Category Archives: fantasy

The Geography of Words

Posted on August 4, 2020 by

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 by

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

Posted on July 7, 2020 by

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 by

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 by

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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A Moment of Stuckness

Posted on May 19, 2020 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

  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 by

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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Creativity and the laugh-track of my life

Posted on December 3, 2019 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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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Open Submissions for Anthologies – a guest post by Joshua Palmatier

Posted on September 3, 2019 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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 by

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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Milford Writers’ Retreat

Posted on May 7, 2019 by

So here I am, in the wilds of Welsh Wales on a writing retreat organised by Milford SF Writers (of which I am the secretary – so yes, theoretically I organised it myself). The venue is Trigonos, the village is … Continue reading →

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The Long Haul

Posted on April 23, 2019 by

Now, here’s the thing… when you write a trilogy you are in it for the long haul. To all those people who write a single book, I salute you. It’s not easy. It takes dedication and effort. Now imagine you … Continue reading →

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The Truth in Historical Fantasy

Posted on April 9, 2019 by

My Rowankind trilogy: Winterwood, Silverwolf and Rowankind (all out now, published by DAW) is a fantasy set (mostly) in Britain in 1800, 1801 and 1802 respectively. It tells the story of Ross (Rossalinde) Tremayne, cross dressing privateer captain and witch, … Continue reading →

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What I Like to Read, and Why

Posted on March 26, 2019 by

Though I have a large collection of paper books, some of them from my childhood, I mostly read fiction on Kindle these days. It’s not that I prefer electronic to dead tree books, but books are books and it’s the … Continue reading →

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Write What You Know – Kind Of…

Posted on March 12, 2019 by

I nearly died. It was a few years ago, before I got my first book deal, but I was already a writer, if not a published one. I had an anaphylactic reaction, and it happened like this. I developed a … Continue reading →

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Updated Blog Archive: 2013 to 2018

Posted on March 12, 2019 by

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: Star … Continue reading →

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It’s never too late to talk about a book

Posted on February 26, 2019 by

Unless you are lucky enough to live in a city which has good bookshops, or even better, specialist science fiction and fantasy bookshops, your browsing of new SFF titles may be limited. My little local bookshop sadly closed last year, … Continue reading →

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Writing Tip: Using Wordle to highlight overused words

Posted on January 15, 2019 by

Wordle used to be a web-based utility, a web toy that allowed you to paste in a piece of writing to make a word cloud. The more frequently a word appeared in your text, the bigger it appeared in the … Continue reading →

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Looking Back and Looking Forward: 2018 and 2019

Posted on January 1, 2019 by

It just so happens that my alternate Tuesday blog falls on 1st January 2019, so it’s a good time to assess 2018 and see if I can peep into the future to 2019. I’m not sure where 2018 went to. … Continue reading →

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My 2018 Reading

Posted on December 18, 2018 by

It’s getting towards the end of the year and this is the time I usually post a summary of my reading. I’ve kept a booklog since 2009, and oh, how I wish I’d started decades ago. I post my booklog … Continue reading →

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Happy Book Day to Me

Posted on November 27, 2018 by

My new book, ROWANKIND, is out today. WHOO-HOO! It’s my sixth published book, and the third in my Rowankind trilogy, so it represents a milestone. It not only completes my second trilogy, but it means that my published words have … Continue reading →

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Guest Blog. Peter Sutton Answers Five Questions

Posted on November 20, 2018 by

Tell us your biography in three sentences or fewer. My first book: A Tiding of Magpies was shortlisted for best short story collection in the British Fantasy Awards 2017. I’ve since published two novels – Sick City Syndrome: a horror … Continue reading →

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Jacey’s Quick Book Links

Posted on November 16, 2018 by

With the publication of Rowankind just a few days away (27th November), I thought I’d post links to all my books. Obviously the (not-so-hidden) subtext is, go out and buy them, but seriously folks, those advance orders for a new … Continue reading →

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Interrogate Your World – Worldbuilding Questions for Writers

Posted on November 13, 2018 by

I was asked to give a talk on worldbuilding and research at the Escafield SF event in Sheffield on 10th November. I came up with a checklist and promised to post it here for the people who attended. I may … Continue reading →

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Winterwood Chapter One – Read it Here

Posted on November 3, 2018 by

In anticipation of the publication of Rowankind, due on 27th November, the third book in my Rowankind Trilogy, I offer for your delectation, the first chapter of Winterwood. It’s the beginning of the trilogy, Rowankind is the finale – with … Continue reading →

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