Author Archives: Jacey Bedford

About Jacey Bedford

Jacey Bedford maintains this blog. She is a writer of science fiction and fantasy (www.jaceybedford.co.uk), the secretary of Milford SF Writers (www.milfordSF.co.uk), a singer (www.artisan-harmony.com) and a music agent booking UK tours and concerts for folk performers (www.jacey-bedford.com). She's also a Home Office / UK Visas and Immigration department licensed sponsor processing UK work permits (Certificates of Sponsorship).

Domestication in a time of Coronavirus

Posted on October 20, 2020

I’m currently reading/listening to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari who says that early farmers did not domesticate wheat, wheat domesticated them. By the process of gradually farming it rather than gathering wild grains, early farmers (previously nomadic) began to stay … Continue reading →

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Georgette Heyer: The Toll Gate for your reading pleasure

Posted on October 13, 2020

Everyone has their favourite Heyer. This is one of mine. When Crazy Jack Staple, lately of Wellington’s army returns to civilian life after the defeat of Napoleon, he finds that there’s not much to satisfy the adrenaline junkie he’s become, … Continue reading →

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Style Sheets

Posted on October 6, 2020

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Jacey Bedford There’s a lot of information to keep in your head if you’re writing a book. There’s even more if you’re writing a trilogy or a series. I happily wrote seven books without … Continue reading →

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Joe Abercrombie: Best Served Cold – for your reading pleasure

Posted on September 29, 2020

Joe Abercrombie never fails to disappoint. After thoroughly exhausting myself reading his First Law trilogy towards the back end of 2011 it took taken me a while to come to Best Served Cold. I anticipated reading it last year but … Continue reading →

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The Rule of Three

Posted on September 22, 2020

This post first appeared on David Tallerman’s blog. As humans we look for patterns. Three is the smallest number of elements that can form a pattern. Superstition suggests that three is the magic number, or that both bad things and … Continue reading →

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Boy Wizards on the Lam. Three series beginnings.

Posted on September 15, 2020

This is the first of my new alternate Tuesday reading posts, so I thought I’d dip back in time to tell you about three books that are each the first in their own well-loved series. They all owe something to … Continue reading →

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Space Opera

Posted on September 8, 2020

I write science fiction. I’m pretty sure my sub-genre is space opera. I’m happy with that definition. I grew up reading my dad’s Lensman books and the distinctive Gollancz yellow jacketed SF, however I wasn’t aware of any distinction between … Continue reading →

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Book Blogs

Posted on September 7, 2020

I’ve been posting writing-related blogs every other Tuesday, and I’ll continue to do that, but from now on I’m also going to do reading-related blogs on the intermediate Tuesdays. Yes, that’s right, this blog is going weekly. I blog everything … Continue reading →

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Game of Thrones Revisited

Posted on August 25, 2020

Just after Game of Thrones finished, Iain Grant sent a few of us some revealing questions about Game of Thrones. I know the ending was contentious, but though I would have wished for a happier ending, I wasn’t honestly expecting … Continue reading →

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The Belgian Refugees of World War One

Posted on August 11, 2020

In 2017, when Alma Alexander asked if I’d be interested in writing a story for her refugees anthology, Children of A Different Sky, I jumped at the chance. There are so many refugee crises in the world that a writer … Continue reading →

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The Geography of Words

Posted on August 4, 2020

Writing science fiction and fantasy involves worldbuilding. Sometimes we take a concept, strip it right down to basics and invent a planet where the sea is pink, the sky is upside down and the dominant life form has seven tentacles … Continue reading →

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Rejectomancy

Posted on July 28, 2020

I don’t write much short fiction these days unless I get an invitation to contribute to an anthology. Mostly it’s because I’m too busy writing long fiction. My novels are published by DAW in the USA. I’ve just signed a … Continue reading →

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Hookey Garrity’s Story

Posted on July 14, 2020

The Rowankind books, Winterwood, Silverwolf, and Rowankind, are narrated by Rossalinde (Ross) Tremayne, but every now and then one of the other characters likes to have his say. You can find Corwen’s piece here. And pirate captain Gentleman Jim’s piece … Continue reading →

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Getting Things Done – a guest post by Gail Z. Martin

Posted on July 7, 2020

I’ll admit it. I have a reputation for getting a lot done. People ask me if I sleep, or take vacations, or have down time. And the truth is that I generally log about seven hours sleep a night, take … Continue reading →

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How Long is a Piece of String?

