There's a saying by the president, Donald Trump, that practically flies out of the pages.

"Real power is, I don't even want to use the word, fear."
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Though an airborne quality may certainly befit such words, however, perhaps they are deserving of less clean imagery; thick smog, oozing from the pages at hand, would seem more suited. Indeed, such is the nature of Bob Woodward's observations that alarm bells should be ringing in perpetuity in the background, as you delve deeper into the dragon's den.

Lord of Chaos is Robert Jordan's sixth entry into the Wheel of Time series, following the events of The Fires of Heaven. 

"On the slopes of Shayol Ghul, the Myrddraal swords are forged, and the sky is not the sky of this world..." 
- Lord of Chaos

Before my return to Jordan's exquisitely expansive world, I had caught wind of some pretty despairing reviews of the later entries of The Wheel of Time. The gist seemed to be that, from the point of The Fires of Heaven (or The Shadow Rising, depending on who you listen to), the Wheel of Time starts to become less Trolloc-slaying fun and more cool, political intrigue with a dash of the occasional swordplay and world-bending magical feats.

​While I'm delighted to be back working on the Phoenix Saga, I can't help but feel that *Mysterious Project No.3*, as exciting as it was at the time, has been something of a palette cleanser.

Moving on to a new series was always going to be a challenge in itself, of course, even more so if you were as foolish enough, as I, to think you could detach yourself from your SIP (series/saga in progress, is that a thing?). Not to say that it isn't doable. Certainly, for the more experienced writers out there, a capacity for cold-blooded ruthlessness when it comes to switching between projects has often long-since been cultivated. Take Will Wight for instance, currently demonstrating such a feat with his The Elder Empire series... boy, is that guy just damn productive....

Welcome one and all, and an outrageously belated Happy New Year to you lovely people!

For those of you who haven't come across my guest appearance on Yakira Goldberg's blog (which you can catch here) I thought I'd cobble together a quick post to inform you all of a recent change of heart I've had in regard to my writing.

I'm still writing, by the way! I won't be hanging up the keyboard just yet.

I had been working since the Summer on a completely separate project, basically with the idea of seeing how quickly I could write a novel (extremely rough first draft, more like). Inevitably, however, life tends to get in the way of our goals and I was thrust once more into university life, and all the fun and joy that it entails. Not to say I'm not enjoying it, but, as one might expect, it has made writing more of a juggling exercise.

As such - and considering how much I've missed the Phoenix Saga - I've decided to focus all my attentions on the third book and the following instalments before I attempt such an ambitious move again.

Bring on the Phoenix.

So... I was wondering this morning about the practicalities of designing either a 'soft' or 'hard' magic system within a book.

Establishing strong characters and an equally compelling story line should, in my opinion, always be the first port of call for any genre. But magic systems are also the calling cards of Fantasy - they make the genre distinctive.

Harry Potter has wands and spells; the Mistborn Trilogy has a strict system of rules and limitations, requiring the consumption of metals for magic and for the 'magic user' to have been born able to use one or all of the metals; and then you have Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (LoTR), where the limitations and extent of magic are shrouded in mystery.