Kit Holmes is a singer-songwriter and virtuoso guitarist. This is an interview I did with her in February 2011, for Acoustic Magazine, when she had just released her third studio album, Driving Into The Blue.

How does this new album differ from your previous two?

On this new album we’ve still got the same band, and we’ve still got the wonderful Danny Thompson on bass, Pat Illingworth on drums and Allan Greenwood on other guitars. We recorded at home and at a local studio called The Chairworks, and then we took it to Abbey Road to be mastered. All three albums were mastered at Abbey Road, but this time around we did experiment a little more. The first track, ‘Kitty’s Blues’, was recorded in mono, which is a little bit different than anything we’ve done before. We were trying to get a more old-fashioned feel to it. Also, we experimented with reverb. Usually you put the reverb on afterwards. You listen to the song and decide what reverb you would like. But we decided we’d record ‘Blues For Muse’ with the reverb on it, to give more of a live sound.

I’d like Driving Into The Blue to be received well. Obviously it’s the third album, so I’m a little bit further down the line. The thing that differs about this one is that it has a little more of an aspect of fun to it. A few of the songs on there, like ‘Kinda Girl’, ‘Roundabout’ and ‘Arriving At The Station’ have a fun, tongue-in-cheek quality to them. So although we follow the same general format and have the same band, this one’s a little lighter in mood.

Continue reading “Kit Holmes Interview – Feb 2011″

I dislike the term “aspiring writer”. You see it a lot in people’s social media profiles, but to me it seems noncommittal. Either you write, or you don’t. And if you do, please have the guts to say so. If you want to be a writer, don’t wait to be asked. Nobody’s going to say, “Hey kid, would you like to be a writer?”. You have to become one all by yourself. Start thinking and acting like one. Say to yourself, “I will look at the world the way a writer looks at the world. I will react to things the way a writer would react. When people ask me what I do, I will tell them I’m a writer. And when it is time to write, I will write like a writer.” Life’s too short to fuck about wasting time. Internalise the identity. Don’t be a person with a job who writes in their spare time; be a writer who has a job to pay the bills while they learn their craft.

Next, convince yourself you can write, and then be confident enough to get some words on paper. And if your first attempts suck (and they probably will), have the balls to stick with it: keep learning, keep refining, keep improving. There are no short cuts; you have to sit down and do the work. You have to have the confidence to produce a finished manuscript, and the humility to take criticism from readers, agents and editors. You have to be arrogant enough to believe that the world wants to hear what you have to say; but if you’re too arrogant, nobody will want to work with you. Believe in yourself, but not to the exclusion of all else. Believe that you are a professional writer, and act like one. And what do professional writers do? They write. They put the work in. They strive to improve, to make every story they write better than the one they wrote before.

Aspiring writer? I’m an aspiring millionaire, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever be one. Take yourself seriously. You might be unpublished, but if you believe in your heart that you’re a writer, say so. Declare to the world that that is what you are, and act like it. Don’t wait to be asked. Find your calling. Find a way to make it work. You won’t get a second chance.

New writers are often given the following piece of advice: “Write what you know”. In other words, concentrate on the things you’ve observed and the things you understand about the world around you. If you’re a former journalist wanting to write a mystery, make your main character a journalist; if you’re a coal miner, write about the dangers and camaraderie of life down the pit.

Such first-hand experience can add verisimilitude to your fiction; but what happens if you’re trying to write genre fiction? What if you’re trying to write about a future society so far removed in time that they barely remember the present day? What if you’re trying to write about a supernatural horror preying on a group of cave divers, or a lone warrior on a quest across a mythic fantasy kingdom? In science fiction, fantasy and horror, characters are routinely put in situations in which it would be impossible for the writer to gain any direct experience. How then can you convincingly fill in these scenes using only your imagination?

1. Identify the parts of the scene you do know.

People for example. Your characters should be recognisably human, each with their own distinct personalities and foibles. No matter how fantastical the situation, you can base your characters on your own experiences of people and the way they interact with one another.

Sometimes when writing fiction, it’s hard to keep a consistent mental image of all the characters involved, and mistakes start to creep in. You get muddled and describe your hero as having blue eyes in chapter two and green ones in chapter six. To get around this problem, I suggest casting your story in the same way you’d cast a movie. Go through magazines and pick out photos of actors, celebrities, models, or “real” people to represent your characters, and stick them on the wall behind your computer monitor. Not only will this help you keep their physical descriptions consistent as you write, it’ll also help you visualise your scenes better, and you may even find the pictures suggest things you can work into the story to give your characters added depth, such as facial tics, a preference for a particular style of clothes, or an unusual mannerism, such as a raised eyebrow or twisted smile.

2. Draw on incidents from your own life and try to map them onto the situations in which your characters find themselves.

