Two on the Go!

I'm a reader. If you don't know that by now, you really don't know me. I love books - which is a good thing, too, considering I work in a bookshop - and I often find that one is never enough.

No, I have to have two on the go at all times. That's how I do it. One novel or memoir, and one book of non-fiction - usually one on business or writing or personal development. (The latter being an incredibly vague descriptor for a genre. Some are total mindset books that lead you to take action, some are totally practical books that attempt to alter your mindset through method, some rely on spirituality - the variants are seemingly endless.)

The main thing is that I don't attempt to juggle two stories at the same time. Anecdotal stuff in a non-fiction book is fine - it can help to illustrate a point - but I prefer not to mix the stories up in my head while reading them.

Here's how I do it:

The story I'm reading - at this moment in time, It's Kind of a Funny Story, is reserved for my lunch breaks in work, and bus journeys, when I'm not too tired to read. When I start college, that guarantees me two hours of reading per week, when I'll only work weekends. That's a minimum, because I'll probably make more of an effort to read on the bus when I love the extra day in work for reading.

I use this time for reading stories because I enjoy the escape, and I like to unwind with them. But there's another reason, and it's why I read the non-fiction books at home, in my personal time and space - I don't feel like I'm wasting time by reading non-fiction at home.

Let me clarify - fiction is not a waste of time. But when I'm at home, I'm presented with an option - my fiction, or someone else's. It's a better use of my time when I use it for (a) writing or (b) developing myself, my writing knowledge, or my business knowledge.

When I read non-fiction, my current book being Get Sh*t Done! by Niall Harbison, I think of it as investing my time in learning something important. In the case of my current read, it's using someone else's life lessons to develop a means towards living the life that I want - not the life other people want for me.

That's a different lesson to the previous book on my list - Creativity Inc. - which shed some light on how to run a creative business. This was, of course, in the context of a company with employees, and not a solo operation. However, there's something to remember here, about education and learning: while authors and teachers have their own intended learning outcomes, students may come out of the experience learning something else. In my case, how to better work on a creative team.

Why is that important? Well, my college course will require a lot of creative work with other people, people from different backgrounds, people I haven't even met before.

Do I have a book on how to better improve my people skills before then? Yes. Of course I do. I also have a book on how to feel more alive, one on dealing with change, one of being more effective, and one on public speaking - just in case I need to make a presentation. Those lessons are all valuable uses of my time, and I wouldn't be surprised if I found myself dedicating a lot more time than usual to reading them in an effort to draw some inspiration before my course begins.

But I won't just be reading those books. I'll be juggling some stories, like Maureen Johnson's The Last Little Blue Envelope, or Josh Sundquist's Just Don't Fall, or David Levithan's How They Met, or Darren Shan's Zom-B Clans - that's one novel on love and growing up and stuff, one memoir on growing up (with, and then without, cancer), one collection of short stories, and one zombie novel. Those are just the ones I think I can finish before college, comfortably, before I tackle Clash of Kings by George RR Martin.

This type of reading isn't sustainable, of course. There will come a time when I'll be forced to choose one or the other - and switching between the two as it suits me - because I'll have to read specific titles for college. But, while it's an option, it's the best one for me. Diversity in reading is important, and when I see people purposely choosing to avoid books that (a) have a story or (b) don't, I wonder if they've ever really given it a shot. I like to learn something new, and usually about something I wouldn't ever study in school or college (because, frankly, I don't think it's possible to grade somebody on something like personal growth), and I like to expose myself to new stories all the time.

Stories help us to develop a sense of empathy and understanding. That's one type of valuable lesson, and it's why I still write fiction when the truth of it has been revealed (the truth being that it's very difficult to make a living from writing fiction) - I believe that people can get something from reading lots of different types of stories, and that the exposure to new ideas and new people (albeit fictional ones) allows us to live a more open life.

At the same time, I believe that if we want to change our lives, we should. Society has this weird stigma attached to being different, and even when so many people read what are broadly described as "personal development" or "self-help" books, many people still look at them and wonder why they're reading something like that. (I used to. I'm speaking from experience here. My perception changed when I realised that I needed to.) Why do personal development books matter? Why should people care about what different people have to say about how to live life, or be happy, or run a business? Because we all live different lives and we can all learn from each other. 

If you don't know how to escape the 9-5 job, someone else has probably already written a book about it. If you don't know how to influence people towards your way of thinking, someone else can probably explain how they do it. If you don't know how to do more with your life that you actually want to do, someone has probably written a book about it. (In fact, books do exist on those three topics - The Four Hour Work-Week, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Get Sh*t Done! being the prime examples!)

I'm a reader, and while I still have the option, I'm going to continue taking on two books at a time. I'm not doing it because I think it'll make me a better person - I can change as a person, if I follow the lessons in the book, not just by reading it - but because it makes me a happier person. Reading is a pleasure, and whether I'm learning something new, or meeting new characters, I'll always find joy in a book (or two.)

The Non-Writing Book Recommendations

After my other list of books for writers, it makes sense to follow up with one that isn't primarily focused on writing, but can illustrate some important ideas and styles for writers to take note of. This isn't extensive, and it all comes down to my personal tastes, but I can guarantee you one thing: a book won't make it onto this list if I haven't read it - because there are already dozens of articles online with the same books on them as recommendations.

Paper Towns by John Green

Why? It is, in essence, a road-trip novel, and one that captures the experience so perfectly that it made me want to go on one myself. (Though, for the record, I don't actually have my a car of my own to do that with.) Don't attempt to write a road-trip book unless (a) you've been on one and (b) you've read a road-trip book. This one is my suggestion.

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

One reason: a thought provoking but inoffensive exploration of suicide, and why one girl in particular took her own life. It's a very sensitive issue, and Asher manages to tread carefully, while covering the necessary ground - how the girl felt, how those she blames felt, their reactions to her death. It's not an easy read, in the sense that it's emotionally unsettling, but overall it's worth the experience.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

For it's treatment of racism, and the exploration of race through a child's eyes, it's a vital read. Why any school would ever ban this, I'll never understand. Bare-faced and daring, tense and unnerving, if you haven't read it, you need to.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

Lawson's only book to date, this memoir of growing up in Texas explores a number of topics that many writers may never find themselves going through - and many more than writers are incredibly likely to experience. From a bizarre childhood to issues in parenting and motherhood, as well as an exploration of depression, Lawson somehow managed to create a book that was both hilarious and insightful, and, for a couple of chapters, heartbreaking.

One Red Paperclip by Kyle McDonald

The message from this memoir is simple: strange things are possible for ordinary people. If you think writing about suicide or racism or motherhood or road trips might present themselves as being too out-there for some readers, seemingly normal, but just a stretch too far with the imagination, then look no further than the Canadian who, through a series of trades, went from owning one red paperclip to owning a house. It's happened in real life - so who's to say whether or not you're pushing your luck with an idea? There are no limits in fiction, but especially not after Kyle McDonald pulled off this amazing feat.

