I’m often asked, since I’m on the board of the Society of Authors, why legal action isn’t underway in the UK to hold the big tech companies to account for their wholesale and blatant breaches of copyright in using authors’ work scraped from pirate websites?

Well, for a start, class action lawsuits are much more difficult and complicated under English law than in the US. Even relatively straightforward cases can, and most likely will, take years to reach a conclusion and cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. Especially when the other side has more money to spend than many countries’ annual budgets, and every interest in finding procedural ways to drag things out, in order to exhaust the plaintiff’s financial and other resources.

What can make a significant difference to a defendant’s attitude to the threat of UK litigation, and indeed to the prospects for certifying a class action in the UK courts, are judgements elsewhere which have gone against them on the same grounds. This is why recent developments in the US are important, and not only for American authors.

Firstly –

“On Wednesday, July 16, bestselling author David Baldacci delivered powerful testimony before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, laying bare the devastating impact of AI companies’ systematic theft of copyrighted works. “I truly felt like someone had backed up a truck to my imagination and stolen everything I’d ever created,” Baldacci told the subcommittee, describing his discovery that AI companies had pirated his entire body of work to train their systems.
The moment of recognition came when Baldacci’s son asked ChatGPT to write a plot that read like a Baldacci novel. “In about five seconds, three pages came up that had elements of pretty much every book I’d ever written, including plot lines, character names, narrative, the works.”

You can read the full article here, and I recommend you do so.

Secondly –

“A California federal judge ruled Thursday that three authors suing Anthropic over copyright infringement can bring a class action lawsuit representing all U.S. writers whose work was allegedly downloaded from libraries of pirated works.
The filing alleges that Anthropic, the Amazon-backed OpenAI competitor behind the chatbot Claude, “violated the Copyright Act by doing Napster-style downloading of millions of works.” It alleges that the company downloaded as many as seven million copies of books from libraries of pirated works.”

Article here

We have to keep in mind this is a marathon, not a sprint. Frustrating as that is.

I’m looking forward to these autumn events, and discussing the fiction and non-fiction I’ve been working on with readers and fellow writers. And perhaps I’ll have more to share about future plans?

20th September – Edge Lit, Derby.

25th October – MCM Comic Con, London – I’ll be here on Saturday morning…

before hopping on a train to get to …

26th October – Bristolcon, Bristol

followed by …

30th October – 2nd November – World Fantasy Convention, Brighton UK

If our paths cross somewhere, feel free to say hello!

It’s fair to say readers familiar with the Crater School will come to this fourth novel with expectations. A new pupil will arrive and find her place among women and girls who value each other’s skills and merits, even if the hierarchical, patriarchal society of Old Mars fails to appreciate them. Along the way, newcomer and established pupils alike will learn subtly unobtrusive life lessons. So far, so formulaic, but there’s infinite scope for variation on these themes as Brenchley crafts another note-perfect story inspired by classic science fiction and the English school story tradition.

Let’s start with the title. Useful things, prepositions, with their multiple meanings. “At” can simply indicate location. It can also indicate an action directed towards some target. Both are applicable here, and Radhika has plenty to be angry about. She hasn’t come to the Crater School by her own design, or through some benevolent twist of fate. She doesn’t want to be here, but she has no choice. Her father is a disgraced British officer from the Indian Army back on Earth, seeking anonymity on Mars. Living in not-so-genteel poverty, he must find his daughter an acceptable, chaperoned lodging when her mother, his Indian wife, is taken seriously ill and admitted to the Sanatorium across the lake from the school. He has already strained the tolerance of polite society by marrying outside the expectations of his class and upbringing, with the ominous, unspoken implications that has for his daughter’s future.

No one at the Crater School would dream of disparaging Radhika’s complexion. Mistresses and pupils pride themselves on welcoming newcomers, whatever their backgrounds. Readers have already seen girls from strikingly different cultures learn to rub along together here, as their sharp corners are knocked off. We see the widespread expectation that Radhika will leave behind the Hindi she has spoken with her mother, the childhood songs from a very different, non-European musical tradition, and the ruthless, competitive attitudes an army brat learned playing cricket on the Raj’s parched pitches. She will realise they’re not quite the thing, if she’s going to fit in.

