Luke Bellmason Interview, Part Two

Here is part two of M Joseph Murphy's interview with author Luke Bellmason:

You did the cover for Canterbury Tales yourself. It’s very impressive, a rarity for authors. Simple and yet instantly recognizable. Is there a difference, for you, between writing and creating visual art?

Thank you for saying so. I am so critical of my own work and it's almost impossible to judge yourself. I think there is link between all of the creative arts. music, painting and writing and it's aesthetics. It's such a difficult concept to grasp because it's entirely subjective. Two people might agree that something looks beautiful but ten others might not. Who is right? I know when I've done something that looks right image wise, but I can't explain how. I just look at it and say to myself "yes, that's right." When someone else agrees that's very pleasing. I only wish it were that easy with writing, I am never quite sure whether that's good or not. There's a lot less certainty.

I think I must have a visual sort of mind, I tend to visualize everything in the story before I ever write it down. The writing part is the last part, like the events have happened and the words are just the 'reporting' of those events. I did a two year course in visual communications about six years ago and, even though I can't draw that well and have never seriously considered working in the industry professionally, I learned how to present things professionally. How to 'sell' yourself and take a professional attitude to manage deadlines and such. It seems like something so simple now, but before going to college I would start projects and never finish them, or never plan them out to how I would complete them. I'm a lot more workman-like about my writing as a result of that and it's certainly come in very handy to know how to do typesetting and produce stuff for print and all that.

The other great thing I learned at college was to be experimental. You have to do something which will stand out. Everyone has access to Photoshop and computer imaging software these days but they are just tools. There's a great temptation to let the computer do all the work but then you'll simply end up with something which looks exactly like everyone else's.

At college, they would encourage us to go out and photograph 'textures' or to collect unusual objects, or do something else totally random. Then we'd have to incorporate these into our work. It made us think differently and come at things from another direction. I have certainly tried to apply this ethos to my writing.

Like the story I'm working on at the moment, which has the plot line of 'discovery'. The main character discovers something which ends up changing his life and leading him in turn to discover something fundamental about himself. I took the word 'discovery' as a theme and 'discovery' wrote the first draft instead of carefully outlining it like I normally would. The result was a different story to the one I would have written if I'd planned it, probably. I don't actually know this for certain of course. I would be inclined to say I learned 'to think outside of the box' if that phrase wasn't so hideously overused.

Describe your writing process? How often do you write and how long per session?

I write do a lot of my writing at work, in the truck or sitting in the driver's waiting room. I can easily clock up three or four hours of sitting-around-time a night. Having said that, I do have an iPad and waste a huge amount of that time on twitter, or watching TV shows and movies.

I recently set up a very convoluted system for making myself write, which involved writing a text adventure game. Check my blog for more details. It's completely crazy, and I know it's crazy, but it seems to be working. It goes back to what I said about being experimental. Nobody in their right mind would waste time creating a text adventure game to help them write a novel, but doing the obvious and the expected is only a sure route to creating something obvious and expected.

The first four tales took over four years to write, but it allowed me to develop a kind of production line system where I start out with a concept, themes and a plot then go on through drafts on to a final version.

Link: Kurt Vonnegut Explains Drama

So to begin with I draw up (with coloured lines and everything) an outline for each main character. If you've seen that video of Kurt Vonnegut explaining Cinderella and other classic tales, you'll get the idea. That outline forms the basis for the first draft, which is a really free-flowing exploration of all the ideas I've had for the story. I don't hold anything back, I just chuck everything in. Usually the story has been gestating for months and rolling around inside my head. I like it best when the first draft spills onto the screen in a couple of weeks.

Sorting out the mess of the first draft is the task of the second draft, which is where I try and figure out where the scenes are, and each scene has to advance the plot. This is vital with a short story where space is at a premium, but it also keeps the story moving along and I like to switch up locations a lot too, have contrasts between scenes so the mood changes and the reader gets a sense of following the character through their journey.

