Wednesday 31 December 2014

New Reviews Of Hunter No More

I've had some great reviews in the last few months which as they have been appearing on a few different blogs, I decided to post for posterity.

My thanks to all the reviewers who took the time out to read my book and post these reviews:


Hunter No More is a fascinating piece of science-fiction, a novel combining several concepts and crafting them into an engaging story that, although scifi, does sound realistic. The story alternates between the POV of several different characters, giving an all-around experience of what’s happening and the consequences for everyone. In that sense, the book reminded me of Game of Thrones. Different characters tell different parts of the story and in the end you get a well-rounded tale.

The main focus of the story is the battle between humans and artificial intelligence. The story is believable and the characters are engaging. The action is flawless. It starts on the first page and is still going strong by the end. At the same time, the author manages to provide food for thought for the reader, about machine intelligence and what would happen if one day they decide to rule the world. The book features a lot of intrigue and mystery, and so many twists and turns you simply can’t stop reading until you’ve reached the end.

I’d recommend this one to all science-fiction fans and thriller fans.


http://deborahjayauthor.com/2014/09/17/blog-tour-hunter-no-more-by-g-d-tinnams-review-giveaway-ya-sf/


Starting out with a breathless action scene, Tinnams drags the reader by the throat into a world where things are not as straightforward as they initially appear. The panic of the night flight amid rioting is truly heart pounding, and the relief once all are safely on board the escape boat is a welcome breather, even though something is clearly amiss between the two male leads, Roger and Keith.

This is an accomplished piece of writing, and the concepts explored are fascinating and well realised: AIs that wear ‘biotech’ (synthetic human bodies that house their consciousness when they need a physical form other than their space ship), a war between machine minds with human beings as unwitting casualties, and how a random event can put a spanner (or a hammer – read it, you’ll understand) in the works – or perhaps be fortuitous, depending on whose point of view you take.

My small quibble with the book was the – to me – slightly uneven structure. There are 5 viewpoint characters, opening with what seems to be a typical teenager, Samantha, which lured me into thinking this would be a standard YA novel revolving around the teen character. Chapter 2 is from her father, Keith’s viewpoint, and then the story alternates between the two for several chapters before the 3rd person, Josella, is introduced. Fine so far, but then when the action really ramps up (and it does, believe me – the sequences on the Amberjack are mind-blowingly good), Sam is left behind on the planet, and almost half the book takes place without her. This made it feel almost like reading two separate books, and I expected to at least have Sam’s viewpoint again at the very end, to ‘showcase’ the story, but that doesn’t happen, and I felt a tiny bit cheated, not seeing her response to the tragedy in the final showdown.

Having said that, I would still highly recommend this book, for the concepts, the depth of characterisation and the action – well worth the read.

I received this book to review for a blog tour – my opinions were in no way influenced by this.

http://msnoseinabook.com/2014/08/21/blog-tour-book-review-hunter-no-more-by-gd-tinnams/


I had been itching for a good Sci-Fi book to read so when I saw that was going on tour I jumped at the opportunity to read it. Hunter No More is exactly what you want in a Sci Fi read complete with a mechanical species threatening the human race, emotional distress, fast paced action and a heart breaking and rather beautiful conclusion. I was riveted from the beginning to end. At 140 pages it is a fast, light and yet satisfying read.
Hunter No More

While I enjoyed this book and the story enough to give it four stars I really wish it was longer but that’s just selfish of me because I liked the story alot and felt like the action and drama could have gone on awhile longer. I loved the story itself and was really interested in the civil war going on with the humans and the hunters themselves were fascinating to me and their way of thinking about and dealing with humankind. I do like how Josella, at the start of the story seems to be a minor, sort of sidekick type character but ends up being a pretty central focus of the story. I think that was great. I feel like all of the characters, except maybe Anna and Skylar each were equally important (at least perspective wise) to the story. I love books that are written from multiple perspectives, I always like to see the differences in the story as it occurs character to character. This book was no exception to that, I really enjoyed the delivery. One thing I loved about this story is that it never stops with the action and I love my Sci Fi reads to just be full of gut punch action where you can feel the adrenaline pumping almost like you are experiencing it for yourself. Hunter No More was like that for me.
The ending to this book was rather stunning…surprising to me and sad. In a good way. I rather enjoyed reading this book and I think that Sci Fi fans in need of a light read would enjoy it too! I really dig the cover as well!!

