When Reading Isn’t Just Reading

Posted: January 6, 2011 in Reading
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I’ve always been a voracious reader, even from the youngest age. I devoured the written word, and what I read wasn’t of much concern. I even read encyclopaedias before I was ten.

I always used to just read to read, to educate myself and for fun. I’ve noticed all that has changed since I started to take my writing more seriously.

Now I do something I said I’d never do; I analyse the stories I read. I’d gone all the way through school without analysing, believing that it would ruin the read. Maybe it happens to other writers too, or actors watching movies or other professionals; they look beyond just the story and look at how it is crafted.

Whenever I read a book now I am always looking at the language used, how the stories are structured, the devices and forms in which they are written. I don’t know if it will make a me a better write but it has changed the way I read books forever now.

Meet Professor Halir, The Unexpected Character

Posted: January 3, 2011 in fantasy, Pure Escapism, Sharael, Tears of the Mountain, winter wolves, World Building, writing update
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Professor Halir Ashford. Historian, Explorer and Adventurer. One of the favourite characters I’ve written so far. And a character who really shouldn’t have existed beyond a minor mention. It happens from time to time; characters take on a life of their own and demand a bigger say in things.

His story starts back with a novel I was planning (but never got around to starting). I needed someone to introduce the main character (Heric ‘Harry’ Ban, likewise a character that came about unexpectedly) to the adventure, and so I came up with Halir. he had been a friend of Harry’s father back during a war and was now a professor and historian. The novel was abandoned and the character would have been forgotten except for another novel I started sometime later, Winter Wolves.

Winter Wolves was my first serious effort at plotting and then writing a novel, and was designed to be a showcase for the setting and for Harry Ban. I even managed to complete a round draft. There was a need for a character who would draw Harry into events, and for that I went back to Halir and brought him along.

Though I finished the rough draft, I never got around to fleshing it out, instead, as is my want, I moved onto other projects and suddenly Halir took over somewhat. He got himself two lengthy short stories, Gifts and Sacrifices, and The Tomb of the Tagosa Kings, and then he got himself a full novel in which to star – Tears of the Mountain – which is the first novel I’ve completely properly.

It won’t be the last that Professor Halir is seen either.

Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards

Posted: January 1, 2011 in fantasy, Pure Escapism, Tears of the Mountain, The Oncoming Storm, winter wolves, writing update
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I’m not going to look back at my resolutions for last year – I know that most of them never got done, which is why I normally don’t bother.

It is a good time, however, to look back over 2010 and to look forward to 2011.

2010 was a year of missed opportunities, both writing and otherwise.  While I did actually complete my first proper, full length novel, my writing output was way down on what it should have been and that single novel should have been more.  Moreover, it is still sitting there gathering dust and hasn’t been used yet, something that needs to be rectified.

2011 needs to see an improvement.  I’m not going to make any resolutions – because they will just be broken – but I want to see a lot more writing done, both novels and short stories.  I’ve got all these ideas floating around not being used.

I’m going to go over the Pure Escapism page and stories and clean it up, make it look more professional.  That includes new and improved covers.  I have a few that I’ve worked on and that I need to upgrade the rest to that level.

I’d like to try and add at least one new short story to the collection a month – more of the time permits – and of course to try and exchange the reader base. Cleaning up and polishing the pages here and at Smashwords, plus starting to join up on various forums should help with that a bit.

The big one is of course the novels. I’ve got one complete and two half complete. They need to get completed, polished and made ready as soon as I can. And then I have to make a big decision.

Do I try for an agent and publisher, a long and laborious process that has no guarantees of any success?

Or do I try and go independent? There is no success guaranteed there either but there will at least be something to show for it, which is more than would happen if I ended up with no agent. It would require a whole new skillset – that of self marketting – but there have been a number of successes to show it is not impossible.

A Smashwords Success Story to Aspire Too

Posted: December 23, 2010 in General
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I’ve got a few stories up on Smashwords – nothing major, just my collection of short stories. It is a valuable tool that one day I need to make more of. And now I have the inspiration to do so.

On the Smashwords blog there is a post about one of their authors, Brian S Pratt, whose books have taken off. He is on track to make $100,000 next year from sales. That is the kind of success I dreamed of making when starting out. Actually, I’d be happy with just a quarter of that.

