An update on writing and also a bit about my life

Very, very occasionally I write blog posts, usually with about the frequency that Earth experiences ice ages or direct hits from coronal mass ejections. I haven't written a post in over a year. Some people would call that lazy.

The fact is, I'm not much of a blogger. For some reason the only people that seem to read my blog are in Russia, at least according to Google. Hi comrades. I'm not sure why you read this but hey, I'm not complaining.

As I don't possess anything that vaguely resembles a readership there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of pointing writing anything, but now and then I feel the need to do so if only to structure my thoughts. This is one of those occasions.

By the way, according to autocorrect I cannot spell occasion. See, I got it wrong again even though it's the third time I've written the word in the space of five minutes.

So, what's been going on in the last year? Well, I suppose the biggest news is I became a dad in May this year. I now have a three month old daughter called Olivia. She resembles me in a lot of ways, in that she likes to burp and fart a lot, is easily amused and when she drinks too much she shits herself. That last one isn't true (at least on my part) but it was a good joke.

On the writing front, things went cold for a while because of the baby situation and also because my photography business was, and is, doing rather well. Since that pays my bills I need to make that a priority over writing. I'm in a little bit of a lull on the picture taking front until late September so I'm using that time to get back on the writing wagon.

To date I've still only published two novels: Satisfaction and Infinite Diamond. I think I've sold maybe 10 copies of Satisfaction, which really does baffle me because it's really not that bad of a book. Infinite Diamond on the other hand has sold very well, and is still selling some eighteen months after publication. This amazes me, but then it shouldn't because it's a fun book.

I have another novel, GhostWalker, which is sitting in the wings still waiting for publication. I really need to pull my finger out and launch that, but I've been putting my energies elsewhere, namely into the sequel to Infinite Diamond (ID), which is called The Eye of Andromeda (TEOA).

Generally, I hate sequels. Unless its Aliens or Godfather Part II, most of them are terrible, either rehashing the same idea or forcing a premise out of a completed story. I'm trying to avoid both of those with my sequel and it's leading to some interesting changes to my plans.

One of the things I do when I write is to come up with a basic plot and then apply characters to it and analyze what happens in the story. If the plot progression is organic and feels like something that would happen because of the characters rather than in spite of them, it stays. If it feels contrived, the plot changes and develops from the characters. That's something that's hugely important to me, especially when writing action and fantasy type material. However far fetched a scenario might be, I want it to feel as though the people in that situation are behaving as though they would and it's them driving the story rather than the other way around. Of course it's a blend of the two, but you understand what I'm getting at, don't you?

The result of this is that the while the original plot of TEOA has remained intact, quite a number of the details have been changed to make it blend much more naturally with ID and expand on the world I created there. The downside of this is that I've created a world much bigger than can be explored within the confines of this one story, and while the sequel works as a standalone piece it strongly links back to ID and it leaves a way forward to expand the story again into the next book Scorpio. It leaves me in the quandry that it is very much a middle act, or the first half of a middle act. I do think I've made it a good enough story to stand on it's on merits, but it's most definitely part of a larger story arc.

Originally, TEOA, ID and Scorpio were all independent stories set in the same universe. As I've progressed with TEOA it's become increasing apparent to me that they all are part of the same story. Perhaps they always were in my subconcious, but the more I put the stories down on paper the more ah ha! moments I have where each of the stories naturally link and layer and build into a much more intricate saga.

I hate that word by the way - saga - but it's the only word I can think of to define the overall arc I'm developing.

So I'm at the point where ID opens the story, TEOA extends that story. Scorpio then adds another layer, almost as a parallel sequel, and then finally NorthStar will complete the story arc.

Originally Scorpio, NorthStar and Nemesis were a standalone trilogy but as I've written ID and TEOA it's become very apparent that they're not. In fact, they don't need to be a trilogy at all. The middle act of that trilogy is completely redundant. I don't want to give out any spoilers in case one day you decide to read these stories but once I have them all published I'll write an explanation of how the story compressed and merged over time.

This is extremely long waffle is my way of explaining that I've revised my planned output. While I was once going to write TEOA and then leave that as a completed story along with ID, I'm now segueing it into Scorpio, and then NorthStar will bring together elements from the previous three books into a very definite conclusion. I'm not going to drag it out without a clear ending and make it up as I go along. Although I'm only 40% through writing the overall story arc, I already know how it will end, who will live and who will die and how the whole story ties together.

