Tag: EDITOR

How to Write a Good Vampire Book 3. – Characterisation

writing3Basic Rules of Characterisation

So, in our story about Vampire Santa’s sleigh problems, we have Santa, Vampire Rudolph, and Rudolph’s wife, Erma!

Now how do you create characters for them? There are no hard and fast rules, but be wary of simply writing the story as it comes into your head without setting the characters. If you do this, the most likely outcome is that all the characters will sound like the same person, or sub-personalities of the same person. For instance:

“Wow! I got an egg for my birthday. Thanks Erma. I really love you. It’s exactly what a male reindeer wants!”
“It’s okay Rudolph. Wow! I really love you too. I’m glad it’s what you wanted.” Continue reading “How to Write a Good Vampire Book 3. – Characterisation” →

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” →

Many thoughts and projects

I have completed the penultimate edit of Iron II. It was a bit of an epic. I was determined to get it down from 104,000 words to less than 100,000. Every time I cut out chunks it still seemed the same length. I don’t know how that was possible. I cut out a whole chapter and it was still 104,000 words long. Admittedly I had to add some stuff back in to make the story flow and keep the continuity. The last 10 words took 2 hours, but it is now 99,998 words long. Hope to publish in about a month.

I have also rewritten the ending of Ordo Lupus II, and I think it’s much better. It also resulted in a story 30,000 words shorter. At 80,000 words, it could be my shortest yet. It wasn’t really the length that bothered me, but that the original climax followed by a second climax didn’t seem to work: the momentum was lost somewhere. Now, I think it works really well. Hope to publish this one later this year.

I have finally started on Iron III which will revolve totally around Jake Nanden again and have many more battles. I see Iron II now as the eye of the storm in the flow of the trilogy.

I am already making tentative steps towards writing a very serious novel which I hope will break a few boundaries. It will certainly be ‘adults only’.

I also am developing an outline for a story set in WWII and basically revolving around aircraft. In Ordo Lupus there was a raid on Holland in WWII, and I really enjoyed writing it. I had good feedback from readers who like that sort of thing, but other readers found it boring. So it would nice to try a book for those that might enjoy it. Of course there is a risk I am trying too many genres and I might lose credibility.