Writing

Our own writing things

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Tony’s Rambles: The Curious Curse of the Cellular Phone

Sherlock Holmes lit his foul briar pipe and settled back into his chair, staring moodily out at the London fog.

“It has made your life much harder, Watson.”

Watson, startled out of examining his latest ApplePlum phone, looked up. “Sorry, old boy?”

“Cellular phones, Watson, cellular phones.”

“Not following old boy.”

Holmes leaned forward, his thin face harsh angles in the firelight. “No, of course not Watson, of course not. Now, observe and note.”

He leaned back again and ticked off points on his fingers.

“Firstly, description of character. I had to rely on hearsay and exaggeration. Now you bring that thing -,” (he waved towards Watson’s phone) ” – press a button, and bring me a precise image.”

“True, Holmes, true.”

“Secondly, and I use the vernacular, Watson, you understand, the vernacular. Backup.”

“Backup?”

“How can we be in any peril when you merely bring out your magic device and call for assistance?”

“Impeccably put, Holmes, but what’s your point?”

“As chronicler of my narratives, Watson, you must realise the problem?”

“No, afraid not, Holmes.”

“I will provide you examples then. Take the Hound of the Baskervilles. Someone snaps a photograph on that machine of yours, and the mystery is solved. A mysterious ghostly hound? No, obviously just a dog painted with phosphor. Add a Geotag, and tell us exactly where and when.”

“Ah, yes. That would spoil the mystery somewhat.”

“And are we in peril, Watson, when Lestrade and London’s finest can be called at any time?”

“By Lor Holmes! You’re right!” There was a pause while Watson considered. “What am I to do, Holmes? As a writer of fiction, my readers demand suspense. They demand drama.”

“There are few options, Watson. Break it. Let the potential energy run down, the battery as you would say. Leave it at home. Have it stolen.”

Watson spluttered. “What about my RSS? My Twitter updates?”

“Sorry, old friend. They have to be forfeited. You cannot write tension and drama into a story while that thing is in your pocket.”

Watson considered the slab of plastic and rare earth metals in his hand for a long moment, then placed it on the table beside him.

Holmes slapped his thighs and cocked his head to one side. “Excellent, Watson, excellent! Now if I’m not mistaken, that’s Mrs Hudson on the stairs and a woman with size four feet following. Your tension and drama are restored, and  the game is afoot, my friend…”

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Tony’s Thoughts: Do I need a webpage?

This is a little involved, but bear with me for a moment while I tell you a story. I’m good at that, so my reviewers say. 😉

I’ve been playing with the settings on my webpage recently, trying to iron out some random noisy statistics.

For those who don’t know, there are automated ‘spiders’ and ‘bots’ that index webpages for search engines. They crawl through the entire site, picking out keywords and then report back to their makers. Or something like that.

Anyway, I’ve been getting a lot of traffic from random places like China and South America, and as much as it inflates my ego to think that my fame spreads across the globe, looking closer tells me another story. There are bots and spiders out there that steal images and content from your site and eat up your bandwidth. In webpage terms, more bandwidth = more cost, and these bots can get bad enough to eat it all if you don’t stop them, with the result that the people hosting my webpage will turn it off.

I think the steps I’m taking to combat these bots are working, and when I look at my statistics for my webpage, I know by the traffic drop-off that they seemed to have stopped. And so does everyone else, for that matter: zero visitors yesterday. Compared to Facebook, which had thirty or so visits.

Another thing on my mind is that my webpage is ‘rented’ by me from a hosting company, and the renewal is up in December. It’s quite cheap, but money is money at the end of the day.

So here’s the thing: The sudden drop in statistics, the renewal thing have all got me thinking:

Do I need a webpage at all?

It’s in all the how-to-become-an-internet-successful-author books, right there at the top: Get a webpage, get on Facebook, get on Twitter, get yourself virtually out there and networking.

And the webpage is the least successful of all of those. My webpage sits there, passively, in a kind of Zen state. Nothing changes, except when I write another book (and I am!).

I could tweak it and put in a blog, download some applications to do that. But why? That’s what WordPress is for. I drop in links to where my books are sold…again, WordPress.

I could tweak it and put in a forum, do some social networking. But why? That’s what Facebook and Twitter are for.

I could drop in a secure store, but I’m happy to link back to my booksellers on Amazon and Smashwords.

