In my opinion, Dark Knight is the finest superhero movie ever made. There’s something about the way it builds its own Batman mythos, borrowing minimally from the comics but adding its own twists to make a great movie that you’d love even if you perhaps weren’t a superhero fan.
Avengers on the other hand is a movie for fanboys. And ordinarily that would be a worry. You’d picture this big, soulless movie, with fanboy moments crammed in, trying to tick boxes instead of telling a story. And when you consider that this movie features the leads from three previous Marvel movies… well, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this thing had ‘mess’ written all over it before the ink was dry on the script.
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It occurred to me whilst driving home the other night that we live in the first age without heroes. A combination of greater openness, social media and press intrusion means that we no longer hear a one-dimensional description of people portraying them as true heroes through and through in the classic sense of the word. That soldier who risked their life to save their comrades commits domestic abuse, that Olympic sports star has been found cheating on their partner. That nurse who went to some disaster ravaged country to help give aid has a conviction for drug abuse. Instead heroes have been replaced by heroic acts.
The day job took me to a disaster recovery site yesterday, the idea being that if something happened to a main site, staff could up and migrate to the disaster recovery site and carry on working. But until that happens the place is almost empty. It’s a fantastic site and incredibly eerie. I went into the toilets and had to switch on the lights, the fluorescent bulbs flashing and clicking a few times before coming on fully. It felt like it was taken directly from a horror movie. It’s like a real equivalent of the prison from The Walking Dead comics.
There comes a time when a project needs to go from brainstorming and planning to the actual writing. I’m more than a little scared because ideas for books normally swim in my head for years, growing and mutating. However, this project, which has the working title of “Fool’s Gold”, didn’t exist a little over a month ago.
As regular readers know, in my spare time I’m an avid Geocacher. Whilst day job changes and moving have really hit my numbers this year, things are settling down and I hope to hit the big 10,000th find sometime in the near future.
We’ve all seen those landscape paintings in charity shops. Those ones that look like they’ve escaped some 1970s living room. There’s no denying that the art is well done, but there’s something about the tone or the palette that just makes them feel tired and old.
There’s been a big 
I wanted to write a little bit about the brainstorming work I’m currently doing on my next project.
Not sure if something is wrong with me or if I’m coming down with something but I’m falling out of love with Epic Fantasy. For years, I would say my subgenre of choice was the Epic. I love the whole ‘bigness’ of it all – vast casts, vast worldbuilding and story with such massive consequence. I want it bigger with greater consequences. I want it to take my breath away.
George R R Martin talks about two archetypes for writers: Gardeners and Architects. The architect will plan and plot their story, knowing what happens to who from beginning to end before ever writing a single word. The gardener however will go in blind, knowing only the barest of details and discover the story as the write.