Light Shard now in Paperback!

Very pleased to announce that my new book Light Shard can now be purchased in paperback!

You'll find it over at Amazon... somewhere here: 

US: https://www.amazon.com/Light-Shard-H-Charles/dp/B0BN21JN25/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Light-Shard-H-Charles/dp/B0BN21JN25/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

CA: https://www.amazon.ca/Light-Shard-H-Charles/dp/B0BN21JN25/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

DE: https://www.amazon.de/Light-Shard-H-Charles/dp/B0BN21JN25/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

NEW BOOK NEW BOOK NEW BOOK NEW BOOK!!

Set your alarms, everybody, because I have a new book!

Yes, it's been a looooong time in the making, but it's here. LIGHT SHARD is the first in a new series about archaeologist Nick Allemand. It's contemporary fiction with plenty of action, adventure and a healthy dash of fantasy (obviously!). 

It will be available on Kindle and eBook from the 25th November at the inflation-busting price of $4.99. Orrrr, get in early and PRE-ORDER for a bargain $2.99! 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BKGYHLNH/

or

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BKGYHLNH/

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1175443

https://books.apple.com/us/book/x/id6444018193

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/2940165955266

https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/Search?Query=9780463149249

Nick Allemand has almost everything present and correct: a job in archaeology that he loves, acceptable-to-moderate looks, more money than he could ever hope to spend, a bijou house in Grantaford, and friends he can count upon for just about anything. But all that changes when his colleague and fellow archaeologist Ava Galaniou goes missing. Almost immediately, he is under suspicion for her disappearance, and on the run with few of the tools and little of the experience he needs. His search leads him to the tomb of all tombs - the long-lost Tomb of Alexander the Great - source of incredible power across the centuries, and a pyramid scheme with apparently little connection to Egypt. Will Nick adapt in time to survive the tests set by this long-dead ruler? And will he find Ava? It'll take a great deal of shattered light to find out...

Book One of The Nick Allemand Series.

From the author of The Fireblade Array.

For fans of Indiana Jones, Mieville's The City & The City, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, Tomb Raider and many other contemporary action and adventure stories with mystery, crime and a dash of history.

Wheel of Time on Prime - semi review

Well, here's another one. 

Like others, I started reading WoT while I was at school. I was probably about 14 when I had my first stab at reading The Eye of the World. I recall it took me about five goes before I could really get into it - many times did my eyes glaze over at the descriptions of braided hair and honey cakes, but I made it to Chapter Two eventually, and the investment truly did pay off. From then on, and across thousands of pages, I was hooked. For me, it was the first series I had encountered where fantasy was handled in a more mature way. I don't mean it was filled with strange reproductive habits (who would write a thing like that?!), but that it dealt more heavily with angsty human characters and their relationships instead of comical hobbitses. 

When Crossroads of Twilight came out, I remember heading to Waterstones to purchase it with some school prize tokens instead of spending them on academic books like I was supposed to. Little did I realise it would turn out to be a valuable volume for my future career, and I still have it, complete with my school prize certificate inside!

Tragedy struck in 2007 when the author, Robert Jordan, died before completing the series, and as many of you know, the mantle was taken up by Brandon Sanderson of (more recently) Stormlight fame with great success. 

Over the last two decades, I've followed report after report about the series being optioned by various production outfits and TV networks, and over those years, virtually nothing came of those stories. I recall there was a set of Lews Therin monologues on Youtube from a few years back. They were as long-winded as Jordan's writing, but demonstrated someone was willing to front at least a bit of cash. I can't find them now, but I assume they're still out there. 

The problems I believe each production company hit were the obvious ones: things like getting a whole team of people to read these massive brick-shaped tomes and condense them down to a pitchable screenplay, or getting a financial backer to commit to enough episodes to tell the story, whilst also paying for the extra costs that come with fantasy-world effects, costuming, sets, etc. And not forgetting that High Fantasy was perhaps out of mainstream fashion throughout the 90s and early 2000s.

Game of Thrones proved fantasy could have modern relevance and themes, and that overcoming all of these issues was possible, but that had two extremely committed writers who established a positive relationship with George R.R. Martin from the outset. And honestly, I do not believe Wheel of Time would ever have made it to TV if Game of Thrones had not paved the way. 

However, the Wheel of Time book series suffers from another issue, in that perhaps because of the way its world is structured, it is... well... a bit sexist. I remember my key frustration when first reading it was that (spoiler) no woman would ever have the power to match the Dragon. And the Dragon could only be male. Further, The White Tower, run by women, seemed to be a generally negative entity - oppressive, all-powerful, untrustworthy and corrupt to everyone not trained within its walls. It should be no surprise that The Fireblade Array was, at least in part, my reaction to that. Some of you may argue TFA is just as sexist, but truly, that was never my intention (spoiler: Acher's misogynistic kingdom falls).

