The AGM

Well last night was the Writers Circle AGM and I’ve been duly voted in as Chairman for another year. It’s certainly a role I enjoy.

The group as a whole keeps expanding. We’ve had quite a few new members join us, and what with our forthcoming Prose café’s and the Booker debate in October, we have a fantastic programme for the coming year and we seem to be going from strength to strength!

The train project is going well, with more characters being added by the new members. And as for Gary Styles – my Used Car Salesman – he may be feeing rough now – but he’s no idea how bad things are going to get … (I’m feeling quite evil at the moment poor chap.)

Ruins and Adders

My eagerly awaited contributer's copy of Ruins Metropolis has finally arrived, and it is a thing of beauty. I've only been able to read a couple of the stories so far though, because it's been swiped by my 10 year old daughter - but not for long - once she's asleep I'll swipe it back...

And why do people keep saying that adders are getting rare? We saw another one today, just a little baby, slipping through the leaf litter by the side of the road. (Not a red one this time though - just normal colour.)

Shh - she's asleep - time to go and reclaim that book...

Snakes in the Heather

Today, while I was walking around Winfrith Heath at lunchtime, I spotted an adder - one of those young brick-red ones. I’ve never seen one that colour before and I head to look twice, but it was most definitely an adder. The bloke I share an office with tells me that these red adders are typical of this area. He’s seen quite a few of them this year so far. Needless to say I picked my way back over the heath with extra care!

And in writing news – Ruins Metropolis is now available from Amazon.co.uk as well as Amazon.com. Looks like it’s going to be an interesting read. There are quite a few names I recognise in the line up, which is as follows:

"Old World Magic" by Adele Cosgrove-Bray
"End" by Ahmed A. Khan
"Sumari's Solitude" by Alycia C. Cooke
"Mrs. Kelly's Ghosts" by Anna D. Allen
"City of the Dead" by Barton Paul Levenson
"A Haunting in Giza" by Brenta Blevins
"In Search of Camanac" by C.L. Holland
"Veilsight" by Camille Alexa
"For Sale: One Gold (plated) Eye Of Horus" by Chris Benton
"The Eye of Re-Atum" by Christine Poulsen
"By the Pool of the Blue Lotus" by Erin M. Hartshorn
"The Name and the Shadow" by Gene Stewart
"Seeker of the Dead" by Gerri Leen
"Goddess Reborn" by Gianna Robbins
"Chamber of Illusions" by H.F. Gibbard
"The Final Goodbye" by Heather Kuehl
"Amulet" by Jacqueline Seewald
"The Return of the Queen" by Jennifer Moore
"When Love Dies" by Jonathan Shipley
"Dancing On the Corpse of the World" by Jude-Marie Green
"Convergence" by K.L. Townsend
"Kehmet's Curse" by Kari Livingston
"In the precinct of Amun-Re" by Kate Kelly
"The Librarian of Talimbourne" by Kimberly Vandervort
"The Amulet of Passages" by Leslie Brown and Sarah Totton
"Children of the City" by Lyn McConchie
"The Memory" by Meg Swanton
"Panthanatos" by Megan Arkenberg
"Carrying Keptara" by R.F. Long
"Qui's Contract" by Ransom Noble
"The Great Sleep" by Rob Rosen
"The Tomb of Setankan" by Sarah Wagner
"Burning Stone" by Stephen Graham King
"The Deserted City" by Victoria Kennedy
"Haroeris's Favor" by Willis Couvillier

Ruins Metropolis - Now on Amazon

It's out!

Just had an e-mail from the editor to let me know that Ruins Metropolis is now up at Amazon.com and should be available from Amazon.co.uk fairly soon, as well as serveral other outlets.

Now all I need is for my contributers copy to arrive, so that I can see my story 'In the Precinct of Amun-re' in print, as well as read all the other stories and see what the other authors came up with. It's an exciting project, and an impressive line up. Hadley Rille are producing some lovely books. Long may it continue!