Told from the POV of a few different characters, Hunter No More is an engaging scifi story about AI vs. humanity. The book is breathtaking, fast-paced, and provides excellent writing. The author crafts an engaging scifi world and characters the reader feels an immediate connection to. An awesome read to finish this year of reading.

Samantha Marriott's  family is lucky to escape a growing political discontent in their hometown. Things would be great at their new temporary home if it weren't for the fact that aliens have decided to complete their missions of destruction and all the adults have huge secrets. Samantha and all those around her quickly decide what it is that is important to them and must fight for it...to the death.

A very smoothly written science fiction. This smoothness made the story entrancing and so believable (another that was read in one-sitting...again, one-sitting as defined by a mother of a running Toddler and a constantly jumping Preschooler). The only time that I found myself pausing for believability was when humor was at just too awkward a time (that happened a bit near the end of the story).

I like all of my characters to be very well-developed and this story had that...in a puzzling way. The action was laid out by several different narrators. For this particular story, skipping around from one mind to the other actually worked (and one might even say it was appropriate for the subject matter covered). On some level, each entity (person, machine or alien) is struggling to understand the true meaning of humanity.
(I would recommend Roger Zelazny's "The Last Defender of Camelot" for readers who wish to further think about humanity and whether humanity can be learned via will power...G.D. Tinnams can take this observation as a big compliment to his writing style.)



This is one of the best scifi books I've ever read. The worldbuilding is phenomenal, the story is breathtaking, and the author does an amazing job with character development. I liked Sam's personality - she was an easy character to relate to. Overall, it's hard to say just how good this book is, but take it from me, it's pretty great.


In Hunter No More, Samantha Marriot and her parents have to flee their home after a violent revolution. They hope they can be safe on "The Rainbow Islands", but unfortunately their perils have only just begun. Once they arrive on the island, Sam discovers a secret her father has been keeping, and that secret changes everything. Meanwhile, the Machine Mind Hierarchy of Earth wants to get rid of the planet's remaining human population, and humanity's only hope is a damaged Hunter unit.

We meet a bunch of characters along the way: Keith, Kristof, Jostella, and many more, but the most memorable character is  Sam. She's strong, independent, intelligent, rational, and easy to relate to. Her struggles seem quite real, and her reactions to things are realistic as well.

The book is fast-paced and offers, besides an impressive cast of characters, an intruing story and solid writing.

Saturday 20 September 2014

WHO AM I? A Comment About Characterisation



First of all, and what many people have noted, I tend to give my characters ‘normal’ names such as Roger, Keith, Anna, Sam, Alicia. This was a conscious choice because when I’ve read books in the past I find it hard to get my head around weird alien names and lose track of who is who. I didn’t want my readers to have the same problem so I’d just rather keep it simple and direct. Even so a few slightly different names did creep in, like Kristof and Skylar. Again not alien names, but just a little unusual. I probably couldn’t walk down the street and meet a Kristof or Skylar, but I could probably bump into a Keith.

Names notwithstanding, once a character has a name, what do you do with them? Well in any story you have a protagonist, a character whose experiences the story is built around. Sometimes but not all the time you have an antagonist in direct opposition to the protagonist. Their conflict creates the story. Actually it’s not quite that simple, but that is a starting point. In my novels I tend to have more than one protagonist, allowing multiple points of view and multiple antagonists as well. It mixes things up more, and sometimes a protagonist can change roles and so can the antagonist. Their roles are not set, but are dictated by how each character progresses in the story.

It’s never as cut and dried as good versus evil. Good people sometimes do bad things and bad people do good things. Characters are not consistent, and may make a good decision one day and a bad the next, even when confronted with the same circumstances. Why? Is this bad writing? No, in real life people are equally inconsistent, I’m inconsistent. We live, we change, we make mistakes and sometimes we don’t. Characters follow suit.

