Saturday, November 9, 2013

How long will she be dead?


How long will my life be? Will I be dead in the next three or four hundred pages? Or will he forget, or will he make me kill, and then I’ll go to jail and the door will slam and he’ll write “The End” and I’ll be left in limbo for eternity; a true immortal. I ought to find that funny, a triumph for me, the character. I win, you lose. The author dies, but the character, being an idea, can never die. But it’s not funny. It scares the shit out of me. What if he dies before the book is finished? Do I just stop in mid-stride, mid-orgasm, mid-scream, and hang there, freeze-framed until the universe goes cold?

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Character in search of an author - character's POV


Nothing I do or say is going to make a difference. He’s already made up his mind. If you look for the word ‘frustration’ in the OED you’ll see my ... no you won’t, because apart form being 5’ 7” with long blond hair and blue eyes, I have no idea what I look like because the bastard has never described me. Oh Christ! My face is a blank. If I look in the bathroom mirror will anyone look back? But that doesn’t make sense: I look in the mirror a dozen times a day. I mean, I must do, mustn’t I? But has he ever said I do? Has he ever said that I looked in a mirror? What would happen if I went back to page one and did it all again? Would I know any more?

Character in search of an author - the author's POV


This woman thinks she’s slipping out of my control. I know it’s generally believed by the gullible public and artsy-farty wannabe writers that characters take on a life of their own and start doing things you don’t want them to. But that’s bullshit. They’re words on paper, figments of my imagination, and they bloody well do what I want them to do. Jesus Christ, they’d better because I made them and I can unmake just as easily. Which way you want to go? Car smash, cancer, a bullet between the eyes, or something really inventive and agonizing like being burned alive as a witch? ‘Cause I can do it, and there’s bugger all you can do to stop me.

     Then again, maybe she is getting a bit uppity and I’ll have to slap her down. I’ll string her along for a couple of chapters and then, wham, out the left field something’ll leave her wide–eyed and gasping and she’ll be bloody sorry she ever screwed with me. I think that calls for a couple of fingers of Scotch. I always write better when I’m half loaded. The words come easier and there are none of those fatuous inhibitions and cringing servility at the altar of political correctness. Fuck political correctness. I write and if you don’t like it, don’t damned well read it. Chuck the book in the fire. Write to the Pope and get it banned – yes, please do that: the free publicity would send sales through the roof.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Ode to the Typographical Error

“The typographical error is a slippery thing and sly;
You can hunt till you are dizzy, but it somehow will get by.
Till the forms are on the press, it is strange how still it keeps.
It shrinks down in a corner, and it never stirs or peeps –
That typographical error, too small for human eyes –
Till the ink is on the paper, when it grows to mountain size.
The boss he stares with horror, then grabs his hair and groans;
The copyreader drops his head upon his hands and moans.
The remainder of the issue may be clean as clean can be,
But the typographical error is the only thing you see.”

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

There are no rules

Despite what everyone likes to tell, and they’re usually people making money out of teaching courses or writing books like this one, there are no real rules to writing fiction. That is, apart from spelling, a modicum of correct grammar, and punctuation to make it readable and to get your meaning across. Note: “Eats shoots and leaves.” “Eats, shoots, and leaves.” And “Eats shoots, and leaves.” You won’t learn how to write from classes. You’ll only learn what someone else thinks. You learn from reading, and writing. You learn from yourself.

The Thrill in Thriller

How do you put the thriller in a Thriller? Conventional crime stories play upon the audience's conventional fears of lawlessness, violence, death. But the Thriller goes far deeper. It reaches into the audience's unconscious mind to arouse the gripping, irrational fear of a fate worse than death, a fate that would make you beg for oblivion. The key to this intense terror is the writer's creation of an extreme offset of power between the underdog protagonist and the ruthless spirit of evil lurking within the antagonist. The greater this imbalance, the greater the thrill in the Thriller.

The Right Words

I'm reminded of a line of Hemingway's. Someone asked him how he knew what to write and how to say it, and he replied that he only used certain words. What words are those, they asked? .....do I need to finish it?

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Because we must

Man’s primordial need to hear stories, to remember the past, to exercise his imagination: that is why novelists succeed, because they not only entertain, but are necessary.

