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...

On bad (as in REALLY bad) video game writing...

Well, there you have it, folks. After a year of hoping for some glimmer of light, or the possibility of an ending that doesn't destroy the narrative of all three games, the final DLC for Mass Effect 3 has been released, and to quote the ever brilliant Top Gear, "It's not gone well."

Now, I'll say right away that this blog post is going to include spoilers for that new DLC, called simply 'Citadel'. And so, therefore, I'm going to make sure I only put in spoilers after the break; only click through and read it if you've played the Citadel DLC, or if you don't mind being spoiled, or if you're so jaded with the Mass Effect 3 debacle that you don't care...

People what done influenced me - Peter F. Hamilton

They say that no work is ever done in a vacuum, right, and that's true. It's just human nature, especially when it comes to creative type thingies; everything that gets made is influenced by what's gone before it, and at the same time, influences what comes after.

I've always been open about the people and, well, stuff that's influenced me, and in fact, I've got a list of my influences on my Goodreads page.

I reckon, though, that it might be a cool idea to talk in-depth about some of them. Also, you might learn about some authors whose work you've never read before, and that's always awesome.

So, first up, I reckon I'll talk about the utterly brilliant British author, Peter F. Hamilton...

So, this whole 'love' business...

Right then, with my typical sense of good timekeeping, it's time for me to remember that Valentine's Day was two weeks ago, and write a post about love. After all, it's quite possibly the most talked about emotion in the entirety of human history, and since the whole topic plays a rather large part in Messiah's Shard, I reckon it might pay to talk about love, and soulmates, and all that gubbins.

Oh yes, there's much more than just epic, prophetic shenanigans going in the book...

Y'see, we begin Book 1, Act 1 by going and sitting next to John Harley, a man whose whole character is kinda sorta defined by love. The painful love he still feels for his long-dead sister, the heartache when he remembers her little face and realises he's never going to see her again, is simply one aspect of it, but it's not unfair to say that a big chunk of Harley's personality is a reaction to that aspect of his past, that bond with a sibling who's no longer with him.

And then, there's her. Anna. The woman he loves with all his heart.

The genesis of Messiah's Shard happened waa-aaaaa-aaaaay back in the mists of prehistoric time (seriously, we're talking pre-2000, here), back when I was young and daft, and still remained utterly convinced that soulmates existed, in a literal sense. I eventually moved away from that viewpoint, but that nugget of an idea kept festering away in my brain, as I thought more about what the idea of soulmates would actually mean.

Think about it; say that soulmates really are two parts of one soul, and say that they can only be happy together. What then? What happens if the souls can't be bonded in this lifetime? Would only having half a soul hurt? What if something happened to the other person, the other half of your soul, and you knew you could never be whole?

That's a horrible thought!

So therefore, my take on soulmates is possibly a little bit darker than you might be expecting...

On a brighter note, though, there's another relationship in the novel, and this one's quite a bit happier. I'm talking, of course, about Jake Mooney and Madeleine Wilder, a couple who are just perfect for each other, and who were fun to write. Not that that will stop me messing with them; no-one gets a happy ending unless they've been stretched right to their breaking point.

Because that's the big question, of course: can love survive the apocalypse? When humanity falls, can love endure?

There's only one way to find out...

Messiah's Shard is available to buy now! Subscribe for more news from the world (and brain) of Mark W. Bonnett!

I reckon aliens should look, well, ALIEN...

It's fair to assume that, since I'm a sci-fi writer, I'm a rather big sci-fi fan. It's a logical assumption, right enough, and you'd be bang on the money to jump to it, but there's one bit of sci-fi that really sort of annoys me, and it's this:

Aliens that look like humans with half a ton of rubber glued to their heads.

What I'm saying, right, is that evolution doesn't work like that...

Yes, it's that old trope, the rubber-forehead aliens, the bane of my very life when I watch things like Star Trek, or even my favourite TV sci-fi show, Babylon 5. Yes, I know that it all comes down to budgetary restraints, but the simple fact is that there's no reason why an alien lifeform, from (need I remind you) an entirely alien world light years away, should even vaguely look like a human.

To produce an alien that looks like, well, us, a species would have to follow an evolutionary path that's exactly identical to our own. Hell, if you reran evolution on Earth, and changed just one tiny parameter, you most likely wouldn't get humans here, so to imagine it happening on an alien world, with vastly different evolutionary constraints, is a bit silly really.

Where's all the floaty head things, like the eosapien from Wayne Barlowe's exquisite Expedition? Where's all the five-limbed treefrog things, from the 2005 version of War Of The Worlds? Where's all the malevolent, telepathic locust things, from Quatermass And The Pit (the film version with Andrew Keir, that scared the cacky out of me)?

I want more of those, please...

"But Mark," you may well now be saying. "Don't you use humanoid races in your novel, Messiah's Shard?"

Well, yes. Yes I do, but there's more going on there than you know about, just yet. There's hints of what's going on there, in that first novel, but you don't yet know the whole story (but you will, eventually, oh you most certainly will). Besides, there's the yowason and the n'kaf (the two beasties in the pic up there) to consider, and I've made a pact with myself that any future races I come up with will resolutely not be humanoid.

Hmm, maybe something with limbs on their faces (*scratchy beard noise*). That could work...

Messiah's Shard is available to buy now! Subscribe for more news from the world (and brain) of Mark W. Bonnett!