Wednesday, December 21, 2011

500 BOOKS IN 300 DAYS – WEEK 36

I've been running this weekly competition on my Facebook fan page all year, and it'll run into 2012. Most weeks all year I've been giving away three of my trilogies and quartets, signed, except for breaks where I've given away two iPad 2s. 

Stay tuned: there could be another iPad comp in 2012.




Total number of my books won so far: 382

To enter this week’s comp, go here, http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author, Like my page (unless you already have) then enter from the Promos tab. 

WEEK 36 QUESTION – Your favourite author has let you down. How would you see him or her punished? The cleverest, funniest, most moving or wittiest entries win. No knowledge of my books needed. 



 



First Prize – The View from the Mirror quartet, signed.

Second Prize – The Well of Echoes quartet, signed.

3rd Prize – The Song of the Tears trilogy, signed. 

There were 25 entries this week. 

Winners 
 1st Charmaine Cree, 2nd Dave Dray, 3rd Danny Charles Daines.     

Honourable Mentions (get 3 HMs and you also win). 
 Courtney ‘Toffee’ Rohde, Duncan Anderson, Kelly Broadbent, Edward Bennett-Williams.
 

The complete list of winners for 2011 can be found here: http://www.ian-irvine.com/winners.html 

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Goodreads Giveaway Winners

The winners of my December book giveaway on Goodreads are:

Mary Preston

Maria Komninos

Lauredhel Lauredhel

Winners are chosen randomly by Goodreads. Each winner wins a signed copy of Vengeance.

I'll be running more giveaways on Goodreads early in 2012. To find out more, or to check, rate or review any of my books, go to http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/153703.Ian_Irvine


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Sunday, December 18, 2011

500 BOOKS IN 300 DAYS – WEEK 35

I've been running this weekly competition on my Facebook fan page all year, and it'll run into 2012. Most weeks all year I've been giving away three of my trilogies and quartets, signed, except for breaks where I've given away two iPad 2s. 


Stay tuned: there could be another one in 2012.




Total number of my books won so far: 371

To enter this week’s comp, go here, http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author, Like my page then enter from the Promos tab. 

WEEK 35 QUESTION – You can build your dream castle anywhere in fantasyland. Where do you build it? The cleverest, funniest, most moving or wittiest entries win. No knowledge of my books needed. 



 



First Prize – The View from the Mirror audiobooks on CD, all 91 hours.

Second Prize – The Grim and Grimmer quartet, signed.

3rd Prize – a signed copy of Vengeance. 

There were 36 entries this week. 

Winners 
1st, Carolina Maria Ostmark, 2nd, Sarah Blundell, 3rd, Esther Walls.     

Honourable Mentions (get 3 HMs and you also win). 
Courtney ‘Toffee” Rohde, Mitchell Fitzsummons, Danny Charles Daines. .
 

The complete list of winners for 2011 can be found here: http://www.ian-irvine.com/winners.html 


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Saturday, December 10, 2011

Kim Wilkins' Writing Tips


In the past 15 years Kim Wilkins has written 21 novels, including supernatural thrillers, horror, fantasy, books for young adults, books for children and, in recent years, contemporary epic romances. Her books are published in a dozen countries. She teaches at the University of Queensland in the postgraduate writing program, and at the Queensland Writer's Centre, and also mentors emerging writers, some of whom have gone on to brilliant success. 


Kim has also won a shelf full of awards including multiple Aurealis Awards for her speculative fiction, a Romantic Book of the Year award, plus awards for Teaching Excellence, Research Excellence, and Criticism/Review. Topping it off, Kim's latest book, Wildflower Hill, recently made the USA Today bestseller list, so when she talks about writing, it's a good idea to listen.