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle

Why? The music. You don't necessarily have to like Soul music, but as a novel, it's a good example of how a band can come together, and how to include songs in a book. It also works as a great example of how a book can be written almost entirely using dialogue. Some of the colloquialisms may be difficult to understand for readers outside of Ireland, but there are always Irish readers out there who will happily translate for you.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

For an understanding of Asperger's Syndrome - albeit one that should be taken with a pinch of salt - Haddon's novel is a must read. A story of emotional difficulty, a search for meaning, and a seemingly impossible journey, it's ideal for writers trying to figure out how to make their characters different without making them weird. Even today, few writers include stories with autistic characters in the main cast - I've only ever seen one other character who fell into the category, in Cassandra Clare's latest novel, City of Heavenly Fire, and even then it isn't stated explicitly. If it doesn't challenge you to do something out of the ordinary with your protagonist(s), then nothing will. (Just, you know, be respectful of people who are actually going through the same things as your characters, and don't glorify what makes them different.)

Do you have any recommendations?

My list isn't comprehensive, but the books here present vast differences in stories and how they're told. I hope that, when you're working on your own ideas, these books might help highlight some key ideas for you to explore in a contemporary setting. (Or not.) Do you have any recommendations of your own? What books do you think writer should be reading?

Future Books and Future Plans

My friends poked fun at me when I said, in response to the challenge to come up with a book idea in thirty seconds, that I had a wall full of ideas, and I could easily pretend I just came up with one of them. I got the whole "Oh, I just have so many ideas..." line.

Well yes, yes I do.

I don't have plans, but I do have ideas. The ones I really like, I make sure to focus on. They're a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and I don't know how many of them are actually good yet. I have to see how they pan out when I try planning them, when I try to find the story around the idea.

My general plan for the next couple of years with books looks like this:

- I want to release the third Modern Irish Myth book. It'll require re-planning, and writing from scratch, but it's going to happen. Then, the series will be put on hiatus.

- I'll be releasing a series of books set in an Irish college. To put it really simply, it'll be creating a fictional world around my own college experience, inspired by events rather than people. I'm fleshing out a lot of it at the moment, but it's been exciting me for a long time, now, and it'll be appearing sooner rather than later.

- I'll be focusing on a couple more writing books in the future. Some will be specific genre-related titles, others more broad, addressing all writers. Without just giving away ideas, that's all I can say.

- After my Masters, I'll be turning my attention to researching and writing about mental health. I want to make the material accessible. If my experience on teaching placement in 2013 was any indication of the trend, even the people who should know about mental health don't. This is something I've been wanting to write about for a long time, and for the time being it'll remain in my fiction, but in the future I'll be taking on a more proactive role in the field in Ireland - and maybe even abroad.

That's just the books, of course. There's a lot else to focus on in the future, which I can't really discuss until I actually get started (I have books on mental health, and have read a bit of some of them, so I'm not breaking my own rule there). This isn't just a secrecy thing. This is a hype thing. As in, I don't want to create any hype in my own head over this stuff.

Being a writer can be a scary thing, especially when public announcements are concerned. It's with that in mind that I'm keeping a lot of things quiet until I'm ready to talk about them, and why I haven't given any indication as to what's actually going to happen in my new books. For now, you'll have to do with the vague answers I can give, and accept the fact that new material is on its way.

What I Write

When I was younger, I thought I would only enjoy one type of book: one that had magic in it. Then, I found A Series of Unfortunate Events, and everything almost changed.

Except, that was it. That was the only non-magical series I was reading. Until I went to secondary school and was required to read Boy by Roald Dahl, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, I didn't read another book that didn't have magic in it. I was reading Harry Potter, and Darren Shan, and Garth Nix.

My first book was a fantasy book. My second was sci-fi. And it wasn't just a genre fixation. I was only reading and writing novels. Nothing else.

I tried to write some short stories. They were derivative at best.

Then, when I was seventeen, I wrote a book that didn't have magic in it. It was set in Dublin, it had swearing in it, and no one could throw a fire ball or read anyone's mind. It was a perfectly ordinary book. More or less. But it was still a novel.

I tried writing some poetry, and couldn't get it right.

Eventually, I found my poetic voice. That was important for me. I was writing things that had meaning for me, and I was able to put some form on them. It was a big step in the right direction.

As I entered third year in college, I wrote a play for the first time. The only time I'd ever written a script before this was a bad, short screenplay a couple of years back.

By this point, I was doing something else with my reading, too. I was reading all sorts of books. I was reading novellas, poetry, short stories, and non-fiction. I had actually found non-fiction interesting. I was reading books on business and mental health and writing, and I was loving it.

When I wrote Balor Reborn in 2012, I also started writing flash fiction. I managed to take ideas and turn them into 1000 word stories quite easily.

The end result: I now write novellas, in different genres, as well as flash fiction on romance and mythology and vague elements of fantasy and magical realism; I've been writing poetry, and I've written short scripts for stage production; to top it all off, I've been writing books on writing.

It may not seem significant for some, but when stories were my whole world, turning to all of these different areas and genres has been life-changing for me. I'm not just a novelist, or a poet, or a playwright; I'm a lot of different things, all at the same time, and it's the spice that makes my life that little bit more interesting.

Dear Exhaustion

I have good news, and bad news. I'll start with the bad news: I don't yet have the books I'd hoped to work on edited. I was hoping that, with what little time I had off this week, I might be able to turn some attention to them. Alas, no. You see, between the early starts, the distinct lack of any days off, and the beating of the rain on the roof - and poor me in the attic - I lost a lot of sleep that would have otherwise contributed to my editing energy.

The good news, though, is that while I don't yet have the books edited, I have an idea of what I might do with the series. I think it'll look like a December announcement as to whether or not I'll be going ahead with my book-a-month publication on the series, but for now I have things I can do, a publishing schedule vaguely drawn up, and some ideas related to cover design and overall plot.

So, it's a start.

I think the main reason I want to publish this series is because it's something I can control that I really enjoy. Recently, I had been thinking of some film ideas. You know what they say, everyone has an idea for a movie. I had three. A Slenderman movie, a Krampus movie, and an adaptation of Frankenstein.

Well...

Turns out Marble Hornets has been optioned for a film release on the big screen with the director of Sinister (I think... maybe it was Paranormal Activity or Insidious - whatever, one of the big horror directors I would have liked to work with on my Slenderman movie in my wild dreams) connected to it. So, there goes that idea. The Krampus movie, I'm not even sure what's happening with it. One release date on it, a lot of uncertainty about it... I don't know, I could still do it. I have an idea, and an idea is a very good place to start. As for Frankenstein...

Two movies. Yes, two. One, I, Frankenstein, sees Adam in a kind of action role, with two immortal races battling it out. I think one of them are gargoyles. I'm not sure. It's not a typical Frankenstein adaptation, and it's technically mis-titled if you ask me (or anyone who's read the book and knows that you shouldn't call Adam - AKA Frankenstein's monster - by his creator's name. But then, I'm against the idea that Adam should be considered the monster in the first place!) The other one, though, simply titled Frankenstein, stars James McAvoy as Victor Von Frankenstein, and Daniel Radcliffe as Igor, and is therefore a take on the classic films. Not the book.

I don't know what it is about the book, or whether Hollywood just loves the idea of having an Igor, but I haven't heard of an adaptation that follows the same plot as Shelley wrote. Instead there are all of these different paths followed, and the odd decision made to make Victor Frankenstein a Von Frankenstein instead.

Hashtag weird, am I right?*

So, in my heightened state of exhaustion, I managed to see three ideas I had for films get washed away by others who came before me. In a sort of response, I decided to take a couple of completed first drafts and a lot of ideas for follow-ups and connected books, and release them en masse to the world in 2014. I'm aiming for an air of tragi-comedy, dealing with some wit and buffoonery and general craic, while addressing some of the darker elements of ordinary life.

