Author: nicelystrongoak

Author, lyricist and scriptwriter, Terry Newman

Fun in Augmented Reality

Have you, or any of your friends or family, gone Pokémon Go crazy? Are you trekking the streets and countryside hoping for strange pastel-coloured figures to pop up on your Smartphone screens? It seems that the world has woken up to ‘augmented reality’ and is getting very excited.

I won’t be getting excited.

That’s because I have been excited by the possibilities for years now! The reason being that back in 2013 I worked with a company called Apeartome Ltd (now tomee.com) on a project that didn’t involve just augmented reality, but ultra-reality! This wasn’t just cartoon figures appearing on your Smartphone, but people! And they would talk to you!

soldier York

The figures in question were historic people (both actual and imagined) who would tell you something interesting about the City of York. A Roman soldier, a Victorian businessman, Guy Fawkes and Richard Plantagenet were just some of the characters that would pop up at various locations around the city to enhance the tourist experience for tourist. You could even have your photograph taken with them!

york fawkes

Writing the scripts for some of these was tremendous fun, I particularly enjoyed penning the home-sick legionnaire, but more exciting still was getting an insight into just how powerful the technology was and could be. As somebody who was involved in the early days of the ‘multi-media explosion’ it was fascinating to see some of the predictions coming into actuality. As a fantasy writer it’s a bit a little bit of fantasy come true!

Continue reading Fun in Augmented Reality

Abandon Summer Office!

One of the great things about this writing business is the chance to use the summer office. It’s wonderful with garden coming into full bloom to have this little hide-away.

back to the office

Sadly this year’s’ weather has been so pants there have not been many great summer office days. And now, when we finally have a decent day, what happens?

Inside the Summer office

I have to vacate the office, that is what! Yes, for the first time ever it is too hot for Dr Tel to be out there in the summer office. The jolly-old thermometer is hitting 90F and I can’t concentrate!

How cross am I?* Continue reading Abandon Summer Office!

The Elf with No Name

“I stopped a step or two from the top and weighed him up. The long straight blond locks were pulled back tight with a pin-stick slide-clip that flashed a sapphire or two as he turned his head to survey the night-time Citadel. A knotted plait hung over one shoulder. His two-button suit in midnight green was expertly cut in a style that did not impede movement. His hat was as cool as an ice-dragon’s undercarriage.

Elf with no name

Lean and nicely balanced and probably fast with it, this was one elf that would need careful watching.

Continue reading The Elf with No Name

Nicely’s Appeal Explained

You can’t beat a good Venn diagram can you? Still love a good Venn diagram – and it’s the perfect method for explaining the appeal of ‘Detective Strongoak’ to readers of fantasy, comedy and detective fiction. So here we go:

The Appeal Of Detective Nicely Strongoak to Different Fiction Readers.
The Appeal Of Detective Nicely Strongoak to Different Fiction Readers.

So there we are! Very informative, I’m sure you’ll agree and clearly illustrating the target audience! Just about everybody who likes a good book! Continue reading Nicely’s Appeal Explained

Graphic shorts

I love graphic novels. I always have, even when they were comics. My favourite? Probably still ‘V for Vendetta’ – and then too many to mention (I will sometime though). So of course I had to give it a try. This is what I came up with – perhaps more of an illustrated story? (It’s full of old British stuff – but hey, that’s the charm!)

Please enjoy: ‘A Widow’s Weeds.’ page1 widows graphicPage 3 widows graphicpage 3 widowspage 4 widows graphic

Continue reading Graphic shorts

Words we love to hear #94

Just heard those magic words from a producer: ‘So, anyone optioned the film rights for your book yet?’

Nicely film strip

Of course they haven’t read it yet! But in the same week that you get the contract for writing a feature pilot for a TV series that you helped to create, well it’s not bad news!

Continue reading Words we love to hear #94

World Building Gone Mad?

I love a good bit of world building. I not only want to smell the coffee, I want to know which estate the beans came from and through what small cat-like creature they may have passed through. This is one of the reasons that I was excited by the title credits to the recent TV adaptation of the ‘Shannara Chronicles’. There was a sort of ‘evolutionary’ family tree of how the races, elves, gnomes, dwarfs etc, developed in Brooks’s post-holocaust world. Top world building, even if it was difficult to imagine how exactly all this went on in such a short time period, or why elves were just seemed to be people with pointy ears. I’m sticking with ‘Shannara’ though and see how it err… evolves.

Shanara opening credits

I did wonder if I might have gone a bit far when I delved into the ‘The Paleoanthropological Relationships That Exist in the Hominini Lines of Fairyland’. This examined the ancestry of the particular races that people my own world of Widergard. Not only that but it equates dwarfs, elves, ogres etc with what we know of our own past ‘humans’. Too much world building though I wondered?

Judging by the response though, apparently not. Readers do love an obscene amount of detail about the places they invest their leisure time reading into – including evolutionary family trees.

lord of rings family tree

So if you want to know what really happened to the Australopithecines and Homo habilis go have a look at my longer article on the fab SF Signal.

Continue reading World Building Gone Mad?