So my point is that everything on my webpage I could spend weeks doing myself (or a small fortune paying someone else), I can do somewhere else. Simpler, faster, cheaper, more interactive. So why do I have a webpage? For instance, I’m posting this on two blogs – not my webpage.

Almost, the personal webpage is becoming redundant. The links on it point to other pages where people can at least interact with me – I’m having a fun debate on Facebook on making up some futuristic profanity for my work-in-progress at the minute.

I’m not planning to dump it tomorrow – for one thing, I get free email hosting tony-talbot@tony-talbot.co.uk, which I like.

I’ll keep you updated when the site comes up for renewal in December 2013. And where will that update be?

Not on my webpage, that’s for sure.

Are personal webpages irrelevant? What do you think?

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Tony’s Thinking…Making a World from Scratch

Whenever I write a story – any story, short or otherwise – the first thing I have to do is make a world for the characters to live in. It’s perhaps the easiest part of the process, but still one which needs some thinking over before you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).

For a start, it’s important to think logically and sensibly about the world your character is going to find themselves in, and to adapt either your characters or your world to suit your story. If your character is in a wheelchair for example, you’re going to need some way of getting them upstairs without breaking up the story, or else confine them to one floor.

Let’s take a solid example: The haunted house. And by that, I also mean the haunted town (See Stephen King’s IT for example) or even the haunted spaceship (which is essentially the plot of Alien).

Let’s walk through those examples and see what we can do with the worlds they need.

So your character – let’s call him Joe – has found themselves in your haunted house. You want Joe to stay there, at least until the story is finished…or until Joe is…

First question about this world: Why doesn’t Joe simply leave?

I know if I was in a haunted house, logically, sensibly, I’d head for a door. But I need some walls for the story…can’t have Joe wandering off without finishing what I’ve got him here for!

The door is locked? Fine. What about a window? Bars across them?

Hmm…okay. Now I’ve got Joe looking round the little haunted house I’ve just made and interacting with it.

Can he smash the glass and shout through the window for help? No, the house is on an island. Now I’m expanding the house to the local area around it.

Can he use his cell phone to call for help? Flat battery. No signal.

The point is, whatever Joe chooses to do at this point, the little world I’ve made won’t let him until he finishes the story. Joe is going to get increasingly desperate to get out, and at some point in his wandering through the haunted house, he’s going to meet the bogeyman and one of them won’t make it out alive.

In Stephen King’s IT, he has the main characters trapped by the fact that they’re children, and only children can see the Big Bad. Where else could they go? They can’t leave exactly leave town at the age of twelve. In Alien, the crew of the spaceship are trapped inside a literal vacuum of space while the monster stalks them.

And walls don’t always have to be physical. Joe could hear his little sister screaming upstairs, and there’s no way he’s going to walk away from that. Even if he gets out of the house, he’s going to go right back in there and rescue her like a good brother.

This is a simple example, but you can hopefully see how the world has adapted as I’ve needed it to. A character who can easily walk out of a story isn’t going to make an interesting read.

So when you create a story, think about how the world you create will shape that story, and think – logically and sensibly, no matter what the genre – how you can keep your characters there until the end. Keep bouncing them against the walls you’ve made for them until they break through.

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Tony’s Thinking…Starting a work in progress

I finished my fourth novel, Eight Mile Island, back in June 2012, but what with holidays and a trip to the USA this summer and feeling pretty burned out, I took a break before I started something new. I think you have to do that, give yourself a chance to recover and give your imagination a chance to reset.

I started thinking about Book Five (No title yet!) just about as I was finishing Eight Mile, and I was working on ending the world in grey-goo nanotechnology (I was going to ramp up the pacing so it happened in maybe a week…). I did a little research around nanotech, some background reading…but I kept bumping into nothing when I started writing. Nothing was coming out and screaming, “Write me!”

For a few weeks, I had only a first chapter that wasn’t going anywhere…a good first chapter, with some interesting characters, but nothing else.

Let me tell you, writers block is bad; writers block before you start is even worse. I was going nowhere.

I’m a regular subscriber to a science and technology magazine, and the August 2012 edition had an article about a company (Project Blue Seed, if you want to Google it), planning to build a business community offshore of the coast of California in 2014. There was some speculative artwork about building whole cities, maybe whole nations out there in the deep seas…

…and bang, new idea for Book Five! Something that definitely screamed “Write me!” It’s Waterworld, I thought, except it won’t be when I’m finished with it…

About a week later, I was dozing in the back garden on a Saturday afternoon, thinking about not much, when Muse threw up an image of a girl on a jet ski heading towards one of those cities, and then a dozen more ideas followed, then more and more. Suddenly, everything started to feel right, and I started to feel like this is a book I should write next.

