Lou's Writing News, Cues and Reviews: July's Writer's Showcase: L.N.Hunter

L.N.Hunter

So far in this series, I have showcased the talented authors Ruth Loten, Jane Langan, Beck Collett and Ron Hardwick. This month I’m going to showcase a member of the OU Write Club, fantasy writer L.N.Hunter. The Write Club is where I first came across his fabulous writing. I am a huge fan of his work and I was always delighted if there were pieces of his writing waiting to be given feedback on the Write Club forum, because I knew they'd be exactly the sort of thing I loved reading. He was also brilliant at giving insightful feedback on my own work, so I'd like to take the opportunity to thank him for that while I'm here! L.N. is excellent at writing comic fantasy, being witty and imaginative, with a wry intelligence. If you like the work of Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde, Tom Holt, Robert Rankin, you’ll probably enjoy his stories.

L,N,Hunter

Biography

L.N. Hunter’s comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp (published by Three Ravens Publishing at the end of 2022), sits alongside over twenty short stories in anthologies such as Best of British Science Fiction 2022 and Hidden Villains: Arise, as well as several issues of Short Édition’s Short Circuit and the Horrifying Tales of Wonder podcast. There have also been papers in the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, which are probably somewhat less relevant and definitely less entertaining. When not writing, L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in rural Cambridgeshire along with two cats and a soulmate.

Here are a few short examples of L.N.'s work, with his comments:

The Prayer of the Humble Monks, from The Feather and the Lamp

O, Great Lord—or Lady, for We Do Not Know,

We are not worthy of Thy Attention.

We are insects. No, we areth less than that. Parasites on insects, verily,

Remaining far distant from Thy Being, or possibly Beings,

So as not to cause offence in Thy Gaze.

Not that we merit an acknowledgement within Thy Sight.

Of Thee, we beseech nothing,

For we deserveth not even of the scrapings of Thy Boots,

If, that is, Thou wearest Boots and not, say, Sandals or Flip-flops,

For we desire not to maketh assumptions on Thine Apparel.

Or anything else.

"Being somewhat artistically challenged, I used Lou’s request for pictures as an excuse to play with Bing’s image creator. The chapter containing that prayer is where we first meet Brother Nobody: ‘Light flared from a torch held by a skinny, tonsured man wearing a grubby brown cassock and carrying a carpetbag.’ I gave that sentence to the image generator, but got nothing particularly nice; the carpetbag was just too much for the program. In the end, I used ‘a brown-robed tonsured monk carrying a flaming torch in a tunnel’ as the prompt—he’s a bit tougher-looking than I imagine Brother Nobody, and the tonsure was ignored, but still, it’s better than anything I could produce myself.

Sometimes my characters come fully-baked, even down to which actor I imagine playing them in the Netflix TV series (sigh, if only)—incidentally, Anton Lesser is my choice for Brother Nobody. More often, though, they’re just a voice and a few mannerisms. Occasionally, I’ll do an image search for similar types of people for inspiration about all the missing details, but I imagine I might start noodling with these image generation tools too."

Mackerel Swimming Through Swiss Cheese

Bouquet of cheese and rancid fish:

the smell of bin bags when they squish.

Too soon, all things go grey and green:

old bacon shines with slimy sheen,

releasing thick and powerful stench

of loathsome, dead, decaying tench.

Abandoned cup of milky tea

contains a hint of charmless brie,

with texture of some bubbly snot

exuding strands of stringy rot.

Which fish is it that smells so mean:

brown trout, or cod, or smoked sardine?

Why does all cheese go off and stink -

hard or gooey, blue-veined or pink?

Oh, why do bin bags, when you squeeze,

all smell of mackerel and Swiss cheese?

"Poetry and I don’t see eye to eye, and the part of my creating writing course that I liked least was the segment on that topic. When it came to writing something for the course, I decided to be ornery and picked the most ridiculous subject I could think of, and this was the result."

Start of First Date

I watched one of those old movies the other day—you know, from when nobody wore masks. It was a little disturbing to see all those strangers’ naked mouths, and sometimes it was tricky to tell what was happening, since a lot of old-timey actors weren’t very good at showing their emotions in their eyes. Afterwards, I spent ages trying out different facial expressions in the bathroom mirror, trying to get my mouth to match what my eyes and eyebrows did naturally—it was hard!

