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English

The differences in spelling (of numerous words) between “British English” and “American English” (sorry – horrid names – but I didn’t come up with them) isn’t a problem for people in the UK or USA – unless you count the scattering of wavy red lines in MS Word, the problem is for people who are learning English as a 2nd – or maybe even a 3rd language. Which spellings should they use?

Personally I don’t really mind and I will often use both myself, and I would say to anyone learning our language – it doesn’t matter – as long as you are consistent. For example if you are going to use the US spelling of colour (which is color), make sure you use the US spelling of things like honour (honor). Obviously if you’re planning to move to an English-speaking country it would be worth learning the spellings that country uses, mainly to avoid confusion when you read newspapers or magazines etc.

The English language is a complex thing, it has grown and developed over the last two thousand years or so, it has merged and incorporated other languages. It’s a living thing. I have a 1996 edition of the Oxford English Reference Dictionary on my shelf – the cover proudly states 192,000 definitions and entries. I’m not sure of the number of “words” defined – but there are 1686 pages of it (plus a load of appendices after that). According to The Global Language Monitor there are 1,013,913 words in English (according to answers.com French has around 220,000).

But saying all of this the one thing I do not like is the “text” speak that today’s youth seem to like using, call me old-fashioned (and I’m only in my 30’s), but when I send a text I spell everything out fully with the correct capitalisation and punctuation, not doing the abbreviations, this has in recent years spread to services like twitter with its 140 character limit – again here I try to spell things fully and not resort to these abbreviations, and back to the people learning English, how do they know that great and gr8 could mean the same thing?
Sticking to using full words in the limitations (although SMS is not really limited on modern phones) allows a greater range of words to be used – thesaurus.com is great for this!

So go forth and use this great language to its fullest, whether you use British or American, like having u’s in words, love or detest z’s and if you want re or er – just write something and enjoy the words.

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Incoming – pt .1

It was a slow shift in traffic control, there had in fact been a slowdown in incoming traffic for the last three shifts. And the computer had noticed.

Dave was sat at his command station when he got the alert from the computer. It also sent him a splurge of news that it has sucked from the few ships that had docked. And it had highlighted some disturbing things. At least the computer thought they were disturbing.

Dave was inclined to agree with it. They all indicated that Earth had gone crazy.

This wasn’t the normal level of crazy that happened on a semi regular basis, this was full on someone had turned the planetary defences on all of the orbiting stations crazy.

The news didn’t say what had caused this. But Dave knew. Everyone that had served on the line knew.

There was something about serving on a spaceship for several years at a time that didn’t agree with some people. And the hyper jumps for FTL didn’t help; they put a lot of stress on the human body. Dave knew – his navy career was in tatters because he had problems with FTL. The fact he had even been given the command he had was an indication that he was not long in uniform.
‘Sir!’ yelled one of the scan techs.
‘Go ahead Jim.’
‘There is something big coming out of FTL at system edge, the relays have just sent us a high priority warning.’
‘How big?’
‘Big sir, they haven’t sent an ident sir. They have flagged at unknown ships with a possible first contact warning.’
Dave tapped into his console to lookup the regs for first contact; in all human space history they had never been used. There was another ten hours before the ships were within range of the station, at least they – whoever they were – hadn’t come in close to the station. Although that could have been a bad thing too – why draw out the issue?
‘What navy ships are in system?’ Dave asked the room.
‘Just the Destroyer Marvellous Infinity.’
‘Get the skipper on the com please.’ Dave brought up the details of the skipper while the com tech did as he was asked.
‘Captain Ruiz on com for you sir.’
‘Captain – this is station master Kirby. We have an unidentified ship or ships at ten hours out. Please prepare for possible hostile action or first contact.’
‘Do you have any information on them Station Master?’ Asked Ruiz.
‘Not at this time – we got an auto alert from the relays. I will pass on more info as and when we get it.’
‘Understood Station Master. Infinity out.’
Dave relaxed a little. A destroyer wouldn’t be much good if it was an invasion. But it could at least send a signal probe out towards Earth and hopefully warn them of anything that happened.