So Book Five is off and running now, and I thought I’d share some early thought processes with y’all.

I’ve read a few books on writing novels, the ones that tell you to plan every chapter and every scene, create every character and describe them in detail, but my head doesn’t work like that; I like to be surprised by my characters and I think visually anyway. Starting with Eight Mile Island, I use a mind map, brainstorm, spider diagram, whatever they’re calling them this week.

I stick pictures I snag off the internet next to the ideas I have flying around, then post them to my work in progress board in my ‘office’ where I write.

Here’s the apparently messy result:

Thought Board

First thing to note is there are a LOT of things going on there, and not all of these ideas will end up in the final story, but it’s a place to start.

My WIP board is something I walk past at least twice a day (I keep my work ties on the back of the door in the same room), so I catch the images and words peripherally and let my subconscious work on them, ready for writing when I’ve finished the Day Job. I’ve found it’s a way for me to think about the story all day without working on it consciously.

The quote in the top left is from SF author James Blish. “Who does it hurt? That’s who the story is about.” It might seem obvious, but it’s a fundamental aspect of probably every story you’ve ever read, and every story you should write as well. The designs in the top right are what got me started, a concept for a “lily pad” floating city. I’m thinking of having a deserted London in there, that’s bottom left, and middle and bottom right are concepts for the inside of some of the cities and my “superboat” that’s an integral part of the story.

So that’s the start of my journey into Book Five. It’s going to be interesting to see how many ideas survive and how many die out by the time I finish and get everything edited!

If you think that might work for you, and you have room and a spare wall, having one of these boards might be for you – this one is magnetic and a whiteboard, so it’s twice the fun for half the price. For a size reference, the piece of paper in the middle is A3 (420 x 297mm, 16.5 x 11.7 in).

Have fun!

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Guest Post…Making Memorable Villains

Making Memorable Villains

We said “mean – really mean” and from that you heard “green and lilac lycra”?

Back in April I participated in the A to Z Blog Challenge—it was a 30-day challenge in April and where your blog topic has to correspond to each letter in the alphabet. I wanted to have a lil fun with the idea so I started talking about the villains we all know and love and what we can learn about them. Well 50 villains later, I’ve learned a thing or two about the darker side of the villains that stick with us.

Villains Have a Clear Purpose

You ever watch a James Bond movie? Some of those villains you really remember, like Blofeld, and some of them you end up wondering what in the world was going on, right? That’s because their purpose wasn’t clear. The alien in Alien taught me about this—that animal, for all its disgusting attributes, just wanted to survive. It did what it was always meant to do. The unfortunate souls on the Nostromo happened to be in the way.

Villains Are Mean—Like Really Mean

OK so this is tougher than it sounds. Sure all villains are mean but Cruella DeVille told us that we have to take things up a notch to be memorable. You don’t remember the two guys in the movie with her, do you? But you remember that this chick wanted to kill puppies to turn them into high fashion. Think about the Evil Queen from Snow White: “I should kill my stepdaughter because she’s prettier than me”? There is a line villains must cross to be ranked in the pantheon of the greats—the truly memorable ones dance across that line and leave it in the dust.

Villains Have Focus

A villain without clear focus on that singular purpose we talked about above gets lost in the shuffle. Look at Voldemort. This cat murdered a bunch of people so he could split his soul, store it in seven horcruxes, all so he could live forever. And he figured this out in high school. At his age I was trying to figure out how to ditch English. And even in his “death” people were too scared to say his name. Focus, man, focus.

Villains Take Matters Into their Own Hands

Darth Vader taught me this lesson.  My man was first in the room ALWAYS, killed his homeboy with the lightsaber, tried to kill his own kid—three times, took two shots from Han Solo, and had the best battlefield promotion plan in history. You can’t say he was ever afraid to get his hands dirty. The villain that delegates is a villain we forget.

Villains Commit

You can’t buy a villain whose not committed to their cause hook, line and sinker. Once they start, there is no going back. The ghosts in Poltergeist took Carol Ann, tried to eat the boy, and eventually ate the entire house. Khan sacrificed his entire crew and himself for revenge in Star Trek II. The Coyote routinely risks life and limb trying to catch the Roadrunner. If your villain isn’t committed, there isn’t much conflict and the hero is never really in danger. That equals BORING!