And so it goes

“A lot of critics think I’m stupid because my sentences are so simple and my method is so direct: they think these are defects. No. The point is to write as much as you know as quickly as possible.” (Kurt Vonnegut)

Friday, October 18, 2013

A multitude of books for free

The websites, Manybooks and Gutenberg, which a lot of you will know, offer FREE classic books, from A-Z, from Austen to Zola. You can't do better than that. And it's true what they say, "To anyone reading a book for the first time, no matter when it was published, it's new and hot off the press." Think about that for a second. Download them, yes, free, onto your Kindle, or any other pad or device, and enjoy all those books you "thought" you'd read but hadn't.

Stork's law

The Romans had a law compelling children to care for their aged parents. They caled it "Lex Ciconaria". I'm seriously thinking of getting this back on the statute books. Dammit, I spent all those years looking after them: now it's my turn. Hmmm. Storks can fly; not sure this one will.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Wold Newton Universe

Excerpt from Wikipedia The Wold Newton family is a literary concept derived from a form of crossover fiction developed by the science fiction writer Philip José Farmer. Farmer suggested in two "biographies" of fictional characters, that the real meteorite (Wold Cottage meteorite) which fell near Wold Newton, Yorkshire, England, on December 13, 1795, was radioactive and caused genetic mutations in the occupants of a passing coach. Many of their descendants were thus endowed with extremely high intelligence and strength, as well as an exceptional capacity and drive to perform good, or, as the case may be, evil deeds. The progeny of these travellers were purported to have been the real-life originals of fictionalised characters, both heroic and villainous, over the last few hundred years. Never heard of Wold Newton, or crossover fiction? You may be missing out. Take a look at the website and discover a whole new genre. http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Pulp2.htm

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

In the beginning was the word

Long ago, when the world was young, I sat down on a bunk bed, put my portable typewriter on a packing case, and hammered out my first novel. It was about an ex-spy named Maxim Gunn. It was terrible. But the feeling of satisfaction I got from putting in that final full stop and writing The End, was enormous. More than that it meant I could call myself a writer. Eight more Maxim Gunn stories later (a lot better) and there’s the beginning of a series. Take a look if you don’t believe me - http://www.tauruspub.net/Maxim-Gunn.html The thing is, terrible or not, I still have it. It should have been shredded, but it wasn’t. It’s tangible proof that one day long ago I did what so few people did in those days before computers and word processors: I finished a book. Of course, Maxim Gunn wasn’t the only character I wrote about. There are a lot of others in thrillers, dramas, occult and horror stories. Some have been published; others are waiting in the wings. But my point is, that’s where it began, in a hot room in Western Australia, with the sweat dripping off my chin. And I’ve never looked back. I’m a writer. Successful or not, I’m a writer and always will be. And it started with one lousy book.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Noir

By David L. Vineyard March 5, 2009 Not all of these elements are in every noir film or book, but enough of them predominate that they can be used to define the genre. There are always going to be films or books that are on the edge one way or another, and because of its nature I’m not sure noir can be defined precisely, but I’ll name seven key factors I think are vital. 1. Alienation. 2. Obsession 3. Visual Style 4. Destructive Sexuality 5. Grotesque characters 6. Narration 7. Stylized violence

A bit at a time gets it done

Does the thought of writing a five hundred page novel overwhelm you? Does it seem an impossible task? Try breaking it down into bite-sized pieces, or at least chapters. No one said you have to start at page one and work your way through to “The End”. If you’ve got a great last chapter or scene, write it first (it’ll give you something to aim for). Got a great love scene, a bit of action, some killer dialogue? Write them now, because I promise you that you won’t remember them later. Novels are made up of scenes; some sequential, some in parallel depending on the POV. Treat them as such. Of course it’s a good idea to have a “plan”, and outline of what you want the story to say, how you want it to go, and where you want it to end. But you can think of the writing process in the same way as they shoot a movie. All locations tend to be shot at one time because shooting them sequentially is expensive and time-consuming – think of all the equipment you have to move. However, as a writer you have the luxury of being wherever you want, whenever you want. Just don’t get stuck in that “page one, line one” trap.

A word to the wise

A wise publisher will let an author write what they want to, because with any author who is not simply writing formulas, who’s trying to create something new, pressuring them to do something for market purposes almost always backfires. Working under those circumstances is very difficult and self-defeating.

