Author Archives: Tony Ballantyne

​10 Books I Couldn’t Put Down

I don’t know what my favourite book is, but the following are books I read at various times of my life that, at the time, I couldn’t put down. Most of them I finished in maybe one sitting – definitely no more than two or three – perhaps whilst lying ill in bed or on holiday.

Some of them I’ve read over and over again, two of them I’ve only read once (one of those because it’s not yet available on Kindle and I don’t buy paper books any more)

Most of them are expertly crafted, one of them is appallingly written. All but two have very good stories, half of them are strongly plotted, three of them are character driven, three of them made me laugh out loud, three of them made me smile, four of them had me on the edge of my seat, none of them made me cry. Maybe three of them would get into my top ten books ever.

In no particular order…

  • Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keys
  • The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
  • The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  • The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
  • The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
  • Complicity by Iain Banks
  • A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
  • The Rainmaker by John Grisham
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling
  • The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

PLR – Have you signed up?

I just received my PLR statement for this year. If you’re wondering what the PLR is, then read this, taken from the PLR website:

Public Lending Right (PLR) is the right for authors to receive payment for the loans of their books by public libraries.

I’m a huge fan of the PLR and not only for the obvious reason that they send me money each year, but also for the fact they are so good at their job.

I first found out about them a few years ago when one of their operatives phoned me up to say she’d noticed I hadn’t registered with them and was due some money if I did so. Since then they have operated with quiet efficiency, paying my money directly into my bank each February without fail. They’ve also got an excellent website – nothing fancy, it just works.

If you’re a published writer and you’ve not signed up yet, you could be losing money. Where does it come from? Well, again, as it says on the website:

Under the PLR system in the UK, payment is made from government funds to authors, illustrators and other contributors whose books are borrowed from public libraries. Payments are made annually on the basis of loans data collected from a sample of public libraries in the UK. The Irish Public Lending Remuneration (PLR) system covers all libraries in the Republic of Ireland and operates in a similar way.

To qualify for payment, applicants must apply to register their books.

It takes less than ten minutes. There’s absolutely no reason not to sign up.

There’s a nice end note to all this, too. Many top selling authors waive their PLR payments, allowing them to go back into the pot to help out other writers.

PLR, they really do bring a ray of sunshine into these dark January days.

Six Ways to Stay Sane as a Writer

  1. Don’t place too high a value on your reviews (there’ll always be good and bad ones).
  2. Don’t place too high a value on your Amazon Sales Position (no matter how high it is, it will go down eventually).
  3. When it comes to you writing, the only people whose opinions really matter are your editor and those you’ve chosen to be your alpha and beta readers. (And you should really listen to them!)
  4. Remember that you got into this to be a writer. If you’re writing, you’re doing what you wanted to do (and what you have to do).
  5. Always be working on your next story (that way you won’t feel so bad if the last one is rejected).
  6. Remember that being a writer is only part of who you are. You’re also a wife/husband/partner/mother/father/son/daughter/friend/colleague…  (in fact, you spend more of your time being those things).

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Why the Last Series of Dr Who was Badly Written, and Why it Matters

It’s not often that a TV show makes me angry, but the last series of Doctor Who did. It made me really angry.

Why? Because it was badly written. Very badly written. I’ve read many articles to the contrary and, somewhat confusingly, I agree with them. How can that be?

Because I do agree that the writing for the series was superb, but I also think that some of the episodes with the best writing in them were also the worst written overall.

So where’s the contradiction? It lies in the writers’ almost total disregard for the science in the Science Fiction.

Does it matter? After all, this is a show that features a character who can travel in time. Time travel is impossible, surely that shows a complete disregard for science. Well, yes, but that’s not the problem. In Science Fiction you can have one impossible thing, you can maybe have two or three impossible things that you build your story around. That’s the nature of the genre, but there’s a caveat: you have to maintain internal consistency. If you accept your two or three impossible things and then continue to go trampling over the science just for the sake of the plot, then that’s just bad writing. Full stop. And that’s what happened in the last series of Dr Who.

Does it matter?

If you want to write SF, yes it does. If you care about SF, it does. Because this sort of bad writing cheapens what the rest of us SF writers are trying to do. It falls in with the received wisdom of the Literary Establishment that these things don’t really matter, that ignorance of Maths and Science is nothing to be ashamed of.

No one would dream of writing a detective show without consulting basic police procedure. I read somewhere that the BBC is always careful to make sure that the steam engines it includes in period dramas are correct because so many people write in to complain when they get it wrong. So why is it okay to ignore bad science? A dragon hatching and laying an egg straight away? Trees suddenly appearing to save us from a solar flare? These were well written episodes with bad explanations just tacked on. They could have been much better. Are the writers really going to claim failure of the imagination?