At the very least, it'll keep me busy. And so long as the rain keeps at an acceptable volume, I can write these books in peace without worry of exhaustion creeping in.

*I should probably not do that, right?

Working 9-5

I've made a decision. From Monday onwards, I'm going to work 9-5. While I have a make a quick trip into the city centre on Monday, too, I'm going to make sure that I get in early enough to get what I need to do done quickly. No browsing, no staying around for lunch.

The reason I want to do this is so: (1) it sets up boundaries for me for when I work, (2) it'll encourage me to do something all the time and (3) it means I know when I can muck about, and when I can't. Since I can't afford a social life next week, it's the perfect time to test my self-imposed life of working 9-5.

I imagine it'll be a case of me being bored out of my mind by Tuesday, but sure what can you do?

Actually, that's probably not entirely true. I'm in the middle of making a wee project a reality. I've got my Options sheet (all typed up and pretty) to give me work. I know how to get myself to do things. I plan on spending a wee bit of time drawing up a list of things I can write about, and a list of other tasks I can do, and I imagine it'll keep me busy for the week.

I may even set myself deadlines for things. Imagine that, me with deadlines and working creative-filled shifts.

I jest, a bit, but I'm actually serious about this. I think I can manage working 9-5. I'll be sure to tweet, too, to make it look like I'm a one-man business. Businesses tweet all the time, right? (That's a rhetorical question. I know they do. The pile of free books I received through Twitter competitions is proof of that. Paulie loves free books.)

I'm thinking, aside from one little thing that I've been working on that only my brothers know about, I'll work on getting some flash fiction written, and sending off a bunch of poetry, and finishing The Blood of Leap and designing a cover for it, and addressing a novel I've been meaning to work on for a while.

You know, nothing too stressful.

The way I see it, I can sit at home playing games online and watching seven series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or I can work from home and actually, maybe, make something of myself in a nerdy writer type of way, and still have time in the evenings to do other things that tickle my fancy. What a way to make a living, right?

Getting Ready for Launch Day!

Tomorrow, I'm launching my new blog. I have a list of things I need to do before then, including writing the first story for it, but I have a feeling it'll be a fun one to keep up to date. I have a list of story ideas, and I'll be adding to that particular brand of story-ideas as time goes on.

If you remember a poll I did on my website a while back, you might know what sort of stories are in the works. If not, and you're not bothered looking, well...you can wait to find out tomorrow.

Thankfully, most of the prep-work is very basic code and re-organising in Wordpress. It's the same sort of stuff I've done with blogs in the past, and with my website and the Modern Irish Myth site, so it won't take long to actually get it done. And once it's out of the way, I'll have a brand new site up and running.

Literally, it's a case of: adding a subscriber widget, setting up a navigation menu, writing an About page, and grabbing links to social media sites and the like. It's all simple jobs, and it'll have the site up and running and easy to use.

Once I get it started and have a few stories written to keep it going for a few weeks consistently, I can get to work on a couple of other major projects that have been calling for my attention for a while now. With the Big Break coming to an end, I figure it's about time I actually started following through on my plans.

Of course, I won't be giving up things like reading comic books, and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD, or re-discovering my joy of Pokémon Yellow. That would be ridiculous. But I'll be assigning more time in the day to do "work". (Which, to be honest, is just what I'll have to call it to get people to leave me alone while I do it!)

I have high hopes for the next few months. These are the ones that'll matter, I reckon. These are the ones that will define how I spend my days while not in full-time employment.

Day 31: The Last Month Considered

When I look back at the last month, I see good times and bad. Actually, the "bad" are merely an absence of work. Compared to other times, that's not actually all that bad.

I got to see friends, which was nice. Between an on-stage comedy, dinners, the Zoo and the cinema, I've gotten to see a lot of the people I'm delighted to call my friends, doing things I don't always get the opportunity to do. In previous summers, I don't think I actually squeezed in as many days socialising as I did this month. Somehow, life never worked out that way. I'd like to think of this month as being the template for the next few months, at least.

In terms of work... while I did lose my ticket for the productivity train a while back in terms of The Blood of Leap, I did manage to write a fair few poems this month. I'm lucky that I have that this year. In the past, if I wasn't writing fiction, I wasn't writing. While I didn't submit anything this month in terms of poetry, I do have a list drawn up of where some poems are going. And I entered a competition, which was fun. I don't know when the results are out, but I'm glad to have even submitted something.

In the long run, things are still holding up well. I've written something every day - as this blog can attest to - which means my New Year's Resolution is still in-tact. The habit is getting easier to keep. Best. Resolution. Ever. Seven months in and still going at it.

Of course, I should also be celebrating the publication of The Hounds of Hell, and happy-dancing to the fact that it's sold already.

Next month, I have a lot to focus on. Between a family celebration and some friends leaving, and a possible haunted house excursion on the tables again, I'll definitely have enough to keep me socialising. This is aside from regular things like going to the cinema, and lunches with friends. I could also be releasing a wee ebook, but I still have to write a good chunk of it, and edit it properly. Still, it could be fun.

I've also got my poetry blog to launch. A poetry blog which I might make a poetry and prose blog. I'm thinking of making my website more of a static - but still interactive - place, with other sites hosting stories and poetry entirely on their own. It's a much better system, I think. I can de-clutter my site as a result of that, which is always a good thing.

Who knows, that might launch tomorrow if I get around to it.

Back On Track

Today, I wrote a wee list of things I wanted to get done in the evening. For once, I've actually managed to stick to it. The list included:

- Finish the chapter I was writing.
- Write a blog post.
- Write a poem.
- Update my sales file on my laptop.

As of writing this post, I have everything else done. While it's not enough to stick to my previously intended publication date for The Hounds of Hell, it's certainly enough that I might be able to get myself back into some rhythm of work again. I had no trouble actually forcing myself to write the rest of the chapter.

As for the poem... well, that was a bit more difficult. Sometimes, I have an idea of what I want to write. Today, I just focused on 's' sounds, and went with it from there. Rather than trying to write The Best Poem Ever, I decided I would just attempt to improve upon how I use certain words and sounds in my poetry. The only way to do that is through practice. I was fairly happy with that.

As you might have guessed, updating the sales file was the easiest thing to do this evening. I have my file set up in such a way that I just need to change one figure (the number of books sold) to determine: (a) how many copies of that book I've sold in total, (b) how many books I've sold in total, (c) how much I've earned, roughly, from a single title, and (d) how much I've earned, roughly, from every book I've published.

What most surprised me was the surge in sales since last night. I was not complaining. I had expected sales to dip from the moment Planning Before Writing stopped being on Kindle Select. I was wrong, and I was glad I was wrong. It seems that the book is simply selling because people wanted to read it, not because Amazon was pushing it especially hard for being a Select book.

With that in mind, I think tomorrow I'll arrange for Planning Before Writing to hit the shelves of Smashwords. Renewing the Kindle Select agreement would only do one thing: allow Amazon, exclusively, to earn from my wee book. I don't have an plans to make that book free again, at least not for the foreseeable future, and so this is the best way forward with it.