These are my top quick writing tips of all time that I think every writer should know. They represent, of course, my opinions, but I think you'll find I'm always right. ;)

  • Look to your verbs. If you read a page back and it seems lifeless and flabby, find every verb on the page and see if you can improve it. Make a point of collecting great verbs every time you read or watch a movie or have a conversation. Verbs like gasp, surge, quiver, and drench work so hard. Verbs are the muscle of a sentence, and can punch up dull writing in a moment.
  • Chillax on chapter one. Easily the most common writing problem I see is the writer trying far too hard to impress in the first few pages of a story. Many stories warm up and get fantastic after page five, but by then the publisher has already put you on the "reject" pile. Often your first chapter is so overworked that it's uncomfortable to read. My advice is to finish the book, then scrap the first chapter all together and write it again without looking at the original.
  • Don't write all your fun scenes first. Write in order. If you give a child her custard first, she's probably not going to be all that interested in her Brussels sprouts.
  • Be in a viewpoint, always. At the start of every scene make sure you know exactly whose viewpoint you are going to be in, and write the scene from inside their head. A story details a relationship between characters and events. The most impact is always achieved from describing that relationship from the inside.
  • Plan your story in advance, even if it's only loosely. It will save you so much time and heartache and, contrary to popular belief, it's actually MORE fun to do it this way. When you know that an exciting turning point is approaching, the scene and the ones around it can play out in your mind over and over as you think them through, becoming richer the more you anticipate it.
  • Most important of all: keep going. This is a tough craft, and it's an even tougher business. Dream big if you want, but your dreams can't sustain you on a day-to-day basis. The only thing that can sustain you is the work. Do it because you love it; because not to write hurts. Do it because you are mad about your story and obsessed with your characters. Don't make it another chore to fit into your busy day: make it the special place you go when your day has been rubbish. Keep going and keep going, and then keep going some more.

Thanks very much, Kim. I've made a note to work on my own flabby and under-exercised verbs. 

Kim's pictorial guide to editing: http://fantasticthoughts.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/how-to-edit-a-pictorial-guide/. Kim's main website is here, http://fantasticthoughts.wordpress.com/. And the Kimberley Freeman site, for Kim's epic romances, here: http://kimberleyfreeman.com/


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Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Robyn Wardlaw on Running a Fan Site


Robyn Wardlaw set up the fan site, Triune, way back in 2002, when she was 16 – well before I had my own site up and running! She has been running Triune ever since. Who could be better qualified to talk about the challenges, the troubles and the rewards of running a fan site. 


Robyn is 25 years old and runs the Ian Irvine fan site Triune from her home in Scotland. She has a degree in Maths along with a vast array of skills and talents that people are currently refusing to pay her for.


Imagine you open up your inbox one day to find an email from one of your favourite authors. Imagine that you're not entirely surprised by this because you have, after all, been running a website about this author for over nine years – wait what, nine? – and you've had semi-regular contact with the author throughout that. Then imagine the email is a very polite invitation asking if you'd be interested in doing a guest-post on the author's own newly started blog.

…

If you're anything like me your response to this would be an incoherent garble of keyboard mashes followed, some very long time later, by a quiet “Yes please.”

This is not something I could have imagined happening nine years ago - come on, seriously, nine? I started my site for one reason and one reason only: because nowhere on the vast internet could I find another site devoted to Ian Irvine. I had been using the internet pretty heavily for about three years at that point, and had some use of it for a couple of years before that. Being a teenager with somewhat geekish tendencies I used it mainly as a source of information and to socialise with other geeks. A friend of mine that I met on one such discussion forum had recommended a series of books to me and I had hunted them down, devoured them, and desperately desired more. I took to Google (at least I think I was using Google at the time) and searched high and low for information on these new books.

Other than online book stores selling the books, I found all of three pages. They were all interviews that had been conducted with Ian about the time of the initial releases of the View from the Mirror books, on various book news/reviews sites. They had a complete lack of useful bits of information – more books were planned, three whole different series even – but nothing particularly recent.