Villains Have A Real Rationale For Their Actions

We don’t have to agree but the villains whose plans make sense tend to stick with us. If we can understand why they might want to do something, we automatically sympathize, even if we detest their methods. Magneto is a fantastic example of this: he’s trying to avoid a holocaust against mutants. That’s a noble, even virtuous sentiment. His methods, though, well, they leave a lot to be desired.

Villains Make It Personal

The best villains have a personal connection to the hero. Darth Vader was Luke’s dad. Clubber Lang killed Rocky’s father-figure manager. Voldemort handled Harry’s parents. Scar killed his brother and traumatized his nephew—on the same day. Villains who make it personal for the hero are the villains we can never let go. They, in essence, make it personal with us.

Think about the villains that have stuck with you—do you agree? Disagree? And join the conversation over at christophercstarr.net.

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About the Author: Christopher C. Starr is the founder of Sanford House Press, an indie publishing house. The Road to Hell is his first novel and the launch of the HEAVEN FALLS series. Chris lives in the Seattle area with his wife, two kids and his huskies, Rocky the Wonder Dog and his colorful sidekick, Leylah Redd. Check him out on the web at christophercstarr.net

Want to know more? Check out the links! 

Blog: http://www.christophercstarr.net

Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/author/christophercstarr

Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/christophercstarr

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/SuperStarr73

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Guest Post…What is Experimental Fiction?

It’s actually quite hard to say what experimental fiction is. It’s fiction that consciously departs from ‘conventional’ novels, so first we’d better define just what a conventional novel might be!

 

A novel depicts a fictional character or characters acting and moving through a period of time, usually but not necessarily a recognisable time from our actual history be it recent or long past. Its primary purposes are to communicate and to move the reader, a remarkable achievement of the author who is absent; that through the power of their words whispered inside the reader’s head as they read, can produce these responses across the separation in actual space.

The first myth I wish to dispel about experimental fiction is that somehow it is exempt from having to communicate and move the reader. It absolutely should, otherwise how could we expect a reader to devote time to reading a book that failed to communicate to them? Literature is a pastime and therefore must provide elements of entertainment.

The other myth I would like to debunk is that the word experimental lends itself to notions of an unfinished process that is still ongoing. Or that somehow the work is half-baked because it’s not been thought through and planned out. That the writer has no idea of the destination he will end up at.

I started writing the way I do, because the books I read didn’t satisfy me. It’s been a long journey finding my way through to discovering alternative ways of navigating the problems of traditional novels as I saw them. This wasn’t something I just arrived at all of a piece, so in that sense I have experimented along the way. But in any new novel I write, I often don’t know the destination. But as I proceed, the things that don’t work I throw out. Thus I think I prefer the term ‘radical fiction’ rather than experimental. It has less negative connotations.

I said experimental fiction consciously departs from one or more elements of the conventional in the way it puts together its narrative. It can be in story, in language, in how it deals with time or space or perspective. It can be in how it treats character. It can even be in the physical look of the book, or the print on the page. B.S.Johnson wrote a book that was loose leaved and came in a box. You could read the chapters in any order you chose, in between the specified opening and closing chapters and the book still worked! Georges Perec wrote a novel without using a single letter ‘e’ throughout, this style of writing being called a lipogram.

What experimental writing seeks to do is not use these devices simply for the sake of being clever or tricksy, but to open up new ways of representing narrative. Conventional narrative usually has story as its main feature around which it is arranged. That story in all likelihood will have a beginning, a middle and an end. The inner workings of the main character’s mind will be slowly revealed through a build up of information as the book progresses and thus the character will undergo a journey or an arc, which will probably end up with them being significantly changed by the book’s end. Conflict will be the catalyst of the character’s actions and resultant change. Time will flow one way as the character progresses, even if flashbacks and memories are used.

Well I’d say that experimental fiction opts to avoid most if not all of those elements in structuring its narratives. First and foremost because human lives do not unfold with beginnings, middles and ends. And while we do live our lives one day after another in a way that we cannot relive yesterday in any real way today, the past is constantly informing and impacting us in the present, through thoughts and emotions which spark off and draw from past experiences. The human mind is not linear, it is constantly feedbacking on its present disposition and comparing to the past information and planning ahead to the future consequences of action. In a way we live in an eternal present. We do not have arcs. We don’t even have stories, rather we have ongoing lives instead. A story is merely a set of datelines we artificially impose on our own lives in order to group events together in such a way as to seemingly offer us a pattern for making sense of our lives. Experimental fiction may opt to represent its characters in this non-linear, constantly feedbacking way. An example is the book “The Damned United” by David Peace, which has the best depiction of a human mind I think I have ever read.

