Steve Cook Fiction has moved!

My writing, podcasts and news can now be found at stevecookfiction.com so please update your favourite!

Many thanks,

-Steve

Avast, Ye Airships! Anthology

I'm very proud to announce that today is the release date for the Steampunk anthology 'Avast! Ye Airships!' which features a story by me, 'The Clockwork Dragon'!

"In a daring history that never was, pirates roam the skies instead of the seas. Fantastical airships sail the clouds on both sides of the law. Within these pages, you will find stories of pirates and their prey with a few more pragmatic airships thrown in. With stories ranging from Victorian skies to an alien invasion, there is something for everyone in these eighteen tales of derring-do!"

I am incredibly excited to be a part of this, and you can purchase the anthology here or here for just $3.99/£2.59!

Pocket Fiction - My Setup

How I Record Pocket Fiction

I’ve gone up in the world as far as podcasting is concerned; I’ve made my own recording studio. It’s not much, but it didn’t cost me much either. Most importantly, the quality of the recordings I’ve made has gone up, to the point where I’m wondering if I want to re-record the last couple of poor-quality episodes.

Here’s a photo of my set-up:

The mic is a Samson Q2U, seen here with an iPad mini

The ‘studio’ itself is a nice little walk-in cupboard we’ve got under the stairs. I’ve cleared it to the point where I can stand in it. The printer lives there, among a hundred other things, and on top of that is my recording booth.

Not pictured: The cats that hassled the foam the entire time.

I started with a box – I got lucky, and found one that exactly fitted the measurements of the space. I probably should have a smaller box, but I couldn’t resist buying one that fitted so perfectly.

I bought 10 squares of sound-proofing foam from eBay. I spent a while comparing the different sorts, but I couldn’t find any definitive proof that, at the standard I’m working to, a more expensive foam would yield a better result. I wasted a fair amount of time sticking it in with tape, then super glue, before finally shelling out £14 for a can of spray-adhesive. In a side note, there is a lumber shop in Brockley that sells everything. Like, everything you could ever want. Ever.

With the box lined, I put my microphone in one corner, leaving plenty of room for whatever else I needed. My laptop does fit in there, but it’s much easier to leave it out on the side. Instead, I take my wife’s iPad in there. If I transfer whatever I’m reading onto it, I have a backlit screen behind the microphone that I can read from.

The last bit of physical kit was a pop-guard. By far the most irritating thing was editing out all the plosive sounds – p sounds that ‘pop’ in the recording. I looked online; they were about £3, and I nearly bought one. Then I came across a tutorial that demonstrated how to make my own, pointing out that the part most likely to wear out (the material, not the ring) can’t be replaced on one that you buy. So £3 might be good for six months, but then it’s another £3, and then another. Instead, I used a cross-stitch hoop, a £1 pair of tights, a £1 jubilee clip and a length of stiff wire to make my own pop-guard. It works like a dream. No more plosives!

Software was next. I’m blessed that I’ve got a Mac here, really, as the second-to-most-recent version of GarageBand includes a Podcast template. I’ve got some fiddling to do to ensure that it sounds the best it can, but that’s a good place to start.

And that’s it! I’ve had the microphone for over six months now, and that was by far the most expensive piece, coming in at about £80. The box was £13, the foam was £6, the pop-guard maybe cost around £10 or less. GarageBand is free, as is iMovie (which I use to port the podcasts to my YouTube channel.

I hope this was useful!

Deep In Thought 2

The second half of the flash fiction Deep In Thought, also available on my podcast, Pocket Fiction!

Writing ‘Deep In Thought’ went the usual way my mind works, which was ‘Here is a theme. How can I twist the meaning of the sentence to make it about something oblique?’ It’s by far not the first time I’ve done it. Playing with words is a favourite pastime of mine, and I’m always looking for anagrams, codes, Spoonerisms, hidden meanings and words-written-backwards (pretty much any time I see a name, like Mr Radnor, I’ll read it backwards in case it’s important. 99% of the time it’s not.)

Deep In Thought is one of those. It’s about someone deep in thoughts... someone else’s thoughts.