This was somewhat aggravating. The internet had never before failed me in such a catastrophic manner. I couldn't believe there was not one single website out there devoted solely to the works of Ian Irvine.

I decided to do something about it.

Aside from my heroic attempts to rescue the internet from this dire lack-of-author-website predicament, my desire to make the site also probably had something to do with the fact that I'd been wanting to make a site for ages but never found a good subject matter. Finally getting to put these new found HTML skills to use, I began constructing the layout for the site. But then came the next problem – content. I didn't really know how to go about finding out the information that I wanted to put on my site. My experience of finding out information mostly consisted of Googling it, and that just got me right back where I started.

So I opened the book again, and I re-read the “About the Author” page, which I recalled had an email address in it. Scrounging up some courage I sent an email telling Ian I was making a website about the View from the Mirror series and asking for some information on his forthcoming books. Although I probably didn't use the word 'forthcoming' – I tried to check, but apparently Hotmail has taken to deleting emails from accounts that are largely inactive. [Ian: The date of that fateful email was August 17, 2002, and you're right, Robyn, you didn't. You said 'new']

To my great surprise I received a response within about a day. It had never occurred to me that I would hear back from him so soon, him being a busy famous author and all, but there it was, in my inbox, Ian telling me he'd be delighted to give me whatever information I wanted for the website. Awesome.

The first site that went up looked atrocious. I can barely remember it but I know that much. That said, it had the most up to date information of any version since then, so its key desired outcome was a success. It didn't take me long to revamp it into something less offensive to the eye, and it was at the point that I added something else: a forum. A horrible, freely hosted by someone else piece of discussion board software, but a forum all the same.

That particular version of the board probably had in total about ten registered members, and maybe about five of them posted regularly, but it was the start of a real community. I always felt we were limited by the board software and I wanted to host my own forums, but that would involve actually paying for my own web host, and I was an unemployed teenager living off of pocket money. It was almost a year before I got a job and could convince my parents to loan me the use of their credit card (since that's the only payment method the hosting companies took).

With the move to a new host, I was going all-out. No longer would this be some childishly-designed, Geocities-hosted, unprofessional array of large buttons. This thing would have its own domain name, and that's a coming of age for a website. It got a new name, it got a new look, and – yes – it got its own forums.


So was born Triune. The original layout of the site is what I would consider the alpha version of the current look (it's still essentially the same layout and colour scheme, just with some added functionality as I picked up one or two more bits of web design knowledge).  The improvements from the previous site were tremendous, and the forums provided the ideal place for the newly formed community of Ian Irvine fans to grow.

I learned something then that I've recently re-learned in Real World work: communities are hard. They require a lot of time and effort to keep them going. Mostly they have one or two key individuals that put in this time and effort, and when sufficient time and effort are put in the whole thing just looks effortless. But as soon as your life starts getting a bit busier – the very moment that you decide you just can't be bothered for a while – you come back and find it's gone.

The Triune Forums have always been like that. There are periods of high activity – usually surrounding the release of new books, but not always – and there are times when you'll be lucky to see a tumbleweed. Occasional events such as The Great Web Host Screw Up of  2008, which included three months of site-wide downtime and precipitated a change of hosts, not to mention domain names, haven't exactly help such matters.

Or alternatively the What The Hell Has Happened To My Database of 2011 (Ongoing), an issue I had hoped to have resolved before sending this off (and in fact delayed its writing somewhat – sorry Ian!). I am almost at the point where I don't know if it can be fixed, and I'm wondering if I should just start fresh. At the same time, I'm not sure exactly how much discussion forums fit in to the Ian Irvine fan community these days. He's gotten much better at it himself recently – his website is updated frequently (far more frequently than mine), he blogs often, and he's even gotten on-board with this newfangled Facebook concept.

