blues.

I hope you enjoy the new chapter and are looking forward to fresh story and fresh memories in weeks to come!

The Best Magicians

 “Ninety percent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.”
― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

What is it about magic that makes it so addictive?

Sure, we'd all love superpowers. But real-world magicians are fascinating for the way they can make the impossible seem possible. I love movies about magicians in the same way that I love heist movies or a great crime TV show (my favorites are the Ocean's Trilogy, Guy Ritchie's blockbusters and TV show Elementary): The thrill of seeing a problem that can't be solved, then watching it get solved anyway.

While writing Coin Tricks, my novel with a street magician romantic lead, I had a great excuse to delve into stories about magicians. Here are my three favorites, and what I think makes them so great.

HellblazerComic book series

From the Hellblazer wiki

What makes John Constantine a stand-out magician is how seldom he uses magic.

Each volume of the comics follows an arc: John gets into trouble, he wise-cracks as the mystery deepens and he digs himself further into trouble as you start to think his enemies are stronger/better/smarter than him, then finally (usually in the last few pages of the comic) he delivers a scathing come-back and a simple piece of magic that bring him out victorious.

Still of Keanu Reeves from the 2005 movie Constantine

Hellblazer hasn't translated to the screen well. First Keanu Reeves played JohnConstantine deadpan and skilled at fisticuffs with a comic-relief sidekick. Nearly 10 years later the TV show cast Matt Ryan as closer to the Sting-inspired comic book John Constantine. Unfortunately that decade delay between the movie and the show saw 10 years of Supernatural, a show with similar themes and a character (Castiel) dressed to look like Constantine. The sad fact is that by the time Constantine hit the screens, Constantine's image was already familiar and all the angel-and-demon themes had been done to death.

Matt Ryan as magician John Constantine

Misha Collins as angel Castiel in Supernatural

But—like how I prefer the monster-of-the-week early format of Supernatural—I think the best Hellblazer comics aren't about a grand war between angels and demons, they're about a dirty magician just trying to get by.

Highlights include the time Constantine embarrassed a whole group of white supremacists, the time he tricked a monstrous talking dog not to attack him by rolling on his back in a posture of submission, or that time a demon melded a gang of hooligans into one ferocious monster which Constantine destroyed by pointing out that different parts of it supported different football teams (so it tore itself apart).

The Prestige

Film

Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman in The Prestige

The Prestige is brilliant even if you don't frame it as a Batman vs Wolverine movie with illusion and sleight-of-hand in the place of superpowers. With an all-star cast and writer/director Christopher Nolan (of Inception, The Dark Knight and Memento fame, the latter two and The Prestige were also written with his Jonathan Nolan), it's no surprise that The Prestige is a complex and psychologically thrilling tale that's beautiful to look at.

But what makes it the best magic film is the contrast between the different magicians—the two stars and their fabricators/mentors and assistants all have their own perspectives on magic and we're shown these different views seamlessly as part of the plot and character development. It's especially satisfying to see the difference in a successful magician who wants to be famous and out-do his rivals, contrasted with a successful magician who just wants to surprise and satisfy people and to hear their applause.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Novel

Michael Chabon's Pulitzer-winning novel is a brilliant blend of the pulp and the literary, showing that an intricate and emotionally-driven plot dealing with death, war, race and sexuality can still fit beside pop culture elements like comic books and superheroes.

All too often we're told that anything fun is frivolous and superheroes only belong in popcorn-selling blockbuster movies, and that if a novel isn't serious and difficult to read then it can't be edifying so isn't worth reading.

I never understood the appeal of the Golden Age of Comics until I read Kavalier and Clay. The plot focuses on two comic book creators in 1940's New York City and their struggles to create art (while getting paid) in the midst of war and turmoil. Their most famous creation, The Escapist, is inspired by Houdini, and both comic creators are passionate about performance magic. There's so much passion and joy in this novel (as well as plenty of misery and heartbreak), and it's so vividly written that you feel exactly what it was like to be a young comics creator in the boom of comics and superheroes.

Magic and magicians weave their way through a twisting tale which also features superheroes, comic books, a massive clay golem and exquisite prose. What's not to love?

Omega Blues: chapter 2

Chapter two of my Wattpad serial m/m romance is now live!

Omega Blues is the spin-off sequel to Jagged Rock. Both stories are completely free to read.

Being a werewolf has always felt like a curse to Bren, even after he's let into a friendly pack of mostly-humans led by his alpha nephew Will. The Jagged Rock Pack are friends and members of a rock band, standing together even after their vocalist came out as a werewolf. It's Will's plan to turn all the members of the band into werewolves, and that sounds like a great plan... except for Matt.Matt is funny and kind and endlessly helpful, the sort of guy anyone would want for a friend. Unfortunately, as a werewolf he's marked out to be an omega which comes with its load of weaknesses and agonies.It's Bren's job to look after Matt and help him with the transformation. He didn't plan on falling for him, especially because Bren's never felt anything like love or attraction before. It's another complication in his already difficult life.Matt's had a crush on Bren from the moment they met, and he loves teasing and flirting. He's delighted to think he might have a chance.Matt would do anything to become a werewolf, and Bren would do anything to stop him. How can the two have a chance at happiness or a life together?

First chapter of my free Wattpad story!

Nearly two years ago I wrote a free novel called Jagged Rock for the M/M Romance Group on Goodreads. It featured a college rock band with a werewolf for a vocalist, and enough characters that I've always wanted to write spin-off sequels about them finding their happy endings.

