Tel's Talk

Rollercoaster City

2011-07-27T18:56:00.002+01:00

Well it's been a while, and I thought I should probably do an update.

First and foremost the book has had a second-half re-write, and a name-change (and, apparently, a hyphen-overload ... oops, did it again).

It is now called Saturday's Child, from the popular rhyme. Seems to fit quite well and there aren't a million other things with that name. The hook runs as follows:

1912. A chance meeting between scullery maid Lizzy Parker and heiress Evie Creswell leads to more than an enduring friendship and a new job for Lizzy; it draws her into a world of privilege and intrigue, and delivers her into the loving arms of a killer.

So there we have it; and the query must have hit the spot because around a week after sending it out to pretty much the only agents I could find who accept e-mail submissions, I had a bite: Diane Banks e-mailed me to say she'd enjoyed what she'd read so far, and invited me to send the full MS. After flapping about and muttering "ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod," for a while I got a grip, prepared the e-mail and sent it.

Of course I knew the chances were good that it'd be knocked back, and I was right, it was. But Diane was perfectly polite about it and while she didn't offer any feedback (disappointing and now feel slightly adrift) she did have the good manners to let me know right away instead of keeping me hanging on for months and making me ask. I had the rejection in two days.

MAN that hurt! Hurt loads worse than having a query rejected, because I could always tell myself before that they hadn't bothered to even read it, yada yada yada-all-agents-are-mean! But Diane read it and she said she "didn't feel strongly enough in the end, to take it further in what is an incredibly competitive fiction market."

Ho hum. Never mind. It's out there working, still; sitting with 4 more agents and entered for two breakthrough/debut novel competitions. And when those run out I'll start in on the printed submissions - I can't quite believe there are still agents out there who don't accept e-mails, not in in this day and age. But - there are, and one of them might just be the one who connects with Lizzy Parker and wants to help me tell her story.

Downton Vs Oaklands part 2

2010-10-26T14:43:00.003+01:00

Okay, so on Sunday night Lady Sybil, the politically aware and somewhat rebellious daughter of the house, came out with a few lines that were so close to a scene I wrote myself, I sat bolt upright and started mouthing at the TV like a goldfish!

Lady Sybil was talking to one of the housemaids and saying that everything was changing. The housemaid asked if she was talking about the vote, and Sybil said yes, but it wasn't just that, it was everything else too.

Now, here's an excerpt from the scene I wrote last summer - Evie is the the politically aware and somewhat rebellious (!) daughter of Oaklands, and she's talking to her lady's maid:

“Stop repeating what I say, and think about it!” Evie urged. “Don’t you feel a sense of … change? People, women, are thinking less about how many buttons they should wear on their coats, and more about the world and everything in it.”

“I don’t go out in company enough to notice,” I reminded her. “But I’ve heard them in the kitchen talking. Votes and suchlike?”

“Yes, votes. But I’m not just talking about the suffrage movement, Lizzy, I’m talking about all of it; society, the way we live … it’s so foolish the way we carry on, and I can feel, underneath it all, the way we’re clinging on to a way of life that is finally dying.”

Every week I watch this programme wondering if the wonderful Fellowes was hiding under my sofa and peeking every time I went to make coffee!

Downton Abbey Vs Oaklands Grange

2010-09-27T10:42:00.004+01:00

Last night saw the first airing of Julian Fellowes's long-awaited Downton Abbey. I've had very mixed feelings about the timing of this, since I finished my book Tainted Legacy earlier this year and have begun querying agents with it over the last couple of months.
This book is something I've wanted to do for years after hearing some of the amazing stories told by my maternal grandmother of her years in domestic service, but it does seem funny that the final push came after watching Gosford Park for the second time -- also a Julian Fellowes classic.

When I was halfway through TL, I started hearing about this new drama penned by Fellowes, due to come out in the Autumn. It's set in 1912 (as is TL) centered on the goings on above and below stairs of a well-to-do Edwardian family (as is TL) who live in a country house called Downton Abbey. (TL's main residence is Oaklands Grange ... come on, that would have just been too mad for words!)