I’ve never been involved in a gun battle, for instance, but I have been paintballing. I know what it’s like to hunker down uncomfortably behind a tree stump with gravel digging into my knees, to run out of ammo at a crucial moment, and to take a high-velocity pellet to the stomach, head or leg.

It’s easier to write about characters in extreme situations if you’ve had a few adventures of your own. In my time, I’ve also flown a light aircraft; been punched in the face; crawled through potholes; kayaked down white water rapids; jumped off a bridge; taken fencing and shooting lessons; had my heart broken; swum in Loch Ness; and climbed a number of mountains. I know what it’s like to be tired and wet and cold; I know what it’s like to lose someone; and what it feels like to break a bone. Drawing on these experiences can add authenticity to the most fantastical situations, by providing the small details and observations that really bring a scene to life.

3. Know your setting.

In genre writing, it helps if you know your setting inside out. If it’s the flight deck of a space shuttle, research all you can; find images online; try to find a simulator, or at least set foot on the flight deck of an airliner. If it’s an invented city, then make sure you know everything there is to know about it. Visit London or Amsterdam or Barcelona and look at the old buildings. Use Google Maps to “walk” through the streets of cities in Japan, America and Europe. Get the flavour of as many cities as possible, and take the bits you like to furnish your creation. Draw maps. Immerse yourself to the point where you can see your city in your mind’s eye and hear, smell, and feel its hustle and bustle around you.

As my first novel, Silversands, was set a distant planet, I spent months assembling notes about the planet’s climate, orbit, geography and seasons. I researched anaerobic bacteria, magnetic weaponry and weird terrestrial sea life. I got to know the characters, their back stories and personalities. I even based the craggy landscape on my childhood memories of Pembrokeshire, with its plunging rocky cliffs and yellow-tipped gorse bushes. By the time I finished writing the novel, I had an entire box full of background notes, sketches and maps. Most of that information didn’t make it into the finished story, but it played a vital part in helping me convincingly visualise and communicate the setting.

Of course, I’m not downplaying the importance of imagination. A strong imagination is one of the genre writer’s most essential tools, and without it, you may as well be writing nonfiction. In order to write genre fiction, you need the audacity to make bold leaps into the unknown and turn the everyday world on its head. My argument is that if you want to lend authenticity to your flights of fancy, you need to do your research, observe the people around you, and have your own adventures.

[This article originally appeared on www.writetodone.com]

As the title of this post suggest, Fantasy Book Review has selected Ack-Ack Macaque as one of its books of the month for May, and awarded it a stonking 9.8 out of 10.

This is a short interview I did for Exposure TV, the TV channel of the University of Glamorgan, run and operated by media students. They interviewed me as a novelist and graduate of the university.

I found this quote from Hemingway:

“For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.”

My interpretation:

“Aim high. Shoot for perfection. Try to articulate the inexpressible. And with luck, you will.”

A great new review of Ack-Ack Macaque from Parallaxed, an online literary journal based in the States.

“I also admit that when reading a novel written from several perspectives, there is a temptation to skip over the more boring of narrators. Fortunately, this was not a problem while reading Ack-Ack Macaque, because while the protagonists share a crucial similarity (I won’t spoil what it is), each individual voice is unique and equally fascinating. There is, in fact, never a moment you want to skip ahead, because every turn of the page may present an unexpected twist or take you somewhere new, and often that somewhere is about to be blown up. Which brings me to my next thought on the writing: The action. Is is brilliant. It is powerful, fluid, and intense. … Ack-Ack Macaque is a highly readable book that moves at a remarkable pace, yet maintains a level of complexity to satisfy readers of more serious Science Fiction. If you are looking for an entertaining read, one that is engaging, effectively written, and just damned good fun, go pick up Ack-Ack Macaque today.”

Read the full review here.

The new free supplement from Morpheus Tales contains and interview with me, and a review of Ack-Ack Macaque.

“I wouldn’t be a writer if I didn’t love the process of writing. Some days it can be slow and frustrating, but on other days the words seem to fly onto the page almost faster than I can type them, and it feels like riding a tall and beautiful wave. It can be exhilarating.”

You can read the whole thing online, here.

SF Reviews.Net gives Ack-Ack Macaque a big thumbs-up, describing the book as a “gloriously outlandish exercise in balls-out, high-octane entertainment”, and saying that:

“What is most pleasing about this book is that what could have been a self-conscious, one-joke tossoff is in fact a smart and impressively layered actioner. Powell presents popular culture, particularly video games and tabloid celebrity worship (especially the UK version of the latter, where, unlike in the States, at least the objects of such public adulation really are royalty), as the unlikely medium through which social change and revolution emerge. And by indulging in the most iconic tropes of pop culture entertainment — structurally, the narrative bears more than a passing resemblance to some classic Bond films — Powell pays them loving homage. The whole thing is just a blast. The smile the title puts on your face will stay there throughout.”

You can read the full review here.