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Routling around hard drive

I was looking in random folders on the laptop and came across these, no idea what they are or where they came from (not my best work by any stretch of the imagination), but they have date stamps of 2001 and 2003 – so while I was still at uni, wonder what bit of coursework I got tired of working on or books/films I had been reading/watching when I “needed” to write these 🙂

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During the second age of man, during the great war of good and evil, the strength that was leaders of the light cast the last spell to be cast for a thousand years. This spell was not just spell it was The Spell. This spell was cast to prevent the evil which magic was consuming the land. This spell had never been cast before apart from when Elerbran the Great first discovered the spell, which had drastic consequence for him and everything around him. When he first discovered the spell the great library, were he had been working was almost total destroyed, the spell almost killed him. When he had cast the spell the area around were the library had stood became aura free. This meant that no magic could be cast in the area. In last days of the War when all was not going well for Armies of life, the great council of light gathered for the last time and with all the magical abilities together the cast the spell. The spell caused the Aura of the whole Earth to be destroyed removing the evil magic that had been plaguing the planet. Without the Aura that had once surrounded the planet, magic started to fade, this fading of the Magic had two effects; prevented all magic on the planet, also the magic which had already been cast on earth started to fail, including The Spell. So the Aura started to return. Sending magic into myths and legends… This aura is now returning…

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It was a nice sunny day and Jake was looking out over the lake, the sun rippled orange on the blue-green water. The wind ruffled his hair and the leaves on the nearby trees.
It was peaceful, the way Jake liked it, the way that was to end the next day when he set off to war in the army. War, the thought brought shivers to his spine, all that blood and gore, he couldn’t even stand the sight when he cut himself, how would he cope with the blood that would spill over his, over the sea of bright green grass.
He felt the presence of another behind him, he smiled as he smelt the perfume of his wife, Aganla
‘My love, you look troubled’ she said.
Turning he placed his arms round her waist, gave he a quick kiss, ‘It is the war. I do not wish to go, but I know that I must or be killed for the coward that I am.’ There was a tint of sadness in his voice. Aganla looked at him, ‘You shall never be a coward, never in my eyes nor the eyes of our children.’
The sadness on his face intensified. ‘Our children will be told that their father was a coward by the soldiers. Please do no try to hurt my feelings by lying to me.’
‘The let us have one night of happiness before the end of our lives as we know them.’
Arm in arm they walked towards the hut that they lived in.

The next morning Jake left his wife’s arms while she still slept and crept out into the night, while he did not want to bring shame to his family he had come to the decision that he was not going to fight in the war. He was going to try and stop the war, he wasn’t sure how, but he was going to try.
As he walked towards the lake for his final view he saw the sky light up in a blaze of lightning, like nothing he’d ever seen before. Maybe the tales he had heard as a child about the wizard in the mountains on the other side of the lake, maybe he could find out.
He started towards the inlet about a mile to the west so that he could take a boat and leave over the lake, he heard the sound of marching men, the army had come to claim the men, when he was found to be gone; he would have to go another way to the other side.

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Gerry often wondered what it was like to fly. He’s seen other people doing it, but he knew he could not, never would be able to fly
He was deformed, and while the others didn’t say anything to his face, he knew they would rather he was not around them
He looked at the stumps where his wings were supposed to be, he felt the welling feeling of shame as it came to him. Why was he cursed like this! Oh great Thiran why?
He often asked this of the God of People, why was he deformed and the others were not? Why was it do bad that the deformed were shunned? He never got his answer, or more to the point, he did. Thiran was shunning him, that’s why the others were uncomfortable round him.

Thiran heard the anguish in the younglings’ calls, but he could not bear to look upon this one and incur the wrath of Heiklin; The God of War.

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Plot Development

For those of you that write you’ll know this – getting your plot right is probably the hardest thing you can do – the actual flesh of something will come together easily once this is done. This is a key art that underpins any written work, be it sci-fi, fantasy, chick-lit, a cookery book – anything. There has to be a plan or it all falls apart after about 10 pages. Although a good plot is not completely necessary for a best seller – there are some truly awful (in my opinion) works out there with so many holes in the plot they make Swiss cheese look like a block of granite. On the flip side, there are some excellent plotted books that never sell well – but is that because they require the reader to think about something? Let me develop that idea – I’m sure you have all seen one of the procedural shows that has come from the USA in the last few years – CSI, NCIS etc, they can’t seem to go for more than 20 mins without a recap of everything that has happened (lets ignore the silly being able to zoom into a picture taken on a mobile phone to read a number plate 10 miles away that always seems to happen).