There is no road map

There is no roadmap for writers. There’s no arrow saying “You are here”, with a lot of other signs pointing to other places you may or may not want to go. You can only look back at where others have been and learn. Then you must go into the unknown, the places marked on the map “Here there be dragons”. This is the only way to progress in your journey, because to stay on the well-trodden path is merely to revisit what has already been done. Exploration will find your unique voice. There is no right way to write. Read: novels and screenplays; learn from others, see what they did and then find your own voice. The books will tell you about structure, about beat, about subtext: all very necessary. But don’t let them take over your own ability to tell a story. There are only three real cardinal rules. Every story must have a beginning, middle and an end. You must engage your audience immediately, keep them engaged throughout, and then finish off with a bang, give them an ending that leaves them guessing or blurs their eyes with tears. But whichever way you do it, there’s got to be a “wow” factor. Your reader or cinema viewer has got to put down your book or walk out of the darkened theatre thinking they’ve had their money’s worth and are going to tell someone else about it.

Monday, October 14, 2013

I am a writer because . . .

I am a writer. I have published books. I am a writer. I have received both kudos and criticism. I like the kudos more. I am a writer. If you don’t enjoy my words, that only means that you don’t enjoy my words. Nobody made you Literary Critic God. I am a writer. The fact that I earn my living from a day job subtracts nothing from this fact. I am a writer. When my computer goes pffft, or the electricity fails, I resent the loss of my word processor more than I care about the Internet access or television. I am a writer. I cannot imagine not writing. AND - I am the last boss I’ll ever have. Of course that doesn’t take into account my editor, my publisher and the people who read my books, who all think I work for them. Actually, it’s the other way round. In their own way each of them works for me.

Typewriters - the then and now.

Today’s generation can’t comprehend the aggravation of having to use manual typewriters and eraser fluid. Those were the time when writing was a labour of love, literally. Imagine pounding out screenplays and novels with two fingers, emptying bottles of eraser fluid. No cut and paste, no insert, no spell-check, no page numbering, no perfectly turned out product from a laser printer. In the pre-computer days writing was about love of writing and perseverance, about producing something that looked like a manuscript dug up after half a century in the ground and handing it to a typist in the hope she, yes she, could read it and produce something an editor wouldn’t chuck in the garbage. If we still had to do that, there’d be a damned site fewer manuscripts and screenplays written, and the ones that were would come from the heart, written in heart’s blood. Writers today have no idea what it was like before computers and word processors. It was a constant battle; stabbing at a mechanical keyboard, eternally reaching for the whiteout as you stumbled around with two fingers, cursing and wishing you’d had the sense to go to typing school, but remembering that if Hemingway could do why not you. People wrote because they really wanted to and were prepared to put up with the inconveniences. And because there were none of the conveniences we take for granted in word processing, if you changed you mind or wanted to revise a chapter or a page it meant typing the whole damned thing again, or scribbling endless little hieroglyphics in the margins, pasting fragments till the manuscript looked like one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I tell you, the writing life back in those days was for the dedicated few. Publishers actually had what were called slush piles and had readers whose job it was to sift through all those unsolicited manuscripts from hopefuls like you and me just in case the next Steinbeck or Hemmingway was lurking in the dust. Publishers actually encouraged authors: today if you don’t have an agent and send an unsolicited MS, it’ll end up in the shredder. There’s a saying which probably contains a lot of truth. “Everyone has a book in them, and in 99% of cases that’s exactly where it should stay.” As I said, I blame the computer. Today, anyone can slap together a few of hundred pages and call it a book, and the sad part is it’ll be beautifully presented thanks to those word processors. Look at bookstore shelves: there are hundreds and hundreds of books that will never make a penny, and many are so badly written it’s frightening. But what’s more frightening is why any publisher would want to risk their reputation by turning them out. Life’s a mystery. Writing is part of life. I just wish sometimes the computer had never been invented and then only those writers who had the passion to write and maybe had something worth reading would make it past the shredder.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Bits and pieces - or - a writers life.

This is a thing of bits and pieces, of quotations, aphorisms, thoughts and other unconsidered trifles of the writing life. Feel free to comment, add your own thoughts and ideas. Stay away from destructive criticism, bad language and vulgarity: life hands out enough of those and nobody needs them here. First quote: Dr. Samuel Johnson said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” It’s a good point. The trouble is that it’s so hard to get anyone to pay you for your efforts. Still, roadblocks never stopped a writer from trying, and Winston Churchill said, “Never give in, never, never, never.” And to that end I’ll direct you straight to my website at http://www.tauruspub.net/ – which is Taurus Publishing. Stay tuned, there will be more.

This is so obvious, but ...