It'll be interesting to test the waters of Smashwords again, albeit with a totally different book to Stepping Forward. It'll require updating links on my website and on ModernIrishMyth.com to ensure readers have a choice in where they're sent to, but it'll be worth it. Plus, it'll mean the book will eventually be available for purchase on various stores online. Huzzah and such.

So, that's part of tomorrow's plan. I'll also have to write like crazy, which will be fun. I don't plan on staying up too late tonight, but at the very least I'll be awake in time to take advantage of the day ahead of me. I'm back on track to writing regularly and keeping myself busy. It's about time.

Poetic Focus

Progress on The Hounds of Hell was practically non-existent today. I'm still hoping to have the energy to write at least the rest of the chapter I was working on once I finish up here.

My principal problem was that I couldn't sleep last night. This put me in a position of having a headache for most of the day that makes looking at a screen a challenge and a half. I've been avoiding writing this blog post all day for that very reason, instead focusing on part of what kept me awake so late in the first instance: poetry.

Last night, upon realising that it was Bed Time and I hadn't written a poem in the whole day, I started writing one. Forty minutes later, I put down my pen and did a line count: 120 lines. Rhyming. It took quite a lot out of me, and not just because it's an mini-epic of life and death.

Having written it, though, I couldn't sleep. When I then woke up, I wasn't sure if I could leave it there as the last poem I'd written. So, I wrote a happier poem, one about The World of Orange. That was followed by poems about exams and spelling and grammar, because there was something there that I could see, something I could take advantage of that was fun and simple and less miserable than last night's poem.

It didn't make me feel horrible to have written it, mind you, but it was a bit dark in places and I didn't want to just leave it there. I've been writing poems in the same notebook for the past couple of weeks, now, and I don't want there to be a wholly negative chunk of it as some form of conclusion. (Not that it's actually a sequence.)

This has, of course, all been part of my hopes to write more poetry, because I didn't feel like I'd written enough, or was writing enough. Now, I'm facing something of an opposite problem: I'm taking a huge focus on poetry, and not enough on fiction.

That is something I want to change, without sacrificing one for the other.

If I can manage it, I'd like to up the ante a bit. From tomorrow onwards, every day shall see me:

1. Publishing a blog post here.
2. Writing a poem.
3. Writing fiction.

Not necessarily in that order, of course, since the five poems I've written today were all completed before this post had even been conceived. (I'd planned on writing about "strong female characters", but my brain is too melted for that. Soon. Soon.) Tomorrow, I'll write a chunk of fiction - definitely enough to finish the chapter if I don't manage that tonight - as well as writing at least one poem and writing a blog post.

So yes, that'll be busy.

But it's a necessary busy-ness. I can't afford to not write fiction every day. It has to happen. I won't actually write enough if I don't write fiction every day. I'll probably have to take on Camp NaNoWriMo next month, too, to ensure I'm writing a ridiculous amount of fiction every day in an effort to destroy the deadline-target.

I've definitely got my work cut out for me, but this is the life I want to live. I just need to figure out the sleep thing, first. If I keep losing sleep (for some reason... I wish I knew) then I'm going to keep struggling with the writing. Fingers crossed, tonight I'll sleep, and my new daily writing plans can get under way.

Gripped by Exhaustion

It took me some time to actually get up this morning, by which time all hopes of waking up early to write were dashed. With a number of other factors then contributing to the time-suck of the day, including eating, chores, laziness, Skyrim and The Walking Dead (dammit, why did we start watching that...and then keep watching until season 1 reached a finale?), I quickly ran out of time in the day.

I managed to write a sizeable chunk today, despite these various distractions, but about half as much as I would have liked to. It means I still have a lot of work to do, and only a couple more days to actually get it all done.

This might mean not doing very much in terms of television or PS3 for the next while. That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make, if it means getting this book written.

The thing is, today's work was the most fiction I'd written in a very long time. It took a while to get back into the rhythm of things, to find the words more easily. I didn't just slip back into writing fiction like it was riding a bike. I wasn't just shaky at first; I was incapable.

With the chapter I'm currently working on coming to an end, I hope to beat these mental blocks. That's all they are. I'm out of practice with fiction. The ideas are there. The words, not so much. It's a different type of language to writing a blog post every day, or writing a poem, or writing non-fiction.

The actual story is going well, though. While it's more of a struggle to write it than I'd like it to be, I'm having fun with it, and getting the basis for the book in place. I've even introduced a new character to the series. She can drive. She knows my protagonist Fionn. She's going to be more and more kick-ass as the story goes on. I can't wait. Strong female characters are always interesting to create. While her role in the story will be understated by certain characters, she's integral to the development of events in the book.

Just so you know.

Anyway, in other news:
- My desire to write a zombie apocalypse novel has only increased since watching The Walking Dead season 1.
- I'm scheming something, as I have a tendency to do.
- New Comic Book Day...just, that. Tomorrow. As always. Yay!

Stepping Up a Notch

Back when I made plans for the summer to write all the time, things were simple: I had a job, I had a list of things I wanted to write. Since  then, it's become more complicated. My job is less likely to provide additional income. That's the major upset to the plans. In other areas of life, things have actually improved.

My initial intenton back in March was to just write all the time. Then, the Heart in Mouth competition happened, and I found a greater interest in poetry than I've ever had before. A consequence of this is that in my plans for what I hope to achieve by September's end, I'm looking to submit a few dozen poems in the next four months, along with fiction of various lengths. I plan on entering competitions and submitting to journals and hoping, hoping, that something will pay off. That sort of desire to get my poetry out there didn't really exist two months ago.

A further consequence of this is that I need to be writing a lot more poetry. I have ideas in mind to keep the poetry going, some large projects that need attending to. However, I'm also planning on following an example set by Dave Lordan: write a poem every day. I'm testing that this month, and if it goes well I'll do it again in July. That's 61 poems. I cannot guarantee they'll be any good, mind you; that seems to happen to me without my intending it, though always when I attempt to write a certain type of poem. When I reach in to myself, when I attempt to write about something close to me, that's when I find the heart of my poetry, the emotions needed to create something worth reading, worth experiencing, and the words almost fall into place themselves.

Other factors that have played a part in this are the people I meet. Specifically, in one instance, the friends I've been writing with for the past couple of years in college (more so in the last year) have been driving me towards trying to do better. They inspire a certain confidence in me, and when we get together to read poetry or short stories, I feel like I learn something from every one of them.

They've made me want to pursue old dreams. They'll understand in reading this what I might mean, given the sorts of things we talk about. Grandiose projects in development are making me want to spend a lot more time at my craft, and to reach out to other writers.

Reading particular books has inspired me towards trying to achieve more. One such example, mentioned before, is the 4 Hour Work Week. It's not that I only want to write for four hours of the week, but that I want to have a lifestyle that befits my aspirations. I don't think I could be happy just accepting life as is, falling into place in a job (and worse: one I don't enjoy.)

I want to step it all up a notch, and I know that I have to. That, I think, is why I haven't been working as much as I ought to all the time. I think part of me is afraid of failing if I actually apply myself fully, as if writers aren't meant to be prepared for rejection. You know what, to hell with rejection! It's not really much to be afraid of, in the end. It's an absense of someone seeing your work or your life in the same way you do, or in a way that fits their needs. That is not something I can change, and it's not something I should dwell over.