Downton's family is the Crawley family, Oaklands is home to the Creswells. We have a prim-ish Scottish Housekeeper in each, a politically aware daughter of the house, who fights for women's rights, a well-meaning scullery maid (my MC) and at least one scheming and ambitious servant who's likely to be the cause of more conflict than even they're prepared for. These characters might all appear as clichés on the surface, but hopefully my versions have as many quirks and layers as Julian's, lifting them out of that rather shallow character pool.

The urgency to finish, and begin pitching before DA was aired, pushed me on to some extent, but the ease with which Lizzy Parker began to make herself known to me was bordering on spooky. For starters I had never intended to write an entire novel in the 1st person. I've done that with shorts, and with some success, but the thought of writing a novel that way? Nope. I shudder at the thought.
But from the minute I opened up the blank Word document and began typing, Lizzy was there. I've never written anything so fast, that needed so little editing afterwards. Of course I've gone back over it since, and made changes to sentence structure etc, but basically the book now, is the book as I first wrote it. It still astonishes me how it just fell out of my head and onto the screen.

So anyway, I watched Downton Abbey last night, nibbling at my fingernails in case I spotted massive, glaring errors despite my meticulous research, and ended up both hugely relieved, and HUGELY entertained. DA was enjoyable and beautiful to watch right from the beginning (a train features at the very start, and in TL the main character has just disembarked from one, and walks up an avenue flanked by trees - similar to those being gazed at by Bates from his train carriage. Okay, I'll stop now!)

This blog post isn't supposed to be a review of Downton Abbey, it's just a way of setting down my deep pleasure at the beginning of what promises to be both a wonderful way to spend a Sunday night, and a further research tool for any edits I decide to make in my own MS.

What wouldn't I give for the chance to get that MS into Julian's hands, and ask for an endorsement!

You can follow @DowntonAbbey on Twitter.
And me too, of course: @TerriNixon

The Query Minefield

2010-06-01T15:24:00.002+01:00

Okay, so here we are once again at the query stage. I've not given up querying The Dust Of Ancients, but I have this shiny new MS that I'm currently a lot happier with - largely because I think it'll be easier to place, genre-wise.

Tainted Legacy is straight historical fiction. There's a romantic element; and a bit of physical tussling sometimes resulting in death; and a stolen diamond; and there's even a ... nope, not giving anything else away here! But basically, yeah, it's historical fiction.

Right, so time to brush up on current thinking regarding that old chestnut; the query. Once again I'm so mired in confusion and conflicting advice/requirements. I read Query Shark religiously, read all the comments; the wins and the fails, the confused, the questions, the agreements, the disagreements ... and I read other agents' sites, where I discover everything I've learned is a huge no-no.

QS requires an immediate hook, the word count etc at the end, and the query to give a strong indication of what the story is about. Other places insist you begin with the info, and that you include a personal bio. QS states no bio unless it's relevant, others say they want to get a feel for the writer.

So, I signed up to this thing called Query Test where you can submit a query to a virtual slushpile, and have other people read it and tell you whether or not your query has their attention. Okay, so I've had 2 'no' replies so far, and both of them give their reason as 'it's not to their personal taste' and it's not a genre they read.

Well, I'm sorry, but is this going to accurately reflect a query's chances? I wouldn't send my query or my MS to an agent who isn't seeking historical fiction, or who doesn't represent it.

I've had a couple of decent e-mailed rejections from (actual) agents, both of whom have complimented it in one way or another, but being told your query is no good because the reader doesn't like historical fiction is like being told you're ugly because the beholder prefers blondes.

Anyway, since there's no method of replying to those Query Test observations, I thought I'd blog about it instead, and vent a little bit here. I'm bloody exhausted with it all, to be honest!

I follow the different requirements as far as they're laid down by different agents, but most of them don't tell you if they're from the school of "less is more" or "gimme everything."

Well, I've bitten the bullet (oh no! a cliché!) and sent my query to QS for ceremonial ripping-to-shreds, and will await the verdict, if I get one.