There are seven secrets to good writing, the trouble is no one knows what they are, but three of them are certainly write, practice, and edit. Also, try reading what you’ve written out loud, to yourself. If it sounds dumb, long-winded, stilted like you’ve swallowed a thesaurus, then get out the blue pencil and edit. Be ruthless. There really are no rules to writing, other than the basics which seem to get ignored too often. A story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. The Beginning is “The Hook”. This is what keeps the reader reading, makes them turn the page to find out what=s going on. And it doesn’t matter if it’s an action, thriller, murder or love story. “Jack looked at the girl and knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her ...” makes the reader turn the page to find out how he manages this. The Middle is how he the story unfolds. Any story should have a beat to it. The beat is the rhythm, the up and down parts. Success and failure, love and loss, escape and capture. The protagonist goes through a series of ups and downs before coming to the ... End. The end is the revelation, the unfolding, the “Uh-hu” factor in a mystery, the sigh of relief in a love story. It’s what satisfies the reader and makes them want to look out for your next book. Keep these three rules in mind and you won’t go far wrong.

Saturday, October 12, 2013

A.E.W.Mason - "The Broken Road"

Many readers and movie goers will be familiar with "The Four Feathers", a few ancients of my generation will remember the somewhat plodding Inspector Hanaud. But I'm willing to bet not many will have read what I consider to be the best of Mason's novels - "The Broken Road". Set in the North West Frontier of India pre WW1 - Mason never visited India as far as I know - it is a beautifully told story of love, friendship, betrayal and loss, set in an area anyone who reads a paper today will be familiar with - at least the names. NOTHING has changed, except more efficient ways to kill more people, quicker. The politics, the problems: what Mason wrote nearly 100 years ago is almost as valid today as it was then. His descriptions are beautiful, his characters finely drawn, his atmosphere breathable. I was so very pleasantly surprised becuase I'd never heard of it either. You can download it for free at Gutenberg or ManyBooks. Enjoy. I did.

