Category: WRITER

Reaching Your Target Audience

Well, I have decided to call the book ‘Ordo Lupus and The Winged Serpent’. It’s not a name I thought up (thanks – you know who you are and there will definitely be acknowledgement), but it’s better than the titles I thought up and others like it.

Target Audience
I initially aimed this book at Baby Boomers – well actually I basically aimed it at fantasy/suspense thrillers and then pleased myself, but it has ended up more pure fantasy than I intended. I don’t really mind that. It’s often been said that there is an element of sci-fi in all my stories and I suppose fantasy is pretty close to that, so maybe I am homing in on what I really like writing (and perhaps I am getting better at it). I now just need to actually make contact with my audience! I had a lot of friends into this kind of writing many years ago at college, but I seem to have lost contact with them. I do not have a single close friend who is into the genre now, so I am contacting interest groups on lulu.com (where my work is published). I will see if they are interested in reviewing my work, and I will review some of theirs in return. Continue reading “Reaching Your Target Audience” →

The Humour in my Writing 1

OK. I have arrived at a point in my new sci-fi story when I need to write some genuine comedy – a joke actually. I often mix humour into stories but I have never tried proper comedy before or a joke. So I am going to try it out here and see what people think. The humour (that might, I hope, make the joke funny) has this context in the story. At this time (whenever it is) aliens are known to exist but nobody has seen one yet. There is a stand up comedian who is busking on a street corner and the main character sees him and hears the joke and laughs. Later on he sees the same guy on a talent show on the equivalent of tv and perhaps later again, each time developing his jokes further.

When he is seen on the street corner he is dressed in suit, standing on a soap box (futuristic equivalent) and wearing a satirical rubber mask in the likeness of the presedent of US and Canada. He is interspersing his jokes with humorous comments about passers-by. Here is the joke: Continue reading “The Humour in my Writing 1” →

I Have Received useful Feedback

OK all the readers who are going to complete my draft (of the werewolf story) have completed it and I have all the feedback. It makes for very interesting reading. The curious thing – which I didn’t expect but probably should have, is that they all completely disagree.

While one person thinks that one chapter or section is boring, for another it is their favourite part. This makes it quite difficult to do any editing at all although there were some areas that all felt could be improved. A secondary problem arose from that though:

For instance one passage that several felt was really extraneous I deleted, and then did a kind of flash-back just for the vital details of that section – like a summary. But then people said it sounded like I was rushing on to the next bit. Even worse, one reader said that for the next section there then wasn’t enough background so that I even contemplated putting the original section back in. Continue reading “I Have Received useful Feedback” →

Offering Readers Choice of Pace

In my novel Insanity, some readers have preferred certain parts and others have felt they are too long or too detailed so I am thinking of offering an ‘extended’ version of the book, like a ‘directors cut’ which will have the longer air battle and the whole chapter in Bulgaria for those who want more background. it just seems a shame to cut out all of this which some have liked. in fact some wanted more air battles.

What do you think of this idea? It might offer people the choice of what sort of pace they want.
Incidentally what do you think of the title? Do you think it should be shortened?

Sci-fi Features Top Trump Factor

Welcome to the first one of a series of Sci-fi Top Trumps. In actual fact they will be Iron Top Trumps because that is the provisional name of my new sci-fi novel. Its set mainly on Io, moon of Jupiter and Io has an iron core. There’s something about the Iron Cross as well but don’t get the wrong idea. Also there is a deeper meaning but that will only become apparent much later if you read the story.

So what Top Trumps? For those of you that haven’t come across them before they are a pack of cards with items on which have varying numbers of points attached to them depending on the quality/attributes of the item. For instance for cars you might have a card for a Mini and an E-Type Jaguar. Clearly the Jag is heavier, faster and more powerful than the mini so it would beat it on every attribute in a game of cards where you call out your strongest attribute. So for my Iron Top Trumps the attributes are:

Coolnest
Cost
Usefulness
Futurosity (how far in the future you might have to go to get one)
Weakness (lowest score wins)

Scores are out of 10 Continue reading “Sci-fi Features Top Trump Factor” →

2 Films: Anonyma (2008), Road of No Return

Well I had a week off work last week and I watched lots of films. Some were so-so like ‘Anonyma – The Downfall of Berlin’ and others I didn’t like ‘Road of No Return’

Anonyma tells the story of a German journalist who goes back to Berlin in the last day of April, 1945 to witness the end of Nazism and gets caught up in the Russian takeover. They could have made a lot more of the fact that she was a journalist – in fact the only observation that really resonated was when she mentioned that they could feel Berlin becoming ‘Russian’ by the hour. Apparently a true story written anonymously in the 40s or 50s and the author herself was so castigated that she withdrew all further editions of the book after the first. Continue reading “2 Films: Anonyma (2008), Road of No Return” →

On Screen now: will eBooks catch on?

Before I forget, I have been reading Tolkien’s letters which I thoroughly recommend to anybody who is a big Tolkien fan, as I am. I have been reading it on screen though which I don’t recommend.

It has made me think about eBooks and whether they really will catch on. I am not (or haven’t been until now) one of those luddites who hold to the view that paper books are it and that e-books go against the grain of what a reader really wants – that sensual experience. but frankly I may change my mind. There really is something kinda (did you see what I did there?) anti-ceptic about reading on-screen. I don’t know what it is. I think in some way one feels that the computer is dictating terms in that it is ’emitting’ light and decides the format of the page as in fact the format of the page doesn’t normally seem to suit me on screen. I will have to investigate further but I just published one of my books as an e-book and I am wondering now if I should do this. Continue reading “On Screen now: will eBooks catch on?” →

The Straw that Built the Camel’s Bridge

Wow! 2 Followers now. I guess that means I really should try and write something interesting.

When the Sun of true power,
Sends forth its glow,
Take care where you tread
for the flowers below,
are the souls of friends.

I have had a couple of really bad days luck wise and its got (I reserve the right to use bad grammar including ‘got’ on my blog) me focused again on luck. The title of this post refers to the fact that sometimes, out of the direst bad luck you can bring out something good. It’s not easy though. I am not sure if I have been unlucky or maybe it’s a bit of evil finding its way back into my life. If it’s the latter then why now? And anyway I haven’t been feeling the presence that I usually feel when it’s around. So for the time being I think I have to put it down to very bad luck. Just little things really. Yesterday everything I did and touched went wrong. It was just continuous and I ended up knackered just trying to get through the day and I didn’t get anything done at all that I intended to do.

Just out of interest here is an edited version of my diary notes of luck/evil for the last month. What does anybody make of it? Do you have any similar experiences? Continue reading “The Straw that Built the Camel’s Bridge” →

Deluxe images

They are linked from here.

SU 401

LC5150

X.77

Alien Clover Leaf rifle

Lu-kshîa

JFK

Cruiser

MCS Cropped

MSC Detail

Reploids or Cyblicants?

In figuring out the main crux of my pending sci-fi story I ended up with a bit of a dilemma. My main character has some issues with whether he is human or not – Of course, this has been explored in Blade Runner and it’s not the main theme of my story so I didn’t want to get too involved with it but I did need to find a platform for his ‘kind of person’.

Originally I had conceived this part of the story in quite simple terms using just androids or cyborgs but this didn’t quite seem to cover all the possibilities I needed. Then I thought of sticking to Replicants – a-la-Blade Runner but this just seemed to dilute things and, in fact, make the story almost pointless. Continue reading “Reploids or Cyblicants?” →