I got a DM from Remy as I was doing it—my SomaNet had tripped an alarm because of my elevated heartrate and breathing, and signalled everyone I’d registered as my health watchers. That’s Mum, my sister, best friend Joss, and—of course—Remy. The others probably didn’t even notice, but Remy overreacted, as usual—I guess it’s kinda sweet that she worries so much.

I gave her a vidcall back, and she laughed when I explained what I’d been doing. It was weird how laughter in the movie differed from hers, as if the bottom halves of the actors’ faces were somehow loose while their foreheads were unnaturally static.

Mind you, I did notice that Remy’s mouth seemed a bit too rigid. I wondered if she’d joined in with that fad for botoxing your cheeks that a lot of the girls, and a few of the boys, at school were doing. It seemed rude to ask.

When she stopped laughing, she asked, ‘Still coming over tomorrow?’

I felt a sudden chill, and wondered if she noticed that on SomaNet. I swallowed. ‘Sure, nothing can keep me away.’

"First Date was inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic—more on that later. There’s a bit in the story about a robot travelling along a train to check passengers’ health, though as you can see in the picture, the image creator seems to have forgotten to include the people. Still, it’s a nicely atmospheric image.

Just one more comment on these images, or rather the generative AI technology which is raising hackles in creative circles at the moment. A few decades ago, people were decrying the rise of inexpensive synthesiser technology in lowering the bar to music creation—we were going to wallow in quagmire of awful music. True, some of the music wasn’t great, but many more people were able to be creative than before. There’s an aspect of that in these new tools too: people who ‘can’t’ write or draw are now able to produce something at least OKish. My images aren’t going to win any awards, but are better than anything I could produce by hand; they’re also not important, nor are they going to affect any actual artist.

We do have to be careful that we’re not stealing people’s work (cf. sampling in the music industry) nor their livelihood (like most technology as its use becomes widespread, AI will take away some jobs—for example, I don’t like the idea of cover artists being replaced by AI—but we need to compensate for that). The technology is here and can’t be ignored, and it will get better over time, for good or bad. My own view is that what we have now is fun to play with, but should be used for inspiration rather than final work."

And finally we come to The Big Interview, where L.N. kindly answers writing-related questions and lets us into some of his writing secrets...

How old were you when you first knew you wanted to be a writer, and what set you off down that journey?

Let’s just say I was a late starter and leave it at that. Oh, all right then…

I grew up in the era when one had to pretty much choose between science or arts at age 14, and ne’er the twain shall meet. I was much better at the former than the latter—I’m pretty sure some of that was down to teachers, since I had great Maths and Physics teachers. The way English Literature was taught didn’t help, and as far as I know that hasn’t changed much: painfully detailed analysis of a piece of writing sucks all the potential for enjoyment out of it. (It was years before I thought about picking up any of the ‘classics’ for pleasure, and I still can’t face John Steinbeck.) The result of all that was a Computer Science degree and then a career as a software developer (about which I have no complaints).

Anyway, quite some time after school and university, there were two triggers for starting to write. The first was a book by a famous author; up until then, I loved everything he wrote, but this particular novel was awful. I remember thinking even I could write something better—it didn’t take me all that long to realise I was totally deluded and I put away my pen. Nonetheless, a small seed had been planted, albeit in not particularly fertile ground.

A few years later, I embarked on a distance learning Psychology degree, which included a small segment on Phenomenology. At one level, that came across as concocting detailed stories, and when it came time to pick one of my free choice modules, I selected creative writing as a treat to myself. It was a total blast, and the most enjoyable module of the whole course.

And I was off!

Tell us about the books and writers that have shaped your life and your writing career.

My first favourite authors were the old guys of science fiction and fantasy—Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Dick, Moorcock. I found gadgets and magic much more interesting than people. I probably still do, truth be told.

The authors who really clicked with me were Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde, as much for their playfulness as for the story they were telling. I love that the cleverest mathematician in the world is a camel who uses his skills to aim gobs of spit (Pratchett’s Pyramids), and the FootNoterPhone in Fforde’s Thursday Next books is inspired, especially when it starts getting nuisance calls. I’m a fan of Douglas Adams too, but more of the radio version of Hitchhiker’s Guide than the books—I think I got my love of snappy dialogue from him. Andy Hamilton’s scripts are great for that too.

I’d like to think I’ve absorbed some of their dialogue styles and sense of the absurd in my writing, though it sometimes comes out as horror rather than comedy.