Such comfortable, blinkered assumptions lay bare the school’s hitherto hidden flaws. If the Cratereans cannot see for themselves why Radhika rebuffs this pressure to conform so furiously, they risk failing their latest pupil without even realising. With this gulf between them, how can Radhika find a way to help herself?

Brenchley crafts an entertaining, thoughtful read which will more than satisfy returning readers and engage those new to the series equally well.

For a full roster of purchase links, visit the Wizard’s Tower Press webpage.

For thoughts on previous books
Three Twins at the Crater School
Dust Up at the Crater School
Mary Ellen, Craterean

A brief and very pleasing bit of news today. I’m delighted to share Ben Baldwin’s fantastic cover, along with the title of the next book in my Green Man series.

The Green Man’s Holiday will be officially launched in October at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton (with a sneak preview at Bristolcon).

Will Dan and Fin enjoy the relaxing break they’re hoping for? You’ll have to wait and see…

I hadn’t planned on a six month blogging hiatus. So what happened?

On the plus side, over the Christmas and New Year break, I found the ideas I had for the next Green Man book were coming together in new and interesting ways. As soon as the holiday was over, I started writing, and I kept on writing. After illness and other upheavals wreaked havoc with my work schedule last year, I was determined to get as much of the new book done as soon as I could, in case anything unexpected happened. I pretty much assumed it would.

I’m happy to say no crisis hit. I got the draft written fast and fluently. With the benefit of editor Toby Selwyn’s invaluable input, we now have the finished manuscript, ready well ahead of the book’s planned launch at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton at the end of October. Ben Baldwin has now worked his usual magic and given us a marvellous cover. Details will forthcoming soon.

Other things in the plus column include me contributing an essay to the creative writing handbook, Writing the Magic, edited by Dan Coxon. I decided to explore what Tolkien’s creative process could offer a writer today – and where following in his footsteps might not be the best idea. That was an interesting and illuminating exercise on many levels. And talking of Tolkien, Zen Cho’s memorial lecture on fantasy fiction was as entertaining as it was instructive, and is well worth a watch.

I have also been working with the team at Angry Robot to agree on some changes to a fantasy novel proposal. That was one of the other projects that got badly disrupted last year. We have reached an entirely satisfactory consensus, and signed the contract. That book will be published next year, and when I read the opening few pages at Eastercon, people were pleasingly intrigued.

As an aside, some people have been surprised when I’ve mentioned I’m reworking a novel to a fairly significant extent following editorial input on my proposal. I’m surprised that they are surprised. It’s not the first time I’ve done this after all, going right back to my early Tales of Einarinn days. Fresh eyes, especially experienced, professional eyes, can offer valuable new input at every stage of a book’s development. I’m simply telling the story I want to tell from a slightly different perspective. Shifting the focus on certain characters, and rebalancing different plot elements, is proving to be an enjoyable challenge.

So I have been busy, and not only with writing. I was re-elected to the board of the Society of Authors last autumn, and we have been extremely busy. The onslaught on copyright law led by tech companies, hell bent on monetising their parasitical Large Language Models, has only been our most high profile challenge. A whole lot of things are making life difficult for writers at present, from the fragmentation and degradation of social media to bad practise and sheer incompetence by some publishers. You’ll notice I’m not naming names or mentioning specifics. I have a duty of confidentiality to the Society and its membership. That precludes me blogging about the publishing industry outrage of the day/week. Even without that, I haven’t had time to spare to get into debating and exploring the details of extremely complex situations.

Then there’s the ongoing everything else; in society, in politics, in the climate crisis, and international affairs. You don’t need me to tell you we live in perilous and unhappy times. I’ve balanced keeping current with the news with not letting it overwhelm me, which has meant spending less time online. Yes, I absolutely recognise the social and financial privilege I have which allows me to do that. I use that privilege where and when I can, to do what I can, mostly offline. Then there’s been family stuff; nothing dire, I’m glad to say, but everything takes up time. All this has added up to me limiting my social media to Bluesky, Mastodon and Facebook, disinclined to post longer form blogs, even about unrelated things.

