Recent content by Mad Swede

My advice as a published author? Just write. Don't worry too much about the themes in the story, or what layers there are in the story. As The Dark One wrote, if you care enough about (or are driven/motivated enough by) something then these will come over in your writing. You may not give this...

No, but Bayaz is. He is shown to use magic, personal and political manipulation and (in the later stories) technology to win his battles. But the way his magic work is never explained. Or we could take Jadis in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. All we're told about her magic is that she...

Oh dear. And the scammer doesn't even have their own (fake) profile right. Comes from Chattanooga and lives in one of the most exclusive parts of London? Even I know London better than that...

You don't need a detailed explanation of the "how" to show this. Tolkien makes it quite clear how tired Gandalf is when they meet the Balrog in Moria, and Joe Abercrombie also shows how tired Bayaz is after helping Jezal to win the fnecing tournament. Readers will accept something like that, a...

Do you need to explain the magic system? Here I'm thinking of legends, folk tales and myth. It's very rare that any of these explain how magic works or why it works. It just does. I sometimes think we as authors are guilty of excessive world building, we seem to think we have to explain...

Does NUMLOCK need to follow the PAGE DOWN to the cellar? If there's wine down there it might be the best place to meet the END...

My editor has a somewhat jaundiced view of literary fiction. In her more cynical moments she says that literary fiction is whatever the current most influential literary critics define it to be (by which she means they decide whether a work is literary fiction or not). When she's feeling less...

I wonder how much thought you've given to characterisation. Even supposedly normal characters need to be well developed, that's what makes them interesting to the readers. If you're sitting there wondering how to make your POV characters more interesting then I'd suggest you need to develop them...

OK, the best paying English language magazines are those that used to be regarded as qualifying markets for SFWA membership. That includes Asimovs, F&SF, Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Strange Horizons. You could also consider BFS Horizons, although they don't pay as well. Be warned...

You know you are a writer when you see some stranger on the train reading one of your books.

No, I don't recall Tolkien saying anything about the Ents and their physiology at all. All we really know is that they are long lived, can move very quickly, drink something as some sort of food, and that they don't use swords, axes or knives when they fight. So do I, and it's something I aim...

Speaking from personal combat experience I wouldn't recommend any film for it's accurate depiction of warfare of any sort. The reason is that combat is so very personal, in terms of emotions, intensity and awareness of the wider situation. The tension, the fear, the uncertainty, the hope, the...

I'm sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about. Trust me when I tell you that some of the large scale scirmishes I saw in Africa were fought with old style weapons (swords, knives, clubs) using some very old style tactics. There is very little difference between a fight like that and a...

No. Your opinion on warfare is subjective, since you yourself have only read other peoples accounts and analyses of warfare. There is also no way of making an objective analysis of a fantasy battle involving ents, dwarves, orcs and elves (or indeed any alien race in SF), since to do so without a...

I've seen several different definitions of epic fantasy over the years, but what they all have in common is that the story should have a very large scale with something significant at stake. I don't set out to write stories like that, but some of my readers think that when taken together my...