Yes, it’s nice that the BBC include this sort of drama in their mainstream schedules, it’s great that they throw money and actors at it to produce a quality product. But if they ignore the science, then they’re saying that it doesn’t matter, that when in it comes down to it, the S in SF doesn’t matter. It’s the only the F that counts.

Well, I think they’re wrong, and unlike some of the other reviewers, I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

Sometimes I Have No Opinion

Who says that Weetos are just for breakfast?

I have no idea. I’ve never heard anyone express an opinion on the right time to eat Weetos, one way or the other.

But advertisers love these sort of statements. They appeal to the rebel in people (hey, no one tells me when to eat my breakfast)!. More than that though, they make you part of the debate. Advertisers validate the thing they are trying to sell by tricking you into having an opinion on it one way or another; because once you have an opinion on something it becomes important. That’s why the adverts want you to believe that you have to either love or hate Marmite, they want you to believe that indifference is not an option.

Well, yes it is. Indifference can be a great thing. I have no opinion on many things. I haven’t got time to have an opinion on everything, because if I were to try it would stop me concentrating on the things that are really important.

This is the politician’s trick. Concentrate on the fact that it’s important to vote and you validate the people you are voting for, the politicians themselves. Keep telling people that they have to vote or the wrong party will get in, and they’ll forget to check if the right party has anything going for it.

The Internet is full of people with opinions, many of them keen to get you involved in their debates. That’s how they validate themselves. That’s how they promote themselves. They want to drag you into the argument, they’ll tell you that you have to be involved, that if you’re not part of the solution then you’re part of the problem.

Well, no. You’ll just have to excuse my indifference.

Engage the Reader: Bring a Scene to Life

I’ve just returned from a few days in Paris where I’ve been finishing off the first draft of my next novel, Dream Paris.

Did I have to finish the book in Paris? Well, there’s no denying it was an enjoyable experience: walking down the boulevards in the unseasonable autumn sun; stopping at a cafe to drink a Leffe and watch the world go by; taking my time over coffee in a restaurant at the end of a meal…

But was it really necessary to go to Paris? I think so. It gave me the opportunity to take lots of photos to use as reference images. But more importantly, It gave me the opportunity to use my note book. I’ve written about this before (and I’ll mention it again in the future), there’s nothing like capturing a scene live. One of my favourite definitions of a novelist comes from Sol Stein: a novelist is someone who communicates emotion.

I’m not a photographer, I can’t capture the emotion in a scene with a camera, all I can do is to take snapshots. I do like to think that I can capture a scene in words, however, and this has to be done live. You’re capturing your emotional reaction to the scene, or the imagined reaction of your characters. Failing to realise this is a mistake that many beginners make: a simple description of the scene before you is not good writing, no matter how detailed that description, no matter how many fancy words you use.

In a story, the scene you are describing should be there to communicate some emotion: tension, happiness, fear, excitement. You can recreate this emotion at your desk or in the coffee shop, but if you are moved by what you see before you then remember this: it’s not the play of sun on the leaves that you are trying to record.

Capture those emotions there and then.

Leave it to the Experts

You may have noticed that I’ve separated the blog from this website. As I maintain two static content websites (this one and my tech site: https://tonyballantyne.com/tech) it seemed appropriate to have a separate, dedicated blog. I’ve been looking at Ghost blogging, and I liked the philosophy behind it. I also like to support to open source, so I thought I’d give it a go.

I’ve only just resisted the temptation to write a theme for Ghost. I’ve looked at the documentation, I’ve downloaded a couple of themes and had a look around inside, but I’ve managed to summon the self control to say “no”.

It was difficult. I hand coded the first websites I published, I dabbled in Dreamweaver, I wrote my own WordPress themes… I’m really tempted to get under the bonnet of Ghost, but over the years I’ve come to realise that whatever I do will never be as good as something done by a proper designer – by which I mean someone with a flair for design. I’m a writer first and foremost. I like Ghost because it allows me to concentrate on what I’m good at. It’s the mark of the amateur to think they can do everything. It’s the Dunning-Kruger effect: the less you know, the more you think you know.

So, I’m sticking to writing for the moment, and I’m keeping the Ghost blog on the basic Casper theme. No comments, no menus – nothing but blogging and a real sense of freedom. I’ll wait for someone else to make it look good.