So what has changed? Mostly, I’ve got the new Green Man book completed without a crisis. This time last year, I was scrabbling to get back on track, still recovering from a serious illness. Currently, I’m ahead of the game. I realised this when I looked at the calendar this morning. Don’t ask me why, but that flipped some sort of switch. Today was the day to dust off the blog.

I like to wrap up each year with a few reflections before Christmas, then take a break from social media until the New Year when I look forward. This year, looking back, my overriding thought is ‘Really? Seriously​?’ Because these past twelve months saw us hit with one disruptive (and often expensive) thing after another… That’s all I’m going to say about that, partly because I choose not to live my life online, and partly because I’m choosing to focus on the positive aspects of the year. Not burying my head in the sand, but making sure to balance the scales.

2024 saw the publication of my novel, The Green Man’s War, from Wizard’s Tower Press, a short story collection, Different Times and Other Places, from Newcon Press, a novelette, Unseen Hands, from ZNB, and three original short stories, A Civil War, in the anthology Fight Like a Girl Volume 2, from Wizard’s Tower Press, along with The Green Man’s Guest, and A Stitch in Time Saves One, both in Different Times and Other Places. I think there are possibly years where I’ve seen more words in print, but I think that’s a new high water mark as far as range and variety of writing in a single year is concerned.

August saw me attend the Worldcon in Glasgow, then there was Fantasycon in Chester, Bristolcon in Bristol (where else?) and lastly but by no means least, Fantastika, where I was a Guest of Honour this year’s Swecon in Stockholm on the first weekend of November. That was an excellent convention which I thoroughly enjoyed. All these events offered me opportunities for friendly and supportive conversations with fellow writers and readers, on panels, over meals and drinks. Some of these were planned, plenty more were unforeseen good fortune.

Since the disruptions mentioned above meant we hadn’t managed any sort of holiday to that point in the year, my husband and I stayed on in Stockholm for a week’s break. We had a splendid time. The weather was decent, we found some good restaurants, the city’s museums are excellent, and at that time of year, not too busy. The Vasa is as astounding as everyone says, and the Wreck Museum offers an up-to-date perspective on underwater archaeology which is very well worth seeing. The Viking exhibit at the History museum was fascinating, and the Army museum gave us a very interesting and different view of historical events. The ABBA museum is extremely well done, though we still find it hard to accept Waterloo won Eurovision 50 years ago!

As an added bonus, we spent time with local friends, including Jonathan, SF fan and historical guide, who showed us rune stones and painted churches on the outskirts of the city, and intriguing corners of Stockholm’s old town which we would never have found on our own. If you’re planning a visit to Sweden, do check out the tours and walks on offer at the Sweden History Tours website. You may then be able to see details and ideas which I picked up through the week appearing in my writing in the year to come.

And since Jonathan is a SF & Fantasy fan, we made sure to visit the deservedly renowned SF Bokhandeln bookstore in Stockholm. One of life’s great pleasures is strolling around a well-stocked bookshop comparing notes with a like-minded friend, finding out what you both have read, what they recommend that’s new to you, and introducing them to books you have really enjoyed. Finding your own books on the shelves is a bonus thrill.

Which brings me to my conclusion for the year. There’s a lot that’s wrong in the world at the moment, and far too many people are having far too hard a time of it, near and far. So alongside doing what I can to help out, I have realised that taking respite as well as pleasure on a personal level, when and where that’s possible, is more important than ever. Friendships are invaluable for doing these things. Those are the thoughts I’ll be taking with me to the end of this year and into the next.

With all good wishes to you and yours, as you celebrate this season as you choose.

Today sees Different Times and Other Places, my retrospective short fiction collection, published by Newcon Press. This is the latest in their Polestars series showcasing writers working across speculative fiction – who happen to be women. Selecting these stories has offered me insights into my development as a writer, as well as highlighting inspirations which I realise go back to my earliest reading. It has also given me the opportunity to share two completely new, previously unpublished stories. The Green Man’s Guest sees an unexpected encounter for Dan Mackmain in an arboretum, while A Stitch in Time Saves One explores an epic fantasy possibility that occurred to me and was simply too good not to use somewhere.