I also believe that characters shouldn’t necessarily get on, even if they are on the same side, they have different interpretations of what that side is. For instance, the characters Keith and Roger in ‘Hunter No More’ actively despise each other. Keith sees Roger as small minded, Roger sees Keith as alien and arrogant. But that doesn’t mean they can’t work together, it doesn’t mean they can’t love the same people. But they are at odds, and that conflict helps to define who they are and make them more interesting as people. If they liked each other, and did everything without argument, that would make them the same person. Superficially the description would be different, but the characters would be duplicates of each other. People are all unique and different and no-one is exactly the same. In life we are all the stars of own shows, for the characters it’s no different. Even a minor character doesn’t know they are a minor character. In their own life they are the protagonist and they have to be written that way.

So we have names, conflict, descriptions. Someone is tall, someone is fat, someone is a man, someone is a woman. Gender stereotypes: the man should be strong, the woman should be weak. That is rubbish, a woman can be stronger than a man, both physically and mentally. A woman shows more emotion than a man? Maybe in feature films, but in a story we are interested in the inner voice. A man and woman can be equally afraid, equally grief-stricken, equally brave, and equally hysterical. Characters react and feel, man or woman, it shouldn’t matter. I’m not saying they should be written the same, but a writer should avoid being influenced by preconceptions about gender as much as possible. Why, as much as possible? Because we are all influenced by our upbringing, and every independent thought is tinged by that. I have no doubt that some stereotypes creep into my writing, but the trick is to avoid those stereotypes as much as you possibly can.


Finally it’s all about the layers; layers of behaviour, layers of reaction, layers of internal and external argument, layers of action. After injecting a character with enough layers, plot no longer dictates their actions, rather their actions dictate the plot. Keith isn’t going to say to Kristof, let’s blow up this place and go home. It’s not in his character. So plot hinges on how a character would act, and you can’t just throw in plot twists which don’t fit with a character’s actions. You have to write the character’s actions based on their developed traits and let the story play out as honestly as possible. That’s when it gets interesting for a writer, really interesting, because as you’re writing you don’t know exactly what is going to happen next.

Wednesday 3 September 2014

Emon and the Emperor - Review

A book that is genuinely hard to put down until finished and one that I thoroughly enjoyed. The world building is done with the barest hints and the characters are built in a slow but steady flow of action and detail. Emon himself, is a decent guy, not bright but with his heart in the right place, and as such the other characters gravitate towards him, love him and are even jealous of him. He also doesn't help himself that much, his stupidity on a par with his bravery.

His relationships with Titan and Emara are the driving force of the story as much as the electric and water super powers are. They are a strange love triangle, each dependent on the other, each giving something to the others that they lack. It is Emara's story which is just as compelling, if not more so, than Emon's and the flashes I see of her past as an 'imperfect' only leave me hungry for more.

The world of the Empire itself is only hinted at in the broadest possible terms, but this is because the reader is limited to Emon's own first person world view. There are no stats about landmasses or conditions, just a place that has to marched through and experienced. While it is hinted the Empire is another world, no detail is given as to how Emon is transported there again and again. It could exist somewhere in space, or another time or another dimension. There is no way of knowing and I like the mystery of it.

The narrative is constantly moving for the most part, putting our protagonists in danger as they discover more about the Empire they are in conflict with. The twists did catch me by surprise and the mineral that affects the people of the empire in various ways proved an original driving plot device.

A good and original book, it deserves to be read.


Tuesday 19 August 2014

Book Review - The City Beyond The Sands - By Michael K. Rose

On an Earth that is not Earth people and societies from our history have been kidnapped and thrown together for reasons unknown. It could be natural, it could be by design, the only thing Will Kelly knows for sure is that he wants to find a way home to 2014 and the son he left behind.

In this action packed novel there is friendship, sword fights, horses, camels, sea chases, ape men, neanderthals, bat creatures, a mysterious city, desert, mongols, savage tribesman and more.

