Any Hints?

 So research for the new (new) WIP is ongoing. There's a lot of it to do, paradoxically because the Heian period of Japan isn't well understood. We only have a sketchy idea of those times, and almost none of life away from the Temples and nobles. That means I can give myself free rein on a lot of things - make it up, really. But it also means I really have to get the basic points right, because those are the hooks that the rest hang on. If the reader is going to understand where the story is set, he needs those hooks.

 So, I'm very busy not writing. (Doesn't help that we've been a House of Plague for a week. When the girls get sick, they really go to town, and soon everyone else is sick too.) But anyway, I've been working out a social structure, including ranks and offices, sifting through various versions of Buddhism to pick the schism that divides the two main sects, and learning about Japanese mythology. Boy, that last is complex. Their gods are sometimes referred to as the Ten Thousand, and they all apologise for being gods, apparently. I haven't figured out why yet, so any hints.... But that gives you an idea of how time-consuming this is. Research is always tedious. This time it's extreme, but still, it hasn't changed its nature.

 So that makes me wonder, again, how some people manage to write, edit and publish a novel every six weeks.

 I could not do it. Not with the nature of what I do. If I took a cocktail of drugs to keep me awake and functioning 24 hours a day, if I abandoned my family, gave up my job, shut myself in a shack to work and did nothing else, I would still struggle. It's only possible if I abandon research and do no background work at all. But that changes my work beyond what I will accept. Imagine if Tolkien had written LOTR but not bothered to devise an Elvish language and culture, or a pantheon of gods, or any of the history of Middle-Earth. Would the story be as strong? Of course it wouldn't. It would be more like something by David Gemmell, where history is covered in two sentences and then someone gets killed again.

 In a way I admire those prolific writers. But there has to be a trade-off, speed in favour of quality and depth. I think they've chosen to make money rather than to make something of quality. Or to try; god knows I'm no Tolkien or Guy Kay, but I do my best to make something meaningful. I want to write books that people will come back to five years later and read again, and maybe find something new inside.

 I don't write for money. I write for the thrill of it, for the ideas and discoveries, some of which are found in the black pits of research. I'll stick with it.

Pip pip.

No Pressure, Then.

 I've been thinking about battle in SF and Fantasy.

 In SF onscreen, it's usually rubbish. Star Wars has fighters that behave just like planes in World War I, dogfighting around planets. Space: Above and Beyond was the same. Moonraker and others feature marines who drop from orbit into battle. But all these things are nonsense. Our technology is already so advanced that we can pick aircraft off from miles away with homing missiles, so why use lasers that miss even from a few hundred metres? Why drop assault infantry from orbit when micro missiles would shred them high in the atmosphere?

 Fantasy is bad too. Partly that's the LOTR tradition, in which the Good Guys come through massive battles without a scratch, leaving a trail of dead Orcs or generic Bad Guys behind. I know a bit of history, and nobody comes through a battle that way. You suffer burns where your shield ring rubs, or blisters, or bruises from your armour taking a hit. In medieval days people died when their armour was driven into flesh and jumbled up their organs. No scratch? That means no one hit you, so you're either luckier than gods or faster than light. Silly either way.

 As for magic, mostly we find what I think of as the Terry Brooks approach. Mages who throw spells around, usually beams of red or green like lasers, sometimes illusions. And this, friends 'n neighbours, is the one that really annoys me. Is that really the best way a mage can think of to fight?

 I have a new WIP which involves a good bit of magic. It's used to fight, which means I need to work out how. I don't want to have this mano a mano approach. I'm looking at illusion, mages changing their appearance or fading into the background, so you don't know they're there until they strike. But what else could a sorcerer do? Slice time, perhaps. Divide a second into smaller and smaller segments, allowing himself to move more quickly than an opponent and so counter his moves before they develop. They might win by crushing the rival's mind. Someone watching would see the figures blur, and not much else, except that maybe the ground around them bubbles or cracks with the force unleashed.

 These are broad strokes, and I don't have details yet. But I like the direction of ideas. It's a little different from the usual, and that's a good thing I think. Let's give the reader something new to look at. It might be better, might be worse (that up to me, so no pressure, then). But at least it will feel new, and that matters.

 That's all for now. Pip pip.