What I'm saying is, I'm going to try harder to actually stick to my plans. I don't care that I'll be insanely busy and half-mad by the end of it with all the wild characters in my stories getting out. I love it. I love writing, and I want to stop being so afraid to do more of it. I've gone through this sort of stuff too much in the past to just let it happen again, because I know that I only ever feel flustered and deflated and ultimately angry at myself for not putting in even a little bit of work when I should have done.

I'm stepping it up a notch. I'm going to make sure that the past eight years of my life haven't all been to get scared when things start getting serious.

Competitions, Publications and Performances

While I can't be certain as to how my employment status will look for the coming months (aside from the weekend job in the bookshop!), it seems that I'm feeling a bit more prepared, really and truly, for writing competitions, for publications, and for performances. I have tended in the past to avoid them, partially out of a lack of time to consider themed-stories or poems due to college assignments, partially out of fear of being judged.

The first is much easier to get past. After this month, I will have nothing more to do for college. Until such a time that I can actually afford to do a Masters programme, I won't have any such assignments to hand in anymore. I'll have, at the least, evenings to myself. With these evenings, I'll finally have the time to consider submitting something. Within a group I run on Facebook, I've been gathering a little list of publications to consider submitting to. Even just having the list is a comfort.

It's not just short stories and poetry, though. I've been thinking it through, more and more over the last few years, and I'm getting to the point of being mentally and emotionally ready to submit to a publishing house. I've done it once in the past, when I was fifteen, and there was a distinct problem with that: I convinced myself that the book was ready, when I wasn't even at that point myself. (The book also needed a lot more editing than it had gone through. A LOT. I won't deny that at all.)

Now, though, I feel ready. I feel like I can actually submit a book - and I know which one - for publication. I won't be talking about that much from here on out until such a time that I actually have good news to share, though. Aside from the book still needing some work, I don't want anybody getting the impression that it's not worth publishing because one editor or agent didn't consider it suitable enough.

It's all part of one big movement for myself. I've never felt ready for somthing like this like I have now. I'm even considering competitions that have an entry fee, if I can write something that I think is suitable. That's a large step for me. I don't often put money on the line for anything. I'm not a gambler. I never really have been. Putting my money on the line for a competition is going beyond my comfort zone. I guess I never really trusted myself before now.

That's where we meet the fear of judgement.

I don't think I'm alone in that. It's not quite a lack of confidence in my ability (that's partially why I avoid submitting much, but I've managed to overcome that on a few occasions for publication purposes). I think it has more to do with the person on the other end of the submission process, knowing who will be reading what. That's put me off for a long time.

Then I entered the Heart in Mouth competition, on a whim, and that actually turned out okay.

Making that shortlist was a major deal for me. It gave me some confidence in myself. It took away some of the fear of submitting short stories and poetry to competitions and magazines. There are a lot of opportunities out there for someone to submit something, especially if they write across several different forms of writing like I do.

As for performance... I think the anxiety has gone out of it. Having gotten on stage both for fun and for the competition, I've gotten a bit more comfortable doing it. I know I still have a long way to go - it's still beyond my comfort zone - but I know what I need to do to help myself improve. It'll be a while before I attempt actually getting listed as performing - the open mic will do, thank you.

So, there we have it. I'm much less scared now than I was even this time last year. I can't say how well I'll do in all of this, but it's a good first step to get myself emotionally ready for this. The writing will come a bit more naturally, I think.

Guest Post by Sophie Duncan: The Sidekick - Plucky, Loyal and Just a Tad Annoying

Well, it's double thanks to Paul today, 1 for hosting me and 2 for organising this blog tour (and thanks to Literary+ for making it possible).
The Sidekick - Plucky, Loyal and Just a Tad Annoying :).

Ever since I was little, I've always been a fan of sidekicks. Maybe it's because I grew up watching Dr Who, a show in which the Doctor's companions are very important. I always missed them in the episodes when the Doctor was alone. I was exposed to my first kick-arse woman in Dr Who, Leela, the Sevateem warrior who liked her Janus thorns just a little too much. I also love Mary Tamm's Romana, but I only got to watch her in reruns, I was too young to watch the shows on the TV. The Doctor's companions used to have to put up with quite a lot and I liked it when they managed to get one up on him.

The Doctor and his companions is the classic power dynamic between hero and sidekick: the hero knows more, is generally better at stuff and is frequently explaining things to his/her younger companion and thus explaining things to the reader/viewer. However, because there were so many companions, Dr Who did get to crack the mould. The Doctor remained (mostly) in charge, but the likes of Sarah Jane Smith could make their mark and stepped out of the Doctor's shadow, especially so with Sarah Jane, who eventually had her own series.

I was being flippant with my title when I described the sidekick as annoying, it's not a universal truth, although I have to admit, some have turned out that way, or at the very least started that way. A character I loved as a child, Adric, again from Dr Who, annoys the hell out of me as an adult, I just want to smack him over the head for being willful, childish and arrogant. Richie Ryan from Highlander The Series, in the first episode I saw, I wanted to take a sword to his neck, but he grew on me, so much so, I preferred him to The Highlander himself. Richie is an example of a sidekick growing beyond the role in which he starts. There were five seasons of Highlander (well, okay there were six, but some of us don't talk about #6) and Richie grew from rebellious teenager, there to generally get in trouble so Duncan could moralise at him, to a mature, independent immortal who then began to lose his usefulness for the writers, because he was too like the other immortals in the show. Personally, I liked the adult Richie, he was a sidekick who came of age, someone who could stand up to McLeod, a more modern companion.

Richie was not the first sidekick to do this, we have the likes of Robin becoming Nighthawk in the Batman comics as well. And maybe in written media, comic serials and book series that run over a longer time-frame than TV, sidekick growth is easier to accommodate and you also don't have to worry about the actor getting older, either. I suppose my sidekick character in Death In The Family is Sean, he's younger than my protagonist, Tom, but they share common goals and Tom feels protective towards him. I certainly see him growing and changing over the sequels, after all, he is currently fourteen, a time of transition from child to adult. In fact, I intend his evolution to be as much part of the story dynamics as Tom's. I won't be using him as a stooge, nor as an example of how not to do things, the sidekick in modern literature is far more sophisticated than the 2D characters of old TV, e.g. Scrappy-Do from Scooby-Do, Vince Romano from TJ Hooker, Penfold from Dangermouse.

Unlike the aforementioned traditional sidekicks, who were generally stuck in their ways with a particularly annoying catch-phrase if you are really lucky, Sean does get to take the lead in some things, he knows more about their mutual condition than Tom does and at least in the beginning, he is the stronger character. Modern sidekicks are more than there for the 'but why Doctor's of old. In fact, a lot of stories are moving to the ensemble model where there is not such a distinction between leader and supporter. In TV, this can be seen in the likes of CSI, where there is always a lead figure, but the sidekicks, or rather, subordinates are no longer on the side, they have almost as big a role in proceedings as the head honcho. There are, of course, always the mentor-mentee moments, providing the classic one-on-one learning experiences, but there is not so much of the subordinate being there just to get it wrong so the hero can show them how it's done, because *gasp* in our modern world, even heroes are allowed to be fallible.