Robyn and Ian at Worldcon, Glasgow, 2005
During the bad days it's easy to start thinking about packing it all in, letting someone else take over, maybe just shutting it down altogether. Not too long ago, after spending almost an entire day trying countless fixes for my current problems, I thought to myself “Why am I doing this?” But then you remember the good days. Making friends. Meeting Ian at WorldCon. Silly word association games. Marriage proposals based on internet-rare good grammar (and refused because that's no reason to get married). Invitations to post on Ian's blog. Yes, today is a very good day.

Imagine that all this happened to you, then go and check your emails. Maybe tomorrow will be a good day for you.

In 05, Robyn travelled right across Scotland to meet me at Worldcon in Glasgow, and kindly came to my exclusive 'reading for one' there – the most focused audience I've ever had. Thank you for that, Robyn, and for the past 9+ years of Triune. 


Triune can be found at http://triunelives.co.uk/index.html.



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Monday, December 5, 2011

Trent Jamieson on World-Building Hell


Today Trent Jamieson, who in his own write is a sombre, contemplative fellow with just a hint of edge, is talking about how he created the world of his marvellous Death Works trilogy.


World-Building as an Obsession - a Not Particularly Helpful Guide

Sometimes worlds are built through assiduous research, and other times they're just part of what you are.

If you're a writer, particularly if you're a fantasy writer, you like to build worlds - actually build in this case is too weak a verb, you like to inhabit them. And, like anything you inhabit, it starts to inhabit you a bit, too. You close your eyes and you're suddenly standing beneath the great creaking branches of a giant Moreton Bay Fig Tree (otherwise known as the One Tree), its root buttresses the size of hills. A dead soul, glowing slightly blue, bumps you, you turn to apologise but it's already marching towards the base of the tree.

Well, that's how it is for me. And the world of the Death Works is one that I've inhabited for a long time.

I grew up fascinated by the afterlife, and stories about the Underworld. The first time I heard the story of Eurydice and Orpheus shivers ran down my spine. The first time I looked at Brueghel's Triumph of Death - with all those crazy skeletons - I knew I had found a kindred spirit. It seemed inevitable that I would go to those places in my writing.

The world of the Death Works books isn't the only place I hang out in, of course, but it's the only one that is so closely focused on the Underworld, it's also the only one that has Brisbane as a setting. Which is appropriate, because Brisbane is my home, and these are some of the most personal stories I've ever written. Mixing my home with a fantasy land version of Hell didn't just seem appropriate, it was vital - I needed both to ground the other, any hesitancy and the books would just feel unbalanced.

When you're writing about Psychopomps and Stirrers and scone eating deities and belligerent talking tattoos you need to ground it in a place that's familiar, that has great coffee, pubs, and a lot of bridges (death and bridges go hand in hand, you see).

My Underworld is a mixture of mythologies and folk law. Everything from Norse to African, Sumerian, Greek and French is in there. Which made sense to me because I imagined all of these mythologies would hold a piece of truth in my world. But I also wanted to throw in my own bits and pieces, the Hungry Death, Wal the talking cherub, the nature of Mog, Death's Scythe, and the way Regional Deaths are promoted.


The One Tree is in part Norse, but it also borrows from European Folklore that looks at the journey of a soul as being of three parts, one of which is a journey to a tree - the World Axis - where the souls live in the branches. There was also the idea of reincarnation as a tree common to a lot of different cultures and fairytales, see the Grimm's "Juniper Tree" - which also uses birds in an interesting way (birds feature quite prominently in my books as well).

But it wasn't just folklore that I used. The books are loaded with references to other books that concern themselves with the underworld, too, I couldn't help myself - Mr D's bicycle and Steve's surname come from the book the Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. The blue glow of the dead comes from The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. There's even touches of Ursula Le Guin's Underworld in the Earthsea books. And that's not even mentioning Fritz Leiber's Death or Neil Gaiman's or Terry Pratchett's or the dozens of other novelists that I can't think of now, all of which have left their mark on the novels.