Why might any of this be important? Because experimental narrative attempts to approach ‘truth’ in a different manner than the conventional novel. What could be stranger than seeking to derive ‘truth’ from a work of fiction? Yet if a book can move us emotionally, then it has resonated with some truth within us to move us so. Therefore fiction can touch truth. Experimental narratives primarily seek to represent human life in a more ‘realistic’ way than the conventional novel. That does not mean its techniques are realistic, but it recognises our lives as being far more formless than they are represented within conventional narrative form.

Another significant difference being that the experimental novel is aware of itself as constructing yet another layer of representation of ‘reality’ and weaves that into its quest to more realistically represent human ‘truth’. It is less likely to ask a reader to suspend their disbelief in order to enter the world of the book that is absolutely fictional. Rather it says to the reader through its radical narrative forms, that it is absolutely a work of fiction and therefore takes its place in the confusion of life that forms ‘reality’. And it does so knowingly, in order to better help unpick the struggle for truth; it’s easier to separate fact from fiction, if fiction announces itself clearly.

A huge part of this revolves around language. Experimental fiction is aware of the limitations of language and adopts many different ways to try and make language do what it is supposed to do and communicate meaning. Words will be played with. The likes of Perec go further and play with the letters that make up words.

So experimental/radical fiction seeks different narratives from conventional fiction in order to differently attack the notion of human truth. It is less interested in linear story and plotting. It has a radically different approach to character, one that I feel is more akin to how we are as human beings. Language is key to our fiction, even down to the look of the words on the page which may not be blocks of print all flowing left to right. It endeavours to search for a different type of meaning. Personally, I’m not seeking a revolution to sweep away all other types of writing. This is just a different approach to stories that may appeal to readers who are interested in something a bit different. Something more in tune with our times, than the conventional novel which has basically remained unchanged in form for over 200 years.

Marc Nash

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A,B&E

From the black market economy of the 1980’s through the gangsterism behind the Clubbing scene of the 1990’s, to today’s decade of drift and low cost airline hedonism, one woman in exile has lived it all. On the run from her gangster husband, Karen Dash is hiding out in a Club 18-30 resort in Kavos on the island of Corfu. A home from home as the neo-colonial horde of hens, stags, booze cruisers and sex tourists turn mythical, Classical Greece into Little Britain. Meanwhile, back in the UK, an NHS nurse decides she has had enough of being assaulted by the patients she is trying to help heal…

A guided tour into the contemporary British soul, conducted by the presiding Mother Spirit as a barfly Scheherazade and an arse-slapping midwife. Avenging angels both. This scurrilous and scabrous book not only peels away the sunburnt skin of our hens, stags, booze cruisers and sex tourists, but delights in jabbing fingers into the pus below. Wish you were anywhere but here ?

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About the Author: Marc Nash lives and works in London. He has been in the counter-culture of the indie music scene for 20 years and now works for a non-government organisation monitoring censorship around the world. He has twin boys whose football team he coached for two years, which gave him more stress than anything to do with writing! He has published 4 books on Kindle, recorded 19 videos on YouTube and performs live readings often in costume! His next ambition is to perform a piece with live backing from a scratch DJ.

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Want to know more? Check out the links!

Amazon.com.Author Page

Website   Blog   Goodreads   YouTube Channel

Twitter: @21stCscribe

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Guest Post…My Journey by Tony Talbot

 Blog regular Tony Talbot’s latest book was released last week! It looks fantastic and you can check out the book and teaser beneath today’s special guest post from Tony himself, talking about his writing journey, from first sentence to Eight Mile Island, his fourth novel. Speaking of the new book: you can enter to win your very own copy in our giveaway! **CLICK HERE**

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“Even a journey of a hundred miles begins with one.” – Chinese proverb

In case you missed it, I’ve just finished writing my fourth book in four years. I know, sometimes I can’t believe it either. Four books is four times as many as some people many in a lifetime; on the other hand, to some people, it’s nothing but the start of their career.

It seemed like a good time to take a look back and see if I’ve learned anything. How is Eight Mile Island (2011-2012) different from Over the Mountain (2008-2009)? What have I learned from it all?