Ensemble structures are not something I've played with a lot in my writing, I suppose the classic is the fantasy quest adventure, the likes of J R R Tolkein's Lord of The Rings, where there are many characters each striving for the one goal. I tend to veer towards one or two characters when I'm writing, so this group dynamic is a challenge for me, making sure each character has enough 'air time' and this style of story lends itself to an omnipotent view point, also not a narrative mode I go for. Still, I do have a short story that I released for The Wittegen Press Giveaway Games, Samling Born, that will be developing into an ensemble format novel, so I better get practising.

Despite the rise of ensemble shows on TV, I don't believe the hero-sidekick relationship will go away, especially not in written format. There is still something to say for the best-friends and/or master-student relationships that this dynamic creates. Much good literary material lies in 'wise sage give young apprentice advice' and, in modern relationships, the inverse is also true, teachers can learn from their pupils. I think, due to the flexibility of our format, a novel writer can develop a much more nuanced and intimate relationship between characters than a forty-five minutes a week TV show and the sidekick has his or her role to play in many stories. They are there to: help the reader learn about the environment the author is creating; maybe lighten the mood from time to time; keep the hero on the straight and narrow (there is a particularly good example of this in The Stein and Candle Detective Agency #2: Cold Wars where Weatherby makes his opinions known to Mort when Mort's actions become questionable).

I think the role of the sidekick can be summed up by saying that they, more often than not, provide the humanity a story needs. Your hero/protagonist can be a psychotic bastard, as many of the darker superheroes can be from time to time, if you have that small breath of loyal, earnest humanity in the form of the, yes I'll use the term, plucky sidekick.
Sophie Duncan

Sophie was born with the writing bug in her blood, boring her primary school teachers with pages of creative writing and killing her first typewriter from over use when she was thirteen. She began publishing her work on line while at university where she discovered the internet and fanfiction. It took another decade for Sophie to realise her long-time dream of releasing her own original fiction as an author through Wittegen Press.
Death In The Family (Heritage is Deadly #1)

Leaving a good London school with solid prospects, Tom Franklin has the world at his feet. Yet one thing has always haunted his perfect life: his dreams. When Tom discovers that the nightmarish images of dark places and even darker instincts are in fact repressed memories from his early childhood, he must face the heritage from his birth-father, a savage vampire known only as Raxos.
Realising his memories are his only hope of controlling his awakening instincts, Tom returns to, Coombedown, the sleepy, Cornish village in which he was born, unknowing that the night-breed in his veins will lead him into danger.
Death In The Family is a young adult, paranormal novel.

Death In The Family Literary+ Blog Tour Schedule:

• 27th August 2012: Is it the teeth? - vampires and why we like them. Host: Brooke Johnson
  
• 28th August 2012: Scare me, Shock me - paranormal fiction vs horror. Host: A. K. Flynn
  
• 29th August 2012: For Mature Eyes Only - when does romance become erotica? Host: JD Savage
  
• 30th August 2012: There were 3 in the bed... ménage, ewww or gimme gimme! Host: Tressa Green
  
• 31st August 2012: The Sidekick - plucky, loyal and just a tad annoying :) Host: Paul Carroll
  
• 1st September 2012:Feedback - Taking It - Giving It - Enjoying It. Host: Leonard Suskin
  
• 2nd September 2012: Mad With It - The Highs and Lows of A Writing Imperative Allisyn Bridges

Literary+ is a mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tive which was founded and led by Shen Hart. This is a time of evo­lu­tion and progress, the mar­ket is being opened up to e-books and self-publication. As a fel­low writer, Shen under­stands that self-publication is a hard and often lonely road. She started Lit­er­ary+ to bring together authors and related cre­ative spe­cial­ities with the goal of help­ing each other. With a tight knit, friendly and wel­com­ing com­mu­nity at its core, Lit­er­ary+ holds a strong focus on mar­ket­ing. As Lit­er­ary+ con­tin­ues to grow and evolve it will use inno­vat­ing, orig­i­nal and exper­i­men­tal mar­ket­ing meth­ods and schemes to get its member’s books into their reader’s hands.

Guest Post, by Ian Mac an Ghaill: Words, Worlds, and Gaiman

Today, I've got the pleasure of hosting a guest blog by my terribly literate friend, Ian Mac an Ghaill. He's an aspiring author, something of a genius, and while you won't hear it here, he has one of the coolest voices in the world. He's currently working on his first novel.

I'll pass you over to Ian as he talks about words, worlds, and Gaiman.

***

I’ve been telling stories for longer than I remember.

That is a story in itself; told in the first person, present perfect continuous tense, establishing the embryo of a plot (protagonist tells stories) while giving some information about the character (given to reflecting on previous and current actions) and referring to the limits of the protagonist’s experience. It is not a very sophisticated story though. I could not fill 1000 pages with it (unless I wrote each word to be REALLY BIG). It’s also a true story, an autobiography.

When I was very young I decided to write a book. The book had 3 stories (3 that I remember, in any case). I wanted the story typed, like a real book. I think that I was writing by that stage but I can’t be sure and for many years my writing was largely illegible so this may have been common sense on my part. Anyway, I told my stories to a tape recorder and my Dad duly typed them up on a typewriter. Each story was about a paragraph long but the book contained several more pages of illustration (I may add that a face made up of a crude circle with dots for eyes and a line for a mouth was the pinnacle of aesthetics in these illustrations) and I was delighted with what lay between the cardboard covers.

This was my earliest independent attempt at writing a work of fiction. I believe that I have improved since then. I have at the very least written longer works with more complicated vocabulary, whether they are actually better or not is subjective. The longest piece I have ever written is just over 10,000 words and arose as a kind of ‘Marvel’s Spider-man/David Gemmel’s Drenai’ fanfic hybrid but most of what I write is between 1000 and 3000 words. Most of my story-writing has been for essays at school but I always harboured the desire to write an epic.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Rowling’s Harry Potter, Nix’s Old Kingdom, Colfer’s Artemis Fowl; these were the fictions I wanted to emulate. With one exception (noted above) attempts to do that tended to fizzle out, wasting away because I lacked the necessary craft and diligence to nourish them; my enthusiasm wasn’t enough to sustain them. I never gave up on my ambitions but I stopped trying to make novels appear through sheer force of will.

Then I discovered the stories of Neil Gaiman. I had been in the habit of only reading long fiction; the longer the better and the bigger the world, the more I wanted to know about it. I changed the way that I looked at reading and writing. That seems a grandiose and yet pointless statement; everything that I read or write changes how I read and write but Gaiman’s writing stands out to me as the catalyst for a new reaction to how I understood stories.

He used language in such interesting ways that I could not do other than notice. He even changed writing-styles within stories. Word-choice and sentence structure suddenly came into focus for me in a way that they had not before. For some reason the importance of language and style in writing had not quite clicked with me in the same way before.

There is a reason to choose the word ‘rob’ over the word ‘steal’ or ‘eldritch’ over ‘strange’. ‘Déja vu’ means ‘already seen’ yet English writers often use the French formulation. Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy were both writers of fiction in 19th century Russia but they wrote very differently. Having said that, maybe Dostoyevsky writes exactly like Tolstoy and the exactitude is lost in my English translations.

I also started reading short fiction, which gave me a better idea of how to pace and structure narratives. I changed the way I approached my school essays (they were now short stories, not stories cut short) and writing short stories changed how I approached longer ones. I am in the process of writing a novel at the moment (not as far as I’d like to be, unfortunately) and I write each chapter as if it were a short story by itself. If nothing else, this makes each foray into writing seem more manageable.