The third draft is where I edit down, make things clearer, try to cut out scenes which aren't necessary or merge scenes. It's great when you can double up things too, like having dialogue which doesn't just explain the plot, but also describes a character and maybe foreshadows or sets something up for later. The third draft really has to get the story ready for publication, with line-editing to cut down the word count as much as possible. Someone once told me to 'imagine the editor is charging you for each word'.

Then there's the final draft, where I do the last bit of proof-reading and checking for overused words, like 'just' or 'decide' or 'wonder', which I seem to use a hell of a lot!

I am the worst procrastinator in the world and will do anything to avoid writing, but with this new system I'm hoping plan out my time much more carefully and get the next volume out in a year.

The ideal amount of time I've found for writing is about 90 minutes. You have to decide to make those 90 minutes sacred, keep away from Twitter and the internet. Even so, for the first half an hour is just messing about, getting the brain warmed up. Then I'll hopefully be in the zone for a good hour, before I stop. I stop at the end of the time, even unless things are going really well, because I'll go off the boil and stop producing anything any good.

One of the things I like to do at the end of a session like this as well is to set up the thing I'm going to be doing in the next session. Write the first few lines of the next scene or a few lines of dialogue. So I'm not coming to the work completely cold next time.

What do you think is your weak point as a writer? Or, to say that another way, describe something about your writing you would like to improve.

I often worry about my characters and whether they're all the same, or whether they're all just versions of me. I enjoy writing dialogue but it's so hard to get into a character if you're not sympathetic with them or if they're supposed to be the 'bad guy'.

My main gripe though is my lack of output, the procrastination that I mentioned. But then again, I would not be too unhappy to have written only one or two good books by the time I leave this rock by one means or another.

I used to read a lot of books on writing and listen to writing podcasts and go to writing workshops, but in the end I think you can overdo it. One tends to end up with analysis paralysis, where you end up doing nothing because you think everything you're writing is bad. There's a sort of bad writing hypochondria where you recognise every example of bad writing and think 'yes, I do that.' You can easily convince yourself you're writing is shockingly bad and that has the effect of stopping you from writing, which is the opposite of what you should do of course, which is write more and more until you get better.

Or, you could do what I do and just have your story told by a narrator and then blame all the bad writing on him.

Lastly, how many volumes are planned for Canterbury Tales? Have you thought about what you’d like to write after the series is finished?

There will be two more volumes of the tales to come, making up the total of twelve tales. Volume 2 should be out next year, with volume 3 following in 2015. Then I'll probably collect the three volumes together into one book, and I'm thinking that maybe I should add some new stuff for that version.

There could be an infinite number of follow ups, but I'm a big fan of ending things before they go stale. Leave your audience wanting more and all that.

The book after was planned so long ago, well before the Canterbury Tales were even conceived. But it's going to be a better book for the fact that I have honed my story-telling skills on this project first. I'm really aware of learning all I can from this project to build up to writing the next one.

It will also be based on video-games and the culture that surrounds them. It'll have two levels going on, a little like the Canterbury Tales has; firstly the group of players in an online game and also the events and characters they play in the game itself. It will also tie in with what I said about online games and the character's stories emerging from the players themselves, rather than having pre-written and scripted things in the game.

I'd love to explore the iteration between the players and their characters in a system which could potentially generate and manage an entire fictional universe drawn from all the world's literature and culture on the internet. A sort of automated AI storytelling machine which injects new stuff into a video game all the time. Such a game would be endlessly playable (not to mention highly addictive.)

Luke Bellmason Interview, Part One

Here's part one of M Joseph Murphy's interview with Luke Bellmason:

I met Luke Bellmason through our mutual friend Jae Blakney. She posted the preface to Canterbury Tales on her blog. I was immediately impressed by the quality of writing. Thankfully, Luke and I have talked several times and he recently agreed to an in-depth interview. Here is Part 1.