The only problem is at the end of my planned story, there's an obvious next story to be told. One day, it will make sense what it is. Whether or not I write it is an entirely different matter.

- Paul

The proverbial needle in a haystack

I've just published my second novel, Infinite Diamond, on Amazon. As with Satisfaction, I enrolled this book in KDP Select as it gives me access to the widest possible reader base. It also allows me to promote the book by giving away free copies for 5 days out of every 90 days. I figured this would be useful to get copies of my books out there and to generate some form of interest. The logic seems to be that you give away so many books that a groundswell of interest is created that then translates into sales once the promotion ends. It also gives people a chance to leave reviews, which in turn generate sales.

Neither of these things seem to have happened.

Now I will freely admit to being a complete novice at this self-publishing lark, but I kind of imagined that there would be a little more post-promotion activity. In short, here's whats happened with Satisfaction:

pre-promotion sales: 1  ::  reviews: 0

promotional (free copies) sales: 333  ::  reviews: 0

post-promotional sales (so far): 0  ::  reviews: 0

The promotion ended a couple of weeks ago, so what this tells me is that giving away free copies does nothing to help sales or reviews. Even one review from 333 copies would be less than 0.3% of the readership showing enough interest to say, "Yeah, I liked it," or "Wow, I wouldn't even use this as toilet paper in an emergency."

This is frustrating and also baffling.

Being a logical minded sort of person, I've decided to follow the same method with Infinite Diamond, so I can do some kind of analysis. Maybe the first book just wasn't what's popular right now, or maybe I'm doing something completely wrong? I don't know, but by putting my second title through the same process I'll be able to see any trends that develop.

The promotion for Infinite Diamond is currently underway, and it ends on June 28th, so I'll update this post then. In the meantime, I'm going to stare at my computer hitting refresh every thirty seconds in the hope that something, anything, changes. It's kind of like eBay, only more personal.

If you're interested, below are links to Infinite Diamond.

Thanks as always,

- Paul

INFINITE DIAMOND (sci-fi action adventure novel)
Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DK2E94S
Amazon.co.uk:  https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00DK2E94S
Createspace: https://www.createspace.com/4332151

If you go down to the woods today...

Today is quite an important day for me. After a few (20) years of fiddling around with writing, starting stories and forgetting to finish them and coming up with ideas that never make it beyond a scrap of paper, I finally published a novel.

I say published in the loosest possible sense. E-published I suppose is more accurate. It's the future you know; ebooks supposedly make up 30% of book sales in the US now. To me though, unless you can hold a book in your hand, it's just not the same.

I suppose I shouldn't be talking like that, because it's demeaning what I've achieved. I wrote a book. A real book, that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. Nobody else wrote that story, or created those characters. It all came from me. It's unique. It means I have left a mark on the world, no matter how small or insignificant it might be. Nobody can ever take that away.

I've no idea how this publishing thing is going to go. A large part of me believes it will fall flat on it's face and go nowhere and it will just become some kind of embarrassing side note to my life that's better left forgotten. A small part of me thinks it might just be the start of something amazing.

The thing is, I know my writing isn't that bad. There's no reason my book shouldn't sell, and there's no reason I shouldn't be able to publish the other two manuscripts I have completed this year. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to write the five stories I have in development at the moment. In another couple of years I could have published 8 books. That would be a dream come true, particularly if they became self-sustaining and generated enough revenue so that I could write and make a decent living, but I know that's just a dream for now.

Incidentally, the book I published today is Satisfaction: A Sociopathic Romance. I published a large chunk of an earlier draft on this blog a while ago. It's still there if you wanted to take a look. If you wanted to buy a copy of the finished version and compare the two, then you know that would be very nice of you.

For the first month, Satisfaction is available at 50% off, just $1.49, with the following coupon: MH93C. It's valid until March 1st 2013. You can find my book here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/280265 … It will also be on Amazon in the next day or two.

Who knows where this will lead. Somewhere? Nowhere? Round and round in circling futility? Your guess is as good as mine.

Thanks for reading

Paul

Structuring an unstructured mind is like nailing a cat to a sail in a hurricane

The problem with having an overactive imagination is getting it to stop.  I can be walking along when I have a great idea, concept, lyric, line or something that flashes across my mind.  It's so great it puts the proverbial spring in my step as I let it run free and grow and build and I think 'I HAVE to get this down, this is amazing'.  Then something happens - someone speaks to me, a child punches me in the groin or a car tries to run me over (all have happened) and the great idea evaporates away before it has time to fully form in my memory.  It's a pain in the arse.

