Category: AUTHOR

Secret Codes; Should I use them?

This week: Secret Codes; should I use them? FREE eBook and a Sneak Preview.

It’s been a very busy week. My first newsletter went out on Sunday so today’s blog will be quite a short one.

===== FREE NOW!!! ==========
Share: Occult thriller- Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate is still free until tomorrow at 8am BST. http://bit.ly/15R1xOL “Wild ride” “Exciting read” “Rich, complex” “Well plotted”

“Am I? Beautiful?” She turned her face towards me and I longed to kiss it but I couldn’t.

Download the free Kindle apps here: http://www.amzn.to/13aluuF Continue reading “Secret Codes; Should I use them?” →

The Journals of Raymond Brooks 2nd Edition

I am excited and delighted to announce that the second edition of Amit Bobrov’s Fantasy tale The Journals of Raymond Brooks is out now, and I am the editor!

I first met Amit through Goodreads.com and I took a peep at the opening pages of this, his first novel. I was immediately grabbed by the opening premise; Modern day assassin creeping up on house with two vampire survivors from the middle-ages. I had to read it!

What I experienced was an enchanting tale which guided me safely though a complex set of ideas. There were only two things which let the book down slightly, a slightly under-developed (very understandable for an Israeli writer) view of the extreme religious period of the Late Middle Ages and a poor English edit.

Fortunately I have ample experience of the former through my personal genealogical research, which took me back to 1240 France, and the number of weighty academic books I have read on the Medieval. Amit and I were able to work together to address these issues. I also did a small amount of development editing. Continue reading “The Journals of Raymond Brooks 2nd Edition” →

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?” →

Blog – Frankenstein: The True Story

The Ice Boat – Lost Manuscript

I published Volume I of The Ice Boat in April, 2010. It was the first novel I ever wrote and I wrote it in long-hand. I didn’t realise just what a pain in the ass it was going to be to type it up. In fact, a friend typed up nearly half of it for me – free – which is the only reason I published Volume I when I did!

Writing it up in long-hand did have some advantages; I could write in the relaxed environment of a holiday apartment in Spain and I could get my thoughts down as fast as my pen-hand could write. The latter, in my opinion, has made the manuscript more like a stream-of-consciousness than any of my other novels.

Continue reading “Blog – Frankenstein: The True Story” →

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.”

Author Kristen Lamb's avatarKristen 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

Copyright © 2013 by Lazlo Ferran

All Rights Reserved

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: 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

Copyright © 2013 by Lazlo Ferran

All Rights Reserved

“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” →