That is the story of how I write stories and how I came to write them in the way in which I do. This may or may not be of any use to anyone and what works for me will most likely not work for anyone else in exactly the same way. I don’t know of any infallible rules for writing and I do strongly believe that there are none.

Joyce’s Ulysses proved that you don’t even need an easily intelligible language or much of a plot. I obsess over synonyms and the mechanics of wording. You don’t have to. You can just write the first words that come into your head. J.R.R. Tolkien was marking exams when he wrote “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” and he had no idea what he meant by writing it.

Write what you like or write what you feel compelled to write. Break whatever rules of writing seem necessary. Write.

Guest Post, by Shen Hart: Bringing Your Characters to Life

A good friend of mine from Google+, Shen Hart, is here today with a post about bringing your characters to life! I'm extremely grateful to Shen for putting the time into writing this, in the midst of a day job and running a new writing group, Literary+. You can find out more about both Shen and Literary+ beneath her post.

***

Bringing Your Characters to Life

Your story is nothing without your characters. It cannot happen without them. Therefore, it's rather important that you write characters with depth, feeling. You need to bring them to life. Of course it's entirely up to you how you view this, some people may prefer to think of themselves as a puppet master, others as a director. Whatever works for you.

The key part, in my mind, is knowing your characters inside out. You need to look past their rough physical appearance and favourite fruit. What is their history? What's that one thing which keeps them up at night? To really bring them to life, they need to be real on some plane or level of existence. You're probably thinking 'but the reader doesn't give a damn what happened on Bob's fourth birthday'. Yes, you're probably right. However! You need to know that his fourth birthday party was the time when his relationship with his father started to twist and falter. It was in that moment, that things changed. That, is the reason that Bob is about to start the zombie apocalypse.

What is my actual point and methodology here? Stop thinking of your characters as just words on a page. See them as people which you need to know inside out. They can be your best friends, your arch nemesis, whatever role they need to fill in your life. Treat them like a psychology project. Personally, I do it like this: I'm a very visual person. So I choose a character, form the scene in my mind then press play. I watch it like a movie. I see every little detail, the slight shift in weight, the glance over at the faded photograph. I hear that rise at the end of the last word, the change in breath and skipped heartbeat. Then I poke. I square up to them and demand to know why. Sometimes I prefer more... torturous methods but that's for a different post.

The summary here? Get to know your characters on every possible level. Understand what makes them tick, why they're like that. That will bring them to life and make them leap off the page and grab your readers

***

About Shen:

Shen Hart is a passionate, hot-headed English writer. When she isn't torturing her characters in deviously dark manners she spends time with her horses. She has a penchant for twists and has been called 'cheek incarnate' on many occasions...

Shen founded Literary+ as a combination of her desire to help fellow self-published authors and her love of marketing and challenges. 

Shen blogs here:  http://tiaden.wordpress.com/

About Literary+:

Literary+ is a writer based project brought together and lead by Shen Hart. It brings together passionate, quality self-published writers to help each other promote their work, bringing more readers to every member. It was sparked by the simple fact that there are many top quality self-published authors being over-looked because they do not have the time and resources to efficiently and effectively market and promote themselves. With ambition and passion, Literary+ will take its members to the heights they deserve through a tight-knit community of like-minded writers.

You can access the Literary+ website here: https://sites.google.com/site/plusliteraryplus/home

Free Book Out Tomorrow!

We're literally hours away from Stepping Forward going live on the Internet. Hours. I plan on staying up to sort out getting it available as early as possible on December 15th (local time, of course...). The best part, of course, is that the book is free to download. This has a number of advantages:

1. It means that you, the reader, do not have to pay to read a longer work of fiction that I have written.
2. It means that there is literally no point in anyone pirating this e-book: all someone has to do is go to the Smashwords page and download themselves in whatever format they want.
3. And yes, I did say in whatever format. This is keeping in mind the available formats from Smashwords, but what it boils down to is that most, if not all, e-readers will be able to support the file.

One thing people haven't asked me is why I'm releasing the book for free. For a start, it helps me get my name out there. I plan on editing Meet Sam a lot over the next few weeks to get it ready for submission to a publisher, and this will be something I hope people can enjoy in the meantime.

There's also the fact that I've wanted to give a Christmas present out for a very long time: this is that present. Free for me and free for you. Simple.

I enjoyed writing the book, and the few people who have read it have enjoyed it, so with any luck it will appeal to the wider audience of the whole of the Internet. (I jest, of course...).

And why Smashwords? Aside from hearing a lot of good things about them, I wanted to get the book away from the little corner on the Internet I call my website. While I love my website, and while I loved the idea of having the free chapters there to download, it wasn't practical. While the server would have been able to deal with the traffic, I had no way of knowing how many people were actually downloading the book. Smashwords should fix that problem, while also putting the book in the market.

Mostly, though, I just want to have fun with this, and I want to have a book available for people to read. So many people in college have heard me say I'm a writer and aside from the website, there's nothing there for them to really base that on.

I do have a request, however: I want people to read this book. I want honest feedback on the book. What did people like? What did they not like? Would they recommend it to a friend? Is there a glaringly obvious typing error I missed in my edits? (That one's a joke... I've done everything I can to make this as perfect as possible in terms of spelling and grammar!) Mostly, I want to know if people enjoyed the book. Reading should be fun.

Remember, though, that this isn't the last book I'll be releasing. I have a project in mind that I have told people on various social networking sites, and I aim to publish things to do with that in the same way, while aiming towards the traditional publishing route with other books. I don't believe authors should restrict themselves to one or the other, especially not today.

Readers who still buy paper books should be given the option to read something extra by an author if they really want to. At the same time, readers who have only read the e-books might be encouraged to go for a paper book if they liked the author enough. This isn't just me I'm talking about. This is how I believe the publishing industry might survive in an age when e-books are getting stronger. Readers need more options, but not authors shouldn't be restricted to one market or the other in order to give a reader these options.

With that said, this is my first step into the publishing world. This is the first, but not the last, free book I publish. I can't say for sure what's coming next or when, but I will do my utmost best to ensure that there will always be new material out there by myself for people to read. This is a lot for myself as it is for people who genuinely love to read, and given the economic climate, I'd like to offer something for free to make sure that, so long as people have Internet access, people always have options of books to read.

So, quick recap, back to where this started: Stepping Forward is out tomorrow, December 15th 2011, for free. The first step of the longest journey of my life begins then.

One Week In

So, I'm a week into the website, and a week into college. Well, third year of college. That makes me feel older. A lot older. The past two years have gone by so quickly, and so much has changed since then. But that's a story for another day.

So, the website hasn't had much added to it since the novella excerpt, the short story, the poems, the articles and the Doctor Haik-Who. I've added two more haiku and one more poem, but right now the list of new material on the site is lacking. This will change, over time. There will most definitely be more short stories over the next few months. For the time being, I'm trying to get a couple of them submitted to different publications. Others will find their way directly online. That's just the way it is.

Quick question though: what genre of story would people like to read?

1. Fantasy? (Including Urban Fantasy)
2. Science Fiction? (Including Speculative Fiction and Superhero Fiction)
3. Horror? (Including Dark Comedy - something that should both make you laugh and disturb you a little)
4. General fiction? (Like the story already on the website, Dear World)

Cast your vote for the genre of your choice and I'll write the story. Voting closes September 29th. I have a few ideas, so I'll just go with whatever people want to read with this one. (Vote in the comments below, please. You don't need a Blogger account to do so.)