As the author states it is written in the spirit of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E Howard, although the style is much more modern and reader friendly. In a way it reminds me of the black and white chapter plays I used to see during the holidays, with excitement and peril at every turn. It is full of ideas and a constant movement through a detailed patchwork world where the protagonists constantly encounter new people, cultures and strange creatures.

The story is written as a series of short sharp chapters that keep you reading and in a way it is the story itself is the main character of the book, fleshing out a world that is surprising, exotic and, above all, deadly. The novel ends on a cliffhanger, and I for one, am very interested in finding out what happens next...


Sunday 20 July 2014

Coffee Shop In An Alternate Universe

This little story was written as a half hour challenge during a meeting of my writer's group. The brief was simple enough, 'coffee shop in an alternate universe'. Below is what I scrambled to write in that half hour. It was a fun experience that I hope you will enjoy reading.



Coffee Shop in an Alternate Universe

It was the sun on his eyes that brought James out of a dream that was already escaping his grasp. Something about a forest of green sun dappled leaves and overpowering fragrance. He awoke with a sneeze.
Recovering himself, he felt warm hard concrete against his back. Turning his head he made out the edge of double yellow lines. He was lying the road. What? He rolled to his feet, dodging over to the pavement in order to avoid whatever cars or traffic that was coming his way. It took him only a moment to realise that there was none. All the cars he could see - the range rovers, the aston martin, the fiesta – all were still, inert, but not parked, just stopped, a queue of traffic with no drivers and no humming engines.
This was London, he knew it was London, but it was so quiet, so dead. He looked up at the buildings rising overhead, shielding his eyes from the sun. Buildings that literally scraped the sky and that should have been full of commerce and activity. He saw no movement and somehow knew they were just as empty as the street he stood upon. He was alone.
Turning around he saw his favourite Starbucks waiting for him. The same Starbucks he spent every lunchtime with a coffee and a book listening to jazz. Brushing down his dishevelled suit, he walked over to it and pushed through the door. The cold breeze of the air conditioning greeted him and then something else, someone else.
“Hello James.”
It was Tracey, his normal server, dressed in her starbucks uniform, she appeared to be waiting for him.
“Tracey?” he mumbled.
“The usual?” she asked.
He strode up to the counter. “The usual?” He rapidly gestured outside, “What’s happened?”
She followed his gaze, her expression more tired than usual. He normally saw her with a smile on her face, always a smile, a beautiful plastic smile for all her customers.
“This is where I come to be by myself,” Tracey explained. “You followed me here.”
James blinked and opened his mouth. “I didn’t follow you. I always come here.”
She sighed. “Not here, here,” she gestured with a sweep of her hand. “Here. A sidestep away. I’m on my break.”
“Break?” He found it hard to understand the ramifications.
“Now that you are here,” she pulled out a cup. “The usual?”
James shook his head and rubbed a chin that was no longer as clean shaven as he would have liked. “This doesn’t make sense.”
“Just sit down,” Tracey said. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Slowly he felt his limbs respond and took a window seat looking out onto a beautiful summer’s day in the centre of the city of London. Beautiful, but so empty. He loosened his tie and Tracey delivered his Moche.
“You’re the first to follow me here, James, the first ever. How did you do it?”
He heard jazz and blinked rapidly as she mouthed more words he couldn’t hear.
“Did you just turn that on?” he asked.
She replied again with words he couldn’t hear. The jazz was getting louder. It was playing a horn solo he had heard so many times before.
“Don’t go back yet!” She cut in abruptly.
“What is this?” He asked, scrambling from his seat and knocking his coffee cup flying with a stray hand. The cup flew through the air and then fell in vivid slow motion, the brown liquid spilling upward. Then it smashed, the whole episode over in an instant.
“Calm down, James,” Tracey said. “Only a few people can do what we can do. Just a very few. I never thought I would meet another.”
“Do what?” he asked. “What?” Suddenly it was very hot.
“Travel between,” she whispered. “Distant and close at the same time.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” he mumbled.
Tracey laughed. “I’m not alone anymore.” She stared at him, studying his grey suit and his even greyer hair. “Oh...” Then she was gone.
He blinked, she was gone and he was alone in an empty Starbucks, in what appeared to be an empty London. An empty world? He stood up and wiped the sweat from his brow. He had to go outside and find out.

