I read, I write, I write about reading.

[maknights]

Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott review

Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott review

Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott review Fabulous, but flawed in one particular area (at least for me). I give Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott a solid ⭐⭐⭐⭐ but can see why it has garnered mixed reviews. The story is set in the town and valley of Rotherweird, cut off from the rest of England by a mysterious decree from Queen Elizabeth I and forbidden from studying its own history. Its a great…

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[maknights]

#winterflashblogbattle

So… It’s been a while! How have you been? Keeping safe, I hope? I am taking part in the #winterflashblogbattle so keep reading to the end of this post for my entry! But first, let’s catch up 😉 This blog may have been lying, sadly neglected, as the world burns around us, but I am happy to say that my writing ambitions have not. I finally finished my first draft of Castle Blackwood: The Lord of…

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[maknights]

World building part five: Power Structures

Today’s world building blog post is all about the structure of power in your literary world. If you’ve missed any of the previous instalments you can find them all Here. This might at first glance seem like a pretty easy choice to make: Shall I have a King/Queen? Or a President/Prime minister? Well, what if I was to tell you that there are over twenty common forms of government of which…

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[maknights]

World Building Part four: Magic

World Building Part four: Magic

5 Steps to craft the perfect magic system for your world

Hello, and welcome to week four of my world building blog series. Over the previous three weeks we have looked at aesthetics, weather/climate and technology. If you’ve been following the series then by now you should have a pretty good idea of what your world looks like. This week we’ll be looking at magic systems. 

Not all fantasy…

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[maknights]

World Building: Part three

5 steps for picking the technology level of your world

Welcome to week three of my world building series! We started off by looking at Aesthetics, then, last week we looked at Weather/Climate. So this week we are moving a little further on with the process and will be going into depth with 5 steps for picking the technology level of your world.

Technology is all around us. It impacts even…

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[maknights]

World Building Part Two

5 Steps to making sure Weather/Climate work for your world

For this second part in my world building series (which started last week with 5 Steps to Creating Amazing World Aesthetics) we are going to take a closer look at weather and climate.

It might not be immediately obvious, but the climate of your chosen story world can have far reaching consequences, from what your characters wear and…

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[maknights]

World Building part one

5 Steps to creating amazing world aesthetics

Can anyone guess where the map above came from?

Welcome to the first in a series of posts that are going to look into world creation. Making up worlds for our stories can be one of the funnest parts of the writing process. Despite this many find it hard or intimidating. My aim for this series of posts will be to show the methods I use to make the…

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[maknights]

Zachary and the Pumpkin Men

Zachary was afraid of the pumpkin men. He was afraid of their fixed, waxen smiles. He was afraid of their dark, hollow eyes. He was afraid of their leathery, orange skin and, most of all, he was afraid of what they did when no one was looking.

Not that they ever did anything of course. Miss Weaver, the schoolmarm, was quick to point this out, and Zachary was forced to admit it was true. What…

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[maknights]

Grumpy Old Man

Grumpy? Who said I was grumpy?

I am, somewhat to my own surprise, a grumpy old man.

I’m thirty-four, meaning I seem to have caught my case of the grumps fairly young. Id like to tell you that this is a recent development, that as I slowly edge to the point in my life where I will soon become closer to forty than to thirty a certain change has come over me, transforming me from a once jovial…

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[maknights]

Autumn approaches

With summer seemingly on the wain, it is time to look forward to all that Autumn has to offer. These golden months are the favourite time of year for my wife and I, and after what has proved quite a difficult 2019 so far, we are looking forward to slowing down in the back end of the year, and really savouring this time.

So the heaters are slowly getting switched on and the cupboards are…

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[maknights]

Book Review: 'Early Riser' by Jasper Fforde

Book Review: ‘Early Riser’ by Jasper Fforde

The cover art doesn’t give away much, but you’re in for a fun ride.

I recently finished reading ‘Early Riser’ by Jasper Fforde and as I personally hadn’t read a book by him for several years, and he evidently hasn’t written one for a few years either I wasn’t sure what to expect.

But the premise as described on the back cover piqued my interest right away so I decided to give it a punt.…

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[maknights]

The Castle Blackwood Best Vegetable Competition

A short story what i wrote: The Castle Blackwood Best Vegetable Competition #writing #writingcommunity #books #shortstory

So I thought I’d share with you the short story I wrote a few years ago that sparked the WIP I am currently working on: a comic fantasy novel called “Castle Blackwood and the Lord of Misrule”. It bears little resemblance to how. Blackwood looks now in my early scribbling of the novel but I still like it.

Anyway here it is, I hope you enjoy reading it, and let me know what you think! Critiques…

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[maknights]

"New Super Creamy Avios!"

“New Super Creamy Avios!”

0% fat, 0% sugar, 0% sense!

This morning I took the dog for a walk. So far so dull you might be thinking. And whilst I’d like to tell you that while tramping through the first of the fallen leaves I was set upon by a gang of talking squirrels, I wasn’t. I’d be most excited to let you know that I fell through a crack in a tree, reappearing in an alternate reality where humans are ruled by the…

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