An interview

This is an interview I did a short while ago. Please tell us more about yourself, anything you like- interests, background. About a million years ago I was a mining engineer, which gave me an excuse for roaming the world at other people’s expense and picking up a lot of background for some of the things I’ve written. But eventually I got sick of it (my unalterable conviction being that mining in 40 degrees in the shade was a vastly overrated pastime) and took off to do a lot of other stuff including being a docker and a forester. My books and screenplays draw on these experiences to provide characters, backgrounds and scenes. I am the author and publisher of the “Maxim Gunn” series of action/adventure books - nine books and counting. I have also written some nine other novels: dramas and thrillers, and a handful of screenplays all which follow the central character to countries and places - a couple futuristic - where the forces of nature as much as people provide the conflict. My current interests, not surprisingly, are writing and reading and thinking about writing. Sounds a bit dull? Well, think of all the places I can go and things I can do – the imagination is limitless. Please tell us more about the book or books you would like to feature today. “The Warlock” was released in October 2012. It can best be described as an occult thriller. For some reason it got pegged as a horror story, but although there are horrific incidents, I don’t think of it as being in the horror genre, if there is such a thing. I think of much more as a discovery that evil really exists as a force, and that it can be manipulated like any other force by someone with the requisite knowledge. Basically it’s the story of an overworked executive who goes to a lonely Greek island to get rid of the stink of city life, and, despite the best efforts of the abbot of the local monastery to dissuade him gets involved in a black magic set up. At first he thinks it’s just post adolescent nastiness, until it all starts to go horribly wrong. What gave you the idea to write in this genre? Frankly I have no idea. Notes, bits of dialogue, a character a bit like Aleister Crowley, maybe the influence of John Fowles and Dennis Wheatley (I was a lot younger then). And then the snowball grew. I really did not have an outline, but I did have a lot of characters in search of an author. What research did you do, and how? Or does it all come from your own imagination? I do a bit of background research, mostly on the Web. It’s amazing how realistic you can make a scene without ever having been there. Otherwise everything comes from my imagination or, as I said earlier, personal experience. Do you ever base your characters on people you know? Not specifically, but I suppose a lot of them are composites. Do you make a plan for your novels, or do you just start writing and see where it goes? I do more or less know where the book is going, but my tendency is to have a great big file into which I throw a huge grab bag of scenes, description, action and dialogue. That being said, I’m now trending towards doing an outline and storyline: I find it less stressful. I’m also a great believer in writing an idea or chapter while the thoughts are fresh because with the best will in the world you’ll never remember it later. The result is I won’t necessarily start at page one line one. If I’ve got a great ending, it could well be written first. However, taking that to extremes, I’ve just come to the end of the first draft of a book in which I wrote each chapter as a discreet event and cobbled them together –never again: it was a nightmare. Which of your own books/ characters is your favourite and why? My favourite character is definitely Maxim Gunn, the hero of an action-adventure series I’ve been writing for years. The first in the series was in fact the first full-length novel I wrote – more years ago than I care to tell you – and typing “The End” changed me forever from a dabbler into a writer. The first draft, which I still have, is appalling and should be shredded, but with Gunn just having had his ninth adventure and another coming up, he’s more or less “real” to me. What books or other projects do you have coming up in future? I have a novel “The Disputed Barricade” currently with my publisher. This is a fictional biography of an environmental activist turned environmental terrorist. He can’t get the powers that be to get on with it, so he’s taken things into his own hands. The story largely takes place in Tasmania (I spent a lot of time there) where his biographer winkles the truth out of him: and there are side stories in which he deals drastically with a mine in the Rockies, a logging operation in British Columbia and an offshore dredge in Chile. Good stuff: action, environmental issues and a love story. And, I’m starting the editing of a horror story that takes place in a defunct coal mining town in Yorkshire where the devil’s assistant shows up. “I intend to make Malthorpe the horror story of the century,” so he says. “The Malthorpe Slaughterhouse” may just catch the imagination of readers as it is rather different, and comes under the genre of Comedie Noire. Not a lot of comedie, but a lot of noire. So you see, I switch gears regularly and refuse to get typecast or stuck in one genre. Is there anything you’d like to say to your readers? I like to think that my writing has matured over the years, that my characters are deeper, more three dimensional and have come alive. The Maxim Gunn stories have evolved from tongue in cheek fun stuff, to being much darker. They started as almost YA books, but that is definitely no longer the case. Similarly with my thrillers and dramas. The simplistic good versus bad has developed more blurred lines. The back blurb and inside cover précis never tells the full story, and never tells how the writing has dealt with the problems. The blurb for “The Warlock” simply tells the potential reader it’s a story about good versus evil; but it’s also a love story, a story of redemption and of revenge. The revues on Amazon and Goodreads give a more in depth picture – most good, one not so good. You can’t have everything, and hopefully any potential reader will see past this and want to read what some consider to be good writing and a good story. What has been the most helpful piece of advice you’ve received as a writer? If pressed I’d say something like being told to read everything, try everything, don’t be afraid or too proud to junk the whole project and start again and, in the words of Winston Churchill: never, never, never give up. Oh, and don’t listen to advice, just do your own thing. My Website - http://www.tauruspub.net Facebook - http://bit.ly/4p6usv Smashwords - https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Nicholas Amazon.com - http://amzn.to/SdBqGI Amazon.co.uk - http://amzn.to/RtEcYy CreateSpace link: The Warlock https://www.createspace.com/4045630 Maxim Gunn on Amazon - http://amzn.to/T7vUmR

The Warlock - a review

The author is an incredibly talented writer and makes the unbelievable seem not only believable, but terrifying. From the serene monastery to the opulent meals at Marat's abode to the cold English moors, Boving paints scenery like an artist. The cloud of danger hanging over Alan is so thick, it's palpable. Dark, creepy, sexually perverse rituals will make your skin crawl and demonic entities will keep you turning the pages well past the time you should be sleeping. Looking for it? Go to Amazon.com http://amzn.to/SdBqGI Amazon.co.uk http://amzn.to/RtEcYy

L'Ombre de Judex

For those aficonados in La Belle France, here Judex is again. Find it at Riviere Blanche http://www.riviereblanche.com/judex.htm

The Shadow of Judex

Brand new anthology of the adventures of Judex. Take a look at Black Coat Press. http://www.blackcoatpress.com/judexshadow.htm

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Compagnons de l'Ombre

Like your reading in French? Try a few of these beautiful translations. Available at http://www.riviereblanche.com/compagnons011.htm

Tales of the Shadowmen - La vie en Noir

Tales of the Shadowmen - La vie en Noir now available at Blackcoat Press. http://www.blackcoatpress.com/talesshadowmen09.htm Edith Piaf liked to sing about la vie en rose, "life in pink," in other words, life seen through rose-tinted glasses. This volume of Tales of the Shadowmen is another kind of song altogether, one dedicated to la vie en noir, the darker side of life. And what could be darker than the Black Coats, that sinister brotherhood of criminals and their legendary treasure, a malignant self-aware entity that is the embodiment of greed and avarice?