Which brings me back to the beginning, these Death Works books chart my reading of fantasy, the world is built on a lifetime's obsession. Sometimes that's all the research you need.


Thanks very much for those insights, Trent. A revelation – my worlds have a complete lack of scone-eating deities and I now realise what a flaw that is. Trent's next book is Roil –



I've read The Business of Death, and loved it. For more info on Trent, The Business of Death and his other writing, where else would you go but the Trentonomicon, http://www.trentjamieson.com/


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Saturday, December 3, 2011

Vengeance Giveaway

I'm giving away 3 copies of Vengeance on Goodreads between now and December 20: http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/17741-vengeance. 




To rate any or all of my books on Goodreads, go here:http://www.goodreads.com/author/list/153703.Ian_Irvine. 
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500 BOOKS IN 300 DAYS – WEEK 34

I've been running this weekly competition on my Facebook fan page all year, and it'll run into 2012. Most weeks all year I've been giving away three of my trilogies and quartets, signed, except for breaks where I've given away two iPad 2s.



Total number of my books won so far: 362.

To enter this week’s comp, go here, http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author, Like my page then enter from the Promos tab.

Lately I've been giving away 3 copies of the Aussie trade paperback edition of my brand new book, Vengeance, each week.

WEEK 34 QUESTION – You’ve just become an evil overlord. What do you do first? The cleverest, funniest, most moving or wittiest entries win. No knowledge of my books needed. 





THERE ARE THREE FIRST PRIZES – each a copy of my latest book, Vengeance, signed.

There were 77 entries this week.

Winners
1st, Jason Stevens, 2nd, Sue Knight, 3rd, Patrick Chaffin.

Honourable Mentions (get 3 HMs and you also win).
Victoria Proctor, Nick Fisher, Esther Walls, Jon O’Mara Yuen Harrison, Danny Charles Daines.


Here's the winning entry, with Jason's permission. Thanks, Jason.

Well, I suppose that would largely depend on HOW I became an evil overlord, the last option of which would be the most dramatic. 

If I had supplanted a prior overlord, my first act would be to examine whatever security the previous ruler had in place and test the loyalty of his or her remaining minions. Once I'd identified weaknesses, then I would set to work resolving those and putting additional measures in place (after all, if I caused their downfall, someone could do the same to me if I didn't change the security at all).

If, however, there had been no previous evil ruler, then the METHOD by which I became the overlord would matter. If it was through political maneuvering and the simple assassination of a benevolent ruler, then I would need to act quickly. Thankfully in that situation I would have been planning my coup in advance so I would know exactly what I would need in order to ensure the populace would have little chance of resisting me. I'd create a number of magical wards for my main fortress and also for myself any time I might be exposed, then set to work creating an army of vicious and cruel hybrid creatures immune to all known types of magic with a cunning intellect and a hard-coded 'religion' that kept them loyal. (Being an evil overlord, I would essentially have to create the means for my own demise, albeit unwittingly).

The other scenario in which I could become an evil overlord would be one in which there is either no political maneuvering to do, or I lacked the requisite connections to do so. In that scenario, I would have hunted down a legendary magical artifact and in activating it created a worldwide cataclysm that eliminated a very large portion of the world's inhabitants and made very few regions hospitable for life, thereby leaving survival as the primary focus in their lives as opposed to resistance. My first act in this scenario would be more open, as I would have a considerable amount of time to solidify my control of the world as people would be focused on rebuilding and surviving. My first step in this last scenario, would be to send my minions that I had selected to survive with me in chamber of activation out to the most populous cities of the world with instructions to advise of their new ruler, each having the authorization to make an example of any residents that resist. This example making would be a very public torture, consisting of physical, mental, and magical elements. The magical element of the torture would be twofold: one to heal the physical wounds inflicted so as to avoid the death of the subject, and the second would be a form of torture that manipulated the innate magical essence of the subject, definitely causing pain and very likely mutations of multiple kinds as well. Sufficiently cowed by this first act and looking to survive, I would then have plenty of time to establish a base and lay down the foundation for an unbreakable empire.

