Category: Literary

What is the back-story behind your books?

This week: Here is the back-story behind my newly published volumes of The Ice Boat Volume II and The Ice Boat – 2 in 1. What is your back-story?

The Ice Boat
In the Lazlo Ferran Newsletter which went out to my friends last weekend, I announced the publication of the last volume of The Ice Boat and a 2 in 1 version, which includes both volumes in one book.

I published Volume I back in 2009. It is semi-autobiographical, largely anecdotal, and was the first novel I wrote, even further back, in 2003.

The Ice Boat is largely autobiographical, although certainly not for most of the erotic passages, which are many. It was written at a time in my life when I was frustrated by my own lack of wisdom; in particular my inability to be neither totally cynical nor optimistic. Perhaps because I had just moved from a life as a full-time musician to an IT professional within the science sector, I felt a little bit ‘dislocated’. Continue reading “What is the back-story behind your books?” →

How to get my stories into Arabic or Urdu?

I am becoming increasingly frustrated by the lack of translation services on the internet and the quality of those that do exist. For some time I have been gaining a disproportionately large number of fans in Egypt and India. I don’t know why this is, but that’s hardly the point. If these people are interested in me, then I want to publish something that is easy for them to read. In other words I want to publish in their languages: Urdu and Arabic.

You are probably thinking; what’s the point? If they understand English then they can read it and if not, why bother? Well, I just feel that they deserve it!

Until now I have used Google Translate – http://translate.google.com for twitter and Facebook posts. It’s okay for short posts but as everyone probably knows by now, it’s not great. If you have ever received spam from a fake Russian girl looking for a boyfriend you will know what I mean. The result is a sort of gobble-de-gook; a soup of phrases that overlap each other and mean little. I recently tried to translate a tweet into Chinese and then translate it back to see how good/bad it was. I had to make several attempts before I could get anything that retained even the basic meaning of what I was saying! Continue reading “How to get my stories into Arabic or Urdu?” →

Should your main character have flaws?

This week: Sneak Preview, news about an Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate promotion and: Why should your main character have flaws?

Why should your main character have flaws?
All of my main character (and thus protagonists) have flaws. In my earlier books I think it was just instinct that led me to this. In fact you could argue that for James Brennan in The Man Who Recreated Himself and King Vaslav in Infinite Blue Heaven the question of whether they are flawed or not is the main theme examined in the novels. James is perhaps naive and Vaslav is perhaps sexually weak, being a willing participant in incest, something not uncommon in the 17th century. In The Ice Boat, which is my first novel completed, it’s very obvious that David Dee is flawed; naive and confused by life. Physically he is in good health however, as are the other two characters mentioned. Continue reading “Should your main character have flaws?” →