One of the biggest differences for me is this, what I’m typing right now. My self-promotion for OtM was non-existent. I posted about it a few times on the Amazon boards (The awful ghetto of the meet-the-author forum was still a nascent nightmare back then). I didn’t have a webpage or a Facebook account. Didn’t tweet, didn’t know about Goodreads (Did it even exist?).

I’d finished OtM and sent it off to a few agents with no real results before I read an article about self-publishing. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I commissioned a woman I work with to design me a book-cover and I started to self promote. So there were all the twists and turns of uploading to get to grips with…

Initially I started SP’ing without much enthusiasm or sales, but I’m a persistent guy and I stuck with it while I started on my second book, Taken.

I’d finished that and number three – American Girl – when I stumbled across Goodreads at the start of this year.

And that’s when things started to happen. I offered some of my books up for review, and I’m getting some good feedback now – 4 and 5 star reviews, I’m delighted to say, and a growing group of people have me on TBR lists. I affiliated with this blog, and I started my own. I have a Facebook account for myself and all of my books, a website and a Twitter account.

And all that’s happened in the last seven months! It feels like I’d been feeling around in a dark room and suddenly found the light switch.

Self promotion is as least as important now as writing the book. And tied up with that is the book itself, how it looks and reads.

Something new for EMI…I decided to commission a graphic design company to do the cover for me. It was the first thing I did after I finished the first draft, and when the cover came back, it made me realise that something that looked this professional should be professional. Having a cover so good, it felt like I should step up a gear and do something more professional as well, but what?

I looked around on Goodreads, and quite a few people were talking about editors – my wife does a first edit for me, but she can’t catch everything.

OtM wasn’t read or edited by anyone but myself before it went live on Amazon, and I realise now how much of a mistake that was. A good edit would have caught some of the typos, and polished the parts I didn’t even realise are dull. A good editor can make a difference with just a few commas and a handful of comments.

So for EMI, for the first time, I hired a professional YA editor (jennifermoorman.com), and it made a world of difference. Literally, in my case, changing one word changed the whole of the book. Editing is something I have definitely improved. Buying a Kindle has helped in that regard. Funny how the loopholes and the typos jump out when it’s a different format!

And even when Jennifer and I were batting edits back and forward, there are still things we both missed. Editing never really stops…I’m a lot easier on typos in books now I know how hard it is to pin them down. EMI went through six edits compared to OtM, as a comparison.

All of this is, of course, expensive. Facebook is free, but my web hosting and blog costs money; my editor wasn’t cheap, and my cover set me back a few pennies. I’ve spent more money on EMI than any of my other books. It’s also, with all the editing and self-promotion, a book that’s taken me longer to write.

But I look at it as an investment. Make your writing look professional and people will respond to it. Have it professionally edited…do it for your readers if not for yourself.

I exist as a writer almost exclusively virtually and digitally, and all people know about me as a writer are the things they read about me on web pages like this and my cover photo. All they have to go on is my book covers and the samples they read. There are a lot of books to read out there, and I have to – and YOU have to, if you want to be a digital writer – make life easy for them. Be good to your readers, and they’ll be good to you in return.

Do I write the books any differently now? The mechanics of writing is easier now with all the writing I’ve done. I know where the commas go and what to do with paragraphs. That’s sublevel stuff now, a foundation I can rely on. I’m still learning it though – that’s another advantage of an editor – but I can concentrate on the story now without having to worry about speech marks.

I plan them out a little more now as well. I have a magnetic board in my office (a spare bedroom…I aspire to a writers shed at the end of the garden!) where I stick up a mind-map rough idea of what I want from the book. I don’t follow it to the letter though; it’s more of a spark for my imagination.

So that’s my journey from book one to book four.  It’s been a blast, and there’s no way I’m done yet! I have a plan for Book Five already…

At this rate, I’ll be back in a few years to talk about Books Six to Ten, the books I haven’t written and the characters I haven’t shared lives with…yet.

See you in five years!

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You can also enter to win your very own copy for Kindle in our giveaway! **CLICK HERE**

Welcome to Eight Mile Island. 

Dylan James is used to boarding schools. He’s been thrown out of so many in the past two years, he’s lost count. So when an elite academy in Oregon offers him a place, he doesn’t think he’ll be there more than a week.
 
But Eight Mile Island isn’t like anywhere Dylan has been before. In the dense forests around the school, there are things that look human but aren’t.
 
Things that are hungry, and waiting.
 
