Ladies and gentlemen - we have a release date and a cover! The final book of the Plot Bandits "Trilogy", The Taskmaster, will be coming out on 20th June 2023. :)
The Unachievable Heights of The Chosen One Ah, The Chosen One. That staple of the fantasy world. Destiny’s Child, born under an auspicious star, with a unique birthmark foretelling their glorious fate, generally blessed with a stunning or striking appearance, an unusual eye colour and unexpectedly modest origins for their impressively regal heritage, watched over at a distance by a guardian just waiting for the right moment to reveal their secret power and fated purpose in saving their realms from a lurking evil. Step forward all you fantastical Eriks out there, for you are legion. But as anyone who has read my novels may have guessed, I have a few issues with the trope of The Chosen One. Because as the father of modern fantasy, JRR Tolkien himself dictated, fantasy is escapist but also aspirational. And although his work does have a Chosen One – Aragorn, I’m looking at you – who does his bit extremely well, he isn’t the one who saves the day. That role falls to a couple of v...
The Joy of Tropes As anyone who has read my novels may be aware, I like to play with tropes. I like to try at least to puncture expectations and point out the kind of plots and characters a narrative tends to rely on with big fat signposts. I don’t like to let the obvious and predictable pass by without comment. Sad as it sounds, that’s my idea of fun. ;) But – and here’s the thing – I point them out while trying to adhere to a satisfying narrative structure myself. Stories where the bad guys win and everyone dies horribly do exist, but they aren’t much fun for the audience – there needs to be the escape, the payoff, the triumph in order to leave the reader smiling and satisfied. There needs to be victory over adversity, a price or a heroic sacrifice to make the moment hard earned – an easy victory is no fun either, there has to be some drama or strife. That is what makes a tale worth telling. So while I poke at tropes, oddly enough I don’t actually have that much objection...
My tired old brain has failed me again - I have both forgotten to write a blog this month and had no ideas for one anyway. So I'm doing a Blog Redux on this offering from 2020 about how precious and unique a book is to every reader. :) *** The human imagination is an extraordinary thing, when you stop and think about it. Being as I am not of a scientific bent, I have no idea of the ins and outs of how it can possibly work, how it is that a lump of grey meat inside a wrapping of bone could possibly generate images, ideas, unheard sounds, regurgitate things once seen and create whole new universes out of nothing. Indeed, to be honest, I don’t want to understand how it works - that would destroy the magic. I’m quite happy just to have the means to play in new and never before seen realms in the depths of my own head. But there is another special thing about the imagination – it is unique. It is a strange thing to consider that no one will ever see my characters exactly ...
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