The only downside of putting this collection together – if I can even call it that – is I find I want to write more and longer stories about the people and places I have revisited. My natural writing length is the novel. Writing short stories is a skill I have consciously learned. It’s a distinctly different narrative form which I have come to appreciate, not least by reading the work of other authors who do this supremely well. Writing really good, effective short fiction absolutely isn’t simply a case of fitting a story into the required word count.

My first novel, The Thief’s Gamble, was an epic fantasy, a genre I still read and enjoy. I often come across potential inspirations for fresh ways of looking at magic, and of reflecting on our own lives using the magic mirror of a previously unimagined secondary world. These days, short stories allow me to explore these ideas in between writing my ongoing Green Man series of contemporary fantasy novels. And since a short story asks far less of a reader’s time, they are an excellent way to offer an introduction to my style and perspective as an author.

I don’t ever want to become complacent as a writer, so I continually strive to hone my skills. The best way to improve your abilities in any craft is to tackle new tests. That’s something else I get from short fiction. Writing for a themed anthology is an intriguing creative challenge as I look for an angle that no one else has seen. Then I get to read everyone else’s stories, and see the other possibilities they found. In Fight Like A Girl Volume 2, from Wizard’s Tower Press, it’s great to see so many authors from the first volume returning, as well as the contributions from other writers joining us. It’s very rewarding to see readers enjoying the breadth of perspectives this anthology offers.

Shared-world writing asks similar and also different questions of an author, as a group of writers work together to find the balance between individuality and collaboration that creates a coherent setting which becomes more than the sum of its parts. I contributed the story ‘Unseen Hands’ to the Ampyrium anthology from ZNB in the summer, working with and alongside a great roster of writers to build this new and original milieu.

February 2025 will see the publication of the Lincolnshire Folk Tales Reimagined anthology. This was a different writing challenge yet again. The team behind the ‘Lincolnshire Folk Tales: Origins, Legacies, Connections, Futures’ project at Nottingham Trent University are putting together a programme of launch events, which will include readings, Q&A and more, to promote interest and awareness of the origins and influences of this storytelling heritage. Check this page for the dates and places for events – you’ll need to scroll down for the newest additions.

And now? I’ll get back to working on a new, full-length project that I’m developing, alongside Dan’s next adventure…

I’m delighted to share the news that my female-centred Arthurian retelling, The Cleaving, is now available as an audiobook, courtesy of Watkins Media, narrated by Joanna Carpenter.

You can find it here

I’ve felt for years that the legendary epics of King Arthur and Camelot don’t tell the whole story. In particular the women are badly underserved, as they are denied the right to control their own destinies amid the wars and rivalries that determine ‘the matter of Britain’. As far as Arthur and Merlin are concerned, they serve Camelot by doing as they are told and nothing more.

So we’re supposed to accept Arthur’s mother Ygraine marrying the man who’s just killed her husband? Arthur’s half-sister Morgana turns to dark magic to defy him and Merlin just because she’s ‘bad’? The enchantress Nimue challenges Merlin and uses her magic to outwit him – but why does she do it? Come to that, exactly why does Arthur’s marriage to the dutiful, biddable, beautiful Guinevere end in adultery, rebellion and death.

When I focused on the women I saw a different picture. Men forget that women talk. Ygraine, Nimue, Morgana and Guinevere have opportunities to become friends and allies as the decisions that shape their lives are taken out of their hands. Now these women have a voice.

The seventh instalment of Dan Mackmain’s adventures makes this the longest continuous sequence of novels that I’ve written. Okay, I actually reached that point with the last book, The Green Man’s Quarry but I’ve only just thought about this. The Tales of Einarinn came to a natural pause after five volumes. The subsequent books in the World of Einarinn timeline were a series of four novels, followed by two trilogies. With each of those sequences, I was determined not to rewrite a story I’d already told. Shifting focus to a different part of that fantasy world with a new cast of characters was a key part of ensuring that.

