Sorry, sorry, sorry to my two faithful readers for having to break my covenant with you.

I thought I could finish Penumbra before November 30th, but the problem is I am now in New Zealand until the end of the month, and my time here is limited, and I have a lot of family and friends to see in a small bracket of time, so I don't have a lot of spare time to devote to writing. The book will be finished when I get back (in December), and I have it all written in my head, I just don't have the time to get it out before the end of the month. I'm not so much bowing out because I don't think I can do it as bowing out due to other factors.

My apologies. In the meantime, if there are any problems, mysteries, misunderstandings or just plain bad bits I need to work on, please mention them here.

fish fish fish and so forth.

I wish I could say that when Kerron held his hand out to me, I took it. It is sad, but understandable, to report that I did not. While it seemed clear to me at the time that he did not wish me immediate harm, and my mind raced with both curiosity and hope that I had encountered something in this dark hell that was not inherently hostile, he was still one of the Enemy, and I was of course extremely suspicious. I did not see a distinct person before me at this time, but the Enemy, a single entity, one that had killed Atrius and possibly taken my entire family from me as well. My instinct, along with an entire lifetime of being told to fear the creatures of the night, forced my mind to reel away from the possibility of trusting him.

Kerron had always enjoyed watching the sun rise. This was in stark contrast to most of his people, who did not like bright light in general, and the light of the sun least of all. But Kerron had always been something of an outcast in his clan. Disliked by some, considered odd but amiable by most. They often found him sitting on some high perch, usually on a mountain they were passing nearby, looking out over the horizon, waiting for those first slender beams to peak over the horizon, staring silently, contemplatively. He was a very quiet person, known for his long silences. When he did say something, it was usually either smart enough to be impressive or smart to the point where it would confuse those about him. He was valued by the tribe for his intelligence, in a way they balanced out his eccentricities, but he was not widely trusted or befriended for either. Once he had to be dragged forcibly from the top of a tree, as he waited to see just a few more colours spreading across the sky. For the unfortunate truth of the sunrise was that it was synonymous with the passing of the umbra, and the penumbra was not a safe place for him or his people. They had been at war with the people from the sunrealm for some time.

A while ago I ran into my friend Nat, aka God, online and asked what she was up to. She was living my dream, answering questions for AQA, and I helped her out for a bit, answering questions while she researched others. One of the questions was: "When will the world end?" and I said something along the lines of: "Astronomers theorize that the world will end in approx. 5 billion years when the sun becomes a red giant and increases in size to engulf Earth's orbit." This answer has now entered the vast AQA database, so that when anyone else asks it, they get my answer. Thus, in a little way, have I contributed to the knowledge of God.

Who ever said owning a blog didn't reap rewards? AQA has, completely out of the blue, sent me a copy of their latest book (now sitting next the toilet in my flat):

Aren't they nice? In thanks for this lovely gift, I will now do a special edition of AQAttack, clearing out all the AQAs that have been sitting in my phone.

Why do pigeons often have freakout feet? Is someone going about stomping their toes?

It is normally city-dwelling pigeons whose feet are deformed. This is usually due to non-congenital diseases. Some lose their feet in discarded rubbish.

What's the difference between Scots and Kiwis?

Scots and from Scotland and Kiwis are from New Zealand. Scots are located in the Northern Hemisphere and Kiwis in the Southern Hemisphere.

Yes I know that you twonk, I meant what are their distinguishing characteristics?

AQA apologises. Scotland is much more of an industrialized society; there are more poor people, but kiwis are perhaps less urbane and more rustic.

What is the longest continual noninterrupted gig by any one artist in any one performance, and how long was it?

A piece of organ music by the American composer John Cage (1912-1992), entitled Organ2/ASLSP began at midnight July 11 2003 and will last 639 years.

(I should note that this didn't really answer my question. It's a pretty straightforward question. What is the world's longest gig? A machine playing noises does not count).

It is worth considering at this time that, for the people of Alys' world, hell was not some abstract concept, or some faraway place. They did not follow the sun for no reason. Their hell chased them continuously, as they in turn chased it. It was the place where the criminal and infirm, those who could not stay on the great circle, were sent to be punished. The place where nightmares dwelt, when they were not visiting your sleep. The place where you awoke when you passed away. For the people of the Sun, the night was their hell. So it is not hyperbole to say that when Alys awoke, she seriously considered the possibility that she was dead, and that she was to spend an eternity in the dark place she found herself. For in her realm, true darkness, the absence of the sun, was not something often encountered. To be sure, they had caravans, rooms in the Cardinal City, and taking shelter in caves was not unknown, so darkness itself was not unknown to them. But the sun was always there, its light bleeding through, suffusing them. For it to not be there at all, no light from above, no visibility for more than a fewmetres, for Alys it was almost as if she had been struck blind, forever lost in the shadow of the world.