The skimmer flew on. Now that he was inside the long and gently curving tube, Jerod gunned the engine. It was an artefact of the visualisation, he knew; pushing further into the neuron had shrunk his skimmer down, to the point where the journey was taking far longer than it should have, but it was the only way his mind could make sense of it all. Either that, or Ramona’s mind was resisting, taking more of an active role in the simulation.

The axon tunnel ended abruptly, opening up to another large space, this one roughly ovoid. 

Deep In Thought 1

I’ve been writing quite a lot recently, since I left full-time teaching, and among other things I’ve revisited the 100 themes. This was a deviantArt initiative, giving you 100 things to write about as writing prompts. I’m going to start chewing through them; I’d done 51 before I stopped, so 49 more to go!

Here’s the first half of #52, which is also the text for this week’s and next week’s Pocket Fiction podcast; watch this space in a week’s time for the second half.

052 – Deep In Thought

It was mostly dark when Jerod opened his eyes. He was on a bench seat in the front of a skimmer, looking at the cramped dashboard with its softscreens displaying dials for speed and fuel, its cupholder, the little trophy girl with her hula skirt rocking drunkenly from side to side; even the little lead-glass laser sculpture of a brain he’d stuck on with sticky tack, a memento from his first ex.  The main control panel was alight, its sepulchral glow illuminating only the barest edges of everything. He ran his hands over the plastic fascia, feeling in its ruts and scratches a wealth of memories. There was the tiny smooth circle where his dropped cigarette had melted it; they’d been at an open-air concert, just Alice and him, and the touch of her lips on his was a welcome distraction. The music had been terrible, but at least it was free. In the darkness, Jerod smiled sadly. It hadn’t lasted. The sweet nothings became arguments. He was working long hours, on the fast track to make commander. She accused him of having an affair; the argument had escalated, and she’d threatened to get out while he was driving. He’d pulled over, of course, and that was that.

His earpiece crackled, breaking into his thoughts. “Commander, are you in?” The voice was female, all business.

Keeping A Secret

I wrote ‘Keeping a Secret’ after doing a bit of research into coding information into human DNA for another project. I’m writing a short story that I would like to submit to the BBC’s Short Story Competition, and I stumbled across this new article:

Clicky clicky linky!

It was the last line that really brought this story into view. I read that and thought, ‘Damn, that’d make an excellent story.’

053 – Keeping A Secret

“Well now,” the gang leader said. “I think you have some explaining to do.”

Like a shark circling its prey, Dragon Head Liu moved into my field of vision. We were in the only lit part of the warehouse, a circle of light shed by the single bare bulb that showed me little more than the Triad leader’s massive shadow. Other figures waited just beyond the light. I could hear them breathing, moving around. There was some sort of incense burning, sickly-sweet.

I moistened my cracked lips, tasting blood from where his ring had struck me. “I have the information you sent me for.”

“Give it to me.” His voice was deep, heavily accented.

“It’s safe. Secure.”

“Where?”

“Encoded into my skin.” I held my breath. Would they believe me?

The King's Thief

I have snow to thank for the fact that I’m aspiring to be a writer at all. In my second year of teaching, we lived opposite a Starbucks that was never very busy at the best of times. It was a great place to go and write; quiet conversation, background music, first-name-terms with the manager and the benefits of having a ‘regular’ drink. (Venti hazelnut latte, extra shot – not my favourite any more, sadly!)

The first week of January, I was ready to go back to work. My first term had been one of dizzying highs and hellish lows, but I’d rested and planned and resourced, and I was ready to go back. And then it snowed. We’re not great at snow in the United Kingdom; I saw headlines today in the newspapers that said things like ‘SIX INCHES OF SNOW MAY PLUNGE UK INTO CHAOS’. Now, there’s all sorts of jokes I could make about six inches of cold, hard chaos, but let’s suffice to say that in 2008 it snowed enough to close the school at which I was working.

I was totally ready to be creative, flexible, all that stuff... and all that energy just kind of backfired. Most shops didn’t really open. I’d got some games to play, but even that palled after a while. It was a brief window in my life when I wasn’t playing an MMO, so I didn’t even have Final Fantasy or World of Warcraft to fall back on. So I started writing.