Wednesday 4 June 2014

Some Simple Rules of Editing



Over the past few years I’ve edited and revised my own fiction to what I considered a fair degree. But over the course of the last six months or so I have learnt a lot more. My new novel ‘Hunter No More’ has been through the hands of not one, but two separate editors, and of course the worst editor of all, me. Here are some of the things to look out for.

It’s or Its

One of the first things I learnt is that it’s can only be used as a conjunction of it is rather than the possessive, eg it’s stamp, the stamp belongs to it, is incorrect. You can say It’s mine but only because what you want to say is it is mine. The rule is if you can’t say it is then you can’t say it’s you have to say its. So Its stamp is correct. You have to think of it working in the same way as his or her. You would never say her’s jacket or his’s jacket so don’t say it’s jacket.

Was or Were

I’m thinking of this rule when dealing with an object, objects or a group of objects. You can say there was a book, but you can’t say there was books, instead you say there were books. But just to confuse things you can’t say there were a shelf of books. The correct phrasing is there was a shelf of books. In this instance was is used for the singular and the singular group while were is used for the plural and the plural group. For instance I can correctly say, there were many shelves of books, because I'm talking about more than one shelf, rather than more than one book.

Who and what are you referring to?

This is about something called lexical ambiguity. You start with one character and then another and then have an action that can be attributed to either character ambiguously. Here is an example from a recent episode of the blacklist. The prisoner was handcuffed to the guard and then he cut his hand off. In the episode the detective believed from this statement that the prisoner cut the guard’s hand off. That was not the case, what was actually being explained was the prisoner cutting his own hand off. Third and fourth options are the guard cutting his own hand off, or, the guard cutting the prisoner’s hand off. If a sentence can be read in more than one way then it needs to be changed. You don’t know how the reader will read it and it could very well cause confusion later on. A hard one for an author to catch, because we know what we mean and can’t see the ambiguity.

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

You don’t even realise you’re doing it until long after the fact. It’s quite innocent really, you describe something as green and then a sentence later someone is green at their job. You say an object is over there, and then your character walks over there, and runs their fingers over the object. Another one might be, because I saw the figure in the mist I could figure out what to do next. You don’t even realise you’re doing it until the editing stage. Your mind gets stuck on one word and it repeats in all your sentences in a range of different contexts. Beware this horrible verbal tic.

Speech and Capitalisation

I looked across at Jim and asked, “How are you?”
Even though there is a comma after asked, the speech still starts with a capital letter even though this is not the start of a new sentence. Once you realise this you could be excused for thinking speech always starts with a capital letter. It doesn't.
“So my friend,” he said, “how are you?”
Confusing isn’t it? As long as all of the speech forms a sentence without, he said, the second part of the speech does not have to be capitalised.

Thursday 27 February 2014

Growing Up With Wyndham... (The Day of The Triffids & Chocky)

During the 1980s, back when I was a child, two BBC science fiction series distinctly stick in my mind. These are 'The Day of The Triffids' and 'Chocky'. These were small screen adapatations of the novels 'The Day of The Triffids' (1951) and 'Chocky' (1968), both by prolific British science fiction writer John Wyndham at either end of a very successful career.

Until fairly recently they were just the shadowy recollections of a child. The Triffids series was all about deadly walking plants that hunted down and killed whoever they found, while 'Chocky' was all about an alien's relationship with a young boy and a Dad who just wanted to help and understand. Thinking back I was afraid of the plants, and I thought the Dad in 'Chocky' was the best Dad that ever existed.

'The Day of The Triffids' was a six half-hour episode drama series that came out in 1981. Having watched it on DVD, the triffids, are, for want of a better word, crude to say the least, almost laughable by today's standards but even fake looking they were solid. A CGI triffid would be even more laughable.