The Long Wait

Most of the short fiction markets I submit to are pretty good with their response times, but sometimes they seem to take an age.

At present my longest outstanding submission is with Dark Discoveries. They’ve now had it for 15 months and counting. When I queried them back in January they were only just getting round to their November 2006 submissions. Very frustrating since, when I submitted to them their response time was stated to be 6 months. Looking on Duotrope they’ve now got round to their January 2007 submissions. This is an awfully long time to have a story tied up with a market that, chances are, is probably going to reject it anyway. I don’t think I’ll be submitting to them again.

The other market that I’m waiting on is Dark Wisdom. Since I’ve got two stories tied up there I’ve bitten the bullet and e-mailed the editor to try to find out what’s happening. However, I’ve a lot more patience with this one since it is a SWFA pro market. The mere fact that they accepted my story in the first place was a huge boost to my confidence. So fingers crossed that it doesn’t fall foul of their restructuring.

End at the End

So much emphasis is put on getting the opening right, but a good ending is also important.

Of course the point at which a short story ends is very different from the point at which a novel ends. A novel usually provides resolution where a short story ends with, of just after the climax.

Even so, as a reader, I get very frustrated when a story or novel doesn’t end well. Some of the types of ending that annoy me most are as follows.

The story runs on – often happens in short stories where the writer writes on beyond the story’s natural end. I’ve done this myself often enough :-)

The story fizzles out – almost as if the writer got bored and didn’t really know how to end it. I get really annoyed with these.

Loose ends are left hanging – OK if they are part of the set up for a series or sequel, but really annoying if they are just the writer being sloppy.

So what makes for a good ending? Well for me the best ones are those that resonate and haunt me for the rest of the day. When you get that feeling that you don’t want to pick up another book just yet. That’s when I’ve read a truly satisfying ending.

Of course, it’s one thing to spot these, quite another thing to pull it off myself. So did I manage it? I’ll tell you when I get there!

Thoughts on Plotting

Plotting is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. It’s one of the hardest things to get right, and the hardest thing to get good feedback on, simply because it would involve getting someone to read the entire novel, which is a lot to ask of anyone.

Anyway, after trawling through writing books and the internet I thought I would post some of my thoughts on the subject here.

Now it seems that most stories will follow the same general plot principle, which I’ve tried to visualise in my little graph below.

Arc of Tension:
1. Normal World
2. Point of Change
3. Conflict/Crisis (Rising arc of tension)
4. Climax
5. Resolution
6. New Level (different from the starting point)



So how does this compare with all the other structures described out there? Well I think they are one and the same and in order to illustrate this I’ve taken 4 popular ones: The Heroes, journey, the 3 act structure, the 7 basic blot beats and the 8 point arc, and mapped them across onto my arc of tension graph.

Basic 3 Act Structure
1. Beginning
2. Middle
3. End

8 Point Arc
1. Stasis
2. Trigger
3. Quest
4. Surprise
5. Critical Choice
6. Climax
7. Reward
8. Resolution

7 Basic plot beats
1. Problem
2. Opponent
3. Desire
4. The plan
5. The battle
6. Knowledge
7. New Level

Heroes Journey
1. Ordinary World
2. Call to Adventure
3. Refusal of call
4. Meeting Mentors
5. Road of Trials
6. Approach Innermost Cave
7. Woman as Temptress
8. Ordeal
9. Reward
10. Road Back
11. Rescue from Without
12. Magic Flight
13. Resurrection
14. Master of Two Worlds



Apologies if it’s not that easy to read but hopefully you can get the gist. It seems to me that they map across rather well.

So how does this apply to my own work?

Well as a little experiment I thought I would try to map the tension arc for my children’s book. Estimates for tension in each chapter are of course based on gut feeling. Here it is.



So what does this tell me about my plot eh? Well I'll leave that for you to decide :-)