One final note - The Tooth Fairy = epic win! Except I kept thinking that now, whoever reads my short-story: A Tooth For A Tooth, about the tooth fairy's revenge, is going to think I nicked bits of the film. Ah well.

Oh, and a final-final note: Julian Fellowes is currently writing/filming a series set in a big, Edwardian country house, about life above and below stairs. Hmm, maybe he's copying me!

15 minutes ...

2009-09-22T10:54:00.003+01:00

Have been reading some wonderful advice from publishing blogs, and although it still conflicts, it's getting easier to weed out the relevant from the irrelevant (notice I do not say 'good' or 'bad' because it's all subjective.)

This morning's read, on Nathan Bransford's blog, was about showing and telling. Now, I always enjoy Nathan's blogs; full of great advice, and humorous too. But amongst the "Ooh, thank you, that was wonderful, please can I have your babies?" comments, it was nice to see some people start to question the hard and fast rule so many crits seem so delighted to pick up on.

I've lost count of the times I've read a crit (not always my work) that gleefully leaps on a sentence and shrieks: "THIS IS TELLING, NOT SHOWING!" And you can almost hear the subtext: "found something impressive to say, yay me!" But you know, I've read some of those sentences over again and thought: "yep, it is. But it works."

Lots of 'rule' breaking works. Let's just enjoy the writing process and not get too hung up on it.

To be fair, Nathan wasn't being heavy handed on the subject, he rarely is. http://blog.nathanbransford.com/ Always a good read.

Okay, writerly rant over, this is kind of nice:

http://www.inplymouth.com/newsindetail.asp?category=Around%20Plymouth&serialnumber=73 it's a little piece written about me on Plymouth's online presence.

This came from a simple tweet (@TerriNixon on Twitter) that mentioned I was writing, and a couple of e-mails where they asked me some questions about myself and my completed MS, The Dust Of Ancients.

The book I'm doing now is about as different as it gets, which is mad fun! I'm now at a little over 40,000 words, there have been some changes (including the working title) and I'm having a wonderful time with it.

The New Project

2009-08-09T11:31:00.003+01:00

Just a miniature update, to remind myself how to do this blogging thing.

Work's going well on the new project - bit of a departure for me to be writing something that doesn't involve anything vaguely paranormal or horrific. It's a historical novel inspired by the life of my maternal grandmother during her time in service, but the main character is completely fictional.

It's interesting to be able to put Grandma in as a secondary character though, gives me a lot of freedom to mess with the plot while still able to pay tribute to a rather extraordinary life.

I still don't have a title for this piece, but the working title is "Just Lizzy." It's set (the beginning) in 1912 and I aim to have it in two distinct and separate parts before and after the first world war. Don't want to give too much away (because, of course, you're going to buy the book when I get my huge publishing deal! *HAH*) but I intend to skip the actual war years - or gloss over them - and have Lizzy coping with a very different world when she rejoins it in 1920.

Thing I'm not sure about though, is whether or not to keep the whole book in first person; toying with the idea of maybe having part 2 in third, but not sure how that would sit with a reader.

Anyway, I'm up around 15,000 words (ish) and really enjoying writing it. Dom is going to be away next week so I'll have a really good push and maybe get the first part finished.

Which means staying away from Twitter. Yeah, like that's going to happen. Still, I'll try and moderate my addiction to that and to the new iPod apps I've been pointed at.

Exciting News!

2009-02-16T17:14:00.001+01:00

Well well! Here I am after a very long absence - yet again! Been writing a lot, won a couple of minor comps and suchlike, still waiting to hear back from Mic Cheetham agency regarding Dust Of Ancients. I sent it off last October so it's been quite a long time, just starting to wonder if that's a good or bad sign, and if it's poor etiquette to now enquire as to whether it ever arrived ... hmm.

Anyway, good news is that Bound For Evil has been picked up and recommended by The Washington Post! Hooray! Here's the blog entry from Dead Letter Press, which will lead, in turn, to the article.

http://departmentofdeadletters.blogspot.com/2009/01/dead-letter-press-featured-in.html

Anyhow, back to writing ...

