Couple of interesting things have cropped up since I've re-discovered The Lynher Mill Chronicles. First thing  is this, that I put on Facebook a month or so ago: 

 So ... I wrote The Dust of Ancients in 2006. I'm currently going through it with a view to letting it see the light of day via self-publishing, and now I keep seeing this character I'd created as Robert Carlyle's Rumpelstiltskin - who I really, inexplicably strongly, took to in Once Upon A Time. Now I'm at the end of the MS and he's turned around and called someone "Dearie." 2006, I said. Somewhat freaked.

Next is the rather spooky choice of name for my lead male: his surname is Lucas, always has been, from the word 'go'. Well, given that his life is all tangled up with elemental Cornish spirits, and they're forever messing about with the weather, (lots of storms) turns out the Cornish word for 'lightning' is 'luhas.' 
Eh? Eh??? Yes, quite. 

Third thing; the trilogy heavily features a broken bronze dagger and a decorated jar, takes place on Bodmin Moor near Minions, and one of the character has a hiding place in a barrow near the village. 
The other day I was looking for a likely place on the moor to base this hidey-hole and looked up Rillaton Barrow, which I've heard of, walked past several times and vaguely had an idea had some historical importance -- apparently it was found to contain a skeleton (not surprising, for a burial mound!) but also a decorated jar and, yep, a bronze dagger. 

Now, I've just had a knock-back from the one agent I've queried since the re-vamp, but all that's telling me is that she was wrong for this book/series. (The first book can stand alone as a complete novel in its own right, essential for a first-time author, but the second and third are closely linked and will depend upon each other to complete the story.) 

I recently made a Facebook status update that claims I have never been more excited by something I'm writing, and that's the truth. When I wrote The Dust of Ancients six years ago I had such a strong belief in it, yet I allowed myself to be convinced by a measly 4 agents, (yes, 4!) that it wouldn't work. I'm so much tougher-skinned now, and the more I work on this story the stronger my belief grows. I am prepared to take knock after knock until the right agent, the one who can see the potential and is brave enough to take the risk, picks it up off the slush pile. No rush.

It's made so much harder by the fact that so many of them won't even consider fantasy. I'll bet those agents look at things like Game of Thrones and wonder if they should maybe remove that stipulation from their Writers' and Artists' Yearbook entries. Well, they should. I'm not saying The Lynher Mill Chronicles can ever hold a candle to George R R Martin, but it's proof that people DO want to read of alternative existences; whether totally separate or merging/blending with our own everyday lives. Reading is escape, and whether you escape to another country and follow someone's adventures there, or whether you just take a sideways step into what might be right beside you and just out of your line of vision, it's just as valid.

I took a break from LMC to write Saturday's Child, and I loved it. I enjoyed it, the voice came naturally and I felt a connection to my Grandmother through it. When I also found enjoyment in beginning Penhaligon's Attic thought I'd settled, but the minute I dug this out and began to read it again I felt myself relaxing into it, like my own familiar bed after a few nights in a luxury hotel. 

I still believe in this story, and I am not going to rest until I have seen it in print - whether it be with an agent and traditional publisher, or whether I go self-published. I will do it. All I ask for is the continued support of my friends and family, and of my fellow writers, whose work I have always supported in return.
Like I said; no rush.

Oh fickle, fickle me ...

Well then. I've now gone through The Dust of Ancients, after letting it languish in a drawer (metaphorically speaking) for a few years. I'm bound to report that I'm actually quite excited about how crap it isn't, and how I'd done far more towards the sequels than I'd realised. 

Having been so 'into' Penhaligon's Attic recently I wondered if I was now just bored and looking for another project, so I asked my trusty pendulum (pictured below.) I found it - or rather, I think it found me - in a little shop somewhere in middle America, when Tonya and I were searching for something else. No other pendulum since has reacted so strongly for me, and when it reads my deeper wishes and reports back that my subconscious would like to re-visit Bodmin Moor, the spriggans and the rather glorious Richard Lucas, who am I to argue?