You can find out more about Ghost here: http://ghost.org

You can find my blog here: http://blog.tonyballantyne.com

It’s Time to Think Big Again: How to Develop as an Artist

There’s a tendency nowadays to view simple as good, to regard the stripped down as authentic. In music we’re still seeing a reaction to the 1970’s, to the overblown theatricals of prog rock, to the tendency to “big” sound in classical orchestras. Well, that was forty years ago today, and things have gone too far.

This was illustrated in an article I read today about the singer songwriter Ed Sheeran.

Last week, IoW boss John Giddings caused controversy when he said that the industry wasn’t nurturing enough newer acts to rise to the role of headliner, and that the pool of more established legacy acts that could be called on to top the bill was forever diminishing – adding that Ed Sheeran was ‘boring’ and that if he’s the future, ‘we’re all screwed’.

If I read the article correctly, John Giddings problem was Ed Sheeran’s habit of playing solo concerts, just him and a guitar.

I don’t know enough about Ed Sheeran to have an opinion on whether he’s boring or not, but John Giddings may have a point about the solos. I’m getting tired of hearing minimalistic sets on acoustic instruments. To my mind, stripped down instrumentation all too often reveals a failure of the imagination. Why? Because arranging is difficult. Writing many parts is harder than just writing for voice and guitar. Thinking of something original to do with a larger sound palette is hard, full stop. Yes, all too often a bigher band can also be used to hide a lack of content, but that’s not an excuse to try something new.

You might disagree with the above. I’m sure some of you have your fingers poised on the keys, ready to type what about JS Bach? What about Chopin? Well, good point. And if Ed Sheeran’s playing in his live act involves him adding to the range of guitar techniques due to his extended arpeggiations, if he is using the instrument to provide a counterpoint that highlights the inner harmonies of his music in unusual fashions, if what he’s doing is pushing back the boundaries then fair enough. Actually, better than fair enough. Hats off to the artist, we can all learn something from him.

But if he’s just singing along to the chords, then, no, that’s not enough, not anymore. I’ve heard enough of those sort of acts, I want something different. (I should add at this point I listened to Ed Sheeran whilst typing this. I was rather impressed, and I didn’t think him boring. I haven’t heard his live act, though.)

That doesn’t detract from my main point, though. If you want to develop as an artist., yes. keep it simple to start with. But there has to come a time when you do something more exciting, when you try to work on a larger scale. You’ve got to take the journey before you can return to your roots.

You’ve got to get out into the world and experiment before you bring it all back home.

What, exactly, is the Waters of Meribah About?

I was contacted by a college SF class, asking me about my short story The Waters of Meribah. In particular, they wanted to know, what did it mean? Here’s my reply…

My degree was in Mathematics. I’m fascinated by what can be mathematically proven and what can’t. I’m intrigued by the fact that maths reveals so much about the universe, and that leads me to wonder about the things that aren’t revealed. The things we simply can’t comprehend.

I’d been planning a story describing the gradual process of changing from human into the other when a friend of mine lent me a book. Inside it was a photocopy of the passage from The Waters of Meribah, being used as a bookmark. I don’t remember what the book was, but the bookmark captivated me. What really struck me about the passage was that Moses and Aaron’s reaction was quintessentially human: they questioned.

Now, a recurring theme in Science Fiction is our relationship with the alien. In my story I wanted to examine the totally alien, something so alien that humans couldn’t comprehend it. Something so alien that in order to understand it, we would have to stop being human.

I didn’t know the ending to the story when I began writing, but as it progressed, as Buddy Joe changed, I realized that what made something truly alien wasn’t a different body, or different emotions, it was something that struck at the heart of what it is to be human: to think, to reason, to question. If something is truly alien, it won’t think as we do. If the alien visits our world, we won’t be able to comprehend it,

If we are to understand the alien, if we are to gain a greater understanding, we have to do what Buddy Joe does at the end of the story. We have leave to our current minds behind in this world.

I’m not sure that the above answers any questions, I’m not sure it even answers mine. I suppose if the answers were clear cut, I wouldn’t have written the story, I’d have just done some maths instead…

Six Ways that Being Published Won’t Change Your Life

  1. It won’t make you rich.*
  2. Your non-writing friends won’t think any differently of you.
  3. Nor will your writing friends
  4. The urge to write will not diminish
  5. Nor the urge to be published (again).
  6. It won’t provide any answers to the other problems in your life

However, it will validate you as a writer. To yourself, at least.

* Really, it won’t. Well, it’s so unlikely that it will you shouldn’t make it part of your life plans. Treat it as a happy bonus if it does.

See Also