So how can I keep writing the Green Man books without repeating myself? It turns out elements embedded in these stories from the start are very helpful. I decided Dan’s life would be grounded in everyday reality. Writing epic fantasy novels showed me how a solid foundation makes the magical far more believable. With these books, that means a year or so between each story sees a year or so pass in Dan’s life. His relationships develop and his priorities change. That makes new demands on him and I can find new ways to threaten him.

These books are rooted in British folklore. This is a vast and varied resource. The more I read, the more I find to spur my imagination. I don’t necessarily find complete stories. Most local legends are single incidents, often tied a particular landscape feature or an old building. A lot of these stories are very similar, even when they’re set hundreds of miles apart. None of this is a problem. As I read these variations, I can use common threads to weave stories into the underlying mythology that’s evolving through this series. Where I find contradictions and exceptions, those can remind the reader not to take anything for granted. Where mentions of a monster are little more than fragments, I can devise something that’s both familiar and wholly new.

Then there’s the catalyst. The creative process that has emerged for these books is very different to my approach to writing an epic fantasy novel or a historical murder mystery. I plan those in detail from the start, and I tailor my research to the needs of the plot I’ve already worked out. Each Green Man book starts with me gathering assorted, apparently unrelated ideas from my folklore reading, from places I visit, from conversations with like-minded friends. I make note of news stories about rural life and concerns which will affect Dan and his friends. At that stage, I genuinely have no idea what the next book will be about.

Then I will come across something that suggests a way to tie these ideas together. Once I have that catalyst, the story starts to take shape. Its internal momentum shows me where and when to draw the next element in. Now my research is about finding the people and resources to tell me things I had no idea I would need to know. I will be well into writing the novel before I see the ending come into focus ahead. I would never have imagined I would be working this way, but the experience is as exciting as it has been unexpected.

So what was the catalyst for The Green Man’s War? When we were visiting Burford one day last winter, my husband saw a small bronze statue of three dancing hares in a jeweller’s shop window. Regular readers will understand why that caught his eye. We went in to buy it, only to discover the shop door should have been locked and the ‘Closed’ sign put up. A distracted member of staff had followed the usual routine on auto-pilot. The manager and staff were actually in the shop that morning to compile an insurance claim after being robbed the week before. A gang of men armed with hammers and knives had ambushed the keyholder outside, forced their way in, and stripped the shelves and display cases bare. The nice people in the shop were happy to sell us the little statue, once they had told us all about it.

That got me thinking. What would Dan do, faced with that situation? Why might something like that happen to him? I’d read a few myths that mentioned jewellery. Ideas started coming together…

I’ve shared in thoughtful panel discussions with Andrew Knighton at conventions, as well as more informal conversations. I am very pleased to share his article on the relationships between a character’s job of work and various aspects of a story.

Work is a fundamental part of life. It can provide purpose, frustrations, and a roof over your head. In a capitalist society, it’s the thing that most clearly defines your place in society.

Because of that, jobs can bring fictional characters to life in novel and fascinating ways. Not so much the common protagonist jobs, the warriors and police officers who power so many stories, but the unexpected choices, the jobs that are unusual for fictional protagonists even if they’re common in the real world.

Working the Story

Work as Character

A character’s job can tell you a lot about who they are at heart.

Take Ten Low, Stark Holborn’s frontier combat medic. She’s a wounded character in a wounded world, trying to patch people together as they get shot and stabbed and flung around. She’s clearly chosen this role to put some distance between her and who she was before, for reasons that become clear as the story unfolds. No one’s paying her to heal, but it’s definitely her job.

Charlie Mason, the protagonist of Neil Williamson’s Charlie Says, is a standup comic whose performances express his own insecurities, his fears, and the changes he’s gone through over the years. His profession becomes a hook the whole character hangs off, and with it the themes of the story. The standup comic as stand-in for modern Britain, defensive and abrasive, caught between the instincts to mock himself or to cruelly attack others.