A quick summary - a meteorite storm blind the population of the Earth except for a lucky few, like the protagonists Bill Masen and Josella Payton. With society breaking down, the triffids, a hybrid plant life farmed for oil, break free and begin hunting down and eating the blind populace. This comes under Wyndham's umbrella themed 'cosy catastrophe'. The protagonists are sighted and therefore 'empowered' members of what remains of society who have to decide what to do next. Do they help who they can until eventually they are overcome by the magnitude of the task, or do they try to create a new society, leaving many behind in the process?

There are lots of moral questions in 'The Day of The Triffids' but basically, the main one is about the nature of society itself. We can only care for underprivileged and the disabled when the machinery is in place to do so, when that machinery is ruthlessly dismantled, society has to discard all but the working components of itself in order to survive. It's a harsh lesson that neither the book or the tv series shy away from. Survival becomes paramount and morality has to change. It can no longer exist as it did, the absolutes are no longer compatible with what has to happen. Tough love, and yet there is a matter of fact tone to all this that made the TV series chilling, perhaps even more than the man eating plants.

'The Day of The Triffids' has since been remade in 2009 with Dougray Scott as Bill Masen. Unlike the 1981 series the plot is not faithful to the book and some of the plot twists are laughable. In this version Masen's father is involved and there are nuns who leave out parishioners as food for the triffids. That's not the book, that's just horror. In the 1981 series, Masen if forced to look after a group of the blind only for them to die around him or disease. He finds Josella and has a family while holding out against the triffids for years. The harsh realities do not need plot gimmicks to be successful, they just are.

The final memory of that 1981 series that really grinds is the sound the triffids make, a sort of disgusting organic rapid drum beat that when you hear it, you know death is coming.

'Chocky' on the other hand, is less about horror and more about growing up. Matthew Gore's mind is invaded by an alien and his parents David and Maty try to cope. In a nutshell - alien meets boy, alien puts boy in danger, boy is kidnapped, alien decides to leave boy so boy will be safe from the evil men who would exploit him. Father comforts boy while mother is relieved it is all over and he is back to normal.

This series was made in 1984 and the theme music and opening credits were 'unearthly' disquieting. Basically they depict something alien, observing our world as it merges with the face of a young boy. Again this is a six part half hour BBC series which was very faithful to the subject matter. But 'Chocky' is far from a 'cosy catastrophe', it is rather all about the process of questioning and learning. It is also about how one parent, the mother, will hold their child back, afraid for them, wanting to protect them, but is ultimately unwilling to understand them. The other parent, the father, asks as many questions as his son, seeking to understand what has invaded him, and with an open mind, is not quick to judge, but simply wants to help if he can. 
 
Wyndham is a clever man, the questions Chocky asks about why the cow can't work out how to open a gate are the sort of questions any child might ask as they try to understand and define the world around them. As adults most of us no longer ask these questions, the world is as it is simply because it is. We don't really know why and we never try to find out, like the cow who refuses to open the gate. The alien is in essence a child, and the question it asks are just as innocent and as thought provoking as any a child would ask. I watched this series as a child and at the time it made me think deeply about a world that I didn't and still don't understand.

There are of course, a few gimmicks, the blue ethereal light that represents 'Chocky'. (In the novel Chocky was only ever a voice in Matthew's head.) Also Chocky allows Matthew to share viewpoints, by concentrating Matthew can see what Chocky sees and draw it, creating paintings which are like the way we see but subtly different. Chocky is a superior being, amused by our backwardness but nevertheless instilling our lives with value. She saves Matthew's life when he is about to drown by showing him how to swim. She also makes the sacrifice of leaving him after he has been kidnapped in order to guarantee his safety. Chocky has values, and it is inferred, she has more values than many of the unscrupulous members of humankind.

But like I said, at the time I thought it was as much about Matthew's relationship with his father as it was with Chocky. The total trust between them demonstrating the sort of relationship we all want to have with our fathers.

Some science fiction stays with you forever. The less said about the non book version sequels to Chocky the better.