  

In your preface you discuss the process of coming up with Canterbury Tales. I think it’s a valuable story for young writers. Did you have someone give you helpful advice when you started writing? If so, who was it and what did they say?

I can't think of any one person who gave me advice when I started writing because I don't think I told anybody I was doing it! I was one of those writers who was scared to show my work to anyone because they might not like it. I am still like that and I imagine it's a natural thing not to want to hear criticism but I didn't even give my work to my friends to read.

Eventually I plucked up the courage to join a writing group and it covered everything you needed to know from fiction, to writing articles, to how newspaper stories are written, to poetry, to romance, to short stories to novels. I can remember reading out a story I'd written for the first time to the group. It was a ghost story about a submarine and it was quite 'atmospheric'. I read it out to the class and it was the very first time anyone had heard my work. A woman at the front of the class said she had been 'transported away' to the place I was describing and she could see the rolling waves, the rain and the dripping walls. I think that was the moment I realised the power that writing could have. Unfortunately, I had neglected to give the story an ending so she said she was dying to know what happened next!

That was the one experience I'd say that made me realise that being an author gave you a tremendous power to create anything you wanted inside people's heads. After that I was hooked, and even though sometimes I feel like life would be a lot easier if I didn't have this little writing demon nagging at me day and night to "sit down and write", I know I'll never be able to give it up.

Once you become a writer, you can never look at the world the same way again. Wherever you go and whatever you do it gives you a purpose; you're an observer, you get to look at things and think about why they are the way they are, what they would be like if they were different.

One if the other major events in my early writing days was finding Douglas Adams. When I first saw the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on TV, the old 80s series, I realised that I was Ford Prefect. I'd always suspected that I wasn't originally from this planet, so the idea of being a researcher for some intergalactic guide book really appealed to me. That and the fact that Ford (like his creator) managed to be a writer without actually doing that much writing. For Ford (and Douglas) the experiencing of things was far more important than the writing about them bit.

Sorry, I seem to have drifted somewhat from the original question.

No. That’s a perfect answer. In your introduction you mention a video game called Elite. Have you tried replaying it recently?

Yes, I did play a game called 'Oolite' a few years ago, which is a freeware version of Elite for the Mac. It's been updated and expanded quite a bit and has a great modding community, but it has a mode which lets you play it as the original Elite. What you tend to forget is how boring it was! Compared to modern games, there's really very little going on, so much of the game is in your own imagination. That's also the key to good writing I think. The more you cram into someone's head, the less work the reader, or the player, has to do which means they're less engaged.

I often wonder if playing Elite had an influence on my choice of career because I ended up as a truck driver! I even started learning to fly a helicopter about two years ago and there's a lot of that piloting, trucking kind of vibe going on in the my stories. A lot of the stories involve sitting trapped inside a box, and yet being free to roam the galaxy.

Are you aware that Elite has a sequel coming out (Elite: Dangerous). If so, do you plan on playing it?

Yes! In fact I found out about Elite: Dangerous from Twitter and I saw the Kickstarter page the day after it ended. There was an option on there to buy the rights to publish an official Elite book, but I just missed out! So I could have quite easily made 'The Canterbury Tales' into an Elite book, and it would have been nice to have been part of the big launch next year when the game and all the other books come out. The publicity would have been handy too. In another way though I'm glad I missed the deadline because a) I need the money for flying and b) this way I get total creative control.

From what I read the new game is everything we've been waiting for all these years. I played the original Elite sequel, Frontiers, but found it totally unplayable. They had given it realistic physics and made an astronomically accurate galaxy and solar systems, which was incredibly impressive in its own way, but it totally ruined space combat. The speed of everything was all relative to the nearest planet or star and enemy ships would whip past you at thousands of miles per hour, then circle around and whip back again just as fast. You couldn't even hit them!

