Nail the ending, or don't even bother starting...

[WARNING: Here be spoilers for Mass Effect 3. And Assassin's Creed 3. Oh, and the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary, as well.]

Hmm, now there's an interesting question. I was having a nice long conversation with someone today, all about why the ending of Mass Effect 3 was such a colossal bag of donkey doings, and said person asked a question about whether a bad ending can really ruin all the good stuff that came before, when the entire experience up to that point had been good.

My immediate was a big fat yes, but it raised a rather intriguing question: why? How come the ending has such enormous power over a story, and thus, how is it possible that a bad ending can ruin everything that's gone before?

Might it be something about how we, as humans, are hardwired that makes the ending of the story the single most important bit of the whole enterprise?

Musings on my influences - HOW has Transformers endured for 30 years?

What I say next, I say completely without shame or irony: I love Transformers. I've always loved Transformers, ever since the age of 6/7, and I honestly reckon that my love of the weird and the epic (seriously, that's a concrete part of my biography and everything) came from the opening of Transformers: The Movie, in 1986.

Y'know, where the first scene has a planet being eaten. Seeing something like that was bound to have a lasting effect on the brain of a 7 year old, and no mistake.

The thing is, though, that it wasn't just my prepubescent brain that Transformers had an effect on; it also somehow went on to become one of the most successful toy franchises in history, and is still going strong today, thirty years later. The big question, of course, is this: why? How did a toy franchise aimed at 7 year old boys manage that?

Creativity - the bane of society, apparently

I'll be honest, I wibbled back and forth about writing this post, for a very simple reason: how does it actually apply to the whole business of being a writer? Does it fit the theme of this blog to actually talk about it?

Then, though, I had a realisation. By even asking myself that, was I not playing into the very phenomenon that the original source story was talking about? By avoiding writing this, was I not actually being averse to a bit of the ol' creativity myself?

'Strong Female Characters'? Seriously? You want to limit your palette like that?

Hoooooo blimey, this one's a thorny issue, and no mistake! Seriously, this one causes no end of introspection and outright navel-gazing, from every imaginable side of the whole gender debate, and since I'm a writer, it's one of those things I have to be aware of. Yes, it's the issue of "strong female characters", and I know I'm going to get flamed to a crisp by people who don't read past the headline, but the simple fact is this: "strong female characters" are dull.

And so are "strong male characters"...

Time for me to be a tease - say hello to the Cynos Union's newest alien, the enigmatic quintaceph

Ooh, not long now till The Abominable Moon is ready to go! I'm down to the final couple of chapters, so it's soon going to be winging its way to my editor, to get the final fine-toothed-comb treatment, before it's ready to be published on Amazon.

And so, I feel like being a tease.

Yes, it's time for me to introduce you to a new alien within the Cynosverse. I've already made my feelings clear about how I reckon that aliens should actually look alien, and given the general tone of The Abominable Moon, it just seemed natural for it to feature an alien species with five heads.

You may well be able to tell that I'm going for Lovecraftian weirdness with this book...

Forget yer vampires, and ghosties, and long-leggity beasties - Lovecraftian horror is REAL horror

Blimey, I've not written many posts recently, have I? Mind you, there is a good reason; I'm knee-deep in writing the next book in the Cynos Union series, The Abominable Moon (coming soon to Amazon), y'see, and what with doing that and writing content for the redesign of my official site (and if you've not seen it yet, you really should go take a look; I am well proud of it), the blog's had to be put on pause for a bit.

But now, I'm back,and since The Abominable Moon is basically a horror story (the name's a bit of a giveaway, right?), I reckon now's the perfect time to talk about that genre.

I'd best also mention that as far as horror goes, vampires, werewolves, ghoulies and ghosties just don't cut it, for me. Why? Well I shall tell ya...

Announcing the arrival of The Non-Random Dog!

Woohoo! It's finally finished and on sale, so I can tell you all about it!

Ladies and gentlemen, the second story in the Cynos Union, The Non-Random Dog, is now available to buy from both Amazon! I decided with this one that I wanted to do something rather different from the first full-length novel, Messiah's Shard, and write a short story with a tighter, less all-encompassing plot, that's not all about saving the galaxy.

Thus, this second story was born.

In the aftermath of the Abyssal War (detailed in Messiah's Shard), humanity has finally taken its place among the stars. The dream of the Cynos Union, a dream of disparate races finally coming together for the common good, a dream of a galaxy that finally knows peace, has come true.

And yet, there are still adventures to be had, as the crew of the human freighter Diomedes are about to find out. There's something a little bit unusual about their new passenger.

Although that might be because she's a dog in a spacesuit...