Been a while ...

2008-03-08T17:27:00.003+01:00

Long time since I've posted here - things went a bit screwy for me last summer. If I have any readers left they'll know what's occurred so I'm not going to make a big issue (no thanks, have a nice day ...) of it here.

One reason I'm here now is because this is supposed to be my writing blog, and because any day now I'm expecting/hoping to hear of the publication of the hardback issue of "Bound For Evil" which has a story I wrote in it: "The Truth Inside The Lie." I've already been paid for this, but part of the payment is 2 copies of the book itself and I'm VERY much looking forward to that!

In other writing "news" -- I'm working on what I hope will be the final-final edit of The Dust Of Ancients, working in some action to pace things up a bit, and bringing out the finer points of the lead male's character without, I hope, making it too obvious. This book has been through so many incarnations it's made me dizzy, but since I've already started on a sequel, with the idea of making it a trilogy eventually, I think its current format is the way it should stay now!

The main reason I came here though, is because I'm supposed to be adding a link to BeWrite books's new blog, and thought I'd slap a quick entry up while I was here!

Hopefully I will have publication news soon!

Paperback #4!

2007-06-13T17:13:00.000+01:00

My copy of La Fenetre (Summer Magic) arrived today, I am so chuffed
I have another story appearing in the next La Fenetre edition too, again it's an old one (This Trolley, My Life) but it's nice to see all this stuff finally seeing the light of day after languishing (for the most part) in folders on my PC.

After some lovely comments on Sky-Tribe about some more older work, and a good writing day yesterday - now this little boost today - I'm feeling more 'up' about the whole thing.

I'd been having second/third/millionth thoughts about whether or not I can really do this writing thing after all, but all I have to do is look at the note from Dean Koontz, handwritten to me at the end of a standard reply, and now pinned to my corkboard:

"Good luck with your own writing. Do it always for the love of doing it, and in my experience the sucess will follow ... Though also in my experience, perhaps slowly!"

Bless you, Dean, you will never know how much difference that has made!

If You Love Them Let Them Go?

2006-11-27T14:56:00.000+01:00

I'm in a bit of a quandary at the moment ... slowly dragging myself out, thanks to some firm assistance from a couple of friends.
This writing blog has been silent because I've been doing just that, writing, rather than talking about writing ... I've probably said something like that before but that's only because it's true.

(Bothers me no end to visit writing sites and see people complaining they've no time to write, and then you look through the forum and the post times shout out loud and clear they've been bloody surfing all day!)

Thing is - I've finished what will hopefully be the last of several edits on my second book; The Dust Of Ancients and am well into my third - as yet untitled supernatural thriller. However, I find myself completely unable to let go of the characters in Dust.

I don' t know if that's because there's more story to tell there, or if it's just that I've been working with these characters for so long ... I did the same thing to a lesser extent when I'd finished my first book The DarkFire Legacy. I made copious notes for a sequel, which are still here ready for me should I decide to pick them up at some point. That book is still with the publisher, and Dust has been submitted to an agent. I would love to start writing the sequel that's bubbling around in my head for Dust, but how do I know it's worth it when I don't even know if the first book is going to be acceptable anywhere?

Trouble is, I feel I want to do it now, while it's all still fresh in my head and while I can remember how it felt to be in that world with them. I think I'm talking myself into this sequel the longer I bang on here, which - I suppose - is the whole point of offloading to a blog rather than boring the pants off my friends ... holding them with my glittering eye and all that!

The characters in book 3 (Declan Farrell and Lexie Dawson) will hopefully prove interesting but they just haven't grabbed me yet. This is unusual and leads me to think that Richard and Laura still have more to go through before I can release them to their (probably) happy ever after. Hopefully Declan and Lexie are simply being good little characters, and patiently keeping their distance while I sort out the others.

What I hope this doesn't mean, is that I've left too much unanswered in Dust. That wouldn't be good. I've been assured it doesn't mean that, but that there are definitely some possibilities that were hinted at that could bear uncovering and exploring a bit more ... I choose to believe that version.