But that’s just the start of the mysteries, mysteries that mean Dylan may never escape. Even if he wants to…
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About the Author: Tony Talbot was born in the 1970s and started writing in 2008 after a dream he had and couldn’t shake. Eight Mile Island is his fourth book. Tony regularly contributes to the Aside from Writing blog and so look out for future features and posts from this great author.

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Want to know more? Check out the links!

Website: http://www.tony-talbot.co.uk    Twitter: @authortony

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tonytalbotwriter

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/author/tony-talbot

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Fifty Shades of…Granger

You would need to be living in a cave to have missed the recent Mr Grey mania – ASDA bookshelves across the UK have found themselves picked clean as ladies go out in force to grab the book. But what’s it all about? I’d like to say I knew – but from reading the Kindle sample, I’ve not felt especially inspired to spend my money on the book itself. So instead – I’ve taken what little I know from work colleagues who are reading it: there’s a contract, a dungeon and lots of saucy conditions…and instead given the Fifty Shades… treatment to some other areas of literature.

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Just sign the contract!

Just sign the contract!

The Gryffindor common room was buzzing with the sounds of early evening activity. Several tables were occupied by groups of students: heads down, lips pressed tightly together in concentration; diligently completing their homework. In a dark corner, away from prying eyes, the Weasley twins were testing their latest lunchbox items on unsuspecting first years. A small girl was turning blue as she had a severe reaction to a Cough-it-up Drops. “More cough, less choke needed,” Fred nodded, making notes on a dog-eared scroll. Several members of the quidditch team were playing ‘dodge the bludger’, near the stairs leading up to the dorm rooms. That is, until Katie Bell nearly got hit in the face by it and swiped the bludger away with an over-zealous bat of her textbook, directing it straight into one of the ornate, stained-glass windows.

“Fenestra Reparo,” Hermione muttered as she passed by the still shattering window, absently waving her wand in the direction of the wall. As her charm caught the glass shards, they swirled upwards and flew back into the frame, repairing the window perfectly.

There was a determined expression on Hermione’s face as she marched towards the fireplace and Lavender Brown – taking note of this – swiftly dodged out of her path. An instant later, Hermione was standing before the two boys sitting on the sofa, who up until that moment had been happily chatting about the pros and cons of performance enhancing magic in sports.

“…it’s just unethical, mate.”

“A-hem,” Hermione coughed quietly.

Two faces turned towards her, wondering at her abrupt intrusion into the conversation.

“What’ve you done now?” Harry asked, taking one look at Hermione’s face and then swivelling to look at Ron.

“What…me…?” Ron scrambled, sounding a little confused, but also a tad guilty.

“Yes, you!” Hermione confirmed, fixing him with one of her sternest frowns.

“What has he done?” Harry asked, looking to Hermione for clarification.

“Ron made a wager with me that I wouldn’t be able to cast a particular spell – I did it and now he won’t pay up!”

“Well…it wasn’t a fair spell…” Ron began to protest, before meeting Hermione’s gaze and falling quiet.

“Oh, mate,” Harry laughed, shaking his head. “You bet against Hermione on something magic? Guaranteed fail.”

“That’s not the point.” Hermione insisted. “Ron’s forfeit is to become my slave for a week and now he won’t make the unbreakable vow to do it. I have the contract ready and everything.” She brandished a sheaf of papers in front Ron’s nose to reinforce the point.

“Help me out Harry – she wants me to spend two hours a day working with the house elves to help me appreciate their situation…”

“You agreed to the terms,” Hermione reminded Ron, ignoring his pleading tone.

“She wants to dictate how long I sleep for at night…” he went on.

“It will help you perform better in lessons during the day – you’re always staying up too late, then moping around in class.”

“And I’m only allowed to eat at the times she tells me I can!”

“It’s all for your own good!” Hermione exclaimed, gesturing towards Ron’s stomach with her wand, eliciting a nervous squeak from him, before he realised she wasn’t actually going to do anything to him. “No one wants a chubby Keeper on the team now, do they?”

“What do I get if I stick to the contract?” Ron asked, looking hopeful for the first time since the conversation began.

“You get rewarded,” Hermione said.

“And what happens if he doesn’t stick to the contract?” Harry asked, inquisitive eyes darting between his two friends.

“Then he gets punished.” Hermione confirmed, with a business-like nod of her head.

“Oh, fudge,” muttered Ron, beneath his breath.

Harry nodded. “Don’t ever bet against Hermione on magic – definitely a fail, mate.”