The difference between him and me is output. He has 17 books out there, mostly large epic fantasy, the genre I in part dabble in. I currently have a bunch of short stories.

What I really need to do is sit down and write, write some more and then continue writing and get some novels and novellas finished and put up. Only then could I possibly consider success anywhere near that scale.

The full interview can be read here.

Dr Who Christmas Special Promo and Unreleased Bridging Scenes

Posted: December 21, 2010 in General
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I’ve got three clips to share here, all Dr Who related.

The first is the promo for the upcoming Dr Who Christmas Special. And for a change this year it will be being shown in Australia at Christmas and not weeks later.

The next two are unreleased bridging scenes, just special little scenes done for fun.

The first takes place between The Eleventh Hour and The Beast Below.

The second takes place between Flesh and Stone and The Vampires of Venice.

Return of a Familiar Friend

Posted: December 18, 2010 in fantasy, The Oncoming Storm, writing update
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I was poking around some old half written stories and drafts and game across one I started some time back – and found it was 47K in length. That is a fair chunk of novel just sitting there getting no use so I thought I would return to it and finish it, as I have plans for it.

The story itself is currently called He Stands Between, the first book of a epic fantasy series called The Oncoming Storm. As with any epic fantasy it has the full array of tropes; a host of characters, daring deeds and heroic last stands, noble heroes and dastardly villains, world shaking events and everything else that epic fantasy holds dear. There are still a few details to work out, such as the name of one of the main characters. He has been through a couple and I am still not entirely satisfied.

The rewrite is coming along great, almost to 10K words from only just over 2 days. I am slowly ramping up as I haven’t had a good stretch of writing for a while. Hopefully I can match the output when I first started writing the draft, back last year. The first 40K came in just 7 days.

By the end of the year, which is only 13 days away, I’d like to well on the way to finishing. I am still considering my options with what to do with it once done, but one main one is a thought to go indie with it.

A New Nhaqosa Story: Wisdom from the Ashes

Posted: December 3, 2010 in fantasy, Pure Escapism, writing update
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The next chapter in The Chronicles of the White Bull is now on the site, entitled Wisdom from The Ashes.

It follows on from the events of Echoes of Dark Reflections and Nhaqosa is not in a good state physically or mentally from the encounter in the dark crystalline tower. His band is starting to fray without his leadership, and worse are the dreams that haunt him both day and night.

A New Approach

Posted: December 2, 2010 in Pure Escapism, writing update
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I’d be the first to admit that I am not all that great at marketing myself – in fact I am terrible at it. I just don’t have the personality to push myself forward like some do.

But that has to change. I need to start doing so, to get my stories out there for people to read and hopefully take an interest in. Otherwise why write if no one is reading them?

Starting tomorrow I am going to look at ways to do so, finding forums and sites to share my work and get opinions, to push myself on twitter more and the like. After all I have some 24 stories on the site (plus 2 more to add) totalling around 110,000 words. That is a lot of effort.

I also hope to write a lot more than I have been – the aim being to add one new story a month from now on in.

NaNoWriMo: Update

Posted: November 19, 2010 in fantasy, Sharael, writing update
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As may have been noticed I have updated in a bit. That is because the project has fallen over. I got eleven days in and then it stopped. There are a number of reasons behind this, including coming down sick and working on editing. I’m trying to get Tears of the Mountain sent off to beat the rush of NaNoWriMo novel queries.

NaNoWriMo Day Eleven

Posted: November 12, 2010 in General, Sharael, writing update
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There was a time there yesterday where I was almost ready to give up on NaNoWriMo – I had done nothing on the story and was wondering if I’d get around to doing any. In the end though I had a late start I wrote almost 2000 words, bringing the total up to 17018 words. I’m still around 1300 words behind where I should be but at least I made up some ground.

I sort of hit a part of the story where my pre-plotting is rather limited which is half the problem. Fleshing out near nothing can be hard – but it did spawn a couple of ideas during the day that I hadn’t thought of before but will work when they are properly rewritten. Sometimes you have scenes and characters that just write themselves, which helps a lot.

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