It had some good world-elements. There was a race of people who were part-tree, with glowing green orbs instead of eyes, called Sylvans. There was a race of centaurs, called centaari, and a steampunk pedipulator that I’d actually forgotten about until I looked it up just now. In an homage to Metal Gear Solid 4, there were some awesome Banshees, women with emotional connections to Kaliss who were magically programmed to hunt him down and kill him. They had brass domes that completely covered their heads and rang like a bell with their constant screaming. There was a convoluted plot that involved the main character, Kaliss, pretending to be something he wasn’t in order to steal a fabulous gem, but secretly he was working for the king so that he didn’t get hanged. That influenced the title: The King’s Thief.

Trouble is, it was a bit crap. Kaliss had no character of which to speak. He was docile; people took him captive, or knocked him unconscious, meaning that he was lead around from place to place. He was boring and predictable, and completely devoid of use. Just recently, though, I think I’ve found a way to resurrect The King’s Thief, so I’m sorely tempted to plot it out and use it as my next novel. It’s cringeworthy to look back over old stuff – did I really write that? – but it will be useful in the long run.

Noctis Point - Edits

I've been doing a lot of editing recently. Noctis Point, the book I wrote for last year's NaNoWriMo, is finished; I wrote the last chapter in the first week or so of January. I didn't want to shelve this for forever before I started editing, partly because I need to justify not working full-time right now, but mainly because I want to see Noctis Point published.

I've finished the first round of edits; general sense, continuity, consistency. And I tore through it in about a week and a half. That's pretty fast, for me. My wife was kind enough to print it out, and I did the edits in pencil. Sure makes you feel like a 'real writer' when you're sat in a coffee shop with a folder containing your writing.

I transcribed those edits into the Scrivener file. (Scrivener is brilliant, and I use it for anything longer than a piece of flash fiction. It's just a nice program to write in, more than anything, but it's got some lovely organisational touches that appeal to my love of over-filing things!) With another printout in hand, I'm now going through the next stage of edits: Reading it out loud.

Sue and I share books at bedtime. We've been reading 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (lists, polyps and tubercules); We did The Player Of Games, which I've just realised we mostly finished early last year... 20,000 Leagues has taken forever. We've done The Hobbit too. But reading Noctis Point out loud is a uniquely embarrassing experience, in a weird way. I want to do it, but every time I do I find a dozen things wrong with every chapter that I've missed out. It's extremely useful, no doubt aboutit, and I know that what Sue says will be insightful and useful. But it's still something that I need to get used to: baring my work, in a potentially unfinished state, to the world. Because later this year, as soon as possible in fact, I'm going to be looking for ways to get it published.

So far, it's going well.

Pocket Fiction is back!

I've started doing Pocket Fiction updates again, with a view to uploading a more finely-polished product each Friday. I'm using different software again, something simpler: Garage Band '11, which is actually a downgrade. Turns out they took out the Podcasting functionality in the most recent version of Garage Band, and it's pretty darned good. I've had a play around with it, and I think it's generally better for me.

I've also made a recording booth in my downstairs walk-in cupboard; it's basically a plastic box with some foam in it. I've also made my own pop-filter out of a pair of tights and an embroidery hoop... it's pretty good! Didn't get a single plosive in the two short stories I recorded today, so it's obviously doing its job!

Also! I'm going to take a break from recording episodes of Poisonroot, for two reasons. One, it's difficult to jump-on at any point other than the beginning. Two, some of the writing is actually a little shaky, and I'm writing better stuff now. If, at some future point, people ask me to do the rest of it, I will record the other half.

For now, the podcast is available on the iTunes Podcast store, on YouTube and on my Tumblr. It'll be updated every week now that there's absolutely no excuse.

I'm actively looking for other authors who would like their work read out. As a guide, 1600 words is about ten minutes talking time, so if you've got something of about that length and would like it narrated, then fully linked through my blog, Tumblr, podcast and YouTube channel, drop me a line!

Final Fantasy XIV - Ceremony of Eternal Bonding

The Ceremony of Eternal Bonding between Kenshin Tenshi and Scarlet Moon was a quiet affair. There were four of us in the congregation, watching as Kenshin and Scarlet exchanged rings, drank from chalices and posed for screenshots – not photos, because Eternal Bonding is the ingame wedding ceremony for characters in Final Fantasy XIV, the MMORPG.

