Iconoblast

Hi everyone, I’ve been absent from Iconoblast for quite a while, but that’s because I’ve been busy working on things! Lisa and I are writing the Temporary Gentleman, our WW1 spy thriller, which readers here will have first seen as a series of MI7 Assassin short stories. As we are building a novel which is the first in a planned series, the pacing and structure is very different.

I enjoyed the review below of Sláine: The Horned God by Michael Johnson so much I’ve shared it as a guest blog. I was also fascinated by his marketing analysis, which suggests that the saga has yet to reach a larger audience. Even so, it’s still hugely popular, with new editions appearing every two or three years and there are endless, beautiful European editions. Except possibly in the States. If I recall, there was a Heavy Metal edition of the Horned God and then… nothing.

I apologise for the lack of posts here on Iconoblast, but I’ve been so busy working on other projects, I needed to stayed off this platform. I’ve turned off paying subscriptions for the time being and will turn them on when I am back to regular posting.

Hi everyone, A very quick note to let you all know that Hellbreaker Fire in the Blood Kickstarter ends this evening.

Have you had any such experience? My query with AI was: GRABHAM ST JOSEPH’S COLLEGE IPSWICH and this was its response: The query likely refers to Sir Patrick Grabham, a former student and chairman of the board of governors at St. Joseph’s College in Ipswich, or to someone named Grabham connected to the college. Sir Patrick Grabham was a distinguished figure in Ipswich who had a strong connection to the school.

I had long resisted writing gurus because their creeds didn’t especially resonate with me. Apart from one whose name and title I forget. It stated an often denied truth by authors: ‘A writer is a thief. They steal people’s lives.’ That I thoroughly agree with. I’ve stolen so many peoples’ lives, i.e. I didn’t ask their permission to feature them in my stories, not least because my portrayal of them is generally unflattering.

Action had proved very popular with readers. No matter how rough and ready and how imperfect, it was saying something new and exciting to our audience. As I made plans to leave and move onto my next project, it became obvious to me that there was something missing. Stories like Dredger and Hellman were popular, but they weren’t quite up to the standard of Hookjaw which was the runaway leader.

We’ve had some feedback on our Hellbreaker Kickstarter that surprised me... Some people haven’t realised that it’s a BRAND NEW STORY! They thought it was a reprint! Clearly, we haven’t done a good enough job of telling everyone what it is. 48 pages of BRAND NEW Hellbreaker story, called FIRE IN THE BLOOD. Plus the original Spacewarp Comic Hellbreaker story - coloured by Ian.

‘We would see the posters; we couldn’t get into the movies… But ‘Action’ was there for us.’ I wanted Action to have a very modern look, so I asked the art editor to base the design on The Sun newspaper. This approach is something I regularly do to this day – look at what the enemy is doing and play them at their own game.

I have a horror of writing ‘off the peg’ characters: typical ‘stereotypes’. They have to be real to me and to be saying something new and exciting, otherwise I’ll be bored by them – which means the reader will be bored by them. So I knew on Hellbreaker I needed a sidekick for Inspector McNeal, a rough diamond, older cop to contrast with her young, politically correct persona.