So I understand that this new Elite has gone in for more of a classic feel, with much more detailed planetary systems, economics and political systems, and everything is supposed to be tied in with one online persistent universe, so when a system decides to build a new station, it will affect the commodity prices for the construction materials in the surrounding systems and so on. Wars can cause humanitarian disasters which will put the food prices up, all kinds of complex interactions will be going on all the time.

What interests me about all of this is the law of 'unintended consequences' and what happens when you let real people loose on an open world. Emergent behaviour is certain to create new and fascinating things in the game which the designers hadn't anticipated. I love all of that. I played EVE Online for a bit and liked how the stories in the game came purely from the player interactions rather than being put there by the designers.

One of the stories I'm working on now for Volume 2, the Miner's Tale, is based on my brief experiences inEVE Online. If Elite: Dangerous can somehow mix the chaos of an online game with the structure of the old Elite, it will be awesome.

If I remember correctly, you’ve never actually read the original Canterbury Tales.  Do you plan on reading it now?

I fear that the original Canterbury Tales is totally impenetrable to anyone who hasn't studied the medieval period and knows how to read “olde English”. Plus the fact it's poetry. I read somewhere that it wasn't just one of the first books published, but one of the first published in English. At the time, books were in German, French or Latin, and the English people spoke was far removed from what we speak now, it really is another language. Remember also that not many people would have been able to read or write when the Canterbury Tales came out.

I suppose in a way, the world of medieval England is as far removed from us now as the world of starships, faster-than-light travel and aliens, so maybe there's a neat sort of parallel.

I did find an updated version of the Canterbury Tales translated into a more readable kind of English, the Percy Mackaye version if anyone wants to find it. I could see myself reading this at some point, though it's still quite hard going. I actually based the language of the 'story-teller' in my book on the kind of language used in this 19th century version.

LINK: Canterbury Tales Kindle Version Translation by Percy Mackaye

The main problem in understanding the book for me would be not knowing much about that time period. The church was a much more powerful force in people's lives and a few of the characters in the original stories are related to religion. In a way, it would be like reading a science-fiction story with all the exposition removed, which might be an interesting exercise.

History fascinates me and I never took much interest in it at school. One of the hardest things about history is forgetting everything that you know and trying to imagine what it was like for people at the time. It's so easy for us to look at major events, like world war two or the sinking of the titanic for example, and look at them with hindsight. People knew and believed different things in the past and that shaped their actions. It's one of the things that annoys me about 'steampunk'. It's lazy history; it doesn't bother to filter out the modern world, it simply assumes everything was the same then as it is now. All steampunk is basically the 'Flintstones' to me.

 Part Two of the Interview Will Be Posted Thursday

For My Review of Canterbury Tales: Click Here

Purchase Canterbury Tales Now on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

 
 

Guest Post: Cover Art

This is the final post in the special series of guest posts by Luke Bellmason to celebrate the recent launch of his new science-fiction book, The Canterbury Tales, Volume I. These posts are repeated from Luke's own blog. I wanted to share them with you because they give a nice little glimpse into what it's like for him as a writer. They were written before the book's launch. Here's Luke:

They say you shouldn’t do your own cover art for your book. It’s probably good advice, but I’ve always wanted to do book covers. About six years ago I did a full two year course at my local college in Graphic Design. Not because I wanted or expected to get a career as a graphic designer (though I admit it would have been nice), but simply because I wanted to learn more about how to do logos, cover art and such professionally. I got a HND in Visual Communications out of it, which is like a starter pre-university qualification.

This means I am actually even more qualified to do my book cover than I am to write my book; writing is something for which I have no professional training at all! It also means that I am in a fairly unique position of being able to truly reflect my book and my writing style in my cover art.

This is still the concept cover, but it’s beginning to grow on me. I wanted a cover which was like my writing style; bold, simple, straight-forward and clear. This design hopefully gives some indication of the four characters who’s stories feature in the volume. One of the major problems with having a title like ‘The Canterbury Tales’ is that I didn’t want to mislead people into thinking this was the original book, but really I’m going to have to hope that people read the blurb on the back before buying it so they know it’s not. The other factor I needed to consider was that the other two volumes need to have the same style of artwork, but look different, so I’ll be using different background colours for each one, and each character is going to have their own colour as well. I also wanted something which would stand out on the Amazon Kindle store, where the vast majority of sci-fi titles have starfields, ships, planets and such.

