The World and Adventures of Master Detective Nicely Strongoak and Writer Terry Newman. The #1 USA Kindle Epic Fantasy ***** Bestseller "Detective Strongoak and the Case of the Dead Elf" now joined by his new adventures: "The King of Elfland's Little Sister" and "Dwarf Girls Don't Dance."
OK – it was pointed out to me that I may be a little bit more interesting than I made out the other week.
Yes, I did go to Andrew Lord Weber’s ‘The Other Palace’ for a social networking evening and Lord Andrew was there and I did wave, but he missed me I think. Great contacts though.
And (unconnected) I had a great day in the studio going through songs for a fantastic (other) musical that sounded great on the studio speakers with a full(ish) orchestra. Worked on a new song on the way home too.
And this is a photograph of me being interviewed for my first big screen appearance – talking about football. Uh huh, that’s right.
And this is a link to a very interesting animation I wrote for the film and another to a great game I am involved with (oh and I just finished a great classic SF shoot-the-aliens game).
However, honestly, I don’t feel very interesting – well, not like 20 years ago when I captured an excytosing heart secretory granule using a helium-cooled copper block.
My mother always used to say it and I, full of my vast knowledge of science – at that stage mostly gained from SF books and comics – would laugh and go out anyway, hair soaking wet.
Advice you see, it’s always difficult to take when the reasons for it aren’t obvious. Advice, tricky to take and sometimes tricky to give too.
“I refuse to belong to any club that would have me as a member” – Great Advice from Groucho Marx
When I actually gained enough scientific knowledge to put ‘scientist’ on my passport (except you couldn’t by then) I still found myself in a position where advice had to taken. From people with more experience, it made sense to listen, but it was harder when they didn’t necessarily know any more about the subject than you, but were just ‘senior’. Of course, when the advice came from somebody reviewing your research paper, you had to take notice or it may not have been published. Difficult then if you didn’t agree with the referee, so you tried to appear to be bending over backwards to accommodate their advice, while sticking as closely to your own guns as possible. An interesting mixture of metaphors there, I’m sure you will agree.
After becoming a radio and TV comedy writer, the next obvious step after being a research scientist, I still had to take advice. Usually this came from a producer and of course you had to listen to this otherwise your sketch didn’t get broadcast. One, now very famous, multi award-winning, comedy producer once told me to take my sketch away and put more ‘melons’ in it. You can probably guess what type of melons he was referring to. I didn’t want to put more ‘melons’ in it; I don’t particularly like ‘melon-heavy’ sketches. I put the ‘melons’ in it though. It was broadcast and got laughs. (I still think it would have got laughs without the increased ‘melon’ count, but I’m not the one with the BAFTAS).
Now as fantasy writer I still get advice and this time it’s from an editor. So what’s the best approach to take?
Nicely Strongoak 