Introducing Omega Blues!

Omega Blues is the story of omega werewolf Bren and human bass-player Matt. I wanted to make it free and as I've always loved the thrill of serial stories, I decided to write one and give readers the experience that I've always loved.

Omega Blues is available free on Wattpad, a site for sharing free serial fiction. I'll upload a new chapter each week so you can follow the story weekly, or wait until it's finished to read the whole thing.

If you're worried about reading something that won't get finished: don't! I have a complete first draft and, while it needs extensive revision, I have at least the total framework for the novel.

I am thoroughly looking forward to the serial writing experience, and I hope you're looking forward to reading it!

New release: Coin Tricks

My new novel Coin Tricks is available now!

Cover illustration by Kazi.

Wire's too huge and intimidating to find love… but that doesn't stop him dreaming.

His size has defined his whole life, from his jobs as a bouncer and store security to his brief and unsatisfying relationships. But beneath his scary appearance, Wire's kind and loving. He cares for his family and his dog and imagines a future with a goat at his side.

Then he catches Sid stealing soap.

Sid's a cute librarian and aspiring magician, raising his sister alone and stealing when he can't make ends meet. Wire should report the theft to the cops, but instead he takes food parcels to Sid, and an unlikely friendship forms. Sid is shy and scared at first, but with time he reveals his inner strength and the burning ambition that makes him the opposite of Wire's laid-back aimlessness.

Wire falls hard but can't bring himself to do anything about it. He's never been anything more than disposable to goats, and he can't bear to have his heart broken by his only friend. And years of trying to be different can't hide the fact that Wire was raised to be rough, to think with his fists and ask questions later. He keeps making a bad impression on Sid without meaning to, running the risk of losing Sid before they even have the chance of finding something more together.

They have to struggle with work and their families and the weight of the past, trying to unite their very separate lives to create something new and beautiful. Wire knows his dreams of love are just that: Dreams. Sweet but impossible. But that doesn't stop him dreaming…

Coin Tricks is a standalone M/M romance novel with a HEA and no cliffhangers.

This is a very exciting day for me because I've been editing this novel since early 2014 and I am so glad that I get to share it with everyone!

The cover is illustrated by the incredibly talented Kazi.

Coin Tricks is available through these links:
Amazon
Smashwords
All Romance eBooks

No Heterosexuals and Jokes

Earlier this week, the New Zealand internet world was rocked by an ad on the auction site Trade Me. Tenants were looking for a new flatmate and specified:

"We don't want to live with a couple, a heterosexual person, or someone who is loud at night, or drinks/does drugs/party a lot."

First off, this is legal. The Human Rights Commission makes exceptions for cohabiting – you're allowed to discriminate about who you live with.

Last year, a flatmate ad specifying "no Indians or Asians" was published on the same site. There was less press surrounding that ad, probably because the Indian and Asian population is smaller than the heterosexual population, or because the latter is less used to being discriminated against.

It's essential to have a safe space, a place where you feel accepted and understood, where you can escape the constant pressures and microaggressions of the outside world. It's terrible to not feel comfortable in your own home. But 'no heterosexuals' is exclusionary language that offends, even though it's legal.

There wouldn't be any controversy if the ad had just stuck with the politely worded:

"We want to live with someone who is relaxed, motivated, grown up, reliable, considerate, child friendly, LGBTQIA+, pays the board on time with no stress, vegetarian or vegan."

This conveys the same information without sounding as exclusionary. I agree with the sentiment of the ad, but not the wording.

There's a time to be impolite. There's a time and place to wield aggression as a weapon and fight to be acknowledged. But Trade Me isn't that place.

Reading responses around this ad, one comment in particular grabbed my attention. It was part of a Reddit discussion, where one user took issue with the flatmates not wanting to live with a person who was:

"racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic, hates sex workers, hates migrants or is otherwise a jerk."

The Reddit user said it would be a challenge to make any jokes that didn't incorporate the above. There were rebuffs, which is awesome, but there's still this unusually pervasive opinion that humor can't exist without causing offense.

Posting to Reddit saying, essentially, 'there are no jokes that aren't racist, sexist or sizeist' is like posting to Goodreads with the question 'who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird?' You're right there on the site, you could just go ahead and check!

A while ago I got hooked on reading jokes in an askreddit thread, and I was sure they mostly weren't offensive. So I did the math

I just scanned the all time top list of r/jokes, the joke subreddit. Of the top 50, 21 directly considered race, gender, gay or transgender people, weight, sex work, or migrants.

Note that this includes jokes which poke fun at the dominant group (e.g. a joke about 'friend zoned' guys and a joke saying the LAPD are eager to shoot black people). If we remove jokes against the dominant group (and the pun 'boy ant' which isn't really about gender), we're down to 13 of the top 50 jokes being offensive against a minority group (I'm including Irish, Texans and Italians here). Bringing this into account makes our graph look a lot more like Pac Man taking a bite:

It's not me saying these jokes are funny, it's the Reddit community choosing them through upvotes.
I've always thought it was easy to make a joke that wasn't directly offensive, but it's nice to have proof. And, as a critic ending on this positive note, here's my favorite joke from r/jokes:

A young artist exhibits his work for the first time and a well-known art critic is in attendance.
The critic says to the young artist, "Would you like my opinion on your work?"
"Yes," says the artist.
"It's worthless," says the critic
The artist replies, "I know, but tell me anyway."