What's more, WoT didn't really allow for non-binary sex and gender (never mind its very limited inferences on LGBTQ+ characters!) - a theme which few good series would be without these days. I sometimes find myself wishing I had a better intersex counterpart for The Daisain across my own books, but for now I'll have to take it as a learning point for the future.

ANYWAY. Telly programme. With all that in mind, it was important that the show widened its horizons, and took Jordan's hints about "pillow friends" to the same-sex relationships we're no longer afraid to depict and consume in the western world. Much has been made of the diversity brought to the show by the cast, as although Jordan's world of Seanchans, Aiel, Malkieri, Tuath'an and so on was ethnically diverse, the main agents of change were predominantly white in the books. The world has moved on, and many of us who write have been given cause to reflect upon who's doing the saving and how they look.

It's many years since I've read the earlier books, but I did notice the TV show has had to make a departure from several key locations in order to save on runtime and budget. I note that Caemlyn was skipped, along with Min and Rand's first meeting place. For me, the absence of Caemlyn didn't make a lot of sense, because Rand's first meeting with Elaine is at a point when he is still ignorant of his identity and quite vulnerable. When that does occur on screen, he is now going to be in a much more powerful position.

The Ways and Shadar Logoth were excellently rendered, in my opinion. I really, really liked the SL sets and they were pretty much as I had imagined. Tar Valon was even better. The interior White Tower design was a definite improvement upon the one I'd imagined inside my head!

Outside of that, it was clear the budget for the series had not been particularly generous. I hope they will have a bit more to play with - and to spend time really refining the dialogue - next time.

The Trollocs, for example, looked almost as comical as their name. I remember laughing out loud when I first read of them in the books - thinking it a portmanteau of trollope (a derogatory term for a promiscuous woman) and bollock (hopefully you know that one). It does make it difficult to fear them, but a TV outfit with some spectacular effects could outgrow the stupid name with some nastier teeth. I think they could also afford to break free of Jordan's description too. Rhino-headed bipeds are tricky to make intimidating.

I'm not sure about the departure of Matrim Cauthon - the original would never have done that, and I'm intrigued as to what they will come up with next for him.

Rosamund Pike does an excellent job as Moiraine, with Zoe Robins my other favourite as Nynaeve. I'm not sure why they hotted-up Thom Merrilyn, but hey, I'm sure all will be revealed!

Costume design worked really well on Moiraine, but I wasn't convinced much by Lan's. Again, I suspect that was down to budget.

So in summary, it was clear that Prime had to do some work bringing the source material up to date, and that they lacked the huge financing that GoT eventually received. However, it remains a very watchable series, with some great design talent. Most impressively, they've managed to compress the larger part of that doorstop of a book into a few episodes. Definitely worth a watch.

Unsolicited "The Witcher" Series (or Season) 2 Review (spoilers)

Excellent, but could still be improved.

In response to precisely no demand, I thought I'd put down a few thoughts about the most recent series of Netflix' The Witcher. Really, and for fairness, I should have done this for Game of Thrones and Wheel of Time, but I didn't. And I suppose it's better late than never to do a blurb. I hope that my perspective as a very minor fantasy author will add something different to the myriad opinions already out there.

Perhaps improperly, my first introduction to The Witcher was through the third game. I've spent a long time inside it, and I'd love to make the joke about being glad that Ciri never made it to Skellige in the TV series because of the exhausting side-quests, but unfortunately someone else got there first. After the first series came out, I was finally prompted to turn to the books. They're good fun, by the way. I generally prefer Rothfuss or Jordan's style of stuff for the world-building, but they're still great reads. 

As anyone else who has either read those books or played the game(s) will know, the storyline of the Netflix series is quite a departure from both versions. It's unclear if Geralt's memory problems will ever feature (and hence the subsequent Triss thing), or if he will be taking small sailing dinghies into the middle of the sea to dive for weapons caches. Only time will tell. But do authors get annoyed about having their carefully honed and perfected stories messed with for telly?

No. Far from it. Unless an author is supremely arrogant, a re-jig for television is far more of an excitement than it is a concern. Yes, it can be disconcerting for readers with fully formed expectations, but for an author, it's immensely flattering to have your work looked at and developed into something completely new. Many of us don't write in sequence anyway. We create a pile of scenes and draw them together later - the order can be changed, and frequently is.