That said, a lot of idiocy and madness does survive that initial germination phase and makes it to a scrap of paper, a notebook, the back of a hand or any other place I can get it scribbled down, just enough to prompt the thought again when I look back at it later so that the idea is not lost amongst the noise of the world.

Even with all the loss, I still splurge out more ideas than I can realistically turn into worthwhile work.  This includes stories, songs and often just throwaway lines that I put on Twitter or to a lesser extent Facebook.  I've always written stories, even from a young age.  A couple of things stick in my mind from that period. Both involve the same English teacher, Mr Milner, who taught me at Oaklands School in York.  He must be dead by now, but he had a huge impact on my life, even though he doesn't know it.  In return, I never gave him back his copy of To Kill A Mockingbird.

My first memory related to his teaching - oh no, wait, there's three, not two - was when we were given a sheet of paper with a series of drawings, depicting a guy who gets a motorbike.  We had to use them to tell a story.  I sort of cheated, because I cut the page up, rearranged the sequence of pictures and turned one of the characters into a policeman reporting on the untimely death of the lead character at the end of the story.  Mr Milner wrote on it 'This is a work of the highest standard, well done.'  That stuck in my head because a) he was right, it was good and b) I didn't get why nobody else did the same thing.  It just seemed obvious to me.

Memory number two was a story about a raft.  I wrote it from the point of view of someone walking through a forest a spying on another person building a raft.  Mr Milner started reading that one out in class, much to my horror.  At that point I realized that I don't crave attention or validation for my writing.  I know when something works and when I doesn't.  I don't need other people telling me that.  If I let someone read something it's because I've gotten it to the point where it's progressed far enough to be presented to an audience.  That doesn't necessarily mean its the finished product.  That said, I do take onboard people's suggestions.  When people read my story I want them to find plot holes or any deus ex machina moments that need extracting and replacing with decent story telling.  I don't have a problem with that but generally by the time I have gotten to the point of letting someone read my work, such problems can be fixed with one or two lines of exposition.

Memory number three was a comment he put on a story about a deranged general trying to blow up a neutron bomb.  He wrote at the bottom - 'hugely entertaining, worthy of Jeffrey Archer!'  At the time I thought that was a compliment, but there will be more on that story later...

So that sort of brings me on to the point of this post.  I have a lot of stories in development, but a lot of them are pretty closely tied together.  In order to keep track of this, I need to set out a diagram of where they all fit together.  Apologies for the formatting:


Brotherly Love

                                                    Valiant Shield

Satisfaction                                Ghostwalker                                                      
Sympathy for the Devil               Ghostwalkers
                                                                                 Infinite Diamond
                                                                                 The Eye of Andromeda          Scorpio
                                                                                                                                  Northstar
                                                                                                                                  Nemesis

Okay, I have more than I thought, that's actually eleven books.  Given the length of book I seem to write, that's about a million words.  Seeing as I do at least one complete rewrite per story, that brings it up to over two million words worth of effort to complete all these stories.  Now you see why I see having too much imagination as being a bit of a curse.

Bear in mind that most of these are not written out in full, and that million word target is probably more around the three hundred thousand word mark at the moment.  In fact, only Satisfaction and Ghostwalker are completed to a reasonable degree, with Infinite Diamond close behind.  Brotherly Love has an outline and a few passages.  Sympathy for the Devil has a start and a premise.  Ghostwalkers has a premise.  Valiant Shield is based on the story Mr Milner likened to the work of Jeffrey Archer, and is little more than a basic pitch.  Infinite Diamond is the story I'm working on at the moment and is about half way through being rewritten. The Eye of Andromeda has an outline, as do the last three.

What links Valiant Shield through to Nemesis is one character.  He's called Nathan Hayes and in some of the stories he's a relatively minor player, whereas in others he takes centre stage.  The overarching span of these stories is really about his career, although you wouldn't see that reading any one of the stories.