Personally I enjoy these shows, to an extent – but they all get a bit samey after a while. I like something that makes your mind work. I’ve ether missed it or we haven’t had one of those for a few years.

I’ve often just let the pen flow and got to that 10 – 15 page mark and gone – right – where to now? I enjoy writing those first pages, but then you have to start thinking. In fact I really enjoy writing those first 10 pages. I’ve got piles of them kicking about, started and left, waiting for some sort of plot to develop. Some need introducing to a match however.

Without the “plan” you will just get some random, unusable block of text. You may have some good ideas that can be developed for something else, and some truly awful ideas that require the use of another match.

I am now on my 4th different alternate plot of Mary Rose. I know this one will work because I have broken it down into 20 “chapters” – I’ve put that in “” because there will not be 20 chapters to the novel. It just broke down that why when I started to think where to take the story.
The first 3 plots wouldn’t have worked – and I got a lot of ink on paper to find that out. And a couple of back stories – I will probably tidy them up and put them in shorts at some point.

I’ve even managed to leave it open at the end for more to come at a later date. But it took me 2 weeks of just working on the plot to get that. I had lots of bad ideas, some reasonable ideas and a few good ones. I went through a few carts in the pen too.

But the big question is probably – how do you get a plot developed? I’m sure you will get a different answer if you ask a different writer, but this is how I do it. I start with about 10 pages of random story – one of the ones described above. If I can’t get that far and do a little character development I won’t enjoy writing more. I then think a little about what I’ve written, this normally involves a healthy amount of red wine. From this if I can do a 2 page backstory on one of the characters and the world I will break down a plot. I normally start with a single page of A4, and have a before, a start, a middle, an end, and an after. Those before and after I find are the most important – otherwise where does the story go? Where did it come from? I will probably have 2 or 3 lines for each. I then rewrite putting in more detail. Then rinse and repeat. After a couple of cycles I get to about 20 pages, each page a “chapter” or stage of whatever I’m working on.

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Anthology

I have not been lazy in the last few months, life has got in the way of things a little bit. I left the company I owned and ran for a new start with a fantastic company, and this has kept me very busy.

I have also been tinkering with Assassins, but with so little spare time I have agian put this to one side for a while, but in keeping my writing going I have been doing some 2000 odd word stories. these are just small bits, but I have decided to edit them and go over them an am aiming to put them together in a small anthology, which I will publish as an ebook on Kindle.

So watch this space and I will update you all soon! 🙂

Read more

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The Hunt for Manuscript Books (or THMB) – pt. 1

As most people know I write with a proper pen most of the time, and then type up at a later point on the laptop. I have in the past used some “manuscript” books I got from a well know UK stationary supplier. I ran out of these book and went to order some more. Unfortunately the ones I like have been discontinued. Argh!

It is difficult to tell if I will like a new product without getting it, and in this day of internet everything I didn’t hold out much hope. So I asked some friends and they gave me some suggestions of places. Nada. Tried the supermarkets as they have everything these days. Nada.

So a trip into town it is then. Grrr!

Trip into town and to Smiths, The Works and Staples – all resulted in 1 almost suitable book. I say almost – it was PINK, and not just a little bit, it was very pink.

So the THMB continues.

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Random bit of writing

Its was a strange day. It was the middle of summer, yet there was ice on the well, no birds were singing. And no sound could be heard from the stables, nor from where the other farm animals were kept.
The sky was overcast, big dark black clouds covering the sky.
Looking round Linna could see the buildings that surrounded the yard, they all looked bleak and uninhabited – it was though no one had been here…

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Update on progress

Hi, well – it’s been a while since I last posted. Just wanted to give an update on the status of the Assassins project. I am still working on it, but due to work commitments I had to take a brake.

I took a weeks holiday in March and got around three thousand words done – as posted. Then for 2 months I could not write anything. A couple of weeks ago I managed to sit out in a friends garden and got four thousand words done in a day, and this weekend managed around 2k words. It’s amazing how a writers mind works – and just shows if you try to force writing nothing (good) will come out!

I will hopefully get settled into a routine again now so that I can get more done. The entire project is currently sitting at around 15k words. A little off my 200k target – but that will come. I have got the chapters all planned out and most of them at 700 to 800 words each.

I have written a few things in my “idea log” notebook – but nothing more than a page – more to clear my mind of rubbish or to explore an idea. And none of that stuff will ever see the light of day again – it may see the light of a match on the other hand….