Fan Fic Collab

M Carmel is the author of the Arkavian Intelligence Services series. Earlier this year we agreed to collaborate by producing a piece of fan fiction based in each other’s fictional worlds. J M would write a story set in the world of The Changeling King, focusing on Det. Karen Rainbow’s catholic roots, and I would […]

FAith Beyond the Surface

Writing Belief That Breathes What does it mean to truly believe something – and how should that shape a character’s every breath? Recently, I interviewed Arthur C. Clarke and Hugo Award winning author, Adrian Tchaikovsky in which we discussed his recent book Bee Speaker and the Dogs of War series. During the conversation the matter […]

On Characters

On Characters (including a Deep Dive on my characters) Coming up with new characters for a story is one of the most fun and also daunting tasks for any author. Sometimes it comes easily, with a main character already cast in your mind with your initial idea. Other times its like trying to squeeze out […]

Book Sale

Stretched Thin

Today, I’m treating this blog post as therapy. I’m feeling over-stretched and out of sorts. As usual, I have taken on too much. My new day job is very demanding and often leaves me feeling exhausted at the end of the day. I’ve also made a commitment to my old job, to help tie things […]

Clash of Mythologies

The troll hefts its makeshift club and advances cautiously towards the glowing blue figure. He roars a challenge at the strange creature to show his dominance. But the blue figure is uncowed. She just smiles as she hovers above the ground and raises a single hand. The earth rumbles in response. In my last post, […]

AI IMAGES: ADAM, KAREN, SULTAN and VASCH

As promised, here are some more AI generated images of characters from The Changeling King. These again were generated using Copilot by entering brief descriptions of each character.

AI images of Nathan, Logan, Katrina and Salina

I’ve been playing around with different AI tools recently so was curious to see how Microsoft’s COPILOT matched up against other free AI Art generators. I think the results speak for themselves. I asked Copilot to generate images of each of my characters after feeding it descriptions of each one. These are fairly accurate to […]

Author in Transition

I know. I’ve been neglecting you. I could give you a list of reasons, all of them good, logical, honest and inadequate. The truth is that I have been writing intermittently; switching projects, writing new stuff, writing old stuff, then writing some more new stuff. I have been in-between different jobs in my other […]

The Trinity Syndrome and the Objectification of Women

I just read this article on ‘The Trinity Syndrome” (link to the original article is below) and was reflecting on the fact that there is no ‘strong female’ in the Adventures of Some Kid. There are three ladies in the story, Pauline Tate (Ted Glory’s Executive Assistant), Mrs Stevens and her daughter, Erica, and each […]