And do not forget the feelings of validation and joy that come from finding a buyer for those TV rights. Those of us at the more obscure end of Amazon rankings can only dream of being in a situation where such disappointment is even an option. I recall GRRM once said that no author he knew ever begrudged a poor adaptation of their work, especially not when it had paid for their new garage.

And let's face it, Netflix' The Witcher is not poor or half-hearted. The CGI was faultless, the costumes and monster make-up appropriately beautiful and horrible, and the sets pretty spectacular. Kaer Morhen was a personal favourite. Vast, empty and ruined; it told its own story without requiring any dialogue. I was always disappointed that the books didn't linger for very long here. Plus, placing the Nivellan story in the second series rather than the first worked quite well, in my view. It added to the sense of distance travelled for Ciri and Geralt that would otherwise have been filled with landscape cutaways and Enya (c.f. LotR).  An unfaithful adaptation is, therefore, no bad thing. 

Cavill requires no more fanfare than he already receives, lest his head grow too large for his dusty grey wig. I will say that when I originally heard he was cast to play Geralt, I thought it would never work. I could not have been more wrong, and it's surprises like that which keep me glued to multiple series rather than a single episode. Chalotra gave a brilliant performance as the tortured hunchback in the first series, and I absolutely believed she could be seduced by the darker side of her own personality, but I felt her character deserved something more than frequent defeat in the most recent episodes. If I had been writing, she would have had many more wins to enjoy. She also got a bum deal with the Ciri storyline.

Fringilla deserves a mention - seeing the other side(s) of her in this series was much-needed. Hers, and to a lesser extent Cahir's, were the best pieces of character development this time round. No longer were either of them evil cardboard cutouts from wicked Nilfgard, but with a little more complexity. Everything else not mentioned below was generally good, or not negative enough to be memorably bad.

Geralt did a lot more talking in this series, which isn't a bad thing, but I do worry that if heavily pursued, chatter could lead to a loss of what makes Geralt so special. As viewers and readers, we know how much is going on behind those yellow eyes during his frequent silences, and that whole monologues are encapsulated within his "Hmm"s. He is brilliant because he doesn't need to talk and talk, and Cavill has proved himself quite capable of communicating all this with a grunt, a clenched jaw or furrowed brow. It's a thin line to tread when adding dialogue. 

Onto the proper negatives. There was something wrong with the first two/three episodes that I could not put my finger on at first. I thought the dialogue a bit ponderous and under-edited, but that wasn't the larger problem. It took a second viewing (admittedly, while I was doing other work) before I figured it out - a kind of deadness. And the source of that was Jaskier - or rather his absence. The moment he bursts on screen, the whole thing came back to life for me. It's not just his music, but the optimism and comedy he brings. He's a necessary foil to the darkness, and I feel he was badly underserved by the scripting in this series (his main song - Burn Butcher, Burn - was fabulous and I was swearing at Netflix for auto-skipping the credits, however).

This is a familiar experience for me. When I was writing books four and five, I was repeatedly struck by waves of this same emptiness because of Silar's absence. 

The dark scenes become unbearable when there is no relief; it becomes difficult to write with any degree of punchiness, and if the writer feels this way, you can be certain the reader will feel it too. I needed Silar to make the other parts of the story work, and so does The Witcher. The comic relief is far from an afterthought for the LOLs; it's an essential and necessary part of the whole. Plus, Joey Batey is not a thing to be wasted, but a hugely valuable asset to the show. So that is my main criticism - not enough of him or the chemistry he creates with the other characters. I think the writers got Jaskier and Yen wrong too. Jaskier, after all, is a dandy and a seducer of women. As frightening as Yen is to him, I think he would have recognised and acted upon his attraction to her with Geralt out of the picture. This, combined with the inevitable rejection, would have made for much better comedy, and it needn't have been overt or repetitive or seedy.

The other characters using "fuck" or variations thereof ended up depowering it too significantly. "Cannot think of a side from which you are not completely fucked," was a great line, but the Fire Fuckers either side of that felt flaccid in comparison. Swearing is not bad per se, nor is plenty of it (c.f. The Thick of It), but it does need variety. We are fortunate to have a language with the some of the most fantastic and varied swearwords, euphemisms, and insults known to humankind. I wish they could have been more creative and experimental with the swears. Tinderbox Twat, Campfire Cunt, Burning Bollocks Bastard, Sparky Scale-Faced Cesspit Sewer-Dweller are just a few alternatives off the top of my head. 