Posted on June 30, 2020

Chopping and Changing – Revisions, Cuts and Additions. How long should your story or novel be? A piece (story, novel or poem) should be as long as it needs to be – but that’s not always as long as you, … Continue reading →

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How Much is Too Much History? – A guest post by David Tallerman

Posted on June 17, 2020

Though I’ve gone on to write a couple of things since, my novel To End All Wars, out last week from publisher Aethon, was my first stab at writing historical fiction.  It was a dramatic about-turn for me after years … Continue reading →

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Crew Dragon Launch – 30th May 2020

Posted on June 2, 2020

I watched the SpaceX terminated launch last Wednesday 27th May, and then again the actual launch on Saturday 30th – immediately followed by watching Apollo 11, the documentary using newly unearthed film footage and audio recordings. Apollo 11 was the … Continue reading →

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A Moment of Stuckness

Posted on May 19, 2020

Anyone who knows me will testify that I’m not usually stuck for words. It’s not that I don’t believe in writer’s block (obviously it is a thing) it’s that I’ve rarely experienced it. However, recently I had a period where … Continue reading →

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How I Got Here From There

Posted on May 5, 2020

First published on Gillian Polack’s blog in March 2020 for Women’s History Month It took me a long time to get here, possibly too long. If I’d known then, what I know now, it might not have taken so long… … Continue reading →

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The New Normal

Posted on April 21, 2020

To meet or not to meet – that is the question. I’m a big advocate of critique groups. I’ve been attending the Milford Writers’ Conference since 1998 with enough regularity that eventually I’ve ended up being the secretary. Milford is … Continue reading →

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Fiction Must Make More Sense Than Real Life

Posted on April 6, 2020

Fiction must make more sense than real life. I think we all know that real life isn’t making much sense at the moment. If we wrote about a global pandemic in which presidential staff held hands and prayed that it … Continue reading →

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House Arrest

Posted on March 24, 2020

Due to Covid 19 we’ve pulled up the drawbridge and dug a shark infested moat around Bedford Towers. No, we’re not sick, but I’m diabetic and my other half has suddenly become classified as elderly. How scary is that? Our … Continue reading →

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An interview first published in SF Signal

Posted on March 10, 2020

I like doing interviews, especially when the questions are both thoughtful and taxing. Carl Slaughter presented me with an intriguing set of questions way back in 2016. I thought I’d revisit them. CS: Your first series is cyberpunk space opera. … Continue reading →

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Reading Writing and Rewriting

Posted on March 10, 2020

I was a voracious reader as a child, working my way steadily through the stock of my local public library children’s department. My literature of choice was anything with horses or ponies in it. Some of the books in my … Continue reading →

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Useful book cover tool online

Posted on February 25, 2020

I posted this to the Milford blog this week, but I’m so taken with it, I thought I’d post it here, too. Whether you’re self-published or traditionally published there’s a good chance that you’ll need to shout out about your … Continue reading →

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Quantifying Success

Posted on February 18, 2020

A few years ago, Chuck Wendig posted to his Terrible Minds blog saying: ‘It Only Gets Harder Once You’re Published’. (http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/08/19/it-only-gets-harder-once-youre-published/) How true. That article really resonated with me. I wonder if authors ever get over the self-doubt thing. When … Continue reading →

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Fantasy Food to Go – Part 2 – Overland

Posted on February 11, 2020

Land journeys Looking at the amount of storage required on board ship for all the provisions, it quickly becomes obvious that carrying anything close to naval rations for even a small party travelling on land would require wagons or, at … Continue reading →

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Fantasy Food to Go – Part 1 – All at Sea

Posted on January 28, 2020

As a fantasy writer I’ve given much thought to what characters eat on those epic journeys by land and sea. My Rowankind Trilogy involved stocking the Heart of Oak, Ross’s tops’l schooner, for an Atlantic voyage. You need to base … Continue reading →

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Updated Blog Archive: 2013 to 2019

Posted on January 14, 2020

  2013 Bated Breath Seven Short Men and a Waif Preparing for Milford Jumping in at the Shallow End Serendipitous Book Browsing Four days to go Three Book Deal Milford Writers Publishers Marketplace Announcement Editor Talk New Book Log on LJ: Karen Traviss: … Continue reading →

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2019 – Retrospective

Posted on December 31, 2019

2019 has been a pretty good year. I did a few conventions, read a lot of books, finished editing a couple of my own, saw a lot of movies, kept up with the day job, organised (and attended) a couple … Continue reading →

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The Christmas Truce in 1914.