The complete list of winners for 2011 can be found here: http://www.ian-irvine.com/winners.html

For more about me and my books: http://www.ian-irvine.com/
To say Hi or talk to me about books and writing: http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author
To follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/ianirvineauthor
My blog about the novels I write, and the writing life: http://ian-irvine.blogspot.com/

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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Ian Irvine is Grilled by Fans

I was going to interview myself today, but my Facebook fans asked such good questions that I've given them full rein.

Ian Irvine: This may seem a bit of a lol, but I'm doing an interview with Ian Irvine for my blog and I need some really curly questions, because I've heard he's a slippery customer. Tricky questions would be much appreciated; I really want to put the scoundrel on the spot.

Ami: Have you developed multiple personalities or something???

Ian: Ha ha, yes I have, says Ian. No I haven't, says Ian. I don't understand the question, says Ian. Are we there yet? says Ian. Need we go on, Ami? chorus the Ians, sweetly.

Alison: Who would you ask to finish your novels if you ever (heaven forbid) died before they were completed (e.g. Brandon Sanderson for Robert Jordan).

Ian: I have no idea, Alison. I don't know of any fantasy novelists who write the way I do, or about the kinds of things I write about. But maybe someone else does. I might have to throw that one back to my Facebook page and see if anyone comes up. In the meantime, i'll try hard not to die.

John: Or would you actually want someone else finishing them off in that situation?

Ian: To be honest, John, I don't think I'd want anyone finishing off a series of mine. Perhaps I'm a control freak. But I think the story would end up very differently to the way I'd imagined it. But then, since I've been so inconsiderate as to die in the middle of a series, instead of waiting until the story is completely wrapped up, I guess I can't complain. I'd certainly want to see it finished rather than just left hanging ...

John: Who is your favourite (or favourites if you can't choose one) of the characters you've created?

Ian: It changes all the time. At the moment I'd say it's Tali, the slave girl from Vengeance who, when just a little girl, saw her mother murdered and some mysterious object taken from her. Now she's 18, she's full of a burning rage and an utter determination to see justice done to the killers. I've spent a long time inside her head and really like her. I also like Tobry, from that story, because he's scarred, reckless, thinks the whole universe is a joke, yet is utterly loyal to his friends. But at other times it can be any of my heroes or heroines, even the alien Ryll from the Three Worlds, or Useless Ike from Grim and Grimmer.

Renee:  If there was one thing you had to change about your favourite character what would it be?

Ian: Depends on the character, Renee. If Tali, I think I'd make her a little bit less nice (not that she's completely nice; she has her flaws) and a lot more conflicted about every aspect of her life. Make everything she does, and every choice she makes, a struggle between incompatibles. She can have one or the other, but not both, and she HAS to choose.

Dusty: What character do you associate yourself with the most??

Ian: Dusty, I suspect that would be Llian from The View from the Mirror. There's a lot of me in most of my characters (especially the evil ones, glee, glee! says the bad Ian) because I'm the only person I know, or can know, from the inside. But I think in Llian, because he was one of my first characters, it's closer to the surface. Pity he's such an idiot at times.

Deborah: Why did Ian decide to write fantasy, other than any other genre? What does family think of his novels? Does he envisage that he will still be writing them when he is in 70s? Does Ian believe that the dark side of his personality is expressed in his evil characters?..... (will stop for now,......)

Ian: Why fantasy, Deborah? Because that's what I most enjoyed reading back in the far-off days when I began writing. And though I read far less fantasy these days, I still love it, and especially love writing it. 

What does my family think? See my sister Kathy's reply, below. I come from a large family, and so does my wife, and most of the people in our families love books and reading. They're very supportive, and constantly talking about my books to others, and rearranging them in bookshops so they face out, etc.