Of course, if I could actually draw I might have gone with all that stuff, but I can’t draw! So I use Adobe Illustrator, which is a piece of software so fiendishly difficult to use that few people get past the first two hours of trying to make it do anything even remotely useful. But I’m a video game player, I’m used to software which is difficult to control, which actively tries to make life difficult for you and which reveals its secrets to you only after you’ve shown it that you’re the boss! Learning to use Illustrator seemed a lot like that.

So, for those who are interested, The Canterbury Tales Vol. 1 nears completion. I have spent the past months editing, proof-reading and finishing off the text. Then came the task of taking the finished files and formatting everything into a word document to get it Kindle compatible. After that, I took almost three days to write the Preface and finally, I got to do the cover art – probably my favourite part of the whole process.

I posted this concept cover on my Twitter feed last night and this morning I woke to find it had been favourited by Ray Dillon! Don’t know who Ray Dillon is? Well he’s a writer and artist who does the artwork for HBO’s Game of Thrones and who has done a massive amount of work on comics, cover art and trading cards. After you’ve finished admiring my lovely cover, head on over to Ray’s page and marvel at his gorgeous images. Needless to say, I am super psyched about my cover getting favourited by such a luminary and wow, what a huge compliment. Thanks Ray!

My book’s going to hit the Kindle store in the next week or so, assuming I can successfully wrangle with MS Word and the upload process. I’ll be sure to post here when it’s finally up, check back soon for more news!

Guest Post: Launch Day!

My fellow Suckers Guild member Luke Bellmason has just launched his new novel, and I'm very excited.

The book is called The Canterbury Tales,Volume I, and here's what he has to say about it on his blog (and yes, I do have permission to repeat it here):

The Canterbury Tales – Volume 1 is now officially available for download in the Amazon Kindle store. The ebook is available on the US and UK stores as well as all the other global stores.
Kindle Prime members can borrow the book for free and there’s no DRM so you can even lend it to your friends (or foes).
The Canterbury Tales tells the stories of twelve space travellers on their way to Vale aboard a passenger liner, the GSS Canterbury. Volume 1 contains four short stories; the Smuggler’s Tale, the Merchant’s Tale, the Assassin’s Tale and the extended two-part Knight’s Tale. Volumes 2 and 3 will follow in 2014 and 2015 and introduce the Pirate, the Bounty Hunter, the Commander, the Spy, the Scout, the Slaver and more!
The style is heavily influenced by 80s video games and by Chaucer’s own idea of having a story telling competition among a group of pilgrims. If you like action/adventure space fiction, tightly woven plots and bold characters, with a dash of humour thrown in you’ll probably like The Canterbury Tales. One of the most original and inventive new works to come out of the publishing houses of Ursa Minor in recent years.

The Canterbury Tales, Volume I is not a Suckers Guild book, as Luke joined the Guild very shortly before the book launch. But we're all very excited for him. I've been privileged to see a little bit of the book, and I can't wait to read the rest of it.

Watch here for more about The Canterbury Tales.

Guest Post: The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

I'm delighted to have Luke Bellmason back, this time with his science fiction short story, "The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales":

WHEN that Aprilis, with his showers swoot, 
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licour, 
Of which virtue engender'd is the flower;

And smalle fowles make melody,
That sleepen all the night with open eye,
So pricketh them nature in their corages;
Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages,

And specially, from every shire's end of Engleland,
to Canterbury they wend.

-Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Late 14th Century, Earth
CHAPTER ONE

THE PROLOGUE TO THE CANTERBURY TALES

Many are the suns of the nine galaxies and greater still the number of worlds which circle them; so that a being may live a thousand years, travel every day of her life and yet touch naught but a small fraction of this great domain. And yet, there is one solar-system among this multitude which can claim its greater share of visitors, for it lies like the centre of a great wheel, with all others spinning round it.

In one constant steady stream do these travellers come, spacer-pilots all; be they helmsman of the smallest tug or commander of the mightiest starcruiser. Each decade at a time all must take the same Pilgrimage. On liners such as this one do they meet and journey to the system called Vale. Where the all pervading laws of the Federal Galactic Spaceflight Licensing Authority decree each pilot's licence must be issued, then at ten-year intervals be checked, updated and, if found to be in order, renewed. For, to ignore the authority of the FGSLA is to go the way of the pirate and the fugitive and to spend ones life always one parsec ahead of the lawman, or lawwoman, or lawbeing.

And so it was that I found myself aboard such a vessel, the passenger ship 'Canterbury', among a small band of such travellers; talking their strange language of approach vectors, mass distribution charts and power output characteristics. All were as different as could be; of age, of race, of bone and skin and of status, yet all in common they were, for none of the other passengers would wish to listen to them, nor could they have understood their strange speak had they tried. None, but me. For my eye and ear being that of a story-teller, and a story-collector, was a role for which one must be proficient in many tongues and many disciplines.

To find such gatherings as this was the meat to my bread. For all the years have I crossed the great star empires and no play of actors, no trillion-budget Sim-O-Rama, no holo-mersive virtuality, could match the simple tales of spacer folk. And in my time have I listened and recorded such tales and stored them in my trusted MultiSens, later to transcribe into the oldest and simplest of recording forms; these written words which I put before you now.

As our voyage began, seven such travellers there were upon the Canterbury, though as nearer to Vale we ventured, certain I was that others would join. For four days and three nights would we fly; suspended in limbo, between reality and whatever realm for which one might wish to invent a name. For the 'hyspace' into which starships jumped in order to expedite their journey from star to star was no place at all; rather, it was something other than space. Some other plane which could not be travelled to, only travelled in.

And while all manner of sports, mental diversions and the studying of exam books would fill our days, by way of the restrictive licensing laws of the Interspacial Travel Commission, our precious evening hours would be spent in the lounge-bar between the hours of nineteen-hundred and twenty-three thirty shipboard time. For it was a fact widely accepted by spacers that only the pleasures of a well stocked bar could truly guard against that feeling of unpleasant monotony, of being nowhen at all, of the mind-warping possibilities of the perfect infinity of hyspace. So it was that evening, in the lounge after dinner, our group of travellers assembled. These seven characters were as new each to the other just exactly as they are to you now, and so before I make further progress, I think it reasonable to give you the same advantage as afforded them by sight and proximity and describe to you the qualities, appearance and bearing of each, as it seemed to me;

At first, to my right there sat The Smuggler. A Human he was, dressed in the clean white robes of one recently discharged from hospital. He appeared aged and showed the weariness of a life spent too long among the stars. While his body manifested a certain lack of vitality, it was behind his eyes where the true madness of the man was displayed. That look I had seen so many times in the eyes of men who had stared too long into void. This fellow had surely been tinged by this spacer's madness. But also there was another particular sickness about him which was not so obvious; on occasion he would wrap his hands and arms tightly at his body as though pushing against some great force. His face would contort and he would be lost to us for a moment until some pill or a swig or more of brandy would return him.

Beside him sat what one might call his opposite, for they were both in the business of trading goods, but the Merchant had remained true to the laws and regulations which I earlier spoke of. His appearance, in contrast to his neighbour, bore out the greater wisdom of abiding by these laws. For though he was almost as old as the Smuggler, his lifestyle demonstrated that there was more profit to be made in a long life of honest work than a short life of misdeed. The Merchant's suit was plain, pale yellow and of the highest quality. He was a man of wealth, it was clear, but also of good taste, which made one wonder if the two might be skills harmonious to good business.