The heat from the burning tower seared one side of Alys' face, even as the other side stayed cold against the night. She looked about frantically, trying to think of a way out of her predicament. Below her and to her left the tower continued to burn, spreading across the now-shattered wood of the tower. Within minutes the fire would spread to the remains of the turret she clung to, if it already hadn't collapsed by then. Out across the plains, her brother's soldiers continued to fight a pitched battle against swarms of the Enemy.

With the exception of a few bowmen manning the windows, Alys was soon left alone in the mess, as each and every warrior had scrambled up or down the ladders, each according to his role in the line of battle. Rogan and her father had gone to the stable level, each barking orders at their men as they did. Before he had left, Rogan had grasped his sister by the shoulders.

Borin was hurled to the dewy grass of the penumbra, crying out as his knees and bound hands hit the ground roughly. He was weeping without shame, and had been stripped of his Frontiersman's uniform.

Keleth, Lord of Arms and fist of the King, stood over him. He was not dressed in armour any finer than all other warriors of the realm, but he had a presence and authority about him that hung like an ornate cloak. His son Rogan, a captain of the watch, stood beside him, as did a dozen of his personal retinue. They had found Borin running away from the darkness in a panic, having clearly deserted his unit. They had picked him up and bought him here, to the edge of night. The watchtower of the Frontier loomed behind them, trundling away at its slow place. For the moment, they stood on the enemy's side of the umbra.

*UPDATE* Could everyone who watches the video please give it a star rating on YouTube so we can know in cold hard stars just how good it is. Cheers.

A wee while ago, some friends and I entered a music video competition with a fairly interesting pedigree. The competition was put forth by a band called Loka, and they described their songs as 'music for films that haven't been made yet'. Their idea for their next album was to supplement it with a DVD which had a different music video for each song, so that you could 'watch' the entire album as well as listen to it. The competition started with an ideas phase, and Chris and I had a really neat story breaking session where we bounced an idea around until it formed into a cool shape. At the time I was working on a short story about a man on a space station who was slowly coming to the realization that nobody about him was actually there, but Chris was sick of making sci-fi videos, so we bought it down to earth and beat it about for a bit until it took the shape of the video that we have now (which is very, very different from the story I ended up writing). The initial idea outline was accepted into the first stage, but so were two other ideas for each song, so we had to make the vid to beat out those two competitors to make it into the final seven.

After storyboarding (also loads of fun), it left my domain of ideas and went to the true artists, Rob and Chris and Jayne, who I'm constantly in awe of because they are so creative and talented and inspiring. They took background photos and perfected the 'triangulization' effect you see in the vid (although to be honest the effect is lost somewhat in the YouTube encoding). We then spent a couple of really fun nights against a bluescreen filming the footage to layer over the photography, and this is a big thank you to all my friends who showed up and were extras in the vid- you were all great. Then Rob and Chris and Jayne all worked ludicrous hours to get the footage and effects matched and edited before the deadline, which was an extremely tight schedule.

We made it into the final seven (which means we make it to the DVD!) and were invited to Colchester a few weekends back to attend the premiere of the videos and the announcement of the winner. We all agreed that, from the seven videos shown, we were somewhere about the middle, and that there were videos that deserved to win far more than ours. The video that did win, however, was a piece of pretentious nonsense that was bereft of humour or spirit, as was its creator, who said as part of his acceptance speech (I kid you not): "I'd like to thank my brain." However I don't think we minded losing and a bottle of Bailey's on the train ride home cheered us no end.

Anyway, here is the final vid, take it for all in all, it's something I was proud to be a part of, and proud of the friends who came and helped us out on it.

When Alys came to, shaking nightmares of fingers and teeth out of her hair like cobwebs, she found that she was in a small, single bed, in a small room with a curtain for a door. The gentle rocking motion of the room told her immediately that she was in one of the watchtowers, and a quick glimpse at the terrainpassing by out of a small window by the bed confirmed this. Alys felt slightly queasy but at the same time was ravenously hungry, so, after washing her face and arms at a small basin, went through the red cloth curtain.