  • Kathy: Yes Deborah, family think he is awesome, totally talented, amazingly intuitive, and sensitive to the needs of his characters. Appreciate that he can poke fun at himself and has remained level headed throughout. Love his wicked sense of humour and his imagination. I also hope he will be writing for many years to come. :-)
  • Ian: And I blush easily, and often.


When will I stop writing? I certainly hope to be still writing in my 70s, and even in my 80s should I live that long. Most of the people in my family live to ripe and reasonably healthy old age, so if I have that good fortune I'll keep writing.

The dark side of my personality? What are you talking about? What dark side? All 27 of my personalities are glowing with light – 'Hey, what about me?' says evil Ian. 'Glmph!' He's bound, gagged and thrust under the table out of sight. 'Now, where was i ...?'

Traci: Who would Ian turn gay for? (Weeeelll, you did ask for tricky questions & there was no specifications on the questions being 'work' related).

Ian: Apart from Bridget Jones, and Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. But wait, that wouldn't be turning gay, would it? I guess no one. 

Sue: Ian, can you ask Ian for me... does he believe in in life forms beyond earth and how did life on earth begin? Thanks Ians.

Ians: Well, Sue, there are a few hundred billion galaxies in the visible universe, and each galaxy could have hundreds of billions of stars, and most of those stars could have planets. And of course, there could be billions of universes apart from our own. So the chances of there not being life out there somewhere seem implausibly remote to me. Yes, i do believe there's life out there. Intelligent life is another matter; i don't think it evolves very often and perhaps doesn't last long when it does, but even so, I reckon it exists somewhere.

How did life on Earth begin? Probably in the rich soup of the primordial oceans. It's possible that it could have evolved elsewhere and Earth been seeded with primitive life forms which then evolved here, but that doesn't seem nearly as likely to me. Space is a hostile place for life compared to a protected ocean.

Brian: Do you think the world will end in 2012, if so, are you a believer in he zombie apocalypse or just the plain old destruction of the planet?

Ian: No, I don't, Brian. I can't say I'm a great fan of zombies, though a zombie apocalypse does have a certain ikky charm. I don't think the planet is going to be destroyed any time soon, unless there's a nearby supernova. Earth is pretty resilient. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't make it unsuitable for a vast range of advanced life, including ourselves.

Marta: Why do some writers use a pseudonym to write different books. Is there a particular reason for that because sometimes it can get confusing if your favourite author writes under a pseudonym and you don't know about it. You miss out on reading those books unless you accidentally come across it.

Ian: Marta, if an author is well known for a certain kind of books (say, fantasy) but wants to write something completely different, say, crime or thrillers or romance, they often use a pseudonym to avoid confusing readers and booksellers (otherwise booksellers will often shelve their books in the wrong place). But also, if an author's first book or two have gone really badly, bookshops aren't going to order many of the next book, because they always order based on sales of the last book by that author. It may not be possible to get published at all unless the author changes their name, which wipes the slate.

Danny: Would you ever consider taking on a protege... What would your code names be?

Ian: Do you mean a co-writer, Danny? No, I don't think so. I just want to write my own books in my own way.

Cassandra: Would you change anything about any of your books? If so which ones?

Ian: That's a continent-sized question, Cassandra. If I really needed to update any of my books, I imagine I'd change many things, and I'd certain cut out a lot of verbal flab, as I did when I for the revised editions of the 3 Human Rites eco-thrillers. I cut about 10 K words out of the first, 14 K from the second and 20 K from the third book. But if I'm rewriting old books, I'm not writing new ones, so it's not the best use of my time.

Mitchell: Have you ever had a thought like this? About how strange things happen, when your going around the twist?

Ian: If I thought I was going round the twist, Mitchell, do you really think I'd post it on the internet? [Sidles off, twitching and laughing maniacally]

Thanks very much, Guys, great questions, as always.
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