The Sanctum of the Twelve

Kenshin, real name Mark, was impressed by the depth of the immersion in the experience. “One word: Amazing. The quest has a rich deep history in it that makes it special, and the places they take you really make you see the game's world for its beauty.” To even get to the ceremony, your characters have to obtain Promise Wristlets, craft or purchase the rings and visit twelve locations in the game, each one tied to one of the pantheon of gods. “We sometimes stopped in the middle of it to take in the scenery,” Mark said. “They really did a good job.”

Friends you've invited are part of your customised cutscene.

Final Fantasy XIV’s stance on weddings has been refreshing; there are no restrictions on gender or species for Eternal Bond. In fact, the only criteria you need to meet is being on each others’ friend lists ingame. Mark and Scarlet, real name Mackenzie, hope that bonding their characters will deepen their relationship. “For me, it’s a sign of connection to the people on the game, whether they be your love interest or a very dear friend," Mark said.

Of course, nothing comes for free. Final Fantasy XIV has a healthy subscription, starting at £7.69/month, and devotees wishing for a more intricate Eternal Bonding Ceremony can opt to pay for it. The Gold level, giving you options for background music, clothing, a special two-person mount and gifts to give to your guests, will set you back $20, while the Platinum level, which adds another set of clothes for the bride and different decorations for the Sanctum, clocks in at $40.

“It’s an MMO. There is going to come a time where they will ask for more money besides subscriptions,” Mark points out. “The price isn’t bad either, since even attendees get something. For stuff like marriage or extra mounts? Yeah, I think it’s fair.”

The rings can be bought or hand-crafted for the personal touch.

“I think paying for content helps to get stuff like the Eternal Bonding. I mean, it kind of gives them a reason to develop something like this,” Mackenzie adds. “I chose the standard pack, but if I could, I would have chosen a higher tier.”

By far the sweetest things, available to all tiers, are the new embrace emote, and the rings which allow you to teleport to directly in front of your partner – just right for kissing distance.

For my character, Atys, it was a chance to dress up in my smartest suit and cheer on my comrades-in-arms, people I’ve fought alongside, and welcome them into the next stage of their friendship. And of course, just like in real life, to loom somewhere at the back of wedding photos.

Atys (centre back) is scarily like me in real life...

More CYAO - Decision trees

Here's a sample of the decision tree for my CYAO:

It's pretty complicated already... and this is at a point when the hero is only just getting to Dragonstone Keep, the main area for the game. It's going to be pretty complex by the end. Those black ones are deaths; four chances to be dead already, and we're barely out of the starting blocks. I don't know about you, but my favourite bit of the CYAO games I read as a child was reading all the deaths. Some just copped out, with a 'You are dead' script, but the best ones were a bit more flavourful. The larger one at the bottom is a placeholder for something like this:

"A goblin club catches you on the back of the head. The sudden pain is quickly replaced by a warm, wet feeling, and you sink into darkness. You awake hours later, your shoulders burning in agony. As you reach over to see what's wrong, you realise your arms have been removed. The smell of sweet meat cooking finds your nostrils. A goblin looks up from where he is sucking the flesh off your fingers, growls something in a guttural language and grins, displaying a mouthful of fangs. You are (mostly) dead."

Grisly, fun and something worth going through the decision tree for? Or would most people see the words 'You are dead' in bold and immediately flip back? I can't think that both Sue and I are alone in wanting to know all the gory details...

Choose Your Own Adventures!

It's ok as long as you kept your thumb in the page, right?

I remember whiling away the hours reading through the Ian Livingstone/Steve Jackson Fighting Fantasy books. They had green borders, wonderful cover illustrations, and the ending was almost always at paragraph 300. But I don't remember ever actually 'playing' one of them. Just reading through and assuming I'd won the fights, because it was fun to seek out all of the terrible deaths.

Then there were three stand-out series of video-game tie-in gamebooks, for Sonic the Hedgehog, the Mario Bros and Lemmings. I'm actually genuinely amazed that the first two have wikipedia pages, and that there were only two Lemmings gamebooks. I didn't just play those, I used to sit and trace the images. I can still draw a Lemming as a result of that book.