So. Penhaligon's Attic is going to be taking a little bit of a breather (the story is more or less sorted and the characters could do with a little bit of time to have a think about how they're going to wow me.) I'm back in the fictional village of Lynher Mill for a while, and ... yeah, I'm excited about it. 

A Quick Word Or Two. ('zoom' and 'whoosh')

Before I started writing Saturday's Child I wrote another novel - in fact Saturday's Child was number 3 - that I eventually called The Dust of Ancients. I always knew it was going to be very hard to place, being a somewhat blurred-genre piece. However, I enjoyed writing it very much, and I do believe it's a decent piece of work. I even got halfway through the second in the planned trilogy (The Lynher Mill Chronicles) before I felt Saturday's Child beginning to push her way through to the front of my mind, knocking harder and harder 'til I put Lynher Mill to one side and started paying attention. 

 

So, as a lot of people are doing these days I've been letting my thoughts turn to possibly self-publishing. 

Watch this space, my friends, when I've done a little tightening work on it I'm going to be asking if any of the arty-types among you might be able to come up with a cover. 

I'm actually quite excited about this now. What's to lose, right?

In other news, I've updated my website with the first chapters of both Saturday's Child and Penhaligon's Attic. Outlines and more chapters to follow; please subscribe to this blog to be kept up to date. 

Personal -- a question.

How are you supposed to feel when you hear your abuser is terminally ill?

This man was physically violent, an emotional bully, a drunk and a paedophile. He spent most of my childhood either administering a riding crop on bare skin, or behaving in ways I’m not prepared to mention here. I’m not saying there weren’t good times, but they were always overshadowed by wondering how long they would last, and how we were going to pay for them later.

This man tried to mow down my mother and me on a country road in the middle of the night: we had to climb the hedge to escape his car.

This man made me walk about 5 miles down those same country roads with him (also in the middle of the night) and the whole way he was telling me how he was going to kill himself at the other end, that there was a gun in his workshop. Made sure I knew he would probably shoot me first, without actually saying the words (kept reminding me how an old friend of his had killed his wife and himself several years before.) He laughed at me when we got there and the gun wasn’t loaded. Ha ha.

There are other things, too numerous, personal (and hideous) to mention, so, without going into any deeper details I’m wondering now, how I’m supposed to feel when I hear he doesn’t have long to live?

Part of me is viciously glad; part of me feels cheated that he’s going to get away with it, that the rest of my family are still in touch and presumably caring and supportive of him. Natural enough, given that he’s my younger brother’s father, but I feel guilty for that little stab of relief that I won’t have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder or being afraid to attend family events in case he’s there too.

I know I’m not expected to express regret for his illness, after all I didn’t get so much as a get well card when I was diagnosed with cancer and going through chemotherapy, but I always thought I’d soften a bit towards him if I heard something bad had happened.

I haven’t. Is that wrong?

Not Such A Jewel After All

So the call came. Finally.


After almost a year of re-working and re-editing, and a renewed submissions drive for Saturday’s Child over the space of the past few weeks, I was contacted last night by a literary agent who said those magic words: “we like your work, we think it deserves to be published and we’d like to represent you.”

Time to dance around the living room? Time to drag that dusty bottle of Asti out of the wine rack and put it in the fridge? Time to call friends and family and let them know I’m finally on my way and they can stop yawning now? Well, no. Because the call was from Darin Jewell of Inspira Group.

When they contacted me within a few days saying they would like to represent me, and would read the full and get back to me in a couple of weeks, I was quite unmanageably excited. Then I did my research and found this, on the Inspira Group website:

An accomplished business development and operations professional, Darin Jewell was CEO of the biographical Internet portal Real-Lives.com before co-founding The Inspira Group. Before that he was lead marketing and PR consultant to the Chairman of a major international trading group.

Born in the USA, Darin settled in the UK in the early 1990s. He has a Master's Degree in Management and Philosophy, and undertook his doctoral research at Queens' College, Cambridge before teaching Philosophy and Religion as a Senior Fellow at Harvard University

So right away the alarm bells started ringing: there is nothing in that bio to suggest an appreciation of, or interest in fiction. I then looked further and found the P&E entry around the same time as the Absolute Write water cooler discussion - my enthusiasm started nosediving around about then. All reports said this company charges an up-front fee, and years of research into the query/submission process has told me no reputable agency does that.

