I am writing this on Halloween. The shops are full of pumpkins and strangely wrapped sweets to give to trick or treaters..
Some of my neighbours’ houses have spooky decorations and carved pumpkins on the doorstep. They look like macabre heads. (The pumpkins, that is. Not the neighbours. Obviously.) It’s all very jolly in a perverse way.
“Come in if you dare,” says one banner. Continue reading
Reader work is a new concept for me. Reading, especially with Companion Cat purring beside me, has always been my purest pleasure.
Fact, fiction, annual financial statements, cornflake packets, I read them all. And I revelled in the otherwhere of the printed word, quite apart from whatever I learned from the text in question.
During lockdown, I have been reading even more than I usually do. Some old friends, for the dark times. Right Ho, Jeeves never lets me down. Nor does Sylvester. Or Wyrd Sisters, Fire and Hemlock, Persuasion…
But also new voices. Recommendations, serendipitous discoveries, long postponed titles from TBR pile, curiosities. All were interesting, many fitted my mood or preoccupations of the time. A few were utterly fabulous and I binge read everything else the author had written.
But what surprised me was that reading a new book tired me. Especially the ones that I really loved. Nearly as much as writing the damn stuff.
Think about it. Reading a new book is nearly as tiring as writing a new book? Continue reading
During lockdown I’ve been reading even more than usual – and looking back over my Kindle intake for the last 13 weeks, I see that a surprising amount of it is fantasy. I use the term to embrace novels that may be classified also as paranormal, speculative fiction, time travel, alternative history, steampunk or even science fiction.
I was telling a friend this and he looked rather shocked. “You must have been desperate,” he said.
Well yes, I was – desperate for a cracking good read that would take me somewhere other than a world I was rather fond which seemed to be going to hell in a hand basket. But not so desperate that I lurched into uncharted jungle. I like fantasy. I’ve always read quite a bit of it anyway. Didn’t he?
He shuddered. “Oh romance!” he said. (Actually he said something rather crisper than that, and I found it funny and shouldn’t have, so I’m not sharing.)
I conscientiously did not take umbrage. (And a lot of it was not at all romantic, anyway.) But it set me thinking.
This week I have been considering – no, make that marvelling at – writer’s clues we novelists leave sprinkled about our stories. The clue is always a key to unlock some crucial element of plot or character when it becomes important. In other words, later. A breath from the future.
Some are for the readers, especially if we’re writing some sort of whodunnit, whether the crime is murder or stealing a pig.
But some are for ourselves. And some come as a complete surprise to us when we get to the crucial moment. Continue reading
This week I have been finishing a slow burn story. Writing has totally absorbed me. Hardly had time to eat and sleep, let alone read my Facebook and Twitter feeds. Actually Tweet or post Facebook status? Haha. In a contest between us, snowballs in hell would be the bookies’ favourite.
It’s been great. But…
I always loved Lord of the Rings but I worried – can an orc change? Even Bilbo had his moment of savagery, after all. But could an orc go country dancing? Grow roses, maybe?
Nah.