How would you describe your own writing?

I’m all over the place and haven’t found a niche I want to settle in, besides ‘offbeat.’ Almost everything I write is speculative in some form, whether it’s fantasy, horror or sci-fi, and often has a sprinkling of humour. Possibly because of my scattered approach, I tend to spit out short stories—each one is a chance to explore some random idea quickly. The Feather and the Lamp happened almost by accident, and it was much more difficult than the equivalent word count’s worth of short stories.

Are there certain themes that draw you to them when you are writing?

Things I get annoyed about are often triggers for a bit of scribbling, though the end result might exhibit little of that trigger. For example, Skin Deep started off as a look at superficial vanity, and Eternal Soldier is a comment on the wastefulness of war. I’ve got a heap of possibly unpublishable stories inspired by British politics, but writing them was quite cathartic.

I like pushing things to extremes, including my characters who sometimes verge on caricatures. Looking back through my publications, I see that I more often than not give people in my stories a hard time, and not every ending is a happy one. I dread to think what that says about me, not to mention the editors who chose to publish me.

Tell us about how you approach your writing. Are you a planner or a pantser?

In software development, there’s the notion of ‘top-down programming’ (i.e., planning) and ‘bottom-up programming’ (pantsing), but the reality is a mix of both, and undoubtedly based on years of programming, I approach writing in the same way: a loose outline which grows outward (somewhat akin to the snowflake method), and a few scenes or set pieces that come from the components—er, characters—themselves to be glued into an overarching narrative. I find that too much planning sucks the pleasure out of actually doing the writing, but too little leads to a meandering story—I’m not sure I’ve got the balance right yet.

Do you have any advice for someone who might be thinking about starting to write creatively?

I think what was holding me back was needing ‘permission’ to write—part of the creative writing module was about just writing. Anything, anywhere, anytime, with no regard to quality or end results. It probably sounds silly, but it wasn’t until then that I realised I could just put words on paper.

The next thing that I feel is important is letting someone else read your work and give you feedback.

Are you, or have you been in the past, a member of any writing groups, online or face-to-face?

My first scribbles were shared within a small online group associated with the university I studied at (where I first encountered Lou). The first time you ask someone else for feedback can be daunting, so I really appreciated the friendliness of this group. Sadly, the active core of the group is fairly small, and I felt I might be asking too much from them to critique everything I wrote, so I’ve been looking for other places too. I’m bit sad to have drifted away from that group, especially after it gave me such a fantastic start.

There isn’t a convenient face-to-face group near me, and in any case, it could be tricky to find totally compatible writers. There are numerous critiquing websites (something I wrote about recently), and these sorts of places tend to have a sufficiently large membership that you can find someone with similar tastes. I’ve settled on Scribophile and pretty much everything I’ve written has a few critique passes there before submission.

Whatever sort of writing/critique group style you like, I think it’s essential to have something. Besides the sense of community and the support, it’s better to have someone there point out flaws rather than have publishers and editors discover them, when it’s too late to address them.

You don’t have to react to everything people tell you (though if nine out of ten critiques are telling you the same thing, maybe there’s something that needs to be looked at), but it’s good to see how people react to a story before you treat it as complete.

Have you studied creative writing on a formal course?

Only the one short course mentioned above. I’m not a literary sort of person and would find ‘proper’ further academic study dull and frustrating. There’s also the issue of paying for it!

However, there is plenty of free ‘training’ material out there on the web, and I’ve learned a lot from various blogs and podcasts. A couple I particularly like are K.M. Weiland’s and Writing Excuses. One particularly valuable season of Writing Excuses a few years ago (still available online) was essentially a ‘course’ in writing a novel from beginning to end. Brandon Sanderson has put his entire creative writing course up on YouTube for anyone to watch, which I thoroughly recommend.

I’m much more interested in ‘doing’ than studying, which might be limiting my artistic development, but I’m having fun!

Beyond your family and your writing, what other things do you do?

Keep fit—hahahaha! That’s something I really need to do. Sometime.

I’m currently in the process of redecorating the whole house, which leaves little time for anything else (including writing, alas).

Would you describe yourself as a ‘cultured’ person?