As a writing exercise, I'm trying my hand at creating a CYOA book, mostly inspired by those gamebooks of my childhood. It's complicated; thanks to this article by Karen Woodward, I'm using SimpleMind+ app on the iPad, which makes flowcharts fun and interesting to look at, and also simplifies it somewhat. I'm genuinely interested in inkle, a software for making interactive stories that are just a bit better than CYOA, as they feature sound, colour visuals and so on. I'm really interested to note that there are fighting fantasy games on the Nintendo DS and might see if I can check that out on my own 3DS.

Watch this space; I'll put the decision tree up as soon as it's finished.

I hope you had a great Christmas and that your new year has got off to a nice start!

Murder Matches - With Nana Li!

I've been wanting to blog about this for a while, but it's only just been properly finished - just in time for the weekend!

Murder Matches

by Nana Li and Steve Cook

Nana's idea for Murder Matches was a really lovely one to work with; a mystery in eight parts, designed to be picked up and read in any order. Each one needed to have a unique voice; they also needed to provide a series of red herrings, motives and gossip, while still dropping hints as to how the death of the Colonel actually occurred.

It was a really lovely challenge, and I hope people have fun reading them, and enjoy owning the spectacular artwork by Nana. If you're anything like me, the pictures will give each character an accent in you head as you're reading, as they did when I was writing.

Nana Li will be exhibiting at Thought Bubble this coming weekend, sharing a table with John Aggs in New Dock Hall, table 40.

Flash fiction set in Koru

Koru, one of the five countries that make up the continent of Ehrian. Although, that said, one that I'm thinking of changing the name of, mainly because that makes the spoken language 'Koruan', which is little too close to 'Korean'. Maybe 'Korun' works, or 'Kor'. 'Caw, listen to me speak my language'. Bleh.

Anyway! A bit of dunking in the politics of Koru.

General Sun-Ji looked out upon his empire, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. The sun was setting, painting everything in shades of blood; the warmth of the day had already begun to sink into the coolness of evening, and a faint mist was rising from the reflection pools in the shadows far below.

His son, still standing at the desk a few feet behind him, cleared his throat gently. “Father,” the young man said, “The staff are still in revolt. We must do something.” His plea echoed around the hard walls and floor, sounding empty.

“I have already put measures in place,” Sun-Ji said. “Soldiers have set up a perimeter, and the workers are being contained.” He half-turned and graced his son with a smile. “You worry too much, Mako.”

“They will fight.”

“They will die, then,” Sun-Ji said, turning back to the sunset.  Even at fifty, his back was straight and his shoulders broad. He closed his eyes and listened. Whoever had designed the Imperial Office had known his audience. Every movement, however slight, was amplified. There was the sound of a step, almost too tiny to hear, and the susurration of fabric moving against skin. The slightly uneven sound of Mako’s breathing, and underneath it, something out of place, off to the right.

Teaching Lows and Podcast Highs

Almost exactly as I predicted, term started and I dropped completely off the radar. Not a single blog post since September 1st, when term started. The truth is that the school I'm working at now has very high expectations and is also expecting the Inspectors any time soon. That translates to very late nights, working at the weekend, and generally not wanting to do anything other than vegetate in the evenings.

That's not entirely true. I play a bit of Final Fantasy XIV; it's fast becoming an escape from what I do, but this week is a prime example. The first time I was able to get on was last night, so it's not exactly taking up all my free time!

I've found time to do some writing. As well as continuing to work with Patrice Aggs, I'm collaborating with Nana Li on a project which should be finished soon. But it's not as much writing as I'd want to do, sadly.

I do plan to do NaNoWriMo, my second one this year, and the plan is to write Noctis Point during that month. Whether I actually manage to get the time is a question I can't answer right now. Work's getting busier and I'm getting more tired as we crawl closer to Christmas.

However, one thing I have managed to do is release a podcast every week, and a video on YouTube! I've yet to garner much interest, but that's to be expected. I think it's fairly niche, but hopefully eventually I'll just have been doing it so long that I get watchers/listeners through attrition. It's also incredibly handy; it's allowed me to spot several mistakes in Poisonroot, and also realise that I really don't like the first ten chapters or so. I should have rewritten them. They're a bit pants. Luckily, it picks up after that, almost exactly at the point where I started writing it as my NaNo two years ago. Funny, that.