The stories on the left don't involve Hayes and are a standalone little stories told from the first person point of view.  This is by far and away the easiest and laziest way for me to write, because I'm basically writing in my voice as I see it and hear it in my head.  If a character doesn't know something then they don't know.  I don't need to go away and research a subject or try to describe something I barely understand myself.  It really is much, much easier writing like this.  It's pretty much the same voice I use to write this blog, only it's fictional.  That's why when I start trying to publish, I'll be using thes stories on the left.  That way if I fail, it's at minimum damage to myself.  The other reason is to retain creative control.  I know where I want the rest of the stories to go and how I want them to fit together.  If I publish one of them without securing that creative control, it would run the risk of buggering up the overall structure that I have in mind.

The rest of the stories are very much more conventional fiction writing and range from thrillers through to straight action stories, mostly with a slight fantasy/sci fi element, although I don't include characters with names like Jxxfrkk or Gilfard the Great or anything like that.  It's a little more grounded writing than that, I like to think.  I do tend to write pretty visually and of course I think about how these stories could end up on film.  I'm also realistic though, and I know there's pretty much a zero chance of that happening, since they would be expensive to make.  So for now they will exist as novels, although another thought has occurred to me.  Being very visual stories, they could do very well as graphic novels.  I think the sort of stories I write could work in that medium and be marketed to the sort of audience who would pick up a graphic novel in the first place.

The only problem is that, like most things in life, I have no idea where to start.

Here we go again

If you've read any of this blog, then you will have noticed that it comprises of two things: excerpts from the fiction I write, and me complaining about how hard it is to write fiction.  Depending on your point of view, you may or may not be pleased to know this post is another piece of fiction.  Then again, you might never have read any of my other posts and may now be thinking "What on earth is this person gibbering on about?".

What I really should start doing is varying this blog a bit - start complaining about American drivers, fat people and other things that aggravate me.  But I don't want to come across as some cut price Jeremy Clarkson, so I will avoid doing that and stick to the fiction.

So onwards to the point of this post: right back at the start of writing this blog, I mentioned a story I'd started back in 2006 called Infinite Diamond.  A few weeks ago, I was heavily into finishing two other stories, Satisfaction and GhostWalker, both of which I've now finished and posted the first few chapters of on here (if you go looking, beware that Satisfaction is VERY rude).  I wanted to take a break from writing, but then I opened up Infinite Diamond and started reading...  It's really not that bad.  It's rough, it's literally in it's first draft but still, it's got potential.  It's also about 60% complete.  It would be a crime to leave it incomplete, surely?  I might as well get a first draft complete.  That way, if something happens to me, a least the concept would be captured, if not the final words.

So I'm going to have a stab at completing the first draft.  Not reviewing what I've done previously, but finishing an imperfect story.  Saying that, I did review the prologue last night and that's what I'm posting here.  It's only 1,200 words so I thought 'What the hell?'.

I've found I'm better writing fast paced, short books, running in at about 80,000 words.  That's the target for this one too.  It's still some way off completion but with the way I've been writing in the last few months, I reckon I could have a draft complete in a month.  If I do, that means I would have 3 complete 80,000 word stories, all of which are completely different in nature and style.  I think that's something to feel reasonably happy about.

Anyway... Here's the prologue to Infinite Diamond...

