RENEGADE WRITERS: 5TH JANUARY 2011

First Renegades of the year and it was a good one.

Tim seems to have decided to concentrate of his sex-o-drama story which is a GOOD IDEA! He's also come up with an interesting - but bloody challenging - new twist, having overlapping stories from his protagonist. This I know from personal experience is a really difficult stunt to achieve - I gave up in the end - but one if carried off with elan is very effective. I do tho' think he needs to have a different 'colour' for the two sections, perhaps demonstrating the different personaes of a paranoid and homicidal schizophrenic. It'll be very interesting to see how it unfolds in the weeks ahead.

Misha read from the second volume of her steampunky/dragons/nephelim story which centres around the building of the Clifton suspension bridge in a Victorian world set in an alternative universe. It is an intriguing idea, in many ways similar to the Alexia Tarabotti series written by Gail Carriger. The opinion was that she needs to ramp up the character of Isambard Kingdom Brunel a tad and I was a little thrown by the switches of POV. I'm a bit sensitive to POV at the moment because Gail Carriger changes it around with abandon and this is the one thing I really dislike about her otherwise excellently written books: she has a keen eye for Victorian detail and a good ear for dialogue.

I promised to let Misha have a copy of the SciFiNow edition with the acticle on steampunk. Mustn't forget.