Poems and articles will find their way to the website more easily. Some articles will require a lot more effort than others, so they will take a little bit longer to write, but they will make it there!

As for college... When did it get so tiring? This further emphasises the pain of feeling older. In first year, I was able to sit through lectures quite easily. Now I'm struggling to stay awake. While I have all 10am starts (much better than a 9am start!), I'm also in quite late. The earliest I'm off, aside from Fridays, is 4.30pm. But then other days I have lectures until 6pm. We haven't even started with clubs and societies yet!

I think my main issue is my sleeping pattern. I'm staying up too late, even if I still go to bed relatively early. My other issue is laziness. Fact.

It's been a good first week, back, though. While I haven't been able to talk to some people as much as I'd wanted to, I've survived our first assignment (that felt like homework...) and I'm very happy with the optional modules that I got. I'll be off to France for a few days later in the year for one of them! How cool is that?

Of course, everything will get even busier once the second week starts, but with the way everything is timetabled, it'll be Christmas before we know it! Which is frickin' scary, on account of Teaching Practice in January. Before I know it, then, it'll be my birthday and I'll definitely be old! (Or, eh, old enough to legally drink in the US...)

A good first week overall, for the website and college. I'm hoping more people will find their way to the website, soon, though. I think it's getting lonely. For now, cast your vote for the story and if you have time, download the sample chapters of Stepping Forward! I'm looking for reviews! There may even be a competition in that, sometime soon!

Deadlines Approaching!

My website is, hopefully, being launched on September 11th. I have a lot of stuff to do between now and then, but I chose the date for one reason and one reason only: it's the day before I go back to college. I want to have the website up and running with content to view (and share?) before then, but I'd be too pushed for time to try get everything done before then.

Because I slacked a little the past couple of days, I have to play catch-up on my workload. I've got to write four scenes of The Rest is Silence, which will be no small feat, and that's only one of the many things I have to do. Thankfully it's also the only explicitly creative goal for the day, the rest being website work, editing, etc.

I have to finish editing a short story - the first short story that will be going on my website. That's my primary concern, because I don't want that section to be blank when I launch. The story is called Dear World, but I can't tell you much more about it without spoiling it. It's something I hope people like, that they can maybe connect to, but that I mainly wrote upon seeing a publication opportunity. It wasn't accepted, but then I didn't really believe it would be. I still like the story, though, so I'm posting it online. I just don't believe in posting on a website someone else set up. This is my baby, so it's staying in my house.

Once that's all done, I have to get some poems selected for the launch of the site. I'm not the best poet in the world, but some of the stuff I've shown people has been liked, so I'm going to share it through the website. I sometimes write with particular people in mind, other times I find the connection with a person after it's written. (Classic example in my novel Meet Sam was realising how much like Nick a friend from college was, who I didn't meet until ten months after the novel was written!)

To finish off my day, I have to type up articles for the website. I have five categories for non-fiction on the website, and each one needs a piece written in it by launch day. Of course, I need more pieces to post in the future, which is where next week's workload comes in. I have to write more articles, edit something, get more poems ready, and work on the banner. Still working that one out, mind you!

See, I have deadlines for a lot of stuff. All the basics for the website need to be ready by the 11th at the latest, but preferably the 10th. My play, The Rest is Silence, needs to be written, typed and edited by the time college starts back on the 12th. I'm not in until the afternoon, but I don't want to be working on it, then. I have a deadline list, and the play needs to be finished so I can write my novels throughout the college year, while continuing to work on the website and for The Phantom Zone, and then I'll get into the heavy planning stage of my X-Men story that I've been talking about on Twitter and Facebook; that needs to be planned in some details by December 10th.

I might be mad with the amount of work I'm taking on, but I wholly believe it's possible to do all of this. And hey, there's a reason I chose December 10th - Christmas break! I will finally be able to collapse, then, after a tiring first semester! (I'm not entirely sure of the date I'm off, but that's my deadline, anyway!) In the meantime, I have to get a lot of other stuff ready, before I even go back to college. I don't think I'll ever stop working, you know that? It's like I'd heard on the radio, and mentioned a short while ago, a professional does the work even when he doesn't feel like it. Thankfully I happen to know some amazing people who will make the winding-down periods in my life so much better!

Review - Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes

Remember Maureen Johnson? She's that author I quoted in my last review who said hilarious things. Up until recently, I referred to her as 'my favourite author whose books I hadn't read.' Not anymore. I took a risk (admittedly, a very low risk...) at buying one of her books, Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes, at the end of May, and I read it very recently. What can I say? I was missing out.

What did you think of the book?
First of all: I loved the concept of the story. I don't have a mad aunt who sends me all around the world with very little instructions to guide me along the way, and rules that stop me bringing guide books, money or anything else that might be useful going across continents and oceans. Second of all: I loved the characters. Ginny was a great protagonist. She was friendly, she was funny and best of all: she was ridiculously bad at being a popular girl stereotype and everyone still liked her. I loved the ensemble of new and weird people entering her life, the mad little ideas her aunt had, the opportunistic letters and the feeling of everything needing to work out for Ginny, from a reader's perspective.

How does it compare to other books you've read?
If I am being perfectly honest - which I aim to be in my reviews - the only other books close to this one that I've read are those by John Green (er...all of his novels that hit the shelves) and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Johnson wrote a book that was much more light-hearted than Green does. This isn't to say either one of them is better than the other; rather, the happy feelings you get from Johnson's book are marred by much less sadness (especially when you compare it to Looking For Alaska, which made me an awful lot more.) Yes, you read that bracket right: more.

More? What do you mean more?
Let's be clear: a book that is only filled with happiness, with laughter, with strange people, can be good, but not great. To be great, the book has to inspire a lot more emotions from the spectrum. I laughed a lot while reading this book, but it does have its sad moments. On top of that, you really want Ginny to succeed in whatever she thinks her quest is. Oddly, you don't necessarily want her to ever go home, even when she first arrives scared and lonely in London. This would ruin the story, but aside from that you just want her to keep following through with the quest her aunt sent her on.

What was your favourite quirky moment?
My experience of Maureen Johnson is that she's a little bit quirky. If you saw her commentary on the Royal Wedding, or if you looked at my last review, or if you follow her on Twitter, you'll know this is definitely an understatement. So, I'll attempt to keep this spoiler free, but I definitely have to say that the play she made up for the book is definitely one of my favourite quirky moments in the book. Maybe not the best play in the world, but definitely good for what it is.

Who would you recommend this book to?
If you like young adult literature, the works of John Green and/or travel fiction, this is a good for you. It's funny, heart-warming and that little bit of delightful that every reader needs every once in a while. The characters are likeable, weird and interesting, the plot equally so. I couldn't put it down.

What next?
Well, I have another Maureen Johnson book to read, but not quite yet. Next week we've got another triple-set of reviews (compensating for the lack of reviews this summer) and I've got to write a helluva lot of fiction. Also, I think I want to travel everywhere now. Thanks Maureen, my bank account and job will love you for this... I may have to postpone it for a little while. And I don't think I'll be following Ginny's aunt's rules - I need money and guidebooks and stuff when I'm going anywhere. (Seriously, I once got lost on the way home, but that's a tale for another day...)