I know this is a very uncool entry because it doesn't have any little asterisks leading to explanations at the end,* nor does it have snappy little two word sentences. Like this. Ah well. Oh look! There's another.

Right, off to pay my respects elswhere in Blogger-land, haven't done the rounds for quite some time, sorry about that.

*except this one.

Submissions? I give up ...

2006-09-01T17:15:00.000+01:00

Found this very interesting, quite funny article on covering letters to go with submissions.

Very little else to say, except that I've been busy putting together a submission package for "The Dust Of Ancients" and am now completely paranoid ...

Titles - sent to try us ...

2006-08-10T17:06:00.000+01:00

I haven't posted here for a little while, and the very simple reason for that is that this is primarily a writing blog and rather than write about writing, I've actually been doing some. How very strange ...
Anyway, I'm feeling quite please with myself at the moment having just completed the first draft, and first and second edits of my second book. (The first one is still out there being perused by the damn publisher who asked to see it, and it's a daily struggle not to spend too much wondering if that's a good thing or a bad thing)

This book is the one that's been with me, I think, the longest ... I'm not sure. It's been through several incarnations - ironically the subject matter has no small connection with that as well - and even more titles. The first title was long-winded and annoying, but it popped into my head before I even started to write, and so I wrote the book around the title which was "The Haunting Of Jonathan Riley." Lots of problems with that: It's too much like something else, it was too long, and when I got into the story I realised that Jonathan Riley was not haunted at all, but playing host to something a bit unpleasant. Briefly, as a child messing about somewhere he shouldn't underground, he smashes a jar containing the treasured, and supposedly guarded, remains of an ancient Cornish king with unfinished business to attend to. Boy inhales dust in shock, boy becomes something you really don't want to fuck about with. (As I said, briefly ...) I understand this subject matter is either something you can run with or you can't, it's all a matter of taste. Not the point.

So anyway. It changed a few times, had the working title of "The Heath" for an awfully long time, set as it is on Bodmin Moor where I grew up. Then one day when I opened the document to get down to it, I just looked at the title and realised I was so incredibly sick of it that if I wasn't careful I'd bin the whole project.

So, the search for a new title began. Again. I'm notoriously shit at titles; either I come up with them and nothing to put under them (ie: a story) or else the story leaks out of my fingertips mega-fast and then I spend weeks searching for something catchy to hang on it handle-wise. The two rarely come together.

I played with several ideas and came up with a couple, then had to ask Ms Google to please check I hadn't nicked them. I had, of course. One was "The Dust of Ages" which turned out to be a song. Then I started with the word "ancient" to see what slithered through my mind, and came up with "The Dust Of Ancients."
Ooh good, I thought, that sounds nifty! So I Googled it, and it came up with a whole page full.
Shit, says I. Then I realised they were all the same thing, and that one thing was a line from Geoffrey Of Monmouth's History Of The Kings Of Britain. First published 1138. Abso-bloody-lutely perfect.

Even better was, when I read the whole excerpt, the line is: "The dust of ancients shall be restored."
I have a notes document for each project, these usually run into several thousands of words for a longer piece, and I just hammer away at it when I've got a problem. It's always fun to read through and see how the thought processes work and how the original idea evolved.
Very often it's peppered with things like "fuck, this isn't working, I need coffee/a nap/a miracle" etc. The notes document for this book totalled 39,262 words - the book is just over 107,000.
Here's the bit where I worked through the title problem (the most recent one)

I hate the title!!!!

Gah! Go back to something like the original? The haunting of Thomas Riley? But that sounds like a ghost story and it’s not. Also sounds bit archaic and it’s set now. So no.

There follows a lot of other notes and then this:

How about something like King’s Dust for the title? Strange, but keep thinking along those lines. Dust of The King? King to Dust? Dust Of Ages? Sounds familiar though ... Google it.

It’s a song, but not a book title!! So don’t rule it out.

Dust Of The Ancient

Dust Of Ages?

The Dust Of Ancients – quote from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History Of The Kings Of Britain.

Okay, so the new working title, is The Dust Of Ancients. It’ll probably stay that.

