Category: AUTHOR LAZLO FERRAN

Expectation & Desire-Cultivating Fans, Not Just Readers

Great post from Kristen – any new writers should pay close attention.

Abstract
“Readers expect a good book. They expect proper grammar, punctuation and formatting that doesn’t look like it was performed by a sloth with a severe Valium addiction. These are basic, fundamental expectations…and they no longer impress people all that much.”

Kristen Lamb's Blog

We talked about this earlier in the week, but when I first approached agents with the idea of a social media book for authors, I was nearly stoned. All readers want is a good book, was their cry. Yes, that was true before our world inalterably shifted with The Digital Age.

In 1993, we didn’t expect an instant reply to a phone call. In 1996, we knew to just go make a cup of coffee while we waited for our dial-up Internet to load a page, because we didn’t expect for a page to appear in a fraction of a second.

In 1999, we didn’t expect our cell phones (the few who owned them) to take brilliant pictures, play music and offer us high-speed access to the Internet so we could make reservations for dinner, buy movie tickets, or do some Christmas shopping while stranded at the doctor’s office.

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Blog: Witchfinder General – Lazlo Ferran

This week: Sneak Preview, Gravity’s Rainbow review, the End of Formula 1?

Sneak Preview

This week’s is from a a project provisionally entitled December Radio. Hard to say what it’s about at this point without giving it all away but you can be sure there will plenty of tension with a huge climax and even some philosophy for those that have the time. This excerpt holds the reason for this week’s blog title.

December Radio

Sarah barked at the crows, “Shut yer mouths. I ain’t got no food for you and you int a ‘having my body. Not even when I’m dead. They’s ‘ll probably burn me and if not, I will get a Chist’an burial. She spat into the puddle swilling around her filthy skirt- hem but missed and it splatted against piece of rock. She even found this funny; Sarah had a bright soul. Her long, brown and unwashed hair had fallen loose over her left eye while she had been working at the crosses and she pushed the strands back into place while humming a tune. She had made it up to go with the spell her mother had taught her so long ago: Continue reading “Blog: Witchfinder General – Lazlo Ferran” →

Blog: How to Commit the Perfect Murder

This week: How to Commit the Perfect Murder, Rant about Adespresso, updated bio, book price increases.

How to Commit the Perfect Murder
There is no Sneak Preview this week because I am still only slowly progressing with the latest book. If I excerpted every week you would soon have read all of it. 🙂 Instead let me write about something which has preoccupied me this week and does for some time during most books I write. There is often a murder and one often has to think through just how the murderer in the book is going to handle it. There are many ways of murdering somebody so that it is unlikely you will be found out but very few people can or actually, do it in cold blood. It is more often done out of passion and on the spur of the moment ( it is more commonly state-sponsored executions that are planned). Serial Killers I won’t count here because they are not generally sane, usually psychopaths and don’t think rationally about what they are doing.

So my main character finds himself with a knife in his hand and the means, and motive, to kill somebody. It is war-time and you might think nobody will notice a missing person, or will care about a body in the street. But you would probably be wrong. Apart from cleaning up the crime scene (if he or she can do the deed) as best they can, the murderer will next have to consider either how to dispose of the body or how to conceal the act and make the death look natural. In my case (ie the character in my book, not me!) the latter is not possible, nor does the character need to fake his own death, but he does want to take the place of the deceased for a while. Therefore he needs to dispose of the victim. Continue reading “Blog: How to Commit the Perfect Murder” →

Blog: Playing for Keeps – by Lazlo Ferran

This week: Sneak Preview, Free offer results, Short Stirlings, philosophy.

Sneak Preview is back!
Yes, I am writing again! It’s taken a few weeks but here is an excerpt from the forthcoming (in the next few years!) novel with the working title December Radio.

December Radio

“Scary the first time but don’t look too long; you’ll be fine,” said Max Schickert, coiling the blue nylon safety line around the taut muscles in his forearm.
It was Davis Connaughy’s first trip to ‘The Telescope’. He looked at the innocent-looking gap between the two boulders with distrust. The noon-day heat of Peru in October was making him sweat slightly after the long hike up the hill above San Ramon. He glanced at the blonde Apollo in front of him and grinned. He turned to look back out across the vast valley of refulgent green, ruffled nearby by the gentle east-north east breeze.
“No problemo. I have done The Cave of Swallows twice!”
“You do realise how privileged you are to be here? Don’t fuck up! And pay attention.” Continue reading “Blog: Playing for Keeps – by Lazlo Ferran” →

Blog: The World Is Not Enough

This week: Para-Worlds, Social Network build and Free Offers.

Para-Worlds
I have spent most of this week defining a para-world. When I sit down to work on one of my literary projects now, I often feel hesitant: have I forgotten the thrust of the book; does what I am going to write fit into the world-view of the main character; does the story express the world view I want to show. With about ten books published it is getting increasingly hard to keep track of the different world-views my stories encompass. Moreover, its becoming harder to invent new stories that are either so radically different from my existing ones that I don’t have to worry about any incongruity or ones that are similar enough to existing ones that I need to avoid the reader saying, “Hey, this doesn’t fit with that previous story – what’s going on?”