That can extend to a group of characters. In N. K. Jemisin’s The City We Became, the avatar of the Bronx works at an arts centre, an outsider and creative; Brooklyn is a rapper turned politician, furiously battling the system; while Padmini, the avatar of Queens, is a logically-minded graduate student working in mathematics. Their professional roles reflect their personalities which in turn reflect the places they embody. Their jobs root them in geography and society, highlighting the connections of modern urban life and specifically of New York.

Work as Story

While any job can provide a window into a character’s heart, others more directly affect the story.

Dan Mackmain, the protagonist of Juliet E. McKenna’s Green Man series, is a man whose career reflects his character. He’s a carpenter and handyman who makes carved wooden objects, someone who’s practical and connected to the land, creative yet down-to-earth. His connection to the wood and world is what draws him into supernatural danger, but it also provides the pragmatic, worldly skills that let him survive otherworldly threats. It’s a hook for adventure and a tool to survive it.

That path from a character’s job to the challenges they’re going to face can be more direct. Ned Beauman’s Venomous Lumpsucker features a pair of protagonists who work in different specialist fields, one an animal scientist and the other an investment executive. Their perspectives let the story explore economic and environmental systems without drowning readers in textbook explanations or political diatribes, while the investor’s deals in a fictional commodity called “extinction credits” embodies economic structures gone wrong. Their shared knowledge gives the characters both the tools and the motive to go crack the systems of the world open, angles from which to see society and to shape it.

Work as Inspiration

Sometimes the job is the whole reason a story exists.

That category is where my new novel, The Executioner’s Blade, fits in. Inspired by Joel F. Harrington’s history book The Faithful Executioner, I started thinking about what the life of an executioner would be like and who would take on a job like that. It’s a job that’s been central to the functioning of many justice systems, but that’s viewed with fear and suspicion. A killer of killers, wielding violence to deter violent acts, living in tension with societies that want them to do the work but don’t want to know them afterwards.

I became fascinated with what sort of person would do that. Someone interested in justice. Someone who was happy to be shunned. Someone comfortable shedding blood. Preferably someone with the skills and experience to kill quickly and cleanly. Maybe someone living in tension with herself.

Inevitably, I thought about problems with capital punishment, not least the fact that miscarriages of justice happen. Sometimes the wrong person gets punished, and when the punishment is execution there’s no coming back from that. How would it feel for an executioner to learn that she’d killed an innocent person, that she’d been used to perpetrate a further injustice and cover the murderers trail? It felt like a good motive for a story, a character wanting to put right a wrong she’d unwittingly done, a murder mystery in which the killer is also the investigator.

The job became the story.

Collected Work

If there’s one book that shows how much you can do with a single profession, it’s Steve Toase’s Under My Skin, a collection of archaeological horror.

Through ten different stories, Toase shows how the same job can take a person, and an author, in very different directions. Characters range from the obsessive to the world-weary, the idealistic to the cynical. Their work includes digging holes, plotting maps, identifying finds, and theorising on what they’ve found. We see the giddy excitement of discovery and the repetitive tedium of paperwork. We meet characters fascinated by the work and others worn down by it.

The stories also find different ways to make the archaeological fantastical and unnerving. It could be something uncanny found in the ground, a colleague becoming increasingly strange thanks to his discoveries, or a survey of a town where the houses themselves become horrifying. In one case, archaeology becomes a profession for travelling to and interacting with another realm.

The same job, presented in ten very different ways.

And All the Rest…

Toase’s book left me thinking there should be more stories about archaeologists, because there’s so much potential in what they do. But maybe that’s true of any profession if you dig into it deeply enough or even sprinkle it with the twisting magic of genre fiction. We could be reading about Medusa’s hairdresser, about a takeout chef on an intergalactic highway, about stable hands cleaning out the manticore pens. There are books out there about magical bakers and the fire fighters in a world of dragons, but we could have so much more, a chance to see the fascinating characters that different careers can create.

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Andrew Knighton’s new novel, The Executioner’s Blade, is out from Northodox Press on 28 November. You can find him at andrewknighton.com.