Now, if only the perfection of this little find could be taken as an omen. What do you think?

Just out of interest - one of my first entries here concerned characters and their inability to behave: I've just seen this in my notes document:

SHIT! Bloody Laura has found something in the grass by the old mill house and I don’t know what it is!!! ARRGGHH!

Why can’t she keep her feet to herself??

I rest my case.

Brief Is The Word

2006-07-20T19:23:00.000+01:00

... It's been several days and I still have only one thing to say:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A TOOTHCOMB.

Very well, as you were ...

Clearing the blockages ...

2006-07-02T18:21:00.000+01:00

... and no, there's nothing biological about this very short post.
But a couple of clearances have occurred today; firstly an irritating block in the narrative of the book (see the post about characters having a life of their own) and then the sink. God alone knows what's down there in those pipes; I dread to think. But I had a session with the plunger this afternoon ( nothing like Sue White's session with the turkey baster I can assure you ...) and now the water gurgles away happily, so I'm happy too.
I really doesn't take much.

Huge, monstrous thunderstorms last night and this morning. My boys were out camping with their dad and I spent a tense few hours trying not to picture what might be happening out there. But it turns out they only heard the odd rumble. It was smack bang over my house though, and the forked lightning out over the moors was horrific to watch - but I couldn't stop watching it nevertheless. I think we're due for more of the same tonight.

Other than that this weekend has been very, very dull in a perfectly wonderful way. Lots of coffee, lots of toast, lots of writing - today, at least. And I'm on leave next week. Hoorah and huzzah, and other assorted whoops of delight.

And congrats to me: this template does not have a links section so I had to do the farting about with html thing - which I don't do - and have managed to put a list of links in. Marvellous, now I'm tempted to play with it a bit more but will probably lose everything if I do, so maybe not, on second thoughts ...

Pointless Ramble #1

2006-06-27T18:28:00.000+01:00

Some of you will note that my other blog entries have also been pointless rambling, but this is the first official one. Nothing of any note has happened with my writing, but I want to blather on for a bit anyway. When I'm in this kind of mood, bullet points work best as I found out on my Xanga blog a few months ago. Suddenly everyone was doing that, and saying things like "RYC."
This bothered me because no-one told me what it meant and I had to work it out for myself, yet everyone else knew about it. Paranoia isn't attractive and don't let anyone tell you it is.

* Work. Bleh. Why is the most irritating person in the room also the one with the loudest voice?
* Hoorah and huzzah, #2 son actually had gravy with his tea without making an enormous fuss.
* Bugger all on the telly again tonight so it's on with series 3 of Drop The Dead Donkey. Why don't they show them again instead of all those ghastly repeats of Friends?
* Child is now climbing into the cupboard muttering: I like to eat foooood. He's a bit odd.
* Bought fresh rolls and a bottle of white. Is it very wrong to drink in the middle of the week?
* Looking forward to Thursday writing day, but it bothers me that they're coming around faster than they ever used to.
* Had my appraisal at work yesterday; I'm officially God.
* So where's my pay rise?
* Channel 4 get all the best comedy shows; Father Ted, Black Books, Drop The Dead Donkey, and, of course, Green Wing. I love Channel 4 comedy. Except Friends.
* I need to dye my hair again, it's going gingery instead of that nice, interesting deep red I strive for. I always kid myself I'll try something new, but always end up with the same old colour -basically because I'm a big scaredy cat.
* Who said "cat"? Where's my water pistol ...

Kettles, Cats and Maryland Cookies

2006-06-22T10:08:00.000+01:00

Why is it, just when I know exactly what I'm doing with the piece of writing I'm working on, I immediately feel the need to celebrate with a cup of coffee? This inevitably takes me away from my computer and out into the kitchen, where I'll be distracted further by next door's cat sniffing at my rubbish (Thursday writing day is also Thursday bin day, and living on the nipple of the city apparently we're too awkward to warrant the supply of wheelie bins) and if I've been stupid enough to leave a bit of chicken in the rubbish, the feckin' animals will stop at nothing in their quest to strew my path with crap all the way to the end.