Posted on December 26, 2019

I have a theory, and it’s only a theory, so accept it or not as you wish. My granddad, Lance Corporal Tommy Bennett of the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry took part in the Christmas Truce in 1914. It wasn’t … Continue reading →

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Christmas-ish post

Posted on December 17, 2019

Though our family has never been religious we take advantage of the season and enjoy our version of Christmas which is all about family, food, presents, games and Dr Who or a new movie on TV. When Brian and I … Continue reading →

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Creativity and the laugh-track of my life

Posted on December 3, 2019

I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) at the beginning of November, a commitment to write 50,000 words in a month. It’s fewer than 2000 words a day, so it should be—if not easy—not all that difficult. I’ve … Continue reading →

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Process

Posted on November 19, 2019

I’ve been thinking about process over the last few weeks. I’m writing a new, story which I hope will turn into the next novel project. It’s as yet untitled, and if I had to describe it at all it would … Continue reading →

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It’s not too late to join up – NaNoWriMo

Posted on November 5, 2019

NaNoWriMo – National NovelWriting Month-takes place each November. You sign up Her: https://nanowrimo.org and commit to writing 50,000 in November, which means writing just a little under 2,000 words a day. It’s only 3rd November, you still have time to … Continue reading →

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Retro-Blog of a Pre-published Writer from Autumn 2008

Posted on October 22, 2019

With hindsight this is really interesting. This (edited) collection of blog posts is from the early days of writing The Amber Crown, which then had the working title of Spider on the Web. (Sometimes the working title became That Bloody … Continue reading →

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Writers Injuring Characters

Posted on October 8, 2019

I went to visit my dentist for a particularly difficult tooth extraction today, so as I write this I’m sitting nursing a sore jaw as the anaesthetic is wearing off. I can’t deny that I felt a bit wobbly after … Continue reading →

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Home from Milford – Tired but Happy

Posted on September 24, 2019

I’ve just arrived home from Milford SF Writers’ Conference in North Wales, and I could sleep for a week. I’m not ready for the real world yet. After a week of intense writing critique punctuated by meals taken with fourteen … Continue reading →

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Retro-Blog of a Pre-published Writer from March 2008

Posted on September 10, 2019

A few more interesting notes from my old blog. Long before I got my book deal I was working on Empire of Dust and Winterwood,  the books that were to become the first books in my two trilogies. At the … Continue reading →

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Open Submissions for Anthologies – a guest post by Joshua Palmatier

Posted on September 3, 2019

Zombies Need Brains’ latest Kickstarter started up on August 7th and with the possibility of an open call for submissions if we fund, I thought that I’d spend some time talking about how you can better your chances of getting … Continue reading →

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Generating Ideas – a guest post by Joshua Palmatier

Posted on August 27, 2019

The three new themes for Zombies Need Brains’ Kickstarter have been revealed (apocalypses, food, old tech finding new life) and I thought I’d offer up a suggestion here for how to generate an idea that fits a theme AND make … Continue reading →

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Dublin Worldcon 2019

Posted on August 20, 2019

This was my third Worldcon. I attended in 2014 in London, and 2017 in Helsinki. The first thing to note is that Worldcon is BIG, with thousands of fans, authors, publishers and industry professionals with an enormous choice of panels, … Continue reading →

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My Other Journal in a Galaxy Far far Away

Posted on August 13, 2019

In 2008 I started a blog on LiveJornal (and later moved everything over to Dreamwidth, but that’s another story). These days I mostly keep Dreamwidth for book and movie reviews, but in those early days my blogs were much more … Continue reading →

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A Visit to the British Museum

Posted on July 30, 2019

As I said in my last blog I was down in London for the Science for Fiction course and T and I stayed over an extra day to visit the British Museum. It’s mightily impressive both for its collections and … Continue reading →

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Science for Fiction 2019

Posted on July 16, 2019

Science For Fiction is an annual event organised by Dr. David Clements at Imperial College, London. It’s a series of lectures by scientists at the cutting edge of their field, specifically aimed at writers. (Unsurprisingly a load of Science Fiction … Continue reading →

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Book Browsing

Posted on July 2, 2019

This is a revamp of a post from 2013, updated The tor.com blog had a feature on book browsing back in September 2013 and it prompted this original post, reminding me that I so very rarely got to browse real … Continue reading →

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For the Love of Prequels – A guest post by Gail Z. Martin

Posted on June 27, 2019

One of the tricky parts of telling a story is knowing where to start. The beginning of the interesting part isn’t always the place to start the main tale. That’s especially true when the main story is truly epic in … Continue reading →

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Submission, Rejection, and my Coping Strategies

Posted on June 18, 2019

I’ve always written. I started my first novel when I was fifteen. (It was dire, and I never finished, but I loved writing it.) It took me years to actually tell anyone I wrote, and even more years before I … Continue reading →

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NASA’s Free Photo Library

Posted on June 4, 2019

NASA has released its whole photo library, complete with a searchable database, and made all its images free for public use. Yes, their entire collection of images, sounds, and video is now available. I can’t begin to tell you how … Continue reading →

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Read the first chapter of Silverwolf

Posted on May 21, 2019

You can read the first chapter of Winterwood (Book 1 of the Rowankind trilogy) here. Silverwolf Book 2 of the Rowankind Trilogy by Jacey Bedford (Published by DAW, USA) Chapter One Happy Ever Afters Deep in the Old Maizy Forest, … Continue reading →

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