Two and a half months

That's how long until Silent Oath is released.

It's getting close to that hectic time when the normal slow pace of bring a writer jumps to warp speed. Things start happening so fast you don't realise how quickly time is moving on until you wake up one morning and realise there's a book out there with your name on the cover, and people are paying to read it!

Soon I'll receive my ARCs and get to see my new cover. I'll have to send in my dedication and acknowledgements. It'll start to feel real.

I was worried I wouldn't be as excited this time. Everyone's nervous and excited the first time they earn an achievement or try something new. All too often, the thrill can be just a novelty that fades a little the next time. But I'm feeling that little knot in the pit of my stomach. My heart beats faster thinking about what I have left to prepare. I wonder what people will think? Will it be successful? Will it encourage new people to read my books, or will it mostly only be read by people who picked up Locked Within last year?

Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to be planning my promotion for Silent Oath, including getting back to volunteers for street team duties and early reviews. I'll be preparing blog posts discussing the new book, how writing it differed from writing the first one, and how I feel about the way Nathan Shepherd's story has evolved over time.

If there's anything anyone would like to see me discuss in relation to the book, or questions you'd like to ask, now's the time to let me know.

In Which I Rave About Fate Core

I'm not a massive Kickstarter person. I only back the odd project and typically only ones by companies I've already dealt with somehow.

A while ago I backed Evil Hat's Kickstarter for Fate Core, and my copy arrived the other week.

This book is so pretty, you guys. It's a wonderfully compact size with a gorgeous blue cover with a matte finish. The artwork is all new and the interior layout makes everything so easy to follow and understand.

As a fan of the Fate system, I'm thrilled to see it presented so cleanly. There are lots of subtle changes and clarifications to make the system easier to understand and explain. I think my favourite adjustment is that Evil Hat have provided the single best description of Aspects I've ever seen. They are the reasons we should be interested in your character.

Wow. So simple.

That's something you can apply to so much. Not just any tabletop game, but also to writing. Every character should have several reasons why people would want to see more of their story. Without that, they'll never reach their full potential. It's not what a character can do or what they look like that sets them apart. It's the reasons we find their story compelling.

I like that the book is presented as a toolkit rather than a strict rulebook. You are given the pieces with which to create whatever game you want, leaving the grittier details like magic or superpowers to the players, and advising groups to decide for themselves what rules they want to take as written and what rules they want to tweak. I can imagine that really helping to give a particular game its own idenity, rather than, for example, just another fantasy game, but with the Fate system.

Included in the book is a Veterans' Guide at the back, where players with previous Fate experience can see what's new at a glance. Brilliant idea, and again, such a simple thing that makes things so much easier for players.

As a bonus, there was a high quality bookmark included which features, on one side, a concise, but complete, summary of the base rules of the game.

If you're a Fate fan, buy a copy. It's worth having for the rules clarifications alone, many of which I'm porting over to my Dresden Files campaign.

If you're new to Fate, check it out anyway, or pick up the streamlined Fate Accelerated Edition. If you're into games where the focus is on character development and narrative over XP and loot, you may find what you're looking for here.

Surprise News

Hey everyone. As many of you know, my wife has just returned to work after her maternity leave.

Well we recently got a bit of a surprise. She's pregnant again, and due in January!

It was a shock, and we're still coming to terms with the fact that we'll have a third baby in the house in a few months. But we did want to have another baby at some point. It's just happening sooner than we expected. On the plus side, the children will all grow up so close in age that we shouldn't have to worry about jealousy at a new arrival. So in the long-run, this will be a good thing.

We've had a scan, and confirmed it's just one this time, so at least we should have room in the house, for the time being, and we may not need to consider upgrading our car (though Jen already has her heart set on a Land Rover). And we'll still have all the stuff needed for a new baby.

It's going to be a busy few years.

Happy Birthday Conor

Today our son Conor would have been two years old. We should be getting ready to celebrate with him and his two sisters, but we can't, and it feels so utterly unfair.