Still, I thought I’d wait and see, because, you know, they might have changed. But last night (August bank holiday 2012) I had a call from Mr Jewell. He enthused about my book, we agreed on the genre, he said the word count was ideal, and that I was a talented writer who deserved to be published … blah blah, ego duly fed. Then he asked me how long I’d been trying to get this book published, and what I was working on now.

However, because I’m unknown I’m a huge risk, (accepted) and the printing/packaging of the book will cost over £300 (not my problem.) Would I be prepared to put up that kind of money to help with the initial submissions to commissioning editors? Because, after all, I’d been trying to get published for so long now.

When I began to question this he said he could tell I was “not naïve,” but that hardly any agents will take on a new author. He named one agency (Sheil Land) but said they were the only ones he could think of who might give a new author a shot. When I said they had my initial submission at the moment, and that 2 others were currently considering the full MS as well, he back-pedalled like a good’un and said that he’d just decided he didn’t want to represent me after all, because my next book is too different from this one -- ie; it has a ghost in it. I was clearly someone who couldn’t possibly write more than one book in the same genre (not his words, but the gist) and so no commissioning editor would look twice at my work no matter how deserving of publication it is.

So – the Asti stays in the wine rack, my living room remains un-danced around and my family and friends are probably still yawning (although not to my face, they’re too nice). But I was able to put the phone down last night knowing full well I’d made the right decision, as disappointing as it was.

I might never get an agent for this book; I might never get one for the next, or the ones I’ve written previously, but I have a little bit of pride left, at least.

Moving on, and hopefully up ...

Well, the saga of Saturday's Child continues; 3 bites being chewed at the moment: an offer of publication with independent publishers BeWrite; offer of representation subject to checking the full MS from Inspira; request for a full from LBA. (Luigi Bonomi Associates in London)

Two of those are responses in less than a week, to a fresh batch of queries I sent out earlier this month - a renewed effort to get good representation for this book. LBA's initial query was by post, and they replied within a few days of receipt, asking for the remainder to be sent -- also by post. 

BeWrite aren't an agency,  Inspira, so the grapevine tells me, are more than likely to ask me for an up-front fee. That's not going to happen, so, at the moment my biggest hope is with LBA, and I've just printed out 328 pages ready to post. It's sitting there on my coffee table, wedged into a blue plastic folder held closed by one of those red elastic bands the posties drop all over the roads. Not very neat, but at least the pages aren't loose, and with our lovely English summer doing its usual party-piece, if the package gets wet at least the MS is protected!

I plan on submitting still more over the next few days, then I can forget it for a while and use my free time next week to get stuck into Penhaligon's Attic. 
My new copy of WAY is waiting for me at the sorting office (maybe I can pick up some more elastic bands off the road, when I go to collect it!) so in the meantime it's this list to keep me busy.

Good times, good times. 

Success At Last!

Well, how's this for a reason to update: Saturday's Child has been accepted by BeWrite books, the publishers of most of my short stories over the past 12 years. How excited am I then?! My first published novel! All the more special to me because of the links to Grandma Mary and the memories I've managed to get into the plot -- not as many as I'd have liked, but there are some. I've always had the notion in the back of my mind that there will be a novella covering the time Lizzy is in Holloway, when we find out how Mary, Evie, Will and Jack fared on the outside.

We're hoping for a summer release, in print and e-book, and I'm going to have to turn into marketing bore extraordinaire from here on in! I'll need to get my website working and focus on SC on the main page, and get links to all the places it can be bought on there ... exciting times!

This news has also given me the boost I need to get my teeth further into Penhaligon's Attic, so in between any changes that need making to SC I'm going to be bashing on with that one. Oh, and remembering to blog progress!

Some of the girls at work are giving me ideas with regard to getting the Uni and local papers to help with publicity ... it's going to be all systems go.

Oh, and one more thing:

HOORAY!!!!!!!!!

Rollercoaster City

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

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

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

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 ...

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

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!

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 ...

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!

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?

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 ...

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 ...

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

... 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 ...