I have found time to do some reading, namely 'Endgame: The Calling' by James Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton. It's the first part of an ARG (alternate reality game) sort of thing where there is a real prize of $500,000 in gold coins. Think Kit Williams' Masquerade or The Merlin Mystery (both of which, I know, date me slightly!). So far, it's fairly impenetrable to me, but that's because I just read it through like a normal book. If I really want to go for it, I'll need to sit with a notebook and actually try and solve some of the puzzles. There's a book signing next week in Waterstones, Piccadilly; I plan to ask the author why it's written in the present tense, which I find a little difficult to parse!

Hopefully it won't be another six weeks until I update this!

Back to work

I'm actually back at my day-job now, teaching. Currently the children aren't in, but there's more than enough work to do, so writing is taking a back-seat. I've recorded another two chapters of Poisonroot for upload, so I'm not totally letting it go, and I'm going to have a look at my NaNo from LAST November, edit it up and release those stories as well. But maybe not at the same time as Poisonroot.

My 'writing' day is now Friday, though I'll try to get some in all through the week; this Friday, though, I'm going on a knife-making course, which Sue got me for my birthday! It's incredibly exciting and I'm sure I'll have photos to show off come this Friday evening.

Whisp's Tale

This is the last of the Paragon Path tales that I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!

The journey back to Fjornik was a quiet one, everyone wrapped up in their own thoughts. Only the rhythmic beat of the horses’ hooves disturbed the silence, a silence which had been hard won.

Faces flashed before her eyes. Maran. Ena. Doe. Even Vile, she thought with a snort. He was a bastard, but he didn’t deserve to die like that. The last weeks weighed heavily on her, and she knew the others were feeling it too.

“We won, didn’t we? We’re heroes.” she said aloud, more to herself than anything else. 

Toofi looked round. “It doesn’t feel like it, though,” she said quietly.

Whisp nodded and fixed her eyes back on the road. Then why do I feel so insignificant?

Gods. Demons. And she just a human. She narrowed her eyes. It was clear that the monsters of this land were too vast to be easily hunted, cornered and slain.

Ostardva's Tale

This is one of the Paragon Path tales I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. As a bit of back story to this one, we left Ostardva's story hanging at the point when Tiamat, the evil dragon goddess, had offered him a place as her paladin. We kept the suspense up until the very end of Heroic Tier about whether his Paragon path would be as an evil paladin or as a righteous one, or turning his back on the path of a paladin altogether. Enjoy!

“No.”

The word echoed around the cavernous chamber. Ostardva, stood on one of Tiamat’s long, sinuous necks, stared defiantly at the five immense dragon heads, arrayed in front of him.

The central one, the red one, started backwards a little, as if surprised.

“No? Just like that? You disappoint me, child of Arkhosia.” The five heads spoke as one, a woman’s voice but with a hint of growling bass in it. The sound was like a hammer-blow, every word a storm to be weathered.

“Just like that,” Ostardva said, holding the red head’s gaze.

“I offer you power.”

“I don’t need power.” Ostardva felt a small flame kindle in his chest.

“I offer you privilege.”

“Privilege must be earned.” The flame grew brighter, and Ostardva began to remember how it felt to be righteous.

The heads began to move closer in unison. “I offer you the respect of your companions. As an arbiter of a god, they would see the worth in you.”

“You offer me nothing that I cannot gain on my own.”

Futch's Tale

This is one of the Paragon Path tales I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!

Futch frowned as he walked away from the others. No-one seemed in a particularly celebratory mood; they had won the war, beaten the Lich, but at a high cost. Hundreds had died, thousands perhaps. Ostardva, Gieve, the others on the airship.

Maran.

He gritted his teeth and clenched his fist, fighting the surge of frustration that threatened to boil over. To have been so far away, and not able to do anything, or even know about it... It wasn’t fair. He wandered through the streets, barely aware of the direction his feet were taking him, lost in thought.

Finally he stood in front of the southern gate, looking out over the plains. The gently sloping path that lead to Varikause and beyond lay in front of him and, with one backwards glance at Fjornik, he shifted.

Faster than the wind, faster than thought, he ran, and as he ran he allowed the sheer joy of it to carry away his anger and sadness. They can never know this, he thought to himself, never see the world through scent and hear the smallest sound, never run through the wilds on four paws like this.