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Tony’s Thinking…On Losing a Story

A few months ago, I’d just finished writing another novel, and was wondering (maybe dreaming would be a better word) what would happen if I was suddenly granted my wish…to be a full time writer and at that a famous full time writer. Kind of suddenly discovered like JK Rowling, people everywhere reading one of my books.

What would my life be like? Imagine that…never having to leave for work in the morning and never having to drive through snow or rain or rush hour traffic. To sit at my desk all day and (to quote Steven Spielberg) ‘to dream for a living’.

But it wouldn’t be all regular royalty cheques and a quiet home. I know I’d get easily distracted, sitting there in an empty house. I’d be forever checking my Goodreads reviews, my Facebook friends. There would be constant pressure to Tweet my every move. Not to mention the endless meetings and flying to Hollywood to meet with Mr Spielberg for the movie deal, and the endless parties and other things I’m sure I’d hate. Would be tough, I’m sure, having to fly to the Caribbean and lie on a beach.

I digress into my fantasy there, but thinking about how my life would change set me thinking about a story, as such things do. I imagined a housewife, bored with her life. She has everything she ever wanted: beautiful home, devoted husband and adorable kids. But still she’s bored. She’s always defined by how other people see how she relates to her family. She’s always a wife, or a mother…never just her.
Finally, she starts writing one day, just to slay the boredom and the incipient feeling that life has more to offer her. She writes, and she writes, telling no one – this is something just for her. Eventually she writes a novel and sends it to an agent, and they accept it, but still she tells no one what she’s doing.

Which is where the story starts: she’s sitting at her kitchen table, looking at an advance from an agent and a publication deal that would free her from her domestic life forever. All she has to do is cash the cheque and make it to the airport, and her life is her own. The story is about how trapped she feels, and whether she’d be more free if she was suddenly flung into the spotlight.

I loved that story. I really felt for that woman and what she was going through. It might have been realistic if she just told her family what she was doing when they came home, but I wasn’t interested in that; I wanted to go through what she was going through.

But here’s the really terrible thing: I lost that story.
I thought I had it saved on at least ONE of the computers I use, or the memory sticks that hold my work, but I can’t find it. I must have saved it somewhere because (being the tech guy I am) I always hit save before I print. And I printed two copies: one for me and one for a writing friend.
I can’t find my printed copy, and I NEVER throw my work away. I have hopes my writing friend can find it and I can re-type it. I’ve even tried a file recovery…but nothing.

Why not recreate it? You might ask. That’s a hard one to explain…stories are ephemeral, flighty things, gone with a breeze. If I re-write it, it won’t be the same story. I know I won’t be able to recreate the same…intimacy…with the woman in the story, I won’t get into her head the way I did when I wrote it on a whim. I won’t know who she is as well as I did before.

I’ve never lost a story before, and it’s gone as though it never existed. And I feel bereft. I’ve lost a story and it feels like I lost a friend as well, and they’re such hard things to grasp at the best of times. I know all the arguments: hit save, hit save, then hit save again. I did. I do.
But this time it wasn’t enough. Farewell, lonely housewife.

I’ll miss you.

(Stop Press 18th June 2012: My writing friend found my story! Thanks Portia! You can read it here)

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NEW RELEASE! Eight Mile Island by Tony Talbot

 Blog regular Tony Talbot’s latest book is released this week! It looks fantastic and we hope to get a review up very soon…in the meantime, check out the book and teaser we have for you today…

You can also enter to win your very own copy for Kindle in our giveaway! **CLICK HERE**

Welcome to Eight Mile Island. 

Dylan James is used to boarding schools. He’s been thrown out of so many in the past two years, he’s lost count. So when an elite academy in Oregon offers him a place, he doesn’t think he’ll be there more than a week.
 
But Eight Mile Island isn’t like anywhere Dylan has been before. In the dense forests around the school, there are things that look human but aren’t.
 
Things that are hungry, and waiting.
 
But that’s just the start of the mysteries, mysteries that mean Dylan may never escape. Even if he wants to…
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About the Author: Tony Talbot was born in the 1970s and started writing in 2008 after a dream he had and couldn’t shake. Eight Mile Island is his fourth book. Tony regularly contributes to the Aside from Writing blog and so look out for future features and posts from this great author.

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Want to know more? Check out the links!

Website: http://www.tony-talbot.co.uk

Twitter: @authortony

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tonytalbotwriter

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/author/tony-talbot