The man ran as fast as his weary legs could carry him, his breath as ragged as his peasant clothes.  The dark, muddy track that he followed was heavily rutted by cartwheels, and he slipped and stumbled as he ran, but it did not slow his escape.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the recently passed storm had left the earth beneath his feet treacherously wet.  Branches tore at the man’s rough clothes as he stumbled to his left and rolled along the hedgerow, before resuming his desperate course.
A gibbous moon emerged slowly from behind low, scudding clouds, reflecting in the long deep puddles that lay ahead of him.  The pale light shone on his face, giving his skin a pallid glow that echoed his fearful expression.  This was a man running for his life.
He did not let up his pace, even as each breath he took became shorter and more painful; his exhalation hung for a moment in the cold night air as though he were steam train driving on in desperation.  He was young and fit, but he was pushing himself beyond endurance to escape the fear that pursued him, and with every step his stamina was beginning to desert him.
He jinked around a large puddle ahead of him, seeking firmer ground so as not to be slowed.  The thunder rolling across the horizon to his left continued to sound its death knell, and as it faded another sound took its place.  He pulled up quickly, stopping for a moment.  He bent down, hands on his knees trying to breathe quietly, straining to listen beyond the rush of blood in his ears and the laughter of Mother Nature.
There it was – the unmistakeable bass sound of hoofbeats.  Somewhere behind him, not too far away, a horse was galloping towards him.  He gave a short yelp and resumed his desperate course, but it was all too obvious that he was going to be caught by his pursuer.
The horseman was hunting with intent, driven by an anger that tore at him from within.  He wore a knight’s tunic, all black save for a white lion on the right breast.  He wore no helmet, but had on the gauntlets and boots from a suit of armour, and a heavy coat of chain mail glinted beneath his tunic.  His mount was a black stallion and wore no armour; it was a animal being ridden for the speed of pursuit and it snorted fiercely as the rider drove the beast forward towards his ever closing quarry.
The fleeing man was exhausted, his race run, but still he did not stop; driven on by fear and fast fading hope, he began to run again. The sound of the horseman closing on brought panic rising in his throat, and he could not stop himself from glancing over his left shoulder to glimpse a sight of his nemesis.  It proved to be a fateful mistake.
His boot landed on a smooth, wet rock sitting in the middle of the track.  It was slippery with mud and his foot turned as he landed on it.  He yelled out in agony as his ankle turned over, sending him stumbling forward.  He fell into the mud, splashing into dirty dark water.  In moments he was pushing himself to his feet again, but the fall had allowed the rider to close to within killing distance.
The horseman was no more than thirty yards from the fallen man and without slowing he released the reins, reached behind his back with his right hand and drew an arrow from the quiver strapped across his back.  He never took his eyes from his quarry as drew a heavy bow from his left side, notched the arrow, raised the bow, drew it back to its full weight and let the arrow slip.  It flew true and landed square between the shoulder blades of the running man, who cried out and fell forward, splashing down into ground.  This time he did not rise, but lay prostrate, his head turned to one side, his breath laced with cries of pain.
The rider whipped by the stricken runner, and wheeled his horse around before dismounting in one swift movement.  He sheathed the bow, and drew a long sword from a scabbard hanging on the horse’s saddle.  He strode up to the fallen man, his face filled with hatred.
“Get up,” he ordered, standing over the prone body.  The man on the ground didn’t move; only his shallow groans suggested there was still life in him.
“Maybe you need some encouragement,” snarled the knight.  He grabbed the shaft of the arrow rising from the man’s back and tugged on it.  The man screamed in pain, agonisingly lifting himself with his elbows to try and ease the pain.  The knight quickly slipped his foot under the fallen man’s body and kicked him onto his back. The arrow shaft snapped as he rolled over and he screamed again as he fell back into the mud.  Their eyes met, one gaze full of hate, the other swimming with fear.
“Why?” the swordsman demanded, putting the tip of his sword to the fallen man’s throat.
“You know why,” the man on the ground answered, his teeth clenched with pain.
“Your betrayal will cost you your life, you fool,” the knight said.  He drew the sword up, wrapping both hands around the hilt, ready to plunge it down.  “Make your peace with God,”  he hissed, “for you are about to face Him.”
He drew his gaze from the fallen man’ face to his chest, to where he was about to drive his sword but as he did, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.  He suddenly lunged down, grabbing at the fallen man’s left hand.  He prised back his cold dirty fingers to reveal a small, dark disc of metal.  The knight took it and stood up, examining it.  It was warm to the touch, and in the centre was a recessed button.  His eyes flicked back to the fallen man, who now had a defiant look on his face.
“They are coming for you, Luyten,” the man on the ground said.
“You will not live to see them,” Aaron Luyten spat back.  He raised the sword and thrust it down with one hand, stabbing the fallen man through the chest.  He let out a loud moan, and grabbed at the blade, clutching it.  Luyten twisted it, feeling it crunch against his victim’s breastbone, and he saw blood from the man’s hands run down the blade as the keen edge of the sword sliced his hands open.  Then, with a last gurgling breath, the hands went slack, and life slipped from the fallen man.  Luyten waited a few more seconds, his weight resting on the hilt of the sword before he drew it back from the lifeless body.  He looked down to his hand and thumbed the button in the centre of the disc.  It popped back up flush with the surface of the disc, and he then slipped it into his tunic.  He turned, leaving the body in the middle of the track, and walked back to his horse.  He glanced up at the distant storm as a sheet of lightning illuminated the horizon.  He knew the dead man, Second Lieutenant Chase Crawford, was right.  They were coming, there was no doubt of that.  But thanks to the murder he had just committed, he would be ready for them.