So I spend the next ten minutes - firstly squirting the cats with Dominic's mega-super-duper-hotshot- pump- action-hyper-hydro-blaster - (that's a water pistol to you and me) and then picking up half chewed chicken and soggy crisp packets full of snails.
By the time I get back to the kettle the water's gone cool again, and if you boil the same stuff again it starts tasting metallic and shite. So I empty the kettle, re-fill it with fresh water and switch it on, trying not to look out of the window in case the cats have got over their fear of aforementioned Sherman tank-esque squirter, and then the biscuit tin strays into view.

Well come on, what's a girl to do? Maryland Chocolate Chip cookies are about the only kind of chocolate I'm biologically programmed to require on a daily basis, and it's impossible to take one, they're just too small and look terribly lonely sitting on my hand. Still, it's a well known fact that if you eat something really quickly you don't have time to gain calories from it; your brain hasn't worked out the correct quantities of hydrogenated fats it's having to distribute around your arteries and your arse, so it gives up and pretends it never happened.

So by the time I've got over the guilt and made the coffee, the original problem solving brainwave has faded into a murky kind of shadowy thing at the back of my mind, and the only way to put cats, soggy chicken and chocolate biscuits out of my head is to read back over what I've just written and hope the spark comes back.
It didn't.
That's why I'm blogging instead.
One day, when I'm rich and famous, I'll look back and laugh.
Ha, bloody ha ha.

Characters - do they have a life of their own?

2006-06-20T16:43:00.000+01:00

This is a debate I've been considering lately; some (real) writers claim that their characters never act or speak on their own. They say that each word and act is carefully considered and thought through, and that their creations never do anything spontaneous. It's been said that to claim that they do is pretentious and even ridiculous.
Now - these are real, paid writers, so people like me are supposed to listen to them, right?

The truth is I think it depends on the way you write; some authors, like Dean Koontz for instance, polish each and every page until it's as perfect as they can make it, and only then do they move on.
I prefer to hammer away at my keyboard and let everything just spill out onto the page, and then I go back and cut away at it, and change it, until it's reading the way I like it. Because of this, my characters sometimes, often in fact, do things that surprise me. Sometimes it causes problems when that happens, sometimes it solves them.

It's always a joy.

A little while ago I had cause to ask my lead male, Richard Lucas, to drop his friend off at the airport. When he came back to his car there was a man leaning on it. I sat here for ages staring at the screen, wondering who this man was and where he came from. He is now a major character and the person who stands between Lucas and his future.

Yesterday I was writing a conversation between this character and someone else, and it turned out that the other had an uncanny knack for mimicry. I don't know how, but I believe this is going to impact on the story quite significantly.

Does this make me pretentious? I hope not.

And so we begin ...

2006-06-13T13:30:00.000+01:00

Well - up until now I've been posting at Live-Journal and Xanga. But this place looks friendly enough so I think I'm going to be using this one for my writing blog and continue to post rantings, ravings and general, personal bleh stuff over at Xanga.

So far as a writer I have published through independant publisher BeWrite, a full royalty paying company, not to be confused with many of the fee-charging/vanity press sites out there. My work for BeWrite has been largely horror-based, but some genre-leakage has occurred and I've even been known to raise the odd smile. (But don't tell my kids, they think I write only horror, and am therefore scary and not to be crossed ...)

Currently I've published short stories only, but I do have a novel submission package out there doing the rounds; I've told it not to come home until it's found representation. The latest writing news is that among the gazillions of "no thank you"s I've received from agents, one publisher has, at least, asked to see the remainder of the novel.

This is how you find me then: not sure if the publisher will like the rest of the book enough to offer to publish it, not sure if the publisher will take the piss if they do, given that I don't have an agent (yet) and not sure if I'll ever find representation anyway. Still, I keep flogging away, and maybe one day I'll have something exciting to post about.

I'm working on a second book, distinctly different from the first, and hoping that this one will find a permanent home. Or I'll have two little manuscripts, getting exhausted but at least travelling far more than I ever will - even if they're making no friends along the way.