Grimdark Fiction

There’s an article floating around today in which Damien Walter talks about grimdark fantasy within the context of the David Gemmell Legend Award and the World Fantasy Award. There has been a lot of discussion about the contents of the article and grimdark fantasy on both Twitter and on the article itself. In a nutshell, it has been a very interesting argument on all sides and some good points have been made. But, as a reader and reviewer, I feel that something is getting lost in the translation because there are misconceptions being thrown about as to what grimdark fantasy is.

Additionally, there has been a distinct lack of acknowledgement of grimdark fantasy as written by women. Or, you know, just grimdark fiction in general, whether it is science fiction or fantasy. This isn’t something new of course, because the publishing industry and the reader/fan-base have become adept at glossing over the contributions of women in SFF, for the most part. This is a perception that desperately needs to change but sadly, there are very few agents of such change.

Regardless, fact remains that grimdark fiction isn’t what most people think it is. It is much more nuanced than the general public believes to be.

Victory, Centrestage

Another one hit straight out of the park, and that is a DLF maximum!

*That would be one of the usual comments from the cricket commentators at the Indian Premier League matches that have been going on for the last month and a half and end today with a Final match later in the evening.*

Anyways, celebrations around because Chapter 1 of Project Salvation, my Deathwatch novel pitch to BL is complete. In its First Draft phase that is. Continuing from my last post where I mentioned that I had to seriously revise the target word count for this, Chapter 1 has clocked at 5317 words. For now. Gonna be sending it out today to various beta-readers of mine at the Bolthole for some valuable critique.

And as one of the lessons learned from this experience, I have revised Chapters 2 & 3 to 5000 words each as the target. No doubt it will increase further as I write the samples but that is OK. I have a better measure of this process now.

In another news, a friend of mine from back in LA just became an uncle, another two of my friends who are now a couple had their first baby this past week, and he is C.U.T.E 🙂 *pokes fun at Harold Camping* Been SUCH a good week this one.

Also, dear Mr. Chris aka Phalanx has also finished his own Chapter 2 of his novel. That guy is knocking off the word count like crazy. His blogpost over here has been quite insightful although I am definitely not as organized as him. Organization and me just don’t go well together.

One of my fellow moderators at the Bolthole, Squiggle, referred this blogpost from an author named Joe Abercrombie. I have no idea who this guy is or what he has written but that particular blogpost is very, very insightful. It deals with the pitfalls of obsessing over word count and the good and bad of it. I definitely recommend it. I definitely relate given my own ongoing experience with writing a novel.