So I decided to think about coming up with a para-world which could encompass my sci-fi and fantasy stories. I am not exactly coining the term ‘para-world’ but I had better define what I mean. I mean by that a world that explains the unexplained elements of our own world; the hidden world as I see it if you like. Actually it is more like a hidden world as I see it; it is not the only view I have and is probably not the one I use in my day-to-day life. Continue reading “Blog: The World Is Not Enough” →

Blog: Who Dares Wins

This week’s Excerpt

Escher’s Staircase
Copyright © 2013 by Lazlo Ferran
All Rights Reserved

Again it’s from The Detective section from Escher’s Staircase (published as Lotus). If you like US Muscle Cars, you’ll love this section.

It’s you or me now, Blue. Killing one of your own! Shame! But now I have the proof… Macar Tadek!
My breathing slowed almost to a stop while I focused through the infra-red sight. I held my index finger delicately over the trigger and waited. I could see no movement. Minutes went by.
Surely he has to move!
I saw just the faintest variation in light up on a second floor balcony of the fire-escape. Something had moved. Continue reading “Blog: Who Dares Wins” →

Blog: The Fast and the Furious

This Week’s Excerpt
This week it comes from the upcoming publication which is currently going under the name Lotus. I am going off that title though; anyway its an erotic suspense novel with deep philosophical angles (I hope!). This part is from an unnamed section but lets call it The Detective. If you read the novel you will know where it fits in.

The red 1971 Pontiac LeMans Convertible streaked along the highway at full speed. The muscular driver behind the wheel was wearing Ray Ban’s and his medium-length brown hair was ruffled violently by the air-stream over the windscreen. He seemed intent only on the road ahead. He held the accelerator flat to the floor with his foot. On the passenger seat was an elegant blonde. Her hair too was flowing out behind her head in the turbulent air. Her head was reclined and at rest on the top of the seat. She appeared to be asleep. The car raced on. Continue reading “Blog: The Fast and the Furious” →

Blog: Are You Experienced?

if you don’t know the the origins of this week’s blog title, look it up! You won’t be disappointed.

Many times young writers ask me if it’s okay to write about something you have not experienced. I usually say yes, if you absolutely must, but there is no substitute for experience.

Landscape and Location
This is particularly true of places – landscape and location. In my first novel, The Ice Boat, a kind of odyssey of a young musician, I stuck to places I knew: London, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (update: this also helped for The Hole Inside The Earth – Ed), Den Haag (The Hague in Holland), Amsterdam and Stockholm. The second volume is yet to be published because the manuscript was lost for years and I only just found it again. In it the main character visits Siberia and and even the top of the world (I was influenced my Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein here!). Ironically I hadn’t even been to Russia while writing it but later I actually married in Kyrgyzstan, in the far east of the old USSR. There the ethnicity is largely that of Mongols from the far north. Perhaps this was a case of life imitating nature. My second book The Man Who Recreated Himself was largely set in England and in places I knew. By the time I wrote Infinite Blue Heaven I had married in Kyrgyzstan and so it made sense to write about the landscapes and people I had experienced. I hope this comes through in the book. Continue reading “Blog: Are You Experienced?” →

This week’s Blog: Gone in 60 seconds

Nano-Short Story – or Flick-Story

11.25: This week I am trying something different: don’t say I don’t try and provide you with variety. I wanted to write a short story so short it would fit in one tweet (140 characters) and I intend to do that today. It’s 11.25 and so I am starting now, posting live the stages as I publish in real time.

11.38: Okay, we’re off! I first had the idea of writing a story shorter than flash-fiction or ultra-short stories when I was promoting Too Bright the Sun. I found that when translating into Chinese or Japanese, there were many characters spare after I had composed the tweet: oriental languages that use logograms depicting ideas (far more complex than in the west) are way more economic than Western ones. I wondered if it might be possible to squeeze a very short story into a tweet of 140 characters. I have had an idea floating around in my head for a short story during the last week and it seemed very suitable for the experiment. It’s basically the story of a Catholic Nun who believes the menstrual cycle is murder. So she becomes what some might call promiscuous but to her she is simply doing the work of God. Last night I wrote a very short draft and just now I found this interesting site talking about writing Flash Fiction. However ultra-short or Flash Fiction are stories of a few paragraphs. There are some very nice short ones like the following: Continue reading “This week’s Blog: Gone in 60 seconds” →

Welcome to the new WordPress Blog

I was tired of issues with the Blogger Blog and it didn’t even give me stats on followers. When I investigated whether you could do this using Blogger, the opinion of the experts was that it couldn’t! Hopefully our new home at wordpress will be a happy one and allow our little community to grow. Thanks for following me. Tell all your friends about the blog. And don’t forget the free offers this month on Amazon!