I spotted one Geralt-branded "Fuck," and it was not given the correct timing by the other bits of soundtrack around it. I know there can be a sense of cliche with such character-specific catchphrases, but the viewer is waiting in hope for it, and it's surprisingly hard for these things to become as tired to the audience as they perhaps seem to the actor. It also gives the writers endless opportunities for messing with expectations. Remember Bond's "Do I look like I give a fuck?" response to the martini offering? Perhaps Geralt's expletives could be played with in reverse fashion.

Vilgeforz - one of my favourite supporting characters, but I'm not sure why he has a wild and angry outburst with Tissaia. It seemed rather unjustified.

I wasn't convinced that Geralt would have dangled Ciri in front of the dragony beast. It was an opportunity for an heroic moment, but I'm afraid it jarred for me.

Nitpicky stuff: 

Yen's escape from Fountains Abbey using an axe was somewhat contrived. 

Yennefer's unicorn was referenced, but I was actually rather gutted that they hadn't gone for a visual Easter Egg instead. How brilliant would it have been if the stuffed unicorn - broken or otherwise - had appeared in the background of a scene, completely unreferenced or acknowledged? I do prefer subtlety...

They killed Roach. True to the games, and probably intended as an in-joke. But still. It's like the trauma of Bela all over again. *wipes tear away*

There was a scene where Ciri begs to start eating her dinner. Two minutes later, or perhaps even less, Geralt tells her it's time for bed. At least give the girl some time to eat - she's got trials to complete! This could have done with better editing or writing. 

Use of "gotten" instead of "got" or some other synonym. Use of "wrote me" instead of "wrote to me." Gah. I think some more Americanisms crept in there too. These make perfect sense in American accents, and do have their roots in older English, but are surprisingly jarring to a Brit ear in Brit/RP accents. 

That's all. I feel I've spent an unfair amount of time on the negatives as it's still an excellent set of episodes. The perfect is, after all, the enemy of the good. I eagerly await the next batch - and here's hoping Yen and Yaskier get the things I've requested. 

Fireblade Array Shop!

A little while ago (okay, a LONG while ago), a reader asked if some of my artwork could be made available on T-shirts... Well, it's taken rather longer than expected, but I finally got round to adding the four Will-Die pieces to Redbubble. These are four pieces of digital art, created by me, specifically for the series. You can have these printed on pretty much anything you can imagine, but if there's an item you'd like me to add to the collection, or if you'd like more background colour options/repositioning of the images and so on, just reply to this email and I'll do my best to add it to the shop! All best, H   Buy FA art Artemi Wielder and assassin. Self-rescuer. View products » Morghiad Just your everyday, swashbuckling kanala. Shop here »

Fireblade Friday!

We are running a HUGE PROMO at Gialdin Towers: from this Friday (26th June) -> Friday (3rd July), we have heavily discounted BOTH Fireblade book bundles.

So if you are in need of a bargain, or would like a book series to recommend to your friends, now is the time to get a deal.

First four books:



https://www.bookbub.com/books/the-fireblade-array-four-book-bundle-by-h-o-charles?ebook_deal

The second bundle:



https://www.bookbub.com/books/the-fireblade-array-three-book-bundle-by-h-o-charles

I'm also looking at making some artwork available to purchase. More to follow on that soon...

Hello, everybody.


It's been a while, I know, and just a few things have happened in the world since I last wrote to you all.


I hope this message finds you and your loved ones well in the current circumstances, and bearing up with such restrictions placed upon the lifestyles we previously enjoyed. Though we have our health, employment uncertainty looms large, and most likely will do for some time to come.


In April last year, my partner was diagnosed with stage II cancer. Following chemo and radiotherapy, it looks like it has gone, but it was an upsetting experience for us both, and quite disrupted all the plans we had for that year (e.g. travelling, writing!) - plans we postponed to this year...


As some of you may know, before turning to writing I was a science communicator, and oddly enough, worked with a lot of people in virology. For years they had been warning of the inevitability of another viral pandemic like SARS, and urging politicians to be prepared for the eventuality. Of course, for western countries unaffected by such events since 1918, pandemic stockpiling was not seen as important as other matters - matters that now appear quite trivial.


One opportunity this pandemic has offered me is in reconnecting with those former colleagues, and in getting them to help me form my next novel. It'll be set twenty years from now, and involve fraud... but that's all I'm saying!



---@: WATCH THIS SPACE :@---



Merchandise updates to follow in next message...






Additional:
I don't have any new writings for you just yet, but I AM doing a sales day on Friday 26th June. Both Fireblade Array e-bundles will be heavily discounted across all online outlets - my first big sale in two years!!