I know you could make the point that if we'd been able to keep Conor, we might not have had the girls. You can certainly say, and we agree, that losing Conor has made us more committed to being the best parents possible for Amy and Erica. We're stronger for it. Nothing could possibly be as painful as losing our son, so we're able to face bigger challenges.

But it doesn't change the fact that we miss him and it breaks our hearts that he's not with us.

I know that, with time, this will get easier. For now, we'll carry on. As hard as this time of year is, we refuse to let it break us. We have too much else to be grateful for, like our two wonderful daughters who will grow up knowing that they have a big brother always watching over them.

Today we're bringing Amy and Erica down to the beach, where like last year, we'll sit and talk to Conor, and release a balloon for him.

Happy birthday, Conor. We love you.

Christening

It's been a busy few days. It's Jen's last week of maternity leave so I've taken the week off work to spend time with her and the girls.

On Saturday we had the girls' christening. It was a good day, with perfect weather and lots of friends and family around. Come over to my Facebook profile to see some pictures. 

I warn you; there is much cutness.

The World is Saved

I've been thinking a lot about endings again...

Anyone else feel like reading a new book or playing a new game?

Writing the Dark Side

I've been working on the third book of the Locked Within Trilogy and getting close to the end. While writing some of the darker scenes, those moments where all hope is lost and we're exposed to the true extent of the villain's depravity, I got thinking about the dark side of writing. The twisted part of the writer's mind that desires to see the hero suffer because it knows that makes the eventual victory all the more satisfying.

How do you balance the desire to entertain with the desire to make the reader truly fear the villain? How far can you push before you cross the line and start to bore, or disgust, your readers?

The other concern is just how much do you break the hero? Every story needs the hero to have that "end of all hope" moment, the lowest point from which the hero must rise to claim victory. But if the hero is too hurt or too broken, how can they believably turn that around?

One of the things I've been conscious of in my writing is gratuity. I dislike gratuitous violence or gore. I like leaving a lot up to the reader's imagination and letting the reader own the experience, both in violent and non-violent scenes. It can be a challenge to really get across how dire a situation is, or how much a hero is suffering, and manage to hit that sweet spot between not enough detail, and so much graphic information that the reader is turned off.

The really twisted part of it, though, is that I love writing this stuff. I love putting the hero into situations where they're backed into a corner and made to suffer. The moment when the hero begins to turn the tide is often my favourite part of any story, and for that moment to have any meaning at all, the reader has to feel like they're suffering along with the hero.

Granted, there are some lines I don't want to cross, and for the time being I can't see myself including certain plot points in my work. Rape, for one. I imagine I would have a hard time writing a scene where a child was made to suffer, too. I don't want to say I'll never look into those darker areas, because at some point I may want to explore them. But I'll never use them as a quick and easy way to create tension.

That's actually a good rule of thumb for any dark scene. Is it just in there because you needed a quick way to create tension or make the reader feel a certain way about a character? If so, it's a good idea to reconsider it and see if you can't find a less disturbing way to achieve the same thing. Readers will never feel they're missing out if you hold back on the graphic content, but they may feel put off if you show them more than they're ready for.

And that's really what I've tried to keep to while working on Book 3. In Locked Within and Silent Oath, I establish a certain level of violence, profanity, and sexual content. I don't want to shock my readers by going too far outside of their expectations, so I keep what I've already written as a guideline for the tone and content of the final installment.

Have you guys got anything to add? Any preferences as regards darker material and subject matters? Has a series ever surprised you by unexpectedly shifting in tone? How did it make you feel?

Defeating the Villain After Saving the Day

First, a reminder that I'm looking for people to help with the promotion of my new book, Silent Oath. Details for those who are interested can be found here.

The rest of this post contains spoilers for Lord of the Rings, Man of Steel, and the Avengers movie.

Open Call for Promotion Help

Hi everyone. With about three and a half months to go before Silent Oath hits the shelves, it's time to start making concrete promotion plans. Like last year, I'm going to need some help, so I'm putting the call out now to make sure things are arranged in time.