And at the Merchant's side there sat a young woman; slim, athletic, quiet and calm. Her serenity appeared to come from a lack of something that the others possessed. A missing nervousness perhaps, arising from one who felt capable in any situation and who feared nothing. She had presented herself to us as the Assassin and had added little more, only to give us assurance that none of us need fear her, for none among us were on her list.

Then next in sequence came the Knight; a feline creature of the worlds where sentient life had descended from the felis catus family. He explained at length the nature of his Order, the details of which I will dutifully withhold from you so as to avoid cracking any eggs which may remain unhatched.

Then proceeding in the other direction from my left, sat the Miner. A quiet and thoughtful kind, with thick silver hair and a coat of plated metal. Of the group, he was the most jovial, quick to share a joke and seeming to quite enjoy being in company at last. He would hang on every word the others spoke, I noted, and would listen intently, as though trained as myself in the arts of transcription and reportage.

To the Miner's left side was an avian of some two metres in height, covered in shimmering brown feathers and towering above us all. Every word she uttered came delayed through the soulless interpretations of a translator box hung about her neck. Seldom did she speak, but the box continually chirped our words back to her through a headpiece. She sat perched on the edge of her seat with her talons gripping the hard metal frame of the bench. her eyes darted between us, and the quick jerky movements of her head made it hard to tell quite in which direction she was looking. When I had enquired at first as to her profession so that I may make record of it, she chirped a long burst of indecipherable twittering, which the interpreter box hesitantly broadcast as 'Slaver'. Perplexed as we were by this title, the avian declined any further questions.

Finally, at the very end was seated the Scout. She wore the gold uniform and insignia of the Galactic Astrogation Squadron. I was somewhat puzzled by her presence among this group as it was not usual to find military or federal personnel travelling on a civilian vessel, when a naval ship would have been available to her at no cost. Yet, her boots and her clothes were quite worn and not to the high standard one would expect for one of her profession.

And so, having thoroughly been appraised of all in our company, at hardly past the stroke of eight by the ship's clock, I came upon the reason by which I had attended to this party.
"For these three nights to pass more merrily," stated I, "and for the entertainment of all yet at a cost of nothing, save for the consumption of a few bottles, I propose that each of you tell your tale. For each mortal to be born and each to die must have one story to tell, and not less than one. And tell them shall you each in turn, and by your nature will each labour to outdo your fellows."

There was much chatter, but all appeared agreeable and if any found the suggestion objectionable, none made it known. And yet each in turn bore such modesty of their own humble story, sure that any account of their lives would be no great tale to be told. To this remarked I, "take my assurance, as one who has collected tales and scribed them for the pleasure of others, that it is equally as impossible for each of you to see the mystery which abounds in your own experience as it would be to know even the merest details of a complete stranger. And it is such mystery as is required to fill our long nights."

So this was our resolve, but quickly did arise the matter of where to start. To whom would fall the honour and the burden of beginning? At once, I withdrew a coin from my pocket; a relic of a long distant world it was, as was I. Upon one side was forged a star and on its reverse a queen.
"We will start at either my left hand or my right," said I. "For the Miner shall call it." All were again agreed and with great anticipation I tossed the coin toward the ceiling and the Miner did call, "stars!".

Upward the coin span and tumbled above my head, passing by planets and nebula in an eye's blink as the Canterbury hastened on though the upper dimensions of hyspace. And as the coin was once more gripped by gravity I reached out and snatched it tightly. At last I looked to my right, at the contorted and pained countenance of the Smuggler, revealing as I did so the upward face of the queen. And so began the first of the tales; the Smuggler's Tale, and what need of more words?

The Canterbury Tales Volume 1 by Luke Bellmason will be released on Amazon in June 2013, with a special edition hardcopy coming to Blurb soon after. It will feature three short stories, The Smuggler's Tale, The Merchant's Tale and the Assassin's Tale plus a special two-part story The Knight's Tale.