The Call

It’s happened…

I can hardly believe it……

I was at work when the call came and I’ve been grinning from ear to ear ever since.

I want to shout it from the rooftops – but perhaps I’ll just whisper it really quietly…




I have an Agent………

Anticipation

One of the things I love most about living where I do is watching the changes - the seasons - the tides - the weather.

It's freezing cold, the first really cold weather this year. Until a few hours ago we had brilliant sunshine and crisp blue skies. But that's changing. The first altocumulus crept down from the north a few hours ago and now, over the hills, the clouds are thickening to grey.

There's a weather warning on the met office website - heavy snow and icy roads. And these days I don't just need to rely on the sky - I can see it tracking down across Wales on the rainfall radar.

I'm like a small child once again, my nose pressed against the frosted glass peering out at the sky -

Is it going to snow?

Did Father Christmas get my letter?

Will I hear back from that Agent soon?

In the Footsteps of Vikings

Sometimes a throwaway comment is all it takes. A chance word and from nowhere a new idea springs into life.
This time it happened as we sat round the fire in this Viking Longhouse chatting, while the kids were outside ploughing the fields (I'm not making this up - they were - but as there weren't any oxen they had to pull the iron age plough themselves)

A casual comment from one of the archaeologists and a whole new dimension to my WIP sprang into my head.

I've been trying to work out how to fit it into the story, except I can't. It wouldn't work. The plot doesn't need anything so major.

But then I realised that it would make a fantastic sequel, notching up the tension and the stakes tenfold.

I've never done this before - I normally put everything into the story I'm working on. But this case is different. I'm barely 10K words into DF and already I'm planning a sequel!

And for anyone who is wondering this Viking Longhouse is at the Cranbourne Ancient Technology Centre.

And So It Begins...

When I wrote my first novel I started with a character and a setting, nothing else. I sat down and wrote and let the story take me where it wished.

The novel rambled. It wandered off at a tangent and when at last I drew it to a close the ending felt contrived. That novel now gathers dust in the Box-Under-The-Bed.

These days I start somewhat differently. I let the idea marinade in the juices of my imagination – the characters grow and mature, the setting takes shape, the plot forms structure. I jot down notes. Soon these become an outline.

Then I start to write.

But wait. Something else is happening. When I take a closer look I realise that the first couple of chapters aren’t really needed. The third one makes a better opening. By then the voice of the piece has settled, the characters have developed. The action really starts.

What I’ve been doing is writing my way into the story.

So Chapter Three becomes Chapter One (For now).

And this is where I’m at – a new project flowing from my fingertips, the characters arguing with me in my head whenever I give them the chance. (Plus it stops me fretting about WRRW as I wait to hear if I hit the mark with my revisions).

Enough blogging - back to the writing!

Here be Dragons

Some people come here with their binoculars to look at the sea birds, but I come here looking for dragons.

There are caves like these all along this stretch of coast. Not many people know it but there are dragons living in most of them. They’re very shy and hard to spot. But if you are patient and sit quietly as the sun drops below the horizon and the shadows deepen into dusk, you might just see one slip out if its cave and take flight over the sea.

Back down on the shore I wandered into one such cave with my children. It’s okay though. I checked for tracks in the sand by the entrance before we went in. It was definitely uninhabited.

Even so, we didn’t go too far – just in case.

Conned!

Quite often when I wander into my local bookstore there will be a writer sitting signing books on a Saturday morning.

One time there was a man with a pile of thrillers and since I like thrillers I picked one up to take a look. Soon we were chatting.

“This novel, my first one,” he said, “Has just gone out in its fourth edition and I now earn my living entirely from my writing.”

I was impressed. It must be selling well. So I asked him about his route to publication. He didn’t have an Agent but said that he’d submitted directly to publishers and had two offers which he’d had to chose between.

I glanced at the publisher. I'd never heard of them, but from what he was saying I assumed they were one of the respectable indies.

He started talking about book deals, and how his publisher wanted to see how well his first book sold before offering him his second book deal. He also told me about how he went to major literary festivals such as Hay on Wye with his writing. He was very convincing.

He then asked me if I was a writer too.

“Yes, I said. I’m writing children’s books.”

“Oh. It’s virtually impossible to get published in the children’s book market,” he told me. “Most of them are ghost written or written to order. You’ll never break into it.”

I was a bit taken aback. It seemed an awfully negative thing to say to a fellow writer.

Maybe I should have put his book back down at this point. But it was a thriller. So I bought it.

When I got home I started to read it. It was awful - about six typos or grammatical errors in the first pages, the writing was laboured and packed with clichés, the dialogue clunky.

Disappointed I googled the publisher – it’s a vanity outfit.

I feel cheated!

Analysis: Invisible City by MG Harris

Apart from the fantastic neon orange cover sleeve, I was drawn to this book because the author is a member of a writing forum I belong to and I had been reading about her success with interest.

So I bought a copy and gave it to the daughter to read.

However this is one that she put down part way though and when I asked her why she told me that one of the characters had died and she didn’t want to read it any more.

Interesting. So I read it myself.

Now I love these sorts of adventure books and I thought it was really very good. MG Harris writes superbly well and Josh has a strong and engaging voice. The plotting is excellently woven with enough intrigue to keep the pages turning and enough excitement to keep you on the edge of your seat. Josh is very much on his own and there’s a lot at stake – two elements that are key to this type of story. I was really rooting for him, and I felt his highs and lows along the way.

I thought it was great and I’ll certainly be reading more of this series. But the question is - why didn’t my daughter?

Well this book is very much aimed at boys. Of course plenty of girls love this sort of thing – I’m one of them – but from what my daughter told me I think she was looking for a female protagonist to engage with. In fact I’ve noticed that all the books she loves either have a female in the leading role or one of the MCs sidekicks is female.

So what I think happened here is that she started to engage with a particular female character who was introduced to the plot, but when that character was killed off she didn’t want to read on any further and that is why she put it down. Interestingly there is another female character in Invisible City, but it was the death of Josh’s sister that stopped her reading. Maybe because Josh was so emotionally involved then she, as the reader, was too.

Shame really because she’s missed out on a good story.

Analysis: Adventure for Boys

http://www.joshuafiles.co.uk/