There are three main areas I'm looking for volunteers to help with:

1: Early reviews - Once I have ARCs, I'll be sending them out to people in exchange for reviews posted on Amazon, Goodreads, your own blogs, etc. These reviews would need to be posted on or very soon after the release date of October 8th.

2: Street Team - This year I'm recruiting a street team; people to help spread the word about Silent Oath on social media, websites, forums, and around bookstores. There'll be a number of tasks given to volunteers as the release date draws near.

3: Blurbs - This one is for authors only, I'm afraid. Last year, several amazing authors, Janice Hardy, Whitney Boyd, Elisabeth Craig and Linda Poitevin, helped me out with blurbs for Locked Within. I'll be asking around for blurbs for Silent Oath  when I have my ARCs, particularly from those who were kind enough to help out before, but if any authors would like to get involved this time, let me know.

I'll be confirming people receiving ARCs and getting in touch with my street team in a few weeks, to give time for word to spread. Now, places will be limited, because I have to co-ordinate all of this myself and there are limits to my organisational skills, but I'll try my best to take on as many people as possible.

If you're interested in helping out, you can get in touch with me here, on Twitter or Facebook, or at pashortt@gmail.com.

Women Don't Sell in Video Games?

It's been the rallying cry of game developers the world over looking for an easy answer to the lack of titles with female protagonists. It's such an ingrained mantra, that games with female leads receive less than half the marketing budget of games with male leads, creating a vicious self-fulfilling prophecy.

This last weekend, however, the latest game for the Playstation 3, The Last of Us, blew people away with its sales figures, out-selling even Man of Steel on its opening weekend. Granted, for the majority of the game the player controls Joel, the male protagonist, and the game is centered on the traditionally male hero, but there are sections at the beginning and latter parts of the game where the player controls the female characters Sarah and Ellie.

Games companies and critics of those of us calling for more women in games insist that games with female protagonists, or even women on the game's cover, don't sell. In fact, The Last of Us could be argued to have a similar character set-up to Bioshock Infinite, which also features the player as the male protagonist while the female protagonist is controlled by the game's AI. The idea that the game wouldn't have sold as well with Elizabeth on the cover is one of the reasons often cited for why it is Booker alone, standing in a gritty, manly fashion with a gun over his shoulder, who gets a spot on the cover. This in spite of popular opinion being that the game is, in fact, Elizabeth's story, not his.

Well let's look at this a little more closely.

Released March 2013. Female and male protagonists, male character on cover. Top-selling PC game of  the month, over  878,000 physical copies sold in March, taking the top spot for the month from Tomb Raider.

Released June 2013. Male and female protagonists, both on cover. Takes in sales beating Man of Steel's opening weekend, which made $125.1 million in the US.

Released October 2008. Male protagonist, no character on the cover. Sold 1 million copies in 4 months.

Released November 2008. Female protagonist, on the cover. Sold 1 million copies in 3 months.

Released March 2013. Male protagonists, two men and one woman (though it's difficult to tell in the picture that she's a woman) on the cover. Sold 425,000 copies in its first month, considered disappointing compared to the sales of previous entries in the series.

Released March 2013. Female protagonist, on the cover.  Sold 1 million copies in  48 hours.

Released April 2012. Male protagonist, but  there's a girl right in the middle of the cover. Sold 1 million copies of the first episode in the first 20 days. To date, over 17 million episodes have been purchased worldwide

Released April 2012. Male protagonist, on the cover. Sold less than it's predecessor, which sold under 2 million in it's first year. Poor sales were cited as a reason for Activision Blizzard shutting down Radical Entertainment.

In each of these cases, the sales of the games with women on the cover are easily holding their own against those of games where women are absent. Certainly, it is clear that the gaming community are focused on the quality of the game itself, and not the gender of the character(s) featured in the box art. Hopefully game companies will start to take a serious look at the sales figures and realise that it's long past time to let go of this outdated notion that gamers won't play games with women in them, or that women on covers must be depicted with revealing clothing, in contorted poses designed to draw attention to T&A. The sales figures speak for themselves. A good game, well-promoted, will sell, regardless of who is on the cover.