I’m thoroughly uncultured and lowbrow, and I’m sure I have school to thank for some of that. (It was decades after school that I considered going to a Shakespeare production a valuable use of time.) I don’t have enough patience for literary reading, but I do like a nice turn of phrase. Probably the most (which isn’t actually saying much!) literary writing I’ve done is the material Short Édition published, though I’m not entirely sure where that came from.

Are you interested in history and if so does it impact on your writing?

I’m not all that interested in recent history, but ancient is a different matter—I’ve got a part-done middle-grade novel which uses a lot of Egyptian mythology. As for other domains, science and technology fascinate me, and I keep an eye on developments in those areas. I often push whatever’s happening now to extremes, such as Eternal Soldier (appears in Best of British Science Fiction 2022) where I project bioengineering and military technology into a ludicrous future, or Hiding in Plain Sight (in Hidden Villains: Arise), where AI gets a bit too big for its boots (written well before ChatGPT existed).

I don’t think writers need to know everything about history, sciences, politics, etc., but more interesting stories come from expertise in a few specific domains. There are enough other people reading books that such stories will appeal to someone.

How did the Covid pandemic affect you as a writer?

During lockdown, not having to endure a couple of hours commuting gave me a lot more time to write, and I did produce a lot of short stories during that time. Only a few were actually inspired by the pandemic, one of which was First Date, which most recently appeared in The Start. (I really like this anthology. Most collections of short stories have a few good ones and a few, shall we say, not as engaging. However, I found everything in The Start to be excellent—Tiffany and the other folk at Rebellion LIT did a great job.)

Something I found writing to help with is dealing with things that make me anxious—it’s as if putting them on paper helps get them out of my head or to explore in more detail instead of focussing on the worst that can happen, as well as being easier to deal with if it’s someone else (i.e., my characters) having to cope with whatever it is.

There is a lot of talk at the moment about political correctness, about the Woke movement, about cultural appropriation, about diversity. What are your thoughts on this, with regard to writing?

As a member of the relatively privileged, I might actually be blind to what really matters to some people, though I believe that my Psychology degree helps me understand others’ positions somewhat. (Or am I guilty of fooling myself? It’s difficult to tell.)

I think writing can and should explore difficult topics, but needs do so sensitively. Cultural appropriation is tricky—I don’t want all my characters to be variants of me, but I also don’t want to cause offence. The Feather and the Lamp includes one very Australian character—am I ‘allowed’ to do that? I would have liked to include aspects of The Dreaming, but I know I wouldn’t do it justice, so I limited myself to the occasional ‘G’day’ and barbie on the beach. I did get a few people from different parts of Australia to look at the relevant parts of the book, but despite their thumbs up, I still worry… I did once get asked why I made the main character of the novel female, as if that’s something I shouldn’t have done. There’s a cut-off in what’s permissible somewhere, and it depends on the characters’ roles within the story, but I’m not sure I know exactly where it is.

I’ve already mentioned another novel I’m working on which uses a lot of Egyptian mythology—I wouldn’t want to be prevented from doing that because of misappropriation, but am I being too selfish?

Most of the time, I try to avoid the issue in my own writing by not having my characters be or do anything that would step on someone’s toes. I guess it helps that I tend to focus on the speculative rather than realism.

Where would you place your own stories, on a continuum with PURE FANTASY at one end and COMPLETE REALISM at the other?

First, what’s the definition of ‘fantasy?’ The Cambridge Dictionary leans towards magic and a medieval setting, which would rule out sci-fi…

Psychology has the ‘type’ theory of personality and the more modern ‘trait’ theory—the first gives people specific labels, while the second defines personality as a combination of a number of different aspects. I think stories are the same—the notion of fantasy or thriller or romance as a genre is the legacy of having to find exactly one place on a shelf or in a catalogue for each book. I believe all stories are combinations of varying amounts of fantasy, technology, adventure, romance, humour, etc., and can sit on multiple shelves simultaneously. Sure, there are ‘pure’ stories that slam the slider against the rail on one dimension while the rest hover close to zero, but I’m much more interested in combinations. Scott Lynch’s Red Seas Under Red Skies is a wonderful heist novel that happens to be set in a fantasy world; Star Wars is a fantasy with space technology.

My own tastes are for the unusual, so I lean towards stories with a high speculative (fantasy, sci-fi, horror) quotient, and tend to shy away from stories set in the real world with real people. Having said that, I love Gill Sims’ Why Mummy Drinks series, which is realism underneath all the humour.